Sunday, October 17, 2021

Mammals on the menu: Snake dietary diversity exploded after mass extinction 66 million years ago

Modern snakes evolved from ancestors that lived side by side with the dinosaurs and that likely fed mainly on insects and lizards.

Then a miles-wide asteroid wiped out nearly all the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the planet's plant and animal species 66 million years ago, setting the stage for the spectacular diversification of mammals and birds that followed in the early Cenozoic Era.

A new University of Michigan study shows that early snakes capitalized on that ecological opportunity and the smorgasbord that it presented, rapidly and repeatedly evolving novel dietary adaptations and prey preferences.

The study, which combines genetic evidence with ecological information extracted from preserved museum specimens, is scheduled for online publication Oct. 14 in the journal PLOS Biology.

"We found a major burst of snake dietary diversification after the dinosaur extinction—species were evolving quickly and rapidly acquiring the ability to eat new types of prey," said study lead author Michael Grundler, who did the work for his doctoral dissertation at U-M and who is now a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA.

Mammals and birds, which were also diversifying in the wake of the extinction, began to appear in snake diets at that time. Specialized diets also emerged, such as snakes that feed only on slugs or snails, or snakes that eat only lizard eggs.

Similar outbursts of dietary diversification were also seen when snakes arrived in new places, as when they colonized the New World.

"What this suggests is that snakes are taking advantage of opportunities in ecosystems," said U-M evolutionary biologist and study co-author Daniel Rabosky, who was Grundler's doctoral adviser. "Sometimes those opportunities are created by extinctions and sometimes they are caused by an ancient snake dispersing to a new land mass."

Those repeated transformational shifts in dietary ecology were important drivers of what evolutionary biologists call adaptive radiation, the development of a variety of new forms adapted for different habitats and ways of life, according to Grundler and Rabosky.

Modern snakes are impressively diverse, with more than 3,700 species worldwide. And they display a stunning variety of diets, from tiny leaf-litter snakes that feed only on invertebrates such as ants and earthworms to giant constrictors like boas and pythons that eat mammals as big as antelope.

So, how did legless reptiles that can't chew come to be such important predators on land and sea? To find out, Grundler and Rabosky first assembled a dataset on the diets of 882 modern-day snake species.

The dataset includes more than 34,000 direct observations of snake diets, from published accounts of scientists' encounters with snakes in the field and from the analysis of the stomach contents of preserved museum specimens. Many of those specimens came from the U-M Museum of Zoology, home to the world's second-largest collection of reptiles and amphibians.

All species living today are descended from other species that lived in the past. But because snake fossils are rare, direct observation of the ancient ancestors of modern snakes—and the evolutionary relationships among them—is mostly hidden from view.

However, those relationships are preserved in the DNA of living snakes. Biologists can extract that genetic information and use it to construct family trees, which biologists call phylogenies.

Grundler and Rabosky merged their dietary dataset with previously published snake phylogenetic data in a new mathematical model that allowed them to infer what long-extinct snake species were like.

"You might think it would be impossible to know things about species that lived long ago and for which we have no fossil information," said Rabosky, an associate professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and an associate curator at the Museum of Zoology.

"But provided that we have information about evolutionary relationships and data about species that are now living, we can use these sophisticated models to estimate what their long-ago ancestors were like."

In addition to showing a major burst of snake dietary diversification following the demise of the dinosaurs in what's known as the K-Pg mass extinction, the new study revealed similar explosive dietary shifts when groups of snakes colonized new locations.

For example, some of the fastest rates of dietary change—including an increase of roughly 200% for one subfamily—occurred when the Colubroidea superfamily of snakes made it to the New World.

The colubroids account for most of the world's current snake diversity, with representatives found on every continent except Antarctica. They include all venomous snakes and most other familiar snakes; the group does not include boas, pythons and several obscure snakes such as blind snakes and pipe snakes.

Grundler and Rabosky also found a tremendous amount of variability in how fast snakes evolve new diets. Some groups, such as blind snakes, evolved more slowly and maintained similar diets—mostly ants and termite larvae—for tens of millions of years.

On the other extreme are the dipsadine snakes, a large subfamily of colubroid snakes that includes more than 700 species. Since arriving in the New World roughly 20 million years ago, they have experienced a sustained burst of dietary diversification, according to the new study.

The dipsadines include goo-eaters, false water cobras, forest flame snakes and hognose snakes. Many of them imitate deadly coral snakes to ward off predators and are known locally as false coral snakes.

"In a relatively short period of time, they've had species evolve to specialize on earthworms, on fishes, on frogs, on slugs, on snakelike eels—even other snakes themselves," Grundler said.

"A lot of the stories of evolutionary success that make it into the textbooks—such as Darwin's famous finches—are nowhere near as impressive as some groups of snakes. The dipsadines of South and Central America have just exploded in all aspects of their diversity, and yet they are almost completely unknown outside the community of snake biologists."

Rabosky and Grundler stressed that their study could not have been done without the information gleaned from preserved museum specimens.

"Some people think that zoology collections are just warehouses for dead animals, but that stereotype is completely inaccurate," Rabosky said. "Our results highlight what a tremendous, world-class resource these collections are for answering questions that are almost impossible to answer otherwise."Modern snakes evolved from a few survivors of dino-killing asteroid

More information: Rapid increase in snake dietary diversity and complexity following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, PLOS Biology (2021). journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ … journal.pbio.3001414

Journal information: PLoS Biology

Provided by University of Michigan

Japan’s forgotten indigenous people

Japan’s indigenous people, the Ainu, were the earliest settlers of Hokkaido, Japan’s northern island. But most travellers will not have heard of them.

(Image credit: Michele and Tom Grimm/Alamy)
By Ellie Cobb20th May 2020

“This is our bear hut,” the short, vivacious woman shouted through a hand-held loudspeaker, her smile creasing her forehead with deep wrinkles. A blue hat was perched on her head and her short tunic, embroidered with pink geometric designs, was tied sharply at the waist. She pointed at a wooden structure made of round logs, raised high above the ground on stilts.

“We caught the bears as cubs and raised them as a member of the family. They shared our food and lived in our village. When the time came, we set one free back into nature and killed the other to eat.”

Having treated the bear well in life, her people believe the spirit of the sacred animal, which they worship as a deity, will ensure the continued good fortune of their community.

Kimiko Naraki is 70 but looks decades younger. She is Ainu, an indigenous people who now live mostly on Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island, but whose lands once spanned from northern Honshu (the Japanese mainland) north to Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands (which are now a disputed part of the Russian Federation). The Ainu have long been of interest to anthropologists because of their cultural, linguistic and physical identity, but most travellers will not have heard of them. That’s because although they were the earliest settlers of Hokkaido, they were oppressed and marginalised by Japanese rule for centuries.

Shiretoko National Park in Hokkaido was a traditional Ainu hunting and fishing area (Credit: Azuki25/Getty Images)

The Ainu have had a difficult history. Their origins are murky, but some scholars believe they are descendants of an indigenous population that once spread across northern Asia. The Ainu called Hokkaido “Ainu Moshiri” (“Land of the Ainu”), and their original occupation was hunting, foraging and fishing, like many indigenous people across the world. They mainly lived along Hokkaido’s warmer southern coast and traded with the Japanese. But after the Meiji Restoration (about 150 years ago), people from mainland Japan started emigrating to Hokkaido as Japan colonised the northernmost island, and discriminatory practices such as the 1899 Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act displaced the Ainu from their traditional lands to the mountainous barren area in the island’s centre.

