The Federal Heartbeat.

CREDIT: sebk/iStock.

CREDIT: sebk/iStock.

There’s an interesting article at Think Progress, demonstrating that the majority of Americans favour pro-choice.

Recent research from the Pew Research Center indicates that 69 percent of Americans — or 7 in 10 — say Roe v. Wade should not be completely overturned. This represents a 6-point increase in the number of individuals who expressed this sentiment just a few years ago.

It’s unfortunate, to say the least, that coinciding with this change is the illegal election which has placed every manner of fanatic into high office.

During the campaign, Trump promised to ban abortion, punish women who got abortions and doctors who perform them, and appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. What’s more, his cabinet picks read like the Who’s Who of anti-abortion zealots.

Our elected officials are now at complete odds with what the American public wants when it comes to abortion.

It’s fairly clear that what the majority of Americans want is not of import; it’s what the minority want which will rule the day. The attempt to de-fund Planned Parenthood is still on, and one of the very first things gutted from ACA was contraceptive coverage, because of course if you want to lessen the amount of terminations, eliminating access to contraception is the way to go. Fucking idiots.

Continuing in this vein, for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been reading about an attempt to pass a federal heartbeat bill. Mostly, this story has been covered by Right Wing Watch. Not anymore! The lunatics are running the asylum, and the federal heartbeat bill is a reality. A vicious one.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) Thursday introduced a bill that would implement a nationwide abortion ban, modeling it after the “heartbeat bills” already found unconstitutional in federal court.

Under HR 490, an abortion provider who performs an abortion without “determining … whether the fetus has a detectable heartbeat,” “informing the mother of the results of that determination,: or “after determining … that the fetus has a detectable heartbeat,” will face fines and up to five years in federal prison.

In a press release, King called Roe v. Wade “unconstitutional,” arguing, “lives have been ended by the abortion industry, all with a rubber stamp by the federal government.”

“Human life, beginning at the moment of conception, is sacred in all of its forms and today, I introduced a bill that will protect the lives of voiceless innocents,” he said.

“America was founded on the concept that our rights come from God…” the press release continues. “I believe our most important responsibility that God has bestowed upon us is to protect innocent human life, and I will continue to dedicate my life to that responsibility.”

King worked with anti-choice activist Janet Porter on the bill.

This isn’t a war on women. It’s an obliteration. It’s a refusal to accept women as full human beings, who are capable of making their own decisions. Sort of an alternate version of The Handmaid’s Tale. This will, of course, impact just as hard on some transgender men. This is also an insistence on forcing a specific religious belief, which is against the constitution, but these so-called lovers of the constitution don’t give a flying fuck about that, oh no. They are finally in a position to drop the bomb of misogynistic control on our heads, and they can’t wait to do it. Who cares if women end up dead? Small price to pay as far as they are concerned.

“I gave him a packet and he has agreed to introduce a federal Heartbeat Bill, which would protect every baby whose heartbeat can be detected,” Porter told Rewire in an interview. “That will actually end abortion in nearly every case. Ninety to 95 percent of the abortions will be ended with that bill.”

And you don’t give one little shit about all the lives which would be negatively impacted, either. As long as you get to be smug about stomping all over other women.

Via Raw Story.

Fellow Travelers.

Cincinnatiopera.org

Cincinnatiopera.org

Most people are aware of Sen. McCarthy’s red scare, the hunt for commies under every rock and pillow, but it wasn’t the only hunt McCarthy engineered, there was the lavender scare also, which yes, Cohn helped out with, in spite of being gay himself. There was a terrible purge of people, many of whom decided to die rather than face decades of abuse, turned backs, and no way to find employment ever again. In 2008, Thomas Mallon wrote Fellow Travelers, a historical fiction which centers on two people living and working during the lavender scare. The choice of title is a laden one. Now the book has become an opera:

You can read all about it at The Advocate.

Opposing Forces.

An abandoned U.S. missile base.

An abandoned U.S. missile base.

An abandoned Soviet missile base.

An abandoned Soviet missile base.

Be it the deliberate destruction of something or its sheer neglect, what transgresses is rarely the complete story. I photograph the visual footprints that the human race leaves on the landscape during its march through time. When the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union signaled the end of the Cold War, the holdings of American and Russian nuclear armaments were significantly reduced with many of the supporting facilities being closed and abandoned. All that now remains are decaying reminders of the might once exhibited by two opposing forces heading towards an unimaginable end. Just like time, photography can strip away the extraneous distraction of life to leave a meditative stillness. Sometimes silence speaks the loudest.

Soviet and American Nuclear Missile Bases by Brett Leigh Dicks.

New Year’s Ukiyoe.

Chinese New Year is coming up, it’s on the 28th this month. 2017 is the Year of the Rooster. I’m a rooster, a fire rooster to be specific. If it’s your year, it’s supposed to be a bad one for you. Nothing new there, except that I can hope that particular fantasy is wrong. Very wrong. Please be very wrong. Are you listening, universe? Probably not.

Over 150 years ago the ukiyo-e artist Shigematsu Enrosai created an imaginary beast as a woodblock print and called it “Twelve Precepts.” The beast featured the head of a rabbit, the neck of a dragon, the tail of a snake, the forelegs of a monkey and the hind legs of an ox. Indeed, it was a fantastical combination of all 12 zodiac animals. Now, Japanese artist Feebee has created her own interpretation, and has produced it in the same technique as it was made in around 1850.

“A beast called Kotobuki”

“A beast called Kotobuki”

Feebee’s creation is titled “A beast called Kotobuki – bird-“ (2017) and is created in her unique style of using vivid colors and excruciating detail to render fantastical beasts. This time, however, instead of painting she collaborated with the Adachi Foundation for the Preservation of Woodcut Printing. If you were thinking about becoming a member, now’s your chance because Feebee’s woodblock print comes as a membership reward (20,000 yen, or about $170).

[…]

Below are 2 fascinating videos that show the production process of the woodblock print. Even if you’re familiar, it’s a nice reminder of the incredible work and craftsmanship that goes into producing these.

Via Spoon & Tamago.

The Phantom Atlas.

I love maps. I have a calendar up which is comprised of antique maps. Cartography is a colourful and wonderful art, as well as a record of how we thought at various stages. The farther you go back, the more fascinating maps are, and it’s not just the artwork. Of course they were terribly wrong, and wrought more of imagination than anything else, but there is such wonder and awe! So many places that turned out to have existence in the mind, so many magical creatures which weren’t. Now you can explore The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps by Edward Brooke-Hitching. (Yes, I noted the Simon & Schuster UK, and I’m not happy about it.)

Sea monsters on Olaus Magnus’s “Carta marina et description septemtrionalium terrarum ac mirabilium” (“Nautical Chart and Description of the Northern Lands and Wonders”) (1527–39).

Sea monsters on Olaus Magnus’s “Carta marina et description septemtrionalium terrarum ac mirabilium” (“Nautical Chart and Description of the Northern Lands and Wonders”) (1527–39).

“This is an atlas of the world — not as it ever existed, but as it was thought to be,” Brooke-Hitching writes in an introduction. “The countries, islands, cities, mountains, rivers, continents, and races collected in this book are all entirely fictitious; and yet each was for a time — sometimes for centuries — real. How? Because they existed on maps.”

Mythical islands were often copied by mapmakers, who, for instance, could not easily voyage out to the Southern Hemisphere to see if it did indeed have the giant Terra Australis continent. The Phantom Atlas includes Hy Brasil, recently the subject of a Boston Public Library exhibition, which stayed on maps for five centuries, and had tales of a sorcerer who lived with huge black rabbits and, later, UFOs. Although Brooke-Hitching features extremes of credulity, like a 40-foot “sea worm” that roamed the shores of Norway on a 16th-century map by Olaus Magnus, he also cites more recent mistakes. Sandy Island was recorded in the eastern Coral Sea by a whaling ship in 1876, and it wasn’t until November 2012 that it was deemed fictional. And in the 19th century, there were still those who believed in a flat Earth, such as Professor Orlando Ferguson of Hot Springs, South Dakota, who in 1893 illustrated a map arguing for this planar view of the planet, which he based on biblical texts.

What makes Brooke-Hitching’s book more than just a collection of oddities is the emphasis on why these errors happen, and how relying on religion at the exclusion of science, or valuing outsider reports ahead of indigenous knowledge, detrimentally impacted centuries of exploring.

Map of the Arctic by Gerardus Mercator (first printed 1595, edition from 1623), with the mythical “Rupes Nigra” magnetic black rock at the North Pole.

Map of the Arctic by Gerardus Mercator (first printed 1595, edition from 1623), with the mythical “Rupes Nigra” magnetic black rock at the North Pole.

