World’s oldest tortoise that has seen both world wars celebrates 190th birthday

Jonathan the tortoise is the oldest known living land animal on Earth


Jonathan, the world's oldest tortoise, has turned 190. PA

The National

Dec 02, 2022

The world’s oldest tortoise has lived through the two world wars, witnessed the rise and fall of the British Empire, and has just turned 190.

Jonathan the Seychelles giant tortoise hatched in the Georgian era and is the oldest known living land animal on Earth and the oldest chelonian ever recorded.

Born in the early 1800s, Jonathan has lived on St Helena — an island situated in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean — since 1882.

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Jonathan’s age is an estimation but shell measurements documented from a photograph taken shortly after his arrival to St Helena show he was fully mature and at least 50 years old when he arrived from Seychelles in 1882 — although it is likely that he is even older.

Joe Hollins began caring for Jonathan when he worked as a St Helena’s veterinary surgeon and, although now retired, still helps look after the tortoise.

Mr Hollins said: “When you think, if he was hatched in 1832 — the Georgian era — my goodness, the changes in the world.

“The world wars, the rise and fall of the British Empire, the many governors, kings and queens that have passed, it’s quite extraordinary.

“And he’s just been here, enjoying himself.”

Jonathan hatched in the Georgian era and is the oldest known living land animal on Earth. Press Association

At the start of 2022 Jonathan achieved the Guinness World Records title for the world’s oldest living land animal and this month, he has also been named as the oldest documented tortoise.

Jonathan has spent the majority of his life on the British Overseas Territory, one of the world’s most remote islands. He lives on the grounds of Plantation House, the governor's residence, alongside three much younger tortoises called David, Emma and Fred.

He has witnessed more than 35 governors come and go from Plantation House and has seen the island introduce radio, telephones, TVs, internet, cars and an airport.

Mr Hollins said it was a privilege to look after the elderly animal, who he described as “magnificent”.

“I do think he’s fabulous actually, he’s a great animal,” he said.

A photo of Jonathan taken around 1886, issued by St Helena island. Press Association

“And as a vet — what greater privilege is there than to be looking after the oldest known living land animal in the world? I mean, how often does that happen?

“It is such a privilege to be able to care for this magnificent animal.”

To celebrate his 190th birthday, residents from across the island will be come together on Friday to honour Jonathan over three days at a birthday party at the governor’s residence.

Highlights will include a display of a range of posters celebrating Jonathan’s life, bearing pictures and messages from those who have visited him over the years.

On Saturday, a series of activities honouring his birthday will include a chat with the governor and his wife as they feed Jonathan his favourite vegetables.

The event will be live streamed online from Plantation House so anyone from across the world can join in with the celebrations.

An animated video and song dedicated to celebrating Jonathan’s life will premiere on Sunday, and he will be given a ‘birthday cake’ — made entirely out of his favourite healthy foods.

A special stamp will also be on sale alongside other memorabilia which islanders will be able to win during novelty tortoise-themed games.

For more information about the celebrations, visit St Helena Tourism’s Facebook page.

Updated: December 02, 2022, 12:17 p.m.

"Catastrophic failure": DOJ tried to hide report warning private border wall in Texas could collapse

The report confirms an investigation that found the privately built fencing could collapse during major flooding

By PERLA TREVIZO - JEREMY SCHWARTZ
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2, 2022 

A construction crew works on a section of privately built border wall funded by hardline immigration group We Build The Wall on December 11, 2019 near Mission, Texas. 

(John Moore/Getty Images)

This article originally appeared on ProPublica.

Aprivate border wall built along the Rio Grande in South Texas could collapse during extreme flooding, according to a federally commissioned inspection report that the government sought to keep secret for more than a year.

The 404-page report, produced by the global engineering firm Arcadis, confirms previous reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. It also shows for the first time that the federal government independently found structural problems with the border fencing before reaching a settlement agreement with the builder, Fisher Industries, in May.

Under the agreement, which ended a nearly three-year legal battle between the International Boundary and Water Commission and Fisher Industries, the company must inspect the fence quarterly, remove bollards and maintain a gate that would allow for the release of floodwaters. It must also keep a $3 million bond, a type of insurance, to cover any expenses in case the structure fails.

Engineering and hydrology experts told the news organizations the bond is inadequate to cover the kind of catastrophic failure described by Arcadis and raised concerns that the federal government's decision to settle the case cuts against the report's findings.

The company modeled different scenarios using the extreme weather conditions caused by Hurricane Beulah, a 1967 storm that dumped about 30 inches of rain in some areas of the border region and caused the banks of the Rio Grande to overflow. The modeling showed that the fence "would effectively slide and/or overturn" during major flooding, and that it starts to become unstable during much smaller and more frequent floods.

According to the report, the fencing doesn't meet basic international building code and industry standards and has a foundation far shallower than border barriers built by the federal government.

