'This is insane': Watchdog group stunned by details in Mar-a-Lago search warrant

Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
August 12, 2022



Multiple news outlets that reviewed the warrant authorizing a federal search of Mar-a-Lago reported Friday that former President Donald Trump is being investigated for potential violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice, and unlawful removal of government records.

"This is insane. If you're not fed up, you're not paying enough attention," tweeted the advocacy group Public Citizen in response to the Espionage Act revelation.

Some reports about the warrant and an inventory of what agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation removed from the Florida residence—including from Breitbart, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal—came before a federal judge's 3:00 pm ET deadline for Trump's legal team to respond to a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) request to unseal the documents.

Trump made clear in social media posts and a legal filing that he did not oppose making the documents public, which led government attorneys to request that the court do so. As details of the leaked materials circulated Friday afternoon, U.S. Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered the official release.

As Charlie Savage at The New York Times summarized:
The search warrant for Trump's residence cited three criminal laws, all from Title 18 of the United States Code. Section 793, better known as the Espionage Act, which covers the unlawful retention of defense-related information that could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary; Section 1519, which covers destroying or concealing documents to obstruct government investigations or administrative proceedings; and Section 2071, which covers the unlawful removal of government records. Notably, none of those laws turn on whether information was deemed to be unclassified.

According to Politico, a receipt accompanying the warrant "shows that Trump possessed documents including a handwritten note; documents marked with 'TS/SCI,' which indicate one of the highest levels of government classification; and another item labeled 'Info re: President of France.'"

Details of the search warrant and inventory followed reporting by The Washington Post late Thursday that FBI agents were attempting to recover classified nuclear weapons documents from Trump's home on Monday.

FOSSIL FOOT FETISH

A key feature contributed to sauropods getting so enormous, new dino foot study reveals

The Conversation
August 11, 2022

Sauropod Dinosaurs (Herschel Hoffmeyer/Shutterstock)

For the first time, we have shown that a soft heel pad was crucial to how sauropod dinosaurs supported their immense weight, according to a new digital reconstruction of their feet.

Sauropods, which weighed up to 50 tonnes and dominated the world’s ecosystems for around 100 million years, appear to have developed soft heel pads early in their evolution, and it was likely a key step that allowed sauropods to become the largest animals to have ever walked the earth. Our work appears this week in the journal Science Advances.

‘Thunder lizards’

One of the most notable things about sauropods is the immense size of some species: the feet of sauropod dinosaurs would have shaken the earth as they walked. Indeed, the name of one of the first described sauropods to gain popular appeal, Brontosaurus, means “thunder lizard”.

Sauropods had long necks and tails, and walked on four long, pillar-like legs, but they didn’t start out gigantic. Around 230 million years ago, the ancestors of these dinosaurs were small, two-legged animals that would have looked very much like their saurischian cousins, the theropods; most probably wouldn’t have weighed more than an ostrich.

But starting around 210 million years ago, sauropod ancestors increased in size, with an estimated body mass approaching one tonne. The largest sauropods such as Argentinosaurus, Patagotitan and Australotitan probably reached adult sizes in excess of 50 tonnes more than ten times the size of the largest living terrestrial animal today, the African elephant.

It goes without saying that animals of that size had immense feet. Some sauropod footprints found in the Kimberley region of Western Australia are more than 1.7 meters long – big enough for most people to bathe in!

But what did sauropod feet really look like, and how did they support the titanic adult body weight of their owners?


An accumulation of sauropod tracks in the Lower Cretaceous Broome Sandstone, Walmadany area, Dampier Peninsula, Western Australia. 

Steven W. Salisbury, Author provided

On the trail of sauropods

Having spent many years tracking sauropods in the Kimberley, I [Steve Salisbury] have long pondered what their feet might have looked like in life. The front feet appear to have been like those of elephants, with the bones arranged in a near-vertical, semi-circular column, with greatly reduced finger bones except for the thumb. The “hand” prints of most sauropods are typically rounded or “bean-shaped”.

Despite their commonly portrayed columnar look, however, sauropod feet were very different to those of elephants. Sauropods had long, flexible toes, as evidenced by the mobility between the bones. Fossilized tracks show they could spread their toes, adjusting the splay of the foot as they walked across different surfaces – this is not what we find in elephants today.



Computer modeling shows sauropod feet had a soft tissue pad. 

Andreas Jannel, Author provided

It has long been assumed that like other dinosaurs, sauropods walked on their toes, with the ankle joint elevated off the ground. Yet many sauropod tracks include the impression of a large “heel”.

