Dinosaur-era egg nests found in Argentine Patagonia

Saturday, July 17th 2021 - 

Scientists have rescued 73 eggs and more “continue to appear”

The Argentine University of Comahue Friday announced the discovery on its campus of dinosaur-era egg nests. The 73 specimens found are birds 85 million years old from the Cretaceous period.

A “nesting site” with more than 70 dinosaur-era eggs was found within the campus of the National University of Comahue (UNCo), in Neuquén, during a monitoring carried out by the Museum of Natural Sciences due to the future construction of new buildings in that place.

Scientists from the university pointed out that the eggs had been rescued to a protected area.

Researcher Juan Porfiri told Télam that they had decided to “carry out a monitoring of a sector of the university campus where new constructions are going to be executed in a very rich fossil deposit where we have found snakes and crocodiles and where we believe there is much more to be done.”

The scholar also explained that “we proposed before the works began, as there is paleontological risk, to do the monitoring in that sector where in previous years we had worked and found fossils.”

He added that “when they cleaned the place they found a nesting area that has many eggs from which we have rescued 73 so far and they continue to appear.”

Porfiri specified that what they found “is a nesting site that is 12 meters long by 5 meters wide.” He also explained that the eggs found at the university were of birds, some 85 million years old, from the Cretaceous period. “They are approximately 5 centimeters from end to end in an elliptical shape, with an extremely smooth shell unlike other dinosaur eggs that have appeared in the city of Neuquén that are rough, round and larger,” he went on.

The geological formation of the finding is called “Bajo de la Carpa” and “85 million years ago it was a place with dunes and small lagoons with a semi-arid climate,” explained Porfiri. Rescue efforts will continue in the coming weeks, although many of the materials found are on the site and others have been collected and have already been added to the Museum's collection.

Porfiri stressed that “there are several studies done on these bird eggs, but there are always new contributions through studies that are being made to know well why they are deposited, what form of deposit they have and, in turn, advance in some other types of investigations.“

”The paleontological site of the entire university campus is extremely important because fossil materials always appear,” he explained. Porfiri mentioned fossils found of “Notosuchio” crocodiles, or the “Alvarezsauros”, a family of dinosaurs which first surfaced “at the university campus and then their relatives began to appear in Mongolia, Canada and other parts of the world.”

Students from the UNCo's Geology department participate in the research project. They have been also involved in other initiatives with the Museum of Natural Sciences and the Secretariat for University Policies. “They are university volunteers specializing in paleontology and today they are faced with this opportunity to work on this project,” said Porfiri. The work team is coordinated by Porfiri and his paleontologist colleague Domenica dos Santos.

(Source: Telam)

Chinese Mining company pledges to invest US $ 34 million in lithium plant in northern Argentina
Tuesday, July 6th 2021 - 09:15 UTC
Full article

Ganfeng Lithium is arguably among the largest in the world in the production of lithium and batteries.

A local subsidiary of China's Ganfeng Lithium has purchased a 23-hectare property in the General Güemes Industrial Park in the northwestern Argentine province of Salta, it was announced.

The company reportedly plans to achieve a production capacity of 20 thousand tons of lithium chloride per year under the local franchise Litio Minera Argentina, which is expected to generate 195 jobs.

The Chinese firm has pledged to invest US$34 million in their new plant, which is expected to be operational in five years.

“Today we are moving forward with the acquisition from the province of 23 hectares of land in the General Güemes Industrial Park, which will be used for the construction of a lithium chloride industrial plant,” said Simón Pérez Alsina, Vice President of Litio Minera Argentina.

Ganfeng Lithium is arguably among the largest in the world in the production of lithium and batteries.

The documents related to the purchase of the land to settle the factory were signed Monday by Pérez Alsina on behalf of the developers and Pablo Outes, Coordinator of Liaison and Political Relations of Salta's provincial government.

“It is important the impulse that we can give from the State as an incentive and the control that we exercise over the companies, in the hiring of local workers and the support to SMEs, so that they become suppliers for this activity,” said Outes.

It is estimated that the plant will be fully operational in approximately five years and that the construction process of this industry will have an enormous economic impact at the local level since the vast majority will demand local suppliers.

Pérez Alsina concurred, adding it was company policy to hire local suppliers and labour.

