Veterans – Patriotism – Page 172

Here’s the Healthiest Way to Drink Alcohol, According to a Dietitian

Men’s Health

Here’s the Healthiest Way to Drink Alcohol, According to a Dietitian

Erica Sweeney – December 12, 2022

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ENJOYING A NICE glass of red wine with dinner, sipping a tumbler of bourbon after a long day, trying a new craft beer, or mixing up your own cocktail. Everyone loves a good drink from time to time. Though drinking too much (and, we’ve all been there) isn’t good for you, it is possible to incorporate your favorite alcoholic beverage into a healthy lifestyle.

So, what is healthy drinking? “Moderation is key,” says Brittany Kunza, M.D., a medical director at virtual health platform PlushCare. “Alcohol really shouldn’t be considered ‘healthy,’ but it certainly can be part of social gatherings.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends no more than two drinks a day for men and one for women. But, two-thirds of adults say they drink more than that at least once a month.

Drinking too much long-term can bring many health consequences, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, liver disease, and stomach problems. It can also weaken your immune system and increase your risk for certain cancers.

Either inspired by these health risks or striving to cut back for other reasons, many people are partaking in Dry January or permanently embracing a “sober curious” lifestyle. And, non-alcoholic, booze-inspired drinks are becoming more popular.

Many aspects of drinking can affect your health—how much you drink, how often, and your beverages of choice. A healthy approach to drinking alcohol is part of a healthy approach to life. Often, that means choosing drinks that are lower in sugar and calories, such as skipping sugary mixers and using seltzer in place of tonic.

What’s the best way to balance drinking and a healthy lifestyle?

It’s best not to overdo it when it comes to alcohol and stick to two drinks or less a day. But, having a few more from time to time likely won’t harm your health—just don’t drive when you’re drinking.

healthiest ways to drink alcohol — Plan Shooting 2 / Imazins

Everyone is different in terms of how they handle alcohol. Some people can drink more than others before they feel drunk.

“Alcohol impairment is an individual number that is different from person to person,” says Ernest Gelb, D.O., president of the American Osteopathic Association. “The legal limit is 0.08, but there are many individuals who can’t tolerate that much alcohol. The end result of impairment is the same and will not end well.”

It’s a good idea to understand what’s considered a “standard drink,” too, says Dr. Kunza. According to the CDC, standard drink sizes include:

12 ounces of beer
8 ounces of malt liquor
5 ounces of wine
1.5 ounces of distilled spirits, like gin, vodka, or whiskey

What Kinds of Alcohol Are the Healthiest Options?

Ignore the myths you heard in high school about your body processing certain alcoholic beverages in different ways. Your liver doesn’t recognize wine from beer from a Long Island Iced Tea—it only processes alcohol.

That said, if a drink is higher in alcohol, your liver has to work hard. So if you’re drinking a finger of Scotch whisky neat (typically about 40% alcohol by volume, or ABV), your liver is going to have an easier time than with that Long Island Iced Tea (typically four shots of alcohol—all of which are roughly 40% ABV).

So, usually, the simpler the drink—and the less of it that you’re drinking—the better off your liver (and you!) will be. Here’s what to know about drinking different kinds of booze.

Beer

Beer can contain anywhere from 103 to 350 calories per 12 ounces. Craft beers often have a higher ABV than traditional macro-beers. And more alcohol means more calories.

For example, a 12-ounce beer with 9% ABV (typical for craft brews) has about 270 calories. But because craft breweries don’t have to list the calorie count on their beers, you can use this handy equation to estimate the number of calories in your beer: Multiply the ABV by 2.5, then multiply that by the number of ounces in your beer.

Vodka, tequila, and other spirits

Put this in the myth category. Tequila—as well as vodka, rum, and gin—all have zero grams of carbs, so they won’t raise your blood sugar if you drink them straight up. If you have diabetes, you should count your drink as two fat exchanges.

healthiest way to drink alcohol men's health — Oliver Henze / EyeEm

But don’t fall for the hype that choosing a tequila made from 100 percent agave changes the impact. All of the health attributes of agave (aka lower glycemic index, etc.) are gone once it’s been distilled into tequila. That said, choosing pure, agave tequila means you’ll typically skip unnecessary additives like caramel coloring. It’s also gluten-free.

Most distilled alcohol, including gin, rum, vodka, and whiskey, contains between 97 and 116 calories per 1.5 ounces.

Hard seltzers

Most hard seltzers are lower in alcohol, ranging from 4% to 6% ABV. But, they can contain added sugar.

Look for brands that offer very little sugar per serving. Otherwise, you’ll take in an overload of calories, mainly from the sweet stuff. Spiked seltzers, on the other hand, aren’t a bad option. Ideally, you want one that’s zero-calorie flavored sparkling water with booze added.

Wine

Most wines contain 120-130 calories per 5-ounce glass. But, the sugar content can vary. A glass of red table wine contains about 0.9 grams of sugar, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some white wines, like chardonnay, can contain 1.4 grams of sugar, and super-sweet dessert wines can have 7 grams.

Cocktails

Determining the calorie and sugar content of a cocktail is tricky, as it depends on what ingredients they contain. A simple vodka soda with seltzer and a squeeze of lime would be a low-calorie, low-sugar option.

But, sweet cocktails like a mai tai can have as much as 300 calories and loads of sugar. Creamy drinks like a White Russian or Piña Colada can clock in at more than 500 calories.

It’s always a good idea to opt for low-calorie mixers and avoid drinks overflowing with sugar, Dr. Gelb says.

You also need to drink plenty of water, too

Alcohol is a dehydrator. So, it’s crucial to drink plenty of water while you’re enjoying a beer or cocktail.

cropped shot of a young man drinking a glass of water at home — ljubaphoto

“Physicians recommend a one-for-one ratio, which is one 8-ounce glass of water for every alcoholic drink,” says Brian Fiani, D.O., attending neurosurgeon at Weill Cornell Medicine/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and vice chair of the American Osteopathic Association Bureau of Emerging Leaders.

Drinking alcohol can also irritate the stomach, worsen acid reflux, and contribute to gastritis, Dr. Kunza says. So, it’s a good idea to eat something before you drink or while you’re drinking.

How Drinking Too Much Affects Your Body

Having a few too many glasses of wine or overdoing it on the beer is OK every so often. Drinking too much of even low-calorie alcohol long-term can be detrimental to your health.

For one, it can affect the brain and spine. “Specifically, regarding the central nervous system, alcohol slows down the cerebral cortex process, which can lead to poor judgment,” Dr. Fiani says.

Long-term drinking can damage the brain’s frontal lobes, which can affect decision-making, memory, judgment, and impulses, he adds. It can also lead to degenerative disc disease of the spine and cause back pain.

Excessive alcohol intake over a long time period can cause a thiamine deficiency, which might lead to someone developing the brain disorder Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, Fiani says. “This condition can cause irreversible mental confusion, loss of coordination, and memory problems similar to dementia.”

Overdoing it on alcohol can cause (or increase your risk for) a number of other health problems, like liver disease, pancreatitis, cancer, high blood pressure, anemia, GI problems, and other conditions.

Signs You Might Be Drinking Too Much

Excessive daily drinking could signal a drinking problem. “Individuals who can’t just have one drink would be a warning sign,” Dr. Gelb says.

If you feel you fall into this category, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is a good place to start.

