BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DID
A Dam in Syria Was on a 'No-Strike' List. The U.S. Bombed It Anyway.
Dave Philipps
Fri, January 21, 2022, 

Damage where a coalition missile penetrated five stories of the Tabqa Dam's north tower in Syria, Dec. 15, 2008. (Azmat Khan/The New York Times)

Near the height of the war against the Islamic State group in Syria, a sudden riot of explosions rocked the country’s largest dam, a towering, 18-story structure on the Euphrates River that held back a 25-mile-long reservoir above a valley where hundreds of thousands of people lived.

The Tabqa Dam was a strategic linchpin controlled by the Islamic State group. The explosions March 26, 2017, knocked dam workers to the ground. A fire spread and crucial equipment failed. The flow of the Euphrates River suddenly had no way through, the reservoir began to rise and authorities used loudspeakers to warn people downstream to flee.

The Islamic State group, the Syrian government and Russia blamed the United States, but the dam was on the U.S. military’s “no-strike list” of protected civilian sites, and the commander of the U.S. offensive at the time, then-Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, said allegations of U.S. involvement were based on “crazy reporting.”

In fact, members of a top secret U.S. special operations unit called Task Force 9 had struck the dam using some of the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. arsenal, including at least one BLU-109 bunker-buster bomb, according to two former senior officials. And they had done it despite a military report warning not to bomb the dam, because the damage could cause a flood that might kill tens of thousands of civilians.

The decision to strike the dam would normally have been made high up the chain of command. But the former officials said the task force used a procedural shortcut reserved for emergencies, allowing it to launch the attack without clearance.

The two former officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were not authorized to discuss the strikes, said some officers overseeing the air war viewed the task force’s actions as reckless.

Even with careful planning, hitting a dam with such large bombs would likely have been seen by top leaders as unacceptably dangerous, said Scott F. Murray, a retired Air Force colonel.

“Using a 2,000-pound bomb against a restricted target like a dam is extremely difficult and should have never been done on the fly,” he said. “Worst case, those munitions could have absolutely caused the dam to fail.”

After the strikes, dam workers stumbled on an ominous piece of good fortune: Five floors deep in the dam’s control tower, a U.S. BLU-109 bunker buster lay on its side, scorched but intact — a dud. If it had exploded, experts say, the whole dam might have failed.

In response to questions from The New York Times, U.S. Central Command, which oversaw the air war in Syria, acknowledged dropping three 2,000-pound bombs but denied targeting the dam or sidestepping procedures. A spokesperson said that the bombs hit only the towers attached to the dam, not the dam itself, and while top leaders had not been notified beforehand, limited strikes on the towers had been preapproved by the command.

“Analysis had confirmed that strikes on the towers attached to the dam were not considered likely to cause structural damage to the Tabqa Dam itself,” said Capt. Bill Urban, the chief spokesperson for the command. Noting that the dam did not collapse, he added, “That analysis has proved accurate.”

But the two former officials, who were directly involved in the air war at the time, and Syrian witnesses interviewed by the Times, said the situation was far more dire than the U.S. military publicly said.

Critical equipment lay in ruins and the dam stopped functioning entirely. The reservoir quickly rose 50 feet and nearly spilled over the dam, which engineers said would have been catastrophic. The situation grew so desperate that enemies in the yearslong conflict — the Islamic State group, the Syrian government, Syrian defense forces and the United States — called an emergency cease-fire so civilian engineers could race to avert a disaster.

Engineers who worked at the dam, who did not want to be identified because they feared reprisal, said it was only through quick work that the dam and the people living downstream of it were saved.

“The destruction would have been unimaginable,” a former director at the dam said.

The United States went into the war against the Islamic State group in 2014 with targeting rules intended to protect civilians and spare critical infrastructure.

But the Islamic State group sought to exploit those rules, using civilian no-strike sites as weapons depots, command centers and fighting positions. That included the Tabqa Dam.

The task force’s solution to this problem too often was to set aside the rules intended to protect civilians, current and former military personnel said.

Soon, the task force was justifying the majority of its airstrikes using emergency self-defense procedures intended to save troops in life-threatening situations, even when no troops were in danger. That allowed it to quickly hit targets — including no-strike sites — that would have otherwise been off-limits.

Perhaps no single incident shows the brazen use of self-defense rules and the potentially devastating costs more than the strike on the Tabqa Dam.

It is unclear what spurred the task force attack March 26.

Dam workers said they saw no heavy fighting or casualties that day before the bombs hit.

What is clear is that Task Force 9 operators called in a self-defense strike, which meant they did not have to seek permission from the chain of command.

A military report obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit shows the operators contacted a B-52 bomber and requested an immediate airstrike on three targets. But the report makes no mention of enemy forces firing or heavy casualties. Instead, it says the operators requested the strikes for “terrain denial.”

A senior Defense Department official disputed that the task force overstepped its authority by striking without informing top leaders. The official said the strikes were conducted “within approved guidance” set by Townsend, the commander of the campaign against the Islamic State group.

First, the B-52 dropped bombs set to explode in the air above the targets to avoid damaging the structures, the senior military official said. But when those failed to dislodge the enemy fighters, the task force called for the bomber to drop three 2,000-pound bombs, including at least one bunker buster, this time set to explode when they hit the concrete.

