Oh No, They’ve Come Up With Another Generation Label


Joe Pinsker

The cutoff for being born into Generation X was about 1980, the cutoff for Generation Y (a.k.a. the Millennials) was about 1996, and the cutoff for Generation Z was about 2010. What should the next batch of babies be called—what comes after Z?

© Spencer Weiner / Getty

Alpha, apparently. That’s the (Greek) letter that the unofficial namers of generations—marketers, researchers, cultural commentators, and the like—have affixed to Gen Z’s successors, the oldest of whom are on the cusp of turning 10. The Generation Alpha label, if it lasts, follows the roughly 15-year cycle of generational delineations. Those delineations keep coming, even as, because of a variety of demographic factors, they seem to be getting less and less meaningful as a way of segmenting the population; in recent decades, there hasn’t been a clear-cut demographic development, like the postwar baby boom, to define a generation around, so the dividing lines are pretty arbitrary. How much do members of this new generation, or any generation, really have in common?


[Read: Generations are an invention—here’s how they came to be]

A picture of Generation Alpha, if a blurry one, is starting to emerge. In various articles about its members, analysts have stated that they are or will grow up to be the best-educated generation ever, the most technologically immersed, the wealthiest, and the generation more likely than any in the past century to spend some or all of their childhood in living arrangements without both of their biological parents. These are all notable features, but some of them are broad and fairly low-stakes observations, given that the global population has been getting richer, better educated, and more exposed to digital technology for a while now.

Some marketers and consultants who analyze generations have tried to get more specific. One suggested that Generation Alpha might be particularly impatient because they’ll be used to technology fulfilling their desires from an early age. And a branding agency recently polled a bunch of 7-to-9-year-olds on a wide range of mostly nondivisive issues (such as the importance of “making sure everyone has enough food to eat”) and arrived at the conclusion that Generation Alpha “cares more about all issues than their Millennial and Baby Boomer [predecessors] did when they were kids, or even than they do now.”

Many of these takeaways seem premature, or at least overeager. “They’re still kids,” says Dan Woodman, a sociology professor at the University of Melbourne who studies generational labels. “A lot of things we attach to a generation are around the way they start to think about politics, the way they engage with the culture, and [whether they] are a wellspring of new social movements.” The narrative of a generation, he told me, “starts to get filled in with some meaningful—maybe not correct, but at least substantial—content probably more when they start to enter their teens.”

Who Is Generation Alpha?

The term Generation Alpha is usually credited to Mark McCrindle, a generational researcher in Australia who runs a consulting agency. McCrindle told me that the name originated from an online survey he ran in 2008 that yielded a slew of now-discarded monikers, many of which focused on technology (the “Onliners,” “Generation Surf,” the “Technos”) or gave the next round of humans the burden of undoing the damage done by the last (the “Regeneration,” “Generation Hope,” the “Saviors,” “Generation Y-not”).

One popular option from the survey was “Generation A,” but, McCrindle told me in an email, he thought the name for a cohort that would shape the future shouldn’t “be labelled by going back to the beginning.” So once the Latin alphabet was exhausted, he hopped over to the Greek one—“the start of something new.”

A consensus has formed around Generation Alpha, but it may be a temporary one. The generic “Generation [Letter]” format began with Generation X. “It was meant to be a placeholder for something a bit uncertain or mysterious, almost like X in some algebraic equation,” Woodman told me. Generation Y followed, though it was usurped, at least in the U.S., by Millennials; nothing has overthrown Generation Z. Placeholder names, in a way, make generational generalizations easier. “They’re almost like empty labels that you can put anything in,” Woodman said. He thinks Generation Alpha will stick for at least a little while, but can also see how it might get replaced by something “a little more descriptive.”

The history of generational labeling is littered with names that gained some traction, but not enough. Gen X has been referred to as “Baby Busters,” the “slacker generation,” “latchkey kids,” and the “MTV Generation,” though the placeholder won out. The same, so far, has been the case for Gen Z, whose proposed alternate names include “iGeneration,” the “Homeland Generation,” “Multi-Gen,” “Post Gen,” and the “Pluralistic Generation.”

[Read: How generations get their names]

For researchers and consultants, picking a winning name and becoming an authority on a particular generation can be highly lucrative. “It’s worth a heap of money,” Woodman said. “One of the things we do with generational labels is make claims about how different this cohort is—they're so different, almost alien in their attitudes, that you need to pay some experts to come in and explain them to you.” For instance, Neil Howe, one of the coiners of Millennials some 30 years ago, has gone on to make a career out of consulting, speaking, and writing about generations.

Of course, the enthusiasm about naming generations isn’t just among marketers and consultants. People “do love generations talk,” Woodman said. They’re “drawn to using these labels to pin down something they intuitively feel about young or old people these days.” He thinks that this desire is strong when the world is perceived to be changing rapidly—people want to be able to identify their position amid the flux.

Unfortunately, though, “generations talk” can often devolve into stereotyping, as generational labels necessarily lump together people with a wide variety of experiences. “We'd probably bristle if we did with gender or race what we still seem to get away with with generations,” Woodman said.

Generalizing is additionally unwise because the process of delineating generations is hardly scientific. To be sure, today’s coexisting cohorts have had meaningfully different experiences—Baby Boomers and Millennials, for instance, came of age in eras with markedly different technologies and paradigms of education and work. But, Woodman noted, shifts involving “generational factors” like these are usually gradual, and don’t vary drastically from one year to the next.

“There’s a continuous stream of people emerging in a population. How do we draw the line between the end of one cohort and the beginning of another?” said Rick Settersten, a professor of human development and family sciences at Oregon State University. “At some point, it’s an arbitrary game.”

In some regards, the game is more arbitrary now than it used to be. Take the Baby Boomers, for example. “We can see them more easily in the population because there’s a fertility boom in 1946 right after World War II, which tails off by about 1964,” Settersten told me.

The moderately logical boundaries of the Boomer generation set a precedent that in some ways led to the less logical boundaries for the generations that followed. If the final birth year for Boomers is 1964, counting out 15 more years gets you to the Gen X–Millennial border, and another 15 or so gets you to the Millennial–Gen Z border. But even though this is an orderly way of doing things, big societal changes don’t always follow neat 15-year increments.

