How can researchers tell if male and female dinosaurs, like the stegosaur, were different?

Did male and female dinosaurs differ? A new statistical technique is helping answer the question

  Susannah Maidment et al. & Natural History Museum, London, CC BY

February 1, 2022 

In most animal species, males and females differ. This is true for people and other mammals, as well as many species of birds, fish and reptiles. But what about dinosaurs? In 2015, I proposed that variation found in the iconic back plates of stegosaur dinosaurs was due to sex differences.

I was surprised by how strongly some of my colleagues disagreed, arguing that differences between sexes, called sexual dimorphism, did not exist in dinosaurs.

I am a paleontologist, and the debate sparked by my 2015 paper has made me reconsider how researchers studying ancient animals use statistics.

The limited fossil record makes it hard to declare if a dinosaur was sexually dimorphic. But I and some others in my field are beginning to shift away from traditional black-or-white statistical thinking that relies on p-values and statistical significance to define a true finding. Instead of only looking for yes or no answers, we are beginning to consider the estimated magnitude of sexual variation in a species, the degree of uncertainty in that estimate and how these measures compare to other species. This approach offers a more nuanced analysis to challenging questions in paleontology as well as many other fields of science.

In many species, like these mandarin ducks, males (left) and females (right) look very different

. Francis C. Franklin via WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA

Differences between males and females

Sexual dimorphism is when males and females of a certain species differ on average in a particular trait – not including their reproductive anatomy. Classic examples are how male deer have antlers and male peacocks have flashy tail feathers, while the females lack these traits.

Dimorphism can also be subtle and unflashy. Often the difference is one of degree, like differences in the average body size between males and females – as in gorillas. In these modest cases, researchers use statistics to determine whether a trait differs on average between males and females.
The dinosaur dilemma

Studying sexual dimorphism in extinct animals is fraught with uncertainty. If you and I independently dig up similar fossils of the same species, they are inevitably going to be slightly different. These differences could be due to sex, but they could also be driven by age – young birds are fuzzy, adult birds are sleek. They could also be due to genetics unrelated to sex, like eye color in humans.

It’s possible that variation among individual dinosaurs of the same species could be due to sexual dimorphism, but there are rarely good enough samples to assert so using traditional statistics. James Ormiston, CC BY-ND

If paleontologists had thousands of fossils to study of every species, the many sources of biological variation wouldn’t matter as much. Unfortunately, the ravages of time have left the fossil record painfully incomplete, often with less than a dozen good specimens for large, extinct vertebrate species. Additionally, there is currently no way to identify the sex of an individual fossil except in rare cases where obvious clues exist, like eggs preserved within the body cavity.

So where does all this leave the debate on whether male and female dinosaurs had differences within traits? On the one hand, birds – which are direct descendants of dinosaurs – commonly show sexual dimorphism. So do crocodilians, dinosaurs’ next closest living relatives. Evolutionary theory also predicts that, since dinosaurs reproduced with sperm and egg, there would be a benefit to sexual dimorphism.

These things all suggest that dinosaurs likely were sexually dimorphic. But in science you need to be quantitative. The challenge is that there is little in the way of statistically significant analyses of the fossil record to support dimorphism.

Statistical shifts

Very large sex differences can create a bimodal distribution that looks like two distinct groupings of a certain measurement. Maksim via WikimediaCommons, CC BY

There are a couple of ways paleontologists could test for sexual dimorphism. They could look to see if there are statistically significant differences between fossils from presumed males and females, but there are very few specimens where researchers know the sex. Another method is to see whether there are two distinct groupings of a trait, called a bimodal distribution, which could suggest a difference between males and females.

To tell whether a perceived difference between two groups is true, scientists have traditionally used a tool called the p-value. P-values quantify the probability of a result being due to random chance. If a p-value is low enough, the result is deemed “statistically significant” and considered unlikely to have happened by chance.

But p-values can be heavily influenced by sample size and the design of the study, in addition to the actual degree of sexual dimorphism. Because of the very small sample size of fossils, relying on this statistical technique makes it exceedingly difficult to categorically proclaim what dinosaur species were dimorphic.

The weakness of the black-or-white approach that focuses solely on whether a result is statistically significant has led to hundreds of scientists calling to abandon significance testing with p-values in favor of something called effect size statistics. Using this approach, researchers would simply report the measured difference between two groups and the uncertainty in that measurement.

Effect size statistics

I have begun to apply effect size statistics in my research on dinosaurs. My colleagues and I compared sexual dimorphism in body size between three different dinosaurs: the duck-billed Maiasaura, Tyrannosaurus rex and Psittacosaurus, a small relative of Triceratops. None of these species would be expected to show statistically significant size differences between males and females according to p-values. But that approach does not capture the nature of the variation within these species.

Using effect size statistics, researchers were able to determine that the duck-billed dinosaur Maiasaura showed a larger amount of dimorphism with the least uncertainty in that estimate compared to other dinosaurs. Daderot via WikimediaCommons

When we instead used effect size statistics, we were able to estimate that male and female Maiasaura demonstrate a greater difference in body mass compared to the other two species and that we had a higher confidence in this estimate as well. A few of the characteristics within the data helped reduce the uncertainty. First, we had a large number of Maiasaura fossils, from individuals of various ages. These bones very nicely fit with trajectories of how size changes as an individual grows from juvenile to adult, so we could control for differences due to age and instead focus on differences due to sex.

Additionally, the Maiasaura fossils all come from a single bone bed of individuals that died in the same place at the same time. This means that variation between individuals is likely not due to them being different species from different regions or time periods.

If my colleagues and I had approached the problem expecting a yes or no answer on whether males and females differed in size, we would have completely missed all of these intricacies. Effect size statistics allow researchers to produce much more nuanced and, I think, informative results. It is almost as much a difference in the philosophical approach to science as it is a mathematical one.

Studying dinosaur dimorphism is not the only place p-values create issues. Many fields of science, including medicine and psychology, are having similar debates about issues in statistics and a worrying problem of unrepeatable studies.

Embracing uncertainty in data – rather than looking for black-or-white answers to questions like whether male and female dinosaurs were sexually dimorphic – can help elucidate dinosaur biology. But this shift in thinking may be felt far and wide across the sciences. A careful consideration of problems within statistics could have deep impacts across many fields.

Author

Evan Thomas Saitta
Postdoctoral Scholar in Paleontology, University of Chicago

Ancient human tracks on South Africa’s west coast: 3 reasons they are an exciting find

The Conversation
February 03, 2022

Newly uncovered prehistoric human footprints provide a rare glimpse into ancient human group behavior

It’s been 27 years since geologist David Roberts identified some of the oldest footprints of our species ever discovered. The trackway of three footprints was found on the surface of a cemented sand dune (called an aeolianite) near Langebaan on South Africa’s west coast. The tracks were later dated to 117,000 years and were attributed to Homo sapiens; they became popularly known as “Eve’s footprints”.

They were airlifted to Cape Town, where they are housed in the Iziko South Africa Museum. A replica is on exhibit at the Geelbek Visitor Centre in the West Coast National Park. There has been international debate since then about whether or not “Eve’s footprints” really were human tracks, due to their relatively poor level of preservation.

No further fossilised human tracks have been discovered in the area since then – but a recent find by our research team, also near Langebaan, changes this.

These two tracks, discovered in what is today the ceiling of a small cave, are a remarkable find for three reasons. The first is that modern graffiti on aeolianite surfaces in the area around Langebaan area is prolific. In fact, graffiti was present just inches away from “Eve’s footprints”. A potential fossilised human tracksite on the Cape south coast near Knysna, more than 400 km to the east, was defaced by graffiti before it could be scientifically assessed.

We don’t know precisely when this happened, but we know that the graffiti “artists” got to it before we did. It is therefore possible that fossil tracksites around Langebaan are rare because graffiti has obscured them.

The second reason is that human tracks registered in aeolianites are rare at a global level. The majority of such tracks are found in cave floor deposits or volcanic ash sediments; the South African sites, which were made on dunes and beaches, are an exception. And the third is that our find, made within kilometres of those Roberts discovered in 1995, supports his conclusion that a human ancestor left “Eve’s footprints”.

The tracks

Rudolf Hattingh, a speleologist – he studies caves – and member of our research team, found the two tracks on the small cave’s ceiling while out exploring for caves.

They are natural casts, representing the sediment which filled in the original tracks. The original dune surface on which the tracks were made has been eroded away, and is no longer evident. They are probably of approximately the same age as “Eve’s Footprints”, and therefore from the Late Pleistocene epoch, which began about 126,000 years ago.


Graffiti in aeolianites at Langebaan. Some potential human tracks have been destroyed by such graffiti.
CHARLES HELM

The two tracks have approximately the same orientation, and are are an appropriate distance apart (49 cm) for a walking human, which suggests that they form a short trackway segment. They are friable, vulnerable even to light touch, and their margins are not crisply defined – it is possible that more detail might have been present if they had been discovered earlier.

Track length is approximately 28 cm (although this may include a heel drag), width is 13 cm, and depth is 3-4 cm. One of the tracks contains a possible outline of a hallux (big toe). Both tracks show an outward convexity, suggesting the presence of a medial arch. These features are all broadly consistent with a human trackmaker walking on a dry, non-cohesive dune surface.

We would have preferred a longer trackway and tracks which showed more anatomical detail morphology. Nonetheless, the identification of new probable human tracks at Langebaan, free of graffiti, is still a significant find. Although extinct members of our genus like Homo naledi and Homo helmei cannot be completely excluded, we believe the likelihood is that these tracks, like “Eve’s Footprints”, were made by one of our direct Homo sapiens ancestors.

Potential for more?

Although the focus of our work is on the Cape south coast, not the west coast, this discovery is a spur to keep exploring in the Langebaan area, especially in the few remaining areas that are free of graffiti.

It also inspires us to be vigilant for cliff-collapse events which may create new aeolianite exposures on this coastline. Fossil tracks are evocative: they can readily transport us back in time and lead us think what it must have been like to walk on a dune more than 100,000 years ago, near what is today known as Langebaan.

Charles Helm, Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University


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

The struggle to define psychedelics

by John Hewitt , Medical Xpress

Credit: Wikipedia

Psychoactive drugs include all manner of hallucinogens, deliriants, hypnotics and psychedelics. But what is a psychedelic, really? Insofar as many in the field are now moving toward bringing new molecules with presumably desirable introspective properties into a larger, potentially druggable populace, there is a palpable need for increased clarity.

There is a curious push to define psychedelics as compounds that alter consciousness by acting on serotonin receptors in the brain, most notably 5-HT2A receptors. However, that is a terribly parochial definition that clearly suffers from a narrow perspective—surely, many receptors, and likely many non-receptor effects, can create what is already commonly understood as a psychedelic effect.

A timely attempt to bring further order to the world of psychedelic molecules was recently put forward in the journal Current Biology. The authors offer a divide-and-conquer approach that assigns psychedelics to one of three classes based on their chemical structure: tryptamines, ergolines and phenethylamines. The tryptamines, to which 5Ht (serotonin) belongs, yield familiar molecules including psilocybin, psilocin, DMT and 5-MeO-DMT via the addition of methyl groups to the ethylamine chain, as well as the addition of other critical side groups, to the core fused indole benzene-pyrrole ring system.

Credit: B. Kelmendi et. al. 2022

The ergolines were initially isolated from the ergot fungus, and can be further processed into more familiar derivatives like LSD. Finally, the phenethylamines are based on a scaffold of a benzene ring with an amino group attached through two-carbon. This group includes 2C-B, mescaline, amphetamine analogs such as DOI and DOM, and derivatives such as 25I-NBOMe. This division is handy, hardly exhaustive. some phenethylamines such as MDMA, act through entirely different mechanisms, while deliriants such as muscimol and scopolamine, and dissociatives such as salvinorin A, ibogaine, nitrous oxide, phencyclidine (PCP), and ketamine have entirely unique structures.

All this, and much more was actually laid out many years ago by the late "godfather of psychedelics," Alexander Shulgin, who, together with his wife, penned two famous books on the topic based on his direct experiences with hundreds of compounds he invented and synthesized. These two still unmatched treatises, PiHKAL and TiHKAL (standing for "Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved" and "Tryptamines I Have Known And Loved"), methodically lay out the first exhaustive rational drug design approach to designer psychedelics. Each instruction synthesis account is typically accompanied by thorough dosing recommendations, comparative routes of administration, bioassays, method of metabolism, and detailed commentary on the time course of effects.

So what has science been able to offer since Shulgin? There have been at least two contributions to the field: The first is the structural determination of a psychedelic-bound 5-HT2A receptors at near-atomic resolution. These reconstructions have enabled detailed computer simulations to identify thousands of candidate compounds which can be tested to evaluate their kinetic binding properties. The second has been major advances in tracing the signal transduction pathways that are activated by receptor binding. In this case, the established canonical pathway involves the G-protein Gαq, which dissociates from the receptor and from its Gβγ partners and activates other downstream effector proteins upon receptor activation.

But there is also another parallel, G-protein-independent pathway mediated by β-arrestins that has come to be viewed with increasing relevance for these drugs. "Some psychedelics appear to be biased ligands such that they preferentially engage 5-HT2A receptors in conformations that favor β-arrestin signaling over the G-protein pathway. In contrast to 5-HT2A receptors, the 5-HT1A receptors are Gi/o-protein coupled and activate other signaling proteins." These kinds of observations now form the basis of more recent and sometimes dubious efforts to deconvolve desirable antidepressant effects of receptor activation from any of the undesirable hallucinogenic effects.

