Video: How Corruption Leads to Conspiracy Theories

Well, today may have been better than yesterday, but if so it was not by much. I’m glad it wasn’t worse, and I have my fingers crossed for tomorrow. It’s still basically just congestion, and just a hint of an impending sore throat that has yet to arrive. Oh, and some difficulty with temperature regulation. I think my head feels a little clearer today, but the fact that I’m so uncertain seems to imply otherwise.

Anyway, here’s a video that I think is useful. The ruling class of the US has spent the last century or so making corruption so much a part of daily operations that a lot of people can’t even tell it’s there. Growing up, I remember hearing about corruption in other countries – through media of various sorts – and it was always presented as a pyramid of officials shaking people down, and shaking each other down, all the way to the top, all outside the actual laws. I’ve grown up a bit since then, but even so it’s hard to really pick apart just how much the United States has been designed over the years to have a scared and obedient workforce that willingly gives almost all of everything they create or earn to corporations.

In that setting, is it any wonder that people believe in conspiracies? Add in the various conspiracies that we know have happened, and I think it would be more surprising if people didn’t start seeing patterns where none actually exist. This video is an interesting dig into some research into why people believe conspiracy theories, and how government corruption can lead to them. As always with Rebecca Watson’s videos, you can find a full transcript on Skepchick.org.

 

Video: Use of tactical nukes is unlikely in Ukraine

Some days it feels as though the elderly people who’re driving humanity towards extinction are nostalgic for the existential terror of their youth, so they decided to bring back the constant fear of imminent nuclear annihilation. While none of us can predict exactly where this is going to go from here, I think this breakdown is useful and somewhat comforting.

The TL:DW is that Putin knows that if he were to use tactical nukes in Ukraine, Russia’s remaining allies would turn against them, and the US would destroy all of their assets outside of their geographical borders. The US would also probably give Ukraine better weapons – ones that can reach inside Russia. More than that, because of how this war has gone, there’s no longer any question at all whether Russia has the military capacity to stop any of that. Basically, nukes are all they have, and they’re not something that can “win” this war for Putin in any meaningful sense.

Again, that does not mean that we’re safe. I’m comfortable with helping Ukraine defend itself, but not supporting an invasion of Russia. I think it’s unlikely that Putin would use nukes unless he felt it was the only way to hold on to power, and I think it’s good to avoid reaching that point. Triggering nuclear war would be a far greater injustice than allowing an asshole like Putin to die of old age, still holding on to what little power he has. As the saying goes, it ain’t over till it’s over.

Until then, we keep doing what we can to make the world better.

Some More News: Mental Health and Mass Shootings

I always find it odd how resonant my head seems to be when it’s loaded up with snot. I’m grateful that this continues to manifest as a head cold, and I hope it stays that way. I don’t know if I have brain fog, but I’m certainly glad I decided not to try to do any real writing today.

Here’s Cody’s Showdy talking about mental health and mass shootings (and how the “mental health” line is a bigoted dodge that hurts everyone, especially those of us struggling with mental health problems. I also do not believe for a second that any of these powerful people – as ignorant and incurious as I think they are – actually think that “mental health” is the driver of mass shootings. They’re lying for the same reason they always lie – to prevent any kind of systemic change.

 

Why don’t we have “good” cops? Ask the ones we do have…

I remember seeing an article going around, back in June, about the funeral of a police officer who’d been “accidentally killed during a training exercise”. I had other things on my mind at the time so I didn’t look into it much, but I remember assuming that he was deliberately killed by other officers for either investigating a crime one of them committed, or for reporting misconduct. I honestly didn’t expect to hear about it again any time soon, but just today I saw the same funeral picture, this time with a Jezebel headline supporting my initial suspicion:

LAPD Officer Killed in Training ‘Accident’ Was Investigating Gang Rape by 4 Other Officers

The lawyer of a Los Angeles police officer killed in what the LAPD called a training accident back in May said the officer, Houston Tipping, had been investigating an alleged gang rape perpetrated by four LAPD officers in 2021 when he was killed. Tipping’s lawyer, Bradley Gage, claimed on Monday that one of the four officers who allegedly participated in the gang rape was present when Tipping was killed.

