Category Archives: Post Human

Activists of Amnesty International demonstrate to show their support with the Syrian people at the Fontaine des Innocentes in Paris May 29, 2012.. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Amnesty International and Bahraini democracy advocates based in Britain and the US are concerned for the safety of a prominent woman human rights activist arrested in Bahrain on Monday after she tweeted criticism of the king.

Ebtisam al-Saeghs arrest came weeks after she was beaten and sexually assaulted by members of the National Security Agency during a previous arrest, according to Amnesty International. She was warned then to stop her human rights activities, which included documenting police abuses in connection with the killing in May of five peaceful demonstrators in shootings that were condemned as unlawful by UN human rights experts. Her whereabouts are unknown and the fear is she will face the same or worse treatment this time.

The Bahraini authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Ebtisam al-Saegh, whose only crime is speaking up against a government committed to crushing all forms of dissent. We are deeply concerned about Ebtisams well-being, said Samah Hadid, director for Amnesty International campaigns in the Middle East.

We fear she is at high risk of torture as long as she remains in custody, Hadid added.

Saeghs renewed arrest is part of a crackdown on Bahraini civil society and human rights activists that has drawn international condemnation. Human rights groups allege that Bahrain has moved from arresting and/or banning the travel of rights activists to torturing them in a bid to silence them.

On Monday, Saegh tweeted about the ill treatment of women at the hands of the National Security Agency, writing that the king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, was responsible for their actions. At 11:45 that night her house was raided by masked officers in civilian clothing carrying body and head cameras, Amnesty said. Around 25 officers claiming to belong to the Criminal Investigation Directorate arrived at her house in five civilian cars and a minibus, it said. No warrant for her arrest was presented.

In response to written questions from The Jerusalem Post, the press office of Bahrains embassy in London wrote that Bahrain is firmly committed to the protection and safeguarding of human rights and has oversight bodies to safeguard them and independently investigate violations.

Allegations such as the ones raised are taken very seriously and it is within the mandate of both the National Institution for Human Rights and the Ombudsmans Office to examine complaints when received in order to take all necessary measures to promote and defend fundamental freedoms in the Kingdom of Bahrain. At the time of writing the embassy is not aware of any complaint lodged with the oversight bodies mentioned above, the press office said.

The embassy did not answer a question on where Saegh is being held, instead referring the Post to the National Institution for Human Rights in Manama, which did not respond to an email query.

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Fears mount for detained Bahraini human rights activist - The Jerusalem Post

Some migrant workers made a statement this week on Thai social media. Many shared photos posing with their passports, ID cards and even employment documents festooned about their bodies.

Some strung their documents into necklaces. One man tied a few ID cards to his forehead. Another attached every document he had to his back to show he works in Thailand legally.

It was their immediate response to the government's issuance of an emergency decree on migrant labour management on June 23. With its "harsh" penalties on the recruitment of undocumented migrant workers, the decree was supposed to be "strong medicine" to battle human trafficking.

Paritta Wangkiat is a reporter, Bangkok Post.

Unfortunately, this medicine has instead triggered fear among many small- and medium-size business operators who depend on migrant labour. It also panicked migrant workers who flocked to the borders to get out of Thailand.

But will the new law solve the chronic problems of human trafficking and the corrupt bureaucratic system of migrant labour management as intended?

As of May, according to the Department of Employment, over 1.26 million documented migrant workers from Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar were in Thailand. It's estimated that undocumented migrants number one to two million.

The figures seem to have alarmed many Thais who hold traditional views of migrants as a national security threat or a burden on public resources. Those from Myanmar are even classified in the historical context of being viewed as descendants of "the enemy" of old Siam.

These perceptions reflect deeply rooted nationalism among many Thais who believe the presence of "too many foreigners" poses a threat to our nation which "has never been colonised".

Migrant workers are often seen as separate to Thai society. As a result, some people think it is okay to limit their rights or even punish and exploit them.

