New species found in ‘magical ecosystem’ in Ecuador gets name inspired by Tolkien

2023/02/27

A new species of frog was recently discovered in the mountains of Ecuador and named after author J.R.R. - 

Juan Carlos Sánchez-Nivicela/Archive Museo de Zoología, Universidad San Francisco de Quito/TNS

Often referred to as the father of modern fantasy, author J.R.R. Tolkien created a larger than life world inhabited by goblins, giant spiders and fire-breathing dragons.

His namesake has now been given to a decidedly less terrifying creature, a l Zoo Keys.

“It would seem that it lives in a universe of fantasies, like those created by Tolkien,” the researchers wrote in a news release. “The truth is that the tropical Andes are magical ecosystems where some of the most wonderful species of flora, funga, and fauna in the world are present.”

Upon finding the frog, researchers named it Hyloscirtus tolkieni after the acclaimed English writer and scholar.

“All three authors are admirers of Professor Tolkien’s work,” Juan Sánchez-Nivicela, a biologist at the National University of Colombia and co-author of the study, told McClatchy News over email.

After immersing himself in the works of Tolkien, particularly “The Lord of the Rings,” Sánchez-Nivicela now sees parallels between the author’s fantastical creations and the mystical jungle world he traverses while on field expeditions.

The striking color pattern seen on the newfound species evokes the “magnificent creatures” that populate the world of fantasy, the researchers said.

The creature — also distinguished by its large body size, “robust” forearms and pale pink eyes — spends its life in the freshwater brooks of the Río Negro-Sopladora National Park, a protected area spanning 75,000 acres in southern Ecuador.

Because so little is known about Hyloscirtus tolkieni, researchers recommended elevating its conservation status and risk of extinction, and they called for further research and monitoring of the species.

Amphibians, which play a vital role in the stability of ecosystems, including as pest controllers, are in a precarious position in Ecuador, considered to be one of the most biodiverse countries on Earth.

The majority of the country’s amphibians, 57%, are imperiled by extinction, researchers said.

Habitat loss — often resulting from agricultural expansion and mining and oil activity — is considered one of the primary causes of the decline in amphibian populations, according to a 2021 study published in the journal PLOS One.

This “sad reality of the world we live in” also factored into Sánchez-Nivicela’s decision to name the new frog after Tolkien, whose fiction has a theme of environmental stewardship, according to the book “Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien.”

The sustainable agrarian lifestyle of Tolkien’s hobbits is put in stark contrast to Sauron and Saruman’s environmental degradation in the name of greed, the book’s authors write.

Tolkien “deserves proper recognition through a species that evokes this entire world and that is so fragile,” Sánchez-Nivicela said.

SHE WAS THE ONLY ONE TO CALL TO DEFUND THE MILITARY

New age author Marianne Williamson announces new 2024 Democratic presidential run
2023/02/27

New age self-help author Marianne Williamson says she will run for the Democratic 2024 presidential nomination, adding her quirky spiritualism to the mix as the first official challenger to President Joe Biden from within his party.

“We are not living in easy times,” Williamson said in an a statement. “But the times will change when we are willing to change them.”

Williamson, 70, said she she will formally announce her long shot run in a speech in Washington, D.C., this weekend and will visit early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Quoting Albert Einstein, Williamson said the world’s problems won’t be solved unless leaders raise their level of thinking.

“It’s time for a new beginning,” she said. “This will only happen if we’re willing to look at the world in a different way.”

Political pundits give Williamson next to no chance of winning even though she is the first candidate to jump into the race.

Biden hasn’t formally announced he will run for reelection but insiders say he plans to do so in the next several weeks.

First Lady Jill Biden recently suggested there is “pretty much” no doubt Biden will run for four more years in the White House.

Williamson, who occasionally livened up staid debates with wacky pronouncements, spent about a year vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination as part of a sprawling field that eventually came down to a battle between Biden and progressive favorite Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

One of Williamson’s signature proposals was a plan to create a U.S. Department of Peace. 

She also advocated that the federal government pay reparations to Black Americans as atonement for centuries of slavery and discrimination.

Williamson once credited “the power of the mind” with keeping a dangerous hurricane offshore.

She pulled the plug on her campaign in the weeks before the first Democratic voters made their voices heard in the leadoff Iowa caucus and later endorsed Sanders.

© New York Daily News

Consumer advocates say Supreme Court must rebuke 'harebrained' attack on CFPB
Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams
February 27, 2023

The United States Supreme Court building. (Shutterstock.com)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear arguments in a case challenging the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding, a move that was welcomed by some advocates as an opportunity for the nation's highest court to protect American consumers from a lower court ruling.

The justices will take up the case, Community Financial Services Association v. CFPB, after a panel of three U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judges appointed by former President Donald Trump last year sided with the payday lending industry in the ruling by questioning the federal agency's funding model and thereby its authority.

At issue is whether the CFPB's annual funding via the Federal Reserve and not Congress violates the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution. Critics of the October ruling argued that the CFPB's funding mechanism was designed to ensure the agency's independence.

The Biden administration, backed by Democratic attorneys general in 21 states, argues that the 5th Circuit Court's ruling "threatens the validity of all past CFPB actions."



First proposed by then-Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB was established in 2010 under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in the wake of the 2007-08 global financial crisis. Consumer advocates warn that the 5th Circuit's ruling threatens the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve, as well as agencies including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the National Credit Union Administration, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Farm Credit Administration, and the Office of Financial Research.