Two workers were at the dam that day. One of them, an electrical engineer, recalled Islamic State fighters positioned in the northern tower as usual that day, but no fighting underway when they went into the dam to work on the cooling system.

Hours later, a series of booms knocked them to the floor. The room filled with smoke. The engineer found his way out through a normally locked door that had been blown open. He froze when he saw the wings of a U.S. B-52.

The dominoes of a potential disaster were now in motion. Damage to the control room caused water pumps to seize. Flooding then short-circuited electrical equipment. With no power to run crucial machinery, water couldn’t pass through the dam. There was a crane that could raise the emergency floodgate, but it, too, had been damaged by fighting.

The engineer hid inside until he saw the B-52 fly away and then found a motorcycle. He sped to the house where the dam manager lived and explained what had happened.

Engineers in Islamic State territory called their former colleagues in the Syrian government, who then contacted allies in the Russian military for help.

A few hours after the strike, a special desk phone reserved for directed communications between the United States and Russia started ringing in an operations center in Qatar. When a coalition officer picked up, a Russian officer warned that U.S. airstrikes had caused serious damage to the dam and there was no time to waste, according to a coalition official.

Less than 24 hours after the strikes, U.S.-backed forces, Russian and Syrian officials and the Islamic State group coordinated a pause in hostilities. A team of 16 workers — some from the Islamic State group, some from the Syrian government, some from U.S. allies — drove to the site, according to the engineer, who was with the group.

They succeeded in repairing the crane, which eventually allowed the floodgates to open, saving the dam.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces dismissed reports of serious damage as propaganda. A spokesperson said the coalition had struck the dam with only “light weapons, so as not to cause damage.”

A short time later, Townsend denied the dam was a target and said, “When strikes occur on military targets, at or near the dam, we use noncratering munitions to avoid unnecessary damage to the facility.”

No disciplinary action was taken against the task force, the senior officials said. The secret unit continued to strike targets using the same types of self-defense justifications it had used on the dam.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Ex-lawmaker dies using medical suicide law he helped pass nearly a decade ago


Vermont Rep. Willem Jewett chats with his daughter, Anneke, during the first day of the legislative session in Montpelier on Jan. 5, 2004. (Toby Talbot/AP)

Kim Bellware
Thu, January 20, 2022

A former Vermont lawmaker died last week using a medical aid-in-dying law that he helped pass nearly nine years earlier, before his terminal diagnosis. Willem Jewett, D, who served two years as House majority leader from 2013 to 2014, died Jan. 12 at his home in Ripton, Vt. He was 58.

Jewett's palliative-care doctor confirmed to the Vermont-based digital news outlet VTDigger that he died using a prescription obtained through Act 39, also known as Vermont's Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act. Jewett was diagnosed last year with mucosal melanoma, a rare but aggressive form of cancer, according to his obituary.

"His life was cut short by mucosal melanoma, but it was remarkably full and well-lived," loved ones wrote in his obituary. They recalled the New York-born Jewett's passion for the outdoors and for adventure. An avid cyclist, Jewett rode a 200-mile circuit around his high school campus for a class project, and later as a lawmaker, he would bike 50 miles from his home in Ripton to the capital in Montpelier as part of the state's annual Earth Day celebration.

Jewett served in the state legislature for 14 years, starting his career in the Vermont House of Representatives in 2003 before announcing his retirement in 2016 and leaving office the next year.

Jewett's obituary noted that even his 2020 cancer diagnosis did not stop his adventurous streak: He continued an annual group camping trip to Vermont's Kingdom Trails and mountain biking.

Jewett is survived by his wife, Ellen Blackmer McKay, and two daughters from his first marriage. Jewett's survivors could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

State Sen. Dick McCormack, D, who voted for the original 2013 law and is the lead sponsor of the current amendment, recalled Jewett's commitment to Act 39 even as it faced opposition in the General Assembly.

"What I knew of Willem is that he was a compassionate guy, and had a libertarian streak as well. Willem had a great capacity for that when he saw something clearly," McCormack told The Washington Post on Thursday.

In the days before his death, Jewett had lobbied for an amendment to Act 39 that would make the law easier for patients to use. Jewett told VTDigger in an interview that he found some of the law's restrictions and barriers "completely meaningless."

"If anyone wants to suggest that I, or anyone else who's gotten to this stage, hasn't thought long and deeply about this, and if they've made the request, hasn't done it with information, or at the end of the day, conviction - they're crazy," Jewett said in the interview, which was published the day he died. "What do people think we do when we're sick in bed? There's a lot of time to think and figure things like that out."

Vermont is among nine states and the District of Columbia where terminally ill patients can obtain prescriptions to end their life. Consideration to amend Vermont's current law comes as at least three states - Delaware, Massachusetts and New York - consider enacting similar legislation.

The amendment to Act 39 that Jewett lobbied for would eliminate barriers he faced in his final weeks, Jewett said in his last interview with VTDigger.

Under the Vermont law, patients over 18 who have a terminal condition that could kill them within six months and who can make independent medical decisions can request a lethal prescription from a doctor. But patients must undergo multiple waiting periods throughout the process and seek the approval of at least two doctors.

Vermont's proposed amendment would eliminate a final 48-hour waiting period, provide immunity from state homicide laws for nurses and pharmacists to help a patient and would allow for patients to consult with doctors via telemedicine - a provision McCormack said was crucial in a state where many rural residents are otherwise forced to make painful and inconvenient trips to the doctor while terminally ill.

