I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM
Twitter permanently bans Donald Trump over Capitol violence

Twitter has permanently suspended President Donald Trump's account after the violence at the Capitol building. The company cited the risk of further incitement in its decision.

Twitter said Trump's account was suspended "due to the first of future incitement of violence"

Twitter has announced it is permanently suspending President Donald Trump's account following the Capitol violence.

Twitter said late on Friday night that it was banning Trump's account "due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
 

This is a breaking news story. More to follow.

UPDATED

 Twitter said Trump's account was suspended "due to the first of future incitement of violence"

Twitter has announced it is permanently suspending President Donald Trump's personal account, @realDonaldTrump, and the @TeamTrump campaign account following the Capitol violence.

Twitter said late on Friday night that it was banning Trump's account "due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
 

"In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action," Twitter said in a statement. 

Trump calls suspension a ban on free speech

Trump tried to bypass the ban on Friday night by tweeting from @POTUS, the official US government account for the country’s leader.

Trump took to the official @POTUS account to accuse Twitter of "trying to silence me."

"Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me -- and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me," he said.

The tweets were subsequently deleted as Twitter does not allow using another account to evade a suspension.

Twitter's decision comes hours after Trump gained access to his Twitter account after being temporarily suspended from the microblogging site on Thursday. The permanent ban keeps the president from using what was one of his most-common means of directly addressing the public and making policy as well as personal statements.

According to the Twitter statement, on Friday Trump tweeted:

"The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!"

This was followed by another tweet, where he announced that he will not attend President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration.  

"To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th."

Twitter said it is suspending the account, which had more than 88 million followers, over violation of its policy against the glorification of violence. 

"After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service

Trump also banned on Facebook

Trump was also "indefinitely" banned from Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram on Thursday, with the pressure building on social media platforms to ban the outgoing president. 

The call follows Wednesday's US Capitol storming, which saw pro-Trump supporters disrupting a joint congressional session in Washington DC to confirm President-elect Joe Biden's 2020 election win.

Whether to address matters of diplomacy or scathing attacks on rivals, Trump has used social media as his bull-horn throughout his presidency. 

Social media continues purge

Google suspended alt-right social networking service, Parler, from its Play Store late on Friday evening over posts that could further fuel violence, according to reports by Politico and The New York Times.

The suspension comes as tech giant Apple also mulls a ban on Parler.

Apple has reportedly given Parler 24 hours to implement a plan to fully moderate its platform, failing which it could face an ouster from Apple's App Store.

According to BuzzFeed News, Apple wrote to Parler over complaints that the service had been used to plan and coordinate the Capitol storming.

Earlier on Friday, Twitter also permanently evicted former Trump aides Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell for pushing far-right conspiracy theories and QAnon's content.

"Given the renewed potential for violence surrounding this type of behavior in the coming days, we will permanently suspend accounts that are solely dedicated to sharing QAnon content," Twitter said.

Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser and Sidney Powell, an ex-Trump campaign lawyer, have both raised doubts over the president’s defeat. 

Reactions to ban

While many on Twitter celebrated the ban, Donald Trump, Jr., lashed out at Twitter over the suspension of his father's account, saying "free speech no longer exists" in the country.

He said Trump's account was banned while dictatorial regimes are allowed to have a presence on Twitter, "with no issue despite threatening genocide to entire countries."

Jason Miller — a senior adviser to Trump and the chief spokesperson for his 2016 presidential campaign — called Twitter "disgusting" in a tweet addressed to the platform's co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey.

Jason Miller

@JasonMillerinDC

.@Twitter is disgusting. These people would rather empower a murderous, anti-Semitic terrorist than allow free speech for the duly-elected President of the United States and the 75M people who voted for him. They’re coming for you next...why do you love terrorists, @jack?

5:45 PM · Jan 8, 2021

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Twitter permanently suspends Trump's account

 "due to the risk of further incitement of violence"

Issued on: 09/01/2021 - 00:55

A photo illustration shows the suspended Twitter account of U.S. President Donald Trump on a smartphone at the White House briefing room in Washington, U.S., January 8, 2021. 

© REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Twitter Inc said on Friday that it has permanently suspended U.S. President Donald Trump's account due to the risk of further incitement of violence following the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.

The suspension of Trump's account, which had more than 88 million followers, silences his primary megaphone days before the end of his term and follows years of debate about how social media companies should moderate the accounts of powerful global leaders.

"After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence," the company said in a tweet.

It was the first time Twitter has banned a head of state, the company confirmed.

Social media companies have moved swiftly to crack down on Trump and some of his prominent right-wing allies and supporters in the wake of the turmoil in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, which led to five deaths.

Trump has repeatedly used Twitter and other platforms to claim his defeat in the Nov. 3 election was due to widespread voter fraud and to share other conspiracy theories, and had urged supporters to come to Washington on Wednesday and march on the Capitol to protest the election result.

Facebook Inc said earlier this week it was suspending his account through until at least the end of his presidential term.

The Republican president is due to hand over to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20.

In a blog post on Friday, Twitter said that two of the president's tweets posted that day were in violation of its policy against the glorification of violence.

