Scientists Believe Evolution Could Save Coral Reefs, If We Let It

Research shows protecting “hot reefs” is key to saving coral reefs

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

Coral reefs can adapt to climate change if given the chance to evolve, according to a study led by Coral Reef Alliance, Rutgers University, the University of Washington and other institutions.

The recent study, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, finds that coral reefs can evolve and adapt to the effects of climate change—but only if we protect a sufficient diversity of coral reefs, particularly when it comes to temperatures.

“Evolution happens when corals that have already adapted to new environmental conditions breed with corals that have not yet adapted,” said Malin Pinsky, associate professor at Rutgers and a coauthor of the study. “As ocean temperatures rise, we need to keep corals in hotter waters healthy and protected so they can reproduce and spread their heat tolerance to other coral reef areas.” 

The study advocates for a conservation approach that protects coral reefs at local, regional and global scales, in a way that allows heat tolerance to spread.

The authors of the study said if humanity takes rapid and effective action to keep coral reefs healthy at local scales and addresses climate change, coral reef ecosystems may recover over the next century and thrive in the future. 

“The best part about these results are that they underscore the importance of our actions at local scales—we don’t have to just sit back and watch coral reefs suffer as our climate changes,” said Madhavi Colton, lead author of the study and former executive director of the Coral Reef Alliance. “This study provides guidance on how to design local conservation solutions that will have real, lasting impacts well into the future.” 

Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the earth’s surface, but they are one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on our planet. Home to about 25 percent of all marine life, coral reefs support an estimated one billion people with food, income and coastal protection. But threats to coral reefs continue to mount. Today, nearly 75 percent of all coral reefs are threatened by climate change and localized human activities.

Scientists predict 99 percent of coral reefs will be lost by the end of this century without concerted efforts to protect them.

“We simply cannot afford to lose coral reefs,” said Helen Fox, conservation science director at the Coral Reef Alliance and a collaborating author on the study. “It is imperative that we do what we can to save coral reefs now because we will be faced with combined global economic, humanitarian, and biodiversity crises if we do not.” 

The study was co-authored by Malin Pinsky, associate professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at Rutgers University, as well as Lisa McManus, who conducted the work as a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University and is now faculty at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology, and researchers from Coral Reef Alliance, University of Washington, Stanford University, University of Queensland, University of British Columbia and The Nature Conservancy. The research was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and The Nature Conservancy.

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JOURNAL

Nature Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1038/s41559-022-01854-4 

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Sep-2022

Groundbreaking discovery from South Africa challenges the recent re-interpretation of magma chambers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND

 

IMAGE: PROF RAIS LATYPOV AND DR SOFYA CHISTYAKOVA view more 

CREDIT: N/A

Professor Rais Latypov from the School of Geosciences at Wits University and his research team have found field evidence for the existence of a 5-km-thick totally molten chamber within the ancient crust of South Africa. This suggests that a super-large, entirely molten and long-lived magma chambers occur, at least, in deep geological time, and that the classical view of ‘big magma tanks’ remains relevant.

The classical petrological view that magma chambers occur as ‘big tanks’ has faced some doubt in recent years, owing to a lack of conclusive evidence from geophysical surveys. In addition, thermal modelling indicates that the formation of a large magma body within the upper crust is physically problematic. These studies have concluded that molten magma chambers are either transient or non-existent in the geological history of the Earth.

“Although, modern geophysical surveys are indeed unable to conclusively identify any present-day magma chambers with a large volume of eruptible melt, it is too early to discard the existence of such chambers in Earth’s crust. In our study we present the ground-truth observations indicating that one of these large and molten chambers existed in the ancient Earth's crust of South Africa” says Professor Latypov. Latypov and his team’s findings have been published as a paper in Scientific Reports.     

Latypov asserts that the size of the resident melt column in the Bushveld chamber at one stage was “really staggering — over 5 km in thickness and over 380,000 km3 in volume. This amount of magma is several orders of magnitude larger than any known super-eruptions in the Earth’s history.” It is only comparable to the extrusive volume of some of the Earth’s large igneous provinces such as the Karoo flood basalts in South Africa.  

Key evidence comes from the Bushveld Complex in which the temporary chamber floor was found to gradually rise through a 4-km-high sloping step.  “Such development of magmatic layering implies that the resident melt column was thicker than the stepped relief of the chamber floor. This discovery is arguably the most fundamental constraint on the thickness of the resident melt column that has been ever derived from field mapping in fossilized magma chambers”, argues Dr. Sofya Chistyakova from Wits University.