Consumer advocates reacted to Monday's news by saying the U.S. Supreme Court now has an opportunity to correct what they say is the mistaken logic of the lower court ruling.

"There is no judicially cognizable limiting legal principle that distinguishes between the 5th Circuit's harebrained assault on the CFPB and potential challenges to Social Security or other financial regulators which are funded outside of the annual appropriations process," warned Jeff Hauser, executive director of the watchdog group Revolving Door Project.

Maria Langholz, communications director at the online advocacy group Demand Progress, welcomed the high court's acceptance of the case.

"We are pleased to see that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear this important case and expect a correction of the 5th Circuit's misguided attacks on the CFPB," she said in a statement. "In the past twelve years, the CFPB has proven itself as a fierce defender of consumers against unscrupulous creditors that decimated our economy and wreaked havoc on people's lives. The Supreme Court should reject the Fifth Circuit's unprecedented ruling, restoring stability to the marketplace and preserving the CFPB's ability to protect the American people."

Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, called the 5th Circuit's decision "a direct attack on the nation’s economy."

"Now that it has taken up the case, SCOTUS must move swiftly to overturn this dangerous opinion that could prevent financial regulators, including the Federal Reserve, from doing their jobs to protect American businesses and consumers." 

Revolving Door Project researcher Vishal Shankar called the 5th Circuit's ruling "a naked attempt by corporate fraudsters to destroy the only cop on the beat protecting consumers.

Shankar continued:

The case was originally brought by predatory payday lenders and is being supported by giant lobbying groups like the Chamber of Commerce, whose members and executives have a shameless history of breaking the law and ripping off consumers. Multiple Republican lawmakers who have praised the 5th Circuit's ruling—and the far-right judge who wrote it—have taken large financial contributions from these corporate rip-off artists and lobbying giants.

"Following the money confirms what we all know to be true: this case has nothing to do with the constitutional separation of powers and everything to do with destroying an overwhelmingly popular law enforcement agency that has already returned over $13.5 billion in relief to consumers from corporate fraudsters," Shankar added.

"If the Supreme Court has any respect left for the rule of law," he said, "it should overturn the 5th Circuit's radical act of right-wing judicial activism."

Leftist Elly Schlein—'Italy's AOC'—elected to confront far-right Giorgia Meloni

Julia Conley, Common Dreams
February 27, 2023

Elly Schlein (AFP)

Calling her victory "a clear mandate for real change," left-wing Italian politician Elly Schlein on Sunday was named the new leader of her country's Democratic Party after winning against a centrist supported by the political establishment.

Schlein, a member of Parliament who temporarily defected from the Democratic Party (PD) in 2015 due to her opposition to a jobs act that made it easier for employers to fire workers and give them less job security, won with 54% of the vote to become the party's new secretary.

Stefano Bonaccini, president of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy, won just 46% of the vote after being projected to win easily. His support was mainly concentrated in the conservative southern regions of the country

Schlein will now lead the PD in opposing the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has neofascist roots and who has been condemned for pushing discriminatory education policies and penalizing humanitarian groups that rescue migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.

The new PD leader addressed the latter issue on Sunday, as her victory came the same day dozens of refugees, including 20 children, died when their overcrowded boat capsized in the sea—days after Italy's parliament passed a new law imposing restrictions on rescue boats, making it more difficult for charities to save asylum-seekers.

The refugees' deaths weigh "on the conscience of those who only weeks ago approved a decree whose only goal is to hinder rescues at sea," said Schlein on Sunday, calling for migrants to be permitted to legally apply for entry into all European nations and for the E.U.'s government to strengthen search-and-rescue efforts in the Mediterranean.

Schlein promised that under her leadership, the PD "will be a problem" for Meloni's government.

"She's a force to be reckoned with," said journalist Andrea Carlo. "I imagine Meloni & Co. won't be sleeping too well tonight."



The 37-year-old former member of European Parliament has been called "Italy's AOC"by some news outlets—referring to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(D-N.Y.)—for her support for a minimum wage law and a Green New Deal to create jobs and help the country drastically reduce its fossil fuel emissions.

Last year, she announced her campaign to lead the PD as one that would be "progressive, environmentalist, and feminist."

Schlein's victory represents "a genuine moment of hope in the fight against the far right in Italy, and across Europe," said socialist activist Michael Chessum.

At one point Schlein was polling 18 points behind Bonaccini. Her surprising margin of victory was secured largely thanks to the support of women and young voters, according to the Associated Press.

"The Democratic Party is alive and ready to stand up," said Schlein. "We did it, together we made a small big revolution, even this time they didn't see us coming."

Schlein's victory came as trade unions across Italy demanded better safety protections and job security for port workers, holding a nationwide maritime port strike Saturday. In December, the PD and unions organized street protests over Meloni's proposed budget, which they said targeted the poor by cutting the country's "citizen's wage" for unemployed people and not addressing rising costs of essentials.

"We will put the battle against every type of inequality and precariousness center-stage," said Schlein on Sunday.

Religious sadists just want to see women suffer
Thom Hartmann
February 27, 2023

Photo by Russell Ferrer on Unsplash

Mifepristone, the abortion and miscarriage drug that is used in over half of all US abortions and routinely given to women having miscarriages to prevent complications, may well be functionally outlawed this week by a federal judge in Texas who’s been a Christian activist his entire life.

