WW3.0

China tensions rising, US revives WWII-era Pacific airfield

2023/12/30

This January 10, 2022 satellite image released on December 28, 2023 by Maxar Technologies shows the island of Tinian, where the US is reviving a World War II-era airfield

Washington (AFP) - In the middle of the Pacific ocean, an abandoned US airfield once key to dropping the nuclear bomb on Japan -- and nearly lost to history amid encroaching forest -- is being revived.

But as the Americans hack away at the jungle overgrowth at Tinian island airfield and other old, World War II-era bases across the region, it won't be with Japan on their mind.

Rather, it's Beijing's growing influence in the Pacific that is spurring the recovery of a slew of abandoned runways on the 40 square-mile (100 square-kilometer) speck of land that makes up Tinian, part of the US territory of the Northern Mariana Islands.

"Rehabilitation of World War II-era airfields has provided Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) a rapidly executable avenue to enhance infrastructure in the region," a spokesperson told AFP.

Though the statement mentioned a "sense of urgency" enabling PACAF to "enhance... warfighting capability and improve deterrent posture alongside Allies and partners," it did not mention China directly.

But Washington's plans for what officials have described as "an extensive" facility on Tinian comes amid a serious military pivot to the Pacific in recent years -- and as China builds its own new bases in the region, including in disputed waters.

"The most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security is the (People's Republic of China's) coercive and increasingly aggressive endeavor to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences," the Department of Defense's 2022 planning document, called the National Defense Strategy, reads.

Tinian's old military airfield "has extensive pavement underneath the overgrown jungle. We'll be clearing that jungle out between now and summertime," Air Force General Kenneth Wilsbach recently told Japanese outlet Nikkei Asia.

Meanwhile, military projects for "fuel and airfield development" at the island's nearby civilian airport are already underway, according to the PACAF spokesman.
Back to the future

If little known now, the airfield at Tinian was perhaps the most important -- and the busiest -- in the world in 1945, as its six hastily built runways played host to US B-29 bombers carrying out missions against Japan, some 1,500 miles (2,300 kilometers) away.

Including, on August 6 and August 9 of that year, the planes that dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"Little Boy" and "Fat Man," as the weapons were known, killed some 200,000 people.

In the last three years, money annually allocated to Indo-Pacific military construction costs has doubled, from $1.8 billion in 2020 to just shy of $3.6 billion in 2023, according to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

It's part of a Pentagon strategy to open a range of flexible military bases, able to operate outside of the larger, longstanding installations in Japan, South Korea and the American island territory of Guam.

On Tinian, initial work started near the civilian airport in February 2022, before extending toward the World War II airfield on the north of the island.

Within two years, tarmac rehabilitation and the construction of fuel tanks are set to be completed, at a budget of at least $162 million, part of contingency plans in the event "access to Andersen Air Force Base or other western Pacific locations is limited or denied," according to Air Force financial documents reviewed by AFP.

Across multiple projects at Tinian, the total cost is unclear, "due to differing timelines and requirements, and the fact that not all work is being executed by the US Air Force," the PACAF spokesperson said.
No 'super bases'

Tinian isn't the only World War II-era base being revamped: new defense appropriations also include money for construction at Basa Air Base in the Philippines, "along with ongoing projects" at the Royal Australian Air Force's Darwin and Tindal bases, according to the PACAF spokesperson.

"A lot of our strategy there is taking many of the World War II airfields that frankly are overgrown by the jungle, and there's still concrete or asphalt underneath," Wilsbach said in a September speech.

"We're not making super bases anywhere. We're looking for a place to get some fuel and some weapons, maybe get a bite to eat and take a nap and then get airborne again."

Satellite images already show the extent of the work underway, including a new tarmac built just north of the civilian airport.

Not far off, satellite images show other military developments -- from China, which has created artificial islets among the diplomatically contested Spratly Islands, used to host its own air bases.

© Agence France-Presse

U.K. archives show Parthenon marbles role in 2012 Olympics lobbying

Agence France-Presse
December 29, 2023 

Parthenon Marbles (AFP)

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The U.K. government tried to help Greece secure the Parthenon Marbles on loan two decades ago in a bid to drum up support for London's 2012 Olympics' bid, according to files released Friday.

Internal British government correspondence from 2002 and 2003 about the Parthenon friezes, also known as the Elgin Marbles, were revealed as the issue continues to dog U.K.-Greece relations.

Just last month, the Elgin marbles caused a fresh diplomatic spat with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak axing a meeting with his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the last minute.

It followed a BBC interview with Mitsotakis the previous day in which he aired frustrations over the long-contentious issue.

The 2,500-year-old sculptures were taken from the Parthenon temple at the Acropolis in Athens in the early 19th century by British diplomat Thomas Bruce, the earl of Elgin, and subsequently handed to the British Museum.

Greece maintains the marbles -- a major draw for visitors at the world-famous London museum -- were stolen, while the U.K. insists they were obtained legally and should remain on display in the British capital.

In the early 2000s, progress on resolving the thorn in bilateral ties appeared imminent.

Greece proposed a then-novel solution, suggesting the friezes return to Athens in the form of a long-term loan, bypassing the issue of ownership.

The country was keen for the sculptures to go on display in the Greek capital -- at a new museum being built on the Acropolis -- to coincide with the 2004 Olympic Games set to be held there.

At the same time, then-UK leader Tony Blair and his government were stepping up lobbying efforts to secure the 2012 Olympics for London.


- 'Blinkered intransigence' -

Against that backdrop Sarah Hunter, Blair's lead adviser on culture, media and sport policy issues, sent him an April 2003 memo arguing "there are good reasons for us to change tack" on the marbles.

Several months earlier, Blair had discussed the loan proposal with his Greek counterpart Konstantinos Simitis, but had subsequently written to him saying "this is not an issue on which the UK govt (government) would seek to intervene" on.

London had long maintained it was a matter for the British Museum and its trustees alone.

But noting it could be a "powerful bargaining chip" in International Olympic Committee votes for the 2012 Games, Hunter now suggested the government "privately and publicly encourage" the museum "to find an accommodation over the next 12 months".

