Men accused in plot on Michigan governor attended protests

DAVID EGGERT, Associated Press•October 10, 2020



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 In a photo provided by the Antrim County Sheriff, William Null is shown in a booking photo. Null is one of several charged Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020, in state court for allegedly seeking to storm the Michigan Capitol and seek a “civil war.” (Antrim County Sheriff via AP)

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Among the armed protesters who rallied at the Michigan Capitol against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's coronavirus lockdown this past spring were some of the men now accused in stunning plots to kidnap her, storm the Capitol and start a “civil war.”

The revelation has sparked scrutiny of rallies that were organized by conservative groups opposed to the Democratic governor's orders and egged on by President Donald Trump. It has also prompted renewed calls from Democrats for a gun ban in the building — an effort that so far has failed even after they reported feeling threatened by rifle-carrying protesters who entered the Statehouse.

At least one man accused of aiding in the surveillance of Whitmer's home as part of the alleged scheme to kidnap her stood in the Senate gallery on April 30 as majority Republicans refused to extend an emergency declaration that was the underpinning of Whitmer's stay-at-home and other restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the COVID-19 virus. “Several” of the 13 men arrested in the plots against the state government were seen at Capitol protests this year, the state attorney general's office said.

A man whom the FBI identified in court papers as a leader in the alleged plot, Adam Fox, attended an “American Patriot” pro-gun rights rally at the Capitol on June 18 to recruit members of anti-government paramilitary groups to attack the Statehouse, according to a federal complaint that cites a recording from a confidential informant.


“I’m not surprised — and anyone who is just hasn’t been paying attention," Whitmer told The Associated Press by phone on Friday. There have been Republican lawmakers and at least one sheriff at the protests, she said, "who fraternize with these domestic terror groups, who egg them on, who encourage them, who use language that incites them. They too are complicit.”

Some of the men involved in the alleged plots were members and leaders of Wolverine Watchmen, which authorities described as “an anti-government, anti-law enforcement militia group.” Federal authorities became aware in March about an initial plan by Wolverine Watchmen to target and kill police, according to court papers. Officials have not indicated whether law enforcement monitored the anti-lockdown protests in April and May.

Such protests have attracted a range of people, including openly armed Second Amendment backers and members of paramilitary groups dressed in tactical gear — particularly early in the pandemic when some demonstrators displayed Confederate flags, misogynistic anti-Whitmer signs and threatening images. GOP leaders have denounced such tactics while saying many people protest safely and responsibly.

The state's Republican Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, “does not condone violence, does not embrace violence and has never advocated in support of violence,” spokeswoman Amber McCann said. “Like many politicians, he has spoken out when he disagreed with policy.”

Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf told WXMI-TV that maybe the men wanted to arrest Whitmer, not kidnap her, and suggested that could be legal. At least one man charged under the state's anti-terrorism law by Attorney General Dana Nessel appeared on stage in May at a protest in Grand Rapids against Whitmer's stay-at-home order that was also attended by the sheriff and Shirkey.

Nessel, a Democrat, told the AP that Leaf’s remarks were “terrifying.”

“To suggest that it is proper for armed gunmen who are not licensed law enforcement officers to execute an arrest on a sitting governor for policy disagreements is abhorrent to me on every level,” she said.

The bombshell charges prompted Democratic legislators to plead, again, for the GOP-led Legislature to prohibit firearms inside the Capitol.

The federal complaint alleges that Fox in June said he needed 200 men to storm the building and take hostages, including Whitmer, and that several individuals talked about using Molotov cocktails to destroy police vehicles. By July, the men had shifted to targeting Whitmer's official summer residence or her personal vacation home before settling on the latter, according to authorities.

“We literally dodged death this time — this time. But what about next time? Because there'll be a next time,” said Sen. Dayna Polehanki, a Democrat. “I pray we use our God-given common sense to make a law banning guns from this building. If not now, when?”

It is unclear if anything will change. Republican leaders are having further discussions about guns with a commission that maintains the Capitol. A panel member noted that legislators have authority over certain areas of the building including the voting chambers.

“From the evidence I've read, a magnetometer or similar equipment would not have stopped what was planned,” John Truscott said. Shirkey told reporters: “There is no way in a country like ours that you can legislate and get rid of all risk.”

Whitmer told the AP she is concerned about the safety of lawmakers, visiting schoolchildren, media and others.

“The Legislature needs to act to protect everyone at the Capitol,” she said. “It is all of our building and every one of us should be able to go in there and feel safe.”

Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, said the anti-government movement in the U.S. and certainly in Michigan has been particularly active at statehouses in the past year — first by opposing proposed “red flag” laws that allow authorities to temporarily take guns away from people deemed to be dangerous to themselves or others, and later by opposing governors' measures to combat the pandemic.

“Militia groups and other actors who harbor violent agendas will continue to look for opportunities to conduct attacks against politicians, community members and government officials whom they believe are legitimate targets,” said Javed Ali, a former senior counterterrorism director at the National Security Council who is a policymaker in residence at the University of Michigan.

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Associated Press writers Ed White in Detroit, John Flesher in Traverse City and Angie Wang in Atlanta contributed.

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Delaware suspect in Whitmer plot was pardoned last year


RANDALL CHASE, Associated Press•October 9, 2020


DOVER, Del. (AP) — The Delaware man charged in federal court with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has a long criminal history and was pardoned just last year by Delaware’s governor for crimes dating to 1994, according to state records.

Barry G. Croft Jr., 44, was taken into custody this week after being arrested by the FBI in Swedesboro, New Jersey. Croft made an initial appearance before a federal magistrate in Wilmington on Thursday.

Croft was being held Friday at a state prison in Wilmington. A hearing on his continued detention and removal to Michigan is scheduled for Tuesday.

Five other men, all from Michigan, were charged in the alleged scheme that involved months of planning and even rehearsals to snatch Whitmer from her vacation home.


Croft spent nearly three years in prison after being convicted on Dec. 1, 1997, of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. That sentence followed a one-year stint that ended in March 1996.

In April 2019, one week after Delaware revenue officials filed a state tax lien against Croft for more than $36,700, Democratic Gov. John Carney granted him a pardon for the 1997 gun charge and several other convictions from 1994 to 1996. The crimes involved included assault, burglary, theft and receiving stolen property.

Carney’s pardon came after a December 2018 Board of Pardons hearing at which the attorney general’s office did not object to Croft’s request for a pardon. The board’s recommendation for a pardon was based on the lack of opposition from the state “and the need for a pardon for employment purposes.”

“The prior administration did not oppose this application because Croft’s criminal history was more than 20 years old and it appeared to everyone involved that his offenses were in his past and that he had gotten himself on the right track,” said Mat Marshall, a spokeswoman for Democratic Attorney General Kathy Jennings. “Needless to say, nobody — neither the DOJ nor the bipartisan Board of Pardons — would have endorsed a pardon had they known what the future held.”

Jonathan Starkey, a spokesman for Carney, noted that the charges in Croft’s unopposed pardon petition were from 1994 and 1997, more than 20 years earlier, and the pardon was unopposed.

“The charges brought in Michigan are disturbing and everyone charged in this plot should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Starkey said. “This is also another warning sign about the growing threat of violence and radicalization in our politics.”

In addition to Croft’s criminal convictions, authorities in Delaware twice sought to have him declared a habitual offender for motor vehicle offenses, first in 1995 and again in 2004.

