Jihadists flood pro-Trump social network with propaganda

GETTR, the new platform started by members of the former president’s inner circle, is awash with beheading videos and extremist content.


The proliferation of terrorist propaganda on GETTR underscores the challenges facing former President Donald Trump and his followers in the wake of his ban from the mainstream social media platforms. | Jenny Kane/AP Photo


By MARK SCOTT and TINA NGUYEN

08/02/2021 04:30 AM EDT

Updated: 08/02/2021 04:42 PM EDT

Just weeks after its launch, the pro-Trump social network GETTR is inundated with terrorist propaganda spread by supporters of Islamic State, according to a POLITICO review of online activity on the fledgling platform.

The social network — started a month ago by members of former President Donald Trump’s inner circle — features reams of jihadi-related material, including graphic videos of beheadings, viral memes that promote violence against the West and even memes of a militant executing Trump in an orange jumpsuit similar to those used in Guantanamo Bay.


The rapid proliferation of such material is placing GETTR in the awkward position of providing a safe haven for jihadi extremists online as it attempts to establish itself as a free speech MAGA-alternative to sites like Facebook and Twitter.

It underscores the challenges facing Trump and his followers in the wake of his ban from the mainstream social media platforms following the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots.

Islamic State “has been very quick to exploit GETTR,” said Moustafa Ayad, executive director for Africa, the Middle East and Asia at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks online extremism, who first discovered the jihadi accounts and shared his findings with POLITICO.

“On Facebook, there was on one of these accounts that I follow that is known to be Islamic State, which said ‘Oh, Trump announced his new platform. Inshallah, all the mujahideen will exploit that platform,’” he added. “The next day, there were at least 15 accounts on GETTR that were Islamic State.”

While GETTR does not provide access to its data to track the spread, or virality, of such extremist material on its platform, POLITICO found at least 250 accounts that had posted regularly on the platform since early July. Many followed each other, and used hashtags to promote the jihadi material to this burgeoning online community.

In the months since he was kicked off Twitter and suspended from Facebook, Trump has sought alternative ways to engage with his base online. While his supporters decamped to other online venues — including the social network Parler, where they could express themselves without facing increased scrutiny — Trump’s own effort to create an internet bullhorn has stalled.

In May, he launched a blog — titled “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” — but it was taken down just weeks later amid widespread ridicule and poor readership.

So far, GETTR has been the highest-profile pro-Trump platform launch, given the names behind it: Jason Miller, former Trump spokesperson, is its chief executive, and the site is partially funded by Miles Guo, the business partner of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Trump, himself, is not directly involved in the operation, nor has he officially signed up to the platform. The social network has touted a “free speech” policy that, purportedly, would allow users to fully express themselves without the censorship of tech giants.

The newest MAGA app is tied to a Bannon-allied Chinese billionaire
BY TINA NGUYEN

Yet this MAGA exodus to fringe social networks that champion unfettered speech has also caught the attention of supporters of Islamic State and other jihadist groups, according to extremism experts.

In response to questions about jihadi material being shared on GETTR, Miller told POLITICO that ISIS was attacking the MAGA movement because Trump had destroyed the group militarily. “The only ISIS members still alive are keyboard warriors hiding in caves and eating dirt cookies,” he said in a text message.

These terrorist communities have similarly faced widespread removals from the largest social networks, which have often promoted their clampdown on Islamic extremists as an example of how the tech companies are policing their global platforms for harmful content.

In response, Islamic State supporters have quickly shifted gears, looking for new spaces online where they can spread their hateful material, as well as piggybacking on tactics and platforms first used in the United States.

“Is Daesh here?” asked an account whose profile photo was of the Islamic State flag account, using the Arabic acronym for jihadi movement. The replies were in the affirmative, with some praising the social network for its willingness to host such content.

Days after GETTR was launched on July 1, Islamic State supporters began urging their followers on other social networks to sign up to the pro-Trump network, in part to take the jihadi fight directly to MAGA nation.

“If this app reaches the expected success, which is mostly probable, it should be adopted by followers and occupied in order to regain the glory of Twitter, may God prevail,” one Islamic State account on Facebook wrote on July 6.

Some of the jihadi posts on GETTR from early July were eventually taken down, highlighting that the pro-Trump platform had taken at least some steps to remove the harmful material.

Larger platforms like Facebook and Twitter now work via the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, an industry-funded nonprofit which shares terrorist content between companies — via a database of extremist material accessible to its members — so that the material can be taken down as quickly as possible.

GETTR has yet to sign up.

In the platform’s terms of service, it outlines how offensive or illegal content, including that related to terrorism, may be removed from GETTR. “This may include content identified as personal bullying, sexual abuse of a child, attacking any religion or race, or content containing video or depictions of beheading,” a clause reads.

Though the site has had notoriously spotty luck in moderating users on the platform — in its early days, it was flooded with a wide spectrum of pornography — Miller has drawn the line at doxxing, or sharing other people’s addresses, or advocating physical harm.

In interviews, GETTR’s chief executive has touted the site’s content moderation policy, primarily based on a combination of human monitoring and algorithms.

Four days after POLITICO submitted several requests for comment to GETTR, many of these accounts and videos are still up.

