What the Bible's approach to history can teach us about America's glory and shame

Mark K. George, Professor of Bible and Ancient Systems of Thought,

 Iliff School of Theology
Mon, March 1, 2021

Trumpeting the past? The Bible has conflicting narratives over the conquest of Canaan Wikimedia Commons

At a time when Americans are seemingly as polarized as ever over the present, the country’s past also appears to be up for debate.

The killing of George Floyd and the anti-racism protests it sparked and The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which placed slavery central to the American narrative, have reminded people of the oppressive, exploitative and painful parts of the making of the United States. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission was created to counter what the administration described as a “radicalized” view of America history. Its report, released in the last days of the Trump administration, suggested that all Americans are “united by the glory of our history.”

But history is messy. It doesn’t fit easily within binary thinking.


As a Bible scholar, I am struck by the ways the Bible tells both the good and bad of ancient Israel’s history – even when the narratives conflict. Instead of only celebrating moments of glory or tragedy, the Bible recounts both together. This approach to history – treating narratives as one rather than cherry-picking the bits that fit a certain point of view – offers an example of how we can reframe the debate about how the U.S. tells its own history.
‘City on a hill’

The Bible regularly has been mined for ideas, themes and metaphors to tell America’s story.

In 1630, shortly after the first slave ship arrived in Virginia, John Winthrop, a Puritan minister and later Massachusetts Bay Colony governor, delivered a sermon calling for the Massachusetts Bay Colony to become a “city upon a hill” – a reference to a passage in the Book of Matthew in which Jesus calls on his followers to be models of behavior for the world to follow. This image became popular again in the 20th century when both Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald W. Reagan invoked it to describe American exceptionalism – the idea that the U.S. is by design, inherently different.

Meanwhile, the U.S. as a promised land given to the settlers by their God, a widely held belief in the 19th century, motivated the idea of Manifest Destiny, the doctrine under which American settlers embarked on a westward movement. This movement, with its forced displacement of Native Americans and others, implicitly reenacted another part of the biblical narratives: Canaan as the land God gave ancient Israel. It was another way the U.S. could become Winthrop’s “city upon a hill.”
Written by the victors

Beginning in ancient times, historical narratives commonly celebrate purported victories and downplay or omit whatever detracts from them.

Take for example Egypt’s Pharaoh Ramesses II who, in the 13th century B.C., fought a battle with the Hittite king Muwatalli II at Kadesh, in what is now Syria. Ramesses portrayed the event as an Egyptian victory. But Hittite accounts of the battle, discovered by archaeologists, suggest the battle was a draw. The outcome of the battle depends on who tells the story.
Different narratives

The biblical writers also provide accounts of victories. But they also acknowledge defeats and failures. They even preserve conflicting accounts of Israel’s past, providing multiple interpretations of the same event as part of one overall history – take, for example, the conquest of Canaan.

The Book of Joshua recounts a story of a sweeping military campaign to capture Canaan. Yet in the very next chapter, Joshua 13, readers learn things are not quite what they seem. Israel did not conquer all of Canaan. The first chapter of the next book, Judges 1, provides a different account of Israel’s life in Canaan.

Rather than a great military conquest, Israel takes possession of Canaan gradually and with setbacks. Israelites live among the inhabitants of Canaan, occasionally fighting limited battles to take particular cities or regions. The process took time.

Elsewhere in the Bible, there is the figure of King David. He is remembered as the one who unifies the people, makes Jerusalem the capital and has God’s favor. But he also impregnates another man’s wife and sends Uriah to his death in battle before marrying his wife Bathsheba.

He is also driven from Jerusalem when his own son, Absalom, leads a rebellion against him.

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Replacing binary history

The point is, be it portraying a key figure as both heroic and flawed, or a campaign as triumphant victory and slow conquest, the biblical writers often told more than one side of history.

They recount the good and bad of ancient Israel’s history, without resolution of the tension, discrepancies and unseemliness of past actions.

As such, it could offer a model for how to tell U.S. history. Both the 1619 Project and President Trump’s 1776 Commission can tell the histories of the U.S. without denying or excluding the other.

As the Bible shows, coming to terms with different historical narratives is possible.

Iliff School of Theology is a member of the Association of Theological Schools.

The ATS is a funding partner of The Conversation US.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Mark K. George, Iliff School of Theology.

Read more:

Sacred violence is not yet ancient history – beating it will take human action, not divine intervention

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a priceless link to the Bible’s past

Mark K. George does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Trump Got Vaccinated Secretly, 

Because Otherwise He Might Have 

Helped the Country

Ryan Bort
Mon, March 1, 2021

Former President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump both received the Covid-19 vaccine. They just didn’t tell anyone about it.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported the news on Monday, noting that Trump and Melania got the vaccine all the way back in January, when they were still living in the White House. The news is more than a little frustrating considering the impact a public show of faith in the safety of the vaccine could have had on his supporters, who as it turns out are disproportionately hesitant to inoculate themselves

Earlier on Monday, Axios published a poll finding that a whopping 56 percent of white Republicans are unsure if they’ll get vaccinated against Covid, despite all three available or soon-to-be available vaccines having been determined safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration. The number far outpaces any other group sampled. Black Americans were the next-most hesitant at 31 percent.

Trump has an overlarge influence over Republican voters, 88-percent of whom, as he left office, approved of the (objectively terrible) job he did as president. Last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference only cemented the former president’s enduring control over conservative America, with several speakers placing him at the center of the GOP’s future. Trump did, during his headlining speech on Sunday, say that “everyone” should get vaccinated, but an offhand endorsement tucked into a 90-minute torrent of unrelated grievances pales in comparison to the message he could have sent by receiving the vaccine on camera.

