Life's Frankenstein Beginnings

When the Earth was born, it was a mess. Meteors and lightning storms likely bombarded the planet's surface where nothing except lifeless chemicals could survive. How life formed in this chemical mayhem is a mystery billions of years old. Now, a new study offers evidence that the first building blocks may have matched their environment, starting out messier than previously thought.

1/22/2020 

Szostak believes the earliest cells developed on land in ponds or pools, 

potentially in volcanically active regions. Ultraviolet light, lightning strikes,

 and volcanic eruptions all could have helped spark the chemical reactions

necessary for life formation [Credit: Don Kawahigashi/Unsplash]

Life is built with three major components: RNA and DNA--the genetic code that, like construction managers, program how to run and reproduce cells--and proteins, the workers that carry out their instructions. Most likely, the first cells had all three pieces. Over time, they grew and replicated, competing in Darwin's game to create the diversity of life today: bacteria, fungi, wolves, whales and humans.

But first, RNA, DNA or proteins had to form without their partners. One common theory, known as the "RNA World" hypothesis, proposes that because RNA, unlike DNA, can self-replicate, that molecule may have come first. While recent studies discovered how the molecule's nucleotides--the A, C, G and U that form its backbone--could have formed from chemicals available on early Earth, some scientists believe the process may not have been such a straightforward path.

"Years ago, the naive idea that pools of pure concentrated ribonucleotides might be present on the primitive Earth was mocked by Leslie Orgel as 'the Molecular Biologist's Dream,'" said Jack Szostak, a Nobel Prize Laureate, professor of chemistry and chemical biology and genetics at Harvard University, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "But how relatively modern homogeneous RNA could emerge from a heterogeneous mixture of different starting materials was unknown."

In a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Szostak and colleagues present a new model for how RNA could have emerged. Instead of a clean path, he and his team propose a Frankenstein-like beginning, with RNA growing out of a mixture of nucleotides with similar chemical structures: arabino- deoxy- and ribonucleotides (ANA, DNA, and RNA).

In the Earth's chemical melting pot, it's unlikely that a perfect version of RNA formed automatically. It's far more likely that many versions of nucleotides merged to form patchwork molecules with bits of both modern RNA and DNA, as well as largely defunct genetic molecules, such as ANA. These chimeras, like the monstrous hybrid lion, eagle and serpent creatures of Greek mythology, may have been the first steps toward today's RNA and DNA.

"Modern biology relies on relatively homogeneous building blocks to encode genetic information," said Seohyun Kim, a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry and first author on the paper. So, if Szostak and Kim are right and Frankenstein molecules came first, why did they evolve to homogeneous RNA?

Kim put them to the test: He pitted potential primordial hybrids against modern RNA, manually copying the chimeras to imitate the process of RNA replication. Pure RNA, he found, is just better--more efficient, more precise, and faster--than its heterogeneous counterparts. In another surprising discovery, Kim found that the chimeric oligonucleotides--like ANA and DNA--could have helped RNA evolve the ability to copy itself. "Intriguingly," he said, "some of these variant ribonucleotides have been shown to be compatible with or even beneficial for the copying of RNA templates."

If the more efficient early version of RNA reproduced faster than its hybrid counterparts then, over time, it would out-populate its competitors. That's what the Szostak team theorizes happened in the primordial soup: Hybrids grew into modern RNA and DNA, which then outpaced their ancestors and, eventually, took over.

"No primordial pool of pure building blocks was needed," Szostak said. "The intrinsic chemistry of RNA copying chemistry would result, over time, in the synthesis of increasingly homogeneous bits of RNA. The reason for this, as Seohyun has so clearly shown, is that when different kinds of nucleotides compete for the copying of a template strand, it is the RNA nucleotides that always win, and it is RNA that gets synthesized, not any of the related kinds of nucleic acids."

So far, the team has tested only a fraction of the possible variant nucleotides available on early Earth. So, like those first bits of messy RNA, their work has only just begun.

Source: Harvard University [January 22, 2020]

Driven By Earth's Orbit, Climate Changes In Africa May Have Aided Human Migration

1/27/2020 


In 1961, John Kutzbach, then a recent college graduate, was stationed in France as an aviation weather forecaster for the U.S. Air Force. There, he found himself exploring the storied caves of Dordogne, including the prehistoric painted caves at Lascoux.

An aerial view of northern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Mediterranean Basin.

 A new study led by University of Wisconsin–Madison’s John Kutzbach shows that

 changes in Earth’s orbit, greenhouse gases, and ice sheets influenced the planet’s

 climate over the last 140,000 years and may have provided wetter, greener corridors 

at times that permitted human migration out of Africa and into the Middle East 

[Credit: Google Earth]

Thinking about the ancient people and animals who would have gathered in these caves for warmth and shelter, he took up an interest in glaciology. "It was interesting to me, as a weather person, that people would live so close to an ice sheet," says Kutzbach, emeritus University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

Kutzbach went on to a career studying how changes in Earth's movements through space - the shape of its orbit, its tilt on its axis, its wobble - and other factors, including ice cover and greenhouse gases, affect its climate. Many years after reveling at Ice Age cave art, today he's trying to better understand how changes in Earth's climate may have influenced human migration out of Africa.

In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Kutzbach and a team of researchers trace changes in climate and vegetation in Africa, Arabia and the Mediterranean going back 140,000 years to aid others studying the influences underlying human dispersal.

The study describes a dynamic climate and vegetation model that explains when regions across Africa, areas of the Middle East, and the Mediterranean were wetter and drier and how the plant composition changed in tandem, possibly providing migration corridors throughout time.

"We don't really know why people move, but if the presence of more vegetation is helpful, these are the times that would have been advantageous to them," Kutzbach says.

The model also illuminates relationships between Earth's climate and its orbit, greenhouse gas concentrations, and its ice sheets.

For instance, the model shows that around 125,000 years ago, northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula experienced increased and more northerly-reaching summer monsoon rainfall that led to narrowing of the Saharan and Arabian deserts due to increased grassland. At the same time, in the Mediterranean and the Levant (an area that includes Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine), winter storm track rainfall also increased.

These changes were driven by Earth's position relative to the sun. The Northern Hemisphere at the time was as close as possible to the sun during the summer, and as far away as possible during the winter. This resulted in warm, wet summers and cold winters.

"It's like two hands meeting," says Kutzbach. "There were stronger summer rains in the Sahara and stronger winter rains in the Mediterranean."

Given the nature of Earth's orbital movements, collectively called Milankovitch cycles, the region should be positioned this way roughly every 21,000 years. Every 10,000 years or so, the Northern Hemisphere would then be at its furthest point from the sun during the summer, and closest during winter.

Indeed, the model showed large increases in rainfall and vegetation at 125,000, at 105,000, and at 83,000 years ago, with corresponding decreases at 115,000, at 95,000 and at 73,000 years ago, when summer monsoons decreased in magnitude and stayed further south.

Between roughly 70,000 and 15,000 years ago, Earth was in a glacial period and the model showed that the presence of ice sheets and reduced greenhouse gases increased winter Mediterranean storms but limited the southern retreat of the summer monsoon. The reduced greenhouse gases also caused cooling near the equator, leading to a drier climate there and reduced forest cover.

These changing regional patterns of climate and vegetation could have created resource gradients for humans living in Africa, driving migration outward to areas with more water and plant life.

For the study, the researchers, including Kutzbach's UW-Madison colleagues Ian Orland and Feng He, along with researchers at Peking University and the University of Arizona, used the Community Climate System Model version 3 from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. They ran simulations that accounted for orbital changes alone, combined orbital and greenhouse gas changes, and a third that combined those influences plus the influence of ice sheets.

It was Kutzbach who, in the 1970s and 1980s, confirmed that changes in Earth's orbit can drive the strength of summer monsoons around the globe by influencing how much sunlight, and therefore, how much warming reaches a given part of the planet.

Forty years ago, there was evidence for periodic strong monsoons in Africa, but no one knew why, Kutzbach says. He showed that orbital changes on Earth could lead to warmer summers and thus, stronger monsoons. He also read about periods of "greening" in the Sahara, often used to explain early human migration into the typically-arid Middle East.

"My early work prepared me to think about this," he says.

His current modeling work mostly agrees with collected data from each region, including observed evidence from old lake beds, pollen records, cave features, and marine sediments. A recent study led by Orland used cave records in the Levant to show that summer monsoons reached into the region around 125,000 years ago.

"We get some things wrong (in the model)," says Kutzbach, so the team continues to refine it. For instance, the model doesn't get cold enough in southern Europe during the glacial period and not all vegetation changes match observed data. Computing power has also improved since they ran the model.

"This is by no means the last word," Kutzbach says. "The results should be looked at again with an even higher-resolution model."

Author: Kelly April Tyrrell | Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison [January 27, 2020]

New Predatory Dinosaur Added To Australia's Prehistory

1/29/2020 


Evidence of agile, carnivorous two-legged dinosaurs known as noasaurids have been found across the now dispersed land masses that once formed the ancient southern supercontinent of Gondwana, but never in Australia—until now.



The Lightning Ridge noasaurid bone in approximate life position,
with a human for scale [Credit: Tom Brougham]
Researchers identified a single neck bone found in an opal mine near the outback town of Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, as belonging to a noasaurid, and then realised that another fossil discovered in 2012 along the south coast of Victoria was from the same group.

Noasaurid are a rare group of theropod dinosaurs—two legged carnivores—that lived in the middle to late Cretaceous Period, between about 120 and 66 million years ago. Noasaurids were small-bodied dinosaurs, many with peculiar facial features, typically less than two metres long and weighing about 20 kilograms.

The recognition of this new group of dinosaurs in Australia by palaeontologists from the Palaeoscience Research Centre at the University of New England and the Australian Opal Centre in Lightning Ridge adds a missing piece to a puzzle.

"It was assumed that noasaurids must have lived in Australia because their fossils have been found on other southern continents that, like Australia, were once part of the Gondwanan supercontinent," said lead scientist, Dr. Tom Brougham of the Palaeoscience Research Centre. "These recent fossil finds demonstrate for the first time that noasaurids once roamed across Australia. Discoveries of theropods are rare in Australia, so every little find we make reveals important details about our unique dinosaur fauna."

The researchers compared the 100 million-year-old Lightning Ridge neck bone with those from other carnivorous dinosaurs and quickly realised it was different from anything that had been found in Australia to date. "When we looked at what features this bone has compared to those of other theropods, we found that it matched closely with this strange group of dinosaurs called noasaurids," Dr. Brougham said.

This prompted us to re-examine an ankle bone of a dinosaur that was discovered in Victoria in 2012, about 20 million years older than the Lightning Ridge bone, and using the same methods we concluded that this also belonged to a noasaurid. In addition, this ankle bone is approximately the same age, or perhaps even older, than the oldest known noasaurids, which come from South America."

Noasaurids were similar in size to, and lived at the same time as, a more well-known group of carnivorous dinosaurs called dromaeosaurids or 'raptors'—infamously represented by Velociraptor in Jurassic Park—and were probably also active predators. However, while Velociraptor and kin have representatives from all over the world, noasaurids were known only from several of the southern continents (South America, Africa, Madagascar and India), which formed the supercontinent of Gondwana before it started breaking apart in the Cretaceous.

The study was published today in the journal Scientific Reports.

Source: University of New England [January 29, 2020]

Archaic Building Found At Asclepeion Sanctuary In Ancient Epidaurus

1/29/2020 

The Asclepeion of Epidaurus on the Peloponnesian Peninsula is one of the most important ancient sites in the entire world.

The Tholos of Ancient Epidaurus in the process of restoration and the 

remains of the Archaic era building that has just been discovered 

[Credit: Athens-Macedonian News Agency]

Today, it owes a great deal of its fame to the theatre, a wonder of acoustics which is still in operation today, but in ancient times it served as a medical sanctuary, and serious illnesses were healed there.

People from all over the Eastern Mediterranean region flocked to Epidaurus in antiquity to find cures for their various maladies. It was a spacious resort which included guesthouses, a gymnasium, a stadium and the famous theater, which served to “elevate the soul,” which ancient Greeks saw as the goal of all theatrical plays, both tragedies and comedies.

Along with its many luxurious facilities, the Asclepeion of Epidaurus offered beautiful, serene natural surroundings, with lush vegetation and stunning views of the surrounding mountaintops.

According to the poet Hesiod, who was active between 750 and 650 BC, Asclepius, the son of Apollo who was considered the ancient Greek god of medicine, was born in Epidaurus.

A new building found at Epidaurus’ Asclepeion area, which was dedicated to this god, gives new insight into the famous sanctuary, mainly concerning the early years of its creation.

The newly-uncovered building is a structure from the archaic era, whose function is currently unknown. It was built on a site adjacent to where the Tholos, or dome, the most iconic building of the Asclepeion, is situated.

The building, rectangular in plan, had a basement space corresponding to the ground floor, with mosaics placed in a peristyle form. According to the information gleaned so far from the excavation, which is still in progress, the building dates back to around the year 600 BC.


The theatre at Epidaurus [Credit: Geolines]

University of Athens Professor Vassilis Lamprinoudakis, head of the excavations in ancient Epidaurus, explained to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency “This means the worship of Asclepius appears to have begun earlier in the Asclepeion of Epidaurus. Until now, it was believed to have begun around 550 BC, i.e., in the middle of the sixth century BC.

“Now it is evident that the structures are earlier, and this is particularly important for the history of the sanctuary and for the history of Asclepius himself,” the archaeologist noted.

“At the place where the Tholos was later built, a part of a building, a ‘double’ building, with basement and ground floor has been found. Since there is a basement, like in the Tholos, we consider it to be a forerunner of this ‘mysterious’ building called the Tholos,” Lamprinoudakis stated.

“When it was decided to build the Tholos, this building was demolished. The empty space created by its basement was filled with relics from the old building, but also from other parts of the sanctuary. That is because (when) the great program of the 4th century BC began, some other buildings were also demolished, the material of which was buried with respect in the place,” he added.

The archaeologist explained that the name Tholos “was only given to the structure by the ancient traveler Pausanias in the second century AD. Its original name, as we know from the inscriptions of the 4th century BC, was ‘Thymeli.’ Thymeli was a kind of altar (used in sacrifice), in which offerings were made without blood.”

Lamprinoudakis continued, saying “Research tells us that the Tholos was a kind of underground house of Asclepius, where patients were treated by injection.” The patient who slept in this special place would dream of the god Asclepius to reveal to him the cure for his illness. “This former building had a function similar to that of the Tholos, that is, its basement served as the seat of Asclepius on earth,” the archaeologist explained.

“The new building, however, also gives important clues to the topography of the sanctuary. It explains the orientation of some other constructions that follow,” Lamprinoudakis concluded.

The archaeological dig at the sanctuary of Asclepius of Epidaurus, which has been carried out by the Department of History and Archeology of the University of Athens since 2016, continues today.

The excavations, carried out with the support of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Argolis, were funded by the organization “Asclipiades” in 2016-2017 and by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation in the years 2018-2019.

Author: Philip Chrysopoulos | Source: Athens-Macedonian News Agency via Greek Reporter [January 29, 2020]

New Study Debunks Myth Of Cahokia's Native American Lost Civilization

1/27/2020

A University of California, Berkeley, archaeologist has dug up ancient human feces, among other demographic clues, to challenge the narrative around the legendary demise of Cahokia, North America's most iconic pre-Columbian metropolis.

Painting of the Cahokia Mounds by William R. Iseminger [Credit: Cahokia Mounds Historic State Site]

In its heyday in the 1100s, Cahokia -- located in what is now southern Illinois -- was the center for Mississippian culture and home to tens of thousands of Native Americans who farmed, fished, traded and built giant ritual mounds.

By the 1400s, Cahokia had been abandoned due to floods, droughts, resource scarcity and other drivers of depopulation. But contrary to romanticized notions of Cahokia's lost civilization, the exodus was short-lived, according to a new UC Berkeley study.

The study takes on the "myth of the vanishing Indian" that favors decline and disappearance over Native American resilience and persistence, said lead author A.J. White, a UC Berkeley doctoral student in anthropology.

"One would think the Cahokia region was a ghost town at the time of European contact, based on the archaeological record," White said. "But we were able to piece together a Native American presence in the area that endured for centuries."

The findings, just published in the journal American Antiquity, make the case that a fresh wave of Native Americans repopulated the region in the 1500s and kept a steady presence there through the 1700s, when migrations, warfare, disease and environmental change led to a reduction in the local population.

White and fellow researchers at California State University, Long Beach, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Northeastern University analyzed fossil pollen, the remnants of ancient feces, charcoal and other clues to reconstruct a post-Mississippian lifestyle.

Their evidence paints a picture of communities built around maize farming, bison hunting and possibly even controlled burning in the grasslands, which is consistent with the practices of a network of tribes known as the Illinois Confederation.

Unlike the Mississippians who were firmly rooted in the Cahokia metropolis, the Illinois Confederation tribe members roamed further afield, tending small farms and gardens, hunting game and breaking off into smaller groups when resources became scarce.


Credit: Herb Roe, University of California - Berkeley

The linchpin holding together the evidence of their presence in the region were "fecal stanols" derived from human waste preserved deep in the sediment under Horseshoe Lake, Cahokia's main catchment area.

Fecal stanols are microscopic organic molecules produced in our gut when we digest food, especially meat. They are excreted in our feces and can be preserved in layers of sediment for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Because humans produce fecal stanols in far greater quantities than animals, their levels can be used to gauge major changes in a region's population.

To collect the evidence, White and colleagues paddled out into Horseshoe Lake, which is adjacent to Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site, and dug up core samples of mud some 10 feet below the lakebed. By measuring concentrations of fecal stanols, they were able to gauge population changes from the Mississippian period through European contact.

Fecal stanol data were also gauged in White's first study of Cahokia's Mississippian Period demographic changes, published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It found that climate change in the form of back-to-back floods and droughts played a key role in the exodus of Cahokia's Mississippian inhabitants.

But while many studies have focused on the reasons for Cahokia's decline, few have looked at the region following the exodus of Mississippians, whose culture is estimated to have spread through the Midwestern, Southeastern and Eastern United States from 700 A.D. to the 1500s.

White's latest study sought to fill those gaps in the Cahokia area's history.

"There's very little archaeological evidence for an indigenous population past Cahokia, but we were able to fill in the gaps through historical, climatic and ecological data, and the linchpin was the fecal stanol evidence," White said.

Overall, the results suggest that the Mississippian decline did not mark the end of a Native American presence in the Cahokia region, but rather reveal a complex series of migrations, warfare and ecological changes in the 1500s and 1600s, before Europeans arrived on the scene, White said.

"The story of Cahokia was a lot more complex than, 'Goodbye, Native Americans. Hello, Europeans,' and our study uses innovative and unusual evidence to show that," White said.

Author: Yasmin Anwar | Source: University of California - Berkeley [January 27, 2020]

Study Reveals Pre-Hispanic History, Genetic Changes Among Indigenous Mexican Populations

1/22/2020
As more and more large-scale human genome sequencing projects get completed, scientists have been able to trace with increasing confidence both the geographical movements and underlying genetic variation of human populations. Most of these projects have favoured the study of European populations, and thus, have been lacking in representing the true ethnic diversity across the globe.

To better understand the broad demographic history of pre-Hispanic Mexico and to search for signatures of adaptive evolution, an international team led by Mexican scientists have sequenced the complete protein-coding regions of the genome, or exomes, of 78 individuals from different indigenous groups from Mexico. The genomic study is the largest of its kind for indigenous populations from the Americas [Credit: Ruben Mendoza,
National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity (LANGEBIO) - UGA, CINVESTAV]

To better understand the broad demographic history of pre-Hispanic Mexico and to search for signatures of adaptive evolution, an international team led by Mexican scientists have sequenced the complete protein-coding regions of the genome, or exomes, of 78 individuals from five different indigenous groups from Northern (Rara?muri or Tarahumara, and Huichol), Central (Nahua), South (Triqui, or TRQ) and Southeast (Maya, or MYA) Mexico. The genomic study, the largest of its kind for indigenous populations from the Americas, appeared recently in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution.

"We modeled the demographic history of indigenous populations from Mexico with northern and southern ethnic groups (Tarahumara and Huichol) splitting 7.2 kya and subsequently diverging locally 6.5 kya (Huichol groups) and 5.7 kya (Triqui and Maya), respectively," said lead author Maria Avila-Arcos, of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The Nahua were excluded from the final analysis due to the noise it brought to the overall analysis.

Overall, they identified 120,735 single nucleotide variants (SNV) among the individuals studied, which were used to trace back the population history. Furthermore, they were able to reconcile their data with the demographic history and fossil records of ancestral Native Americans.

"The split times we found are also coherent with previous estimates of ancestral Native Americans diverging ~17.5-14.6 KYA into Southern Native Americans or "Ancestral A," comprising Central and Southern Native Americans) and Northern Native Americans or "Ancestral B," and with an initial settlement of Mexico occurring at least 12,000 years ago, as suggested by the earliest skeletal remains dated to approximately this age found in Central Mexico and the Yucatan peninsula," said Avila-Arcos. "Studies on genome-wide data from ancient remains from Central and South America reveal genetic continuity between ancient and modern populations in some parts of the Americas over the last 8,500 years."

"This suggests that, by that time, the ancestral population of MYA was not yet genetically differentiated from others, so our estimates of northern/southern split at 7.2 KYA and Mayan/Triqui divergence at 5.7 KYA fit with this scenario."

Next, they scanned the data to identify candidate genes most important for adaptation.

"Interestingly, some of these genes had previously been identified as targets of selection in other populations," said co-corresponding author Andres Moreno Estrada, principal investigator at National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity (LANGEBIO) - UGA, CINVESTAV.

These genes include SLC24A5, involved in skin pigmentation, and FAP, which was previously suggested to be under adaptive archaic introgression in Peruvians and Melanesians. Three genes were involved in the immune response. These include SYT5, implicated in innate immune response, and interleukins IL17A and IL13. The remaining candidate genes were involved in signal transduction (MPZL1), protein localization and transport (GRASP and ARFRP1), cell differentiation and spermatogenesis (GMCL), Golgi apparatus organization (UBXN2B), neuron differentiation (MANF), signaling and cardiac muscle contraction (ADRBK1), cell cycle (CDK5), microtubule organization and stabilization (NCKAP5L), and stress fiber formation (NCKIPSD).

A couple of genes stood out for the team. These included, BCL2L13, which is highly expressed in skeletal muscle and could be related to physical endurance, including high endurance long-distance running, a well-known trait of the northern Mexico Rara?muri. The KBTBD8 gene has been associated with idiopathic short stature (also found in Koreans) and the team found it to be highly differentiated in Triqui, a southern indigenous group from Oaxaca whose height is extremely low compared to other Native populations.

"We carried out the most comprehensive characterization of potentially adaptive functional variation in Indigenous peoples from the Americas to date," said Moreno Estrada. "We identified in these populations over four thousand new variants, most of them singletons, with neutral, regulatory, as well as protein-truncating and missense annotations. The average number of singletons per individual was higher in Nahua (NAH) and Maya (MYA), which is expected given these two Indigenous groups embody the descendants of the largest civilizations in Mesoamerica, and that today Nahua and Maya languages are the most spoken Indigenous languages in Mexico. Furthermore, the generated data also allowed us to propose a demographic model inferred from genomic data in Native Mexicans and to identify possible events of adaptive evolution in pre-Columbian Mexico."

Source: Oxford University Press [January 22, 2020]

INTERVIEW
Jackson Browne: ‘My generation were idealistic and naive but we were right about so many things’

The singer-songwriter talks to Kevin E G Perry about his benefit album for Haiti, the calamitous state of the planet, Donald Trump’s ‘wild lies’, his fears about the election, and getting old


Jackson Browne performing at a benefit concert in New York, December 2019 ( Rex )

The morning after our interview I get a call from Jackson Browne. I stare at my phone in bleary-eyed confusion, trying to remember if one of the all-time great singer-songwriters had let slip anything scandalous he might be eager to recant, but when I pick up I hear his warm Californian tones overflowing with enthusiasm. “I just realised I didn’t finish telling you about Rick!”

Rick appears in the third verse of Browne’s song “Love Is Love”, the lead single from a new benefit album, Let the Rhythm Lead, which he recorded in Haiti along with a group of fellow musicians to support the charity Artists for Peace and Justice (APJ). Browne has been passionate about their work since playing a benefit concert after the devastating 2010 earthquake, and was impressed by APJ’s ability to swiftly build a school in Port-au-Prince that now provides free education to 2,600 of the most impoverished children in the western hemisphere. Moved by the stories he heard from Haiti, Browne wrote “Standing in the Breach”, the title track of his 2014 album about the disaster and the long history of colonialism and slavery that preceded it. “It’s a difficult subject, so it took me a long time to finish that song,” he says. “I think it took me longer to write than it took them to build the school.”

Browne made his name in the Seventies as a writer of deeply introspective songs about love, death and desire. He had his first hit in in March 1972 with “Doctor My Eyes”, which was soon covered by The Jackson 5. A few months later, Eagles frontman Glenn Frey completed Browne’s unfinished song “Take It Easy” and the track launched his band’s career. As rock lore has it, Browne was stuck on the line: “Well, I’m a-standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona…”, before Frey provided: “Such a fine sight to see. It’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowin’ down to take a look at me.”

Browne filled the remainder of the decade with a string of classic albums: 1973’s For Everyman, 1974’s Late for the Sky, 1976’s The Pretender and 1977’s Running On Empty, a portrait of life on the road which gave him his biggest commercial success. In the Eighties, Browne’s songwriting became more overtly political as he began to turn his lacerating gaze outward.

It was only when he arrived in Haiti to visit the school that APJ built that Browne learned they’d also constructed an artist’s institute in the south coast town of Jacmel, where young people were learning to become sound engineers in a modern studio. “When I saw it I thought, well, people from outside of Haiti should come here and work,” he says. “So I asked some people if they wanted to come.”

The group he rounded up included the songwriter and producer Jonathan Wilson (“A very willing partner and accomplice”) and former Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis (“One of my heroes. I love her music”) as well as Paul Beaubrun, Habib Koite, Raul Rodriguez and Jonathan Russell. On the island they also teamed up with members of the Haitian roots band Lakou Mizik. They set about trying to capture the reality of the country in song, which brings us back to Rick, who Browne didn’t finish telling us about. In the song he’s riding a motorbike through the slums: “The father and the doctor to the poorest of the poor / Raising up the future from the rubble of the past”. As it turns out, he’s a real person.

“Father Rick Frechette is a major figure in this whole story,” explains Browne. “He’s a Catholic priest, but when he arrived in Haiti it was so rough he said: ‘These people don’t need a priest, they need a doctor.’ He went away, became a doctor and then came back to Haiti and built a hospital. He’s an inspiration, and he was instrumental in starting the school.”

Browne’s determination to shine a light on Rick and the work still being done in Haiti is in part motivated by the knowledge that the world’s attention has long since moved on. “It’s such a vibrant culture,” he says. “But the art and music and the incredible resilience of these people is matched by the environmental problems which have come with global warming, the hurricanes and the effects of centuries of deforestation. The problems are formidable.”

Jackson Browne (fourth left) with the musicians who worked on charity album ‘Let the Rhythm Lead’

Browne is fiercely passionate about the environment. He lives in an off-grid ranch supported by wind and solar power, and since 2008 has banned plastic bottles from his tours. His 1974 song “Before the Deluge” spoke of anger at those who had forged the earth’s “beauty into power”, and warned of the “magnitude of her fury in the final hour”. It could almost have been written today, although Browne sadly points out our situation is now even more dangerous. “That song was inspired by a writer named Paul Ehrlich,” he says. “He laid forth a scenario in which the world’s dysfunctions compound and create an apocalyptic outcome, but even he couldn’t have predicted the calamitous situation we’re in now where we have a world leader who is flagrantly disregarding information from the scientific community.”

As if to underscore his point, the day we speak the Trump administration announces it is scrapping pollution protections for America’s streams and wetlands. Browne says he doesn’t believe America will re-elect their president this year, but his optimism is shaded with caution. “I don’t think it’s in the bag or anything, but I have to hope,” he says. “He didn’t win the popular vote, and he only has a 30 per cent approval rating, but that 30 per cent of people are the ones I’m worried about. I saw a photograph of him at a rally, and there was a sign saying: ‘Thank Baby Jesus for President Trump’. Holy s**t! He’s telling these wild lies and still receiving that sort of adoration.”


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Louis Tomlinson: ‘Being in One Direction was like a drug’

All of these issues will filter into his next album, which he plans to release in September. He’s currently finishing a track called “Downhill from Everywhere”, inspired by the oceanographer Captain Charles Moore’s remark that “the ocean is downhill from everywhere”. Another new song is called “A Little Soon to Say”. He recites a few lines of it: “I want to see you holding out your light / I want to see you find your way / Beyond the sirens in the broken night / Beyond the sickness of our day / And after all we’ve come to live with / I want to know if you’re OK / I have to think it’s gonna be alright / It’s just a little soon to say.”


“That’s my way of touching upon what I’m worried about most,” he explains. “I wonder how young people coming into positions of authority in this world are going to deal with what we’re leaving them. Even as my generation were somewhat myopic or idealistic or naive, we were right about so many things. It’s the same people that opposed the Vietnam War, who wanted to protect the planet, who want to feed the hungry and educate the uneducated.”

He sees echoes of that Sixties idealism in the “very inspiring” activism of Greta Thunberg. “This generation coming into the world taking these problems seriously is exactly what’s needed,” he says. “I don’t feel I have the right to be pessimistic or feel defeated, but it’s a struggle I have every day because the news is so unremittingly bad. Activism by young people is one of the brighter spots.”
Browne in 1974 (Rex)

For Browne, America’s problems are manifold but intertwined. He brings up the failings of the criminal justice system and the unchecked power of the industrial war complex that he sang about on 1986’s “Lives in the Balance”. “This is the worry I have about democracy,” he says. “It can be gamed by private interests, whether they be robber barons in the 1800s or the fossil fuel industry today. They get us to drag our feet so they can keep making their corporate fortunes. As Warren Zevon said in his great song: our s**t’s f***ed up.”


That would be Zevon’s “My S**t’s F***ed Up”, released in 2000, which is about a man hearing bad news from his doctor. Two years later Zevon received his own terminal diagnosis, learning of the cancer that would kill him in 2003. Browne and Zevon had been friends and collaborators since the Seventies, and they shared a knack for sharply prescient songwriting. When Browne was on his most recent tour, with the headlines full of Russia’s attempts to influence American politics, he took to covering Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money”. It opens with the line: “I went home with the waitress / The way I always do / How was I to know / She was with the Russians, too?” Browne clearly got a kick out of its continued relevance. “If you didn’t know that song you’d think it was written last week,” he laughs. “That song is 40 years old. It was funny then, and it’s even funnier now.”

Let the Rhythm Lead interpolates languages like Creole and Spanish, much as Zevon did on his 1982 track “The Hula Hula Boys”. When I remind Browne of this he howls with delight. “Do you know what the chorus of ‘The Hula Hula Boys’ actually means?” he asks mischievously. “It’s a saying in Hawaii that loosely means ‘get to the point’, but literally means ‘sing the chorus’. So when they sing the chorus, they’re singing ‘sing the chorus’. That is the funniest f***ing thing I have ever f***ing heard! That’s Warren Zevon at his best. With one stroke, he’s saying nothing and everything. Zevon is a singular writer.”

Now 71, after more than half a century of songwriting, Browne still believes in the power of music to change lives. He was just 16 when he wrote “These Days”, which is made all the more remarkable by the fact it contains one of the most devastating lyrics ever committed to song: “Don’t confront me with my failures/ I had not forgotten them”. Was the teenage Browne really that tortured, or was it a case of art imitating art?

“I don’t know,” he says after a pause. “I listened to a lot of old men making music when I was a kid. Blues and folk, as well as Bob Dylan, who sounded old. I was emulating them to an extent, but I wasn’t just posing as an old person. That thought resonated with me. I’ve had therapists say to me: ‘What the hell happened to you when you were young?’” He thinks he was just always an old soul. He remembers reading a book of blues lyrics his mother had given him. “There was a lyric where it arrived at the place: ‘I got so old,’” he says. “It hit me really hard. I thought: ‘F***, that’s going to happen.’ You get to a place where you can’t believe how old you are. No one ever thinks it’s gonna happen to them, isn’t that wild?”

He may be of their generation, but The Who’s line about hoping they’d die before they got old never rang true for Browne. “I’ve always disputed that inwardly,” he says. “I’ve had a problem with my back most of my life. In my thirties it got to where it was so painful I could barely lean over the sink when I brushed my teeth. I thought: ‘This is the onset of decrepitude,’ but I hadn’t tried anything! With yoga and chiropractic doctors I eradicated the problem. I remember thinking with amusement: ‘You were really ready to accept the idea that you were decrepit and there was nothing to be done about it.’ That’s maybe a metaphor for what we’re talking about, about hope in the world. Things are so bad, but I still don’t hope the world dies before it gets older.”

‘Let the Rhythm Lead: Haiti Song Summit Vol 1’ by Artists for Peace and Justice is released today (31 January)

MY FAVORITE JACKSON BROWNE SONG

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=REBEL+JESUS

‘The haters will shut up when we win’: Rashida Tlaib boos Hillary Clinton at Sanders rally in Iowa

Bernie Sanders’ backers are upset by Hillary Clinton’s recent comments about the 2020 hopeful, in which she said: ‘Nobody wants to work with him’

A rally in support of Bernie Sanders erupted in boos when a moderator mentioned Hillary Clinton’s name – and even Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib joined in from the stage.

It came at the end of a panel discussion between Ms Tlaib and fellow representatives Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal. All three have endorsed Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primary.

When moderator Dionna Langford mentioned Hillary Clinton at the end of the discussion – raising her recent statement that “nobody likes Sanders” – the audience began to boo.

Langford attempted to quiet then down, saying: “We’re not gonna boo, we’re not gonna boo. We’re classy here.”

But Ms Tlaidb jumped in, saying: “I’ll boo. Boo,” as her fellow panellists began laughing.

“You all know I can’t be quiet,” Ms Tlaib added. “The haters will shut up on Monday when we win.”

She later rowed back with a Twitter statement, saying: “I am so incredibly in love with the movement that our campaign of #NotMeUs has created. This makes me protective over it and frustrated by attempts to dismiss the strength and diversity of our movement.

“However, I know what is at stake if we don't unify over one candidate to beat Trump and I intend to do everything possible to ensure that Trump does not win in 2020. In this instance, I allowed my disappointment with Secretary Clinton's latest comments about Senator Sanders and his supporters get the best of me.

"You all, my sisters-in-service on stage, and our movement deserve better."

It happened during Mr Sanders’ first ‘Caucus Concert’ ahead of Monday’s Iowa Caucuses.

The event was mainly taken up with discussions of progressive issues such as climate change, but it ended with the discussion of Ms Clinton because of her recent negative comments about Mr Sanders, in which she said: “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done.”

Ms Clinton has also refused to confirm whether she will endorse and campaign for him if he wins the Democratic nomination. 

AND THAT SAYS IT ALL ABOUT THE 1% BITCH 

A SORE LOSER WHO RIGGED THE PRIMARY AGAINST BERNIE IN 2016

H&M has been criticised over its plans to start making clothes from Circulose, a sustainable fabric made from up-cycled clothing and fashion waste.
The Scandinavian fashion giants will be the first retailer to sell garments made from the material, which is produced by Swedish company Re:newcell.

The clothes sold by H&M will comprise a Circulose/Viscose blend that uses 50 per cent Circulose sourced from upcycled cotton jeans fabric and 50 per cent viscose sourced from FSC-certified wood.

The retailer told WWD that its Circulose clothes will be in stores from spring and that it plans to use only recycled or sustainably sourced materials by 2030.

However, the move has been criticised by anti-fast fashion campaigner, Venetia La Manna, who tells The Independent that it is another example of H&M “greenwashing” its consumers.

“Circulose is an absolute box-ticker,” La Manna says. “Not only is it creating something from waste, it’s also vegan-friendly, non-toxic, durable and biodegradable. As a ‘new’ material, it’s much more planet friendly than a lot of the sustainable yarns that are already on the market.

“With this in mind, it’s a real shame to hear that Circulose chose to partner with H&M on such an exciting, circular and innovative yarn. Sustainable fashion absolutely needs to be as accessible for as many people as possible, but the fast fashion model will never reach that all important net zero target that we need to be aiming for.”

La Manna explained that textile waste has increased drastically in recent years and the focus should be on reducing how much we buy and slowing production rates rather than introducing new materials to consume.

“H&M will do whatever they can to continuously greenwash consumers,” La Manna added, citing the retailer’s Conscious Collections, which are made from environmentally friendly materials.


“Ultimately, the sheer amount of product H&M produces is causing irreversible harm to both planet and people, and completely outweighs their sustainability efforts,” she explained. “Fashion this fast can never and will never be sustainable.”

As for how best to be an eco-conscious shopper, La Manna advises enjoying the clothes you already own by finding different ways to style them rather than constantly looking to revamp your wardrobe with new purchases.

“I’d suggest organising a Swap Shop with friends or co-workers to get the dopamine hit of something new, without actually making a purchase,” she adds.

“If you’re craving Zara, try a car boot sale, charity or vintage shop and take advantage of online circular fashion via websites like eBay, Depop or Vestiaire Collective. I’d also recommend renting an outfit for when you want something for an event or wedding, my go-to is Hurr.”

venetiafalconer

Verified

BOYCOTT BLACK FRIDAY?
I want to start by saying that for some people, Black Friday is their only chance to afford something they’ve been lusting after for a really long time - and perhaps something that is going to add real value to their life. I am not in a position to comment on those people. But what I will say, is that crucially, they are in the minority. ⁣
⁣
To bring you up to speed, Black Friday is a shopping weekend that traditionally starts the day after Thanksgiving in America (NB, this is not a public holiday here in the UK, we just love an excuse to over consume). It started as a day, then it spread to a long weekend, and now, with consumerism at an all time high, it’s an entire week long. In fact…
⁣
⚫️Last year in the UK, shoppers spent £1.49 billlion over Black Friday weekend [Interactive Media In Retail Group via Fashion Revolution] ⁣
⚫️In the USA, more than £6.4billion was spent on Cyber Monday, the highest e-commerce sales day in American history [Adobe Analytics via Fashion Revolution]

A few pointers I just learned from a quick click onto the websites of some of the the UK’s fastest fashion stores…
⚫️@PrettyLittleThing are offering up to 80% off their entire site
⚫️@Missguided are offering up to 90% off everything
⚫️@ASOS are offering 70% off - their ‘biggest ever’

Not only is this level of consumption having a negative impact on the planet, it’s having a negative impact on the PEOPLE who are making these clothes ⚫️ We are producing 80 BILLION pieces of clothing each year - that’s 400% more than the amount we consumed just two decades ago (@truecostmovie) ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
We are being encouraged to BUY BUY BUY as a means to make us think that this will bring us happiness. NEWSFLASH: it doesn’t. And fun fact, NOT SHOPPING IS FREE.

It’s time to ask ‘WHY?’ before you buy. 
If you truly LOVE something, buy it. 
If you don’t, leave it. 
And again, NOT SHOPPING IS FREE!⁣
⁣
♻️#OOOTD (old outfit of the day) : t shirt: @depop, skirt @hurr, jacket, belt + kicks: 4 years old

Venetia La Manna

🌎recovering hypocrite + climate activist
♻️on a mission to slow fast fashion
🌱host of #TalkingTastebuds podcast
🤳🏼@48hourchallenge 2020 retreat👇🏼www.ourretreat.co.uk/retreat/march-27th-30th-2020

If you’re not ready to change your shopping habits and completely boycott the high street, La Manna suggests simply trying to shop less frequently.

“Slowing down our overall consumption can have a huge impact,” she adds.

Rand Paul named the whistleblower and revealed the hypocrisy at the heart of the Republican Party

rand paul is not a real libertarian he is a right wing american who has no clue about libertarianism anymore than he has a clue about what socialism is.

It would be pertinent to remember this the next time right-wing people call themselves 'free speech advocates'

Noah Berlatsky New York January 31,2020

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul today named the whistleblower whose revelations sparked the House impeachment hearing. Paul is, in theory, a libertarian, who believes in the protection of free speech. But in naming the whistleblower, he showed how little his free speech principles are worth — and how the GOP has morphed into a party bent on crushing speech, dissent, and liberty.

The Constitution protects free speech from government interference in part because the founders believed that criticism of those in power was necessary to prevent abuse. Government employees who come forward with information about crimes or abuses are alerting the public, and checking corruption. Even if a whistleblower's information turns out to be incorrect after investigation, it's important to protect the ability of people to speak up and come forward. And you do that by ensuring anonymity and freedom from retaliation.

But instead Rand Paul, a Senator and government actor, chose to reveal the whistleblower's name today on Twitter and in a press conference, after Chief Justice Roberts refused to read out his question because it contained the name in question. The whistleblower has already received death threats; he will now receive many more. Any other potential whistleblowers in the Trump administration and intelligence services are now on notice that if they come forward, Republican members of our government will not protect them. This will have a chilling effect on how our democracy works. Whether or not he realizes the consequences of his actions, Paul has contributed to an atmosphere of fear and oppression. Those who might otherwise have spoken out — about anything at all — will now wonder whether they should instead shut up for the sake of themselves and their families.

Republicans have insisted for some time now that they inhabit the party of free speech; indeed, right-wingers across the world have styled themselves as “free speech advocates” fighting the “leftie language police” and “political correctness gone mad”. Conservative commentators, and many in the center, have lamented campus protest of talks by right-wing figures like Milo Yiannopolous and Charles Murray. They argue that the left is intolerant and unwilling to hear opposing viewpoints, and this could have a harmful effect on education and the future of open discourse.

But student protestors on campus are not in positions of substantial power and authority. In contrast, the right has brazenly and with little pushback cultivated an ethos of intimidation intended to muzzle any critic on the left, or anyone who dares to push against a reactionary agenda. Yiannopoulos himself first rose to prominence as a leader of Gamergate, a floating right-wing harassment campaign loosely connected to video games, which under his guidance quickly spread to other targets. As just one example, in 2016, Yiannopoulos wrote an essay attacking Leslie Jones for her participation in the female-led reboot of Ghostbusters. Her social media accounts quickly filled with horrific racist and sexist abuse. Yiannopoulos and his fans regularly singled out targets large and small in this way; in doing so, they sent the message to leftists, women, and black people that their words and cultural products were being policed, and that they could face vicious, psychologically damaging abuse if they stepped out of line.

Some might dismiss Yiannopolous and his type as clowns or an irrelevant bullies. But the same tactics have been used by the President of the United States. When Trump retweeted a lie that Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota had celebrated after the 9/11 attacks, Omar was sent death threats by Twitter trolls. And just this week, the president tweeted about House impeachment manager Adam Schiff, saying he had “not yet paid the price” for his role in the hearings.

This sort of behavior has become a theme for right-wingers, and it’s seriously concerning. Unlike students speaking up against right-wing debaters, such suppression of dissent has serious, tangible risks. It seems that Rand Paul, cheerleader of liberty, would do well to remember that - because today he did his part to make his country a little less free.