People systematically overperceive the level of moral outrage expressed in political tweets, study finds

2023/06/03


People tend to misperceive others on Twitter as being more outraged than they actually are, according to new research published in Nature Human Behaviour. The findings suggest that the prevalence of divisive content on social media platforms might be a result of our tendency to misperceive others as angrier than they actually are online.

The new study was motivated by the importance of accurate social knowledge in functional democracies and the role of online social networks in shaping social knowledge of morality and politics. The researchers aimed to investigate how social media platforms, as currently designed, may contribute to the overperception of moral outrage, which could distort individuals’ understanding of collective moral attitudes.

“There is a growing body of research that examines how social media – whether through our psychology or algorithmic amplification, or both – increases the production of moral and political content,” said study author William Brady, an assistant professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

“Some research including my own suggests that there are several features of social media that in fact increase its production, and this turns out to be very important because our knowledge of morality and politics is increasingly being constructed in online settings. But much less research has looked at the other side of this picture, which is the perception of moral and emotional content.”

“One striking finding in U.S. politics that highlights the importance of perception, for example, is that some portion of the growing levels of affective polarization can actually be explained by misperceptions of how polarized we really are (the idea of ‘false polarization’),” Brady explained. “We hypothesized that the overperception of certain types of political content like moral outrage in the context of social media may actually be an important building block of phenomenon such as false polarization.

“Thus, we designed field studies on Twitter to test whether our perceptions of moral outrage can be skewed online, and whether this has downstream consequences for group perceptions (e.g. norms of outrage and polarization).

For the three field studies, the researchers implemented a research pipeline consisting of multiple phases. In the author phase, the researchers used Twitter’s application programming interface (API) to collect public tweets about contentious topics in American politics. They then classified the collected tweets to determine whether they contained moral outrage expression.

Direct messages (DMs) were sent to users who expressed moral outrage or non-moral outrage, requesting them to report the emotions they experienced when they posted their tweet. The DMs were sent shortly after the users’ tweets were posted to capture their emotions at that specific moment.

In the observer phase, politically partisan participants were recruited to rate the level of outrage and happiness expressed by the authors of the collected tweets. Each participant judged a selection of 30 tweets, including both outrage and non-outrage tweets. The researchers used generalized linear models to analyze the data and test for overperception of outrage and happiness in the authors’ tweets.

The first field study focused on tweets about William Barr and President Donald Trump’s popularity. The second field study focused on tweets about Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation and the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The third study aimed to replicate the findings from the previous studies and also examine the relationship between perceiving outrage and using social media for political purposes. The studies included 333 tweet authors and 650 observers in total.

The studies found consistent evidence of overperception of outrage, with observers perceiving higher levels of outrage than reported by the authors. Although people tended to overestimate the level of moral outrage conveyed by authors in their tweets, this overperception did not occur when perceiving happiness.

“Our key finding was that the social media users in our study who observed political Twitter posts systematically overperceived the level of moral outrage expressed by the message author,” Brady told PsyPost. “Our method actually allowed us to classify Twitter messages in real-time so we knew who was expressing moral outrage, and then send them a message prompting consenting users to self-report their actual level of outrage at the time of composing the tweet (within 15 minutes of their posting).

The researchers also conducted additional experiments to explore the consequences of overperception of outrage. They manipulated the overperception of individuals’ outrage in a simulated Twitter newsfeed and found that participants who viewed a newsfeed containing overperceived outrage expressions perceived higher levels of collective outrage in the social network. They also found that viewing overperceived outrage messages amplified participants’ beliefs about norms of outrage expression, affective polarization, and ideological extremity present in the network.

“We also find, in experimental settings where we create social media feeds that manipulate levels of overperception of outrage, that when we overpercieve individual’s outrage is directly amplifies users group level judgments,” Brady explained. “Compared to newsfeeds that induce less overperception of outrage because of the messages our ‘algorithm’ amplifies, the newsfeeds that induces more overperception of outrage cause users to think their social network is more collectively outraged, to think that expressing outrage in the context of politics is more normative, and to think their group dislikes the political outgroup more (affective polarization).”

Furthermore, the researchers found that individuals who engage in frequent political social media use were more likely to overperceive outrage. This suggests that people who spend more time using social media to learn about politics are more prone to overperceive outrage.

“One key question is what are the variables that predict when a user is most likely to overperceive moral outrage in social media messages?” Brady told PsyPost. “This is a complicated question that requires further research both in terms of what the author is motivated to do and what biases observers have, but one variable we find to explain significant variance consistently: the amount of time that observers spent on social media to learn about politics.”

“Users who spent more time on social media to learn about politics were much more likely to overperceive outrage. We believe that this is because these users are spending more time around politically active users who are much more likely to express high levels of outrage, and this experience forms their priors of outrage expression that creeps into their judgment of any given person’s emotion expression.”

