DR. Simone Gold Arrested for Role in Capitol Insurrection

— Physician faces charges for entering restricted grounds, disorderly conduct

by Amanda D'Ambrosio, Staff Writer, MedPage Today




Simone Gold, MD, JD, founder of the notorious pro-hydroxychloroquine, anti-vaccine group America's Frontline Doctors, was arrested Sunday for participating in storming the U.S. Capitol earlier this month, according to the Department of Justice.

Following Gold's confirmation that she entered the Capitol building during the riot on Jan. 6, DOJ officials arrested her in California on Sunday. Gold faces charges of entering a restricted building and for violent entry and disorderly conduct.

Department representatives did not return a query as of press time as to whether Gold has been released on bail.

Along with Gold, federal officials also arrested John Strand, communications director for America's Frontline Doctors, who was pictured with the physician at the event.

Gold joined the mob that stormed Capitol Hill in an attempt to disrupt the 2020 election certification process. She spoke at protests in Washington, D.C., leading up to the riot, casting doubt on the vaccines and claiming that COVID-19 is non-fatal. Gold stated that citizens must not comply with taking "an experimental, biological agent deceptively named a vaccine."

The California-based physician told the Washington Post that she was indeed inside the Capitol, as she followed a crowd and assumed it was legal to do so. Several photos of Gold at the insurrection have circulated online, as well as a video of her making a speech to rioters inside the federal building.


Starting on the day after the riot, federal investigators received photographs of Gold and Strand during the riot. The pair was also captured on video at the doors of the federal building, in the middle of a crowd attempting to push past law enforcement officials to get inside. In this footage, one law enforcement official appeared to be pulled down by someone in the crowd and landed right where Gold and Strand were standing, according to the FBI's affidavit supporting the arrest warrant.

Prior to her involvement on Capitol Hill, Gold gained notoriety for spreading misinformation about the pandemic. Last July, she led a press conference in front of the Supreme Court in which she and other members of America's Frontline Doctors touted the benefits of hydroxychloroquine and criticized lockdown restrictions. Gold has also attempted to sow fear of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Last Updated January 21, 2021

Amanda D'Ambrosio is a reporter on MedPage Today’s enterprise & investigative team. She covers obstetrics-gynecology and other clinical news, and writes features about the U.S. healthcare system. 

Mind the Gap: What '95% Efficacy' Doesn't Tell You

— Questions on COVID vaccines and asymptomatic infection remain unsettled

by Randy Dotinga, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today February 24, 2021



If you've been listening to the news media or even some medical professionals, you might assume the FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines are about 95% effective at stopping you from getting infected by the virus. Think again. Despite popular belief, no one knows how well the vaccines actually perform at halting infections overall or preventing transmission. All we understand now is how well they prevent people from becoming significantly sick.


The ability of the vaccines to prevent all infections may seem like an arcane topic compared to their proven ability to stave off moderate-to-severe illness and death. Still, infection prevention "is going to be one of the determinants about how many people die. In effect, you have to vaccinate fewer people to get to herd immunity with a vaccine that protects against infection," Joshua Schiffer, MD, MSc, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, told MedPage Today.

Why don't we know more? Because drugmakers have been focused on understanding whether vaccines prevent serious consequences of COVID-19 infection. Asymptomatic cases are secondary, even though they appear to contribute mightily to the spread of the pandemic, and they aren't being as rigorously tracked as moderate-to-severe cases.

This focus makes sense to internist Jeffrey Carson, MD, who managed the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine trial's site at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "The logistics of doing a big trial like this are monumental," he told MedPage Today, noting that the J&J trial enrolled about 45,000 people. "Therefore, compromises are made sometimes."


It would be complicated and expensive – but not impossible – to create a vaccine trial that provides rapid data about asymptomatic cases. "You might have people swab themselves every couple days, or every week. You'll be picking up a lot of disease that way, and you'll be able to see if the vaccine prevents asymptomatic disease," Carson said.

However, that kind of trial would be very expensive, he said. Instead, vaccine makers have adopted other approaches. For example, the ongoing Novavax vaccine trial only asks participants to test themselves for COVID-19 via provided swabs if they are directed to do so after developing suspicious symptoms. I'm participating in the Novavax trial, as I reported in a previous MedPage Today article, and I haven't needed to open my packet of swabs.

We don't know much about whether COVID-19 vaccines prevent asymptomatic cases. The publicly available efficacy statistics – 94% to 95% for the FDA-authorized Moderna and Pfizer vaccines -- do not address their ability to prevent cases of COVID-19 with non-existent symptoms, although preliminary Moderna data suggest a lower likelihood of asymptomatic transmission. Additionally, a new study of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in Israel indicated A close up of a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine vial 92% efficacy in preventing infection -- symptomatic or not -- following the second dose.


As the New York Times helpfully explained, efficacy and effectiveness are not the same thing: "It's possible that the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines will match their impressive efficacy in clinical trials. But if previous vaccines are any guide, effectiveness may prove somewhat lower."

Unfortunately, vaccine statistics are complicated and can be difficult for even the top minds in medicine to understand. This month, an infectious disease physician told the editors of Lancet Infectious Diseases in a letter that their editorial misunderstood what 94% to 95% efficacy means in regard to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines and asymptomatic spread.

