Arms deal and sanctions trap British-Iranian mother in Tehran’s ‘hostage diplomacy’

Issued on: 10/03/2021 -

Richard Ratcliffe, husband of British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and their daughter Gabriella protest outside the Iranian Embassy in London, March 8, 2021. © Reuters

Text by: FRANCE 24

The fate of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman detained in Tehran, is linked to an arms deal dating from the reign of deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and is another example of Iran's policy of “hostage diplomacy”. The UK has agreed to pay Iran its dues, but US sanctions present another challen

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s life changed on April 3, 2016. A British-Iranian dual national, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested with her daughter, Gabriella, then not yet 2 years old, at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport.

An aid worker, Zaghari-Ratcliffe had travelled to Iran to visit her family for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year. She was on her way back to the UK when she was arrested and accused of "plotting to overthrow the Islamic regime" – a charge she vehemently denies. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was then separated from her daughter, whose British passport was confiscated, and sent to prison.

It was the start of a long ordeal for the young mother, marked by harsh stays in solitary confinement in windowless cells, blindfolded interrogations and hunger strikes to demand medical care. In November 2016, Amnesty International raised an alert that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s severe detention conditions were driving her to contemplate suicide.

After nearly five years in prison, Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 42, who worked as a project manager at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, now faces charges of "spreading propaganda against the regime". The Iranian justice system has summoned her to appear on Sunday, March 14, to answer the new charges against her. Her passport has not been returned and she cannot leave to join her husband and now 6-year-old daughter, who returned to London in 2019 to start school in the UK.

On March 7, Zaghari-Ratcliffe ended her initial sentence and was allowed to remove her electronic bracelet while under house arrest. But she’s far from finished with the Iranian judicial system. According to regional experts, her fate is linked to a larger diplomatic game.

A £400 million bilateral debt

For her husband, Richard Ratcliffe – who has been tirelessly campaigning for her freedom since her arrest – his wife is a "hostage" of a sinister political game involving a debt of £400 million (€464 million) owed by the UK to Iran within the framework of an arms contract signed before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iranian officials told his wife that her detention would end when London settled the infamous £400 million debt, Ratcliffe has told the British press.

"At that time, the Shah of Iran bought more than a thousand tanks [1,750 Chieftain tanks] from Britain and paid an advance because there was a lot of money in the coffers of the Iranian state," recalled François Nicoullaud, a French diplomat who served as France’s ambassador to Iran between 2001 and 2005. But after the 1979 revolution, the UK refused to honour the order.

In 2017, after years of negotiations and legal battles, Britain said it was ready to settle its bill to Tehran while denying the move had any connection with Zaghari-Ratcliffe's detention.

But that was before Donald Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimposed tough sanctions under his administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy.

"The British do not deny that they have a debt. The problem is the US sanctions that prevent Britain from paying the money to Iran," Nicoullaud explained. "Poor Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe finds herself the victim of an inextricable struggle between two states."

All eyes are now on Washington, DC, where the arrival of Joe Biden as president could eventually lead to the lifting of sanctions banning bank transactions with Iran. But more than a month into his presidency, Biden has not yet launched a major initiative to return the US to the 2015 deal, a campaign promise that some fear has been put on a backbench.

Aware of the stakes, her husband has kept up the pressure on his government. “It is, in my view, clearly a game of chess. She’s the pawn,” explained Ratcliffe in an interview with the New York Times last week.

‘Hostage-taking’ as a foreign policy

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case is not unique. Around a dozen other foreign and dual nationals are currently trapped in the same situation. These include two French nationals, researcher Fariba Adelkhah – who was placed under house arrest in October 2020 after serving 16 months in prison – and a French tourist detained since May 2020. The latter was arrested under murky circumstances in a desert area near the Iran-Turkmenistan border while he was touring the country in a van.

While some call this phenomenon "hostage diplomacy", Nicoullaud prefers the term "hostage-taking". "It's nothing less than that. It is hostage-taking. It's a very bad Iranian habit to use quid pro quo. It started with the beginnings of the Islamic Republic in 1979, when 53 hostages from the US embassy in Tehran were held for nearly a year and a half. Since then it has been repeated, and Iran has seen that this extraordinary means of pressure has worked over the years."

