Inside the Flat Earth Conference; U.S. water security falls short; adapting to survive future fires, and more

What we’re seeing is a convergence of longstanding American fears about government mind control and manipulation of the weather merging with climate change skepticism, as climate science becomes ever-more-politicized.

Former Trump official pushes conspiracy theory that ISIS and Antifa were involved in Las Vegas shooting (Jessica Kwong, Newsweek)
former Trump administration National Security Council official and a retired CIA agent are pushing a conspiracy theory started by Infowars’ Alex Jones that the Islamic State group (ISIS) and antifa had a hand in the deadliest mass shooting in United States history, in Las Vegas last year. The massacre in an anti-President Donald Trump effort.
“There’s substantial evidence that ISIS was involved in this,” Rich Higgins, who worked in the White House for several months as the National Security Council’s strategic planning director, told Politico in a report published Friday.
Higgins, a former Pentagon official, and the retired CIA officer Brad Johnson are among about a dozen intelligence and special operations community members backing the conspiracy theory, according to Politico. The theory, which is utterly contradicted by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s report, was introduced by Jones shortly after Stephen Paddock gunned down 58 people and injured more than 800 others in Las Vegas in October 2017.
Along those lines, Higgins claimed the attack was motivated by an “anti-Trump bias.”

How the media should respond to Trump’s lies (Sean Illing, Vox)
A linguist explains how Trump uses lies to divert attention from the “big truths.”

How U.S. gun laws allow mass shooters to slip through (Benjamin Bahney, RAND Blog)
The three most lethal domestic terrorist attacks since 9/11 were carried out with high-capacity semiautomatic weapons. None of the attackers were under 21 or were stoppable through criminal background checks. Restrictions on sales of semiautomatics would make it much harder for terrorists to obtain their most effective means of killing.

Pentagon, DHS spell out how they’ll cooperate on cyber defense (Joseph Marks, Defense One)
The memorandum of understanding comes after the Defense Department prepared to help the Homeland Security Department repel Election Day cyberattacks.

How would U.S. prosecutors go after Assange? (Elias Groll, Foreign Policy)
Prosecuting the WikiLeaks founder raises hard questions about U.S. press freedom that may not, at present, be answerable.

U.S. water security falls short (Sera Young, The Hill)
Next week we celebrate Thanksgiving, a day in the U.S. when many commemorate the country’s forefathers and mothers for having enough food to survive a bitter New England winter.
Assessing food security is easy; by answering a few short questions created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we can know where to target resources like vouchers and food banks and if programs and policies meant to improve food security actually do so.
Given how valuable it has been to be able to measure household food insecurity, it is stunning that we can’t do the same for water. It seems that inadequate access to water of acceptable quality and quantity is likely an enormous issue in the United States. 

How extreme weather is shrinking the planet (Bill McKibben, New Yorker)
With wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels, large tracts of the earth are at risk of becoming uninhabitable. But the fossil-fuel industry continues its assault on the facts.

How California needs to adapt to survive future fires (Matt Simon, Wired)
Something’s gone awry in California. Fires aren’t supposed to destroy entire cities—at least not since San Francisco burned in 1906. Fire codes, better fire-resistant materials, fancier firefighting equipment, and water-spewing aircraft have made it easier to put out flames. Yet in the last year, California has seen seven of its 20 most destructive wildfires ever. The Camp Fire comes just a year after the second most destructive blaze, the Tubbs Fire, struck the city of Santa Rosa in the wine country, leveling 5,500 structures and killing 22.