“prior efforts to restrict the franchise frequently placed unnecessary hurdles in the way of voters, such as by requiring them to show certain forms of ID or by limiting where and when voters can cast their ballot. These sorts of laws are troubling, but they can be overcome by determined voters.
SB 202, by contrast, is part of a new generation of election laws that target the nuts and bolts of election administration, potentially allowing voters to be disenfranchised even if they follow the rules.”
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations’ climate science research group, concluded in a major report that it is “unequivocal” that humans have warmed the skies, waters, and lands, and that “widespread and rapid changes” have already occurred in every inhabited region across the globe. Many of these changes are irreversible within our lifetimes.
This is the first report of its kind in eight years, and a lot has changed. Scientists have backed away from many of the best-case scenarios. They’re more confident than ever that human-caused climate change is already worsening deadly weather events, from flooding to heat waves. And they’re investigating culprits of climate change that warm the planet even more than carbon dioxide.”
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“The goal of these reports is to compile the best available science and create a solid foundation for decision-makers to act, whether that’s to invest in clean energy, relocate people from high-risk areas, or help the most vulnerable places cope with unavoidable impacts.”
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“While researchers have better answers now on some fronts, they are also blunt about the things they still don’t know, which could have huge effects on the livability of the planet. Certain tipping points, feedbacks, and currently unappreciated mechanisms could further tilt the climate out of balance in ways that are hard to predict.”
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“in the eight years since the last comprehensive IPCC report and the six years since the Paris accords, humanity’s output of heat-trapping gases has only grown. Even with a dip in emissions stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reached a record high this year, topping 419 parts per million, a level the planet has not seen for at least 2 million years.
This rise in emissions has given scientists unprecedented opportunities to study climate change in real time. Alongside improvements in computer simulations, measurement technology, laboratory experiments, and historical records, scientists have gained far more insight to, and confidence in, humanity’s role in cranking up the planet’s thermostat.”
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“According to the report, it now seems impossible that the world will get lucky and warming will somehow stay within the Paris agreement targets without massive action to limit emissions, starting right away.”
“Multiple investigations, including by United Nations officials, have determined the Rohingya were victims of genocide or that there was strong evidence of it. Dozens of countries, led by The Gambia, have pushed a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice accusing Myanmar of genocide.”
“When I came back to Afghanistan [in 2011], it was a very, very different paradigm. The IED techniques had migrated from Iraq. You couldn’t drive anywhere. When I was [in Afghanistan in 2001], we were on horseback or we’re on foot or we’re in light-skinned vehicles. Now, you couldn’t get from A to B without being in an armored vehicle or flying a helicopter.
But the biggest problem—the big point where I said, things aren’t going as well as I had hoped for — was dealing with these district governors, whom I dealt with frequently. They didn’t have a long view. They were not invested in the central government. There were a lot of reasons for that. Every day was a new day to them and it was a fight for survival. They had no incentive to build these relationships that we designed for them.
For example, we were paying nine and a half dollars per gallon to ship gas from Karachi to outlying districts. And when I approached the district governor—’Hey, you need to learn how to use your own bureaucratic requisition systems’—he said, ‘Why should I do that when you’re doing it for me?’ And he was dead serious. And of course, he died a couple of months later, as probably 60 percent of the guys who I worked with did on the Afghan side.”
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“We made a lot of efforts to pacify villages that were more hostile to us. And we succeeded in some cases by putting an Afghan National Police checkpoint in a village that didn’t have one to help deter the Taliban from launching rockets at the base. [In one instance] we convinced a village elder, who was a Ghilzai Pashtun, to support us, which was a big deal because many of the people to whom he had tribal ties were Taliban supporters.
But he was assassinated. Then his brother stood up and took his place and said, ‘We’ll stand with the government, the Americans.’ And he was assassinated. By that point, the Taliban had essentially regained control of the village. I spoke to one gentleman on the side of the road one day, and he was subsequently beheaded for talking to me and made an example of.
I saw through that that some of these things were almost Pyrrhic victories because we were doing the things that, [per] the counterinsurgency manual, doctrinally, we were doing the right things. And we were succeeding in some cases. But at the end of the day, the sacrifice and the loss of trust in the villages was starting to hamper our effectiveness in getting people to want to work with us, to follow our goals and objectives, to cooperate with us and to resist the Taliban and ultimately for us to succeed. I think they were going to have to resist them on their own. We couldn’t maintain a permanent presence of U.S. forces indefinitely to keep them safe or to deter the Taliban.”
“A year after his tainted electoral victory, Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko continues to use violence and intimidation against his opponents at home and abroad to cling to power.