"Every single conclusion in the report points to it not needing to be there and shows it is actually negatively affecting the area," said Adriana E. Martinez, a professor and geomorphologist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. (She was not involved with the report.)

Martinez, who studies the impact of border barriers in South Texas, questioned how much more evidence the state and federal governments need to take down the fencing and prevent future construction along the Rio Grande.

Arcadis referred questions about its assessment to the Department of Justice, which represented the IBWC in the lawsuit, arguing the fence violated a treaty with Mexico that requires both countries to approve any development that can affect the international boundary. A DOJ spokesperson declined to answer specific questions about the settlement or about why the government fought the release of the report.

The news organizations obtained the report on Nov. 15 after multiple Freedom of Information Act requests and 15 months of back-and-forth with the federal government, which initially denied the request. The DOJ reversed course and released the report after ProPublica attorneys threatened legal action.

As part of the settlement, federal officials ordered that Fisher Industries and its subsidiaries destroy all copies of the Arcadis report, alleging that it contained "proprietary information."

"Reading this and seeing the settlement that came out of this, it's as though they completely disregarded the Arcadis report," said Amy Patrick, a Houston forensic structural and civil engineer and court-recognized expert on wall construction. "I can see why they were dragging their heels so much on letting it get out because (the report) basically completely dismantled this idea that the fence will be OK."

Mark Courtois, an attorney for Fisher Industries, said that the construction company "strongly disagreed with the opinions in the Arcadis report and refuted those opinions to the satisfaction of the IBWC." He said the company worked with the IBWC, which is charged with oversight of the international treaty, to "reach a mutually agreeable resolution of all matters pertaining to the fence, including any issues raised by the Arcadis report."

"Construction of the fence was completed nearly three years ago, and we continue to be confident in its design and construction," Courtois said.

Sally Spener, a spokesperson for the IBWC, denied that Fisher was able to counter the conclusions in the Arcadis report to the agency's satisfaction.

In an email to the news organizations, Spener said that the agency accepted the report's findings, which showed a far greater impact on the flow of the Rio Grande than the builder had claimed. Despite that, she added, the settlement agreement's requirements address the agency's concerns that the barrier would violate the treaty.

But the settlement agreement won't address the report's findings that the fence was built on a flawed design and featured construction shortcomings that could contribute to its collapse, said Alex Mayer, a civil engineering professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

"It just shows the shoddiness of the whole effort. It worries me even more," Mayer said.

Tommy Fisher, president of Fisher Industries, started to construct the fence in 2019 with financial support from the online fundraising campaign We Build the Wall. The nonprofit was set up to help former President Donald Trump build his "big, beautiful wall" along the length of the border. In the end, four of the nonprofit's top leaders, including Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon, were arrested on fraud and other charges connected to the fundraising scheme.

Trump pardoned Bannon in January 2021. But in September, Bannon was indicted on state charges in New York. Bannon called the charges "nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system."

The three other men, including Brian Kolfage, an Air Force veteran who led the organization, face sentencing on Jan. 31 in federal court on various fraud and tax-related charges. Kolfage and another man pleaded guilty in April. The third man was convicted in October.

Soon after construction of the fence began, the DOJ filed a lawsuit in federal court to try to halt the work, claiming that Fisher Industries was violating the treaty with Mexico. A state district judge in Hidalgo County granted the government a temporary restraining order to stop construction, but a federal judge later reversed it.

During a January 2020 court hearing, Fisher claimed that his bollard wall design would bring security to the actual border by addressing the flooding and erosion concerns that previously prevented the federal government from building near the river's edge.

The 3-mile project was completed in February 2020, making it the first border fence built directly on the riverbank in South Texas. We Build the Wall contributed about $1.5 million of the $42 million total cost, with the rest coming from Fisher, according to court testimony.

The areas around the private border fence soon started to show signs of erosion. Six hydrologists and engineers told ProPublica and the Tribune in July 2020 that the foundation of the fence was too shallow and that a series of gashes and gullies where rainwater runoff had scoured the sandy loam beneath the foundation raised stability concerns.

Following the organization's news articles, Trump tried to distance himself from the project, saying on Twitter that it had been constructed to make him look bad.

Fisher called the news organizations' reporting on engineering concerns "absolute nonsense" during a 2020 podcast interview hosted by Bannon.

"I would invite any of these engineers that so-called said this was gonna fall over, I'll meet 'em there next week. … If you don't know what you're talking about, you probably shouldn't start talking," he said. "It's working unbelievably well. There's a little erosion maintenance we have to maintain."

As climate change contributes to more extreme weather, better understanding the erosion that is occurring is critical, Martinez said.

"We know that there are more extreme hurricane seasons that are occurring due to climate change, so we know that it's more likely that the fence is going to get flooded out in the Rio Grande," Martinez said. "It's just a matter of time before something happens."

