Attenborough: 'Curb excess capitalism' to save nature

8 October 2020
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COP26

The renowned broadcaster says the excesses of capitalism must be "curbed" to help nature.

Sir David Attenborough says the excesses of western countries should "be curbed" to restore the natural world and we'll all be happier for it.

The veteran broadcaster said that the standard of living in wealthy nations is going to have to take a pause.

Nature would flourish once again he believes when "those that have a great deal, perhaps, have a little less".



Sir David was speaking to Liz Bonnin for BBC Radio 5 Live's new podcast 'What Planet Are We On?'. Listen to the podcast on BBC Sounds

Speaking personally and frankly, Sir David explained, "We are going to have to live more economically than we do. And we can do that and, I believe we will do it more happily, not less happily. And that the excesses the capitalist system has brought us, have got to be curbed somehow."

"That doesn't mean to say that capitalism is dead and I'm not an economist and I don't know. But I believe the nations of the world, ordinary people worldwide, are beginning to realise that greed does not actually lead to joy."

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Sir David said when we help the natural world, it becomes a better place for everyone and in the past, when we lived closer to nature, the planet was a "working eco-system in which everybody had a share"

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GETTY IMAGES

The 10-part podcast is being released on the second anniversary of the publication of a key scientific report on global warming.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change study looked at how the world would cope if temperatures rose by 1.5C by the end of this century.

The podcast series explores issues and solutions around climate change, and features the BBC environment correspondent, Matt McGrath, and science correspondent, Vic Gill, along with interviews with well-known names like Idris Elba, Lily Cole and Jay Blades.

The IPCC special report, released in October 2018 didn't "save the planet" but it may yet prove to be the most critical moment in the story of climate change.

The study made two things very clear. The first was that there was a massive difference in keeping the rise in global temperatures this century to 1.5C as opposed to 2C.

Politicians had for years focussed on the higher number - the special report made clear that was a risky strategy, which could see the end of coral reefs and expose millions of people to the threat of floods.




The second key message from the IPCC was that the world could stay under 1.5C if carbon emissions were essentially slashed in half by 2030.

The urgency of the challenge laid out in the report inspired millions of young people to take action. This pressure is filtering up to politicians.

Sir David also spoke about his frustrations with the postponement of COP26, in Glasgow, the UN's major climate change conference.

He called the pandemic "a disaster for all of us" saying it's depressing that every time we get to a moment to do something about climate change, it's delayed to another year.

The broadcasting legend also spoke about giving up the "busyness" of things like travelling and meetings.

"We've had time to sit down and suddenly you realise out there in the park or if I'm lucky enough, in the garden, there's a bird singing and I've not heard that for a bit … and that lifts the spirit to an extraordinary degree and you begin to realise, what is really important".

T. rex dinosaur 'Stan' sold for world record price
By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent
7 October 2020

Image copyrightCHRISTIE'S

A near-complete specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex, nicknamed "Stan", has been sold for a world record price of $31.8m (£24.6m).

The 67-million-year-old fossil went to an anonymous bidder in the sale organised by Christie's in New York.

The guide price had been $6-8m, but this was rapidly surpassed as the online auction progressed.

Stan's hammer price smashes the $8.4m record paid for the T. rex known as "Sue" in 1997.

That particular specimen went on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. Where Stan is headed is uncertain, however. The fear, as always, is that it could disappear into a private collection never to be seen again.

While Christie's declined to divulge the name of the new owner, the company's James Hyslop said some further details about the dino's future could emerge in the next few days.

The actual winning bid was $27.5m, but commission and other additional costs took the final price to $31.8m.

Image captionCasts of Stan's bones have been sent all around the world

Stan carries the name of its discoverer, the amateur palaeontologist Stan Sacrison.

He first saw the dinosaur's remains in 1987, weathering out of sediments in the famous fossil-yielding Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota.

The bones were positioned about 16m below the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary - the geological horizon that records the impact of an asteroid on Earth, and the demise of three-quarters of all animal and plant species, some 66 million years ago.

Stan is regarded as one of the finest T. rex specimens in existence.

It comprises 199 bones - about 70% of a complete skeleton - which have been subjected to a battery of tests and investigations. Damage to the skeleton suggests the dinosaur was involved in a number of battles during its life.

"Stan rapidly became the 'Stan-dard' for T. rex, given there are so many casts of this extraordinary fossil that have been sold all over the world," commented British dinosaur expert Prof Phil Manning who has worked on the specimen.