He was also the subject of a criminal judgment filed in July 2005 but not satisfied until 2018. It’s unclear what offense that involved.

According to the Delaware Department of Correction, Croft was last under DOC supervision in January 2005, when a period of probation ended.

One of the men involved in the plot to kidnap Michigan governor had 'rage issues,' report says

Yelena Dzhanova,
Business Insider•October 10, 2020

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer addresses the media about the flooding along the Tittabawassee River, after several dams breached, in downtown Midland Reuters/Rebecca Cook


One of the six men charged by the FBI with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had shown signs of "rage issues" while a member of the Michigan Home Guard, BuzzFeed News reported.

The man, Adam Fox, also appeared to want to incite violence against racial justice protesters earlier this year, Michigan Home Guard cofounder Rick Foreman said. 

The FBI said that Fox and the other suspects involved in the plot "agreed to unite others in their cause and take violent action against multiple state governments that they believe are violating the U.S. Constitution."

One man charged on suspicion of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had previously exhibited signs of "rage issues" and clashed with racial justice protesters, BuzzFeed News reported.

Rick Foreman, the cofounder of Michigan Home Guard, which proclaims to be the state's "largest and most active militia," told BuzzFeed News that the man, Adam Fox, had been kicked out of the group earlier this year.

"He has rage issues," Foreman said, adding that there were no problems with Fox until he became a full member of the group. 

"And then all of the sudden he's all anti-government, he wants to start a war, he wants to take people out," Foreman said. 

The FBI on Thursday identified Fox as one of the six men involved with a plot to kidnap Whitmer. Fox had orchestrated several facets of the planned attack, including conducting meetings with accomplices and contacting members of a Michigan-based militia group to carry out the plan, an FBI affidavit reads.

The suspects "agreed to unite others in their cause and take violent action against multiple state governments that they believe are violating the U.S. Constitution," the FBI said.

While at the Michigan Home Guard, Fox had threatened multiple people, Foreman said. 

At one point in June, when Fox had still been a part of the Michigan Home Guard, the group gathered for an "American Patriot Rally" in front of the state capitol building, BuzzFeed News reported. Counterprotesters calling for racial justice appeared, and Fox tried to block them and seemed to want to engage the group in a physical altercation, Foreman told BuzzFeed News. 

Foreman also said that other group members speculated that Fox was taking steroids during his time at the Michigan Home Guard, saying that he had "roid rage." 

Far-right and right-wing protesters were angered earlier this year when Whitmer issued a statewide lockdown in response to the spreading coronavirus. Many brought guns to the state capitol building, according to photographs that flooded social media. Business Insider received almost 1,200 emails from Michigan residents complaining about her executive order. 

President Donald Trump openly embraced the groups, calling them "very good people" who "want their lives back again, safely."

2 suspects in Michigan kidnapping plot are US Marines who were recently-discharged

David Choi, Business Insider•October 10, 2020

Both of the veterans' military awards mentioned in the report were unremarkable.
Joseph Morrison, left, and Daniel Harris. Associated Press

Two of the men charged with terrorism-related crimes and a plot to kidnap the Michigan governor are Marine Corps veterans, a service spokesperson said to Marine Corps Times.

Joseph Morrison, 26, was a Marine reservist who reportedly discharged as a lance corporal, on Thursday, the same day the charges were announced.

Another Marine veteran, 23-year-old Daniel Harris, was an infantryman and was discharged in 2019.

Two of the men charged with terrorism-related crimes and a plot to kidnap the Michigan governor on Thursday are Marine Corps veterans, a service spokesperson reportedly said.

A Marine Corps spokesman told Marine Corps Times on Saturday that Joseph Morrison, 26, was a Marine reservist since 2015. Morrison was reportedly discharged as a lance corporal, a junior enlisted service member, on Thursday.

The spokesman told the Marine Corps Times that his recent discharge was unrelated to the alleged plot he was implicated in.

Morrison was one of the cofounders of an armed militant group dubbed the "Wolverine Watchmen," according to state investigators. The group was said to have had a broad goal of fueling a "civil war leading to societal collapse."

Another Marine veteran, 23-year-old Daniel Harris, enlisted in the service when he was 18 in 2015, according to the Marine Corps Times. Harris, who was an infantryman, was discharged in 2019.

Harris was one of six men charged by federal attorneys for allegedly conspiring to kidnap Gov. Whitmer.

A total of six men, including Harris, are facing federal charges with the plot to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. Seven others, including Morrison, are facing state terrorism-related charges.

The group, which has ties to the amorphous militant "boogaloo" movement, allegedly urged its members to conduct surveillance on Gov. Whitmer's private home and gather information on law enforcement officers to kill them.

Adam Fox, one of the six men who was charged in the plot, was quoted saying he needed "200 men" to attack the Capitol in Lansing and take hostages, including Whitmer.

"Snatch and grab, man. Grab the f---in' governor. Just grab the b----," Fox said during a July 27 meeting recorded by an informant, according to the affidavit. "Because at that point, we do that, dude — it's over."

Gov. Whitmer has been criticized by conservative activists for the state's response to the coronavirus. In April, Whitmer extended a stay-at-home order that imposed restrictions on businesses that were classified as essential. The order was later rescinded as part of the state's reopening plans. The armed group's associates characterized Whitmer as a "tyrant b----," according to a federal affidavit.

Harris's attorney denied his client's alleged involvement was intentional.

"All of this is something that he didn't envision happening, so he has given me information that makes me call into question at least some of the things that are related in the complaint," Parker Douglas, the attorney for Harris, said to WJRT-TV. "And that just means certain things that may have been said or related that he believes may have been taken out of context."

What if armed, far-right groups go to the polls? Some plan to

Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Jaweed Kaleem,
LA Times•October 10, 2020

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the group the Oath Keepers, center, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington in 2017. (Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

They go by names like Oath Keepers, Wolverine Watchmen and the Three Percenters. They chat on Gab, Discord, 4chan and other social media. Heavily armed and loyal to President Trump, many vow to descend on polling places Nov. 3. in a far-right show of unity.

Armed, far-right groups have long echoed at the fringes of American politics, drawing white nationalists and other extremists to their ranks. But over the last four years — when conservative causes have collided with social justice movements — their voices have grown louder, their actions more brazen. The alleged plot this week by extremists to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was a stunning indication of the potential for domestic terrorism.

The groups are now turning their attention to battleground states in the most consequential election in generations. Far-right organizations have rallied around Trump, positioning themselves as a counterforce to movements like the anti-fascist antifa and Black Lives Matter, whom they blame for nationwide protests that have stirred unrest in recent months. The majority of Black Lives Matter protesters have been nonviolent.

The Oath Keepers claim thousands of members, including those who served in the military and law enforcement. Some have signed up as poll watchers, while others plan to monitor the election armed and “undercover,” drawing their weapons if needed, said founder Stewart Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper and Yale law school graduate: "We’ll be out on election day to protect people who are voting.”


With political tensions running high across the country, protesters from a variety of groups could clash at polling places. Experts are especially focused on dangers raised by armed right-wing factions and self-styled militias with national networks who may intimidate voters, particularly immigrants and minorities.

“The chances are really high that we’re going to see militia members, armed groups or Trump supporters who are armed at the polls,” said Cassie Miller, a senior researcher with the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Not only are these people willing to participate in voter intimidation, but they’re hoping to create this chaotic moment. There’s an unwillingness to accept anything but a Trump victory.”

