Monday, November 23, 2020

Galaxy encounter violently disturbed Milky Way, study finds

by University of Edinburgh NOVEMBER 23, 2020
Magellanic clouds over Bromo Semeru Tengger National Park, Java, Indonesia. Credit: Gilbert Vancell- gvancell.com

The spiral-shaped disk of stars and planets is being pulled, twisted and deformed with extreme violence by the gravitational force of a smaller galaxy—the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).

Scientists believe the LMC crossed the Milky Way's boundary around 700 million years ago—recent by cosmological standards—and due to its large dark matter content it strongly upset our galaxy's fabric and motion as it fell in.

The effects are still being witnessed today and should force a revision of how our galaxy evolved, astronomers say.

The LMC, now a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, is visible as a faint cloud in the southern hemisphere's night skies—as observed by its namesake, the 16th century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan.

Previous research has revealed that the LMC, like the Milky Way, is surrounded by a halo of dark matter—elusive particles which surround galaxies and do not absorb or emit light but have dramatic gravitational effects on the movement of stars and gas in the universe.

Using a sophisticated statistical model that calculated the speed of the Milky Way's most distant stars, the University of Edinburgh team discovered how the LMC warped our galaxy's motion. The study, published in Nature Astronomy, was funded by UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

The researchers found that the enormous attraction of the LMC's dark matter halo is pulling and twisting the Milky Way disk at 32 km/s or 115,200 kilometers per hour towards the constellation Pegasus.

To their surprise they also found that the Milky Way was not moving towards the LMC's current location, as previously thought, but towards a point in its past trajectory.

They believe this is because the LMC, powered by its massive gravitational force, is moving away from the Milky Way at the even faster speed of 370 km/s, around 1.3 million kilometers per hour.

Astronomers say it is as if the Milky Way is trying hard to hit a fast moving target, but not aiming very well.

This discovery will help scientists develop new modeling techniques that capture the strong dynamic interplay between the two galaxies.

Astronomers now intend to find out the direction from which the LMC first fell in to the Milky Way and the exact time it happened. This will reveal the amount and distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way and the LMC with unprecedented detail.

Dr. Michael Petersen, lead author and Postdoctoral Research Associate, School of Physics and Astronomy, said, "Our findings beg for a new generation of Milky Way models, to describe the evolution of our galaxy.

"We were able to show that stars at incredibly large distances, up to 300,000 light-years away, retain a memory of the Milky Way structure before the LMC fell in, and form a backdrop against which we measured the stellar disk flying through space, pulled by the gravitational force of the LMC."

Professor Jorge Peñarrubia, Personal Chair of Gravitational Dynamics, School of Physics and Astronomy, said, "This discovery definitely breaks the spell that our galaxy is in some sort of equilibrium state. Actually, the recent infall of the LMC is causing violent perturbations onto the Milky Way.

"Understanding these may give us an unparalleled view on the distribution of dark matter in both galaxies."

Explore further

More information: Michael S. Petersen et al, Detection of the Milky Way reflex motion due to the Large Magellanic Cloud infall, Nature Astronomy (2020). 

Journal information: Nature Astronomy

Provided by University of Edinburgh
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New clues shed light on importance of Earth's ice sheets

by Florida State University
Pictured is a glacial meltwater river that has drained from the Greenland Ice Sheet. These rivers contain high amounts of suspended glacial flour as the ice sheet acts like a natural bulldozer and gives the rivers a grey milky color.
Photo courtesy of Jon Hawkings. Credit: Jon Hawkings

Researchers examining subglacial waters both from Antarctica and Greenland found that these waters have higher concentrations of important, life-sustaining elements than previously thought, answering a big unknown for scientists seeking to understand the Earth's geochemical processes.

"The data from an Antarctic lake is particularly exciting," said Florida State University postdoctoral fellow Jon Hawkings. "Most people tend to think of Antarctica as just ice, but we've known about these lakes underneath the glaciers in Antarctica for 40 years and over 400 of them have currently been identified. Some scientists refer to the subglacial environment in Antarctic as the world's largest wetland. The challenge for scientists is it's just extremely difficult to sample them."

Hawkings, along with colleagues at Florida State and Montana State University, has published a new study this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences exploring these subglacial waters.

The study specifically examines the liquid water beneath the ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. About 10 percent of the Earth's land surface is covered by these ice sheets, and these polar environments are undergoing rapid change as a result of rising temperatures. Scientists are greatly interested in understanding these environments and how continued warming will affect critical geochemical processes into the future.

Hawkings analyzed the water samples focusing on what are called trace elements—chemical elements that are present in extremely small amounts but that are essential to microscopic organisms and thus the global carbon cycle. Scientists thought for years that the waters beneath glaciers worldwide contained these elements in such miniscule quantities that they didn't play a significant role in the Earth's geochemical and biological processes.
Research scientists overlooking the vast expanse of Leverett Glacier, an outlet glacier of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Ice sheets cover ten percent of the global land surface. Far from being extremely cold, sterile locations, the newly published results indicate that they could be a more important component of global elemental cycles than previously appreciated. Credit: Jon Hawkings

"What we found is actually that ice sheets are seemingly more important to life processes than we originally thought," said FSU Associate Professor of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science Robert Spencer. "As big unknowns in our contemporary understanding of how our planet works are uncovered, it reminds us of how much there still is left to learn."

For example, scientists expected to see less than 5 micrograms per liter of dissolved iron (an extremely important trace element) in some of these subglacial waters, but they saw up to 1,000 micrograms per liter. These large variations may make a major difference in how much life can be sustained in extreme subglacial ecosystems and in the ocean waters that receive ice sheet meltwater.

"These trace elements are kind of like the vitamin tablet people take every day," Spencer said. "Although we only need small amounts of these materials, they are fundamental for the development of healthy ecosystems."

