NASA won’t rename James Webb telescope — and astronomers are angry

ByKaren Graham

DIGITAL JOURNAL
PublishedOctober 2, 2021

The James Webb Space Telescope with large infrared 6.5 meter mirror will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana in 2021. The Webb telescope will be the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. Source - NASA/Space Coders

NASA has decided not to rename its soon-to-be-launched flagship observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), after investigating whether its namesake, former NASA administrator James Webb, was involved in persecuting gay and lesbian people in the 1950s and 1960s. NASA says it found no evidence to support the allegations.

The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, already about 14 years behind schedule, is set to be launched in December 2021. Interestingly, controversy over the naming of the telescope has been circulating for years among professional and amateur astronomers.

The James Webb telescope is to be the successor to the pioneering and iconic Hubble Space Telescope, and sadly, despite its scientific potential – it has now become a controversial subject because of the connotations associated with its Name.

The full-scale model is assembled on the lawn at Goddard Space Flight Center and displayed during September 19 – 25 2005. The Webb Telescope team took a group photo with it. Seeing the people gathered next to it shows its scale nicely. Source – NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Pat Izzo, Public Domain

James Webb was a NASA administrator during the “Lavender Scare,” an era barring homosexual people from government jobs. More than 1,200 people—mostly astronomers and passionate enthusiasts—have already signed a petition urging NASA to rename the telescope.

The Lavender Scare has been described as a “moral panic: that gripped the public during the mid-20th century about homosexual people in the United States government and their mass dismissal from government service.

It was thought that gay people were more susceptible to being manipulated, which could pose a threat to the country. The term for this persecution was popularized by David K. Johnson‘s 2004 book which studied this anti-homosexual campaign, The Lavender Scare.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, the petition cites the case of NASA employee Clifford Norton, which happened under Webb’s leadership. Norton was arrested for “gay activity,” interrogated by the police, and questioned by NASA about his sexual activities. NASA fired Norton from his position for “immoral conduct” and for possessing personality traits that render him “unsuitable for further Government employment.” 

NASA Administrator James E. Webb (Left side) presents the Group Achievement Award to Kennedy Space Center Director Dr. Kurt Debus, for Kennedy Space Center’s role in the successful launch of the Saturn I rocket. Source – NASA, Public Domain.

There is no evidence that Webb knew this happened, but Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire told NPR.org this does not exonerate him.

“Either he was a wildly incompetent administrator and didn’t know that his head of security was interrogating employees in NASA facilities, or he knew exactly what was going on and he was, in some sense, party to overseeing the interrogation of someone for being gay,” she said.

“And at worst, we’re basically just sending this incredible instrument into the sky with the name of a homophobe on it, in my opinion.”

The thing is – NASA is not a stranger to controversy. They once renamed an asteroid after learning that its original name had Nazi connotations, according to Futurism’s Dan Robitzski.

More recently, the agency promised to stop using racist names for various objects in space, announcing the agency’s commitment to “examining its use of unofficial terminology for cosmic objects as part of its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Bottom line? Everything is still up in the air over this latest controversy. “We’ve done as much as we can do at this point and have exhausted our research efforts,” senior science communications officer Karen Fox said in an email, NPR reported. “Those efforts have not uncovered evidence warranting a name change.”

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-science/nasa-wont-rename-james-webb-telescope-and-astronomers-are-angry/article#ixzz78JjEmQli

Rudy Giuliani admits under oath that he got some of his 'evidence' of alleged election fraud from Facebook


Rudy Giuliani. Jacquelyn Martin/AP


Rudy Giuliani has been sued by former Dominion employee Eric Coomer for promoting election fraud conspiracy theories.

Giuliani admitted under oath that he did not verify the claims about Coomer before naming him in a press conference.

In the deposition, Giuliani said some of his evidence was based on Coomer's Facebook posts.

Rudy Giuliani admitted under oath that his "evidence" of voter fraud in the 2020 election came partly from Facebook and that he did not interview or fact-check his sources, reports say.

Donald Trump's former personal lawyer made the comments in a deposition on August 14 in relation to a defamation lawsuit brought by a former Dominion Voting Systems employee, Eric Coomer, MSNBC reported.

Coomer is suing the Trump campaign and others for promoting baseless conspiracy theories that he helped "rig" the election for Joe Biden.

In the deposition, Giuliani admitted that he got some of his information about Coomer's alleged role in the election fraud from his social media posts but couldn't be sure if it was Facebook or another platform, MSNBC said.

"Those social media posts get all one to me," Giuliani said.

