A million animal and plant species are perilously close to extinction. Their fate and ours are intimately connected

In an essay entitled The Sense of Wonder, the American conservationist Rachel Carson suggested two questions to make us think more deeply about our natural environment. “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”

Published in 1955, Carson’s call to mindfulness was influential in the burgeoning postwar environmental movement. But despite campaigners’ best efforts, the sense of jeopardy lurking within her second question is now acute. Wild animal populations are declining annually by about 2.5% as a result of habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, climate change, overfishing and overhunting. Since 1970, overall numbers are down by 69%. Livestock and the human beings who farm them now account for 96% of all the mammals on Earth. The Sumatran tiger, the Bornean orangutan and the hellbender salamander are among the million animal and plant species judged perilously close to extinction.

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The cost of living crisis has cast new light on their role as places not only to read and learn, but to keep warm. They cannot be allowed to dwindle

What is the purpose of libraries? One of the oldest, founded in Nineveh in the seventh century BC, was a repository for works looted and collected for the “greater contemplation” of the scholarly Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. One of the newest was opened this summer in Barcelona, as a centre for Latin American literature, in honour of a one-time resident, Gabriel García Márquez.

Such grand statements of intellectual identity and aspiration seem a long way from the UK’s cash-squeezed local libraries. These were established under the Public Libraries Act of 1850 to provide free access to information and literature for newly urbanised masses with time to kill outside the working day, but have struggled to make a case for necessary funding in the age of cut-price bookselling, declining belief in print, and repeated raids on local government budgets.

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It is not clear from Ivanka Trump’s Instagram record of her family’s three-day visit to the World Cup in Qatar if she or her husband, Jared Kushner, heard any of the chants and songs in support of the Palestinians voiced by Arab fans at multiple venues during the first round of matches.

Ivanka Trump with her husband, Jared Kushner, and their children at the World Cup in Qatar in November 2022.

Ivanka Trump via Instagram

But the outpouring of support — which was also expressed on huge “Free Palestine” banners displayed in the stands, and by fans who intruded on Israeli television interviews to wave Palestinian flags and berate Israeli reporters — made it clear how badly Kushner had miscalculated, as his father-in-law Donald Trump’s Middle East peace envoy, when he convinced a handful of Arab autocrats to sign economic cooperation deals with Israel that did not respect the rights of Palestinians.

Hours after 5 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank, Arab fans at the World Cup in Qatar chanted (in Arabic) “With spirit and blood, we will redeem you, O Palestine” https://t.co/94S6fYrnxv

— Yumna (@yumna_patel) November 29, 2022

In his White House memoir, “Breaking History,” Kushner claims to have orchestrated “a true turning point in history” when “five Muslim-majority countries — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kosovo, Morocco and Sudan — signed peace agreements with Israel.”

According to Kushner, whose agenda seemed to be dictated from the start by his old family friend, Benjamin Netanyahu, the agreements he brokered with nations that were never central to the conflict “have the potential to bring about the complete end of the Arab-Israeli conflict that has existed ever since the founding of the State of Israel.”

Despite Kushner’s inflated claims, it was clear from the start that there was little public support in the Arab world for any nation to make peace with Israel while millions of Palestinians still live under Israeli military rule.

Survey data from 2020, when Morocco agreed to sign the deal — in exchange for the Trump administration recognizing the kingdom’s sovereignty over the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara — showed that 88 percent of Moroccans rejected diplomatic recognition of Israel. Polls conducted the same year showed that 89 percent of Tunisians and 88 percent of Qataris agreed that “the Palestinian cause concerns all Arabs.” Just 6 percent of Saudis surveyed said they would support recognition of Israel.

“To our beloved Palestine, the most beautiful of all countries”

Morocco World Cup fans sing in solidarity with Palestine in Qatar. The North African country went on to beat Belgium today in a historic 2-0 win, their first World Cup victory in 24 years pic.twitter.com/Ir2iEtZsp3

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) November 27, 2022

Broad support for a continued boycott of Israel was clear when the tournament kicked off, and social networks were flooded with video of fans from across the Arab world rejecting the emirate’s own tentative step toward normalizing relations with Israel: its decision to allow Israeli journalists to report on the tournament.

When approached by an Israeli channel covering the @FIFAWorldCup in Doha, this Qatari made his stance on normalisation very clear.

