TURKIYE



Disabled man among 8 Kurdish politicians arrested on terrorism charges

By Turkish Minute
- June 9, 2022

Eight Kurdish politicians, including Sadi Özdemir, who is almost totally disabled, have been arrested on terrorism charges in the northwestern Turkish province of Tekirdağ, local media reported on Thursday.

Seyit Soydan, Murat Mutlu, Hüseyin Güzel, Ömer Güven, Emin Şen, Sadet Fırat, Emin Orhan and Özdemir were arrested on Thursday on charges that include “membership in a [terrorist organization]” and “disseminating propaganda for a [terrorist organization],” according to Turkish media reports.

Their arrests came after 36 politicians, including provincial and district co-chairs of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), were detained on June 3, as part of an investigation launched by the Tekirdağ Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), together with its ally, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), have long portrayed the HDP as the political front of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and the US, and has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

The party denies links to the PKK and says it is working to achieve a peaceful solution to Turkey’s Kurdish issue and is only coming under attack because of its strong opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 19-year rule.

The political and legal assault on the HDP, which intensified after a truce between Kurdish militants and the AKP government broke down in 2015, grew even stronger after Erdoğan survived a coup attempt in July 2016 that was followed by a sweeping political crackdown.

The party currently faces a closure case on charges of “attempting to destroy the indivisibility between the state and the people.”

Hundreds of HDP politicians, including the party’s former co-chairs, are behind bars on terrorism charges, while most of the 65 HDP mayors elected in the predominantly Kurdish Southeast in 2019 have been replaced by government-appointed trustees.

THE REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE

   

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.211905/page/n11/mode/2up

SEE http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/01/dialectical-science-jbs-haldane.html

ABOLISH SCOTUS

Studies show licensing firearms saves lives — but SCOTUS may ban states from doing it

Ray Hartmann
June 11, 2022

Shutterstock

New research shows that states requiring licenses to purchase firearms have experienced “significant” reductions in the incidence of gun homicides and suicides, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is reporting.

It cited recent studies of two states: Connecticut, which had passed a firearms-purchaser licensing law in 1995; and Missouri, which had repealed a licensing law in 2005. The results were striking though predictable:

“Connecticut’s purchaser licensing law was associated with significant reductions in rates of firearm homicide and firearm suicide and the repeal of Missouri’s purchaser licensing law was associated with significant increases in these outcomes.” Johns Hopkins reported.

“The most recent study estimates Connecticut’s law reduced firearm homicide rates by 28 percent and firearm suicide rates by 33 percent over a 22-year period; the repeal of Missouri’s law increased firearm homicides by 47 percent and firearm suicide rates by 23 percent.

“Another study found evidence that these changes in handgun purchaser licensing laws were linked to decreases in fatal shootings of police officers in Connecticut and increases in shootings of police in Missouri.”

These studies bore out previous research that such laws were associated with “with 56 percent lower rates of fatal mass shooting incidents, and 67 percent fewer mass shooting victims,” the Johns Hopkins website reported.

It explained how firearms-licensing laws enhance background checks to make them more effective. “The additional components required with firearm purchaser licensing laws – fingerprinting, a more thorough, and a built-in waiting period --all play a vital role in preventing people with a history of violence, those at risk for future interpersonal violence or suicide, and gun traffickers from obtaining firearms.”

According to the Giffords Law Center, some 13 states and the District of Columbia have some form of state licensing requirements for gun purchasing or possession. There is no federal requirement, it noted.

One of those states is New York, which has licensed the ownership of handguns for nearly a century. On Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed major new gun-control legislation that would, among other steps, add new licensing requirements for the purchase or possession of semi-automatic firearms and body armor.

However, at the very time the governor and state legislature are moving to strengthen gun laws, New York is facing a strong challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court that is widely viewed as posing its right to license handguns at all.

Here’s how the New York Times reported it this week:

“Across the city and state, authorities are bracing for a ruling, expected from the United States Supreme Court this month, which could strike down a century-old New York State law that places strict limits on the carrying of handguns.

