The pursuit of herd immunity is a folly – so who's funding this bad science?

Links between an anti-lockdown declaration and a libertarian thinktank suggest a hidden agenda
 

‘lockdowns are one of numerous measures that scientists have called for, and are seen as a short-term last resort to regain control.’ Pedestrians cross the Millennium Bridge in a quiet London, as it enters a new phase of lockdown. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Sun 18 Oct 2020 

Earlier this month, in a wood-panelled room at a country estate in Massachusetts, three defiantly unmasked professors gathered around a large oak table to sign a declaration about the global response to the pandemic. One academic had flown across the Atlantic from Oxford; another had travelled from California. The signing ceremony had been carefully orchestrated for media attention, with a slick website and video produced to accompany the event, and an ostentatious champagne toast to follow.

You may not have heard of the “Great Barrington declaration” but you’ll likely have seen the headlines that followed it. Journalists have written excitedly about an emerging rift in the scientific community as the consensus around the most effective response to Covid supposedly disintegrates. The declaration, which called for an immediate resumption of “life as normal” for everyone but the “vulnerable”, fuelled these notions by casting doubt on the utility of lockdown restrictions. “We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity”, it stated.

Scientists were swift in their response. The declaration’s core assumption, that population immunity will be achieved by allowing life to go on as normal and shielding only the most vulnerable from the virus, is entirely speculative. The thrust of its argument is based on a false opposition between those who argue for lockdown and those who are against it, when in fact lockdowns are one of numerous measures that scientists have called for, and are seen as a short-term last resort to regain control.

And shutting away the most vulnerable as life continues as normal is not only inhumane, but impossible: by this measure, the carers, household members and frequent close contacts of vulnerable people would also need to isolate. Moreover, young people with pre-existing conditions they don’t yet know about can be equally susceptible, and “long Covid”, with its debilitating host of symptoms, affects people of different ages.

The truth is that a strategy of pursuing “herd immunity” is nothing more than a fringe view. There is no real scientific divide over this approach, because there is no science to justify its usage in the case of Covid-19. We know that when it comes to other coronaviruses, immunity is only temporary. The president of the UK’s Academy of Medical Sciences, in a detailed rebuttal, describes the declaration’s proposals as “unethical and simply not possible”.

It’s time to stop asking the question “is this sound science?” We know it is not. Instead, we should be more curious about the political interests surrounding the declaration. Within hours of its launch, it had seeded political and ideological impact disproportionate with its scientific significance. The hashtag #signupstartliving began trending on social media. Its three signatories were later received by Alex Azar, the US secretary of health and human services, and by Scott Atlas, recently appointed as Donald Trump’s health adviser, who tweeted on 8 October that “top scientists all over the world are lining up with the @realDonaldTrump #Covid_19 policy”. And on a call convened by the White House, two senior officials in Trump’s administration cited the declaration.

Was this ever really about science? When scientists disagree, we expect them to provide evidence for their position. Yet the declaration’s many contentious statements are unreferenced – and the manner of its launch seems designed to amplify publicity over substance. If anything, the tactics employed in this performance have serious implications for the public’s trust in scientists.

It is already clear that the declaration is being used to legitimise a libertarian agenda. Indeed, some authors have questioned if it was ever anything about health, or whether its motivations were always purely economic; as the professor of political economy Richard Murphy put it, the declaration was “the economics of neoliberalism running riot … revealing in the process its utter indifference to the interests of anyone but those who can ‘add value’ within that system”.

Alarming new data shows the UK was the 'sick man' of Europe even before Covid
Richard Horton

As we approach one of the most important elections in the history of western democracy (itself described as a referendum on lockdown), we should be asking who funded this piece of political theatre, and for what purpose. The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), where the declaration was signed, is a libertarian thinktank that is, in its own words, committed to “pure freedom” and wishes to see the “role of government … sharply confined”.

The institute has a history of funding controversial research – such as a study extolling the benefits of sweatshops supplying multinationals for those employed in them – while its statements on climate change largely downplay the threats of the environmental crisis. It is a partner in the Atlas network of thinktanks, which acts as an umbrella for free-market and libertarian institutions, whose funders have included tobacco firms, ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers. Our questions to the AIER about its relationship to the three signatories went unanswered, but it has posted a number of articles about the declaration and herd immunity on its website.

These are not the names one would associate with sound public health policies. But the trio of scientists who fronted the declaration were able to put the weight of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions behind their statements – Stanford, Harvard and Oxford – giving the declaration a sheen of respectability. The views of these scientists about lockdown and the pursuit of herd immunity are no doubt sincerely held (though, notably, not published in any peer-reviewed scientific articles), but they are falling into a trap set by the right.

Rightwing free-market foundations and institutions have long attempted to savage the public reputation of well-intentioned policies such as those aimed at curbing ecological threats and limiting smoking. Some of the tactics these organisations have used in the past are those we see at play in the Great Barrington declaration: discredit the scientific consensus, spread confusion about what the right response is and sow the seeds of doubt. It seems that lockdown restrictions aimed at bringing the virus under control are merely the latest target in this rightwing stealth campaign.

