Brave New World

genomemag |  Imagine if doctors could correct a cataract, for instance, not by using a scalpel or laser to perform surgery, but rather by sending off miniature surgical tools to reach right in and fix the diseased gene that was responsible. It might surprise you to learn that scientists have already shown that this sort of thing is doable today — not in humans perhaps, but in much tinier and fuzzier mice in the lab. The procedure doesn’t work perfectly every time (which partly explains why no one has tried it in a person just yet), but when it does, the animals grow healthy and disease-free.

Scientists in China successfully cured 24 mice of their eye condition, which was produced by a single, mutant copy of one gene. That demonstration, reported in the scientific literature two years ago, was billed as the first to show that it’s possible to correct a genetic disease using a genome editing tool, which scientists call CRISPR-Cas9. Although in mice, the findings offered the first proof of principle that scientists and doctors might one day have sufficient skill and precision to edit single-gene disorders out of human genomes in much the same way.

Jinsong Li, one of the leaders of the study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said then that he believes it is “absolutely possible to use CRISPR to cure genetic disease in the near future.” As further evidence in support of Li’s conclusion, his paper came out alongside another by researchers in the Netherlands. They had used CRISPR to correct a gene that causes cystic fibrosis in adult stem cells derived from patients with the single-gene disorder.

CRISPR-Cas9 Human Genome Editing: Challenges, Ethical Concerns and Implications

omicsonline |  Genome editing technologies may in the future have therapeutic potential for various incurable diseases: cancer, genetic disorders, HIV/AIDS to mention the most obvious. Genome editing of somatic cells, which is at it various clinical stages, is a promising area of therapeutic development. This year, a group of Chinese researchers led by Junjiu Huang - a gene-function researcher at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, used complex enzyme-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 as a therapeutic agent to eradicate the human β-globulin (HBB) gene from the germline of the human embryo. The mutations in HBB gene cause β-thalassaemia (a deadly blood disorder). The research was, however, not completely successful, and had to be abandoned at its preliminary stage. This research was published in the journal Protein and Cell after it was rejected by the journal Nature and Science on ethical grounds. Caution flags have been raised about the use of CRISPR-Cas9 on human germline editing. This research has generated the debate among the world-renowned scientists about the ethical concerns and implications of CRISPR-Cas9 human germline editing. While some members of the scientific community have argued that a moratorium should be called on human germline editing, others have argued that it is unethical to withhold a technology that would eliminate devastating genetic diseases. This paper critically evaluates the challenges, ethical concerns and implications of CRISPR-Cas9 human germ line editing.

Atlas of the RNA Universe

phys.org |  As the floor plan of the living world, DNA guides the composition of animals ranging from unicellular organisms to humans. DNA not only helps shepherd every organism from birth through death, it also plays an essential role in the development of many human diseases.

But it wasn't always so. Long before DNA emerged as the molecule of life, its closely related cousin, RNA (ribonucleic acid), held center stage.

The RNA world refers to a time in earth's distant past when primitive forms used RNA rather than DNA to archive genetic information, pass it along using RNA-based copying machinery and perform biological reactions.

With the emergence of DNA, RNA came to play an intermediary role, copying DNA messages known as genes and translating them into proteins. This pathway from DNA to RNA to protein has become so engrained in the field of biology it is often referred to as "the central dogma."

Recently, however, RNA's strict subservience to DNA has been called into question. New discoveries have prompted an explosion in RNA research, with vital implications for both the foundations of biology and the practice of medicine. (Sidney Altman, who won the Nobel Prize for establishing that RNA can act independently and perform chemical reactions on its own, providing powerful evidence for the RNA world hypothesis, has recently joined ASU's School of Life Sciences).

Distances Between Nucleotide Sequences Contain Biologically Relevant Information

g3journal |  Enhancers physically interact with transcriptional promoters, looping over distances that can span multiple regulatory elements. Given that enhancer-promoter (EP) interactions generally occur via common protein complexes, it is unclear whether EP pairing is predominantly deterministic or proximity guided. Here we present cross-organismic evidence suggesting that most EP pairs are compatible, largely determined by physical proximity rather than specific interactions. By re-analyzing transcriptome datasets, we find that the transcription of gene neighbors is correlated over distances that scale with genome size. We experimentally show that non-specific EP interactions can explain such correlation, and that EP distance acts as a scaling factor for the transcriptional influence of an enhancer. We propose that enhancer sharing is commonplace among eukaryotes, and that EP distance is an important layer of information in gene regulation.

