First view from new Crew Dragon shows marble-like Earth

By Trevor Mogg

September 15, 2021 

SpaceX has posted footage showing the stunning view now being enjoyed by its first all-civilian crew.

The historic Inspiration4 mission launched from Kennedy Space Center at just after 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday, September 15, with the four crewmates reaching Earth orbit a short while later.

The scenery from the Crew Dragon spacecraft is even more dramatic than what astronauts enjoy from the International Space Station (ISS), with the higher orbit giving Earth a more marble-like appearance. The Crew Dragon is orbiting Earth at an altitude of 358 miles (575 km), 100 miles (160 km) above the ISS and the furthest it’s ever traveled from our planet.

The video shared by SpaceX shows the spacecraft’s new glass dome. Its engineers were able to put it in place of the Crew Dragon’s docking mechanism as the Inspiration4 mission is not linking up with the space station. The dome is fitted beneath the nose cone, which is designed to open up when the spacecraft reaches orbit.

Crewmates Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Dr. Sian Proctor, and Chris Sembroski will orbit Earth for about three days before returning home.

During their time in space, they’ll conduct various science experiments in microgravity conditions — so long as they can turn their attention from the breathtaking view, that is.

Entrepreneur Isaacman, who founded payment processing company Shift4 Payments, secured the groundbreaking mission in a private deal with SpaceX. The three other three passengers were then selected through various means, with all four undergoing intense training for the flight over the last six months.

Isaacman made clear early on that the main goal of the Inspiration4 mission is to raise funds of at least $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

For SpaceX, the mission marks the start of a potentially lucrative space tourism business that will operate alongside its astronaut flights between Earth and the ISS, and small-satellite launches for private companies and its Starlink internet service.

SpaceX blasts off for world's first tourist trip into orbit

Four civilians have blasted off into space on the first ever trip into orbit by amateur space travelers.



The rocket lifted off safely from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Wednesday night (local time)

A group of civilian space travelers has made history by becoming the first set of non-professional travelers to orbit the Earth.

Although amateurs have gone into space before, trained astronauts or cosmonauts have always been on board.

The SpaceX Dragon carrying four amateurs separated from the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket 12 minutes after liftoff, according to a live video feed.

As of 00:50 UTC, the capsule was "officially in space," according to SpaceX.

"Dragon will conduct two phasing burns to reach its cruising orbit of 575 km (357 miles) where the crew will spend the next three days orbiting planet Earth," the company wrote on Twitter.

Who is on board for the trip?

Among the passengers is Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of payment processing company Shift4 Payments.

The 38-year-old high school dropout is funding the entire trip — named Inspiration4.

The Falcon rocket soared from the same Kennedy Space Center pad used by SpaceX's three previous astronaut flights for NASA

"A few have gone before and many are about to follow," said Isaacman.

He will be joined by Hayley Arceneaux, a nurse who beat bone cancer as a child. Arceneaux was treated at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where she now works.

She was chosen for the trip after Isaacman donated a ticket to the hospital for a guest.

Arceneaux is the youngest American to go into space, and the first with a prosthesis — on part of her femur.

The two other seats were sold in a fundraising raffle for St. Jude.

They went to Chris Sembroski, an Air Force veteran and aerospace data engineer; and the geoscientist Sian Proctor.

Proctor is a geology professor who was almost selected to be an astronaut for NASA in 2009. She is set to become only the fourth African American woman to go to space.

From left, Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux sit in the Dragon capsule

What's the plan?

A Dragon capsule housing the passengers blasted off on top of a Falcon 9 rocket.

The departure was from the launch complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The complex is where the Apollo 11 mission took off for the Moon.

The spaceship's trajectory will take it to an altitude of 575 kilometers (357 miles), which is further into space than the International Space Station.

The four passengers will splash down off the coast of Florida at the end of their journey, with their descent slowed down by huge parachutes.

Mission to open up space

As well as raising money for the hospital, the mission has the stated goal of becoming a turning point in the democratization of space.

It aims to show that space travel is accessible to people who have not been handpicked and undergone years of training as astronauts.

It also marked the debut flight of SpaceX owner Elon Musk's new orbital tourism business, wherein wealthy customers are willing to pay a small fortune for the thrill — and bragging rights — of spaceflight.

Isaacman has reportedly paid an undisclosed sum to Musk for the mission to include himself and his three crewmates.

SpaceX regards the mission as a step towards humanity existing on multiple planets.

The biological data, including their heart rate and sleep statistics, will be analyzed as well as their cognitive abilities.

The team will also undergo tests before and after the trip, to see how it affects their bodies.

While the team's training only lasted about six months, they were put through their paces physically.

They had to trek to the summit of 14,411 feet (roughly 3,000 meters) Mount Rainier and complete G force training — both in a centrifuge and onboard a jet.

While the flight should be fully automated, the crew has been trained to take control in the event of an emergency.

Both Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson and Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos also blasted off from the Earth earlier this year as amateurs. However, their flights in July only briefly skimmed space rather than going into orbit, with Branson reaching 86 kilometers and Bezos 106 kilometers.

rc, as/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters)

First all-civilian crew launched to orbit aboard SpaceX rocket ship

Issued on: 16/09/2021 - 

Video by:Fraser JACKSON

A billionaire e-commerce executive and three less-wealthy private citizens chosen to join him blasted off from Florida on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX rocket ship and soared into orbit, the first all-civilian crew ever to circle the Earth from space. The quartet of amateur astronauts, led by the American founder and chief executive of financial services firm Shift4 Payments Inc, Jared Isaacman, lifted off just before sunset from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

NASA video shows the cramped quarters where SpaceX's 4 civilian passengers will live for 3 days

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

The Inspiration4 crew sits inside a model Crew Dragon spaceship. Left to right: Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman, and Hayley Arceneaux. SpaceX


SpaceX just launched its first tourist crew into Earth's orbit aboard its Crew Dragon spaceship.

The mission, called Inspiration4, will have four civilians orbiting in the spaceship for three days.

NASA astronauts' video from inside the ship shows how cramped their quarters will be.
Insider Healthcare: The latest healthcare news & analysis

SpaceX just launched four people, none of whom are professional astronauts, into Earth's orbit.

Now that crew is set to circle the planet for three days aboard the company's Crew Dragon spaceship. The inside of the capsule will probably get cramped. With four seats, control displays, and storage, the four passengers will have about enough space to move around as they would inside a walk-in closet.

Billionaire Jared Isaacman chartered the flight from SpaceX and called the mission Inspiration4. He gave the other three seats to Hayley Arceneaux, who survived bone cancer as a child and now works at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital; Chris Sembroski, an Air Force veteran who works for Lockheed Martin; and Dr. Sian Proctor, a geoscientist who serves as an analogue astronaut in simulations of long-term Mars missions.

In training for their mission, the Inspiration4 crew spent 30 hours inside the capsule together for a simulation at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. During that time, they were cramped in a very small space. Gravity holding them down only made it smaller.

"We're literally sleeping right next to each other," Proctor told Axios reporter Miriam Kramer. "You're doing so many mental tasks and physical exertion that, even though it was not comfortable, I still fell asleep."

Now that they're in orbit, and they're all floating in microgravity, they can take advantage of the vertical space inside the capsule too. But even then, it will be cramped. Just watch these four astronauts giving a tour of Crew Dragon, high above Earth, in November:

Those astronauts were only inside the spaceship for about one day. Their Crew Dragon docked with the International Space Station, where the astronauts lived and worked for six months before climbing back aboard the spaceship and returning to Earth.

But unlike those astronauts, the Inspiration4 crew will have a glass dome at the nose of their spaceship. Because they don't need to dock to the space station, SpaceX replaced that docking port with this cupola. The passengers can stick their heads into the dome and get the full experience of drifting through space.

An illustration of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship with a glass dome "cupola" at its nose. SpaceX

Incidentally, that's also where the spaceship's toilet is.

"When people do inevitably have to use the bathroom, they're going to have one hell of a view," Isaacman told Insider in June.