Salta Secretary of Industry, Commerce and Employment Nicolás Avellaneda, highlighted that in the last ten days this is the second company to have purchased a property in the Güemes Industrial Park. “We are satisfied because it is an investment of US $ 34 million and this will bring greater investments, which in the coming years will be reflected,” he said.

Avellaneda also explained that the bidding documents which will allow the construction of the Multimodal Logistics Node in Güemes, adjacent to the Industrial Park and the Free Trade Zone, are to be finalized soon.

“The Logistics Node is approved and endorsed by the World Bank, as an industrial and commercial strategic point for the entire northern region of Argentina and the mining industry will be a part of this great project,” he said.

The Güemes Industrial Park is projected as one of the most important industrial development poles in the Northwest, due to its strategic position within the bi-oceanic corridor.

The realization of the Logistics Node will facilitate logistics and distribution of goods, both for domestic and international trade, while the Dry Port will allow exports directly from the NOA.

ARGENTINA

Paraná river reaches historic lows; worst part far from over
Friday, July 16th 2021 - 

“Clearly there is a climate change,” said Bordet

The Paraná River had descended yet another three centimeters over the last 24 hours in front of the former capital of Argentina named after it (1853-1860) for a total of 17 centimeters below sea level.

It is a key waterway for the export of agricultural items from the Argentine port of Rosario as well as Paraguay's access to the ocean. The current situation is the worst ever for navigation since it reached -1.40 meters in 1944.

The current downspout keeps the river way below its average of 3.10 meters in July by the city of Paraná, currently, the capital of the province of Entre Ríos, where the river reached 0.50 meters in 1971, and 0.0 in 1970 and 2020.

Argentina's National Water Institute (INA) has forecast that a “clearly unfavorable outlook as of September 30 persists, with a certain probability of extending into the subsequent four months, at least.”

The INA also pointed out that July will be “especially critical” for “water intakes for urban consumption, for cooling power generation plants and industrial processes.” It also warned about problems in “river navigation, fish fauna, bank stability” and “exposure to fires on banks and islands.”

Entre Ríos Governor Gustavo Bordet explained that the current situation “generates a lot of concern, it is a historical downspout that impacts drinking water and this is the most urgent thing that concerns us today, in addition to the environmental” issues.

Bordet also explained he was in permanent touch with local mayors along the river bank. He added that “clearly there is a climate change, fundamentally in the headwaters of the rivers with deforestation, and with a change in the soils and in the cropping systems that modify the environmental conditions.”

Entre Ríos Secretary of Agriculture and Livestock of Entre Ríos Lucio Amavet told Télam that the downspout ”had a strong impact on collectors, filleters, transporters and more than 3,000 families of fishermen who make a living from it“, registering ”the lowest export quota of the last 15 years.“

”It is a level never reached, we in Paraná [city] have no memory of something similar and beyond the economic damages, it is an environmental pain that will take years to recover,“ historian, poet, and singer-songwriter Roberto Romani told Télam.

Romani, the author of some 25 books, called on ”the State, the teaching profession, the media, and families to try to convey what it means to live around the river and its importance” once this historic downspout is overcome.

(Source: Télam)

Charges filed against former Argentine President Macri for helping overthrow Evo in Bolivia
Saturday, July 17th 2021 - 

Macri said he was sure of his innocence

Argentine prosecutors have agreed to file charges against former President Mauricio Macri and several senior officials for allegedly supporting the overthrowing of Evo Morales in November 2019.

Former Ministers Patricia Bullrich (Security) and Óscar Aguar (defence) as well as then Argentine Ambassador to Bolivia, Normando Álvarez García are among the accused, together with top-ranking Gendarmería Nacional (Border Guard) chiefs.

Prosecutor Claudio Navas Rial has called for an investigation into whether there was “aggravated smuggling,” due to which he has for now not given in to pressure from the current Government of President Alberto Fernández to demand from Macri a report on the calls between him and the other defendants.

The charges are about the “illegal shipment of weapons and ammunition to Bolivia perpetrated on November 12, 2019, by the national government headed by former President Macri, with the participation of high authorities of the National Executive Power,” it was reported Friday in Buenos Aires.

Macri has said he was “calm” in the face of the accusations against him and sure of his innocence. The complaint is nothing more than “a story, an operation, a mixture of malice and hallucinations of Kirchnerism,” he added.

