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erronis

erronis's Journal
erronis's Journal
February 15, 2025

RFK Jr's "Wellness" Camps -- Digby

https://digbysblog.net/2025/02/15/rfk-jrs-wellness-camps/



Snake oil freak RFK Jr was confirmed this week and has laid out his first 100 days:

Hours after being confirmed as Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. issued a statement that laid out sweeping plans for his first 100 days in office. Chief among his goals, he wrote, was to combat what he called a “growing health crisis” of chronic disease. The document called for the federal government to investigate the “root causes” of a broad range of conditions, including autism, ADHD, asthma, obesity, multiple sclerosis, and psoriasis. Conspicuously absent was any explicit mention of childhood vaccines, which Kennedy has long railed against as the head of the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense.

But the document did zero in on another one of his fixations: a class of widely prescribed drugs that treat depression, anxiety, and mood disorders. The government, he said, would “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, [and] mood stabilizers.”


He is not a doctor and knows absolutely nothing about any of this. He’s a conspiracy theorist and a crank who has said that most school shooters are on antidepressants which is a lie. (I wonder when someone’s going to ask Kennedy about his obvious steroid abuse? )

He may not have mentioned vaccines (he’ll get to that I’m sure) but the anti-depressant thing has long been one of his issues. But don’t worry, he has a plan: re-education camps:

Kennedy said he planned to dedicate money generated from a sales tax on cannabis products to “creating wellness farms—drug rehabilitation farms, in rural areas all over this country.” He added, “I’m going to create these wellness farms where they can go to get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also illegal drugs, other psychiatric drugs, if they want to, to get off of SSRIs, to get off of benzos, to get off of Adderall, and to spend time as much time as they need—three or four years if they need it—to learn to get reparented, to reconnect with communities.” The farm residents would grow their own organic food because, he suggested, many of their underlying problems could be “food-related.”

This is some serious woo-woo bullshit which proves that the conspiracy theory industry of both the left and right has now fully merged.

...
February 15, 2025

US Forest Service and National Park Service to fire thousands of workers -- The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/15/us-forest-service-national-park-service-layoffs

Agencies say Trump’s latest push to trim government could impede firefighting efforts and create crises at national parks

The US Forest Service is firing about 3,400 recent hires while the National Park Service is terminating about 1,000 workers under Donald Trump’s push to cut federal spending and bureaucracy, according to a report on Friday.

The terminations target employees who are in their probationary employment periods, which includes anyone hired less than a year ago, according to Reuters, and will affect sites such as the Appalachian trail, Yellowstone, the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr and the Sequoia national forest.

The cuts represent about 10% of the Forest Service workforce and about 5% of National Park Service employees, but excludes firefighters, law enforcement and certain meteorologists, as well as 5,000 seasonal workers, from the cutbacks.

“Allowing parks to hire seasonal staff is essential, but staffing cuts of this magnitude will have devastating consequences for parks and communities,” the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) president, Theresa Pierno, said in a statement.

...


My guess is that after they get rid of the provisional/early hires, they'll eviscerate the rest of these agencies. First, make sure there's no one available to do the job, then eliminate the job.
February 15, 2025

Trump administration backtracks on firing nuclear arsenal workers -- The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/15/trump-administration-nuclear-arsenal-worker-firings

Cuts to nuclear security workforce were made on Thursday – but agency can’t find workers to offer them their jobs back

Bumbling idiots. But perhaps that's on purpose.

The US agency charged with overseeing nuclear weapons is looking to contact workers who were fired on Thursday as part of the Trump administration’s federal cost-cutting measures, but are now needed back.

Officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) attempted to notify some probationary employees who had been let go that they are due to be reinstated – but they struggled to find them because their contact information was missing.

“The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel,” the agency said in an email, obtained by NBC News.

“Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people’s personal contact emails,” the notice added.

...
February 15, 2025

Revealed: Google facilitated Russia and China's censorship requests -- The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/15/google-helped-facilitate-russia-china-censorship-requests

An investigation has exposed the tech firm’s cooperation with autocratic regimes to remove unfavourable content

(This appeared just after I posted that I have stopped using Google News as my primary aggregator. Feeling confirmation!)

Google has cooperated with autocratic regimes around the world, including the Kremlin in Russia and the Chinese Communist party, to facilitate censorship requests, an Observer investigation can reveal.

The technology company has engaged with the administrations of about 150 countries since 2011 that want information scrubbed from their public domains.

As well as democratic governments, it has interacted with dictatorships, sanctioned regimes and governments accused of human rights abuses, including the police in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

After requests from the governments of Russia and China, Google has removed content such as YouTube videos of anti-state protesters or content that criticises and alleges corruption among their politicians.

...
February 15, 2025

I've started using AP as my main news source after trump's attack on the outlet.

I had been using Google News but found I needed to block so many outlets that spouted right-wing trash. I also couldn't care less about pro sports or trivia news (hollywood stars, etc.)

I do always read The Guardian and ProPublica. Empty Wheel and many blogs. Reuters can be good but focused on business.

But I want a concise way to see what is happening in the world (first) and the US (second). AP seems to give me this ability.

Appreciate anybody else's opinions!

Edited to append:
Just saw this from The Guardian:
Revealed: Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/15/google-helped-facilitate-russia-china-censorship-requests
(https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220033260)

Edited after researching the AP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press

The Associated Press (AP)[4] is an American not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are distributed to its members, major U.S. daily newspapers and radio and television broadcasters. Since the award was established in 1917, the AP has earned 59 Pulitzer Prizes, including 36 for photography. The AP is also known for its widely used AP Stylebook, its AP polls tracking NCAA sports, sponsoring the National Football League's annual awards, and its election polls and results during US elections.


