have you heard the bad news

“Absolutely mind-blowing wildfire behavior in British Columbia. Incredible & massive storm-producing pyrocumulonimbus plumes.” [From: Dakota Smith,  Dakota Smith, meteorologist at Colorado’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, 30 June 2021.]

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“Pyrocumulonimbus: a new word to learn in 2021. It means fires so big and hot they create storm clouds, which shoot out lightning that starts new fires.”

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Excerpt:

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The Pacific Northwest’s hell is just beginning. After being seared by record heat, the fires arrived with a roar.

In what is one of the most unprecedented displays of fire weather on record, lightning lit up British Columbia on Wednesday [30 June 2021]. Data shows a staggering 710,117 lightning bolts – 5% of all of Canada’s lightning in an average year – formed over the province and parts of Alberta. The concentrated display was caused in part by fires already burning on the ground that were so intense, they created their own weather system. […]

“The potential for things to burn there is extreme if it gets dry enough,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said. “It’s bloody well dry enough. The one thing we were all hoping wouldn’t happen happened. It’s a little hard to wrap the numbers around.” […]

Things turned for the worse late on Wednesday. Lytton, a town that became famous in the preceding days for breaking Canada’s all-time high temperature three days in a row, burned to the ground. […]

Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist and lightning applications manager at Vaisala, said in an email that the 710,117 lightning events captured by sensors on the ground that are part of the North American Lightning Detection Network included “nearly 113,000 cloud-to-ground strokes.” Some of that lightning was generated by the fires already burning, which created pyrocumulonimbus clouds. […]

That’s what happened on Wednesday at a scale that’s honestly hard to comprehend. The most recent notable example of a lightning-driven firestorm occurred in California last August [2020]. But even that’s not really a great analog; Vagasky noted that, during that storm, “there were about 20,000 cloud-to-ground strokes” over a four-day period – a fraction of what happened in Canada on Wednesday [113,000 cloud-to-ground strokes in one day]. The heat then was also nowhere near as extreme as what the Pacific Northwest just saw.

Swain said some of the satellite imagery shows the clouds reached heights near 60,000 feet (18,288 meters) above the Earth’s surface. That allowed them to punch through the tropopause, a boundary that delineates the lower atmosphere from the stratosphere, and pump smoke into the upper atmosphere. This is extremely rarified fire behavior. “It essentially looked a lot like a pretty significant volcanic eruption,” Swain said. […]

“This is going to affect a bunch of tribal areas and Indigenous lands that don’t have the same relatively minimal level of resources these incorporated towns have in BC,” Swain said. 

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Excerpt from: Brian Kahn. “‘'I Suspect It Will Get a Lot Worse’: Firestorm in British Columbia Helps Spark 710,000 Bolts of Lighting.” Gizmodo. 1 July 2021.

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Here are some more “ambiguous” phrases which courts have found DO NOT invoke your right to a lawyer:

“Maybe I should speak to my lawyer first.”

“I might like a lawyer.”

“I think I should have a lawyer present for this.”

“Could I speak to my lawyer first?”

“How long until my lawyer gets here?”

And perhaps most egregiously – “Get me a lawyer, dawg – ‘cause this is not what’s up.”

Here are the magic phrases which you need to know if you want to invoke your Miranda rights:

1) “Am I free to leave?”

It’s worth asking this even if the answer is obvious. Even if the officer does not let you leave, by forcing them to admit that you are not free to leave, you are creating a record which your attorney can use to prove that you were in custody. Miranda rights only apply if the interrogation is custodial, meaning that police officers will frequently claim that their suspects were “not in custody” to get around their Miranda rights.

2) “I am invoking my right to remain silent.”

Simply staying silent will not invoke your right to remain silent. As absurd as this is, you must explicitly say that you are invoking your right to remain silent in order to invoke that right.

3) “I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

As stated above, you must be not only clear and unambiguous, but clear and legally unambiguous. Don’t get cute. Don’t get sassy. And on the flip side, don’t get intimidated and use verbal ticks to minimize your request. Say the line with those words exactly – say it clearly, and say it once, and then say nothing else.