Interviewing many migrant workers over the past few years, I found similar stories of them being smuggled and exploited through many corrupt systems in Thailand. They shared backgrounds of being abused and exploited by brokers. They had to pay bribes and be temporarily kept in dark, locked rooms being being taken to their employers.

There are also many stories of illegal brokers and smugglers who brought workers to Thailand against their will.

Many were trafficked in harsh conditions in fishing boats, helping to bring seafood to our dining tables and our export markets. Sadly, they ended up abused, tortured and even killed on these boats.

Only rarely do we hear about brokers and smugglers being arrested. In 2015, after authorities discovered trafficking camps in Thailand's southern provinces, a high-ranking military officer was among 103 civil servants and civilians arrested for suspected involvement in trafficking Rohingya refugees.

Even as this and other cases prove the Thai bureaucratic system is corrupt, migrant workers are still seen as criminals rather than victims. This notion is reflected in the new decree, now suspended for six months.

Unregistered migrant workers who are not victims of human trafficking, will face a maximum of five years in prison and/or a fine of 2,000 to 100,000 baht under the decree. Those who are found taking a job, working in a location or with an employer different to what is stated in their work permits will be fined up to 100,000 baht. These penalties will only push more migrants into underground work and exploitation.

But brokers or smugglers who run trafficking rings face a maximum of six months' imprisonment and/or a maximum fine of 100,000 baht.

Employers will be fined from 400,000 to 800,000 baht for each unregistered migrant worker they hire. No jail terms for them. No penalty is prescribed for corrupt officials.

This shows that lawmakers overlooked or rejected the fact that human trafficking involves corruption within the Thai bureaucracy and among influential people. The law bypasses the need for human rights to protect trafficking victims.

It does not recognise the importance of migrant workers who help drive the Thai economy and take on jobs that Thais won't do.

The government must promote the contribution of migrant workers to the economy and bring them into the legal employment system by making registration an open, year-round and uncomplicated option.

It is the government's job to ensure they are protected.

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Law makes a mockery of human rights - Bangkok Post

DO WE have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? President Trump asked during his speech in Warsaw on Thursday. Thats an important question, and so is this: Which values is he summoning us to defend?

There were encouraging elements in his address suggesting that he was referring to the universal values that America celebrated earlier this week, on the anniversary of its declaration of independence. Repeatedly, Mr. Trump invoked the parallel Polish and American devotion to freedom. He spoke of Americas commitment to your security and your place in a strong and democratic Europe. Unlike during his first trip to Europe as president, he embraced NATOs Article 5, which binds the United States and its allies to treat an attack on one as an attack on all.

Mr. Trump warned against powers that use propaganda, financial crimes and cyberwarfare against the United States and its allies and, in case that wasnt clear enough, explicitly warned Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere and its support for hostile regimes, including Syria and Iran. He assured his audience, We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression.

Yet elements of his address left doubt as to whether Mr. Trump views such values as truly universal. The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive, he said. If by the West he means anyone embracing the values of human rights, freedom and the dignity of every individual, he may be right. But those are hardly the property of the United States and Europe. They are treasured by the ailing Liu Xiaobo in China, by bloggers fighting for freedom in Uganda and by legislators fighting off the Maduro regimes thugs in Venezuela. They belong to people of all colors, all sexual orientations and all or no religion. When Mr. Trump urges us all to fight like the Poles, for family, for freedom, for country and for God, does all truly mean all?

Perhaps what gives the most doubt is that he celebrated the right to free speech and free expression without mentioning that the government welcoming him has worked worryingly to narrow those freedoms, along with the independence of its judiciary and without mentioning that, at home, Mr. Trump himself has been far from a tribune of the free press. Above all, he said, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. Many people will cheer those words and will watch to see how his administration lives up to them in its interactions with Saudi Arabia and China, Russia and Egypt, and at home.