This has led many paleontologists to speculate that sauropods had some kind of “heel pad”. But apart from tracks, definitive evidence of a heel pad in sauropods has remained just that – academic speculation. Our work aims to change that.
Walking in the feet of giants

Armed with knowledge of what the foot skeleton of various sauropods looked like, along with information about their tracks, Andréas Jannel went about trying to figure out how their feet may have worked, as part of his PhD at The University of Queensland. We also teamed up with Olga Panagiotopoulou, an expert in the foot mechanics of modern animals, and elephants in particular.

Andréas generated 3D digital models for the foot skeleton of various sauropods and sauropod precursors. He and Olga then went about testing the strength of these models using a technique known as finite element analysis. They compared how different postures influenced the mechanical behavior of the foot with and without the addition of a soft-tissue pad.


Forces exerted on sauropod foot bones with and without a soft tissue pad.

 Andreas Jannel, Author provided

Regardless of the posture of the foot – toes on the ground, toes partially on the ground, or only the tips of the toes on the ground — none of the models could sustain the magnitude of mechanical forces that sauropods would have encountered in life, unless they also had a soft tissue pad beneath the “heel”.

Our findings indicate that a soft tissue pad would have cushioned the entire foot skeleton, allowing it to absorb mechanical forces during weight bearing. Put simply, without that pad beneath the heel, bones in the feet of sauropods would have crumpled under their immense weight.


The sauropods had soft tissue pads to absorb their enormous weight and enable them to walk on land. Andreas Jannel, Author provided

Arrival of the giants

Sauropod precursors such as Plateosaurus have traditionally been reconstructed as having walked with their toes slightly raised off the ground and with no heel pad. Our models now indicate their foot skeleton could not have supported their body weight without some form of additional padding.




Goolarabooloo Law Boss Richard Hunter alongside a 1.75 metre sauropod track in the Lower Cretaceous Broome Sandstone, Western Australia. The sauropod that made these tracks would have been around 5.4 metres high at the hips. From Salisbury et al. (2017). Photo: Steven W. Salisbury; image Anthony Romilio, Author provided

Some fossil tracks thought to belong to animals such as Plateosaurus do show evidence of pads starting to coalesce behind the toes. This “incipient” heel pad – one just starting to develop – would be consistent with our models.

The presence of an incipient heel pad in sauropod precursors laid the foundations for the evolution of a more substantial structure. By 170 million years ago, the first “true” sauropods were exceeding 10 metric tonnes, and tracks attributed to them show a well-developed heel pad.

The stage had been set, and within 10 million to 15 million years, titans weighing more than 30 tonnes were walking the earth, and the diversification of giant sauropods had begun. They would dominate world ecosystems for the next 100 million years.

Steven W. Salisbury, PhD; Associate Professor, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland; Andréas Jannel, Postdoctoral researcher, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, and Olga Panagiotopoulou, Senior lecturer PhD, Monash University

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

Mexican officials say close to accessing trapped miners

Agence France-Presse
August 12, 2022

Friends and relatives hold a candlelit vigil for the trapped miners 

Pedro PARDO AFP

Mexican authorities said on Friday they are in a position to enter the flooded coal mine where 10 workers have been trapped for more than a week.

"We have all the conditions to go down there today... to search for and rescue" the miners, said Laura Velazquez, the civil defense national coordinator, during President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's morning press conference.

Velazquez said the rescue operation will become possible once "97 percent of the water" has been extracted from the 50-meter deep mine in the town of Agujita in the northern Coahuila state.

"The necessary resources for the search and rescue have been prepared," she added.

The water level in one of the three wells in which rescuers will try to enter has been brought down to just 70 centimeters (27 inches), from a high of 30 meters (98 feet) the day after the accident that flooded the mine, Defense Minister Luis Cresensio Sandoval said.

The other two wells still have 3.9 and 4.7 meters of water.

Authorities consider 1.5 meters to be an acceptable water level to gain access to the crudely constructed El Pinabete mine.

"In any case, we're going to continue pumping.... The process is slow but we don't want to take any risks," added Velazquez.

Since the August 3 accident, there have been no signs of life from the 10 miners trapped inside.

Five miners managed to escape following the initial accident, in which workers carrying out excavation activities hit an adjoining area full of water.


Several hundred rescuers, including soldiers and military scuba divers, are taking part in efforts to save the miners, whose relatives held a vigil Thursday night for those trapped underground.

© 2022 AFP

Poaching of 'status symbol' date mussels threatens Italy's coasts

Agence France-Presse
August 12, 2022

Calcareous rock is gutted by hundreds of holes chiseled by poachers to extract date mussels Andreas SOLARO AFP

Off the rocky coast of southeastern Italy, two scuba divers from the financial crimes police bob in and out of the blue waters, under the curious gaze of vacationers.

They're seeking neither buried treasure nor smuggled contraband, but evidence of the hunt for date mussels, a forbidden mollusc turned status symbol whose poaching is indelibly destroying Italy's coastlines.