Because even after you’ve done all this, the police can still try to get you to talk. They’re not supposed to interrogate you, but they’re allowed to make casual conversation, and if that conversation just happens to circle back around to the thing they wanted to question you about, well, that’s really your fault for talking after you said you wouldn’t, isn’t it? Can’t possibly fault the poor officers when you initiated – if you really wanted to have your rights respected, you wouldn’t have talked to them in the first place.

The police know this, and they will mercilessly exploit this loophole. So, once you’ve successfully invoked your Miranda rights, any and all conversation you have with police officers will put those rights back into jeopardy. 

Putting it all together:

Ask: “Am I free to leave?”

If they say no, say: “I am invoking my right to remain silent and I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

And then shut up and do not say a single thing to them for any reason whatsoever until you have actually spoken to an attorney. Yes, even if it takes hours. Yes, even if they start talking to you about something else.

Finally, a very important disclaimer:

Every single cop lies. Every single cop lies and manipulates and twists the situation around to get a confession. Even when they know that the person is innocent, even when they know that what they have isn’t enough to convict someone, even when they know that that confession has been made under duress or manipulation. All they care about is getting anything to put someone behind bars.

Just like I said. Illegal adoption.

https://twitter.com/evanchill/status/1010399759088193536

Completely unfit parents can get their children back like it’s nothing and this poor woman who loves her child and just wants him with her again cannot? How is this not human trafficking/kidnapping? 

Also:

The judge said the biological mother had no rights to even see her child, according to the mother’s lawyer.

Pushed a law that forces schools to turn undocumented students over to ICE, separating them from their parents and violating human rights

Laughed about putting parents in jail if their kids missed school, disproportionately harming single parent households, the poor, and families of color like this one, including homeless mothers

Her office refused to address what the Supreme Court calls “unconstitutionally overcrowded” prisons specifically to perpetuate the exploitation of the mass incarcerated for slave labor close to $1/hour(she later claimed she didn’t know her own lawyers argued this.

Declined to prosecute Steven Mnuchin after his bank’s predatory lending and foreclosure fraud broke the law “over a thousand” times and ruined the lives of thousands of homeowners, keeping him free to donate to her campaign and become Trump’s Treasury Secretary

Spent years jailing disproportionately black nonviolent cannabis users while opposing taking cannabis off DEA’s list of most dangerous substances and literally laughing at the idea of legalizing it multiple times, even as her Republican opponent ran to the left of her on the issue. She then tried to pander by admitting to smoking herself despite prosecuting others, but got her story all wrong, and even offended her own Jamaican family to the point they’ve disassociated with her

Used a technicality to stop the release of a man serving 27 years-to-life after being wrongfully convicted of possession of a knife under the three-strikes law she supported. When civil rights groups and nearly 100,000 petition signatures got him released after 14 years she took him back to court again for a crime he didn’t commit

Opposed reforming California’s three-strikes law, which is the only one in the country to impose life sentences for minor felonies and incarcerates black people at 12x the rate as white people, three different times, even while her Republican opponent supported reform

Appealed a judge ruling that the death penalty was unconstitutional and won on a technicality, resulting in continued executions

When evidence pointed towards a black defendant being framed by police, Harris avoided DNA testing to keep him on death row

Protected serial child rapists by refusing to prosecute in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal

Lied about her state’s solitary confinement to block a suit by inmates, claiming there was none in California when there were about 6,400 victims of the practice, which is considered torture

Oversaw a state prosecutor falsifying a confession to get a life sentence and then destroyed the evidence, upheld a conviction secured by a prosecutor lying under oath, and oversaw the framing of another man

Opposed legislation that would require independent investigation of fatal police shootings despite criticism from many civil rights advocates including California’s Legislative Black Caucus

Opposed statewide implementation of police body cameras and ignored police brutality, multiple officers raping a teenager, and other officers sharing racist and homophobic messages, despite multiple requests from the public defender

Refused to hand over the names of police whose testimonies led to convictions despite the officers’ arrest records and past misconduct

Tried to deny a transgender inmate healthcare and endangered trans women by forcing them into mens prisons, leading to the rape and torture of at least one trans inmate

Stood by silently as $730 million was spent on moving inmates to for-profit private prisons

Delayed the confiscation of illegal firearms from dangerous people, then posed a “continued risk to public safety” by failing to implement changes state auditors recommended to fix this despite receiving $24 million specifically for this purpose

Voted two different times to block federal funding for abortions

Following the foreclosure fraud scandal she negotiated a deal great for banks but bad for the ruined homeowners, becoming one of Wall Street’s favorite candidates to fundraise for

Voted to give Trump increased military spending two different times.

