It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, April 14, 2023
US Army to Mount High-Energy Laser on Infantry Squad Vehicles to Destroy Drones
Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser, or AMP-HEL, mounted on an Infantry Squad Vehicle.
Image: BlueHalo
APRIL 12, 2023
The US Army has awarded BlueHalo $45.7 million to develop a 20-kilowatt high-energy laser, which it will mount on Infantry Squad Vehicles to protect them against drones.
The base award, which includes a further $30.2 million in options, will see the company develop a prototype of the Army Multi-Purpose High-Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) system.
The US Army plans to deploy the weapon to protect Division and Brigade Combat Teams against growing drone threats on the battlefield.
BlueHalo will leverage its many years of experience developing directed energy and optical targeting and tracking systems, including its deployed LOCUST Laser Weapon Systems (LWS).
“Our LOCUST LWS has successfully engaged and defeated numerous drone threats across a wide variety of background, clutter, slant range, and threat conditions,” BlueHalo CEO Jonathan Moneymaker said.
“BlueHalo prides itself on being the protective ring around our forces. The AMP-HEL system will deliver a paradigm changing capability to our military, providing highly maneuverable protection for our warfighters on the ground so that they can achieve mission success and return home safely.” BlueHalo Contracts for US Armed Forces
The AMP-HEL award is the latest in a series of BlueHalo contracts with the US armed forces.
Last August, the US Department of Defense awarded the company a contract to supply its TITAN counter-drone system.
The firm also received a 10-year contract from the US Air Force Research Laboratory last June to construct a directed energy simulation range to test and train with high-energy laser weapons.
Offensive Drone Swarm Platform
In addition to developing high-energy laser counter-drone capabilities and associated platforms, BlueHalo has also developed an offensive drone swarm platform.
The company said that these systems and the AMP-HEL combine the latest in precision optical and laser hardware, advanced software, artificial intelligence, machine learning algorithms, processing, and adaptive countermeasures to track, identify and engage a wide variety of targets.
“AMP-HEL marks another historic step for the deployment of more HEL systems and the modernization of our national defense capabilities,” BlueHalo Chief Operating Officer Trip Ferguson said.
“Through our layered defense solutions like LOCUST, BlueHalo continues to meet the toughest challenges with soldier-centered technology and inspired engineering–safeguarding our warfighters and nation.”
China confirms first death from common avian influenza H3N8 strain
news.com.au By Alexis Carey 12 Apr, 2023 Bird flu virus globules under the microscope.
Photo / CSIRO, Livestock Industries Australian Animal Health Laboratory, Geelong
A bird flu strain that is very rare in humans has claimed a woman’s life in China, authorities have confirmed.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the 56-year-old woman from Guangdong in China’s south was the third person to have recently been struck down with the H3N8 strain of avian influenza, with all three cases occurring in China.
However, the other two cases, which were detected in 2022, eventually recovered.
It is believed the strain does not spread between humans, but instead, can pass from infected animals to people who come in contact with them.
The WHO confirmed the woman had fallen ill on February 22, and had died on March 16 after being hospitalised with “severe pneumonia” on March 3.
The woman had “multiple underlying conditions”, a “history of exposure to live poultry” and a “history of wild bird presence around her home”.
“Since avian influenza viruses continue to be detected in poultry populations, further sporadic human cases are expected in the future,” the World Health Organisation says.
However, no close contacts of the patient went on to develop symptoms.
Investigations reveal she likely caught the illness after visiting a wet market, with traces of avian influenza later found in samples collected from the site.
Influenza infections that have spread from animals to humans can cause a range of symptoms, from none at all, to mild and severe enough to kill.
Symptoms include conjunctivitis or mild flu-like symptoms to severe acute respiratory disease, while gastrointestinal or neurological symptoms are possible but rare.
“Based on available information, it appears that this virus does not have the ability to spread easily from person to person, and therefore the risk of it spreading among humans at the national, regional, and international levels is considered to be low,” the WHO said.
“However, due to the constantly evolving nature of influenza viruses, WHO stresses the importance of global surveillance to detect virological, epidemiological and clinical changes associated with circulating influenza viruses which may affect human (or animal) health.”
While the three Chinese cases involved the H3N8 strain and not the H5N1 virus that has killed millions of birds around the world recently, the WHO warned it was important to keep an eye on the situation given the ability of avian influenza viruses to evolve and spark pandemics.
“Since avian influenza viruses continue to be detected in poultry populations, further sporadic human cases are expected in the future,” the WHO added.
“To better understand the current risk to public health, more information is needed from both human and animal investigation.”
The cases are of particular concern given the world is only just starting to recover from the devastating Covid pandemic, which many scientists believe started in a wet market in Wuhan in China.
Members of a World Health Organisation team visit the Hubei Animal Disease Control and Prevention Center. Photo / AP
Deadly virus spreading across the planet
The woman’s death comes at the same time as the largest ever bird flu outbreak – caused by the deadly H5N1 strain – is rapidly moving across the planet, after already spreading to hundreds of mammals and killing hundreds of millions of birds worldwide.
It has already been detected in species across Asia, Europe, North and South America and Africa, and in February, an 11-year-old Cambodian girl died from the illness, becoming the nation’s first bird flu fatality in many years.
Despite the tragedy, the World Health Organisation (WHO) at the time stressed that the risk to humans was low – however, it noted it was “worried” about the current outbreak, while some scientists have also publicly expressed concerns that it could start jumping more rapidly from mammals to humans.
Egg prices are rising globally.
Photo / NZME
The virus is devastating the poultry industry in nations around the world, with Japan recently making headlines after running out of room to bury the more than 17 million chickens culled due to bird flu this season.