The science is clear: attaining herd immunity to coronavirus via uncontrolled infection is a fringe view, peddled by a minority with no evidence to back up their position. What’s less certain is the political and economic interests that lie behind this declaration. Let the debate begin on those.

Trish Greenhalgh is a professor of primary care health sciences at Oxford University. Martin McKee is professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Michelle Kelly-Irving is a social epidemiologist working for the French institute of health research – Inserm – based at the Université Toulouse III, France

UK

Government urged to sell cocaine and ecstasy in pharmacies

Campaigners say sale of drugs should be nationalised to undermine organised crime
 

A mock-up of how a packet of legal, prescription cocaine would look. Photograph: Halo Media/Transform Drug Policy Foundation


Henry McDonald
Tue 20 Oct 2020 


Cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines should be “nationalised” and sold legally in government-run pharmacies to undermine global drug-related crime, a UK drugs reform charity has recommended.

In a book – with a foreword written by the former prime minister of New Zealand Helen Clark – the drugs liberalisation campaign group Transform has sought to set out practical ways to sell the drugs in state-run special pharmacies as an alternative to what it calls the “unwinnable war against drugs

The book includes a mock-up of what a packet of legal, prescription cocaine would look like, including health warnings, which Transform said could be sold over the counter by specially trained chemists.

The book proposes that a specialist regulatory agency, overseen by the government, could license production of the drugs.

Only a single adult use dosage of the drugs would be available in unbranded pharma-style plain packaging with highly visible health warnings and risk information. The new regulatory agency would determine prices and there would be a ban on advertising the drugs.

The sale would be managed by a state monopoly to minimise profit incentives, which Transform said would only increase sales. Specialist new pharmacies would open under strict controls with vendors trained to offer health and risk-reduction advice to drug users.

The book’s authors stressed that sales should be limited to over-18s, with only one dose per purchase.

Transform’s chief executive, Dr James Nicholls, said the book’s practical suggestions offered a way out of a war on drugs that had failed for more than 50 years. “Our proposals would take drug supply away from organised crime groups, creating a system that reduces harm rather than increasing it. The status quo can’t continue,” he said.

The father of two sons who both died on the same night from adulterated ecstasy supported the move towards a nationalised, publicly controlled supply system for the three stimulant drugs.

Ray Lakeman, a campaigner with Anyone’s Child: Families for Safer Drug Control said: “It’s time to accept drug use happens and find ways to make it safer. I hope this book helps make those reforms a reality.”

In the foreword, Clark writes: “As consensus grows that the ‘war on drugs’ has failed, so does the need for a frank exploration of the alternatives … It is essential that we begin a serious discussion on how we regulate stimulants.”

Asked whether there were any moves to reconsider the law on drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines, a Home Office spokesperson said: “Absolutely not.”

The Home Office spokesperson added the government remained opposed to legalising cannabis “because it is detrimental to health and mental health”.

• This article was amended on 20 October 2020. An earlier version incorrectly stated that the Transform campaign was backed by the former president of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos. The credit for the main image caption was also updated.

UK

The Conservatives are shrinking the state – to make room for money and privilege

Boris Johnson’s talk of restoring sovereignty is a lie. He is handing democratic power to economic elites, not the people

A protest against privatised contracts for coronavirus test and trace, Bristol, August 2020. 

Photograph: Simon Chapman/LNP

Wed 14 Oct 2020 

George Monbiot

The question that divides left from right should no longer be “how big is the state?”, but “to whom should its powers be devolved?”. In his conference speech last week, Boris Johnson recited the standard Tory mantra: “The state must stand back and let the private sector get on with it.” But what he will never do is stand back and let the people get on with it.

The Conservative promise to shrink the state was always a con. But it has seldom been as big a lie as it is today. Johnson grabs powers back from parliament with both fists, invoking Henry VIII clauses to prevent MPs from voting on crucial legislation, stitching up trade deals without parliamentary scrutiny, shutting down remote participation, so that MPs who are shielding at home can neither speak nor vote, and shutting down parliament altogether, when it suits him.

He seeks to seize powers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: the internal market bill appears to enable Westminster to take back control of devolved policies. He imposes the will of central government on local authorities, refusing to listen to mayors and councils while dropping new coronavirus measures on their cities. He claws back powers from the people, curtailing our ability to shape planning decisions; shutting down legal challenges to government policy; using the Coronavirus Act and the covert human intelligence sources bill to grant the police inordinate power over our lives.

His promises to restore sovereignty are lies. While using the language of liberation, he denies power to both people and parliament. He promised to curtail the state, but under his government, the state is bursting back into our lives, breaking down our doors, expanding its powers while reducing ours.

Instead, he gives power away to a thing he calls “the market”, which is a euphemism for the power of private money. This power is concentrated in a small number of hands. When Johnson talks of standing back and letting the private sector get on with it, he means that democratic power is being surrendered to oligarchs.

