Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 127

60 years in orbit for “grapefruit satellite” — the oldest human object in space

(Credit: AP/NASA)

Sixty years ago, a grapefruit-sized aluminium sphere with six antennas and some tiny solar cells was launched into Earth orbit. The Vanguard 1 satellite is still up there and is the oldest human-made object in space. It’s our first piece of space archaeology.

Other early satellites — such as Sputnik 1, the first satellite to leave Earth in 1957, and Explorer 1, the first US satellite — have long since re-entered the atmosphere and burnt up.

Vanguard 1’s legacy, as we enter the seventh decade of space travel, is a new generation of small satellites changing the way we interact with space.

Making the first road map for space

By the early 1950s, the second world war’s rocket technology had developed to the point where the first satellite launch was imminent.

The global scientific community had been working towards a massive cooperative effort to study the Earth, called the International Geophysical Year (IGY), to take place in 1957-58. What could be better than measuring the Earth from the outside?

Everything we knew about the space environment we had learned from inside the envelope of the atmosphere. The first satellite could change everything.

The IGY committee decided to add a satellite launch to the program, and the “space race” suddenly became real.

Six nations were predicted to have the capability to launch a satellite. They were the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Australia.

This was before NASA existed. The United Nations space treaties had not yet been written. The IGY was effectively building the first road map for using space.

Waging peace in the Cold War

Vanguard 1 was intended to make the US the first nation in space — hence its name, meaning “leading the way”. The term also refers to the advance troops of a military attack.

Space exploration was not just about science. It was also about winning hearts and minds. These first satellites were ideological weapons to demonstrate the technological superiority of capitalism — or communism.

The problem was that the IGY was a civilian scientific program, but the rocket programs were military.

Project Vanguard was run by the US Naval Research Laboratory. Public perception was important, and they tried to give the satellite a civilian spin to present the US’s intentions in space as peaceful.

This meant the launch rocket should not be a missile, but a scientific rocket, made for research purposes. Such “sounding rockets” were, however, part of the military programs too — their purpose was to gather information about the little-known upper atmosphere for weapons development.

Keep watching the skies!

The astronomer Fred Whipple, from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, had an idea for the IGY satellite program that would help Project Vanguard present the right image and contribute to the scientific outcomes.

It was all well and good to launch a satellite, but you also had to know where it was in space so that you could collect its data. In the 1950s, the technology to do this was still in its infancy.

And in the words of science fiction author Douglas Adams, space is big. Really big. When something the size of a grapefruit is launched, you can predict where it should end up, but you don’t know if it’s there until you’ve seen it. Someone has to look for it.

This was the purpose of Whipple’s Project Moonwatch. Volunteers — nowadays we would call them citizen scientists — across the globe watched for the satellite using binoculars and telescopes supplied by the Smithsonian. But their first satellite sighting was not Vanguard 1. The Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 became the first human artefact in orbit on October 4, 1957.

Vanguard 1’s descendants

Six months later, on March 17, 1958, the little polished sphere was lofted up to a minimum height of around 600km above the Earth, and there it has stayed, long after its batteries died. Technically, Vanguard 1 is space junk; but it doesn’t pose a great collision risk to other satellites. It has survived so long simply because its orbit is higher than the other early satellites.

The historians Constance Green and Milton Lomask say that Vangaurd 1 is the “the progenitor of all American space exploration today”. It wasn’t just the satellite, it was the support systems too, such as the tracking network hosted by multiple nations.

It was Soviet leader Nikita Krushschev who called Vanguard 1 the “grapefruit satellite”, and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. But funnily enough, after satellites weighing thousands of kilograms and the size of double-decker buses, the current trend is back to small satellites.

Rather than fruit, these satellites are likened to loaves of bread or washing machines. They’re cheap to build, with off-the-shelf components, and cheap to launch. They’re not meant to stay in orbit for centuries. They’ll do their job for a few months or years, and then self-immolate in the atmosphere.

There has been a long tradition of amateur satellites, but now space is more accessible than ever before. Students and space start-ups can get into orbit at a fraction of the cost it used to take. It’s revitalising the space economy and allowing a greater number of people to participate.

For example, QB50 is an international collaboration to launch 50 cubesats to explore the lower thermosphere. So far, 36 have been launched, including three from Australia last year.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX company is planning to launch a network of more than 7,500 small satellites over the next few years, to deliver broadband internet. (There are major concerns about how they will contribute to the space junk problem, however).

When Vanguard 1 was launched, its only companions were Explorer 1 and Sputnik 2. Soon it may have thousands of descendants swarming around it.

The little satellite meant to represent the peaceful uses of outer space is a physical reminder of the competition to imprint space with meaning in the early years of the Space Age. Now, 60 years on, it seems we are on the cusp of a new age in space.

