Mystery Paris street artist ‘Invader’ glues up new work to celebrate Olympics and delight fans

The mystery French street artist known only as “Invader” has struck again – this time to celebrate the Paris Olympics. Invader has been cementing mosaics to Paris walls since the 1990s, usually at night and without permission. His works now dot all corners of the City of Light and his fans have a lot of fun hunting them down.

 (AP video: John Leicester)Photos

BY JOHN LEICESTER
 August 7, 2024

PARIS (AP) — The mystery French street artist known only as “Invader” has struck Paris again — this time to celebrate the Olympics.

Invader has been cementing his quirky mosaics to Paris walls since the 1990s, usually at night and without permission. He’s become France’s most international, invasive and intriguing contemporary street artist. His works dot all corners of the City of Light and his fans have a lot of fun hunting them down.

And now there’s a new, Olympic-themed one for them to find.

Invader cemented it to a wall on one of the River Seine’s embankments sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday. Using tiles to create the mosaic, it shows one of his signature Space Invader figures running. The work’s colors evoke the shades of blue that Paris Games organizers have used to decorate the city for the Olympics.

A representative for artist — who, like him, maintains anonymity — said by email to The Associated Press that “Invader told me to say that he wanted to celebrate the Olympics in Paris with this mosaic. The space invader is running and he wears some of the colors of the Olympics signage.”

The artist’s admirers can download his app, called “Flash Invaders,” and then use it to take photos of any of his works that they find.

When they do, the app awards them points. The more works they find and “flash,” the more points they get.

It’s addictive: The app has nearly 400,000 players.

The new mosaic is the 1,512th that Invader has glued up in Paris. Players get 50 points when they flash it with his app. Since the first catalogued mosaic of a blue Space Invader went up on a Paris street in 1998, numbered PA_01, Invader has colonized the world. There are now more than 4,000 of his mosaics in cities and towns on all continents except Antartica.

On Instagram, the artist posted a photo Wednesday of the new work and the words “Special Olympic Games Paris 2024,” with a jogger running past.

Catch up on the latest from Day 13 of the 2024 Paris Olympics:
Basketball: LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry vs. Nikola Jokic is quite the matchup in the U.S. v. Serbia men’s basketball semifinals Thursday.
Track and field: Noah Lyles won the 100 by five thousandths of a second on Sunday night, and is a big favorite heading into the 200.

Keep up: Follow along with our Olympics medal tracker and list of winners. Check out the Olympic schedule of events.

That and a video post by the artist alerted admirers that there was a new work for them to find.

A small group of them quickly tracked it down, took its photo with the app, got their points, and spent time together admiring the work.

Super fan André Lavigne, a 64-year-old retired chemical engineer, was among the first to find and flash it. He is currently ranked in the top 100 players on the app, having tracked down 2,718 of the artist’s works in France and overseas.

In just the first few hours, the work was already generated buzz.

“I’ve seen many people coming and flashing and asking, ‘It’s a new one?’ And I say, ‘Yes, it has been put (up) last night.’ (They reply) ‘Oh, well, that’s extraordinary,” Lavigne said.

Another admirer, Gema Calero, rolled up on her bike and celebrated with a fist pump when she got her 50 points.

“It’s all fresh, it still smells of glue,” she said.

She says searching high and low across Paris for the works has taught her lots about the city and the value of looking around.

OLYMPIC PHOTOS: See AP’s top photos from the 2024 Paris games

“It allows you to look at life differently. You hunt around. You look up a little bit. Because normally when we walk we look at what’s in front of us,” she said. “It’s super.”

Like Banksy, the British street artist he is sometimes likened to, Invader is elusive, fiercely protective of his anonymity and operating on the margins of illegality. He comes, glues, and disappears into the night, leaving behind his signature pixelated mosaics made mostly with small ceramic and glass tiles.

Most resemble the aliens from the Space Invaders arcade game. Others are wonderfully elaborate, such as still lives of fruit or, in New York, portraits of Lou Reed and Andy Warhol. Some reference pop culture — Spiderman, Star Wars, Bugs Bunny, Ninja Turtles, pizza and the like.

Israel court hears bid to close prison where soldiers are accused of sexually assaulting Palestinians


Israeli soldiers gather at the gate to the Sde Teiman military base, as people protest in support of soldiers being questioned for detainee abuse, July 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov, File)

Protesters wave Israeli national flags in support of soldiers being questioned for detainee abuse, outside of the Sde Teiman military base, Monday, July 29, 2024. The Israeli military said Monday it was holding nine soldiers for questioning following allegations of “substantial abuse” of a detainee at a shadowy facility where Israel has held Palestinian prisoners throughout the war in Gaza. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

BY JULIA FRANKEL
 August 7, 2024

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli Supreme Court considered a petition Wednesday to shutter a desert military prison where soldiers have been accused of abusing Palestinians, as a new video emerged purporting to show the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee.

Rights groups have been engaged in a legal battle since June to shut down the detention facility, known as Sde Teiman, where Israel has held many Palestinians detained in Gaza during the 10-month war with Hamas. The groups claim that conditions at the facility are grave and that abuse by Israeli soldiers is common, basing their claims on testimony from released detainees and Israeli whistleblowers.

Calls for the prison’s closure ramped up in late July, when Israeli military police arrested 10 soldiers from Sde Teiman on suspicion of their involvement in the alleged sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee at the facility. Five of the soldiers are no longer under investigation. A physician who identified himself as the person who reported the attack said last week that the detainee appeared to have been seriously sexually abused.

The soldiers’ detention triggered angry protests by supporters, and at least two government ministers demanded their release. The response underscored tensions between the military command and hard-line nationalists in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government who advocate even harsher treatment of Palestinians detained from Gaza.



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Defense lawyer Nati Rom told The Associated Press that the soldiers were arrested about a month after the alleged attack and are accused of performing acts of sodomy on the detainee. He said the soldiers used force to defend themselves against a detainee who attacked them during a search, but did not sexually abuse him

A video purporting to reveal the assault shows a group of masked soldiers wresting a detainee from the ground, where he and other Palestinians appear to be lying face down in a fenced-in pen, their arms cuffed above their heads. The soldiers take the detainee to an area of the pen they appear to cordon off using shields. Footage then shows about eight soldiers and a dog with the detainee, largely hidden from view by shields held up by some of the soldiers. Israel’s Channel 12 news, which broadcast the video, said it captures the moment of the attack.

