SURE LOOKS LIKE THE RIGHT’S ANTIFA BOOGEYMAN DOESN’T EXIST

Court documents show that almost none of the people arrested during protests against police brutality have any connection to left-wing radicals.


BY TARISAI NGANGURA VANITY FAIR OCTOBER 20, 2020

William Barr, U.S. attorney general, arrives for the announcement of U.S. President Donald Trump's nominee for associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020. Photo by Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images

An exhaustive investigation by the Associated Press has revealed that of the hundreds of people arrested during the ongoing protests against police brutality, almost none have had any links to the organizing tactic known as antifa, which the president has repeatedly insisted is a concerted left-wing group. In the thousands of pages reviewed by the AP, antifa is reportedly mentioned just once: in a Boston case that says a member of the FBI Gang Task Force was investigating “suspected ANTIFA activity associated with the protests.” The majority of those arrested—on charges ranging from arson to civil disorder—have been working alone, with no links to any radical far-left organization, as both Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr have repeatedly asserted.

As recently as during last week’s NBC town hall, Trump brought up alleged antifa violence when pressed on the proliferation of the right-wing conspiracy group QAnon. Though he claimed to “denounce white supremacy,” he quickly pivoted to asking why moderator Savannah Guthrie hadn’t mentioned “people on the left that are burning down our cities.” Since the beginning of the protests early this year, Trump has consistently targeted blue states as hubs of so-called anarchist activity, writing in a memo sent out last month that “anarchy has recently beset some of our states and cities.” He continued with a threat: “My administration will not allow federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones.”

According to the AP, several of those who have been arrested “are not from the Democratic-led cities that Trump has likened to ‘war zones’ but from the suburbs the Republican president has claimed to have ‘saved.’” In late August, when protests began in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, was shot in the back by police, Trump blamed the violence on “domestic terror” while lending support to Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with the deaths of two protestors. Rittenhouse was from Illinois and had driven to Kenosha following a mass Facebook call to action by the right-wing militia group known as the Kenosha Guard.


The AP reported that, along with little mention of antifa in court documents, “more than 40% of those facing federal charges are white” and a majority are under 30; they were arrested in cities ranging from “Portland, Oregon, to Minneapolis, Boston, and New York.” FBI director Christopher Wray has labeled far-right extremists “a domestic terror threat.” Testifying in front of the House Homeland Security Committee last month, Wray said, “Within the domestic terrorism bucket, racially motivated violent extremism is, I think, the biggest bucket within that larger group.” He continued, “within the racially motivated violent extremist bucket, people subscribing to some kind of white supremacist-type ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that.”

Even in the face of irrefutable evidence, Trump’s allies, and Barr in particular, have continued in their hunt for radical left-wing violence. In a June interview with Fox News, Barr said of antifa, “There appear to be sources of funding, and we are looking into the sources of funding.” And in an interview with Wolf Blitzer in September he doubled down on his allegations, saying, “I’ve talked to every police chief in every city where there has been major violence and they all have identified antifa as the ramrod for the violence.” A July investigation by The Intercept found that law enforcement disproportionately focused on antifa even when they knew that far-right extremists were a legitimate threat.

Most protesters arrested this year aren't urban 'Antifa,' they're young suburbanites with no ties to leftist groups, AP investigation finds

Haven Orecchio-Egresitz

Protesters stand in front of the 3rd precinct police building as it burns during a protest on May 28, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Today marks the third day of ongoing protests after the police killing of George Floyd. Scott Olson/Getty Images

President Donald Trump has tried to link violence and destruction at this year's protests to left-wing militants, using that premise as part of a pledge to keep suburbia safe.

An AP investigation has found that many of those arrested for bad behavior at protests are from the same suburban communities the president paints as safe havens.

More than 40% of those arrested around the country on federal charges are white and more than 30% are under the age of 30

Most people who have been arrested at protests this year have no affiliation with "Antifa" — an umbrella term used to describe so-called left-wing militant groups — but are rather young suburbanites, an investigation from the Associated Press found. 

Anti-racism protests and their counter-demonstrations around the US have resulted in sparks of violence, looting, and destruction of property that President Donald Trump has largely attributed to left-wing activists. He has used the unrest to fuel a race-baiting pledge to protect suburbia, which he calls largely white.

The Associated Press, which sifted through thousands of documents, found that most of the behavior at protests that actually resulted in arrests wasn't of city-dwelling criminals, but rather young people, some of whom traveled from the same communities Trump has painted as Rockwellian safe havens for middle-class America. 

It is true that there have been arrests of men and women with anti-government views, and that some of them had carried weapons or had a criminal record, the AP found.

Some of those facing federal charges for violent behavior were members of extreme left- or right-wing chat ideologies. 

One man from suburban who was arrested, 20-year-old Brian Bartels, is a "self-described left-wing anarchist." He pleaded guilty to charges that he painted an "A" on a police cruiser before smashing its windshield, the AP reported. 

A 63-year-old man from Virginia Beach, John Malcolm Bareswill, was angry that a local Black church held a prayer vigil for George Floyd and, in a phone call riddled with racist slurs, threatened to burn it to the ground, prosecutors said, according to the AP. 

But a majority of the defendants had no ties to known militant groups, despite the president's attempts to link destruction to "antifa," the AP found

"I know about antifa, and I know about the radical left, and I know how violent they are and how vicious they are, and I know how they are burning down cities run by Democrats," Trump said at an NBC News town hall.

The only apparent mention of antifa in court documents related to protests stemmed from one Boston investigation into a someone who fired a gun at officers. Authorities called is "suspected ANTIFA" activity, but didn't claim the suspect accused of firing was a member of the group.

Anti-police protesters rally outside the Portland Police Association building on Friday, Sept. 4, 2020, in Portland, Ore. Noah Berger/AP

The AP reported more than 40% of those facing federal criminal charges related to protest activity are white, at least one-third are Black, and about 6% are Hispanic.

More than two-thirds are under the age of 30 and most are men, according to the AP. More than a quarter have been charged with arson. 

In Portland, where 93 people have been arrested on federal criminal charges related to protests, 18 aren't even from Oregon, the AP reported. 

Jim Middaugh, a spokesman for Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, told Insider how officials are addressing protesters who venture into the city: "The way we're working to manage the situation is that we don't really care where you're from, we care about the behavior you're engaged in," Middaugh said.

"We don't care about your political ideology, we just want you to be peaceful and obey the law and if you do that, you're welcome to be in Portland. If you don't, we're going to do our best to hold you accountable."

