HE HEARS WHAT HE WANTS TO HEAR

Trump repeatedly misunderstands health officials advising him about coronavirus

Chuck Schumer slams president, saying he is 'downplaying' threat from virus

John T Bennett Washington @BennettJohnT

Donald Trump contended on Monday that a vaccine to prevent coronavirus cases could be ready in three months, only to be corrected by one of his top public health officials after he repeatedly appeared to misunderstand drug company executives' statements about their plans to test possible vaccines.

The president, during a Cabinet Room meeting with top pharmaceutical industry executives, said he has heard a vaccine could be ready in just three or four months. But Anthony Fauci, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, later clarified the remark, telling reporters getting a vaccine properly tested, cleared and distributed likely would take one year.

It was merely the latest time Mr Trump and his top health officials have contradicted one another since the coronavirus outbreak hit US soil. They also have issued different messages about the potential severity of the flu-like ailment and the likelihood that a significant number of cases is inevitable in the United States.

Mr Trump made the forecast even after being told by one industry bigwig that it would take "a year" for his company just to get a potential vaccine into clinics. Repeatedly during the confusing session, Mr Trump latched onto executives' mentions of moving into new phases of testing in the next few months. But Mr Fauci at one point broke in to try and explain to the president that required testing would not allow the drugs to actually reach Americans by summer.

Meantime, another top Trump administration official said the president is pressing drug manufacturers to shed their usually methodical development process to find a coronavirus vaccine and rush it to market.

During the same meeting that featured the president, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Mr Trump pressed the industry officials to "challenge some of those normal Pharma timelines that can be a little slow and bureaucratic." Other Trump administration officials spoke vaguely of possibly getting "new countermeasures" available quickly without offering specifics.

Those remarks came a few hours after the president told reporters his team and drug makers are "talking about a vaccine, maybe a cure, it's possible".
Donald Trump and Mike Pence at a meeting with pharmaceutical executives in the Cabinet Room of the White House to discuss the coronavirus crisis (AFP via Getty Images)

"We'll see about that," he said of a drug to cure coronavirus victims, something Mr Azar and other Trump health officials have not said is possible. They have focused instead on a vaccine to prevent people from contracting the virus.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains the difference between a cure and a vaccine this way on its website: "Unlike most medicines, which treat or cure diseases, vaccines prevent them."

Executives for several major drug manufacturers were in the Oval Office for the meeting, including GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer Inc and Sanof.

As the two sides met, US markets were closing up for the first time in a few days – and following a coronavirus-triggered slide. The S&P 500 rose 4.6 per cent on Monday, as markets around the world added value ahead of a G7 ministers conference call on Tuesday that fed hopes the central banks of the globe's biggest economies might slash interest rates together as a hedge against the virus's economic impacts.

But congressional Democrats continued to criticise the president.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused him of "downplaying" the threat from the mysterious virus.

"Even now, President Trump seems to be spending more of his time blaming the media, blaming the Democrats than being constructive," the New York Democrat said on the Senate floor. "He is downplaying the threat of coronavirus to a dangerous degree."

If the UK is serious about the climate crisis, we must start investing in new synthetic fuels

The Heathrow decision is a good first step, but the government needs to take more revolutionary action if it wants to see results

Chris Goodall @ChrisGoodall2

The block to the expansion of Heathrow is an early victory in the fight against climate change. The third runway would have expanded the number of flights from the airport by more than 40 per cent. If the decision is upheld by the Supreme Court, emissions from aviation will be lower than they otherwise would have been.

But our celebrations should be muted. We still need to address the underlying problem. How does the UK achieve a target of zero emissions by 2050 while aviation remains such a large source of CO2? There is only one way forward: the UK needs to focus on making jet fuel from man-made sources that don’t add to carbon emissions.

Flights from the UK add almost 40 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year, around 7 per cent of the national total. These numbers are particularly high by international standards. Another way of expressing the unusual importance of aviation to UK emissions is to note that more British people engage in international air travel than Americans or Chinese citizens, even though those countries have vastly greater populations.

The carbon consequences of individual trips are severe. A return flight to New York adds more than a tonne of CO2 to an individual’s carbon footprint, almost as much as the typical annual emissions from a small modern car. Moreover, that figure excludes the extra impacts of burning fossil fuels high up in the atmosphere, which scientists estimate may roughly double the overall greenhouse effect of flying.

