A Duty To Warn

Liberty Bell

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ASM Defends Science-Based Health Policy in Letter to Executive Branch

"July 14, 2020

In response to a coordinated effort to discredit public health officials, ASM, the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) issued the following letter to Vice President Pence demonstrating support for public health officials who are prioritizing science-based public health strategies to address the COVID-19 pandemic​.


Dear Vice President Pence:

During a national public health emergency, it is vital that we lead with science and with the best data available. Our continued response to and successful recovery from the COVID-19 crisis depends on adherence to sound scientific and public health guidance from the experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who have made the health and safety of the public the top priority.

As organizations representing thousands of researchers, public health professionals, health care providers and others serving in scientific and health care professional fields, we object to any attempt to cast doubt on science and sow mistrust for public health expertise, and to spread misinformation during this challenging time for all Americans. Such efforts not only put the health of our population in greater peril, but also undermine the work underway to move our country beyond the pandemic and return to normalcy.

SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus and COVID-19 is a new condition with which we have no prior experience. As is the case with any new pathogen or disease, we are learning in real time. Public health and medicine are inherently dynamic fields that adapt as the science evolves. We have embarked on an unprecedented global effort to develop medical countermeasures and refine public health guidance, and as this work uncovers new knowledge, recommendations can and will change. By heeding the recommendations of those who are on the front lines of progress to combat this virus, we have the best chance at a successful outcome.


Sincerely,

American Society for Microbiology
Association of Public Health Laboratories
Infectious Diseases Society of America
AcademyHealth
African American Health Alliance
American Academy of HIV Medicine
American Association for Anatomy
American Association for Dental Research
American Association for Respiratory Care
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy
American Association of Immunologists
American Association of Physics Teachers
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Physiological Society
American Public Health Association
American Society for Cell Biology
American Society for Clinical Pathology
American Society for Investigative Pathology
American Society for Reproductive Medicine
American Society for Virology
American Society of Hematology
American Society of Pediatric Nephrology
American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
American Sociological Association
American Thoracic Society
Association for Psychological Science
Association of American Cancer Institutes
Association of Nurses in AIDS Care
Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health
AVAC
Baruch S. Blumberg Institute
Big Cities Health Coalition
Biophysical Society
Black AIDS Institute
Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation
Coalition for the Life Sciences
Consortium of Universities for Global Health
Council of Scientific Society Presidents
Cure HHT
Endocrine Society
Genetics Society of America
Hepatitis B Foundation
HIV Medicine Association
Institute for Systems Biology
Institute of Food Technologists
International Society for Stem Cell Research
Jeffrey Modell Foundation
LUNGevity Foundation
NASTAD
National Association of County and City Health Officials
Natural Science Collections Alliance
NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
Prevention Institute
Safe States Alliance
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society
Society of General Internal Medicine
Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP)
Society of Toxicology
STChealth LLC
The Histochemical Society
Treatment Action Group
Trust for America's Health
Vaccinate Your Family
Washington State Department of Health
AIDS Foundation Chicago
American Statistical Association
North Carolina AIDS Action Network
IRMA - International Rectal Microbicide Advocates
HealthHIV
Positive Women's Network-USA
National Coalition for LGBT Health
The Well Project
Cascade AIDS Project
Latinos Salud
Entomological Society of America
AIDS Alabama
San Francisco AIDS Foundation
American Crystallographic Association
North American Vascular Biology Organization
American College of Nuclear Medicine (ACNM)
AIDS United
AIDS Action Baltimore
International Association of Providers of AIDS Care
WVU Health Sciences Center
American Society for Gravitational and Space Research
International Association of Providers of AIDS Care
Institute of Mathematical Statistics
American Urological Association
The AIDS Institute
IAVI
Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America
Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology
American Medical Technologists
Federation of American Scientists
Pan American Society for Clinical Virology
Association of American Medical Colleges
North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition
National Association of School Nurses
AIDS Alliance for Women, Infants, Children, Youth & Families
International Mammalian Genome Society
International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH)"

Blind Willie McTell News - 7

All The News We Think You Need

This series goes back a ways (Blind Willie McTell News, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

Concerning this subject matter, a piece over at Salon is a must read, so here are a few excerpts:

"For those who attended to the substance of Wednesday's congressional hearings featuring former special counsel Robert Mueller, they offered a cold, devastating reminder of how far our nation has fallen. Mueller, with his terse but honest responses to Democrats reading passages from the report that followed his investigation into Donald Trump's relationship to the Russian criminal conspiracy to hack the 2016 election, painted a devastating picture of a White House hijacked by a greedy criminal who will not hesitate to obstruct justice and betray his country for personal gain. Republicans, virtually to a person, exposed themselves as morally bankrupt lickspittles who eagerly lie and make up conspiracy theories, all to serve their orange-hued wannabe mobster of a master.

