Brown University takes firm stand on caste-based harassment

Ivy League institution of US makes provisions for stringent punishment, including expulsion or termination of employment, for violations

Brown University

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Basant Kumar Mohanty   |   New Delhi   |   Published 04.12.22, 03:33 AM

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Brown University, an Ivy League institution based in Rhode Island in the US, has added caste-based harassment to its non-discrimination policy and made provisions for stringent punishment, including expulsion or termination of employment, for violations. 

Earlier, Harvard, California State University and Brandeis University in the US had acted similarly against caste-based discrimination, said to be prevalent among South Asians in American institutions.

According to a statement, the Corporation of Brown University, the varsity’s governing body, voted in Fall 2022 to adopt a change to the University’s Corporation Policy Statement on Equal Opportunity, Non-discrimination and Affirmative Action to insulate the varsity community from caste oppression and to “call attention to a subtle, often misunderstood form of structural inequality”.

The policy seeks to prevent discrimination, harassment or retaliation based on a person’s race, colour, religion, sex, age, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or caste.

“Failure to comply with this and related policies is subject to disciplinary action, up to and including suspension without pay, expulsion, or termination of employment or association with the University, in accordance with applicable (eg, staff, faculty, student) disciplinary procedures,” the policy said.

The statement quoted the vice-president for institutional equity and diversity, Sylvia Carey-Butler, as saying that as the  South Asian population in the US increases, caste discrimination is becoming a growing issue on college and university campuses across the country.

“University students who are members of the castes classified as lower often report facing discrimination at educational institutions in the diaspora,” it added.

The Equity Lab, a South Asian-American human rights forum in the US, conducted a survey on caste in the country in 2016 and found that one in three Dalit students reported discrimination during their education in the US while two out of three Dalits reported being treated unfairly at their workplaces.

Sixty per cent said they had experienced caste-based derogatory jokes or comments while 40 per cent of Dalits said they felt unwelcome at places of worship because of their caste. Sukhadeo Thorat, former chairman of the University Grants Commission, said it was unfortunate that people from dominant castes continued to exercise their caste status even on foreign soil despite obtaining higher education. He said the societal norms in India were the main source of the bias, which stayed with people throughout their lives.

Effective measures are required at various levels to sensitise caste Hindus on the subject, he said. “Social norms that are discriminatory should be changed. People from the forward castes have to take the initiative.

It can happen if there is sustained action by government and non-government organisations, political parties and the media. Such actions are very negligible,” Thorat said.

Harvard and California State University included caste in their non-discrimination policy last year while Brandeis University did so in 2019.

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The Amount of Climate Change Denial on Twitter is Increasing

It's prompting climate scientists to leave the platform

Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, Nov, 29, 2022.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

BY TOBIAS CARROLL @TOBIASCARROLL

What happens when a social media app’s new ownership fires a significant portion of its content moderation? Unfortunately, we’re watching that very scenario play out in real time right now with Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. Things that would have previously been flagged immediately are no longer being processed as such, and it’s leading to a much more fraught experience for many of the app’s users.

The latest example of this comes via a new report at The Guardian, which focuses on an increase in climate change denial on the site. The article quotes University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann, who spoke of seeing “climate deniers who had been deactivated making a reappearance, and climate denial getting somewhat more traction.”

This phenomenon also includes the hashtag #ClimateScam coming up more prominently in searches for some users. According to The Guardian‘s reporting, this predates Elon Musk’s takeover of the company — the article cites research done by Climate Action Against Disinformation noting that phrases like the aforementioned hashtag and both “climate scam” and “climate is a scam” have been on the rise since July of this year.

As it’s described here, the issue is twofold: part of what’s historically made Twitter appealing is the presence of experts in certain fields who are willing to chime in on certain issues. If those experts would prefer to head elsewhere, as s their prerogative, that part of the discourse on Twitter would be lost.

Unfortunately, denial of climate change isn’t the only thing that’s been increasing on Twitter lately. This, too, doesn’t bode well for the platform’s future or health.

‘Religious intolerance’ US targets Pakistan, ignores India

NNI 



WASHINGTON: The United States has designated Pakistan as a country of particular concern under the Religious Freedom Act over violations during 2022, but India was let off despite its serious violations.

“Around the world, governments and non-state actors harass, threaten, jail, and even kill individuals on account of their beliefs,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken while announcing the designations.

“In some instances, they stifle individuals’ freedom of religion or belief to exploit opportunities for political gain. The United States will not stand by in the face of these abuses,” he said.

Therefore, “today, I am announcing designations against Burma (Myanmar), the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, the DPRK (North Korea), Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan as Countries of Particular Concern …for having engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom”.

The US also placed Cuba, Nicaragua and Russia’s Wagner mercenary group to a blacklist on international religious freedom, opening the path to potential sanctions. The designation of Cuba is the latest sign of pressure on the island by the administration of President Joe Biden, which has largely shunned previous Democratic president Barack Obama’s policy of seeking an opening with the long-time US nemesis.

Pakistan was first place on the list in Dec 2018 during the Trump’s tenure and retained it in 2020, as well. The Biden administration also kept Pakistan on the list.

US congresswoman seeks $600m aid for Pak flood victims

INP 

WASHINGTON: US Congresswoman Sheila Jackson has written a letter to the House Foreign Affairs Committee to increase aid to Pakistan’s flood victims, it has been learnt on Saturday.

In her letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee, Sheila Jackson wrote that aid to Pakistan should be increased to deal with the floods’ aftermath.

In the letter, the Congresswoman asked for $600 million to be given to Pakistan to help flood victims. Sheila Jackson wrote that $500 million was given to earthquake victims in 2005, and more aid should be sent this time. In her letter, Sheila Jackson, a member of the US Congress, wrote that this aid will not only improve Pakistan-US relations but will save many lives.

U.S. healthcare system same as Afghanistan, Sudan: Hillary Clinton

Mrs Clinton blames the rising mortality rates in the U.S. on states that have “draconian” measures with “reproductive healthcare”.

TOSIN AJUWON • DECEMBER 3, 2022

Hillary Clinton [Photo credit: Tele Trader]


Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has expressed concern at the rising mortality rate for pregnant women in America, comparing the country to Sudan and Afghanistan.

“It’s so shocking to think that in any way we’re related to poor Afghanistan and Sudan but as an advanced economy as we allegedly are, on this measure, we, unfortunately, are rightly put with them,” Mrs Clinton said.

The former first lady was speaking at the Women’s Voices Summit at the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Mrs Clinton apportioned the blame for the rising mortality rates in the U.S. on states that have “draconian” measures with “reproductive healthcare”.

There has been a rise in the number of women dying due to pregnancy or childbirth each year in the U.S., with the maternal death rate among Black women still three times the rate for White women.

According to the National Centre for Health Statistics report, the overall number of women identified as having died of maternal causes in the U.S. climbed from 658 in 2018 to 754 in 2019 and 861 in 2020.

The report further posited that the maternal mortality rate in the U.S. are unacceptably high (17.4 deaths per 100,000 births) and exceeds those in other developed countries.

Unfortunately, the global maternal mortality rates are declining in most countries but are unchanged in the U.S. and even increasing for some groups.

At the event, Mrs Clinton added that “Some of the most harsh, draconian measures against reproductive healthcare are in states that don’t provide healthcare to pregnant women.”

She recalled how tennis superstar Serena Williams had a close shave with death during childbirth, stressing that attention be drawn to life-threatening issues.

“One of the stories ingrained in my mind is that often black women, even women of education and affluence like Serena Williams, come close to dying when she gives birth because people are not paying attention to her,” Mrs Clinton said.

Several states enacted stricter restrictions on abortions after the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in the decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Both Afghanistan and Sudan have strict restrictions on abortions, with both countries allowing it when the mother’s life is in danger. Sudan also allows abortions to be performed when a woman is raped.

But specifically in Afghanistan, multiple factors which range from war and poverty to illiteracy and lack of infrastructure, contribute to the high maternal mortality rate in the country.

Aside from these, the war on terror and political instability in the country has made healthcare resources inaccessible to over 41 million population.

FASCISM U$A

White House to Trump: ‘You cannot only love America when you win’

The former president had earlier called for the “termination” of constitutional laws, while citing conspiracy theories about the presidential election he lost.


By CRAIG HOWIE
12/03/2022 

The White House on Saturday responded to Donald Trump calling for the suspension of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election, saying in a statement, “You cannot only love America when you win.”

“The Constitution brings the American people together – regardless of party – and elected leaders swear to uphold it,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said. “Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation, and should be universally condemned.”


Earlier, in a post on his Truth Social network, the former president had called for the “termination” of constitutional laws, while citing conspiracy theories about the presidential election he lost.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

Trump’s post came hours after Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk revealed sensitive deliberations at the social media company around Hunter Biden’s personal computer files in the fall of 2020.

The internal company discussions offered insight on the internal confusion at Twitter as it responded to the New York Post’s reporting on then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son in the closing weeks of the last presidential campaign.

POLITICO has not independently verified the communications, which were given to Substack writer Matt Taibbi and posted Friday night. Musk late Friday suggested that another batch of revelations would land Saturday. As of this writing, another batch has not been released.

Musk on Saturday afternoon defended his release of the files, though admitted there may be a “legal risk” in the action.

“We’re just going to put all the information out there try to get a clean slate,” Musk said in a Twitter Spaces live chat. Any legal risk is “less of a concern than just clearing the air and making sure that people know what really happened,” Musk said.

On the promised release of another batch of files, Musk said he was “somewhat leaving this up to Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.” He indicated it would focus on events after the election, including “government influence” on the platform.

Candidly, he admitted he’d “read hardly any” of the files.”

Asked whether any DNC or Biden campaign requests to take down content related to Hunter Biden would be released, Musk replied, “The intent is to release all the files.”

In response to Trump’s call to suspend Constitutional laws, the DNC said in a statement: “Donald Trump lost by 7 million votes in 2020 and his calls to undermine our democracy cost his party key races in 2022. The continued silence by Republican leaders, including his potential primary competitors, shows a MAGA party that is beholden to Trumpism, his divisive rhetoric, and his extreme positions.”

Trump, who has declared his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, preceded his Truth Social post with several posts focused on Big Tech’s role in policing misinformation in the runup to the 2020 election.

He followed up with a post later Saturday saying, “UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!”

'Wrong, crazy, dangerous': CNN legal analyst aghast by Trump call to 'terminate' Constitution

Brad Reed
December 03, 2022

Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig appears on CNN (Screen cap).

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday said it was necessary to "terminate" the United States Constitution to restore him back in power, and he left CNN legal analyst Elie Honig aghast.

During a discussion with Honig on CNN, host Jim Acosta described Trump's Truth Social post as "just more desperation," as he noted that there is no mechanism in the Constitution to "reinstate" Trump to the White House.

Honig, however, said that Trump's ravings were dangerous even if they had no chance of becoming a reality.

"I guess I will just summarize, in response to Donald Trump's statement, to say that virtually every word of that statement is wrong, crazy and dangerous," he said. "I mean the only accurate thing Donald Trump says is that to do what he is recommending would require termination of the constitution which, of course, would leave us without a democracy."

Acosta then editorialized to say that the Trump statement demonstrated his "hostility to the American way of life and democracy in this country."

"It is a reminder of what the country was going through around January 6th," the CNN host added.

Trump Calls For 'Termination' Of Constitution Over Elon Musk's 'Twitter Files' Leak

The social media platform's new CEO appears to have allowed messages sent between the company's past executives to be released.

By Sara Boboltz
Dec 3, 2022, 

Former President Donald Trump called Saturday for the “termination” of articles of the Constitution following the “Twitter files” leak of a series of messages between the social media platform’s leaders in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

Trump suggested that the contents of the leak warranted a complete election re-do or simply a coup in which he would be installed as president.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, the platform he started after being kicked off Twitter early 2021.

In a follow-up post, he added: “UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!”

On Friday evening, author Matt Taibbi posted a thread of dozens of tweets that he titled “THE TWITTER FILES,” alleging that his story offered bombshell revelations about free speech on Twitter. Some conservatives claim Taibbi’s tweets prove that Twitter improperly influenced the result of the last presidential election, although the story has been panned as overhyped and misleading.

The purportedly leaked messages discussed content moderation decisions ― specifically, how Twitter would handle the New York Post story about the sordid contents of a laptop reportedly belonging to Hunter Biden. The laptop’s contents ranged from explicit photographs of Joe Biden’s son and his romantic partners to emails about his work advising Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company.

At the time, many intelligence experts thought the story’s provenance was highly suspect, given the threat of foreign disinformation in the weeks leading up to a monumental election. A group of more than 50 former intelligence officials signed an open letter stating that the laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Tech companies that were excoriated for allowing disinformation to flow freely on major social platforms during the 2016 presidential campaign were not keen to make the same mistakes.

Since then, at least some of the information from the laptop has been authenticated by news outlets that are not owned by right-wing billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

But in all the uncertainty of late 2020, Twitter went to relatively extreme lengths to deal with the laptop story: The platform blocked it. Sharing a link to the New York Post story meant your account could be locked until you deleted it, which is what happened to then-White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

This brings us back to the “Twitter Files” leak.

Twitter’s new overlord, the billionaire Elon Musk, had teased and hyped the thread with popcorn emojis in the hours before, writing, “This will be awesome.”

Taibbi claimed he had been given access to “thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.” In what he promised would be the first in a series of installments to “The Twitter Files,” Taibbi shared screenshots of conversations that high-level Twitter executives supposedly had.

The company’s leaders settled on saying that the New York Post story violated its rules against hacked materials, although later, they reversed this decision. One email purportedly showed how Twitter executives heard from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who said suppressing the Post story had angered lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and was not in line with First Amendment principles.

Some conservatives reacted with particular outrage at another point in Taibbi’s thread, where he shared what appeared to be a request from someone on Joe Biden’s team. At the time, Biden was still just a presidential candidate, and someone had asked Twitter to remove several tweets. While some reacted as if this amounted to collusion, the tweets in question contained nude photos of the president’s son taken from his laptop.

The entire “Twitter Files” saga does seem to make one point clear: The complicated necessity of content moderation on major internet platforms.eport.

Trump doubles down on calls to 'terminate' Constitution in furious all-caps Truth Social post
Brad Reed
December 03, 2022

Donald Trump at the Elysee Palace. (Frederic Legrand - COMEO / Shutterstock.com)


Former President Donald Trump on Saturday evening doubled down on his calls to "terminate" the United States Constitution and restore him to power.

Writing on his Truth Social website, Trump again expressed rage at his loss in the 2020 election, which he still falsely maintains was "stolen" from him,

"The world is laughing at the United States of America and its corrupt and rigged Presidential Election of 2020!" Trump wrote.

In an all-caps follow-up post, Trump wrote that "UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!"

Earlier on Saturday, Trump elaborated on what this "unprecedented cure" would look like when he said that it would require "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."

In a final post, Trump attacked Republicans who voted to certify President Joe Biden's win in the 2020 election.

"I wonder what Mitch McConnell, the RINOS, and all of the weak Republicans who couldn’t get the Presidential Election of 2020 approved and out of the way fast enough, are thinking now?" he raged. "They are a disgrace to our great Party, and to our Nation, which has become a laughing stock all over the World!"

Trump demands 'termination' of Constitution so he can return to power

Brad Reed
December 03, 2022

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday flat-out called for the "termination" of the United States Constitution so that he could be returned to the presidency.

Reacting to the news that Twitter in the runup to the 2020 election removed tweets that featured pornographic photos of Hunter Biden, Trump declared that the entire election had been stolen from him and demanded to be returned to the presidency.

"So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. "A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great 'Founders' did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!"

This is not the first time Trump has called for his reinstatement as president, although this is the first time he has acknowledged that doing so would require the United States to shred its own Constitution on his behalf.

New York Times reporter Peter Baker wrote on Twitter that this seems like a dangerous new milestone for Trump.

"Needless to say, can't think of a time in the United States when a former president (and would-be future president) has called for suspending the Constitution to let him seize power," he wrote. "Even after all the shocks of the last few years, this one is remarkable."

'Heart of darkness': Pastors demand churches condemn Trump for coddling Nazis

Brad Reed
December 03, 2022

Donald Trump (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

Two pastors are putting their feet down and saying it's long past time for churches for condemn former President Donald Trump for his continuous coddling of Nazis and white supremacists.

Roman Catholic priest Matt Malone and Episcopal priest and former Republican Sen. John Danforth have written an editorial for the St. Louis Post Dispatch in which they excoriate Trump for his decision to host Hitler-praising rapper Kanye West and neo-Nazi podcaster Nick Fuentes for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

The two men accuse Trump of being "today’s spreader of the disease" of anti-Semitism, and they lament that the Republican Party is apparently too weak to forcefully condemn him.

However, they do see roles for religious institutions to play in combatting Trump's dangerous actions.

RELATED: Trump demands 'termination' of Constitution so he can return to power

"We propose that our churches and their clergy take the lead," they argued. "We can never make up for the churches’ 20th century omissions, but we should not repeat them in 21st century America. This is our chance to put in practice what our faith professes that antisemitism is opposed to what Christians believe... Our faith tells us to shine Christ’s light in a world of darkness. Antisemitism is the heart of darkness."

The two men then drew a direct parallel to the decision of many Christians to overlook the evils being done by Nazi Germany even as they were occurring.

"This is what we failed to do in Germany 90 years ago," they concluded. "It’s what we must do in America today. The time has come for our churches to denounce Donald Trump from the pulpit."

LIKE EVERY WAR BEFORE IT...

The Pentagon can’t balance it’s own budget, but it’s okay, it’s a ‘teachable moment’

The audit found issues with almost two thirds of the Department of Defense's assets.

BY NICHOLAS SLAYTON | PUBLISHED DEC 3, 2022

Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord discussing the findings of the latest Department of Defense audit on Nov. 15. (Photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Brittany A. Chase/DoD).

The Pentagon can’t account for more than 60 percent of its assets. That’s the news from the latest of the Department of Defense’s audits, the results of which were released last month. Despite not knowing where trillions of dollars are, the chief comptroller for the Pentagon says the department can learn from the audit’s findings. Specifically, American aid to Ukraine provides a chance for the department to see why it matters that every item and dollar are accounted for

TOYS FOR BOYS

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This is the fifth year in a row that the Pentagon has failed to balance its budget. The Department of Defense has $3.5 trillion in assets, as well as another $3.7 trillion in liabilities. Auditors looked at 27 different military agencies, finding the majority had issues in unaccounted or lost funds and new weaknesses in the department’s books. Despite the overall poor news from the findings, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord declined to say that the Pentagon “flunked” the audit.

“The process is important for us to do and it is making us get better. It is not making us get better as fast as we want,” he told reporters in November.

The results, with 61 percent of the audits reflecting issues, weaknesses or discrepancies, are “basically the same picture as last year,” McCord said. Although the Pentagon did not expect to fully pass the audit, the expectation has been that there would be progress year over year.

The mandatory department-wide audits started in 2017, to see how the Department of Defense handles its funds and assets, which include everything from medical benefits to the military’s real estate holdings and utilities worldwide. This year’s report was done by 1,600 outside auditors, comprising 27 different smaller audits. Of those, only seven were considered “clean,” including the Military Retirement Fund, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — Civil Works and the Defense Health Agency — Contract Resource Management. One element, the Medicare-eligible retiree healthcare fund, was given a qualified opinion, meaning it will be judged as “clean” after it resolves an identified weakness or issue. Last year, McCord said that a previously established goal of a completely clean audit by 2027 might not be attainable.

However, this year the Russian war with Ukraine is stressing the need for better accounting within the Pentagon. The United States has sent billions of dollars in weapons and equipment to Ukraine to help its fight against Russia. McCord added Although the U.S. has not been in a “kinetic conflict” with a rival power, it can learn and better track weapons and assets from this war, McCord said. He added that “to me the Ukraine thing is actually a very teachable moment for us on the audit.”

“And, so we’ve not been in a position where we’ve got only a few days of some critical munition left. Right?” McCord said. “But we are now supporting a partner who is and so when they appeal to us for help and say, I’ve got a weeks worth left of something, this is hypothetical. I don’t want to use an exact example but when we’ve got a weeks worth left of something, when can you get me more? I mean that’s a, to me, a really great example of why it matters to get this sort of thing right, of counting inventory, knowing where it is and knowing when it is.”

The United States has sent so much ammunition to Kyiv, including 155mm shells for American howitzers, that it’s put a drain on stockpiles, but the comptroller said there has not been an instance where promised supplies couldn’t be found.

“I’m not saying that insight is going to flip everything to a clean audit overnight, but I think it is an important thing for us to message across DoD and I’ve tried to do that in my — in my talks with people who work here,” McCord added.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

Sunflower sea star population declining to the ‘point of extinction’: U.S. scientists

By Staff The Associated Press
Posted December 3, 2022 

Starfish, lobsters, gulls and fish washed up on a beach in south west England following days of Arctic temperatures across Europe – Mar 5, 2018

Scientists along the West Coast are calling for action to help sunflower sea stars, among the largest sea stars in the world, recover from catastrophic population declines.

Experts say a sea star wasting disease epidemic that began in 2013 has decimated about 95% of the population from the Aleutian Islands of Alaska to Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, The Astorian reported.

The decline triggered the International Union for Conservation of Nature to classify the species as critically endangered in 2020. A petition to list the species under the federal Endangered Species Act was filed in 2021.

READ MORE: Disease, warm ocean water causing mass starfish die-off according to new study

Steven Rumrill, shellfish program leader at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said in his more than 40 years as a marine scientist, he hasn’t seen a widespread decline of a species on the same scale as the sunflower sea star.
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The sea stars, which are among the largest in the world and can span more than 3 feet (91 centimeters), are predators to the kelp-eating sea urchin. Without them, sea urchin populations have exploded, causing a troubling decline in kelp forests that provide food and shelter to many aquatic species along the West Coast.

Rumrill contributed to a recently published roadmap to recovery for the sea star as a guide for scientists and conservationists.

1:53  An SFU study hopes to shed new light on why so many sea stars are dying

“It just sort of breaks your heart to see a species decline so rapidly to the point of extinction,” Rumrill said. “At the global scale, we’re recognizing that the impacts of humans have had major impacts on populations and lots of extinctions worldwide. Here’s one that’s happening right in front of our eyes.”

The roadmap was completed in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, National Marine Fisheries Service, and state agencies in California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska.

The sea star wasting disease is estimated to have killed over 5.75 billion sunflower sea stars, according to the document.

READ MORE: Climate change wiping out billions of sea stars: study

The source of the outbreak has not been conclusively identified, but the document points to evidence that warming ocean waters from human-caused climate change increases the severity of the disease and could have triggered the outbreak.

Rumrill said listing through the Endangered Species Act could result in federal funding to continue research.

Matthew Burks, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said whether the agency recommends the sea star be listed under the Endangered Species Act will be posted to the Federal Register by early next year.

While sunflower sea stars appear to be the most affected by the sea star wasting disease, they are among about 20 documented species of sea stars at risk along the West Coast.

New NASA camera spots methane ‘Super Emitter’ in New Mexico

By Jerry Redfern for Capital & Main
Capital and Main for Daily Kos Partners
Community
Thursday December 01, 2022 ·

A methane plume 2 miles long detected by NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation mission, southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico.

An International Space Station instrument looks for dust, finds methane vent in the Permian Basin.

A news release from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory about its new mineral mapping instrument on the International Space Station sent Oil Conservation Division (OCD) employees scrambling the last week in October. The notification, posted to science aficionados around the world, featured the agency’s new ground-scanning camera and led with an image of a massive methane leak from what appears to be a gas well along the Pecos River, 10 miles southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico.

In the image, the leaking plume stretches just over two miles due north, a roil of angry reds and blues reflecting different concentrations of the incredibly potent greenhouse gas. Those high concentrations are why the new instrument detected the event, which it wasn’t exactly looking for. NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation—known as EMIT—originally went to space to map minerals in this planet’s deserts, part of an effort to understand how dust from these places affects the global climate. Methane detection is a bonus.

“It’s not formally part of the mission as stated and as funded,” says Andrew K. Thorpe, a research technologist at JPL who works on the project and has studied methane emissions for the past decade. “I’m just leveraging a small portion of the data that’s already being collected as part of this other NASA mission, and mining it for the methane work.”

The new plume near Carlsbad was venting more than 40,300 pounds of methane an hour.

In addition to the picture, NASA documented a one-hour release rate at that site that was far greater than the amount reported at the nearest well site for all of 2022. “OCD immediately reached out to NASA for additional information and began investigating this as a possible major release when it became aware of the information,” says Sidney Hill, spokesperson at the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, under which OCD operates. He says that OCD inspectors were on the ground and investigating the area in the photo the day after they received the NASA news release.

That notice and the colorful picture from Carlsbad were the first mentions of methane on the project’s website, but finding the climate-warming gas wasn’t totally unexpected. The EMIT instrument on the ISS is an updated version of a similar project that mapped methane emissions across the Permian Basin in recent years. Thorpe says that this earlier project defined sites like the one near Carlsbad as “super emitters” because of the phenomenal amounts of methane they release. In those earlier flights, he says, they detected emissions from wells and other equipment ranging from 22 to 44,000 pounds of methane per hour. The upper end of that range were the “super emitters.”

This new plume near Carlsbad was venting more than 40,300 pounds of methane an hour. Thorpe says, “We’re confident in saying these are large emissions, and they are part of that ‘super emitter’ class.” That class forms a small percentage of the overall number of emissions sites, but combined, their vast volumes contribute 40%-50% of methane emissions for a given area, he says.

“OCD understands that the NASA images indicate the point of estimated highest concentration at the time the image was captured but does not necessarily identify the specific source,” Hill said. “OCD reviewed the entire area around the plume. OCD is still reviewing the results of its on-the-ground investigation.”

Overlaying the NASA image with OCD’s online Oil and Gas Map places the highest methane concentration atop Harroun Com #001, a well operated by Marathon Oil. Thorpe said the reading was made “in the July, August timeframe” but he couldn’t be specific about the date because of policies against releasing individual data points (like a single emission) before releasing a whole data set.

Last year, OCD implemented new, statewide venting and flaring rules to reduce industry’s natural gas emissions to less than 2% of total production by 2026. Producers must report all natural gas that comes out of the ground and account for all venting, flaring, and other emissions so that what arrives at a pipeline equals what came out of the well. Failing to report an emission like the one in the NASA image can result in fines of up to $2,500 a day, according to Hill.

Karina Brooks, a communications manager with Marathon Oil, said via an email statement, “Based on our initial review of the data, including our wells in the area, it does not appear that our operations are the source(s) of the methane emissions reflected in the photograph.”

Thorpe said that high methane concentrations like those at the center of the plume indicate the source of a leak, but “that being said, there is a little bit of ambiguity.” The pixel size of the instrument’s camera records squares 60 feet across, so it can’t distinguish locations smaller than that. But the next closest well or other equipment is over 2,200 feet away from the plume’s hot spot and the Marathon well.

The release rate of 40,300 pounds of methane per hour documented by NASA is 5% more than the total venting reported to the state from Marathon’s well for all of 2022 to date. It’s an amount roughly equal to the greenhouse gas emissions of 100 cars driven for a year—being released into the atmosphere every hour.

“We will cooperate with the state agency to investigate the matter, which limits our ability to address [this] inquiry in detail at this time,” Brooks said.

The EPA has indicated it may soon declare the Permian Basin an ozone nonattainment zone under the Clean Air Act, which would require stricter controls on oil and gas field emissions.


Thorpe said the image is a snapshot in time due to the nature of ISS’s orbit, which is offset several degrees each time it races around the globe. It circles the Earth about 16 times a day, but because of the offset, it takes three days to fly over the same spot.

“We don’t know if it was emitting before. We don’t know if it was emitting after. But we know that we caught an emission at this location,” he said.

“I think it’s terrifying it’s that close,” said Kayley Shoup, an organizer with the environmental and community group Citizens Caring for the Future. She lives in Carlsbad and worries about the associated gases that leak with methane and contribute to ozone and smog in the region and lead to respiratory problems. The EPA has indicated it may soon declare the Permian Basin an ozone nonattainment zone under the Clean Air Act, which would require stricter controls on oil and gas field emissions.

Hill said that OCD is investigating the release to find the source, but could not comment further on a case that is still under review.

And perhaps OCD should prepare for similar investigations in the future. Thorpe says that methane information from EMIT and other dedicated methane-tracking satellites that are scheduled to launch over the next two years will sharply increase the world’s ability to find, pinpoint and measure oil and gas methane emissions. “There’s going to be more examples, and it’s going to be shared more frequently,“ he said.

“I think it’s in everyone’s best interest to know about it,” he said. “You give people data and hopefully they’ll use it accordingly.”

Thorpe said that JPL plans to have a public data portal up and running early next year with all of the mission data. Shoup said she looks forward to having a new, online resource to document large methane emissions in her backyard. “That is really such wonderful news,” she said.


Copyright 2022 Capital & Main

Christian Nationalist Leader Claims He Forgot He Ran Mega-Racist Twitter Account

A**HOLE AMNESIA

After Thomas Achord’s antisemitic and racist secret account was exposed, the Christian Nationalist headmaster had a very strange excuse.


Will Sommer
Politics Reporter
Published Dec. 03, 2022

Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty


Until last month, Thomas Achord’s friends in the increasingly assertive world of right-wing Christian nationalism saw him as an upstanding member of their movement.

The headmaster of a Baton Rouge school that teaches “classical Christian education,” Achord hosted a podcast with the author of a new book advocating for Christian nationalism. In the insular online community where Christian nationalists debate how to live out their values in a secular world—perhaps by abandoning society altogether or by rallying around an American Caesar who will impose their values by force—Achord was seen as a rising star.

Then someone found his secret Twitter account.

Achord lived a clandestine second life on Twitter, under the vaguely ancient-sounding name “Tulius Aadland.” There, he called a Black member of Congress a “negress” and Black teenagers “chimps.” Achord opined about his desires for a “race realist white nationalism.” He complained that the middle school-aged stars of a Netflix movie simply weren’t hot enough for him. He expounded on his ideas about “Jewish satanism” and argued Jewish people were tricking the United States into “Jew wars.”

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Achord’s two worlds collided shortly before Thanksgiving, when Twitter users connected his public profile with the Tulius account. Confronted with evidence that he ran the account, including a picture taken inside his school, Achord was quickly fired.

Achord initially denied the account belonged to him. Three days later, he tried a novel defense, admitting that he did run the account but that, stricken by a sort of Twitter-only amnesia, he had no memory of writing it.

Achord insisted there were contradictions between himself and the “Tulius” person that he couldn’t reconcile. For example, while he wrote on the Tulius account that he would never go to a Mexican restaurant, his Mexican mother had made him food as a child.

Achord’s secret Twitter account has occasioned much agonizing in the world of Christian nationalism, as his ideological compatriots publicly struggle to understand how one of their own could harbor such racist views. One called him a “stowaway” within Christian nationalism, smuggling racism into their beliefs.

But to Christian nationalism’s critics, the idea that the movement contains white supremacist ideas is no surprise. Even before America’s founding, Christian nationalism was used to justify taking Native American land and enslaving people, according to Philip Gorski, a Yale sociology and religious studies professor.

“It’s always been there,” Gorski said of the racism within Christian nationalism. “It just sunk out of view for some people.”

“I have come to conclude that the Tulius Aadland twitter account is indeed an old alias account of mine.”
— Thomas Achord

Achord couldn’t be reached for comment. Sequitur didn’t respond to a request for comment.

What’s come to be called “the Achord affair” among right-wing intellectuals comes as Christian nationalists—who believe that America is a divinely favored nature nation that should be governed according to conservative Christian principles—are increasingly open about their goals in American politics.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a prominent member of the Republican House caucus, has described herself as a Christian nationalist and sells a T-shirt that declares its wearer to be a “Proud Christian Nationalist.” At a Trump rally in November, the former president nodded in approval as a pastor defended the idea of Christian nationalism and declared that “this nation belongs to God.”

Achord aligned himself with Christian nationalism, hosting a podcast with Stephen Wolfe, the author of a book released last month called The Case for Christian Nationalism. Wolfe and other Achord allies have claimed that the controversy over his Twitter account is just a way for their critics to strike at Christian nationalism.

But even Wolfe admitted that Achord’s tweets were “offensive” after Achord finally conceded on Nov. 28 that he did write them. On his pseudonymous account, Achord described Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) as a “negress” and called a Black man “animalistic.”

“White boys simp,” Achord wrote in a 2020 tweet. “Black boys chimp.”

In his tweets, Achord also talked more specifically about his desire to use “classical Christian education”—the Christian movement that his school, Sequitur Classical Academy, follows—to train white nationalists. In a 2020 series of tweets, Achord complained that Christian education wasn’t doing enough to support white nationalism, writing that he wanted to provide “resources for white-advocates to take back the West for white peoples.”

Achord’s connection to the Twitter account became clear in late November, when Christian writer Alastair Roberts noted similarities between Achord’s public writings and the Tulius account. Most notably, Achord wrote a tweet under the Tulius handle in 2020 with a picture of a room reserved for a grief support group. Achord mocked the group, calling the idea of men sharing their grief “weakness” and “garbage”—but Roberts noticed that a placard with the room number carried Sequitur’s logo.

Achord also attacked women in his Tulius tweets, writing that he would only defend any woman, including his wife, out of an idea that she’s his “possession,” rather than out of any respect for her.

Achord also made bizarre remarks about Cuties, the 2020 Netflix movie that provoked backlash over claims that the movie sexualized its 11-year-old actress.

For Achord, though, Cuties’s problem was somewhat different: the middle-school-aged girls in the film just weren’t attractive enough for him. In a tweet, he complained that the girls were not “comely.”

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“I hate to point this out but the ‘Cuties’ are ugly,” he tweeted under the Tulius alias. “This isn’t a sexual comment. They’re just not comely children. They have horse faces and donkey teeth.”

Achord initially claimed he didn’t run the racist account, insisting it must be run by an impersonator posing as him to sabotage his career. Faced with more evidence from Roberts, though, he eventually admitted he was behind it—but claimed he had forgotten he ever ran it in the first place.

“After more thorough research with the help of trusted friends and advisors and a great deal of counsel and soul-searching, I have come to conclude that the Tulius Aadland twitter account is indeed an old alias account of mine,” Achord wrote in a Medium post.

Ultra-conservative Christian writer Rod Dreher, whose children attended Sequitur and whose wife taught there until Achord’s account was discovered, blasted Achord’s racism in a blog post.

“You were an online racist, anti-Semite, woman-hating creep who admitted on that account to wanting to use Classical Christian Education as a Trojan horse for white nationalism—and did this while you were the headmaster of a school that trusted you!” Dreher wrote.

Part of the surprise at the blow-up over Achord’s racist views is that it didn’t come sooner. In a book he published under his own name, Achord advocated for racist ideas about racial separation. In his profile on the book-rating website Goodreads, Achord’s reading list was filled with white supremacist authors like David Duke and Adolf Hitler, as well as Holocaust denier David Irving.

For Gorski, the Yale religious studies professor and co-author of a book on white Christian nationalism called The Flag and the Cross, the Achord controversy is another example of Christian nationalists being in “denial” about the racists within their movement.

“People are sort of surprised when the clerical collar comes off and it turns out there are ‘SS’ insignias underneath, but they shouldn’t be,” Gorski said.





Will Sommer
Politics Reporter
@willsommerWilliam.Sommer@thedailybeast.com

What links Libya and Yemen? The predominant role of the militias

Emanuel Rossi
December 4, 2022


The presence of armed groups that dominate economic, political and social interests unites Libya and Yemen. The militias have become actors of a state character, they are encrusted in the ganglia of power and exploit resources (especially energy) to strengthen themselves. What the ISPI report edited by Eleonora Ardemagni and Federica Saini Fasanotti says and why Italy is of interest.

In a report published today by ISPI, “From Warlords to Statelords: Armed Groups and Power Trajectories in Libya and Yemen”, the activities that armed groups carry out in Libya and Yemen are compared. Two apparently different dossiers, although both part of Italian foreign policy interests (Libya on the central Mediterranean, Yemen overlooking the Horn of Africa and part of the projection in the enlarged Mediterranean).

Scenarios both pervaded by weak and contested institutions, in which the militias have gradually brought their strategies of survival, profit and governance under the umbrella of the state. The warlords have become the new lords of the state. Armed groups control most of the energy revenues, critical infrastructure, smuggling and illicit trafficking. Their leaders are multifaceted: they are military commanders, tribal leaders, politicians and businessmen at the same time.

Combining comparative analyzes and case studies, Eleonora Ardemagni , ISPI associate researcher and expert on the history of Islamic Asia and New Conflicts at the Catholic University of Milan, and Federica Saini Fasanotti , ISPI and Brookings Institution analyst, have curated a series of expert contributions to shed light on the “economic face” of armed groups and their trajectories of power. How do armed groups build networks of profit and loyalty in the territories they hold? How does cronyism mark a trend towards continuity with former authoritarian regimes?

Armed groups have built patronage mechanisms at the local level (“armed neopatrimonialism”, the study defines it), as the old regimes did at the national level. The contemporary warlords of Libya and Yemen are both patrons and clients: patrons to the local inhabitants of the controlled territories, to whom they arbitrarily assign income, licenses and jobs; but customers of the external state.

The analysis shows that they are also clients of external state powers on which they depend – with nuances – for financial, military and training support. Warlords often rely on greater political legitimacy, and this comes from top-down recognition by legitimate institutions and/or international stakeholders , and growing influence at the community, educational, and religious bureaucracies.

For the report edited by Ardemagni and Fasanotti – among the leading European experts on Yemen and Libya respectively – as long as the armed leaders monopolize economic relations in the Libyan and Yemeni contexts, “imagining an effective transformation from a conflict to a post-war economy is simply unrealistic ”.

On the other hand, for example in Libya, since 2011, most of the armed groups perceive the state not as a set of institutions to be served or disobeyed, but rather, mainly, as a prize to be conquered. Formal institutions, especially those related to energy, have also been gradually eroded through extortion by armed groups, who play the role of “shadow lords”.

Always following the Libyan example, the blocks imposed by some militia groups on the activities of energy fields and infrastructures have turned into the main instrument of blackmail that they can exercise against the institutions, internal rivals and external interested parties, as well as a bargaining chip to gain political access to the state. Encrusting at the nerve centers of the energy sector was a choice as obvious as it was strategic for the militias.

In Yemen, formal and informal economies are also heavily dependent on crude oil exports. For this reason, the old elites, de facto authorities and criminal armed groups are scrambling to control oil reserves, trying to dominate the importation of petroleum derivatives. In the country, the internal race for control of oil resources accelerated after the 2015 war (the one that led to the flight of the government in the face of the advance of the northerner Houthi group), further eroding the boundaries between formal and informal actors: consequently , the web of economic loyalties now cuts across state and non-state dominance.

The Yemeni conflict “is now centered on the creation of an economic basis that allows armed groups to support governance structures (and not just military operations) while preventing others from doing so”, explains the ISPI analysis. “This trend will continue to weaken state structures, while also fostering new conflict dynamics in energy-rich governorates.” Likewise, in post-Gaddafi Libya, armed groups, including those that play a role along the most active coastal strip (and not just those that dominate the tribal context of the South, where the province of Fezzan loses its borders in the chaos of the Sahel ) , have undergone a process of “mafization”.

“They have transformed from young opportunists and petty criminals to white-collar criminals, who retain the ability to carry out extreme violence on the street. This has had a profound impact on policy areas of European concern, from energy supplies to migration control.” The socio-political and economic strength of this militia component and the capacity it has in influencing the dynamics connected to the ongoing institutional crisis, was highlighted on Formiche.net by Karim Mezran (Atlantic Council).

In Libya, a narrow focus on security policies, rather than broader political development and transformation, “has further contributed to the strengthening of armed groups, allowing for a counterproductive effect on key interests of Europe and Italy, worth namely migration and energy”, explain the ISPI analysts. Governance in Yemenof maritime borders is multi-governed: “Armed groups, with varying degrees of opposition or alliance with the internationally recognized government, control most of the coasts, port cities and islands of the country, profiting from tariffs, customs duties and smuggling networks. In Yemen, the strength that certain actors have developed in controlling the coasts has further strengthened them, strengthening their role in smuggling activities.

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