The bottom line is: When alcohol or any substance use begins to interfere with your life, it’s problematic, says Lea McMahon, LPC, Ed.D., chief clinical officer at Symetria Recovery.

Mental health and addiction professionals use criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) to assess substance use and how it affects someone’s life, she says. Patients are asked a series of questions, including:

Do you drink more than you mean to?
Do you want to stop but can’t?
Is drinking taking over your life?
Is drinking getting in the way of day-to-day activities?
Is drinking getting in the way of your relationships?
Do you need to drink more than you used to?

“The number of yes answers determines the degree to which one’s substance use is problematic,” McMahon says. For example, two or three yeses might signal a mild alcohol use disorder, four or five a moderate disorder, and six or more a severe disorder.

Russia grinds on in eastern Ukraine; Bakhmut ‘destroyed’

Associated Press

Russia grinds on in eastern Ukraine; Bakhmut ‘destroyed’

Jamey Keaten – December 10, 2022

An aerial view of Bakhmut, the site of the heaviest battles with the Russian troops, in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, Dec. 9, 2022. (AP Photo/LIBKOS)

Stretchers are seen outside a city hospital, where wounded Ukrainian soldiers are brought for treatment, in Bakhmut, the site of heavy battles with Russian troops, in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, Dec. 9, 2022. (AP Photo/LIBKOS)

An emergency worker and his dog warm up in front of a wood-burning oven in a shelter in Bakhmut, the site of the heaviest battles with the Russian troops, in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, Dec. 9, 2022. (AP Photo/LIBKOS)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces have turned the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut into ruins, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, while Ukraine’s military on Saturday reported missile, rocket and air strikes in multiple parts of the country that Moscow is trying to conquer after months of resistance.

The latest battles of Russia’s 9 1/2 month war in Ukraine have centered on four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin triumphantly — and illegally — claimed to have annexed in late September. The fighting indicates Russia’s struggle to establish control of those regions and Ukraine’s persistence to reclaim them.

Zelenskyy said the situation “remains very difficult” in several frontline cities in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Together, the provinces make up the Donbas, an expansive industrial region bordering Russia that Putin identified as a focus from the war’s outset and where Moscow-backed separatists have fought since 2014.

“Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna. For a long time, there is no living place left on the land of these areas that have not been damaged by shells and fire,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, naming cities that have again found themselves in the crosshairs. “The occupiers actually destroyed Bakhmut, another Donbas city that the Russian army turned into burnt ruins.”

Some buildings remain standing in Bakhmut, and the remaining residents still mill about the streets. But like Mariupol and other contested cities, it endured a long siege and spent weeks without water and power even before Moscow launched massive strikes to take out public utilities across Ukraine.

The Donetsk region’s governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, estimated seven weeks ago that 90% of the city’s prewar population of over 70,000 had fled in the months since Moscow focused on seizing the entire Donbas.

The Ukrainian military General Staff reported missile attacks, about 20 airstrikes and more than 60 rocket attacks across Ukraine between Friday and Saturday. Spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun said the most active fighting was in the Bakhmut district, where more than 20 populated places came under fire. He said Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks in Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk.

Russia’s grinding eastern offensive succeeded in capturing almost all of Luhansk during the summer. Donetsk eluded the same fate, and the Russian military in recent weeks has poured manpower and resources around Bakhmut in an attempt to encircle the city, analysts and Ukrainian officials have said.

After Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city of Kherson nearly a month ago, the battle heated up around Bakhmut, demonstrating Putin’s desire for visible gains following weeks of clear setbacks in Ukraine.

Taking Bakhmut would rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and open a route for Russian forces to press on toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk. Russia has battered Bakhmut with rockets for more than half of the year. A ground assault accelerated after its troops forced the Ukrainians to withdraw from Luhansk in July.

But some analysts have questioned Russia’s strategic logic in the relentless pursuit to take Bakhmut and surrounding areas that also came under intense shelling in the past weeks, and where Ukrainian officials reported that some residents were living in damp basements.

“The costs associated with six months of brutal, grinding, and attrition-based combat around #Bakhmut far outweigh any operational advantage that the #Russians can obtain from taking Bakhmut,” the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington, posted on its Twitter feed on Thursday.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that Russian troops also pressed their Donbas offensive in the direction of the Donetsk city of Lyman, which is 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of Bakhmut. According to the ministry, they “managed to take more advantageous positions for further advancement.”

Russia’s forces first occupied the city in May but withdrew in early October. Ukrainian authorities said at the time they found mines on the bodies of dead Russian soldiers that were set to explode when someone tried to clear the corpses, as well as the bodies of civilian residents killed by shelling or who had died from a lack of food and medicine.

On Friday, Putin lashed out at recent comments by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said a 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine negotiated by France and Germany had bought time for Ukraine to prepare for war with Russia this year.

That deal was aimed to cool tensions after pro-Russia separatists seized territory in the Donbas a year earlier, sparking a war with Ukrainian forces that ballooned into a war with Russia itself after the Feb. 24 full-scale invasion.

Ukraine’s military on Saturday also reported strikes in other provinces: Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast, central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia in the southeast and Kherson in the south. The latter two, along with Donetsk and Luhansk, are the four regions Putin claims are now Russian territory.

A month ago, Russian troops withdrew from the western side of the Dniper River where it cuts through Kherson province, allowing Ukrainians forces to declare the region’s capital city liberated. But the Russians still occupy a majority of the province and have continued to attack from their news positions across the river.

Writing on Telegram, the deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said two civilians died and another eight were wounded during dozens of mortar, rocket and artillery attacks over the previous day. Residential areas, a hospital, shops, warehouses and critical infrastructure in the Kherson region were damaged, he said.

To the west, drone attacks overnight left much of Odesa province, including its namesake Black Sea port city, without electricity, regional Gov. Maxim Marchenko said. Several energy facilities were destroyed at once, leaving all customers except hospitals, maternity homes, boiler plants and pumping stations were without power, electric company DTEK said Saturday.

The Odesa regional administration’s energy department said late Saturday that fully restoring electricity could take as long as three months and it urged families whose homes are without power to leave the region if possible.

Attacks on Pacific north-west power stations raise fears for US electric grid

The Guardian

Attacks on Pacific north-west power stations raise fears for US electric grid

Dani Anguiano in Los Angeles – December 10, 2022

<span>Photograph: Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Reuters</span> — Photograph: Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Reuters

A string of attacks on power facilities in Oregon and Washington has caused alarm and highlighted the vulnerabilities of the US electric grid.

The attacks in the Pacific north-west come just days after a similar assault on North Carolina power stations that cut electricity to 40,000 people.

As first reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting and KUOW Public Radio, there have been at least six attacks, some of which involved firearms and caused residents to lose power. Two of the attacks shared similarities with the incident in Moore county, North Carolina, where two stations were hit by gunfire. Authorities have not yet revealed a motive for the North Carolina attack.

The four Pacific north-west utilities whose equipment was attacked have said they are cooperating with the FBI. The agency has not yet confirmed if it is investigating the incidents.

It’s unknown who is behind the attacks but experts have long warned of discussion among extremists of disrupting the nation’s power grid.

Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) said in a statement on Thursday that it was seeking tips about “trespassing, vandalism and malicious damage of equipment” at a substation in Clackamas county on 24 November that caused damage and required cleanup costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Someone clearly wanted to damage equipment and, possibly, cause a power outage,” said John Lahti, the utility’s transmission vice-president of field services. “We were fortunate to avoid any power supply disruption, which would have jeopardized public safety, increased financial damages and presented challenges to the community on a holiday.”

