Thursday, September 14, 2023

Combating Climate Change (while Clarence Thomas combats democracy and freedom)

Let me start with the illegitimate Supreme Court where corrupt justices have allowed verdicts to be for sale (verdicts -- don't call that garbage "justice").  They are destroying the country and they should be removed from the bench.   At WSWS, Jacob Crosse covers Crooked Clarence Thomas:

On Sunday, September 10, Politico reported extensive and damning revelations on the longstanding connections between Virginia Thomas, the wife of arch-reactionary Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, billionaire Nazi artifact collector Harlan Crow, and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society.

Their relationship, which included Crow’s funneling of hundreds of thousands of dollars to entities controlled by Virginia Thomas, began months prior to a pivotal ruling by the Supreme Court that allowed corporations to funnel unlimited amounts of money to their preferred political candidates.

On January 21, 2010, Justice Thomas was one of five justices who voted in favor of striking down sections of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) that had limited corporate funding of political campaigns.

Politco revealed that in the weeks before Clarence Thomas cast the deciding vote in the Citizens United case, a nonprofit consulting firm controlled by Virginia Thomas received half a million dollars from the billionaire Crow.

Since the Citizens United ruling, billionaires operating in the shadows, behind a constellation of “dark money” non-profit and for-profit groups, have been able to purchase their preferred politicians and judges in order to advance anti-democratic laws and legal theories aimed at ensuring the “right” of corporations to unlimited profits.

[. . .]

In its report on longstanding financial arrangements between the Thomases and right-wing millionaires and billionaires, Politco emphasized the close relationship between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas and the co-chairman of the far-right Federalist Society, Leonard Leo. “Ginni really wanted to build an organization and be a movement leader,” Politico wrote, citing a person “familiar with her thinking at the time.”

“Leonard [Leo] was going to be the conduit of that,” Politico added.
This past May, the Washington Post reported on the “conduit” role played by Leo, which took the form of arranging for Virginia Thomas “to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work.” The Post revealed that beginning in January 2012, Leo instructed Kellyanne Conway, then-CEO of the Polling Company and later a senior advisor in the Trump White House, to bill a nonprofit group he controlled, the Judicial Education Project (JEP), in order to funnel money to Ginni Thomas.

According to the documents reviewed by the Post, Leo instructed Conway to “give” Thomas “another $25K,” while emphasizing that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.” That same day, the Polling Company sent the JEP a $25,000 bill. The obvious implication by the phrase “another $25K” is that this was far from the first bribe Leo funneled to the Thomases.


This is not about justice.  This is not about democracy.  This is 100% corruption.  

Now for some environmental news.  AP reports:




Hundreds of communities around the country will share more than $1 billion in federal money to help them plant and maintain trees under a federal program that is intended to reduce extreme heat, benefit health and improve access to nature.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will announce the $1.13 billion in funding for 385 projects at an event Thursday morning in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The tree plantings efforts will be focused on marginalized areas in all 50 states as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and some tribal nations.

“We believe we can create more resilient communities in terms of the impacts of climate,” Vilsack told reporters in previewing his announcement. “We think we can mitigate extreme heat incidents and events in many of the cities.”



There is nothing up at the US ag website -- not even a press release.   I did find this, from November 2019, at NASA's website:

By Alan Buis,
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

It’s an intriguing premise: what if we could reduce the severity of global climate change by planting hundreds of billions of trees to remove excess carbon from our atmosphere? A recent study published in the journal Science sought to provide answers by estimating the global potential of restoring forested lands as a possible strategy for mitigating climate change.

The international research team, led by Jean-Francois Bastin of ETH-Zurich in Switzerland, used direct measurements of forest cover around the world to create a model for estimating Earth’s forest restoration potential. They found Earth’s ecosystems could support another 900 million hectares (2.2 billion acres) of forests, 25 percent more forested area than we have now. By planting more than a half trillion trees, the authors say, we could capture about 205 gigatons of carbon (a gigaton is 1 billion metric tons), reducing atmospheric carbon by about 25 percent. That’s enough to negate about 20 years of human-produced carbon emissions at the current rate, or about half of all carbon emitted by humans since 1960. The study attracted worldwide attention, as well as some criticism within the science community.

Is the concept of planting trees to help combat climate change really going out on a limb, so to speak, or might it take root? Sassan Saatchi, a senior scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, believes it has some merit. But while he says there’s potential for using reforestation as a climate mitigation tool, he cautions there are many factors to consider and that planting trees will never be a substitute for decreasing fossil fuel emissions.