According to Jewett's final interview, he received his diagnosis in September 2020 and was warned by doctors that pursuing a medical aid-in-dying request could take up to two to three months. Jewett reportedly began his request in December.

McCormack recalled that his former colleague could be relentless, especially when he saw people making arguments out of "pious cruelty," as McCormack described it.

"He was indignant when he saw people who had arguments that didn't make sense," McCormack said. "When an issue was controversial and he was advocating for something, he was a scrapper. He wouldn't let you off the hook if you said something stupid."

The Vermont Senate is expected to take up consideration of the amendment as early as Friday.

Archaeologists find previously unknown structures among Machu Picchu's ruins

Denise Chow
Thu, January 20, 2022

Hidden deep in the Peruvian jungle and shrouded beneath thick foliage, archaeologists have discovered a series of long-forgotten structures among the sprawling ruins of Machu Picchu.

Cutting through the foliage isn't easy, but such discoveries are becoming more common thanks to a combination of two technologies: lasers that can "see through" obstructions and drones that help archaeologists explore places humans sometimes can't easily reach.

Around a dozen small structures were identified less than 5 miles from the main remnants of the 15th century Inca city, on the outskirts of a ceremonial site called Chachabamba, according to a study published in the January edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The scientists used a type of remote-sensing technology known as light detection and ranging, or lidar, which bounces laser pulses off surfaces to detect features and map their contours.

 

A lidar view of the Vilcanota Valley and Chachabamba. (B. Ćmielewski)

Lidar scanning, a relatively new tool in archaeology, is becoming an essential way for scientists to study areas that were once too dangerous or inaccessible. In 2019, laser scanning revealed a huge network of ancient Mayan farms in a rainforest in Belize. Years before that, lidar helped archaeologists uncover a lost city in Honduras.

The Machu Picchu discoveries, which include parts of a water system that ran through the area, are yielding new insights into Inca civilization and the role of ceremonial complexes at Machu Picchu.

"Only very privileged people could get to Machu Picchu, because it was a very special place," said Dominika Sieczkowska, the deputy director for organization and development at the University of Warsaw's Center for Andean Studies, who led the research. "When you were going there, you had to stop in Chachabamba for a spiritual bath to be clean and pure to get to Machu Picchu."

Chachabamba, which sits in the Vilcanota Valley, centers on a main stone altar surrounded by 14 baths, which Sieczkowska said most likely were used for ritual ablutions. Water to the site flowed through a complex network of channels fed by the Urubamba River.

Ceremonial sector at the Chachabamba. (D. Sieczkowska)

The site is tricky to study, because the area is mostly overgrown, with archaeological ruins receding deep into the jungle. To uncover what lay beneath the forest canopy, Sieczkowska and scientists at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology in Poland and Peru’s Ministry of Culture used drones outfitted with special lasers to pierce the foliage.

The lidar scans revealed about 12 structures all within about 60 feet of the main ceremonial part of Chachabamba.

"They were so close, and we didn't even know they were there," Sieczkowska said.

The laser scans also revealed stone channels running partly underground that supplied water throughout the Chachabamba site. The researchers then developed models based on the slope and depth of the canals to re-create how water may have flowed to the various ritual baths.

LiDAR launching at the bottom of the Vilcanota Valley. (D. Sieczkowska)

Sieczkowska said that much remains unknown about how the newfound structures around Chachabamba were used but that they may have been residences for people who oversaw the ceremonial site.

The archaeologists plan to conduct further research at Chachabamba, including excavations of interesting features that were identified in the lidar scans.

"The idea was to excavate some of the structures, but because of the pandemic, we had to cancel our plans for now," Sieczkowska said. "But maybe, maybe, we'll get there next year."

Hong Kong warns animal lovers not to obstruct hamster cull

By AFP
Published January 21, 2022

The Hong Kong government is scrambling to cull about 2,000 small mammals -- mostly hamsters -- under its "zero-Covid" strategy - Copyright MIA Recoveries/AFP -

Hong Kong’s government Friday warned local animal lovers not to obstruct its ongoing cull of small animals, a policy triggered when hamsters in a pet shop tested positive for the coronavirus.

The Chinese city adheres to the mainland’s strict “zero-Covid” policy, in which even the slightest sign of the virus is stamped out with contact tracing, targeted lockdowns and long quarantines.

The discovery of Covid-positive imported hamsters in the Little Boss pet store saw roughly 2,000 small pet shop mammals — mostly hamsters, but also rabbits, chinchillas and guinea pigs — culled as a “precautionary measure”, with owners urged to surrender pets purchased after December 22.

But the policy has sparked a backlash, with animal lovers stationing themselves outside the government-run hamster collection facility to dissuade owners from giving up their pets — a move the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department condemned Friday.

“The AFCD demands them to stop such action immediately and return the hamsters taken away,” it said in a statement, adding that police had been notified of the hamster obstructionists.

By late Thursday, the facility said it had received 68 hamsters.

Local TV news Friday showed a police van parked outside the collection facility.

There is currently no penalty for pet owners who withhold hamsters purchased after December 22, but health officials have said Hong Kong has legal mechanisms for enforcing a mandatory surrender.