"It does not mean that 95% of people are protected from disease with the vaccine -- a general misconception of vaccine protection," he wrote. Instead, it "means that in a population such as the one enrolled in the trials, with a cumulated COVID-19 attack rate over a period of 3 months of about 1% without a vaccine, we would expect roughly 0.05% of vaccinated people would get diseased [with symptomatic infections]. ... Accurate description of effects is not hair-splitting; it is much-needed exactness to avoid adding confusion to an extraordinarily complicated and tense scientific and societal debate around COVID-19 vaccines."


Epidemiologist Samuel Scarpino, PhD, director of the Emergent Epidemics Lab at Northeastern University, has similar concerns about lack of insight into the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. "I'm pretty confident that vaccines interrupt transmission, but we don't have data to say that. By not having a clear answer to this, we perpetuate uncertainty. And that's not good for controlling the narrative around the vaccines," he told MedPage Today.

To add to the complexity, scientists are still working to understand how vaccines affect diseases that spread from infected people who don't look or act sick. Most viral diseases, including HIV and hepatitis C, can spread from people who don't realize they're infected. "It makes a lot of sense for survival of the invaders, if you think about it. Humans who feel unwell are not going out to meet up with others, but ones who feel fine will continue along with their daily schedules, allowing the infection to spread," Bryn Boslett, MD, an infectious disease physician at the University of California San Francisco, told MedPage Today.


Scarpino and a colleague authored a 2015 report that suggested asymptomatic spread in vaccinated children may explain outbreaks of whooping cough in the U.S. and U.K. after a new vaccine was introduced. "Over 10 years, a lot of researchers across public health all over the globe have been working on this question about whether the switch in vaccines has increased the rate of asymptomatic individuals," he said.

We're not going to remain in the dark for long about asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 in vaccinated people. Vaccine trials will provide insight over time. For example, in addition to the new Israeli study, Pfizer's December report in the New England Journal of Medicine promised that "a serologic end point that can detect a history of infection regardless of whether symptoms were present (SARS-CoV-2 N-binding antibody) will be reported later."

For now, experts are urging vaccinated people to continue wearing masks and keep away from other people when possible.


"One major worry going forward is that vaccinated people will change their behavior and stop taking COVID-19 precautions," Boslett said. "It's very tempting to do so, very understandable. However, the stars are not yet aligned for us to go back to 'normal.' There is still a lot of COVID-19, and most of us are still vulnerable. We need to continue to focus on behavior to reduce new cases of COVID-19."

Last Updated February 24, 2021

I was the Australian doctor on the WHO’s COVID-19 mission to China. Here’s what we found about the origins of the coronavirus

February 21, 2021

As I write, I am in hotel quarantine in Sydney, after returning from Wuhan, China. There, I was the Australian representative on the international World Health Organization’s (WHO) investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Much has been said of the politics surrounding the mission to investigate the viral origins of COVID-19. So it’s easy to forget that behind these investigations are real people.

As part of the mission, we met the man who, on December 8, 2019, was the first confirmed COVID-19 case; he’s since recovered. We met the husband of a doctor who died of COVID-19 and left behind a young child. We met the doctors who worked in the Wuhan hospitals treating those early COVID-19 cases, and learned what happened to them and their colleagues. We witnessed the impact of COVID-19 on many individuals and communities, affected so early in the pandemic, when we didn’t know much about the virus, how it spreads, how to treat COVID-19, or its impacts.

We talked to our Chinese counterparts — scientists, epidemiologists, doctors — over the four weeks the WHO mission was in China. We were in meetings with them for up to 15 hours a day, so we became colleagues, even friends. This allowed us to build respect and trust in a way you couldn’t necessarily do via Zoom or email.

Listen to ‘Don’t Call Me Resilient,’ a provocative new podcast about raceFind out more

This is what we learned about the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
Animal origins, but not necessarily at the Wuhan markets

It was in Wuhan, in central China, that the virus, now called SARS-CoV-2, emerged in December 2019, unleashing the greatest infectious disease outbreak since the 1918-19 influenza pandemic.

Our investigations concluded the virus was most likely of animal origin. It probably crossed over to humans from bats, via an as-yet-unknown intermediary animal, at an unknown location. Such “zoonotic” diseases have triggered pandemics before. But we are still working to confirm the exact chain of events that led to the current pandemic. Sampling of bats in Hubei province and wildlife across China has revealed no SARS-CoV-2 to date.

We visited the now-closed Wuhan wet market which, in the early days of the pandemic, was blamed as the source of the virus. Some stalls at the market sold “domesticated” wildlife products. These are animals raised for food, such as bamboo rats, civets and ferret badgers. There is also evidence some domesticated wildlife may be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. However, none of the animal products sampled after the market’s closure tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.

After COVID-19, China brought in new regulations for the trade and consumption of wild animals. Alex Plavevski/EPA/AAP

We also know not all of those first 174 early COVID-19 cases visited the market, including the man who was diagnosed in December 2019 with the earliest onset date.

However, when we visited the closed market, it’s easy to see how an infection might have spread there. When it was open, there would have been around 10,000 people visiting a day, in close proximity, with poor ventilation and drainage.

There’s also genetic evidence generated during the mission for a transmission cluster there. Viral sequences from several of the market cases were identical, suggesting a transmission cluster. However, there was some diversity in other viral sequences, implying other unknown or unsampled chains of transmission.

A summary of modelling studies of the time to the most recent common ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 sequences estimated the start of the pandemic between mid-November and early December. There are also publications suggesting SARS-CoV-2 circulation in various countries earlier than the first case in Wuhan, although these require confirmation.

The market in Wuhan, in the end, was more of an amplifying event rather than necessarily a true ground zero. So we need to look elsewhere for the viral origins.

