Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, March 08, 2016
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time. Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - respect is due.
This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: (Won't You Come Home) Bill Bailey by Sarah Vaughan
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Top News |
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Surprise! A third of Congress members are climate change deniers
By Katie Herzog
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The Center for American Progress Action Fund found that there are 182 climate deniers in the current Congress: 144 in the House and 38 in the Senate. That means more than six in 10 Americans are represented by people who think that climate change is a big ‘ol liberal hoax — including some leaders at the highest levels of government, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch “I Am Not a Scientist” McConnell and senator and presidential candidate Marco “I Am Not a Scientist” Rubio. (And those are just the members of Congress who are out-and-out deniers, so it doesn’t include the many more who kinda sorta admit that something might be going on with the climate but still don’t want to do anything about it.)
Not surprisingly, many of these same climate deniers have been handsomely rewarded by the fossil fuel industry. In total, these climate-denying congresspeople have received more than $73 million in contributions from oil, gas, and coal companies over the course of their careers. . .
If there’s a silver lining to this dark news, it’s this: Even though a healthy portion our nation’s leaders continue to perpetuate the dangerous myth that climate change isn’t real, the people know better. Nearly 70 percent of Americans support climate change action, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund — and that includes many Republicans. Last year, a survey conducted by Republican pollsters found that even most conservative Republicans both believe climate change is real and support clean energy.
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Conservative businessman to bankroll Republicans who support clean energy
By Suzanne Goldenberg
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. . .
Jay Faison, a North Carolina businessman, said he was making a significant intervention in the 2016 elections through his ClearPath foundation, in the hopes of promoting what he called a conservative clean energy agenda.
. . .
But Faison’s intervention, though limited, could still shake up a party whose leading presidential contenders openly deny the existence of climate change, or rely heavily on funding from the fossil fuel industry.
. . .
But he said he hoped to influence congressional races next November by supporting candidates who are both Republican and supporters of clean energy.
. . .
Some of the potential beneficiaries of Faison’s cash are already beginning to stick their heads above the parapets to call for action on climate change – such as the 10 Republicans who broke party ranks last September to call for movement on the issue.
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Which Leads to Greater Political Power: Virtue or Vice?
By Daisy Grewal
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. . .
Underwood’s philosophy towards gaining power is an old one, tracing at least back to the time of Niccolo Machiavelli, who warned that kindness only leads to weakness. In the modern era, some research suggests that people with narcissistic and tendencies are more likely to rise to the top of organizations. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are effective leaders. When it comes to political power, how does virtue relate to success?
. . .
To measure the political influence of each senator, the researchers looked at how successful each senator was at obtaining cosponsorship from colleagues on bills that the senator had created. Since the ability to obtain cosponsors was found in the study to be highly correlated with the number of bills that a senator successfully passed into law, cosponsorship provided an indirect way of measuring political influence. Using cosponsorship as the outcome revealed that senators who displayed more virtuous behaviors were more likely to wield greater political influence. In terms of behaviors that suggest vice, there seemed to be little influence between displaying them and political influence with one exception: senators displaying psychopathic behaviors were less likely to obtain cosponsorship.
. . .
. . . the study provides some scientific evidence that Machiavellian politicians may lose in effectiveness. This has implications for the kinds of characteristics that voters should pay attention to when selecting between candidates. Politicians who fail to care about others may also fail to win the respect and approval of their colleagues. For better or for worse, the U.S. political system depends on collaboration – a reality that often makes it seem slow and ineffective but also provides balance and protection against someone with too forceful a will.
If virtuous leaders seem few and far between, there may be a good reason for it. Research has shown that virtuous people who have a strong sense of responsibility are less likely to actively pursue leadership roles. However, when they do assume positions of power, they end up making excellent leaders who are admired by others. Research also suggests that leaders who demonstrate greater integrity may be rewarded with more loyal and harder working employees.
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International |
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DRC military officers decry rape doctor documentary
By Habibou Bangre
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. . .
Dr Denis Mukwege, 61, has helped thousands of raped women through surgery and psychological therapy since he opened his Panzi hospital in 1999 in the eastern town of Bukavu. Many suffered brutal sexual assault, including gang rape by soldiers and militias.
The two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee was profiled in the award-winning documentary The Man Who Mends Women, which initially was banned in the Democratic Republic of Congo last year.
An army general - who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorised to talk to the press - denounced the film for making the military look like "a militia made up of rapists".
. . .
"They have never been punished and victims got no compensation. Impunity fuels resentment, hatred, and a feeling of injustice not compatible with a peaceful society," Michel told Al Jazeera.
