News bits: Abortion wars in Texas, etc.

Fundamentalist Christian zealots 

checking sewage for abortion medication

Antiabortion zealots are continuing to refine ways to track down and report evidence of abortions in any way their zealot minds and hearts can come up with. Like with the presence of COVID, sewage can be tested for the presence of abortion pills being taken. That sounds nutty, but rabid antiabortionists are zealots. Nutty is not a concern. The WaPo writes:

The largest anitabortion organization in Texas has created a team of advocates assigned to investigate citizens who might be distributing abortion pills illegally.

Students for Life of America, a leading national antiabortion group, is making plans to systematically test the water Erin Brockovich-style in several large U.S. cities, searching for contaminants they say result from medication abortion.

And Republican lawmakers in Texas are preparing to introduce legislation that would require internet providers to block abortion pill websites in the same way they can censor child pornography.

Nearly six months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, triggering abortion bans in more than a dozen states, many antiabortion advocates fear that the growing availability of illegal abortion pills has undercut their landmark victory. Now they are grasping for new ways to crack down on those breaking the law.

“Everyone who is trafficking these pills should be in jail for trafficking,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who has started to speak with Republican governors about the prevalence of illegal abortion pill networks. “It hasn’t happened, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.”

So far, criminal penalties are only for people who facilitate illegal abortions, but not for the pregnant women. The WaPo reports that for much of the South and Midwest, abortion ban violations is a crime punishable by at least several years in prison. Note the phrase at least. The jail time under such laws is mandatory, not optional. That is how theocratic American Christian fundamentalism deals self-righteously but lovingly with sin. This is the face of an emerging vengeful, bigoted American Christian theocracy. 

Abortion is yet another issue that is tearing America apart in the radical right’s vicious, no-compromise culture wars. This war isn’t over by a long shot. We are just in the middle part of the war of secularism and secular law vs. Christian Sharia law and Christian Taliban-imposed theocracy.

From the vicious liars and crackpots files: QAnon puts 

 a new poison ingredient in its toxic stew

After the weak showing of Trump and a decrease in his presence after the midterm elections, QAnon has been somewhat adrift. It is casting about for new poison ingredient to spice up the vicious crackpot stew it likes to serve the public. The WaPo writes:

Twitter owner Elon Musk’s boosting of far-right memes and grievances has injected new energy into the jumbled set of conspiracy theories known as QAnon, a fringe movement that Twitter and other social networks once banned as too extreme.

And on Tuesday, [Musk] tweeted a message with an emoji that many people interpreted as saying “follow the white rabbit,” possibly harking back to “Alice in Wonderland” or “The Matrix.” But many QAnon believers saw the rabbit as a wink to one of their foundational icons, a secret indicator shared in one of QAnon’s earliest online prophesies, known as “drops.”

🐇

The White rabbit emoji?

Musk mocked the suggestion that the tweet could be interpreted negatively but offered no clarification. Among QAnon promoters, though, the message was clear: Musk was speaking to them.

One QAnon-amplifying account on Telegram with 118,000 followers, known for spreading a bogus claim that Russian fighters were targeting “U.S. biolabs” in Ukraine, said the tweet was only his latest flirtation with QAnon ideology. 

“Elon called out Fauci for creating [covid-19], [is] calling out the woke hive mind, is paving the path for 2020 to be nullified and Trump reinstated … and now he’s directly quoting Q,” the account said. “Elon is an Anon,” the account added, using the term QAnon disciples call themselves.

Logan Strain, a conspiracy theory researcher who uses the name Travis View on the podcast “QAnon Anonymous,” said Musk’s “conspiracist dog whistles” have galvanized a group that was fractured after 2020, when major social networks including Twitter started banning QAnon accounts and Trump lost the White House.

“He’s responding to and validating a rogues’ gallery of right-wing conspiracists … [and] going through a checklist of far-right grievances in a way that has certainly energized them,” Strain said. For QAnon believers, “what they view as a major battlefield in the information war just opened up again.”  

Musk has never explicitly supported QAnon, and some of his closest allies say they doubt he believes some of the wilder things he says online. One person in Musk’s inner circle, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Musk’s views, said he uses the claims merely to win the internet’s most prized currency: attention. “He wants to muck it up,” the person said.

But in QAnon circles, Musk’s ambiguity and plausible deniability have been seen as a strategic way for him to subtly push their dogma into the mainstream. A QAnon-boosting account with 165,000 followers on Truth Social, Trump’s social network, wrote Monday: “At this rate, Elon is on pace to start posting Q drops to millions of normies and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop him.”

It looks like Musk is positioning Twitter to be the main online source for radical right crackpottery, lies, slanders and other anti-democratic, anti-inconvenient truth dark free speech. The trick for him is to do that without alienating too many big advertisers. This is another example of the core capitalist moral, profit talks and everything else walks. 

Among some other good things, everything else includes democracy, inconvenient truth and majority public opinion. For Musk and his now morally and socially rotted Twitter, the goal is to keep those ad revenues flowing. Given that big advertisers are capitalist like Musk, they will try to find a way to continue advertising if there’s insufficient public backlash to force a change. 

It looks like us normies, along with all the crackpotties, are going to get bombarded by a tsunami of Q drops from the hellscape called Twitter. Total bummer.

Now I regret having bought a Tesla. I didn’t see this coming. My mistake.

From the constantly moving goalpost files: Russia is 

running out of bombs to pulverize Ukraine?

For months, reports have been coming out from Western sources saying that Russia is running out of the tens of thousands of tons of bombs needed to pulverize the Ukraine into dust. (lots of  'of' in that sentence, by golly) The Guardian says it again:

Russia faces a “critical shortage” of artillery shells and Moscow’s ability to conduct ground operations in Ukraine is “rapidly diminishing” as a result, Britain’s armed forces chief has said.

Adm Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of defence staff, told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank on Wednesday that the Kremlin had only planned for a short period to subjugate Ukraine, and has instead found itself embroiled in a conflict lasting nearly 10 months.

“So, let me tell Putin tonight what his own generals and ministers are probably afraid to say,” the military chief said. “Russia faces a critical shortage of artillery munitions. This means that their ability to conduct successful offensive ground operations is rapidly diminishing.  

The admiral’s statement is the latest in a line of similar assertions by western and Ukrainian leaders and officials, who have been counting the number of missiles fired against known stockpiles – although there has been evidence of Russia making fresh munitions as the war has gone on.

This reporting seems to ring false? Russia can build, barter oil and buy with cash more bombs to drop on Ukraine. Why would the bombs run out? Humans seem to have an endless capacity and enthusiasm to slaughter humans. It would be nice if the running out of bombs story was true. But is it?