The fence outside Mission is one of two private border barriers built using private funds, but it may not be the last.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has embarked on an effort to build fencing along the state's 1,200-mile border using a mixture of state funds and crowdsourced private dollars. And Trump said he would continue border wall construction while announcing last month that he would again run for the country's highest office.

Ryan Patrick, a former U.S. attorney whose office first filed the lawsuit against Fisher, said that by settling the case and requiring a bond, the government limits the risk of losing at trial. Patrick left office before the settlement was negotiated. He continues to believe that the judge should not have allowed Fisher to build the fence.

The settlement doesn't prevent someone from constructing on the floodplain in the future, he said, but it shows that the government will not give unrestricted authority to potential builders. "You are going to have long-term care and custody of that thing," he said.

Amy Patrick, who is not related to Ryan Patrick, offered a different perspective.

The structural engineer said that the government's handling of the legal case, and what she sees as an apparent indifference to its own engineering report, could set "a precedent that credible engineering will be disregarded in similar projects in the future."

US company turns air pollution into fuel, bottles and dresses

Agence France-Presse
December 02, 2022

'We can take garbage, we can take biomass, we can take off gas from an industrial plant,' said LanzaTech's Zara Summers, who previously worked for ExxonMobil 

© KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP

At LanzaTech's lab in the Chicago suburbs, a beige liquid bubbles away in dozens of glass vats.

The concoction includes billions of hungry bacteria, specialized to feed on polluted air -- the first step in a recycling system that converts greenhouse gases into usable products.

Thanks to licensing agreements, LanzaTech's novel microorganisms are already being put to commercial use by three Chinese factories, converting waste emissions into ethanol.

That ethanol is then used as a chemical building block for consumer items such as plastic bottles, athletic wear and even dresses, via tie-ins with major brands such as Zara and L'Oreal.

"I wouldn't have thought that 14 years later, we would have a cocktail dress on the market that's made out of steel emissions," said microbiologist Michael Kopke, who joined LanzaTech a year after its founding.

LanzaTech is the only American company among 15 finalists for the Earthshot Prize, an award for contributions to environmentalism launched by Britain's Prince William and broadcaster David Attenborough. Five winners will be announced Friday.

To date, LanzaTech says it has kept 200,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, while producing 50 million gallons (190 million liters) of ethanol.

That's a small drop in the bucket when it comes to the actual quantities needed to combat climate change, Kopke concedes.

But having spent 15 years developing the methodology and proving its large-scale feasibility, the company is now seeking to ramp up its ambition and multiply the number of participating factories.

"We really want to get to a point where we only use above ground carbon, and keep that in circulation," says Kopke -- in other words, avoid extracting new oil and gas.

Industry partnerships

LanzaTech, which employs about 200 people, compares its carbon recycling technology to a brewery -- but instead of taking sugar and yeast to make beer, it uses carbon pollution and bacteria to make ethanol.

The bacteria used in their process was identified decades ago in rabbit droppings.

The company placed it in industrial conditions to optimize it in those settings, "almost like an athlete that we trained," said Kopke.

Bacteria are sent out in the form of a freeze-dried powder to corporate clients in China, which have giant versions of the vats back in Chicago, several meters high.

The corporate clients that built these facilities will then reap the rewards of the sale of ethanol -- as well as the positive PR from offsetting pollution from their main businesses.

The clients in China are a steel plant and two ferroalloy plants. Six other sites are under construction, including one in Belgium for an ArcelorMittal plant, and in India with the Indian Oil Company.

Because the bacteria can ingest CO2, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, the process is extremely flexible, explains Zara Summers, LanzaTech's vice president of science.

"We can take garbage, we can take biomass, we can take off gas from an industrial plant," said Summers, who spent ten years working for ExxonMobil.

Products already on the shelves include a line of dresses at Zara. Sold at around $90, they are made of polyester, 20 percent of which comes from captured gas.

"In the future, I think the vision is there is no such thing as waste, because carbon can be reused again," said Summers.

Sustainable aviation fuel

LanzaTech has also founded a separate company, LanzaJet, to use the ethanol to create "sustainableaviation fuel" or SAF.

Increasing global SAF production is a huge challenge for the fuel-heavy aviation sector, which is seeking to green itself.

LanzaJet is aiming to achieve one billion gallons of SAF production in the United States per year by 2030.

Unlike bioethanol produced from wheat, beets or corn, fuel created from greenhouse gas emissions doesn't require the use of agricultural land.

For LanzaTech, the next challenge is to commercialize bacteria that will produce chemicals other than ethanol.

In particular, they have their sights set on directly producing ethylene, "one of the most widely used chemicals in the world," per Kopke -- thus saving energy associated with having to first convert ethanol into ethylene.