It is quite conceivable that such magma chambers have developed throughout the entire Earth’s history. Even if some regions of the Earth’s crust are lacking such chambers, this does not automatically mean that ‘big tank’ magma chambers are absent from other regions.  

“Since layered intrusions — such as the Bushveld Complex — are rare throughout geological time, it is not surprising that geophysicists cannot now detect active examples of large and molten magma chambers in Earth’s crust”, says Chistyakova.    

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41598-022-19915 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A 5-km-thick reservoir with > 380,000 km3 of magma within the ancient Earth's crust

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Sep-2022

Why does nature create patterns? A physicist explains the molecular-level processes behind crystals, stripes and basalt columns

The Conversation
September 21, 2022

Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland features around 40,000 exposed polygonal columns of basalt in perfect horizontal sections. 

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Why does nature always create a pattern? – Saloni G., age 16, Alwar, Rajasthan, India

The reason patterns often appear in nature is simple: The same basic physical or chemical processes occur in many patterned substances and organisms as they form. Whether in plants and animals or rocks, foams and ice crystals, the intricate patterns that happen in nature come down to what’s happening at the level of atoms and molecules.

A pattern in nature is any regularly repeated arrangement of shapes or colors. Some of the most striking examples include the hexagonal arrays of rocks at Giant’s Causeway in the United Kingdom, the beautiful fractal arrangements of florets on a Romanesco broccoli and the colorful stripes and spots on tropical fish.




Each bud of a Romanesco broccoli bunch is composed of a series of smaller buds, arranged in a consistent spiral pattern.
Creativ Studio Heinemann/Westend61 via Getty Images

Patterns like these begin to form at a small scale when materials undergo processes like drying, freezing, wrinkling, diffusing and reacting. Those changes then give rise to complex patterns at a larger scale that people can see.

Patterns in ice and rock

Imagine delicate frozen crystals on a windowpane during a cold day. What creates that pattern?

When water freezes, its molecules begin clustering together. Water molecules have a particular bent shape that causes them to stack into clusters shaped like hexagons as they freeze.

As the cluster grows, many outside factors, including humidity and temperature, begin to affect its overall shape. If the water is freezing on a windowpane, for example, small and random imperfections on the glass surface redirect the stacking and create the larger pattern.


Ice crystals on an old window in Norway.
Baac3nes/Moment via Getty Images

This same process of stacking molecules is responsible for the striking variety of snowflake shapes.

What about the amazing patterns of the basalt columns at Giant’s Causeway? These formed 50 million to 60 million years ago, as lava – hot rocky fluid from deep underground – rose to the Earth’s surface and began to lose heat. The cooling caused the top layer of basalt to contract. The deeper, hot layers resisted this pulling, creating cracks in the top layer.

As the lava cooled, the cracks spread deeper and deeper into the rock. The particular molecular qualities of basalt, as well as the basic physics of how materials fracture apart – laws of physics universal to all substances on Earth – caused the cracks to meet up with one another at certain angles to create hexagons, much like the stacking water molecules.

Eventually, the cooling basalt broke into the hexagon-shaped columns of rock that still create such an impressive pattern millions of years later.

Patterns in animals

The creation of complex patterns in living organisms also begins with simple mechanisms at the molecular level. One important pattern-making process involves the way diffusing chemicals react with one another.

Imagine how a drop of food coloring spreads in a glass of water – that’s diffusion


Drops of blue dye at different stages of diffusion in water.
Science Photo Library via Getty Images


In 1952, English mathematician Alan Turing showed that a chemical spreading like this within another chemical can lead to the formation of all kinds of patterns in nature.

Scientists have proved that this process reproduces the patterns of a leopard’s spots, a zebra’s stripes and many other animal markings.


A tiger’s stripes can help it blend in with the surrounding environment – making it harder for prey to see.
Sourabh Bharti/iStock via Getty Images Plus

What makes these markings consistent from generation to generation? As animal species evolved, these chemical reactions evolved with them and became part of their genetic codes. This might be because the markings helped them survive. For example, a tiger’s stripes camouflage it while hunting in a forest or grassland, making it easier to surprise and catch its prey.

However, researchers are still working out the details of which particular chemicals are involved.

Scientists do not always know the purpose of a pattern, or even if there is one. The molecular processes involved are simple enough that they might coincidentally generate a pattern.

For example, in my research team’s work studying plant pollen grains, we have seen a huge variety of patterns, including spikes, stripes and many more.