The Real Recession Is Just Starting

Robert Barone Contributor
Great Speculations
Contributor Group
Markets



Total All Unemployment Claims UNIVERSAL VALUE ADVISORS

At month’s end, we are going to see the BLS announce a 30%+ bounce in real GDP (the Atlanta Fed’s forecast is now above 35%). Much of this is already priced into the equity market, so a positive or negative reaction will only occur if the reported number is significantly above or below the consensus view. In addition, this is old news, as Q3 will have been in the rear-view mirror for a month.

Markets worried about a change in Fed policy which tolerates higher inflation rates, and that, along with some rebound in depressed commodity prices and some food (supply related) and used car price increases caused interest rates to move up slightly in late September. Underlying inflation is non-existent, and rents, a major component of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) are falling. Furthermore, true to its word, the Fed expanded its balance sheet in mid-October to push the yield curve lower.

The best gauge of economic health is employment, and, on that front, the news is not good. New unemployment claims continue at well over +1.2 million/week; the pre-virus norm is +200K. When all claims are considered, the total is more than 25 million, a real unemployment rate in excess of 15%.

Stimulus’ Impact on Spending

On Friday (10/16), the news that retail sales rose 1.9% in September buoyed the equity markets early on after several losing sessions during the week as hopes for an immediate additional fiscal stimulus package faded. In a recent blog I explained how consumption rose in August, even as incomes fell, due to the large pool of savings resulting from the CARES Act. There was still a small amount of savings left in that pool over and above what was the pre-virus norm as measured by the St. Louis Fed. I suspect that last of those “excess” savings were spent in September, causing that unexpected rise in retail spending.

But, even with the unexpectedly good retail sales news (up 1.5% even ex-autos – used car sales are on fire as the public eschews public transit), the markets finished flattish on the day and down for the week. Despite all of the hoopla around the data releases, without the stimulus, the economy would have contracted (by at least -10% according to economist David Rosenberg). Even with the headline retail sales, the underlying economy is truly in Recession and will be there for a significant period of time. An economy not in Recession doesn’t need a Fed pumping up its balance sheet and the money supply. (The Fed added $75 billion to its balance sheet the week ended Wednesday, October 14th; no wonder rates retreated across the yield curve!) An economy not in Recession also doesn’t need another fiscal stimulus package that the Fed (Powell in particular) is begging for. While that appears to be stalled for political reasons, it likely will proceed after November 3rd.

The Interest Rate Scene

Interest rates rose over the past month triggered in part, by the Fed’s policy shift in the way inflation will impact monetary policy going forward, in part, by the FOMC minutes (Federal Open Market Committee, the rate making Fed committee), which openly worried that more fiscal stimulus was needed but would not be forthcoming in a timely manner (and subsequently Chairman Powell’s promise to Congress that the Fed would monetize any fiscal deficits (his “hand in hand” comment)), and, in part, due to the expectation that any new stimulus would arrive post-election no matter who won (but a larger stimulus if the Democrats win). Because a new stimulus would dramatically increase supply, rates began to drift up in late September/early October. True to its word, the Fed provided the loot to push rates back down over the last several market sessions.

And Inflation

There has also been some concern about the re-emergence of inflation, another factor causing the recent mild spike in interest rates. That concern was initially stoked by the change in how the Fed will target future inflation. We have seen some spikes in the prices of commodities and food. Many of the commodity spikes were simply a bounce back from large downdrafts last spring. The price spikes in food, especially meat, is largely due to supply issues as processing plants dealt with virus prevention issues. The headline PPI (Producer Price Index) for September was +0.4%. Ex-food and energy, however, it was a very meek +0.1%. So, no inflation to worry about at the manufacturing level. September’s CPI (Consumer Price Index) rose +0.2% versus August and +0.2% ex-food and energy. Year over year, CPI is up 1.37%; again not displaying any worrisome tendencies. Rent and rent equivalent calculations (related to mortgage costs) comprise more than a third of the CPI Index. Rents are now deflating, especially in densely packed urban centers, and falling mortgage rates have an impact on the mortgage calculations in the index. So, it appears that measured CPI inflation isn’t going to be a problem for quite some time, at least until after we get through the coming wave of evictions.

Unemployment, the Real Economic Indicator

To gauge the health of the economy, one needs to look no further than the state of the labor market. And, on that front, the news is not good. At the state level, Initial Claims (ICs) jumped more than +76K in the first full measurement week of October and this is without any reporting from California. (The California IC data for the week of September 26th has been used in the October 8th and October 15th data releases covering the weeks ending October 3rd and October 10th. California is due back on-line for the data release on October 22nd, covering the week ending October 17th. Likely there will be significant upward revisions. Unless California found and fettered out a significant number of fraudulent claims, the Disney and airline layoffs probably swelled their IC numbers – we will know soon!

The accompanying table and chart of state ICs shows the flat to slightly rising right-hand tail. “Normal,” i.e., pre-virus, is shown in the left-hand tail. Let’s also remember that +885K ICs are new layoffs, most of which occurred in the prior week. Yikes! In addition, ICs under the CARES Act PUA program (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance – for self-employed, independent contractors, and gig workers) added another +373K. While the PUA ICs fell -91K from the prior week’s +464K level, when the state ICs and PUA ICs are added together, the result is a mind-blowing +1.26 million ICs for the week of October 10th. That’s 6.5 months after the initial shock.

Initial Claims- State (NSA) UNIVERSAL VALUE ADVISORS

When the Continuing Claims (CCs) are added to the ICs as shown in the chart and table at the top of this blog, there remain more than 25 million unemployed. While the “official” U3 number is 7.9% for September, the “real” unemployment rate is in the 15%-20% range. The right-hand side of the chart shows that, while total unemployment is down from its 32 million peak in June, the improvement halted in September. The left-hand tail of the chart shows the much, much lower pre-virus norm.

Finally, much of the fall in CCs in the state programs appear to be an exhaustion of eligibility, not re-employment. The monthly BLS JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) report shows declining hiring and the various surveys from employment consultants show continuing significant levels of new layoffs.

