Mourning in America: But after the Trump era's darkness, a rebirth is still possible
At last, the American people have awakened to the dangers of this president. But the worst may still lie ahead


CHAUNCEY DEVEGA SALON JULY 10, 2020 

Since Election Day 2016, America has been in a state of mourning.

Donald Trump's Independence Day speeches offered more of the almost never-ending funeral ceremonies for America's democracy, dignity and decency. Instead of trumpet-like exhortations to American greatness and goodness on the country's birthday, Trump chose to deliver horribly off-key funereal dirges.
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Trump's speeches were celebrations of white racism and neo-fascism, declarations that those Americans who dare to oppose him are de facto enemies of the state to be purged from the body politic.

Some of America's most respected historians have certified Donald Trump to be one of the worst presidents of all time.

Trump can do no better because he is inexorably compelled and attracted to the worst parts of America's past and present. In that way Donald Trump, his followers, enablers, voters, supporters and other allies are the human embodiment of almost everything wrong with American society.

Writing for the Washington Post, David Nakamura described Trump's Fourth of July weekend speeches, comparing them to his infamous "American Carnage" inaugural address:

Nearly 3½ years later, in the president's telling, the carnage is still underway but this time the enemy is closer to home — other Americans whose racial identity and cultural beliefs are toppling the nation's heritage and founding ideals….

As he has so often during his tenure, the president made clear that he will do little to try to heal or unify the country ahead of the November presidential election but rather aims to drive a deeper wedge into the country's fractures.

At Mount Rushmore, under the granite gaze of four U.S. presidents, Trump railed against "angry mobs" pursuing "far-left fascism" and a "left-wing cultural revolution" that has manifested in the assault on statues and monuments celebrating Confederate leaders and other U.S. historical figures, including some former presidents, amid the mass racial justice protests of recent weeks.

A day later, on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump's rhetoric was, if anything, even harsher. "We are now in the process of defeating the radical left — the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters," he told his assembled guests on what is supposed to be a day of national celebration. As Nakamura observed:

In making the case that a radical and violent ideology underpins much of the social justice movement that propelled the nationwide demonstrations, Trump has dropped virtually all pretense that he supports millions of peaceful protesters who have called for broad reforms to address what they see as systemic racism and a culture of brutality in police departments.

Instead, he warned of a "growing danger" to the values of the nation's founders — a "merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children."

Trump even described those Americans who oppose him as being akin to Nazis or terrorists. Almost explicit in Trump's Independence Day speeches are threats of violence and destruction. He does not believe in the core tenets of democracy and normal politics, such as compromise and consensus-seeking within the constraints of an agreed-upon set of rules.

While political debates in America have often been intense and sometimes quite violent — see the Civil War — the nation's political leaders for the most part still shared a fundamental belief in the system and the need to preserve it for future generations. Donald Trump and his allies have no such principled commitments.

As with other authoritarians and demagogues, Donald Trump's threats must be taken seriously. Trump is not engaging in harmless hyperbole or mere attention-seeking and distracting behavior.

In addition to Trump's repeated public use of stochastic violence and his outright threats to have Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats jailed for treason — or worse — there is the president's ominous private behavior to consider as well.

As recounted by former national security advisor John Bolton in his new book, Donald Trump wants journalists to be killed. Trump also supports Chinese President Xi Jinping's use of concentration camps where Uighur Muslims have been tortured and killed.

To make matters worse, America's state of mourning is also a literal season of death with the coronavirus pandemic. Because he is only capable of destruction, Trump has made decisions about the pandemic that have led to the deaths of at least 133,000 Americans and counting.

In another example of Trump and his cabal's barbarism and disdain toward the American people, the administration's new "plan" for "confronting" the coronavirus pandemic is to habituate and condition the public into accepting hundreds of thousands of deaths as somehow being a "new normal," which might also include the needless deaths of school children from the coronavirus pandemic.

At the New Yorker, Robin Wright summarizes the pathetic condition of America in the Age of Trump:

The sorry state of America's political and physical health ripples across the globe. The United States, long the bedrock of the Western alliance, is less inspirational today — and perhaps will be even less so tomorrow…. This Fourth of July holiday is one of the most humbling in our history. Even at the height of world wars or the Great Depression, America inspired. But, today, the United States is destroying the moral authority it once had. There will still be fireworks. And the Statue of Liberty still towers over New York Harbor. But it is harder today to convince others that Americans embrace — or practice — the ideals that Lady Liberty represents.

New public opinion polls show that this feeling of dread and despair and embarrassment is widespread. American exceptionalism and greatness are in doubt. Americans' sense of patriotism is at a two-decade low. A new poll from Politico and Morning Consult shows that 75 percent of American voters believe the country is on the wrong track — the worst such response since Donald Trump won the White House in 2016.
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Collectively these polls show how the American people want a return to normalcy and decency. Trump cannot soothe such pain: his political brand is cruelty, chaos, and destructive disruption.

America's mourning in the Age of Trump is following the steps outlined by the "stages of grief": Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

With the George Floyd protests and people's uprising — and what appears to be a large shift in public opinion against Donald Trump — the American people seem to have finally arrived at the stage of accepting that the country is imperiled by the president and his movement.

Too much time may have already been wasted, because hope peddlers and other naïve voices in the American commentariat kept telling the American people that Trump would "pivot" and become "presidential," that special counsel Robert Mueller "would save the country," that "the institutions were strong" and that Trump's evil was being "exaggerated" by his critics, or that Trump's voters were "good people," the American people en masse are now finally moving to action. They are doing this through mobilizing, organizing, engaging in direct corporeal politics and — we must hope — showing up in massive numbers to vote Trump out of office in November.
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Of course, matters are not that simple.

While the Democrats and other good Americans are moving from acceptance to action in their stages of grief for America, Donald Trump and his supporters are being made to confront that their movement, at least in its current form, may be dying.

Trump's true believers are now in the denial and anger stages of grief. How will they react after Election Day if Trump is conclusively defeated and then forced out of office?

Trump's followers are willing to kill and die for him. We have seen an increase in hate crimes, mass shootings and other right-wing terrorism and violence. Blood has already been spilt in the (literal) name of Donald Trump. On Election Day and the weeks and months after there will likely be much more violence by Trump's supporters against their "enemies."
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Jonathan Lockwood, an operative for right-wing extremist Republicans in Oregon, recently issued an ominous warning to the American people and the world. In an interview with the Independent he explains:

"I think we should fear a violent uprising… All it takes is for Trump to say one line or post one tweet," he said, adding that such an uprising could consist of occupying state capitols or even taking hostages to prevent state legislatures from certifying the election results.

"I think you could see takeovers of every [state] capitol, since the president seems to enjoy watching that from DC, and the country can descend into a chaos that we've never seen. People are gravely underestimating how pervasive these conspiracies and the delegitimizing of Democrats governing truly are."

Election Day 2020 is an existential moment when the life or death of America's multiracial democracy — and the nation's pre-eminent place in the world – will be decided.

Will the American people choose death and destruction with Donald Trump and all that he represents? Or will the American people instead embrace life, and saving the country's democracy, with Joe Biden?

