Monthly Archives: January 2021

CAMPAIGNERS fighting against plans for 576 homes and a school at Upper Cosmeston Farm in Sully say they have deep concerns that the land poses a danger to peoples health.

The plans currently in the consultation phase of the planning application have drawn criticism for many reasons including a lack of infrastructure, pollution, and the impact on the historical heritage of the area.

But part of the land included in the plans has also previously been used as a landfill site for Lavernock Isolation Hospital which local historian Brian Keitch says dates back to at least the early 1900s and was around until at least the 1920s.

The planning application indicates that soil samples identifiedpotentially hazardous chemicals there.

But campaigners say the application does not alert people to the scale of the hazards or how people living on the proposed site and in the surrounding area will be kept safe if the development goes ahead.

The purple area is the site of the old landfill

Chairman of campaign group Keep Cosmeston Green Michael Garland said: Residents of Cosmeston have probably had their health already affected by this.

I have deep concerns that if this site gets disrupted with development those hazards could become significant and more airborne.

There will be a choice for those who wish to buy a home at the development, but for people who live in the surrounding area will have no choice but to suffer the impact.

Residents have questioned whether the proposed houses will be worth anything at all if the land is found to be of significant danger.

Liberal Democrat MS candidate for Cardiff South and Penarth Alex Wilson compared the site in question to Cosmeston Country Park in Lavernock.

He said: The park includes sites that were used between 1964 and 1978 as landfill of household waste.

Campaigners and residents deeply concerned over plans to build 576 homes on contaminated land. Picture: Alex Seabrook

The area of interest that could help provide an insight to the type of pollution that can be expected is located at the corner of the north west paddock where the old refuse tip, the woodland and the old western spoil tip meet.

In 2019 we identified various locations in this area with heavy water contamination. Returning to the site the contaminated environment remains clearly visible.

We support house building, but we cant stand in the way and just let this proceed.

A spokeswoman for the Welsh Government said: The planning application for the residential development of land at Lower Cosmeston Farm, Penarth, is still subject to publicity and consultation enabling representations to be made to the Local Planning Authority.

How the new homes could be laid out (Image: Welsh Government/ Austin Smith Lord)

"The planning application is supported by numerous technical reports including one which details the ground conditions and refers to historic contamination and proposed mitigation. It will now be for the Vale of Glamorgan Council to consider the planning application and any representations made.

A spokesman for the Vale council said: The Council is currently considering a planning application for the development of this site by the landowner, Welsh Government.

"Any interested party can share their views on this matter by emailing planning@valeofglamorgan.gov.uk. All representations will be full considered along with any issues relating to pollution and contamination as part of the normal planning process.

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Penarth-Sully residents' worry over 'contaminated land' plan - Penarth Times

Last Wednesday, we saw the worst passions of the American republic storm through the doors of the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

For hours, people around the world watched as protestors transformed into rioters who ransacked various congressional offices, posed for photos on the House floor, and terrorized hundreds of congressmen and women, senators, staff, journalists, and Capitol Police.

One woman, a protestor and rioter from Arizona, was shot and killed by Capitol Police. Three others died due to medical emergencies, according to Washington Police Chief Robert Contee.

The march outflowed from a Stop the Steal rally held by President Donald Trump in the hours prior, decrying the results of the 2020 election and fueling various allegations of voter fraud and manipulation.

He urged his supporters at the rally to turn their attention to Congress, which was deliberating the final tally of the Electoral College votes.

What transpired at the Capitol Wednesday was something no one should tolerate in a liberal democracy. The ransacking of a seat of the federal government, by any force or group of individuals, is an act of aggression that should be prosecuted.

It was, no doubt, a result of demagoguery and a violent urging by Donald Trump.

There are many items of concern that my organization and I have broadly agreed with President Trump: on questioning the role of the World Health Organization early on in the pandemic, dismantling burdensome regulations that quash innovation, pushing for the safe and orderly opening of the economy after devastating coronavirus restrictions, and more.

At the same time, we have opposed the Trump administration when it was needed most: disastrous tariffs that raise prices for all consumers, drug pricing plans that will set back innovation while making drugs more expensive, and a federal vaping flavor ban that will deprive former smokers of the ability to choose a less harmful alternative.

Personally, I have opposed Trumps desire to severely restrict and reduce immigration. My family immigrated to the U.S. some 30 years ago, and we have enjoyed a much more fruitful life because of it.

But those policy arguments and disagreements are secondary to the very real threat of a violent parade of hysteria through the halls of the Capitol.

We advocate for ideas to improve society based on the rule of law and democratic order. We use the means of free expression, free assembly, and the right to petition our government to ensure that policies that help every consumer and every citizen will be the law of the land.

Seeing a mob trample into the primary seat of one of Americas branches of government achieves none of that, and should be rightly condemned.

