Some LAPD officers ignore COVID-19 mask rules – Los Angeles Times

Nearly half the LAPD remains unvaccinated, and new cases in the department — particularly among sworn officers — have spiked in recent weeks, with more than 50 LAPD employees infected in the past week, Moore said. Four LAPD personnel were hospitalized with serious cases of the virus as of Tuesday, and two others had been in the ICU this past week but were released, he said.

Ten LAPD personnel and three spouses of LAPD personnel have died from complications of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic; more than 2,800 LAPD personnel have contracted the virus.

Source: Some LAPD officers ignore COVID-19 mask rules – Los Angeles Times

Russia announces record number of COVID-19 deaths | Euronews

Russia recorded its highest number of daily COVID-19 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic on Thursday with 808 lives lost. The official COVID-19 death toll in Russia now stands at 168,049 — the fifth highest in the world, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The real tally is likely to be much higher. The country’s statistics agency Rosstat, which has a broader definition of what constitutes a COVID-19 death, reported more than 300,000 fatalities by the end of June. The Coronavirus Taskforce also announced that there had been 21,932 new infections detected over the previous 24 hours. The country has been recorded more than 20,000 new daily infections since June 24. The surge is being blamed on the Delta variant.

Source: Russia announces record number of COVID-19 deaths | Euronews

Thoughtful Thursdays, Stayed on Freedom’s Call page 26, and Bridges

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

It is crucial that we each help our society to become more fully inclusive for all of us today, and to come and work together, for all of us, right?  

I believe that attention to shared histories, as in DC, may provide part of an answer.  I started a note about that, a few years ago, in my book Stayed on Freedom’s Call:

” … accepted yet religiously and culinarily estranged from one’s community of origin, the African-American community, can be disconcerting.

From feeling a part of the rich history in both places, having learned sacred songs from revered grandmothers and respected mentors in both settings, conflict sometimes derives. Learning to sing “We Shall Overcome” from a grandmother, rising with the prayers during the chanting of a niggun. Temple Beth Emet, in Silver Spring, MD embodies this feeling, holding Jewish services
in a style more familiar to many African-Americans…

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Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, Chapter 3 introduction

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

This post starts the rough draft of  Chapter 3, of my non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres.  

Note that I’m sharing my outlines for JYP,

(chapter 3 outlines… chptr3Outlines )

as this is a rough draft, and I am very keen to hear suggestions if they improve the ideas presented here, as they are still in flux.

And  once again, by way of disclaimer, the overall goal is now to explain why we need both equ. + justice, & why in 4 phases.  This chapter will transition to a chapter (2-5) for each phase, showing what Phases I-IV could look like as part of a possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us.  This vision is laid out in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met, without taking anything from anyone, and without violence, intimidation, nor coercion of any kind. 

Chapter Three:

Chapter 3:…

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♫ Rain ♫

Filosofa's Word

Well, wouldn’t you just know it? I mentioned yesterday when I played ♫ Paperback Writer ♫ that Roger had sent me Rain (the song, not the precipitation that falls from the sky), and told me it was the ‘B-side’ to Paperback Writer. Then he said that it was his favourite Beatles tune, but he didn’t specify which, so I guessed Paperback Writer. WRONG! He meant Rain. So tonight I must make amends, and thus I give you … Rain!

According to SongFacts …

John Lennon wrote most of Rain. It was his first song to get really deep, exploring themes of reality and illusion – after all, rain or shine is just a state of mind.

This was the first song to use a tape played backwards, which created the strange audio effect. John Lennon discovered the technique when he put the tape for “Tomorrow Never…

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In Peru, a corrupt land-titling scheme sees forests sold off as farms (Me: theft is theft and destroying forests at this point is a crime against us all on earth)

  • An irregular land titling system is behind the deforestation of a swath of Amazon rainforest now occupied by a Mennonite colony in Masisea municipality, in Peru’s Ucayali department.
  • In 2015, more than 40 land registry files were filled out with false information to give forests titles that made them appear to be farmland.
  • This system, used in several places in Ucayali department, allowed for the deforestation of more than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of forests in Masisea and within Indigenous communities.

In September 2015, officials from the agriculture agency of Peru’s Ucayali department arrived in the district of Masisea with one goal: to create a rural land registry in a forested area along the edge of the Masisea-Imiría Highway, a road that runs through a section of the Peruvian Amazon.

That was the beginning of an intricate system of irregularly ceding public and Indigenous lands that later ended up in the hands of a Mennonite colony in Ucayali department.

Some authorities from the departmental government participated in this process by using their positions to grant titles to forested land illegally. Some of them are now under investigation and under house arrest. This story is an example of how, in Peru, some forests are deforested first on paper, and then in real life.

Source: In Peru, a corrupt land-titling scheme sees forests sold off as farms

Os pulmões doentes da Amazônia — Mágica Mistura✨

Barbara Crane Navarro

Meados de julho de 2021. Durante o segundo ano da pandemia de COVID-19, o calor catastrófico e o inferno de fogo no oeste dos Estados Unidos e Canadá, bem como as inundações do século na Alemanha e na Bélgica, competem pela maior manchete com o voo espacial do o multibilionário Jeffrey Bezos na florestade…

Os pulmões doentes da Amazônia — Mágica Mistura✨

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