The signs are unmistakeable.

Just below the surface, the calcareous rock that is home to countless organisms is gutted by hundreds of manmade holes -- proof that unscrupulous poachers have chiseled, crushed and blasted the reef to extract the bivalves burrowed inside.

"These men put on their oxygen tanks and masks, go down... with hammer and chisel and start to break the rock," said Arcangelo Raffaele Gennari, commander of the Guardia di Finanza in Puglia's port city of Monopoli.

"There have been cases in which we've seized mini jackhammers," he told AFP during a recent visit.

"Even explosives have been used."

Fueling the trade are the soaring black-market prices for the narrow brown "Lithophaga lithophaga", said to boast a delicate oyster-like flavor, which can cost nearly 200 euros ($205) per kilo.

Poachers supply fish markets or restaurant owners who sell under the table to high rollers -- including cash-rich mafiosi -- flaunting their wealth at Sunday lunches with a raw seafood platter or extravagant spaghetti.

"If you think that in an hour and a half, two hours, if you find the right spot you manage to take out eight or nine kilos... you've made an exorbitant amount of money in one day," said Gennari.

Denuded reefs

Thirty years ago, marine biologist Stefano Piraino and colleagues discovered that more than 40 percent of Puglia's Ionian coast was extensively damaged due to date mussel harvesting.

That research led to Italy's 1998 law prohibiting their collection, sale and consumption, followed by a 2006 EU-wide ban.

Returning this year to the same areas as part of a government-funded project, Piraino has so far found fewer sites showing recent damage but has little hope for reefs already destroyed.

Time alone does not heal the "all white, denuded" rock surface devoid of life, he said: "It's a devastating impact".

Date mussels' painfully slow growth cycle -- taking three decades to grow just five centimeters -- means that once taken, they're not soon replaced.

But more critical is the impact on the delicate marine ecosystem, where not only the reef but all the organisms dependent on it are destroyed.

A 2019 study by Naples' Parthenope University found an average of 1,500 manmade holes per square meter in the reefs of the south-western Sorrento Peninsula, damage that ultimately causes the rock to collapse entirely and harm the seabed below.

Researchers are examining ways to help reefs recover, including removing sea urchins, whose grazing prevents new vegetation from growing on rocks, or planting seedlings of tiny organisms in hopes they will propagate.

But the problem goes beyond Italy, warned Piraino, who called for more education and enforcement throughout the Mediterranean.

A search of TripAdvisor.com found date mussels mentioned by reviewers or shown in photographs as recently as last year in restaurants in Albania, Slovenia and Montenegro, where they are illegal but more easily found.

Environmental disaster

In March, environmental groups hailed a six-year prison sentence for the head of a criminal ring operating in protected areas near Naples and the island of Capri -- the first-ever conviction for the crime of "environmental disaster" related to date mussels.

"Attacking the ecosystem isn't like selling drugs," said Mariagiorgia De Gennaro, a lawyer for maritime non-profit Marevivo, a party to the case.

"It's a domino effect that has an irreversible impact."

Authorities are increasingly clamping down on every part of the chain, from fishermen to restauranteurs and even consumers.

Last year Puglia seized 97 tons of illegal seafood, including date mussels, the most in Italy, according to environmental group Legambiente.

Most illegal fishing offenses occur in Sicily, Puglia and Campania.

Last month, a video went viral of a man on a beach near Naples hammering a rock to extract the molluscs in full view of sunbathers.

More commonly, perpetrators -- usually a diver, helper and lookout -- operate at dusk or just before dawn.

"It's a niche market operating in the ultimate secrecy," said police commander Gennari.

But authorities cannot win the battle as long as there remains a willing market from consumers.

"When you eat a plate of linguini with date mussels, a whole square meter of ecosystem has been destroyed," Piraino said.

© 2022 AFP

GLOBALIZATION MEANS IT IS STILL CHEAPER TO FLY PEI MUSSELS FROM CANADA TO ITALY

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Former Florida GOP lawmaker caught up in FBI investigation into multi-million dollar 'bilking' of taxpayers: report

Tom Boggioni
August 12, 2022

Allen Bense (Photo via Florida State University)

According to a report from the Palm Beach Post, a former Florida Republican lawmaker who served as Speaker of the House is under investigation and accused of ripping off taxpayers to the tune of millions after a company he heads reportedly submitted invoices for hurricane clean-up that was never done.

Allan Bense, who served in the state legislature from 1998 to 2006 where he rose to speaker before being replaced by Marco Rubio, is one of the subjects mentioned in an investigation into GAC Contractors according to court documents.

According to the report, the investigation centers around "millions" billed to local governments in 2018 for Hurricane Michael clean-up.

