Aussie scientists see life-saving potential in spider venom

Funnel-web spiders are among the world's deadliest species.

A group of Australia-based scientists are looking to venom from a deadly native spider to actually save lives, by halting the harmful effects of heart attacks.

Researchers used venom from a type of funnel-web spider—among the world's deadliest species—in a drug they hope can soon be taken to human trials.

So far the experimental medicine has only been lab-tested.

University of Queensland scientist Nathan Palpant said Friday the venom helped stop the body sending a "death signal" after a heart attack, which causes cells to die.

"After a heart attack, blood flow to the heart is reduced, resulting in a lack of oxygen to heart muscle," Palpant said.

"The lack of oxygen causes the cell environment to become acidic, which combine to send a message for heart cells to die.

"Despite decades of research, no one has been able to develop a drug that stops this death signal in heart cells, which is one of the reasons why heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the world."

The team has successfully used a protein from spider venom on beating human heart cells that were exposed to heart-attack stresses.

"The Hi1a protein from spider venom blocks acid-sensing ion channels in the heart, so the death message is blocked, cell death is reduced, and we see improved heart cell survival," Palpant said.

It is hoped the drug could help not only prevent heart damage and save lives, but improve the quality of donated hearts during transplants.

Previous research has indicated funnel-web spider venom may also be useful in curbing damage from strokes.

The University of Queensland said the team was aiming for human clinical trials for both stroke and heart disease "within two to three years".

The most recent research was published in the latest edition of the journal Circulation.

Revealing the mysteries of stonefish venom

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More information: Meredith A. Redd et al, Therapeutic Inhibition of Acid Sensing Ion Channel 1a Recovers Heart Function After Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury, Circulation (2021). DOI: 10.1161/circulationaha.121.054360

Journal information: Circulation 

The Skilled Labor Shortage Threatens Manufacturing's Full Recovery, Says Study

Before the pandemic, 38% of manufacturers had trouble finding candidates with the right skills and today that number is 54%, said The Workforce Institute at UKG.

Workforce Institute at UKG

THE SKILLED WORKER IS A WHITE MALE

Adrienne Selko
JUL 14, 2021

While more than half, 54%, of manufacturers have achieved year-over-year growth, despite combatting the pandemic, workforce issues have escalated." The Resilience of Manufacturing: Strengthening people operations and bridging the talent gap amid crisis," a study from the Workforce Institute at UKG based on a survey of more than 300 hiring decision-makers representing a mix of U.S.-only manufacturers (65%) and multinational manufacturers with a strong U.S. presence (35%). found that finding talent with the right skills has been more difficult. Before the pandemic, 38% of manufacturers faced this issue and today that number has increased to 54%.

IndustryWeek talked to Kylene Zenk, director of the Manufacturing Practice at UKG to further explore the conclusions from the report.

IW: What are the reasons behind the problems finding skilled workers?

KZ: There are a number of reasons including:
Employees aren’t just calling out of scheduled shifts on short notice — many are actually “ghosting” their employer by skipping a scheduled shift with zero notice.
Between January and March 2021, more than two in three manufacturers (68%) let employees go due to poor attendance, and 13% said managers had to adjust labor schedules every day to account for unplanned absences.
Turnover is up 15% over the prior year: Nearly three in five manufacturers (59%) experienced “higher-than-average” turnover from March 2020 to March 2021, compared with 44% from March 2019 to March 2020. Among multinationals, 71% said turnover was up during the first year of the pandemic vs. 52% of U.S.-only manufacturers.

Although the study did not explicitly explore the reasons why employees are committing attendance infractions, the frequency at which last-minute call-outs occurred within the first 12 months of the pandemic is indeed troubling. Half of the respondents we surveyed said they had people call out of scheduled shifts with less than 24-hour’s notice at least several times a month and 1 in 10 said this happened daily, which puts pressure on managers as well as other team members to fill in the gaps and maintain production schedules.

Again, we can’t pinpoint exactly why these attendance issues happened, but it seems likely that pandemic-related obligations or concerns were a common cause given that frontline employees faced extraordinary personal challenges over the past year, such as enhanced childcare or remote schooling responsibilities, which would have likely impacted their ability to come to work on time or at all. Of course, some manufacturers with more people-centric cultures and policies offered their frontline team members more flexibility to address personal concerns, but this was not unilaterally the case.

We also have to keep in mind that attendance issues were commonplace in manufacturing even before the pandemic. When we surveyed manufacturers in March 2020, more than half said employee lateness (61%), short-staffed shifts (58%), and last-minute call-outs (55%) were all regular occurrences in the 12 months prior to COVID.

What this tells us is that attendance issues, which will presumably continue to impact manufacturing into the post-COVID era, demand a long-term solution — especially in light of the national labor shortage, wherein the decision to let a skilled employee go cannot be made lightly.

IW: What are the recruiting challenges?

KZ: The recruitment challenges noted in the survey seem to be consistent with data coming from other industry studies, and also what we are hearing anecdotally. Among the numerous recruitment challenges employers are facing, a third of our respondents said it’s difficult to compete with other manufacturers, and a quarter is having just as much trouble competing with employers outside the industry, which may have something to do with stagnant wages in manufacturing.

