Xi Jinping says China’s ‘miraculous’ development shows ‘modernisation does not equal Westernisation’



Shweta Sharma
Wed, 8 February 2023 

China’s rapid economic development busted the myth “modernization equals Westernisation”, Xi Jinping said in his first policy speech since securing an unprecedented third term as president.

China “achieved a historic breakthrough” and took a “historic leap” to become the world’s second largest economy with the help of Chinese-style modernisation, Mr Xi said on Tuesday, according to state-run Xinhua news agency.

“Chinese-style modernisation breaks the myth of ‘modernization equals Westernisation,’” he said at the meeting.

“Chinese-style modernization has set a good example for developing countries to move towards modernisation independently and provided them with a new choice,” he added.

It was his first major policy speech to top Communist Party cadres and government officials, during which he set out his vision for both the party and the country, in the follow-up of the 20th party congress in October.

It also came a month ahead of China’s annual parliamentary meetings scheduled to take place in Beijing, concluding the power reshuffle announced at the party congress last year.

Mr Xi said innovation must be given top priority in nation building while maintaining a balance between efficiency and equity.

The “ultimate success or failure” of China’s development will directly depend on achieving these goals by sticking to Communist Party’s leadership, he said.

He said Chinese-style modernisation is formed on the principles of world outlook, values, history, civilisation, democracy, and ecology.

China has “created a miracle of rapid economic development and long-term social stability, and opened up broad prospects for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”, he said.

Mr Xi’s comments reinforced his pledge of “self-reliance” and “social fairness” as Beijing faced challenges from Washington’s effort to contain its growth.

US president Joe Biden on Tuesday took direct aim at China’s ambitions to dominate and made similar comments about strengthening domestic industries in his State of the Union speech.

“I will make no apologies that we are investing to make America strong. Investing in American innovation, in industries that will define the future, that China intends to be dominating,” Mr Biden said.

Later, the Chinese foreign minister issued a statement, taking objection to Mr Biden’s comments that were deemed as smearing China.

“China does not fear competing with the US but is opposed to defining the entire China-US relationship in terms of competition,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a daily briefing on Wednesday.

“It is not the practice of a responsible country to smear a country or restrict the country’s legitimate development rights under the excuse of competition, even at the expense of disrupting the global industrial and supply chain,” Ms Mao said.

Brazilian armed forces drive illegal gold miners out of Amazon

Our Foreign Staff
Thu, 9 February 2023 

An agent from Ibama watches as an aircraft burns as they expel illegal miners from the area - Ibama/Shutterstock

Armed government officials with Brazil's justice, indigenous and environment ministries pressed illegal gold miners out of Yanomami Indigenous territory Wednesday, citing widespread river contamination, famine and disease they have brought to one of the most isolated groups in the world.

People involved in illegal gold dredging streamed away from the territory on foot. The operation could take months. There are believed to be some 20,000 people engaged in the activity, often using toxic mercury to separate the gold.

An estimated 30,000 Yanomami people live in Brazil's largest Indigenous territory, which covers an area roughly the size of Portugal and stretches across Roraima and Amazonas states in the northwest corner of Brazil's Amazon.

Boats loaded with miners and mining supplies, such as fuel barrels, in the Uraricoera river - AMANDA PEROBELLI/Reuters


The authorities - the Brazilian environmental agency Ibama, with support from the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples and the National Guard - found an airplane, a bulldozer, and makeshift lodges and hangars, and destroyed them - as permitted by law. Two guns and three boats with 5,000 litres (1,320 gallons) of fuel were seized. They also discovered a helicopter hidden in the forest and set it ablaze.

Ibama established a checkpoint next to a Yanomami village on the Uraricoera River to interrupt the miners' supply chain there. Agents seized the 12 metre (39ft) boats, loaded with a ton of food, freezers, generators, and internet antennas. The cargo will now supply the federal agents. No more boats carrying fuel and equipment will be allowed to proceed past the blockade.

Miners are detained during an operation against illegal mining in Yanomami indigenous land - Ibama/Reuters

The large amount of supplies bound upriver could indicate some of the gold miners were ignoring President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's promise to expel them after years of neglect under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who tried to legalise the activity.

Other miners, however, sensed it was better to return to the city. On Tuesday, The Associated Press visited a makeshift port alongside the Uraricoera River, accessible only by three-hour drive on a dirt road. Dozens of gold miners arrived over the course of the day, some of them after walking for days through the forest, en route to state capital Boa Vista.

One of them, Joao Batista Costa, 61, told reporters the Yanomami are dying of hunger and that recent emergency food shipments have not been enough.

Miner Joao Batista Costa, 61, walks for days to leave the Yanomami indigenous territory ahead of expected operations against illegal mining - Edmar Barros/PA

The federal government has declared a public health emergency for the Yanomami people, who are suffering from malnutrition and diseases such as malaria as a consequence of illegal mining.