One of the last hostages released, French researcher Roland Marchal, was released in March 2020 after nine months in detention. Marchal was released as part of an exchange with an Iranian engineer detained in France. The Iranian engineer, Jalal Ruhollahnejad, was detained in France and wanted by the US on charges of violating sanctions on the import of sensitive electronic systems to Iran.

This article is a translation of the original in French.

GREEN CAPITALI$M
France pushes 'green finance' rules in talks with Biden's climate envoy Kerry

Issued on: 10/03/2021 

Text by: FRANCE 24


Europe and the United States should agree on common rules to determine how "green" a financial investment is, France's finance minister said on Wednesday after talks with US President Joe Biden's climate envoy.

John Kerry, the US special envoy for climate, is in Europe this week to relaunch trans-Atlantic cooperation in the wake of Biden's decision to rejoin the landmark Paris climate accord.

He visited the French capital on Wednesday, a day after telling EU officials in Brussels that the US has "no better partners" than Europe in the fight against global warming.

During talks in Paris, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire pushed for a common taxonomy for green investments. He said it was important to launch discussions with Washington on carbon border tax adjustments.

"I proposed to [Special Envoy] John Kerry that Europe and the United States have an identical taxonomy," Le Maire told a news conference. "It would be a shame if at the end of the day we had two sets of rules in Europe and the United States."

Le Maire added: "That would be a source of considerable confusion between our two continents."

Asked to respond to the separate suggestion of a carbon border adjustment tax, Kerry said Washington was aware that a number of countries were investigating such a tool.

Such a tax essentially consists of import fees levied by carbon-taxing countries on goods manufactured in non-carbon-taxing countries.

"There are a number of different proposals to assign a price on carbon and the methane and the greenhouse gases creating this damage," Kerry told reporters. "Whether or not we think that's the right tool or not, we have not yet been able to sit down and evaluate that."

He added: "Our friends from France are planning to do a deep dive on it, that could be very constructive and we look forward to hearing from them."

>> In appointing John Kerry to top role, Biden shows he’s serious about climate

The former US secretary of state said signatories of the Paris climate agreement were not doing enough to respect their commitments to limit global warming. He said trillions of dollars were needed to finance the transition to a sustainable future, adding it was possible to find that money with the help of the private sector.

The 2015 Paris climate change accord commits countries to put forward plans for reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which is released from burning fossil fuels. EU leaders reached a hard-fought deal in December to cut the bloc’s net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.

Like the EU, Biden has said that fighting global warming is among his highest priorities. His administration is yet to announce a new national 2030 target for cutting US fossil fuel emissions.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

One dead in Myanmar anti-coup protest as ousted MPs urge unity against junta

Hundreds of thousands have continued to protest near-daily across Myanmar, despite crackdowns by the police 


Issued on: 14/03/2021 -

Yangon (AFP)

At least one anti-coup protester was killed Sunday as demonstrators across Myanmar continued to defy military rule, a day after a group of ousted MPs in hiding urged them to overcome the nation's "darkest moment".

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi from power in a February 1 putsch, triggering a mass uprising that has seen hundreds of thousands protest daily for a return to democracy.

The junta has repeatedly justified its power grab by alleging widespread electoral fraud in November's elections, which Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won by a landslide.

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In response, a group of elected MPs, many of whom are in hiding, have formed a shadow "parliament" called the Committee for Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) -- the Burmese word for the country's governing bloc -- to denounce the military regime.

The junta's security forces are staging near-daily crackdowns against demonstrators calling for a return to democracy, deploying tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds to quell anti-coup protests.

More than 80 have been killed in the unrest, according to a local monitoring group.

On Sunday, fresh violence during a protest in the northern jade-producing city of Hpakant saw one man shot dead before noon, according to a doctor and a local news outlet.

"Kyaw Lin Hteik died when he arrived at the hospital... he had a gunshot on the right side of his chest and he lost too much blood," said a local doctor who declined to be named.

He added that another three people were hit by rubber bullets and had to be transferred to state capital Myitkyina, where hospitals are better equipped.

Despite the growing death toll, protesters continued to take to the streets Sunday -- from civil servants hoisting Suu Kyi's poster defiantly at a march through the central city of Monywa to a sit-in in commercial hub Yangon.

"May the fallen heroes who have given their lives in this spring revolution rest in peace!" chanted protesters wearing hard hats in Yangon's Thaketa township.

Two men had been killed in the early hours of Saturday in Thaketa, after protesters had gathered at the police station to demand the release of arrested residents.