There was a time in my life, long ago, when some of this would have surprised me. Hell, there was a time not too long ago that I still believed that some, or even most cops were “good”. I’ve learned a bit more since then – enough to realize that I had been taken by the propaganda that fills the culture of the United States like some kind of cursed fog. According to the cops, Tipping died when he was trying to demonstrate a grappling move by some sort of ledge, and both officers fell off. The attorney representing Tipping’s interests here has a different perspective:

At a July news conference, Gage showed reporters MRI scans revealing that Tipping had staples in his head due to the injuries he sustained leading up to his death. Gage also cited sworn declarations from a nurse and a paramedic and alleged that Tipping had suffered spinal cord injuries, a collapsed lung, broken ribs, and liver damage consistent with being fatally beaten. “When you look at all these horrific injuries, the truth is something went seriously wrong here,” Gage said. “I cannot fathom anything other than a severe beating.”

In June, Gage first filed a damages claim against the LAPD on behalf of Tipping’s mother, Shirley Huffman, alleging that he had been beaten to death as part of a training exercise to “simulate a mob.” According to the claim filed by Gage, Tipping died after being repeatedly hit in the head, causing bleeding and multiple fatal neck fractures.

At this point, it’s more reasonable to assume any police statement is more likely to be a lie than the truth. They lie far more often than they attack people, and they attack people all the time. I don’t know what sort of person Tipping was, but given that he was a cop, he probably wasn’t great. That said, it was good that he was investigating the crime committed by his colleagues. People with power over others have a tendency to use that power to get away with sexual harassment, assault, and rape. Few people have more unaccountable power in the United States than the police, so it should not surprise you that they commit sex crimes all the time.

And Tipping’s fate shows what can happen to anyone who tries to hold them accountable. As with all the other police atrocities we’ve been seeing, it’s worth remembering that this stuff is not new. Non-white communities in particular have been sounding the alarm on the horrors of policing for decades, and have been largely ignored. All that has changed is that now they’re being caught on camera more often, so now we can see them lying.

I don’t know what will come of this story. Ideally, the people responsible would be put on trial for murder or manslaughter, and would be blacklisted from police or guard work in the future. It may be that because they got caught killing a fellow cop – you know, an actual person – they’ll actually face prison time. It seems more likely to me that they’ll either get a slap on the wrist for getting caught, or maybe they’ll just be fired. As ever, I’d love to be proven wrong, but LA is notorious for the viciousness and corruption of its law enforcement:

The allegations against the LAPD suggesting officers may have killed Tipping because of his investigation come amid years of whistleblowing and reports about “shadow-gangs” within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. These gangs allegedly comprise a sort of shadow government within local law enforcement to cover up officers’ crimes. As of July, at roughly the same time Gage and the LAPD were disputing the circumstances that led to Tipping’s death, LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s former chief of staff publicly admitted he’d once belonged to the alleged “Grim Reaper” deputy gang within the county sheriff’s department.
In August 2020, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors paid a $5.5 million settlement to a young woman who said a LA County Sheriff’s Department had raped her in 2017 when she was 15. The detective in question had faced two prior allegations of sexual misconduct that included committing a lewd act with a child and unlawful sexual intercourse. The Los Angeles Times recently reported on the LAPD’s history of systematically declining to discipline officers for sex crimes and then concealing these crimes from the public.