Conclusions

Don’t be fooled by the retail sales data or the talk of the return of inflation;
Don’t hold your breath for or hold out cash in anticipation of rising interest rates;
The economy is in Recession; we just haven’t felt it because of the CARES Act stimulus, but, eventually we will because we have a huge, huge unemployment problem;
And then there is the oncoming eviction crisis (on hold until year’s end); there hasn’t been much discussion about this, and I wonder if it is priced into financial markets;
The CARES Act stimulus has covered up the Recession, and another stimulus, post-election, may further kick the can down the road, but free cash cannot go on forever without dire consequences;
·The Recession will persist as long as the virus persists (and we seem to be entering into a second, resurgent phase). A vaccine would help, but getting enough people to take it (providing herd immunity) and then returning to pre-virus behavior may take years, not quarters

Lisa Montgomery to be first female federal inmate executed in 67 years

Brandon Bernard also faces execution for separate killing
Attorney general Bill Barr cites ‘heinous murders’


Richard Luscombe THE GUARDIAN

 Mon 19 Oct 2020 
 

Lisa Montgomery, who strangled a Missouri woman in 2004 and stole her unborn baby, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the US penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, on 8 December. Photograph: AP

The US is set to execute a female federal inmate for the first time in 67 years, Donald Trump’s justice department has said.

Lisa Montgomery, who strangled a Missouri woman in 2004 and stole her unborn baby, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the US penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, on 8 December.

Montgomery, whose lawyers have long argued she has brain damage from beatings as a child and suffers from psychosis and other mental conditions, will become the first woman executed by the US government since Bonny Brown Heady in December 1953. Heady was convicted of kidnapping and killing the six-year-old heir of an automobile tycoon. With her boyfriend, she was executed in a gas chamber

The attorney general, William Barr, announced the decision to proceed with the execution of Montgomery, 52, in a statement that also detailed a 10 December execution date for Brandon Bernard, 40, who with two accomplices was found guilty of the murder of two church ministers in Texas in 1999.

Barr said the crimes were “especially heinous murders”. Montgomery, who sliced open the belly of Bobby Jo Stinnett and took her daughter, is the only woman among 55 federal inmates awaiting execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Under Barr, seven executions of federal prisoners have taken place since July. Before that, only three inmates had been executed since the restoration of the federal death penalty in 1998, the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and another in 2001, the other two years later.

In state prisons, 16 women have been executed since a 1976 supreme court decision lifted a moratorium on the death penalty across the US. The most recent was in September 2015, when Kelly Renee Gissendaner received a lethal injection in Georgia for the 1997 murder of her husband.


Kelly Gissendaner: Georgia executes first woman for 70 years despite last-minute appeals
Read more   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/30/georgia-executes-kelly-gissendaner-vatican-clemency 


Montgomery’s attorney, Kelley Henry, attacked Barr’s decision as an “injustice”.

“In the grip of her mental illness, Lisa committed a terrible crime,” Henry, an assistant public defender in Nashville, Tennessee, said in a statement. “Yet she immediately expressed profound remorse and was willing to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence with no possibility of release.

“Lisa Montgomery has long accepted full responsibility for her crime, and she will never leave prison. But her severe mental illness and the devastating impacts of her childhood trauma make executing her a profound injustice.”

Now 16, Stinnett’s daughter, Victoria Jo, was raised by her father. In 2004, Montgomery’s husband said he was unaware the baby his wife brought home was not theirs.

“I had no idea,” Kevin Montgomery said. “I sure hope [the Stinnett family] get as much support from their church and community as I have because we are all going to need it.”

As the Arctic's attractions mount, Greenland is a security black hole

By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - On a windy August afternoon in 2017, Akitsinnguaq Ina Olsen was relaxing in the old harbour of Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, when a Chinese icebreaker sailed unannounced into the Arctic island’s territorial waters.

Danish patrol vessel P571 Ejnar Mikkelsen is seen in Sisimiut harbor, Greenland, in 2015. Picture taken in 2015. Kim Moller Petersen/Danish Armed Forces/Handout via

“I saw it by chance,” Olsen, 50, told Reuters. “My first thought was: ‘They’re already here!’ They’re pretty cheeky, those Chinese.”

She pulled out her phone and took a picture of the 167-meter long Chinese icebreaker Xue Long (Snow Dragon), before it turned around and disappeared.

The Chinese ship was one of a growing number of unexpected arrivals in Arctic waters as shrinking sea ice has fast-tracked a race among global powers for control over resources and waterways. Both China and Russia have been making increasingly assertive moves in the region, and after the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last year said now is “America’s moment to stand up as an Arctic nation and for the Arctic’s future,” military activity is stepping up.

Greenland is a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark and Copenhagen runs the island’s defence through its Joint Arctic Command. On several occasions since 2006, foreign vessels have turned up unexpectedly or without the necessary protocols, in waters that NATO-member Denmark aims to defend, Greenland residents and military sources in Denmark and the United States told Reuters.

Copenhagen and its Arctic neighbours have tried in recent decades to keep the region what they call a “low tension” area. But each event underscores new challenges for Denmark and its allies.

The main problem: It’s hard to see what’s going on there.

Greenland, which U.S. President Donald Trump offered unsuccessfully to buy from Copenhagen last year, is largely an ice sheet with a rocky coastline of 44,000 km (27,000 miles) - longer than the earth’s equator. It’s hidden by almost complete darkness in the winter months.

Beneath its rocks and ice are abundant resources of minerals and rare earth metals used in equipment from smartphones to electric vehicles and military jets, as well as uranium and potentially vast resources of oil and natural gas.

Greenland offers more than resources. The island, which is nearer to New York than New York is to Los Angeles, is also a strategic window onto space.


Located at Thule, the United States’ northernmost air base houses the 21st Space Wing’s network of sensors, which provides early missile warning and space surveillance and control. Thule is one of the few places in the world with access to satellites that orbit the poles, completing coverage of the globe which is essential for weather forecasting, search-and-rescue and climate research.

“Historically the Arctic, like space, was characterised as a predominantly peaceful domain,” Secretary of the U.S. Air Force Barbara Barrett said in July when presenting America’s Arctic strategy in the transcript of a webinar hosted by the Atlantic Council think tank.

“This is changing.”

Several countries are building new icebreakers to increase freight traffic. China, which in 2018 declared itself a “near-Arctic” nation, has said it wants to build infrastructure and “participate in the governance of the Arctic.”

China has “really gone from zero to 60 in space, very quickly,” U.S. Space Force chief General John W. Raymond told the July presentation. He said China’s capabilities “threaten our access to space in the Arctic” both in Alaska and Thule.

The icebreaker that Olsen photographed in 2017, used by China’s Polar Research Institute for scientific expeditions, had been invited by a researcher in Greenland, the researcher said. But it had not, as would normally be expected, applied in advance for clearance, the head of the Joint Arctic Command Kim Jorgensen told Reuters.

Also in the area taking advantage of the short Arctic summer, a multinational search-and-rescue exercise spotted the Xue Long. Danish armed forces invited it to seek permission to enter, which was granted, Jorgensen said.