"If you have looked at a T. rex in a museum, the chances are it was a cast of Stan. The skull is possibly the best preserved, given it was found as isolated elements, carefully prepped and beautifully reconstructed.

"I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed that this remarkable fossil stays in the public domain for all to enjoy," the University of Manchester scientist told BBC News.

Stan had been on display at South Dakota's Black Hills Institute of Geological Research since the late 1990s, but the Hill City company was ordered in 2018 by a court to release the specimen for auction.

With the sale comes certain intellectual property rights, but the new owner has been denied permission to make future casts or 3D prints, or to sell related merchandise online.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

Trump Calls Kamala Harris a ‘Monster’
By Benjamin Hart

Not most people’s definition of a monster. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

In an appearance that fell into the even-more-unhinged-than-usual category, President Trump appeared on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business show Thursday morning to rant about the supposedly low character of his opponents and the alleged conspiracies arrayed against him.

The president told a vigorously nodding Bartiromo that Biden was not “mentally capable” of lasting two months as president, and then, in an attack on Kamala Harris’s position on fracking, referred to her as “this monster who was onstage with Mike Pence,” calling her a “monster” again for good measure. (Harris did vow to ban fracking as a candidate in the Democratic primary but clarified during the debate that Biden would not do so.)

Trump refers to Kamala Harris as "this monster" pic.twitter.com/hcnUpV8PBf— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 8, 2020

Trump has long reserved some of his most dehumanizing insults for women, especially women of color.

Donald Trump‘s decision to call Kamala Harris a “monster” is a depressing statement about his understanding of his base of supporters and what they want to be told about the first Black woman to be a major party’s vice presidential nominee.— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) October 8, 2020

And Trump wasn’t done attacking Harris:

Trump's descriptions of Sen. Kamala Harris this morning: “This monster." "Totally unlikable." "She's a communist." (No.)— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 8, 2020

Drawing the attention fully back to himself the night after a mostly uneventful debate, Trump — who did not sound short of breath several days after being hospitalized — also announced his opposition to a virtual debate with Biden next week, criticized Attorney General Bill Barr for not yet indicting Joe Biden and Barack Obama for “the greatest political crime in the history of our country” (referring to the abstruse “Obamagate” faux scandal), ranted about Hillary Clinton’s emails, and said that he might have caught the coronavirus from a meeting with Gold Star families, among other highlights/lowlights.

Given the friendliness with which Trump’s wild notions are received by Bartiromo, one can imagine that her show will be a choice venue for him to complain about the unfairness of November’s election — even if he wins.

We Know Exactly How Amy Coney Barrett Feels About Abortion
Don’t let Republicans pretend otherwise.
By Sen. Elizabeth Warren

ABORTION RIGHTS OCT. 8, 2020
Photo: Pool - Getty Images


The decision whether or not to bear a child is “central to a woman’s life, to her dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that 30 years ago, at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing. She understood that reproductive freedom is foundational to equality, and critical to women’s health and economic security. Without access to high-quality reproductive health care — including contraception and safe, legal abortion — we cannot have true equality.


But President Trump, Senate Republicans, and their extremist allies don’t care. They’ve spent almost four years of the Trump administration — and the many years before — undermining health care and turning back the clock on reproductive rights. That’s why they nominated Amy Coney Barrett to sit on the Supreme Court. She’s the ticket for a desperate, right-wing party that wants to hold onto power a little longer in order to impose its extremist agenda on the entire country.

President Trump and his Republican enablers have tried to deny this obvious fact. The president recently said that he “didn’t know” how Barrett would rule on reproductive rights, and Republicans in the Senate have fallen in line. The Republican Party knows the large majority of Americans don’t support overturning Roe v. Wade. They benefit when we stay on the sidelines — and they want us to sit back and stay quiet while our fundamental freedoms are on the line.

But we see right through their radical play.

President Trump picked Barrett as his Supreme Court nominee to take us back in time. Roe v. Wade established the constitutional right to safe and legal abortion and has been the law of the land for over 47 years. But over, and over, and over again, President Trump has bragged about his plans to appoint judges who would “automatically” overturn Roe. The Affordable Care Act expanded access to reproductive health care — like no-co-pay birth control — for millions. But President Trump has promised to overturn the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, and sent his Department of Justice to ask the Supreme Court to do just that.

Barrett is Trump’s ideal candidate to accomplish his plans. In 2006, she signed a newspaper ad calling for the end of Roe and describing the decision as “barbaric.” She was a member of an anti-choice group while on the University of Notre Dame faculty. She’s also been critical of the Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court’s past decision to uphold the law in court. Her position on abortion and other reproductive rights are clear: She believes women cannot be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies.