Kylene Zenk, director of the Manufacturing Practice at UKG 

 Across the board, competition for skilled talent is fierce right now. Following a staggering decline in frontline shift-work volume that began in March 2020, shift-work activity in the U.S. is hovering at 86.7% as of June 2021 — 13.3% below the 100% pre-pandemic baseline. And despite being a critical economic engine for growth in the U.S., manufacturing shift-work volume is still about 10% below pre-pandemic levels. This is according to the UKG Workforce Activity Report, which measures U.S. shift work for 3.3 million employees across 35,000 organizations.


Although the skills shortage in manufacturing has been a pervasive issue for the past several years, our research shows us that far more manufacturers today (54%) than a year ago (38%) are having a particularly hard timing finding candidates with the right skills to fill critical job openings. At the same time, 54% of manufacturers say that negative industry perceptions are impacting their ability to recruit Millennial and Gen Z talent, which is equally challenging.

To address the lack of skilled candidates, manufacturers must make a concerted effort to retain the people they have working for them today and cultivate desired skillsets internally, which many are doing by further developing their existing workforce. The survey found that 63% of manufacturers today are taking steps to reskill employees and another 60% are crossing training their people.

To address negative industry perceptions, manufacturers need to look closely at other industries that have been successful in attracting younger workers. This will likely involve adopting practices and policies that create a more employee-centric workplace where flexibility and empowerment are commonplace, which may be uncomfortable for those who hold the more traditional mindset of “command and control” often seen in manufacturing environments.


IW: Do you see the trend of using “alternative “ talent pools continuing?

KZ: The competition for talent will only continue to grow, so manufacturers absolutely need to do everything they can to widen their pool of potential candidates. This should include actively recruiting capable individuals from non-traditional or alternative sources, which is something the survey found many manufacturers are already doing today. For example, 62% have hired or considered hiring people with disabilities or special needs. Another 56% are targeting retirees, while 52% are considering previously incarcerated or “second-chance” workers as potential employees.

It’s important to understand that as employers expand their talent pools, additional training to adequately prepare new hires for their jobs may be needed, but with a severe shortage of labor, these investments will be worth it to streamline onboarding and optimize productivity.

IW: Are you hearing examples of companies who are unable to produce or increase output due to labor shortages?

KZ: Labor shortages are a pervasive problem. In fact, the survey uncovered that nearly two in three manufacturers (63%) are struggling to fill critical labor gaps, and almost a quarter (23%) are “really struggling.” Just recently, I heard about some organizations that have missed production deadlines due to frontline labor shortages, but most are doing everything they can to avoid that situation, like giving more hours to their current workforce. But taking on this extra workload — i.e. working longer shifts to help meet demand — is now starting to have negative impacts as employers run the risk of increased employee burnout, higher overtime expenses, and even more turnover. Already, three-quarters of respondents are concerned about employee burnout and two-in-five indicated that overtime costs are now affecting their bottom lines.

Unfortunately, with the massive competition for labor, it’s only a matter of time before frontline employees who feel overworked and underappreciated at their current job will look for opportunities elsewhere.

IW: Do you see any important trends manufacturers might be missing?

KZ: We are observing an interesting dynamic play out in the manufacturing industry. Some organizations have come to realize they essentially operate two distinct company cultures: one for office employees, and one for frontline, hourly team members. Corporate versus plant if you will. This has become especially apparent over the course of the past year, during the pandemic. One group was deemed “essential” and required to stay in the plants, while the other perhaps had the flexibility to work from their homes.


This dynamic highlights the fact that the quality of these two workplace cultures is not equal, and that there is significant work to be done to improve the workplace experience for frontline, hourly team members so that manufacturers can remain competitive employers now and into the future.

 

Erin Gilmer, Disability Rights Activist, Dies at 38

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Erin Gilmer, a lawyer and disability rights activist who fought for medical privacy, lower drug prices and a more compassionate health care system as she confronted a cascade of illnesses that left her unable to work or even get out of bed for long stretches, died on July 7 in Centennial, Colo. She was 38.

Anne Marie Mercurio, a friend whom Ms. Gilmer had given power of attorney, said the cause was suicide.

First in Texas and later in Colorado, where she had her own law practice, Ms. Gilmer pushed for legislation that would make health care more responsive to patients’ needs, including a state law, passed in 2019, that allows pharmacists in Colorado to provide certain medications without a current prescription if a patient’s doctor cannot be reached.

She was a frequent consultant to hospitals, universities and pharmaceutical companies, bringing an extensive knowledge of health care policy and even more extensive firsthand experience as a patient.

At conferences and on social media, she used her own life to illustrate the degradations and difficulties that she said were inherent in the modern medical system, in which she believed patients and doctors alike were treated as cogs in a machine.

Her conditions included rheumatoid arthritis, Type 1 diabetes, borderline personality disorder and occipital neuralgia, which produces intensely painful headaches. Her lengthy medical file presented a challenge to doctors used to addressing patients in 15-minute visits, and she said she often found herself dismissed as “difficult” simply because she tried to advocate for herself.

“Too often patients have to wonder: ‘Will they believe me?’” she wrote on in May. “‘Will they help me? Will they cause more trauma? Will they listen and understand?’”

She spoke often about her financial difficulties; despite her law degree, she said, she had to rely on food stamps. But she acknowledged that her race gave her the privilege to cut corners.

“In the months when I couldn’t figure out how to make ends meet, I would disguise myself in my nice white-girl clothes and go to the salad bar and ask for a new plate as if I had already paid,” she said in a 2014 speech to a medical conference at Stanford University.