“I feel there’s a strong possibility a significant portion of these lands can be reforested to their original forest cover,” said Saatchi, an expert in global forest carbon stocks and dynamics. “It’s definitely not a solution by itself to addressing current climate change. To do that, we need to reduce human emissions of greenhouse gases. But it could still have some partial impact on our ability to reduce climate change.”

Saatchi says the study establishes a reasonable estimate of global forest restoration potential and addresses the issue more directly than previous work. The researchers used new satellite-based land cover and land use maps, along with other climate and soil data and advanced techniques to arrive at their results. He says their conclusions on tree restoration aren’t that different from the recommendations made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2018, which suggested that 950 million hectares (2.3 billion acres) of new forests could help limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5-degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2050. However, he says, “the devil is in the details.”

Many Unanswered Questions
Before a global forest restoration effort is undertaken, Saatchi says, numerous questions must first be addressed to assess the concept’s feasibility, scientific soundness, cost-efficiency, risks and other considerations. “We need to understand not only whether it’s possible to do such a thing, but whether we should do it,” he says.

“The paper has sparked a healthy debate in the science community, which has now come forward to begin to address issues that the paper did not,” he said. “The science community has been looking at these questions to some extent for a long time, but there’s more urgency to address them now, since we no longer have the same climate conditions we had 50 or 100 years ago, when humans began massive deforestation for agriculture and human settlements. Since then, Earth’s population and land use have increased drastically. In some parts of the Northern Hemisphere, countries have been able to save more forests, but other areas, such as the tropics, have seen massive deforestations because of the need to feed larger populations.”

Saatchi outlined a few of the many questions scientists and others will want to investigate. For example, how realistic are the study’s estimates of how much carbon can be sequestered through reforestation? How long will this approach take to make a dent in atmospheric carbon concentrations? Can grasslands and savanna ecosystems sustain increased tree cover? How might converting non-forest land to forests compete with food production? How much time, money and resources will it take to implement a global forest restoration of this magnitude? How do the costs of adopting such a climate mitigation strategy stack up against its potential benefits? How much carbon would be released to the atmosphere by restoring forests? How will global climate models respond to a massive forest restoration? Will an Earth with a billion hectares of new forests actually be cooler?

“Planting a billion hectares of trees won’t be easy,” he said. “It would require a massive undertaking. If we follow the paper’s recommendations, reforesting an area the size of the United States and Canada combined (1 to 2 billion hectares) could take between one and two thousand years, assuming we plant a million hectares a year and that each hectare contains at least 50 to 100 trees to create an appropriate treetop canopy cover.”

Even once the trees are planted, says Saatchi, it will take them about a century to reach maturity. Most forests in the United States are less than 100 years old because they are recycled constantly. Trees in tropical regions take a little bit longer to reach maturity, but sequester carbon much faster. We know it will take time for new forests to absorb atmospheric carbon.”

Saatchi says scientists will want to do a comprehensive evaluation of all potential effects a mass reforestation may have on Earth’s climate and the global carbon cycle.

Currently, Earth’s forests and soil absorb about 30 percent of atmospheric carbon emissions, partially through forest productivity and restoration. While deforestation has occurred throughout human history, the practice has increased dramatically in the past 50 years. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, about 7.3 million hectares (18 million acres) of forest are lost every year, and roughly half of Earth’s tropical forests have already been cleared. In the continental United States, an estimate from the University of Michigan found that 90 percent of indigenous forests have been removed since 1600.


As deforestation has ramped up, Earth’s climate has changed significantly. Warmer, more adverse climate conditions are creating more difficult growing conditions for forest ecosystems.

Key questions scientists will need to address are how global reforestation might affect Earth’s surface albedo (reflectivity) and evapotranspiration. In the near term and locally, says Saatchi, forest restoration may actually have a warming effect. As the trees mature, the new forest canopy cover would presumably make Earth’s surface albedo darker, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere during periods of snow cover, causing it to absorb more heat. Increasing forest cover, particularly in the tropics, will increase evapotranspiration, causing a cooling effect. With Earth already warming significantly due to greenhouse gas emissions, will forest reforestation on a global scale have a net warming or cooling effect on our planet, and will the benefits of reforested areas absorbing more carbon outweigh their increased heat absorption? These effects may vary geographically from tropical to boreal regions and may depend largely on water and light availability. In addition, how might these changes impact climate change patterns?

