Bark beetles are killing the Earth's oldest trees. Can they be saved?

DPA
July 11, 2022

A 4,853-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine tree known as Methuselah is growing high at Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of Inyo County in eastern California, United States on November 28, 2021. It is also recognized as the non-clonal tree with the greatest confirmed age in the world.

 Tayfun Coskun/AA/dpa

Forest pathologist Martin MacKenzie strode forward on a narrow path through California's mythic bristlecone pine forest in the White Mountains near the Nevada border, methodically scanning gnarled limbs for the invaders that threaten the lives of some of the world's oldest trees.

These intruders are bark beetles, a menace smaller than a pencil eraser, but they bore by the thousands into the bark and feast on the moist inner core, where trees transport nutrients from roots to crown. Then they carve out egg galleries, where hungry larvae hatch.

A blue stain fungus carried in by the pests delivers the coup de grace - a clogged circulatory system.

For thousands of years, bark beetles were held in check or eliminated by the harsh conditions of the stony, storm-battered mountain crests where the grotesque, twisted trees have evolved an arsenal of survival strategies.

Now, scientists say, these living symbols of longevity, strength and perseverance may be at an evolutionary crossroads. Hotter droughts and bark beetles are for the first time in recorded history killing bristlecones, according to a recent study published in the scientific journal Forest Ecology and Management.

Since 2013, thousands of the trees that ranged in age from 144 to 1,612 years have been killed on Telescope Peak - the site of Death Valley National Park's lone population of bristlecones - the study says. Many more have been killed in high-altitude bristlecone forests scattered across southern Utah.

On a recent morning, MacKenzie, 74, wanted to confirm that the culturally significant Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, home to Methuselah, a 4,853-year-old specimen some say is the oldest living tree on Earth, remained free of the insects.

"We're lucky - there's no sign of the beetles in these trees," MacKenzie told a companion with a smile.

But minutes later, as he made his way along the path, he noticed a tell-tale colour of arboreal stress: red. It had just begun to emerge on the bright green needles of a bristlecone crouched on a steep slope in the distance.

His face fell. "I have to go check it out."

Great Basin bristlecone pine trees are magical for foresters like MacKenzie.

In tough times, they die off almost entirely, leaving a few strips of bark that can continue growing for thousands of years - sideways along the ground, or diagonally skyward. They hold needles for up to 40 years and drown hungry insects in resin.

They are survivors of bristlecone pine forests pushed upslope more than 11,000 years ago, by rising temperatures that triggered major shifts in plant and animal distribution and created California's deserts.

"Unlike people, bristlecone pines don't die of old age," he likes to say.

But they can be killed. The study led by U.S. Forest Service biologists Barbara Bentz and Candace Millar found that bark-beetle-caused mortality was most likely in areas where bristlecone pines are intermixed with other tree species that are known to host the beetles.

Solitary bristlecones deal with the beetles by drowning them in sap, the study says. But in hot, drought-stricken mixed forests, bark beetles first land on nearby limber and pinion pines, generating new broods that can attack bristlecones, overwhelming their defense systems.

In an interview, Millar recalled what she described as "a sense of shock when I first came upon hundreds of bristlecones killed by bark beetles on the highest slopes of Telescope Peak in Death Valley."

The study found that bristlecone mortality at Telescope Peak and in the Wah Wah Forest in southern Utah was likely due to a combination of warming temperatures, declining precipitation, reduced tree defenses, and bark beetle attacks that originated in nearby limber and pinyon pines during a period of severe drought that began in 2013.

"Do I think this is a death knell for bristlecone pines elsewhere? Well, maybe not," Millar said. "But it's time to consider taking action to protect these trees."

Proposals to control the bugs have included the sublime and the controversial. The study calls for annual surveys to provide advance notice of beetle attacks, as well as public education programs and the posting of interpretive signs.

Another idea involves devising a chemical attractant to lure the insects into baited traps, although such an effort would also risk summoning uncontrollable swarms of bugs into currently unaffected groves.

Bristlecone pines, identifiable by their bottlebrush-like branches with short needles, are found in semiarid portions of the Great Basin, which extends from California's Sierra Nevada range east to the Rocky Mountains.

But the ones found in the White Mountains are the oldest. The slow growers are only about 25 feet (7.6 metres) tall and expand 1 inch (2.5 centimetres) in diameter every 100 years.

Of particular concern for researchers is the oldest of the bunch, Methuselah. Its precise location is carefully guarded to prevent vandalism, although its surrounding grove is a tourist attraction that draws 30,000 people a year.