Two members of the Oath Keepers are seen in Louisville earlier this year. (Stewart Rhodes)

The groups fall under the far-right banner but they're not uniform in their methods and beliefs. Most express support for law enforcement, but have vigilante tendencies. Some call themselves law-abiding militias. Others, like the Oath Keepers, reject militia, white supremacist and racist labels. Those like the Proud Boys, which has been designated a hate group, and the Boogaloo movement, another far-right anti-government group, are prone to violence and see the election as an opportunity.

They have become increasingly vocal in politics. But the threat of extremists has a deep history, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by anti-government terrorist Timothy McVeigh, which killed 168 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and the 2016 standoff in Oregon between supporters of Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy and federal authorities.

Trump's rhetoric over the last four years has been regarded by far-right organizations as implicit endorsement. In 2017, when neo-Nazis and white supremacists at the "Unite the Right" rally attacked peaceful demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., killing a protester, the president did not immediately condemn them. Last month, during his debate with Joe Biden, Trump told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by” before saying the next day that he was not aware of the group.

Many armed groups have been banned from mainstream social media platforms like Facebook, which this week also purged QAnon conspiracy theorists, who believe Satan-worshiping pedophiles are running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against Trump. But armed groups' online chatter about the election has not been muffled: They rely instead on private Telegram channels, member-only forums and the Zello walkie-talkie app.

A post to a QAnon-affiliated Telegram group with 5,200 subscribers this month warned of “heavily armed MAGA patriots” standing ready for the election, according to SITE Intelligence Group, a Bethesda, Md..-based research organization that tracks extremists online.

“I want nothing more than to stand down and live in peace, but if it goes bad, God forgive me for what I do when they force my hand,” an Oath Keeper wrote while discussing the election on a members-only forum this month. "It’s not going to end, these people, and I hate saying it, are going to have to be stopped. Is President Trump going to, with the aid of the proper authorities, arrest them or are we the people going to have to get involved?"

A member of the Three Percenters in a parking lot two blocks away from the Taylor-Made Women's Empowerment Event at Vibes presented by Until Freedom during BreonnaCon on Aug. 22 in Louisville, Ky. (Amy Harris / Invision via AP)

In another online forum of Three Percenters — an armed group that draws its name from the supposed 3% of colonists who fought the American Revolution — a Vermont member warned, “November is almost here, prepare for anything! Reach out to your neighboring states and work on those relationships to increase your intel as well as regional strength.”

People showing up armed at protests have led to several deaths so far this year. Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old vigilante now celebrated by some right-wing groups, was charged in August with homicide in connection with the fatal shooting of two people in Kenosha, Wisc., during protests against a police shooting of a Black man. Last month, a supporter of the right-wing Patriot Prayer was fatally shot in Portland, Ore., by an antifa-affiliated protester later killed by federal agents attempting to arrest him.

Michigan militia members had rallied at — and inside — the state Capitol this year to oppose the state's COVID-19 restrictions. But concern over violence increased this week after state and federal authorities there charged 13 men with plotting to kidnap the Democrat governor and put her on trial for “uncontrolled power.” In recent weeks, the men had trained and dubbed themselves the Wolverine Watchmen.

Members of the Michigan Home Guard, which supports the 2nd Amendment, take part in the annual march at the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Mich., on Sept. 17. (Jeff Kowalsky / AFP via Getty Images)

Adam Peisker, an officer with the Michigan Home Guard, one of the largest of the state’s militias with more than 300 members, condemned the men charged this week, saying he knew one who “has a past of not fitting in well and being kicked out of militias.” He said the Wolverine Watchmen were not a known militia, but that it's common for militias to form in Michigan, then dissolve or merge with national groups.

Peisker, 32, a firefighter in southeast Michigan, said his group would not be poll watching but, “If rioting happens we will have to assess where are the damages. We protect our members first then we reach out to law enforcement and see where we can help."

The Department of Homeland Security warned this week that anti-government groups could carry out attacks over a perceived "infringement of liberties and government overreach” with polling sites “likely flash points for potential violence.” A report by the Gifford Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence predicted: “It is likely that significant numbers of people will bring guns to polling places under the guise of preventing election fraud.” Georgetown Law School created an online tool to check laws concerning guns at polling places.

Twenty-five states, including California, have statutes that criminalize certain paramilitary activity, according to a Georgetown Law report.

Black Lives Matter protesters in swing states also plan to go to the polls to protect voters, especially minorities, from being intimidated by right-wing groups: “This could be the biggest voter turnout in history, a lot of them people of color," said KeJuan Goldsmith, 19, a Black activist college student who led a protest against police brutality in Green Bay, Wisc., on Saturday. "If we need to be there for them to be protected, so they can cast their vote without fear, that’s what we have to do.”

Rhodes, 55, said the Oath Keepers militia plans to proactively monitor polling places as it did during the last presidential election, reporting problems to police. He said it's most concerned with swing states like Minnesota, North Carolina and Wisconsin and has intelligence analysts looking at other states where the vote's expected to be close.

A member of the Oath Keepers walks with his personal weapon on the street during protests in Ferguson, Mo., in 2015. (Michael B. Thomas / AFP via Getty Images)

Rhodes, a former criminal defense lawyer, tells members of his group to obey the law and not to menace voters. His group has provided volunteer security at recent Trump rallies, where he claimed supporters were attacked by armed counter-protesters. He fears they will show up at the polls, where Trump supporters, many of whom tend to be skeptical about the dangers of COVID-19, are more likely to vote in person.

“I’ll be voting in person and so will everybody else I know, and I think the radical left knows that,” Rhodes said by phone while visiting Houston this week. He supports law enforcement, but said it has been so "hands off" in protecting recent Trump rallies that at the polls, “I am not confident police will do their job."

He advised his group to monitor the polls with their guns hidden because, “We want it to be difficult to know you’re being watched.” He added: “You’re not going to be able to tell who’s an Oath Keeper and who’s not. I’ll tell my guys to stay concealed unless they’re in a situation that requires them to be overt," such as protesters near the polls wielding guns.

“If we see that kind of behavior, we’re going to intervene. We’ve done it before,” he said. “If the cops are doing their job we’ll just stand by. If they’re not, we’ll step in.”

Jim Murphy runs the Black Robe Regiment, an armed, Christian tea party offshoot in Wisconsin. Murphy, 73, a county commissioner with a web design business in Green Bay, communicates with his 300 members online. A man who never leaves home without his 9mm handgun, Murphy said his group is not endorsing violence ahead of the election. But one of his recent tweets called for taking down officials in the federal government.

Earlier this month, he tweeted support for upending the so-called “deep state." He added: "When Will This Happen? We can’t call the cops on the cops in Washington so is it really going to come down to us to physically" remove them by force.

Some experts predict armed groups will appear in cities where Trump has alleged voter fraud, like Philadelphia. Others said they’re more likely where they have the most members: The West Coast, particularly the Pacific Northwest. Still others suggest they will head to anti-lockdown and police protest hotspots: Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

Devin Burghart, executive director of the Seattle-based Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, said they’ve tracked far-right groups online planning to go to the polls in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those who spot them can report to his group via their app and it will alert local legal observers like the NAACP.

He said armed groups "will refer to it as ‘voter integrity’ or ‘poll watching’ but the act of showing up armed is certainly a deterrent to folks showing up to vote,” Burghart said.

Heidi Beirich, Georgia-based co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said violence is more likely to erupt in cities or states led by Democrats that Trump singled out since COVID-19 restrictions began, including Louisville, Detroit, Kenosha, Portland and Seattle.