When Memes Fail You

p2pfoundation |  I know this has been a rough time for a lot of you, and I hope you are doing well. In brief: Yes, there has been a major electoral upheaval, and it seems there are many confused people out there working under some pretty strange assumptions. But no, this isn’t as much of a shift as it may seem.

If anything, this is the legacy of the 20th Century coming back to haunt us. In an effort to counter the propaganda of our political enemies, American social scientists (Bateson and Meade, to be exact) proposed a world of screens they called “the surround.” Their idea was that if people had the experience of choosing different things – or of looking at whichever screen they wanted to – they wouldn’t care so much that all the choices were for essentially the same thing.

In short, looking at a screen – any screen – was more important than what a person learned or came to believe, other than that he or she was experiencing real autonomy and choice. That was supposed to be America: the land of choices. The supermarket offers us fifty different laundry detergents to choose from – even though they are almost all the same, and are distributed by the same two or three corporations. You can choose whichever one you want, as long as you choose (and pay for) one of them.

An array of TV channels gave us a similar experience of choice. But Bateson and Meade probably never imagined a world with quite as many screens as ours now has. Or as much of a direct connection between our experience of screen choice and that of democracy. American Idol and other reality programs made the connection discrete. And thus Donald Trump’s migration from reality TV to electoral politics was seamless. Social media and smart phones took screens to the next level of illusory user-control, while they simply reduced the array of possibilities to a narrow beam of sensationalist, algorithmically assembled, self-affirmation.

But the underlying techniques for influencing people through all those screens? That’s magic. Or at least the approach to magic practiced by Hitler and his propagandists in WWII, before it was utilized by the British and American advertising agencies after the war. It’s the subject of the graphic novel I released last week – Aleister & Adolf – about the occult war between Aleister Crowley and Adolf Hitler at the end of WWII. I hadn’t meant it to be quite so prescient, but it’s a great way of understanding how we got where we are. The social media landscape is the ideal space for sigils and memetic engineering because we are utterly untethered from grounded experience. Those who succeed at these techniques are the ones who successfully tap into existing hidden agendas in popular culture. They just jump into the unacknowledged standing wave of society, and it carries them along for the ride. It’s not the subject or surfer that matters so much as the wave itself, and one’s willingness to surrender to it entirely. That’s why celebrities or candidates who adopt this strategy end up seeming to have no coherent goal.

Like Genomics - Reality is Computational

edgarlowen |  A computational model is by far the most reasonable and fruitful approach to reality. The computational model of Universal Reality is both internally consistent and consistent with science and the scientific method. This may initially seem counter intuitive but there all sorts of convincing reasons supporting it.

There is overwhelming evidence that everything in the universe is its information or data only and that the observable universe is a computational system:

1. To be comprehensible, which it self-evidently is, reality must be a logically consistent structure. To be logical and to continually happen it must be computable. To be computable it must consist of data because only data is computable. Therefore the content of the observable universe must consist only of programs computing data.

2. The laws of science which best describe reality are themselves logico-mathematical information forms. Why would the equations of science be the best description of reality if reality itself didn’t also consist of similar information structures? This explains the so-called “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in describing the universe (Wigner, 1960).

3. By recognizing that reality is a logico-mathematical structure the laws of nature immediately assume their natural place as an intrinsic part of reality. No longer do they somehow stand outside a physical world while mysteriously controlling it. A physical model of the universe is unable to explain where the laws of nature reside or what their status is (Penrose, 2005).

4. Physical mechanisms to produce effects become unnecessary in a purely computational world. It’s enough to have a consistent logico-mathematical program that computes them in accordance with experimental evidence.

5. When everything that mind adds to our perception of reality is recognized and subtracted all that remains of reality is a computational data structure. This is explained in detail below and can actually be confirmed by carefully analyzed direct experience.

6. We know that our internal simulation of reality exists as neurochemical data in the circuits of our brain. Yet this world appears perfectly real to us. If our cognitive model of reality consists only of data and seems completely real then it’s reasonable to assume that the actual external world could also consist only of data. How else could it be so effectively modeled as data in our brains if it weren’t data itself?