A report published yesterday by the Health Ministry found that gold miners have invaded four clinics inside Yanomami territory, leaving them inoperational. In the city of Boa Vista, where starving and sick Indigenous people have been evacuated to a temporary medical facility, there are 700 Yanomami, more than three times its capacity.

The gold miners, who come from poor regions, such as Maranhão state in northeast Brazil, usually cross the forest wearing flip-flops, carrying only food and personal belongings in their backpacks. They sleep in hammocks in campsites.

But their mining depends on sophisticated logistics to outfox authorities and is backed by investors outside the forest.

A Yanomami woman with her child in Boa Vista. The indigenous people have suffered the devastating effects of illegal mining in the region - Edmar Barros/AP

Such tactics include: illicit fuel distribution on the outskirts of Indigenous land; airstrips carved from the jungle for transport of miners and supplies; light planes with modified tail numbers, registered to front companies; helicopters operating between mining sites on the reserves, and clandestine communication networks.

"This operation hasn't come a moment too soon," Sarah Shenker, the head of the non-profit Survival International in Brazil, said in a statement.

"It's absolutely vital that the authorities get the miners out, and keep them out. They've blighted the Yanomami's lives for far too long, and have caused untold misery and destruction. Even if all of them are removed, and they can be kept out, it will take years for the Yanomami and their rainforest to recover."

Brazil launches operation to drive illegal miners from Yanomami lands


Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Wed, 8 February 2023 at 10:09 am GMT-7·4-min read

The Brazilian government has launched its campaign to drive tens of thousands of illegal miners from the country’s largest Indigenous reserve, with special-forces environmental operatives destroying aircraft and seizing weapons and boats during an operation deep in the Amazon’s Yanomami territory.

Members of Brazil’s environmental protection agency Ibama – with support from the Indigenous agency Funai and the newly created ministry for Indigenous peoples – launched the long-awaited operation on Monday, with troops establishing a base along the Uraricoera river. 

Wildcat tin ore and gold miners use the waterway – as well as dozens of illegal airstrips – to reach and supply their illegal outposts in Yanomami lands.  Interactive

In a statement on Wednesday lunchtime, Brazil’s government said the environmental squad had destroyed a helicopter, an airplane and a bulldozer used by mining mafias to drive clandestine roads through the region’s jungles.

Footage of the raid showed the chassis of a helicopter smoldering near a patch of rainforest after it was torched by Ibama agents in order to prevent it being used again.

In December, the Guardian documented the existence of an illegal 75-mile “road to chaos” through Yanomami lands during a flyover with the Indigenous activist Sônia Guajajara, who weeks later was made Brazil’s first ever minister for Indigenous peoples.

On Tuesday evening, Guajajara said the new government of leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was determined to protect the nearly 30,000 Yanomami people living in Brazil from what authorities have called a “genocide”.

“The Yanomami want peace – that is all they want,” Guajajara told the television network GloboNews. “And this is what we are going to give them.”

Illegal goldminers known as garimpeiros began pouring on to Yanomami lands in the 1970s and 80s, after the 1964-85 military dictatorship urged impoverished Brazilians to populate a region they claimed foreign powers sought to seize.

A global outcry – which included Prince Charles condemning the “collective genocide” of the Yanomami – prompted government action. Tens of thousands of miners were removed from Yanomami lands in the early 1990s during a security operation called Selva Livre (Jungle Liberation). Brazil’s then president, Fernando Collor de Mello, created a supposedly protected 9.6m-hectare territory for the Yanomami which exists to this day.

However, the assault rekindled after the 2018 election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who publicly railed against how such a large expanse of mineral-rich land had been set aside for the Indigenous group.

During Bolsonaro’s four-year administration – during which Amazon deforestation soared and the environmental and Indigenous agencies were enfeebled – at least 25,000 miners are estimated to have flocked in to the Yanomami territory near the border with Venezuela, bringing violence and disease.

“It was a government of blood,” the Yanomami leader, Júnior Hekurari, said in a recent interview.

Lula’s new government, which began on 1 January, has vowed to reserve Bolsonaro era policies that caused havoc for Brazil’s environment and Indigenous communities.

“We will put a complete end to any kind of illegal mining. This can’t be simply through a law – it must be almost a profession of faith,” the veteran leftist told the Guardian during last year’s election campaign.

On Wednesday afternoon, several top ministers, including the defense chief, José Múcio, touched down in the Amazon city of Boa Vista – the nearest to the Yanomami territory – to monitor the start of the crackdown.

An aerial view of Porto do Arame, on the banks of the Uraricoera river, the main access point for people trying to leave illegal mining sites.

 Photograph: Michael Dantas/AFP/Getty Images

This week’s operation follows outcry in Brazil over the humanitarian disaster that has struck the Yanomami territory in recent years as a result of the influx of miners and government inaction.

