Once demonized, capitalist-style banking could be the future for socialist North Korea’s economy

HE HAS LOST WEIGHT AS ALL N KOREANS HAVE DUE TO FAMINE 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks at a conference of military educationists of the Korean People's Army held in early December in Pyongyang. (AP)


By Michelle Ye Hee Lee
December 22, 2021 

TOKYO — In North Korea, commercial banking was once seen as the ultimate capitalist institution. But under leader Kim Jong Un, it evolved into a topic of fascination and debate as the regime’s top thinkers weighed how to adopt a robust commercial banking system of their own, new research shows.

Kim, who marks his 10th anniversary in power this month, has allowed the development of some free-market enterprises in North Korea — an effort to bring his country out of its deep isolation and to modernize the economy of one of the poorest countries in the world.

In 2015, Kim signaled he would accelerate an overhaul of the state-run banking system, an effort that began under his father but that he doubled down on as he worked to distinguish himself and show that he was serious about improving the country’s economy.

North Korea heads into ‘tense’ winter: Closed borders and food supplies in question

In the years that followed, top thinkers grappled with the complexities of commercial banking systems, at times struggling to make sense of how North Korea, a socialist country, could adapt decidedly capitalist concepts, such as private residents’ banking accounts accruing interest, according to a new report released Wednesday by 38 North, a research program at the Washington-based Stimson Center think tank.

For the report, researchers pored over two decades of North Korea’s premier economic journals, whose articles are among the few sources that reflect current polices and directions, and whose publication has been discontinued since January. While banking was rarely mentioned in statements issued by state media, it was a hot topic behind the scenes, researchers found.

Because commercial banking is so closely associated with capitalism, many of the articles treaded carefully on the topic, researchers found. Still, over time, the regime’s top scholars began to justify adopting new measures, engaging in a vibrant academic discussion about ideas that were once forcefully condemned, they found.

“I was amazed by the level of discussion that was taking place in the academic journals, the extent to which concepts that were once considered too capitalist were being offered as viable options for North Korea,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a former intelligence analyst based in South Korea and co-author of the report.

“Commercial banks are one key example,” Lee said. “They were once defined by the North Korean encyclopedia as parasitic and predatory. Now, academic journals are trying to persuade readers why these once-demonized banks are necessary for improving the country’s economy.”

WHAT WAR DID THIS GUY ALL HIS MEDALS FOR

In this photo provided by the North Korean government, Kim Jong Un waves during a Jan. 14 military parade at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang. (AP)

Among the most intense moments of debate came in 2018, the year Kim shifted to direct diplomacy with the United States and South Korea for negotiations on denuclearization and sanctions relief.

As Kim made his foray onto the world stage for high-profile summitry with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and President Donald Trump, economic articles focused on what it would look like to broaden the role of banks in the country — a timely debate when diplomatic engagement could open doors for new foreign investments in North Korea.

These articles help inform policymakers about the internal economic calculations and opportunities Kim may have had in mind as he raised tensions in 2016 and 2017 with nuclear tests, then switched to a period of rapprochement to negotiate an easing of sanctions, researchers said.

What’s happening inside North Korea? Since the pandemic, the window has slammed shut.

“This is a critical point that gets to a weakness in, certainly, U.S. intelligence and U.S. policy formation,” said Robert Carlin, co-author of the report, who is a former intelligence analyst and one of the foremost North Korean researchers in the United States. “We don’t follow closely enough in real time the depth of these economic developments and therefore can’t see, or refuse to see, the links between foreign policy and the internal economic policy.”

“If we can’t understand how these things are yoked, we’re never going to be able to probe and take advantage of the window of opportunity” for diplomacy, Carlin said.

North Korea had one, central bank until the 1970s. Back then, money was nearly irrelevant because the state provided what its citizens needed — for example, by providing ration cards.

But in the early 2000s, more state-run and foreign investor banks began to emerge as a private sector and markets were established in the wake of an economic crisis following the deadly famine in the 1990s. After the famine, North Korean people began trading and bartering to survive, and such private markets became key to the country’s economic recovery.

Under then-leader Kim Jong Il, North Korea officially allowed state-sanctioned markets. Academic journals began studying foreign banking systems, writing neutral and explanatory research that read like “Banking for Dummies,” the report reads. There was an effort to start commercial banking at the time, but a full-scale system never took off. The commercial banks that exist today are technically state-owned and are largely geared toward wealthy elites and party and state interests.

Ten years of Kim Jong Un, in photos: Nuclear tests, diplomacy ... and K-pop

With the recognition that economic reform is key to the long-term stability of his country and staying in power, Kim Jong Un has emphasized economic growth and enacted a new management system to enable the growth of private markets and businesses.