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Trump wants us to defend 'our values.' Which ones? - Washington Post

Shady characters... Christopher Abbott as Will in It Comes at Night. Photograph: Eric McNatt/A24

The 28-year-old Texan film-maker Trey Edwards Shults is a former crew member on Terrence Malick movies who made a big impression last year with his no-budget debut feature at SXSW, Krisha, about an eccentric older woman showing up at a family reunion party. For his follow-up he has put together this very impressive movie whose title, It Comes at Night, might suggest straight horror. But, that isnt really the case and the title doesnt entirely mesh with what happens in the film.

Actually, what you get is a claustrophobic psychological chiller in the more realist post-apocalyptic vein, set in a lonely world where law and order and human decencies have broken down due to some unspecified plague, which is liable to surface again if brutal quarantine discipline is relaxed for a single moment. Those who have been spared the great horror that has swept civilisation away must get by with their families as best they can barricaded by their own anxiety, deeply and even murderously suspicious of strangers.

It is a downbeat cousin to 28 Days Later or The Road, but perhaps more like Stephen Fingletons recent Northern Irish movie The Survivalist or Michael Hanekes uncompromisingly bleak The Time of the Wolf. Joel Edgerton plays Paul, the bearded and grim-faced patriarch of a family who are holed up in a fortified home in a forest somewhere in North America. He lives with his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and teen son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr). The film begins with an intimately horrible scene: Sarahs elderly dad Bud (David Pendleton) has just succumbed to the illness, with ugly spores all over his body, and the two other men put on masks and gloves to take his body out to the surrounding woodland to be burned.

As if this wasnt traumatic enough, an intruder arrives: Will (Christopher Abbott) who says that he only wants water for his wife Kim (Riley Keough) and their child. This desperate man seems plausible enough Paul can sympathise and sees a way to feel human again, a redemption, after their devastating bereavement.

However, Paul starts to notice tiny inconsistencies in Wills story. Paul is scared of interaction, causing situations that spread and replicate, like the disease: he is frightened of his family being infected by alien relationships over which he has no control. Even when he is happy enough with Will and his family, it is clear that Paul still cannot quite rid himself of the notion that they, however healthy, could be the disease. Will and Kims child has a habit of sleepwalking, which creates its own miasma of anxiety and Travis seems to have some sort of growing friendship with Kim.

Everything about the atmosphere in It Comes at Night is tense, and the tension comes both from within and without human betrayal and airborne sickness. At its most effective, it achieves a combination I associate with British television post-apocalyptic drama from the 70s and 80s, like Survivors or Threads: scary-plus-depressing. The immediate menace is flavoured with a grimmer, longer-term sense that, however the present danger pans out, this is what life is going to be like from now on.

In a rare moment of candour, Paul says that before the great catastrophe, he was a teacher his speciality being Roman history. It is an elegant moment of irony. The civilisation that they enjoyed, until only a few years or months before, has now vanished into exactly that same distant irrelevance as classical antiquity.

It Comes at Night is a drama that doesnt feel the need to tie up loose ends or deliver neat twists or pat explanations. It mirrors what life would be like for survivors and their attitude to strangers or even friends whose motivations cant truly be known. These are people who might have to lie, to cheat, to betray even those they like, who under other circumstances they would feel a debt of gratitude towards but this is what is needed to live and the old rules have been superseded. It is a fiercely watchable film.

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It Comes at Night review fiercely watchable post-apocalyptic chiller - The Guardian

Nearly two years after the citys Human Rights Commission promised to ease up on restaurants that unwittingly violate hiring laws, it finally made good on that vow.

On June 21, the commission quietly reduced fines in two cases eliminated the penalty entirely in a third case where establishments had posted online ads seeking staffers of a specific nationality or gender which isnt allowed.

Its not clear why it took the commission 2 years to reverse its aggressive approach, which included using undercover digital stings to prove that restaurants had discriminated against some job applicants.