“It’s a very ugly story,” said Professor Kunihiko Yoshida, law professor at Hokkaido University.

Forced into agriculture, they were no longer able to fish for salmon in their rivers and hunt deer on their land, Yoshida said. They were required to adopt Japanese names, speak the Japanese language and were slowly stripped of their culture and traditions, including their beloved bear ceremony. Due to the wide stigmatisation, many Ainu hid their ancestry. And the long-term effects are clear to see today, with much of the Ainu population remaining poor and politically disenfranchised, with much of their ancestral knowledge lost.

Among other nefarious practices, Japanese researchers ransacked Ainu graves from the late 19th Century to the 1960s, amassing huge collections of Ainu remains for their study and never returning the bones.

The Ainu built their homes along rivers or by the sea where water was plentiful and safe from natural disasters (Credit: Toshifumi Kitamura/Getty Images)

Recently, however, things have started to look up for the Ainu. In April 2019, they were legally recognised as an indigenous people of Japan by the Japanese government, after many years of deliberation, which has resulted in a more positive appreciation of Ainu culture and renewed pride in their language and heritage.

"It is important to protect the honour and dignity of the Ainu people and to hand those down to the next generation to realise a vibrant society with diverse values," said government spokesman Yoshihide Suga, as reported in The Straits Times.

Naraki continued showing us around the Ainu kotan (village). Still smiling, she pointed to a wooden, cupboard-like structure. “This is the toilet for the men,” she said, giggling. Next to it was a smaller, teepee-style hut. “And this one is for the women.”

I want to tell the world that Japan has indigenous people

Naraki leads tours of this kotan to teach visitors about her culture. It is part of the Sapporo Pirka Kotan (Ainu Culture Promotion Centre), Japan’s first municipal facility featuring indigenous people, where visitors can experience Ainu handicrafts, watch traditional dancing and imagine traditional Ainu life when this area was a vast wilderness and the people lived on and with the land. Located approximately 40 minutes by car from downtown Sapporo, Hokkaido’s capital city, the centre was opened in 2003 to teach both other Japanese and foreign visitors about Ainu culture and spread their message to the world.

“97% of Ainu are underground. But the people who come here to events are very proud of their culture,” said Jeffry Gayman, an educational anthropologist at Hokkaido University who has been working with the Ainu for 15 years.

The Ainu were assimilated into Japanese society and their traditional tattoos and other customs banned (Credit: Michele and Tom Grimm/Alamy)

The pride is especially evident in the centre’s small, well-kept museum, where Ainu artefacts, such as traditional clothing and tools, are carefully displayed. Upstairs are rooms where visitors can join workshops on Ainu embroidery or learn how to make the traditional Ainu musical instrument mukkuri (a bamboo mouth harp). By hosting events, members of the community are able to educate the wider world on their history and situation.

“If I try to tell people about Ainu rights and empowerment, no-one is interested. But when people see our dancing or music, it makes them interested in learning more about us,” explained Ryoko Tahara, an Ainu activist and president of the Ainu Women’s Association.

Although this centre is a significant step in sharing Ainu culture nationally and internationally, no-one lives here. The kotan is a replica to show people what traditional Ainu life was like. Only a few isolated neighbourhood pockets of Ainu people remain, scattered across Hokkaido, with most of the estimated 20,000 Ainu (there are no official figures) assimilated into cities and towns around the island.

However, travellers who look carefully will be able to see traces of their culture everywhere. Many place names in Hokkaido have Ainu origins, such as “Sapporo”, which comes from the Ainu words sat (dry), poro (large) and pet (river) due to its location around the Toyohira River; or “Shiretoko” – a peninsula that sticks out from Hokkaido’s north-eastern tip – which can be translated as “of the ground” (siri) and “protruding point” (etuk).

The Ainu worship the bear as a sacred animal, incorporating them into their architecture and traditions (Credit: DEA/W BUSS/Getty Images)

And Ainu pride is visible at events like the annual Marimo Festival at Lake Akan and the Shakushain festival in Shizunai; and in groups like The Ainu Art Project, a 40-member group that share Ainu culture through their Ainu and rock fusion band and handmade arts and crafts. Restaurants such as Kerapirka in Sapporo serve up traditional Ainu food and act as a hub for the local community.

“And you can see Ainu values in any settings where Ainu people gather, whether that be inside their home, at a local town gathering or an event. But you need to know what you’re looking for,” said Gayman, explaining that “generosity and hospitality” are core Ainu principles. “They’re light-hearted people,” he said.

The Ainu have also become more prominent on the national stage, with activist Kayano Shigeru elected to the Japanese parliament in 1994, where he served five terms; and the hugely popular manga series, Golden Kamuy, pushing Ainu culture into the national spotlight over the last couple of years.

“In the last few years, people have become more interested in the Ainu; it has become a hot topic in Japan,” said Tahara. “That makes me proud that people will know about the Ainu, but there is still work to be done.”

Visitors can come to the Sapporo Pirka Kotan to experience Ainu handicrafts, watch traditional dancing and imagine traditional Ainu life (Credit: Ellie Cobb)

The latest step forward for this community is the Symbolic Space for Ethnic Harmony in Shiraoi, Hokkaido, a new complex currently under construction by the government to showcase Ainu culture. Made up of a National Ainu Museum, the National Park for Ethnic Harmony and a memorial facility, it was scheduled to open in April 2020 in time for the Olympics, but has been delayed due to Covid-19.

The recognition is very symbolic, but not so meaningful

However, many experts believe that the recent recognition of the community is not enough, saying it is merely lip-service by the government, with the new Ainu bill failing to provide Japan’s indigenous people with clear and strong rights.

“The Ainu still cannot fish their salmon and dams are still being built that submerge sacred sites,” said Yoshida. “There’s no self-determination, no collective rights and no reparations. It’s just a cultural performance.”

“The recognition is very symbolic, but not so meaningful,” he added with a sad laugh, noting that Japan is far behind the world standard in treatment of indigenous people. “It’s a shameful situation. That’s the reality.”

As I followed Naraki on her tour of the kotan, it seemed clear, however, that public interest in Ainu culture is strong. Groups of Japanese people and other visitors, who’d arrived by bus-load from Sapporo, jostled for pictures in front of the pu, the hut for storing food, which is located directly opposite the poro-ci-set, where the village chiefs lived in order to keep a stern eye on the village’s communal larder. “The elders would resolve any disputes in the village,” Naraki said. If no one could agree, they would discuss for three days and three nights and then make a decision.

Traditional Ainu clothing was made with animal or fish skin, or woven with tree bark or nettle fibres (Credit: DeAgostini/Getty Images)

She explained how the Ainu’s lives were tied to the land. Kotans would be constructed along rivers or by the sea where water was plentiful and safe from natural disasters. Food was foraged or hunted, with staple proteins including salmon, deer and bear. They would pick wild grasses, vegetables, mushrooms and berries, such as kitopiro (Alpine leek) and shikerepe (berries of the Amur cork tree), never picking everything at once and always leaving the roots so the plants could keep growing. Food was simple, with animal oil, kelp and salt the only flavourings, and millet their main grain. Clothes were made with animal or fish skin, or woven with tree bark or nettle fibres.