For example, structural analysis comparing receptor-bound serotonin with similarly non-hallucinogenic ligands like lisuride reveal a bias toward arrestin recruitment. Based on these analyses, researchers were able to design arrestin-biased ligands that displayed antidepressant-like activity in mice without hallucination effects. They note that arrestin recruitment alone is insufficient for antidepressant effects, but the low G-protein signaling of the arrestin-biased ligands appears to allow antidepressant effects without causing hallucination.

Sleep deprivation increases serotonin 2a receptor response in brain

More information: Benjamin Kelmendi et al, Psychedelics, Current Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.12.009

Dongmei Cao et al, Structure-based discovery of nonhallucinogenic psychedelic analogs, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abl8615Journal information: Current Biology , Science 

© 2022 Science X Network

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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out 

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Fish on acid? Microdosing zebrafish with LSD shows its potential benefits for humans

The Conversation
February 03, 2022

Zebrafish (Screen Grab)

Microdosing — regularly ingesting small amounts of a psychedelic substance 

— has gone mainstream.

Believed to increase productivity, spark creativity or improve open-mindedness, the microdosing of psychedelic drugs is gaining popularity with both academic researchers and those interested in experimenting.

But microdosing may offer more beyond its mood-boosting abilities.

Using zebrafish and our new method for precise and repeated drug administration, my colleagues and I are studying LSD and terpenes (chemicals in plants responsible for their scent, among other things) in a series of projects exploring potential novel treatments for mental illness and alcohol use disorder.

Zebrafish might seem an odd choice in studying human health, but they share 70 per cent of their genes with us and are a popular nonhuman organism used by scientists to study biological processes. They are also incredibly social, making them well-suited for behavioural studies into psychiatric disorders and drug discovery.

However, past drug research using zebrafish has studied “chronic” administration — putting fish in a drug solution for weeks. Since humans require (at the very least) some sleep, this administration can’t accurately reflect human consumption patterns.

Dose control

To address this limitation, we developed a new method to dose multiple fish accurately and efficiently for exact exposure times. By placing an insert into the housing tank, we can move groups of fish from their housing tank into a dosing tank for a precise dosing period, more closely mimicking the way that a person might consume drugs or alcohol.

To verify that this new dosing procedure could have behavioural and neurochemical effects, we completed a series of projects using our new method to examine the effects of alcohol and nicotine.

First, we tested the zebrafish with a daily moderate dose or a weekly binge-level dose of ethanol for three weeks. We found a significant difference in location preference in the daily moderate group compared to controls during a withdrawal period, which implies there were neurological changes.

Then we followed up with a study using lower doses for shorter periods of time. Here, we saw decreased boldness and increased anxiety-like behaviour during withdrawal from the highest dose (opposite to what is seen after an acute single-dose).

Similarly, testing the model using nicotine, we found again that acute doses decreased anxiety-like behaviour while repeated dosing led to an increase of anxiety-like behaviour during withdrawal.

For humans, having an alcoholic drink or a cigarette can decrease anxiety, and the inverse is observed in withdrawal. Our zebrafish model is consistent with this, which has given us confidence that we can test novel compounds with potential therapeutic effects in humans.


Researchers have been finding that cigarette and alcohol consumption has increased during the pandemic. These substances can reduce anxiety, but withdrawal from them can increase it.
(Shutterstock)

Potential therapies

Terpenes are a large and diverse group of aromatic compounds. They are responsible for the smell, taste and pigmentation of plants. Many terpenes — like those found in tea, lemongrass, cannabis and citrus fruits — have medical benefits.

We found that zebrafish acutely dosed with the terpene limonene (found in citrus fruit peels and cannabis) and myrcene (found in cannabis and hops), showed a significant reduction in anxiety-like behaviour. One observation that may be clinically significant is that — contrary to nicotine or alcohol — no negative effects were seen after repeated dosing for seven days, suggesting minimal to no addictive potential.

This study, alongside previous research, suggests that the terpenes limonene and beta-myrcene possess sedative and anti-anxiety effects that have potential as valuable therapeutic compounds for the treatment of a variety of mental health conditions.


There is a growing interest in microdosing psychedelics to increase productivity and spark creativity.
(Shutterstock)

Prairie psychedelic research

Some of the most influential research into psychedelics began in Saskatchewan in the 1950s. British-born psychiatrist Humphry Osmond used LSD and mescaline to treat alcoholism, with single doses showing a 50 to 90 per cent recovery rate over two years.

However, while Osmond saw success in large single-dose treatments, the acute administrations required continuous monitoring of the patient over the seven- to 15-hour “trip” to prevent any harm arising from impaired judgment. From a therapeutic perspective, this would be very time-intensive for clinicians, and is not feasible.

This is where microdosing comes in. With the potential to be easy and safe, we believe this pattern of exposure to be more therapeutically relevant, as doses are small enough to be safely self-administered with the proper guidance of a clinician.

