Ground Zero Research Articles

Women at War: Feminists and Antifeminist Christians in the 1970s

Women at War: Feminists and Antifeminist Christians in the 1970s Leigh Ann Wheeler Kristen Swinth, Feminism’s Forgotten Fight: The Unfinished Struggle for Work and Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. 339 pp. Abbreviations, notes, figures, and index. $35.00. Marjorie J. Spruill, Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women’s Rights and Family Values that Polarized America Politics. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017. 436 pp. Acknowledgments, notes, and index. $33.00. Born in 1967 into a Church of Christ family in Kansas, I would not hear the word feminism or the names of Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem until college. But I knew that God hated “women’s libbers,” because they were ugly, hated kids, wanted to destroy my family, and thought my mom was a loser. My dad also assured us—my mom, two brothers, and me—that women’s libbers would rudely cut in front of you in line. My mom, a mother of three without a college degree, was a housewife in the 1970s. I don’t know whether she had heard of feminism, Friedan, or Steinem. But she could not have known that “Battling Bella”—the flamboyantly feminist Congresswoman Bella Abzug—helped to pass more equitable divorce policies that would, by the 1980s, apply to her. Nor could she have anticipated that the term “displaced homemaker,” coined by feminist Tanya Melich in 1974, would describe her by the end of the decade. (p. 122) And I did not know this: my blue-collar, fundamentalist Christian family occupied ground zero in the war over sex roles, work, and family that would define two antagonistic women’s movements and dramatically realign relations between Democrats and Republicans. This history that I lived through in nearly complete ignorance is the subject of two fascinating new books that, together, show how mainstream women’s rights activists embraced family values but nevertheless became identified as the family’s number-one enemies. The story involves idealists and cynics, as well as celebrity activists, politicized homemakers, prominent politicians, first ladies, and even U.S. presidents. In the end, it shows us yet another phase of a [End Page 144] repeating modern narrative: expectations that women would unite aggravated differences between them, incited attacks among and between them, and invited sensationalist media coverage as well as cynical exploitation by politicians who transformed disagreements among women into polarizing wedge issues. Professors of History Kristen Swinth and Marjorie Spruill approach their subjects with different questions. Swinth asks: Why are feminists blamed for “today’s superwoman dilemma” (p. 2)? In other words, when women struggle to “have it all” with regard to career and family, but fail or feel dissatisfied with the result, why is feminism held accountable? By contrast, Marjorie Spruill aims to explain why, given that Republicans and Democrats both supported the modern women’s rights movement in 1970, “by 1980, the GOP had sided with the…women’s movement…that positioned family values in opposition to women’s rights” (p. 2). The answers to both of these questions involve the “new postindustrial order” that made “wage work increasingly insecure and a ‘family wage’ for men increasingly rare” (Swinth, p. 4). Spruill describes the women’s rights movement as “more a result than a cause” of these changes, while Swinth credits feminists with offering “the first viable alternative to the dominant gender and family arrangement” (Spruill, pp. 71–2; Swinth, pp. 5, 10). Feminism provided a solution to the demise of the male breadwinner. But both authors are less interested in investigating this than in exploring the tangled relationships between women’s rights and families’ “needs.” In Feminism’s Forgotten Fight, Swinth emphasizes that mainstream feminists did not simply adopt a male model of liberation—one that would free women of domestic responsibilities and the “having-it-all” juggling act that men escaped (p. 24). Swinth shows that from the first, feminists addressed “the very issues of work and family” that they have since been blamed for ignoring. (p. 2) She does so by bringing together a number of activist strands often treated separately by scholars, including activism around welfare rights, housework, childcare, and maternity. In the process, Swinth writes a history...

HOMOPHOBIA AND ‘UN-AMERICANNESS’ AS RISING FACETS OF ISLAMOPHOBIA: AN ANALYSIS OF ORLANDO SHOOTING MEDIA TRANSCRIPTS

HOMOPHOBIA AND ‘UN-AMERICANNESS’ AS RISING FACETS OF ISLAMOPHOBIA: AN ANALYSIS OF ORLANDO SHOOTING MEDIA TRANSCRIPTS

Big Data Biopolitics

Abstract This article considers the medial logics of American terrorist watchlist screening in order to study the ways in which digital inequities result from specific computational parameters. Central in its analysis is Secure Flight, an automated prescreening program run by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that identifies lowand high-risk airline passengers through name-matching algorithms. Considering Secure Flight through the framework of biopolitics, this article examines how passenger information is aggregated, assessed and scored in order to construct racialised assemblages of passengers that reify discourses of American exceptionalism. Racialisation here is neither a consequence of big data nor a motivating force behind the production of risk-assessment programs. Both positions would maintain that discrimination is simply an effect of an information management system that considers privacy as its ultimate goal, which is easily mitigated with more accurate algorithms. Not simply emerging as an effect of discriminatory practices at airport security, racialisation formats the specific techniques embedded in terrorist watchlist matching, in particular the strategies used to transliterate names across different script systems. I argue thus that the biopolitical production of racialised assemblages forms the ground zero of Secure Flight’s computational parameters, as well as its claims to accuracy. This article concludes by proposing a move away from the call to solve digital inequities with more precise algorithms in order to carefully interrogate the forms of power complicit in the production and use of big data analytics.

Differential interferometry, structural lineaments and terrain deformation analysis applied in Zero Zone 2016 Earthquake (Manta, Ecuador)

The earthquake of April 16, 2016 caused huge economic losses and human lives in Ground Zero of the city of Manta, Ecuador. The present study delimited the affected areas by superficial deformation and vertical displacements of the relief in this zone by means of the differential interferometry analysis (DInSAR), with the support of geophysical techniques such as electrical tomography of the subsoil and of georadar in combination with the analysis of concentration of structural lineaments-tectonic deformation, seismicity and geotechnical parameters such as soil liquefaction indexes, cutting wave velocity Vs30, among others. This combination of techniques allowed the spatial location with greater certainty of areas susceptible to seismic risk for construction and related to the soils typology of the Ecuadorian Construction Standard-NEC 2015. This proposed methodology improved forecasting mechanisms for the reduction of seismic risk based on maps of its susceptibility to the possible occurrence of an earthquake of magnitude as that of 16 April 16, 2016. Forecast that can be done to protect engineering works and to the population, especially in tectonically deformed areas.

Ghost Dance

My poem draws on two threads of American history in the West, contact of indigenous peoples with European immigrants and the experience of workers at the Nevada Nuclear Bomb Site during the 1950s and '60s. In my mind, the decimation of the native population and confiscation of their land paved the way for bomb-building experiments that poisoned thousands of government workers and residents. Two oral histories, Native American Testimonies and American Ground Zero, informed my understanding of these events.

MODERATE ISLAM AND ITS RELEVANCE IN THE POST 9/11 AMERICA AS IMPLIED IN IMAM FEISAL ABDUL RAUF’S MOVING

American Muslim is one of some existing religious minorities in America. Despite of minority, this religious group has been long, some believed it has been even since the Columbus exploration, living in the country. As time goes, the American Muslims are able to blend with American Society. These Muslim individuals are found in many fields of life of American, such as social, economic, education, and even politics in America. This condition is anyway worth appreciating as the struggle of American Muslims for their existence is not something simple and easy. Apart from the reality, the deadly attacks of 9/11, to some extent, has put American Muslims to be objects of suspicions. Soon after the tragedy, Muslims in many occasions are prejudiced as harsh, and of course, terrorists. These suspicions and prejudice have been, in fact, long found in the middle of American society pre-9/11 attacks. However, the tragedy aggravates the status quo of the American Muslims and it soon creates the worst point of so-called Islamophobia. In response to this phenomenon, many American Muslims start to deliver counters in various ways and media. Among the American Muslim figures, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, an American Muslim activist and leader, actively brushes off the bad images of Islam, especially regarding the 9/11 tragedy. Through his book entitled “Moving the Mountain: beyond Ground Zero to a New Vision of Islam in America”, Rauf explains his views on Islam. This book also implies counters to the so-called phenomena of Islamophobia. On the other hand, Moderate Islam contains the same spirits with Rauf’s Moving the Mountain. It offers the spirit of moderation in understanding and practicing Islam. Both the ideas in turn are able to counter Islamophobia in America, especially in post 9/11 America.Keyword: American Muslims, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Moving the Mountain,Islamophobia, Moderate Islam