The top aide acknowledged the Greek case had "become more sophisticated" with its loan plan, and accused the museum of "blinkered intransigence to consider any compromises".

She goes on to suggest supporting a recent proposal from former British foreign secretary David Owen for a UK-Greece treaty governing the loan arrangement.

"It seems sensible: rational policy-making favours the Greeks," Hunter wrote, while adding the museum's trustees must ultimately make the decision.

Blair appears amenable, replying "yes" in a handwritten note on the memo.

He suggests putting Owen "in charge of negotiating this", adding that the veteran politician could "probably help with the BM (British Museum), whilst distancing it a little from govt".

However, the initiative appears to have quickly stalled, with the museum issuing a statement four months later in August 2003 saying "the trustees cannot envisage any circumstances under which they could accede to the Greek government's request".

Britain nonetheless succeeded in securing the 2012 Olympics, but two decades on, it remains at loggerheads with Athens over the Parthenon Marbles.

Russian court jails Navalny ally Ksenia Fadeyeva for nine years

Agence France-Presse

December 29, 2023 

Ksenia Fadeyeva © Vladimir NIKOLAYEV / AFP

A Russian court on Friday sentenced Ksenia Fadeyeva, who led jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny's now-banned organization in the Siberian city of Tomsk, to almost a decade in prison, her supporters said.

This is the latest in a string of heavy sentences against Russia's opposition, with the Kremlin doubling down on the repression of civil society since launching a military operation in Ukraine in 2022.

"The 'judge' Khudyakov has ordered a nine-year sentence against Ksenia Fadeyeva" for extremism, her supporters' Telegram channel said, adding the defence would appeal.

Lawyers and supporters denounced the trial as a sham.

"What happened in this trial has nothing to do with justice," lawyer Semyon Vodnev said in a video posted by SOTA media, adding the defense had been "bullied".

Vodnev called the verdict "illegal, baseless and unfair" but said he needed to refrain from speaking his mind, otherwise "I will probably find myself on the same bench as Ksenia."

Fadeyeva, 31, headed Navalny's political office in Tomsk, where the opposition leader was poisoned in August 2020 on a visit ahead of elections.

Fadeyeva was elected to the Tomsk city legislature in 2020, a move hailed as a victory for the Russian opposition against President Vladimir Putin's rule.
'A brave politician'

But authorities labelled the group an "extremist organization" in 2021, which opened up its members and supporters to prosecution.

Many of Navalny's allies left, but Fadeyeva refused to flee and was detained in December 2021 on charges of organizing "an extremist" group.

"Ksenia did not commit any crime, she is a brave politician who has been fighting against Putin's corrupt regime," the Anti-Corruption Foundation said in reaction to the verdict.

Moscow has used laws on "terrorist" and "extremist" bodies to hand out years-long jail sentences to critics, including Navalny himself.

Moscow has used laws on 'extremist' bodies to hand out years-long jail sentences to critics © Vladimir NIKOLAYEV / AFP

Navalny galvanized huge nationwide protests in Russia before he was jailed in 2021 on fraud charges after returning from Germany, where he was recovering from the poison attack.

He saw his sentence extended to 19 years on charges of extremism in 2023, and was recently transferred to a harsher colony in Russia's Arctic.


Several regional heads of the Anti-Corruption Foundation have been jailed.

Among them was Lilia Chanysheva, Navalny's ally in the central Bashkortostan Republic, who was handed seven and a half years in prison this summer.

Vadim Ostanin, the head of Navalny's office in Barnaul, was imprisoned for nine years on "extremism" charges.

It’s time to banish the absurd idea that people are paid what they’re 'worth'

Robert Reich
December 23, 2023 

Photo by Desola Lanre-Ologun on Unsplash

“We renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country,” Donald Trump has said.

Someone should alert him that America is already a hotbed of socialism. But it’s socialism for the rich. Everyone else is treated to harsh capitalism.

In the conservative mind, socialism means getting something for doing nothing. This pretty much describes General Motors’ receipt of $600 million in federal contracts, plus $500 million in tax breaks, after Trump took office in 2017.

Some of this corporate welfare has gone into the pockets of GM executives. Since then, Chairman and CEO Mary Barra has raked in some $20 million a year in total compensation.

But GM employees are subject to harsh capitalism. (Hopefully, the recent agreement between GM and the UAW will reduce this harshness somewhat.)

The nation’s largest banks have saved an estimated $21 billion a year since Trump’s tax cuts went into effect in 2018, some of which went into massive bonuses for bank executives.

On the other hand, thousands of lower-level bank employees got a big dose of harsh capitalism. They lost their jobs.

Banks that are too big to fail — courtesy of the 2008 bank bailout — enjoy a hidden subsidy of tens of billions a year because they have the backing of the federal government. This hidden subsidy gives Wall Street’s giant banks a huge advantage because everyone dealing with them is guaranteed against loss.

Take away this hidden subsidy, and Wall Street’s bonus pool disappears, along with most profits.

When he was in business, Trump perfected the art of using bankruptcy to shield himself from the consequences of bad decisions — socialism for the rich at its worst — while leaving employees twisting in the wind.


Now, all over America, executives who run their companies into the ground are getting gold-plated exit packages while their workers get pink slips.

Under socialism for the rich, you can screw up big time and still reap big rewards. Equifax’s Richard Smith retired in 2017 with an $18 million pension in the wake of a security breach that exposed the personal information of 145 million customers to hackers.

Wells Fargo’s Carrie Tolstedt departed with a $125 million exit package after being in charge of the unit that opened more than 2 million unauthorized customer accounts.


Whatever happened to the idea of an economic system that allows everyone to get ahead through hard work, and allocates economic gains only to those who deserve them?

Around 60 percent of America’s wealth is now inherited. Many of today’s super-rich have never done a day’s work in their lives.

Trump’s response was to expand this free lunch by cutting the estate tax to apply only to estates valued at over $22 million per couple.


To the conservative mind, the specter of socialism conjures up a society in which no one is held accountable and no one has to work for what they receive. Yet this is exactly the society Trump and his Republican allies have promoted for the rich.

Meanwhile, most Americans are subject to an increasingly relentless and arbitrary capitalism.