Of course, Trump couldn’t care less about sending a message. He routinely mocked the idea of wearing a mask to prevent the spread of Covid-19, only doing so himself on rare occasions. His flippant attitude toward the virus undoubtedly inspired millions of Americans to disregard the safety of themselves and others, leading to untold cases, untold hospitalizations, and untold deaths that could have been prevented.

Still, it’s unclear exactly why Trump didn’t care to announce that he had been vaccinated in January. Maybe he understood that many of his supporters were anti-vaxxers and he didn’t want to betray them. Maybe he thought it would come across like he was giving into liberal propaganda. Maybe, as is the simple explanation for most of what confounds us about Trump, he’s just a huge asshole.

National Latino groups condemn Goya Foods CEO for calling Trump the 'actual president'


Suzanne Gamboa
Mon, March 1, 2021, 4:35 PM

Leaders of several national Latino organizations condemned Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue for declaring at a meeting of political conservatives that former President Donald Trump is still the "actual president of the United States."

Unanue, whose comments have previously earned him a censure from his corporate board, made the statement Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, over the weekend in Orlando, Fla.

"I'm honored to be here, but my biggest honor today is going to be that I think we're going to be on the same stage as, in my opinion, the real, the legitimate and the still actual president of the United States, Donald J. Trump," he said.

Several Latino groups said in a statement Monday that Unanue's remarks "dangerously perpetuate falsehoods that were at the core of the criminal assault on the nation's capital on Jan. 6th."

That is the day that violent groups, including many armed participants and many who alleged that the election had been stolen, violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, resulting in the deaths of at least five people and injuring many others, including police officers. Trump was impeached on a charge of inciting the attack and was acquitted in a Senate trial.

The Latino groups said Unanue's false allegation that Joe Biden is president because of widespread fraud is an "affront" to millions of Latino voters who cast ballots despite voter suppression.

No widespread fraud has been found in the election. But the lie that the election was rigged was said repeatedly at CPAC, including by Trump.

The Latino groups said in their statement that Unanue is entitled to support the candidate of his choosing. But they added: "What he most clearly should not be entitled to is the platform his role at Goya Foods provides to attack our democracy — the belief and faith in free and fair elections, which has been the bedrock of our union and national success.

"It is a slap in the face to those millions of voters and customers to insist, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that they were complicit in a grand electoral fraud," they said.

Groups that joined in the statement include the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute, Hispanics in Philanthropy, Mi Familia Vota, the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, LatinoJustice, the Latino Commission on AIDS, Alianza Americas, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Federation, Presente.org and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation.

Goya Foods did not immediately respond to email and phone requests for comment.

Unanue praised Trump at a White House event in July, saying the country was "truly blessed" to have him as a leader. That set off a campaign to boycott Goya Foods, which bills itself as the country's largest Hispanic-owned food brand.

The comments prompted social media backlash with the hashtags #BoycottGoya and #goyaway. Trump and his allies countered with support for the company.

Goya's board of directors censured Unanue in January after he made similar untrue claims about the election. Unanue has said the backlash is a "suppression of free speech."

Although most Latinos voted for Biden, exit polls showed that Trump got about a third of the votes cast by Latinos.

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#ABOLISHBEAUTYPAGENTS

Judge rules Miss USA can ban trans women from its pageant. On the same day the Equality Act passed the House, no less

Maggie Baska
Fri, February 26, 2021

A judge in Oregon has upheld Miss USA‘s policy banning trans women from competing in the beauty pageant, on the same day the Equality Act passed in the House of Representatives.

Anita Noelle Green was the first trans contestant for Miss Montana and was the titleholder for Miss Elite Earth Oregon 2019. But for the Miss USA pageant, she was deemed not good enough.

Green was banned from Miss USA on the basis that she is not a “natural-born female”. So she sued the competition in December 2019, claiming its gender identity discrimination violated Oregon’s public accommodations act, which says Oregonians have right to full and equal accommodations without any discrimination on account of race, religion, sex or sexual orientation.


Green’s legal team also argued her exclusion from Miss USA infringes on her first amendment rights to free speech and free association.

Anita Noelle Green. (Instagram/Anita Noelle Green)

However, district judge Michael Mosman sided with the pageant. He ruled Miss USA is an “expressive” organisation, rather than a commercial one, so it has a first amendment right to its “message” and isn’t required to change it.

He made this ruling on the same day that the US House passed the Equality Act, which would prohibit any discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Green told OregonLive in a statement that she was disappointed in the ruling, but her lawsuit drew attention to an important issue even if it wasn’t ultimately successful.

“This case brought awareness to an issue many people were and still are unaware of and that issue is that discrimination against transgender people is still actively happening in the private and public sector even within the pageant circuit,” Green said.
Miss USA claims it supports diversity and isn’t anti-trans

John T Kaempf, who represented Miss USA, praised the ruling, saying his client is “not anti-transgender“, but it “wants to be able to hold a pageant that is only for biological females”.

He told OregonLive after the ruling: “Contrary to what people might think, my client, the pageant, is a supporter of diversity.

“It believes there can be a Miss Black USA pageant, a Miss Native American pageant or a transgender pageant.”

Green’s lawyers argued she was excluded from participating in Miss USA because of an “express discriminatory eligibility policy requiring contestants to be ‘natural born female’.”

In the court documents, her lawyers argued: “This policy, intentionally designed to exclude the specific class to which [Green] belongs – transgender females – is discriminatory because it denied [Green] the full and equal advantages and privileges of [Miss USA’s] services in violation of Oregon’s public accommodations law.”

Miss USA’s motion to dismiss Green’s discrimination claims said the pageant’s mission is geared towards “natural-born women” and including Greene would “undermine its vision” and mar its “message of biological female empowerment”.

Miss USA’s legal team also continuously misgendered Green in their submissions. The court documents presented on behalf of the beauty pageant refer to Green as a “biological male who identifies as female” and a “man who identifies as a woman”.

New Orleans Archdiocese Asks Catholics to Avoid Johnson & Johnson COVID Vaccine

Brittany Bernstein
Mon, March 1, 2021, 

The Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans is asking Catholics to avoid the recently-approved Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, which it says is “morally compromised” by its “extensive use of abortion-derived cell lines.”

In a statement on Friday, the archdiocese noted that while deciding whether to receive the vaccine is an individual choice, that “the latest vaccine from Janssen/Johnson & Johnson is morally compromised as it uses the abortion-derived cell line in development and production of the vaccine as well as the testing.”

While a number of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have used cells originally derived from an aborted fetus in the 1970s, the archdiocese argues that Johnson & Johnson “extensive use” is worse than that of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which used the cells lines only to test their vaccines, according to Religion News Service. This makes the “connection to abortion … extremely remote,” in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, the statement argues, recommending that Catholics choose one of those instead, if provided a choice.

While the archdiocese claims the decision is in line with guidance from the Vatican, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Catholic Bioethics Center, none of the three have issued statements denouncing the new vaccine.

In December, the Vatican issued general guidelines regarding vaccines in which the Holy See said it was “morally acceptable” for Catholics to receive shots that used the HEK293 cells for research. While the HEK293 cells are reportedly originated from an aborted fetus from the 1970s, ethicists have said that the cells and similar cell lines are clones and not the original fetal tissue.

The Vatican has made the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine available for all Vatican City residents. Pope Francis reportedly received the shot in January.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans’ statement comes after leaders of the USCCB and leaders from other religious organizations sent a letter to the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last spring regarding ethical concerns over the COVID-19 vaccines.

“We are aware that, among the dozens of vaccines currently in development, some are being produced using old cell lines that were created from the cells of aborted babies,” the letter read. “For example, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has a substantial contract from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and is working on a vaccine that is being produced using one of these ethically problematic cell lines.”

However, a USCCB memo written by Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, who chairs the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine, and Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, who chairs the organization’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities, argued that the vaccines are moral.

Pakistan expert: Religiosity aiding spike in militancy







Malala Yousafzai
KATHY GANNON

Sat, February 27, 2021

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Militant attacks are on the rise in Pakistan amid a growing religiosity that has brought greater intolerance, prompting one expert to voice concern the country could be overwhelmed by religious extremism.

Pakistani authorities are embracing strengthening religious belief among the population to bring the country closer together. But it's doing just the opposite, creating intolerance and opening up space for a creeping resurgence in militancy, said Mohammad Amir Rana, executive director of the independent Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies.

"Unfortunately, instead of helping to inculcate better ethics and integrity, this phenomenon is encouraging a tunnel vision” that encourages violence, intolerance and hate, he wrote recently in a local newspaper. “Religiosity has begun to define the Pakistani citizenry.”

Militant violence in Pakistan has spiked: In the past week alone, four vocational school instructors who advocated for women’s rights were traveling together when they were gunned down in a Pakistan border region. A Twitter death threat against Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai attracted an avalanche of trolls. They heaped abuse on the young champion of girls education, who survived a Pakistani Taliban bullet to the head. A couple of men on a motorcycle opened fire on a police check-post not far from the Afghan border killing a young police constable.

In recent weeks, at least a dozen military and paramilitary men have been killed in ambushes, attacks and operations against militant hideouts, mostly in the western border regions.

A military spokesman this week said the rising violence is a response to an aggressive military assault on militant hideouts in regions bordering Afghanistan and the reunification of splintered and deeply violent anti-Pakistan terrorist groups, led by the Tehreek-e-Taliban. The group is driven by a radical religious ideology that espouses violence to enforce its extreme views.

Gen. Babar Ifitkar said the reunified Pakistani Taliban have found a headquarters in eastern Afghanistan. He also accused hostile neighbor India of financing and outfitting a reunified Taliban, providing them with equipment like night vision goggles, improvised explosive devises and small weapons.

India and Pakistan routinely trade allegations that the other is using militants to undermine stability and security at home.

Security analyst and fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Asfandyar Mir, said the reunification of a splintered militancy is dangerous news for Pakistan.

"The reunification of various splinters into the (Tehreek-e-Taliban) central organization is a major development, which makes the group very dangerous," said Mir.

The TTP claimed responsibility for the 2012 shooting of Yousafzai. Its former spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, who mysteriously escaped Pakistan military custody to flee to the country, tweeted a promise that the Taliban would kill her if she returned home.

Iftikar, in a briefing of foreign journalists this week, said Pakistani military personnel aided Ehsan's escape, without elaborating. He said the soldiers involved had been punished and efforts were being made to return Ehsan to custody.

The government reached out to Twitter to shut down Ehsan's account after he threatened Yousafzai, although the military and government at first suggested it was a fake account.

But Rana, the commentator, said the official silence that greeted the threatening tweet encouraged religious intolerance to echo in Pakistani society unchecked.

“The problem is religiosity has very negative expression in Pakistan,” he said in an interview late Friday. “It hasn’t been utilized to promote the positive, inclusive tolerant religion.”

Instead, successive Pakistani governments as well as its security establishments have exploited extreme religious ideologies to garner votes, appease political religious groups, or target enemies, he said.

The 2018 general elections that brought cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan to power was mired in allegations of support from the powerful military for hard-line religious groups.

Those groups include the Tehreek-e-Labbaik party, whose single-point agenda is maintaining and propagating the country's deeply controversial blasphemy law. That law calls for the death penalty for anyone insulting Islam and is most often used to settle disputes. It often targets minorities, mostly Shiite Muslims, who makeup up about 15% of mostly Sunni Pakistan's 220 million people.

Mir, the analyst, said the rise in militancy has benefited from state policies that have been either supportive or ambivalent toward militancy as well as from sustained exposure of the region to violence. Most notable are the protracted war in neighboring Afghanistan and the simmering tensions between hostile neighbors India and Pakistan, two countries that possess a nuclear weapons' arsenal.

“More than extreme religious thought, the sustained exposure of the region to political violence, the power of militant organizations in the region, state policy which is either supportive or ambivalent towards various forms of militancy ... and the influence of the politics of Afghanistan incubate militancy in the region," he said.

Mir and Rana both pointed to the Pakistani government's failure to draw radical thinkers away from militant organizations, as groups that seemed at least briefly to eschew a violent path have returned to violence and rejoined the TTP.

Iftikar said the military has stepped up assaults on the reunited Pakistani Taliban, pushing the militants to respond, but only targets they can manage, which are soft targets.

But Mir said the reunited militants pose a greater threat.

“With the addition of these powerful units, the TTP has major strength for operations across the former tribal areas, Swat, Baluchistan, and some in Punjab,” he said. “Taken together, they improve TTP’s ability to mount insurgent and mass-casualty attacks.”

Anti-LGBTQ coalition targets Equality Act in the name of America's children

AMERICAN CHILDREN DENY THEY SPEAK FOR THEM



Sydney Bauer
Fri, February 26, 2021, 

A new initiative backed by a coalition of right-wing organizations is courting lawmakers and parents in an effort to stop the passage of the Equality Act — a federal LGBTQ rights bill — and promote policies targeting transgender Americans at the federal and state levels.

Backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Policy Alliance, Heritage Foundation and other national and local groups, the Promise to America’s Children coalition says it is fighting “a culture – and sadly, a government – around us seek to sexualize our children for the sake of a political agenda.”

"It’s no surprise that the ugly wave of state attacks on trans kids traces back to a few, very familiar national anti-LGBTQ groups."

As part of this effort, policymakers and parents are asked to sign pledges protecting children’s “minds,” “bodies” and “relationships with their parents.” Elected officials can even sign up on the coalition website to receive model legislation on the policies it promotes.

“Every child deserves an education that is suited for their specific needs and development as guided by their parents, and one that is free from graphic sexual curriculum or content, the promotion of abortion, and politicized ideas about sexual orientation and gender identity,” the policymaker pledge reads.

On its website, the Promise to America’s Children coalition says anyone who signs the pledge is not signaling support or opposition to legislation, “with the exception of the federal Equality Act, which clearly violates all principles of this Promise.”

The Equality Act is federal legislation that seeks to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces, public funding and jury service. The House passed the recently reintroduced legislation Thursday, but it will likely face an uphill battle in the Senate, where a 60-vote threshold is required to bypass a filibuster.

Related: The Equality Act faces a tougher battle in the Senate, where 60 votes must be found to bypass a filibuster.

Civil rights groups say this new conservative coalition is an attempt to roll back the rights of LGBTQ Americans, particularly the transgender community, and stall passage of comprehensive nondiscrimination laws on the federal and state levels.

“The same few sources have been responsible for peddling anti-LGBTQ legislation for many years, and this legislation is simply the latest iteration of their losing political fight against equality,” Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel for the Human Rights Campaign, said of state bills associated with the organizations in the coalition.

“While extremist groups push copycat bills down to states, these state legislators should understand that their constituents — including a large majority of Republicans — believe transgender people should be allowed to live freely and openly,” Oakley added. “The only thing these bills do is harm kids who are simply trying to navigate their adolescence.”

Emilie Kao, an attorney at the Heritage Foundation, said the coalition’s efforts were accelerated by the reintroduction of the Equality Act.

“Regardless of whether one agrees with the idea that people can have gender identities at odds with their biological sex, bills that treat Americans as criminals if they don't agree with a government-imposed ideology about the treatment of gender dysphoria is a gross violation of our most basic freedoms of speech and conscience,” Kao told NBC News. “The Equality Act will turn disagreements over marriage and sexuality into discrimination by misusing civil rights law as a sword to coerce conformity rather than as a shield to prevent unjust discrimination.”

Kao declined to disclose what model legislation the coalition is offering on its website. Prior to the coalition's official launch this week, LGBTQ advocates said anti-transgender bills were introduced in 20 states in a coordinated assault by conservative groups. At least one of those conservative groups, the Alliance Defending Freedom, is part of this newly formed coalition.

Related: Many proposed bans on trans athletes and transition care for minors share identical language.

Bethany Moreton, a history professor at Dartmouth College, said the guise of protecting children when promoting conservative ideology is not uncommon. She cited Anita Bryant's "Save Our Children" campaign in the late 1970s that worked to overturn gay nondiscrimination ordinances in Miami by referencing how such measures would harm local children. Over the past 20 years, the religious right has repeatedly lost political battles when it comes LGBTQ issues, so this new pledge is continuing in the "Save Our Children" vein in an effort to appeal to a broad base, according to Moreton.

“Their sort of arsenal of acceptable arguments have shrunk, and one of them is doubling down on child vulnerability,” Moreton said.

While the Promise to America’s Children coalition is new, groups within the coalition have already had success in assisting lawmakers with legislation intended to curtail transgender rights. One such example is Idaho's HB 500, a bill that bars trans women from participating in high school sports that was passed in 2020, which was written with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom, according to Barbara Ehardt, the legislator who drafted it. A similar bill in Montana was drafted directly from HB 500, Laura Sankey Keip, a staff attorney in the Montana Legislature, confirmed.

The coalition, which launched Tuesday, already has 24 state representatives as signatories to the group’s pledge, three of whom have introduced legislation targeting transgender individuals. Ohio state Rep. Jena Powell and North Dakota state Rep. Ben Koppelman, both Republicans, have introduced bills that would restrict trans women from participating in high school sports, mirroring HB 500, and Kansas state Sen. Mike Thompson, also a Republican, has introduced a bill that would criminalize doctors providing gender-affirming health care to teenagers.

There are more than 45 pieces of anti-transgender legislation making their way through statehouses this year, according to a legislation tracker from Freedom for All Americans. That is more than the legislative session of 2016, which produced the largest volume of anti-trans bills in statehouses, according to civil rights groups.

"It’s no surprise that the ugly wave of state attacks on trans kids traces back to a few, very familiar national anti-LGBTQ groups,” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, said. “They have opposed LGBTQ equality for decades, fighting marriage equality and now targeting trans youth. Bills claiming to protect children or women’s rights do neither and put trans kids in further danger.”

Lawmaker breaks down confronting Ercot officials over death of boy in Texas freeze

Gino Spocchia
Sun, February 28, 2021

Lawmakers confront Ercot officials over recent freeze(MSNBC)

A Texas lawmaker broke down as she confronted officials from the state’s energy supplier, Ercot, over dozens of deaths during a power blackout and a winter storm last week.

It came as Ercot officials appeared before Texas’s legislature on Thursday to answer questions as part of a hearing into the firm’s role in the crisis.

That was when, as reported by MSNBC, a lawmaker broke down in tears as she confronted the officials from Ercot over the deaths, which are thought to be in the dozens – and include an 11-year-old boy, Cristian Pineda, who died of hypothermia.


His family were among four million Texas who went without power during the worst winter weather for decades, while tens of thousands went almost a week without power, all largely supplied to Texas by Ercot.

A lawmaker said during the hearing, before having to pause: “"Harris County alone has confirmed 15 fatal cases of hypothermia including the death of a 11-year old Cristian Pineda..."

Read more: ‘Read the fine print’: Texas lieutenant governor blames Texans for high storm energy bills

"Who died in his sleep after playing in the snow and returning to his unheated home,” she said, having broken down in tears. “We want them and every Texan to ensure this never happens again.”

The tense first day of the hearing came as the CEO of Ercot, Bill Magness, told lawmakers he had no regrets about the firm’s role in the crisis – despite admitting that the state came minutes away to losing all of its supply.

“I feel a great sense of responsibility and remorse about the event, but I will continue to investigate – we continue to investigate it – but I believe the operators on our team did everything they could have,” Mr Magness told lawmakers.

A lawmaker then asked: “But you wouldn’t have changed anything in terms of your play calling during those critical hours?”

Mr Magness replied: “I don’t believe I would”.

According to theHouston Chronicle, about 52,277 megawatts were lost from the Texas power grid at the height of the crisis last week, causing blackouts. Officials from Ercot were then forced to rotate power outages to prevent the collapse of the system.

It comes exactly a decade after a 2011 winter storm forced 14,700 megawatts offline in Texas, with a federal report afterwards warning that the state needed to weatherise its power network to prevent a future collapse in cold weather.

The state, whose power network is independent, did n

BUT HE ISN'T DEAD YET
Speaking at CPAC: Former Leader of Magical Cult That Channels Ghost of Trump

Jake Adelstein
Fri, February 26, 2021


HARUMI OZAWA

TOKYO—Even by the standards of the alleged kooks and conmen commonly found on the CPAC roster, one of this year’s speakers has an extraordinary background that includes fronting an organization that claimed—in all seriousness—to be able to channel Donald Trump’s guardian deity through a magical medium.

The former political leader of a Japanese cult called Happy Science, Jay “Hiroaki” Aeba, is on the bill for Friday.

Like Trump, Aeba has been accused of fraud back home but he doesn’t think that should be held against him.

We asked Aeba for clarification but didn’t get a reply. He is now head of the Japanese Conservative Union although he said last year he was still a believer in Happy Science.

Aeba’s guru, Ryuho Okawa, claims to be a Venusian god named El Cantare who created life on earth—and is also a reincarnation of the Buddha, just in case you were wondering. Okawa is not only a snazzy dresser and a self-proclaimed deity, but he says he has the power to channel the spirits of any person, living or dead. He claims to have had a great awakening in 1981 and subsequently founded the Happy Science religion (Kofuku no Kagaku) in 1986. In American terms, he’s like Billy Graham crossed with Shirley MacLaine. He’s channeled the spirits of Jesus, Kim Jong II, and in 2016, he even managed to obtain an exclusive interview with the guardian spirit of Donald Trump.

In that amazing encounter, Trump’s spirit correctly stated, via Okawa, that he would be the next president.

You’ve never quite seen anything like the spirit of Donald Trump possessing a Japanese visionary and discussing New York cheesecake as a political metaphor. It’s too bad that the God (Okawa) himself can’t make it to CPAC but at least his former disciple Aeba is speaking.

CPAC, which runs through Sunday afternoon, features the best and the brightest of the Republican party and its allies, such as insurrection rousing Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, and the usual assortment of foxes and fiends from Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp. Aeba is scheduled to take the podium right after Donald Trump Jr. and speak about China’s threat to the U.S.

This will not be the first time that Aeba has spoken at the event—indeed, he claims to be the first Japanese man to speak on the mainstage of the event. If you read Aeba’s online profile in English, there appear to be no outright lies at first glance, but there are what the Jesuits would call some sins of omission.

He is a self-proclaimed conservative commentator and columnist and chairman of the Japanese Conservative Union (JCU) which was founded in 2015. The profile says, “Jay attended his first CPAC in 2011 and founded JCU in 2015 as a counterpart to the American Conservative Union (ACU). In 2017, JCU and ACU co-hosted the first-ever international CPAC in Tokyo, where experts from across the Indo-Pacific met to discuss such critical issues as the economic and military security of the region in the face of Chinese expansionism, the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, the development and regulation of the cryptocurrency market…. To date, JCU and ACU have hosted four Japanese CPACs”.

All of this is true. What his biography fails to mention is that Aeba was a member of Japan’s Happy Science cult for many years, and was also a major figure in the creation of their political arm, the Happiness Realization Party.

Ostensibly, the Happy Science cult teaches that Okawa, the founder, is a god, and only by following his teachings can one obtain happiness in this life and the next. They believe in aliens, reincarnation, and multi-dimensions. Some of the teachings are modeled after the Buddhist eightfold path and preach love, wisdom, and self-reflection. Yet at the same time, the cult also teaches that the Nanjing massacre never happened and that Japan must scrap its pacifist constitution, rearm to the max, and prepare for a cataclysmic war.

One weekly magazine reported the group’s total capital as being close to $1.8 billion—money made from encouraging believers to buy copies of Okawa’s many books, from extracting lavish donations from followers, and for self-help seminars conducted by the organization. Of course, they also sell prayers and charms. During the pandemic, Happy Science found itself in hot water for selling “cures” for COVID-19.

Happy Science—not content to just be a spiritual power—launched its own political party in 2009, and Aeba was the first party leader. He went on to serve as the research division chief and held many other positions within the party. In 2011, while attending his first CPAC, he was still an executive member of the Happiness Realization Party and presumably began networking with America’s conservative elite in the hopes of gaining the Happiness Party an aura of legitimacy.

Aeba, who also used the alias Jikido “Jay” Aeba, and sometimes goes by Jay H. Aeba, was born in 1967 and graduated from the elite Keio University Law Division in 1989. In 1990, he joined the headquarters of Happy Science and in May 2009, he became their political leader. He served as the organization's public relations chief. In 2013, he became the chief of the research and investigation division. In 2015, he ostensibly left the party and created the Japanese Conservative Union. It’s not entirely clear what relationship Aeba has had with his former party after the creation of JCU but his relations with Happy Science seem strained—much like Trump’s relationship with the GOP. Although, in an interview published last year in SEIRON magazine, he said that he was still a believer in Happy Science.

On April 6, 2020, he changed his name to Hiroaki Aeba. Three days later, on April 9, Happy Science publicly disavowed having any connection to Hiroaki Aeba aka Jikido Aeba and the JCU on their website. Why? Possibly because in April last year two magazines reported on a scandal within the JCU that seemed to implicate Aeba in possible fraud involving cryptocurrency. According to the articles, Aeba collected nearly $9 million to create a virtual currency called Liberty. In his fund-raising efforts, he used a photo of himself and Donald Trump in a pamphlet handed out to potential investors. The photo was enough to convince many of his credibility.

The Japanese media reports that it is still a mystery as to what happened to the nearly $9 million in funding used to create the virtual currency, and it has resulted in internal fighting within the JCU.

The JCU told The Daily Beast in an email about the alleged cryptocurrency misconduct: “Jay [Aeba] and JCU are proceeding to deal with and address this issue with the cooperation of experts including lawyers.”

One thing is certain: the photo of Trump and Aeba is actually real.

There are some similarities between Aeba and Trump. They are both political opportunists, charismatic speakers, adept at using celebrity connections to enhance their image—and both of them have been accused of fraud. For Aeba, his pictures and meetings with Trump have given him an air of prestige and access among Japan’s arch-conservatives. He may have used that for his own personal gain rather than for the benefit of the Happy Science cult, but it seems to be working out fine.

While Aeba was a member of the Happiness Realization Party, the cult’s political arm, he gave them access to the wealth and influence of the Republican Party. JCU told The Daily Beast: “Since its establishment [in 2015] JCU has never had any relation with Happy Science (HS) or the Happiness Realization Party (HRP). As for Chairman Jay Aeba, he also has completely left the HS organization and HRP now. In terms of his personal religious belief, we do not know because the JCU has a policy of religious freedom for all members and staff.”

Trump supporters at CPAC may worry that the Republican Party is trying to move on from the Trump era, but even if he returns as the presidential nominee for 2024, Trump is mortal, and unlike cult-leader Okawa, he doesn’t claim he will be reincarnated again and again and live on forever.

That’s where the Happy Science cult comes in handy. Even after he’s dead, the ghost of Trump can keep calling the shots via a magical medium for years to come.

Now, isn’t that something to be happy about?

DOJ Opens the Door to Seeking New Domestic Terror Powers

EXPANDING THE SECURITY STATE 

LIKE CLINTON DID AFTER OKLAHOMA

Spencer Ackerman
Fri, 26 February 2021, 
The Daily Beast


Jim Bourg/Reuters

A senior Justice Department official opened the door to seeking new legislative authorities to pursue domestic terrorism, a step the Biden administration has yet to entertain since the January 6 insurrection and something civil libertarians have warned against.

The prospect of expanded investigative and prosecutorial tools arose during a Friday briefing with reporters in which multiple Justice Department and FBI officials described an expansive array of authorities already available to them.

While there is no domestic terrorism statute, and U.S. officials can not designate a domestic group for sanction like they can a foreign one, one senior official acknowledged that statutory definitions of domestic terrorism “expand a lot of authorities we can use,” such nationwide search warrants, expanded law-enforcement access to tax and educational records, and harsher sentencing.

But on Friday, a senior Justice Department official suggested the administration would consider seeking a domestic-terrorism statute as well.