Blueprint For Genieology

On the merits, for people judging the hearings on substance, Wednesday was a devastating exposé of a situation many times worse than Watergate.

The mainstream press that regards politics more as a TV show than a matter of real world importance had a different verdict: BOOOOORING!
...
The grossness continued Thursday morning as both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran articles declaring that Mueller's inability to play to the cameras means that any hope of impeachment is probably dead.

Perhaps, in some other time, things like evidence and morality might have mattered when it comes to fundamental questions of justice. But according to modern analysts, all that really matters today is how much Emmy buzz you can generate in seven hours of testimony on Capitol Hill."

(Media declares Mueller was boring: Who cares if Trump is a criminal?). Read the entire Salon piece and join the outrage!

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

The Shape Shifters Of Bullshitistan - 19

Professor Cruel, Trump University

"The press is the enemy of the people" in North Korea, China, Russia, The Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and other right-wing authoritarian countries (How To Identify The Despotic Minority, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

The authoritarian right wing president of the USA has the same Orwellian, wrong headed opinion.

He speaks evil of fellow Americans in concert with mass murdering North Korean "ideological lover Kimmy."

His current corrupt leader of the Department of Just Us (DOJ) has evidently cleared the way for Robert Swan Mueller III (RSM III) to speak briefly at the newly evolved Department of Hoaxes (DOH), but to take no questions afterwards, thus, today among other things we will see how much Tweeter has perverted, or not, RSM III.

In other words, we may see whether or not the two years of public criticism, obstruction, and character assassination of the Special Counsel has taken down yet another official.

We already know that it has taken down many American minds who now support Professor Cruel of Trump University (High Percent of GOP Support Trump).

But, has it taken down the authors of The Mueller Report (The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan - 18) ?

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AFTER PRESSER

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After careful consideration concerning what  RSM III stated in his presser, and in his report, I conclude that NO they did not pervert him.

That is good for the USA!

So, RSM III said that his report exposed Russian interference in our politics and that it should concern "every American!"

Therefore, I must pose this question to the Senators in the GOP:  

Since RSM III wants you to be concerned Americans will you drop the political idolization of your political Fuhrer and do as RSM III suggested?

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Bingo

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Stormy Ode: (or Ode to Stormy):

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The news today o-boy

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The Blobosphere and Beyond

The Blobosphere

I. How To Study
Bloby Oceans

Some say that the atmosphere is the place to look for information when studying Ocean Heat Content (OHC) and/or Ocean Heat Flux (e.g. On Resplandy Et Alia (2018) - 2).

That is a bit unusual, like studying the lungs to find out about the heart, because actually it is a better practice to study the ocean directly or use the World Ocean Database (WOD) to find out about the oceans (The Appendix of Vestigial Textbooks).

Concerning the 'blob' ... one paper asserts:

"The marine heat wave was first noted over deep waters of the northeastern Pacific Ocean in January 2014 ... anomalous temperatures at coastal GOA

WOD Zone 7312

stations arrived variously between January and June. Warm temperature anomalies were confined to the top 100 meters until late 2014, after which they penetrated to depths of 300 meters and reached strengths greater than 2 standard deviations ... The consensus of previous studies is that atmospheric circulation anomalies played a key role initiating and maintaining the North Pacific 'blob' of warm water"

(Walsh et alia, 2018). Using WOD in situ data in the zones shown in Fig. 1 puts some shade on that proclamation.

WOD Zone 7313

WOD Zone 7314

After converting in situ temperature measurements (T) recorded in the WOD into Conservative Temperature (CT), using the TEOS-10 toolbox, and then looking at the subsurface CT trends, it is apparent that warming has taken place prior to the years asserted in Walsh et alia 2018.

That subsurface warming has continued, and in fact in recent years one could say it has gotten worse because the Bering Sea sea ice has not developed for two seasons now.

II. Warming CT Peaks
In WOD Zones

(Shown in Fig. 1)

The following list shows the year, zone, and depth level of CT peaks shown in today's graphs.