Two soldiers who formerly worked at the facility and requested anonymity for fear of retribution told the AP they believed the video had been taken at Sde Teiman. The room in which the detainees appear, a corral topped by barbed wire, matches photos of the facility shared with the AP and the description of incarceration conditions that whistleblowers have previously described.

Military prosecutors stated that evidence brought forth in the case indicates “a reasonable suspicion of the commission of the acts,” the Israeli military said Tuesday. The military did not comment on the video.

U.S. officials have seen the video, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Wednesday. He called the reports of sexual abuse “horrific.”

“Prisoners’ human rights need to be respected in all cases and when there are alleged violations, the government of Israel needs to take steps to investigate those who are alleged to have committed abuses and, if appropriate, hold them accountable,” Miller said.

Meanwhile, more information about the case has come to light from a doctor who treated the detainee in question.

Dr. Yoel Donchin, an Israeli anesthesiologist at the field hospital for Palestinian detainees at Sde Teiman, came forward Friday as the person who reported the case to the military authorities.

In an interview with Israeli public broadcaster Kan, Donchin said the detainee’s life was in danger and that he was in need of emergency surgery after the attack.

During the interview, Donchin confirmed information attributed to an unidentified medical official who said the detainee had fractured ribs, showed signs of beating and bore evidence of being sodomized, leading to a tear in the lower part of the intestines.

Donchin said the detainee’s case was the most extreme he had witnessed since working at the facility.

Naji Abbas, a case manager with Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, said the detainee was transferred to a civilian hospital outside Sde Teiman about a month ago because his injuries were too severe for treatment at the military facility. Abbas received his information from a medical source with knowledge of the case.

In a written submission to the Israeli Supreme Court in advance of Wednesday’s hearing, state attorneys did not mention the military’s sexual assault investigation, but insisted the rights groups’ claims of deplorable conditions were inaccurate.

The Israeli organization arguing in court for the military prison’s closure, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, had alleged that detainees at the facility are punished with severe violence, including with attack dogs and sexual assault; made to sit on the ground blindfolded and handcuffed 24 hours a day; forbidden from moving or speaking and rarely shower or change clothes.

An investigation by the AP into the facility documented how detainees are blindfolded, handcuffed and diapered during medical treatment.

The state, in a written response, said detainees were given sufficient food and water, showered regularly, accessed medical treatment as needed, and were blindfolded and handcuffed because of concerns that they could harm staff. The state said a new wing of Sde Teiman set to open Sept. 5 would improve conditions, including adding a walking area for detainees. Additional improvements are expected to be made later this year, it said.

Following Wednesday’s hearing, the court gave the state a week and a half to provide more information about conditions at the prison.

Sde Teiman was the main military prison holding Palestinians captured in large-scale raids on the Gaza Strip. Israel began moving detainees out of the facility following the rights groups’ petition to shut it down. State filings show 28 detainees remain.

Under Israeli law, Palestinians from Gaza can be held at the facility, and other military detention camps, without a detention order, trial or charge for over a month. Many Palestinian detainees have spent weeks in the facility before being released back to Gaza after Israeli authorities deemed them unaffiliated with militant groups.
___

This story has been edited to correct the name of the organization Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. ___

Associated Press reporters Tia Goldenberg and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel; and Jack Jeffery in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.

JULIA FRANKEL
Frankel is an Associated Press reporter in Jerusalem.

Majority of US adults say democracy is on the ballot but they differ on the threat: AP-NORC poll

- Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz arrive at a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

BY ALI SWENSON AND LINLEY SANDERS
August 8, 2024S


NEW YORK (AP) — Roughly 3 in 4 American adults believe the upcoming presidential election is vital to the future of U.S. democracy, although which candidate they think poses the greater threat depends on their political leanings, according to a poll.

The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that most Democrats, Republicans and independents see the election as “very important” or “extremely important” to democracy, while Democrats have a higher level of intensity about the issue. More than half of Democrats say the November election is “extremely important” to the future of U.S. democracy, compared to about 4 in 10 independents and Republicans.

Democrat Pamela Hanson, 67, of Amery, Wisconsin, said she has grave concerns for the future of democracy in the country if Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gets elected.
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“His statements tend towards him being a king or a dictator, a person in charge by himself,” Hanson said. “I mean, the man is unhinged in my opinion.”

But Republican Ernie Wagner from Liberty, New York, said it’s President Joe Biden’s administration — of which Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, is a part — that has abused the power of the executive branch.

“Biden has tried to erase the student loans, and he’s been told by the courts that it’s unconstitutional to do that,” said Wagner, 85. “He’s weaponized the FBI to get at his political opponents.”

The poll findings suggest that many Democrats continue to view Trump as a threat to democracy after he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, embraced the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and threatened to seek retribution against his opponents if he wins reelection.

But they also indicate that many of Trump’s supporters agree with him that Biden is the real threat to democracy. Trump and his allies have accused Biden of weaponizing the Justice Department as it has pursued charges against the former president over his effort to halt certification of the 2020 election and keeping classified documents, though there is no evidence Biden has had any involvement or influence in the cases.

Trump has framed himself as a defender of American values and portrayed Biden as a “destroyer” of democracy. He said multiple times after he survived an assassination attempt last month that he “took a bullet for democracy.”

The poll, conducted in the days after Biden dropped out of the race and Harris announced her campaign, is an early glimpse of Americans’ views of a reshaped contest.

What to know about the 2024 Election

Democracy: American democracy has overcome big stress tests since 2020. More challenges lie ahead in 2024.

AP’s Role: The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. Learn more.

Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans say democracy could be at risk in this election depending on who wins the presidency, responses generally in line with the findings when the question was last asked in an AP-NORC poll in December 2023.

Hanson, the Wisconsin Democrat, said she worries Trump in a second term would use the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court to overrule important freedoms. She also is concerned that he would fill his Cabinet with loyalists who don’t care about the well-being of everyone in the country and defund agencies that regulate key functions of society.

But Wagner, the New York Republican, brushed off those concerns and pointed to Trump’s time in office.

“When he was in the White House, we had peace, we had prosperity, we had energy independence,” he said. “What’s undemocratic about that?”

He said he didn’t think Trump’s intentions leading up to and on Jan. 6 were criminal.

“I just think he was misguided,” Wagner said.