Living in harmony with nature is a way of life that many Ainu would like to return to. “Eventually what I want is to get back some land so we can hunt and fish freely as well as do our traditional farming,” Tahara told me. Increasing numbers of Ainu are also starting to relearn their language, which is linguistically isolated and declared as critically endangered by Unesco.

What are your other hopes for the future, I asked Tahara.

“I want to tell the world that Japan has indigenous people. People don’t know,” she said. “I want us all to respect each other, to treat each other respectfully and live peacefully in this country. And, of course, I would like our ancestors’ bones returned. Bring them back to the graves they were taken from.”

Saturday, October 16, 2021

The Niigata Geigi: Japan's 'other' geishas

(Image credit: Niigata City)

By Steve John Powell and Angeles Marin Cabello13th October 2021

For most people, the word "geisha" conjures visions of Kyoto's Gion district. But there is another major geisha centre, one that even many Japanese don't know.

The dancer glides noiselessly across the tatami mat floor, a branch of reddening maple leaves in her right hand. The long sleeves of her kimono denote that she is a furisode, or apprentice geisha. Behind her, an onesan (senior geisha) in a fawn kimono sits on the floor, plucking a lilting rhythm on a three-stringed shamisen with a large wedge-shaped pick.

A typical scene from Kyoto's Gion district, you might think. But this is more than 500km to the north-west in Niigata, a historic port city on Honshu's west coast.

Niigata's geisha tradition dates back more than 200 years to the Edo era (1603-1867) when the city was a major port on the Kitamaebune (literally, "north-bound ships") shipping route that connected Osaka with Hokkaido. Thousands of cargo vessels made this journey each year. As the capital of Japan's largest rice producing area, Niigata became the busiest port on the Sea of Japan coast. By the early Meiji Era (1868-1912), Niigata was among the wealthiest, most populous parts of the nation.

A thriving entertainment district grew up in the Furumachi neighbourhoood of the city to cater for the countless wealthy merchants and other visitors. Geishas (or geigis, in the local dialect) began performing at Furumachi's many teahouses, ozashiki (banqueting halls) and ryotei (luxury restaurants). Politicians and even members of the Imperial family figured among the clientele. By 1884, nearly 400 geigis were performing in Furumachi.

Nobuko, the shamisen-playing onesan who played the lilting song as the apprentice danced, has been a Furumachi geigi for 64 years. She recalls entertaining celebrity guests, including Prince Takamatsu, brother of Emperor Hirohito; and Kakuei Tanaka, prime minister from 1972 to 1974. Like all geishas, Nobuko is known only by her first name.

Although little-known compared to Kyoto, Niigata's geisha tradition dates back more than 200 years (Credit: Niigata Visitors & Convention Bureau)

"The prince was very friendly," she recalled. "He cracked a lot of jokes. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to mention this, but he was playing mahjong with the senior geigis. I watched them while I served sake and tea."

While geisha activity ceased during World War Two, it quickly picked up again afterwards. Although it never regained the peak of its glory days, it still offers a fascinating glimpse into traditional formal Japanese culture and arts. Unlike the over-touristed geisha area of Kyoto, Furumachi is one of the few parts of Japan where travellers can still savour the authentic environment of a traditional hanamachi or Flower Town, as geisha districts are called.

"Today perhaps one can only experience this in Kyoto, Kanazawa [the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture] and Furumachi," said Aritomo Kubo, staff member at Furumachi Kagai Club, which helps preserve Furumachi's traditional streetscape by maintaining its heritage architecture. "Moreover, many of Furumachi's ryoteirestaurants are the original buildings, dating from the 1800s," he added.

Furumachi has the additional advantage that many of its ryotei accept first-time visitors, while many other famous geisha areas require an introduction from a regular client. Niigata is also the home of the Ichiyama School of Traditional Dance, a style uniquely practised by Niigata geigis that has been the basis of local performances for more than 100 years and is designated as an Intangible Cultural Property. Geigis perform this dance style when singing songs like "Niigata Okesa", which was brought to Niigata by mariners sailing the Kitamaebune trade route.

However, with the advent of TV, cinema and other alternative forms of entertainment, demand for geishas declined drastically. By the late 1970s, Furumachi geigi numbers had dropped below 100. By 1985, just 60 remained. With no new trainees joining since the late 1960s, the youngest geigis in Furumachi were in their 30s.

At that time, far fewer young women were interested in devoting eight years of their lives to learning the essential geisha skills: the shamisen; the songs; the dances; the manners. Consequently, the rate of new trainees failed to keep pace with the rate of retirement.

Furthermore, unlike Kyoto – the refined capital of Japan for more than 1,000 years (794-1868) – remote Niigata is a place few tourists visit, further limiting the demand for geisha performances. And by the 1980s, a lack of business forced many ryotei to close.

Visitors to Niigata can make a reservation at a ryotei in the Furumachi district to see geigis perform (Credit: Niigata Visitors & Convention Bureau)

However, things began looking up in 1987, when an enterprising company decided to help keep Niigata's geisha tradition alive. Ryuto Shinko Co, Ltd became Japan's first geigi recruitment company, aiming not just to train new geigi but also to act as intermediaries, connecting them with ryotei and other establishments. Backed by sponsorship from 80 local businesses, Ryuto Shinko contracts geigis as full-time salaried workers, providing health care and other benefits. They also hope to raise awareness and boost tourism via merchandise like T-shirts, calendars, fans and even sake bearing images of Furumachi Geigi.

Yui – the apprentice who danced across the tatami mat – is one of their recruits. "I joined after graduating from high school. This is only my ninth year," she said. "I started learning Japanese traditional dance when I was small. So I was already fond of kimonos and the sound of Japanese classical instruments."

Ryuto Shinko has introduced an attitude of innovation into the geishas' traditional world. They abolished the rule of compulsory retirement after marriage, and reached out to families, women and tourists to expand their audience from the traditional Japanese male clientele. Nowadays, Furumachi geigis dance and teach about their culture at conventions and perform at weddings and even funerals, where they perform the favourite song of the deceased. While it's quite common to see geigis on the streets of Furumachi, walking to ryoteis or to their lessons, visitors to the city can make a reservation at a ryotei restaurant to see them perform or head to one of the many annual festivals held in Niigata throughout the year.

The company has also come up with new ways to entertain modern audiences unfamiliar with geigi tradition. For example, tarukenis a game adapted from Rock Paper Scissors where customers get up and play with the geigi. The loser has to drink a cup of sake. As Niigata is one of Japan's major sake producers, taruken has the additional benefit of promoting the local brew.

Customers in the old days were regulars and knew how to lead us

"Customers in the old days were regulars and knew how to lead us," said Nobuko. "They would often start singing traditional songs, and the geigis followed their lead, playing the shamisen and dancing to their singing. This was before karaoke. Customers today are mostly new and need to be guided. Taruken is a good way to entertain them."

Yui (right) was recruited by Ryuto Shinko Co after high school and has been a geigi for nine years (Credit: Sakura PR)

However, Furumachi's fragile recovery suffered a new blow with the outbreak of coronavirus. In the months following May 2020, when the Japanese government declared a state of emergency, recommending that people avoid bars and restaurants, the number of ozashiki banquets dropped by 90%. Currently there are just 24 Furumachi geigis.

"I've experienced nothing like this. The pandemic is like an invisible war," said Nobuko, who has seen the geigi scene survive two major earthquakes. "After the earthquakes, Ryuto Shinko sent geigis out to hospitals and nursing homes to perform for free, to cheer patients up. We can't even do that now."