At a rally last month in Portland, the Proud Boys announced plans to monitor Oregon sites where mailed ballots were dropped off, according to Miller, the SPLC researcher. In messages leaked from another right-wing Oregon group’s online forum, she noted, members suggested monitoring the polls from their cars or setting up game cameras. Miller called the Oath Keepers' plan to patrol the polls undercover “a frightening prospect” that could lead to vote suppression. And she was tracking Chris Hill, Georgia-based leader of the III% Security Force, who’s been discussing the election on YouTube.

Hill, 45, a Marine veteran and paralegal known as General Blood Agent, said he's not urging his 75-member group to go to the polls because, “It could be confused with intimidation. I don’t want to open up that Pandora’s box."

But Hill fears “ballot harvesting” and civil unrest on election day, and will respond if that happens.

“If people are being targeted by radicals, I’m going to be there to protect them. I don’t need to get permission from any government agency,” Hill said by phone this week. “Snuff it out quickly or we will assist in defending people and places in our state and we will cross state lines to do that as well."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

'Watchmen' Creator Alan Moore: Superhero Movies May Have Contributed To Trump's Rise


Jeremy Blum HuffPost•October 10, 2020


Alan Moore — the famed British co- creator of the graphic novels “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta” and writer of dozens of DC and Marvel comics — offered a blistering critique of comics and argued that superhero movies may very well have contributed to the rise of Donald Trump and Brexit.

“I’m not so interested in comics anymore,” Moore said in a rare interview in Deadline on Friday. He is promoting his upcoming film, “The Show,” a nightmarish tale set in Northampton, England.

Moore retired from writing comics in 2018 after the release of the final issue of the “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” series, which inspired the 2003 Sean Connery film of the same name. 

“I had been doing comics for 40-something years when I finally retired,” Moore said. “When I entered the comics industry, the big attraction was that this was a medium that was vulgar. It had been created to entertain working-class people, particularly children. The way that the industry has changed, it’s ‘graphic novels’ now. It’s entirely priced for an audience of middle-class people. I have nothing against middle-class people, but it wasn’t meant to be a medium for middle-aged hobbyists. It was meant to be a medium for people who haven’t got much money.”

Moore added that mainstream audiences today tend to equate comics with superhero films, much to his displeasure. Moore slowly transitioned away from superhero stories over the course of his career, partly because of his negative experience working with DC, which he said “managed to successfully swindle” him through constricting contracts after the publication of “Watchmen” in the 1980s.

Since then, Moore criticized movies based on his stories. Following the negative reception of the “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” movie, Moore asked that his name be removed from all film versions of his work. Neither the 2009 movie based on his seminal comic series “Watchmen” or HBO’s 2019 sequel TV series bear his name.

“I haven’t seen a superhero movie since the first Tim Burton ‘Batman’ film,” Moore told Deadline. “They have blighted cinema and also blighted culture to a degree. Several years ago I said I thought it was a really worrying sign, that hundreds of thousands of adults were queuing up to see characters that were created 50 years ago to entertain 12-year-old boys. That seemed to speak to some kind of longing to escape from the complexities of the modern world and go back to a nostalgic, remembered childhood. That seemed dangerous; it was infantilizing the population.”

Moore — who added that the best version of “Batman” in his opinion was the campy 1966 Adam West TV show, “which didn’t take it at all seriously” — speculated that an overabundance of superhero cinema may even have led to the current political state of the world.

“This may be entirely coincidence, but in 2016 when the American people elected a National Socialist satsuma and the U.K. voted to leave the European Union, six of the top 12 highest-grossing films were superhero movies,” Moore said. “Not to say that one causes the other, but I think they’re both symptoms of the same thing — a denial of reality and an urge for simplistic and sensational solutions.”

Alan Moore Gives Rare Interview: 

‘Watchmen’ Creator Talks New Project ‘The Show’, How Superhero Movies Have “Blighted Culture” & Why He Wants Nothing To Do With Comics


By Tom Grater
International Film Reporter@tomsmovies

October 9, 2020 8:13am

Alan Moore AP


EXCLUSIVE: As the creator of Watchmen, V For Vendetta and many more celebrated comic series, Alan Moore is one of the industry’s biggest names, but his frosty relationship with the film adaptations of his works has been well documented. After some very public dissatisfaction with previous endeavours (see The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen), he now refuses to let his name be linked with any such projects, even declining to profit from the big-screen incarnations, a decision that he estimates has cost him millions.

Deadline

Now, Moore is attempting to break into the film business on his own terms with original project The Show. Starring Tom Burke and directed by Mitch Jenkins, the fantastical adventure, set in Moore’s hometown of Northampton, follows a man’s search for a stolen artefact, a journey that leads him into a surreal world of crime and mystery.

Moore, who tends to duck the limelight, gave a rare interview to Deadline this week to discuss The Show, which has been something of a passion project for the writer. Him and his producers have kept it independent every step of the way, insisting on retaining creative control and rights to their own IP. After making several shorts film and now this feature, Moore has plans for a TV series based on the same characters and has already worked out 4-5 seasons worth of material, he tells us.

I also took the chance to ask him about retiring from comics in 2018, which his followers will be disappointed to hear he seems firmly set on, as well as his take on the current world of blockbuster superhero films, which he has been an inadvertent factor in. Safe to say, he is not a fan. He’s also not a fan of the current UK or U.S. political regimes, particularly Donald Trump, or “National Socialist satsuma”, as Moore refers to him.

The Show would have premiered at SXSW earlier this year, but following the Austin event’s cancellation it is headed to Spanish genre festival Sitges where it will debut online October 8 before a physical screening on October 12. Protagonist Pictures is handling world sales.

DEADLINE: Hi Alan, what’s your lockdown experience in Northampton been like?

ALAN MOORE: Me and my wife Melinda are still effectively living in late February – it’s about the same temperature. We are ignoring all advice from the government because we don’t think they have our best interests at heart, we’re just doing what we think is the most sensible thing, we’re maintaining distancing, having our stuff delivered. We haven’t seen or touched anybody in the last six months.

On the other hand, we’re finding that we’re closer to people even though we haven’t seen them in the flesh for ages. We’re spending a lot more time calling up and reading stories to our grandchildren, which is a lot of fun. Things that we didn’t find the time for back when the world was trundling ahead. Yes we miss everybody, but at the same time I can see different sorts of bonds forming. We will keep informed by listening to proper doctor and scientists.

DEADLINE: You retired from comics after finishing The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen in 2018, any thoughts on getting back in the saddle?

The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Titan Books

MOORE: I’m not so interested in comics anymore, I don’t want anything to do with them.

I had been doing comics for 40-something years when I finally retired. When I entered the comics industry, the big attraction was that this was a medium that was vulgar, it had been created to entertain working class people, particularly children. The way that the industry has changed, it’s ‘graphic novels’ now, it’s entirely priced for an audience of middle class people. I have nothing against middle class people but it wasn’t meant to be a medium for middle aged hobbyists. It was meant to be a medium for people who haven’t got much money.

Most people equate comics with superhero movies now. That adds another layer of difficulty for me. I haven’t seen a superhero movie since the first Tim Burton Batman film. They have blighted cinema, and also blighted culture to a degree. Several years ago I said I thought it was a really worrying sign, that hundreds of thousands of adults were queuing up to see characters that were created 50 years ago to entertain 12-year-old boys. That seemed to speak to some kind of longing to escape from the complexities of the modern world, and go back to a nostalgic, remembered childhood. That seemed dangerous, it was infantilizing the population.