The outbreak has affected the supply of poultry and sent the price of eggs skyrocketing, in both Japan and elsewhere across the globe.
Fossil fuel pledges divide G7 in ‘critical decade’ for climate The world's leading developed economies are all targeting net-zero emissions by 2050 or sooner after signing the Paris Agreement to cap global warming at well under two degrees Celsius
G7 allies meet this week for climate talks that are likely to urge more action in a “critical decade”, but could also lay bare divisions on ambitious fossil fuel commitments.
The world’s leading developed economies are all targeting net-zero emissions by 2050 or sooner after signing the Paris Agreement to cap global warming at well under two degrees Celsius.
But they differ on how to respond to the energy squeeze caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, with host Japan among those arguing for more leeway on fossil fuels to protect energy security.
Britain, backed by France, has proposed new targets on the phase-out of domestic coal power in a draft statement seen by AFP ahead of the minister-level talks, which kick off in Sapporo on Saturday.
Pushback from Japan — which remains heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster — could sink those efforts.
There are also divisions over natural gas, with Japan leading those pushing the group to recognise overseas investments in the fuel as a “necessary” step in the global transition to clean energy.
Campaigners say Japan’s reluctance to embrace ambitious fossil fuel targets sends the wrong message.
Japan is “actively working to increase reliance on liquid natural gas and other kinds of gas-based fuels” in Asia, Susanne Wong, Asia Program Manager at Oil Change International, told AFP.
“While there’s an urgent need to shift from fossil fuels, and the war has shown how risky the strategy is of relying so heavily on imported fossil fuels, they’re encouraging governments to import LNG across the region.”
– ‘Exceptional circumstances’ –
At last year’s meeting in Germany, the G7 climate ministers pledged to largely decarbonise their electricity sectors by 2035.
They also agreed to end new direct public support in 2022 for overseas fossil fuel projects that take no steps to offset carbon dioxide emissions.
But this commitment was watered down the following month, when G7 leaders said the “exceptional circumstances” of the Ukraine war made gas investments “appropriate as a temporary response”.
The language now sought by Japan — with backing from G7 partners that include the United States, Canada, Germany and Italy — would solidify that exception.
The meeting comes after a major UN climate report last month warned the world will see 1.5C of warming in about a decade, calling for “rapid and far-reaching” efforts to keep temperature increases within relatively safe limits.
And the draft final statement by the G7 environment ministers calls for all major economies to take action “in this critical decade”.
It also urges a peak in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 at the latest — language that experts say is aimed at China, the world’s largest carbon emitter.
China is targeting a peak of its carbon emissions by 2030.
Other phrasing will be more contentious, including Japan’s push for recognition of nuclear power and endorsement of its plan to start releasing treated water from the Fukushima plant into the sea this year.
It also wants G7 recognition for its controversial strategy of burning hydrogen and ammonia alongside fossil fuels to reduce carbon emissions, which climate activists say only serves to extend the lifespan of polluting plants. – Japan ‘biggest obstacle’ –
Coal may prove the largest stumbling block, with Britain seeking a 2030 deadline to complete an “accelerated phase-out of domestic unabated coal power generation” to keep the 1.5C goal within reach.
But Japan’s preferred language would be a more general pledge to prioritise “concrete and timely steps” towards the phase-out.
Friederike Roder, vice president of the NGO Global Citizen, warned the meeting’s language would be critical ahead of the G20 summit in India and COP28 in Dubai.
“We’re trying to avoid going backwards” on pledges, she told AFP.
“Japan is certainly the biggest obstacle — and this year it is G7 president.”
Governments around the world will also be looking for action on resilience funding for the developing nations most affected by climate change.
Multi-billion-dollar investment plans have been announced for countries such as South Africa and Indonesia to transition to clean energy from fossil fuels.
But these remain “very ad hoc”, said Alex Scott from the climate think-tank E3G.
The G7 needs to “offer some credibility and clarity on what they’re going to do to help countries adapt to climate change”, she said.
SINOPHOBIA
Amid Chinese aggression, ‘Taiwan’s fight is Canada’s fight,’ MPs vow
A delegation of Canadian MPs arrived in Taiwan this week for a multi-day visit, marking the latest show of Western support for the island following the Taiwanese president’s trip to the U.S. last week. Jeff Semple reports on the delegation, and what it hopes to accomplish with the visit.
A delegation of Canadian politicians met with the president of Taiwan in Taipei Wednesday to discuss the Chinese government’s military aggression and allegations of foreign interference.
“Even as we arrived here, there’s 160 warplanes flying overhead and they’re carrying on naval exercises,” said Liberal MP John McKay, referencing this week’s Chinese military drills around Taiwan.
“Our message to them is that Taiwan’s fight is Canada’s fight,” he said.
The 10 Canadian MPs included representatives from the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Quebecois. They wore pins on their lapels bearing the Taiwanese and Canadian flags and were greeted with a warm smile and handshakes by President Tsai Ing-wen.
“Canada is a very important democratic partner,” Tsai told the delegation from her podium in a briefing room inside the Presidential Office Building.
“Faced with continued authoritarian expansionism, it is even more critical for democracies to actively unite.”
The Canadian MPs presented Tsai with a hardcopy of a report that passed unanimously last month by the House of Commons’ special committee on Canada-China relations, which called for closer ties with Taiwan and an end to Chinese military encroachment.
Previous visits by Canadian politicians to Taiwan, like the one last year, have largely focused on issues such as trade. But the conversation on this trip carried a much starker tone.
