2/23/2022~Eagle Cam Osceola County, FL~Time To Get Some Wingersizing In and Hops

 

OC9 is 64 days old today. Getting closer to branching hopefully.... Thank You Eagle Camera Osceola County,Fl For The Live Feed.

First Egg for 2021-22 11/12/2021 at 17:22:52 pm Egg #2 11/16/2021 at 18:19:19 pm Hatch Date For Egg #1 for 2021-22...12/21/20 at 1:38:33 pm ,38-Days , 20- hrs and 38- mins Egg #2 Didn't Hatch ************************************** Some Back History.... In 2016 with the support and encouragement of Osceola County Commissioner Cheryl Grieb, The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and the Osceola County Parks and Information Technology Departments, work began on establishing a live camera at a Bald eagle nest in Osceola County. A well- known and easily accessible nest was chosen at Brownie Wise Park on Tupperware Island Conservation Area to make this happen. This popular Osceola County park can be found along the northern reaches of Lake Toho and within visual distance of the County CourtHouse and downtown Kissimmee. More info can be found on this website.

RSN: Harvey Wasserman | How the "Peaceful Atom" Makes Ukraine a Nuke War

 

26 February 22

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RSN: Harvey Wasserman | How the "Peaceful Atom" Makes Ukraine a Nuke War
Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
Wasserman writes: "Like all nukes anywhere, Ukraine's 15 operating atomic reactors are pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction. As a global threat to the future of human life on this planet, they have escalated this crisis to a danger level that parallels the apocalyptic US/USSR madness of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis."

The “Peaceful Atom” has transformed Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine into a nuclear war.

Like all nukes anywhere, Ukraine’s 15 operating atomic reactors are pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction. As a global threat to the future of human life on this planet, they have escalated this crisis to a danger level that parallels the apocalyptic US/USSR madness of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

As Putin’s troops penetrate the Ukrainian countryside, even a relatively minuscule attack on any of those power plants could blow out radiation far in excess of a nuclear weapon attack. They could (again) blanket Ukraine, Belarus and much of Europe with lethal radioactive fallout arriving in the United States within ten days. Their downwind death toll could dwarf Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Fittingly, the Russian assault quickly focussed on Chernobyl, whose April 26,1986 Unit 4 explosion blew out apocalyptic clouds that have since killed more than a million people worldwide.

The site’s other three reactors were closed by 2000. The Russians could threaten to explode the pit at Unit Four, now covered with a sarcophagus. Its seething wastes could blanket the region—-and much of the Earth—-with deadly radiation.

But Ukraine has fifteen other reactors Putin could obliterate with far more lethal impact.

More germain is that Chernobyl is now surrounded by a highly radioactive dead zone. It’s thus largely vacant of human life, making it a logistical chute through which an invading army could march with ease. As it’s close to the Belarus border and just 80 kilometers from the national capital at Kiev, that “hot” corridor would be a tempting assault route, especially for a dictator who doesn’t really care what kinds of doses his army absorbs.

More critical are Ukraine’s 15 operating reactors, which supply about 50% of the country’s electricity. The six nukes at Zaporozhe comprise the largest reactor site in the world. It’s about 100 kilometers from the Donbass region Putin has recognized as an independent breakaway republic. Any one of those nukes could be triggered toward a melt-down/explosion with a single missile (shot on purpose or by accident), or a relatively light land attack, sabotage of cooling or backup power systems, disruption of the electric grid, a threat to the operating crew or a cyber-attack meant to debilitate the control rooms at reactors which are nearly all more than thirty years old.

The impacts on global health would (again) be cataclysmic. A major study involving 5,000 research papers concluded that by 2007, Chernobyl’s worldwide fallout had killed at least 985,000 human beings. Radiation was detected in New England and at Point Reyes Station, north of San Francisco, where bird births soon after the explosion dropped 60%. Financial fallout topped a trillion dollars, with at least $250,000,000,000 each lost to both Ukraine and Belarus.

