Video captured the moment the rare, terrifying weather phenomenon of volcanic lightning was triggered by an erupting volcano in the Philippines
Sahar Esfandiari

A still capturing the rare moment lightning struck the pummel 

of ash rising from the volcano. YouTube/Weather Events

Video footage captures the moment a rare occurrence known as volcanic lighting hits the sky following a volcanic eruption in the Philippines.
Volcanic lighting is caused as a result of electrical discharge released from a volcanic eruption.
There were no immediate injuries from the eruption, but 450,000 people are said to be based in the 14 km danger zone surrounding the volcano.

Video footage captures the moment a rare occurrence called "volcanic lighting" occurred in the Philippines.

As can be seen in the video below, volcanic smoke and ash are erupting from the volcano as lightning strikes the sky.

The smoke appears to make the lightning more visible and pronounced to onlookers, who are heard screaming in the background at the terrifying scene.

A closeup of the footage seen below was re-posted by meteorological institution MetSul on Twitter.
—MetSul.com (@metsul) January 12, 2020

Volcanic lighting is a rare natural phenomenon believed to be caused by ash particles rubbing together in volcanic clouds, creating friction and static electricity.

The Taal volcano began spewing lava on Monday morning local time.

A day prior, the volcano emitted a huge plume of ash across the surrounding area, and put an estimated 450,000 people at risk, according to the UN OCHA office in the Philippines.

The ash covered the area in a blanket of volcanic dust, and as of 6.a.m Monday local time 7,700 people had been evacuated by authorities.

The volcano is one of the world's smallest in size, but has recorded 34 eruptions over the last 450 years, according to the BBC.

Perogies and Politics: 

Canada's Ukrainian Left, 1891-1991

By Rhonda L. Hinther

© 2018

In Perogies and Politics, Rhonda Hinther explores the twentieth-century history of the Ukrainian left in Canada from the standpoint of the women, men, and children who formed and fostered it.

For twentieth-century leftist Ukrainians, culture and politics were inextricably linked. The interaction of Ukrainian socio-cultural identity with Marxist-Leninism resulted in one of the most dynamic national working-class movements Canada has ever known. The Ukrainian left’s success lay in its ability to meet the needs of and speak in meaningful, respectful, and empowering ways to its supporters’ experiences and interests as individuals and as members of a distinct immigrant working-class community. This offered to Ukrainians a radical social, cultural, and political alternative to the fledgling Ukrainian churches and right-wing Ukrainian nationalist movements. Hinther’s colourful and in-depth work reveals how left-wing Ukrainians were affected by changing social, economic, and political forces and how they in turn responded to and challenged these forces.　

Re-Imagining Ukrainian-Canadians: 

History, Politics, and Identity

Edited by Rhonda L. Hinther and Jim Mochoruk

© 2010

Ukrainian immigrants to Canada have often been portrayed in history as sturdy pioneer farmers cultivating the virgin land of the Canadian west. The essays in this collection challenge this stereotype by examining the varied experiences of Ukrainian-Canadians in their day-to-day roles as writers, intellectuals, national organizers, working-class wage earners, and inhabitants of cities and towns. Throughout, the contributors remain dedicated to promoting the study of ethnic, hyphenated histories as major currents in mainstream Canadian history.

Topics explored include Ukrainian-Canadian radicalism, the consequences of the Cold War for Ukrainians both at home and abroad, the creation and maintenance of ethnic memories, and community discord embodied by pro-Nazis, Communists, and criminals. Re-Imagining Ukrainian-Canadians uses new sources and non-traditional methods of analysis to answer unstudied and often controversial questions within the field. Collectively, the essays challenge the older, essentialist definition of what it means to be Ukrainian-Canadian.

CD Goes Digital

Volume 53, Issue 1: Summer 2019

With this issue of Canadian Dimension, we draw the curtain on 56 years in print.

This decision – the result of perpetual penury due to debt, shrinking grants, a decrescent subscriber base, and the pressures of the contemporary media environment – would be more heart-rending than it is, were it not for the promise of eternal life in cyberspace. So, in fittingly dialectical terms, this is at once a demise and a transcendence of English-speaking Canada’s longest-lived radical left magazine published in Winnipeg for the last six decades.

This defiant and scrappy periodical for people who want to change the world was launched at a historical moment when changing the world, or at least bringing about some sweeping changes in Canadian society, seemed a more distinct and immediate possibility than it does now. But the very first issue to see the light of print reminds us that the false promises of capitalism and the threat of nuclear war weighed heavily on the generation of the New Left. Introducing the magazine, Cy Gonick wrote: “Despite the terrifying (and terrified) world in which we were born, we are not without hope for a better future. We have not become so disillusioned, so swamped by commercialism, so paralysed by the bomb that we have halted the search for ‘the good society’ and the use of reason as a guide to action.”

Founded in 1963, Dimension was an oasis in what was then a largely bleak media landscape for the Left. The only independent left publication of note in English-speaking Canada was the anarchist monthly Our Generation, published in Montreal. Dimension prceded The Last Post, Briarpatch, In These Times and many other periodicals that emerged to satisfy the need for radical left analysis of Canadian politics, economy and culture.

However, the kind of radical movement of which Dimension was a reflection and an integral part has ebbed over the decades. The organized labour movement is a shadow of its former self, having mostly retreated into corporatism and futile rear-guard action against the assaults of neoliberal capitalism, when what is needed is mobilization for massive class struggle. The peace movement too has flagged. Outside Québec, where students were the advance guard of the popular movement known as the Printemps érable in 2012, the student movement hardly exists. The NDP has moved steadily rightward in spite of periodic efforts to infuse it with some semblance of fighting spirit – this at a time when socialism, however vaguely defined, is inspiring a new generation of young people in the United States.

Our raison d’être remains intact. And although CD is a political project that first found expression in print, that project is not tethered to a specific medium. Our aim has always been to give voice to left ideas and to spark discussion. Today, with the irrevocable rise of the Web, the conversation to which we want to contribute is taking place principally online. And we plan to continue speaking our piece in that vital virtual space.

We will still offer the in-depth analytical pieces that have been our hallmark for more than half a century, but going digital will enable CD to be more responsive to the fast pace of left debate and intervene more quickly in ongoing discussions.

We invite our readers and supporters to join us online as we make this transition, and we look forward, in the months and years ahead, to engaging with a new generation of people who want to change the world.

As we bow out of the tangible world of print, we want to thank our subscribers – both the stalwarts and the relative newcomers to CD – for their sustaining solidarity. ¡Hasta la victoria siempre!

Manufactured Ignorance about the Ukrainian-Canadian Left

JEFF KOCHAN   CANADIAN POLITICS, EUROPE   JANUARY 3, 2020

Still image taken from the film The Ukrainian Labour Temple: A Cultural and Political Movement from Winnipeg’s North End (2012), directed by Aaron Floresco.

In recent years, a new academic field has emerged, called agnotology. The name comes from the old Greek agnōsis, meaning “ignorance,” and -logia, meaning “the study of.” Agnotology is the study of ignorance. More specifically, it is the study of how ignorance is often manufactured in order to obscure matters of fact.

For example, in the last century big tobacco companies funded research that obscured the health effects of tobacco. Key agents for Big Tobacco were later hired by Big Oil, where they quickly got busy manufacturing ignorance about anthropogenic climate change.

Agents of ignorance lobby news media to publish contradictory information in the name of “balance.” Despite overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic climate change, “balance” requires that a few opposing scientific voices be given equal weight.

The goal is not to replace one set of facts with another, but to create a fog of doubt about what the facts are. The resulting spectacle is meant to paralyse public opinion and promote passivity.

The Lingering Fog of Cold War Rhetoric

The Cold War is fertile ground for agnotology. It apparently fizzled out after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Yet there has been a weird resuscitation of Cold War rhetoric in twenty-first century Canada.

In 2014, Stephen Harper admonished Vladimir Putin to “get out of Ukraine”, a demand that echoed Ronald Reagan’s famous 1987 exhortation: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Also in 2014, newly elected Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland was banned from Russia for her criticism of Putin’s government. She called this an “honour” and went on to serve as Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister from 2017 to 2019, while still under the Russian ban.

Michael Chomiak and wife Alexandra, with their children in Canada in 1952.

In 2015, Freeland penned an essay for the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., with the title “My Ukraine”. Photos on her MP website show her wearing a traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt. Freeland has woven her Ukrainian heritage into her public persona as a globetrotting Canadian politician.

For many Canadians, this proves the success of multiculturalism. For many Ukrainian Canadians, it demonstrates their success in achieving full membership in Canada, while still retaining their distinct heritage.

But not everyone views Freeland’s eccentric blend of culture and politics as innocent. In 2018, Canada expelled four Russian diplomats posted in Ottawa. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited an alleged disinformation campaign against Freeland as one reason for the expulsion.

At issue were allegations that Freeland’s Ukrainian grandfather was a Nazi collaborator. In March, 2017, two opinion pieces appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, one supporting the allegations, the other dismissing them.

