For Socialism (Landauer, 1911)

PDF / Aufruf zum Sozialismus

See also: Landauer: Revolution and Other Writings / All Power to the Councils!

For socialism — let it be said immediately and the Marxists ought to hear it, as long as the wisps of fog of their own obtuse theory of progress are still in the air — does not depend for its possibility on any form of technology and satisfaction of needs. Socialism is possible at all times, if enough people want it. But it will always look different, start and progress differently, depending on the level of available technology, i.e., also of the number of people who begin it and the means they contribute or have inherited from the past — nothing begins from nothing. Therefore, as was said above: no depiction of an ideal, no description of a Utopia is given here. First, we must examine our conditions and spiritual temperaments more clearly. Only then can we say to what kind of socialism we are called, to what type of men we are speaking. Socialism, you Marxists, is possible at all times and with any kind of technology. It is possible for the right people at all times, even with very primitive technology, while at all times, even with splendidly developed machine technology it is impossible for the wrong group. We know of no development that must bring it. We know of no such necessity as a natural law. Now therefore we will show that these our times and our capitalism that has blossomed as far as Marxism are by no means as you say they are. Capitalism will not necessarily change into socialism. It need not perish. Socialism will not necessarily come, nor must the capital-state-proletariat-socialism of Marxism come and that is not too bad. In fact no socialism at all must come — that will now be shown.

Yet socialism can come and should come — if we want it, if we create it — that too will be shown.

– Gustav Landauer, 1911

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Karl Marx and the Iroquoi (Rosemont, 1989)

by Franklin Rosemont, 1989, in Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion

PDF

There are works that come down to us with question-marks blazing like sawed-off shotguns, scattering here and there and everywhere sparks that illuminate our own restless search for answers. Ralegh’s so-called Cynthia cycle, Sade’s 120 Days, Fourier’s New Amorous World, Lautremont’s Poesies, Lenin’s notes on Hegel, Randolph Bourne’s essay on The State Jacque Vaches War letters, Duchamp’s Green Box, the Samuel Greenberg manuscripts: These are only a few of the extraordinary fragments that have, for many of us, exerted a fascination greater than that of all but a very few “finished” works.

Karl Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks[1] -notes for a major study he never lived to write, have something of the same fugitive ambiguity. These extensively annotated excerpts from works of Lewis Henry Morgan and others are a jigsaw puzzle for which we have to reinvent the missing pieces out of our own research and revery and above all, our own revolutionary activity. Typically although the existence of the notebooks has been know since Marx’s death in 1883, they were published integrally for the first time only eighty-nine years later, and then only in a highly priced edition aimed at specialists. A transcription of text exactly as Marx wrote it- the book presents the reader with all the difficulties of Finnegan’s Wake and more, with its curious mixture of English, German, French, Latin and Greek, and a smattering of words and phrases from many non-European languages, from Ojibwa to Sanskrit. Cryptic shorthand abbreviations, incomplete and run-on sentences, interpolated exclamations, erudite allusions to classical mythology, passing references to contemporary world affairs, generous doses of slang and vulgarity; irony and invective: All these the volume possesses aplenty, and they are not the ingredients of smooth reading. This is not a work of which it can be said, simply, that it was “not prepared by the author for publication”; indeed, it is very far from being even a “rough draft?’ Rather it is the raw substance of a work, a private jumble of jottings intended for no other eyes than Marx’s own-the spontaneous record of his “conversations” with the authors he was reading, with other authors whom they quoted, and, finally and especially, with himself. In view of the fact that Marx’s clearest, most refined texts have provoked so many contradictory interpretations, it is perhaps not so strange that his devoted students, seeking the most effective ways to propagate the message of the Master to the masses, have shied away from these hastily written, disturbingly unrefined and amorphous notes.

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COMMUNIST EXPROPRIATION

FBI: North Korean Hackers Behind $100M Horizon Bridge Theft

Jesse Hamilton
Mon, January 23, 2023 

A pair of North Korean hacker groups were behind the June theft of $100 million in crypto assets from Horizon Bridge, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said in a Monday statement.