This is why I no longer believe reform can work. Better training is a waste of everyone’s time, because new cops are told to ignore that training the second they tart actually working, and because old cops will just ignore any training that doesn’t rank their ego above the life of every other human they interact with. Abolition isn’t something that will happen overnight, or in isolation from the rest of society, but until it does happen, this will continue. From what I can tell, we cannot expect other outcomes from creating a class of unaccountable people with power over life and death. Hell, even giving them far less power to kill doesn’t remove this dynamic, as the UK has shown. Replacing our current police with “better people” will not change the fundamental purpose served by the institution. We need first responders, but we do not need cops. Trying to reform them is useless, and continuing to have them destroys countless lives on an ongoing basis.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Video: Positive Leftist News from September, 2022

Too often, we see “good” news in the world that either highlights the cruelty and injustice of our society, or that is actually terrible news for most of humanity. It’s frustrating, and it’s often tiring. That’s why I appreciate Mexie and her team for putting together these roundups of good *leftist* news. It helps to remember that while nobody has gotten it perfect, there are people all over the world fighting for real justice, prosperity, and self-governance.

John Oliver’s condemnation of Bolsonaro does not go far enough

John Oliver is probably my second favorite political comedian after Cody Johnston of Some More News. He has a well-deserved reputation for delving into obscure and unpleasant details to present a compelling and deep analysis of pressing problems in the world. All of this is why I find it so disappointing that Oliver still has a mysterious inability to report well on anything happening in Latin America.

I first became aware of this flaw thanks to the work of Michael Brooks, whose ability to maintain a solid understanding of international affairs went beyond any other journalist I’ve seen. He died far too young, and we’re still all a bit worse off for his death. I can’t do as good of a response as he could have, but I’ll do my best.

For those of you who don’t know, Brazil is holding the first round of its presidential election tomorrow. The race is between former president Luis Ignácio “Lula” da Silva, and current president Jair Bolsonaro. Lula was not a perfect president, if such a thing exists, but from what I can tell he was far better for the working class and international reputation of Brazil than any of its previous leaders, or any president the United States has ever had.

Lula was imprisoned on a bogus corruption conviction in April of 2018, just six months before the presidential election, and the judge, Sergio Moro, blocked efforts to release him. Moro was appointed Minister of Justice and Public Security by Bolsonaro when he took office in 2019.

Later that year, The Intercept published evidence of a plot between Moro and the prosecutor to imprison Lula to keep him from participating in the 2018 election. The conviction was annulled in 2021, apparently over jurisdiction, and a retrial was ordered in a more appropriate court. It’s unclear to me where things will go from there, but all of this, including the apparent FBI involvement, makes this seem like yet another effort by the United States to undermine a popular left-wing leader in favor of a fascist.

And that brings me to Oliver’s discussion of Bolsonaro.

There’s a lot to like about this video. I think the biggest problem with it is that it seems to stop at the points where the situation is similar to events in the US. It makes a somewhat compelling case that Bolsonaro is dangerous, but it leaves out a lot of context. This is part of a pattern for John Oliver. When it comes to Mexico, Central America, and South America, he seems to have a bizarre aversion to actually digging into stories. The most charitable explanation I can think of is that they’ve got someone on staff who’s in charge of the Latin America segments, who is either lazy, or holding some kind of odd centrist bias.

He was right to cast Bolsonaro as a threat to democracy. Bolsonaro has been openly saying that he won’t accept any result other than victory or death, casting doubt on the electoral system without evidence (sound familiar?), and he got into power in the first place via a judicial coup more blatant than the one that put George W. Bush in power in 2000.

Unfortunately, it’s worse than that. Beyond his extensive ties to both the military and Brazil’s past military dictatorship, Bolsonaro also as ties to terrorism and political assassination. Bolsonaro was twice photographed with suspects in the murder of councilwoman Marielle Franco, and turned out to live in the same high-end apartment complex as one of them.

BRASILWIREput together this timeline:

August, 2003: Jair Bolsonaro publicly defends Militias in a speech in Congress, saying, “I just heard a Congressman criticize death squads. As long as the State does not have the courage to adopt the death penalty, the crime of extermination, in my understanding, should be very welcome…. If it depended on me they would have all of my support…”

March 2007 – As a State Congressman, Jair’s son Flavio attempts to legalize militias. “For me, human rights are not for all humans, because some people cannot be called humans. They are monsters,” he says in defense of death squad executions.