Taiwan’s representative in Canada, Harry Ho-jen Tseng, who travelled with the delegation, said Taipei’s relationship with Ottawa is being reshaped by an increasingly bold and brazen Beijing.
“Even though the relations between Canada and Taiwan have been very comprehensive over the past years, at this particular point of time, the security issue and national defence seem to be more important than anything else,” Tseng told Global News in Taipei.
Delegation from Canada visits Taiwan as China wraps up war games close video
The Canadian delegation’s security concerns centre on the Chinese government’s alleged foreign interference in Canada’s elections. During their week-long visit to the Taiwanese capital, which is being funded by Taipei, the Canadian MPs toured the offices of an NGO called Doublethink Lab, one of many groups that have sprung up in recent years to fact-check and debunk disinformation and Chinese government propaganda targeting Taiwan.
“Taiwan is kind of ground zero for Chinese disinformation,” said Ai-Men Lau, a Canadian research analyst who works for the NGO in Taipei.
“I think it’s quite striking being here in Taiwan, seeing how Taiwanese civil society has really risen up to address the issue.”
Trudeau calls China’s military exercises around Taiwan ‘problematic’
Michael Chong, the Conservative foreign affairs critic and a member of the delegation, said Canada can learn from the Taiwanese experience.
“Taiwan has long been subject to foreign interference from Beijing,” he said. “There are a lot of lessons we can learn in how the Taiwanese government has built resilience in its population and its citizens and society against this foreign interference.”
Opinion polls have consistently shown the vast majority of Taiwan’s citizens want to remain a democracy and separate from China. But these high-profile meetings with democratic world leaders have at times proved polarizing here.
After Tsai met last week with top U.S. officials, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Chinese government launched three days of military exercises around Taiwan, involving dozens of warplanes and ships.
Some Taiwanese feel the diplomatic photo-ops aren’t worth Beijing’s wrath.
“This issue has been divisive in Taiwan, because some think this is too provocative against China,” said James Yifan Chen, an assistant professor at the Department of Diplomacy and International Relations of Tamkang University in Taipei.
“Mostly, we want to maintain a so-called status quo.”
Taiwan president calls China’s military drills “irresponsible” as aircraft, ships remain around country
The leader of Taiwan’s pro-China reunification party and convicted former gang leader, Chang An-lo, said the Canadian delegation should go home.
“They should mind their own business and solve their own problems before talking about these things. They need to reflect on themselves,” he said, pointing to the Canadian government’s mistreatment of Indigenous people.
“Maybe I should tell Canada how to deal with its Indigenous people,” he said.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa has so far not commented on the Canadian delegation in Taiwan. When asked by Global News whether they were concerned their visit might further provoke the Chinese government against Taiwan, the MPs shook their heads.
“Not at all, because these visits are part of a long-standing policy for decades amongst democracies of sending parliamentary delegations to Taiwan,” said Chong.
“What has changed is Beijing’s position. They’ve become increasingly belligerent. And we can’t appease that behaviour by kowtowing to it.”
Taiwan’s extraordinary 111-year-old forest railway gets a makeover
Snaking through the dense forests of Alishan, one of the tallest mountain ranges in Taiwan, the 111-year-old Alishan Forest Railway has long been a popular attraction for train fans.
And now, the train’s operators are freshening up its historic fleet by adding six sleek new rail cars.
Collectively named Formosensis, the new carriages are the product of two years and nine months of planning and construction. Test drives kicked off in March, with the company hoping to wrap things up by June.
Both the livery and interiors of the six new cars are lined with two types of cypresses native to the island – Taiwan red cypress (or Chamaecyparis formosensis – which inspired the name) and Taiwan cypress (Chamaecyparis Taiwanensis).
“Taiwan red cypress and Taiwan cypress are fine and uniform wood materials,” say Alishan Forest Railway officials in a statement. “They’re durable, resistant to erosion and insects. The essential oils it contains exudes a unique phytoncide scent (the scent of the forest), which is both energizing and cleansing. Passengers could enjoy a refreshing forest bathing experience.”
Taiwan's historic Alishan Forest Railway will soon welcome new, more comfortable train carriages.
Courtesy Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office
Formosensis will elevate the experience for travelers in several ways. For one, the current cypress-themed train doesn’t have air-conditioning or soft seating.
Each new car will be fitted with 18 leather seats, including two four-seat booths and two two-seat booths. They will also feature bigger windows and warmer lights compared to older models, all to enhance the viewing experience.
But travelers will have to wait a bit longer before they can climb aboard. Details of the routes and launch date have yet to be confirmed, according to the train office’s spokesperson. Asia’s highest narrow-gauge mountain railway
The existing Alishan Railway Route runs from Chiayi city station to the Loco Shed Park, a garage-turned-park where visitors can see preserved old train engines and trains that served the Alishan Forest Railway.
Completed in 1912 under the Japanese occupation, the railway was once used to transport now-endangered Taiwan cypress trees from Alishan. After logging was banned, it became the only passenger train to ride up the mountains.
It’s believed to be the highest narrow-gauge mountain railway in Asia, climbing from 30 meters to 2,216 meters above sea level – some 16 meters higher than the famed Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, which ascends from 100 meters to 2,200 meters.
The new cars will be fitted with leather seats, bigger windows and warmer lights.
Courtesy Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office
The Formosensis carriages will be the latest addition to Alishan Forest Railway’s historic fleet, which includes restored steam locomotives.
Train lovers can experience some of the 71.6-kilometer railway’s original features – including the many spiral and horseshoe bends along the tracks. (You can see the aerial photos of some of the tracks in the above photo gallery.)
