Tracker

Sometimes it seems here is so much abuse of our fellow humans in Canada and elsewhere that one might be tempted to write off the human race as being so horrifyingly hostile and indifferent that God might be better off to hit the reset button. There are reasons for hope, though. The first step in change is "awareness", which is not always comfortable or even kind. You cannot heal what you will not feel, and we need to go through this in order to get to the next stages. This, and other such here in Canada have been swept under the rug too often and for too long. The point of pain is to draw attention that something is injured and needs attention. Our church has sponsored Yazidi families for some years and it is gratifying to see how grateful they are and how well they are doing here in Winnipeg. A small act of kindness but a step towards redemption.

Americans demand court-martial for Flynn after call for military coup: 'Honor veterans — arrest this traitor' Lt. Gen Michael Flynn proclaimed that he thinks there should be a military coup to replace President Joe Biden with Donald Trump in the White House. It's something that sent many to demand he be court-martialed, the legal process of prosecution in the U.S. Military. It isn't unheard of, Jan. 2020, the Navy Appeals Court decided that "a Navy retiree was properly court-martialed and convicted for a crime committed after he had left active duty," reported the Military Times. Even the Federalist Society noted that the Uniform Code of Military Justice allowed for some retirees to be court-martialed though they are rare. But in the civil case Larrabee v. Braithwaite there is a question before the DC Circuit about whether a military member can be court-martialed for a civil crime. For advocating the overthrow of the government, it's a different issue entirely. Americans demand court-martial for Flynn after call for military coup: 'Honor veterans — arrest this traitor' - Alternet.org

If you can get in to see one, osteopaths have the skills of both chiropractic and physiotherapists plus other abilities.

So long as the lawyers get paid, they are happy.

Not all good news- Bennett is apparently even more hard-right than Bibi.

Manichin is stupid but smart and amoral enough to sell himself to the highest bidder.

The future of democracy in the US depends on whether the Democrats and any Republicans who still have a conscience are willing to literally fight for it. If the Democrats adopt Bernie Sanders' position that the plutocrats and culpable Republicans must be confronted and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, then they have a chance. If they wimp out and seek "bipartisan" support to ensure the reign of democracy and the law, they are merely delaying the ascendancy of Trump-branded fascism and the probable return of Trump or someone like him to the White House. The next version of Trump and his cronies will be way more corrupt and violent.

There is a report today that an even more lethal variant has been identified in Viet Nam. Just what we need.

I suspect we are seeing the birth of "Christian" fascism as a major political movement.

Damn. At least no new COVID deaths. So far as charges for violating the health orders, had the police descended en masse onto that gathering at the Forks or the Spring church, kettled up the participants, and documented and charged every one, followed by stiff fines and the jailing of the leaders, all while the Media recorded, I can guarantee there would not be another repetition. There would have been an outcry, but lives would have been saved.

Have booked myself and she-who-must-be-obeyed for June 11th.Yaaaay!

The Rise of Christian Fascism and Its Threat to American Democracy Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told his students that when we were his age -- he was then close to 80 -- we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists." The warning, given 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and television evangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts toward taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. This call for fundamentalists and evangelicals to take political power was a radical and ominous mutation of traditional Christianity. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible. He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He had been in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as the Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States. It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolf Hitler placed over the contents of his suitcases to hide the rolls of home-movie film he had taken of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied the Nazis, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the tops of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Fuehrer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black-and-white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge. Adams understood that totalitarian movements are built out of deep personal and economic despair. He warned that the flight of manufacturing jobs, the impoverishment of the American working class, the physical obliteration of communities in the vast, soulless exurbs and decaying Rust Belt, were swiftly deforming our society. The current assault on the middle class, which now lives in a world in which anything that can be put on software can be outsourced, would have terrified him. The stories that many in this movement told me over the past two years as I worked on "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" were stories of this failure -- personal, communal and often economic. This despair, Adams said, would empower dangerous dreamers -- those who today bombard the airwaves with an idealistic and religious utopianism that promises, through violent apocalyptic purification, to eradicate the old, sinful world that has failed many Americans. These Christian utopians promise to replace this internal and external emptiness with a mythical world where time stops and all problems are solved. The mounting despair rippling across the United States, one I witnessed repeatedly as I traveled the country, remains unaddressed by the Democratic Party, which has abandoned the working class, like its Republican counterpart, for massive corporate funding. The Christian right has lured tens of millions of Americans, who rightly feel abandoned and betrayed by the political system, from the reality-based world to one of magic -- to fantastic visions of angels and miracles, to a childlike belief that God has a plan for them and Jesus will guide and protect them. This mythological worldview, one that has no use for science or dispassionate, honest intellectual inquiry, one that promises that the loss of jobs and health insurance does not matter, as long as you are right with Jesus, offers a lying world of consistency that addresses the emotional yearnings of desperate followers at the expense of reality. It creates a world where facts become interchangeable with opinions, where lies become true -- the very essence of the totalitarian state. It includes a dark license to kill, to obliterate all those who do not conform to this vision, from Muslims in the Middle East to those at home who refuse to submit to the movement. And it conveniently empowers a rapacious oligarchy whose god is maximum profit at the expense of citizens. We now live in a nation where the top 1 percent control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, where we have legalized torture and can lock up citizens without trial. Arthur Schlesinger, in "The Cycles of American History," wrote that "the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense -- not only for their acquiescence in poverty, inequality and oppression, but for their enthusiastic justification of slavery, persecution, torture and genocide." Adams saw in the Christian right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists rise under the guise of religion to dismantle the open society. He despaired of U.S. liberals, who, he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil or the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand-wringing by Democrats, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams. Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite. The Rise of Christian Fascism and Its Threat to American Democracy - Alternet.org