“When the Supreme Court heard arguments over the law in November, a number of justices appeared predisposed against it, leading experts to believe that the law is likely to be struck down. If that happens, the ramifications could reach beyond New York: A handful of other states, including California, Connecticut, Maryland and Massachusetts, have similar laws that could also be invalidated.

“New York State requires anyone who wants to purchase a handgun to apply for a state license. But there is an additional level of scrutiny for people who want a license that allows them to carry their gun outside their home. The two petitioners before the Supreme Court, both upstate New Yorkers, are challenging the laws governing the carrying of handguns, though gun control advocates in the state worry that the rules for acquiring handguns will be next.”

As reported at Raw Story last month, New York Mayor Eric Adams has warned that residents of his city “should be very afraid” if the Supreme Court strikes down the state licensing law.

Ray Hartmann is a St. Louis-based journalist with nearly 50 years experience as a publisher, TV show panelist, radio host, daily newspaper reporter and columnist. He founded St. Louis alt weekly, The Riverfront Times, at the age of 24.

On Law

by Godwin, William

https://archive.org/details/sparrowsnest-10124

Petr Kropotkin  Organised Vengeance Called  Justice  

https://archive.org/details/al_Petr_Kropotkin_Organised_Vengeance_Called_Justice_a4

Blaming ‘evil’ for mass violence isn’t as simple as it seems – a philosopher unpacks the paradox in using the word

The Conversation
June 11, 2022

Mourners gather at a memorial in Uvalde, Texas on May 26, 2022 after a gunman murdered 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school (AFP)

The word “evil” circulates widely in the wake of terrible public violence. The May 24, 2022, massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, is a case in point.

Texas state safety official Christopher Olivarez spoke of “the complete evil of the shooter.” Others expressed their resolve with the same word. “Evil will not win,” the Rev. Tony Grubin told the crowd at a vigil.

Days later, at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Texas, CEO Wayne LaPierre acknowledged the Uvalde victims before arguing against gun control legislation. His reasoning pivoted on the concept of evil: “If we as a nation were capable of legislating evil out of the hearts and minds of criminals who commit these heinous acts, we would have done it long ago.”

Evil is one of the most complex and paradoxical words in the English language. It can galvanize collective action but also lead to collective paralysis, as if the presence of evil can’t be helped. As a philosopher studying moral concepts and their role in communication, I find it essential to scrutinize this word.

The evolution of ‘evil’

Evil wasn’t always paradoxical. In Old English it was simply the common word for bad – for any kind of misfortune, illness, incompetence or unhappy result. This meaning lingers in phrases such as “choosing the lesser of two evils.”

Starting around 1300, the word bad gradually emerged as the familiar opposite of good. Yet even while bad was becoming common, people continued to encounter the word evil in older written works, and speech influenced by these works. Translations of the Bible and Anglo-Saxon classic literature surely shaped how the concept of evil came to seem larger than life, and spiritually loaded. Some things seem too bad for the word bad. But what, exactly, does evil mean?

Many people would answer that they know evil when they see it – or when they feel it. If there’s any good occasion for using the word, surely a planned massacre of vulnerable children seems an uncontroversial case. Still, this commonsense approach doesn’t shed much light on how the idea of evil influences public attitudes.

One philosophical approach – pragmatism – may be helpful here, since it focuses on how words do things, rather than on how they should be defined. People who use the word evil are doing something: sending a clear signal about their own attitude. They are not interested in excuses, justifications or coming to some kind of shared understanding. In this pragmatic sense, the word evil has something in common with guns: It’s an extreme tool, and users require utter confidence in their own judgment. When the word evil is summoned to the scene, curiosity and complexity go quiet. It’s the high noon of a moral standoff.

As with reaching for guns, however, resorting to the word evil can backfire. This is because there are two deep tensions embedded in the concept.

Inner or outer?

First, there’s still some confusion about whether to locate evil out in the world, or within the human heart. In its archaic sense, evil could include entirely natural causes of great suffering. The Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of 1755 is an infamous example. Tens of thousands of people died agonizing deaths, and thinkers throughout Europe debated how a good God could allow such terrible things. The French philosopher Voltaire concluded, “evil stalks the land.”