Horizon Bridge, a service enabling crypto assets to be traded between the Harmony blockchain and other blockchains, was drained of ether (ETH), tether (USDT) and wrapped bitcoin (wBTC). The FBI said that the hackers – “cyber actors associated with the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]” – relied on a malware campaign known as “TraderTraitor” in the Harmony attack.

Two weeks ago, a privacy protocol, Railgun, was used to launder more than $60 million in ETH stolen during last year’s theft, according to the FBI. A portion of it was sent to other service providers and changed to bitcoin. Some of the funds were frozen, and others were moved to addresses identified in the agency’s statement.

At least one industry research firm had already partially come to the same conclusion on the identity of the attackers last year, identifying Lazarus and North Korea.

U.S. authorities said that North Korea’s thefts of crypto and laundering of the assets are used “to support North Korea’s ballistic missile and Weapons of Mass Destruction programs,” according to the statement.

Lazarus Group had previously been accused of stealing more than $600 million of cryptocurrency from the Axie Infinity-linked Ronin bridge.

Read More: Harmony Hackers Cover Tracks by Bridging Portion of $100M Loot to Avalanche, Ethereum and Tron

FBI accuses North Korean government hackers of stealing $100M in Harmony bridge theft



Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Tue, January 24, 2023 

The FBI accused two groups of North Korean government hackers of carrying out last year’s heist of $100 million in crypto stolen from a company that allows users to transfer cryptocurrency from one blockchain to another.

On Monday, the FBI announced that the Lazarus Group and APT38 — two groups linked to the North Korean government by both cybersecurity companies and government agencies — were responsible for the hack against the Horizon bridge, created by the U.S. company Harmony, in June 2022.

Citing cybersecurity experts, Reuters reported last year that North Korea was likely the culprit of the hack, which exploited a vulnerability in the bridge to steal various cryptocurrency assets, such as Ethereum, Binance Coin, Tether, USD Coin, and Dai.

The FBI said that on January 13, the North Korean hackers used RAILGUN, a crypto “privacy protocol,” to launder $60 million in Ethereum stolen from Harmony.

“A portion of this stolen ethereum was subsequently sent to several virtual asset service providers and converted to bitcoin (BTC),” the FBI said in its announcement. “A portion of these funds were frozen, in coordination with some of the virtual asset service providers.”

The FBI also published 11 cryptocurrency wallets where the remaining $40 million in stolen bitcoin were moved to.

North Korea has a long history of targeting cryptocurrency companies to raise money for the regime, which sees crypto as a way to evade international sanctions and to fund its nuclear weapons program. Last year, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the U.S. Treasury Department published an advisory detailing North Korea’s activities targeting crypto companies.

According to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, North Korea has stolen around $1.2 billion worth of crypto in the last five years, including $626 million in 2022 alone.

Harmony’s Horizon is a so-called blockchain bridge — also known as cross-chain bridges, a tool that allows users to transfer digital assets from one blockchain to another, allowing different blockchains created by different companies to be interoperable. Several of these bridges have had serious vulnerabilities, making them a favorite target for hackers.

“Blockchain bridges have become the low-hanging fruit for cyber-criminals, with billions of dollars worth of crypto assets locked within them,” Tom Robinson, co-founder and chief scientist at blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, told CNBC last year. “These bridges have been breached by hackers in a variety of ways, suggesting that their level of security has not kept pace with the value of assets that they hold.”

Chainalysis, another blockchain analytics firm, estimated that around $1.4 billion were stolen from blockchain bridges last year.

Hacker exploits Harmony blockchain bridge, loots $100M in crypto

FBI says N. Korea-related hacker group behind U.S. crypto firm heist


The truce village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas

Mon, January 23, 2023 

(Reuters) - A hacker group associated with North Korea, the Lazarus Group, also known as APT38, was responsible for the theft last June of $100 million from U.S. crypto firm Harmony's Horizon bridge, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Monday.

On Jan. 13, North Korean cyber actors used a privacy protocol called Railgun to launder over $60 million worth of ethereum stolen during the theft in June, the FBI said in a statement.

