CANADIANS JONI MITCHELL & LORNE MICHAELS HONOURED

Joe Biden Helps Kennedy Center Honors Return To Tradition During A Weekend Of Politicos, Performers And Proof Of Vaccination

Ted Johnson
Mon, December 6, 2021


UPDATED, with additional quotes: David Letterman opened Sunday night’s Kennedy Center Honors by telling the audience in the Opera House, “Tonight, it is quite nice, very nice, to see the presidential box once again being occupied.”

The crowd cheered and then gave President Joe Biden a standing ovation, after which Letterman quipped, “The same with the Oval Office.”

White House Correspondents' Association Plans Return Of Annual Dinner In 2022

2021 Kennedy Center honorees, from left, Justino Díaz, Lorne Michaels, Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler, and Berry Gordy pose following the Medallion Ceremony for the 44th annual Kennedy Center Honors on Saturday. - Credit: (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

The ceremony marked a return to the large-scale, lavish gala of tradition, as Covid-19 forced last year’s ceremony to be postponed and later scaled back. But it also was the return of the presidential seal of approval, after four years in which President Donald Trump did not attend or host a pre-ceremony reception at the White House.

Instead, Biden and First Lady Jill Biden hosted honorees Justino Diaz, Berry Gordy, Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler and Lorne Michaels for an event in the East Room before the ceremony. The president gave Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live, a little ribbing, “He’s trying out seven guys to play me.”

He added, “If you can’t laugh at yourself, we’re in real trouble. And you make me laugh at myself a lot.” (Trump, by contrast, railed on Twitter over Alec Baldwin’s portrayal).

Then Biden introduced Steve Martin, sitting in the crowd, who quipped, “Do you want me to play you?”

“Steve, I’m afraid that you understand me too well,” Biden said.

The ceremony itself, to be broadcast later this month on CBS, again featured moving tributes to the honorees from friends and admirers, but also one of the plum see-and-be-seen A-list social events of the year for D.C. Things weren’t entirely normal, as most attendees were vigilant about wearing a mask and other requirements.

David Rubenstein, the chairman of the Kennedy Center, drew cheers when he said on stage to the audience, “How does it feel to be in a room where everyone is vaccinated and tested?”

Sitting near the Bidens were Vice President Kamala Harris and First Gentleman Doug Emhoff, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chief Justice John Roberts and Secretary of State Tony Blinken. Shari Redstone was spotted during the National Anthem between Emhoff and Pelosi, and nearby were other figures like Bob Bakish and Steve Schwartzman. Joe Manchin, who was a visible presence in the scaled back Kennedy Center Honors last spring, made a return visit, along with a slew of other Democrats. There was a sprinkling of Republicans — including Newt and Callista Gingrich, former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) — but Letterman perhaps said it best when he told the crowd, “This night is about the honorees whose unique gifts cross all boundaries and represent all parties from the left to the far left.”

President Joe Biden looks at actor Steve Martin, standing right, a he speaks during the Kennedy Center Honorees Reception at the White House. - Credit: (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The ceremony has shades of the Grammys, the Tonys, the Oscars, The Emmys and This Is Your Life.

Chita Rivera honored Diaz and noted that the opera legend has “a secret fondness for singing disco.” Grace Brumbry said that Diaz “was that rare combination of an opera singer who is also an extraordinary actor.” Christian Van Horn, Denyce Graves, Ariana Wehr, Hannah Shea, Ana Maria Martinez and Matthew Polenzani performed selections from some of Diaz’s best known performances.

For the tribute to Mitchell, Norah Jones performed A Case of You and other works, Ellie Goulding sang Big Yellow Taxi and Brandi Carlile performed River, and Brittany Howard finished up the set with Both Sides Now accompanied by Herbie Hancock.

Goldie Hawn, Scarlett Johansson, Melissa Manchester and the cast of Hello, Dolly! paid tribute to Midler, with Beanie Feldstein, Kate Baldwin and Taylor Trensch performing Friends and Kelli O’Hara singing Wind Beneath My Wings. Billy Porter got an ovation for a medley of Midler’s hits, finishing with From a Distance. Barbara Hershey said that she became lifelong friends with Midler when they made Beaches. She said that when they get together they are recognized and she has to tell people, “Yes, it’s us. Yes, we are actually friends. Yes, I’m still alive.”

Michaels’ tribute was highlighted by Paul Simon singing America, and by three different on-stage versions of Weekend Update: first one anchored by Kevin Nealon, followed by Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers, and then Colin Jost and Michael Che. One of the clip packages was devoted to the political figures spoofed on the show, although left out Baldwin and his spoof of Trump. There weren’t any mentions of the 45th president, for that matter.

Others giving testimonials for Michaels: Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Pete Davidson, Kenan Thompson and Jimmy Fallon.

The tributes turned into a roast at points, from cast members past and present, along with multiple host Martin, who said, “Even after 45 years of producing the show, Lorne still has a dream about Saturday Night Live. That is to get two laughs in a row.”

The tribute to Motown founder Gordy featured Smokey Robinson, Andra Day and the cast of Ain’t Too Proud: The Life And Times of the Temptations. Although Stevie Wonder, with the finale, called a brief halt to reset the production (he even sang words of assurance, “We’re getting this right,” as the audience waited). The delay was worth it: Superstition, followed by the capper, Higher Ground.

The Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss production will at at 9 PM ET on CBS.

On the red carpet, Midler told reporters that her cream-colored dress was “federal,” in honor of the nation’s capital. Asked what she thought of her White House experience, she said, “Very clean. Lovely. Great staff. The food was excellent. The wine was a little sweet.” Then she got a tad more serious. She described Biden as “so kind and so generous. He was obviously so happy to be there. The vice president and her husband were there, and that was very moving, although with masks I couldn’t tell you who was who.”