Collecting subglacial waters for analysis is no easy feat though, particularly in Antarctica. Researchers must work in remote and harsh environments.
View down an ultra-clean hot water borehole drilled into Mercer Subglacial Lake, a freshwater lake located more than 1000 metres beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The lake is hydrologically active, meaning water flows through it to the coast, much like lakes on land. Meltwater from this lake is highly enriched in biologically essential trace elements like Iron. Credit: Katryn Kasic, Montana State University

Hawkings' and Spencer's collaborators from Montana State University, Professors John Priscu and Mark Skidmore, orchestrated a logistically complicated research expedition to Antarctica to drill more than 3,500 feet through the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

After receiving funding from the National Science Foundation in 2016 for the project SALSA (Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access), Priscu led a field campaign that involved moving almost 1 million pounds of gear by aircraft and tractor traverse across the ice sheet to the field site.

Then, from December 2018 through January 2019, the SALSA project Science Team drilled through about three quarters of a mile of ice into Mercer Subglacial Lake, a lake more than 5.5 miles (9 kilometers) long and 50 feet (15 meters) deep. They chose that particular lake as it was located where two ice streams meet.

"We were interested in the physical, chemical and biological processes occurring in that specific lake, but then there is also this broader context of these lakes being part of the greater hydrological system under the ice sheet," Skidmore said. "We want to see what's being generated beneath the ice sheet and how that connects to the coastal environments."

Skidmore took samples under a protocol that Hawkings laid out and then shipped them back to the United States via a temperature-controlled cargo boat, taking several months, and then forwarded to Tallahassee via overnight delivery in special coolers to keep the sample temperatures stable.

Hawkings and colleagues separately collected samples in Greenland from a large meltwater river that emerged beneath Leverett Glacier. The fieldwork, led by Jemma Wadham of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, involved monitoring the hydrological and geochemical characteristics of the river over a three-month period during the summer melt season.

Hawkings and Spencer then conducted geochemical analysis in specially designed laboratories at the FSU-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory that minimize dust or other environmental factors that would potentially contaminate the samples.

The researchers said their collaborative resources and interdisciplinary approach ultimately resulted in a study that will move their field forward.

"Discoveries are made at the intersection of disciplines," Priscu said. "The PNAS paper intersects many disciplines and shows the power of international collaboration. Results in this manuscript have transformed our view of how polar ice sheets influence the Earth System."


Explore further  Microbe hunt beneath Antarctic ice sheet

More information: Jon R. Hawkings el al., "Enhanced trace element mobilization by Earth's ice sheets," PNAS (2020). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014378117
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Everest region glaciers thinning at high altitudes

by University of St Andrews
Figure 1: The retreat of Lhotse Shar/Imja Glacier and the associated development and expansion of Imja Tsho glacial lake, captured by declassified Corona KH-4 imagery in 1962, aerial photographs used to compose the 1988 National Geographic Everest map and 2018 Cartosat satellite imagery. The glacier has retreated more than 2.5km due to the expansion of the glacial lake. Credit: Atanu Bhattacharya, University of St Andrews

The behavior of glaciers around Mount Everest over the last six decades is now revealed in research published today in the multidisciplinary journal One Earth.


The project, which is part of the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition, used a combination of declassified spy satellite imagery from the 1960s and 1970s, data from early aerial surveys of the topography of Mount Everest and its surrounding valleys from the 1980s, a range of modern satellite data and lidar data from the 2019 Everest Expedition to constrain the rate of ice mass loss from the region's glaciers over the longest possible time period using satellite archives.

The work also documented the first known example of glacier surge behavior around Mount Everest—a phenomenon previously thought to be restricted to glaciers located in other locations.

Dr. Owen King, of the School of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews, who led the study said: "Our results show that ice mass loss rates have consistently increased since the early 1960s and are now similar to the average global rate of ice loss, despite the regions extreme elevation. Ice loss has even occurred above 6000m above sea level which emphasizes the impact of climatic change on the harsh high mountain environment."

Upper part of the tongue of Khumbu Glacier in 2016. Credit: Owen King, University of St Andrews
Nuptse Glacier in 2006: The glacier was hardly visible any more already more than ten years ago. Credit: Tobias Bolch, University of St Andrews

Dr. Atanu Bhattacharya, also of the School of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews, added: "The behavior of glaciers high in the Himalaya provides the clearest evidence of the far-reaching impacts of climate change on this remote region."

An increased rate of glacier recession in response to long-term warming will impact both local mountain communities and those further downstream because of its effect on the magnitude and timing of meltwater supply to rivers and because it enhances the risk from glacial hazards.

Dr. Tobias Bolch, of the School of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews, who has studied glaciers in the Himalaya for nearly two decades and led the remote-sensing based investigations, said: "The results of the study provide a valuable reference for future projections of ice loss from the region and will help to more accurately understand the stress placed on water resources across the Himalaya in coming decades."
Lower part of the tongue of Khumbu Glacier in 2016. Credit: Owen King, University of St Andrews

Alex Tait, Geographer of National Geographic who led the mapping component of the 2019 Everest Expedition, said: "It's hard enough to just fly a helicopter above Everest Base Camp, our team completed a sub-decimeter resolution lidar survey using helicopters from the head of the Khumbu Glacier to its terminus. Our lidar data was an important baseline data for this study and will enable further detailed in-depth investigations about past changes to the world's highest glacier; it will also be useful for years to come as change accelerates in the water towers of High Mountain Asia."


Explore further Himalayan lakes are exacerbating glacial melt

More information: Owen King et al. Six Decades of Glacier Mass Changes around Mt. Everest Are Revealed by Historical and Contemporary Images, One Earth (2020). 
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For Some Workers, Schools Never Closed

Amid the pandemic, frontline education workers are shouldering crucial responsibilities.

