June 25, 2023

As more schools target 'Maus,' Art Spiegelman's fears are deepening

Right-wing culture warriors pushing restrictions on classroom instruction sometimes defend these measures by insisting that they avoid targeting historically or intellectually significant material. In their telling, these laws restrict genuinely objectionable matter — such as pornography or "woke indoctrination” — while sparing material that kids truly need to learn, even if it’s controversial.

A new fracas involving a school board in Missouri will test this premise. The controversy revolves around Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about the Holocaust, and it indicates that those seeking to censor books seem oddly unconstrained by the principle that they are supposed to avoid restricting important, challenging historical material.

“It’s one more book — just throw it on the bonfire,” Spiegelman told me ruefully, suggesting the impulse to target books seems to have a built-in tendency to expand, sweeping in even his Pulitzer-winning “Maus” under absurd pretenses.

“It’s a real warning sign of a country that’s yearning for a return of authoritarianism,” Spiegelman said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/14/art-spiegelman-maus-book-bans/

It's really the genocide they're objecting to, not the naked mice.....

June 25, 2023

Iowa meteorologist resigns after death threats over climate crisis coverage

An Iowa meteorologist says he is resigning from the television station where he works because he developed post-traumatic stress disorder after threats over his climate change coverage.

On Wednesday, Chris Gloninger, the chief meteorologist at Des Moines’s CBS TV station affiliate KCCI, announced that he will be stepping down from his position and leaving his broadcast career in July.

Gloninger said in a statement on Twitter: “18 years. 7 stations. 5 states. I am bidding farewell to TV to embark on a new journey dedicated to helping solve the climate crisis.”

He added: “After a death threat stemming from my climate coverage last year and resulting PTSD, in addition to family issues, I’ve decide to begin this journey *now*”.

Last July, Gloninger, who has spent 18 years of his career covering climate change as well as the weather and became KCCI’s chief meteorologist in 2021, shared a series of disturbing emails he received regarding his coverage.

One message said: “I don’t watch your worthless weather forecast because your an idiot but someone else texted me and said you are still an idiot, go the hell back where you came from DOUCHEBAG.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/24/iowa-meteorologist-resigns-death-threats-climate-coverage

The rest are equally ungrammatical and ill-spelled. Wonder if they are all from the same idiot?

June 25, 2023

Cyberattacks on hospitals 'should be considered a regional disaster,' researchers find

It was early May in 2021 when patients flooded the emergency room at the University of California San Diego Health Center.

"We were bringing in backup staff, our wait times had gone haywire, the whole system was overloaded," said Dr. Christopher Longhurst, UC San Diego's chief medical officer and digital officer. "We felt it."

But the crunch wasn't the result of a massive accident or the latest wave of patients infected by a new coronavirus variant. The influx was the direct result of a ransomware attack, a costly and unfortunately now common form of cybercrime in which hackers lock down their victims' files and demand a ransom, often millions of dollars, to unlock them.

In reality, UC San Diego wasn't the target. Their systems were intact. Instead, hackers had breached the hospital down the street, Scripps Health. The culprits not only took over the hospital's digital records system and its entire computer network, but stole millions of patients' confidential data. Scripps struggled for weeks to get back online, and is still dealing with the aftermath, having paid $3.5 million in a legal settlement earlier this year with patients whose data was exposed.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/25/1184025963/cyberattacks-hospitals-ransomware

Most recently it was Johns Hopkins.

June 25, 2023

Trump keeps lying. For election workers that's meant threats, harassment and a poisoned dog

The county election worker was crossing the street with a locked bag full of ballots when he saw a Jeep Gladiator pickup truck come around the corner. It sped toward him and slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop just past him. The driver glared.

"Then she leaned out of the car and looked at me and yelled, 'you f***ing traitor!'" he said.

The woman had been following him all day as he drove around collecting ballots from drop-boxes in Coos County, Ore. The man — whom we've agreed not to identify because he said he fears being further targeted — says she would get out and film him, and that she had a gun on her hip.

Things weren't much better over at the county elections office. Local people, apparently juiced up on misinformation related to Donald Trump's false claims about rigged elections, were camped in the hallway day after day.