When questioned about whether he saw any other evidence linking Coomer with election fraud, he responded, "Right now, I can't recall anything else that I laid eyes on."

The conspiracy theories about Coomer were sparked by accusations made by right-wing podcast host Joe Oltmann.

Oltmann claimed to have infiltrated an Antifa conference call in which someone who identified themselves as "Eric from Dominion" boasted about preventing Trump from winning the election, The New York Times reported. Oltmann offered no proof of his claims.

The podcast host then found Eric Coomer's Facebook profile, on which he supposedly had written anti-Trump messages.

Giuliani and other Trump allies seized upon Oltmann's allegations, repeating them in a now-infamous November 19 press conference.

" One of the Smartmatic patent holders, Eric Coomer, I believe his name is, is on the web as being recorded in a conversation with ANTIFA members saying that he had the election rigged for Mr. Biden," Giuliani said.

But according to court papers filed by Coomer's lawyers, Giuliani spent "virtually no time" investigating the claims.

The filings said that Giuliani did not speak to Oltmann about the claims and did not reach out to Coomer or Dominion about them.

Giuliani said he was too busy when asked why he repeated Oltmann's accusations without verifying them.

"It's not my job in a fast-moving case to go out and investigate every piece of evidence that's given to me," Giuliani said in the deposition, reported by MSNBC.

"Why wouldn't I believe him? I would have to have been a terrible lawyer… gee, let's go find out it's untrue. I didn't have the time to do that."

After being named by Giuliani and lawyer Sidney Powell in the November press conference, Coomer briefly had to go into hiding.

Trump and his allies have continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

The Justice Department has said it found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election, and dozens of lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 election have failed.

Read the original article on Business Insider

'Terrifying' Texas Abortion Law Mobilizes 'Vigilantes' To Shred Rights: DOJ Attorney

Mary Papenfuss
Fri, October 1, 2021

An attorney for the Department of Justice on Friday slammed the “terrifying” and “subversive” new Texas abortion law for empowering “vigilante bounty hunters” to shred women’s constitutional rights.

Such an enforcement “ploy,” designed to dodge judicial review, is an “open threat to the rule of law,” attorney Brian Netter argued in the first federal court hearing involving the law in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. He accused the state of launching “an unprecedented attack on the supremacy of the federal government.”

The three-hour virtual hearing was held to consider a request by the Justice Department to block the law, which has been in effect for a month and is the most restrictive in the nation.

The law bars abortions after six weeks, before most women even know they’re pregnant. Enforcement is through citizen vigilantes, who can win $10,000 in civil damages if they successfully sue anyone who “aids and abets” an abortion — from a doctor to a driver.

District Judge Robert Pitman appeared to agree with Netter that the vigilante enforcement mechanism was a strategy designed to shield the Texas government from a legal challenge. He questioned why Texas went “to such great lengths” to create what he characterized as an unusual law aimed at hindering judicial review. “That’s what the whole statute was designed to do,” Pitman said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Attorney Will Thompson, representing Texas, claimed there was nothing unprecedented about a state empowering private individuals to enforce a state law in state courts, Law & Crime reported.

He also underscored the ploy by telling the judge that it’s not possible to issue an injunction because there’s no one (such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott) whom the court could prohibit from enforcing the law — because no one in government is responsible for enforcing the law.

The judge didn’t seem entirely convinced, the Journal noted, and he asked several questions concerning a possible injunction. Pitman didn’t say when he would issue a ruling.

Netter argued that vigilantes trying to enforce the law were “state actors” proceeding at the behest of the state government and that the state was still accountable.

He warned that if vigilantes are empowered to enforce other questionable laws, a citizen in the future could hypothetically be empowered to sue someone for $1 million for criticizing a president — even though it would violate First Amendment rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court last month voted not to immediately block the controversial anti-abortion law. Countless women have already traveled long distances outside the state to obtain abortions.

The Justice Department filed its lawsuit Sept. 9, arguing that Texas had adopted a near-ban on abortion in open defiance of the Constitution.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Giant Milky Way Void Could Be Result of Ancient Supernovae

Matthew Hart
Thu, September 30, 2021,

As astronomers continue to scan the Milky Way for answers to cosmic questions, the galaxy’s strangeness continues to unfold. Our home galaxy, for example, hosts everything from “yellow ball” star clusters to “snow clouds” consisting of oxygen. Now, new research reveals a giant void or “cavity” in the Milky Way. And it may be the gaping result of ancient stars exploding ten million years ago.