An 18th-century engraving depicts the destruction of Lisbon, Portugal, by an earthquake and tidal wave in 1755.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

At the opposite extreme, many Christian thinkers – and some classical Greek and Roman ones – treat evil as entirely distinct from worldly events. The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, defines evil as an inner moral failure, which might lurk behind even the most acceptable-looking acts. Given his faith that innocent victims would go to heaven, Kant did not focus moral concern on the fact that their lives were made shorter. Rather, he argued murder was terrible because it was the expression of a morally forbidden choice.

Most people today would reject both of these simple views and focus instead on the connection of inner and outer, where human choices result in real-world atrocities.

Yet the purely inner view casts new light on LaPierre’s argument, that legislation is powerless to prevent evil. If evil were strictly an interior, spiritual problem, then it could be effectively tackled only at its source. Preventing that evil from erupting into public view would be like masking the symptoms of a disease rather than treating its cause.

The paradox of blame

There is a second major tension embedded in how the word evil works: evil both does and does not call for blame.

On one hand, evil seems inherently and profoundly blameworthy; evildoers are assumed to be responsible for their evil. It’s constructive to blame people, however, when blame helps to hold them responsible. Unfortunately, that important role is undermined when the target of blame is “evil.”

Philosopher Gary Watson helps illuminate this paradox in his essay “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil.” Blame involves attempting to hold people responsible as members of a shared “moral community” – a network of social relations in which people share basic norms and push one another to repair moral expectations after they are violated. Taking responsibility, in Watson’s view, involves a kind of competence, an ability to work with others in community.

Evil, however, implies being beyond redemption, “beyond the pale” of this community. Calling someone evil signals a total lack of hope that they could take up the responsibility being assigned to them. And some people do seem to lack the social bonds, skills and attitudes required for responsibility. Examining the life story of a notorious school shooter, Watson reveals how his potential for belonging to a moral community had been brutally dismantled by chaotic abuse throughout his formative years.

If evil implies such a complete absence of the skills and attitudes required for moral responsibility, then calling people evil – while still holding them morally responsible – is paradoxical.

Compare this with the paradoxical power of the number zero – a quantity that is the absence of quantity. Zero is a powerful concept, but it requires a warning label: “Steer clear of dividing by this number; if you do, your equations are ruined!”

The English word evil is powerful, no doubt. Yet the power of the concept turns out to be driven by turbulence below the surface. Laying blame on evil can bring this turbulence to the surface in surprising ways.

Elise Springer, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Wesleyan University

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

GOP congressman blasts Democrats for not agreeing ‘prayers’ are the solution to school shootings

David Badash,

 The New Civil Rights Movement
June 09, 2022

Louie Gohmert (Saul Loeb AFP)

U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) is attacking Democrats for not supporting his belief that the solution to mass school shootings is prayer.

"In debate last week and even today, to be told that we have no courage, that Democrats, we were told in debate last week, don't want to hear any more about social media, violent video games, Hollywood, mental illness, and they sure don't want to hear any more about prayers," said Gohmert, who just lost his attempt to become the next Texas state attorney general.

"Don't want to hear any more about fatherlessness, drug use," Gohmert continued, rattling off a litany of supposed causes for gun violence. "Look, maybe if we heard more prayers from leaders of this country instead of taking God's name in vain, we wouldn't have the mass killings like we didn't have before prayer was eliminated in schools."

 

Texas teachers union survey finds that school employees don’t want to be armed

Brian Lopez, The Texas Tribune
June 09, 2022


A survey of nearly 4,000 K-12 teachers in Texas found that most do not want to be armed while in class or be expected to intercept a gunman at school, according to the state’s teachers union, which released its survey results Wednesday.

The Texas American Federation of Teachers sent an online questionnaire to its 65,000 members, which include public school teachers, support personnel and higher education employees, a week after an 18-year-old gunman killed 21 people — including 19 children — at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Soon after the shooting, Texas Republicans said the solution could be arming teachers.

A total of 5,100 members responded to the union’s survey, including 3,673 secondary school teachers. Of those K-12 teachers, 76% of them answered “no” when asked, “Do you want to be armed?” About 90% of all school employees who responded said they are worried about a shooting happening at their school.

