The relentless and non-stop assault by Chinese authorities on speech in Hong Kong is truly the worst kind of totalitarian State behavior.

Chinese authorities continue to stamp out any vestige of dissent having jailed protesters, newspaper publishers and journalists. The latest indignation is the arrest of people for publishing picture books.

The Chinese government’s continuing assault on basic human freedom is a genuine outrage which shows no signs of abating.

Wall Street Journal 7.22.2021

Hong Kong’s national-security police arrested five people for allegedly conspiring to commit sedition through a series of picture books that portray sheep being targeted by wolves—an allusion to China’s crackdown on pro-democracy supporters in the city.

Hours after police detained five members of a speech therapists’ union, police displayed three illustrated books that they say incited hatred against the government among children as young as four. The cartoons simplified “political issues that kids wouldn’t comprehend and beautifies criminal activities,” Superintendent Steve Li Kwai-wah told a news conference. “They’re meant to poison the minds of children,” he said.

The five people arrested—two men and three women, aged between 25 and 28 years old—are board members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists. They were detained under a colonial-era antisedition law rather than the security law imposed by China

The wildfires sweeping the Western United States are destroying the land, polluting the environment and increasing the risk of Covid cases and death.

At a time when people think the Pandemic is waning and trying to resume a normal life, the wildfires scorching the West are laying waste to those plans.

Excerpted from Montana Free Press 7.22.2021

MISSOULA — Missoula’s new downtown library was teeming with people who might typically spend a Saturday afternoon hiking, biking or otherwise making the most of Montana’s abundant outdoor recreation. One look at the soupy haze blanketing the city and it was clear why.

“We’re definitely trying to stay out of the smoke,” Charlie Booher said as his kids picked out books from the stacks.

Smoke from the wildfires burning through bone-dry forests and grasslands in the West has damaged air quality this week from California to the Eastern Seaboard. The polluting smoke has been thickest in the Northwest, including Montana, where over the past week Missoula, Helena, Great Falls and other cities ranked among the 10 places with the worst air quality, according to AirNow.

Back in Missoula, county Air Quality Specialist Sarah Coefield said the best thing people can do is get vaccinated, especially if they plan to seek out public spaces to escape heat and smoke. They can also create a clean-air space at home.

With about 2.5 million acres already burned this year in the U.S., and drought worsening across the West, Coefield said, “There’s nothing in the forecast to suggest it’s going to end anytime soon — and it’s not going to get any easier as it goes on.”

The smoke and unrelenting heat pummeling the state have driven people to seek refuge at libraries, movie theaters, museums and other indoor venues. In areas with low COVID-19 vaccination rates where people have largely abandoned masks and physical distancing, health officials are concerned the result will be COVID outbreaks.

Adding to that worry is the rise of the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus, and research suggests that COVID cases and deaths increase during periods of intense wildfire smoke.

Missoula County has the highest vaccination rate in Montana, at 60%, but Whitney Kors was still mindful of the risks as she took her family to the library to get out of the smoke.

“My daughter and I are still masked because she’s not vaccinated,” Kors said.

She said that until her daughter, who’s under 12 years old, becomes eligible for her shot, her family will continue to distance from others when they’re out. However, health officials worry that not everyone seeking out smoke-free activities indoors this summer will take the same precautions if they are unvaccinated.

To the north in Flathead County, Joe Russell, the county health officer, said he’s tracking a roughly 50% increase in COVID cases over the past two weeks, mostly from unvaccinated people catching the virus at events.

“These are activities that are happening specific to events or settings, and they are indoors,” he explained.

Russell said his team is more closely investigating new clusters to see if people went inside to escape heat and smoke. About 6 of 10 county residents who are eligible for COVID vaccines have not gotten them, and Russell is worried these large clusters could get worse if more people gather indoors.

The dangers of the pandemic appear to have waned in people’s minds as they gather in indoor public spaces, many of which dropped masking and physical distancing requirements earlier this year.

In Yellowstone County and Billings, Montana’s largest city, the pandemic is still being felt in hospitals that have been treating younger, sicker patients than they saw earlier in the pandemic. COVID deaths also spiked there in early July.