I've experienced nothing like this. The pandemic is like an invisible war

But then Ryuto Shinko came up with an ingeniously contemporary way of rescuing the geigis' centuries-old culture: online crowdfunding.

They set an ambitious goal of 10m yen (approx. £66,000) and a time limit of just 52 days (from 10 May to 30 June 2021) in which to raise it. Amazingly, they surpassed their goal in just 11 days, receiving 15m yen, contributed by a wide variety of people anxious to help preserve this intrinsic part of Japanese culture. They went on to collect an astonishing 30m yen (approx. £191,000).

In light of this groundswell of popular support, there are reasons to be cheerful about the geigis' future once Japan reopens to international travel.

"I feel geigis will stay the same, but our customers may change," said Nobuko. "There are many uncertainties ahead… We have to be ready to adjust to any new demand."

Whatever the future holds, Nobuko has no regrets about her career, even though it wasn't her choice. "It was my mother's idea. She had been a geigi in her hometown. I had many brothers and sisters, so I guess the reason was financial."

Nobuko remembers getting scolded frequently by her seniors in her apprentice days, but this never put her off the geigi world. "Is there any other job that gives you an opportunity to meet with so many people, including a prime minister, and talk to them as equals?" she said. "I've never been happier in my life than when I'm meeting and learning from the guests."

You may also be interested in:
• Why Japan values 'naked communion'
• Why you've never had 'real' sushi

'Unintentional gift': US steps into China's bitcoin breach

Issued on: 17/10/2021 -

A worker installs a new row of bitcoin mining machines at the Whinstone US Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October 9, 2021

Mark Felix AFP

Rockdale (United States) (AFP)

The long sheds at North America's largest bitcoin mine look endless in the Texas sun, packed with the type of machines that have helped the United States to become the new global hub for the digital currency.

The operation in the quiet town of Rockdale was part of an already bustling US business -- now boosted by Beijing's intensified crypto crackdown that has pushed the industry west.

Experts say rule of law and cheap electricity in the United States are a draw for bitcoin miners, whose energy-gulping computers race to unlock units of the currency.

"There's a lot of competitors coming into Texas because they are seeing the same thing (as) when we came here," said Chad Everett Harris, CEO of miner Whinstone, which operates the Rockdale site owned by US company Riot Blockchain.

China was the undisputed heartland of crypto mining with about two-thirds of global capacity in September 2019, but last month Beijing declared illegal all transactions involving crypto money as it seeks to launch one of its own.

A worker fills out a form at the Whinstone US Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October 10, 2021

Mark Felix AFP

Figures released Wednesday by the University of Cambridge showed that activity in the United States more than doubled in the four months to the end of August, increasing the market share held by the world's biggest economy to 35.4 percent.

Samir Tabar, chief strategy officer at miner Bit Digital, said the company started to pull out of China in 2020 and accelerated that process as the crackdown intensified. They have operations in the United States and Canada.

"China's bitcoin mining ban was basically an unintentional gift to the US," he said. "Thanks to their ban an entire sector migrated to North America -- along with innovation, labor and machines."

Some of the key pulls toward the United States are simply a democratic government, a court system and the power to protect property rights.

"If you're going to make long-term investments and accumulate wealth in a country, you want to have some confidence that it's not going to be taken away by the government," said David Yermack, a crypto expert at New York University.

- 'Poetic' return to America -

He expected the shift to the United States to be temporary, saying places like Nordic countries have cheap and abundant renewable energy, as well as plenty of cold weather to cool the hot-running mining machines.

Whinstone CEO Chad Harris poses for a portrait in a room with bitcoin mining machines during a tour at the Whinstone US Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October 10, 2021

Mark Felix AFP

The steady increase in US-based mining operations has fanned the ongoing environmental criticisms of the industry's massive annual electricity consumption -- more than what the Philippines uses in a year, according to Cambridge University data.

An ongoing backlash has been fueled by concerns the industry relies on carbon-emitting power sources that contribute to climate change.

"To think that we're causing harm or pollution or all those things here... the majority of our power comes out of the ERCOT grid and that profile is extremely friendly to the environment," Harris said, referring to the Texas power network operator.

According to ERCOT's data for 2020, about 46 percent of its power came from natural gas while wind and solar combined for 25 percent with coal at 18 percent.

The price miners pay for electricity is key, and a place like Texas is desirable because the market is de-regulated so companies can have more flexible terms, said Viktoriya Zotova, a business school professor at Georgetown University.

"In principle, they can buy the electricity when it's cheaper and not buy it when it's more expensive," she said.

An empty street in downtown Rockdale, Texas, on October 9, 2021

Mark Felix AFP

While there are obvious reasons for the crypto world's migration, some also see a bit of poetry in mining operations coming to the United States from China.

Tabar, from miner Bit Digital, said his company has a site in Buffalo, New York, which used to be one of the country's main manufacturing hubs but lost jobs and prosperity as production work shifted to places like China.

"There is a bit of a poetic thing going on," he noted. "It dawned on me how this is going full circle."

© 2021 AFP

WV EXPORTS NAT GAS NOT COAL
Joe Manchin fumes after Bernie Sanders Op-Ed in West Virginia paper calls out obstruction of Biden agenda

MANCHIN HEADS THE SENATE ENERGY CMTTE
Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams
October 16, 2021

Joe Manchin (Screen Grab)

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia lashed out Friday after a major newspaper in his home state published an op-ed by Sen. Bernie Sanders that called out Manchin's obstruction of his own party's Build Back Better reconciliation package.

"Congress should proceed with caution on any additional spending and I will not vote for a reckless expansion of government programs," Manchin said in a statement shared on social media.

"No op-ed from a self-declared Independent socialist is going to change that," he added.

At issue is an op-ed by Vermont Sen. Sanders—an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats—published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail in which he calls the proposed reconciliation bill "an unprecedented effort to finally address the long-neglected crises facing working families and demand that the wealthiest people and largest corporations in the country start paying their fair share of taxes."

Sanders details how the proposal would take action to tackle the climate emergency and make sweeping investments in Americans' wellbeing including through lowering prescription drug prices, expanding Medicare, continuing cash payments to working class parents, and making community college tuition-free.

"Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for this legislation," wrote Sanders. "Yet," he continued, "the political problem we face is that in a 50-50 Senate we need every Democratic senator to vote 'yes.' We now have only 48. Two Democratic senators remain in opposition, including Sen. Joe Manchin." The other is Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

"This is a pivotal moment in modern American history," Sanders continued. "We now have a historic opportunity to support the working families of West Virginia, Vermont, and the entire country and create policy which works for all, not just the few."

The op-ed was published the same day the New York Times and CNN reported that Manchin's opposition to the Clean Electricity Performance Program—dubbed "the most impactful climate investment under consideration in Congress"—would likely mean it's left out of the budget package.

The Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa Was the Original East Coast/West Coast Musical Feud

The Velvet Underground documentary director Todd Haynes discusses how heroin chic East Coast rockers clashed with the healthy hippies rolling in the West Coast sun.

By Tony Sokol|

October 15, 2021|

Photo: Apple TV+

In The Velvet Underground, director Todd Haynes expertly captures the outsider quality of the titular band. While much of the youth of the Aquarius age wanted to let the sunshine in, the band preferred to close the door, so they’d never have to see the day again. This disconnect is glaringly featured in a segment about the band’s first trip to California.