In the most unusual of the cases, the commission went full blast after restaurant middleman Ayhan Aksoy in August 2015 for posting a Craigslist ad seeking Eastern European waitresses and a female bartender/phone person.

The agency sought a $15,000 fine against Aksoy who posted the ad on behalf of a friend who owns a restaurant since his ad discriminated on two fronts, gender and nationality.

An administrative judge agreed to a lower $5,000 fine.

But two weeks ago the agency undercut its own Law Department which argued the case by reversing the judges ruling and dismissing the fine.

The commission now says its own lawyers didnt prove that the restaurant in question employs at least four people, the minimum required to be subject to human rights law.

In recent years, the New York City Commission on Human Rights has revised its approach to cases involving unlawful postings. Instead of allocating valuable public resources to litigation, the New York City Commission on Human Rights is reaching out to small, unsophisticated potential respondents who appear to be unfamiliar with the NYCHRL [New York City Human Rights Law] and educating them about their obligations under the law, the agency wrote in one of its recently-amended decisions.

This approach recognizes that greater impact can often be achieved by focusing on changing behavior, rather than simply imposing penalties.

Aksoy said he was relieved that the agency finally cleared him.

I had no intention whatsoever to discriminate against any certain group of people, he told The Post.

Other cases the agency recently downgraded include:

All three of the cases were litigated and amended after the appointment of current Human Rights chair Carmelyn Malalis, whom Mayor de Blasio tapped to lead the agency in November 2014.

Agency spokesman Seth Hoy acknowledged the agencys revamped approach to dealing with violations by small businesses.

The Commission continues to decide cases as quickly as possible to get justice for victims and hold violators accountable, said Hoy. In these cases, the Chair and Commissioner took time to reconsider the commissions approach to cases involving unlawful ads by small business owners.

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Human Rights Commission finally eases up on discriminatory restaurant ads - New York Post

A tower of human skulls unearthed beneath the heart of Mexico City has raised new questions about the culture of sacrifice in the Aztec empire. (Reuters)

The 400 Spanish conquistadors who walked into the Aztec capital in the 16th century had conquest and new-world riches on their minds, but they were initially welcomed as friends. From that peaceful vantage point, they were amazed by the splendor of the people of Tenochtitlan and their cannibalistic brutality.

They found temples soaked with blood and human hearts being burned in ceramic braziers,according to the Archaeological Institute of America.

They had heard tales of thousands sacrificed at the Great Temples dedication, four rows of victims that stretched for miles, all waiting to have their hearts torn out.

The conquistadors and the Spaniards who followed them wrote of the victims of human sacrifices rolling down the steps of the temple, where they were dismembered, then eaten in a stew with chilies and tomatoes.

But one thing terrified the European newcomers more than almost anything: A rack of human skulls that towered over one corner of the temple to Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of the sun, war and human sacrifice

Andres de Tapia, one of Hernn Cortss soldiers, wrote that were so manyhuman skulls, he had to resort to multiplication to count them all.

We found there were 136,000 heads.

Those skulls, the conquistadors assumed, were what remained of men who had been defeated in battle.

They were both ornamentation and message: This is what happens to Aztec enemies.

[Tomb of a 16th-century Catholic priest found in remains of Aztec temple]

Nearly 500 years later, scientists digging in Mexico City have unearthed the skulls.

They have also turned up more questions about the nature of Aztec human sacrifice that conflict with the conquistadors thinking.

Their biggest finding: The skulls werent just the heads of male warriors who had been defeated by the Aztecs. Some were the smaller, thinner skulls of women and children.

We were expecting just men, obviously young men, as warriors would be, Rodrigo Bolanos, a biological anthropologist investigating the find, told the news agency Reuters, and the thing about the women and children is that youd think they wouldnt be going to war.

Its clear the Aztecs had publicly displayed the skulls of women and children, but who were they?