Some independents also are carefully considering the stakes of the upcoming election on the country’s democratic future.

“I believe that this is the most important election of my lifetime,” said 53-year-old Patricia Seliga-Williams of LaVale, Maryland, an independent who is leaning toward voting for Harris.

Seliga-Williams said she’s barely scraping by on $15 an hour as a hotel breakfast attendant and remembers Trump handling the economy and immigration well. But she didn’t like it when he recently quipped that he plans to be a “dictator” on day one in office.

“We all know Donald Trump could run the country,” she said. “But he’s just too aggressive anymore, and I don’t think I can trust that as a voter.”

Not everyone agrees that this year’s presidential election will be an inflection point for the country’s democracy, offering starkly different reasons, according to the AP-NORC poll. About 2 in 10 Americans say democracy in the U.S. is strong enough to withstand the outcome of the election no matter who wins, while another 2 in 10 believe democracy is already so seriously broken that the outcome doesn’t matter.

The poll also shows the stakes of democracy in the election are felt more by older adults rather than younger ones. About half of adults 45 and older say the outcome of the election is extremely important for the future of democracy, compared to about 4 in 10 adults under 45.

“Making the claim that the other candidate is trying to destroy democracy, it doesn’t really land for me,” said Daniel Oliver, 26, an independent from suburban Detroit. “I think that we have things in place that should safeguard against when you kind of play at destroying democracy. We have other branches of government. We have people that believe in voting. So, it would be hard for a candidate to take over and become some kind of dictator.”

He said he’ll be looking for candidates to talk about issues he’s more interested in, such as reducing inflation and investing in clean energy sources.

Biden and Trump spent months sparring over whose second term would be worse for democracy. The president nodded to the consequences when he ended his campaign last month, saying in his Oval Office address that “the defense of democracy is more important than any title.”

Harris has focused more on the concept of “freedom” in the early days of her campaign. She has said Trump’s reelection could result in Americans losing the freedom to vote, the freedom to be safe from gun violence and the freedom for women to make decisions about their own bodies. Her debut campaign ad last month was set to Beyoncé’s 2016 track “Freedom,” and it has become a campaign anthem for her at rallies ever since.

Harris didn’t mention democracy in her first two presidential campaign rallies, but she returned to the topic in remarks to Sigma Gamma Rho sorority members in Houston last week, saying “our fundamental freedoms are on the ballot, and so is our democracy.”
___

The poll of 1,143 adults was conducted July 25-29, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

ALI SWENSON
Swenson reports on election-related misinformation, disinformation and extremism for The Associated Press.
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LINLEY SANDERS
Sanders is a polls and surveys reporter for The Associated Press. She develops and writes about polls conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, and works on AP VoteCast.
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Fossils suggest even smaller ‘hobbits’ roamed an Indonesian island 700,000 years ago



This photo provided by Yousuke Kaifu shows an arm bone fragment excavated on the Indonesia island of Flores. New research suggests ancestors of an early human species nicknamed “hobbits” were even shorter. (Yousuke Kaifu via AP)


This image provided by the University of Tokyo shows the Mata Menge humerus fragment, left, at the same scale as the humerus of Homo floresiensis from the Liang Bua cave on the island of Flores, Indonesia. (Yousuke Kaifu/University of Tokyo via AP)


This photo provided by Gerrit van den Bergh shows the Mata Menge excavation site on the Indonesia island of Flores on Oct. 15, 2014. Researchers uncovered fossils at the site that suggest ancestors of the “hobbits” were even smaller and lived around 700,000 years ago. (Gerrit van den Bergh via AP)


This photo provided by Gerrit van den Bergh shows the Mata Menge excavation site on the Indonesia island of Flores on Sept. 9, 2019. Researchers uncovered fossils at the site that suggest ancestors of the “hobbits” were even smaller and lived around 700,000 years ago. (Gerrit van den Bergh via AP)


BY ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN
August 6, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — Twenty years ago on an Indonesian island, scientists discovered fossils of an early human species that stood at about 3 1/2 feet (1.07 meters) tall — earning them the nickname “hobbits.”

Now a new study suggests ancestors of the hobbits were even slightly shorter.

“We did not expect that we would find smaller individuals from such an old site,” study co-author Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo said in an email.


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The original hobbit fossils — named by the discoverers after characters in “The Lord of the Rings” — date back to between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. The new fossils were excavated at a site called Mata Menge, about 45 miles from the cave where the first hobbit remains were uncovered.

In 2016, researchers suspected the earlier relatives could be shorter than the hobbits after studying a jawbone and teeth collected from the new site. Further analysis of a tiny arm bone fragment and teeth suggests the ancestors were a mere 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) shorter and existed 700,000 years ago.

“They’ve convincingly shown that these were very small individuals,” said Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University who was not involved with the research.

The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers have debated how the hobbits – named Homo floresiensis after the remote Indonesian island of Flores – evolved to be so small and where they fall in the human evolutionary story. They’re thought to be among the last early human species to go extinct.

Scientists don’t yet know whether the hobbits shrank from an earlier, taller human species called Homo erectus that lived in the area, or from an even more primitive human predecessor. More research – and fossils – are needed to pin down the hobbits’ place in human evolution, said Matt Tocheri, an anthropologist at Canada’s Lakehead University.

“This question remains unanswered and will continue to be a focus of research for some time to come,” Tocheri, who was not involved with the research, said in an email.
___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Miscarriages in horses offer insights to help prevent pregnancy loss in humans

By Ernie Mundell, HealthDay News


Researchers are gleaning important insights into miscarriages in women from a longtime four-legged friend: horses. Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News

Researchers are gleaning important insights into miscarriages in women from a longtime four-legged friend: horses.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, since female horses have long pregnancies (11 months) and embryos of both species grow at similar rates, said a team overseen by Mandi de Mestre, a professor of equine medicine at Cornell University in New York.

Their new research found that almost half (42%) of miscarriages and spontaneous abortions that occurred in horses during the first two months of pregnancy were linked to a chromosomal condition called triploidy.

With triploidy, the fetus contains an extra set of chromosomes that can cause complications leading to pregnancy loss, the researchers explained.

So, horses make a good model for human pregnancies because, "over that embryonic period [up to eight weeks from conception], triploidy had rarely been reported in mammals outside of women," de Mestre noted in a Cornell news release.

"The study tells us that over the first six weeks of gestation, this will likely be the primary cause of pregnancy loss following natural conception," she added.

