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Saturday, May 04, 2024

 

Has Zionism Caused the Destruction of the Jews?


The proven danger of two million Gazans, blasted from their homes and struggling to find survival, is being overshadowed by unproven “safety concerns” for a relatively few Jewish college students who argue they are harmed by careless words and show no physical injuries. News reports reveal malicious intent and media complicity — divert the protests against genocide to a non-existent anti-Semitism and impede the effectiveness of the campus demonstrations by citing “safety concerns.” Generate hate of the campus demonstrators and disguise the malice by falsely accusing them of hate, the Zionist Modus operandi from its inception — hide the truth and answer critics by labeling them anti-Semites.

NBC News

A growing number of leaders and organizations have called on Columbia University and its president to protect students amid reports of antisemitic and offensive statements and actions on and near its campus, which has been the site this week of a pro-Palestinian encampment and protest.

CBS NEWS

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A Jewish Yale University student said she was assaulted during pro-Palestinian protests on campus and now the university is investigating. Sahar Tartak, editor-in-chief of the Yale Free Press, said she was assaulted Saturday night while covering demonstrations on the campus in New Haven, Connecticut. Tartak believes she was targeted for wearing Jewish attire. “I wear a Star of David necklace,” she said. “One of them taunted me by waving a Palestinian flag in my face and jabbed me with it in the eye.”

New York Post

A Jewish Yale University student journalist reporting on an anti-Israeli protest at the Ivy League school Saturday night was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag, while her assailant has gone unpunished.

Breaking Points

Krystal and Saagar discuss the ‘stabbed in the eye’ girl being debunked by the video of the incident. “This is all complete B.S.”

Examine the press reports

The campus demonstrations are protests against U.S. policy of assisting Israel in its genocide of the Palestinian people, and the press cites them as either “pro-Palestinian” or “anti-Israel.” These opposing descriptions give an impression that the protests have a bias, do not affect the American people, and mainly concern those who favor the Palestinians and those who are repulsed by actions taken against Israel. A few words, constantly repeated, affect the mindset of the American people and distract them from understanding their government’s disgraceful policies.

The NBC report is not news; it is an advertisement for organizations that have an agenda and manufacture rumors to satisfy the agenda, not different from an exterminator falsely telling Columbia University authorities to protect students amid reports of rodents infesting the campus. Note also the mental link to “a pro-Palestinian encampment and protest.”

The New York Post, an infamous rag sheet, turns an unverified statement by an Israeli supporter into her being “stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag, while her assailant has gone unpunished.” The victim, Sahar Tartak, came to the demonstration with a video camera, wearing a Star of David necklace, and accompanied by another person described as having the appearance of an Orthodox Jew, an indication of purposeful intent to broadcast that she and the other person are Jewish students. Neither Sahar Tartak’s video camera nor any video camera recorded an attack upon her persona. There is no hospital report to show she was injured and her appearance immediately after the incident does not indicate harm to an eye.

Did Ms. Tartak come to the demonstration as a provocateur attempting to initiate verbal or physical attacks on her or the other Jewish student? When she did not succeed, did she fabricate an incident?

Striding as obvious Jewish students, Ms. Tartak and her friend walked untouched through the angry crowd. Her behavior initiated no attacks and showed that if there are attacks on Jewish students, they must be rare. Will Columbia University investigate her actions, which appear belligerent, untruthful, and purposely agitating? Isn’t it twisted to repress those who struggle to prevent genocide and follow the dictates of those who approve genocide?

Don’t Columbia and other universities know about the genocide and the terrible consequences inflicted on the Palestinians? Is their negligence due to American media — print, online, television, and radio — treating Israel as a friendly neighbor and a victim of terrorism, and approaching the two million Palestinians as collateral damage to Israel’s overpowering a few thousand Hamas militants who have no anti-tank weapons to halt tanks, no guided missiles to cause critical damage, and no handheld missile systems to destroy drones and aircraft? Nobody equipped Hamas with an adequate defense or for an effective offense. Militants crossed the border, walked a few miles, committed random havoc, and, after being alerted, Israeli forces wiped them out.

October 7, 2023, taught the Israeli military it had no problem in containing powerless Hamas; as soon as the militants met a prepared Israeli military they were quickly defeated. Israel had a temporary border problem of relaxation and apathy, which allowed the Hamas militants to enter. Stationing troops at the border and assuring they are alert rectified the situation. There was no need to send a massive number of soldiers into Gaza, have a number of them killed, slaughter the Gazans, and ensure none of the captives survived. Why did Israel pursue the more punishing path?

(1)    The Israeli government did not want to engage in talks with Hamas, which would elevate Hamas’ importance and put Israel on the defensive.

(2)    Israel has pursued one path — steal the Palestinian land and patrimony and contrive a means to cleanse the Palestinians from the area. Hamas’ resistance is a continuous block to the pursuit and a change in tactics was ordered.

(3)    The Hamas attack presented an opportunity to change the tactics from a slow ethnic cleansing to a more rapid genocide — fool the world into believing the demolishing of the Gazans is retribution and not genocide. With the obedient Western media occupied with reports from Gaza, less attention will be given to the violent ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.

Attempts to subdue campus demonstrations that protest the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people reveal the obvious — since day one of their appearance, spurious anti-Semitism has been a constant weapon of Zionists to disguise the truth, foment hatred of their opponents, and advance their agenda. Their deceptive tactics have enraged segments of U.S. and European societies and directly led to animosity and attacks against Jews. Describing their state as a “Jewish state,” and having a majority of Jews throughout the world support the state and its genocidal actions is causing a backlash to the Jews. The only salvation for the Jewish community is separation from Zionism, its oppressive state, and its suicidal inclinations and halt the continuation of relying on the media to confuse the populace into favoring, protecting, and urging governments to rescue the Jewish community.

PBS’ News Hour, supposedly a more respected element of the U.S. media, on April 26, featured Israelis mark Passover amid conflict, loss and trauma. Description of the program: “This week, Jews around the world are observing Passover, the festival of liberation that marks the historic exodus from ancient Egypt.”

“The historic exodus from Egypt?” Is there any history that tells us of this mythical exodus? Are news broadcasts a compilation of facts or fiction?

But, this year, joy is tempered with loss and trauma. More than 160,000 Israelis will mark the holiday while displaced from their homes, as the war with Hamas continues. Still others have empty chairs at the dinner table, their loved ones still held captive by Hamas.

Upon orders from their command, and not due to excessive danger, a small percentage of Israelis are taking a respite from their daily lives and still established homes and eating matzah in temporary hotel quarters. Almost all Palestinians have been forced out of destroyed homes, where relatives still lie under the rubble, and they search to find a tent or place to house their permanently displaced families and obtain some bread, leavened or non-leavened, to eat. They don’t have empty chairs at dinner tables; they have no chairs and dinner tables and suffer the loss of the tens of thousands of loved ones and captives held by Israel.

The biblical “Exodus” story did not free the Jews. Just the opposite, it has been used to keep Jews in perpetual bondage to a spurious history and to promote an attitude of constant victimhood, while distracting them from realizing the role they play in the injustices done to others. Hopefully, Jews who absorb verified history will awaken other Jews to the destructive impulses generated from Israel, which prevents them from recognizing the roots and appeal of modern Judaism and instead induces them to adopt atavistic and reactionary attitudes from ancient Hebrew stories and its fictitious world — recreating the Passover plagues that now kill Palestinian livestock and crops and sent lice, flies, frogs, wild animals, locusts, hail, boils, and extended darkness throughout Gaza, and death to the firstborn child in every Palestinian household.Facebook

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in AmericaNot until They Were GoneThink Tanks of DCThe Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.

Sunday, April 14, 2024

Come For the Satanic Eclipse, Stay For the Commie Earthquake, Illegal Invaders and Bootlegged Baby Parts


A Swiss student in faux spacesuit flies a paper rocket during a Mission to Mars project
(Photo by STEFAN WERMUTH/AFP via Getty Images)


ABBY ZIMET
Apr 09, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Lordy. Our apocalyptic circus of bigots, morons, loudmouths and clowns has stayed in town too long. To wit: a ceaseless GOP House "shit show," racists freaking out at too-tanned NCAA players "invading," pastors cancelling autism awareness as "demonic," Klan Mom decrying black market harvesting of baby organs - thanks Dr. Fauci! - and now, from God or the Gazpacho police, an earthquake and end-of-the-world eclipse telling us to "repent." First, maybe repent for an electoral college that gave us this lunacy.

The seedy grandstand for the mayhem is the (barely) GOP-controlled House, which for a while has been "imploding in plain sight." After skipping town for Easter, they left behind yet more flops earning yet more declarations of "Republicans in disarray." Amidst a "Great Resignation" that's seen the highest number of lawmakers quitting in 40 years, two more Reps - Gallagher and Buck - are bowing out, leaving the GOP a paltry one-seat majority. The showboats of what Raskin calls the "chaos-and- cannibalism caucus" still don't like their Speaker for (five months late) keeping the government open with a $1.2 trillion spending bill, Comer's Biden impeachment effort has crashed and burned like his other "investigations," the sole accomplishments of the shortest and least productive House session since the Great Depression are re-naming some Veterans Affairs clinics and authorizing a coin to mark the Marine Corps' 250th anniversary, and even George Santos says he's (inexplicably) running again as an Independent 'cause the GOP is too "embarrassing."

For once, he has a point. Self-righteous blowhards venting ignorance and hate, they seem to do nothing but voice imaginary grievances when grownups do things they don't like. When the effort to remove Fani Willis from Trump's election interference case failed, they shrieked, "It's all rigged!" and "There is no justice in America today." When Kamala Harris touted an effort to keep guns away from dangerous people, yahoos who send out Christmas cards of their kids cradling AR-15's bayed, "What the hell is this evil?" When a Transgender Day of Visibility coincidentally fell on Easter, they ranted it was part of a "years-long assault on the Christian faith" and the Catholic Biden - to Trump, one of "MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA," would now "commandeer" Christmas with a Trans-Siberian Orchestra playing and say what? When a Florida school planned Autism Awareness Week, the pastor cancelled it as "demonic" (like "Santa Clause") because "anything that exalts itself above the name of Christ should be brought down."

And when racist moron and Michigan state rep Matt Maddock - who boasts he's America's "Most Conservative" pol, tried to imprison "war criminal" Gretchen Whitmer for requiring masks during COVID, got kicked out of the House GOP Caucus as too conspiracy-y even for them, posts things like "the left hates farmers," "government controls your air conditioning," "bail reform kills people," "communists are lonely, bitter, angry cowards with sad kids," and whose wife is under indictment as one of Michigan's fake electors - saw three buses at Detroit Airport and some scary dark guys alight, squawked they were "illegal invaders" and "everyone knows" Whitmer is "bussing in illegals and asking (us) to shack them up in their homes for $6,000 a year." Except they were the Gonzaga Bulldogs basketball team there to play in the NCAA Mens Sweet 16 March Madness against Purdue. Confronted with his "spectacular stupidity" and the facts, even by supporters, he snarled back - “Sure kommie. Good talking point" - and doubled down with replacement theory: "How long till the #HostileMedia calls the invaders homesteaders?" He seems nice.

The implausible queen of this GOP rabble is grandstanding, hate-mongering, self-promoting "purveyor of political pageantry" Marjorie Taylor Greene, a useless, performative troll most recently appointed to chair the "useless, performative impeachment" of Homeland Security's Alejandro Mayorkas by Mike Johnson in hopes of shutting her up as she tries to oust him for keeping the government running, or something. Among other memorable ventures since her Jewish Space Laser and school-shooting-survivor-harassing days: Inventing an Antifa plan for a "Trans Day of Vengeance," arguing 8-to-10-year-old Uvalde victims should've been armed with JR-15 rifles, spreading a replacement theory video about "the Democrat (sic) open border plan to entrench single party rule," and after Mexico's president proposed several U.S. actions to ease border crossings, refuting them with a "Declaration of War" against Mexican cartels for fentanyl trafficking, even though it's mostly produced in China and smuggled into this country not by migrants but U.S. citizens or other legal visitors.

Last month she also hosted, with live stream, a "Hearing Investigating the Black Market of Baby Organ Harvesting" to explore "the "aborrent (sic) truth of the industrial abortion complex (to) profit off the murder of unborn babies." She'd announced the event, based on repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories that Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue for profit - including grafting "the scalps of unborn babies onto the backs of rodents in a study funded by Anthony Fauci under the NIH" - with a beaming photo of herself that, noted one observer, "looked oddly bubbly for a hearing on dead babies." Her two speakers were David Daleiden, who in 2015 released heavily edited videos of himself as a fake biomedical researcher trying to buy fetal tissue, after which Planned Parenthood successfully sued him for $2 million; and Terrisa Bukovinac, who in 2022 was convicted with another anti-abortion activist of blocking access to a health clinic, stealing 115 aborted fetuses from a medical waste truck, burying most of them, and keeping five they claimed without evidence were "born alive and then murdered."

Greene said she wanted the hearing, attended by five people though she invited every member of Congress, to be a graphic, gory, in-your-face rebuttal to genteel talk of "women's health care." And so it was, with her use of pointedly incendiary language and images: "abortionists," not doctors, "babies sucked out while still alive" by an instrument "more powerful than a household vacuum," "tiny brains and hearts," "over 63 million people murdered in the womb" - misinformation so prevalent House Dems created a website to refute it - and no mention of vital medical advances facilitated by fetal tissue research. Still, wise-acres weren't buying it: "Baby Organ Harvesting is my Norwegian Death Metal cover band," "Marge hungry," "Do you know how many fetus livers it would take to make a single kabob?", "Curious how she'll tie it into Hunter's dick pics," "She should do her genealogy - she would have led lots of witch trials if she was alive back then," and, "This is absolutely ridiculous. No one harvests baby organs. Infants are only run through hydraulic presses to make baby oil, and THAT'S IT!"

But not even abortion, or terrorists collapsing Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, or earthquakes in what Rudy Giuliani called "the communist states" of New York and New Jersey - with its epicenter at Trump's Bedminster golf course deemed "Ivana's revenge" -come close to the "Super Bowl for Conspiracists" that is an eclipse. Marge was on it: "God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent." So was her squinty-eyed, right-wing boyfriend Brian Glenn - Wonkette calls him "the dude she has been having what we assume is very sweaty, pale, Godly white-person sex with" - who very scientifically "explains astronomy" and eclipses with, “I think we're going to see where the largest kind of a spiritual awakening in this country that people are realizing how much evil has creeped (sic) into (our) lives." He also warned of its fallout, "combined with earthquakes, and this infestation of locusts that have been dormant for years that all of a sudden will attack mankind, and oh then throw in Joe Biden trying to get into a war with eye-ran." He seems nice too, also smart.