Supports Trump escalating war in Syria

Co-sponsored the bill that let Trump impose sanctions on Iran which violated the nuclear deal and lead to the currently rising tensions

“Systematically violated defendants’ civil and constitutional rights” in crime lab scandal

Kept her Orange County DA office from being charged for running an unconstitutional jailhouse informant program they tried to cover up.

Oversaw San Francisco’s felony conviction rate rising from 52% to 67% in only 3 years

As part of her tough on crime approach she assigned senior prosecutors to misdemeanors like graffiti and vandalism, tripling the number of cases brought to trial

Mocks the activist call to “build more schools, less jails”

Supports collecting and keeping DNA from people even if they’ve not been charged with a crime

Defended the discriminatory practice of cash bail in court as recently as June 2016

Supports Israel’s right-wing government and cozies up to AIPAC, co-sponsored resolution against Obama in support of illegal settlements, does not support Palestinian rights, and calls BDS “anti-semitic”

Claimed to be unaware of sexual harassment and retaliation by her top aide over a 6 year span

Sponsored a bill allowing for prosecutors to seize profits before charges are even filed and opposed a bill that would reform civil asset forfeiture

Defended a prison’s religious discrimination in hiring policy

Opposed calls to tear down 700 miles of existing border wall/fence

Fought to limit amount of land indigenous tribes could place in trust and tried to take reservation land away from a tribe just to keep them from evicting a non-indigenous man who had lived there without paying rent for 24 years

Is a latecomer in endorsing Medicare for All and already appears to be backtracking on multiple aspects of it

Refused to review a case in which a pharmaceutical CEO killed his wife but made it look like a suicide after their son died under mysterious circumstances as well

Refused to prosecute PG&E for its massive gas pipeline explosion and now its consultants are running her campaign

Did not properly investigate the San Onofre scandal to protect her political allies.

Refused to investigate Herbalife’s exploitation and fraud, receiving donations from people connected to the corporation

Her associate operated a fake police force but somehow all charges were dismissed

Refuses to support AB5 to give gig workers like rideshare drivers basic employee rights (her brother-in-law & niece are high-up in Uber)

Opposed legalization of sex work, endangered sex workers, and oversaw people being charged for prostitution without even agreeing to sex

Endangered the public by supporting legislation that increased the homeless sex offender population 24x in 3 years, then appealed a court’s ruling that it was unconstitutional. Her Republican opponent ran to the left of her on this issue

Accepted thousands of dollars of campaign funds from Donald and Ivanka Trump multiple times

This is genocide.

If you’re not outraged, you’re complicit.

Original post 9/14/20

I won’t go too deep on how and why it happens, or all the diffferent subtypes of the disease, but what it entails is that for the severe presentation, because the baby is lacking one gene, they’ll gradually lose the strenght in their muscles. By the age of 4, most those children are dead. 

It’s not an easy death. The child loses the capacity to breathe and swallow by themselves because of muscle weakness. We provide support as best as we can, but there’s not a lot we can do about something like that. And though muscle strenght is lost, cognition is unaffected, which means the baby brain is maturing as it would regularly, inside a weakening body. 

So, it’s horrific. But because it’s a single gene causing the mess, and because science has advanced this far, scientists went “hey what if we could give the kid this gene?” 

And that’s exactly what they did. Enter Novartis, pharma giant. They decided to try it out: put the gene inside an empty virus, give the virus to the kid. Did it work?

to those of you who don’t speak medical: yes. yes it did. it worked really well. it worked well to a point where they ran tests with 15 kids and all 15 kids survived without need for respiratory aid, as opposed to the usual 92% death/permanent ventilation rate. 

“Wow, this is good,” said Novartis. “I’m going to put a 2.1 million dollars tag on it.”

“What the fuck?” said the parents, who are regular people who do not have 2.1m sitting on their banks.