Texas AFT’s membership includes public school teachers and employees, as well as those who work at colleges and universities.
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Zeph Capo, president of the Texas AFT, said at a press conference Wednesday that the Texas Legislature has made it easier for people to buy guns instead of focusing on protecting the lives of children.

“We’re depending on the United States Congress to take action because what the Texas Legislature has shown us is rather than doing things to fix it, they want to put Band-Aids on it,” he said.

Capo called on Texans to vote in November for people who will bring real change to gun policy and protect Texan students and teachers.

Nearly a decade ago, Texas lawmakers created the school marshal program, a way for educators to carry weapons inside schools. But since then, only 84 school districts have opted to have such a program. In those districts, only 361 people have become licensed school marshals across a state that has 9,000 campuses and more than 369,000 public school teachers.

The survey of Texas school employees found that there is an overwhelming support for stricter enforcement of guns.

Of all those who answered the survey, 98% support red flag laws, which would allow local officials to take someone’s guns away if a judge declares them to be a danger; 96% want the minimum age for legal gun purchases raised from 18 to 21; and 83% support a ban on assault weapons.

Texas Democrats have already called for a special legislative session to pass sweeping gun reform.

The Uvalde shooting may also have ramifications to Texas’ already struggling teacher workforce. Slightly less than half of those surveyed said the shooting may affect their decision to leave teaching.

Over the last two years, the pandemic and attacks on teachers have exacerbated the state’s teacher shortage. It has become such a major issue for school districts that Gov. Greg Abbott created a task force to come up with ways to solve it.

Across the state, teachers in Texas are finishing out one of the toughest years they have ever seen. Since the pandemic hit two years ago, teachers have had to navigate a series of disruptions caused by the coronavirus — first the closure of schools and the switch to online education, then a return to classrooms last fall that was marred twice by major outbreaks. At the same time, they have had to face parents angry about mask mandates and learn to tailor history lessons about racism to keep students from feeling “uncomfortable,” per a state law passed last year.

Katrina Rasmussen, a Dallas high school teacher and union member who attended AFT’s news conference, said schools are supposed to be one of the safest places for communities, yet the only answer she hears is more guns.

“I’ve seen student and teacher deaths mounting, and yet all I hear from policymakers is empty rhetoric,” she said. “I asked my legislators, ‘Is turning my learning community into a militarized zone really the best you can come up with?’”

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

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/08/texas-teachers-armed-survey/.

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

Poll shows Lula with big lead over Bolsonaro in Brazil's presidential contest

Kenny Stancil,

 Common Dreams
June 08, 2022

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (AFP)

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a world-renowned leftist who lifted millions out of poverty during his tenure as Brazil's president, maintains a significant lead over the South American nation's far-right incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro ahead of the October election, according to new survey data released Wednesday.

A Genial/Quaest poll found that 46% of voters would support Lula in a first-round vote, giving him a 16-point lead over Bolsonaro, who garnered 30%—a two-point decline since April.

Should the two candidates meet in a head-to-head runoff as expected, Lula would defeat Bolsonaro by a margin of 54% to 32%, said the polling firm, which conducted in-person interviews with 2,000 voters between June 2 and June 5.

As Reuters reported:

Other recent polls show Lula maintaining a solid lead in the first round and winning the election comfortably in the second round, by as much as 25 percentage points in the May Datafolha survey and by 10 points in the latest PoderData poll.

The Genial/Quaest poll also showed that the negative view of Bolsonaro's government is at 47%, up from 46% in May, while the percentage of those who see the government in a positive light remained at 25%.

During a speech in São Paulo last month marking the official launch of his campaign to unseat Bolsonaro, Lula said, "Everything that we did is being destroyed by this government."

When he served as Brazil's president from 2003 to 2010, Lula—a member of the Workers' Party who began his political career in the 1970s as a metalworkers union organizer—oversaw an economic boom, which he channeled into downwardly redistributive programs that slashed inequality.

Lula enjoyed approval ratings of over 80% when he left office, and before his candidacy was derailed by a corruption conviction, he was leading the polls during the 2018 race eventually won by Bolsonaro. Lula has maintained his innocence, describing the charges that put him behind bars for 18 months as a lie fabricated by right-wing adversaries intent on carrying out a political coup.