By Michelle Chen Twitter

A custodian cleans ahead of the return of students for the upcoming semester at APPLES Pre-K School on August 26, 2020 in Stamford, Conn. (John Moore / Getty Images)

Before Covid-19 hit Lexington, Mass., Amy Morin loved her job helping special needs students at an elementary school. She still does, but now she also feels a creeping sense of dread.

In many ways, Morin is in the best possible situation: Her school district is relatively affluent, and the infection rate is low. But her job as a paraeducator constantly brings her into contact with kids, and she fears her face mask and scrubs are inadequate. When one of her students rushes up to her to whisper that she needs to use the bathroom, social-distancing guidelines don’t really apply.

“As much as I’m like, ‘Oh, you need to keep your distance’—you know, she’s 7, and she has autism,” she told me. Personal boundaries are a challenge even without a public health crisis. “I’m trying to practice good hygiene and stuff, but I am nervous that if she ever were to get sick, because she’s just so close to me all the time, there’s no way that I wouldn’t get sick if she got sick.”

Many classrooms across the country remain fully or partially closed, but for some workers, school has always been in session. In normal times, they maintain school facilities, assist special needs students, and make sure kids don’t go home hungry. In the middle of a public health crisis, they are now tasked with feeding families or becoming children’s closest companions as they adapt to online learning. Custodians, paraeducators, cafeteria workers, and other frontline workers are struggling alongside students to adjust to new roles. They have taken on critical responsibilities, but support staff typically remain at the margins of their local public education systems. Often, they say, they’re expected to provide the kind of support for others that they rarely receive themselves.

“I feel like educators now are just doing so much more work than they ever have in the past, and it’s not sustainable,” Morin said. “There’s just so much to do, and there’s not enough self-care to—you can’t give from an empty glass.”

VIRTUAL AIDES

Morin’s school is operating on a hybrid system, in which students are scheduled for alternating weeks of in-person and online instruction. But most of her special needs students attend class in person full-time in order to receive supplemental help.

“The fact that we’re in such close proximity to students the entire time,” she said, “makes it different than a classroom teacher or even a special ed teacher, or a specialist who sees them for a snapshot of their day and not the entire day.”

Although she is a part-time employee, she said, “I am doing twice as much work as I’ve ever done in my whole life, because I’m on Zoom with one student while simultaneously supporting a student in class. And the fatigue and everything else that comes with that is so real.”

Julie Hackett, superintendent of the Lexington school district, said in a statement that school administrators would try to make accommodations to protect staff in the case of a student with disabilities who cannot or will not wear a mask, and pointed out that a paraeducator can negotiate to stay home to care for a child.

Susan, a pseudonym to protect her from retaliation, is a paraeducator at a high school in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota and works with English-language learners on the school’s hybrid schedule. With students divided into two groups—attending in-person class on alternating days—she is the primary support worker for the Spanish-speaking students, who must navigate both technological and language barriers.


“For a lot of the students that I work with, some of this content is hard,” Susan told me in an interview for Dissent magazine in October. “And maybe they didn’t understand the instructions, or they missed a couple years of school in their home country, or for whatever reason, they definitely need more one-on-one time.” And now she has to contend with lax adherence to the school’s mask-wearing rule.

“When I went in today,” she said, “I was very upset and surprised at how many students continue to wear their masks below their nose, or some, today, blatantly, just weren’t wearing one, which is definitely scary. And we’re told over and over, ‘Make sure you tell students to put on their masks’ and whatnot. But I see my coworkers doing that less and less. And I don’t know if it’s because they feel hopeless, or they feel like it’s a losing battle, but that’s definitely one of the scary things.”

The Minnesota Department of Education said in a statement that the state has issued an executive order on mask-wearing for all schools, provided face coverings and other protective equipment for all students and staff, and created health guidelines for “situations where students (or staff) may not be able to wear their masks due to a developmental, medical or behavioral health condition.”


In districts that are only providing virtual classes, paraeducators face different challenges as they try to do onscreen what they’re used to doing in person.

According to Marguerite Ruff, a Philadelphia paraeducator for special needs students in grades three through five, “being online for our population—it takes away from a lot of things, because they get a whole bunch of things in their learning, and not just academics. When we get back [to in-person classes], we’re going to have to work like triple time to make up.” In an in-person setting, a paraeducator can use “hand over hand” techniques to physically guide children through movements and can interact with them face to face, which fosters social-emotional learning that does not translate well over a video call.

“Some kids can handle a change,” Ruff said. “And there’s others that really need that redirection to focus.… They need that personal direction, and not from across a screen, but we can’t help it because this is what it is right now.”

Gemayel Keyes, an early childhood paraeducator at a Philadelphia elementary school, said paraeducators are not being given the same support and resources as teachers. For example, in his class, he is not given access to the supplementary teaching materials and other digital resources that the teacher uses. “We’re trying to find ways to be assets to our teachers and to our schools, [but] it seems like we’re the forgotten group by the School District of Philadelphia,” Keyes told me.

Keyes thinks the transition to virtual learning has been hampered by long-standing problems with the school’s technological infrastructure. “We’ve had years and years and years to get on board with implementing a more digital-friendly way of learning,” he said. “But now…we’re getting overloaded with information, and it’s very difficult to figure everything out when you’re basically building a plane while you’re flying it.” (The School District of Philadelphia did not return a request for comment.)

As a paraeducator of 15 years, Keyes is among the most senior staff at his school, but he said he has never had an opportunity to move up to a teaching position, because his income as a paraeducator—about $30,000 a year, just above the median earnings for teachers’ assistants nationwide—does not allow him to take time off to complete his teacher training. “They don’t realize that their policies don’t make it easy to promote from within.”