“Recent Landsat satellite-based analyses show that close to 400 million hectares (988 million acres) of forests have been disturbed in this century alone (2000-2017), either by human activities or through droughts and fires – that’s almost 50 percent of the area recommended for reforestation by the authors of the new study,” he said. Some of these areas have gone back to being forests, but a large amount of these degraded forests located in tropical and subtropical regions are suitable targets for restoration.

Another science question concerns biodiversity. Will ecosystems in reforested areas revert to their previous conditions and maintain their ability to sequester carbon? While ecosystems that existed before areas were deforested may have been highly diverse, reforesting them with only a single type of species (known as monocultures), might result in ecosystems that won’t function as efficiently as they did before – in other words, they may not grow the same or stay as healthy over time. Saatchi says each region of the world will need to address this question for itself. But restoring a region’s original biodiversity or its natural forests may not be easy. For example, the region’s soil health may have changed.

Yet another concern is something Saatchi calls climate connectivity. When ecosystems become too fragmented, they begin losing their natural functions. “In Earth’s tropical regions, a combination of deforestation and climate conditions may have actually changed the system so much that climate connectivity is reduced,” he says. “Once this connectivity is lost, it becomes much more difficult for a reforested area to have its species range and diversity, and the same efficiency to absorb atmospheric carbon.”

Saatchi says scientists are already studying some of these questions. He believes that by the end of the next decade, better results from satellite observations and modeling will likely enable us to determine whether a global forest reforestation will produce the carbon and climate benefits suggested by the new study, and whether it should be undertaken. In the meantime, stopping further deforestation and restoring these areas to their original forest cover of 50 years ago may be the most effective mitigation strategy.

Looking to Space for Answers

Saatchi says a number of current and planned satellite missions from NASA and other space agencies can make valuable contributions to these research efforts:

  • Instruments on NASA satellites, such as the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite, continuously monitor the energy balance of Earth’s land surfaces, measuring their albedo, a key climate parameter that would be impacted by reforestation.

  • NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on the agency’s Aqua and Terra satellites provide a suite of measurements on global forest cover change, fire and forest carbon cycling function.
  • NASA’s ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment (ECOSTRESS) aboard the International Space Station, launched last year, measures evapotranspiration and stress on ecosystems, providing valuable information on how Earth’s energy, water and carbon cycles interact in ecosystems in a warming climate.


  • NASA scientists conduct research to map the functional traits of ecosystems. Models, combined with satellite observations, can examine whether ecosystems will absorb more carbon if we plant new trees.
  • A new NASA mission in development for launch in the next decade called Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) would give scientists a global view of the functional traits and diversity of ecosystems and their efficiency in absorbing carbon, water and energy. Other space agencies also plan to make similar measurements.
  • NASA’s recently launched Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) aboard the space station is conducting high-resolution laser ranging of Earth’s forests and topography to study how deforestation has contributed to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, how much carbon forests will absorb in the future, and how degradation of habitats will affect global biodiversity.

  • The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, a dedicated U.S./Indian interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) mission scheduled to launch in 2022, will be able to measure the woody plants and forests that make up 80 percent of Earth’s living terrestrial biomass. NISAR’s global, detailed maps of above-ground woody biomass density are expected to cut in half current uncertainties in estimates of carbon emissions resulting from land use changes.
  • The European Space Agency’s BIOMASS mission, launching in the early 2020s, will map the global distribution of above-ground biomass in forests to reduce uncertainties in estimates of carbon stocks and fluxes in the terrestrial biosphere, such as those linked to changes in land use, forest degradation and forest regrowth.

“With these new missions, we should be able to monitor how every patch of forest around the world is absorbing carbon, and how carbon absorption is changing, on a monthly and annual basis,” said Saatchi.

Seeing the Forests for the Trees: The Big Picture

Saatchi says the study’s results can help address policy-relevant questions. In accordance with the Paris Agreement, after 2020, the global community has agreed to major emission reduction programs. Reforestation can complement these emission reduction strategies.

“With the Paris Agreement, governments around the world committed to reduce emissions by adopting low-carbon pathways in accordance with nationally determined contributions,” he said. “As a result, it’s become more urgent than ever to have realistic estimates of each country’s capacity to increase its forest cover and health. While it’s likely the burden of restoring forests will fall primarily on the shoulders of the world’s large and economically-developed countries, the developing world can also contribute by reducing land use change and deforestation.” He adds governments will need to decide which land areas to target first and which will have the least negative economic impacts to both society and individual communities, such as indigenous populations.