There are about three, mathematically predictable solar eclipses a year, and many unpredictable earthquakes caused by shifting tectonic plates, not God being mad about gay marriage; both have occurred since creation, and you can read about them here and here. Regardless, news of these events made the right wing lose whatever's left of their minds. Alex Jones - not much left there - called the eclipse "a dress rehearsal" for declaring martial law if Trump wins the election. He cited “Major Events" like "Masonic rituals (to) usher in a New World Order," noting the eclipse trajectory in the U.S. forms an “Aleph” and “Tav,” the first and last Hebrew letters, signaling end times. Another genius saw a "perfect cover story if our terrorist government wanted to take down the power grid and cause mass chaos while blocking citizen communications (to) unleash a dictatorship" before Trump can win. And to ensure "no Satanic forces come through" during the eclipse, Steve Bannon hosted a live Mass with newly fired, financially sketchy, MAGA Bishop Joseph Strickland "in prayer and penance for our country."

It didn't help that a nerdy NASA project in Virginia measuring changes in electric and magnetic fields - Project APEP, short for Atmospheric Perturbations Around the Eclipse Path, referencing the snake god of darkness - planned to shoot rockets at the moon during the eclipse. To one wise wingnut, that meant there would be "rituals performed by Masonic, Satanic, Esoteric, Gnostic, Brotherhood of the Snake and other occult-like groups." And because if it's Monday, it must be the frog-raining end of days, several red states, Oklahoma and Texas among them, issued various disaster warnings and executive orders because when in doubt or fear just go totalitarian. In Arkansas, "out of an abundance of caution," lying Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency over a possible "backlog of deliveries by commercial vehicles transporting essential items of commerce" during maybe four minutes of darkness. In truth, noted one of her constituents, "The real emergency is that "the governor of an entire state is a fucking moron."

In honor of the fraught occasion, Fox News took its usual, balanced, erudite approach and went with racist paranoia on the subject of the dangers of an eclipse at the border even though it was so cloudy it wouldn't have much effect. Host Dana Perino: "A rare celestial event collides with a policy failure on the ground." Host Bill Hemmer: Officials bracing for higher traffic under cover of darkness "means a real opportunity for smugglers and cartels and migrants to come right in..." Vile correspondent Bill Melugin: "While everybody is gonna be looking up, if you're looking down here at the border, here's some of what you're gonna see." He offers video of "a surge of illegal alien evaders" (two poor guys scrambling through brush) with, "You'll see illegal immigrants dressed in dark clothing, sometimes camouflage...And you'll see outnumbered border agents trying to respond as these guys flood in" (one sad guy gets caught) "as they're trying to sneak into the United States." Cruelty, as usual, is the point here, and the eclipse gives us one more ugly, feckless chance to flaunt it.

Four years ago, amidst a pandemic needlessly killing hundreds of thousands, the "leader" of all these loathsome, inept people was showing them how it's done, sputtering nobody's thanking him for the great job he's doing, yet more tests bring more cases: "So I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'" Somehow, now it's worse. For the eclipse, he released a deeply weird, insanely narcissistic ad declaring, to the soaring music of 2001, "The Most Important Moment In Human History." As awe-struck crowds watch, we see the sun slowly eclipsed by....his wattled, blubbery, grotesque silhouette. Comments: "The most accidentally honest ad Trump's team ever put out," "this fucking moron won't even let himself be upstaged by the solar system," "what a freak," "not a cult," "how can I make this about me?," "going all in with the anti-Christ thing," "Stephen Miller is no Leni Riefenstahl," "fat boy ate the sun," "total eclipse of the brain," "dark side of the buffoon," "totalitarian eclipse." For a laugh, someone added light passing ear to ear. Not a laugh: "So, Trump will bring darkness to us. Got it."


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ABBY ZIMET has written CD's Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women's, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues. Email: azimet18@gmail.com
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Saturday, April 06, 2024

Angry God, omens, and 'Dark Brandon' - N.Y. quake gets wacky

Agence France-Presse
April 6, 2024 

The skyline of midtown Manhattan in New York City is seen from the United Nations headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S., July 20, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Was it God feeling angry? A dire portent? Or perhaps Joe Biden's superhero alter ego pursuing Donald Trump?

Many were reluctant to admit that the 4.8 magnitude earthquake rattling New York on Friday was just an unimpressive little shake.

This is New York after all.

And with a rare total eclipse set to blot out the sun up the eastern United States on Monday, some are already looking for answers.

"God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come," Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene -- a noted conspiracy theorist even in normal times -- wrote on X.