The overall amount of terrorist propaganda that POLITICO found on GETTR represented a mere fraction of the mostly right-wing content — which also includes the promotion of the Proud Boys white supremacist movement. More mainstream conservative influencers and policymakers like Sean Hannity and Mike Pompeo also regularly post on the platform.

Still, the fact that such jihadi material was readily available on the social network, and GETTR’s failure to clamp down on such extremism, underlined the difficulties that the company faces in balancing its free speech ethos with growing demands to stop terrorist-related material from finding an audience online.

“The content we’re coming across on small platforms is basically similar to the content that is being automatically removed from Facebook and Twitter,” said Adam Hadley, director of Tech Against Terrorism, a nonprofit organization that works with smaller social networks, but not GETTR, in combating the rise of extremist content online.

“Many of the smaller platforms do not have the resources to automatically remove this type of content,” he added. His organization’s membership includes Tumblr and Wordpress, the blogging platform.

Extremism analysts who reviewed POLITICO’s findings said that Islamic State supporters’ use of GETTR appeared to be an initial test to see if their content would escape detection or be subject to content moderation.

In their ongoing cat-and-mouse fight with Western national security agencies and Silicon Valley platforms, jihadi groups are quickly evolving their tactics to stay one step ahead of online removals.

“The terrorist organizations are always experimenting, because they're fighting a real battle to continue to have access to public spaces to spread their propaganda,” said Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab and the author of “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.”

So far, Islamic State supporters are enjoying their incursion into GETTR and the possible new audience they could reach. “We will come at you with slaying and explosions you worshippers of the cross,” wrote an account whose name referenced the extremist group, adding: “How great is freedom of expression.”

Rym Momtaz contributed to this report from Paris.

 

Decline in CO2 cooled Earth's climate more than 30 million years ago

by University of Bristol

Tree stomp in lignite deposits. Credit: Vittoria Lauretano

New research led by the University of Bristol demonstrates that a decline in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 played a major role in driving Earth's climate from a warm greenhouse into a cold icehouse world around 34 million years ago. This transition could be partly reversed in the next centuries due to the anthropogenic rise in CO2.

Between 40 and 34 million years ago, Earth's climate underwent a major climatic transition. Before 40 million years ago, during the Eocene, Antarctica was covered by lush forests, but by 34 million years ago, in the Oligocene, these forests had been replaced by thick continental ice sheets, as we know Antarctica today. The main driver of this greenhouse to icehouse transition is widely debated, and little information is available about how climate changed on land. An international team led by Dr. Vittoria Lauretano and Dr. David Naafs at the University of Bristol used molecular fossils preserved in ancient coals to reconstruct land temperature across this transition.

The team used a new approach based on the distribution of bacterial lipids preserved in ancient wetland deposits. It was developed as part of the ERC-funded project, The Greenhouse Earth System (TGRES), which also funded this study. The TGRES PI and paper co-author Rich Pancost, from the University's School of Chemistry, explained: 'These compounds originally comprised the cell membranes of bacteria living in ancient wetlands, with their structures changing slightly to help the bacteria adapt to changing temperature and acidity. Those compounds can then be preserved for tens of millions of years, allowing us to reconstruct those ancient environmental conditions.'

Lignite mine in South East Australia. Credit: Vittoria Lauretano

To reconstruct temperature change across the greenhouse to icehouse transition, the team applied their new approach to coal deposits from the southeast Australian Gippsland Basin. These remarkable deposits span over 10 million years of Earth history and have been extensively characterized by collaborators on the study from the University of Melbourne, Dr. Vera Korasidis and Prof. Malcolm Wallace.

The new data show that land temperatures cooled alongside the ocean's and by a similar magnitude of about 3C. To explore causes of that temperature decline, the team conducted climate model simulations, Crucially, only simulations that included a decline in atmospheric CO2 could reproduce a cooling consistent with the temperature data reconstructed from the coals.

These results provide further evidence that atmospheric CO2 plays a crucial role in driving Earth's climate, including the formation of the Antarctic ice sheet.

"Eocene to Oligocene terrestrial Southern Hemisphere cooling caused by declining pCO2" is published in Nature Geoscience.

Throwing a warm sheet over our understanding of ice and climate

---

More information: Eocene to Oligocene terrestrial Southern Hemisphere cooling caused by declining pCO2, Nature Geoscience (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-021-00788-z , www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00788-z

Journal information: Nature Geoscience 

Provided by University of Bristol 

FIDE CHESS WORLD CUP

Alexandra Kosteniuk triumphs in Women’s World Cup

by Carlos Alberto Colodro

8/2/2021 – A draw with white was enough for Alexandra Kosteniuk to claim victory at the first edition of the Women’s World Cup in Sochi. Aleksandra Goryachkina could not create imbalances in her must-win game and ended up agreeing to a draw in a lost position. In the match for third place, Tan Zhongyi and Anna Muzychuk drew again and will decide their match in tiebreaks. Meanwhile, in the open section, Sergey Karjakin moved on to the final, where he will face either Magnus Carlsen or Jan-Krzysztof Duda, who will return to the playing hall on Tuesday to face off in rapid and blitz tiebreakers. | Photo: Anastasiia Korolkova



A fantastic performance

Alexandra Kosteniuk’s showing at the first edition of the Women’s World Cup was nothing short of dazzling. A fixture in the elite women’s circuit for over 20 years, the Russian won the knockout event without ever needing to play a single rapid tiebreaker. In fact, she scored 10/12 points on her way to a memorable triumph — knocking out Deysi Cori, Pia Cramling, Mariya Muzychuk, Valentina Gunina and Tan Zhongyi before defeating top seed Aleksandra Goryachkina in the final.