In 2015, Kim identified commercial banking as an area of potential growth, which prompted research and debate in the regime about whether and how to turn the idea into reality by decentralizing state control of banks, and increasing “creativity” in the banking system, research shows.

To be sure, there is a long way to go before North Korea can take on a banking overhaul. Since the nuclear negotiations fell apart in 2019, Pyongyang has retreated into isolation. During the coronavirus pandemic, North Korea has enacted a strict closure of its border, conducting dramatically less trade out of fear of spread of the virus and emphasizing self-reliance.

The North Korean banking system has also struggled with technical issues, including sometimes lacking electricity, and in the past, banks were not able to transfer money between each other or to any international financial institutions, said Peter Ward, a North Korean economy specialist who is not involved in this research project. There is distrust toward existing commercial banks, and wealthy elites who save money through them are not always guaranteed they can draw down money in the future, Ward said.

One of the reasons Kim may be interested in expanding the use of commercial banks is that the state could keep closer track of the flow of cash throughout the country, and get more people to save money in banks rather than stockpile it at home, Ward said. In addition, a more robust banking system would allow the state to redistribute that cash and use it for development projects, Ward said.


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Le Guin‘s “The Dispossessed”: The Anarchist Utopia of Anarres

FROM THE LECTURE SERIES: GREAT UTOPIAN AND DYSTOPIAN WORKS OF LITERATURE

August 10, 2021

By Pamela Bedore, Ph.D., University of Connecticut

Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is another exploration of science fiction in the Hainish Cycle. The Cycle deals with different worlds, including a future Earth, all of which are the product of experiments by the Hainish culture. In this novel, Le Guin explores capitalism on the planet Urras and anarchy in a colony named Anarres.

Le Guin’s Hainish cycle is set on many different planets, which have similar inhabitants but varied social structures. (Image: diversepixel/Shutterstock)

The Wall

This is how The Dispossessed begins:

There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall.

And then, the second paragraph of the novel reads: “Like all walls, it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.” We realize that it’s ambiguous, it’s all a matter of perception. And even though that’s a very different idea than the first, an almost contradictory idea, it’s understandable.

This is a transcript from the video series Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature. Watch it now, on Wondrium.

Urras and Anarres

We are first introduced to the protagonist, Shevek, by his role rather than his name. He is The Passenger. We learn that he is crossing the wall in order to get onto a spaceship. This spaceship travels regularly between Urras and Anarres, but hasn’t taken a passenger in almost 200 years.

Two centuries before Shevek, led by the philosophical writings of an anarchist woman named Odo, a group of people from the planet of Urras became so frustrated by what they saw as a corrupt capitalist system that they emigrated, permanently, to their moon, Anarres.

Ethical Anarchy on Anarres

The colony on the moon was set up, not as an experiment, but as a community-based way of life putting into practice the principles of ethical anarchy. Here there is no leadership, no government. There are only community members who act ethically out of their own human instinct and a desire to be accepted by the community.

And, as we see in times of strife caused by a moon-wide famine, the people act ethically because they understand that the only way they can survive is to all work together as a community. If any of the members don’t contribute, the entire social organism may not survive.

Learn more about real-world utopias.

Shevek: The Anarchist

The social system on Anarres is based on ethical anarchy—there is no leader, but each person works for the good of the community. (Image: DisobeyArt/Shutterstock)

Shevek is a brilliant physicist. He is a tall, thin guy with long blond hair who likes sweets and manual labor. When he’s young, he’s a perfectly well-regulated member of the social organism.

Shevek volunteers for various work details, he helps other people with their math and physics homework, he copulates with other young people, male and female, although he has a preference for girls. On Anarres there’s no religion and no taboo around sexuality, and consequently no cuss words.

On Anarres, people wouldn’t say ‘my T-shirt’ but ‘the T-shirt that I use’ since clothing is made communally for the community by people who have volunteered on a clothing-making assignment. In the same sense, ‘the mother’ and ‘the father’ are people you may interact with more than others, but you don’t feel possessive toward them.

The Alternate Utopia

Shevek grows up, becomes permanently partnered with a woman, has two children, and creates a whole new theory of simultaneity, an extension of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. To the consternation of many on Anarres, he decides to go to the planet Urras, to eventually share his theory with the whole of the Ekumen. It becomes the basis for the ansible that allows instantaneous communication between all those planets.

