EU considering whether to attend Britain's AI summit, spokesperson says

By Martin Coulter
Fri, September 22, 2023 

LONDON (Reuters) - The European Union is considering whether to send officials to Britain's upcoming artificial intelligence safety summit, a spokesperson told Reuters, as the bloc nears completion of wide-ranging AI legislation that is the first of its kind globally.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is set to host the summit in November bringing together governments, tech companies and academics to discuss the risks posed by the technology.

But the invitee list has been kept under wraps, with some companies declining to say whether they have been invited.

European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova has received a formal invitation to the summit, the spokesperson said, adding: "We are now reflecting on potential EU participation."

AI has seen rapid growth in investment and consumer popularity since the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot.

While Sunak hopes to position Britain as the global leader in regulating the rapidly developing technology, the EU is close to rolling out its own AI Act, the first such legislation in the world.

Under the bloc's incoming rules, it is expected that organisations using AI systems the bloc deems high risk will have to log their activities, complete rigorous risk assessments and make some internal data available to authorities.

However, the Financial Times reported that British government officials favour a less "draconian" approach to AI regulation than the EU.

Tech expert Matt Clifford and former senior diplomat Jonathan Black have been appointed to lead preparations for the summit. Last month, Clifford told Reuters he hoped the summit would set the tone for future international debates on AI regulation.

While a number of world leaders, including U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, are expected to attend the summit, it largely remains unknown who else has been invited -- or who has accepted an invitation.

The British government was recently forced to defend its decision to invite China to the summit.

The country's finance minister Jeremy Hunt told Politico: "If you're trying to create structures that make AI something that overall is a net benefit to humanity, then you can’t just ignore the second-biggest economy in the world."

‘This is his climate change’: The experts helping Rishi Sunak seal his legacy

James Titcomb
Sat, September 23, 2023

Rishi Sunak wants Britain to lead on AI safety 

- IAN VOGLER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

It took just 23 words for the world to sit up and pay attention. In May, the Center for AI Safety, a US non-profit, published a one-sentence statement warning that artificial intelligence should be considered an extinction risk alongside pandemics.

Those who endorsed the statement included: Geoffrey Hinton, known as the Godfather of AI; Yoshua Bengio, whose work with Hinton won the coveted computer science Turing prize; and Demis Hassabis, the head of the Google-owned British AI lab Deepmind.

The statement helped to transform public opinion on AI from seeing it as a handy office aide to a potential threat of the kind usually only seen in dystopian science fiction.

The Center itself describes its mission as reducing the “societal-scale risks from AI”. It is now one of a handful of California-based organisations advising Rishi Sunak’s government on how to handle the rise of the technology.

In recent months, observers have detected an increasingly apocalyptic tone in Westminster. In March, the Government unveiled a white paper promising not to “stifle innovation” in the field. Yet just two months later, Sunak was talking about “putting guardrails in place” and pressing Joe Biden to embrace his plans for global AI rules.
Sunak’s legacy moment

An AI safety summit at Bletchley Park in November is expected to focus almost entirely on existential risks and how to negate them.

Despite myriad political challenges, Sunak is understood to be deeply involved in the AI debate. “He’s zeroed in on it as his legacy moment. This is his climate change,” says one former government adviser.

In November, Bletchley Park will host Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's AI Safety Summit - Simon Walker / No 10 Downing Street

In the last year, Downing Street has assembled a tight-knit team of researchers to work on AI risk. Ian Hogarth, a tech investor and the founder of the concert-finding app Songkick, was enlisted as the head of a Foundation Model taskforce after penning a viral Financial Times article warning of the “race to God-like AI”.

This month, the body was renamed the “Frontier AI taskforce” – a reference to the bleeding edge of the technology where experts see the most risk. Possible applications could include creating bioweapons, for example, or orchestrating mass disinformation campaigns.

Human-level AI systems ‘just a few years away’

Hogarth has assembled a heavyweight advisory board including Bengio, who has warned that human-level AI systems are just a few years away and pose catastrophic risks, and Anne Keast-Butler, the director of GCHQ. A small team is currently testing the most prominent AI systems such as ChatGPT, probing for weaknesses.

Hogarth recently told a House of Lords committee that the taskforce is dealing with “fundamentally matters of national security”.

“An AI that is very capable of writing software… can also be used to conduct cybercrime or cyberattacks. An AI that is very capable of manipulating biology can be used to lower the barriers to entry to perpetrating some sort of biological attack,” he said.

Leading preparations for the AI summit are Matt Clifford, an entrepreneur who chairs the Government’s blue-sky research lab Aria, and Jonathan Black, a senior diplomat. The pair, who have been dubbed Number 10’s AI “sherpas”, were in Beijing last week in order to drum up support for the summit.

Meanwhile, the research organisations now working with the taskforce have raised eyebrows for their links to the effective altruism (EA) movement, a philosophy centred around maximising resources for the best possible good.

The movement has become controversial for concentrating on long-term but unclear risks such as AI – judging that the lives of people in the future are as valuable as those in the present – and for its close association with FTX, the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange founded by the alleged fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

Of the six research organisations working with the UK taskforce, three – The Collective Intelligence Project, the Alignment Research Center, and Redwood Research – were awarded grants by FTX, which dished out millions to non-profits before going bust. (The Collective Intelligence Project has said it is unsure if it can spend the money, The Alignment Research Center returned it, while Redwood never received it).

One AI researcher defends the associations, saying that until this year effective altruists were the only ones thinking about the subject. “Now people are realising it’s an actual risk but you’ve got these guys in EA who were thinking about it for the last 10 years.”
No guarantee tighter regulation will yield results

Those close to the taskforce are said to have brushed off a recent piece in Politico, the Westminster-focused political website, that laid out the strong ties to EA. It focused on the controversial aspects of the movement but, as a source close to the process says: “The inside joke is that they’re not effective or altruists.”

Still, start-ups have raised concerns that the focus on existential risk could stifle innovation and hand control of AI to Big Tech. One lobbyist says that, counterintuitively, this obsession with risk could concentrate power in the hands of major AI labs such as OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, DeepMind and Anthropic (the bosses of the three labs held a closed-door meeting with Sunak in May).

Rishi Sunak meeting with Demis Hassabis, chief executive of DeepMind, Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, and Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, in 10 Downing Street in May - Simon Walker / No 10 Downing Street

Hogarth has insisted these companies cannot be left to “mark their own homework”, but if government safety work ends up with something like a licensing regime for AI models, they are the most likely to benefit. “What we are witnessing is regulatory capture happening in real time,” the lobbyist says.

Baroness Stowell, the chair of the Lords communications and digital committee, has written to the Government demanding details on how Hogarth is managing potential conflicts of interests around his more than 50 AI investments, which include Anthropic and defence company Helsing.

There is no guarantee that the current push for tighter regulation will yield results. Other past efforts have fallen by the wayside. Last week it emerged that the Government had disbanded the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation Advisory Board, created five years ago to address areas such as AI bias.

However, those close to the current process believe the focus in Downing Street is now sharper. And to the clutch of researchers working on preventing the apocalypse, the existential risks are more important than other considerations.