The pollen grains of various common plants like sunflower, morning glories, prairie hollyhock, oriental lily, evening primrose and castor bean – magnified 500 times and colorized in this image – display intricate patterns.
Dartmouth Electron Microscope Facility

We don’t yet understand why a plant produces one particular pollen pattern rather than another. Whatever the ultimate use this and other patterns in nature may have, their variety, complexity and order are amazing.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Maxim Lavrentovich, Assistant Professor of Theoretical Biophysics, University of Tennessee

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

Soup kitchens full as battle rages over Italy's poor

Agence France-Presse
September 22, 2022

Mario Conte, who runs the soup kitchen, fears Italy's poverty relief scheme will be scrapped after Sunday's elections

Alberto PIZZOLI AFP

Mario Conte's Salerno soup kitchen serves 140 hot meals every day but as soaring inflation hits Italy's poverty-stricken south, he is struggling to keep up with demand.

And with far-right leader Giorgia Meloni promising to abolish a poverty relief scheme if she wins Sunday's general elections, he fears things will only get worse.

"There will be a flood of people here," he warned as he handed out food at the San Francesco kitchen, not far from Salerno's palm-lined seafront, south of Naples.

The eurozone's third largest economy is suffering a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by Russia's war in Ukraine.

But as usual it is Italy's south, long plagued by poverty and unemployment, which feels it hardest.

"I pay rent, the electricity bill, and then I've got nothing left for food," said 60-year-old Antonio Mela, a former barman who lives with his brother on a 500-euro state pension.

"Everyone is struggling here," he told AFP, as he took servings of pasta, pork and potatoes, and fruit.

Energy is a major concern in a country reliant on Russian gas, particularly here, in the Campania region. According to the Italian Poverty Observatory, the region has the greatest number of people struggling to pay electricity and gas bills.

Citizens' income

Rocco Papa, a spokesman for the Catholic Caritas charity which helps run the kitchen, said there was a "chronic" lack of work in Salerno, where one in 13 people are at risk of extreme poverty.

"The bringing together of many factors, the pandemic, the war, has seriously aggravated the situation," he said.

While this is a familiar story across Europe, Italy, with its low-skilled and rapidly aging population, is unique.

It was the only EU country where inflation-adjusted wages fell between 1990 and 2020, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

It is also one of just six EU countries without a national minimum wage, having instead, since 2019, the so-called "citizens' income".

Nearly 2.5 million people claim this benefit for the jobless, which works out on average at 550 euros a month, costing the state 8.3 billion euros this year.

The majority -- 1.7 million people -- live on Italy's islands or in the south, a region with a large shadow economy and where 10 percent of households live in absolute poverty.

But the benefit has been targeted by fraudsters, and some employers say it makes it impossible for them to find staff. They accuse young people of preferring to pocket easy money for sitting at home.

These payments have become one of the electoral campaign's most divisive issues, to the point that Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy party, which led the last opinion polls, has vowed to ditch the scheme outright.

War on Poverty

"The citizens' income helped hugely," 70-year-old Conte said. For a while, many guests stopped coming.

Rising prices have brought new faces to his door, however: from divorced dads to struggling carers, whose badly paid, off-the-books work is no longer enough.

The number of people using soup kitchens in Salerno has doubled over the past few months, while a Caritas-run canteen in Castellammare outside Naples has seen a three-fold increase.

Conte feeds an extra 10 families with young children each morning.

This benefit was the brainchild of the populist Five Star Movement, which swept to power four years ago after winning big in the south.

Now trailing the right in the polls, Five Star has vowed to make the income "more efficient", to bring in a minimum wage and to tackle the gender pay-gap.

The centre-left Democratic Party (PD) also wants to keep a reformed version of the benefit. It has pledged similar other anti-poverty measures as well as with 500,000 new council houses and free school meals.

Favoring jobs

But for Meloni, the citizens' income is not the solution.

Poverty, she told a rally in Palermo, Sicily this week, "is fought by favoring growth and jobs".

She proposes instead a benefit for those most at risk: disabled people, the over 60s, and struggling families with small children.

Her right-wing coalition, which brings together the anti-immigrant League and right-wing Forza Italia, has also promised tax cuts to boost growth.

The last available polls suggest Five Star and the Democratic Party's support for the citizens' income may once again be winning votes in the south -- although not everyone here backs it.

"Young people have to work," said Mela, as he collected his food from the San Francesco kitchen. "It should be for families, not 30-year-olds.

"And they have to check who's cheating and who's not."

© 2022 AFP

EMOTIONAL PLAGUE

Donald Trump has a dangerous mental illness — and he is spreading it to his followers

Thom Hartmann

RAW STORY
September 21, 2022

Former President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a "Save America" rally. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)


Donald Trump has built a cult around himself. This is dangerous to America and dangerous to democracy.