This election is a literal struggle between creation and destruction, a moment when the American people will either rise to the occasion or fall further into shame, defeat and ignominy.


CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
 is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

Bacteriophages Could Be a Potential Game Changer in the Trajectory of COVID-19

By Marcin W. Wojewodzic
-July 10, 2020

Source: Design Cells/Getty Images

The pandemic of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused the death of at least 270,000 people as of the 8th of May 2020. This work stresses the potential role of bacteriophages to decrease the mortality rate of patients infected by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus. The indirect cause of mortality in COVID-19 is miscommunication between the innate and adaptive immune systems, resulting in a failure to produce effective antibodies against the virus on time. Although further research is urgently needed, secondary bacterial infections in the respiratory system could potentially contribute to the high mortality rate observed among the elderly due to COVID-19. If bacterial growth, together with delayed production of antibodies, is a significant contributing factor to COVID-19’s mortality rate, then the additional time needed for the human body’s adaptive immune system to produce specific antibodies could be gained by reducing the bacterial growth rate in the respiratory system of a patient. Independently of that, the administration of synthetic antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 viruses could potentially decrease the viral load. The decrease of bacterial growth and the covalent binding of synthetic antibodies to viruses should further diminish the production of inflammatory fluids in the lungs of patients (the indirect cause of death). Although the first goal could potentially be achieved by antibiotics, I argue that other methods may be more effective or could be used together with antibiotics to decrease the growth rate of bacteria, and that respective clinical trials should be launched.

Both goals can be achieved by bacteriophages. The bacterial growth rate could potentially be reduced by the aerosol application of natural bacteriophages that prey on the main species of bacteria known to cause respiratory failure and should be harmless to a patient. Independently of that, synthetically changed bacteriophages could be used to quickly manufacture specific antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. This can be done via a Nobel Prize awarded technique called “phage display.” If it works, the patient is given extra time to produce their own specific antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and stop the damage caused by an excessive immunological reaction.
The Virus That Caused the Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has caused the death of more than 270,000 people, as reported by 8th May 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO). The crisis we observe is the joint effect of globalization and the properties of the new virus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the disease, COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 stands for “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome COronaVirus 2” describing one of the most dangerous symptoms in COVID-19. Although there have been past warnings of the threat that respiratory targeting viruses pose,1 the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread at an unprecedented rate and it is devastating our health and economy globally. We urgently need multiple approaches to tackle this crisis.

This short communication attempts to highlight the potential for the use of natural bacteriophages to decrease the mortality rate among patients infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. COVID-19 patients can develop SARS, leading to atypical pneumonia2 that is mediated by cytokine storms.3
Possible Significance of Bacteria in Symptoms for COVID-19

The most probable entrance road of the SARS-CoV-2 to humans is the respiratory system, where the virus can disrupt its equilibrium.


The indirect cause of death in COVID-19 patients could be miscommunication between the innate and adaptive immunological systems.4 The adaptive immune response takes much longer than the innate immune response to begin effectively attacking a new pathogen. This means there is a period when only the innate immune system is fighting the infection and, in this period, the innate immune system’s response can become too aggressive when faced with a high virus load, causing it to damage other systems. The growth of the virus causes the innate immune system to secrete inflammatory material (fluid and inflammatory cells) into the lungs. As a result, the lungs become filled with fluid reducing the body’s ability to exchange gases.4

The debris of dying and virally infected human respiratory cells can become a substrate for bacteria growth, a side effect of the virus infection. This growth of bacteria then causes the innate immune system to secrete additional inflammatory material in nearby alveoli. Bacterial infections seem to provoke a further reaction of the innate immune system, and they may interact with virus infections.5 This process accelerates as the virus continues to attack lung cells, and it thus creates more cell debris substrate for the bacteria to feed on. This can result in the innate immune system adding too much inflammatory fluid to the lungs, inhibiting gas exchange and resulting in an urgent need for ventilation, and it can cause sepsis and death.

The delay (or failure) of the production of antibodies specific to the virus could explain why SARS-CoV-2 is so dangerous for the elderly. A recent detailed review on immunity in COVID-19 summarizes state-of-the-art knowledge of the host’s immunological response to the virus, and it points out clear differences in disease progression between younger and older patients.4

Immunosenescence (impairment of immune functions) can delay the production of antibodies and is usually expected in elderly patients (Figure 1B),6,7 which might be a part of the cause for the high age-dependent mortality observed in COVID-19 patients (Figures 1A, B). Although data for COVID-19 are still scarce, there is evidence that having previously contracted influenza predisposes the host to acquiring pneumococcal colonization8,9 and therefore there is a known mechanism for viral infections to cause bacterial colonization in the human respiratory system. Further, the co-occurrence of viruses and bacteria is well documented for other viruses.10Figure 1. Theoretical time courses of the SARS-CoV-2 virus growth (red curves), bacterial growth (purple curves), and host antibody production (blue curves) for four scenarios. (A) A young healthy individual who has no problems developing antibodies to the virus infection. (B) An old individual who experiences delayed antibody production, resulting in bacterial growth as well as increased virus growth. (C) An old individual for whom a bacteriophage cocktail against bacterial growth was introduced as a part of standard therapy. Increase of bacteriophages is marked (green curve) with the time of treatment (green arrow). The relationship between bacteriophages and bacteria can be described by the Lotkka-Voltera population model. The viral load does not decrease until the body’s natural antiviral antibodies are produced but more time is bought for this to happen. (D) An old individual for whom synthetic antibodies were introduced (brown curve), creating an immediate reduction in the viral load and once again buying time for the natural antibodies to be produced. SARS-CoV-2, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.

Although ecologists call this process a “succession,” medical doctors use the term “secondary infections.” For instance Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus), Aerococcus viridans, Haemophilius influenza, and Moraxella catarrhalis are bacteria typically found in influenza patients, as well as other respiratory commensals, which occasionally turn into pathogens causing infection.11

A recent review suggests that bacterial infections, including Acinetobacter baumanii and Klebsiella pneumoniae, have been documented in COVID-19 patients, especially in the intensive care unit setting.2 Non-survivors were more likely to have sepsis and secondary infection, although detailed bacteriology results were not reported. Secondary infections were also positively correlated with steroid administration.2

At least part of the high mortality rate attributed to COVID-19 could be due to bacterial infection of the respiratory system,12,13 although we still do not have an accurate estimate for the numbers. There might also be problems in producing reliable estimates for these numbers due to the overwhelming number of patients seen in clinics and the criteria for which patients are admitted to bacteriology tests, and at what point in the process. A recent report from Wuhan shows that at least 50% of patients dying developed secondary infections.12 The median time given for these secondary infections to develop is 17 days, although the range in time is quite large. It is plausible that bacterial infections begin to colonize before acute respiratory distress syndrome is developed.

In viral scenarios such as influenza, bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa are known to spread rapidly.14,15 In addition, the rapid and enormous response of the first-line, innate immunity system causes general inflammation that can change pulmonary structures (causing fibrosis), further reducing oxygen uptake and causing permanent damage to the respiratory tissue. This reaction can lead to the innate immunity system itself being the actual cause of death; however, the extent to which this reaction is caused by the body’s response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus or to which it is caused by its response to infection by bacteria (such as P. aeruginosa) is not yet known and I postulate may differ over the course of the infection.