This Crew Dragon will feel roomy compared to what SpaceX has in store. In the future, the company plans to launch as many as seven people aboard the spaceship.

SpaceX's first private crewed mission lifts off into space

Inspiration4 mission will orbit Earth for around three days.

By Aimee Chanthadavong | September 16, 2021


Image: SpaceX

SpaceX has launched what it is deeming as the "world's first all-civilian" crew into orbit as part of its Inspiration4 mission.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from a launchpad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 8.02pm ET, 15 September 2021, and will now orbit Earth for roughly three days at an altitude of 575 kilometres -- just above the Hubble Space Telescope and 155 kilometres further from the International Space Station.

On board the company's fully automated Crew Dragon spacecraft are four crew members: Shift4 Payments founder and CEO Jared Issacman, cancer survivor Hayley Arceneaux, geoscientist Sian Proctor, and aerospace employee Chris Sembroski. They each underwent six months of training prior to launch.

During their time in space, the crew will perform "carefully selected research experiments on human health and performance" that will be used for potential applications for human health on Earth and during future spaceflights, SpaceX said.

"We are proud that our flight will help influence all those who will travel after us and look forward to seeing how this mission will help shape the beginning of a new era for space exploration," Issacman said.

Noticeably absent from the flight is SpaceX founder and tech billionaire Elon Musk. This is unlike Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who jumped on board Blue Origin's first crewed space launch and Richard Branson when he boarded Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity in July.

Between the three tech billionaires, it has been a head-to-head race to see whose aerospace company would be the first to make space travel available to paying civilians, not just for professional astronauts.

SpaceX launches four people to orbit in company's first-ever tourism mission

By Jackie Wattles, CNN Business
Updated  September 16, 2021


Cape Canaveral, Florida (CNN Business)A SpaceX rocket soared into orbit Wednesday evening, carrying four people — none of whom are professional astronauts — and kicking off the first-ever mission to Earth's orbit crewed entirely by tourists.

The launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida was dramatically illuminated with spotlights against the night sky, and when the SpaceX rocket's nine engines fired up just after 8 pm ET it flooded the surrounding wetlands with a blaze of light as it soared into the upper atmosphere and made a dramatic, ghostly light show overhead. After reaching orbital speeds — more than 17,000 miles per hour — the capsule carrying the four passengers detached from the rocket and began to maneuver toward its intended orbit.

The team of amateurs — which include a billionaire who self-funded the mission, a cancer survivor, a community college teacher and a Lockheed Martin employee — strapped into their 13-foot-wide SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Wednesday afternoon before their SpaceX rocket roared to life and blasted the capsule into orbit. The crew will remain aboard their capsule for three days as it flies through orbit before returning for a splashdown landing off the coast of Florida on Saturday.




From left, Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux sit in the Dragon capsule at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Sept. 12, 2021 during a dress rehearsal for the upcoming launch.

For the next three days, the passengers will float around the capsule as it circles around the planet once every 90 minutes, traveling at more than 17,500 miles per hour, while the passengers float and take in panoramic views of Earth. To cap off the journey, their spacecraft will dive back into the atmosphere for a fiery re-entry and splash down off the coast of Florida.
Splashdown is currently slated for Saturday, but that could change if weather or other issues prompt an earlier or later return. The capsule is stocked with enough food and supplies for about a week.


A SpaceX rocket carries the first-ever all-tourist crew into orbit.

This is only the third crewed launch from US soil in the past decade.
The crew includes 38-year-old billionaire Jared Isaacman, who personally financed the trip; Hayley Arceneux, 29, a childhood cancer survivor and current St. Jude physician assistant; Sian Procotor, 51, a geologist and community college teacher with a PhD; and Chris Sembroski, a 42-year-old Lockheed Martin employee and lifelong space fan who claimed his seat through an online raffle.
All four passengers will spend the entire mission aboard the SpaceX capsule, a 13-foot-wide, gumdrop-shaped spacecraft that detaches from SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket after reaching orbital speeds and was originally built to carry NASA astronauts.
And yes, for all three days in space, the passengers will all have to share a special zero-gravity-friendly toilet located near the top of the capsule. No showering will be available, and crew will all have to sleep in the same reclining seats they will ride in during launch.

SpaceX hopes this will be the first of many similar tourism missions, paving the way toward a future when it's as common to take a jaunt to space as it is to hop on an airplane. And the Crew Dragon capsule is SpaceX's first step on the way there. Though it was designed and built under a NASA contract and intended to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station, SpaceX still owns and operates the vehicle and is allowed to sell seats or entire missions to whoever the companies wishes. And with that, SpaceX and its space tourism customers get to design the entire mission — from picking the flight path and training regiment all the way down to choosing whcih foods the passengers will munch on while in oribt.

At a press briefing Tuesday evening, Sembroski, the 42-year-old who got his ticket via a raffle, told reporters that joining the Inspriation4 mission felt like "we're writing the rules, we're breaking a couple of them that NASA used to demand...We get to kind of do things our own way."

This is far from the first time civilians have traveled to space. Though NASA has been averse to signing up non-astronauts for routine missions after the death of Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire school teacher who was killed in the Challenger disaster in 1986, a cohort of wealthy thrill-seekers paid their own way to the International Space Station in the 2000s through a company called Space Adventures. American investment management billionaire Dennis Tito became the first to self-fund a trip in 2001 with his eight-day stay on the International Space Station, and six others came after him. They all booked rides alongside professional astronauts on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.

The Inspiration4 crew in an altitude chamber training on July 2, 2021, at Duke Health in Durham, North Carolina.

This mission, however, has been billed as the beginning of a new era of space travel in which average people, rather than government-selected astronauts and the occasional deep-pocketed adventurer, carry the mantle of space exploration.
But to be clear, we are still a long way from that reality, and this trip is still far from "average." It's a custom, one-off mission financed by a billionaire founder of a payment processing company, and though pricing details have not been made public, it likely cost upward of $200 million. (According to one government report, SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule costs roughly $55 million per seat.)

Jared Isaacman during rollout at Launch Complex 39A on September 11, 2021.

Isaacman — who will become the third billionaire to self-fund a trip space in the past three months and the first to buy a trip to orbit on a SpaceX capsule — is billing this mission as one that he hopes will inspire would-be space adventureres, hence the missions's name, Inspiration4. He's also using it as the centerpiece for a $200 million fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Hospital, $100 million of which he donated personally and the rest he is hoping to raise through online donations and an auction set to begin Thursday. Items will include a ukulele that Sembroski will play in space and 66 pounds of beer hops.

So far, the fundraiser has brought in $31 million of its $100 million goal.

Rolls-Royce’s all-electric ‘Spirit of Innovation’ takes to the skies for the first time

By Glenn Sands September 15, 2021 Featured

We are pleased to announce the completion of the first flight of our all-electric ‘Spirit of Innovation’ aircraft. At 14:56 (BST) the plane took to the skies propelled by its powerful 400kW (500+hp) electric powertrain with the most power-dense battery pack ever assembled for an aircraft. This is another step towards the plane’s world-record attempt and another milestone on the aviation industry’s journey towards decarbonisation.

Warren East, CEO, Rolls-Royce, said: “The first flight of the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ is a great achievement for the ACCEL team and Rolls-Royce. We are focused on producing the technology breakthroughs society needs to decarbonise transport across air, land, and sea, and capture the economic opportunity of the transition to net-zero. This is not only about breaking a world record; the advanced battery and propulsion technology developed for this programme has exciting applications for the Urban Air Mobility market and can help make ‘jet zero’ a reality.”

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: “The first flight of Rolls-Royce’s revolutionary Spirit of Innovation aircraft signals a huge step forward in the global transition to cleaner forms of flight. This achievement, and the records we hope will follow, shows the UK remains right at the forefront of aerospace innovation.

“By backing projects like this one, the Government is helping to drive forward the boundary-pushing technologies that will leverage investment and unlock the cleaner, greener aircraft required to end our contribution to climate change.”