The journey also offers a glimpse into Taiwan’s diverse natural beauty, as the train goes through a tropical forest, then a subtropical forest and finally a temperate forest during its ascent to the top of Alishan.
In addition to developing more modern trains for the route, Alishan Forest Railway has also been restoring some of its older trains, as well as historical attractions along the line.
In 2021, the Alishan Forestry Railway and Cultural Heritage Office completed restorations of the century-old Shay 21 steam locomotive. It’s Alishan’s first 28-ton steam train, imported from the United States in 1912, and is powered by its original coal-burning engine.
Meanwhile, a Shay 31 locomotive makes occasional appearances during the flower blossoming season, from March to May. Getting to Alishan
The Alishan Forest Railway isn’t a continuous line – one section of track between Shizilu Station and Alishan Station was damaged in a typhoon.
Travelers can take the main line from Chiayi Station to Fenqihu Station (2 hours, 20 minutes) and continue the journey by bus from Fenqihu Station to Alishan Station.
Only one train departs daily from Chiayi, at 9 a.m on weekdays. Two more trains (at 8:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.) are added at weekends. (Find the schedule on this website).
From Alishan Station, there are a few branch lines that ferry passengers to the attractions around the Alishan Scenic Area.
Visiting Alishan: Built more than 100 years ago, the Alishan Forest Railway is perhaps the best way to explore Alishan, one of Taiwan's most important mountain ranges. Lai Guo-hua, an aerial photographer who lives next to the railway, spent a few years documenting it.courtesy Lai Guo-hua
Taiwan's stunning 111-year-old mountain railway 1 of 18
Afro Ecuadorians: Remembrances of the past and present
Black community in Cuajara, in the ancestral territory El Chota
- La Concepción and Salinas. (Photos by Dr. Edzón León Castro)
As in other countries in the Americas, the Republic of Ecuador saw the kidnapping and enslavement of thousands of Africans during its colonial period. It is today the South American nation with the fourth largest presence of people of African descent––after Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela.
Ecuador’s national census counted Afro Ecuadorian as 7.2% of the population in 2010, but local activists and the London, England-based human rights organization Minority Rights Group International (MRG) have estimated that Afro Ecuadorians are more likely 10% of the population.
“Because of the struggles upheld by the Afro Ecuadorian social movement, for the first time we are recognized in the constitution of the Republic of Ecuador as a Black or Afro Ecuadorian people, ‘part of the Ecuadorian state, unique and indivisible,’ holders of collective rights. It’s with a problematic caveat that specified ‘in all that is applicable to them.’ (Political Constitution; 1998: 50 – 51). Still, and in spite of these constitutional recognitions, the Afro Ecuadorian population struggles between poverty, illiteracy, and state neglect.”
Chalá, who also has a degree in applied anthropology, saw a glimmer of hope with the arrival of Rafael Correa to the nation’s presidency.
Rafael Correa Delgado served as constitutional president from 2007 to 2017. One of his first actions was to convene a national constituent assembly, which resulted in the 2008 constitution for Ecuador. One of the important achievements reached by the Afro Ecuadorian and Indigenous social movements was to be recognized by the state. Article 1 mentions that: “Ecuador is a constitutional state of rights and justice, social, democratic, sovereign, independent, unitary, intercultural, plurinational and secular’ (Constitution; 2008: 21).”
In the same 2008 constitution, explains Katherine Chalá Mosquera, a professor at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, “We are recognized as Afro Ecuadorian people, with 21 collective rights. We are recognized as having the right ‘not to be subjected to racism and any form of discrimination (…);’ we also have the right to ‘recognition, reparations and redress to the communities affected by racism and other related forms of intolerance and discrimination.’”
Before and after Correa
According to the last population census conducted in 2010, the Ecuadorian state has a total population of 14,483,499 inhabitants, of which 71.9% of people self-identify as mestizo, 7.4% as montubia (mestizo who reside in the countryside of coastal Ecuador), 7.2% as Afro Ecuadorian (1,041,559 people), 7% as Indigenous and 6.1% as white.
Official data from the last census conducted post-pandemic 2022 are not yet known, so we have to rely on the data from 2010.
President Correa made a social investment never seen before in Ecuador: he increased access to public education, with the Afro Ecuadorian population making up average enrollment and attendance. Girls and boys received from the central government textbooks, school meals, and uniforms. Modern educational units were built with well-equipped laboratories, there was internet service, more teaching staff and improved remuneration.
Similarly, in terms of public secondary education, the Afro Ecuadorian population between 2007 and 2017 was very close to the national average in terms of enrollment and class attendance.
In the case of third-level university education (bachelor’s degrees, engineering, etc.), and fourth level (master’s degrees and doctorates), the gaps in terms of the national average were extended by the structural difficulties that have been carried since the colonial and republican-neoliberal exclusionary era.
President Correa’s government initiated a scholarship program at the national and international level, many of which were accessed by Afro Ecuadorian youth. We await the qualitative and quantitative results of the 2022 census to officially know the status of Afro Ecuadorians with respect to undergraduate and graduate university education.
Regarding public health coverage, the Correa government made a very significant investment in this area by building hospitals, and sending equipment and medical provisions to the population free of charge.
In regard to home ownership, according to the 2010 census, the national percentage suggests that 63.6% of heads of household stated that they live in their own residence, while 164,421 heads of household identified as Afro Ecuadorian have their own homes, that is, 42.9%. Now, of that 42.9% of fully paid residences, 93.3% have access to electricity, 71% have potable water and 47% have public sewage service. Also, 21 out of every 100 Afro-Ecuadorian homes have access to telephone service (CODAE 2014).
Despite the formidable investment by the government of President Correa, Afro Ecuadorians were still below the national average.