Future knowledge

In our first study, we repeatedly microdosed our zebrafish with LSD. Using behavioural neuroscience tests to quantify locomotion, boldness and anxiety-like behaviour, we observed no impact on behaviour after 10 days of repeated dosing. Like with terpenes, this may suggest a lack of withdrawal symptoms or addictive potential, which is encouraging for clinically viability for use in humans.

Our current study examines the effects of LSD microdosing on the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, which is a growing issue in Canadian health care.

In Canada, the negative effects of alcohol are widely felt. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder remains the leading developmental disability in Canada, and alcohol harm is a top cause of injury and death. It costs Canadians billions of dollars in lost productivity, and is a burden on the health-care and judicial systems. Treatment and rehabilitation can be costly, time consuming and bogged down in lengthy wait times — if accessible at all.

Further research into other psychedelics, like psilocin (the psychoactive compound in psilocybin, or “magic mushrooms”), are also planned with the goal of providing scientific evidence to help determine whether these substances should be used in larger clinical trials in humans.

Psychedelics may provide assistance, but despite increasing evidence that LSD and psilocin are non-addictive and low risk, they remain highly restricted. Perhaps with more research and the continuing shift in public perception, we might yet again see LSD being used as a radical treatment for mental health and addiction.

Trevor James Hamilton, Associate Professor in Neuroscience (Department of Psychology), MacEwan University

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

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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out 

Pro-Trump Tennessee pastor holds literal book burning of the most popular children's books

Matthew Chapman
February 04, 2022

Pastor Greg Locker -- Facebook screenshot

According to the Nashville Scene, an infamous pro-Trump pastor held a book burning this week, with his supporters throwing young adult fiction novels into the blaze.

"Mt. Juliet pastor and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Greg Locke decided to turn it up a notch by organizing an old-fashioned book burning," reported Alejandro Ramirez. "The books included millennial staples like Harry Potter and Twilight — hits of the early Aughts that were targeted by Christian book burnings back in the day."

"In a sermon preceding the bonfire, Locke described beefing with 'Free Mason devils' and said 'I ain't gonna be 'suiciding myself' no time soon,'" continued the report. "Locke also said people aren't mad that they were burning books, but mad because of the books they were burning — implying that his critics, even other pastors, were devil and witchcraft supporters."

Locke has become infamous for waging culture war from his leadership in the Global Vision Bible Church. He forbade his supporters from wearing face masks in his church as the COVID-19 pandemic flared up, and even told a Dunkin' Donuts employee to try and make him wear a mask "I'm going to kick your teeth down your throat." He has also urged children to deliberately fail history classes because they are part of an "Islamic invasion."

THIRD WORLD USA
Crowdfunding to pay for medical bills rarely works: study

Travis Gettys

RAW STORY
February 04, 2022

Doctor with Patient. (Shutterstock)


A new study found that few GoFundMe campaigns met their fundraising goals, and the problem has been getting worse.

Researchers from the University of Washington examined nearly 500,000 campaigns launched between 2016 and 2020, which raised more than $2 billion from 21.7 million donations, but fewer than 12 percent met their goals and 16 percent raised no money at all, reported Gizmodo.

“Because the campaigns people see on social networks are almost always the small subset that are shared widely, the public may have the impression that crowdfunding is more likely to be successful than it really is,” said study author Mark Igra, a sociology graduate student."

A full third of campaigns raised no money at all in 2020, and the median campaign raised less than $2,000 over the five-year period.

Previous studies made similar findings, and other studies have suggested that people who are already poor fare even worse.

The new study, which cross-referenced census and other data, also found 20 percent of campaigns were started by individuals living in areas with the lowest incomes, but garnered only about 12 percent of all the money raised last year, while more campaigns were launched in states states with the highest rates of medical debt and uninsurance.

“Despite its popularity and portrayals as an ad-hoc safety net, medical crowdfunding is misaligned with key indicators of health financing needs in the United States,” the authors wrote. “It is best positioned to help in populations that need it the least.”

MANSON SPIRIT POSSESION

Trump's race-war fantasies continue to escalate — while the mainstream media pretends not to notice

Chauncey Devega, Salon
February 03, 2022


Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets fairgoers while campaigning at the Iowa State Fair on August 15, 2015 in Des Moines, Iowa. 

(Photo by Win Mcnamee for Agence France-Presse.)


Every day, Donald Trump becomes more his horrible true self. He commands the loyalty of tens of millions of people. He does not even pretend to be a statesman who loves America. He is a political cult leader, a sociopath and a model of antisocial and dangerous behavior. As psychologists and other public health experts have warned, Trump has "infected" many of his most loyal followers with the same mental pathologies.