Better days, yes. but there will be unnecessary deaths before then due to the unwillingness of Pallister and his crew to have taken stronger action sooner. None of these will appear in court but they are complicit in these deaths.

Trump DOJ secretly collected CNN reporter's email, phone records: report. The DOJ covertly obtained CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr's records over a two-month period in 2017 On Thursday, CNN reported that the Justice Department, under former President Donald Trump, secretly collected email and phone records from a CNN reporter, without notifying either the reporter or the news organization. "The Justice Department informed CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, in a May 13 letter, that prosecutors had obtained her phone and email records covering two months, between June 1, 2017 to July 31, 2017," reported Jeremy Herb and Jessica Schneider. "The letter listed phone numbers for Starr's Pentagon extension, the CNN Pentagon booth phone number and her home and cell phones, as well as Starr's work and personal email accounts." "The seizure of Starr's records is the third disclosure in as many weeks where the Trump administration used its Justice Department to secretly obtain communications of journalists or to expose the identity of critics of former President Donald Trump's allies," continued the report. Starr reportedly was not the target of a criminal investigation. "CNN strongly condemns the secret collection of any aspect of a journalist's correspondence, which is clearly protected by the First Amendment," CNN President Jeff Zucker said in a statement. "We are asking for an immediate meeting with the Justice Department for an explanation." Under Trump, the Justice Department was frequently controversial for its attitude towards the press. At his confirmation hearing, Attorney General William Barr stumbled over a question about whether he would use the DOJ to imprison journalists.

'Embarrassing and terrifying': Poll finds nearly one-third of Republicans are QAnon believers Roughly 15-20 percent of Americans — and nearly one-third of Republicans — agree with core tenets of the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to a poll released Wednesday by the Public Religion Research Institute. The poll's findings prompted one New York Times columnist to suggest that QAnon believers could soon "dominate the political system." This is slightly less than the % of Americans who supported Trump circa early 2015. Under our system's structural i… https://t.co/9XIZtDKIz8 — Max Fisher (@Max Fisher) 1622126054.0 The poll's findings prompted one New York Times columnist to suggest that QAnon believers could soon "dominate the political system." "This is slightly less than the % of Americans who supported Trump circa early 2015," wrote Max Fisher, who authors NYT's The Interpreter column. "Under our system's structural imbalances, that's enough to overtake the GOP and therefore dominate the political system. "Reminder that QAnon orthodoxy explicitly calls, as a central plank of the movement, for publicly executing hundreds of thousands of Democrats and cultural figures," Fisher added. The poll found that 28 percent of Republicans agree that "there is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders," and that "because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country." A slightly smaller number of Republicans, 23 percent, agreed that "the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation."

"Acceptable losses" in the name of preserving their concept of freedom.

It seems the Anti-vaxxers have painted themselves into such a tight corner that they can no longer admit they were/are wrong without conceding that they have been complete idiots being led by idiots. Therefore, they will dwindle down in numbers until only the most brain-dead remain, much as the flat-Earthers. Forgot to mention: there was a very effective medication for ED that is no longer available- "Micoxaphlopin".

I think that getting the CFL back for Labour Day is both realistic and very welcome.

Anti-vaccine movements shift their target to the vaccinated. Anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists are blaming vaccinated people for "shedding" virus in their presence Myths around infertility, pregnancy and miscarriages have run rampant in anti-vaccine circles for years — and in the universe of their conspiracy theories, vaccines are often to blame. While variations of such false claims have been part of misinformation campaigns around the COVID-19 vaccines, there has recently been a shift from demonizing the vaccine itself to villainizing those who are vaccinated. It's a peculiar repositioning for the anti-vaccination conspiracy movement — and as the false claim evolves into more extreme iterations, it has caught the attention of people who study and advocate against vaccine misinformation. "I think it is particularly interesting that people are saying that those who are those who are vaccinated are a risk to those who aren't," said David Broniatowski, who's the associate director for the Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics at George Washington University. "It's like taking the common vaccine conventional wisdom and flipping it on its head where people will say, 'if you have not been vaccinated, you're a risk to those who are more vulnerable and vaccinated.'" Broniatowski said he's never seen this before in the history of anti-vaccine rhetoric. "This is the first time," Broniatowski said. The conspiracy centers on one particular myth that people who are vaccinated can emit contagious particles of the coronavirus's Spike protein and can infect others, a process referred to as "vaccine shedding." Vaccine shedding is a very rare possibility with live-attenuated vaccines that use a diluted version of a disease to stimulate an immune response. In the rare case there's enough germ to spread, the shedding usually happens via feces— for example, with the polio vaccine or the measles vaccine. "For the measles vaccine, later in life — and again this is super rare — it's possible that the live virus could revert to a condition called Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE)," said Dr. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco. "But in no way can you shed it and give it to someone." Anti-vaccine movements shift their target to the vaccinated | Salon.com

