Fears of arbitrary arrests in El Salvador

Jun 2, 2022

Non-governmental organizations in El Salvador have documented at least 50 cases of arbitrary detentions by security forces combating powerful gangs for months.

Pakistani women face harassment at workplace



Islamabad [Pakistan], June 3 (ANI): Over 70 per cent women are victims of harassment at the workplace in Pakistan and there seems to be no end to their plight.

Recently, an order has been issued by the federal ombudsman who has imposed a penalty on the former ambassador of Pakistan to Italy, Nadeem Riaz, who has been found sexually harassing the trade officer.
The reports have shown that the ombudsman has charged him with a heavy fine on the complaint of the trade officer who said that Nadeem Riaz had sexually harassed her, according to the Pakistani newspaper Daily Times.

Reports say that women who are working in offices in Pakistan with male colleagues and at places where the male ratio is significantly high, find inconvenience in their mobility around and at the workplace.

Citing official reports, Daily Times reported that more than 70 per cent of women are harassed at their workplaces every day. Many women have abandoned the idea of being a working woman owing to the lack of security and improper working conditions at the workplace and those who are forced to earn to support their families often remain silent as they cannot give up their job, nor do they complain about it due to fear of losing their employment.

Sara, a 25-year-old banker, said the practice prevalent in the workplace puts women in jeopardy.

“Harassment exists and we cannot ignore that. But we have to remain silent, otherwise, our fathers and brothers wouldn’t let us continue working, and we cannot afford that,” she said as quoted by the media outlet.

A report was produced on the “Sexual Harassment at workplace in Pakistan” after analyzing the experience of various women who were asked about their working environment at the workplace.

Most women are also found switching their jobs in order to avoid such a toxic environment.

Data collected by White Ribbon Pakistan, an NGO working for women’s rights, shows that 4,734 women faced sexual violence between 2004 and 2016. Lately, the government of Pakistan has passed the “Protection against Harassment at the Workplace (Amendment Bill), 2022 and has amended the weaker provisions of the 2010 law.

Pakistan observes an increased ratio of overall working women in recent years but the country is grappling with the issue of psychological, physical and sexual harassment of women that impedes their safe mobility and prevents them from stepping outside to work.

(ANI)

App lets women in Gaza anonymously report abuse

This app allows women in the Gaza Strip to report domestic abuse anonymously, allowing victims to seek help while avoiding the shame and reprisals that put many off of going to the authorities directly.

American Federation of Teachers demands gun reform | ABCNL

JUNE 2, 2022

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, discusses gun control in America after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

Veterans

They are the good guys with guns. After another mass shooting, veterans want change.

By Kelly Kennedy, Michael de Yoanna and Sonner Kehrt, The War Horse
Jun 2, 2022

Petty Officer 2nd Class Zach Bernat, an aviation ordnanceman, demonstrates proper handling and safety procedures of the M240B machine gun before sailors qualify to operate the weapon during a gun shoot in 2010. (Petty Officer 1st Class Rebekah Adler/Navy)


Editors Note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter.

When Kyle Bibby reported in to the Naval Academy, he had never fired a gun. But he learned to shoot a pistol. Then a rifle. He learned safety measures and effective training. Eventually, he taught pistol to other midshipmen. When he graduated and was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps, he says, “Pistols, rifles, machine guns, rockets — that was my life.”


Then he became a civilian.

“I am a gun owner, myself,” Bibby says. “And I just remember constantly feeling like, Oh, that’s it? I just show up, and you just hand it to me. There’s no safety manual. There’s no, ‘Hey, I recommend you do this. Hey, do you got a safe place to lock it?’

2nd Lt. Kyle W. Bibby, 3rd platoon commander for Company B, Battalion Landing Team 1/1, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, gives instruction on the fundamentals of infantry patrolling to members of the Qatari Amiri Land Forces, March 29, 2009, in Qatar. 

(Gunnery Sgt. Matthew Holly/Marine Corps)

“Nope. Just, ‘Here’s this thing that can kill you or anyone else.’”

After yet another school shooting — one that, even as people grieved, caused the usual forays against politicizing tragedy or offering “thoughts and prayers” rather than solutions — veterans continue to speak up, on social media, in organizations they have formed, and in the media.

Some veterans are tired of being seen as homogenous, decked in T-shirts that feature big guns, voting based purely on the idea that you will take their weaponry only from cold, inflexible fingers.

Veterans have issues of their own with guns, violence, and suicide. They also know veterans are “just people” — often “just people” who haven’t trained on a weapon in decades — rather than heroes simply waiting for the Bat-Signal so they can instantly appear in schoolyards across the United States.

They want to help swing the argument back to a conversation about practical solutions, to a place where people can listen to each other and pay attention to the wants and needs of the majority rather than those who use service members and veterans to push a single-note story. They want to help a grieving nation understand that they, too, are diverse in their ideas, backgrounds, and opinions, but they take pride in their ability to work together.

They’re ready to be the good guys with guns, but maybe those guns are kept in a locked box in the garage. Or maybe the good guys with guns are required to train at the range every year to keep their weapons. Or maybe they have to go through a background check to buy them.

“The veteran space is a really interesting space to talk about gun control, because amongst veterans, just like most issues, there’s a lot of different opinions,” Bibby says. But, “we know what it’s like to hand an 18-year-old who has very little life experiences a very deadly weapon.”

There have been 27 school shootings so far this year, a number that seems to need daily updating. And there have been 119 since 2018, according to Education Weekly. Gun violence has risen in general: For the first time, children died more often from guns than in car accidents in 2020, The Washington Post reports. Kids have higher access to guns, too, and that increase has led to higher rates of suicide, according to the Society for Research in Child Development.

In May, a gunman shot into a crowd at a music festival in Oklahoma, killing one and injuring seven. There were no doors to defend, to lock. Six people were shot in downtown Chattanooga, with the mayor calling them “kids”: teenagers with access to guns. In Buffalo, a man killed 10 people at a grocery store because they were Black.

The veterans say the conversations can’t keep ending in a stalemate, and the solutions — or the beginnings of them — might be right there for everybody to see.

Recruits with Echo Company, 2nd Recruit Training Battalion, fire their rifles on Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., Sept. 17, 2019. For one week, recruits must learn and practice the fundamentals of marksmanship before shooting live ammunition on range week. 