After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 g6! leads to the so-called "Accelerated Dragon Defense". On this DVD the Russian grandmaster and top women player Nadezhda Kosintseva reveals the secrets of her favourite opening.

Twenty years ago, a 17-year-old Kosteniuk reached the final of the 2001 Women’s World Chess Championship — a 64-player knockout event — where she lost to Zhu Chen in a drawless 8-game match. Seven years later, in 2008, she defeated Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan in the final of a similar event to become the women’s world champion, a title she kept until 2010. Now, at 37, she defeated the latest challenger to the world crown to get a spot in the Candidates Tournament, where she will fight against 7 highly motivated opponents to get the right to challenge Ju Wenjun in a match for the Women’s World Championship.

Kosteniuk’s stellar performance gained her a stunning 42.8 rating points, which prompted her to climb 10 spots in the women’s world ranking. Simply an extraordinary achievement!



The woman of the hour — Alexandra Kosteniuk | Photo: Eric Rosen

Twice was the tournament’s champion in real danger of losing throughout the event — in her game with white against Gunina, and in Sunday’s first encounter of the final against Goryachkina. Remarkably, she came back from behind to score full points on both occasions!

Only needing a draw with white on Monday, the experienced grandmaster kept things under control against her younger compatriot. In desperate need of a win, Goryachkina tried to keep the game going in an opposite-coloured bishop endgame, only to soon find herself in a lost position:

Kosteniuk vs. Goryachkina - Game 2

As endgame specialist Karsten Müller points out in his annotations below, entering a race with 42...Bc7 is too risky for Black, while 42...Bxh2 would have led to a draw. Of course, Goryachkina had no option and looked for a last chance to provoke a mistake by her opponent.

Not long after, White had a completely winning position, but the compatriots nonetheless sensibly agreed to a draw, which meant Kosteniuk had won the demanding event that started exactly three weeks ago.

Alexandra Kosteniuk triumphs in Women’s World Cup | ChessBase

Braid: Poll shows UCP faces long climb out of persistent unpopularity

Author of the article: Don Braid • Calgary Herald
Publishing date:Jul 31, 2021 • 

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney at a press conference in Calgary. PHOTO BY POSTMEDIA FILE
Article content

Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative government remains far behind the NDP in both popularity and cold hard cash.

A new poll for Postmedia from Leger Research shows 39 per cent of Albertans would vote for the New Democrats, and only 29 per cent for the UCP.

Current contribution numbers filed with Elections Alberta are even more startling.

In the first six months of this year, the NDP collected $2.7 million. The UCP brought in $1.2 million

If this trend continues, the NDP will have a stupendous war chest for the election coming in about 20 months.

Leader Rachel Notley’s party raked in nearly as much in the past three months ($1.5 million) as they spent to win the 2015 election ($1.6 million).

The NDP not only has more donations but about twice as many individual donors as the UCP.

Money trouble always makes parties nervous, even when they face virtually no opposition. The late Progressive Conservative premier Don Getty was gently encouraged to step aside in 1992 after fundraising fell off. He did.

The more visible problem for Kenney is weak approval numbers. This has shown up for months in results from several pollsters.

The latest findings from Leger remain bleak for the government.

First, there is widespread general discontent. Fifty-four per cent of Albertans say the province is going in the wrong direction.

The UCP scores behind the NDP in Calgary, Edmonton and the rest of Alberta.

Only in the age group over 65 is the UCP more popular than the NDP (47 per cent to 39 per cent).

The NDP appears to have a lock on most younger Albertans.

For those between 35 and 44, the NDP has 45 per cent approval and the UCP only 18 per cent.

The NDP leads among men, with 38 per cent to 33 per cent. Female voters favour the NDP by 40 per cent to 26 per cent.

Leger executive vice-president Ian Large says “the numbers are bad for the UCP.”

“But I think you’ve seen the low point in UCP support. There are small changes, incremental, but this could essentially be the darkness before the dawn.”

For instance, when only decided and leaning voters are considered, UCP support rises to 34 per cent. This is still well behind the NDP but appears to be trending upward.

Also, 51 per cent of voters say they could change their minds about whom they will support. Some younger voters, although leaning hard toward the NDP right now, are quite open to switching.

Large says, “there is lots of potentially good news on the horizon for the UCP. Oil prices are up, there’s the Trans Mountain pipeline — all that perfect storm for recovery is there.

“There is the potential for the numbers to keep rising. They’re only two years into the mandate, so they have another two years to pull it together.”

But some serious UCP challenges are starting to look entrenched.

“The NDP shouldn’t be leading in Calgary,” Large adds. “It just shouldn’t be happening. The (UCP) problem runs very deep, far beyond just a few people on the right.”

More troubles seem inevitable. Leaks from the Allan commission report on foreign funding of anti-oil campaigns show there has been no wrongdoing — an expensive finding sharply at odds with the premier’s rhetoric on oilpatch opponents.

Also, Leger’s polling was completed before this week’s abrupt shift in pandemic policy. By mid-August, the province will sharply cut testing and even allow people infected with COVID-19 to circulate with others.