Qatar has refused to normalise with Israel as long as it continues its occupation of Palestine. pic.twitter.com/SIgrk3tl92

— Doha News (@dohanews) November 18, 2022

The fact that even fans of Morocco, one of the five nations that signed Kushner’s “Abraham Accords,” were unwilling to appear on Israeli TV seemed to baffle one Israeli reporter. “But we have peace, huh?” the journalist yelled, as the Moroccan fans walked off and shouted support for Palestine. “You signed the peace agreement!”

A thread of World Cup fans refusing to engage with Isr@eli reporters:

1. Reporter: “BUT YOU SIGN PISS, YOU SIGN PISS, YOU SIGN PISS AGREEMENT” pic.twitter.com/QGQWnE1cDh

— Jennine (@jennineak) November 26, 2022

One of the most watched clips to come out of the World Cup’s opening round showed a Saudi fan telling a reporter for Israel’s public broadcaster, in English, “There is only Palestine! There is no Israel!”

???? ????? ???? ?????? ?? ????? ???????? “??? ???? ??????? ???? ?????? ???” …. “??? ??? ???? ?? ???” pic.twitter.com/1fLzuhRGiM

— Haitham El-Tabei ??????? (@Haithamtabei) November 26, 2022

“Israeli reporters realizing that their country is despised by Arabs is hilarious and informative,” Elizabeth Tsurkov, a research fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking, an Israeli-Palestinian think tank based in Jerusalem, observed on Twitter. “They actually thought that if they normalize with Arab authoritarian regimes it means Arabs will forget Israeli oppression of Palestinians.”

Linah Alsaafin, a Palestinian journalist who has worked for Qatar’s state-owned broadcaster Al Jazeera, pointed out that Raz Shechnik of the Israeli news site Yedioth Ahronoth had shared a compilation of clips of his failed interviews with Arab fans — including the tense exchange with the Moroccan fans. (The interviews are almost all in English, even though Shechnik’s Twitter caption is in Hebrew.)

?? ?????, ??? ?????

?????, ?? ????? ????? ?? ?????? ????. ???? ????? ??? ?????, ?????????, ?? ??????. ??? ?? ????? ??? ???? ?? ?????? ?????? ??? ???????????. ??? ???? ???? ???? ?????, ?? ???? ??? ????? ???? ?? ?? ????? ????? ???. ?? ???????? ??????. ????? ??????? ??????, ?????> pic.twitter.com/nMTApXtBWb

— Raz Shechnik (@RazShechnik) November 26, 2022

In one revealing exchange, as Shechnik suggests that the problem is between “only governments,” not people, a man holding a Palestinian flag says, “There’s nothing called Israel. It’s only Palestine. And you just took the land from them. … Bro, there is nothing called Israel. Israel does not exist.”

In an ensuing thread on his experiences in Qatar, Alsaafin wrote, Shechnik “demonstrated his delusion in thinking Arabs in particular would be welcoming just [because] some of their governments normalised relations with Israel.”

“Israeli journalists say they were surprised at the level of enmity that they faced in Qatar at the World Cup,” Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist, added. “I am surprised that they are surprised since what they are doing daily in Palestine is all over the world media (except in Israel maybe) but every action has a reaction.”

As the Reuters Qatar correspondent Andrew Mills reported, while Qatari authorities permitted displays of support for the Palestinians, they cracked down hard on other forms of protest — like refusing to allow fans to wear rainbow-colored hats, shirts, or even watch straps into matches (to prevent shows of support for LGBTQ+ rights in a country where same-sex relationships are criminalized), and tackling and arresting Iranians who wore T-shirts with the words, “Women Life Freedom,” to support women’s rights in Iran.

One of the oddest aspects of Kushner’s boast about the Abraham Accords as a Middle East peace deal was the fact that the non-Arab nation of Kosovo was included as a signatory. Kosovo, which is in the Balkans and not the Middle East, is a former province of Serbia where ethnic Albanian Muslims make up a majority. The republic did not strike a peace deal with Israel — for the very good reason that it had never been at war with Israel — but did agree to open an embassy in Jerusalem as part of an economic deal with Serbia brokered by the Trump White House and signed in Kushner’s presence.