(Lance Cpl. Ryan Hageali/Marine Corps)

“As an individual soldier, I’ve gone through robust training, and as a company commander, when I oversaw soldiers, we have a training program for them to ensure range safety and firearm safety, as well,” says Anthony Joyce-Rivera, who serves as a major in the U.S. Army but spoke on his own behalf and not for the U.S. government. “And on military installations, there is no — I do not carry a firearm, I’m not allowed to carry a firearm. If I owned a weapon — full disclosure, I do not own a personal firearm — but if I did, the post requires you to have it registered with the provost marshal, and it has to be under two-lock security at all times in the home.”

He has never heard anyone complain about the policy, he says. But as a father of three young boys, and as the spouse of a woman who earned a degree because she plans to be a school teacher, he’s troubled by the lack of action around the issue.

He thought a lot about the shooting in Texas.

“All the things that were in place,” he says. “The police were, theoretically, at the scene at the time of the shooter showing up, so this ‘good guys with guns’ — they were there. Did they do anything in time? The gap to respond was frustrating; seeing the parents in the videos pleading for people to go in and do something, and being restrained, is very troubling and hard to see. Because I can empathize if that were my child in that school and I was a parent outside. …”

‘We have very strict regulations’

“Gun control” isn’t a foreign concept for service members.

“In the military, we have very strict regulations over safe weapons handling and storage of weapons,” says former Marine Joe Plenzler, an avid shooter since childhood who competes and likes to shoot at ranges. “For instance, on base, all weapons are stored in the base armory. They are prohibited from being stored in on-base residential areas.”

Plenzler also serves on the Veterans Advisory Council for Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that advocates for gun safety reforms.

The military requires extensive weapons training before anyone’s even allowed on the range: They talk about how to handle weapons. They use weapons simulators. They talk about range procedures.

After a patrol, Pfc. Estaban Fernando, performs weapon clearing procedures for his M4 carbine at Joint Security Station Justice, Nov. 25, 2009.

 (Spc. Luisito Brooks/Army)

“When I go in the military, they don’t just hand me a gun, right?” says Fred Wellman, a retired Army officer and political strategist. “You don’t just sign in and go, ‘All right there, Wellman, here’s your M4. And here’s the ammo. Here’s six magazines of ammo. Look, just keep it under your bed.’ No.”

Sherman Gillums Jr., a Marine Corps veteran and long-time veterans advocate, pushes further, saying it’s a misperception that military training is all about guns: It’s about safety and training.

“We don’t hand them a weapon, the day they — a weapon with bullets, I should say — the day they arrive at boot camp,” he told The War Horse. “It takes some time. They’re there for about a month before they ever see ammunition.”

(Disclosure: Gillums serves on the board of directors for The War Horse.)

Before service members get to that point, they face a background check — mental, physical, and criminal — before they join the military, Wellman says. And the rules that follow the checks and the training are strict.

“The weapon is kept in a locked and secured facility where you don’t have access to it,” he says. “Ammo is kept separately from that facility. For me to get my weapon, I have to sign it out. There’s rules that apply. I’m trained on the weapon in every way. If I break those rules, there’s punishment. … We don’t just have guys walk around posts with guns — because it’s stupid.”

Even with those rules in place, the military mandated further precautions to keep service members safe after officials in Iraq reported 126 negligent discharges among American troops in Afghanistan over an eight-month period and at least 90 troops died in Iraq. After years of rising suicide rates as national access to guns increased, Veterans Affairs began a campaign to encourage veterans to lock up their weapons. (Veterans suicide rates decreased in 2019.) And the services insist on continual training because leaders know inexperienced shooters get hurt or hurt others.

But that care is not what civilians see in the fight for gun-access rights: People in military-type gear armed to the hilt with magazines at the ready appear at state capitols, coffee shops, and grocery stores in their push for more access. In fact, it’s hard to know how many of those protestors are truly veterans. Veterans are, after all, known for losing their minds if a service member points a weapon at a pal in a movie, so the idea of a magazine in a rifle at a coffee shop seems out of character.

On most military bases, service members aren’t allowed to carry weapons.

“We require extensive training for service members to handle weapons,” Plenzler says. “We only issue live ammunition under strict supervision and on designated training ranges. This is with the exception of people standing security duty or in combat. I would say the military takes weapons safety and storage very seriously, while the civilian community in America does not.”

‘A particular type of patriotism’

Gun culture in the United States has long been intertwined with the military. Union veterans, concerned about a lack of marksmanship among their troops during the Civil War, founded the National Rifle Association, which met in Houston this Memorial Day weekend. For decades after its formation, the NRA’s rhetoric focused on military readiness — making sure civilians who might be called on to fight for their country knew how to shoot, says Matthew Lacombe, an assistant professor of political science at Barnard College and the author of Firepower: How the NRA Turned Gun Owners into a Political Force. But starting in the 1960s, the focus has shifted away from explicit military preparedness and more toward an ideology of “a particular type of patriotism.”

“I think what has remained is this notion that gun owners are sort of similar to soldiers,” Lacombe says. “They’re the patriotic defenders of our way of life.”

But many veterans say valorizing the military through gun ownership mischaracterizes the military experience.

“I’m a combat veteran four times over, and most of the time I was in Iraq, I spent sitting in rooms, drinking tea, eating sheep, and trying to keep people from killing each other,” Wellman says. “You’re really seeing the use of our veteran experience and the military experience as part of this conversation in ways that are troubling. But what’s troubling is that the majority of veterans who commit suicide do so by weapon.”

To continue the politicization of the military community, in the immediate aftermath of the Texas school shooting, the memes appeared: Just place an armed veteran in front of every school building.

Sgt. Ruby Maxime (left), catches the round from the weapon of 1st Lt. Brandon Pasko, a Cincinnati native, as he goes through clearing procedures at Joint Security Station Justice, Nov. 25, 2009.

 (Spc. Luisito Brooks/Army)

“It’s frustrating because it’s not realistic,” Joyce-Rivera says.

The average veteran served from the ages of 18 to 21, got an honorable discharge, and then went on with their life, he says. Now, at age 48 or so, they haven’t had weapons training in decades. Depending on what their jobs were in the military, they may not have had much to begin with.

“There’s this idea that veterans are somehow mythical humans that make less faulty decisions than other people,” he says.

He reiterated Wellman’s concerns about suicide: “The VA is looking at how to address gun violence for suicides for veterans,” he says. “So is the solution the demographic that already is struggling with suicide through firearms … having [them] equipped with firearms at schools?”