A portion of the stolen ethereum was subsequently sent to several virtual asset providers and converted to bitcoin, the FBI said.

The FBI said North Korea's theft and laundering of virtual currency is used to support its ballistic missile and Weapons of Mass Destruction programs.

In June last year, California-based Harmony said that a heist had hit its Horizon bridge, which was the underlying software used by digital tokens such as bitcoin and ether for transferring crypto between different blockchains.

Reuters in June reported that North Korean hackers were most likely behind the attack on Harmony, citing three digital investigative firms.

Harmony develops blockchains for decentralized finance - peer-to-peer sites that offer loans and other services without traditional gatekeepers such as banks - and non-fungible tokens.

(Reporting by Sneha Bhowmik in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler)

SI HAY FACISMO
Mexico court: army doesn't have to tell police about arrests

\ A woman is detained by Mexican army military police in a neighborhood in the city of Chilpancingo, Mexico, Friday, Feb. 6, 2015. Mexico´s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, Jan 24, 2023, that soldiers can make an arrest without telling police, as long as they eventually register the arrest in a computer system that civilian agencies use. 

(AP Photo/Alejandrino Gonzalez, File) 

Tue, January 24, 2023 

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the armed forces do not have to advise civilian police when they make an arrest.

The issue is a sensitive one, because Mexico’s military is supposed to be participating in civilian law enforcement only to ‘support’ police.

But the court ruled Tuesday that soldiers can make an arrest without telling police, as long as they eventually register the arrest in a computer system that civilian agencies use.

The armed forces have frequently been accused of violating human rights. But Mexico’s underpaid, antiquated police forces can’t handle the country’s well-armed drug cartels alone.

Some civilian police forces complain that the armed forces, and the largely militarized National Guard, aren't trained in proper arrest procedures and filling out standardized crime reports.

A broader criticism is that the armed forces and National Guard do little investigation, and thus can't build strong cases except when they catch suspects in the act of committing a crime.

Last year, the court upheld a constitutional change that allows the military to continue in law enforcement duties until 2028, ruling against appeals that argued law enforcement should be left to civilian police forces.

Critics warned President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is militarizing the country and ignoring the separation of powers.

Putting soldiers and marines on the streets to fight crime was long viewed as a stopgap measure to fight the country’s well-armed drug cartels. In 2019, legislators voted that civilian police should take over those duties by 2024.

But López Obrador supports relying on the military indefinitely because he views the armed forces as more honest. The president has given the military more responsibilities than any Mexican leader in recent memory.

TRANSHUMANISM HAS TRANS IN IT

Don't identify as human? North Dakota schools don't want you



Brooke Sopelsa
Tue, January 24, 2023

Six Republican members of the North Dakota Legislature introduced a bill Wednesday that would send a clear message to nonhuman-identified students: You’re not wanted in the Roughrider State.

The two-page bill, which is primarily a measure seeking to prohibit schools in the state from accommodating transgender youths, includes a subsection aimed at a different — and theoretical — category of students.

“A board of a school district, a public or private school, or a teacher in a public or private school may not … Adopt a policy establishing or providing a place, facility, school program, or accommodation that caters to a student’s perception of being any animal species other than human," the bill, labeled an “emergency measure” by its authors, states.

This section of the bill appears to be connected to an urban myth about litter boxes in U.S. schools that spread among conservative Republicans ahead of the November election. An NBC News report published in October found this myth — about schools providing accommodations, like litter boxes, for children who identify as cats — to be untrue.

While the North Dakota bill does not mention litter boxes, one of the bill's sponsors, state Rep. Lori VanWinkle, said her state does indeed have students who don't identify as human.

FURRIES

"Yes we have people who would like to claim themselves as animals such as cats and dogs," VanWinkle wrote in an email.




The bill's five other Republican sponsors did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The bill, if passed, would also ban accommodations for transgender students, including a teacher’s use of a student’s “preferred gender pronoun, if the perceived or expressed gender is inconsistent with the student’s” sex assigned at birth. Schools found to be in violation of the policy could be fined up to $500,000 in damages, the bill states.