According to the Bolivian Foreign Ministry of the Government of Luis Arce, the alleged shipment took to La Paz on November 13, 2019, and contained 40,000 cartridges of rubber bullets, five sprays of tear gas, 50 CN gas grenades, 19 CS gas grenades. and 52 HC gas grenades.

Current Argentine Justice Minister Martín Soria also explained that as a result of the accusations, the Bolivian authorities might request Macri's extradition as well as that of all the others involved in the case.

Meanwhile, Bolivian authorities have announced the finding of 29,600 anti-riot bullets allegedly sent by Macri. “The cartridges are undoubtedly Argentine,” Bolivian Police Chief Jhonny Aguilera told the Buenos Aires daily Página 12.

Aguilera also pointed out that the Bolivian Police officer who had received the weapons from the National Gendarmerie had already been identified.

The official also explained the ammunition had been discovered in a police warehouse not far from La Paz.

Earlier this week, Bolivian authorities disclosed what they claim is a thanks note from then Bolivian Air Force Chief Jorge Terceros Lara to the Argentine ambassador upon reception of rubber bullets, grenades and pepper spray.

Macri is currently in Switzerland due to his involvement within football's ruling body FIFA.

According to current Argentine Security Minister Sabina Frederic, the Gendarmería Nacional élite “Alacrán” group which was sent to Bolivia during the uprising against Morales does not use anti-riot weapons but rather lethal weapons, which would explain why the ammunition found remained in storage.

The week after the arrival of the Argentine group there were two massacres, that of Sacaba and that of Sakata.

In the smuggling complaint, Argentina's government has hinted that the ammunition might have been used there.

The case is now under study by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) - created through an agreement between Bolivia and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Navas Rial is the prosecutor in the two smuggling cases (one submitted by the national government and the other by Eduardo Freiler), which are likely to be merged into one at some point.

China rejects any further investigation to COVID-19 origins at the Wuhan lab
Saturday, July 17th 2021 - 

WHO chief Tedros called on Beijing to be transparent, open and cooperate on a second phase of the investigation, to definitively eliminate the lab leak hypothesis.

The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian empathically rejected the theory of the virus leak from the virology lab in Wuhan.

China openly rejected the World Health Organization request for more information, and transparency, regarding an investigation into the origins of the COVID 19 pandemic.

WHO is also under strong pressure to organize an in depth investigation into the pandemic's origin, given the modest results of the organization's team sent to China's Wuhan province last January, where the disease was first reported.

Earlier this week WHO chief Tedros admitted that during the first phase of the investigation, the team of independent international experts did not have access to the raw data of the outbreak of the disease and the suspicion of a lab leak of the virus in China was further reaffirmed.

Tedros thus called on Beijing to be transparent, open and cooperate on a second phase of the investigation, to definitively eliminate the lab leak hypothesis.

However Beijing on Friday pointed out that China had allowed “access to the original data that needed special attention”, although admitting that some of the information “involves personal privacy”.

The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian also empathically rejected the theory of the virus leak from the virology lab in Wuhan.

He added that the team of experts visiting China “had agreed that the hypothesis of a lab leak had led to the virus outbreak is extremely unlikely”, and warned that “the issue should not be politicized”.

Beijing's reaction to such hypothesis has been to blast any such suggestion as politically motivated and unscientific.

But even with ex president Trump's aggressiveness on the issue out of the field, such an option has again resurfaced and Tedros said further investigation could help rule out completely such hypothesis.

Last May president Joe Biden ordered US intelligence agencies to investigate the origin of the pandemic including the hypothesis of a lab leak, which was one of former president Trump's favorite arguments to pound on Beijing. However at the time it was discarded believing it was an extreme right conspiracy theory.

However the hypothesis has again regained headlines following on reports from three scientists at the Wuhan Virology Institute who became seriously ill after visiting a bats' cave in Yunnan.

The theory of a natural origin of the virus, supported by WHO experts and Chinese scientists during their first investigation in Wuhan, argues that the virus from the bats jumped to human beings through some other animal.

Tedros at his conference in Geneva also mentioned that the Delta variant which surfaced in India and has rapidly spread to other countries has become the dominant strain in parts of Europe and the United States, and underlined that the pandemic is far from over.

Sprawling Oregon wildfire, largest of dozens in U.S., continues to grow
By Deborah Bloom and Steve Gorman
METRO US
Posted on July 16, 2021

Firefighters deal with extreme conditions as Bootleg Fire expands, in Orego

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (Reuters) -A sprawling wildfire raging mostly unchecked for over a week in southern Oregon forced firefighters into retreat for a fourth straight day as it expanded to become the state’s fifth largest blaze in more than a century, forestry officials said on Friday.

