Such a peacenik

As noted everywhere:

The Trump administration will send nearly 2,000 troops and advanced military equipment to Saudi Arabia to deter threats from Iran — a move that will increase America’s presence in the Middle East, even as President Donald Trump falsely boasts about ending wars in the region.

The announcement, made by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley on Friday, continues the administration’s campaign both to increase pressure on Tehran and deepen ties with Riyadh. The US has sent an additional 14,000 military members to the Middle East since May, which the 1,800 authorized Friday will add to.

And more:

Trump is saying these things to justify his decision on Sunday to move American troops in Syria — a decision that’s drawn bipartisan pushback. It’d be one thing if he were bringing all 1,000 US troops in the country home, but he’s not. Instead, he’s moving just 50 US service members out of northern Syria to get out of the way of a just-started Turkish invasion.

That’s not all. A late September report from US Air Forces Central Command showed that the US launched the most airstrikes in Afghanistan over a single month in roughly a decade. American troops have ramped up airstrikes in Libya targeting ISIS fighters there. And the US continues its shadow war in Somalia to fend off terrorist groups there.

Where to find the only people in Australia who can detect sincerity in Donald Trump

Brilliant political analyst Tom from somewhere in Victoria lights up a durry and turns down the permanent race call on the radio so as to swoon over Trump in a live net broadcast:

When one other says he/she doesn't agree, old Tom flies the condescension flag:

The other thing that I find hilarious is how suddenly, after Trump makes a decision, most of the wingnuts at Catallaxy suddenly become experts on Turk/Kurd history so that they can nod sagely that their culture war leader has obviously made a wise decision. 

Update:   I see Sinclair has handed posting keys over to CL, who thinks that Trump's talk about how the families of the dead brought back to Dover AFB seem fine at first but then "scream" when they see the coffin "may be his finest".   In reality, it came across like a weird and exaggerated description by an emotional cripple incapable of normal empathy himself.   (It was a "sir" story, which is always a tell with Trump.)   Oh, and let's not forget his telephone calls to relatives have not always gone down well.  Maybe that's why he sticks to letters now.

It's back to the old puzzle for me - has the internet-led culture war culminating in Trump made idiots of people, or were they just always idiots waiting to be revealed by their inability to recognise a dumb, completely unethical, wannabe autocrat?

Electricity in Africa

I see Jason's having a gut reaction again, this time to a twitter headlined article in The Economist:

Electricity does not change poor lives as much as was thought

Getting a power connection to the poorest of the poor may be the wrong priority for a cash-strapped government

The article makes a case, citing studies in Africa mainly, but all Right wingers can do is get indignant that a magazine powered by electricity is dissing Africans getting electricity.  That's outrageous!

How about addressing the actual arguments and studies the article cites, conservatives?

Surely this is far from normal

The twitterverse is abuzz about what this could mean:

Attorney General William Barr “met privately Wednesday evening with one of President Trump’s frequent confidants, Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul whose holdings include Fox News, which has recently become more critical of the president,” the New York Times reports.

“The meeting was held at Mr. Murdoch’s home in New York.”

The most immediate and valid reaction should surely be:  why is Barr making himself look like the President's personal lawyer and messenger boy?   We know Rudy has been a bumbling disaster, but this just looks so far from what an AG should be doing it's ridiculous.

On the other hand - is it a case of Rupert wanting to tell Trump he's withdrawing Fox support?  As I speculated earlier this week, the Turkey decision seems a valid pretext conservatives could use to withdraw support, especially if images of civilian deaths start pouring in. 

The French way

For a nation pretty relaxed about things like nudity and extramarital affairs, it seems the French have remained quite conservative compared to other countries regarding how kids are made. 

In this article at France 24:  Inside France's black market for sperm (some headline, hey?) we learn that -

On September 24, French lawmakers begin debating a government-proposed bill to extend the right to medically assisted procreation (MAP) to all women, a highly sensitive subject in France. Under current rules, single women and lesbian couples are barred from access to fertility treatment. This discrimination has fostered the rise of a thriving underground market for sperm that carries enormous legal and sanitary risks.