And it was all avoidable. In 1952 a federal study on the future of American energy predicted 15 million solar-heated homes in the US by 1975. That didn’t happen.

In 1953 the first photovoltaic cells were fabricated at the Bell Labs in New Jersey, giving the US a clear route to converting its electricity supply to rooftop solar panels…and to wind power, which was already rapidly advancing.

But that December, Dwight Eisenhower announced the “Peaceful Atom” at the United Nations. The Atomic Energy Commission, whose real business was nuclear weapons, promised electricity “too cheap to meter.”

The rest is history. We now get electricity that REALLY IS too cheap to meter from turbines in Texas that produce juice being given away free at night.

Yet throughout the world, we have hugely subsidized nuclear power plants that STILL can’t compete with wind, solar, batteries and LED efficiency ready to supply humankind with 100% green carbon-free energy.

We have nukes under construction in France and Finland that are years behind schedule and billions over budget…and can never come close in cost to true green power. Two reactors at V.C. Summer in South Carolina were just totally abandoned at a cost of $10 billion. Two more at Vogtle, Georgia, have topped $30 billion and may never open.

And now, in Ukraine, we see the total merger of the Peaceful Atomic with nuclear war. The smoldering ruin of Chernobyl has fused with the imperial power of the demented ghost of the USSR that built it. Germany, and much Europe, are still addicted to Russian gas it could have done without had it not wasted countless billions on errant nukes and gone much earlier to sustainable renewables.

Meanwhile Ukraine is hostage to 15 pre-deployed weapons of mass nuclear destruction that could blow at any moment, threatening the future of all human life.

In light of what’s happening there now, anyone who advocates buliding new nuke reactors, or prolonging the operation of those still precariously on line, need only look to the game of Ukrainian roulette Putin is now playing with the fate of the Earth to realize the truly Apocalyptic price of the anything-but-Peaceful Atom.

---

Harvey Wasserman’s PEOPLE’S SPIRAL OF US HISTORY is being published this spring at www.solartopia.org. He co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Monday zooms at 5pm Eastern (www.electionprotection2024.org).

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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PUTIN DESTROYING DEMOCRACY ...with help from Daffy Don, Republicans and the WEALTHY ILK

 

I think Americans need to understand that Trump was put into the WH to help Putin accomplish this goal, which is not just about Ukraine, it's about killing democracy worldwide!

Trump and his cronies failed 1st by not getting him re-elected and then failed again on 1/6 with a botched coup.

Putin needed trump in office for his evil plan to work; and had trump been in office right now, this would already be over, with Ukraine being decimated.

The USA would have refused to back NATO, and Trump would not have been sharing intel openly with Ukraine and the world.

So, as bad as it is right now, it could be a lot worse!

You can thank yourself, America,
for at least stopping trump!

It really screwed up Putins plans!

This Hell Mary he just threw, is his last resort, and it will fail miserably for him!

Ukraine will prevail (with help from the rest of the world)
Long Live Ukraine's democracy and America's! 

Stolen antiquities taken from billionaire's collection repatriated to Greece

"After many years of wandering, they now return to their homeland."

ByAlexandra Svokos

February 23, 2022,

 

Dozens of stolen antiquities, including "The Kouros," a sculpture valued at $14 million, were repatriated to Greece in a ceremony at the New York District Attorney's office in Manhattan on Wednesday.

"After many years of wandering, they now return to their homeland where they belong," Greek Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni said at the ceremony.

Forty-seven of the antiquities were seized from the collection of billionaire investor and philanthropist Michael Steinhardt in December 2021 after a multi-year, multi-national investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney's office. Another eight items were seized as part of another investigation.

MORE: New York billionaire surrenders stolen antiquities worth $70M

Alexandra Svokos

Stolen Greek antiquities are on display at a repatriation ceremony at the Manhattan Distr...

