There's a great display of rhododendrons right now at the garden. The early ones have big seed pods. It's just past the fire station off Campbell Airstrip Road. Same parking lot as the Save High School.
And, of course, there are plenty of other things blooming as well. I try to stop by at least once a week on one of my bike rides so I can check out the every changing selection of plants to buy.
I think this is a globe flower, not quite in bloom yet.
And below are Martagon Lilies.
I went to the Assembly Homeless Public Hearing today. There were about 40 people in the audience and about 25% were wearing masks most of the time.
Let me highlight what I took away from the meeting. These were the three issues that seemed to be problems that were raised for the Assembly to try to resolve or at least understand.
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| Click on Image to Enlarge |
These aren't problems unique to this data base. Competing interests for which data to include, how to integrate the data, and usefulness to end users are always problematic. And the more you add the slower it all gets and harder to use.
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| Again, click to enlarge |
An email [it's copied below] for Alaska Redistricting Board update subscribers today says that they have worked out an agreement with Tufts University for maps making tools for the public to use. [You can subscribe to the Board's updates here.]
The 2020 detailed census data are not out yet, but people can start practicing with the 2010 data now. Below is the email with a link to the software and two example maps.
I haven't tried this yet because I wanted to get it out to people immediately. For anyone interested in mapmaking or in politics, this is a must. It's a good opportunity to get non-political tech people paired up with non-tech political people.
I hope gamers see this as a real life game and that they can keep the Redistricting Board accountable by showing them that better maps (maps that meet all the Federal and State requirements more efficiently and equitably) can be made. When there were challenges to the Redistricting Board's maps in the 2010 round, maps were submitted to the courts to show that better maps could be made.
As I looked at the example maps below I realized there are some requirements for valid districts that mappers need to know. Here's an early post from the 2010 Redistricting round that details some of the Federal and State requirements. For instance,
The Federal Constitutional Redistricting Principles are, briefly:
- A. "One Person, One Vote". . ."legislative seats must be apportioned exclusively on the basis of population and the populations of the respective districts must be substantially equal."
- B. "Districts of as nearly as equal size as practicable. Maximum overall deviation of the no more than 10%, (i.e. plus or minus 5%) Deviation is the measure of how much a district or plan varies from the ideal. Good faith efforts to make deviations as small as practicable must be made.
There are forty House seats. Each has to be as close to equal as possible.
The official 2020 total Alaska population which is 733,391 divided by 40 = 18,334.775.
But it's impossible to have a fraction of people in every district, so it's necessary to have some deviance. . Ideally, each district deviates from 18,335 by less than 1% (That would be 183 people).
But while mappers have to get all the districts equal, they also have requirements for compactness and for "relatively socio-economically integrated areas" That's why some districts can deviate up to 10%, though that is discouraged. Urban districts with lots of population should be under 1% deviation if possible.
So here's an enlargement of the first map below. It's pointing to "percentage of deviation from the ideal" That should make sense to you now, but let me repeat the details again.
"Good morning subscribers,Thanks for your continued interest in Alaska’s redistricting process. Census data for 2020 is expected in late August and the Board is looking forward to getting to work. Drawing maps will be challenging and public feedback is an essential part of the process.One of the ways you can provide input is by sending the Board your map ideas. To facilitate this the Board is working with The Redistricting Lab at Tufts University to deploy a customized, web-based, publicly available map drawing tool. This platform is available now for your beta testing at:REMINDER: the data and blocks shown are from the 2010 Census; the 2020 data will be uploaded in late August – we’ll send out a notice at that time. Any maps you create until then will be based on 2010 population data and so are not appropriate for formal submission to the Board.The web mapping tool uses a "paint brush" concept (for coloring) to shade in areas you wish to assign to a district, which are denoted by 40 individual colors. This customized version allows painting at the Census block level, the most precise level of geography available and the same one which the Board will use to draw new legislative districts.As you "paint" a district, the population will be dynamically totaled under the Population tab. To assist you, under the Data Layers tab you'll find tools to overlay the state with existing legislative district boundaries, incorporated city limits, borough boundaries and school districts.If you would like to view population distribution you may make selections to shade Census blocks with population density under Data Layers -> Demographics -> Population.The system supports undo/redo, and allows you to "lock already drawn districts". This enables drawing perfectly adjoining districts by respecting blocks you have already colored into a previous district.Use the Save/Update button to save your work, share plans with others (copy and send the URL) or submit directly through the website for Board consideration (once we have gone live with 2020 data, expected at the end of August).Please take a little time to experiment with the tool so we can identify any bugs prior to our public launch. Your feedback would be appreciated; simply reply to this email.Thanks,Peter TorkelsonExecutive DirectorAlaska Redistricting BoardP.S. Here are a few tool tips to get you started:" [Below are the two example maps that were at the end of the email. You can enlarge them considerably by clicking on them.]