In certain urgent situations, such as to protect Methuselah from potentially fatal infestations, the study suggests that "a highly aggressive defensive strategy would be to manually remove nearby pines that are known hosts to mountain bark beetles."

Whether Methuselah warrants the title "oldest living thing," however, is debatable. Researchers in Chile a month ago announced that an ancient cypress there known as Gran Abuelo may be 5,400 years old. If confirmed, it would beat Methuselah by about six centuries.

In the meantime, the daunting task of keeping an eye out for bark beetle attacks in public lands belongs to forest pathologists like MacKenzie.

After a hike, MacKenzie entered the shade of the bristlecone pine tree with troublesome shades of red and looked at its bark and needles, his eyes alive with anticipation.

There were plenty of red needles indicating stress, but no evidence of beetles.

"Drought killed the tree - not beetles," he said. "But I noticed some other trees in the area that I have to check out."

NYC's nuclear attack ad panned by nuclear strategy expert

Bob Brigham
July 11, 2022

Composite image of Eric Adams and a mushroom cloud. (Shutterstock images).

New York City's nuclear preparedness public service announcement (PSA) left a lot to be desired, at least for one expert on nuclear war.

NYC Emergency Management released the video which instructs New Yorkers to get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.

The ad ends with the narrator saying, "you've got this."

NYC's nuclear attack ad panned by nuclear strategy expertNYC's nuclear attack ad panned by nuclear strategy expert

The ad was dissected on Twitter by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

The school notes he was previously "the director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation. Prior to that, he was executive director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, executive director of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a desk officer in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy."

In a thread posted to Twitter, Lewis said, "the advice isn't wrong, it's just ... unhelpful."

"The big problem with the video is that it omits some pretty important context: If Russia, China or North Korea hit NYC with a 300 kt warhead, this advice won't help many people in the city itself," Lewis explained. "It's more useful to people in communities downwind. Even then 'stay inside' doesn't go very far: Are you even at home? If not, will others let you inside? What about children at school? Do they try to get home? What if your building collapsed? What if you were injured in the blast and need medical care? What about food? Water?"

"While 'stay inside' will help some people at the margin, it's not much more than 'thoughts and prayers," Lewis said. "A lot of civil defense advice is like that -- it's designed to make people feel better without really leveling with them. My sense is that civil defense campaigns undermine public trust, because the advice -- and by implication the authorities dispensing it -- is so obviously inadequate to the problem."

Lewis concluded, "All of which is to say that while 'stay inside' is decent advice, the scale of what we need to do is way bigger than what one person can do. In other words, you definitely do not got this."

Read the full thread below or at this link.

Court dumps Trump-era changes to the Endangered Species Act

Kyle Davidson, Michigan Advance
July 11, 2022

A wolf howls at a Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York(AFP)

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is applauding a federal court’s decision abandoning Trump-era changes to the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

“We must continue to prioritize protection of Michigan’s natural resources, including vulnerable wildlife populations,” Nessel said.

In 2019, the Democrat joined 17 other attorney generals and the City of New York in filing a lawsuit after the Trump administration introduced rules that this coalition argued would “dramatically weaken protections and reduce federal ESA enforcement.”

The U.S. District Court, Northern District of California announced the new rules would be vacated in a decision filed on Tuesday.

The Endangered Species Act, written by the late U.S. Rep. John Dingell (D-Dearborn), was enacted in 1973 “to prevent the extinction of various fish, wildlife, and plant species.”

In August 2019, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, alongside the National Marine Fisheries Service, modified three rules affecting how the ESA is implemented. According to the court’s opinion, these changes modified how the services add, remove and reclassify endangered and threatened species and the criteria for designating their critical habitats.

It also removed a Fish and Wildlife Service policy which automatically extended some endangered species protections to threatened species, and changed how the services work with federal agencies to prevent harm to listed species and their habitats.

The coalition challenging these changes was particularly concerned with actions adding economic considerations to the ESA’s species-focused analyses, expanding exemptions for designating critical habitats, reducing the consultation and analyses required before federal agency action and pushing responsibilities for protecting endangered species and habitats onto the states, among other changes.

In January 2021, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 13990 directing the services to evaluate and revise or rescind environmental and public health-related regulations issued by the previous administration that conflicted with national objectives listed in the executive order, including the ESA rules introduced in 2019.

The administration later signaled it would revise and rescind many of these 2019 regulations.

“As a state with more than two dozen animal and plant species that are considered endangered or threatened, I applaud this ruling and its positive impact on conservation efforts not just in Michigan but around the country,” said Nessel in a prepared statement.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Environmental Conservation Online System lists 25 species in Michigan as threatened or endangered. The list includes Piping plover, whooping crane, gray wolf, Karner blue butterfly, as well as other plant and animal species.


Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and Twitter.

Robert Reich delivers brutal reality-check for Dems — and urges 'an agenda of radical democratic reform'

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
July 11, 2022

If Republicans enjoy a major red wave in the 2022 midterms, it won’t be traditional Goldwater, Reagan or McCain conservatives who take over Congress and/or state governments. It will be radicalized far-right MAGA extremists and Donald Trump loyalists, many of whom promote the Big Lie and continue to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Economist Robert Reich, who served as secretary of labor in the Clinton Administration, is among the liberals who is sounding the alarm about the radicalism that characterizes so many of 2022’s Republican candidates. But in an op-ed published by The Guardian on July 10, Reich also sounds the alarm about Democrats — who he believes are ill-prepared to defeat Republicans in the midterms.

“Much of today’s Republican Party is treacherous and treasonous,” the 76-year-old Reich warns. “So why are Democrats facing midterm elections that, according to most political observers, they’re likely to lose? Having been a loyal Democrat for some 70 years, including a stint as a cabinet secretary, it pains me to say this: the Democratic Party has lost its way. Some commentators think Democrats have moved too far to the left — too far from the so-called ‘center.’ This is utter rubbish. Where’s the center between democracy and authoritarianism, and why would Democrats want to be there?”

Reich adds, “Others think (President Joe) Biden hasn’t been sufficiently angry or outraged. But what good would that do? After four years of Trump, why would anyone want more anger and outrage?”

According to Reich, the “real failure of the Democratic Party” is its “loss of the American working class.”

“The working class used to be the bedrock of the Democratic Party,” Reich observes. “What happened? During the first two years of the Clinton, Obama, and Biden Administrations, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, they scored some important victories for working families: the Affordable Care Act, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Family and Medical Leave Act, for example. But they also allowed the middle class to hollow out and the working class to sink.”

Although President Bill Clinton allied himself with some liberals — he nominated Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the U.S. Supreme Court and chose Reich as his secretary of labor in 1993 — his policies were generally quite centrist. And Reich still has some disagreements with his former boss.

“Clinton passed free trade agreements without providing millions of blue-collar workers who consequently lost their jobs a means of getting new ones that paid at least as well,” Reich notes. “His North American Free Trade Agreement and plan for China to join the World Trade Organization undermined the wages and economic security of manufacturing workers across America, hollowing out vast swaths of the Rust Belt. Clinton also deregulated Wall Street. This led to the financial crisis of 2008.”

Reich adds that that the Democratic Party “continues to prioritize the votes of ‘suburban swing voters’ who supposedly determine electoral outcomes.”

“The most powerful force in American politics today is anti-establishment fury at a rigged system,” Reich emphasizes. “There is no longer a left or right. There is no longer a moderate ‘center.’ The real choice is either Republican authoritarian populism or Democratic progressive populism.”

Reich continues, “Democrats cannot defeat authoritarian populism without an agenda of radical democratic reform — a pro-democracy, anti-establishment movement. Democrats must stand squarely on the side of working people against oligarchy. They must form a unified coalition of people of all races, genders, and classes to unrig the system. Trumpism is not the cause of our divided nation. It is the symptom of a rigged system that was already dividing us.”

'Not good': Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship booster test ends in explosion and flames

Bob Brigham
July 11, 2022

SpaceX Starship boosters explosion/NASA screengrab.

There was an "unexpected anomaly" during a test of a SpaceX Starship booster.

"A roaring explosion ripped through SpaceX's rocket testing facilities in Boca Chica, Texas, on Monday," Insider reported. "The company was running a test of the Super Heavy booster, which it's designing to someday push its enormous Starship rocket into orbit around Earth. The system is the keystone of CEO and founder Elon Musk's plan to build an independent settlement on Mars."

Musk is the world's richest man and may or may not be buying Twitter.

"NASASpaceflight captured the incident in a livestream of the test. The NASASpaceflight commentators, who meticulously track SpaceX's plans and activities, said that the explosion was unexpected. SpaceX had not sent out the notices that it normally publishes ahead of an engine test-fire," Insider noted.

Musk acknowledged the explosion was "not good."

"Team is assessing damage," he added.

Musk's response was posted on his Twitter account.

Watch the SpaceX Starship booster explosion below or at this link.

Bhutan's trailblazing beauty queen speaks up for LGBTQ community
Agence France-Presse
July 12, 2022

Tashi Choden, who was crowned Miss Bhutan 2022 last month, came out last year on International Pride Day Namgay Wangchuk AFP

Tashi Choden will not only be the first contestant to represent Bhutan at the Miss Universe competition -- she is also the Himalayan country's only openly gay public figure.

