AUSTRALIA;

LAP DOG OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

Pacific Island leaders 'endorse' contentious regional policing plan

Australia announced that Pacific Island leaders at a Tonga summit endorsed a regional policing plan to curb China's influence. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed the agreement to establish up to four police training centres and a multinational crisis force, comprising 200 officers for regional emergencies and disaster response.

Issued on: 28/08/2024 -

Tonga's Crown Prince Tupouto'a 'Ulukalala (centre L), UN chief Antonio Guterres (centre R) and other leaders attend the Pacific Islands Forum. 

© Mary Lyn FONUA, AFP

Australia said Pacific Island leaders meeting at a summit in Tonga endorsed a contentious regional policing plan Wednesday, a move seen as trying to limit China's security role in the region.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said leaders had agreed to establish up to four regional police training centres and a multinational crisis reaction force.

Under the plan, a corps of about 200 officers drawn from different Pacific Island nations could be dispatched to regional hot spots and disaster zones when needed and invited.

"This demonstrates how Pacific leaders are working together to shape the future that we want to see," said Albanese, hailing the agreement.

He was flanked by leaders of Fiji, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tonga -- a symbolic show of unity in a region riven by competition between China and the United States.

According to Mihai Sora of the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank, Wednesday's endorsement was a diplomatic victory for Australia and for the Pacific Islands Forum, which had appeared deeply divided on the topic.

China's regional allies -- most notably Vanuatu and Solomon Islands -- had voiced concern that the policing plan represented a "geo-strategic denial security doctrine", designed to box out Beijing.

While all members of the forum have endorsed the deal in principle, national leaders will have to decide how much they participate, if at all.

Partner of choice?

Australia and New Zealand have historically been the region's go-to security partners, leading peacekeeping missions in Solomon Islands and training in Nauru, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Policing, however, has increasingly become a cornerstone of Beijing's efforts to build Pacific influence.

China tried and failed to ink a region-wide security pact in 2022, but has since been plying some under-resourced Pacific police forces with martial arts training and fleets of Chinese-made vehicles.

Australia and longtime ally the United States were caught napping in 2022 when China secretly signed a security pact with Solomon Islands -- the details of which have not been made public.

China now maintains a small but conspicuous police presence in Solomon Islands, sending a revolving cadre of officers to train locals in shooting and riot tactics.

Gleaming new police vehicles roam the capital Honiara emblazoned with the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force badge and stark red "China Aid" stickers.

Earlier this year, Beijing also started sending teams of police advisers to Kiribati.

There are fears in Washington that China may one day parlay these agreements into a permanent military foothold in the region.

'Not yet done'

According to the Lowy Institute's Sora, some Pacific leaders will hope the deal can plug gaps in their own security, while Canberra will hope it helps "close the window for China to seek a regional security agreement".

Papua New Guinea's Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko told AFP on Wednesday that his country was keen to "work together with Australia" to implement the proposal.

But others signalled lingering misgivings.

Top Solomon Islands' diplomatic official Colin Beck told AFP that Honiara would have domestic discussions about the plan before anything is finalised.

"We have a national process that we have to dive into it," said Beck, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"We are basically reviewing our national security strategy and everything, so it will be part of the conversation."

"The matter is still going on. The forum is not yet done."

(AFP)

Chips down: Indonesia battles illegal online gambling

Jakarta (AFP) – When the wife of Indonesian snack seller Surya asked why he stopped sending money home to his West Java village, he broke down, confessing to a gambling addiction that had cost him more than $12,000.


Issued on: 28/08/2024 -

Murals drawn by patients at the Marzoeki Mahdi Psychiatric Hospital in Bogor, West Java, which is now treating people for gambling addictions © Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP

"When I lost big I was determined to win back what I lost no matter what -- even if I had to borrow money," the 36-year-old father of two told AFP, declining to use his real name.

While gambling is illegal in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation -- with sentences of up to six years in prison -- government figures show around 3.7 million Indonesians engaged in it last year, placing more than $20 billion in bets.

The stats prompted President Joko Widodo in June to set up a task force headed by the country's security minister and that month the government ordered telecoms providers to block overseas gambling websites -- typically in Cambodia and the Philippines.

Some VPN services, which gamblers use to bypass firewalls on foreign sites, were also blacklisted, but diehard gamblers are still able to bet from their phones or through illegal bookies, and it is easy to borrow money from loan sharks.
A patient lifts weights in the garden of a hospital running a program for gamblind addicts © Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP

Surya was earning up to four million rupiah ($250) a month in the West Java capital Bandung, but once he started gambling he was only sending a million home.

He would play mobile gambling games until dawn and squander away his hard-earned money.

"Even when you're winning, the money will be gone instantly. Now, I'd rather give money to my wife," he said.
'I want to quit'

Eno Saputra, a 36-year-old vegetable seller in South Sumatra, started buying lottery tickets five years ago but is now addicted to mobile gambling.