"I pray that our country listens," she posted.

On the other side of the political spectrum, some spotted that the epicenter of the quake was close to Trump's New Jersey golf club in Bedminster.

The MeidasTouch group, which opposes Trump, highlighted the New Jersey map under a meme of "Dark Brandon" -- a version of Biden in which the 81-year-old president is depicted grinning with red laser beams shooting from his eyes.

Others poked fun at the doomsayers with a little doomsaying of their own.

"Old Gypsy woman: *turns over a tarot card that shows an Earthquake in NYC just days before a total solar eclipse*," wrote Robert McNees, described as a physicist, on X.

"Sources say that New Yorkers should expect a swarm of locusts following the earthquake, floods and eclipse. Rumblings of concern about plagues so soon before Passover," another poster on X wrote.

New York is also the US media capital, ensuring an unparalleled ratio between the number of journalists and relative lack of news to cover.


In the ensuing race for original headlines, perhaps The Guardian will be recorded as the winner, with: "US man was getting vasectomy as earthquake struck."

According to the article, he emerged from the experience as smoothly as everyone else in the city that never sleeps.

"It mostly felt like a speed bump," he told the outlet.

'Ivana rolling in her grave': Trump golf course at epicenter of quake spurs weird theories

Kathleen Culliton
April 5, 2024 

Trump seen in the rough atTrump National Golf Club Potomac Falls, Va., on Father's Day 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

The far-right gets a lot of credit for concocting conspiracy theories linked to the highest level of government, but an earthquake near former President Donald Trump's golf Friday gave Democrats a chance to shine.

Donald Trump’s National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Friday was at the epicenter of a magnitude 4.8 earthquake that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) warned was a message from God to "repent."

This spurred Trump biographer Tim O'Brien to reply, "Does MTG know the earthquake’s epicenter was a 12-minute drive from Trump’s Bedminster, NJ golf course?"

News spread fast that the golf course — among those Attorney General Letitia James considered seizing as Trump struggled to find a $464 million bond in his civil fraud trial — was at the heart of the day's quake.

"Now I'm not normally one of those Doomsday people," said X user the Real Thelma Johnson, "but with an Earthquake epicenter at Bedminster Golf Club, Lightning striking the Statue of Liberty, and the upcoming Eclipse... God is obviously very angry Donald Trump is not in jail."

The Bedminster golf course is also where Trump's ex-wife Ivana was laid to rest not too far from the main clubhouse, as one source told the New York Post upon her death in 2022.

"Relax, New Jersey," wrote X user Marc Goldstein. "That was no earthquake. It was just Ivana rolling over and knocking down a stack of classified documents."

X user @dreamwithfaith agreed, adding, "That was Ivana rolling over in her grave cause the classified documents are getting too heavy."

Trump has dominated the 2024 news cycle as he became the first former president to head to court on criminal charges — his New York City hush money case is slated to go to trial on April 15 — and become the professional focus of journalists across the nation.

One of those reporters, Anna Bower, was among the first to chart the earthquake's proximity to the Bedminster golf course.

"Is there any news this man doesn’t touch?" the Lawfare reporter demanded to know on Friday.

Replied Eric Columbus, a former appointee of former President Barack Obama, "On Monday he’ll blot out the sun."


'Girl you are insane': MTG slammed for claiming earthquake was sign from God

Kathleen Culliton
April 5, 2024 

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) at a news conference this month.
 (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

As Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) prayed Friday that America would heed God's warning that had been supposedly been delivered by a relatively minor earthquake, many other Americans prayed someone would tell her about science.

Greene issued a stern warning on social media Friday after a magnitude 4.8 earthquake rumbled east coast cities from Philadelphia to Boston and three days before a solar eclipse is slated to cross over the northern hemisphere.

"God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent," Greene declared. "Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens."

This is not the first time Greene (R-GA) has evoked God's name to express a political point. She once accused transgender people of "destroying God's creation" and last year claimed her savior flooded the music festival Burning Man.

Nor is this the first time Greene has offered a questionable take on natural events, having infamously blamed space lasers supposedly financed by the Rothschild family for California's wildfires.

This may be why Greene's comment Friday was not met with the reverence she might have anticipated.

"Girl you are insane," replied X user Jersey Craig.

X user @SundaeDivine replied with a pithy round-up of Greene gaffes that include mistaking Nazi secret police with cold Spanish soup and fruit-bearing arbors for cell-culture plates.

"It was the Jewish Space Lasers being controlled by the Gazpacho Police targeting the Peach Tree dishes on Capitol Hill," they replied.

Christopher Hale provided Greene with a friendly reminder of the complicated but precise astrophysical calculations that have rendered solar eclipses predictable for centuries.

"Bless your heart, Marjorie," Hale replied. "Eclipses have been predetermined since the dawn of creation. You are perhaps the dumbest person ever elected to the United States Congress."