"The company’s top executives, including Bense and its late CEO Derwin White, commanded its crews to visit work sites with equipment but not perform any work, and then billed Bay County, the school district and other government municipalities, federal investigators allege in an affidavit filed with a search warrant carried out last year at the company’s headquarters," the report states before adding, "Federal law enforcement authorities, in the affidavit, said that Bense and White ordered GAC's workers to clean up their own homes or properties and that of other top public officials, including state Sen. George Gainer, Lynn Haven City Attorney Adam Albritton's house and Bay County School Superintendent Bill Husfelt, among others."

The report adds, "The search warrant itself called for government review of any and all records, documents and supporting documentation relating to owner account expenditures and accounting entries for Derwin White and Allan Bense."

"Bense, who served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1998 to 2006 and as House Speaker between 2004-06, has been a managing partner of GAC Contractors, alongside Derwin White, since 1996. This year he is listed by the Florida Division of Corporations as the company's chairman," the Post is reporting.

ICYMI

Cognitive biases and brain biology help explain why facts don’t change minds
The Conversation
August 12, 2022

Human anatomy illustration, central nervous system with a visible brain (Shutterstock)

“Facts First” is the tagline of a CNN branding campaign which contends that “once facts are established, opinions can be formed.” The problem is that while it sounds logical, this appealing assertion is a fallacy not supported by research.

Cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies have found that the exact opposite is often true when it comes to politics: People form opinions based on emotions, such as fear, contempt and anger, rather than relying on facts. New facts often do not change people’s minds.

I study human development, public health and behavior change. In my work, I see firsthand how hard it is to change someone’s mind and behaviors when they encounter new information that runs counter to their beliefs.Your worldview, including beliefs and opinions, starts to form during childhood as you’re socialized within a particular cultural context. It gets reinforced over time by the social groups you keep, the media you consume, even how your brain functions. It influences how you think of yourself and how you interact with the world.

For many people, a challenge to their worldview feels like an attack on their personal identity and can cause them to harden their position. Here’s some of the research that explains why it’s natural to resist changing your mind – and how you can get better at making these shifts.

Rejecting what contradicts your beliefs

In an ideal world, rational people who encounter new evidence that contradicts their beliefs would evaluate the facts and change their views accordingly. But that’s generally not how things go in the real world.

Partly to blame is a cognitive bias that can kick in when people encounter evidence that runs counter to their beliefs. Instead of reevaluating what they’ve believed up until now, people tend to reject the incompatible evidence. Psychologists call this phenomenon belief perseverance. Everyone can fall prey to this ingrained way of thinking.

Being presented with facts – whether via the news, social media or one-on-one conversations – that suggest their current beliefs are wrong causes people to feel threatened. This reaction is particularly strong when the beliefs in question are aligned with your political and personal identities. It can feel like an attack on you if one of your strongly held beliefs is challenged.

Confronting facts that don’t line up with your worldview may trigger a “backfire effect,” which can end up strengthening your original position and beliefs, particularly with politically charged issues. Researchers have identified this phenomenon in a number of studies, including ones about opinions toward climate change mitigation policies and attitudes toward childhood vaccinations.

Focusing on what confirms your beliefs

There’s another cognitive bias that can get in the way of changing your mind, called confirmation bias. It’s the natural tendency to seek out information or interpret things in a way that supports your existing beliefs. Interacting with like-minded people and media reinforces confirmation bias. The problem with confirmation bias is that it can lead to errors in judgment because it keeps you from looking at a situation objectively from multiple angles.

A 2016 Gallup poll provides a great example of this bias. In just one two-week period spanning the 2016 election, both Republicans and Democrats drastically changed their opinions about the state of the economy – in opposite directions.

But nothing was new with the economy. What had changed was that a new political leader from a different party had been elected. The election outcome changed survey respondents’ interpretation of how the economy was doing – a confirmation bias led Republicans to rate it much higher now that their guy would be in charge; Democrats the opposite.

Brain’s hard-wiring doesn’t help

Cognitive biases are predictable patterns in the way people think that can keep you from objectively weighing evidence and changing your mind. Some of the basic ways your brain works can also work against you on this front.


It can feel really satisfying to get the better of an opponent, even if you’re not actually right.

Rob Lewine/Tetra images via Getty Images

Your brain is hard-wired to protect you – which can lead to reinforcing your opinions and beliefs, even when they’re misguided. Winning a debate or an argument triggers a flood of hormones, including dopamine and adrenaline. In your brain, they contribute to the feeling of pleasure you get during sex, eating, roller-coaster rides – and yes, winning an argument. That rush makes you feel good, maybe even invulnerable. It’s a feeling many people want to have more often.

Moreover, in situations of high stress or distrust, your body releases another hormone, cortisol. It can hijack your advanced thought processes, reason and logic – what psychologists call the executive functions of your brain. Your brain’s amygdala becomes more active, which controls your innate fight-or-flight reaction when you feel under threat.