Michael Kacsmaryk, 45, was appointed to the federal bench by Donald Trump. A Republican activist and religious fundamentalist, he’s said that “so-called marriage equality” has put America “on a road to potential tyranny” and reflects a “complete abuse of rule of law principles.”

As The Washington Post noted this weekend, Kacsmaryk has argued that:
“The sexual revolution ushered in a world where an individual is ‘an autonomous blob of Silly Putty unconstrained by nature or biology’ and where ‘marriage, sexuality, gender identity and even the unborn child must yield to the erotic desires of liberated adults.’”

Now an advocacy group that, according to Ms Magazine, includes the attorney/wife of Senator Josh Hawley, has brought a lawsuit to outlaw Mifepristone in the one specific Texas federal judicial district where Kacsmaryk — and Kacsmaryk alone — sits in judgement.

As a federal judge, however, his ruling will affect the entire United States.

This part of the anti-abortion crusade is clearly not about whether Mifepristone is a dangerous drug that needs more aggressive regulation.

The drug has been used millions of times in the US and around the world and is literally safer than Tylenol. It’s been approved for use in the US for over 20 years, first for helping women struggling with incomplete miscarriages and later combined with a second drug to safely, quickly induce early-stage abortion.

And outlawing Mifepristone is not just to reduce the number of abortions, as much as the people bringing this lawsuit proclaim that’s their goal.

If reducing the number of abortions was their singular and primary goal, they’d be putting much of their time, effort, and money into sex education, birth control, universal healthcare (particularly for fertility-age women), and government support for low-income families with children. Instead, most in the forced birth movement oppose all of those things.

No, this is part of a much larger effort. Because their “beliefs” are grounded in their religion and they believe that women who get abortions are committing the ultimate sin: murder. Therefore, they want to actually see these sinning women suffer.

Like people who love the death penalty (and in two states now state legislators have called for the death penalty for women who get abortions), they want to be able to torture them and watch them suffer; they want them to experience humiliation, and feel mortification for their sin of rejecting a pregnancy initiated by a man and ordained by their god.

Torturing women for religious reasons is nothing new for American theological zealots.

Louise and I used to live just a short drive from Dover, New Hampshire, the fourth-largest city in the state, near the Maine border and the Atlantic seacoast. Generations ago, rightwing politicians and preachers were enforcing social control, much like the forced birthers are trying to do today.

John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “How the Women Went from Dover” tells the tale of three young women who dared to challenge that day’s most powerful religious men, that early generation of the people driving the most extreme parts of what today has morphed into the forced birth movement.

Whittier’s poem begins:
The tossing spray of Cocheco’s fall
Hardened to ice on its rocky wall,
As through Dover town in the chill, gray dawn,
Three women passed, at the cart-tail drawn!

The three women were Anne Coleman, Mary Tomkins, and Alice Ambrose, and their crime was adhering to and promoting female-tolerant Quaker beliefs in a rabidly rightwing town.

This so enraged the minister of Dover’s Congregational church, John Reyner, that he and church elder Reverend Hatevil Nutter (yes, that was his real name) lobbied the crown magistrate, Captain Richard Walderne, to have them punished for their challenge to Reyner’s and Nutter’s authority.

It was a bitter New England winter when Walderne complied, ordering the three women stripped naked and tied to the back of a horse-drawn cart by their wrists, then dragged through town while receiving ten lashes each.

As Whittier wrote:
Bared to the waist, for the north wind’s grip
And keener sting of the constable’s whip,
The blood that followed each hissing blow
Froze as it sprinkled the winter snow.

A local man, George Bishop, wrote at the time:

“Deputy Waldron caused these women to be stripped naked from the middle upwards, and tied to a cart, and after a while cruelly whipped them, whilst the priest stood and looked and laughed at it.”

It was a start, from Reverend Reyner’s point of view, but hardly enough to scare the women of the entire region from which he drew his congregation. So, he got the young women’s punishment extended to 11 nearby towns over 80 miles of snow-covered roads, all following the same routine.

So into the forest they held their way,
By winding river and frost-rimmed bay,
Over wind-swept hills that felt the beat
Of the winter sea at their icy feet.

The next town was Hampton, where the constable decided that just baring them above the waist wasn’t enough. As Sewall’s History of the Quakers records:
“So he stripped them, and then stood trembling whip in hand, and so he did the execution. Then he carried them to Salisbury through the dirt and the snow half the leg deep; and here they were whipped again.”

Once more the torturing whip was swung,
Once more keen lashes the bare flesh stung.
“Oh, spare! they are bleeding!” a little maid cried,
And covered her face the sight to hide.

Whipping, beating, stoning, hanging, nailing, being pilloried (publicly clamped to a post through neck and wrist holes, often naked and sometimes for days at a time), dragging, burning, branding, and dozens of other techniques were employed by religious and government authorities in the early American colonies to enforce religious thought and behavior, particularly against women.

If her cry from the whipping-post and jail
Pierced sharp as the Kenite’s driven nail,
O woman, at ease in these happier days,
Forbear to judge of thy sister’s ways!

For the entirety of “civilized” human history — in country after country, culture after culture, religion after religion — crusaders for Zeus, Ra, Thor, Odin, Aphrodite, Venus, JHWH, Shiva, Rama, Krishna, Jesus, Quetzalcoatl, Mohamed, Ceridwen, Xpiacoc, Ishtar, and Amen (among hundreds of others) have, at various times, punished, tortured, and even killed women who refused to acknowledge their gods and the rules of their religions.