As a national conversation about veterans and mental health grows, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly introduced legislation attempting to protect gun access for veterans, often framing the issue in patriotic terms.

“There are struggles that the veteran community is dealing with of their own through gun violence,” Joyce-Rivera says. “And the mental health crisis? How do we look at that and thoughtfully address it without just saying, ‘Veterans are the solution here’?”

Spc. Juan Graces, an Individual Ready Reserve Soldier and infantryman serving with Bravo Troop 1/82 Cavalry, 41st Infantry Brigade Combat Team, instructs Ugandan guards on properly loading and clearing the PKM machine gun on Jan. 14, 2010. 

(Capt. Brandon Ditto/Army)

For Gillums Jr., the veterans advocate, the question of veterans and gun access is a complicated one. Any discussion of restricting guns should be part of a broader conversation about mental health care, he says.

But, he says, what he finds intolerable is lawmakers who haven’t served posing with guns as a way of declaring their support for the military.

“You see the fingers on a trigger, all the things that show you clearly know nothing about the military culture,” he says, referring to constant training to touch the trigger only when it’s time to shoot. “The point of joining the military is not to have a weapon.”

Both Wellman and Gillums Jr. say they see hope in veterans in elected office — on both sides of the aisle.

“I do place a lot of the onus right now going forward on the folks in Congress who know what it means, who know what these weapons can do, who have had to fire them, have had to use them to defend the country, and are now in positions of responsibility — not authority, responsibility — to do the right thing,” Gillums Jr. says.
‘An unacceptable calculus’

Given the long string of shootings from Columbine High School to a country music festival in Las Vegas to this month’s shootings in Texas and New York, Kyleanne Hunter, a former Marine, likened America to a war zone — maybe even worse.

“We knew we might not come home and we knew we might have to live with guilt of others not coming home,” says Hunter, of Colorado, who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Super Cobra helicopter pilot and just finished the school year at the Air Force Academy as a professor of political science. “That’s part of the calculus that you take when you volunteer in an all-volunteer force.”

But Americans shouldn’t expect to face it at home, she says, and the news this month saddened her on a different level: “That is an unacceptable calculus to exist, going to school or going to a concert or going to church or going to a grocery shop.”

Hunter and Plenzler push back against the idea that gun control laws can’t make a difference. They are part of the #VetsForGunReform, a movement made up of veterans across the political spectrum.

“There’s no easy solutions, but there are actionable steps that we could take,” Plenzler says.

Joyce-Rivera has a suggestion:

The military employs weapons systems for a specific purpose, Joyce-Rivera says: To kill enemy combatants. But in the United States, people argue for the right to defend their homes. For that purpose, there should be a different weapons system, he says — one that doesn’t necessarily need to be accurate at 300 meters.

Gunner’s Mate 1st Class Corey Wilhelm, a safety officer at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth’s gun range, educates personnel from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 22 about gun safety and gun handling before a live-fire qualification course in 2020. (MCS2 Nolan Pennington/Navy)

“If the argument is to defend your home, I think we can design weapons systems that fulfill that need, but also help detract against the use of those weapons systems to commit mass shootings and killings,” he says. “As a military guy, that’s kind of where my head’s at is we got to talk about these things as weapons systems.”

The mass shootings aren’t the only violent firearm deaths to think about, Plenzler says. Crimes and suicides, happening in every corner of the country, should also be considered. Nobody he knows has all the answers for how to reverse the trend, Plenzler says, but adds that failing to seek solutions wouldn’t be fair to the victims. And the “false binary choices,” often advanced for political purposes, that people are either pro- or anti-gun complicates the conversation.

“It’s not like we need to be all for no restrictions on guns whatsoever or we’re for complete abolition,” Plenzler says. “I mean neither of those extremes are tenable positions. What I’m really interested in is finding the work in the middle.”

He starts by asking people what would make them feel safer. He often hears support for universal background checks for all gun sales. Many polls, including a survey by Morning Consult and Politico conducted one day after the Texas elementary school shooting, back up his assertion. The poll found 73% of respondents “strongly support” universal background checks and another 15% “somewhat support” the idea.

The House passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021 for all gun sales more than a year ago, but the measure has lingered in the Senate.

“I think people are getting tired of having a Congress that is flying in the face of public sentiment,” Plenzler says.

The Morning Consult poll also found that 4% “somewhat” oppose universal background checks and another 4% “strongly” oppose them.

Veterans themselves are “more supportive than nonveterans of expanding civilians’ gun-carrying rights,” according to research published this month in Social Science Quarterly, but are more likely to favor “banning AR15 and military-style rifles and high-capacity ammunition clips.” They’re also more likely to be in favor of a 14-day waiting period for “all gun purchases.”

“Taken together, these findings appear to reflect a veteran population that is positively disposed toward guns in general, but also understands the destructive power of military-style weapons,” the authors wrote.

A new “domestic terrorism” bill, which would have opened debate about hate crimes and gun safety, that flew through the House after the shooting in Texas was blocked when every Republican voted against it when it hit the Senate, saying it didn’t provide enough emphasis on domestic terrorism committed by those on the far left. Right-wing extremists have “been involved in 267 plots or attacks and 91 fatalities” since 2015, The Washington Post reports. Left-wing extremists have been involved in “66 incidents leading to 19 deaths.”

A bipartisan group of Senators is working on a bill that would address background checks for online or gun-show gun purchases, laws that would keep guns away from people a doctor has said could hurt themselves or others, and programs to increase security at schools.

Hunter would like to sit down with those who oppose any limits on gun ownership, she says — especially those who are against any regulations on assault rifles — to ask them if it is “worth it”:

“Is their AR-15 worth the fact that the generation of school kids that are there right now have worse educational outcomes than their parents because they’re afraid of being at school?”

The silence on bipartisan solutions has been the most frustrating point, Joyce-Rivera says.

“We need to address the problem,” he says. “And the problem is children are being killed with firearms.”

This War Horse investigation was reported by Michael de Yoanna, Sonner Kehrt, and Kelly Kennedy; edited by Kelly Kennedy; fact-checked by Ben Kalin; and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Headlines are by Abbie Bennett.

