The M word

Nov 29th, 2016 8:55 am | By

An unedifying protracted conversation on Twitter, started by someone I don’t know from Adam.

Sigh.

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There is no getting better

Nov 28th, 2016 6:27 pm | By

N Ziehl on coping with an apparent narcissist in the White House.

I want to talk a little about narcissistic personality disorder. I’ve unfortunately had a great deal of experience with it, and I’m feeling badly for those of you who are trying to grapple with it for the first time because of our president-elect, who almost certainly suffers from it or a similar disorder. If I am correct, it has some very particular implications for the office. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1) It’s not curable and it’s barely treatable. He is who he is. There is no getting better, or learning, or adapting. He’s not going to “rise to the occasion” for more than maybe a couple hours. So just put that out of your mind.

I should probably pay attention to that. I’ve never expected him to rise to the occasion, but I suppose I have been thinking he might realize what a fucking fool he is if everyone told him so. I should just put that out of my mind.

2) He will say whatever feels most comfortable or good to him at any given time. He will lie a lot, and say totally different things to different people. Stop being surprised by this. While it’s important to pretend “good faith” and remind him of promises, as Bernie Sanders and others are doing, that’s for his supporters, so they can see the inconsistency as it comes. He won’t care. So if you’re trying to reconcile or analyze his words, don’t. It’s 100% not worth your time. Only pay attention to and address his actions.

Well I’m not doing it because he will care but because others care. We have to keep track – for the prosecution if nothing else. Plus it’s a kind of coping mechanism itself. Decline and fall sort of thing.

4) Entitlement is a key aspect of the disorder. As we are already seeing, he will likely not observe traditional boundaries of the office. He has already stated that rules don’t apply to him. This particular attribute has huge implications for the presidency and it will be important for everyone who can to hold him to the same standards as previous presidents.

So that’s another reason we should keep track.

5) We should expect that he only cares about himself and those he views as extensions of himself, like his children. (People with NPD often can’t understand others as fully human or distinct.) He desires accumulation of wealth and power because it fills a hole. (Melania is probably an acquired item, not an extension.) He will have no qualms at all about stealing everything he can from the country, and he’ll be happy to help others do so, if they make him feel good. He won’t view it as stealing but rather as something he’s entitled to do. This is likely the only thing he will intentionally accomplish.

I have suspected as much. Good to have it spelled out.

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Makeup to cover the bruises

Nov 28th, 2016 12:30 pm | By

News from Morocco:

Women in Morocco have reacted in horror after a programme on state television demonstrated how they could use makeup to cover up evidence of domestic violence.

The segment in the daily programme Sabahiyat, on Channel 2M, showed a smiling makeup artist demonstrating how to mask marks of beating, on a woman with her face made up to appear swollen and covered with fake black and blue bruises.

“We hope these beauty tips will help you carry on with your daily life”, the host said at the end of the segment, broadcast on 23 November – two days before the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Have the clip:

https://twitter.com/CurioGorilla/status/802496936393711616

Lipstick on a pig bruise.

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Oversight

Nov 28th, 2016 12:06 pm | By

There’s a thing called the Goldwater Rule which applies to members of the American Psychiatric Association; it says they can’t diagnose someone they haven’t personally evaluated.

The Goldwater Rule is published as an annotation in the Principles of Medical Ethics with Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry. I encourage you all to read the full text of the rule below, and keep it in mind during this election cycle, and other events of similarly intense public interest.

The “Goldwater Rule:”

On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.”

Principles of Medical Ethics with Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry

You know, people who go into the military get evaluated first. They get screened. Some candidates are rejected. But candidates for president are not evaluated or screened in any such way. There is no procedure for blocking a candidate who is just plain unfit for the job.

Trump should have been screened out long ago. There’s a terrible mismatch between what the president has the ability to do – like starting wars and deploying nuclear weapons – and the total lack of a system for insuring that the president is not a raging narcissist.

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Aren’t all politicians?

Nov 28th, 2016 11:38 am | By

The Washington Post asked in late July Is Trump a textbook narcissist?

For the four days of the Republican convention, the word “narcissism” was never more in vogue, but what does the word actually mean? More importantly, what would it mean for America if one of the nominees for president of the United States is a narcissist? Aren’t all politicians?