The article details how single or lesbian women have been, um, sourcing sperm via the underground online market, and the men who offer their services are sometimes not in it for altruistic reasons:

The donor, who says he belongs to the first category, claims to have fathered dozens of babies and now moderates a 1,100-member closed Facebook group that connects single and lesbian women with donors in France. He says he has seen a clear increase in both the number of donors and the number of women seeking donors on the Facebook group lately. But he has also noted a rise in inappropriate proposals, especially when it comes to donors seeking free sex, or a financial reward for their services.

“Some ask to be paid €30, €500 or even €1,000 for their ‘donations’,” he says, adding that he has to exclude at least 10 people from the group each month because of such demands.

Seriously, how brash do you have to be to offer to donate sperm to a lesbian, but only via sex?

But it is not an unusual thing in France, apparently, seemingly due to a strange law which perhaps encourages crazily opportunistic men to offer sex to lesbians/single women.   (Although, it also seems from what follows that there may be a genuine cultural feeling that personal delivery, so to speak, is just more natural and the way it should be.   You have to remember the French are not immune from dubious health ideas - homoeopathy is popular there.)

Can you imagine any Australian guy even bothering to try this on with an Australian lesbian?:

Once a woman has selected her donor online, there are three ways to carry out the insemination. Most opt for artificial insemination (AI), in which the donor collects his sperm in a small container and the woman uses a needleless syringe, a turkey baster or a pipette to inject the semen into her vagina. One alternative is partial insemination (PI), which involves penetration just before ejaculation. The other is natural insemination (NI) – in other words, sex.

The AI method, which entails “handling” the sperm but remains the least intrusive for the woman, is strictly forbidden in France and carries a penalty of up to two years in prison and a €30,000 fine. “By handling the sperm, we’re talking three things: collecting it, retaining it and finally manipulating it with one’s hands [by way of a syringe, for example],” APGL’s Faget explains.

For the purpose of this investigation, FRANCE 24’s reporter set up a profile on a popular donor app. Within 48 hours she had received more than 50 “likes” and invitations to start a conversation with potential donors. Most of them advocated natural insemination as their preferred method, with many even conditioning their donation to its use. Offering his reasons, “Joe”, 28, wrote: “I just believe this is how it should be done, it’s more effective too.”

“Jack”, 35, said he would only be prepared to donate through NI and that it would be done “over a timespan of seven to nine days in a row (to make sure you get pregnant), as both bodies are physical and [generate the] chemicals that are needed for a successful fertilisation: It’s a dance for two to make three ☺.” He also said that he was “very interested in helping out lesbian couples and getting them both pregnant in the same cycle”.

“Bebeaide” (or Babyhelp in English), 42, who claims to have impregnated at least five women in the Paris region, initially told FRANCE 24’s reporter that he did not mind donating via the less intimate AI technique, but later told her that it would be a shame to not at least attempt partial insemination because it “maximises the chances” of getting pregnant. “It would just entail sexual intercourse at ‘the moment of’, no strings attached, no foreplay. Your partner can participate in the act,” he proposed.

According to Doctor Chalas, there is some truth to the claim that sexual intercourse works better, however disturbing the propositions. “The conception rate from sexual intercourse is around 25 percent, and 21 percent from a medically assisted intrauterine insemination with frozen donor sperm – so those two methods are comparable,” she says. “But an artificial insemination carried out at home is a lot less efficient, with a conception rate of around 10 percent.”

One other thing I learn form the article - in parts of Europe, some men can make a significant supplement to their income via donation to sperm banks:

 One reason for the dearth of sperm donors is the absence of remuneration. While donors in Denmark can be paid more than €500 per month for their semen, all donations must be free in France – a principle doctors and politicians are both attached too. Another factor is the lengthy vetting process donors have to go through, including interviews with psychologists and biologists, along with fertility and chromosome tests, and screening for possible STDs. Only the candidates who clear all tests and fit within the 18-45 age bracket are accepted.