Finally made it to the Muldoon Farmers' Market Saturday. It's a little smaller and has fewer venders than when I was here last in 2019. Maybe there will be more venders as the summer crops ripen.
Still, I got to buy veggies from Cherry, who's from Myanmar.
She spent something like ten or twelve years in refugee camps - first and longest, in Thailand. And then in Malaysia. She was in the refugee camp near Maesot, Thailand which I passed on the way to and from Umphang where one of my former students is the headmaster of the local school. He tried to take us into that huge camp, which sprawls across a mountainside, but the officials he knew there were away that day. Here's a picture I took from a post back in 2007. They said 25,000 refugees from Myanmar were kept there.
Here are some posts from 2018 and2019 that feature the market. And yes, by September there are a lot more fresh vegetables for sale.
There's also a great playground here for the kids.
[Overview: basically there's
1. And introduction about how perilous the times are
2. A list of the Dirty Dozen
3. Comments here and there about the need to adapt our legal thinking about Free Speech and the internet to be able to stop clear, dangerous, disinformation
4. Some links to sites that offer suggestions for how to do this - though I can't say that I found anything that has anything close to a magic bullet. At least you can get the sense that people are working on this.]
The Center for Countering Digital Hate posted a study March 24, 2021 called The Disinformation Dozen. The first point in the executive summary is:
"1. The Disinformation Dozen are twelve anti-vaxxers who play leading roles in spreading digital misinformation about Covid vaccines. They were selected because they have large numbers of followers, produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or have seen rapid growth of their social media accounts in the last two months."
I'm a firm believer in the First Amendment protections for free speech. But there comes a point when people say things that do significant damage. We have libel and slander laws. We have hate speech laws. All put limits on speech.
Perilous Times
Right now we are in a battle. On one side is democracy and the rule of law and knowledge and action based on science. On the other side we have the rule of power - based on personal opinion, misinformation, religion, playing on people's emotional weak points.
The Senate did not impeach Trump after the insurrection. Half the Senators still won't publicly acknowledge that Trump lost the election. The GOP refuses to take action against treason. Their personal power and wealth is more important than the survival of democracy. Plus the Monied Right have given us a Supreme Court now that may well support moving to an autocratic theocracy.
US citizens tend to believe their democracy is immortal. It's not. It's being severely tested now. What happens in the next few years will change the world for better or worse. There's no guarantee those on the side of freedom and equality will be the victors in this new civil war.
We must adapt our laws to deal with threats that the internet enables. I don't have the answers, but I do have the questions.
From what I can tell, money is a factor in all of these cases. Tat a minimum they have lots of followers on social media, so ad revenue is an issue. And for a number (if not all) of these folks, there are side hustles - video tapes, alternative medicines, etc. - that bring in a lot of money. Probably speaking engagements add up too.
I'm guessing that for some, the money is the main draw. I don't know how many of these people believe what they are saying. We know that outrageousness generates clicks. But I'm sure a few of these despicable people have convinced themselves they are speaking the truth.
The spreading of disinformation is a key weapon in the arsenal of autocracy.
The List
These are the 12 (really 13) people they Center for Digital Hate identified. The report also has examples of the kinds of post they distribute.
[All these profiles are from Center for Countering Digital Hate a study The Disinformation Dozen. [The pics of the perps didn't transfer over to here and it's more work than I want to do to redo them all, so for the pics I recommend visiting the original source linked two lines up. It also includes examples of their dirty work.]]
1 Joseph Mercola
Facebook: Active
Twitter: Active
Instagram:Active
Joseph Mercola is a successful anti-vaccine entrepreneur, peddling dietary supplementsand false cures as alternatives to vaccines. Mercola’s combined personal social mediaaccounts have around 3.6 million followers.