Yellowstone County Health Officer John Felton hoped the summer would provide time to boost the county’s 50% vaccination rate before cold weather sends people indoors and increases the risk of unvaccinated people transmitting COVID.

“But this year has been so hot, so dry and with so much smoke, we are concerned we’re going to have increases happening a little earlier,” he said.

Across Montana, about 48% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated, but Magdalena Scott with the state Department of Public Health and Human Services said county rates range from about 23% to 60%. She said that means case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths are likely to vary more widely than they did last summer, when vaccines weren’t yet available. “We are concerned that it’s going to be a long smoke season for sure,” Scott said.

Daniel Kiser is a researcher at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada. He worked on a recently published paper about an increase in COVID cases in Reno during the wildfire season.

“What we found was that there was about an 18% increase in the rate of positive tests during the period that was most affected by wildfire smoke,” Kiser said.

University of Montana researcher Erin Landguth is also expanding her past study showing intense wildfire seasons in Montana have been followed by bad flu seasons months later in the fall and winter.

“Comparing bad fire seasons to non-bad fire seasons, one would expect to see three to five times worse flu seasons,” Landguth said.

https://montanafreepress.org/2021/07/22/wildfire-smoke-could-drive-covid-outbreaks/

Those who still refuse to be vaccinated to put it bluntly, are stupid, selfish and are putting their fellow citizens at risk.

The Pandemic is far from over despite what people want to believe. 

People are foolishly resuming their old habits and not showing the discipline and patience necessary to fight off the Covid-19.  Now with the increasing virulence of the Delta variant the public is increasingly at risk.

Even those who have been fully vaccinated are not immune.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 7.22.2021

With coronavirus cases sharply rising in the Bay Area, more restaurants and bars are requiring or planning to require proof of vaccination to enter.

Previously an action \taken only by a few of the most cautious owners, the concept of allowing only vaccinated individuals inside businesses is gaining steam amid concerns about the rapidly spreading and more infectious delta variant.

It sure isn’t 2019 World Cup all over again, yet, for the reigning American champs.  At least for one game.

Two years later in an empty stadium in Tokyo to start the Olympics, the American women were soundly taken down in the first game in Group play.  The good news is Team USA has a chance to regroup when they play New Zealand on Saturday.

Excerpted from The Guardian 7.21.2021

Megan Rapinoe said “it is what it is, we got bopped” after two goals from the striker Stina Blackstenius helped Sweden to a stunning 3-0 defeat of the United States at the Tokyo Stadium in their opening game of the Olympics.

“We got our asses kicked, didn’t we? I thought we were a little tight, a little nervous, just doing dumb stuff. There’s no time to dwell and think about if Sweden is living in our heads or not. We’ve got another game in three days.”

The US team arrived in Japan as overwhelming favourites to win gold but they were brutally exposed by Sweden. “They found a lot of space on us,” said Rapinoe. “I don’t remember the last time we gave up a goal. So to give up three is not great …

“I wouldn’t say they’ve got in our heads,” said the forward of the team that knocked them out of the Rio Olympics at the quarter-final stage and more recently earned a 1-1 draw against the world champions that ended their 16-game winning streak.

“They’re one of the best teams in the world,” Rapinoe added. “If we play a France [or] an England four times a year, we’re going to have those kinds of results.

 

With that said, we always expect to win every game that we play. So do we expect this result tonight? No, and it’s frustrating, and of course frustrating that it’s Sweden.”

Blackstenius’s 26th-minute header gave Sweden the lead. In the second half the USA manager, Vlatko Andonovski, who had not lost since taking charge after Jill Ellis stepped down, shuffled the pack, bringing on Carli Lloyd for Alex Morgan and Julie Ertz for Sam Mewis but his team could not break through a resilient defence that was without the key centre-back Magda Eriksson, who reached the Champions League final with Chelsea last season. Instead, Blackstenius scored a second in the 54th minute before substitute Lina Hurtig added a third.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/21/sweden-come-back-to-haunt-uswnt-again-in-shock-olympic-thrashing

America is full of deranged extremists. The American combination of toxic anti-Semitic thinking, the number of far right extremist groups and the easy availability of guns is  both the fuel and the match for this incendiary hatred.

