HAPPY LUPERCALIA

One Good Thing: The Left Hand of Darkness showed us that the greatest romances in life can be friendships

Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1969 sci-fi tour de force can still teach us something about human connection.

By Muizz Akhtar@muizz_akhtarMuizz.Akhtar@voxmedia.com  Feb 13, 2022,

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The cover for the 1969 version of The Left Hand of Darkness.

 Walker & Company (NYC)

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Recommendations from the world of culture we think you should check out.

Not everyone celebrates Valentine’s Day — some folks will opt to celebrate Galentine’s or Palentine’s with their friends instead. Nowadays, more and more people are reconsidering prevailing ideas of who the significant others in our lives should be — particularly by choosing lifelong relationships with friends, as chosen family, and by radically challenging the accepted norms of intimacy and romance (notably in queerplatonic relationships).

Indeed, what if our biggest romances were not with romantic partners, but instead with our best friends? In The Left Hand of Darkness, famed novelist Ursula K. Le Guin depicts just such a possibility through the relationship between Genly Ai and Therem Harth rem ir Estraven.

What we think of as “romance” is usually just a story about two people (typically cisgender and heterosexual men and women) falling in romantic love, and entering into an exclusive (and often sexual) romantic relationship (particularly marriage). This narrow conception of romance in society is known as amatonormativity. As Rice University philosophy professor Elizabeth Brake argues in her book Minimizing Marriage, we are all pressured to pursue amatonormativity in our own lives. This happens at the expense of other relationships, such as our friendships and our relationships with ourselves.

The Left Hand of Darkness fundamentally challenges amatonormativity. The story is premised on Ai, the Earth-born protagonist, attempting to get the planet of Gethen to join the Ekumen, an intergalactic alliance. Through his envoy mission to build connections and trust with the human-like Gethenians — including one Gethenian leader in particular, Estraven — Le Guin asks: What if an entire society was built without formal marriage, child rearing, or relationship roles? What if we had profoundly deep yet non-romantic relationships outside the binary roles of “man” and “woman”? Over time, Ai realizes that he must let go of his preconceived notions on gender, sex, and relationships in order to really understand and communicate with Estraven.

The Left Hand of Darkness, a sci-fi tour de force — which grapples with topics like first contact, nationalism, Taoist philosophy, and prophecy — is, at its core, a story about connection, and the difficulty of communicating and building relationships with other people. The story’s poignancy comes from Ai and Estraven working through mutual misunderstanding and cultural and linguistic gaps to build a relationship of profound trust, acceptance, and love. It’s been over 50 years since the book’s release in 1969, but the romance between Ai and Estraven continues to serve as an inspiration for becoming intimate beyond amatonormative ideas of soulmates and marriage, and has lessons anyone can strive for in their own relationships.

Initially, Ai is unable to connect with and trust Estraven, because the latter, like all Gethenians, is androgynous; neither “male” nor “female” as humans from Earth are assigned at birth. (Note: Le Guin uses “he/his/him” pronouns to refer to the Gethenians because at the time she wrote the novel, she felt they were “genuinely generic.” After facing much criticism and self-reflection, she later came to have second thoughts about that choice.) As Ai notes over dinner with Estraven in the very first chapter:

“… I thought that at table Estraven’s performance had been womanly … Was it in fact perhaps this soft supple femininity that I disliked and distrusted in him? For it was impossible to think of him as a woman … and yet whenever I thought of him as a man I felt a sense of falseness.”

It becomes apparent that Ai has a serious sexism, misogyny, and homophobia problem, and this directly gets in the way of his job of communicating with the Gethenians and gaining their confidence. Writer Charlie Jane Anders observed that “[Ai is] curious and open-minded about everything, except for the huge areas where his mind has been long since closed.”

Estraven, meanwhile, is a steadfast ally to Ai in his mission of connecting Gethen to the Ekumen. At great personal sacrifice, he supports Ai throughout the story, although the latter does not realize this until much later. Estraven has difficulty conveying his intentions because of Gethenian social codes that Ai does not fully comprehend. On top of that, Ai communicates with Estraven in ways that come off as arrogant, obtuse, and even insulting. Estraven eventually realizes that “[Ai] is ignorant of us: we of him.”

Due to said ignorance, Ai ends up in a prison farm. Estraven saves him from certain death and the story reaches its climax as the two must traverse a massive, glacial tundra to escape back to Estraven’s country. It is here, hauling a sledge, gear, and themselves across hundreds of miles of Arctic desert for months, that the two work through their long-held misunderstandings and begin to truly understand one another. Particularly, as Estraven works to communicate in ways easier for Ai to grasp, Ai realizes that he has to curb his gendered views and masculine insecurities to get closer to Estraven. When he gets sick or exhausted, Ai learns to appreciate Estraven’s concern and not take offense to it, as well as be more honest about his own limits.

And it is during their shared sub-Arctic isolation that Ai finally comes to see Estraven as he had always wanted to be seen:

“Until then I had … refused [Estraven] his own reality … he was the only one who had entirely accepted me as a human being: who … [gave] me entire personal loyalty, and who therefore had demanded of me an equal degree of recognition, of acceptance … I had been afraid to … give my trust, my friendship to a man who was a woman, a woman who was a man.”