They need stronger safety nets, and they deserve a bigger piece of the economic pie.

If you want to call this socialism, fine. I call it fair.

A FEW YEARS AGO, I was invited to speak to a group of workers at a power plant in northern California who were considering whether to form a union.

One young man who intended to vote against forming a union told me he was “worth” no more than the $14 an hour he was then paid. “I say for these people making their millions, that’s fantastic. I could have done the same thing if I went to school and had the brains for it. I do not, so I’m a laborer.”

The young man apparently had no knowledge of the 1950s, when over 30 percent of the nation’s private-sector workforce was unionized. That gave the nation’s blue-collar workers, like him, enough bargaining power to summon the equivalent (on average, and in today’s dollars) of $30 an hour — even though many hadn’t finished high school.

It wasn’t their brains that accomplished this. It was their bargaining power. But the power of trade unions to negotiate good wages for hourly workers has declined markedly since then. That’s why the young man I met was “worth” no more than $14 an hour.

Yet the notion that you’re paid what you’re “worth” is by now so deeply engrained in the public conscious that many who earn very little assume it’s their own fault. They may even feel ashamed of what they see as a personal failure — a lack of “brains” or a deficiency of character.

The same mythology allows those who earn vast sums to believe they must be extraordinarily clever, daring, and superior. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be doing so well. This reassuring conviction seemingly justifies not only their great wealth but also their high status in society.

They would prefer not to view their money as winnings in an economic contest over whose rules they and others like them have disproportionate influence. And they would prefer the public not see it that way, either.

A decade ago, the hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen earned $2.3 billion. During his 20 years at the helm of S.A.C. Capital Advisors, he had amassed a fortune estimated to be around $11 billion.

Was he really worth it? In the trivial, tautological sense, he must have been, because that’s what he earned. “[P]rivate hedge fund people only make money because others voluntarily decide that it’s worth it to invest their money with them,” noted Dan Mitchell of the right-wing Cato Institute, in response to my public questioning of Cohen’s pay.

But there may be a reason people decided to invest their money with Steven A. Cohen that raises a deeper question about his “worth.”

According to a criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department, insider trading at S.A.C. Capital under Cohen’s leadership was “substantial, pervasive, and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge fund industry.” Nine of Cohen’s present or former employees pleaded guilty to using insider information. The firm itself entered a guilty plea and paid a $1.8 billion fine.

For years, investors had put their money into S.A.C. Capital — presumably because the firm’s trades on inside information generated huge returns. Had the firm’s insider trading been discovered and prosecuted earlier, those returns would not have been nearly as high, investors would not have put their money there, and Cohen’s wealth would never have amounted to $11 billion (minus the $1.8 billion fine).

In other words, if unions were as strong today as they were six decades ago, the worker I spoke with might well have earned (and therefore been “worth”) $30 an hour instead of $14.

And if the ban on insider trading had been stronger and fully enforced, Steven A. Cohen would not have accumulated (and been “worth”) $11 billion, and his clients would not have “voluntarily decided it was worth it” to invest their money with him

PEOPLE ARE “WORTH” what they’re paid in the market in the trivial sense that if the market rewards them a certain amount of money, they are assumed to be worth it. Some confuse this tautology for a moral claim that people deserve what they are paid — that America is a “meritocracy.”

The term “meritocracy” was coined by British sociologist Michael Young in his 1958 satirical essay “The Rise of the Meritocracy” to depict a society so wedded to standard measures of intelligence that it ignored many gifted and talented people while overlooking character flaws in those who tested well.

Since then, the term’s meaning has changed to become a positive description of a society in which anyone can make it based on individual merit — through qualities such as natural intelligence, hard work, ambition, and courage — and in which financial rewards are directly proportional to individual effort and ability.

But a moment’s thought reveals factors other than individual “merit” that play a larger role in determining earnings — inheritance, connections, luck, or discrimination in favor of or against someone because of how they look. It turns out that the most important determinant of someone’s future earnings is the earnings of the family they’re born into.

Unless one assumes that these outcomes are just, it does not follow that people deserve what they are paid in any moral sense.

IF THE RULES GOVERNING HOW THE MARKET IS ORGANIZED took full account of the benefits to society of various roles and occupations, some people would be paid far more — and others, far less.

Social work, teaching, nursing, and caring for the elderly or for children are among the lowest-paid professions. Yet evidence suggests that talented and dedicated people in these positions generate societal benefits far out of proportion to their pay.

One such study found that good teachers increase the average present value of their students’ lifetime income by $250,000 per classroom, for example. Presumably, if teaching jobs paid better, they would attract many more such teachers.

On the other hand, the worth to society of many CEOs, hedge-fund managers, investment bankers, “high-frequency” traders, lobbyists, and high-end corporate lawyers is likely to be far less than they command in the market.

Much of what they do entails taking money out of one set of pockets and putting it into another, in escalating zero-sum activity.

High-frequency traders, for example, profit by getting information a fraction of a second earlier than other traders, necessitating ever-greater investments in electronic systems that give them that tiny edge.

Similarly, squadrons of corporate lawyers are paid substantial sums by their clients because squadrons of corporate lawyers on the other side are paid vast sums to attack them and defend their own clients.

PEOPLE IN THESE PROFESSIONS do not generate discoveries that transform society or create works of art that enrich and deepen human consciousness. Their innovations are financial and tactical — finding new ways to squeeze more money out of a given set of assets, including employees, or to expropriate the assets and incomes of others.

Such contests also use up the time and energies of some of the nation’s most educated young people, whose talents could, one supposes, be put to more socially beneficial uses.

According to research by sociologist Lauren Rivera, some 70 percent of Harvard’s senior class routinely submits résumés to Wall Street and corporate consulting firms. The percentages are similar at other Ivy League colleges.

The hefty endowments of such elite institutions are swollen with the tax-subsidized donations of wealthy alumni, many of whom seek to increase the odds that their own kids will be admitted so they too can become enormously wealthy financiers, management consultants, and corporate executives.

Personally, I could think of a better way for taxpayers to subsidize occupations with more social merit: Forgive the student debts of graduates who choose social work, child care, elder care, nursing, and teaching.

