Facebook & Twitter Notes, March 22, 2019

Read this thread.

This image of a Tweet is here only for the record. I'm not posting it on Facebook or anywhere else because I don't want to give it any more oxygen. 

Christian Dominionists are a frightening lot.

New Zealand is making a noteworthy gesture.

See the You Tube video in another note further down.

Tom Westgarth is a Young Voices contributor who studies philosophy, politics, and economics at Warwick University. He has words of warning at The American Conservative.

If political history is doomed to repeat itself, then these cheap shots [at AOC] will eventually end up backfiring. I watched as British pundits used similar tactics against the Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn, and the mud-slinging didn’t land. In fact, all it did was further his bad ideas.

So-called "lone actors" like the perpetrator of the New Zealand mass killing, are made, not born. They are deliberately groomed by an organized global network.

The Azov Battalion is emerging as a critical node in the transnational right-wing violent extremist (RWE) network. This group maintains its own ‘Western Outreach Office’ to help recruit and attract foreign fighters that travel to train and connect with people from like-minded violent organizations from across the globe. Operatives from the outreach office travel around Europe to promote the organization and proselytize its mission of white supremacy. In July 2018, German-language fliers were distributed among the visitors at a right-wing rock festival in Thuringia, inviting them to be part of the Azov battalion: ‘join the ranks of the best’ to ‘save Europe from extinction.’ It has also established youth camps, sporting recreation centers, lecture halls, and far-right education programs, including some that teach children as young as 9 years old military tactics and far-right ideology. This aggressive approach to networking serves one of the Azov Battalion’s overarching objectives to transform areas under its control in Ukraine into the primary hub for transnational white supremacy.

Too often, the focus on foreign fighters has been relegated to Sunni jihadists, but in a globalized world, the foreign fighter phenomenon has deep roots across ideologies, from foreign fighters assisting the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, to Shi’a militants traveling from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Lebanon to join with Iranian-backed foreign fighter networks operating in Syria. It is now evident that RWE networks are also highly active in recruiting fighters worldwide to its cause, with the Azov Battalion and other ultra-nationalist organizations playing a significant role in the globalization of RWE violence. Indeed, the Azov Battalion is forging links with RWE groups, hosting visits from ultra-nationalist organizations such as members of the Rise Against Movement (R.A.M.) from the U.S. and the British National Action from the U.K., among other white supremacists from around the world. In the United States, several R.A.M. members (all American citizens) who spent time in Ukraine training with the Azov Battalion were recently indicted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) for their role in violently attacking counter-protestors during the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, VA in August 2017. (More at the link)

Munich Re, world’s largest reinsurance firm, warns premium rises could become social issue

Insurers have warned that climate change could make cover for ordinary people unaffordable after the world’s largest reinsurance firm blamed global warming for $24bn (£18bn) of losses in the Californian wildfires.
Ernst Rauch, Munich Re’s chief climatologist, told the Guardian that the costs could soon be widely felt, with premium rises already under discussion with clients holding asset concentrations in vulnerable parts of the state.
“If the risk from wildfires, flooding, storms or hail is increasing then the only sustainable option we have is to adjust our risk prices accordingly. In the long run it might become a social issue,” he said after Munich Re published a report into climate change’s impact on wildfires. “Affordability is so critical [because] some people on low and average incomes in some regions will no longer be able to buy insurance.”
The lion’s share of California’s 20 worst forest blazes since the 1930s have occurred this millennium, in years characterised by abnormally high summer temperatures and “exceptional dryness” between May and October, according to a new analysis by Munich Re.
(...)
“It is very interesting if insurers conclude that climate change was a significant contributory factor to the event and will make the insurance companies think carefully about the pricing and availability of similar insurance policies.”
It may also influence several court cases testing the liability of fossil fuel companies for the effects of global warming.
Dr Ben Caldecott, the director of Oxford University’s sustainable finance programme, said: “Company directors and fiduciaries will ultimately be held responsible for avoidable climate-related damages and losses and urgently need to up their game to avoid litigation and liability.”
Munich Re has divested its large thermal coal holdings. However, it maintains some gas and oil investments.

The women of New Zealand know how best to respond to the recent tragedy there.Hello, Americans! Ya'll getting this?I'm looking at you, Evangelical Christian sisters & brothers.

** These two items, one from New Zealand, the other from America, leave me at a loss for words. **


Parkland shooting survivor Sydney Aiello takes her own life

Sydney's mother, Cara Aiello, told CBS Miami that her daughter struggled with survivor's guilt and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in the year following the tragedy. And while she reportedly never asked for help, she struggled to attend college classes because she was scared of being in a classroom.
Sydney was also a close friend of Meadow Pollack, one of the students who was shot and killed in the Parkland shooting. Meadow's father, Andrew, became one of the most visible of the Parkland victims' parents when he delivered a searing and emotional speech at the White House just a few days after the shooting, arguing for an increase in school safety rather than changes to America's gun laws.

(Subscription wall at the link. This is the Twitter thread.)

Today's @bopinion post is a response to @paulkrugman about rural America.

The situation isn't hopeless...as long as we're willing to allow our idea of "rural" to evolve a bit.https://t.co/C1d8ZbDb81

— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) March 22, 2019

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for visiting. 

I'm calling it  day.