The study has certain limitations, including the selection of specific Twitter users for the experiments and the focus on language cues without considering other factors that influence emotion perception on social media. The researchers called for further research to validate the findings across different platforms and media channels and to explore the effects of overperception on topics beyond politics and morality.

“Further research is required to disentangle effects of authors vs observers that together produce overperception effects,” Brady said. “For example, is our finding mostly because authors are motivated to express high outrage when they are not actually feeling it? Our initial data suggest that this explanation cannot fully explain our effect, yet our study was not designed to precisely pull apart author motivations vs observer perceptual bias.”

The study, “Overperception of moral outrage in online social networks inflates beliefs about intergroup hostility“, was authored by William J. Brady, Killian L. McLoughlin, Mark P. Torres, Kara F. Luo, Maria Gendron, and M. J. Crockett.

© PsyPost

Your body naturally produces opioids without causing addiction or overdose – studying how this process works could help reduce the side effects of opioid drugs

The Conversation
June 5, 2023, 

Opioid neurotransmitters (Shutterstock)

Opioid drugs such as morphine and fentanyl are like the two-faced Roman god Janus: The kindly face delivers pain relief to millions of sufferers, while the grim face drives an opioid abuse and overdose crisis that claimed nearly 70,000 lives in the U.S. in 2020 alone.

Scientists like me who study pain and opioids have been seeking a way to separate these two seemingly inseparable faces of opioids. Researchers are trying to design drugs that deliver effective pain relief without the risk of side effects, including addiction and overdose.

One possible path to achieving that goal lies in understanding the molecular pathways opioids use to carry out their effects in your body.

How do opioids work?

The opioid system in your body is a set of neurotransmitters your brain naturally produces that enable communication between neurons and activate protein receptors. These neurotransmitters include small proteinlike molecules like enkephalins and endorphins. These molecules regulate a tremendous number of functions in your body, including pain, pleasure, memory, the movements of your digestive system and more.

Opioid neurotransmitters activate receptors that are located in a lot of places in your body, including pain centers in your spinal cord and brain, reward and pleasure centers in your brain, and throughout the neurons in your gut. Normally, opioid neurotransmitters are released in only small quantities in these exact locations, so your body can use this system in a balanced way to regulate itself.

The opioids your body produces and opioid drugs bind to the same receptors.

The problem comes when you take an opioid drug like morphine or fentanyl, especially at high doses for a long time. These drugs travel through the bloodstream and can activate every opioid receptor in your body. You’ll get pain relief through the pain centers in your spinal cord and brain. But you’ll also get a euphoric high when those drugs hit your brain’s reward and pleasure centers, and that could lead to addiction with repeated use. When the drug hits your gut, you may develop constipation, along with other common opioid side effects.

Targeting opioid signal transduction

How can scientists design opioid drugs that won’t cause side effects?

One approach my research team and I take is to understand how cells respond when they receive the message from an opioid neurotransmitter. Neuroscientists call this process opioid receptor signal transduction. Just as neurotransmitters are a communication network within your brain, each neuron also has a communication network that connects receptors to proteins within the neuron. When these connections are made, they trigger specific effects like pain relief. So, after a natural opioid neurotransmitter or a synthetic opioid drug activates an opioid receptor, it activates proteins within the cell that carry out the effects of the neurotransmitter or the drug.

Cells communicate with one another in multiple ways.

Opioid signal transduction is complex, and scientists are just starting to figure out how it works. However, one thing is clear: Not every protein involved in this process does the same thing. Some are more important for pain relief, while some are more important for side effects like respiratory depression, or the decrease in breathing rate that makes overdoses fatal.

So what if we target the “good” signals like pain relief, and avoid the “bad” signals that lead to addiction and death? Researchers are tackling this idea in different ways. In fact, in 2020 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first opioid drug based on this idea, oliceridine, as a painkiller with fewer respiratory side effects.

However, relying on just one drug has downsides. That drug might not work well for all people or for all types of pain. It could also have other side effects that show up only later on. Plenty of options are needed to treat all patients in need.



This figure shows the structure of Hsp90. 

Laguna Design/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

My research team is targeting a protein called Heat shock protein 90, or Hsp90, which has many functions inside each cell. Hsp90 has been a hot target in the cancer field for years, with researchers developing Hsp90 inhibitors as a treatment for many cancer types.

We’ve found that Hsp90 is also really important in regulating opioid signal transduction. Blocking Hsp90 in the brain blocked opioid pain relief. However, blocking Hsp90 in the spinal cord increased opioid pain relief. Our recently published work uncovered more details on exactly how inhibiting Hsp90 leads to increased pain relief in the spinal cord.

Our work shows that manipulating opioid signaling through Hsp90 offers a path forward to improve opioid drugs. Taking an Hsp90 inhibitor that targets the spinal cord along with an opioid drug could improve the pain relief the opioid provides while decreasing its side effects. With improved pain relief, you can take less opioid and reduce your risk of addiction. We are currently developing a new generation of Hsp90 inhibitors that could help realize this goal.

