DP 8/30/2021
August 30, 2021
The Good News
- California: mother fights off mountain lion with bare hands to save 5-year-old son (Guardian)
- Nandi Bushell, 11-year-old drummer, plays with the Foo Fighters (CNN)
“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” — Pele
New Rules In Kabul
The situation is increasingly tense in Afghanistan as the U.S. prepares to completely leave the country by midnight Tuesday. Following last Thursday’s deadly attack by ISIS-K at the Kabul airport that left 170 people dead, including 13 U.S. servicemen, President Biden vowed Friday to hunt down the perpetrators and make them pay. The president’s threat was swiftly carried out, first with a drone strike on a house in the Nangarhar province, east of Kabul and bordering Pakistan. Pentagon officials said Saturday that “a planner and a facilitator” of ISIS-K were killed in that strike, and a third person was injured.
Officials fully expected another deadly attempt from the Islamic State offshoot in Afghanistan. Made aware of a “specific, credible threat,” the military conducted a second drone strike on a vehicle in a Kabul neighborhood in the early morning hours on Sunday. A spokesman for U.S. Central Command confirmed the strike: “U.S. military forces conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to [Hamid] Karzai International airport.” Navy Capt. Bill Urban said the vehicle was carrying explosives and a number of suicide bombers set to immediately attack the airport.
Evacuations are continuing amid danger and disruption. All local Afghan staffers at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and their families, some 2,800 people, were successfully flown out by Saturday evening. The State Department said Sunday that some 250 Americans are still trying to leave Afghanistan, and another 280 self-identified Americans were undecided about leaving or wanting to stay. And the stories keep coming of outsiders performing Herculean tasks assisting would-be evacuees. One small group pulled off “nothing short of a miracle” when they coordinated an international effort to airlift out of the country the 86 athletes, officials, and family members of Afghanistan’s National Women’s Football.
Former Marine and college-soccer-player-turned-coach, Haley Carter, had wanted to empower the women during what was a brief era of more tolerance toward equality and human rights in Afghanistan. Carter described her experience taking a fledgling football team to a national level. “[W]e all knew that this effort was something much, much bigger than football. We gave them the opportunity to use sport to get out of the house, to get an education.” But as the Taliban again overran the country, time was of the essence to try getting the woman to safety. Carter says team members burned their uniforms, deleted their social media accounts, and went into hiding. They “narrowly avoided gunfire, were trampled,” and “beaten by the Taliban.” On the final leg of their escape they had to wade through sewer water.
In the end the operation succeeded, and Carter described the overwhelming sense of relief. “I can’t believe that a ragtag group of six women, some human rights lawyers, football coaches and a program director managed to use our networks and our resources to get these women out,” she said. (ABC7 Chicago, NBC News, Guardian, The Hill, CNN)
Indigenous Fight Back In Brazil
- In the 19th century, almost all indigenous sub-tribes of Xokleng Indians living in the highlands of the state of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil were exterminated by colonists. By the early 20th century, Xokleng Indians of the sub-group Laklano were the only survivors, and by the 1950s, government officials in Santa Catarina were pushing the Xokleng Indians into a degraded corner of their ancestral grounds, in order to sell the bulk of the fertile land to tobacco farmers. In the Brazilian Constitution, ratified in 1988, indigenous groups have “original rights over the lands that they have traditionally occupied.”
- The Xokleng now number some 3,000 people; they are crowded into about 35,000 acres of hilly territory, where landslides threaten homes and most land is too steep for agriculture. They began a push to reclaim an additional 59,300 acres of rich tobacco country they say belonged to them for centuries before settlers moved in. But the Santa Catarina government had applied an overly narrow legal interpretation of Indigenous rights, which only recognizes tribal lands occupied by native communities at the time the constitution was ratified.
- The government used this narrow interpretation to expel a group of Xokleng from a nature reserve in their ancestral lands. A subsequent lawsuit meandered its way through Brazil’s legal system, and wound up at the Supreme Court, whose decision was delayed by the pandemic, but it’s now time for the court to make its decision known. The ruling will affect hundreds of Indigenous land claims, many of which offer a bulwark against deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
- A defeat in court for the Xokleng could set a precedent for the dramatic rollback of Indigenous rights, which far-right President Jair Bolsonaro advocates. He says too few Indigenous people live on too much land in Brazil, blocking agricultural expansion. In anticipation of a decision, some 6,000 indigenous people from 176 tribes have been protesting at the capital. On Wednesday, a group of about 150 demonstrated in front of the presidential palace, where they set fire to a giant coffin. (socioambiental.org, Al Jazeera, Latin America Dispatch, Reuters)
Additional World News
- Nigeria: Gunmen free scores of young students abducted from school three months ago (CNN)
- German election campaign heats up as Merkel’s conservatives slide (Reuters)
- Italian coast guard rescues fishing boat with over 500 migrants on board (The Hill)
- Australia’s New South Wales reports record 1,218 COVID-19 cases (Reuters)
- How Instagram star helped rescue dozens from Afghanistan (AP)
- For France, American Vines Still Mean Sour Grapes (NYT, $)
- France’s Macron visits Iraq’s Mosul destroyed by IS war (AP)
Slow Your Parole
- Sirhan Sirhan is a Palestinian militant who assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, on June 5, 1968. RFK was campaigning for president, and had just completed a speech when shots rang out from the audience; he died the next day. In 1969, Sirhan was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.