State-run media New Light of Myanmar said security forces had fired "warning shots" to disperse the crowd, and "an investigation is underway regarding the cause of death" of the two men.

The city has been utterly transformed since the coup, with key protest townships barricaded with sandbags, wooden fences and stacked tables -- an attempt by demonstrators to stop security forces from entering.

Gunshots were heard Sunday in at least two hotspots of unrest -- garment-producing hub Hlaing Tharyar and the once-bustling shopping junction Hledan.

- 'The darkest moment of the nation' -

The gatherings come a day after the acting vice president of the CRPH called for the people to continue protesting against the military's "unjust dictatorship".

"This is the darkest moment of the nation and the light before the dawn is close," said Mahn Win Khaing Than in a recorded video posted on the CRPH's Facebook page Saturday night.

"This is also a moment testing our citizens to see how far we can resist these darkest times," said the politician, a high-ranking NLD politician who served as speaker of the house during Suu Kyi's previous administration.

"We will try to work through CRPH... to draft necessary laws for people to be able to defend themselves."

Along with other top Suu Kyi allies, he was placed under house arrest during the February 1 power grab, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners monitoring group.

His Saturday address was his first appearance in his capacity as CRPH's acting vice president, and he echoed the anti-coup movement's calls for a "federal democracy" -- which would allow ethnic minority groups to have a role in Myanmar's governance.

"This uprising is also the chance for all of us to struggle together hand-in-hand to establish a federal democracy union," he said.

"We must win the uprising."

The committee has issued several statements since its formation, but the protest movement on the ground appears largely leaderless -- with daily rallies organised by local activists.

The junta -- self-anointed as the State Administration Council -- has said the CRPH's formation is akin to "high treason", which carries a maximum sentence of 22 years in jail.

RIP

Black space engineer, housing advocate Ken Kelly dies at 92



Obit-Kenneth-C-KellyThis Nov. 2020 photo provided by Ron Kelly shows Kenneth C. Kelly in Sherman Oaks, Calif. Kenneth C. Kelly, a Black electronics engineer whose antenna designs contributed to the race to the moon, made satellite TV and radio possible and helped NASA communicate with Mars rovers and search for extraterrestrials, has died. The 92-year-old also worked to erase race barriers in the Navy, in California housing and on the newspaper comics pages. Kelly had Parkinson's disease before his death on Feb. 27, 2021 his son Ron Kelly said. (Ron Kelly via AP)


MICHAEL WARREN
Fri, March 12, 2021

Kenneth C. Kelly, a Black electronics engineer whose antenna designs contributed to the race to the moon, made satellite TV and radio possible and helped NASA communicate with Mars rovers and search for extraterrestrials, has died. The 92-year-old also worked to erase race barriers in the Navy, in California housing and on the newspaper comics pages.

Kelly had Parkinson's disease before his death on Feb. 27, his son Ron Kelly said.

Kelly was awarded more than a dozen patents for innovations in radar and antenna technology, work that appears in peer-reviewed journals from 1955-1999. His early work at Hughes Aircraft helped create guided missile systems and the ground satellites that tracked the Apollo space missions, he said in an oral history recorded by his family.

His two-way antenna designs at Rantec Microwave Systems enabled consumers to have DirecTV and Sirius XM connections, and are featured in the massive Mojave Desert radiotelescopes that search for signs of life in space, his son and JPL colleagues said.

After many years working on deep space missions through NASA subcontractors, Kelly worked directly for JPL from 1999 until retiring in 2002, helping to design robotic antennas for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, according to Joseph Vacchione, who manages the JPL's antenna test range.

Kelly appeared in an Associated Press article in 1962 after he moved his family into Gardena, a middle-class suburb that had excluded Black people. To overcome a racist covenant and the repeated refusals of real estate agents, he had to ask a white colleague at Hughes to make the purchase on his behalf.

“We have pretty much the same hopes, fears, ambitions, strengths and frailties that have typified all of human existence,” Kelly wrote in a letter his white neighbors, urging them to set aside “stereotyped notions,” according to the AP story.

Kelly and his wife Loretta later moved near California State University-Northridge, to be closer to his job and have their children attend better schools. According to the 2017 oral history, the agent wouldn’t sell him the lot, so he had to repeat the demeaning experience of having white friends buy it for him before signing over the mortgage.