There may be many paths to developing an improved opioid drug without the burdensome side effects of current drugs like morphine and fentanyl. Separating the kindly and grim faces of the opioid Janus could help provide pain relief we need without addiction and overdose.

John Michael Streicher, Associate Professor of Pharmacology, University of Arizona Health Sciences

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

Commentary: 50 years after the first ERA debate, women still don’t have equal pay or representation

2023/06/05

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America/TNS

Betty Friedan was just a fiery radical with a bad temper. It’s convenient to believe this. But at a moment when many of the rights for women she gained are being overturned, it’s time to reconsider common wisdom about her character.

Friedan, a towering figure in the women’s movement who died in 2006, wrote the 1963 groundbreaking book “The Feminine Mystique” and co-founded the National Organization for Women and the National Women’s Political Caucus.

Fifty years ago, on May 1, 1973, Friedan participated in the first public airing of the pros and cons of the Equal Rights Amendment at Capen Auditorium in Normal, Illinois, with Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the STOP ERA movement. Schlafly wanted to destroy the amendment. Friedan worried that without it passing, women’s rights — and the movement itself — would wither.

The stakes were high. In 1973, 30 states had already ratified the ERA; eight more were needed to enshrine it in the Constitution.

As we all know, Schlafly would play on women’s fears to slow the amendment’s momentum; by 1982, in part thanks to her efforts in convincing several states to rescind ratification, the ERA did not ratify.

It also did not die. Thirty-five years later, after #MeToo, several states including Illinois began ratifying it. However, procedural complications and blocks from the right continue.

On April 27, a vote in the U.S. Senate did not secure enough support to end the filibuster to start a debate on it. (Every Republican voted against it except Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins.)

If you’re trying to figure out why it’s so hard to protect women’s rights in the Constitution, one answer can be found in this half-century-old debate in Illinois and the derision aimed at Friedan, especially since her death.

The popular 2020 Hulu show “Mrs. America” in part focuses on Schlafly, as played by the elegant Cate Blanchett. In an article published last week, a Politico writer blames Friedan’s slurs, which in 1973 were reprinted in The New York Times, for tanking the amendment. “The comments didn’t help the cause of the ERA, which has yet to become a constitutional amendment,” Shia Kapos writes.

Sure, in the 1973 debate, Friedan called Schlafly “a traitor to your sex” and an ‘’Aunt Tom” and said she would ‘’like to burn (Schlafly) at the stake.”

Today, those words would get you canceled. But at a moment when the rights that Friedan helped secure are in jeopardy, it’s time to tell the full story of this debate.

The two adversaries share more than is commonly thought. Both had Illinois connections. Schlafly lived in Alton, and Friedan was born in Peoria. Both were mothers, and both believed that the women’s movement had gone too far.

But in Normal on May 1, 1973, their differences were most in evidence. Friedan reminded her audience that a broad coalition of women supported the ERA — “the League of Women Voters, YWCA, church grandmothers, granddaughters, black and white” — in an effort to distance the amendment from radical feminists whom the media associated with the women’s movement. Turning to a protectionist argument, Schlafly claimed that the amendment would hurt women’s status as mothers and force them into the draft and to manual labor.

Initially, Friedan owned the room. Hecklers interrupted Schlafly, swearing and jeering, and objected to her calling them “girls.” Friedan plowed on. She aimed to strike down Schlafly’s characterization of the ERA as radical, which she knew would alienate many moderates and Midwesterners needed to sway politicians on the fence. So she pointed out that Toni Adams, an ERA supporter and a Democratic candidate for the Illinois General Assembly the previous year, had nearly beaten incumbent Gerald Baker.

Friedan, who had spent a decade working on reforming laws to support women in every arena, was a liberal who did not want to blame men for inequality but rather sex roles. She later chastised Schlafly for criticizing the women’s movement, since she had benefited from its gains by, for example, attending law school.

But in Normal, Schlafly continued to use scare tactics to defeat the ERA, telling the audience that the amendment would force them to lose status. “The women of this country don’t want to be lowered to equality,” she said. Friedan, who believed that a good way to galvanize a movement in danger of losing its force was to create an enemy, accused STOP ERA of receiving funding from members of the ultraconservative group the John Birch Society, a charge that Schlafly always denied. (A few months later, Friedan would tell a Boston Globe reporter: “You can’t tell me these women earned so much money by holding cake sales.”)

Schlafly countered by arguing that women had won so many rights that the ERA was no longer necessary. She ridiculed NOW’s overturning of protective labor laws, which had prohibited women from certain jobs, and she warned that the ERA would create a female draft.

Friedan replied that she did not want anyone to fight a war. She turned the debate to how, despite the enormous strides the women’s movement had made since she had published “The Feminine Mystique” 10 years earlier — many spearheaded by NOW — women still did not have equal pay or equal political representation. “We can’t value responsibility too highly,” she said, especially at a time when Watergate was unfolding.

When Schlafly did not back down, Friedan began lobbing slurs, which The New York Times reprinted in its ‘’Notes on People’' column, as if the debate about the ERA were merely a squabble between two broads.

