News bits: Getting info from government via FOIA requests; Vaccine crackpottery works

One of the most potent tools that federal and state government corruption fighters have is freedom of information laws. Commonly called FOIA requests, these laws allow anyone to ask for information of specified issues. Nate Jones, the head of FOIA requests for the WaPo writes about his work in a current article, I find documents officials want to keep hidden. Here’s how. In the comments to that article, Jones linked to an earlier article about his work, RETIRED U.S. GENERALS, ADMIRALS TAKE TOP JOBS WITH SAUDI CROWN PRINCE, which comments:

More than 500 retired U.S. military personnel — including scores of generals and admirals — have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments, mostly in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression, according to a Washington Post investigation.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for the Defense Ministry since 2016. The ministry is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, who U.S. intelligence agencies say approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist, as part of a brutal crackdown on dissent.

Congress permits retired troops as well as reservists to work for foreign governments if they first obtain approval from their branch of the armed forces and the State Department. But the U.S. government has fought to keep the hirings secret. For years, it withheld virtually all information about the practice, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake.

To shed light on the matter, The Post sued the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the State Department in federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). After a two-year legal battle, The Post obtained more than 4,000 pages of documents, including case files for about 450 retired soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. The Post submitted its first FOIA requests for the documents in May 2020. After getting little or no response from the military services and the State Department, The Post filed a lawsuit in federal court in April 2021. The WaPo's legal complaint is here.

That's just an FYI about FOIA and governmental refusal to obey transparency law when it is inconvenient, embarrassing or reveals evidence of corruption, crime and/or treason. Pages 1-3 of the WaPo's complaint:

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The research journal Vaccine writes:

The most commonly reported reason for not having been boosted was a prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (39.5%), followed by concern about vaccine side effects (31.5%), believing that the booster would not provide additional protection over the vaccines already received (28.6%), and concern about booster safety (23.4%) or that it would not protect from SARS-CoV-2 infection (23.1%).

Improvement in booster uptake is necessary for optimal public health in the United States. The development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 occurred at an unprecedented speed, but vaccine uptake remains among the greatest current public health challenges as updated boosters continue to be developed and made available to the public.  

In September 2022, bivalent boosters were recommended for everyone 12 years old and above and since December 2022, they have been approved in the United States for all people aged 6 months and above. However, as of May 2023, less than 20% of eligible persons had received an updated booster, representing a critical public health challenge.

There you have it. Lies and crackpottery about COVID mRNA vaccines have poisoned the minds of about 80% of the American public. Truth just doesn't have the impact that a juicy fear or distrust-inducing lie or false conspiracy theory has. That seems to be about as true in health care as it is in politics.

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Global warming update: The AP writes:

September sizzled to records and was so much warmer 

than average scientists call it ‘mind-blowing’

After a summer of record-smashing heat, warming somehow got even worse in September as Earth set a new mark for how far above normal temperatures were, the European climate agency reported Thursday.

Last month’s average temperature was 0.93 degrees Celsius (1.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1991-2020 average for September. That’s the warmest margin above average for a month in 83 years of records kept by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

“It’s just mind-blowing really,” said Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo. “Never seen anything like that in any month in our records.”

But remember, as the CARRRP* likes to point out, it's just the weather, not the climate.

* Corrupt authoritarian radical right Republican Party (corruption just needs to be in the mix)

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Religion update: The AP reports:

In many countries around the world, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people who are nonbelievers or unaffiliated with any organized religion. These so-called “nones" — atheists, agnostics, or nothing in particular — comprise 30% or more of the adult population in the United States and Canada, as well as numerous European countries. . . . . [We] also look at regions where openly being a none is rare or even dangerous.

The AP report on the US:

The decades-long rise of the nones — a diverse, hard-to-summarize group — is one of the most talked about phenomena in U.S. religion. They are reshaping America's religious landscape as we know it.

In U.S. religion today, “the most important story without a shadow of a doubt is the unbelievable rise in the share of Americans who are nonreligious,” said Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University and author of “The Nones,” a book on the phenomenon.

The nones account for a large portion of Americans, as shown by the 30% of U.S. adults who claim no religious affiliation in a survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Many embrace a range of spiritual beliefs — from God, prayer and heaven to karma, reincarnation, astrology or energy in crystals.

“They are definitely not as turned off to religion as atheists and agnostics are,” Burge said. “They practice their own type of spirituality, many of them.”

Dulak still draws inspiration from nature.

Data like this is what drives the most of aggression and extremism of the American Christian nationalism movement. The CN wealth and power movement sees an existential threat in the nones, agnostics and atheists. This atheist, i.e., me, sees an existential threat in the CN movement, but not in honest, tolerant, organized religion. I'm an outlier among outliers.

Also note that other research into this indicates that the nones, agnostics and atheists amount to about 50% of the American public. It depends on how one words the questions and what factors are taken into account. Some nones claim to be Catholic or protestant to avoid social ostracism in their communities.