Kelly became president of the San Fernando Valley Fair Housing Council, testing listings to prove discrimination, lobbying authorities and going to court to prevent whites-only advertising. To do more from the inside, he became a leading Realtor, helping many Black families move into new suburbs in the 1970s.

Kelly had another role in promoting racial harmony after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. A white ally of the Kellys on the Fair Housing Council, schoolteacher Harriet Glickman, had been corresponding with cartoonist Charles Schulz, urging him to add a Black character to his comic strip. At the time, Black people were all but invisible in mass media.

Letters published by the Charles M. Schulz Museum show the cartoonist was reluctant, fearing the move would seem patronizing to Black people in the wake of King's death. Glickman recruited Kelly to persuade Schulz otherwise.

Kelly urged the cartoonist to treat the Black character as a “supernumerary” — just another member of the Peanuts gang. Franklin soon appeared on a beach, helping Charlie Brown build a sand castle.

Born in 1928 in New York City and raised by a single mother who worked as a live-in maid, Kelly began living at 13 in the Harlem YMCA, where he was mentored by older black men including photographer Gordon Parks. He tested into Brooklyn Tech high school, then enlisted in the Navy to be trained as an electronics technician. Told he could only be a steward to white officers, he wrote to the chief recruiter and was allowed to take the engineering exam just when President Harry Truman was moving to desegregate the military.

“I think I’m a crazy optimist,” Kelly said in his oral history. “I’m definitely the half-full glass person. I meet lots of people who are so pessimistic. I always thought I could.”

Kelly's Navy training helped him excel at Brooklyn Polytechnic College and get a job at Hughes Aircraft in 1953. He later learned that his white colleagues had been polled to see if they'd work with a Black man; the few who said they’d quit were told to do so.

Kelly and Loretta were members of the Ethical Cultural Society for decades. He also formed a society of Black scientists and engineers who launched science fairs and outreach programs to minority students in Los Angeles, which was booming with Black people fleeing the South in the post-war period.

“I think the more contact between the ones who have been successful in what they’re doing and the ones who are several steps down the line, the better,” he said.

Kelly felt racism's sting repeatedly in life, but was determined to overcome it.

“We have a terrible real history of defeat, horrible conditions, death, rapes, just a hell of a history of Blacks in this country, but I don’t think knowing it is that valuable unless it encourages you do more to beat it somehow, and I think we can,” Kelly said in his oral history.

Kelly was predeceased by his first wife, Gloria White, and his son David. He is survived by his ex-wife Loretta Kelly, his third wife Anne Kelly, his son Ron Kelly, his stepson Steve Kelly, their wives and two grandchildren.

 

How this market turns 10 tons of food waste into energy every day

Daniel T. Allen , Katie Nixdorf , and Amelia Kosciulek 

Mar 12, 2021

Volume 90%

 

• 
  
• The Bowenpally market in India turns 10 tons of food waste into biogas every day.
• That's enough energy to power over 150 streetlights and a canteen kitchen that feeds 800 people.
• Turning food waste into biogas cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions from landfills, which are the third largest source of human-caused emissions.

Sea slugs lose heads to rid bodies of parasites, Japan researchers show


An Elysia marginata, a species of sea slug, after shedding its body and its self-decapitated head is seen in this handout photo

Rikako Murayama
Thu, March 11, 2021

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese researchers have shown that a type of sea slug are able to self-decapitate and regrow their bodies, a discovery that could have ramifications for regenerative medicine.

The mechanism is believed to be an extreme method for the organism to rid itself of parasites, researchers Sayaka Mitoh and Yoichi Yusa wrote in a study published in Current Biology this week. The green slugs have algae cells in their skin, so they can feed off light like a plant until they develop a new body, which takes about 20 days.

Mitoh, a doctoral researcher at Nara Women's University, noticed one day that a sea slug, known as a sacoglossan, had spontaneously detached its head from its body.

"I was surprised and thought it was going to die, but it continued to move around and eat quite energetically," Mitoh said. "I kept an eye on it for a while, and it regenerated its heart and body."

That prompted a study showing that five of 15 lab-bred slugs and one from the wild split its body off from a particular point on the neck during their lives. One did so twice. Each time, the animal's heart was left behind in the body, which continued to live for some time, but didn't regrow a head.

"One of the amazing things about stem cells is that they can be used to regenerate a heart and body from the edge of the animal's head," Mitoh said. "With further study, we may be able to apply these findings to regenerative medicine, but that's still a distant hope at this stage."