What’s profound about Ai and Estraven’s relationship is that they get closer as they get past amatonormative norms of what it means to be intimate. Although worn down to the bone, they learn to communicate more in fewer words, overcoming many close calls on the ice through mutual trust. Strikingly, while there is sexual tension, they choose not to have sex with one another, and — contrary to everything we have been taught about romance — that actually makes them trust each other more:

“For it seemed to me, and I think to him, that it was from the sexual tension between us, admitted now and understood, but not assuaged, that the great and sudden assurance of friendship between us rose: a friendship so much needed by us both in our exile, and already so well proved in the days and nights of our bitter journey, that it might as well be called, now as later, love.”

The book’s title is emblematic of their relationship, as they transcend thinking of the other person as an unintelligible alien and instead come to view one another as a friend and partner — as their left hand. And through their romance, Le Guin explores a world beyond the constraints of gender and sex, as well as beyond the cultural limitations we impose on our relationships based on those things. As Ai realizes at the end of the story, true connection comes when we not only adjust to another’s world, but also unsettle our own bodies and realities to make room for that world.

Ultimately, The Left Hand of Darkness teaches us that we are each alien to one another — inhabiting a vast, unique cosmos in space that others can barely hope to comprehend when crossing paths. But in the deep expanse of that cold darkness, simultaneously, always, exist the infinite bright stars of possibility to build true connection and warmth.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin is available everywhere books are sold. For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.

There’s finally momentum to stop stock trading in Congress

Details vary, but Democrats and Republicans are both ready to ban stock trading by lawmakers.

By Ellen Ioanes

Feb 12, 2022

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) walks through the Senate subway in the US Capitol during a vote on December 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. 

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Bills banning members of Congress from trading stocks are gaining increased bipartisan support — including from a former skeptic, Speaker Nancy Pelosi — after a series of investigations involving potential insider trading by lawmakers, particularly in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

There’s wide agreement among voters that legislators should be banned from trading stocks while in Congress, since their position can give then access to information about companies and industries that ordinary people don’t have. While there are some policies in place to at least provide transparency about how legislators are making money from the stock market, there aren’t significant punishments for violating those rules.

In fact, as Business Insider’s Dave Levinthal reported earlier this month, at least 55 members of Congress violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act in 2021 alone.

The law — better known as the STOCK Act — was passed in 2012 to curtail the use of inside information to trade stocks, but many lawmakers now believe it didn’t go far enough to curb abuses.

Business Insider’s reporting, as well as the high-profile investigations of Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) and former Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue for suspiciously well-timed trades around the advent of the pandemic, have (somewhat belatedly) spurred new energy around legislation to prevent members of Congress from trading stocks while in office, with multiple bills introduced in the House and Senate aiming to do just that — albeit with varying degrees of stringency and a lack of clarity regarding who exactly should be targeted.

According to Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the government watchdog group Public Citizen, public frustration with ethical issues — and widespread public support for a stock trading ban — is likely driving the current push.

“Sometimes we have to embarrass Congress into doing the right thing, and it works once the public gets involved,” he told The Atlantic in January.

Congressional leadership is also warming to the issue: Pelosi, in a shift from her position late last year, appeared to endorse a ban this week, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer offered his own endorsement on the Senate floor.

“This is something that the Senate should address,” Schumer said on Wednesday. “Hopefully we can act on it soon and hopefully it can be done in a bipartisan way like many of the bills we are looking at this week.”

But while there’s widespread consensus that something has to be done, legislators aren’t yet in agreement about key aspects of an eventual bill, including who the ban should cover and how severe repercussions should be.

Pandemic trades looked suspicious — and raised alarms

Ethics experts say there are abundant reasons why lawmakers should be barred from trading individual stocks, but the problem was cast into particularly stark relief by the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Specifically, in early 2020, when many Americans suddenly lost their jobs due to the pandemic (not to mention had to deal with unexpected medical bills and childcare), US senators raked in millions after placing fortuitous trades in the stock market.

Loeffler, who lost her seat to Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff last year, reportedly made millions after she and her husband sold some of their interests in January 2020 — and invested in the teleworking company Citrix. The next month, Burr, the former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, dumped between $628,000 and $1.7 million in stocks — including stocks in hotel companies — just weeks before Covid-19 hit the US in full force. And Perdue, a very active trader who also lost his reelection bid in 2021, routinely traded assets of companies that his former Senate committees oversaw.

Loeffler and Burr were both accused of insider trading, which they fiercely denied, and along with Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and James Inhofe (R-OK) were subject to an FBI investigation of their conduct, which ultimately did not result in charges.

That’s not especially surprising — insider trading is hard to prove under normal circumstances, Donald Sherman, senior vice president and chief counsel of Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington (CREW), told Vox, and when it comes to members of Congress, he said, “that bar, in practical effect, gets even higher.”

Insider trading, of course, is illegal for everyone and not just members of Congress. As Sherman points out, though, it’s exceedingly hard to prove, and Congress is subject to additional checks on their trading behavior. Those don’t always work either, though: According to former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter, the 2012 STOCK Act “confirmed that insider trading laws apply to members of Congress and their spouses; using nonpublic information learned in Congress to trade securities is illegal. But in the nearly 10 years since the STOCK Act’s passage, nobody in Congress has been prosecuted for insider trading based on congressional information.”

Specifically, the STOCK Act requires legislators to file disclosures regarding their trading activity, but members of Congress violate it often. The law is not well enforced, and the punishment for violation is often something like a $200 fine, as Business Insider’s reporting found.