February 15, 2025

Forget Stalin and Trotsky, Animal Farm is a play for our times. Pringles anyone? -- The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/15/animal-farm-play-george-orwell

George Orwell’s publishers thought his parable was too specific. They needn’t have worried, 80 years on it’s as salient as ever

Trying to find a bit of humor in the darkness. (Not succeeding, unfortunately.)

“I feel sorry for the old horse,” my son said, drinking his Coke in the interval.

“We all feel sorry for the horse,” I replied.

“He’s going to die, isn’t he?’’

“Er, well… it rarely ends well for the loyal, hard-working and exhausted masses under the yoke of a totalitarian dictator’s regime. But don’t worry. Pringles?”

...
February 15, 2025

Are we seeing the beginnings of World War III brought to us by Trump and Putin? -- Thom Hartmann

https://hartmannreport.com/p/saturday-report-21525-ca-or-and-wa

Trump’s reflexive ass-kissing of Putin is putting Europe at risk of war, repeating the big mistake that Neville Chamberlain made at the Munich conference on September 30, 1938. Expansionist dictators like Putin are not interested in peace unless it’s entirely on their own terms; Putin has already, since he became president of Russia on the last day of 1999, taken over or seized functional control via proxies of Belarus, Chechnya, Syria, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Crimea, and Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region. Claiming that the breakup of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” (Прежде всего, следует признать, что крушение Советского Союза было крупнейшей геополитической катастрофой века , he’s now trying to get the old band together, which includes absorbing Ukraine.

Trump, Hegseth, and Vance all appear committed to helping Putin achieve his goal, kneecapping any effort to give Ukraine real security and ratifying the discredited doctrine that when a country invades a neighbor they should be able to keep whatever land and resources they can steal. Trump actually said: “Russia fought for that land in Ukraine and lost a lot of men doing it, so they should just keep it.” This is insanity. And it gives a green light to China on their quest to regain control of Taiwan by force, another event that could trigger a third world war.

This is such an extreme pro-Putin and anti-democracy position that Britain’s prime minister and politicians across Europe are calling it out, worried that Trump is quite literally walking that continent toward war with Russia. As the conservative Member of Parliament Sir Bernard Jenkin said, “Some of the defence chiefs have been expressing this, that we must be ready to fight a war with Russia if necessary, in order to be able to deter Russia.” Yes, European politicians are now openly discussing the possibility of war on the continent, all because Trump is so weak when it comes to Putin. Pathetic…and dangerous.
February 15, 2025

Saying 'women' is not allowed, but 'men' and 'white' are OK? I'm (not) shocked -- Arwa Mahdawi

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/15/trump-banning-words-women

Thanks to Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders attacking a number of terms, ‘women’ is literally being erased.

From banning books to policing words

Thanks to the intolerant left, nobody can say the word “women” anymore! Do you remember when that was a major talking point in certain quarters? Prominent columnists wrote endless pieces declaring that the word “women” had “become verboten”. The thought police, these people claimed, were forcing everyone to say “bodies with vaginas” and “menstruators” instead. Even the likes of Margaret Atwood tweeted articles with headlines like: “Why can’t we say ‘woman’ anymore?”

That, of course, was complete nonsense. While there was certainly a push for more inclusive language, nobody with any influence was trying to ban the word “women”.

Now, however? Now, it’s a very different story. Thanks to Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders attacking “gender ideology” and DEI programs, the word “women” – along with a number of other terms – is quite literally being erased. The likes of Nasa have been busy scrubbing mentions of terms related to women in leadership from public websites in an attempt to comply with Trump’s executive orders, for example. Agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have taken down numerous webpages related to gender in the wake of Trump’s orders – although a federal judged ordered on Tuesday that they should be reinstated.

Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has an internal list of hot-button words (which include “women”, “gender”, “minority”, “biases”) that they are cross-referencing against active research projects and grant applications. The Washington Post reports that once one of these very dangerous words is identified, staff then have to go through a flowchart to see whether a research project should be flagged for further review.
February 15, 2025

What a $2 Million Per Dose Gene Therapy Reveals About Drug Pricing -- ProPublica

https://www.propublica.org/article/zolgensma-sma-novartis-drug-prices-gene-therapy-avexis

Reporting Highlights

A Record Price: The gene therapy Zolgensma helped children born with a fatal disease, spinal muscular atrophy, grow up to run and play. But the cost was stunning: $2 million per dose.

Cashing In: While taxpayers and small charities funded the drug’s early development, executives, venture-capital backers and a pharma giant have reaped the profits.

Priced Out: The drug’s cost adds to the nation’s ballooning bill for prescription drugs and puts Zolgensma out of reach for kids in many low- and middle-income countries.
February 15, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson on the events yesterday and the NPS erasing TQ+

from the Greenwich Village Stonewall National Monument.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-14-2025

...

Protesters today packed Christopher Park in New York City’s Greenwich Village near the Stonewall National Monument after the Trump administration erased “TQ+” from the LGBTQ+ on the monument’s website. The Stonewall Uprising of 1969, six days of conflict between police and LGBTQ+ protesters after police raided the Stonewall Inn, brought the longstanding efforts of LGBTQ+ activists for civil rights to popular attention, making Stonewall a symbol of LGBTQ+ rights.

Trans activists Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera were key figures in the Stonewall Uprising. Acknowledging their contribution, one protester held a sign that read, “NATIONAL PARK SERVICE: YOU CAN’T SPELL HISTORY WITHOUT A ‘T’”

Former Republican operative Stuart Stevens had a different take. He posted: “When I see the sexual orientation hate come out of the Republican party under the pretext of just being anti-Trans, I am very tempted to name the Republican operatives and elected officials who are closeted gays. It’s not a short list.”

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