Read more: Coronavirus: live animals are stressed in wet markets, and stressed animals are more likely to carry diseases

Frozen or refrigerated food not ruled out in the spread

Then there was the “cold chain” hypothesis. This is the idea the virus might have originated from elsewhere via the farming, catching, processing, transporting, refrigeration or freezing of food. Was that food ice cream, fish, wildlife meat? We don’t know. It’s unproven that this triggered the origin of the virus itself. But to what extent did it contribute to its spread? Again, we don’t know.

Several “cold chain” products present in the Wuhan market were not tested for the virus. Environmental sampling in the market showed viral surface contamination. This may indicate the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 through infected people, or contaminated animal products and “cold chain” products. Investigation of “cold chain” products and virus survival at low temperatures is still underway.

Read more: Could frozen food transmit COVID-19?

Extremely unlikely the virus escaped from a lab

The most politically sensitive option we looked at was the virus escaping from a laboratory. We concluded this was extremely unlikely.

We visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is an impressive research facility, and looks to be run well, with due regard to staff health.

We spoke to the scientists there. We heard that scientists’ blood samples, which are routinely taken and stored, were tested for signs they had been infected. No evidence of antibodies to the coronavirus was found. We looked at their biosecurity audits. No evidence.

We looked at the closest virus to SARS-CoV-2 they were working on — the virus RaTG13 — which had been detected in caves in southern China where some miners had died seven years previously.

But all the scientists had was a genetic sequence for this virus. They hadn’t managed to grow it in culture. While viruses certainly do escape from laboratories, this is rare. So, we concluded it was extremely unlikely this had happened in Wuhan.

Read more: British people blame Chinese government more than their own for the spread of coronavirus

A team of investigators

When I say “we”, the mission was a joint exercise between the WHO and the Chinese health commission. In all, there were 17 Chinese and ten international experts, plus seven other experts and support staff from various agencies. We looked at the clinical epidemiology (how COVID-19 spread among people), the molecular epidemiology (the genetic makeup of the virus and its spread), and the role of animals and the environment.

The clinical epidemiology group alone looked at China’s records of 76,000 episodes from more than 200 institutions of anything that could have resembled COVID-19 — such as influenza-like illnesses, pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses. They found no clear evidence of substantial circulation of COVID-19 in Wuhan during the latter part of 2019 before the first case.
Where to now?

Our mission to China was only phase one. We are due to publish our official report in the coming weeks. Investigators will also look further afield for data, to investigate evidence the virus was circulating in Europe, for instance, earlier in 2019. Investigators will continue to test wildlife and other animals in the region for signs of the virus. And we’ll continue to learn from our experiences to improve how we investigate the next pandemic.

Irrespective of the origins of the virus, individual people with the disease are at the beginning of the epidemiology data points, sequences and numbers. The long-term physical and psychological effects — the tragedy and anxiety — will be felt in Wuhan, and elsewhere, for decades to come.

Read more: Yes, we need a global coronavirus inquiry, but not for petty political point-scoring

Author

Dominic Dwyer
Director of Public Health Pathology, NSW Health Pathology, Westmead Hospital and University of Sydney, University of Sydney

3 Republican senators grilling Biden's Interior Secretary nominee Deb Haaland deny climate science
Eliza Relman

Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday, May 27, 2020. Caroline Brehman/Getty Images

Three Republican senators grilling Interior Secretary nominee Rep. Deb Haaland this week have denied well-established climate science. 

Republicans attacked Haaland during her confirmation hearings for previously arguing that the GOP doesn't "believe in science." 

Haaland's nomination is evidence of increasing national concern for climate issues.


Three Republican senators grilling Interior Secretary nominee Rep. Deb Haaland this week have denied well-established climate science, even as they vigorously defend their party as pro-science.

Sens. James Lankford of Oklahoma, Mike Lee of Utah, and John Marshall of Kansas -- who sit on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee -- have made statements in recent years rejecting the scientific consensus that humans are a major contributor to climate change and global warming. But Republicans on the committee insist that their positions on energy and the environment are guided by science, and some even accused Democrats of ignoring science.

Lee said in 2019 that the solution to climate change is "more babies" and "technological invention."

"The solution to so many of our problems, at all times and in all places: fall in love, get married and have some kids," Lee said in response to the Democratic Green New Deal proposal.

In 2010, Lankford called global warming a "myth" and said it will eventually be "exposed" as "a way of control more than anything else."

In 2017, Marshall said, "I'm not sure that there is even climate change," during an interview on Kansas radio. In a Wednesday statement to Insider, Marshall claimed that the climate is "always changing," an implicit denial of human-caused global warming.

"Is the climate changing? Sure it is always changing," he said. "That being said, I'm proud the air in Kansas is cleaner than when I was growing up. I'm proud the United States is at a 25-year low for Carbon production, and I look forward to innovative solutions that will create a cleaner, safer, healthier environment."

Spokespeople for Lee, and Lankford didn't immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

Prior to her nomination, Haaland, a citizen of Laguna Pueblo and the first Native American ever nominated to a cabinet position, accused Republicans of rejecting science. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso asked her about a tweet she wrote during last fall's vice presidential debate claiming, "Republicans don't believe in science."

During the portion of the October debate focused on climate, Vice President Mike Pence, a longtime climate science skeptic, refused to acknowledge that climate change is manmade and an "existential" threat.