During his three-year reign, by contrast, Bolsonaro has accelerated the destruction of the Amazon rainforest—imperiling the future of the planet—and responded so poorly to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic that Brazil's Congress has accused him of crimes against humanity.

"Bolsonaro represents rock bottom in the recent history of the republic," Christian Lynch, a political scientist from Rio de Janeiro's State University, said last year when Lula signaled a potential presidential run. "And he's going to have to face the candidate who was its zenith."

Republicans take hate to the next level as they hijack Pride month

Amanda Marcotte,

 Salon
June 07, 2022

(Shutterstock.com)

Nowadays, the month of June is notable to most Americans not just for the hot weather, swimming pools, and explosion of summer produce, but also for the cheerful displays of rainbows everywhere to honor Pride. While there's plenty of criticism to be had about the corporate-ization of Pride, what is also true is that, for right-wing bigots who still refuse to accept LGBTQ identities, the ubiquitous, normalizing presence of the rainbow flag during this month chaps their hides. Unfortunately, that means right-wing propagandists and Republicans see an opportunity to use Pride month to pander directly to the worst people in our society, turning up the trolling and harassment of LGBTQ people during a moment of celebration.

On Monday, the biggest Republican troll in Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, announced a right-wing grifter team-up with Milo Yiannopoulos, who she is hiring as an "intern," even though he is a married, nearly middle-aged man who hasn't attended college in over a decade. Yiannopoulos was doing fairly well for himself a few years ago by being a full-time troll until a video resurfaced in 2017 of the right-wing provocateur praising a Catholic priest for molesting him as a boy. He then spent years struggling after losing the right's financial support. He eventually caved and rebranded himself as an "ex-gay" and a champion of a fascist form of Catholicism.

As Kathryn Joyce reports for Salon, the alliance between Greene and Yiannopoulos is largely built on their shared interest in Christian nationalism. The timing, however, is notable. The announcement was pegged to Pride month and is clearly about trolling the gay rights movement by promoting the right-wing myth that gay people can be "converted" to straight people. Indeed, Taylor Greene leaned directly into this narrative by releasing a statement about how Yiannopoulos "was" gay but "changed his life" through "Jesus and Church."

RELATED: Marjorie Taylor Greene and Milo Yiannopoulos: A match made in troll heaven

One should be skeptical of all this, of course, and not just because Yiannopoulos still appears to be married to a man, glibly telling reporters that his husband has been "demoted to a roommate." Yiannopoulos has a long history of cynical and insincere stunts to promote both himself and to drape his fascist views in a pseudo-irony that allows him to recruit followers while not being taken too seriously by the press. Greene, as well, plays stupid for the cameras but is likely a fairly savvy operator who knows how to use her "dumb blonde" persona to get liberals to spread her noxious ideas.

While a lot of the trolling from these two is likely fake, what is not fake is the hate they're spreading.

Greene's trolling hire of Yiannopoulos is just the most ridiculous example of what is shaping up to be a deeply ugly month of Republicans leeching onto the publicity of Pride month to spread lies, stoke homophobia, and target LGBTQ people for harassment and violence.

Republicans are using Pride as an opportunity to escalate their deeply scary and damaging attacks




As Melissa Gira Grant writes in the New Republic, Republicans in state legislatures are making alliances with groups that have been "threatening to confront Pride celebrations with armed protest or 'hunting' LGBTQ people and allies." Aided by prominent figures like Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the right has been hyping false accusations that LGBTQ people are "grooming" children to be sexually molested as part of a national conspiracy that supposedly involves the Democratic Party, as well as corporations like Disney and the company that makes Oreo cookies. This risible rhetoric is clearly meant to encourage violence, and it's working. As Grant reports, trolls are threatening to harass Pride parades and are filming themselves attacking LGBTQ-friendly churches.

RELATED: Libs of TikTok: The Twitter troll who took Trump's place

This has all been aided by the infamous "Libs of Tik Tok" Twitter feed, which has been releasing a steady stream of viral posts meant to push a conspiracy theory that "liberal elites" are trying to "turn" kids trans or queer through Pride events. Photos of children at Pride events or stories of kids playing dress-up are dangled out as "proof" of this conspiracy theory. Even though little boys and girls play dress-up for the same reasons — it's fun! — the lurid accusations are giving anti-queer bigots the pretext they need to harass and abuse families for daring to attend Pride events.