Steinhardt had to give up 180 stolen antiquities, which court records said were looted and illegally smuggled out of 11 countries, trafficked by 12 criminal smuggling networks and lacked verifiable provenance prior to appearing on the international art market.

"On behalf of Homeland Security Investigations, this is a major area that we enjoy investigating and that we need to investigate, and it truly is a privilege to be a part of this grand repatriation ceremony today," said Acting Special Agent in Charge Ricky Patel of Homeland Security Investigations.

The 55 pieces are collectively valued at over $20 million. In addition to "The Kouros," which dates back to 560 BCE, the returned items include a gold broach dating back to 600 BCE that is valued at $1.3 million and a spouted bowl dating back to 2700 to 2200 BCE, valued at $600,000. They come from central Greece, Crete, the Cyclades islands, Samos and Rhodes.

Alexandra Svokos

Stolen Greek antiquities are on display at a repatriation ceremony at the Manhattan Distr...

Alexandra Svokos

Stolen Greek antiquities are on display at a repatriation ceremony at the Manhattan Distr...

One piece, a larnax -- or small coffin -- from Crete dating back to 1400 to 1200 BCE had been in Steinhardt's office, according to investigators, and when asked about it, he reportedly told an Antiquities Trafficking Unit investigator, "There's no provenance for it. If I see a piece and I like it, then I buy it."

Other items from Steinhardt's collection are being returned to their respective homelands.

"Today is a day of great joy for Greece because all these artifacts, all these items, could be back in the place that borne them, in Greece," Mendoni told ABC News.

MORE: Greek prime minister asks Boris Johnson to return Parthenon marbles

Alexandra Svokos

Greek Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni examines stolen antiquities at a repatriation cere...

Mendoni, who called illegal trafficking a "trauma" in addition to a crime, has been in her role since 2019 and has made the repatriation of Greek antiquities a priority. This includes working to try to get the United Kingdom to return the Parthenon Marbles, which are currently at the British Museum, to Athens.

"I would like to thank, from the bottom of my heart, all the staff of the District Attorney's Office, and of course Matthew Bogdanos for his dedication to this work," she said Wednesday, referring to Assistant District Attorney Bogdanos, who is chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit and has Greek roots himself.

After the papers were formally signed to signal the repatriation, Bogdanos called out, "Madam Minister, they're all yours."

ABC News' Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.

LINK

How Republicans moved from Reagan’s ‘evil empire’ to Trump’s praise for Putin

 

EXCERPT:

"...This week, while many Republicans blasted Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s all-out assault on Ukraine, former president Donald Trump and some of his allies urged the United States to stay out of the conflict and praised Putin, even presenting him as a “peacekeeper,” as Trump put it.

“Don’t look for consistency in Republican policy,” said Craig Shirley, a Reagan biographer and longtime Republican political consultant. “The Republican Party right now is a little schizophrenic. Anti-communism and love of freedom used to be the glue that held the party together, but now the attitudes toward Russia have gotten all mixed up with domestic politics..."

COPIED POST:

The birth of the GOP with Lincoln appeared as if they would stand for equality while the Democrats supported the status quo. The modern GOP has now morphed itself drastically as they oppose both equality and standing up to our nation's enemies. Our own party maintains the standard for both equality and international justice.

WASHINGTONPOST.COM

How Republicans moved from Reagan’s ‘evil empire’ to Trump’s praise for Putin

For decades, the Republican Party’s stance on Russia’s dictators and expansionist tactics was rock-solid: From Dwight D. Eisenhower to Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan, Russia — then the Soviet Union — was America’s chief enemy, untrustworthy, anti-freedom. It was, in Reagan’s famous formulation, the “evil empire.”

This week, while many Republicans blasted Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s all-out assault on Ukraine, former president Donald Trump and some of his allies urged the United States to stay out of the conflict and praised Putin, even presenting him as a “peacekeeper,” as Trump put it.