Barrasso pointed out that he and two other Republicans on the energy committee -- Marshall and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana -- are physicians.

"Do you think that as medical doctors we don't believe in science?" Barrasso said. "How do you stand by this statement?"

Haaland didn't defend her tweet and replied that she "would assume" doctors believe in science.

Just six years ago, Barrasso claimed "the role human activity plays" in the changing climate "is not known." He has since shifted his position on the issue and advocated for the use of nuclear energy and technological interventions to fight climate change. But the senator has also repeatedly blocked climate legislation and falsely claimed that family farms and ranches would be eradicated under a progressive Green New Deal.

"Say goodbye to dairy, to beef, to family farms, to ranches," he said in 2019. "American favorites like cheeseburgers and milkshake would become a thing of the past."

The vast majority of Republican lawmakers in Washington do not acknowledge that climate change is caused by humans, even if they concede that the climate is changing and the government should do something about it.

During the somewhat tense confirmation hearings, some Republicans questioned Haaland's own fidelity to science. GOP members painted progressive climate policy as ideological, rather than rooted in science and economics.

"Will your department be guided by a prejudice against fossil fuel or will it be guided by science?" Cassidy asked. "Clearly the Biden administration is not guided by science, and Republicans are guided by science."  ROFLMAO

Throughout the hearings, Haaland repeatedly stressed her desire to work with lawmakers and constituents across the aisle and said she would implement Biden's agenda, "not my own."

"I want to first assure you that if I'm confirmed as secretary, that is a far different role than a congresswoman representing one small district in my state," she said. "I understand that role. It's to serve all Americans, not just my one district."

  

Senator James Lankford, R-OK, speaks during a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing on the nomination of Rep. Deb Haaland, D-NM, to be Interior Secretary. GRAEME JENNINGS/Getty Images

A historic cabinet nominee exposes national shift on climate

Haaland has strong support on the activist left. She has for years supported progressive approaches to climate change, opposed natural gas fracking, and called for the elimination of oil and gas exploration on public land. As President, Joe Biden has put a 60-day pause on oil and gas leasing and drilling on federal land. Republicans have accused Biden of pushing for a national ban on fracking, the controversial extraction practice, but the president has repeatedly said he won't do that.

FACES RACISM AND SEXISM
Haaland is perhaps Biden's most unpopular cabinet pick among Republicans. Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican on the energy committee, called the nominee "a die-hard, far-left ideologue." Haaland's nomination has faced skepticism even from some conservative Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who chairs the energy and natural resources committee and reportedly has "remaining questions" about Haaland. The Republicans on the committee aggressively pressed Haaland on her positions on fossil fuel energy and the impact environmental policy has on energy producers and rural interests.

But Haaland's nomination also exposes the extent to which public opinion on climate issues have shifted in recent years. A majority of Americans say dealing with climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress, and two-thirds of Americans -- including the majority of both Republicans and Democrats -- believe the government isn't doing enough to address climate change, according to Pew polling last year.

While just 22% of Republicans say humans are a major contributor to climate change, millennial and younger Republicans are significantly more concerned about the climate and environment than their older counterparts.

NUCLEAR ICE BREAKER USED

Russian Gas Tanker’s Arctic Ice Voyage Branded ‘Irony Of Our Time’

David Vetter

Senior Contributor
Sustainability  FORBES
I cover green energy and sustainability
Feb 24, 2021


The Arctic tanker Christophe de Margerie, operated by Sovcomflot, in the Gulf of Ob, the Kara Sea. ALEXANDER RYUMIN/TASS

This month, for the first time in history, a commercial gas tanker travelled from China to northwestern Russia through Arctic winter ice, an event U.K. climate experts have told Forbes.com was made possible by man-made global warming.

That the vessel in question, the Christophe de Margerie, was named after the former CEO of French oil corporation Total and was carrying liquified natural gas (LNG), added a grim irony to the event, the experts said.

The Russian LNG carrier sailed from Jiangsu in China to the remote Arctic terminal of Sabetta on the remote Yamal peninsula in Russia. Until this year such a journey had not been possible, as thick, “multi-year” ice, meaning ice that lasts two years or more, blocked the passage of commercial ships.

“The fact that this ship went to Yamal to collect fossil fuels is of course an irony of our time, filled with symbolism,” said Marc Macias-Fauria, associate professor in physical geography at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. “Sea ice volume and thickness have declined precipitously during the last decades. From this point of view, it is only logical to expect that the Arctic Basin will become more accessible to navigation with global and regional warming, and sea ice loss.

Macias-Fauria said that human-caused climate change leading to higher temperatures was the dominant trend causing sea ice decline measured in recent decades. “This is a first,” he said, and while the voyage “does not mean that the conditions found will remain within the year-to-year and intra-year variability ... it signals the consequences of a very clear trend in the Arctic Ocean towards less sea ice.”

The ship’s owner, Sovcomflot, presented the voyage as a triumph, with the Moscow Times and the Barents Observer describing the event as “historic” and “historical,” respectively.

“The current voyage of Christophe de Margerie significantly expands the navigation window in the eastern sector of the Russian Arctic, and confirms that year-round safe navigation is possible along the entire length of the Northern Sea Route,” Sovcomflot CEO Igor Tonkovidov said of the journey.

The Russian nuclear powered icebreaker 50 Let Pobedy 

[50th Anniversary of Victory] accompanied 

the ... [+] ALEXANDER RYUMIN/TASS

But Samantha Buzzard, a lecturer in climate science at Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said the voyage was concerning for a number of reasons.