For instance, the youngest Millennials, born in 1996, might have more in common with the oldest Gen Zers, born in 1997, than the oldest Millennials, born in 1981; to name just one difference, many children of the late ‘90s grew up with the internet, while the 1981 babies spent most of their childhoods without it. (This sort of tension has birthed some niche generational labels for those born on the outer edge of their cohort, such as “Xennials.”) Even the Baby Boomer label—which is grounded in a measurable fertility trend—doesn’t entirely make sense, Settersten pointed out, as some of the oldest Boomers are the parents of some of the youngest ones.

Further, Millennials are often considered the children of Boomers, and Gen Zers are often considered Gen Xers’ children. But these sorts of one-to-one matchups of parents and children become less valid as the average age at which parents have their first child has gotten higher. The age range of first-time mothers—whether they are 21, or 31, or 41—“has widened dramatically,” Settersten wrote in an email. “They share a life event—they all had first births at the same time—but they potentially come from different ‘generations.’” (He put the term in scare quotes to note that generations are essentially social constructs.) Woodman raised this point about other life milestones, such as leaving one’s childhood home, starting a committed relationship, and purchasing a house. “The life course isn’t as synchronized as it once was, where everyone does stuff at the same time,” he said.

That means that, from here on out, even more diversity of human experience has to be crammed into broad generational labels. Woodman said that “attach[ing] attributes to an entire group, like optimistic or pessimistic or entitled, snowflakey, resilient, or whatever, has always been a stretch, but it’ll probably get even less helpful as time goes on.”

Settersten made a similar point: “It probably has gotten more difficult to distinguish one generation from another, especially if you can’t point to meaningful things that might define it, like a baby boom or bust; or a historical event like the Great Recession; or maybe the emergence of some new technology, if we had reason to believe that it would mark [people] as a distinct group.”

The march through the Greek alphabet may continue anyway. In 2024, by McCrindle’s definition, the last of Generation Alpha will be born, making way for Generation Beta, whose birth years will span from 2025 to 2039. “If the nomenclature sticks, then we will afterwards have Generation Gamma and Generation Delta,” McCrindle said. Those placeholder names stand a good chance of catching on—so long as nothing important and generation-defining happens in the next half century, of course.

Internet Shutdowns Become a Favorite Tool of Governments: 'It's Like We Suddenly Went Blind

PONNAGYUN, Myanmar—Last June, the Myanmar subsidiary of telecom Telenor Group received an urgent government order it was told it must not disclose. Turn off the internet in nine townships. 

© nyunt win/EPA/Shutterstock

Hans Martin, a senior executive at the Norwegian company, saw red flags. He said Myanmar’s justification—that people were using the internet to “coordinate illegal activities”—was vague, and no end-date was given. The telecom said it had little legal basis to refuse the order, and complied.


Nearly 250 days later, western Myanmar has become the site of one of the longest internet shutdowns documented anywhere in the world.

From autocratic Iran to democratic India, governments are cutting people off from the global web with growing frequency and little scrutiny. Parts or all of the internet were shut down at least 213 times in 33 countries last year, the most ever recorded, according to Access Now, a nonprofit that advocates for a free internet and has monitored the practice for a decade. The shutdowns were used to stop protests, censor speeches, control elections and silence people, human-rights advocates said.

Pakistan tailored shutdowns to isolate and control specific neighborhoods, while Iraq automated internet curfews at certain times of the day. Venezuela blocked social media apps, such as Facebook and Twitter. Bangladesh throttled mobile data speeds to 2G levels, making it impossible to share photographs, watch videos or even load most websites.

“What I’m seeing is a definite increase in the shutting down of the internet for political reasons,” said David Kaye, the United Nations’ special rapporteur for the protection of free expression, who monitors rights violations across the globe and reports to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council.

Dozens of interviews with telecom officials, diplomats, researchers and rights advocates revealed how very little stands in the way of governments that want to block the internet, even for long periods.

No global agreements explicitly cover internet freedoms, though the right to information is guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a nonbinding set of principles adopted by the U.N. Telecom companies, which rely on government licenses and agree to follow a nation’s laws, rarely push back. Those that try to ask questions or negotiate find they don’t have much leverage.

Myanmar’s telecom ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Across the world, hundreds of companies offer access to the internet, including private-sector multinationals and state-owned firms. Their control over who can do what online makes them valuable to governments. The companies can pinpoint user locations, block apps and websites, and turn off access within minutes.

Companies emerging as prominent players in markets across Africa, Asia and the Middle East—including India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd., Malaysia’s Axiata Group Bhd. and Qatar’s Ooredoo QPSC—disclose little information about how they handle government orders or when and why they turn the internet off. The companies didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Only a few telecom firms publish data on the number of government requests they receive to intercept messages, shut down networks, restrict content and share user details. Even those reports leave out orders or actions that authorities want to keep secret.

“We’re often restricted by law to disclose the details or acknowledge any requests received,” said Laura Okkonen, the senior human-rights manager for U.K.-based Vodafone Group PLC. “We have, as a company, tried to be as transparent as legally possible.”

In the U.S., major telecommunications companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. publish reports disclosing the number and nature of demands they receive from government and law-enforcement bodies. These can include subpoenas for subscriber information, court orders for wiretaps, emergency requests for information and in some cases rough estimates of National Security Letters issued by the FBI.

To uncover or confirm shutdowns that aren’t disclosed, some internet monitoring groups rely on diagnostic tools that measure changes in network activity. Access Now and U.K.-based NetBlocks track dips in network data to call attention to disruptions, such as in Venezuela and Iran in recent months.

After Iran ordered a shutdown in November, a research lab in California, the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis, ran tests measuring connectivity. It produced a detailed sequence of the weeklong blackout, including how devices were severed from the global internet, though users could visit Iranian websites, which are largely government controlled.

The first time it’s known that a government ordered a nationwide internet blackout was Jan. 28, 2011. Internet trackers call it a turning point. The popular revolts of the Arab Spring were spreading to Egypt, and protests against then-President Hosni Mubarak were growing. Twitter, Facebook and messaging apps were being widely used to share information and coordinate protests. The government ordered all internet providers to disconnect, and almost immediately, 80 million people were offline.

After services were out, soldiers armed with machine guns barged into the office of Mobinil—majority owned by French telecom company Orange SA—and demanded that they blast out a text message praising the president’s glory, according to Yves Nissim, a corporate social responsibility officer at Orange. Staff sent out the message, at gunpoint, but insisted that it be attributed to the army.

“This was just unheard of before,” Mr. Nissim said. “We decided after that we couldn’t face this alone.”

Over the next two years, seven multinational telecom companies, including Orange, Telenor and Vodafone, formed a group to compare their experiences and align arguments used to negotiate with authorities. They said they established standards to disclose government requests, and that they have made some orders less severe through negotiations.

But the practice is more widespread than ever. On Nov. 16, Iran switched the entire nation offline as authorities carried out a deadly crackdown on antigovernment protesters. Iraq did the same in October, and again a few weeks later. Sudan did it in June. Zimbabwe in January 2019.

India’s government has faced criticism for blocking the internet in Kashmir after its decision in August to end the region’s partially autonomous status. Officials argue the move is required for public security, which they said trumps the right to internet access. Critics said the shutdown is aimed at blocking protesters.

India’s Supreme Court ruled in January that the blackout was unconstitutional. Authorities have restored limited fixed-line services while leaving mobile data and social media cut off.

“India is a swing state in the future of democratic governance of the internet,” said Adrian Shahbaz, research director for technology and democracy at Freedom House, a U.S.-based human rights group. “When a massive democracy like India resorts to such a blunt tool, it normalizes the approach of shutting down the internet.”

In Myanmar, the internet only became widespread over the past five years, after the country’s telecom sector opened up as part of a transition from military rule toward democracy. Mobile towers sprang up across the countryside, and the price of SIM cards—the chips that connect phones to a mobile network—dropped from about $250 to $1.50 almost overnight.

In rural Ponnagyun, in the western state of Rakhine, residents said the internet’s arrival had just started to transform their impoverished communities. E-commerce and digital services such as money transfers were trickling in, and travel operators and farmers had adopted new ways of working.

San Naing, a 40-year-old rice farmer, said he could communicate with buyers more efficiently, send them photographs and arrange large deliveries. Since the shutdown, he has returned to his old practice of bringing huge hauls of rice to the nearest town by boat, hoping to unload it at the market. “It’s like we suddenly went blind,” he said.

In this part of the country, Myanmar’s military, which has been widely criticized for its violent operations against the country’s many insurgent groups, is fighting a group of ethnic rebels called the Arakan Army. Clashes intensified in early 2019 and surged again in recent weeks.

The shutdown affects areas that are home to both Rakhine Buddhists and a few hundred thousand Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority. Myanmar is facing genocide allegations at the U.N.’s top court after military operations in 2017 forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.

It was after hours on June 20 when the Myanmar subsidiary of Telenor, Norway’s state-owned telecom firm, received the government’s email. It had until 10 p.m. the next day to turn off the internet in nine townships, including Ponnagyun, according to Mr. Martin, Telenor’s chief corporate affairs officer in Myanmar.

The order, parts of which were read to the Journal, cites the country’s telecommunications law, which allows the government to suspend services “when an emergency situation arises.”

The company’s regulatory officer had already begun quiet preparations after a heads-up from a government source a few days earlier, according to the company’s head of technology operations, Abdur Raihan. Over two days, a small team of engineers identified the towers whose antennae transmit signals into the relevant townships. An engineer wrote a piece of code that would instantly disable the antennae, Mr. Raihan said.

Mr. Martin said his first thought on the morning after the order arrived was that obeying it could set a bad precedent, signaling to authorities that they would face little resistance if they tried to do the same elsewhere. The Arakan Army is only one of more than 20 armed groups in Myanmar, which is home to one of the world’s longest and most complex civil wars.

The company’s legal and sustainability officers weighed in with concerns that the order was too open-ended and might disproportionately affect civilians. Telenor representatives communicated with the telecom ministry several times throughout the day, pressing for details on why the shutdown was necessary and how long it would last. They were told the government had nothing to add.

Despite its concerns, Telenor decided to comply because the company’s lawyers found the order to be legal, Mr. Martin said. But it told a top bureaucrat in the telecom ministry, Soe Thein, that the company would alert customers with a text message and a public statement. Mr. Thein was clearly displeased, according to Telenor, but didn’t try to forbid it.

At 10 p.m., service went down. Telenor customers’ mobile phones in the blackout zone lit up with a message saying the government had ordered the disruption, and service would be restored “as soon as possible.”

The government order was also addressed to the country’s three other telecom providers—state-owned Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications, state-controlled MyTel and Qatar-based Ooredoo—who also complied. The companies didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In September, the government lifted restrictions in five townships, while four remained offline. In early February, the government reimposed the blackout in the five townships, citing “security requirements and public interest,” Telenor said.

Locals said that within days of the renewed blackout a major offensive against the rebels was under way in the region. On Feb. 18, the U.N. expressed grave concern over a surge in civilian casualties and urged the government to end the internet shutdown.

Write to Feliz Solomon at feliz.solomon@wsj.com

A heat wave melted 20% of an Antarctic island's snow in only 9 days

A heat wave this month in Antarctica sent temperatures soaring into the mid- to high-60s across northern portions of the normally frigid continent. 

Surprisingly, the warmth melted about 20% of an Antarctic island's snow in only nine days, according to newly released images from NASA, leaving behind ponds of melted water where the snow had been.

"I haven’t seen melt ponds develop this quickly in Antarctica," said Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College in Massachusetts, in a statement. “You see these kinds of melt events in Alaska and Greenland, but not usually in Antarctica.” 

Pelto said that during the heat wave, which peaked from Feb. 6 to 11, snowpack on Eagle Island melted 4 inches. This means that about 20% of seasonal snow in the region melted in this one event on Eagle Island, Pelto said.

Bye-bye iceberg: Iceberg twice the size of Washington, D.C., breaks off Pine Island glacier in Antarctica

He added that such rapid melting is caused by sustained high temperatures significantly above freezing. Such persistent warmth was not typical in Antarctica until this century, but it has become more common in recent years, NASA said.

The temperature peaked at 64.9 degrees Fahrenheit at Argentina’s Esperanza Base on Feb. 6, which was Antarctica's warmest temperature on record. A reading of 69.3 degrees was measured a few days later at a research station on Seymour Island, on Feb. 9, but that reading has not yet been officially verified.

This February heatwave was the third major melt event of the 2019-2020 summer, following warm spells in November 2019 and January 2020. "If you think about this one event in February, it isn’t that significant,” said Pelto. “It’s more significant that these events are coming more frequently." 

It's been a busy summer for climate news in the world's coldest continent. In addition to the record warmth, an iceberg twice the size of Washington, D.C., broke off a glacier there. Also, scientists reported that the continent's "Doomsday glacier" is melting from below because of unusually warm water.

Doomsday approaching? Warm water discovered beneath Antarctica's 'doomsday' glacier, scientists say

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A heat wave melted 20% of an Antarctic island's snow in only 9 days

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/antarcticas-thwaites-glacier-has-got.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/antarctica-shock-bizarre-heat-source.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/its-t-shirt-weather-in-antarctica-as.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-antarctica-factor-model.html

Koala Saved From Wildfires Won't Stop Snuggling His Rescuers

Caitlin Jill Anders

© Bill BlairBill Blair was capturing drone footage of the burnt terrain after wildfires raged through Australia when he suddenly spotted someone in need of help. Huddled at the base of a tree on Kangaroo Island was a little baby koala, all alone and so confused. Blair had been on his way back to his car when he noticed the little guy, and he immediately knew there was no way he could leave him behind.

© Bill Blair“I remembered I was told when I arrived if I come across a koala at the base of a tree, it means it's got nothing left in the tank and needs help, toss something over it like a blanket or a shirt as it will calm it down,” Blair told The Dodo. “So I took off my shirt and placed it over the koala, picked him up and carried him back to the car with the drone in the other hand.”

The koala wasn’t afraid as Blair approached him and scooped him up, and seemed to know that Blair was there to help him. All four of his tiny paws were burned, and it was a miracle he’d been able to survive on his own.

© Bill BlairAfter loading the koala into his car, still wrapped up in his shirt, Blair started driving toward the makeshift koala hospital that had been set up on the island. He hadn’t been driving for very long when suddenly the koala popped his head out of the shirt, watched Blair for a bit and then decided to have a look around.

© Bill Blair“Slowly he climbed out of my hat he was sitting in next to me and began exploring around the car, lots of looking out the window like a child,” Blair said. “Then when relaxed enough he came over and after climbing on the seat backs for a while, settled on my seat back just next to my shoulder and cuddled up.”

The little koala stayed that way for the rest of the car ride, all snuggled up next to Blair, so thankful to his rescuer for saving his life.

© Bill BlairWhen the pair finally arrived at the hospital, Blair passed the koala off to the team so they could give him the care he needed — but both Blair and the koala were definitely reluctant to say goodbye.

“I think he seemed relieved I found him and certainly showed affection towards me,” Blair said. “He didn't want to leave me when I passed him over to the military nurse.”

© Bill BlairLuckily the orphaned koala was able to get the care and attention he needed to eventually be released back into the wild where he belongs, but there’s no doubt he’ll never forget the kind man who noticed him and took the time to help, just like so many other people across Australia.

“They are doing an amazing job there, koalas and kangaroos were being brought in every day by locals,” Blair said. “To see all these people working together to help these animals was truly amazing. I'm so glad I could be involved in a small way.”

If you’d like to help the animals affected by the fires in Australia, you can donate to WIRES.

Konrad Lorenz - Imprinting | Simply Psychology
Lorenz (1935) investigated the mechanisms of imprinting, where some species of animals form an attachment to the first large moving object that they meet.

Konrad Lorenz | Austrian zoologist | Britannica
 Konrad Lorenz, (born Nov. ... 27, 1989, Altenburg), Austrian zoologist, founder of modern ethology, the study of animal behaviour by means of comparative zoological methods. ... He shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1973 with the animal behaviourists Karl von Frisch and ...

Konrad Lorenz - Biographical - NobelPrize.orgKonrad Lorenz. Biographical. I consider early childhood events as most essential to a man's scientific and philosophical development. I grew up in the large ...

As Domestic Terrorists Outpace Jihadists, New U.S. Law Is Debated

When the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness issued its terrorism threat assessment for 2020 last week, it noted a marked shift. 

© Jim Wilson/The New York Times Mourners in August after a mass shooting in El Paso killed 22 people. Proponents of a domestic terrorism law argue that it would streamline and clarify the patchwork of charges now used against homegrown extremists.

The threat level from violent, homegrown extremists, and specifically white supremacists, was marked in red as the top category: “High.” The threat from the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and their ilk was demoted to third, in green: “Low.”

Terrorism experts believe that holds true for the entire United States.

“In the U.S., more people are killed by far-right extremists than by those who are adherents to Islamist extremism,” said Mary McCord, a Georgetown University law professor and a former senior Justice Department official for national security. Her comments came at a discussion last week at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, which commemorates victims of the most notorious attack by international terrorists on American soil.

© Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times The F.B.I. director Christopher Wray told a House committee that “racially motivated violent extremism” was equal to the threat from the Islamic State.

Even as the menace from homegrown extremists grows more explicit, however, law enforcement is wrestling with how to combat it. That challenge has spawned a fervent debate over whether the United States needs a new law to specifically criminalize domestic terrorism, or whether such a statute would threaten basic First Amendment rights.

Proponents argue that a domestic terrorism law would streamline and clarify the patchwork of charges now used against homegrown extremists, charges that often avoid even mentioning terrorism.

Opponents counter that a new law amounts to a worrisome expansion of government powers, and might face constitutional challenges on the grounds of impinging on free speech.

Yet the New Jersey report laid out what is at stake in stark terms. “Some white supremacist extremists argue that participating in mass attacks or creating other forms of chaos will accelerate the imminent and necessary collapse of society in order to build a racially pure nation,” it said.

After Latino shoppers were targeted in a shooting in El Paso last August, leaving 22 people dead, Congress proposed a new wave of laws. However, most of those have stalled.

But the recent arrests of eight members of a white supremacist group called the Base, some of whose members were accused of planning a mass attack in Richmond, Va., have renewed focus on the issue. Three members arrested in Maryland pleaded not guilty last week to various charges, including transporting a firearm and ammunition with the intent to commit a felony.

Senior law enforcement officials express frustration that cases like those cannot be called terrorism in court.

“The statutes that are typically deployed in connection with domestic terrorism cases are really kind of pedestrian in nature,” said Thomas E. Brzozowski, the Justice Department’s counsel for domestic terrorism. “This confuses people. It leads to this pervasive but false narrative that somehow the government is paying more attention to the Islamic extremist threat than to the domestic threat.”

With both Democrats and Republicans proposing legislation, the issue is one of the few that does not divide strictly along partisan lines.

There is no legal mechanism for designating domestic extremist groups as terrorists. Federal laws define terrorism as a criminal attack intended to intimidate and coerce civilians in order to influence government policy or to otherwise affect government conduct.

They also define 57 specific acts as federal crimes of terrorism. Among the conditions required for formally labeling a crime terrorism in court are targeting an international airport, using a weapon of mass destruction or attacking federal officials.

Such charges come into play periodically. Using a weapon of mass destruction was among the accusations faced by Glendon Scott Crawford, a member of the Ku Klux Klan from upstate New York who failed in his attempt to build a radiation death ray that would inflict cancer on Muslims hit from afar. In 2016, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

However, current terrorism statutes do not incorporate most attacks on civilians that involve guns or vehicles, or the stockpiling of assault weapons, which Ms. McCord, the Georgetown law professor, said was a gaping hole considering their frequency. A new law would also underscore that society considers white supremacist violence on par with jihadism, she said.

Several draft bills seek to define domestic terrorism as a crime and to prescribe court sentences, including the death penalty. A less sweeping bill would force the federal government to make public statistics about all violence attributed to white supremacy.

The F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray, told the House Judiciary Committee this month that the agency had more than 1,000 violent extremist investigations in progress, covering all 50 states, but he resisted providing a more detailed breakdown.

He described “racially motivated violent extremism” as a “national threat priority” equal to the threat from the Islamic State. The F.B.I. has also created the Domestic Terrorism-Hate Crimes Fusion Cell to buttress its efforts, he said, stressing that the focus is “not about the ideology, it’s about the violence.”

Misgivings about a new law are also bipartisan.

African-American and Muslim organizations harbor deep concerns that a new law could actually be used against minority groups — organizations protesting police violence, for example — even though their communities are among the most frequently targeted. Current hate crimes laws are powerful enough to prosecute these acts, said Nadia Aziz, the policy counsel for the Stop Hate Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

“We need to know how domestic terrorism investigations are being carried out right now instead of a new statute,” said Ms. Aziz, echoing a common criticism.

A sweeping new law also makes some conservatives uneasy. The lack of such a law has not hindered the prosecution of anyone who carried out terrorist attacks domestically, said Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in technology, privacy and civil liberties.

He pointed out that one domestic terrorism law proposed by a Republican congressman specified various prison sentences, including up to 25 years for destroying or damaging “any structure, conveyance or other real property.”

That means a protester who engaged in vandalism to make a political point could face 25 years in jail. “Beyond being unnecessary, it seems quite thorny and dangerous,” Mr. Sanchez said.

After Mr. Trump’s inauguration, more than 200 demonstrators were arrested, some in connection with smashing storefronts and damaging vehicles. All charges were eventually dropped, but under such a law the defendants could be charged with terrorism, Mr. Sanchez noted.


Critics of federal counterterrorism measures, and even some senior law enforcement officials, believe that the intense focus on the jihadist threat since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks slowed efforts to counter white supremacists.

“There is a blind spot within law enforcement about the threat white supremacy poses,” said Michael German, a former undercover agent with the F.B.I. who researches national security law at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “The F.B.I. and other intel agencies were not putting their resources toward the most serious threats.”

Under the Trump administration, the F.B.I. began dividing domestic extremism among four categories, down from 11: racially motivated violent extremism; anti-government/anti-authority violent extremism; animal rights/environmental extremism and abortion extremism.

Members of Congress have expressed skepticism about lumping white supremacists with other groups given the recent history of violent attacks directed against Latinos in El Paso, Jews in Pittsburgh and African-Americans in Charleston, S.C., among others.


There is no official source on the number of attacks carried out by white supremacists in the United States. Statistics kept by academic centers or NGOs rarely match because of different methods, including various definitions of right-wing extremism.

In addition, the tendency to include them with other hate crimes leaves the extent of the problem unclear.

“The F.B.I. is being evasive,” said Representative Karen Bass, Democrat of California and a member of the Judiciary Committee. “It raises the question as to whether or not they are seriously looking at white supremacy.”

In the short term, a far more likely scenario than a new law is the State Department designating a foreign white supremacist group as a terrorist organization, allowing for law enforcement agencies to pursue any U.S. adherents for providing material support for terrorism.

The debate over a domestic terrorism law underscores just how complex the terrorist threat has become in the nearly two decades since Sept. 11, said Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.

“You look at the landscape now — it is scattered,” he said, with white supremacists and antigovernment organizations rivaling jihadists in their aspiration to foment mayhem. “It is a diversification of the homegrown threat in a way that we have not seen before.”

South Carolina: Gobs of jobs, but not enough offer living wage

As the Democratic presidential candidates take to the stage for Tuesday night's debate in South Carolina, they'll be speaking in a state with the nation's lowest unemployment rate — 2.3%, tied with Utah and Vermont.

But that rosy number obscures a harsher reality for many South Carolina workers: While they are employed, their low wages make it hard to pay for housing and other basics. Indeed, the state's median household income — about $52,300 last year — ranks only 42nd among all U.S. states, according to the latest Census data.

The pressures on working families in South Carolina comes as President Donald Trump touts the nation's 50-year low in unemployment and robust hiring. Yet many low- and middle-wage families around the country continue to struggle with economic insecurity. Income for middle-class Americans is projected to grow at less than half the rate as for the richest 1%, a recent Congressional Budget Office found.

Indeed, South Carolina is typical for states across the U.S., where job growth looks strong on the surface but much of that work offers meager wages and few benefits like health insurance and retirement savings. It's an issue facing growing numbers of Americans, with about 55% of the 225,000 private-sector jobs U.S. employers added in January offering wages of $10 to $15 an hour, according to an index of job quality. That translates to about $400 to $600 in weekly wages — well below the $765 in average weekly earnings for most non-government workers.

At the same time, South Carolina's economic expansion, which has lifted wages for high-earning professionals, is pushing up housing costs and pricing many workers out of the local housing market, according to the state's Housing Finance and Development Authority.

The state not only has the highest eviction rate in the country, but two-bedroom apartments in 41 of its 46 counties aren't affordable for the typical renter in the state, the housing authority says.

"You are not likely to have a huge inventory of high-wage jobs" in a state like South Carolina, which has a relatively small workforce of about 2.3 million adult workers, and is a "right-to-work" state, said Daniel Alpert, a founder of Westwood Capital and one of the creators of the Job Quality Index. Right-to-work states are those where employees don't have to join a union if their workplace is unionized.

Among the state's largest employers are manufacturers such as BMW and Boeing, yet service-related jobs are growing fast and now outnumber manufacturing jobs, according to the state's Chamber of Commerce. Leisure and hospitality jobs pay about $16.83 an hour on average, compared with $27.91 an hour for manufacturing jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

Lowest jobless rate in the U.S.

On its face, South Carolina has an enviable economy. Its 2.3% jobless rate tied the state for the lowest in the nation in December, according to the latest BLS data. Holding a job, however, doesn't mean workers are earning a living wage.

Rates of worker pay in the state's two largest cities tell the tale. About 44% of workers in Charleston are employed in low-wage work, earning a median wage of $10.12 per hour, according to a recent study from the Brookings Institution. In Columbia, about 45% of workers earn median hourly wages of $9.84 per hour.

The state's minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, same as the federal wage floor. One state lawmaker told a local news outlet in December that raising the minimum wage in the state is a "non-starter" because the competitive job market means that most employers are already paying higher than the $7.25 hourly base rate.

Democratic candidates such as senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have pointed to widening income inequality as one of the nation's top problems, with both proposing taxes on the rich to raise revenue for social programs such as universal health care and education.

But for workers in South Carolina and nationally, a bigger issue may be whether the candidates have proposals to boost anemic wages.

A faulty CDC coronavirus test delays monitoring of disease’s spread

AMERICA UNPREPARED THANKS TO TRUMP

AND CANADA RELIES ON THE CDC FOR INFORMATION

Problems with a government-created coronavirus test have limited the United States’ capacity to rapidly increase testing, just as the outbreak has entered a worrisome new phase in countries worldwide. Experts are increasingly concerned that the small number of U.S. cases may be a reflection of limited testing, not of the virus’s spread.

While South Korea has run more than 35,000 coronavirus tests, the United States has tested only 426 people, not including people who returned on evacuation flights. Only about a dozen state and local laboratories can now run tests outside of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta because the CDC kits sent out nationwide earlier this month included a faulty component.

U.S. guidelines recommend testing for a very narrow group of people — those who display respiratory symptoms and have recently traveled to China or had close contact with an infected person.

But many public health experts think that in light of evidence that the disease has taken root and spread in Iran, Italy, Singapore and South Korea, it’s time to broaden testing in the United States. Infectious disease experts fear that aside from the 14 cases picked up by public health surveillance, there may be other undetected cases mixed in with those of colds and flu. What scares experts the most is that the virus is beginning to spread in countries outside China, but no one knows whether that’s the case in the United States, because they aren’t checking.

“Coronavirus testing kits have not been widely distributed to our hospitals and public health labs. Those without these kits must send samples all the way to Atlanta, rather than testing them on site, wasting precious time as the virus spreads,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

In a congressional hearing Tuesday, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on whether the CDC test was faulty. He denied that the test did not work.

But in a news briefing that was going on about the same time, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said that she was “frustrated” about problems with the test kits and that the CDC hoped to send out a new version to state and local health departments soon.

“I think we are close,” she said. She said that the agency is working as fast as possible on the tests, but that the priority is making sure they are accurate.

Currently, she said, a dozen state and local health departments can do the testing, although positive results need to be confirmed by the CDC. She also said she hoped that tests from commercial labs would soon come online.

Messonnier said the agency was weighing widening its testing protocols to include people traveling to the United States from countries beyond mainland China, considering the rapid spread of the virus in other places in recent days.

The nation’s public health laboratories, exasperated by the malfunctioning tests in the face of a global public health emergency, have taken the unusual step of appealing to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to develop and use their own tests. In Hawaii, authorities are so alarmed about the lack of testing ability that they requested permission from the CDC to use tests from Japan. A medical director at a hospital laboratory in Boston is developing an in-house test, but is frustrated that his laboratory won’t be able to use it without going through an onerous and time-consuming review process, even if demand surges.

“This is an extraordinary request, but this is an extraordinary time,” said Scott Becker, the chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which is asking the FDA for permission to allow the laboratories to create and implement their own laboratory-developed tests.

At one hospital in the Mid-Atlantic region, a patient who recently returned from Singapore, which has 90 cases, was admitted to the hospital with mild upper respiratory symptoms, according to a hospital official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect the patient’s privacy. The patient tested negative for flu. Because of underlying medical conditions, the person was at higher risk for severe illness if this was a coronavirus infection.




Even though clinicians suspected coronavirus, and treated the person for it and placed the patient in isolation, the patient was not tested.

“If this person had returned from mainland China, they would have been tested for coronavirus,” the official said. The patient recovered and was discharged to their home.

Testing also affects other aspects of care.

People with confirmed cases can enroll in clinical trials for therapeutics. For patients who need more intense care in a facility with a biocontainment unit, that facility can receive reimbursement from the federal government for care, the official said.

The CDC announced a week and a half ago that it would add pilot coronavirus testing to its flu surveillance network in five cities, a step toward expanded testing of people with respiratory symptoms who didn’t have other obvious risk factors. Specimens that test negative for flu will be tested for coronavirus. But that expanded testing has been delayed because of an unspecified problem with one of the compounds used in the CDC test. About half of state labs got inconclusive results when using the compound, so the CDC said it would make a new version and redistribute it.

To public health experts, the delays — and lack of transparency about what, exactly, is wrong with the test — are extremely concerning.

“We have over 700 flights every month between Hawaii and Japan or South Korea,” where the virus is spreading in the community, said Hawaii Lt. Gov. Josh Green (D), who is also an emergency physician. It’s unlikely that the CDC would allow state labs to accept a test from another nation, he said, but “this is an exceptional circumstance.”

In a letter to the FDA, the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents state and local laboratories, asked the agency to use “enforcement discretion” to allow the laboratories to create and use their own laboratory-developed tests.

“While we appreciate the many efforts underway at CDC to provide a diagnostic assay to our member labs … this has proven challenging and we find ourselves in a situation that requires a quicker local response,” said the letter, which was co-signed by Becker. “We are now many weeks into the response with still no diagnostic or surveillance test available outside of CDC for the vast majority of our member laboratories.”

 © AP/AP This electron microscope image made available by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in February 2020 shows the Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, yellow, emerging from the surface of cells, blue/pink, cultured in the lab.Because a public health emergency has been declared, certified hospital laboratories that usually have the ability to internally develop and validate their own tests can’t use them without applying for an “emergency use authorization,” a major barrier to deploying the test.

“I think a lot of people, myself included, think it’s very likely this virus might be circulating at low levels in the United States right now. We can’t know for sure because we haven’t seen it,” said Michael Mina, associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He said the optimal testing scenario for flu is a 30-minute turnaround on a test, but right now, shipping samples to Atlanta to test for coronavirus means a 48-hour wait.

“A lot of hospitals are trying to do something similar, which is get a test up and running on an instrument, get it validated in-house,” Mina said. “I think all of us are coming to the same realization that we can’t do anything as long as this remains under the control of CDC and state labs.”

Marion Koopmans, a virologist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, which has performed a few hundred tests on behalf of more than a dozen countries, said that developing a test for a new pathogen is complicated and involves refinement and a back-and-forth between researchers who are constantly learning from one another.

“That is typical for a new disease outbreak. No one actually knows how this works, so you really have to build these assays on the fly,” Koopmans said.

But as the United States struggled to ramp up its capacity, the coronavirus test was added to the sentinel flu surveillance system in the Netherlands two weeks ago. The test was recently rolled out to 12 high-performing molecular diagnostic laboratories in the Netherlands so that they can be ready to scale up if demand increases.

Part of the problem in the still-struggling United States is the tension between regulations intended to ensure a high-quality standard for tests and the need to roll out diagnostic capabilities very quickly. No test is perfect, and with high stakes for missing or misidentifying a case, public health officials want to make sure that tests are as accurate as possible and are validated by labs that run them. But the slowness may also reflect years of underinvestment in public health infrastructure — and a bias toward developing treatments that may seem more appealing to the public.

“The public health system is not sufficiently built to surge very rapidly,” said Luciana Borio, the former director of Medical and Biodefense Preparedness Policy at the National Security Council and now a vice president at In-Q-Tel, a strategic investor that supports the U.S. intelligence community. “Over the years, when given limited dollars, we applied it toward vaccines and therapeutics, more so than diagnostic tests. I think there’s this idea: The diagnostic test is not going to save my life. But the fact is they underpin so much of the response and deserve a lot more attention.”

Read More:

The biggest questions about the new coronavirus and what we know so far

Inside a lab where scientists are working urgently to fight the coronavirus outbreak

Most coronavirus cases are mild, complicating the response

Crews battle large fire at L.A.-area refinery after explosion

EDMONTON IS A REFINERY CITY AS WELL AND LIKE LA OUR REFINERIES WERE BUILT FIFTY YEARS AGO 

An explosion and a large fire erupted at a Los Angeles-area refinery late Tuesday.

Marathon Petroleum's Los Angeles refinery is the largest on the West Coast with a crude oil capacity of 363,000 barrels per day

© Scott Varley/The Orange County Register Image: A fire burns after an explosion at the Marathon Refinery in Carson

The blaze at a Marathon refinery in the city of Carson happened about 11 p.m. Tuesday.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department tweeted that an explosion preceded a fire in the cooling tower, and that Marathon fire crews were keeping the flames in check while the system was being depressurized. No injuries were reported by the county fire department, which was assisting.

Carson is a city in southern Los Angeles County, south of Compton.

Resident Pricilla Reyes told NBC Los Angeles in a phone interview that her niece came running over to ask whether she heard an explosion and that they saw the fire from their home, which is about four blocks from the refinery.

"I heard about four or five explosions, really loud," said Reyes. "You could see the flames and the smoke from our house," she said.

Reyes said she shut the windows of her home in case the smoke was harmful.

Michael Molina told NBC Los Angeles he saw sparks and then "a big fireball in the air."

"I heard a couple more thumps, and I could see like a big ball of smoke," Molina said.

Molina, a truck driver who works in the area, said the force of the blast shook his truck.

The city of Carson did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Tuesday.

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Carson station tweeted crews had secured a perimeter around the facility but did not anticipate needing to evacuate residents. The fire department was monitoring air quality.

Marathon Petroleum's Los Angeles refinery is the largest on the West Coast with a crude oil capacity of 363,000 barrels per day, according to its website.

Why Evolution Is True

PARIS IN THE THE SPRING

Paris: Food, cats, and scenery

Across the river lies Shakespeare and Company, a famous independent bookstore founded (in another Paris location) by Sylvia Beach in 1919, but now located right across from Notre Dame. Because of its literary reputation (many famous authors visited the original store, which also first published Ulysses in 1922), it remains a mecca for literary Anglophones. I went to see its famous cat, Agatha. (You can see Aggie’s page at Hotels with Cats, a great website).

Outside the store is a cat-lover’s sign:

And here’s Agatha, who roams the store. I think she resented my interrupting her nap.

More cat stuff in stores nearby. This store sells nothing but items with black cats on them. The proprietor wouldn’t let me take pictures inside, the meanie!

Peter Singer deplatformed in New Zealand for his stand on euthanasia of newborns

Why Evolution Is True

It seems to me that an enlightened philosophy would allow people to be able to end their lives in a humane way if they’ve undergone proper medical and psychiatric vetting. Some form of this “assisted suicide” is already legal in Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Colombia, Switzerland, Victoria in Australia, and and in some states of the U.S. (California, Colorado, Washington state, Oregon, and—by court order—in Montana).

I further believe—and I’ve gotten into trouble for this—that we should also allow newborns afflicted with incurable conditions—conditions from which they will suffer and die young—to be euthanized humanely. The conditions under which I think this is not only allowable, but ethical, were first laid out in this post of mine. I was aware at the time that philosopher Peter Singer had agreed with and defended this view, but I can’t remember whether I arrived at it independently or read it in some of his writings. No matter, for it’s a view that people need to consider, and of course Singer has defended this view far more extensively and ably than I.

For his views, Singer has undergone considerable pushback, and has been not only deplatformed, but subject to calls for his resignation from Princeton (he splits his time between Princeton and the University of Melbourne). I, too, was subject to a surprising amount of publicity, nearly all negative, for my one website post about this. On her own website Heather’s Homilies, Heather Hastie defended my views, summarizing and answering some of the pushback I got (thanks, Heather!), I also wrote about the surprising opposition to my views here and here.

The opposition, of course, comes largely from believers, who see euthanasia of any sort as “playing God.” I swear that some of these people are Mother-Teresa-like in preferring horrible suffering to a merciful end. After all, Jesus suffered! (That was Mother Teresa’s excuse.)

But others object because they see the euthanasia argument as a slippery slope, leading to scenarios in which we can do away with Grandma in the nursing home simply by signing a paper. It doesn’t work like that, of course, as the states and countries who allow adult euthanasia have strict regulations. And euthanizing newborns with horrible and fatal conditions, like anencephaly, is even more unacceptable. Even though such infants are doomed, there’s something about them having been born that makes the prospect of euthanasia especially appalling to people. Of course I agree that strict procedures, including the agreement of doctors and parents, are essential here, but since these infants will die I see no credible objection to letting them have a peaceful death.

Against the strong negative publicity and many emails I got saying I’m a latter-day Satan (I also got emails from some handicapped people accusing me of wanting to deprive them of life), I received several letters from nurses and doctors who, having seen infants suffer and die, agreed with me. But these people, understandably, don’t want their views made public. I stand by what I said, and Singer stands by what he said. The man is clearly no monster, as his books and papers on ethics are extremely humane. And he walks the walk, giving away lots of his own income to the poor. (I should add that Singer is a recipient of the honor of Companion of the Order of Australia, that country’s highest civilian honor.)

Singer has been deplatformed for his views on infant euthanasia (see here, for instance). And, according to the Newshub article below (click on screenshot, and see a similar piece in Think, Inc.), now a country that’s supposed to be extremely liberal and enlightened, New Zealand, has deplatformed him as well. Singer had a contract to speak at SkyCity in Auckland in June, but the venue canceled his contract. And this was also due to his views on euthanasia.

Although Think, Inc. says that the Auckand incident shows that Singer “has been de-platformed for the first time in his 50-year career”, that’s not really true. Singer was disinvited from a philosophy meeting in Germany and also effectively deplatformed at the University of Victoria in British Columbia when shouting students made his talk inaudible. Those disruptions were also for his views on euthanasia of newborns, although Singer’s talk in Canada was about effective altruism, not euthanasia.

Anyway, the New Zealand story is here:





A quote from the piece above:

Singer, a philosopher who has been recognised both as the Australian Humanist of the Year and the most dangerous person in the world, was scheduled to appear at the Auckland central venue on June 14 for ‘An Evening with Peter Singer’.

However, the figure now says the event had been cancelled by SkyCity after a “news article attacking” his view that it may be ethical for parents to choose euthanasia for severely disabled newborn infants.
“We decided that yes it was a reasonable decision for parents and doctors to make that it was better that infants with this condition should not live,” he has said.

On Saturday, Newshub reported that the New Zealand disabled community was frustrated by his appearance. Dr Huhana Hickey, who has used a wheelchair since 1996 and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2010, said he wasn’t an expert in disability.

Do you have to be an expert in disability to know when a childhood condition or deformity is invariably fatal and causes suffering


Even Singer says it was the first time he was deplatformed, which mystifies me. But never mind. His contract was canceled because of a “free speech but. . ” argument (my emphasis below):

A statement from Singer on Wednesday said that this was the first time he had been “de-platformed” in his 50-year career.

“It’s extraordinary that Skycity should cancel my speaking engagement on the basis of a newspaper article without contacting either me or the organiser of my speaking tour to check the facts on which it appears to be basing the cancellation,” Singer said.
“I have been welcomed as a speaker in New Zealand on many occasions and spent an enjoyable month as an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury more than 20 years ago. If New Zealand has become less tolerant of controversial views since then, that’s a matter for deep regret.”

A SkyCity spokesperson told Newshub: “Following concerns raised by the public and local media, SkyCity has cancelled the venue hire agreement for ‘An Evening with Peter Singer’.

“Whilst SkyCity supports the right of free speech, some of the themes promoted by this speaker do not reflect our values of diversity and inclusivity.”

Is it “inclusive” to allow children born with only part of a brain, or a brain outside the skull—children doomed to die within days or weeks—to suffer before their deaths? For that is what this is all about. In fact, in September Kiwi citizens will have a referendum on the legalization of voluntary euthanasia for adults with less than six months to live. At a time when they’re debating this, it is not only proper but essential to discuss the euthanasia of doomed newborns, who suffer but cannot give consent. As Wikipedia notes, “A poll in July 2019 found that 72% of the [New Zealand] public supported some kind of assisted dying for the terminally ill. Support over the past 20 years has averaged around 68%.” Why must the “terminally ill” include only adults?

In such a climate, it’s unconscionable to deplatform somebody for his views, especially when it’s not even clear that his “evening with Peter Singer” was going to touch on this subject. As the report notes above, nobody checked with Singer before canceling his contect.

Promoters of the talk are looking for a new venue, and I’ll report back if they find one.

Finally, here’s cartoon from Heather’s post, underscoring the futility of religion when it comes to helping the afflicted: