Charlie Sykes piles on the mockery of Josh Hawley's 'made in China' insurrection coffee mug

Sarah K. Burris
February 15, 2022

Conservative Charlie Skyes piled on the mockery of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who is promoting the image of him taken by Francis Chung pumping his fist in the air in solidarity with Jan. 6 attackers. The report of the mug broke Monday, but now it's being discovered that Hawley's insurrection mug isn't even American-made.



Bulwark chief Charlie Skyes put in his morning newsletter a photo from U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) showing the bottom of the mug.

"When I saw folks in 'Hartzler for Senate' T-Shirts that were made in the Dominican Republic frantically taking Josh Hawley's 'Made in China' stickers off his coffee mugs before Saturday breakfast I knew the jig was up," Long tweeted showing the sticker on the bottom of the mug.

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) was called out for campaign t-shirts that were made in the Dominican Republic. Hawley has endorsed her for the GOP Senate primary race.

Sen. Hawley Embraces Jan. 6 'Fist Pump' Photo, Sells Merchandise

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., gestures toward a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021.  (Francis Chung/E&E News and Politico via AP Images)

By Luca Cacciatore    |   Monday, 14 February 2022 08:48 PMComment|

The team of Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has turned a controversial photo showing the senator fist pump protestors outside of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, into a coffee mug, a tweet from New York Times journalist Shane Goldmacher revealed.

The $20 mug, available by donating to Hawley through WinRed, is made of ceramic and features the phrase "Show-Me Strong!" in all upper-case.

"Liberals are so easily triggered, and this new mug is really whipping the left into a frenzy! Josh isn't scared – he's show-me strong! This Made in America mug is the perfect way to enjoy Coffee, Tea, or Liberal Tears!" the message accompanying the promotion reads.

The promotion then details how buying the mug will support Hawley's 2024 re-election campaign.

Although some have speculated the photo could hurt Hawley, who has been floated as a future presidential contender, the Missouri senator has embraced the photo in a clear sign of appealing to the Republican Party base, The Hill reported.

Hawley had previously defended his fist pump to protesters and challenged the idea of lumping together protestors outside of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to rioters who breached the building later in the day.

"That was as I was entering the House chamber the morning of the 6th," Hawley told The Washington Post Live in April of last year. "Those were demonstrators who were out there on the plaza, on the far end of the plaza ... standing behind barricades, waving American flags."

Morning Joe slams Josh Hawley for

 supporting Canadian 'insurrectionists'

after fueling Jan. 6 riot

Travis Gettys
February 15, 2022

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and John Heilemann trashed Republican senators who have thrown their lot with Canadian insurrectionists.

A group of truckers and assorted right-wing extremists have shut down parts of Ottawa and a border crossing into the U.S. as part of their protest against vaccine mandates, and GOP senators and conservative media figures have expressed their support for the increasingly costly demonstration -- and the "Morning Joe" panelists were appalled.

"This group of truckers in Canada, which is a G7 country, huge American ally, a trillion dollars in trade across the border, their stated objective, however implausible, is to overthrow the Canadian government -- that's what they're saying," Heilemann said. "They're insurrectionists. When in the past have Republican politicians in the United States Senate stood up and declared their allegiance to an out-front declared insurrectionist group trying to throw the duly elected government of an American ally?"

"I point it out not because the guys are going to overthrow the government of Canada, but the sympathy with insurrectionists is a thing in the Republican Party," Heilemann added.

Scarborough said the right had become the things they most despised.

"The right is having its hippie moment," Scarborough said. "They are attacking institutions, they are supporting insurrections against the government, they're saying that the United States military -- they hate the military. They're saying the military is taking helicopters from Afghanistan and they're coming to America to kill Trump supporters. They're saying that the FBI, that the FBI is scurrilous and they're going to kick down doors and they're going to arrest people and drag them off for being Trump voters. They're saying all of this stuff. They are saying that nobody at any university can be trusted. I mean, why don't they just take over the president's office at Columbia University. This is a carbon-copy cutout of what we conservatives reacted against in the '60s. This is what created Ronald Reagan and now we've gone a full circle."

Scarborough singled out Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) for raising campaign funds selling mugs with the infamous image of himself holding up his fist in solidarity with the U.S. Capitol rioters.

"When you turn around to the other side does it have American flags bashing cops' brains in?" Scarborough said. "He's proud of that and proud of that day when cops got their brains bashed in by American flags. Many thought they were going to die and two committed suicide after because of the trauma and horror of that day."

How poisonous mercury gets from coal-fired power plants into the fish you eat
The Conversation
February 15, 2022

Fresh Water Fish (Screen Shot)

People fishing along the banks of the White River as it winds through Indianapolis sometimes pass by ominous signs warning about eating the fish they catch.

One of the risks they could face is mercury poisoning.

Mercury is a neurotoxic metal that can cause irreparable harm to human health – especially the brain development of young children. It is tied to lower IQ and results in decreased earning potential, as well as higher health costs. Lost productivity from mercury alone was calculated in 2005 to reach almost $9 billion per year.

One way mercury gets into river fish is with the gases that rise up the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants.

The Environmental Protection Agency has had a rule since 2012 limiting mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. But the Trump administration stopped enforcing it, arguing that the costs to industry outweighed the health benefit.

Now, the Biden administration is moving to reassert it.

I study mercury and its sources as a biogeochemist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Before the EPA’s original mercury rule went into effect, my students and I launched a project to track how Indianapolis-area power plants were increasing mercury in the rivers and soil.

Mercury bioaccumulates in the food chain

The risks from eating a fish from a river downwind from a coal-burning power plant depends on both the type of fish caught and the age and condition of the person consuming it.

Mercury is a bioaccumulative toxin, meaning that it increasingly concentrates in the flesh of organisms as it makes its way up the food chain.



Mercury accumulates as it moves up the food chain.
doug4537 via Getty Images


The mercury emitted from coal-burning power plants falls onto soils and washes into waterways. There, the moderately benign mercury is transformed by bacteria into a toxic organic form called methylmercury.

Each bacterium might contain only one unit of toxic methylmercury, but a worm chewing through sediment and eating 1,000 of those bacteria now contains 1,000 doses of mercury. The catfish that eats the worm then get more doses, and so on up the food chain to humans.

In this way, top-level predator fishes, such as smallmouth bass, walleye, largemouth bass, lake trout and Northern pike, typically contain the highest amounts of mercury in aquatic ecosystems. On average, one of these fish contains enough to make eating only one serving of them per month dangerous for the developing fetuses of pregnant women and for children.

How coal plant mercury rains down

In our study, we wanted to answer a simple question: Did the local coal-burning power plants, known to be major emitters of toxic mercury, have an impact on the local environment?

The obvious answer seems to be yes, they do. But in fact, quite a bit of research – and coal industry advertising – noted that mercury is a “global pollutant” and could not necessarily be traced to a local source. A recurring argument is that mercury deposited on the landscape came from coal-burning power plants in China, so why regulate local emissions if others were still burning coal?

That justification was based on the unique chemistry of this element. It is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, and when heated just to a moderate level, will evaporate into mercury vapor. Thus, when coal is burned in a power plant, the mercury that is present in it is released through the smokestacks as a gas and dilutes as it travels. Low levels of mercury also occur naturally.

Although this argument was technically true, we found it obscured the bigger picture.


People sometimes fish along the White River where it flows through Indianapolis.
alexeys via Getty Images

We found the overwhelming source of mercury was within sight of the White River fishermen – a large coal-burning power plant on the edge of the city.

This power plant emitted vaporous mercury at the time, though it has since switched to natural gas. We found that much of the plant’s mercury rapidly reacted with other atmospheric constituents and water vapor to “wash out” over the city. It was raining down mercury on the landscape.

Traveling by air and water, miles from the source

Mercury emitted from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants can fall from the atmosphere with rain, mist or chemical reactions. Several studies have shown elevated levels of mercury in soils and plants near power plants, with much of the mercury falling within about 9 miles (15 kilometers) of the smokestack.

When we surveyed hundreds of surface soils ranging from about 1 to 31 miles (2 to 50 km) from the coal-fired power plant, then the single largest emitter of mercury in central Indiana, we were shocked. We found a clear “plume” of elevated mercury in Indianapolis, with much higher values near the power plant tailing off to almost background values 31 miles downwind.

The White River flows from the northeast to the southwest through Indianapolis, opposite the wind patterns. When we sampled sediments from most of its course through central Indiana, we found that mercury levels started low well upstream of Indianapolis, but increased substantially as the river flowed through downtown, apparently accumulating deposited mercury along its flow path.

We also found high levels well downstream of the city. Thus a fisherman out in the countryside, far away from the city, was still at significant risk of catching, and eating, high-mercury fish.

The region’s fish advisories still recommend sharply limiting the amount of fish eaten from the White River. In Indianapolis, for example, pregnant women are advised to avoid eating some fish from the river altogether.
Reviving the MATS rule

The EPA announced the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards rule in 2011 to deal with the exact health risk Indianapolis was facing.

The rule stipulated that mercury sources had to be sharply reduced. For coal-fired power plants, this meant either installing costly mercury-capturing filters in the smokestacks or converting to another energy source. Many converted to natural gas, which reduces the mercury risk but still contributes to health problems and global warming.

The MATS rule helped tilt the national energy playing field away from coal, until the Trump Administration attempted to weaken the rule in 2020 to try to bolster the declining U.S. coal industry. The administration rescinded a “supplemental finding” that determined it is “appropriate and necessary” to regulate mercury from power plants.

On Jan. 31, 2022, the Biden Administration moved to reaffirm that supplemental finding and effectively restore the standards.


More than a quarter of U.S. coal-fired power plants currently operating were scheduled as of 2021 to be retired by 2035.
EIA

Some economists have calculated the net cost of the MATS rule to the U.S. electricity sector to be about $9.6 billion per year. This is roughly equal to the earlier estimates of productivity loss from the harm mercury emissions cause.

To a public health expert, this math problem is a no-brainer, and I am pleased to see the rule back in place, protecting the health of generations of future Americans.

Gabriel Filippelli, Chancellor's Professor of Earth Sciences and Executive Director, Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute, IUPUI

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

Here's when Republicans shifted from being anti- to pro-terrorism
Amanda Marcotte,

 Salon
February 14, 2022

Ammon Bundy, leader of the armed anti-government militia at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters near Burns, Oregon, January 5, 2016 (AFP Photo/Rob Kerr

In the weeks after the January 6 insurrection, the Washington Post published a disturbing piece that hinted at how everyday Republicans had come to embrace the politics of terrorism. In Oklahoma City, the Post noted, the memory of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing has become a flashpoint, as both Republican politicians and ordinary citizens bully anyone who tries to draw a line between Timothy McVeigh's crime and Donald Trump-incited storming of the Capitol. The link is obvious, however. Both crimes were committed by white nationalists who refuse to accept a multiracial democracy — but woe on those who say as much in Oklahoma. When Oklahoma's Department of Education shared information from the bombing memorial linking McVeigh's attack with the domestic terror attack on the Capitol, their Facebook page was flooded with vitriol.

"How in the world is this even remotely the same as the Oklahoma bombing??!!!" one teacher wrote. Another derided the education department as the "Oklahoma Dept of Socialist Indoctrination." An angry dad clashed with other parents who argued that McVeigh's radicalism and the anti-government rhetoric at the Capitol were "the very definition of the same context."

One angry Oklahoman even shared the right-wing slogan about the "tree of liberty" needing to be "refreshed" with "blood" in the comments, seemingly unaware that the same phrase was on the T-shirt that McVeigh wore the day he murdered 168 people.

This incoherent insistence on treating McVeigh's insurrectionist violence as somehow different than the Capitol rioters illustrates an ugly shift that's happened in Republican politics since 1995. Back then, most Republicans rejected the view that a white nationalist is entitled to commit violence to protest democratic outcomes he doesn't like. Now, McVeigh's ideology is the mainstream view in GOP politics. Sure, they rarely come right out and say it. But this insistence on minimizing the Capitol riot and continuing support for the man who instigated it — Donald Trump — speaks loudly enough. And ugliness in Oklahoma City in the days after the 2021 insurrection demonstrated that this pro-insurrection view was fixed on the right within days, if not hours, of the event itself.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

We see this, as well, in the celebratory attitude that right-wing media — especially Fox News — is taking towards the Ottawa trucker blockade.

As Zack Beauchamp of Vox notes, the uprising that brought that part of the Canada-U.S. border to a standstill and has terrorized the city of Ottawa "is on the fringe, including among Canadian truckers — some 90 percent of whom are vaccinated." It's a group of right-wingers who "are angry because they have lost" and are trying to gain by force what they cannot through democratic means. And yet, it's become a cause célèbre on Fox News, causing comically overwrought claims like it's "the single most successful human rights protest in a generation."

Fox News doesn't like the blockade despite its widespread unpopularity — they support it because it's unpopular.

As with the January 6 insurrection, the trucker tantrum is viewed by right-wing media as a model for how the embittered white conservative majority can impose its will without getting public support. Both the insurrection and the trucker tantrum are a far-right minority expressing a belief that they're entitled to rule, no matter what. And while the Ottawa demonstration has so far not been as violent as the January 6 insurrection, it is still about using force — by taking the economy hostage and intimidating the residents with the threat of violence — to obtain what conservatives cannot gain fairly.

This shift from being anti- to pro-terrorism among Republicans can really be traced back to Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's 2014 standoff with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and his sons' subsequent 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. That's when a group of far-right extremists, led by brothers Ryan and Ammon Bundy, seized control of a visitor's center at an Oregon national wildlife refuge, spouting a bunch of incoherent demands that amounted to a belief that a democratically elected government had no right to pass laws restricting the right of white men to wreak as much environmental damage as they damn well pleased. The fight quite literally started because the occupiers didn't believe the government had a right to convict two men who had set fire to federal lands to protest not being allowed to graze their cattle there.

RELATED: How the fringe ideology of anti-government cranks is becoming the GOP mainstream

The occupiers were domestic terrorists, trying to obtain through violence what they couldn't through fair engagement in politics. But while Republicans formally condemned the violence, they were also tripping over each other to validate the asinine complaints of the occupiers. Multiple GOP congressmen even drew on arguments that came from fringe authoritarian writers who believe in things like turning the U.S. into a Christian theocracy. Even more troublingly, the occupiers were found "not guilty" at their trial, suggesting that by October of 2016, enough Republicans were pro-terrorism enough to make it impossible to put together a jury to convict in a case that should have been a slam dunk. So that Trump was able to cobble together enough votes the next month to win the electoral college should not, in retrospect, have been a surprise.

The Department of Justice under Barack Obama had been slow and cautious in its response to the occupation, fearing another debacle like the Branch Davidian fire in Waco, TX in 1993. Instead of storming in, they let the occupiers feel safe enough to actually leave the property for a media event, where they were then easily captured on an open highway. It was a decision heavily criticized at the time, with lots of people rightfully pointing out that people of color who commit acts of terrorism don't get the kid glove treatment. Others, including myself, defended the feds, arguing that the fact that only one person died in the process justified the strategy. Now I'm beginning to doubt that view.

RELATED: Why voters don't blame Republicans for the Capitol riot — no GOP leaders have been arrested yet

It may be that Democrats just need to get stiffer spines when dealing with right-wing bullies and terrorists, even when doing so means the right will react with violence. As Brian Beutler of Crooked Media argued in his newsletter last week, it's reasonable to worry that the utter failure of the Department of Justice to arrest Trump or his allies for their many crimes "is driven by fear" of a violent backlash. Certainly, Trump has been using intimidation recently, promising pardons for people who commit violence for him and demanding ugly reactions from his followers if he does face a consequence.

But this failure of nerve on the part of Democratic leadership is going to screw us all over in the long run. As Beutler argues, the system "can't function if one side gets a hostage-taker's veto over the rules of fair play," and without imposing real consequences for crime and violence, "he public will just grow desensitized to right-wing tactics or, worse," even start to sympathize with the hostage-takers and violent terrorists.

We see this in the shift in GOP circles from 1995, when McVeigh's villainy was indisputable, to our modern time, when people who share McVeigh's views and stormed the Capitol are described by the Republican National Committee as merely engaging in "legitimate political discourse." The RNC did walk that lie back a little bit, but notably only for the people who got arrested. That only underscores the validity of Beutler's argument: Consequences matter when it comes to public opinion.

The ongoing failure of Democrats to bring the hammer down on the ringleaders of the coup signals strongly to the public that the coup was no big deal — and indeed, opens the door to arguing that the coup was justified. Republicans are walking right through that door right now.

NEWS OF THE ROYALS

Prince Andrew settles lawsuit with his rape accuser
Sky Palma
February 15, 2022

Shutterstock

According to a report from The New York Times, Prince Andrew has settled a lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre, the woman who had accused him of raping her when she was under 18-years-old and allegedly trafficked by Andrew's friend, the billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The amount paid out to Giuffre has remained confidential. Andrew also “intends to make a substantial donation” to a charity “in support of victims’ rights,” the parties said in a joint statement.

"The deal comes just weeks before Andrew was scheduled to sit for a deposition, in which he would have been questioned under oath by Ms. Giuffre’s lawyers. Andrew did not admit to any of Ms. Giuffre’s accusations against him in the statement announcing the settlement," NYT's reported stated. "The lawsuit by Ms. Giuffre, one of the most prominent of Mr. Epstein’s accusers, had cast a shadow over the royals at a time when Queen Elizabeth, the 95-year-old British monarch, was marking her 70th year on the throne. Andrew was forced to relinquish his military titles and royal charities, no longer was to use the title 'His Royal Highness,' and was 'not to undertake any public duties,' Buckingham Palace said in a statement last month."

Read the full report over at The New York Times.

HIS OWN GRNDR

Top Trump donor Peter Thiel funds right-wing dating app after investing in Rumble
David Edwards
February 15, 2022

Gage Skidmore.


Peter Thiel, one of former President Donald Trump's top donors in 2016, is reportedly funding "The Right Stuff," a dating app that targets conservatives.

Axios revealed on Tuesday that Thiel had injected $1.5 million into the company creating the app, which is expected to launch this summer.

Trump political aide John McEntee was said to be behind the app.

"We’re excited to launch The Right Stuff dating app this summer. Conservatives deserve an easy way to connect," he said.

The New York Times reported on Monday that Thiel has invested in Rumble, a conservative alternative to YouTube.

"Conservatives have been aggressively building their own apps, phones, cryptocurrencies and publishing houses in an attempt to circumvent what they see as an increasingly liberal internet and media ecosystem," Axios noted.

Sandy Hook families settle with gunmaker over school massacre
Agence France-Presse
February 15, 2022

Composite of Sandy Hook victims

The families of nine victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting have reached a settlement with Remington, the maker of the rifle used in the massacre, according to US court documents released Tuesday.

Twenty-six children and teachers were shot dead at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut by 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza, who then killed himself.

A “settlement agreement has been executed between the parties,” the notice from lawyers for the families said.

US media reported that the settlement amount was $73 million. AFP is seeking comment from both Remington and the plaintiff’s lawyers.

The lawsuit had alleged that Remington and the other two defendants are culpable because they knowingly marketed a military grade weapon that is "grossly unsuited" for civilian use yet had become the gun most used in mass shootings.

The plaintiffs alleged that the gun was marketed immorally and unscrupulously, sold on its war-fighting capabilities to civilians.

Marketing, they alleged, popularized the AR-15 in combat and mass shooting-type situations through the type of violent video games that Lanza was known to play.

They specifically cited Remington’s marketing of high-capacity magazines, which have only combat utility, for use with the gun.

Last year a US judge ruled in favor of parents who sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for saying that the massacre at the school was a hoax.

In the shooting, 20 six- and seven-year-old children and six staff members were killed. Earlier, Lanza had also killed his mother at their Newtown home.

British Museum exhibition traces rise and fall of Stonehenge

Agence France-Presse
February 15, 2022

The exhibition includes the gold and bronze Nebra Sky Disc, the world's oldest surviving map of the stars

 Daniel LEAL AFP

A new exhibition on the Stonehenge stone circle in southern England sheds new light on its 4,500-year history, linking its declining influence to the Bronze Age population's discovery of metal working.


Opening Thursday at the British Museum in London, the exhibition called "The World of Stonehenge" traces the development of the UNESCO-protected site -- two concentric circles of huge stone blocks and lintels.

According to Celtic legends of the Middle Ages, the circle was magically created by the mythical magician Merlin.

Construction at the site was started during the Neolithic era by hunter-gatherers without metal tools and continued into the Bronze Age as metal working became widely established.

European metal workers arrived during the early Bronze Age, gradually superseding the local Neolithic population.


"Within a couple of hundred years, those people from Europe replaced the previous population by almost 95 percent," Neil Wilkin, the exhibition's curator, said.

As their culture and beliefs became dominant, Stonehenge lost its original purpose and became used as a cemetery, he added.

The exhibition shows numerous tombs from the time, as well as objects such as large gold necklaces made in France around 2300 BC.

The Nebra Sky Disc, the world's oldest surviving map of the stars, smelted in gold and bronze in 1600 BC in present-day Germany, is also featured.

Altogether there are more than 430 objects from the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland at the exhibition, which runs to July 17.

The British Museum also displays 14 wooden poles that were preserved for millennia under the sand of a beach in Norfolk, eastern England, until their discovery in 1998.

These are the remains of a wooden circle called Seahenge, on loan to the museum for the first time.

The 4,000-year-old circle once featured 54 oak piles arranged in a circle 6.6 meters in diameter, with a huge upturned tree in the centre, its roots facing skywards.

This circle would have been used for rituals in a similar way to Stonehenge, but was built five centuries later (2049 BC), using metal axes typical of the Bronze Age, said Wilkin, as the tradition of building such circles dwindled away.

"Seahenge is one of the last monuments of its type built in Britain. It's the very end of a long tradition that spans 1,000 years," he noted.

© 2022 AFP

Cook Islands confirms first coronavirus case — two years into pandemic

PAULINA FIROZI AND JENNIFER HASSAN

• THE WASHINGTON POST

 • FEBRUARY 14, 2022

The south shoreline of Rarotonga, the largest of the Cook Islands, which detected its first case of coronavirus on Feb. 13, 2022. 

(Walter Nicklin/for The Washington Post)

The Cook Islands, one of the few places left in the world that had not reported any coronavirus infections, detected its first case on Sunday.

Prime Minister Mark Brown said in a briefing Sunday that the individual who tested positive arrived in Rarotonga, the largest of the Cook Islands, on Thursday. The person was tested Sunday after learning that a family member who was a close contact had tested positive in New Zealand the day before. The individual was asymptomatic and was isolating and under observation Sunday at private holiday accommodations, Brown said.

The remote South Pacific nation had been bracing for a potential spate of infections in recent days. Officials announced Saturday that a traveler tested positive for the omicron variant upon returning to New Zealand last week after eight days on the islands — although Brown said the case confirmed Sunday was “not connected” to that visitor.

The individual who was confirmed positive Sunday was “traveling with two others, and they will all remain in isolation until they no longer test positive for COVID-19,” Brown said. Officials did not explicitly say whether the two others had been tested. It was “helpful,” Brown added, that the individual had been staying in private accommodations rather than at a resort or hotel.

The person who tested positive is vaccinated, the prime minister said, and had tested negative before boarding a flight from New Zealand. Officials had begun contact-tracing efforts to track the person’s movements since arriving in Rarotonga and to determine potential close contacts

The islands restarted air travel last month after maintaining strict limits since the start of the pandemic. The Cook Islands government declared on Jan. 13 that the “reopening of borders allows for two-way quarantine-free travel from New Zealand.”

The sandy islands are a self-governing parliamentary democracy but coordinate with New Zealand on international affairs.

“Every step we have taken has led us to the point today where we remain COVID-19 free,” Brown said in a November statement. He said the closure has taken a mental and financial toll and that “keeping our borders closed indefinitely was no longer a viable option.”

It is “futile” to believe that any place can entirely avoid the virus, said David Freedman, president-elect of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

He noted that travelers to the Cook Islands must still go through New Zealand — which has had some of the world’s most stringent pandemic restrictions and measures.

“And it still got in,” Freedman said. He added: “You can use measures, you can delay, and if there’s a new variant that’s potentially dangerous, you can get ready for the variant ... [but] you’re never going to keep it out.”

Instead of travel restrictions, Lin Chen, director of the Travel Medicine Center at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., underlined the importance at this stage of the pandemic of masking, rigorous testing and the continued push for vaccinations and boosters. She added that the confirmed Cook Islands case shows “that the pandemic is not over, and that we need to continue taking precautions when traveling.”

“If we can test rigorously and have plans or policies to have an infected person be quarantined or isolated depending on vaccination status,” she said, “that might allow us to start to go toward normalization.”

The government has hailed its vaccination rate, with the prime minister calling it a “factor that is in our favor as it slows the spread of transmission.” According to the nation’s Health Ministry, 98 percent of the population age 12 and older has received at least a first vaccine dose, with 96 percent having received two doses and 67 percent getting a booster shot.

Until now, the nation of about 17,000 people had been one of fewer than a dozen regions, countries, territories or areas with zero reported coronavirus cases, according to the World Health Organization’s coronavirus tracker.

“I understand that some of you may feel frightened or anxious, but please rest assured that all branches of our government are working together to deal with this situation to protect us all,” Brown said during his Sunday briefing. “We have expected this virus, we have prepared for it, and we are ready to fight it.”

 

Denver, Colorado, BNSF worker killed in rail yard accident

Erik Schreiber

WSWS.ORG

A BNSF worker was killed in a rail yard accident in Denver, Colorado, on Wednesday, February 9. The worker, whose name has not been released, died after being struck by a train at the company’s Globeville yard, which is north of Coors Field. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating the accident.

This tragedy took place one day after US District Judge Mark T. Pittman extended a restraining order that forbids BNSF workers to strike over the company’s new Hi-Viz attendance policy. The policy, which the company imposed unilaterally on February 1, allots each worker 30 points and deducts points for every time that a worker takes off from work, regardless of the reason. To earn points back, workers must be on call 24 hours per day for at least two weeks straight. The policy is being used to discipline or fire workers who lose their points and to ensure that workers are available for duty at almost all times.

BNSF Corwith rail yard with downtown Chicago in background (Photo by Richard Hurd, distributed under a CC-BY 2.0 license)

Even before the new policy was enacted, many BNSF workers did not have predictable schedules or assigned days off. The new policy will exacerbate workers’ difficulties in scheduling doctor’s appointments, spending time with their families or even getting needed sleep. An inevitable consequence of the policy will be an increase in workers’ fatigue, which will in turn increase the risk of serious accidents and deaths.

Three BNSF workers have died in the past year alone. In April 2021, conductor Buddy Strieker died in a switching accident while working at a customer facility in Louisiana, Missouri. Strieker was 56 years old and had worked for the company for more than 24 years.

In March, 2021, a worker was killed while working at the La Mirada rail yard near Los Angeles, California. Emergency personnel determined that two trains had converged and crushed the worker. Both deaths became the subject of NTSB investigations.

In 2021, four BNSF workers died on duty. This was half of the total worker fatalities for the entire railroad industry last year.

Many factors contribute to these accidents and fatalities. One factor is the relentless cost-cutting that the railroads, like every other industry, carry out to increase profits for their owners and shareholders. Another contributing factor is the increased deregulation of the industry. One turning point in this process was the 1996 dissolution of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which had been established in 1887 to regulate the railroads.

This deregulation has abetted an increase in mergers within the industry. BNSF itself is the product of a merger of the Burlington Northern Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. This merger was completed in 1996—the year that the ICC was dissolved. BNSF is majority owned by billionaire Warren Buffett.

By requiring workers to be at the company’s beck and call, BNSF’s new Hi-Viz attendance policy will dramatically increase their stress, overwork, and fatigue. These conditions will only make fatal accidents more likely. Data compiled by a BNSF worker indicated that resignations had increased to an average of 31 per week shortly after the policy was introduced, with 57 workers resigning last week. Workers are seeking other jobs, and some are openly expressing thoughts about suicide.

Most BNSF workers are members of the Sheet Metal Air Rail Transportation-Transportation Division (SMART-TD) union or the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET). Opposed to any serious mobilization of workers to the Hi-Viz policy, the unions are enforcing the restraining order that BNSF obtained. Not only are the unions forbidding workers to strike, they also have instructed them not to make any comments at all to the press, essentially stripping workers of their right to free speech.

In addition to acting as policemen for the company, SMART-TD and BLET are diverting workers’ attention to the courts. The unions are filing legal appeals that they know will be fruitless, since the company is “overseen” by the Railway Labor Act of 1926. This act has made strikes illegal, for all practical purposes, for nearly a century. Indeed, in its latest legal filings, BNSF gloated that the courts routinely decide in favor of the railroads and that its victory in this dispute is a foregone conclusion.

To further distract workers’ attention from their treachery, SMART-TD and BLET have appealed to the Biden administration for help. The unions have argued that the company’s new policy compromises worker safety, knowing full well that Biden has subordinated workers’ safety, and even lives, to the interests of profit. His administration is ending the few remaining public health measures put in place to control the pandemic and has even ended its requirement that hospitals report daily COVID-19 deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The conduct of SMART-TD and BLET during this struggle clearly illustrates that these organizations are engaged in a pantomime to cover up their activity as agents of BNSF. Even if workers’ opposition pushed the unions into declaring a strike, the unions’ leadership would quickly isolate and suffocate the strike to protect the company’s profits. For workers to conduct a genuine struggle, they must form independent rank-and-file committees, controlled democratically by workers themselves, to mobilize BNSF and all railroad workers in a common fight to end these conditions of exploitation.

If you are a railroad worker at BNSF or another company, contact the WSWS with your comments.

Navigating doubts, hopes, and hormone replacement therapy at Princeton

José Pablo Fernández García / The Daily Princetonian

Anonymous

February 14, 2022 

 
 
 

Content Warning: The following essay contains mentions of transphobia.

When the intake nurse at University Health Services (UHS) asked my reason for coming in, my heart raced. The person who checked me in that day had referred to me by my legal name — one which I had asked the University to stop using in reference to me at the end of the previous semester (pro tip: changing your name on TigerHub doesn’t change your name in the UHS system). I expected the worst when I blurted out, “Oh, I just had some questions. Um, about gender-affirming care.”

She smiled. “Ah, like a consult?” When I nodded in reply, she took the data and vitals regularly obtained by intake nurses: temperature, blood pressure, any regular medications I was on, etc. When she left the room, I exhaled shakily and held my forehead in my hands. As I waited to be seen by the next practitioner, I thought back through the journey which led me to that room. 

Around a year prior, I “came out” to friends as nonbinary on a small social media account. Though the message was framed in a celebratory lens, I cried a bit while writing it. I would keep crying throughout the coming months, as I changed the pronouns I used (twice) and asked my professors to refer to me by a different name. 

I was not ashamed of who I was. Still, I was worried about how coming out would affect the way others perceived me. I was raised in an environment where being openly nonbinary was considered unprofessional. I spent several long, lonely nights awake wondering if my peers, employers, and professors would doubt my competency on the basis of my gender expression. 

I felt like I had to deal with socially transitioning largely on my own because the COVID-19 pandemic kept me at a distance from large parts of my support network. Changing the pronouns on Zoom, Slack, and Canvas, that I once proudly displayed as a sign of allyship, to ones that acknowledged my transition brought on bullets of sweat. I didn’t know when it was appropriate to correct those who knew of my social transition when they referred to me with gendered terms I didn’t identify with. 

No one gave me a roadmap to living authentically, and without one, I felt like I was flying blind, susceptible to so many mistakes along the way. 

I wanted so badly to find joy in my social transition. And at times, I did. One day, after a haircut that felt life-changing, I looked in the mirror and felt comfortable with my appearance for maybe the first time. I couldn’t stop smiling.

But at other times, I felt the same way I had felt for much of my life: alien to the way others perceived me. Being referred to with gendered terms that didn’t match my identity took on a new level of pain after having finally admitted to others how I felt inside. Growing up facing expectations around the gender others wanted me to be brought with it panic and anguish — the awfulness of puberty making me look different from my sibling and cousins, the deep discomfort around wearing gendered clothing that I found so hard to explain to my parents. This panic and anguish found new avenues through which to plague me. One moment, I felt joy in expressing who I was. The next, I felt frustrated and confused. 

It wasn’t until the summer after I had come out that I was able to settle into my gender expression and learn to navigate the social situations that came with it. I made the conscious choice to be “out” to my employers and the people I was interacting with. 

There were moments of embarrassment — awkwardness of trying to insert my pronouns into introductions, a plethora of misgenderings, etc. But they were learning experiences in how to navigate my gender expression in the “real world,” outside of college. I learned patience, graciousness, and honestly, how not to be bothered. My gender identity is a special part of who I am, but at the end of the day, just one small (and beautiful) part. 

I learned when it mattered to me to call attention to my gender identity and when it did not. In essence, I learned how to be myself and how to be happy being myself. And then, I really was happier than I had ever been: more confident, more sure of myself, and a whole lot less awkward. 

The following fall semester, I found a level of support that I could have only dreamed of previously through actively entering affinity spaces and spending time with an affirming network. The Gender + Sexuality Resource Center’s Gender Group gave me mentors who had been in my shoes and friends who were going through the same challenges. My eating club’s affinity group chat gave me a sense of belonging and no-judgment-camaraderie that I had feared I would no longer have easy access to.

A graduate student mentor of mine generously lent a ridiculously sympathetic ear to me when I first asked her about the prospect of medically transitioning. I had spent years fantasizing about it. From middle school onward, I would spend hours watching Youtube videos of people who had gone through the process and shared their stories. But I was afraid. 

The support network that I gained enabled me to finally make the appointment I had spent so long considering. I went into it with so much anxiety. I wasn’t out to my parents, a situation which makes insurance complicated. And I grew up in a religious environment that was generally both anti-gay and anti-trans. (A therapist in high school once told me to consider whether regularly attending church would cure me of my LGBTQ+ feelings.) I had heard more horror narratives of trying to medically transition than positive ones. 

When the UHS practitioner finally came into the room where I had been waiting and asked me why I had come in, I started crying. I thought I was about to have to jump through hoops to get the care I wanted — to be diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” or to carefully recount my lifelong struggle with gender. I was afraid I hadn’t been out for long enough to be considered valid or stable, or that a comment would be made about whether my identity was some sort of bandwagoning fad. I hadn’t always had amazing experiences with UHS concerning my regular health problems, and my expectations were low.

None of my fears came to light. I was met with only sympathy, kindness, and a professionalism that I didn’t expect to be granted as a trans person. UHS practices an “informed consent” model of gender-affirming care, which basically means that a practitioner will carefully explain to you the effects of hormone therapy, and if you still want to go through with it, they’ll help you embark upon the process. 

After spending a generous amount of time explaining to me what it’s like to be on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) in a friendly manner, my practitioner ordered blood work for me, and after everything came back in order, sent the necessary prescriptions to the local CVS. I found the prescription remarkably affordable without insurance. And I found it insanely relieving that my practitioner had both extensive clinical experience with patients on HRT and personal experience with the process. All my nervous questions were answered with gentleness. 

When I filled the prescription, I came back into UHS, and the same practitioner I initially saw coached me on how to self-administer the prescribed hormones through injection. I shook a bit from nerves, but I was allowed to take all the time I needed. It wasn’t scary, and it didn’t hurt. 

At the time of writing this, I’m a few months on HRT, and I’m the happiest I have ever been with my body. I’ve found that HRT has not confined me to express myself as the gender often associated with the “opposite” of the one I was assigned at birth, but instead has freed me to feel my best no matter what clothing I’m wearing. Physical changes are slow  — I purposefully started on a low dose to make sure of this — but welcome. “Second puberty” is awkward at times, but thanks to the advice and support of friends (cis and trans alike), it’s never felt embarrassing. I look in the mirror, and I see myself. That’s a privilege everyone should enjoy. 

It’s not that I never have doubts or anxieties. The nice thing is that medical transition can be stopped at any time. Many changes aren’t as permanent as one might think. Stopping medical transition is not a sign of defeat or not being “trans enough.” Everybody should have the right to explore their gender identity and their options for gender expression. Medical transition is just one option.

I’m writing all of this to say that you are the one who gets to write your story. Socially and medically transitioning can be scary. It has been for me. But it’s not as intimidating as you might think, and it’s not impossible. 

Transitioning has led me to love myself in ways I never thought I could. Being trans at Princeton — where student groups still invite transphobic speakers and prominent professors are openly anti-trans — is not always easy. But the easy thing, I’ve been told, is not equal to the right thing. 

We are so much more powerful when we live openly as ourselves. The person you are inside — just like the person I am inside — is gorgeous, vibrant, and deserving of love. Do right by the person inside you. It’s our job to love those who live authentically as their authentic selves, and I hope we all do it well. Here’s to doing so, together. 

Editor’s Note: The ‘Prince’ granted the author of this essay anonymity due to privacy and safety concerns.