They also warned of the “increased likelihood” of animal-to-human virus transmission, after finding more Covid-positive cases linked to other local pet shops.

The city’s top microbiologist and government adviser on Covid said the mass cull was needed to “avert disaster”.

“We have reason to believe the source was the warehouse containing more than 1,000 hamsters in close proximity. The virus could multiply via cross-infection and spread to pet shops and other retail outlets,” Yuen Kwok-yung wrote in an article Wednesday.

He added that virus samples found in the pet warehouse resembled the “non-local European Delta variant” — which is now rare in Hong Kong.

Covid-related animal culling remains rare.

Last year, Denmark was criticised for its decision to cull all 15 million of its mink population after some were found to carry a mutated virus variant.

The risk of animal-to-human transmission “remains low”, a World Health Organization official said earlier this week, but is a possibility.

Op-Ed: Grim news – Lions in South Africa and rats in NYC have COVID, spread can loop back to humans

By Paul Wallis
Published January 20, 2022

In a totally unwelcome bit of news, South African research has confirmed the spread of COVID to zoo lions due to human exposure. The lions were seriously ill. In the wild, the spread of the virus could be catastrophic.

This “viral feedback” to animals could be very complex to deal with. If proximity contact with humans is actively contagious to animals, the world has a new, critical, problem which could be unmanageable.

Spread could already be happening. I checked rats+COVID, and, no surprise at all, evidence was found “pointing to infection and mutations” in rats and dogs in New York last year. If rodents can get COVID, it’s a much tougher, truly worldwide, major issue. Rodents are global and can infect just about anything within their proximity. (Well publicized, that bit of news wasn’t. Probably wouldn’t matter if it was. The US is so obsessed with politics that nothing else seems to register.)

In other words, there are many more vectors for the virus to mutate and re-emerge, jumping back to humans. Whether or not this added dimension to the virus had anything to do with the Omicron strain would be hard to prove.

The contagious factor is very important. Carnivores in the wild and rats in cities can’t exactly practice social distancing. The virus could spread through the food chain. It could also create new strains based on new sources of DNA and RNA.

It’s hardly reassuring to know the virus could be branching out to such high-density populations of animals which typically inhabit human environs. If this is the case, we’ve moved on to an imponderable scenario of infection, mutation, and reinfection.

From an evolutionary perspective, the virus has given itself more options for infection by spreading to other high-volume population species. Therefore it can propagate more easily.

One of the imponderables, particularly for the coronaviruses, is that their cross-species infection is literally standard procedure for them. These viruses are highly adaptable, mutate fast, and can move on to new infection options on a routine basis.

The obvious issue is that a multi-species pandemic can also crash critical animal populations. That could easily apply to livestock. It would be extremely hard to manage any sort of immunological process for pigs, sheep, and cattle.

“Herd immunity”, that unspeakably stupid expression, could well be a contradiction in terms. Quite the opposite; the herd could be the best possible vector for the virus. There are lots of infection opportunities in a herd. If so, your food prices can be expected to skyrocket.

Bring in the experts, lose the idiots, particularly the politics.

A crash in the food supply can’t be anything but disastrous. The shambolic response to the human pandemic was bad enough. Millions of dead for the sake of a few self-righteous press releases doesn’t seem to work. Anti-basic hygiene is also not much of a stellar performer.

The politics are far worse than the pandemic. There are no excuses at all for this situation. “Choosing” to be infectious to other people hasn’t helped much, either. It’s as good a way of making sure the pandemic goes on for as long as possible. In this enlightened social environment, irresponsibility rules.

…Now try getting these same idiots to understand something as complex as a crashed or severely compromised food chain. If you think food shortages due to supply chain issues are bad, this can be a lot worse. Whole classes of food may be in serious trouble. You can’t supply food that doesn’t exist.

Expertise, research, and incredible amounts of patience will be required if a food chain infection regime occurs. This is more new territory opened up by the virus. Working management methods will have to be developed.

That can’t happen in the presence of so many ignoramuses in positions of authority.

Let’s try a quiz for politicians:
What, exactly, are you representing? The virus, presumably? …Because you’re sure as hell not representing the best interests of humanity.
Why is it a good idea to have a disease running rampant worldwide? Running out of things to say on all your other total failures?
Who benefits from the pandemic? A useful question. No answers are expected, of course, but surely they’d like to be appropriately thanked?
If you “choose” to infect other people with a possibly fatal disease, why aren’t you in jail? You’re making a choice for other people.
Why is total systemic failure a reason to elect people? I’d love to see the political spin-morticians answer that one.
Do political donors have to be dropping dead before you do your jobs? How unpredictable.

Humanity is its own worst enemy. Tolerating failure simply produces more failure. This severe risk to the food chain is a critical issue that if it happens won’t go away.

Plagues and pandemics never completely wipe out entire populations. Starvation and dislocation of essentials, however, do. Happy?

Saudi-led coalition denies targeting prison after Yemen strike kills dozens

Issued on: 22/01/2022 - 

A man walks on the collapsed roof of a detention centre hit by air strikes in Saada on January 21, 2022. © Naif Rahma, Reuters


At least 70 people were killed in an air strike on a prison as Yemen's long-running conflict suffered a dramatic escalation Friday that drew condemnation from UN chief Antonio Guterres.