Diaz, wearing an inverness cape, explained to Midler that Leonard Bernstein “had one just like it.” He then gave Midler and kiss and said, “I love you.” Diaz performed Ginastera’s Beatrix Cenci at the Kennedy Center in its inaugural year.

Gordy may have been the most ebullient of the honorees who walked the carpet, as he was joined by Robinson, a longtime friend. “It’s like a fairly tale, you know? All of the stuff I wished for as a kid.” Asked how he went from a boxer to a music career, he said, “I wanted to be like Sugar Ray Robinson. I wanted to be a great fighter. He was so good because I wanted to hit and not be hit. But music took over … and music won out.”

The Kennedy Center Honors is officially apolitical, but when the first set of honorees were announced during Trump’s term, in 2017, Norman Lear and others announced that they would not attend the White House ceremony. Trump then announced that he would not go to the ceremony at all, and he never did.

Saturday Night Live member Colin Jost, right, and Scarlett Johansson pose on the red carpet at the 44th Annual Kennedy Center Honors. - Credit: (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

Still, on Sunday night, some attendees didn’t shy from the political fray. Robinson, who once said that Republicans needed to stand up to Trump, said that hasn’t happened. Judy Collins lamented the potential demise of the Supreme Court’s Roe Vs. Wade decision.

As Biden ribbed Michaels over the show’s portrayal of him, a number of the politicos also were queried about their SNL characterizations. That made this ceremony a bit more unique than others, what with the interaction of real life vs. satire.

As Davidson put it during the ceremony, “Basically if you are in politics and you have screwed up, we’ve got someone who looks and sounds like you and you are going to be on the show. And if you screwed up and we don’t have someone who looks or sounds just like you, I get to play you.”

Manchin told Deadline that he wasn’t a fan of Aidy Bryant’s take on him in a skit earlier this season. “Awful,” he said. Asked about the show’s portrayals of her, Pelosi said, “Just as long as it’s funny. If it’s not funny, well…”

Asked what the night meant given that Trump avoided the ceremony for four years, Pelosi told Deadline, “Let’s not worry about that. Let’s move forward in a center named for a great president, in a theater in here named for President Eisenhower, and tonight we will be honored by the presidency of Joe Biden.”

All-day alligator hunting proposed in Florida. The price? Rotting carcasses, irritated tour operators



David Fleshler, South Florida Sun Sentinel
Mon, December 6, 2021

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida has 24-hour restaurants and 24-hour gyms. Why not 24-hour alligator hunting?

The state wildlife commission has proposed adding seven daylight hours to the annual public alligator hunt, which typically takes place at night, making the activity a 24-hour-day experience.

Many hunters support the idea, since it would give them more options and take away the pressure to finish by 10 a.m., especially if they’re on the verge of nabbing a trophy-sized gator.

But some airboat tour operators say daytime hunting could scare away the very animals their clients are most eager to see. And alligator processors, who transform the dead reptiles into useable meat and hides, are not enchanted at the idea of receiving carcasses that have been baking in the sun.

“My biggest concern is people bringing spoiled alligators,” said Grayson Padrick, owner of Central Florida Trophy Hunts, whose Cocoa plant processes about 1,200 alligators a year, one of three processors who expressed concern about the idea. “Currently we see quite a bit of spoilage from the daytime hunting as it is. The skin starts slipping. You can take your hand and wipe them down the alligator and the scales will literally peal off in your hand.”

Alligators, one of the original members of the endangered species list, recovered so robustly that hunting was reopened on them in Florida in 1988. Florida is home to an estimated 1.3 million alligators.

Last year hunters killed 8,216 alligators in Florida, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The average length was about 8 feet, although seven came in at 13 feet or more and one topped 14 feet. The Florida record is a 14-foot, 3 1/2-inch male taken in Lake Washington in Brevard County.

At a meeting held by the wildlife agency Thursday evening in Moore Haven, near the western shore of Lake Okeechobee, only three hunters showed up to discuss the proposal. All three supported it.

“I think the 24-hour hunting is a big plus,” said Stephen Greep, a Fort Lauderdale hunting guide.

He said it can be difficult for his clients to fit a nighttime hunt into their schedules and that stormy weather can ruin their plans if hunting is restricted to certain hours.

“We have the afternoon thunderstorms that blow us off the lake at 5 p.m. till 11 o’clock sometimes,” he said. “There’s a lot of time, money and planning that goes into it, taking time off for that week.”

Jim Simon, of Moore Haven, who once got a 13-foot, 4-inch alligator on Lake Okeechobee, said, “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to hunt them all day long.”

Alligators have typically been hunted at night, when they’re more active and can be found with a spotlight by their red eyeshine. Hunters catch them with methods such as harpoons, fishing rods, spearguns and crossbows. Once they catch the alligator, they kill it with a bang stick, a pole that discharges a shotgun shell or high-caliber bullet on contact.

Alligators are a prime attraction for tourists exploring Florida’s interior, with visitors feeling they haven’t quite enjoyed the full experience without encountering the state’s most famous reptile.

“My people want to see alligators,” said Capt. Kenny Elkins, of Okeechobee Airboat & Eco Tours, who says his pre-COVID clients came from all over the United States and many foreign countries. “During the hunting season, they get very difficult to see.”

He opposes the extension of hunting hours.

“I don’t understand why they would want to do it,” he said. “To me, the alligators are more important to see than to kill. The alligator is worth more alive than he is dead.”

