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Heard on CBC radio from Toronto/Ottawa and also just posted to BBC --
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38324045
A special archiving event is being held in collaboration with Archive's End of Term project. Since 2008 this has saved US government websites at risk during government transitions.
Canadian "guerrilla" archivists will be assisting a rushed effort to preserve US government climate data.
Environmentalists, climate scientists and academics are collaborating to protect what they view as fragile digital federal records and research.
They want the data saved before Donald Trump takes office.
The CBC report interviewed a Canadian scientist who described some of the scientific data that was lost during the Harper government.
Help and donations are requested.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Friday December 16 2016, @01:38PM
Environmentalists, climate scientists and academics are collaborating to protect what they view as fragile digital federal records and research.
All the anti-Trump scare articles are starting to get a tad old, not only here but in general in media. I understand people that write them don't like him and didn't vote for him but the scaremongering is starting to take on unreal proportions. They seem to be trying to top eachother now in how horrible it is going to be on January 20th when Trump becomes POTUS and enters the Whitehouse -- the world as we know it is clearly going to to end, all the science is going away and nuclear war is right around the corner.
(Score: 5, Informative) by TheGratefulNet on Friday December 16 2016, @02:00PM
people truly hated rumsfeld.
people now, also, truly hate pence.
trump, I can deal with. a bozo who has no motivations other than to line his pockets. we've seen that and it does not destroy things, per se.
god botherers, though, IN THE WHITE HOUSE, that's entirely something to be afraid of. when a religion takes hold of a country, all kinds of repression and regression happens.
its quite reasonable to fear those that want to turn back the clock of progress. and that's exactly what pense is all about.
we fear he will be the real one in control. that's what us 'liburals' are afraid of. and with good reason, as he has not been shy about his agenda.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @05:03PM
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." [wikiquote.org], Sinclair Lewis
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday December 17 2016, @01:59AM
Perhaps it would be more accurate to speak of fascism coming back to America:
In Germany, Ford's antisemitic articles from The Dearborn Independent were issued in four volumes, cumulatively titled The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem published by Theodor Fritsch, founder of several antisemitic parties and a member of the Reichstag. In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters." Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Mein Kampf, although he is only mentioned once: Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence...[from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said he regarded Ford as his "inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping Ford's life-size portrait next to his desk. Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany," and modeling the Volkswagen, the people's car, on the Model T.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#The_Dearborn_Independent_and_antisemitism [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @06:35PM
> trump, I can deal with. a bozo who has no motivations other than to line his pockets. we've seen that and it does not destroy things, per se.
Money is not Trump's primary motivation. The presidency was not about making him rich. It was about making him loved and respected. His father was distant and unloving. His entire life has been spent trying to fill the hole his father left in his heart. He's packing his cabinet with generals because his father sent him to a military boarding school where officers became surrogate father figures. Watch how he behaves on twitter - anything even mildly negative said about him provokes a completely over the top attack in response. And the attacks aren't even topical, he'll reach for anything to use as a weapon because as far as Trump sees it, everything is personal so everything is on the table.
He's never going to get the love he wants because his personality is defective. He's completely transactional, 'If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.' [washingtonpost.com] But transactional love is what you get from a hooker, it only lasts as along as you are willing to pay for it so he's always going to have that empty hole in his heart.
That personality defect makes him vastly more dangerous than somebody just out to line their pockets. It makes him easy to manipulate [washingtonpost.com] and easily provoked into completely disproportionate actions. It also means you can not count on him to act in his own rational self-interest.
Look at his "victory tour." It does nothing to make him any money. It costs him money -the tickets are free and he's gotta pay for the facilities and his travel on that jet which is about $11,000/hour to fly anywhere. [aviationcv.com] But the rallies give him the adoration of the crowds. And BTW, the last time a western politician held post-election victory rallies was 1930 Germany. [groopspeak.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:18PM
Psycho-babble all you want, but the bottom line is that people have been voting against the status-quo all over the world. Change is in the air, and we would do better to help shape the change than engage in character assassination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:32PM
And Neville Chamberlain rises from the grave to post on soylent!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:48PM
Well what do you think we are doing????