In the context of communication, people tend to raise their voice, push back and stop listening when these chemicals are coursing through their bodies. Once you’re in that mindset, it’s hard to hear another viewpoint. The desire to be right combined with the brain’s protective mechanisms make it that much harder to change opinions and beliefs, even in the presence of new information.

You can train yourself to keep an open mind

In spite of the cognitive biases and brain biology that make it hard to change minds, there are ways to short-circuit these natural habits.

Work to keep an open mind. Allow yourself to learn new things. Search out perspectives from multiple sides of an issue. Try to form, and modify, your opinions based on evidence that is accurate, objective and verified.

Don’t let yourself be swayed by outliers. For example, give more weight to the numerous doctors and public health officials who describe the preponderance of evidence that vaccines are safe and effective than what you give to one fringe doctor on a podcast who suggests the opposite.

Be wary of repetition, as repeated statements are often perceived as more truthful than new information, no matter how false the claim may be. Social media manipulators and politicians know this all too well.

Presenting things in a nonconfrontational way allows people to evaluate new information without feeling attacked. Insulting others and suggesting someone is ignorant or misinformed, no matter how misguided their beliefs may be, will cause the people you are trying to influence to reject your argument. Instead, try asking questions that lead the person to question what they believe. While opinions may not ultimately change, the chance of success is greater.

Recognize we all have these tendencies and respectfully listen to other opinions. Take a deep breath and pause when you feel your body ramping up for a fight. Remember, it’s OK to be wrong at times. Life can be a process of growth.

Keith M. Bellizzi, Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Connecticut

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

Why the Republican insurgency will not be a second civil war

John Stoehr
August 11, 2022

Supporters of President Donald Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol 

in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021.

 - Yuri Gripas/Yuri Gripas/TNS

A pattern emerged in the hours after the FBI lawfully searched the Florida home of the former president. Indeed, it was deeply familiar.
It goes something like this.

When Bad Thing X happens to Donald Trump – and, given who we’re talking about, there’s always a Bad Thing X – it’s actually Good Thing Y, because it’ll arouse the resentments of his supporters. It doesn’t matter what Bad Thing X is. What matters, for the purposes of propaganda, is that this pattern is used at Trump’s convenience. And, given who we’re talking about, that convenience has come in handy.

READ MORE: Trust the plan': QAnon conspiracy theorists believe Mar-a-Lago search will benefit Trump

But what started as convenience, effective though it may have been, has evolved into a habit, which has evolved into a tic, which has evolved into a tell. Whenever someone says Bad Thing X is actually Good Thing Y, we can have confidence that it’s no such thing.

A new civil war?

After the FBI searched the former president’s home for secret government documents that, according to the Wall Street Journal, he would not surrender voluntarily, online chatter among his supporters tsunamied, according to Vice News, into calls for a new civil war.

“A total war on dissidents is about to unfold,” wrote an anonymous member of a far-right channel on Telegram, Vice reported. “Not behind closed doors but blatantly, in public. Attacks on Alex Jones, Trump, and Patriot Day defendants are only setting the precedent for the future of us as the only opposition to the Deep State.”

READ MORE: Republicans in freefall over FBI seizure of Congressman's phone

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a J6 seditionary who asked Trump for a pardon, said that, “This is the rogue behavior of communist countries, NOT the United States of America!!! These are the type of things that happen in countries during civil war.”

A respectable white journalist said: “It’s true that ours is a government of laws, not of men, and that nobody — not even a president — is exempted from those laws. It’s also true that we are now closer to civil war than we have been at any time since 1865.”

Stuck and stayed stuck

After news broke, the Washington press corps, as if incapable of breaking past bad habits, immediately fell into wondering how the former president’s supporters would react to the FBI’s search, and whether it might make his grip on the Republican Party tighter.

It won’t.

The only time Bad Thing X turned out to be Good Thing Y was when all things Trump were weighed against all things Hillary Clinton. Yeah, OK, he’s a pussy grabber, people would say, but at least he’s not the subject of an FBI investigation over handling state secrets.

Since then, every Bad Thing X has remained a Bad Thing. For all of his ballyhooed Teflon-coating, everything has stuck and stayed stuck. Anyway, now he’s the one who’s the subject of such an investigation.

“Take our country back”

You might say that’s peachy, but it doesn’t mean his supporters won’t act violently. To which, I’d say you’re absolutely right.

But before we allow fear of civil war to affect our minds, allow me to remind you that we’ve been in a soft one-sided civil war since the mid-1990s, and that that soft one-sided civil war has been getting harder, especially since the election of the first Black president.

As I wrote last week, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich opened the doors of the Republican Party to mutinous paramilitaries who had already made plans to attack and overthrow the US government.