The Houthi rebels released gruesome video footage showing bodies in the rubble and mangled corpses from the attack, which levelled buildings at the prison in their northern heartland of Saada.

The Saudi-led coalition, which has been fighting the rebels since 2015, released a statement on Saturday denying it carried out the strike.

Reports of the targeting of the rebel-held facility are "baseless and unfounded", said coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki, who was quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The coalition official said the prison was not placed on a "No Strike List in accordance with the agreed upon mechanism" with the United Nations' humanitarian affairs office in Yemen and had "not been reported by the International Committee of the Red Cross".

Al-Malki said the coalition would share with both agencies "the facts and details, as well as the media misinformation" by the Houthis about the facility.

Further south in the port city of Hodeida, at least three children died when air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition hit a telecommunications facility as they played nearby, Save the Children said. Yemen also suffered a country-wide internet blackout.

"The children were reportedly playing on a nearby football field when missiles struck," Save the Children said.

Eight aid agencies operating in Yemen said in a joint statement they were "horrified by the news that more than 70 people, including migrants, women and children, have been killed... in a blatant disregard for civilian lives".

They said the prison in Saada was used as a holding centre for migrants, who made up many of the casualties.

The strikes came after the Houthis took the seven-year war into a new phase by claiming a drone and missile attack on Abu Dhabi that killed three people on Monday.

They came as the UN Security Council met to discuss that attack at the UAE's request.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement Friday called for "all parties to the conflict to de-escalate" and "abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law" after the Yemen strike and the attack on the Emirati capital.

'Proportionate response'

The United Arab Emirates insisted that it and other coalition members remained committed to "proportionate" responses to Huthi attacks.

"The coalition undertakes to abide by international law and proportionate response in all its military operations," UAE ambassador to the United Nations Lana Nusseibeh said.

The Security Council unanimously condemned the "heinous terrorist attacks" by the Yemeni rebels, but in a statement before the meeting the council's Norwegian presidency also strongly condemned the latest violence.

In a later statement, the UN said Guterres "reminds all parties that attacks directed against civilians and civilian infrastructure are prohibited by international humanitarian law."

Aid workers said hospitals in Saada were overwhelmed after the prison attack, with one receiving 70 dead and 138 wounded, according to Doctors Without Borders.

Two other hospitals have received "many wounded" and as night fell, the rubble was still being searched, the aid agency said.

'Horrific act'

Ahmed Mahat, Doctors Without Borders' head of mission in Yemen, said: "There are many bodies still at the scene of the air strike, many missing people."

"It is impossible to know how many people have been killed. It seems to have been a horrific act of violence."

The coalition claimed the attack in Hodeida, a lifeline port for the shattered country, but did not say it had carried out any strikes on Saada.

Global internet watchdog NetBlocks reported a "nation-scale collapse of internet connectivity".

AFP correspondents in Hodeida and Sanaa confirmed the outage.

Yemen's civil war began in 2014 when the Houthis descended from their base in Saada to overrun the capital Sanaa, prompting Saudi-led forces to intervene to prop up the government the following year.

Tensions have soared in recent weeks after the UAE-backed Giants Brigade drove the rebels out of Shabwa province, undermining their months-long campaign to take the key city of Marib further north.

On January 3, the Houthis hijacked a United Arab Emirates-flagged ship in the Red Sea.

And on Monday, they claimed a long-range attack that struck oil facilities and the airport in Abu Dhabi, killing two Indians and a Pakistani, and wounding six other people.

The attack was the first deadly assault acknowledged by the UAE inside its borders and claimed by the Houthis.

In retaliation, the coalition carried out air strikes against rebel-held Sanaa that killed 14 people.

Yemen's civil war has been a catastrophe for millions of its citizens who have fled their homes, with many close to famine in what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

(AFP)

Samsung pulls Singapore drag queen ad after backlash


B yAFP
Published January 21, 2022


South Korean tech giant Samsung has pulled an online advert in Singapore that featured a hijab-wearing Muslim woman hugging her drag queen son after it sparked a backlash from socially conservative corners.

LGBTQ rights remain a sensitive topic in the prosperous city-state, where a rarely invoked colonial-era law banning sex between men was upheld by the country’s High Court only two years ago.

The ad, part of a campaign called “Listen to Your Heart” for wearable tech like noise-cancelling earbuds and smartwatches, showcased the warm relationship between the mother and cross-dressing son.

But it touched off a wave of online criticism, with one group labelling it “an unfortunate attempt to push the LGBT ideology into a largely conservative Muslim community”.

“We are against the ideology of mainstreaming homosexuality and transgenderism into a conservative society,” said “We are Against Pinkdot”, a group that opposes Singapore’s gay rights movement.

Other criticism took a similar tack, with one social media user bemoaning the negative impact the ad’s message of “unlimited openness” could have on future generations of the religious community.

Ethnic Malay Muslims represent a sizeable minority in the city-state, which is majority ethnic Chinese.

Following the backlash, Samsung said it was pulling the ad from all public platforms as it “may be perceived as insensitive and offensive” to some members of the local community.

“We acknowledge that we have fallen short in this instance,” it added in a Facebook post earlier this week.

But Pinkdot, one of Singapore’s main gay rights groups, hit back at the “vocal conservatives” whose protests got the ad removed.