Defeated people from neighboring civilizations? Aztecs who had been sacrificed?

And why did the Aztecs display them in one of their holiest places?

Researchers believe the tower of skulls was definitively a show of power by the Aztecs. But a more detailed explanation has eluded researchers and may have died with the Aztecs.

The skulls were found in the cylindrical edifice near Templo Mayor, one of the main temples in Tenochtitlan.

Bolanos and other researchers from the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History have been researching the skull rack since it was discovered in 2015.

The excavation unearthed nearly 700 skulls.

But the dig is ongoing, and researchers expect to find more as they get closer to the base of the tower of skulls.

The conquistadors werent exactly known for their attention tohistorical preservation. They slaughtered the Aztecs, who outnumbered the Spanish, but were literally outgunned.And the Aztecs who avoided Spanish bullets succumbed to Old World diseases, which further decimatedthe native population.

On the ruins of the Aztec empire, Mexico City began to rise.

In fact, Cortsand the Spaniards who followed him used the pre-Hispanic structures as the foundation for new churches and cathedrals,according to the Associated Press.

It was both a symbolic decision and a practical one.

It showed how the Aztec gods had been displaced by the Christian church, but also saved the Spaniards the trouble of building new foundations, walls and floors.

Over the intervening centuries, forgotten Aztec ruins and clues about their pre-Hispanic civilization were buried beneath the largest city in North America.

But the ruins have refused to stay buried. Some were discovered in the rubble of buildings destroyed in a 1985 earthquake.

And in 1978, workers laying electrical cables two blocks from the Zcalo, Mexico Citys main square, discovered theAztecs Templo Mayor, or high temple.

Centuries after the Aztec civilization fell, the surprise find is still yielding new artifacts and raising new questions.

Something is happening that we have no record of, said Bolanos, the biological anthropologist. This is really new, a first.

Read more:

A researcher discovered how cavemen cleaned their teeth. It will make you want to brush yours.

Was Anne Franks family betrayed? After 72 years, historians have a new theory.

Amelia Earhart didnt die in a plane crash, investigators say. This is their theory.

A military historians find could unlock the mystery of 136 sailors missing since World War II

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Archaeologists unearth a 500-year-old tower of skulls and another gruesome Aztec mystery - Washington Post

23,000 cases of trafficking or attempt to traffic reported in FY 2105/016 KATHMANDU, July 5:Human trafficking has significantly increased after the earthquake of 2015, shows a recently published report of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The revelation was made after reports of trafficking or attempts to traffic roughly around 23,000 Nepalis during the fiscal year 2015/16.

The report prepared by the NHRC Trafficking In Persons (TIP) 2015/016, which was published on Tuesday, has revealed a very disturbing picture of human trafficking during the earthquake compared to the previous years. NHRC's National Report 2011 had revealed that 11,500 persons were trafficked or attempted to traffic in the fiscal year of 2011/012, with the next fiscal's report estimating the number of the victims to be around 13,900 to 15,600. Exceeding all the figures of the previous years, this year's report estimates that 6,100 persons were trafficked; 13,600 attempted to traffic; and 3,500 persons have been missing.

The report states that children are especially under high risk of being trafficked. The report further says that a total of 44,131 children were vulnerable to trafficking by the end of June 2016 in 14 earthquake-hit districts of Nepal. Excluding the Kathmandu Valley, the number of children reported missing in the earthquake-hit districts increased from 829 to 1165 after the earthquake - an increase by 40.5 percent, says the report.

However, the numbers of trafficking cases registered with the police is still low against the actual number of victims believed to have been trafficked to other countries, the report states. In the fiscal year of 2015/16, a total of 212 cases of human trafficking were registered with the police but the actual number of victims was 352. Nonetheless, the number is higher than that of previous two years. Police cases registered in the fiscal year 2013/014 and 2015/015 were 185 and 181 respectively.