THE ENORMOUS pay going to the richest members of society is not necessary to get them to do the work they do. Nor does it reflect the societal value of their work. More often than not, their pay is way out of line with the common good.

Meanwhile, the current pay going to the working class is inadequate to provide people the standard of living they desire. It, too, is out of line with the common good.

Why these misalignments? Next Friday, I’ll take a closer look at what happened to America’s middle class — how and why it lost bargaining power, and what it can do to gain that power back.

Happy holidays.

***

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Expert shocked as Trump appears to claim Hitler's theories as his own: 'It was my idea'

M.L. Nestel
December 28, 2023



For all the accusations and denials that former President Donald Trump has made about his use of Nazi talking points, an acclaimed New York City author says there's some truth to it.

Kurt Anderson, who co-founded Spy Magazine and writes about politics, appeared on MSNBC's "The Last Word" with Lawrence O'Donnell to talk about Trump's supposed adoption of Adolf Hitler's terms and concepts.

"When [Trump] admits ignorance, one is inclined to believe it because he's ignorant of so much," Anderson explained.


He was talking about how Trump has attempted to assuage comments, such as his accusation that immigrants are "poisoning the blood" of America, as a joke, and then pleaded ignorance of Hitler's speeches and writings.

During a rally in New Hampshire earlier this month, Trump painted immigrants entering the U.S. to be damaging the heritage of America.

“They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country," he said. "When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country."

Then in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt last week, the former president stuck to the poison comment, but pirouetted away any Hitler origins.

"First of all, I know nothing about Hitler. I'm not a student of Hitler. I never read his works," he said during the interview. "They say that he said something about blood. He didn't say it the way I said it, either, by the way.

"It's a very different kind of a statement. What I'm saying when I talk about people coming into our country is they are destroying our country."

Anderson said that Trump can't backtrack.

"It's not accusations," he said. "It is remarkable and, of course, it's more remarkable that he's repeating it."

He pointed to a 1990 Vanity Fair article penned by Marie Brenner that mentions a Trump Organization worker who routinely enters Trump's office, "clicks his heels and says, "Heil Hitler."

At that time, Trump had a copy of Hitler's collected speeches by his bed (that Trump reportedly mistakes for Mein Kampf), according to the report.

When pressed, Trump sidestepped.

"If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them," he said at the time.

Again, Anderson thinks Trump is playing coy.

"He says 'It's not Mein Kampf', ' I didn't read Mein Kampf', and he's almost saying 'It's my own idea about 'poisoning the blood of the country," he said.

Watch the video below or at this link.

FOR THEM RAPTURE

MAGA evangelicals' 'desire for doom' explored by journalist

APOCALYPSE FOR US

Brad Reed
December 27, 2023 

www.rawstory.com

Many American evangelical Christians have taken on an apocalyptic view of the world in which they see former President Donald Trump as their sole savior against demonic forces, according to journalist Tim Alberta.

In an interview with New York Times columnist Jame Coaston, Alberta discusses how evangelicals came to rationalize designating Trump as their savior despite his decades of documented un-Christian behavior.

In reading Alberta's work, Coaston said she was struck by how much the evangelicals he covers have a "desire for doom" in which the end of the world brings about a final reckoning between the forces of good and evil.

"I think when you spend so much time swimming in these waters of ‘The end is near, they’re coming for us, brace yourself for this collision between the forces of good and evil,’ you actually start to not only anticipate it, but you start to look forward to it," Alberta explained.




He then cited the temporary closure of churches during the novel coronavirus pandemic that fed into evangelicals' belief that there were sinister forces at work intent on blocking their ability to worship rather than a generational health emergency that caused the deaths of more than one million of their fellow American citizens.

"When Gavin Newsom says, 'Hey, we’re shutting down houses of worship as a public health measure for a few weeks here,' suddenly it was, I think for so many of these people, it was like the prophecy was being fulfilled," Alberta explains.

Dreaming may have evolved as a strategy for co-operative survival

PREHISTORIC WOMEN SHARE DREAMS DURING PERIODS AND INVENT LANGUAGE 

The Conversation
December 27, 2023 

A comparison of dreams shows they play out much differently across various socio-cultural environments. (Shutterstock)

Have you ever woken from a dream, emotionally laden with anxiety, fear or a sense of unpreparedness? Typically, these kinds of dreams are associated with content like losing one’s voice, teeth falling out or being chased by a threatening being.

But one question I’ve always been interested in is whether or not these kinds of dreams are experienced globally across many cultures. And if some features of dreaming are universal, could they have enhanced the likelihood of our ancestors surviving the evolutionary game of life?

My research focuses on the distinctive characteristics that make humans the most successful species on Earth. I’ve explored the question of human uniqueness by comparing Homo sapiens with various animals, including chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, lemurs, wolves and dogs. Recently, I’ve been part of a team of collaborators that has focused our energies on working with small-scale societies known as hunter-gatherers.

We wanted to explore how the content and emotional function of dreams might vary across different cultural contexts. By comparing dreams from forager communities in Africa to those from western societies, we wanted to understand how cultural and environmental factors shape the way people dream.

Comparative dream research

As part of this research, published in Nature Scientific Reports, my colleagues and I worked closely for several months with the BaYaka in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Hadza in Tanzania to record their dreams. For western dreamers, we recorded dream journals and detailed dream accounts, collected between 2014 and 2022, from people living in Switzerland, Belgium and Canada.

The Hadza of Tanzania and the BaYaka of Congo fill a crucial, underexplored gap for dream research due to their distinct lifestyle. Their egalitarian culture, emphasizing equality and co-operation, is vital for survival, social cohesion and well-being. These forager communities rely heavily on supportive relationships and communal sharing of resources.

Higher mortality rates due to disease, intergroup conflict, and challenging physical environments in these communities (without the kind of social safety nets common to post-industrial societies in the West) means they rely on face-to-face relationships for survival in a way that is a distinct feature of forager life.