Twitter had temporarily blocked Trump's account on Wednesday following the siege of Capitol Hill, and warned that additional violations by the president's accounts would result in a permanent suspension.

Trump was required to delete three rule-breaking tweets before his account was unblocked. He returned to Twitter on Thursday with a video acknowledging that Biden would be the next U.S. president.

Twitter said that Trump's tweet that he would not be attending Biden's inauguration was being received by a number of his supporters as confirmation that the November election was not legitimate.

It said another tweet praising "American Patriots" and saying his supporters "will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!" could be seen as "further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an orderly transition."

Critics of major social media platforms, including top Democratic politicians, praised Twitter's move and said it was long overdue, while Trump suppporters expressed outrage.

The president's son, Donald Trump Jr., in a tweet on Friday decried the ban, saying dictators who had threatened genocide continued to have Twitter accounts. He did not provide names.

The White House had no immediate direct comment. The Trump campaign's Twitter account criticized the company for "silencing" the president of the United States.

Using the @POTUS account, Trump said he would look at building his own platform.

'Looting and shooting'

Trump's prolific use of social media helped propel him to the White House in 2016. He has used his personal @realDonaldTrump account, which has sometimes tweeted more than 100 times a day, to reach supporters, spread misinformation and even fire staff.

In a 2017 interview on Fox Business, Trump said "I doubt I would be here if it weren’t for social media, to be honest with you," according to a transcript released by the network.

Both Twitter and Facebook have long afforded Trump special privileges as a world leader, saying that tweets that may violate the company's policies would not be removed because they were in the public interest. They said he would lose access to those privileges upon leaving office, however.

Twitter last year started labeling and putting warnings on Trump's tweets that broke its rules against glorifying violence, manipulated media or sharing potentially misleading information about voting processes.

In May, Twitter affixed a warning label to a Trump tweet about widespread anti-racism protests over the police killing of George Floyd that included the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Facebook, which has come under fire from employees and lawmakers for not doing more about Trump's inflammatory posts, declined to act on the same message.

Trump still has access to the official @WhiteHouse and @POTUS accounts but will lose this when his presidential term ends. Asked if Trump could create another account, a Twitter spokeswoman said if the company had reason to believe he was using accounts to evade Friday's suspension, those accounts too could be suspended.

(REUTERS)

Twitter boots Trump to stop violence-sparking 

tweets

Issued on: 09/01/2021 - 

  

This screen grab shows the suspended Twitter account of 

US President Donald Trump on January 8, 2021 - TWITTER/AFP

San Francisco (AFP)

Twitter shut down President Donald Trump's account Friday, booting him from the global service to prevent another attack on the US Capitol building.

Trump had fervently used @realDonaldTrump for proclamations, accusations and misinformation unchallenged for his entire time in office.

Twitter' decision to permanently suspend Trump is considered overdue by critics who argue he has gotten away with abuses, but has inflamed members of the far-right who equate fact-checking with stifling free speech.

"After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account," Twitter said in a blog post explaining its decision, "we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."

Twitter late Friday blocked efforts by Trump to sidestep the ban.

He fired off tweets from the official presidential account @POTUS, accusing the company of conspiring with the "Radical Left." The social network quickly deleted the tweets.

Trump also tweeted from the @TeamTrump campaign account, which was soon suspended.

"Using another account to try to evade a suspension is against our rules," Twitter told AFP.

"We have taken steps to enforce this with regard to recent Tweets from the @POTUS account."

Twitter blocked Trump temporarily after the deadly attack on the US Capitol Wednesday, warning the suspension could become permanent.

He was suspended Friday after a pair of tweets: in one, Trump vowed that none of his supporters would be "disrespected." In another, he said he would not attend successor Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, as is customary.

"These two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President's statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks," Twitter said.

"We understand the desire to permanently suspend him now," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Kate Ruane.

"But, it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions."

Trump has a press team and can easily turn to sympathetic outlets such as Fox News, while other people who could be shut out by the social networks don't have that luxury, Ruane noted.

Social media companies such as Twitter have the right to decide what appears on their platforms and set standards for appropriate content. The First Amendment right to free speech prevents governments from stifling expression and does not apply to private businesses.

- Talk of new attack -

Twitter said it also factored in that plans for more armed protests have been proliferating on and off the service, including a proposed second attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17.

Trump's tweeted statement about not attending the Inauguration has been received by some supporters as his continued rejection of the election's legitimacy and a sign that the event would be a "safe target" since he won't be there, according to Twitter.

Supporters also viewed the tweets' wording as praise for those involved in what has been described as a coup attempt and indication he does not plan to yield power to President-elect Biden, Twitter said in the post.

"We are living Orwell's 1984," Donald Trump Jr. tweeted from his account. "This is absolute insanity!"

- Fact-check fury -

Trump, who at 81.7 million followers had one of Twitter's 10 most popular accounts, preferred using the platform to get out his message without submitting himself to questions from reporters.

But the US leader has been at war with his favored social media platform since the presidential election, after Twitter took the unprecedented decision to fact-check some of his tweets.