China’s foreign ministry did not comment on that incident but said in a statement it respects the sovereignty and jurisdiction of “the Arctic countries in the area” and is ready to make positive contributions to the peace, stability and sustainable development.

By this year, Western allies had increased their presence. U.S. destroyer Thomas Hudner, together with Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command, sailed for the first time into the deep fjord near Nuuk in August. In August and September, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter carried out joint exercises with Danish and French naval vessels on Greenland’s west coast. And last month, Denmark for the first time joined the United States, UK and Norway in a large-scale military exercise in the Barents Sea near Russia.

Danish Defence Minister Trine Bramsen told Reuters in a statement that Denmark wants to keep tension low in the Arctic, “but we must not be naive.” Russia is trying to limit the right to free navigation in international waters, she said; Denmark is taking steps towards strengthening the Armed Forces’ surveillance and presence there.

A spokesperson at the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen said Denmark needs to strengthen its defence in the Arctic with additional investment.

Moscow’s ambassador to Denmark, Vladimir Barbin, said talk of threats to freedom of navigation is a “made-up pretext” for naval exercises and Russia’s activities in the Arctic are peaceful. U.S. policy “accompanied by bellicose rhetoric, is creating a new reality and splitting Arctic states and could open (the) sluice gates for overspill of tension from the outside to the Arctic region,” he told Reuters in a statement.
BELOW THE RADAR

Some Arctic regions are relatively well covered by satellite and radar. But since the early 1990s, Greenland has slipped off the radar.

From 1959 to 1991 Greenland was part of the North American Aerospace Defence Command, an integrated chain of 63 radar and communication centres stretching 3,000 miles from Western Alaska across the Canadian Arctic. It had four radars operating on its ice sheet. Two were dismantled; the other two were abandoned and are now slowly sinking into the ice.

Today, to monitor its vast area, Greenland has one aircraft, four helicopters and four ships. In addition to enforcing sovereignty, they handle fishing inspection and search and rescue operations. Six sleds powered by 80 dogs patrol the remote northeastern part.

In August 2006, a local couple said they spotted a submarine while they were hunting reindeer at the remote Qassit fjord in southern Greenland, said Niels Erik Sorensen, who headed Denmark’s Arctic Command at the time. The couple told the police and made a drawing, which the military identified as a likely Russian model.

“This was the first sighting since the end of the Cold War,” said Sorensen.


The sub was mentioned in a 2016 report on Denmark’s Arctic defence, which said candidly that “there is no access to a coherent picture” of the situation in the area of responsibility for its Arctic Command. Neither the airspace nor activities below sea-level are monitored.

As there is no surveillance, it said, “it is not possible to assess whether violations of sovereignty are taking place in the air. Thus, no deliberate violations of the airspace ... have been found.”

In another part of the Arctic that year, a U.S. Coast Guard vessel accidentally discovered a joint Russian-Chinese naval exercise in Arctic waters near Kamchatka, said Paul Zukunft, who retired as Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard in 2018.

“This is a region where we did not have any satellite coverage,” he said. “But we did have a ship up there, and they literally stumbled upon this joint naval exercise between Russia and China that otherwise would not have been known.”

Russia’s ambassador said there are no joint Russian-Chinese military-naval exercises in the Arctic Ocean. The Chinese foreign ministry did not comment.

The Danish government promised in 2019 to upgrade military spending in Greenland with a payment of 1.5 billion Danish crowns (£183.5 million) for surveillance. Denmark’s Bramsen said that was a “first step” and Copenhagen has yet to decide how to spend the money.

For now, Denmark has no satellites to monitor traffic around Greenland. In 2018, it started receiving a few satellite images a day from the European Union’s Maritime Safety Agency, but they aren’t always detailed enough for military purposes.

“Denmark will never be able to defend itself in the Arctic,” said Steen Kjaergaard, head of the Centre for Arctic Security Studies at the Royal Danish Defence College, which does research for the defence ministry.

“The government is trying to strike a balance.”


“DARK TARGETS”

That balance is becoming increasingly delicate. For years, it’s been fairly easy for foreign researchers to access the waters around Greenland and those between Greenland, Iceland and the UK, researchers and military sources say: All that’s needed is to fill in a form seeking permission.

Last year, though, Danish authorities failed to approve an application from a Swiss-led group of international researchers, the government said in response to a Freedom of Information request from Reuters. The researchers were planning to travel on a Russian icebreaker, 50 Let Pobedy (50 Years of Victory) on the first-ever circumnavigation of Greenland.

Authorities let the application expire without responding.

Two sources with knowledge of the matter said they had become suspicious that the icebreaker, used for several earlier expeditions in Greenland, could serve non-scientific purposes such as tapping information from subsea fibre cables or mapping the seabed to ease access for Russian submarines.

In 2016, a Russian vessel, Yantar, which the U.S. Navy has alleged transports submersibles that can sever and tap into cables miles beneath the ocean’s surface, anchored outside Nuuk, where a subsea communications cable lands that connects Iceland and America.

Ambassador Barbin said Russia considered the icebreaker decision an “unfortunate misunderstanding,” noting that this year Denmark agreed to another Russian icebreaker visiting Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Even NATO allies arrive unannounced in these vast, dark waters.

Foreign ships usually report their arrival using the international Automatic Identification System ship-tracking system. When analysing satellite images, the Joint Arctic Command often identifies what it calls “dark targets” - objects that look like ships but can’t be identified on the system.

If the Danish military sends out vessels or helicopters to the target, they often find an iceberg. When the targets have turned out to be ships, these have most often been U.S. marine vessels that haven’t reported their arrival, military sources say.

The U.S. embassy didn’t comment. Denmark’s defence ministry said the allies are working to bolster information sharing.


Edited by Sara Ledwith

Arctic: Culture and Climate exhibition at the British Museum. 

Rare mammoth tusk sculpture on show for first time in Arctic display

Exhibition at British Museum features newly finished Sakha sculpture

Vanessa Thorpe Sun 18 Oct 2020 
 

Collection managers assemble Fedor Markov’s model of the summer solstice ceremony for the Arctic: Culture and Climate exhibition at the British Museum. 

Photograph: British Museum


Ancient mammoth tusk is a seriously niche material to work in, but there is one place where the skills and carving techniques involved are still passed down the generations.

A major new British Museum exhibition, Arctic: Culture and Climate, which starts this week in London, will feature an extraordinary piece of “very rare” sculpture, one that details an arcane ritual and has been completed in collaboration with the Sakha people of north-eastern Russia.