In just the first few weeks of the year, state lawmakers across the U.S. have introduced over 140 bills targeting LGBTQ rights and queer life, according to an NBC News analysis, with the majority of these bills focusing on transgender young people.

CLASSIC SHADY CAPITALI$M
Vince McMahon Walks Back WWE Coup, Sowing Split Among Investors



Mike Leonard
Tue, January 24, 2023 

(Bloomberg Law) -- WWE Inc. investors leading litigation over chairman Vince McMahon’s surprise return are fighting over the path forward, after McMahon rescinded certain bylaw changes that would have seized power from the company’s board.

The dispute involves three groups of shareholders that sued McMahon this month—including a pension fund—after he ended his self-imposed exile, which began when he stepped down in July while facing a wave of sexual harassment and hush money allegations stretching back more than 15 years.

The lawsuits in Delaware’s Chancery Court accused McMahon of timing his comeback to seize control of upcoming negotiations over the WWE’s expiring media rights and forcing his way back by leveraging a threat to withhold support for any deal reached without his participation.

The move reinstalled McMahon as the head of a WWE royal family that includes his daughter, Stephanie—who stepped down as chairman and co-CEO in early January—and son-in-law, the former champion wrestler Paul “Triple H” Levesque, a member of the board.

Two of the investors suing McMahon, including the Police & Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit, narrowly challenged solely his unilateral move to rewrite the WWE’s bylaws in his own favor. A third shareholder brought broader claims directly involving the sexual harassment accusations.

McMahon and the WWE haven’t yet made a court appearance, but a Jan. 17 securities filing showed that McMahon had repealed the most contentious changes, restoring power to the board. The filing prompted the current dispute among the shareholders.

In one corner, the pension fund and another investor are seeking to have the bylaw-related claims declared moot so they can take credit for the reforms and seek a “mootness fee” in recognition of their role in forcing McMahon to curtail his ambitions.

“This consolidated litigation is narrow in scope, it is moot, and the only remaining litigation in this action should concern the application for a fee award,” they said in a court filing Monday.

The other group of investors, meanwhile—those suing over McMahon’s alleged history of paying to cover up sexual harassment accusations—are seeking to sever their case from the consolidated action. That could keep the bylaw-related claims alive, interfering with any fee request.

The pension fund and its co-plaintiff, investor Scott Fellows, are represented by Labaton Sucharow LLP, Friedlander & Gorris PA, Friedman Oster & Tejtel PLLC, and Kaskela Law PLLC.

The investors seeking to proceed separately, Carole Casale and Chrystal Lavalle, are represented by Christensen & Dougherty LLP and Scott & Scott Attorneys at Law LLP.

The case is In re World Wrestling Ent. Inc. Stockholders Litig., Del. Ch., No. 2023-0022, motion to dismiss as moot filed 1/23/23.

No room for religious liberty in abortion debate? Since when are we a one-faith nation?

Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY
Tue, January 24, 2023 

I lived in Ireland for a year in the 1970s, when both contraception and abortion were illegal. I still remember the news story about a young German couple whose birth control was confiscated as they entered the country for their honeymoon. Welcome to Ireland!

Contraception became legal in Ireland in 1979 and widely available in 1985. But the tide on abortion did not start to turn until the 2012 death of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist carrying a doomed 17-week fetus.

In a BBC interview at the time, her husband said she was told she could not end the pregnancy because it was against the law in Catholic Ireland. She said she was Hindu, not Catholic, and asked “why impose the law on her,” said her husband, Praveen. The answer she received: “ ‘I'm sorry, unfortunately it's a Catholic country' and it's the law that they can't abort when the fetus is live." By the time the fetus’ heart stopped, it was too late for Savita. She died of septicemia.

There's no consensus on abortion

Make no mistake, the abortion debate is about religion. For some believers, it's simple: Abortion amounts to murder.

In reality, that word is fraught and harder to define than it seems. Our laws consider many circumstances: Was a killing premeditated, impulsive, accidental, committed in self-defense?