This may be entirely coincidence but in 2016 when the American people elected a National Socialist satsuma and the UK voted to leave the European Union, six of the top 12 highest grossing films were superhero movies. Not to say that one causes the other but I think they’re both symptoms of the same thing – a denial of reality and an urge for simplistic and sensational solutions.

DEADLINE: You said you feel responsible for how comics have changed, why?

MOORE: It was largely my work that attracted an adult audience, it was the way that was commercialized by the comics industry, there were tons of headlines saying that comics had ‘grown up’. But other than a couple of particular individual comics they really hadn’t.

This thing happened with graphic novels in the 1980s. People wanted to carry on reading comics as they always had, and they could now do it in public and still feel sophisticated because they weren’t reading a children’s comic, it wasn’t seen as subnormal. You didn’t get the huge advances in adult comic books that I was thinking we might have. As witnessed by the endless superhero films…

DEADLINE: What’s your take on the comics industry now?

MOORE: I doubt the major companies will be coming out of lockdown in any shape at all. The mainstream comics industry is about 80 years old and it has lots of pre-existing health conditions. It wasn’t looking that great before COVID happened.

Most of our entertainment industries have been a bit top heavy for a while. The huge corporations, business interests, have so much money they can produce these gigantic blockbusters of one sort or another that will dominate their markets. I can see that changing, and perhaps for the better. It’s too early to make optimistic predictions but you might hope that the bigger interests will find it more difficult to manoeuvre in this new landscape, whereas the smaller independent concerns might find that they are a bit more adapted. These times might be an opportunity for genuinely radical and new voices to come to the fore in the absence of yesteryear.

DEADLINE: The economic realties, and lack of support for the arts, could hamper that.

MOORE: That is undeniable. I am talking in the long-term. There is going to be an awful lot of economic pain for everybody before this is over. I’m not even sure it ever will technically be over, until we’ve reached a better stage of equilibrium, whatever that turns out to be. When that was attained I hope we might see a very different landscape culturally.

DEADLINE: Do you watch no superhero movies at all? What about something a bit offbeat, like Joker? You wrote a key Batman comic book…

MOORE: Oh christ no I don’t watch any of them. All of these characters have been stolen from their original creators, all of them. They have a long line of ghosts standing behind them. In the case of Marvel films, Jack Kirby [the Marvel artist and writer]. I have no interest in superheroes, they were a thing that was invented in the late 1930s for children, and they are perfectly good as children’s entertainment. But if you try to make them for the adult world then I think it becomes kind of grotesque.

Batman: The Killing Joke DC Comics

I’ve been told the Joker film wouldn’t exist without my Joker story (1988’s Batman: The Killing Joke), but three months after I’d written that I was disowning it, it was far too violent – it was Batman for christ’s sake, it’s a guy dressed as a bat. Increasingly I think the best version of Batman was Adam West, which didn’t take it at all seriously. We have a kind of superhero character in The Show but if we get the chance to develop them more then people will be able to see all of the characters have quite unusual aspects to them.

DEADLINE: Hasn’t cinema always been a form of escapism, to an extent?

MOORE: Sometimes it was, all art-forms are potentially. But they can be used for something other than escapism. Think of all the films that have really challenged assumptions, films that have been difficult to take on board, disturbing in their messages. The same goes for literature. But these superhero films are too often escapism.

With regards to The Show, I think it’s an interesting case in point. I am known, perhaps a bit unfairly, for creating dystopias – I think I’ve done one or two but the rest are just my reflections on the world as I see it. With The Show, it could very well be argued that it is actually set in a dystopia, in that Northampton is the first British town in something like 35 years to collapse into an economic blackhole. We went into special measures in the early months of 2018. We can only afford skeleton services. They’re now talking about breaking it up into two different voting areas, which I imagine will make it Conservative until the end of time. There are a lot of failed social visions, mismanagement, but the imaginary life of the town… it has odd little pockets of surrealism and bizarreness that are still there, same as they’ve ever been, that are coming to the fore as Northampton’s waking reality has been so disjointed. The Show is an observed fantasy on a number of levels, but an awful lot of it is true. The town really is that odd-looking.

DEADLINE: In retirement, are you still creating, do you still write?

MOORE: I’ve only retired from comics. I’m finishing off a book of magic now. It’s been stalled for a while but I’m also working on an opera about John Dee with [musician] Howard Gray. I’ve got some short stories coming out. And I’ve also been thinking a lot about what we want to do after The Show feature film. We hope that it’s enjoyable as a thing in itself, but to some degree it could be seen as an incredibly elaborate pilot episode, we think there’s quite an interesting story that we could develop out of it as a TV series, which would imaginatively be called The Show.  

 

‘The Show’  Protagonist Pictures

I’ve worked out about four-five seasons of potential episodes. We’re showing that around to people to see how it goes, if there should be any interest I am prepared to launch myself into that. We’re not asking for a huge amount of money we’re just asking for control over the work and ownership over the work, if that is something people are prepared to give us we have no problem with people making money out of it. What we have got a problem with is us losing our rights to the ownership of the material, and having the work interfered with in any way.

DEADLINE: It sounds like the kind of thing Netflix might be interested in, but retaining your IP might be an issue…

MOORE: We shall see. There are options. All we need is to own our IP. But that’s why it has taken us so long to get to the feature film stage, and to get the five short films made previously. I really don’t have an interest in writing for movies or television per se, it has to be on my terms, which I think are fair ones. I’ve got no problem with other people making money from those works.

DEADLINE: Fair to say you’ve earned that right.

MOORE: I think so.

DEADLINE: Why make the shorts first?

MOORE: When we were trying to get this made some people wanted us to make a short film that would later be made into a feature film. As soon as it was announced that I was doing any sort of film there was suddenly a lot of interest in it. People said it could be a short that turned into a feature and a TV series, like This Is England. I realised without changing it I could open up the story, it could become a much bigger narrative.

DEADLINE: And you used the shorts to attract the feature finance?

MOORE: The BFI nobly gave us just over £1m if we could get someone to match that. It went on for a few years with various partners getting involved but not being able to work out the financial details. I was coming to the end of my rope and then we heard the financing was in place and we had something like £3m and could go ahead and make the film in November 2018.

We started on schedule, but I noticed there seemed to be a lot of the investors gathering around Mitch [Jenkins, director] in the early days of the film. When we finally got it finished we had a modest wrap party at a local restaurant, I thought it was a good-looking film for £3m, and then Mitch said, ‘we didn’t do that for £3m’… apparently just before the film was due to start soothing, some of the investors pulled out, they said it would take another year or two to raise the money again but someone said if I heard this had happened they would probably never see me again. They gave Mitch a chance to make it for £1m but were breathing down his neck to make sure he met all the deadlines. I believe we got it shot for £900,000, I don’t think it looks like a £900,000 movie…

DEADLINE: It certainly doesn’t. Did you have to make compromises?

MOORE: There was one scene that was removed because there wasn’t time for it. There might have been small changes but not really significantly. The main good fortune was that we had Northampton at our disposal, perhaps the only good thing about having the town on its knees is that the council are absolutely desperate for anything that will draw any kind of financial attention to this collapsed hellhole. They gave us the freedom of the town.