If it’s determined that a global reforestation effort can be successful, will the world’s governments have the will to do it? Saatchi pointed to some recent examples that show what might be possible.

Over the past 15 years or so, China has planted millions of trees and created millions of hectares of new forest cover, much of it in areas with marginal agricultural potential. “China’s land use policy increased forest cover in southern China between 10 and 20 percent, turning these areas into intense managed forests,” he said. “As a result, they created close to a carbon sink (an area that stores carbon) in their forests, almost doubling their carbon uptake. The effort has offset 20 percent of China’s annual fossil fuel emissions, and since 2012 that percentage has increased to 33 percent. So that’s a success story.”

Managed activities to increase the carbon sequestration of forests have also taken place in other parts of the Northern Hemisphere, including the United States, Canada, Europe and Russia, he says. He believes it’s possible to increase them even further and to extend the area or the capacity of these forests to sequester more carbon. In fact, he says, some foresters have been doing so for decades.

“U.S. forests have actually been a net sink for carbon for many decades,” he says. “A paper published a couple of years ago showed that reforestation could reduce U.S. annual carbon emissions from all sources by 10 to 15 percent. Imagine if we do that? It’s possible. We just need to study the cost-to-benefit ratio – is it economically feasible to plant those trees compared to how much carbon they would offset?”

Will it work?  I don't know.  I would hope so, I would hope it would at least mitigate it somewhat.  Doyle Irvin (AMERICAN FORESTS) noted in 2017: 

What has also been clear for a long time is that trees and forests are a great source of existing moisture, through their evapotranspirative properties. Their “tree sweat” provides water for both their surrounding vegetation and the clouds above. The clouds then move with the wind to new areas. Scientist Dominick Spracklen of the University of Leeds found “this really strong impact – air that travelled over a lot of forest brought a lot more rain than air that didn’t.”

A new development that is starting to gain steam in the scientific community is the theory that forests anchor and attract rainfall for their regions, instead of simply serving as a source of moisture for the air. Russian scientists Dr. Anastassia Makarieva and Professor Victor Gorshkov of the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute have proposed that forests act as what they call a “biotic pump.”

To explain this process, picture three distinct bio-zones: desert, ocean and forest. Forests actually evaporate more moisture than oceans, and deserts of course evaporate the least of the three.

Evaporation creates low-pressure air zones by reducing the temperature of the air. Remember, heat causes expansion, meaning that a hotter quantity of atmosphere will expand and push itself into a colder area (this is why city streets and deserts provide such great updrafts for birds to fly with). This transference of atmosphere from one area to another will bring whatever moisture is on the wind as it rushes in to fill low-pressure areas. This means that whatever area is evaporating more — creating a low pressure zone by lowering air temperatures — is going to attract moisture from adjacent lower-evaporation areas.

Now, these aren’t hard and fast rules you can apply everywhere — there are always exceptions. But they are general principles. What they tell us is that, generally, if you have a desert next to an ocean, the ocean will be evaporating more moisture than the desert, and the wind will blow out into the ocean. If you have a forest next to an ocean, the wind will blow in from the ocean and bring the moisture with it.



I had always heard that trees increased rain.  Looked it up and found that article.  It makes sense to me -- the same way that bodies of water -- oceans, rivers, ponds, lakes, creeks -- add moisture to the air.


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, September 14, 2023.  Efforts to ban books increase, the family of a woman with dual citizenship (she's a citizen of Russia and of Israel) wants the US to play "cops of the world," and much more.



Let's start with this from AP:

The United States should use its influence to help win the freedom of a Russian-Israeli academic at Princeton University who went missing in Iraq nearly six months ago and is believed to be held by an Iran-backed militia regarded by Washington as a terrorist group, her sister said Wednesday.

No, we shouldn't.  The woman is most likely a spy and, if not, she's an idiot.  Regardless, she had no business being in Iraq and she's not an American citizen.  She created her own little international incident and if she needs help now, she can turn to Russia or to Israel -- those her countries.  Stop pushing your problems off on others.  Deal with your stupidity -- and it's stupidity either way, actually.  She was stupid to have gone to Iraq as an 'academic' or she was stupid as a spy for being so obvious.

I don't know which and I don't care.  