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USA |
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How A Foiled Robbery Sheds Light On Apple's Clash With The FBI
By Aarti Shahani
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. . .
"We're moving to a place where there are warrantproof places in our life," Comey testified before the House Judiciary Committee. "That's a world we've never lived in before in the United States that has profound consequences for public safety, and all I'm saying is, we shouldn't drift there."
. . .
Apple lawyer Theodore Boutrous tells NPR that Comey's rhetoric about warrantproof space is just that — rhetoric — because the FBI does have a warrant. "The government got a warrant for the phone. It seized the phone," Boutrous says. Apple is saying: Go ahead and break in; just don't expect us to help.
. . .
Kerr argues this line of reasoning is irrelevant: A warrant on paper doesn't matter, if Apple is creating digital locks so powerful that for all intents and purposes, no one can break in without the user's permission. That's no longer something in the realm of science fiction but mathematically possible.
. . .
"For most of American history, there was a warrant-free zone regarding people's communication across the country," Boutrous says. "There weren't surveillance techniques. There weren't ways to capture what people were saying to each other. And so the government has become so used to having surveillance techniques, they forget this is a relatively new development."
Before telephones became popular in the 20th century, conversations between citizens were private. Over time, it took vigorous debate before the Supreme Court paved the way for wiretapping of phone conversations. And Stanford law professor David Sklansky says it is not a given that every new technology must be police-friendly or police-accessible.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
In a career that spanned nearly 50 years, Miss Vaughan influenced countless other singers - including Phoebe Snow, Anita Baker, Sade and Rickie Lee Jones - and made hits of such songs as ''It's Magic,'' ''Make Yourself Comfortable'' and ''Broken-Hearted Melody.'' Her ornate renditions of ''Misty'' and ''Send In the Clowns'' were invariable show-stoppers at jazz festivals . . .
Where more idiosyncratic jazz artists like Billie Holiday excelled at interpretation, Miss Vaughan was a contralto who gloried in displaying the distinctive instrumental qualities of a voice that had a comfortable three-octave range and was marked by a voluptuous, heavy vibrato. Known for her dazzling vocal leaps and swoops, she was equally adept at be-bop improvisation and singing theater songs with a symphony orchestra. Among the singers of her generation, only Ella Fitzgerald enjoyed comparable stature.
. . .
Throughout her career, Miss Vaughan was affectionately known as Sassy or the Divine Sarah. The first nickname reflected her sense of humor and the mischievous sexiness that often inflected her singing and stage patter. The second, appropriated from the legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt, acknowledged her phenomenonally versatile voice. Foremost among the singers Miss Vaughan admired was the soprano Leontyne Price, to whom she bore more than a passing vocal resemblance.
. . .
After 1959, Miss Vaughan would never have any commercially significant pop hits. But over the next 30 years, her reputation as consummate vocal artist soared steadily, thanks to her appearances in nightclubs, at jazz festivals and increasingly with symphony orchestras in the United States and abroad.
Back to what's happening:
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Environmental |
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TV coverage of climate change fell last year — but climate denial coverage increased
By Melissa Cronin
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According to a report released Monday, big-name television networks — namely, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox — decreased the amount of airtime they devote to climate change by five percent from 2014 to 2015, despite public promises to cover the issue more. In 2015, climate-related issues took up just 146 minutes total of the network’s evening and Sunday news shows.
. . .
The numbers are especially significant when you consider the fact that television is the staple of the U.S. news diet — according to the American Press Institute, the TV is the device Americans use most frequently to get their news. Survey respondents preferred TV news over other sources, like smartphones or tablets.
. . .
And TV viewers tend to be more conservative — 2013 Gallup poll found that Republicans are more likely than Democrats or independents to report that TV is their main source of news. . .
Luckily, the younger generation may not actually be the audience for these segments. More and more, millennials are cutting the cord, leaving cable for streaming services instead. . .
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Science and Health |
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Biopolitics and Epigenetics: Q & A with Charles Dupras
By Chelsea Jack
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. . .
Epigenetics refers to molecular mechanisms that influence the expression of genes, sometimes activating genes and sometimes silencing them. Part of what’s fascinating about these mechanisms is that they can occur in response to social and environmental factors. But they can also be heritable: a gene silenced in a parent may remain silenced in the person’s child. For this reason, epigenetics bridges the gap between individuals’ genetics and their environment.