“Members of Congress just have way too much access to way too much information,” Tyler Gellasch, a former Senate staffer and architect of the STOCK Act, told Politico on Saturday.

Can Congress really stop members from trading stock?

Momentum is building behind a push to ban stock trading in Congress, but no one clear plan has emerged so far. Despite bipartisan, bicameral consensus on the basic policy, there are multiple different proposals across both chambers of Congress that vary in breadth and enforcement.

One of the most stringent bills, which was introduced by Ossoff and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) last month, stipulates that not only legislators, but their spouses and any dependent children, put their stocks and other investment assets into a blind trust managed by an independent party for the duration of their congressional career. The penalty for violating the bill’s requirement would be a fine equivalent to the member’s entire congressional salary, according to Ossoff’s office.

“Members of Congress should not be playing the stock market while we make federal policy and have extraordinary access to confidential information,” Ossoff said in a press release announcing the new legislation.

The Ossoff-Kelly bill, which has yet to find a Republican cosponsor in the Senate, is modeled closely on a bipartisan bill in the House, which was first introduced by Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) and Chip Roy (R-TX) in 2020 and reintroduced last year. That bill — the TRUST in Congress Act — doesn’t cover other asset classes like mutual funds or government bonds like its Senate counterpart does, but would still impose substantial divestment requirements on lawmakers.

“If placing limitations on how we can buy and sell stock makes it so that someone trusts us a bit more — Congress doesn’t have a great approval rating — I think that is a quote-unquote sacrifice we should make to positively affirm we are deserving of that trust, or to positively affirm we are working for the American people and not our pocketbooks,” Spanberger told the Washington Post last month.

But Sherman, the CREW chief counsel, says that it’s not enough just to divest from individual stocks, and that other asset classes can be subject to insider knowledge, too. “Individual stocks is the floor,” he told Vox, and putting them in a blind trust “doesn’t do the job.”

In addition to the Ossoff-Kelly or Spanberger-Roy proposals, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ben Sasse (R-NE) have each introduced their own proposals; the Hawley bill would take a narrower approach and doesn’t include a ban on dependent children’s portfolios, while Sasse’s bill comes with a hefty penalty — a fine as large $1 million, up to five years in prison, or both. Neither, however, has garnered as much support as the Ossoff-Kelly or Spanberger-Roy proposals.

In the House, there’s also the Ban Conflicted Trading Act, which was introduced last year by Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and currently has 51 cosponsors in the House, ranging from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

That bill would ban members of Congress and their senior staff from trading individual stocks, but doesn’t have a ban on spouses and dependent children; it’s supported by a number of Democratic senators.

Yet another permutation of a stock trading ban — the bipartisan, bicameral Congressional Stock Ownership Act, which counts Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Steve Daines (R-MT) as cosponsors — does not address dependent children’s holdings, but covers lawmakers and their spouses and would impose a $50,000 fine for violations.

Additionally, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) are proposing changes to the 2012 STOCK Act, building on current legislation by banning stock trading, strengthening disclosure requirements, and expanding the offices that the STOCK Act applies to, to include, “members of the federal judiciary and Federal Reserve Bank presidents, vice presidents, and members of the Federal Reserve boards of directors.”

Whatever Congress settles on, Sherman told Vox, “the penalties need to be significant enough that it does have a financial impact” on violators. Financial penalties, he said, “can and should have a chilling effect” on legislators’ motivation to engage in trading — likely even more so than other punitive measures.

The biggest hurdle might be getting legislators to agree on one bill

None of the bills are perfect, but ethics experts say some are better than others. One particular priority: spouses and children. “A congressional stock trade ban that doesn’t cover spouses is worthless,” Walter Shaub, the Project on Government Oversight’s senior ethics fellow and former director of the Office on Government Ethics, tweeted Friday.

Sherman agrees: “The exclusion of spouses and dependent children is a giant loophole,” he told Vox.

That loophole is particularly visible in the case of Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), whose wife Victoria made thousands of dollars from stock trades, potentially using inside information, in April 2020. Insider trading is already incredibly difficult to prove; insider trading by a spouse would be even more so, despite the fact that it would likely benefit both parties in the marriage.

A ban would also head off the appearance of impropriety, regardless of actual violations. For example, Pelosi herself benefits from the enormous wealth generated by her husband’s stock trading; in July 2021, Paul Pelosi netted $5.3 million from a well-timed transaction, according to Fortune, though there’s no evidence of wrongdoing on either or their parts.

As Katy O’Donnell wrote in Politico Saturday, despite the glut of legislation on hand, there are still many unanswered questions regarding what a final bill would look like, and what it could do. While the sentiment of the bills is the same, the specifics are so divergent that it could completely derail the positive movement toward enacting a ban.

Lawmakers, though, have indicated that they’re willing to compromise in pursuit of the larger goal of ending congressional stock trading.

“What we’re trying to do as a group is make sure we don’t lose sight of the central premise of the immediate effort,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), a cosponsor of the Krishnamoorthi bill, said Friday. “Now we’re going to have to work to bring everybody into a common effort and make sure that this happens and we don’t get distracted or lost in the field of every possibility.”

Sherman told Vox that he was somewhat encouraged by the outright bipartisan support for such a measure. “With all the ethical reforms that have been met with roadblocks ... this is something that can get across the finish line, and is should get across the finish line,” he said.