Dozens of Yanomami children have been flown to hospitals in Boa Vista suffering from malnutrition and malaria in recent days, with horrifying photographs of emaciated children and adults causing indignation in Brazil and internationally. At least 570 Yanomami children are reported to have died of curable diseases during Bolsonaro’s administration.

After a visit to the region last month, Lula said: “More than a humanitarian crisis, what I saw … was a genocide. A premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government impervious to the suffering of the Brazilian people.”

The crisis was documented in the Guardian by Dom Phillips, the British journalist whose murder in the Amazon last June shone a spotlight on the environmental degradation and crime that blighted the region during Brazil’s previous government.

“This is like a bomb going off. This is as drastic as you’ll see,” one environmental expert told Phillips after viewing images of one mine Phillips had visited in the Yanomami territory in late 2019.

THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS

A solution to the climate crisis: mining the moon, researchers say

Oliver Milman in New York
Wed, 8 February 2023

Photograph: Richard A Brooks/AFP/Getty Images

Proponents of a “moonshot” idea to deal with global heating have been handed a new, very literal, interpretation by researchers who have proposed firing plumes of moon dust from a gun into space in order to deflect the sun’s rays away from Earth.

The seemingly outlandish concept, outlined in a new research paper, would involve creating a “solar shield” in space by mining the moon of millions of tons of its dust and then “ballistically eject[ing]” it to a point in space about 1m miles from Earth, where the floating grains would partially block incoming sunlight.

Related: Can geoengineering fix the climate? Hundreds of scientists say not so fast

“A really exciting part of our study was the realization that the natural lunar dust grains are just the right size and composition for efficiently scattering sunlight away from Earth,” said Ben Bromley, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Utah, who led the research, published in Plos Climate.

“Since it takes much less energy to launch these grains from the moon’s surface, as compared with an Earth launch, the ‘moonshot’ idea really stood out for us.”

Bromley and two other researchers considered a variety of properties, including coal and sea salt, that could dim the sun by as much as 2% if fired into space. The team eventually settled on the dust found on the moon, although millions of tons would have to be mined, sifted and loaded into a ballistic device, such as an electromagnetic rail gun, and fired into space each year into order to maintain this solar shield.

Getting this mining and projective equipment to the moon would be a “significant project”, Bromley conceded, and might also require the positioning of a new space station in an area called the L1 Lagrange point, found between Earth and the sun, in order to “redirect packets of dust on to orbits that could provide shade for as long as possible”.

Such an approach would act as a “fine-tuned dimmer switch, leaving our planet untouched”, Bromley said, an advantage over other solar geoengineering proposals that have raised concerns about the environmental impact of spraying reflective particles within the Earth’s atmosphere.

The moon dust would have to be continually propelled into space in order to take the edge off global heating, however, or risk a so-called “termination shock” whereby temporary cooling is abruptly stopped and the world is left to rapidly heat up. Bromley insisted that the research’s sci-fi idea is no substitute for the primary task of cutting planet-heating emissions in the first place.

“Nothing should distract us from reducing greenhouse gas emissions here on Earth,” he said. “Our strategy may just be a moonshot, but we should explore all possibilities, in case we need more time to do the work here at home.”

Tinkering with the world’s climate, including attempts to reflect sunlight, is a controversial and still relatively fringe response to the climate crisis. It has gained some traction amid repeated warnings that countries are not slashing emissions quickly enough to prevent disaster, however, with the US government launching a research project around the concept last year.

Related: Can geoengineering fix the climate? Hundreds of scientists say not so fast

Ted Parson, an expert in environmental law at UCLA, said the moon dust proposal was “fun, scientifically interesting speculation” that was unlikely to be put into practice, partially due to the larger cost and lack of control compared with Earth-based geoengineering options.

“There seems to be a bit of uptick of interest in space-based geoengineering schemes more broadly,” Parson said. “They were long dismissed as wildly impractical due to technical and cost considerations, but my impression is that the ongoing reduction of launch costs is piquing people’s interest and strange ideas are bubbling around.”

But opponents of solar geoengineering, whether on Earth or in space, argue that it is an unhelpful and potentially dangerous distraction from the urgent imperative to transition away from burning fossil fuels.

“The idea to mine the moon or near-Earth asteroids in order to artificially block parts of the sunlight is no solution to the ongoing and intensifying climate crisis,” said Frank Biermann, professor of global sustainability governance at Utrecht University.

“What is needed are massive cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions, which require rapid technological advancement and socioeconomic transitions. Mining the moon is not the answer that we need.”

Iranian prosecutors concealed rape by Revolutionary Guards, document shows

Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor

THE GUARDIAN
Wed, 8 February 2023 



Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards raped two women in an attack covered up by state prosecutors, according to an internal judicial document seen by the Guardian.