The NHRC's report has also highlighted emerging trend of human smuggling and trafficking. It includes smuggling people to China for forced sex, smuggling to Afghanistan via New Delhi for security guard, smuggling to USA via Latin America by education consultancy agents, trafficking for marriage to South Korea and trafficking for kidney transplant among others.

In the aftermath of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake of 2015, there was not just increase in cases of human trafficking but the number of rape and attempted rape cases against women and children also increased significantly in the country's quake-hit districts, the report shows.

Besides that, justice for victims of foreign employment also looks grim. In the fiscal year 2015/016, 704 complaints were received by the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE), out of which it settled only 94 cases. In the previous fiscal years too, the number of settled cases were very low. During the fiscal year 2012/013, the DoFE settled 202 cases out of 1245 complaints received, while it settled 151 cases out of 974 cases during the fiscal year 2013/014, according to the report.

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NHRC report shows rise in human trafficking post-quake - Republica

By Ben Santer By Ben Santer July 5 at 6:00 AM

Ben Santer is a climate scientist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Fact Checkers Glenn Kessler and Michelle Lee examine several of President Trump's claims from his speech announcing the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord on Thursday. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

Ive been a mountaineer for most of my life. Mountains are in my blood. In my early 20s, while climbing in France, I fell in a crevasse on the Milieu Glacier, at the start of the normal route on the Aiguille dArgentire. Remarkably, I was unhurt. From the grip of the banded ice, I saw a thin slit of blue sky 120 feet above me. The math was simple: Climb 120 feet. If I reached that slit of blue sky, I would live. If I didnt, Id freeze to death in the cold and dark.

Now, over 40 years later, it feels like Im back in a different kind of darkness the darkness of the Trump administrations scientific ignorance. This is just as real as the darkness of the Milieu Glaciers interior, and just as life-threatening. This time, Im not alone. The consequences of this ignorance affect every person on the planet.

Imagine, if you will, that you spend your entire professional life trying to do one thing to the best of your ability. In my case, that one thing is to study the nature and causes of climate change. You put in a long apprenticeship. You spend years learning about the climate system, computer models of climate and climate observations. You start filling a tool kit with the statistical and mathematical methods youll need for analyzing complex data sets. You are taught how electrical engineers detect signals embedded in noisy data. You apply those engineering insights to the detection of a human-caused warming signal buried in the natural noise of Earths climate. Eventually, you learn that human activities are warming Earths surface, and you publish this finding in peer-reviewed literature.

You participate in rigorous national and international assessments of climate science. You try to put aside all personal filters, to be objective, to accommodate a diversity of scientific opinions held by your peers, by industry stakeholders and by governments. These assessments are like nothing youve ever done before: They are peer review on steroids, eating up years of your life.

The bottom-line finding of the assessments is cautious at first. In 1995, the conclusion is this: The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate. These 12 words are part of a chapter on which you are first author. The 12 words change your life. You spend years defending the discernible human influence conclusion. You encounter valid scientific criticism. You also encounter nonscientific criticism from powerful forces of unreason, who harbor no personal animus toward you, but dont like what youve learned and published its bad for their business.

[I worked on the EPAs climate change website. Removing it is a declaration of war.]

You go back to the drawing board. You address the criticism that if there really is a human-caused signal, we should see it in many attributes of the climate system not just in surface thermometer records. You look at temperature from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans. You examine water vapor and the height of the lowest layer of the atmosphere. Your colleagues search for human fingerprints in rainfall, clouds, sea level, river runoff, snow and ice extent, atmospheric circulation patterns and the behavior of extreme events. You find human-caused climate fingerprints everywhere you look.

Your peers are your fiercest critics. They are constantly kicking the tires. Show us that your discernible human influence results arent due to changes in the Sun, or volcanic activity, or internal cycles in the climate system. Show us that your results arent due to some combination of these natural factors. Convince us that detection of a human fingerprint isnt sensitive to uncertainties in models, data or the statistical methods in your tool kit. Explain the causes of each and every wiggle in temperature records. Respond to every claim contradicting your findings.