“It’s a big opportunity for global Britain, a thing that the UK can actually lead on,” says Shabbir Merali, who developed AI strategy at the Foreign Office and now works at the think tank Onward. “It would be strange not to focus on existential risk - that’s where you want nation state capability to be.”

Green U-turns may sink Sunak bid for AI legacy

Simon Hunt
Fri, September 22, 2023 

The Prime Minister announced a series of delays to climate policy that will make it harder to hit legal targets

 (Justin Tallis/PA) (PA Wire)

Rishi Sunak this week delivered a hasty press conference at Downing Street where he unveiled a bonfire of green regulation.

The move was roundly condemned by big business leaders, who complained that they had already poured oodles of cash into their net-zero plans, and desperately needed certainty from government. Those who didn’t comment may be quietly breathing a sigh of relief that they have more time to go green.

But whether Sunak’s looser approach to environmental goals proves a vote winner or not, it is diminishing his status on the world stage. Former US vice president Al Gore led international criticism of the new approach, blasting it as “shocking and really disappointing”. “This is not what the world needs from the United Kingdom,” he said.

The Prime Minister is just weeks away from hosting an AI safety summit with world leaders and bosses of big tech. In UK tech circles, there are hopes that the Government can achieve, if not a formal treaty, at least some kind of memorandum of understanding on AI regulation that will establish this country as a global leader.

But those hopes are fading following his press conference. As one summit attendee put it to me, why would countries trust anything the UK says on its AI commitments, if less than two years on from hosting COP, the Government is already rowing back on its green pledges?

Sunak’s chances of winning the election look slim. His hopes of leaving a legacy should be pinned on a breakthrough agreement at his AI safety summit. Such a deal would make the UK the world’s number one AI destination, and might even avert the catastrophe that experts warn could ensue if artificial general intelligence, the most powerful form of AI, is left to develop unchecked. But he may have now scuppered it all with his latest U-turn.

An asteroid sample is set to land on Earth Sunday
Amanda Holly
Fri, September 22, 2023 



A mission seven years in the making will be fulfilled on Sunday when a sample of an asteroid will land on Earth.

NASA launched a spacecraft OSIRIS-REx in 2016. The spacecraft set its sights on asteroid Bennu. As the spacecraft approached the asteroid in 2020, a robotic arm reached out and took an 8.8-ounce sample of dust and rock off the surface.

The arm tucked the sample safely away into a capsule inside the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx continued to orbit and study the asteroid for six months before beginning its journey back to Earth in 2021.

On Sunday, as the spacecraft approaches Earth, the capsule containing the sample will be ejected into Earth’s atmosphere. The capsule will deploy parachutes to slow it down and it is expected to safely land in the Utah desert where researchers will be waiting to retrieve it. It will immediately be taken to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas where the sample will be divided among many scientists. It will be extensively studied for years to come.

According to NASA, there is evidence that similar asteroids delivered organic compounds necessary for life to Earth billions of years ago, which is one reason why they picked this asteroid. The other was that it was relatively close to Earth and could be reached in a reasonable amount of time.

The asteroid sample is thought to date back to the early days of the solar system, and is made up of rocks that have been untouched or weathered by a planetary atmosphere. NASA hopes that the pebbles may provide some new scientific insight into that period 4.5 billion years ago.

The spacecraft will then continue on a journey toward a new asteroid, Apophis. It will reach and begin studying Apophis in 2029. This asteroid is expected to make a close fly-by of Earth but will not actually impact Earth.

What time is NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return capsule landing on Sept. 24?
Josh Dinner
Fri, September 22, 2023

It's been seven years since the launch of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to collect and return samples of asteroid Bennu, and the long wait for the spacecraft's homecoming is nearly over.

OSIRIS-REx, short for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, on September 8, 2016. The journey to rendezvous with Bennu took the spacecraft two years to complete, which were followed by another two years of scans while orbiting the asteroid.

The much-anticipated collection of material from Bennu's surface didn't occur until October 20, 2020, and it would be another three years until the spacecraft made its way back to Earth. That time is now, and the asteroid-sand in the hourglass of OSIRIS-REx's mission clock is sprinkling down to zero. The mission's asteroid sample return capsule is currently projected to land on Sunday (Sept. 24) at 8:55 a.m. MDT (10:55 a.m. EDT, 1455 GMT).

Related: Watch it live: OSIRIS-REx's asteroid sample will come down to Earth on Sept. 24.

Read more: How NASA's OSIRIS-REx will bring asteroid samples to Earth in 5 not-so-easy steps


a capsule softly lands in the desert dust.

NASA and the OSIRIS-REx mission team have the spent the past several years monitoring the spacecraft's speed and trajectory, and have calculated its landing down to the minute.

A Sept. 10 firing of OSIRIS-REx's thrusters honed the course for its landing site at the Department of Defense's (DoD) Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR), in the western Utah desert. The remote, 36-mile by 8.5-mile (58-kilometer by 14-kilometer) area of land is bullseye for OSIRIS-REx's asteroid sample return capsule.

After tracking the capsule along its journey through Earth's atmosphere first using infrared cameras and then with radar stations on the ground at UTTR, mission operators will be able to pinpoint OSIRIS-REx's landing coordinates to within 30 feet (9 meters). The OSIRIS-REx return capsule is programed to deploy its main parachute about a mile (1.6 kilometers) above the Utah desert. If the spacecraft and return capsule experience a nominal separation and landing sequence, the capsule is expected to land five minutes after deployment of its main chute.

Slowing the return capsule and its stowed asteroid sample to just 11 miles-per-hour (17.7 kilometers-per-hour), the parachute is scheduled to softly touchdown OSRIS-REx at 8:55 a.m. MDT (10:55 a.m. EDT, 1455 GMT).

Once the area is verified safe, ground teams will collect the pod and transport it to a secure temporary cleanroom nearby, and eventual transportation to NASA's Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas, for analysis and research.

a map of utah, and a dot indicating the location of the DoD utah test and training range.
Can I watch the OSIRIS-REx landing?

OSIRIS-REx's widespread and remote landing area make catching a view of the return capsule difficult, but not impossible. NASA is providing landing coverage beginning at 10 a.m. EDT (8 a.m. MDT, 1400 GMT), Sunday, Sept. 24 which will be available to stream here, at Space.com.

The space agency is also planning a Spanish-language version of the OSIRIS-REx landing, which will be available on the space agency's social media accounts at X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Streaming of the landing is expected to last until the asteroid sample return capsule arrives at the on-site cleanroom facility.

NASA has also scheduled a post-landing press conference to take place following the sample canister's arrival at the temporary cleanroom, which will also be streamed on the space agency's website, beginning at 5 p.m. EDT (3 p.m. MDT, 2100 GMT).

How long will the OSIRIS-REx landing take?

a blue-scale map shows a high altitude view of earth above the edge of utah, where a turquoise region is highlighted to signify the spacecraft landing zone. a white line traces the trajectory of the landing from space.