The document, originally leaked to Iran International by hacktivist group Edalat-e Ali (Ali’s Justice), reveals the case of sexual assault by two IRGC officers of a woman aged 18 and a woman of 23 in a van during protests against the death in September of Mahsa Amini in police custody in Tehran.

The two women were detained for acting suspiciously, it said, and their phones were examined for evidence they had been at the protests.

Activists have alleged that some of the women arrested have been sexually abused by security officials during the protests, but this is the first internal document that has emerged showing a specific case.

Written by Mohammad Shahriari, the deputy prosecutor and head of the General and Revolution Prosecutor’s Office of Tehran, and addressed to Ali Salehi, the Tehran general and revolution prosecutor, the 13 October 2022 document, a report on a collection of witness statements, says two named women were assaulted by two named male security officials.

The case came to the attention of prosecutors after one of the IRGC officers rang one of the victims after the assault and she recorded what he said before filing a complaint. He initially denied the charges, before changing his story to say the two women had consented to sex.

The officer is reported to have been detained along with his father at their house in Tehran, where batons, ammunition, bulletproof jackets, police radios, handcuffs and IDs for different security organisations were found. The second agent was arrested separately and transferred to a police intelligence unit prison.

The report details how the two men eventually admitted to intercourse with the two women, which the document described as rape. The first officer acknowledged that they had detained the two women near a petrol station while on a mission on Sattarkhan street in western Tehran. The IRGC officers initially took them to the Revolutionary Guard headquarters, but were told it was not possible to admit the accused women.

The first officer claimed that the women had made sexual advances and he had recited Sigheh, a private and verbal temporary marriage that can make intercourse permissible. He named three other officers, including the second officer, who might have been involved in the rape of the second woman.

The second officer admitted in his witness statement he had had sex with the victim but claimed it had been consensual.

The document continues: “Considering the problematic nature of the case, the possibility of the leaking of this information into social media and its misrepresentation by enemy groups, it is recommended that the necessary order [is] issued for it to be filed top secret. Since no complaint has been registered and the defendants have been dismissed, the accused should be dismissed without mentioning their names.”

It added the case should be closed without any reference to the military institution involved.

Rev Al Sharpton takes aim at UK’s ‘undeserved self-congratulation’ on race


Nadine White
Wed, 8 February 2023 

Reverend Al Sharpton (Ernest Simons/Black Equity Organisation )

Reverend Al Sharpton has cautioned the UK against getting too comfortable in the fight for racial equality.

The renowned civil rights leader visited London to meet with Black activists, promote the UK’s biggest Black voter registration drive and meet with grassroots activists.

His remarks come as the government took aim at a recent report by the United Nations which found that systemic racism is eroding the rights of Black people, boasting about the UK’s “hard-earned global reputation” as “an open, tolerant and welcoming country”.


“It’s an undeserved self-congratulation,” Reverend Sharpton, 68, told The Independent. “For example, Black people are still stopped and searched disproportionately in the UK; Black people are still not in the higher levels of education to the degree that they should be.

“I spoke at Cambridge University today and it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that there were no Blacks at all in some of those colleges.”

Referring to comparisons made between police brutality in the US and UK, with the suggestion that Black people fare better in the UK as a “more tolerant” country, the reverend likened the ongoing oppression of minorities to a pervasive sickness.

(Ernest Simons/Black Equity Organisation)

”Comparing yourself to something worse, while trying to proclaim yourself as well, is futile. It’s like if I was in the hospital suffering from a disease alongside someone else; but I say ‘I’m not as bad as him’ despite not being well myself!

“In assessing the truth of race relations, Black people should be compared to whites in society. Why are white people still treated better by the criminal justice system, education system and health system? Don’t compare Black people to worse - the plight of Black people in other countries - compare us to what we could be at our best.”

During his UK trip, the reverend also hosted a private screening of his biographical documentary, ‘Loudmouth’, in London, with a Q&A session with Lord Simon Woolley.

Executive produced by R&B singer John Legend, the film chronicles Reverend Sharpton’s life spanning more than five decades as an activist and religious leader during major points in the civil rights movement including the 1986 lynching of three Black men in Howard Beach, New York, and the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

On Tuesday evening, Reverend Sharpton’s visit culminated in him meeting Black activists from across the country in an event organised by the Black Equity Organisation, a newly launched UK civil rights organisation, in partnership with the Alliance for Police Accountability, and the Advocacy Academy.

The event took place in Hackney, East London, on Tuesday and featured addresses from activists Athian Akec, Lee Jasper, Chantelle Lunt and more.

Activist Chantelle Lunt and Lee Jasper of the Alliance for Police Accountability at the BEO event in Hackney (Ernest Simon/Black Equity Organisation)

Following the wave of anti-racism protests that took place following George Floyd’s murder in 2020, many people felt a sense of optimism; as though systemic racism may yet be dismantled and things would change for the better.

