An ongoing fight in Utah to ban pride flags in schools entered new territory Thursday after Rep. Trevor Lee proposed new legislation to ban the flags not just in public schools, but in any government building or on any government property. The bill, HB0077, originally applied only to schools. But an update to the bill released ahead of Thursday’s House Education Committee hearing expands the ban to all government buildings or property.
Approved flags for display in government buildings and schools would include the Utah state and U.S. flags, military flags, flags for other countries, flags for Native American tribes and official flags for colleges and universities. The bill also allows for the flying of a “historic version of a flag … that is temporarily displayed for educational purposes,” which Lee, R-Layton, said would include the Confederate and Nazi flags.
Read the full article. In his floor speech, Lee said, “You may have a Nazi flag. You may have a Confederate flag, and so you are allowed to display those flags as part of the curriculum, and that is okay.” An attempt to ban Pride flags failed in 9-20 Utah Senate vote last year. As you’ll see in the video report below, Lee has a history. His X feed is mostly retweets of prominent cultists and extremists. He’s also attacking the “dumb” report linked above.
A new bill would allow for Nazi and Confederate flags to be displayed in Utah schools and government buildings, but pride flags would be banned. https://t.co/Itdt9Ldocl
Sorry this may be the last post I make today. I am not doing well. I have had 3 hours sleep in two days. Monday I got a steroid shot in each shoulder so I could move them again. My bones ache so bad I wondered if I had gotten a cold or flu again. Steroids do depress my already depressed immune system. But I can hardly stand the pain in my hands, arms, legs, and I am not a jolly fellow today. Tomorrow I have my allergy shots. That should be great, right, what could go wrong with how I feel. Ron is going with me and we are going to buy the flooring for the Florida room Ron built and that will be my new office. As I have said before it is to give me more light and not feeling so isolated and will give us a spare bedroom for visitors. Hugs
The earliest evidence that humans inhabited rainforests has been found in Africa, a surprising find which pushes human settlement in these habitats much further back than previously thought.
Modern humans, Homo sapiens, evolved about 300,000 years ago in Africa. The ecological and environmental circumstances in which our species evolved are still not well understood.
It is likely that our ape-like ancestors millions of years ago did live in dense rainforests. But the retreat of Africa’s forests and the spread of savannah and grasslands as Earth’s climate dried is usually linked to the evolution of bipedalism in early human ancestors as far back as 7 million years ago.
As a result, rainforests have often been overlooked as important habitats in the evolution of early modern humans.
New research published in Nature has put a dent in this assumption.
The evidence comes from a site which dates to 150,000 years ago in present-day Côte d’Ivoire on the southern coast of West Africa.
“Before our study, the oldest secure evidence for inhabitation in African rainforests was around 18,000 years ago and the oldest evidence of rainforest inhabitation anywhere came from southeast Asia at about 70,000 years ago,” says lead author Eslem Ben Arous, from Spain’s National Centre for Human Evolution Research (CENIEH) and the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany.
The site was first investigated in the 1980s when ancient stone tools were discovered. But the age of the tools and the ancient ecology couldn’t be determined with the technology of the day.
The trench initially excavated by Professor Guédé’s team was overgrown when researchers returned for the current study. Credit: Jimbob Blinkhorn, MPG.
“Several recent climate models suggested the area could have been a rainforest refuge in the past as well, even during dry periods of forest fragmentation,” says senior author Eleanor Scerri, from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. “We knew the site presented the best possible chance for us to find out how far back rainforest inhabitation extended.”
The anthropologists used several dating techniques including optically stimulated luminescence and electron-spin resonance to determine the stone tools were 150,000 years old.
Stone tools like this one, excavated at the Anyama site, reveal that humans were present at the rainforested site roughly 150,000 years ago. Credit: Jimbob Blinkhorn, MPG.
Sediment samples also showed the region was heavily wooded, with pollen and leaf waxes typically found in humid West African rainforests. Low levels of grass pollen show it wasn’t a narrow strip of forest either, but in a dense woodland.
This evidence suggests that some early modern humans lived in rainforests while others stuck to their grassland and savannah homes.
“Convergent evidence shows beyond doubt that ecological diversity sits at the heart of our species,” says Scerri. “This reflects a complex history of population subdivision, in which different populations lived in different regions and habitat types.
“We now need to ask how these early human niche expansions impacted the plants and animals that shared the same niche-space with humans. In other words, how far back does human alteration of pristine natural habitats go?”
“This exciting discovery is the first of a long list as there are other Ivorian sites waiting to be investigated to study the human presence associated with rainforest,” says Guédé.
The site which yielded these stone tools has since been destroyed by mining.