If Barrett’s nomination makes you scared and angry, you’re right to be: 17 abortion-related cases are already one step away from the Supreme Court. Twenty-one states have laws that could be used to restrict abortion in the event Roe is overturned. And if Barrett’s confirmation is rammed through quickly, she’ll have the opportunity — on November 10 — to hear a case about overturning the Affordable Care Act, and a lifetime on the nation’s highest court to undermine the rights and values we hold dear.

Access to birth control has changed the economic futures of millions of women, and access to safe abortion care is an economic issue, too. For a young couple with modest wages and piles of student loan debt, the decision to start or expand a family is a powerful economic issue. For a woman working two jobs with two kids in day care, an unplanned pregnancy can upend budgets already stretched too far. For a student still in high school or working toward a college degree, it can derail the most careful plans for financial independence. Indeed, one of the most common reasons that women decide to have an abortion is because they can’t afford to raise a child.

And let’s be explicitly clear: If these attacks succeed, they will have disproportionately negative consequences for women of color, who are already facing some of the most insurmountable barriers to abortion care. Rich women will still have access to abortion and reproductive care, but it will be Black and Brown women, women with low incomes, women who can’t afford to take time off from work, and young women who were raped or molested by a family member who will be the most vulnerable.

But this isn’t a moment to back down. Already, it’s inspiring to see so many women and friends of women coming off the sidelines in this fight — and we must continue to speak up, call your senators, and make sure this conversation is grounded in our real experiences. Men must speak up, too, because reproductive freedom affects us all.

Voting is already underway across the country, and there are only 26 days before the election is completed. And the data shows most Americans want to wait until after the election for a new justice to be confirmed. Justice Ginsburg gave us our marching orders: Do not fill this Supreme Court seat until after the election when the next president is installed. We will fight hard together to honor her wish.

Pence’s Won’t Own Up to His Anti-Abortion Crusade
By Ed Kilgore 
VISION 2020 OCT. 8, 2020

The vice-president at one of his favorite venues, the annual March For Life. Photo: Erik S Lesser/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

In public appearances, politicians avoid discussion of their more unpopular positions all the time. When they are at or near the top of a party ticket, moreover, they tend to downplay positions that divide their own team or that are under internal discussion. That’s why Joe Biden and Kamala Harris didn’t directly answer questions about hypothetical “court-packing” schemes that Democrats might or might not pursue if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed as Trump’s third Supreme Court justice. And it’s why Donald Trump and Mike Pence evade blunt questions about the administration’s Cheshire cat of a health-care plan.

But lumping all the evasions together as functionally equivalent isn’t right. One particular Pence side step in Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate is astonishing if you know anything about the man’s long history as a crusader against legalized abortion. Asked by moderator Susan Page what he’d want his own state of Indiana to do if Roe v. Wade is reversed and states could outlaw abortion, Pence would not answer other than a vague reference to himself as “pro-life,” a term that means different things to different people. That Pence has any doubt whatsoever on exactly what he’d want Indiana to do in this suddenly very plausible hypothetical situation is preposterous, unless he’s been lying to us for his entire public career.


You don’t have to go very far to find out what Pence’s attitude toward the abortion laws of Indiana might be: As governor of the state from 2013 to 2016, he signed eight bills aimed at testing the willingness of federal courts to accept an erosion of reproductive rights while harassing abortion providers and the women who rely on them.

But during his six terms in the House, Pence established the crusading identity on this subject that led Marjorie Dannenfelser of the hard-line anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List to praise him as a “pro-life trailblazer” and the best of all possible choices as Trump’s 2016 running mate. He was best known for launching the relentless attacks on public funding for Planned Parenthood that soon became part of the anti-abortion movement’s playbook at every level of government. The “defund Planned Parenthood” campaign he began nearly led to a government shutdown in 2011 and again in 2015, and was a symbolic expression of the grip the ban-abortion cause had on the Republican Party.

