Israeli general turned lawmaker emerges as settler critic

Israel Maverick Lawmaker Israeli Deputy Minister of Economy and Industry Yair Golan, a legislator with the dovish Meretz party, poses during an interview with The Associated Press at his office at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem, Monday, Jan. 17, 2022. Golan spent a significant part of his military career serving in the occupied West Bank, protecting Jewish settlements. Today, he is one of their most vocal critics. His comments, highlighted by his recent description of violent settlers as “subhuman,” have rattled Israel’s delicate governing coalition.

 (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

TIA GOLDENBERG
Thu, January 20, 2022

JERUSALEM (AP) — Retired general Yair Golan spent a significant part of his military career serving in the occupied West Bank, protecting Jewish settlements. Today, he is one of their most vocal critics.

Golan, a former deputy military chief, is now a legislator with the dovish Meretz party, where he has repeatedly spoken out against settler violence against Palestinians.

His comments, highlighted by his recent description of violent settlers as “subhuman,” have rattled Israel’s delicate governing coalition, and his opponents have labeled him a radical. He joins a cadre of former security personnel who, after not speaking up while in uniform and positions of influence, have in retirement sounded the alarm over Israel’s five-decade-long military rule of the Palestinians.


“You can’t have a free and democratic state so long as we are controlling people who don’t want to be controlled by us,” Golan told The Associated Press in an interview at his office in the Knesset this week. “What kind of democracy are we building here long term?”

Golan has emerged as a rare critical voice in a society where the occupation is largely an accepted fact and where settlers have successfully pushed their narrative through their proximity to the levers of power. Most members of Israel's parliament belong to the pro-settlement right wing.

Golan, 59, had a long military career, being wounded in action in Lebanon and filling key positions as head of the country’s northern command and as commander of the West Bank, among others.

Along the way, he gained a reputation as a maverick for decisions that sometimes landed him in hot water. At one point, he reached an unauthorized deal to remove some settlers from the West Bank city of Hebron. He was reprimanded and a promotion was delayed after he permitted the use of Palestinian non-combatants as human shields during arrest raids, a tactic the country’s Supreme Court banned.

At the same time, he was credited with permitting thousands of Syrians wounded in their country’s civil war to enter Israel for medical treatment.

As the deputy military chief, he was passed over for the top job after comparing what he saw as fascistic trends in modern-day Israel to Nazi Germany. He believes the speech cost him the position.

A few years after retirement, he was elected to parliament and eventually joined Meretz, a party that supports Palestinian statehood and is part of the current coalition headed by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Meretz has been one of the few parties to make ending Israel’s occupation a top priority. But since joining the coalition, which has agreed to focus on less divisive issues to maintain its stability, most of its members have appeared to tone down their criticism.

Golan has not. Earlier this month, he caused a firestorm when he lashed out against settlers who vandalized graves in the Palestinian West Bank village of Burqa.

“These are not people, these are subhumans,” Golan told the Knesset Channel. “They must not be given any backing.”

His remarks angered Bennett, a former settler leader, and sparked criticism from others within the coalition.

Golan acknowledged his choice of words was flawed but said he stands by the spirit of his remarks.

“Is the problem the expression that I used or is the problem those same people who go up to Burqa, smash graves, damage property and assault innocent Palestinians?” he said.

Such statements have turned him into a poster boy for what far-right nationalists describe as dangerous forces in the coalition challenging Israel’s role in the West Bank. The Palestinians seek the area, captured by Israel in 1967, as the heartland of a future state.

Some on Israel’s dovish left also have been hesitant to embrace Golan, who continues to defend the army’s actions in the West Bank.

Golan always saw his duty in the territory as primarily combatting Palestinian militants, and he continues to believe that most settlers are law-abiding citizens. The international community overwhelmingly considers all settlements illegal or illegitimate, and the Palestinians and many left-wing Israelis see the military as an enforcer of an unjust occupation.