Plutonium and other radionuclides persist across marine-to-terrestrial ecotopes in the Montebello Islands sixty years after nuclear tests.

Since the 1956 completion of nuclear testing at the Montebello Islands, Western Australia, this remote uninhabited island group has been relatively undisturbed (no major remediations) and currently functions as high-value marine and terrestrial habitat within the Montebello/Barrow Islands Marine Conservation Reserves. The former weapons testing sites, therefore, provide a unique opportunity for assessing the fate and behaviour of Anthropocene radionuclides subjected to natural processes across a range of shallow-marine to island-terrestrial ecological units (ecotopes). We collected soil, sediment and biota samples and analysed their radionuclide content using gamma and alpha spectrometry, photostimulated luminescence autoradiography and accelerator mass spectrometry. We found the activity levels of the fission and neutron-activation products have decreased by ~hundred-fold near the ground zero locations. However, Pu concentrations remain elevated, some of which are high relative to most other Australian and international sites (up to 25,050 Bq kg-1 of 239+240+241Pu). Across ecotopes, Pu ranked from highest to lowest in the following order: island soils > dunes > foredunes > marine sediments > and beach intertidal zone. Low values of Pu and other radionuclides were detected in all local wildlife tested including endangered species. Activity concentrations ranked (highest to lowest) terrestrial arthropods > terrestrial mammal and reptile bones > algae > oyster flesh > whole crab > sea turtle bone > stingray and teleost fish livers > sea cucumber flesh > sea turtle skin > teleost fish muscle. The three detonations (one from within a ship and two from 30 m towers) resulted in differing contaminant forms, with the ship detonation producing the highest activity concentrations and finer more inhalable particulate forms. The three sites are distinct in their 240/239Pu and 241/239Pu atom ratios, including the Pu transported by natural process or within migratory living organisms.

Conserving novel ecosystems and layered landscapes along the inter-German border

ABSTRACTFor forty years, Germany was cut in two, its internal border a legacy of the Second World War and ground zero of the Cold War. But the border region, shaped for decades by demographic and economic decline, became an ecological refuge for many of Germany’s endangered plant and animal species. When the wall fell in 1989, conservationists launched an effort to protect the former borderlands and convert them into an ecological corridor called the Green Belt. This paper explores the novel ecosystems along the Green Belt: one a restoration and rewilding project, the other aimed at maintaining the imprint of the Cold War landscape. It shows how conservation of novel ecosystems in Germany and beyond requires a long-range approach that emphasizes opportunism, multifunctionality, experimentation, a flexible interpretation of historical fidelity, and respect for both emergent ecosystems and the deep layers of human history and memory.

Nepal Earthquake: An Experience from Ground Zero.

Nepal Earthquake: An Experience from Ground Zero.