The Hadza are an Indigenous community in Tanzania, and one of the last hunter-gatherer societies remaining. (Shutterstock)

Dreaming across cultures

While studying these dreams, we began to notice a common theme. We’ve discovered that dreams play out much differently across different socio-cultural environments. We used a new software tool to map dream content that connects important psychosocial constructs and theories with words, phrases, and other linguistic constructions. That gave us an understanding about the kinds of dreams people were having. And we could model these statistically, to test scientific hypotheses as to the nature of dreams.

The dreams of the BaYaka and Hadza were rich in community-oriented content, reflecting the strong social bonds inherent in their societies. This was in stark contrast to the themes prevalent in dreams from western societies, where negative emotions and anxiety were more common.

Interestingly, while dreams from these forager communities often began with threats reflecting the real dangers they face daily, they frequently concluded with resolutions involving social support. This pattern suggests that dreams might play a crucial role in emotional regulation, transforming threats into manageable situations and reducing anxiety.

Here is an example of a Hadza dream laden with emotionally threatening content:
“I dreamt I fell into a well that is near the Hukumako area by the Dtoga people. I was with two others and one of my friends helped me get out of the well.”

Notice that the resolution to the dream challenges incorporated a social solution as an answer to the problem. Now contrast this to the nightmare disorder-diagnosed dreamers from Europe. They had scarier, open-ended narratives with less positive dream resolutions. Specifically, we found they had higher levels of dream content with negative emotions compared to the “normal” controls. Conversely, the Hadza exhibited significantly fewer negative emotions in their dreams. These are the kind of nightmares reported:
“My mom would call me on my phone and ask me to put it on speakerphone so my sister and cousin could hear. Crying she announced to us that my little brother was dead. I was screaming in sadness and crying in pain.”
“I was with my boyfriend, our relationship was perfect and I felt completely fulfilled. Then he decided to abandon me, which awoke in me a deep feeling of despair and anguish.”



The dreams of people living in the West tended to reflect more anxiety. (Shutterstock)
The functional role of dreams


Dreams are wonderfully varied. But what if one of the keys to humanity’s success as a species rests in our dreams? What if something was happening in our dreams that improved the survival and reproductive efforts of our Paleolithic ancestors?

A curious note from my comparative work, of all the primates alive, humans sleep the least, but we have the most REM. Why was REM — the state most often associated with dreams — so protected while evolution was whittling away our sleep? Perhaps something embedded in dreaming itself was prophylactic for our species?

Our research supports previous notions that dreams are not just random firings of a sleeping brain but may play a functional role in our emotional well-being and social cognition. They reflect the challenges and values of our waking life, offering insights into how we process emotions and threats. In forager societies, dreams often conclude with resolutions involving social support, suggesting that dreams might serve as a psychological mechanism for reinforcing social bonds and community values.

Why dream?

The ultimate purpose of dreaming is still a subject of ongoing research and debate. Yet these themes seem to harbour within them universals that hint at some crucial survival function.

Some theories suggest that dreaming acts like a kind of virtual reality that serves to simulate threatening or social situations, helping individuals prepare for real-life challenges.

If this is indeed the case, then it’s possible that the dreams of our ancestors, who roamed the world in the distant Paleolithic era, played a crucial role in enhancing the co-operation that contributed to their survival.

David Samson, Associate Professor, Anthropology, University of Toronto

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

BBC will not stop Eurovision contestant expressing his political views

Dominic Penna
22 December 2023·

Olly Alexander also criticised the Government’s new transgender guidance for schools in the days after he was unveiled as next year’s Eurovision contestant. - MATT CROSSICK/PA

The BBC will let Britain’s entrant at next year’s Eurovision Song Contest continue to express his political views in the wake of an anti-Semitism row.

Olly Alexander, who was announced as the UK contestant by the national broadcaster last week, came under fire after The Telegraph revealed he had signed a letter calling Israel an “apartheid regime” and condemning “Zionist propaganda”.

Israel accused the BBC of shirking its “moral responsibility” by refusing to cut ties with Alexander, while the Conservative Party questioned whether its selection process was fit for purpose, and Jewish campaigners called for him to be replaced.


But the corporation confirmed on Friday that the 33-year-old, who found fame in the pop band Years and Years, does not have any responsibilities around his use of social media because he is neither a member of staff nor a freelancer.

A BBC source pointed to the corporation’s official social media guidelines, which state: “Actors, dramatists, comedians, musicians and pundits who work for the BBC are not subject to the requirements of impartiality on social media.”

This means Alexander would be able to share further opinions on political issues including the Israel-Gaza conflict if he wished to do so.
‘Dehumanising language’

Campaign Against Antisemitism, a volunteer-led Jewish charity, referred to the statement he endorsed as “appalling”, while a spokesman for the Israeli embassy accused Alexander of “dehumanising language” and said his participation in the contest was a “cause for concern”.

BBC social media guidelines were overhauled in September following a row involving Gary Lineker, the Match of the Day host who came under fire after comparing the rhetoric used by Suella Braverman, the then home secretary, to that of Nazi Germany.

However, Lineker and other controversial presenters are still allowed to share their views on the issues of the day provided that they do not endorse or attack political parties.

The letter signed by Alexander insisted solidarity with Palestine – where same-sex activity between men is illegal – is a “queer issue”, before going to accuse Israel of genocide and its defenders of “unthinking philosemitism”.

Alexander also criticised the Government’s new transgender guidance for schools – which urges schools to consider the role of social media on schoolchildren who ask to transition – in the days after he was unveiled as next year’s Eurovision contestant.

Mr Alexander shared a post by LGBT activist Shon Faye to more than 750,000 Instagram followers on December 20, four days after it was announced that he would represent Britain in Malmo next May.

Faye’s post called the guidance a “completely inappropriate framework”, adding: “Raising children into normative gender in a patriarchal capitalist society is far from neutral.”

Voices4 London, an LGBT pressure group which co-ordinated the letter Alexander signed, said they “condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms” and repeated their claim Israel was committing genocide.

“We stand alongside our many Jewish siblings, who also act and advocate for the freedom of Palestinian people – our criticism is of Israeli state violence,” they added.

A representative for Alexander was contacted for comment.

DO EV'S DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?
Do electric cars really produce fewer carbon emissions than petrol or diesel vehicles?