Unfortunately, the energy for flying will need to come from liquid fuels into the foreseeable future. Batteries are too heavy to power any but the very shortest flights, such as between Scottish islands. Hydrogen, another alternative sometimes mentioned, cannot compete with the energy contained in an equivalent weight of aviation kerosene. “Flight shaming” may reduce the number of people in the air, but even a halving of departures would still require the UK to shift 15 per cent of its land area into forestry to fully offset the remaining emissions. 

Read more

After Heathrow, what else must be cancelled to avert climate change?

Fortunately, there is a route forward, although many technical and financial obstacles remain to its full implementation. We can chemically create man-made alternatives to fossil oil so that we can continue to fly without a net impact on emissions (although the extra effects of burning fuels at 35,000 feet will persist).

Are man-made alternatives to aviation fuels really possible? Yes. The molecules contained in fuels such as aviation kerosene are composed of atoms of hydrogen and carbon (hence the expression “hydrocarbon”). If we have supplies of these two basic chemical elements we can use well-understood engineering techniques to create complex hydrocarbons that are full replacements for fossil fuels. The processes employed have been in active use for many decades and already make hundreds of millions of tons of useful chemicals each year.

The crucial question to answer is this: how can we create abundant amounts of hydrogen and carbon in a way that doesn’t add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and at a reasonable price? Hydrogen is the simpler case. All we need is a supply of renewable electricity which we then use in a machine called an electrolyser. This uses the electric power to separate out the hydrogen and the oxygen in water molecules. The hydrogen can then be stored.

Heathrow boss warns of French threat

Carbon is a little more difficult. The conventional source in today’s chemical processes is carbon monoxide, a molecule that is a mixture of one atom of carbon and one atom of oxygen. We can generate carbon monoxide very simply from carbon dioxide.

In turn, our carbon dioxide can come from two main sources. We can burn natural materials such as wood, perhaps in a power station, and collect the CO2 that arises. Because the carbon in that wood had been originally collected from the atmosphere by the process of photosynthesis we can use it to make aviation fuel without any net consequences for greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. The problem is that we have restricted supplies of wood or other biological fuels to burn, particularly because we are trying to add forests to the world’s land surfaces.

Probably the best way of getting large quantities of carbon dioxide is to collect it directly from the air. This is possible, but the technology is still at an early (and expensive) stage. Once we have good supplies of CO2 and hydrogen we can manufacture abundant amounts of a fuel that will not result in net additions to greenhouse gases.

We cannot completely avoid the need for flying, even though each of us has an obvious responsibility to avoid taking the plane when we can. Because of the particular importance of aviation to the UK economy, it now makes clear sense for the country to invest in the research and development to push synthetic fuels forward, probably using money raised from taxation on today’s ultra-polluting aviation sector.

Trump and other populists are using coronavirus for their own political ends – and we will all suffer for it

The Trump administration’s handling of the virus illustrates the dangers of the politicisation of everything under this president and his ilk across the world

Borzou Daragahi @borzou
Sunday 1 March 2020

A note by a hospital in California released late on Wednesday suggested that the United States government health officials under the authority of President Donald Trump were deliberating for nearly a week before administering a coronavirus test to a patient suspected of carrying the illness.

“Since the patient did not fit the existing CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] criteria for Covid-19, a test was not immediately administered,” said the note, which went on to explain how the patient turned out to be the first person in the US to contract the virus from a local community rather than carry it in from abroad.

It’s no mystery why Trump may have potentially wanted to suppress information about the spread of the virus, which has hammered the stock market just as the 2020 presidential election campaign gets underway. In a tweet, Trump raged that news channels were “doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus [sic] look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible.”

On Saturday, facing a potential political crisis, Trump to the podium to address the coronavirus outbreak, before veering off towards talk about the new Afghanistan peace deal.

The administration’s handling of the virus illustrates the dangers of the politicisation of everything under Trump and his ilk across the world.

Just a couple of years ago, Trump looked to gut the CDC, including its pandemic response team, attempting to slash $1.2 billion from the agency’s budget and use the savings to reward the military contractors that are the pillars of his Republican Party.