Capital punishment is legal killing. So is war, except when it's not – for instance if a party targets civilians or uses weapons of mass destruction. Some people oppose even “legal” war killings due to their moral or religious principles and may be granted conscientious objector status.

Confused by abortion laws, anxious about intimacy? The answer is clear. We must ban sex.



Author Amy Bloom’s husband had Alzheimer’s disease and he did not want to deteriorate until it killed him. She researched assisted suicide for months – how to do it (Do-it-yourself suffocation? Pentobarbital?) and where to do it (Dignitas in Zurich was the only real option). In her book “In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss,” she describes supervising his application process, watching him drink the fatal potion and holding his hand as he embarked on his “long journey, miles and miles of Nought.”

Was Bloom an enabler, an accessory to a crime? Not in Zurich. Is assisted suicide considered murder? Not in the 11 U.S. jurisdictions that allow it. What about other types of euthanasia? When you have a vet put your terminally ill pet out of its misery, is that murder – or mercy?

No consensus among religions

Is abortion murder? It depends on when you think life begins. Is it at conception, at viability, at birth? Arthur Caplan, a New York University bioethicist, talks of symmetry: “We agree that people are dead and no longer exist when their brains have ceased to function. So, I think a key landmark is when a brain is able to totally function.”

He and other scientists say that happens at 24-25 weeks. That’s when a fetus develops the coordinated "brain activity required for consciousness,” Dr. Tomás Ryan, an associate professor at Dublin's Trinity College Institute of Neurosciences, wrote in 2018.

Abortion-rights supporters outside a Catholic church in downtown Manhattan on May 7, 2022, in New York City.

10-year-old rape victim: Here's what happens to a victimized child when the singular focus is on saving babies

There is no consensus among religions on these questions. In fact there is no consensus among Muslims, says Asifa Quraishi-Landes, a professor of U.S. constitutional law and modern Islamic constitutional theory at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Quranic verses can be interpreted in many ways and “Muslims simply select whichever sharia school of thought they want to follow,” she wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle. “That means it is normal for some Muslims to oppose abortion while others insist on its legitimacy.”

Interview
Friend of Satan: how Lucien Greaves and his Satanic Temple are fighting the religious right

The National Council of Jewish Women says a fetus is considered “a physical part of the pregnant individual’s body” until labor and childbirth. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, the council’s scholar in residence, posted a Twitter thread quoting from the Talmud and Orthodox authorities to show Judaism permits abortion for many reasons – among them preventing disgrace, preserving dignity, keeping “domestic peace” and sparing people emotional and physical pain. To save a pregnant person’s life, Ruttenberg wrote, “it’s required.”

Freedom to follow your faith

For nearly 50 years, Roe v. Wade created space for disagreement on abortion. Caroline Mala Corbin, a constitutional law professor at the University of Miami School of Law, put it to me this way: “Each person is able to live their religious truth when abortion is legal.”

You’d think that right would be guaranteed in America by the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In other words, the people have religious liberty and the government can’t establish an official religion or favor one religion over another.

Four-year degree worth the cost? Yes, but government should pick up the tab.

But Corbin notes that in a 1980 case about abortion restrictions, the Supreme Court ruled that the restrictions did not favor a particular religious view – they just happened to coincide with it. On top of the court’s rulings last month that abortion cannot be “deemed fundamental” like other rights and that a football coach has the right to pray publicly on the field (an Establishment Clause “wrecking ball,” Corbin says), national prospects appear dim.

Some states have explicit constitutional or statutory rights to privacy, and they are the basis of many legal challenges. Religious freedom is also a right in some states and it is in play in at least two lawsuits, in Florida and Ohio.
An abortion law signed in a church

Ten days before Roe was overturned, a Florida synagogue filed suit on June 14 claiming that the state’s 15-week limit on abortion “prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and this violates their privacy rights and religious freedom.” The rabbi noted with anxiety that Gov. Ron DeSantis had signed the law in an evangelical Christian church.

In Ohio, a coalition of Jewish groups said last week that it would join the ACLU in challenging the state’s six-week ban on freedom-of-religion grounds.

Jill Lawrence is a USA TODAY Opinion columnist.