Exposure to WTC Dust Alters Rat Cardiac Gap Junctional Proteins

ObjectiveFirst responders (FR) present at Ground Zero during the first 72 h after the World Trade Center (WTC) towers collapsed have exhibited increased incidences of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Despite increasing evidences of CVDs, the mechanistic underpinnings behind adverse effects of WTC dust exposure are not well studied. Using a system that generated/delivered supercoarse (10–53 μm) WTC dusts (in a manner that mimicked FR exposures), this study sought to examine potential toxicities in the heart.MethodsIn this study, rats were exposed on two consecutive days for 2 h/day by intratracheal inhalation (ITIH) to supercoarse (10–53 μm) WTC dusts (while under isoflurane [ISO] anesthesia) or an air/ISO (naïve) mixture. This dose conservatively modeled likely exposures to nearly ≈250 mg dust/m3 FR exposure. Hearts were harvested 30 & 60 days post‐exposure and processed for qualitative and quantitative protein expression analyses.ResultsData obtained from right ventricular samples demonstrate decreased desmin expression in the WTC exposed group as compared to the control groups (naive and ISO). Interestingly, although no change in the expression of connexin‐43 was observed between the exposed and control groups, localization studies using confocal microscopy revealed disrupted organization of connexin‐43 at the cardiomyocyte junction. Additionally, confocal imaging suggested reduction of F‐actin expression in the WTC exposed group compared to control groups. Further, expression profiles of the PI3K/Akt signaling axis using western blot analysis revealed a marked decrease in activated phospho‐Akt in the WTC dust exposed group in comparison to control groups. Although blunted activation of Akt was observed, phospho‐PI3K levels were unaltered.ConclusionExposure to WTC dusts caused significant remodeling of gap junctions and altered expression of selected mechanical junction proteins at the intercalated disks. These results illustrate that a defect in a structural/gap junction protein can cause alterations in structural integrity leading to electrical and mechanical perturbations that can contribute to cardiac dysfunction.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Self-Unity as Ground Zero of Learning and Development

Contrary to the suggestion that we are born in a state of confusion and primordial state of a-dualism with the environment, infancy research of the past 40 years shows that from the outset, infants are objective perceivers guided by rich evolved survival values of approach and avoidance in relation to specific resources in the environment such as faces, food, or smell. This starting-state competence drives and organizes their behavior. Evidence-based ascription of self-unity at birth is discussed. Selected findings are presented suggesting that self-unity is a primordial human experience, the main organizer of behavior from the outset. Self-unity is the necessary ground zero enabling the rapid learning and development taking place early in human life.

Imagining New York City: Literature, Urbanism, and the Visual Arts, 1890–1940The Language of Vision: Photography and Southern Literature in the 1930s and After

Imagining New York City: Literature, Urbanism, and the Visual Arts, 1890–1940The Language of Vision: Photography and Southern Literature in the 1930s and After

The psychology of modern memorials: the affective intertwining of personal and collective memories / La psicología de los monumentos modernos: la implicación afectiva de los recuerdos personales y colectivos

This paper explores collective memory and grief as they are experienced and expressed at modern memorial sites. What makes them collective is the way they are interpreted and felt as a ‘we’, in first-person plural. From a cultural psychological perspective, we conceptualize memorials as cultural and historical artefacts that mediate these processes and in so doing give meaning to the past based on present and future challenges. Along these lines, we analyse visitors’ situated and evolving experiences of two memorial sites: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and the Ground Zero National September 11 Memorial in New York. Results focus on individuals’ particular modes of experiencing and appropriating modern memorial sites, which in contrast to classic ones are purposely built to generate a wide range of different meaning-making processes and ways of interacting with them.

Lung transplant after COVID-19 – Would there be a need for it in future?

The coronavirus disease also known as COVID-19 was discovered at the end of 2019 following epidemic of acute respiratory syndrome in humans in Wuhan, China. It leads to lung destruction at acute stage of the disease and, possibly, progressive lung destruction from extensive inflammatory process at the ground zero which is the lung. This will eventually lead to a permanent scaring of the lungs with reduction in the oxygenation of the lungs and eventually end-stage lung disease. The use of ventilations and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation does not seem to hold the ace in guaranteeing a long-term relieve, but lung transplant for the condition may be the solution in a long-term basis.