August, 2011 – After Judge Patricia Acioli is assassinated with 21 gunshots by two militia members, Flavio Bolsonaro commits character assassination against her, “May God take her but the absurd and gratuitous way that she used to humiliate police officers contributed to her having many enemies,” he said. Before her assassination, Judge Acioli had convicted 60 police officers for acting in militias and for death squad activities.

February, 2018 – During a radio interview on Joven Pan, Jair Bolsonaro, again, defends Militias. “There are people who support militias,” he says, “because it is the way that they can live without violence. In those regions where people pay militias, there is no violence.”

March, 2018 – Marielle Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes are assassinated. Jair Bolsonaro is the only presidential candidate who does not publicly condemn the killings.

April 2018 – A motion is passed in the Rio de Janeiro State Legislature to posthumously award slain city councilwoman Marielle Franco with the Tiradentes Medal. Flavio Bolsonaro is the only lawmaker who votes against it.

September, 2018 – Alex and Alan Oliveira, two Rio de Janeiro Military Police officers, are arrested for committing acts of corruption and extortion as part of a Militia that operates on the West Side of Rio. It comes out that both had worked on Flavio and Jair Bolsonaro’s political campaigns, and that their sister was the Treasurer of the Rio de Janeiro state headquarters of the Bolsonaro’s PSL party.

October 2018 – Two candidates for Rio de Janeiro State Congress in Bolsonaro’s PSL party, rip a street sign honoring Marielle Franco in half at a campaign event, while gubernatorial candidate Wilson Witzel cheers. In the scandal that ensues, Flavio Bolsonaro defends their actions.

October 2018 – The Civil Police Organized Crime Unit, GAECO, arrests 18 members of a militia operating in the Rio de Janeiro suburb of São Gonçalo and discovers that they have been working on the campaign of retired Military Police Colonel Fernando Salema, running for State Congressman for the Bolsonaro’s PSL Party.

December 2018 – COAF, the Federal Board of Financial Activities Control, reveals that the Flavio Bolsonaro’s former driver, Fabricio Queiroz, made unusual money transfers valuing $R1.2 million in 2016 and 2017. The ex-Military Police officer committed at least 10 killings while on active duty.

January 2019 – COAF discovers that, in addition to the R$1.2 million, another R$5.8 million went through Queiroz’s accounts while employed for Flavio Bolsonaro during the two previous mandates.

January 2019 – COAF reveals that, during one month in 2017, Flavio Bolsonaro received R$96,000 in 50 bank deposits valued at just under the minimum limit to require money laundering investigations.

January 2019 – President Jair Bolsonaro issues a decree moving the COAF’s jurisdiction to the Justice Ministry, headed by Lula’s captor, former Lava Jato investigator Sergio Moro. In a move widely viewed as made to protect his employer, Moro fires the director of COAF and, two months later, replaces him with a former co-worker from the deeply politicized Lava Jato investigation.

January 2019 – Globo newspaper reveals that, before he went to the nation’s most expensive hospital, Albert Einstein in São Paulo, for what appears to have been frivolous treatment to delay testimony, Queiroz was hiding in the Rio das Pedras favela, which is controlled by the Escritorio de Crime militia under investigation for the assassination of Marielle Franco.

January 2019 – The media announces that Flavio Bolsonaro employed the mother and girlfriend of former Military Police special forces Captain and leader of the Escritorio de Crime militia Antonio Nobrega, in his state congressional cabinet for over a decade.

March 2019 – After legendary Rio de Janeiro Samba School Mangueira pays homage to Marielle Franco during Rio’s carnaval parade competition in an event transmitted live to tens of millions across Brazil, Carlos Bolsonaro tries to smear the group on social media, hypocritically accusing them of involvement with militias.

March 12, 2019 – Elcio Queiroz and Ronnie Lessa, two former Rio de Janeiro Military Police officers, were arrested for the alleged assassination of Marielle Franco. Lessa lives in a R$4 million home in the same small beach-side condominium complex as Jair Bolsonaro, which he purchased shortly after Marielle was murdured. During a press conference, Civil Police Organized Crime Unit officer Giniton Lages says that Ronnie Lessa’s daughter used to date one of Jair Bolsonaro’s sons. Immediately afterwards, he is removed from the case.