Any attack on electric infrastructure “potentially puts the safety of the public and our workers at risk”, said BPA, which delivers hydropower across the Pacific north-west .

Portland General Electric, a public utility that provides electricity to nearly half of the state’s population, said it had begun repairs after suffering “a deliberate physical attack on one of our substations” that also occurred in the Clackamas area in late November 2022. It said it was “actively cooperating” with the FBI.

Puget Sound Energy, an energy utility in Washington, reported two cases of vandalism at two substations in late November to the FBI and peer utilities, but said the incidents appeared to be unrelated to other recent attacks.

“There is no indication that these vandalism attempts indicate a greater risk to our operations and we have extensive measures to monitor, protect and minimize the risk to our equipment and infrastructure,” the company said in a statement.

overhead view of substation — Duke Energy workers repair an electrical substation that they said was hit by gunfire, near Pinehurst, North Carolina, on Tuesday. Photograph: Drone Base/Reuters

Experts and intelligence analysts have long warned of both the vulnerability of the US power grid and talk among extremists about attacking the crucial infrastructure.

“It’s very vulnerable,” said Keith Taylor, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who has worked with energy utilities. “[These attacks] are a real threat.”

The physical risks to the power grid have been known for decades, Granger Morgan, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told CBS. “We’ve made a bit of progress, but the system is still quite vulnerable,” he said.

A US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report released in January warned that domestic extremists have been developing “credible, specific plans” to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020.

The DHS has cited a document shared on a Telegram channel used by extremists that included a white supremacist guide to attacking an electric grid with firearms, CNN reported.

“These fringe groups have been talking about this for a long time,” Taylor said. “I’m not at all surprised this happened – I’m surprised it’s taken this long.”

Three men who law enforcement identified as members of the Boogaloo movement allegedly planned to attack a substation in Nevada in 2020 to distract police and attempt to incite a riot.

In 2013, still unknown assailants cut fiber-optic phone lines and used a sniper to fire shots at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation near San Jose in what appeared to be a carefully planned attack that caused millions of dollars in damage. The attack prompted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Ferc) to order grid operators to increase security.

“They knew what they were doing. They had a specific objective. They wanted to knock out the substation,” Jon Wellinghoff, the then chair of Ferc, told 60 Minutes, adding that the attack could have “brought down all of Silicon Valley”.

After the 2013 attack in California, a Ferc analysis found that attackers could cause a blackout coast-to-coast if they took out only nine of the 55,000 substations in the US.

The US electrical grid is vast and sprawling with 450,000 miles of transmission lines, 55,000 substations and 6,400 power plants. Power plants and substations are dispersed in every corner of the country, connected by transmission lines that transport electricity through farmland, forests and swamps. Attackers do not necessarily have to get close to cause significant damage.

“In a centralized system, if I [want] to take out one coal-fired plant, I don’t even have to take out the plant, I just have to take out the transmission line,” said Taylor. “You can cause a ripple effect where one outage can cause an entire seaboard to go down.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report

America’s Toxic Gun Culture

The New York Times – Opinion

America’s Toxic Gun Culture

By The Editorial Board – December 10, 2022

An array of gun cartridges set against a black background. — Credit…Sam Kaplan/Trunk Archive

This editorial is the fifth in a series, “The Danger Within,” urging readers to understand the danger of extremist violence and possible solutions. Read more about the series in a note from Kathleen Kingsbury, the Times Opinion editor.

A year ago, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky posted a Christmas photo on Twitter. In it, Mr. Massie, his wife and five children pose in front of their ornament-bedecked tree. Each person is wearing a big grin and holding an assault weapon. “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo,” Mr. Massie wrote on Twitter.

The photo was posted on Dec. 4, just four days after a mass shooting at a school in Oxford, Mich., that left four students dead and seven other people injured.

The grotesque timing led many Democrats and several Republicans to criticize Mr. Massie for sharing the photo. Others lauded it and nearly 80,000 people liked his tweet. “That’s my kind of Christmas card!” wrote Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who then posted a photo of her four sons brandishing similar weapons.

These weapons, lightweight and endlessly customizable, aren’t often used in the way their devotees imagine — to defend themselves and their families. (In a recent comprehensive survey, only 13 percent of all defensive use of guns involved any type of rifle.) Nevertheless, in the 18 years since the end of the federal assault weapons ban, the country has been flooded with an estimated 25 million AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles, making them one of the most popular in the United States. When used in mass shootings, the AR-15 makes those acts of violence far more deadly. It has become the gun of choice for mass killers, from Las Vegas to Uvalde, Sandy Hook to Buffalo.

The AR-15 has also become a potent talisman for right-wing politicians and many of their voters. That’s a particularly disturbing trend at a time when violent political rhetoric and actual political violence in the United States are rising.

Addressing violent right-wing extremism is a challenge on many fronts: This board has argued for stronger enforcement of state anti-militia laws, better tracking of extremists in law enforcement and the military, and stronger international cooperation to tackle it as a transnational issue. Most important, there is a civil war raging inside the Republican Party between those who support democracy and peaceful politics and those who support far-right extremism. That conflict has repercussions for all of us, and the fetishization of guns is a pervasive part of it.

The prominence of guns in campaign ads is a good barometer of their political potency. Democrats have sometimes used guns in ads — in 2010, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, running for the Senate, shot a hole through a copy of the cap-and-trade climate bill with a single-shot hunting rifle. Since then, guns have all but disappeared from Democratic messaging. But in the most recent midterm elections, Republican politicians ran more than 100 ads featuring guns and more than a dozen that featured semiautomatic military-style rifles.

In one of the most violent of those ads, Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri and a former Navy SEAL, kicks in the door of a house and barges in with a group of men dressed in tactical gear and holding assault rifles. Mr. Greitens boasts that the group is hunting RINOs — a derogatory term for “Republicans in name only.” The ad continues, “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

Twitter flagged the ad, Facebook banned it for violating its terms of service, and Mr. Greitens lost his race for office. He may have been playacting in the ad, but many other heavily armed people with far-right political views are not. Openly carried assault rifles have become an all too common feature of political events around the country and are having a chilling effect on the exercise of political speech.

This intimidating display of weaponry isn’t a bipartisan phenomenon: A recent New York Times analysis examined more than 700 demonstrations where people openly carrying guns showed up. At about 77 percent of the protests, those who were armed “represented right-wing views, such as opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. rights and abortion access, hostility to racial justice rallies and support for former President Donald J. Trump’s lie of winning the 2020 election.”

As we’ve seen at libraries that host drag queen book readings, Juneteenth celebrations and Pride marches, the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms is fast running up against the First Amendment’s right to peaceably assemble. Securing that right, and addressing political violence in general, requires addressing the armed intimidation that has become commonplace in public places and the gun culture that makes it possible.

A growing number of American civilians have an unhealthy obsession with “tactical culture” and rifles like the AR-15. It’s a fringe movement among the 81 million American gun owners, but it is one of several alarming trends that have coincided with the increase in political violence in this country, along with the spread of far-right extremist groups, an explosion of anti-government sentiment and the embrace of deranged conspiracy theories by many Republican politicians. Understanding how these currents feed one another is crucial to understanding and reversing political violence and right-wing extremism.

