Salamence
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5763205
One is attached to the International Space Station, and the other is collecting data as a stand-alone satellite. The latter would meet its permanent demise after burning up in the atmosphere if the mission were to be terminated.
A 2023 review by NASA concluded that the data they'd been providing had been "of exceptionally high quality."
The observatories provide detailed carbon dioxide measurements across various locations, allowing scientists to get a detailed glimpse of how human activity is affecting greenhouse gas emissions.
(Ex NASA employee) David Crisp said it "makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data," pointing out it costs only $15 million per year to maintain both observatories, a tiny fraction of the agency's $25.4 billion budget.
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5745138
When Donald Trump pledged to reopen the notorious Alcatraz prison as a detention center for immigrants and violent offenders, the idea was met with contempt and mockery. San Francisco leaders have called it Trump’s “stupidest idea yet” and threatened to cut off the island’s sewage and garbage services if the president acts on his carceral ambitions.
But for the Indigenous people of the San Francisco Bay Area, the idea was more than just laughable. It was an affront to their identity, and an attempt to erase the island’s history as a site of Indigenous resistance.
After the federal prison shut down in 1963, the island took on a second life as the scene of one of the most important acts of Native American resistance in modern history. Between November 1969 and June 1971, Indigenous activists occupied Alcatraz for 19 months, demanding rights and resources for Native people.
Now, as Trump appears set on pushing ahead despite the extraordinary costs and logistical hurdles, tribal members are fighting to preserve a history that is still little-known beyond Indigenous circles.
Alcatraz has always loomed large for April McGill. Growing up in Mishewal Wappo territory in California’s Sonoma county, McGill, who is a member of the Yuki and Wappo tribes, frequently heard stories from the veterans of the occupation who lived in her community. Her aunt even babysat the children of Richard and Annie Oakes, who led the movement.
When she moved to San Francisco as a teenager, the island’s shadow grew – especially as McGill, who is now executive director of the city’s American Indian cultural center, became increasingly involved in activism herself, and learned about the pivotal role the occupation played in maintaining Native sovereignty in California and nationwide. “It holds a really personal, deep place to me,” McGill said. “It symbolizes so much of our history.”
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/8665795
As images of starving children in Gaza continue to circulate and the international outcry grows louder, a number of American rabbis used their pulpits this past Shabbat to speak up about the humanitarian crisis, some with sorrow, others with moral urgency, and many with a sense that silence was no longer tenable.
The sermons came amid growing pressure on Jewish institutions to reckon with the consequences for Palestinian civilians of [the purported] war against Hamas as it nears the end of its third year. In recent days, more than a thousand rabbis from around the world and across denominations signed an open letter demanding that Israel “stop using starvation as a weapon of war.”
The Union for Reform Judaism issued a public statement saying, “The situation is dire, and it is deadly,” and that Israel bears part of the blame even if Hamas is the primary cause. “The primary moral response must begin with anguished hearts in the face of such a large-scale human tragedy,” the statement said. In the Conservative movement, meanwhile, the Rabbinical Assembly cited Jewish values in calling on the Israeli government to alleviate the suffering in Gaza.
Despite these public declarations, in many congregations the topic of Israel and Gaza remains complicated, given the unresolved trauma of Oct. 7, and the 50 hostages that remain in the hands of Hamas. Some rabbis have struggled with whether, and how, to speak publicly. Others have doubled down on the pulpit’s rôle as a space for moral wrestling and prophetic critique.
“This is not the Judaism we want our 12-year-olds to inherit,” said Rabbi Sarah Reines in her Friday night sermon at Temple Emanu El, the Reform congregation in Manhattan, referring to the Torah’s account of a divinely sanctioned war in which Moses commands the killing of Midianite men, women, and children.
Reines did not explicitly mention the situation in Gaza, but she unmistakably wrestled with the moral toll of war. Drawing from the week’s Torah portion, Reines used the imagery of the war against the Midianites to examine the ethical conduct of war through the lens of Jewish tradition. Citing Maimonides, she emphasized restraint, civilian protection, and the imperative to free captives, calling them “wartime priorities” rooted in Jewish values. “Are we protecting life,” she asked, “or are we hardening ourselves to it?”
Reines was one of several rabbis who framed the current moment as a test of Jewish ethics, not only in terms of Israel’s actions, but in how Jews worldwide choose to bear witness. In Gloucester, Massachusetts, Rabbi Naomi Gurt Lind grappled with the Torah’s command to “dispossess” the land’s inhabitants, a concept she called morally troubling in light of the ongoing war in Gaza.
A newly ordained rabbi serving Temple Ahavat Achim, a Conservative synagogue, she reflected on the Hebrew root “yarash,” which is linked to both “dispossess” and “inherit,” and explored how Jewish and Palestinian experiences of displacement echo each other. Identifying as “a Zionist through and through,” Gurt Lind affirmed both peoples’ connection to the land, saying [that] she condemns Hamas’s actions as well as starvation as a tactic of war.
Not all rabbis spoke from the same ideological place, but a common thread was their effort to assert Jewish moral vocabulary in a moment of despair.
At SAJ, a Reconstructionist synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann delivered a sermon that she acknowledged might alienate some people when she posted it to Facebook the next day. “I stand here broken-hearted before you,” she said. “Broken-hearted by what I am witnessing … and deeply troubled by the responses I am seeing from the broader Jewish community.”