So you jump through hoops. You do due diligence. You go down every blind alley, every rabbit hole. Over time, the evidence for a discernible human influence on global climate becomes overwhelming. The evidence is internally and physically consistent. Its in climate measurements made from the ground, from weather balloons, and from space measurements of dozens of different climate variables made by hundreds of different research groups around the world. You write more papers, examine more uncertainties, and participate in more scientific assessments. You tell others what youve done, what youve learned, and what the climatic shape of things to come might look like if we do nothing to reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. You speak not only to your scientific peers, but also a wide variety of audiences, some of whom are skeptical about you and everything you do. You enter the public arena, and make yourself accountable.

After decades of seeking to advance scientific understanding, reality suddenly shifts, and you are back in the cold darkness of ignorance. The ignorance starts with President Trump. It starts with untruths and alternative facts. The untruth that climate change is a hoax engineered by the Chinese. The alternative fact that nobody really knows the causes of climate change. These untruths and alternative facts are repeated again and again. They serve as talking points for other members of the administration. From the Environment Protection Agency administrator, who has spent his career fighting against climate change science, we learn the alternative fact that satellite data show leveling off of warming over the past two decades. The energy secretary tells us the fairy tale that climate change is due to ocean waters, and this environment in which we live. Ignorance trickles down from the president to members of his administration, eventually filtering into the publics consciousness.

[Why Im trying to preserve federal climate data before Trump takes office]

Getting out of this metaphorical darkness is going to be tough. The administration is powerful. It has access to media megaphones and to bully pulpits. It can abrogate international climate agreements. It can weaken national legislation designed to protect our air and water. It can challenge climate science and can tell us that more than three decades of scientific understanding and rigorous assessments are all worthless. It can question the integrity and motives of climate scientists. It can halt satellite missions and impair our ability to monitor Earths climate from space. It can shut down websites hosting real facts on the science of climate change. It can deny, delay, defund, distort, dismantle. It can fiddle while the planet burns.

I have to believe that even in this darkness, though, there is still a thin slit of blue sky. My optimism comes from a gut-level belief in the decency and intelligence of the people of this country. Most Americans have an investment in the future in our children and grandchildren, and in the planet that is our only home. Most Americans care about these investments in the future; we want to protect them from harm. That is our prime directive. Most of us understand that to fulfill this directive, we cant ignore the reality of a warming planet, rising seas, retreating snow and ice, and changes in the severity and frequency of droughts and floods. We cant ignore the reality that human actions are part of the climate-change problem, and that human actions must be part of the solution to this problem. Ignoring reality is not a viable survival strategy.

Trump has referred to a dark cloud hanging over his administration. The primary cloud I see is the self-created cloud of willful ignorance on the science of climate change. That cloud is a clear and present threat to the lives, livelihoods and health of every person on the planet, now and in the future. This cloud could be easily lifted by the president himself.

But for my own part, I dont intend to spend the rest of my life in darkness or silently accepting trickle-down ignorance. I didnt climb out of a crevasse on the Milieu Glacier for that.

Read more:

Meet the people clouding the climate change debate

Scientists know climate change is a threat. Politicians need to realize it, too.

Heres the secret to making people care about climate change

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I'm a climate scientist. And I'm not letting trickle-down ignorance win. - Washington Post

At moments of institutional conflict and uncertainty, Americans naturally turn to the Constitution. But at times of anger, division and national self-doubt, the best American leaders have helped us turn to a different document: the Declaration of Independence. That few seem to be doing so now in our season of division and doubt is another sign that we lack real leaders.

The Declaration is an odd source of national pride since it can be properly read only in a spirit of humility. It refers to a transcendent order of justice and human dignity that existed prior to the nation and that exposed the nations horrifying hypocrisies. (How is it, taunted Samuel Johnson, that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?) We hold these truths makes us vulnerable to the judgment of those truths.