Ideally, Congress would pass a law setting a national minimum standard for abortion rights and access. For Ireland, it took tragedies, traumas and pressure from groups like the European Convention on Human Rights, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the U.N. Human Rights Committee. In 2018, Irish voters overwhelmingly repealed a 1983 constitutional amendment that gave equal weight to “the right to life of the unborn” and “of the mother.” A new law establishing a legal right to abortion took effect in 2019.

Patients are increasingly at risk as doctors try to navigate new laws and stay out of jail. The plight of Ohio's 10-year-old rape victim has dramatically defined the impact of Roe v. Wade's demise. Maybe this child will be this country's Savita Halappanavar – shocking enough consciences to blast America out of the 18th century and back into the 21st.





More from Jill Lawrence:

►Interstate abortion travel bans? We're supposed to be a free country, not East Germany.

►Supreme Court month of horrors on guns, abortion and climate

Jill Lawrence is a columnist for USA TODAY and author of "The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock." Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence

AMERIKA

If you care about your country and your rights, don't vote for any Republicans in 2022

Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY
Tue, January 24, 2023 

Now that primary season is over there is a simple test for voters, especially Republicans and independents: If you care about the future of America, democracy and your own rights, don’t vote for Republicans. Any of them. Even the officeholders who have stood up to Donald Trump and the newcomers who pitch themselves as reality-based and results-oriented.

I feel terrible thinking this, much less writing it. I’ve covered many Republicans whom I admired. I spent months reporting on political negotiations and how deals get made in Congress. I believe policy debates and compromises are healthy, and the Democratic-led Congress has produced solid bipartisan results this year in gun safety, infrastructure, industrial policy and other areas.

Even so, the Republican Party is on a dark path and should not hold power anywhere until it comes back into the light. That’s especially true on Capitol Hill.

Congressional math is unforgiving. If there is just one more Republican than Democrat in the House or Senate, a power-obsessed party in thrall to election deniers and conspiracists will control committees, agendas, investigations and leadership positions.

We sued the FEC: Hold Trump accountable for raising money

The Trump-MAGA threat is real

Republican voters are key to the outcome. About 8% of them voted for Democrats in 2018, TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier, a Democratic data and polling expert, told me in an email. If that rises to 15% this year, he added, “the GOP has no chance of taking back either the Senate or the House.”

That’s not an unrealistic goal given the percentage of Republicans who voted for abortion rights last month in Kansas (roughly 30%, Bonier said Wednesday at a New Democrat Network webinar) and the chunk of GOP voters alarmed by Trump and his "Make America Great Again" loyalists. A new poll found a quarter of Republicans agree that Trump's MAGA movement threatens democracy.

President Joe Biden accurately summarized that threat in a recent speech: “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.”

As national security expert Tom Nichols wrote afterward in The Atlantic, “We should be deeply troubled that Joe Biden had to give this speech at all.” And he had to. Because even now, after the Trump mob’s insurrection attempt on Jan. 6, 2021, two impeachments, years of election lies, escalating legal problems and the FBI recovery of top secret government documents from Mar-a-Lago, Trump is not a spent force.

Former President Donald Trump and ally Doug Mastriano, the GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor, at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Sept. 3, 2022.

Hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on their deadly quest to block Congress from finalizing Biden’s win, 147 Republican lawmakers went ahead and objected to certified election results from Arizona, Pennsylvania or both. Over 18 months later, the party is still with Trump. Polls show roughly 70% of Republicans don’t view Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, and most Republicans want Trump as their 2024 nominee.

In fact, Maggie Haberman reports in her upcoming book, “Confidence Man,” Trump never intended to leave the White House – though he lost to Biden by more than 7 million votes.

'I picked 15 weeks': Sen. Lindsey Graham mansplains his federal abortion ban

Believers of Trump’s Big Lie that he was the true winner have elevated so many delusional Republicans that 60% of voters will find election deniers on their 2022 ballots, according to FiveThirtyEight. Its analysis of GOP nominees for House, Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general found at least 200 of 552 say the 2020 election was illegitimate. If they win, they could influence and possibly even overturn elections in 40 states.