“Proposed CDC budget: unsafe at any level of enactment,” Tom Frieden, the former head of the agency, wrote back then. “Would increase illness, death, risks to Americans, and health care costs.”

Even as late as two weeks ago, Trump was pushing to slash government spending on healthcare research and public health, as well as reducing US funding for the World Health Organisation, the commendable United Nations agency now on front lines of fighting coronavirus.

US officials have repeatedly criticised other countries for their handling of the coronavirus. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, took Iran and China to task last week for being less than forthcoming about the outbreak of the disease, which has struck both countries hard.

“All nations, including Iran, should tell the truth about the coronavirus and cooperate with international aid organisations,” he told reporters.

But while authoritarian regimes with little history of transparency or accountability are ill-equipped to deal responsibly with crises that require public trust and professionalism, so too are democracies dominated by cynical populists like Trump or Boris Johnson. 

Such characters have shown a willingness to twist the truth for political gain at times of crisis, even at the cost of human lives.

As if to confirm Trump’s cynicism, he has named his obsequious vice president Mike Pence the point person for the US response to the coronavirus. Pence is not a public health professional, nor even a doctor like sometimes White House ally Senator Rand Paul. He’s a former governor and rightwing radio host who allegedly badly bungled his home state of Indiana’s response to a HIV crisis.

Pence’s only qualification appears to be unswerving loyalty to the president, and a willingness to lie for him, which makes him not so different than the Communist Party apparatchiks in China, or the clerical loyalists to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Iran, accused of downplaying coronavirus for political ends.

According to the New York Times, one of his first orders of business was to get the nation’s top health officials to stop talking about coronavirus, as if the “prayers” Pence hoped would ward away HIV during his tenure as governor of Indiana would work better than the needle-exchange programmes he rejected.

In addition to rejecting science, Trump, along with like-minded rightwingers across the Atlantic like Hungary’s Victor Orban, have already exploited the coronavirus epidemic to justify their hostility to immigrants, which they often equate to germs or infestations in racist tropes that harken back to the darkest moments of the 20th century.

“The free circulation of goods and people, immigration policies and weak controls at the borders obviously allow the exponential spread of this type of virus,” Aurélia Beigneux, a member of the European Parliament from France’s far right, said during a rally in February.

Loudmouth populists like Trump and Johnson may be more entertaining than straitlaced professional politicians, and for the media, they draw more readers and viewers than Germany’s Angela Merkel or the Netherlands’ Mark Rutte. But real the cost of having such ideologues in charge is needless suffering and death.

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WHY WOULD A WOMAN WANT TO BE A PRIEST?

 SHE IS ALREADY A PRIESTESS!

Pope’s view on women in the church has brought frustration, anger and tears

Rite and Reason: Francis’s dream for women in the latest papal document is more like a nightmarish vision

Soline Humbert

Where and when have Roman Catholic women with a sense of vocation to the priesthood been listened to by Francis or his predecessors? Photograph: Getty Images

 

Pope Francis’s reaffirmation of the exclusion of women from ordination (Holy Orders) in his recent exhortation Beloved Amazonia (Querida Amazonia) reminded me of a comment heard when I was still in my teens. “The only orders you will ever receive are orders telling you what to do,” said a young fellow student to whom I confided my nascent sense of vocation to the priesthood. That was 45 years ago.

In Beloved Amazonia, Pope Francis refers to his many dreams for the region in beautiful, inspiring, poetic form. Yet when it comes to chapter 4 his ecclesial dream there has a very distinct change of style. One can only speculate that another writer is behind this chapter, but in any case it comes under Francis’s name.

I have heard several people talk of frustration, anger, devastation, dismay and even tears at the description of women and their roles in the church contained in this latest papal document, quite a few saying it is the end of the road for them.

For many women – and men who support them – this particular pope ’s dream is more akin to a nightmarish vision.

All my tears, and they were copious and anguished, have been shed long ago

Theologian Tina Beattie refers to Francis’s views as based on a “frozen idea of the feminine”. A frozen view of the feminine which would leave women like me frozen out.

Francis often talks about opening doors and dialogue, but this does not apply to women’s ordination: the door that St John Paul II slammed violently and abusively in our faces in 1994 is to be kept firmly shut.

To deny us

As for dialogue and discernment, where and when have Roman Catholic women with a sense of vocation to the priesthood been listened to by Francis or his predecessors?