When The Velvet Underground were playing Los Angeles in 1966 as part of Andy Warhol’s art collective, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, they ran afoul Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

“This comes from them, this doesn’t come from me,” Todd Haynes tells Den of Geek. “But this is entirely the history, this is well documented.”

The feud might not make sense on the surface. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention had more in common with the Velvet Underground than other California bands. Both bands had serious musicians with classical backgrounds. Lou Reed’s songs were populated by society’s outsiders, John Cale and Zappa both drank from the well of the Avant Garde sounds of music concrete, and John Cage. But it makes sense to Haynes.

“Even if they are both bands and artists who are experimenting and drawing from all kinds of unorthodox traditions and music, and trying to fold that into what’s possible in rock and roll,” he says.

The documentary briefly, but fervently, touches on the battle of the bands, but it exposes a larger gap between the Atlantic and Pacific. “Musically, the West Coast was an organized force trying to predominate in the pop scene,”guitarist Sterling Morrison is heard saying in The Velvet Underground. “It was odd, the way it struck us, everybody was very healthy,” Reed remembers in an interview. In an archival clip, Bill Graham, the famed promoter who booked the Velvet Underground at The Fillmore West, says young people flock to the city of Los Angeles “because people are very nice here. There’s a joie, an esprit, which doesn’t exist in New York, Chicago, Detroit, where everything is pretty nailsy, tar.”

Graham was ready to feather the Velvets before they even hit the stage, pairing the band with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention at the last minute. “They were hippies,” Warhol Factory actress Mary Woronov says in the film. “We hated hippies. You know, flower power, burning bras, what the fuck is wrong with you? We become anti a lot of things that other people aren’t anti.”

While Velvet’s drummer Maureen Tucker believes Graham was jealous of the multimedia aspect of the band’s performances, the local scene seemed to band together to hate on the Velvets. The critics panned The Velvet Underground show, Cher said the band would replace nothing besides suicide. “This love/piece crap, we hated that, get real,” Tucker says in the documentary. “Free love, everybody’s wonderful and everybody loves everybody, aren’t I wonderful? You cannot change minds by handing flowers to some bozo who wants to shoot you.”

The specific feud began when Zappa made a sarcastic comment when The Mothers opened for The Velvet Underground at the Trip on May 3, 1966, but there was also a rivalry within both band’s label MGM, where Zappa was most promoted alternative act. Reed continued to hold the grudge well into his post-Velvet career, saying he enjoyed his shows at London’s Rainbow Theater because that’s where Zappa fell down twenty feet into the orchestra pit. As it turns out, Frank was less offended by the band’s music than their aura of heroin chic.

“When they clashed with the West Coast, I think they realized the degree to which their genius was a form of depravity, and they knew that,” Haynes says. “But I think they couldn’t literally stand up and say, ‘Yeah, this is who we are, and we find the rest of the counterculture to be kind of bourgeois and uptight and sort of conformist by comparison.’”

Reed and Zappa apparently settled whatever differences they had on a personal level, away from public scrutiny. Reed told Mojo magazine (per Rolling Stone) that Zappa gave him the idea of playing a cantaloupe for the White Light/White Heat album. “‘You’ll get a better sound if you do it this way,’” Reed recalled. “And then he says, ‘You know, I’m really surprised by how much I like your album.’”

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Reed also inducted Zappa at the 1995 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.

“Whether writing symphonies, satirical broadsides, or casting a caustic glow across the frontier of madness that makes up the American political landscape; whether testifying before Congress to put the PMRC in its rightful lowly place, or acting as a cultural conduit for President Vaclav Havel and the Czech government, Frank was a force for reason and honesty in the business deficient in those areas,” Reed said. “As we reward some with money for the amusement they supply to the cultural masses, I think the induction of Frank Zappa in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame distinguishes the Hall as well as the inductee.

The Velvet Underground will be available in theaters and on Apple TV+ on Friday, Oct. 15.

Written by
Tony Sokol | @tsokol
Culture Editor Tony Sokol is a writer, playwright and musician. He contributed to Altvariety, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and other magazines. He is the TV Editor at Entertainment…

Analysis: How Judge Bitar’s probe shook Lebanon leaders

Experts say judge leading investigation into last year’s explosion at Beirut’s port rattled the country simply by challenging systemic impunity.

Supporters of Lebanese groups Hezbollah and Amal take part in a protest against Tarek Bitar, the lead judge of the port blast investigation

[File: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters]

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
By Kareem Chehayeb
16 Oct 2021

Beirut, Lebanon – When the Lebanese government announced more than a year ago that the probe into the devastating explosion in Beirut’s port would be conducted domestically, few expected that senior officials would be charged.

But even fewer expected that the lead investigator, Judge Tarek Bitar, could rattle the country’s entrenched leadership, which for decades has reigned with impunity and routinely quashed legal investigations that may hold it accountable.

More than 200 people were killed and some 6,500 wounded when hundreds of tonnes of highly explosive ammonium nitrate fertiliser stored in the port for years ignited on August 4, 2020. The explosion wrecked large parts of Beirut and continues to haunt Lebanon, as the country struggles with an economic meltdown that plunged three-quarters of its population into poverty. No officials have been convicted yet.

Bitar’s persistence to pursue senior political and security officials, despite their attempts to delegitimise and remove him, has put the country on notice.

“Judge Bitar is giving the Lebanese hope in the domestic judiciary after many people have totally given up on justice and accountability locally,” Aya Majzoub, Human Rights Watch Lebanon researcher, told Al Jazeera. “He is single-handedly facing off with the entire political establishment that is implicated in the Beirut blast.”

On Thursday, a protest in Beirut by Hezbollah and Amal supporters calling for Bitar’s removal turned into a bloodbath when unidentified snipers fired at the crowd from rooftops, triggering a gun battle that last for more than four hours. Seven civilians and combatants died.

Families of the explosion victims, activists and human rights organisations continue to back Bitar. However, several political and religious leaders from across the country’s sectarian spectrum continue to call for his removal and accuse him of bias, accusations dismissed by legal experts and rights groups.

Bitar was appointed to lead the investigation in February following the dismissal of his predecessor, Judge Fadi Sawan, who had shockingly charged former ministers Ali Hasan Khalil, Ghazi Zeiter, Youssef Finianos, and Lebanon’s then-caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab with criminal negligence.

Over the past seven months, Bitar has continued to pursue the same individuals and also charged former minister Nohad Machnouk. He has also repeatedly requested to summon two senior security officials, General Security chief Major-General Abbas Ibrahim and State Security head Major-General Tony Saliba – but the Ministry of Interior and Higher Defence Council would reject the requests.

The charged politicians have declined to show up to the interrogations. They have also continuously tried to remove the judge by filing legal complaints, which have sometimes temporarily suspended the investigation. Though the judiciary has so far dismissed these complaints, legal experts say this has been a tactic to stall the investigation, while major political parties have now also begun calling for Bitar’s removal.

The most vociferous has been Hezbollah, even though Bitar has not charged anyone from the party. Just three days before Thursday’s clashes, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah accused the judge of politically targeting officials and called for an “honest and transparent judge”. Last month, a senior Hezbollah security official reportedly threatened Judge Bitar in his office.