DEADLINE: What are your hopes for the film?

MOORE: I hope people will enjoy it and will be interested enough to see how the story will evolve in a TV series. I hope that all the people who worked on the film, including the brilliant actors, get the recognition. But all of that is in the lap of the gods.

DEADLINE: I’m a huge fan of Tom Burke…

MOORE: Absolutely, he’s terrific, he brought such a lot to the character and he’s a terrific guy as well. I particularly enjoyed my scene with Tom.

DEADLINE: How long did it take you to get into that makeup? [See below]

MOORE: Oh, hours. Our makeup designer was an absolute genius, she did it as quickly as anybody could

.

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17-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg endorses Joe Biden

Yelena Dzhanova

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg talks to the media before meeting with EU environment ministers in Brussels Reuters

Greta Thunberg, the teen activist from Sweden who made waves for urging world leaders to take climate change seriously, endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden Saturday. 

"Just get organized and get everyone to vote #Biden," Thunberg said on Twitter.

There are just weeks to go before the November presidential election, and the Biden campaign has positioned itself against President Donald Trump on the issue of climate change. 

The Biden campaign said it wants to reverse one of Trump's biggest decisions: pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.


Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Saturday, asking her Twitter followers to cast a vote for him in the upcoming November election.

"I never engage in party politics. But the upcoming US elections is above and beyond all that," Thunberg tweeted, along with an editorial from the Scientific American urging people to avoid voting for President Donald Trump.

"Just get organized and get everyone to vote #Biden," Thunberg said.
—Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) October 10, 2020

The 17-year-old is an activist from Sweden who made headlines for leading climate strikes across the country. She also interrogated large organizations and groups like the United Nations and the US Congress on climate change policy and is regarded as the face of the youth climate movement.

She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, and her efforts landed her recognition as Time's Person of the Year, which drew Trump's ire.

"So ridiculous," Trump tweeted in response to the news. "Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!"
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2019

Thunberg in a December interview said it was useless engaging Trump on climate change "because obviously he's not listening to scientists and experts, so why would he listen to me?"

The Trump administration has been in the process of pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, a voluntary accord signed by 200 countries with the goal of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. The withdrawal will be completed by November 4, a day after this year's presidential election.

The Biden campaign has presented itself as the antithesis to Trump when it comes to climate change. During the first presidential debate between Trump and Biden, the former vice president vowed to reinstate US participation in the Paris climate agreement if he is elected.

"The first thing I will do, I will rejoin the Paris Accord," Biden said. "I will join the Paris Accord because with us out of it, look what's happening. It's all falling apart."

Neither the Trump nor Biden campaign immediately responded to a request for comment.

Trump Takes Sham 'Health Assessment' In Bizarre Fox News Appearance

Sarah Ruiz-Grossman
Reporter, HuffPost,
HuffPost•October 9, 2020

President Donald Trump said he feels “really good, really strong,” yet declined to clearly state whether he had tested negative for the coronavirus in a remote, televised “health assessment” performed on Fox News by Dr. Marc Siegel, a frequent Fox News contributor.

The president said he’d been “medication-free” for the last eight hours in his appearance on host Tucker Carlson’s show at 8 p.m. Eastern on Friday night — his first on-screen interview since contracting the coronavirus. He later revised that claim to say he had taken “pretty much nothing” and had taken his “final doses of just about everything” that day.

Asked if he had been tested for the virus on Friday, Trump dodged, saying “I have been retested and I haven’t even found out numbers or anything yet — I’m at either the bottom of the scale or free.”

Siegel, a pro-Trump internist in New York City, remotely interviewed Trump, who was filmed at the White House, and noted it was “not officially a televisit.” The doctor has previously spread misinformation about coronavirus in his appearances on Fox News


Trump described his state while at the hospital last weekend as “tired, you didn’t have the same energy level.” The president credited the fact that he “got there very early,” noting that “one of the doctors thought it would have gotten a lot worse” if he had not.

Trump tested positive for the coronavirus Thursday of last week and was hospitalized for three days over the weekend. Since he returned to the White House on Monday — flouting public health guidelines to quarantine for at least 10 days following the onset of COVID-19 symptoms — the president has repeatedly downplayed the threat of the illness, calling it a “blessing from God” that he was infected and telling Americans “don’t be afraid” of the virus.

The coronavirus has killed over 213,000 people in the U.S. so far this year.



Trump claims he is no longer taking any medications as of this morning pic.twitter.com/qn8ICrv2js

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 10, 2020

In the Fox News interview, Trump also addressed his widely criticized drive near the hospital to wave to supporters while still hospitalized, saying “it was a great display of love out there” and that he wanted to “go out and say hi.”

Trump also claimed that his Secret Service agents — two of whom were in the car with him, risking their health — had “no problem” with it.

“I love the people of this country and I thought it would have been very disrespectful ... if I didn’t go out and at least give them a wave,” Trump said. “I’m very glad I did it.”

Friday’s Fox News interview extended Trump’s recent tour of right-wing media shows, including phone calls into Sean Hannity’s Fox News program on Thursday and right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh’s show earlier on Friday.

Meanwhile, since Trump left Walter Reed hospital on Monday, his medical team has not held a single press event where reporters could ask questions about the president’s health.

In Friday’s Fox News interview, Trump was asked whether he knew where he’d caught the virus.

“I don’t know. They had some big events at the White House, perhaps there,” the president said. ”You know, people have contracted it all over the world.”

He went on to downplay the virus yet again, saying that while it’s a “contagious disease,” people “generally get better from it,” and that in regard to coronavirus-related closures, “the cure is worse than the problem itself.”

Last month, the White House was the location of a coronavirus “superspreader event,” per Dr. Anthony Fauci. Following the Sept. 26 Rose Garden celebration for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, multiple attendees tested positive for the virus, including the president, first lady Melania Trump and two Republican senators.

Over two dozen people connected to the White House have tested positive in recent days, including former adviser Kellyanne Conway, current adviser Stephen Miller and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who remains hospitalized.

Trump plans to hold an in-person event at the White House on Saturday with hundreds of attendees expected.

Related...

Trump Is Going All Out In Right-Wing Media To Convince People He’s ‘Cured’ Of COVID-19

Homeless migrants sleep rough beneath Dubai's skyscrapers as Covid employment crisis bites

Ashleigh Stewart, The Telegraph•October 9, 2020

Migrant labourers have been made destitute by the coronavirus lockdown in Dubai

Dubai is witnessing a rare uptick in homelessness as migrant workers left destitute by the Covid downturn have begun sleeping out in parks under the glistening skyscrapers.

Blue collar workers from Asia and Africa say they are trapped after losing jobs and running out of money to return home.

Migrant workers who spoke to The Telegraph claimed they have been left abandoned after losing their jobs as the economy tightens.

With no jobs and expired visas, many have congregated in parks in Dubai’s poorer Satwa area, appealing for help for repatriation flights home.


Homelessness and poverty are not typically visible in the United Arab Emirates’ glitziest city.

White collar jobs have also been threatened by the pandemic in UAE, with many UK expats returning home since coronavirus. Dubai's economy is geared towards heavy consumer spending in hospitality, luxury real estate and travel.

Oxford Economics, a UK forecaster, estimates 900,000 jobs are under threat among a population of under 10 million.

900,000 jobs in Dubai are under threat, in a country where the population is only 10 million

Blue collar migrant workers from poorer countries are paid low wages, work long hours and often live in cramped dormitories that have been coronavirus hotbeds.