Biden enforces largest Medicare premium hike in history while funneling more profits to private insurers

Kate Randall
WSWS.ORG

In a move that received minimal media attention, last week the Biden administration reaffirmed its decision to enact the largest Medicare premium hike in the program’s 57-year history. The president is also endorsing a plan to funnel more money to private insurance companies and escalating plans to privatize the government insurance program for seniors and those with disabilities. Medicare enrolled 62.7 million people in 2021.

President Joe Biden on March 18, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

The White House announced May 27 that Medicare recipients will not see their premiums lowered this year. This is despite the fact that a rate hike confirmed last November was due in large part to projected costs for a drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease that have now been lowered.

In November 2021, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced an approximately 14.5 percent increase to premiums for Medicare Part B, which covers doctor visits and some preventive care and outpatient services. The standard monthly premium rose from $148.50 in 2021 to $170.10 this year.

The hike came largely as a result of uncertainty over whether Medicare would cover the costs of Aduhelm, an exorbitantly expensive drug to treat Alzheimer’s. Under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, the controversial drug was approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in June 2021, despite disputes over whether it is effective in treating the debilitating disease.

Biogen, the maker of Aduhelm, originally priced the drug at $56,000 a year. After a considerable outcry from patient advocates and others, Biogen announced that the drug would cost $28,200 effective January 1, 2022, when the Medicare premium hikes kicked in. In April, Medicare instituted strict rules regarding who could receive Aduhelm, restricting its use mainly to clinical trials.

On May 27, the Biden administration said that despite the halving of Aduhelm’s cost, and also its restriction to a small patient pool, it would not be lowering the monthly premiums deducted from seniors’ Social Security benefits. The administration justified this move on the basis of “legal and operational hurdles.”

In a report to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, CMS wrote that “a mid-year administrative redetermination [of Medicare premiums] would be prohibitively complex and highly risky, requiring significant resources and unproven technical solutions from the varied entities which manage premium collection and payment.” In practical terms, this means that Medicare enrollees will not be receiving either a refund on the premium increases already collected this year, nor will premiums be adjusted for the balance of 2022.

CMS claims that 2023 premiums will be adjusted to reflect the lowering of the price of Aduhelm and the reduction in the drug’s usage. There is no guarantee, however, that such an adjustment will take place, as other price hikes demanded by the pharmaceutical industry or other segments of the for-profit health care system are highly likely. And the government has seldom rebated money that it has already collected from the population.

CMS also makes the fantastic claim that seniors are unlikely to feel the impact of the premium hike due to a 5.9 percent cost-of-living adjustment in their Social Security benefits that began in January 2022. This small increase has already been more than eaten up by rapidly rising inflation hitting food, housing, transportation and other basic necessities. The impact on seniors is particularly dire, with more than 7 million living in poverty and 7.3 million food-insecure, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).

The news that 2022 premium hikes will not be refunded or scaled back comes as Biden officials are moving forward with an 8.5 percent increase in payments made to private insurers operating Medicare Advantage plans in 2023.

Under Medicare Advantage, also known as Medicare Part C, beneficiaries pay their monthly premiums to the federal government but receive coverage from a private insurer for inpatient hospital and outpatient services, typically including prescription drug coverage as well. The establishment of these plans marked a major step in the dismantling of Medicare as a government program. Companies operating these plans are incentivized to limit the amount of medical care received by their enrollees in order to boost profits.

Dr. Susan Rogers, president of Physicians for a National Healthcare Program, told The Lever, “Medicare Advantage insurers such as United Healthcare, Anthem, and CVS/Aetna are celebrating record profits in the tens of billions of dollars.” She added, “Their business plan is simple: inflate their Medicare payments by making seniors look sicker than they are, and then pocket more of those Medicare dollars by ruthlessly denying seniors’ care.”

Enrollment in Medicare Advantage—signed into law in 1997 by Bill Clinton—has more than doubled over the past decade. In 2021, more than 26 million people were enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, or about 42 percent of the total Medicare population. Private plans have cost Medicare $146 billion since 2008.

In addition to hiking Medicare premiums and funneling more money to Medicare Advantage insurers, Biden has expanded Medicare privatization. The Direct Contracting Entity (DCE) program was launched in April 2019 by the CMS, during the Trump administration, under the auspices the CMS Innovation Center, known as CMMI.

Similar to Medicare Advantage, the DCE program allows intermediary companies to offer unique benefits, such as gym memberships. DCE operators range from private insurers to publicly traded companies to private equity firms. As for-profit entities they are also incentivized to limit patient care, particularly for the critically ill.

While Medicare patients choose to sign up for Advantage plans, patients can be enrolled in DCE health plans without their informed consent. Remarkably, seniors for instance may be “auto-aligned” to a DCE if any primary care physician they have visited in the past two years is affiliated with that DCE. Seniors are being swindled by these plans via methods more unscrupulous than scammers trying to obtain Social Security numbers over the phone.

Notably, CMMI was created under the Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in 2010 by Barack Obama. CMMI’s aim was to develop new payment models in Medicare and Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, without going through the formal legislative process that requires public comment.

The DCE program is now being expanded by the Biden administration under a new name—ACO REACH, or Accountable Care Organization Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health. Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s office told The Lever that 350,000 seniors were assigned to DCE plans as of January 2022, none of whom signed up voluntarily.

In the US health care system, access to and the affordability of medical care is subordinated to the profits of the private insurers, pharmaceuticals and giant hospital chains. Democratic and Republican politicians alike are concerned with upholding the interests of this market-driven system, not by the needs of patients and health care workers. One need only follow the money to see who benefits.

Business Insider reports that Biden received roughly $47 million from health care industry executives during his 2020 presidential campaign. The leadership of DCE contractor Clover Health donated $500,000 to the main super PAC for Senate Democrats in 2020, while Chamath Palihapitiya, the company’s financier, donated $750,000 to the same super PAC, according to the Open Secrets web site.

Éric Duhaime, the Quebec Conservative Party and the ruling class’ turn to social reaction

Louis Girard
WSWS.ORG

Since his election as leader of the Parti conservateur du Québec (PCQ—Quebec Conservative Party) in April 2021, right-wing libertarian Éric Duhaime has received a great deal of coverage in the mainstream media and increasing attention from big business.

PCQ leader Eric Duhaime [Photo by Asclepias / CC BY-SA 4.0]

With four months to go before the Quebec provincial election, some polls place the PCQ ahead of the two parties that until 2018 had alternated as Quebec’s government for almost a half-century, the Quebec Liberal Party and the Parti Québécois (PQ).