7. This view of reality is tightly consistent with the other insights of Universal Reality, which are cross-consistent with modern science. Total consistency across maximum scope is the test of validity, truth and knowledge (Owen, 2016).

8. This view of reality leads to simple elegant solutions of many of the perennial problems of science and the nature of reality and leads directly to many new insights. Specifically it leads to a clear understanding of the nature of consciousness and also enables a new understanding of spacetime that conceptually unifies quantum theory and general relativity and resolves the paradoxical nature of the quantum world (Owen, 2016).

9. These insights complete the progress of science itself in reducing everything to data by revealing how both mass-energy and spacetime, the last remaining bastions of physicality, can be reduced to data as explained in Universal Reality (Owen, 2016).

10. Viewing the universe as running programs computing its data changes nothing about the universe which continues exactly as before. It merely completes the finer and finer analysis of all things including us into their most elemental units. It’s simply a new way of looking at what already exists in which even the elementary particles themselves consist entirely of data while everything around us remains the same. Reality remained exactly the same when everything was reduced to its elementary particles, and it continues to remain the same when those particles are further reduced to their data.

Planets Will Either Be Lush or Dead

nautilus |  A “living worlds” perspective implies that after billions of years, life will either be absent from a planet or, as on Earth, have thoroughly taken over and become an integral part of all global processes. Signs of life will be everywhere. Once life has taken hold of a planet, once it has become a planetary‐scale entity (a global organism, if you will), it may be very hard to kill. Certainly life has seen Earth through many huge changes, some quite traumatic. Life here is remarkably robust and persistent. It seems to have a kind of immortality. Call it quasi‐immortality, because the planet won’t be around forever, and it may not be habitable for its entire lifetime. Individuals are here for but an instant. Whole species come and go, usually in timescales barely long enough to get the planet’s attention. Yet life as a whole persists. This gives us a different way to think about ourselves. The scientific revolution has revealed us, as individuals, to be incredibly tiny and ephemeral, and our entire existence, not just as individuals but even as a species, to be brief and insubstantial against the larger temporal backdrop of cosmic evolution. If, however, we choose to identify with the biosphere, then we, Gaia, have been here for quite some time, for perhaps 3 billion years in a universe that seems to be about 13 billion years old. We’ve been alive for a quarter of all time. That’s something.

The origin of life on Earth was not just the beginning of the evolution of species, the fount of diversity that eventually begat algae blooms, aspen groves, barrier reefs, walrus huddles, and gorilla troops. From a planetary evolution perspective, this development was a major branching point that opened up a gateway to a fundamentally different future. Then, when life went global, and went deep, planet Earth headed irreversibly down the path not taken by its siblings.

Now, very recently, out of this biologically altered Earth, another kind of change has suddenly emerged and is rewriting the rules of planetary evolution. On the nightside of Earth, the lights are switching on, indicating that something new is happening and someone new is home. Has another gateway opened? Could the planet be at a new branching point?

The view from space sheds light on the multitude of rapid changes inscribed on our planet by our industrial society. The orbital technology enabling this observation is itself one of the strange and striking aspects of the transition now gripping Earth. If up to now the defining characteristic of Earth has been planetary‐scale life, then what about these planetary‐scale lights? Might this spreading, luminous net be part of a new defining characteristic?

Experiences Leave Behind Epigenetic Traces in Our Genetic Material

phys.org |  An ideological dispute is taking place in biology. And it's about a big topic that's central to everything: heredity. In his epoch-making book On the Origin of Species of 1859, Darwin wrote of the reigning ignorance about how differences between individuals come about. It was only with 'modern evolutionary synthesis' in the 1940s that people became convinced that heredity functions through genetics – in other words, that the characteristics of living creatures are passed on to the next generations through their genetic substance, DNA.

This perspective was helpful in providing a focus for research in the ensuing decades, which brought about extraordinary discoveries. As a result, many aspects of the form and function of living creatures can now be explained. But already in the 1950s, different observations called into question the seemingly exclusive control of the genes. For example, maize kernels can have different colours even if their DNA sequence is identical.

Plants remember aridity

Further investigations brought to light the fact that when individuals with identical genetic material have a different outward appearance, this can be traced back to different degrees of activity on the part of the genes. Whether a particular section of DNA is active or not – i.e., whether it is read – depends to a decisive degree on how densely packed the DNA is.