(Note that 'e' = Epipelagic, 'm' = Mesopelagic, and 'b' = Bathypelagic depths; the four digits indicate the WOD Zone number):

2000: 7312m
2001: 7312m,7413e
2002: 7312m,
2003: 7314e,7413e,7414b,7417e,7515m,7614e
2004: 7313e,7315e,7316e,7316m,7317e,7415e,7416e,7416m,7417m,7516e
2004: 7516m, 7614e, 7712e
2005: 7412m,7412b,7413m,7413b,7512e,7512m,7512b,7513m,7513b,7514e,7517e
2006: 7312m,7314m,7414e,7514m,7715m
2007: 7516b
2008: 7312b,7313b,7415e,7417e,7417m,7613e
2009: 7415b
2010: 7413e,7415m,7513e,7514e,7514m,7514e,7515e,7516m,7713m,7715m
2011: 7313m,7413m,7413m,7414e,7414m,7416e,7416m,7417e
2012: 7317b,7412e,7415e,7515b,7517b,7714m
2013: 7313e,7314m,7315e,7317e,7317m
2014: 7314e,7416b,7715m
2015: 7412e,7414e,7416e,7417e,7417m,
2016: 7312e,7313e,7512e,7513e,7514e,7515e,7516e,7517e,7712e
2017: 7713e,7713m,7715m,7716m
2018: 7316b,7413b,7714m

This warming flow of the N. Pacific Current sea water into the Gulf of Alaska via the Alaska Current has been happening under the covers, so to speak, for longer than the atmosphere above the covers would suggest.

WOD Zone 7315

WOD Zone 7316

WOD Zone 7317

WOD Zone 7412

WOD Zone 7413

WOD Zone 7414

WOD Zone 7415

WOD Zone 7416

WOD Zone 7417

WOD Zone 7512

WOD Zone 7513

WOD Zone 7514

WOD Zone 7515

WOD Zone 7516

WOD Zone 7517

WOD Zone 7712

WOD Zone 7713

WOD Zone 7714

WOD Zone 7715

WOD Zone 7716

III. How To Study The Blob

A. Skim The Surface

The researchers who are studying the atmosphere in order to study the oceanic phenomenon nicknamed "the Blob" are "going around the barn" (Fig. 1).

It seems to me that studying the hot pool of water in, at, and/or near the Great Pacific Garbage Patch would be a more natural beginning (New Continent Found - Garbage Gyre II).

Like the black soot on glaciers and ice sheets that is said to be a collector of heat by impairing albedo, thereby melting the icy surface it lands upon (Dark Snow).

The plastic and other garbage will warm as photons from the Sun are absorbed, then emit those photons into the cooler seawater around them.

The fact that recently, without the 'blob', the Bering Sea surface has lost its typical, natural winter sea ice cover is also instructive (Mysterious Zones of The Arctic - 2).

Still, observing those surface phenomena where the atmosphere contacts the ocean surface is only skimming the surface.

We should know by now that subsurface sea water is warmer than the surface water temperatures below and beyond the blobosphere latitudes and longitudes, so, where to next?

B. Go Deeper

Today's graphs are "DNA" style with a granularity of one WOD Zone (Beyond Fingerprints: Sea Level DNA - 3).

The Conservative Temperature spikes can be seen in the "DNA" patterns at the Epipelagic (0 - 200 meters), Mesopelagic (201 - 1000 meters), and Bathypelagic (1001 - 4000 meters) depths shown in the graphs.

(In some cases the graphs show only one pelagic depth because of sea ice cover or shallowness of the ocean near the coastline.)

The WOD Zones which the graphs depict are shown in Fig. 1.

There is also a "Legend" with colored squares indicating the peaks in CT calculated using in situ measurements and the TEOS-10 toolbox.

Each WOD Zone in the "blobosphere" is outlined in blue on Fig. 1 and can have a maximum of three small squares (indicating CT peak info).

The small squares indicate the depths of the peak CT values shown in the list of zones in Section II above.

The real story is that neither the Great Pacific Garbage Patch nor atmospheric temperatures over the surface of the N. Pacific can explain the CT spikes at up to 4,000 meters deep.

There is a movement of subsurface warming water, caused by OHC (i.e. "Potential Enthalpy" or h^O) which can be tracked reasonably using CT.

IV. Other Research

Other research shows that the warmer waters at serious depths flow through the Bering Sea up through the Bering Strait and into the Chukchi Sea.

From there they flow eastward into the Beaufort Gyre to be mixed with deep, warming Atlantic waters (Mysterious Zones of The Arctic, 2, 3).

This is not in any way the result of atmospheric dynamics, nor even of ocean surface dynamics alone.

Serious deep ocean currents and heat flux (OHF) are at work all the way to 'the last ice area' near the N. Greenland coastline (Mysterious Zones of The Arctic - 2).

These currents are a lot like the serious deep ocean currents and OHF at work around the coastlines of Antarctica (Mysterious Zones of Antarctica, 2, 3, 4).

V. Stay Focused

Like CO₂ increases, which reached 415 ppm this year (as predicted by Oil Qaeda in 1982), these ocean currents, the OHC, and the OHF will increase in intensity.

There is no need to look to the atmosphere for where this is going.