2 Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Facebook: Active
Twitter: Active
Instagram: Part Removed
Kennedy is a long-standing anti-vaxxer, and his Children’s Health Defense (CHD) hosts a range of anti-vaccine articles.
Kennedy’s account was banned from Instagram on 8 February, yet his Facebook Page remains active, as does the CHD’s Instagram page.
Kennedy and Children’s Health Defense released a film in mid-March targeting members of the Black and Latino communities with tailored anti-vaccine messages. Facebook and Twitter continue to allow him a platform to promote these false claims.
3 Ty & Charlene Bollinger
Facebook: Active
Twitter: Active
Instagram: Active
Ty and Charlene Bollinger are anti-vax entrepreneurs who run a network of accounts that market books and DVDs about vaccines, cancer and COVID-19. In 2020 they launched the United Medical Freedom Super PAC ahead of last year’s United States elections.
The Bollingers have promoted the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates plans to inject everyone with microchips as part of a vaccination program.
“You’re going to love owning the platinum package,” Charlene Bollinger tells viewers, as a picture of a DVD set, booklets and other products flashes on screen. Her husband, Ty, promises a “director’s cut edition,” and over 100 hours of additional footage.
Click the orange button, his wife says, “to join in the fight for health freedom” — or more specifically, to pay $199 to $499 for the Bollingers’ video series, “The Truth About Vaccines 2020.”
The Bollingers are part of an ecosystem of for-profit companies, nonprofit groups, YouTube channels and other social media accounts that stoke fear and distrust of COVID-19 vaccines, resorting to what medical experts say is often misleading and false information.
Wikipedia says he's a former body builder with no medical training.
4 Sherri Tenpenny
Facebook:Part Active
Twitter: Active
Instagram: Active
Sherri Tenpenny is an osteopath physician who spreads anti-vaccine sentiment and false claims about the safety and efficacy of masks via her social media channels. While her Facebook account has been removed, her Twitter and Instagram are still intact.
"Since 2017, Tenpenny and her business partner, Matthew Hunt, have taught a six-week, $623 course titled "Mastering Vaccine Info Boot Camp" designed to "sow seeds of doubt" regarding public health information. During the course, Tenpenny explains her views on the immune system and vaccines, and Hunt instructs participants on how best to use persuasion tactics in conversation to communicate the information.[9]
Tenpenny promotes anti-vaccination videos sold by Ty and Charlene Bollinger and receives a commission whenever her referrals result in a sale,[10] a practice known as affiliate marketing.[11]"
5 Rizza Islam
Facebook: Removed
Twitter: Active
Instagram: Active
Rizza Islam’s anti-vaccine posts aim to spread vaccine hesitancy amongst African Americans. While Facebook removed Rizza Islam’s Facebook Page in February, he continues to post anti-vaccine messages from his Instagram and Twitter accounts.
From Wikipedia entry on the World Literacy Program of which Rizza Islam was Executive Director.
World Literacy Crusade (WLC) is a non-profit organisation formed in 1992 by the Rev. Alfreddie Johnson to fight illiteracy, and supported by the Church of Scientology.[1][2] The group uses "study technologies" and "drug rehabilitation technologies" developed by L. Ron Hubbard, the Church's founder.[3][4] It has been characterized as a "Scientology front group",[5][6] and has been promoted by celebrity Scientologists such as Isaac Hayes and Anne Archer.[1]
Legal issues
The LA Times reported in 2008 that about 100 protestors gathered outside of the World Literacy Crusade offices after being sold fake low cost housing vouchers for as much as $1500. Officials at WLC admitted to selling the free vouchers, but stated they did not know they were fake.[7] The Compton, Californian offices of the WLC housed a drug detox program using “dry heat sweat therapy”.[8] In 2015 the executive director of WLC, Hanan Islam, Ronnie Steven Islam (AKA Rizza Islam) and her adult children were arrested for Medi-Cal fraud and insurance fraud for billing for this detox program.[9][10]
The Anti-Defamation League cites his anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
6 Rashid Buttar
Facebook: Active
Twitter: Active
Instagram: Active
Rashid Buttar is an osteopath physician and conspiracy theorist known for videos posted to his YouTube channel.