This morning the New York Times' Alissa J. Rubin and Michael Gordon offered "U.S. Frees Suspect in Killing of 5 G.I.'s."  Martin Chulov (Guardian) covered the same story, Kim Gamel (AP) reported on it, BBC offered "Kidnap hope after Shia's handover" and Deborah Haynes contributed "Hope for British hostages in Iraq after release of Shia militant" (Times of London).  The basics of the story are this. 5 British citizens have been hostages since May 29, 2007. The US military had in their custody Laith al-Khazali. He is a member of Asa'ib al-Haq. He is also accused of murdering five US troops. The US military released him and allegedly did so because his organization was not going to release any of the five British hostages until he was released.  This is a big story and the US military is attempting to state this is just diplomacy, has nothing to do with the British hostages and, besides, they just released him to Iraq.  Sami al-askari told the New York Times, "This is a very sensitive topic because you know the position that the Iraqi government, the U.S. and British governments, and all the governments do not accept the idea of exchanging hostages for prisoners.  So we put it in another format, and we told them that if they want to participate in the political process they cannot do so while they are holding hostages.  And we mentioned to the American side that they cannot join the political process and release their hostages while their leaders are behind bars or imprisoned." In other words, a prisoner was traded for hostages and they attempted to not only make the trade but to lie to people about it.  At the US State Dept, the tired and bored reporters were unable to even broach the subject.  Poor declawed tabbies. Pentagon reporters did press the issue and got the standard line from the department's spokesperson, Bryan Whitman, that the US handed the prisoner to Iraq, the US didn't hand him over to any organization -- terrorist or otherwise.  What Iraq did, Whitman wanted the press to know, was what Iraq did.  A complete lie that really insults the intelligence of the American people. CNN reminds the five US soldiers killed "were: Capt. Brian S. Freeman, 31, of Temecula, California; 1st Lt. Jacob N. Fritz, 25, of Verdon, Nebraska; Spc. Johnathan B. Chism, 22, of Gonzales, Louisiana; Pfc. Shawn P. Falter, 25, of Cortland, New York; and Pfc. Johnathon M. Millican, 20, of Trafford, Alabama."  Those are the five from January 2007 that al-Khazali and his brother Qais al-Khazali are supposed to be responsible for the deaths of.  Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Robert H. Reid (AP) states that Jonathan B. Chism's father Danny Chism is outraged over the release and has declared, "They freed them?  The American military did? Somebody needs to answer for it."


There was no reason for the US to be involved in that issue.  Five American servicemembers were killed.  Their killers were in custody.  Four mercenaries from the UK and one computer consultant had been kidnapped two years prior.  Going in the chances were strong that every one of them was dead.  Turns out Peter Moore was alive (the computer guy).  (The four contractors were all killed: Jason Swindlehurst, Jason Creswell, Alec Maclachlan and Alan McMenemy.)  

Killers of five US troops in US custody -- one of which was the ringleader of the League of Righteous -- a terrorist organization.  The handover was beyond stupid and had no benefits for the US or for Iraq.  It was a huge mistake which is why so few people talk about today -- we must protect Barack at all costs.  

What he did was outrageous.  Not only was he making a deal with terrorists -- and letting them set the terms -- he was releasing the killers of Americans which was bad for the US.  And bad for Iraq was letting these killers out so that they could terrorize the Iraqi people -- which is what they continue to do.

And on top of everything, Barack looked like an idiot on the world stage and that's when the US media lost interest in the topic.  He gave the terrorists what they wanted: the release of all killers in custody.  And?  They released some.  Some.  Not all five.  A few months later, in August of that year, they were talking big to the press about how they'd do what they wanted and they didn't trust Barack.  Big talk was easy because Barack had released the killers.  Not handed them over to Iraqi courts and jails, mind you, just released them, like turning a turtle back into the wild.

They mocked him, the Arabic press was all over that story.

There was no great win in that.  And those five British citizens should have been the focus of their own government.

The Israeli-Russia woman and her family need to appeal to the countries she's a citizen of.  She's not an American citizen and US interests do not need to be wasted on her in Iraq.

Iraq has enough issues and enough problems that the US government could help with -- such as bringing people to the table to implement the Constitutional article to determine the status of Kirkuk.  When Bully Boy Bush was in the White House, the Iraqi Constitution called for that to be implemented.  Then prime minister and forever thug Nouri al-Maliki refused to do so.  Brookings warned that the failure to implement it presented real risks to Iraq's future.  

We've now seen that even more so.  

That's what our diplomatic mission should be.