Anyway, it looks like French law will change and things will be more like it is in other countries.   But there will probably still be French men prepared to selflessly put themselves through several rounds of sex to aid women who want to get pregnant.

 

Yeah, this is a little surprising

Good, though:

Extinction Rebellion (Melbourne), if you're listening...

Stop bothering people trying to get to work or, more importantly, hospital or court (where appointments really matter), and target something that has played and continues to play a disgusting role in climate change denial/inaction:

The IPA, of course:

As for climate scientists in semi-supporting ER:  they know that the official position of the group in terms of targets are completely unachievable, but they feel that anything that seems to help political action in the right direction is at least not worth attacking.   See some comments here on Twitter:

The pathetic Lindsay

Update:  Allahpundit at Hot Air talking about Graham:

It’s amazing how able he is to compartmentalize his disgust at Trump’s Syria policy with his zeal in defending Trump on impeachment, frankly. They’re two distinct matters, granted, but politicians use leverage they have over one matter to exact concessions on unrelated matters all the time. Pundits keep warning that Trump is playing with fire by antagonizing Senate Republicans on Syria at the very moment that they’re about to take his fate in their hands on impeachment, but is he really playing with fire? Graham is heartbroken about abandoning the Kurds and yet here he is on Fox trying to blow up the impeachment effort on the president’s behalf before it even reaches the Senate. With ass-kissing like this, why should Trump feel pressure to throw the Senate GOP a bone on foreign policy?

Weirdo aliens return?

Gee.  Odd, possible alien related, cow mutilations are back in the news, at least at NPR:

Harney County Sheriff's Deputy Dan Jenkins has been working the cattle cases and has gotten dozens of calls from all over offering tips and suggestions.

"A lot of people lean toward the aliens," Jenkins says. "One caller had told us to look for basically a depression under the carcass. 'Cause he said that the alien ships will kinda beam the cow up and do whatever they are going to do with it. Then they just drop them from a great height."

Some history:

Back in the 1980s, one of Terry Anderson's mother cows was mysteriously killed overnight. Standing at his ranch near Pendleton, Ore., Anderson points to the exact spot where he found her on top of a mountain.

He remembers his cow lying dead, her udder removed with something razor sharp.

"And not one drop of blood anywhere," Anderson says.

He has never gotten over it.

"It's just left a really strange feeling with me since that day. You can't explain it," Anderson says. "And, you know, no one else has been able to explain it."

I would be a lot more convinced if there were good, clear photos of the "precision" cutting that could only have been done with a sharp instrument.

A fast food observation

Oh my.  The Filet-O-Fish has shrunk to something like a toddler sized snack.  It's tiny.  

Is McD losing more market share lately.  It deserves to...

Has Fox found a way to abandon Trump?

Remember I said that Fox News had created a cult, and didn't know how to end it?

I wonder if the Trump Turkey/Kurd decision is seen by Lachlan as giving them a way to dump him?

More important than the breakfast twits, however, will be the way the evening Trump worship sessions handle this.

An unfortunate realisation in another late movie review

This time - American History X.

Bleak films about racist neo-Nazis are not generally my cup of tea, so I hadn't bothered catching up with this one until now.

It was better than I expected, perhaps because I hadn't realised that it was actually a redemption story, and so had the spark of old fashioned optimism about it.   It's not perfect, and I had not realised (or had forgotten if I had read it before) that the director had disowned the film when it came out - a very serious case of "creative differences" between him and the studio, obviously.   A lot of the acting was very good, but that black teacher hero was a bit over the top in solemn earnestness.