Even though there was only a brief mention of Israel in the agreement signed by Kosovo’s prime minister in Washington in September 2020, and the economic cooperation with Serbia it enshrined was minor, Trump described it at a campaign event that month as a “major breakthrough” that — along with the deals between Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE — might help him win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump on ?? – ?? deal

“We are stopping MASS KILLINGS between Kosovo and Serbia. They have been killing each other for so many [years].”

“Stop Killing’, I said ‘fellas, let’s get together.”

“You know, they’ve been doing it for hundreds of years frankly under different names,” pic.twitter.com/JSpicEGroz

— kos_data (@kos_data) September 20, 2020

“We’re stopping mass killings between Kosovo and Serbia,” Trump told supporters in North Carolina, inaccurately describing an economic agreement between two nations that stopped fighting more than 20 years earlier. “They are going to stop killing.”

While Kosovo did not qualify for the World Cup, tensions over the nation’s frozen conflict with Serbia — which still refuses to recognize its independence — were in evidence at a match between the Serbian national team and that of Switzerland, which features two stars whose families are refugees from Kosovo.

Before the match, a social media photograph of the Serbian dressing room showed a flag hanging above the lockers of the players with an old map of Serbia, showing Kosovo as part of their territory, and the slogan “No surrender!”

The @FFK_KS is a full member of @FIFAcom.

Serbia’s chauvinistic rhetoric against the Rep.of Kosova through sport, and within official facilities is an aggressive act against human and sportsmanship values, and must be condemned.

Taking no measures is a loud act in itself. pic.twitter.com/XbFPxXTmGP

— Daulina (@DaulinaOsmani) November 25, 2022

During the match, which Switzerland won, with a goal from one of the Kosovan-Swiss players and a commanding performance by the other, ultranationalist Serb fans could be heard chanting death threats and slurs at ethnic Albanians.

The post How Jared Kushner Lost at the World Cup in Qatar appeared first on The Intercept.

I’m tired of it. I am tired of pathetic, spoiled little brats throwing fits, temper tantrums, and issuing threats when they don’t get their way. American terrorism is an ongoing threat. Many years ago, something like that would not have ever seemed possible.

It used to be we worried about threats from OTHER countries — not our own. But that is no more. Time and time again, we find ourselves at the mercy of a bunch of spoiled brats — people whose worldviews are so primordial and ancient that they will happily throw fits if they don’t get their way.

We see this, of course, with election denialism. It’s in Arizona, where election officials have been threatened with one actually having to go into hiding — all because of spoiled brats.

These spoiled brats delight in calling our elected officials vial names and acting like this country belongs to them and them only. It’s like others — with other opinions — do not even exist.

In Arizona, election deniers have been raging against good people whose only crime is obeying the law. One of these election deniers had the gall to call the election staff “traitors.” Spoiled brats.

Kari Lake has openly called for her own voters to get themselves arrested while protesting for her. Spoiled brat.

The DHS has come out and warned of American terror threats to the LGBTQ community as well as the Jewish community. Spoiled brats. Threats against migrants are skyrocketing. Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled brats. These people are not God though they seem to think they are. Time and again, they are mollycoddled as pundits try to understand just where they are coming from.

They are coming from, in my opinion, a place of spoiled brattiness. I have no sympathy for these people, and the more they rage against imaginary threats, the more they mindlessly carry on, the more they screech, and cuss and name-calling make me further believe.

It makes me believe that these people are the ultimate spoiled brats. They are little children in adult bodies who either were never told no or have never developed the coping skills on how to handle BEING told no.

The post Spoiled brats appeared first on Palmer Report.

The operations of Iran’s “morality police” have effectively been suspended, a top official said, after months of widespread anti-government protests over the death of a young woman in its custody.

Officially called the Guidance Patrol, the police unit has for years stalked major intersections and thoroughfares in Iranian cities, arresting those it determined were flouting the Islamic Republic’s strict religious dress codes.The patrols seemed to disappear from Tehran’s streets soon after nationwide protests erupted in mid-September over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, who fell into a coma after being detained for her attire.

“The Guidance Patrol has nothing to do with the judiciary; it was suspended by the same institution that formed it in the past,” the semi-official Iranian Labour News Agency reported, citing Chief Public Prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri.

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Read More: What to Know About the Iranian Protests Over Mahsa Amini’s Death

The comments, which don’t amount to an official dissolution of the unit, follow deadly unrest and protests that have challenged Iran’s theocratic leadership on a scale not seen since they took power after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Montazeri’s statement is unlikely to represent a major shift in policy and didn’t address protesters’ demands to scrap mandatory religious dress codes altogether, or deal with a broad list of grievances related to civil liberties, governance and the rule of law.

With mandates for how women must dress still in place, removing the Guidance Patrol also raises questions about how the rules will be enforced, and whether an alternative system will emerge.

‘Prudent Solution’

In a sign that regulation of public life will not necessarily be relaxed, Montazeri said that “of course, the judiciary continues to monitor behavior in the community.”

In separate comments published in the moderate Shargh newspaper on Saturday, Montazeri said that the judiciary was working on a draft proposal for amendments to how laws “pertaining to chastity and hijab” should be enforced, referring to the Arabic word used to describe religious modesty codes.

“Following recent events, the relevant bodies are looking for a prudent solution,” he said, adding that Iran’s parliament and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution plan to reach a decision on how to go forward within 15 days.

According to rights groups, more than 400 people have been killed by security forces in the protests, including scores of children. The United Nations said last month that more than 14,000 people have so far been arrested for taking part and many stand accused of serious offenses that carry the death penalty.

Read More: What the Success of Women-Led Protests Tell Us About Iran’s Future

Since 2006, green and white Guidance Patrol minivans have regularly cruised busy streets, especially during summer months, arresting passersby, mostly young women, deemed to be improperly dressed.

Amini’s death sparked a public outcry, and many women began publicly shunning or destroying head-scarves that have been compulsory for them since childhood. Many women are now seen out in public in Tehran’s more liberal, northern enclaves without head coverings.

Iranian officials have repeatedly accused foreign countries, including the US, of instigating the unrest and have vowed to continue their heavy crackdown on protesters.

Last month, the United Nations said it would investigate Iran for human rights violations and called on the Islamic Republic to immediately end its targeting of demonstrators.

HONG KONG — China on Sunday reported two additional deaths from COVID-19 as some cities move cautiously to ease anti-pandemic restrictions following increasingly vocal public frustrations.

The National Health Commission said one death was reported each in the provinces of Shandong and Sichuan. No information was given about the ages of the victims or whether they had been fully vaccinated.

China, where the virus first was detected in late 2019 in the central city of Wuhan, is the last major country trying to stop transmission completely through quarantines, lockdowns and mass testing. Concerns over vaccination rates are believed to figure prominently in the ruling Communist Party’s determination to stick to its hard-line strategy.

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While nine in 10 Chinese have been vaccinated, only 66% of people over 80 have gotten one shot while 40% have received a booster, according to the commission. It said 86% of people over 60 are vaccinated.

Given those figures and the fact that relatively few Chinese have been built up antibodies by being exposed to the virus, some fear millions could die if restrictions were lifted entirely.

Yet, an outpouring of public anger appears to have prompted authorities to lift some of the more onerous restrictions, even as they say the “zero-COVID” strategy — which aims to isolate every infected person — is still in place.

The demonstrations, the largest and most widely spread in decades, erupted Nov. 25 after a fire in an apartment building in the northwestern city of Urumqi killed at least 10 people. That set off angry questions online about whether firefighters or victims trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other anti-virus controls. Authorities denied that, but the deaths became a focus of public frustration.

The country saw several days of protests across cities including Shanghai and Beijing, with protesters demanding an easing of COVID-19 curbs. Some demanded Chinese President Xi Jinping step down, an extraordinary show of public dissent in a society over which the ruling Communist Party exercises near total control.

Beijing and some other Chinese cities announced that riders can board buses and subways without a virus test for the first time in months. The requirement has led to complaints from some Beijing residents that even though the city has shut many testing stations, most public venues still require COVID-19 tests.

On Sunday, China announced another 35,775 cases from the past 24 hours, 31,607 of which were asymptomatic, bringing its total to 336,165 with 5,235 deaths.

While many have questioned the accuracy of the Chinese figures, they remain relatively low compared to the U.S. and other nations which are now relaxing controls and trying to live with the virus that has killed at least 6.6 million people worldwide and sickened almost 650 million.

China still imposes mandatory quarantine for incoming travelers even as its infection numbers are low compared to its 1.4 billion population.

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