Under the Conservatives, the state shrinks only in one direction: to make room for money and privilege. It grants lucrative private contracts to favoured companies without advertisement or competitive tendering. It gifts crucial arms of the NHS to failed consultants and service companies. It replaces competent, professional civil servants with incompetent corporate executives.

We need a state that is strong in some respects. We need a robust economic safety net, excellent public services and powerful public protections. But much of what the state imposes are decisions we could better make ourselves. No Conservative government has shown any interest in devolving genuine power to the people, by enabling, for example, a constitutional convention, participatory budgeting, community development, the democratisation of the planning system or any other meaningful role in decision-making during the five years between elections.

The Labour party’s interest in these questions is scarcely more advanced. The 2019 manifesto talked of “urgent steps to refresh our democracy”. It called for a constitutional convention and the decentralisation of power. But these policies were scarcely more than notional: they lacked sustained support from senior figures and were scarcely heard by voters. During his bid to become Labour leader, Keir Starmer announced that “we need to end the monopoly of power in Westminster”. He called for “a new constitutional settlement: a large-scale devolution of power and resources”. Since then we’ve heard nothing.

When challenged on its policy vacuum, Labour argues that “the next general election is likely to be four years away … There’s plenty of time to do that work.” But you can’t wait until the manifesto is published to announce a meaningful restoration of power to the people, and expect it to be understood and embraced. The argument needs to be built – and Labour local authorities, by developing powerful examples of participatory politics, need to show how Starmer’s promised new settlement could work. Instead there’s a sense that the parliamentary Labour party still sees its best means of enacting change as seizing a highly centralised system, and using this system’s inordinate powers to its own advantage.

For many years, Labour relied on trade unions for its grassroots dynamism and legitimacy. But while the unions should remain an important force, they can no longer be the primary forum for participatory politics. Even at the height of industrialisation, when vast numbers laboured together in factories and mines, movements based in the workplace could only represent part of the population. Today, when solid jobs have been replaced by dispersed and temporary employment, and many people work from home, the focus of our lives has shifted back to our neighbourhoods. It is here that we should build the new centres of resistance and revival.

Starmer has so far shown little interest in reigniting the movements that almost propelled Labour to power in 2017. But even if Labour wins an election, without a strong grassroots mobilisation it will struggle to change our sclerotised political system. Any radical political project requires a political community, and this needs to be built across years, not months.

The popular desire to take back control is genuine. But it has been cynically co-opted by the government, which has instead passed power from elected bodies to economic elites. The principal task of those who challenge oligarchic politics in any nation is to offer genuine control to the people, relinquishing centralised power and rewilding politics. Yes, the state should stand back. It should stand back for the people, not for the money.

• George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Covid-19 has exposed the catastrophic impact of privatising vital services

Global markets have failed to provide people with basic needs like housing and water, say present and former UN special rapporteurs

Leilani Farha, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, Koumbou Boly Barry, Léo Heller, Olivier De Schutter, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona

Public services policy
 

‘By continuing to opt for contracting out public goods and services, 

governments are paying lip service to their human rights obligations.’

 Photograph: Boniface Muthoni/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

Mon 19 Oct 2020 

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the catastrophic fallout of decades of global privatisation and market competition.

When the pandemic hit, we saw hospitals being overwhelmed, caregivers forced to work with virtually no protective equipment, nursing homes turned into morgues, long queues to access tests, and schools struggling to connect with children confined to their homes.

People were being urged to stay at home when many had no decent roof over their heads, no access to water and sanitation, and no social protection.

For many years, vital public goods and services have been steadily outsourced to private companies. This has often resulted in inefficiency, corruption, dwindling quality, increasing costs and subsequent household debt, further marginalising poorer people and undermining the social value of basic needs like housing and water. We need a radical change in direction.

The Conservatives are shrinking the state – to make room for money and privilege
George Monbiot

There was a glimmer of hope when people seemed to recognise the crucial centrality of public services to the functioning of society. As French president Emmanuel Macron put it on 12 March, the pandemic had revealed that there are goods and services that must be placed outside the laws of the market.

Take water, a commodity all the more vital as washing your hands is one of the best ways to protect yourself from the virus. About 4 billion people worldwide experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year. In the Chilean Petorca province, for example, one avocado tree uses more water than the daily quota allocated to each resident. Despite increasing daily water allocation to residents, the ministry of health revoked this decision just eight days later – an indication of how authorities continue to put the interests of private companies above the rights of their people.

And what about the long-awaited vaccine? Recognising that we cannot rely on market forces, more than 140 world leaders and experts have called on governments and international institutions to guarantee that Covid-19 tests, treatments and vaccines are made available to all, without charge. But the reality is that pharmaceutical companies around the world are competing to sell the first vaccine.
By contracting out public goods and services, governments are paying lip service to human rights

The global mantra to practise physical distancing to avoid spreading the coronavirus is meaningless for the 1.6 billion people living in grossly inadequate housing, let alone the 2% of the world’s population who are homeless. Yet most governments seem unwilling to step back into the housing arena to regulate the financial organisations that have helped create these conditions. The financialisation of housing by these actors has for years resulted in higher rents, evicting low-income tenants, failing to properly maintain housing in good repair and hoarding empty units in order to increase their profits.