Rashid Buttar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rashid Buttar
Nationality American
Education Des Moines University
Occupation Physician
Known for Conspiracy theories,
Anti-vaccine views
Rashid Ali Buttar (born January 20, 1966) is an American osteopathic physician from Charlotte, North Carolina, also known as a conspiracy theory and vaccine hesitancy proponent.[1] He is known for his controversial use of chelation therapy for numerous conditions, including autism and cancer.[2] He has twice been reprimanded by the North Carolina Board of Medical Examiners for unprofessional conduct[3][4] and cited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for illegal marketing of unapproved and adulterated drugs.[5][6][7]
7 Erin Elizabeth
Facebook: Active
Twitter: Active
Instagram: Active
Erin Elizabeth, partner to Joseph Mercola, runs Health Nut News, a prominent ‘alternative health’ website with affiliated newsletter and social media accounts.
8 Sayer Ji
Facebook: Active
Twitter: Removed
Instagram: Part Removed
Sayer Ji runs a popular alternative health website, GreenMedInfo.com, and affiliated social media accounts that promote pseudoscience and anti-vaccine misinformation. Despite his GreenMedInfo accounts being removed by Twitter and Instagram, it is still available on Facebook.
An article on GreenMedInfo.com falsely claimed that "The FDA knows that rushed-to- market COVID-19 vaccines may cause a wide range of life-threatening side effects, including death."
"Ji obtained a BA in philosophy from Rutgers University in 1995.[2] He has previously owned an organic food market in Bonita Springs.[3][4]
He is the former editor of the defunct International Journal of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine [5] and a member of the advisory board and a former vice-president of the National Health Federation, a lobby group opposing government regulation of alternative health practitioners and supplements retailers.[5][6][7][8]
Ji became popular promoting common alternative medicine beliefs, such as enthusiasm for ancient healing practices and the claim that the appearance of some foods is meant to indicate which organ of the human body they are meant to cure.[5] While he always invited his readers to be suspicious of governments, health authorities and pharmaceutical companies, during the COVID-19 pandemic Ji joined other proponents of alternative medicine in embracing conspiracy theories about allegedly oppressive global organizations.[1][9]
Ji denies being an anti-vaccination activist, but consistently shares false or misleading messages about vaccine safety and efficacy.[10][5][11][12] He is married to Kelly Brogan, another well-known promoter of medical misinformation.[11] He lives in Florida.[8][13]"
9 Kelly Brogan
Facebook: Removed
Twitter: Active
Instagram: Active
Kelly Brogan is the partner of fellow alternative health entrepreneur Sayer Ji. She claimsto practice “holistic psychiatry” and sells a range of books and courses from her website.
10 Christiane Northrup
Facebook: Active
Twitter: Active
Instagram: Active
Christiane Northrup is an obstetrics and gynecology physician who has embraced alternative medicine and anti-vaccine conspiracies. She has used her social media accounts to spread disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine.
11 Ben Tapper
Facebook: Active
Twitter: Active
Instagram: Active
Ben Tapper is a chiropractor with a growing following on social media. He has routinely posted COVID disinformation and spoken out against masking.
Example Violations
12 Kevin Jenkins
Facebook: Active
Twitter: Active
Instagram: Active
Kevin Jenkins is an anti-vaccine activist with a growing social media presence who has appeared at public events with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Jenkins has called vaccines a“conspiracy” to “wipe out” black people and is a co-founder of the Freedom Airway & Freedom Travel Alliance, a company founded in late 2020 to help its members travel around the world without observing any masking, quarantining, vaccination, or other pandemic control measures.
The report is pushing for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to shut down their accounts - and some of these folks have many different accounts.
They succeed because of people like the man below.
The idea that constitutional rights can't be abridged comes up against the fact that the exercise of one person's constitutional rights can curtail the constitutional rights of others. Then we have to evaluate which right is more critical. Letting FB cut people off is not an issue because it's the government, not private companies, that must not abridge people's rights. Companies may set conditions which apply to all users equally - based on behavior, not inherent traits such as race and gender.
What can you do?
I don't want to just offer bad news without giving people some ideas of what can be done about it. People should share such information with policy makers - you can easily email your members of Congress even if you don't have the power to implement these things yourself. Or you can join or donate to organizations that fight these problems. Here are a few ideas just to remind you that every problem has ways to mitigate it and people who have taken on this project.
How to fight lies, tricks,and chaos online - There are a number of sites that offer individuals steps to prevent receiving misinformation. This is one of the best I saw. It also includes when to report to law enforcement. And it recognizes that this is all complicated and no checklist is fool proof. This is definitely worth a look.