Herrmann, a self-described progressive Zionist, organized her sermon around three common Jewish responses to the aid crisis: denial (“They are making it up”), deflection (“It’s Hamas’s fault”), and moral relativism (“This is just what happens in war”). She challenged each in turn, rooting her critique in teshuvah, the Jewish practice of repentance.
“Israel may not be responsible for the entire systemic problem,” she said, “but it is responsible for its part in the tragedy that is unfolding.”
In Santa Fe, New Mexico, Rabbi Neil Amswych of Temple Beth Shalom delivered an introspective and agonized message, one that wrestled not only with Israel’s actions but with the very rôle of the rabbi as public moral voice. “Why do some people need me to say what they’re thinking about Israel?” he asked. “Why can’t they do it?”
Amswych ultimately decided to sign the recent rabbinic letter urging Israel to change course, but only after what he described as a painful internal journey. He rejected performative politics and the culture of “black-and-white” statements.
“Every public statement lacking nuance that I make brings some people who agree with it closer to the Temple, and simultaneously pushes some people who disagree further away,” he said. “There is a cost to every public black-and-white statement in a community that is trying to be truly diverse.”
Even in sermons that didn’t deal with Gaza at all, the heaviness of the moment was salient.
In Los Angeles, Rabbi Hannah Jensen, who helps lead the progressive congregation Ikar, invoked the traditional Three Weeks of mourning on the Jewish calendar — and reimagined them as an extended period of civic grief for her city. Referencing the devastating wildfires in January and the mass ICE raids of recent weeks, she drew a direct parallel to ancient laments for Jerusalem.
“Lonely sits the city once great with people,” she quoted from the Book of Lamentations. “The imagery feels so palpable in the city right now.”
While Jensen’s sermon focused on displacement and trauma in Los Angeles, it pointed to a universal imperative in the face of crisis. “Our grief cannot be the whole story,” she said. “It must move us to action.”
Action, too, was a central theme in the sermon delivered by Rabbi Adam Louis-Klein at Kehillat Beth Israel, a Conservative congregation in Ottawa. He placed the war and its global fallout within the longer arc of Jewish history, drawing connections from the Hebron massacre of 1929 to contemporary campus antisemitism and media bias.
Without directly addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, he said [that] the current wave of criticism against Israel should be understood as a product of how antisemitism distorts the truth. He called on Jews to move beyond fighting antisemitism, arguing that only by engaging with Jewish knowledge and identity, can Jews assert themselves in the world, and escape what he characterized as the trap of perpetual defensiveness.
“We are not survivalists,” he said. “We are not fighting just to persist. Our survival today is now bound to the survival of truth itself — in a world where it is once again under siege.”
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5753408
The empire really doesn’t hide how much distain it has for it’s own soliders.
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5719320
Ramallah- July 31, 2025: In a grave escalation of its assault on Palestinian agricultural sovereignty, Israeli military forces carried out a violent raid this morning targeting the Seed Multiplication Unit of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)’s Seed Bank, located in the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
Using bulldozers and heavy machinery, the Israeli army destroyed the storage warehouses and infrastructure of the unit, where essential equipment, seed materials, and tools for indigenous seed reproduction were kept. The destruction was carried out without warning, under military protection, and constitutes a direct blow to Palestinian efforts to preserve local biodiversity and ensure food sovereignty.
This deliberate targeting of a civilian agricultural facility is a strategic attack on the very foundations of Palestinian resilience. The Seed Bank has played a critical role in safeguarding traditional seed varieties and empowering small-scale farmers through local seed reproduction and exchange.
The attack comes amid increasing settler violence, land grabs, and systemic efforts by the Israeli occupation to dismantle the means of survival for Palestinian communities. Destroying a national seed bank is an act of erasure, intended to sever the generational ties between farmers and their land.
We call on all international partners, human rights defenders, and solidarity movements to speak out forcefully against this crime.
We urge immediate international intervention to hold the Israeli occupation accountable for its repeated violations of agricultural, environmental, and human rights.
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5718494
In the meeting held at United Nations headquarters on July 28-30, Cuba reiterated its firm commitment to the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. It denounced the systematic violations and atrocities committed by Israel as the occupying power.
Ambassador Yuri Gala, Charge d’Affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations, affirmed in his speech at the forum that his country “has joined the call of the most international community for decisive action to end one of the longest-standing injustices of our time.”
He said injustice has worsened in these last two years, during which “Israel has perpetrated crimes against humanity, collective punishment, Apartheid, and genocide against the Palestinian people with impunity.”
Ambassador Gala recalled on Wednesday the high number of dead, injured, and displaced persons, as well as the destruction of hospitals, schools, mosques, and other civilian infrastructure, in clear violation of International Humanitarian Law, which “places us before a painful reality that lacerates the conscience of humanity.”
Gala emphasized that concrete actions are urgently needed in the UN Security Council to stop the ongoing genocide, allow for the delivery of sufficient and unrestricted humanitarian aid, and guarantee the vital work of UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East).
The Cuban representative also recalled that more than 145 countries already recognize the State of Palestine and emphasized that its admission as a full member of the UN cannot be delayed further.
Justice for Palestine cannot wait any longer. “Let us act with the urgency that humanity demands, that the Palestinian people need, as an unavoidable condition for achieving a just, lasting, and permanent peace in the Middle East,” he concluded.