"Some of them were very mean," says Dede Murphy, the county clerk during this past midterm election. One called her "a wicked woman." Another barked through a bullhorn, "you should be ashamed of yourself."

Even though Trump won 59% of the vote in this county in 2020, Murphy and the other election workers say two years later people were still yelling in their faces about voter fraud.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/21/1180818978/election-workers-are-facing-threats-and-harassment-as-they-brace-for-2024

This is criminal harassment and should be punished severely.

June 25, 2023

Why Did Putin Let Prigozhin Walk Away?

The same government that has been slaughtering Ukrainian civilians for more than a year because it claims NATO baddies are too close to its borders allowed its own rogue mercenary boss to shoot down military helicopters on Saturday and, according to state media, kill several soldiers before calmly waltzing away to a new life in Belarus.

The Kremlin even publicly guaranteed that Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin had President Vladimir Putin’s “word” he could safely leave the country—after conveniently having criminal charges against him dropped.

So why is Prigozhin so untouchable? Or is the Kremlin simply biding its time to deal with him in a less public manner?

It’s hard to imagine the former hot-dog vendor will get off unscathed after humiliating the Russian leader while the whole world watched. The chaotic spectacle of Prigozhin’s armed uprising and the ease with which he and his Wagner mercenaries appeared to take control in Rostov shattered Putin’s carefully cultivated image as a strongman leader. Hours after Putin vowed to take “brutal” measures against the coup organizers, they walked away. And in another blow to Putin, crowds of supportive Rostov residents were filmed cheering on the Wagner fighters and shaking their hands.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-did-putin-let-prigozhin-walk-away?ref=home

Dude has a lot of support.....

June 25, 2023

Joe Rogan doesn't get it: Medical facts aren't up for debate

Dr. Thomas K. Lew

By the time my patient had reached out for treatment, it was too late.

Laying in her hospital bed, cancer that had originated in her breast had spread to her liver, her lungs and even her brain. She had known about her cancer for years, but did not trust medical doctors for treatment. Instead, she relied on “natural” remedies – vitamins and supplements recommended by communities online, that she could have faith in over “big pharma” and the medical complex. They did not work.

I’ve been thinking about this now deceased woman lately, as I’ve been reading about Joe Rogan’s challenge for a scientist to debate a politician over the benefits of vaccines. The popular podcaster has invited Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor of virology and preeminent vaccine expert, to argue against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine skeptic. Like my misguided patient, many of Rogan’s listeners do not trust medical experts or the best scientific data available, and would rather believe a vaccine skeptic – or at least weigh their testimony equally.

Dr. Hotez is right to call out the misinformation on this widespread podcast, and he is right to not partake in the spectacle that would be this debate. You might think, why wouldn’t he just participate, shut down all the critics, and prove his point – after all, if the scientific data is so strong, wouldn’t it easily persuade listeners over any point RFK Jr. could make?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2023/06/25/rogan-debate-challenge-shows-why-covid-misinformation-thrives/70347479007/

I think most of us here on DU hate Big Pharma too, but we're also not stupid. There are an ungodly lot of stupid people out there.

June 25, 2023

Nearly 1/3 of the US homeless population lives in California. This veterinarian cares for the pets

An elevated train clangs along tracks above Dr. Kwane Stewart as the veterinarian makes his way through a chain link gate to ask a man standing near a parked RV whether he might know of any street pets in need.

Michael Evans immediately goes for his 11-month-old pit bull, Bear, his beloved companion living beneath the rumbling San Francisco Bay Area commuter trains.

“Focus. Sit. That’s my boy,” Evans instructs the high-energy puppy as he eagerly accepts Stewart’s offer.

A quick check of the dog reveals a moderate ear infection that could have made Bear so sick in a matter of weeks he might have required sedation. Instead, right there, Dr. Stewart applies a triple treatment drop of antibiotic, anti-fungal and steroids that should start the healing process.

“This is my son right here, my son. He’s my right-hand man,” an emotional Evans says of Bear, who shares the small RV in Oakland. “It’s a blessing, really.”

https://apnews.com/article/california-homeless-pets-street-veterinarian-ed7c4759cb54753f6fc1ccf43c766e9c

Dr. Stewart is a hero. For many homeless people, their pets are their only friends or family.