The remote country is famed for its philosophy of "Gross National Happiness", in which it prioritizes citizens' well-being on par with economic growth.

But up until February 2021, gay sex was defined in the penal code as "sexual conduct against the laws of nature", and branded illegal in the Buddhist country.

That makes Choden's crowning last month as Miss Bhutan 2022 a "huge deal" for the country of almost 800,000 people and its LGBTQ community, she said.

"I'm not only speaking for the Bhutanese community but I'm speaking for the minority community on a platform like the Miss Universe pageant," she told AFP.

"I can be their voice."

The 23-year-old -- who lost both her parents by the time she was 14 -- said she came out last June, on International Pride Day, after "a lot of research and introspection".

It initially prompted a "very strong reaction" from her conservative and religious family members, but Choden said it was important for them to be part of her coming-out process.

"First and foremost, their acceptance matters to me," she said. "After a while, they were very accepting of it. And I'm very grateful for that because a lot of people are not that fortunate to have that acceptance.

"As long as they know I'll do well in life, that I can stand on my own feet, that I can be an independent woman -- I think my sexuality doesn't really matter to them."

While she received "some negative reactions" online after she was crowned and chosen to represent Bhutan in Miss Universe, her win appeared to garner support from inside the country and abroad.

Bhutanese Prime Minister Lotay Tshering -- who famously still practices as a doctor on weekends as a "de-stresser" -- personally congratulated her and wished her success.

Paving its own way

Bhutan has always plowed its own furrow, benchmarking itself not just on economic growth but also on maintaining the ecological health of its picturesque valleys and snow-capped mountains.

The country is carbon negative and its constitution mandates that 60 percent of Bhutan remains forested.

It also eschews the global tourism model, instead levying a hefty $200 a day "sustainable development fee" for foreign tourists to enter -- a fund used to offset their carbon footprint.

Television was only allowed in 1999, archery is a national craze and phalluses painted on houses to ward off evil are common.

Members of the LGBTQ community have reported instances of discrimination and social stigma, which keeps many in the closet.

But the kingdom's decriminalization of gay sex in 2021 signaled growing openness and acceptance, said Rinzin Galley, a gender-fluid beautician.

"With the decriminalization... I feel more comfortable in public than before," Galley told AFP.

"I like putting on make-up and going out, and it's not a normal thing for a guy to come out with make-up."

Several transgender women have had their names and gender changed on their citizenship identity cards and the LGBTQ community is slowly becoming more visible.

Community-based organizations -- like Queer Voices of Bhutan and Pride Bhutan -- and an NGO called Lhak-sam have also provided support through advocacy.

And now, with Choden representing Bhutan on the Miss Universe stage -- watched by millions worldwide -- many are hopeful about the future of the country's queer youth.

"Having a queer woman become Miss Bhutan enables the rest of the queer community, especially queer youth, to aim for bigger goals in their lives," Regita Gurung, a young bisexual woman, told AFP.

"This representation has paved the path for the rest of us to be confident about who we are on public platforms."

© 2022 AFP

Shipping’s dirty secret: how ‘scrubbers’ clean the air – while contaminating the sea

Richa Syal 

In 2019, Alan Ladd, a marine engineer, was on a cruise ship that was slowing down to give passengers a better view of the Hubbard Glacier – the largest tidewater glacier in North America. Briefly looking away from the harbour seals and orcas, Ladd noticed a stream of black grease, with a rainbow sheen, bubbling to the surface of the water.

“The only reason I saw it was because the vessel had stopped. All of a sudden I could see this pollutant and this soot,” says Ladd, who works with Alaska’s Ocean Ranger programme as one of several independent observers of effluent from shipping. “The thing that really disturbed me more than anything is they didn’t do anything about it.”

What Ladd saw was the result of a decision by the shipping industry to reduce air pollution at the expense of the ocean.

After the International Maritime Organization (IMO) set out to lower sulphur emissions in the atmosphere – which regulators say is harmful to human health – the shipping industry was faced with the choice of switching to cleaner but pricier fuel or installing a system to clean exhaust gases – known as “scrubbers” – that dump the chemicals removed from the exhaust directly into the sea instead.

Scrubbers are dirty and dirt cheap, but as of 2020 more than 4,300 ships globally had installed them – up from 732 ships in 2018.

It is a trade-off: clear the skies but contaminate the waters.

“The writing has been on the wall for many years with scrubbers and their environmental implications,” says Andrew Dumbrille, adviser for the Clean Arctic Alliance, a coalition of environmental organisations working to protect the polar region from the impact of shipping.