Alice Gorman is a panellist for two events at 2018 World Science Festival Brisbane — Space Junk: Cleaning Up After Ourselves (22 March) and Space Invaders: To Infinity and Beyond (24 March).

Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in archaeology and space studies, Flinders University

Babies think logically before they can talk

(Credit: maxriesgo via Shutterstock)

Symbolic communication in the form of language underlies our unique ability to reason — or so the conventional wisdom holds. A new study published today in Science, though, suggests our capacity to reason logically may not actually depend on language, at least not fully. The findings show babies still too young to speak can reason and make rational deductions.

The authors — a team hailing from several European institutions — studied infants aged 12 and 19 months, when language learning and speech production has just begun but before complex mastery has been achieved. The children had to inspect distinct objects repeatedly — such as a dinosaur and a flower. The items were initially hidden behind a black wall. In one set of experiments the animation would show a cup scooping up the dinosaur. Half of the time, the barrier would then be removed to reveal, as expected, the remaining flower. In the rest of the instances, though, the wall would disappear and a second dinosaur would be there

The children deduced in these latter occurrences that something was not quite right, even though they were unable to articulate in words what was wrong. Eye-tracking — a commonly used technique to gauge mental abilities in preverbal children and apes — showed infants stared significantly longer at scenes where the unexpected object appeared behind the barrier, suggesting they were confused by the reveal. “Our results indicate that the acquisition of logical vocabulary might not be the source of the most fundamental logical building blocks in the mind,” says lead study author Nicoló Cesana-Arlotti, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. A major component of human logic, he notes, relates to thinking about alternative possibilities and eliminating inconsistent ones: Does the dinosaur sit behind the barrier or does the flower? In a formal logic this is called a disjunctive syllogism: A or B; not if A, therefore B. (A syllogism is a conclusion derived from two distinct premises.

As part of their study, Cesana-Arlotti and his colleagues also reported infants’ pupils dilated when watching animations featuring illogical outcomes. This is known to occur in adults tasked with logic problems and provides more evidence babies are aware of the way things “should” be. “Their approach of using multiple trial types is very strong,” says Johns Hopkins psychologist and reason researcher Justin Halberda, who was not involved in the study but wrote an accompanying analysis in Science about the new paper. “I think many people would say that most of their reasoning happens when they are silently talking to themselves in their heads. What this new study reveals is that preverbal infants are also working through this same type of serial reasoning, and doing so before robust language abilities have been mastered.”

Cesana-Arlotti acknowledges his findings do not negate the importance of language and symbolic communication to human brain development, and to our evolutionary backstory. Yet the new research suggests that perhaps it is not entirely necessary to shape the brain’s logical reasoning capacities. He plans further work studying how preverbal logic might still differ from reasoning abilities that emerge once language comes along, as language may open additional reasoning abilities unavailable to the speechless brain. He also hopes to explore more deeply the mental development of young children. “Our research aims to investigate the earliest foundations of our ability to reason logically,” he says, “a major basis for learning, creativity and flexibility in the human mind.”

“To our knowledge, nobody has ever directly documented logical reasoning in 12-month-old infants before,” he adds. “The exploration of the initial state of logic in the mind is a very exciting enterprise.”

 

Why is Trump fixated on women who remind him of his daughter?

Ivanka Trump; Karen McDougal (Credit: AP/Alex Brandon/Getty/Dimitrios Kambouris)

In the never-ending excuses for brain bleach this administration provides, the creepiness of Donald Trump’s fixation on his daughter Ivanka always ranks way up there. The most recent bit of information we can never unknow? That he reportedly told his alleged former mistress that she was “beautiful like her” — her being Ivanka.

During a CNN interview Thursday, Karen McDougal said, “There wasn’t a lot of comparing, but there was some. I heard a lot about her.” McDougal says she received this praise while she was having an affair with Trump, a sexual relationship he also initially tried to pay her for. And nothing says, “Wow, that is a lot to unpack,” like a man who reportedly treats a woman who resembles his daughter like a prostitute.

Trump’s boundary-obliterating fascination with Ivanka has been well documented. Speaking on “The View” in 2006, he famously declared that were she not his child, “perhaps I’d be dating her.” In 2015,  he echoed the sentiment to Rolling Stone, saying, “Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father. …” He’s called her “hot,” “voluptuous” and “a great beauty,” and claimed she has “the best body.” A 2016 AP report revealed that former staffers on “The Apprentice” claimed that “He repeatedly made lewd comments about a camerawoman he said had a nice rear, comparing her beauty to that of his daughter, Ivanka.” And also in 2016, BuzzFeed reported that a draft version of a Washington Post story contained the later deleted line, “‘Can I ask you something?’ Trump asked someone I know, about his then-13-year-old kid, ‘Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife?'”