— Adherents to radical Islam from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan to The Philippines today require women to cover most all of their bodies, and delight in publicly whipping and even beheading females who won’t comply.

— Fundamentalist Hindus in India today burn women to death if they’ve defied religious authorities or the patriarchs of their families.

— For over 1000 years, Christian fundamentalists have — as Whittier documents — tortured, hung, impaled, and burned to death women who defied their ministers’ religious mandates.

What we’re seeing today in these attempts to regulate women’s behavior by the radical fringe of the forced birth movement is a simple extension of religious fundamentalism and patriarchy that goes back as far as ancient Samaria.

And the sadism associated with it is nothing new either.

“Sadism?” you may say. It’s a strong word. But consider the long game they’re playing here in this effort to outlaw Mifepristone.

If medication abortions — which can be done quietly and privately at home, as are the majority of those brought about by Mifepristone — are no longer available, women will be forced to show up in person at clinics where surgical abortions are performed.

They’ll find themselves in public, on display, directly exposed to religious fanatics just like in Whittier’s Women From Dover.

They’ll be forced to enter a public building, where these religious freaks can set up a gauntlet the women must run to get into and out of the clinic.

— The zealots can then scream at them, curse them, photograph them, video them, follow them home.

— They can then photograph the women’s license plates; publish their names, addresses, and telephone numbers; harass them.

— They can then use social media to invite hordes of fellow fundamentalists — along with random misogynists, incels, and militia members — to stalk and terrorize them.

— They can call them repeatedly, email them, stake out their homes, all to gleefully torment them.

That’s what’s really going on here. For the zealots in the most extreme parts of the forced birth movement — which has largely taken control of the GOP — it’s all about the punishment.

Far too many of these people appear to be religiously motivated sadists.

Some hate women who try to have the same agency over their own bodies that men claim. But the most aggressive are the ones who are offended when women reject their extreme religious belief that fully human life exists at conception rather than viability.

Many of these extremists leap at a chance to inflict pain on those who reject their religious mandates, just like Hatevil Nutter did back in the day. Particularly when it is women who are asserting their own authority and agency.

It’s estimated that between 5 and 20 percent of all Americans are sadists or have sadistic tendencies, depending on how tightly defined the term is. Even if forced-birth sadistic religious zealots represent only a small percentage of our nation, it would add up to millions of people.

This is not a male or female thing, at least with regard to the most zealous movement activists. It’s a religion and sadism thing.

Although most of the high-profile leaders, fundraisers, politicians, litigators, and power brokers in the forced birth movement have been and continue to be men, this lust for domination is more about wielding religious power than it is about the gender of the people running it.

Again, this is nothing new. It’s really an ancient story that keeps echoing through history.

There was no shortage of men or women to work in the concentration and death camps in Germany in the 1930s and ’40s. Many of those Christians volunteered to be part of Hitler’s elite corps just so they could destroy the Jews and homosexuals “who’d rejected Jesus.”

They loved being in the shadow of Hitler, the big man, the famous guy, doing his work, wearing his logos. Inflicting pain on their religious enemies. Owning the German libs after their Fuehrer had declared Christianity the official religion of Germany, declared homosexuality evil, and proclaimed Judaism the enemy of Christianity. And, ultimately, they delighted in sending nonbelievers and non-compliers to prison or their deaths.

Here in America today, it’s part of a larger war on “uppity women,” non-whites, non-fundamentalist-Christian people, and gender minorities.

It’s why Ron DeSantis just introduced legislation to ban Gender Studies in colleges across Florida.

Gender Studies examines the role women play in society, from the workplace to the home to power in every dimension of American life: this goes way beyond “Don’t Say Gay.”

Which is why it’s so clear that outlawing abortion pills, for many of today’s extremists, is not about the safety of women. It’s not even about reducing the number of abortions.

It’s about control, power, and their assertion that an angry Christian god has told them they are uniquely suited to interpret his scripture. They, and they alone, can choose to embrace the punitive parts of Christianity and ignore the empathetic and loving parts of it.

For example, in the Mississippi state legislature last week Republicans would not even allow a debate on a Democratic amendment to an anti-abortion bill that would provide help for poor women who are pregnant. They want to punish women who get an abortion, but literally blocked a discussion about offering medical or financial support to low-income women for the child’s first year.

This is not to say that all or even most of the men and women in the anti-abortion movement are sadists or religious fanatics. Many are even Democrats: there’s a pro-life group called Democrats for Life that is active in helping women avoid abortion and argues for medical and financial support during pregnancy.

I know several “pro-life” people who contribute to or volunteer for adoption programs, show up to help with births, or raise money to buy diapers and baby food for low-income women. Others work to fund birth control programs and push for legislation making both sex education and contraception more widely available.

Many who work to discourage women from getting abortions are simply following the dictates of their religious leaders, particularly the Catholics among them. They believe they’re “on the side of life,” and their belief is sincere.

But those people are not, by and large, the radicals funding efforts to outlaw a drug that is safer than Tylenol.

They’re not the ones who want to force women to walk a sidewalk lined with shouting, jeering, spitting crusaders.

Those are an entirely different type of cat.

Those sadists want to shame women who’ve rejected their religious beliefs and gone on to get abortions. Who have defied their religious authority.

They want to publicly humiliate them, harass them, and teach them a lesson.