“Don’t look for consistency in Republican policy,” said Craig Shirley, a Reagan biographer and longtime Republican political consultant. “The Republican Party right now is a little schizophrenic. Anti-communism and love of freedom used to be the glue that held the party together, but now the attitudes toward Russia have gotten all mixed up with domestic politics.”

In Congress, across conservative media and on the social media battlegrounds where so much of right-leaning America thrashes out its differences, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seemed to open a gap between Trump and some of his erstwhile loyal supporters.

On Capitol Hill, GOP senators usually quick to agree with most anything Trump says issued statements that aligned with Republican reactions to Russian aggression through the past seven decades. One of Trump’s most vocal allies, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), praised the sanctions that Trump’s successor levied against Putin. “President Biden has now taken positive steps,” Cruz said, adding that “much more still needs to be done to deter and counter the threat that Putin poses to our allies in Ukraine and across Europe.”

Sen. Todd C. Young (R-Ind.) similarly praised Biden’s sanctions and said “Putin is attacking the democratic, rules-based order that has benefited countless Americans and millions around the globe since World War II. The United States must stand with the Ukrainian people by immediately providing additional assistance, including military equipment and lethal aid.”

But other Republicans hewed closer to Trump, who on Fox News touted his “good relationship” with Putin and suggested that the Russian president had attacked Ukraine only because of the “weakness” of the Biden administration. In Ohio, Senate candidate and Trump loyalist J.D. Vance said on a podcast that “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” and tweeted that “our leaders care more about Ukraine’s border than they do our own.”

Fox’s most popular host, Tucker Carlson, pooh-poohed the idea that Putin is an enemy: “Why do I hate Putin so much?” he said. “Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?”

“Makes your head spin, doesn’t it?” Shirley said. “The party is searching for meaning beyond just anti-Bidenism, and there’s no one position.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting of big businesses at the Kremlin in Moscow on Feb. 24. (AFP/Getty Images)

A chief cause of the Republican splintering on Putin and his invasion of Ukraine is the dramatic shift in rhetoric and policy that Trump introduced into the party’s messaging, starting in his 2016 campaign and continuing through his term in the White House and his embittered post-presidency.

With his “America First” rhetoric and his policies of stepping back from NATO and other U.S. alliances with Western democracies, Trump tapped into a long-standing American discomfort with getting involved in other countries’ troubles. That attitude traces back to the founders; Thomas Jefferson warned against “entangling alliances.”

To varying degrees, that allergy to diving into foreign crises has surged periodically in U.S. history, especially in times of economic disarray and technological dislocation. Especially after the trauma of World War I — another time when a deadly pandemic deeply disrupted American life — isolationism became persistently popular. And it has remained an occasionally recurring bug in both parties, often wrapping in antagonism toward immigrants, minority groups, Wall Street and academia. Republican leaders campaigned for decades on reining in Russia, from Eisenhower’s statement that the Soviet Union represented “godless depravity in government” to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 characterization of Russia as “our number one geopolitical foe.”

The country’s establishment politicians and policymakers have generally leaned toward America playing an active role in international affairs. The United States is, as Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, said, “the indispensable nation,” on trade, certainly, but also on securing peace, curbing extremism and spreading democracy.

NATO ‘more united and determined than ever’ after Russia’s ‘brutal act of war’ on Ukraine

But during periods of populist politics — and especially when foreign wars crop up — many Americans embrace politicians who preach a strong, if not total, focus on domestic matters. In 2013, for example, with U.S. forces seemingly bogged down in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, the percentage of Americans telling pollsters that the country should “mind its own business internationally” jumped to 52 percent — the first time a majority expressed that view in half a century, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

That attitude has been particularly popular among Republican voters in recent years, polls indicate.

“I have always been a Republican because of the party’s stands for freedom, free markets, limited government and strong defense,” said Joe Walsh, a former GOP congressman from Illinois who supported Trump in 2016 but then became sharply critical of him as president. “But then came Trump and his authoritarian approach, which connected with voters who really wanted a strongman to build a wall, keep Brown people out and shut down CNN. Now the party’s populist base has been radicalized and it’s metastasized beyond Trump himself.”