A guide to anti-misinformation actions around the world - This offers a list, country by country, of measures to stop the spread of misinformation. Unfortunately, many of the countries are authoritarian regimes that don't offer us much help. But worth a look to see what other democracies are doing.
MITIGATING MEDICAL MISINFORMATION: A WHOLE-OF-SOCIETY APPROACH TO COUNTERING SPAM, SCAMS, AND HOAXES
"This brief addresses how the public health sector, along with a coalition of civil servants, media workers, technology companies, and civil society organizations, can understand and respond to the problem of medical media manipulation, specifically how it spreads online. Here we present a supplementary research-and-response method in correspondence with the World Health Organization (WHO)’s already suggested framework for dealing with the infodemic, with a focus on media manipulation.2"
How to Slow the Spread of Disinformation: A Guide for Newsrooms -
Congressional Panel On Internet And Disinformation... Includes Many Who Spread Disinformation Online - This one has a promising title, but it doesn't live up to the promise. It demonstrates the problem of people writing about complex without really being experts themselves. (Like I'm doing here.) This person writes very little about what was debated. He basically pulls out stuff he disagrees with and throws up his hands. The comments, though, offer a sense of the complexity and conflicts of goals involved in all this.
How Data Privacy Laws Can Fight Fake News - This post argues that by protecting personal privacy online, it would be harder for people to be targeted for mis- and disinformation.
That's enough. People are working on this. Find them and support them.
Creativity and humor are evenly distributed around the world. The west has no monopoly.
This may take several views to catch it all.
พุง is pronounced phung and means belly
ปาก is pronounced baak and means mouth
ดนฃา is pronounced tonkaa and means thigh
มัน is pronounced man (rhymes with fun) and means fat (like chicken fat)
น้ำมัน is pronounced num mun and means oil.
The Thai words and their English transliteration in red are on the road signs, but the subtitles translate to the English words so if you don't know the Thai you might not catch it as they say it.
It does all make sense - where they are coming from and going to.
"MushroomExpert.comMutinus elegans, M. caninus, & M. ravenelii[ Agaricomycetes > Phallales > Phallaceae > Mutinus . . . ]by Michael KuoStinkhorns frequently bewilder people by popping up in lawns, thrusting their slime-covered tips into the world within a matter of hours. They have been much maligned over the years, probably because--well, because they stink and they often look like penises (human, canine, or alien). Unlike other mushrooms, the stinkhorn distributes its spores by applying an odorous, spore-thick slime to its tip, which flies and other insects are attracted to. The flies then carry the spores to other places."
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is working hard to shine light on Republican actions to thwart democracy through covert operations. In this previous post "When You Find Hypocrisy In The Daylight, Look For Power In the Shadows" - Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse At Barrett Hearings I offered a video of Whitehouse outlining the goals of the new GOP Supreme Court. (New referring both to GOP and to Supreme Court.) He identified 80 cases where there was a 5-4 majority (conservative v. liberal) split in the rulings and identified these four key outcomes:
The goal of all of these is to create a Supreme Court that would strengthen power of corporations and the very wealthy. He also outlined the Federalist Society's 40 year campaign to create this kind of court, including the creation of a legal ideology - Originalism - that would allow justices to reinterpret the Constitution to meet the conservative objectives. All supported by dark money.
I'd like to call your attention to a New Republic article - The Supreme Court's Total War on Congress - by Simon Lazarus, Robert Litan/July 8, 2021 that argues the Supreme Court has shown in recent cases that it is now at war with Congress and has moved past its powers to interpret whether a law is Constitutional, to simply invalidating laws they don't like. Here's one brief quote from the article which they say embody their thinking underlying a couple of cases decided in the last week of the Court's session:
"If we cannot come up with a credible Constitution-based excuse for striking those provisions down, we will simply turn to the power justified two centuries ago by Chief Justice John Marshall as this court’s responsibility to “say what the law is.” We will use that raw power to ignore or rewrite unwanted statutory provisions, to render them ineffectual, or to produce results directly opposite to what they mean."
They are specifically looking at the case which essentially invalidated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and a decision which blocks a California law allowing unions to meet with workers on private property in labor campaigns. Clearly the Voting Rights case fits the last of Whitehouse's four categories - Voter Suppression and Gerrymandering. The anti-union case probably fits into the Weaken Regulatory Agencies category, though this was a California State law.