That is a waste of dwindling research money and time.

Stay focused on CT and h^O to track OHC and OHF.

It is easier, so long as we keep producing in situ measurements of temperature (T), practical salinity (SP), and depth.

What needs to be added is deeper, and more wide-spread measurement expeditions and research.

VI. Why We Need

Focused Research

The despotic minority has taken over the U.S. Senate and the Administration (Inhofe's One Man Troofiness Crusade).

They are following the lead of Oil-Qaeda (The Authoritarianism of Climate Change).

Their mindless mission is to change our existing law, which is:

"Based on respected scientific opinion that a well-documented rise in global temperatures and attendant climatological and environmental changes have resulted from a significant increase in the atmospheric concentration of “greenhouse gases,” a group of private organizations petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin regulating the emissions of four such gases, including carbon dioxide, under §202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act, which requires that the EPA “shall by regulation prescribe . . . standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class . . . of new motor vehicles . . . which in [the EPA Administrator’s] judgment cause[s], or contribute[s] to, air pollution . . . reasonably . . . anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,” 42 U. S. C. §7521(a)(1). The Act defines “air pollutant” to include “any air pollution agent . . . , including any physical, chemical . . . substance . . . emitted into . . . the ambient air.” §7602(g). EPA ultimately denied the petition, reasoning that (1) the Act does not authorize it to issue mandatory regulations to address global climate change, and (2) even if it had the authority to set greenhouse gas emission standards, it would have been unwise to do so at that time because a causal link between greenhouse gases and the increase in global surface air temperatures was not unequivocally established.
...
Massachusetts and other state and local governments, sought review in the D. C. Circuit [... which held...] that the EPA Administrator properly exercised his discretion in denying the rulemaking petition.
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[Supreme Court Conclusion:] The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion."

(Global Warming Induced Climate Change Is A Matter of Law). That Dredd Blog post quoted a U.S. Supreme Court case: Massachusetts v. EPA, 127 S. Ct. 1438 (2007).

VII. Closing Comments

There is a monumental effort to slow down, thwart, and eradicate climate change research (Trump’s Cuts In Climate-Change Research Spark a Global Scramble For Funds).

That effort is radically accelerating:

"President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term 'global warming' into a punch line rather than a prognosis.

Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault.

In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump’s hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change.

And, in what could be Mr. Trump’s most consequential action yet, his administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests."
...
"As a result, parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.

The attack on science is underway throughout the government. In the most recent example, the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey, James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously."

(Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science, emphasis added). Now you can see that "The blob" is an apt metaphor describing the despotic minority (How To Identify The Despotic Minority, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

If we do not stop the despotic minority, they will stop us.

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"Time Has Come Today"
(by The Chambers Brothers)

"Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can't put it off another day
And I don't care what the others say
'Cause they say we don't listen anyway
Time has come today, Hey!
The rules have changed today, Hey!
I have no place to stay, Hey!
And I'm thinkin' about the subway, Hey!
Love has gone away, Hey!
And tears have come and gone, Hey!
Oh my God, I have to run, Hey!
I have no home, Hey!
I have no home, Hey!
Now the time has come, Time!
There's no place to run, Time!
Might get burned up by the sun, Time!"

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Will The Military Become The Police? - 12

2300 Children Under Trump's Guns

I. Background

In this series (began 5/10/10) we (regular readers and I) have been contemplating what some consider to be "over-the-top ideas" or "fringe notions" of past, current, and looming misuses of the military (Will The Military Become The Police?, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

Yet, in the previous post I answered the question this series posits ("Will The Military Become The Police?") as follows:

No, they won't.

Why?

They already are, aren't they (What if U.S. stops policing the world?, The United States Must Be the World’s Policeman) ?

(Will The Military Become The Police? - 11). I answered "no" in terms of will the military become (future tense) the world police, because they already have (it is historical, not futuristic).

II. "Say It Ain't So"

Furthermore, in a limited sense it has already happened domestically to the degree that the literal military police, in the recent past, have even been used to give traffic tickets (Will The Military Become The Police? - 2).

But there is the larger domestic realm to consider, in terms of sniffing out "why are police forces all across the country being built up, by the Pentagon, with military hardware?"

That has been well documented in this series (Will The Military Become The Police? - 10).

III. Happy Halloween?

For those who never "sniff the air" such a concept must be simply "halloweenish."

And it is "halloweenish" in the sense that Halloween keeps coming back every year, like tyranny does (On The Origin of Tyranny).

IV. Tyranny of The Despotic Minority

At a time when Americans are being gunned down and bombed, preznit Donnah Dump is sending in the military to police a place where nothing like that is happening.