A visualization of the Milky Way galaxy with a slice containing a "cavity" or space void magnified.
Alyssa Goodman/Center for Astrophysics

SYFY WIRE reported on the recently announced Milky Way void. Although it may evoke the idea of a black hole, this cavity is actually a sphere (or “bubble”) of empty space. The cavity, as the astronomers outlined in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, spans approximately 500 light-years across. And molecular clouds—which provide the material for nascent star formation—surround the region.

“Hundreds of stars are forming or exist already at the surface of this giant bubble,” Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Astrophysics and study lead, said in a press release. “We have two theories—either one supernova went off at the core of this bubble and pushed gas outward forming what we now call the ‘Perseus-Taurus Supershell,’ or a series of supernovae occurring over millions of years created it over time,” Bialy added.



Bialy and his colleagues were able to spot the space void thanks to their analyzing a 3D map of the Supershell. Researchers made the map using a space-based observatory. It represents the first instance of a map of this kind in three dimensions. In the video above, we get a look at the 3D map of the Supershell and its molecular clouds. This video also demonstrates how people can use their phones to look at an augmented-reality version of the Supershell. (You can grab the QR codes for that here.)

“There are many different theories for how gas rearranges itself to form stars,” Catherine Zucker, the lead creator of the 3D map, said in the press release. “Astronomers have tested these theoretical ideas using simulations in the past, but this is the first time we can use real—not simulated—3D views to compare theory to observation, and evaluate which theories work best.”

A 3D visualization of a spherical "cavity" within the Milky Way Galaxy.
Jasen Lux Chambers / Center for Astrophysics

The findings ultimately suggest that the molecular clouds that make up the Perseus-Taurus Supershell are not independent. On the contrary, a single shockwave from a supernova—i.e. an exploding star—likely formed both together. “This demonstrates that when a star dies, its supernova generates a chain of events that may ultimately lead to the birth of new stars,” Bialy added. Which, again, is just one of the many cosmic events occurring throughout the Milky Way all the time.

The post Giant Milky Way Void Could Be Result of Ancient Supernovae appeared first on Nerdist.

Shipwrecks of World War I are a seabed museum in Turkey

Yesim Dikmen and Mehmet Emin Caliskan
Sat, October 2, 2021, 12:21 PM


SEDDULBAHIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkey's newest park is an underwater museum of fourteen shipwrecks that lie beneath the waves of the Dardanelles Strait, a glimpse into the fierce battles between Ottoman and Allied forces in World War I.

Turkish photographer Savas Karakas was one of the first to board a motor boat and then dive to the seabed grave when the park opened on Saturday. There, he says, he was able to reconnect with his grandfather who fought in the Gallipoli campaign of 1915.


"My grandfather's hands were disfigured and burned in action, and I was always scared of them," said Karakas, who lives in Istanbul and whose given name means "war", after the battle.

"But when I come to Gallipoli and dive, the rusted metal and steel of the wrecks reminds me of my grandfather's hands and I hold his hand under the water."

The Gallipoli Historic Underwater Park opened 106 years after Ottoman and allied German forces halted an invasion by British, French, Australian and New Zealand troops.

The Ottoman resistance remains a point of deep pride in modern Turkey. At the time, it thwarted the Allies' plan to control the straits connecting the Aegean to the Black Sea, where their Russian naval allies were penned in.

Heavy British losses included the 120-meter HMS Majestic battleship, which is the first stop for divers at a depth of 24 meters off the coast of Seddulbahir.

It and other vessels are largely intact on the sea floor.

"We are a fortunate generation because we ... can still visit those monuments," said Ali Ethem Keskin, another underwater photographer from Istanbul.

"When I started diving ... I felt the moment that they were sunk, and I felt the stress of war," he said. "I sensed the panic they felt at that moment."

(Writing by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Christina Fincher)

Shipwrecks of World War I are a seabed museum in Turkey

Gallipoli Historical Underwater Park Exhibition in Seddulbahir

GREEN CAPITALI$M

Al Gore puts $600M into UK Green energy-tech startup Octopus Energy Group



Mike Butcher
Fri, October 1, 2021

Former Vice President Al Gore has invested $600 million of equity into U.K. energy startup Octopus Energy Group via his Generation Investment Management vehicle, taking a stake of approximately 13% in the business. The investment means Octopus has attained a valuation of around $4.6 billion.

Octopus has made a name for itself in energy circles largely because of its "Kraken" technology platform, which it claims is able to reroute energy from renewable sources around a network far more efficiently than competitors. Octopus is now managing 17 million energy accounts in 12 countries in this manner.