“The issue is that more ships are going to be installing scrubbers, and so the problems are predicted to get worse.”

The race to install scrubbers only began recently. In January 2020, the IMO – the United Nations body overseeing shipping – announced a new global sulphur cap of 0.5%, reduced from 3.5%. To meet the target, it urged the global shipping fleet to switch to low-sulphur fuel.

But it also allowed for “equivalent” compliance measures, as long as ships reduced their emissions.

Scrubbers have proved to be the cheapest way to do so. The cost of buying and fitting a scrubber is £1.5m to £5m, whereas cleaner fuel is £250-£400 a tonne. The scrubber pays for itself within a year.

“It’s been a loophole for industry to continue burning the cheapest, dirtiest fuels,” says Lucy Gilliam, of Seas at Risk, an association of European environmental organisations.

Scrubbers, which sit in the funnels, or exhaust stacks, of ships, use seawater to spray or “scrub” the sulphur dioxide pollutants from the engine’s exhaust.

Most vessels use an open-loop system, meaning that instead of holding waste in a tank to be disposed of at dedicated port facilities, the ships directly dump the acidic wash – up to 100,000 times more acidic than seawater – overboard, says Eelco Leemans, an Arctic marine researcher.

Roughly 10 gigatonnes – 10,000,000,000 tonnes – of scrubber washwater are discharged into oceans annually, according to an International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) report on global discharge waste – just less than the total weight of all the cargo transported by ships in a year.

The toxins do not just disappear. Aside from being acidic, scrubbers contain heavy metals that accumulate in marine food chains. The Swedish Environmental Research Institute found that washwater from North Sea ships has “severe toxic effects” on zooplankton, which cod, herring and other species feed on. Meanwhile, a Belgian study found that scrubber discharges contain high concentrations of metals such as nickel, copper and chromium, which all devastate marine ecosystems.

What most concern experts, though, are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These have been linked to several types of cancers and reproductive dysfunction in marine mammals, including southern resident orca in the north Pacific and beluga whales.

“A lot of the discharge is toxic and contains all these nasty substances,” says Leemans, adding: “It’s the whole cocktail together that makes it even worse.”

An IMO spokesperson, Natasha Brown, says scrubbers were developed as an “equivalent” to comply with air pollution limits and the IMO is now looking at the wider issue in response to concerns.


We could solve the problem of sulphur pollution by switching to cleaner fuels. But instead we’re just transferring the problem from one place to the otherLucy Gilliam, Seas at Risk

Approximately 80% of scrubber discharges occur within 200 nautical miles of shore, with global hotspots along major shipping routes, including the Baltic Sea, North Sea, the strait of Malacca and the Caribbean Sea, according to the ICCT.

The US has the highest amounts of scrubber washwater discharge, with the UK second, mainly due to its 14 overseas territories, particularly the Cayman Islands.

Cruise ships, such as the one Ladd was on, were early adopters of scrubbers. They account for 15% of scrubber discharge in ports, despite making up only 4% of scrubber-installed ships.

The cruise line routes up the Canadian Pacific coast to Alaska are particularly prone to dumped water pollution. An estimated 200m litres of toxin-laden scrubber washwater are generated on a one-week trip from the north-west US to Alaska and back along the Canadian coast, according to a report by the environmental organisations Stand.earth and West Coast Environmental Law.

For Ladd, the solution is simple: stop using scrubbers. A few nations have done so, restricting or banning the use of open-loop scrubbers in their waters; one of the most recent restrictions came in March in Vancouver, the world’s fourth most polluted port from scrubber washwater.

Related: ‘Black carbon’ threat to Arctic as sea routes open up with global heating

In 2021, the IMO updated its guidelines for scrubbers, setting stricter limits for open-loop scrubbers on acidity and discharge of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and nitrates. In June of this year, the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee approved additional guidelines on scrubbers. Ultimately, however, UN member states must enforce any action.

And whatever the stricter measures, experts agree it was a misstep by regulators to allow scrubbers at all.

“It’s a huge mistake,” says Gilliam. “We could solve the problem of sulphur pollution by switching to cleaner fuels. But instead we’re just transferring the problem from one place to the other. And that’s really frustrating.”

THE GUARDIAN

‘Most feared disease’: Indonesian farmers’ foot and mouth misery

Southeast Asian nation is grappling with its first outbreak of foot and mouth disease in nearly 40 years.

[File: Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana/Reuters]

By Aisyah Llewellyn
Published On 12 Jul 2022

Medan, Indonesia – When dairy farmer Bagoes Cahyo noticed saliva pouring from the mouths of his cows, his heart sank.