By continuing to opt for contracting out public goods and services, governments are paying lip service to their human rights obligations. Rights holders are transformed into the clients of private companies dedicated to profit maximisation and accountable not to the public but to shareholders.

This affects the core of our democracies, contributes to exploding inequalities and generates unsustainable social segregation.

We are six UN independent experts from many different backgrounds, current and former special rapporteurs on a range of economic, social and cultural rights. It is in this capacity that, together, we want to share this message: if human rights are to be taken seriously, the old construct of states taking a back seat to private companies must be abandoned.

New alternatives are necessary. It is time to say it loud and clear: the commodification of health, education, housing, water, sanitation and other rights-related resources and services prices out the poor and may result in violations of human rights.

States can no longer cede control as they have done. They are not absolved of their human rights obligations by delegating core goods and services to private companies and the market on terms that they know will effectively undermine the rights and livelihoods of many people. It is equally crucial that multilateral organisations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, stop imposing financialised models and the privatisation of public services on countries.

This is also a pivotal moment for the human rights community. We call on all those committed to human rights to address the consequences of privatisation head on. Human rights can help articulate the public goods and services we want – participatory, transparent, sustainable, accountable, non-discriminatory and serving the common good.

We are in a state of emergency. This is probably the first of a series of larger crises awaiting us, driven by the growing climate emergency. The Covid-19 crisis is expected to push another 176 million people into poverty. Each of them may see their human rights violated unless there is a drastic change of model and investment in quality public services.

Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky is the former UN independent expert on foreign debt and human rights; Koumbou Boly Barry is UN special rapporteur on the right to education; Olivier De Schutter is UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; and former UN special rapporteur on the right to food; Leilani Farha is the former UN special rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context; Léo Heller is UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation; Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona is the former UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights

Austerity is a zombie ideology. 

It's time to bury it once and for all

Even the IMF believes that fiscal restraint is not the right way to deal with pandemic debt – but the UK can’t seem to move on

NOR CAN KENNEY IN ALBERTA

Customers in a Manchester pub watch Rishi Sunak announce on 9 October 2020 that he will pay two thirds of the wages of hospitality staff.

 Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA Tue 20 Oct 2020

Tom Kibasi

“There’s no money left.” That is the ominous refrain repeated in hushed tones across Whitehall and public services. It is the same idea that scarred the UK economy for much of the past decade and inflicted misery on millions. Could austerity be set to return?

At an international level, the consensus has certainly turned against austerity. Both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank now advocate for fiscal activism rather than restraint.

Yet despite this radical shift in the economic consensus – and the continuing fight against the virus – the chancellor has already attempted to cut back the levels of employment support before reversing course again. The job support scheme incentivises employers to cut jobs rather than hours; the revived furlough scheme is more targeted by geography and sector. Economic policy has consistently been on the back foot during the crisis.

Though the largesse showered on an array of private contractors for the bungled NHS test and trace system in England would suggest otherwise, budgets are again being slashed within the health service. Planned capital expenditure – always the canary in the coalmine – has already been cut back, regardless of the talk of 40 new hospitals.

So what is going on? It would appear that austerity has become a zombie ideology – dead as an idea yet still stumbling around. Rishi Sunak made this plain in his recent Conservative party conference speech, where he echoed his predecessor George Osborne, an architect of austerity. The chancellor intoned his “sacred duty” to keep debt down for the sake of future generations.

That’s because austerity was always more than a policy: it was an ideology that became a mindset. It is a way of thinking that has infected the British state, nowhere more so than the once highly regarded Treasury. It’s perhaps unsurprising that after a decade of focusing on what can’t be done, the British state has responded so woefully to the crisis.

It is true that government borrowing – and as a result, national debt – has surged during the pandemic, the result of higher expenditure and lower tax receipts. Less than halfway through this financial year, government borrowing is already £174bn – more than full-year borrowing at the peak of the financial crisis in 2009-10. The national debt has already risen to above 100% of national income, the highest level since the 1960s.

Yet history teaches us that governments can sustain much higher levels of debt than at present. At the end of the second world war, the national debt in the UK was more than twice national income. Today, it is a little more than equal to it and still much lower than that of other industrialised economies such as Japan. And these times are certainly unprecedented in the postwar era.

It is important to keep the level of debt in perspective. Conservatives are fond of comparing the national economy to a household, claiming each must “live within its means”. It’s obvious that a single household isn’t the same as an entire industrialised economy, but even taking it on its own terms, the UK’s national debt is the equivalent of a typical household having a mortgage of around £31,000 (which is median household income). There is scant evidence that this is an unsustainable level, especially given its maturity structure that much of the UK’s debt isn’t due to be repaid until far into the future.