Our decentralized republican democracy based on a time-honored Constitution, a system that is unique to the United States and has allowed for some of the most promising economic and social innovation in the world, was threatened. And we cannot excuse these actions in the slightest.

From this point forward, we must restore the rule of law and advocate for liberal democratic principles to advance the American project.

That President Trump should continue to serve out the last two weeks of his term, after this insurrection and rebellion in our nations capital, is unacceptable.

Whether it be through his removal from office by the invocation of the 25th Amendment by Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet, or articles of impeachment in the House and swift conviction by the Senate, something must be done to show to the world what happens when order and liberty are transgressed in a representative liberal democracy.

When the actions of certain individuals go too far, and when demagoguery threatens the very system that allows us to freely enjoy our liberty and pursue happiness how we see fit, that is an appropriate time to use the tools at our disposal to rectify injustice.

Let us hope justice conquers after the events of last week.

Yael Ossowski is deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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Ossowski Storming of Capitol a threat to republican democracy - Herald and News

Despite the vast numbers of classic Land Rover Defenders that have been coming in to the U.S., and the prices that they have been generating, the demand and the money being thrown at them does not seem to be abating. Instead, the Land Rover Defender Industrial Complex has only gained more shops specializing in Defender restoration and off-road gear installation, often to a money-no-object standard.

But even the Defenders that were offered in the U.S. officially are still generating plenty of interest from Land Rover enthusiasts, despite the availability of newly imported examples through the end of the 1995 production year.

In a few days, one of the earliest Defenders officially sold in the U.S. will cross the auction block when Bonhams offers a 1993 Land Rover Defender 110 NAS with just 80,000 miles on the clock at its Scottsdale sale.

Will this Defender reconfirm the values for North American models from the 1990s?

Bonhams

The 110 NAS, in case you're not familiar, was a special American-market model meant to whet the appetite of Land Rover buyers in the U.S. The 110 North American Specification model was effectively a fully loaded, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink, long-wheelbase, four-door Defender with an external roll cage, roof rack with basket, brush guards, and a 3.9-liter V8 paired with a five-speed manual transmission. It even has air conditioning, which was by no means a common option in the home country. Just 500 of these were sent to the U.S., and all were finished in a white exterior color, almost begging for UN letters on the doors. The NAS vehicles were also the first examples of the Defender model (after the Series Land Rovers) to be modified to U.S.-market specifications from the factory, which until that time had been left to various gray-market importers.

After the initial run of 110s in 1993, Land Rover introduced the Defender 90 in the States, now available in a greater variety of colors. But they were sold for just a few years, with Land Rover pulling them from sale in 1997. This meant that the total number of NAS Defenders in the U.S. (and Canada) was more or less locked for some time, until the earliest European-spec Defenders began hitting the 25-year mark and became eligible for importation. But this fact did not dilute the values and demand for NAS models, especially the white 110s.

Bonhams

The example that Bonhams will offer later this month is the 34th of that original run of 500, as its badge near its rear door shows, and it was built in June of 1992 as a 1993 model-year vehicle. The auction house informs that it was delivered new to Southern California and stayed with its original owner this whole time. So it'll be trading hands for the first time since delivery, having accumulated just 80,000 miles during that time. The Defender will be offered with its optional camping chairs, factory paraphernalia, owner's manual, and original spare keys.

"The bodywork is in beautiful condition, as is the original interior with the six, fold-down seats in the back," the auction house says. "The color-coded wheels are shot on beefy Michelin tires, giving the Defender a very purposeful look."

Bonhams

Bonhams estimates this Defender to bring between $60,000 and $90,000 on auction day, reflecting its moderate mileage and one-owner history. The somewhat liberal range perhaps reflects some uncertainly about just how badly collectors will want a 110 NAS model given the options available today, including importation, but it's clear that the one-owner history and climate-controlled garage residence place it into an elite category among existing 110 NAS models.

Visit the auction website for the full list of lots and auction schedule.

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This Land Rover Defender 110 NAS Is One of the First in the States - Autoweek

A common refrain one hears from both the left and right is that their foes are just cosplaying. The word is a Japanese portmanteau of costume and play, and originally referred to people dressing up as characters at comic book conventions. Now its used, more or less metaphorically, to mock anybody who seems lost in a fantasy world. Its cousin, performative, has become similarly popular as a word to dismiss actions being carried out purely for appearances sake.

This strikes me as strange, because the cosplay label is often applied precisely to the kinds of people who clearly are no longer playing around, and who are willing to make good on their pretensions. As we learn more about last weeks attack on the Capitol, the intensity of the violence and the seriousness of the participants murderous intent becomes ever clearer. This was not people cosplaying a violent mob it was a violent mob. One wonders who is really off in fantasy land: the people cracking skulls, or those insisting that the skull crackers arent really doing it, for some reason? It is time to acknowledge that fancy and imagination are doing serious political work for the far right.