Generation is a $36 billion fund management business with a specific remit to back sustainable businesses. Octopus will use the proceeds of Generation’s strategic investment to push further into the U.S. market, where it already has a toe-hold in Texas.

The Generation investment follows an earlier equity investment from Origin Energy, Tokyo Gas and the acquisition of Upside Energy, specialists in smart grid technology. Octopus’s retail businesses are now in the U.K., U.S., Germany, Spain and New Zealand, plus it has licensing agreements with Good Energy, Hanwha Corporation, Origin Energy, Power and E.ON.

AI-driven energy startup Octopus hits $2B mark after $200M investment from Tokyo Gas

Octopus has also earlier launched Electric Juice, an electric vehicle "roaming network" of 100,000 charge points across Europe that allows users to charge their personal Octopus Energy account when they charge their EVs. It’s also partnered with Tesla to launch Tesla Power in the U.K. and Germany.

Speaking for Octopus Energy, founder and CEO, Greg Jackson said: “Whilst the U.K. energy market is currently in a tough state, it’s highlighted the need for investment in renewables and technologies to end our reliance on fossil fuels. So we are delighted to announce our agreement with Generation Investment Management, created to back sustainable companies changing the world for the better.”

"We run 300 stress tests, twice a week. For us, as a tech company, it’s just algorithmic. For rival companies, they're … doing it on spreadsheets.”

Speaking for Generation Investment Management, Tom Hodges, partner in the long-term equity strategy, said: “Octopus Energy has an extraordinarily good fit with Generation’s mission of investing over the long term to support system and climate-positive companies. The world is at the early stages of an unprecedented energy transition which is essential to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement. This can be done in a way that is better for the environment and consumers.”

In an interview via Zoom, Jackson told me that there are two parts to the current global energy crisis: “One is the energy wholesale price crisis. Global gas prices have trebled or quadrupled in the last year. That's not only causing gas to be expensive but because a lot of electricity comes from gas it’s pushing up electricity prices. I think this is really revealing the extent to which companies have been selling long and buying short. So companies that are currently folding are larger ones which had sold a one-year contract, but only bought six months worth of energy and they were keeping their fingers crossed for the rest of it.”

He said Octopus has “always been 100% hedged. For us, energy retail is just one of our businesses. And we've got 13 businesses in the group. What we've always sought to do is serve an outstanding service and a really, really risk-managed back end. We run 300 stress tests, twice a week on our hedging position. For us, as a tech company, it’s just algorithmic. For rival companies, they're either not doing that or they are doing it on spreadsheets and it just doesn’t work.”

“The reality is this crisis is entirely a fossil-fuel crisis. And if we'd been using renewables as a primary source and then gas as a backup we wouldn't be in this situation,” he added.

He said Octopus is an owner-operator of wind, solar and biomass renewable energy sources, with £3.5 billion in generation assets and plans to 10x that over the next 10 years.

The generation deal consists of a $300 million immediate investment, with $300 million to follow by June 2022, subject to certain further funding conditions.

Octopus has also established the Centre for Net Zero, an independent London-based research facility that is taking the fight against climate change to the government level and also invested £10 million into an R&D and Training Centre for Decarbonisation of Heat.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
Binance Hires Ex-U.S. Agent Who Led Probes on Silk Road, Mt. Gox


Joanna Ossinger
Thu, September 30, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, hired a former U.S. Internal Revenue Service special agent who worked on some of the digital-asset world’s most high-profile investigations.

Tigran Gambaryan -- who led several multibillion-dollar cyber-investigations at IRS including on the Silk Road website and the Mt. Gox hack -- joins Binance as vice president of global intelligence and investigations, according to a statement. Another former IRS special agent, Matthew Price, is coming on board as senior director of investigations, Binance said.

Binance is bolstering its ranks as it says it’s focusing strongly on compliance and working with regulators around the globe. The exchange expanded quickly in an environment with few rules, and the cryptocurrency market’s rapid growth has drawn attention from officials who haven’t always liked what they’ve seen. Binance alone has faced a slew of probes and consumer warnings in recent months from regulators in countries including the U.S., U.K., Thailand, Singapore and Japan.

“The Binance investigations team now includes the top investigators in the world,” Binance Chief Executive Officer Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said in the statement. “This level of experience will make Binance a leader in compliance, enhancing trust in Binance and the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole.”

Gambaryan, in his decade at the IRS-Criminal Investigations Cyber Crimes Unit, investigated cases involving national security, terrorism financing, identity theft, distribution of child pornography, tax evasion and bank secrecy act violations.