“The polar regions act like a giant cooler for the whole planet,” Buzzard said. “While there are dire local consequences to sea ice loss, for example the impact on wildlife such as polar bears, the impacts aren’t just limited to the Arctic.”

She explained that polar ice reflects a lot of the Sun’s energy away from earth. When the open ocean instead absorbs that energy, it causes changes to ocean temperature and circulation that can lead to changes in the global climate. “The loss of our multi-year ice is especially concerning as being much thicker it’s more resilient to change,” she added.

A Disaster In The Making?

Buzzard said she was doubly concerned by the voyage as the presence of tankers in the previously unnavigable region could result in ecological disasters, including oil spills. “Although the tanker in this case was carrying liquified natural gas, if crude oil were to be transported on this route then the consequences of a spill could be catastrophic,” she said. “An event like that would be totally unprecedented.”

Martin Siegert, professor and co-director of The Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, told Forbes.com: “Thirty years ago, the area to the west of the Bering Strait, close to the Siberian coast, would have regularly held multi-year sea ice.” Sea ice can last as long as four years, Siegert said, but tends not to get older, as currents and gyres sweep it into regions that either melt or break up the ice.

“With climate warming, which is two to three times magnified in the Arctic because the loss of the reflective ice surface ... much more melting is occurring, leading to less sea ice,” he said. “The reflectivity feedback means less sea ice leads to less sea ice, but there is another feedback in place also: as the sea ice is lost, the wind is able to form large waves, where none would be possible before, and these can act to break up the sea ice further.”

“So it seems that the Arctic—in summer time especially—is becoming less conductive to sea ice than it ever was in human history.”

New Study Suggests Atlantic Ocean Circulation System Could Collapse

By VOA News

February 24, 2021 

File - This satellite image made available by NOAA shows Hurricane Iota in the North Atlantic Ocean on Monday, Nov. 16, 2020, at 07:11 EST.

A study suggests a key environmental system that affects how water circulates in the Atlantic Ocean and effects the climate could be on the verge of collapse due to the rapid melting of glaciers and sea ice.

The study, published Tuesday in the scientific journal Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) used a global ocean model to study the effects of melting ice on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a large system of ocean currents that carry warm water from the tropics northward into the North Atlantic.  

The system includes the Gulf Stream, of the eastern U.S. coast, which carries warm tropical water north and helps moderate temperatures in much of Europe, considering its high latitude.  The current has been under intense scrutiny in recent years because cold, fresh water from melting Greenland glaciers has essentially been causing the current to slow down, though not stop completely.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen - who conducted the study – said their model indicates the AMOC could reach a “tipping point” or, crucial threshold, sooner than earlier predicted because of the speed at which glacial ice is melting.  

In an interview, one of the study’s authors, Johannes Lohmann, said it has been predicted, based on previous climate models, the AMOC could reach its tipping point when a certain level of freshwater flowed into the North Atlantic from ice melt in Greenland. He said those models were based on a very slow melting of ice.

Lohmann said, “In reality, increases in meltwater from Greenland are accelerating and cannot be considered slow.” He said that faster rate could mean the circulation system could be reached much sooner than earlier predictions.

Lohmann and other researchers say the study’s findings are not conclusive and more study is needed. But he said the possibility of a rapid AMOC collapse should be a warning to policymakers.

He said, “Due to the potentially increased risk of abrupt climate change in parts of the Earth system that we show in our research, it is important that policymakers keep pushing for ambitious short- and mid-term climate targets to slow down the pace of climate change, especially in vulnerable places like the Arctic.”

POSTMODERN IMPERIALISM

OPINION
Embarrassing no-shows at China’s summit are a sign Europe is charting a new course

Peter Hartcher

Political and international editor

THE AGE, BRISBANE TIMES

February 22, 2021 — 

Something went badly awry when China’s President Xi Jinping called together the leaders of 17 nations of central and eastern Europe this month. The event was the annual 17 + 1 summit – that’s 17 Europeans and one China. The one easily outweighs the 17 in its sheer economic bulk.

Not only is its economy seven times the size of all the European members put together, it also brings a sack of cash and promises of huge economic benefits each year. It’s Xi’s primary pathway for driving his colossal Belt and Road infrastructure juggernaut, also known as the “new silk road”, across Europe’s poor periphery and into its wealthy core.

Six European leaders snubbed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent summit.CREDIT:AP

The initiative “demonstrates that China has already become a fully fledged European power” said Emilian Kavalski, a professor of silk road studies at the University of Nottingham campus in Ningbo, China, in 2019.

And the Chinese Communist Party’s media has hailed the 17 + 1 as a “pioneering feat of great power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics”.

So what would you call the 17 + 1 minus six? An embarrassment, at the very least, when six of the European leaders stayed away from the latest summit.

It “looked decidedly like the 11 + 1,” said Politico’s Stuart Lau, “when half of the 12 EU national leaders invited to the club failed to show up to pay homage to Chinese President Xi Jinping. It’s a stinging diplomatic setback for Xi.” Even the lure of access to China’s coronavirus vaccines failed to impress. And they didn’t even have to make the effort of travelling to the summit – it was held on video link.

The central and eastern European leaders have felt increasingly let down by Beijing’s failure to deliver. And some of the promises that were delivered have failed to satisfy. A $US750 million ($953 million) loan to build a Belt and Road highway in tiny Montenegro is being blamed for the county’s national debt blowout to 80 per cent of GDP.