“It’s clear that Bitar has hit too close to home, but we don’t know why Hezbollah, in particular, is leading this campaign against him,” Majzoub said. “They keep saying they’re singled out, but none of the officials Bitar has called for investigation are Hezbollah officials.”

Lebanon’s troubled history is littered with conflict, including a vicious 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, followed by decades of assassinations and sporadic armed clashes. But the perpetrators of even the gravest crimes were never held to account. Many say this is an extension of rampant corruption in Lebanon, where the judiciary is not independent of the government.

Now, political leaders have accused Bitar and the judiciary of being politicised.

Families and experts told Al Jazeera that Bitar set a new precedent in the port explosion investigation and shocked Lebanon’s leadership.

Bachar El-Halabi, a political analyst, said Bitar “decided to go as far as possible”.

“Sawan’s removal also shocked [the public] and garnered support in the public sphere which transcended sectarian fault lines,” El-Halabi noted. “It’s not just about ending the impunity that continues to reign supreme in Lebanon, but a fear of any kind of repercussion of change that could come through the judiciary.”

Two years ago, mass nationwide protests demanded accountability for rampant corruption and financial mismanagement, as well as an end to decades of rule at the hands of the country’s sectarian leadership. A common call among protesters at the time was an independent judiciary to investigate corrupt politicians and business people.

“Bitar has also started a wider discussion around the country around [legal] immunities, and the really corrupt political and legal system that essentially shields these high-level officials from accountability,” Majzoub said.

“He brought this issue to the forefront of public debate in Lebanon, and put a lot of pressure to reform this system designed by the powerful to protect the powerful.”

KEEP READING

Beirut blast probe suspended again as judge issues arrest warrant

Court allows Judge Bitar to resume Beirut blast investigation

Mother continues daughter’s art after losing her to Beirut blast

How an investigation into Beirut's port explosion is rattling Lebanon's elite, stirring memories of civil war

Analysis by Tamara Qiblawi, CNN
Sat October 16, 2021

(CNN)For many in Lebanon, Thursday's scenes from central Beirut brought a sense of deja vu.

Snipers shot people from rooftops. Masked gunmen fired back with rocket-propelled grenades and B7 rockets. Terrified schoolchildren took cover in corridors. And to top it all off, the violence was all playing out along the capital's former "Green Line," a major battle front that divided Beirut's Christian east from the predominantly Muslim west during the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990.

It was enough to send shivers down the spine of a people still reeling from collective traumas both fresh -- such as last summer's Beirut port blast -- and old. The wounds of the civil war continue to fester, and to watch smoke billowing from buildings covered in pockmarks from battles long past was almost too much for ordinary people to bear.
Yet for all the harrowingly familiar optics of Thursday's fighting, the political environment is new. The violence did not pit Muslim against Christian. Nor are the motivations sectarian. Instead, the violence has emerged from a fault-line that is divorced from those terrible realities.

Men help evacuate an elderly woman after gunfire erupted, in Beirut, Lebanon October 14, 2021.

The probe into the port explosion that killed more than 200 people is at the heart of Thursday's tumult. The investigation -- the biggest ever legal challenge to Lebanon's ruling elite, who are also a holdover from the civil war -- is widely seen as a potential milestone, a tool through which the country can begin to shed its blood-drenched past.
Neither the masked gunmen who emerged from a Hezbollah-organized protest against the port probe, nor the unknown snipers who appeared to be posturing as defenders of the investigation, have a vested interest in Lebanon moving forward or finding answers from the devastation of August 2020. Hezbollah and its ally Amal have accused the Christian right-wing party and former militia, the Lebanese Forces (LF), of being behind the sniping -- an allegation the LF has rejected.

Thursday's fighters appear keen to keep the tiny Mediterranean country stuck in the past, just when the population has overwhelmingly voiced support for a better future. The judge leading the investigation into the probe, Tarek Bitar, has emerged as a champion of those people. Hezbollah, on the other hand, has positioned itself as Bitar's most vociferous opponent.

People of all religious stripes were casualties of the August 2020 explosion. Across Lebanon's religious spectrum, people want justice. In that same vein, Hezbollah — which has not been prosecuted in the probe so far — has led a political offensive on behalf of a multi-religious elite.

Bitar has sought to question top officials across the board, and has recently issued arrest warrants against three former ministers — a Sunni Muslim, a Shia Muslim and a Maronite Christian.

The divisions therefore do not play out along Lebanon's age-old confessional lines. Instead some say observers ought to be looking at the implications of the probe itself. The investigation into the Beirut blast has rattled the political elite in a way that the blast itself, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, could not.

The ruling class appears to be shaking in its boots, after having unsuccessfully petitioned to remove Bitar from his position. This is the same elite that survived a civil war, thanks to an amnesty law that marked the end of the conflict, and was largely unfazed by the October 2019 nationwide popular uprising and the devastating economic catastrophe that followed.

The ramifications of the probe could extend beyond Lebanon and to the Arab world at large. This is a region well-known for brazenly undermining its judiciary, even as the appetite for accountability among an increasingly frustrated Arab youth continues to grow.

If, against all odds, Bitar can see his investigation through, then he could be setting a precedent for the entire region. Arab leaders should take note.

A man runs for cover as gunfire breaks out at a protest in Beirut, Lebanon, on Thursday, October 14.

The law that prompted a school administrator to call for an 'opposing' perspective on the Holocaust is causing confusion across Texas

Brian Lopez, The Texas Tribune
October 16, 2021

THE OPPOSING PERSPECTIVE

A new Texas law designed to limit how race-related subjects are taught in public schools comes with so little guidance, the on-the-ground application is already tying educators up in semantic knots as they try to follow the Legislature's intent.

In the most striking instance so far, a North Texas administrator informed teachers last week at a training session on House Bill 3979 that they had to provide materials that presented an “opposing" perspective of the Holocaust. A recording of the Oct. 8 training at Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, obtained by NBC News, has reignited the debate over the so-called “critical race theory law."

“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979," Gina Peddy, Carroll ISD 's executive director of curriculum and instruction, is heard telling teachers on that recording. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing — that has other perspectives."

It's not the first time the Carroll school district in Southlake — the affluent suburb that sits between Fort Worth and Dallas — has made news with its interpretation of the new law, which is an attempt to keep critical race theory, or CRT, an academic discipline usually taught at the university level, out of schools. Critical race theory's central idea is that racism is not something restricted to individuals. Instead, the theory contends that bias is something embedded in policies and legal systems.

Two weeks ago, the Carroll school board voted 3-2 to reprimand a fourth grade teacher who had an anti-racist book in her classroom after a parent complained about it last year. And Southlake's earlier struggles with a school diversity and inclusion plan — as well as how parents opposed to the plan started a political movement there — were the subject of a seven-part NBC podcast released earlier this year.

The Texas law states a teacher cannot "require or make part of a course" a series of race-related concepts, including the ideas that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex," or that someone is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive" based on their race or sex.

Since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the anti-critical race theory bill into law June 15, reports of schools struggling to comply with it have surfaced, most notably in Southlake.

Since then, one Carroll teacher covered a classroom library with yellow “DO NOT ENTER" tape. Last week, NBC reported that teachers there have been given scoring tools known as rubrics. Those scoring sheets, also obtained by The Texas Tribune, ask teachers to move through a complicated chart to evaluate library offerings to make sure they are in compliance with the new state law.