The decent majority wonders why the leader of the despotic minority is sending the military to police a band of refugees who have fled authoritarian regimes to answer the call written on the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

(What is the quote on the statue of liberty?). The language on the statue does not indicate that the reason for bringing the downtrodden here is so the military can treat them like enemies, break up families, and drive innocent children into psychotic despair (2,300 migrant children in Central American ‘caravan’ need protection, UNICEF says).

The reason, IMO, is that preznit Donnah Dump, as leader of the despotic minority, needs despotic votes bigly in order to perpetuate the tyranny of his despotic minority:

"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority."

(How To Identify The Despotic Minority - 4). Those who now give him the votes are the despotic minority in what was once a united country.

V. Conclusion

Concerning those now in the despotic minority who have been voted into power in the DC swamp, only if they are voted out of office by the American Majority will the nation progress as it has under duress in the past.

Make it so.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Beware of the Sycophant Epidemic - 2

Economist

I really had to flip a coin, as it were, to decide which series this post should be posted into.

Any one of several series would have been ok, but I chose to revisit the one about the current surge of a cultural epidemic in the U.S.eh?

Cultural epidemics take place when a large minority group becomes sycophantic toward a sick leader or leaders, whether that leadership emerges from a person, a corporation, or an institution.

For example, the "institution of Bernays" has lived on long after its "father" has faded, and has morphed into the shadows:

It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry.

(Etiology of Social Dementia - 9, quoting PR Watch Magazine, Vol. 6 No. 2, p. 11, 1999). If we do not understand "Bernays and his professional heirs" then we will not understand the current government crisis.

Which is a crisis brought on by the professional beliefs and professional practices concerning the merits of deceiving the public:

One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public.

And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public — and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries—in Britain and the US — roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control"

(ibid, quoting The Deceit Business). A sycophant is a person who has been deceived into becoming a Type-B Authoritarian:

"We know an awful lot about authoritarian followers. In one way or another, hundreds of social scientists have studied them since World War II. We have a pretty good idea of who they are, where they come from, and what makes them tick. By comparison, we know little about authoritarian leaders because we only recently started studying them. That may seem strange, but how hard is it to figure out why someone would like to have massive amounts of power? The psychological mystery has always been, why would someone prefer a dictatorship to freedom? So social scientists have focused on the followers, who are seen as the main, underlying problem."
...
"Authoritarian followers usually support the established authorities in their society, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders. Such people have historically been the “proper” authorities in life, the time-honored, entitled, customary leaders, and that means a lot to most authoritarians.
...
Psychologically these followers have personalities featuring:

1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society;

2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and

3) a high level of conventionalism.

... he’s someone who readily submits to the established authorities in society, attacks others in their name, and is highly conventional. It’s an aspect of his personality, not a description of his politics."

(The Authoritarianism of ..., quoting the book: The Authoritarians). The physical reason that a sycophant mentality arises is varied (economics, fear of an enemy, etc.) but the psychological reason is always the same (dementia).

The way that mass-dementia has worked historically is well known.

For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica pointed out the ingredients of the DNA of that history, which incidentally, also applies to our current culture's genetic code:

"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces."

(Stockholm Syndrome: The Declaration of Intellectual Dependence). Take note of the three genes in the cultures of suicidal civilizations: "nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority".

We have all three genes in abundance.

For example, we have a group composed of thirty to forty million people who constitute "a despotic minority" and who are sycophants willing to follow type A authoritarians (KKK leader threatens black Latina journalist during interview).

Further, we have become a nation of militarism and nationalism spread throughout that despotic minority of thirty to forty million people, and even beyond them into the public at large in various degrees  (When You Are Governed By Psychopaths - 8, Will The Military Become The Police? - 11).

And, those type-B authoritarians currently support a smaller, but powerful group of despots in government (Welcome to the Post-American World).

To be clear, ours is not the first civilization to have become demented:  “Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

That is not the question however, because the larger question is: "Will we be the leading despotic minority group in the final civilization?"

Some info on the dear leader of that sycophantic despotic minority:

Vice on Fred Trump

WaPo

Woody Guthrie song about Old man Trump before "Trump Tower" came into existence

Guthrie vs Trump NYT, same WaPo

Intercept on Trump

New Yorker

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Germ Warfare Comes To America

American Hospitals are in the enemy's cross-hairs

I. Destroying Americans With Depravity Bombs

Some seven years ago, in a Dredd Blog series (Your Health Is Their Number 1 Enemy?! , 2). I quoted people who were no doubt trained at the War College.

I quoted people who wrote that your health care is the biggest threat to the Pentagon.

That anti-health care diatribe was posted at National Defense Magazine, a well-known site.