While live coverage of the landing doesn't begin until 10 a.m. EDT (8 a.m. MDT, 1400 GMT), OSIRIS-REx mission operators will begin their day much earlier. By 4 a.m. EDT or (2:00 a.m. MDT, 0800 GMT), the morning of Sept. 24, teams will be preparing to send final landing commands to the spacecraft, according to OSIRIS-REx's mission implementation systems engineer, Anjani Polit.

A "go/no-go" meeting will be held early Sunday to determine whether to proceed with the morning's landing, and initiate the separation command for OSIRIS-REx to release the sample return capsule. Assuming a unanimous "go" polling from team operators, OSIRIS-REx will release its asteroid sample container at precisely 6:42 a.m. EDT (4:42 a.m. MDT, 1042 GMT). It will be a little over four hours between then and the capsule's touchdown in Utah.

From there, the return pod, which doesn't include any type of maneuver controls, will be on a ballistic trajectory for its landing at UTTR. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will continue onward, soon after firing its thrusters to put the probe on course for a new target, the asteroid Apophis. The OSIRIS-REx mission will then change names to OSIRIS-APEX, short for OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer, and the surveyor will begin a six-year journey to Apophis, where it will remain in orbit for up to 18 months.

As for the OSIRIS-REx return capsule, NASA engineers have calculated every second of its return trajectory following spacecraft separation. A minute-by-minute schedule is listed below, including atmospheric reentry times and speeds, as well as drogue and main parachute deployments.

What if the OSIRIS-REx landing is unsuccessful?

Related stories:

— NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return to Earth: Live updates

— OSIRIS-REx: A complete guide to the asteroid-sampling mission

— Asteroid Bennu: The squishy space rock that almost swallowed a spacecraft

In the event that Sunday morning's go/no-go meeting results in a "no-go," it won't mean the end of the world for OSIRIS-REx. Should a complication arise with the spacecraft's systems or the readiness status of of mission teams on the ground, the OSIRIS-REx team has a backup plan for landing NASA's asteroid samples.

Should the decision not to separate the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from its sample pod become necessary, another opportunity to land exists two years from now. "We really don't want to do that," Polit told Space.com during the Sept. 15 episode of the This Week in Space podcast. "The spacecraft will be going closer to the sun than we'd like during that two-year time period," she said, alluding to the deleterious effects increased and extended exposure to the sun's radiation could have on the asteroid sample. "It's better to get it on the ground rather than having it sit in space and get heated up over the next two years."

 OU’s Wyatt among scientists leading space research agenda for living on moon, Mars

Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
Provided by Ohio University
Fri, September 22, 2023

ATHENS - Dr. Sarah Wyatt is one of 18 U.S. scientists who led the formulation of the nation's ambitious 10-year research roadmap to support humans traveling to the moon and Mars.

For Wyatt, an experienced NASA researcher with four experiments already flown on the International Space Station (ISS), working on the steering committee for the nation's space plan was just short of her ultimate dream - wanting to be an astronaut since she was 10.

Ohio University's Dr. Sarah Wyatt is one of 18 U.S. scientists who led the formulation of the nation's ambitious 10-year research roadmap to support humans traveling to the moon and Mars.

"Thriving in Space," the Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences Research in Space 2023-2032, was released Sept. 12 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Wyatt spent two years among the nation's top biological and physical scientists, documenting what has been accomplished over the past decade and delineating the key areas where funding should be aimed in the next 10 years.

"Getting to work with that group, each an expert in their field with the different perspectives—the sheer magnitude of the knowledge in that room was incredible," said Wyatt, professor of environmental and plant biology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio University.

Since Wyatt's visits to Cape Canaveral are to the science labs and not the astronaut training facilities, her expertise is aimed at how people might grow plants for food, medicine and oxygen in a microgravity environment.

"I’m excited about the possibilities of what we might learn, insights into our place in the universe, and the implications for better understanding our place on Earth through the ‘Thriving in Space’ plan," Wyatt said. "But funding is always a huge hurtle. There are so many possibilities to expand our knowledge, but limited resources."

More: OU student, Lancaster resident David Lamp makes discovery of a lifetime

“Thriving in Space” leads with a call for support of the United States' "unprecedented opportunity to lead the way to the Moon and Mars" through NASA’s BPS (Research in Biological and Physical Sciences in Space) program.

Wyatt and other scientists on the decadal steering committee identified key scientific questions under three themes that need to be explored as part of the United States’ future ability to "travel and prosper in space sustainably, all while returning benefits to Earth," according to the report.

The three themes include:

Adapting to Space

Life in space operates differently than life on Earth. It is critical to understand how the space environment impacts human beings as well as the plants and microbes that will be part of future habitat systems.

Living and Traveling in Space

Human exploration of the Moon and Mars will require longer-duration space missions. For these missions to be successful, it is important to understand how biological and hardware systems interact over the course of years, as well as how to derive resources to sustainably explore new places.

Probing Phenomena Hidden by Gravity or Terrestrial Limitations

Fundamental processes that are not observable on the Earth can be readily seen in spaceflight when gravity is removed from the equation. Space-based laboratories provide the opportunity for major science gains.

The third one, probing phenomena hidden by gravity is Wyatt’s favorite. As she tells audiences, for her, spaceflight is the control.

"For any experiment, you need a treatment and control. If you want to learn more about how organisms respond to gravity, you need to see what they do with no gravity (or very little). ISS provides that opportunity,” Wyatt explained.She has sent four experiments to the International Space Station so far – with a fifth awaiting a launch date.

The future of long-duration space travel and exploration missions to the moon and Mars will require plants for food production, carbon dioxide removal, oxygen production and water purification. But extended exposure to the extreme environmental factors that accompany spaceflight, which include microgravity and ionizing radiation, have profound and largely unknown health effects on biological systems.

So Wyatt's next experiment will study the effect of space radiation on plant telomeres.

"We have conducted numerous plant experiments in microgravity on the International Space Station. And while radiation exposures induce stress responses in plant systems, we now hope to better understand the mechanisms underlying spaceflight-induced plant stress responses, plant genomic adaptation to spaceflight environments, and long-term plant viability under different space radiation scenarios," said Wyatt, who has extensive experience in the design and implementation of spaceflight experiments using Arabidopsis.

Wyatt is an internationally renowned plant molecular biologist, as well as one of two scientists elected this summer to the American Society of Plant Biologists Board of Directors. In 2020, she was named a fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists and inducted into the inaugural cohort of Sigma Xi Fellows, the scientific research honor society, for her distinguished accomplishments and contributions in research, teaching and outreach.

She is also chair of the OHIO Faculty Senate and previously served as director of the multi-disciplinary graduate program in molecular and cellular biology. She's won most of OHIO's teaching and research awards, some of them more than once and helped start the OHIO Genomics Facility in 2007.

Taliban send all-male team to Asian Games but Afghan women come from outside

DAVID RISING
Updated Fri, September 22, 2023

A volunteer holds up country's sign for Afghan men's only team during a welcoming ceremony at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. In the first Asian Games since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, two teams of athletes are arriving in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, looking very different. One, sent from Afghanistan where women are now banned by the Taliban from participating in sports, consists of about 130 all-male athletes, a Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Afghanistan’s Olympic Committee told The Associated Press. Another, competing under the black, red and green flag of the elected government the Taliban toppled in 2021, is drawn from the diaspora of Afghan athletes around the world, and includes 17 women.