Now more than ever, it is vital that government spending is used to prevent normally viable firms from going bust, to avoid the scourge of mass unemployment and its lasting scars, and to support the public sector at a time when its importance has been thrown into sharp relief. The public and the capital markets all recognise that it is the right thing to do.

Cutting back on expenditure now will not only impose misery on millions but will also mean a longer and slower recovery. Britain has made that costly mistake once in the past decade: the recovery after the financial crisis was the slowest return to pre-recession output since the second world war. We know that austerity is an economic mistake as well as a social disaster. It is vital that government keeps spending.

• Tom Kibasi is a writer and researcher on politics and economics

UK
Why do we need Black History Month? Because too many people still reject it

Rightwing push-back on the idea that British history should encompass the black experience makes it all the more urgent

Diane Abbott

Mon 19 Oct 2020 

Black History Month has never been more relevant than in 2020. The Black Lives Matter movement has swept blackness to the heart of the political discourse. For me, it brings back memories of the upsurge of black activism in the 1980s, when I first entered politics.

In the 1980s, black people took to the streets of the UK, which partly reflected the US civil rights movement, but was also about the emergence of a new generation of black activists in this country. “Here to stay, here to fight,” was one of our favourite slogans on demonstrations. Importantly, riots erupted in cities all over the country, sparked by decades of injustices suffered by black communities at the hands of the police and other institutions. The riots started in Brixton, south London, in 1981. And there were other related uprisings in Handsworth, Birmingham; Southall, west London; Toxteth, Liverpool; Hyson Green in Nottingham; and Moss Side in Manchester. Black people taking to the streets in the 80s was probably the single most important factor in moving the fight for racial justice up the political agenda, and led to the election of myself and three other people as the first black members of parliament. It also made initiatives such as Black History Month possible.


The story of the Mangrove Nine

The move to the left in Labour, particularly in London, was also significant. The leadership of the party may have regarded with horror the “black sections” campaign, which I and other black members of the party set up to address racism and promote ethnic minority candidates within Labour, but Black History Month came from the left of the party. It was no coincidence that Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, an officer of the Greater London Council (GLC), organised the very first Black History Month in Britain.

In a later interview, Addai-Sebo said that although he had initiated the idea, it was a collective effort, and it could not have been achieved without the London strategic policy unit, which was an organisation established after the Thatcher government abolished the GLC in 1986.

Among the many people involved in creating Black History Month, he mentions some of the first black MPs, Bernie Grant and Paul Boateng (now a Labour peer), and local politicians of the day, including Linda Bellos, Herman Ouseley and Ken Livingstone.

These were all big figures in the municipal socialism of the era. And there were many other council officers who were actively involved. In fact, it has been leftwing local authorities that have provided much of the funding for Black History Month over the decades.

In recent years there has been a lull in interest in Black History Month. It is still a mainstay of school curriculums, but there has been a backlash from both the right and the left. Black activists routinely described it as tokenistic. The usual argument was that every month should be Black History month. Now Black Lives Matter has brought issues about black people and history to centre stage once more.

Amazingly, institutions at the heart of the British establishment, from the Bank of England to the National Trust and the City of London, along with Oxbridge colleges and our leading museums, are now having unprecedented discussions about black people and British history.

But there has been a serious push-back by some rightwing pundits and politicians against the idea that British history should also encompass the black experience.

‘Black Lives Matter has brought issues about black people and history to centre stage once more.’ A postbox honouring black Britons. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty

In Hackney, east London, we have the well-known Museum of the Home (until recently called the Geffrye museum), which was funded by the slave trader Robert Geffrye. His statue stands in pride of place. But in the wake of Black Lives Matter, the museum had a public consultation about whether the local community wanted a slave trader honoured in this way. Residents said that the statue should be taken down. However, on hearing this decision, the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, took the trouble to write to the museum, reminding it that it was funded by the government, which was strongly opposed the statue being moved. Sadly, the museum caved in to government pressure. And the statue of a man who made his money out of trading in black Africans still looms over multicultural Hackney.

It’s not just Tory ministers such as Dowden, or the men who organise counter-demonstrations to Black Lives Matter events, ostensibly to “protect” statues, for whom it seems black lives emphatically don’t matter when it comes to how Britain frames it history. There are still too many people who resist the idea that black people and our history should be accepted as part of the sweep of British history.

This is why Black History Month remains extremely relevant, and is worth keeping and fighting for. The fight for racial justice must always have an appreciation of our culture and history at its heart.

• Diane Abbott is the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

• To buy the Guardian’s black history wallcharts, visit the Guardian bookshop and use code 15CHART for a 50% discount

Angels and artillery: a cathedral to Russia's new national identity

Cathedral of the Armed Forces blends militarism, patriotism and Orthodox Christianity to controversial effect

The Cathedral of the Armed forces, in Patriot Park, Kubinka. Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS

Shaun Walker at Patriot Park
Tue 20 Oct 2020 

Angels hover above artillery, religious images are adorned with Kalashnikovs and the Virgin Mary strikes a pose reminiscent of a Soviet second world war poster. The imagery inside Russia’s vast Cathedral of the Armed Forces blends militarism, patriotism and Orthodox Christianity to breathtaking and highly controversial effect.