Cults of personality in governance are broadly incompatible with democracy. They usually erupt in dictatorships where the Great Leader’s face and sayings are splashed all over public places. Think Mao’s China, Stalin’s USSR, Hitler’s Germany, Kim’s North Korea.

On a smaller scale and in a different context, we see how destructive such personality cults can be with the deaths around Jim Jones’ Jonestown, David Koresh’s Branch Davidians, and Charles Manson’s Family.

This is what Donald Trump aspires to.

Back in 2000, Louise and I visited Egypt. Our guide was a retired professor of Egyptology from the largest university in the country, and as we were touring Luxor he pointed out some writing carved fifteen or so feet up a stone wall at the Temple of Karnack.
“This is from when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt,” he told us, as I recall. “It says that Alexander was the child of Amen, the god of all the gods, the one who was so great that even to this day we say his name at the end of prayers.”

“Why would Alexander make that claim?” I asked.

“Because” he said, “it’s a lot easier to seize and hold power when people think you have a connection to their idea of divinity.”

While modern Hebrew scholars may disagree about why “amen” ends our prayers, it was a lesson for me that I’ve kept in mind ever since. Beware of leaders asserting connections to divinity, particularly if they’re grasping for political or financial power.

Trump is now openly encouraging his followers to think of him as divine or, at least, divinely inspired. And this isn’t a new pitch, it’s just getting a new round of attention.

Back in 2019, when Trump actually was president, Dana Milbank noted for The Washington Post:

“On Wednesday morning, he tweeted out with approval a conspiracy theorist’s claim that Israelis view Trump ‘like he’s the King of Israel’ and ‘the second coming of God’ (a theology Jews reject). He shared the conspiracy theorist’s puzzlement that American Jews don’t view him likewise.
“Hours later, he explained why he has taken a tough trade policy against China: ‘I am the chosen one.’”

Followers of the Qanon cult and the Fox “News” cult appear to believe him. And, like those who followed the people mentioned above, it’s tearing apart families, devastating our politics, and causing deaths across the nation.
As a Cleveland newspaper noted a week ago yesterday:
“A man who authorities say killed his wife and dog and seriously wounded his daughter before being shot by police reportedly was depressed by Donald Trump’s loss in the presidential election and became fixated by online conspiracy theories such as QAnon.”

The man’s daughter who avoided being shot, Rebecca Lanis, told The Detroit News:

“It’s really so shocking but it really can happen to anybody. Right-wing extremism is not funny, and people need to watch their relatives and if they have guns, they need to hide them or report them or something because this is out of control.”

And she’s right: it is out of control.

Rational people know that messiahs don’t molest women and brag about it, don’t fleece people with a phony school who just want a college education, don’t encourage racial hatred, and don’t get crowds to try to overturn democracy and kill a policeman.

But Trump isn’t after the rational people. He’s a predator, and his prey are the psychologically and emotionally vulnerable, people crushed by 40 years of Reagan’s neoliberalism, now desperate for simple answers to complex problems.

We should have known when Trump said, in a Charles Manson moment, that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and his followers would still support him.

Charismatic con men can make some people believe anything.

For example, nearly a third of all registered Republicans believe that top-level Democrats are running international child trafficking rings to torture and abuse kids before draining their blood.

Where did this modern-day variation on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion come from?

When I was young my favorite writers were Ernest Hemmingway and Hunter S. Thompson, and my favorite Thompson novel was his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Which is why a caller last year who started on a rant about Democrats harvesting “adrenochrome” from children caused me to both cut him off the air and go back to my copy of the novel to see if my memory was right.


Sure enough, there it was. Thompson was bemoaning running out of hashish and being almost out of opium when his “fat Samoan” sidekick offered an alternative:
“As your attorney,” he said, “I advise you not worry.” He nodded toward the bathroom. “Take a hit out of that little brown bottle in my shaving kit.”
“What is it?”

“Adrenochrome,” he said. “You won’t need much. Just a little tiny taste.”
I got the bottle and dipped the head of a paper match into it.
“That’s about right,” he said. “That stuff makes pure mescaline seem like ginger beer. You’ll go completely crazy if you take too much.”
I licked the end of the match. “Where’d you get this?” I asked. “You can’t buy it.”
“Never mind,” he said. “It’s absolutely pure.”
I shook my head sadly. “Jesus! What kind of monster client have you picked up this time? There’s only one source for this stuff…”

He nodded.
“The adrenaline glands from a living human body,” I said. “It’s no good if you get it out of a corpse.”