Krishnamoorthi has also signaled that he’s willing to compromise on aspects of his proposal, specifically banning members’ spouses from trading. “But,” he said at a press conference Thursday, “right now we want this thing to move.

Yemen Rebels: US Behind 'Escalation' Prompting Strikes Against ​Saudi, UAE

BY TOM O'CONNOR 

NEWSWEEJ

ON 2/12/22 

Senate Votes To End Sending U.S. Military Aid In The War In Yemen

A senior official of the Yemeni rebels engaged in a seven-year war with a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition has told Newsweek that the insurgent movement holds President Joe Biden's administration responsible for an escalation in the conflict that triggered the group to conduct a recent series of missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Ansar Allah, also referred to as the Houthis, launched ballistic missiles last month against Saudi Arabia, injuring two residents of Bangladeshi and Sudanese nationalities, and missiles and drones against the UAE, killing three workers of Indian Pakistani citizenship. Other missiles launched toward the two Arab coalition partners were said to have been intercepted, including a more recent reported drone attack near a southern Saudi Arabia airport, with subsequent shrapnel injuring a dozen people.

The developments were only the latest in a series of Ansar Allah missile strikes against Saudi Arabia, and more recently, the UAE, which have been viewed as yet another escalation in the long-running war.

But Ansar Allah Deputy Information Secretary Nasreddin Amer told Newsweek that the operations came in response to the Saudi-led coalition's deadly air campaign, which was accused last month of killing scores of people, including children, near a northern prison, along with a series of intense clashes between his movement and pro-government fighters near the strategic port city of Marib.

"There is an escalation by the countries of aggression against our country, under clear directives from America, and therefore we escalated our operations against them in response to that," Amer said.

Asked about Ansar Allah's goals given the potential international fallout, Amer said the most important objective was bringing an end to the conflict and lifting the Saudi-led coalition's blockade of Yemen's air, land and sea borders.

"We are of the position that the biased world does not concern us as much as we are concerned with the suffering and pain of our people and the siege and killing of our people," Amer said. "We are working to make peace for our people in a real way and not just statements in the air as the Biden administration does in its talk about peace without any clear decision."

A Yemeni man reacts as he walks under mock drones and missiles that were set up by Ansar Allah followers at a popular square on January 31 in Sanaa, Yemen. Ansar Allah, also called the Houthi movement, has intensified firing cross-border ballistic missiles and drones targeting the United Arab Emirates, a partner of the coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which has also been targeted by the Yemeni group.

MOHAMMED HAMOUD/GETTY IMAGES

The war in Yemen has its roots in the 2011 series of regional uprisings sometimes referred to as the Arab Spring. Popular protests resulted in the ousting of longtime Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, leaving his deputy and successor, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to contend with lingering discontent as well as rival insurgencies conducted by the Zaidi Shiite Muslim Ansar Allah and fundamentalist Sunni Muslim forces, including Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Ansar Allah managed to take control of the capital Sanaa by early 2015, forcing Hadi to relocate to the southern city of Aden, from which the internationally recognized leader has since fled to Saudi Arabia. Riyadh would form a coalition of Arab powers including Abu Dhabi to back a pro-government campaign in an attempt to rout the rebels and allied forces ruling large parts of Yemen.

But today the conflict remains at an effective stalemate and a series of catastrophes including poverty, malnutrition and disease has led the United Nations to repeatedly refer to the situation in Yemen as "the world's worst humanitarian crisis." Compounding these calamities have been longstanding concerns about growing civilian casualties, much of which has been blamed on the airstrikes regularly conducted by the Saudi-led coalition.

These concerns were enough to prompt the U.S. Congress to invoke the War Powers Act for the first time in an attempt to force former President Donald Trump to halt U.S. assistance for the Saudi-led campaign, but the motion was vetoed in 2019. Shortly after taking office last year, Biden announced last February he would end U.S. military aid to the Saudi-led war effort.

But the White House has continued to voice support for Riyadh, a position reiterated following the recent missiles attacks during Biden's phone call Wednesday with Saudi King Salman on Friday, when the U.S. leader "underscored the U.S. commitment to support Saudi Arabia in the defense of its people and territory from these attacks and full support for UN-led efforts to end the war in Yemen."

State Department spokesperson Ned Price also issued a statement of condemnation Thursday in response to the most recent Ansar Allah attack on Saudi Arabia's Abha airport.

"Repeated attacks of the last several weeks have harmed civilians and civilian infrastructure and undermine international efforts for a peaceful solution to the Yemen conflict and threaten the more than 70,000 U.S. citizens living in Saudi Arabia," Price said. "The Houthis have pursued a dangerous pattern of increasingly obstructive and aggressive actions against Yemenis, Yemen's neighbors, and the international community."

He reiterated Biden's pledge to the Saudi monarch and said the U.S. would continue to search for a lasting diplomatic resolution to Yemen's civil war.

"The United States, along with the international community, continues to urge de-escalation of the conflict," Price said. "The parties should come to the negotiating table to work together and support the new, more inclusive UN-led peace process."

The conflict has also taken on a broader geopolitical character, however, as Iran has voiced support for Ansar Allah and has been accused by the U.S. and its Arab partners of arming the Yemeni group. Newsweek reported last year on imagery purporting to show so-called suicide drones similar to Iran's Shahed-136 model deployed to Yemen.