And, if this or another effort to outlaw Mifepristone succeeds, they’ll be able to gleefully do it — like Reverend Nutter — under the sanction and protection of the law.

SPEAKING OF DE SADE AND RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION OF WOMEN ONE COULD READ HIS WORK JUSTINE

$100 million Jesus ads point to exploitable weakness in the religious right
Valerie Tarico
February 25, 2023

Photo by Edward Cisneros on Unsplash

Christianity has a brand problem. If it were a corporation, brand managers would be scrambling to scrub public image—maybe by greenwashing or with corporate diversity trainings or by renaming their product, say natural gas instead of methane, or by coming up with a new catchy slogan. Or they might actually do something substantive, like ceasing to “gift” baby formula to poor moms or to use child labor in their factories. There are many ways to polish brand.

Christianity’s recently launched He Gets US campaign—millions of people got a dose during the Superbowl—tells us two things: 1. Conservative Evangelical Christians care about their brand problem. 2. Some major Christian donors have decided, to the tune of $100 million apparently, to go with the greenwashing strategy rather than substantive change. And that combination provides a possible avenue for fighting back against some of the ugly objectives and tactics of the Religious Right.

The people paying for this ad campaign are the same ones promoting homophobia, advocating against reproductive healthcare for women, and funding politicians to protect the good old pecking orders: rich over poor, men over women, white people over everyone with more melanin.

Losing customers

Back when the world and I were young, Evangelical Christians were a politically diverse group. But Republican strategists recognized them as a potential political voting block. Hierarchical social structures within churches meant the strategists had to recruit only Church leaders, and those leaders would bring along their congregations. It worked for the Republican party, but at an enormous cost to Christianity as an institution. That is because right wing operatives were spending down Christianity’s good name by merging its brand with their own. The more Christianity came to be associated with ugly political priorities—and then crass power grab-‘em-by-the-pussies—the more young people fled the Church. By the millions. (Tangentially, Islam faces a similar brand problem and deconversion pattern wherever the Mullahs wield political force. Almost half of Iranians say they used to be religious.)

Losing money

Losing customers by the millions would be a problem for any corporate body—especially one with a product that people realize they don’t need when they actually take a good look. When there are better options, in this case secularism, people rarely go back to the same-old-same-old. The financial impact of deconversion is potentially huge. The Mormon Church may coerce tithes with visits from elders who review a family’s finances, but most protestant and Catholic sects rely on more subtle social and emotional pressures. Either way, market share requires mindshare. You have to get people in the door before you can pass the basket.

Losing prospects

But this isn’t merely a financial calculus. At some point, brand damage becomes a threat to identity. Evangelicals are evangelical. It’s part of the ideology. Go into all the world and make disciples of every creature. Unlike Judaism or Hinduism, Christianity is a proselytizing religion. Proselytizing (ok, coupled with colonization and holy wars) has been the strategy that allowed Christianity to spread across the planet. Missionaries may not explicitly recognize that they are recruiting paying customers who will trade cash for club benefits and afterlife services, but they do recognize that “harvesting souls” is a central commandment of their faith. For many, this mandate—called the Great Commission—is their version of praying five times facing Mecca. For some, it becomes an underlying feature in virtually every relationship: All non-Christians are potential converts; friendliness becomes friendship missions; feeding the poor becomes first-and-foremost a path to winning their souls. Evangelicals are a sales force, and as their brand becomes more and more soiled, it gets harder to do their job.

In need of a savior

Having spent down Christianity’s brand, the patriarchs of the religious right are uncomfortable with how far that has gone—the image, that is, not the substance. Most Americans used to think of the Bible as The Good Book, but not anymore. Most Americans used to think of Christianity (and religion more broadly) as benign, but not anymore. Jesus, though—the image of Jesus is relatively untainted. Even those who don’t buy into the idea of him being the perfect human sacrifice who saves our souls (Are you washed in the blood?) tend to believe that he was a good, wise, loving man. They think we know a lot more about him than we do, and what they think we know is positive. So, it totally makes sense that a $100 million rebranding and recruiting effort would center on the person of Jesus. Much of Christian theology is nasty, and the Iron Age texts in the Bible contradict what we now know about science, anthropology and—well, pretty much every other field of modern scholarship. This iconic personal Jesus is all they have left.

The fact that conservative Christians are spending $100 million on marketing Jesus means they are bad off and know it. It means they recognize the deterioration in their brand, and they feel desperate to turn it around. They have made the mistake of letting that desperation slip out, and those of us who would rather not return to the good old dark ages when the Church ruled the world can exploit that vulnerability. Their product sucks, and we need to keep saying so in every way possible. We need to make sure the general public keeps associating Christianity with what Christians are doing, not what they are saying: Those anti-abortion centers that dupe women into keeping pregnancies aren’t Crisis Pregnancy Centers, they are Church Pregnancy Centers. Fetal personhood isn’t a philosophical debate, it’s theology. Denying rights to queer folks and women isn’t conservative, it’s theocracy.

When people do ugly things that are motivated by religious dogma, we should name what’s going on. Conservative Christians are telling us that they can’t afford more brand damage. And maybe if their bad works keep getting exposed they will realize that the answer isn’t Jesus-washing; it’s substantive change.
________________________________

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including The Huffington Post, Salon, The Independent, Quillette, Free Inquiry, The Humanist, AlterNet, Raw Story, Grist, Jezebel, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.