The way Trump is? No, certainly not.

Arguably they can’t be, because politics doesn’t work that way. Trump’s election is an anomaly. People who put their own ego ahead of everything else are going to put people off, and their political careers won’t get off the ground. Trump is an “outsider,” which means he didn’t do any political work to get to this point. He’s always been at the top of his own ladder, giving orders, so he’s never had to learn to get along with people, so he’s never been forced to stop putting himself first.

A simple narcissist is someone who is self-absorbed, says Peter Freed, a psychiatrist at the Personality Studies Institute in New York City. On the other hand, people with narcissistic personality disorder are so self-absorbed that they are indifferent, even oblivious, to how they appear to others.

That’s our boy, wouldn’t you say?

Pathological narcissism is not, strictly speaking, a mental illness. Rather, it is classified as a personality disorder, afflicting someone whose behavior and beliefs lie far outside the norm. Unlike many mental illnesses, the origins of personality disorders are generally considered more familial and environmental than genetic.

Freed thinks narcissism is the “great, undiagnosed character pa­thol­ogy of the modern age,” even though few in psychiatry want to even use the word narcissism, he says, because of its pejorative connotation. The American public “is hampered by a lack of education about a syndrome that is real” and causes “real suffering.”

Ultimately, he said, regarding highly successful people, narcissism works — until it doesn’t. Usually those who suffer most are not the narcissists, Freed says, but those around them, the people who have to cope with the “mood swings, walking on egg shells, the demand to be sycophantic.”

“Right now Trump is not having a hard time” he said. “The hard time will come if he loses.”

Or, it turns out, if he wins but many people continue to say he’s a terrible human being.

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If he’s that out of control

Nov 28th, 2016 10:09 am | By

The Washington Post edges up to the task of discussing Trump’s pathological narcissism.

Trump’s frustration that he’ll be inaugurated despite having less demonstrated support than his opponent is the most likely explanation for his tweets. He’s clearly annoyed that Clinton agreed to participate in Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s efforts to review balloting in Wisconsin and other Midwestern states (an annoyance also made clear on Twitter). It’s remarkably similar to what happened when he lost the Iowa caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.): At first, he accepted the result as it was. Within a day or two, though, he began lashing out at Cruz, accusing him of stealing the vote in the state.

Of course, there’s no evidence that Cruz did anything that could be identified as “stealing” the election. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that Trump was mad. (Incidentally, this was also the genesis of “Lyin’ Ted.”)

There has been some social-media speculation that Trump is laying the groundwork for federal efforts to curtail voting access. That’s probably backward. It’s more likely that Trump is leveraging long-standing, unfounded murmurs of rampant voter fraud as a way to assuage his ego, just as he claimed that Cruz stole the election to save face.

This has to be carefully explained to us, because it’s (still) so hard to believe that a grown man who has just been elected president of the US has that little self-control and discipline. It’s hard to believe and it’s also terrifying to believe. If he’s that out of control, maybe he’ll send a pilot to drop a nuclear weapon on our house because we sent him a rude tweet. If he’s that out of control, maybe he’ll speed up climate change even more out of sheer spite. If he’s that out of control, maybe there’s nothing we can do to limit the destruction.

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Verified? Really?

Nov 28th, 2016 9:47 am | By

The Washington Post dug into the likely source of Trump’s wild claim that millions of people voted illegally.

On Nov. 13, Gregg Phillips, a former Texas Health and Human Services Commission deputy commissioner, tweeted about there being 3 million votes that were cast by noncitizens.

https://twitter.com/JumpVote/status/797843232436748288

Phillips hasn’t provided any evidence for that claim. InfoWars and Drudge picked it up, but Drudge labeled it a “claim.”

When Matt Drudge qualifies something with “Claim:,” it’s worth treating it with skepticism.

The rumor-debunking site Snopes looked at Phillips’s claim and found no evidence for it. (It also noted that Phillips has a history of implying that Obamacare will lead to the registration of millions of immigrants here illegally.) Phillips replied on Twitter, “One might imagine someone would have called me.” That’s easier said than done; when I was looking at this earlier this month I couldn’t find a way to contact Phillips. An email to True the Vote, a conservative group focused on the issue of voter fraud (for which Phillips claims to be a board member), did not receive a reply.