Maybe that’s not conclusive, but I think it’s certainly worth considering.

As I said, John Oliver is right to be concerned about Bolsonaro, but I find it strange that he would leave out so much of the history there. I also find it disappointing that Oliver’s “analysis” so often seems to rely on stereotyping and denigration of politicians who seem to be doing better by their people than anyone Oliver has lived under in the U.S. or the U.K.. I think the danger is greater that Oliver is indicating, and Bolsonaro holding on to power would be bad for all of us.

Sadly, this video from 2018 is still relevant:

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

The Alt-Right Playbook: The Cost of Doing Business

I had intended to have a more involved piece done today, but that didn’t end up getting finished (though I did make some delicious marmalade chicken as a treat). Fortunately, Innuendo Studios just came out with a new installment in his series The Alt-Right Playbook. If you’re not already familiar with it, the series covers a wide array of tactics used by the modern U.S. fascist movement, mostly focused on their used of rhetoric and propaganda. While I’m aware that my taste is far from universal, I find these videos to be both very watchable, and very important if you want to understand what is happening in politics these days. As far as I knew, the series ended in 2021, so I was pleasantly surprised to see there was a new addition. I don’t know if more videos will be coming, but I hope so!

Video: Some More News about the GOP’s recent foray into human trafficking

As you have no doubt heard, the Republican Party of the United States of America has taken to engaging in human trafficking for political stunts. They tricked Venezuelan asylum seekers into taking a flight to Martha’s Vineyard, without warning anyone there that they were about to need to take care of a bunch of refugees. This was apparently done under the belief that the people of that island would freak out at the presence of scary brown people, and their hypocrisy would be exposed. Mano Singham did a good breakdown of the history of this sort of tactic, most infamously the “freedom rides” during the Jim Crow era, so you should check that out, but you know I couldn’t resist posting the Some More News take on this story:

This follows on the theme of fascists seeing humans as disposable tools.

 

Reminder: Children are disposable tools to fascists. They don’t actually care about them.

As fascism rises around the world, we’re going to see a lot of bigotry and oppression justified in the name of “protecting children”. One of the worst offenders in the United States right now is Tucker Carlson. He’s a white supremacist and a fascist, and he’s also most watched “news” host on cable. I don’t believe that literally every attack from conservatives is projection, but it’s certainly their favorite tool, and I think this is no exception. Carlson is happy to engage in stochastic terrorism because of the left “sexualizing children” by teaching them about things like gender and consent, but he was also happy to insist repeatedly and over objections that when a teacher gave a lap dance to a child, no crime was committed:

Fascists see children as a means to an end. They’re a way to build and exert power. They’re props in the political theater. They’re worth murdering doctors to defend one day, and they’re lazy moochers for wanting food the next. The mere existence of gay or trans people is a threat to all children everywhere, but it’s fine to support people like Donald Trump or Josh Duggar.

The only boundary on their actions is what they think they can get away with, whether it’s lying about their concern for children, or engaging in human trafficking for political stunts, or overthrowing democracy and murdering people they disagree with. They will keep pushing farther until they are forcibly stopped. That’s why turning out to oppose them en masse is so important at this stage, and it’s why more organizing and networking are needed, so that communities can mobilize quickly to defend themselves and each other when a hospital or school is targeted.

Exposure to air pollution in the womb and early childhood linked to abnormal brain development

I talk a lot about the need for us to clean up air pollution as part of our climate response, despite the fact that doing so speeds up the warming. Air pollution has been linked to a wide array of health problems, and higher temperatures mean more poisonous air. We didn’t need another reason, but now we have one. I feel like this isn’t a big shock, but researchers have now found a link between in-utero and early childhood pollution exposure, and abnormalities in brain development:

A study published in the journal Environmental Pollution has found an association, in children aged 9‑12, between exposure to air pollutants in the womb and during the first 8.5 years of life and alterations in white matter structural connectivity in the brain. The greater the child’s exposure before age 5, the greater the brain structure alteration observed in preadolescence. The study was led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a research centre supported by the ”la Caixa” Foundation.