Experts warn 'doomsday scenario' for Colorado river basin possible in 2023

Julia Conley,

Common Dreams
December 01, 2022

Lake Powell in Arizona (Shutterstock)

The catastrophic chain of events that water and power authorities are working to prepare for amid the desertification of the Colorado River basin would amount to a "complete doomsday scenario," harming water and electricity supplies for millions, according to new reporting from The Washington Post.

While the Biden administration earlier this year ordered water use cuts in Arizona, Nevada, and parts of Mexico that use water from the rapidly shrinking Colorado River, officials in the region are examining how they can keep Lake Powell and Lake Mead—the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S.—from reaching dangerous "dead pool" status, in which water levels would drop so low that water no longer flows downstream.

"You're not going to have a river... It would be a catastrophe for the entire system."

According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, with Lake Powell's surface already having fallen 170 feet, the reservoir is even closer to reaching "minimum power pool" status.

If water levels drop another 38 feet in Lake Powell, which is currently a quarter of its original size, the surface could approach the tops of eight underwater openings allowing Colorado River water to pass through the Glen Canyon Dam.

"The normally placid Lake Powell, the nation's second-largest reservoir, could suddenly transform into something resembling a funnel, with water circling the openings," reported the Post.

That would force turbines which supply 4.5 million people with electricity to shut down, likely triggering financial struggles for people across southwestern states. The standard rate for low-cost power generated by Glen Canyon Dam is $30 per megawatt hour, but with the dam already producing 40% less power than it originally did, customers this past summer faced prices as high as $1,000 per megawatt hour as they sought electricity on the open market.

The latest projections of the Bureau of Reclamation show that minimum power pool status could be reached as early as next July.

Tom Buschatzke, director of Arizona's Department of Water Resources, told the Post that dead pool status would amount to "an ecological disaster," with the region's agricultural sector cut off from a crucial irrigation source.

"You're not going to have a river" in the case of Lake Powell reaching dead pool, he said. "It would be a catastrophe for the entire system."

As government officials announced over the summer that water levels could approach the dam's underwater openings by next July, the Bureau of Reclamation also announced it was supporting studies to examine whether authorities could make modifications to the dam, such as drilling tunnels at river level.

"There was a time in my professional career that if anybody from Reclamation ever said that, they'd be fired on the spot," said Jack Schmidt, an expert on the river at Utah State University who worked on the U.S. Geological Survey during the Obama administration.

Schmidt told the Post that the fact such a possibility has been raised denotes "a huge sea change telling you how different the world is."

Jeff Goodell, author of the book The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, suggested that the aridification of the West—made 40% worse by planetary heating and the continued extraction of fossil fuels, according to one recent study—has left the Colorado River unable to provide water and power to the millions of people who have come to rely on it.

"The problem with massive projects like Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam," tweeted Goodell, "is they were engineered for a climate that no longer exists and will never return (at least not on human timescales)."

Where Mauna Loa’s lava is coming from – and why Hawaii’s volcanoes are different from most

The Conversation
December 02, 2022

Fountains of lava upto 200 feet (60 meters) high are spewing from Mauna Loa in Hawaii

Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, began sending up fountains of glowing rock and spilling lava from fissures as its first eruption in nearly four decades began on Nov. 27, 2022.

Where does that molten rock come from?

We asked Gabi Laske, a geophysicist at the University of California-San Diego who led one of the first projects to map the deep plumbing that feeds the Hawaiian Islands’ volcanoes, to explain.

Where is the magma surfacing at Mauna Loa coming from?

The magma that comes out of Mauna Loa comes from a series of magma chambers found between about 1 and 25 miles (2 and 40 km) below the surface. These magma chambers are only temporary storage places with magma and gases, and are not where the magma originally came from.

The origin is much deeper in Earth’s mantle, perhaps more than 620 miles (1,000 km) deep. Some scientists even postulate that the magma comes from a depth of 1,800 miles (2,900 km), where the mantle meets Earth’s core.


An illustration suggests what Hawaii’s mantle plume might look like.
Joel E Robinson/USGS

Earth’s crust is made up of tectonic plates that are slowly moving, at about the same speed as a fingernail grows. Volcanoes typically occur where these plates either move away from each other or where one pushes beneath another. But volcanoes can also be in the middle of plates, as Hawaii’s volcanoes are in the Pacific Plate.


The crust and mantle that comprise the Pacific Plate cracks at different places as it moves northwestward. Beneath Hawaii, magma can move upward through the cracks to feed different volcanoes on the surface. The same thing happens at Maui’s Haleakala, which last erupted about 250 years ago.
How does molten rock travel from deep in Earth’s mantle, and what exactly is a mantle plume?

Scientists hypothesize that the mantle is not made of uniform rock. Instead, differences in the type of mantle rock make it melt at different temperatures. Mantle rock is solid at some places, while it starts to melt at other places.