Most recently, another former alleged mistress, Stormy Daniels, claimed in January that during their 2006 relationship, “He told me once that I was someone to be reckoned with, beautiful and smart just like his daughter.”

And lest you fear poor young Tiffany has been entirely left out of her father’s uncomfortable compliments, let’s not forget that time he enthused about his then 1-year-old daughter by saying, “Well, I think that she’s got a lot of Marla. She’s a really beautiful baby, and she’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.” And at that, he made a cupping gesture toward his chest.

Trump’s profoundly revolting commentary about his daughters and his alleged willingness to compare women who claim they’ve slept with him to his offspring is full-body shudder-inducing material. But when I consider his icky litany, I’m reminded of something Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler once said regarding his famous, beautiful daughter Liv. When asked if he’d ever found himself attracted to her, he laughingly admitted, “Oh, absolutely,” adding, “How can a father not be attracted to his daughter, especially when she’s a cross between the girl he married and himself? Unless he’s an ugly man, a father is always gonna be sexually attracted to his daughter on a certain level.” Astutely, Tyler went on to observe, “There’s a certain level of narcissism in incest. All a man has to do is be totally honest with himself and he can see it. However, the real man knows that’s just a place to never go.”

Here’s a word that leaps out in that statement: narcissism. There’s nothing to suggest Trump has ever acted inappropriately toward his daughters. There is, however, ample evidence he’s madly infatuated with himself. It’s not hard to imagine him, in his majestically un-self-aware way, being drawn to women who remind him of … Donald Trump. This is a man who just this week was bragging of his physical prowess in an imaginary brawl with a former vice president. A man who believes, “All of the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me — consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.” (Sure, Jan.) For such a man, how could the beauty of his child not be his own? How could her sexual allure not be his own achievement?

Make no mistake — Trump’s track record of behavior and commentary is still wildly inappropriate and still super-, super-gross. It’s just that, when viewed in this interpretive light, it’s not about Ivanka at all, really. It’s about his bottomless obsession with the one true love of his life. Himself.

“The door is open”: On “Billions,” Asia Kate Dillon shakes up the macho finance world

Asia Kate Dillon as Taylor in "Billions" (Credit: Jeff Neumann/Showtime)

Asia Kate Dillon has an infectious, inquisitive energy about them which is apparent from a first meeting. They smile easily, sparkle in conversation and infuse each observation with a crisp excitement, even if it’s something they may have said a hundred times before.

Indeed, Dillon is the polar opposite of Taylor Mason, the character they play on Showtime’s “Billions,” returning for its third season Sunday at 10 p.m. Like Dillon, Taylor identifies as non-binary, a term used by people who feel their gender identity falls outside of the standard delineations of male or female. Both Taylor and Dillon use the pronouns they and them; indeed, one of the most memorable scenes in the second season of “Billions” features Taylor calmly and assuredly telling their boss Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis), one of the most powerful men in finance, how they are to be called – to which Axelrod did not blink.

“There is something that happens when you watch a white man give permission like that, that allows other people to think, ‘I might be able to do that,’” Dillon observes in an interview with Salon. “It is a powerful tool, and we are using it. It’s one of the reasons I’m proud to be on the show.”

The addition of Taylor to Season 2 of “Billions” challenged the testosterone-fueled workplace at Axe Capital, where all the men on the floor obsess over who makes the most money and who’s the most ostentatious at spending it, and where women are there to keep them aligned with their goals, such as Maggie Siff’s Wendy Rhoades, or are part of the victors’ spoils. Dillon’s performance received critical acclaim, and they were upped to a series regular for this new season.

Taylor is specifically written as female and non-binary, the first such role on North American television, and this throws their co-workers off-balance. What’s more, Taylor is effective, logic-driven and unflappable, an emotionally neutral character who dresses with crisp practicality.

Part of the fun of Taylor, Dillon says, is exploring the challenges of being non-binary in a very gendered, hyper-masculine environment. “It just goes to show that you don’t have to be any particular way to work in the [venture capitalist] world, the hedge fund world. You really can be yourself, which is what Taylor is. It really puts the men, in particular, on guard. To check themselves and say, ‘Well, why am I being hyper masculine then? Do I need to be? Is that something I actually have to do in order to get ahead?’ Because, Taylor’s not doing that and Taylor becomes CIO.”

Even so, Dillon infuses Taylor with an enigmatic quality vibrating just beneath the surface. It might be anger or hurt. It could merely be a tactic to discombobulate their opponents. One of Taylor’s more uncanny talents is to read people to the core while remaining inscrutable.