The interplay between the time taken for the human body to develop antiviral antibodies and the role of bacteria in the death of older individuals is also not yet well known for COVID-19.
Integrative Approach Proposal

If bacterial growth, together with the delayed production of antibodies, is a significant contributing factor to COVID-19’s mortality rate, then the additional time needed for the human body’s adaptive immunity system to produce antibodies could be gained by reducing the bacterial growth rate in the respiratory system of the patient. If the growth of bacteria in lungs can be stopped, then the rate of liquid increase within the lungs should also decrease. However, as the growth of the virus is exponential, it might be necessary to decrease the viral load at the same time as the bacterial load to slow down the immunological response.
Natural Bacteriophages’ Potential—A Direct Weapon Against Bacteria

Bacteriophages are viruses that selectively attack specific species of bacteria and are otherwise harmless to animal cells, including humans. They were discovered 100 years ago by Frederick W. Twort and Félix d’Hérelle16 and are distributed throughout Earth’s ecosystems17 and over a broad bacterial host range, including bacteria naturally found in humans.18

It has been shown that the attack of bacteriophages is specific, meaning that one species of bacteriophage targets only a single species of bacteria (or even a specific strain of one species).19 This specificity also points toward the “Red Queen” co-evolutionary process between these two players.20,21 The scenario of the attack is as follows: (1) The bacteriophage attaches itself to a susceptible bacterium, exclusively infects the host bacterial cell and (2) hijacks the bacterium’s biochemical machinery to produce multiple copies of itself. (3) The bacterium then undergoes destruction (lysis) and new copies of the bacteriophage are released and infect, exclusively, other bacteria of the same species in the neighboring areas.

Despite this known interplay between bacteriophages and bacteria, research into bacteriophages and their potential medical applications was largely abandoned for many years due to “The Antibiotics Revolution.” Antibiotics were adopted as the main way of treating bacterial infections due primarily to the fact that they are general purpose, as opposed to bacteriophages that specifically target a single species of bacteria. Other advantages include the fact that antibiotics are usually fast acting, efficient, and relatively cheap to manufacture. However, there are several drawbacks as well to the use of antibiotics. One of these is that, unlike bacteriophages, antibiotics can destroy beneficial bacteria in addition to harmful ones.22 More importantly, the overuse of antibiotics can cause bacteria to evolve resistances to them, resulting in antibiotic-immune “superbugs.”23,24

In the current COVID-19 pandemic, around 70% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients worldwide receive antibiotics as part of their treatment.25 This raises the danger of the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria even higher and creates an even greater need for the development of alternative strategies to fight bacterial infections. Unlike antibiotics, bacteriophage treatments would be far less susceptible to the development of resistances, as the bacteriophage itself can also adapt to overcome any resistance that the bacteria develop.26

It has also been suggested that the presence of bacteriophages can have positive effects on human health and patient recovery, suggesting that bacteriophages are to some extent responsible for homeostasis of the microbiota.27 For instance, a group investigating alternative treatments for Clostridium difficile, a bacteria that can infect the bowel and cause diarrhea, has identified a large set of bacteriophages that are effective at killing this pathogen.28 This method is now being transformed into a therapeutic treatment. We can find more examples of how bacteriophages are being used for human or animal models, in addition to different bioengineering methods using bacteriophages that are currently being developed.29–31
Bacteriophages Used for Accelerated Therapeutic Antibody Production Against the Virus

Despite the fact that bacteriophages’ potential to fight bacterial infections has only recently been rediscovered, they were successfully used as tools at the molecular level, leading to Nobel Prize awards.32

Using a technique called phage display, bacteriophages have the potential to quickly produce recombinant antibodies.33 This technique of producing antibodies was developed for MERS-CoV and successfully applied.34 In phage display, techniques blocking ACE2 interaction could be engineered from the serum of immune patients. The Yin-Yang biopanning method highlights the possibility of utilizing crude antigens for the isolation of monoclonal antibodies by phage display. Before this, artificial antibody production was primarily done by using animals; however, this is both slower and less cost effective than using bacteriophage display techniques.35 Another benefit of this method is that monoclonal antibodies produced by bacteriophage display techniques can be humanized.36

The use of antibody therapy for the control of viral diseases has already been reviewed and some therapies have been approved for human testing.37 As an example, the company ProteoGenix launched accelerated therapeutic antibody discovery by screening a naive antibody human library (LiAb-SFMAX™, scFv, Fab, IgG) or an immune human antibody library (obtained from the plasma of COVID-19 survivors) by using the phage display technique (https://bit.ly/2LlOsVQ). This demonstrates that accelerated therapeutic antibody discovery is highly feasible.

Therefore, there are two main ways that bacteriophages could be used to decrease the mortality rate of the COVID-19 pandemic. They can be used to decrease the population of bacteria in a patient’s respiratory system and/or bacteriophage display techniques can be used to efficiently manufacture synthetic antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 (Fig. 1D).

I propose a series of clinical trials for the use of cocktails of bacteriophages (that target the main species of bacteria known to cause respiratory problems) in treating COVID-19 patients and/or the use of phage display techniques to create synthetic antibodies that target SARS-CoV-2 in the early stages of infection.
Further Considerations for Bacteriophage Therapy—Bacteriophages as Killers

The bacterial growth rate could potentially be reduced by the aerosol application of bacteriophages that prey on the main species of bacteria known to cause respiratory failures (Figure 1C). This can occur in a self-regulatory manner, similar to ecological prey–predator regulation. The exponential growth of the bacteriophage population (limited primarily by the population of the bacteria it preys on) should allow for a fast clearance, especially in cases where the bacterial population has already grown significantly. The relationship can be described by Lotka-Volterra or Kill-the-Winner population model.38–40

In fact, we can already find evidence in literature that pneumonia could be cured by nebulized bacteriophages.41 Prophylactically administered bacteriophages reduced lung bacterial burdens and improved survival of antibiotic-resistant S. aureus infected animals in the context of ventilator-associated pneumonia. If needed, a selection of bacteriophages and optimal target bacteria could be quickly identified by a group of experts as the species of bacteria that commonly cause respiratory problems are well known and a bacteriophage that preys on a specific species can be quickly identified by screening methods.42 If needed, quantitative microbiome sequencing could potentially be used.43