February 27, 1939 Flint sit-down strikers, 1937 The Supreme Court outlawed sit-down strikes in its decision NLRB v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp. Such strikes had become a very effective strategy employed by workers to organize unions. The 1937 Flint sit-down strike of autoworkers against General Motors forced GM to recognize the United Auto Workers as the representative of its hourly employees, and negotiate wages and working conditions. The text of the Supreme Court’s decision:
February 27, 1973 Hundreds of Oglala Lakota Sioux and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Angered over a long history of violated treaties, mistreatment, family dismemberment, cultural destruction, discrimination, and impoverishment through confiscation of resources, they particularly demanded the U.S. live up to the terms of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. That treaty recognized the Sioux as an independent nation in the western half of South Dakota. Additionally, there had been a recent campaign of harassment and violence by tribal and FBI officials. Wounded Knee was chosen because of the 1890 massacre there of several hundred men, women and children by U.S. troops. The occupation lasted until May.
February 26, 1966 Julian Bond in 1966 Four thousand picketed outside New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel as President Lyndon Johnson received the National Freedom Award. As Johnson began his speech in defense of his Vietnam policies, James Peck of the War Resisters League jumped to his feet and shouted, “Mr. President, peace in Vietnam!” On the streets, meanwhile, activist A.J. Muste presented the crowd’s own “Freedom Award” to Julian Bond, who had been denied his seat in the Georgia legislature for refusing to disavow his opposition to the war, and for his support of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
February 26, 1984 The last of the 1400 peacekeeping troops President Ronald Reagan had sent to the Lebanese capital of Beirut were evacuated. The troops were part of an international force sent to deal with the Lebanese civil war. The president withdrew almost all American troops following the deaths of 241 Marines and 58 French paratroopers in a suicide truck bombing carried out four months earlier by the combined forces of Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah. France withdrew its troops as well. Three weeks earlier, Reagan had told the Wall Street Journal, “As long as there is a chance for peace, the mission remains the same. If we get out, that means the end of Lebanon.” In a barb directed at House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. (D-Massachusetts), Reagan had said, “He may be ready to surrender, but I’m not. News of the withdrawal of peacekeeping troops
February 26, 1998 Libby Davies An international Citizens’ Weapons Inspection Team, led by Canadian Member of Parliament Libby Davies (NDP-Vancouver East), was denied entry to determine the presence or absence of weapons of mass destruction at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, Washington, nuclear submarine base, just 12 km (7 miles) from Seattle and less than 60 km (37 miles) from Canada. They found the WMDs! OMG – right in our back yard!
February 25, 1941 A general strike was called in Amsterdam to protest Nazi persecution of Jews under the German Nazi occupation. The previous weekend 425 Jewish men and boys had been imprisoned (only two survived the war). Truck drivers, dock and metal workers, civil servants and factory employees — Christians, Liberals, Social Democrats and Communists — answered the call and brought the city to a standstill. The work stoppages spread to Zaanstreek, Kennemerland and Utrecht. Two days later the strike was called off: nine people were dead, 50 injured and another 200 arrested, some of whom were to die in the concentration camps. “The Dokwerker” is a statue by sculptor Mari Andriessen in Amsterdam’s Jonas Daniel Meyer Square commemorating the February 1941 strike. It is frequently the rallying point for demonstrations against racism. Read more (pdf)
February 25, 1968 Discussing the war capacity of North Vietnam, a country that had been fighting for its independence for 23 years and had just staged the massive, successful Tet Offensive, U.S. General William C. Westmoreland stated, “I do not believe Hanoi can hold up under a long war.” He was replaced as commander in Vietnam less than four months later. Vietnam commander General William Westmoreland meeting with President Lyndon Johnson Westmoreland’s life and career (It’s NYT’s obit.)
February 25, 1971 Legislation was introduced in both houses of Congress to forbid U.S. military support of any South Vietnamese invasion of North Vietnam without prior congressional approval. This bill was a result of the controversy that arose following the invasion of Laos by South Vietnamese forces. On February 8, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam had launched a major cross-border operation into Laos to interdict activity along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and destroy the North Vietnamese supply dumps in the area. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, named for the leader of North Vietnam, was an informal network of jungle trails down which supplies came from the north, supplying insurgents and troops in the south.
February 25, 1986 The newly elected Philippine president, Corazón Aquino, was sworn in, bringing to an end years of dictatorship under Ferdinand Marcos. In the face of massive demonstrations against his rule, President Ferdinand Marcos and his entourage had been airlifted from the presidential palace in Manila by U.S. helicopters.
February 25, 2011 A Day of Rage saw demonstrations across the Middle East. Protesters in Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, and Bahrain showed their support variously for an end to corruption and income inequality, political reform and better public services, and the replacement of long-running dictatorships with democratic regimes. Day of Rage in Taiz, Yemen Reports from throughout the region
February 23, 1982 Wales declared itself a nuclear weapons-free zone. Its last nuclear power plant, Wylfa at Anglesey with two reactors, was shut down completely in 2015. Nuclear-free zones
February 23, 2011 Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, fell to rebels after three days of violent clashes with the forces of brutal dictator Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. “He is gone. A dragon has been slain,” cried Ahmed Al-Fatuuir outside the secret police headquarters. “Now he has to explain where all the bodies are.“ Graffiti showing a caricature of Gaddafi reading, ‘The Monkey of Monkeys of Africa’, a reference to his self-declared title ‘The King of Kings of Africa’.
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