Phillips has said that he will release evidence of his claims at some point in the future — but not to the media. As of writing, there simply isn’t any data to that effect.

Yet Trump – who will be president in a few weeks – is happy to blat out the accusation all the same. He’s the same reckless malevolent narcissist he’s always been.

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Live above the rest

Nov 27th, 2016 5:50 pm | By

New details on the conflicts of interest.

On Thanksgiving Day, a Philippine developer named Jose E. B. Antonio hosted a company anniversary bash at one of Manila’s poshest hotels. He had much to be thankful for.

In October, he had quietly been named a special envoy to the United States by the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte. Mr. Antonio was nearly finished building a $150 million tower in Manila’s financial district — a 57-story symbol of affluence and capitalism, which bluntly promotes itself with the slogan “Live Above the Rest.” And now his partner on the project, Donald J. Trump, had just been elected president of the United States.

After the election, Mr. Antonio flew to New York for a private meeting at Trump Tower with the president-elect’s children, who have been involved in the Manila project from the beginning, as have Mr. Antonio’s children. The Trumps and Antonios have other ventures in the works, including Trump-branded resorts in the Philippines, Mr. Antonio’s son Robbie Antonio said.

Isn’t that just cozy. Antonio is a special envoy to the US, and Trump is the next president of the US. How pleasant for both of them and their children.

Mr. Antonio’s combination of jobs — he is a business partner with Mr. Trump, while also representing the Philippines in its relationship with the United States and the president-elect — is hardly inconsequential, given some of the weighty issues on the diplomatic table.

Among them, Mr. Duterte has urged “a separation” from the United Statesand has called for American troops to exit the country in two years’ time. His antidrug crusade has resulted in the summary killings of thousands of suspected criminals without trial, prompting criticism from the Obama administration.

Situations like these are already leading some former government officials from both parties to ask if America’s reaction to events around the world could potentially be shaded, if only slightly, by the Trump family’s financial ties with foreign players. They worry, too, that in some countries those connections could compromise American efforts to criticize the corrupt intermingling of state power with vast business enterprises controlled by the political elite.

“It is uncharted territory, really in the history of the republic, as we have never had a president with such an empire both in the United States and overseas,” said Michael J. Green, who served on the National Security Council in the administration of George W. Bush, and before that at the Defense Department.

Or such a corrupt, self-serving, defiant president. The combination is going to be lethal.

a review by The Times of these business dealings identified a menu of the kinds of complications that could create a running source of controversy for Mr. Trump, as well as tensions between his priorities as president and the needs and objectives of his companies.

In Brazil, for example, the beachfront Trump Hotel Rio de Janeiro — one of Mr. Trump’s many branding deals, in which he does not have an equity stake — is part of a broad investigation by a federal prosecutor who is examining whether illicit commissions and bribes resulted in apparent favoritism by two pension funds that invested in the project.

Several of Mr. Trump’s real estate ventures in India — where he has more projects underway than in any location outside North America — are being built through companies with family ties to India’s most important political party. This makes it more likely that Indian government officials will do special favors benefiting Mr. Trump’s projects, including pressuring state-owned banks to extend favorable loans.

There’s Turkey. Will Trump look the other way while Erdogan keeps arresting dissidents and academics in exchange for favors to Trump’s business interests there?

What is clear is that there has been very little division, in the weeks since the election, between Mr. Trump’s business interests and his transition effort, with the president-elect or his family greeting real estate partners from India and the Philippines in his office and Mr. Trump raising concerns about his golf course in Scotland with a prominent British politician. Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who is in charge of planning and development of the Trump Organization’s global network of hotels, has joined in conversations with at least three world leaders — of Turkey, Argentina and Japan — having access that could help her expand the brand worldwide.

What is that? Why was she even allowed to do that? Why is any of this being allowed?

Then there’s that hotel in Rio, and the investigation by a federal prosecutor into why two pension funds invested so heavily in the hotel when it’s not even finished and is a risky investment?

And a lot more.

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With no evidence

Nov 27th, 2016 5:27 pm | By

The Times basically says that Trump is lying.

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Sunday that he had fallen short in the popular vote in the general election only because millions of people had voted illegally, leveling his claim — despite the absence of any such evidence — as part of a daylong storm of Twitter posts voicing anger about a three-state recount push.