Some of these races are out of reach for Democrats. In U.S. House contests, FiveThirtyEight found that “118 election deniers and eight election doubters have at least a 95 percent chance of winning.”

At the same time, Real Clear Politics counts eight toss-up Senate races, 11 toss-ups for governor and 34 in the House. Concerned conservatives and moderates could make the difference in these contests – particularly if they vote Democratic no matter what kind of Republican is running.

This seems unfair to Republicans who have shown principled independence. By my count, 20 in the House made it to the fall ballot despite voting for an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the violent Capitol riot. Two of them, California's Rep. David Valadao and Washington state’s Rep. Dan Newhouse, also voted to impeach Trump for inciting the rioters.

The Future of the Republican Party: What to do now with 'hot mess' that is the GOP?
Alarmed GOP voters are the fail-safe

Valadao’s tight race could be one of the few that determine House control. Does he deserve to be reelected? Maybe. But could America survive a GOP-controlled House unscathed? Also maybe, and that’s not good enough.

The same argument holds for candidates like Senate nominee Joe O’Dea in Colorado, who says he'd be an "independent-minded" senator, and House nominee Allan Fung in Rhode Island, who says he’d work with Democrats to solve problems. That’s commendable, but voting for them could produce a Republican House or Senate.

I wouldn’t even bet on fact-based Republican governors. Some could face veto-proof legislatures dominated by MAGA fantasists. And some could fold. Look at New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who a month ago declared that “Trump won the election. … I'm not switchin' horses baby. This is it." Sununu called Bolduc a “conspiracy theorist-type” and “not a serious candidate” for the GOP Senate nomination. But right before Tuesday's primary, Sununu said he'd endorse Bolduc if he won.

The upshot: Bolduc won, he and Sununu shared a public hug at a post-primary GOP unity breakfast, and then – in a shocking plot twist – Bolduc went on Fox News and said he had concluded that “the election was not stolen.”

A MAGA-driven America is a grim prospect. Would future Republican candidates admit defeat if they lost, or would they make sure, through legislation and manipulation, that they'd win? Would they cement minority rule and further restrict fundamental rights like voting and abortion?

Biden has correctly distinguished between “mainstream Republicans” and Trump’s extreme “MAGA Republicans.” They are different, and mainstream GOP politicians holding the line deserve credit. Nevertheless, when it comes to who controls Congress and the levers of power in states across the country, all that counts right now is the “R” after their names.

Jill Lawrence is a columnist for USA TODAY and author of "The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock." Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence

NASA gets best look yet at the "deepest, coldest ices" in space

Li Cohen
Tue, January 24, 2023

An international team of astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has obtained an in-depth inventory of the deepest, coldest ices measured to date in a molecular cloud. 

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and M. Zamani (ESA)

Before stars become massive glowing bodies of hot gas and planets develop conditions that can sustain life, they start out as a deep-space plate of tiny, icy ingredients. And now, NASA has gotten the best look at those ingredients yet.

"An international team of astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has obtained an in-depth inventory of the deepest, coldest ices measured to date in a molecular cloud," NASA said in a news release on Monday. " ... This is the most comprehensive census to date of the icy ingredients available to make future generations of stars and planets, before they are heated during the formation of young stars."

That census was captured in the Chamaeleon I molecular cloud, which lies about 500 light-years away from Earth and is currently developing "dozens" of stars. This region is part of the 65-light-year-wide Chamaeleon Cloud Complex, which was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope last year.

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures one of three segments that comprise a 65-light-year wide star-forming region named the Chamaeleon Cloud Complex. The segment in this Hubble composite image, called Chamaeleon Cloud I, reveals dusty-dark clouds where stars are forming, dazzling reflection nebulae glowing by the light of bright-blue young stars, and radiant knots called Herbig-Haro objects. / Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Luhman and T. Esplin (Pennsylvania State University), et al., and ESO; Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)More

Using the telescope, astronomers were able to take a deeper look at the "frozen forms" of various molecules, including carbonyl sulfide, ammonia, methane and methanol. Those molecules contain the essential elements – mostly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur – that are needed to form planets and stars. Those elements, plus phosphorus, are essential for living organisms.