Other animals have been known to intentionally detach and regrow body parts, a mechanism known as autotomy, but this extreme form was previously unknown, the researchers said.

They initially thought it might be a method to escape predators, but they now think it's done to get rid of parasites that inhibit reproduction.

(Reporting by Rikako Murayama and Rocky Swift in Tokyo; Editing by Karishma Singh)

Study: Lack of diversity in Hollywood costs industry $10B



Film-Diversity Study

FILE - The Hollywood sign appears near the top of Beachwood Canyon adjacent to Griffith Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles on Jan. 29,2010. : For years, researchers have said a lack of diversity in Hollywood films doesn’t just poorly reflect demographics, it’s bad business. A new study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates just how much Hollywood is leaving on the table: $10 billion. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)

JAKE COYLE
Thu, March 11, 2021, 

NEW YORK (AP) — For years, researchers have said a lack of diversity in Hollywood films doesn’t just poorly reflect demographics, it’s bad business. A new study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates just how much Hollywood is leaving on the table: $10 billion.

The McKinsey report, released Thursday, analyzes how inequality shapes the industry and how much it ultimately costs its bottom line. The consulting firm deduced that the $148 billion film and TV industry loses $10 billion, or 7%, every year by undervaluing Black films, filmmakers and executives.

“Fewer Black-led stories get told, and when they are, these projects have been consistently underfunded and undervalued, despite often earning higher relative returns than other properties,” wrote the study’s authors: Jonathan Dunn, Sheldon Lyn, Nony Onyeador and Ammanuel Zegeye.


The study, spanning the years 2015-2019, was conducted over the last six months and drew on earlier research by the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California and Nielsen. The BlackLight Collective, a coalition of Black executives and talent in the industry, collaborate with McKinsey researchers. The company also interviewed more than 50 executives, producers, agents, actors, directors and writers anonymously.

McKinsey attributed at least some of Hollywood's slow progress to its complex and multi-layered business — an ecosystem of production companies, networks, distributors, talent agencies and other separate but intertwined realms.

But the lack of Black representation in top positions of power plays a prominent role. The study found that 92% of film executives are white and 87% are in television. Agents and executives at the top three talent agencies are approximately 90% white — and a striking 97% among partners.

Researchers found that films with a Black lead or co-lead are budgeted 24% less than movies that don't — a disparity that nearly doubles when there are two or more Black people working as director, producer or writer.

Among other measures, McKinsey recommends that a “well-funded, third-party organization" be created for a more comprehensive approach to racial equality. The film business, it said, is less diverse than industries such as energy, finance and transport.

Following the Black Lives Matter protests last year, McKinsey said it would dedicate $200 million to pro-bono work to advance racial equality.

CATWOMAN VS LADYBIRD

When Eartha Kitt Condemned Poverty and War at the White House


It was supposed to be a genteel luncheon with the first lady dedicated to discussing crime policy. The chanteuse had other ideas.

Eartha Kitt c. 1970
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

By: Livia Gershon
March 13, 2021

If you think Americans are divided today, consider 1968, a time of enormous conflict over war, racism, and poverty. As Janet Mezzack writes, that January, Eartha Kitt brought all those conflicts into the sedate setting of a White House luncheon hosted by the first lady, Lady Bird Johnson.

A Black cabaret singer, actor, and celebrity, Kitt had been invited to a “Women Doers’ Luncheon” focused on crime, an issue of growing importance to the Johnson administration at the time. Mezzack writes that the speakers and guests included leaders of local anticrime groups, volunteers with community organizations like Head Start, judges, politicians’ wives, and teachers. After hearing from the speakers, Kitt spoke up, drawing on her authority as someone who had “lived in the gutters” and was involved with youth organizations in poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. She suggested that the luncheon’s speakers had missed a key point.
Kitt said that a teenage boy who was aware that men with criminal records weren’t sent to war had little incentive to avoid illegal activities like smoking marijuana.

“The youth of America today are angry,” she said.

She pointed to causes including high taxes, low levels of support from government welfare programs, and…the war that the Johnson administration was prosecuting in Vietnam. Kitt said that a teenage boy who was aware that men with criminal records weren’t sent to war had little incentive to avoid illegal activities like smoking marijuana.

“You take the best of the country and send them off to a war and they get shot,” she said. “They don’t want that.”