That’s a cautious way of putting it, of course, but their meaning is pretty clear.

The series of posts came one day after Hillary Clinton’s campaign said it would participate in a recount effort being undertaken in Wisconsin, and potentially in similar pushes in Michigan and Pennsylvania, by Jill Stein, who was the Green Party candidate. Mr. Trump’s statements revived claims he made during the campaign, as polls suggested he was losing to Mrs. Clinton, about a rigged and corrupt system.

The Twitter outburst also came as Mr. Trump is laboring to fill crucial positions in his cabinet, with his advisers enmeshed in a rift over whom he should select as secretary of state. On Sunday morning, Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser, extended a public campaign to undermine one contender, Mitt Romney — a remarkable display by a member of a president-elect’s team. She accused Mr. Romney of having gone “out of his way to hurt” Mr. Trump during the Republican primary contests.

Professionalism in action.

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More Twitter lies from Trump

Nov 27th, 2016 4:33 pm | By

Trump has lit up social media again.

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.

I offered him my quick thought on the subject:

What if we add the millions of people whose votes were suppressed in defiance of the Voting Rights Act? You lying bastard.

Ezra Klein points out that he can’t keep track of his own arguments.

Trump has lost the thread of his own argument. The point of Trump’s tweets was to dismiss those questioning the legitimacy of the vote.

Yes but that’s true only if you regard his tweets as an argument. I consider them blurts, instead; it saves a lot of time.

This perhaps goes without saying, but it’s unnerving that the president-elect can’t restrain himself from making a bad situation worse on Twitter, or even hold himself to the logic of the argument he intended to make and the outcome he wanted to achieve.

Yes. Yes it is. It’s very unnerving that he is that stupid, and undisciplined, and narcissistic, and impulsive. It’s shocking that someone like that can get elected to such a powerful office. I’m unnerved by it multiple times every day. It’s hard to say enough about how terrible it is.

This tweet is an example of Trump’s most dangerous quality: his tendency to mobilize against a threatening, sometimes imaginary Other whenever he himself is under siege.

Most dangerous and possibly most disgusting. His constant lashing out is a revolting thing to see in a head of state.

This tweet is an example of one of Trump’s other dangerous qualities: his tendency to believe what he wants to believe about the world, facts be damned.

To believe it and to try to force it on everyone else. Another bad quality in a head of state.

It has been weeks since Donald Trump won the presidential election, and here is what we can say: he is still just himself. He is governing like he promised. He is appointing the loyalists, lackeys, and extremists he surrounded himself with during the campaign. He is tweeting the same strange, crazed missives, pursuing the same odd and counterproductive vendettas. His conflicts of interest have proven, if anything, worse than expected, and he has shown no shame, restraint, or interest in addressing them.

He will always be just himself. That’s painfully clear. Nothing can shift him.

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Springtime for Putin and Rusheeyaaa

Nov 27th, 2016 1:13 pm | By

And speaking of those zany Russians…there’s the Holocaust-themed ice dance.

The wife of Vladimir Putin’s powerful spokesman has provoked outrage by performing a Holocaust-themed ice skating routine on Russian TV reality show.

Tatiana Navka, the wife of Dmitry Peskov, appeared on Russian reality show Ice Age and performed in the striped uniform of concentration camp victims complete with the yellow Star of David which Jewish people were forced to wear by the Nazis.

She and her ice skating partner, actor Andrei Burkovsky, smiled at the audience during the performance and appeared to mime shooting each other in one sequence.

View image on Twitter

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Trump is an honorary Cossack

Nov 27th, 2016 12:55 pm | By

Jeff Sharlet on Facebook:

Since Trump’s been made an honorary Cossack — by the St. Petersburg-area Irbis group — I thought I’d re-share my own encounter with a St. Petersburg Cossack — and his whip, and his gun.

This was in November 2013, at a secret meeting of Russian fascists to organize anti-LGBT violence to which I’d been invited by accident. I was reporting for GQ.

The Cossack will begin, he says, with history. “God sends Cossack souls through our blood,” he says. A voice that seems cultivated for menace. A barrel of dread. God sends Cossacks, yes, he says. They are his warriors.