The Bootleg fire, the biggest among dozens of wildfires flaring across the tinder-dry landscape of the Western United States, has scorched more than 241,000 acres – an area exceeding the land mass of New York City.

Ironically, heavy smoke shrouding much of the region from the fires may act to slightly blunt the effects of yet another heat wave expected this weekend in the Rockies, extending to parts of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado.

The Bootleg blaze has been burning through drought-parched timber and brush in and around the Fremont-Winema National Forest since erupting on July 6 near Klamath Falls, about 250 miles (400 km) south of Portland. The cause is under investigation.

Flames have destroyed at least 21 homes and 54 other structures, authorities said. On Friday, the Oregon Department of Forestry listed 5,000-plus homes as threatened, about 3,000 more than a day earlier.

That figure represents a greater number of communities potentially in harm’s way as the blaze expands, said agency spokesman Marcus Kauffman. Still, fewer dwellings were in immediate danger, especially along the fire’s southern flank where crews had more success.

Consequently, the number of homes under mandatory evacuation declined by about half to just over 200 on Friday, while about 2,700 were placed on stand-by alerts.

Strike teams have carved containment lines around 7% of the fire’s perimeter. But extreme fire growth fueled by low humidity, dry vegetation and gusty winds forced firefighters to withdraw from leading edges of the blaze for a fourth consecutive day on Friday, officials said.

“The Bootleg fire perimeter is more than 200 miles long. That’s an enormous amount of line to build and hold,” incident commander Rob Allen said in a statement.

ANOTHER HEAT WAVE

Allen said hot, dry, windy conditions were expected to worsen over the weekend, while meteorologists forecast the arrival of yet another major Western heat wave, the fourth since early June.

This one, roasting portions of the Northern Rockies and High Plains through Monday, will emanate from a high-pressure ridge building over the Desert Southwest, said National Weather Service meteorologist David Lawrence.


That high-pressure dome may help pull some much-needed moisture into Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and southern Idaho, Lawrence said. A potential downside, however, is the increased chance of dry lightning storms forming in central and northern California ahead of any rain that may fall there, he added.

More than 1,900 firefighters and a dozen helicopters as well as airplane tankers and bulldozers were assigned to the Bootleg fire as demand for personnel and equipment across the Pacific Northwest strained available resources.

The Bootleg ranked as the largest by far of 70 major active wildfires listed on Thursday as having burned more than 1 million acres in 12 states, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, reported. It also stood as the fifth largest on record in Oregon since 1900, according to state forestry figures.

As of Wednesday, the center in Boise put its “national wildland fire preparedness level” at No. 5, the highest of its five-tier scale, meaning most U.S. firefighting resources are currently deployed somewhere across the country.

The situation represented an unusually busy start to the annual fire season, coming amid extremely dry conditions and record-breaking heat that has baked much of the West in recent weeks.

Scientists have said the growing frequency and intensity of wildfires are largely attributable to prolonged drought and increasing bouts of excessive heat that are symptomatic of climate change.

Nearly 70 National Weather Service stations across the West have posted all-time high temperatures this summer, and several hundred record highs for specific dates have also been set, Lawrence said

The Bootleg fire is so large that it generates its own weather. Towering pyrocumulus clouds form from condensed moisture that is sucked up through the fire’s smoke column from burned vegetation and the surrounding atmosphere, and can spawn lightning and high winds.

The sudden “collapse” of one such cloud on Friday spread embers to the east of the main fire zone, prompting additional evacuation notices for two communities, Allen said.

(Reporting by Deborah Bloom in Klamath Falls, Ore.; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by David Gregorio and Leslie Adler)

Firefighters deal with extreme conditions as Bootleg Fire expands, in Oregon

Thousands evacuated as raging wildfires spread in Oregon and US West

Issued on: 17/07/2021 - 

Fire from the Bootleg Fire illuminates smoke at night near Bly, Oregon, July 16, 2021. 

© Payton Bruni, AFP


Firefighters scrambled Friday to control a raging inferno in southeastern Oregon that’s spreading miles a day in windy conditions, one of numerous wildfires across the US West that are straining resources.

