[mpen-dayton] FW: "A Letter to NYT Editors" & "The resemblance is striking...." & "refugees flee Trump's America, risking life and limb" and more

FYI.   Best, Munsup

P.S. Please reply back to me with 'unsubscribe' added to the subject line if you no longer want to receive my e-Newsletters. The convenient link to unsubscribe is no longer available due to security reasons to protect my email servers.

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• FW: Atlantic article by David Frum: "how to build an autocracy" & "A Letter to NYT Editors"
• FW: "Beware: This story may provoke extreme laughter  &  "The resemblance is striking...."
• FW: California Farmers Backed Trump, but Now Fear Losing Field Workers
• FW: refugees flee Trump's America, risking life and limb
• FW: The Fate of Science and Academia Hang in the Balance

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From: Andrew
Subject: Atlantic article by David Frum: "how to build an autocracy"  &  "A Letter to NYT Editors"

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/

Letter to NYT Editors by Lance M. Dodes, M.D
http://www.lancedodes.com/new-york-times-letter

 

 

From: Eric Kramer
Subject: "Beware: This story may provoke extreme laughter  &  "The resemblance is striking...."

Beware: This story may provoke extreme laughter!
http://www.theonion.com/article/secret-service-adds-emotional-protection-division--55263

The resemblance is striking....

Is it just my own imagination, or is actually a requirement that all extremist,
Right Wing propagandists appear to have completely dead eyes??

  
Stephen Miller                                                                                          Joseph Goebbels

 

 

From: Thomas Scott
Subject: 84 Lumber's SB Ad, Voter's Remorse? Is it the ACA or Obamacare?

California Farmers Backed Trump, but Now Fear Losing Field Workers

California Farmers Backed Trump, but Now Fear Losing Field Workers By Caitlin Dickerson and Jennifer Medina People in a Republican stronghold in the Central Valley thought a promise to crack down on illegal immigrants wa...

 

 

From: Andrew Tierman
Subject: refugees flee Trump's America, risking life and limb

This is a heartrending story...

Refugees to the US, from Africa, now view themselves as refugees from President Trump's America and, not having known about frostbite, suffer the consequences of hours trudging through snow from North Dakota to Manitoba. Some refugees are Somali, some Ghanaians fleeing persecution in their own country for outlawed homosexuality. I have not seen this on CNN televised, only at cnn.com.

See http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/13/americas/refugees-flee-united-states-for-canada/index.html

 

 

From: Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Penn State, AAUP
Subject: The Fate of Science and Academia Hang in the Balance

My Penn State colleagues looked with horror at the police tape across my office door.

I had been opening mail at my desk that afternoon in August 2010 when a dusting of white powder fell from the folds of a letter. I dropped the letter, held my breath and slipped out the door as swiftly as I could, shutting it behind me. First I went to the bathroom to scrub my hands.

Then I called the police.

It turned out to be cornstarch, not anthrax. And it was just one in a long series of threats I've received since the late 1990s, when my research illustrated the unprecedented nature of global warming, producing an upward-trending temperature curve whose shape has been likened to a hockey stick.

All of this must ring familiar to professors who find themselves on a watchlist or are facing online harassment for what they teach, write, or say. I've faced hostile investigations by politicians, demands that I be fired from my job, threats against my life, and even threats against my family. I I thought those threats would have diminished as human-caused climate change has become recognized as the overwhelming scientific consensus and as climate science began to receive the support of the federal government. But with the broader political climate that has accompanied the Trump administration, my colleagues and I are facing a renewed onslaught of intimidation, from inside and outside the government.

The AAUP is collecting stories about online harassment of faculty to get a sense of the prevalence of such instances at colleges and universities around the country. Submit an incident here.

One thing is different now than when I faced similar attacks nearly a decade ago: a very rapid and concerted pushback against the disinformation and misinformation. As a member of the AAUP and a steadfast supporter of the fight for academic freedom, I am heartened by the strong response that faculty have taken against some of the most dangerous elements of this new watchlist and science-denying culture.

That's not to say that obstacles don't remain. We face an unprecedented assault on science by the government that should be supporting and promoting it. The disrespect that the nominee to lead the EPA, Scott Pruitt, displays for science is deeply distressing. And he is just one of a group of ominously anti-science advisors and notorious climate change deniers who now hold key positions in the Trump administration.

I worry that younger scientists might be deterred from going into climate research (or any topic where scientific findings can prove inconvenient to powerful vested interests). As someone who has weathered many attacks, I would urge these scientists to have courage.

The fate of science and academia hang in the balance.

 

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