Wall Street Journal 7.20.2021

A 22-year-old California man pleaded guilty Tuesday to murder and other charges in connection with a deadly attack at a synagogue in the San Diego suburb of Poway in 2019.

Just before the shooting, John Earnest posted a manifesto online in which he invoked anti-Semitic tropes to justify attacking Jews and admitted to trying to burn down the mosque.

Killer’s victim Lori Gilbert-Kaye, 60

Earnest admitted that he carried out the shooting that left one dead and three wounded on the last day of Passover because of his bias and hatred of Jews, according to the San Diego County district attorney’s office .

As part of a plea agreement, Earnest avoided the death penalty and agreed to serve the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole, the office said. He also pleaded guilty to arson at a nearby mosque.

John O’Connell, a public defender representing Earnest, declined to comment

Earnest opened fire with an AR-15 style rifle in April of 2019 at the Chabad of Poway. He killed Lori Gilbert-Kaye, 60, and wounded three others, including an 8-year-old girl and Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein who lost his finger in the attack.

After the shooting, Earnest fled and called 911 to admit what he had done, saying, “I just shot up a synagogue. I’m trying to defend my nation against the Jewish people” authorities have said.

Earnest still faces federal hate-crime charges, including the obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs using a dangerous weapon.

The district attorney’s offices said it consulted with the family of Ms. Gilbert-Kaye as well as the survivors of the shooting before accepting the plea deal.

“While we reserved the option of trying this as a death penalty case, life in prison without the possibility of parole for the defendant is an appropriate resolution to this violent hate crime and we hope it brings a measure of justice and closure to the victims, their families, friends and the wider community,”  the district attorney’s office said in a statement.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-diego-synagogue-shooter-gets-life-sentence-in-plea-deal-11626819381?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_2&cx_artPos=1&mod=WTRN#cxrecs_s

We live a couple of miles away from the historic Golden Gate Bridge and have been intermittently serenaded for months by the hum of the natural music moving in our direction.

The sound comes through as a sharp high pitched whistle and definitely ads an interesting vibe to our quiet Richmond District neighborhood close by the Pacific Ocean.

There is always an opportunity for someone in San Francisco to make a statement. Now San Francisco State University graduate Nate Mercerau has put the ghostly hums to artistic use.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 7.19.2021

The relentless drone the Golden Gate Bridge makes on windy days is a nuisance to many Bay Area residents. But for Nate Mercereau, a musician who has written and produced songs for platinum-selling pop stars including Lizzo and Shawn Mendes, the racket — created when gusts blow through the bridge’s newish safety slats — is a source of inspiration in the key of C-major.

“Actually, the note the bridge makes seems to fluctuate depending on where you are standing,” Mercereau said. “It plays four notes pretty solidly. There’s an A, B, and a G that warble together and create the ominous part of the sound, and then there’s a high C that holds it all together.”

Mercereau said the inspiration for the project, titled “Duets / Golden Gate Bridge,” came from an article in The Chronicle with the headline: “The Golden Gate Bridge ‘humming’ is driving people crazy. A team of engineers is working to shut it up.”

“This is like a full-circle moment for me,” he said, with a laugh.

“Because there is so much negative attention around it, this seemed like an opportunity to look at it another way,” said Mercereau, a San Francisco State University alum who now lives far from the noise in the Los Angeles foothills.

While he expresses deep sympathy for the people who live near the interminable clamor — the result of a $12 million retrofit of the western sidewalk rail last year — he said creating a set of songs with the 88-year-old bridge as his only accompanist was too good an opportunity to pass up.

“It’s the largest wind instrument in the world right now,” Mercereau said.

Using recording equipment powered by car batteries and surrounded by windscreens, Mercereau and Parkes managed to produce nearly eight hours of improvised music in the spirit of artists such as John Cage and Brian Eno.

The four tracks that made the album are simply titled “Duet 1,” “Duet 2,” “Duet 3” and — you guessed it — “Duet 4.”

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/how-one-musician-recorded-a-series-of-duets-with-the-golden-gate-bridges-ghostly-hum

It’s worth remembering that Republican legislators and regulators during the Trump regime tried to destroy and weaken every environmental law and regulation.

Now that the current Administration is trying to act as a good steward for America’s natural resources the Republicans are engaging in every slash and burn tactic at their disposable to disrupt.