“To date, it is still unclear what these people were offended by — the fact that LGBTQ+ people exist in Singapore or that we are deserving of loving relationships, or both,” it said.

While support for gay rights is growing in some quarters, there is still resistance to greater acceptance. In 2020, more than 25,000 people signed a petition demanding that a live stream of Pride celebrations be restricted to adult viewers.

Singaporean authorities are frequently criticised for their attitude towards gay rights, but officials have defended their stance, saying the city-state remains largely conservative.

Last May, the government warned the US embassy “not to interfere” in local matters after it hosted an online gay rights forum attended by Singaporean activists.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/business/samsung-pulls-singapore-drag-queen-ad-after-backlash/article#ixzz7IgYflw78

Pakistan proud of pig-to-human heart transplant pioneer


By AFP
Published January 21, 2022

Friends and former classmates of the Pakistan-born surgeon behind the world’s first pig-to-human heart transplant say they earmarked him for greatness from his medical school days.

Karachi-born Muhammad Mansoor Mohiuddin made headlines last week as the co-founder of the US university programme that successfully transplanted the heart of a genetically modified pig into a gravely ill American man.

While hailed as a medical breakthrough, the procedure also raised ethical questions — particularly among some Jews and Muslims, who consider pigs to be unclean and avoid pork products.

None of that worried Mohiuddin’s friends and former colleagues in Pakistan, who remember him as an ace student with a passion for medicine.

“He would be so interested, always there, always available and always ready to get involved in surgery,” said Muneer Amanullah, a specialist who attended Karachi’s Dow Medical College with Mohiuddin in the 1980s.

College vice-chancellor Muhammad Saeed Qureshi said pride in Mohiuddin’s achievement had flooded the campus.

“There was exhilaration that this has been done by a graduate from this college,” he told AFP.

Mohiuddin was quick to share the limelight with a team of 50 from the University of Maryland Medical School.

“They were all experts of their respective fields,” he told AFP by phone.

“They are the best surgeons, the best physicians, the best anaesthetists, and so on.”

While the prognosis for the recipient of the pig’s heart is far from certain, the surgery represents a major milestone for animal-to-human transplants.

About 110,000 Americans are currently waiting for an organ transplant, and more than 6,000 patients die each year before getting one, according to official figures.

To meet demand, doctors have long been interested in so-called xenotransplantation, or cross-species organ donation.

“We were working on this model for 18 years,” Mohiuddin said.

“Those 18 years were dotted with different phases of frustration — as well as breakthroughs — but finally we have done it.”

The surgery is not without controversy, however, especially given Mohiuddin’s Islamic faith.

Pigs are considered unclean by Muslims and Jews — and even some Christians who follow the Bible’s Old Testament literally.

“In my view, this is not permissible for a Muslim,” said Javed Ahmed Ghamdi, a prominent Islamic scholar, in a video blog where he discussed the procedure.

But another Islamic scholar in Pakistan gave the procedure a clean bill of health.

“There is no prohibition in sharia,” Allama Hasan Zafar Naqvi told AFP, calling it a “medical miracle”.

“In religion, no deed is as supreme as saving a human life,” added Mohiuddin.

In Karachi, the surgeon’s fellow alumni feel their former colleague may now be destined for even greater glory — medicine’s top prize.

“I think… the whole team is in for it, in for the Nobel Prize,” said vice-chancellor Qureshi.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/pakistan-proud-of-pig-to-human-heart-transplant-pioneer/article#ixzz7IgYA9N3h

Biden’s dilemmas
By Marwan Bishara
January 21, 2022

After a strong start that included rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and World Health Organization, both of which Trump abandoned, President Joe Biden has been, in a word, disappointing.

Over the past year, Joe Biden has talked like Barack Obama but walked like Donald Trump on foreign policy. But as he lacks the eloquence and bullishness of his predecessors, the president has fallen flat through and through.

He has failed to keep promises, issuing checks his administration could not cash. And although he criticised Trump’s policies, he so far kept much of them in place. Any good reason why the US has not rejoined UNESCO yet? For its fanciness, Biden’s ‘foreign policy for the middle class’ turned out, like Trump’s, rather nationalistic and protectionist. His commitment to make America more credible and respected around the world has failed as miserably as Trump’s commitment to ‘make America great again’. A quick balance sheet may help clarify.

In the Middle East, Biden spoke with passion and determination about democracy and human rights but went on to appease dictators like Egypt’s Abdul Fattah el-Sisi.

He has not talked to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman but has continued selling arms to Saudi Arabia despite its devastating war in Yemen, which has entered its seventh year. He has re-emphasised the importance of the two-state solution but also gave Israel the green light to do what it will to finish off Palestine through repression and illegal settlement.

And if that wasn’t enough, Biden has fully supported Trump’s policy of wedding Arab dictatorships to Israeli colonialism under the pretext of ‘peace’. The only issue where Biden actually diverged from Trump was the Iran nuclear deal, which his administration has been trying to revive, albeit incompetently.

As for transatlantic relations, Biden promised to reverse Trump’s indifference towards Europe and his insolence towards NATO but has proved just as cold and distant towards the continent.

He made the decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan with hardly any coordination with the European allies, a withdrawal that proved an utter disaster in its implementation, forcing US soldiers and personnel to basically flee the country in humiliation.