THAT'S WHAT THE RCMP TOLD BABA
Can eating poppy seeds affect drug test results? An addiction and pain medicine specialist explains
The Conversation
February 27, 2023

Poppy Seed Bagels (Shutterstock)

The U.S. Defense Department issued a memo on Feb. 17, 2023, warning service members to avoid eating poppy seeds because doing so may result in a positive urine test for the opiate codeine. Addiction and pain medicine specialist Gary Reisfield explains what affects the opiate content of poppy seeds and how they could influence drug tests.

What are poppy seeds?

Poppy seeds come from a species of poppy plant called Papaver somniferum. “Somniferum” is Latin for “sleep-bringing,” which hints that it might contain opiates – powerful compounds that depress the central nervous system and can induce drowsiness and sleep.

There are two main uses for the opium poppy. It is a source of the opiates used in painkillers, the most biologically active of which are morphine and codeine. Its seeds are also used for cooking and baking.

Poppy seeds themselves don’t contain opiates. But during harvesting, the seeds can become contaminated with opiates contained in the milky latex of the seed pod covering them.


The milky latex of poppy seed pods contains opiates. 

Daniel Prudek/iStock via Getty Images Plus

What affects opiate content in poppy seeds?

Many factors determine the opiate concentrations and ratios of poppies. As with wine grapes, the opiate profile of the poppy plant – and thus its seeds – is affected by its terroir: climate, soil, amount of sunshine, topography and time of harvest.

Another factor is the variety or cultivar of the plant. For example, there are genetically engineered opium poppies that produce no morphine or codeine and others that produce no opium latex at all.

Can you get high from eating poppy seeds?

Practically speaking, you cannot eat enough poppy seeds to get you high. Furthermore, processing dramatically decreases opiate content – for example, by washing or cooking or baking the seeds.
Do poppy seeds affect drug tests?

Poppy seeds don’t have nearly enough opiates to intoxicate you. But because drug tests are exquisitely sensitive, consuming certain poppy seed food products can lead to positive urine drug test results for opiates – specifically for morphine, codeine or both.

Under most circumstances, opiate concentrations in the urine are too low to produce a positive test result. But certain food products – and it’s generally impossible to know which ones, because opiate content does not appear on food labels – contain enough opiates to produce positive test results. Moreover, because of overlap in opiate concentrations and morphine-to-codeine ratios, it can sometimes be challenging to distinguish test results that are due to the consumption of poppy seeds from those that are due to the use of opiate drugs.


Processing poppy seeds decreases the opiate content that may be on the seed. 

Burcu Atalay Tankut/Moment via Getty Images

This is not a problem with most workplace drug testing. Test results are reviewed by a specially trained physician called a medical review officer. Unless the physician finds evidence of unauthorized opiate use, such as needle marks or signs of opiate intoxication or withdrawal, even relatively high concentrations of opiates in the urine that produce positive test results are generally ruled to be negative.

It turns out, though, that drug testing in the military is different, and poppy seeds pose potential problems. One such problem, as highlighted in recent news reports, concerns service members who test positive for codeine and assert a “poppy seed defense.” They are still regarded as having taken codeine, sometimes with serious consequences, such as a disciplinary action or discharge from the service.

Gary Reisfield, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Florida

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

GOP's attacks on government workers draw fire from critics: 'Weaponization is their purpose'
Matthew Chapman
February 27, 2023

Jim Jordan speaks during CPAC Texas 2022 conference. (Shutterstock.com)

House Republicans are using their new majority to try to strip various civil service protections from government workers and target individual officials and employees in retribution for policies they don't like — and it's drawing increasing outrage from their fellow lawmakers, reported The Washington Post on Monday.

"In recent weeks, House Republicans have passed legislation requiring federal employees to return to the office, arguing that pandemic rules have bled into a permanent state that diminishes productivity," reported Lisa Rein and Jacqueline Alemany. "Lawmakers have voted to rescind $80 billion for the cash-starved IRS to hire 87,000 employees in customer service, technology and audit roles to increase tax compliance of those earning more than $400,000 — claiming the extra staff will unfairly target taxpayers. They’ve allowed House members to reduce or eliminate federal agency programs or slash the salaries of individual employees on a quick vote."

All of this comes as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who now chairs the Judiciary Committee, has sent a wave of subpoenas to agency heads without even asking for their voluntary cooperation first. President Joe Biden, for his part, is almost certain to veto all these bills, and his administration "has signaled that it won’t cooperate with GOP efforts to involve career employees in the hearings."

“Essentially, they want to wage war on the federal workforce — with the possible exception of certain parts of the military,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) to the Post. He added, that, despite thier formation of a new committee targeting what they claim to be "weaponization" of government, “Weaponization of the government is not their target — weaponization of the government is their purpose.”

Former President Donald Trump himself tried to radically restructure the civil service to make all workers serve at his pleasure, instituting a provision called "Schedule F" that would reclassify most government workers in a way that allows them to be fired at any time, including for political reasons. Biden rescinded this upon taking office, and Republicans in the House have so far not made any effort to force this provision to be reinstated.

What Norfolk Southern’s accident reports say about the company and industry

Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal
February 27, 2023

Norfolk Southern axed technician jobs that could have stopped toxic derailment: union

Last October in Sandusky, a Norfolk Southern train derailed 21 cars and spilled 10,000 gallons of paraffin wax.