Delusion is flying thick and heavy through the air, fascism and dictatorship are reaching new levels in many countries. There is change in the air, now make sure you choose the right path. Trump himself may not be the anti-christ, but his cabinet picks aren't making him look any better.
Are you just blind? Insane? A true believing evangelical christian who can't wait to slam the hammer on some illegals and muslims? Not saying that is guaranteed to happen with Trump, but that is his rhetoric and the beliefs of a good portion of his cabinet.
Appointing Elon Musk? Pure PR move to gain support (heeeey, it might not be so bad they got Muskie on board!) Pffft.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday December 17 2016, @02:28AM
[...] people have been voting against the status-quo all over the world. Change is in the air [...]
In Mr. Trump's speech on energy policy, he seemed to favour continued, even increased, emphasis on fossil fuels.
/article.pl?sid=16/06/03/1944223 [soylentnews.org]
His selection of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state only reinforces that impression.
He holds investments in several fossil fuel companies.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2838696-Trump-2016-Financial-Disclosure.html [documentcloud.org]
He's expressed reluctance to sell his stocks or place them in a blind trust. Not doing so would leave him in a position to profit from his office.
I appreciate that Ms. Clinton wasn't, for many people, the change they were looking for, but Mr. Trump appears to me to represent a reinforcement of the status quo in regard to energy.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Saturday December 17 2016, @11:13AM
It has more to do with which way policies have been trending and the economic issues involved:
The trend for the past 8 years or so has been to emphasize reduction of fossil fuel usage. More tax funds are being spent on public transit initiatives and financial incentives for adding solar power or buying a hybrid or electric car. The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting use of the carpool lane in traffic jams, first–row parking with free charger access, huge discounts (or money back) on their utility bill, and so forth.
Meanwhile, thanks to the economic mess, there's a lot of people who can't afford to get solar equipment or a hybrid/electric car, and who have had to watch the more fortunate get all of those perks in addition to their existing socioeconomic status. From that perspective, “change” is then more about curbing or reversing those policies, and possibly about reducing/removing the sales & gas taxes that have been footing the bill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @12:10PM
The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting use of the carpool lane in traffic jams, first–row parking with free charger access, huge discounts (or money back) on their utility bill, and so forth.
Heh. None of those are federal policies. And the nissan leaf is eminently affordable at less than $30K after the federal subsidy - less than the average new car price of $33.6K [kbb.com]
But it has been interesting to watch your mind at work trying to rationalize trumpism.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday December 17 2016, @09:09PM
> [...] for the past 8 years or so [...] sales & gas taxes that have been footing the bill [...]
The federal tax has remained the same, 18.4 cents per gallon, since October of 1997.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/incometaxandtheirs/a/Federal-Gas-Tax-Rates.htm [about.com]
The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting [...] free charger access, huge discounts (or money back) on their utility bill [...]
Those subsidies are intended, it would appear, to make electric cars and solar panels more affordable. Of course they are a burden, but the reasoning has been that the benefits—less pollution, less greenhouse effect, less dependence on the fossil fuel industry and on imported fuel, less need to build central power plants—would outweigh the costs. Earlier this month, OPEC convinced 11 non-member countries, including Russia, to cut oil production.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-opec-russia-cuts-idUSKBN14513U [reuters.com]
Back in 2000 and 2001, Enron and a few other companies coerced California into paying exorbitant prices for electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis [wikipedia.org]
https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/enron-caused-california-blackouts-traders-say [marketwatch.com]
If the rate-payers were generating much of their own electricity, such a situation would be unlikely to occur.
More tax funds are being spent on public transit initiatives [...] The people that can afford to buy those things have been getting use of the carpool lane in traffic jams, [...]
Try to forgive me for quoting and responding out of context. Public transit ought, in my opinion, to be affordable to the masses. It also ought to lessen traffic congestion. I do acknowledge that it sometimes fails to do either.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 17 2016, @07:10AM
Just listened to the news on the radio. Talking about the protests in Poland. Seems they voted in a conservative government and now the people are really not happy as the government removes the freedom of the press.