And in a humiliating and abrupt move, the Biden administration stiffed France out of a $40 billion arms deal by scuttling its submarine sale to Australia. Biden later admitted that his administration’s handling of the affair was clumsy and lacked grace. Biden has also failed to get European powers, notably France and Germany, solidly behind US policy against a more bellicose Russia that has been amassing forces on its borders with Ukraine. In fact, since Biden became president, a bigger gap opened up between the US and its Western allies over how to deal with Russia.

After the EU was sidelined from talks held last week between Russia and the US, French President Emmanuel Macron has said the EU “must open its own talks with Russia rather than rely on Washington” in what seemed like a snub to the Biden administration. Biden’s failure to restore trust and commitment to transatlantic relations may not all be his fault, considering Europe’s increasingly negative perception of the US and its political system since the Trump presidency.

Excerpted: ‘Biden’s foreign policy dilemmas’

Courtesy: Aljazeera.com

‘US playing Xinjiang Card against: China 

while silent on Kashmir, Palestine’
By Asim Yasin
January 21, 2022

Islamabad: Minister for Human Rights Dr. Shireen Mazari said the United States playing ‘Xinjiang Card’ against China while silent on Kashmir and Palestine.

Pakistan-China Institute (PCI) organized a first-of-its-kind webinar on the ‘New Cold War? Playing the Xinjiang card against China" under its flagship event series, "Friends of Silk Road (FOSR)’.

The Webinar was attended by over 35 participants online and featured six speeches.The panelists discussed how the ‘Xinjiang card’ is used by the Western world, particularly the United States, to achieve their foreign policy objectives of pressuring China.

The speakers stressed that laws such as the ‘Uyghur forced labor bill’, and other legislation and policies concerning Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Tibet, are part of a larger ‘China containment’ policy.

A brief video was played which discussed how the US took a politically-motivated decision to remove the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which is recognized as a terror outfit by the United Nations, from its’ list of terror groups.

It discussed the double standards on the part of the US to demonize China, despite being at war in the Muslim world for a couple of decades. Federal Minister for Human Rights Dr. Shireen Mazari, while speaking in the webinar said that the United States is involved in starting a New Cold War with China, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which requires greater international cooperation.

She asserted that the United States has created laws, such as the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act, to sanction China using the ‘Xinjiang card’. She questioned why the United States failed to take action against the genocide of innocent Kashmiris by the

Indian occupation forces. She asked why the US failed to speak out against the elimination of Palestinians from their homeland by the Israeli regime.

She emphasized that the US is losing power internationally due to its imperialist approach. “It also created the military alliance, AUKUS, centred on countering China in the Asia-Pacific region,” she said.

She said efforts to combat China in South Asia include massive military hardware influx and military cooperation.

Dr. Shireen Mazari said Pakistan faces a challenge of whether it will move towards economic prosperity, which is now a central norm of Pakistan’s National Security policy, or whether it will be sucked into the militarization being pushed by the United States. She said the rational route is to support the opening up of the world through international trade via the Silk Route, BRI, and CPEC projects.

Dr. Shireen Mazari concluded that Muslims have suffered the consequences of the US War on Terror and of militarization and they cannot afford to go down this route.

Chairman Senate’s Defense Committee Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed stated that political and economic power in the world is shifting from the West to the East. He agreed with Professor Jeffery Sachs who believes that the US has not been able to compete with China economically.

He cited a study by Professor Graham Allison of Harvard University that China has displaced the US as the world’s biggest hi-tech manufacturer.

He linked this with a recent report that China registered a growth of 8 percent in 2021, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. He highlighted that despite their opposition to the Belt and Road Initiative, the US launched its own copycat project, Built Back Better World.

He cited an article by Leslie H. Gelb in The New York Times titled ‘Breaking China Apart’, which stated that the US will ‘kindle separatism in China’ if it doesn’t fall in line and discussed the approach of Demonizing, Damaging, and Destabilizing countries.

He highlighted a July 2020 survey by the Ash Centre of Harvard University which found that over 90 percent Chinese support the Communist Party of China, since it has provided the Chinese people with stability, continuity, peace, and stability. Senator Mushahid Hussain concluded that while the US is engaged in creating cleavages, conflict, and encouraging confrontation, Pakistan will continue to support China on its core national interests such as Xinjiang, Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, South China Sea, and BRI.

Special Aide to Prime Minister on Religious Harmony and the Middle East Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Ashrafi stated that bills or statements made by the United States regarding lack of religious freedom in Pakistan, China, and Saudi Arabia are baseless. He suggested that these statements are politically motivated, rather than fact-based.

Dr. Ejaz Akram stated that the issue of Xinjiang is a flashpoint, which is used by Western groups to rally certain parts of the Muslim world against China. Professor Li Xinguang discussed that the West fears the unity between the Confucian and Islamic Civilizations.

Ms. Saba Aslam discussed that in international politics, the Western world, which has a colonial mindset, uses narratives and sanctions to demonize others.

Ambassador Masood Khalid commented that the West aims to release a domino effect in those regions of China, such as Xinjiang, which it perceives as vulnerable.

Moreover, Gerald Mbanda from Rwanda presented the African perspective and the experience of Africa with colonialism.

The dialogue was moderated by Mustafa Hyder Sayed, Executive Director of the Pakistan-China Institute. A diverse audience of students, scholars, and the media took an active part in this webinar.