Guillermo Lasso became president of Ecuador in 2021. He has made no investment in state social services, decreased the budgets in education, health, and housing, and instead of creating new jobs his administration has closed them due to its ideology of “reducing the size of the State,” that is, having fewer teachers, less doctors, a reduction of the public force, elimination of national and international student scholarships, and deinstitutionalization of the country.
The political and legal crisis that Lasso has led Ecuador to is unprecedented in the country’s modern history, barely 09% approve of his management. The crisis is aggravated by permanent corruption scandals in his government that have led the National Assembly call for his impeachment.
In the last regional elections on February 5, the Citizen Revolution, the new political party of Rafael Correa, won important victories in the nation’s provinces and districts. This raises the expectation that in 2025, the Citizen Revolution, with popular support, will be able to take over the government of Ecuador.
Broken promises: Malaysian gov’t condemned by watchdog groups for reneging on repeal of repressive laws
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim speaking in parliament on Dec 20, 2022.
Despite those promises, Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail disclosed yesterday that the government has no plans to revoke the PPPA, as it remains “essential for preserving public peace.”
The PPPA gives the home minister the “absolute discretion” to grant, revoke or suspend permits “to any person to print and publish a newspaper in Malaysia”. Critics argue the law gives the government the ability to restrict political discourse and silence its political opponents.
However, Saiffuddin asserted that the most recent evaluation of the law found that it is still pertinent to uphold public security and peace “at present.”
In the meantime, The Coalition for Clean and Fair Election (Bersih) has urged the coalition government to reconsider its stance on refraining from reviewing laws that restrict freedom of expression at this critical moment.
Bersih’s executive director, Ooi Kok Hin, told Coconuts that legislative amendments take time and any process to review the multiple laws that restrict freedom of expression ought to commence immediately due to the lengthy process required to change them.
He noted that Saifuddin and Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) Ramkarpal Singh are both leaders from the PH coalition, which promised in their election manifesto to review and repeal the PPPA, as well as Sedition Act 1948, and Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA) 1998.
“This is a long-term commitment by Pakatan leaders to their supporters and campaign volunteers, many of which have suffered consequences such as being harassed, remanded, or even charged because of these repressive laws.”
“They must not squander the opportunity to implement reforms to these colonial relics again – if the failures to amend or repeal those laws during PH’s 22 months in power were allegedly attributed to an unsympathetic Prime Minister and then Home Minister from Bersatu back then, what is the excuse now that the reformists are in power?” he added.
The Centre for Independent Journalism echoed the same opinion as Bersih.
“There should be no more delays for this government to demonstrate their commitment to institutional reforms, strengthen free speech and significantly improve both the responsiveness and responsibility of the media in upholding public interest,” Executive Director Wathshlah Naidu told Coconuts.
She argued that PPPA gives wide powers to the authorities to act, at times unilaterally, with regard to curtailing news content, including the threat to revoke newspaper licenses on insubstantial grounds.
“The law doesn’t just cover the news media, but every kind of publication. What kind of threats to national security and peace are the government envisioning exactly by keeping this law in place?”
In its report, CIVICUS said that, despite Malaysia being a member of the Human Rights Council, the government continues to fall short in terms of domestic human rights protections. It noted that the aforementione laws continue to be used to silence dissent. For example, authorities have used the CMA to question and arrest several people in 2023, including two students who made a Tik Tok video criticising the history paper in a national examination.
The report details a number of other instances in which members of the public have been charged under some of these laws. You can read about more of them in CIVICUS’s full report.
Sartre and Huston: The collaboration tormented by an absolute aspiration
John Huston and Jean-Paul Sartre came together to create a film based on the life of Sigmund Freud, but the project was scuppered by irreconcilable creative differences
Jean-Paul Sartre during a rehearsal of his play La P... respectueuse in Paris, 1946.
Photo: Roger Viollet/Getty
When people speak of great creative pairings, among the Lennons and McCartneys and Powells and Pressburgers the names John Huston and Jean-Paul Sartre are never mentioned. There is a good reason for that.
A landmark in 20th-century culture beckoned when, in 1958, the American director of The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen invited the world’s foremost public intellectual and father of existentialism to write a screenplay based on the life of Sigmund Freud.
It should have worked. The men were the same age, of similar political persuasions and already admired each other. Cinema would be a new medium for Sartre, but he had written a string of successful works for the theatre, so he possessed both the transplantable skills and necessary philosophical insight. Huston’s offer of $25,000 sealed the deal, and Sartre threw himself into the commission.
The first sign of trouble was when the first draft whumped on to Huston’s doormat. Never less than thorough, Sartre had produced an intricately researched and detailed screenplay running to 300 pages which, Huston quickly calculated, would result in a film roughly five and a half hours long.
The director invited Sartre to his mansion in the west of Ireland to pare down the script, where the giant of Hollywood and giant of European thought struggled to find common ground, each unimpressed by the other. “Sartre was a little barrel of a man, and as ugly as a human being can be,” wrote Huston of their 1960 encounter. “His face was both bloated and pitted, his teeth were yellow and he was wall-eyed.”
“Huston isn’t even sad, he is empty,” Sartre wrote in a letter home to his partner, the writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. “His emptiness is purer than death. He refuses to think because it saddens him.”
Over the course of a week that would have made a terrific screenplay in itself – Sartre proving impervious to Huston’s attempts at hypnotising him, Huston driving Sartre around Galway city searching for a dentist so Sartre could have a tooth extracted – the director suggested a series of cuts and Sartre returned home to rework his screenplay.