The partially molten rock becomes buoyant and ascends toward the surface. The ascending mantle rock is what makes a mantle plume. Because the overlying pressure lessens as the rock ascends, it melts more and more, and eventually collects in the magma chamber. If a large enough opening exists at the surface, and enough volcanic gases have collected in the magma chamber, the magma is forced to the surface in a volcanic eruption.



The origin of the magma may be more than 620 miles deep, and some scientists have suggested it could come from a depth of 1,800 miles, where the mantle meets Earth’s core.
Gabi Laske

Seismic imaging by research teams I’m involved with has shown that Hawaii’s mantle plume comes from deep inside the mantle.

But the plume is not a straight pipe as some concept figures suggest. Instead, it has twists and turns, originally coming from the southeast, but then turning toward the west of Hawaii as the plume reaches into the shallower mantle. Cracks in the Pacific Plate then channel the magma upward toward the magma chamber beneath the island of Hawaii.

Why does Hawaii typically see less dramatic eruptions than other locations?

Hawaii is in the middle of an oceanic plate. In fact, it is the most isolated volcanic hot spot on Earth, far away from any plate boundary.

Oceanic magma is very different from continental magma. It has a different chemical composition and flows much more easily. So, the magma is less prone to clog volcanic vents on its ascent, which would ultimately lead to more explosive volcanism.

Thermal imaging shows the Mauna Loa eruption, which began around 11:30 p.m. local time on Nov. 27, 2022. Temperatures are in Celsius. USGS.
How do scientists know what is happening under the surface?

Volcanic activity is monitored with many different instruments.

The perhaps simplest to understand is GPS. The way scientists use GPS is different from that of everyday life. It can detect minuscule movements of a few centimeters. On volcanoes, any upward movement on the surface detected by GPS indicates that something is pushing from underneath.

Even more sensitive are tiltmeters, which are in essence the same as bubble levels that people use to hang pictures on a wall. Any change in the tilt on a volcano slope indicates that the volcano is “breathing,” again because of magma moving below.




Mauna Loa has a history of eruptions. Here’s where the lava tends to go.
USGS


A very important tool is watching for seismic activity.

Volcanoes like Hawaii’s are monitored with a large network of seismographs. Any movement of magma below will cause tremors that are picked up by the seismometers. A few weeks before the eruption of Mauna Loa, scientists noticed that the tremors came from ever shallower depths, indicating that magma was rising and an eruption might be imminent. This allowed scientists to warn the public.

Other ways that volcanic activity is monitored includes chemical analysis of gases coming out through fumaroles – holes or cracks through which volcanic gases escape. If the composition changes or activity increases, that’s a pretty clear indication that the volcano is changing.

Gabi Laske, Professor of Geophysics, University of California, San Diego

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

US Jews battle new 'mainstreamed' anti-Semitism

AFP
December 02, 2022

President Donald Trump meets with rapper Kanye West in the White House Oval Office in 2018

Washington (AFP) - President Joe Biden's emphatic condemnation of anti-Semitism Friday was driven by an alarming normalization of anti-Jewish tropes and hate speech by influential public figures and on social media, experts said.

One day after hip-hop and fashion mogul Kanye West voiced a "love" for Nazis and 10 days after ex-president Donald Trump dined with West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, Biden blasted a message about open anti-Semitism on Twitter.

"Silence is complicity," Biden said.

"The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting anti-Semitism wherever it hides."

Experts said the most recent controversies underscore a difficult new-generation fight against bigoted memes and conspiracy theories about Jews entering the mainstream.

Some of the new anti-Semitism has been propelled through Trump's MAGA movement and the parallel QAnon conspiracy community.

Some has also been advanced through youth and African American communities by influential celebrities like West and basketball star Kyrie Irving, boosted by largely uncensored social media platforms.

West capped weeks of stoking anti-Semitic fires on Thursday when, in a podcast joined by Fuentes and extremist Alex Jones, he praised Hitler and then posted online a Nazi swastika interlaced with a Star of David.
Trump factor

Oren Segal of ADL, which fights anti-Semitism, said the trend has been building for some time, with more people, intentionally or unintentionally, spreading anti-Semitic ideas.

"When you have celebrities who are promoting classic anti-Semitism like Kanye West, who has more followers on Twitter than there are Jews on the planet Earth, that is going to make that part of the public discussion," Segal told AFP.

Aside from Trump dining with West and Fuentes, Segal noted, several Republican elected officials readily attended a pro-Trump conference organized by Fuentes earlier this year.

"That normalisation is not something that just began when Kanye lost his mind. It's something that we have seen in the public, frankly, for a long time," Segal.

Trumpism is an important factor, he added.

"If Trumpism is understood as normalising disinformation and conspiracy theories, the normalisation of anti-Semitism is not far behind," he said.