Virginia state officials ignored National Weather Service warnings about catastrophic snowstorm that left thousands stranded on interstate

Dominic Gustavo
WSWS.ORG

Officials with the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) were given information ahead of time by the National Weather Service (NWS) about a snowstorm that wreaked havoc in Northern Virginia on January 3-5. The snowstorm—which came after unusually warm weather in December—brought heavy snowfall (between 5-12 inches) and plunged the Washington D.C. region into chaos.

This image provided by the Virginia department of Transportation shows a closed section of Interstate 95 near Fredericksburg, Virginia on Monday January 2, 2022. (Photo: Virginia Department of Transportation)

The Washington Post reported last week that forecasters from the NWS provided ample warnings to VDOT officials, beginning with emails on the morning of January 2, almost 24 hours before the storm began. This was followed by an online briefing that predicted a potential “worst case scenario” of rapid snowfall leading to an accumulation of up to 12 inches around Fredericksburg. This prediction, incidentally, is precisely what occurred.

That same morning, VDOT also received a separate warning from a private forecasting company called DTN, which predicted rapid snowfall of up to 2-3 inches per hour on the morning of the 3rd, with a total accumulation of 4-8 inches for most of northern Virginia, with a few regions receiving even more.

The storm resulted in numerous deaths, widespread power outages and scores of vehicular accidents. Virginia State Police reported hundreds of car crashes and over 1,400 disabled or stranded vehicles.

The most catastrophic impact was felt by motorists on Interstate-95. A 50-mile stretch of the highway between Dumfries and Ruther Glen was blocked off after several tractor-trailers lost traction and crashed or were “jackknifed”—a position that leaves a semi-truck totally immobilized. Thousands of vehicles were trapped in the inclement weather, some for over 24 hours. Many of the passengers went without food, water or medication.

Rescue efforts fell short due to staff shortages brought on by a surge in COVID-19 infections. One man froze to death after exiting his disabled vehicle and attempting to walk to his home near Lake Anna in the midst of the storm. To the north, three people died in Montgomery County, Maryland after their vehicle collided with a snowplow. The storm also shutdown COVID-19 testing centers in the midst of a huge surge of cases in the region.

According to the Post, “[a]t 2 p.m. on Jan. 2, the Sterling office [of the NWS] delivered an online briefing to the Metro Area Transportation Operations Committee, which includes VDOT’s Northern Virginia district and other D.C.-area transportation agencies.” The Post quotes the NWS’s Christopher Strong, a warning coordination specialist, who “leaned very heavily on not just what was most likely, but also the reasonable worst case for planning.”

DTN spokesperson Lori Johnson likewise notes that the organization “provided VDOT with weather briefings on Jan. 2 and 3 at 10 a.m. and that hourly updates were available online.” The Post notes in a separate editorial that despite these warnings, it “was not until more than five hours later that the district office issued a news release about the danger of heavy snow.” Likewise, there was no effort to shutdown the major highways or even to prevent semi-trucks—a major factor in the highway disaster—from traveling that day.

Interstate 95 is the primary north-south highway on the east coast of the United States, running from Miami on the tip of Florida to the Canadian border in Maine. It passes though 15 states as well as the District of Columbia, and serves as the main link between all of the major cities on the eastern seaboard. The highway serves 110 million people, and it facilitates some 40 percent of the US GDP.

The enormous commercial importance of the highway, particularly in light of the global supply chain crisis, was almost certainly a factor behind the decision not to close down the roadway ahead of the snowstorm.

The revelations of state negligence came as the east coast was struck by another winter storm on January 17. Over 118,000 people across five states were left without power, with unusually heavy snowfall affecting southern states including the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.


In the immediate aftermath of the January 3 storm, the administration of then-Democratic Governor Ralph Northam attempted to downplay its culpability for the disaster. Northam and VDOT officials took turns claiming that the amount of snowfall could not possibly have been anticipated or that their supposedly well-publicized warnings went unheeded by thoughtless motorists. This has all been exposed as self-serving and bald-faced lies.

Northam, in what may be considered his parting words to the Commonwealth of Virginia before being succeeded by Republican Glenn Youngkin last week, appeared on a radio show a few days after the storm to say that he was “sick and tired of people talking about what went wrong” in the state’s disaster response. “Why don’t you start asking some of these individuals that were out on the highway for hours: … ‘Why did you feel it was so important to drive through such a snowstorm?’” he said.

In comments to the Post, Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist for AccuWeather, stresses that this was, in fact, the outcome of inaction on the part of state authorities. “I’m of the mind-set that this was a completely preventable situation.”

Porter went on, “We were alarmed about it and did everything we could to get the message out… We specifically said that conditions would rapidly deteriorate and that highway chaos would ensue.” The meteorologist stated that VDOT should have issued travel bans and closed down the highways ahead of the snowstorm.

VDOT officials have promised an investigation to “address performance gaps and identify ways to mitigate the challenges faced during this incident.” Likewise, state Democrats have proposed bills to save face that would place limited restrictions for trucks on the highways when it is snowing.

The January 3 snowstorm, a relatively minor bout of inclement weather that was predicted well ahead of time, testifies to the irrationality of a social system operated on the basis of private profit. It is an episode within the much larger social catastrophe that has unfolded in the capitalist class’s homicidal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.