Almost three years later, more Black people have died at the hands of police officers across the UK and US, from Chris Kaba to Tyre Nichols.

“They were right to feel the optimism as long as it was realistic optimism,” Reverend Sharpton told The Independent. “Movements go through peaks and valleys; hope showed that there was fertile ground there.

“Now you have to work the ground and plough it; legislation and policies don’t change overnight. There has to be a continuation sometimes over a generation.

“It’s not about putting a timetable on liberation or equality; it’s about the determination that ‘I’m not going to live any other way: therefore, if see inequality in a year or if I see it in five years, I’m gonna fight when I see it’.

“I have no desire to live under any circumstances that’s uneven, and therefore will fight every day until it’s even. If I die first, then I will but as long as I live, I’m going to be fighting.”

Last week, Reverend Sharpton delivered a rousing speech at the funeral of Tyre Nichols in which he compared the Memphis police officers who fatally beat the 29-year-old to death to a group of gang members.

WALES

Meet the dog on a UK-first mission to protect Pembrokeshire's seabirds


Ruth Davies

Western Telegraph:
Wed, 8 February 2023

Jinx has been in training for two years in the art of sniffing out rats 

(Image: Welsh Government)

A spaniel named Jinx has been tasked with a special mission - to protect the seabirds of the Pembrokeshire coast and the rest of Wales.

He has been given the proud title of the UK’s first conservation detection dog after two years’ training with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

His role will now be to sniff out one of the greatest perils known to already-threatened seabird colonies – rats!

Three-year-old working cocker spaniel Jinx is part of a £250,000 Welsh Government-funded project to expand biosecurity for Wales.

Western Telegraph: Jinx has an important role to play in the protection of our island birds.

Jinx has an important role to play in the protection of our island birds. (Image: Welsh Government)

His role is so important because a single pregnant rat can produce a colony of over 300 in just eight months. Rats are expert hunters and would quickly eat eggs, chicks and even adult birds.

Only last December, there was a major biodiversity alert for Pembrokeshire’s Skomer Island – home to over 350,000 pairs of Manx Shearwater and 39,000 puffins – after a fishing boat ran aground.

There were fears that if rats were on the vessel they could have gone ashore to the island and devastated the seabird population.

READ MORE

Shipwreck could cause 'biosecurity risk' to Skomer Island

Biosecurity risk averted on Skomer after fishing boat runs aground

The survival of Wales’ seabirds is also under threat from climate change, unsustainable fisheries, marine development and pandemics - such as the recent Highly Pathogenic Avian Flu (HPAI) which killed more than 5000 gannets on Grassholm Island last year.

Western Telegraph:

Minister for Climate Change, Julie James was introduced to Jinx today, Wednesday February 8 and said: “I was delighted to meet Jinx who I have no doubt will deliver the mission we have tasked him with – to protect Wales’ seabirds from rats and other mammalian predators.

"Thanks to the intense training he completed with his expert handler, Greg, we are confident that the biosecurity on our islands will be greatly improved under his service.

“Protecting our seabirds and balancing our precious ecosystems is all of our responsibility as we face the climate and nature emergencies.

"We can help Jinx do his job properly by being vigilant to critters on our clothes, invasive species in our rucksacks or mammalian hunters who hitchhike a lift when we visit these islands.

"Please report anything suspicious immediately. Thank you to RSPB for your vital work in protecting our seabirds and all our partners who have worked together to make Jinx the UK’s first biosecurity dog.”

Senior marine policy officer, RSPB Cymru, Emily Williams said: “We are delighted that Jinx will be continuing his work on biosecurity through this new project.

"Biosecurity is a vital element of seabird conservation, at a time when seabirds need our help more than ever. Coupled with the developing welsh seabird conservation strategy and marine environmental planning, we can turn the tide for seabirds in Wales."

Elephants ‘could help to save the planet’

Rob Waugh
·Contributor
Wed, 8 February 2023 

African forest elephants are important to the health of the planet. (Getty)

Elephants could play a crucial role in the battle against climate change, a new study has shown.

The study showed that elephants play a key role in creating forests which store more atmospheric carbon – and are also important in maintaining the biodiversity of forests in Africa.

Ten million elephants once roamed Africa, but just 500,000 remain in pockets, and some populations are critically endangered.

The researchers found that if elephants in the area become extinct, the rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest rainforest on earth, would gradually lose between 6-9% of their ability to capture atmospheric carbon, amplifying planetary warming.

Read more: Melting snow in Himalayas drives growth of green sea slime visible from space

Assistant professor of biology at Saint Louis University and senior author on the paper Stephen Blake said, “Elephants have been hunted by humans for millennia. As a result, African forest elephants are critically endangered.