And speaking of that grip, Pence’s GOP has for many, many years been united (with a dwindling and now nearly disappearing minority of dissenters) in insisting that Roe v. Wade be replaced not by some sort of live-and-let-live states’ rights position on abortion policy but with a constitutional amendment banning abortion nationwide permanently. (This Human Life Amendment has been in every Republican platform since 1980.) There have been occasional attempts (by presidential nominees in particular) to insist on exceptions for pregnancies that are the product of rape and incest, or that threaten the life of the woman being ordered to carry the pregnancy to term. But the basic principal of making abortion illegal has been sacrosanct, as Michael Kinsley explained in 2012:

Ever since [1984], with various rhetorical flourishes, the platform has contained the same four elements: 1) the unborn child has a “fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed”; 2) endorsement of a “human life” constitutional amendment; 3) a call for judges who “respect human life”; and 4) new laws to “make clear” that the fetus is a “person” under the 14th Amendment. Paul Ryan has co-sponsored such legislation, declaring that the fetus is a “person.”

An even more visible proponent of “personhood” legislation has been — you guessed it — Mike Pence. Brian Tashman explained the significance of this position when Pence joined Trump’s ticket in 2016:

Advocates of federal personhood bills believe that if Congress passes legislation defining “personhood” as beginning at conception, they can bypass and nullify Roe v. Wade, criminalizing abortion nationwide with no exceptions. While the personhood movement has traditionally sat on the far-right fringes of the anti-abortion movement, in recent years Republican politicians like Pence have brought the extremist cause into the GOP mainstream. Unlike more established abortion rights opponents that seek to cut off access to abortion and gradually outlaw the procedure, personhood activists want the government to immediately end abortion in all cases.

Dubious as it is as a legal theory for circumventing the Constitution, the “personhood” movement is also too radical for the taste of many abortion opponents, suggesting as it does that certain forms of contraception might be banned as interfering with the development of a fertilized ovum. Personhood ballot initiatives have lost badly in Colorado, North Dakota, and (most recently) Mississippi. That Pence is inclined to go that far is another indication, should you need one, that he has not an ounce of doubt about the righteousness of taking control of reproductive systems from sea to shining sea.

On top of his single-issue devotion to the anti-abortion cause, pursuing that cause to its logical end of outlawing all abortions is Job One for a Christian right religiopolitical movement that regards Pence as its indispensable champion in the court of our erratic president. Here’s how I described Pence’s importance to Trump’s “faithful believers” in a review of a recent book about Trump’s relationship with conservative evangelicals:

You can sense the authors’ nagging doubts, though, perhaps nourished by the new president’s nasty Twitter language and other forms of thuggish behavior toward critics. Near the very end of the book they bring in their star witness for Trump’s inner transformation: Vice-President Mike Pence, the Christian-right warhorse who constantly attests to the president’s reliance on both prayer and the prayer warriors (like Trump’s all-Evangelical Faith Advisory Committee) for whom Pence runs interference.

All in all, it’s as likely that Pence would stop short of a total abortion ban in a world where the Supreme Court didn’t stand in his way as it is that Bernie Sanders will become a hedge-fund manager or Donald Trump a soup-kitchen cook. It’s the one thing about him that is most certain. And it’s precisely why he and his allies are so excited about Barrett’s potential advent to the Supreme Court.

So Pence’s evasions say a lot about the dishonesty of the anti-abortion movement and its confidence that its cause is winning the hearts and minds of the American people. All the efforts to distract attention from their fundamental radicalism with hand-wringing over a tiny number of late-term abortions can’t disguise that basic fact.

Harris and Pence Represent Two Different Americas
By Eric Levitz@EricLevitz 
VISION 2020 OCT. 7, 2020

There’s no red America and blue America — only the disunited states of Pence America and Harris America. Photo-Illustration: Megan Paetzhold. Photos: Getty Images

Four years ago, Donald Trump chose Mike Pence as his running mate because the formerly pro-choice libertine needed an ambassador to the Evangelical right.

Two months ago, Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris as his would-be veep because the old white male moderate from Scranton wanted to energize the (comparatively) young, diverse, college-educated liberals who provide his party with an outsize share of its small-dollar donations and phone-banking volunteers.

Ticket-balancing is not a new practice. But the polarization of America’s parties, combined with the peculiar and antithetical balancing needs of Biden and Trump, have brought us the most ideologically and culturally disparate pair of major-party vice-presidential nominees in U.S. history.

Harris is the child of a pair of immigrant academics, one an Indian American biologist, the other a Jamaican American Marxist economist. Pence is the son of Roman Catholic gas-station owners. Harris’s childhood was divided between Berkeley and Montreal. She attended a French-speaking primary school and historically Black university. Pence grew up in an Indiana town of 20,000 people before leaving for Hanover College, less than 60 miles away.