Schlafly kept her cool, using Friedan’s temper to argue that the women’s movement was so weak that it had to resort to insulting opponents.

At a time when the fate of the amendment has become entangled with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling denying women the right to an abortion, we need reformers to speak up more than ever.

What Friedan should be remembered for is not her temper but her tireless efforts to secure women’s rights in the Constitution. Fifty years after this debate, we still don’t have equal pay or equal representation; we no longer have reproductive rights. Without the ERA, we will not.

____

ABOUT THE WRITER

Rachel Shteir is the author of “Magnificent Disrupter,” a biography of Betty Friedan that is set to be published Sept. 12. She lives in Chicago.

___

© Chicago Tribune

Martin Schram: The making of MAGA
2023/06/05

Demonstrators attend a rally in support of former President Donald Trump on Saturday, April 1, 2023, in Huntington Beach, California. - Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Today we will be exploring why Donald Trump’s little-understood MAGA Republican base has seemed so stunningly shatterproof – despite being pounded by nonstop news revelations of potential prosecutions, more unsavory conduct and eruptions that sound unpatriotic to outsiders’ ears.

Now this: The 2024 presidential campaign attacks are just getting started. Former Trump endorsers are now campaigning against him in the 2024 presidential primaries. No one knows what to expect. And there are things we need to know.

But first, whether you are or are not a MAGA Republican, visualize the scene when “Make America Great Again” famously became a thing in our presidential campaign politics: Oh – and don’t start by remembering that long glide down the Trump Tower escalator. Keep rewinding – all the way back to Sept. 1, 1980. (I’ll wait while most of you reach for your nearest Google machine).

Now you are seeing that iconic made-for-TV scene: Ronald Reagan, wearing a white shirt, tieless, two top buttons open, is starting his fall 1980 campaign. He is standing behind a long, wide table draped with huge, horizontal red, white and blue stripes. A perfect breeze is blowing his perfect dark hair – and unfurling two huge American flags at stage right. Between Reagan and the flags is his guest of honor – the Statue of Liberty. Here’s how Reagan ended his speech:

“Let us pledge to each other, with this Great Lady looking on, that we can – and so help us God, we will – Make America Great Again.”

By the end of the campaign, Reagan had made the MAGA phrase his own. So why do Trump and his base think it is all about them? Because in July 2015, Trump made the phrase his own – big time. He trademarked it.

Coincidentally, that same month, I realized the significance – and political potential – of Trump’s huge, super-loyal rally crowds that became known for their red baseball caps, with white letters: “MAGA.” Frankly, I had a tip. I knew a kid who had seen something just like it, way back in 1968, covering his first presidential campaign for Newsday.

In September 1968, the race between Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Republican Richard Nixon, I went to the rallies in northern states of the third-party candidate, Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace. I saw huge numbers of blue-collar workers leave factories (where their unions endorsed Humphrey), to go to Wallace rallies and cheer enthusiastically.

Why? I spent days talking to Wallace’s blue-collar rally-goers. I asked them one question: If we had talked way back in January, who would you have told me you liked for president? They mentioned one name more than any other: Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, the liberal integrationist senator from New York, who was assassinated in June.

Those voters saw no inconsistency in first liking RFK, later liking Wallace. Why? “They were the only ones really talking to people like me.” They felt the others were elitist snobs who looked down at folks like them.

Those 1968 Kennedy/Wallace-minded folks seemed much like the folks I saw in 2015, wearing MAGA hats and feeling Trump was really talking to them. They bonded with Trump. Never mind that all the pols, press and late-night TV comics were treating Trump as a national punchline. Well, I didn’t. In July 2015, a year and three months before the election, I wrote a column explaining what I just told you. Trump was amassing a base of true-believers. I ended by telling readers not to be surprised if on Election Night 2016, they discover that “America’s fed-up, mad-as-hell voters just chose your next president.”

So now I must tell you that Trump’s MAGA base still seems bonded with Trump. When Trump tells them he is being victimized, unfairly attacked, persecuted by enemies who want to prosecute him – well, they feel they are also being victimized, attacked, persecuted and damn-sure disrespected.

That’s why Republicans who attack their man Trump in the 2024 primaries cannot expect to ever get the votes of the MAGA Republicans. No wonder the Republican polls haven’t really changed so far.

We have no idea how all that might change if Trump ends up on trial during the 2024 campaign. We have never seen anything quite like this. Not even in the movies.

But on Election Night 2024, there may be many places where we will finally hear someone – maybe your neighbor, maybe you – following the infamous instructions of the strung-out, truth-telling TV anchor in the 1976 movie “Network,” when he told his viewers:

“I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’”

We’re a long way from knowing how our movie ends.

___

© Tribune News Service

John M. Crisp: Why Republicans love welfare work requirements
2023/06/05

Would we really risk the catastrophe of a debt default because we think that some citizens who are receiving food stamps may not be working hard enough?