There’s much, much more at Hyperallergic.

The Painting Hated by the GOP.

David Pulphus's painting in response to the Ferguson unrest, "Untitled #1", won first place in Missouri's 1st Congressional District in the 2016 United States Congressional Art Competition.

David Pulphus’s painting in response to the Ferguson unrest, “Untitled #1”, won first place in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District in the 2016 United States Congressional Art Competition.

Each year since 1982, the Congressional Institute has sponsored a high school art competition whereby students submit artwork to their congressional representative’s office, which in turn selects a winner. The 435 winning artworks are then exhibited in Washington, DC, hung salon style in a hallway between the Capitol Building and Longworth House Office Building for a year. The office of Representative William Lacy Clay, a Democrat from St. Louis, Missouri, selected a painting by Cardinal Ritter College Prep High School senior David Pulphus in early May 2016. Early this month, the untitled painting was hung in the Capitol. A few days later, the Independent Journal Review, a right-wing website with a mixed record on factual reporting, published an article titled, “Painting of Cops as Pigs Hung Proudly in US Capitol.” A cycle of outrage began. Fox News picked up the story. In a ginned up moment, Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican from San Diego, California unscrewed the painting from the wall, delivered it to Representative Clay’s office, and went to Fox News to brag about it. Today, Representative Clay and members of the Congressional Black Caucus rehung the painting. Shortly thereafter Representative Doug Lamborn, a Republican from Colorado, removed it again, only to have Representative Clay rehang it again. Congressional Republicans are discussing how to remove it permanently.

The full story is at Hyperallergic. For people who almost never shut up about being persecuted or censored (or criticized), conservatives are always the first ones to try and censor anything they don’t like.

The Holman Rule.

© Getty Images.

© Getty Images.

House Republicans this week reinstated a procedural rule created in 1876 that allows lawmakers to cut the pay of individual federal workers down to $1, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

The Holman Rule allows members of Congress to propose amendments to appropriations bills that target specific government employees or programs in an effort to cut spending.

Under the rule passed this week in larger rules package, any such amendment that would target an employee or program would have to be passed by a majority of the House and Senate. That makes it unlikely, albeit possible, for lawmakers to reduce a federal worker’s pay.

Democrats and federal employees who worry about how President-elect Donald Trump could use it blasted the rule.

Resurrecting a very old rule is never good news, you know people are planning to do very bad things, and this has one hell of a chill factor:

“This is a big rule change inside there that allows people to get at places they hadn’t before,” he told reporters.

The new rule follows requests by the Trump transition team for lists of the names of employees involved in specific programs, such as Energy Department scientists who have worked on climate change.

The ability to legally reduce someone’s salary to a dollar is a good way to get rid of people, isn’t it? Or just using it as a threat, fall in line, or…

Via The Hill.

Raghad Saddam Hussein Praises Trump.

Raghad Saddam Hussein, daughter of the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Raghad Saddam Hussein, daughter of the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. (photo credit:REUTERS).

Raghad, who blames the US for the chaos that unraveled in her country, hopes that President-elect Donald Trump will be different from his predecessors.
“This man has just arrived to the leadership … But from what is apparent, this man has a high level of political sensibility, that is vastly different than the one who preceded him,” she told CNN. “He exposed the mistakes of the others, specifically in terms of Iraq, which means he is very aware of the mistakes made in Iraq and what happened to my father.”
During his presidential campaign, Trump said he opposed the war on Iraq, however he was publicly supportive of the invasion in interviews before and after the war. And while saying that Saddam Hussein “was a bad guy,” Trump has praised the former Iraqi leader’s efficient killing of “terrorists”.
Most people should at least be marginally aware, by now, that one of the very few things which actually gain Trump’s attention is flattery of any kind. I imagine it won’t be long before we’re hearing about Trump and Hussein being the very best of buddies and bedfellows.
Via CNN. (Warning: autoplay video.)

Goosestepping Along…

CREDIT: Fox News screengrab.

CREDIT: Fox News screengrab.

Gee, just one post ago, I was commenting on how the constitution will glaringly highlight the hypocrisy of conservatives. Didn’t take long for blowhard Bill O’Reilly to jump onto the white supremacy ship. And I just don’t want to think about all the small-minded conservatives who are going to drink the poison kool-aid with nary a thought.