Jasper Jolly

The Guardian
23 December 2023·

Photograph: Maureen McLean/Shutterstock

There is a spectre haunting electric cars: the question of greenwashing. What if, for all the green hopes attached to zero-emissions cars, the truth is that they fail to achieve their main goal of cutting world-heating carbon emissions?

Our EV mythbusters series has looked at some of the most persistent criticisms of electric cars, ranging from car fires to battery mining, range anxiety to cost concerns. This article asks: do electric cars really produce fewer carbon emissions than petrol or diesel?
The claim

In the US, the Florida senator Rick Scott said there was “ample evidence to suggest that EVs are not as clean as people are being led to believe and folks deserve to know the truth”. He and other Republican colleagues introduced the (suggestively named) “Directing Independent Research To Yield Carbon Assessment Regarding Electric Vehicles (DIRT Y CAR EV) Act”, which tried to call for analysis of the carbon footprint of vehicles.


A recent article in the UK’s Daily Mail reported that “the environmental benefit of electric cars may never be felt” because many electric vehicles “will never hit their mileage target as owners upgrade to newer models, leaving swathes of used electric cars sitting unwanted on garage forecourts”.

But it is not only the rightwing press. In June, the Guardian published an article by the actor Rowan Atkinson in which he said he felt “duped” by EVs’ carbon claims and that the reality was “very different”, citing Volvo research suggesting greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are almost 70% higher than when manufacturing a petrol one.

“It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile’s fight against the climate crisis,” Atkinson wrote.Interactive
The science

Any assessment of carbon emissions associated with a product needs to look at its whole life cycle, from manufacture to scrapping (and, hopefully, recycling). Many claims about electric cars’ supposedly worse environmental toll focus on manufacturing and ignore the actual use of the cars.

The grain of truth in the criticism is that EVs do indeed take significantly more energy to manufacture. Battery production requires large amounts of electricity to heat ovens to bake electrode materials, and to charge and discharge the battery to prepare it for use. While electricity can be produced with zero emissions, most countries still burn carbon-heavy fossil fuels to turn generators. Analysis by the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, cited by the US Environmental Protection Agency, suggests that manufacturing battery cars produces about 60% more carbon emissions than their fossil fuel cousins.

That means that electric cars start with a big carbon disadvantage, sometimes described as a “carbon debt”. However, Eoin Devane, a senior analyst for surface transport at the Climate Change Committee, the UK government’s climate science adviser, said: “If you look at the data, that ‘carbon debt’ is paid off within about two years of driving the vehicle.”

The vast majority of fossil fuel cars’ carbon footprint comes in use, when exhaust pipes constantly spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Transport & Environment (T&E), a campaign group, calculates that a new petrol car will produce about 27 tonnes if driven for 100,000 kilometres (62,000 miles), and 49 tonnes over 200,000km.

Electric cars, by contrast, use less energy and can charge from zero-carbon sources. Just how much greener electric cars can be in operation depends on how much renewable electricity is used in local grids. Transport & Environment has a handy online calculator that allows you to play with the grid, choosing between different countries’ energy mixes and whether the battery was made in carbon-heavy China or greener Sweden. Where the lines cross indicates how many miles are needed for a battery car to win on carbon emissions.

Lucien Mathieu, T&E’s cars director, said that even if you choose a worst-case scenario – vehicles made and driven with electricity largely from coal – the electric car will win out after about 70,000km (about six years of driving). “The more you drive an electric car, the better it gets,” he said.

The picture for electric cars will improve as power from the wind and the sun replace gas and oil, reducing carbon emissions from generating electricity. Colin Walker, the head of transport at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, said: “Even if you have a really dirty grid, EVs are still better for the environment. That will keep going as the grid gets cleaner and cleaner.”

We also need to take into account the future of the technologies. Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, said emissions from fossil fuel cars cannot fall much further, meaning they are not a viable technology for a zero-emissions world. Yet battery development is still in relative infancy, and is likely to tip the balance further in favour of electric cars.

Batteries are “a good endgame solution” for the transition to net zero, Hoekstra said. “The gasoline engine is basically going nowhere.”
Any caveats?

Batteries are not the only way to get cars to net zero. You can fill them with “e-fuels” – petrol made with carbon from the air, hydrogen from water, and green electricity. That technology works and will probably be used to power classic cars long into the future. Other people advocate using the hydrogen in fuel cells to run a motor.

However, in either case the energy efficiency is drastically lower than using that electricity directly, and the fuel is likely to be needed for planes, which are much harder to decarbonise.

And there was an important point in Atkinson’s Guardian article: replacing an old, little-used car with a brand new electric car may not make sense because of the “carbon debt”.

“If the vehicle is not being regularly used there is certainly a case to wait until the point you’re going to replace it anyway,” said the CCC’s Devane. However, he and others cautioned that any calculation of relative carbon savings for individuals would be complicated. And, Hoekstra added, “not having an electric car is better for the environment” if you can rely on public transport instead.
The verdict

The scientific consensus is overwhelming: on any realistic like-for-like comparison a battery car will be cleaner than its petrol or diesel equivalent. Burning fossil fuels to make and drive electric cars will still cause emissions, but at a lower level than inefficient fossil fuel engines.

That is true of today’s grid (in richer economies, at least) but in tomorrow’s grid the benefits will grow as long as countries continue to shift away from coal and gas to generate electricity. Putting batteries in cars so far appears to be the only practical way to shift the tens of millions of light vehicles sold every year towards net zero emissions.
Making the switch to electric vehicles: ‘The biggest shock was the huge savings’


Jem Bartholomew

The Guardian
23 December 2023·

Photograph: Doug Houghton/Alamy

From the bottom of Max Berman’s garden in High Wycombe, he can see the M40 motorway, with cars shooting between London and Birmingham up one of England’s great asphalt veins. On some days, Berman says, he can see the diesel fumes suspended in the air.

It was this awareness of pollution that led Berman, a 50-year-old working in the film industry, to switch to an electric vehicle (EV) in 2019. He found a pre-owned Volkswagon e-up! for £6,500 on eBay. Now Berman’s car is one of more than 940,000 fully electric vehicles on UK roads, according to government data.