Trump has an erotic attachment to violence, as do many of his followers. They are tied together by the Big Lie and other sadistic, and anti-human fictions. TrumpWorld is a malignant and vile alternate universe — one that longs to devour and consume the world as it actually exists.

Nearly every day we learn more evidence about Donald Trump and his cabal's attempted coup. In the face of the Justice Department's flaccid approach to those crimes (at least to this point), Trump and his agents continue to attack American democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution, now in plain sight.

Last Saturday at a rally in Conroe, Texas, Trump communicated his clear intent to cause mass mayhem and destruction in the United States — in essence, his willingness to burn it all down — should he ever face punishment for the crimes he committed as president.

Trump told his followers: "If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington. D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt."

He repeatedly described the prosecutors investigating him in New York, Washington and Atanta as "racist." (All four are Black.) He also attacked them as being "mentally sick" and said they were committing "prosecutorial misconduct at the highest level."

Trump also told the crowd in Conroe that "in 2024, we are going to take back that beautiful, beautiful house that happens to be white, that is so magnificent and that we all love. We are going to take back the White House." All these remarks were read off a teleprompter, rather than improvised.

Trump is a master performer who knows his audience very well. In no way were they uncomfortable with his white supremacist invective and implicit invitations to violence. They applauded. This should not be surprising: Public opinion research has repeatedly shown that Trump's voters are motivated by a sense of white victimology and racial grievance politics, and by a belief that white people like them should remain dominant in our increasingly diverse country.

During his Conroe speech, Trump acted as a political crime boss and dictator in waiting, promising (preemptive) pardons for his followers who engage in political violence and other criminal or terrorist acts on his behalf.

"If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly," he said. "We will treat them fairly. … And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly."

This fits into a larger pattern. At his rally in Arizona several weeks earlier, Trump made false claims about the pandemic and health care that were framed in explicitly racial terms:

The left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating — just, denigrating — white people to determine who lives and who dies. If you're white you don't get the vaccine, or if you're white you don't get therapeutics. It's unbelievable to think this. And nobody wants this. Black people don't want it, white people don't want it, nobody wants it. ... In New York state, if you're white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical health — think of it, if you're white you go right to the back of the line. ... This race-based medicine is not only anti-American, it's government tyranny in the truest sense of the word.

Trump's statements are more than stochastic terrorism or other implied threats. These are direct instructions to his followers about who their enemies are. Trump has recently focused his attention on Black people, even more than usual. At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch suggests that we should "drill down on arguably the most important and alarming word in Trump's statement: racist":

At first blush, it seems to come out of left field, in the sense of what could be racist about looking into a white man's role in an attempted coup or his cooked financial books? Except that it happens that three of the key prosecutors investigating Trump — the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and new Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg — as well as the chair of the House committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, are all Black.

Thus, it's both alarming and yet utterly predictable that Trump would toss the gasoline of racial allegations onto his flaming pile of grievances, knowing how that will play with the Confederate flag aficionados within the ex-president's cult. In tying skin color into his call for mobs in Atlanta or New York, Trump is seeking to start a race war — no different, really, from Dylann Roof. Roof used a .45-caliber Glock handgun, while Trump uses a podium and the services of fawning right-wing cable-TV networks. Sadly, the latter method could prove more effective.

Trump's threats against Willis and James carry particular resonance at this moment, given that President Biden has announced his historic intention to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court.

Donald Trump is an entrepreneur of racial and ethnic violence. In that sense, he is not dissimilar to leaders in places like Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia, who used fear, lies, stereotypes and other dehumanizing and eliminationist rhetoric and threats of violence to encourage ethnic genocide. Trump has made it clear that he wants a "race war", where black and brown people are targeted for widescale violence by white people. There may be thousands, or tens of thousands (or even more) of white people willing to follow his orders. The danger is extreme.

The thousands of Trump's followers who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, represent a deeper and broader group in American society who are becoming more radicalized and less restrained. While some of Trump's attack force may face incarceration, many have not been deterred in the least, and are only becoming more resolute and determined.

Fascist intimidation and threats of violence are being normalized across American society. Right-wing paramilitaries and street thugs are attempting to claim public space through marches, "protests" and other actions designed to signal their growing power and influence — and, most importantly, to intimidate those Americans who believe in pluralism and democracy.

Trump's fantasies of race war are only one part of a larger strategy aimed at turning America into a 21st-century apartheid state. Republicans intend to make it almost impossible for a Democratic candidate to win the presidential election — and many state and local elections as well. They are using the moral panic around "critical race theory" and other culture-war issues to impose an Orwellian reshaping of America's schools, where it will be illegal to tell the truth about American history or to discuss subject matter deemed to be "unpatriotic" or somehow "uncomfortable" for white people.