The state wildlife commission has set up an online information site on the proposal, with opportunities for the public to comment. If the proposal goes through intact, it will go in March for approval by the wildlife commission, a seven-member board appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

More than 80% of respondents to an online survey found a 24-hour alligator “very acceptable” or “extremely acceptable,” said Tammy Sapp, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Brooke Talley, coordinator of the state’s alligator management program, said the extension of hunting hours would provide more flexibility.

“People will have more opportunity within their schedules to get out on the water,” she said. “That’s what we heard people tell us — I want to get out more, I work nights, I can’t get out at night. By allowing hunting during the day, we might be appealing to people who may not be as comfortable hunting at night, maybe the youth hunters. So there’s a lot of benefits to 24-hour hunting.”

Myanmar's process against Suu Kyi has low credibility - Nobel Peace Prize chair


The World Food Program is announced as Nobel Peace Prize laureate by Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Nobel Committee in Oslo

Mon, December 6, 2021
By Gwladys Fouche

OSLO (Reuters) - Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's conviction by a Myanmar court is part of a process whereby the country's military rulers are suppressing the opposition, the chair of Norway's prize awards committee said on Monday.

"The legal process against Aung San Suu Kyi appears to have low credibility," Berit Reiss-Andersen said in a statement to Reuters.

Suu Kyi, who is now 76, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 while under house arrest in recognition of her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights. She was arrested again this year following a military coup against her government.

A Myanmar court on Monday found the deposed leader guilty of charges of incitement and breaching coronavirus restrictions, and state TV said she will serve two years in detention at an undisclosed location.

"Aung San Suu Kyi has dedicated her life to the fight for freedom and democracy in Myanmar and has faced this demanding situation for more than 30 years," Reiss-Andersen said.

"The Nobel committee is worried by what her imprisonment will mean for the future of democracy in Myanmar. It is also concerned for the strains a long prison term could impose on Aung San Suu Kyi personally," she added.

(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche, writing by Terje Solsvik, Editing by Catherine Evans and Angus MacSwan)

The trials of Aung San Suu Kyi, from heroine to villain to convict


Protest against the military coup in Yangon

Mon, December 6, 2021

(Reuters) - Put on trial by the generals who overthrew her elected government in a coup that cut short democratic reforms she had fought for decades to bring about, Myanmar's ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced on Monday to four years in prison.

The 76-year-old's sentence was later reduced to two years' detention in an undisclosed location after she was convicted of incitement and violations of a law on natural disasters in the first verdicts in more than a dozen criminal cases filed against her since the Feb. 1 military takeover.

Just 14 months before the coup, she had travelled to the U.N. International Court of Justice in the Hague to defend those same generals against charges of genocide over a 2017 military offensive that drove ethnic Rohingya Muslims out of Myanmar.


Suu Kyi's long struggle for democracy made her a heroine in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, and the mostly Western criticism she faced over the plight of the Rohingya had no negative impact on her popularity at home.

Known as "the Lady", Suu Kyi had fulfilled the dreams of millions when her party first won a landslide election in 2015 that established Myanmar's first civilian government in half a century.

She spent 15 years under house arrest in the struggle for democracy, but her administration had to cohabit with the generals who retained control of defence and security.

That hybrid government failed to unite Myanmar's many ethnic groups or end its decades-long civil wars, and Suu Kyi also oversaw tightening restrictions on the press and civil society while falling out with some former allies.

But her second election victory in November unnerved the military - and it seized power on Feb. 1, alleging voter fraud by her National League for Democracy party despite rejection of the army's claims by the election commission and monitors.

The first criminal cases filed against Suu Kyi included breaching coronavirus restrictions and possession of unlicensed walkie-talkies.

More serious charges were to follow, including incitement, corruption and breaching the Official Secrets Act. She now faces a dozen cases with combined maximum sentences of more 100 years.

Protesters have taken to the streets in her name, calling for the release of "Mother Suu" despite hundreds of killings and thousands of detentions since the coup.

LADY BY THE LAKE

The daughter of independence hero Aung San, who was assassinated in 1947 when she was 2 years old, Suu Kyi spent much of her young life overseas. She attended Oxford University, met her husband, the British academic Michael Aris, and had two sons.

Before they married, she asked Aris to promise he would not stop her if she needed to return home. In 1988, she got the phone call that changed their lives: her mother was dying.

In the capital Yangon, then known as Rangoon, she was swept up in a student-led revolution against the then junta that had plunged the country into a ruinous isolation.

An eloquent public speaker, Suu Kyi became the leader of the new movement, quoting her father’s dream to "build up a free Burma".

The revolution was crushed, its leaders killed and jailed, and Suu Kyi was confined to her lakeside home. Speaking her name in public could earn her supporters a prison sentence, so they called her "the Lady".

Slightly built and soft-spoken, she played a crucial role in keeping world attention on Myanmar’s junta and its human rights record, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

Aris died in 1997, but she did not attend his funeral, fearful she would not be allowed to return.

During a brief release from house arrest in 1998 she attempted to travel outside Yangon to visit supporters and was blocked by the army. She sat inside her van for several days and nights, despite dehydration in the sweltering heat, and was said to have caught rainwater in an open umbrella.

She survived an assassination attempt in 2003 when pro-military men wielding spikes and rods attacked a convoy she was travelling in, killing and wounding some of her supporters.

The army again placed her under house arrest and from behind the gates, she gave weekly addresses to supporters, standing on rickety tables and talking about democracy under the watchful eyes of police.

A devout Buddhist, she sometimes spoke of her struggle in spiritual terms.

In 2010, the military began a series of democratic reforms and Suu Kyi was released before thousands of weeping, cheering supporters.