Many also pay fees to recruiters in their home country, a practice common for low paying jobs in the Gulf.

Susil Kumara, one of a group of Sri Lankans now awaiting repatriation in a Satwa park, was an “office boy” for a company in Dubai for five years before losing his job in July. With his residence visa and accommodation terminated, he joined others in the park two weeks ago.

Another, Buddhima Egalla, a graphic designer, slept on a grimy mattress in the park with two other men for eight days. He came to Dubai to find work on a three-month tourist visa, which he renewed twice, before running out of money.

Nearby, a tearful Jemeela Abdul Salam says she has been in the park for about two weeks, after losing her job as a house maid.

“The police are telling us to go to the embassy but the embassy can’t help either,” Mr Egalla said. The Sri Lankan consulate has now provided them temporary accommodation as they await repatriation.

While the UAE has offered amnesties for hefty overstaying fines, many still cannot afford flight tickets or exit fees.
Most migrants can't afford exit fees or flights home, leaving them stuck in Dubai

With embassies and authorities being slow to act, private donors are relied on to provide flight tickets. Others are taken to temporary accommodation camps by Dubai police, if there is space.

When contacted, the Government of Dubai Media Office did not answer questions about homelessness, but said they were “providing extensive assistance” to unemployed workers and Dubai Police was helping with emergency accommodation.

More than 480,000 Indians, 60,000 Pakistanis and 40,000 Filipinos have been repatriated since the outbreak began, according to their respective consulates. There are no reliable estimates on how many migrant workers are out of work, but the consulate of the Philippines in Dubai says about 30,000 Filipinos had lost their jobs - but many more remained in the UAE on a “no work, no pay" basis with their employers.

Isthiaq Raziq, of the Sri Lankan Welfare Association, says they cannot provide emergency accommodation as they do not have government approval, but are now coordinating repatriations with the embassy.

The association is also relying on donors for airfares after their main source of income, an annual concert in March, was cancelled due to the pandemic. Repatriating citizens was costly, Mr Razik said, as they must pay exit fees and quarantine in Colombo, as well as airfares.

“These people are very helpless, they’ve lost their jobs and they don’t have a single penny to pay.”

Nalinda Wijerathna, Dubai's consul general of Sri Lanka, said 9,000 people had been repatriated and about 6,000 were still waiting. Limited capacity in Colombo’s quarantine facilities meant delays in availability for repatriation flights.

Jemeela Abdul Salam has been living in a park for two weeks, awaiting repatriation to Sri Lanka

He said more people needed assistance than they could provide for, and some were attempting to leapfrog waiting lists by moving outside.

Anthony Iwueze was part of a group of 35 Nigerians sleeping in a rubbish-strewn Satwa park in August, after his company failed to pay his salary for three months. He joined a group of fellow Nigerians sleeping outside their consulate before police moved them to the park.

“We have suffered. We just want to go back,” he said at the time.

Stephen Oguntade was also there after being “scammed” by a recruitment agent. Mr Oguntade, a nutritionist, came to Dubai in January on a tourist visa to find work. He paid Dh2000 to a recruiter for a security job, but was taken to accommodation and then abandoned.

The two have since been repatriated to Nigeria by airfare donors.

“It’s a good thing to be back home,” Mr Oguntade said from Lagos. “I’m starting to build my life from the ground up.”

One of many volunteers who has stepped in to help, Mahnaz Faquih has been coordinating flights for homeless migrant workers for six months. The Indian mother of two relies on her network of friends, and “friends of friends” to find donors for airfares, and has purchased about 20 herself. There are strict laws around fundraising in the UAE, meaning flights must be paid by a single donor.

Ms Faquih, who owns a chain of medical clinics, says she believes she has helped about 700 people be repatriated - including a recent group of 13 pregnant Sri Lankan and Ghanaian women.

Co-ordinating now requires her attention around the clock.

Other volunteers The Telegraph spoke to would not speak publicly due to fear of repercussions.

Several had been asked to stop providing food to stop more people showing up on the street.

One man, who is organising citywide food drives, says the common theme for many people is “no work for months, lots of liabilities, no money for accommodation and living on one meal a day”.

“We were giving food for a few weeks to a labour camp of 200 people in Sharjah, whose employer had been in jail since August last year. The sad part is that most of these people aren’t paid for months and the only thing they want is to go back home.”

The man said the government must do more to protect blue collar workers, saying most of the country’s embassies are too slow or lacking in resources, and NGOs lack the scale that is needed.

UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna wins Nobel Prize for genome research

by Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley October 9, 2020

Jennifer Doudna laughs as she talks with reporters over a cup of coffee early Wednesday at her home in Berkeley. Doudna received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work with CRISPR. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small/UC Berkeley via UC Newsroom)


UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Berkeley, biochemist Jennifer Doudna has won the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry, sharing it with colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier for the co-development of CRISPR-Cas9, a genome editing breakthrough that has revolutionized biomedicine.

CRISPR-Cas9 allows scientists to rewrite DNA — the code of life — in any organism, including human cells, with unprecedented efficiency and precision. The groundbreaking power and versatility of CRISPR-Cas9 has opened up new and wide-ranging possibilities across biology, agriculture and medicine, including the treatment of thousands of intractable diseases.

Doudna and Charpentier, director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, will share the 10 million Swedish krona (more than $1 million) prize.

BREAKING NEWS:

The 2020 #NobelPrize in Chemistry has been awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing.” pic.twitter.com/CrsnEuSwGD— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 7, 2020

“This great honor recognizes the history of CRISPR and the collaborative story of harnessing it into a profoundly powerful engineering technology that gives new hope and possibility to our society,” said Doudna after the prize was announced Wednesday. “What started as a curiosity‐driven, fundamental discovery project has now become the breakthrough strategy used by countless researchers working to help improve the human condition. I encourage continued support of fundamental science as well as public discourse about the ethical uses and responsible regulation of CRISPR technology.”

“The groundbreaking work of professor Jennifer Doudna has ushered in a revolutionary new era in genomics,” said UC President Michael V. Drake, M.D., in a statement this morning. “This Nobel Prize, which recognizes the discovery and real-world applications of CRISPR-Cas9, will continue to transform the scientific world, opening up new avenues for curing genetic diseases, improving crops and developing new biofuels. On behalf of the entire UC community, I join Chancellor Carol Christ in extending heartfelt congratulations to professor Doudna.”

While women have done research at UC Berkeley that, after they left the campus, won them a Nobel Prize, Doudna is the first woman on the UC Berkeley faculty to win the coveted award. She is the campus’s 25th Nobel laureate; the 24th winner, Reinhard Genzel, won the Nobel Prize in physics just yesterday.

Today’s honor also brings another first: Doudna and Charpentier are the first women to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences together, which sends the message, Doudna said, that “women rock.”

“Many women think that, no matter what they do, their work will never be recognized the way it would be if they were a man,” said Doudna, who was awakened from a sound sleep by a reporter at 2:53 a.m. Wednesday, learning for the first time that she’d won a Nobel. “And I think (this prize) refutes that. It makes a strong statement that women can do science, women can do chemistry, and that great science is recognized and honored.

“That means a lot to me personally, because I know that, when I was growing up, I couldn’t, in a million years, have ever imagined this moment.”

Doudna said she is “really, really proud to be representing Berkeley, … a public university that supports great science and great education, … a place that welcomes everyone, people from all over the world.” She added, “It’s a great feeling to have such incredible colleagues who are part of this.”