Crews had to flee the fire lines late Thursday after a dangerous “fire cloud” started to collapse, threatening them with strong downdrafts and flying embers. An initial review Friday showed the Bootleg Fire destroyed 67 homes and 117 outbuildings overnight in one county. Authorities were still counting the losses in a second county where the flames are surging up to 4 miles (6 kilometers) a day.

The blaze has forced 2,000 people to evacuate and is threatening 5,000 buildings that include homes and smaller structures in a rural area just north of the California border, fire spokeswoman Holly Krake said. Active flames are surging along 200 miles (322 kilometers) of the fire’s perimeter, she said, and it’s expected to merge with a smaller, but equally explosive fire by nightfall.

The Bootleg Fire is now 377 square miles (976 square kilometers) — larger than the area of New York City — and mostly uncontained.

“We’re likely going to continue to see fire growth over miles and miles of active fire line,” Krake said. “We are continuing to add thousands of acres a day, and it has the potential each day, looking forward into the weekend, to continue those 3- to 4-mile runs.”

The inferno has stymied firefighters for a week with erratic winds and extremely dangerous fire behavior, including ominous fire clouds that form from superheated air rising to a height of up to 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the blaze.

“We’re expecting those same exact conditions to continue and worsen into the weekend,” Krake said of the fire-induced clouds.

Early on, the fire doubled in size almost daily, and strong winds Thursday again pushed the flames rapidly. Similar winds gusting up to 30 mph (48 kph) were expected Friday.

Dry conditions and heat waves

It’s burning an area north of the California border that has been gripped by extreme drought, like most of the American West.

Extremely dry conditions and heat waves tied to climate change have swept the region, making wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years, and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

The blaze was most active on its northeastern flank, pushed by winds from the south toward the rural communities of Summer Lake and Spring Lake. Paisley, to the east of the fire, was also at risk. All the towns are in Lake County, a remote area of lakes and wildlife refuges with a total population of about 8,000.

The Bootleg Fire is one of at least a dozen major fires burning in Washington state, Oregon and California as a siege of wildfires takes hold across the drought-stricken West. There were 70 active large fires and complexes of multiple fires that have burned nearly 1,659 square miles (4,297 square kilometers) in the US, the National Interagency Fire Center said.

In the Pacific Northwest, firefighters say they are facing conditions more typical of late summer or fall than early July.

About 200 firefighters were battling but had little control over the 17-square-mile (44-square-kilometer) Red Apple Fire near the Washington city of Wenatchee renowned for its apples. The flames were threatening apple orchards and an electrical substation, but no buildings have been lost, officials said.

In California, the Tamarack Fire in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest quickly grew to 2.5 square miles (6.5 square kilometers) on Friday, prompting evacuations in the Markleeville area in Alpine County. The blaze prompted the cancelation of Saturday’s “Death Ride,” a 103-mile (165.76-kilometer) bicycle ride in the so-called California Alps over three Sierra Nevada mountain passes.

(AP)

 

Europe floods: Death toll rises above 150

17 Jul, 2021

The death toll from disastrous flooding in western Europe rose above 150 as rescue workers toiled to clear up the devastation and prevent further damage.

Police said that more than 90 people are now known to have died in western Germany's Ahrweiler county, one of the worst-hit areas, and more casualties are feared.

A destroyed house is seen in Erftstadt-Blessem, Germany. Photo / AP

On Friday, authorities gave a death toll of 63 for the whole of Rhineland-Palatinate state, where Ahrweiler is located.

Another 43 people were confirmed dead in neighbouring North Rhine-Westphalia state, Germany's most populous, and 20 others were killed across the border in Belgium.

By Saturday, waters were receding across much of the affected regions, but officials feared that more bodies might be found in cars and trucks that were swept away.

A woman walks up the stairs in her damaged house after flooding in Ensival, Vervier, Belgium. Photo / A

A man looks at a car that is covered in Hagen, Germany. Photo / AP

Debris of houses and trees surround houses in Schuld, Germany. Photo / AP

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier planned to travel Saturday to Erftstadt, southwest of Cologne, where a harrowing rescue effort unfolded on Friday as people were trapped when the ground gave way and their homes collapsed.

 

UN Agrees To $6 Billion Peacekeeping Budget, Narrowly Averting Shutdown

By Giulia Campos on June 30 2021 

United Nations members convene to discuss $6 billion budget to their 12 peacekeeping operations.