The aircraft took off from the UK Ministry of Defence’s Boscombe Down site, which is managed by QinetiQ, and flew for approximately 15 minutes. The site has a long heritage of experimental flights and the first flight marks the beginning of an intense flight-testing phase in which we will be collecting valuable performance data on the aircraft’s electrical power and propulsion system. The ACCEL programme, short for ‘Accelerating the Electrification of Flight’ includes key partners YASA, the electric motor and controller manufacturer, and aviation start-up Electroflight. The ACCEL team has continued to innovate while adhering to the UK Government’s social distancing and other health guidelines.

Half of the project’s funding is provided by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, and Innovate UK. In the run-up to COP26, the ACCEL programme is further evidence of the UK’s position at the forefront of the zero-emission aircraft revolution.

“The first flight of the Spirit of Innovation demonstrates how innovative technology can provide solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges,” said Gary Elliott, CEO, Aerospace Technology Institute. “The ATI is funding projects like ACCEL to help UK develop new capabilities and secure a lead in the technologies that will decarbonise aviation. We congratulate everyone who has worked on the ACCEL project to make the first flight a reality and look forward to the world speed record attempt which will capture the imagination of the public in the year that the UK hosts COP26.

Rolls-Royce is offering our customers a complete electric propulsion system for their platform, whether that is an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) or commuter aircraft. We will be using the technology from the ACCEL project and applying it to products for these exciting new markets. The characteristics that ‘air-taxis’ require from batteries are very similar to what is being developed for the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ so that it can reach speeds of 300+ MPH (480+ KMH) – which we are targeting in our world record attempt. In addition, Rolls-Royce and airframer Tecnam are currently working with Widerøe, the largest regional airline in Scandinavia, to deliver an all-electric passenger aircraft for the commuter market, which is planned to be ready for revenue service in 2026.

In June, we announced our pathway to net-zero carbon emissions – a year on from joining the UN Race to Zero campaign – and the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ is one way in which we are helping decarbonise the critical parts of the global economy in which we operate. We are committed to ensuring our new products will be compatible with net-zero operation by 2030 and all our products will be compatible with net-zero by 2050.

MICHIGAN

Massive energy bill becomes law, investing billions between renewable, nuclear sectors

Gov. JB Pritzker signs Senate Bill 2408, a sweeping energy regulation overhaul,
into law at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago Wednesday. (Credit: Blueroomstream.com)

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Unions, environmentalists call it a win for climate, job creation in state

By JERRY NOWICKI
Capitol News Illinois
jnowicki@capitolnewsillinois.com

SPRINGFIELD – Gov. JB Pritzker was joined by environmental and social justice activists, union representatives, and lawmakers from both parties Wednesday as he signed into law a sweeping energy regulation overhaul that aims to phase out carbon emissions from the energy sector by 2045 while diversifying the renewable energy workforce.

His signature marked a celebratory end to negotiations that began shortly after he took office in 2019, ended as he seeks a second term, and were feared permanently derailed on numerous occasions in between.

“We've seen the effects of climate change, right here in Illinois, repeatedly in the last two-and-a-half years alone,” Pritzker said at a bill-signing ceremony at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. “A polar vortex, devastating floods, microbursts that destroy buildings, record lake levels, extreme heat and emergency declarations in more than a third of Illinois counties.”

The governor mentioned Hurricane Ida’s destruction to the South and fires at the Boundary Waters wilderness area in Minnesota, describing the energy bill, Senate Bill 2408, as “the most significant step Illinois has taken in a generation toward a reliable, renewable, affordable and clean energy future.”

Specifically, the bill forces fossil fuel plants offline between 2030 and 2045, depending on the source and carbon emissions level, although the Illinois Commerce Commission, Illinois Power Agency and Illinois Environmental Protection Agency would have the authority to alter plant closure timelines in order to ensure energy grid reliability.

It subsidizes three nuclear plants with $694 million paid over a period of five years, and increases subsidies for renewable energy by more than $350 million annually. The latter is the driving piece in an effort to increase state’s renewables output from 7-8 percent of the energy mix currently to 40 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040.

Another goal aims for 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2050, elevating the importance of the nuclear plants, which will continue to operate as a result of the massive subsidy.

Estimates for the cost of the bill have ranged from $3 to $4 monthly added to ratepayer bills according to the Citizens Utility Board, to $15 according to the senior advocacy group AARP. In terms of percentages, bill sponsor Sen. Michael Hastings, D-Frankfort, said residential electric bills would increase by about 3-4 percent, commercial bills by about 5-6 percent, and industrial bills by about 7-8 percent.

Large business and industry groups such as the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association and Illinois Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill due to its effects on businesses. But advocates argue the advent of more renewables will lower residential bills over time, creating savings for ratepayers as the cheaper renewables become more widely available.

While critics have also said the bill could cause grid reliability issues downstate, creating a need to import more expensive carbon-emitting power from neighboring states, supporters pointed to the five-year review by ICC, IPA and IEPA as a safeguard against such a reality.

Much of the hourlong news conference Wednesday was a celebration for the various interest groups and lawmakers that negotiated the bill.

Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, represents multiple nuclear plants and was one of two Republicans to vote for the bill in the Senate.

With the bill, she said, “we ensure that our state's nuclear fleet will stay online and thousands of jobs and the tax revenue that they provide won't be lost. We ensure that our state won't lose the source of over 50 percent of its total energy and nearly 90 percent of the carbon-free energy. We ensure that our state has a better energy path.”

Exelon Corporation, which owns the state’s six nuclear plants, had threatened to close two of them in the coming days and months without the legislative action to make nuclear more competitive and cost-effective compared to fossil fuels and highly subsidized renewables. Five of the six Exelon plants will now receive subsidies.

Pat Devaney, secretary treasurer of the Illinois AFL-CIO federation of labor unions, said the bill “sets the strongest labor standards in the country” for renewable projects. It mandates project labor agreements for large-scale renewable projects and requires a prevailing wage be paid on non-residential renewable projects.

“This now-enacted piece of legislation proves that we do not have to choose between good jobs and a clean energy future for our state. We can do both,” he said.

Unions and environmentalists had struggled to come to an agreement on the bill, due in large part to the effect on coal plants which are heavily staffed and maintained by union labor. Two municipal coal plants – the City, Water, Light and Power plant in Springfield and Prairie State Energy Campus in the Metro East near St. Louis – were a particular sticking point.

Ultimately, those plants were neutral on the final bill language, which provides they must be carbon-free by 2045 and reduce emissions by 45 percent by 2035. If they cannot do so, they’d have three years to come into compliance or shut down part of their operations.

The signing also garnered attention from Washington, D.C., with U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm praising the measure in a news release.

“Preserving our existing fleet of nuclear reactors, adopting more clean and renewable energy, and incentivizing sales of electric vehicles are all key components of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and essential to reaching our nation’s climate goals,” she said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of Gov. Pritzker and legislators, Illinois will keep a number of nuclear power plants online – preserving thousands of good paying jobs – all while showing just what bold state-level action can do to usher in the clean energy future.”

The electric vehicle portion of the bill aims to put 1 million electric vehicles on Illinois roads by 2030, partially by offering incentives up to 80 percent of the cost of charging stations that were built by labor paid at the prevailing wage, based on a number of factors.

The bill also provides for a $4,000 rebate on an electric vehicle purchase starting in July 2022, which Pritzker said would be available to all Illinoisans, not just those in certain counties, as had been discussed during floor debate of the bill. That could be clarified in follow-up legislation which lawmakers have said will be considered in the fall veto session to clean up portions of the nearly 1,000-page bill.

The law also provides subsidies to convert coal-fired plants to solar or energy storage facilities at about $47 million annually starting in 2024. That provision, according Hastings, will be a boon to downstate by helping “transition shuttered coal plants into state-of-the-art solar energy sites with world-renowned battery storage,” a provision aimed at boosting the reliability of otherwise intermittent resources such as wind and solar.

Equity advocates said the law sets Illinois apart from other states by creating a $180 million annual investment in clean energy workforce diversification programs, as well as training programs aimed at providing the fossil fuel workforce with inroads into renewable energy.