Breaking the Silence, a whistleblower group for former Israeli soldiers who oppose policies in the West Bank, called for action, not just words, against settler violence.

“Yair Golan knows full well what settler violence looks like and what our violent control over the Palestinian people looks like. That’s why his criticism is valuable, but it's not enough,” the group said in a statement.

Golan said he always saw Israeli control over Palestinian territories as temporary. He said separating from the Palestinians is the only way to keep Israel a democratic state with a Jewish majority.

In 2006, Golan commanded the violent evacuation of the Amona settlement in the West Bank, which was built on privately owned Palestinian land.

“I can’t come to terms with the idea that someone Jewish who holds Jewish values supports the theft of someone else’s lands,” he said.

In recent months, as violence between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank has ticked up, videos have emerged of soldiers standing by as settlers rampage. Golan said he never would have allowed such a thing under his command.

“These people don’t accept the essence of Israel and abide by the law only when it’s convenient for them,” he said.

His comments about settlers aren’t the first to rankle the establishment. In a 2016 speech marking Israel's Holocaust memorial day, Golan, then deputy military chief, said he was witnessing “nauseating processes” in Israeli society that reminded him of the fascism of Nazi-era Germany.

He said the remarks were sparked by the fatal shooting of a subdued Palestinian attacker by a soldier. The soldier was embraced by nationalist politicians, including then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Golan said the shooting was nothing short of an execution.

Next to his desk, Golan keeps a photo of Netanyahu arriving for his corruption trial at a Jerusalem courthouse, surrounded by his Likud Party supporters as he rants against police and prosecutors.

Golan said the image is a reminder of what he is fighting against — and for.

“I served the country in uniform for so many years, I really gave it my life,” Golan said. Pointing to the photo, he said: “I didn’t endanger my life countless times for these people.”

Five do battle for top UN labour job

The race is on to succeed British former trade unionist Guy Ryder when he reaches the end of his second five-year term (AFP/Fabrice COFFRINI)

Agnès PEDRERO
Thu, January 20, 2022, 7:10 PM·4 min read

Five candidates battling to take the helm of the United Nations' labour agency completed two days of hearings Friday where they set out their visions for the organisation's future.

Issuing promises around social dialogue, the right to strike and more diversity, the five, including three former government ministers, presented their cases for becoming the next head of the International Labour Organization.

Two women are in the running to succeed British trade unionist Guy Ryder when he completes his second five-year term, in a post only ever held by men.

"I would like to be the first female director-general of the ILO in more than 100 years," Muriel Penicaud, a former French labour minister, said during her presentation.

Founded in 1919, the ILO is the oldest specialised UN agency, with 187 member states, which are, uniquely in the UN system, represented by governments, employers and workers.

Headquartered in a vast 1960s-designed rationalist rectangular block, the ILO aims to promote rights at work, encourage good employment opportunities, enhance social protection and strengthen dialogue on work-related issues.

Besides Penicaud, the candidates are Togo's former prime minister Gilbert Houngbo, South Korea's ex-foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha, entrepreneur Mthunzi Mdwaba of South Africa, and ILO deputy Greg Vines of Australia.

Whoever wins, a change is on the cards: the ILO's 10 chiefs so far have all been men from Europe or the Americas.

- Hats in the ring -

Thursday and Friday's live-streamed "dialogues" with the candidates will be followed by a private round of hearings in mid-March before an election on March 25.

The new director-general will take office on October 1.

Penicaud, 66, was France's labour minister from 2017 to 2020, initiating some of President Emmanuel Macron's major social reforms, including unemployment insurance, promoting apprenticeships, gender equality and changing the labour laws.

"We are seeing the development of new forms of work which raise questions about the protection of workers, and they must be addressed," she said.

Kang was South Korea's first female foreign minister, in post from 2017 to February last year.