When Thompson pushes his “attorney” about where the adrenochrome came from, the fictional character tells the fictional tale of having once been hired to represent a child molester/murderer who’d presumably extracted it from one of his victims:
“Christ, what could I say?” Thompson’s sidekick told him. “Even a goddamn werewolf is entitled to legal counsel. I didn’t dare turn the creep down. He might have picked up a letter opener and gone after my pineal gland.”

That little seed, entirely fictional, planted in the national subconscious back in the early ‘70s, has now blossomed into a full-blown flower of a belief held by literally millions of Americans.

As Rightwing Watch documents, uber-Trump cultist and “journalist” Liz Crokin explains in one of her many videos:
“Adrenochrome is a drug that the elites love. It comes from children. The drug is extracted from the pituitary gland of tortured children. It’s sold on the black market. It’s the drug of the elites. It is their favorite drug. It is beyond evil. It is demonic. It is so sick.”

People who have been ensnared by the QAnon cult and are gullible enough to believe this kind of thing are the explicit targets now in Trump’s crosshairs.

Similarly, when then-OMB Director Mick Mulvaney used the word “pizza” in a televised cabinet meeting, Crokin laid out how she and all the other Trump cultists were being flagged as to the “reality” of a pizza restaurant in a DC suburb being the place where the children were being held prior to being tortured and having their adrenochrome “harvested”:
“President Trump and his staffers are constantly trolling the deep state,” she said of Mulvaney’s reference as Trump nodded in agreement. “That’s President Trump’s way of letting you know that Pizzagate is real and it’s not fake. He’s constantly using their words against them and throwing it in their face and God bless him, it’s amazing.”

And now the cult that Trump has both adopted and built around himself is claiming its victims, as personality cults usually do.

Matthew Taylor Coleman, a 40-year-old Christian surfing school owner, drove his two children, a 3-year-old boy and a nine-month-old girl, to Mexico where he slaughtered them with a spear-fishing gun.

His children “were going to grow into monsters so he had to kill them,” said federal officials handling the investigation. Coleman told police that killing his kids was “the only course of action that would save the world” because they had “lizard DNA” and would grow up to threaten us all.

Federal officials believe he learned this from Qanon/Trump followers, as did Anthony Quinn Warner who died when he blew up his truck outside an AT&T building in Nashville on Christmas Day 2020 causing a widespread internet outage in an apparent attempt to cripple the “lizard people” network opposing Trump, which included Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Obamas.

The University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism notes that 68 percent of the open Qanon followers arrested at the US Capitol on January 6th who had also committed crimes before or after that coup attempt “have documented mental health concerns, according to court records and other public sources.”

Their psychological issues included “post-traumatic stress disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Munchausen syndrome by proxy.”

The “Qanon Shaman” of so many iconic 1/6 pictures has now pleaded mental illness as his reason for showing up at the Capitol, as have two others who “were found to be mentally unfit to stand trial and were transferred to mental health care facilities.”

Of the six women arrested on 1/6 who’d also committed crimes before or after the coup attempt, the researchers note, “all six…have documented mental health concerns.”

This should be no surprise: Donald Trump also has well-documented mental illness, as do most messianic cult leaders. But his mental illness is what makes him dangerous to society, just like Jones, Koresh, and Manson.

Psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee MD edited a compilation of articles by accredited mental health professionals discussing Trump’s issues and their possible impact on America, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Psychiatrist Justin Frank MD wrote Trump on the Couch, a similarly chilling account of Trump’s issues and their consequences.

Even Trump’s niece, clinical psychologist Mary L. Trump PhD, has repeatedly and convincingly documented Trump’s mental illness and its causes deep in his twisted and unhappy childhood with a psychopathic father.

And, it turns out, certain types of mental illness are functionally contagious.

People with Trump’s malignant narcissism can, essentially, activate or bring out narcissistic tendencies in others, which may explain in part the explosion of air rage among Trump followers who were, until recently, infuriated by being told to wear a mask in-flight.

Followers yearning for a parent figure turn to a damaged leader, hungry for adulation and to create a symbiotic relationship that binds them together, notes Dr. Lee in an interview with Psychology Today.

When it reaches a lot of people, we see a repeat of the Salem Witch Trial-type of mass insanity that ripples through society. This is called shared psychosis.
“When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position,” Dr. Lee notes, “the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence – even in previously healthy individuals.”

We have multiple Republican governors now using the power of law, enforced by armed police, courts, and prisons to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, an emulation of Trump’s misogyny.

In an attempt to out-Donald his role model, Ron DeSantis is using Florida taxpayer’s money to fly Texas-based asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard and elsewhere: it got him a standing ovation in Kansas this past weekend.