Her team published its findings Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the research team, about 10% to 20% of human pregnancies will end in miscarriage, and chromosomal aberrations are thought to be a major cause.

But until now, scientists haven't had an adequate animal model for human miscarriages. In the new study, they analyzed 256 fetus and placenta samples from veterinarians who had treated horses with failed pregnancies over a period of 10 years.

"We were able to study the impact of chromosome errors across the entire pregnancy in the horse," de Mestre said. "We found that triploidy is only associated with losses in early pregnancy."

Chromosomal errors occurred in 57.9% of pregnancy losses up to day 55 of gestation and in 57.2% of losses between days 56 and 110.

In contrast, only 1.4% of losses between days 111 and the end of pregnancy were associated with chromosomal errors like triploidy.

Aneuploidy -- the gain or loss of a chromosome -- was tied to miscarriages in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, de Mestre's group reported, while deletions or duplications of a segment of a chromosome were largely detected in miscarriages after 110 days.

That mirrored similar findings among women who had miscarried. Most human miscarriages occur at home, the research team noted, so there's little for researchers to work with if they hope to uncover why miscarriages occur.

Using the horse as a model might rectify that situation, they said. Horses' owners typically provide a high level of care and monitoring to their animals during a pregnancy, offering much data that's useful for research.

The new research can certainly help horses.

For example, if it's determined that a major chromosomal error is present early in an equine pregnancy, veterinarians can move to end the pregnancy, de Mestre's team said.

"This research has provided a foundation for understanding the genetic causes of pregnancy loss in horses, often referred to as pregnancy loss of unknown cause," said study co-first author Shebl Salem, a postdoctoral researcher in de Mestre's Equine Pregnancy Lab.

SHE WROTE OF HORSES AND WOMEN 

Book Review: Walk to the End of the World, Suzy McKee Charnas (1974)

July 30, 2015/ Joachim Boaz

Gene Szafran’s cover for the 1st edition

5/5 (Masterpiece)

“The men heard, and they rejoiced to find an enemy they could conquer at last. One night, as planned, they pulled all the women from sleep, herded them together, and harangued them, saying, remember, you caused the Wasting” (3).

Suzy McKee Charnas’ Walk to the End of the World (1974) is the first of four novels in The Holdfast Chronicles sequence (1974-1999) that charts the slow forces of change in a post-apocalyptical future where women (“fems”) are chattel. Kate Macdonald, in her wonderful review of Ammonite (1993) characterized Nicola Griffith’s novel as “instantly […] feminist: not stealth, or muted, or sub-conscious.” Walk to the End of the World falls squarely, and powerfully into this category. Told with intensity and vigor, Charnas brands the reader with her vision, a searing and festering landscape where white men have either exterminated the remaining “unmen” (the “Dirties”) or subjugated them (the “fems”) after a manmade cataclysm. Complex societal institutions maintain control in a mostly illiterate world via appeals to collective memory, intensive drug facilitated indoctrination, and the deconstruction of the family unit in favor of exclusively homosocial relationships.

Walk to the End of the World does not hold back its punches—this is a serious and disturbing novel. “Fems” are subjected to horrific violence as slaves to man and are forced to great extremes to survive.

Brief Plot Summary/Analysis

In the grand historical narrative espoused by the men who control the community of Holdfast, a past rebellion facilitated by “fems” and other unmen overthrew the Ancients, already weakened by the betrayal of their own sons. The survivors blamed the cataclysmic and vaguely understood Wasting that created an impoverished, polluted, and devastated world on the surviving “fems”. The community the emerges is highly regimented and authoritarian. They espouse a “heroic” and “pioneering” tradition—Holdfast is an “anchoring tendril” that holds back the forces of destruction (4). The position of men vs. women is reinforced by this narrative: men must hold back the destructive power of women embodied by the destroyed world and the wastelands that surround Holdfast.

Walk to the End of the World is comprised of five sections placed in chronological order. The first three are from the perspectives of the male characters—Captain Kelmz, Servan D Layo, Eykar Bek. The fourth, is from the perspective of the “fem” Alldera. The fifth and final section is a composite that shifts between the surviving characters and ends, again, with Alldera. The carefully planned structure is wedded to the narratological and ideological aims of the novel. None of the characters fit neatly into the post-Wasting world where rigid binaries—between man vs. woman, Senior vs. Junior, white vs. non-white, man vs. animal—dominate the society in which they restlessly inhabit.

The first character Captain Kelmz, blurs the position between Seniors and Juniors by retaining his position into old age over a band of Rovers, “the powerful defenders of the Seniors and their interests” (10). More dangerously, Kelmz sees other men in “beast shapes.” More than simply a flight of imagination, “to think of the beast was like willfully calling up the ghosts of dead enemies” (8). Man conquers beasts. Men are not beasts. Kelmz’s visions violate this central tenet profoundly troubling his sense of the world.

The second, d Layo the DarkDreamer, “has no company, no order, and no legitimate use to his fellows” (7). He also encourages and facilitates drug induced dreams outside of those taught in the Boyhouse (where all boys are taught to develop their manly souls and survive in the regimented world). Rather than “dreams of victorious battles against monsters” (45), the dreamer is free to dream what his soul desires. Under d Layo’s guidance, Kelmz dreams that he is emasculated and is but a pathetic perversion of other men (46).

The third, Eykar Bek is the Endtendant at Endpath. At Endpath Seniors—and Juniors manipulated by Seniors—end their lives when their “souls [are] ripe for departure” (17). To dream a drug induced dream was to “assure the life of one’s name among younger generations” (17). However, Eykar Bek has other interests—he seeks to uncover the reason why he knows his fathers name. In Holdfast, the “mass-divison of Seniors and Juniors” is more important than blood-ties. All men are brothers, some older, some younger…. In the grand narrative, the Ancients were overthrown by their sons: In a perversion of the Biblical story, “even God’s own Son, in the old story, had earned punishment from his Father” (22). Eykar and d Layo were friends at the Boyhouse. d Layo was thrown out into the Wild while Eykar was condemned to serve at Endpath after the scandal caused by his father. The quest for Eykar’s father forms the thrust of the narrative.