Astronomer Melissa McClure said that the results help paint a fuller picture of the "dark chemistry stage" of ice formation on interstellar dust grains. That stage, she said, is what leads to the "centimeter-sized pebbles" that eventually turn into planets.

"These observations open a new window on the formation pathways for the simple and complex molecules that are needed to make the building blocks of life," she said.

They also found more complex molecules deep in molecular clouds for the first time ever, a discovery that suggests many stars and planets in the particular cloud studied could inherit advanced molecules. It also suggests that this is a common occurrence after stars are formed that extends beyond Earth's own solar system.

The findings, which were published Monday in Nature Astronomy, were part of the James Webb Space Telescope's Ice Age project, which seeks to learn more about the molecular ingredients that start out as ice forms and eventually evolve into life itself.

"This is just the first in a series of spectral snapshots that we will obtain to see how the ices evolve from their initial synthesis to the comet-forming regions of protoplanetary disks," said McClure. "This will tell us which mixture of ices — and therefore which elements — can eventually be delivered to the surfaces of terrestrial exoplanets or incorporated into the atmospheres of giant gas or ice planets."

Protecting Amazon a tough task, says Brazil's environment minister

Paula RAMON
Tue, January 24, 2023 


Brazil's environment minister Marina Silva knows she has her work cut out to protect the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest that is shared among nine countries.

"It will be difficult," Silva acknowledged in an interview with AFP on Monday night.

Just three weeks into the job, Silva said the environmental situation in her country, which is home to more than 60 percent of the Amazon, was "worse than expected."

When left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva appointed this emblematic figure in the environment struggle to her position, he signaled that the planet was a clear priority for the new administration after four years of far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro's governance, which saw deforestation hit record levels.


"The reality is a lot worse than we imagined," said Silva, 64, who was born in the heart of the jungle.

"We will have to make a great effort" because the ministry "has been largely dismantled."

Lula's focus on the environment is "in line with what is happening elsewhere in the world."

He has set 2030 as a target for reaching zero deforestation.

"It will not be an easy road ... but we will try to recover lost time," said Silva.

- 'Convincing people' the key -

Within Lula's government, 17 ministers will be involved in environmental policies.

But when it comes to deforestation, Silva says achieving target numbers is not enough, "we have to convince people that it is not a good idea to destroy the forest."

"We will invest in biotechnologies, tourism, low-carbon emissions agriculture and in other revenue sources," she said. "Our aim is to restart preventative actions and the fight against deforestation."

But Silva warned against expecting too much too soon during Lula's four-year term.

"We will see what can be achieved in this short space of time. Only populist governments can guarantee they will solve such massive problems in four years," she said with irony.

"We hope to arrive at the COP30 in 2025 as a country that has fulfilled its obligations."

Brazil has submitted a bid to host the 2025 climate conference in Belem, a city on the edge of the Amazon.

Brasilia will not be able to pull off miracles without international help, said Silva, who was previously environment minister during Lula's first two terms as president (from 2003 to 2010) before quiting in 2008 in protest against what she called a lack of funding.

One of Lula's first acts as president was to reactivate the Amazon Fund -- whose main contributors were Norway and Germany. It had been suspended under Bolsonaro due to a scandal related to forest fires in the Amazon.

"We are talking to the United Kingdom, France, Spain and several other countries that can contribute to the Amazon Fund. We don't want it to be just Norway and Germany," said Silva.

- 'A life of dignity' -

Negotiations are also well advanced with businesses and philanthropic organizations, said Silva.

But she says the international community still needs to make more of an effort.

"This collaboration with developed countries must also translate into the opening of markets for sustainable products" so that "what is legally produced can serve as a source of income for the Amazon's 25 million inhabitants."

"We must guarantee to these populations a life of dignity," said Silva, adding that the fight against the commercialization of illegally extracted gold and logs needs to be multilateral.

But, she warned, "if developed countries do not also reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, the Amazon will be destroyed."

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