This packing density is influenced by several so-called epigenetic mechanisms. They form a complex machinery that can affix or detach tiny chemical attachments to the DNA. Here, the rule applies that the tighter packed the DNA, the more difficult it is to read – and this means that a particular gene will be more inactive.

Living creatures can adjust to a volatile environment by steering their epigenetic mechanisms. In this manner, for example, the epigenetic machinery can ensure that plants can deal better with a hot or arid climate if it at some point they already had to live through a similar situation. So in this sense, the epigenetic markings in the genetic material form a kind of 'stress memory' of the plants. This much is today a matter of consensus among biologists.

Doubts on heredity over generations

Several studies, however, suggest that the descendants of stressed plants are also better prepared against the dangers already faced by their ancestors. "However, these studies are a matter of controversial debate," says Ueli Grossniklaus, the director of the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of Zurich. Like many other epigeneticists who are involved in deciphering these mechanisms, he believes that, "since the evidence is patchy, we can't yet say to what degree acquired characteristics can be transmitted in stable form over several generations." So it still remains to be proven whether epigenetics actually brings organisms long-lasting advantages and thus plays a role in evolution. It's an attractive idea, thinks Grossniklaus, but it's still to be demonstrated.

It's not just in plants that results on the heredity of epigenetic markings are causing a stir – the same is true in mice. In order to investigate the possible long-term effects of severe childhood trauma, for example, the research group led by Isabelle Mansuy, a professor of neuro-epigenetics at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, has been taking mouse offspring away from their mothers for three hours each day, just a few days after being born.

This is Not a Question to be Left to Scientists Alone - ROTFLMBAO!!!

telegraph |  An ethical debate over how long human embryos can be grown in a lab has erupted after Cambridge University announced it had allowed fertilised eggs to mature for 13 days – just one day short of the legal limit.

In groundbreaking research, scientists invented a thick soup of nutrients which mimics conditions in the womb, and keeps an embryo alive for days longer than it could previously survive without being implanted into a mother.

Currently UK law bans laboratories for growing embryos for longer than 14 days because after two weeks, twins can no longer form, and so it is deemed that an individual has started to develop.

But scientists have now suggested that the deadline should be extended to allow for more research into the development of embryos.

Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, who led the research suggested it would be useful to extend the limit by a few days, while Professor Robert Lovell-Badge of London’s Francis Crick Institute said an extra week might be useful, but admitted it could ‘open a can of worms.’

“Proposing to extend the 14-day limit might be opening a can of worms, but would it lead to Pandora’s box, or a treasure chest of valuable information ?” said Professor Lovell-Badge

 “This is not a question to be left to scientists alone.”

Where in the World Will the First CRISPR Baby be Born?

nature |  They are meeting in China; they are meeting in the United Kingdom; and they met in the United States last week. Around the world, scientists are gathering to discuss the promise and perils of editing the genome of a human embryo. Should it be allowed — and if so, under what circumstances?

The meetings have been prompted by an explosion of interest in the powerful technology known as CRISPR/Cas9, which has brought unprecedented ease and precision to genetic engineering. This tool, and others like it, could be used to manipulate the DNA of embryos in a dish to learn about the earliest stages of human development. In theory, genome editing could also be used to 'fix' the mutations responsible for heritable human diseases. If done in embryos, this could prevent such diseases from being passed on.

The prospects have prompted widespread concern and discussion among scientists, ethicists and patients. Fears loom that if genome editing becomes acceptable in the clinic to stave off disease, it will inevitably come to be used to introduce, enhance or eliminate traits for non-medical reasons.

Ethicists are concerned that unequal access to such technologies could lead to genetic classism. And targeted changes to a person's genome would be passed on for generations, through the germ line (sperm and eggs), fuelling fears that embryo editing could have lasting, unintended consequences.

Adding to these concerns, the regulations in many countries have not kept pace with the science.

Nature has tried to capture a snapshot of the legal landscape by querying experts and government agencies in 12 countries with histories of well-funded biological research. The responses reveal a wide range of approaches. In some countries, experimenting with human embryos at all would be a criminal offence, whereas in others, almost anything would be permissible.

The Coming War On China

Counterpunch  |  I have spent two years making a documentary film, The Coming War on China, in which the evidence and witnesses warn that nuclear war is no longer a shadow, but a contingency.  The greatest build-up of American-led military forces since the Second World War is well under way. They are in the northern hemisphere, on the western borders of Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, confronting China.