It appears that we would: One of the puzzling priorities for Republicans during negotiations over the debt ceiling increase was stricter work requirements for welfare recipients, a point that they won:

Under the new rules able-bodied adults without children who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program must work or participate in a training program for at least 80 hours per month until they reach the age of 54, an increase of five years over the previous cutoff. By some estimates, this rule change may push many thousands of Americans out of the food stamp program.

The moral aspect of this change is more interesting than its financial impact, which will be minimal. Because the new rules expand food stamp access for veterans, the homeless and others, imposing more stringent work requirements may actually be a financial wash.

In fact, research cited recently by New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie indicates that work requirements implemented a few years ago in Arkansas and Iowa had no impact on employment levels and actually cost more to administer than they produced. Their only real effect was to make it a little more difficult for hungry Americans to get something to eat.

So the appeal of work requirements arises from motives more complicated than economics.

Work requirements have moral implications. Even most tender-hearted liberals can see the theoretical logic and moral benefit of requiring adults who receive public assistance to work at least some if they are able.

And for many conservatives, welfare recipients are tempting targets for reasons having little to do with economics. Stricter work requirements are consistent with certain values that Republicans like to claim as their own. Work requirements capitalize on the fabled image of the able-bodied but indolent welfare queen or couch potato who dines on lobster and watches TV at home all day because he can make more money on welfare than he can working.

But like all stereotypes, this one is mostly false. Welfare fraud is like election fraud. Of course it exists and measures should be taken to prevent it. But vague suspicions of imaginary fraud do not justify overturning an election or putting unnecessary and ineffective obstacles between our less privileged fellow citizens and a life of reasonable dignity.

Every decent modern country has a social safety net. This hasn’t always been the case, and it still isn’t in many parts of the world. You don’t have to read very far into 19th century British writer Charles Dickens to encounter scenes of poverty, hunger, death, squalor and filth that are inevitable when everyone just looks out for himself.

Taking care of others is a moral obligation, but if that isn’t enough of a motivation, consider the legal obligation established in our Constitution: one of the clearly stated purposes of our nation is to “…promote the General Welfare.”

But the Republican passion for work requirements has another layer to it. There is considerable political capital to be gained by inciting the resentment of middle class voters against lazy welfare recipients who—the voters are told—are enjoying a luxurious life while the rest of us have to get up and go to work.

Resentment inspires passion, and grievance is always ripe for exploitation. The trick is to keep the grievance pointed in the right direction.

Which probably explains why Republicans used the debt ceiling crisis to impose more stringent work requirements on the poor but insisted on taking away from the Internal Revenue Service $20 billion intended for better enforcement of our tax laws.

In other words, Republicans would much rather keep our attention and resentment focused on the supposed welfare cheats at the bottom than the actual tax cheats at the top.

In fact, Republicans would always rather have voters punch down than punch up.

© Tribune News Service

MSNBC host takes down 'Bannon-backed, Tucker-platformed' RFK Jr.
Sarah K. Burris
June 4, 2023,

Robert F. Kennedy Jr (AFP)

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan began his show by reminding voters who Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is and why they shouldn't be fooled by the far-right Republicans desperate to promote him.

He showed a clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talking about the wealth discrepancy that continues to increase and a candidate "willing to condemn the consolidation of corporate power, the evils of environmental racism, and ever-increasing income inequality."

He checked off three "worrying things" that he said any Kennedy fan should look at.

RELATED ARTICLE: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. inoculates himself against financial disclosure — for now

First, Kennedy made his name among the anti-vaccine crowd in 2005 using distorted data to allege a massive conspiracy theory about mercury-based preservatives. During the pandemic, he proposed the 5G vaccine conspiracy theories. Another was the conspiracy that Bill Gates, who didn't create the vaccine, somehow used tracking devices injected into people for unknown purposes. Then he started comparing vaccines to the Holocaust. He put out photos of Dr. Anthony Fauci in a Hitler mustache.

Up until April of 2022, COVID vaccines could have prevented at least 318,000 deaths from the disease, the Brown University School of Public Health calculated. Hasan said that it's proof people like Kennedy have blood on their hands.

Second, Kennedy is being lauded by far-right organizers Steve Bannon and Roger Stone. Kennedy hasn't addressed why these two would be so supportive of his campaign when the man they support the most, Donald Trump, is also running. He almost got a job in the Trump administration.


Lastly, a big tell is that Kennedy doesn't have any support from his own family. The Democratic stalwarts have long supported the party and the members of their family that chose to run under its banner. RFK Jr. is the only one to be dismissed by his own family.

"Forgive me, but a Bannon-backed, Tucker-platformed, anti-vaxxer... is perhaps not the progressive, principled, anti-establishment, liberal Democratic Party champion that he might want you to think he is," said Hasan.

Kennedy also confessed that he has a lot of conversations with dead people.

See the clip below or at the link here.