The conflicts in this novel are subtle and beautiful, as are the relationships. Anarres is one utopian model. The moon where the environment is so harsh it brings out the best in people. There people own virtually nothing but have really important relationships with each other and with their work, because they feel no possessiveness.

Learn more about gender equality and utopia.

The Inequity on Urras

Urras is a wealthy planet, that’s been inhabited for hundreds of thousands of years. There’s lots of agriculture and industry, big cities, excellent universities, lots of different cultures. But Shevek has a lot of trouble accepting two things about the planet, even though they’re the reasons why Odo and her followers founded the colony on the moon in the first place.

First, there’s a lot of inequity on Urras. People go hungry even when there isn’t a famine. The people who have food just don’t share it. Second, he goes to a university to work with other physicists and finds himself surrounded by men. His male colleague gives a startling response, saying what Shevek knows from experience to be untrue—that women aren’t intellectually equal. He keeps thinking about that, wondering at the consequences of this lie.

Lessons for Earth?

There’s also, perhaps, a predictive portion of this ambiguous utopia. The more we learn about the planet, the more it feels like Earth, our Earth.

At the end, Shevek flees to an embassy on Urras, and there he meets the Ambassador from Earth. To her, Urras is Paradise, because the people of Earth have destroyed their planet, and they survive only because the Hainish saved them. But things on Earth are very hard, since the planet is just as stark as Shevek’s moon, but without the ethical anarchy that makes it work.

Is that gutted Earth a prediction? Is Urras the prediction? Or is Anarres? Or is each a different description—a description of the ways we can imagine ourselves, our relationships with each other?

Common Questions about The Dispossessed and Anarchist Utopia

Q: What are the two societies in The Dispossessed?

In The Dispossessed, there are two societies. One is Urras, a rich capitalist planet with a large divide between the rich and the poor. The other is the colony of Anarres, on the moon of Urras. The society in Anarres is based on the principle of ethical anarchy in which no one possesses anything, and everyone works for the common good.

Q: What was the reason for the anarchists to leave Urras?

The anarchists of Anarres left Urras because of the inequality between rich and poor, and the social inequality that sees women as inferior to men.

Q: In The Dispossessed, what is the condition of the Earth?

In The Dispossessed, the people of Earth have destroyed their planet, and they survive only because the Hainish saved them. But things on Earth are very hard.

Keep Reading
When Can We Justifiably Rebel against the State?
Defining Dystopia: Development and Difference from Utopia
The Utopian Blueprint in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

Anarchists rise for ‘Our Culture’ in Karachi

Dancers, rappers and graffiti artists gather at the Pitstop to spread love, peace and unity through the one thing they know best: hip hop.

Written by The Narrator

 29.03.2021 

While it’s too early to say there’s been a renaissance in Pakistani music industry in the last decade or so, there is a case to be made for its resurgence. After years of stagnation after the glorious early 2000s and the rise of Atif Aslams and Ali Zafars and the like, new artists finally broke away from the traditional model in a pursuit of creating and finding their own audience. Independent musicians turned to social media to reach out to and carve their own niche.

And yet, even beside them, is an underground culture, the sort that doesn’t get enough spotlight. It may not receive the recognition, but, mind you, it’s there. And it’s thriving. I got to explore this underground scene first-hand last Sunday at the hip hop show aptly titled ‘Our Culture Vol. 4’.



Taishi - Anarchy
© Saad Saeed

Taishi of the hip hop dance group Anarchy has already held three shows under the ‘Our Culture’ banner in the last couple of years. But Vol. 4 was special. It was a comeback show after a gap of over a year.
Perhaps, this is why you could see everyone shedding their skin, coming out of the cage and figuratively roaring with intensity as the hip hop beats blasted from the speakers.


Hashim Ishaq and Moji
© Saad Saeed

Everyone was back in their element.

‘Our Culture’ was more like a mini-festival than a show.

Held at Pitstop in Karachi, there was something going on in all parts of the venue: dancers free styling on the dance floor, groups showcasing merch on the stands in the corner, artist Neil Uchong spray-painting a beautiful mural on the wall, and a rapper spitting fire on the stage. Everyone and their pet dogs were immersed in the hip hop spirit.


Neil Uchong - Graffiti artist
© Saad Saeed
Saad Imtiaz aka Imtiazing opened the show with some rapid-fire rhymes while the floor was prepped for the dance battle. 16 of the best dancers in the underground hip hop community partook with a cash prize and gifts promised for the winner.



Shady - Hip hop dancer
© Saad Saeed
Syed Saad aka Sid showcased some of the most insane freestyle moves and went on to win the tournament. However, the level of competition was so high, anyone winning would’ve been fair game.