An hour’s drive from Moscow, the cathedral has a metallic, khaki-green exterior, topped with golden domes and crosses that rise to 95 metres (312ft). Inside is the largest amount of mosaic of any church in the world, with many of the work depicting battles from Russian history and the second world war in particular.

During Vladimir Putin’s two decades in charge of Russia, the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War, as the second world war is still called here, has gradually become the main building block of a new Russian national identity. Now, the war victory has its own religious shrine, and when future historians look back at the Putin era, they may well decide that this cathedral is its defining building.

A member of the armed forces attends a service in the cathedral. Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS

Soviet war medals are rendered in stained glass on the ceilings, while mosaics show various key battles. Symbolic numbers have been coded into the dimensions – the diameter of the main dome, for example, is 19.45 metres. Trophy weapons and tanks seized from the Wehrmacht were melted down and used in the creation of the cathedral’s metal floors.

“Think of this as you step into the cathedral. As you walk across the floors, you are symbolically delivering a blow to the fascist enemy,” a guide told a tour group of older women in headscarves as they entered the building earlier this month.

The cathedral was the brainchild of Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the opening was originally planned for the 75th anniversary of victory over the Nazis, in May. In the end, owing to the coronavirus pandemic, the ceremonial opening was delayed until June. Shoigu, Putin, and the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow attended the opening, on 22 June, the anniversary of the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941.

Performers dressed in Soviet era military uniforms dance in front of the cathedral. 

Photograph: Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA

“Only a nation that loves God could build such a grand cathedral,” said Bishop Stefan of Klin, who heads the Russian Orthodox church’s department for cooperation with the army and regularly holds services at the cathedral, where he is the patriarch’s designated representative.



The 59-year-old bishop, who was an officer in the Soviet and Russian missile defence forces before becoming a priest, defended the use of Soviet symbols, saying the cathedral depicted “all the epochs of our state, Holy Rus” and it would be wrong to leave out the second world war, given how many Soviet soldiers were religious.

But the imagery has proved controversial. “For many priests, who were young in the 1970s and 1980s and personally came up against the repressive Soviet machine, which targeted the church, they are in shock and they can’t get over it,” said Sergei Chapnin, a religious scholar in Moscow. “This is not really an Orthodox cathedral, it’s a cathedral of our new post-Soviet civil religion,” he added.

A Soviet hammer and sickle is visible in the stained glass of the cathedral.

 Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/TASS

Some minor changes have been made after the original outcry earlier this year, most notably the removal of a mosaic about the Kremlin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea that featured images of Putin and Shoigu.

“It was the wish of our president, who is so modest that he thought it wasn’t right for him to be represented on the mosaic, to remove it,” said Stefan. The mosaic detailing the Crimea events now has no Putin, but does depict the infamous “little green men” – Russian special forces, without insignia, who ran the annexation of the peninsula and whose presence in Crimea was initially denied by the Kremlin.



In a large mosaic devoted to the Soviet and Russian armies since the second world war, two angels look down at a group of soldiers carrying modern weapons, and there is a list of commemorated conflicts, ending with “forcing peace on Georgia” in 2008, “the return of Crimea” in 2014 and the “fight against international terrorism” in Syria. There is space for future conflicts to be added.

Russian Orthodox Christian light candles near a mosaic depicting more recent conflicts. 

Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA

The panel also lists the two Russian wars in Chechnya, as well as Soviet military interventions to crush the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and the Prague spring in 1968, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Asked if the church really wanted to suggest that all these interventions were sacred, Stefan said it was wrong to focus on particular conflicts.

“We are not talking about the geopolitical background at any particular time, we are talking about the fact that our armed forces have sacred help from above, from God and from the heavenly saints. That’s what the cathedral is about.”

A Russian military band march in front of the cathedral during a military music festival in September. Photograph: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

The cathedral is located at Patriot Park, a “military Disneyland” that was opened by Putin five years ago. Three years ago, Shoigu was among 5,000 spectators who watched a re-enactment of the 1945 storming of the Reichstag at the park, involving tanks, planes and a giant model of the Berlin parliamentary building.

With the opening of the cathedral, there are even more options for a family day out. About 20,000 visitors a day have visited on recent weekends, and even on a Tuesday afternoon this week there were hundreds of people inside the cathedral, and many taking excursions.

Dancers and musicians of the paratroopers band perform during the military music festival in September. Photograph: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Wrapped around the cathedral’s perimeter, in a mile-long horseshoe, is a bombastic, interactive museum called 1418 Steps to Victory – one step for each day of the Soviet war effort – that opened at the same time as the cathedral. Many of the rooms have computer-game-style recreations of episodes from the war playing out on huge screens, and some also have temperature and “smell” elements. Children can pose for photographs with a mannequin of a surrendering Nazi soldier, and there are jigsaw puzzles, souvenir mugs and toy missile launchers for sale in the gift shop.