Cahyo immediately suspected that his 70-strong herd of Friesian Holstein milkers were the latest victims of a vicious outbreak of foot and mouth disease that has swept Indonesia since May.

Within days, lesions and sores appeared around the cows’ mouths and noses. By the end of the week, all 70 of his herd were sick.

“When they got sick, their milk production drastically declined to about 10 percent,” Cahyo, who is based in the city of Malang, East Java, told Al Jazeera.

Stricken by illness, the cows struggled to eat, Cahyo said, drastically affecting their usual milk supply of 15 litres (4 gallons) per animal per day.

Even if their milk had been plentiful, Cahyo would not have been able to sell it, as his cows had to be put on antibiotics to aid their recovery.

Indonesia is currently in the grip of its first major outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in nearly 40 years. The Southeast Asian country successfully eradicated the virus behind the disease in 1986 and was declared FMD-free by the World Organisation for Animal Health in 1990. The disease affects hoofed animals such as cows, sheep, goats, pigs and deer, and is highly contagious.

Since May, more than 300,000 cases have been recorded across 21 provinces, prompting the Indonesian government to roll out a vaccine programme aimed at inoculating healthy cattle against the disease.

“This is the most feared disease in the world for the livestock industry,” Deddy Kurniawan, the head of the East Java II Indonesian Veterinary Association, told Al Jazeera. “No other virus is so horrific both economically and socially.”

Kurniawan said one of the reasons the virus is so ferocious is that it spreads quickly, causing symptoms within two to four days of infection, and can be passed easily in saliva, droplets, faeces, and milk and meat products.

“The viral shedding of the virus is so high that it is very difficult to avoid transmission unless you have really tight biosecurity measures in place,” he said.

Deddy Kurniawan says foot and mouth disease is a huge worry for Indonesia’s livestock industry [File: Aisyah Llewellyn]

As a result, the spectre of the virus stalks Joko Iriantono and his herd of 7,000 cows in Lampung on the island of Sumatra – although he has been able to avoid it until now.

Iriantono imports 2-year-old Brahman Cross cows from Australia every month and fattens them for 120 days on his farm before selling them for their meat.

Iriantono said there is a 6 percent increase year on year for beef in Indonesia due to a rising middle class “who want to eat steak”.

If a foot and mouth outbreak were to rip through the herd, Iriantono’s business would be devastated, so he has had to pay out of pocket to put in place strict measures to keep the disease at bay.

“We paid ourselves to get the cows vaccinated privately,” Iriantono told Al Jazeera, “and we have beefed up our biosecurity measures.”

These include ensuring that all vehicles and personnel on the farm are sprayed with disinfectant before they enter, and making staff change their clothes and shoes before they interact with the livestock.

According to Iriantono, the outbreak could have been better contained if widespread culling had taken place as soon as the first cases were announced in Java and Aceh back in May.

Culling livestock, known as “stamping out,” is widely thought to be the best way to eradicate FMD outbreaks quickly. The Indonesian government opted against widespread culling due to concerns about insufficient funds to compensate farmers for lost livestock.

As a result, only about 3,000 animals have been culled in some parts of Indonesia such as Bali, with many provinces focusing on vaccination and other measures such as antibiotic treatment.

It is not clear how the virus took hold.

Indonesia imports about 1.2 million cows capable of producing 300,000 tonnes of meat per year, Iriantono said, as domestic supply is not enough to meet demand.

Government regulations mean that farmers are only allowed to import livestock from countries that are free from FMD such as Australia and New Zealand.

Tim Harcourt, chief economist at the University of Technology in Sydney, said neighbouring Australia has so far escaped the same fate as Indonesia.

“Fortunately Australia has been able to contain the outbreak with world-class quarantine standards,” Harcourt told Al Jazeera. “Australian exports are clean and green so they’ll be boosted [as a result of the outbreak], but Indonesia imports will be adversely affected.”

The outbreak also comes at an inopportune moment, following the Eid al-Adha holiday on July 9-10. Known as the “Festival of Sacrifice,” the holiday sees cows, goats and sheep slaughtered across the country and the meat distributed to the poor or cooked at home.

Livestock sellers reported losses as farmers were forced to cull their herds, or couldn’t sell animals that were ill. Some said that customers were hesitant to buy animals for fear of the disease.

Joko Iriantono is worried about his herd of 7,000 cows in Lampung on the island of Sumatra [Courtesy of Aisyah Llewellyn

Kurniawan, however, said that the wider problem is that exports of animal products have been halted while the outbreak continues, which could affect the whole agriculture industry if countries refuse to import more and more products for fear they may be contaminated.