“I led some of the most significant cyber and cryptocurrency investigations in history, including the Silk Road, BTC-e bitcoin exchange and the Mt. Gox hack,” he said in an email. “I look forward to bringing this experience to Binance’s investigations team and cementing Binance’s position as an industry leader in compliance and investigations.”

Price led international cyber-investigations at the IRS targeting bad actors who sought to exploit cryptocurrency for illicit purposes. Those included Helix, the first investigation and successful prosecution of an illicit Bitcoin tumbling service operating on the darknet.

“Compliance is the first line of defense,” Gambaryan said in the statement. “Our goal is to increase trust in cryptocurrency by establishing Binance as the leading contributor in the fight against human trafficking, ransomware and terrorism financing.”

Judge declines to drop lawsuit against Trump for using ‘Electric Avenue’

Dustin Seibert
Thu, September 30, 2021,

The former president used Eddy Grant’s song in his failed 2020 re-election campaign

A New York federal judge on Tuesday declined to dismiss a lawsuit from musician Eddy Grant against former President Donald Trump over the use of his music during Trump’s failed re-election campaign.

Trump used Grant’s song “Electric Avenue” in a video he posted to Twitter on Aug. 12, 2020. Following Grant’s copyright claim, Twitter removed the video. The social media site has also since banned Trump, theGrio previously reported.

(Credit: Getty Images)


Grant filed suit in New York last September, alleging copyright infringement. The animated video featured a train with Trump’s campaign logo followed by a small handcar operated by his then-opponent, President Joe Biden, with “Electric Avenue” playing in the background. Trump argued that the copyright was fair use.

“The purpose of the Animation is not to disseminate the Song or to supplant sales of the original Song,” stated a motion to dismiss, The Hill reported. “Here, a reasonable observer would perceive that the Animation uses the Song for a comedic, political purpose — a different and transformed purpose from that of the original Song.”

U.S. District Judge John Koetl issued the order stating that Trump failed to argue that the song, which played over most of the video, was fair use.

“A reasonable observer would perceive that the Animation uses the Song for a comedic, political purpose — a different and transformed purpose from that of the original Song,” the motion reads. “Moreover, in light of the obvious comedic or satirical nature of the Animation, a reasonable observer would regard the Animation as criticism or commentary.”

Grant isn’t the only music artist to oppose Trump’s use of their music – that list includes rock legend Neil Young, John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater fame, and The Rolling Stones, who took legal action to prevent Trump from using their 1969 hit “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

Also, the failure to dismiss wasn’t the only recent courtroom loss for Trump: His former mentee Omarosa Manigault Newman triumphed in arbitration after Trump attempted to enforce a non-disclosure agreement against her following the 2018 release of her book Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House. Manigault Newman — who served as assistant to the president and director of communications for the White House Public Liaison Office in early 2017 after being a contestant on Trump’s on his reality TV show, The Apprentice — expressed her joy at the ruling.

“Clearly, I am very happy with this ruling,” she wrote. “Donald has used this type of vexatious litigation to intimidate, harass and bully for years! Finally, the bully has met his match!”

  

‘A Total Clusterf—‘: Oval Office Speech That Sparked Covid Airport Panic All Ivanka’s Idea, New Book Claims

Tessa Stuart
Fri, October 1, 2021

Donald Trump - Credit: Seth Wenig/AP Images

On March 11th, 2020, as new cases of coronavirus were popping up around the United States at an alarming rate, the president, seeking to reassure Americans that everything was under control, delivered a primetime address from the Oval Office. “To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days,” Donald Trump said.

His words instantly sparked a panic around the world. Americans in Europe rushed to airports, worried they would be shut out if they didn’t return home immediately. And that rush would later fuel the outbreak stateside: epidemiologists would later assert that the U.S. outbreak was driven, overwhelmingly, by the European strain — not the Chinese.

A new memoir from the Trump White House’s communications director offers a backstory to that disastrous presidential address. The whole thing was Ivanka Trump’s idea, Stephanie Grisham writes in I’ll Take Your Questions Now. An excerpt of the book, which goes on sale next week, was published by Politico on Friday morning.

Grisham, who describes the Trump White House as “a clown car on fire running at full speed into a warehouse full of fireworks,” served as Melania Trump’s press secretary and later her chief of staff. In between, she worked as the White House’s communications director, a position she likened to “sitting in a beautiful office while a sprinkler system pours water down on you every second and ruins everything on your desk.”

