Recovery of Great Barrier Reef stalls as scientists point to bleaching, disease and starfish attacks

Reef experts say an El Niño climate pattern could take hold this summer, raising the risk of another mass bleaching event further.

A recovery in the number of corals growing on the Great Barrier Reef over recent years has paused, with government scientists blaming bleaching, disease and attacks by starfish.

Results from the latest annual surveys of more than 100 individual reefs show a small drop in coral cover over the northern and central parts of the reef over the past year.

The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle has removed any references to Harry Potter author JK Rowling from an exhibition celebrating the fictional wizard, due to her “super hateful and divisive”comments about the transgender community.

“There’s a certain cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity in the world of Harry Potter and, this time, it is not actually a Dementor,” the exhibit’s project manager Chris Moore, who is transgender, wrote in a blog explaining the decision to axe Rowling from the museum.

Moore added: “This certain person is a bit too vocal with her super hateful and divisive views to be ignored.” The blog post also explained that the series creator’s absence is a short-term measure to “reduce her impact” while the museum determines its “long-term practices.”

The Alabama Republican senator Tommy Tuberville is jeopardising US national security by blocking military leadership confirmations in protest of Pentagon policy on abortion, Joe Biden and the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters in Finland, where he attended meetings after the Nato summit in Lithuania, Biden said he would talk to Tuberville if he thought there was any prospect he would change his “ridiculous” position.

White Australians like to think of themselves as an egalitarian and frank people, despising pretentiousness, while basking in a reputation for larrikinism and mateship. But this is all a front, papering over a culture that is deeply racist, excessively masculinist, and incorrigibly populist. Indeed, from its very beginnings, white Australia has been a morally backward society. And there are no signs that this is abating. Its moral backwardness is disgustingly on show in the No campaign against the forthcoming referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

By Allan Patience

Judge in Trump Mar-a-Lago classified documents case demands to know why the DOJ wants to use a grand jury from out of state as she hands Jack Smith multiple blows

The federal judge in Donald Trump's classified documents case on Monday asked prosecutors why they had used grand juries in Florida and in Washington to build their case when charges were filed in South Florida.

In an interview with judge Napolitano, Col Tony Shaffer made a reference to “Garbo” — a British double agent during WW2 — in regard to Zelensky’s assassination.

See, the Ukrainian secret services discovered that one of their own was about to top the brilliant Volodymyr…

The Russians do not want to kill Zelensky because he’s all bullshit-talk and is weak as piss on the battlefield, apart from giving Nazi medals to commanders who won’t make it alive before the end of the week… It’s likely that the Americans will get rid of Zelensky soon — and blame the Russians — because  his “counteroffensive” is faltering badly (45,000 dead soldiers at today’s count). 

At writing, we are 16 months from the 2024 presidential election. If a week is a long time in politics, there is too strong a chance that the interim upon us will prove one of awful eventfulness. In my read, the risk of brazen lawlessness in the upper reaches of power and, in consequence, a constitutional crisis, is now greater than at any point in the postwar period. It is time to brace ourselves against this eventuality. 

By Patrick Lawrence
Original to ScheerPost

In his 23 years in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin has been dismissed countless times. This is because we did not understand whatever…

Nella foto sopra, quella a sinistra è una copertina di The Economist (Regno Uniti) del 2011: il titolo dice “L’inizio della fine di Putin”. Quella a destra, invece, è la Home page di Foreign Affairs (Usa) di pochi giorni fa, giugno 2023: il titolo dice “L’inizio della fine per Putin?”. In dodici anni l’unica differenza sta in quel piccolo punto interrogativo. Dodici anni per farsi venire un dubbio.

Warren Buffett explains the 1929 crisis and what we can learn from it, especially with regards to the current downturn.

Warren E. Buffett is an American investor, philanthropist, business tycoon, and the chairman & CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is considered one of the most successful investors in the world and has a net worth of over 100 billion dollars. Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He developed an interest in business and investing in his youth and made truly incredible stock market returns over his career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7QOS28WTPk

Life on this little planet has evolved in leaps and bounds, via crashes and extinctions. 

We could suggest here that un-sustainability is the driving force of this evolution through adaptation to its reactivity and/to mostly local and cosmic changes. 

According to seriously comprehensive scientific studies there are evidence of warm, cold, hot, full of life, nearly barren, oxygenated, sulfur-dioxided, eras, eons, periods and seasons past.

Changes and variations, adaptation and evolution are facts of life. Life is a derivative of the surface construct and sidereal position of this little planet.

We can’t escape this disorganised ad-hoc system that follows some powerfully set assemblages of elements into molecules that make us whom we are. 

Forget the paradise lost theory. We are born from the planet’s own accidental birth.

From Barbie to Taylor Swift – why are men so afraid of girls?

Jacqueline Maley

It’s a tough line to walk. How to dismiss the Barbie movie as a dumb movie about a dumb doll, while justifying your outsize, grown-man anger over a movie about, well, a doll?

Some right-wing media commentators outraged by the film have attempted to thread the needle, with limited success. US conservative media personality Ben Shapiro said the quiet part out loud when he videoed himself conflagrating a Barbie doll in protest, while denouncing the movie as woke, feminist dreck. Most men of his ilk at least attempt to disguise their contempt for the feminine; he wears his so openly it provokes him to pyrotechnics.

Over twenty ALP branches around Australia have now passed anti-AUKUS resolutions and the list is growing by the day.

Many of the branches are calling on the Albanese government to withdraw from the pact while others want a parliamentary inquiry into the $368 Billion deal.

AWPR supports the call for a full and open inquiry which was suggested by The Australia Institute and others in May.

The grassroots revolt within the ALP is being pushed along by a new informal group called “Labor Against War” which is headed by former Labor staffer and journalist Marcus Strom.

Zelensky fears peace pressure from West – NYT

The Ukrainian president has reportedly told his diplomats that benefactors may push for a negotiated truce with Russia

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is reportedly worried that Western nations may ramp up pressure to negotiate a peace agreement with Russia, ending a bloody conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Kiev’s troops in just the past two months.

“As furious battles raged across the front lines of Europe’s bloodiest war in decades, Mr. Zelensky told his ambassadors on Wednesday that things would grow even more difficult as pressure was likely to build in the coming months to find a negotiated path to peace,” the New York Times reported on Saturday.

It was hardly the triumphant return to Washington that he and his campaign imagined. Donald Trump was back in America’s capital this week, not as president but an accused criminal. “Not guilty,” he pleaded in a hushed courtroom to four charges stemming from the effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

But even as observers savored a sombre yet reaffirming moment for the rule of law, a follower of the former US president could be seen outside court waving a giant flag. “Trump or death,” it declared, not far from the halls of Congress where lethal violence erupted on January 6,2021.

Max Blumenthal and Stephen Gardner discuss the evil in DC. Colonel Douglas Macgregor and Tucker Carlson have said Donald Trump's biggest sin was the threat to interrupt the money flow to the military-industrial-congressional complex. Ukraine is being used by DC to enrich government contractors. The "real war" is between DC and Putin with so much financial interest involved, DC will let Ukraine bleed to death before they give up their profits. Zelenskyy is a pawn in a money-grabbing scheme. DC is loaded with corrupt people making more money off this war than ever before so they fly their flags to support Ukraine but really they are supporting their huge incomes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M7RKbieyZo