The American gun industry has reaped an estimated $1 billion in sales over the past decade from AR-15-style guns, and it has done so by using and cultivating their status as near mythical emblems of power, hyper-patriotism and manhood. Earlier this year, an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform found that the gun industry explicitly markets its products by touting their military pedigree and making “covert references to violent white supremacists like the Boogaloo Boys.” These tactics “prey on young men’s insecurities by claiming their weapons will put them ‘at the top of the testosterone food chain.’”

This marketing and those sales come at a significant cost to America’s social fabric.

In his recent book “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America,” Ryan Busse, a former firearms company executive, described attending a Black Lives Matter rally with his son in Montana in 2020. At the rally, dozens of armed men, some of them wearing insignia from two paramilitary groups — the 3 Percenters and the Oath Keepers — appeared, carrying assault rifles. After one of the armed men assaulted his 12-year-old son, Mr. Busse had his epiphany.

“For years prior to this protest, advertising executives in the gun industry had been encouraging the ‘tactical lifestyle,’” Mr. Busse wrote. The gun industry created a culture that “glorified weapons of war and encouraged followers to ‘own the libs.’”

The formula is a simple one: More rage, more fear, more gun sales.

A portion of those proceeds are then funneled back into politics through millions of dollars in direct contributions, lobbying and spending on outside groups, most often in support of Republicans.

All told, gun rights groups spent a record $15.8 million on lobbying in 2021 and $2 million in the first quarter of 2022, the transparency group OpenSecrets reported. “From 1989 to 2022, gun rights groups contributed $50.5 million to federal candidates and party committees,” the group found. “Of that, 99 percent of direct contributions went to Republicans.”

The Danger Within

It is important, of course, to distinguish between the large majority of law-abiding gun owners and the small number of extremists. Only about 30 percent of gun owners have owned an AR-15 or similar rifle, a majority support common sense gun restrictions and a majority reject political violence.

Institutions and individuals — prominent politicians, for instance, and responsible gun owners — could do far more to insist that assault weapons have no place in public spaces, even if they are permitted in many states, where the open carry of firearms is legal. Public condemnation of such displays is a good place to start.

Republicans should also show more courage in condemning extremists in their own ranks. When Representative Massie posted his Christmas photo, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois responded on Twitter: “I’m pro second amendment, but this isn’t supporting right to keep and bear arms, this is a gun fetish.” There’s a difference between celebrating Christmas secure in the knowledge that you have a weapon to defend your home and family and sending out a photo of your arsenal days after a school shooting.

Democrats, while they may hope for stricter gun laws overall, should also recognize that they do share common ground with many gun owners — armed right-wing extremists and those who fetishize AR-15s do not represent typical American gun owners or their beliefs. That’s especially true given the changing nature of who owns guns in the United States: women and Black Americans are among the fastest-growing demographics.

This summer, for the first time in decades, Congress passed major bipartisan gun safety legislation — a major accomplishment and a sign that common ground is not terra incognita. It should have gone further — and can in the future: preventing anyone under 21 from buying a semiautomatic weapon, for instance, and erasing the 10-year sunset of the background-check provision. States should also be compelled to pass tougher red-flag laws to take guns out of the hands of suicidal or potentially violent people. Mandatory gun-liability insurance is also an idea with merit.

States and the federal government should also pass far tougher regulations on the gun industry, particularly through restrictions on the marketing of guns, which have helped supercharge the cult of the AR-15. New York’s law, which allows parties like victims of gun violence and the state government to sue gun sellers, manufacturers and distributors, is a good model for other states to follow.

Federal regulators should also do more to regulate the arms industry’s marketing practices, which are becoming more deadly and deranged by the year. They have the legal authority to do so but, thus far, not the will to act.

Americans are going to live with a lot of guns for a long time. There are already more than 415 million guns in circulation, including 25 million semiautomatic military-style rifles. Calls for confiscating them — or even calls for another assault weapons ban — are well intentioned and completely unrealistic. With proper care and maintenance, guns made today will still fire decades from now. Each month, Americans add nearly two million more to the national stockpile.

But even if common-sense regulation of guns is far from political reality, Americans do not have to accept the worst of gun culture becoming pervasive in our politics. The only hope the nation has for living in and around so many deadly weapons is a political system capable of resolving our many differences without the need to use them.

Op-Ed: Democrats should use their Senate majority to expose Republican corruption

Los Angeles Times

Op-Ed: Democrats should use their Senate majority to expose Republican corruption

Kurt Bardella – December 8, 2022

Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., left, is welcomed back to the Capitol by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., after Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a runoff election in Georgia last night, in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022. The Democrats' new outright majority of 51-49 in the Senate means Schumer will no longer have to negotiate a power-sharing deal with Republicans and won't have to rely on Vice President Kamala Harris to break as many tie votes. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) — With Sen. Raphael Warnock, left, reelected, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has a majority to lead. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

With Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia winning reelection, Democrats now have a 51-49 majority heading into the next Congress. Under a 50-50 Senate, each party seats the same number of members on committees. With a 51-seat majority, Democrats will now outnumber Republicans at the committee level for the first time in the Biden presidency. Most important, this means Senate Democrats can now exercise the reins of their oversight authority unilaterally. They don’t need Republican votes to issue subpoenas or conduct depositions.

Republicans in the House of Representatives have been downright boastful about their intentions to use their new majority, narrow as it is, to initiate an oversight tsunami targeting the Biden administration and Biden’s family. On Tuesday, Republican Leader (at least for the moment) Kevin McCarthy released an exhaustive list of oversight targets including Hunter Biden, the Justice Department, the FBI and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The Republican playbook is a simple one: They will use their oversight authority to initiate actions and confrontations that will captivate media attention and keep the Biden administration and Democrats on the defensive. Republicans in Congress are betting the House on the idea that the media will do their dirty work and will chronicle their oversight overreaches as legitimate instead of what they are: taxpayer-financed witch hunts.

That is why it is crucial that Democrats in the Senate embrace their newfound majority margins and exercise their oversight authority as well. Giving Republicans a clear field to dominate the oversight conversation would be a huge mistake that could cost Democrats dearly by the time we get to 2024. Through the extraordinary work of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, we have seen how effective oversight, when done right, can affect public opinion. This committee, incidentally, is about to be disbanded and then investigated by House Republicans.

Republicans like Rep. James Comer, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, plan on employing a “make accusations first, get the evidence second” crusade against the president and his family. There is no reason Senate Democrats should not turn the tables on Republicans by finally investigating the conflicts of interest created by Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner during their time in the White House.

Documents recently released by Congress reveal that foreign nations were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at President Trump’s hotel at the same time they were trying to influence our foreign policy.

Records obtained by Congress exposed that when agents had to stay in Trump hotels, Trump’s companies charged the Secret Service as much as five times more than the government rate, costing taxpayers more than $1.4 million.

Six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner received a $2 billion “investment” from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington released a report detailing 3,400 examples of Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest.

Let’s be very clear here: This is not a “both sides” situation.

If Democrats in the Senate pursue this kind of oversight agenda, it would be based on facts, building on investigative work that has already produced volumes of documents, testimony and indisputable examples of conflicts of interest by Trump and his family at the time. It’s worth noting that unlike Ivanka Trump and Kushner, Hunter Biden never served in the federal government in any capacity. The investigations Republicans are about to launch are conspiracy-theory-driven nonsense designed to smear their political adversaries.