An aerial view of the cathedral. Photograph: Mikhail Japaridze/TASS

But while there are plenty of war museums in Russia the cathedral is something altogether new, making explicit the quasi-religious subtext of the way the war is remembered in Russia.

Dmitry, a 28-year-old altar server working at the cathedral, claimed that the military and religious images on its mosaics, far from being a jarring combination, are in fact a perfect fit: “In the war, our soldiers martyred themselves so that we could be free and independent. Only Russians are capable of sacrificing themselves to save humanity, just like Jesus

I'm the one': Philippines president takes responsibility for drug killings

In televised address, Rodrigo Duterte says he would ‘gladly’ go to jail over drugs killings carried out during drug war

Thousands of people have been killed in the Philippines during Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign against drugs. Photograph: Dondi Tawatao/Reuters

Associated Press
Tue 20 Oct 2020 

Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has said he has no problem with being held responsible for the thousands of killings under his government’s war on drugs, adding that he was ready to face charges that could land him in jail, though not charges of crimes against humanity.

The president’s televised remarks on Monday night were among his clearest acknowledgement of the prospects that he could face a deluge of criminal charges for the bloody campaign he launched after taking office in mid-2016.

The killing of nearly 6,000 drug suspects have been reported by police but rights watchdogs suspect the death toll is far higher.


UN accused over failure to investigate 'war on drugs' killings in the Philippines

“If there’s killing there, I’m saying I’m the one ... you can hold me responsible for anything, any death that has occurred in the execution of the drug war,” Duterte said.

“If you get killed it’s because I’m enraged by drugs,” the president said. “If that’s what I’m saying, bring me to court to be imprisoned. Fine, I have no problem. If I serve my country by going to jail, gladly.”

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Photograph: Robinson Ninal Jr./AP

At least two complaints for crimes against humanity and mass murder in connection with Duterte’s campaign are being examined by an international criminal court (ICC) prosecutor, who will determine whether there is enough evidence to open a full investigation.

Duterte responded to the complaints by withdrawing the Philippines from the court two years ago in a move that human rights groups said was a major setback in the country’s battle against impunity. The ICC prosecutor has said the examination into the drug killings would continue despite the Philippine withdrawal.

Duterte framed his remarks by portraying the drug menace as a national security and public threat like the decades-long communist insurgency that the government is obligated to quell.

“If this is allowed to go on and on and if no decisive action is taken against them, it will endanger the security of the state,” said Duterte, a former government prosecutor.

“When you save your country from the perdition of the people like the NPAs and drugs, you are doing a sacred duty,” he said, referring to communist New People’s Army insurgents.

There are 1.6 million drug addicts in the Philippines, Duterte said, citing statistics from an anti-narcotics agency. The figure is much smaller than the 4 million addicts that he cited the police as reporting early in his presidency to justify his crackdown.

Police have reported at least 5,856 drug suspects have been killed in raids and more than 256,000 others arrested since the start of the crackdown. Human rights groups have accused authorities of considerably under reporting the deaths.


'If it’s drugs, you shoot and kill,' Duterte orders Philippine custom chief

Duterte said drug killings that did not happen during police operations should not be blamed on him, adding those deaths may have been set off by gang rivalries or settling of scores.

There have been widespread suspicions of extrajudicial killings in the crackdown, allegations that Duterte and the police deny.

In 2018, a court convicted three police officers of murdering a 17-year-old student after witnesses and a security video disproved their claim that the suspect was shot after violently resisting, a common reason cited by police officers after drug suspects are killed.

 

Rethinking the link between cannabinoids and learning

CHAMPALIMAUD CENTRE FOR THE UNKNOWN

Research News

 

IMAGE: FLUORESCENT IMAGE OF A MOUSE BRAIN WITH THE CEREBELLUM HIGHLIGHTED IN THE SHAPE OF A MARIJUANA LEAF. view more 

CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION BY RITA FÉLIX, PHD.

Cannabinoids have a strong influence on how our brains work and how we behave. Many people are only aware of the recreational aspect of cannabinoids. But in fact these molecules naturally exist in our brains where they participate in various intrinsic processes.

Altered cannabinoid signalling, for instance due to chronic use of marijuana, results in a range of impairments. Similarly, mice lacking cannabinoid receptors exhibit reduced activity levels, as well as deficits in learning and memory.

How do cannabinoids exact their effect on learning? A team led by Megan Carey, a principal investigator at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown in Portugal, and Catarina Albergaria, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab, decided to tap into this question by investigating the brain mechanisms involved in a classical learning task called eyeblink conditioning.

The immediate suspect

In eyeblink conditioning, subjects learn to associate the appearance of a sensory stimulus, for example a flash of light, with a subsequent delivery of an airpuff to the eye. Once learned, the subject - in this case a mouse - closes its eyes when the light appears to avoid the airpuff. "It's just like Pavlov's dog and the bell," says Albergaria.