She does not have prior labour experience, but has highlighted her broad UN career, having served as deputy human rights chief, deputy emergency relief coordinator and senior policy advisor to the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

"I am from the outside perhaps, but I think it's time for the ILO to have some fresh input in terms of leadership," the 66-year-old said, insisting she could be an "impartial player".

Vines meanwhile has been an ILO deputy director-general since 2012. Before that, he represented Australia at the ILO and chaired the Timor Leste civil service taskforce.

"It is my driving passion that everyone should get a fair go, and the dignity that comes with a decent job," he said Friday, stressing his support for the right to strike.

- Focus on Covid changes -

Houngbo, who has the support of African countries, was the prime minister of Togo from 2008 to 2012, before spending four years as a deputy director-general at the ILO headquarters. He is currently the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Driven by a resolve for better social justice, he called for a "new global social contract", saying that "decent work remains a big dream for millions of workers".

Mdwaba runs various companies in Africa and has held several senior positions in employers' organisations.

He called himself an "entrepreneur who's had to mix things with Karl Marx".

Besides producing global labour statistics, the ILO also sets international labour standards on matters such as working hours, forced labour, domestic workers, maternity protection, night work, unemployment and workplace harassment.

The ILO convention banning the worst forms of child labour in 2020 became its first convention ever to be universally ratified.

It calls for the prohibition and elimination of child slavery, forced labour and trafficking and bans the use of children in warfare, prostitution, pornography, illegal activities such as drug trafficking, and in hazardous work.

Recently the ILO has turned its focus on work during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has triggered economic crises around the world and seen millions shift to working from home.

apo-rjm/nl/ah

A professor said her students think average Americans make six figures. That's a long way off.


A student leaves the Wharton School of Business on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Mostoller - RC17946552A0

Timothy Bella
Thu, January 20, 2022,

The question asked by Nina Strohminger to her students at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania was straightforward: What did they think the average American makes in annual wages?

Some of the answers, however, were not what the professor of legal studies and business ethics could have expected from one of America's most prestigious business schools, she said.

"I asked Wharton students what they thought the average American worker makes per year and 25% of them thought it was over six figures," she tweeted late Wednesday. "One of them thought it was $800k."

As she estimates the real answer is around $45,000 a year, Strohminger has a hard time wrapping her head around what some Wharton students believed was an average wage.

"Really not sure what to make of this," she wrote.

Neither did the Internet.

Strohminger's tweet set off a range of reactions from experts and observers wondering if this classroom interaction accurately reflected what future business leaders think about the state of wages in the United States.

"People tend to believe that the typical person is closer to themselves financially than what it is in reality," Ken Jacobs, the chair of the University of California at Berkeley's Center for Labor Research and Education, told The Washington Post. "It is an odd notion in America that people think of $200,000 or $100,000 as a typical wage when it is quite a bit above."

Others took the chance to compare the Wharton students who think the average American makes more than $100,000 to Lucille Bluth, the "Arrested Development" character played by the late Jessica Walter, who once guessed that a banana costs $10.

"Not shocking if it were, say, middle school students," tweeted journalist Soledad O'Brien. "But Wharton?"

Neither Strohminger nor a Wharton spokesperson immediately responded to requests for comment on Thursday.

According to the Social Security Administration, the average U.S. annual wage last year actually was $53,383, with the median wage at $34,612. The Labor Department reported that median weekly earnings in the fourth quarter of last year were $1,010, which comes out to an annual wage of $52,520, according to MarketWatch.

The debate comes as the latest surge of coronavirus cases from the highly-transmissible omicron variant has exacerbated the country's persistent labor shortages and potentially complicated the labor market's push toward pre-pandemic employment levels. Approximately 8.8 million workers reported not working between Dec. 29 and Jan. 10 because they were infected with covid-19 or caring for someone who had the virus, according to data from the Census Bureau.