June 25, 2023

Is it chicken? Here's how the first bite of 'cell-cultivated' meat tastes

By JONEL ALECCIA

When I told friends and family I was reporting on the first chicken meat grown from animal cells, their first comment was “Eww.” Their second comment was: “How does it taste?”

The short answer (you’ve probably heard this sentence before in other contexts): Tastes like chicken.

The longer answer, which folds in the “Eww” response, is more nuanced. Yes, it’s strange to think of eating a totally new kind of meat — chicken that doesn’t come from a chicken, meat that will be sold as “cell-cultivated” chicken after the U.S. Agriculture Department on Wednesday gave the green light to two California firms, Upside Foods and Good Meat.

But it’s also interesting (and exciting!) to taste test the first offerings of a new era in meat production, which aims to eliminate harm to billions of animals slaughtered for food — and to dramatically reduce the environmental effects of grazing, growing feed for those animals and dealing with their animal waste.

https://apnews.com/article/labgrown-chicken-cultivated-meat-863e7d68c8c4a5293683a7c5d6a58d15

Also possibly nice for those of us who, for one reason or another, cannot digest the Beyond or Impossible products, although I don't know how my church will regard them for fasting purposes......

June 25, 2023

What is the Wagner Group?

What is the Wagner Group? A look at the mercenary group led by man accused of 'armed mutiny' in Russia

Long at odds with Russia’s military leaders during the war in Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, took his feud to a new level Friday when he leveled accusations that his fighters had been struck and vowed revenge.

The threat, made on his official Telegram channel, sparked a crisis in Russia, where the country's Federal Security Service called for members of the private military contractor to refuse Prigozhin's orders and detain him.

It also opened a criminal investigation for “organizing an armed rebellion,” the prosecutor general’s office said.

Describing it as a stab in the back, Russian Lt. General Vladimir Alekseev told broadcaster RBK it was “a coup d’état.”

In a later television address, President Vladimir Putin labeled the revolt an “armed mutiny” and vowed to put down the effort. Calling Prigozhin’s actions “a betrayal of his country and people,” he said, “Everything that weakens Russia should be thrown aside.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/what-is-the-wagner-group-rcna90923

I don't see that much difference between the Wagner Group and Blackwater/Xe or whatever Eric, Prince of Darkness, calls his outfit now. Both were supported by their governments until Prigozhin and Putin got into this pissing match.

June 25, 2023

Defending RFK Jr. Is Boring--Not Brave

Anthony L. Fisher

You do not, under any circumstances, “gotta hand it to RFK Jr.”

If you fancy yourself a nuanced, just-asking-questions, politically tribeless centrist—and are so desperate to find an activist avatar that will give voice to your outrage against the mainstream media, various government and corporate institutions, and the Democratic Party in general—then consider seeking out and elevating one who hasn’t demonstrated through decades of high-profile activism and innumerable media appearances that his two speeds are “dishonest” and “dumb as shit.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—the 69-year-old longshot Democratic presidential candidate—would be just another anonymous, unemployed nepo baby if he had a different last name. But thanks to descending from mid-20th-century political royalty, he’s polling well enough against President Joe Biden that it’s tough to ignore his candidacy, even as some commentators argue we should freeze him out as a moral imperative. (Just as when the media at first tried to pretend Donald Trump’s political rise wasn’t happening, I don’t agree that ignoring faux-populist demagogues will make the problem go away.)

While it’s unlikely that Kennedy will do much more damage to the sitting president than Pat Buchanan did to President George H.W. Bush during the 1992 GOP primary, by having his candidacy serve as a waystation for “populist” grievances (much like Buchanan’s “culture war” candidacy provided a home for the overt antisemities, racists, and homophobes who had started to feel tribeless in the early ’90s Republican Party), RFK Jr.’s campaign feels more astroturf than grassroots.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/contrarian-defenses-of-robert-f-kennedy-jr-arent-brave-theyre-boring

"Faux populi". (Yeah, I thought that just a couple minutes ago while reading this editorial.) Jill Stein, anyone? Geez, the guy is a nutcase.