The great danger this beckons is not news, or it is buried and distorted: a drumbeat of mainstream fake news that echoes the psychopathic fear embedded in public consciousness during much of the 20^th century.

Like the renewal of post-Soviet Russia, the rise of China as an economic power is declared an “existential threat” to the divine right of the United States to rule and dominate human affairs.

To counter this, in 2011 President Obama announced a “pivot to Asia”, which meant that almost two-thirds of US naval forces would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific by 2020. Today, more than 400 American military bases encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and, above all, nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, says one US strategist, “the perfect noose”.

A study by the RAND Corporation – which, since Vietnam, has planned America’s wars – is entitled, War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable.  Commissioned by the US Army, the authors evoke the cold war when RAND made notorious the catch cry of its chief strategist, Herman Kahn — “thinking the unthinkable”. Kahn’s book, On Thermonuclear War, elaborated a plan for a “winnable” nuclear war against the Soviet Union.

Today, his apocalyptic view is shared by those holding real power in the United States: the militarists and neo-conservatives in the executive, the Pentagon, the intelligence and “national security” establishment and Congress.

The current Secretary of Defense, Ashley Carter, a verbose provocateur, says US policy is to confront those “who see America’s dominance and want to take that away from us”.

For all the attempts to detect a departure in foreign policy, this is almost certainly the view of Donald Trump, whose abuse of China during the election campaign included that of “rapist” of the American economy. On 2 December, in a direct provocation of China, President-elect Trump spoke to the President of Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province of the mainland. Armed with American missiles, Taiwan is an enduring flashpoint between Washington and Beijing.

“The United States,” wrote Amitai Etzioni, professor of international Affairs at George Washington University, “is preparing for a war with China, a momentous decision that so far has failed to receive a thorough review from elected officials, namely the White House and Congress.”  This war would begin with a “blinding attack against Chinese anti-access facilities, including land and sea-based missile launchers … satellite and anti-satellite weapons”.

Is The U.S. Worried That China Will ‘Win’ With World’s First GMO Humans?

wakingscience |  Rejecting the inherent ability of the human immune system to naturally fight disease on its own, researchers out of China have taken nature to task by introducing a new set of genetic modification techniques that they claim will “enhance” the ability of the human body to attack and destroy cancer cells.

According to reports, the procedure involves injecting extracted immune cells with so-called “CRISPR” technology, which essentially reprograms the ways in which they handle foreign invaders. CRISPR combines a DNA-cutting enzyme with a specific molecular guide that, in essence, changes the way genes express themselves.

As reported in Nature, a team of scientists led by Lu You, an oncologist from Sichuan University in China, have already used CRISPR to “treat” a patient suffering from an aggressive form of lung cancer, which is part of a larger clinical trial currently taking place at West China Hospital.

Previous trials have taken place with similar technologies, but those pushing CRISPR claim that it’s simpler and more efficient than its predecessors. If eventually approved for commercial use, CRISPR would become the world’s first form of genetic modification for humans, opening a Pandora’s box of biotechnology that threatens to further syncretize man and machine.

You’s trial received ethical approval from the hospital board back in July, and so far the results have met his expectations. Immune cells extracted from the test patient’s blood were injected with CRISPR, which in effect disabled the gene codes for certain proteins including PD-1, which under normal circumstances halt’s the body’s immune response, allowing cancer cells to proliferate.

After the reprogramming process was complete, You and his team cultured these cells, replicated them into much larger quantities, and re-injected them back into the patient. Now they wait to see whether or not the genetically-modified (GM) genome successfully overcomes the patient’s metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer.

Old Triple-Dipper Still Out Hustling Gwalla in These Streets...,

NYTimes  |  Former Senator Bob Dole, acting as a foreign agent for the government of Taiwan, worked behind the scenes over the past six months to establish high-level contact between Taiwanese officials and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s staff, an outreach effort that culminated last week in an unorthodox telephone call between Mr. Trump and Taiwan’s president.

Mr. Dole, a lobbyist with the Washington law firm Alston & Bird, coordinated with Mr. Trump’s campaign and the transition team to set up a series of meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and officials in Taiwan, according to disclosure documents filed last week with the Justice Department. Mr. Dole also assisted in successful efforts by Taiwan to include language favorable to it in the Republican Party platform, according to the documents.

Mr. Dole’s firm received $140,000 from May to October for the work, the forms said.