A few weeks later a package arrived at Huston’s door. Sartre’s revised script now ran to 700 pages; the film would be nearly 12 hours long. Freud: The Secret Passion was eventually made, but by then Sartre had long withdrawn from the project.
If the failure of the film collaboration was a loss to modern culture, Sartre remained emphatically in credit elsewhere. The possessor of one of the busiest and most analytically gifted minds of the modern age, he wrote plays, novels, articles for newspapers and magazines on subjects from jazz to architecture. He was also responsible for a string of philosophical texts, all seeking an answer to the ultimate question to which he dedicated his life: do we determine ourselves or are we made by external factors beyond our control?
To wrestle with that conundrum he chose not to cosset himself away in the protective cocoon of academia. Indeed, Sartre never completed a doctorate, and spent a large part of his adult life as a schoolteacher while disseminating his ideas and questions in more accessible realms.
While his popularity waned in his later years, and his work has swayed in and out of fashion since his death, in a Europe seeking answers to bewildering questions in the aftermath of the second world war, Sartre became a celebrity on a level hard to comprehend today.
Iris Murdoch met him in Brussels in 1945 and later recalled, “his presence in the city was like that of a pop star”.
In its obituary, the French newspaper Le Matin wrote, “You really needed to be 20 in 1954 to know what it could mean to a whole generation to have this man who dared all on his own to insist that the only important action was justice for the oppressed, that the violence of the colonised against the coloniser was justified, that a man could be right even against his country in the name of a superior ideal, which is man himself.”
The roots of his quest to discover the path to absolute human freedom lay in his childhood. His father died when Sartre was a baby, of which he later wrote, “Had my father lived he would have lain on me at full length and crushed me. As luck had it, he died young.”
With his mother, he moved to the house of his grandfather, a professor of German at the Sorbonne, and later developed a deep resentment of his mother’s new husband, “always the person I wrote against, all my life”.
When war broke out, Sartre was assigned to a meteorological station in Alsace where he raised daily weather balloons – “my vertical dimension, a vertical prolongation of myself, and also an abode beyond my reach”, before being captured as a prisoner of war in 1940. He passed his year in the camp giving inspiring lectures on philosophy and, unusually for a committed atheist, writing a nativity play performed by inmates whose call for social equality was so profound that one fellow prisoner was inspired to spend his life living and working among the poor.
He became a reduced figure in his later years, his ideas out of fashion and a lifelong dedication to intense thought taking its toll. Edward Said recalled attending a seminar a few months before Sartre’s death where “he sat across from me, looking disconsolate and remaining totally uncommunicative, egg and mayonnaise streaming haplessly down his face”.
His exhaustion was understandable. For Murdoch, Sartre “described very exactly the situation of a being who, deprived of general truths, is tormented by an absolute aspiration”.
Perhaps the most telling analysis came in a passing comment from Sartre himself in a letter home to de Beauvoir from Huston’s Galway mansion in 1958. “I am not bored,” he wrote, “but I cannot work out why.”
Daily Hate: The Mail’s century-long quest to demonise migrants
It is arguably Britain’s most influential paper – which makes its long and ongoing history of vilifying refugees and asylum seekers even more troubling
At first, it was the Jews – “Russian Jews, Polish Jews, German Jews, Peruvian Jews; all kinds of Jews, all manner of Jews”. Now it is the Albanians. In between, there were Austrians, Poles, Italians, West Indians, Somalis, Chinese, Irish, Sri Lankans, Kosovans, Bangladeshis, Eritreans, Sudanese, Poles (again), Romanians, Bulgarians, Afghans and Syrians (I’ve doubtless missed a few). All coming here without legitimate reason to benefit from the Great British way of life, take our jobs, sponge off our welfare state and mug, rape and murder our citizens.
Such has been the history of refugees/asylum seekers/migrants as viewed by the Daily Mail over the past 120-odd years. As Prof Tony Kushner of Southampton University’s Parkes Institute put it more than 20 years ago: “The Daily Mail has been an anti-alien newspaper since the 1900s. There’s great continuity.” The nomenclature has changed (instead of “undesirable aliens” and “bogus asylum seekers” we now have “illegal migrants”), as has the provenance of those so-called, but the attitude has not: Britain is a generous host to the “deserving” displaced, but is regarded as a soft touch by those deemed not to warrant our hospitality.
That “Daily Mail special” report of a post-Boer war evacuation from February 3 1900 was headlined “So-called refugees” and began: “There landed yesterday at Southampton from the transport Cheshire over 600 so-called refugees, their passage having been paid out of the Lord Mayor’s Fund; and, upon the unanimous testimony of the ship’s officers, there was scarce 100 of them that had, by right, deserved such help, and these were the Englishmen of the party. The rest were Jews. The ship seemed alive with them.” It went on to describe in shocked tones the jostling, greedy, ill-mannered, foul-mouthed passengers.
The paper would never publish anything like that about Jewish people today – rather it accuses Jeremy Corbyn and Labour of antisemitism and Gary Lineker of insulting victims of the Holocaust – but it has used similar language this century in reporting “running battles” involving “mobs” of migrants (“Africans”, “Eritreans”, “Sudanese”, “Syrians”) “desperate to get to Britain” from the “squalid camp” in Calais – including two spreads on the day before the Brexit referendum. It is equally at home reporting similar disturbances in Germany, Sweden and elsewhere, with the incomers always the problem, rather than the often right wing locals going after them.
The Mail has a long history of anti-foreigner rhetoric stretching back to the 1900s
So it was in February after a Knowsley hotel accommodating asylum seekers was besieged by protesters. Unlike other papers, the Mail did not report the disturbances at the time, but it sent Sue Reid to investigate 10 days later. She identified the spark point as an Egyptian man accosting a 15-year-old girl and asking for her phone number, an incident filmed and shared on social media.