American independence, of course, involved more than humility. It was an act of defiance rooted in an arm-long list of grievances. In Worcester, Mass., after the Declaration was signed, patriots drank to the toast: Perpetual itching without the benefit of scratching to the enemies of America.

But, as Abraham Lincoln noted, the Declaration could have established national independence without its second paragraph about the human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The assertion that all men are created equal, Lincoln argued, was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain. As he saw it, the Founders, while constrained by the political realities of their time, set out a non-arbitrary, timeless truth for future use.

They meant simply to declare the right, said Lincoln, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for ... even though never perfectly attained.

Why is that maxim so important? At one level, Lincolns answer was bluntly practical. If liberty is denied to anyone, it could eventually be denied to you. And when you have stricken down the principles of the Declaration of Independence, he said, and thereby consigned the Negro to hopeless and eternal bondage, are you quite sure that the demon will not turn and rend you? Will not the people then be ready to go down beneath the tread of any tyrant who may wish to rule them?

But Lincoln also saw the Declaration as the embodiment of a moral ideal. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the motherland; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.

By definition, America cant be a normal nation. It stands for more than getting and keeping. Its greatness is a greatness of spirit. And its failures such as slavery, segregation and the shameful treatment of Native Americans are not only legal but also spiritual failures. They are blasphemy against our countrys creed.

Does anyone think or talk like this now? They need to. There is so much dehumanization in our politics, and the main role of the Declaration is humanization. Its ideals are desperately needed and roundly ignored.

How do we measure our loss? It might be a useful exercise to take political arguments and apply the Declaration as a kind of suffix. So: We should fear Latino migrants as gang members and murderers ... and all men and women are created equal. Or: Muslims are a threat and should be kept out of the country ... and all men and women are created equal. Or: Spending on AIDS treatments for foreigners is a waste ... and all men and women are created equal. Or: The human cost of a failing health or education system doesnt matter ... and all men and women are created equal. Or: Human beings can be dismembered up to the moment before birth ... and all men and women are created equal.

When our founding ideals are forgotten, it is the vulnerable and powerless who suffer first and worst. Lincoln accused politicians who dismiss or play down the Declaration of blowing out the moral lights around us. When someone calls us back to that faded document, and begins to rekindle Americas conscience, it will be a sign we have found a real leader again.

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America isn't a normal country - Washington Post

A tower of more than 650 human skulls has been unearthed in Mexico City.

Reuters

As the Jets get close to training camp, I am...

This ones a real head-scratcher.

A tower of more than 650 human skulls including the craniums of women and children has been unearthed deep beneath the heart of Mexico City, according to a report.

The shocking find has raised new questions about sacrifice in the ancient Aztec Empire, as historians had believed Mesomaerican cultures mostly used the severed heads of captured warriors to adorn tzompantli or skull racks, Reuters reports.

We were expecting just men, obviously young men, as warriors would be, and the thing about the women and children is that youd think they wouldnt be going to war, biological anthropologist Rodrigo Bolanos told the agency. Something is happening that we have no record of, and this is really new.

Archaeologists discovered the skulls caked in lime in the cylindrical edifice near the site of Templo Mayor one of the main temples in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which later became Mexico City, according to the report.

The tower likely formed part of the Huey Tzompantli, a massive array of skulls that terrified Spanish conquistadors when they captured the city under Hernan Cortes in 1521, the news outlet reported.

Andres de Tapia, a Spanish soldier who accompanied Cortes, mentioned tens of thousands of skulls in his account of the conquest, archaeologist Raul Barrera said.

The skull tower is almost 20 feet in diameter, and stands on the corner of the chapel of Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of the sun, war and human sacrifice, according to the report. Its base has yet to be unearthed.

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Ancient tower of skulls found in Mexico City - New York Post