UN agency concerned over Earth’s melting ice

The United Nations’ weather agency announced that it is making the cryosphere a top priority following increasing global impacts of diminishing sea ice and melting glaciers.

A glacier resort above the Les Diablerets. The thick layer of ice that has covered a Swiss mountain pass between Scex Rouge glacier and Tsanfleuron glacier has melted away completely.

 (AFP or licensors)

By Zeus Legaspi

Delegates from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) expressed concern about the impacts of diminishing sea ice and melting glaciers on sea level rise.

WMO chief Petteri Taalas called the cryosphere issue a “hot topic not just for the Arctic and Antarctic,” as the world’s melting ice continues to pose a global threat.

“What happens in polar regions and high mountain regions doesn’t stay in those regions,” WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis told reporters on Tuesday, May 30.

Retreating glaciers affects people’s adaptation strategies and access to water resources, WMO said in a statement on Monday.

“More than a billion people rely on water from snow and glaciers melt which is carried by the major rivers of the world. When those glaciers retreat…you need to think what is going to happen to the water security of those people,” Nullis added.

As a response, WMO member states called for increased funding for more coordinated observations and predictions, and better data exchange, research, and services, because “you cannot manage what you are not measuring,” the agency’s spokeswoman said.

Accelerated melting

WMO detailed that ice sheet melt in Greenland and Antarctica is accelerating and is having “growing and cascading impacts on small island developing states and densely populated coastal areas.”

The UN weather agency called the Arctic permafrost a “sleeping giant” of greenhouse gases, storing twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere at present.

“Thawing mountains and Arctic permafrost create an increased risk of natural cascading hazards,” WMO said in a statement.

“Cryosphere changes in mountain areas are leading to an increased risk of hazards such as rockslides, glacier detachments, and floods,” the agency added.

Rapid acceleration of thawing was recorded in the European Alps, smashing records for glacier melt due to a combination of little winter snow, an intrusion of Saharan dust, and heatwaves between May and early September last year.

The Greenland Ice Sheet ended with a negative total mass balance for the 26th year in a row.

Amidst this, the global mean sea level continues to reach new record highs. It doubled between the first decade of the satellite record, from 2.27 millimeters per year from 1993 to 2002, to 4.6 millimeters per year from 2013 to 2022.

The Survival of Many Ecosystems Depends on Pollination

As the Neolithic process of settlement of human communities in villages near areas of cultivation or domestication of animals progressed in the Neolithic period.

June 6, 2023 by Pressenza 

By Partido Humanista Internacional

As the Neolithic process of settlement of human communities in villages near areas of cultivation or domestication of animals progressed in the Neolithic period, as agricultural work increased and food production improved, the ability to tame bee hives developed and their reproduction was organised, thereby increasing honey consumption and improving the nutrition of villagers and their descendants.

The recognition of the role of bees as pollinators in food production is a recent development that coincides with the conclusions of scientists and technicians around the world regarding the destruction of beehives and the death of bees.

In different research and production centres, warnings have been issued about the destruction of this species. This means a decrease in the pollination capacity of plants and crops, which puts human civilisation and life itself at risk.

The reports are blunt about the loss of ecosystems, the relentless promotion of forest destruction and changes in modes of agricultural production that threaten biodiversity and are manifested in the loss of millions of species of insects and bees.

“Pollination, especially by bees, is a fundamental process for the survival of ecosystems, essential for the production and reproduction of many crops and wild plants. Nearly 90% of flowering plants depend on pollination to reproduce; 75% of the world’s food crops depend to some extent on pollination and 35% of the world’s agricultural land. Pollinators not only contribute directly to food security but are also indispensable for conserving biodiversity. UN, World Bee Day Declaration, 2023.

In addition to the constant calls for the defence and protection of bees, real and immediate solutions must be found to the environmental disaster promoted by the capitalist mode of production.

Specifically, it is necessary to implement public policies for the real protection of bees that involve the populations, and national, regional and local governments, to organise cultural change and direct action to protect these invertebrate animals.

Among these public policies to be implemented are: budgeting and developing education and information campaigns on the serious situation caused by the disappearance of bees, making direct investments to increase the number of hives and apiaries, training new beekeepers, establishing policies for the consumption of honey and by-products of beekeeping production locally, and encouraging research and production of medicinal honey from native bees in tropical areas of the planet.

Celebrating World Bee Day is important, but it is essential to celebrate it with personal and social coherence in protection and to promote imaginative and transformative policies and actions to effectively protect the lives of current and future generations.

—

Previously Published on pressenza with Creative Commons License

When Thatcher Met Mandela

As soon as Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years, in still apartheid South Africa, U.K. officials lobbied him for business interests, declassified files show, reports Mark Curtis.

South African President Nelson Mandela with members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus including Representative Kweisi Mfume, on right, 1994. (Maureen Keating, Library of Congress)

By Mark Curtis
Declassified UK

June 6, 2023

British officials feared Nelson Mandela would nationalise South Africa’s economy and lobbied him to protect British commercial interests as soon as he gained freedom.