This is an example of “balance” in the media. Canadians, including Ukrainian Canadians, can be forgiven for not knowing what to think as a result. The lingering fog of Cold War rhetoric turns historical fact into an uncertain phantom.

The Ukrainian-Canadian Left’s Critique of Multiculturalism

In 2009, Parks Canada designated Winnipeg’s Ukrainian Labour Temple a national heritage site. Historian Rhonda Hither, in her recent book Perogies and Politics: Canada’s Ukrainian Left, 1891-1991, describes this as a “hard-fought recognition”, as well as evidence that Canada’s Ukrainian left had become “firmly ensconced within the Canadian multicultural historical record.”

Reading Hinther’s words, Ukrainian Canadians are meant to feel proud that the actions of their leftist forebears have been finally, and fully, recognised by the Canadian state. But what was their contribution, and has it really been fully recognised?

In fact, Ukrainian-Canadian leftist leaders were decidedly critical of official multiculturalism. On first blush, this would seem at odds with their own desire for equal status as a distinct cultural group within a heterogeneous Canadian state. So why did they do it?

An early 20th century postcard of Winnipeg’s newly constructed Ukrainian Labour Temple, captioned in Ukrainian, was probably intended to be mailed to relatives in the Old Country. Source: Rob McInnes.

The answer is Québec. Hinther shows that it was rightist Ukrainian Canadians who supported state multiculturalism. By contrast, labour leader Mitch Sago, writing in the Ukrainian Canadian on May 1, 1968, condemned these rightists as a “reactionary” and “self-interested” lobby group who “provide the Anglo-Canadian establishment with a mass base for diversionary attacks upon the French Canadian people.” Sago instead told Ukrainian Canadians that “We are ethnic elements of one or the other nation in Canadian society.”

This was one year before the Waffle Manifesto was published in Canadian Dimension. As Mel Watkins has recently written, the Waffle stood for an independent socialist Canada within which Québec’s independentist movement would be respected. The Waffle quickly crashed, and the idea of a progressive, left-wing nationalism went with it.

Except in Québec. As Pierre Beaudet has observed, the independentist provincial party Québec solidaire maintains a powerful example of progressive nationalism. But this example has been largely ignored by the rest of Canada.

By the same token, the progressive nationalism of the Ukrainian-Canadian left has largely disappeared from history. With this ignorance in place, it becomes ideologically safe both to designate Winnipeg’s Ukrainian Labour Temple a national heritage site, and to celebrate this designation as a hard-fought victory for the Ukrainian-Canadian left. But who truly benefits from this arrangement?

Conservative Multiculturalism and Canada’s “Ethnic” Vote

In 2007, Conservative MP Jason Kenney became Canada’s first Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity. His remit was to win over “ethnic” voters for the new Conservative government. He continued this work from 2008 to 2013 as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

In 2008, the Canadian Parliament passed into law the Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (“Holodomor”) Memorial Day Act. This law designates the fourth Saturday in November as a national day of commemoration for the millions who died of famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. The act’s preamble states that this famine “was deliberately planned and executed by the Soviet Regime under Joseph Stalin.”

In November of 2019, Kenney, now Premier of Alberta, published a video press release marking this day of commemoration. In the video, he states that the famine “was tied up with an effort of suppressing Ukrainian nationalism by the Soviet powers in Moscow.”

On the one side, nationalism. On the other, communism. This black-and-white binary once again resuscitates Cold War rhetoric. By painting the famine as a communist assault on Ukrainian nationalism, Kenney implies that those who sympathise with communism might also turn a blind eye to mass extermination.

Indeed, in that same week, Kenney tweeted about “how the Communists, and their ‘useful idiots’ in the West, covered up the famine-genocide.” He was likely referring to Dougal MacDonald, a member of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada, who had a few days earlier commented on Facebook that it was “Hitlerite Nazis who created the famine myth.”

My speech at last week’s #Holodomor commemoration in Calgary.

I discussed how the Communists, and their ‘useful idiots’ in the West, covered up the famine-genocide.

Sad to see some in Canada still engaged in this genocide denial. pic.twitter.com/RrDVbasKk1

— Jason Kenney (@jkenney) November 28, 2019

MacDonald’s idiocy was, in fact, quite useful for Kenney’s conservative effort to drive a wedge between nationalism and communism. Kenney’s rhetoric obscures the fact that many on the Ukrainian-Canadian left had combined nationalism with progressive politics. This attracted the ire not only of the Ukrainian-Canadian right, but also of the Communist Party of Canada.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper (left) and Paul Grod, then President of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. Photo by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

Progressive Nationalism: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

In 1962, Mitch Sago was in Vancouver fundraising for the Ukrainian Canadian when he was assaulted on the street in broad daylight, and left badly injured. As cited in Hinther’s Perogies and Politics, police concluded that the attack “was one of several … perpetuated on leading labour figures in the community during the past recent period of time.”