But the opposition isn’t giving up hope that he can be pushed out.”
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“Lukashenko is showing no sign of loosening his grip.
All prominent opposition leaders have either been arrested or forced out of the country. Protesters have faced mass arrests. The regime is now rooting out the few remaining independent media operations and NGOs — including education institutions, human rights advocates and the local unit of the PEN-center headed by Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Aleksievich, who lives in exile in Germany.”
“Fracking has also accelerated life on the surface. Some landowners have made millions of dollars from selling the rights to oil beneath their land to major corporations. And struggling agricultural crossroads, including Watford City, the county seat 20 miles southeast of Novak’s farm, have found new life as boomtowns. During the past decade, a new high school and hospital, and housing developments sprawling from Main Street into the prairie, have arisen to serve the more than 10,000 people who have come from afar to work in the McKenzie County oil field.
But installing an industry atop an agricultural zone has brought less-heralded changes, too, including an elaborate system to deal with the saltwater, which is actually a polluted mix of naturally occurring brine, hydrocarbons, radioactive materials and more. Billions of gallons of it are produced by oil drilling and pumping each year.”
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“Over the following weeks, industry clean-up specialists dug dirt, built berms and installed pumps to try to decontaminate the pasture and its springs. But nearly three months later, a water sample taken far down the gully, where it broadens into a wetland, contained 149,000 parts per million of chloride — 600 times the advised limit, and a clear indication that saltwater and its dangerous contaminants were still present.
The damage to Novak’s land, while dramatic, isn’t uncommon in the North Dakota oil fields. More than 50 saltwater spills happen each year in McKenzie County, when tanker trucks crash, pipelines leak, or well pads or disposal sites catch fire or otherwise malfunction. Many spills are contained on well pads and at disposal sites. But others drain into fields, farmyards and roadways. Novak worried about his pasture, a water source for cows, deer, pheasants and more. And he feared the cumulative impact of so many saltwater spills in a county that is home to hundreds of streams and springs, and where farmers and ranchers often rely on water wells for livestock and themselves.”
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” Today, tax revenues from oil operations make up more than 50 percent of North Dakota’s annual budget. Republican leaders in the state, who hold all federal and statewide elected positions, have continued to push for a carbon-based economy, as North Dakota now depends on oil more than any other state. The North Dakota Legacy Fund, an investment account approved by North Dakota voters to guard some oil tax revenue for future expenses, is worth more than $8 billion. Oil tax revenue from that and other sources has buoyed schools and health care across the state, lowered income taxes for residents, and funded everything from flood containment systems in eastern North Dakota to major highway projects.”
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““Sometimes you have a really good company that will clean it up. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you don’t ever find out about it,” Jappe said. “I wish saltwater had a little bit more regulation. There just needs to be more accountability.”
Jappe would like the state to require tanker trucks hauling saltwater to carry placards that indicate the toxic load. She would like to see more state health and environmental quality inspectors on site, including some who live and work in McKenzie County year-round, as many now travel from the eastern part of the state for shorter stays.
She is especially concerned about the damage that can come if pipes injecting saltwater a mile underground were to leak. She told me she is not confident underground aquifers, let alone fields and pastures impacted by surface spills, are safe. She worries that residents don’t have enough protection under current oil-field oversight by state agencies that can’t keep pace with development.
“On September 1, nearly all abortions became illegal in Texas.
A state law signed by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year bans abortions as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected. That’s as early as six weeks’ gestation, before many people know they are pregnant, making the bill a near-total ban on the procedure.
Earlier this week, abortion providers asked the Supreme Court to stop the ban from going into effect while legal cases continue. But the justices did not take action, allowing the six-week ban, which contains no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, to become the law of the land in Texas.
So-called heartbeat bills like Texas’s are not new. At least eight have passed in recent years, with a raft of states enacting the bans in 2019. But until the Texas law, no heartbeat bills have gone into effect — they have faced court challenges since they run directly counter to Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established the right to an abortion in America.”
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“the Texas bill was intentionally written to prevent courts from blocking it before it takes effect. Rather than having state officials enforce the abortion ban, the bill essentially empowers private citizens to do so by suing abortion providers, according to the Texas Tribune. This unusual provision makes it harder for abortion-rights groups to sue state officials to block the law, since they aren’t technically the ones who will enforce it.
Regardless, legal challenges to the Texas law remain ongoing, and it could still be struck down. But for now, abortion providers in Texas say they will abide by the law, and most Texans will likely need to travel out of state for an abortion — if they can afford to do so.”