Both became attorneys animated by a will to political power. But for a man of Pence’s social conservatism and geographical roots, the path to such power ran through a conversion to Evangelical Protestantism and the hosting of a local right-wing talk-radio show. For Harris, it meant balancing San Franciscans’ public-safety concerns with their bleeding-heart liberalism. As their careers progressed — and their nation’s politics steadily polarized — the two came to represent evermore disparate constituencies.

In CNN’s most recent national poll, Harris is 29 points more popular with college graduates than noncollege graduates, 65 points more popular with liberals than with moderates, 32 points more popular with women than men, and 27 points more popular with “people of color” than whites. Pence, meanwhile, is 24 points more popular with noncollege grads than college grads, 87 points more popular with conservatives than with moderates, 31 points more popular with men than with women, and 29 points more popular with whites than “people of color.” These splits make Pence and Harris an even more polarizing pair of figures than Trump and Biden, who both boast a bit more appeal among secular white working-class northerners than the median member of their parties.

The running mates’ respective die-hard fan bases are even more diametrically opposed than their sources of polling support. Pence’s place on the GOP ticket signals to white patriarchal Christians that the Trump administration will fight to preserve their embattled traditions and ethnocentric conception of American identity. Harris’s place on the Democratic ticket, by contrast, signals to liberal professionals and social-justice nonprofits that Biden will fight to erode traditional race- and gender-based hierarchies and fortify an ascendent, ecumenical, multiracial conception of Americanness. Beyond the culture war, as a California senator and presidential candidate, Harris paid tribute to the economic ambitions of various progressive groups and advocacy campaigns, while Pence’s fealty to the Koch Network has made him every bit as loyal a servant of Mammon as he is of (white right-wing) Christ.

In Salt Lake City Wednesday night, Harris and Pence will likely seek to spotlight the ways their disparate constituencies are out of sync with the median swing-state voter. Pence may needle Harris for supporting the decriminalization of illegal border-crossing, Hyde Amendment repeal, or the passage of the Green New Deal (defined, in this context, as a ban on fracking, beef, and airplanes). Harris will surely note Pence’s opposition to Roe v. Wade and universal health care, toxically unpopular stances that are newly salient amid the looming vote over Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

The debate is certain to be more polite than last week’s meeting between Biden and Trump (whatever their differences, Pence and Harris are both disciplined professionals). But the division that these two figures represent (both politically and symbolically) in American life — between cosmopolitanism and provincialism, city and country, secularism and fundamentalism, feminist advance and patriarchal tradition, social justice and racial innocence — is starker than any their bosses collectively embody. Pence and Harris offer irreconcilable visions for America’s future. And that future will never be more than one actuarially plausible tragedy away.

Africa's quiet cryptocurrency revolution

Cryptocurrency transactions in Africa are growing rapidly. On a continent that already embraces mobile money, virtual currency offers advantages for a young, tech-savvy population.



Africa is undergoing an economic revolution that has nothing to do with banks and despite little sign of outdated economic policies being overhauled.

Monthly cryptocurrency transfers to and from Africa under $10,000 (€8,500) shot up by 55% over the past year, reaching a peak of $316 million in June.

These numbers, which are based on data from US Blockchain research firm Chainalysis, are likely to keep rising. And while cryptocurrency is more commonly used by financial traders in other parts of the world, Africa is bucking this trend and mainly using it for commerce.

Individuals and small businesses in Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya account for most of this activity.

What is a cryptocurrency?

Simply put, a cryptocurrency is virtual money that people can use just like real money to buy things or send to other people. The 'crypto' in crytocurrency comes from the complicated cryptography (encrypted codes) used to create it and record transactions.

Crytocurrencies aim to cut out the middlemen, such as credit card companies or banks, making it cheaper to transfer money from one virtual wallet to another. Cryptocurrencies also aren't controlled by any central authority, which theoretically protects them from any interference by governments.

Read more: A new legitimate era for Bitcoin

"For most people, when they hear cryptocurrency, they think it's just money on the internet," Elisha Owusu Akyaw, a Ghanaian-based cryptocurrency marketer and founder of BlockNewsAfrica, told DW.

Alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum is another crypocurrency platform growing in popularity in Africa

"Cryptocurrency basically takes what money is to many people and uses technology to make it more transparent and less centralized, so that everybody has a seat at the table when it comes to the future of finance," he said on the phone from the Ghanaian capital, Accra.

Read more: Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies — how do they work?

Bitcoin — the original and by far the most popular form of cryptocurrency — was created in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Since then, more than 6,000 other types of cryptocurrency have been created, including popular options like Ethereum and Litecoin.

Ghanaian technology entrepreneur and blockchain digital marketer Emmanuel Tokunbo Darko told DW that Africa was the"next frontier of development and global economic growth."