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In the U.S., as well as elsewhere in the world, there is a strong emphasis today on personalized or precision medicine. This results from a biopolitical context that favors individual and technological solutions to health problems. There is also an emerging acknowledgement of social determinants of health and the importance of the environment. So, these two trends can create a tension when it comes to choosing how to implement new scientific knowledge. Our main point in this piece is that we should acknowledge the socio-political context and not be completely seduced by one paradigm, but rather find a good balance and translate new knowledge in socially responsible ways.
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Epigenetics changes the vocabulary of discussions about complex issues such as the protection of ecosystems and social justice. We can be discussing the external environment and then shift the discussion toward molecules and what happens inside the body. It’s a shift in what we look at and what we value as important. We need to be aware of that.
. . .
In the recent past, neoliberal forces have influenced the market economy, and this had a variety of social and political outcomes. In this article we caution about the impact these forces might have on how we choose to implement the very promising tools epigenetics research is giving us. We want to put environmental concerns and the reduction of socioeconomic disparities on the table, because they are really important.
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Technology |
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Racial justice organizers to FBI vs Apple judge: crypto matters to #blacklivesmatter
By Cory Doctorow
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Phenomena like the Harlem Cryptoparty demonstrate the connection between racial justice and cryptography -- civil rights organizers remember that the FBI spied on and blackmailed Martin Luther King, sending him vile notes encouraging him to kill himself.
. . .
“I’ve been reviewing the Apple vs. FBI lawsuit and now realize how important it is that that Apple wins the lawsuit. #DontHackApple,” DeRay McKesson, Baltimore mayoral candidate and prominent Black Lives Matter organizer, tweeted on February 22. “When I was arrested in protest, my iPhones were in police custody. They were secure. The police couldn’t access my info,” he added. “If Apple has to create an insecure iPhone iOS app, all of the private data that we store on our phones is at risk.”
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Death apps promise to help people curate their afterlives
By Tina Amirtha
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. . .
Death apps promise to help a person organize his or her entire online life into a bundle of digital living wills, funeral plans, multimedia memorial portfolios and digital estate arrangements. It could be the mother of all personal media accounts, designed to store all of a person’s online passwords in one spot, for a successor to retrieve after he or she dies.
. . .
According to a 2011 McAfee survey, the average American valued their digital assets at around $55,000. In 2015, the average internet user has at least 90 online accounts. A tech pundit once estimated that 2.89 million Facebook users would die around the world in 2012 and leave their pages behind. In the US, 89% of adults age 18-29 who use the internet also use a social networking service.
Google, Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook already offer options to let users pass control of their accounts to their loved ones if they die – with limitations. Facebook legacy contacts, for example, cannot edit a memorialized account’s old posts or delete the account entirely.
In contrast, death apps help people give their loved ones unconditional control of all of their online accounts by digitally transmitting their account passwords to them, post-mortem. Online banking, digital newspaper subscription and online shopping accounts are all scooped up by death apps, not just social media accounts.
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Cultural |
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Welfare recipients seen as immoral for buying ethical products
By (ScienceDaily)
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Shoppers making ethical purchases, such as buying organic food or environmentally friendly cars, are generally seen as more virtuous -- unless they're receiving government assistance. If ethical shopping is funded by welfare cheques, those shoppers are judged as immoral for taking advantage of public generosity, according to a new UBC Sauder School of Business study.
"People on welfare tend to be seen as undeserving of more expensive options and of wasting taxpayers' hard-earned cash," said study author Darren Dahl, senior associate dean of faculty at UBC Sauder. "We discovered a double standard where people are judged differently for making identical choices, depending on where their money comes from."
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The fifth study found that people were also less likely to donate to a charity if the meals it provides are organic.
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Blog post stirs Japanese anger over child care
By (BBC)
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PM Shinzo Abe said that his government is committed to improving the provision of child care facilities after the blog post went viral, the Mainichi Daily newspaper reports. The strongly-word post, written by an anonymous mother after her child was denied a place in a nursery, was entitled "Hoikuen ochita, Nihon shine!!!" ("My child wasn't accepted for nursery school. Die, Japan!!!"), going on to say "I will now have to quit my job. Seriously, get your act together, Japan".
. . . the author has since contacted Kyodo News Service and told them that she didn't think she'd "cause so much commotion" with her post. Defending her use of strong language, she said that if she had been polite "I wonder if my post would have spread this far"
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Responding to what Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called "the sadness and desperation felt by parents who are not able to have their children admitted to nurseries and unable to work like they used to", Mr Abe insisted that 500,000 more nursery places would be available by the end of 2017. "It's not a failure. We're working hard," he said.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already.