And though Tehran has consistently denied any direct support to Ansar Allah, another pro-Iran militia in Iraq calling itself Alwiyat al-Waad al-Haq also claimed responsibility for a drone attack against the UAE capital earlier this month, potentially raising the stakes of an already intractable conflict in Yemen.

As Iran attempts to rebuild bridges with Arab countries across the Persian Gulf and negotiate a U.S. reentry into a 2015 multilateral nuclear deal while at the same time maintaining ties with the influential "Axis of Resistance" network of partners across the region, President Ebrahim Raisi called for an end to Saudi Arabia's airstrikes and blockade of Yemen during a call with Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio on Wednesday.

"Today, it is necessary to prevent the horrific crime of the coalition forces in the massacre of the defencelessness people of Yemen by breaking the oppressive siege of the country," Raisi said.

A Yemeni fighter from the UAE-trained Giants Brigade, mans a position near the village of Jafra on the outskirts of Marib, on January 26. The clashes are part of a major escalation in the seven-year war after Ansar Allah rebels, following a series of territorial defeats, launched a deadly drone-and-missile attack on the 

UAE.SALEH AL-OBEIDI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Poultry industry raises alarms as significant bird flu strain detected in Indiana turkey flock

State is on major migratory bird pathway.

By Just the News staff
Updated: February 12, 2022 -

The detection of a strain of avian flu in Indiana this week has raised alarm in the poultry industry as experts warn it could lead to a major outbreak of the virus among the nation’s poultry farms.

A commercial turkey farm in the state reported an outbreak of the H5N1 virus Wednesday, with the farmer culling dozens of birds to help prevent the further spread of the disease.

Mexico, China and South Korea quickly banned poultry imports from the state. U.S. authorities, meanwhile, warned farmers to be alert about the possibility of further outbreaks.

"It's time to move to a higher alert for our livestock producers," Iowa Agricultural Secretary Mike Naig said. Iowa produces the most chickens of any state in the country.

Indiana falls within the Mississippi Flyway, one of four major bird migratory patterns in the United States. By some estimates that flyway is used by as much as 40% of North American waterfowl for migratory purposes.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza strain invades a number of U.S. states


By Karen Graham
February 12, 2022

A new strain of Avian influenza that was present in Europe, only last year, is reported in the southern states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida, as well as in Indiana.

It is another highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) strain. And while the HPAI virus is not easily transmissible from birds to people, there are concerns it could develop into another form that spreads readily from person to person, triggering another pandemic.

Avian influenza (AI) is caused by an influenza type A virus that can infect poultry (such as chickens, turkeys, pheasants, quail, domestic ducks, geese, and guinea fowl) and is carried by free flying waterfowl such as ducks, geese, and shorebirds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Samples collected by USDA’s Wildlife Services in January from hunter-harvested blue-winged teal in Palm Beach County, FL, tested positive for the HPAI strain: H5N1 2.3.4.4b Eurasian.

The Flordia finding follows reports in the other southern states during the fall and winter months of 2021-22. The strain first appeared in Europe in 2021.Samples collected by USDA’s Wildlife Services in January from hunter-harvested blue-winged teal in Palm Beach County, FL, tested positive for the HPAI strain. Source – Alan D. Wilson, www.naturespicsonline.com. CC SA 2.0.

Indiana turkey farm hit with HPAI

On February 9, the USDA confirmed that a turkey farm in Indiana had to euthanize nearly 30,000 turkeys for avian flu, although the state maintains that a food risk is not imminent.

The Indiana State Board of Animal Health (BOAH) released a statement on February 10 saying that an undisclosed commercial turkey farm was hit by an H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI.

Samples from the affected flock, which experienced increased mortality, were tested at the Indiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Purdue University, part of the National Animal Health Laboratory Network, and confirmed at the APHIS National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa. Virus isolation is ongoing, the IndyStar reported.

“​​This finding is the first case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in commercial poultry in the United States since 2020,” the BOAH press release stated. “HPAI was last identified in commercial flocks in Indiana in 2016.”

BOAH has instituted a quarantine at the affected farm and all farms within a 6.2 mile (10 kilometers) radius. The quarantine has affected 18 operations in total and likely a few hundred thousand birds, Denise Derrer Spears, the spokeswoman for BOAH told the IndyStar.

“As a reminder, the proper handling and cooking of poultry and eggs to an internal temperature of 165 F (73.8 degrees Celsius) will kill bacteria and viruses,” so safe food handling practices would be enough to kill off the H5N1 virus, according to the USDA.

SOLE PROPERTY OF THE IRANIAN AIR FORCE

Meet The F-14 Tomcat: The Most Famous US Military Aircraft Ever?

By Eli Fuhrman

F-14 Tomcat. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The F-14 Tomcat only flies for Iran at this point, yes, which is strange. However, for many reasons, the Tomcat is quite famous–some of which involve a certain movie: The F-14 Tomcat is one of history’s most iconic military aircraft, in no small part as a result of its starring role in the original Topgun film. But in addition to its on screen heroics, the F-14 was a very capable combat aircraft that served the Navy faithfully for decades.

F-14 History

The Tomcat first flew in December 1970, and achieved initial operational capability as a carrier-based aircraft with the U.S. Navy in 1973 and was first deployed the following year. The F-14, along with the Air Force’s F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-15 Eagle, emerged following an examination of air combat performance during the Vietnam War. Following the halt in production of the F-111B, the Navy sent out a request for proposals as part of its Naval Fighter Experimental (VFX) program, which called for a tandem two-seat, air superiority fighter. Grumman was awarded the contract in 1969.