Twitter confirmed Friday that several hundred employees signed a letter to chief executive Jack Dorsey saying they were disturbed by the "insurrection" carried out by Trump supporters, who had been rallied by the president.

The employees called for Twitter to assess the role its platform played in Wednesday's events.

- QAnon purge -

Twitter also removed the accounts of Michael Flynn and other high-profile Trump supporters who promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory.

"The accounts have been suspended in line with our policy on Coordinated Harmful Activity," Twitter told AFP.

"Given the renewed potential for violence surrounding this type of behavior in the coming days, we will permanently suspend accounts that are solely dedicated to sharing QAnon content."

Flynn has met with Trump at the White House to collaborate about how to overturn the presidential election results.

Facebook also has banned Trump from the platform "indefinitely" due to his efforts to incite violence at the US Capitol, according to chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg said a one-day ban imposed on Trump's accounts on Facebook and Instagram was extended because of Trump's "use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government."

The announcement came after the outgoing president was locked out of all major social media platforms due to his false claims about the legitimacy of his loss to Biden, and for inciting the angry mob that stormed the US Capitol.

Google pulls 'free-speech' app Parler for 'egregious content'

Issued on: 09/01/2021 -

Google pulls Parler from app shop for 'egregious content'. 

© Olivier DOULIERY AFP/Archivos

Text by: NEWS WIRES


Google said Friday it had pulled the Parler app from its mobile store for allowing "egregious content" that could incite deadly violence like that seen at the US Capitol.

The Parler social network has become a haven for far-right personalities who say they have been censored by other social media platforms.

"We're aware of continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the US," Google said in a response to an AFP inquiry.

"For us to distribute an app through Google Play, we do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content," the company added, referring to its shop for digital content tailored for Android-powered devices.

Policies and enforcement practices that curb posts inciting violence are agreed to by app developers whose software is made available at Google Play, according to the Silicon Valley internet titan.

"In light of this ongoing and urgent public safety threat, we are suspending the app's listings from the Play Store until it addresses these issues," Google said.

Apple has reportedly warned Parler that its software could be removed from the App Store if it doesn't take measures to prevent users from planning illegal, violent activities on the platform such as the deadly attack in Washington.

Conservatives backing President Donald Trump's claims of election malfeasance have sparked a migration to alternative social media sites that have refrained from filtering unverified claims.

The shift has boosted right-wing favorites like Parler, Newsmax and Rumble, which have rejected Facebook and Twitter's approach of labeling and limiting the reach of conspiracy theories.

Facebook and Twitter banned Trump accounts Friday due to fear he would use them to instigate another attack such as the one in the nation's capital on Wednesday.

Sites like Parler have attracted Republican lawmakers as well as the Trump campaign.

As they have become increasingly important to the political conversation, Twitter and Facebook have struggled with manipulation and misinformation, while at the same time seeking to keep their platforms open to a variety of viewpoints.

Parler and similar sites have become a magnet for racist and anti-Semitic tropes along with groups that have been banned from other platforms for posting hateful content or promoting violence.

(AFP)

Q&A: ‘We need to reduce the ‘embodied energy’ of buildings

January 6, 2021 by Horizon Magazine

Retrofitting Europe’s buildings for energy efficiency is not enough to slash the carbon footprint of the construction sector and cut emissions in time to meet the Paris climate agreement goals, according to Dr Catherine De Wolf, assistant professor of design and construction management at TU Delft in the Netherlands.

She says that we need to design buildings to make them recyclable – but doing this will require a fundamental restructure of the construction industry.

How important is it to ‘green’ the construction industry?

The building sector is responsible for more than a third of our greenhouse gas emissions, and more than a third of our waste … and is one of the most resource-depleting industries.

That’s three good reasons for us to think about how to construct buildings in a more sustainable way.

And how urgent is it, given the rate at which emissions must be cut to meet the Paris climate agreement goal? 

Europe has set a target of net zero emissions in the construction and buildings sector by 2050. It is a huge ambition. If we don’t change the sector in the next five years we won’t be able to achieve that target.

There has been a lot of innovation in reducing the energy we need to heat and cool buildings – the ‘operational energy’. But we also need to reduce the ‘embodied energy’ of buildings, which is related to production, construction, demolition and maintenance.

We need to shift from a linear model to a circular model where we use as little new material as possible, and (instead) we reuse, repair and recycle.

Can you give examples of what this might look like?

One of the things that makes demolition attractive is it is very quick … we just wreck everything and send it to landfill. But to go towards a circular construction industry, we want to be deconstructing buildings (and reusing the materials). This takes more time and often more expertise.

We’re exploring robots in our research. If we can find ways to program robots to carefully disassemble building elements, potentially it could be done quicker than humans because they could work 24/7 in an automated way.

We still need the human expertise, and we still need to design for deconstruction so building materials are not glued together and cast together in a way that makes it hard to take them apart.

There’s a lot of innovation (still) to do in designing buildings that can be quickly disassembled.

And there are already a lot of startups in the reuse sector – they train people who are specialised in recognising which materials are valuable on the market, and how to remove materials without breaking them.

But (robots) can be one of the solutions.