(AP Photo/Louise Delmotte, File) 

HANGZHOU, China (AP) — In the first Asian Games since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, two teams of athletes are arriving in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, looking very different.

One, sent from Afghanistan where women are now banned by the Taliban from participating in sports, consists of about 130 all-male athletes, who will participate in 17 different sports, including volleyball, judo and wrestling, Atel Mashwani, a Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Afghanistan’s Olympic Committee, told The Associated Press.

Another, competing under the black, red and green flag of the elected government the Taliban toppled in 2021, is drawn from the diaspora of Afghan athletes around the world, and includes 17 women, according to Hafizullah Wali Rahimi, the president of Afghanistan's National Olympic Committee from before the Taliban took over.

Rahimi, who now works from outside Afghanistan but is still recognized by many countries as its official representative on Olympic matters, told reporters at the team's official arrival ceremony late Thursday that the athletes are there for the love of sports.

“We want to be keeping the sports completely out of the politics so the athletes can freely, inside and outside their country, do their sports activity and development,” he said.

Rahimi's contingent at the welcome ceremony was entirely male, but he said the women were on their way, consisting of a volleyball team that have been training in Iran, cyclists from Italy, and a representative for athletics from Australia.

He did not respond to an emailed request on Friday seeking more details.

The games official opening ceremony is on Saturday.

Although the Taliban promised a more moderate rule than during their previous period in power in the 1990s, they have imposed harsh measures since seizing Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO forces were pulling out after two decades of war.

They have barred women from most areas of public life such as parks, gyms and work and cracked down on media freedoms. They have banned girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade, and prohibited Afghan women from working at local and non-governmental organizations. The ban was extended to employees of the United Nations in April.

The measures have triggered a fierce international uproar, increasing the country’s isolation at a time when its economy has collapsed and worsening a humanitarian crisis.

Rahimi said that the previous government had been working hard to increase women's participation in sport since the previous Taliban regime, and that it had increased to 20%.

“We hope it comes back, of course,” he said. "Not only the sport, we hope that they'll be back allowed to schools and education, because that’s the basic rights of a human.”

From an old-style Afghan camera, a new view of life under the Taliban emerges

ELENA BECATOROS
Updated Fri, September 22, 2023 


2 /47
The Moradi family sits for a portrait on a small boat in Band-i-Mir lake, one of the tourist attractions in the Bamiyan Valley region in Afghanistan, Saturday, June 17, 2023. The family traveled a long way from Helmand to spend a few days for their summer vacation. During their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban banned photography of humans and animals as contrary to the teachings of Islam. Many box cameras were smashed, though some were quietly tolerated, Afghan photographers say. But it was the advent of the digital age that sounded the device’s death knell.

 (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The odd device draws curious onlookers everywhere. From the outside, it resembles little more than a large black box on a tripod. Inside lies its magic: a hand-made wooden camera and darkroom in one.

As a small crowd gathers around the box camera, images of beauty and of hardship ripple to life from its dark interior: a family enjoying an outing in a swan boat on a lake; child laborers toiling in brick factories; women erased by all-covering veils; armed young men with fire in their eyes.

Sitting for a portrait in a war-scarred Afghan village, a Taliban fighter remarks: “Life is much more joyful now.” For a young woman in the Afghan capital, forced out of education because of her gender, the opposite is true: “My life is like a prisoner, like a bird in a cage.”

The instrument used to record these moments is a kamra-e-faoree, or instant camera. They were a common sight on Afghan city streets in the last century — a fast and easy way to make portraits, especially for identity documents. Simple, cheap and portable, they endured amid half a century of dramatic changes in this country — from a monarchy to a communist takeover, from foreign invasions to insurgencies — until 21st-century digital technology rendered them obsolete.

Using this nearly disappeared homegrown art form to document life in post-war Afghanistan, from Herat in the west and Kandahar in the south to Kabul in the east and Bamiyan in the center, produced hundreds of black-and-white prints that reveal a complex, sometimes contradictory narrative.

Made over the course of a month, the images underscore how in the two years since U.S. troops pulled out and the Taliban returned to power, life has changed dramatically for many Afghans — whereas for others, little has changed over the decades, regardless of who was in power.

A tool of a bygone era, the box camera imparts a vintage, timeless quality to the images, as if the country’s past is superimposed over its present, which in some respects, it is.

At first glance the faded black-and-white, sometimes slightly out-of-focus images convey an Afghanistan frozen in time. But that aesthetic is deceiving. These are reflections of the country very much as it is now.

AN UNEASY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CAMERA

During their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban banned photography of humans and animals as contrary to the teachings of Islam. Many box cameras were smashed, though some were quietly tolerated, Afghan photographers say. But it was the advent of the digital age that sounded the device’s death knell.

“These things are gone,” said Lutfullah Habibzadeh, 72, a former kamra-e-faoree photographer in Kabul. “Digital cameras are on the market, and (the old ones) are out of use.” Habibzadeh still has his old box camera, a relic of the last century passed down to him by his photographer father. It no longer works, but he has lovingly preserved its red leather coating, decorated with sample photos.

On Afghan city streets today, billboard advertisements have faces spray-painted out, and clothing store windows display mannequins with their heads wrapped in black plastic bags, to adhere to the renewed ban on the depictions of faces.

But the advent of the internet age and of smartphones have made a ban on photography impossible to impose. The novel sight of an old box camera elicits excitement and curiosity – even among those who police the new rules. From foot soldiers to high-ranking officials, many Taliban were happy to pose for box camera portraits.

Outside a warehouse in Kabul, a group of men watch intently as the camera is set up. At first, they seem shy. But as the first portraits emerge, curiosity overtakes their reservations. Soon, they’re smiling and joking as they wait to have their photos taken, pitching in to help when a black cloth backdrop slips off the wall. As each man steps forward for his portrait, set jaws replace tentative smiles. Adjusting their grip on their assault rifles, they look straight into the camera’s tiny lens and hold their poses.

Most of these men joined the Taliban as teenagers or in their early 20s and have known nothing but war. They were drawn to the fundamentalist movement because of their fervent Muslim faith – and their determination to expel U.S. and NATO troops who invaded their country and propped up two decades of Afghan governments that failed to crack down on rampant corruption and crime.

Bahadur Rahaani, a 52-year-old Taliban member with piercing light blue eyes beneath his black turban, says he’s happy to see the Taliban back in power. With them in government, “Afghanistan will be rebuilt,” he says. “Without them, it is not possible.”

PEACE, AT A PRICE

Two years after Taliban militias swept across the country to seize power again, there are strong echoes of life as it was before U.S.-led NATO forces toppled them from government in 2001.