You'll notice that State's Rights are used when convenient - as in the Voting Rights case - and also ignored when convenient - as in the California case.
Finally, here's Sheldon Whitehouse again responding to these two recent Supreme Court cases in a Tweet today:
This week’s Scheme speech discusses two decisions just delivered by the Court – Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. FEC and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee – that reflect the patterns and purposes of the Court-capture effort. https://t.co/LgkaE3zYkW
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) July 13, 2021
Watching this video, I had to acknowledge that Whitehouse is a very slow and deliberate speaker. But the content is is rich in fact and meaning. For those who find Whitehouse too slow, I offer this comment by cartoonist Jen Sorenson on the recent Voting Rights Act.
I'd note that the two items in the title - Voter Suppression and the Supreme Court - are only two of the GOP efforts to destroy our democracy. Trying to overturn elections is another. Violent attacks on opponents is another. Keeping democracy is going to require extra effort on the part of those who believe in democracy. Extraordinary effort to get voters to the polls despite the obstacles the GOP is setting up and the Supreme Court is allowing is one option.
Aminatta Forna's novel starts with a Wolfer killing the last pair of wolves in Greenhampton, Massachusetts in 1834. One of the key characters, Jean, carries on that theme by studying coyotes in upstate New York in the 21st Century as well as urban foxes in London. But this is secondary, though related to the main theme and main character Attila.
Attila describes his job working in crisis zones around the world.
"'I specialise in trauma, among civilian populations principally,' said Attila. 'Much of my work is as you would imagine. Teams of us go in, some to count the dead, others to trace the living and return them to where they should be or send them somewhere else. I work with the survivors. My job is less to fix the damage than to catalogue the extent of it."
'What happens then?'
'After us? More reconstruction. The aid agencies, the people who have won the contracts to fix the roads, mend the dams, repair the bridges.'
'I meant to the victims.'
'We file our reports, they can run to thousands of pages. Sometimes a perpetrator or two is imprisoned in The Hague. A few of the survivors will be called as witnesses and have their moment in court. They get to see some general or president or warlord whose name they have heard but who they've never laid eyes on put behind bars. They go there wanting to face the person who tortured them, but that never happens, the system doesn't work like that. The lawyers argue about chains of command, utmost responsibility. Those words don't mean anything to the woman whose daughter was taken away or who's son's bones turned up in a ditch he had to dig himself.' Attila shrugged. 'While all that's happening, somewhere in the world somebody else gets ready to go to war.'
'Wow!' Jean exhaled, not knowing what to say next. (p. 118)
All that proceeds the next paragraph:
Attila gave a small wry smile. 'I'm not being cynical, just realistic. War is in the blood of humans. The kind of people who torture and rape during war, they're always among us, every time you walk own a busy street you're passing killers waiting to kill. War gives them license. We tell ourselves people are ordinarily good, but where is the proof of that? There are no ordinarily good people, just a lot of people who've never been offered the opportunity to be anything else. As for the rest, the followers and foot soldiers - well you can't imprison half a nation. For them and for everyone else life carries on, only not quite as before."(118)
I should add that Attila is a Ghanian psychiatrist who's in London to present a paper at a conference. It's there that Jean bumps into him (literally) while she's jogging over the Waterloo Bridge observing one of her foxes weaving unnoticed through the crowd.
He goes on, and I had to think of all the white supremacists that Trump has unleashed:
"There was no big secret to war, Attila thought. There would always be people who relished violence, all they ever needed was a leader and an opportunity. If someone could unite the gang members of New York or Chicago or London, they could take over their respective cities if that person was the president they could take over the country. A lot could be achieved by offering young men power and sex."
The book was published in 2018. Usually books take years to be written, edited, and published, so the odds are good it was started before Trump was seen as a viable candidate, though passages like this could have been edited closer to the publication date.
The chapters are titled Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc. as we follow Attila during the two weeks or so he's in London for the conference. He and Jean run into each other a couple of times and then team up after Attila goes to see his niece and a neighbor tells him that the niece and her son were taken by immigration. He tracks down he niece in a hospital bed who was let go because it was a mistaken identity (well, actually, an unscrupulous landlord who reported her as illegal so he could get her out of the apartment and raise the rent), but the boy, who'd been put in a foster home, had run away. Jean, who's been mapping out sections of the neighborhoods to keep track of her foxes, offers to help find the boy. Jean has also enlisted the help of night workers - street cleaners, doormen, restaurant workers, many of them Africans) to report fox sightings to her. She recruits them to help look for the boy.