Along with the GOP House sweep of 1994, Gingrich brought with him a new and “decidedly insurrectionist interpretation of the Second Amendment, namely that the founders had written the amendment precisely so that individual citizens would have guns to use against government tyrants,” wrote historian James R. Skillen in 2021.

That faction, to whom guns equaled rule by right of melanin, grew rapidly after Sept. 11 and again after a multiracial democracy, from the ashes of the Iraq War, created conditions for President Obama.

In one way or another, every shooting massacre since then – from Sandy Hook to Highland Park – has been a white-power reaction punctuating a long-term insurgent effort to “take our country back.”

Theory of government

The Second Amendment wasn’t the only thing to receive a “new, decidedly insurrectionist interpretation” during this period.

So did the Republican Party’s theory of government.

Instead of being for the people, the federal government was seen as being against the people. Instead of being by the people, the federal government was seen as being by rich white Christian men who also believed America was a gift from God and they were His majordomos.

One consequence has been, over the years, a slow-motion bleed-out of the federal government such that now it can hardly collect the taxes owed and hidden by these same rich white Christian men.

Meanwhile, the ideological roots of this “new, decidedly insurrectionist interpretation” of the Second Amendment and the federal government have grown so deeply that there’s no other idea remaining in the GOP that’s robust enough to compete with it.

So when Trump’s paramilitaries smashed into the US Capitol in a bid to take over a government that their allies had bled for years, it wasn’t a disaster. It was just another white-power reaction punctuating a long-term insurgent effort to “take our country back.”

The Republican insurgency


This brings us to a couple of conclusions.

On the one hand, future violence will be part of a pattern of regular though intermittent violence that has been with us for years.

On the other hand, it won’t be a civil war, as such. It will be violence of the lone wolf variety that, again, has been with us for years.

Takeaway: It’s not a civil war. It’s an insurgency – like wildcat terrorists planting roadside bombs to kill Iraqis and otherwise throw the Iraqi government into chaos. The Republican insurgency has been building for decades, first outside the party, then from the inside.

It reacted and grew after Sept. 11. It reacted and grew after 2008. It reacted and grew after the Republican Party welcomed efforts by the Russian government to contribute to a long-term insurgent effort to “take our country back” by sabotaging Trump’s campaign opponent.

And by the time Trump called on them to attack, they had been standing back and standing by long before Trump asked them to.

They don’t mean it

As I said at the top, we can have confidence that Bad Thing X isn’t going to become Good Thing Y, because, since the moment Donald Trump arrived at the White House, that’s never been true.

So when they say civil war is coming, on account of something they don’t like, they don’t mean it. They can’t. They don’t have the numbers. They don’t have the courage. They sure as hell don’t have the attention span required to prosecute a war, civil or otherwise. They don’t have anything to justify using the words “civil war.”

But they do have guns.

They do have plenty of white Christian men, who, though not rich, believe multiracial democracy is robbing them of their birthright.

READ MORE: 'Lock and load': MAGA extremists lash out after Mar-a-Lago search

John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.

THIRD WORLD U$A
Food pantry for Disney employees still fights hunger as donations fall

2022/8/13 
© Orlando Sentinel

A statue of Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse outside the entrance to Cinderella's Castle at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. - Libo Tang/Dreamstime/TNS

Hit with a hefty dental bill, a Disney employee faced the choice of paying it or buying groceries.

Another Disney worker’s infant son was diagnosed with food allergies and needed a specific, pricey formula when formula shortages were intensifying nationwide. The family found the bulk of their grocery budget was going toward feeding him.

Both came to a Disney employee food bank called Cast Member Pantry for help. The nonprofit organization is not affiliated with the company, though Disney has donated money to it, founder Emily Lartigue said.

Similar stories of people facing financial difficulties are becoming more common as food, housing and other costs have soared to record highs in recent months. Though a historic increase raised the theme park’s minimum wage to $15 an hour in October 2021, union leaders say inflation has offset workers’ gains, and many are struggling to pay their bills.

“A lot of it does have to do with inflation, the rising costs of rents — just being able to afford to live somewhere in Orlando right now is tough,” Lartigue said.

But as the need has remained strong, donations have fallen at the pantry, which relies entirely on gifts, Lartigue said. She said that could be due to tightening budgets or a lack of awareness of the ongoing need.

Cast Member Pantry, founded in March 2020 to serve Disney employees furloughed or laid-off because of the pandemic, has not yet had to turn away anyone for lack of donations thanks to careful financing. Pantry volunteers have become savvy coupon cutters to save money where possible, Lartigue said, and the organization is looking into applying for grants.

“The only concern is what the future looks like: for how long we are going to be able to continue serving cast members?” Lartigue said.