Once more, the country is ruled by a fundamentalist movement that has restored many of the strict rules it imposed in the 1990s. The first Taliban regime was notorious for destroying art and cultural patrimony it deemed un-Islamic, such as the giant ancient buddhas carved into cliffs in Bamiyan. They imposed brutal punishments, chopping off hands of thieves, hanging supposed blasphemers in public squares and stoning women accused of adultery.

Once again, executions and lashings are back. Music, movies, dancing and performances are banned, and women are again excluded from nearly all public life, including education and all but a few professions.

The return to fundamentalist policies has chased away Western donors, aid workers and trade partners. Poverty has spiraled to crisis levels, fueled by the ban on women working, deep cuts in foreign aid and international sanctions. But there is nearly universal relief that the relentless bloodshed of the past four decades of invasions, multiple insurgencies and civil war has largely ceased.

There are still sporadic bombings, most attributed to enemies of the Taliban, the extremist group Islamic State-Khorasan Province, or IS-K. But Afghans interviewed say their country is more peaceful than they’ve known for decades.

The United Nations recorded 1,095 civilians killed in deliberate attacks between Aug. 15, 2021, when the Taliban reclaimed power, through May 30, 2023. That’s a fraction of the annual civilian death toll over two decades of war between U.S.-led NATO forces and insurgents.

Even those who dislike the current regime say banditry, kidnapping and corruption, which were rampant under the previous governments, have been largely reined in.

But less crime and violence does not necessarily translate to prosperity and happiness.

WOMEN, ERASED

In a three-story building tucked in a Kabul alleyway, a group of women work silently at a loom. Zamarod’s hands move swiftly, nimble fingers flitting between strands of yarn as she knots colored wool around them, making a carpet. Her movements are rapid, almost brusque, but her voice is soft and sad. “My life is like a prisoner,” she says. “Like a bird in a cage.”

The 20-year-old had been studying computer science, but the Taliban banned women from universities before she could graduate. Now she and her 23-year-old sister work in a carpet factory, falling back on a skill their mother taught them as children. They are among very few women who can earn money outside the home and, like others, asked that only their first names be used for fear of retribution for speaking out.

Women have experienced the starkest changes since the Taliban’s return. They must adhere to a strict dress code, are banned from most jobs and denied simple pleasures such as visiting a park or going to a restaurant. Girls can no longer attend school beyond sixth grade, and women must be escorted by a male relative to travel.

For all intents and purposes, women have been being erased from public life.

Even in this environment, Zamarod hasn’t given up on her dream of graduating. “We have to have hope. We hope that one day we will be free, that freedom is possible,” she says. “That’s why we live and breathe.”

In another room, 50-year-old Hakima is introducing her teenage daughter Freshta to weaving. It is their only way of eking out a living, though she still dreams her 16-year-old daughter will someday become a doctor. “Afghanistan has gone backwards,” she says, donning an all-encompassing burka to pose for a portrait. “People go door to door for a piece of bread and our children are dying.”

While the clock has turned back for women who’ve lost financial independence and a voice in public life and government, in conservative, tribal parts of the country, expectations for women have always been different and have changed little over the years — even during U.S. and NATO military presence.

Even so, education is a priority for many Afghans. In dozens of interviews across the country, nearly everyone — including some members of the Taliban — said they wanted girls and women to be educated. Most said they believed the education ban was temporary, and that older girls would eventually be allowed back into schools. They say keeping girls and women confined at home doesn’t help the country, or its economy.

“We need doctors, teachers,” says Haji Muhibullah Aloko, a 34-year-old teacher in the village of Tabin, west of Kandahar. Women must be educated “so that Afghanistan improves in every sector.”

The international community has withheld recognition of the Taliban and pressed its leadership to roll back their restrictions on women — to no avail.

“That is up to Afghans and not foreigners, they shouldn’t get involved,” Taliban government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid says during an interview in Kandahar, the birthplace of the movement in southern Afghanistan and a stronghold of conservative values.

“We are waiting for the right moment regarding the schools. And while the schools are closed now, they won’t be forever,” he says. He won’t give a timeline but insists “the world shouldn’t use this as an excuse” not to recognize the Taliban government.

VICTORIOUS INSURGENTS

The village of Tabin lies deep in the Arghandab River valley, a fertile swath of fruit orchards and irrigation canals cutting through Kandahar Province’s dusty desert.

But around it, the remnants of war are everywhere. The derelict remains of American combat outposts have faded warnings of mines and grenades spraypainted on their wind-blown blast walls. Tangles of abandoned razor wire litter the ground. Bombed-out houses lie in ruins. And there’s the ubiquitous presence of armed young men adjusting from a life of fighting to one of living in peace.

The new jobs — policing streets, guarding buildings, collecting garbage — are the mundane, necessary tasks of governing. It’s less dramatic than waging war, but there is palpable relief to be free of the violence.

Without fear of airstrikes or bullets, children shriek in delight as they splash about in an irrigation canal, leaping into the murky water from a bridge.

“Life is much more joyful now. Before there used to be lots of brutality and aggression,” 28-year-old Abdul Halim Hilal says, sheltering from the blazing sun under a mulberry tree before posing for a portrait. “Innocent people would die. Villages were bombed. We couldn’t bear it.”

He joined the Taliban as a teenager, believing it was his moral duty to fight foreign troops. He lost as many as 20 friends to the war, and more were wounded. He’s stung by the memory of his dead brothers-in-arms when he sees their fatherless children, but he’s comforted by an unshakeable belief that their sacrifice was worth it.

“The ones that were killed were fighting to sacrifice themselves for the country,” he says. “It’s because of the blood they gave that we’re now here, giving interviews freely, and the Muslims here are living in peace.”

A villager walks by, glancing at the gaggle of curious children and adults gathered around the box camera. “It’s so strange,” he mutters. “We used to fight against these foreigners, and now they’re here taking pictures.”

Mujeeburahman Faqer, a 26-year-old Taliban fighter, now mans an uneventful security checkpoint in Kabul. Like many others, he’s struggling to adapt to a peacetime mentality, because all he’s ever known was war. “I had prepared my head for sacrifice,” he says, “and I am still ready.”

A FOUNDERING ECONOMY — AND A STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE

Security has improved since the end of the insurgency against U.S. forces. But with peace came an economy in freefall.

When the Taliban seized power again in 2021, international donors withdrew funding, froze Afghan assets abroad, isolated its financial sector and imposed sanctions.

That squeeze, combined with the near-total ban on women working, has crippled the economy. Per capita income shrank by an estimated 30 percent last year compared to 2020, according to the United Nations Development Program.

Nearly half of Afghanistan’s 40 million people now face acute food insecurity, the U.N.’s World Food Program says. Malnutrition is above emergency thresholds in 25 of 34 provinces.

Struggling to survive is something Kasnia already knows at age 4. In a brick factory outside Kabul, she scoops out a chunk of mud with her tiny hands, kneading it until it is pliable enough for a brick mold. After countless repetitions, her movements are automatic. She works six days a week from sunrise until sunset, with brief breaks for breakfast and lunch, toiling next to her siblings and her father — one family among many in a sprawling factory where children become laborers at age 3.

“Everyone wishes that their children study and become teachers, doctors, engineers, and benefit the future of the country,” says her father, Wahidullah, 35, who goes by one name, as do his children.