There are assumptions that need to be met during the clinical trials for the approach to work. (1) The cohort has to be chosen to have a high probability of developing bacterial infections. (2) It should be ensured to have the correct choice of bacteriophages that both target the optimal bacteria candidates and are most effective at reducing that bacteria’s population growth. (3) The bacteriophages should not interfere with the patient’s innate or adaptive immune system. (4) The patient does not have antibodies toward bacteriophages used, nor develops any antibodies toward bacteriophages to clear off the bacteriophage earlier than to SARS-CoV-2. We know from bacteriophage therapy in the pneumonia system that the rapid lysis of bacteria by bacteriophages in vivo does not increase the innate inflammatory response compared with antibiotic treatment.44 This is a promising finding and there seemed to be positive effects on the patient’s immune system.45 (5) Another obstacle could be a risk of a species of bacteria developing resistance to the bacteriophage, according to the co-evolutionary process mentioned. However, this would be much less serious than the antibiotic resistance problem as it would only reduce the effectiveness of that one bacteriophage and there is the possibility of the bacteriophage also adapting to overcome any resistance to it. (6) Finally, bacteriophages are so specific to one species of bacteria, and there is very little chance of the bacteriophage damaging any beneficial bacteria, but this should still be verified in clinical trials. It has to be noted that the point here is to decrease bacterial growth in critical time and therefore allow the patient more time to recover from the COVID-19 infection.
Decreasing the Population Growth Rate of Bacteria

The response to antibiotics may be slower or smaller than expected. This may be due to both antibiotic-resistant strains and slow diffusion rate of the antibiotics in that area due to bacterial biofilm formation.46 Also, in some cases, the penetration of antibiotics into target tissues is also dependent on the tissue type that was shown for lungs in tuberculosis scenarios.47 It has been shown that the sites of mycobacterial infection in the lungs of patients have complex structures and poor vascularization, which obstructs drug distribution to these hard-to-reach and hard-to-treat disease sites, further leading to suboptimal drug concentrations. Because of this, there is the potential for the use of bacteriophages (entering patients’ respiratory systems in a different way and acting differently to antibiotics) to decrease the mortality rate of patients infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Intensive use of antibiotics targeting COVID-19 in clinics can further lead to bacterial resistance spreading in the hospitals. Using bacteriophages could take pressure off this problem. This could also shed light on the use of bacteriophages to decrease this problem in post–COVID-19 scenarios.
Decrease the Viral Load by Using Synthetic Antiviral Antibodies

There are also assumptions that need to be met during the clinical trials for the second approach to work. (1) The cohort has to be chosen to have a bad prognosis (age >80) and high viral load; (2) ensuring the correct choice of antibody that targets the virus epitope and nothing else in the human body; (3) the antibody should not cause failure of the immune system (anaphylactic shock); (4) the dose and frequency should be mathematically modeled; and (5) the delivery system should be efficient.
Gaps in Knowledge

Before choosing the candidate bacteriophages, careful literature studies will need to be done to check for potential known interactions. For example, it has been shown that some bacteria can produce a biofilm when exposed to their relevant bacteriophages,48 which could be an obstacle for the development of these methods as a treatment for COVID-19 patients. Although most bacteriophages kill their bacterial hosts, others can live inside the microbes without killing them.49 Also, lessons from recent studies need to be carefully followed. For instance, complex immune dysregulation in COVID-19 patients with severe respiratory failure has been observed.50

During the writing of this communication, the first immunological reviews were published, in which the authors identified major gaps in knowledge that need to be addressed by the scientific community.4 It is unknown how this may complicate any treatment and further investigation is needed.
High Gain Approach

However, if a treatment using bacteriophages therapy can be developed it is likely to prove practical as they can be produced both quickly and cheaply. Production of antibodies from the phage display techniques will have some costs of production but, owing to recent progress, the development should be simple. Bacteriophages can also be stored and transported easily. I believe that bacteriophages have the potential to be a practical tool in mitigating the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, especially in patients with secondary bacterial infection and high viral load. I believe that it is unlikely to have any significant side effects, and that it has the potential to save a great number of lives. The beauty of nature is that although it can kill us, it can also come to our rescue.
Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges Antal Martinecz, Fei-Chih Liu, Urszula Berge, Leon Berge, and Carl Morten M Laane for constructive discussions around human health and basic immunology. Special thanks are due to Jan Lavender and Jodie Burnett-Wren.

For this article in its entirety and its references click here.


Marcin W. Wojewodzic is a systems biologist at the Cancer Registry of Norway, Institute of Population-Based Cancer Research, Etiology Group.

PHAGE: Therapy, Applications, and Research, published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., is the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated to fundamental bacteriophage research and its applications in medicine, agriculture, aquaculture, veterinary applications, animal production, food safety, and food production. The above article was first published on June 23, 2020. The views expressed here are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of PHAGE: Therapy, Applications, and Research, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, or their affiliates. No endorsement of any entity or technology is implied.

https://www.genengnews.com/insights/bacteriophages-could-be-a-potential-game-changer-in-the-trajectory-of-covid-19/

UK SWEATSHOP 

Boohoo dropped by investor over ‘inadequate’ response to unsafe factory and low pay allegati

One of Boohoo’s biggest shareholders has said the company failed to adequately address allegations of poor working conditions in its supply chain after concerns surfaced amid Leicester’s coronavirus outbreak

Katie Grant @kt_grant July 10, 2020 

Boohoo has been dropped by one its biggest investors over allegations of unsafe working conditions and illegally low pay.

Asset management firm Standard Life Aberdeen (SLA) sold most of its stock in the company in the wake of an investigation that found workers producing clothes for Boohoo at a Leicester factory were being paid as little as £3.50 an hour.

It brings an end to a tumultuous week for the retailer during which Next and Asos both dropped Boohoo-branded goods from their online stores in an effort to distance themselves from the label following the claims published in The Sunday Timese


Shares plummet

Boohoo, which also owns fellow fast-fashion brands Nasty Gal and PrettyLittleThing, has denied putting workers at risk but promised to “thoroughly investigate” the claims.

Shares in Boohoo Group began to recover on Thursday after plummeting nearly 40 per cent, wiping more than £1.5bn off the retailer’s value. This rebound followed assurances from the company that it would launch an independent review of its UK supply chain.

The fashion brand Boohoo has lost one of its biggest investors (Photo: Craig Barritt/Getty Images)

But Boohoo’s response failed to win over investor SLA, which has dumped almost all its stock.

“Having spoken to Boohoo’s management team a number of times this week in light of recent concerning allegations, we view their response as inadequate in scope, timeliness and gravity,” spokeswoman Lesley Duncan told the Financial Times.

Boohoo ‘shocked’

Boohoo said in a statement earlier this week: “As a board, we are shocked and appalled by the recent allegations that have been made and we are committed to doing everything in our power to rebuild the reputation of the textile manufacturing industry in Leicester.

“We want to ensure that the actions of a few do not continue to undermine the excellent work of many suppliers in the area, who succeed in providing good jobs and good working conditions.”

BOOHOO APTLY NAMED 

Leicester’s Dickensian fast fashion factories are a blight on our nation

My sources tell me some garment makers – most of them Asians or new migrants – are paid £3.50 per hour in hellish Victorian-style workshops

By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
July 6, 2020 7:38 pm

Boohoo clothes are so cheap that you can wear them once and then choose another outfit

Families keep secrets and cover them with lies. Communities, businesses and nations do the same. People don’t talk because of loyalty, self-interest, patriotism or fear. New revelations about appallingly treated workers in garment factories in Leicester are not new. Satanic factories are all over this land.

Turn over rabid industrial capitalism and you find monstrously greedy bosses. The spotlight is on Leicester because the city was forced to lock down again.