The ensuing protests, she continued, involved disgruntled locals, “pro-migrant groups” including “activists” from the Care4Calais charity, and members of the Communist Party. Late in the story, she said that left wingers, including the Guardian, had accused the far right of fomenting the disorder, but she declined to endorse or investigate the claim. She did, however, say that the far right Patriotic Alternative had set its sights on Skegness, where migrants and refugees had also been accommodated in hotels.
High in the piece, Reid reported that “ordinary” mothers, fathers and grandparents feared that the influx of young men posed a threat to their children, claiming they were “making a nuisance of themselves, chasing girls, hanging around in parks and abusing Britain’s generous hospitality”.
During the 1930s, the Daily Mail ran many headlines and editorials in support of fascist regimes
It is, of course, natural for people to be concerned when a large number of strangers are imposed on their community, but one of the reasons this is happening is that the bureaucracy of processing applications (not people) isn’t working. This is not the asylum seekers’ fault. It is quite legitimate for a reporter such as Reid to examine the impact on local life, but the Mail shows scant, if any, interest in talking to the people waiting for their fates to be decided. Rather, Reid was happy to suggest that it was unreasonable for destitute people whose “home” is a hotel room and who are forbidden to work – as asylum seekers are – to spend their time “hanging around” in parks. Isn’t that the most obvious thing for them to do? It’s free.
Four months earlier, Reid reported on a “playground shootout” between migrant gangs that explained “why Sweden is turning its back on liberalism”, and on the day after the Knowsley riot, David Jones produced a spread on “The bloody death of Sweden’s liberal dream”. The following week Guy Adams investigated “How Ireland’s mass immigration dream has turned sour”. You might say there’s a theme here.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Early in 2016, a Reid report was instrumental in convincing her paper that Britain should rescue lone children from the Calais Jungle. The Mail put pressure on then-prime minister David Cameron, who had previously ruled out accepting 3,000 migrants, and was soon splashing on its “Victory for compassion”. (Eventually, though, Theresa May’s government abandoned the scheme and the Mail forgot its campaign, reporting the decision at the foot of page 6.)
The Mail presents itself as being in tune with public sentiment, and it seems it was at the time of that Cheshire report in 1900, since a public backlash against the arrival of up to 150,000 of 2.5 million Jews fleeing pogroms in eastern Europe led to the 1905 Aliens Act, which pulled down the shutters. Today it thinks it is again reflecting the views of the “British people” in demanding action to “control our borders” and “stop the boats”, and in chiding Sir Keir Starmer for not supporting the Illegal Migration bill that will deny anyone arriving here by unconventional means the right to put their case for sanctuary.
Whether it is right this time is open to debate. The latest Ipsos survey of “issues that matter” to voters had immigration fifth on the list – behind the economy, the cost of living and the NHS – being mentioned by only 12% of those interviewed (down from 13% the previous month). People were more concerned about a lack of faith in politicians.
The Mail’s report on the Cheshire in 1900. Today it thinks it is again reflecting the views of the “British people” in demanding action to “stop the boats”
If passed, the Illegal Migration bill will be the 166th adjustment to the laws relating to immigrants since the Conservatives took office in 2010, quite apart from more than 40 initiatives designed to stop the small boats since 2019. These, as documented by the Guardian, include multiple attempts to “work with France”, using border force ships, jet skis and the navy to send the boats back, lining up third countries to take their unwanted passengers, buying ads on Facebook and banning social media posts “glamourising the crossings”.
Most, if not all, of these have been enthusiastically supported by the Mail (and the Sun, Express and Telegraph), which seemed almost to see it as a badge of honour that the latest effort would “push human rights law to the limit”. There have been frequent “this is the turning point” headlines and guest columns by the minister in charge.
Eleven months ago, Priti Patel wrote that anyone could see the asylum system was broken but her New Plan for Immigration, including sending people to Rwanda, would provide a firm but fair system to meet the people’s priorities. More recently Suella Braverman – who took journalists from favoured outlets, including the Mail and GB News, on a misfiring photo-opportunity trip to Rwanda – was the byline-of-the-moment, along with the headline “The British people have had enough of migrants pouring over the Channel. That’s why stopping the small boats is my top priority.” In this piece, she expanded on her Commons statement that “100 million people could qualify for asylum – and let’s be clear, they are coming here” to add that, on top of the 100 million, there were “likely billions more eager to come here if possible”.
Fact-checking ministers’ pronouncements is not always a priority for the Mail – nor is contextualising. So it did not point out that while there are 100 million displaced people around the world, about half of them are in their own countries and showing no desire to move abroad; nor did it question where the “likely billions” notion came from. Nor did it tell readers that “generous” Britain stands 18th when included in a league table of EU+ countries (the 27 plus Switzerland and Norway), in taking in refugees, at nine per 10,000 population, against an EU average of 14.
Or that we aren’t the automatic country of choice. According to the UNHCR, 44,190 people sought asylum here in the year to September 2022, 8% of the total number of applications to the EU+ and the UK. Germany had 127,730 applications and France 95,510. And all of these numbers are dwarfed by Turkey, whose population of 80-odd million includes nearly 4 million refugees. In November last year, 231,597 refugees lived in our islands, whose total population is 67.5 million.