With an increasing number of Africans already embracing mobile money services such as M-Pesa, those in the industry say it's no surprise cryptocurrency is quickly gaining traction on the continent.

Fertile ground for virtual money

Cryptocurrency basically works like mobile money, technology entrepreneur Darko said. "So it's easier for Africans to understand as opposed to people in the West who already had more financial inclusion and easy access to banking systems."

Many Africans are already familiar with mobile money transfer companies like M-Pesa

Africa is well positioned to take advantage of the cryptocurrency boom. It has a growing generation of adaptable young professionals and would-be entrepreneurs. Plus, high unemployment in many African countries means young people are skirting traditional sectors and exploring new ways to make money.

Ghanaian cryptocurrency marketer Elisha Owusu Akyaw explained that young people were interested in the virtual money because of the lack of jobs for school and university leavers.

"With the cryptocurrency system, people are able to start their own business, people are able to work for big brands outside their own country through cryptocurrency and make a living for themselves," he said.

Read more: Digitalization in Africa: 'We aren't thinking any more in the conventional way'

Avoiding currency instability

Unreliable local currencies and hyperinflation have also played a part in the cryptocurrency boom. When the Zimbabwean dollar skyrocketed in 2015, some people turned to trading in Bitcoin instead.

More people in Zimbabwe began investing in cryptocurrency to avoid the pitfalls of hyperinflation

"Now you have this alternative to traditional government-managed currencies where there's historically been so many errors and negative side-effects," Chris Becker, the blockchain technologies lead at the South African-based international banking group Investec, told DW.

Read more: Why Bitcoin is valued in Zimbabwe

In the best case scenario, Becker predicts the emergence of cryptocurrencies may actually help some African economies in the long run.

"These competing currencies are operating alongside the domestic currencies, which I think will give these economies an increased level of resilience," he said on the phone from Johannesburg.

Cryptocurrency can be win for remittances

Africa's growing diaspora has also jumped on the cryptocurrency bandwagon to send remittances across borders more cheaply.

That's a logcal move, tech entrepreneur Emmanuel Darko says.

"For Africans in the diaspora sending money back home, the cost of bank transfers is astronomical," said Darko. "It's sometimes as high as 20%. ... But there are some cryptocurrencies that allow [people to] practically send money back to Africa for free."

One popular service is the remittance company BitPesa, based in Kenya's capital Nairobi. BitPesa uses Bitcoin as a medium for international money transfers. This avoids bank fees and also skips the cost of converting money into different currencies.

Many mobile money servies in Africa still have a human touch

A risky venture?

Africa's foray into cryptocurrency doesn't come without risks.

The very nature of cryptocurrency means prices are volatile to begin with. Virtual currencies remain unregulated in most African countries and their legal status is often unclear, meaning there is no safety net to compensate for loss of funds. Short term investors are more likely to get hit hard by sudden slumps.

Darko warns that anyone looking to trade in cryptocurrency should tread carefully and educate themselves before starting.

"Because of a lack of education, people are misled into some schemes that are not crypto," he explains. "So it's advisable to get educated. Crypto appears a bit complex for a lot of people, while in truth crypto is actually very simple if you take your time to understand it."

Cryptocurrency marketers like Akyaw warns that people with little experience in new technologies are most at risk of falling victim to an increasing number of crypto-scams, or investing in the wrong markets.

"Cryptocurrency and blockchain is easier to understand by people who are already educated and who are already exposed to technology," he said. "It's a little difficult to get older people to understand and get past the learning curve that comes with technology."

Young Africans are often tech-savvy and looking to make money, making them more likely to venture into the world of cryptocurrency

What does the future hold?

Some African countries are scrambling to create new laws to prepare for a possible future where cryptocurrency is the norm.

Africa's biggest economy Nigeria is leading the way, having recently made cryptocurrency legal and issuing regulatory guidelines for digital currencies and crypto-based companies or start-ups.

Read more: Afrofuturism: Between science fiction and reality in Africa

Other cryptocurrency hotspots like South Africa and Kenya aren't far behind. South Africa's top financial regulators, including the South African Reserve Bank, released a policy paper in April with recommendations for the regulation of cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, Kenya is set to experiment with a digital tax from January 2021, possibly opening the door to more crypto regulation.

While it's still too early to say how widely adopted cryptocurrency will become in Africa, cryptocurrency marketer Akyaw believes it's something young Africans should consider looking into.