The problem is that voting against the status-quo, just to vote against the status-quo, seems to lead to reduction of freedoms more often then not.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Saturday December 17 2016, @11:37AM
Its not just freedom of the press that is getting reduced now in Poland: Since the paranoid swivel-eyed PiS conservatives are in government and have absolute majority in parliament (sounds FAMILIAR??!?), they also:
2016-10-06 Poland's parliament rejects near-total ban on abortion after protests [theguardian.com]
Poland has strict abortion laws; only in 3 cases a. rape, b. mother's life is in danger, c. foetus is deformed and will die soon. The government tried, but failed, to pass a law that only in case b. mother's life is in danger, abortion would be allowed.
2016-10-24 Polish abortion law protesters march against proposed restrictions [theguardian.com]
Extremely conservative catholic Poland makes an even more limited abortion law; if the foetus is deformed and will die soon after birth, it must be brought to term against the mother's wishes so that it can be christened and buried.
So only allowed in case of a. rape and b. mother's life is in danger.
2016-11-14 Poland exhumes president Lech Kaczyński's remains [theguardian.com]
Poland's president's brother's body dug up to prove that somehow the "Russians did it", when the government of Poland visited Smolensk in dense fog despite weather warnings and their plane crashed.
2016-12-14 Poland restricts public meetings [theguardian.com]
Freedom of assembly is voted out; the Polish government probably had a (for them) important reason to forbid complete freedom of assembly, namely to make sure that on the day of remembrance of the president's brother's plane crash, only the Catholic church and his own government could hold manifestations. So that no dissent could be heard on that day. It still sounds a bit stupid to me to write a law for that, though. "You have freedom of assembly, except on the following days, because then I'll put you in jail if you disrupt my important meetings"
2016-12-17 Polish government tries to keep the budget secret [theguardian.com]
To be honest I didn't 100% understand this article, they held the budget vote in another room of the parliament building so that it could not be recorded or made public??
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @11:50PM
> when a religion takes hold of a country, all kinds of repression and regression happens...
As opposed to the french and communist revolutions, I guess?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @05:13AM
Secular revolutions can fail for a variety of reasons all unrelated to the fact they are secular.
Theocracies all fail the same way.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by quacking duck on Friday December 16 2016, @04:35PM
We already have a template for what happens when an ideologue takes power: Stephen Harper's conservatives in Canada sought to destroy the scientific works that departments had spent decades building up. Literal libraries of data and research were destroyed by closing the facilities, forcing the materials to be thrown into dumpsters or recycled, not to mention muzzling government scientists from being able to talk to media without going through a political officer / censor.
A TP-led, Republican-dominated house will be much worse, because it's Harper's contempt for science + Rob Ford's unhinged populist behaviour, multiplied by ten. We already have proof by the PE's selection to head various departments like the EPA, education, etc. Funny how I haven't heard a peep about being "qualified for the job" from right wing whiners.
Given odds like this, it's absolutely prudent to safeguard scientific data. It's analogous to moving irreplaceable things out of museums and galleries when you know an invading extremist force is coming that seeks to destroy anything that doesn't conform to their dogma.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @06:03PM
Generally, I find myself getting more stupid by visiting here. Criticism and debate, what little of it there was, has been replaced by grandstanding and specious claims with little to no supporting evidence or reasoning.
In many respects, it reflects the media at large. Congratulations, SN has joined the big leagues, where hyperbolic editorializing has replaced any semblance of intellectual honesty or rigour.
When conservatives [washingtonpost.com] are offering more pointed criticisms of Trump than the left could possibly muster (and certainly of a higher caliber than anything found here), you know it's time to pack it in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @10:28PM
A couple of problems: on SN you probably won't find too many politically focused people who follow every political news item. This means most are limited to the article at hand and whatever thoughts they've gathered overall. Next you have Trump who isn't even president yet so all we can do is speculate for the most part. Complaining about hyperbole? I think its better to waste some hot air on hyperbole in the chance it keeps people alerted to a full fascist take over.