“The announcement has created a great deal of confusion and concern,” says Large. “With the new rules, kids don’t have to wear masks, so you have a very big contingent of worried parents who are sending their kids to school.”

If the UCP is to get out of this jam, they have to start soon. The months do fly by.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Calgary Herald.

Twitter: @DonBraid

Facebook: Don Braid Politics

Alberta NDP fundraises double the donations of the UCP in first six months of 2021

NDP raises $2.7 million, UCP raises $1.3 million


Janet French · CBC News · Posted: Jul 30, 2021

So far this year, the Alberta NDP, led by Rachel Notley, right, are out-fundraising the governing United Conservative Party, led by Premier Jason Kenney, left. (Mike Symington/CBC)


The Alberta NDP has out-fundraised the governing United Conservative Party for the third consecutive quarter, new figures show.

It's a pattern one political scientist calls "remarkable" for a governing Canadian conservative party.

"These 2021 numbers are staggering," said Mount Royal University Prof. Duane Bratt.

For the first six months of this year, the NDP has pulled in about $2.7 million — more than double the UCP's fundraising of $1.3 million during the same time.

He said it's a noteworthy reversal from 2018, when the NDP was in government and UCP donations were twice as high as their political foes.

Conservative, governing parties tend to lead in fundraising, since many of their supporters are business people, who can afford to donate the maximum amounts allowed, Bratt said.

The governing party's challenges are numerous, Bratt said.

"They've got a problem in caucus," he said. "They're already removed two people. There remains some discontent. They've got a problem with the public, in public opinion polls, and they've got a problem with their donors."

Alberta NDP would likely form majority if election held today, new poll suggests

Alberta MLAs Todd Loewen, Drew Barnes booted from UCP caucus

No one with the UCP responded to phone calls or emails on Thursday afternoon.

Bratt says while some financial support may have migrated to the NDP, many disenchanted voters may just keep their wallets closed, he said.
Unpopular government policies prompt NDP donations

Last year, fundraising by the two parties was on par, with NDP donations surging near the end of 2020. Both parties brought in slightly more than $5 million each.

Although the NDP has had more lucrative quarters during the last four years, the party claimed the latest figures from Elections Alberta as a victory.

"I think that they show that Rachel Notley and the Alberta NDP have momentum and have sustained momentum," provincial secretary Brandon Stevens said. "And I think Albertans are seeing Rachel as a leader who's ready to be premier and who has a positive vision of where this province needs to go coming out of the pandemic."

Patio dinner fallout shows new fractures in UCP caucus, pollster says

Donations are growing on multiple fronts, he said. An unpopular policy or decision by the government will often prompt a rash of one-time, small donations from frustrated members of the public, he said.

Since being booted from government in 2019, the Alberta NDP has more than doubled the amount of money it brings in from monthly donations, he said. They also toned down fundraising efforts during the heights of the pandemic.

Stevens said the party is using the money to hire more staff, conduct research, invest in technological campaign tools, and save for the next provincial election campaign, expected in 2023.

In a distant third place for fundraising during the second quarter of this year is the Pro-Life Alberta Political Association, according to Elections Alberta.

With more than $124,000 in donations so far, the anti-abortion group has out-fundraised the Wildrose Independence Party of Alberta, the Alberta Party and the Alberta Liberals. The pro-life party declared no donations between 2018 and 2020.

Bratt said they are a likely beneficiary of people who feel disenchanted with the UCP.

He said the UCP can catch up on fundraising in the second half of this year, which is likely the goal of provincial tours this summer by the premier and cabinet ministers.

The governing party is aiming to win back support by re-opening the economy and dropping pandemic restrictions faster than any other Canadian jurisdiction, he said.

Bratt says what the public won't know until next year is how much money is flowing to political action committees — third-party political advertisers who can accept corporate and union donations, unlike individual politicians.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Janet French
Janet French is a provincial affairs reporter with CBC Edmonton. She has also worked at the Edmonton Journal and Saskatoon StarPhoenix. You can reach her at janet.french@cbc.ca

Alberta NDP leading in support from voters with 39 per cent compared to 29 per cent for UCP: poll

Author of the article: Ashley Joannou
Publishing date: Jul 31, 2021 • 

Alberta NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley met with approximately 100 nurses and supporters who staged a protest rally outside the Sturgeon Community Hospital in St. Albert, Alberta on Monday July 26, 2021. They were protesting staff shortages and bed closures at the hospital.

PHOTO BY LARRY WONG /Postmedia

Lifting COVID-19 restrictions was not enough to give the UCP government much of a bump in voter support as the NDP has kept a significant lead across Alberta, a new poll suggests.

An online Leger poll of 1,377 Albertans conducted July 22-26 for Postmedia found 39 per cent threw their support behind Rachel Notley’s NDP while 29 per cent support Jason Kenney and the UCP if an election were held today. One in seven Albertans said they were undecided.

More than half (54 per cent) of Albertans said they feel the province is headed in the wrong direction, the poll indicates, with only 25 per cent responding that the province is heading in the right direction.

The NDP is leading with voters across the province. The widest gap, unsurprisingly, is the party stronghold of Edmonton at 45 per cent support versus 28 per cent for the UCP.

One of the things that’s different this time around is that Notley is a former premier sitting as leader of the Opposition, said Ian Large, Leger’s executive vice-president. Unlike in almost all previous cases where a party will replace its leader after losing an election, Notley is a known entity to Albertans, he said.