In 1950, the same year Canada began to admit former Ukrainian SS servicemen as immigrants, Toronto’s Ukrainian Labour Temple was bombed while hosting a children’s concert. Nobody was killed, but many were injured by flying glass. The Ukrainian-Canadian left immediately pointed to the Ukrainian-Canadian right. The right, in turn, argued that the left had bombed itself, in order to discredit the right. An RCMP investigation concluded that the right’s arguments were more convincing.

In 1940, the RCMP rounded up most of the Ukrainian-Canadian left’s leadership and placed them in an internment camp. The indefatigable Mitch Sago was among them. Leftist Ukrainian-Canadian organisations were banned, and their meeting halls were seized and sometimes sold off to groups on the Ukrainian-Canadian right.

Right-wing Ukrainian-Canadian nationalists sought to destroy the Ukrainian-Canadian left, often with considerable help from the Canadian state.

As both Hinther and historian Jim Mochoruk have shown, the Ukrainian-Canadian left was also under constant pressure from the Communist Party of Canada, which was keen to stamp out the former’s “ethnic” orientation. Canadian communist leaders were often as blind to their own Anglo-Celtic biases as were Russian and Russified leaders in Moscow when dealing with Soviet Ukraine.

Focusing on Ukraine, historian Stephen Velychenko describes this as a struggle within communism between “red nationalists” and “red imperialists.” Historian James Mace has documented the rise and fall of Ukrainian “national communism” in the early Soviet period.

Kenney’s hard line between nationalism and communism is historically false, and serves to erase from history the existence of a robust Ukrainian tradition of anti-imperialist, left-wing nationalism.

With their history thus stripped of its political richness, contemporary Ukrainian Canadians are offered a bogus choice between Stalinism and conservative nationalism.

This rich history is interesting in its own right. When reports reached Canada of the dire effects of Stalin’s policies in Soviet Ukraine, several prominent Ukrainian-Canadian leftists publicly criticised the leadership of both the Communist Party of Canada and the Ukrainian-Canadian left. Ukrainian-Canadian leftist leaders responded by expelling the dissidents and reaffirming their loyalty to the Communist Party.

Yet, as Mochoruk argues, this expression of loyalty gave cover for the continuing efforts of Ukrainian-Canadian leftist leaders to protect the autonomy of their community. Hinther’s book recounts in detail how these leaders were squeezed not only from above by the Anglo-Celtic communist elite, but also from below by a Ukrainian-Canadian rank-and-file who insisted on independence for their own distinct culture-based activism.

This activism could be quite effective. In 1926, Ukrainian-Canadian leftists helped to elect Canada’s first communist politician, Winnipeg alderman William Kolisnyk. Ukrainian-Canadian communists served on Winnipeg’s council well into the 1930s, much to the alarm of the Ukrainian-Canadian right.

Historian Orest Martynowych notes that when one Ukrainian-Canadian alderman urged the city to assist Jewish refugees, he was ferociously attacked in the right-wing Ukrainian-Canadian press. Ukrainian-Canadian leftists were denounced as the useful idiots of a “Judeo-Bolshevik” plot.

The Question of Ukrainian-Canadian Anti-Semitism

Very little historical research has been done on attitudes toward anti-Semitism within the politically diverse Ukrainian-Canadian community. Exposing internal fissures on this point could help to blow off the fog that now shrouds the legacy of Canadian progressive nationalism.

Historian John-Paul Himka—who is Chrystia Freeland’s uncle by marriage and the son-in-law of Michael Chomiak, Freeland’s aforementioned grandfather—has written about war crimes against Jews committed by militant Ukrainian nationalists in the 1940s. He has pointed to a “blank spot” in the collective memory of Ukrainian Canadians, some of whom today celebrate these militant nationalists as heroic freedom fighters.

Himka has also charged some in the Ukrainian-Canadian community with instrumentalising the 1932-33 famine in order to promote a self-serving politics of collective victimhood.

For this, Himka says he has been accused of “treason.” The president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress has denounced him for approving of “Holodomor deniers”, that is, those who deny that the famine in Ukraine was a deliberate act of genocide orchestrated by Stalin.

Himka has criticised the term “Holodomor deniers” as an appropriation of Holocaust language, and claimed that a part of the Ukrainian-Canadian “diaspora establishment […] is rather antagonistically disposed to the Jews.”