The disclosures suggest that President-elect Trump’s decision to take a call from the president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, was less a ham-handed diplomatic gaffe and more the result of a well-orchestrated plan by Taiwan to use the election of a new president to deepen its relationship with the United States — with an assist from a seasoned lobbyist well versed in the machinery of Washington.

“They’re very optimistic,” Mr. Dole said of the Taiwanese in an interview on Tuesday. “They see a new president, a Republican, and they’d like to develop a closer relationship.”

The United States’ One China policy is nearly four decades old, Mr. Dole said, referring to the policy established in 1979 that denies Taiwan official diplomatic recognition but maintains close contacts, promoting Taiwan’s democracy and selling it advanced military equipment.

Negative ROI of Team America World Police

thearchdruidreport |  History shows that there are two ways that empires end. Their most common fate involves clinging like grim death to their imperial status until it drags them down. Spain’s great age of overseas empire ended that way, with Spain plunging into a long era of economic disarray and civil war. At least it maintained its national unity; the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires both finished their imperial trajectories by being partitioned, as of course did the Soviet Union. There are worse examples; I’m thinking here of the Assyrian Empire of the ancient Middle East, which ceased to exist completely—its nationhood, ethnicity, and language dissolving into those of its neighbors—once it fell.

Then there’s the other option, the one chosen by the Chinese in the fifteenth century and Great Britain in the twentieth. Both nations had extensive overseas empires, and both walked away from them, carrying out a staged withdrawal from imperial overreach. Both nations not only survived the process but came through with their political and cultural institutions remarkably intact. This latter option, with all its benefits, is still available to the United States.

A staged withdrawal of the sort just described would of course be done step by step, giving our allies ample time to step up to the plate and carry the costs of their own defense. Those regions that have little relevance to US national interests, such as the Indian Ocean basin, would see the first round of withdrawals, while more important regions such as Europe and the northwest Pacific would be later on the list. The withdrawal wouldn’t go all the way back to our borders by any means; a strong presence in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific basins and a pivot to our own “near abroad” would be needed, but those would also be more than adequate to maintain our national security.

Meanwhile, the billions upon billions of dollars a year that would be saved could be put to work rebuilding our national infrastructure and economy, with enough left over for a Marshall Plan for Mexico—the most effective way to reduce illegal immigration to the United States, after all, is to help make sure that citizens of the countries near us have plenty of jobs at good wages where they already live. Finally, since the only glue holding the Russo-Chinese alliance together is their mutual opposition to US hegemony, winding up our term as global policeman will let Russia, China and Iran get back to contending with each other rather than with us.

Cancel This Wasteful Crap!!!

Politifact |  As the trade publication Defense One has noted, the two current Air Force Ones -- a modified version of a Boeing 747-200 aircraft known as VC-25 -- were purchased under President Ronald Reagan and were delivered in 1990 under President George H.W. Bush. With Boeing closing down its 747-200 production line 24 years ago, spare parts for the two current planes have become hard to find. And the plane is approaching the end of its expected 30-year life.

So during his second term, President Barack Obama ordered a replacement fleet. (By tradition, a president does not order planes that he will expect to use personally.) Since the old model of the basic aircraft isn’t being made any longer, a new one had to be created. The new model will be based on the Boeing 747-8, with four engines and two floors.

Trump’s tweet referenced one plane, but the Air Force One program will actually produce two planes, not one. That allows one to undergo maintenance while the other one is available.

Of course, Air Force One is more than just a plane. It’s also a mobile command center, with state-of-the-art communications and safety features.

The plane must be able to refuel while flying, and the president and his staff need to have communications capabilities equivalent to what is in the Oval Office -- secure video conferences, classified computer access, and nuclear-strike controls. It also needs robust defensive systems such as missile evasion.

The new planes will be "both the fastest and longest commercial airliner in the world," according to military.com. They will be able to fly 7,730 nautical miles -- nearly 1,000 more than the current planes -- and will produce 16 tons less of carbon dioxide on a typical flight, according to the company.

Unsustainable Wastefulness of the Unspeakable Parasite

WaPo |  The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.

Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.

The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology.

The study was produced last year by the Defense Business Board, a federal advisory panel of corporate executives, and consultants from McKinsey and Company. Based on reams of personnel and cost data, their report revealed for the first time that the Pentagon was spending almost a quarter of its $580 billion budget on overhead and core business operations such as accounting, human resources, logistics and property management.