  

The construction industry needs to move to a model in which it uses 

as little new material as possible and instead reuses, repairs and recycles,

 says Dr Catherine De Wolf. Image credit – Paul Barendreegt Fotografie

How much material is currently reused from old buildings?

(Construction companies) take away only about 1% of building materials from a demolition site for reuse, because the market isn’t in place yet.

If there was more demand and more actors involved, we could (reuse) more materials from buildings.

(In the meantime) you can reuse buildings as a whole by keeping the structure in place and putting a more flexible infill into them. For example, introducing movable wall partitions allows an office to be reconfigured quickly and cheaply in the future.

What needs to happen for us to achieve circular construction?

We will need to completely review the whole supply chain in the building sector.

Building users and owners, architects, engineers, contractors, materials suppliers … (and) governments need to work together towards this transition.

At TU Delft we are looking at how digitalisation can help put stakeholders in contact with each other so they can exchange materials and reuse them, rather than throwing them away.

(We) are exploring AI technology to make digital platforms for exchanging materials more efficient.

‘We still need to design for deconstruction so building materials are not glued together and cast together in a way that makes it hard to take them apart.’

-Dr Catherine De Wolf, TU Delft, the Netherlands

What’s holding back the shift to a circular economy?

There’s a strong concrete and steel lobby in the construction industry that is definitely playing a role.

But it’s also about how fragmented the construction industry is. There are so many contractors and subcontractors, so communication between stakeholders is quite difficult.

The construction sector in general is quite slow in the uptake of innovation – especially digital innovation – compared to other sectors, and I think this is because of how fragmented the value chain is.

Can the construction industry really become circular within 5 years?

Yes I think so. It’s already shifting towards circular construction. And there’s a lot we can do to accelerate the transition.

For example, currently some building materials are quite cheap. We don’t pay for their environmental impact, or the impact of waste on the environment and on society. Carbon and waste taxes could help address that.

The public sector can play a big role through changing building regulations and through public procurement.

Also, we need to start assessing the price of a building based on its long-term lifecycle cost, and the cost of waste and emissions.

Is the shift to a circular economy the most important change?

We should go beyond circular construction and talk about regenerative construction.

That means designing buildings that improve the environment rather than harming it. For example, as well as reusing materials, use materials with carbon sequestration, use (biological-based technology to) treat wastewater from the building, grow vegetables on the roof.

A building is a complex entity so it should be looked at holistically.

Dr De Wolf has received EU funding under the EPFL Fellows project.

Rock Magnetism Uncrumples The Himalayas’ Complex Collision Zone

January 8, 2021 MIT

MIT EAPS researchers find the impressive mountain range formed over a series of impacts, not a single event, as previously thought.

With some of the world’s tallest peaks, Asia’s “the abode of snow” region is a magnet for thrill seekers, worshipers, and scientists alike. The imposing 1,400-mile Himalayan mountain range that separates the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau is the scene of an epic continent-continent collision that took place millions of years ago and changed the Earth, affecting its climate and weather patterns. The question of how the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collided, and the mountains came into existence, is one that scientists are still unfolding. Now, new research published in PNAS and led by MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) confirms that it’s more complicated than previously thought.


“The Himalayas are the textbook example of a continent-continent collision and an excellent laboratory for studying mountain-building events and tectonics,” says EAPS graduate student Craig Martin, the paper’s lead author.

The story begins around 135 million years ago, when the Neotethys Ocean separated the tectonic plates of India and Eurasia by 4,000 miles. The common view of geologists is that the Neotethys Ocean plate began subducting into Earth’s mantle under Eurasia, on its southern border, pulling India north and the tectonic plates above it together to ultimately form the Himalayas in a single collision event around 55-50 million years ago. However, geologic evidence suggested that the high rate of subduction observed didn’t seem to quite fit this hypothesis, and model reconstructions place the continental plates thousands of kilometers apart at the time of this inferred collision. To account for the time delay and subduction strength required, MIT’s Oliver Jagoutz, associate professor of geology, and Leigh “Wiki” Royden, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Geology and Geophysics, proposed that because of the high speed, orientation, and location of the final continental collision, there needed to be another oceanic plate and subduction zone in the middle of the ocean, called the Kshiroda plate and the Trans-Tethyan subduction zone (TTSZ), which ran east to west. Additionally, EAPS geologists and others postulated that an arc of volcanic islands, like the Marianas, existed in between the two, called the Kohistan-Ladakh arc. Located near the equator, they took the brunt of the force from India before being squished between the two continental crusts.

Tiny magnets point the way

This chain of events, its timing and geological configuration, was speculation based on models and some geological evidence until EAPS researchers tested it — but first, they needed rocks. Along with professor of planetary sciences Ben Weiss of the MIT Paleomagnetism Laboratory, Martin, Jagoutz, Royden, and their colleagues visited northwest India’s Ladakh region, bordering the Eurasian plate. Over multiple excursions, the team, which included EAPS undergraduate Jade Fischer for one trip, scrambled over outcrops and drilled rock cores, slightly larger than the size of a cork. As they pulled them out, the geologists and paleomagnetism experts marked the samples’ orientation in the rock layer and its location in order to determine when and where on Earth the rock was formed. The team was looking for evidence showing whether a volcano, which was active around 66-61 million years ago, was part of a volcanic island chain in the ocean south of Eurasia, or part of the Eurasian continent. This would also help determine the plausibility of a double subduction zone scenario.