“Everyone has a different sort of perspective on Taylor on the show,” Dillon observed. “I think Taylor is full of emotion. Taylor is a fully fleshed out human being, but Taylor is very aware of when and how to titrate those emotions to get the best result, the best logical result.”

However, it bears pointing out that Taylor’s neutral affect has nothing to do with their non-binary identity.

“Taylor is one example of a non-binary person,” said Dillon. “Like you said, it is very individualized. I think Taylor happens to be the type of person who, when they walk into a room they want to be seen as a human being first and what that human being has to offer. The way Taylor speaks, the way that Taylor dresses, is the way in which Taylor is doing that. Certainly Taylor’s emotional life and the fact they are non-binary affect the way that they are in the world. But, just like anyone, it’s not the only thing that affects the way they are in the world.”

Certainly not in this new season, which places an entirely fresh set of challenges into Taylor’s lap and, for the most part, allows Taylor’s abilities to outweigh their gender identity. An indicted and out on bail Axe appears to be dethroned and Paul Giamatti’s U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades is on his way up in the world of politics. Taylor, meanwhile, moves into the position of chief investment officer of Axe Capital, where their steel confidence serves to keep the place anchored despite the loss of its leader.

“Really the test for Taylor so far in Season 3 which is, what is morality, where is the line, when do you cross it, and when do you give it weight, and when don’t you? I think ultimately that is the thing that every character on the show is dealing with. Which is, how to be a moral person, but also be who you are. And, if you’re being who you are, are you being moral or not?”

Playing Taylor also aligns with Dillon’s directive of doing work that has purpose. Outside of “Billions,” they are the co-founder of the production company Mirror/Fire, a company dedicated to inclusivity through backing productions created by or about historically marginalized and disenfranchised people.

“One of the reasons I think Taylor is so well received, is that I have light skin — I’m white, for all intents and purposes — and assigned female at birth. If Taylor is a bridge into the world of non-binary, Taylor is an easier bridge than, say, someone who was assigned male at birth, who is a person of color, who wears make-up and dresses. Those people are still ostracized. We are making progress, and there is still more progress to be made.”

Fortunately their role on the Showtime drama has grants them the exposure to assist in accelerating that progress, in ways they didn’t expect.

“Maybe it’s a mother, or maybe it’s an older self-identified straight male who’s white and 65, but sometimes I get a message that says, ‘I didn’t know anything about non-binary and frankly I use to be homophobic or transphobic, but I love your character, so I’m now investigating’ — I’m paraphrasing here — ‘I’m now investigating how I could love that character.’

“That’s just been incredible and gives me a lot of hope,” they said. “I think the conversation is happening now and the door is open. So, it’s just about bringing more and more people through the door, whether it’s educating people or bringing more roles in characters to the big and small screens.”

This Georgia rancher might be our best hope for a sustainable future

A still from "One Thousand Beating Hearts" (Credit: Peter Byck)

Will Harris, a good ol’ boy Georgia rancher, may well be our nation’s best bet for a better, more sustainable future. He’s the subject of a documentary by Peter Byck, “One Hundred Thousand Beating Hearts.”

You can watch the full documentary “One Hundred Thousand Beating Hearts”  on Salon Premium, our new ad-free, content-rich app. Here’s how. 

Salon talked to Byck, a professor at Arizona State University who teaches a film class for the School of Sustainability and Cronkite School of Journalism, about “One Hundred Thousand Beating Hearts.”

How’d you find Will Harris?

Our short film, “Soil Carbon Cowboys,” was well received in the ranching community, so when I was at a Grassfed Exchange conference, I was introduced to Will, and he invited me down to his farm, White Oak Pastures. It took me about nine months to then get down there to film.

He is such a great character. Tell us a little about what it was like to film him. 

Will was a great person to film and to simply spend time with. He gave me all the time I needed.

He works hard. I work hard filming, and we came to a good mutual respect for each other. I’ve since been back to his farm with my oldest boy. And Will has left a standing invite to my whole family to come down and stay on their farm — they’ve got some great cabins in the woods.

How long did you film him?

I was with Will for three days straight. And then, a year later, I came back to film some more b-roll and the drone footage.

Tell us one story about the production. 

When Will was taking me around the surrounding counties, to see the dying towns, small towns that had a strong agricultural base and that had been shriveling up due to poor economics for the local folks, we were filming along an old mill and rain was impending. I could see the coming squall down the road and it appeared to me to be about four minutes away. At about three minutes [out], when Will finished his answer to one of my questions, I grabbed the camera and tripod, told him we’d better run back to his truck, and as soon as we shut the doors, it started to really come down. He was impressed with my sense to read the rain. That made me feel good.