Mezzack writes that Betty Hughes, the wife of New Jersey Governor Richard Hughes, immediately rose to respond to Kitt, noting her family’s military service and insisting that “anybody who’s taking pot just because there is a war in Vietnam is some kind of a kook.” Johnson also responded to Kitt, saying that she was praying for peace but in the meantime believed that reformers should keep “our energies fixed on constructive aims.”

The day after the luncheon, Johnson issued a formal statement saying she was sorry “the good constructive things which the speakers on the panel said were not heard—only the shrill voice of anger and discord.” Kitt, meanwhile, told reporters that her remarks were unplanned, but “I think I am speaking for millions of Americans across the country and the world.”

Newspapers around the country published front-page stories about the incident, and the White House was flooded with responses, most of them supporting the first lady. Some came from mothers of men fighting in Vietnam, praising their sons’ sacrifices. President Johnson’s (white) pastor, the Rev. Dr. George R. Davis, sent a telegram to the White House apologizing “for any member of [the American] family including Negroes who are ill-mannered, stupid and arrogant.” The next Sunday, protesters interrupted Davis’s sermon and handed out fliers defending Kitt.

Ultimately, Mezzack writes, the incident worked out for the Johnsons, drawing attention to their anticrime agenda. And while antiwar activists and some Black Americans viewed it as a symptom of the administration’s lack of interest in their concerns, a majority of politically engaged Americans apparently came down on the Johnsons’ side.



Resources

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR

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"Without Manners You Are Nothing": Lady Bird Johnson, Eartha Kitt, and The Women Doers' Luncheon of January 18, 1968

By: JANET MEZZACK

Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 4, Modern First Ladies White House Organization (FALL 1990), pp. 745-760

Wiley on behalf of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress

Covid fallout 'undermining nature conservation efforts'

Helen Briggs - BBC science correspondent
Thu, March 11, 2021


Baby monkey poached in Indonesia

Covid-19 is taking a "severe toll" on conservation efforts, with multiple environmental protections being rolled back, according to research.

Conservation efforts have been reduced in more than half of Africa's protected areas and a quarter of those in Asia, said the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

And 22 countries are rolling back protection of natural areas.

Protected areas encompass some of the world's most precious ecosystems.

They include pristine forests, wilderness areas and natural habitat that supports endangered species.

IUCN Director General Dr Bruno Oberle said the new research revealed "how severe a toll the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on conservation efforts and on communities dedicated to protecting nature".

He added: "Let us not forget that only by investing in healthy nature can we provide a solid basis for our recovery from the pandemic, and avoid future public health crises."


Fears of rise in poaching amid pandemic poverty


A glimmer of hope for gorillas?


Ivory from shipwreck reveals elephants' decline.

The research is published in a special edition of an IUCN journal dedicated to areas of the globe protected for nature.

In one paper, researchers looked at government policies on economic recovery put in place between January and October last year that had an impact on the funding and protection of areas for nature.

Road built through the rainforest

They identified some positive examples, with 17 countries, such as New Zealand, Pakistan and eight countries within the EU, maintaining or increasing their support for protected and conserved areas.

In contrast, 22 countries had rolled back protections in favour of unsustainable development including road construction or oil and gas extraction in areas designated for conservation.

Rachel Golden Kroner of Conservation International is a co-chair of the IUCN taskforce looking into the impact of Covid-19 on protected areas, and lead researcher on the study.

She told the BBC: "We found that more funding and more of the economic stimulus has gone towards activities that undermine nature rather than that support it, globally. So we're not yet on the whole moving in the right direction."

In other papers, researchers found:

Conservation efforts in Africa and Asia were most severely affected. More than half of protected areas in Africa reported that they were forced to halt or reduce field patrols and anti-poaching operations as well as conservation education and outreach. A quarter of protected areas in Asia also reported that conservation activities had been reduced.


The pandemic has affected the livelihoods of protected area rangers and their communities. A survey of rangers in more than 60 countries found that more than one in four rangers had seen their salary reduced or delayed, while 20% reported that they had lost their jobs due to budget cuts. Rangers from Central America and the Caribbean, South America, Africa and Asia were more severely affected than elsewhere.

Herbs & Verbs: How to Do Witchcraft for Real

Like for real real.