And if the governments of Israel and Russia want to use their diplomatic resources to rescue the stupid woman, that's their business.  But she is not a US priority and she is not an Iraqi priority.  

And I'm not seeing any history of that woman or her sister advocating for the release of Julian Assange or any other political prisoner so apparently they only believe in themselves.  Not going to rush to help selfish people.

JEWISH NEWS SYNDICATE notes, "While Tsurkov is not a U.S. citizen, Emma is pressing Washington to use its financial support to Iraq as leverage to secure her sister’s freedom."  The US government is not and should not be the cops of the world.  Your sister has two countries who can help her due to her citizenship: Russia and Israel.  



Elizabeth Tsurkov is not a US citizen, limiting the tools at the American government's disposal and the direct ability of Washington officials to secure her release. But Emma Tsurkov contends that the US government still has substantial influence given that her sister has significant US ties as a “graduate student in an American institution that is approved and funded for research."



No that does not create a legal obligation and instead of fighting windmills, her sister should be using the resources she does have to appeal to the governments of  Russia and Israel.


Let's move over to the topic of books.  At THE NEW YORK TIMES, Naomi Klein writes:


Though doppelgängers reliably elicit feelings of vertigo, I find the sudden prevalence of doubles oddly comforting. For years I struggled privately with a problem I considered rather niche: being perennially confused and conflated with another writer and outspoken political analyst named Naomi, Naomi Wolf, even though I bear only a passing resemblance to her. (And I would see the same thing happening to her.) Once best known for best-selling feminist books like “The Beauty Myth” and for a controversial role advising Al Gore’s presidential run, Ms. Wolf has more recently distinguished herself as an industrial-scale disseminator of vaccine-related medical misinformation, as well as a fixture on pro-Trump shows like the one hosted daily by Steve Bannon.



I sometimes wondered what I had done to deserve my doppelgänger woes. With popular culture feeling increasingly like a house of mirrors with duplicated and simulated and similar selves endlessly refracted, many more of us may soon be dealing with versions of doppelgänger confusion. What role is this proliferation of doubles, twins and clones playing? Doppelgängers, which combine the German words for doppel (double) with gänger (goer), are often regarded as warnings, or omens.

In an attempt to better understand the warnings carried by my doppelgänger experience, I spent many evenings immersing myself in the rich repertory of doppelgänger films. One that proved particularly helpful was Jordan Peele’s “Us.” This 2019 horror film imagines a society much like our own, only sitting on top of a shadowy underworld, inhabited by warped doubles of everyone living aboveground. Every move above is mirrored below in darkness and misery. Until the underground doppelgängers get tired of the arrangement and wreak havoc.

Who are these underground people? one terrified character asks.

“We’re Americans,” comes the gut punch of an answer.

The film has been interpreted as an allegory for capitalism’s entanglements with racial and other forms of oppression, with the comforts of the few requiring the exploitation of a shadow world. That understanding landed particularly hard during the pandemic, when I watched the film. Those of us who were part of the lockdown class were able to shelter in place because we were being served by “essential workers,” many of whom did not have the ability to call in sick. Doubles often play this role, offering viewers and readers uncomfortable ways into their own story. By showing us a character facing her doppelgänger, we are exposed to parts of ourselves we can least bear to see, but at a slight angle, and through a warped mirror.

[. . .]

We are, once again, at a historical juncture where our physical and political worlds are changing too quickly and too consequentially for our minds to easily comprehend. This is why I decided to start regarding my own doppelgänger as a narrow aperture through which to look at forces I consider dangerous, and that can be hard to confront directly.

Rather than worrying about people thinking that she and I were one and the same, I got interested in the ways she seems to have become a doppelgänger of her former self. Because I have been getting confused with Ms. Wolf for close to a decade and half, I knew that she had been dabbling in conspiracy culture for years. (I would periodically get harangued online for positions she had taken.)

Before the pandemic, her underlying values seemed somewhat stable: feminism, sexual freedom, democracy, basic liberalism. Then, rather suddenly, they appeared less so. In a matter of months, I watched her go from questioning masks in schools to questioning election results alongside Mr. Bannon. Next she was engaging in Jan. 6 revisionism, condoning the Supreme Court’s assault on abortion rights, posting about her firearms and also warning that “war is being waged upon us.”

This is a phenomenon far larger than Ms. Wolf, of course. A great many of us have witnessed it in people we know, once respected and even still love. We tell one another that they have disappeared “down the rabbit hole,” lost to conspiratorial fantasies, embracing apocalyptic language, seemingly unreachable by affection or reason.