Its president, Milo Djukanovic, went to Beijing a few days before the summit to complain to a gathering of Chinese investors by quoting strategic aphorisms from ancient China’s Sun Tzu, according to The South China Morning Post: “If there is no skill in planning, it is difficult to achieve, and if there is no skill in planning, it will fail.”

Access to the Chinese market was another sore point for several. Polish President Andrzej Duda said his country was “dissatisfied” with the speed of China’s market opening to farm produce.

And while China is a formidable presence in Europe, the snub by the leaders of Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is just one of many indicators of a growing European wariness of Beijing.

A threshold moment was the European Commission’s 2019 formal designation of China as a “systemic rival”. Still, Europe was reluctant to abandon its collective dream of Chinese money as the source of its future prosperity.

European ambiguity was on display in March 2019, shortly after the designation of China as a “systemic rival”. Xi Jinping flew to Paris and, after a champagne toast with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, then-president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and French President Emmanuel Macron, he tested their seriousness.

Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Xi Jinping and Jean-Claude Junker 

had a telling exchange in 2019. CREDIT:AP

Did the Europeans really mean it, calling China a “systemic rival”, Xi wanted to know? As The Wall Street Journal reported it, first “Merkel demurred with a compliment for Mr Xi, saying the language showed Europe recognised China’s growing strength and influence”. Next, “Juncker cut the tension with a joke about the EU’s inability to agree on what China was”, said the Journal. But Macron was blunt. It’s true, the French President said. You are a rival. Within weeks, a French naval ship sailed through the Taiwan Straits in defiance of Xi’s wishes.

Since then, Europe has become more like Macron, less like Merkel. The pandemic, and China’s conduct, hardened mounting suspicion of Beijing. The percentage of people saying they had “no trust in Xi Jinping to do the right thing in world affairs” across six European nations grew by between 9 per cent and 21 per cent in a Pew poll published last October. The total with no trust in Xi now stood at 70 per cent in the Netherlands, 78 in Germany and 80 in France. “If 2019 was the year when Europeans began having serious doubts about Beijing’s geopolitical intentions, 2020 may go down in history as the moment they turned against China in defiance,” wrote Andreas Kluth, former editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global.

“Because China, by trying to capitalise on the pandemic with a stunningly unsophisticated propaganda campaign, inadvertently showed Europeans its cynicism,” he wrote for Bloomberg. For example, in France when the Chinese embassy published a wild accusation that French retirement homes leave old people to die. Or in Italy when Chinese sockpuppets insinuated that the virus had originated in Europe. Or in Germany when Chinese diplomats urged government officials to heap public praise on China.

Under its new, tougher stance, the EU is shutting China out of its signature new research initiative, Horizon Europe, which aims to lift EU science spending by 50 per cent to some 100 billion euros ($153 billion) between now and 2027.

The EU aims to exclude nations that don’t share “EU values”, according to Maria Cristina Russo, director for international co-operation in research and innovation at the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU. Similarly, the commission is drawing up guidelines to limit foreign interference in universities and research institutes. Governments increasingly are challenging China’s Huawei, too.

But what about the big news event of just a couple of months ago, when the EU signed its long-awaited Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with China? That agreement is yet to be ratified by the European Parliament, and it’s meeting resistance. Some members are critical of China’s conduct in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Reinhard Bütikofer, chair of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with China, said that “even the most fundamental research cannot just ignore geopolitical implications because co-operation and interdependence can be weaponised and is being weaponised as we speak”.

And across the channel, a former part of the EU, Britain, too is hardening its stance against the Chinese Communist Party’s policies. Public opinion is again leading the way. A new poll by the British Foreign Policy Group finds that 79 per cent of people named China a potential security threat, just behind Russia. London is now banning Huawei and demanding UN inspectors be given access to China’s Xinjiang province.

Europeans increasingly are turning away from Xi and his Belt and Road to find their own way.

‘We stand together’: ethnic Chinese rally in Myanmar against coup

By Thompson Chau
February 25, 2021 

Yangon: The chorus of banging pots and pans begins in Chinatown at about 8pm.

The district in Myanmar’s commercial city of Yangon is normally festooned with bright red lanterns to celebrate Chinese New Year. But when the Year of the Ox arrived in mid-February, the usual festive atmosphere was gone - replaced by a tension in the air.


Demonstrators display a picture of Chinese president Xi Jinping, with a message requesting not to support military coup during a protest against the military coup in Mandalay, Myanmar  .CREDIT:AP

Here, and across the country, swelling ranks of young ethnic Chinese protesters are joining mass rallies against the junta that abruptly deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s government. Many are united by rumours that China is helping the regime install a repressive new internet system that will severely restrict online freedoms behind a “Great Firewall”.

Eager to show opposition to Beijing meddling, they gather outside the embassy, some displaying posters reading “Myanmar-born Chinese oppose the military coup”.

“They want to show all Myanmar people we stand together,” said Yang Chung-ching who was in the crowd at a recent demonstration. “It’s not just here, but everywhere. Ethnic Chinese are actively taking part in these protests.”

Campaigners of all backgrounds are concerned that China is secretly supporting army chief General Min Aung Hlaing’s military coup.

A man carrying a flag of the National League for Democracy party flashes the three-fingered salute during the funeral of Tin Htut Hein in Yangon, Myanmar on Wednesday. CREDIT:AP

Their fears were not allayed when China failed to condemn the coup at a meeting of the UN Security Council.

The Chinese government, which wants to avoid instability that will disrupt its own economic ambitions, has denied reports of political support or assistance to build Myanmar’s own version of their internet.