“The devil-you-don’t-know persona can’t be applied to her because we know who she is,” he said in an interview.

The numbers represent a recent trend in the province with the two largest political parties sitting at an unchanged level of support for the last six to nine months, Large said. A March 2021 Leger poll found 40 per cent support for the NDP compared to 20 per cent for the UCP.

The latest poll was done after Alberta became the first Canadian province to drop almost all major pandemic restrictions at the beginning of July.

“(The polling results are) not unexpected. What I had expected was maybe a little more lift for the UCP with the faster reopening and Calgary Stampede and things getting back to normal,” Large said.

It is common for political parties to see low voter support in the middle of their term, Large said, adding that heavy criticism of the government’s COVID-19 response has not helped.

Despite the trend in the polls, the minds of Albertans are far from made up. About half (51 per cent) of the Albertans who are considered decided voters said they may change their mind.

According to the poll, 57 per cent of decided NDP voters said that their choice is final while only 46 per cent of decided UCP voters said they won’t change their minds.

Large said those numbers suggest that while both parties have room to increase support, the NDP has more space to grow since it has more of a base locked in.

He said the openness of voters to change their minds is a change for Alberta, where conservative loyalty is historically strong.

“I think if I asked this question 10 years ago, at exactly this point, I would probably have gotten very few people saying that they’re likely to change their mind,” Large said. “This is an indication that there are two strongly viable parties that could form government.”

Online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population. If the data were collected through a random sample, the margin of error would be plus or minus three per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Hog heaven: China builds pig hotels for better biosecurity

Chinese companies are building high-rise ‘hog hotels’ to prevent outbreaks of swine fever.

An automatic temperature and humidity controller is seen at a pig farm on April 26, 2021 in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, China

 [File: Wang Gang/China News Service/Getty Images]

Bloomberg
2 Aug 2021

China is taking hog biosecurity to new levels — 13 stories in fact.

That’s the height of a building in southern China where more than 10,000 pigs are kept in a condominium-style complex, complete with restricted access, security cameras, in-house veterinary services and carefully prepared meals.
KEEP READINGChina’s ‘No 1 document’: Beijing steps up focus on food securityWorld food prices continue to soar, hitting nearly 7-year highChina court jails billionaire pig farmer for ‘provoking trouble’

The seemingly luxurious conditions represent a state-of-the-art approach to biosecurity in which pigs — the main source of meat in China — are shielded from viruses, including the devastating African swine fever that wiped out half the nation’s hogs in the two years before the coronavirus pandemic emerged.

Nicknamed “hog hotels,” these gigantic vertical farms are being built by companies, including Muyuan Foods and New Hope Group, emulating the strict controls major suppliers in other countries have used to prevent outbreaks of the devastating disease.

China is copying best-practices from Europe and the U.S. to close its biosecurity gap, said Rupert Claxton, the U.K.-based meat director at consultant Gira, who has been providing advice to farmers and businesses for two decades. “In 20 years, it’s done what the Americans took probably 100 years to do,” he said.

Lethal African swine fever, which sickens pigs much like Ebola kills humans, caused a dramatic outbreak in China in 2018. Within a year, roughly half the nation’s herd of more than 400 million pigs had been wiped out — more than the entire annual output of the U.S. and Brazil combined — leading to rocketing prices and unprecedented imports.
Top Priority

Food security became a top priority, and as inflation surged to the highest in eight years, the government had to turn to emergency sources of frozen meat to cool prices. New agriculture policies were instituted to accelerate a shift to large-scale, industrial operations over backyard farms that have traditionally fattened pigs on raw kitchen scraps and swill — the main sources of African swine fever.

Now, domestic hog numbers recovered more swiftly than anticipated because mega farms have expanded capacity so aggressively. Wholesale pork prices have tumbled so much that it tripped the government’s new alert system, prompting authorities to begin buying pork for state reserves and to shore up the market.

Still, the virus threat persists, with 11 incidents reported so far in 2021, prompting the culling of more than 2,000 pigs, China’s farm ministry said in July. The emergence of new strains that appear to cause milder symptoms and have a longer incubation period are complicating efforts to detect and respond to outbreaks, the ministry said.

In developed countries, pig production is dominated by bigger farms in fewer hands. This has been seen for decades in the U.S., Denmark and Netherlands, which have among the best biosecurity standards globally and never reported a single African swine fever outbreak in recent years.


Mega Complexes

These days, mega pig complexes that don’t rely on other farms for sows, fodder and labor — which risk introducing pathogens — are a pillar of China’s food security. As of 2020, 57% of the country’s pig production is from farms supplying more than 500 hogs a year. Before the outbreak, only about 1% came from larger suppliers.

New Hope Group recently completed three five-story buildings across an area the size of 20 football fields, or 140,000 square meters (1.5 million square feet), in Beijing’s eastern Pinggu district. The facility, which can be smelled from about a kilometer away, will eventually produce 120,000 pigs annually, making it the largest in the Beijing area.


It’s equipped with robots that monitor animals for fever, air filtration, and automatic feeding and disinfection systems, according to Gong Jingli, the supervisor in charge. A request to visit was declined on biosecurity grounds.

That’s in part because the scale of these farms means more is at stake. With thousands of pigs housed in close proximity, an infectious disease could spread rapidly.