Christopher Hyre had another interpretation of the message God meant to send Greene.

"Maybe God is telling you to do your job?" Hyre said. "Stop being a horrible person."

Keith Higgins had a historical question: "Did we just slide backward to the Dark Ages?"

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Erratic weather fueled by climate change will worsen locust outbreaks, study finds

A farmer watches swarms of desert locusts that invaded his farm in Elburgon, -
Copyright © africanewsBrian Inganga/Copyright 2021 The AP. All rights reserved

By Rédaction Africanews
with AP 
CLIMATE CRISIS


Extreme wind and rain may lead to bigger and worse desert locust outbreaks, with human-caused climate change likely to intensify the weather patterns and cause higher outbreak risks, a new study has found.

The desert locust — a short-horned species found in some dry areas of northern and eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia — is a migratory insect that travels in swarms of millions over long distances and damages crops, causing famine and food insecurity.

A square kilometer swarm comprises 80 million locusts that can in one day consume food crops enough to feed 35,000 people. The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization describes it as "the most destructive migratory pest in the world."

The study, published in Science Advances on Wednesday, said these outbreaks will be "increasingly hard to prevent and control" in a warming climate.

Xiaogang He, author of the study and an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore, said more frequent and severe extreme weather events due to climate change could add unpredictability to locust outbreaks.

But he hoped that the study could help countries understand and address "the impacts of climate variability on locust dynamics, particularly in the context of its repercussions on agricultural productivity and food security" and urged better regional and continental cooperation among countries and control organizations to respond quickly and build early warning systems.

To assess the risk of locust outbreaks in Africa and the Middle East and the connection to climate change, scientists analyzed incidents of desert locust outbreaks from 1985 to 2020 using the Food and Agriculture Organization's Locust Hub data tool.

They created and used a data-driven framework to examine the insects' patterns to find out what may cause outbreaks to happen across long distances.

They found that 10 countries, including Kenya, Morocco, Niger, Yemen, and Pakistan, experienced the majority of locust outbreaks among 48 affected nations.

The worst outbreak of desert locusts in 25 years struck East Africa in 2019 and 2020, when the insects ravaged hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and damaged crops, trees and other vegetation, impacting food security and livelihoods.

Elfatih Abdel-Rahman, a scientist at International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology who wasn't part of the study, said widespread desert locust outbreaks due to climate change will substantially threaten livelihoods in the affected regions due to reduced food production and increase in food prices.

The researchers also found a strong link between the magnitude of desert locust outbreaks and weather and land conditions like air temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, and wind. Desert locusts are more likely to infest arid areas that receive sudden extreme rainfall, and the number of the insects in an outbreak is strongly impacted by weather conditions.

El Nino, a recurring and natural climate phenomenon that affects weather worldwide, was also strongly tied to bigger and worse desert locust outbreaks.

University of Delaware entomology professor Douglas Tallamy, who wasn't part of the research, said erratic weather and rainfall trigger spurts in vegetation and therefore fuels enormous population growth in locusts.

"As such variability increases, it is logical to predict that locust outbreaks will increase as well," said Tallamy.

The study is "yet another example of what should be a very strong wake-up call that societies across the globe need to come together to reduce climate change and its impacts but also to implement strategies in response to global events such as increasing threats of desert locusts," said Paula Shrewsbury, an entomology professor at the University of Maryland. Shrewsbury was not involved in the study.

The study found that especially vulnerable locations like Morocco and Kenya remain high-risk but locust habitats had expanded since 1985 and projects that they will continue growing by at least 5% by the end of the 21st century, predictably to west India and west central Asia.

It gives the example of the Rub' al Khali, or Empty Quarter, a desert in the southern Arabian Peninsula, as a place that was historically uncommon for desert locust outbreaks but then became a hotspot. The desert experienced locust outbreaks in 2019 after uncontrolled breeding following cyclones, which filled the desert with freshwater lakes.

Major locust outbreaks can have huge financial impacts. It cost more than $450 million to respond to a locust outbreak that happened in West Africa from 2003 to 2005, according to the World Bank. The outbreak had caused an estimated $2.5 billion in crop damage, it said.

Countries affected by desert locust outbreaks are already grappling with climate-driven extremes like droughts, floods and heat waves, and the potential escalation of locust risks in these regions could exacerbate existing challenges, said research author Xiaogang.

"Failure to address these risks could further strain food production systems and escalate the severity of global food insecurity," he said.

Saturday, January 27, 2024

 

Locusts’ sense of smell boosted with custom-made nanoparticles


Wash U researchers amplify neuron signals from insect brain to achieve better chemical sensing performance


Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

Locusts’ sense of smell boosted with custom-made nanoparticles 

IMAGE: 

SRIKANTH SINGAMANENI AND BARANI RAMAN LED A TEAM THAT HARNESSED THE POWER OF SPECIALLY MADE NANOSTRUCTURES THAT CAN ABSORB LIGHT AND CREATE HEAT AND ACT AS CONTAINERS TO STORE AND RELEASE CHEMICALS ON DEMAND. THEY USED THESE NANOSTRUCTURED MATERIALS TO BOOST NEURAL RESPONSE IN THE LOCUST'S BRAIN TO SPECIFIC ODORS AND TO IMPROVE THEIR IDENTIFICATION.