“The argument that everybody loves elephants hasn’t raised sufficient support to stop the killing. Shifting the argument for elephant conservation toward the role forest elephants play in maintaining the biodiversity of the forest, that losing elephants would mean losing forest biodiversity, hasn’t worked either, as numbers continue to fall.

“We can now add the robust conclusion that if we lose forest elephants, we will be doing a global disservice to climate change mitigation. The importance of forest elephants for climate mitigation must be taken seriously by policy makers to generate the support needed for elephant conservation. The role of forest elephants in our global environment is too important to ignore.”

Read more: A 1988 warning about climate change was mostly right

Elephants play multiple roles in protecting the global environment.

Within the forest, some trees have light wood (low carbon density trees) while others make heavy wood (high carbon density trees).

Low carbon density trees grow quickly, rising above other plants and trees to get to the sunlight. Meanwhile, high carbon density trees grow slowly, needing less sunlight and being able to grow in shade.

Elephants and other megaherbivores affect the abundance of these trees by feeding more heavily on the low carbon density trees, which are more palatable and nutritious than the high carbon density species.

This “thins” the forest, much like a forester would do to promote growth of their preferred species. This thinning reduces competition among trees and provides more light, space and soil nutrients to help the high carbon trees to flourish.

“Elephants eat lots of leaves from lots of trees, and they do a lot of damage when they eat,” Blake said. “They’ll strip leaves from trees, rip off a whole branch or uproot a sapling when eating, and our data shows most of this damage occurs to low carbon density trees. If there are a lot of high carbon density trees around, that’s one less competitor, eliminated by the elephants.”

Elephants are also excellent dispersers of the seeds of high carbon density trees.

“Elephants are the gardeners of the forest,” Blake added. “They plant the forest with high carbon density trees and they get rid of the ‘weeds,’ which are the low carbon density trees. They do a tremendous amount of work maintaining the diversity of the forest.”

Armed with this vital information, the arguments to conserve the forest elephants of the Congo Basin and West Africa have never been greater, the researchers say.

Populations of elephants have been eliminated from many areas of the forest, and in many areas, they are functionally extinct, meaning that their populations are so low that they have no significant impact on the ecology of the forest.

China's spy balloon: inflatable eyes in the sky have been used in war for centuries

Frank Ledwidge, Senior Lecturer in Military Strategy and Law, University of Portsmouth

The Conversation
Wed, 8 February 2023 

One of the more surreal sights of the recent Afghan war was tethered balloons (also known as “aerostats”) looming over the bases of international forces. These “persistent threat detection systems” carried a suite of 360-degree cameras providing a constant view - out to 100 miles - of surrounding areas to the US “force-protection” teams within the heavily guarded installations.

The recent four-day saga of a Chinese spy balloon prying into US nuclear secrets serves as a reminder that the oldest technologies are still being developed to achieve military effects today. Balloons have been in use for military service longer than air forces have existed.

It was the brilliant French engineer Jean-Marie-Joseph Coutell (founder of the French Aerostatic Corps) who first demonstrated the potential of using a balloon to observe an enemy’s positions.

A picture postcard showing a French balloon overlooking a battle in France, 1794.

In June 1794, he ascended above the battle of Fleurus and reported on Austrian positions, dropping messages describing their movements and positions from his tethered balloon, while being unsuccessfully shot at by somewhat surprised artillerymen.

But despite this success, the corps was disbanded in 1799 – after deployment to Egypt with Napoleon, who failed to see the potential of this new weapon.

There was limited use in the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian war. But in the first world war, aerostats came into their own. Dirigibles, the famous Zeppelin airships – which by definition were powered and steerable – had a short-lived role as bombers.

However, the role of balloons on the battlefield was of far more immediate consequence. They offered relatively stable platforms high above the battlefield from which to observe enemy positions and direct artillery fire on to them. The downside, of course, was that they were easily visible from those same enemy positions. Every effort was made to shoot them down, making membership of balloon crews a notably dangerous endeavour.

The size and unwieldiness of balloons compared with powered aircraft – as well as the increased accuracy of anti-aircraft guns – made them an impractical proposition as artillery observation platforms in the second world war. But they did vital if unglamorous service in an air defence role, forming unmanned “barrages” – especially in Britain, where they were deployed in cities and around vital targets.

The cables tethering them to the ground were lethal for low-flying aircraft, which had to fly above and around them. Barrage balloons became an iconic feature of the Blitz.

Iconic: barrage balloons were a familiar sight over UK cities during the second world war.

Somewhat less effective was the attempt by Japan to terrorise the US population by sending thousands of bombs carried by balloons (known in Japanese as “Fu-Go”) over the US mainland. Six people were killed in Oregon – the only casualties to enemy action in the continental US during that conflict.