KEEPING SCHOOLS RUNNING WITHOUT STUDENTS

A recent study on school employees’ vulnerability to Covid-19 found that an estimated 42 percent of school employees nationwide were “at increased risk of severe Covid-19,” according to the criteria of the Centers for Disease Control. But about 58 percent of school support workers in “low skill” jobs are at increased risk, in large part because they are more prone to underlying health conditions like obesity, diabetes, or high blood pressure, and also tend to be older.

Yet many school staff in custodial and service roles, known as “classified employees,” have been consistently working inside school buildings, even as teachers, administrative staff, and students have been sheltering at home. Some have been providing child care in schools, and cafeteria workers have been operating food distribution sites for students who depend on school for daily meals.

Conrado Guerrero, a building engineer with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), has been working on school ventilation systems to ensure that schools can mitigate infection risk while in-person classes remain suspended. He said he worries personally about being exposed to infection on the job, but as president of his union, SEIU Local 99, he is far more concerned about coworkers with underlying health conditions. They are being called back to report to work, he said, following the easing of stay-at-home restrictions over the summer, and if they want to stay home as a precaution, they can only use personal paid leave time.

The union, Guerrero said, “tried to negotiate that they shouldn’t even be reporting to the school site, but unfortunately, our state of emergency ended and…there was no way we could continue [allowing people to stay home] without workers using their personal time in order to remain off, if they still felt that it was unsafe for them to be at work.”

Esperanza Hernandez, a LAUSD cafeteria worker who has been reassigned to work at a meal distribution site, said some coworkers are considering retirement because they’re afraid to work as Los Angeles faces another wave of infections. Others are taking a calculated risk. “Even if they don’t feel comfortable going back to work,” she said, “there’s a lot of employees that I know that are going back just because they need to go back to work [for] the income.”

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Though the LAUSD did not respond directly to concerns about worker safety, it said in a statement that LAUSD and other districts planned to eventually reopen schools under a set of common standards, including safety protocols for students and employees, testing at schools, and contact tracing.

In the Bethel School District in Washington state, students are still doing virtual learning, but nutrition worker Christine Caskey never stopped going to work. She now helps run a meal distribution program for students and families. Though classified employees like her have been continually onsite, Caskey said their union’s request for hazard pay was denied. The district administration also rejected the school support workers’ request to participate alongside teachers in the planning process for reopening schools. (The Bethel School District did not return a request for comment.)

“We felt very ignored,” she said. “We tried to be involved and give our input. They were not hearing it.”

Despite their ongoing work in the school system while in-person classes were suspended, Caskey said, “teachers sometimes don’t think ‘classified’ is as important, because ‘your job is easy’—that’s what they might say about me. But for nutrition, I actually have to take classes. I have an education that I have to do every year to keep my job. And so you can’t just pull anybody off the street to do it…. We’re looked down upon in those ways.”

SEIU Local 99 has issued demands for safely reopening schools that foreground the needs of LAUSD’s classified workers: It has called on the district to ensure proper personal protective equipment for all workers, provide free testing to all staff, expand custodial and maintenance staff to ensuring proper disinfection of school facilities, and, above all, close the funding gaps that have long plagued LA schools. The union wants California to tax its billionaires to help pay for safe environments for students and staff.

The union says the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests this summer should provide an opportunity for cities and school authorities to recognize the value of school support workers—a poverty-wage workforce that is disproportionately comprised of immigrants and people of color.

“We have to stay vigilant and always ready to organize,” said Local 99 Executive Director Max Arias, whose great hope is to push the Los Angeles school districts to finally begin “breaking down some of those structural racist barriers that exist within education—not only for the students…but also for the people that do the work.”

Michelle Chen is a contributing writer for The Nation.
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Trump Is Blowing Up the Georgia GOP—and It Couldn’t Happen at a Better Time

His complaints about a “stolen” election have state Republicans in a circular firing squad, threatening their chances to win two Senate seats in January.

By Joan Walsh Twitter
TODAY 3:00 PM

Donald Trump’s supporters rally outside the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta on Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020. (Ben Gray / AP Photo)

Never underestimate the capacity of Republicans to put aside differences and “come home” just before an election, but right now I’d say Donald Trump’s insults and demands that Georgia Republicans somehow overturn Joe Biden’s stunning if narrow win there—after they certified it on Friday—is inflicting genuine damage to the campaigns of GOP Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.

That hasn’t stopped either senator from backing Trump; Loeffler and Perdue even demanded Secretary of State Brad Raffesperger’s resignation merely for his expressing confidence in the state’s election integrity after Biden’s apparent win (even as he authorized a hand recount, since the vote came within the margin requiring that). But the divisions in the party could cost them both votes in the January 5 runoff. They’re also taking headlines away from Loeffler’s crazy racist campaign to turn the Rev. Raphael Warnock, her opponent, into a junior Jeremiah Wright, and Jon Ossoff, Perdue’s opponent, into a Jewish anti-Semite for supporting Warnock.

The weekend saw wild demonstrations by Trump supporters against Governor Brian Kemp and Raffensperger—and implicitly against Perdue and Loeffler, who are increasingly perceived by hard-core Trumpists as not doing enough to aid Trump. On Saturday in Atlanta, hundreds gathered for a “Stop the Steal” rally where a man in a MAGA cap called Kemp and Raffensperger “traitors” and added, “Any Republican who allows this to happen is complicit and we will finish you!” (I’m sure he meant electorally, though he did put on a camouflage sweatshirt adorned with an elephant, and someone in the crowd shouted, “Death to tyrants!”) He added, “We will do whatever it takes to completely destroy the Republican Party.”