That has real consequences, he said, pointing to the deadly extremist attacks on synagogues in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Poway, California in 2018 and 2019.
Fringe ideas hit the mainstream

The fact that West and Irving are both Black raised concerns about a surge of anti-Semitism among African Americans and young minorities.

But Cheryl Greenberg, a professor at Trinity College, said they reflected general trends in their communities.

"What I think it is, is the trend of mainstreaming otherwise fringe ideas."

For example, she said, Irving highlighted an old video by the Black Hebrew Israelites, who are critical of Jews.

"They've been preaching the same stuff for decades," Greenberg said.

"What's unusual, I think, or what's new, is that they've managed to move from New York street corners and elsewhere into the mainstream."

A big reason for that is social media, which makes it easier to preserve and share anything, including hate.

Elon Musk's haphazard takeover of Twitter showed how fast objectionable material of any kind -- against Jews or others -- can return if a platform is not extremely diligent.

Segal said bigger problems are the "ecosystem" of algorithm-based video hosts like TikTok and mostly uncensored messaging and discussion boards like Telegram and Reddit, where virtual, global communities are built around anti-Semitism.

"It's just a toxic online environment, where the most vulnerable people are getting their worldview, where I think we're starting to see the consequences," said Segal.
Alliances unraveled

Greenberg said another problem is that anti-Semitism's importance has dissipated among younger Americans who are less knowledgeable about the Holocaust and are focused on the issues of other marginalized or oppressed groups, whether ethnic minorities or LGBTQ.

"The ways the Jews have made anti-Semitism a primary issue has made it much more difficult to engage with the many groups," said Greenberg.

She said the 1950-60s alliance between African Americans and Jews for civil rights has mostly unraveled.

A younger generation of Blacks and other minorities today don't see Jews as "fellow sufferers," in part because they consider Jews as successful whites, Greenberg said.

"There are many groups out there, it is not just about Jews, it's about lots of people," she said.

Greenberg said the only answer is to work more closely with other groups -- even those critical of Israel -- to keep the issue of anti-Semitism in the mix.

"It's never-ending because as soon as people forget, we fall off the radar," she said.

Sci-fi books for young readers often omit children of color from the future

The Conversation
December 03, 2022

While visiting an elementary school library in 2016 to count the fantasy books for a graduate class on fantasy literature, I noticed there were hardly any science fiction books for readers under 12. This discovery prompted me to spend the next five years researching the shortage of science fiction books for children in this age group.

I reached two big conclusions. First, I found that adults often think that kids can’t understand science fiction – but they can. Second, I found that authors and illustrators are not depicting characters from diverse backgrounds in children’s stories about the future. As a researcher who specializes in children’s literature, these findings make me wonder if the reason there is so little diversity in children’s science fiction is because authors don’t believe that their readers will be children from diverse backgrounds.

Out of the 357 science fiction children’s books that I read for my research, I found that only a quarter of them featured diverse characters. Less than half – 37% – featured a girl in a major role. While children’s science fiction books have lacked diversity historically, I found that those written in the 21st century are more diverse than children’s books overall.
The case for diverse characters

In 2014, authors Malinda Lo and Ellen Oh launched the ongoing #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign to call for more children’s books with characters of various races, genders, cultures, religions and physical and mental disabilities. Since then, the number has risen from 397 diverse children’s books published in 2014 to 1,155 books in 2021.

Diversity matters in children’s science fiction because it suggests who belongs in the future.

In recent years, some vocal fans have reacted negatively when major television and film series like “Star Trek,” “Star Wars” and other science fiction and fantasy television shows cast actors of color to play main characters.

When fans refuse to accept non-white fantasy and science fiction characters, they demonstrate what children’s literature expert and professor Ebony Elizabeth Thomas calls the “imagination gap.” Thomas explains that the imagination gap begins in childhood. Children who rarely see diversity represented in their fantasy and science fiction books grow up to be adults who see diversity as out of place in their favorite stories.

Imagined futures

Diverse representation in science fiction is especially important because these authors are not only imagining futures, but also the sorts of people who create those futures. NASA scientists and mechanical engineers have reported that their interest in science was fueled by their childhood encounters with science fiction.

When science fiction authors imagine a wide variety of people like women, people of color, disabled people and queer people as the scientists of the future, then they provide models for more children to imagine themselves in those careers. Research has shown that seeing female scientists in media affects whether girls imagine themselves in STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – careers. Even seeing just one positive character from a diverse background in science fiction can motivate young people to enter and persist in STEM careers. The first Black female astronaut, Mae Jemison, says that she was able to imagine herself going to space because as a young person she saw Nichelle Nichols playing Lieutenant Nyota Uhura on “Star Trek.”