United Nations member states agreed on Tuesday to a $6 billion budget to avert a shutdown of global peacekeeping missions. 

The 193-member U.N. General Assembly budget committee agreed to the peacekeeping budget for the year through June 30, 2022. It will formally be adopted on Wednesday. 

There are currently 12 peacekeeping operations led by the Department of Peace Operations, most of which are in Africa and the Middle East. These operations are crucial in the maintenance of international peace and security.

U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said if they missed their June 30 negotiation deadline, missions would be severely limited and unable to carry out such measures as protecting civilians, helping tackle COVID-19 and supporting political efforts and mediation. T

The United States is the largest contributor to the peacekeeping budget, responsible for about 28%. China follows with 15.2% and Japan at 8.5% of contributions.

UK

After Sarah Everard: What the case revealed about violence against women

The guilty plea of Everard’s murderer was welcome. But we have also learned much about the failures in our policing, politics and public understanding of how men harm women.

BY LAURA BATES

NEW STATESMAN
FEMINISM
14 JULY 2021

Inside the Old Bailey’s Court 12 on Friday 9 July, the former Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens appeared by video link from Belmarsh high-security prison in south-east London. Wearing a blue sweatshirt and hunched forwards to hide his face from the camera, he spoke only briefly to enter his plea of guilty to the murder of the 33-year-old marketing executive Sarah Everard in March this year. His barrister told the court that Couzens had told the defence team he would “bear the burden” of his actions for the rest of his life, and that he deserved to be punished – a claim likely to be of little comfort to the members of Everard’s family in the room.

Outside the building, four of Couzens’ former colleagues stood guard in police uniform. Their presence seemed unusually meaningful, as the police response to Everard’s disappearance was central to the scrutiny the case attracted, framing the narrative and playing a major role in the wider significance that her death assumed. Days after Everard went missing on 3 March, women in Clapham, south London, where she was last seen, told reporters that officers had visited them at home and warned them not to go out alone, that it was a time to be “vigilant”. On social media, there was anger: surely, women argued, it should be the freedoms of men committing criminal acts that were curtailed, not theirs?

It wasn’t only officers who misjudged the mood. When Everard’s remains were found a week later, the Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick made a televised address in which she said, “I know Londoners will want to know that it is, thankfully, incredibly rare for a woman to be abducted from our streets.” At the same time, women across the country were mourning Everard’s death, placing it on a continuum of sexism, harassment and abuse that marks their daily lives. As the Labour MP Jess Phillips pointed out in the Commons, it was difficult to describe extreme violence against women as “rare” when six other women and a little girl were reportedly killed by men in the week after Everard’s disappearance. There was dissonance everywhere: on 11 March the front page of the Times read, “Police insist women safe as remains discovered”, next to a picture of Couzens, who had just been arrested over Everard’s death.

It had emerged that Couzens had been reported to the police for indecent exposure just days before Everard’s disappearance. And after Couzens pleaded guilty to murder, it was revealed he had been reported to Kent Police in 2015 for indecent exposure (an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct has been launched into the alleged failure to investigate, and into other incidents related to Couzens across several police forces). Had these reports been taken seriously, many women wondered, would Couzens have been a serving officer the day he abducted Everard?

[see also: Wayne Couzens’ guilty plea is a moment for anger, not relief]

Following Everard’s disappearance, women began to share their stories online in an outpouring of grief and rage – at the near-misses, the close calls, all the times we made it home safe but felt that things could have ended very differently. There was fury that every woman has a story like this. I thought about the man who sat opposite me on a quiet bus, reached his hand under his coat and began to masturbate, his eyes burning into mine. I remembered the man who ran up behind me on the pavement one night and forced his fingers, suddenly and painfully, into my crotch without warning. The man who started running his hand up my thighs on a crowded night bus. The man in the dark green car who slowed down one sunny morning to tell me he knew exactly what time I walked down that particular street and on which days. The man who turned to his friend as I passed them on a dark street and said: “I’d hold a knife to that.” The van whose door slid open as it went past me, the men inside reaching out and “joking” about pulling me in. If this list sounds shocking, it isn’t. It is average. Like so many other women, I wondered how close my story had come to ending as Everard’s did.