• The Irish Times view on women in the Catholic Church: invisible and powerless
• Josepha Madigan criticises Catholic Church's lack of women in clergy
• Unequal treatment of women the greatest challenge for the Catholic Church

"The teenage girl with a vocation to the priesthood is now a grandmother who has found papal utterances and dictats on women again and again to be ridiculously inaccurate, severely limiting, woefully wrapped up in fanciful praise of the feminine genius, 'codology dressed up as theology’ (Mary McAleese - above). File photograph: Patsy McGarry

The official attitude over the past decades has been to shun us, to deny us any form of recognition, to render us invisible and voiceless in official church fora.

Our sense of vocation is treated a priori as an egotistic delusion, a sinful hankering for power, a failure to accept our womanhood, the product of a clericalist mentality, an evil threat to the church.

We are dangerous women to be kept out in the cold. No warm embrace from male-governed Mother Church for us.

I was not one of the women who shed tears reading the pope’s latest words on what women can and cannot be, can and cannot do. All my tears, and they were copious and anguished, have been shed long ago.

These words no longer held any power over me, no longer had the power to wound me. To put it bluntly, I do not recognise myself in the pope’s view of women, and haven’t done so for a very long time.

The teenage girl with a vocation to the priesthood is now a grandmother who has found papal utterances and dictats on women again and again to be ridiculously inaccurate, severely limiting, woefully wrapped up in fanciful praise of the feminine genius, “codology dressed up as theology’’ (Mary McAleese).

I have a dream too. That some day soon women will no longer be the ecclesial 'other’

For me these words have lost all their authority, meaning they were found out not to be truth-telling, life-giving or liberating. I respect Pope Francis and find him in many ways inspiring, but this does not extend to his views on women.

God’s hands

My life, lived in the light of my faith, has led me to the same conclusion that St Teresa of Avila, doctor of the church, had reached a few centuries ago: When it comes to women, churchmen are forever trying to tie up God’s hands. And forever failing....For God opens doors for women that no man, even a pope, can close.

In answer to Pope Francis’s ecclesial dream, I have a dream too. That some day soon women will no longer be the ecclesial “other’’, and that women’s hands, feet, faces and lips, indeed whole sexual bodies, are acknowledged to be as Christ-like as men’s are, and true sacramental representations of Christ.

We are no less the body of Christ, and in truth we can say and do say: “This is my body.”

Francis exhorts us not to clip the wings of the Holy Spirit. Removing the ban on women’s ordination would be a good start.

Soline Humbert is a spiritual guide and member of We Are Church Ireland which will mark International Women’s Day next Sunday, March 8th, by handing a message and flowers to Papal Nuncio Archbishop Jude Okolo at his residence in Dublin at 12.30pm. It is part of a global action by the Catholic Women’s Council

HERSTORY MONTH WOMEN ROCK N ROLL BANDS

BIRTHA -
1970'S ALL GIRL HARD ROCK BAND ROSEMARY BUTLER - BASS & VOCALS SHERRY HAGLER - KEYBOARDS SHELE PINIZZOTTO - GUITAR & VOCALS LIVER (OLIVIA) FAVELA - DRUMS & VOCALS THIS IS THEIR LAST SINGLE "THE ORIGINAL MIDNIGHT MAMA / DIRTY WORK" FROM 1973, WHICH DOES NOT APPEAR ON EITHER OF THEIR ALBUMS OR THE RE-ISSUE ON CD. VINYL TRANSFER, AUDIO RESTORATION and DIGITAL AUDIO ENHANCEMENTS BY: TUSCADERO10