For hard evidence you'll be waiting for Trump to screw things up, come back when that happens. Or better yet, leave! I can tell from
the left could possibly muster that you have your own axe to grind.
On this particular article I've seen a lot of good points and decent discussion, so I don't know what your problem is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @01:31AM
And yet...and yet...here you are again to give us your received wisdom!
I think it bears mentioning here that you have yet to make your own contribution of evidence, reason, intellectual honesty, or rigour. Why is that?
Note that your grand staircase flounce would have been much more impactful if you had actually included your name, rather than posting as AC. That being said, don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out! You were just leaving, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @07:01PM
Generally, I find myself getting more stupid by visiting here.
I find that hard to believe...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by https on Friday December 16 2016, @09:50PM
It's not scaremongering. It's an observation of a pattern of action that has worked well elsewhere. This will require an attention span of more than one minute, so please bear with me.
Here in Canada, we recently had the most frighteningly fascist administration in a long time (under Stephen Harper) go out of their way to literally destroy the libraries of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans( DFO). This department was not chosen randomly, and I'll get to why later. It was hard for most people to believe, especially when they couldn't imagine a motivation for it. It worked something like this: first, you claim a long-term plan to gradually centralize and digitize all the books and pamphlets and records and panel papers and so on, and retain a central repository of various undigitized items. So when all the regional offices were having their libraries removed, there wasn't a lot of traction to resist - "why are you opposing this cost-cutting measure that will, in the end, let you have faster access to more information?" So, a lot of the regional libraries started having their collections moved. While this was going on, the quality of the work the scientist did was affected, because parts of their library literally weren't there. The loan process from head office was extremely slow and cumbersome, and when your manager is asking for a report by Friday or you're fired, a three week wait for that good text on the subject that used to be on the third floor... you just do without, even though you know there's some important stuff left out. This had a side effect of getting staff used to contractors fucking around inside their libraries, which was critical to step two: hiring contractors to literally throw the books directly into the garbage instead of into storage that you're not paying rent on. The plan to digitize was a deliberate farce. No records were kept of what, if anything, was digitized. The claims of building a nationwide library index and only throwing out duplicate copies was a lie, and not even a good idea (see previous point, work quality).
The why of that particular department it is fairly clear, at least to Canadians who track the stock market or maybe just live here. One of the things the DFO does is keep historical records of soil and water quality. In a country of two million lakes, kinda important. But if you don't have records of what the water quality was in Le Moo St. Bumfuck from fifty years ago, thirty years ago, five years ago, you're going to have a very hard time saying that these lead levels of 1 mg/mL are caused by the new smelter upstream, because how do you know what the background levels are there? Oh, right, you don't, because we destroyed your records. <smirk>
Canada's stock markets are dominated by mining companies. You name any large international mining concern, chances are its head office is in Canada. Our laws are very generous to mining companies in terms of taxes and rights, but science gets in the way of high ROIs.
It didn't fully work as expected, because several scientists risked their jobs alerting the press (related to a different nightmare where scientists were forbidden from speaking publicly). But we literally don't know how much information was lost, aside from "much much more than that, no, more than that, no you moron, more than that." Multiple shipping containers at every office.
Scaremongering? No. Just a functioning memory, slightly more than a year but not as many as five, is needed. Don't think Trump and Co. can't think of a quieter way to destroy large chunks of the EPA's data now that Harper and Co. have some battle experience (and smirking skills) to share.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @01:19AM
Unreal proportions? Seriously? And, who the hell modded you up as "Insightful", of all things? Your personal sock puppet? Perhaps you missed this [foxnews.com] bit of recent news? When are you going to admit that some people have very legitimate concerns? When experts on climate change are being rounded up and disappeared in the middle of the night? When Muslims, Mexicans, and intellectuals are being shoved into the gas chambers? When? Just where is the tipping point for you?
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday December 17 2016, @06:52PM
All the anti-Trump scare articles are starting to get a tad old, not only here but in general in media.
What's fair is fair. After 8 years of the most ridiculous bullshit being spread about Obama (and 15+ years about Clinton) it's the other side's turn now.