PCQ leader Duhaime has been hosted, along with other party leaders, by business associations, including Quebec’s largest employer group, the Conseil du patronat du Québec. The television networks have already announced that he will be invited to join the official leaders' debate in the run-up to the October 3 Quebec election.

Yet the PCQ—which was founded in 2009 and is separate and distinct from the federal Conservative party, the official opposition in Canada’s parliament—has never won a single National Assembly seat, nor won more than 1.5 percent of the vote in a provincial election. Currently, the PCQ has a lone Member of the National Assembly (MNA), a defector from the ruling Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) who has said she will not be running in the coming election.

The media craze for Duhaime can best be understood by examining the very right-wing agenda he advocated for years as a trash- or shock-radio host in Quebec City and is now projecting with equal virulence as leader of the PCQ. This is not the first time the ruling elite has used an ultra-reactionary figure to push the entire axis of politics firmly to the right.

Duhaime has vehemently opposed all mandatory public health measures to counter the COVID-19 pandemic that has wreaked havoc and mass death in Quebec, the rest of Canada and around the world. Having denounced all efforts to curb the pandemic from the start, he enthusiastically welcomed the “Freedom Convoy,” a group of far-right trucker-owners, supported by the Conservative Party of Canada and much of the corporate media, who terrorized Ottawa residents for weeks to press their demand for the scrapping of all anti-COVID measures. Duhaime said at the time, “My goal is to bring these ideas into the National Assembly.”

Duhaime is a long-time friend and close associate of Pierre Poilievre. The front-runner in the current federal Conservative Party leadership race, Poilievre began his campaign by reaffirming his support for the far-right Convoy, the abandonment of all anti-COVID measures, and a massive assault on public services in the name of eliminating the federal budget deficit. Adopting the language of Margaret Thatcher to advocate for capitalism at its most predatory, Poilievre vowed to make Canada the “freest” country in the world.

The PCQ, now under Duhaime's control, also advocates massive cuts in social spending; accelerated deregulation; increased privatization, especially in health and education; and steep tax cuts for the wealthy, including the introduction of a single tax rate or flat tax.

Duhaime has long been active in right-wing circles. A political advisor to the leader of the Bloc Québécois from 1993 to 1999, he began his career with the Quebec indépendantistes when they were massively cutting social spending.

From 2000 to 2002, he was an advisor to Official Opposition Leader Stockwell Day of the Canadian Alliance, a party that was used to push Canadian politics further to the right and was the dominant element in the merger with the rump of the federal Progressive Conservatives that created the Stephen Harper-led, hard-right new Conservative Party.

In 2003, Duhaime was a candidate for the Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), with a young Poilievre actively campaigning for him, before becoming a political advisor for the ADQ from 2003 to 2008. The ADQ, which ultimately became part of the right-wing populist CAQ, played a leading role in stirring up anti-immigrant chauvinism in Quebec, particularly around the phony issue of “unreasonable accommodation.”

Duhaime worked for the National Democratic Institute (NDI)–a US imperialist-sponsored agency associated with the Democratic Party that works closely with the US State Department and CIA—in Morocco from 2005 to 2007 and Iraq from 2008 to 2009. The NDI's board of directors has included such leading figures of US militarism as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Wolfowitz, Madeleine Albright and Elliott Abrams.

Like the rest of the Quebec political establishment and elite, Duhaime has supported Canada’s participation in US-led wars of aggression, from the 1999 NATO war on Yugoslavia, to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and the 2011 regime-change war in Libya. In a tweet at the outset of the US-NATO instigated war with Russia over Ukraine, he rushed to label Moscow the aggressor and salivated over the opportunity the war presents to develop Quebec’s hydrocarbon resources.

In 2010, Duhaime founded the Réseau-liberté-Québec to bring together people anxious to be rid of what remains of the social concessions made to the working class as a result of the mass struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. Dr. Roy Eappen, one of the members of the network and now a PCQ candidate, is a prominent anti-abortion activist and climate-change denier. Encouraged by Quebec Premier François Legault's reckless profits-before-lives response to the pandemic, which has included the promotion of the reactionary pseudo-scientific “herd immunity” policy, the PCQ promotes all sorts of anti-scientific nonsense—on vaccinations, abortion, and climate change.

For a decade starting in 2010, Duhaime was a commentator in the press and in particular on the radio, where he was given ample opportunity and latitude to spew his reactionary, libertarian and xenophobic ideas. In a generally sympathetic article about him published in April, Duhaime boasted that he had the “microphone for four hours a day for 10 years.”

This included downplaying the hateful, Islamophobic acts that preceded the Jan. 29, 2017 terrorist attack on the Grand Mosque in Quebec City, which left six Muslims dead and some 20 injured. Duhaime dismissed the leaving of a bloody pig's head on the mosque steps as a “silly joke,” comparing it to someone delivering a pizza to a neighbor's house.

In a 2017 radio debate, Duhaime defended the aristocratic principle that voting rights should be modulated according to taxes paid, with the rich given weighted votes that would count more than those of the poor.

Duhaime unabashedly champions far-right positions, but it need be added that so far to the right has the entire political establishment moved over the course of the past decade-and-a-half, his policies on many issues are not so different from those advanced by the other ruling class parties.

Duhaime says that immigrants should be selected on the basis of their “civilizational compatibility.” But how is this chauvinism different from the CAQ's Bill 9, which selects immigrants according to their “values?” Or its Bill 21, which denies health care and other vital public services to devout Muslim women wearing the niqab or burqa. The latter law was itself inspired by the previous Liberal government's Bill 62. And what about the PQ's “Charter of Values,” which aimed to ban more than half a million public sector workers from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols, while making an exception for “discreet” crucifixes?

Duhaime has become a darling of the bourgeois media and is being promoted by it as a means of pressing the CAQ to intensify its assault on the working class. Editorialists regularly speak of the “difficult decisions” that the government will have to make after the elections, i.e., renewed attacks on wages, working conditions, living standards and public services.

The “Eric Duhaime phenomenon” is taking place in the context of an immense crisis of global capitalism, characterized by galloping inflation, rising social inequality, catastrophic management of the pandemic, and NATO's war against Russia in Ukraine, which threatens to turn into a nuclear conflict.

The main responsibility for the threat from the far right facing the working class lies with the trade union bureaucracy, which has suppressed the class struggle for decades.