Kurniawan said that he has heard anecdotally of farmers having trouble exporting other non-livestock products, such as wood, following the outbreak.

“The disease can potentially be spread by agricultural products, workers, machinery and transportation, all of which could affect exports, so the impact of this virus could be extremely widespread,” he said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Outrage as Biden Reportedly Considers Lifting Ban on ‘Offensive’ Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia

"Saudi Arabia and the UAE are fabulously wealthy oil states and do not need any aid," noted one progressive. "U.S. weapons transfers are intended to throw our money to American arms corporations."

by Brett Wilkins Posted onJuly 12, 2022

As President Joe Biden prepares to visit Saudi Arabia this week, peace and human rights campaigners on Monday decried a report that his administration is considering lifting its amorphous ban on the sale of “offensive” US weaponry to the repressive monarchy.

According to Reuters, the US administration has come under pressure from Saudi officials to end its policy of selling only defensive arms to the kingdom, which Biden is scheduled to visit later this week as part of a wider Middle East tour with stops in Israel and the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine.

“Biden is headed to Israel and Saudi Arabia this week, where he will sing the praises of an apartheid government and a council of oil dictators,” tweeted Sunjeev Bery, executive director of Freedom Forward, which seeks to end US support for dictatorships.

“And now, Biden is considering resuming offensive weapon sales to one of the most brutal dictators on the planet: Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince MBS,” he added, a reference to de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman.

Jasmine Krotkov, a Democratic candidate for the Montana House of Representatives, tweeted that “Saudi Arabia and the UAE are fabulously wealthy oil states and do not need any aid from the US”

“US weapons transfers are intended to throw our money to American arms corporations,” she added.

People familiar with the matter told Reuters that any final decision on a Biden administration arms policy shift depends upon whether the Saudis make progress toward ending the war in neighboring Yemen:

The internal US deliberations are informal and at an early stage, with no decision imminent, two sources said, and a US official told Reuters there were no discussions on offensive weapons under way with the Saudis “at this time.”

But as Biden prepares for a diplomatically sensitive trip, he has signaled that he is looking to reset strained relations with Saudi Arabia at a time when he wants increased Gulf oil supplies along with closer Arab security ties with Israel to counter Iran.

A week after taking office in January 2021, Biden – who while campaigning for president vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” – temporarily froze arms sales to the kingdom and the United Arab Emirates pending a review of weapons deals with repressive regimes approved during the presidency of Donald Trump. The following month, the president announced his administration would end US support for “offensive operations” in the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

However, Biden was accused of breaking his promise following his administration’s approval of a $500 million maintenance and support services contract for Saudi military helicopters and a $650 million air-to-air missile sale to the Royal Saudi Air Force, whose airstrikes have killed thousands of civilians.

As Juan Cole notes at Informed Comment:

Since Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and their allies launched a war on Yemen in 2015, some quarter of a million people have been killed (most by disease and hunger caused by the war), and half the population has been made food insecure. Of those killed in air strikes, about 17,000 are known to have been civilian non-combatants, according to the U.N.

In late January of this year alone, Saudi and UAE fighter-jets, supplied by the US, hit three primarily civilian sites, including a hospital and a Houthi a telecommunications corporation. The strikes killed 80 civilians and caused 156 injuries. And that was just one two-week period.

Last month, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report acknowledging difficulties in determining whether Saudi forces are using U.S.-supplied weapons in a “defensive” manner.

Jason Bair, GAO’s director of international affairs and trade, told the Washington Post that while US State Department officials “told us that they attempt to distinguish between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ weapons, they have no specific definitions of ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive.'”

“Without clear definitions of ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ weapons, it can be difficult for the State Department to implement the president’s wishes” to end offensive arms sales, Bair noted, adding that “State’s assessment is based on the intended use of the weapons, which may or may not match the actual use.”

Biden is defending his renewed engagement with the Saudis.

In an opinion piece published Saturday in the Washington Post, the president acknowledged that “there are many who disagree with my decision to travel to Saudi Arabia” before explaining why he is seeking closer engagement with one of the most repressive governments on the planet and the perpetrator of what has been widely called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

“As president, it is my job to keep our country strong and secure. We have to counter Russia’s aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to out-compete China, and work for greater stability in a consequential region of the world,” Biden wrote.

“To do these things, we have to engage directly with countries that can impact those outcomes,” he explained. “Saudi Arabia is one of them, and when I meet with Saudi leaders on Friday, my aim will be to strengthen a strategic partnership going forward that’s based on mutual interests and responsibilities, while also holding true to fundamental American values.”

Since the end of World War II, the United States has supported most right-wing dictatorships around the world in service of US government and business interests.