There's also the concern surrounding rising inflation and the direct impact it has on Americans' wallets. While wages are rising, unemployment is low and the stock market is healthy, 2021 was the worst year for inflation since 1982, according to a report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last week. Inflation, which is driven in part by supply chain issues and shortages overseas, is wiping out wage gains made by many workers last year, and has caused prices to increase 7 percent over the 12-month period that ended in December.

The question surrounding what is considered middle-class in America has popped up in recent years. A majority of Americans consider themselves to be middle-class, but many are still having a hard time figuring out what it means. The Post calculated in 2017 that the country's middle-class ranges from $35,000 to $122,500 in annual income.

"The bottom line is: $100,000 is on the middle-class spectrum, but barely," The Post's Heather Long wrote at the time. "75 percent of U.S. households make less than that."

Among the thousands who responded to the Wharton tweet was Stefanie Stantcheva, a professor of economics at Harvard University. Stantcheva co-authored a paper in 2020 that looked at how well people understand their social position relative to others in society. One of her findings, she tweeted, was "what you think others make very much depends on your own income."

"Lower income people think everyone else is lower income too," she wrote. "Rich people think everyone else is richer too."

Jacobs told The Post that an American pretense about how there are not major differences in class has helped fuel misconceptions, like the ones from the Wharton students. He noted that some people "way overestimate the ability for financial mobility in the United States."

"Where this becomes a problem is that people in the spaces that have more political power have a skewed understanding of the typical person, based on their own set of social relations," he said. "That can lead to policy outcomes that perpetuate the current inequalities that we have."

Many on social media agreed, with some saying that the Wharton students who think people make a six-digit salary believe "the average American is an investment banker at Deutsche Bank." One of them was Brady Quirk-Garvan, who works in asset management and financial planning in South Carolina.

"Remember those setting economic policy are more likely to be Wharton (or similar) grads than have worked multiple minimum-wage jobs," Quirk-Garvan wrote.

The Wharton School was ranked as the second-best business school in the nation this year by U.S. News and World Report. Tuition for the school is about $80,000 a year. Some critics noted how the average annual income for those living in West Philadelphia, where Wharton is located, was reportedly around $34,000.

James Martin, a Jesuit priest who is a Wharton alum, tweeted that he was not surprised about the Wharton professor's message, saying "there was a relentless focus on the bottom line, and zero encouragement in understanding the poor" when he was in school. He reflected on a time when he was invited to speak at the school about vocation and how some students told him "they had never been encouraged to think about what they might be called to do, or how to contribute to the common good, but only how to land the highest-paying job."

"I'm a capitalist (yes), but capitalism isn't perfect," wrote Martin, who is also an editor-at-large at America magazine. "One of its many flaws lies in its inability not only to factor in the need to care [for] the 'least among us,' but also its built-in propensity to enable the privileged to avoid contact with their brothers and sisters in need."

On Thursday morning, Strohminger awoke and realized her tweet was the top trending topic on Twitter. She explained she had asked students the question about average wages because she wanted to see if they were as biased as other people had been in previous studies on the topic.

But she stopped short of saying the beliefs that a few students have on average wages in the U.S. reflects on them as a whole.

"A lot of people want to conclude that this says something special about Wharton students - I'm not sure it does," she wrote. "People are notoriously bad at making this kind of estimate, thinking the gap between rich and poor is smaller than it is."

Eli Rosenberg contributed to this report.

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Strike at Kroger's King Soopers ends after deal with union


 Kroger's King Soopers workers in Colorado go on strike for better pay


Fri, January 21, 2022, 6:08 AM·2 min read

(Reuters) -More than 8,000 workers at nearly 80 Kroger Co-owned King Soopers stores called off their strike on Friday after reaching a tentative deal with the U.S. retail giant, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 union said.

The details of the contract would be made public to the union members after a voting by workers beginning Monday, the union said.

"You have seven days to return to work. Contact your store manager to be placed on the schedule," the union told https://bit.ly/33Ep6iP the workers on Twitter.