As support for the traditional ruling class parties has steadily eroded, the unions have isolated and run workers’ struggles and strikes into the ground. When governments have imposed anti-democratic back-to-work laws to break militant strikes, the unions, led by highly paid bureaucrats who fully accept the capitalists' “right” to make profit, have policed them.

As for Québec Solidaire, the pseudo-left party representing affluent sections of the middle class, it never criticizes the treacherous role of the union bureaucracy and spares no effort to integrate itself even more deeply into the ruling establishment.

It is in this political climate of bourgeois reaction, which is growing in intensity as the social opposition of the working class mounts, that extreme right-wing figures like Duhaime are being promoted by big business in an attempt to divert workers' anger into the most reactionary channels.

Exploring the forgotten scents of ancient Egypt

Perfumes were used for ritual and carried a symbolic purpose, and they helped to establish trading posts in the Nile delta

Researchers are analysing the scents of ancient Egypt to gain new insight into how its people lived (Courtesy: Dora Goldsmith)

By MEE correspondent
1 June 2022 

Scents have always been an important part of ancient Egypt. Hatshepsut, the 15th century BCE queen of Egypt and someone seen as an intermediary between the gods and the country's people, was tasked with ensuring that the kingdom was always filled with pleasant scents.

Scents are even mentioned in the inscriptions found at the Temple of Edfu, where the Egyptian king Ptolemy X is said to have anointed himself with the best perfumes as part of his daily morning rituals.
Five foods the ancient Egyptians used to eatRead More »

The Ebers Papyrus, one of the oldest medical papyri of ancient Egypt, says that good scent fills the rooms of a noble family’s home, impregnating their clothes.

From this, it is clear that scent was a key part of the daily life of ancient Egyptians, and remains an integral part of the human experience, offering valuable clues about many aspects of the past, such as rituals, cuisine, perfumes, hygiene, trade and medicine.

By delving into how ancient Egyptians made sense of the world through smell, we can learn more about certain practices and social hierarchies of the time, and their perception of the world.
Filling in the sensory gap

Despite smell revealing a lot about people and the climate of ancient Egypt, Egyptology has so far not recognised the full potential in the study of scents, and what it can tell us.

“It’s very important to understand the ancient Egyptians through smell, because it was extremely significant in their culture. If we disregard this part of their culture, then we are disregarding a huge part of it,” Dora Goldsmith, an Egyptologist at the Freie Universitat Berlin and leading researcher on the topic, told Middle East Eye.

Goldsmith, who translated inscriptions found in the Deir el-Bahri, Edfu and the Ebers Papyrus, noted that most publications about archaeological findings in Egypt focus on ancient Egypt only visually.

Scents are mentioned in inscriptions found in the Temple of Edfu

 (Supplied/Jay Silverstein)

Whether they be about coffins, burial chambers, temples or cities, publications rarely talk about scent. Yet this is beginning to change, with some researchers trying to fill in the gaps in this largely odourless landscape, in a variety of ways.

Goldsmith is combing ancient texts for references to the world of smells, even going so far as to recreate ancient Egyptian perfumes and smellscapes. Others are searching for archaeological evidence in the Egypt. Some are trying to discover the contents of ancient objects by analysing scent molecules that have been preserved to this day.

“The three ways yield different kinds of information,” Barbara Huber, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, told MEE.

“By using scientific analyses together with information from ancient texts, visual depictions and the broader archaeological and environmental records, we can open up new aspects of past olfactory worlds, our changing societies and cultures, and our evolution as a species,” Huber noted.

Popular ancient perfume

Strategically located in the Nile Delta, Thmuis became a major centre of perfume trade in the ancient world. Exotic spices from India, the Arabian peninsula and other parts of Africa flowed to the city to fuel its most important industry. And its production was later shipped to Alexandria and across the Mediterranean.

In recent years, archaeological work led by Jay Silverstein and Robert Littman is starting to unearth part of that glorious past.

“It was the most important industry in this area,” Silverstein told MEE. “There was a lot of money to be made, you had the most talented perfumers and merchants centred here, and they were able to get all the spices from around the world.”

Among the discoveries the mission co-led by Silverstein has been able to make since 2009 is a Hellenistic complex associated with the manufacture of perfume bottles, made up of 20 kilns and ancillary structures including wells, aqueducts, basins and ovens.

A kiln workshop where ceramic perfume jars were made

 (Supplied/Jay Silverstein)

According to Silverstein, these elements suggest this was a place dedicated to liquids, a hypothesis the team hopes to confirm later this year with the results of a chemical analysis of samples from the site.

“It is pretty clear to me that it’s a perfume manufactory. It wasn’t consistent with any other type of factories we looked at,” Silverstein noted. “[And] it was found associated with a treasure, which suggests it’s the house of a wealthy merchant. All the pieces point in that direction.

“I suspect there were many workshops,” he added. “Probably [the industry] was originally controlled by the priests of Mendes, but eventually fell more into the hands of private entrepreneurs, who took more control over the business."

In particular, the Thmuis-Mendes area’s flagship product was a perfume called Mendesian, which was the most popular fragrance in the ancient world for centuries. And although there are no literary accounts of it from ancient Egypt, Greek and Latin references do mention it as far back as at least the mid-first century CE.
Key ingredients

Goldsmith has documented Greco-Roman sources consistently listing four ingredients for Mendesian perfume: myrrh, cassia, resin and oil of balanos (most academics believe this is a species of moringa, others desert date oil). Some accounts also mention cinnamon. Quantities and methods of production, which Goldsmith and scholar of Ancient Greek science Sean Coughlin have tested, are preserved in a document from the seventh century by the Byzantine physician Paul of Aegina.

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“It was not easy [to reconstruct it] because the Mendesian is only mentioned in Greco-Roman sources, so in Greek and Latin, and they are not really recipes. These sources describe what they claim to be Egyptian perfumes,” Goldsmith said.

“But it was also very exciting, because I tried to track back some of the ingredients they mention to ancient Egyptian perfume ingredients. And I found out that some of them the Egyptians did use, but not all of them.

“The way Greeks treated Egyptian recipes was very flexible. They retained some ingredients, but they also changed a lot. The study of how perfume recipes changed from the Egyptians to the Greeks can be referred to as transmission of knowledge in perfumery.”

