Only You Can Prevent, Well, All Of This
July 29, 2019
Daily Pnut’s edition last Friday was about how much personal and private data is being breached and leaked. And this past weekend Daily Pnut’s Tim Hsia found out that his data was part of the Equifax breach. If there’s lemonade to be made out of these lemons, then it’s that he claimed $125 for this data breach.
There’s a good chance the Equifax hack also compromised many Daily Pnut readers data. Check here to see if you are eligible for $125 or 10 years of free credit monitory. If you qualify, then file a claim here. It took us 3 minutes to check our eligibility and file a claim.
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Only You Can Prevent, Well, All Of This
In just seven months, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has reversed protective policies governing his country’s natural resources, particularly the rainforest, and given a green light to illegal land invasion, logging and burning. The populist right-winger was elected with strong support from agribusiness and mining interests, and he has moved rapidly toward payback by eroding government agencies responsible for forest protection.
Bolsonaro put Brazil’s environment agency under the supervision of the agricultural ministry, which is headed by the leader of the farming lobby. His administration criticizes the forest monitoring agency, Ibama, for imposing fines on illegal land grabbers and loggers. No leaders have been appointed in eight of the nine Ibama regional offices. Operations to combat environmental crimes declined 70 percent in the first four months of 2019 as compared with 2018.
Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles eradicated the department responsible for policies to combat deforestation, which has risen to the highest level in a decade. Brazil’s foreign minister dismisses climate science as part of a global Marxist plot. Bolsonaro has weakened protections for nature reserves, indigenous territories and zones of sustainable production by forest peoples, and unabashedly invites businesspeople to register land counter-claims within those areas.
The Amazon is turning into farmland at the rate of three football fields a minute — an area the size of Greater London disappeared just this month. With Bolsonaro in charge, not only is Brazil is going backwards fast, but the rest of the planet will also suffer tragic consequences if deforestation reaches an unrecoverable tipping point.
- Amazon gold miners invade indigenous village in Brazil after its leader is killed (Guardian)
- Extreme weather has damaged nearly half Australia’s marine ecosystems since 2011: CSIRO says dramatic climate events are compounding the effects of underlying global heating (Guardian)
Armageddon: The Real Life Movie
- On July 25 Earth had a close encounter of the asteroid kind. The chunk of space rock estimated at somewhere between 187 and 427 feet wide was not being tracked by scientists when it appeared suddenly and flew past at about 54,000 mph, missing our planet by some 45,000 miles.
- The lead scientist at the Royal Institution of Australia told reporters: “It should worry us all, quite frankly….It is a clear and present danger.” Astronomers have a nickname for this kind of space rock: “City-killer asteroids.”
- A Melbourne-based astronomer said if the asteroid had struck Earth, “It would have gone off like a very large nuclear weapon” with enough force to destroy a city. (WaPo)
You Can Protest Under My Umbrella-ella-ella
- Protesters in Hong Kong warned not to demonstrate on Saturday showed up anyway. They carried umbrellas to shield against police cameras and tear gas, and gathered in the area around a train station in the Yuen Long district where pro-democracy activists were attacked last weekend.
- Demonstrators who resisted orders to leave Yuen Long could face up to five years in prison. In what has become the summer of protests, thousands of activists demanding change had filled the arrivals terminal of the Hong Kong International Airport on Friday. (NPR)
- What Is the Chinese Military Doing in Hong Kong? (NYT, $)
- ‘No difference’: Hong Kong police likened to thugs after Yuen Long violence Images circulate online comparing gang attacks to police baton charge as fresh protests begin on Sunday (Guardian)
- How the U.S. Could Lose a War With China: It’s not that the Chinese Communist Party would take over Washington. But in its own region, China has the advantage. (The Atlantic)
You’re As Sweet As HFCS
- Here’s how soda companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi switched from sugar to high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to sweeten their beverages. In the 1970s the American market was flooded with corn thanks to government subsidies and eager corn farmers. A process using corn’s starch makes HFCS, which is as sweet as sugar, but not profitable versus cheap foreign-produced sugar.
- Industry titan and Midwestern Machiavelli Dwayne Andreas, whose company Archer Daniels Midland was glutted with corn, and had begun ramping up production of HFCS, donated mega-bucks to politicians and supported lobbying efforts by Florida sugarcane growers to convince Congress to impose quotas on imported sugar.
- Andreas’ ally Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 and signed a law, still in effect, imposing quotas on imported sugar, which quickly raised the price of domestic sugar and resulted in HFCS becoming the economical alternative. (MotherJones)
Additional World News
- Adblocking: How About Nah? (EFF)
- How To Bring Cancer Care To The World’s Poorest Children (NPR)
- Russian Police Arrest Hundreds Of Demonstrators At Moscow Protest (NPR)
- A doctor’s deception: For 30 years, Paul Shuen was one of the city’s most respected obstetricians. Then his nurses noticed something unusual about the way he delivered babies. A story of greed, betrayal and medical misconduct (Toronto Life)
- The disinformation age: a revolution in propaganda: Troll farms, bots, dark ads, fake news … from Putin’s Russia to Brexit Britain, new methods are being used to change politics and crush dissent. It’s time to fight back (Guardian)
- Treasure Island: Leak Reveals How Mauritius Siphons Tax From Poor Nations To Benefit Elites: Based on 200,000 files, Mauritius Leaks exposes a sophisticated system that diverts tax revenue from poor nations back to the coffers of Western corporations and African oligarchs. (ICIJ)
Mueller Reports, Trump Retweets
- Robert Mueller’s appearance before two congressional committees last Wednesday was largely critiqued for its dramatic appeal. Rather than concentrating on the mountain of evidence uncovered during his two year investigation into Russian election interference and presidential obstruction of justice, some people were questioning the 74-year-old former special counsel’s acuity.
- On Saturday the Washington Post reported that “some lawmakers are privately wondering whether there was some truth to … rumors” that Mueller “might not be as sharp as he once was.” President Trump seized on the reports, tweeting: “The [Democrats] are now coming out of shock from the terrible Mueller performance, and are starting to spin impeachment all over again. How sick [and] disgusting and bad for our country are they. What they are doing is so wrong….”
- No formal process has begun to remove the president, but on Friday, prior to the House recessing for a six-week summer break, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) announced a lawsuit had been filed requesting that the court order the release of secret grand jury testimony underlying the Mueller report. The suit mentioned the word impeachment 76 times. (Guardian)
- Actually, Robert Mueller Was Awesome: History will show that he had one big goal, and nailed it. (Politico)
- Who In The House Is Calling For Impeachment? (NPR)
- Trump’s Secret Foreign Aid Program: He’s giving away billions to overseas investors. (NYT $)
- Trump’s Inhumanity Before a Victim of Rape: In his boundless self-absorption, this president is capable of anything. (NYT $)
“All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?” – Nicholas Johnson
- A wave of social science research focusing on the social effects of watching television presents a pretty dismal picture of what happens when hours are spent viewing what are primarily entertainment programs and advertisements. Studies reveal that the quality of shows can influence people in important ways, from shaping thinking and political preferences, to affecting cognitive ability. Said simply: You are what you watch.
- Some of the best research has been done on the show “Sesame Street.” The high-quality educational programming for children that began in 1969 has actually accounted for boosting the IQs of regular watchers.
- Overall, however, there are negative consequences from abundant TV watching, primarily because it is replacing more enlightening ways of spending time.
- Studies done in Norway provide clear evidence that the introduction of cable television in 1981 is responsible for a drastic decline in daily time spent reading, and an accompanying decline in IQ scores. (NYT)
LAST MORSELS
“Most people gaze neither into the past nor the future; they explore neither truth nor lies. They gaze at the television.” – Radiohead
“Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.” – Bill Hicks