Central Europe as Ground Zero of the New International Order

This article presents post-Habsburg central and eastern Europe as the flagship campus of the new international order of 1919. It shows how the international project of imperial liquidation, and the predicament of the successor states, produced a wide range of new international schemes, techniques, and frameworks—spanning the economy, crime, humanitarianism, and rights—that significantly shaped the global governance of today. Where historians customarily trace the implications of imperial collapse for the region's nationalization, I focus instead on internationalization. I isolate three different “border effects” in which the boundaries of sovereignty were reworked or challenged. International authority and jurisdiction grew and thrived on the sorts of qualified sovereignty that emerged in empire's wake.

Ground Zero mosque in the context of America’s post-9/11 religious pluralism: CDA of mainstream news media’s coverage of the discursive event

This article analyzes the Ground Zero Mosque discursive event and the discourses surrounding the American Muslim Community and explores the role of the media in the production and reproduction processes of anti-Muslim frames. To understand Islamophobia in the United States in the context of religious pluralism, this article adopts Critical Discourse Analysis, under which two theories unfold: sourcing theory and framing theory. The sourcing analysis targeted the media voices monitoring the discourses and contributing to the discursive construction and interpretation of mosque proposal into an agenda-led image. The second theory is framing, which consists of including a perceived reality—in the news—, making it more salient, and presenting it to the audience. The data analyzed were collected from CNN and Fox News via Lexis Nexis online academic database. A total of 225 media transcripts—(n=138) Fox News and (n=87) CNN—constituted the text and were coded and analyzed using Atlas.ti data mining software program. The critical analysis has resulted in a number of 180 voices—e.g. journalists, politicians, academics, officials, etc. — contribution of the discursive construction of the non-violence event, ofwhich 150 were anti-Muslim activists, journalists, politicians, reportedly formerMuslim Brotherhood member, etc. The study has also resulted in two mainframes: frame of illegitimacy and frame of terrorism, transforming the nonviolenceevent into a celebrated violent one, thereby providing a vivid image ofAmerica’s project of religious pluralism and its capacity to accommodate thereligions existing within the American confines.Artikel ini menganalisis peristiwa acara diskursif Masjid Ground Zero danwacana seputar Komunitas Muslim Amerika dan mengeksplorasi peran mediadalam proses produksi dan reproduksi bingkai anti-Muslim. Untuk memahamiIslamophobia di Amerika Serikat dalam konteks pluralisme agama, artikelini mengadopsi Analisis Wacana Kritis, di mana dua teori terungkap: teorisumber dan teori framing. Analisis sumber menargetkan suara-suara mediayang memonopoli wacana dan berkontribusi pada konstruksi diskursif daninterpretasi proposal masjid ke dalam pencitraan yang dipimpin oleh suatuagenda. Teori kedua adalah framing, yang terdiri dari memasukkan realitas yangdirasakan — dalam berita—, membuatnya lebih menonjol, dan menyajikannyakepada pemirsa. Data yang dianalisis dikumpulkan dari CNN dan Fox Newsmelalui database akademik online Lexis Nexis. Sebanyak 225 transkrip media—(n = 138) Fox News dan (n = 87) CNN — merupakan teks dan dikodekandan dianalisis menggunakan program perangkat lunak data mining Atlas.ti.Analisis kritis telah menghasilkan sejumlah 180 suara — misalnya wartawan,politisi, akademisi, pejabat, dll. - berkontribusi terhadap konstruksi diskursifdari peristiwa non-kekerasan, yang 150 di antaranya adalah aktivis anti-Muslim,jurnalis, politisi, mantan anggota Ikhwanul Muslimin, dll. Studi ini juga telahmenghasilkan dua kerangka utama: bingkai illegitimacy dan bingkai terorisme,yang mengubah peristiwa non-kekerasan menjadi peristiwa yang sangat kejam.Inilah gambaran yang jelas tentang proyek pluralisme agama Amerika dankapasitasnya untuk mengakomodasi agama-agama yang ada dalam batas-batasAmerika.