Half of the Republicans in Congress refuse to say if they’re vaccinated (although all probably are; outside of Gohmert, Greene, and Boebert these people are grifters, not idiots), thus modeling behavior that is destroying families and even today killing around 400 people a day in America.

Liz Cheney put down how Republicans in Congress refer to him as “Orange Jesus.”

Meanwhile, a clearly delusional pillow salesman promotes a democracy-destroying conspiracy theory that the Senate of the State of Arizona has endorsed and thrown a pile of cash at, while Republican state officials in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania tried to emulate Arizona’s “audit.”

If it all seems insane, that’s because it is.

There’s a very sad and very human aspect to all this.

We’re all primed to be a bit gullible when it comes to fantastical ideas. Childhood myths like Santa Claus and most organized religions teach us that things beyond our understanding were both real in the past and will cause events in the future.

We all grew up tiny and helpless, depending on giant magical-seeming adults to take care of our needs, and that little, frightened child who just wants to be protected and loved is still alive and buried deep in the psyche of each of us.

The 918 people who died at Jim Jones’ jungle camp in Guyana didn’t join the People’s Temple because they were suicidal: Jones’ own psychosis either infected them or wore them down to a passive compliance.

We’re all vulnerable to mass psychosis as a condition of our humanity.

That’s why true leaders like Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders openly refuse to allow cults of personality to form around them.

Back when Bush was president, Bernie ridiculed the idea of voting for him “because you’d like to have a beer with him” on my program. Vote for a politician’s policies, not his personality, Bernie said emphatically.

Even John McCain had the decency to correct a woman saying that Obama was a “secret Muslim.” While he appreciated political support, he was wary of cults around him or cults that were demonizing other politicians. He’d been in politics long enough to know it’s a two-edged sword.

So what do we do as a society when we’re confronted with a psychotic former leader who’s continuing to inflict and spread contagious forms of mental illness among our nation? How do we handle it, and repair the damage?
Dr. Bandy X. Lee says, “The treatment is removal of exposure.”

Point out as often and as clearly as possible what a criminal, hustler, con artist and genuinely damaged person Trump is, and put him safely in prison.

Break the bond with his followers by crushing his aura of invincibility: indict and convict him of very ordinary crimes like public corruption, tax fraud, bank fraud, treason, theft, and rape.

Make clear how corrupt and destructive his policies were when he was in office, his criminality and treason around classified documents he stole and perhaps shared with or sold to hostile nations, and the long con he’s run the past 20 months fleecing donors out of a half-billion dollars just since he was forced out of the White House.

If we fail to deal with Trump in this way and keep him in jail and out of the headlines for a good long time, it’ll be extremely difficult to rescue his followers who’ve fallen deeply into the Qanon/Trump rabbit hole. And in their induced psychotic state, the damage they could wreak in a country awash in 400 million guns is breathtaking.

Like so many infamous leaders in history, if Trump isn’t both stopped and imprisoned for at least another presidential election cycle (until 2028) he’ll simply attempt a comeback and further tear apart the psychological and political fabric of our nation. Hitler came out of prison stronger than when he went in: Trump would, too.

As Liz Cheney pointed out this Monday:
“Excuse by excuse, we’re putting Donald Trump above the law. We are rendering indefensible conduct normal, legal, and appropriate — as though he were a king.”

If we are to save America, we must convict and meaningfully imprison Trump for his lifetime of very real crimes. And we must do it now.

 

Our first Global Solidarity Conference in 7 years! From 2008 through 2016, LabourStart organised a series of seven Global Solidarity Conferences in London, Washington, Hamilton (Ontario), Istanbul, Sydney, Berlin and Toronto.   Due to organisational issues and the pandemic, we haven't held one since 2016.   For that reason, we're delighted to announce that the next Global Solidarity Conference will take place in Tbilisi, Georgia from 27 - 30 April 2023.   (That's a provisional date and is subject to change.)  The conference will be hosted by the Georgian Trade Union Confederation.   We will have much more information in the next few weeks and will begin online registration for the conference as soon as we can.   Meanwhile -- please note the dates in your diary! *** Myanmar: Help us grow the campaign The campaign launched by global unions in support of democracy in Myanmar needs to grow -- and to grow quickly -- if we are going to persuade the United Nations General Assembly to refuse to seat the military dictators. After the first week online, the campaign has 5,267 supporters and it appears in 23 languages, with more on the way. (A big thank you to all our volunteer translators.) Please sign up to support this campaign if you've not yet done so. It will take just a few seconds of your time. Please ask your union to inform all its members in an email message to sign up to support the campaign.  Email is the best way to build support for our campaigns. Having said that, please also share the campaign link across social media if you use Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.  Here's a sample post which you can copy and paste: I've supported this important campaign - join me! Myanmar: UN must stop military junta - https://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=5164 Thank you! Eric Lee