The Oval Office address, Grisham writes, was “a total clusterf— from start to finish because Ivanka and her crew wanted her father to be on TV.”

She recounts that the morning of March 11th started with a Coronavirus Task Force meeting, featuring Covid experts like Robert Redfield, Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, and administration figures like Vice President Mike Pence and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin arguing over whether or not to close the border to Europe.

“After about an hour of going around in circles,” Grisham says, “The president told us all to go to the Cabinet Room and ‘figure out what to do.’”

There, Grisham writes, “Ivanka was also doing her ‘my father’ wants this and ‘my father’ thinks that routine, making it impossible for staff members to argue a contrary view. At some point I think Birx decided she’d ridden on the crazy train long enough and excused herself to get back to work. I used that opportunity to leave as well.

“I instructed one of my deputies to call the networks to reserve airtime for that evening — which no one else had even thought to do. Katie Miller, an aide to the vice president, was married to speechwriter Stephen Miller. So she went into Stephen’s office and sat there while Jared Kushner frantically dictated the address to Stephen, who wrote something out. Katie did her best to keep us looped in, sending me updates as she knew them.”

It’s worth noting that, as White House communications director during Trump’s disastrous Oval Office speech, Grisham has obvious motivations for publicly placing the blame for one of the biggest communications blunders of her tenure on someone else. (She writes, “One of my other biggest personal regrets is that I didn’t have the courage to speak out against Jared, Ivanka and Hope [Hicks] about the potential dangers of addressing the nation without any Covid response strategy in place, and what a disservice it could be to the country and the president.”)

But Grisham’s account is still entertaining, if only for the metaphors she uses to describe her time in Trump’s inner circle (like “​​living in a house that was always on fire, or in an insane asylum where you couldn’t tell the difference between the patients and the attendants, or on a roller coaster that never stopped”) and for the brief glimpses into the former president’s inner world.

She writes, for example, that once when she and Trump were sitting on Air Force One, he turned to her, and commented, seemingly unprompted: “Trudeau’s mom. She fucked all of the Rolling Stones.’ (In fact, Margaret Trudeau denied having affairs with any members of the Rolling Stones, but later said, ‘I should have slept with every single one of them.’)”

Grisham also shared that, during her time as communications director, a teenager challenged the president to go vegan for one month in exchange for a $1 million donation to veterans groups. Trump refused, she said, explaining “It messes with your body chemistry, your brain.” Before adding: “And if I lose even one brain cell, we’re fucked.”

An activist who helped organize the search for missing Tennessee woman Desheena Kyle said the attention Gabby Petito's case drew was both a blessing and a 'slap in the face'

Kenneth Niemeyer

Fri, October 1, 2021

Desheena Kyle poses for a photo. WBIR

• The body of Desheena Kyle, a Knoxville, Tennessee, woman who'd been missing for three months, was identified Thursday.

• An activist who helped lead the search for Kyle told Insider that coverage of the Gabby Petito case initially felt like a "slap in the face."

• But Petito's case also helped the search efforts because it provided an example of how a police investigation is "supposed to go," the activist said.

The outsized national attention Gabby Petito's disappearance drew was both insulting and a blessing for a Knoxville, Tennessee, activist who helped organize the search for Desheena Kyle, a woman who'd been missing for three months.

"When we saw that happen it was just like, 'well damn,'" Fahd Wali, who leads a community organization called Protect Our People, told Insider. "It was just like a slap in the face really."

Kyle's grandmother reported her missing on June 28, and the 26-year-old was last seen at her apartment in Knoxville ten days earlier. Community members came together for weeks to search for Kyle until police recovered her body on Tuesday. The manner of death has been ruled a homicide.

Kyle's boyfriend, Joshua Bassett, had been named a person of interest in her disappearance and the Knoxville Police Department told Insider that Bassett is now a person of interest in her death. Bassett is currently in jail facing unrelated probation violation, gun and drug charges, according to police.

Wali said Protect Our People, which is meant to stand in the gaps between the Black community in Knoxville and police, organizes children's programs, gun safety training, and employment assistance. So when Kyle went missing this summer, Protect Our People naturally stepped up to lead the search for her.

Kyle's family had tried to get the word out about her disappearance for months with little success, so Petito's case initially frustrated them and Wali.

"We reached out to the TV station and we got some news coverage on it but you know how it goes," he said. "The light is on for a second, but then they say you know, 'Here comes some more news,' and it's out of the way."

News organizations around the country reported on Petito's disappearance, sparking a national conversation around "Missing White Woman Syndrome." Petito's own father called for more media coverage of other missing persons cases and implored the public to take an interest in solving them.