Even with the entire family working, there’s often not enough money for food and they live hand to mouth on credit from shopkeepers. Of his three sons and three daughters, all except the youngest one are brickmakers.

“When I was young, my dream was to have a comfortable life, to have a nice office, to have a nice car, to go to parks, to travel around my country and abroad, to go to Europe,” he recalls. Instead, “I make bricks.” There is no bitterness in his voice, just acceptance of an inevitable fate.

Many Afghans have resorted to selling their belongings — everything from furniture to clothing and shoes — to survive.

When the Taliban banned movies, Nabi Attai had nothing to fall back on. In his 70s, the actor appeared in a dozen television series and 76 films, including the Golden Globe-winning 2003 movie “Osama.” Now he is destitute.

His home, tucked in a warren of steep alleys, is now nearly devoid of furniture, which he sold in the bazaar to feed his extended family. Sold, too, is his beloved TV.

After 42 years of acting, Attai has no work. Neither do his two sons, who were also in the movie and music business. Attai is glad the streets are now safe, but he has 13 family members to feed and no way to feed them.

He asked local authorities for any job, even collecting garbage. There was nothing. So he started selling his belongings. “I have no hope right now,” he says. Even begging is now punished by imprisonment under the Taliban.

Over the past year, he has become frail. His cheeks are sunken, his frame thinner. There’s a sadness in his eyes that rarely leaves, even when he recounts his glory days.

“We made good movies before,” he says. “May God have mercy that music and cinema will be allowed again, and the people will rebuild the country hand in hand, and the government will come closer to the people and embrace each other as friends and brothers.”

PINPRICKS OF GLITZ

The shimmering lights of wedding halls cut through the gloom as night encroaches on Kabul, pinpricks of glitz in the darkness.

Despite the economic slump, wedding halls are doing a brisk trade, buoyed in part by wealthier Afghan emigres returning home for traditional marriage ceremonies now that the security situation has improved.

Weddings are a big part of Afghan culture, and families sometimes bankrupt themselves to ensure a lavish party for hundreds or even thousands of guests.

Construction of the Imperial Continental wedding hall began four years ago but was disrupted by the COVID pandemic and the Taliban takeover. The opulent venue finally opened its doors last year.

Manager Mohammad Wesal Quaoni, 30, cuts a dapper figure in a sharp suit as he sweeps through the glamorous, cavernous halls, juggling four weddings in one night. The former Kabul University lecturer in economics and politics is trying to ensure the business thrives amid the country’s economic woes. It’s not easy.

“Business is weak,” he says, and onerous government rules and regulations don’t help. The Taliban are raising taxes, but he says there isn’t enough commerce to support a healthy tax base.

The ban on music and dancing doesn’t help. Gone are the live musicians and even the DJs who would bring in extra revenue, Quaoni says. Weddings are segregated by gender but, for once, there’s sometimes a bit more fun for the women.

Occasionally women and girls enjoy taped music in the ladies’ section. “If they want, they do it,” restrictions or not, he said. “Women will be women.”

Five hundred miles west of the capital, on the outskirts of the city of Herat, businessman Abdul Khaleq Khodadadi, 39, has an entirely different set of challenges.

Rayan Saffron Company, where he is vice president, exports the prized spice to customers, mainly in Europe and the U.S. But the Taliban takeover and ensuing sanctions left many foreign clients reluctant to do business with an Afghan company – even though it’s one of the few still allowed to employ women, whose hands are deemed more suitable than men’s to extracting and handling the delicate crocus flowers.

The isolation of the banking sector has also left many Afghan companies with no way to trade except through a third country, usually Pakistan, which significantly increases costs. Then there’s drought that has decimated crops, including saffron.

His company had aimed to increase their production this year. Instead, their production fell to half of what it was three years ago, he says.

Khodadadi says he is determined to persevere. For him, successful businesses are the best way to heal Afghanistan’s wounds.

In the chaotic early days of the Taliban takeover, Khodadadi felt intense pressure to join the tens of thousands of people who fled, he says. He had a visa and family and friends urged him to leave, but he refused to go.

“It was very, very hard,” he recalls. “But ... if I leave, if all the talented people, educated people leave, who will make this country? When will this country solve the problems?”

___

This story was supported by funding from the Pulitzer Center. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

___

Through a different lens: How AP used a wooden box camera to document Afghan life up close

ELENA BECATOROS
Thu, September 21, 2023 







Associated Press photographer Rodrigo Abd carries his wooden box camera in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, Friday, June 16, 2023.

 (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — For Associated Press photographer Rodrigo Abd, a main attraction of working with a traditional Afghan box camera is the intimacy it provides with his subjects, and the slow pace that allows for a unique window into daily life.

In the years after the 2001 U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban, the Argentine photographer spent months on assignment in Afghanistan and developed a deep affection for the country and its people. He also was fascinated by what was then a common sight: urban street photographers who made their living snapping cheap portraits, mostly for identity documents, using old-style wooden box cameras. Abd learned how to use what in Dari is called a kamra-e-faroee, or “instant camera,” a handmade box on a tripod that combines a simple camera and darkroom in one.

“I fell in love with this way of photographing, going back to the most primitive act of taking photos, that long time spent looking at faces, details, textures, landscapes, both urban and rural,” Abd says.

As cellphone cameras and digital technology spread across Afghanistan, the old cameras fell out of favor and had long disappeared from the streets by the time U.S. troops withdrew after 20 years and the Taliban swept back to power in August 2021.

Abd had an idea: to return to the country with a traditional Afghan-style box camera to document how daily life has and hasn’t changed in the two years since the Taliban returned.

“I always like to return to the places that marked me as a photojournalist and as a person, those places where one has a special affection. And coming back with this camera is like an attempt to close a cycle, or perhaps like closing an open wound,” Abd says. “Being able to document that same country, now so changed, seemed to me an extraordinary challenge, even more so with a camera that was a routine sight on the streets in 2006 and that is now a strange object for most people.”

Afghanistan has become globally isolated since the Taliban reimposed its strict interpretation of Islam, virtually erasing women from public life and banning the depiction of human faces in billboards, shop windows or posters. But Abd found that using the old camera to take portraits somehow disarmed his subjects, including foot soldiers and even some Taliban officials. The appearance of a now-obsolete device so familiar to many was both novel and nostalgic.

The time required for a subject to sit still and pose for the old-style camera creates a special kind of intimacy with the photographer.

“I can connect sometimes better with that camera than with a digital one, because of the way people look at the camera, that moment that is created between the photographer and the person that is sitting in front of the camera,” Abd says.

The exact origins of the camera are unclear, although similar wooden cameras have been used around the world. In Afghanistan it is believed to date back at least to the 1950s. Each camera is custom-made, so photographers chose their lenses. Most were shutterless, with the photographer briefly removing the lens cap to let in the required amount of light — a method that required skill and experience.