The workers went on a strike on Jan. 12 after rejecting at least two offers from the grocery chain. The union had rejected a $170 million offer made last week by Kroger, which termed it as the "last, best and final offer".

The offer proposed wage increases of up to $4.50 per hour depending on job classification and tenure, with the starting rate of pay increased to $16 per hour. The union, however, sought raises of at least $6 per hour for everyone.

Rising COVID-19 infections and inflation have pushed U.S. workers to demand better working conditions and higher pay, with employees at Deere & Co and Kellogg Co's cereal plants recently securing better deals after weeks of strike.

The latest deal comes after a lot of difficult negotiation, in which Kroger accused the union of refusing to bargain in good faith, while the union alleged a few King Soopers representatives displayed "unprofessional" and "outrageous" behavior.

A U.S. court earlier this week had granted King Soopers a temporary restraining order against its striking workers, prohibiting picketing in groups of over 10 people, interfering with anyone within 20 feet of the individual or standing in front of store entrances or vehicles.

(Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Deborah Sophia; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

More surprises await scientists at Antarctica's "Doomsday Glacier"



Andrew Freedman
Fri, January 21, 2022

Researchers like David Holland, an atmospheric scientist at New York University, are in a race to understand the fate of a massive glacier in West Antarctica that has earned a disquieting nickname: "The Doomsday Glacier."

Why it matters: Studies show the Thwaites Glacier (its official name) could already be on an irreversible course to melt during the next several decades to centuries, freeing up enough inland ice to raise global sea levels by at least several feet.

Driving the news: Speaking via satellite phone Thursday aboard an icebreaker navigating through thick sea ice near West Antarctica, Holland said his research team aims to gain a better understanding of what is taking place near the glacier's grounding line. That is where the glacial ice meets the seafloor, or where floating ice meets land ice.

The big picture: The conditions there will help scientists model the glacier's likely future.

The topography of West Antarctica's seafloor is such that if the ice shelf were to significantly melt or even collapse, warm water could flow well inland, melting land-based ice.

Meaning if the ice shelf breaks up, it will open the path for the massive quantities of inland ice that it holds back, like a doorstop or a cork in a wine bottle, to flow faster into the sea.

This would raise sea levels, with potentially catastrophic consequences in coastal cities worldwide. Thwaites Glacier's meltwater already comprises about 4% of global annual sea-level rise.

Some studies have shown that much of West Antarctica may already be on an unstoppable melt pathway, but the specific timing is unclear.

Holland's work is part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a multinational push to urgently gain a better understanding about Thwaites' fate, and with it, that of some of the world's most populated cities, from New York to Mumbai.

How it works: Holland's team of scientists and engineers plans to use hot water drilling to generate boreholes through the ice shelf to observe the water below.

Scientists will also use small, unmanned submarines to take readings under the ice to find out more about the water temperature, salinity and ocean currents in areas that are critical for stabilizing the glacier.

If ocean temperatures just beneath the ice shelf are above freezing, it would melt the ice shelf from below. This has been taking place in parts of Thwaites, based on satellite readings and extensive field studies carried out so far.

Flashback: In December, scientists affiliated with the international research effort Holland is participating in announced they detected new cracks in Thwaites' Eastern Ice Shelf.

They warned parts of that shelf could collapse in as little as five years, accelerating the movement of inland ice to the sea and eventually causing sea levels to rise by several feet.

Between the lines: The eastern Thwaites discovery was an unnerving surprise since it is a part of the ice shelf that was previously thought to be more stable. But the main action is in the western part of the ice shelf, Holland said, where he is now headed.

"Western Thwaites moves faster, it's much deeper and it cuts more into the inland," he said. "It could fall apart quickly, in decades, or it could be centuries. And the only way to really know that is through this research."

The bottom line: "I'm here at the end of the Earth, but I'm not actually very far away from where you are," Holland said. "Everything is connected, and this ice that seems far away is intricately a part of your planet and your life."