“Obviously that’s going to be a policy question for the folks that are coming in” to the administration, said the senior official. “I’m sure we’ll run a data-driven process to see whether we need additional legislative authorities in this area.”

That has been a step the new administration has yet to take. On Tuesday, Sen. Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, told The Daily Beast’s “New Abnormal” podcast that the FBI has not sought additional powers to confront white supremacist or far-right violence. The FBI did not challenge that characterization, telling The Daily Beast: “The FBI defers to the legislative branch to work with leadership at the Department of Justice on whether any additional legislation is required.”

The prospect of new counterterrorism powers has alarmed civil libertarians and others who fear that such authorities are both unnecessary and rife for abuse to criminalize extreme political views, rather than pursue people who have planned or committed acts of violence. Pointing to the excesses of the FBI during the 20-year War on Terror, they also fear that expanding those law enforcement, intelligence, and prosecutorial powers will permit future presidents to use them against marginalized groups. Former President Donald Trump, for instance, slandered Black Lives Matter activists as terrorists.

“We should not lose sight of our disgust at the double standards employed against white protesters and Black ones, or against Muslims and non-Muslims,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) told The Daily Beast in the week after the Capitol insurrection. “But at the same time, we must resist the very human desire for revenge—to simply see the tools that have oppressed Black and Brown people expanded… The answer is not more laws expanding the surveillance and security state.”

On the call, Acting Deputy Attorney General John Carlin pledged that the Justice Department was “prioritizing the detection, disruption, and deterrence of domestic terrorism and violent extremism in all its forms.” Carlin repeatedly referenced continuities in such prioritization with the post-9/11 pursuit of jihadist terror at home, such as taking an “intelligence-led” approach, “as we have since 9/11.”

Across the government, and to include Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’ forthcoming “comprehensive threat assessment” of domestic terrorism, Carlin said the administration was looking at expanding information sharing, to prevent radicalization and disrupt “extremist networks.” As many officials have since 9/11, Carlin promised the protection of civil liberties would remain a priority.

Carlin said the Justice Department would soon issue guidance ensuring its National Security Division “has insight into and can track all cases with a nexus to domestic terrorism” or violent extremism, in the hope of generating leads in cases across jurisdictions.

“This approach recognizes that success is not the prosecution of a violent extremist or terrorist after the fact when families have lost loved ones and are grieving,” Carlin said. “Success is a disruption before violence occurs and that always has to be the goal of our counterterrorism work.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The World’s Oldest Woman Doesn’t Look Like You’ve Been Told


Candida Moss
Fri, 26 February 2021, 
The Daily Beast


Dave Einsel/Getty

Almost fifty years ago, on a Sunday morning in late November 1974, a team of archaeologists in Ethiopia unearthed a three-million-year-old skeleton of an ancient early human. The remains would turn out to be one of the most important fossils ever discovered. That night Donald Johanson, the paleoanthropologist who discovered the fossilized remains, played a cassette tape of the Beatles and as the group listened to the sound of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” reverberate through the campsite a colleague suggested that he name the female hominin Lucy. She represented a new species—Australopithecus afarensis—and a visit to almost any major natural history museum in the world will give you the opportunity to see an artist’s rendition of how she appeared in her own time.

Visit more than one natural history museum or flip through a handful of scientific textbooks, however, and you’ll quickly notice how much disagreement there is about Lucy’s physical appearance. No one can agree on what Lucy or “AL 288-1” looked like. Why is that? In a new article on “Visual Depictions of Our Evolutionary Past,” published this week in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, a team of scientists from the University of Adelaide, Arizona State, the University of Zurich, and Howard University set out to discover why this is and to compile their own, scientifically grounded, reconstruction.

The differences in the depictions of Lucy are not small and, as the authors of the study show, reflect ideological biases about the past. For example, the Creation Museum in Kentucky, which is run by Answers in Genesis, depicts Lucy as a knuckle dragging ape. This is despite the fact that, as Adam Benton has discussed, there is a broad consensus among scientists is that Lucy was a biped who walked on two feet. As the authors of the new study write, “the decision to reconstruct this specimen as a knuckle-walker is an obvious error” but it has significance for whether we see Lucy as important evidence about our ancestors or “just an ape.”

Even in less extreme cases, there are considerable differences in the way that artistic reconstructions show Lucy’s ribcage, facial features, hair, and skin tone. As Karen Anderson has written in an important work, the problem is widespread in hominin reconstructions, which “often convey inaccurate scientific information.” Maciej Henneberg, one of the co-authors of the study, explained to The Daily Beast that depicting a hominin’s body and face involves the reconstruction both of hard tissues (bones and teeth) and of soft tissues (muscles, skin, guts, internal organs, etc). Along the way, numerous decisions have to be made and these decisions, Henneberg told me, substantially affect how people relate to the reconstructed specimen (be it Lucy or another example). Facial features are especially important in this process, Henneberg said, because “Humans communicate by looking at each other’s faces, so we pay a lot of attention to faces of others. Thus, the reconstruction of the face of an animal or a human ancestor gives important personal information - the ‘first impression’ of the reconstructed individual. Incorrectly performed reconstruction may change public opinion about the reconstructed fossil specimen, for example reconstructing the face of a sophisticated human like the Neanderthal (who used jewelry, cared for injured people, cooked food) using ape-like muscles and skin, makes him into a brute.”