Walsh, now a podcaster who considers himself a man without a party, said the old Republican attitudes toward Russia still exist in the hearts “of many of my former colleagues in the House. They still believe in a Reagan internationalism, in being tough on Russia,” he said. “But they don’t say anything because they know where the base is: with Trump and Tucker Carlson, saying, ‘Putin good, Biden bad, and I don’t want my gas prices to go up.'"

The party’s division was evident as Russian missiles landed in several Ukrainian cities and Trump defended the Russian leader. “I don’t believe he wanted to do this initially,” Trump said of Putin on Fox News. A day earlier, on a conservative podcast, Trump called Putin a “genius” for declaring two regions of Ukraine to be independent countries and said “he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper.”

Trump and Putin speak at a news conference in Helsinki on July 16, 2018. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

Trump’s aversion to portraying Russia and Putin as America’s enemies was evident from the start of his late-life political career. During the 2016 campaign, he moved to erase from the Republican platform any mention of protecting Ukraine from Putin’s designs. And he repeatedly praised Putin throughout his presidency.

But why did so much of the Republican political leadership and the party’s voter base so easily flip from traditional anti-communism and suspicion of Russian motives to an acceptance or even an embrace of Putin and his authoritarian ways?

Walsh argues that when he and other young Republicans were attracted to Reagan’s candidacies in the 1980s, they were wowed by “the overall idea of strength after the weakness of Jimmy Carter and by his promise to get government out of your lives. Reagan’s strong stance against the Soviet Union was never the real draw.”

“I voted for Trump in 2016 in part because he was a noninterventionist, f--- the rest of the world guy,” Walsh said. “What saddens me most is that I did not sufficiently see this embrace of authoritarianism coming.”

But others see the shift in the definition of Republicanism less driven by stances on issues than simply by the power of personalities.

“There’s always been an ebb and flow between isolationism and internationalism in the party,” said Shirley, who is also the author of “April 1945,” a history of World War II’s endgame. “It’s really based on the personalities of our presidents and the Russian leaders more than on any principles. The current crop of Republicans still says they like Reagan, but they just like his personality. They don’t share his consistent internationalist philosophy.”

Some conservative media hosts ridiculed Biden’s warnings of a Russian attack. Now they say it’s his fault.

The evolution of attitudes toward Russia in the Republican base has been driven not only by Trump’s popularity and the struggles of the U.S. economy, but also by a years-long effort by Russia to influence how Americans of all political stripes view the world, according to disinformation researchers who have traced Russia’s hacks, deceptive Internet posts and fake accounts on social media.

From the civil war in Syria to the separatist battles in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s intelligence services have sought to shape American views of Putin and his government. In 2016, Russia interfered in the U.S. election by hacking and disseminating sensitive Democratic Party emails, and the Internet Research Agency, run privately by a Putin ally, flooded Facebook, Twitter and other platforms with faked social media posts that helped drive Americans to polarized political positions while also supporting Trump’s presidential bid.

Russia has sought to shape American attitudes toward political issues “through a subtle, sophisticated, very long game of influence,” said Camille François, a disinformation researcher at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “It’s a full-spectrum campaign with covert and overt elements.”

Other experts on disinformation, in contrast, argue that the impact of Russia’s efforts to alter Americans’ political perspectives is not so clear. Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and author of “Active Measures,” a history of disinformation, said the role of Russian meddling may not be as powerful as some other domestic forces that have pushed Americans toward views so polarized that members of one party almost automatically take a position opposed to the other party’s.

“Your hatred of your own political opponent is so deep that you side with Vladimir Putin as he attacks major population centers in Ukraine, which is extraordinary,” Rid said.

Craig Timberg contributed to this report.

LINK