Sid - Hip hop dancer
© Saad Saeed
Dwayne Lucas, goatee-and-a-black-tee sporting, arrived on the dance amid a huge buzz in the 150, SOPs-following, mask-wearing, social distance-maintaining people at the event. You could tell, while some were focused on executing the dance moves to the best of their ability, Lucas was a character. Not only a fantastic performer, he showed more personality on the floor than perhaps anyone else.



Kumail - Hip hop dancer
© Saad Saeed
Taishi, who also served as the host and 1/3rd of the judges for the dance battle (fellow Anarchy members Naqi and Rocky were the other two), introduced him as not only a friend and a “homie” but a mentor and an inspiration. And once the beat dropped, one could see why Lucas had such fanfare going for him. His signature style of incorporating desi moves and expressions with the traditional hip hop amped up the audience. It was evident that he was having fun; and so were we.



Anarchy with Hashim Ishaq and Moji
© Saad Saeed
Sarah Babar was a surprise as the only female entrant in the tournament. Out of all, it was Babar who not only represented best the notions of love and peace and unity, but also the anarchy and fearlessness of the hip hop lifestyle.
Here was a woman in Pakistan, practicing hip hop and killing it on the dance floor. She showed off and showed up the boys and looked badass while doing it.



Sarah Babar - Hip hop dancer
© Saad Saeed
Masoom was anything but. Freakishly athletic, his performances were a highlight of the night. It was fascinating to see the variety in the dance techniques among the competitors. Dancers like Shady, Sid, Hamza Nadeem and more, all exemplified grit and dedication to their craft.
More performances followed until the end of the night. One more that stood out was by Munab Manay. One may have heard of character actors; he was rather a character rapper - personifying different characters in each rap to comment on the social and political happenings in Pakistan.



Hip hop artists
© Saad Saeed
In all, Our Culture Vol. 4 was a milestone event not only because it was happening after a long break, but also because it was a self-created platform for a community, a huge pool of unrecognized talent, that goes on, that stands up and, as Josephine and Anthony of ‘Oh Wonder’ sing, “keep on dancing until the feet wear thin”.



Spectators enjoying the hip hop scene
© Saad Saeed

Here are the anarchists who live and move and dance the way they want. To quote Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, here are the “angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night”. And they find that connection to the cosmos, to the world around them, to fellow humans, through hip hop.

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The hip hop scene in Pakistan has certainly …


We Are Anarchy: The story of Lahooti Melo 2020
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Why a 19th-century Russian anarchist is relevant to the mask and vaccine debate

July 21, 2021 

Americans who refused to don masks or get vaccinated during the pandemic don’t have an easy task constructing a valid philosophical defense of their behavior.

The go-to philosophical authorities typically cited to defend individual liberty in the U.S. – John Locke and John Stuart Mill – do not provide compelling reasons for ignoring public health messages.

Locke’s doctrine of natural law states that people are endowed with natural rights to “life, liberty, and estate,” premised on duties to God of self-preservation, and any behavior that risks survival constitutes a violation of that natural law. As such, there is no justification to refuse a safe and effective vaccine during a deadly pandemic.

Similarly, Mill’s “harm principle” – which broadly states that people are allowed to do whatever they want provided they do not directly harm others – doesn’t help those opposed to vaccines and masks. Their actions might prolong the pandemic, allowing the virus an opportunity to mutate and potentially render vaccines ineffective – behavior that puts everyone at risk.

There is, however, another ethical framework that people refusing to be vaccinated or wear masks might turn to, although it comes from an unlikely source: the 19th-century Russian anarcho-communist Mikhail Bakunin.

Perhaps most famous for his lengthy and bitter tiff with German philosopher Karl Marx, Bakunin’s philosophy of anarcho-communism consisted of the abolition of government, private property and indeed all means of coercion.

Revolutionary anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. 

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

As a professor of political theory, I believe Bakunin has been overlooked in the current debate about masks and vaccines. Some of his views are consistent with at least the libertarian-based criticisms of mask and vaccine requirements. Indeed, despite meaningful differences, many libertarians in the U.S. share with Bakunin the belief that freedom is the most important value and governments are by nature coercive. They may distrust Bakunin’s insistence on linking freedom and rationality and certainly would reject his embrace of communism, but libertarians would likely nevertheless admire his skepticism of authority.
Science as a threat to freedom

Bakunin might not be an obvious source of support for many in the anti-mask and anti-vaccine camp. His classic 1871 text, “God and State,” begins in a manner sure to offend certain elements of the religious right, who make up a sizable number of those refusing to follow public health advise on vaccines.