“Well, you know,” said Novartis. “You only have to take it once in a lifetime! Seems like a fair price to me. Uh, but also, do bear in mind it only works if you give it to the baby before they turn 2 years old.” 

but does it end there? no! although the drug was FDA approved, Novartis needs their prized treatment to get cleared on the rest of the world. people are complaining about the price tag, too. so they have an idea. a brilliant idea! 

“We’ll get the contacts of the kids who have it around the world,” said Novartis. “And then we’ll run a lottery! Because we are generous, we’ll give away a hundred doses a year for the entire population of planet Earth! Of course, that means your country has to agree my drug is legit.” 

“What if I don’t get picked,” wonder the parents of the children.

“Well, you know. You can always just raise 2.1 million dollars, but remember you have to do it before your kid turns two.”

so now i sit here seething in hatred toward big pharma, watching mothers desperately trying to raise an absurd amount of money which is even more absurd if your coin is weaker than the dollar, saddled with the weight that if they don’t do it in time, they’ll have to watch their kids die

and then every once in a while one of them manages to raise the cash, and then they’ll post videos in their social media and i get to watch as the babies gradually regain strenght and starts sitting on their own, then moving their limbs, then standing up by themselves

while the other mothers share increasingly desperate videos of their kids who can no longer sit, and no longer swallow, and no longer breathe, until it all ends with a single text shared through instagram that just says “thank you all, but my child has passed, and we’ll give what we managed to raise to the next one.” 

Text copied from the DSA Housing Justice Commission, @dsa_housing on Twitter:

"The CDC has announced a new, nationwide moratorium on evictions lasting from now until the end of December. This thread will cover the details, and then some actions that DSA locals can take to ensure it is effective and that tenants are not forced out of their homes regardless.

Firstly, unlike the CARES Act moratorium, this applies to all rental properties. If any home is being rented out, it is covered by the moratorium depending on the tenant's circumstances.

Tenants must make a *self-declaration to their landlord* - it does not need to be processed to be effective.

They first must declare that they

(a) received a stimulus check, or

(b) did not have to pay tax in 2019, or

(c) expect to earn 99k or less, or 198k if filing jointly.

Second, they must declare they have lost income or incurred unexpected expenses due to the economic or medical effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Third, they must declare they are doing their best to make partial payments, taking into account other necessary expenses e.g. food.

Finally they must declare that they will become homeless or have to move into a congregated setting such as a family home, shelter, or house with roommates if they are evicted.

Once this declaration is made, they can't be evicted til 2021.

If a tenant does not make this declaration, even if it would apply to them, they can still be evicted if it would otherwise be permissible under local and state laws.

It does NOT override stricter moratoriums like that in Washington, D.C. where currently nobody can be evicted.

It also does NOT cancel rent or convert rental debt into consumer debt that tenants cannot be evicted for in future, so people who cannot pay will still have to deal with a backlog. DSA continues to believe cancelling rent is the only just solution to the COVID housing crisis.

That being said, this moratorium will only work if tenants are aware of it. Locals have the opportunity to canvass their neighbors and inform them of their new rights under the CDC moratorium, and how they can make a declaration to their landlord that can keep them in their home.

This is a reprieve, not a final victory for tenants. We must help protect tenants from eviction through education about these rights while also continuing the struggle to cancel rent and ensure that landlords, banks and the rich - not tenants - pay for this crisis.

We would also note that this means tenants in many states will have effective protection against evictions for nonpayment for the first time since the crisis began. This is an opportunity for tenants, and your DSA locals, to talk to neighbors about tenant unions and rent strikes.

We have been receiving some questions about whether this applies to no-fault evictions or merely to evictions with nonpayment as a specific cause. To be clear, this moratorium DOES NOT allow no-fault evictions (but does permit evictions for certain other causes, see screens)."

Additional info:

The CDC's official announcement

The company recently posted job listings for a senior intelligence analyst and an intelligence analyst, both based in Phoenix, Arizona, that would be part of its Global Security Operations’ Global Intelligence Program, according to the posting. The analysts would be charged with gathering information on any internal and external threats to Amazon and reporting the data to leaders across the organization.

Among the types of intelligence they might gather are “sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company,” “funding and activities connected to corporate campaigns (internal and external) against Amazon,” as well as briefings on “dynamic situations” including protests, geopolitical crises and other topics “sensitive to human resources and employee relations.”