Over the weekend, the seriousness of the situation was illustrated in Dallas, when anti-LGBTQ protesters intimidated attendees at a family-friendly drag show to raise funds for queer youth. The organizers let news cameras inside, where the event appeared exactly as advertised: a cleaned-up version of their usual drag show, stripped of sexual innuendo so that the kids can enjoy it.

A Dallas drag show that promoters called family-friendly and appropriate for kids brought both supporters and protesters to it on Saturday afternoon. https://t.co/IdGA4e77l3

— WFAA (@wfaa) June 5, 2022

The event is basically a queer version of those Kidz Bop records, but the protesters held signs falsely accusing LGBTQ people and their allies of "grooming" children. The people in the crowd said that they were there to "protect" children, but their behavior says otherwise. Video from the protest shows the queer-phobes being aggressive, chasing families, and chanting incendiary language about sexual abuse that is far more threatening to children's safety than watching a drag queen perform a fully clothed dance.

They have dramatically escalated efforts to define queer people as threats to society, and especially to children.

This grotesque and threatening display, however, was met by approval by GOP politicians. One Republican state legislator, Bryan Slaton, claims he'll be introducing a bill banning kids from drag shows and "other inappropriate displays." The word "inappropriate" is doing a lot of work there. One can easily see such a law being used to criminally punish queer couples for holding hands in front of children. And same-sex couples who have children are in very real danger of having their entire home deemed "inappropriate." After all, bills in other states, especially Florida, have already used this "groomer" panic to pass broad legislation meant to force adults to conceal the existence of LGBTQ people from children altogether.

RELATED: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directs state agencies to investigate trans youth for child abuse

 

Sadly, as Florida's "don't say gay" law shows, this over-the-top homophobia is not fringe in the GOP any longer. Republican state legislators have spent months trying to cram through hundreds of bills meant to terrorize LGBTQ people, targeting trans kids in particular. And despite their claims to be "protecting" children, many of these bills are overtly cruel to children.

For instance, Republicans in the Ohio state legislature have introduced a bill that would allow any person — a parent, a teacher, a coach of a rival team, a random member of the community — the right to "challenge" the gender identity of any kid who plays on a girls sports team. If a girl's gender is challenged, she is required to go through a process that the Salem witch hunters would deem excessive: A blood draw to determine both genetic make-up and hormone levels and a physical exam by a doctor to verify "internal and external reproductive anatomy."

For those who don't have the relevant parts, let me explain: That means a doctor shoves fingers in your vagina and thumps your tummy to feel your uterus. It's unpleasant for adults, but Ohio wishes to inflict this on children at the request of any random person. This is a horrible invasion of trans children's privacy, but doesn't stop there. Some parents can get aggressive about eliminating their child's competition for spots on cheerleading squads or college resume-burnishing athletic events. No girl is safe from people leveraging these accusations to force her off a team.

The ubiquitous nature of rainbow flags and family-friendly Pride events may lull many folks into believing that the struggle over LGBTQ rights is over and the good guys won. But clearly, Republicans aren't ready to move on. They have dramatically escalated efforts to define queer people as threats to society, and especially to children. And they're using Pride, and the attention it draws, as an opportunity to spread lies and conspiracy theories meant to demonize the LGBTQ community. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance, used Pride to push an asinine theory that "no one will be straight anymore" in "four or five generations," escalating these false claims that accepting the existence of LGBTQ people is a threat to straight people.

As with most things right-wing, this is pure projection.

LGBTQ people aren't trying to "convert" anyone. As Yiannapoulos, the "ex-gay" troll, shows, the opposite is true: It's conservatives who won't let go of their insistence that they can convert queer people to straight people. (They can't. Conversion "therapy" is just abuse meant to bully people into the closet.) It's the same thing with the accusations that LGBTQ people are a threat to children. In reality, it's Republicans who are passing bills forcing genital inspections on kids, threatening to tear kids from loving families, and bullying LGBTQ kids into hating themselves and hiding in the closet. In some places, they're even taking away life-saving mental health care access for kids, in order to keep counselors from telling queer kids that they are fine the way they are.