Among many such provisions, the bill directs the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to create the Clean Jobs Workforce Network program, which establishes 13 hubs in different communities across the state that rely on community-based organizations to provide job training and a career pipeline for equity-focused populations.

It also establishes training programs for those recently leaving incarceration, and creates a “Climate Bank” within the Illinois Finance Authority to help fund renewable projects and a “Jobs and Justice Fund” aimed at ensuring “the benefits of the clean energy economy are equitably distributed.”

Delmar Gillus, a social equity advocate with Elevate Illinois, praised the equity provisions as “nation-leading.”

At the bill signing Wednesday, he explained how it would help those who, according to the bill, hail from areas where “residents have historically been excluded from economic opportunities” or have “historically been subject to disproportionate burdens of pollution.”

“It means that Cheryl Johnson, from the People for Community Recovery, has access to seed capital money to build solar in her community,” Gillus said, naming several advocates who worked for the bill’s passage. “It means that Rev. Tony Pierce in Peoria has access to the prime contractor program that will provide underserved contractors the resources they need to become lead contractors that create jobs in their communities. It means that Troyce Polk from here in Chicago will have access to solar incentives so that he can develop projects that he has been planning for years.”

Rep. Ann Williams, a Chicago Democrat who sponsored the Clean Energy Jobs Act that provided much of the framework for the ultimate compromise, called Wednesday a “historic day” that marks “just the beginning” of a larger effort to combat climate change. 

“The climate conversation is far from over in Illinois and everywhere else,” she said. “Addressing the climate crisis, which remains an escalating threat to the life and health of each and every one of us, will require ongoing, aggressive and sustained action at all levels of government.”

 

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government and distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

 

On the moral and scientific case against Covid booster shots

Wednesday, 15 September 2021, 
Article: Gordon Campbell,  SCOOP N

A year ago, a Covid vaccine was still on humanity’s wish list. Now, we’re basing our economic planning - and the safety of opening our borders – on the ability of the new Covid vaccines to reduce infection, hospitalisation and death. Given this reliance and in the face of an evolving virus, there is a lot of anxiety about how well the vaccines protect us, and for how long. Will we need booster shots, and how soon? And would the theoretical gain from a booster shot programme outweigh the very low incidence of serious side effects, such as the myocarditis risk that has been linked to the mRNA vaccines and the Guillain-Barre syndrome associated with the adenovirus vector vaccines?

There’s another consideration. At this point, how justifiable can it be for countries like New Zealand to amass stockpiles of vaccines – Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, Novovaxx- cumulatively sufficient to protect our population several times over, when there are people in other countries who have yet to receive even a single dose of a Covid vaccine. Not even of the AstraZeneca vaccine that the affluent world tends to shun. In these circumstances talk of a third, “booster” shot programme would seem entirely immoral.

That concern can be framed in terms of self-interest. The Delta variant has raised the stakes. In time, are even more dangerous Covid variants likely to arise in a largely unvaccinated Third World ? Possibly. (Delta remember, emerged from a largely unvaccinated context in India.) That’s why – so the argument goes - until we are all safe, none of us are safe.

Science, not Politics

Almost all the above issues were raised in an article published 48 hours ago in the Lancet medical journal. In it, the authors strongly question (a) the need (b) the supportive medical evidence and (c) the morality of a booster shot programme for the main vaccines that have been rolled out to date. As the FiercePharma medical news website has pointed out, two of the authors of the Lancet article are especially worthy of note. Dr. Marion Gruber is the director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s office of Vaccines Research and Review, and Dr. Philip Krause is her deputy director. This would seemingly put them on a collision course with the Biden administration’s decision – reported by Werewolf a fortnight ago - to launch a booster shot programme. Perhaps not coincidentally in the light of that Biden decision, Gruber and Krause both recently announced their plans to retire from theiur current FDA posts.

The full text of the Lancet article is available here. It begins with a reminder that the data on vaccine efficacy – and the length of time that the vaccines offer protection – is still sketchy, is occasionally confounding and is being selectively reported. Some of it is being published in peer-reviewed contexts, and some of it is not. As Werewolf reported, the Boden booster plan assumes the Pfizer vaccine needs a third booster shot eight months after the second vaccination. In reaching that conclusion, the US seems to be jumping ahead of strong supportive evidence. As the Lancet authors put it :

Careful and public scrutiny of the evolving data will be needed to assure that decisions about boosting are informed by reliable science more than by politics. Even if boosting were eventually shown to decrease the medium-term risk of serious disease, current vaccine supplies could save more lives if used in previously unvaccinated populations than if used as boosters in vaccinated populations.

Booster shots may be better deployed as a targeted response. Yet even then there is room for doubt about that if a double shot regime fails to offer adequate protection, whether a third shot would do much better:

Boosting could be appropriate for some individuals in whom the primary vaccination, defined here as the original one-dose or two-dose series of each vaccine, might not have induced adequate protection—eg, recipients of vaccines with low efficacy or those who are immunocompromised(although people who did not respond robustly to the primary vaccination might also not respond well to a booster). It is not known whether such immunocompromised individuals would receive more benefit from an additional dose of the same vaccine or of a different vaccine that might complement the primary immune response.

So... Even for the most vulnerable, the science remains inconclusive as to whether (and how to proceed with a booster. Should it be with the same vaccine as previously, or with another? In general, here’s where we are to date:

A consistent finding is that vaccine efficacy is substantially greater against severe disease than against any infection; in addition, vaccination appears to be substantially protective against severe disease from all the main viral variants. Although the efficacy of most vaccines against symptomatic disease is somewhat less for the delta variant than for the alpha variant, there is still high vaccine efficacy against both symptomatic and severe disease due to the delta variant.

In other words, the main vaccines are still proving to be very effective in preventing serious illness, hospitalisation and death, as distinct from offering protection against mild bouts of infection. When it comes down to the duration of protection – on which the whole argument for booster shots is based – the evidence does not apparently (as yet) support the calls for a booster shot programme. Here’s possibly why:

Current evidence does not…appear to show a need for boosting in the general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high. Even if humoral immunity appears to wane, reductions in neutralising antibody titre do not necessarily predict reductions in vaccine efficacy over time, and reductions in vaccine efficacy against mild disease do not necessarily predict reductions in the (typically higher) efficacy against severe disease. This effect could be because protection against severe disease is mediated not only by antibody responses, which might be relatively short lived for some vaccines, but also by memory responses and cell-mediated immunity, which are generally longer lived.

In other words, antigens may not be the only relevant marker. This is a key point. We still seem to be in a “so far, so good” phase where the antigen response against the earlier forms of the virus is also still working pretty effectively against the variants as well :

The ability of vaccines that present the antigens of earlier phases of the pandemic (rather than variant-specific antigens) to elicit humoral immune responses [ ie antigens against extracellular pathogens] currently circulating variants indicates that these variants have not yet evolved to the point at which they are likely to escape the memory immune responses induced by those vaccines.

But then comes the cautionary footnote, as the variants interact with the vaccines :

Even without any changes in vaccine efficacy, increasing success in delivering vaccines to large populations will inevitably lead to increasing numbers of breakthrough cases, especially if vaccination leads to behavioural changes in vaccinees.

Who deserves the life jackets?

Even so.. For now, the reliable science, the authors contend, does not support the necessity for booster shots, or the case for prioritising them. This includes their verdict on an August 2021 study in Israel which had reported some benefits from a third “ booster” shot :

A recent report on the experience in Israel during the first 3 weeks of August, 2021, just after booster doses were approved and began to be deployed widely, has suggested efficacy of a third dose (relative to two doses). Mean follow-up was, however, only about 7 person-days (less than expected based on the apparent study design); perhaps more importantly, a very short-term protective effect would not necessarily imply worthwhile long-term benefit.