Harsh words, but they should be considered against a historical backdrop in which Ukrainian-Canadian leftists were denounced by the Ukrainian-Canadian right as the witless agents of a “Judeo-Bolshevik” plot.

It is striking how these attacks on Himka so nicely dovetail with the Canadian conservative elite’s attempts to draw Ukrainian-Canadian “ethnic” voters into the conservative sphere. The Ukrainian-Canadian establishment’s sharp response to Himka suggests just how fragile this conservative consensus may be.

Blowing off the fog of ignorance that now hides the history of the Ukrainian-Canadian left would help to dismantle this consensus. It would throw light on the Ukrainian left’s historic and ultimately unsuccessful efforts to put into practice a progressive form of nationalism, one that protects the independence of distinct cultural groups within a shared democratic space.

Ultimately, too, clearing this fog would more generally help us to better appreciate the unique, multifaceted, and now largely forgotten history of Canadian progressive nationalism.

Jeff Kochan is a researcher at the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz. He is the author of, among other works, the essay “Decolonising Science in Canada: A Work in Progress.”

Trump reportedly okayed assassinating Soleimani 7 months ago

IN A PETULANT MOMENT HE HAD OVER IMPEACHMENT

WAS ALL THE EXCUSE HE NEEDED TO USE HIS PRE SIGNED

APPROVAL

SEVEN MONTHS IS NOT IMMINENT

 IT'S PRE PLANNING ASSASSINATION 

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Gen. Qassem Soleimani's killing was reportedly in the works since June.

As other sources have reported, President Trump had been given several options for acting against Iran, ranging from the relatively delicate to the most extreme. Killing Soleimani was on the latter end of that spectrum, but Trump still went with it — provided an American was killed first, five current and former senior officials tell NBC News.

The Soleimani decision reportedly started back in June, when Iran shot down a U.S. drone over the Strait of Hormuz. John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser at the time, pushed for the harsh response of killing Soleimani, as did Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, officials said. Trump turned them down, but did say "that's only on the table if they hit Americans," a person briefed on the discussion told NBC News. That option became valid when an Iranian proxy attack killed a U.S. contractor*** and wounded U.S. service members.

This report is also backed up by a comment from Vice President Mike Pence at a Trump rally last week. "When one American life was lost at the hands of Iranian-backed militias just a few short weeks ago, President Trump launched the first air strikes against Iranian-backed militias in 10 years," Pence said to explain the rationale behind the Soleimani strike. 

Kathryn Krawczyk

---30---

***DON'T CALL THEM CONTRACTORS THEY ARE MERCENARIES NOT BOUND BY THE REGULATIONS OF WAR OR CONFLICT

THE ATTACK WAS IN PUBLIC ON A PUBLIC HIGHWAY GOING TO A PUBLIC AIRPORT IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY NOT IRAN SO THIS WAS AN ACT OF WAR

BY PLANNED ASSASSINATION 

Does Iran Have Secret Armed Dolphin Assassins?

THE USA, RUSSIA AND ISRAEL DO

Andrew Daniels,Popular Mechanics•January 13, 2020

Photo credit: Ingo Menhard / EyeEm - Getty Images
From Popular Mechanics


In 2000, Iran purchased a fleet of killer dolphins from the Soviet Navy.


Twenty years later, we don’t know whatever happened to the mammals. But if they’re still alive, could Iran potentially use them for warfare against the U.S.?


The U.S. invented the concept of military dolphins in 1960. Today, the Navy trains about 30 dolphins and 30 sea lions at Naval Base Point Loma, San Diego to track sea mines.

As the U.S. military prepares to deal with the fallout from the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani earlier this month, we can expect Iran and Iranian-backed militias to retaliate in any number of ways, from traditional missile strikes to cyber attacks on our oil and gas facilities, banks, electrical grids, and more. But we might not want to count out the possibility of the country employing its fleet of killer Communist dolphins, which may or may not still exist.

Let’s rewind 20 years ago to the spring of 2000, when a Russian man named Boris Zhurid made a painful, fateful sale.

For years, Zhurid had been training a pack of dolphins to kill for the Soviet Navy, according to the BBC. He and other experts taught the mammals to target enemy combat swimmers and divers with harpoons strapped to their backs, capture them, and carry mines to enemy ships in suicide attacks. (The dolphins could tell the difference between Soviet and foreign subs by how their propellers sounded.)
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But when funding for that project ran out—and the Soviet dolphin program transferred to the Ukrainian Navy—Zhurid brought his animals to a private dolphinarium on the Crimean Peninsula, where they performed for tourists. Eventually, however, Zhurid couldn’t afford to feed the dolphins anymore.