In the West, she was feted. Barack Obama became the first U.S president to visit Myanmar in 2012, calling her an "inspiration to people all around the world, including myself". U.S economic sanctions on Myanmar were eased, though Suu Kyi remained cautious about the extent of reforms.

But the Western optimism generated by Suu Kyi's 2015 election win evaporated two years later, when Rohingya militants attacked security forces and the military responded with an offensive that eventually expelled more than 730,000 Rohingya from Myanmar.

U.N. investigators in an August 2018 report said the Myanmar military had carried out killings and mass rape.

In December 2019, Suu Kyi defended the military operation before the U.N. International Court of Justice, describing it as a counterterrorism response and asking the court to dismiss a genocide accusation brought by Gambia.

(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Angus MacSwan)

Automating the War on Noise Pollution

To reduce noise, cities need new sensor technology that can tell the difference between a dog barking, a garbage truck and a revving motorcycle engine.


A sensor deployed by researchers measures noise levels and collects data to train an AI model to automatically recognize the origin of the sound.
Courtesy of SONYC/Charlie Mydlarz

By Linda Poon 
December 2, 2021, 
Linda Poon is a writer for CityLab in Washington, D.C., focused on climate change and urban life. She also writes the CityLab Daily newsletter.@linpoonsays

Any city dweller is no stranger to the frequent revving of motorbikes and car engines, made all the more intolerable after the months of silence during pandemic lockdowns. Some cities have decided to take action.

Paris police set up an anti-noise patrol in 2020 to ticket motorists whose vehicles exceed a certain decibel level, and soon, the city will start piloting the use of noise sensors in two neighborhoods. Called Medusa, each device uses four microphones to detect and measure noise levels, and two cameras to help authorities track down the culprit. No decibel threshold or fines will be set during the three-month trial period, according to French newspaper Liberation, but it’ll test the potentials and limits of automating the war on sound pollution.

Cities like Toronto and Philadelphia are also considering deploying similar tools. By now, research has been mounting about the health effects of continuous noise exposure, including links to high blood pressure and heart disease, and to poor mental health. And for years, many cities have been tackling noise through ordinances and urban design, including various bans on leaf blowers, on construction at certain hours and on cars. Some have even hired “night mayors” to, among other things, address complaints about after-hours noise.

But enforcement, even with the help of simple camera-and-noise radars, has been a challenge. Since 2018, the Canadian city of Edmonton has been piloting the use of four radars attached to light poles at busy intersections in the downtown area. A 2021 report on the second phase of the project completed in 2020, found that officials had to manually sift through the data to take out noise made by, say, sirens. And the recordings didn’t always provide strong enough evidence against the offender in court. It was also costly: The pilot cost taxpayers $192,000, while fines generated a little more than half that amount, according to CTV News Edmonton.


Those obstacles have made noise pollution an increasingly popular target for smart city innovation, with companies and researchers looking to make environmental monitoring systems do more than just measure decibel levels.

A sensor deployed by researchers behind SONYC.
Courtesy of SONYC/Charlie Mydlarz

In one of the noisiest cities in the U.S., a group of researchers at New York University have been studying New York’s sound environment since 2016 in hopes of developing a network of smarter sensors. That is, sensors that use machine learning to help city officials not only better address 311 complaints about noise, but proactively set targeted policies to minimize the activity from which they originate.

“As the current tool to understand noise, 311 is totally flawed because it's a very reactive way of dealing with noise,” says Charlie Mydlarz, a senior audio researcher who’s part of the SONYC (Sounds of NYC) project funded by the National Science Foundation. “There has to be a noise problem for someone to pick up the phone to actually log a noise complaint.” The process is not only slow and limited by staffing resources of the city, he adds, but it’s also not representative of the city’s population, with complaints largely coming from wealthier neighborhoods.


A network of nearly 100 sensors has gathered “hundreds of millions of rows” of anonymized data from around the city — including audio snippets and data on decibel levels that will help the team understand noise patterns, how loud the city is in certain areas and how they vary over time, Mydlarz says. More than 2,800 citizen volunteers recently helped identify and label a subset of the audio snippets, which is used to train a machine learning model to automatically distinguish the nature of the various noises. Mydlarz adds that the samples have been randomized and broken up to preserve privacy, and that it’s unlikely for the sensors to pick up intelligible conversations from where they were placed — usually high off the ground.

Now in its second phase, the team is working with the city’s Department of Environmental Protection to trial a network of roughly 30 low-cost sensors deployed in residential neighborhoods and mounted to the homes of residents who’ve complained to the DEP about chronic noise issues. The sensors can stream real-time data on decibel levels in the neighborhood and source identification of noise disturbance to the department, which will help them better distribute and lead to a more immediate response time.

They can give the city concrete data to propose changes in regulation to, say, construction permits, if they detect a pattern among the noise violations. Mydlarz says their project has already proved useful in the Red Hook community of Brooklyn, where the waterfront has seen an influx of warehouses thanks to the e-commerce boom. Residents say trucks often pass through residential neighborhoods, clogging up streets and generating excessive amounts of noise.

“Our sensors were being used to generate data that then is used to convince the city agencies to reroute trucking away from residential areas,” says Mydlarz. The data illustrated just how loud the trucks are, and on Oct. 29 last year, the community board unanimously supported a resolution asking the city department of transportation to consider such changes.

As for residents, the noise monitoring network comes with an app that also provides context about the noise they’re hearing — if there is a permit for a construction project nearby, for example. The researchers are currently looking for more volunteers so they can deploy more sensors. (Mydlarz says they would ideally like to mount sensors on light poles and other city infrastructure, but are limited by which city agencies they’re able to partner with.)