“I’m not proud of it, but I’m desperate,” she added. “It’s survival of the fittest. Some patients die trying to get food, medicine, housing and medical care. If you don’t die along the way, you honestly wish you could, because it’s all so exhausting and frustrating and degrading.”

She could be fierce, especially when people presumed to explain her problems to her or offer a quick-fix solution. But she also developed a following among people with similarly complicated health conditions, who saw her as both an ally and an inspiration, showing them how to make the system work for them.

“Before, I thought I didn’t have a choice,” Tinu Abayomi-Paul, who became a disability rights activist after meeting Ms. Gilmer in 2018, said by phone. “She was the first to show me how to address the institution of medicine and not be written off as a difficult patient.”

Ms. Gilmer highlighted the need for trauma-informed care, calling on the medical system to recognize not only that many patients enter the intimate space of a doctor’s office already traumatized but also that the health care experience can itself be traumatizing. Last year she wrote a handbook, “A Preface to Advocacy: What You Should Know as an Advocate,” which she shared online, for free.

“She expected the system to fail her,” said Dr. Victor Montori, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic and a founder of the Patient Revolution, an organization that supports patient-centered care. “But she tried to make it so the system didn’t fail other people.”

Erin Michelle Gilmer was born on Sept. 27, 1982, in Wheat Ridge, Colo., a Denver suburb, and grew up in nearby Aurora. Her father, Thomas S. Gilmer, a physician, and her mother, Carol Yvonne Troyer, a pharmacist, divorced when she was 19, and she became estranged from them.

In addition to her parents, Ms. Gilmer is survived by her brother, Christopher.

Ms. Gilmer, a competitive swimmer as a child, began to develop health problems in high school. She had surgery on her jaw and a rotator cuff, her father said in an interview, and she also developed signs of depression.

A star student, she graduated with enough advanced placement credits to skip a year of college at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She studied psychology and economics, and she graduated summa cum laude in 2005.

She decided to continue her education, at the University of Colorado’s law school, to keep her student health insurance — “a cruel joke,” she said in a 2020 interview with Dr. Montori. She focused on health law and human rights, training herself to be both a policy expert and an activist; she later called her blog Health as a Human Right.

She received her degree in 2008 and moved to Texas, where she worked for the state government and a number of health care nonprofits. She returned to Denver in 2012 to open her own practice.

By then her health was beginning to decline. Her existing conditions worsened and new ones appeared, exacerbated by a 2010 accident in which she was hit by a car. She found it hard to work a full day, and eventually most of her advocacy was virtual, including via social media.

For all her mastery of the intricacies of health care policy, Ms. Gilmer said what the system needed most was more compassion.

“We can do that at the big grand levels of instituting trauma-informed care as the way to practice,” she said in the interview with Dr. Montori. “And we can do that at the small micro levels of just saying: ‘How are you today? I’m here to listen. I’m glad you’re here.’”

Game of Thrones’s Dire Wolves Existed—But a New Study Suggests They Weren’t Really Wolves

BY ELLEN GUTOSKEY

Not a dire wolf.
ADRIAAN GREYLING, PEXELS

Though most people may know dire wolves from their many scene-stealing appearances in Game of Thrones, they didn’t spring straight from the mind of George R.R. Martin. In fact, scientists have known about the long-extinct creature since the mid-19th century.

Until recently, it was widely believed that the dire wolf (Canis dirus) was essentially a more muscular relative of the gray wolf (Canis lupus), partially because their skeletons look so similar. But a new study published in Nature suggests that the two species share much less than their appearances imply.

It all started when archaeologist Angela Perri, of Durham University in the UK, set off on an expedition across North America to locate dire wolf fossils from museum collections and see if she could extract DNA from them. Her endeavor was successful: As National Geographic reports, Perri and her collaborators were able to sequence genomes from five dire wolf fossils from Idaho, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wyoming. The remains dated from 50,000 years ago to about 13,000 years ago (around the time dire wolves died out).

After comparing the dire wolf sequences to ones from gray wolves and several other canids, the researchers discovered that dire wolves and gray wolves diverged genetically from their common ancestor about 5.7 million years ago. As Scientific American explains, their morphological resemblance seems to be an example of convergent evolution; in other words, they developed similar traits because their lifestyles were similar, not because their DNA was similar.

A dire wolf skeleton on display at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Kansas.JAMES ST. JOHN, FLICKR // CC BY 2.0

Based on these findings, it’s possible that dire wolves spent millions of years evolving in the Americas—far separated from the gray wolves back in Eurasia. In that case, it could’ve been the eventual migration of other species—even humans—that steered dire wolves toward extinction.

“The question now becomes: Is their extinction related to climatic and environmental change, or did humans and potentially other wolves and dogs and [diseases] coming in assist in pushing them out?” Perri told National Geographic.

The study could also impact the dire wolf’s scientific classification. With a weaker genetic link to the Canis genus, it might need to be shifted to its own genus. But even if that happens, there’s a good chance we’ll still call them “dire wolves” in casual conversation—much like we do with koala bears, electric eels, and other animals with misleading monikers.

[h/t Scientific American]

The Right Chemistry: John Dee mixed science and the occult

The enigmatic polymath who had once been the toast of the court of Queen Elizabeth I died in poverty.

Author of the article:Joe Schwarcz • Special to the Montreal Gazette
Publishing date:Jul 16, 2021 • 

A detail from John Dee performing an experiment before Queen Elizabeth I, a painting by Henry Gillard Glindon. A recent X-ray analysis of the 19th-century work shows that originally Dee was surrounded by a circle of skulls, Joe Schwarcz writes. Wellcome Library via Wikimedia Commons

Amazing staging! Trygaeus climbs onto a giant mechanical beetle and flies up to the palace of the gods. That scene from Aristophanes’s play Peace would be spectacular on the Broadway stage today, but what is truly amazing, is that it was orchestrated in 1547 at Trinity College, Cambridge. The brains behind the spectacle was John Dee, a young faculty member who instantly developed a reputation as a sorcerer because the audience could not believe that such a spectacular effect could be produced by normal means

Dee would go on to forge a career as mathematician, astronomer, navigational expert, cartographer, book collector and alchemist. He would certainly qualify as a scientist if the description ended there. But it doesn’t. While the Cambridge beetle had nothing to do with sorcery, Dee later would go on to live up to the reputation it had fostered by dabbling in astrology, exploring contacts with the spirit world and engaging in fortune-telling, a curious melange of science and the occult.

In 1558, Dee cemented his status as a seer by advising young Princess Elizabeth not to despair, because “as the gods have indicated to me, you shall become queen in another four months.” Indeed, exactly four months later, Mary Tudor died, allowing Elizabeth to ascend to the throne. Out of gratitude, the queen appointed Dee as her personal astrologer and advisor.

Before long, John Dee proved to be so useful that he was then given the task of gathering intelligence about foreign rulers and reporting directly to the queen. A secret agent as it were! These reports were not signed with his name, but rather with a symbol of two circles flanked with a horizontal and a vertical line that can be interpreted as the number seven. Supposedly the circles represent eyes, meaning the report was only for Her Majesty’s eyes. The seven was there because it was the alchemists’ lucky number. And there we have the first secret agent, code name 007! Is this where Ian Fleming got the idea for 007? Was John Dee the inspiration for James Bond? We will never know because Fleming is no longer with us. An alternate theory is that Fleming’s research into spy activities revealed that one of the great British successes during the First World War was the cracking of a German code that the British referred to as 0070. The author just shortened this to 007. I prefer the association with Dee, because he was into chemistry.

This is documented in a famous 19th-century painting by Henry Gillard Glindoni depicting Queen Elizabeth and her courtiers watching Dee performing a chemical experiment. “The Queen’s conjurer” is clearly seen pouring some substance from a vial into a flaming brazier. Looks like a demonstration we commonly carry out in chemistry lectures, sprinkling a little lycopodium powder into a flame. Dee documents other chemical experiments in his writings, including the making of silver chloride. Although not completely clear, it seems he reacted silver with nitric acid to form silver nitrate, which then yields silver chloride on reaction with salt, sodium chloride.

Dee’s interest in chemical matters is further demonstrated by his association with the infamous occultist, self-declared spirit medium and alchemist Edward Kelley. Having once been convicted of forgery, Kelley had had his ears cropped as punishment, and we see him in Glindoni’s painting with a hat that covers the disfigurement. Upon hearing of Dee’s efforts to foretell the future by gazing into a mirror, Kelley had sought Dee out in 1582, offering his help as a medium. Indeed, Dee was into “scrying” with a mirror made of obsidian, a volcanic rock. Kelley claimed that he had the ability to contact angels who would help him interpret the visions Dee saw in the mirror.

The mirror that John Dee is supposed to have used is on display in the British Museum, along with his crystal ball. Such obsidian mirrors were introduced into Europe by Spanish explorers who had found Indigenous people in Mexico using such mirrors for divination. The required shine was imparted to the rock by rubbing with, get this, bat droppings! Since bats only digest insects they eat partially, residues of the bugs’ skeletons show up in the feces, making this a functional abrasive to polish the volcanic rock. Also on display in the British Museum is a clay tablet with all sorts of occult symbols that Kelley used in his communications with angels. He would interpret the messages for Dee, including the famous one about the need to share all earthly possessions, including wives. And yes, that meant Dee and Kelley came to engage in wife swapping! One of Dee’s children may actually have been fathered by Kelley.

Dee and Kelley travelled through Europe with Dee telling fortunes and demonstrating scientific phenomena, while Kelley attempted to mutate metals into gold with a magic powder he claimed to have discovered. In Bohemia, he was even imprisoned for a while after he failed to produce the metal as promised. Dee eventually fell out of favour when Elizabeth was succeeded by James I, who abhorred divination and anything to do with the occult. The enigmatic polymath who had once been the toast of the royal court died in poverty.

A recent X-ray analysis of the Glindoni painting shows that originally Dee was surrounded by a circle of skulls, which the painter may have intended to portray that while Dee pursued science, he also had a foot in the occult. Perhaps the patron who commissioned the painting did not like this association and asked the artist to modify the work. He painted over the skulls, and, perhaps piqued, retained the occult connection by replacing a globe in the original with Kelley. I just wish he would have sneaked the 007 in there somewhere.

joe.schwarcz@mcgill.ca

Joe Schwarcz is director of McGill University’s Office for Science & Society (mcgill.ca/oss). He hosts The Dr. Joe Show on CJAD Radio 800 AM every Sunday from 3 to 4 p.m.

The Problem Is the Other CRT (Conservative Race Theory)

Denying systemic racism means blaming black people for their status in America — and that’s far more offensive

July 16, 2021 by Tim Wise 


To hear conservatives tell it, Critical Race Theory — their newfound buzz phrase for virtually any anti-racist analysis or argument — is fundamentally un-American, and even racist itself. By suggesting that the country is systemically unjust, they argue, CRT is rooted in a rejection of the United States as a “good and great” nation. And by insisting upon the existence of white privilege as a social and economic reality, CRT is, they say, racist against white people.

But amid the uproar over anti-racist scholarship, equity trainings, and the movement for Black lives, one important thing has been overlooked. Namely, the alternative to the analysis offered by Critical Race Theory is far more troubling, offensive and racist than anything being forwarded by the Crits themselves.


After all, if disparities in labor markets, education, housing, and the justice system are not the result of deeply embedded systemic racism — meaning the sedimentation of unequal opportunities resulting from a history of white racial domination and ongoing discrimination today — what’s left to explain them?

Frankly, there is only one possible answer: if the problem isn’t America, then it must be Black people.

But to suggest that there is something wrong with Black people as a group, something dysfunctional and pathological, is to forward a racist proposition by definition. So how exactly can the critics of CRT say it’s racist to suggest whites have privilege but acceptable to say Blacks are defective? The former, after all, is a sociological assessment, while the latter is a characterological one. Situating white people within a sociological context of power and relative position is not a judgment upon them as human beings. But placing Black people in a basket marked “inferior” in some way — whether biologically, as in the arguments of The Bell Curve (a book rejected by few conservatives and written by a very prominent one), or culturally — casts precisely such a judgment.

So why is this not being screamed from the rooftops in response to the recent anti-anti-racist backlash? First, because we’ve been bogged down trying to demonstrate how the things being critiqued aren’t really Critical Race Theory or insisting that CRT isn’t really being taught in middle and high schools.

While true, this is a losing strategy of value to no one but scholars and academics. As Christopher Rufo — the researcher who initiated much of the anti-CRT push — said recently in a televised interview, he “doesn’t give a shit” about the specific minutiae of CRT. He knows, as does the entirety of the right, the label’s value as a memetic device. The word critical, to the masses, means being critical of them and the country they love (how dare we!). At the same time, theory triggers images of academics who get paid to ponder intellectual and philosophical issues while “real Americans” have to work for a living. It’s tailor-made for resentment and backlash.

So while we argue the finer points of Derrick Bell’s parables in the book And We Are Not Saved or Kimberle Crenshaw’s theories on intersectionality, the other side is looking to invalidate all anti-racist thought in the hopes that any challenge to the existing racial hierarchy can be resisted.

Meanwhile, no one is holding them accountable for what their rejection of the systemic racism thesis requires of them; namely, an alternate explanation for ongoing racial disparities in American society. And in practice, that explanation — what we can call conservative race theory, or the other CRT — is one that intrinsically necessitates a racist assessment of Black people.

Rather than arguing detailed academic theory, we must answer the right-wing assault on anti-racism by demonstrating the real motives of those who have launched the attack on it. And in this case, their motives are to cast aspersions upon the victims of racial injustice, to pathologize Blackness. For 400 years, it has been their chief project: the very project about which they would keep our children ignorant, even as they continue to further its aims.

Anti-Blackness was at the heart of the nation’s founding. First, it came in the guise of spiritual supremacy, as in, these heathens are cut off from the salvific balm of God, cursed by Ham, meant to be slaves, and instructed, as such, to serve their masters.

Then it morphed from the religious to the scientific, as Blackness came to be seen as a lesser form of human evolution. And so there was phrenology, and the measuring of the facial slope, and later the giving of IQ tests. Black folks were, on this account, inferior not because of God but because of nature. Lesser opportunity, segregation away from whites, and second-class citizenship were appropriate, to hear the nation’s leaders tell it, for Black people were incapable of higher development and accomplishment.

After the Second World War, which was fought in part to smash the notion of racial science, the idea of Blackness as a biological pollutant became a harder sell. Oh sure, there were still true believers and others who might not have gone full-tilt Hitler but nonetheless continued to endorse the idea of biological superiority for whites, alongside definitive inferiority for Blacks. But for most, a new school of analysis was needed.

Enter the idea of cultural pathology. Beginning in the 1970s, in an attempt to fashion a kinder, gentler anti-Blackness, conservatives turned to a critique of Black communities, family structure, and Black culture more broadly. Black folks, on this accounting, didn’t sufficiently value hard work, education, or marrying before childbirth, valorized and glamorized criminal behavior, and generally preferred reliance on the government and various welfare programs to steady employment. Far from proving systemic injustice or inequality of opportunity, racial gaps in educational outcomes, employment, poverty, and crime rates — according to cultural critics — reflected deep-seated pathologies within Black America as a whole.

Although some versions of this argument allow that these cultural tendencies were adaptations (or maladaptations) to past oppression — aversion to work stemmed from past exploitation, and devaluing schooling stemmed from having been denied access to it — others were less ecumenical. Dinesh D’Souza, for instance, argued in his book The End of Racism that Blacks under enslavement had been treated “pretty well,” and that only when they decided to close the “civilization gap” with whites and Asians would the problem of inequity disappear. To this way of thinking, Black people are a deviant sub-group of lazy, fecund brutes, criminals, and welfare parasites, fully deserving of scorn from the rest of us.

But remember, CRT is the racist worldview.

Never mind that the vast majority of Black people do not receive so-called welfare benefits, or that out-of-wedlock birthrates in the Black community have plummeted (contrary to popular misconception), or that Black crime rates are far lower today than 30 years ago, or that Black educational attainment is at an all-time high. Never mind, in short, facts. The proponents of the anti-Black cultural critique know what they know — and more importantly, they know that a white public fed a steady diet of this kind of racism for generations will believe it.

And now is the time for them to push it. In the past year, the defenders of white hegemony have been confronted with a mass movement, led by Black folks, but to which millions of previously unmobilized white persons attached themselves. Even though white enthusiasm for the uprising has waned from its high-water mark a year ago, ongoing support for racial equity (especially among the young) has left many of the old guard nervous. What better way to stem the tide than by launching an assault on anti-racism, not only with police in the streets but also against teachers in the schools?

The latest freakout is part and parcel of what Carol Anderson documents in her book White Rage. Every step forward on the road to Black liberation — and surely the uptick in support for racial justice in the past year would constitute that, at least symbolically, to the right — has been met with pushback by white America. Combined with a shifting popular culture and demographic changes that will soon render whites a plurality of the country rather than the majority, the ingredients for a white existential meltdown have been duly gathered.

Into that breach have stepped political Trumpism — itself a movement marinated in nostalgia for a fictive time of national glory and greatness — and anti-wokeness. While the latter is a reaction, in part, to the admittedly clumsy machinations of a racial justice movement finding its legs, it has been weaponized by those who disagree with more than just the specific narrative chosen by the left or with its particular tactics. Anti-wokeness is firmly attached to a political project that seeks to stifle police reform, derail policy changes to better equalize economic resources, and commit memoricide — the extermination of truth and memory — within the halls of academia.

We must do more than merely argue arcane theoretical points with those who attack the racial justice movement. Debating those who seek to reinforce systemic white supremacy by denying it exists is a fool’s errand. Better to expose them for what they are and what their politic portends. Better to make them explain their theory for racial inequities in America. Make them defend scientific or cultural racism. In short, better to out them as the racists they are and have always been.

Because the problem is either with America or with Black people.

And if you believe it’s the latter, the problem is also with you.


Anti-racism educator and author of 9 books, including White Like Me and, most recently, Dispatches from the Race War (City Lights, December 2020)

—

This post was previously published on Medium.

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Migrant 'encounters' top 1 million in past year, but 1/3 are repeat crossers of U.S.-Mx border

Number of individuals picked up by CBP has declined from 2019, but number of bodies found in desert is increasing



Posted Jul 16, 2021, 
Paul IngramTucsonSentinel.com

More by Paul Ingram

Driven by multiple attempts to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, the overall number of "encounters" tracked by U.S. Customs and Border Protection has risen to more than 1.1 million this fiscal year, even as the number of individual people crossing this year has declined from 2019.

Many people have attempted to cross more than once this year, and CBP officials said 34 percent of encounters in June were people who had at least one prior encounter over the last 12 months.

Some people picked up by Border Patrol agents have crossed three or more times in the past year, and have quickly tried to come to the United States again after being immediately deported under policies instituted by the Trump administration.

Between the end of March 2020 and the beginning of February 2021, 38 percent of all encounters involved recidivism, said CBP's acting head. That pattern, which sometimes turns fatal, has continued in recent months.

The increase in encounters comes despite brutal weather across the southwestern United States, and officials continued to highlight life-saving efforts along the border, even as Homeland Security officials have repeatedly warned people not to try and cross the desert.

Humane Borders and the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office reported finding the remains of 127 migrants in the first half of 2021. Last year, the group recorded 96 deaths during the same time period.

The number of migrant deaths recorded in the Arizona desert so far this year is on pace to break the record set just last year, as migrants attempt the crossing in the face of a record-breaking heat wave.

Data released Friday show that migrants were encountered 188,829 times across the southwestern border in June. The majority were single adults who were immediately expelled from the United States under Title 42 — a policy ostensibly supported by the CDC that allows the agency to rapidly deport those who crossed into the U.S. after they traveled through a country with COVID-19 infections.

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This policy, which relies on a 1944 public health law, was used by the Trump administration beginning in March 2020 to push migrants out of the United States, including thousands of asylum seekers who remained marooned in northern Mexico. That policy has remained in place under President Joe Biden, even as other Trump border policy bulwarks, including the Migrant Protection Protocols, have been shut down.

"The large number of expulsions during the pandemic has contributed to a larger-than-usual number of migrants making multiple border crossing attempts, which means that total encounters somewhat overstate the number of unique individuals arriving at the border," said Troy Miller, acting commissioner for CBP.

Woman died in desert after crossing 3 times

One case in Arizona highlights the realities of the issue. On June 13, agents assigned to the Wellton station found the remains of a woman underneath a tree in the desert southeast of Yuma, Arizona. After tracking down her information, agents discovered that she had attempted to enter the U.S. twice before, once on June 9 and against on June 11.

Agents working with the Mexican consulate found a phone number in her belongings and were able to tell her family that she had died in the desert, after attempting to cross into the U.S. three times.