“To make matters worse,” the authors argue, “most hominin reconstructions…[are] presented without any rigorous empirical justifications.” Even when those involved in reconstruction describe how they based their reconstructions of facial features and body proportions “this research has never been formally verified nor published in any scientific literature.” Ryan Campbell, the lead author on the study said via email, that the variability in how museums and textbooks depict ancient hominins “has occurred as a result of a lack of effort from the scientific community to hold soft tissue reconstructions to the same level of scrutiny as peer-reviewed scientific research. Most reconstruction methods are unreliable or are not used in favor of artistic interpretation.” A museum visitor might think that they are seeing a rigorous piece of scientific reconstruction but often artistic sensibilities take center stage.

An additional problem with depictions of our biological ancestors is the way that they tend to present evolution as a kind of inevitable linear progression towards a particular Eurocentric goal. Rudolph Zallinger’s famous March of Progress illustration, which was commissioned by Time-Life books in 1965, is a case in point. Not only does the series of images present the erroneous idea of linear progress that eliminates variety, the progression “from animal to ape, to ape-man to the so-called “Negroid race” and then to the “Caucasoid race”” is wildly Eurocentric and racist. The same problems, Campbell and his team write, are implicit in more recent treatments. They argue that John Gurche’s reconstructions at the Smithsonian present a similar “linear progression” from one genus to the next that ends with a photo of Gurche himself, a man of European ancestry. “Consider,” the authors ask “how young, would-be academics of minority groups feel as they are readily encountered by not just unscientifically substantiated material, but material that echoes a history of racist attitudes toward groups that look like them. One could understand how visual material of this sort can discourage interest in science.”

In their own reconstruction, undertaken over 6 years as a collaboration between the scientists and Cuban-American artist Gabriel Vinas, clearly explains the group’s decision making process. Vinas explained to The Daily Beast “For the image showing Lucy and Taung, we produced it to highlight how different choices in surface treatment, color, and hair quantity can differ immensely based on the whims of practitioners or their expert consultants which can result in the kinds of inconsistencies we see all over the world regarding these features.”

Rather than relying upon “intuitive” methods of reconstruction, which the team found “too imprecise” they inferred muscle proportions from previous studies. They are transparent about the gaps in our knowledge. As Vinas told me: “Lucy’s cranial bones are almost entirely missing … ‘putting a face’ quite literally to the celebrity-status skeleton can seem like a minor form of procedural trespassing; in a way, ‘a white lie’ that parents are comfortable telling their children.” In Vinas and the team’s facial reconstructions Lucy is reconstructed with bonobo-like features while the reconstructed Taung child (another well-known set of remains) is shown with skin tone “more similar to that of anatomically modern humans native to South Africa.” The rationale for the difference in skin tone, we are told, is that scientists do not have “an empirical method for reliably reconstructing” the melanin concentration in austalopithecines. Some scientists may disagree with details of these reconstructions, but at least they (and we) know why these choices were made. Vinas added, “to remain intellectually consistent, we must say that none of these models or images in this publication should be touted as representative of the actual appearances of those individuals regardless of how technically impressive they are.”

The larger problem of bias, Diogo Rui of Howard University told me, is not unique to facial reconstruction. “Human evolution is plagued by the use of both art, and scientist biases, and societal prejudices. They can relate to sex, or to gender differences, or to racist ideas.” The depiction of “cave men” with sticks, for examples comes from baseless Hobbesian views about the brutishness of the past. Images of the invention of fire, stone tools, of cave painting, Rui added, only depict men as involved in these innovations. The assumption, he told me, is that women were “passive players.” Such educational reconstructions “are hugely important,” he said because “they are the most direct, efficient tool to perpetuate enculturation, and thus systemic misogyny and racism.” Rui and his co-authors acknowledge the important role played by museums in generating excitement about scientific work and the role of artists in producing images of the past. They note, however, that “unless there are clear plaques and context giving aids revealing that the body and its proportions are speculative” images have the potential to mislead the public.

Top Hong Kong university cuts ties with student union over national security concerns

Jessie Pang and Sharon Tam
Thu, 25 February 2021, 


Top Hong Kong university cuts ties with student union over national security concernsMembers of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)'s student union hold a news conference over national security concerns, in Hong Kong


By Jessie Pang and Sharon Tam

HONG KONG (Reuters) - The Chinese University of Hong Kong has withdrawn recognition of its student union, saying criticism of the city's national security law by newly elected union leaders may have been illegal.

The move, accusing the union of having "exploited the campus" for "political propaganda", raises further concern about academic and political freedom in the Asian financial hub after Beijing imposed a sweeping security law in June.

Students have been at the forefront of mass pro-democracy protests in 2019 and authorities are keen to quash dissent in schools and universities, which Beijing and city officials have blamed for fostering anti-government sentiment.

Union leaders "have made false allegations against the university and exploited the campus for their political propaganda, which...brought the university into disrepute," the university said in a statement late on Thursday.

At a midnight news conference, union leader Isaac Lam, 20, said, "We will continue to pursue democracy and freedom, despite the crackdown."

In its manifesto, Syzygia, the union's newly elected executive committee, had accused the university of "kowtowing to the regime" and vowed to fight it, saying the security law infringed basic human rights and freedom.

After Wednesday's election, the university, which ranks 13th in Asia and 43rd in the world according to its website, said it would stop collecting fees on behalf of the union.

It would also require the student body to register as an independent society to assume legal responsibility for itself.

Members of the union will also be suspended from all other positions on university committees.

Ties between the university and the union had already been sour before the union elections. The university had called in police after a conflict with students over security checks and an unofficial graduation ceremony that turned into a protest.

Last November, dozens of graduating students, many in black robes and Guy Fawkes masks, staged a peaceful protest on the sprawling campus, carrying anti-government banners and chanting democracy slogans.

Nine people were arrested over the protest, four on suspicion of violating the new law, which sets punishments of up to life in prison for anything China sees as subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces.

(Editing by Marius Zaharia and Clarence Fernandez)