On Tuesday night, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly embraced white nationalism, criticizing minorities and liberals for trying to strip power from “the white establishment.”

“The left wants power taken away from the white establishment,” O’Reilly said, “They want a profound change in the way America is run. Taking power away from the white precincts is the quickest way to do that.”

O’Reilly was reacting to renewed criticism of the Electoral College after Donald Trump was officially enshrined as president-elect. Trump won the Electoral College vote on Monday despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.9 million votes. Clinton received 48.2 percent of the votes, compared to 46.1 percent for Trump.

[…]

“Newspapers like the New York Times and LA Times have editorialized to get rid of the Electoral College,” O’Reilly said. “They well know that neutralizing the largely white, rural areas in the Midwest and South will assure liberal politicians get power and keep it… the left sees white privilege as an oppressive force that must be done away with.”

Hypocrisy, writ large and flaming, right there. The shameless dirty tactics and gerrymandering the republicans indulged in this election, to block people of colour from voting, and finding ways to conveniently lose those votes, why that was perfectly okay, yessir! There’s never any wrong as long as it’s amoral conservatives doing it, then it’s just dandy, fine, and of course it isn’t an unethical, illegal, sleazy thing to do, oh no. I’ll let The Cursing Hedgehog express my feelings about this one:

tuhina_en

Full story at Think Progress.

Oh, The Constitution.

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The Constitution. My feelings about it? Fuck the constitution. That superannuated paen to the rich and the immoral should have been scrapped long ago, and been replaced with something progressive and relevant. The very worst of people worship that ragged document, twisting it to support evil ideologies and actions; much like people with their holy books of myths (for the hard of thinking, yes, that includes the bible). Gun fondlers adore it, as do all manner of right wingers. Republicans routinely mouth off about their constitution love, and how great and grand it is, etc. It isn’t grand. It isn’t great. It’s a document of its times, put together in the flush of a successful genocide, by wealthy, bloodthirsty men, who weren’t overly concerned with moral or ethical behaviour. You can, of course, see the appeal to republicans, but more than anything else right now, the constitution highlights the abject hypocrisy of all conservatives.

Republicans are always the first to scream “constitution!” whenever there’s something proposed which they don’t like, and they are always the first to search for the tiniest of constitutional violations in the case of someone they find appalling, like President Obama. The conservatives went lunatic fringe, searching for anything which could constitute a violation, so they could oust him from office. Now, the pres-elect will be violating the constitution in the same manner he violated a very long line of women, but who wants to bet the republicans will be zealously pursuing those violations with an aim to impeach? I don’t imagine I’ll have any takers on that bet. I’d be willing to say they are going to find every gorram excuse in the book to absolve Donny in all the violations, and with that, they will demonstrate how little they actually care about that supposedly hallowed document.

What kind of nation allows the loser of a national election to become president — and then does it again 16 years later?

What kind of nation retains an electoral process that was originally designed to inflate the influence of slaveholders?

What kind of nation permits its Congress to write a time bomb into law that periodically forces rival factions into a game of chicken that could wreck the world economy?

What kind of nation fights a civil war over the question of whether people of African descent are people or property, and then looks the other way when the loser ignores the resolution of that war? What kind of nation waits until 1965 to guarantee black people’s right to vote?

Americans speak of our Constitution as if it were a religious text. To label a law “unconstitutional” is not simply to say that it violates some procedural rule or legal technicality, it is to label it fundamentally unAmerican. To do so is to question the values of any lawmaker despicable enough to support such a law, and to suggest that those values are at odds with who we are as a nation.

But our Constitution has not served us nearly as well as we would have been served by other systems adopted by our peer nations. Nor has it lived up to the expectations of its drafters.

Now, our country is facing a man of superlative ignorance. A racist. An admitted sexual assaulter of women. A man poised to violate the Constitution the very instant he takes the oath of office. A man who openly encouraged Russia’s efforts to usher him into the White House. A man who owes his election to the underhanded efforts of deep state actors within our nation’s internal police agency. A man who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. And the Constitution has placed this man in the White House.

The Constitution gave Donald Trump command of the world’s most powerful military and an nuclear arsenal that can eradicate all life on Earth. It let him name a racist as our nation’s top enforcer of its laws. It let him use his office to sell hotel rooms to foreign diplomats. The Electoral College has voted. Trump will be our next president. This is what the Constitution hath wrought.