NASA astronaut Mae Jemison says she was inspired by Nichelle Nichols’ Lt. Nyota Uhura character on ‘Star Trek.’ NASA via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-ND

Yet children’s science fiction is more diverse than children’s literature at large. I compared the recent science fiction books in my sample published from 2001 through 2016 with the overall diversity in children’s books over those same 16 years. I found that 19 percentage points more of the science fiction books contained diversity.

Better representation

I have found that the presence of girls and diverse characters in children’s science fiction has been slowly increasing over the last 90 years. The first science fiction picturebook, “Little Machinery,” written by Mary Liddell and published in 1926, avoids human diversity entirely through focusing on a robot and its animal friends. It is hard to include diversity in books with no human characters.

Even though the plot of the 1999 picturebook “The Worst Band in the Universe” by Graeme Base is an analogy for the history of Black music in America, it contains only aliens from the planet Blipp. De Witt Douglas Kilgore, an expert on race in science fiction and a professor of English at Indiana University, says that science fiction must include a variety of humans rather than a variety of aliens to celebrate the potential of diversity in the future.
Early efforts

The earliest example from my sample to include diversity was a collection of “Buck Rogers” comic strips from 1929. It contained at least a few characters with different skin tones and some independent female characters. This is more than can be said for the other stories I read from the same era, like the “Flash Gordon” comics from 1934 and the “Brick Bradford on the Isles Beyond the Ice” comics from 1935. The women in the stories prior to the 1960s were often trying but failing to be independent. “Connie: Master of the Jovian Moons” from 1939 stood out for having an active and successful female protagonist and an elderly female scientist.

Only five books out of the 357 that I read had detailed non-white or non-European cultural content. The 2014 graphic novel “Lowriders in Space” by Cathy Camper and Raúl The Third, for instance, features Mexican American lowrider culture and rasquachismo, which is a uniquely Chicano aesthetic that values survival and uses discarded and recycled materials in art in defiance of the perceived value of those materials. The illustrations in “Lowriders in Space” were drawn with ballpoint pens that Raúl The Third picked up from sidewalks.

The books that I read did not show any queer characters, but I found that recent children’s television has ventured into this type of representation. The cartoon “Steven Universe” uses the unlimited possibilities of the science fiction genre to think about gender and queerness creatively. For example, the aliens in “Steven Universe” can transform their bodies at will, and yet identify as female and have queer relationships.

Science fiction authors could be leaders in the efforts to diversify children’s books if creators fill the shortage of children’s science fiction with stories that include characters from diverse backgrounds. Inspired by my own research, I collaborated with illustrator Lauren A. Brown to craft a picturebook about a girl learning to care for an adorable stowaway alien. The girl is Black and disabled, but the story is about her discovery of life in space.

If the creators of children’s science fiction don’t diversify the genre, they risk perpetuating the idea that only some groups belong in science and in the future. The burden is not only on creators, though. Educators and parents also need to seek out science fiction with diverse characters in order to make sure that children’s book collections reflect a future that welcomes everyone.

Emily Midkiff, Instructor of Children's Literature, University of North Dakota

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

UK

Tory MP admits it’s ‘almost impossible for the Conservatives to win the next election’, warning more MPs will quit


Basit Mahmood
Left Foot Forward
Today

“Many of my colleagues will be thinking ‘Do I want to do much more of this? Do I want to go down to Electoral defeat?"

Conservative MP Charles Walker has said that it is ‘almost impossible’ for the party to win the next election, warning more MPs will stand down than ‘go down to electoral defeat’.

His comments came after the Tories were thrashed in the Chester by-election, suffering their worst defeat in the seat since 1832, with a swing of 13.8% from Tory to Labour.

A 12% swing from the Tories to Labour would be enough to take the party into power.

Walker, a former vice chair of the Tory backbench 1922 committee who is stepping down, told TimesRadio: “It’s almost impossible to see us coming back from this. I suspect, we will lose the next general election.

“Now I hope what Rishi Sunak does is make sure Labour doesn’t wipe the floor with us, so that we perhaps win 220 seats, and we form a viable opposition, which was not the case in 1997, when we went down to having 165 Members of Parliament.”

He also said we should expect quite a lot more Tory MPs deciding to stand down as we get nearer to the general election.

“Many of my colleagues will be thinking ‘Do I want to do much more of this? Do I want to go down to Electoral defeat?’ … Or if they’re in really safe seats ‘Do I want to be in opposition for ten years?”, he said.

His comments also come on the day when former chancellor Sajid Javid announced that he too will be stepping down at the next general election.

Javid wrote on Twitter: “After much reflection I have decided that I will not be standing again at the next General Election.

“Serving as the Member of Parliament for Bromsgrove remains an incredible privilege, and I will continue to support the Government and the causes I believe in.”