The U.K.’s Foreign Office set out to “educate” the African leader with “sensible” economic policies and to counter “the absurdity of nationalization,” declassified files show.

British fears were sparked one month before Mandela’s release from jail.

On January 15, 1990 Mandela issued a statement saying nationalising “the mines, banks and monopoly industries” was the policy of the African National Congress (ANC) — of which he was then deputy president — and that a change in this view was “inconceivable.”

He added that “Black economic empowerment is a goal we fully support and encourage, but in our situation state control of certain sectors of the economy is unavoidable.”

At the time, British firms in South Africa accounted for no less than half of all foreign investment in the country. Prominent among the U.K. companies were the banks NatWest, Barclays and Standard Chartered, which were all subject to lawsuits for complicity in apartheid after the regime fell.

British mining companies Anglo American and De Beers also faced legal claims for exploiting black workers.

Britain had maintained and profited from these investments under decades of apartheid, with Margaret Thatcher’s government famously opposing sanctions, and had no desire to see them disappear with an ANC-led government.

‘Absurdity of Nationalisation’

New arrivals at the Crossroads Squatters Camp near Cape Town, South Africa, circa 1980. Many black South Africans, searching for work and unable to find homes in the townships, or unwilling to live separated from their families in all-male hostels there, became squatters, living under constant threat of forced removal. (UN Photo/DB)

Britain’s ambassador in Pretoria, Robin Renwick, wrote in June 1990 that the South African state already held large holdings in many companies but that “the idea that nationalising the banks, mines and ‘monopoly industry’ can help to redistribute wealth has proved a short cut to disaster wherever it has been tried.”

Ahead of Mandela’s first visit to the U.K. in July 1990, just five months after his release, the Foreign Office prepared a brief stating that a key U.K. objective was to “encourage recognition” of “sensible economic policies which encourage investment.”

“There are some signs that economic realities are beginning to impinge” on Mandela, “with less talk of wholesale nationalisation but the process of education will take time,” Stephen Wall, private secretary to Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, wrote.

“Nationalisation is not the answer,” Wall added in his brief. South Africa needed “economic policies to foster growth and attract investment.”

When Hurd met Mandela on July 3, he asked the South African if his economic policies “included nationalization.” Mandela replied that state ownership in his country was “nothing new” and that “the problem was an unfair distribution of resources.”

Ahead of Thatcher’s meeting with Mandela, Charles Powell, the prime minister’s private secretary, was even starker in his brief for his boss. “The absurdity of nationalisation” was one of the main issues he advised Thatcher to raise.

‘Troubled’

U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the U.S., 1981. (U.S. National Archives)

Thatcher met Mandela for the first time in person in Downing Street on July 4, 1990.

According to the British notes of the meeting: “The prime minister said that she was troubled by the emphasis given in Mandela’s remarks since his release to negative aspects such as sanctions, armed struggle and nationalization.”

Thatcher “stressed the importance of an open economy, in order to attract investment and create growth.”

Mandela told her that “state participation in industry was an option, but only one.” … “He wanted to stress that the ANC had not decided on nationalisation: they hoped that viable alternatives could be found.”

But he also told Thatcher that “virtually all the resources of South Africa were owned by a tiny minority of the white minority.” He added that “the great mass of black people were experiencing poverty, hunger, illiteracy and unemployment.”

“Unless this inequitable distribution could be rectified, it would not be possible to get democracy to function.”

Redistribution

The day before Thatcher met Mandela, the Foreign Office had told her that nationalisation “was clearly receding as an issue” and that Mandela was rather concerned with “the unfair distribution of resources.”

This was also what Ambassador Renwick had told London after meeting Mandela the previous month.

He said the ANC would not nationalise “anything” when in power and that all the major utilities were already in the public sector. The “key issue” for Mandela, Renwick wrote, “was not nationalisation but the distribution of wealth.”

Jan. 1, 1982: Inhabitants of Ekuvukene, a “resettlement” village in the black “homeland” called KwaZulu in Natal. Millions of black South Africans were forcibly moved to such villages over the previous 30 years. They had become dumping grounds for women and children, the sick and the elderly, and anyone else deemed unnecessary to the white economy. (UN Photo)

“South Africa could not go on with a situation in which whites owned 87% of the land,” Renwick wrote, expressing Mandela’s view.

After Thatcher resigned in November 1990, Mandela held his first meeting with new Prime Minister John Major in London in April 1991.

The notes of the meeting, held in Downing Street, record that Mandela “favoured a mixed economy with public and private ownership and cooperatives.”

Officials were still not entirely reassured, however.

Wall, who was by now Major’s private secretary, wrote that Mandela “has a remarkable lack of bitterness but his view of the world is coloured by the fact that when he went to prison Britain was still a colonial power and intervention economics were fashionable.”

The Foreign Office noted at the time that the South African economy was in recession the previous year, that unemployment was on a “massive scale” — and at over 50 percent in the townships – and that 84 percent of the rural population lived below the poverty line.