The final character Alldera, although perceived because of her gender by the male characters as a beast suitable for bearing sons and working the fields (56), is highly intelligent and an important cog in the communication networks between groups of desperate women. She leaves her world where woman are forced to be self-sustaining after drastic reductions of food after previous famines blamed on the fems. In an era of incredible deprivation, “fems” build up their numbers due to ingenious methods of preserving their own milk and consuming their own dead (59). The men who see the process declare that “it was too beautiful, too efficient to be a product of the fems’ own thinking” (65). Alldera has ulterior motives for joining the three male main characters in their trek to discover Eykar’s father.

Final Thoughts

Despite the lack of popular awareness of the novel in comparison to later feminist masterpieces such as Russ’ The Female Man (1975*) and Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1984), analysis of Walk to the End of the World does appear in some scholarly circles—for example, Bill Clemente’s article, “Apprehending Identity in the Alldera Novels of Suzy McKee Charnas” in The Utopian Fantastic ed. Martha Bartter (2004).

Feminist importance aside, I will focus on a handful of ideas that really resonated with me and elevate Charnas’ novel to its great heights: the role of songs + chants reinforcing/challenging collective memory and the focus on the ideological underpinnings of the society.

Charnas explores a variety of ways of reinforcing the master values in a mostly illiterate society. One of more prevalent is the notion of a collective memory (at least propagated by men) that reinforces a grand narrative of the past and thus the position of the present in relation to the past. For example, in the Boyhouse the boys recite the three categories of people (“unmen”) defeated in the post-Wasting world by white man: the “Dirties” i.e. “Gooks, Dagos, Chinks” etc., the “Freaks,” which includes “Faggas, Hibbies, Famlies, Kids; Junkies, Skinheads, Collegeists: Ef-eet Iron-mentalists” and finally “fems” known by “beasts’ names,” “Bird, Cat, Chick, Sow; Filly, Tigress, Bitch, Cow […]” The chant ends with a warning about the dreadful weapons of the unmen, “Cancer, raybees, deedeetee” (112). Man in the present holds back these forces of destruction.

Each social group has their own chants that play into this narrative. Captain Kelmz in order to fight off his visions silently recites the “Chant Protective” that starts with “a reckoning of the size and reach of the Holdfast and of all the fellowship of men living in it” in order to “remind a man of his brothers and of what they expected from him” (8). The ferrymen keep a “Chants Celebratory” which includes the names of the men who dare enter the empty lands to obtain wood for the ferries, “part of a fabric of custom intended to hold ferrycrews together in manly order” (33).

The songs of women fall into different patterns although they serve similar functions in creating collective cohesion. For the women who still have tongues— “muteness in fems was a fashion in demand among masters” (141)—songs, spoken in obfuscated “fem speak,” serve to transmit news. Work songs are more than entertainment, they tell of the hell wrought by the “wonderful knowledge” of men (158). They posit historical narratives counter to those of men: “Those of the unmen who realized what was happening and rose up to fight, the Ancient men slaughtered” (159). Other work songs directly mock the songs of men and the heroic founding of Holdfast, “Heroes […] The unmen are not gone; you are more predictable than the thoughtless beasts, though not as beautiful” (159). Although the chattel of man, songs sung working for their masters are a powerful medium for rebellion.

Charnas also weaves ancient theories of generation and matter into the ideological underpinnings of her society. This creates an unnerving familiarity of thought between ancient Western Thought and this dystopic future. The male soul is a “fragment of eternal energy” that is fixed inside a woman’s body by “the act of intercourse.” As the soul is alien to the woman, her body surrounds it with a physical form in order for the soul to be expelled. Thus, “a man’s life” is a struggle between the “flesh-caged soul” not to be seduced by the concerns of the fem generated “brute-body” (103). Historical narrative combines with pseudo-scientific theories of matter to generate the iron-clad boundaries, enforced by the victors, between genders.

I recommend Walk to the End of the World to all fans of feminist fiction. I fervently hope a more mainstream SF audience will be open to Charnas’ brilliantly conceived world filled with interesting characters, biting prose, and disturbing social systems with twisted philosophical underpinnings. But after reading online reviews and engaging in debates with readers over the years, I cannot help reiterate that a double standard exists when readers approach feminist SF from this era—most readers seem to be fine with other polemical male 60s/70s science fiction authors from across the political spectrum (Robert A. Heinlein, Norman Spinrad, R. A. Lafferty, John Brunner, etc). However, when a woman author takes a dystopic future scenario and weaves a poignant and harrowing experience with a powerful feminist message suddenly it is best avoided. Alas.

Walk to the End of the World is firmly among my top ten 70s SF novels.*

*note: Russ wrote The Female Man earlier but was unable to find a publisher.

*David Pringle placed it in his top 100 SF novels written between 1949 and 1984 [list].

For more book reviews consult the INDEX

OBIT

Suzy McKee Charnas, Writer of Feminist Science Fiction, Dies at 83

She was best known for the Holdfast Chronicles, a series about a dystopic world in which once-enslaved women conquer their former male masters.

Suzy McKee Charnas in an undated photo. One reviewer wrote that her four-novel series “reflects 25 years of the development of feminism.”

Credit...Tachyon Publications

By Richard Sandomir
Published March 10, 2023

Suzy McKee Charnas, an award-winning feminist science fiction writer who in a four-novel series created a post-holocaust, male-dominated society called the Holdfast that is liberated by an army of women, died on Jan. 2 at her home in Albuquerque. She was 83.

Her cousin David Szanton said the cause was a heart attack. Her death was not widely reported at the time.

Ms. Charnas, whose books were well regarded but who by her account did not make a living from her writing, was best known for her science fiction. But she also wrote vampire fiction, young-adult fantasy novels with women as central characters, and a memoir about taking care of her father in his later years after a long period of estrangement.

In an epic that began with “Walk to the End of the World” (1974) and concluded 25 years later with “The Conqueror’s Child,” Ms. Charnas conceived a dystopic world in which an escaped female slave, Alldera, leads the rebellious Free Fems to brutally conquer and enslave their former male masters. The men had faulted women for the near-destruction of humanity, called the Wasting.

Image

“The Slave and the Free,” encompassed the first two books in Ms. Charnas’s series “The Holdfast Chronicles.”

Credit...Macmillan

The Holdfast Chronicles, as the series is called, is unique in feminist science fiction “in that it reflects 25 years of the development of feminism,” Dunja M. Mohr wrote in the journal Science Fiction Studies in 1999.