Most electric cars are already cheaper over the long term than petrol or diesel, according to research organisation Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and the UK government’s Climate Change Committee said in October that EVs “will be significantly cheaper than petrol and diesel vehicles to own and operate over their lifetimes”.


That means Berman’s EV switch is one that many households are considering. And from 1 January, carmakers must ensure at least 22% of new UK cars sold are fully electric, which raises incrementally to an eventual 100% by 2035.

But there are drawbacks. There are 52,602 public chargipoints for EVs in the UK, government figures show, up by 44% on last year, but still well below the 2030 target of 300,000 public stations.

Nearly half of EV drivers still suffer “range anxiety”, a YouGov poll found. And EV purchases are on average more expensive than petrol or diesel cars upfront, a significant roadblock for lower-income households.

Expensive cars were cited in September by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, for delaying the ban on petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, a move which attracted scorn for a U-turn on a popular green policy. The “upfront cost is still high, especially for households struggling with the cost of living,” Sunak said.

Ahead of the new 22% EV requirement on 1 January, the Guardian spoke to drivers who got in touch to share their plans.
‘The biggest shock was the huge savings’

After going electric, “the biggest shock with electric driving was the huge savings,” Berman says. He estimates reductions of about £1,000-a-year on fuel and hundreds on service fees. It costs roughly 1p-a-mile to run, he says, compared with about 16p for his old petrol VW.

Berman says EVs make total sense for short journeys. But he travelled 420 miles – and back – to collect his mother from Stirling, Scotland, for Christmas, which meant two stops at roadside charging stations.

“My mum’s about to experience motorway electric driving for the first time as well, which might be a bit of a hair-raiser,” he said, speaking before the trip. “We’re in the hands of the gods.”

Yet overall, he is happy to be electric. “I love it,” Berman says – feeling like he’s making an effort not just for the wider push towards a net zero carbon future, but decreasing local pollution and smog for his two children, too.
‘It feels the right thing to be doing’

Don Sims, a 51-year-old doctor in Birmingham, will switch to electric in 2024. He is buying a new Kia Niro EV with a £30,000 upfront payment.

“It feels like its a no-brainer” for the environmental benefits, Sims says. He does feel some range anxiety, over visiting his daughter at university, but “it feels the right thing to be doing,” he says.

Sims hopes with far fewer moving parts, the maintenance will prove much cheaper over the vehicle’s lifetime – after being forced to splash out £1,200 last month on a clutch for his current Ford Focus – and estimates the on-the-road costs will be 25% to 50% lower than fuel expenditure.

Sims enjoyed test-driving the Niro. “Quiet, smooth, easy to drive – but automatic, which is just weird I think,” he says.
‘It’s totally impossible’

Yet many people cannot afford the upfront fees. South Wales pensioner Stephen Coates, 74, said he would like to swap his 15-year-old VW Passat for an EV but prices are too high and charge points too sparse.

“I’m someone who believes we need to look after our environment – we need to look after the plants and the trees and everything – and with six young grandchildren now, I need to be aware that what I do now will probably have a great impact upon them in the future when they’re young adults,” Coates says. Yet the £23,000 for an EV he checked out is too expensive.

Coates says he and his wife are on the fixed income of the state pension and two private pensions and the initial cost of going electric makes it “totally impossible”. “Obviously now with all the cost of living things, food going up, it makes it just manageable to get through the month with buying the food and paying the utility bills.”

Moreover, Coates says, the terrace houses in his Welsh town make it difficult to charge EVs, unless you “run cables across the pavement,” which would be “quite dangerous”. Coates says there are only six public sockets nearby.
‘Electric cars for me are a long way off’

Sue Horton-Smith says she realised it was time to replace her nine-year-old diesel Renault Clio when she got fined for driving in Bristol’s clean air zone recently.

But when Horton-Smith, a 67-year-old retired from the education sector, began looking at options, she says EVs did not seem possible. She lives on a terraced road in Greater Manchester, often travels long distances to Cornwall, and feels there has been a lack of government investment in electric infrastructure. She says a decent scrappage scheme for older fuel-guzzling cars would have been helpful to incentivise going greener.

“I honestly can’t see how I’ll ever be able to have an electric car, compared to people like my brother who has a garage and off-street parking,” she says. “Really, electric cars for me and my circumstances are a very long way off.”

Instead, Horton-Smith opted to buy a secondhand hybrid this autumn – a Renault Clio again – and is very happy with it. The only difference to get used to was the automatic gear system.
‘The infrastructure is getting there’

Darren Fox-Hall, a 53-year-old in Lincolnshire who works for an IT outsourcing firm, will go electric with a Škoda Enyaq in March next year.

Fox-Hall says his transition is smoothed out by it being a company car, which means he will pay a £560-a-month lease over four years but face no initial outlay, except installing a home charge socket for £1,500. That is slightly more than his monthly lease of £460-a-month, he says, but with fuel and tax significantly less, costs are lower.

He says his one worry is charging availability on longer journeys, such as taking his wife and three children on holiday to Cornwall.

“Doing a little bit of research, people [are] saying they’re financially slightly better off, which is great, but I don’t want to be stranded on the motorway because there’s no chargers,” Fox-Hall says.

However, he adds, “the infrastructure is getting there”.

Scramble for uranium supplies on new nuclear Silk Road

Matt Oliver
23 December 2023·

Since the Ukraine war erupted, Kazatomprom has sought to reduce its reliance on Moscow for getting uranium to the West, sending more via what it calls the ‘trans-Caspian route’ - Olivier Martel Savoie/The Image Bank Unreleased

Already stretched uranium supplies are set to come under further pressure as dozens of new nuclear power plants come online globally

Britain’s long-promised nuclear renaissance edged forward this month, as a crane swung a gigantic domed roof into place on a reactor building at Hinkley Point C in Somerset.

Emblazoned across it, a large banner declares: “Helping Britain achieve net zero”.


The site’s two reactors, which are expected to come online in 2027, are among 61 being built around the world, as more countries turn to nuclear to help cut their carbon emissions.

Yet with hundreds more planned, experts are now asking where all the uranium to fuel them will come from. There is a worrying lack of answers.

The uncertainty has driven the price of the radioactive metal to heights not seen in more than a decade.