"It's a no brainer in the sense that that's where finance is going," he said. "A lot of big brands initially dismissed the potential of cryptocurrency, saying it was just going to vanish. It's been over ten years and cryptocurrency is still growing, it's still getting stronger."

VIDEO https://www.dw.com/en/africas-quiet-cryptocurrency-revolution/a-55199637

Indonesia's first transgender public official breaks conservative mold

As a trans woman, Hendrika Kelan overcame social barriers in conservative Indonesia to win the support of her community. Active in the Catholic Church, Kelan says she has always tried to serve others.

As the head of the consultative body of a small village in Indonesia, Hendrika Mayora Kelan celebrated her 34th birthday last week by giving out vegetables to her community.

Kelan is the first openly trans woman to become a public official in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country.

"I am grateful for the support of the people to me as a trans woman. They entrusted the leadership of the village council to me," Kelan told DW.

She said at times during the election, she felt inferior because of her sexual orientation. But it seems her reputation as a hard worker mattered more to the village.

Read more: Indonesian society splinters under conservative draft laws

"As soon as I was elected, I was immediately confronted with the hardships brought on by the pandemic. So, I immediately created a food security program, planted crops and distributed them to the community," said Kelan.

The Habi Village Consultative Body has important functions, including drawing up village regulations, overseeing the use of village funds and monitoring the performance of village officials.

With the authority she has for the next six years, Kelan will also try to enact inclusive policies, including empowering marginalized groups such as transgender people.

Habi village in Sikka district is part of a Catholic-majority region in Indonesia's southernmost province, East Nusa Tenggara. There are around 320,000 people in Sikka, of which Muslims make up 9%.

Before transitioning to a woman, Kelan had been a religious brother in the Catholic Church. As a devout Catholic, she has contended with a struggle between her sexual identity and her faith.


Kelan says she wants to be an example that trans women in Indonesia can be part of government without stigmas and stereotypes attached

A long transition

Born in August 1986, she was given the male name Henderikus. She said she had felt like a girl since elementary school; wearing make-up and playing with girl's toys.

"I already felt different from boys. But due to family pressure, I continued to survive as a boy."

When she was a child, her family moved to the larger island of Papua and in high school, Kelan entered a Catholic seminary school and became a religious brother.

"I had the spirit to serve others," she said.

Read more: Indonesia's Aceh enlists an all-female flogging squad to enforce Shariah law

But during that time, she also struggled with accepting her identity and reconciling her faith with the feeling that being transgender was a sin prohibited by her religion.

Meanwhile, the feeling that she was a woman trapped in a male body grew stronger, and she began battling depression.

"I did not tell my bosses about my self-identity, but I think all people could see my femininity," she said.

After two years, she decided to leave the service of the church. Slowly she started coming out as transgender and began wearing women's clothes.

She moved to the city of Yogyakarta on Java. She volunteered to help victims of HIV-AIDS, but she soon ran out of money. She worked as a street performer and a sex worker, facing beatings and harassment from officials.

In 2018, following the death of her cousin, Kelan decided to leave the city and return to the village in Sikka where she was born.

Indonesia: Thousands protest against labor reforms

Protesters and striking workers have entered the third day of clashes with police against a new reform which they say undermines workers' rights. Thousands have taken to the streets and hundreds have been arrested.

VIDEO https://p.dw.com/p/3jbpt

Thousands of people took part in protests and strikes across Indonesia for a third straight day on Thursday in a call for the government to repeal its controversial "Omnibus" reform, which was enacted on Monday.

At least 600 people have been arrested in clashes with the police. Protesters said the new law undermines job security as well as environmental regulations. The government considers it a necessary step to encourage investment in the faltering economy.

Protesters, many of them students, gathered in major cities across the country on Thursday morning. Police responded to the street demonstrations with tear gas and water cannons. Two students were seriously injured in the confrontations.

Hundreds of protesters push against a wall of police

Police in the capital, Jakarta, prevented protesters from holding mass rallies in front of the parliament building by blocking the city's streets.
Workers and students united against the government

A video shared on Twitter showed protesters in the city of Semarang, on the island of Java, knocking down a gate while facing off against the police.

Workers also went out on strike against the new legislation. Said Iqbal, president of the Confederation of Indonesian Workers' Union (KSPI), which, along with 32 other trade unions, had called for the strike, said Thursday would be the third and final day of strikes.

The "Omnibus" reform made changes to 79 other laws in order to improve bureaucratic efficiency, but protesters claimed that the legislation hurts workers by changing how the labor system regulates severance pay, outsourcing and dealing with wages.