Excerpted from Montana Free Press 7.18.2021

Republican members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources issued a letter to President Joe Biden Wednesday urging him to rescind his nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the Bureau of Land Management.

The letter’s signatories, including Montana Sen. Steve Daines, say Stone-Manning made “false and misleading” statements to the committee about her involvement in a tree-spiking incident that led to an investigation and two convictions.

The tree-spiking incident has surfaced at various points in Stone-Manning’s career, including when she was chosen by former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock to lead the state Department of Environmental Quality. The Montana Legislature questioned her about the incident and ultimately approved her appointment.

Last month Bullock told the Associated Press that Republicans on the Senate Energy Committee were grasping at old news to try to sink her nomination.

“She helped send a guy to prison 30 years ago when she was a college kid,” he said. “It’s never been a secret at all.”

Jon Tester, Daines’ Democratic counterpart in the Senate, was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Stone-Manning’s nomination. He described her as “somebody who exhibits uncommon common sense, somebody who has two ears and one mouth and acts accordingly [and] someone who is a critical thinker, thinks reasonably and promotes reasonable decisions” when introducing her before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources June 8. His support of her nomination appears to be unchanged by his Republican colleagues’ letter.

Prior to her post with the DEQ, Stone-Manning worked for Tester, first as a regional director and later as a state staff director and senior advisor.

A July 15 statement from Tester’s office says, “Tracy Stone-Manning is a dedicated public servant who has devoted her life to advocating for the public lands that drive our economy and serve as the backbone of Montana’s outdoor heritage. Tracy will bring Montana common sense to the Bureau of Land Management and serve as a collaborative, nonpartisan steward for our public land as well as the thousands of good-paying jobs that rely on them. I look forward to her confirmation.”

CONSERVATION GROUPS RALLY AROUND NOMINATION

A number of conservation organizations voiced their continued support of Stone-Manning and expressed frustration with Daines for attempting to nix her nomination.

Montana Conservation Voters Executive Director Whitney Tawney described Stone-Manning as an outdoorswoman, conservation professional and demonstrated leader. She said Daines’ “partisan attacks are an affront to all those who enjoy our public lands and want to see them managed with balance and transparency.”

Missoula’s Jock Conyngham, who’s worked with Stone-Manning in a number of capacities, including as a fellow Montana Conservation Voters board member, said Barasso and Daines are distorting her involvement in the tree-spiking incident and are only presenting “part of the picture.”

He said he’s always been impressed by Stone-Manning’s perspective and careful consideration of tough issues.

In 1989, while attending the University of Montana, Stone-Manning sent a letter to federal officials saying that trees in the Clearwater National Forest had been spiked, and that “a lot of people could get hurt” if logging in the forest proceeded. Tree spiking involves hammering a metal spike into a tree to discourage logging. Contact between a chainsaw or sawmill blade and a spike can seriously injure the operator.

Four years after Stone-Manning wrote the letter, she testified before a federal grand jury in Boise, Idaho, against two friends who were convicted in the tree-spiking case. She said she’d mailed the letter at the request of one of those friends, and to prevent people from getting hurt. She received immunity in exchange for the testimony and was never charged with a crime.

https://montanafreepress.org/2021/07/15/republican-senators-ask-biden-to-nix-stone-manning-blm-nomination/

The Covid-19 pandemic is still with us, despite an ongoing rush by many people to resume life as normal. 

This information is timely and needs to be taken seriously.

In the San Francisco Bay Area people are being encouraged to once again wear masks indoors.

Excerpted from The Washington Post 7.17.2021

The variant first identified in India last year is now dominant in the United States.

Liz Heidhues 7.16.2021

Richard Sherman is disgraced.

But was Sherman’s behavior that abnormal for a professional football player?

The rate of domestic violence among NFL players is higher than expected for their income level, which could suggest that these athletes are indeed more prone to domestic violence.

A survey of 252 nationally reported criminal cases in one year that involved athletes found that about 14% of the athletes involved were professional football players. This compared with 7% professional baseball players and 6% of professional basketball and ice hockey players.