Do not be frightened, he says. Cossacks are just. For instance: We will not rape Muslim women, for it would be unjust to the half-Cossack child born damned by Muslim blood. And we are creative. “We are famous for our humor,” he says. For instance: By rights homosexuals should be slaughtered. This is tradition. He recounts some of the ways Cossacks murder homosexuals. “Of course,” he explains, “I cannot say this officially.” He cracks his first smile. But there is something he can speak of. Shit—the medium of Cossack humor. “They like to put their cocks in the ass, so we put the shit on their cocks for them. We smear them.” He chortles, waits for me to laugh, glares. Do I not think this is funny?

I try to change the subject. “Tell me about your outfit,” I say brightly. He shows me his whip, weighted with a sharp lead block. He puts its thick wooden grip in my hand. “Feel,” he says. He unsheathes a wide black blade as long as my forearm. He says nothing about the handgun at his side.

“What kind of gun is that?” I ask.

“A good one,” he says. He releases the clip, to show me it’s loaded. He pushes the clip back in. He points the gun at me. Very casual. Just in my direction. Cossack humor. Do I not think this is funny? I lift my notebook off the table. He reaches across to thump it down. “Pishi,” he says. “Write.”

We live in bully-world now.

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Faces

Nov 27th, 2016 10:12 am | By

Trump gets angry at the news media when they publish unbecoming photos of him. In general I think people should not be attacked on the basis of how they look, but the thing about Trump is that he’s so very often making horrible faces in aid of making some horrible point. I don’t think the news media are stooping or being cruel when they publish photos of that kind.

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In the kitchen

Nov 27th, 2016 9:12 am | By

Terry Sanderson on Facebook from the Sunday Times, a story by Andrew Gilligan and Sian Griffiths:

The ringleaders of the “Trojan Horse” plot to impose conservative Islamic values on state schools in Birmingham are back in teaching, despite being banned from the classroom, an investigation by The Sunday Times has established.

Tahir Alam and Razwan Faraz are running informal classes — Faraz in a different city and under a false name.

…

An official report found Alam and Faraz were at the centre of “co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained action” to introduce an “intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos” into schools in the city, with girls and boys separated, “un-Islamic subjects” such as evolution reduced or removed, and secular head teachers bullied from their jobs.

Faraz, deputy head of one of the Trojan Horse schools and the brother of a convicted terrorist, was a key figure in the “Park View brotherhood” of teachers, a group on the messaging tool WhatsApp who expressed grossly bigoted and extremist views. Faraz described gay people as “satanic” and “animals”, and said women’s place was “in the kitchen . . . a perpetual role serving men”.

More.

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Behind him

Nov 26th, 2016 4:52 pm | By

Abigail Rockwell, granddaughter of the illustrator Norman Rockwell, points out the presence and positioning of a painting by the latter in the meeting between Obama and Donnie from Queens.

It’s the arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty.

A painting by Norman Rockwell was moved in the Oval Office for the first meeting between President Obama and Mr. Trump so it would hang over Mr. Trump’s shoulder. In the painting the torch of the Statue of Liberty is being repaired by five men, one of whom is an African-American. All of them are precariously roped to her flame.

Who moved the painting and why? It is clearly too small for that space; a larger landscape painting had hung there previously. Originally the Rockwell painting was displayed to the right of President Obama’s desk and the expansive window, over a Frederick Remington sculpture, The Bronco Buster.

What is the meaning of this gesture? Most of my grandfather Norman Rockwell’s paintings are about tolerance, unity and the inherent goodness and resilience of the human spirit. The reflection of that vision and the profound presence of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the bust below, by African-American sculptor Charles Alston, speak volumes without saying a word. Perhaps they are able to say what Obama could not in these circumstances of necessary protocol.

Whoever moved it must have done it with Obama’s knowledge and permission, if not on his instructions. I doubt people can just go in there and switch stuff around without his say-so.

Rockwell “snuck” in the man in the bright red shirt (which draws attention to him) with noticeably darker skin. My grandfather occasionally did this to skirt The Saturday Evening Post’s policy of only painting people of ethnicity in subservient roles to whites.

Its what? I have to say, I froze in surprise when I read that. How incredibly creepy and awful.

And here they are working together to repair our Lady’s torch. My grandfather left out the rest of liberty to focus on her strong arm outstretched to the sky, proclaiming the light of freedom to everyone, especially immigrants. The ornate protective fence around the flame is the painting’s most delicate detail.