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CREDIT: SINGAMANENI LAB, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY




Our sensory systems are highly adaptable. A person who cannot see after turning off a light in the night slowly achieves superior power to see even small objects. Women often attain a heightened sense of smell during pregnancy. How can the same sensory system that was underperforming can also exceed the expectation based on its prior performance?

Since nature has perfected its sensory systems over evolutionary time scales, an interdisciplinary team of researchers in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis tapped into these capabilities to adapt the system on demand to perform at its peak performance. Their tools to achieve this goal: locusts and nanomaterials too small to see.

Srikanth Singamaneni and Barani Raman, both professors in the McKelvey School of Engineering, led a team that harnessed the power of specially made nanostructures that can absorb light and create heat, known as the photothermal effect, and act as containers to store and release chemicals on demand. They used these nanostructured materials to boost neural response in the locust's brain to specific odors and to improve their identification. Results of the research were published in Nature Nanotechnology Jan. 25, 2024.

Singamaneni, the Lilyan & E. Lisle Hughes Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, and Raman, professor of biomedical engineering, have collaborated for years with Shantanu Chakrabartty, the Clifford W. Murphy Professor in the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering, to harness the superior sensing capabilities of the locust olfactory system. Recently they demonstrated the feasibility of using a bio-hybrid electronic nose for sensing explosive vapors.

“We let the biology do the harder job of converting information about vaporous chemicals into an electrical neural signal,” Raman said. “These signals are detected in the insect antennae and are transmitted to the brain. We can place electrodes in the brain, measure the locusts’ neural response to odors, and use them as fingerprints to distinguish between chemicals.”

The idea, though sound, has a potential roadblock.

“We are limited by the number of electrodes and where we can place them,” Singamaneni said. “Since we will get only a partial signal, we want to amplify this signal. This is where we turned to heat and neuromodulation to enhance the signal we get.”

In the new research, the team used two strategies to boost the locusts’ ability to detect odors. First, the team created a biocompatible and biodegradable polydopamine nanoparticle that converts light to heat through a process called photothermal effect.

"Heat affects diffusion,” Raman said. “Imagine adding cold milk to hot coffee. The idea is to use the heat generated by nanostructures to locally heat, for example, a nanoheater, and enhance the neural activity.”

Second, these nanostructured materials can be made to load chemicals for storage. However, they need to be encapsulated by a covering material. The team used a phase-change material called tetradecanol which is solid at room temperature and transitions to liquid upon heating. When heated, the same nanoheaters will ooze the chemicals stored within them in addition to generating heat.

Singamaneni and the team stored octopamine, a neuromodulator involved in various functions, and released it on demand. Usually, these neuromodulators are released based on the needs of the organism. However, using the nanostructured heaters, they were released on demand to enhance the neural signals.

“Our study presents a generic strategy to reversibly enhance neural signals at the brain site where we place the electrodes,” Raman said.

“The nano-enabled neuromodulation strategy we developed opens new opportunities to realize tailored cyborg chemical sensing approaches,” said Prashant Gupta, a graduate student in Singamaneni’s lab and first author of the paper. “This approach would change an existing passive approach where information is simply read into an active one where the capabilities of the neural circuits as a basis for information processing are fully used.”

  

The nanostructures can absorb light and create heat and act as containers to store and release chemicals on demand.

CREDIT

Singamaneni lab, Washington University

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Gupta P, Chandak R, Debnath A, Traner M, Watson BM, Huan H, Gholami Derami H, Baldi H, Chakrabartty S, Raman B, Singamaneni S. Augmenting Insect Olfaction Performance through Nano-Neuromodulation. Nature Nanotechnology, Jan. 25, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-023-01592-z

Funding for this research was provided by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (#FA95501910394) and the Office of Naval Research (#N000142112343).

 

Thursday, January 11, 2024

 

Why I am obsessed with an ancient story about giant frogs

Yes, they are a metaphor for the challenges of our time.

Gerard Jollain’s 1670 etching, “The Plague of the Frogs.” Etching by Gerard Jollain, via Wikimedia/Creative Commons

(RNS) — If you are Jewish — and, frankly, even if you are not — think about the last time you attended a Passover Seder.

You will recall that moment in the Seder when it’s time to recite the plagues that fell upon the land of Egypt. Many Jews know the list by heart: dam, blood; tzfardea, frogs; kinim, locusts …

So it goes. We recite each plague, and as we do so, we spill a drop of wine on our plates to symbolize the lessening of our joy at the downfall of our enemies.

But wait a moment.