The hope is to generate more support from both city officials and residents. “What we want to do is to show them the loop,” he adds, “meaning you deploy a sensor, you see the data, the DEP enforces [the noise code], and measure the impact of that enforcement.”

Paris is already deploying a similar strategy. Medusa, the type of sensors that the city will be using, was developed by the local environmental noise monitoring nonprofit Bruitparif. First tested in 2019 near busy bars and construction sites in the suburbs outside Paris, the sensors measure decibel levels several times per second. Images captured on camera combined with the nonprofit’s own technology displays the sound snippets as colored dots representing different noise levels, essentially allowing officials to “see” noise traveling from its source.

Like SONYC, Medusa aims to add crucial information to noise disturbance in hopes of answering a question that’s far more complex than it initially seems: “Where does the dominant noise come from?”

Shaanxi China January 23 1556

Last Updated on Mon, 06 Dec 2021 | Plate Tectonics

The deadliest earthquake and mass-wasting event on record occurred in 1556 in the central Chinese province of shaanxi. Most of the 830,000 deaths from this earthquake resulted from landslides and the collapse of homes built into loess, a deposit of wind-blown dust that covers much of central China. The loess represents the fine-grained soil eroded from the Gobi desert to the north and west and deposited by wind on the great loess plateau of central China. Thus, this disaster was triggered by an earthquake but mass-wasting processes were actually responsible for most of the casualties.

The earthquake that triggered this disaster on the morning of January 23, 1556, leveled a 520-mile-wide area and caused significant damage across 97 counties in the provinces of shaanxi, shanxi, Henan,

Hebei, hubei, shandong, Gansu, Jiangsu, and Anhui. sixty percent of the population was killed in some counties. There were no modern seismic instruments at the time, but seismologists estimate that the earthquake had a magnitude of 8 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter near Mount Hua in Hua County in shaanxi.

The reason for the unusually high death toll in this earthquake is that most people in the region at the time lived in homes carved out of the soft loess, or silty soil. People in the region would carve homes, called Yaodongs, out of the soft loess, benefit from the cool summer temperatures and moderate winter temperatures of the soil, and also have an escape from the sun and blowing dust that characterizes the loess plateau. The shaking from the magnitude 8 earthquake caused huge numbers of these Yaodongs to collapse, trapping the residents inside. Landslides raced down steep loess-covered slopes, and the long shaking caused the yaodongs even in flat areas to collapse.

Time tends to make people forget about risks associated with natural hazards. For events that occur only every couple of hundred years, several generations may pass between catastrophic events, and each generation remembers less about the risks than the previous generation. This character of human nature was unfortunately illustrated by another earthquake in central China, nearly 400 years later. In 1920, a large earthquake in Haiyuan, in the Ningxia Authority of northern Shaanxi Province, caused about 675 major landslides in deposits of loess, killing another 100,000-200,000 people. Further south in 2008, the May 12 magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Sichuan Province similarly initiated massive landslides that killed an estimated 87,587 people.

Climate Policy Watcher


The Warming Effects of the Industrial Revolution

Last Updated on Fri, 03 Dec 2021 | Global Temperatures

Until recently, humans did not significantly affect the much larger forces of climate and atmosphere. Many scientists believe, however, that with the dawn of the industrial age—and the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil—humans began to significantly add to the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, enhancing the planet's natural greenhouse effect and causing higher temperatures.

Climate Change Threatens Society

"Climate change . . . is the single greatest threat that societies face today." —James Gustave Speth, environmentalist and dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

James Gustave Speth, "The Single Greatest Threat: The United States and Global Climate Disruption," Harvard International Review, Summer 2005.

The Industrial Revolution began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Great Britain when manual labor began to be replaced by machinery fueled by new sources of energy. The first sign of this change was mechanization of England's textile mills, the development of iron-making techniques, and the increasing use of coal rather than wood and water power for heating, industry, and transportation. Around 1850, steam power was invented as a way to use coal energy more efficiently, and soon steam engines were used to power trains, ships, and industrial machinery of all sorts. These inventions spread throughout Europe, the United States, and other regions, bringing enormous changes in society and commerce. Later in the nineteenth century, scientists learned how to generate electricity, and the discovery of oil led to the invention of the internal combustion engine, both technological developments that further changed the way humans lived and worked around the globe.



Around 1850, steam power was invented as a way to use coal energy more efficiently, bringing enormous changes in society and commerce. Here, a worker operates a steam engine in 1854.

By the end of the twentieth century, the world was completely dependent on and rapidly depleting the planet's fossil fuels— resources such as coal, natural gas, and oil that are formed from the decomposed remains of prehistoric plants and animals. As Hillman explains, "Fossil fuels contain the energy stored from the sun that took hundreds of thousands of years to accumulate, yet within the space of a few generations—a mere blink of the planet's life so far—we are burning it."

The result of this rapid burning of fossil resources, many scientists believe, is rising concentrations of greenhouse gases that may be overheating the planet. Scientists have determined, for example, that concentrations of carbon dioxide have been increasing

since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In 1750, there were 280 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but by 2005, the levels of carbon dioxide had risen to 380 ppm, an increase of over one-third. And much of this increase has occurred in recent years, since 1959, as world energy usage has expanded dramatically. The United States is responsible for almost a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, and China is the second-largest emitter. Other countries with high emissions include members of the European Union, while the lowest emissions come from various nations in Africa.