Nicely done.

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Faster than the models

Nov 26th, 2016 3:53 pm | By

It’s alarmingly warm in the Arctic this year. I suppose Donald Trump and his friends think that’s nice, the polar bears and caribou can get in some sunbathing, but everyone else realizes it could mean disaster a lot sooner than expected.

The Arctic is experiencing extraordinarily hot sea surface and air temperatures, which are stopping ice forming and could lead to record lows of sea ice at the north pole next year, according to scientists.

Danish and US researchers monitoring satellites and Arctic weather stations are surprised and alarmed by air temperatures peaking at what they say is an unheard-of 20C higher than normal for the time of year. In addition, sea temperatures averaging nearly 4C higher than usual in October and November.

…

Sea ice, which forms and melts each year, has declined more than 30% in the past 25 years. This week it has been at the lowest extent ever recorded for late November. According to the US government’s National Snow and Ice Data Centre, (NSIDC), around 2m square kilometres less ice has formed since September than average. The level is far below the same period in 2012, when sea ice went on to record its lowest ever annual level.

And it’s not just some random thing; it’s a loop.

Rasmus Tonboe, a sea ice remote sensing expert at the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen, said: “Sea surface temperatures in the Kara and Barents seas are much warmer than usual. That makes it very difficult for sea ice to freeze.

“When we have large areas of open water, it also raises air temperatures, and it has been up to 10/15C warmer. Six months ago the sea ice was breaking up unusually early. This made more open water and allowed the sunlight to be absorbed, which is why the Arctic is warmer this year,” he said.

“What we are seeing is both surprising and alarming. This is faster than the models. It is alarming because it has consequences.”

And the things it’s doing will make it all worse next year, and that will have consequences. It could trigger tipping points.

Arctic scientists have warned that the increasingly rapid melting of the ice cap risks triggering 19 “tipping points” in the region that could have catastrophic consequences around the globe.

The Arctic Resilience Report found that the effects of Arctic warming could be felt as far away as the Indian Ocean, in a stark warning that changes in the region could cause uncontrollable climate change at a global level.

Temperatures in the Arctic are currently about 20C above what would be expected for the time of year, which scientists describe as “off the charts”. Sea ice is at the lowest extent ever recorded for the time of year.

“The warning signals are getting louder,” said Marcus Carson of the Stockholm Environment Institute and one of the lead authors of the report. “[These developments] also make the potential for triggering [tipping points] and feedback loops much larger.”

It’s pretty terrifying.

In the Arctic, the tipping points identified in the new report, published on Friday, include: growth in vegetation on tundra, which replaces reflective snow and ice with darker vegetation, thus absorbing more heat; higher releases of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from the tundra as it warms; shifts in snow distribution that warm the ocean, resulting in altered climate patterns as far away as Asia, where the monsoon could be effected; and the collapse of some key Arctic fisheries, with knock-on effects on ocean ecosystems around the globe.

The globe with seven billion people who don’t know how to deal with a hotting up planet.

Aides to the US president-elect, Donald Trump, this week unveiled plans to remove the budget for climate change science currently used by Nasa and other US federal agencies for projects such as examining Arctic changes, and to spend it instead on space exploration.

“That would be a huge mistake,” said Carson, noting that much more research needs to be done on polar tipping points before we can understand the true dangers, let alone hope to tackle them. “It would be like ripping out the aeroplane’s cockpit instruments while you are in mid-flight.”

He added: “These are very serious problems, very serious changes are happening, but they are still poorly understood. We need more research to understand them. A lot of the major science is done by the US.”

Which is only fair since the US also does a lot of the major carbon emitting. But now that the ignoramus in chief is planning to axe a lot of that major science…I guess we’ll just watch in silence while it all goes to hell.

Scientists have speculated for some years that so-called feedback mechanisms – by which the warming of one area or type of landscape has knock-on effects for whole ecosystems – could suddenly take hold and change the dynamics of Arctic ice melting from a relatively slow to a fast-moving phenomenon with unpredictable and potentially irreversible consequences for global warming. For instance, when sea ice shrinks it leaves areas of dark ocean that absorb more heat than the reflective ice, which in turn causes further shrinkage, and so on in a spiral.