The exhibition, which opens on Thursday, has brought together the largest and most wide-ranging collection of objects from some of the northern-most regions of the world to be displayed in Britain. It focuses not just on details of ancient traditions but on the impact of political and climate change.

Alongside other archeological finds and historic artefacts, such as an antique sled from Greenland and a bronze Evenki spirit mask, the public will have the first chance to see a newly-complete mammoth tusk model, originally made almost 200 years ago and depicting an ancient annual summer festival known as “yhyakh”.

 Fedor Markov with a rare mammoth tusk in his studio. Photograph: British Museum

“The people of this Sakha community had a very strong revival after the Soviet era ended,” said British Museum curator Amber Lincoln. “Their belief system persists as a faith, although some are also Christian now. Nowadays the yhyakh serves as much as a ritual about national or ethnic identity as for its original purpose of celebrating the summer and praying for good weather.”

Museum experts now have a clearer picture of the ceremony because of the help of art students from the Sakha region who spotted that the model had missing components. It had been lent to Russia for an exhibition, and while on show two students worked to make new figures to finish the scene. On the model’s return, ahead of the new London show, curators commissioned a Sakha artist and master carver, Fedor Markov, to work on fresh replacements for the display.

“Carving the tusk is a high and specialist artform. As a material, it has a different quality to the walrus tusks the Inuit peoples use,” said Lincoln, who also had to request from the Sakha authorities a particularly high quality tusk for Markov to work on.

 A round, coiled basket with carved decoration on the lid in the form of a walrus head with tusks by Marvin Peter, Alaska, 1952. Photograph: British Museum

“We really benefited from what the students had noticed in Russia. Aside from the fact it is a very rare object, it is fantastic to have it in the gallery this month because it is almost like a teaching tool, showing visitors how the real ritual items in the gallery were originally used.”

The semi-nomadic community of Sakha, who call themselves “people of the sun”, and are also known as Yakuts, are a Turkic ethnic group who still celebrate two key religious festivals each year, both revolving around fermented mare’s milk, or koumiss.

“The ceremony’s name can be translated as “sprinkling”, because that’s what the shaman does with the mare’s milk,” explained Lincoln. “It is a way of calling for good weather that will lead to a good harvest. The 24-hour sun at that time of year in the arctic means that if the weather is good there can be an abundance of hay that would take them all the way through the winter. So it was a key moment in their year.” 

An ivory model sled with dogs, north-east Siberia, Russia. Photograph: British Museum

The model shows the central figures of the summer solstice ceremony, with a conical tent and the ceremonial jug and drinking vessels, all corralled inside a fenced area that has been delicately hewn from wood and from preserved mammoth tusk.

Still precious and uncommon, the tusks are actually found with increasing frequency due to the impact of global heating on the polar ice cap.

“The permafrost is melting more, and more and so these mammoth tasks are being found a bit more often. It’s an amazing example of how museums and indigenous communities can work together to create something that explains a new bit of history and gives us new knowledge to share,” said Lincoln.

New Zealand election 2020

Jacinda Ardern considers coalition despite New Zealand election landslide

Prime minister says she will be ready to form a government in two to three weeks as New Zealanders enjoy return to normal life

Eleanor Ainge Roy in Auckland THE GUARDIAN

Sun 18 Oct 2020

Jacinda Ardern has held out the possibility of forming a coalition government despite securing a historic election victory that will enable her Labour party to govern alone.

New Zealanders expressed relief on Sunday at her re-election, after a campaign that felt long and wearying for many. Ardern’s party won the highest percentage of the vote in more than five decades, claiming 64 seats in parliament, with her handling of the Covid-19 crisis regarded as decisive in her win.

Leaders around the world – from Boris Johnson to the Dalai Lama – congratulated her for her compassion and action on climate change.

As Ardern swung straight back into the job – meeting her senior MPs for a coffee – tens of thousands of New Zealanders made their way to Eden Park in Auckland to watch the second Bledisloe cup, further highlighting the country’s many freedoms and liberties at a time when cases in Europe and the US are soaring, and lockdowns slamming back into place. One new local case of Covid did however emerge in Auckland on Sunday, halting the nation’s three-week streak.

But on Sunday, the prime minister said she would take two to three weeks to officially form government, after talks with potential coalition partners. Ardern said she had informed the governor general she would be in a position to form a government soon.

“We’ll be cracking on very quickly with our agenda, we clearly have a mandate from New Zealand,” said Ardern. “I have been a consensus builder but I also need to work with the strong mandate Labour has been given.”

Ardern said new talent coming into the Labour caucus included GPs, a midwife and an infectious disease expert, which would inform her decision on who would take over the crucial health portfolio.

Her opponent, National party leader Judith Collins, said on Sunday morning that she would carry on as leader of the party, but it is yet to be seen if her caucus will back her after such a resounding loss.

Ardern will be making contact with many untested Labour candidates who have been voted in, including a former music teacher and church leader in Hamilton, a midwife in Christchurch, and a long-term foster parent and youth advocate in New Plymouth.

Green party co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson have confirmed they spoke to Ardern. The party won 10 seats in parliament – two more than the previous election – and is hoping to be invited to join her government – pushing it further to the left.

While Labour could rule alone, Shaw is confident the Greens will be included to make use of their ministers’ specific experience, to bolster the new government’s majority and to build their partnership for the future, and an even more progressive government down the line.

“We want to win again in 2023,” Shaw told the Guardian. “We are stronger at the end of our first term in government than we were at the beginning,” Shaw said. “We defied the odds. We made history.”

Green supporter Suzanne Kendrick said the new government was full of “young, vibrant and interesting people”. “It’s time to move on from middle-aged people trying to hold on to the past,” Kendrick said, a claim Ardern laid at Collins’ feet, too, during the leaders debates. “And it’s a victory for the whole world, for liberal democracy, for those who believe in that sort of government and in the environment too.”

Ardern’s victory was hailed around the world, with the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, tweeting that he looked forward to working with her on “climate change issues”.

London mayor Sadiq Khan said he and Ardern shared a vision for “for an inclusive, fairer and greener future”.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said he looked forward to working with Ardern “fighting climate change, empowering women and girls around the world, [and] ensuring equitable vaccine distribution”.

The Dalai Lama also sent warm words of praise and congratulations. “I admire the courage, wisdom and leadership [of Jacinda Ardern], as well as the calm, compassion and respect for others, she has shown in these challenging times.”

“Science and clear communication around Covid-19 have won the day against Trumpery and fake news - people have clearly seen how the government looked after us,” said Christine, a Labour supporter.