I understand the impulse Democrats may have to not want to engage in this kind of oversight battle, but they should know that the battle is coming for them anyway. It would be a costly tactical mistake to allow Republicans to have an open field. Trump’s flagrant corruption has given Democrats more than enough ammunition for fruitful oversight inquiries, which should force Republicans to answer for their hypocrisy.

The only question is: Are Senate Democrats willing to step up, or will they yield to House Republicans?

Kurt Bardella is a contributing writer to Opinion. He is a Democratic strategist and a former senior advisor for Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.

Who is Viktor Bout? Infamous arms dealer swapped for Brittney Griner

Yahoo! News

Who is Viktor Bout? Infamous arms dealer swapped for Brittney Griner

Michael Weiss, Sr. Correspondent – December 8, 2022

Viktor Bout in orange shirt behind bars. — Alleged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout sits in a temporary cell ahead of a hearing at the Criminal Court in Bangkok on Aug. 20, 2010. (Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images)

“She’s on her way home after months of being unjustly detained in Russia, held in intolerable circumstances.” So President Biden announced today from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, alerting the press to the news that Brittney Griner has finally been released from a Mordovian penal colony. Biden spoke next to Cherelle Griner, the American WNBA basketball player’s visibly affected wife.

Following months of intense negotiations, the United States managed to secure Briner’s freedom in a one-to-one swap for Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer. Not included in the deal was another American prisoner of the Kremlin, Paul Whelan, who had been rumored to have been included in the high-profile negotiations over Griner.

Whelan, a former U.S. Marine and Michigan police officer, was arrested in Russia in December 2018 on espionage charges, which he denied; he was sentenced to 16 years in June 2020. Griner, an Olympic gold medalist, was detained in February at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, exactly one week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on charges that she was trafficking cannabis oil — a banned substance in Russia — inside vape canisters. She pleaded guilty on July 7 and was sentenced to 9 years in prison.

US Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) basketball player Brittney Griner, who was detained at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and later charged with illegal possession of cannabis, leaves the courtroom after the court's verdict in Khimki outside Moscow, on August 4, 2022. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images) — US Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) basketball player Brittney Griner, who was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and later charged with illegal possession of cannabis, leaves the courtroom after the court’s verdict in Khimki outside Moscow, on August 4, 2022. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)

Few U.S. officials take the Russian prosecutors’ allegations at face value; the prevailing view is that both Whelan and Griner were snatched as hostages for exactly the kind of swap now under consideration, or as bargaining chips for lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia. “The Russian security services watched Griner closely and knew they could compromise her,” a former U.S. intelligence officer told Yahoo News earlier this year. “She’s a Black gay woman who could be portrayed as carrying drugs, and they waited until she departed. This was not legitimate law enforcement but cynical power games by the Kremlin.” John Sipher, the former deputy head of “Russia House” at the CIA, said Whelan would have been unlikely to be recruited by any U.S. intelligence service owing to his compromised history: He was given a bad-conduct discharge from the Marine Corps after being court-martialed on larceny-related offenses in 2008.

Even by the Kremlin’s suspect characterization of Whelan and Griner, the allegations against Bout are far worse.

“In the late 1990s,” Jonathan Winer, a senior official in the State Department during the Clinton administration who tracked Bout’s movements, told Yahoo News, “Bout was the No. 2 target for the United States, after Osama bin Laden.” In fact, the infamous arms dealer, widely known as the “merchant of death,” has even been accused of arming al-Qaida.

Paul Whelan, a former US marine accused of espionage and arrested in Russia in December 2018, stands inside a defendants' cage as he waits to hear his verdict in Moscow on June 15, 2020. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images) — Paul Whelan, a former US marine accused of espionage and arrested in Russia in December 2018, stands inside a defendants’ cage as he waits to hear his verdict in Moscow on June 15, 2020. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union until his capture in a 2008 Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation in Bangkok, Bout supplied a rogue’s gallery of governments and militias with guns, ammunition and aircraft. Nicolas Cage played a thinly veiled version of him in the 2005 film “Lord of War,” although the real-life version’s antics were more cinematically uncanny. Even Bout’s aliases — “Viktor Budd,” “Viktor Butt” and, simply, “Boris” —might have stretched credulity for a Bond villain.

Bout was chummy with a succession of African dictators, including Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko and Liberia’s Charles Taylor, the latter of whom paid him in conflict diamonds and whose child soldiers operated the antique Antonov cargo planes that Bout sold him. Warlord Sam “Mosquito” Bockarie committed crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone with Bout-proffered weapons. Some of these clients would object to Bout’s apparent racism and peremptory behavior: a pushy Russian in the midst of anticolonial (or postcolonial) leaders. But that hardly affected his bottom line or their willingness to enrich it.

The Tajikistan-born weapons merchant could play both sides of any war to his advantage. He equipped the Taliban with an air force before 9/11 and also sent weapons to their mortal enemy, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the commander of the Northern Alliance and onetime Afghan defense minister, with whom he liked to hunt the finely horned Marco Polo sheep of the Pamir Mountains. Both the Taliban and Massoud evidently knew their broker was double-dealing, but they put up with it because they had no choice, as one Bout associate later recounted to his biographers: “No one else would deliver the packages.”

Ahmad Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, speaks to journalists at Concordia Press Club, on the occasion of the intra-Afghanistan conference, in Vienna, Austria, on September 16, 2022. (Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images)

Astonishingly, even after being hunted by the U.S. government for years, Bout’s flagship company Irbis (“snow leopard” in Russian) even secretly acted as a private airlift courier for supplies intended for the U.S. military and contractors in occupied Iraq in 2004.

For all Bout’s blood-boltered infamy, some former national security officials think the Biden administration made the right call. “It’s a trade that has to be made, despite all the pitfalls,” according to Marc Polymeropoulos, who oversaw the CIA’s clandestine operations in Europe and Eurasia. “The pressure from the families on the White House is immense.” Polymeropoulos acknowledged that the trade would amount to “rewarding terrible Russian behavior” — equating an international arms trafficker with Whelan and Griner — but that the cost would be worth it. “Make no mistake, the Americans have no hope of release save for this swap. Also, let’s not forget that the Israelis have for decades swapped Palestinian terrorists for their imprisoned soldiers, and sometimes just their remains.”

Sipher agrees. “First, it’s a hard policy call, and I’m glad that Americans that were wrongly held as hostages will be freed. I understand why an American president makes such a deal. However, we should admit that we played Vladimir Putin’s game. He got what he wanted in his typical bullying manner. He knows he can push the West around and will do it until he is stopped.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) speaks with Delovaya Rossiya Public Organisation's President, during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, on December 6, 2022. (Mikhail Metzel/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images) — Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) speaks with Delovaya Rossiya Public Organisation’s President, during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, on December 6, 2022. (Mikhail Metzel/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

The U.S. sanctioned Bout in 2004 due to his gunrunning to Liberia; a year later, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned four of his associates and 30 of his companies.

According to the 2008 sealed indictment against Bout, filed in the Southern District of New York, he agreed to provide advanced weapons systems to FARC, the Colombian terrorist organization, knowing that they would be used to target Americans and U.S. military personnel.