In Florida and other states, Republicans are using state authority and resources to silence dissent and protest. This includes laws that encourage right-wing vigilante violence, and the creation of "election police" intended to intimidate and harass Black and brown people as well as liberals, progressives and other "enemies" of "real America".

What should the American people do? Who is going to save democracy? Not the Department of Justice. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack has limited powers to hold Trump and his cabal responsible. The Democratic Party has repeatedly shown that it lacks even a basic understanding of how to explain or address the existential dangers posed by Trump and the Republican fascists.

The mainstream media has continued to fail in its primary task as guardians of democracy. Instead of clearly, consistently and forcefully telling the truth about Donald Trump and the neofascist movement, the news media remains addicted to horserace journalism, "both-sides-ism" and other forms of false equivalency.

Writing at Media Matters, Eric Kleefeld summarized these failures:
Mainstream media outlets should be treating all of this as a five-alarm fire for American democracy and the U.S. Constitution. But instead, Politico's Playbook on Sunday pondered how Trump's declarations might affect Republican messaging and prospects for the midterm election….

The New York Times positioned Trump's comments in terms of supposed Republican infighting and messaging: "The statement signifies an increase in the intensity of the former president's push to litigate the 2020 election and comes days after Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, issued a public warning to Republican candidates to 'respect the results of our democratic process' during an interview with CNN." (The alleged conflict among Republicans is also exaggerated by mainstream media outlets.)
The Washington Post ran a piece Sunday evening, titled "Trump's Texas trip illustrates his upsides and downsides for Republicans and their midterm hopes." Immediately after the paragraph detailing Trump's offer of pardons to January 6 rioters, along with his incitement of new demonstrations against district attorneys, the article proceeded to discuss what this might mean for Republican candidates in primary and general elections ...

And in a separate but also consequential example of missing the real message, The Associated Press said that Trump's "offer represents an attempt by Trump to further minimize the most significant attack on the seat of government since the War of 1812."
Trump didn't just "minimize" what happened, he is actively trying to seed more of it.

Pro-democracy Americans will need to organize across society with the goal of pressuring the Democratic Party, major corporations and other elites into pushing back forcefully against the Republican fascist movement's attacks on American democracy and freedom. Pro-democracy Americans will also need to organize on the local level to resist, survive and defeat the rising fascist tide.

In the end, it will be the American people, through direct action and mass mobilization — strikes, boycotts, direct action and other types of corporeal politics — who must save American democracy.

On his eponymous TV show, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," Fred Rogers told children (and the many adults who were watching as well) that if they were in trouble they should "look for the helpers." America needs Fred Rogers' wisdom now. The helpers are our neighbors and other members of the community who are willing to struggle and suffer to protect America's multiracial democracy and to create a more humane society. The helpers are those who have been sounding the alarm, sometimes at great personal risk, about the dangers of Trump's regime. But in the end we are adults, not children. The most essential helpers are looking back at us in the mirror.

 

CANADA

Thermal coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel out there. It’s responsible for half of total global carbon emissions – and the toxic pollution created by burning the stuff kills around 800,000 people every year.

The federal government knows this. That’s why it created the Powering Past Coal Alliance five years ago. But, as with so much of this government’s climate policy, knowing what to do is no guarantee that anything will actually get done.

The government says it will end the export of thermal coal by 2030 – eight long years from now! But if we are going to stand any chance of limiting global warming to the Paris target of 1.5 degrees C, we need to move RIGHT NOW to ban the mining, burning and export of thermal coal. 

The urgency is real! The past 12 months of heat domes, wildfires, droughts, floods and landslides have brought the message home – we must go further; we must go faster.

Eugene, will you join fellow Green Party members and supporters in writing to Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault urging him to make the regulatory changes necessary to fast-track the thermal coal phase-out to 2023?

Click HERE to send a letter to the minister.

Let’s make sure the Minister and his colleagues know that this is a climate CRISIS and that it’s time to start acting like it.

Thank you for adding your voice.

Public health care dollars are for people, not profits

 ALBERTA LabourNEWS today

As Canada’s premiers ramp up their Canada Health Transfer campaign,  the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), launches a letter-writing campaign to the Prime Minister, encouraging more federal health-care funding, but urging federal dollars must be tied to publicly-delivered services. Also: read AFL president, Gil McGowan's statement on the possibility that the UCP may now eliminate the REP program within days in order to appease the anti-vax protesters who are illegally blocking the border at Coutts.

Action

Public health care dollars are for people, not profits

Canada’s premiers are calling on the federal government to increase health care funding for provinces and Justin Trudeau says he’s listening.