More than half of the people encountered in June at the border by either U.S. Border Patrol or the Office of Field Operations—which guards the nation's ports—were immediately returned to Mexico under Title 42. Nearly 114,000 people were single adults, while CBP officials also encountered a total of 50,015 people traveling as families, and another 15,000 were unaccompanied children traveling to the U.S. without parents or guardians.

Late last year, the ACLU successfully blocked the deportation of unaccompanied children under Title 42 after a federal judge ruled against the practice, and the group has said that it will likely move forward and challenge the program entirely. And, the Biden administration has hinted that it could shut-down the program, prompting Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to weigh-in with a letter that argues that ended the controversial program would cause "nothing short of a catastrophic surge of both illegal immigration and COVID-19 disease along our southern border."

In his letter Friday, Ducey referred to the rise of encounters at the border as a "man-made crisis," and said that the end of Title 42 would "threaten the health and safety of not only Arizonans, but all Americans" because variants of COVID-19 could enter the U.S. Ducey's concerns about the variants comes just weeks after the governor rescinded emergency orders, and signed a law that blocks schools from mandating masks and vaccinations.
Fewer people crossing into Tucson, Yuma sectors

In the Tucson Sector, which covers the Arizona-Mexico border from the Yuma County line east to the border of New Mexico, agents encountered 18,385 people in June, a decline of around 7 percent.

The adjacent Yuma Sector, which straddles the Colorado River, saw a less significant decline — dropping nearly 2 percent from May to June.

This is the second month that apprehensions in Arizona have declined since April's high when agents encountered 20,281 people in the Tucson Sector and 13,725 in Yuma.

Miller said that single adults "continue to make up the majority of these encounters," however, the number of single adults declined 3 percent from May to June. However, the number of unaccompanied children increased by 8 percent, he said, rising from around 14,100 children in May to more than 15,200 in June. At the same time, the number of families increased 25 percent from nearly 45,000 in May to nearly 56,000 in June.

However, the number of families is "well below the peak" of 88,587 people traveling as families who arrived during the Trump administration in May 2019. "In 2021, family unit encounters have consistently tracked below 2019 encounters for each month of the year," Miller wrote.

Miller said that the number of children in CBP custody had fallen from 5,767 at its peak on March 29 to 832 on June 30, and the average daily number of children in CBP custody was just under 800. Citing what he called "sustained progress," Miller said that the average number of hours that children spent in CBP custody fell from 133 hours—or more than 5 days—to 28 hours on June 30.

As part of this effort, CBP officials have established two "tent-like" facilities to hold unaccompanied children in Arizona, one in Yuma and the other in Tucson.

"This sustained progress is a result of the steps DHS took to reengineer processes and mobilize personnel Department-wide, including designating FEMA to lead a whole of government effort to assist the Department of Health and Human Services," Miller said. "This support has included establishing temporary facilities that provide safe, sanitary, and secure environments for unaccompanied children as well as continued support from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers to efficiently and effectively verify claimed sponsors to support the reunification process."

However, even as the agency touted its progress, this follows a whistleblower complaint which cited "gross mismanagement," at a facility in Fort Bliss, Texas.

"We are in the hottest part of the summer, and we are seeing a high number of distress calls to CBP from migrants abandoned in treacherous terrain by smugglers with no regard for human life," Miller said. "Although CBP does everything it can to locate and rescue individuals who are lost or distressed, the bottom line is this: the terrain along the border is extreme, the summer heat is severe, and the miles of desert migrants must hike after crossing the border in many areas are unforgiving."

On Friday, the head of the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, John R. Modlin, tweeted a video showing agents rescuing a Guatemalan woman from "treacherous terrain" and "scorching heat," by flying her out of the area with help from a helicopter from the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Just a day earlier, Modlin tweeted a photo of around 70 migrants who surrendered to Border Patrol agents near San Miguel, Ariz., about 64 miles southwest of Tucson.

Miller said that smuggling organizations are "abandoning" migrants in remote and dangerous areas, leading to a "dramatic rise in the number of rescues" by Border Patrol agents. So far this fiscal year, agents have conducted 9,500 rescues nationwide.

Even as encounters between Border Patrol agents and migrants have declined in some sectors, overall apprehension numbers have instead plateaued after significant month-to-month increases under the Biden administration. Republican politicians, including Ducey and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have declared a "crisis" on the border and declared emergencies in their states. In April, Ducey accused the Biden administration of having its "head in the sand," and later deployed about 250 National Guard troops to conduct administrative duties for the Republican sheriffs of Yuma and Cochise County.

Meanwhile, as Biden administration officials have begun untangling Trump-era policies, Vice President Kamala Harris went to Guatemala and Mexico. Following her meeting with Guatemala's President Alejandro Giammattei, Harris said that the Biden administration wants to "help Guatemalans find hope at home."

"Do not come," Harris said. Later, she added that she wanted to be clear to people "thinking about making that dangerous trek" to the southwestern border. "Do not come," she said. "Do not come."

"The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border," Harris said.

As part of his statement, Miller also highlighted the end of the Migrant Protection Protocols, which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their case moved forward.

Implemented in February 2019, MPP meant that about 68,000 people were sent back to Mexico to wait for their asylum claims, many of them from Honduras and Guatemala. However, MPP this also includes people from Cuba, El Salvador, and Venezuela, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a non-partisan project based at Syracuse University. At its peak, around 12,500 people were sent back in August 2019 as the program expanded along the southwestern border.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas formally terminated MPP on June 1.