The Russian “assembled a fleet of cargo airplanes capable of transporting weapons and military equipment to various parts of the world, including Africa, South America and the Middle East,” the indictment read. Everything from AK-47s to attack helicopters wound up in the holds of Bout’s cargo planes, of which there were scores, under different national flaggings. He maintained the largest private fleet of post-Soviet cargo aircraft in the world at one point, administering it under a veneer of legitimacy by transporting food, medicine and other licit goods along with lethal contraband.

Bout was found guilty in 2011 on all four counts of the indictment: conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, conspiracy to kill officers and employees of the U.S., conspiracy to acquire and use antiaircraft missiles, and conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a terrorist organization. He is now in the 10th year of a 25-year sentence.

Thai commandos escort back hand-cuffed Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout (C), known as the “Merchant of Death” for his role arming rebels from Africa to South America, after a press conference at Thai police headquarters in Bangkok on March 7, 2008. (Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images)

Peter Hain, the former minister of state for Africa at the British Foreign Office, told the London Sunday Telegraph in 2002 that Bout was “supplying the Taliban and al-Qaida,” an allegation that Bout always denied, portraying himself as an honest businessman toting innocent wares such as textiles and furniture to places like Afghanistan. (It was Hain who coined Bout’s unshakable moniker, the “merchant of death.”)

Bout has for years also loudly denied any connection to the Russian government or its military intelligence service, still known by its Soviet-era acronym, the GRU.

However, in “Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possibile,” a 2007 chronicle of Bout’s malign activities, authors Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun quote one of his associates: “The GRU gave him three airplanes to start the business. The planes, countless numbers of them, were sitting there doing nothing. They decided, let’s make this commercial. They gave Viktor the aircraft and in exchange collected a part of the charter money. It was a setup from the beginning.” An unnamed analyst who worked with British intelligence also told the authors that MI6, the U.K.’s foreign intelligence service, “never had any doubt Bout was GRU material.”

U.N. officials placed Bout’s earlier career as that of an interpreter for Russian peacekeepers in Angola; he had trained at the Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, a favored stalking ground for GRU recruitment. Military translators are often GRU officers stationed under diplomatic cover owing to the spy service’s polyglot job requirement. Bout has said he speaks six languages. His bodyguards in his heyday were also reportedly all veterans from GRU Spetsnaz, or special forces.

Russian Spetsnaz march during the military parade at Red Square, on May 9,2021, in Moscow, Russia. (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

Russia’s military intelligence agency has come under international scrutiny in the last several years, particularly after U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that a team of now-indicted GRU officers in Moscow were responsible for the hack-and-leak operation against the Democratic Party email servers in 2016, with the express intent of influencing the outcome of that year’s presidential contest.

GRU operatives have been busy outside the digital domain too.

Operatives attached to an elite assassination-and-sabotage cell known as Unit 29155 were sent to Salisbury, England, in 2018 to poison a GRU defector, Sergei Skripal, along with his daughter, Yulia, with a Russian-manufactured nerve agent.

Unit 29155 has also lately been linked to a string of earlier mysterious poisonings over the last decade, including that of another arms dealer, the Bulgarian Emilian Gebrev, who succumbed to Skripal-like symptoms in 2015 along with his son and his factory manager near his office in central Sofia. A series of explosions of factories and depots elsewhere in Bulgaria and also the Czech Republic, both of them NATO and EU member states, have been attributed to Unit 29155 operatives, leading to expulsions of Russian intelligence officers from embassies in both countries. Tellingly, these sites are believed to have contained Soviet-era ammunition bound for Ukraine.

Given the unprecedented access Bout had to surplus weapons and ammunition stocks, not to mention the enormous Antonov freighters scattered like metal carcasses across airfields of the fallen Soviet empire, it beggars belief that he was not in some way linked to Russian intelligence.

A Russian Antonov 124 condor freighter, one of the worlds largest aircraft on the tarmac at RAF Kinloss, today (Fri) where it is being prepared to fly one of the three Nimord fusealages to Bournemouth, where they will undergo a major re-fit and modification. (Chris Bacon/PA Images via Getty Images)

That would certainly account for why Vladimir Putin’s regime has so desperately sought for his repatriation to Russia and why the U.S. side apparently believes Bout would be a tempting trade amid caustic tensions between the two countries. The Kremlin, said Winer, the former State Department official, “moved heaven and earth” to first prevent Bout’s extradition to the U.S. from Thailand and then to secure his release from prison. The Russian Foreign Ministry has classed him as a political prisoner and, for more than a decade after his capture, serially raised his release with Washington in some kind of exchange. “The big question was whether he was basically state-sponsored or a rogue operator whom the Russian government found useful,” Winer told Yahoo News. “Was he an agent of the GRU when we caught him?”

Given Bout’s conviction in a U.S. court for aiding and abetting FARC, it’s a slightly awkward question for the Biden administration, now facing a mounting chorus to label Russia itself a state sponsor of terrorism. On Thursday, the Senate unanimously adopted a nonbinding resolution urging Secretary of State Antony Blinken to designate Moscow as such.

US President Joe Biden, with (L-R) Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Vice President Kamala Harris and Cherelle Griner, spouse of US women's basketball player Brittney Griner, speaks about the release of Brittney Griner, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on December 8, 2022. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images) — US President Joe Biden, with (L-R) Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Vice President Kamala Harris and Cherelle Griner, spouse of US women’s basketball player Brittney Griner, speaks about the release of Brittney Griner, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on December 8, 2022. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

The text of the resolution not only cites Russian military atrocities against civilians in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and Ukraine but also names the Wagner Group, a U.S. sanctioned Russian mercenary outfit. Financed by the U.S.- and EU-sanctioned oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin — a catering magnate and architect of the St. Petersburg “troll farm” implicated by Mueller in the 2016 U.S. election interference scheme — the Wagner Group has committed “serious human rights abuses in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mozambique,” according to the European Union. The allegations include torture and extrajudicial killings. The Senate also accuses the group of having tried to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the start of Russia’s invasion in February.

The Treasury Department sanctioned the Wagner Group as a “Russian Ministry of Defense proxy force.” The mercenaries maintain a camp in the Russian region of Krasnodar, right next door to a well-guarded training facility for GRU Spetsnaz, of whichWagner’s leader, Dmitry Utkin, was once a brigade commander. According to Polymeropoulos, the former CIA officer, “there was never any doubt that Wagner functions as an arm of the GRU.”

Might the same be said of the man now sitting in a medium-security penitentiary in Marion, Ill., awaiting his plane back to Moscow?

“They will try to lock me up for life,” the then-45-year-old Bout told the New Yorker before his sentencing. “But I’ll get back to Russia. I don’t know when. But I’m still young. Your empire will collapse and I’ll get out of here.”

Biden says Brittney Griner is ‘safe’ after release from Russia in prisoner swap

Yahoo! News

Biden says Brittney Griner is ‘safe’ after release from Russia in prisoner swap

Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – December 8, 2022

President Biden on Thursday said Brittney Griner is “safe” and on her way home after being freed from Russian custody in a prisoner exchange for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.

“She’s safe, she’s on a plane, she’s on her way home,” Biden said in brief remarks at the White House, where he was joined by Griner’s wife, Cherelle, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “After months of being detained in Russia, held under intolerable circumstances, Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones, and she should’ve been there all along.”

Biden said he spoke with Griner and that she is in “good spirits.”

President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House — President Biden speaks to reporters about the release of WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner on Thursday. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

“The fact remains that she’s lost months of her life, experienced needless trauma,” he said. “She deserves space, privacy and time with her loved ones to recover and heal from her time being wrongfully detained.”