What’s been your past interest in sustainable animal agriculture? 

I look to regenerative agriculture, and AMP [adaptive multi-paddock] grazing in specific, as a potential way to draw down significant amounts of carbon from the air and store it in the soils. Carbon is the currency for healthy soils — and healthy soils produce healthy foods and help farmers to make more food on their land. My experience is filming farmers and ranchers across the U.S., Canada and the UK. These innovative producers of food are my heroes.

What’s the School of Sustainability & Cronkite School of Journalism?

The School of Sustainability teaches our students all facets of sustainability; from creating sustainable cities that include people of all incomes to showing companies of all sizes that being sustainable is simply good business; waste is a sure sign of poor use of resources, which costs money. The journalism school uses the teaching hospital model, steeping the students in real world production of print, web and live TV newscasting. I teach a documentary class with students from both schools.

Where has the film been shown?

The film has won six or seven film fests and has been screened all over North America, and via Vimeo, around the world. We did screen an early version at Will’s farm, and it was very well received.

What are you working on now?

I’m continuing the short film series we’re calling “Soil Carbon Cowboys.”

Ride shotgun with Will Harris on his ranch and smell the cow patties. Watch “One Hundred Thousand Beating Hearts” on Salon Premium, our new ad-free, content-rich app.

Reading this in the app already? Go back to the main menu and select “SalonTV” to find Salon Films and Salon original shows.

Trump campaign officials encouraged George Papadopoulos to pursue foreign relationships: report

George Papadopoulos (Credit: Alexandria Sheriff's Office)

As evidence mounts that Donald Trump’s campaign was directly aware of foreign attempts to aid his victory, the walls are closing in around President Donald Trump. Now, it looks like — as speculated — disgraced former Trump foreign policy staffer George Papadopoulos played a more critical role than the Trump administration has claimed. Recall Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the FBI regarding his contacts with foreign agents in 2016, prompting the Trump administration to distance themselves publicly from him.

A new report in The Washington Post reveals juicy insider emails that sources have described to the publication. According to the report, Papadopoulos contacted Trump campaign headquarters asking for approval when a Russian news agency contacted him regarding an interview before the 2016 election.

According to the report:

“You should do it,” deputy communications director Bryan Lanza urged Papadopoulos in a September 2016 email, emphasizing the benefits of a U.S. “partnership with Russia.”

The exchange was a sign that Papadopoulos — who pushed the Trump operation to meet with Russian officials — had the campaign’s blessing for some of his foreign outreach.

The Washington Post went on:

Emails described to The Washington Post, which are among thousands of documents turned over to investigators examining Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign, show Papadopoulos had more-extensive contact with key Trump campaign and presidential transition officials than has been publicly acknowledged.

As Salon previously reported, Papadopoulos is a key figure in the ongoing Russia investigation, but his role has been continuously understated by the Trump administration. Papadopoulos has been portrayed by the Trump team as a lowly volunteer, or a “coffee boy,” a claim that is contested by these new revelations.

When asked in November what his role was with the Trump campaign, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “It was extremely limited; it was a volunteer position. And again, no activity was ever done in an official capacity on behalf of the campaign in that regard.”

Indeed, in October 2017, Trump tweeted he was a “low level volunteer” and a “liar.”

….came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017

According to the Washington Post report, Papadopoulos communicated with higher-ups in the campaign such as Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn. The Post’s report shows that Flynn contacted with him about his endeavors to facilitate relationships between Trump and foreign officials.

According to the report, these emails are “among thousands of documents turned over to investigators.” As Salon writer Lucian K. Truscott IV wryly suggested, “When it’s over, this thing is going to make Watergate look like a cup of spilled milk in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood.”

We used to have Hope, but now we might have Kellyanne

Kellyanne Conway (Credit: AP/Alex Brandon)

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway left open the possibility that she could become the next White House communications director, telling Fox News that she will carry out “whatever my best and highest use is here.”

“I’m here to support the president however he sees is most important. I don’t have any personnel announcements at this time,” Conway told “Fox & Friends” in response to a question about rumors that she might take over the job when Hope Hicks departs from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. “I will do whatever is best, whatever my best and highest use is here.”

Citing anonymous sources, The Atlantic reported earlier this week that Conway is mulling the opportunity, and might fill the soon-to-be vacant post.

The position of communications director has been a rousing game of musical chairs since President Donald Trump assumed the Oval Office last year. In total, he has had four communications directors during his first 14 months on the job.

In December 2016, a few weeks before the inauguration, Trump appointed Jason Miller — the senior communications adviser to the Trump campaign — to serve permanently in the role. Miller stepped down two days later, following affair allegations. The job was then given to Sean Spicer, who then gave it to Michael Dubke, who was eventually succeeded by Anthony Scaramucci, who famously held the job for just ten days before passing the baton to the former model Hicks, crowning her the youngest-ever communications director at 29-years-old.