Spirituality at Workplace: A Report from Ground Zero

Purpose:The construct called Spirituality at Workplace (SAW) has now gained adulthood as it was conceived in the last decade of 20th century. The awareness and practice of the concept among the working world is found severely lagging the speed of scholars' research, discourses and conferences. The paper has three purposes: (i) Examine reasons for this lag through empirical research.(ii) Suggest the way forward so that construct is conceived in its true sense and start delivering the greater good for the society at large and beget sustainable success for the corporate world.(iii) Examine whether SAW is a leadership Competency. Methodology: Three sets of questionnaires were administered to 104 Indian executives across the industry. The first was aimed at gauging the awareness about the construct. The second one targeted to probe whether Spirituality at Workplace (SAW) is in practice without realizing that they are already practicing it ! A simple definition of SAW distilled from the extensive literature review was provided in the third questionnaire and then attempted to assess acceptability of the construct and also whether it is a desirable leadership competency. Comparison of the feedback from first and third questionnaire revealed that it is basically lack of awareness of correct definition of the construct among the corporate citizens which is responsible for the poor perceived value and misunderstanding of SAW. Many myths like relatedness with religion are also found responsible for camouflaging the publicity and virtue of the construct. It was also observed that spirituality has already made inroads into the world of modern work clandestinely. The way forward to propagate SAW is suggested on the basis of results of the survey, expert opinions and literature review. The paper also discusses how a “pyramid of purpose” can be juxtaposed against the pyramid of Maslow's need hierarchy to provide a clear sense of levels of purpose to the corporate citizens and thus leverage and spread SAW for sustainable success in business world.

What happens when you give money to panhandlers? The case of downtown Manhattan

We study panhandling in Downtown Manhattan. Surprisingly few people panhandle there at any given moment: about 8–10 people on average at a busy time, in a small area with an economy the size of Latvia's. The redevelopment of Ground Zero and the resulting surge in economic activity—including the opening of North America's tallest building—changed where panhandlers operated within the neighborhood, but did not significantly increase panhandling overall. The response was muted because the labor supply of panhandlers appears to be inelastic. On the other hand, good places to panhandle are relatively abundant. Hence the benefits of the boom in economic activity accrued mainly to incumbent panhandlers themselves; as would the benefits of greater donor generosity.

The struggle for ‘our streets’: the digital and physical spatial politics of the Ferguson Movement

ABSTRACTThe Ferguson Movement of 2014 and 2015 reached national salience immediately following the murder of Michael Brown, after residents took to social media platforms to report from what many activists called ‘ground zero.’ Some popular and scholarly conversations have couched the movement largely through its online manifestations; this study, however, places the movement within the intersections of digital and physical space as well as the broader political context of St. Louis. Triangulating data from 21 unstructured interviews with local activists in St. Louis, Missouri with GIS and digital media analysis, we illustrate how activists in the Ferguson Movement organized within St. Louis’ physical space and challenged popular arguments about resistance in digital space. Consequently, we argue that social movements’ placeness remain important despite recent emphases on digital media.

Fantasy, the Final Frontier: Making Science Moral in Postwar North Korean Youth Culture

AbstractThe atomic bombing marked an end to World War II and triggered the evacuation of the Japanese from the Korean peninsula. In its wake came parallel occupations by the USSR and the US, under which North and South Korea dedicated themselves to rebuilding from postwar destruction. Science and technology had a central role to play as the means through which to meet economic goals and achieve military, political, and social ideals. In North Korea, the investment in science and technology revealed itself in young reader magazines, where scientific content made banal the exceptional power of nuclear energy and made the natural world knowable through formulas and data. At the same time, science and fiction took an interest in the relationships between the self and the collective and between humans and nature and reconfigured these relationships in moral terms. This article argues that scientific knowledge had to be framed by, and injected with, strong moral guidance to assure accurate and appropriate applications of the technical and scientific. Moral restructuring was the ground zero of social and economic reform, and the narrative form was recognized as the best way to shape the most elusive frontier of all: the fantasy of the young.