Bakunin attacks Christianity as the enemy of rationality and freedom. If humans wish to be free, he argues, they should learn the physical laws of the universe and social laws of society to inform their decision-making. If guided by genuine knowledge, Bakunin says, people can make smart decisions and become rational agents in charge of making choices for themselves.

But science, too, can be a great threat to freedom, Bakunin suggests – and it is here that many of those opposed to mask and vaccine mandates may warm to his argument.

Beyond the fact that there are limits to scientific knowledge, Bakunin believed that there is always the possibility that scientists themselves will be invested with coercive authority.

If rationality and knowledge are requisite for freedom, Bakunin argued, then those with knowledge are in a position to force people to do, or not do, certain things.

As such, Bakunin worried that scientists, emboldened by their importance in society, will “arrogantly claim the right to govern life.”

“We must respect the scientists for their merits and achievements, but in order to prevent them from corrupting their own high moral and intellectual standards, they should be granted no special privileges and no rights other than those possessed by everyone – for example, the liberty to express their convictions, thought and knowledge. Neither they nor any other special group should be given power over others. He who is given power will inevitably become an oppressor and exploiter of society,” he wrote in 1873.

Skeptical consumers of knowledge

Bakunin’s solution to the risk of coercion by scientists was to lessen their authority without diminishing the value of scientific knowledge. To do so, he makes each individual responsible for learning and acting on whatever knowledge they have. The idea is for people to consult scientists for knowledge with the understanding that no one scientist has all the answers and that the accumulated knowledge of all scientists likewise is limited and cannot give perfect answers.

To apply Bakunin’s theory of freedom to pandemic America, no one should be required to get a vaccine. Rather, the population should be encouraged to investigate the efficacy and safety of the vaccines.

Protesters cast vaccines as an attack on their freedom. Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images)

For its part, the scientific community needs to vigilantly scrutinize itself and present knowledge in an honest fashion, eagerly volunteering to the public what it knows and does not know.

Bakunin would be highly critical of both naïve optimists and doom-and-gloom pessimists in the scientific community. People need the unvarnished truth presented in simple and clear terms. If the answer is “we scientists don’t know,” then so be it.

Ask questions … but be reasonable

Bakunin’s theory of freedom asks much of the population. It requires individuals to know something of the nature of scientific knowledge, ask sensible questions and then make a rational analysis of the available evidence. It requires scientists to check their egos and desire for quick celebrity and soberly present their knowledge in accessible and honest terms.

And granted, Bakunin did not account for disinformation campaigns of the sort found on the internet that undermine access to reliable scientific data. He did, however, have faith in people to sort through information and make rational decisions. This ability, according to Bakunin, is a precondition for freedom.

Vaccine skeptics, thus, might find comfort in Bakunin. If they ask good questions and do not find satisfactory answers, then his philosophy suggests they should absolutely refuse a vaccine. The same goes for masking: If the scientific community cannot effectively communicate why masks are still needed, then people should not be expected to wear them, Bakunin might argue.

At the same time, those opposing masks and vaccines need to sincerely follow the science and allow themselves to be convinced by data, Bakunin’s philosophy suggests. Refusing to wear a mask based on an uneducated hunch or because of a belief that the “government wants to control me” constitutes folly, not freedom. In short, anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, to claim their freedom, need to be reasonable.

Author

Michael Locke McLendon
Professor of Political Science, California State University, Los Angeles

Trans Mountain hunts for heirs to quirky Langley legacy of long-dead financier

James C. Kavanagh cashed in when Canadian National Railway took over most of his holdings in Langley Township, but two bits of property were left over, which might be worth something to his heirs now.

Author of the article: Derrick Penner

Publishing date: Sep 16, 2021 •

TMX Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project construction in May 2021 in the Fraser Valley near Popkum, B.C. 

PHOTO BY TRANS MOUNTAIN CORPORATION /PNG

Pipeline builder Trans Mountain knows it isn’t going to find James C. Kavanagh. The financier and former hotelier died a century ago. But the company hopes his descendants will respond to a public notice the company published this week.

That is because the heirs still hold an interest in two odd slivers of land in the Township of Langley that Kavanagh bought in 1911 and which Trans Mountain wants to use for the right-of-way of its $12.6 billion expansion project.

Hence the publication of a four-page public notice in several newspapers, including The Vancouver Sun on Sept. 16, which lists Kavanagh as the registered owner and telling heirs that they have 10 days to file an objection.

If the energy regulator grants the right of way, the notice says Trans Mountain will pay $378,000 as a down payment for compensation for the inconvenience.