When asked about the pantry and workers’ perspectives on pay, Disney pointed to its array of employee benefits and its development of 1,300 affordable housing units for employees and others.

“For our Cast Members, we continue to make significant and personal investments to employee careers and lives through benefits like our 100% tuition payment Disney Aspire program, affordable health care plans, paid time off and more, building on our earlier success leading a community standard for a $15 an hour starting wage,” spokeswoman Andrea Finger said in a statement.

Lartigue said Disney hosted a community support program in mid-2021 where employees could donate via a payroll deduction, with the company matching their contributions.

The amount was “very significant,” she said, but Disney asked her to keep the number private. Disney would not comment on the donation.

Gathering first groceries

Lartigue, a former organization development consultant for Disney’s Parks, Experiences and Products division, founded Cast Member Pantry after helping laid-off Disney College Program participants move out of their Walt Disney World housing and realizing the groceries they left behind could be put to use.

She loaded her car with the food and advertised it on social media to fellow Disney employees, starting the first distribution. Donations grew from a trunk load of groceries to a garage full and eventually enough to fill a storage unit staffed by dozens of volunteers, many current or former Disney employees.

The pantry started inviting employees to shop at the storage unit by appointment that March. Once volunteers identified the top groceries people needed, they started assembling bags with necessities and distributing them in July 2020.

The pantry was able to serve around 300 workers weekly that way, Lartigue said. She estimated it has distributed around 8,000 bags of groceries to nearly 6,000 families to date.

“It’s a really special thing,” she said.

Now, it delivers food directly to employees through the grocery service Instacart, eliminating the potential hurdle of transportation for recipients. It still has a small storage unit for fundraisers and events instead of food.

“I really think that’s just the future of food pantries in general, right? It’s utilizing technology and making things as easy as it can be to help individuals in need,” Lartigue said.

Cast members in Florida, California and Hawaii can register for distributions once per month via the pantry’s website or social media pages. Workers are eligible for a free delivery once the organization verifies their employment status.

The pantry budgets about $65 per family for a delivery, including Instacart fees. That total cost has risen by $10, or about 18%, in recent months due to inflation, Lartigue said.

“We try to be really, really frugal where we can to get them the most bang for their buck,” she said.

The pantry accepts donations through its website and is always looking for volunteers, Lartigue said. She hopes it can officially partner with Disney someday for further support.

‘Max out my credit cards’

Though Disney’s starting wages range from $15 to $21 per hour depending on the position — rates that influenced other local employers, like Universal, to raise their pay — Disney’s union members say that isn’t enough as costs climb.

Kadejha Reid, who works in quick service food at Harambe Market in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, said her income cannot feed herself and her young son.

“I do not qualify for food stamps,” she said. “I was denied four times because I make ‘too much money,’ and the $15 that I do have is not enough. I had to max out my credit cards that I had and even open a new credit card.”

Reid shared her story during a recent roundtable discussion with Orange County Commissioner Maribel Gomez Cordero hosted by Unite Here Local 737. The union ran a food bank for Disney workers during the first year of the pandemic, when many were furloughed or had been laid off, but closed it in 2021.

Tiara Moton, a cook at theBe Our Guest restaurant at the Magic Kingdom, said she struggles to afford basic groceries, like milk, for herself and her nearly 3-year-old daughter. The restaurant charges $62 per adult.

“We can’t keep living like this,” she said. “... They say, ‘work harder, work harder.’ You could work yourself to death and still have nothing to show for it. I don’t want to be working every day and then I go home and I have nothing left to give to my child; I have nothing left to give myself.”

The discussion came as the union coalition representing Disney’s workers, the Service Trades Council Union, is preparing to renegotiate its contract with Disney this fall. Pay and benefits are a priority in these negotiations, union leaders said.

Lartigue remembers living paycheck-to-paycheck early in her Disney career and agrees that employees should be paid more. But she said low pay is not unique to Disney and is something workers are fighting across all industries.

“I don’t like placing the blame on one company,” she said. “I really think that’s a broader problem that has to be addressed at a larger level.”

AMERICAN RELIGION OF PATRIARCHY & MISOGYNY

Southern Baptist Convention leadership under DOJ investigation

Matthew Chapman
August 12, 2022

Reading the Bible (Shutterstock)


On Friday, Christianity Today reported that the Justice Department has opened a federal investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention over allegations that leadership hushed up allegations of sexual abuse.

"The SBC Executive Committee confirmed on Friday that the Justice Department 'has initiated an investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention, and that the investigation will include multiple SBC entities,'" reported Kate Shellnutt. "The general counsel for the Executive Committee — which oversees day-to-day business for the convention and was the subject of the SBC’s own abuse investigation — said the EC has received a subpoena, but no individuals have been subpoenaed at this point."