During World War II, women ran America. They built the planes, ships, and equipment to win the war. They built the economy that pulled the country out of the Depression and then emerge as a new Superpower. For the first time they integrated into the work force, the military, and the society. They were expected to give all that up at the war's end. Having tasted freedom, many Americans refused to surrender for themselves what they had been fighting for abroad. The Civil Rights movement, the farm rights activism of Cesar Chavez, the Counterculture, Stonewall, the American Indian Movement, and Feminism are the children of that democratic spirit of freedom for all. Birtha's first album shows an apt metaphor; a 1948 jukebox being shook righteously with their music. Mothers from WWII wanted more for their daughters. That hope flourished in the 60's and 70's when their children rose to the challenge of bettering society. It's a shake-up that reverberates to this day. Since we are the sum of our memories and experience, the diner herein reflects that mutual arc. Included are idealized women in pin-ups by such artists as Alberto Vargas and Joyce Ballantyne (who was her own model; 00:42); the real Rosie the Riveters and Wendy the Welders who made the country stable; the integrated work forces that opened up the future of civil rights; the Japanese Americans who were interned in concentration camps by their own nation; and the Counterculture opening all the doors of progress. Free your spirit... About BIRTHA: In the mid-60's, bassist Rosemary Butler was in The Ladybirds, an all-female band who toured opening for The Rolling Stones. She hooked up with guitarist friend Shele Pinizzotto in the Los Angeles psychedelic group, The Daisy Chain. By the early 70's they became Birtha, with keyboardist Sherry Hagler and drummer Olivia "Liver" Favela. Fanny had just broken through as the first all-female rock band making major label LPs. Dunhill Records responded by pairing Birtha up with Gabriel Mekler, producer of label mates Steppenwolf. Their especially hard, heavy sound provoked the infamous ad campaign, "Birtha Has Balls", which shocked Playboy so much they wouldn't print it. But the T-shirts were a smash. "When (Birtha) played the 1972 Rockingham Festival, members of Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac and the James Gang all chose to wear them for their own sets," writes reviewer Mrs. Ahab, "and revelers could clearly see the logo disappear from view as Alice left the arena hanging out of a helicopter still sporting his Birtha shirt. " Billboard gasped, "they project more power and drive than most male groups," with astonishment. Birtha made two albums but despite touring with the hardest and playing harder, they didn't break through and broke apart. Almost immediately on their heels would be The Runaways and the Punk grrrls to carry the torch. Shele Pinizzotto (guitar, vocals) Rosemary Butler (bass, vocals) Sherry Hagler (keyboards) Liver Favela (drums, lead vocals on "Free Spirit") http://www.birtharocks.com/ http://www.myspace.com/birthasite http://www.myspace.com/rosemarybutler http://www.rosemarybutler.com/

HERSTORY MONTH

The Girls In The Band: All women bands of the 30's and 40's

HERSTORY MONTH FEMINIST SF/UTOPIA'S

A Perfect World or an Oppressive World:

A Critical Study of Utopia and Dystopia as Subgenres of Science Fiction

Synopsis

In this article, I investigate the concept of utopia and dystopia in literature since the time of
Plato and Thomas More and how it became a significant subgenre of science fiction. I
present the kinds of utopia and its fundamental purposes as well as the different explanations for the term utopia and dystopia by numerous critics. I stress the function of science fiction as a literary tool to depict the grim picture and the weaknesses of current societies, dystopias, and to provide a warning for the future of these societies by presenting alternative peaceful societies; utopias. Therefore, I seek to investigate how utopian writings play a central role in uncovering the shortcomings of societies and presenting a formative criticism towards them.

I also discuss how utopia and dystopia give women the chance to present their feminist
demands using science fiction.

Key Words: Utopia, Dystopia, Science fiction, Feminism

HERSTORY MONTH
Radical Utopias of the 20th century: Anti-authoritarian Perspectives in Feminist Science Fiction

Andriana Kossiva
MASTERS THESIS

Feminist science fiction as a literary sub-genre emerged in the 1960s, next to the development of radical feminism as a political theory, and was clearly influenced by it. At the same time, in an era when gender equality has been only ostensibly attained, and when social and political organization continue to be based upon patriarchal structures, feminism remains relevant. In the framework of the present, where patriarchy remains a fundamental basis for social and political organization, reinforced by capitalism (as an economic as well as a political system), the reconsideration and in-depth examination of works of feminist science fiction that not only criticize the patriarchal/ capitalist system, but also elaborate on alternative forms of organization (such as the novels discussed in this paper), continue to be meaningful.

This thesis explores the relationships between science fiction, radical feminism, and social transformation through an analysis of feminist science fiction novels by Marge Piercy, Monique Wittig and Ursula Le Guin – works that also draw connections to radical feminism. The particular novels were chosen because, as argued by this thesis, they embrace anti-authoritarian perspectives through utopian and dystopian tensions incorporating an understanding of utopia as both a literary mode and a form of social struggle, which involves gender liberation, class struggle and the abolition of hierarchical and capitalist structures. The tensions between the contemporary reality and the utopian vision involve the likelihood of a dystopian future; social transformations on a collective level so as to evade the possibility of a dystopian future; and the need to radically change intersubjective relations in order to attain a eutopian future.