“Investigating the raging war of the sexes,” she added, “Charnas does not shy away from describing the slow — and sometimes grim — process of change leading from dystopia to utopia, the painful purging of psychological and physical violence involved.”

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The fantasy novelist Polly Shulman wrote in Salon in 2000 that the Holdfast Chronicles “fall squarely in the tradition of feminist utopias/dystopias that produced Joanna Russ’s ‘The Female Man’ or Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ nourishing writers like Ursula K. Le Guin and Sheri S. Tepper.”

Ms. Charnas did not set out to write a feminist novel. In an interview with SnackReads, a digital publisher of short fiction, she said “Walk to the End of the World” began as a satire about how top political leaders in Washington would behave while confined to bunkers during a nuclear war and “waiting,” as she put it, “for the results of their stupidity to wipe out the rest of the world so they could come out and repopulate it with the assistants they were sleeping with.”

While the book was in progress, she described the story to a women’s consciousness-raising group in New Mexico, explaining that “everybody in the foreground is male” and all the women were slaves.

Then she had an epiphany.

“What are you doing sitting in this room, full of women, talking about women as half the population and writing this story that’s only about the guys?” she recalled saying to herself. “The women in your story are there, but they don’t have a word to say. Not one of them. So I went back and rewrote the whole thing, and this time I gave one of the women, Alldera, a voice, and she told part of the story, and the book changed completely. It became a feminist text.”

The other books in the Holdfast series are “Motherlines” (1978) and “The Furies” (1994). “The Conqueror’s Child” won the 1999 James Tiptree Jr. Award (now called the Otherwise), a literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that explore gender.

She also won two other science fiction and fantasy awards: a Nebula for a novella, “Unicorn Tapestry,” which is a chapter in her 1980 novel, “The Vampire Tapestry,” and the basis for her play, “Vampire Dreams”; and a Hugo for “Boobs,” a short story.

Image

“The Vampire Tapestry” (1980) was the wellspring for a play by Ms. Charnas, “Vampire Dreams.”Credit...Macmillan

“Suzy, to me, was a lot like David Bowie,” said Jane Lindskold, a science fiction and fantasy writer who knew Ms. Charnas from a writers’ group in Albuquerque. “She followed her own muse. She could have just written only vampire books, but she did what she wanted to do.”

Suzy McKee was born on Oct. 22, 1939, in Manhattan. Her parents, Robin and Maxine (Szanton) McKee, were commercial artists who worked at home but divorced when Suzy was 8 years old. Suzy was a voracious reader who also wrote and illustrated stories, often about cowboys.

“It wasn’t that much of a step from that to making up and writing down stories intended for unfolding in other people’s heads — the first true magic I can remember encountering in my life,” Ms. Charnas said in an interview with the journal Science Fiction Studies in 1999.

After graduating from Barnard College in 1961 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and history — subjects she believed would help her build convincing fictional societies in her novels — she joined the Peace Corps and taught in Nigeria for two years before earning a master’s in teaching from New York University in 1965.

She taught at a private school in Manhattan for a few years before joining Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospital as a curriculum writer for a drug-treatment program in secondary schools. She married Stephen Charnas, a lawyer, in 1968, and soon after moved to Albuquerque.

Ms. Charnas had been an occasional fan of science fiction but began writing in the genre only after reading Ursula Le Guin’s 1969 novel, “The Left Hand of Darkness,” which explored gender themes.

“The book was a mindblower,” Ms. Charnas told SnackReads, “not just for me, but for a lot of women, who said, ‘Holy crap, look what this woman did! Look what she’s talking about!’”

Science fiction was not the only genre Ms. Charnas explored. In “The Vampire Tapestry,” she created Dr. Edward Weyland, a vampire posing as an anthropology professor.

Writing in The Washington Post, the fantasy writer Elizabeth A. Lynn praised the novel, saying it “works on many levels — as pure adventure, as social description, as psychological drama and as a passionate exploration of the web that links instinct, morality and culture. It is a serious, startling and revolutionary work.”

The director Guillermo del Toro, who is known for his science fiction and horror films, was an admirer of “The Vampire Tapestry.” He called it “flawless” on Twitter in 2015 and, after Ms. Charnas’s death, said, “It may be her masterpiece.”

“Stagestruck Vampires and Other Phantasms” (2004), a collection of her short work, includes a story that rethinks “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Beauty and the Beast.” In another, an astronaut at a concert on a faraway planet listens to two lizards discussing the music.

Ms. Charnas is survived by her sisters, Liza McKee and Patricia Powers. Her husband died in 2018.

Her last book was “My Father’s Ghost: The Return of My Old Man and Other Second Chances” (2002), about how she and her husband brought her long-absent father — he had left her family when she was a child — to live on their property in Albuquerque, and her struggle to get to know him over nearly 20 years.

“The person who came to live next door to me was less my father than my father’s ghost: the ghost of my father as I had known him and imagined him all my life,” she wrote. “He was also, I suspect, the ghost of the man he himself had set out to be but never became.”

She added, “Well, I’m a lucky devil: He was a good ghost, an instructive ghost.”

Richard Sandomir is an obituaries writer. He previously wrote about sports media and sports business. He is also the author of several books, including “The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper and the Making of a Classic.” More about Richard Sandomir

NOAA seeks 'citizen science projects' to prepare fisheries for climate change


NOAA and the U.S. Department of Commerce is offering $600,000 to fund three to eight citizen science projects to prepare fisheries and fishing communities for climate change. Photo courtesy of NOAA Fisheries/Aleria Jensen

Aug. 6 (UPI) -- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with the U.S. Department of Commerce, are calling on citizens to submit science projects to prepare fisheries and fishing communities for changing environmental conditions.

NOAA Fisheries is offering $600,000 to finance public projects that "address real-world questions." The funding is provided by the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act.

"We're thrilled to announce $600,000 in funding for crucial citizen science projects to help fisheries and fishing communities prepare for climate change," NOAA Fisheries wrote in a post on X.



"Given the impacts of climate change on fisheries, it's crucial to have a comprehensive understanding of shifts in commercial, recreational and subsistence fishing, as well as their associated communities," said Janet Coit, assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries.

"Observations from people living in affected communities, what we call citizen science, has the potential to give us a better understanding of climate impacts and help us navigate those challenges," Coit added.

NOAA Fisheries is looking for projects that provide specific information on how to address data gaps in evaluating the health of marine fish stocks, as the agency works to prepare fisheries and fishing communities for the future.