While MPP has ended, DHS will continue to process eligible MPP enrollees, and as "part of a continued effort to restore safe and orderly processing of individuals seeking to enter the United States," DHS has expanded "the pool" of people who can be processed into the United States, including MPP enrollees "who had their cases terminated or were ordered removed in absentia," Miller said.

Since that announcement to the end of June, DHS processed more than 12,000 people who had been returned to Mexico under MPP, Miller said.

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Branson made it to space, and Bezos will follow suit. But honestly, no one really cares

The space race appears to be more about ego than scientific advancement. Look at how Branson 'preponed' his trip before Bezos.

RAGHAV BIKHCHANDANI 

13 July, 2021

Richard Branson on board VSS Unity | Twitter | @richardbranson

On 11 July, founder of the Virgin Group, Richard Branson completed a trip to the boundary of outer space on his Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity, dawning a new era of making space “more accessible to all”. Meanwhile, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is also scheduled to lift off on his suborbital space vehicle ‘New Shepard’ on 20 July.

The privatisation of space travel is hardly a new phenomenon and neither is the desire to look beyond this planet to new avenues, be it over a genuine curiosity about the universe or over ambitions of colonisation. We aren’t that far removed from Donald Trump’s Space Force dreams either.

The face of astronomy in popular culture, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, perfectly stated the positive side of having a “cosmic perspective”.

“The day we cease the exploration of the cosmos is the day we threaten the continuance of our species,” Tyson said, as part of a spoken word performance released in 2016.

 

Sadly, such a well-intentioned, albeit idealistic, position is nowhere to be found in the high-budget, ill-advised vanity projects that make up the billionaires’ space race today. The space race now appears to be more about ego than scientific advancement as evidenced by how Branson ‘preponed’ his space flight to outdo Bezos.

Also Read: Indian-origin American Sirisha Bandla to take off with boss, Richard Branson, into space


The Bezos vs Branson ‘coincidence’

In an interview with The Washington Post, Branson attempted to quell any notions of a rivalry with Bezos, stating that it was a mere “coincidence” that he and Bezos will be embarking on space travel in the same month.

But it is too little, too late. The hype trailers are out on social media and the narratives around ‘Bezos vs Branson’ have long since been manufactured. SpaceX owner Elon Musk also weighed in, wishing Branson luck ahead of the launch, as did Bezos.

Not everyone among the public appears to be particularly invested or impressed in seeing how their trips play out. To be honest, much on social media was about the Wimbledon or the Euros rather than Branson bicycling to his launchpad. But we did see criticism and memes directed at these billionaires.

Political commentator Francesca Florentini’s post is particularly strong, citing Branson’s history of false promises over the past two decades on the issue of climate change. This apathy towards the planet’s crumbling environment is far from the only issue surrounding this billionaires’ space race though.

The New Republic’s Jacob Silverman writes: “The best argument against the billionaire space race is how little impact it will have on the lives of most of Earth’s inhabitants. It will inaugurate a new era of ultra-expensive stunt tourism, perhaps, but it will do nothing for the common good.”

Science writer Shannon Stirone also commented in The Atlantic, “Leaving Earth right now isn’t just bad optics; it’s almost a scene out of a twisted B-list thriller: The world is drowning and scorching, and two of the wealthiest men decide to … race in their private rocket ships to see who can get to space a few days before the other. If this were a movie, these men would be Gordon Gekko and Hal 9000—both venerated and hated.”

Also Read: If Elon Musk wrote this, the headline would be a meme & Dogecoin fortunes would’ve changed

Harsh realities of what goes into making a space trip

What the social media marketing posts from Branson and Bezos conveniently omit the most is the challenges that make up the preparation of any expedition beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

In Branson’s case, the teething problems and previously fatal test flight faced by the VSS Unity spacecraft have been well-documented over Virgin Galactic’s 17-year history. As a result, Branson’s effort to gain a first-mover advantage in the race by moving the scheduled date feels hasty and doesn’t inspire confidence that everything will run smoothly.

Jeff Bezos has also encountered several issues, including not getting insurance, petitions to stop him from returning to Earth, among others.

But even if you put aside specific issues with the spacecraft, there’s a myriad of variables affecting the cosmic aspirations of all the billionaires in this race.

As detailed perfectly by journalist Sim Kern, the realities of space travel are a far cry from the glamorous, Hollywood-inspired “champagne-sipping” vacations that Branson or Bezos would have you believe.

The entire itinerary is intensely micromanaged amid equipment that needs to be constantly monitored for maintenance. Be it exercise, food, sleep or going to the bathroom, every aspect of time spent in the spacecraft is akin to being in a zero-gravity cage with no means of escape.

Despite this glamourised propaganda that has surrounded this space race, it will be truly amazing to see the level of spin that Branson or Bezos will use about their experiences. Branson has already announced a sweepstakes contest where the winners will get two tickets to go to space with all the proceeds going to a ‘space tourism charity’ called “Space for Humanity.” Branson claimed that his experience was the first step towards making space accessible to those who cannot afford it.

“If you ever had a dream, now is the time to make it come true. I’d like to end by saying welcome to the dawn of a new space age,” he said.

Bring on the vanity project, the memes are already in drafts.

Views are personal.
(Edited by Srinjoy Dey)

Branson made it to space, and Bezos will follow suit. But honestly, no one really cares (theprint.in)