Based on this and other information she has collected over the years, Goldsmith has been able to recreate numerous products from ancient Egypt: from four temple perfumes to remedies from medical texts. And she noted that they could work perfectly well today.

“I know for a fact that all these products are antibacterial [and] antiseptic, they are also really good for your skin, so they would definitely work [today],” she said.
Smellwalks and smellscapes

Another way to enter the world of ancient Egyptian smells is through what Goldsmith calls smellscapes, which she reconstructs based on written documents.

The researcher, who has recently devoted a paper to this subject, explains that the written references have certain limitations, including not enough sources from a simple place and period, and perceptions in ancient texts not being fully representative of the entire society.

However, based on written references dating from the First Dynasty (2925-2775 BCE) through the Ptolemaic period (305-30 BCE), Goldsmith has been able to reconstruct a smellwalk in an idealised ancient Egyptian city.

A good first stop on this route is the temple, where the scents of incense, myrrh, honey, perfumes, scented cloth and floral offerings from the sanctuary mix with the strong smell of roast meat, bread, cake, milk, beer and wine coming from the hall of offerings.

The king’s private chamber is another must stop. There, his servants anoint him as part of his morning rituals “with the finest perfumes made out of the costliest ingredients in order to enhance his divine appearance”. And not wanting to be less refined than him, the queen also anoints herself with aromas that will leave a pleasant trail wherever she goes.

'People would represent all sorts of things through their scents, through the perfumes they used; they would communicate their social status in society'

- Dora Goldsmith, Egyptologist

Royal gardens were also filled with fragrant trees, flowers and herbs, both to satisfy the gods and to fill the city with a pleasant aroma, Goldsmith writes.

“People would represent all sorts of things through their scents, through the perfumes they used; they would communicate their social status in society,” she said.

“By emitting a strong and pleasant scent, the queen is manifesting her presence and high status in society.”

​​The final stop on this route takes us into the homes of ancient Egyptians.

In the home of a lower-class family, Goldsmith writes, the smells of sweat from the artisan or peasant who has spent the day working outside mingle with that of a deodorant made of incense, chamomile, cypress cones and myrrh, used to eliminate stench, especially in the summer.

And in a noble family’s house, the rooms and clothes will instead be impregnated with the pleasant smell of burning kyphi, a fragrance made from products such as dry myrrh, cypress cones, incense, wood of camphor tree, and mastic.

Their kitchen is at the same time flooded with strong smells released by the dishes cooked by servants, contrasting with the scent of the garden and its blooming flowers and blossoming twigs, a perfect setting for an intimate stroll.

“There is a lot of communication through smell; the smell means something. There was value attached to it in Egypt,” Goldsmith said. “In order to really understand [ancient] Egyptians, you need to understand their olfactory culture. It was a very big part of their everyday life.”

Medical pot proposal gets bipartisan support in NC Senate


Medical pot proposal gets bipartisan support in NC Senate

Gary D. Robertson
Fri, June 3, 2022,

Marijuana would be legalized for medical use in North Carolina with a physician’s prescription and purchased through dozens of tightly regulated dispensaries in a measure receiving initial approval Thursday in the Senate.

The legislation, which received strong bipartisan support, could help people facing more than a dozen different “debilitating medical conditions” in which their doctor declares the health benefits of smoking or consuming cannabis outweigh the risks.

RECENT COVERAGE: Medical marijuana bill resurfaces in NC Senate, heading to floor

The bill’s chief sponsors, however, focused on giving relief to patients with terminal illnesses that bring unbearable pain and suffering, while preventing them from having to act illegally.

“It is our duty as lawmakers to pass legislation that helps people who need our help,” said Brunswick County Republican Sen. Bill Rabon, a cancer survivor who has worked on this legislation for five years. “It is not going to make them ashamed or reluctant to seek help if it is recommended to them by their physician.”

Seventeen of the 25 Republicans and all but two Democrats present Thursday cast votes for the bill, which passed 35-10 and needs one more affirmative vote next week before it heads to the House.

Many House Republicans have been suspicious about legalizing cannabis in any form. Speaker Tim Moore said Thursday that he believed medical marijuana would have to wait until 2023. Legislative leaders are aiming to adjourn this year’s work session around July 1.

Still, the Senate’s affirmative vote, which included a “yes” from chamber leader Phil Berger, shows how far political and public sentiment has come in the Bible Belt state on medical marijuana. Rabon has said that polls show support is strong for the idea across all population groups, including among evangelical Christians.

ALSO READ: Procedural ruling kills medical marijuana bill in SC House

The bill worked its way through several committees last summer before resurfacing this week. Senators have heard from impassioned speakers with severe illness who say marijuana can ease pain or help them lead more normal lives.

Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow the medical use of cannabis products, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“The time for action in North Carolina is now,” said Democratic Sen. Wiley Nickel of Wake County, who recalled how his father used marijuana unlawfully three decades ago as he was dying of cancer. Marijuana for recreational use would remain illegal.

Bill opponents have said the health benefits of marijuana remain uncertain and the health risks are great.

“We spent billions of dollars ... to stop people from smoking (and) we’re now voting on a new version of Big Tobacco,” said Sen. Jim Burgin, a Harnett County Republican who voted no.

Under the bill, other qualifying conditions that could lead to legal marijuana access include epilepsy, Crohn’s disease, HIV/AIDS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and post-traumatic stress disorder. An advisory board could add to that list. Physicians initially would have to receive 10 hours of training to offer a cannabis prescription.

A new Medical Cannabis Production Commission would award licenses to 10 entities that would grow cannabis, process it and sell it.

Each licensee could open eight medical cannabis centers across the state. They could sell up to 30-day supplies of marijuana or cannabis-infused products to patients or their caregivers, who would have to obtain registration cards from the state Department of Health and Human Services. The licensees would have to send 10% of their monthly revenues to the state.

People could face felonies if marijuana at cannabis centers or production facilities is sold unlawfully. Registered patients who smoke pot in public or near a school or church could face $25 fines.

Sen. Julie Mayfield of Buncombe County offered a floor amendment that would have directed the commission to recommend a system that she said would help in-state growers and retailers participate.

Language in the measure otherwise would leave the licenses to multistate corporations, she said, leaving small businesses on the sidelines. Republicans used a parliamentary maneuver to derail a vote on the amendment. Mayfield was one the two Democrats to vote against the full bill Thursday.