The F-14 Tomcat was designed to be capable of engaging enemy aircraft at night and in any weather condition utilizing its six Phoenix AIM 54A missiles, while its AWG-9 radar and advanced weapons control system allowed the F-14 to track up to 24 targets at a time while creating and implementing fire control solutions for six targets.

The aircraft’s variable-sweep wing design allowed for variable speeds, with the wings automatically adjusting in-flight, sweeping forward for low-speed maneuvers and take-off and backwards for supersonic flight.

The F-14 possessed a max speed of Mach 1.88 and a maximum range of up to 500 nautical miles, depending on its weapons package.

F-14 Goes to War:

The F-14 would claim its first confirmed kills in 1981, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered Navy freedom of navigation exercises near the Gulf of Sidra in the Mediterranean, following persistent Libyan territorial claims over the area. Two Libyan Su-22 Fitters attempted to engage a pair of F-14s, with the Tomcats managing to down both of the attackers. History would repeat itself in 1989, with a flight of Tomcats downing a pair of Libyan MiG-23s.

During the 1990s, the F-14 would evolve to take on a new role, filling a gap in the Navy’s capability as a strike aircraft following the retirement of the A-6 Intruder. Modifications were made to the F-14 to improve its ground attack capabilities, and the F-14 “Bombcat” first saw action as part of Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia, before also taking part in action against Iraq in 2003.

The Navy would eventually replace the F-14 with the F/A 18E/F Super Hornet. Today, the F-14 still sees service with the Iranian Air Force, which received 79 Tomcats in the 1970s.

Eli Fuhrman was an Assistant Researcher in Korean Studies at the Center for the National Interest and a recent graduate of Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program, where he focused on East Asian security issues and U.S. foreign and defense policy in the region.

ROGUES GALLERY

Gay billionaire Peter Thiel is going all in on Trump wannabes in this year’s midterm elections

After 17 years, the gay billionaire is stepping down from the board of Facebook’s parent company to spend more time cultivating candidates who share his anti-democracy world views.

By John Gallagher 

Saturday, February 12, 2022

LGBTQ NATION

Peter Thiel

Photo: Future Live Media via Flickr


Back in 2016, gay billionaire Peter Thiel was one of the few deep-pocket donors willing to invest in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Now Thiel is stepping down from the board of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, so that he can devote his time to promoting the fortunes of Trump-like candidates in this year’s midterm elections.

Thiel has been a backer of Facebook since 2005 and a confidante of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. In a statement, Zuckerberg said that “Peter is truly an original thinker who you can bring your hardest problems and get unique suggestions.”

Related: GOP candidate criticized for shooting Biden, Pelosi look-alikes in Superbowl ad

Thiel seems to have concluded that he has a better chance of reshaping the world in his vision through politics than through social media. He has endorsed four Senate candidates and a dozen House candidates, including three who are challenging incumbents who voted to impeach Trump for the January 6 insurrection.

Among them is Thiel’s protege, Blake Masters. Masters, who is president of the Thiel Foundation and co-author of a book with Thiel, is running for the GOP nomination for Senate in Arizona. Masters certainly strikes all the right Trump notes, albeit slightly muted. He has said that election integrity “may be the top priority” of his campaign and “it’s really hard to know” if Joe Biden was really elected president.

Thiel’s participation in politics is not a positive development. He holds unusual views about democracy at a time when it’s in a fragile state. He doesn’t believe that freedom and democracy are “compatible.”

Of course, Thiel’s foray into this year’s midterms continues his tradition of supporting some of the most loathsome politicians around. In 2020, he gave nearly $1 million to Kris Kobach, the anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant Kansan who ultimately lost his primary race. Kobach said that HRC promotes “homosexual pedophilia.”

Thiel also played a role in launching Ted Cruz’s career, investing in his first Senate campaign at a time when it looked like a long shot. Cruz has gone on to distinguish himself as the most hated Senator on both sides of the aisle.

Then there’s the role that Thiel may have played behind the scenes in ensuring that Facebook slow-walked any effort to moderate the fringe beliefs that fueled the radical activities leading up to and including the insurrection. Thiel has long resisted any attempt to halt conspiracy theories on Facebook, saying that he would “take QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theories any day over a Ministry of Truth.”

Unfortunately, real conservatives are in short supply in Silicon Valley, and Zuckerberg seems to think that Thiel’s eccentric views are representative of the conservative viewpoint instead of just Thiel’s own.

With his billions of dollars from founding PayPal and his stake in Meta, Thiel has plenty of money to do lots of damage.

As for leaving Meta—maybe that’s not such a bad move for Thiel. The company lost about a quarter of its market value recently and is facing tough questions about its future. Thiel knows the right time to get in on a good thing. Maybe he also knows when it’s a good time to get out.

'Into The Depths' podcast follows Black divers in search for slave trade shipwrecks


February 12, 20225:31 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with National Geographic explorer Tara Roberts about her new podcast Into The Depths, about a team of Black divers exploring the ruins of slave ships in the ocean.


MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

And finally today, a key chapter in the origin story of Africans in America took place over water. Historians estimate that some 36,000 ships brought nearly 12.5 million Africans across the Atlantic Ocean, according to the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. But not all survived. Somewhere between 500 and 1,000 ships are believed to have wrecked, but only a handful have been found and documented. This is according to Tara Roberts of a new podcast from National Geographic called "Into The Depths." She not only follows a group of Black divers, historians and archaeologists as they try to recover as much as they can of that lost chapter. She decides to become one of them.

(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "INTO THE DEPTHS")

TARA ROBERTS: Through these ships, we could bring lost stories up from the depths and back into collective memory. Just as important, it was a way to help me understand my roots, my own family's history and where I and we belong as Black Americans right now.

MARTIN: Tara Roberts is executive producer of "Into The Depths," and she is with us now to tell us more about it. Tara Roberts, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

ROBERTS: Wow. Thank you so much for having me, Michel.

MARTIN: So first, I'm just going to ask you to give us the short version of what you shared in the podcast, how you kind of just dropped everything, quit your job to pursue this project. So tell me how you heard about it and why you think it had that hold over you.

ROBERTS: Yeah. It was completely by accident, actually. I happened to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C. And I ended up on the second floor, which is this tiny floor that most visitors, I think, skip. But on that floor, there was a picture of a group of primarily Black women on a boat in wetsuits. And it really was that picture that captivated me. It stopped me in my tracks because I'd never seen a group of Black women on a boat in wetsuits before. So when I went to find out, who are they? And what are they doing? I found out that they were part of this group called Diving with a Purpose and that part of their mission was to search for and help document slave shipwrecks around the world. And from that moment, I was hooked.

MARTIN: And to the purpose, why do you and why do they think it's important to unearth these histories and document the remains of these ships from the transatlantic slave trade - to the degree that's possible after all these centuries?

ROBERTS: Well, I think you hit on it when you gave the stats earlier. If there are as many as a thousand potential wrecks out there but only a handful have been found, that means there's an enormous amount of history that's just missing.

MARTIN: And one of the key figures in this movement is Dr. Albert Jose Jones. He co-founded the National Association of Black Scuba Divers. I just want to play a clip of him describing a particular moment documenting the wreckage of the Henrietta Marie. It's a ship that carried enslaved people and was found off of Key West in 1972. That might be a name that some people know, and here's the clip.

(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "INTO THE DEPTHS")

ALBERT JOSE JONES: It felt like you were touching the souls of your ancestors when you were down there, and it involves people that could be your own family.

MARTIN: Could you talk a bit more about this dive and Dr. Jones's role in your work and just what an emotional experience that it can be to connect with these wrecks?

ROBERTS: Yeah. Dr. Jones is considered the grandfather of Black scuba diving. He started the first Black diving club, and he started that, Michel, in 1959. So Black folks have been diving for quite a while. But Doc dove on this site, and when he was down there, he decided that it needed to be memorialized in some way. So he came back, and he got members of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers together, and they raised funds to put a plaque down at the site to honor the people who died in the Middle Passage. And I think that that is often skipped over in our history books, how many Africans died in the Middle Passage. The number is 1.8 million Africans died in that passing. And who's honoring them?

MARTIN: I have to say I looked it up, and that's the population of Phoenix.

ROBERTS: Wow.

MARTIN: So if you can think about - it's larger than the population of Philadelphia. It's larger than the population of San Antonio. It's larger than the population of Dallas - so to put that into some context of how many souls are lost to that - to the bottom of the sea in that passage. So I'm just wondering what that was like for you.

ROBERTS: Yeah. There are definitely sad notes in this work when you're faced with the artifacts of the past. But overwhelmingly, I felt so empowered to be part of helping to raise this history from the depths, to bring these people back into memory.

MARTIN: So before we let you go, you know, we are in a moment when some people don't want to hear about this history at all, from what we are observing. There are certain movements in many parts of the country to stop teaching certain things, to withdraw certain books from the shelves, withdraw certain stories from the curriculum. And I'm just wondering what you would say to those people, based on the work that you and the others have done.

ROBERTS: I would say that the truth about the Middle Passage and the global slave trade is that it's huge history. Like, it's global history. It's not just Black people's history. There were four continents involved in the global slave trade. It's Europe. It's Africa. It's South America. It's North America. It happened over 400 years. And I - what I am understanding through this work is that there's a way to examine the past that's not inside of shame. It's not inside of anger, and it's not inside of guilt. But we have to look at it, I think, to be able to go through it so that we can heal this space.

MARTIN: That was Tara Roberts, National Geographic explorer and host of the podcast "Into The Depths." Tara Roberts, thank you so much for speaking with us.

ROBERTS: Thank you for having me, Michel.

MARTIN: And if you want to hear more about this project, you can tune in to NPR on the Clubhouse app on the next two Wednesdays in February at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 5:00 p.m. Pacific. NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates will be speaking with Tara and other National Geographic explorers about their work documenting slave trade shipwrecks.

Congress passes bill that aims to help victims in sexual harassment cases

February 12, 2022
Heard on All Things Considered
NPR's Michel Martin speaks with the person who helped get the bill passed — journalist and author Gretchen Carlson.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

This week, Congress passed a bill that could fundamentally change how workplaces handle claims of sexual misconduct. The bill, known as the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, is intended to do exactly what it says - to end the practice of allowing companies to require employees to give up the right to go to court in those matters. Instead, companies have hired third-party arbitrators to resolve those claims privately. In recent years, the practice has faced a lot of criticism. Because allegations of misconduct are never released to the public, there's usually not an opportunity to appeal the outcomes.