On Saturday, Trump tweeted support for the rally, while his Georgia attorney, L. Lin Wood, urged state Republicans to boycott the Senate runoff. “Want to get @SenLoeffler & @sendavidperdue out of their basements to demand that action must be taken to fix steal of the 11/3 GA election?” Wood asked on Twitter. “Threaten to withhold your votes & money. Demand that they represent you.” That wasn’t quite as bad as Trump attorney Sidney Powell’s claim that Kemp and Raffensperger had been paid off by Dominion Voting Systems Corporation, the manufacturer of the state’s voting machines, to throw the race to Biden. (On Sunday Trump’s team belatedly cut ties with the loony Powell; no such word about Lin Wood.)

Meanwhile on Parler, the wing nut alternative to Twitter, Trumpers amplified Wood’s call.


MORE: Trump supporters encouraging voters in Georgia to boycott the runoff… https://t.co/p1z1MyAh3S pic.twitter.com/hU06ja2dDI
—Marcus Baram (@mbaram) November 22, 2020
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But Raffensperger, in particular, has been surprisingly aggressive punching back at Trump, as well as Loeffler and Perdue, who he said “folded like cheap suits” to Trump by demanding his resignation. He even accused Trump of causing his own Georgia loss by undermining GOP voters’ confidence in absentee balloting.

“There were actually 24,000 Republican voters that voted absentee in the June primary, and those same 24,000 voters did not show up to vote in either absentee or in-person on the day of [the November 3] election or the 15 days of early voting we have,” he said, in an interview with Peacock’s Mehdi Hasan. “They were there in June for the primary and they should have come home and voted for President Trump in the fall. So that’s 24,000. That’s his difference right there.” Raffensperger and other state Republican election officials have reported death threats since the recount found that Biden won. Other Republicans, including pollster Frank Luntz, are publicly warning that Trump’s futile “stolen election” crusade could similarly discourage absentee voting in the recount as well as demoralize his hard-core Georgia supporters.

Kemp has tried to split the difference, certifying the state’s election results but backing Trump’s call for an audit that would examine not just ballots but also the signatures on the envelopes containing the ballots. As the former secretary of state no doubt knows, that’s impossible; Georgia officials closely match those signatures to registration records, but then toss aside the envelopes, in order to protect ballot secrecy. Trump’s legal team is making the same impossible demand.

Nevertheless, the Trump team continues to attack Kemp, who is walking a tightrope, knowing he’s likely to be facing a rematch with Stacey Abrams, Georgia’s champion of voting rights, whose efforts are widely credited with helping Biden take the state. He either alienates Trump voters (and judging by the rallies over the weekend, he already has) or energizes the massive electorate Abrams and others have mobilized—on behalf of Warnock and Perdue in January, and perhaps Abrams the following November.

On the other hand, The New York Times reported Monday that more than 100 CEOs have signed a letter asking Trump to concede to President-elect Joe Biden—and one form of leverage they’ve discussed is withholding donations to Loeffler and Perdue.

Now Trump is apparently going to see Biden win a third time, having asked for and received another recount even after Kemp certified the vote, after the hand recount confirmed that Biden won. Nobody except wing nuts expects the outcome to change; this recount merely retabulates ballots by machine, not by a meticulous hand count. (Checking the history books to see if any presidential candidate has won the same state three times in the same election.)

It’s been encouraging to see Raffensperger and other Georgia Republicans, conservative Republicans all, stand up to Trump and his enablers. I confess that earlier in his term, I naively expected to see some backbone from congressional GOP leaders in rebuking Trump—either after his regime began its compulsive law-breaking, or in 2019, after the Democratic midterm landslide. It would be the greatest justice (and thrill) if Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s ruinous Trump fealty wound up costing Loeffler and Perdue their Senate seats, making him Senate minority leader.

I don’t expect that; I’m no longer so naive. Georgia Democrats are still going to have to fight like hell for every vote. But it’s safe to say the Georgia GOP would rather not be spending this short sprint to a runoff fighting with one another instead of for votes.



Joan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America.
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GRIFTER POLITICS

Trump campaign forces Georgia taxpayers to pay for second recount after first one confirms its loss

A hand recount of nearly 5 million votes confirmed Biden's win, but Team Trump wants to milk taxpayers even more

By IGOR DERYSH
NOVEMBER 23, 2020

Donald Trump (Getty Images)

Georgia will count its votes again after President Donald Trump requested a machine recount following a hand recount which confirmed he lost his election in the state by more than 12,000 votes.

Thousands of Georgia election workers spent last week recounting nearly 5 million votes by hand, finding that the original count showing President-elect Joe Biden winning the state by more than 12,000 votes was correct within 0.1%. Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans, certified the vote on Friday after the recount finished within 500 votes of the initial machine count. But the Trump campaign, which has waged a legal crusade based on outright lies and conspiracy theories aiming to overturn the results of the election, said it wants the votes counted for the third time

"Today, the Trump campaign filed a petition for recount in Georgia," it said in a statement. "We are focused on ensuring that every aspect of Georgia state law and the U.S. Constitution are followed so that every legal vote is counted."

The first recount was part of a new mandatory risk-limiting audit, which is not considered an official recount by the state. State law allows a candidate to seek an official machine recount within two days of the certification if the margin is less than 0.5%. The final margin in the race was 0.26%. The recount is expected to begin next week, though it is unclear how long it will take to complete, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

While the Trump campaign was forced to pay millions for a recount in heavily Democratic areas of Wisconsin with large Black populations, Georgia state law does not require candidates to cover the cost, meaning taxpayers will have to foot the bill for another recount which has little chance of affecting the outcome. Unlike the hand recount, the machine recount will "pose greater logistical and financial challenges to county election officials," The Washington Post noted.

The campaign's call for another recount came after Raffensperger repeatedly hit back at Trump's baseless conspiracy theories about the recount. "Numbers don't lie," he said after certifying the votes.