Griner has been held in Russia since February, when she was detained in Moscow after being found carrying vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison.

“This is a day we’ve worked toward for a long time,” Biden said. “We never stopped pushing for her release. It took painstakingly intense negotiations.”

Brittney Griner is escorted from a courtroom after a hearing in Khimki just outside Moscow. — Biden said Griner was “unjustly detained” in Russia before she was released in a prisoner swap with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. (Alexander Zemlianichenko, File/AP)

The president thanked those in his administration who worked to secure her release as well as the United Arab Emirates, where a plane transporting Griner back to the United States landed.

“These past few months have been hell for Brittney and Cherelle and her entire family,” Biden said. “People across the country have learned about Brittney’s story, advocated for her release throughout this terrible ordeal. And I know that support meant a lot to her family.”

The president also said the U.S. has not given up on Paul Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive who has been jailed in Russia since 2018 on espionage charges.

“We did not forget about Brittney, and we have not forgotten about Paul Whelan, who has been unjustly detained in Russia for years,” Biden said. “This was not a choice of which American to bring home.”

President Biden and Cherelle Griner speak on the phone with WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner after her release by Russia, in this White House handout photo taken in the Oval Office, as Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken look on. — The White House released this image of Biden and Griner’s wife, Cherelle, speaking to the WNBA star after she was released from Russia. (The White House/Handout via Reuters)

Biden pointed to Trevor Reed, a 30-year-old U.S. Marine veteran who was released in a prisoner swap with Russia in April.

“We brought home Trevor Reed when we had a chance earlier this year,” the president said. “Sadly, for illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s. And while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up.”

In a statement, the Whelan family said the Biden administration “made the right decision” in securing Griner’s release and “to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn’t going to [happen].”

In brief remarks, Cherelle Griner thanked Biden for helping secure Brittney’s release.

“Today my family is whole,” Cherelle Griner said. “But as you all are aware, there’s so many other families who are not whole.”

She added: “Brittney and I will remain committed to the work of getting every American home, including Paul, whose family is in our hearts today.”

Paul Whelan ‘greatly disappointed’ Biden administration has not done more to free him

Yahoo! News

Paul Whelan ‘greatly disappointed’ Biden administration has not done more to free him

Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – December 8, 2022

Paul Whelan listens to the verdict in a courtroom at the Moscow City Court. — Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan has been jailed in Russia since 2018 on espionage charges. (Sofia Sandurskaya, Moscow News Agency photo via AP, File)

Detained American Paul Whelan says he is happy that the Biden administration was able to secure WNBA player Brittney Griner’s release from Russia in a prisoner swap but is “greatly disappointed” that it hasn’t been able to secure his.

“I am greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release, especially as the four-year anniversary of my arrest is coming up,” Whelan said in a phone interview with CNN from the penal colony where he is being held in a remote part of Russia. “I don’t understand why I’m still sitting here.”

Whelan said he “was led to believe that things were moving in the right direction, and that the governments were negotiating and that something would happen fairly soon.”

The Biden administration announced Thursday that Griner was freed in exchange for Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer who had been serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States.

Brittney Griner during a WNBA game. — Brittney Griner was released from Russian custody on Thursday in a prisoner exchange with convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout. (Rick Scuteri/AP File)

Whelan’s brother, David, said Thursday that the Biden administration “made the right decision” in agreeing to the prisoner swap that freed Griner.

“I am so glad that Brittney Griner is on her way home,” David Whelan said in a lengthy statement. “As the family member of a Russian hostage, I can literally only imagine the joy she will have, being reunited with her loved ones, and in time for the holidays.

“There is no greater success than for a wrongful detainee to be freed and for them to go home,” David Whelan continued. “The Biden Administration made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home, and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn’t going to happen.”

Earlier this year, the White House reportedly offered to exchange Bout as part of a potential deal to secure the release of Griner and Whelan.

Griner was detained in Moscow on drug-related charges in February and later sentenced to nine years in prison. Paul Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive and former U.S. Marine, has been jailed in Russia since 2018 on espionage charges.

David Whelan said that U.S. officials let the family know in advance that Paul would not be part of the Griner-Bout swap.

Joe Biden speaks at the White House about Brittney Griner's release. — President Biden announced Griner’s release on Thursday morning, saying the WNBA player is in “good spirits.” (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“That early warning meant that our family has been able to mentally prepare for what is now a public disappointment for us,” David Whelan said. “And a catastrophe for Paul.”

Griner is the second American to be released in a prisoner swap with Russia this year. Trevor Reed, a 30-year-old U.S. Marine veteran, was released in a prisoner swap with Moscow in April.

At the White House, President Biden said that the U.S. has not given up on securing Whelan’s release.

“We did not forget about Brittney, and we have not forgotten about Paul,” Biden said. “This was not a choice of which American to bring home.”

“We brought home Trevor Reed when we had a chance earlier this year,” the president continued. “Sadly, for illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s. And while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up.”

Harnessing the brain’s immune cells to stave off Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases

The Conversation

Harnessing the brain’s immune cells to stave off Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases

Kristine Zengeler, University of Virginia – December 7, 2022

Many neurodegenerative diseases, or conditions that result from the loss of function or death of brain cells, remain largely untreatable. Most available treatments target just one of the multiple processes that can lead to neurodegeneration, which may not be effective in completely addressing disease symptoms or progress, if at all.

But what if researchers harnessed the brain’s inherent capabilities to cleanse and heal itself? My colleagues and I in the Lukens Lab at the University of Virginia believe that the brain’s own immune system may hold the key to neurodegenerative disease treatment. In our research, we found a protein that could possibly be leveraged to help the brain’s immune cells, or microglia, stave off Alzheimer’s disease.

Challenges in treating neurodegeneration

No available treatments for neurodegenerative diseases stop ongoing neurodegeneration while also helping affected areas in the body heal and recuperate.

In terms of failed treatments, Alzheimer’s disease is perhaps the most infamous of neurodegenerative diseases. Affecting more than 1 in 9 U.S. adults 65 and older, Alzheimer’s results from brain atrophy with the death of neurons and loss of the connections between them. These casualties contribute to memory and cognitive decline. Billions of dollars have been funneled into researching treatments for Alzheimer’s, but nearly every drug tested to date has failed in clinical trials.

Another common neurodegenerative disease in need of improved treatment options is multiple sclerosis. This autoimmune condition is caused by immune cells attacking the protective cover on neurons, known as myelin. Degrading myelin leads to communication difficulties between neurons and their connections with the rest of the body. Current treatments suppress the immune system and can have potentially debilitating side effects. Many of these treatment options fail to address the toxic effects of the myelin debris that accumulate in the nervous system, which can kill cells.

A new frontier in treating neurodegeneration

Microglia are immune cells masquerading as brain cells. In mice, microglia originate in the yolk sac of an embryo and then infiltrate the brain early in development. The origins and migration of microglia in people are still under study.

Microglia play important roles in healthy brain function. Like other immune cells, microglia respond rapidly to pathogens and damage. They help to clear injuries and mend afflicted tissue, and can also take an active role in fighting pathogens. Microglia can also regulate brain inflammation, a normal part of the immune response that can cause swelling and damage if left unchecked.

Microglia also support the health of other brain cells. For instance, they can release molecules that promote resilience, such as the protein BDNF, which is known to be beneficial for neuron survival and function.