Previous studies had established that this form of learning takes place in a brain structure called the cerebellum, and that it was impaired by altered cannabinoid signaling in both humans and mice. To study the role of cannabinoids in learning, the team used mutant mice lacking cannabinoid receptors, which show impaired eyeblink conditioning.

Why are these mice impaired? When they started, the researchers had an immediate suspect in mind. "Many studies support the idea that cannabinoids mediate neural plasticity, or experience-dependent changes in the connections between neurons," Carey explains. "We therefore first hypothesized that interfering with this process was what was driving the impairments in learning."

But like a good mystery novel, the immediate suspect turned out to be the wrong one. What was the real culprit? "In a study we published two years ago, we found that the more mice ran, the better they learned", Albergaria explains. The team began to suspect that the difference in learning might instead be due to the reduced activity levels of the mutant mice.

Spotlight on behavioural state

"We wondered whether the mutant mice weren't learning as well simply because they weren't active enough," Albergaria recalls. Today in the journal eLife, the team reports that the altered behavioral state of the mutants fully accounts for their impaired eyeblink conditioning. When the researchers placed the mice on a motorised treadmill that ensured that the mutants walked as much as normal mice, the results were striking: learning was completely restored.

The team also found that other cerebellar behaviors, locomotor coordination and learning, were normal in the cannabinoid mutants. Further, eyeblink conditioning was fully intact in mice that lacked cannabinoid receptors specifically within the cerebellum. "These experiments further supported our hypothesis that disrupted cannabinoid signaling was impairing learning by altering behavioral state, and not through direct effects on neural plasticity in the cerebellum," says Carey.

"There is a growing body of evidence that behavioural state profoundly influences brain function," says Carey. "Our study highlights the need to consider behavioral state as a powerful independent means through which individual genes contribute to complex behaviors."

"We were able to overcome a learning deficit associated with a genetic mutation with a purely behavioral intervention," adds Albergaria, suggesting a potential real-world consequence for these findings.

###

 

How is STEM children's programming prioritizing diversity?

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE:  "CHILDREN SOAK UP SUBTLETIES AND ARE LEARNING AND TAKING CUES FROM EVERYTHING; BY AGE 5, YOU CAN SEE THAT THEY UNDERSTAND IMPLICIT BIASES, " SAYS FASHINA ALADÉ, LEAD AUTHOR OF THE... view more 

CREDIT: ROYALTY-FREE FROM PXHERE

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Children's television programming not only shapes opinions and preferences, its characters can have positive or negative impacts on childhood aspiration, says a new study from Michigan State University.

The study is the first large-scale analysis of characters featured in science, technology, engineering and math-related educational programming. It was published in the fall 2020 edition of Journal of Children and Media. Results revealed that of the characters appearing in STEM television programming for kids ages 3 to 6, Latinx and females are left behind.

"Children soak up subtleties and are learning and taking cues from everything; by age 5, you can see that they understand implicit biases," said Fashina Aladé, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. "With the recent proliferation of STEM television over the past five years or so, I wanted to see who was showing kids how to solve problems, who is teaching STEM foundations and who is modeling what it looks like to engage in STEM."

To get a picture of the entire landscape of STEM programming available to children, Aladé and colleagues -- Alexis Lauricella of Erikson Institute, Yannik Kumar from University of Chicago and Ellen Wartella of Northwestern University -- looked to Nielsen, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu for a list of children's shows that mentioned keywords like science, math, technology or problem-solving in their descriptions.

The researchers looked at 30 shows with target audiences between 3- and 6-year-olds, all claiming to teach some aspect of STEM. Coders watched 90 episodes total -- three episodes from each show's most recent season -- and coded over 1,000 characters who appeared on the shows for physical attributes, gender, race and ethnicity.

"Surprisingly, when it came to the centrality of their role and on-screen STEM engagement, characters were portrayed relatively equally regardless of their race or gender," Aladé said. "But, female and minority characters were underrepresented in these programs compared to population statistics."

An interesting finding, Aladé said, was that racially ambiguous characters -- including non-human skin tones, like pink or purple -- comprised 13% of the characters, which she suggests illustrates producers' attempts to show racial diversity. "The jury's still out on whether those subtle cues are effective," Aladé said. Additionally, the study also found that only 14% of the shows showed occupations related to STEM.

"Animation presents such an opportunity for representation. Ideally, we'd see authentic representation -- not representative stereotypes," Aladé said. "I hope we move in a direction where kids see what scientists really look like in today's world, where doctors, engineers and computer scientists come from all ethnicities and genders."

###

(Note for media: Please include the following link to the study in all online media coverage: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17482798.2020.1810087?journalCode=rchm20)

Michigan State University has been working to advance the common good in uncommon ways for 160 years. One of the top research universities in the world, MSU focuses its vast resources on creating solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges, while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.

For MSU news on the Web, go to MSUToday. Follow MSU News on Twitter at twitter.com/MSUnews.