Back in the lab, the MIT researchers used rock dating and paleomagnetism to understand this ancient geologic car crash. They leveraged the fact that, as lava cools and rock forms, it captures a signature of the Earth’s magnetic field, which runs north-south toward Earth’s magnetic poles. If rock forms near the equator, the magnetization (electron) spins in its iron-bearing minerals, like magnetite and hematite, will be oriented parallel to the ground. As you move further away from the equator, the rock’s magnetization will tip into the Earth; however subsequent heating and remagnetization can print over the original signature.

After checking for this, and correcting for the tilt of the bedrock at the site, Martin and his colleagues were able to pinpoint the latitude at which the rocks were created. Uranium-lead dating of the samples’ zircon minerals provided the other piece of the puzzle to constrain the timing of formation. If there was a single collision, these rocks would have formed at a latitude somewhere around 20 degrees north, above the equator, near Eurasia; if the islands existed, they would have originated near the equator.

“It’s cool that we can reconstruct the deep-time atlas of the world using the tiny magnets preserved in rocks,” says Martin.

A two-part system

With their time and latitudinal measurements and models, the MIT researchers found the evidence they were looking for — the presence of an island chain and double subduction system. From 80 to likely 55-50 million years ago, the Neotethys Ocean was subducted in two locations: along the Eurasian plate’s southern edge (the Kshiroda plate sank) and the mid-ocean TTSZ, just south of the Kshiroda plate and near the equator. Together, these events closed the ocean, and the tectonic activity worked with erosion and weathering to sequester and draw down carbon, until the Paleocene Epoch (66-23.03 million years ago). “The presence of two subduction zones and the timing of their destruction at low latitudes explains the cooling global climate in the Cenozoic (66 million years ago to present day),” says Martin.

Most importantly: “Our results mean that instead of India colliding directly with Eurasia to form the Himalayas, India first collided with a volcanic island chain (similar to the Mariana Islands today), and then with Eurasia up to 10 million years later than is generally accepted,” says Martin. This is because Kohistan-Ladakh arc and India collision slowed the India-Eurasia convergence rate, which kept decreasing until 45-40 million years ago when the final collision occurred. “This finding is contrary to the long-held view that the India-Eurasia collision was a single-stage event that started at 55-60 million years ago,” says Martin. “Our results strongly support Oli and Wiki’s double subduction hypothesis explaining why India moved north so anomalously fast in the Cretaceous period.”

Further, Martin, Jagoutz, Royden, and Weiss were able to determine the maximum extent of the Indian plate before it was forced under Eurasia. The convergence between India and Eurasia since 50-55 million years ago was around 2,800-3,600 kilometers. Much of this is explained by the subduction of the Kshiroda plate, which the MIT researchers estimated to be roughly 1,450 kilometers wide, at the time of the first collision with the island arc, 55-50 million years ago. After the first stage of collision between the island chain and India, the Kshiroda plate continued to disappear underneath Eurasia. Then, 15-10 million years later, as the two continents came together, the continental crust began shortening, folding, and thrusting rocks upward, the force of which caused observable changes to the composition and structure of the rocks. “Our results also directly constrain the size of the part of India ‘lost’ in the collision to less than 900 kilometers in the north-south direction, which is much less than the 2,000 kilometers previously required to explain the timing of collision.”

The newly-gained insights into the mechanisms and geometry of such an archetypal mountain system have important implications for using the Himalayas to study continental collision, says Martin. Revising the number of subduction zones, the age of final collision, and the amount of continental crust involved in the formation of the Himalayas changes some key parameters required to accurately model the growth of mountain belts, the deformation of continental crust, and the relationships between plate tectonics and global climate.

Martin hopes to take this further throughout the rest of his graduate studies by focusing in on the intensely deformed collision zone between the volcanic island chain and Eurasia. He hopes to understand the closure of the Kshiroda ocean and the geological structures produced during the continental collision.

Not only is the finding impressive, but as Martin remarks, “I think it is cool to imagine idyllic tropical volcanic islands, with dinosaurs roaming around on them, having been sandwiched between two colliding tectonic plates and uplifted to form the roof of the world.”

This study was funded, in part, by NSF Tectonics Program and MI

Coronavirus: Children can be spreaders — but are often symptomless

So far, many people have underestimated the role that children can play in spreading the novel coronavirus. Researchers say they can contract and spread the virus without showing symptoms.

Children are often infected by the coronavirus without knowing it

Numerous studies have looked into the role that children play in spreading SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus. On January 4, microbiologist Michael Wagner from the University of Vienna and his team presented their latest research findings on how schoolchildren contract and spread the virus. In November last year, they discovered one infected child — without symptoms — in every three to four classes examined.

The researchers conducted the study by asking pupils to spend one minute gargling a special salt solution and then spitting it into a test tube. A PCR test was then conducted on these samples to scan for the coronavirus. This procedure is far more pleasant for children than receiving oral swabs.