The Trump campaign has pushed unfounded conspiracy theories about the state's signature matching requirement. County officials verify signatures on the ballot envelope when they receive ballots, but afterward, it is impossible to match ballots back to voters because of privacy protections in the state constitution.

"President Trump and his campaign continue to insist on an honest recount in Georgia, which has to include signature matching and other vital safeguards. Without signature matching, this recount would be a sham and again allow for illegal votes to be counted. If there is no signature matching, this would be as phony as the initial vote count and recount," the campaign baselessly claimed. "Let's stop giving the people false results. There must be a time when we stop counting illegal ballots. Hopefully it is coming soon.":

But Raffensperger has repeatedly explained that the state has actually strengthened its signature match requirement, noting that signatures for absentee ballots are matched by election workers not once but twice.

"That's just another red herring that has been thrown out there by a campaign that doesn't have the votes in this state," Raffensperger told WSB-TV, "and apparently other states."

The Biden campaign said it was confident that another recount "will simply reaffirm Joe Biden's victory in Georgia a third time."

"As the secretary of state said, there is no reason to believe there are widespread errors or fraud and the Trump campaign has no evidence to back up their baseless claims," spokeswoman Jaclyn Rothenberg said in a statement. "With regards to signature matching, both parties were aware of the rules set forth months before the election and all signatures have already been matched."

Raffensperger has repeatedly said he preferred Trump to win but would not do anything to reverse the decision of the state's voters despite attacks from Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., and Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., and an alleged attempt by Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. to persuade the state to toss legal ballots to swing the election to Trump.

"I've been saying that half of America will be happy and half of America will be sad with these results," Raffensperger told Georgia Public Broadcasting last week. "And I would be disappointed when I put on my Republican hat, but these will be the results and it will be what it is because that is the will of the Georgia voter."

Kemp has avoided criticizing Raffensperger, though he appeared to echo Trump's attempts to sow doubt in the result on Friday. The governor urged the secretary of state to randomly select ballots to match signatures, even though it would violate the state constitution.

"The Georgians I have heard from are extremely concerned about this, so I encourage Secretary Raffensperger to consider addressing these concerns," Kemp said even as he certified the result. "It seems simple enough to conduct a sample audit of signatures on the absentee ballot envelopes and compare those to the signatures on applications and on file at the secretary of state's Office."
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Raffensperger has not said whether his office would consider such a plan, but Gabriel Sterling, the state's voting system manager, pleaded for Trump to drop his election challenge in a press conference last week.

"Look, you've already got a hand recount," he said. "Nothing changed. Let's not do that."

IGOR DERYSH is a staff writer at Salon. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and Baltimore Sun.
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Understanding the Trump voters: Here's why nobody is doing it right

I've been an evangelical pastor and a teacher in an immigrant community. I'm not shocked Trump did better this time

By NATHANIEL MANDERSON
NOVEMBER 15, 2020 
Supporters of President Donald Trump demonstrate at a ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in front of the State Capitol on November 7, 2020 in Phoenix, Arizona. News outlets project that Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States after a victory in Pennsylvania with Kamala Harris to be the first woman and person of color to be elected Vice President. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Based on the last two presidential elections, there is clearly a failure in reporting, polling and understanding of almost half of America. Perhaps liberals would simply like to govern and run for office by only mobilizing their half of the population and overlooking that other half, but I would imagine this country won't get closer to equal opportunity with that type of thinking. It's true that much of the divisive language comes from Trump supporters who seems to enjoy Trump's deplorable approach to life and politics. Does that embody every single person who voted for Donald Trump in the last two elections? If you think that, then you are as lost as the narrow reporting and polling I have witnessed during the last four years.

My life has brought me across the lives of many other people, which has allowed me to understand the viewpoints of both sides in a more personal and complicated way. I'm a former pastor, and my favorite family in one of my churches was one that actually attended a Glenn Beck rally. Do you realize how kooky you need to be to travel from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C., to attend a Glenn Beck rally as a family? Yet I have nothing but warm feelings for them: Best family in the church by far. They were close to each other, kind and down to earth — and as far from me politically as anyone I have ever met. My least favorite family was full of hate, judgment and self-righteousness — yet I agreed with them on every single political issue. In fact, that liberal family is the sole reason I left formal ministry.

As a high school teacher in a predominantly first-generation and low-income Latino community, I noticed something very interesting. First, my fellow teachers, who were naturally very educated, very liberal and quite talented teachers, and usually came from serious financial privilege, barely survived the Trump presidency emotionally. In real life their lives didn't change a bit. They still went to Europe during the summer, went out to eat all weekend, shopped at Whole Foods and lived in the heart of expensive liberal-bastion neighborhoods like Cambridge and Somerville. In fact, I bet their financial lives improved during the Trump presidency, or at least their parents' lives did.

Meanwhile, the students whose lives were actually affected by Trump winning in 2016 acted like it was nothing. The reason for this reaction was not political ignorance but real-life understanding. Many liberals suffering from what they call "implicit bias" — or, as I call it, racism — claimed that these poor, uneducated immigrants simply didn't know what had just happened. The truth is that the community members knew exactly what had happened: Nothing. Their city has had a bad school system for the last 40 years and it will continue down that path no matter who is president. Their city has gangs, dilapidated housing and crime everywhere, just as it did over the last 40 years. Trump as president just affirmed what they always suspected about this country: It doesn't care about their community. Except when, over the next 20 years, the poor Latino community is forced out by gentrification, which has already started.

Now comes my own failure, and the failure of the people with labels just like me. I am a Bible-believing Christian minister, I am blue collar, and I have been a committed member of the working-class poor most of my life. Many of my people support Trump and will continue in four years to support the next Trump type if the Democratic Party doesn't start changing its approach. By the way, the Trump type is here to stay. Trump brought in more votes than any other Republican ever — the Republicans aren't just going to wash their hands of him now. That's just a pipe dream of the left. The true path to defeating Trumpism forever lies within the blue-collar, working-class poor of this country. 