But the keystone feature of microglia are their astounding janitorial skills. Of all brain cell types, microglia possess an exquisite ability to clean up gunk in the brain, including the damaged myelin in multiple sclerosis, pieces of dead cells and amyloid beta, a toxic protein that is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. They accomplish this by consuming and breaking down debris in their environment, effectively eating up the garbage surrounding them and their neighboring cells.

Given the many essential roles microglia serve to maintain brain function, these cells may possess the capacity to address multiple arms of neurodegeneration-related dysfunction. Moreover, as lifelong residents of the brain, microglia are already educated in the best practices of brain protection. These factors put microglia in the perfect position for researchers to leverage their inherent abilities to protect against neurodegeneration.

New data in both animal models and human patients points to a previously underappreciated role microglia also play in the development of neurodegenerative disease. Many genetic risk factors for diseases like Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis are strongly linked to abnormal microglia function. These findings support an accumulating number of animal studies suggesting that disruptions to microglial function may contribute to neurologic disease onset and severity.

This raises the next logical question: How can researchers harness microglia to protect the nervous system against neurodegeneration?

Engaging the magic of microglia

In our lab’s recent study, we keyed in on a crucial protein called SYK that microglia use to manipulate their response to neurodegeneration.

Our collaborators found that microglia dial up the activity of SYK when they encounter debris in their environment, such as amyloid beta in Alzheimer’s or myelin debris in multiple sclerosis. When we inhibited SYK function in microglia, we found that twice as much amyloid beta accumulated in Alzheimer’s mouse models and six times as much myelin debris in multiple sclerosis mouse models.

Blocking SYK function in the microglia of Alzheimer’s mouse models also worsened neuronal health, indicated by increasing levels of toxic neuronal proteins and a surge in the number of dying neurons. This correlated with hastened cognitive decline, as the mice failed to learn a spatial memory test. Similarly, impairing SYK in multiple sclerosis mouse models exacerbated motor dysfunction and hindered myelin repair. These findings indicate that microglia use SYK to protect the brain from neurodegeneration.

But how does SYK protect the nervous system against damage and degeneration? We found that microglia use SYK to migrate toward debris in the brain. It also helps microglia remove and destroy this debris by stimulating other proteins involved in cleanup processes. These jobs support the idea that SYK helps microglia protect the brain by charging them to remove toxic materials.

Finally, we wanted to figure out if we could leverage SYK to create “super microglia” that could help clean up debris before it makes neurodegeneration worse. When we gave mice a drug that boosted SYK function, we found that Alzheimer’s mouse models had lower levels of plaque accumulation in their brains one week after receiving the drug. This finding points to the potential of increasing microglia activity to treat Alzheimer’s disease.

Of the many brain cells (shown in black), giving microglia a boost could help them more effectively clean up debris in the brain. <a href= — Of the many brain cells (shown in black), giving microglia a boost could help them more effectively clean up debris in the brain. Jose Luis Calvo Martin & Jose Enrique Garcia-Mauriño Muzquiz/iStock via Getty Images Plus

The horizon of microglia treatments

Future studies will be necessary to see whether creating a super microglia cleanup crew to treat neurodegenerative diseases is beneficial in people. But our results suggest that microglia already play a key role in preventing neurodegenerative diseases by helping to remove toxic waste in the nervous system and promoting the healing of damaged areas.

It’s possible to have too much of a good thing, though. Excessive inflammation driven by microglia could make neurologic disease worse. We believe that equipping microglia with the proper instructions to carry out their beneficial functions without causing further damage could one day help treat and prevent neurodegenerative disease.

Listen to The Conversation’s podcast series Uncharted Brain: Decoding Dementia to find out more about the latest research unlocking clues to the ongoing mystery of how dementia works in the brain. Find all episodes via The Anthill podcast.

Volodymyr Zelensky and ‘the spirit of Ukraine’ named Time’s 2022 ‘Person of the Year’

Yahoo! News

Volodymyr Zelensky and ‘the spirit of Ukraine’ named Time’s 2022 ‘Person of the Year’

Rebecca Corey, Writer and Reporter – December 7, 2022

Cover of Time magazine with image of Zelensky surrounded by Ukrainian flags and various people reads: Person of the year, Volodymyr Zelensky & the spirit of Ukraine. — Illustration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by Neil Jamieson on the cover of Time magazine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and “the spirit of Ukraine” have been named Time’s 2022 “Person of the Year,” the magazine announced Wednesday.

The 44-year-old leader became a symbol of Ukrainian resiliency and resistance in the weeks and months after Russia began bombing the former Soviet country, on Feb. 24

“This year’s choice was the most clear-cut in memory. Whether the battle for Ukraine fills one with hope or with fear, the world marched to Volodymyr Zelensky’s beat in 2022,” Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote.

“For proving that courage can be as contagious as fear, for stirring people and nations to come together in defense of freedom, for reminding the world of the fragility of democracy — and of peace, Volodymyr Zelensky and the spirit of Ukraine are Time’s 2022 Person of the Year.”

Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to the U.S. Congress by video. — Zelensky speaks to the U.S. Congress by video to plead for support as his country is besieged by Russian forces in March 2022. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo/Pool)

Contenders for this year’s Person of the Year included several people or entities who have made waves in U.S. politics this year, including outgoing Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision this summer, and possible 2024 presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Zelensky became a household name in 2022 following a meteoric rise from comedian to president in 2019 to global icon in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early this year. With his regularly broadcast messages to everyone from global leaders to regular people — from videos on Twitter to a remote appearance at the Grammys — Zelensky defied Western expectations, holding Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv from Russian forces and inspiring earnest interest in a country that, as Felsenthal says, some people “might not be able to find on a map.”

Time’s cover story by Simon Shuster, who spent nine months reporting on Zelensky and the invasion while being granted “unparalleled access” to the presidential compound, features an exclusive interview with Zelensky on his private train en route to the newly liberated city of Kherson. During the interview, Zelensky described how the only way to defeat Russia is to convince the rest of the free world to pull Ukraine in the other direction toward sovereignty.

“I don’t want to weigh who has more tanks and armies. … We are dealing with a powerful state that is pathologically unwilling to let Ukraine go,” Zelensky said. “They see the democracy and freedom of Ukraine as a question of their own survival.”

Zelensky stands between two hospital beds, on which sit two men, one in a leg cast and the other holding crutches. — Zelensky visits service members at a hospital on the Day of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Kharkiv on Tuesday. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via Reuters)

Reflecting on his time covering Zelensky, Shuster described how Russia’s invasion and the weight of Zelensky’s new role as a defender of democracy has changed the president.

“In April, less than two months into the invasion, Zelensky told me he had aged and changed ‘from all this wisdom that I never wanted,’” Shuster said. “Now, half a year later, the transformation was starker. Aides who once saw him as a lightweight now praise his toughness. Slights that might once have upset him now elicit no more than a shrug. Some of his allies miss the old Zelensky, the practical joker with the boyish smile. But they realize he needs to be different now, much harder and deaf to distractions, or else his country might not survive.”

Previous Time Persons of the Year include Elon Musk in 2021, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2016. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is currently leading the country’s military assault against Ukraine, was named Time Person of the Year in 2007.

Time also announced other accolades on Monday, including the Women of Iran as Heroes of the Year, actress Michelle Yeoh as Icon of the Year and country music artist Mickey Guyton as Breakthrough Artist of the Year.