One of its toughest critics has been former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson. You may recall that in 2016, Carlson sued then-CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harassment. She's since become one of the most visible advocates for helping workers with similar experiences and was involved in helping get this latest bill passed, and she's with us now to tell us more. Gretchen Carlson, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

GRETCHEN CARLSON: Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: It's been a long road to get to this point, and I was just wondering if you thought it would take this long.

CARLSON: Well, with Congress, you never know. I mean, especially in these hyperpolitical, partisan times, the idea that we could get both parties to come together on this, you know, the big, huge question mark is when was that ever going to happen? And I've just seen a tonal shift in the last five years since I've been walking the halls of Congress, trying to get people on my side, meaning that mostly, I was trying to work on Republicans because it tends to be more of a Democratic issue.

And I just saw a tonal shift with Republicans realizing, I think, that the movement is not going away. And it was kind of like, raise your hand if you're in favor of continuing to silence women who are harassed and assaulted in the workplace. OK, I see nobody's raising their hands. And so, you know, I think that many politicians came to the realization that I guess we're going to have to do something about this or it's not going to make us look very good.

MARTIN: Talk about, if you would, your case against then-Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. Obviously, it kind of exploded into public view. I'm sure that was a very traumatic experience for you. But, you know, forced arbitration sounds like one of those kind of, you know, wonky, arcane, kind of technical things that people don't tend to think about when they're starting a job. So when did you understand what it was and how it was going to affect how you handled that situation, how you were able to proceed in that situation?

CARLSON: Yeah - such a great question because you're 100% correct. People have no idea whether or not they have a forced arbitration clause in their employment contract. And even if they do know, like I did know in my last contract at Fox they put one in, I knew it was there, and I asked about it but didn't understand the ramifications of how it would affect me going forward with the lawsuit that I was already thinking about. I didn't understand that if I decided to come forward with my lawsuit of harassment, that it would mean that I was going to go to this secret chamber instead of being able to have my Seventh Amendment right to go to an open jury process.

And so when I finally assembled my legal team a few years later, they looked at me, and they looked at my contract, and they said, we have some really bad news for you. They said, you're going to arbitration, and nobody's ever going to hear from you ever again. And that is how, luckily, my lawyer strategically came up with the plan to sue Roger Ailes personally instead of Fox News as an entity to try to circumvent the arbitration clause and at least make my case public.

MARTIN: So this bill was first introduced in 2017, and it was bipartisan. Even then, many Republicans did not support it. Now, you just told us that you really focused your attention on Republican lawmakers who had been skeptical or who'd previously voted no, and you were able to get them to change their minds. Can you just tell us, without violating any confidence - of course, I don't care if you do - what were those conversations like? Can you just tell us a little bit about it?

CARLSON: I'll just point out somebody who became a champion of it, which was Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, told me to my face in September when I met with him, I voted against it last time, but you've changed my mind. And not only did he decide to vote for it. He became an advocate, so much so in House Judiciary that he pulled along, you know, other Republicans to meet with me and, you know, ended up introducing the amendment on the floor last Monday night that actually, you know, got this through to get even more Republicans changing the definition slightly of sexual harassment. So that's just a prime example of somebody who, you know, looked at me and said, I admire what you've been doing the last five years. You've changed my mind, and now I'm going to be on the other side of this.

MARTIN: I'm curious about how you respond to some of the criticism of this bill. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposed a previous iteration of the bill, claiming that arbitration is a - and I'm quoting them here - "a fair, effective and less expensive means of resolving disputes, compared to going to court," unquote. It also claimed that arbitration doesn't stop survivors from going public. How do you respond to that?

CARLSON: Well, first of all, the Chamber of Commerce is not the Chamber of Commerce that you grew up with in your small town in America. This is a big, huge lobbying group, and they have tremendous influence, especially with Republicans. And while they did not come out publicly against the bill this particular time, they were doing a lot of work behind the scenes to try and kill it. And by the way, arbitration is not cheaper in all cases. I can tell you cases of women right now who are in arbitration for harassment, and they've already spent upwards of $250,000 of their own life saving, and they haven't even started receiving yet. So the company always can outspend an individual, and I think in this case, the chamber would not publicly come out against me because, again, there's been a shift over the last five years. But trust me, they were working against this vehemently. And this is a victory for all workers and for all millions of people who will no longer be silenced on these issues.

MARTIN: Before we let you go, can I ask, how do you think this whole experience has changed you? Has this fundamentally changed you in some way?

CARLSON: Yes. Passing this bill is my greatest life achievement other than the blessing of my two children. And it's more important than any interview I've ever done over 30 years in journalism. It doesn't even pale in comparison because this is not about Gretchen Carlson. This is about all the people that I'm helping who didn't have the same resources or national platform that I did to potentially work so hard to try to make this change. It's not like I ever envisioned being a poster child for harassment in the workplace, but, you know, I took the opportunity to make a difference. And if I can be inspirational to anyone else to show that one person can make a difference, then I hope that's been the case.

MARTIN: That was journalist and author Gretchen Carlson. Her latest book is "Be Fierce." Gretchen Carlson, thanks so much for your time.

CARLSON: Thank you for having me.