To repeat: Vaccines are not a failsafe solution. They are more effective against stopping serious illness, reducing the need for hospitalisation and preventing death than they are at stopping infection or transmission. Even when the overall rate of vaccination is fairly high, the unvaccinated remainder will still be the people (a) most at risk of severe illness, and (b) most likely to transmit the virus. Obviously, the Covid variants do not come out of nowhere. They are more likely to evolve from the existing strains. As the Lancet authors suggest, this means that the “booster” vaccines will be more effective if they are devised to match the main circulating variants, much as we do already with flu vaccines.

Finally though, there is the moral argument mentioned early on. If the need for a booster shot programme is unproven and while the potential gains remain inconclusive, surely the more pressing priority has to be to put the vaccines, the funds, and the technology into speeding up the vaccination rollout in other countries. That’s the conclusion reached by the Lancet article:

The vaccines that are currently available are safe, effective, and save lives. The limited supply of these vaccines will save the most lives if made available to people who are at appreciable risk of serious disease and have not yet received any vaccine. Even if some gain can ultimately be obtained from boosting, it will not outweigh the benefits of providing initial protection to the unvaccinated. If vaccines are deployed where they would do the most good, they could hasten the end of the pandemic by inhibiting further evolution of variants. Indeed, WHO has called for a moratorium on boosting until the benefits of primary vaccination have been made available to more people around the world.

Footnote: The WHO criticism of the Biden booster plan includes this striking comment :

On Thursday, the World Health Organization responded that current data don't support the need for boosters. Unvaccinated people in poorer nations should be prioritized for their first shots before those in developed countries get a third dose, the WHO maintains.“We’re planning to hand out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets, while we’re leaving other people to drown,” Michael Ryan, the emergencies chief at the WHO, told reporters.

UK

71 climate change protesters arrested after blocking M25 for second time this week


Insulate Britain blocked roundabouts and a carriageway leading to the nation’s busiest motorway

MORE than 70 climate protesters were arrested today after they again blocked parts of the M25 in a campaign for action on home insulation.

Insulate Britain, a newly formed group which is calling on the government to “get on with the job” of insulating Britain’s homes, blocked roundabouts and a carriageway leading to the nation’s busiest motorway.

About 90 demonstrators sat on the roads while stranded motorists beeped their horns.

The Metropolitan Police worked with forces from Surrey, Hertfordshire and Kent to make the arrests.

Surrey Police said that officers were also dealing with a crash involving multiple vehicles at Junction 9, and that an investigation into the circumstances of the collision remained ongoing.

Insulate Britain asserted that a national home insulation strategy is key to ensuring a future for younger generations at risk from the climate crisis, as well as ensuring lower energy bills and safer living conditions for people living in “29 million leaky homes” around Britain.

“We demand credible action now,” it said in a statement.

“Proper jobs for hundreds of thousands of people to start the first real step – to insulate all the homes of this country – which, pound for pound, gives us the biggest reduction in carbon emissions.

“It is a total no-brainer and yet this government refuses to get on with the job. This is criminal negligence.”

The group said it will continue to take action until the government “overcomes its complacency and cowardice and fulfils its first and most sacred duty: to protect the people of this country from harm.

“All we ask is that it makes a public statement that we can trust — that commits to the first step, to start the insulation of our homes.

“In the meantime, they can arrest us, they can put us in prison — we know who we are and what we have to do.”

A protest by the same group on Monday blocked five junctions of the M25, leading to tens of thousands of drivers being stuck in huge queues of traffic and dozens of arrests.

In March, the Tory government scrapped its flagship green homes grant – which offered households funding to install insulation – after just six months.

A National Audit Office report on the failed scheme has since found that it was rushed, caused frustration to homeowners and installers and failed to keep promises on carbon-emissions reduction and job creation.

GEN NIHILIST
Nearly half of all young Finns believe humanity is doomed, says global study on climate change anxiety

FINLAND 15 SEPTEMBER 2021

Members of the Extinction Rebellion (Elokapina) movement protest in front of the Bank of Finland on 8 September/Lehtikuva

An extensive international study has found that a large majority of people aged 16–25 are suffering from severe anxiety caused by the climate crisis and lack of government action regarding the same.

Around 75 percent of respondents said they believed the future was “frightening,” and 45 percent felt that distress and anxiety related to climate change are affecting their daily life. The study surveyed 10,000 people from 10 different countries, including Finland.

Helsingin-Sanomat reports that 43 percent of young people in Finland think that “humanity is doomed,” compared to the global average of 56 percent. Additionally, 54 percent of young Finns believe that the government is lying about the effectiveness of its climate action policy, while the global figure is 64 percent.

Only 36 percent of all respondents felt their government’s climate policy was based on scientific research. The equivalent figure was 38 percent in Finland. Owing to climate concerns, 43 percent of young Finns are hesitant to have children.

The study, titled Young People’s Voices on Climate Anxiety, Government Betrayal and Moral Injury: A Global Phenomenon, is being peer reviewed in the Lancet Planetary Health journal. The authors claim it is the first comprehensive global study of climate anxiety in young people.

Tahira Sequeira

Helsinki Times

 

Malala Yousafzai’s Ideology and Activism

Malala Yousafzai’s ideology is activism, social justice for girls and women who have been suffering in many ways such as, lack of human rights, education rights, lack of employment opportunities for women, and countless other barriers for girls and women’s freedom in that that is a continuous trend in the region for centuries.

Ideologies are usually shaping how we think, how we believe and accept or reject cultural, religious, social, and political ideas, policies and actions. In most societies, these ideologies are divided by lift and right, liberal or conservative. Stone (1986, p. 20) explains that ideas “personality and ideology” are interconnected to one another which is the driving force of societies. Stone, (1986) emphasizes that according to “a survey of the psychological literature on behavioral differences was made, with special attention to anomalous differences between liberals and conservatives (differences that seem inexplicable on the basis of ideological content alone)”. However, what is ideology? Or how ideologies’ influence can be analyzed to better understand ideologies? Ideology is related to power and everyone justify their thought, actions, and standpoints “in ideological terms” (POLI 307, n.d). The ideology of Malala Yousafzai roots in her struggle for girls and women’s rights. Yousafzai’s ideology is activism, social justice for girls and women who have been suffering in many ways such as, lack of human rights, education rights, lack of employment opportunities for women, and countless other barriers for girls and women’s freedom in that that is a continuous trend in the region for centuries. The objectives of Yousafzai’s ideology are mainly social, economic, and political equality for girls and women. Additionally, Yousafzai’s ideological streams in her gender, heritage, poverty, lack of equal rights, and equal opportunities both as a female and as a Pashtun tribe in Pakistan.

Women and girls have been suffering in many ways not only in Pakistan but in entire South Asia. Yousafzai’s social and political viewpoints are shaped by her experiences, the lack of her mom’s education, and the stories and educations of her grandmother, grandfather, and her father Ziauddin. Girls and women in South Asia do not have equal rights of education or if they do, it is not welcomed by society because of the traditional and religion superstitious. Yousafzai describes her mother’s educational challenges at that time and wrote “my mother started school when she was six and stopped the same term. Yousafzai adds about her mom that “she was the only girl in a class of boys” and girls’ school was a not normal in that village “she was unusual in the village as she had a father and brothers who encouraged her to go to school” (Yousafzai, 2014, p. 26). Yousafzai also describes her dad that he had the rights to education but none of his sisters “my aunts did not go to school at all, just like millions of girls in my country” (Yousafzai, 2014, p. 26). In addition to the absence of education, women and girls suffer because of dowry, Swara, honor killing, and many gender-based discriminations and inequality in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

Culture and religion are also victimizing girls and women in the region. Swat Valley which is in North West of Pakistan, where Yousafzai was born and raised, girls and women experience severe forms of gender discrimination and gender-based challenges. For example, in South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan women are victims of several forms of violence called Dowry, Swara, and honor killings. Dowry is a compulsory amount of cash, gold, or asset such a land, home, and cars from the bride and her family to the groom and his family. According to Yousafzai that “we have a culture called Swara by which a girl can be given to another tribe to resolve a feud” (p. 38). Honor killing is girls and women murder by their family because they think the female member brought shame to the family. Human Rights Watch reports that “Pakistani rights activist estimate that there are about 1,000 honor killings, in Pakistan every year (Ijaz, 2019). Yousafzai also confirms that her family advocated thorough the years against “honor killings” (2014, p. 46).