The information will be used to help NOAA make accurate management decisions for vulnerable fish species. The research funding will finance between three and eight different projects during fiscal years 2025 and 2026, at about $75,000 to $200,000 a piece.

Anyone interested in submitting a scientific project can apply for a grant on the grants.gov website by Nov. 4. Additional information can be found on the NOAA Fisheries website.

Buca di Beppo restaurant chain files for bankruptcy after closing locations

AMERIKAN JOB LOSSES

Buca di Beppo announced Monday the Italian family-style restaurant chain will voluntarily file for bankruptcy as the company vowed to keep 44 of its locations open in 14 states to "best allow us to continue to serve Buca's patrons and communities for many years to come."

 Photo courtesy of Buca di Beppo

Aug. 6, 2024 / 

Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Italian family-style restaurant chain Buca di Beppo is filing for bankruptcy after closing dozens of locations in Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, Utah and Michigan.

Buca di Beppo announced Monday it would voluntarily file for reorganization under Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas.

"This is a strategic step towards a strong future for Buca di Beppo. While the restaurant industry has faced significant challenges, this move is the best next step for our brand. By restructuring with the continued support of our lenders, we are paving the way toward a reinvigorated future," Rich Saultz, the Orlando, Fla.-based chain's president said in a statement.

Buca di Beppo also vowed to keep 44 of its locations open in 14 states as it restructures, and announced plans Monday to open one new restaurant.

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"We believe this path will best allow us to continue to serve Buca's patrons and communities for many years to come. We are open for business in 44 locations and we expect day-to-day operations to continue uninterrupted," William Snyder, chief restructuring officer of Buca C LLC, said in a statement. "We anticipate moving through this process as quickly and efficiently as possible to emerge as a stronger organization built for the future."

Buca di Beppo, which opened in 1993 as a casual Italian "red sauce joint" in Minneapolis, promised its customers Monday that all reservations and gift cards will be honored at its 44 locations.

The restaurant chain's history has been rocky since going public in 1999. It was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud in 2005. Its chief executive officer, chief financial officer and controller pled guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company.

That same year, the restaurant chain -- which numbered 96 locations -- was ordered to remove all statuary busts of the pope "due to respect" after the death of Pope John Paul II.

Robert Earl's Planet Hollywood acquired the chain in 2008 for $28.5 million, which later became Earl Enterprises.

According to court papers obtained by USA Today, the company blames its current financial problems on hiring difficulties and rising costs. The restaurant chain named 30 creditors that are owed close to $50 million.

Last month, Buca di Beppo closed 13 underperforming locations that had failed to recover from the pandemic. The closures included restaurants in Sacramento, Calif; Salt Lake City and Midvale, Utah; Livonia and Utica, Mich.; Springs Township, Penn.; and Colonie, N.Y.

"Buca di Beppo has been a beloved gathering place for celebrations and memorable meals for many years," Saultz said, "and we are enthusiastic about entering this next phase of our brand's story."

EPA bans DCPA pesticide in 'historic' move to protect unborn babies, pregnant women

Farmworkers, in particular, face burdensome conditions in the fields and often face exposure to harmful pesticides while working to feed others, said U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. (pictured in 2022), hailing Tuesday’s EPA action which he says “prioritizes farmworker health and safety, especially for pregnant women, by suspending this harmful chemical from our agricultural systems.”

 File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 6 (UPI) -- The federal Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday issued an "historic" emergency order to stop the use of the pesticide Dacthal, or DCPA, in order to fully look at the serious health risks it poses to unborn babies and pregnant women.

This is the first time in almost 40 years the agency has taken this type of emergency action, according to the EPA.

"DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately," said Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA' Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said in a statement.

On Tuesday, it was announced that an emergency suspension had been applied to all registrations of the pesticide dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, otherwise known as DCPA or Dacthal, under the 1947 Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, which was signed into law by former President Harry S. Truman.

This decision by the EPA arrived due to the fact, the federal agency says, evidence is indicating how pregnant women exposed to the DCPA pesticide can possibly lead to irreversible fetus damage when exposed in utero, with changes linked to it like low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ and impaired motor skills later in life, some of which may be irreversible.

Nearly 20% of fresh, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables that Americans eat contain concerning levels of pesticides, a new report finds.

Farmworkers, in particular, face burdensome conditions in the fields and often face exposure to harmful pesticides while working to feed others, according to Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.., who hailed Tuesday's EPA action which he says "prioritizes farmworker health and safety, especially for pregnant women, by suspending this harmful chemical from our agricultural systems."

It comes after "unprecedented efforts" by the White House over the last few years to get what it called "long-overdue" data on the pesticide from its sole manufacturer, U.S- based AMVAC Chemical Corporation, in order to assess its overall risk.

In April of 2022, the Biden EPA issued the hardly-used Notice of Intent to Suspend DCPA based on AMVAC's failure to submit the complete set of required data almost 10 years after the EPA's 2013 request and January 2016 due date for the new data went unanswered. By April this year, the EPA was warning farmworkers about the risks of the pesticide as it reveled the government agency was developing "next steps" to address the risks of Dacthal.

"We must continue to build on this progress and ensure all farmworkers are given the protection, worker's rights, and overtime pay they deserve," said Grijalva.

The EPA says it consulted with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to better understand how growers use DCPA and its likely alternatives to the pesticide.

It was first introduced in 1958 to control weeds in agricultural and non-agricultural settings for crops such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and onions, according to an EPA report.

"This emergency decision is a great first step that we hope will be in a series of others that are based on listening to farmworkers, protecting our reproductive health, and safeguarding our families," Mily Treviño Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, said.

WAIT, WHAT?! 

Jury convicts pro-democracy activist of spying on Chinese dissidents for Beijing

WELL OF COURSE WHO ELSE


A Chinese American was convicted by a New York jury Tuesday on charges stemming from his nearly two decades spying on dissidents for China.

 File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 7, 2024 

Aug. 7 (UPI) -- A federal jury has convicted a Chinese American academic known publicly for his pro-democracy efforts on charges of spying on Chinese dissidents for Beijing.

Following a one-week trial, the New York jury handed down its verdict against Shujun Wang on Tuesday, finding him guilty on four counts of acting and conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government.

The 75-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen is a founder of the Flushing, N.Y., pro-democracy Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, whose membership includes Chinese dissidents and critics of the People's Republic of China.