We always translate tzfardea as “frogs,” but that’s not exactly right.

The verse from Exodus that comes right out of our Torah portion for this Shabbat reads as follows: Va-taal ha-tzfardea vatkas et eretz Mitzrayim — literally, “And the frog arose and it covered the whole land of Egypt.”

Should it not have said tzfardayim — frogs — as in many frogs? Isn’t that the way we have always imagined it, and the way we have always pictured it? Wasn’t it a plague of frogs?

No. It was not “frogs,” but “frog.”

Let me bring in an ancient rabbinic interpretation, that is either delightful or monstrous.

“Rabbi Elazar said: At first, it was one frog, and it spawned and filled the entire land of Egypt with frogs.” (Talmud, Sanhedrin 67b).

Let me walk you through how a modern American rabbi interpreted this interpretation — this one frog that produced many frogs.

One of the greatest rabbis in modern American history was Rabbi Israel H. Levinthal.

He was the spiritual leader of the Brooklyn Jewish Center during the 1930s and 1940s. Those were golden times for the Brooklyn Jewish Center. Its majestic building was located on the equally majestic Eastern Parkway. Worshipping at the Brooklyn Jewish Center in those days must have been an awe-inspiring experience, because in the 1940s the cantor happened to be the great opera singer Richard Tucker.

Slightly more than 80 years ago, Rabbi Levinthal preached about how that one frog became many frogs.


These are his words:

No one in America, or in England, except discredited, outlawed charlatans and racketeers, would have dared a few years ago openly to advocate the overthrow of democracy and liberty. They would have dreaded the reaction of public opinion. How shall we explain the sudden appearance in many quarters of men and women, high in social and public life, who would betray the ideals of democracy? Their hatred of democracy and all liberal thought was there before, but it had been repressed, it had been kept hidden; the bearers of the hate feared the shame that would have been heaped upon them … But the one frog appeared, and he croaked his venomous message, and lo and behold, from out of the dark hiding places, they suddenly arose to echo the call that came from that one poisonous throat.

It should be manifestly clear to whom Rabbi Levinthal was referring. The sprouting of many frogs was a metaphor for the sprouting of fascism and Nazism.

If Rabbi Levinthal were alive today, he could have easily been preaching about the potential for tyranny in this country — dangers that historian Timothy Snyder has enumerated in his New York Times bestseller, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century.”

Snyder compares the notions of patriotism and nationalism. His words ring true today:

It is not patriotic to try to sabotage an American election, nor to claim victory after defeat. It is not patriotic to try to end democracy. A nationalist might do all these things, but a nationalist is not a patriot … Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo KiÅ¡ put it, nationalism “has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.” A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves.

Democracy failed in Europe in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, and it is failing not only in much of Europe but in many parts of the world today. It is that history and experience that reveals to us the dark range of our possible futures. A nationalist will say that “it can’t happen here,” which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.

But I find myself turning to yet another interpretation of tzfardea — that one frog.

Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya (not to be confused with the previous Rabbi Elazar) said, “It was one frog; it whistled to the other frogs, and they all came after it.” (Talmud, Sanhedrin 67b)

It was not a large, deafening croak from a gargantuan frog. Rather, it was a simple, quiet whistle. Even, perhaps, a dog whistle.

The hidden frogs have appeared and they have covered all the land. The whistles are clear, and often they do not even appear as dog whistles. I am referring, of course, to the almost daily occurrences of antisemitism in this country.

Antisemitism has gone viral, for it is, in fact, a virus that spreads into the body politic particularly when a society’s immune system has broken down.

What is the response to a virus?

Another kind of virus.

A word that also begins with the letters V-I-R.

A virus of virtue, of personal responsibility, of communal responsibility, and of bearing moral witness.

As of today, COVID-19 is still quite present among us. Almost three years later, it has not receded, though in many cases its severity has diminished. It is as if we have gone from a biological virus to a social virus — Jew-hatred — with not a moment of respite. 

During the early days of COVID-19, there was an Israeli popular song, written by the great Chava Alberstein: “Rikma Enoshit Achat,” “One Human Tapestry.”

All of us are one human tapestry,

and if one of us dies, something within all of us dies,

and yet something of each person remains within us.

If only we knew how to calm the hatred…

In Hebrew the word rikma is “tapestry” or “embroidery.”

But rikma is also a word for human tissue.

Spiritually and physically, we are all part of the same human body.

As we approach what would have been the 95th birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., let us review these words from his “Letter from Birmingham Jail“: 

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly … ”

Because the lessons of history are abundantly clear.

Yes, one frog can produce many frogs.

And, yes: A single frog can whistle, and that whistling will coax the other frogs out of their hiding places.

Please enjoy my new book — the first book to outline what a post-Oct. 7 American Judaism will look like — and how we can restore communal obligation to liberal Jewish life. “Tikkun Ha’Am/ Repairing Our People: Israel and the Crisis of Liberal Judaism.”