The study found that children are frequently infected, often even more frequently than adults, yet rarely show symptoms. This is why they are hardly subjected to coronavirus screenings. "If I examine infected schoolchildren and ask myself whether there are other cases at the same school — without testing symptomless pupils — I cannot infer the source of the infection," Wagner told German public broadcaster ARD. He says entire classes should be tested several times over even if just one child tests positive in that class. Otherwise, he argues, one cannot know to what extent the virus has spread.

Children in the Viennese study only had to gargle a salt solution for their test, unlike the usual method shown here

Children spreading SARS-CoV-2

Up to now, most scientists have assumed that children played a marginal role in spreading the coronavirus. One study by the Munich-based German Research Center for Environmental Health, however, used antibody tests on children and found this assumption to be untrue.

Annette-Gabriele Ziegler, who led the research project, says: "We carried out antibody tests on children and found that more than six times as many had contracted the coronavirus than previously assumed."

Between January and July 2020, the researchers tested blood samples from some 12,000 Bavarian schoolchildren for SARS-CoV-2. Study participants ranged from just 1 year old to 18 years old. One-third of those who lived with family members who had tested positive for the virus had traces of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in their blood.

Approximately half of these children remained symptomless. Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, incidentally, can be detected only after between one and four weeks after infection.

Schools are a potential breeding ground for infections

Undetected and infectious

That children can contract the virus without showing any symptoms and therefore pose a greater risk of unknowingly spreading the virus partly has to do with their so-called naive T cells, says microbiologist and immunologist Donna Faber. Among other things, Faber investigates antibody response of children and adults to SARS-CoV-2 at Columbia University.

Faber also led a study examining childrens' untrained immune responses and how this can shed light on eliminating SARS-CoV-2. 

Children have a different immune reaction to viruses than adults

"Children show a different response to viruses in general and coronaviruses in particular," Faber told DW. "This results from their naive T cells."

"These new T cells are able to respond differently to new pathogens," says Faber. "Children are constantly producing these new, so-called naive T cells; they have an entire arsenal of them. Adults, though, gradually lose the ability to produce new ones."

These cells circulate between blood vessels and peripheral lymphoid organs. After coming into contact with an antigen, they begin reproducing, launching an adaptive immune response.

The T cells found in adults, in contrast, are targeted toward specific infections that the body has already endured, for instance from influenza viruses. This means adults' immune system responses are more effective against such infections. Now, however, both children and adults are facing a new pathogen, SARS-CoV-2, which the former can cope with better because of their naive T cells.

As many children remain symptomless despite contracting the virus, many have underestimated their role in spreading the virus. Annette-Gabriele Ziegler says kindergartens and schools must therefore adopt much stricter preventive measures to help contain the pandemic. These include social distancing, ventilating classrooms, and teaching small groups of pupils. She says that in addition, schoolchildren should be screened more rigorously for the virus even if they are symptomless

From Mulvaney to DeVos, GOP Rats Are Deserting Trump's Sinking Ship

All the times they didn’t resign or even criticize his monstrous deeds in the last four years.

by Juan Cole



When Trump said that the death rate from the coronavirus would be very low "if you didn’t count blue states," you didn’t resign or even criticize. (Photo: Screenshot)

The rats are deserting Trump’s sinking ship, after he fomented the Great QAnon Capitol Insurrection, with two cabinet secretaries and some other officials having resigned. It is too late. The Insurrection did not tell us something about Trump we did not know. Those now leaving are perhaps attempting to avoid any messy 25th Amendment or impeachment proceedings, or perhaps they are trying to salvage what’s left of their reputations by dissociating themselves from Trump at his most insane.

There is an old anecdote apparently first told about Max Aitkin, Lord Beaverbrook, a British-Canadian politician and media mogul. It has many versions but here is how I tell it.

Lord Beaverbrook is at a cocktail party conversing with an attractive woman, and the conversation turns to ethics. He asks her if she would sleep with someone for a million pounds. She says that she would.

He asks her, “Would you sleep with someone for five pounds?”

She says, “Certainly not, what sort of woman do you think I am?”

He observes drily, “Madame, we have already established that. Now we are just haggling about the price.”

I have some questions for the resignees:

When you heard Trump say of Mexican-Americans, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best . . . They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” you still signed on to serve in his administration.

When you saw that Trump sought to ban Muslims from the United States in an act of religious and racial discrimination, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When heard Trump use the phrase “very fine people” for the Charlottesville Nazis, who chanted “Jews will not replace us,” you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you saw Trump promote carbon-intensive coal, try to lower automobile fuel standards, and try to destroy the Paris Climate Accord, wreaking 4 years of unrecoverable climate damage on the planet and on your grandchildren, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you saw Trump used military-grade tear gas and Federal forces to clear peaceful protesters from LaFayette Square so that he could stage a photo op with a Bible at St. John’s Episcopal church, violating the protesters’ constitutional right to peaceable assembly, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you saw Trump capriciously try to end SNAP food stamps for 700,000 unemployed Americans, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you saw Trump’s EPA slash regulations and permit a serious degradation of our national environment, even permitting a pesticide that causes brain damage in babies, you did not resign or even criticize.