Strict protocols are enforced to minimize risks. Staff are required to shower and change their clothes on entering and exiting the facility — much like scientists working in biosafety laboratories. Wristwatches must be left outside.

Tom Gillespie, a U.S.-based swine veterinarian with 40 years of experience and who visits farms in Asia annually, said he was asked to remove his wedding band before entering a facility in China, but was allowed to keep his spectacles on. The requirement was a reaction to African swine fever, he said, and may be relaxed once operators are more familiar with managing biosecurity risks.

Some mega farms have built staff dormitories to try to limit workers’ contact with the “outside” — a strategy Gillespie said would be difficult to implement in other countries.


So far, large-scale farms in China have also avoided many of the restrictions applied to their overseas counterparts because of animal welfare and environmental concerns.

“In Europe and U.S., there are restrictions on how big we can make a pig farm because people just object — they don’t want to live next to these huge sites,” said Gira’s Claxton. “In China, that doesn’t seem to be the case. If it’s decided that a pig farm is needed, then the space is available.”
Popular Option

Expanding vertically is a popular option in a country lacking vast tracks of empty space. Rapid urbanization has diminished land available for agriculture, and environmental regulations have made intensive animal production increasingly difficult in metropolitan areas.

High-rise blocks can cut farmland use by a third compared with traditional farms with the same number of pigs, and there’s flexibility in terms of location as some can be built on mountains, said New Hope’s Gong. Wastewater from the Pinggu plant is treated and used to irrigate orchards nearby, while the solid waste is turned into fertilizer, Gong said.

Muyuan Foods, China’s largest hog breeder, said it has land available to support 100 million hogs. Jiangxi Zhengbang Technology, the second-biggest, has said its herd may eventually reach a similar size.

The rise of large hog farms also reflects shifting diets in China. Whereas Beijing focused on fighting hunger and eliminating poverty in past decades, rapid economic development and expanding incomes mean China’s 1.4 billion people are eating more meat, eggs and other animal proteins. That’s driving more-intensive animal production.


“China is the world’s largest pork-consuming nation, and I don’t see that changing very easily or any time soon,” said David Ortega, associate professor of Food and Agricultural Economics at Michigan State University in East Lansing. “Rebuilding the pork sector is a national priority for the government.”

Swiss Epidemiologist Says No Evidence of COVID-19 Laboratory Leak
By Sputnik

Published: Aug 01, 2021 


Photo: AP
There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, could be a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, and such accusations against Beijing are political in nature, Didier Pittet, lead infectious diseases expert at Geneva University Hospitals and inventor of the hand sanitizer, told Sputnik in an interview.

"We really have no evidence that this or any other virus were created in a laboratory. The topic has been discussed a lot. Especially since it happened in China. But people often forget that the first destructive bacteria to escape from a laboratory did so in the US," he said, noting that though it is theoretically possible even in high-security facilities, there is no reason to assume it happened with COVID-19.

According to the expert, the question of whether there could be a leak of a dangerous virus from the laboratory in Wuhan due to incompetence or insufficient level of security "is more political in nature."

In March, the WHO issued the first report of its fact-finding mission to China, which came to the conclusion that the possibility of the virus having leaked from a state laboratory in Wuhan was very low. The experts said that there was a high possibility that the virus was transmitted to humans from bats through another animal.

However, in May, US President Joe Biden ordered the US intelligence community to reexamine the origins of the coronavirus and determine whether the disease leaked from a lab or spread from an infected animal to a human.

China has denied claims of a lab leak and urged the US and its allies to stop politicizing the issue. Beijing has also affirmed its commitment to finding the truth behind the origins of the virus with global partners based on a scientific approach.

 GOP COVID CONSPIRACY THEORY

“Republican report says coronavirus leaked from China lab Report cited "ample evidence" that Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists - aided by Chinese and U.S. funds - were working to modify coronaviruses to infect humans and manipulation could be hidden” www.reuters.com/world/us/us-republican-report-says-coronavirus-leaked-chinese-lab-scientists-still-2021-08-02

Rep. McCaul: 

COVID Leak Likely Accidental; 

Cover-Up in Play

Ranking Member Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, questions witnesses during a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing looking into the firing of State Department Inspector General Steven Linick, on Capitol Hill on Sept.16, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)

By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Monday, 02 August 2021

The leak of a coronavirus that caused the deadly COVID-19 pandemic was likely accidental, Rep. Mike McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Monday about a new report from the panel's Republican staff on the origins of the disease released Monday. 

However, the "greatest cover-up in human history" came into play at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in late 2019, the Texas Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."

"I think the Chinese Communist Party was very concerned about this report coming out telling the truth and it's already been interpreted into Mandarin as well," said McCaul. "The fact of the matter is, they were playing with fire. They were genetically manipulating at the lab this gain of function that was taking place."

The report cited "ample evidence" the lab's scientists, aided by experts from the United States and China, with the use of and U.S. government funds, were working to modify coronaviruses to infect humans.  

BUT APPARENTLY DESPITE CITING EVIDENCE FAILED TO PROVIED ANY, AMPLE OR OTHERWISE

The report said it was citing new and under-reported information about safety protocols at the lab, including a July 2019 request for a $1.5 million overhaul of a hazardous waste treatment system for the facility, which was less than two years old.