“I think people are really grateful with the way Jacinda has handled Covid; she is leading the world. We are able to live our lives normally with very few restrictions - it is just a blessing.”

But political experts in New Zealand say the Labour leader is facing one of the toughest leadership terms in modern history, and expectations are now so high it will be hard for her not to disappoint voters.

The party is also full of inexperienced new MPs, with only a handful of veterans available to manage the important portfolios.

In September, New Zealand officially entered a recession, as a result of multiple lockdowns and closed borders. The tourism industry, construction and horticulture have taken significant knocks, and poverty and benefit numbers are on the rise, with the waiting list for state housing at record highs.

Writing for the Guardian, Claire Robinson says the pressure to deliver is high, and after promising transformational change in her first term, Ardern must now achieve it.

Peter Wilson, an economist, said voters will need more from Ardern than Covid action. “Voters have thanked Ardern for keeping the country safe from Covid-19. They won’t do it again,” he said. “The next three years will be about economic recovery and the way the government deals with it, a very different challenge and arguably a more difficult one.”

Multiple observers have suggested that despite Ardern being a darling of the progressive left, her second term will not be defined by as much dramatic change as promised.

The new government will have much on their plate, but don’t expect large-scale and bold changes,” writes economist Shambueel Eaqab. “Jacinda Ardern as prime minister has been a pragmatic and centrist leader. Quick and bold to act in crises, but cautious with large-scale disruption.”

New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern condemns divisive elections in victory speech – video

 

 'I don't tend to have communications with Donald Trump,' says Jacinda Ardern – video

'We made history': New Zealand Greens on the rise after voters return to the fold

Supporters jubilant after defying poor early polls and gaining first electorate win since 1999


Phil Taylor in Auckland THE GUARDIAN
Sun 18 Oct 2020 

 

Green party co-leaders Marama Davidson and James Shaw show their joy at an election-night function in New Zealand. Photograph: Phil Walter/Getty Images

The mood at the election headquarters of New Zealand’s Green party was triumphal, almost as though the party had won the election outright. The election result was everything they hoped for and perhaps more than they expected.

Just a few weeks ago, polls had the party below the 5% threshold that would trigger proportional representation and deliver it to parliament if none of its candidates won an electorate seat.

Its best chance for the latter was its candidate in Auckland Central, Chlöe Swarbrick, but she was trailing in third in the polls.

On the night, voters returned to the party, delivering it 7.6% of the party vote and Swarbrick a narrow victory in a seat held by National, the main opposition party. It was the first electorate win for a Green candidate since 1999.

While well below the peak of its popularity – the Greens won 11% of the party vote in 2011 – the jubilation among party supporters had the edge of people who feared the gallows but ended up with a bouquet

Green party candidate Chloe Swarbrick was a surprise win in Auckland. Photograph: Phil Walter/Getty Images

“We are stronger at the end of our first term in government than we were at the beginning,” co-leader James Shaw told the crowd. “We defied the odds. We made history.”

It is set to add at least two MPs to the eight it gained at the previous election.

“It’s so great, it’s a vote for New Zealand’s youth,” said Green faithful Suzanne Kendrick. “Look at the room – young, vibrant and interesting people. It’s time to move on from middle-aged people trying to hold on to the past.

“And it’s a victory for the whole world, for liberal democracy, for those who believe in that sort of government and in the environment too.”

While Labour could rule alone, Shaw is confident the Greens will be included to make use of their ministers’ specific experience, to bolster the new government’s majority and to build their partnership for the future.

“We want to win again in 2023,” Shaw told the Guardian.

On Sunday prime minister Jacinda Ardern refused to comment on whether she would invite the Greens into government, but said she had spoken to co-leader James Shaw already, and talks would proceed “swiftly” over the coming weeks.

Ardern said it would take two to three weeks for a government to be declared, because there were half a million special votes still to be counted.

The Greens have been around since 1990. A few of its members became MPs in the early 1990s as part of the Alliance party, an amalgamation of four small parties, but it entered parliament as a stand-alone party in 1999 when it gained more than 5% of the party vote.

Since then the party has consistently scored the biggest share of the vote of the minor parties and became part of a government for the first time in 2017 after pledging to give confidence and supply support to the Labour-NZ First coalition.

The Greens are as much focused on social equity as on the environment and have pushed for New Zealand to become carbon neutral by 2050 and to reduce inequality by increasing benefits and funding to other social services.

Like many countries, New Zealand has responded to Covid-19 by stimulating the economy through massive spending, which has wiped out its budget surplus.

The Greens want to increase the tax take by introducing a “wealth tax”, but Ardern has stated that won’t happen in a government she leads.

Revealed

Sheikh Khalifa’s £5bn London property empire
Documents reveal UAE president owns multibillion-pound property portfolio spanning London’s most expensive neighbourhoods

by Harry Davies THE GUARDIAN 

→Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan is president of the United Arab Emirates – and one of London's richest landlords

LONG READ FEATURE THIS IS AN EXCERPT

The row of 1960s-built houses with untidy gardens on a quiet cul-de-sac near Richmond upon Thames appears to have little in common with Ecuador’s red-brick embassy in Knightsbridge, where Julian Assange spent seven years in hiding, just across the road from Harrods.

The unassuming suburban dwellings also have little in common with the site where the Queen was born in central London, or Sexy Fish, a seafood restaurant where diners sit among Damien Hirst mermaid sculptures.

The properties, however, all form part of a secretive £5.5bn real estate empire owned by one of the world’s wealthiest heads of state, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates and emir of Abu Dhabi.

For all of its conspicuous addresses, the portfolio’s ownership has been shrouded in secrecy for decades. “It was created in a subterranean way through stealth-like deals, quietly put together over many years,” said a source familiar with Khalifa’s business dealings.

Now, leaked documents, court filings and analysis of public records have enabled the Guardian to map Khalifa’s property holdings in the UK, revealing how the oil-rich nation’s president became a major landlord in London. Khalifa’s London property empire appears to surpass even that of the Duke of Westminster, the 29-year-old billionaire aristocrat who owns swathes of the city.

Khalifa’s personal property portfolio, which spans some of London’s most expensive neighbourhoods, is largely comprised of “super prime” commercial and residential properties. Flats in one of the portfolio’s luxury blocks are on the market for about £20m each.

The documents highlight how it is possible in the UK for a deep-pocketed investor such as Khalifa to build up, largely undetected, a sprawling property portfolio with about 1,000 tenants – thanks to a complex structure of shell companies in offshore havens administered by some of London’s top law firms.