When you heard in the room, or read that Trump asked if migrants at the border could be slowed down by shooting them in the legs, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When Trump said that the death rate from the coronavirus would be very low “if you didn’t count blue states,” you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you saw Trump try to take ACA health insurance away from millions of Americans during a pandemic when they had lost jobs and job-provided health benefits, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When Trump discouraged people from wearing a face mask during a deadly outbreak of a respiratory disease that is transmitted by people breathing on one another, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When, in the midst of a deadly pandemic that has has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, Trump held huge rallies with crowds whom he had discouraged from wearing masks or socially distancing, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When Trump opposed state lockdowns to deal with the pandemic and tweeted out “Liberate Michigan,” and when in response white supremacists and conspiracy theorists invaded the Michigan capitol and plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, you didn’t resign or even criticize.

When you heard Trump say that he won the election on Nov. 3 by a landslide, and you heard the Raffensperger tape in which he used crime-boss tactics in an effort to browbeat Georgia officials into “finding” him “11,780 votes,” you didn’t resign or even criticize.

We know what sort of person served with Trump. Now we are just haggling over their price.

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His newest book, "Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires" was published in 2020. He is also the author of "The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East" (2015) and "Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East" (2008). He has appeared widely on television, radio, and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. 

© 2020 Juan Cole

Civil Society Groups Warn Against Anti-Protest Legislation Following Siege of US Capital

"We have to make sure this moment is not used to further anti-protest legislation."

by Simon Davis-Cohen

Published on Friday, January 08, 2021
by Common Dreams


Trump supporters clash with police and security forces, as they storm the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021. - Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the a 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification.

 (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Hours after Confederate flag-toting white supremacists made their way into the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the certification of the U.S. presidential election, the Florida House of Representatives released a statement announcing its intention to pass a bill to clamp down on protests.

“In response to the violent mobs in Washington, D.C., the Florida House of Representatives and Senate filed identical bills to combat violence, disorder and looting in Florida,” the release reads.

"While we condemn these crimes against democracy, such antics cannot be used to justify new repressive measures against actual protests, restrictions of the right of peaceful assembly, or curtailment of speech."

—Chip Gibbons, Defending Rights and Dissent

The proposed legislation in Florida is a continuation of a national trend to attempt to criminalize Black Lives Matter, indigenous and other civil rights protest movements. The proposed Florida legislation aims to punish municipalities that reduce funding to police departments, protect Confederate monuments, legalize forms of vigilante violence against protesters, and heighten “riot” charges. Democratic State Rep. Omari Hardy called it “bad legislation that is fundamentally un-American,” and “unconstitutional.”

Across the nation, dozens of sister anti-protest bills have been passed and proposed over the past few years, many at the behest of law enforcement lobbies and unions and influential corporate lobbies.

The proposed Florida bills are not alone.

A bill to criminalize anti-pipeline demonstrations is awaiting Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s signature (SB33). Others, to legalize violence against protesters, further criminalize, or punish protesting, are alive in Missouri (SB 26, SB 66, HB56), New Jersey (S 3261, A 4991, AB 3760), Oklahoma (SB 15), South Carolina (HB 3491), Virginia (SB 5079, SB 5058, SB 5074), according to the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law, as well as in Nebraska, Texas and Utah.

Weaponizing the siege of the U.S. Capitol

When news broke of the white supremacists breaching the U.S. Capitol, multiple news outlets repeated statements labeling the mob as “anarchists,” echoing White House efforts to target “Antifa.”

This type of weaponization of the day’s events to justify efforts to clamp down on protests is raising concerns among civil society groups.

“We have to make sure this moment is not used to further anti-protest legislation,” says Justin Hansford, Founder and Director of Harvard University’s Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center.

The events on December 6 showcased preferential treatment by law enforcement for white supremacist groups. “The tanks, batons, and tear gas rounds aggressively used against BLM protesters this summer were conspicuously absent when these white supremacists stormed the capitol building,” says Hansford. “At the end of the day, for many people around the world, this incident punctuated not only the delusion of President Trump's supporters but more enduringly, the fundamentally racially tinged nature of police response to public assemblies."

This preferential treatment, also condemed by the National Lawyers Guild, is further proof that any new efforts to strengthen the power law enforcement to clamp down on dissent—such as through domestic terrorism legislation—is “without basis," says Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.

“This violent mob was allowed to storm the Capitol,” says Verheyden-Hilliard. “The differential treatment that they received, and as compared to the brutal attacks on actual First Amendment protected activity of the racial justice movement, is stunning. Capitol police have all the weapons, tactics and personnel at their disposal but they made an obvious decision not to deploy them. The last thing we need is to allow this right-wing attack on the Capitol to become a vehicle to give police more tools to clamp down on the progressive, peaceful social justice movement.” (The DC Police purchased over $130,000 worth of tear gas just before the November 2020 election and turned down offers from the Pentagon for backup.)