That shared grief and rage found expression in a proposed vigil for Everard on Clapham Common. When the organisers were threatened with legal action (for breaking Covid restrictions), public anger at the apparent failure of the police to grasp the scale of the issue grew. In a series of extraordinarily tone-deaf statements, the Met underlined the importance of “safety”, urging women to “find a safe alternative way to express their views”. A number of large-scale protests had already taken place in London in 2021, including several anti-lockdown marches. Yet at this vigil, where women peacefully held candles, officers moved in and were photographed wrestling attendees to the ground. No such scenes of violent police intervention have emerged in recent weeks, as mostly male football fans have gathered in their thousands in public spaces, also in defiance of Covid restrictions.

***

She was just walking home. She did all the right things. In the wake of Everard’s disappearance, these words trended thousands of times on Twitter. They were sentences that revealed the logic behind the enormous public response to her death. Everard matched the societal picture of the perfect victim: a young, beautiful, middle-class woman who had taken every precaution we wrongly expect of women and girls. Don’t walk home too late. Don’t take a badly lit route. Don’t be drunk, or get in an unlicensed minicab. Don’t dress “provocatively”. So many women related to those strictures, and followed those rules; why, when we were making every effort, were women still disappearing?

The answer, of course, is that the problem doesn’t lie with individual women. It lies with male violence and with the system supposedly designed to protect us. Statistically speaking, our cultural obsession with teaching women to avoid sexual violence is nonsensical. Women around the world are attacked at all different times of day, wearing all kinds of clothing, at all different ages. There isn’t a magic trick for keeping yourself safe.

The only thing those women will all have in common is that they came into contact with a man who committed a deliberate act of violence. But it is more comfortable to believe in the fairy tale that we can spin our girls a spell of magical protection, woven from a thousand little restrictions to their liberty, than to admit the difficult truth. Around 90 per cent of rapists are already known to their victims: a woman is probably safer in public, drunk, at 2am, in a short skirt, than in her pyjamas in her own bed.

Yet the myths persist. I have led school sessions on sexual consent in which boys have asked me, “Why don’t girls just stop wearing short skirts? Everyone knows a man can’t stop once he’s turned on.” This logic is powerfully persistent in a world where the police continue to urge women to stay vigilant, or to stay home to be on the safe side.

Some of this same logic was at play in the response to Everard’s case, and in those Twitter hashtags. The anger was real – but what did it tell us about the women who weren’t “just walking home”, or who didn’t “do all the right things”? Are their deaths less tragic? There appears to be a certain threshold for public sympathy with victims of male violence.

While media coverage of Everard’s case surged, there were far fewer column inches devoted to Julia James, 53, who was murdered while walking her dog near her home in Kent in April. Or to Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, the sisters murdered in a park in Wembley, north-west London, in June last year. Their mother, Rev Mina Smallman, told the BBC soon after their deaths that the police hadn’t responded urgently enough to her children’s disappearance: “They didn’t care because they looked at my daughter’s address and they thought they knew who she was. A black woman who lives on a council estate.” Their bodies were found instead by Nicole’s boyfriend.

How do we move forward, when these cultural myths and institutional prejudices remain so entrenched? Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, tells me she sees a glimmer of hope. “There is at last some recognition of the epidemic of violence against women and girls,” she says, adding that any shift in public understanding needs to be matched by change in the way violence is policed and prosecuted. “The extent to which transformative changes to the criminal justice system will materialise is yet to be seen. Many of the recommendations from the government’s rape review, for example, come without an effective accountability framework, or the multi-year funding they need.” Simon adds that the conceit of the perfect, blameless victim remains a powerful obstacle: “It relies on harmful sexist and also racist myths and stereotypes.” Women who do not fit this mould – and many don’t – face far greater challenges in accessing justice.

***

It is far easier to blame individuals than it is to fix a system that is utterly broken. It is not, as Commissioner Dick recently claimed, a matter of there being an “occasional bad ’un” in the police force. Almost 600 sexual misconduct allegations were made against Metropolitan Police officers between 2012 and 2018. In the past two years, more than 125 women have reported domestic abuse at the hands of partners who are police officers to the UK charity the Centre for Women’s Justice. The Met is currently investigating allegations that a serving officer raped two female colleagues.

In a devastating irony, a woman who attended the vigil for Everard told the BBC she was ignored by police when she tried to report an incident of indecent exposure on her way home. She alleges an officer told her, “We’ve had enough with the rioters tonight, we’re not dealing with it.” What might that offender, emboldened by his apparent impunity, have gone on to do next?