Khalifa’s UK property interests first came to light in 2016 when the Guardian’s reporting on the Panama Papers provided a glimpse into how the UAE’s president had secretly acquired dozens of central London properties worth more than £1.2bn.

However, documents seen by the Guardian suggest Khalifa’s holdings are worth almost five times that. In 2005 alone the sheikh spent £1bn on five properties, according to court filings. By 2015, the portfolio had swelled in value to £5.5bn with annual rental income of £160m.

Analysis of Land Registry data suggests Khalifa’s commercial and private property portfolio includes about 170 properties, ranging from a secluded mansion near Richmond Park to multiple high-end London office blocks occupied by hedge funds and investment banks.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing and owning UK property through offshore companies is perfectly legal. But the UK government has committed to introducing a register of overseas companies owning UK properties to make the market more transparent and combat corruption.

Khalifa did not respond to the Guardian’s repeated requests for comment.

The sheikh’s properties are now at the heart of a high court dispute that has thrown his UK interests into sharp relief. Earlier this year, the court heard claims the UAE president had installed tanks filled with Evian drinking water at his 18th-century mansion near Windsor. But details of his lifestyle have been upstaged by claims that since a stroke in 2014, Khalifa, who was re-elected as UAE president in 2019, has been “mentally incapacitated” – claims his lawyers have denied.

Lawyers for his former property managers, Lancer, claim the legal case, concerning the approval of certain payments, has been brought as Khalifa’s family members compete for control of his assets. Lancer’s lawyers cited a document they claim shows control of his assets was secretly handed over to a special committee in 2015.

The document, first reported by the investigative website the Sarawak Report and seen by the Guardian, appears to install Khalifa’s half-brother Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan as the committee’s chairman, suggesting some of London’s prime real estate is now in the hands of the owner of Manchester City football club. Lawyers acting for Khalifa have denied he has “surrendered control of his assets”.

The notarised document purports to be signed by Khalifa but the signature appears to belong to his brother Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, de facto leader of the UAE and one of the most powerful figures in the Middle East.

READ ON

Lily the barn owl reveals how birds fly in gusty winds

by University of Bristol
  

Lily the barn owl demonstrates wing-morphing to cope with gusts in flight. Credit: Cheney et al 2020

Scientists from the University of Bristol and the Royal Veterinary College have discovered how birds are able to fly in gusty conditions—findings that could inform the development of bio-inspired small-scale aircraft.

"Birds routinely fly in high winds close to buildings and terrain—often in gusts as fast as their flight speed. So the ability to cope with strong and sudden changes in wind is essential for their survival and to be able to do things like land safely and capture prey," said Dr. Shane Windsor from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Bristol.

"We know birds cope amazingly well in conditions which challenge engineered air vehicles of a similar size but, until now, we didn't understand the mechanics behind it," said Dr. Windsor.

The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, reveals how bird wings act as a suspension system to cope with changing wind conditions. The team used an innovative combination of high-speed, video-based 3-D surface reconstruction, computed tomography (CT) scans, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to understand how birds 'reject' gusts through wing morphing, i.e. by changing the shape and posture of their wings.

In the experiment, conducted in the Structure and Motion Laboratory at the Royal Veterinary College, the team filmed Lily, a barn owl, gliding through a range of fan-generated vertical gusts, the strongest of which was as fast as her flight speed. Lily is a trained falconry bird who is a veteran of many nature documentaries, so wasn't fazed in the least by all the lights and cameras.

VIDEO Lily the barn owl is filmed flying through a series of gusts. Credit: Cheney et al 2020
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-lily-barn-owl-reveals-birds.html

"We began with very gentle gusts in case Lily had any difficulties, but soon found that—even at the highest gust speeds we could make—Lily was unperturbed; she flew straight through to get the food reward being held by her trainer, Lloyd Buck," commented Professor Richard Bomphrey of the Royal Veterinary College.

"Lily flew through the bumpy gusts and consistently kept her head and torso amazingly stable over the trajectory, as if she was flying with a suspension system. When we analysed it, what surprised us was that the suspension-system effect wasn't just due to aerodynamics, but benefited from the mass in her wings. For reference, each of our upper limbs is about 5% of our body weight; for a bird it's about double, and they use that mass to effectively absorb the gust," said lead-author Dr. Jorn Cheney from the Royal Veterinary College.


"Perhaps most exciting is the discovery that the very fastest part of the suspension effect is built into the mechanics of the wings, so birds don't actively need to do anything for it to work. The mechanics are very elegant. When you strike a ball at the sweetspot of a bat or racquet, your hand is not jarred because the force there cancels out. Anyone who plays a bat-and-ball sport knows how effortless this feels. A wing has a sweetspot, just like a bat. Our analysis suggests that the force of the gust acts near this sweetspot and this markedly reduces the disturbance to the body during the first fraction of a second. The process is automatic and buys just enough time for other clever stabilising processes to kick in," added Dr. Jonathan Stevenson from the University of Bristol.

Dr. Windsor said the next step for the research, which was funded by the European Research Council (ERC), Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Wellcome Trust, is to develop bio-inspired suspension systems for small-scale aircraft.


Explore furtherCollapsible wings help birds cope with turbulence
More information: Bird wings act as a suspension system that rejects gusts, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, rspb.royalsocietypublishing.or … .1098/rspb.2020.1748
Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B

PACIFIC MORTHWEST NA

Geologists 'resurrect' missing tectonic plate

by Sara Tubbs, University of Houston
 

(l-r) Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology in the UH Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Spencer Fuston, a third-year geology doctoral student, applied a technique developed by the UH Center for Tectonics and Tomography called slab unfolding to reconstruct what tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean looked like during the early Cenozoic Era. Credit: University of Houston

The existence of a tectonic plate called Resurrection has long been a topic of debate among geologists, with some arguing it was never real. Others say it subducted—moved sideways and downward—into the earth's mantle somewhere in the Pacific Margin between 40 and 60 million years ago.


A team of geologists at the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics believes they have found the lost plate in northern Canada by using existing mantle tomography images—similar to a CT scan of the earth's interior. The findings, published in Geological Society of America Bulletin, could help geologists better predict volcanic hazards as well as mineral and hydrocarbon deposits.

"Volcanoes form at plate boundaries, and the more plates you have, the more volcanoes you have," said Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "Volcanoes also affect climate change. So, when you are trying to model the earth and understand how climate has changed since time, you really want to know how many volcanoes there have been on earth."