It did this because our Constitution remains the product of a compromise with moral monsters who believed that human beings could be owned as property. It did this because our Constitution offers no guarantee, or even much in the way of likelihood, that the men and women elected to lead the country will share the preferences of the nation as a whole. It did this because our Constitution fosters voter ignorance. It did this because our Constitution can be gamed — and was gamed quite successfully by the Republican Party.

Emphasis mine. And right there is exactly what the constitution means to conservatives: a means to get their way, to make sure fascism comes marching in, wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible. Nothing is sacred to conservatives, nothing at all. Well, no, a couple of things are sacred to conservatives: the state of their wallet, and the power to oppress and destroy other people.

The full story is at Think Progress, a highly recommended read.

ETA: It seems that even those republicans who might have spoken out are now too overcome by fear to do so. Ain’t fascism fun?

ETA: It’s begun, let’s write special laws, and Donny can just pardon people as he goes along!

Fuck every single person who has brought us to this, and fuck all those who will stand by silently, letting it happen.

The Reality of Oil Spills.

Pastor Dahua, president of the community of Monterrica, on the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon, scoops oil from a spill from a Petroperu pipeline on his community's land. Barbara Fraser.

Pastor Dahua, president of the community of Monterrica, on the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon, scoops oil from a spill from a Petroperu pipeline on his community’s land. Barbara Fraser.

Hunching his shoulders against a driving rain Pastor Dahua scrambled down a muddy bank and stepped across a pool of blackened water to a makeshift shelter that marked the place where crude oil had spilled from an oil pipeline.

The spill in Monterrico, the community of Kukama and Urarina people of which Dahua is president, is one of 10 that have occurred since January along the pipeline that runs from oil fields in the Peruvian Amazon across the Andes Mountains to a port and refinery on the Pacific coast.

The rain worried Dahua. Between November and May, water levels in Amazonian rivers rise by 30 feet or more, flooding villages and forests. If the spill was not cleaned up by the time the flooding began in earnest, Monterrico’s only water supply—a stream that crossed the pipeline near the end of the oil spill—could be contaminated.

Monterrico is one of dozens of communities affected by recent spills. Even more people are exposed to contamination from 40 years of oil operations that dumped oil and salty, metals-laden water into rivers, streams and lakes in Peru’s oldest Amazonian oil fields.

Government agencies have identified more than 1,000 sites needing cleanup, but have a budget of only about $15 million for testing and remediation. Experts say that is just a fraction of the amount that will be needed.

Anger over the sluggish pace of efforts to address decades of pollution and neglect have come to a head in Saramurillo, on the bank of the Marañón River, a few hours by boat downstream from Monterrico.

Hundreds of people from more than 40 indigenous communities converged there on September 1, blocking boat traffic on the Marañón River, a key transportation route in the northeastern Peruvian region of Loreto, where there are virtually no roads.

Despite an initial meeting with government officials in October, the protest dragged on into December, amid tensions among both the protesters and the travelers and merchants trapped by the blockade.

Indigenous protesters stand watch on bank of Marañón River in Saramurillo, Peru, blocking boats from passing, as they pressure the government to solve problems related to pollution from four decades of oil production in the Peruvian Amazon. Barbara Fraser.

Indigenous protesters stand watch on bank of Marañón River in Saramurillo, Peru, blocking boats from passing, as they pressure the government to solve problems related to pollution from four decades of oil production in the Peruvian Amazon. Barbara Fraser.

This in depth look at the reality of oil spills, and their impact on Indigenous people is very necessary reading. The impact of such is not at all limited to Indigenous people, and the more Indigenous people fight against having pipelines on their land, the more the impact of spills will spread, further and further out, into a horrible web of contamination.

Everyone needs to stand up against fossil fuels, now more than ever, with the new climate change denying, fossil fuel loving administration poised to take over.

The full story is at ICTMN.

Oceti Sakowin Camp.

Photo by Tom Jefferson.

Photo by Tom Jefferson.

There are still people at the Oceti Sakowin camp, a considerably smaller number, around 2,000, who will stay until DA is gone. They are requesting that no one new come into camp right now, as weather conditions are very harsh. Those of us fighting the Black Snake still need help. You can signal boost, get involved in various actions, or donate, all is appreciated, deeply.

Have a look at the Oceti Sakowin Camp site, and see if there is a way to add your voice to the many.

The Dakota Access Pipeline may be on hold, but Water Protectors are still fighting for their freedom.