[see also: Are UK police forces institutionally misogynist?]

Last month, the government published its review of the way rape is prosecuted in England and Wales, and found deep systemic failures. As a crime, it has effectively been decriminalised, with just 1.4 per cent of the cases reported to police resulting in a charge or summons.

Nor is it only the criminal justice system that repeatedly fails women: from our media to our male-dominated politics, those with the power to create change too often refuse to acknowledge the scale of the issue, and its insidious roots in social and cultural norms. In the wake of Everard’s disappearance, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme invited on the criminologist Marian FitzGerald to emphasise that men were at a greater risk of experiencing violence than women. “I think I’m entitled to say, as a woman, we shouldn’t pander to stereotypes and get hysterical. Let’s not get this out of proportion,” she told Nick Robinson.

In parliament the same month, the Labour MP and shadow solicitor general Ellie Reeves called on the Attorney General Michael Ellis to take stronger action on sexual violence, and was reprimanded for her tone: “I don’t think that the emotive language that [Reeves] uses is appropriate at all,” Ellis told the Commons. Boris Johnson ludicrously suggested introducing more undercover police officers in nightclubs to help protect women. His assertion in parliament, two weeks after Everard’s death, that we must tackle “casual everyday sexism” was meaningless: here was a man who once promised that voting Conservative would “cause your wife to have bigger breasts”, and who advised his successor as editor of the Spectator to ignore its female publisher: “Pat her on the bottom and send her on her way.”

There was another phrase that trended in the days after Everard’s disappearance: #NotAllMen. “Why do men do what we do?” tweeted Nazir Afzal, former chief prosecutor for north-west England, after Couzens’ guilty plea. Within four minutes, another man had replied: “They aren’t men. Leave me out of it.” There will always be a significant minority of men who react defensively in this context, seeing themselves as the victims. If their numbers swell in the wake of a case such as Everard’s, it is because the strength of the public reaction scares them into believing that something might actually change. Wrongly, they perceive the notion of progress towards gender equality as a threat.

They needn’t worry. In the decade that I have spent campaigning for women’s rights, it has become clear to me that the media and political spotlight flickers restlessly and usually all too briefly on the issue of violence against women, and that big promises and grand plans quickly fall away once the outcry quietens down. Speaking outside the Old Bailey last week, Commissioner Dick said she was “sickened, angered and devastated” by Couzens’ crimes. But what of the hundreds of complaints of sexual offences against other Met officers? Such strong words will be meaningful only when they are matched with strong action. The change we need to see is in the system itself, not in individual women’s behaviour. And until the people in positions of institutional power recognise this, and the scale of the problem, women will continue to pay with their lives.

Laura Bates is the author of five books, including “Men Who Hate Women” and “Everyday Sexism” (both Simon & Schuster)

THE CONFEDERACY NEVER DIED

SHOCK POLL: Two in Three Southern Republicans Want to Secede From the United States

By Colby Hall

Jul 15th, 2021

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty

A shocking YouGov poll found that 66% of Republicans in southern states want to secede from the United States.

The survey, by YouGov in conjunction with BrightLineWatch, looked at the current political climate in America. The most stunning question concerned support or opposition for the state in which respondents lived in “seceding from the United States to join a new union with [list of states in new union]?”

Five prospective new unions were constructed (by region) “and inserted the relevant states for respondents into the question wording above. For example, a participant from California in our survey would be asked about joining a new union along with Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, and Alaska,” explains BrightLineWatch. These sets are provided below:

Pacific: California, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, and Alaska
Mountain: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico
South: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee
Heartland: Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, and Nebraska
Northeast: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia

As you can see in the graphic below, the Southern state respondents embraced the notion of secession most aggressively. 43% of those who live in Mountain states were in support of secession:


BrightLineWatch appeared to recognize the controversial and divisive nature of these results and added the following caveat/caution:

As in our previous report, we caution that this survey item reflects initial reactions by respondents about an issue that they are very unlikely to have considered carefully. Secession is a genuinely radical proposition and expressions of support in a survey may map only loosely onto willingness to act toward that end. We include the question because it taps into respondents’ commitments to the American political system at the highest level and with reference to a concrete alternative (regional unions).

A similar poll was conducted just weeks after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and results were similar. But six months later, any notion that political frustrations have cooled seems to be misguided.