But Wali said that Petito's disappearance also helped the search for Kyle, because it provided an example of how a police investigation was "supposed to go." In the months after Kyle's disappearance, the community's perception of the Knoxville Police Department's efforts to find her was not good, according to Wali.

"I just know what we see on national TV," he said. "As far as when somebody goes missing, you put a search party out and the community and the family is notified, and that hadn't happened here."

Knoxville police spokesman Scott Erland told Insider the department devoted "hundreds of hours" to the Kyle case before community interest increased. The department spent much of its time searching for Kyle, compiling evidence, and interviewing people for information about the case, he said.

"All that being said, we understand the community's frustration and recognize that the vast majority of the work that we have done on the case has gone unseen," Erland said.

Wali said when he saw how much attention Petito's case was getting, he put out a message on Facebook asking for people to help search for Kyle and got an overwhelming response.

"It just took off bigger than we expected," Wali said.

In his telling, the Knoxville Police Department intensified their search only after the community efforts led by Protect our People ramped up.

"All we wanted to do was put light on it so they could move on it," Wali said.

"We hope with this in the future - and God willing it will never happen again - but if anybody in our community goes missing, Black or white, rich or poor, that they'll get out there and do what they're supposed to do," he added.

Read the original article on Insider

#MMIW

‘If we don’t have blonde hair we don’t get on the news’: Indigenous women say the media not Gabby Petito is to blame for ‘epidemic of violence’ being ignored

Andrew Buncombe
Fri, October 1, 2021

Ashley Loring HeavyRunner was just 20 when she disappeared in 2017 (Loring family photograph)

When Nicole Wagon’s daughter went missing, she did not get a call to appear on Good Morning America.

It was not as though the disappearance of Jade Wagon, who laughed and smiled, was not newsworthy: the 23-year-old mother had vanished without trace, precisely a year after one of her sisters, Jocelyn, 30, had been murdered at home.

And so, in Nicole Wagon was embodied the spectacle of a distraught mother, still grieving the loss of one of her children, while organising the search for another.


Yet, it was a story that nobody really wanted to tell.

“When Jade disappeared, no-one from the media called me. And we mainly organised the search among ourselves, using Facebook, and just going out looking,” Wagon tells The Independent.

“It was only after Jade’s body was found two weeks later, that one of the papers got in touch.”

Lynnette Grey Bull ran for Congress to draw awareness to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) 

Last month, when Gabby Petito was reported missing, and said to have last been alive in Wyoming Grand Teton’s National Park, about 150 miles west of Wagon’s home on the Wind River Reservation, her emotions soared in different ways.

On one hand, she felt for Petito’s family, and understood, at least to some degree, how the young woman’s mother must have felt when she had to register her daughter as missing.

But she could also not help but feel pain and anger, over the wall-to-wall media coverage the case of the missing white YouTuber received, in stark contrast to the interest – or lack thereof – the press paid to the plight of her own child.

Wagon, 51, is one of a number of indigenous campaigners who have denounced what they allege is a systemic discrimination that results in both the police and the media dedicating a fraction of the resources to cases of women of colour who go missing, compared to cases of missing white women.

The stark imbalance, something that was was termed “missing white woman syndrome” by the late Black broadcaster Gwen Ifill in 2004, is all the more confounding, say activists, because women of colour suffer violence, and go missing, at a far higher rate than white woman.

Among women of colour, data suggests that Native American or indigenous women, disappear or suffer violence the most. In Wyoming alone, at least 710 Native Americans went missing between 2011 to 2020, according to a report put out by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Task Force, established in 2019.

It found that 85 per cent of those reported missing were children or young people, and that 57 per cent were female. It found that even though Native Americans account for less than three per cent of the state’s population, they made up 21 per cent of homicide victims.

It also calculated the murder rate for indigenous people was eight times higher than for white people, and six times higher for indigenous women, compared to white women.

Yet, this crisis of murdered and missing indigenous women (MMIW), is not confined to Wyoming. Across the United States, campaigners say Native Americans are killed at disproportionate rates and receive little media coverage.

Some go as far as to say this is a crisis confronted by indigenous communities around the word.

Lynnette Grey-Bull, a member of the Wyoming taskforce, describes the crisis as nothing less than “an epidemic”.

Grey-Bull, a member of the Northern Arapaho tribe who last year challenged Liz Cheney for Wyoming’s single at-large congressional seat in order to raise awareness about the violence, says data shows less than 20 per cent of cases of missing indigenous women over the past decade received any media coverage.