The region where Yousafzai’s activist ideology was forming is an extremely tough region where societies threat women very discriminatory. In South Asia, including Pakistan, girls’ birth becomes a presage for families; after they grow most women cannot marry for a long time because their family cannot afford the Dowry. Those who can afford the Dowry put girls and women at risk because the assets brought by the bride put brides’ live in jeopardies. Burn stresses that dowry is domestic violence which occurs when in-laws emotionally, physically, and sexually violate women to make them extract more dowry from women’s family “in extreme cases, they murder the wife and stage it to look like a suicide or an accident, in what is known as dowry murder or dowry death” (Burn, 2019, p. 39). Economic Times also reports that “thousands” of women in Pakistan become paralyzed and are having permanent disabilities after they experienced physical violence by men (2020). In such misogynist societies, Yousafzai and her father believed “lack of education” for girls and women was “the root of all Pakistan’s problems” (Yousafzai, 2014, p. 26). Yousafzai on one hand was observing and experiencing gender inequality and discriminations outside, but on the other hand, she was developing activism for girls’ education and women’s rights at home.

Therefore, Yousafzai developed a strong ideology for activism for girls. This idea that women’s prosperity can be only achieve by educating them when their children through promoting and supporting girls’ education were the center and the core values of her family. Daiya (p. 4), who is the director of Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the George Washington University, cites Yousafzai “poor families in Pakistan and many other parts of South Asia endeavor to ensure that the boys get some kind of education and often careless if their daughter remain illiterates”. Her comments indicate, that Yousafzai is opposing and criticizing the lack of attention to girls’ education, and the above societal approach for girls’ education and empowerment seemed unacceptable for her Yousafzai mentions their family’s collective activism for girls’ education when the Taliban were trying to ban girls from education in Swat Valley while she was 11 years old, and her dad and “his fellow activists were holding endless meetings. These were no longer just about stopping people cutting down trees but were also about education and democracy” (2014, p. 53).

Indeed, the reasoning Yousafzai’s ideology for girls’ education became famous and vital was the extremely patriarchal society. As she calls it her “Pashtun homeland” is a more traditional area within a patriarchal country in the South Asian region with countless gender-based challenges for girl’s education and women’s rights. Daiya highlights that “the social organization of South Asia’s many communities is largely patriarchal”. Daiya adds “according to the United Nations, an estimated 200 million women are missing due to gendercide. Daiya also cited Yousafzai that in her patriarchal society “the husband and the son in the family getting the choice meats at dinnertime, or more food, more milk or eggs, which is expensive, while the daughter-in-law or daughter gets less or none” (21-22). However, Yousafzai grew up in a very liberal and educated family where her father was a girl’s education activist, and women and social activist. But, some so-called religious people were challenging his efforts and actions to educate girls. Yousafzai clearly states that she observes this patriarchy and her dad’s resistance to advocate for girls’ educations. For instance, Yousafzai’s family-run girls’ school was forced to close by some of the local and her family resisted:

“Some of the influential people and elders of our Mohalla into a delegation and turned up at our door. There were seven people some other senior Tablighis, a mosque keeper, and former jihadi, and a shopkeeper and they filled our small house. My father seemed worried and shooed us into the other room, but the house was mall so we could hear every word. ‘I am representing the Ulema and Tablighian and Taliban’ Mullah Ghulamullah said, referring to not just one but two organizations of Muslim scholars to give himself gravitas. ‘I am representing good Muslims and we all think your girls’ school is Haram and a blasphemy. You should close it” (Yousafzai, 2014, p.50).

So, in every step of her life, Yousafzai witnessed patriarchy in society and at the same time, Yousafzai and her family continued to fight for girls’ rights to education. Though Yousafzai observes life-threatening challenges she not only stop going to school, she also never stop promoting girls’ education and never stops fighting for girls’ education. Yousafzai’s everyday life which was activism for girls’ education contributed to her ideology to further promote girls’ educations.

Yousafzai believes that the lack of women’s development in her society is deeply connected to the lack of their education. As mentioned above, women are treated discriminatory, beaten, killed, and are facing numerous savage in the region generally, and particularly in Pakistan and her Valley. Yousafzai (2014) describes that her uneducated mom would have a different life if she was educated. “It was only when she met my father that she felt regret. Here was a man who had read so many books, who wrote her poems she could not read” Yousafzai wrote about her uneducated mom (2014, p. 26). Yousafzai’s ideology furthermore developed when she was banned from school. That is why she took the dangerous route of fighting for girls’ education by standing up against terrorist groups such as Tahrik I Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Yousafzai and her family clearly understood how vitally important education is for a girl’s future. I am one of the examples; how early stoppage of education leaves damaging effects on one future and how that ruins people’s life. More than a decade before Yousafzai’s educational challenges, I was banned from school in secondary school in Kabul, when Taliban took the power in Afghanistan in 1996. While studying about MalalaYousafzai, I remember myself before the Taliban where I was always first in my class, however, yet I am struggling to fill that gap which was caused by the Taliban who took my rights of education. My and my dad’s dream was to become a doctor, but instead of holding a Ph.D. in the late thirties, I am struggling to do higher education in Canada. After the Taliban, from 2002 I worked tirelessly to continue my education, and I was able to complete BA from Kabul University. But I faced countless educational challenges because my educational roots were damaged by the Taliban. Since that time, I am still struggling and facing everyday physical and emotional challenges in my educations, however, I never gave up hope for the future. As Yousafzai and her family believed, I also strongly believe that banning girls will damage them forever. Because not everyone gets the attention, Yousafzai received, or not everyone survived the Terrorist attacks on education. According to the UN News, last month in May, more than 50 “students between the age of 11 and 15 were killed and hundreds of others injured” in terrorist attacks in a girls’ school in Kabul, Afghanistan.

On the other hand, some ideologies are not popular now, or it is safe to say that is not popular worldwide that are excluded from this study, such as Adolf Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeini. Many reasons can be pointed why these ideologies are lesser-known, such as geographical locations, political schemes governing in the society, as well as the period and societal potential and appetite for certain ideologies. For example, currently, the world is suffering from totalitarianism and fundamentalism, which are Hitler’s and Khomeini’s ideologies. In addition, to global warming and climate change, one of the biggest concerns of nations is religious extremism and terrorism. Khomeini’s ideology is fundamentally Islamism, within Islam, he was fundamentalist Shiite. He promoted anti-American sentiments, he was also anti-Israel and against many more. Similarly, Hitler was also anti-Zionism, who was extremely nationalist and who started World War II. Growing incidence against minority around the world shows, that the interest to the exclusion of other is growing which can be related to nationalism ideology. For example, last weekend a Muslim family was targeted in London Ontario, by the white extremist who killed 4 peoples of an innocent family, only because they were looking, dressing, and worshiping different than him. Obviously, in our contemporary globalized world, ideologies such as Hitler and Khomeini are not what we need or what we want. Therefore, Ideologies such as Malala Yousafzai’s is needed to eliminate or at less to reduce the inequality around the globe.

To conclude, Malala Yousafzai’s ideology is human rights, liberalism, feminism, and social justice for girls and women, mainly activism for girls’ education. Yousafzai endangered her safety and got shot, in promoting what she believed in, which was educations rights for girls. She could of be also, silenced if she did not survive the attack or if she did not receive national, regional, and international supports. This support further determined her to get stronger and committed to her activism for girls’ educations. Yousafzai’s ideology developed with the educations she received in international institutions, and from the social and political environments all around the world. She truly highlighted and shined to the world that the world can see how kids are devastated by the war and extremism. Countless, children around the world are suffering in many ways including girls, from religious extremism, culture, poverty, and lack of equal opportunities. Malala Yousafzai is an example of countless stars which one lightened and can be seen, but unknown other stars are shuttered, shut, and darkened. Therefore, Yousafzai is a legend and her ideology became a voice for those who were silenced and will be a voice for those who cannot have a voice in the future.

References:

Burn, S, M.  (2019). Women Across Cultures. Mcgraw Hill, New York. ISBN 9781-260084542.

Daiya, K. (2020). I AM  MALAL. A RESOURCE GUIDE FOR EDUCATORS. Retrieved from:   https://malala.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs1061/f/Theme-3-Culture_FINAL.pdf

Ijaz,S. ( 2019). Pakistan Should not Again fail ‘Honor Killing’ Victim. Human Watch Rights.  Retrieve from: https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/22/pakistan-should-not-again-fail-honor-killing-victim

Stone, W. (1986). Personality and Ideology: Empirical Support for Tomkins’ Polarity Theory. Political Psychology, 7(4), 689-708. doi:10.2307/3791209

The economic times, (2020). Over two-thirds of Pakistani women victim of abuse: Study. Retrieve from: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/over-two-thirds-of-pakistani-women-victim-of-abuse-study/articleshow/79517277.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst.

UN, NEWS. (2021). Afghanistan: Top UN officials strongly condemn ‘heinous’ attack on girls’ school. Retrieved from:  https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/05/1091842

Yousafzai, M., & Lamb, C. (2014). I am malala. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Retrieved from:  https://eg4.nic.in/jnv/DFILES/EBOOKS/IR/IamMalala.pdf.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect Pajhwok's editorial policy.

In new Indo-Pacific alliance, Biden plans to share nuclear submarine technology

BY AAMER MADHANI AND JONATHAN LEMIRE

• ASSOCIATED PRESS •

 SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

President Joe Biden, listens from the East Room of the White House in Washington, on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021, as he is joined virtually by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, not seen, as he speaks about a national security initiative. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that the United States is forming a new Indo-Pacific security alliance with Britain and Australia that will allow for greater sharing of defense capabilities — including helping equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. It’s a move that could deepen a growing chasm in U.S.-China relations.

Biden made the announcement alongside British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who joined him by video to unveil the new alliance, which will be called AUKUS (pronounced AWK-us). The three announced they would quickly turn their attention to developing nuclear-powered submarines for Australia.

“We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term,” said Biden, who said the new alliance reflects a broader trend of key European partners playing a role in the Indo-Pacific. “We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve.”

None of the leaders mentioned China in their remarks. But the new security alliance is likely to be seen as a provocative move by Beijing, which has repeatedly lashed out at Biden as he’s sought to refocus U.S. foreign policy on the Pacific in the early going of his presidency.

Before the announcement, a senior administration official sought to play down the idea that the alliance was meant to serve as a deterrent against China in the region. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the announcement, said the alliance’s creation was not aimed at any one country, and is about a larger effort to sustain engagement and deterrence in the Indo-Pacific by the three nations.

Johnson said the alliance would allow the three English-speaking maritime democracies to strengthen their bonds and sharpen their focus on an increasingly complicated part of the world.

“We will have a new opportunity to reinforce Britain’s place at the leading edge of science and technology, strengthening our national expertise, and perhaps most significant, the U.K., Australia and the U.S. will be joined even more closely together, “ Johnson said.

The three countries have agreed to share information in areas including artificial intelligence, cyber and underwater defense capabilities.

But plans to support Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines are certain to catch Beijing’s attention. To date, the only country that the United States has shared nuclear propulsion technology with is Britain. Morrison said Australia is not seeking to develop a nuclear weapons program and information sharing would be limited to helping it develop a submarine fleet.

The Australian prime minister said plans for the nuclear-powered submarines would be developed over the next 18 months and the vessels would be built in Adelaide, Australia.

Australia had announced in 2016 that French company DCNS had beat out bidders from Japan and Germany to build the next generation of submarines in Australia’s largest-ever defense contract.

Top French officials made clear they were unhappy with the deal, which undercuts the DCNS deal.

“The American choice to exclude a European ally and partner such as France from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, whether in terms of our values or in terms of respect for multilateralism based on the rule of law, shows a lack of coherence that France can only note and regret,” French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and defense minister Florence Parly said in a joint statement.

Morrison said the three countries had “always seen through a similar lens,” but, as the world becomes more complex, “to meet these new challenges, to help deliver the security and stability our region needs, we must now take our partnership to a new level.”

Matt Pottinger, who served as deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration, said that equipping Australia with nuclear-powered submarines was a significant step that would help the U.S. and its allies on the military and diplomatic fronts.

Underwater warfare capabilities have been Beijing’s “Achilles’ heel,” Pottinger said. A nuclear-powered submarine fleet would allow Australia to conduct longer patrols, giving the new alliance a stronger presence in the region.

“When you have a strong military, it provides a backdrop of deterrence that gives countries the confidence to resist bullying,” said Pottinger, who is now a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “Part of the problem right now is that Beijing has gotten rather arrogant and it’s been less willing to engage productively in diplomacy.”

The announcement of the new security alliance comes as the U.S.-China relationship has deteriorated. Beijing has taken exception to Biden administration officials repeatedly calling out China over human rights abuses in Xianjing province, the crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong, and cybersecurity breaches originating from China, as well as Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and what the White House has labeled as “coercive and unfair” trade practices.

Even as White House officials have repeatedly spoken out about China, administration officials say they want to work with Beijing on areas of common interest, including curbing the pandemic and climate change.

Biden spoke by phone with China’s President Xi Jinping last week amid growing frustration on the American side that high-level engagement between the two leaders’ top advisers has been largely unfruitful.

After the 90-minute phone call, official Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi expressed concerns that U.S. government policy toward China has caused “serious difficulties” in relations.

Asked Tuesday about media reports that Xi had declined to commit to meet with him in person, the U.S. president said it was “untrue.” Biden did not speak in “specific terms” about the new AUKUS alliance during last week’s call with the Chinese leader, according to the senior administration official.

The U.S. and Australia, along with India and Japan, are members of a strategic dialogue known as “the Quad.” Biden is set to host fellow Quad leaders at the White House next week.

Biden has sought to rally allies to speak with a more unified voice on China and has tried to send the message that he would take a radically different approach to China than former President Donald Trump, who placed trade and economic issues above all else in the U.S.-China relationship.

In June, at Biden’s urging, Group of Seven nations called on China to respect human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang province and to permit a full probe into the origins of COVID-19. While the allies broadly agreed to work toward competing against China, there was less unity on how adversarial a public position the group should take.

Alliance with Australia and US a ‘downpayment on global Britain’

Comment from White House shows there is a price to be paid: support for US-led stronger posture against Beijing

Boris Johnson, the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the US president, Joe Biden, at the G7 summit in June. 

Photograph: Andrew Parsons/UPI/Rex/Shutterstock

Dan Sabbagh
Wed 15 Sep 2021 

Britain’s post-Brexit foreign policy is taking shape, and the early moves are hardly very surprising: a tripartite defence alliance with the US and Australia – handily compressed to Aukus – clearly designed to send a message to Beijing.

The three start work by sharing with Canberra what is ultimately an American technology: supplying nuclear reactors to power submarines with the likely assistance of Britain’s Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, a relationship that may also allow the Australians to ditch a troubled but lucrative A$90bn (£48bn) diesel engine agreement with a French contractor.

Australia’s new nuclear-powered submarines will not be nuclear-armed, and the country has no desire to be a nuclear power. But there are questions as to how precisely the enriched uranium required will be supplied and how the reactors will be decommissioned – or to put it another way, what will be done in Australia, the UK or the US. The three will spend the next 18 months trying to work it out.

In theory, it would have been perfectly possible for the US to work directly with their Australian counterparts on the sensitive technology transfer (a development so rare that it has only happened once before in history, when the US helped Britain start its own nuclear submarine programme in late 1958).

But as a senior White House official revealed, it was the UK that wanted this the most. “Great Britain has been a very strong strategic leader in this effort,” said one, speaking ahead of the announcement, helping “mediate and engage on all the critical issues” as the partnership was being thrashed out.

It is a vital endorsement after a tricky summer in which Anglo-American relations have been far from smooth during the Afghanistan crisis. British generals and ministers made little secret that they disagreed with Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from the country, effectively handing it over to the Taliban.

There was a lack of understanding of the tactical intentions of the White House. British sources complained it was unclear when the US would pull out of Kabul airport, and Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, a survivor of Wednesday’s reshuffle, even appeared to question if the US had the will to be a superpower any longer.

Now at least, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, can head over the US for the UN general assembly, and his first White House meeting with Joe Biden, with something else to talk about.

But for the UK there will be a price. What the US president wants is for the UK to be more present in the Indo-Pacific, even though it is thousands of miles away from home. The submarine deal is, the White House official observed, “a downpayment” on the “concept of global Britain”.

In June, Biden came to Europe for his first overseas tour as president, wanting western allies to sign up to a stronger posture against Beijing. Nato, traditionally focused on Russia, obliged and agreed to declare that China also poses a security risk at its annual summit. Yet the White House wants to go further.

The Pentagon has hardly been shy in pointing out that China, which has its own nuclear-powered submarines, now possesses the world’s largest navy. The US has repeatedly wanted allies to help: over the summer Britain’s new Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier participated in muscle-flexing military exercises in the Philippine Sea.

A serious confrontation with China remains unlikely, but this is not the point. With access to European markets not as friction-free as before, the UK is choosing to build a political and industrial strategy based in part on defence and helping longstanding but far-flung allies, starting with supplying nuclear-powered submarines.

‘Stab in the back’: France slams Australia, US over move to ditch €50B submarine deal


‘We had established a trusting relationship with Australia, and this trust was betrayed,’ Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called the decision “contrary to the spirit and letter of the cooperation between France and Australia." | Sia Kambou/AFP via Getty Images

BY JULES DARMANIN AND ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH
September 16, 2021

The French government has hit out Australia's decision to tear up a submarine deal with France worth more than €50 billion to instead acquire American-made nuclear-powered submarines.

"It's a stab in the back. We had established a trusting relationship with Australia, and this trust was betrayed," French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a Franceinfo interview Thursday morning. Le Drian added he was "angry and very bitter about this break up," adding that he had spoken to his Australian counterpart days ago and received no serious indication of the move.

Under a deal announced Wednesday by U.S. President Joe Biden, Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. will form a new alliance to be known as AUKUS, which will see the three countries share advanced technologies with one another. As part of the new pact, Canberra will abandon its submarine deal with France.

Le Drian indicated that France would fight the move. “This is not over," he said. "We’re going to need clarifications. We have contracts. The Australians need to tell us how they’re getting out of it. We’re going to need explanation. We have an intergovernmental deal that we signed with great fanfare in 2019, with precise commitments, with clauses, how are they getting out of it? They’re going to have to tell us. So this is not the end of the story."

And he added that the announcement of the move was reminiscent of Biden's predecessor in office, Donald Trump. “What concerns me as well is the American behavior," he said. "This brutal, unilateral, unpredictable decision looks very much like what Mr. Trump used to do … Allies don’t do this to each other … It’s rather insufferable."

In a statement released before the interview, Le Drian and Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said: “This decision is contrary to the letter and spirit of the cooperation that prevailed between France and Australia."

The statement continued: "The American choice to push aside an ally and European partner like France from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region ... shows a lack of consistency France can only note and regret."

The Franco-Australian submarine deal has been significantly troubled for years, with tensions building between French shipbuilder Naval Group and Canberra over cost blowouts, design changes and local industry involvement in the project to build 12 diesel Shortfin Barracuda submarines, announced in April 2016.

China fumes over Australia’s nuclear sub pact with U.S., Britain

U.S. Navy personel walks past USS North Carolina submarine docked at Changi Naval Base in Singapore

By Trevor Hunnicutt, Nandita Bose and David Brunnstrom
Posted on September 16, 2021

WASHINGTON/CANBERRA (Reuters) -The United States, Britain and Australia announced a new security partnership for the Indo-Pacific in a move hailed by regional allies but denounced by China as intensifying an arms race in the region.

Under the partnership, announced by President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the United States and Britain will provide Australia with the technology and capability to deploy nuclear-powered submarines.

The United States and its allies are looking for ways to push back against China’s growing power and influence, particularly its military buildup, pressure on Taiwan and deployments in the contested South China Sea.

The three leaders did not mention China by name in Wednesday’s announcement and senior Biden administration officials who briefed reporters ahead of time said the partnership was not aimed at countering Beijing.

However, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the trio were “severely damaging regional peace and stability, intensifying an arms race, and damaging international nuclear non-proliferation efforts”.

Countries should not build partnerships that target third countries, he told a regular briefing in Beijing on Thursday.

“China will closely watch the situation’s development.”

NUCLEAR POWER, NOT NUCLEAR WEAPONS

In a three-way virtual announcement, the leaders stressed Australia will not be fielding nuclear weapons but using nuclear propulsion systems for the vessels, to guard against threats.

“We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term,” said Biden.

“We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region, and how it may evolve because the future of each of our nations and indeed the world depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead,” he said.

Morrison said the submarines would be built in the city of Adelaide and Australia would meet all of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

James Clapper a former director of U.S. national intelligence, told CNN it was a bold step by Australia given its economy’s dependence on China, adding: “Clearly the Chinese will view this as provocative.”

Republican Senator Ben Sasse said the agreement “sends a clear message of strength to Chairman Xi.”

A U.S. official briefing before the announcement said Biden had not mentioned the plans “in any specific terms” to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a call last Thursday, but did “underscore our determination to play a strong role in the Indo-Pacific.”

U.S. officials said nuclear propulsion would allow the Australian navy to operate more quietly, for longer periods, and provide deterrence across the Indo-Pacific.

The officials said the partnership, dubbed AUKUS, would also involve cooperation in areas including artificial intelligence and quantum technology.

FRANCE SIDELINED

The partnership ends Australia’s 2016 deal with French shipbuilder Naval Group to build it a new submarine fleet worth $40 billion to replace its more than two-decades-old Collins submarines, a spokesperson for Morrison told Reuters.

Naval Group said in a statement that Australia’s decision was a major disappointment and that the company would analyze the consequences of the decision.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Defense Minister Florence Parly said the decision to exclude France showed a lack of coherence at a time the two allies are facing common challenges in the Indo-Pacific region.

Biden said the governments would now launch an 18-month consultation period “to determine every element of this program, from workforce, to training requirements, to production timelines” and to ensure full compliance with non-proliferation commitments.

The pact should be a boon for the U.S. defense industry and among the firms that could benefit are General Dynamics Corp and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc.

General Dynamics’ Electric Boat business does much of the design work for U.S. submarines, but critical subsystems such as electronics and nuclear power plants are made by BWX Technologies Inc

U.S. officials did not give a time frame for when Australia would deploy a nuclear-powered submarine, or how many would be built. They said that since Australia does not have any nuclear infrastructure, it would require a sustained effort over years.

ONE-OFF TECHNOLOGY SWAP

One U.S. official said the announcement was the result of months of engagements by military and political leaders, during which Britain – which recently sent an aircraft carrier to Asia – had indicated it wanted to do more in the region.

“What we’ve heard in all those conversations is a desire for Great Britain to substantially step up its game in the Indo-Pacific,” the official said.


The U.S. official said Washington had shared nuclear propulsion technology only once before – with Britain in 1958 – and added: “This is frankly an exception to our policy in many respects, I do not anticipate that this will be undertaken in other circumstances … We view this as a one-off.”

He said the United States planned to forge stronger ties with long-term allies Japan, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines, and engage more with new partners like India and Vietnam.

The announcement came just over a week before Biden hosts a first in-person meeting of leaders of the “Quad” – Australia, India, Japan and the United States.

(Reporting by Steve Holland, Nandita Bose, David Brunnstrom, Mike Stone, Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington and Colin Packham in Canberra; Additional reporting by John Irish and Matthieu Protard in Paris and Gabriel Crossley in Beijing; Editing by Alistair Bell, Richard Pullin and Jon Boyle)

President Biden delivers remark on National Security at the White House

President Biden delivers remark on National Security at the White House