After reading it, I posted:

Pentagonia, capitol of Bullshitistan, well aware of the current political climate, has declared who its greatest enemy is, believing it is health care:

The U.S. military keeps searching the horizon for a peer competitor, the challenger that must be taken seriously. Is it China? What about an oil rich and resurgent Russia?

But the threat that is most likely to hobble U.S. military capabilities is not a peer competitor, rather it is health care.

(The Enemy the Pentagon Should Fear Most: Health Care, National Defense Magazine, emphasis added). We have been pointing out this very strange ideology for a while now, using "MOMCOM" symbolism to isolate the militant energy fighting against the middle class and poor in the United States.

(Deja Vu - Guns v. Butter Election Looms, March 22, 2010). That post I quoted from was subsequently deleted by National Defense Magazine (the link in the quote above is to The Wayback Machine copy).

The sicko sycophant who wrote the National Defense Magazine article is an enemy of the welfare of the people of the United States, whom the military took an oath to protect by, among other things,  protecting the U.S. Constitution.

II. Target Number One: The Helpless

Americans are known historically for lending a helping hand to their neighbor, as is written at the Statue of Liberty:

"Give me

Is this a fake?

your tired,

your poor,

Your huddled masses

yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse

of your teeming shore.

Send these,

the homeless,

tempest-tost

to me,

I lift my lamp

beside the golden door!"

(Wikipedia). Who are the enemies of these American sentiments, who are the enemies of rural hospitals, who are these enemies of the American people who need health and other care at times during their journey to a better life?

III. "Let's Seriously Hurt and Harm

Twenty or Thirty Million American People"

That is something that enemies of the American People want to do, and would do if they could.

But they can't.

Alone.

They need people in powerful places inside America to lose their minds and turn on "tired ... poor ... huddled masses yearning to breathe free ... wretched refuse ... homeless ... tempest-tost" people in rural America, in American cities, and anywhere sickness and disease attack us.

These moles in "a despotic minority" are feverishly and fiendishly working to remove health care in order to "make America great again."

IV. What "Can't Happen Here" Is Happening Here

I recently quoted an Encyclopedia Britannica article concerning the once-most-quoted historian:

"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces."

(Stockholm Syndrome: The Declaration of Intellectual Dependence). That description is way too close for comfort.

V. Conclusion

Those Americans who came and went, before we were born or became Americans, knew history well enough to use the phrase "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" (Supreme Court).

Those who want to do the harm to Americans (harm that hostile foreign enemies would want to do), and who took that oath not to harm Americans, are in fact domestic enemies.

Defend her from them!

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Trump (R-RU) has a friend named Jim:

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Awe Topsy - 3

Mass Grave, unclaimed bodies,Chicago, circa July 1995

What we may be in for in the denial administration has already been demonstrated far and wide.

Remember the heat wave of 1995 that killed ~700 elderly, infirm, weak, and homeless?

You don't?

I didn't either.

Since heat waves are typically not classified as emergencies, and for other reasons, officialdom and other elite left Chicago to go to cooler places as the heat wave approached.

Then, and until recently, the corporate press tended to covered it up.

A young graduate student then, a professor now (see video below) did his PhD thesis on the matter, and later did a book:

"In 2002, sociologist and writer Eric Klinenberg contextualized those events in a book, 'Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago,' recounting the various ways in which the city of Chicago failed its citizens during that scorching period. As Klinenberg analyzed that one July week, there were many factors in play. These included a wholesale lack of awareness of the danger of heat and the magnitude of the crisis that was unfolding, not to mention an absence of cooling centers, absurdly long emergency-response times, the blame games of city politics, poor public information ..."

(Chicago Tribune). The future is like what Oil-Qaeda (now in control of the U.S. government) was doing then:

Throughout the 1990s, when the coalition conducted a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign challenging the merits of an international agreement, policy makers and pundits were fiercely debating whether humans could dangerously warm the planet. Today, with general agreement on the basics of warming, the debate has largely moved on to the question of how extensively to respond to rising temperatures.

Environmentalists have long maintained that industry knew early on that the scientific evidence supported a human influence on rising temperatures, but that the evidence was ignored for the sake of companies’ fight against curbs on greenhouse gas emissions. Some environmentalists have compared the tactic to that once used by tobacco companies, which for decades insisted that the science linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer was uncertain.

(Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate, 2009). There was no accountability for the lack of vision, so the mayor was reelected by a landslide (Chicago mayoral election, 1995).

Now, there is an ongoing on-steroids acceleration of denialism: (‘Orwellian’: Scott Walker admin. quietly scrubs mentions of ‘climate’ from ‘Climate Change’ website, cf. Scientific American).