AHS finalizes DynaLIFE privatization of community lab services

Jason Herring - Yesterday 


A deal that will see a private company take over most of Alberta’s community laboratory services has been finalized.


© Provided by Calgary Herald

Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping provided an update on changes to lab services at Alberta Precision Laboratories in Calgary on Thursday, June 2, 2022.

Edmonton-based DynaLIFE Medical Labs is set to take over community and non-urgent lab work from Alberta Precision Laboratories beginning Dec. 5, after the parties signed a new service agreement Wednesday.

DynaLIFE, which already provides lab services in and around Edmonton and in much of northern and central Alberta, was previously set to take over community lab operations in July prior to a delay.

Addressing reporters in Calgary on Thursday, Health Minister Jason Copping said the move creates “efficiencies” within Alberta’s lab system, which will save the province $18 million to $36 million per year.

“This change really sums up the rationale for contracting: enhanced services at a lower cost,” Copping said. “First and foremost, it will give Albertans more and better services.”

Copping said there will be no job losses in the privatization, but said it would be “a process of change” for Alberta Precision Laboratories staff. He said all unionized, non-unionized and medical scientific staff will be employed under “the same or similar” terms.

The head of the union representing 1,200 Alberta Precision workers said it’s vital lab workers maintain their current terms of employment.

“HSAA will work relentlessly to ensure all APL members being moved to DynaLIFE will keep their salaries, seniority, workplace benefits and pensions,” Mike Parker, president of the Health Sciences Association of Alberta, said in a statement.


“DynaLIFE members must then also be offered the same benefits, salaries and pensions as their APL counterparts.”

Job losses aren’t on the table in large part because of industry-wide worker shortages, said Jason Pincock, DynaLIFE president and CEO.


Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping toured Alberta Precision Laboratories in Calgary with Dr. Dylan Pillai, south sector medical director with Alberta Precision Laboratories (left), and Jason Pincock, president and CEO, DynaLIFE Medical Labs (right) on Thursday, June 2, 2022.

“We need everybody and we’re taking everybody. And everyone has a role and everyone has a job,” Pincock said. “The reality is that lab systems across Canada are challenged with capacity and staffing.”

Under the new deal, Alberta Precision Laboratories will continue to operate labs in acute-care hospitals, as well as provide services to rural and remote communities and offer some other specialized testing, like COVID-19 tests.

DynaLIFE is set to expand its patient service facilities in Calgary, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Okotoks, Strathmore and Cochrane as part of the takeover.

The Friends of Medicare advocacy group slammed the privatization plans, charging challenges in Alberta’s community lab system are the product of the UCP government.

“The government did nothing to help public laboratories the past few years, yet they’re claiming they have no choice but to do this to get better service and save money, but there’s no evidence that’s true,” said Friends of Medicare executive director Chris Galloway.

NDP Opposition health critic David Shepherd also criticized the announcement, asserting in a news release the UCP “continue to undermine (public health care) by diverting public dollars to profitable companies and their shareholders.”

Where Things Stand: From ‘Doors’ To Abortion, GOP Blames Everything But Gun Laws For Mass Shootings

This is your TPM evening briefing.

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 14: Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.) asks questions to Dr. Richard Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, during a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee 

By Nicole Lafond

June 2, 2022 

In the wake of three recent mass shootings in America in the last two weeks, Republicans are once again showing their collective ass, deploying a litany of talking points about random stuff to clog up the national discourse on gun violence with anything and everything but guns.

It’s all very pellucid — a distraction tactic to avoid engaging seriously on the issue of our nation’s unprecedentedly lax gun laws and the need for national — or even state level! — gun control reform. And Republican Rep. Billy Long (MO) just dangerously added a befuddling new culprit to the mix: abortion is to blame for mass shootings.

An auctioneer, somehow-turned congressman, Long is a pretty far-right Trump guy who announced his bid for the GOP nomination in Missouri’s crowded Senate primary race to replace retiring Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) on Tucker Carlson’s show. He recently voted against Ukraine aid and a baby formula bill in the House and is actively courting Trump for an endorsement ahead of the August primaries (but so are all of his opponents). Trump hasn’t done anything official on that front yet, but Long’s campaign has had some support from Trump-ally Kellyanne Conway leading up to the primaries.

That said, these latest remarks are not super surprising coming from someone like Long. During an interview with the Missouri radio station The Eagle 93.9 on Wednesday — just days after a gunman opened fire and murdered 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and on the same day that a gunman killed five at a medical facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma — Long suggested “an inanimate object” is not to blame for the mass shooting epidemic in this country.

Access to abortion, he said, is what’s made mass-casualty gun violence a uniquely American problem over the past several decades.

“When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year,” he said. “Now we have two, three, four a week in Springfield, Missouri.

“So something has happened to our society. I go back to abortion, when we decided it was okay to murder kids in their mothers’ wombs. Life has no value to a lot of these folks,” he concluded.

Attempting to combat this unhinged claim almost feels unnecessary and disingenuous. The data simply does not reflect anything he’s saying. As HuffPost noted here, there were 499 murders reported in Missouri in 1970, the same year that the Supreme Court landmark ruling protecting abortion access nationally became precedent. Per HuffPost: “In 1975, the figure was 505. And in 2019, 568 murders were reported in the state.”

Long’s remarks also fly in the face of solid data — which President Biden raised during his national address after the attack in Uvalde last week. After Congress passed a sweeping assault weapons ban in the 1990s, the nation witnessed a decade of substantial decline in mass shooting deaths before the ban expired in 2004.

As my colleague Kate Riga reported last week, Republicans are doing their typical song and dance, scrambling to cast blame and offer shoddy solutions to ending mass shootings in America — all of which steer so clear of reasonable gun law talk that it’d be a stunning masterclass in deflection if the tragedies behind this farcical messaging were not so utterly horrific.

Americans are left hacking through the weeds of the GOP’s distraction schemes because the party refuses to engage seriously on guns, terrified of sacrificing their reelection prospects by doing or saying anything that might offend their powerful gun lobby donors.

And so, we’re left talking about things like “doors,” arming teachers, creating a “department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at their social media,” the incoherent and non-existent evils of trans-rights, guarding elementary schools so aggressively with weaponry that they resemble prisons.

And, once again, attacking the right to have an abortion, which, in our almost post-Roe America, is looking increasingly like the GOP’s catchall blame bucket for all of society’s various ills.