The notice was published as protests over the controversial project continue on Burnaby Mountain

.

J. C. Kavanagh, Brandon’s first postmaster, detail, from Martin Kavanagh, The Assiniboine Basin: A Social Study of Discovery, Exploration and Settlement; November 2007.

 PHOTO BY MARTIN KAVANAGH THE ASSINIBOINE /PNG

To date, Trans Mountain’s efforts, according to filings with the Canadian Energy Regulator’s predecessor, sent the company on an extensive search of land title documents, known wills and public registries in B.C. and California.

Trans Mountain did determine that Kavanagh died in 1922 in Los Angeles, leaving the balance of his estate to his wife, Helen (Nellie) Irene Kavanagh, but “has been unable to identify who the current executor or beneficial owner of the property is,” according to its 2017 filing to what was then known as the National Energy Board.

That document did say, however, that a genealogical consultant did identify his closest living kin, two now elderly granddaughters with one living in La Jolla, California, the other in Norwalk, Connecticut.

It is a quirky legacy that Kavanagh, who made a name for himself as a hotelier in Winnipeg, might not have known he left. Most of the property he owned was taken up by Canadian National Railway’s initial construction.

Two slivers on either side of that right of way remained, however, and Kavanagh, who was known to be living in Vancouver as of 1911, moved his family to California by 1915.

Kavanagh was born in Niagara Falls around 1850. By the early 1880s he had moved west, first coming to attention as Brandon, Manitoba’s first postmaster in 1881 and then alderman on Brandon municipal council in 1884, according to the report by genealogist Brian Hutchinson.

He was dismissed as Brandon postmaster in 1900 for “allegedly ‘offensive partisanship,'” according to the report, and moved to Winnipeg around 1902 to become proprietor of the Leland Hotel, which he sold by 1904.

By 1910, Kavanagh was living in Vancouver, where he was listed as having lived first on Chilco Street, then the Grosvenor Hotel on Howe Street, according to Hutchinson’s report. But he and his wife wintered in California where they settled by 1915.

THERE IS MORE TO KENOSHA THAN KYLE RITTENHOUSE

Our Jurassic world
Carthage College graduate Amelia Zietlow forges career studying sea monsters

Liz Snyder
Jul 6, 2021

Carthage College graduate Amelia Zietlow poses with some prehistoric pals outside the Dinosaur Discovery Museum in Downtown Kenosha.
Amelia Zietlow, Photo submitted

This skeleton of an ancient "sea monster," known as a mosasaur, can be found at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Carthage College graduate Amelia Zietlow is working and studying at the museum.
Photo submitted by Amelia Zietlow

"Bunker" is the nickname for KUVP 5033, located at the Kansas University Museum of Natural History. This is one of the largest mosasaurs found so far, at 45 feet long. That's larger than any T. rex, according to Carthage graduate Amelia Zietlow, who is studying the ancient sea creatures.

Amelia Zietlow has a very good reason for studying ancient sea monsters: They’re awesome!

The 2020 Carthage College graduate “fell into paleontology” during college.

Her first plan was “to major in business, so I could eventually afford flight school and become a pilot,” she said. “Paleo was nowhere near my radar as a potential career.”

It’s certainly on her radar now.

Zietlow is working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where she is also “a Ph.D. student in the Comparative Biology program. It’s more like a job than school, because they pay us, instead of the other way around.”

She’s set to graduate in the summer of 2024. Until then, she’s taking courses, working on her research and will be a teaching assistant.

“When I don’t have classes,” she added, “my days typically involve a lot of reading and/or writing, or, on the more fun days, poking around in the collections and looking at lots of fossils to figure out how they differ from one another. Basically, I get paid to think a lot about lizard bones.”

Life with mosasaurs

Zietlow focuses on mosasaurs, a group of extinct, large marine reptiles — basically, sea monsters.

In addition to just being plain awesome — and fearsome — Zietlow said the ancient predators “are better than most prehistoric animals for studying big-picture questions about biology.”

Here’s why:

“Mosasaur ancestors lived on the land and evolved adaptations to live in the water over time,” Zietlow said. “We actually have a really good fossil record of their evolution, tracking their transition from small, semi-aquatic, monitor lizard-like animals to the giant, shark-like, fully marine apex predators that get all the attention in movies and documentaries.”

That means “we can actually see how their skeletons changed as they made this transition from land to water and compare the changes in them to changes in other animals that independently made the same transition,” including whales, seals and sea turtles.

Mosasaurs also “have close living relatives — they are actually just giant aquatic lizards,” closely related to monitor lizards, snakes and iguanas.