The major source of human-produced greenhouse emissions— accounting for approximately 65 percent—is the use of fossil fuels to power industry, transportation, home heating, electricity generation, and cooking. However, carbon emissions are also increased when carbon-absorbing forests are cut down to make way for human developments and woodlands, grasslands, and prairies are converted into farmland for agriculture. As geography professor Michael Pidwirny explains, "Rural ecosystems can hold 20 to 100 times more carbon dioxide per unit area than agricultural systems."6 Together, these human activities are believed to account for at least 28 percent of the Earth's total greenhouse emissions, with the balance produced by natural sources.
The scientific study of Global warming

Scientists have long suspected a link between industrialization and global warming, but serious study of the issue did not begin until the second half of the twentieth century. In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius was the first to suggest that the burning of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide gas to the Earth's atmosphere and could raise the planet's average temperature. At the time and for decades thereafter, however, Arrhenius's discovery of the greenhouse effect was dismissed by the mainstream scientific community, which reasoned that such a major climate change would not likely be produced by humans and could only happen slowly over tens of thousands of years. Most scientists at the time also believed that the vast oceans would absorb most of the carbon dioxide produced by industry.

By the 1950s and 1960s, however, improved instruments for measuring long-wave radiation allowed scientists to prove that Arrhenius's theory was correct. At that time, studies also confirmed that carbon dioxide levels were indeed rising year after year. In 1958, Charles D. Keeling, a scientist with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, conducted the first reliable measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide at Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory and found concentrations of the gas to be 315 ppm and growing.

Charles D. Keeling, a scientist with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, receives the National Medal of Science from President George W. Bush on June 12, 2002. Keeling took the first reliable measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and confirmed that carbon dioxide levels were rising every year.

PRO LIFE SENATORS ARE ANTI-VAXXERS
Senate set to vote on bill barring Biden vaccine mandate, likely to pass with Manchin support

Tyler Olson
Mon, December 6, 2021, 7:01 AM·4 min read

The Senate is set to vote this week on a resolution to nullify President Biden's vaccine mandate for private companies, as Republicans and at least one Democrat push back on the administration's rule requiring vaccines or inconvenient testing rules for workers at large businesses.

All 50 Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., backed a challenge to the vaccine mandate last month under the Congressional Review Act (CRA). That law allows Congress to officially disapprove of an executive branch regulation via a resolution passed through each chamber.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said last week he also supports the Braun resolution.

"I do not support any government vaccine mandate on private businesses," Manchin said Thursday after voting against an amendment to a government funding bill that would roll back public and private vaccine mandates. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and a handful of other Republicans forced that vote in exchange for expediting passage of the funding bill, but they got no Democrat support.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., speaks to reporters outside of his office on Capitol Hill on October 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Manchin spoke on the debt limit and the infrastructure bill. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesMore

Republicans also think Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., may vote for the Braun resolution. She declined to say whether she will vote for it in an interview with CNN last week. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., is also pushing his Democrat counterpart from Montana, Sen. Jon Tester, to "join[] me in my efforts to block all of Biden's mandates."

The Braun resolution only needs a simple majority to pass the Senate, which means the bill will likely succeed. Rep. Fred Keller, R-Pa., is leading companion legislation in the House of Representatives, which his office said Friday has 206 cosponsors. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Friday it is unlikely the bill could come for a vote in the House with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in charge.

"The challenge is how you bring it up on the floor," he told reporters. "We're not in the majority. We don't control it."

Even if Republicans and potentially a handful of Democrats manage to force a House vote on the CRA resolution, such resolutions are subject to a presidential veto. And it's highly unlikely Biden would sign a bill canceling a rule he ordered his administration to make.

Sen. Mike Lee. R-Utah, said Thursday Republicans will continue pushing back against President Biden's vaccine mandates. Reuters

"It'll come up likely again next week with the Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval," Lee said Thursday. "That's insufficient, of course. One of the defects with the CRA is that Congressional Review Act resolutions of disapproval are subject to presidential veto. So, the same president who abuses his executive power as this President has with these mandates, is certain to veto."

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week that the White House believes Biden's vaccine mandate for private companies is on solid ground "based on a 50-year-old law that Congress put into place 50 years ago …. We're going to continue to press forward with these requirements."

Psaki also said the administration's mandate should be called "vax or test" as employees who do not get vaccinated can instead wear masks to work every day and submit to regular COVID-19 testing.

Lee said Republicans will continue to force the issue as Biden's vaccine mandates also face numerous challenges in federal courts. He said Republicans plan to bring up amendments defunding vaccine mandates in any future vote-a-rama, which Democrats will face this month if they move their reconciliation spending bill on schedule.

"It'll come back up in any future vote-a- Rama," Lee said. "It's gonna come up again … and it should."

Lee added that some Republicans may again threaten to block a government funding bill and cause a shutdown in February when the current continuing resolution runs out, "in the unfortunate event that the president persists in keeping this in effect, in threatening the American people this way."

But R Street Institute resident senior fellow for governance James Wallner said any votes on future legislative efforts against vaccine mandates are unlikely to have any actual effect.

"Whatever does happen either now or in the new year is going to be choreographed. It's going to be something that's set up in the Senate, almost always with unanimous consent between the two leaders," Wallner said. "I would imagine that you will see, for instance, votes in the Senate that create the illusion that something like a vaccine mandate ban could pass before you'll see an actual policy like that pass."

He added: "They'll set like 60-vote thresholds on them, they'll structure the process. If they can't block the vote entirely, then they'll create a process whereby… the price of getting your vote is that you lose."

Fox News' Brooke Singman and Jason Donner contributed to this report.

‘It’s who they are’: gun-fetish photo a symbol of Republican abasement under Trump



David Smith in Washington

THE GUARDIAN

Mon, December 6, 2021

It is a festive family photo with seven broad smiles and a Christmas tree. But one other detail sets it apart: each member of the Massie family is brandishing a machine gun or military-style rifle.