Basit Mahmood  is editor of Left Foot Forward

Republicans would rather think 'demonic forces' control America than accept nonwhites as equals: Maddow

Matthew Chapman
December 02, 2022

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow (screengrab)

On MSNBC Friday, Rachel Maddow walked through one of the key reasons why anti-Semitism is becoming so popular within certain corners of the GOP — and why it is such an easy ideology for authoritarians and opponents of democracy to push.

Simply put, she argued, far-right Republicans understand many of their views are unpopular — and so it's a convenient narrative to believe that the voters who are against them have been manipulated by some higher force, which in this case would be the Jews.

"As America and the whole West becomes more secular, people are replacing it with this need to have, someone is orchestrating the things going wrong in my life," said anchor Joy Reid. "I'm not talking about people who are openly Nazis at all. I'm saying there's a common vernacular on the right that is the globalists, right, they can't just be that more people like to vote for Democrats. George Soros is orchestrating this. It can't be that Black people wanted civil rights. The Jews are tricking them and making them want civil rights. It feels like that's a common theme ... and unfortunately, the train that's never late is that it's the Jews. It's the Jewish people getting attacked."

"Always," said Maddow. "Anti-Semitism and authoritarianism are always sistered together. Always, always, always. When you see not only a rise in the expression of anti-Semitism but a sort of mainstreaming of it, and one of the major political parties of our two-party governing system flirting with it in a way that doesn't immediately get denounced throughout the political system, like that, there isn't a surprise I think that that's going with the sort of proto-authoritarian movements you're seeing in that party. Those things always go together."

Fundamentally, Maddow added, "the American democratic experiment is that a country that is made up of all different kinds of people, from all over the place, all get an equal say" — and outside of these far right corners, "it's hard to argue we don't want American democracy anymore."

"Democracy is uncomfortable because we don't like everybody having a say," said Maddow. "We prefer that just we have a say. It's easier to say, our country has been hijacked by demonic forces and shady people behind the scenes that you can't see. That always lends itself to anti-Semitism, or toward whatever kind of cabal you want to imagine. But at its core, it's just something you hide behind when what you don't want is to participate as an equal citizen with others who are different than you in a group decision-making process. You don't get to be in charge. You just get to be a citizen among many. For people who don't want that, the idea is where they often first go."

Pandemic

South African boffins unpack origins of Omicron that began causing havoc a year ago

New study sheds light on where and how the variant evolved

02 December 2022 - 
Tanya Farber

SENIOR SCIENCE REPORTER

Covid-19 is still with us, and Omicron remains the dominant variant. 

Stock photo.
Image: 123RF/phonlamaiphoto

South Africa found itself ostracised this time last year for being the “home” of the then newly detected Omicron variant of the virus that causes Covid-19.

Local scientists and the World Health Organisation (WHO), however, said the country had made a breakthrough by discovering a variant that was likely present in several countries already at the time, and was being unfairly labelled as being the origin of the virus itself.

This had caused major restrictions for the country in terms of international travel.

Now, local scientists have made another breakthrough and again, it is to do with the Omicron variant.

A new study led by Stellenbosch University (SU) and published in the journal Science this week shows that predecessors to the Omicron variant existed on the African continent months before cases were first identified.

It also suggests that Omicron emerged gradually over several months in different countries across Africa.

“This important study sheds light on the question of when, where and how the dominating Omicron variant developed,” says Dr Tongai Maponga from SU’s division of medical virology. “The somewhat unexpected results not only enhance our understanding of the novel virus, but provide valuable guidance on how to better respond — and not to respond — to similar situations in the future.”

The study also casts doubt, but does not disprove, two theories on the Omicron variant.

The one is that the virus was transmitted from a human to an animal, where it spread and evolved before infecting a human again.

The other is that it infected a person with a weakened immune system for a prolonged period during which mutations accumulated.

Either scenario could explain how the mutated virus evades pre-existing immunity (after infection or vaccination, or both) and can be transmitted easily between people.

The team concluded that Omicron seems to have evolved in Africa but not necessarily in the two countries in which it was first discovered and shared with the rest of the world

Omicron was the variant with the most mutations and by the end of December 2021, it had replaced the previously dominant Delta variant worldwide.

For the purpose of the study, a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test was designed to specifically detect the BA.1 lineage of the Omicron variant. It was used to test more than 13,000 respiratory samples from Covid-19 patients collected in 22 African countries between mid-2021 and early 2022.

All samples were tested by researchers within the countries of collection. These tests allowed them to estimate when the Omicron variant started to appear and how fast it spread.

The team concluded that Omicron seems to have evolved in Africa but not necessarily in the two countries in which it was first discovered and shared with the rest of the world. 

This further questions the reasoning behind the travel bans that were placed on South Africa, causing economic losses and other hardships, and which did nothing to prevent the explosive global spread of Omicron. 

Future outbreaks will require better collaboration between countries and measures must not disincentivise global data sharing for the good of humanity, SU said in a statement.

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