 
Naomi's book came out this week.  My apologies because I wrongly stated last week that it had come out.  I was reading a few weeks ago and thought it was coming out Tuesday of last week.  I strongly recommend the book and it's entitled DOPPLEGANGER: A TRIP INTO THE MIRROR WORLD.  That's by Naomi Klein -- Klein.


Let's note how far Naomi Wolf has fallen: She's now reTweeting Jordan Peterson.  If you're not getting it, Jordan Peterson is infamous for insisting that women's studies programs should be defunded.

I've said this many times before but I'm saying it again, should crazy get off the drugs and try to return to the left, you're an idiot if you let her.  It's not just that Naomi Wolf is bat s**t crazy, it's that she's done real harm to women and feminists do not need to be masochists.  She chose her side.  There is no return from the dark side for her..  She is not to be trusted.  She's a right winger who wants to vote for Donald Trump.  She hangs out with homophobes and transphobes.  Moms For Bigotry have the Naomi Wolf stamp of approval.  There is no forgiveness, there is no salvation.  She has stabbed feminism in the back and that's where it should stop.  We would be idiots to ever let her back in.  

The right-wing?  They're fools to embrace her.  Ava and I long ago -- back in the '00s -- exposed how she stole the work of Judith N. Shklar for her piece of garbage THE BEAUTY MYTH -- Shklar had given lectures Naomi attended and cribbed for without doing any attribution.  We've noted how, in FIRE WITH FIRE (her second book), she praises the 'beauty' of Victoria Woodhull while immediately then insulting the looks of Madam CJ Walker.  It was racist.  And, point of fact, Walker was cute, Woodhull had to be photographed from certain angles.  Then came PROMISCUITIES where she brunches the morning after with rapists and feels no concern for the woman who was raped the night before.  Hey, it's a frat house, Naomi's down with the bros.  MISCONCEPTIONS?  A book on motherhood which reads, naturally and obviously, like a book by someone who didn't raise children.  (Those kids were so lucky to have their father and step-mother.)  Crazy most recently took her dissertation -- which goes to how lousy Oxford has become -- and turned it into OUTRAGES: SEX, CENSORSHIP, AND THE CRIMINALIZATION OF LOVE.

Want to read it?

You can't.  

It was pulped.  Her central thesis was based on her misunderstanding of historical records.


The publisher pulped all copies.  

But, explain this, Oxford didn't immediately pull her doctorate.  Her research -- that Oxford waived through -- was all wrong. Well, her conclusions from her research.  In the real world, that happens and you get your dissertation pulled and the university involved issues a statement if this was a public matter.  (It was a public matter.  Her turning her dissertation into a book made it a public matter.)  

She's nuts.  She's always been a huge question mark and we should be a closed community to her at this point.  She is not a feminist.  She has used feminism to grift and now she tries to use it to pretend she's not the idiotic reactionary, tin-foil hat wearer that she is.


As insane as she is, I haven't called for her book to be banned or burned.  And never would.  We don't ban books, we don't burn them -- even badly written ones.



But the other Naomi, Klein, has a good book worth reading.






During a Tuesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about book bans, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) read sexually explicit passages from two LGBTQ+ memoirs in order to justify censorship as a necessary way to protect children from pornography and sexual grooming.

However, other experts during the hearing pointed out book bans are also being used to ban non-sexual LGBTQ+ children’s books and other books about the anti-Semitic Nazi Holocaust, Native American genocide, and Black and Latino civil rights experiences.

The hearing, entitled “Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature,” featured testimony from five witnesses: two who claimed that the upset around book bans is over-exaggerated, and three who consider book bans an attack on democratic free-thinking.

[. . .]

However, Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) called the Republicans’ focus on overly sexual passages “a distraction from the real challenge,” adding, “No one is advocating for sexually explicit content to be available in an elementary school library or in [the] children’s section of the library.”

“I understand and respect that parents may choose to limit what their children read, especially at younger ages. My wife and I did. Others do, too,” Durbin said. “But no parent should have the right to tell another parent’s child what they can and cannot read in school or at home. Every student deserves access to books that reflect their experiences and help them better understand who they are.”

During her testimony, Emily Knox, president of the National Coalition Against Censorship, noted that the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom counted 2,571 unique titles targeted for in-school censorship in 2022 — a 38% increase from the number of titles targeted in 2021.