Republicans using Pride as an opportunity to escalate their deeply scary and damaging attacks on some of the most vulnerable young people in our society is a clear sign of an emboldened movement.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

65,000-year-old ‘stone Swiss Army knives’ show early humans had long-distance social networks

The Conversation
June 11, 2022

Author provided image

Humans are the only species to live in every environmental niche in the world – from the icesheets to the deserts, rainforests to savannahs. As individuals we are rather puny, but when we are socially connected, we are the most dominant species on the planet.

New evidence from stone tools in southern Africa shows these social connections were stronger and wider than we had thought among our ancestors who lived around 65,000 years ago, shortly before the large “out of Africa” migration in which they began to spread across the world.

Social connection and adaptation

The early humans weren’t always so connected. The first humans to leave Africa died out without this migratory success and without leaving any genetic trace among us today.

But for the ancestors of today’s people living outside of Africa, it was a different story. Within a few thousand years they had migrated into and adapted to every type of environmental zone across the planet.

Archaeologists think the development of social networks and the ability to share knowledge between different groups was the key to this success. But how do we observe these social networks in the deep past?

To address this question, archaeologists examine tools and other human-made objects that still survive today. We assume that the people who made those objects, like people today, were social creatures who made objects with cultural meanings.

Social connectivity 65,000 years ago

A small, common stone tool gave us an opportunity to test this idea in southern Africa, during a period known as the Howiesons Poort around 65,000 years ago. Archaeologists call these sharp, multipurpose tools “backed artifacts”, but you can think of them as a “stone Swiss Army knife”: the kind of useful tool you carry around to do various jobs you can’t do by hand.

These knives are not unique to Africa. They are found across the globe and come in many different shapes. This potential variety is what makes these small blades so useful to test the hypothesis that social connections existed more than 60,000 years ago.


Similar designs of ‘Stone Swiss Army knives’ have been found across southern Africa.(Paloma de la Peña)

Across southern Africa, these blades could have been made in any number of different shapes in different places. However, around 65,000 years ago, it turns out they were made to a very similar template across thousands of kilometres and multiple environmental niches.

The fact they were all made to look so similar points to strong social connections between geographically distant groups across southern Africa at this time.

Importantly, this shows for the first time that social connections were in place in southern Africa just before the big “out of Africa” migration.

A useful tool in hard times

Previously it has been thought people made these blades in response to various environmental stresses, because just like the Swiss Army knife they are multi-functional and multi-use.

There is evidence the stone blades were often glued or bound to handles or shafts to make complex tools such as spears, knives, saws, scrapers and drills, and used as tips and barbs for arrows. They were used to process plant material, hide, feathers and fur.

While the making of the stone blade was not particularly difficult, the binding of the stone to the handle was, involving complex glue and adhesive recipes.

During the Howiesons Poort, these blades were produced in enormous numbers across southern Africa.

Data from Sibudu Cave in South Africa shows that their peak in production occurred during a very dry period, when there was less rain and vegetation. These tools were manufactured for thousands of years before the Howiesons Poort, but it is during this period of changing climatic conditions that we see a phenomenal increase in their production.

It is the multi-functionality and multi-use which makes this stone tool so flexible, a key advantage for hunting and gathering in uncertain or unstable environmental conditions.

A strong social network adapted to a changing climate

However, the production of this tool at this time cannot be seen as only a functional response to changing environmental conditions.

If their proliferation was simply a functional response to changing conditions, then we should see differences in different environmental niches. But what we see is similarity in production numbers and artefact shape across great distances and different environmental zones.

This means the increase in production should be seen as part of a socially mediated response to changing environmental conditions, with strengthening long-distance social ties facilitating access to scarce, perhaps unpredictable resources.

The similarity in the stone “Swiss Army knife” across southern Africa provides insight into the strength of social ties in this key period for human evolution. Their similarity suggests that it was the strength of this social network which allowed populations to prosper and adapt to changing climatic conditions.