We’re breaking it.

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Too much traction

Nov 26th, 2016 3:15 pm | By

It’s the age of hate speech.

More than 50,000 abusive and offensive tweets were sent celebrating Labour MP Jo Cox’s murder and lauding her killer, Thomas Mair, as a “hero” or “patriot” in the month following her death, prompting calls for the government to do more to tackle hate speech online.

According to researchers on the social media site, the tweets were sent from at least 25,000 individuals and have been interpreted by hate crime campaigners as a sign of an emboldened extreme rightwing support base.

And that was before the election of Trump and his elevation of Stephen Bannon and Breitbart.

Academics examined more than 53,000 tweets sent over the month after the MP’s murder and found that among the top 20 words used to describe Mair and Jo Cox were the terms “hero”, “patriot”, “white power”, “rapists” and “traitor”.

The findings come ahead of a government report into integration that claims the concept has broadly failed in the UK and that extremists from both the far right and Islamists have been allowed to gain too much traction.

There’s that confusion again – the idea that Islamists are separate from the far right. Islamists are very far right. Theocracy is about as far right as it’s possible to get.

The report into cyber hate speech linked to the murder of Cox, authored by Imran Awan of Birmingham City University, and Irene Zempi of Nottingham Trent University, to be published on Monday, uncovered several key themes.

…

According to the report’s authors, online hate speech and offences committed on the street were linked with online perpetrators emboldened by “trigger” events like the EU referendum.

People who spend hours every day working themselves into a froth of hatred are going to end up likely to do more than type words on Twitter and Facebook.

 

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What means this word “women”?

Nov 26th, 2016 11:40 am | By

The National Network of Abortion Funds has joined the hot new trend to refuse ever to mention the set of people formerly known as “women.” This seems perverse in an organization whose issue is abortion.

From their About page:

MISSION

THE NATIONAL NETWORK OF ABORTION FUNDS BUILDS POWER WITH MEMBERS TO REMOVE FINANCIAL AND LOGISTICAL BARRIERS TO ABORTION ACCESS BY CENTERING PEOPLE WHO HAVE ABORTIONS AND ORGANIZING AT THE INTERSECTIONS OF RACIAL, ECONOMIC, AND REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE.

VISION
WE ENVISION A WORLD WHERE EVERY REPRODUCTIVE DECISION, INCLUDING ABORTION, TAKES PLACE IN THRIVING COMMUNITIES THAT ARE SAFE, PEACEFUL, AND AFFORDABLE. WE ENVISION A WORLD WHERE ALL PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER AND RESOURCES TO CARE FOR AND AFFIRM THEIR BODIES, IDENTITIES, AND HEALTH FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR FAMILIES—IN ALL AREAS OF THEIR LIVES.

VALUES

Intersectionality
NNAF recognizes the connections between systems of oppression. A comprehensive vision of justice for our communities must involve working towards economic, racial, gender, and reproductive justice.

Autonomy
Every person has the non-negotiable human right to determine whether, when, and how to create family. People deserve unrestricted access to the rights, information, and resources to care for themselves and their families.

Collective Power
NNAF is determined to build a base of shared power from the ground while standing alongside other movements in solidarity. People who are most directly and disproportionately impacted by structural barriers are the best architects of solutions that center their voices, experiences, and leadership.

Compassion
NNAF advocates for a reduction of shame and an increase in compassion for people as they navigate life. Reproductive coercion, burdens, and barriers to reproductive healthcare are all forms of violence.

I have yet to find a single appearance of the word “women.”

This is not ok. No other oppressed group would stand for this, or be expected to stand for it. It’s only women who are expected to put up with being dropped from discussions and groups even on their own issues. It’s so unbelievably insulting and yet people who yap about “intersectionality” and “centering” go ahead and erase women.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 8 comments


Turkey and Saudi Arabia

Nov 26th, 2016 10:06 am | By

The one in Turkey. There is a Trump Towers Istanbul.

Donald Trump’s company has been paid up to $10 million by the tower’s developers since 2014 to affix the Trump name atop the luxury complex, whose owner, one of Turkey’s biggest oil and media conglomerates, has become an influential megaphone for the country’s increasingly repressive regime.