As rates of Covid-19 rose, politicians and the press began to look into possible causes. Stories began breaking. The biggest one involved suppliers for Boohoo, the online fashion company. A factory, which displayed the sign Jaswal Fashions, was allegedly operating last week during the localised coronavirus lockdown without additional hygiene measures in place, according to an undercover investigation by The Sunday Times.

Boohoo was co-founded by the billionaire Mahmud Kamani, whose sons control vast empires now. It would be good to know their personal reactions. Boohoo is investigating its suppliers.


Read More
Companies forcing Leicester workers back to factories must face fines, say TUC

Two years ago, Sarah O’Connor of the Financial Times warned that “part of Leicester’s garment industry has become detached from UK employment law”, and was “a country within a country”. The journalist claimed that local government, the retail sector and central government knew about this.

Boohoo clothes are cheap and popular

She quotes Anders Kristiansen, who was CEO of fashion chain New Look until 2017. “When I came to the UK and I discovered what was going on in Leicester, it was mind-blowing,” he said. “This is happening in front of your eyes and nobody’s doing anything?! How can society accept it? Not even society – how can government accept it? I’ve not spoken about it for a long time because it frustrated me so much.”

My Asian acquaintances in the Midlands tell me some garment makers – most of them Asians or new migrants – are paid £3.50 per hour in hellish Victorian-style workshops. Mahesh (not his real name) used to manage a clothes unit belonging to another Asian manufacturer. He left because his conscience couldn’t take it any more.

Read More
UK’s demand for fast fashion hits workers’ welfare as Manchester garment workers ‘paid £4 an hour’

“Poor people are the lowest caste of all. For my boss they were nothing. In the temple they treat him like a god.”So are Asian business leaders especially wicked? No. Amazon staff have made serious complaints about their treatment, and in 2016 MPs accused Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley of not treating his workers like humans.

Having said that, I do feel more agitated and inexplicably responsible when the allegations relate to businesses run by Asians. I feel as though they betray our history. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, some Asian people opened small shops or restaurants but most were working class. They joined unions and mobilised against unfair employers. Some of those who eventually made good turned into bad entrepreneurs. No one called them out. And they still won’t. More blood, sweat and tears will be shed.

Consumers will still buy; the rich will get richer and their communities will guard their ugliest secrets and lies. What a book Charles Dickens could write about this cruel circus.

If the Solar System's 'Planet Nine' is actually a small black hole, here's how we could detect it... wait, what?

There may be a small black hole on the edge of our Solar System? 2020, please stop

The suggestion that the Solar System's hypothesized Planet Nine is actually a small black hole could be supported by searching for outbursts of energy using the Vera Rubin Observatory, scientists say.

The observatory, previously known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), has been under construction in Chile since 2015, and is expected to begin observing the heavens this year. It will be home to a giant telescope that employs a “three-mirror, three-lens optical assembly” to focus light from the night’s sky onto the “world’s largest CCD camera.”

Avi Loeb and Amir Siraj, chairman of the Department of Astronomy and an undergraduate student, respectively, at Harvard University believe the new telescope will be able to determine whether or not Planet Nine, a hypothetical object, may be a black hole or not within a year of the instrument becoming operational.

Planet Nine, if it exists, has remained elusive since it was predicted by a pair of astronomers at the California Institute of Technology in 2015. Fruitless searching for the strange body has led some scientists to believe it’s not visible at all because it may, in fact, be a black hole.

Loeb and Siraj have come up with a method to detect Planet Nine if, of course, it really is a black hole estimated to mass something in the order of five to ten Earth-sized planets. Their approach is described in a paper expected to appear in The Astrophysical Journal – a pre-print version is here. The abstract summarizes the method thus:


Planet Nine has been proposed to potentially be a black hole in the outer solar system. We investigate the accretion flares that would result from impacts of small Oort cloud objects, and find that the upcoming LSST observing program will be able to either rule out or confirm Planet Nine as a black hole within a year.

What that means is, their technique involves spotting luminous flares erupting at the outer edge of our Solar System. These bursts will be produced whenever the black hole, if it exists, gobbles up any comets and other stuff that flies too close to the proposed swirling disk of gas and dust.

"In the vicinity of a black hole, small bodies that approach it will melt as a result of heating from the background accretion of gas from the interstellar medium onto the black hole," said Siraj. "Once they melt, the small bodies are subject to tidal disruption by the black hole, followed by accretion from the tidally disrupted body onto the black hole."

In other words, matter flying towards Planet Nine will get pulled apart and swallowed, if it is a black hole. The interaction produces electromagnetic energy that signals the potential presence of this invisible void.

"Because black holes are intrinsically dark, the radiation that matter emits on its way to the mouth of the black hole is our only way to illuminate this dark environment," said Loeb.

The new telescope has a wide-field view that can search for these random flashes of light in outer space. "LSST has a wide field of view, covering the entire sky again and again, and searching for transient flares," said Loeb. "Other telescopes are good at pointing at a known target but we do not know exactly where to look for Planet Nine. We only know the broad region in which it may reside," Siraj added.

Captain, the computer has identified 250 alien stars that infiltrated our galaxy – actual science, not science-fiction

Neural network trained to spot emigrated suns in our Milky Way uncovers mysterious Nyx collective

Wed 8 Jul 2020 

Deep-learning software has singled out a group of 250 stars in the Milky Way that appear to have been born outside our galaxy. That's according to a research paper published this week in Nature Astronomy.

The oddballs, known collectively as Nyx, were described as a “vast stellar stream in the vicinity of the Sun,” by Lina Necib, first author of the paper [pre-print] and a postdoctoral scholar in theoretical physics at Caltech.

However, unlike our own star, these suns don’t look like they really belong in the Milky Way.

The Nyx collective moves through the galaxy in a manner unlike nearby stars, and some stars in the group have a similar chemical composition that suggests the Milky Way inherited these stars when it merged with a dwarf galaxy in its past.

The Caltech team discovered Nyx by running stars observed by ESA's Gaia spacecraft through a neural network. Specifically, they used a model that had been trained to predict whether a given star has an intergalactic origin from its kinematics. The network was taught using synthetic data derived from simulations run by the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) project. Thus when the neutral net was shown real stars, it could attempt to predict, from their movements, whether they came from beyond the Milky Way.

The team were mindful they had to ensure their resulting AI system was grounded in reality, and reflected how the Milky Way actually worked, rather than predicting what would happen in a simulator. This was accomplished by incorporating real stars into the training process using transfer learning.

We worry that machines trained on them may learn the simulation and not real physics

“At the LHC, we have incredible simulations, but we worry that machines trained on them may learn the simulation and not real physics," said Bryan Ostdiek, co-author of the paper, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, and previously worked on the Large Hadron Collider. "In a similar way, the FIRE galaxies provide a wonderful environment to train our models, but they are not the Milky Way. We had to learn not only what could help us identify the interesting stars in simulation, but also how to get this to generalize to our real galaxy."

They assigned the stars in the training data labels to indicate whether they were born in their galaxy, or accreted there as a result of a galaxy merger. After they trained their neural net, the academics fed it real data taken from the Gaia spacecraft to see if those observed suns were foreign to the Milky Way or not.