It added that there was “uncertainty about ANC economic policies” and that “they have moved a long way from calls for nationalisation but still hanker after a command economy.”

Change of Stance

World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 1992. From second to left: Frederik de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, Klaus Schwab. (World Economic Forum. Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

As debates on nationalisation in the ANC continued, Mandela’s unequivocal change of stance on the issue has been pinpointed to January 1992 during a trip to Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Mandela said of his conversations there with other world leaders: “They changed my views altogether. I came home to say: ‘Chaps, we have to choose. We either keep nationalisation and get no investment, or we modify our own attitude and get investment.’ ”

By May 1993, Mandela visited Major again in London “to encourage foreign investment,” the notes of that meeting state.

He reassured British officials that “the ANC’s economic policies had been modified, particularly regarding nationalisation, and now offered an inviting climate for foreign investment.”

Major reiterated: “He wished to see investment in South Africa: there was substantial interest on the part of U.K. companies in returning.”

Five months later, in October 1993 Mandela gave a speech at the Confederation of British Industry in London “calling for British companies to invest in a climate of sound economic policies,” the Foreign Office noted.

There were by now other advantages to South Africa’s economic openness. The Foreign Office wrote that “there are now no restrictions on defence sales to South Africa” and that “prospects are good for BAE’s Hawk and for naval frigates from Swan Hunter.”

“We are already the biggest foreign investor in South Africa; we hope to build on this position,” the Foreign Office said in another memo.

The U.K. remains a major investor in South Africa, amounting to over £20 billion worth. South Africa’s mineral riches still lie substantially in the hands of British companies, with huge investments in its gold, platinum, diamonds and coal.

‘Too Democratic’

The files also contain some of the British officials’ views on Mandela. Renwick wrote in June 1990 that he “has a natural dignity and authority” but “is not as intelligent as [Zimbabwean leader Robert] Mugabe, but a great deal nicer.”

A U.K. brief on Mandela the following year described him as “rather old-fashioned and rather wooden in manner and a poor public speaker who nevertheless picks his words skillfully.”

He was also “on the nationalist/Africanist wing of the ANC — loyal to, but much more moderate than, overtly socialist/SACP [South African Communist Party] elements.”

Wall wrote in April 1991 that “Mandela has enormous dignity and has borne considerable hardship with great resilience. His mind is not closed to fresh ideas but he can be obstinate and… his organisation is if anything too democratic.”

Mark Curtis is the editor of Declassified U.K., and the author of five books and many articles on U.K. foreign policy.
This article is from Declassified UK.

CNN’s Oliver Darcy Flames His Boss: ‘Alienated Much of the Employee Base’

By Charlie NashJun 6th, 2023, 

CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy didn’t hold back in his Reliable Sources newsletter on Monday, which questioned CNN CEO Chris Licht’s “judgment” and “ability to lead,” and revealed that many CNN staffers want Licht gone.

In his newsletter, Darcy called The Atlantic’s Friday profile of Licht “blistering” and “embarrassing,” and wrote that it “called into serious question Licht’s judgment, his ability to lead the network’s staff, and his overall professional capabilities as CNN’s top executive.”

Darcy also wrote that it was “far from certain” whether Licht could “actually win over his army of journalists,” as he had “alienated much of the employee base and squandered the good will he had when he took helm of the network.”

“There are a wide range of emotions coursing through the halls of CNN. Some staffers are frustrated. Others are angry,” Darcy revealed. “Many are sad about the awful state of affairs that has taken hold of an organization they love.”

Darcy also revealed that the “one near-universal sentiment” behind the scenes at CNN was that “Licht has lost the room.”

While Darcy reported that Licht’s apology to staffers on Monday “struck the right tone,” he noted that several staffers had considered it “too little, too late”:

In the eyes of so many at CNN, there isn’t anything Licht can do at this point to win over their support. They’ve hit the wall with him. As one anchor texted me, in reference to Licht’s announcement on Monday that he will relocate his office to a newsroom floor at Hudson Yards: “We don’t want his office relocated to the 18th floor, we want it relocated out of the building.”

The last time Darcy wrote so candidly about the “fury of criticism” Licht was facing within CNN, Darcy was reportedly “summoned” to a meeting with the CEO and scolded for being “too emotional.”

“Darcy stood by his work and pushed back on the ’emotional’ characterization, one source with knowledge of the meeting said. But afterward two sources who heard about the meeting described him as visibly shaken,” reported Puck News’ Dylan Byers.

On Monday, the Daily Beast’s Confider newsletter called Licht a “dead man talking” and claimed “CNN bedrocks” like Jake Tapper, Erin Burnett, and Wolf Blitzer had “lost confidence in the boss” in the wake of the Atlantic‘s article.

Licht apologized to staffers on Monday, saying, “I fully recognize that this news cycle and my role in it overshadowed the incredible week of reporting that we just had and distracted from the work of every single journalist in this organization. And for that, I am sorry.”