Tracts or bundles of cerebral white matter ensure structural connectivity by interconnecting the different areas of the brain. Connectivity can be measured by studying the microstructure of this white matter, a marker of typical brain development. Abnormal white matter microstructure has been associated with psychiatric disorders (e.g., depressive symptoms, anxiety and autism spectrum disorders).

In addition to the association between air pollution and white matter microstructure, the study also found a link between specific exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and the volume of the putamen, a brain structure involved in motor function, learning processes and many other functions. As the putamen is a subcortical structure, it has broader and less specialised functions than cortical structures. The study found that the greater the exposure to PM2.5, especially during the first 2 years of life, the greater the volume of the putamen in preadolescence.

“A larger putamen has been associated with certain psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, and obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders),” says Anne-Claire Binter, ISGlobal researcher and first author of the study.

“The novel aspect of the present study is that it identified periods of susceptibility to air pollution” Binter goes on to explain. “We measured exposure using a finer time scale by analysing the data on a month-by-month basis, unlike previous studies in which data was analysed for trimesters of pregnancy or childhood years. In this study, we analysed the children’s exposure to air pollution from conception to 8.5 years of age on a monthly basis.”

As someone with a somewhat “abnormal” brain, I think it’s important that we not dismiss or dehumanize the “victims” of this sort of thing. Groups like Autism Speaks and the anti-vax movement have done real harm by treating autism as a fate worse than death, and acting as though autistic people have no agency, thoughts, or lives worth living. I want a world in which people of all neurotypes are able to thrive, not a eugenical fantasy of uniformly “normal” brains.

I think it’s a clear good for us to have a better understanding of how air pollution affects us. Obviously it’s not enough to doom our species at this stage, but it’s worth remembering that it is affecting us in a myriad of ways, some of which are not immediately obvious.

Another strong point of this study is that the data analysed came from a large cohort of 3,515 children enrolled in the Generation R Study in Rotterdam (Netherlands).

To determine each participant’s exposure to air pollution during the study period, the researchers estimated the daily levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM2.5 absorbance) at their homes during the mother’s pregnancy and until they reached 8.5 years of age. When participants were between 9 and 12 years analysed of age they underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging to examine the structural connectivity and the volumes of various brain structures at that time.

The levels of NO2 and PM2.5 recorded in the present study exceeded the annual thresholds limits specified in the current World Health Organization guidelines (10 µg/m3 and 5 µg/m3, respectively) but met European Union (EU) standards, an indication that brain development can be affected by exposure to air pollution at levels lower than the current EU air quality limit values.

“One of the important conclusions of this study” explains Binter “is that the infant’s brain is particularly susceptible to the effects of air pollution not only during pregnancy, as has been shown in earlier studies, but also during childhood.”

“We should follow up and continue to measure the same parameters in this cohort to investigate the possible long-term effects on the brain of exposure to air pollution” concludes Mònica Guxens, ISGlobal researcher and last author of the study.

There’s a part of me that worries this information will be either ignored, or abused. Ignored, because those most exposed to air pollution tend to be those with the least power. I also worry about what governments and corporations might try to do with this knowledge.

There’s also a part of me that tends towards excessive optimism and hopefulness. I don’t know if it’s as strong as my pessimistic side, but it’s there nonetheless. That side of me hopes that research like this – in addition to helping make the case for change, will also open the way for new treatments. There’s a lot that I like about how my brain works, but there are many aspects of it I could do without. It seems to me that understanding the causal factors at work here should shed new light on the development of our brains in relation to our environment, and possibly even ways to tinker with that even into adulthood. It also seems like it moves us closer to figuring out more targeted medications for temporary effects.

This may be another one of those studies that seems important, but is never heard from again, but I don’t think it’s likely.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!