But Jason Kenney can’t be trusted with a blank cheque. The UCP and their donors are pushing American-style private health care. Jason Kenney has already started giving more of our health care to profit-seeking companies and is using the pandemic as cover to cut Alberta’s investments in public health care.

Albertans urgently need more investment in our public health care, but the federal government can’t give the money to Kenney unconditionally — we need to make sure our public dollars aren’t handed over to corporate shareholders.

Tell Justin Trudeau not to give Jason Kenney a blank cheque to privatize our health care. Take action.

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News

Health funding must deliver public health services, not private profits
We must stop the UCP plan to turn our health care into an American-style for-profit system

EDMONTON – As Canada’s premiers ramp up their Canada Health Transfer campaign, Alberta’s largest worker advocacy organization, the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), launches a letter-writing campaign to the Prime Minister, encouraging more federal health-care funding, but urging federal dollars must be tied to publicly-delivered services.

In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, AFL President, Gil McGowan says “our public health care system needs more capacity, and it is the job of our government to add that capacity, not erode it to satisfy investors in the private market.”

The AFL is responding to recent moves by the UCP government to privatize Alberta’s health services, including the switch to private delivery of lab services and laundry services. Read press release.

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Jason Kenney and the UCP cut health-care spending during the pandemic
Why? Because the UCP want a privatized American-style for-profit health care system

Jason Kenney and the UCP cut health-care spending, on a per-person basis, in 2021, during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Although Jason Kenney tries to justify these cuts with sham panels and false statistics, he isn’t fooling Albertans anymore. As further proof of their desire to dismantle public health care, the United Conservative Party revealed their true ideological plans at their AGMs.

According to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), Alberta government spending per person on public health care dropped by 3.6 per cent in 2021, the largest decrease in Canada. These figures do not include federal government support for the provinces’ COVID-19 response, but do include normal federal health transfers, which have increased yearly.

In the 2019 election, Jason Kenney and the UCP promised to “maintain or increase health spending,” but clearly that promise has not been honoured, as health care funding has not kept pace with population growth, inflation, or the added pressure of the public-health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more.

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“We can’t let anti-vax extremists dictate public health policy during a pandemic”
Worker safety should not be used as a bargaining chip, says AFL president in statement

"We cannot let a gang of anti-vax extremists dictate public health policy in our province. That would be true at any time, but it’s especially true now.

We are currently recording the highest levels of infection so far in the pandemic. We have more people in hospital with COVID than ever before. The WCB just acknowledged that COVID has become the third largest cause of work-related illness and death in the province. To top things off, researchers have recently concluded that Alberta has, by far, the highest rate of excess death in the country — and they have linked that fact directly to the UCP’s lax COVID policies.

Given the circumstances, it was bad enough to hear Premier Kenney musing on Tuesday about the possibility of lifting some of our province’s relatively light pandemic safety measures by the end of the month. But it’s even worse – in fact, it’s outrageous – to learn that the UCP may now eliminate the REP program within days in order to appease the anti-vax protesters who are illegally blocking the border at Coutts.

It should go without saying that the health of Alberta citizens and the safety of Alberta workers should not be used as bargaining chips to deal with extremists. But that appears to be exactly what’s happening. And it needs to stop," says Gil McGowan, AFL president. Read statement.

 

In a Landslide Victory, Mexican GM Workers Vote In an Independent Union by Luis Feliz Leon and Dan DiMaggio Auto workers at a General Motors plant in central Mexico delivered a landslide victory to an independent union in a vote held February 1-2. It's a major breakthrough for workers and labor activists seeking to break the vice grip of the employer-friendly unions that have long dominated Mexico’s labor movement. Turnout among the plant’s 6,300 eligible voters was 88 percent, and the independent union SINTTIA (the National Auto Workers Union) picked up 4,192 votes—78 percent of the vote. SINTTIA, which grew out of the successful campaign which ousted the previous corrupt union last year, promised to raise wages and fight for workers on the shop floor. Workers at the Silao plant voted last August to invalidate the contract held by a well-connected national auto workers union affiliated to the Congress of Mexican Labor (CTM), the country’s largest union federation. Its affiliates have long been criticized for signing employer-friendly “protection contracts,” which lock in low wages and prevent workers from organizing genuine unions. “Today I believe we as workers are more united than ever,” said Alejandra Morales, SINTTIA’s principal officer, who has worked at the plant for 11 years in the paint department. “Not only in Silao, but in all of Mexico.” READ MORE.

VIDEO: Interview with Mexican auto worker and organizer Israel Cervantes In this interview, recorded before the union election took place, The Real News Network Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with auto worker and labor organizer Israel Cervantes about this pivotal struggle and what the union election means for workers and the labor movement in Mexico and beyond. WATCH NOW.