A frontispiece from Grete Herball, a 1526 English herbal manuscript.
via Wikimedia Commons

By: Hillary Waterman
October 25, 2017

Magic is first and foremost a technology, a primeval tool that humans stumbled upon eons ago for accessing an invisible realm that they sensed held the key to their well-being. Magic gave people an avenue to attain what their hearts desired—protection, divination, healing, luck, vengeance and, most of all, a sense of empowerment. It’s a measure of comfort in a cold, dark world.

Although the world’s magical practices are diverse, appearing at first to be a kaleidoscopic array of random symbols and incoherent mutterings, if we dig a little deeper, we find common constitutive elements. Try to discern which of the following is not an incantation:


A. Abracadabra

B. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

C. As the moon wanes, so may I decrease…

D. Nasagwagusa, isawagusa
inai gogona
inai gogona
narada nabwibwi…

B is nothing special, just an old-timey physician’s prescription for minor complaints. It accomplishes nothing, save for foisting responsibility back onto the patient. In contrast, A, C, and D are special purpose magical language, used to make things happen in the world.
Abracadabra is the Swiss Army Knife of incantations, reached for in cases where the caster offers no particular spell.

Abracadabra is an ancient magic word of perhaps Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic etymology (no one seems to know, which adds to its mystery). It’s the Swiss Army Knife of incantations, reached for in cases where the caster offers no particular spell. It’s often the first magic word a child learns, and has become ubiquitous in pop-culture depictions of magic. In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Avada Kedavra is the dreaded Killing Curse, of which Harry himself is the only known survivor. Abracadabra has even been co-opted by top-hatted, cape-draped performing magicians and featured to comic effect in a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon.

C is a charm for inducing weight-loss from a paperback booklet of magic spells that caught my eye at the grocery store checkout as a chubby pre-teen. The instructions were to utter the words on the full moon while burning a white candle. As I was not allowed to burn candles in my room, nor did I have the wherewithal to get my hands on special herbs for the draught that would activate the spell, I was never able to test its efficacy.

D is authentic magic. It’s an excerpt from a Trobriand Islands spell for growing yams. The words are uttered over a tufa whetstone called a nasagwagusa, which is used to hone the knife with which a woman will harvest the yams when they mature. The stone, a talisman, is then pressed against the cut seedlings as the rest of the verse is recited. Yams are central to the Trobriand social economy, and constitute women’s wealth and status in the society.



Language has power in the social world—on that we can agree. People use words to hurt, conceal, soothe, and dominate, to evoke emotions in others. More than that, in certain contexts and conditions, the right words effect real change. Words can alter the legal standings of individuals (“I now pronounce you husband and wife”), transfer ownership of goods (“That’ll be $8.99…”), mitigate personal injury (“I apologize”), or establish a legal context (“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”). In linguistic terms, this kind of language is called performative, language that is, in itself, action. This specialized linguistic form is one common ingredient of magic, where the power is in the words themselves.

Common to all kinds of magic are:
Actors—a practitioner, a subject, and an agent (a spirit or energy source)
A decontextualizing of the language and actions from everyday life and resituating them within a special and powerful—and abstracted (often mythic)—context
A special-purpose language or speech register
Rituals and taboos
Use of herbs and talismans
Altered states of consciousness induced by chanting, fasting, or herbal draught

In “The Language of Magic in Two Old English Metrical Charms,” the medievalist L.M.C. Weston analyzes the poetic language of The Nine Herbs Charm, a healing spell dating to the tenth century C.E. West also looks at Wið færstice, a popular charm for relieving a stabbing pain. Weston calls them “magico-medical texts… [in which] ritual and poetry combine… to create and enforce an altered consciousness, in which and through which magic can occur.” They use performative language in Old English verse, magical numbers (multiples of 3), and a characteristic rhythm combining the alliterative structure of Old English verse with counter rhythms that index its special status as magical. There is a lot of repetition.

In Wið færstice, Lines 6, 12, and 15 (all multiples of 3), are practically identical in their refrain:

Ut lytel spere, gif her innie sie
Ut lytel spere, gif her innie sy
Ut lytel spere, gif her innie sy

In subsequent verses, says Weston, “The healer speaking the words over an herbal potion and knife (spere)… becomes a warrior under a shield, engaging in archetypal battle with vaguely identified, supernatural enemies.”

In abstracting away from the particular battle depicted in the poem to a mythic realm, the healer draws on the power of that realm, collecting it in order to discharge it, producing the desired transformation (healing). It is, says Weston “magical in purpose and poetic in method.”
Spells have two distinct phases, the first one concentrating on gathering in power, the second on releasing it.