A classroom library selection rubric from the Carroll Independent School District. Credit: Obtained by The Texas Tribune

The cards ask teachers to consider whether an author of each book has provided multiple perspectives. If an author “provides balanced information by providing multiple perspectives," the book is given a maximum of two points. A book may get zero points if the “author perspective/bias distorts content, making the material inappropriate for use with students."

In one email sent to teachers, also obtained by the Tribune, Carroll ISD administrators told teachers that classroom libraries could not be used until they have been vetted, using the rubrics.

“We want your staff to know that the classroom libraries will continue to be available for students, but we will continue to vet the material in those libraries for the remainder of the semester," an email sent to teachers read.

After news surfaced this week about Southlake's Holocaust guidance to teachers, state Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, wrote a letter Thursday to Mike Morath, the Texas Education Agency commissioner, requesting a review of how school districts are implementing the law to “refute hateful and racist rhetoric in our Texas public schools."

“When this bill passed legislators warned that racist attacks would occur. It is our job to take every step possible to ensure an open and diverse forum, without subjecting our children to racism and hateful rhetoric," Menéndez wrote.

State Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, tweeted Thursday simply that “Southlake just got it wrong."

He added, “School administrators should know the difference between factual historical events and fiction. ... No legislation is suggesting the action this administrator is promoting."

Paul Tapp, attorney with the Association of Texas Professional Educators, said his organization has received questions from teachers because they don't know what they can teach. A biology teacher asked if they should give equal time to creationism and evolution.

“These are two good examples of what the dangers of this kind of law are," Tapp said. “The point of public education is to introduce the world to students. It's not there to protect students from the world."

Carroll ISD Superintendent Lane Ledbetter quickly clarified late Thursday that the comments made in the training “were in no way to convey that the Holocaust was anything less than a terrible event in history."

“As we continue to work through implementation of HB3979, we also understand this bill does not require an opposing viewpoint on historical facts," Ledbetter said.

Still, Carroll is not the only district in the state struggling with how to conform to the new law.

In Katy Independent School District earlier this month, administrators postponed an event by critically acclaimed author Jerry Craft after parents claimed his books "New Kid" and "Class Act" promoted critical race theory. The district removed the books, reversed itself and rescheduled the author event after a review committee deemed the books did not contain offensive material.

Katy ISD did not respond to an interview request.

In June, in what seemed to be the first application of HB 3979, McKinney school officials ended their students' participation in the nationwide Youth and Government class. A McKinney social studies curriculum coordinator wrote to educators that “in light of" the new law's ban on political activism and policy advocacy, “we will no longer be allowed [to] offer Youth & Government as an elective course for credit."

The cancellation of the elective course appeared to be a misapplication and one of the first instances that resulted in educators trying hard to understand the new law. So far, the law only applies to required social studies classes, not electives like the McKinney class. State Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, the bill's author, said in June that the Youth and Government elective “doesn't have anything to do with lobbying members, so there is no reason [McKinney] would have to cancel it."

Following the Legislature's intent may get even more complicated for schools, teachers and parents in the coming months. This December, Senate Bill 3, authored by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, and passed in the state's second special session in August, will place more restrictions on a school's curriculum.

SB 3 says that at least one teacher and one campus administrator at each school must undergo a civics training program. Also, it says teachers cannot be forced to discuss current controversial topics in the classroom, regardless of whether in a social studies class or not. If they do, they must not show any political bias, the law says.

“What I would hope most of all is that school districts will actually read the law, and apply the law as written and not go beyond what the law actually requires them to do," Tapp said. “As soon as I read the bills, I expected that this would be the result of it, and I don't think we've heard the last of it."

Disclosure: The Association of Texas Professional Educators has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/10/15/Texas-critical-race-theory-law-confuses-educators/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

'Dangerous': Inside Greg Abbott’s crazy Lone Star rebellion

Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport @ RawStory
October 16, 2021

Screengrab.

Apparently, the Republican argument suggests, we should just forget about the coronavirus and ignore a disease that has killed 700,000 Americans, variously overrun our hospitals, interrupted jobs, businesses, and lives, and has spurred a strong political resistance movement.

Even as some courts have already endorsed the idea of government mandates for masks and protections against contagion, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is challenging the right of President Joe Biden to act for public health as "yet another instance of federal overreach."

It's apparently okay for Abbott to mandate against mandates not only for the state's employees but for its private businesses as well. But, by contrast, it's not okay for the federal government to tell Texas, Florida, or any state what to do about a pandemic that knows no bounds, or for companies with more than 100 employees.

That Texas is only now beginning to emerge from two months or more of spiraling covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths is not the focus of this dust-up over the rules. Rather, it's a bald political showdown.

Frankly, it's disgusting, no matter what one's politics are. No, this drawdown borders on insanity. Why do we have time, energy, and money available for endless court battles over who's really in charge?

Has Abbott not heard of the telephone, to simply call Biden and engage in some debate if they disagree?

In any event, airlines based in Texas are moving ahead with mandates anyway, guaranteeing more tumult, not less.

Why It's Strange

It is such a strange battlefield that we need to look at it for what underscores this continuing Texas rebellion, especially since it spreads so quickly to other Republican-led states. Several things that question our general understanding are coming to the surface simultaneously.

Discussion about countering a pandemic seems futile. Whenever one side of our cultural divide talks about medicine, the other is talking about rights, including the right to be as sick as one chooses and the right to infect others. We've passed the time of legitimate discussion about immediate health effects of vaccines; that is not even on the table in these moves by Abbott, who has been vaccinated and who has undergone a mild form of covid. The anti-vax position has become nearly fully a political one. By all medical standards, having had covid is no guarantee about carrying the contagion further or even to protection beyond some undetermined but finite time.

Blame for covid under anti-vax is limited now only to the also endless debate over its origin from nature or from a man-made process in a China laboratory, either as the result or by-product of some National Health Institute grant over a study of interspecies transmission. There is no acknowledgment that keeping more than 30% of adult Americans unvaccinated is a problem that manifests as a continuing public petri dish of mutation. Meanwhile, the Right is actively blaming Biden for high gas taxes, for a messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, clogged supply lines and sagging international dominance—because they all are happening on Biden's watch.

Spending zillions of dollars on treatments for those who already have covid may blunt hospitalizations but does nothing to halt the spread of an airborne contagion. Yet, we're seeing tons of support across the political spectrum to spend $2,000 a dose for antibody treatments now emerging, even in pill form, rather than a $20 vaccine. For those who also argue against Biden's big-spending proposals as wasteful, this position seems, well, incongruous.

The legal arguments here are arcane, as well as, frankly, ludicrous to you and me and our jobs. Is this more about state power versus federal power in a constitutional republic than about a chance to jack up Biden and ignore a public health menace? The force of law seems to favor the federal government acting in an emergency. The practical concerns for businesses like American Airlines based in Dallas pulled among conflicting mandates from the feds, the state and demands of consumers are simply not as important to this governor as a political principle.

By all accounts from all political viewpoints, telling businesses what they cannot do is seen as antithetical to a "conservative" view that wants government restraint.
If It Quacks. . .

It is much more understandable to see the Texas challenge over covid mandates right alongside the Texas challenge over abortion, over voting rights, over the environment and even over issues of immigration.