By far the most surprising thing was the unpleasant realisation about how much of the speech the neo-Nazi Norton makes to his buddies (before they trash a Korean run supermarket) could have come straight out of a Donald Trump campaign rally:



Distressingly,  it seems that the person who posted that to Youtube did so because of approval of the sentiment in the speech, and lots of comments agree with him.    Which goes to show the healthy state of the American mindset under Trump.  [Sarcasm, of course.]

Fungi and your pancreas

I said in comments that I would make a post about an article at Nature, explaining that fungi around your pancreas may not be a good thing:

The communities of microorganisms that occupy specific regions of the body are often altered in cancer¹, and these microbiomes — particularly their bacterial components — are a current focus of cancer research. One example is pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA), for which changes in the bacterial community occupying the pancreas have been documented². This lethal disease often goes undetected until it has reached advanced stages, and the prognosis is usually very poor³. Writing in Nature, Aykut et al.⁴ reveal that the fungal component of the pancreatic microbiome (known as the mycobiome) is also altered in PDA. In fact, an abundance of a specific fungal genus actually promotes the disease.

I didn't even realise that fungi made up a significant part of our normal mycobiome, but apparently they do:

The mycobiome is a historically under-recognized player in human health and disease, but its role in both is essential. Harmless organisms called commensals, including fungi, inhabit mucosal surfaces such as the linings of the gut, nose and mouth, and can activate inflammatory processes as part of the immune system’s response to injury or infection. In some cases, changes in the biodiversity of fungal communities are linked to aggravated inflammatory-disease outcomes. For example, intestinal overgrowth of Candida albicans — a fungus that causes oral thrush in babies — has been associated with severe forms of intestinal ulcers⁵ and with mould-induced asthma⁶. Moreover, it is becoming apparent that there is a relationship between the gut mycobiome and human cancers, including colorectal and oesophageal cancer⁷. 

President Flexo

Is it possible that I might be the first person to make this comparison?   I have my doubts, but Googling doesn't bring anything up that I can see.

This recent tweet of Trump:

along with his "stable genius" claim, which Trump cultists would presumably assure us are just his sense of humour, reminds me that Trump is very much like the robot character Flexo from Futurama.  You might recall that he is the robot Bender's evil twin, who constantly claims to be joking after making offensive comments:

 "Well I don't feel as bad as you look! [Laughs] Nah, I'm just messing with you, kid. You're alright. That's some face you got, though. I think they got a cream for that. [Laughs again] Nah, you're great."

I see that many other people think Trump is a lot like an aged Zapp Brannigan - and of course I can see that too.  Trump combines the worst characteristics of both.

And of course, Rupert Murdoch is Professor Farnsworth - never a better match. 

Is it wrong...

...to hope he gets just a little tear gassed?

Although, truth be told, he is such a self promoting publicity tart he's probably figuring that it would be good for his career and will be hoping for it himself.

Has he ever been on Sunrise?  He would probably kill to get a regular slot on that.

Update:   I was rather busy with domestic duties on the weekend, but now I see that the post has caused considerable consternation at Catallaxy yesterday.

Sinclair linked to it in his open thread (with his usual lack of accuracy with English - see his comment in the thread) only to find that one person in particular at Catallaxy pretty much agreed with me, and went further in her criticisms of Wilson.   SD started demanding an apology (on behalf of Tim?) and the end result seems to be either a banning (or self banning) of the commenter.  Many others want her back.

The funny thing is, this departed commenter had made one of the most offensive comments about Greta Thunberg recently, which, to his credit, Sinclair edited when he noticed it.   (To the discredit of everyone else at the blog, no one else had called her out for it.)

So, I inadvertently helped one of the more obnoxious commenters disappear from there.  Cool!

And by the way, it's pretty funny that Sinclair tried to make a big deal out of this, when he went all in defending his good mate's fantasies about Muslims blowing up an ABC panel.    