The most recent person to fill the post, Hicks held the title longer than any of her West Wing predecessors at 197 days. She announced her resignation late last week — and though the White House said at the time that her official departure would be determined in the coming weeks, New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi reports that Hicks is set to leave the White House by next Wednesday or Thursday.

The high-turnover rate in the Trump White House was not lost to Conway’s husband, George Conway, who wrote on Twitter that the president’s way of doing business is “so absurd.”

So true. It’s absurd. Which is why people are banging down the doors to be his comms director. https://t.co/SyKVUuR2CX

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) March 23, 2018

While Kellyanne Conway has officially served in a policy-focused position as White House counselor, she has been one of the most visible faces of the administration, regularly speaking for the president on television, most often on Fox News, where he receives unwaveringly positive coverage.

Conway’s allies call her job “‘the Kellyanne role,’ a position in which the precise title does not completely capture the duties she is performing or the sway she has,” according to a New York Times story published after the 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s TV surrogate praised the White House communications staff for its service, and acknowledged that the work done by the team requires the type of policy expertise needed by her current position during her “Fox & Friends” appearance.

“As counselor to the president, that takes on any number of different tasks and one has been in terms of policy. That has been my major portfolio here,” Conway explained. “But I think to be effective communication directors, as we’ve seen, you also have to know policy, you have to be read-in. But we have very talented people here.”

R.I.P. Craigslist personal ads

(Credit: Shutterstock)

It’s the end of an era for those who have leaned on Craigslist to meet romantic, platonic, and sexual partners. The online classified ads site founded in 1995 closed its personal ads section this week — and yes, that includes its legendary “casual encounters” listings and same-sex ads —”m4m” and “w4w” in Craigslist parlance.

While the subsections are still listed under “personals,” the site is now redirecting users to the following message:

US Congress just passed HR 1865, “FOSTA”, seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully.

Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day.

To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through craigslist, we wish you every happiness!

The aforementioned bill, H.R.1865, entitled “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017” passed the Senate on March 21 and is currently awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature. Commonly referred to as FOSTA, the bill amends section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 (which prevents platforms like Facebook from being held liable in situations of harassment, hate speech, cyberbullying, etc.), to make websites criminally liable for knowingly hosting, assisting, supporting, or facilitating sex trafficking.

The bill came to life following insights discovered in a Senate investigation report, “Backpage.com’s Knowing Facilitation of Online Sex Trafficking” which found that the website Backpage.com — a similar classifieds site to Craigslist — knowingly allowed advertisements for child prostitution.

The Internet Association called the bill “overly broad” and “counterproductive” in the campaign to fight human trafficking.

“While not the intention of the bill, it would create a new wave of frivolous and unpredictable actions against legitimate companies rather than addressing underlying criminal behavior,” Internet Association President and CEO Michael Beckerman said in a statement in August 2017.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., but is considered to be a bipartisan bill.

The purpose of the Craigslist personal ads section was never explicitly to facilitate sex trafficking and prostitution, but as often happens in an open and unregulated market, some of that inevitably made its way into Craigslist’s system. In 2010, Craigslist made headlines when journalists discovered that women were reportedly being prostituted by pimps to answer personal ads on Craigslist. This was shortly after the “Craigslist murder,” so named when Philip Markoff killed a woman he met in the personal connections section whom he was supposed to receive a massage from.

As anyone who grew up smoking weed knows, criminalizing something doesn’t guarantee that it will disappear from society. Instead, it often pushes what could be a safe activity into more dangerous crevices. Indeed, a 2017 paper by professors at Baylor University and West Virginia University found a paradoxical link between the introduction of Craigslist erotic services and a reduced female homicide rate (by 17.4 percent), and noted that sex workers spent less time working the street due to online advertising. This suggests that Craigslist was making sex workers safer.

Critics of the bill also fear it will put sex workers in more dangerous positions. As Alana Massey thoughtfully wrote in Allure, in regards to FOSTA and its sister bill SESTA (the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017): “The problem is that these bills target websites that are widely and inaccurately believed to be hubs of trafficking activity when it is precisely those websites that enable people in the sex trades to do their work safely and independently, at the same time as they make it easier for authorities to find and investigate possible trafficking cases.”

On the other hand, there is more contention over the impact that the end of Craigslist’s personals will have on the LGBTQ community. Conservative gay writer Chad Felix Greene claimed the closure of Craigslist’s personal ads is a “pro-LGBT life-saving measure,” noting that there had been reports of gay men being killed from casual encounters on Craigslist.

