Bill to allow Sunday hunting on SC-owned lands gets hearing
March 27, 2022 at 11:22 am EDTByThe Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A bill that would allow hunting on Sundays in wildlife management areas run by the state of South Carolina is getting a hearing on Tuesday.
South Carolina is one of only a few states that restrict hunting on Sundays, a prohibition going back to blue laws at the founding of the United States that banned many activities on what early churchgoers considered a day a rest.
Sunday hunting on private land has only been allowed since a constitutional amendment protecting the right to hunt and fish was approved by voters in 2010, The State newspaper reported.
After four days of alliance building, emotional interactions with refugees and stirring words about the need to fight for democracy, one sentence that President Joe Biden appeared to tack on to the end of his final speech in Polandthreatened to overshadow all he hadachieved as he deals with the most significant foreign policy crisis of his presidency.
“For God’s sake,” Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin, “this man cannot remain in power.”
Biden’s aides quickly tried to quickly walk it back, insisting the president was not promoting regime change when he spoke to a packed courtyard in the Royal Castle in Warsaw Saturday.
The war has come with a terrible human cost, killing thousands on both sides, including civilians, while turning millions into refugees and cities into bombed-out shells of their former selves.
The biggest uncertainty remains how the war will end, and what Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to walk away from a disastrous military confrontation that has strangled his country’s economy while dealing a serious blow to the prestige of Russia’s military.
The Dalai Lama is among 16 Nobel Peace Prize laureates who jointly issued an open letter Saturday calling for the immediate end of the attack on Ukraine and an explicit vow from both Russia and NATO forces that nuclear weapons of any kind will not be used as part of this conflict or any other.
“We reject war and nuclear weapons,” the letter declares. “We call on all our fellow citizens of the world to join us in protecting our planet, home for all of us, from those who threaten to destroy it.”
Backed by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), which won the Nobel in 1985, and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), awarded the prize for similar advocacy in 2017, the letter was also signed by ten other individual winners — including Jody Williams, Kailash Satyarthi, and Óscar Arias Sánchez — as well as the International Peace Bureau, which won the award in 1910, the American Friends Service Committee (1947), and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs (1995).
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“The invasion of Ukraine has created a humanitarian disaster for its people,” the letter continues. “The entire world is facing the greatest threat in history: a large-scale nuclear war, capable of destroying our civilization and causing vast ecological damage across the Earth.”
The open letter calls for an immediate ceasefire agreement and the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine. After over a month of fighting, thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, according to official figures, and millions of refugees have fled across the Ukraine border to neighboring countries while millions more have been displaced internally within the country.
Concern over the possible use of nuclear weapons has been heightened throughout the conflict after Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 27 ordered his military to put its nuclear forces on “special alert” — a move that was immediately condemned as “unacceptable and reckless” by the anti-nuclear group Global Zero.
Since then there has been growing worry that Putin could resort to the use of so-called “tactical” nukes, lower-yield weapons that some have tried to justify as less dangerous or destructive than their larger counterparts. Such arguments, as Common Dreamsreported earlier this week, have been roundly rejected.
Anyone suggesting use of even a “small” nuclear weapon, wrote Ploughshares Fund president Joe Circionne this week has “lost touch with the reality of nuclear war. Even the smallest conceivable nuclear blast would be many times more powerful than the largest conventional bomb.”
In addition to an end of the war and a vocal promise that nuclear weapons would not be used during the conflict in Ukraine, the open letter issued Saturday by the Nobel laureates calls for all countries of the world “to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to ensure that we never again face a similar moment of nuclear danger.”
The letter concludes, “It is either the end of nuclear weapons, or the end of us.”
The full text of the letter and the list of lead signatories — which can be endorsed by anyone on the Avaaz page — follows:
We reject war and nuclear weapons. We call on all our fellow citizens of the world to join us in protecting our planet, home for all of us, from those who threaten to destroy it.
The invasion of Ukraine has created a humanitarian disaster for its people. The entire world is facing the greatest threat in history: a large-scale nuclear war, capable of destroying our civilization and causing vast ecological damage across the Earth.
We call for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of all Russian military forces from Ukraine, and for all possible efforts at dialogue to prevent this ultimate disaster.
We call on Russia and NATO to explicitly renounce any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict, and we call on all countries to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to ensure that we never again face a similar moment of nuclear danger.
The time to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons is now. It is the only way to guarantee that the inhabitants of the planet will be safe from this existential threat.
It is either the end of nuclear weapons, or the end of us.
We reject governance through imposition and threats, and we advocate for dialogue, coexistence and justice.
A world without nuclear weapons is necessary and possible, and together we will build it. It is urgent that we give peace a chance.
———————————-
Signatories list of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates:
His Holiness The Dalai Lama (1989) International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1985) International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (2017) Juan Manuel Santos (2016) Kailash Satyarthi (2014) Leymah Gbowee (2011) Tawakkul Karman (2011) Muhammad Yunus (2006) David Trimble (1998) Jody Williams (1997) Jose Ramos-Horta (1996) Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs (1995) Óscar Arias Sánchez (1987) Lech Walesa (1983) American Friends Service Committee (1947) International Peace Bureau (1910)
Bludgeoned raccoons are among the victims of the “shocking brutality” of the U.S. trapping industry, an undercover investigation has found.
Trapping is a traditional form of hunting, where traps are laid out for the purpose of catching certain animals. It is carried out for a variety of reasons, with fur being the main one.
However, it can also be used as a form of recreation, or for getting rid of pests.
Many countries have banned trapping altogether, or the use of certain traps. For example, trappers often use conibear traps, which are laid out on the ground and snap up to suffocate and break the victim’s…
A Ministry of Natural Resources enforcement truck.PHOTO BY MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES/Windsor Star
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It was a costly safari for an Amherstburg man who was fined $6,500 by the Ontario Court of Justice after he was caught illegally hunting in Elgin County.
At a case heard remotely by Justice of the Peace Terry Steenson earlier this month in St. Thomas, William Gatto pleaded guilty to hunting without a licence and failing to produce his possession and acquisition firearms licence while hunting with a gun.
Gatto was also placed on probation for two years, prohibited from possessing hunting equipment or wildlife and being in the presence of anyone who…
Rocker Ted Nugent advocates at the state Capitol Wednesday for a package of Republican gun and hunting bills, including one that would allow Wisconsin residents to carry a concealed firearm without a license.MITCHELL SCHMIDT, STATE JOURNAL
Rocker and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent joined Republican lawmakers at the state Capitol Wednesday to advocate for a package of GOP-authored bills that would, among other measures, allow residents to carry a concealed firearm without a license.
Nugent, an avid hunter, spoke alongside close to two dozen Republican lawmakers in the Assembly chamber in favor of the legislative package dubbed the Wisconsin Sporting Freedom Package, which proponents say is meant to simplify regulations and increase access to the state’s natural resources.
“Hunting is essential and any regulation that doesn’t deal…
Sandhill cranes, beautiful birds that mate for life, return to Wisconsin this month after wintering in Florida. Their summer home might not be safe for much longer.
Hunters want state lawmakers to add sandhill cranes to Wisconsin’s list of game animals. The last time it was open season on sandhill cranes a century ago, humans drove the birds nearly to extinction in the eastern half of the United States. Let’s not make the same mistake again.
Too much hunting and destruction of habitat in the 18th and 19th centuries almost wiped out sandhill cranes. By 1936, only about a dozen breeding pairs were left in Wisconsin. The bird had died off in Iowa, Indiana, Ohio and some other states.
Decades of conservation work followed, and sandhill cranes rebounded. Today, more than 90,000 live east…
Cage-free chickens walk in a fenced pasture at an organic farm near Waukon, Iowa, on Oct. 21, 2015. A lethal type of bird flu has bombarded poultry farms across the country recently, but there doesn’t appear to be any major risk for humans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Why it matters:Thebird fluis a major virus that’s running through the bird population in the U.S. Any indication of bird-to-human transmission could lead to sickness and death.
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