In 2020, a Norfolk Southern conductor tried to pull out of a Rossville, Tennessee train yard while one car was still connected to an unloading tower. The accident released about 500 gallons of maelic anhydride — an irritant for the eyes and respiratory tract that’s useful in making resins.

And in 2018, Norfolk Southern had an accident in Loudonville, Ohio. Sixteen cars came off the tracks. One car spilled more than 30,000 gallons of liquified petroleum gas. The other, according to the accident report, “released 200 pounds of environmentally hazardous substances, solid.”

That last accident happened in February — five years to the day, in fact, before the Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine.

Norfolk’s safety reputation

Derailments litter the past five years of Norfolk Southern’s accident reports. To be fair, most of those incidents are relatively benign: Nothing spills, nobody gets hurt.

Still the frequency of these incidents is hard to miss. Axios noted that in a recent earnings call executives acknowledged accidents are climbing. The Dispatch recently reported that Norfolk Southern is near the top of major rail companies when it comes to accidents per million miles.

According to a Federal Railroad Administration 10-year safety summary, Norfolk Southern saw 163.6 derailments and 2.9 hazardous material releases per year on average.

Speaking on background, one former conductor said Norfolk Southern doesn’t have great reputation when it comes to safety. A consultant with significant experience in the industry said among the big four railroads, Norfolk Southern isn’t as bad as Union Pacific, but it’s still pushing the bounds of safe operation.

On the other hand, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen vice president Vince Verna said the company isn’t an outlier among those major, or Class 1, railroads.

“NS doesn’t really stand out as better or worse than the other Class 1 railroads in America,” he explained. “I’m sure if you looked at any one metric, they may have a better or worse metric depending on what you might be looking at, but all the Class 1 railroads have their issues and their successes.”

Robert Lauby, the former chief safety officer with the Federal Railroad Administration argued Norfolk’s track record is actually pretty good.

“Norfolk Southern has historically been one of the safer railroads,” Lauby said. “They are a conservative railroad, I would say, in that they like to do things the way they’ve always done it, but they try to do it as good as possible.”

“Even safe companies have tragic accidents like this,” he added.

Pointing fingers over regulations

The disaster in East Palestine has put significant attention on the regulatory framework that governs rail safety. The often esoteric provisions have become political ammunition for those criticizing the Biden administration’s response or the Trump administration’s rollbacks.

There’s no doubt former President Donald Trump abandoned or rescinded rules related to rail safety. He regularly bragged about cutting red tape on Twitter. But experts caution against relying on a counterfactual argument.

Gov. Mike DeWine said it was “absurd” the train didn’t have a high hazard designation. That would’ve made no difference, the consultant explained. The Trump administration scrapped rules mandating at least two crew members per train. There were three crew members on the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine.

When it comes to electronic braking, however, rail experts offer a more nuanced response.

As NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy noted in a Twitter thread, the electronic braking rules that Trump rolled back wouldn’t have applied to the train in East Palestine. Still, had such a system been in place, it could’ve made a difference.

Train braking

Lauby compared trains to “a giant slinky”. With traditional pneumatic braking systems, cars at the front of the line stop before cars at the back. Electronically controlled pneumatic, or ECP brakes, apply down the line at the same time. Lauby doubts that ECP brakes would have prevented the East Palestine derailment, but he explained they do tend to reduce the size of accidents.

“They minimize the number of cars involved in the derailment and the speed at which they pile up,” he said. “It takes a lot of the energy out of a derailment when it does occur.”

More important, Lauby and the consultant explain, is what the electronic system can offer beyond braking. They describe it as a kind of backbone that can transmit information up and down the train in real time.

“So, if I’m going down the railroad as a locomotive engineer and I see an alert on the ECP display — car 23, hot bearing, I’m just going to bring my train to a stop,” the consultant explained.

Given the preliminary NTSB report citing an overheated bearing as the apparent cause of derailment, the consultant believes that kind of system could have prevented the accident in East Palestine.

“If the train in East Palestine had been equipped with ECP brakes and that suite of sensors on that car, there would not have been an likelihood of derailment,” the consultant said. “It’s not a matter of blaming anybody. It’s a matter of what potential do we have here moving forward to operate a safer and more efficient railroad.”

What should happen?

The NTSB’s initial findings describe how a bearing in the 23rd car went from 38°F to 103°F to 253°F above ambient temperature at three hot bearing detectors. The first two detectors were 10 miles apart; 20 miles separated the second from the third.

Citing a 2019 study, the consultant explained, even at 20 miles apart, that’s more frequent than average. But to Verna, from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, that patchwork is a problem. He argued regulators should establish standards for their use.

All three experts expressed concerns about the “financialization” of the rail system. With major operators prioritizing quarterly growth, they argued, investments in safety get short shrift.

“If I’m a CEO in the railroad industry and I can’t show more profits every year for five years,” Lauby said, “I’m not going to be the CEO anymore.”

Investments in safety, he said, require thinking further into the future than a given CEO will likely be around.

“And this is where the federal government comes in,” Lauby said. “Because where a railroad can’t do something because of their stockholders the federal government can say this is the new requirement and you have to put this in place, and it evens the field for everybody.”

Establishing an ECP braking system would likely require congressional action Lauby and the consultant noted. But Lauby is doubtful it will make the cut if and when Congress acts.

Verna doesn’t oppose upgrading to ECP brakes. But he argued that avoids the bigger problem of railroads attempting to maximize profits by running ever longer trains.