Wu and Spencer Fuston, a third-year geology doctoral student, applied a technique developed by the UH Center for Tectonics and Tomography called slab unfolding to reconstruct what tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean looked like during the early Cenozoic Era. The rigid outermost shell of Earth, or lithosphere, is broken into tectonic plates and geologists have always known there were two plates in the Pacific Ocean at that time called Kula and Farallon. But there has been discussion about a potential third plate, Resurrection, having formed a special type of volcanic belt along Alaska and Washington State.

 

This image shows plate tectonic reconstruction of western North America 60 million years ago showing subduction of three key tectonic plates, Kula, Farallon and Resurrection. Credit: Spencer Fuston and Jonny Wu, University of Houston Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
 

A 3D block diagram across North America showing a mantle tomography image reveals the Slab Unfolding method used to flatten the Farallon tectonic plate. By doing this, Fuston and Wu were able to locate the lost Resurrection plate. Credit: Spencer Fuston and Jonny Wu, University of Houston Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
 

"We believe we have direct evidence that the Resurrection plate existed. We are also trying to solve a debate and advocate for which side our data supports," Fuston said.

Using 3-D mapping technology, Fuston applied the slab unfolding technique to the mantle tomography images to pull out the subducted plates before unfolding and stretching them to their original shapes.

Credit: University of Houston

"When 'raised' back to the earth's surface and reconstructed, the boundaries of this ancient Resurrection tectonic plate match well with the ancient volcanic belts in Washington State and Alaska, providing a much sought after link between the ancient Pacific Ocean and the North American geologic record," explained Wu.


Crack in Pacific seafloor caused volcanic chain to go dormant
More information: Spencer Fuston et al, Raising the Resurrection plate from an unfolded-slab plate tectonic reconstruction of northwestern North America since early Cenozoic time, GSA Bulletin (2020). DOI: 10.1130/B35677.1
Provided by University of Houston

Hot-button words trigger conservatives and liberals differently

by Yasmin Anwar, University of California - Berkeley
  

Graphic shows differences in liberal and conservative brain responses to news media Credit: Yuan Chang Leong

How can the partisan divide be bridged when conservatives and liberals consume the same political content, yet interpret it through their own biased lens?

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University scanned the brains of more than three dozen politically left- and right-leaning adults as they viewed short videos involving hot-button immigration policies, such as the building of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and the granting of protections for undocumented immigrants under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Their findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, show that liberals and conservatives respond differently to the same videos, especially when the content being viewed contains vocabulary that frequently pops up in political campaign messaging.

"Our study suggests that there is a neural basis to partisan biases, and some language especially drives polarization," said study lead author Yuan Chang Leong, a postdoctoral scholar in cognitive neuroscience at UC Berkeley. "In particular, the greatest differences in neural activity across ideology occurred when people heard messages that highlight threat, morality and emotions."

Overall, the results offer a never-before-seen glimpse into the partisan brain in the weeks leading up to what is arguably the most consequential U.S. presidential election in modern history. They underscore that multiple factors, including personal experiences and the news media, contribute to what the researchers call "neural polarization."

"Even when presented with the same exact content, people can respond very differently, which can contribute to continued division," said study senior author Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. "Critically, these differences do not imply that people are hardwired to disagree. Our experiences, and the media we consume, likely contribute to neural polarization."


Specifically, the study traces the source of neural polarization to a higher-order brain region known as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which is believed to track and make sense of narratives, among other functions.

Another key finding is that the closer the brain activity of a study participant resembles that of the "average liberal" or the "average conservative," as modeled in the study, the more likely it is that the participant, after watching the videos, will adopt that particular group's position.

"This finding suggests that the more participants adopt the conservative interpretation of a video, the more likely they are to be persuaded to take the conservative position, and vice versa," Leong said.

Leong and fellow researchers launched the study with a couple of theories about how people with different ideological biases would differ in the way they process political information. They hypothesized that if sensory information, like sounds and visual imagery, drove polarization, they would observe differences in brain activity in the visual and auditory cortices.

However, if the narrative storytelling aspects of the political information people absorbed in the videos drove them apart ideologically, the researchers expected to see those disparities also revealed in higher-order brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex. And that theory panned out.
 

Study shows conservative-liberal disparity in brain response to hot-button vocabulary.

 Credit: Yuan Chang Leong

To establish that attitudes toward hardline immigration policies predicted both conservative and liberal biases, the researchers first tested questions out on 300 people recruited via the Amazon Mechanical Turk online marketplace who identified, to varying degrees, as liberal, moderate or conservative.

They then recruited 38 young and middle-aged men and women with similar socio-economic backgrounds and education levels who had rated their opposition or support for controversial immigration policies, such as those that led to the U.S.-Mexico border wall, DACA protections for undocumented immigrants, the ban on refugees from majority-Muslim countries coming to the U.S. and the cutting of federal funding to sanctuary cities.

Researchers scanned the study participants' brains via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) as they viewed two dozen brief videos representing liberal and conservative positions on the various immigration policies. The videos included news clips, campaign ads and snippets of speeches by prominent politicians.

After each video, the participants rated on a scale of one to five how much they agreed with the general message of the video, the credibility of the information presented and the extent to which the video made them likely to change their position and to support the policy in question.

To calculate group brain responses to the videos, the researchers used a measure known as inter-subject correlation, which can be used to measure how similarly two brains respond to the same message.

Their results showed a high shared response across the group in the auditory and visual cortices, regardless of the participants' political attitudes. However, neural responses diverged along partisan lines in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, where semantic information, or word meanings, are processed.

Next, the researchers drilled down further to learn what specific words were driving neural polarization. To do this, they edited the videos into 87 shorter segments and placed the words in the segments into one of 50 categories. Those categories included words related to morality, emotions, threat and religion.

The researchers found that the use of words related to risk and threat, and to morality and emotions, led to greater polarization in the study participants' neural responses.

An example of a risk-related statement was, "I think it's very dangerous, because what we want is cooperation amongst the cities and the federal government to ensure that we have safety in our communities, and to ensure that our citizens are protected."

Meanwhile, an example of a moral-emotional statement was, "What are the fundamental ethical principles that are the basis of our society? Do no harm, and be compassionate, and this federal policy violates both of these principles."

Overall, the research study's results suggest that political messages that use threat-related and moral-emotional language drive partisans to interpret the same message in opposite ways, contributing to increasing polarization, Leong said.

Going forward, Leong hopes to use neuroimaging to build more precise models of how political content is interpreted and to inform interventions aimed at narrowing the divide between conservatives and liberals.


Bringing people on both sides of the aisle together on climate change
More information: Yuan Chang Leong et al, Conservative and liberal attitudes drive polarized neural responses to political content, PNAS first published October 20, 2020; doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008530117

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Provided by University of California - Berkeley