The next major military use of balloons came during the Cold War, when the US project “Moby Dick” led to hundreds of balloons being sent to spy over the Soviet Union.
Simple but effective

Balloons may seem unlikely candidates for long-range reconnaissance such as that attempted by China recently. They are steerable only by altering altitude, using varying air currents to change direction.

Last week, a skilfully planned use of airstreams and currents directed a surveillance balloon over the single most sensitive element of the US military – the intercontinental ballistic missile silo bases in Montana. The US Department of Defense said that: “Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years.”

China is reportedly denying the balloon was engaged in surveillance activities, maintaining it was a “civilian airship” that was collecting weather data and had been blown off course.

Despite their size and vulnerability, aerostats like this offer advantages over satellites and manned aircraft. They are slow and can persist over a target for far longer than a satellite that passes over at orbital speed. Flying at just 60,000 feet (12 miles or 20km), their cameras can achieve higher resolution than those based in orbit at 100 miles (160km).

They are also cheaper than satellites, drones or manned aircraft, can deploy large payloads, and present a less overtly aggressive face. Indeed, they offer the possibility of a degree of plausible deniability – who would be threatened by a mere hot air weather balloon?.

All that said, it is unlikely that this mission achieved very much from an intelligence perspective At the very least, the US took suitable precautions to jam the balloon’s communications systems and dazzle its cameras.

But it may well have been the medium itself that was the message. China is saying: “Here is this very public dilemma for you. What will we do next?”

The balloon was eventually shot down over the Atlantic ocean on February 4, pulled out of the sea off the coast of South Carolina and taken to the FBI lab at Quantico, Virginia to be scrutinised by military experts.

Ironically, it may well be that the US learns rather more than China did from this particular spying mission.

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

Frank Ledwidge is affiliated with the Transatlantic Dialogue Center in Kyiv

DTIC ADA391266: What the Chinese Learned from Sun-Tzu

by Defense Technical Information Center
Publication date 2001-04-01

  HOlmes, Colleen K,

  ARMY WAR COLL CARLISLE BARRACKS PA,

The Sun-tzu ping-fa (Sun-tzu: The Art of Warfare) dates back to the Warring States period (c. 403-221 B.C.) making it the oldest and most widely studied military classic. The Warring States period was a formative phase of Chinese civilization. In addition to Confucian, Mohist, and Legalist philosophers, there were specialists schooled in military tactics and strategies for waging effective warfare. Sun-tzu is the best known of the military specialists and is probably best described as a pragmatic realist. This is evident in the use and application of shih as it relates to strategic advantage and strategic positioning. For Sun-tzu, the virtuous leader is able to achieve victory without war if he understands and is able to skillfully apply strategic advantage and strategic positioning. War and its avoidance and the fundamentals of shih have developed into a distinctively Chinese pragmatic and calculative security policy. An analysis of China's policy regarding its strategic periphery is a window of opportunity to see these influences at work. From this analysis we may gain a better understanding of how China views regional and global balance of power. As patterns of behavior, traits, or tendencies become clearer, they may provide insights for more collaborative relations with China and be useful in constructing the basic conceptual framework for the United States to develop its grand strategy for a more cooperative China.

THIRD WORLD UK

Energy regulator admits vulnerable people are getting ill because they can’t afford electricity

Rebecca Thomas
Wed, 8 February 2023 

Vulnerable people are making themselves ill by cutting off electricity due to “unprecedented prices”, the UK’s energy regulator has admitted.

An Ofgem official admitted to an NHS chief that vulnerable patients are also rationing their energy due to prices and that the situation is only going to get worse.

The admission comes in response to a stark warning to Ofgem from Samantha Allen, NHS chief for the North East and Cumbria, which said the region had seen vulnerable patients admitted to hospital after their energy had been cut off by suppliers.

Neil Lawrence, director of Retail for Ofgem, said in a response letter: “We recognise that self-disconnection is also an issue, alongside energy rationing which may exacerbate or result in health conditions deriving from cold and damp living conditions.

“Given the unprecedented prices, we anticipate that rates of self-disconnection will likely increase as we head into this difficult winter.”

On Tuesday former prime minister Gordon Brown called for Ofgem boss Jonathan Brearley to resign over the scandal which has seen thousands of vulnerable Britons forced to switch to prepayment meters.

The government is facing calls for an inquiry into how energy companies used debt agents to force their way into the homes so prepayment meters could be installed for those struggling to pay their bills.

In September The Independent reported Ms Allen had written to Ofgem after reports patients needing care at home were being disconnected from their energy supply.

She gave examples of patients who need to run oxygen supply machines at home having their energy disconnected and being admitted to hospital as a result.

Her warning comes amid a major push by the NHS to discharge and treat more patients at home to tackle the worsening bed and staff shortages across hospitals.

Last year The Independent revealed an NHS-funded trial has been launched in Gloucestershire to prescribe more than 150 patients with vouchers to spend on their energy bills.