This is all likely to be a microcosm of the larger disaster which our Titanic civilization is headed for in the next few years (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

Especially with Oil-Qaeda now firmly at the helm of power (Humble Oil-Qaeda, Oil-Qaeda: The Indictment, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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17:15 Chicago heat wave, July, 1995 (temp. index 126 deg F)
20:25 The elite, officials, business leaders left town
20:39 more than 700 people died of heat (thousands more hospitalized)
20:50 african americans, elderly, weak, sick, and poor took the hit
21:00 morgue filled up with the dead, refrigerator trucks used
24:15 mass graves, dozens of people who died never claimed
24:51 a cover up took place (no public hearings, no federal hearings)
25:10 in the report "heat wave" not mentioned, snowflake on cover
25:30 heat wave, Europe 8 yrs later, 2003, was reported as "first time ever"

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The Peak of Sanity - 11

Corporate Media Climate Change Reporters

This series primarily concerns the sanity of groups, cultures, and civilizations (The Peak of Sanity, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

A story related to the subject matter of this series, but narrower in scope because it concerns political group sanity, caught my eye (Majority Of Trump Voters Believe Global Warming Is Real, Poll Finds).

So, in this episode of this series, I want to focus on the current U.S. Election, since I have not explicitly focused on it as a whole.

I did some consideration of limited aspects of the ongoing election in a related post (The Donald University vs. The Lord GOP University).

In today's post, I want to focus on public perception of fossil fuel use caused global warming, and the resulting Damaged Global Climate System (The Damaged Global Climate System, 2, 3, 4, 5).

And, I want to do that in the context of the knowledge, or lack of knowledge, that likely voters have of the scientific consensus on that scientific issue.

A NASA post points out that the consensus is monumental:

Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals¹ show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources.

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AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

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Statement on climate change from 18 scientific associations

"Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver." (2009)²

• American Association for the Advancement of Science

  "The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society." (2006)³
• American Chemical Society

  "Comprehensive scientific assessments of our current and potential future climates clearly indicate that climate change is real, largely attributable to emissions from human activities, and potentially a very serious problem." (2004)⁴
• American Geophysical Union

  "Human‐induced climate change requires urgent action. Humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years. Rapid societal responses can significantly lessen negative outcomes." (Adopted 2003, revised and reaffirmed 2007, 2012, 2013)⁵
• American Medical Association

  "Our AMA ... supports the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment report and concurs with the scientific consensus that the Earth is undergoing adverse global climate change and that anthropogenic contributions are significant." (2013)⁶
• American Meteorological Society

  "It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide." (2012)⁷
• American Physical Society

  "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now." (2007)⁸
• The Geological Society of America

  "The Geological Society of America (GSA) concurs with assessments by the National Academies of Science (2005), the National Research Council (2006), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) that global climate has warmed and that human activities (mainly greenhouse‐gas emissions) account for most of the warming since the middle 1900s." (2006; revised 2010)⁹

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SCIENCE ACADEMIES

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International academies: Joint statement

"Climate change is real. There will always be uncertainty in understanding a system as complex as the world’s climate. However there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems. It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities (IPCC 2001)." (2005, 11 international science academies)¹⁰

• U.S. National Academy of Sciences

  "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify taking steps to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere." (2005)¹¹

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U.S. GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

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• U.S. Global Change Research Program

  "The global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases. Human 'fingerprints' also have been identified in many other aspects of the climate system, including changes in ocean heat content, precipitation, atmospheric moisture, and Arctic sea ice." (2009, 13 U.S. government departments and agencies)¹²

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INTERGOVERNMENTAL BODIES

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• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

  “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.”¹³
  
  “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.”¹⁴

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OTHER RESOURCES

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List of worldwide scientific organizations

The following page lists the nearly 200 worldwide scientific organizations that hold the position that climate change has been caused by human action.
[List of Worldwide Scientific Organizations]

U.S. agencies

The following page contains information on what federal agencies are doing to adapt to climate change.
[List of Agencies, PDF]

(Scientific Consensus: Earth's climate is warming, emphasis added). The evidence for the professional opinions of some 97% of scientists is unequivocal.

