Covid origins: Genetic ghosts suggest pandemic started in market

A team of scientists say it is “beyond reasonable doubt” the Covid pandemic started with infected animals sold at a market, rather than a laboratory leak.

They were analysing hundreds of samples collected from Wuhan, China, in January 2020.

The results identify a shortlist of animals – including racoon dogs, civets and bamboo rats – as potential sources of the pandemic.

Despite even highlighting one market stall as a hotspot of both animals and coronavirus, the study cannot provide definitive proof.

The samples were collected by Chinese officials in the early stages of Covid and are one of the most scientifically valuable sources of information on the origins of the pandemic.

Source: Covid origins: Genetic ghosts suggest pandemic started in market

Opinion: Why does Trump seem to talk like no one ever before? – Los Angeles Times

…A quick look at Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention in July shows that his dependence on superlatives has overtaken all his other oratorical habits. He used them to describe almost everything he discussed. The criminalization of political disagreement is “at a level that nobody has ever seen before.” The “inflation crisis” is “crushing our people like never before. They’ve never seen anything like it.” As for the “illegal immigration crisis,” well, “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it” either…

…This type of rhetoric is not new. Vesna Mikolič, a Slovenian scholar of linguistics, analyzed the speeches of four of the original Italian fascists of the 1920s. She found that an increased intensity of their language, including hyperbole and superlatives, correlated with their detachment from reality, as well as with incitements to violence, and with actual violence. Mikolič calls this kind of oratory — as when Trump promises to “lead America to new heights of greatness like the world has never seen before” — the “fascist imaginary.”

…Once a leader commits to hyperbole, he stays committed. As Richard Evans reminds us in his book “Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich,” Adolf Hitler claimed that his invasion of France was the most “glorious victory of all time” and that he was the greatest military leader ever — greater than Napoleon or Caesar.

Federico Finchelstein, an Argentinian fascism expert, says such leaders “fantasize about creating new realities and ultimately transform reality to fit their fantasies.” For example, Hitler claimed that Jews were disease-ridden subhumans and then created the conditions that made him prophetic. The fascist’s aim, says Finchelstein, is “the destruction of any trace of demonstrable truth.” And the philosopher Hannah Arendt says “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is … people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”

Source: Opinion: Why does Trump seem to talk like no one ever before? – Los Angeles Times

Opinion: JD Vance to Springfield, Ohio: You’re expendable – Los Angeles Times

…Most officeholders pride themselves on providing good constituent service, especially in troubled times. Vance, bizarrely, is suddenly the uncontested master of constituent disservice, to the point of putting lives at risk.

The problems he’s made lately for tens of thousands of his constituents in Springfield, Ohio — all to demagogue the immigration issue — amount to political malpractice, the likes of which we’ve never seen before as Trump is so fond of saying about almost anything. Only this time it’s true.

For weeks, Vance has singled out Springfield as the epitome of a (white) American community overrun by people of color from another country — in this case, Haitians who’ve fled their nation’s epic poverty and violence to settle legally in Ohio, welcomed by employers desperate for hard workers. Vance, who once wrote so movingly about “hillbilly” families like his own coming to Ohio from Kentucky, seeking opportunity but enduring hostility, is so intent on advancing politically that he’s now the hostile one.

And once Trump picked up Vance’s lies about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating Springfieldians’ cats, dogs, ducks and geese — broadcasting the conspiracy talk to 67 million people who watched him debate Kamala Harris on Tuesday last week — all hell broke loose for Vance’s constituents.

Despite local officials’ assurances from the start that the reports were social-media-spawned claptrap, more than 30 bomb threats closed city hall, two elementary schools, two hospitals and two universities for a time. The threats, which have continued this week, turned out to be hoaxes. But the fear and disruption in Springfield were real. By Tuesday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine had dispatched state troopers to Springfield schools to encourage frightened parents to send their children to class, even as he warned of hate groups descending on Springfield. “It makes me sad that we have to get to this point,” one mom told the local paper.

Indeed. But her senator wasn’t sad, just mad — that he’s getting bad press. Consider this snippy, selfish tweet from Vance on Tuesday: “I’m still waiting on a correction and apology from the left wing journalists. They lied about these bomb threats to silence us. Why? Because they don’t want to talk about Kamala Harris’s border policies making housing unaffordable for American citizens.”

Apology? Reporters didn’t lie; there were bomb threats. Those trying to silence Vance’s fear-mongering aren’t journalists but Springfield’s police chief, school superintendent, Republican mayor and governor. Springfield Mayor Rob Rue has repeatedly implored Vance and Trump to stop: “All these federal politicians that have negatively spun our city, they need to know they’re hurting our city, and it was their words that did it.”

And “left wing journalists” aren’t the only ones checking Vance’s falsehoods. Conservative commentator Kevin D. Williamson this week had the best take in a Dispatch article subtitled “A pretty long story about a thing that didn’t happen”: “You can send little J.D. to Yale to make him polished, you can send him to Silicon Valley to make him rich, and you can send him to the Senate to make him powerful, but you cannot stop him from being what it is he apparently wants to be: Cleetus the Gap-Toothed Twitter Troll.”

Source: Opinion: JD Vance to Springfield, Ohio: You’re expendable – Los Angeles Times

Ex-Trump advisers help to grow pro-Russia website that spreads misinformation | Donald Trump | The Guardian

George Papadopoulos and his wife Simona Mangiante in Washington in 2019. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Ex-Trump advisers help to grow pro-Russia website that spreads misinformation

George Papadopoulos and others involved in Intelligencer, increasingly popular source of news in rightwing circles

Amid the recent crackdown on Russian influence in American media, a group of former Trump advisers and operatives have quietly helped build a pro-Russian website that frequently spreads debunked conspiracy theories about the war in Ukraine, election fraud and vaccines.

Working alongside contributors for Kremlin state media, the former Donald Trump policy aide George Papadopoulos, his wife, Simona Mangiante, and others have become editorial board members of the website Intelligencer, which is increasingly becoming a source of news for those in the rightwing ecosystem.

Source: Ex-Trump advisers help to grow pro-Russia website that spreads misinformation | Donald Trump | The Guardian

(11) A Pennsylvania farmer and evangelical votes his values by backing Harris – YouTube

Donald Trump has maintained strong evangelical support, but grassroots groups like Evangelicals for Harris are looking to pull their fellow believers into Kamala Harris’ corner by targeting voters in swing states and offering an alternate vision of their faith. (AP video by Jessie Wardarski)