More gay men were murdered due to gay hook up sites (craigslist a top source) than from anti-LGBT hate crimes.

By your typical logic, this is a pro-LGBT life-saving measure from a 'doing something' Republican congress. ☕ https://t.co/FZnxRYSgUw

— Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) March 23, 2018

Still, others argue vigorously that Craigslist personal ads did provide a safe space for the LGBTQ community seeking love and connection.

I'm legit curious how the end of craigslist personal ads will impact the gay community, because they were pretty plentiful.

I'll likewise miss seeing all the m4m ads here in DC on CPAC and VVS weekends.

— Zack Ford (@ZackFord) March 23, 2018

The majority of lawmakers have conservative views on sex and especially sex work; hence, it remains to be seen whether Congress will react to criticism of FOSTA.

Al Franken returns to criticize Jeff Sessions

(Credit: AP)

Al Franken, the former “Saturday Night Live” scribe-turned-United States Senator from Minnesota, is back in the spotlight with a Facebook post — and he’s using his platform to denounce Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

After pointing out how Sessions cited “lack of candor” as one of his reasons for firing former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Franken accused President Donald Trump’s attorney general of hypocrisy due to his own lack of candor during his confirmation hearing.

“During his confirmation hearing, I alerted then-Senator Sessions to a breaking report from CNN that there had been an ongoing exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” Franken wrote. “When I asked him what he would do as Attorney General if those reports were true, Mr. Sessions decided to answer a different question.”

Franken then proceeded to quote Sessions’ response:

Senator Franken, I am not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have – did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.

Franken went on to describe how Sessions had in fact had three meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the 2016 presidential election. He also described how Sessions claimed to have not deliberately lied but instead been “taken aback” by Franken’s question, even though Sessions had to modify his answer several times as more information came out. He also commented on being “slightly slack-jawed” when Sessions continued to deny that members of the Trump campaign had communicated with the Russians during an October hearing.

Franken then mentioned that Sessions had “more candor problems” in his failure to disclose that he had “attended a March 31, 2016 foreign policy meeting at which George Papadopoulos raised his connections with Russians and offered to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin. Sessions first said he didn’t recall the Papadopoulos meeting, then testified that he ‘pushed back’ on the Papadopoulos suggestion of Trump meeting Putin and now three sources have said Sessions didn’t push back on this suggestion.”

Franken then went for the rhetorical kill.

“That the attorney general would fire the man who was tasked with investigating him raises serious questions about whether retaliation or retribution motivated his decision,” Franken concluded. “It also raises serious questions about his supposed recusal from all matters stemming from the 2016 campaign. But the fact that Attorney General Sessions would claim that a ‘lack of candor’ justified Mr. McCabe’s termination is hypocrisy at its worst.”

While Franken may be correct that Sessions is a hypocrite, he has lost a considerable amount of the moral authority that he once possessed as a political commentator. In December he was compelled to resign in disgrace after eight women came forward to accuse him of groping them or engaging in otherwise inappropriate sexual misconduct. Prior to his resignation, Franken had emerged as one of the most popular and effective progressives in the United States Senate, with some political experts speculating that he might even run for president in 2020.

While a Franken for President bid is now all but dead, that doesn’t mean he still can’t make valid political observations. It was Franken’s line of questioning during Sessions’ confirmation hearing that prompted the attorney general’s infamous lie, and it was that lie which led to McCabe helming a probe into Sessions’ conduct during that hearing. Although Sessions claimed that he fired McCabe because of his handling of questions about the FBI’s handling of an FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton, others have expressed concern that it was actually retribution for McCabe’s probe into Sessions.

“The FBI expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and accountability. As the [FBI’s ethics office] stated, ‘all FBI employees know that lacking candor under oath results in dismissal and that our integrity is our brand,'” Sessions explained.

Yet as one lawmaker who has not been as morally compromised as Franken — Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. — acknowledged, when Sessions responded to Franken’s question by saying that he had not met with Russians during the Trump campaign, he “either made a false statement or misled the committee. I think that that’s not a question — that’s a fact.”

 

Pompeo’s rise will make Mideast war more likely

FILE - In this Jan. 12, 2017 file photo, CIA Director-designate Rep. Michael Pompeo, R-Kan. testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Some of President-elect Donald Trump’s most important Cabinet choices are at odds with him on matters that were dear to his heart as a campaigner and central to his promises to supporters. For the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department and more, Trump has picked people who publicly disagree with him on some cornerstones of his agenda In confirmation hearings. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File) (Credit: AP)

After U.S. president Donald Trump fired his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, many analysts have focused on how this high-level ouster took place: unceremoniously, on Twitter, not in a face-to-face meeting.