 

Wandering the streets, again

Not sure how old this Anglican church building would be, but pretty old by Brisbane standards, I bet:

Wingnut fantasy world watch

Look, all I can say that it's lucky this bloke didn't live during any witch hunt era, because his belief in his powers of interpretation of facial expressions (and even the shape of a jaw, which is freaking hilarious when you wonder what he would make of Mitch McConnell) shows exactly the same level of nutty, misplaced overconfidence in I-can-read-their-face-and-know-exactly-what-is-really-going-on-in-that-mind that would have led to more than a few women being torched:

Or is it just part of a creative writing exercise he's doing? It has that strange structure about it...

I've upset him before in a post in which I (quite respectfully, actually) noted his confession of depression, and expressed surprise at how many angry wingnuts at Catallaxy had come out to support him with their own tales of past issues with depression. 

But really, I am not sure he's out of an unhealthy mindset if he genuinely believes such rubbish.

How to be a berserker

Wired has a recent article that starts:

The legendary Viking warriors known as berserkers were renowned for their ferocity in battle, purportedly fighting in a trancelike state of blind rage (berserkergang), howling like wild animals, biting their shields, and often unable to distinguish between friend and foe in the heat of battle. But historians know very little about the berserkers apart from scattered Old Norse myths and epic sagas. One intriguing hypothesis as to the source of their behavior is that the berserkers ingested a specific kind of mushroom with psychoactive properties. Now an ethnobotanist is challenging that hypothesis, suggesting in a recent paper in The Journal of Ethnopharmacology that henbane is a more likely candidate.

Henbane is a flowering weed that grows in Scandinavia, that had been used for some time:

It's been around since ancient Greece and has been used in various cultures throughout history as a narcotic, painkiller, cure for insomnia, and anesthetic. It's a common treatment for motion sickness and can produce short-term memory loss. It can knock out someone for 24 hours, and in rare cases henbane can lead to respiratory failure. It's also been investigated as a possible truth serum. Henbane even found its way into early European beers, gradually being replaced with hops after the passage of the Bavarian Purity Law in 1516.

Those characteristics don't sound rage inducing, but who knows:

Fatur argues that while both the mushrooms and henbane could account for increases in strength, altered consciousness, delirium, jerking and twitching, and red face commonly associated with the berserkers, aggressive rage is not common with the mushroom. Fatur cites several cases involving angry behavior associated with plants related to henbane, containing the same alkaloids.

All rather speculative. 

Speaking of vikings, I am close to booking a ticket for next year's Ring cycle in Brisbane.   My "best" choice, for the cheap tickets left, is either to be sitting on the top balcony in the back row;  the top row down the side and near the front but with some form of view restriction; or in the stalls right near the stage with a restricted view that means I may not see all the words on the surtitle.  

I can't work out if it will be better to be near the front and being fully immersed in the music, but not knowing what they are singing; or up in the stratospheric second balcony and being able to see everything, at least if I use opera glasses.  

Either way, perhaps if I take henbane before the performance, it will be particularly memorable.

   
 

It's the vibe

I don't talk about Scott Morrison much lately, because he strikes me as a shallow flim flam man of no substance or significant ideas who is not worth talking about.   The only positive thing I can say about him is that he has been annoying me a tad less than Tony Abbott, who was more "in your face" with ridiculous culture war decisions - Bronwyn Bishop as speaker, a knighthood to Prince Philip, for God's sake, as well as his rhetorical nastiness to Julia Gillard.  It's going to take some effort by Morrison to make himself a more ignoble PM than Abbott.

But, he may be working himself up to it, if he's going to continue the "mini-Trump" lines:

 
I think Trump's speech to the UN was just obviously retrograde and a mish-mash of wrong and muddled thoughts (as if nations retreating into what their "patriots" think is right is anything other than an invitation for selfish and unethical behaviour towards other nations - and their own citizens - to thrive), and perhaps the only reason it didn't get more critique along those lines is because the world knows it was delivered by an absurd figure.   Sure, the UN has lots of faults - but Trump's prescription is more likely to exacerbate than fix them.