After Jean gets ambushed on a talk radio show by the host who believes urban foxes should all be killed - Attila gives her this advice:
"Attila laughed. 'Do you know what a diplomat I once worked with told me? That in government they are taught to treat the electorate like six-year-olds. If you ask a member of the voting public a question on any subject most of us can only come up with three words we identify with that thing The words depend on what our concerns are or what the papers tell us our concerns are. . .
As a retired public administration professor, I assure you I never taught my students to treat the public like six year olds, but then few government employees have public administration degrees. And thinking about the three words can be useful.
There are other events and characters in the week and a half that's covered in the book. And some flashbacks to prior events. How Jean's marriage fell apart in the States. Rosie, an old lover of Attila's who's got Alzheimers and is living in a nursing home and Emmanuel, who's bonded with Rosie, through his job at the home as a caregiver. Attila's dead wife Marysa also hovers over the interwoven plot lines.
The flashbacks take us back to war zones - either those between humans and wolves and coyotes, or between humans and humans - to give us background on Jean and Attila.
Attila muses about war frequently.
"His mind was on the mission ahead which was not the kind for which he cared a seminar on frontline training for the military. Young men giving their bodies and their minds to battle sent by middle-aged men who only ever handled a gun on their weekend duck shoots and men like Attila tasked with the job of trying to keep the young men sane while what they were being asked to do was an insanity itself."
There's also a fair amount of discussion about psychiatry. Here's one example.
“In Attila’s second year of medical school the psychiatric establishment was rocked by an incendiary laid treacherously by one of their own a psychologist called David Rosenhan, Rosenhan had attended a lecture by the Scottish psychiatrist Ronald Laing a hard-drinking radical who liked to irritate his peers by challenging psychiatric shibboleths among them the notion that psychiatric diagnoses were objective and could be compared with medical ones Rosenhan wondered if there were any empirical way to test this assertion and decided to conduct his own experiments He recruited a group of six volunteers including (alongside several medical professionals) a painter and a housewife and himself as the seventh Each volunteer was detailed to ring one of several psychiatric hospitals and to request an appointment, to which they presented themselves unwashed and unshaved. They were to describe hearing voices. Nothing too dramatic and always the same words, ‘Empty’, ‘Hollow’, ‘Thud’. All but one of the volunteers was admitted, after which the six, in accordance with their instructions, behaved perfectly normally and told staff the voices had gone away. Nevertheless the participants were held for an average of nineteen days, and one poor soul was kept inside for fifty-two. When eventually they were discharged each of the patients was described not as sane or cured but ‘in remission’. In every case the only people who suspected the volunteers of being perfectly sane frauds were other patients.” (pp 229-230)
"Aminatta Forna was born in Scotland, raised in Sierra Leone and Great Britain and spent periods of her childhood in Iran, Thailand and Zambia. She is the award-winning author of the novels Happiness, The Hired Man, The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stones, and a memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water, and the forthcoming essay collection, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion."
As I near the final pages, I'd say the book is about the human need to control. To control the world, to control nature, to control others. This is demonstrate by how psychiatrists try to control mental illness by categorizing and then treating it. By how people try to control the uncontrollable by killing it - culling urban foxes, refusing to listen to Jean who has been studying the fox behavior and who says that just killing them won't work.
From Ayo, one of the immigrants in Jean's team of fox watchers:
"Cannot become rich from [foxes], cannot control them, not even kill them. That's why the foxes make some people angry. The problem with those people is that they themselves have forgotten they are alive."
A career diplomat echoes that theme. He's holding a snow globe given him long ago by his daughter:
"'This is how most people want to live.' He put his hand out for the [snow] globe and Attila handed it to him. Quell held it up to the light. 'They want to be safe, they want to be comfortable. They want to believe that they are in control of their lives, and they want that thing we call freedom. It all comes at a price, but don't you dare mention that. People want choices without consequences. And we give it to them, fools that we are. We are the "somebody" people who have no bloody intention of doing anything themselves mean when they say somebody must do something. I blame books, films, all that nonsense.'"