Related: Outcry after Colorado sheriff’s office tweets photo of Santa getting handgun permit

The photo was tweeted last week by Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, with the caption: “Merry Christmas! PS: Santa, please bring ammo.”

A few days earlier, a school shooting in Michigan left four teenagers dead and seven people injured after a 15-year-old student allegedly went on a rampage.

Massie’s post earned widespread condemnation but was also seen as indicative of a performative, provocative brand of Republican politics, calculated to go viral, “own the libs” – that is, provoke outrage on the left – and contribute to the outsized influence of supporters of Donald Trump.

“Here his family’s got guns under a Christmas tree just after four kids were killed,” said Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Clinton administration. “The guy’s abominable but that’s what’s happening to the Republican party. They’re flat-out nuts. There’s a piece of the Republican party that now supports violence.”

Recent examples include Paul Gosar, a congressman from Arizona, posting an animated video that depicted him killing Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Joe Biden. All but two Republicans in the House refused to vote to censure him.

Last month, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert made anti-Muslim remarks about Ilhan Omar. Boebert claimed she and a member of staff were taking lift at the US Capitol when she saw an alarmed police officer running toward them. She said she turned to her left and spotted the Minnesota Democrat standing beside them.

“Well, she doesn’t have a backpack. We should be fine,” Boebert recalled saying, to laughter. “And I said, ‘Oh, look, the jihad squad decided to show up for work today.’”

Omar urged House leaders to discipline Boebert. But Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader, downplayed the incident and defended Boebert, insisting she had apologised both publicly and personally.

Omar responded on CNN on Sunday: “McCarthy is a liar and a coward. He doesn’t have the ability to condemn the kind of bigoted Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric that are being trafficked by a member of his conference.”

She added: “This is who they are. And we have to be able to stand up to them. And we have to push them to reckon with the fact that their party right now is normalizing anti-Muslim bigotry.”

Such incendiary antics are set to continue on Tuesday when Gosar is joined by Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Matt Gaetz of Florida at a press conference to decry the treatment of people arrested in connection with the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. Republican extremists have sought to portray the rioters as patriots.

Each tossing of a verbal grenade commands more airtime than moderate Republicans going about legislative business, ensuring that Trump loyalists continue to dominate national conversation. Taylor Greene, appearing on rightwing ideologue Steve Bannon’s podcast, boasted recently: “We are not the fringe. We are the base of the party.”

Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, pointed to the recent congressional testimony of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who described how the platform’s model rewards those who shout the loudest.

“What we know from the whistleblower at Facebook is that the more dramatic, the more outrageous the picture, the more it grabs you,” Kamarck said. “The more it’s violent, the more clicks it’ll get. That’s what their algorithms are trained to do.”

Massie’s gun fetish post now has more than 80,000 likes on Twitter.

Kamarck said: “This guy wants to solidify a base, get campaign contributions from pro-gun people. This is simply unforgivable. There’s just no way that the majority of Americans agree with this kind of rabid, pro-gun stance, even people who are hunters and pro-gun people.”

With historical trends suggesting Republicans will win back the House next year, McCarthy appears determined to become speaker, meaning he cannot afford to alienate Trump or the most radical members of his caucus.

Kamarck added: “Kevin McCarthy is just the lowest of the low. He has decided that he has to placate a base which is very dangerous, which is violent and calls people to commit violent acts and we’ve never had anybody like that. Kevin McCarthy thinks if he can hold all these crazy people in his caucus, he can be speaker.”

The dangerous shift in Republican ranks was on display recently when Kyle Rittenhouse, who was 17 when he killed two people at an anti-racism protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, argued that he acted in self-defence and was acquitted on all charges.

Rittenhouse was invited to Trump’s estate in Florida, elevated to heroic status by rightwing media and feted by Republicans. Taylor Greene even sponsored a bill to award him a congressional gold medal.

Related: Ilhan Omar: McCarthy a ‘coward’ for not condemning Islamophobic comments

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Within the Republican party, there’s a battle for leverage in terms of winning primaries and influencing primaries. Then you’ve got Donald Trump.

“He’s sitting there as a kind of monarch waiting for his subjects to come and pledge their fealty to him and one way to do it is to be the tough man to promise to take to the barricades to defend the 2020 election results, as Donald Trump sees it.”

He added: “We’re into the kind of outrage culture in the Republican party. There’s almost a competition as to who can be more outrageous, more vicious and threatening. It’s a race to the bottom.

“It’s a completely bonkers political party. This is one of the most dysfunctional and dangerous political parties in the democratic world. You’ve got Hungary, you’ve got Austria. There are places where you’ve had a surge on the right and I would say this is comparable. And maybe even a further extreme, if you look at what elected members of the US Congress are saying and doing.”

‘Santa, please bring ammo.’ KY rep. condemned for posing with guns in Christmas photo



Jeremy Chisenhall
Sun, December 5, 2021

Rep. Thomas Massie went viral on Twitter Saturday when he posted a photo of himself and family members holding firearms around the Christmas tree.

“Merry Christmas!” Massie wrote in the tweet. “Ps. Santa, please bring ammo.”

The Republican congressman’s tweet had nearly 50,000 retweets and nearly 65,000 likes Sunday morning. It drew criticism from both sides of the aisle and others who thought it was disrespectful to the victims of the Oxford High School mass shooting which happened in Michigan Tuesday.

Fellow Kentucky Congressman John Yarmuth reacted to the tweet by tweeting “I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive a*****e.”

“I’m old enough to remember Republicans screaming that it was insensitive to try to protect people from gun violence after a tragedy,” Yarmuth, a Democrat representing Kentucky’s third district, said. “Now they openly rub the murder of children in our faces like they scored a touchdown. Disgraceful.”