As a former Middle East analyst at the State Department, though, I think the real drama of replacing America’s top diplomat lies in the foreign policy implications. Trump has tapped Mike Pompeo, the hawkish CIA director and former Kansas congressman, to replace Tillerson.

In 2015, Pompeo voted against a deal that the Obama administration negotiated to remove some international economic sanctions on Iran. In exchange, Iran would significantly scale back its nuclear program and submit to intrusive international inspections.

Tillerson’s departure means the Iran nuclear deal is in trouble.

And if Trump scraps it, I fear the whole Middle East could erupt in conflict.

Why Tillerson had to go

The outgoing secretary of state was fired for a host of reasons, some of them personal.

Tillerson and Trump did not know each other prior to the 2016 election, and it seems Tillerson never gained the president’s trust. The president reportedly found Tillerson arrogant, disrespectful and less compliant than other cabinet members.

Tillerson earned Trump’s ire by disagreeing with him on many substantive policy matters, including the president’s decisions to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and cozy up to Russia. Tillerson also called his boss a “moron” after a July 2017 meeting at the Pentagon.

In short, as Trump suggested to reporters on the White House lawn, the two never developed good “chemistry.”

Iran deal in danger

Perhaps most importantly, though, Tillerson defied Trump on Iran. Trump has been highly critical of the international nuclear agreement since his 2016 presidential campaign, calling it “the worst deal ever negotiated.”

He wanted to scuttle it when it came up for recertification in July 2017, but his secretary of state advised against it on both diplomatic and security grounds.

Tillerson has been strongly critical of Iran, condemning its regional aggression and its meddling in the Syrian civil war. But I believe he understood, as many other policy analysts did, that backing out of the nuclear deal would destabilize the Middle East – and potentially put the world at risk – because Iran would likely react by restarting its nuclear program.

Tillerson, a former international business executive, was also more sensitive to the opinion of European allies than his boss. Rather than sour relations with the U.K., France, Germany and other key partners by terminating an agreement that they helped negotiate, he worked with the Europeans to come up with a compromise that Trump might find tolerable.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis agreed with Tillerson on Iran. The two of them periodically lobbied the president not to scrap the deal, and their influence got the agreement recertified in July 2017.

But Trump resented being pressured. Remember, this is a president who has openly stated that only his views matter when it comes to foreign policy.

Tillerson disagreed. As he said in his somber March 13 goodbye speech, he believed his job as secretary of state was to serve the nation and defend the U.S. Constitution.

To Trump, Tillerson’s stance on Iran wasn’t just a difference of opinion – it was, perhaps, an act of disloyalty.

Pompeo’s dangerous instincts

In October 2017, Trump finally decertified the Iran deal, which effectively opened the door for the U.S. Congress to reimpose sanctions. In his January 2018 State of the Union address, he was more direct, calling on lawmakers to “address the fundamental flaws in the terrible Iran nuclear deal.”

The newly nominated secretary of state shares the president’s dim view.

As a congressman, Pompeo opposed the Obama-era Iran agreement as “unconscionable,” and he said after Trump’s election that he was looking forward to “rolling it back.” Pompeo – with whom, Trump reports, he has very good chemistry – is also on record saying that Iran is “intent on destroying America.”

Congressional aides who’ve worked with him say that Pompeo is a smart guy, level-headed and reasonable. But if he eggs on Trump’s most belligerent instincts, I believe the Iran deal won’t last the year.

Destabilizing the Mideast

This could unleash a dangerous chain of events in the volatile Middle East.

If the U.S. reimposes sanctions on Iran, hard-liners there – who have always opposed the nuclear deal – would likely pressure Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to retaliate by restarting the country’s uranium enrichment program.

I believe Israel would then feel justified in taking military action against Iran, which has been threatening its national security for decades. In doing so, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have the behind-the-scenes backing of Saudia Arabia, a regional power and longtime rival of Iran, and possibly other states with a Sunni Muslim majority.

Iran is governed by conservative Shiite Muslim clerics. Sunni-majority countries like Saudi Arabia dislike Iran’s policy of financing violent Shiite militias to push its sectarian agenda in Arab states with significant, and sometimes restive, Shiite populations.

Israel and Saudi Arabia never supported the Iran nuclear deal. They feared that lifting sanctions on Iran would merely give Tehran more resources to foment strife in the Arab world.

Analysts agree that should some Sunni Arab countries team up with Israel against Iran, Iran would not limit itself to responding with missiles. It could also persuade its well-armed allies like Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to launch rocket attacks on Israel, too.

I doubt Mideast war is the outcome Pompeo and Trump would seek by ending the Iran deal, but it may be just the disaster they create.

Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University