NOTHING NEW OR UNDER REPORTED IN THAT

"We have the CDC director and the Wuhan lab director voice concerns about the lab itself and the safety protocols not being followed," McCaul said. "In addition, in September, the lab took their database offline in the middle of the night. This would be the genetic sequencing database offline which shows they are trying to hide or cover up something they're very concerned about at that time." 

Further, the Military Sports Council's Military World Games took place in October 2019, and "9000 athletes came in, many returning with flu-like symptoms," said McCaul. 

"We know what happened in Wuhan and we know how many people were killed at the front end of this thing in Wuhan and know what the Chinese Communist Party did for the rest of the world," said McCaul. "For the cover-up and transmission of the virus, real costs have to be imposed." 

The Chinese will never admit to their actions, said McCaul. 

"The databases that were taken offline that are archived, that would be the smoking gun," the lawmaker said. "I don't think they'll ever let us have access to that ... all these roads point to the lab being the source."

He also called on Peter Daszak, president of the New York City-based EcoHealth Alliance, the person behind sending the Wuhan lab hundred of thousands of U.S. dollars, to testify before Congress.

"We need ot sanction the top researchers that are responsible for this great pandemic that has killed over 4 million people and caused $10 trillion in economic devastation," said McCaul. 

Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress and Biden are doing "not much" to help in that effort.

"I chair the China task force," said McCaul. "They wouldn't participate. I have asked the Foreign Affairs Committee to subpoena witnesses. They don't seem to really have much of an appetite for (it). For the life of me, I don't understand why. It is very important this be bipartisan. It is an American issue. If we talk about commissions, for God's sake, with something like this, we should have a bipartisan commission to get to the bottom of it."

War and love in Libya: 

How grassroots arts organisations are rising after revolution

Despite a lack of cultural spaces, as well as ongoing political and economic instability, Libyan artists are determined to nurture their diverse arts scene

'War Love' (2016) by Libyan artist Tewa Barnosa (Tewa Barnosa)

By Naima Morelli
26 July 2021

It’s been more than a decade since the killing of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and the country has been in political upheaval ever since. For young artists working in Libya today, this climate of conflict is challenging, not least due to economic pressures, as survival takes precedence over art.

“Most Libyan artists have been affected by the conflict in some way or another,” says Najlaa Elageli, who founded private arts foundation Noon Arts in 2012. “And their work relays that, sometimes directly and sometimes in a more subtle way.”

“Each is original, personal, and powerful with their chosen methods, and yet they all stand collectively as Libya's artists,” she tells MEE.

Younger Libyan artists like Shefa Salem, above, are "more courageous with their narrative" says Libyan gallerist Najlaa Elageli (Courtesy of Shefa Salem)

Elageli set up Noon Arts to help develop the burgeoning arts scene born out of the revolutionary spirit and to raise awareness of Libyan art on a global scale.

She says that, whereas many of the more established artists - like Mohammed Ben Lamin, Yousef Fetis and Algadaffi Alfkhari, Najla Shawkat and Hadia Gana - tend to reflect on societal concerns from a more retrospective lens, “younger artists seem to be tackling very current themes and are much more courageous with their narrative”.


Libyan artists today are working in very different conditions than under Gaddaffi, when they regularly censored themselves so as not to offend the regime

“Painting, collage, drawing, and sketching are still the main tools for most of the established Libyan artists and a few have also adopted photography as a creative medium or used ceramics and sculpture,” says Elageli, adding that the new generation’s work is “much more experimental”, often utilising digital tools as well as audio-visual installations.

She especially notes the work of emerging artists like Tewa Barnosa, Afra Alashhab, Shefa Salem, and Malak Elghuel, whose work centres around questions of identity, gender and politics.

It’s a huge leap from the conditions under which local artists were working under Gaddaffi, regularly censoring themselves so as not to offend the regime.

“Gaddafi’s absolute authority controlled the economy, politics, and social life of people, and even interfered with the way of people thought,” says 51-year-old Libyan artist Mohamed Abumeis. “The artists’ restriction on their freedom of expression led to an alienation within their homeland.”

'Sword Love' by artist Tewa Barnosa, who set up NGO and art foundation, WaraQ (Tewa Barnosa)

Post-revolution, artists became more liberated in their choice of subject, but the need to remain sensitive towards issues of religious ideology was still present.

“Before the current conflict, in [early] 2011, the arts scene in Libya was very small and there weren’t many art galleries, and no national museums,” Elageli says. “The Art House in Tripoli was the major cultural art hub where artists had exhibitions, and foreign audiences were able to attend exhibitions and purchase some artworks.”

During that period, some artists might be invited by the Libyan government to exhibit in art fairs in Arab countries and at international art fairs. There were also individual private participations by Libyan artists in exhibitions outside of Libya but, Elageli says, these opportunities were “minimal”.


'Tripoli still has a strong art community, and most artists know each other'
- Faiza Ramadan, Libyan artist

Over the past ten years however, there has been an increase in cultural activity, mainly initiated by NGOs and private foundations. Exhibitions, seminars and street festivals have become more prevalent, with an audience of the general public in mind.

Today, Elageli sees the private initiatives of cultural foundations as the most impactful: "They are holding sustainable exhibitions and seminars that are beginning to have a strong following. I see this as a very promising step.”