The world’s largest crane has been used to place a roof wider than the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral on top of the Hinkley Point C - Handout/AFP

On the same day Hinkley’s reactor building was crowned, the price of uranium jumped to $85.75 a pound on the spot market.

That is the highest level since January 2007 and compares to just $24 per pound at the start of 2020.

This month, Morgan Stanley analysts predicted it will rise to $95 in the first half of next year, while others believe it could easily go much higher.

The driving force is the fear of a decade-long supply crunch, as demand for uranium ramps up but miners struggle to get the metal out of the ground quickly enough.

Demand is forecast to reach 180 million pounds this year alone, compared to just 130 million pounds of expected production, according to London research company Ocean Wall, a uranium specialist.

Normally in a situation like this, high commodity prices would prompt miners to rapidly invest in new projects to boost overall supplies. But uranium is a different story, says Ben Finegold, an analyst at Ocean Wall.

Reopening mothballed mines will barely move the needle on supply globally. Meanwhile, it typically takes more than a decade to open new ones.

“The supply response is going to be so slow,” Finegold says.

“Frankly, if the uranium price were to jump to $500 a pound tomorrow, it would do very little for meaningful volumes of supply in the short to medium term.”

Mining uranium is more complicated than mining other precious metals, partly due to restrictions on how it is transported and stored.

In the past decade, production of raw uranium concentrate (known as yellowcake) has plunged from a peak of 69,966 tonnes in 2013 to 58,201 last year. According to the WNA, that is more than 10,000 tonnes below current reactor requirements – let alone planned ones.

The malaise set in after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, which prompted some countries such as Japan and Germany to shut down reactors.

This caused utility firms to flood the market with excess fuel, sending the price of uranium crashing to levels that made mining unprofitable, particularly for western operators.

Worse still, when the Covid pandemic struck in 2020 some miners were forced to halt activity altogether.

It has created a supply deficit of the kind unseen for many years, forcing European and American utilities to draw down on inventories built up over years.

Now, those stockpiles are dwindling.

“Inventory is a finite resource, and at some point they run out,” says Malcolm Critchley, president of US uranium processor ConverDyn. “And then you’re faced with a sort of fundamental problem in the market, where supply is lagging behind demand.”

Uranium supplies will be stretched for years to come. The simplest explanation for the supply crunch is that countries are building a huge number of reactors, in many cases to cut their carbon emissions and achieve 2050 “net zero” targets.

Worldwide, in addition to the 61 reactors being built, another 112 are in the planning process (including two at Sizewell C in Suffolk). A further 318 are proposed in some form, the WNA says.

This construction boom is largely driven by enormous programmes in China and India, as well as Middle Eastern countries including Turkey and Egypt.

The scale of China’s programme alone is staggering. There, the number of reactors in operation has risen from 17 to 55 since Fukushima – a period during which the UK started but failed to finish a single one.

Meanwhile, another 25 are under construction and plans are being drawn up for nearly 200 more.

That has prompted Beijing to build a massive stockpile of uranium as well.

In the past decade, production of raw uranium concentrate (known as yellowcake) has plunged from a peak of 69,966 tonnes in 2013 to 58,201 last year - Handout Publicity Material

Over the next 15 years, Ocean Wall predicts China could hoover up one billion pounds (about 454,000 tonnes) of the metal, equivalent to roughly half of all global supplies if production remained static.

Other factors are pushing up prices as well. Many older reactors are now expected to run for longer, after countries including the UK, US and France opted to extend their lifetimes, while some that were idled in Japan are being brought back online.

Uranium mining is dominated by a small cabal of countries and businesses, with parts of the supply chain heavily concentrated into a few hands.

Kazakhstan’s state miner Kazatomprom is by far the largest producer, with 23pc market share, according to the World Nuclear Association (WNA).

Other top miners include Canada’s Cameco (12pc), France’s Orano (11pc), China General Nuclear (10pc) and Russian state owned Uranium One (9pc).

Producers are struggling to respond quickly to increased demand, in part because of how long they were stuck in low gear. Cameco in September slashed the 2023 production forecast for its Cigar Lake mine from 18 million pounds to 16.3 million pounds, citing equipment problems.

Adding to supply pressure is the fact that US lawmakers are pushing for a ban on imports of Russian uranium, with a bill passed in the House of Representatives earlier this month waiting to clear the Senate.

That will make life harder for American utilities, which currently source about 12pc of their supplies from Russia and about 25pc from Kazakhstan, which has historically shipped uranium out of St Petersburg.

Since the Ukraine war erupted, Kazatomprom has sought to reduce its reliance on Moscow for getting uranium to the West, sending more via what it calls the “trans-Caspian route” – or the “new nuclear Silk Road” to some analysts.

Getting uranium to the US via St Petersburg reliably takes around 32 days. However, sending it west along this new Silk Road takes 43 days and is riskier and more expensive.

Yellowcake has to be sent first by rail to the Kazakh port of Aktau, then is shipped across the Caspian sea to the port of Baku in Azerbaijan, which is in conflict with neighbouring Armenia, before travelling by rail again to the port of Poti in Georgia.

It is then sent by ship through the contested Black Sea – hugging the coast of Turkey all the way – before passing through the Bosphorus strait and into the Mediterranean.

Kazatomprom claims it is now sending as much as 70pc of western supplies this way. But the route’s riskier nature has led to fears that the company may instead end up dealing more with China, which has built an enormous warehouse near its border with Kazakhstan to store trainloads of uranium that are constantly arriving.

Some western commentators have pointed to Australia as a solution to the crunch, where the world’s biggest reserves of uranium are buried. However, Ocean Wall’s Finegold argues there are not enough projects underway yet to even begin to address the global shortfall.

He believes the only answer is for western miners to open a generation of new pits, but this will take time.

“There has to be a higher incentive for Western production,” he explains, “whether that’s higher prices or a slightly more relaxed regulatory framework.”

Back in Somerset, operator EDF says it has already safely secured the uranium needed to fuel Hinkley Point C from countries including Kazakhstan and Canada.

That is reassuring for now. But if the UK wants to build yet more nuclear reactors, we had better start thinking about how to fuel them.