The timing is ominous, as Myanmar is drafting a new cyber security law. Even without the law the junta has experimented in recent weeks with intermittent internet blackouts designed to disrupt dissent.

In rare comments last week, Chen Hai, China’s ambassador to Myanmar, denied reports that cargo planes had sent teams of Chinese Communist Party web technicians to install internet controls, and said the current political situation was “absolutely not what China wants to see”.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, shakes hands with then-Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi n 2019 in Beijing.  CREDIT:AP

But the daily rallies outside the Chinese embassy in Yangon continue, with people carrying banners demanding that it “stop interfering with our affairs of state”.

At one recent demonstration Sai Aung Htun, a 24-year-old ethnic Chinese lawyer in Mandalay, expressed his concerns about the draft cyber security law.

“I am quite worried because if that law is adopted, we won’t be able to say what we want to say online. Every single day since the coup I have been worried if the progress Myanmar gained in the last ten years would be rolled back day by day.”

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Myanmar coup
Myanmar generals built a digital firewall with guns and wire cutters

The history of the ethnic Chinese in Myanmar is complex. Much of the older generation remain scarred by the deadly anti-Chinese riots in 1967 that marked a dark chapter in Beijing’s complex relationship with Myanmar.

Dozens of Chinese were killed and their businesses looted by Myanmar’s Bamar majority when unrest was triggered by economic insecurity and fears that the minority was promoting China’s cultural revolution ideology.

Economic and ideological divides, as well as ethnic conflicts in border regions, have since fanned tensions with Myanmar’s 1.7 million-strong Chinese minority, which makes up about three per cent of the population.

In recent years, controversial Chinese-backed investment projects linked to an ambitious infrastructure plan coined the “China-Myanmar Economic Corridor” have created new flashpoints of resentment.

Recent Chinese efforts to revive the deeply unpopular Myitsone hydropower project have been particularly unwelcome.


Play video 1:10
Elephant-riders join Myanmar coup protests
People were spotted riding elephants at an anti-coup protest in the Myanmar village of Ongyaw.

Say Nay Nay Win, 22, has lived in Myanmar all his life. Like millions of ethnic Chinese born and raised there, his ancestors moved to the north of the country from neighbouring Yunnan province more than half a century ago.

But he said that has not stopped people from questioning his loyalties in the wake of the coup.

The suspicions have helped galvanise his own protest activities in the city of Lashio.

After seeing negative social media posts about his community, he revived his Burmese Chinese Youth Association, which has since helped organise mass rallies.

“People confuse anti-Chinese Communist Party feeling with anti-Chinese feeling. But because everyone can see ethnic Chinese standing up and protesting, they are slowly getting clearer,” he said.

An annual survey in early February by the ISEAS-Yushof Ishak Institute in Singapore revealed that 64 per cent of Myanmar respondents were worried about China’s economic influence and 47 per cent about its political clout.

“The Myanmar public, or particularly the Myanmar nationalist public, never liked China,” said Enze Han, of the University of Hong Kong.

He said that the coup was a new headache for Beijing, which had invested heavily in warming ties with the now overturned National League for Democracy government - a more predictable partner than the secretive ranks of the junta.

Telegraph, London

Human Rights Organizations Call for Arms Embargo on Myanmar

Security forces in Myanmar have cracked down on peaceful protesters, activists, journalists, students, and minority groups.

 

Protesters take part in a demonstration against the military coup in front of the Indonesian embassy in Yangon. Photo: Sai Aung Main/AFP

 BIDISHA DAS FEBRUARY 24, 2021

In an open letter to the United Nations Security Council, 137 human rights organizations from over 30 countries demanded the council immediately impose an international arms embargo on Myanmar where the military seized power in a coup on February 1.

The groups denounced the “excessive and at times lethal force” employed by the military during ongoing civil rights violations to quell massive but peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations. Security forces have cracked down on peaceful protesters, activists, journalists, students, and minority groups.

A global arms embargo on the Myanmar military would:
1. Deprive the junta of its tools of repression.
2. Show the people of Myanmar that the world stands behind their quest for democracy.

Beijing says it stands with the people. Will it endorse an embargo? https://t.co/zictWMS0m7 pic.twitter.com/skpCs9Z654
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) February 24, 2021

At least three protesters have been killed with many injured in clashes. Roughly 700 people have been arrested so far, including elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

“Our concerns are heightened by ongoing violations of human rights and the security forces’ history of grave abuses against peaceful critics of military rule,” the letter said, pleading with the Security Council to take action against the human rights abuses taking place in Myanmar.
Demands Made by the Groups

Presently, governments including China, India, Israel, North Korea, Russia, and Ukraine permit arms transfers to Myanmar. The human rights organizations immediately want to stop the supply or transfer of any weapons, munitions, or other military-related equipment.

The arms embargo must also include “dual-use goods such as vehicles and communications and surveillance equipment, as well as the provision of training, intelligence, and other military assistance.” Such an embargo must also be supplemented by robust monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, the letter said.

For decades, the Security Council’s lukewarm response to violence in Myanmar has emboldened the military to continue their outright disregard of civil rights — an approach that has culminated in the current crisis and therefore needs to change, the letter said.

Support from UN Leaders

The call to action reinforces UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s pledge to “mobilize all the key actors and international community to put enough pressure on Myanmar to make sure that this coup fails.”