In contrast to that monumental consensus of professional opinion, the ignorance of the voting public as to the aforesaid understanding that the scientific community has, is also monumental:

• With the exception of Ted Cruz  voters, most supporters of the Democratic and Republican candidates think global warming is happening (Sanders: 93%, Clinton: 92%, Kasich [no longer a candidate]: 71%, Trump: 56%). By contrast, fewer than half of Ted Cruz supporters—38%—think global warming is happening.
• Supporters of the Democratic candidates are much more likely to think global warming is caused mostly by human activities (79% of Sanders supporters and 76% of Clinton supporters). Supporters of the Republican candidates are more likely to think it is caused mostly by natural changes in the environment (60% of Cruz supporters and 55% of Trump supporters), or are divided on the issue — 49% of Kasich supporters think global warming is mostly caused by humans, 46% think it is mostly caused by natural changes.
• Fewer than half of any candidate’s supporters are aware that virtually all climate scientists have concluded human-caused global warming is happening. However, supporters of the Democratic candidates are the most likely to think at least 90% of climate scientists are convinced (Sanders: 38%, Clinton: 27%). Far fewer supporters of the Republican candidates understand the scientific consensus (Kasich: 11%, Trump: 3%, Cruz: 2%).
• When asked how worried they are about global warming, a majority of Clinton (83%) and Sanders supporters (80%) say they are very or somewhat worried about it. Fewer than half of the Republican candidates’ supporters are very or somewhat worried about global warming. Kasich supporters are the most likely to say they are worried (nearly half—44%), followed by about one in three Trump supporters (35%) and about one in six Cruz supporters (17%).
• Supporters of all Democratic and Republican candidates—except Cruz—are more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who strongly supports taking action to reduce global warming.
• Conversely, supporters of all Democratic and Republican candidates—except Cruz—are less likely to vote for a presidential candidate who strongly opposes taking action to reduce global warming.
• While very few voters say global warming will be the most important issue to them when picking a candidate to vote for this year (2%), about half (49%) say it will be among several important issues. Supporters of the Democratic candidates are most likely to say it will be among several important issues (Sanders: 74%, Clinton: 70%). By contrast, fewer than half of the Republican candidate supporters say the same (Kasich: 42%, Cruz: 33%, Trump: 30%).
• Among the issues voters say will influence their vote for President in 2016, global warming ranked 5th in importance of the 23 issues asked about among Sanders voters (59% say it is “very important”) and 11th highest for Clinton supporters (51% say it is “very important”).
• By contrast, supporters of the Republican candidates are least likely to say global warming is very important to them among the 23 issues (Trump: 18%, Kasich: 13%, Cruz: 13%).
• About half of Sanders and Clinton supporters would be willing to join – or are currently participating in – a campaign to convince elected officials to take action to reduce global warming (51% and 47%, respectively). By contrast, fewer than one in five supporters of the Republican candidates would be willing to do so (Kasich: 17%, Trump: 16%, Cruz: 11%).
• Registered voters support a broad array of energy policies, including many designed to reduce carbon pollution and dependence on fossil fuels, and to promote clean energy. The Democratic candidates’ supporters are the most likely to strongly or somewhat support such policies, but supporters of the Republican candidates do as well, including: Funding more research into renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power (Sanders: 93%, Clinton: 91%, Kasich: 86%, Trump: 76%, Cruz: 64%); providing tax rebates to people who purchase energy-efficient vehicles or solar panels (Sanders: 94%, Clinton: 92%, Kasich: 80%, Trump: 70%, Cruz: 59%).
• At least half of supporters of all candidates except Cruz also would support: Regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant (Clinton: 91%, Sanders: 87%, Kasich: 74%, Trump: 62%, Cruz: 47%); requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a carbon tax and using the money to reduce other taxes such as income taxes by an equal amount (Sanders: 88%, Clinton: 85%, Kasich: 53%, Trump: 51%, Cruz: 27%).
• Most Sanders and Clinton supporters (90% and 87%, respectively) and over half of Kasich voters (61%) support setting strict carbon dioxide emission limits on existing coal-fired power plants to reduce global warming and improve public health, even if the cost of electricity to consumers and companies would likely increase. Half of Trump supporters do as well (50%). By contrast, only 36% of Cruz supporters agree.
• Most Sanders and Clinton supporters (90% and 76%, respectively) and over half of Kasich voters (61%) think the U.S. should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of what other countries do. About half of Trump supporters agree (49%), but only four in 10 Cruz supporters (40%) do.
• [Note: Cruz and Kasich are no longer candidates]

(Global Warming and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, emphasis added). The ignorance of the voting public as to the scientific consensus is dangerous.

Regular readers know that I put the blame for this ignorance on the mass media propaganda, funded by Oil-Qaeda (The Authoritarianism of Climate Change, cf. Dredd Blog Series Page, under "OIL" and "OIL-QAEDA").

IMO they are dementia generators (Etiology of Social Dementia, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13), and are also the prime subjects of Agnotology (Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17).

In closing, let's look beyond our noses and consider a kind, albeit ominous warning:

“Experience has shown that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson

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“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson

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"Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people." - Thomas Jefferson

The previous post in this series is here.

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"Progress" is not "forgetting and repeating" ...

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