“We asked the neural network, ‘based on what you've learned, can you label if the stars were accreted or not?’” said Necib.

For each given star, the neural network generates a number between zero and one to indicate the likelihood it was formed inside the virtual model of the Milky Way or outside of it, respectively. To test their predictive model's accuracy, they checked if it was able to identify a separate group of stars known come from a separate galaxy merger some six to ten billion years ago. The foreign stars from that mash-up form what the scientists called a “Gaia sausage.”

Indeed, their model highlighted the Gaia sausage of stars – and a previously unknown group.

Your first instinct is that you have a bug

"Your first instinct is that you have a bug," Necib said. "And you're like, 'Oh no!' So, I didn't tell any of my collaborators for three weeks. Then I started realizing it's not a bug, it's actually real and it's new." She named the group Nyx.

“Nyx exists, there is no question about it,” she told The Register. “We can still debate its interpretation, as we are still gathering data to confirm the origin of these stars, but the machine-learning algorithm helped us identify these as interesting stars.

"We later studied their kinematics and indeed they are different from those of the [Milky Way's] disk; they have highly eccentric orbits, and lag behind the disk by about 90 kilometres per second, which is highly unusual for disk stars, even after collisions.”

Here's a headline we'll run this century, mark our words: Alien invaders' AI found on Mars searching for signs of life

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The astrophysicists were hesitant to say these stars were definitely formed outside of our galaxy, and are the result of a dwarf galaxy merger, though they believe there is enough evidence to speculate that’s the case.

It’s possible, but unlikely, the model is incorrect, Ostdiek told The Register: “For any given star within Nyx, it is possible that the network is wrong about it. However, there are hundreds of stars which seem to be moving together and are all selected by the network. The network itself only identifies individual stars, not whole streams. The stars that it finds interesting are there, and are moving together.”

Necib said that to confirm whether the Milky Way did collide with a mystery dwarf galaxy in its past, they would have to study other sources of data: “We further need high-resolution spectroscopy to evaluate the chemical abundances of the Nyx stars. We expect these abundances to be different for disk stars compared to dwarf galaxies.” ®

https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/08/ai_galaxy_gobble/

NASA trusted 'traditional' Boeing to program its Starliner without close supervision... It failed to dock due to bugs

All eyes were instead on SpaceX and its newer programming techniques

Wed 8 Jul 2020 

Katyanna Quach 

At a press conference on Tuesday, NASA confirmed why Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spaceship failed to hook up with the International Space Station last year. The answer: as expected, buggy code.

Crucially, NASA admitted it did not supervise Boeing closely enough during the craft's software development stage because the agency trusted the aerospace corp's seemingly "more traditional" engineering methods, and thought it had a good grasp on Boeing's processes. NASA thus focused its attention instead on assessing rival SpaceX's newer programming techniques.

Back in December, Boeing was tasked with sending a Starliner packed with cargo to Earth's orbiting science lab. This would have been a perfect opportunity for Boeing to demonstrate it was on track with the spacecraft, which it hopes will safely ferry humans into the heavens in the not-too-distant future. However, the flight was plagued with software glitches, and the Starliner ultimately failed to dock with the station.

Boeing round the twist ... the CST-100 Starliner after it returned to Earth, where it remains grounded. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Ground control was able to bring Boeing’s calamity cargo ship back to Earth, and NASA launched a thorough investigation to figure out what went wrong. As a result of that probe, NASA and Boeing boffins have come up with a list of 80 recommendations to fix Starliner's glaring problems, Kathy Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said in a conference call with reporters.

A full report detailing these changes will not be publicly released, however, as it contains Boeing's proprietary information that could allegedly provide its competitors an unfair advantage. That's amusing given Boeing is far behind rival SpaceX, and its tech doesn't even work properly. Boeing and SpaceX were both contracted to run deliveries to the space station, and while Elon Musk's upstart has put two astronauts in orbit, Boeing is stuck in the doldrums. A redacted report has not been published yet, either.

Lueders admitted NASA was not as closely involved with the Starliner's software development stage as it could have been, leading to the deployment of poor code. This was partly because the agency thought it already had a solid handle on Boeing's development processes.

“Perhaps we didn’t have as many people embedded in that process as we should have,” she said. Instead, NASA focused on areas it deemed “higher risk,” particularly those involving the safety of the crew.

“The strategy was because we’re buying a service, NASA did not have a requirement to have a systems engineering management plan," she said. "If we had understood what that structure was, we would have been better able to plug into the decision-making process. In particular, how they were integrating software and hardware pieces together. We thought we understood it, but over time we realized it had changed."

Two out of three parachutes... is just as planned for Boeing's Starliner this time around

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You might think the Starliner mishap dented Boeing’s standing, yet NASA isn’t giving up on the aerospace company. Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said the American agency expected to launch a new and improved Starliner in the “latter part of the year.”

He couldn’t speculate on the launch date, and said NASA and Boeing eggheads are still making the necessary changes to Boeing’s flight software. “Once we see how that shapes out, we’ll talk about when to go fly,” Stich said.

Boeing’s approach to writing and testing software in its Starliner was described as being “more traditional” than SpaceX’s programming techniques for its crewed Dragon pod. For that reason, NASA staff monitored SpaceX's coders more closely than Boeing's. “When one provider has a newer approach than the other, it's natural for human beings to focus more on that one,” Stich said.

SpaceX successfully sent astronauts off to the space station in its Dragon capsule atop its own Falcon 9 rocket in May. Stich said NASA’s working relationship with both companies was still very solid despite Boeing’s blunders.

“From my perspective, every early space company goes through these anomalies and you learn from it," he said. "These kinds of things disappear. Every time they work to become better... I can’t envision a future where SpaceX is the only provider. We need Boeing and SpaceX to be both be there for us." ®

https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/08/nasa_boeing_starliner/

The world's nonsense keeping you awake in middle of the night? Good news. Go outside and see this two-tail comet

At 65 million miles away, that's what we call social distancing

Sat 11 Jul 2020  Katyanna Quach
https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/11/neowise_comet_spotting/

A two-pronged comet with billowing tails of gas and dust will streak across the sky this month.

If you're in the northern hemisphere, and gazing up at the right moment – around 4am local time, July 10 to 15, looking northeast; and potentially an hour after sunset, July 14 to 23, looking northwest – you should catch a glimpse of the comet, C/2020 F3 NEOWISE. And local time really does mean the time wherever you are.

The glowing lump of ice and rock was discovered by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) probe on March 27 – hence the name. Astronauts onboard the International Space Station also clocked the comet.

Read the directions ... When to expect the comet when looking northeast. Click to enlarge. Source: Sky & Telescope. Used with permission

Solar radiation vaporizes the ice in the comet's nucleus. Gas and dust are freed as a result, and it all forms a cloud, or coma, around the comet’s body as well its two tails. One of the tails contains ionized gas, and the other, brighter, one is made up of dust. The comet made its closest approach to the Sun on July 3. Now, it’s making its way towards Earth and will eventually cross our planet’s orbit and return to the outer edges of our Solar System by August.