Massie, who represents Kentucky’s fourth district, has been a vocal advocate for the right to carry guns before.

Tom Elfers, the chairman of the Kenton County Democrats, said Massie’s photo was “morally reprehensible and makes a mockery of victims of gun violence across this country and here in the commonwealth.”

“The fact that a sitting U.S. congressman would post something so insensitive when the families of four teenagers are currently grieving the loss of their loved ones, only days after being gunned down in a public school in Michigan, is in poor taste and absolutely shameful,” Elfers said.

The Kenton County Democrats asked that Massie take the photo down and apologize.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who represents Illinois, didn’t like Massie’s photo either.

“I’m pro second amendment, but this isn’t supporting right to keep and bear arms, this is a gun fetish,” he tweeted.

Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House communications director under Trump, said he’d help anyone who’s running against Massie.

“If you are running against this a*****e please contact me I will give you dough,” Scaramucci tweeted.

Others replied to Massie’s tweet with photos of the victims in the Oxford, Mi., high school shooting which happened on Tuesday. The shooter killed four students and left others injured, according to multiple media reports.

The suspect in the shooting was a 15-year-old student.

British broadcaster Piers Morgan said Massie’s tweet left him uncommonly speechless.

“In the week of another horrific school shooting in America, a U.S. congressman posts this,” Morgan tweeted. “Words, unusually, fail me.”

After receiving backlash, Massie retweeted a tweet from conservative political commentator Candace Owens, defending Massie’s tweet.

“Can somebody explain to me how they worked out that the Michigan school shooting is (Massie’s) fault because he shared a picture of him and his family holding legal fire arms?” Owens asked in the tweet.

CAPITALI$T CRISIS WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

Trust Firms With Billions at Risk Brace for Evergrande Defaults



Bloomberg News
Mon, December 6, 2021, 2:14 AM·4 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Trust firms that have issued at least $5 billion in high-yield products linked to China Evergrande Group are bracing for a cascade of losses after the cash-strapped developer said it may no longer be able to meet its financial obligations.

At least three firms, including Citic Trust Co., China Foreign Economy and Trade Trust Co. and National Trust, notified clients over the past few days that they risk missing payments on Evergrande products due to the developer’s strained finances and will take legal action to protect investors, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named discussing private deliberations. At least five trust companies held emergency meetings over the weekend to discuss how to handle potential disputes with investors, the people said.


The meetings illustrate how a key group of onshore Evergrande creditors are responding to a Friday statement from the developer in which it formally acknowledged for the first time the need to restructure offshore debt. Should Evergrande be declared in formal default on its bonds, a wave of cross defaults could be triggered, giving trusts limited room to negotiate extensions with investors or bridge over payment lapses by dipping into their own pockets, said one of the people.

None of the trust firms were immediately available to comment. Evergrande didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Evergrande counts trust companies, which pool money from wealthy individual investors, as an important source of funding -- accounting for about 40% of borrowings at the end of 2019, when it last disclosed the figures. While the firms have been reducing their exposure to Evergrande and its peers since then, they continue to be massive lenders with at least $12 billion in developer-linked trust payments due just this month.

The risk of contagion into the $3 trillion trust industry will add pressure on policy makers to ease the crunch in the real estate sector, which has already triggered protests by home-buyers and investors in wealth management products sold by Evergrande and another embattled developer Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd.

Evergrande has done business with most of the 68 trust companies in China. It had $1.8 billion in trust loans maturing in the fourth quarter, with another $5 billion due over 2022 and 2023, according to Use Trust, a company that tracks the industry. The data only covers trusts sold to retail investors and not so-called single trusts, which are private placements and make up the bulk of Evergrande’s financing through the products.

If holders of an Evergrande bond declare it in formal default “cross defaults would be automatically triggered for the firm’s other debt instruments, including trusts,” said Daniel Fan, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “The company would face immense repayment pressure at once.”

Evergrande is planning to include all its offshore public bonds and private debt obligations in a restructuring that may rank among the nation’s biggest ever, people familiar with the matter said. It would include public notes sold by Evergrande and unit Scenery Journey Ltd., according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Grace periods for interest payments on two notes from Scenery Journey end Monday and could mark the firm’s first default on public debts.

Chinese authorities, including the central bank and the securities regulator, sought to reassure investors shortly after Evergrande’s statement late on Friday, reiterating that broader risks to the economy can be contained.

Top of mind for regulators is social stability. Evergrande sparked protests earlier this year when it missed payments on 40 billion yuan ($6.2 billion) of wealth management products, sold to retail investors including its own employees. Some investors in its trust products are high-net-worth clients of commercial banks, which means the spillover could extend beyond the already embattled trust sector, people familiar with the matter said.

The government of Guangdong, the southern province where Evergrande is based, summoned founder Hui Ka Yan to express concern over the company’s Friday announcement and said it would dispatch a team to the developer to ensure “normal” operations.

“We expect more government intervention on the operations side to secure home delivery and prioritize supply chain payments and wealth management products,” said Iris Chen, a credit desk analyst, Nomura Securities Co.

Trust firms have this year defaulted on more than $10 billion of developer-linked products, which were till recently seen by wealthy Chinese and institutions as a place to park money. The firms have sought to cut exposure to the sector, reducing their outstanding loans 17% by June from a year earlier, according to the China Trustee Association.

The potential damage is already seeping out. Jiangsu Yanghe Brewery Joint-Stock Co. said late Friday that payment on an Evergrande-linked trust product that a unit bought from Citic Trust is now overdue. The liquor maker held 2.3 billion yuan in outstanding trust products as of early November, with about 648 million yuan linked to Evergrande, according to responses to investor questions on an inquiry platform run by the Shenzhen exchange.