The Nobel Prize Committee announced Wednesday that UC Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her research in developing CRISPR-Cas9. Berkeley’s Journalism School aired a video news conference and interview with Doudna. (Video courtesy of UC Berkeley/YouTube)

Doudna and Charpentier were recognized by the Nobel Foundation for their discovery that a gene-cutting molecule, Cas9, used by bacteria to kill viruses, can be re-engineered as a precise and easy-to-use gene-editing tool. The CRISPR-Cas9 system is guided by an RNA molecule to bind a specific region in the DNA, and the Cas9 protein then acts like a pair of molecular scissors to cut the DNA, allowing it to be altered in a precise fashion.

Doudna, who is the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at UC Berkeley, is president and chair of the board of the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes and an adjunct professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology at UC San Francisco. Charpentier, who in 2012 was affiliated with the University of Vienna and Umeå University in Sweden, was appointed director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin in 2015.
Pursuing fundamental scientific research

The bacterial enzyme Cas9 is the engine of RNA-programmed genome engineering in human cells. (Image courtesy of Jennifer Doudna/UC Berkeley)

Doudna’s research has focused on RNA, a partner to DNA in carrying genetic information and a key part of several molecular machines (such as the ribosome and telomerase) that help DNA do its job. She became interested in CRISPR because of her long-standing interest in such RNA-based machines.

Doudna’s attention was first drawn to CRISPR by a UC Berkeley colleague, Jill Banfield, who encountered it while studying bacteria living in extreme environments. The system intrigued Doudna, who wondered how exactly an unusual repeating sequence of DNA in the bacterial genome enabled bacteria to mount a successful defense against viral infections. What they and other researchers pieced together is that when viruses invade bacteria, the bacteria cut up the viral DNA and place these pieces in their genome, like “most wanted posters.” If similar viruses invade again, roving enzymes with RNA copies of these bits of viral DNA examine the virus and, if the RNA and DNA match, cut the DNA and kill the virus.

Charpentier was focusing on the Type 2 system (CRISPR-Cas9) and, in a paper published in Nature in 2011, described an unusual RNA not found in other CRISPR systems — the tracrRNA (pronounced “tracer RNA”) — and how it works together with the Cas9 protein to help generate the RNA copies of the “most wanted posters.” She and Doudna then considered how the Cas9 protein might also be involved in the final step of CRISPR immunity: surveilling the cell and cutting up invading DNA. The two began their collaboration that year after meeting at a scientific conference in Puerto Rico.

A year later, in a seminal 2012 Science paper, Doudna and Charpentier rocked the scientific community by showing that the protein Cas9 is guided by both the tracrRNA and an RNA matching a viral sequence, which it uses to seek out and destroy matching viral DNA.

What is CRISPR-Cas9 and how does it work? How do we edit genes? Jennifer Doudna, biochemist at UC Berkeley, explains. (Video courtesy of UC Berkeley/YouTube)

Perhaps more importantly, the two scientists also demonstrated that this cellular defense system had applications beyond killing viruses. They engineered the two-piece RNA into a single RNA and showed that it could be designed to pinpoint any gene in any species, not just bacteria, allowing the Cas9 protein to cleave at that spot. Doudna and Charpentier then made the visionary proposal that CRISPR-Cas9 can be repurposed to be an exceptionally powerful tool for editing plant or animal genomes, including human genes, and customized to delete or add specific strands of DNA.

“Jennifer has, for many years, been a pioneering structural biologist in determining the 3D structure and function of RNAs,” said Robert Tjian, a UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology and former head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “Her development of the fused, single-guide RNA was crucial in enabling the efficient and practical use of CRISPR-Cas9 as a highly efficient gene-editing molecular tool. Her further work determining structures of the Cas9/guide-RNA complex has been crucial in further refining this powerful technology.”

In early 2013, Doudna’s UC Berkeley lab and others went on to show that the system could edit human DNA. In the seven years since Doudna and Charpentier’s landmark 2012 paper, CRISPR-Cas technology, as detailed below, has been put to use in nearly every realm of biomedicine, fully validating the power of the colleagues’ vision.

In 2008, Doudna’s nascent research on CRISPR RNA strands and the Cas1 protein was funded by a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program through her Berkeley Lab affiliation. Established by Congress in 1991, the LDRD program has helped the U.S. remain at the forefront of technology through the innovative, multidisciplinary research of the DOE national labs.
Groundbreaking impact

CRISPR-Cas9 technology has become commonplace in labs around the world because it is remarkably simple to use. Despite its “low barrier to entry,” it is robust in a broad range of settings. In particular, it offers new ways to treat and cure disease, to develop a next generation of crops for a rapidly warming planet and to understand the function of living systems with remarkable speed and clarity.

In medicine, scientists and physicians have used CRISPR-Cas enzymes to precisely alter the genetic code of human cells and organs in a way that bodes clear promise to treat genetic disorders and other diseases. Remarkably, in only seven years, this technology has gone from offering such a promise in theory to being the basis of multiple experimental efforts to treat genetic disease, infectious disease and cancer.

Berkeley professor, Jennifer Doudna, discusses the far-reaching positive potential for the gene-editing tool, CRISPR, as well as the need for close consideration and agreement on how it can be used. (Video courtesy of UC Berkeley/YouTube)

Thousands of labs around the world are already using CRISPR to engineer lab animals with genetics that mimic human disease, so that we can learn how a genetic defect causes symptoms and test ways of correcting the problem.

In agriculture, researchers around the world are applying CRISPR-Cas9 to engineer pest- and disease-resistant crops, as well as crop varieties that are healthier and more nutritious. Highlighting the versatility of CRISPR-Cas technology, the technique is being pursued as the basis of so-called “gene drives” to control mosquito populations and reduce their ability to spread Zika virus and malaria.

In 2015, Doudna was one of the organizers of the first international symposium at the National Academy of Sciences that focused on the societal and ethical use of CRISPR technology. She has been at the forefront of the debate and has argued for inclusive global deliberation before making genetic changes in human sperm, eggs and embryos. She continues to urge the medical and scientific community and the general public to discuss if or when changes to the human germline are acceptable.

Doudna and Charpentier have received numerous awards for their invention, sharing the 2014 Breakthrough Prize in Genetics, the 2015 Gruber Genetics Prize, the 2015 Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, the 2016 L’Oreal UNESCO For Women in Science Award, the 2016 Canada Gairdner International Award, the 2017 Japan Prize and the 2018 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience.

Doudna has received many other major awards as well, including the Lurie Prize in the Biomedical Sciences, the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research, the Dr. H. P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics, and the LUI Che Woo Prize for Welfare Betterment. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Inventors, and a foreign member of the Royal Society. In 2015, she was named one of the 100 leading global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, as well as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.

Born in Washington, D.C., Doudna grew up in Hilo, Hawaii, and developed an interest in chemistry in high school. She graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, California, in 1985 with a degree in biochemistry, then entered graduate school at Harvard University. She earned her Ph.D. in biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology from Harvard Medical School in 1989 and, after various fellowships and postdoctoral positions, joined the Yale University faculty in 1994. She moved to UC Berkeley in 2002.

Doudna lives in Berkeley with her husband, Jamie Cate, a UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology, and their son, Andrew.Jennifer Doudna (Photo by Keegan Houser/UC Berkeley)

This story was originally published by the University of California.