The job listings drew widespread scrutiny from worker rights groups and other critics, including Stacy Mitchell, a co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, who has spoken out about Amazon’s labor practices and testified in front of lawmakers last year about its market power.

By the early afternoon, Amazon took down both job listings from its website. An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in a statement: “The job post was not an accurate description of the role — it was made in error and has since been corrected.”

The spokesperson did not say what was incorrect about the job descriptions, which had been on Amazon’s open jobs site for at least a few days.

Amazon’s labor practices have been in focus before and during the coronavirus pandemic. Beginning in March, tensions developed between Amazon and warehouse workers, with employees claiming the company hasn’t done enough to protect them from catching the coronavirus.

The company drew further criticism after, in April, it fired three employees who were outspoken critics of its labor practices. Amazon said it fired the employees after they violated internal policies.

Prior to the pandemic, it faced criticism from politicians and employees over a pay disparity between warehouse workers and corporate employees. Amazon later announced it would raise the minimum wage for all U.S. employees to $15. Last year, warehouse workers also held protests during Amazon’s annual Prime Day shopping event to shed light on concerns around working conditions and wage practices.

Dania Rajendra, director of Athena, a labor and activist coalition, called the now-deleted job listings “disturbing” and said the positions are proof that Amazon is “targeting” workers for speaking out.

all those living within US borders to vote

those votes to be counted

the counted votes to actually determine policy

it just has never done those things. even before you get to gerrymandering and widespread voter suppression and the inaccessibility of voting to disabled and working class people, it’s still not an actual democracy.

women race and class by angela davis

are prisons obsolete by angela davis

our enemies in blue by kristian williams

Besides the old obvious as fuck Crown Victoria, be suspicious of 2013+ Ford Taurus and Explorer, 2006+ Dodge Charger and Dakota, 06-13 Chevy Impala, 11+ Chevy Caprice and both the Tahoe and Suburban.

Here are some more “ambiguous” phrases which courts have found DO NOT invoke your right to a lawyer:

“Maybe I should speak to my lawyer first.”

“I might like a lawyer.”

“I think I should have a lawyer present for this.”

“Could I speak to my lawyer first?”

“How long until my lawyer gets here?”

And perhaps most egregiously – “Get me a lawyer, dawg – ‘cause this is not what’s up.”

Here are the magic phrases which you need to know if you want to invoke your Miranda rights:

1) “Am I free to leave?”

It’s worth asking this even if the answer is obvious. Even if the officer does not let you leave, by forcing them to admit that you are not free to leave, you are creating a record which your attorney can use to prove that you were in custody. Miranda rights only apply if the interrogation is custodial, meaning that police officers will frequently claim that their suspects were “not in custody” to get around their Miranda rights.

2) “I am invoking my right to remain silent.”

Simply staying silent will not invoke your right to remain silent. As absurd as this is, you must explicitly say that you are invoking your right to remain silent in order to invoke that right.

3) “I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

As stated above, you must be not only clear and unambiguous, but clear and legally unambiguous. Don’t get cute. Don’t get sassy. And on the flip side, don’t get intimidated and use verbal ticks to minimize your request. Say the line with those words exactly – say it clearly, and say it once, and then say nothing else.

Because even after you’ve done all this, the police can still try to get you to talk. They’re not supposed to interrogate you, but they’re allowed to make casual conversation, and if that conversation just happens to circle back around to the thing they wanted to question you about, well, that’s really your fault for talking after you said you wouldn’t, isn’t it? Can’t possibly fault the poor officers when you initiated – if you really wanted to have your rights respected, you wouldn’t have talked to them in the first place.

The police know this, and they will mercilessly exploit this loophole. So, once you’ve successfully invoked your Miranda rights, any and all conversation you have with police officers will put those rights back into jeopardy. 

Putting it all together:

Ask: “Am I free to leave?”

If they say no, say: “I am invoking my right to remain silent and I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

And then shut up and do not say a single thing to them for any reason whatsoever until you have actually spoken to an attorney. Yes, even if it takes hours. Yes, even if they start talking to you about something else.

Finally, a very important disclaimer: