#NODEATHPENALTY

NFL honours Mississippi man freed after 22 years in prison

JACKSON, Miss. — The NFL says it is honouring Curtis Flowers, a Black man from Mississippi who was imprisoned more than 22 years and was freed in late 2019, months after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the last of his several convictions in a quadruple murder case.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The NFL says players are wearing helmet decals this season “to honour victims of systemic racism, victims of police misconduct and social justice heroes.”

The league said Wednesday on Twitter that Flowers is among those being recognized.

“I am so blessed, humbled, and thankful that the NFL and Roc Nation chose to include me to be honoured in today’s movement for social change and justice," Flowers, who has maintained that he was wrongly convicted, said in a statement in the NFL tweet.

Roc Nation is an an entertainment company founded by Jay-Z. Its philanthropic arm, Team Roc, has been working on social justice issues, including pushing for better living conditions for inmates in Mississippi prisons.

“I am a life-long lover of the NFL and the work this organization does in our society,” Flowers said. "Thanks to my Lord, Jesus Christ, my family, friends, supporters, my dream legal team for this opportunity. I continually think about all of the men and women who are still unjustly incarcerated."

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in September that she would not try Flowers a seventh time in the 1996 slayings and a robbery that took place at a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. He had been in custody since 1997.

Flowers was convicted four times: twice for individual slayings and twice for all four killings. Two other trials involving all four deaths ended in mistrials. Each of Flowers’ convictions was overturned.

In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out the conviction and death sentence from Flowers’ sixth trial, which took place in 2010. Justices said prosecutors showed an unconstitutional pattern of excluding Black jurors from Flowers' trials.

The Supreme Court ruling came after American Public Media’s “In the Dark” investigated the case. The podcast recorded jailhouse informant Odell Hallmon in 2017 and 2018 recanting his testimony that Flowers had confessed to him.

The first six trials were prosecuted by the local district attorney. Flowers was still facing the 1997 indictments in December 2019 when a judge agreed to release him on bond. The district attorney handed the case to the attorney general, and her staff spent months reviewing it before deciding not to go forward because of a lack of credible witnesses.

The four people shot to death on July 16, 1996, in Tardy Furniture were store owner Bertha Tardy, 59, and three employees: 45-year-old Carmen Rigby, 42-year-old Robert Golden and 16-year-old Derrick “Bobo” Stewart.

Emily Wagster Pettus, The Associated Press

PACIFIC NORTHWEST FISHING WARS

'Most important Indian' Hank Adams dies

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Hank Adams, one of Indian Country’s most prolific thinkers and strategists, has died at age 77.

Adams was called the "most important Indian” by influential Native American rights advocate and author Vine Deloria Jr., because he was involved with nearly every major event in American Indian history from the 1960s forward.

He was perhaps best known for his work to secure treaty rights, particularly during the Northwest “fish wars” of the 1960s and ’70s.

Henry “Hank” Adams, Assiniboine-Sioux, died Dec. 21 at St. Peter’s Hospital in Olympia, Washington, according to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

“Hank’s a genius. He knows things we don’t know. He sees things we don’t see,” attorney Susan Hvalsoe Komori said when Adams was awarded the 2006 American Indian Visionary Award by Indian Country Today.

“Adams was always the guy under the radar, working on all kinds of things,” said the late Billy Frank Jr., Nisqually and chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

Adams was born in Wolf Point, Montana. Toward the end of World War II, his family moved to Washington state, where he attended Moclips-Aloha High School near the Quinault Nation. He played football and basketball and served as student body president and editor of the school newspaper and yearbook.

In 1963, Adams joined the National Indian Youth Council, where he began to focus on treaty rights just as the fish wars were beginning and Northwest tribes were calling on the federal government to recognize their treaty-protected fishing rights.

Adams had so many personal connections with people from that era, such as Mel Thom, Clyde Warrior and Willie Hensley. It was while Adams was working with the youth council that he first met Marlon Brando. The actor would be prominent later in the Frank’s Landing protests.

Also through the youth council, Adams began working at Frank’s Landing, on Washington’s Nisqually River, with Billy Frank and others who were striving to advance the treaty right to fish for salmon.

“That turned into a civil rights agenda,” Adams said in an interview. “It had been brutal from 1962 onward, and there were just a few fishermen down there, fighting with their families for their rights.”

To make a point, Adams refused induction into the military because the U.S. was failing to live up to its treaty obligations. (He eventually served for two years in the U.S. Army.)

As Washington state’s fish wars heated up in the 1960s, Adam was often working with Frank and other Northwest leaders on a strategy of civil disobedience through “fish-ins.”

Frank told a story about a 1968 fishing protest in Olympia “where all the police are.” But not everyone was supposed to be arrested. Frank said it was the job of Adams, the “visionary,” to protect them all. But when the arrests were made, “here comes our visionary.”

"I said, ‘What are you doing here? You’re supposed to get us out. You’re the strategist, thinking way out into the future,’” Frank said.

It was from those many trips to jail that eventually treaty-protected fishing rights were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Boldt decision affirmed the tribal right to fish in the usual and accustomed places in common with other citizens.

Adams’ role in the trial, which took place in Tacoma, Washington, was unprecedented. He was a lay-lawyer representing tribal fishing people and the last person to speak at trial. The judge considered Adams the most informed person to explain both the treaty and the people.

As the court case made its way through the process, Adams and Billy Frank found a way to meet with Judge George Boldt in chambers.

“We don’t want to talk to you about the case,” Adams recalled at the 40th anniversary dinner of the Boldt decision. Instead, the pair met with the judge to tell them that Montana Sen. Lee Metcalf was an admirer of the judge, who was also from Montana. They swapped Montana stories. And, the joke was the case could be resolved if it was just Montanans in the room.

The Supreme Court affirmed treaty rights and the Boldt decision in a series of cases in 1975.

Shortly before the 1972 election, a caravan of American Indians travelled from points across the country to Washington to protest broken treaties. After failed negotiations for housing, the protest ended up at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And when the bureaucrats left for the day, the protestors remained.

Adams was also instrumental in resolving the 1972 takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Richard Nixon’s special assistant, Leonard Garment, said Adams’ role was essential. He said the story could have been tragic, with some in the administration calling for a military assault on the building.

Adams was both a public foil and a behind-the-scenes negotiator. The Trail of Broken Treaties submitted a plank of 20 proposals. Adams called the Nixon administration’s response “almost totally devoid of positive comment.”

But privately Adams and Garment worked on a resolution. Adams’ reward for being an intermediary? He was arrested in 1973 and his home searched for “government documents.”

“Plus they took my typewriter, which I’d had since 1968 during our encampment on the Nisqually River,” Adams said.

A federal grand jury refused to indict Adams (along with journalists who had been reporting on the incident), and eventually Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus ordered the material returned. He “directed the FBI to return everything that they’d taken from me and particularly my typewriter,” Adams said with a laugh.

Adams played a similar role during the standoff at 1973 Wounded Knee. He said a government helicopter flew him to White Clay, Nebraska, where he was to meet with the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service.

After that meeting, Adams was set to meet in Denver with Marlon Brando. The Justice Department was supposed to drive Adams back to the airport, but “they ran out of gas within sight of the airport.” Adams laughed. “The federal government doesn’t run out of gas. They didn’t want me to meet with Marlon Brando” and stir up public support for the occupation.

Using social media, Adams was meticulous over the years in his documentation of family histories, often used to help people grieve over the loss of family, or to call out people who lied and claimed Indigenous ancestry. He continued to monitor and press for treaty rights. And for Leonard Peltier’s release from prison.

Adams' family said a funeral is not possible at this time, but it will co-ordinate a memorial in the near future.

___

Information from: Indian Country Today, https://indiancountrytoday.com/

Mark Trahant, The Associated Pres

The Weather Network
Rainfall approaches Arctic Circle in highly unusual weather pattern
VIDEO Duration: 00:58  DEC 24, 2020
Details with meteorologist Tyler Hamilton.

JAXA shows the sub-surface samples it collected from asteroid Ryugu

Shortly after Japan's Hayabusa2 probe returned to Earth, JAXA showed off some of the samples it collected from asteroid Ryugu. Those rocks came from the “A” chamber of the probe’s sample capsule, which means they were collected during the mission’s first touchdown in February 2019. Now, JAXA has released photos showing the contents of the capsule’s “C” chamber, which it opened on December 21st.

In JAXA’s tweet, it said the agency opened both chambers “B” and “C.” The “B” chamber is empty since it wasn’t used for collection, but the “C” chamber was used to collect samples during Hayabusa2’s second touchdown in July 2019. JAXA fired an explosive into the asteroid before the second touchdown to create a crater and be able to gather samples from deeper underground. Scientists are hoping that the subsurface samples can offer more clues about the solar system’s formation and early period, since they hadn’t been exposed to the hash environment of space.© JAXA JAXA

JAXA says the largest particles in chamber “C” were about a centimeter in size. If you take a look at the photos, the agency marked one of the particles as “人工物” or “artificial object.” It has yet to confirm where that object came from, but JAXA believes it could be “aluminum separated from the sampler horn” when it used an explosive on asteroid Ryugu’s surface

Forget fairness: Canceling all student debt makes great economic sense for America - here's why

© Provided by Business Insider Countless Americans are burdened with student loan debt that can hold them back from buying homes or starting businesses. recep-bg/Getty

Paul Constant is a writer at Civic Ventures, a cofounder of the Seattle Review of Books, and a frequent cohost of the "Pitchfork Economics" podcast with Nick Hanauer and David Goldstein.
In this week's episode of Pitchfork Economics, Hanauer and Goldstein spoke with Fenaba Addo, an associate professor at University of Wisconsin Madison whose research focuses on racial disparities and student debt.

Addo says her research has uncovered, like many economic disparities in the US, that black student loan borrowers are disproportionately saddled with higher average loan balances as well more issues with defaults and delinquencies.

She says forgiving the $1.5 trillion in student loan debt would serve as a direct re-investment into the economy, as more graduates would then be able to afford cars and homes and start their own businesses.

The word "fairness" comes up a whole lot when we talk about the incoming Biden Administration's plans to pass some form of student loan forgiveness. Supporters argue that it isn't fair that the current generation has to pay tens of thousands of dollars more for a decent college education than generations before, while wages have stayed largely flat and other expenses have skyrocketed. Some opponents argue that it's not fair to forgive student loans when they have already worked hard to pay back their own loans.

It's easy to get caught up in the morass of fairness arguments.

As sharing animals, humans are hard-wired to be obsessed with the concept of fairness. But ultimately, the student loan forgiveness debate is an economic issue - and it makes great economic sense to cancel student debt.

We'll get back to that in a bit, but first let's consider the size of the problem. In this week's episode of "Pitchfork Economics," Nick Hanauer and David Goldstein spoke with Fenaba Addo, an associate professor at University of Wisconsin Madison whose research focuses on racial disparities and student debt.

Addo points out that "approximately 45 million borrowers" owe more than $1.5 trillion in college loans. And while a few disingenuous pundits would like to claim that figure is largely made up of people spending above their means to attend overpriced elite institutions, the truth is that only six percent of student loan borrowers owe more than $100,000.

"A lot of people with student loan debt actually are concentrated towards the lower end of the student debt distribution - so, below $20,000," Addo said.

Like so many economic disparities in America, Addo's research finds that student loan debt doesn't land evenly along racial lines.

"Black borrowers in particular have higher average loan balances," Addo said. "They tend to accumulate more debt, and then they have higher problems with defaults and delinquencies. So we see a disproportionate number of black borrowers with student loan debt."

So what student loan debt cancellation plans are on the table right now? Addo says several ideas are wrestling for primacy.

"The Biden [administration] is proposing a $10,000 debt cancellation for individuals with student loans that would phase out at an annual income of $125,000," Addo explained, adding that Biden's team is considering only targeting forgiveness for debts incurred for those who attended public universities.

Gallery: 9 Ways Student Debt Is Affecting Every Aspect of Americans’ Lives (GOBankingRates)


She notes that more progressive politicians like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, are proposing the cancellation of "$50,000 across the board" per person - no matter what your income or where you went to school. All the other plans, Addo said, "kind of fall in between those."

So how much of America's roughly $1.5 trillion dollars in student debt does Addo believe should we forgive?

"You know what they say: Go big or go home," Addo said. "I think we need to cancel all of it. We admit that the current system isn't working and has failed many people. As a society we need to fix something. And one of those fixes should be removing this debt."

It should be noted that Addo's proposal isn't that far to the left of the policy that the average American wants. A recent Data for Progress poll found that more than half of all Americans - 51% - support a proposal to forgive $50,000 in debt for any American earning under $125,000 per year. More than two thirds of all respondents approve of a program that forgives $10,000 in debt for every year the borrower works in community or national service. College debt cancellation is broadly popular.

That explains why forgiving student debt makes good political sense. And at the end of this week's episode of "Pitchfork Economics," you can hear a compelling case for why it makes good economic sense.

Podcast listeners called in from all around the country to explain what they'd do if their student debt was cancelled. Bobby from North Carolina would use that extra money to help his young adult daughters, who are struggling to find work in the pandemic, pay their rent. A 40-year-old woman named Amy from Dallas can't afford to go back to school to learn how to do the work she loves because it would endanger any hope she has of scraping together a retirement.

An educator in a wealthy, good-paying public school district who's paying off a master's in teaching called in to say that if his debt was canceled he'd "be able to teach in a school district that needs really effective teachers, but unfortunately does not have the pay structures in place to pay a livable wage."

A listener named James from Los Angeles admitted that now that he's in his 50s and he's paid most of his student loans off, debt cancellation wouldn't affect him that much. But James also identified what would've happened had he not had that debt on his back for so many years: It "would have improved my credit standing and my purchasing ability quite significantly, because I've been underemployed for a very long time."

Student debt forgiveness makes great economic sense because it would function as a direct stimulus investment in the economy.

Unlike the Trump tax cuts, which handed $1.9 trillion to the wealthiest Americans and corporations, that $1.5 trillion of forgiven debt would immediately begin circulating through the economy, helping the nation recover from the coronavirus recession.

Unburdened by decades of debt, people would buy cars and homes. They'd spend money in their communities, creating jobs. Rather than writing checks to simply pay the exorbitant interest on a loan they incurred when they were 18 years old, they'd start businesses and take chances that would create economic opportunities for others.

When Addo says she's in favor of going big, she's not just talking about the cost of forgiving debt - she's thinking about the benefits we would all enjoy from its forgiveness.

Read more on Pitchfork Economics.
Read the original article on Business Insider

Sunlight, ventilation and relative humidity all affect the microbiome of indoor spaces.

Buildings have their own microbiomes – we’re striving to make them healthy places

Architects and building engineers strive to create safe, productive places where humans can live and work. We have developed complex codes, regulations and guidelines to achieve goals such as structural safety, fire safety, adequate ventilation and energy efficiency, and to anticipate extreme scenarios such as 100-year floods. The question for our profession now is whether and how the 100-year viral pandemic will change architectural design and building operations.

How can societies safeguard buildings or homes from a viral pathogen during an epidemic? What would it take to redesign public and institutional buildings so they could help “flatten the curve,” instead of simply evacuating occupants? What if people could shape and modify the microbial communities present inside buildings to minimize exposure to harmful pathogens?

At the University of Oregon’s Biology and the Built Environment (BioBE) Center, we study interactions between humans, buildings and microorganisms. We believe that architecture needs to adapt and evolve in ways that help people manage indoor microbiomes to support health. In a new paper, we combine research on how microbes function indoors with knowledge about the novel coronavirus to outline ways of minimizing COVID-19 transmission in buildings.

Cultivating or murdering microbes

Even in good times, and certainly during pandemics, the main thing people typically want to know about microbes is how to kill them. But in fact, the vast majority of microbes help humans more than they hurt us. The idea that microbes around us play an important role in our lives is known as the Old Friends Hypothesis or the Hygiene Hypothesis.

Each of us has our own microbiome – a collection of bacteria, fungi, viruses and protozoa that inhabit our skin and body, and may be as unique as our fingerprints. Some of these microbes help keep us healthy, while others may cause us to become ill.

These organisms help regulate our digestion and impact our mood and our weight. Skin microbes can have immunoprotective effects.

There are also surprisingly complex microbial ecosystems within indoor spaces. Removing all microbial life from these settings can create problems. For example, irritable bowel disease, asthma and some mood disorders have been linked to overall decreases in our microbial exposure. Lack of exposure during childhood is thought to spark overreactive immune function later in life, potentially leading to increased inflammation and contributing to these afflictions.

Focusing solely on murdering microbes can have unintended consequences. For example, our lab recently discovered a correlation between concentrations of antimicrobial compounds and abundance of antibiotic-resistant bacteria indoors. This finding has led our team to reexamine indoor cleaning practices more broadly.

Designing indoor microbiomes

Architects can use many design features to shape and modify microbial communities within homes and office buildings. They include space configuration and occupant density; interior material selection; window location, size and glass type; electric lighting spectrum and intensity; and air movement and ventilation strategies.

Building managers also play a role. They can adjust the amount of outside air that is admitted and the frequency at which it is exchanged with indoor air. Other levers include humidification and dehumidification, and of course, cleaning products and practices.

Our recent research suggests that many natural systems, such as daylight and natural ventilation, don’t just reduce energy consumption and support human health – they also support more diverse indoor microbial ecosystems and reduce the abundance of potential pathogens. Similarly, natural unfinished wood surfaces have been shown to reduce the abundance of some viruses more quickly than other common indoor surfaces, such as stainless steel or plastic.

Humidification is an important influence in indoor settings. Most indoor environments are very dry in the heating season. Dampness can produce mold, but very dry air is also a problem. It dehydrates our mucus membranes and skin and carries particles deeper into our respiratory tract, leaving us more susceptible to infection.

How the novel coronavirus might spread indoors: (a) Viral particles accumulate in an infected person’s lungs and upper respiratory tract. (b) Droplets and aerosolized viral particles are expelled from the body through activities such as coughing, sneezing and talking, and can spread to nearby surroundings and individuals. (c and d) Viral particles, excreted from the mouth and nose, are often found on the hands (c) and can be spread to commonly touched items (d) such as computers, glasses, faucets and countertops. Dietz et al., 2020, http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/mSystems.00245-20, CC BY-SA

Dry air also decreases particle deposition, allowing ultra-fine particles to remain aerosolized longer. This increases the risk of airborne transmission of microbes.

Indoor air with a relative humidity of 40%-60% avoids these harmful impacts. It has also been shown to decrease viral infectivity, likely by disrupting viruses’ outer membrane

Based upon our past research, we have developed some basic guidelines for enhanced building operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. They aim to reduce the risk of indoor viral transmission in settings including homes, medical buildings and other critical infrastructure.

These strategies can be applied in nearly every building. Examples include introducing more outside air, increasing air exchange, maintaining relative humidity of 40%-60%, opening windows to provide natural ventilation and flush out indoor spaces, increasing access to daylight, and implementing targeted disinfection techniques, such as UV-C light in health care settings.

People can use similar strategies to reduce risks at home. If someone in the house has been infected or is symptomatic, we recommend having them self-isolate in a space next to a bathroom with an exhaust fan that can operate continuously. This will pull air from the rest of the home through the infected space and out the bathroom exhaust.
Letting in sunlight and fresh air and maintaining healthy humidity levels can help create a healthy indoor environment at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Better living through microbiology

Our team’s next goal is to define what makes up a community of beneficial microbes. We are partnering with industry, institutions and government organizations to develop real-time indoor microbial monitoring technologies that can support better operating practices and improve contact tracing strategies. With this knowledge, we can monitor for pathogens and use data science to improve our understanding of healthy indoor microbiomes.

How might people cultivate an indoor community of benign and favorable microbes? Several cleaning product manufacturers are already exploring the idea of adding specific microbes to indoor environments to outcompete or attack harmful microbes and curate others. These products avert many traditional cleaners’ “scorched Earth” approach, which relies on caustic and volatile ingredients.

We believe this concept is worth exploring but should be based on robust research with effective oversight. The key agency in this area is the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates antimicrobial products designed as pesticides, including cleaning products.

For several decades, the architectural design and construction industry has been developing standards to guide building performance, including aspects related to human health. In our view, it is time to focus on shaping healthy indoor microbiomes so that they can shape us.

Authors
Kevin Van den Wymelenberg

Associate Professor of Architecture and Director, Biology and the Built Environment Center, University of Oregon

Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg receives funding from The Alfred P Sloan Foundation, US Department of Agriculture, US Department of Energy, The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, and several industry members participating in the Institute for Health in the Built Environment Industry Research Consortium

Leslie Dietz

Wet Lab Manager, University of Oregon

Leslie Dietz receives funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the US Department of Agriculture. Leslie Dietz is affiliated with 500WomenScientists.
Mark Fretz

Research Assistant Professor of Architecture, University of Oregon
Disclosure statement


Mark Fretz receives funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance and participating industry members in the Institute for Health in the Built Environment Industry Research Consortium. He consults with industry members in the Institute for Health in the Built Environment Industry Research Consortium.

Improving building ventilation can help us control the spread of COVID-19 during the winter months

Gabriel Wainer, Professor, Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University 2 days ago

As predicted,we are in the middle of second wave of COVID-19. As of Dec. 23, the world has seen over 78 million confirmed cases and 1.7 million deaths.

© (Shutterstock) The risk of transmitting COVID-19 is much higher indoors due to proximity to other people and building ventilation systems.

One of the few successes to emerge has been the creation of COVID-19 vaccines in record time. But vaccination will not provide immediate relief.

There are many unanswered questions about the efficacy of the vaccines. For instance, vaccine studies mostly tracked how many of the individuals that were vaccinated became sick. It is not known if the vaccinated individuals can still carry the virus asymptomatically; vaccinated people don’t show symptoms, but some may continue to have virus in the nose and throat that can replicate and spread. We also do not know about the chances of reinfection or long-term immunity.

Infection with COVID-19 comes with a risk of death and puts strain on our health-care system, but there is also a risk of long-term health effects. The bottom line is that we cannot let our guard down: we need to continue wearing masks, keep our physical distance, wash our hands, and avoid crowds and indoor events in poor ventilated areas.

As the vaccine is distributed, we might find ourselves relaxing our guard before it is safe to do so. And as the weather grows increasingly colder, reducing our options for outdoor activities and gatherings, we need to consider how the disease spreads indoors and the importance of ventilation.

Avoiding crowded indoors

The evidence for aerosol transmission is overwhelming. Three of the most important factors that determine the risk of exposure are proximity to people, duration of the exposure and the quality of the air. When the three are combined, the risk is higher, as seen in numerous superspreader events.

Read more: A few superspreaders transmit the majority of coronavirus cases

COVID-19 spreads through inhalation of the virus. An infected person breathes out aerosols that can remain suspended in the air for up to three hours. Transmission indoors can be around 20 times higher than outdoors.

We have to think about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 spreading like cigarette second-hand smoking in a closed space. Imagine being indoors where smoking is permitted: the exhaled smoke can spread in poorly ventilated spaces. The amount of particles inhaled close to the source is higher, but, with time, the smoke will fill the whole room and everybody will breathe the contaminated air.

Indoor transmission by aerosols has been recognized by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Public Health Agency of Canada. The World Health Organization recommends avoiding indoor spaces whenever possible and ensuring proper ventilation in the fight against COVID-19.

We need to take these recommendations seriously during the holiday season: we need to reduce the number of close contacts, in particular in indoor settings, wear masks and ventilate the rooms.

Modelling ventilation indoors

At present, my research team is interested in different aspects of indoor ventilation. We are combining building information modelling and indoor viral spread models to study different strategies to return to indoor gatherings and address potential future outbreaks.

One example we used was the site of a COVID-19 outbreak associated with the use of air conditioning in a restaurant in Guangzhou, China. We showed how the airflow produced by the ventilation system affected 10 different individuals. Our team used the floor plans of the restaurant and built a model that can easily be adapted for different factors, such as different positioning of the ventilation sources.

Modelling and simulating indoor ventilation is important: we need to find out which factors — like circulating fresh air or using high-quality air filters — are likely to reduce transmission risk. Simulated virtual environments can be quite informative, as it’s not possible to run experiments with people and COVID-19.

In addition, there is limited information about how infectious SARS-CoV-2 is. Although we know that people shed different amounts of the virus, we don’t know how much virus someone has to inhale to become sick. Using a simulated virtual environment can be useful to conduct different experiments.

The models we constructed allow us to study different scenarios. For instance, we include different types of fabric used for the masks by different individuals as well as the different fitting positions of the masks, which can influence the amount of virus transmitted or inhaled.

The building models can easily adjust different factors for analysis, such as different physical arrangements of people (and their relative physical distance), various ventilation methods, a range of air qualities and even the use of portable HEPA filters to reduce the probability of being infected.

And now that there are vaccines, we’ll need to factor in how the vaccination process will affect disease transmission.

In the meantime, we need to remain vigilant, and focus on the social aspects of the pandemic: online misinformation, social behaviours and public health communication strategies. These are important for all air-transmitted diseases (seasonal flu, colds), including any future pandemics.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Gabriel Wainer receives funding from NSERC and collaborates with DRDC (DND).

REST IN POWER COMRADE

Leo Panitch and the Socialist Project

BY STEPHEN MAHER

Leo Panitch will live on in the democratic socialism he espoused and the lives he touched.

Leo Panitch (1945–2020).


The death of Leo Panitch has made the world a darker place. His writings have carried us through some of the most difficult periods in the history of the socialist left, as wave after wave of the neoliberal onslaught broke workers’ organizations, serving up one defeat after the next. Leo’s work sustained so many of us during these years, pushing us on and pointing the way through the storm.

This was not because he sowed illusions about just how bad things have been. Rather it was because, even as other erstwhile New Leftists lamented the “God That Failed,” he devoted himself to demonstrating the necessity of a democratic-socialist society that would neither fall prey to the shortcomings of social democracy nor those of Soviet-style Communism.

Over the decade I knew Leo, he was my teacher, supervisor, and comrade. He was also a close friend. Aside from completing what ended up being the final doctoral dissertation under his supervision, I worked with him to build the Toronto-based Socialist Project, and collaborated on the past eight volumes of the Socialist Register he coedited with Greg Albo. Leo saw the latter as a sacred covenant, the living link to the politics of the New Left and to his own mentor, Ralph Miliband, who founded the journal with John Saville in 1964.

It was in the pages of the Register that Miliband developed his groundbreaking theory of the capitalist state. It was also where Leo later sharpened his — still utterly essential — critique of social democracy, as well as, with his coauthor Sam Gindin, the theory of American empire that would ultimately culminate in their magnum opus, The Making of Global Capitalism. The three of us also published a revised edition of The Socialist Challenge Today this year.

Leo was fond of quoting Ralph’s adage that the Register “should be hard to write for, as well as hard to read” — by which he meant that while the essays (not articles) should reward focused study and attention on the part of the reader, authors also had a responsibility to make them as readable as possible. This also meant it was hard to edit. He was constantly on the lookout for potential essays, topics, and angles to be covered; devising volume themes along five-year plans; and identifying specific authors to cover particular issues years in advance.

Each year, Leo devoted immense effort to working with authors to develop drafts — providing extensive feedback and striving always to make sure that “the style of writing was clear and accessible at a time when the opacity and clumsiness of much intellectual discourse affected the Left like a plague.”

In this vein, it has often been said that, like Ralph’s, Leo’s writing is “accessible.” This requires some clarification. Though he certainly sought to write clearly, and valued such efforts by others, he was constantly and outspokenly against any attempt to condescendingly “dumb down” ideas for popular consumption. This applied whether he was considering a Register essay or a pamphlet to be handed out on a city bus.

It is a testament to Leo’s socialist orientation that he was adamant that average working people be treated as thinking human beings capable of grappling with difficult ideas. Leo showed his respect for others through his willingness to engage with them as equals. And he did so honestly: if he disagreed, he would say so and challenge people to think harder. This, too, attests to his socialist convictions.

In a world of polite but superficial niceties and sugarcoated small talk, Leo always gave it to you straight. Whether you agreed or disagreed, you always knew what he thought. His sharp wit, charisma, and forceful personality were disarming. Those who spent time with Leo couldn’t help but feel the impact of his presence on their ideas about the world. But he left this mark on people not simply by telling them what to think, but rather by pushing them to develop their own thoughts and arguments. As a result, many of the people for whom Leo was a teacher or mentor were changed forever by the experience — as has been reflected in the many touching tributes that have circulated on social media since his passing. Even people who simply shared a meal, a drink, or a discussion at a conference often found the exchange deeply memorable and formative.

These socialist values were at the heart of his critique of social democracy, which was one of the central animating threads of his work. As Leo argued, social-democratic parties were transformed into top-down institutions controlled by party bureaucrats, who seek to limit the political engagement of working-class people to voting or knocking on doors. Once elected, party “experts” would secure for the workers better living conditions within capitalism. What most bothered Leo about this was that it was entirely predicated on the assumed passivity of workers, rather than geared toward developing their democratic capacities to think, debate, and formulate political strategies and programs — the fundamental tasks of a socialist party.

Moreover, that this was based on a politics of class compromise meant disciplining workers and limiting their horizons to what is possible within capitalism. Once capitalism is unable to accommodate such reforms, as happened following the crisis of the 1970s, they must be rolled back — and social-democratic parties often proved particularly effective at doing so. This was especially the case as socialists, who certainly remained in these parties, were driven to the margins after their ideas had been deemed “unserious” for generations. Even if they had wanted to, these parties had no way of mobilizing workers to the degree that would have been necessary to halt or reverse the neoliberal onslaught.

The collapse of the legitimacy of social-democratic parties all across Europe is precisely the result of this dynamic. These parties became major forces institutionalizing neoliberalism, particularly in advancing market-based reforms under the rubric of the Third Way from the 1990s on.

To Leo, this proved that the fundamental task for socialists is to construct a party of a different kind — one based on empowering, educating, and mobilizing workers. This party, as he put it, was to be the “fulcrum” of working-class formation and state transformation. Far from simply seeking to win elections, it should aim to transform the state to create new forms of participatory democracy and economic planning, so that production was geared toward social need and not private profit. And rather than passivity, a socialist party must be able to cultivate the capacities of workers to mobilize for a new society — such that once the democratic reforms pursued by the party generate a capitalist crisis, rather than rolling them back, workers are prepared to push onward.

Most importantly, Leo’s socialism was one of sobriety and realism — two words of which he was very fond. His unwavering dedication to socialism was mirrored in his uncompromising refusal to retreat into empty slogans, tired dogmas, or comfortable illusions. He was deeply committed to living as if a better, postcapitalist society was possible. But at the same time, he refused to entertain shortcuts or proffer false hope.

In fact, Leo saw the fundamental role of a socialist intellectual as being to identify the limits, as well as the possibilities, of current left political strategies. Rather than seeing socialism as just around the corner, for him, intellectual leadership was about understanding why the efforts of the Left had not resulted in a socialist society, and why the various shortcuts proposed as end runs around the weakness of the working class were likely to fall short.

Above all, this demanded thinking historically. Abstract “concept-spinning,” as he called it, could be helpful for developing a framework through which to decode the immense complexity of history. But socialism is always a matter of actual concrete strategic questions in the here and now — and requires locating oneself at a point in history, uncovering its fault lines and trends, and sketching a way forward from there. This means understanding how politics is shaped by our historical moment, and how change arises from contradictions within that moment — and on this basis, attempting to seriously think through what would actually be required for us to get to a point where a socialist transition was a serious possibility. As his analyses always showed, the herculean nature of this task did not make it any less necessary.

All this gave Leo’s scholarly and political work a seriousness that is all too often lacking on the Left. Faced with the distant prospect of a socialist society, it is easy to resort to a politics of waiting for the systemic breakdown that will lead inexorably to socialism, or simply cheering on ephemeral protest movements whose political vision betrays a lack of careful, long-term, strategic analysis — or which in some cases lack clear objectives at all. The art of the conjunctural analysis — a careful reading of the balance of forces, of the contradictions within capital and the state which sustain the status quo and create openings to change it — is largely a lost one. But it was to this task that Leo devoted himself in seeking to understand the nature of the contemporary capitalist state, the limits of social democracy, and the logic of the American empire.

It is hard to communicate today just how anathema Leo’s assertion, along with his co-thinker Sam Gindin, that the state had not been supplanted by the ethereal forces of “globalization” was during the 1990s and 2000s. In these years, the dominant strains of left theory asserted that multinational corporations, global “networks,” and transnational institutions had bypassed the nation-state as the main locus of political power. Leo, on the other hand, asserted that states were the primary authors of globalization and had taken responsibility for facilitating the internationalization of capital — the American state above all, which uniquely superintended “the making of global capitalism.”

Rather than interimperial rivalry between major capitalist powers, as had existed previously, the postwar world was characterized by a condominium of capitalist states organized within an informal American empire. Nor were nationalist revolutions on the global periphery sufficient to undermine this imperial system. In fact, the “development” of the global periphery only led to demands from these bourgeoisies for greater integration within US-led global capitalism. Anti-imperial struggle therefore entailed not nationalist alliances with bourgeoisies, but class struggle against them — especially in the heart of the empire itself.

Leo was also a committed socialist activist. He was both a regular panelist and constant attendee at the many public talks the Socialist Project organized over the years, which featured scholars and activists from all around the world — often at his invitation. When we took on a campaign to organize bus riders in an overwhelmingly working-class, immigrant, and racialized neighborhood, he was among the most enthusiastic participants. Closest to his heart, however, was the SP’s Cultural Committee, which he chaired. Leo believed deeply that socialist politics must not merely be a matter of economics. Rather, it had to incorporate a focus on developing the aptitudes, stunted and disfigured by capitalism, to participate in and appreciate the arts — as well as creating spaces for the formation of solidaristic communities and bonds of friendship.

Leo continued to read voraciously, and to debate his views and ideas, until the last days of his life. The last time I saw him in person, not long before he was hospitalized, we sat for hours in his garden and discussed the limits of the New Left. While the refreshing and nondogmatic approach to Marxism his generation had developed had been positive, he lamented that it had not produced a “new politics.” And he was quite pessimistic about the future. The United States, he thought, was teetering dangerously close to right-wing authoritarianism, a frightening reality that a Joe Biden presidency would most likely do little to alleviate. While he was relieved that Trump had been defeated in the presidential election, he had no illusions that right populism would simply go away.

And yet at the same time, he was deeply inspired by the energy, organizing, and creative thinking that had emerged around Momentum in Britain and the Democratic Socialists of America in the United States. He was full of hope for these projects, which at their best were animated by the same commitment to democratic socialism that the Register had been since the days of Ralph Miliband. He knew that the process of developing these organizations would be messy and uneven, full of conflict, setbacks, and heartache. But he was deeply encouraged to see a new generation taking up the banner of socialism, returning to class struggle, and seeking to find the organizational forms that could give expression to the principles of democratic socialism.

Leo didn’t just wave the banner of socialist revolution. He actually meant it. It was this that most impressed me upon first meeting him a decade ago. Above all else, the utter earnestness of his commitment to socialism — to really building toward the possibility of achieving a new society — blew me away and reshaped my understanding of what it means to be a socialist. And in changing the lives of the many people with whom he came into contact, he did transform the world. His commitment to socialist values, his honesty and integrity, his generosity and warmth and bigheartedness, should serve as an example for all of us.

Though larger than life in so many ways, Leo was after all a human being, and human beings die. His passing has been unspeakably difficult for me, as for so many others who were close to him. But insofar as he was dedicated to the socialist mission, something that is larger than his — or anyone else’s — life, he cannot die. He will live on in the ideas he espoused and the lives he touched.

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/12/leo-panitch-obituary-democratic-socialism

Millennials Confront True Meaning of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ (A Parable)


Joe Hoover, S.J.December 23, 2020

George Michael, Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (YouTube)

The last choral notes drifted away like the snow that fell reluctantly outside on Blondo Street. Oh the poor starving Africans! The six of us looking at each other like, are you kidding me? And the glorious European pop stars to the rescue! They really wrote songs like that. No matter how many times you hear it: unbelievable.

“We sang that song in eighth grade,” a voice said. We whirled around. All of us, at once, whirled.

Stepping out from the shadows, an old Irishman with a creased face and a dark black peacoat, in about his late 40’s. “We had to bring a record player into the church,” he said. “It was a breakthrough moment in the history of Christmas concerts at St. Pete-bogs , and no one ever forgot it.”

An Irishman. A novelty act. We let him go on.

“But you’ve got issues with the song. It’s always issues with your lot. For instance himself Mr. Bono’s Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you. How terrible! Thanking the Lord for other people’s suffering!”

Well...

“And then Band-Aid’s mourning there won’t be snow in Africa. Very problematic. Everything’s problematic with you all, too. Because maybe Africans wouldn’t even want snow over there, right?”


“Mr. Bono’s Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you. How terrible! Thanking the Lord for other people’s suffering!” 

Before we could respond: “And the very title of the song, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas.’ We thinking these poor Africans just because they’re all hungry and dwelling in sand are unable to read a calendar let alone count to 25 and thus are totally in the dark about it being Christmas. It’s othering the Africans to think that. Everything’s othering with you all, isn’t it?

It was a legitimately disheartening bar we were in. Hands plunged into thin leather coats, we went there to feel better about ourselves, to have one up on something. Even if it was just a bar. Our late twenties had not exactly turned out to be the promised land.

Before we could respond: “But perhaps my lads and lassies, we consider that Mr. Bono himself is being sarcastic about ‘thanking God’ other people are starving and not us. Sarcasm. Are ye unable to catch it when it’s happening?”

We were all silent, unsure if he was being sarcastic. Outside it had stopped snowing, as if the sky itself had quit what it was doing to listen in.

“As for the song title and the grievous lack of snow in Africa,” he said, “consider your standard socialist take on these issues. And you lot are all devout socialists, I assume?”

We considered this for a moment and then nods all around.

“So you know that ye olde Christmas cheer is owned by the bourgeois propertied class whose finely tuned economy dispenses from a colander with holes too small for a mouse to pee in Christmas gifts and generosity and not starvingness. So indeed it is an open question within bridle-free capitalism, wherein Christmas is essentially a collateralized debt obligation and snow a glinty metaphor for the material wealth December 25th supposedly bestows upon the 99 percent but doesn’t, it is an open question whether in fact the people of the Sub-Sahara do not know it’s Christmastime at all and indeed are completely flackered they have no snow.”

We stared at him with reluctant awe. He took off his Irishman’s brown driving cap and slapped it on his knee to get the dust off, and there was no dust.

“So given all of this and other lyrics whose supposedly troubling nature we could readily defuse, consider, do, the somber clangs at the outset of this crushing holiday ode and Mr. Young, Paul, quietly telling us It’s Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid and then throwing to Mr. George, Boy, who declaims with a ghostly precious voice rising like purple mascara fog into the half sunlight And in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy, throw your arms around the world...at Christmas time.”

“And Mr. Collins, Phil, starting on the drums for Mr. Michael, George, who alongside a thrumming bass, gently but firmly transitions us into the shaming part of the whole thing, But say a prayer, pray for the other ones, at Christmas time, when you’re having fun. And then handing off the lyric to some other fellow who looks like Mr. George, but not as drop-dead you know, Because there’s a world outside your window, and it’s a world of dread and fear."

“Consider all of this and then imagine”—a sharp gust of wind blew outside, like a fierce assent to all that had been said—”imagine them Band-Aid fellas not only singing in 1984 for all guilty Nordic types around the world but also floating above, stay with me here, floating above the wretched stable of 2,000 years ago where the wee spitting image of the Lord is taking rest in a disgusting mound of wet hay looking at all these beasts hanging over him and rank shepherds and vagrant kings and one tatty unrhythmic little drum cutting through it all and wondering, what the deuce did I come down here for?”


“The wee spitting image of the Lord is taking rest in a disgusting mound of wet hay...wondering, what the deuce did I come down here for?”

“And then maybe thinking ahead a bit, because he can do that you know, to what’s in store for him.”

We all grew quiet. What’s in store for him. Yes. Only one of us believed anymore, but who of us didn’t know what was in store for him


“But hearing nevertheless these shimmery voices, the Lord, and perhaps seeing even a shadow of the tufted layers of Mr. Michael’s golden locks as he’s up there singing about prayers for the other ones and too the sound of Mr. Boy re-entering the song a few moments later with an unearthly Ohhhh and the Lord thinking, maybe I’m the other one they’re praying for, maybe that heart-wrenching Ohhhh is for me.”

“So but this song whenever it’s played and no matter your unwavering magisterial judgment on it is helping our tiny Lord just plunked down into the brutish world make it through another and another and yet again one more miserable second of life in his cow-infested maternity ward.”

The wet glaze on our plastic cups, the bar’s faint chill, the old man’s voice and nothing else.

“And maybe it’s not only that he’s being born there in that manger but the Lord’s being born over and over, in, I don’t know, whoever’s starving today or glad or twined up in Human Studies-major debt or hopeful or lonely or sheer just wondering what’s the point of it all and why even go on.

“He’s bursting up right there, and ‘Do They Know’ is always playing, and him nestled into that unearthly Ohhhh, one precious note covering Christ for all eternity wherever he is, and Christ himself repaying the favor, sheltering forever all of us.”

He stopped. The bar had grown deathly still. A few candles flickered, a few snowflakes held in the trees. We stood there, unsure what to do next, pondering these things, wanting him maybe to say more.

Far-right white evangelicals will miss Trump dearly — even though he knows next to nothing about the Bible NEITHER DO THEY 

SPIRITUALIST PENTACOSTALS

WHITE PEOPLES HOODOO 


Tom Boggioni
Conservative slams evangelicals descending on DC for last gasp march to 'pray' for God to intercede on Trump's behalf
Alex Henderson December 18, 2020

The Christian Right is in mourning over President Donald Trump being voted out of office. Pat Robertson, the far-right evangelical who founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, has declared that the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on January 20, 2021 must be prevented, saying, "We will not give up this great country. And Satan, you cannot have it." But the irony is that the incoming president is much more religious than Trump, who has demonstrated how little he knows about Christianity and the Bible.

Although Trump was raised Presbyterian, religion was never a high priority in his life. But when he ran for president in 2016, Trump realized that the Christian Right was a prominent voting bloc in the GOP and went out of his way to pander to the far-right White evangelicals he had no connection to in the past. The Trump of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s was more of a Blue Dog Democrat than a GOP culture warrior, and he spent a lot more time in casinos than in churches.

Journalist Ed Kilgore, in an article published by New York Magazine on December 17, notes Trump's history of butchering Biblical references during his speeches.

Kilgore explains, "Before Donald Trump became the very favorite politician of White conservative evangelicals, he was regularly a figure of sport for displaying exceptional ignorance in all matters religious. A particularly rich example of his clumsiness occurred when he was campaigning at evangelical stronghold Liberty University early in 2016 and tried to quote a Bible verse that was very familiar to the audience, since it's etched on several buildings there."

Kilgore adds that there were many other "religious gaffes Trump committed while stumping for votes" in 2016.

"On another occasion along the campaign trail," Kilgore recalls, "Trump was asked about his favorite line of scripture. He delivered a word salad for a while and finally tried to recall 'an eye for an eye,' not the sort of thing Christians of any variety consider normative for the faith of the Prince of Peace…... Just prior to the Iowa caucuses, Trump was in a Council Bluffs church when a plate came down the pews with communion bread on it. The billionaire misidentified it as a collection plate and put a couple of bills on it."

Kilgore also notes that in 2017, Trump met with two Presbyterian minsters and was surprised to learn that they didn't consider themselves evangelicals but rather, described themselves as "Mainline Protestants."

Of course, anyone with even a basic knowledge of Christianity realizes that Presbyterians aren't evangelicals any more than Episcopalians or Lutherans — two other examples of Mainline Protestants — are evangelicals. And there's no way that either Biden, a devout Catholic, or former President Barack Obama, a Mainline Protestant, would have made that mistake or confused a communion plate with a collection plate. Unlike Trump, Biden and Obama both have a long history of being churchgoing Christians and obviously have an extensive knowledge of the Bible.

If Pat Robertson were to sit down with Biden or Obama, they could have an in-depth conversation about scripture. Yet Robertson, like much of the Christian Right, adores Trump while hating Biden and Obama — which underscores the deeply tribalist nature of the Christian Right.

The Christian Right has long been a hate movement, and it is as much about White nationalism and far-right identity politics as it is about Protestant fundamentalism. The late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr., founder of Liberty University and co-founder of the Moral Majority, was a notorious segregationist during the 1950s and 1960s, when he vigorously defended Jim Crow laws in the pulpit and argued that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a not a true Christian because of his anti-segregation views. During the 1980s, Falwell defended the racist apartheid regime in South African and encouraged Christians to buy krugerrands to support it.

The late Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater, known for being an arch-conservative in his day, was vehemently critical of Falwell and the Christian Right during the 1980s — describing them as dangerous fanatics and warning that the GOP was making a huge mistake by allying itself with that movement. But many Republicans ignored Goldwater, much to the GOP's detriment.

To the Christian Right and far-right White evangelicals, the fact that Biden and Obama are more religious than Trump is irrelevant. Robertson, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family) and other evangelical Trump supporters are extreme tribalists, and they view Trump as part of their tribe — which is why Trump got a pass when, according to his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, he had extramarital affairs with a porn star (Stormy Daniels) and a Playboy model (Karen McDougal) and paid them hush money to keep quiet.

Trump repeatedly attacked Biden as anti-Christian during his 2020 presidential campaign. But in 2017, Trump didn't even know the difference between Presbyterians and evangelicals.

The Christian Right will miss Trump dearly when he leaves off on January 20, 2021. And no matter how much Biden goes to church or accurately quotes the Bible, it won't matter to the far-right evangelical extremists who value White identity politics above all else.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
Why Do Evangelicals Worship Trump? The Answer Should Be ... ›
'increasingly desperate' evangelicals make in backing Trump ›
Evangelical pastor explains why nobody understands Trump voters ... ›
Evangelicals' stronghold on American politics may be over -- thanks ... ›
A neuroscientist explains why Christian evangelicals are hardwired ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
Trump's election support from evangelicals shows we're the biggest ... ›
What's next for American evangelicals after Trump leaves office? ›
Why White Evangelical Voters Love Donald Trump : Code Switch ... ›