In a response to Ms Allen’s letter, Mr Lawrence from Ofgem said: “With wholesale energy prices at over 10 times what we would expect during a normal year, this is causing intense pressure across the breadth of society. However, this pressure is particularly acute for those who are clinically vulnerable… We understand your concern on disconnection, and particularly the implications this would have on those who rely on electrical medical equipment.”

The letter said having investigated 21 disconnections over debt in 2021 it was satisfied none of the customers were in “vulnerable circumstances”.

Mr Lawrence said just 80 per cent of domestic suppliers have signed up to the Energy UK Vulnerability Commitment and confirmed the regulator had launched a service of reviews which will include looking at customers in vulnerable circumstances.

North East and Cumbria NHS region has now launched a campaign to ensure vulnerable patients are signed up to their energy suppliers’ priority services register, which identifies vulnerable people who need additional help.

In a recent response to Mr Lawrence, Ms Allen said: “As an overriding principle within our civil society, no clinically vulnerable patient should ever be in a position where their life is at risk by disconnection and/or being in a position of self-disconnection.”

She said although the regulator has acted against some providers locally “we should never get into this position in the first place”.

“Given the scale of the challenge many are facing it is imperative we work together and do all that is within our power, collectively and individually. Whilst the current market conditions and local lived experience of disconnections have instigated the need for our exchange I am sure we can all agree for the need to ensure we challenge each other and work in the best interests of those most vulnerable.”

Ofgem was approached for comment.

Energy firm Equinor under fire after posting record £23.8 billion profits

Holly Williams, PA Business Editor
Wed, 8 February 2023 


One of the UK and Europe’s biggest gas producers has become the latest energy firm to stoke mounting anger over “grotesque” record-breaking annual profits.

Norwegian firm Equinor posted underlying earnings of 74.9 billion US dollars (£61.9 billion), more than double the 33.5 billion US dollars (£27.7 billion) it made in 2021.

On a net profit basis, it reported 28.7 billion US dollars (£23.8 billion) compared with profits of 8.6 billion US dollars (£7.1 billion) in 2021.

It follows similar mammoth bottom line profits for oil and gas giants in recent days thanks to last year’s soaring energy prices, with BP and Shell both posting record-breaking figures for 2022, at £23 billion and £33 billion respectively.

Campaigners have taken aim at the firms for raking in huge profits while households and businesses are suffering amid a cost of living crisis and claim the companies have made little progress in switching to renewable energy sources.

Greenpeace hit out at Equinor’s profit announcement and reiterated its call for a bigger windfall tax on the sector.

Protesters from climate campaigners Parents for Future, Mothers Rise Up, and HERO UK Climate Justice Circle are also staging a demonstration outside Equinor’s London headquarters in protest at its figures and its plans to develop Rosebank, the UK’s largest undeveloped oil field.

The activists at Equinor’s headquarters described the figures as “grotesque”.

Mel Evans, Greenpeace UK’s head of UK climate, added: “Equinor is the latest fossil fuel giant to post record profits looted from bill payers’ pockets while destroying the climate last year.

“Just 0.13% of its energy production came from renewables in 2022.

“Instead of giving out more tax breaks for oil and gas drilling, the Government needs to claw back these massive profits and use them to insulate people’s homes and scale up renewable energy.”

A spokesman for Equinor said the group is aiming to “significantly increase investments in renewables, and that we foresee that more than 50% of gross investments will go to renewables and low carbon projects by 2030”.

He added that the Rosebank development “has the potential to strengthen energy security with oil and gas that is produced with a much lower carbon footprint than current UK production” and claimed it will bring in around £26.8 billion to the UK economy through taxes and investments.

The firm’s highest ever annual profit came after a better-than-expected performance in the last three months of 2022, with quarterly underlying earnings edging up to 15.1 billion US dollars (£12.5 billion), against predictions for a fall.

But its report revealed that production from renewable energy sources was 2% lower year-on-year in the fourth quarter.

Equinor – which is majority Norwegian state-owned – is one of the biggest producers of gas in the world, and last year became Europe’s biggest supplier of natural gas after Russia’s Gazprom slashed deliveries amid sanctions against President Putin’s regime, following his invasion of Ukraine.

It has historically supplied around 25% of gas used in the UK.

Anders Opedal, president and chief executive of Equinor, said: “In 2022, we responded to the energy crisis and contributed to energy security.

“With strong operational performance, we delivered record results and cash flow from operations.

“We stepped up capital distribution to shareholders, while continuing to invest in a balanced energy transition and contributing to society with high tax payments.”

The group – which makes the bulk of its profit in Norway, where oil firms pay tax at 78% – said it expects to pay record taxes in 2022, with 42.8 billion US dollars (£35.4 billion) paid in tax related to operations on the Norwegian continental shelf.