“Almost all of the books can be categorized as ‘diverse’ or books by and about ‘LGBTQIA, Native, people of color, gender diversity, people with disabilities and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities,’” Knox said. “These attacks on our freedom to read, our libraries, and our schools are unconstitutional and unpopular. Seventy-one percent of Americans oppose book bans in public libraries, and 67% oppose book bans in school libraries,” she added, citing a March 2022 ALA survey.

The National Education Association (NEA) noted that recent book bans have targeted such titles as Art Speigelman’s Holocaust graphic novel Maus and numerous titles about the struggle for civil rights by people of color, including Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons, and Duncan Tonatiuh’s Separate is Never Equal.


Sam Seder addresses the hearing in the video below.



 The League of Women Voters hosted a discussion on the topic of book banning this week.



NBC 5 CHICAGO notes:


As bomb threats earlier this week forced nearly half a dozen libraries in Chicago and the suburbs to evacuate, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias testified at a U.S. Senate Judiciary hearing on the state's first-in-the-nation ban against book bans.

“…What I am concerned with is political attempts to ban books that are driving libraries to close their doors, stifle creativity, make librarians quit their jobs," Giannoulias said during Tuesday's hearing. "And just a few weeks ago, literally have to evacuate due to numerous bomb threats at multiple locations.”

The first-of-its-kind law, signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on June 12, states that Illinois public libraries that restrict or ban materials because of “partisan or doctrinal” disapproval will be ineligible for state funding as of Jan. 1, 2024, when the new law goes into effect.


Layne Ray (THE POST) provides context:

The American Library Association began observing Banned Books Week in 1982. According to its website, it “celebrates the freedom to read and spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools.” Teachers, authors, students, librarians and supporters of the First Amendment can all come together this Oct. 1-7 to bring awareness to this harmful form of censorship that affects our nation as a whole. 

Now more than ever, education is being censored. Topics like racism and sexism as well as LGBTQIA+ themes being put to a halt in certain places are disregarding all students’ First Amendment rights. Florida laws like the Stop WOKE Act and the “Don’t Say Gay” bill don’t directly prohibit any titles from being incorporated into the curriculum, but they freely open the opportunity for books to be challenged and removed from school libraries and lesson plans. Evidently, many have done so as Pen America named Florida as having the second-highest number of banned books between July and December of 2022 at 357 books. 

In a similar, but not as severe situation is Ohio. There have been 79 titles challenged in total, but House Bills 322 and 327 that prohibit teachings of “divisive concepts” being passed could increase that number quickly. The bills haven’t been dismissed but have been in the House committee since 2021. With the growing popularity and turmoil of such censorship, Ohio may follow the trend. 

Bookshop.org, a popular online bookstore, has an entry titled, “We Don’t Ban Books Over Here” in which readers can purchase books that are typically challenged or banned in some schools or libraries. It includes works such as “Lord of the Flies,” “The Hate U Give” and “The 1619 Project.” One of the more ironic ones found on this list, which has been read by a large number of students who attended public high schools, is “Fahrenheit 451.” While its significance went over my head as a 15-year-old, it is certainly one of the most crucial books for readers today. Banning a book about banning books is a terrifying level of censorship that is inexcusable. 


Banned Books Week is a week that highlights the undemocratic effort to ban books and celebrates our right to read.  This year, it will be October 1st through 7th.  ALA notes:


“This is a dangerous time for readers and the public servants who provide access to reading materials. Readers, particularly students, are losing access to critical information, and librarians and teachers are under attack for doing their jobs.”
- Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom 

Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read and spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. For more than 40 years, the annual event has brought together the entire book community — librarians, teachers, booksellers, publishers, writers, journalists, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular. The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted for removal or restriction in libraries and schools. By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.

In a time of intense political polarization, library staff in every state are facing an unprecedented number of attempts to ban books. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom ALA documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago. The unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022 nearly doubles the 729 book challenges reported in 2021. Of the record 2,571 unique titles targeted for censorship, most were by or about LGBTQIA+ persons and Black, Indigenous, and people of color.

The theme for Banned Books Week 2023 is "Let Freedom Read." When we ban books, we're closing off readers to people, places, and perspectives. But when we stand up for stories, we unleash the power that lies inside every book. We liberate the array of voices that need to be heard and the scenes that need to be seen. Let freedom read!


ADDED AT 10 am PST:



The following sites updated:





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