Go west ... When to expect the comet when looking northwest. Click to enlarge. Source: Sky & Telescope. Used with permission

The best chance of seeing the comet is a few hours before sunrise until about July 14. Find some place with a good open view of the sky and not too much light pollution. It’s best viewed with a telescope or binoculars, though the naked eye may do just fine. After July 14, you can look for it after sunset though bear in mind it may be too faint for the naked eye.

The trick to finding the comet is to locate Venus, the brightest planet in the eastern direction. After you’ve spotted Venus, find the star Capella... or use one of those free sky-mapping apps for smartphones.

“Look far to Capella’s lower left, by somewhat more than the width of your clenched fist at arm’s length,” Diana Hannikainen, observing editor of Sky & Telescope, America's venerable astronomy magazine, said this week. That’s roughly the spot where the comet will be.

It will appear in the sky as a fuzzy ball of light with a bright streak. “Across the same latitude, observers in both the US and the UK will see the same thing,” Hannikainen told El Reg.

“The difference in what viewers will see of Comet NEOWISE depends more on latitude than on longitude. For the UK, the comet is 'circumpolar,' which means it doesn't set.

“Nevertheless, the best viewing options in the UK are similar to [the US]: for the next few days, the best sights of the comet are those early in the morning, before the Sun rises, while after 14 July or so, the comet will be better placed in the evening, while still remaining visible throughout the night until dawn."

To find the comet in the second half of this month, look for the Big Dipper stars in the Ursa Major constellation, and search just below it, though, again, you may need some equipment to see it.

The comet will pass by Earth no closer than about 64 million miles (103 million kilometres), and is estimated to measure about three miles (five kilometres) across. ®

Genocide denial gains ground 25 years after Srebrenica massacre 

Even as remains continue to be identified, denialism is moving from far-right fringe into mainstream

by Shaun Walker in Srebrenica THE GUARDIAN Fri 10 Jul 2020 

A genocide survivor prays near the graves of his father and two brothers at the memorial centre near Srebrenica. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

At the genocide memorial centre outside Srebrenica, thousands of simple white gravestones stretch across the gently inclined hillside for as far as the eye can see.

Nearby, over a number of days in July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces systematically murdered around 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys. It was the worst crime of the Bosnian war, and remains the only massacre on European soil since the second world war to be ruled a genocide.

Even today, remains of victims are still being found and identified. Owing to a cover-up operation to hide the crimes by digging up and dispersing the contents of mass graves, there are cases in which partial remains of the same individual have been found at as many as five sites several miles apart. At a 25th anniversary commemoration on Saturday, at least eight more victims will finally be laid to rest at the cemetery.

A quarter of a century after the events, however, the truth about what happened at Srebrenica is being subjected to a growing chorus of denial, starting in Bosnia itself and echoing around the world, moving from the fringes of the far right into mainstream discourse. 

Coffins containing remains of newly identified victims before their burial. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

In Srebrenica, the denial starts with the mayor. The current population of around 7,000 is one-fifth of the pre-war total, and there are now more Serbs than Bosniaks, a reversal of the situation before the war and genocide. Four years ago, Srebrenica elected its first Serb mayor, Mladen Grujičić, and official rhetoric changed overnight.

Grujičić, 38, an energetic former chemistry teacher, has no time for talk of genocide. “No Serb would deny that Bosniaks were killed here in horrible crimes … but a genocide means the deliberate destruction of a people. There was no deliberate attempt to do that here,” he said in an interview at his office in the centre of Srebrenica.

He was 10 when the war started. His father was killed during the war in a village not far from Srebrenica. Grujičić pointed out that there were victims on all sides during the conflict, which tore apart multi-ethnic Bosnia after the collapse of Yugoslavia.

But what about the international courts that have forensically sifted the evidence and come to the conclusion that the systematic slaughter around Srebrenica in July 1995 did constitute genocide, unlike other crimes during the war? “Unfortunately, all these courts have been biased against the Serbs and this has only deepened divisions here,” he shrugged. He has not once during his time in office visited the genocide memorial, which is a five-minute drive from the town hall.

Mladen Grujičić, the Srebrenica mayor. Photograph: Elvis Barukcic/AFP/Getty Images

His views are in line with those of most Serb politicians in Republika Srpska, the Serb-dominated entity that makes up half of Bosnia’s complicated post-war political system. Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, has called the Srebrenica genocide “a fabricated myth”, and the Republika Srpska authorities have set up a commission to investigate the events. Its report, due later this year, is expected to whitewash the crimes of Bosnian Serb forces.

“This is the next phase, even worse than genocide denial: to try to create a new historical reality,” said Serge Brammertz, who spent nearly a decade as chief prosecutor at the UN international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The tribunal convicted the Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadžić and the military commander Ratko Mladić of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Mladić’s appeal is still under way.

The genocide has long been an inspiration for far-right extremists and Islamophobes. The Christchurch mosque attacker last year played a song glorifying Karadžić just prior to the assault, and years earlier Anders Breivik also sought inspiration in the Balkan wars and Serb ultra-nationalism.

Recently, however, questioning the genocide has been gaining more mainstream approval. Most infuriating for survivors was the award of last year’s Nobel prize for literature to the Austrian writer Peter Handke. He had delivered a eulogy at the funeral of the Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević and made a number of revisionist statements about the events of the Bosnian war that have led to accusations of genocide denial.
Remains found in a mass grave in the eastern village of Kamenica, believed to have been transferred from Srebrenica. Photograph: Danilo Krstanovic/ReutersIn a press conference before the prize-giving ceremony, when Handke was asked whether he accepted that the Srebrenica massacre had happened, he dodged the question, calling it “empty and ignorant” and comparing it to hate mail he said he had received containing soiled toilet paper.

Emir Suljagić, who runs the sombre genocide memorial centre at Potočari, just outside Srebrenica, said: “I am not a fan of cancel culture but if there’s one thing that should cancel you, surely it’s genocide denial, it’s speaking at Milošević’s funeral.”

The memorial centre is located in the former headquarters of the Dutch UN battalion that in July 1995 failed to protect the people gathered in Srebrenica, which had been declared a UN safe zone. Suljagić, who survived because he worked as a translator for the mission, spoke of the trauma for returnees who have to live in places where the crimes took place. He told a story from his years working as a journalist, covering war crimes trials in The Hague.

Suljagić was watching two former Bosnian Serb soldiers give evidence against their commander at one trial. The men testified under pseudonyms and with their voice and appearance altered, but as they recounted their role in a massacre, Suljagić pieced together their identities from information given to the court. He had been to school with both of them. He assumed they had been given immunity for their role in the massacre in exchange for testifying against their commander.

“Nine years later, I’m in the parking lot of the local supermarket and one of those guys comes out and recognises me and says: ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ They both live locally. And I’m thinking: ‘Do I tell him? Do I tell him I know?’ In the end, I said nothing, but I still see them occasionally.

” 

An aerial view of the memorial centre. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters
With survivors and perpetrators living side by side, and given the country’s divided politics, it is hard to imagine closure and reconciliation coming soon. Hasan Hasanović, who lost his twin brother and his father in the genocide, said it would be possible to talk about progress when school trips of Serb pupils come to tour the genocide memorial, where he works as a guide.