These findings hold global implications for understanding how expanding social networks contributed to the expansion of modern humans out of Africa and into new environments across the globe.

Amy Mosig Way, Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Sydney, and Archaeologist, Australian Museum

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

MSNBC anchor worries Democrats are not 'really in this fight to save our democracy'

Bob Brigham
June 11, 2022

Shutterstock.

A panel on MSNBC worried Democrats are not doing enough to reign in unethical conduct by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Ayman Mohyeldin noted a bombshell new report by The Washington Post.

"Virginia 'Ginni' Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed 29 Republican state lawmakers in Arizona — 27 more than previously known — to set aside Joe Biden’s popular vote victory and 'choose' presidential electors, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post. The Post reported last month that Thomas sent emails to two Arizona House members, in November and December 2020, urging them to help overturn Biden’s win by selecting presidential electors — a responsibility that belongs to Arizona voters under state law," the newspaper reported.

Mohyeldin discussed the news with pundit Tara Setmayer, Prof. Eddie Glaude, and government expert Norm Ornstein

Ornstein explained he was working on legislation that would extend judicial ethics rules to apply to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that he expected to to fall to a GOP filbuster.

"So, it is not just elections, it is the violation of norms and you have to fight back against that. I'm not seeing much fighting going on," Ornstein said.

"Yeah, I completely agree with you," Mohyeldin replied.

"I don't think the Democrats are -- you know, really in this fight to save our democracy at this moment," he said. "It least that is how I am seeing it."

WATCH

 

DC insider: New revelations show Ginni Thomas 'very much a part of seditious conspiracy'

Julia Conley,

 Common Dreams
June 11, 2022

Ginni Thomas 

Ginni Thomas, the right-wing activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, lobbied far more Arizona state lawmakers than previously known to try to overturn the state's 2020 election results—a revelation that reignited calls on Friday for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from cases related to the election.

"As obvious as the symmetry between Clarence and Ginni Thomas' work was three weeks ago, it's even more glaring now."

In addition to emailing two state representatives in November and December 2020, calling on them to "choose" electors who would grant former President Donald Trump a victory in the state, Thomas used a platform called FreeRoots.com to call on 27 other state lawmakers to put aside President Joe Biden's victory. The Washington Post, which first reported the news, obtained the emails Thomas sent via Arizona's public records law.

On November 9, as part of a campaign organized by Every Legal Vote—a group that has supported Trump's "Big Lie" that the election was stolen from him—Thomas sent an email saying the lawmakers must "stand strong in the face of political and media pressure" and claiming they had the "power to fight back against fraud."

"The wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice was very much a part of the seditious conspiracy" that culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, said Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett on Friday in response to the new reporting.

Prior to the January 6 rally—which she briefly attended—Thomas also wrote to 22 state House members and one state senator on December 13, a day before they were scheduled to count their votes, warning them to "consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don't stand up and lead."

"Never before in our nation's history have our elections been so threatened by fraud and unconstitutional procedures," Thomas wrote.

When the letters to two lawmakers were reported by the Post last month, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was among the critics who said Thomas's efforts to keep Trump in office represented a "conflict of interest."

Thomas's husband was the lone dissenter earlier this year when the court rejected Trump's bid to block the release of presidential records regarding the January 6 insurrection.

The Thomases have long claimed that they keep their work separate from one another, but journalist Mark Joseph Stern said Friday, "As obvious as the symmetry between Clarence and Ginni Thomas' work was three weeks ago, it's even more glaring now."

Thomas's lobbying of 29 state lawmakers to overrule the will of Arizona voters represented "a completely egregious attack on democracy by the wife of a sitting SCOTUS justice," tweeted Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.).

Friday's revelations come two-and-a-half months after the Post and CBS News obtained text messages that Thomas sent to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following the election, calling on him to "save us from the left taking America down."

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) issued a "friendly reminder that Ginni Thomas has a government position and absolutely should not," referring to her position on the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board, to which Trump appointed her.

"Her egregious actions to push the White House Chief of Staff and others to overturn a free and fair election make her a threat to democracy and should disqualify her for any role of public trust at the Library of Congress or anywhere else in government," said CREW in April.