"Fire management in Victoria amounts to de facto native logging industry, conservationists say. On Thursday conservationists and the Victorian National Parks Association expressed shock after discovering a dead greater glider in an area where trees had been felled by FFMV."
"Logging in Victoria’s native forests ended at the beginning of this year but Prof David Lindenmayer, a forest ecologist at Australian National University, said: “There’s a de facto logging industry now emerging under the guise of fire suppression.“To me, when you cut down big trees and put them on a truck and take them to a sawmill … that is logging.”"
Cross-examination of #MichaelCohen resumes, an opportunity for the defense to poke holes in his testimony & perhaps trip up or provoke the state’s key witness. The questioning of Cohen, #Trump’s fmr fixer, is the beginning of the end of Trump’s #criminal trial, which began April 15 & might conclude before Memorial Day weekend at this pace.
The #Republicans that showed up to the #TrumpTrial today in Manhattan were lawmakers who are all about disrupting legislative business & have no issue w/embarrassing their own party on the #House floor. It included many #HouseFreedomCaucus members who have frozen the chamber for days on end, most recently voting down their party’s own rules as an act of protest.
Public Participation
The Aarhus Convention and its Protocol on PRTRs empower people with the rights to access information, participate in decision-making in environmental matters and to seek justice. They are the only legally binding global instruments on environmental democracy.
>> https://unece.org/environmental-policy-1/public-participation
Introducing the nominees for our first ever Governing Board elections 🎉 We are grateful to everyone who has raised their hands, and are positively overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and vision expressed by our nominees: https://matrix.org/governing-board/elections/2024/
Get to know the candidates, and get ready: voting begins on May 18th.
Two blog posts today, going into deep dependencies in our political discourse and the dangers lurking for democracy within them.
In this first post I explore how political polarisation is the most efficient tool of malicious governments like Russia and China to influence our western democracies to make them weaker at resisting their imperial push
“#NathanSchneider has the patience and fortitude most of us lack. He’s identified a phenomenon he calls “#ImplicitFeudalism’ - the bias to build our online and real #communities as #fiefdoms, and how this has made us more tolerant of similarly autocratic CEOs and politicians. He’s even optimistic and energetic enough to see how the blockchain could be employed to distribute #governance in a more democratic fashion.”
"we evaluate two pathways for strengthening global #AI#governance: (a) developing new centralized international AI institution(s); and (b) strengthening coordination between, and capacities of, existing institutions.
“We argue that strengthening the existing…institutions is the more politically legitimate and viable path forward. Improving coordination between, and capacities of... institutions governing AI would support inclusive and mutually reinforcing policy change” https://academic.oup.com/ia/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ia/iiae073/7641064?login=true
#Trump saw more turnover in his #Cabinet than any other recent president, & it’s not even close. #POTUS#Biden, on the other hand, has had relatively little change in his admin’s top roles so far.
As Trump & Biden barrel toward a fall rematch, The WaPo is examining the numbers behind their time as president. In this case, we reviewed how they ran the vast #ExecutiveBranch of govt through the lens of the #stability of their Cabinets.
President #Biden is heading to #Baltimore on Friday to survey the wreckage from the Francis Scott #KeyBridge that collapsed last week. In an addition to an aerial tour, Biden will get an operational update on #work being done to reopen the #PortOfBaltimore & will meet w/ #family members of those who died during the collapse, the White House said.
Rural job scheme in huge demand, hints at ongoing distress in villages
MGNREGS has generated 40 crore persondays of work more than the pre-pandemic (2019-20) level - suggesting a continuing rural distress, and that job opportunities in the cities may not have returned to normal.
Why isn’t rising inequality turning into a poll issue?
The view from the penthouse and the pavement is staggeringly different. India’s penthouse story is galloping while millions remain poor and 800 million survive on free foodgrains from the government. Patralekha Chatterjee writes.
Riane Eisler: “Partnership and Domination Systems”
By Nate Hagens, originally published by The Great Simplification March 27, 2024
"...What we value at the individual and family level directly translates to the way we frame our governance systems – societies that emphasize empathy and caring also implement the same types of policies and values. How could we foster the more cooperative side of our humanity across all scales to create empowered communities and balanced decision making? What societies – past and present – lean towards a partnership paradigm and what benefits do their people receive? Is it possible to move away from violence and control oriented systems and into ones that value wide boundaries of empathy and understand the vital nature of care work?"
They had me at "chaos theory" which is the last item in the show's table of contents, at 1:06:03 if you're curious, lol.