There is some truth in the idea that these latter-day fascists are playing out an imaginary game. Some of them even wore outlandish costumes to storm the Capitol, determined to look the part of the marauding barbarian horde. This is not a new or minor part of political history. Karl Marx wrote in 1852 in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, reflecting on the coup that brought Napoleon III to power, that in epochs of revolutionary crisis men anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language.

With his deflating wit, Marx describes how the French revolutionaries of 1789 used Roman costume to invoke an air of historical tragedy; then their heirs in 1848 modelled themselves after their revolutionary forefathers, essentially cosplaying the cosplayers. For Marx, imagination supported the work of politics by transferring actions to a grander and more exciting scene. Once their revolution was accomplished, the bourgeoisie took off their togas and returned to their offices. Napoleon Bonaparte wrote in his diary: Imagination rules the world. The defect of our modern institutions is that they do not speak to the imagination.

A superficial glance at the movement that stormed the Capitol last week discovers the predominance of fantasy over reality. Many were adherents of the bizarre online cult of QAnon, which has concocted an increasingly baroque metaphysical world, totally impervious to empirical fact, around Trumps infallibility and ultimate victory. The imaginary basis of the storming of the Capitol comes straight from the pages of The Turner Diaries, a vile neo-Nazi novel written by the late William Luther Pierce, which envisions the mass lynching of journalists and politicians.

This is not a recent trend for the extreme right, either. In his 1985 book The Occult Roots of Nazism, the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke traces the mystical dreams of Aryan superiority and ultimate world conquest to crackpots and tiny millenarian sects in turn-of-the-century Germany and Austria who were disenchanted with the modern world. Many of the symbols and ideas they cooked up later became the basis for the pomp and pageantry of the SS. Like many of the weekend militia members and QAnon acolytes who showed up at the Capitol, what begins as mere eccentric hobbyism can turn sinister.

It must be admitted that the people Goodrick-Clarke describes in his book stealing off to the woods in outlandish druid outfits, performing made-up rituals are in fact quite silly. But perhaps its this very unseriousness, this retreat from the disappointments and defeats of real life, that provides the appeal of political fantasy. A similar process takes place in the extreme rights use of ironic memes and jokes that revel in their own absurdity: irony suspends the rules that usually govern peoples lives, allowing them to say and do things without really saying them, to engage in a kind of camp play-acting, until, of course, they feel comfortable really believing it, and drop the pretence. Online accounts with cartoon frog avatars traffic in racist or sexist memes that are nasty in content but also playful in spirit. It is possible to reassure oneself that mischief is meant rather than real harm.

The left and liberal reaction to this type of playing around is to get (justifiably) upset and insist on seriousness which unfortunately makes the playing around all the more fun and satisfying, because now it actually shocks the lame, hypocritical libs. The other response is to refuse to take this behaviour seriously, and to call it cosplay. A balance must be struck between penetrating the pathetic core of these fancies, and the way they are meant to create an air of mystery, grandeur and superiority, and taking seriously what their emergence means as both the symptom and cause of dangerous politics.

Perhaps Napoleon was right when he said that imagination rules the world. For some people, it seems like realisation of the fantasy of greatness, rather than anything lying behind the fantasy, is the entire point. The left should exercise imagination a little, too not to engage in similar delusions of grandeur, but to expand their horizons of what is possible. While keeping sight of the facts on the ground, this should be a reminder that reality is more mutable than it seems. If the right has fantasised itself into almost realising a dystopia, perhaps the left can stand to be a little more utopian, and imagine the kind of world where these forces would finally be vanquished.

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Costumes at the Capitol can't disguise the ugly truth of far-right violence - The Guardian

TERRE HAUTE After a flurry of last-minute court orders, hours of uncertainty and one final plea to reconsider her competency, Lisa Montgomery became the first woman executed by the federal government in 67 years early Wednesday.

Montgomery, 52, was executed by lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute. Her time of death was 1:31 a.m., more than seven hours after her originally scheduled time of execution.

As both sides filed appeal after appeal to tip the scales in their favor, Montgomery spent her final moments in a cell within just steps away from the execution chamber.

As a curtain was raised in the execution chamber, Montgomery looked momentarily bewildered as she glanced at journalists peering at her from behind thick glass in the observation room, according to the Associated Press. At the start of the execution process, an executioner standing over Montgomery's shoulder leaned over, gently removed her face mask and asked if she had any last words,

Montgomery responded with a quiet "no." She said nothing else, the AP reported.

She tapped her fingers nervously for several seconds, a heart-shaped tattoo on her thumb, but she otherwise showed no signs of distress, and quickly closed her eyes, the AP reported.