“I cannot bare to see my animals starve,” the trainer told the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. “We’re out of medicine, which costs thousands of dollars, and have no more fish or food supplements.”

So Zhurid bit the bullet and sold his beloved dolphins—along with walruses, sea lions, seals, and a white beluga whale—to a custom-built oceanarium in Iran, where, the BBC reported, the trainer would be “continuing his scientific research.” Zhurid didn’t say what he and his aquatic mercenaries would do in their new home, but he did tell Komsomolskaya Pravda that he was “prepared to go to Allah, or even to the devil, as long as my animals will be OK there.”

We don’t know what ever happened to the dolphins in the Persian Gulf since that March 2000 sale. Dolphins do have a lifespan of 50 years or more, as Blake Stilwell of Military points out, so the original assassins could still very much be alive. Zhurid “could also have trained more killer dolphins for use against Western shipping,” Stilwell speculates.

If Iran is indeed relying on the mammals for reconnaissance, the country isn’t alone. Russia seized control of its dormant military dolphin program in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea. In 2016, the Russian Defense Ministry was actively scouting dolphins “with perfect teeth,” while last year, Norwegian fishermen spotted a whale wearing a harness from St. Petersburg, suggesting the Russian Navy was recruiting belugas for undersea warfare.

Of course, the U.S. invented the concept of military dolphins. In 1960, the U.S. Navy launched the Marine Mammal Program to research dolphins’ and beluga whales’ underwater sonar capabilities and see what tips the branch could take from the speedy swimmers and divers when designing its vessels. The Navy also trained dolphins, sea lions, and belugas to transport gear to divers, track and retrieve lost objects, and do some underwater spying with special mouth cameras—including during the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars.

After the Cold War, the Navy downsized and ultimately declassified the Marine Mammal Program. Today, the Navy trains about 30 dolphins and 30 sea lions at Naval Base Point Loma, San Diego to track sea mines and mark them for disposal. (Dolphins can search an area for mines much faster than humans.) The animals are part of the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific. But could our super dolphin soldiers soon have a new mission?

---30---

Australian prime minister's approval rating goes up in flames

By Sonali Paul, Reuters•January 12, 2020



1 / 6
Australian prime minister's approval rating goes up in flames
An Australian Army combat engineer from the 5th Engineer Regiment utilises a JD-450 Bulldozer to spread out burnt woodchip at the Eden Woodchip Mill in southern New South Wales

 By Sonali Paul

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Public support for Prime Minister Scott Morrison has slumped to its lowest levels amid widespread anger over his government's handling of Australia's bushfire crisis, according to a survey released by Newspoll on Monday.

At least 28 people have been killed in the fires that have destroyed 2,000 homes, and razed 11.2 million hectares (27.7 million acres), nearly half the area of the United Kingdom

Morrison has come under attack for being slow to respond to the crisis, even taking a family holiday to Hawaii while fires were burning. He acknowledged during a television interview on Sunday that he had made some mistakes.

"We have heard the message loud and clear from the Australian people," Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Monday, when asked about the poll result as he announced a A$50 million ($34.56 million) wildlife protection fund.

"They want to see a Federal Government adopt a very direct response to these natural and national disasters," Frydenberg said.

The Newspoll survey showed Morrison's approval rating dropped 8% since the last poll on Dec 8 to stand at 37%, scoring lower than opposition Labor leader Anthony Albanese.


It is Morrison's worst showing in the poll since he took over leadership of the ruling Liberal Party in August 2018 when a backbench uprising ousted former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

No margin of error was provided for the poll, which surveyed 1,505 people from Wednesday to Saturday, although it was about 2.5% points in previous Newspolls.

The poll was taken after Morrison announced a A$2 billion bushfire recovery fund and called out 3,000 army reservists to back up state emergency workers - responses that were viewed as belated.

Morrison said on Sunday he would take a proposal to Cabinet to hold a Royal Commission national inquiry into the bushfires, including examining the response to the crisis, the role and powers of the federal government and the impact of climate change.

After weeks of raging fires whipped up by erratic winds and temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), conditions eased over the weekend with showers forecast for New South Wales (NSW), the worst hit state, over the next few days.

"If this BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) rainfall forecast comes to fruition then this will be all of our Christmas, birthday, engagement, anniversary, wedding and graduation presents rolled into one. Fingers crossed," the NSW Rural Fire Service said on Twitter.

Here are key events in the crisis:

-Australia's pristine 'AAA' sovereign rating is not at "immediate risk" from the fiscal and economic impact of bushfires raging across the country's east coast, S&P said on Monday.