Earth's new lightning capital of the world confirmed from space


Earth's new lightning capital of the world confirmed from space

Scott Sutherland
Fri, January 21, 2022, 

A new NASA map reveals how many times you can expect to see lightning flashes from wherever you live on the planet. It has also pinpointed a new lightning capital for the world.

Attached to the outside of the International Space Station, circling the Earth 16 times every day, is a specialized science camera known as the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS). This NASA instrument has been cataloguing lightning strikes in the atmosphere since 2017. It is the second LIS to be launched after the first flew on NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite from 1997-2015. It is also the third dedicated lightning instrument NASA has put into space. The first was the Optical Transient Detector (OTD) on the OrbView-1 satellite, which circled Earth from 1995 to 2000.

Lightning-Imaging-Sensor-ISS-NASA

This artist's rendering shows the location of the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

The Lightning Imaging Sensor's vantage point on the ISS provides far better data than the previous missions. It gives better resolution than OTD did in the 1990s, and it sees far more of Earth's surface than the LIS on TRMM could.

"What is new and notable about the ISS LIS is that it gives us observations that are significantly farther north and south than we got from TRMM," Patrick Gatlin, an atmospheric scientist at the Marshall Space Flight Center, said in a NASA Earth Observatory post. "ISS LIS observations extend to latitudes up to 55 North and 55 South, well into Canada and Patagonia."

According to NASA, the new LIS adds an extra dimension to the data.

The two previous lightning sensors, on Orbitview-1 and TRMM, simply logged the location of a lightning flash as a single point on the map. However, when a lightning strike occurs, there can be a substantial distance between where it originates and where it connects with another cloud or a point on the ground. Typically, the start and end points are within a few kilometres of each other, which easily fits within a single pixel on a world map. Some lightning bolts reach significantly farther, though.

On October 31, 2018, a lightning 'megaflash' stretched over 700 kilometres across the southern tip of Brazil.

LightningLocator

To address this problem, researchers Michael Peterson of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Douglas Mach at the Science and Technology Institute of the Universities Space Research Association in Huntsville, AL, and Dennis Buechler from the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, combined all of the lightning data collected from space. Their study turned the old one-dimensional point data into a brand new two-dimensional map that accounts for the horizontal distance a lightning strike can cover.

Lightning Imaging Sensor annual density climate 2020 NASA

This map combines all lightning data from 1995 to 2020 reveals the extent of Earth's lightning, and pinpoints those regions that receive the most lightning per year. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

"Our analysis accounts for the fact that lightning bolts can spread horizontally, not just vertically from clouds to the ground," Peterson told NASA Earth Observatory. "One way to think about this new climatology is that it tells us the frequency that an observer can expect lightning to be visible overhead — regardless of where the flash began or ended."

This new lightning map also confirmed Earth's new lightning capital of the world.

At one time, the spot on Earth with the most lightning strikes was near Lake Kivu, on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. While Africa still has the greatest number of lightning hotspots, in 2016, new research moved the lightning capital over 11,000 kilometres to the west. It is now located at Lake Maracaibo, a large tidal bay in northwestern Venezuela.

"Located in northwest Venezuela along part of the Andes Mountains, it is the largest lake in South America. Storms commonly form there at night as mountain breezes develop and converge over the warm, moist air over the lake," NASA said at the time. "These unique conditions contribute to the development of persistent deep convection resulting in an average of 297 nocturnal thunderstorms per year, peaking in September."

Even with this new, updated analysis, Lake Maracaibo still retains its status.

Maracaibo-NASA-Earth-Observatory

Multiple lightning strikes flash over the dark waters of Lake Maracaibo. Credit: NASA

According to NASA Earth Observatory: "With an average flash rate of 389 per day, Lake Maracaibo in northern Venezuela (shown above) has the highest flash extent density in the world. That region's unique geography fuels weather patterns that make it a magnet for thunderstorms and lightning. The area along Lake Kivu, on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a close second with an average of 368 flashes per day."

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?