If I had any political network besides a bunch of package handlers at FedEx I would start a new political party called the Blue Collar Party, the leaders of which would only be front-line workers around this great country. The laborers, the line workers, the waitresses, the janitors, the shovel holders and anyone else suffering from holding up this country. These people understand this country more than any reporter, politician or entertainer with a voice and a big salary ever could. The best part of that blue-collar fight is that it empowers all races, since class doesn't have a color. Naturally enough, providing upward mobility to the working-class poor will predominantly bring hope to many people of color and will potentially show a new sense of unity that could break down some of the barriers between races.

I have worked side by side with the working-class poor who love Trump, and I promise you there is hope in reaching them. Hell, Obama reached them a little, and Bernie Sanders did more so. Even Bill Clinton did, but for the most part they feel forgotten by the Democratic Party. In spite of all this, the liberal media simply wants to explain away half the country as racist, sexist and ignorant voters. God forbid the vote they gave for Trump had a genuine purpose. I admit it may have been a flawed purpose but it's one that needs to be addressed before the country completely loses sight of itself.

On my own end, I would love to reach out to my fellow evangelical followers to re-educate them on the Bible and what it truly means to follow Christ. The evangelical leaders are lost and beyond my help, but the followers are not. The Bible commands its followers to champion liberal causes and certainly not the two non-biblical issues that have been forced onto the public over the last 40-plus years. The issues around welcoming the foreigner, healing the sick, equality for all and supporting the causes of the least of these needs to be the new foundation of the public voice of the church.

I feel there are a great number of people in the country that simply feel unseen, and in desperation they reach out to anyone who even appears to care about them. I know it is easier to put people we disagree with into various categories. I do it all the time. It saves a lot of time and energy. However, as a minister I know I need to hold myself to a higher standard. I also know what I have seen and the people I have met in my life. People are complicated. In fact I barely understand myself half the time. At age 43, I hiked across Spain hoping to "find myself" on my own Camino de Santiago. I didn't find myself in Spain but it was certainly enlightening. I know my own personal journey is complicated and the same can be said about the millions of people living their lives across this Country. People are looking for a sense of belonging, looking to be heard, looking for professional and educational opportunity, looking to feel valued and loved. I can only hope that in the next few years this country will start to understand itself just a little bit more than it does now.

NATHANIEL MANDERSON

Nathaniel Manderson was educated at a conservative seminary, trained as a minister, ordained through the American Baptist Churches USA and guided by liberal ideals. Throughout his career he has been a pastor, a career counselor, an academic adviser, a high school teacher and an advocate for first-generation and low-income students, along with being a paper delivery man, a construction worker, a FedEx package handler and whatever else he could do to try to take care of his family.

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Profiteers of war

Syrians gather at the scene of a double attack in Syria's northwestern jihadist-held city of Idlib, on February 18, 2019. - A twin bomb attack killed more than ten people, including civilians, in Idlib where Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, took administrative control last month, a war monitor said.
(Photo by MUHAMMAD HAJ KADOUR/AFP/Getty Images)

On Nov 23, 2020

During his presidential campaign in 2008, Barack Obama asserted repeatedly that “the sources of Afghan instability are in Pakistan; those in turn are linked to Islamabad’s conflict with New Delhi, at the heart of which is Jammu and Kashmir”. If elected, he pledged to help resolve the Kashmir issue.

In his Nobel acceptance speech, Obama said that the US must uphold moral standards when waging wars that are necessary and justified. He said: “Meeting future challenges would require new ways to think about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace”.

Ironically, a willing hostage to the MIC, President Obama was absolutely antithetical to Obama the candidate. His two terms saw the continuation, in some cases upping the ante, of the Bush led neocon brigand. He initiated unjust wars and shunned peace. He remains the only person to win a Nobel Peace Prize based on the mere rhetoric of undelivered promises. A stark reminder for those who think Obama’s two-term Vice President and President elect Joe Biden will prove a dove.

Donald Trump, true to himself, kicked up a storm when he accused the Pentagon of wanting “to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy”. Trump oversaw historic increases in defense budgets. He supervised the sale of 55.6 billion dollars worth of military hardware in 2018 alone. He also appointed key defense industry insiders to top positions at the White House and the Pentagon. His three Defense Secretaries had remained on the payroll of Depart of Defense (DOD) contractors.

The scale of death and suffering in Syria alone is monumental. The war initiated by the Peace Nobel laureate, Barack Obama, has spiraled into a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions

Jim Mattis was a member of the General Dynamics board of directors, a position he immediately rejoined after his resignation. Patrick Shanahan, who took overas Secretary Defense from Mattis, was a Vice President Boeing Missile Defense Systems. Mark Esperremained Raytheon’s top lobbyist at a reported salary of 1,524,018 dollars. These three companies are the Pentagon’s largest contractors. A ProPublica analysis found that the Trump administration hired 281 lobbyists, most of them regulating their parent corporations.

The defense budget increase under President Trump was the largest in more than a decade. The US military outlays stood at 732 billion dollars as against China’s 178.6 and Russia’s 65.1 billion dollars. The US accounts for 43 percent of the world’s total military spending. This exceeds the combined amount spent by the 15 most developed countries. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the US has nearly 1000 military bases world-wide.

A Government Accountability Office survey of contractors and Internal Revenue Service data found that 52 contractors employed 2,435 former DOD officials who had “previously served as generals, admirals, senior executives or in other acquisition positions which made them subject to restrictions on their post-DOD employment”.

The Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan independent body that exposes corruption and abuse of power, has created a database dubbed the Pentagon Revolving Door. It tracks and reports former government officials working for the very corporations they oversaw or regulated. The Revolving Door data shows that in 2016 alone, the top 20 defense contractors hired 645 former senior government officials, military officers and Congress members as lobbyists, board members or senior executives.

380 high-ranking DOD officials and military officers became lobbyists, board members, executives or consultants for defense contractors. Of the former DOD officials, 95 went to work at Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman; DOD’s top five contractors. Military officers who went to cushy contracting jobs included 25 Generals, 43 Lieutenant Generals, 9 Admirals and 23 Vice Admirals.

Going through the data, one can clearly establish the MIC’s strangle-hold on Washington regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. It has resulted in wars that hadmillions murdered,countries reduced to rubble andhumanitarian tragedies of unimaginable proportions.

SirajuddinHaqqani was feted at the White House with Reagan likening him to America’s founding fathers. When not needed, Haqqani and his sons became ‘terrorists’. Mullah Baradar and Mullah Nabi Omari too were ‘terrorists’ the latter having remained incarcerated for 12 years (2002 – 2014) at Guantanamo without ever being charged. The same Baradar and Omari recently sat across the table at Doha with Mike Pompeo devising a fervently Washington sought face saving exit from Afghanistan.

Addressing a group of US governors after assuming office Trump lamented, “Now, we never win a war”. Wars are not murdering rampages; they are the final means to achieve a clear set of national objectives. Since 1945, the US waged major wars in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. It remained unsuccessful in all four. These wars had nothing to do with national objectives; the atrocities were initiated to enrich the MIC with American taxpayer money. It resulted in a world ravaged by chaos, conflict and tragedies.

The scale of death and suffering in Syria alone is monumental. The war initiated by the Peace Nobel laureate, Barack Obama, has spiraled into a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions. More than 400,000 Syrians have perished. Out of a total Syrian population of 21 million, over 12.7 million have been forced to flee their homes. The UN cites 6 million Syrian children in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. Libya and Yemen too face the same tragedy.

Queen Elizabeth recently stripped Harvey Weinstein of his OBE. Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth’s son, has been named in the Weinstein sordid saga of the sexual abuse of 87 women. He remains untouched and unquestioned. In this dichotomous world can one, in the symbolic least, expect Obama to be stripped of his absolutely unjust Nobel peace title?

The Nuremberg Tribunal declared: “To initiate a war of aggression is the supreme international crime”. Washington’s wars of aggression violate US and international law. They are crimes against humanity, outlawed by the Geneva Convention and the UN Charter. In a more just world these atrocities would have been declared war crimes and those who perpetrated them tried as war criminals.

Gen LeMay is revered as a hero and Washington endlessly proclaims its being the torchbearer of humanity. This does nothing to alter the LeMay confession of war-criminals being hailed as war heroes and Washington, perennial hostage to the profiteers of war, being the initiator of many wars of genocidal aggression.

The United States of America exists on a planet where, it believes, its self-professed goodness ends at its shore-lines. The result, as famed psychologists Abraham Maslow encapsulated, “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.

Can President-elect Joe Biden, having borne personal losses and tragedies in life, nullify the heart-wrenching agony of millions of subjugated Muslims from Kashmir to Palestine? He has the burden of blood drenched history on his shoulders. Shall he be a MIC goaded trigger happy president or one that heals wounds within and outside the US shore-lines? Only time will tell.


The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views and editorial stance of the SOHR.

Source: Profiteers of war – Daily Times




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AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine promise to low income countries should be copied by other ‘Big Pharma’ firms

Decision brings hope to people around the developing world that they will not have to wait at the back of the queue for their turn

By Paul Gallagher
November 23, 2020 
AstraZeneca said it will produce close to a billion doses of its coronavirus vaccine over the next few months (Photo: University of Oxford/John Cairns/AP)

If the applause that welcomed the late-stage coronavirus vaccine trial results from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna was long and loud, then the response to the UK’s leading candidate should ring in the ears for quite some time.

Not only is the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine up to 90 per cent effective but the Cambridge-based pharmaceutical giant (2019 net revenue: $24.4bn) has promised “broad and equitable access” to it for all, bringing hope to people around the developing world that they will not have to wait at the back of the queue for their turn.

The partners are the only vaccine developers to have a deal with the global COVAX facility, which most low and middle income countries will rely on for much of their vaccine supply. In June, they committed to produce one billion doses for low and middle income countries, via a partnership with the Serum Institute of India. Now they have promised to sell the vaccine for no profit – between $2 and $3 per dose – for the duration of the pandemic.

Oxford vaccine makers AstraZeneca pledge to always sell £2.25 Covid jab at cost price to developing countries

The EU has already secured 400 million doses of the Oxford vaccine, followed by the US (300 million), China (200 million) Japan (120 million), and 100 million by the UK – four million of which are already here and waiting to be used pending regulatory approval. It led to a group of UN human rights experts calling on governments two weeks ago to stop hoarding vaccine supplies.
The WHO welcomed the efforts of Oxford/AstraZeneca to make the vaccine affordable
 (Photo: SIPHIWE SIBEKO/AFP)

Although the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine will provide a major boost to access in a number of countries, Amnesty International warned that committed supplies for most low and middle income still only cover a fraction of these countries’ populations.

Nevertheless, the World Health Organisation welcomed the efforts of Oxford/AstraZeneca to make the vaccine affordable and easy to store, which its chief scientist told me “will be good for countries and people everywhere”. Let the global rollout commence.
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Public health strategy needed after vaccine rollout to ‘protect most vulnerable’, says Imperial College vaccinologist

Presenter

Dr Katrina Pollock is a senior clinical research fellow in vaccinology at Imperial College London.

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