The pentobarbital lethal injection began to flow through IVs into both of Montgomery's arms at about 1:18 a.m. She licked her lips and briefly gasped, the AP reported. A few minutes later, her midsection briefly throbbed.

At 1:30 a.m., an official in black gloves with a stethoscope walked into the room, listened to her heart and chest, then walked out, the AP reported. She was pronounced dead a minute later.

The legal battles

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Montgomerys execution with a pair of orders issued just before midnight.

The high court lifted a stay of execution put in place by U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and rejected a final stay application from Montgomery's lawyers.

Kelley Henry, Montgomery's federal public defender, said the federal government violated the Constitution, federal law and its own regulation to put her client to death.

The craven bloodlust of a failed administration was on full display tonight. Everyone who participated in the execution of Lisa Montgomery should feel shame," she said in a statement provided to IndyStar just after midnight.

Henry reiterated her arguments that Montgomery endured severe physical and sexual abuse beginning in her childhood, and that she suffered from serious mental illness.

"Our Constitution forbids the execution of a person who is unable to rationally understand her execution," Henry said. "The current administration knows this. And they killed her anyway."

Tuesdays legal battles began when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit declined to stay her execution less than 24 hours after a federal judge in Indiana granted a stay in her execution over concerns about her deteriorating mental health.

On Tuesday afternoon a judge with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit granted another stay, throwing Montgomery's execution further into question.

Around 8 p.m., the high court lifted the stay issued by the U.S.Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, but the Eighth Circuit stay remained in place until the near-midnight decisions by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court repeatedly split along partisan lines, with liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan ruling in ways that would have granted Montgomery a reprieve.

Her attorneys have said Montgomery endured severe physical and sexual abuse beginning in her childhood, and that she suffers from serious mental illness.

"And Lisa was much more than the tragic crime she committed, a crime for which she felt deep remorse before she lost all touch with reality in the days before her execution," Henry said. "Lisa was also much more than the horrors inflicted upon her, the sexual violence and abuse she endured at the hands of those who were supposed to love, nurture and protect her."

In 2004, Montgomery drove from her Melvern, Kansas, farmhouse to the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore under the guise of adopting a rat terrier puppy from Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a 23-year-old dog breeder. She strangled Stinnett with a rope before performing a crude cesarean and fleeing with the baby.

Stinnett's family did not address the media following Montgomery's execution.

Montgomery, the lone woman on death row, is just the third woman executed by the federal government since 1900.

She joins Bonnie Brown Heady who was put to death in a gas chamber in December 1953 after for her role in the kidnapping and murder a multi-millionaire auto dealers 6-year-old son; and Ethel Rosenberg who was executed in June 1953 for trying to deliver war secrets to the Soviet Union.

Women have accounted for less than 4% of the nearly 16,000 executions carried out in the United States since the 1600s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The 11th execution

Montgomery is the first woman put to death by the federal government since 1953, but the 11th person put to death by the U.S. in the last seven months.

The blitz of 2020 executions under President Donald Trumps administration began in July when Daniel Lewis Lee became the first federal inmate to be executed since 2003, and ended in December with the deaths of Brandon Bernard and Alfred Bourgeois on consecutive days. Two more men are scheduled to be put to death this week.

All 11 inmates have been killed by lethal injection.

Like the executions before hers, anti-death penalty protesters made their presence known outside the Terre Haute penitentiary that houses federal death row before Montgomery's scheduled execution time.

With lawn chairs in tow in anticipation of a long night, members of the Terre Haute Death Penalty Resistance and other local demonstrators held signs and signaled to passing cars from the parking lot of a Dollar General store across the street from the main entrance of the federal prison.

The frustration at the federal government's continued pursuit of the death penalty, as well as the back-and-forth nature of Tuesday court proceedings, was palpable among the protestors.

"I think about Lisa all the time. I think about the fact that they brought her here and how terrified she must be because she doesn't know what's happening," said Karen Land of Indianapolis.

Land, who held a sign that read "STOP STATE KILLING," said she got involved with Terre Haute Death Penalty Resistance after a friend of hers who served as spiritual adviser for Orlando Hall during his Nov. 19 execution tested positive for coronavirus soon after.

Karen Burkhart of Plainfield called the death penalty a "violation of the right to life," and said those who wish to see it abolished must be as aggressive as the federal government has been in its efforts to carry it out.

"It's about the human rights that we have, and no one should take that away," she said. "It's a mistake for the government to kill citizens of its own country."

Associated Press reporter Michael Tarm contributed to this story.

Topeka Capital-Journal reporter Rafael Garcia contributed to this story.

See the article here:

Lisa Montgomery executed in Terre Haute, first woman put to death by U.S. in 67 years - South Bend Tribune