“It’s not just that the brake system needs to be updated, it’s the operating practices that are being engaged with this current brake system really aren’t what it was designed to do.”

The consultant agreed that railroads should pare back their train lengths. They also argued railroads need to sequence cars to better distribute their weight. Lauby added that railroads should consider a safety management system similar to the Federal Aviation Administration’s.

“The question we ask after an accident,” Verna said, “is did we do everything we could to prevent this from happening?”

“We want to be able to answer yes,” he went on. “Right now, at this point, we think there’s more that we can be doing.”

Follow OCJ Reporter Nick Evans on Twitter.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter

Betsy DeVos spent big in Nebraska in 2022 — here's why

Aaron Sanderford, Nebraska Examiner
February 27, 2023

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)


LINCOLN — Much of the $710,000 that a national school choice group sent to Nebraska to spend on legislative races in 2022 came from the family of former President Donald Trump’s Education secretary and the owner of the National Football League’s Cleveland Browns.

Former Secretary Betsy DeVos, together with her husband, Richard, and Browns owner Jimmy Haslam donated $3.25 million of the $3.3 million Nebraska campaign finance forms list as being raised by the American Federation for Children. Both families have served on the group’s board.

The American Federation for Children advocates for charter schools, vouchers and tax credit scholarships for private schools.

So why did the group send $710,000 to a Nebraska affiliate during the 2022 election cycle? It did so to help Nebraska pass something like Legislative Bill 753, the Opportunity Scholarships Act.

State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Omaha sponsored the bill, which the Revenue Committee has advanced to the floor. Opportunity Scholarships would cut the amount of state income taxes paid by donors to private school scholarship programs aimed at needy students at private schools.

Linehan’s bill has 31 co-sponsors, including two Democrats who have received donations from the school choice group: State Sens. Justin Wayne and Mike McDonnell, both of Omaha. They and Sen. Terrell McKinney of Omaha have said they want students to have choices.

Lauren Garcia, who directs the Nebraska Federation of Children, said her group and its national organization are pushing for more options for students in Nebraska. She said the federation fights teachers unions that want “to protect their education monopoly.”

Dunixi Guereca, executive director of Stand for Schools of Nebraska. (Courtesy of Stand for Schools)

She said the groups are grateful for the support of donors such as DeVos and for her “advocacy for a quality education for every child, no matter their ZIP code or family’s income.” Linehan’s daughter, Katie, is a spokeswoman for the national organization.

Said Garcia: “While thousands of Nebraskans support school choice, the political muscle of the teachers union has stripped too many lawmakers of the courage to do what is best for kids.”

The Nebraska State Education Association, the union that represents Nebraska’s public school teachers, had no immediate comment Friday. The union has testified that the bill risks sending money that would otherwise be in the public treasury to fund private schools.

Nationally, the American Federation for Children spent about $9 million in 2022 to help candidates who embrace its goals: charter schools, vouchers, tax credit scholarships and education savings accounts, the last of which Iowa adopted this year.

Nebraska is one of two states that hasn’t approved one of those four policies. The other is North Dakota, which is mulling a bill this session, too.

The Nebraska Federation for Children spent more than $800,000 on nine legislative races during the 2022 election cycle, including the $710,000 sent from the national group, according to Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission year-end reports.

The Nebraska group’s top local donors included Ken Stinson, chairman emeritus of the Kiewit Corp.; U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb.; and James Timmerman of Springfield, Neb., part of a well-known cattle ranching and feeding family.

Among the year’s highlights: The group spent $119,000 to help State Sen. Brad von Gillern of Omaha win his race against Cindy Maxwell-Ostdiek. It spent $57,000 to help State Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Omaha win and $115,000 against Kauth’s opponent, Tim Royers.

The group also spent $124,000 against State Sen. George Dungan of Lincoln and $64,000 to boost his opponent, Russ Barger. Dungan won anyway. And it spent $54,000 against legislative candidate Angie Lauritsen in Sarpy County, who lost to State Sen. Rick Holdcroft.

Lauritsen described the sinking feeling of seeing the outside money continue flowing into her race, including wave after wave of direct mail. She said she was targeted for wanting to protect the excellent public schools that power growth in Sarpy County.

“We’re just going to keep seeing the escalation by these outside groups, because the action is at the state level,” Lauritsen said.

Gavin Geis of Common Cause Nebraska said he has seen outside spending every year in Nebraska legislative races, “but not like this.” He said the increased spending by such groups drives up the costs for ordinary Nebraskans to run for public office.

“I have never seen an organization like this spend this much money and be almost exclusively funded by out-of-state interests,” Geis said. “This is the biggest cash dump I’ve seen in a long time.”

Katie Linehan said Nebraska is a priority for the American Federation for Children, because “we finally see an opportunity to give kids and families who want more educational options that chance.”

She said local donors and supporters organized first, then reached out to the national group.

Dunixi Guereca of Stand for Schools of Nebraska, which advocates to protect public schools and public school funding, said people should understand the costs of “out-of-state money being spent on “out-of-state solutions.”

LB 753 would cap the annual tax credits claimed at $25 million a year for the first three years. In the fourth year, the credit could increase by 25%, as long as 90% of the credit is claimed. The bill’s credit will hit $100 million a year, starting in 2033.

Supporters of the bill have said it would offer families of children who want but cannot afford a private education a chance to obtain one.

In other states that have passed similar measures, about 70% of the credits have gone to the families of students already attending private schools.

Nebraska Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.