The argument this thesis seeks to demonstrate is that feminist science fiction provides a meaningful context to both criticize the existing patriarchal/ capitalist system, but also to envision alternative forms of organization that are based on autonomy and collectivity. The rethinking of gender identities, the elimination of class divisions, and the complete rejection of discrimination play a vital role towards this direction. At the same time, works of feminist science fiction establish a dialectical relationship with the reader, engaging her/him not only in a critique of the contemporary structures of organization, but also in a critique of the utopian texts’ own structures, and demanding from her/him to take political decisions regarding her/his own position towards her/his contemporary social, political, and economic system. This argument is analyzed in the following manner:

Chapter One examines linguistic utopias in feminist science fiction, looking at works by Monique Wittig and Ursula Le Guin, as well as Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. What is argued in this chapter is that language is yet another system (a system of communication), which is based on patriarchal structures. Language has been developed in the patriarchal context of ‘Logos’ and thus, it contains and also promotes patriarchal believes, ideas, and stereotypes. Feminist science fiction exposes the inherently phallogocentric structures of language, but it also endeavors to reconstruct language as a tool towards gender liberation. Language as ‘écriture feminine’ engages repressed female voices, giving space to ‘otherness,’ to a multiplicity of othernesses, and thus undermining the idea that woman is merely ‘not man’ and rejecting all stereotypes imposed by patriarchal order. Écriture feminine has been long discussed with respect to canonical francophone literature, but rarely in relation to feminist science fiction, which is what this chapter attempts to do.

Chapter Two reflects on the potential of anarchist (e)utopias and the problematic of the capitalist state (as a dystopia) in feminist science fiction, particularly in Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. In the term ‘anarchist (e)utopias’ ‘e’ is put in parentheses with the purpose of raising the question whether such depictions constitute eutopias (a Greek word translated as “good places”) or utopias (again a Greek word translated as “no places”). The argument this chapter seeks to make is that feminist science fiction depicts ‘utopias’ and ‘dystopias’ in situations of mutual tension, so as to produce a critique of the dystopic capitalist system, and so as to open the way towards envisioning alternative, non-hierarchical forms of social, and political organization. Moreover, this chapter seeks to demonstrate that feminist utopias are in essence critical utopias, in Moylan’s terms, since they constitute a better alternative to the contemporary society, but they are not devoid of difficulties.

Finally, Chapter Three considers the relationship between feminist science fiction and cyberpunk dystopias and its dynamics, and examines Marge Piercy’s He, She and It in an attempt to demonstrate that the adoption of cyberpunk dystopias by feminist science fiction has opened up the space for a political critique of capitalism through critical dystopias. Moreover, it reflects on the notion of the cyborg, endeavoring to reveal its radical (and) feminist dynamics.

HERSTORY MONTH - WOMEN ROCK N ROLL 
FANNY AKA FANNY HILL 

Fanny was an American all-female band, active in the early 1970s. They were one of the first notable rock groups to be made up entirely of women, the third to sign with a major label (after Goldie & the Gingerbreads and the Pleasure Seekers), and the first to release an album on a major label (in 1970). They achieved two top 40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and released five albums.

FANNY AND ANOTHER ALL WOMEN BAND; BIRTHA WERE CONTEMPORARIES OF SUSIE QUATRO
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/03/herstory-month-women-rock-n-roll-bands.html

Sisters June Millington (born April 14, 1948, Manila, Philippines) and Jean Millington (born May 25, 1949, Manila, Philippines) moved with their family from the Philippines to Sacramento, California in 1961. In high school they formed an all-girl band called the Svelts with June on guitar, Jean on bass, Addie Lee on guitar, and Brie Brandt on drums. Brandt was later replaced by Alice de Buhr (born September 4, 1949, Mason City, Iowa). When the Svelts disbanded, de Buhr and Lee formed another all-female group called Wild Honey. The Millington sisters later joined this band, which played Motown covers and eventually
moved to Los Angeles.

LIVE STUDIO SESSION