-The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) said on Monday bushfire victims can submit damaged banknote claims to redeem their lost money.

-The Australian government committed A$50 million to an emergency wildlife recovery program on Monday, calling the bushfires crisis engulfing the country "an ecological disaster" that threatens several species, including koalas and rock wallabies.

-German engineering giant Siemens said it would fulfill its contract to provide signaling for a rail line to a controversial new coal mine being built by India's Adani Group in Australia's outback, drawing criticism from green groups on Monday.

-Frydenberg announced A$50 million in funding on Monday for protecting wildlife and restoring damaged habitat, with a focus on threatened species, like koalas, with heartbreaking images of rescues of burned animals having gone viral around the world.

-Since October, thousands of Australians have been subjected to repeat evacuations as huge and unpredictable fires scorched more than 11.2 million hectares (27.7 million acres), an area nearly half the size of the United Kingdom.

-Across New South Wales, 111 fires were still burning late on Sunday, 40 of them not yet contained, but none at emergency level.

-A number of fires burning in the Snowy Mountains region in New South Wales and into Victoria have merged across more than 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of land. They do not pose a threat, authorities say, despite being in an area hard to reach.

-The government said on Sunday it would provide A$76 million ($52 million) for mental health counseling and healthcare consultations to firefighters, emergency workers, individuals and communities.

-Western Australia Department of Fire and Emergency Services said on Sunday an out-of-control and unpredictable fire that is moving slowly in the state's south, poses a possible threat to lives and homes in the area.

-South Australia said on Sunday that more than 32,000 livestock animals, mostly sheep, had died in recent fires on Kangaroo Island, while fire services are working to strengthen containment lines ahead of expected worsening weather conditions on Monday.

-Thousands of Australians took to the streets on Friday to protest against government inaction on climate change, and were supported by protesters in London.

-Australia's wildfires have dwarfed other recent catastrophic blazes, with its burnt terrain more than twice the extent of that ravaged by 2019 fires in Brazil, California and Indonesia combined.


-Westpac estimated total bushfire losses to date at about A$5 billion, higher than the 2009 bushfires in Victoria but smaller than the Queensland floods in 2010/11. It forecast a hit of 0.2% to 0.5% on gross domestic product.

-The Insurance Council of Australia increased to more than A$900 million its estimate of damage claims from the fires, and they are expected to jump further.

-About 100 firefighters from the United States and Canada are helping, with 140 more expected in coming weeks.


-The fires have emitted 400 megatons of carbon dioxide and produced harmful pollutants, the European Union's Copernicus monitoring program said.

-Smoke has drifted across the Pacific, affecting cities in South America, and may have reached the Antarctic, the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization said.

(Reporting by Sonali Paul; additional reporting by Colin Packham in Sydney, Editing by Peter Cooney & Simon Cameron-Moore)

China's latest move in its Uighur crackdown is forcing Muslims to redecorate their homes to make them look more Chinese

sbaker@businessinsider.com (Sinéad Baker), Business Insider•January 13, 2020

China GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images

China's crackdown against its Uighur population reportedly involves it ordering people in the Muslim minority to redecorate their homes to make them more Chinese.

Radio Free Asia reported that Uighurs had been ordered to remove traditional furniture or design elements — and witnesses said that the vast majority are complying under threat of being sent to internment camps.

The US estimates that China has up to three million Uighur people detained in these camps, where people who have left speak of torture and medical experiments.

China denies the allegations and calls the camps "re-education" camps.

Uighurs are under heavy surveillance and China sends Chinese men to live with Uighur women, many of whose husbands have been sent to camps, and reports also say that China harvests the organs of Uighurs.

China is reportedly forcing members of its Uighur Muslim minority to redecorate their homes to make them look more traditionally Chinese.

Radio Free Asia reported that officials in China's Xinjiang western region are ordering Uighurs get rid of their their traditional home decoration and to "modernize" the spaces to make them more Chinese-influenced.

This includes replacing rugs and pillows traditionally used to sleep on with beds and the introduction of other furniture like desks, Radio Free Asia reported — with the threat of being placed in an internment camp if they do not comply.

The US State Department estimated last year that China could have up to three million Uighur people detained in these camps and in prisons across Xinjiang.

China calls them "re-education" camps, while those who have left speak of torture and medical experiments in the places. China denies such actions.

As well as these camps, China has taken steps to remove features of Uighur culture.

uighur china prison camps protest xinjiang Achmad Ibrahim/AP

China also runs a "Pair Up and Become Family" program, where it sends Chinese men to live with Uighur women, many of whose husbands have been sent to these camps.