That, ethics advisers said, forces the Trump complex into an unprecedented nexus: as both a potential channel for dealmakers seeking to curry favor with the Trump White House and a potential target for attacks or security risks overseas.

The president-elect’s Turkey deal marks a harrowing vulnerability that even Trump has deemed “a little conflict of interest”: a private moneymaker that could open him to foreign influence and tilt his decision-making as America’s executive in chief.

But we should just trust him, right? He’s always shown himself to be an honorable, fair-minded, impartial, idealistic man, right? We’ve always known him to be motivated by the public good rather than his own bank account, right?

No.

But the ethics experts eyeing Trump’s empire are now warning of many others, found among a vast assortment of foreign business interests never before seen in past presidencies. At least 111 Trump companies have done business in 18 countries and territories across South America, Asia and the Middle East, a Washington Post analysis of Trump financial filings shows.

So, really, from the point of view of conflicts of interest, we could hardly have chosen anyone worse.

Also from the point of view of character and motivation…we could hardly have chosen worse. Trump is driven by greed – for money, for status, for dominance, for power, for sex – and not much else. He’s a giant Appetite, with no apparent altruism or empathy or public interest of any kind.

The business interests range from sprawling, ultraluxury real estate complexes to one-man holding companies and branding deals in Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Panama and other countries, including some where the United States maintains sensitive diplomatic ties.

Some companies reflect long-established deals while others were launched as recently as Trump’s campaign, including eight that appear tied to a potential hotel project in Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich Arab kingdom that Trump has said he “would want to protect.”

I guess we should be thankful that Bangladesh is not oil-rich.

“There are so many diplomatic, political, even national security risks in having the president own a whole bunch of properties all over the world,” said Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush.

“If we’ve got to talk to a foreign government about their behavior, or negotiate a treaty, or some country asks us to send our troops in to defend someone else, we’ve got to make a decision. And the question becomes: Are we going in out of our national interest or because there’s a Trump casino around?” Painter added.

Oh well maybe by that time the national interest and the Trump interest will have become one and the same.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments
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Phone calls

Nov 26th, 2016 9:50 am | By

The Argentina deal.

Three days after the phone call between Trump and Macri on Nov.14, Trump’s associates at Buenos Aires firm YY Development Group announced that the construction project would go ahead, in an interview with La Nación (link in Spanish). The tower’s construction had reportedly been held up for years, for various reasons, with YY Development actively restarting construction permit requests when pro-business Macri took over from statist former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Jan. 2016.

There’s nothing substantive to confirm that the phone call and construction announcement are linked, but local news media have reported that the call itself was arranged in very unusual fashion. Macri, who is son of one of Latin America’s richest men and has reportedly known Trump since beating him at golf in the 1980s, had backed the wrong horse at the election, openly supporting Hillary Clinton. Accordingly, a crisis meeting was called to work out how to put relations on the right track (Spanish language) with Trump’s administration.

La Nación reports that foreign minister Susana Malcorra eventually made contact with Trump’s son Eric, with the assistance of close Trump business associate Felipe Yaryura. A Buenos Aires-based businessman and a co-owner of YY Development, Yaryura was with the Trump team and family at the post-election celebrations in the Hilton hotel in New York. Malcorra and Eric Trump reportedly had a “nice and cordial” conversation, with Eric telling Malcorra that his father would talk with Macri when his timetable allows. He then put her in touch with Trump’s foreign affairs team.

This is the “populist” “drain the swamp” “outsider” president-elect.

Under normal circumstances, the State department would be in charge of arranging contact between the president-elect and foreign leaders, rather than having the president-elect’s family speak to senior foreign officials. But Trump’s team has so far eschewed using the government’s services for this, and a State department spokeswoman refused to comment on the phone call, referring us to Trump’s transition team. Trump representatives have not responded to emailed requests for comment. We will update with their comments if they do.

Whether or not the convoluted web of phone calls is related to the sudden spurt in developments surrounding the Trump Tower Buenos Aires, the case underlines anti-corruption campaigners’ arguments that Trump needs to put his assets in a real blind trust, not one run by his family, and fully disclose his business interests. Otherwise, as Transparency International vice-president Shruti Shah says, all his actions can be derailed even by the very perception of corruption.

That’s not what worries me; what worries me is that all his actions will be corrupt.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments
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