UN special rapporteur on Myanmar Tom Andrews has also criticized the violence saying, “Day after day now, the people of Myanmar, and people around the world, have watched with horror at the photos and videos of brutality emerging from the streets of Myanmar.” Along with the deputy high commissioner for human rights, Andrews has voiced support for targeted UN sanctions against military leaders.

Citizens are hoping for increased international support. “We are happy the UN issues statements of condemnation, but we understand they are powerful and can do more,” Thurein, a 21-year-old student, told Frontier Myanmar.

Earlier this month, the Security Council had already demanded the release of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi and others detained by the military but stopped short of criticizing the coup d’état.

Understanding Myanmar’s Anti-Democratic Patron–Client Network – Analysis
February 24, 2021 East Asia Forum
By Mikael Gravers*

Despite massive popular support, Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi faced forces too difficult to manage. These need to be understood in the aftermath of the military coup. A State Administrative Council of 11 — including Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (Tatmadaw) Aung Min Hlaing — now possesses full power over the state. Aung San Suu Kyi is facing a long trial, the NLD is being dismantled, the election commission dismissed, and her National Reconciliation and Peace Centre dissolved.

In November 2020, the ultra-nationalist monk Wirathu turned himself in and is now in Insein Prison waiting for his case of sedition to begin. Recent events may have raised his prospects for release. He went into hiding after accusing Aung San Suu Kyi of being unable to govern Myanmar, stating that the country is doomed because she ‘only knows how to put on makeup, wear fashion and walk in high heels’, as well as other lewd remarks about her.

The monk went into hiding in Karen State in a house belonging to the Border Guard Force. He appeared in a photo with three armed soldiers and a gun placed on a table in front of him. Wirathu is the most outspoken member of the Tatmadaw-supported Association for the Protection of Race and Religion (Ma Ba Tha) — a Buddhist nationalist, anti-Muslim group.

During election campaigns in 2015 and 2020, Ma Ba Tha urged voters to support nationalist parties such as the military proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in order to resist ‘foreign invasion’ and ‘loss of sovereignty’. But the USDP lost half of its elected seats in parliament in 2020. Xenophobia and fear of a ‘Muslim invasion’ has influenced Burmese politics and nationalist resistance to immigration from India since colonial rule.

Nationalist monks fear Muslim immigration will lead to Muslims ruling Myanmar in this century. They see immigration and intermarriage as a threat to race, nation and Buddhism. The Chairman of Ma Ba Tha, Tilawka Bhivamsa, claims Muslims aggressively convert Buddhists and do not respect Buddhist ethics — ‘we must fight them with Dhamma [the doctrine], not violence. Those who use violence do not understand Buddhism’.


After the Tatmadaw’s eviction of — and atrocities against — more than 700,000 Muslim Rohingya from Rakhine State, the International Criminal Court in The Hague accused Myanmar of genocide. Aung San Suu Kyi defended her country at the court and denied any intended genocide, stating that Myanmar does not tolerate human rights abuses and crimes are prosecuted in the country’s military justice system. She defended the sovereignty of her nation but did not exonerate the military, angering Aung Min Hlaing.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to directly condemn the Rohingya expulsion and military atrocities provoked massive criticism from Western governments and media, with awards revoked and negative comments flourishing with little understanding of her precarious position.

For Aung San Suu Kyi, it would have been dangerous to confront the Tatmadaw directly. Aung Min Hlaing had demanded she convene the National Defence and Security Council during the Rohingya crisis and just before the coup. Encouraged by her popular support, she declined and denied the Tatmadaw-controlled council the chance to declare a constitutional state of emergency. Aung Min Hlaing lost his patience. He feared the National League for Democracy’s (NLD) control over the judicial system, border administration, economy, and peace process would increase and challenge the Tatmadaw’s power.

Recent developments in Karen State illustrate why the Tatmadaw felt compelled to end the NLD’s authority. A patron-client network of the Tatmadaw, Border Guard Force (BGF), Ma Ba Tha, cronies and foreign companies thrives in Karen State. They engage in a shadow economy backed by arms and disregard the rule of law, profiting from bribes, illegal trade and land confiscation.

A recent example is the casino town Shwe Kok Ko near Myawaddy on the border with Thailand. The town is managed by the BGF after they seized land from local villagers and signed a contract with a Chinese company connected to the criminal triad 14K. Illegal Chinese immigrants have now been deported and the Tatmadaw began investigating allegations of major bribes to officers. In early January 2021, this resulted in a demand for the BGF commander to retire.

Monks and armed groups have been involved in other cases of land grabbing for monastic buildings, plantations, a limestone quarry business involving a Chinese road company and the BGF, and a cable car project at the Zwe Kabin Mountain. At the same time, the Tatmadaw breaks ceasefire and conducts violent incursions into Karen National Union areas. This has displaced thousands of Karen and caused civilian casualties. Most recently the Tatmadaw prevented a non-governmental organisation access to deliver food to these displaced Karen.

The NLD was unable to control these powerful networks undermining peace negotiations, reforms to the justice system, the rule of law, and economic development. In an attempt to bring the area under parliamentary control, the NLD government appointed NLD chief state ministers to enhance central state control instead of holding local state elections.

Despite frustrations, voters — including Karen — supported the NLD as the main democratic force able to contest the Tatmadaw’s power. With the NLD threat taken care of, the Tatmadaw can now continue its violent conquest of ethnic areas.

*About the author: Mikael Gravers is Associate Professor Emeritus at the School of Culture and Society in the Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University.

Source: This article was published by East Asia Forum