Radio Free Asia previously reported that the men often sleep in the same bed as the women, and discuss the ideology of China's Communist Party during their stay.

One US-based Uighur activist, whose family are detained, called it "mass rape."

"The government is offering money, housing, and jobs to Han people to come and marry Uighur people," the unnamed activist said.

According to Radio Free Asia, China has created a $575 million fund to "modernize" the Uighur people, which includes destroying traditional design features in their homes.

Radio Free Asia spoke to one person in the region who said that Uighur people are complying with the order, and that around 80% or 90% of people in one village have complied.

FILE PHOTO: A propaganda banner and a security camera are placed on the walls of a mosque in the Old City in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China September 6, 2018. Picture taken September 6, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas PeterMore

It also spoke to one resident whose husband is at a Chinese camp who said that she had changed her home such that "you can't even recognize it anymore" and that she had "gotten rid of pretty much all of the carpets" under the order.

"We don't even wait for the officials to tell us what to do anymore because we all are so enlightened now," she said.

China sees Uighurs' religion as a threat, and began its movement against the people in 2016.

Reports have detailed a coordinated government effort detain them, and to subject them to extremely high levels of surveillance, including installing spyware on their phones and forbidding them from communicating with people outside of the Xinjiang region.

China has also been accused of harvesting organs from persecuted groups including Uighurs, though it denies this.

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China defends barring Human Rights Watch head from Hong Kong

Jing Xuan TENG, AFP•January 13, 2020
  

Kenneth Roth was supposed to give a press

 conference in Hong Kong to unveil the 

New York-based rights group's latest global survey

 (AFP Photo/JOHN MACDOUGALL)

Beijing (AFP) - China on Monday defended barring the head of Human Rights Watch from entering Hong Kong, saying non-governmental organisations were responsible for political unrest in the city and should "pay the proper price".

Kenneth Roth was supposed to give a press conference in Hong Kong this week to unveil the New York-based rights group's latest global survey, which accuses China of prosecuting "an intensive attack" on international human rights agencies.

The long-time executive director said Sunday that he was turned back by authorities at the city's airport.

China last month announced sanctions on American NGOs, including HRW, in retaliation for the passage of a US bill backing Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.

"Allowing or not allowing someone's entry is China's sovereign right," foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a regular press briefing.

"Plenty of facts and evidence show that the relevant NGO has through various means supported anti-China radicals, encouraged them to engage in extremist, violent and criminal activity, and incited Hong Kong independence separatist activities," Geng said.

"They bear major responsibility for the current chaos in Hong Kong. These organisations should be punished, and should pay the proper price."

Hong Kong has been battered by nearly seven months of occasionally violent protests, its biggest political crisis in decades.

Millions have turned out on the streets of the semi-autonomous financial hub to demand greater democratic freedoms.

"Why does Beijing advance the ludicrous fiction that @HRW incited the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests?" Roth fired back on Twitter.

"Because it is desperate to pretend that hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens aren't protesting Beijing's increasingly dictatorial rule."

- Not the first -

Roth joins a growing list of openly critical academics, researchers, politicians and activists who have been refused entry in recent years.

Financial Times journalist Victor Mallet was denied a visa renewal without reason in 2018 after he hosted a talk with the leader of a small and now banned independence party at the city's press club.

Last September, an American academic was barred from entering after he testified in a Congressional hearing alongside prominent Hong Kong democracy activists.

"I had hoped to spotlight Beijing's deepening assault on international efforts to uphold human rights," Roth said. "The refusal to let me enter Hong Kong vividly illustrates the problem."

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, said that when Roth asked why he was prevented from entering Hong Kong, he was only told that it was "immigration reasons".

"What we believe is that he was stopped because the Chinese government is afraid to have the world know what they are doing to the people of Hong Kong and the people of China," Robertson told AFP in Bangkok.

The unrest that began last June is the biggest crisis the former British colony has faced since its return to Chinese rule in 1997.

Under the terms of the handover, Hong Kong enjoys unique freedoms unseen on the mainland, but in recent years fears have increased that these liberties are being chipped away as Beijing exerts more control over the territory.

China and the Hong Kong administration have refused to cede to the protesters' demands, which include fully free elections in the city, an inquiry into alleged police misconduct, and amnesty for the nearly 6,500 people arrested during the movement -- nearly a third of them under the age of 20.

Hong Kong's Foreign Correspondents' Club, which was to host Roth's press conference on Wednesday, said in a statement it was concerned that the city's government was using the immigration department to "act punitively against organisations and media representatives it does not agree with, which is a violation of the commitment to free expression and free speech in Hong Kong law."

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