“I think this is an epidemic, because we make up two per cent of of the population, and yet three out of four indigenous women suffer some sort of violence during their lifetime,” says Grey Bull, who is Hunkpapa Lakota and Northern Arapaho and who heads an organisation called Not Our Native Daughters.

“Then, when you consider that 70 per of the violence is carried out by non-Natives, it means that everyone has a role to play in what is happening to our communities.”

Does she think this is case of straight up racism?

“One of the reasons I would offer up would be systemic racism,” she says. “As native people, we already know we come up against racism on a daily basis, and also a sense of not being important. We understand that if we don’t have blonde hair, or blue eyes, we don’t get to make it on the six o’clock news or front page of the morning edition. These things don’t happen for us.”

Jade Wagon went missing on the Wind River Reservation a year after her sister was murdered (Nicole Wagon)

Grey-Bull says that investigators understand the first 24 or 48 hours in missing persons case are vital. And because the Petito case received such huge coverage, it resulted in large members of the public coming in with tips, or posting them on social media such as Tik-Tok.

When Wyoming’s governor, Republican Mark Gordon, established the taskforce two years ago, he appeared to recognise in part the scale of the crisis.

“I believe it is imperative to ensure the public safety of all Wyoming citizens,” he said. “The Wind River Reservation operates under a separate criminal justice jurisdictional scheme – but Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribal members are also citizens of Wyoming.”

The governor’s office said Gordon did not have time for an interview.

However, Cara Chambers, chair of the task force and director of the Wyoming’s division of victim services, says the media had the capacity to cover cases such as those of Petito, as well as the vast number of cases of missing ingenious women.

At the same time, she is not surprised by the way the media responded to the case of Petito. The study her taskforce published earlier this year, highlighted that even when cases of indigenous women did receive media coverage, it often included language and details that almost amount to victim blaming.

“Was I surprised by the amount of coverage Gabby Petito got? No, I was not,” she says. “Because, we know this is what the media does. She’s a beautiful young woman … And the amount of media attention did help us to recover her body very quickly.”

She adds: “What I have been pleasantly surprised by is this pivot, with people saying ‘Hey, we seem to pay a lot of attention when blonde, blue-eyed young women go missing, but why not when there are brown-haired, brown eyed indigenous people who go missing’. That’s a pleasant surprise for someone who leads this task force.”

Ashley Heavyrunner Loring went missing in the summer of 2017. Her older sister, Kimberly Loring, was on holiday in Morocco when she last communicated by text with her.

She was not unduly worried when she returned to home to north-west Montana, where her sister, aged 20, was about to start college. She reported her sister as missing, but found the police had little interest.

Loring, 27, says that like many other indigenous women who turn to the police for help, was told her sister was probably “partying” and would eventually come home.

She says the authorities have been smearing victims in this way for generations, even in the cases of children who disappear.

So, like with the case of Nicole Wagon in Wyoming, Loring went about the task of trying to locate her sister, a member of the Blackfeet tribe.

“I think she ran into the wrong group of people,” she says from her current home in Portland, Oregon, saying her younger sister had always been very trusting.

Does she still believe her sister is alive?

“That is such a difficult question for me to answer. Recently, some information we’ve received suggests the best we can hope for is to bring her [remains] home…But you always keep hoping.”

She also wishes her sister’s case had received the same coverage as that of Gabby Petito.

“We need to tell everybody’s stories, not just one type of person or group or race.”

As it is, the case of her sister is featured in the current season of true crime podcast, Up and Vanished, hosted by documentary maker, Payne Lindsey, who has been investigating the case. Loring says he is “doing a lot more than the police are doing”.

Lindsey says he is struck by the web of bureaucracy confronting indigenous communities when such incidents happen – overlapping jurisdictions, different forces.

He says he believes the police forces of indigenous communities should be better funded so they are better able to serve their communities.

Nicole Wagon, who now makes protecting her three other daughters her first priority, says she cannot help but conclude that racism plays a key part in the different responses when Petito went missing, compared to that of her own child, Jade, someone who was always “laughing and giggling look at the brighter things of life”, disappeared.

She is trying to seize on the publicity created by the Petito case to draw attention to the crisis in Wyoming, and the pain endured by families such as hers.

“It’s a blessing in disguise because it has shed light on the state of Wyoming, and allowed the 710 indigenous voices be heard now,” she says.

“These are human beings, my daughters had lives. And nobody ever has the right to take anybody’s life in any way, shape or form. And my daughters are just not numbers. They’re not a statistic.”