The device is entirely manual, and the Afghan version includes a cloth sleeve on the side that the photographer uses to access the interior and develop the black-and-white photos by hand. The original, negative image is developed directly on paper using chemicals stored inside the camera. The negative print is then washed of excess chemicals in a bucket of water and attached to the front of the camera, where it’s rephotographed to create a “positive” image.

Former kamra-e-faoree photographer Lutfullah Habibzadeh, 72, is happy to see a fellow photographer, a foreigner no less, arrive at his Kabul home with a wooden camera of his own — not as beautifully decorated, perhaps — but a kindred spirit nonetheless.

He’s somewhat less impressed by the speed — or lack thereof — of the foreign photographer’s work. Abd, more used to working with digital cameras, was slow as he tinkered with the focus.

“The customer will fall asleep if he comes to you to get his picture taken,” Habibzadeh chuckled as he sat for his portrait.

Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson shares an eye-opening take on recent alien findings
Apparent evidence of UFOs has been mounting.

IAN KRIETZBERG
SEP 21, 2023
In June, David Grusch, a former U.S. intelligence officer, told NewsNation that UFOs are a regular presence in Earth's skies, adding that the U.S. government is in possession of crashed spacecraft complete with the bodies of their pilots.

In late July, Grusch and two other whistleblowers — former Navy pilot Ryan Graves and former Navy commander David Fravor — testified before a congressional hearing meant to help Congress understand how to respond to these sightings of strange aircraft, dubbed UAPs by the government.



Why alleged alien evidence isn't the mind-blowing revelation it appears to be
Read More

And in September, Mexico's Congress held its own hearing on UFOs, where a Mexican journalist displayed the bodies of two supposed "non-human beings," each with three-fingered hands and elongated heads.

The journalist and "ufologist," Jaime Maussan, made similar claims in Peru in 2017. The country's prosecutor found that the bodies shown at the time were not bodies at all, but "recently manufactured dolls, which have been covered with a mixture of paper and synthetic glue to simulate the presence of skin.”

Those corpses, however, were never shown to the public; it remains unclear if the bodies Maussan unveiled last week are the same ones from 2017.

Jaime Maussan displayed two 'non-human beings' Sept. 13.

Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Graves, who additionally agreed to testify before the Mexican Congress, was "deeply disappointed by this unsubstantiated stunt."

"Yesterday's demonstration was a huge step backwards for this issue," Graves said.

But famed astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, speaking to CNBC, had a different take on the matter.

"The aliens in Mexico, I'm glad they put them forth. Now, share that with other scientists," he said, "so that we can decide, is it a hoax, is it verified. That's how science progresses. Not by the lone wolf saying 'I have the thing that nobody else has and it's real.'

We've got to double-check that."


Whistleblowers Unveil Details of 'Incredible' UFO Experiences

The alien unveiling came a day before NASA released the results of a year-long independent study into UFOs, where NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted, "The top takeaway from the study is that there is a lot more to learn."

"The team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extra-terrestrial origin," he said. "But we don't know what these UAP are."

The report did not attempt to uncover the truth behind previous UFO sightings; rather, it made a series of recommendations to NASA to improve its data capture and curation methods as the agency moves to increase its study of UFOs.

In response to CNBC host Brian Sullivan's stated belief that the Universe, being as large as it is, must house some sort of extra-terrestrial life somewhere, Tyson said: "Everyone who has studied the problem agrees with you."

"The Universe is vast. The number of stars is huge. Planets around the stars is huge. The ingredients of life itself are everywhere," Tyson said. "We're made out of the most common ingredients in the Universe. It's a different question to say 'are these lights and objects in the sky visiting, intelligent aliens?'

We don't know what they are. Just because you don't know what it is doesn't mean you know what it is."

Ramaswamy sparks furor with comments on race

WHY THE SURPRISE?! 

HE IS AFTER ALL AN ARYAN/HINDU NATIONALIST 

Cheyanne M. Daniels
Thu, September 21, 2023 

Ramaswamy sparks furor with comments on race


Vivek Ramaswamy has sparked a firestorm of criticism since launching his 2024 presidential campaign for comments that some have called racially charged.

Recently, the 38-year-old entrepreneur faced backlash for comparing Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Black Democrat representing Massachusetts, to “modern grand wizards” of the Ku Klux Klan. He has said that the U.S. education system is a “modern ghetto system,” that the government pays women in inner cities to be single, and has argued with former CNN anchor Don Lemon on what it was like to live as a Black person in America.

“I think there is a pattern here, but to be honest, I will go one step further and say that this is a cornerstone of his campaign,” said Brandon Weathersby, presidential communications director for the American Bridge PAC.

“Just because you deliver it with a smile, just because it’s a little more palatable, doesn’t mean that it’s not going to have a lot of the same negative implications for folks or literally feeling like there’s a target on your back when you go outside or when you go into certain communities, because that rhetoric has been normalized.”


Ramaswamy, who is Indian American, announced his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination in February, quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his announcement video. But much of his rhetoric has echoed that of former President Trump’s.

Though Trump remains the front-runner for the GOP nomination, Ramaswamy has been rising in the polls with some showing him posing a real threat to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who has consistently polled in second place.


Earlier in August, Ramaswamy promised that if he secured the GOP nomination, he would “bring along voters of diverse shades of melanin in droves” to win the general election.

But his rhetoric on race only continues to draw criticism, with some experts saying his comments do not speak to Black voters at all.

A spokesperson for Ramaswamy’s campaign told The Hill that people are welcome to disagree with his statements but that he will always say what he believes.

“Vivek says what most people are feeling, he doesn’t even really speak in partisan terms,” said Tricia McLaughlin, senior adviser and communications director for the campaign. “Most of the things he’s talking about are not Republican or Democrat, it’s American issues.”

Many have argued that American politics has seen an increase in racialized political rhetoric since the 2016 election, but Ange-Marie Hancock, executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, says the trend goes back decades.

What has changed, Hancock said, is how explicit the comments have become in the political world.

For instance, she said, Ramaswamy’s comments about single mothers are reminiscent of former President Reagan’s speech that introduced the term “welfare queens” to the nation.

“The difference between what President Reagan said in the 1980s in that speech was that it was coded,” Hancock argued. “‘Welfare queen’ didn’t say Black, didn’t say African American, didn’t say women of color or something to that effect. So the change that Ramaswamy is doing is he’s being explicitly racist as opposed to using coded language.”

Hancock added that as a person of color, Ramaswamy had to determine ahead of time how to address race in his campaign — if at all.

“Candidates of color have to make a choice pretty early on in their campaigns about whether or not they’re going to run a deracialized campaign, meaning they don’t talk about race, they try and present themselves as just American,” she said.

The counter to a deracialized campaign is a race-conscious campaign.

In a race-conscious campaign, Hancock explained, candidates embrace their racial and ethnic identity, and the way they talk about the issues that they support is often in a way that talks about their experience as a person of color.

“That decision that candidates of color have to make does not apply to most white candidates,” Hancock added. “However, there is a parallel structure among female candidates. So it’s not that it’s unique to race, but that is very much a decision that Ramaswamy has to make.”

McLaughlin, the Ramaswamy spokesperson, said that the candidate will not “bow to identity politics a lot of folks want to play these days.”