 

A message to friends of Monthly Review, from John Bellamy Foster: September 2022 Dear friends,   Since the 1980s, there has been a seven-fold increase in concurrent large heat waves affecting multiple regions in the medium and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. A large heat wave is defined in the scientific literature as a high-temperature event lasting three or more days, occupying at least 1.6 million square kilometers (close to the size of Alaska). Concurrent heat waves of this size or larger have increased by 46 percent in mean spatial extent over the last four decades. In the 1980s concurrent heat waves occurred approximately twenty days per year. This has now risen to 143 days, with a maximum intensity 17 percent higher. This July, concurrent heat waves spread across the Northern Hemisphere threatening the lives, living conditions, and general welfare of hundreds of millions of people. Major wildfires arose in Greece, Portugal, Spain, and France. In Spain and Portugal alone, more than 1,700 people died from the July heat waves and wildfires. Temperatures in the United Kingdom broke all historic records. In North America, tens of millions were subjected to searing heat, drought, and out-of-control wildfires. Heat waves also struck North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia and China. The vast territorial range of these concurrent heat waves, stretching around the globe, indicates that heat waves and other extreme weather events emanating from climate change are now emerging as a universal phenomenon requiring universal solutions. The July-August 2022 special issue of Monthly Review titled Socialism and Ecological Survival was devoted to addressing this new, more dangerous planetary condition. The issue took as its starting point the unavoidable reality that even in the most optimistic scenario, in which a climate tipping point is avoided, the lives of hundreds of millions, even billions, of people will be periodically threatened over the next few decades by accelerating compound extreme weather events emanating from climate change, according to the latest report (AR6) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Hence, it is now necessary to carry on the struggle over climate change simultaneously on two levels: (a) mitigating climate change to preserve a habitable planet for humanity (and other species) in the future, and (b) doing what is necessary to secure the survival of human communities and populations in the present. Only a program of sustainable human development rooted in substantive equality, ecological sustainability, and collective self-mobilization, we suggested, is capable of securing the human future, while also protecting the world’s most vulnerable populations. This requires a global ecological and social revolution, aimed not simply at technology, but also requiring the transformation, more fundamentally, of existing social relations. We are now at a point in history where humanity will be compelled by changing material conditions to engage in a more unified, class-based struggle against capitalism, opposing its worldwide economic exploitation, its wasting away of human lives, its military expansion and warfare, its devaluation of everyone and everything but the cash nexus, its hierarchical state system that excludes “we the people,” its imperialism, racism, and sexism, and all its other alienated, expropriative, and destructive characteristics—of human beings and innumerable other species with which we share the earth quite simply won’t survive. A revolutionary new society rooted in collective and communal needs, extending its sense of community to humanity as a whole and to the earth itself, constitutes the realm of freedom as necessity in the twenty-first century. As Michael D. Yates eloquently writes in the final sentence of his book Work Work Work (Monthly Review Press, 2022), “Time is short, and there is no reason to delay what is possible." This is Monthly Review’s message, one that we have stuck to and developed for many decades. We believe this underlying message and the detailed analysis that we are able to provide are needed now more than ever, but for that we need your help. Our voice survives in large part through the support of our Associates, who have been the bedrock of the magazine since its earliest years. Basic magazine subscriptions cover little more than the costs of printing and mailing, and electronic subscriptions, while growing, make only a modest impact on our bottom line. We have no foundation support, no endowment, no deep pockets. Please become an Associate or, if you have joined already, consider renewing at the same or a higher level. Please help us now in whatever way you can.

Startling report describes 'extensive' network of white supremacists and extremists in Florida

Justin Klawans

RAW STORY
September 22, 2022

Shutterstock

A new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) described an "extensive, interconnected" network of radical groups within Florida, including white supremacists, neo-Nazi groups, and far-right movements.

According to the ADL's report, the Sunshine State keeps is continuing to fill up with individuals that are less than sunny. This includes, according to the report, "a significant increase in extremist-related incidents both nationwide and in the state of Florida."

In particular, the ADL highlighted one group called NatSoc Florida, based in Duval County. Described as a Neo-Nazi group, NatSoc Florida participates in numerous racist demonstrations, the ADL said, and also distributes hateful literature. The report included a picture of the group in which they were holding an antisemitic and anti-LGBT rally.