Schooling, like so much in Bosnia, is still divided along ethnic lines. Pupils are split into separate classes for “national subjects” such as history, and while the Bosniak textbooks cover the genocide, the Serb textbooks gloss it over. There is little hope of a unified curriculum in the country in the foreseeable future. “The main nationalist parties that continue to benefit from social division have no interest in changing a divisive status quo,” said Valery Perry, of the Democratization Policy Council in Sarajevo.

At Srebrenica’s elementary school, teachers avoid discussing the war at all, said the headmaster, Dragi Jovanović. “Even adults, when we sit together, we simply do not touch these topics ... We are trying not to hurt people’s feelings, and at this point you can’t educate the children without hurting their feelings,” he said.

How, then, would he respond to a pupil who asked why there was such a vast cemetery on the outskirts of town? “I have never been asked such a question,” he said.

25 Years After Srebrenica: No Peace or Reconciliation in West Balkans

Imagine it is 1970 — and still there is no peace or reconciliation between France and Germany. Fast forward to the present and consider the situation in the West Balkans.
By Denis MacShane, July 11, 2020 THE GLOBALIST


Credit: djstanek - www.flickr.com

Takeaways
Imagine it is 1970 and still there is no reconciliation between France and Germany. That’s where the West Balkans are 25 years after the Srebrenica massacre.

Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vucic, a longtime cheerleader of “Serbia über Alles,” earlier in his career was proud to play chess with Ratko Mladic -- the Srebrenica killer-in-chief.

Aleksandar Vucic -- who was Slobodan Milosevic’s Information Minister during the later genocidal attacks on Kosovan villages -- today is making nice with the Chinese.

In line with his love of China’s masters, Aleksandar Vucic has created an elected authoritarianism making Serbia a one-man-rule state.

It weakens Josep Borrell’s position that he cannot speak for a united Europe. Kosovo keeps looking to the US and is hoping for a Biden win.

Belgrade “no war, no peace” politics is keeping the West Balkans from integrating into the EU.

Imagine it is 1970 — and still there is no peace or reconciliation between France and Germany.

Now, fast forward to the present and realize that 25 years after the worst genocidal slaughter of Europeans since the World War Two, there is still no final peace or agreement on the most basic of relations between peoples and states in the West Balkans — the region of Europe between the Alps and the Aegean.
An indisputable war crime

25 years ago, on July 11, 1995 8,000 men and boys were taken out from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. They were put to death one by one. Serb soldiers had prepared the mass graves with excavators.

They had exactly the right number of plastic handcuffs to fasten arms behind backs. The Serb executioners had been issued with enough bullets for their murder, and given regular coffee breaks in case they got tired.
Truly dark parallels

The world was outraged by Nazi killings in Lidice in what is now the Czech Republic. Then 173 were killed by the SS as revenge for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich — the Nazi ruler of occupied Bohemia.

In Oradour-sur-Glane in the summer of 1944 the Das Reich Division slaughtered 642 villagers as a reprisal for French resistance attacks on German soldiers hurrying north to take part in the Battle for Normandy.

Those two moments of Nazi murderous brutality are insignificant compared to the genocidal attacks at Srebenica. Yet, for years the political leadership as well as the military commanders responsible for the killings were protected by Serbia where politicians put every obstacle in the path of UN investigators.

The dirt on the hands of Serbia’s president today

A cheerleader for this approach of “Serbia über Alles” was a young politician, Aleksandar Vucic. Now Serbia’s president, he was then proud to play chess with the likes of “General” Ratko Mladic, the Srebrenica killer-in-chief.

Vucic was in the Serbian Radical Party and called for the creation of a Greater Serbia and proclaimed that “For every Serb killed we will kill 100 Muslims.”

Today, Serge Bammertz, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, set up by the UN Security Council argues that “a number of alleged genocidists have fled to Serbia and found safe haven there, including political leaders and military commanders.”

Meanwhile, Aleksandar Vucic dominates Serbian politics as President of his country. True to form, the man who then acted as Slobodan Milosevic’s Information Minister during the later genocidal attacks on Kosovan villages and farmers by Serbs during the Kosovo war of liberation 1998-99 today is making nice with the Chinese.
Milosevic’s long reach via his presidential understudy

At the time, Vucic banned foreign TV crews from Belgrade and took control of Serb media to pump out anti-Kosovan propaganda and whip up hate against the Kosovans as they sought their own independence and identity.

Vucic has copied his master, Slobadan Milosevic, in pumping up Serb nationalism as the main political force field in the country. He easily won an election in July which was boycotted by opposition parties.

A China lover

In line with his love of China’s masters, Vucic has created an elected authoritarianism making Serbia a one-man-ruled state. The question now is what he does with his supreme power.

This week, Vucic was received by President Macron and also held talks with the Kosovo prime minister brokered by the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell.
A complete road block

In the 21 years since the end of the Kosovo war and expulsion of the Serb death squads and military from the small Balkan nation, the Serbs have refused to accept that Kosovo is no longer a province of Serbia ruled by Belgrade. It is this denial of reality that blocks any final peace settlement in this small corner of Europe.

Borrell’s predecessors in charge of EU foreign policy — first Britain’s Cathy Ashton then Italy’s Frederic a Mogherini — tried to bring Belgrade and Pristina together but everything foundered on Vucic’s Serb nationalism and refusal to accept the existence of Kosovo.
Also doing Putin’s bidding

Vucic has always had the backing of Putin who enjoys the sight of neither the United States nor the EU able to make a final peace in the West Balkans. Vucic is helped by the short-sighted policy of five EU member states who like Serbia refuse to recognize Kosovo.

Each of them has disputes with neighbors over territorial claims. Romania and Slovakia nonetheless recognize Hungary despite Hungarian irredentism.

Cyprus and Greece recognize Turkey despite opposing Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus. Spain has a problem with Catalonia but the comparison with Kosovo refusing to be ruled by Serbia is absurd.
Europe not united

It does however weaken Borrell’s position as he cannot speak for a united Europe. Kosovo keeps looking to the United States and is hoping for a Biden win. It pins its hopes on the fact that Joe Biden’s beloved late son Beau Biden (who died from cancer) had served in Kosovo and that Joe Biden as Vice President had visited Kosovo to offer U.S. support.

In the 1990s, the complaint laid at the EU’s door was that it failed to stop the Milosevic wars and stamp down on Serb aggression and nationalism which gave rise to Srebrenica.

In 2020, the EU still seems unable to face down Vucic’s Serb nationalism and get Belgrade to accept that its no war, no peace politics is keeping the Western Balkans as a whole from integrating into Europe.

More on this topic
A World of Twenty-Year Cycles?
Serbia and Kosovo — On the Road to Europe?
Letter from Serbia: The EU and the Western Balkans


About 

Denis MacShane is a Contributing Editor at The Globalist. He was the UK's Minister for Europe from 2002 to 2005 — and is the author of “Brexiternity. The Uncertain Fate of Britain” published by IB Tauris-Bloomsbury, London, October 2019. Follow him @DenisMacShane