“What’s great about this is we can do experiments in these living animals that we can’t do in extinct ones — like studying their DNA,” Zietlow said, “and because of their close evolutionary relationship, what we find in the living lizards can be applied to our understanding of mosasaurs.”

Another plus for studying mosasaurs: We have lots of their fossils, Zietlow said.

“That’s great, because a large sample size is important for answering questions that require statistics,” she said.

And being plain awesome, she added, isn’t just a fun bonus. It can have value, too.

“It means that people are more likely to engage with the research done on mosasaurs,” she said, “and get excited about lizards, evolution, biology and paleontology more generally.”

A published scientist

Though Zietlow is a recent college graduate, she’s already a published scientist — a rare feat she attributes to “a lot of things that came together.”

She gives credit to her advisors and professors at Carthage — in particular, Thomas Carr, director of the Carthage Institute of Paleontology, who “proofread what’s probably an unfathomable number of drafts” — and mentors from her internship at Marquette University.

Zietlow’s paper was first submitted as an Honors Thesis at Carthage, which she then reworked for publication.

She’s now working on a second publication, this one focusing on gecko embryos, and will be heading out July 16 to spend a week in Montana on a dinosaur dig with Carr and other students.

On that dig, Zietlow said, “it would be cool to find a rare dinosaur, and I know how much Dr. Carr would love to find a nice T. rex skeleton. Even though the odds are low, I would also, of course, love to find a mosasaur. We find a lot of fossils of animals that lived in a river, and, in addition to being super cool, a mosasaur in that environment (freshwater, far away from any sea) would be scientifically significant as well, since there is only one definitively freshwater mosasaur that we know of so far.”

Competitive field

As for Zietlow’s career plans, she would “ideally like to wind up working at a museum, where I have the resources to continue to do my own research as well as opportunities to participate in education and outreach.”

However, she cautions, “Academia and paleontology are both incredibly competitive and unpredictable fields to work in, so it’ll depend on what opportunities come my way.”

As for aspiring scientists, Zietlow’s advice is “to have a genuine interest in the scientific questions you want to answer. Careers in science, especially in research, can be really intense, but if you really love the things you’re studying, you won’t mind putting in the effort it takes to make your work the best it can be.”

USA

'Sea monster’ roamed the Grand Strand in 1884

STEVE ROBERTSON
Aug 11, 2021

Five-year-old Jessamine Buck got the scare of her life when she encountered a “sea monster” during a visit to the beach in 1884.

As an old woman, the memory remained fresh in her mind as she related the tale to Janet Langston Jones, who recorded the conversation in the Vol. 13, No. 4 edition of the Independent Republic Quarterly.

The 25-mile journey from her home in Bucksport to beaches near present-day Pawleys Island was quite an ordeal involving a river crossing and the fording of tidal creeks.


“One of our favorite summer pastimes was shell hunting and on this particular day Mama consented for my older sister, Iola, and me to go the beach…although Mama warned us against swimming,” said Jessamine. “On this occasion, to make sure that we did not get into trouble, she sent Rozanna, the maid, along with us.”

Jessica said the little party gathered huge conch shells and played at the edge of the surf, playing dash and dare with the waves.

“It was then that we saw the monster,” said Jessamine. “Just beyond an incoming breaker, he raised his whiskered yellow head.”

The little girl said she screamed and ran.

“It was a long way back to the house; and left far behind by the older two, I despaired of ever making it. My hot sticky clothes held my body close. The wind seemed to encircle me with hot arms of restraint while the loose sand sucked me down. I felt that I was scarcely moving up the steep side of the sea oats that scratched my wet face as I struggled to the top of the sandhill.”

She dropped to her seat and slid down the slope on the other side, not daring to look back to see if she was being pursued.

By the time she reached the porch of her home, Iola and Rozanna were already there telling her mother the story. Her mother gently unfastened Jessamine’s bonnet and loosened her damp hair.

“Now,” she said with incomprehensible calm, “Just tell me, what did the thing look like?”

“Like a big yellow dog, Mama. Like an enormous yellow dog. Except it wasn’t a dog. Oh, Mama, let’s go. Let’s go home right now. I don’t want to stay here another minute. Please let Sam take us back to Bucksport.”

Jessamine’s mother instructed the servant, Sam, to go on horseback to check out the situation.

Before long, he came riding hard over the sand dunes. Pulling the horse up to the porch, he panted, “The chilluns are right Missus. It’s a monster for sho’. I’ve lived in these parts a long time, but I ain’t never seen nothing like that afore in all my days.”