NatSoc Florida is just one of a number of these types of groups that have been rising in the state in recent years, the ADL said. Other similar organizations include the Sunshine State Nationalists, White Lives Matter, and Florida Nationalists, all three of which the ADL described as similar white supremacist groups.

RELATED: Secret Service knew neo-Nazis planned violence ahead of Jan. 6: emails

Beyond this, many groups that have previously been linked to a national level are now reportedly being seen at a hyper-local level throughout Florida. This includes many groups associated with the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

While these groups have been in the spotlight since that day, the ADL said that Florida has become somewhat of a haven for them - more Jan. 6 suspects reportedly live in Florida than any other state. Out of 855 people that have been charged already in connection with the attack, 90 of them are Floridians - just over 10%.

Part of the reason for the uptick in Florida extremism, the ADL said, is due to "widespread disinformation and conspiracy theories which have animated extremists and fueled antisemitism."

"The result: unrest and violence, from the January 6 insurrection to white supremacist activity to a spike in hate crimes," the report added. "Many of the individuals in this network, which includes dozens of people, attend events organized by multiple groups. This tactic gives the appearance of larger numbers, and the actions can affect entire communities."

Trump-backed GOP candidate argued against women voting and working: report

Bob Brigham

RAW STORY
September 21, 2022

Suffragettes (Shutterstock)

One of Donald Trump's endorsed candidates for Congress once argued against women being able to vote, saying the country had "suffered" since the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote nationwide.

CNN reported Wednesday, "John Gibbs, who defeated in the primary an incumbent Republican who had voted to impeach Trump, also made comments in the early 2000s praising an organization trying to repeal the 19th Amendment which also argued that women’s suffrage had made the United States into a 'totalitarian state.'"

CNN reported Gibbs founded the "Society for the Critique of Feminism" while a student at Stanford and argued women did not “posess (sic) the characteristics necessary to govern."

Gibbs argued for a patriarchal society, CNN reported, and then tried to cover-up the evidence.

IN OTHER NEWS: Wisconsin Republican blows up over 'disgusting' report his business was rife with sexual misconduct

"Gibbs requested the website for the think tank be removed from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine in 2016, according to a spokesman for the Internet Archive. But CNN’s KFile reviewed it on a different archiving service," the network reported. "CNN’s KFile previously reported that Gibbs’ history of conspiratorial and inflammatory tweets included baselessly accusing Democrats of taking part in satanic rituals and defending a notorious anti-Semitic troll banned by Twitter."

When Trump endorsed Gibbs in November, he described him as a "fabulous talent."

Cuba calls the U.S. blockade of the island «an act of economic warfare in time of peace».

Cuba's Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, has described this Wednesday before the UN General Assembly as "an act of economic war in peacetime" the blockade imposed by the United States on his country for more than six decades, while affirming that since 2019 the sanctions have been intensified.


Cuba's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodriguez - UN© Provided by News 360

"Almost 30 years after the first resolution of this Assembly against the blockade, the Government of the United States continues to ignore your almost unanimous demand to cease its illegal and cruel policy against Cuba," said the head of Cuban diplomacy during his speech, noting that "the blockade is an act of economic war in time of peace."

Rodriguez maintained that "the desire to generate shortages, suffering, discouragement and dissatisfaction and to cause harm to the Cuban people on the part of Washington "still persists".

At the same time, he asserted that the U.S. government is pressuring other governments, banking institutions and companies around the world interested in having relations with Cuba, in addition to "obsessively" pursuing all the sources of foreign currency income of the island to provoke its economic collapse.

"As a result, in effect, the Cuban economy has experienced extraordinary pressures that manifest themselves in industry, the provision of services, shortages of food and medicine, and the deterioration of the level of consumption and general well-being of the population," Rodriguez has said.

In this sense, he accused the United States of manipulating in an "opportunistic" manner sensitive concepts such as terrorism, religion, democracy, justice, corruption and human rights.

The Cuban Foreign Minister reiterated his country's rejection of the inclusion of the United States in the list of countries that promote terrorism.

"Cuba does not and will never promote terrorism. On the contrary, we condemn it in all its forms and manifestations", said Rodriguez during his speech, who described the "persistence" of the White House to declare Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism as "arbitrary and unilateral".

Nevertheless, the Cuban representative at the UN General Assembly accused the United States of "subjugating" countries and subjecting them to "its imperial order", which, in Rodríguez's opinion, "leads to a climate of tensions with unpredictable consequences".

"Cuba will continue to reject domination and hegemonism, unilateral coercive measures, genocidal blockades and the pretension of imposing a unique culture and model on the world. We will never renounce the defense of independence, sovereignty and self-determination of the peoples without foreign interference or intervention," concluded Rodriguez.