All Fun and Games and Profit - Till It Backfires On You

theatlantic |  In response to my article, “Are Jews White?,” some people, primarily on Twitter, have voiced concerns about the headline.

• Some seem to read it as a dog-whistle to white nationalists who seek to show that Jews are part of what they regard as a non-white, inferior racial group, thus reinforcing tropes of anti-Semitism.
• Others seem to see it as an earnest questioning of whether Jews belong in the “white” racial category, thus promoting the use of racial categories.
• And still others claim the headline reinforces old stereotypes within the Jewish community—specifically, a blindness to the experiences of Jews of non-Ashkenazi or non-European descent, many of whom might not self-identify or be seen as white by other people in the American context.

We’re keeping the headline, and I want to explain why.

“Race” is a historically contingent and subjective category that is used to justify violence against minority groups. I specifically wrote about American Jews because their experiences—which are incredibly diverse and varied—show the hypocrisies and limits of these racial categories. Looking at the historical experiences of this one particular group, and the present-day tensions its faces, is a means of critiquing the way “whiteness” is used to delineate who is and isn’t considered powerful and valuable in society.

When I was first looking into writing this article, I worried that the question might be stale. A number of scholars, including Emory’s Eric Goldstein, whom I interviewed; UCLA’s Karen Brodkin; and, most recently, Princeton’s Mitchell Duneier have written about the way Jews relate to whiteness, from a variety of different angles. I wondered whether this debate would seem too esoteric and niche—a conversation of interest only to a small group of Jews and scholars, but effectively irrelevant outside of those circles.

The reaction I’ve gotten has been surprising, and shows that this is clearly not the case. Certain parts of the Jewish community are having conversations along these lines; others seem stunned that this is a question at all. A lot of people seem to feel strongly that talking about Jews in terms of race—even to challenge the notion that Jews could ever fit neatly into a single racial category, which is what my article is about—is thought-provoking or, at worst, dangerous.

Rancher, Plumber, Birther, Cherokee Ending Tribal Detente

Reuters |  Native American reservations cover just 2 percent of the United States, but they may contain about a fifth of the nation’s oil and gas, along with vast coal reserves. 

Now, a group of advisors to President-elect Donald Trump on Native American issues wants to free those resources from what they call a suffocating federal bureaucracy that holds title to 56 million acres of tribal lands, two chairmen of the coalition told Reuters in exclusive interviews. 

The group proposes to put those lands into private ownership - a politically explosive idea that could upend more than century of policy designed to preserve Indian tribes on U.S.-owned reservations, which are governed by tribal leaders as sovereign nations. 

The tribes have rights to use the land, but they do not own it. They can drill it and reap the profits, but only under regulations that are far more burdensome than those applied to private property. 

"We should take tribal land away from public treatment," said Markwayne Mullin, a Republican U.S. Representative from Oklahoma and a Cherokee tribe member who is co-chairing Trump’s Native American Affairs Coalition. "As long as we can do it without unintended consequences, I think we will have broad support around Indian country." 

Trump’s transition team did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

The plan dovetails with Trump’s larger aim of slashing regulation to boost energy production. It could deeply divide Native American leaders, who hold a range of opinions on the proper balance between development and conservation. 

The proposed path to deregulated drilling - privatizing reservations - could prove even more divisive. Many Native Americans view such efforts as a violation of tribal self-determination and culture.

"Our spiritual leaders are opposed to the privatization of our lands, which means the commoditization of the nature, water, air we hold sacred," said Tom Goldtooth, a member of both the Navajo and the Dakota tribes who runs the Indigenous Environmental Network. "Privatization has been the goal since colonization – to strip Native Nations of their sovereignty." 

Reservations governed by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs are intended in part to keep Native American lands off the private real estate market, preventing sales to non-Indians. An official at the Bureau of Indian Affairs did not respond to a request for comment. 

The legal underpinnings for reservations date to treaties made between 1778 and 1871 to end wars between indigenous Indians and European settlers. Tribal governments decide how land and resources are allotted among tribe members. 

Leaders of Trump’s coalition did not provide details of how they propose to allocate ownership of the land or mineral rights - or to ensure they remained under Indian control.