Sam said the sea monster bellowed, “This ain’t my home. This ain’t my home.”

His recollection proved to be true because the grownups decided to read the newspapers, only to learn that a sea lion had escaped from a zoo in Baltimore and had been seen off the coast.

It was captured later near Charleston.

“No matter that the mystery was solved and the monster caged: for the remainder of that summer Iola and I did not go back to the strand without strong adult protection,” recalled Jessamine.

Read more history of Horry County at
www.robertson-blog.com

Publisher
steve.robertson@myhorrynews.com

Japanese city's promotion video featuring giant sea monster viewed over 350 million times

September 21, 2021 (Mainichi Japan)

Japanese version

This screenshot taken from a tourism promotion video shows the giant monster Kaisendon appearing in the Kanmon Straits. (Provided by YouTube channel Kitakyushu-shi Kanko Joho Gur

FUKUOKA -- A tourism promotion video for the Kanmon Straits between the southwest Japan city of Kitakyushu and the Yamaguchi Prefecture city of Shimonoseki co-produced by the two municipal governments may be the most watched video of its kind, with over 350 million accumulated views.

The unique video "COME ON! Kanmon! Kaikyo Kaiju," featuring the "kaiju" (giant monster) Kaisendon, who is based on the local specialties blowfish, heikegani crab and octopus, was uploaded to YouTube in March 2017. The monster, which suddenly appeared in the Kanmon Straits, throws the tourist-filled Mojiko Retro district in Kitakyushu's Moji Ward and the Karato Market in Shimonoseki into panic.

Kaisendon growls and approaches people trying to run away, and the rest can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0qYA53uSVA. The message, "The flow is fast. Everything is amazing. COME ON! Kanmon!" appears at the end of the 2-minute, 37-second video.

Kenji Hibitani is seen at Kitakyushu City Hall on Sept. 9, 2021. (Mainichi/Shotaro Asano)

Despite the video's success, one city executive was initially confused by the idea. "Kitakyushu hardly appears in it. Does this really promote (the area)?" they said. But 54-year-old city official Kenji Hibitani, who was involved in the video production, recalled that "that was what we aimed for."

At the time of production, local governments in Japan were eager to attract inbound foreign tourists. The Kanmon Straits isn't as well known among foreigners as Kyoto or Hokkaido, so it was "important to get people to remember it in the first place," said Hibitani of the video production plan.

The dialogue in the video is in English to facilitate inbound tourism, and versions with Japanese, Chinese, South Korean and Thai subtitles were released at the same time. It became a huge hit, and there were many views from overseas.

Hibitani was able to make good use of his experience at the Kitakyushu Film Commission, in which he served as the secretary general, in the making of the video. Local extras performed brilliantly thanks to various large-scale film-making that has taken place in the area. Hibitani proudly explained, "I think the quality is good enough to make people say, 'As expected from Kitakyushu, a city famous for films.'"

But just as the video attracted attention, and those involved could feel good things were happening from it, the coronavirus pandemic hit. Yet that's not stopping Hibitani's passion. Looking ahead to the end of the pandemic, Hibitani said, "One day I want to make a video of a kaiju flying over Kitakyushu."

(Japanese original by Shotaro Asano, Kyushu News Department)

CASE KRAKED 

Google Maps sleuth ‘discovers ‘Kraken sea monster prowling the ocean’ in chilling image

• Jacob Bentley-York

• Sep 22 2021

A CURIOUS Reddit user has revealed how he spotted a “Kraken" sea monster in a distorted image on Google Maps.

The online sleuth used the forum to share his chilling discovery - which has now sparked a number of theories.

2

The strange image can be seen on Google EarthCredit: Reddit

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An artist's impression of the Kraken, a mythological sea monsterCredit: Getty

A Kraken is a sea monster from Greek mythology which reportedly possessed tremendous size and strength.

Taking to the forum, he wrote: "I'm not familiar with how Google decides to render certain objects via satellite or whether there have been cases of recorded volcanic disturbances but this does not appear to be any sort of vessel and its sheer length rivals the maximum recorded blue whale.

"Let me know what you guys think it is!"

The post was soon inundated with comments as imaginative viewers began to theorise what the object could be.

One said: "I've also done some research over the last few years and according to satellite images this wasn't around in 1800s or even for a long period of time after that."

Another quipped: "Looks like giant squid vs a sperm whale."

However, other users on Reddit were quick to point out that the image was most likely a rock.

One internet user agreed, writing: "Apparently it's a rock."

A fellow user chimed in, claiming that the Kraken enthusiast was simply “trying to explain the rock theory".