The show jumped the shark years ago. I gave up when Abby and Tim both typed on the same keyboard at the same time to speed things up. Why The Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch Don’t Stay on Skinwalker Ranch. According to the owner and the lead investigator of Skinwalker Ranch, phenomena from the paranormal hotspot have followed researchers home. History’s The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch features ongoing investigations into one of the country’s most mysterious locales. The titular ranch allegedly experiences paranormal activity regularly from UFOs and cattle mutilations to incarnate voices and poltergeists…and sometimes several at the same time. Strange occurrences on the ranch have been the focus of several scientific investigations, including from a secretive program housed in the Pentagon. What is not as well known is that some investigators claim the paranormal phenomena follow them home. Brandon Fugal, the elusive owner of Skinwalker Ranch, spoke with Den of Geek about how what happens at Skinwalker Ranch doesn’t always stay there. Fugal is a prominent businessman and real estate developer in Utah. He first heard about the Skinwalker Ranch at a local bookstore. “The ranch was first brought to my attention when I was at Barnes & Noble, back in 2006, and saw Dr. Colm Kelleher and George Knapp’s book Hunt for the Skinwalker on the shelf,” Fugal says. “I actually bought it and read it on the weekend. I found it to be very interesting.” Fugal says he didn’t think much more about the ranch until 2015 when two science advisors of another Utah real estate magnate, Robert Bigelow, approached him. Bigelow, who also founded Bigelow Aerospace, had been funding scientific investigation on the ranch since he had purchased it in the late 1990s. Kelleher was Bigelow’s lead investigator. Fugal says he had developed a relationship with the two science advisors during “another effort that I had been involved with a decade ago.” Why The Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch Don’t Stay on Skinwalker Ranch - Den of Geek According to Fugal, the advisors asked him “whether I would be willing to entertain a potential joint venture or acquisition of the property for the purpose of advancing the research beyond what Mr. Bigelow had done for 20 years.” “I disclosed to them that I was approaching the topic as a healthy skeptic and that I had never seen a UFO, ghost, or anything of the sort, and that I believe that there was most likely a natural prosaic explanation for what had been reported in the book and on the property,” Furgal says. “They were amused and shared with me the reality of what their investigation revealed. They also disclosed that the ranch had been part of a five-year Pentagon black-budget program studying the UFO phenomenon and that, although the results of that investigation remain classified and confidential – how do I say this? The phenomenon is real.” Fugal says he is no longer skeptical that something mysterious is happening at the ranch.

Faster than a PCR test: dogs detect Covid in under a second Faster than PCR and more accurate than lateral flow tests, the latest weapons against Covid-19 have four legs and a wet nose. A study published on Monday found that people who are infected with coronavirus give off a distinct odour, which these highly trained dogs can detect with pinpoint precision. Tala, a golden Labrador in a red work jacket, greets me with a cursory sniff, before returning to his handler. I’m relieved to have passed the test, but feel a wet train of mucus on my hand where I petted him. This mucus fulfils an important purpose: dissolving odour molecules from the air and transporting them to olfactory receptors in the top of their nose, where the magic happens. Whereas humans have about 5m of these receptors, dogs have up to 300m. Dr Claire Guest has always been fascinated by dogs, and humans’ relationship with them. After studying psychology, she worked for Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, where she met a woman who said her pet Dalmatian had diagnosed a malignant melanoma on her calf. “She kept saying, ‘The dog sniffed it,’” Guest recalled. In 2002, Guest joined forces with an orthopaedic surgeon, John Church, to test whether dogs could be trained to distinguish between urine from healthy people and those with bladder cancer. The research, published in the BMJ, showed that they could. Medical Detection Dogs was formed in 2008. The charity trains companion dogs that can detect odour changes in people with type 1 diabetes and other severe disorders, emitted shortly before their health deteriorates, alerting them to take action. It also researches dogs’ abilities to detect cancers, and other diseases, including Parkinson’s. When the pandemic hit it had just completed a study with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), demonstrating that dogs can detect malaria. Tala is one of six dogs who took part in the Covid study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. It found that dogs could detect Covid-19 on clothing worn by infected people with up to 94.3% sensitivity: they would correctly identify 94 out of every 100 infected people. This compares with a sensitivity of 58-77% for lateral flow tests, and 97.2% for PCR tests. However, dogs beat PCR tests on speed, making a diagnosis in under a second. “This includes people who are asymptomatic and also people with a low viral load,” said Prof James Logan of LSHTM, who co-led the study. Tala was the most accurate sniffer, achieving 94.5% sensitivity, and a specificity of 92% – the proportion of uninfected people that he would correctly identify.

Fifth straight day for declining numbers. Still a long way to go.

One shooter, seven victims. Just another day in paradise.

Me too, dammit. Still no priority for ED sufferers.