Though Ramaswamy says that racism exists — including racism against white people — he has also said that it’s a dying issue.

“Is there existing racism in the United States? Of course, there is. But those [are the] last burning embers of racism — the last thing I want to do is throw kerosene on it,” Ramaswamy said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He has pushed for a “colorblind equality, colorblind meritocracy” and promised to repeal former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s executive order 11246, which prohibits federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin.

And, despite the fact that reports have found white supremacy to be on the rise, Ramaswamy has expressed that he doesn’t believe in the existence of white supremacists.

“I’m sure the boogeyman white supremacist exists somewhere in America. I’ve just never met him. Never seen one, never met one in my life, right?” Ramaswamy said at a town hall in Iowa. “Maybe I’ll meet a unicorn sooner. And maybe those exist, too.”

Such comments could pose political risks for him in the long run. While Ramaswamy has seen his star rise in the GOP primary, controversial remarks like the ones he’s made regarding race could prove a harder pill to swallow for the general electorate were he to win the nomination.

Republicans have made a considerable effort in recent years to broaden their appeal with voters of color, including Black and Latino voters. But they have also been hit with controversy over race-related remarks from within their own ranks.

In once instance earlier this year, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, sparked a firestorm when he said that white supremacists are not inherently racist — comments that drew pushback from GOP leaders. And Trump, widely viewed as the standard-bearer for his party, has frequently been accused of racism.

Ramaswamy’s controversial remarks threaten to add to the image that some have of the GOP as a party unwelcoming or even hostile to nonwhite voters.

McLaughlin said that Ramaswamy is not denying racism exists, but rather that too many in politics weaponize racism.

“I think Vivek has talked a lot about that there are people in this country who profit off of racism and they want to fan the flames of a dying issue, which should be racism in this country, because they line their pockets from it,” she said. “I think a lot of people in this country are afraid to say some of those things because one of the greatest charges in modern America is to be called a racist and so many in politics weaponize that.”

Still, advocates argue much of his rhetoric is not only racist, veering toward sexist in some cases, but also dangerous.

The Congressional Black Caucus called Ramaswamy’s comments toward Pressley “beyond dangerous,” while others have said physical harm could come to those targeted by such rhetoric.

“There is a long history of violence against female elected officials in particular,” Hancock said. “We don’t have to go too far back in history to think about what happened to Paul Pelosi because someone was looking for Nancy Pelosi. So the ginning up of this antipathy against elected officials can absolutely lead to violence.”

Weathersby, of American Bridge PAC, pointed out that such rhetoric also ignores systemic issues that plague Black and brown communities that face violence.

“What’s dangerous here is that you run the risk of making life even harder for folks that are up against the eight ball by not acknowledging some of the systemic issues in our country along the lines of race,” Weathersby said.

McLaughlin dismissed the idea that anything Ramaswamy says is dangerous and instead said the “stranglehold on free speech in this country” is the true danger facing democracy.

“Vivek isn’t afraid to say what he believes, and that’s going to make some people uncomfortable,” she said. “But this country was founded on radical ideas and that’s what Vivek is running to revive. He’s not running to be safe. He’s running with a mission to revive this country.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

This massive armored vehicle has a giant plow for clearing Russian mines

THEN YOU CAN PLANT POTATOS

Kelsey D. Atherton
Fri, September 22, 2023 

This is a Mine-Clearing Tank.

At the DSEI international arms show held in London earlier this month, German defense company FFG showed off a tank-like vehicle it had already sent to Ukraine. The Mine Clearing Tank, or MCT, is a tracked and armored vehicle, based on the WISENT 1 armored platform, designed specifically to clear minefields and protect the vehicle’s crew while doing so. As Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine continues well into its second year, vehicles like this one show both what the present need there is, and what tools may ultimately be required for Ukraine to reclaim Russian-occupied territory.

The current shape of the war in Ukraine is largely determined by minefields, trenches, and artillery. Russia holds long defensive lines, where mines guard the approaches to trenches, and trenches protect soldiers as they shoot at people and vehicles. Artillery, in turn, allows Russian forces to strike at Ukrainian forces from behind these defensive lines, making both assault and getting ready for assault difficult. This style of fortification is hardly unique; it’s been a feature of modern trench warfare since at least World War I.

Getting through defensive positions is a hard task. On September 20, the German Ministry of Defense posted a list of the equipment it has so far sent to Ukraine. The section on “Military Engineering Capabilities” covers an extensive range of tools designed to clear minefields. It includes eight mine-clearing tanks of the WISENT 1 variety, 11 mine plows that can go on Ukraine’s Soviet-pattern T-72 tanks, three remote-controlled mine-clearing robots, 12 Ahlmann backhoe loaders designed for mine clearing, and the material needed for explosive ordnance disposal.

The MCT WISENT 1 weighs 44.5 tons, a weight that includes its heavy armor, crew protection features, and the powerful engines it needs to lift and move the vehicle’s mine-clearing plow. The plow itself weighs 3.5 tons, and is wider than the vehicle itself.

“During the clearing operation, the mines are lifted out of the ground and diverted via the mine clearing shield to both sides of the lane, where they are later neutralized by EOD forces. If mines explode, ‘only’ the mine clearance equipment will be damaged. If mines slip through and detonate under the vehicle, the crew is protected from serious injuries,” reports Gerhard Heiming for European Security & Technology.

One of the protections for crew are anti-mine seats, designed to divert the energy from blasts away from the occupants. The role of a mine-clearing vehicle is, after all, to drive a path through a minefield, dislodging explosives explicitly placed to prevent this from happening. As the MCT WISENT 1 clears a path, it can also mark the lane it has cleared.

Enemy mine

Mines as a weapon are designed to make passage difficult, but not impossible. What makes mines so effective is that many of the techniques to clear them, and do so thoroughly, are slow, tedious, time-consuming tasks, often undertaken by soldiers with hand tools.

“The dragon’s teeth of this war are land mines, sometimes rated the most devilish defense weapons man ever devised,” opens How Axis Land Mines Work, a story from the April 1944 issue of Popular Science. “Cheap to make, light to transport, and easy to install, it is as hard to find as a sniper, as dangerous to disarm as a commando. To cope with it, the Army Engineers have developed a corps of specialists who have one of the most nerve-wracking assignments in the book.”

The story goes on to to detail anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, which are the two categories broadly in use today. With different explosive payloads and pressure triggers, the work of min-clearing is about ensuring all the mines are swept aside, so dismounted soldiers and troops in trucks alike can have safe passage through a cleared route.

The MCT WISENT 1 builds upon lessons and technologies for mine-clearing first developed and used at scale in World War II. Even before the 2022 invasion by Russia, Ukraine had a massive mine-clearing operation, working on disposing of explosives left from World War II through to the 2014-2022 Donbass war. The peacetime work of mine clearing can be thorough and slow.

For an army on the move, and looking to break through enemy lines and attack the less-well-defended points beyond the front, the ability of an armored mine-sweeper to clear a lane can be enough to shift the tide of battle, and with it perhaps a stalled front.