This Election Marked the End of America's Racial Detente

thefederalist |  There is a misconception that political correctness was responsible for the breakdown of the racial détente. This is incorrect. Political correctness, as loose a term as it is, was the means by which we continually renegotiated the terms of the deal. After all, the primary rules for whites had exactly to do with what was acceptable to say.

Privilege theory and the concept of systemic racism dealt the death blow to the détente. In embracing these theories, minorities and progressives broke their essential rule, which was to not run around calling everyone a racist. As these theories took hold, every white person became a racist who must confess that racism and actively make amends. Yet if the white woman who teaches gender studies at Barnard with the Ben Shahn drawings in her office is a racist, what chance do the rest of have?

Within the past few years, as privilege theory took hold, many whites began to think that no matter what they did they would be called racist, because, in fact, that was happening. Previously there were rules. They shifted at times, but if adhered to they largely protected one from the charge of racism. It’s like the Morrissey lyric: “is evil just something you are, or something you do.” Under the détente, racism was something you did; under privilege theory it is something you are.

That shift, from carefully directed accusations of racism for direct actions to more general charges of unconscious racism, took away the carrot for whites. Worse, it led to a defensiveness and feeling of victimization that make today’s whites in many ways much more tribal than they were 30 years ago. White people are constantly told to examine their whiteness, not to think of themselves as racially neutral. That they did, but the result was not introspection that led to reconciliation, it was a decision that white people have just as much right to think of themselves as a special interest group as anyone else.

Blame and Destroy Whitey 

The unfortunate place where we now find ourselves is one in which blatant attacks on white people, often from white people, are driving them further into a tribal cocoon. Samantha Bee’s awful and irresponsible berating of white women as the evil force behind Trump’s victory, while condescendingly describing magical people of color as the only ones who can save us, is a clear example of where white defensiveness and victimization are coming from.

Furthermore, the ever-present drumbeat from the Left that every conservative victory is the death throes of bad, old white people who are about to be swept away by waves of brown immigration is making many whites dig in. On a certain level, how can you blame them? They are explicitly being told that their values and way of life are under the sword. How do we expect them to react?

The détente was far from perfect. It often allowed quieter racism to lurk unchallenged. In some ways, it was a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. But Band-Aids have a role to play in treating bullet wounds—the body heals itself better when the wound is clean and free from infection. This is true of discourse’s ability to heal our body politic, as well. Under the détente, there was still racism, but Steve Bannon, whose publication Breitbart has traded in vile explicit racism, could never have been considered for White House chief of staff.

Violence is the Highest Moral Imperative: Everything Else is Self-Calming Conversation....,

theatlantic |  Stigmatization and appeals to moral rightness are among the most effective ways to seize power when dispossessed of it. But also, calling out racism aids its victims in understanding the powers at play in their own lives, and is the foundation of solidarity for many people of color. There is a reason why movements like the civil-rights movement and Black Lives Matter that have had dramatic impacts on the course of American history have developed around rather vivid and unflinching call-outs of white supremacy and racism, even leveled against their own white members.

The movements and empowerment built around calling out racism are what give activists the vocabulary to disassemble it, regardless of whether they choose to use the tactics of civility in individual conversations or not. The ultimate irony of Drum’s objection to expanding definitions of white supremacy is that it took decades of open emotional appeals by black people to persuade—and perhaps stigmatize—the country into believing that segregation, disenfranchisement, and other actions of “real” racists, were in fact racist. Given the objections to incivility that Wells, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other black leaders faced generations ago, it is rather clear that incivility watered the rhetorical ground on which both sides of the debate over racism today stand.

Those concerns among communities of color seem to muddle Singal’s conclusion, focused as it is on psychological rather than sociological analysis, and on the reactions of recalcitrant white people rather than the transformative development of people of color. Maybe, in a limited sense, Singal is right: White Americans can be persuaded to join the liberal project by individual interlocutors jettisoning identity politics and abandoning moralizing about racism. But maybe incivility can be used to empower people of color, establish social penalties for racism, and change social mores and modes of mass communication, which all in the aggregate could push white society towards inclusion and away from bias. Or perhaps calling out racism just helps people of color cope with racism.

Civility is not the highest moral imperative—especially in response to perceived injustices—nor is hand-holding and guiding reluctant people to confront their bigotry gently. American history is full of fights, including the ongoing struggle for civil rights, that have been as fierce as they are ultimately effective. Civility is overrated.