Maulana Syarif, a 45-year-old vehicle production worker, told Reuters news agency he had joined the protest for the sake of future generations. "We ask that the law be repealed immediately," he said.

"This is our struggle for our children and grandchildren and our future generations...If it's like this (with the new law) our well-being will decrease, and we will lack certainty in jobs," he added.

An economy in need of a cure

Indonesia's government under President Joko Widodo introduced the bill in order to increase foreign direct investment in the country as a means of boosting Southeast Asia's largest, but ailing, economy.

The legislation cuts back on red tape and erodes labor and environmental protections in an attempt to appeal to businesses and investors. The reforms have been cautiously welcomed by some financial analysts, but other groups criticized the lack of consultation and expedited passing of the law.

ab/sms (Reuters, AP)

What Indonesia's labor reforms mean for workers' rights, the environment

A controversial measure aimed at cutting red tape by amending dozens of laws covering taxation, labor and environment regulations has workers, trade unions and environmental activists form an unlikely alliance.

A molotov cocktail explodes against police shields

Thousands of Indonesians have taken to the streets this week to protest President Joko Widodo's so-called Omnibus Bill on Job Creation — a new piece of legislation that slashes regulations contained in more than 70 separate existing laws to open up the country to more foreign investment.

With seven of the nine political parties represented in parliament in favor of the 905-page stimulus measure, lawmakers smoothly passed the bill on Monday.

The legislature had initially planned to consider the bill at the end of the week but calls from some 32 labor unions for a three-day national strike starting Tuesday to oppose it prompted the government to speed up the vote.

Labor activists and environmentalists have come together in an unlikely alliance to protest the cut in regulations on businesses which they say would come at a high cost to workers and the environment.

"We are very disappointed and devastated with the House of Representatives and the government for openly displaying a lack of empathy and no ethical sense in the legislative process," Riden Hatam Aziz, secretary general of the Confederation of Indonesian Workers Union, told DW.

"Needless to say this is tremendously embarrassing in a country that is reputedly a democracy," said Aziz.

Human rights group Amnesty International called the legislation "catastrophic" for workers, saying it would damage job security and livelihoods.

Economic despair amid pandemic

The Indonesian government hopes the measure will accelerate reform in the country's economy, make it more business friendly and stimulate investment and job creation.

Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest economy, has been among the nations hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic and is facing recession.

With the economy expected to contract this year for the first time since the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, Widodo is set on pushing ahead with measures to ensure the country's economic recovery, despite rising COVID-19 infections.

Indonesia has registered at least 307,000 coronavirus cases with more than 11,000 related deaths. Health experts, however, warn many more cases and deaths have gone unreported.

Republican Senator Blurts Out That He Hates Democracy

We’re not a democracy.— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) October 8, 2020

By Jonathan Chait

Photo: Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

Last night, livetweeting his thoughts on the 2020 vice-presidential debate, Republican senator Mike Lee decided it was an opportune moment to share one of his edgier political beliefs: Democracy is bad

We’re not a democracy.— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) October 8, 2020

Lee is articulating a view that has long been in vogue on the American right but which Republican politicians were generally hesitant to express openly. The premise is that liberty is a higher value than democracy, and they define liberty to mean a right to property that precludes redistribution. That is to say, the far right does not merely view progressive taxation, regulation and the welfare state as impediments to growth, but as fundamentally oppressive. A political system that truly secured freedom would not allow the majority to gang up on the minority and redistribute their income for themselves.

Lee, indeed, unpacked his views in a follow-up:

Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) October 8, 2020

Four years ago, I wrote a long essay describing this view and its ascent within the Republican party over decades. Its thesis, that the GOP is slowly evolving into an authoritarian party, has been amply borne out by the Trump era.

From the perspective of the right, Trump’s assault on democracy has advanced the cause of freedom and liberty, on net. His regressive tax cuts and deregulation have returned property to their rightful owners. Republicans believe that the political system must retain, and ideally expand, its counter-majoritarian features: restrictive ballot-access rules that restrict the franchise to the most “worthy” citizens, gerrymandered maps that allow the white rural minority to exercise control, a Senate that disproportionately represents white and Republican voters, and a Supreme Court that believes the Republican economic program is written into the Constitution.

Lee drew some attention by attacking Trump in 2016 and urging him to quit the race after the Access Hollywood tape emerged. But Lee, like most conservatives, has grown to appreciate the values he and Trump share. The most important of these shared values is Trump’s hatred for democracy. And this is why the struggle for American democracy will continue after Trump is gone.