But prosecutors accused Wang of using his position to collect and transfer information on Chinese dissidents to his native country for nearly two decades.

"The indictment could have been the plot of a John LeCarre or Graham Greene spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real that the defendant led a double life, pretending for years to be an activist for democracy while he was secretly passing information to the Chinese government," U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York said in a statement.

"The defendant was a perfect stooge for the PRC, a well-known academic and founder of a pro-democracy organization who was willing to betray those who respected and trusted him."

Court documents show that since at least 2006 Wang operated under the direction of four Chinese officials of Beijing's foreign intelligence Ministry of State Security. At their direction, he was tasked with gathering information on those seen as "subversive" to the People's Republic of China.

Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters, Taiwanese independence advocates and Uyghur and Tibet activists where among those he was tasked with spying on, according to prosecutors, who said Wang communicated with the Chinese intelligence officials over encrypted messing smart phone applications and met with them in person during his trips to his native country.

According to prosecutors, the information Wang collected from private conversations with prominent dissidents, pro-democracy advocates and human rights organization was kept as so-called email diaries that his accomplices were able to access.

In total, some 163 diary entries had been recovered by law enforcement from his residence.

Amid the law enforcement investigation, additional charges were brought against Wang for lying. According to prosecutors, he denied being in contact with the ministry officials over the course of three separate interviews held between 2017 and 2021.

Wang was arrested March 16, 2022, and was charged along with the four Chinese intelligence officials.

When sentenced Jan. 9, Wang faces up to 25 years' imprisonment.

His co-defendants -- Feng He, Jie Ji, Ming Li and Keqing Lu -- remain at large.

China has previously rejected the accusations that it was behind the spying of Chinese dissidents. After Wang was arrested, Beijing lambasted the United States for its "unwarranted denigration and smearing against China."

"The U.S. side should abandon the Cold War mentality and ideological bias, stop groundless accusation and smearing against china and do more to promote China-U.S. relations," said Zhao Lijian, Beijing's foreign ministry spokesman.

13. The Use Of Spies

---

 

1. Sun Tzu said: Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State.

The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways.

As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.

2. Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day.

This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.

3. One who acts thus is no leader of men, no present help to his sovereign, no master of victory.

4. Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.

5. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.

6. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.

7. Hence the use of spies, of whom there are five classes: (1) Local spies; (2) inward spies; (3) converted spies; (4) doomed spies; (5) surviving spies.

8. When these five kinds of spy are all at work, none can discover the secret system. This is called "divine manipulation of the threads." It is the sovereign's most precious faculty.

9. Having local spies means employing the services of the inhabitants of a district.

10. Having inward spies, making use of officials of the enemy.

11. Having converted spies, getting hold of the enemy's spies and using them for our own purposes.

12. Having doomed spies, doing certain things openly for purposes of deception, and allowing our spies to know of them and report them to the enemy.

13. Surviving spies, finally, are those who bring back news from the enemy's camp.

14. Hence it is that which none in the whole army are more intimate relations to be maintained than with spies.

None should be more liberally rewarded. In no other business should greater secrecy be preserved.

15. Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity.

16. They cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness.

17. Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain of the truth of their reports.

18. Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of business.

19. If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy before the time is ripe, he must be put to death together with the man to whom the secret was told.

20. Whether the object be to crush an army, to storm a city, or to assassinate an individual, it is always necessary to begin by finding out the names of the attendants, the aides-de-camp, and door-keepers and sentries of the general in command. Our spies must be commissioned to ascertain these.

21. The enemy's spies who have come to spy on us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and comfortably housed. Thus they will become converted spies and available for our service.

22. It is through the information brought by the converted spy that we are able to acquire and employ local and inward spies.

23. It is owing to his information, again, that we can cause the doomed spy to carry false tidings to the enemy.

24. Lastly, it is by his information that the surviving spy can be used on appointed occasions.

25. The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy.

Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality.

26. Of old, the rise of the Yin dynasty was due to I Chih who had served under the Hsia. Likewise, the rise of the Chou dynasty was due to Lu Ya who had served under the Yin.

27. Hence it is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for purposes of spying and thereby they achieve great results. Spies are a most important element in water, because on them depends an army's ability to move.

 

---

Table of Contents: Art of War

Study: Bystander CPR more likely to save White adult men

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News


White adults are three times more likely to survive cardiac arrest after receiving bystander CPR than Black adults are, a new study found. Likewise, men are twice as likely to survive after bystander CPR than women. Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News


Whites are three times more likely to survive a cardiac arrest after receiving bystander CPR than Black adults are, a new study has found.

Likewise, men are twice as likely to survive after bystander CPR than women, researchers found.

"CPR saves lives -- that, we know," said researcher Dr. Paula Einhorn, a program officer at the National, Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). "Yet the disparities revealed in this research show we need to do more understand how to ensure equitable outcomes for all patients needing CPR. We're hoping new insights will lead to better survival for these patient groups."

For the study, researchers analyzed more than 623,000 cases of cardiac arrest that occurred in the United States between 2013 and 2022.

Among those cases, more than 58,000 people survived -- about 1 in 10.

Around 40% of cardiac arrest victims received CPR from a bystander before paramedics could arrive, researchers found.

On average, those who received bystander CPR had a 28% greater chance of surviving, compared to those who didn't.

However, there were marked differences in survival based on gender and race.

Native American and White adults had the greatest benefit from bystander CPR, with their odds of surviving increasing by 40% and 33%, respectively.

On the other hand, Black adults were just 9% more likely to survive if they got bystander CPR.

Men and women also had significant differences in benefit. Men were 35% more likely to survive cardiac arrest with bystander CPR, compared to 15% for women.

Overall, Black women had the least survival benefit, with bystander CPR increasing their survival odds by 5%. White men had the greatest benefit, at 41%.

The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Circulation.

"It's not just about whether bystander CPR was done, but was it done well for everyone so that, irrespective of race, ethnicity or sex, everyone can derive the same level of benefit from someone starting CPR?" said lead researcher Dr. Paul Chan, a cardiologist at Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo.

"These findings suggest we need to have a more complex understanding of improving survival and whether CPR delivered by bystanders provides similar survival benefits to all patients," Chan added in an NHLBI news release.

Future studies should look into the type of CPR training that bystanders have received, and whether any underlying health conditions affected the survival odds of cardiac arrest victims.

More information

The American Red Cross has more about CPR.

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