Biden’s op-ed points to US sanctions imposed on members of the elite Saudi “Tiger Squad” involved in the grisly October 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as visa bans targeting scores of Saudis “involved in harassing dissidents.”

However, the piece does not mention bin Salman, who according to American intelligence agencies ordered the murder of Khashoggi – a legal US resident – with no punitive action by the Biden administration. Nor does it mention Saudi Arabia’s abysmal human rights record or alleged involvement in the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on the United States.

Brett Wilkins is is staff writer for Common Dreams. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace. This originally appeared at CommonDreams and is reprinted with the author’s permission.

 UN to monitor Russia-Ukraine war for violations against children

11 Jul, 2022 
By Edith M. Lederer

The United Nations announced it will start monitoring the war in Ukraine and conflicts in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Africa's central Sahel region for violations against children – including killings, injuries, recruitment, rape and other forms of sexual violence.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in his annual report to the Security Council on children and armed conflict that those four new conflicts have been added to 21 conflicts that the UN already is monitoring for violations of the rights of children. He said the latter conflicts saw "a high number of grave violations" in 2021.

The UN chief said the protection of children was severely affected by escalating conflicts, the multiplication of armed groups, land mines and improvised explosive devices, explosive weapons in populated areas, intensified humanitarian crises, and violations of humanitarian and human rights law.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Photo / AP

Virginia Gamba, the UN special envoy for children and armed conflict, said at a news conference that "forays of extremely violent armed groups, military coups and instability, and violent electoral processes in fragile states, left 19,100 child victims of grave violations during 2021 in the 21 country and regional situations we monitored".

The UN said it verified nearly 24,000 "grave violations" against children in 2021, including more than 1300 committed previously.

The highest numbers of violations last year were the 2515 killings and 5555 injuries involving children, followed by the recruitment and use of 6310 youngsters in conflicts, the report said.

Last year, it said, the number of child abductions rose by over 20 per cent and cases of sexual violence against children continued to rise, also by over 20 per cent.

The highest number of "grave violations" verified by the UN were in Afghanistan, Congo, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, it said.

The basement of a Ukrainian school was used as a bomb shelter for children and their parents, as their village was bombarded by Russian strikes. Photo / AP

While 70 per cent of grave violations were against boys, that number decreased and "the number of girls who were casualties of killing and maiming, or subjected to abduction and sexual violence, increased, particularly in the Lake Chad Basin", the report said.

Guterres said in the report that Ukraine was being added to the monitoring effort "because of the high intensity of this conflict" and in view of the violations against civilians, including children. He asked Gamba to urgently engage with all parties to address the protection of children and prevention of violations against them.
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He said Mozambique was being added because of "the gravity and number of violations reported", including recruitment and use of children, killing and maiming, rape and other forms of sexual violence, attacks on schools and abductions.

The UN chief said Ethiopia was being added in view of "the gravity of clashes in 2021" between government forces and police, the Tigray People's Liberation Front and other parties including militias and regional forces. He cited violence against children including killings, rapes, sexual attacks, abductions and attacks on schools.

Gamba said the central Sahel region covering parts of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger was being added to the monitoring and reporting list for grave violations against children.

Human Rights Watch and the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, a coalition of non-governmental groups, both criticised Guterres for failing to provide any significant information on violations against children in Ukraine, Ethiopia and Mozambique.

Human Rights Watch's Jo Becker also criticised the secretary-general for failing to include any perpetrators in the armed conflicts in the three countries on the UN blacklist of those committing grave violations against children. The Watchlist's director, Adrianne Lapar, said Guterres squandered "an opportunity to shed light on abuses and hold parties accountable".

Both organisations also strongly criticised the UN chief for omitting Israel from the "list of shame" for the deaths of 78 Palestinian children and injuries to 982 in 2021.

In the report, Guterres said that if the high numbers of violations by Israel in 2021 are repeated in 2022, it should be added to the list. He also said if a significant increase in the number of cases of violence against Israeli children last year is repeated this year that Palestinian armed groups including Hamas' al-Qassam Brigades and Palestinian Islamic Jihad's al-Quds Brigades should be listed.

Becker called the failure to list Israel "another missed opportunity for accountability", saying "other armed forces or groups have been listed for far fewer violations". Lapar said "year after year Israeli government forces have gotten away with committing serious crimes against children, with virtual impunity" and "the secretary-general needs to hold the Israeli Government to the same standard as any other warring party".

The UN sanctions blacklist in the report's annex adds some new armed groups, including the dissident Colombian group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army for recruiting and using children and Burkina Faso's militant group Jama Nusrat Ul-Islam wa Al-Muslimin for grave violations.