"“While we continue to grieve and lament past mistakes related to sexual abuse, current leaders across the SBC have demonstrated a firm conviction to address those issues of the past and are implementing measures to ensure they are never repeated in the future,” said the SBC in a statement vowing to cooperate with federal investigators.

"An independent investigation by Guidepost Solutions into the EC, released in May 2022, found that over the past 20 years, its leaders had compiled a secret list of more than 700 abusive pastors and mistreated the victims who asked them for help," said the report. "The investigation, which cost over $2 million, spanned 330 interviews and five terabytes of documents collected over eight months."

The Southern Baptist Convention is one of several major Christian denominations facing such allegations.

For years, the Roman Catholic Church has been accused of shuffling around priests who abused children, with former Pope Benedict XVI even admitting — after years of denial — that he mishandled multiple abuse cases while he was archbishop of Munich, Germany. Another recent report revealed that leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was aware of child abuse cases and had a policy of keeping them concealed.

Monkeypox conspiracy theories may be spreading faster than the virus, survey reveals

Vacutainer with monkeypox blood sample for testing. 

(© blackday - stock.adobe.com)

AUGUST 3, 2022
by Matt Higgins

PHILADELPHIA — As if dealing with a deadly pandemic isn’t bad enough, another virus has now exploded onto the scene. The World Health Organization declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency in July 2022, as cases are rising across the United States and throughout the world. While many people may fear they’ll contract the virus, it turns out few actually know all the facts about monkeypox.

Even though monkeypox has come to the public forefront and has been blasted across the news, a new national survey from the Annenberg Public Police Center finds that many Americans know little about the virus. Overall, 80 percent have seen, read, or heard something about monkeypox in the past month.

While one in five are concerned about contracting monkeypox, 48 percent don’t know whether monkeypox is more or less contagious than COVID-19. Another 66 percent are not sure or don’t believe there is a monkeypox vaccine, even though there is.

“It’s important that the public calibrate its concerns to the reality of the risk of COVID-19 and monkeypox and act appropriately,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, in a media release.

Monkeypox, discovered in 1958, is a less deadly member of the same family of viruses as smallpox. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the virus is transmitted by direct contact with an infectious skin lesion, scabs, body fluids, respiratory secretions, infected animals, or by touching items contaminated by infectious body fluids.

Worry about contracting monkeypox or Covid-19 over the next three months. Asked of 1,580 adults on the Annenberg Public Policy Center ASK survey, July 12-18, 2022. CREDIT: Annenberg Public Policy Center

Pathways to infection are a mystery to many

The survey reveals that many Americans are familiar with monkeypox but lack information about the disease and how to protect themselves. Sixty-nine percent of respondents know that monkeypox usually spreads by close contact with an infected person, however 26 percent are not sure whether that is true or false. Only 34 percent said they know that a monkeypox vaccine exists.

Fourteen percent incorrectly believe that monkeypox is as contagious as COVID, while only 36 percent correctly said that monkeypox is less contagious.

When asked about monkeypox and the COVID-19 vaccine, 67 percent think that getting the COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t increase the likelihood of contracting monkeypox. However, 28 percent were not sure. Researchers say there is no evidence that this is true.

Researchers also asked survey takers if they thought people working with animals have a higher risk of contracting monkeypox. A third said no, nine percent said yes, and 57 percent were not sure.

Another survey question revolved around the concern that there’s a higher risk of infection for men who have sex with other men. Thirty-three percent of Americans said yes, while 66 percent either said this is false or they did not know. The WHO says that most cases outside of Africa during this outbreak have been mainly among men who have sex with other men.

“The time to reduce susceptibility to misinformation about monkeypox is now,” notes Jamieson. “It is critically important that public health professionals offer anxious individuals accurate information about the ways in which this virus is transmitted and infection prevented. Vaccinating those who are at higher risk should be a national priority.”

Monkeypox conspiracy theories are already circulating

Jamieson adds that there are a number of Americans who have embraced conspiracy theories about monkeypox. The survey found that 34 percent are not sure if monkeypox was bioengineered in a lab and 12 percent believe that this is probably or definitely true. However, over half of Americans rejected that conspiracy.

Fourteen percent believe monkeypox was intentionally released into the global population, while 30 percent say they aren’t sure. One in 10 think it’s “probably or definitely true” that scientists released the virus to deflect attention away from the failures of the Biden Administration, while 19 percent are not sure. Another 21 percent of respondents are unsure if monkeypox infections are the result of 5G exposure.

“As one would expect, conspiracy theorists have incorporated monkeypox into their pre-existing beliefs that, instead of emerging through natural processes, a spreading virus must have been bioengineered, intentionally released to accomplish a political objective, or is the byproduct of exposure to a pervasive new technology such as 5G,” says Jamieson.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center surveyed 1,580 American adults from July 12-18.