If you want to see an impressive example of the polar opposite of Trump and his speech (that is, a strong defence of nations all pulling together for mutual benefit delivered by a smart and sophisticated sounding politician) have a look at the speech given by Singaporean PM Lee Hsien Loong:



So why does Morrison make a mini Trump (and mini Brexit) speech now?   There is no obvious reason that I can detect.   I don't think Morrison is the sort of man to dwell on these sort of issues much, so is there some figure in the background trying to tell him how to sound like a deep thinker? 

Or is he just an opportunistic twit who has decided to jump on at least part of the "vibe" of the most retrograde parts of Conservative thought going around at the moment? 

It would be good to know.

Republican conspiracy belief considered

Peter Beinart has a good piece in The Atlantic looking at the somewhat puzzling question as to why the American Right, despite holding the Presidency and a lot of power elsewhere, are still believing so many conspiracies.   How much can I extract?:

...over the past week, Trump’s defenders have spread one conspiracy theory after another about the intelligence-community insider who exposed the call. Stephen Miller, Breitbart, and Fox News have all called the whistle-blower an agent of the “deep state”—a phrase, popularized by Alex Jones, suggesting that a cabal of spies secretly run the government. (The conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer once likened this notion to believing in the tooth fairy.)

On its face, this descent into self-delusion isn’t surprising. In the Trump era, Republican conspiracy theorizing has grown omnipresent. Trump himself has suggested that Antonin Scalia might have been murdered, climate change is a Chinese hoax, Ted Cruz’s father was involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Clintons may bear responsibility for the murder of Jeffrey Epstein, and wind turbines cause cancer. In 2016, more than three-quarters of Trump supporters said Barack Obama was “hiding important information about his background and early life.”

But dig into the academic research on conspiracy theories, and you realize how odd the current environment actually is. Until Trump, scholars assumed that holding the White House inoculated parties from conspiracism. They viewed conspiratorial thinking as a weapon of the weak, which couldn’t seriously threaten the republic because its adherents wielded so little influence in government.

That’s what makes today’s GOP so unusual and so dangerous. Never before in modern American history has a political party been this paranoid and this powerful at the same time.

In their book, American Conspiracy Theories, which tracks paranoid thinking in U.S. politics from 1890 to 2010, the University of Miami political scientists Joseph Uscinski and Joseph Parent conclude that “conspiracy theories are for losers.” Such theories, they argue, are “most likely to issue from domestic groups who fail to achieve power, objectives or resources.” This makes sense. The more dispossessed you feel, and the less you identify with the people running the government, the easier it is to imagine them hatching a shadowy plot to screw you.  ...

Beinart goes on to explain that if a party is in control, its members generally start believing less in conspiracies.  But it hasn't worked that way with Republicans, and the question is why.

The best explanation is that even though a white male Christian Republican holds the presidency, many white Christian Republican men still feel persecuted by those in power. Trump and other top Republicans fan this belief constantly.

Beinart goes on to argue that the white male Christian loss of power is largely fantasy, but:

...white male income has stagnated in recent decades, the country has grown more racially and religiously diverse, and gender norms have changed. And this has helped Republicans convince their supporters that they are America’s real victims. Republicans, according to polling this year by the Pew Research Center, are more likely to say that men face a lot of discrimination than they are to say women face a lot of discrimination. They’re more likely to say that whites face a lot of discrimination than to say blacks or Hispanics do. And they’re more likely to say evangelical Christians experience discrimination than Muslims do.

This itself reflects a detachment from reality. And it has made many Republicans susceptible to the conspiratorial thinking that, in the past, was reserved for groups that really were on society’s margins. 

 All very interesting and all very plausible.  Makes no mention of how the internet has (inadvertently) ramped up the ability of conspiracy belief to spread and be maintained.   That is a huge part of the story.

The worst aspect, though, is that the key global problem of climate change has had action from America (and Australia) stymied because of (parts of) the Right's persistent conspiracy belief about it in the face of well grounded scientific evidence.