“They’re (elite football players) trained to be aggressive and somewhat violent on the field, that’s the nature of the game and that’s how they became important players. And sometimes it is difficult for athletes to turn that off when they go back to their regular lives,” said Stanley Teitelbaum, a Ph.D Clinical Psychologist and author of “Sports Heroes, Fallen Idols and Illusions and Disillusions”.

Former Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers NFL football star Richard Sherman needs to deal with the consequences of his belligerent rampage early last Tuesday morning in Redmond, Washington. He is charged with five misdemeanors, punishable by up to 90 days in jail, or gross misdemeanors, punishable by up to one year.

After driving his SUV in a drunken rage through a construction zone and crashing his vehicle, Sherman ended up at his in-laws’ house in a suburb in Washington.

As Sherman tried to break down the front door of his in-laws, his father-in-law had to spray his face with pepper spray through the partially broken-opened door.

When the police arrived, they could not subdue Sherman because of his massive size, brute strength, and belligerence.

The police officers could not use a Taser because of their concerns about igniting whatever chemical Sherman’s father-in-law had sprayed him with.

The officers ended up on relying on man’s best friend to subdue raging Richard Sherman. They released a police dog, who bit Sherman on the ankle, and the officers were then able to wrestle Richard Sherman to the ground and take him into custody.

Photo above: Richard Sherman accompanied by his wife Ashley Moss enters King County courtroom for arraignment 7.16.2021

Here is today’s story of someone who should have excellent communications skills running afoul of the law.

Richard Sherman. Professional football star. Stanford alumnus. Member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity and graduate in the Class of 2010 with an undergraduate degree in communications.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 7.14.2021

Free agent cornerback Richard Sherman has been arrested for allegedly attempting to break into the Redmond, Wash., home of his in-laws after fleeing a single-car crash that left his vehicle seriously damaged, authorities said at a news conference Wednesday.

Sherman, who spent the past three seasons with the 49ers (photo above) and is vice president of the NFL Players Association executive committee, is in custody at the King County Correctional Facility in Seattle, facing charges of burglary domestic violence, resisting arrest and malicious mischief. He was booked at 6:08 a.m. Wednesday and has been denied bail.

Sherman also faces possible charges for driving under the influence and hit-and-run, according to the Washington State Patrol. He must see a judge before bail is set, Redmond Police Chief Darrell Lowe said at the news conference; Sherman is expected to appear in King County District Court on Thursday afternoon, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

The burglary charge stems from Sherman’s attempt to gain entry to the house in Redmond, according to Lowe, and the domestic violence component is because of his relationship with the occupants, his wife’s parents. The malicious mischief charge is for causing damage to the door, Lowe said. None of Sherman’s family members was injured in the incident.

Sherman and his in-laws engaged in a verbal altercation before police arrived, according to Lowe, who said officers responded to the residence after receiving a 911 call at 1:49 a.m.

Sherman initially was amicable with the officers, Lowe said, but resisted when they established probable cause and told him he would be taken into custody. Sherman tried to walk away from the officers and accelerated his pace, according to Lowe, who said the officers then deployed a K-9 team to gain custody of Sherman.

Sherman and two officers suffered minor injuries, Lowe said; contact with the dog left Sherman with a minor laceration to his lower leg and ankle area.

Rick Johnson, state patrol trooper and public information officer, told The Chronicle that his agency will present the DUI and hit-and-run charges to the King County prosecutor’s office, which will decide whether to proceed.

The sequence of events began shortly after 1 a.m., when the State Patrol received a 911 call about a one-car collision in a construction zone in Redmond. The vehicle struck a concrete divider, Johnson said, left the scene and was abandoned in a parking lot near the 148th Avenue exit of eastbound State Route 520.

The impact left the vehicle with at least two tires popped, according to Johnson. He said a check of the license plate revealed it was registered to Sherman.

Johnson said the State Patrol was granted a search warrant for a blood test for suspected impairment. Soon thereafter, he said, State Patrol troopers arrived at a nearby residence looking for Sherman, and they assisted Redmond police in making the arrest.

The initial 911 call came from a construction worker who witnessed Sherman’s vehicle leaving the scene, according to Mead.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/49ers/article/Former-49ers-cornerback-Richard-Sherman-arrested-16314299.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sherman_(American_football)