The Daily Mail in 1938. It still has the same message against asylum seekers today
The Mail did, however, report that the number of asylum seekers awaiting a decision had reached 166,000 and, indeed, that when cases are considered, three-quarters of applicants are allowed to stay. It keeps a tally on the thousands of people landing in small boats, but puts them in the context of the total number of people heading to the country only when official migration statistics are published. As Gary Lineker so controversially tweeted, there is no “huge influx”. A million people came to live in the UK in the year to last June (and half a million left), while in 2022, just under 46,000 arrived in small boats. And the government has recently admitted that there is no evidence to support an assertion by Patel that “70% of individuals on small boats are single men who are effectively economic migrants”.
Nor is the Mail interested in the individuals making that dangerous crossing. It focuses on Albanians – it recently ran a “special” on the Albanian drugs mafia feeding our “middle-class cocaine habit” – and looks away from the Afghans and Syrians desperate to escape the Taliban or Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The Imix organisation tries to tell these people’s stories – to “give voice to the scapegoats” – by working with the media, but it reaches only the usual suspects: the Guardian, Independent and Metro, “never the Mail, Sun or Telegraph”. The Express, however, did approach it after seeing readers’ response to the Ukraine exodus, setting up its own help scheme before the official one was up and running.
Does any of this matter? Aren’t newspapers a dying commodity? Yes, but their output not only sets the news agenda for broadcasters, and influences politicians, but also is shared widely on social media – Imix’s chief executive, Jenni Regan, cites research showing that the Mail is the top content provider thrown up by searches for “migrants”.
Kushner at Southampton University, who thinks the Sun is worse than the Mail on this, says: “The Mail has been not totally hostile to Ukrainian refugees – white, European, Christian – as against those who come from the developing world who are non-white, often Muslim and therefore not ‘civilised’. Yet even with the Ukrainians, they seem keen to highlight the problems that have inevitably happened with a scheme that was pretty much unregulated.
“What has changed is the context: in the 1900s it was pro-empire and trying to attract a lower middle-class/upper working-class, newly literate audience to tell them what to think about the nation. The context now is post-imperial, post-EU, and the insular nationalism that has emerged. In both cases the alien ‘other’ can be blamed for all sorts of real problems, but not ones that the newcomers have caused.”
A report last autumn by the campaign group Stop Funding Hate (SFH) welcomed a reduction in “vitriolic and unequivocally hateful” coverage of migration and a significant reduction in international alarm at our press compared with the Brexit referendum period. But it still warned that “subtle” anti-migrant narratives, such as linking migrants to child abuse and crime, and the use of words such as “surge”, could have a greater impact on public perceptions than the “more obviously problematic” headlines. The cumulative effect was to give readers “permission” to hold or act on prejudiced views. Its founder, Richard Wilson, also pointed to the arrival of GB News. Its audience might be small, but the press amplified its messages and the channel was “retoxifying” public discourse.
Another campaign group, Hope Not Hate, has meanwhile highlighted what it sees as a growing symmetry between mainstream politicians and newspapers, with their “anti-woke agenda”, and the far right in focusing on the same issues and using the same “divisive narrative” in phrases such as “invasion” and “activist lawyers”. In a report last month, entitled “State of hate 2023: Rhetoric, racism and resentment”, it said: “While the organised far right is the most committed and vocal when it comes to the issue of cross-Channel migration and asylum-seeker accommodation, its position and even its rhetoric have been dangerously mirrored by the mainstream.”
Many people, it says, are angry, scared, detached and disillusioned as well as increasingly poor, a “dangerous mix” that it thinks the far right is seeking to exploit. “The danger of this potent mixture of far right agitation and local anger, fostered by irresponsible behaviour from mainstream politicians and some journalists” was, it continues, made plain by the petrol-bomb attack on an asylum centre in Dover last October, and the recent disturbances in Knowsley.
These were at least reported (eventually, in the case of Knowsley) across the press. But these incidents are becoming more common. Hope Not Hate logged 253 activist “visits” to accommodation housing immigrants and asylum seekers last year – twice as many as the previous year.
As Kushner notes, the Mail has become the shorthand for the entire right wing press because of its circulation, its influence with politicians – “both Tories and Labour being frightened of it or what it says” – and its infamous flirtation with fascism in the 1930s. Indeed, the Sun and Telegraph and, to a lesser extent, the Express and Times are saying much the same thing, giving “Suella” a platform and a microphone while trying to silence critics.
Remember, Braverman was confronted to her face about her use of the word “invasion” by an actual Holocaust survivor, and refused to apologise. Yet she demanded that Lineker say sorry over his language likening her rhetoric to 1930s Germany. The logical extension of that is that the Holocaust survivor should have been the one to apologise to Braverman, not the other way around.
The Mail did campaign in favour of bringing lone children in the Calais Jungle to Britain, but its campaign was dropped when Theresa May’s government abandoned the scheme
If politicians and their newspaper supporters cared about the people on those boats, it would be one thing. But they don’t. They talk about stopping the traffickers who put them in peril; but that is window dressing. The real objective is not to stop the trade in misery, but to stop the poor souls who are paying the ferrymen.
There’s an irony to this. The big complaint is that the people on the boats are overwhelmingly young men. We have an ageing population and an acute labour shortage; the government is trying to entice young parents and the over-50s back to the workplace. The Mail rails about seven million “idlers” who got a taste for a life of leisure during the pandemic.
We need people to work and pay taxes, yet we are busting a gut to exclude healthy young people willing to do both without needing education or hip replacements. Isn’t it worth finding out who some of these people are and what they have to offer? Of course not. They are all criminals. Let’s put on the blinkers and send them somewhere else.
Liz Gerard is a former Times executive who now writes about print journalism. Her book Trussed Up, about the Mail and the Tory leadership, published by Bite-Sized Books, is available from Amazon
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