Chip Gibbons, Policy Director for Defending Rights and Dissent agrees. “While we condemn these crimes against democracy, such antics cannot be used to justify new repressive measures against actual protests, restrictions of the right of peaceful assembly, or curtailment of speech,” said Gibbons in a statement.

Groups including Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, Center for Protest Law and Litigation, Defending Rights & Dissent and Justice for Muslims Collective are demanding probes into the federal and local police planning and response to Wednesday’s events.

Simon Davis-Cohen is a writer and filmmaker focusing on political rights, municipal activism and mass incarceration. He works on research and communications for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and edits the Ear to the Ground newsletter. Follow him on Twitter: @SimonDavisCohen

Will Unprovoked War With Iran Be Trump's Parting Gift to the World?

I will always regret that I did not do more to stop war with Vietnam. Now, I am calling on whistleblowers to step up and expose Trump’s plans

by Daniel Ellsberg

U.S. Pentagon. (Photo: Staff/AFP via Getty Images)

President Trump’s incitement of criminal mob violence and occupation of the Capitol makes clear there is no limitation whatever on the abuse of power he may commit in the next two weeks he remains in office. Outrageous as his incendiary performance was on Wednesday, I fear he may incite something far more dangerous in the next few days: his long-desired war with Iran.

Could he possibly be so delusional as to imagine that such a war would be in the interests of the nation or region or even his own short-term interests? His behavior and evident state of mind this week and over the last two months answers that question.

I am urging courageous whistleblowing today, this week, not months or years from now, after bombs have begun falling. It could be the most patriotic act of a lifetime.

The dispatch this week of B-52’s nonstop round-trip from North Dakota to the Iranian coast – the fourth such flight in seven weeks, one at year’s end – along with his build-up of US forces in the area, is a warning not only to Iran but to us.

In mid-November, as these flights began, the president had to be dissuaded at the highest levels from directing an unprovoked attack on Iran nuclear facilities. But an attack “provoked” by Iran (or by militias in Iraq aligned with Iran) was not ruled out.

US military and intelligence agencies have frequently, as in Vietnam and Iraq, provided presidents with false information that offered pretexts to attack our perceived adversaries. Or they’ve suggested covert actions that could provoke the adversaries to some response that justifies a US “retaliation”.

The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, in November was probably intended to be such a provocation. If so, it has failed so far, as did the assassination exactly a year ago of General Suleimani.

But time is now short to generate an exchange of violent actions and reactions that will serve to block resumption of the Iran nuclear deal by the incoming Biden administration: a pre-eminent goal not only of Donald Trump but of the allies he has helped bring together in recent months, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Evidently it would take more than individual murders to induce Iran to risk responses justifying a large-scale air attack before Trump leaves office. But US military and covert planning staffs are up to the task of attempting to meet that challenge, on schedule.

I was a participant-observer of such planning myself, with respect to Vietnam half a century ago. On 3 September 1964 – just a month after I had become special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, John T McNaughton – a memo came across my desk in the Pentagon written by my boss. He was recommending actions “likely at some point toprovoke a military DRV [North Vietnam] response … likely to provide good grounds for us to escalate if we wished”.

Such actions “that would tend deliberately to provoke a DRV reaction” (sic), as spelled out five days later by McNaughton’s counterpart at the state department, the assistant secretary of state William Bundy, might include “running US naval patrols increasingly close to the North Vietnamese coast” – ie running them within the 12-mile coastal waters the North Vietnamese claimed: as close to the beach as necessary, to get a response that might justify what McNaughton called “a full-fledged squeeze on North Vietnam [a progressively all-out bombing campaign]”, which would follow “especially if a US ship were sunk”.

I have little doubt that such contingency planning, directed by the Oval Office, for provoking, if necessary, an excuse for attacking Iran while this administration is still in office exists right now, in safes and computers in the Pentagon, CIA and the White House. That means there are officials in those agencies – perhaps one sitting at my old desk in the Pentagon – who have seen on their secure computer screens highly classified recommendations exactly like the McNaughton and Bundy memos that came across my desk in September 1964.

I regret I did not copy and convey those memos to the foreign relations committee in 1964, rather than five years later.

I will always regret that I did not copy and convey those memos – along with many other files in the top-secret safe in my office at that time, all giving the lie to the president’s false campaign promises that same fall that “we seek no wider war” – to Senator Fulbright’s foreign relations committee in September 1964 rather than five years later in 1969, or to the press in 1971. A war’s worth of lives might have been saved.

Current documents or digital files that contemplate provoking or “retaliating to” Iranian actions covertly provoked by us should not remain secret another moment from the US Congress and the American public, lest we be presented with a disastrous fait accompli before January 20, instigating a war potentially worse than Vietnam plus all the wars of the Middle East combined. It is neither too late for such plans to be carried out by this deranged president nor for an informed public and Congress to block him from doing so.

I am urging courageous whistleblowing today, this week, not months or years from now, after bombs have begun falling. It could be the most patriotic act of a lifetime.



Daniel Ellsberg was put on trial in 1971 for leaking the Pentagon Papers, but the case was dismissed in 1973 because of government misconduct. He is the author of "Papers on the War," "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers" and "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner." Follow him on Twitter: @DanielEllsberg