- After California revoked the death penalty in 1972, Sirhan’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. Sirhan has spent 53 years in prison, and the California Parole Board is now recommending his release. Six of RFK’s 11 children issued a statement Friday expressing their outrage and vowing “to challenge every step of the way” the parole board’s vote to release their father’s assassin.
- Two of the children support Sirhan’s release; two other children are deceased. RFK’s oldest daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and his widow, Ethel Kennedy, haven’t spoken publicly about the decision. RFK is the brother of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. (Politico)
Seeing The Light
- Danny Reeves is senior pastor at the First Baptist Church in Corsicana, TX. Reeves isn’t anti-vaccine, but since he’s in his 40s and generally healthy, he thought getting the virus wouldn’t be a big deal. Then last month, Reeves wound up in the ICU at Dallas’ Baylor Medical Center, fighting for his life.
- The clergyman describes his experience at the hospital as “harrowing.” At one point, a doctor told Reeves he might die, and weeks later he is still recovering. “It ravaged my healthy body. There’s no doubt,” Reeves said. “I was falsely and erroneously overconfident.” Reeves says he’ll get vaccinated as soon as his doctor signs off.
- Upon his return to the pulpit Sunday, Reeves says the sermon will be about the lessons he learned. “We’re going to praise God together for his rescue…. And certainly I’m going to talk straight to our people about who we can and should be as God’s people and what it really means to love our neighbor.” As the saying goes, Pastor Reeves, ‘from your mouth to God’s ears.’ (NPR)
Additional USA News
- ’Embarrassment of riches’: Boston’s diverse mayoral field creates tough choice for city (Politico)
- How Gavin Newsom went from landslide victory to fighting for his political survival (LAT)
- Biden says another terrorist attack on Kabul airport is ‘highly likely’ while vowing that US retaliatory strike was not ‘the last’ (CNN)
- The Caldor fire is moving in on Strawberry. Can its historic lodge be saved? (LAT)
- Thousands march on Washington in voting rights push (The Hill)
- Gulf Coast braces for Sunday arrival of Hurricane Ida (CNN)
- 2 brothers arrested; bodies found buried in Illinois yard (ABC)
Different Strokes For Different Croaks
For anyone considering introducing the South American Cane Toad to their ecosystem, here’s a tip: don’t. Take a serious hint from Australia’s experience. It was introduced there in the hope it would chow down on agricultural pests, and in turn, be controlled when eaten by other predators or infused with parasites.
Turns out, the Cane Toad doesn’t have any predators or parasites in its native range; its poison glands are hazardous for most species that try to eat it. So because its numbers are only growing, the Cane Toad has become quite the invasive species. And with no real competing species in its invasive range, competition for limited resources has grown, meaning hungry toads now turn to their remaining competition: each other. Yup, now they’re cannibals.
From an evolutionary perspective, cannibalism can make sense as a way to limit the competition posed by other members of one’s species. But the University of Sydney research team that tracked the Cane Toad’s cannibalism suggests the species’ successful invasion of Australia has accentuated this evolutionary pressure. Interestingly, however, the toad has already turned to an additional evolutionary response to try limiting the danger of cannibalism.
Recently hatched toads spend several days maturing into tadpoles. During this time they often get eaten by older, more mature tadpoles. In a heavily populated body of water, clutches of eggs laid after mature tadpoles are present may be completely wiped out before they can live past the hatchling stage. Somewhat similar to a crumbling business situation, when CEOs and management start eating their young. (Wired)
Additional Reads
- Museum chief is only candidate for Estonia’s presidency (AP)
- A Bad Solar Storm Could Cause an ‘Internet Apocalypse’ (Wired)
- What Does It Mean That Greenland Sharks Could Live for Hundreds of Years? (Atlas Obscura)
- ‘Mini-Neptunes’ beyond solar system may soon yield signs of life (Guardian)
- Cutting-Edge Science Launches on NASA’s SpaceX Cargo Resupply Mission (NASA)
- Hearing mother’s voice can lessen pain in premature babies, study suggests (Guardian)