Spells have two distinct phases, the first one concentrating on gathering in power, the second on releasing it, with focused intent, in a particular direction. In the case of Wið færstice, this is marked by a change in verb tense from the first to second half of the charm, which signals a shift from potential power to present use, also using the subject “I” to indicate the healer’s agency. The recipient of the charm is also reframed, from the herbs in phase one to the patient in phase two.

The Nine Herbs Charm calls for an assemblage of herbs: chamomile, mugwort, lamb’s cress, plantain, mayweed, nettle, crab-apple, thyme, and fennel. These are crushed and mixed into a salve. The charm is sung three times over each ingredient and again over the patient and chanted as the salve is applied. If properly executed, the Nine Herbs Charm protects the patient from illnesses believed to come from toxins in the air.

Incantations combining specialized language, plants, and symbolic objects are hardly unique to the Anglo-Saxon world. In Papua, New Guinea, the Trobriand Islands peoples have long been known for their reliance on magic. In “Magical Conversation on the Trobriand Islands,” the psycholinguist Gunter Senft deconstructs the texts of thirteen magic spells, showing how their magic works.

Trobrianders have spells for black magic, for weather, healing, agriculture, fishing, dance, beauty, love, sailing and canoes, and anti-witch (or shark) magic. Magic pervades their cosmology. They employ a special register of their Austronesian Kilivila, which they designate “biga megwa” or “the language of magic.”

Incantations are understood as magical conversations with only one speaker. The magician speaks, or, they say, “whispers” and the addressee, the interlocutor—a plant, animal, a topographic feature, or spirit—acts in the desired way, to bring about a desired effect. A number of conditions must be met. The magician must strictly observe cleansing rituals and food taboos. The correct magical formula must be repeated for the prescribed amount of time with no mistakes or omissions.

For weather magic to bring sunshine, one native magician named Kasiosi explains, he must first slice a ginger root and place the slices in a paper basket with a tiny slit. While he removes a bit of ginger with his fingers, he recites a 144-line magical formula. He chews the ginger, spits it out, and recites the formula again. This may be repeated as many times as he pleases. The name of this spell is magaurekasi; Kasiosi does not know what the name means. Magic words often have no meaning in the mundane world; in fact, this is a common feature of magical language.
Trobriand magic, much like the Old English charms, relies on “speech-action.”

Kasiosi’s incantation first addresses the clouds and rain using a special second person plural form not used in ordinary speech. It orders them to retreat, invoking the names of the former owners of the magic. Trobriand magic can be transferred from one person to another, even bought and sold. In this way, Kasiosi draws on their power and collects it in for himself. He names all the paths along which the bad weather should retreat, along the village path, away from his house and the village, toward the sea. The order bulitabai is repeated no less than fifteen times.

In the second half of the formula, he orders the rain to “disperse,” bulegalegisa, nine times, and to “disappear,” bulilevaga/bulilevaga twelve times. “If we look at the formula as a whole,” says Senft, “we see that the various orders or commands are weighted and seem to follow a certain pattern.” The stanzas follow a formula, A-F, with ordered combinations of commands, invocations and assertion of the desired effects.

Trobriand magic, much like the Old English charms, relies on “speech-action,” ritualized in formulas between esoteric specialists, and special addressees. For the Trobrianders, magic is woven into the fabric of their everyday lives. Senft argues that it is also a “cultural phenomenon,” with the implicit goal of diffusing social tensions by enacting “clearly defined conventions and rules.”

These days, the Trobriand islands face the forces of globalization—Senft did his fieldwork there in the 1980s—and the islanders don’t much rely on magic anymore. And Saxon charms are but a relic of early medieval pagan practice. Yet some ancient mysticism and superstitions have worked their way into contemporary life and belief systems. One can collect magic spells on Pinterest, join a coven online, or use aromatherapy to help fall asleep. Magic survives, and people still find the idea of it, well, enchanting.

THE LANGUAGE OF MAGIC IN TWO OLD ENGLISH METRICAL CHARMS
By: L.M.C. Weston
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Vol. 86, No. 2 (1985), pp. 176-186
Modern Language Society

Magical Conversation on the Trobriand Islands
By: Gunter Senft
Anthropos, Bd. 92, H. 4./6. (1997), pp. 369-391
Anthropos Institut

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