That is, Texas politics demand that Abbott, running at least for reelection if not for president, must protect himself from absolutists even more right-wing than he himself believes. This week, we saw hardliner Republican candidate Allen West continuing to tweet from his covid hospital bed against vaccine mandates and for expensive alternative treatments. Don Huffines, a former Texas state senator who is challenging Abbott, tweeted that "Greg Abbott is a political windsock and today proves it, He knows conservative Republican voters are tired of the vaccine mandates and tired of him being a failed leader." Apparently, in response to a Huffines criticism that a state website to help teen suicide might be fostering trans discussions, Abbott had the site pulled.

About 15 million Texans have been fully vaccinated, or just over half, lagging the national average.

Why kowtowing to a minority of voters in hopes of reelection is a bit of a mystery to me. But the reason for anyone to run for governor or president should be to solve problems.

It's hard to see what problem this governor is solving other than his own political dreams.

Texas GOP advances new maps that would tighten slipping grip

- In this Tuesday, June 30, 2009 file photo, The south side of the Capitol and its surrounding grounds are shown in Austin, Texas. TTexas Republicans are set to approve redrawn U.S. House maps that would shore up their eroding dominance as voters peel away from the GOP in the state’s booming suburbs. The Texas House on Saturday Oct. 16, 2021 is expected to send the maps to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck, File)

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Republicans on Saturday night closed in on redrawn U.S. House maps that would shore up their eroding dominance as voters peel away from the GOP in the state’s booming suburbs.

In a key late-night vote in the Texas House, Republicans gave early sign-off to new congressional boundaries that would give them more breathing room after some close calls in 2018 and 2020, while also opening a new path for the GOP along the border with Mexico.

But in a preview of legal challenges to come, Democrats spent hours blasting the maps as discriminatory and all but blind to the state’s surging number of Latino residents, who made up more than half of the nearly 4 million new Texans over the past decade. Many live around Dallas and Houston, where under the GOP-engineered maps, there would be no new districts that give Latinos a majority.

Republican state Rep. Todd Hunter, who has presided over the redrawn maps in the House, defended the changes and said they comply with the law.

The maps will still need final negotiations in the coming days between the House and Senate before being sent to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign them.

The redrawn congressional districts would make make it easier for many incumbents to hold their seats, but critics say they also threaten Black and Hispanic communities’ political influence, even as those voters drive Texas’ growth. The new lines, the product of a once-in-a-decade redistricting process, create two new districts and make several less competitive for Republican lawmakers.

Texas was the only state to gain two congressional seats following the 2020 census, which showed that people of color accounted for more than 9 of 10 new residents in Texas.

“Race is clearly the factor here,” Democratic state Rep. Rafael Anchia said of how the maps were drawn. “Not partisanship, but rather race.”

One revision by the Texas House during hours of debate Saturday would increase the number of Hispanic voters in two districts, but those changes must still make it through another round of approval.

Democrats and voting rights advocates are preparing to challenge the maps in court in what would be yet another high-profile, high-stakes legal battle over Texas politics — already the epicenter of disputes over abortion and voting rights.

Republicans who control both chambers of the Legislature have nearly complete control of the mapmaking process. They are working from maps that experts and courts have already declared as gerrymandered in their favor, and the state has had to defend their maps in court after every redistricting process since the Voting Rights Act took effect in 1965.

But legal challenges face new hurdles this round — the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Texas and other states with a history of racial discrimination no longer need to have the Justice Department scrutinize the maps before they are approved. Plaintiffs must now wait to file claims and must show that maps were intentionally meant to discriminate by race. Drawing maps to engineer a political advantage is not unconstitutional.

Republican state Sen. Joan Huffman, who authored the maps and leads the Senate Redistricting Committee, has told lawmakers they were “drawn blind to race.” She said her legal team ensured the proposal followed the Voting Rights Act.

The proposal would make 24 of the state’s 38 congressional districts safe Republican districts, with an opportunity to pick up at least one additional newly redrawn Democratic stronghold on the border with Mexico, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of data from last year’s election collected by the Texas Legislative Council. Currently, Republicans hold 23 of the state’s 36 seats.

Republicans with newly fortified advantages include Rep. Van Taylor, whose district in Dallas’ exurbs went for President Donald Trump by a single percentage point last year. Under the new maps, Trump would have won the district by double-digits.

Rep. Michael McCaul, who Democrats aggressively targeted the last two cycles, would now represent a solidly pro-Trump district under lines that exclude Houston’s suburbs and liberal parts of Austin.

And a long, vertically drawn district stretching from the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio that President Joe Biden won by just over 2 percentage points would now slightly tilt toward Trump voters.

In a late-night win for Democrats, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat who is serving her 14th term, had her home drawn back into her Houston district, which was restored nearly entirely to its former shape. So, too, was the nearby district of U.S. Rep. Al Green after both had seen longtime constituents of minority communities drawn out of their districts.

Texas lawmakers are also redrawing the maps for their own districts, with Republicans following a similar plan that would keep their party in power in the state House and Senate. Those proposals are also expected to be sent to Abbott by next week.

___

Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber contributed to this report. Coronado is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Thousands of frustrated visa lottery winners sued the US government. They won

Nearly 10,000 winners of the visa lottery, frustrated by their failure to obtain consular interviews to process their U.S. immigrant visas on time, won a court battle this week. - Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

Nearly 10,000 winners of the FY 2020 Diversity Visa Program, better known as the visa lottery, who were frustrated by their failure to obtain consular interviews to process their U.S. immigrant visas on time, won a court battle this week.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on Wednesday that the U.S. Department of State, which administers the immigration program, must process 9,905 visas that were allocated in the DV-2020 lottery.

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta ordered the Department to “commence processing the 9,905 DV-2020 visas as soon as is feasible and to conclude such processing no later than the end of the 2022 Fiscal Year, or September 30, 2022,” according to court documents.

The visa lottery allocates up to 55,000 permanent resident cards, known as green cards, for immigrants with historically low rates of immigration to the U.S. The winners are drawn from random selection by computer from among qualified entries.

The annual program’s guidelines stipulate that all winners, including family members or derivatives, must be issued immigrant visas by Sept. 30 of the program’s fiscal year, which in this case was Sept. 30, 2020.

But chronic delays at American embassies and consulates around the world, stemming in large part from the coronavirus pandemic, among other causes, did not allow the qualified winners to complete the mandatory consular processing for the visa issuance.

In light of these unintended mishaps, diversity visas winners have filed several class-action lawsuits against the Department of State, both under the Trump and Biden administrations.

In a statement released Wednesday, the foreign policy agency said it was aware of the various court orders pertaining not only to the DV-2020 lottery visa, but also to the DV-2021 edition of the program, whose visas many foreigners were also unable to obtain on time.

“We will publish public guidance on this website regarding the Department’s plan for complying with these orders as it becomes available,” officials said.

In the class action lawsuit Gomez v. Biden, the D.C. district court had already instructed in August that the Department was required to process the 9,905 reserved diversity visas in a random order, but it did not established a time frame for processing them.

With this week’s order, the cards are finally laid out, and the visas on the horizon for the lucky winners, who will be able to immigrate to the United States legally and permanently with a green card.

“The court understands that waiting up to another full year will disappoint Gomez class members who hope to secure a reserved DV-2020 visa,” Judge Metha wrote in his court order.

“However, this court must balance the interests of the class with the resource constraints of the State Department, along with the interests of thousands of others who are patiently waiting for their immigrant and nonimmigrant visas to be adjudicated and issued by consular offices,” he concluded.

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