Artist Faiza Ramadan, 33, says there has been a notable increase in new art spaces, slowly opening up in the country, the majority of them in the capital: "Tripoli still has a strong art community, being quite small, with most artists knowing each other."

Over the past ten years, Ramadan has attended art exhibitions in Libya and watched as new galleries emerged: “Before the revolution I wasn't very active in the art world, but I did visit exhibitions, which were quite successful.”

While most artists and art initiatives are based in Tripoli, the coastal city of Benghazi is also home to its share of artists although, as 25-year-old painter Shefa Salem notes, the dearth of art spaces there is even more pronounced.

“Exhibitions mostly happen in Tripoli and don't travel outside Libya. In Benghazi, we have only one art space build by the government. It's beautiful and very big, but it's currently empty and in need of restoration,” says Salem. “It opened just before the current conflict [in 2011], and closed almost immediately.”

‘Warning’

One of the main difficulties faced by Libyan artists is funding, which Shatha Sbeta, founder of the online platform De-Orientalizing Art, says “stems from the fact that art is not a necessary good. This makes art marketing and buying - especially in times of global health and consequent financial crises - even more challenging.”

The female Libyan artists featured on Sbeta’s platform receive two thirds of the profits, which she hopes will help incentivise buyers, empower the artists, and promote a new narrative on Libya.

Shatha Sbeta offers a platform for female Libyan artists to share their work and get recognition for it (De-Orientalizing Art)

“What I aspire to achieve is whenever someone purchases an art piece, which often comes along with a story, it will ignite conversations among and between this person’s community," Sbeta tells MEE.

Empowering local artists was the motivation for Tewa Barnosa, who founded the NGO and art foundation WaraQ in Tripoli in 2015, after her plans to study abroad were cancelled due to the civil war. Bombing and shelling made it impossible to travel, and the savings she had set aside for her studies were rapidly losing value in light of the deteriorating economic situation.

WaraQ - meaning “paper” in Arabic - became a blank canvas on which emerging artists in Tripoli, including Barnosa herself, could express themselves. They hosted a number of ground-breaking exhibitions that exposed social taboos and the everyday realities of the civil war.

Their 2017 exhibition, Inthaar (which means 'warning' in Arabic), which focused on human rights violations, became notorious after it led to the arts space being forcibly shut down following pressure from “armed individuals" when neighbours reported the exhibition.

In the show, a group of artists shed light on issues such as social chaos, assassinations, disappearance and the kidnapping of journalists and people working in the creative industries. It also highlighted issues related to women’s rights, displacement, and the destruction of the country’s infrastructure.


But, Barnosa says, the general public was outraged by the themes as well as the gender-mixed nature of the space, leading to WaraQ being shut down two weeks after the exhibition.

Barnosa was forced to find other ways to reach audiences, curating projects in public spaces in Tripoli’s old city. WaraQ finally reopened in 2020 with a more nuanced approach to tackling sensitive topics in the local context.

While the Tripoli base is still running, Barnosa herself is now based in Berlin, supporting the local Libyan community with resources she was able to access abroad, like The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) and the Drosos Foundation. She has also partnered with institutions, such as the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung foundation and Reshape Network, as well as expanding WaraQ’s focus on African and Middle Eastern art.
‘Forgetting is not a solution’

Another new artist-run space in Tripoli is the Ali Gana museum, Bayt Ali Gana, which is currently a work in progress.

“It’s evolving depending on the possibilities available,” says founder Hadia Gana, alluding to the complex and unpredictable everyday life in Libya

.

Hadia Gana's 'Zarda' (2012) (Noon Art)

A prominent Libyan artist with a strong ceramics and installation practice, Gana is building the museum in Tripoli’s suburbs and focusing its influence on Libya, with regional and international collaborations.

The museum was conceived in memory of her father Ali Gana, a well-known Libyan intellectual who died in 2006. He was one of the first-generation artists in Libya, teaching art at Tripoli's architecture faculty for several decades and working to preserve the country’s cultural heritage through his writings and teachings.


It was the 2011 revolution that inspired Hadia to establish the Ali Gana Foundation and then the museum in Tripoli, with the mission of offering an inclusive artistic, cultural and educational space.

The idea is to combine the research of new artistic talents while showcasing her father's lifetime of work. When completed, it will be the country’s first art museum, with plans for it to develop into a multi-disciplinary cultural hub.

It will be open to the emerging generations of Libyan artists, who are ready to share new and diverse narratives.

While many Libyan artists understand that through their work, they can educate the public on their country's past and present, especially in light of the lack of documentation and a national archive, Barnosa laments the fact that many of them don’t necessarily address these concerns head on.

“People need to know what is happening in Libya,” Barnosa said, in an interview with Berlin-based Barenzwinger art foundation last year. “I don't think a lot of Libyan artists do this necessarily, actually pointing out the pain and struggles that are happening and saying: ‘Hey, this is going on and we need to think about this rather than forget it’.

“Forgetting is not a solution, we need to think about what is happening and the aftermath. We need to reflect.”

Sbeta believes that one of the most important missions for spaces supporting Libyan art is to move beyond the Eurocentric gaze and orientalist perceptions. "The main mission is to connect cultures through art. This process is very challenging,” she tells MEE. “The fine line that I struggle with the most is how to navigate the cultural contexts along with being inviting and welcoming. I came to realise that storytelling is a great way to combat this.”