He spends at least 100,000 rupiah ($6.45) a day gambling and once won eight million rupiah, but usually suffers losses.

"From the bottom of my heart, I want to quit, for my children," the father of three told AFP.

"I know this is wrong and forbidden by my religion."

Nova Riyanti Yusuf, director a hospital treating gambling addictions, says the number of those affected is growing © Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP

There is hope for some in Bogor, south of the capital Jakarta, where a clinic at a psychiatry hospital has been treating patients struggling to break their gambling addiction since the beginning of the year.

So far 19 addicts have received counselling and therapy for anxiety, paranoia, sleep disorders and suicidal thoughts, said Nova Riyanti Yusuf, director of the Marzoeki Mahdi Psychiatric Hospital.

But doctors believe there are many more struggling without treatment.

"I believe this is the tip of the iceberg because not everybody understands that gambling addiction is a disorder," Nova told AFP.

The hospital is now conducting a study to collect data on how many Indonesians are addicted.
Crime spree

A spate of murders, suicides and divorces linked to illegal online gambling has further cast a spotlight on the surging trade.

In June, an East Java policewoman set her husband on fire because of his gambling, while last year a 48-year-old man in Central Sulawesi robbed and killed his mother to fund his habit, according to local media reports.

Local media have also reported a spike in suicides this year by gambling addicts while Islamic courts on Java island say they are dealing with more divorce requests from women whose husbands won't stop betting.

"Gambling puts our future at risk... also the future of our family and our children," said President Widodo, more popularly known as Jokowi, when launching the task force.

Experts say, however, that the effort isn't enough.

Patients watch TV at the Marzoeki Mahdi Psychiatric Hospital, a national referral centre for mental health services, in Bogor, West Java © Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP

Police say they arrested 467 online gambling operators between April and June, seizing more than $4 million in assets.

But Indonesian judges have been criticised for handing out lenient prison sentences, with operators receiving sentences ranging from seven to 18 months.

"The investigation must be extended to the big names," said Nailul Huda, an economist from the Center of Economic and Law Studies (Celios) research group.

"Those operators did not work alone, they answered to someone big."

Surya, meanwhile, has quit gambling for a month and says he is committed to stopping long-term.

"Nobody is getting rich from online gambling. Now I've learned my lesson," he said.

But for other addicts like Eno, breaking free from the habit is no easy feat.

"This is a stupid thing to do," he said, "but I am addicted."

© 2024 AFP

Sky-high rents have Mumbai residents living on the edge

Mumbai (AFP) – Among the swanky skyscrapers of India's financial capital Mumbai, hundreds of dangerously dilapidated buildings facing demolition are crowded with families risking their lives rather than braving impossibly high rents.


Issued on: 28/08/2024 - 

Debris from the partially collapsed Rubbunnisa Manzil building lies along a street after monsoon rains in Mumbai 

© Indranil MUKHERJEE / AFP

When torrential monsoon rains lash the coastal city each year, some of the decrepit colonial-era buildings come crashing down -- often with a heavy loss of life.

"It was like seeing a biscuit that crumbles after you put it in tea," said office worker Vikram Kohli, recalling how he narrowly missed being killed when a four-storey building partially collapsed in July.

City authorities had red-flagged the century-old building in the megacity's bustling Grant Road area for repairs three years ago.

The government issued a "warning notice for evacuation" in June -- but residents ignored it.

"No one vacated the premises", the state housing authority said.

When the building collapsed, one passerby was killed, four were injured and the fire brigade had to rescue 13 people trapped inside.

Vaishnav Narvekar, who ran a simple cafe on the ground floor, said he had been "expecting" it to collapse -- just not so quickly.

It was the "worst feeling", he said.
'Dangerous and dilapidated'

But that is only one case among many in the densely populated city of about 20 million people.

More than 13,000 buildings require "continuous repair" to stave off collapse, the state's Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) said.

Of those, it lists nearly 850 buildings as being "dangerous and dilapidated" and "not recommended for repair".
A pedestrian walks past the Nathalal Bhuvan building, declared highly dilapidated by civic authorities in Mumbai © Indranil MUKHERJEE / AFP

Many are apartment blocks packed with residents, suggesting more than a hundred thousand people could live in buildings at risk.

Scores are crushed to death each year when buildings collapse, their walls weakened by rainstorms which climate scientists say are increasing in intensity.

Mumbai, the home of glitzy Bollywood stars and billionaire business tycoons, is in the midst of a major infrastructure drive, including highways, metro lines and bridges.

But the government says its affordable housing budget is stretched, leaving many tenants determined to stay put in unsound dwellings.
'Our lives are here'

"Where should we go if we left?" asked one tenant in the suburb of Ghatkopar, in a building listed as "dangerous", asking not to be named for legal reasons.

"Our lives are here."

Mumbai has the highest rental rates in India, with the median rent for a one-room apartment estimated at $480, according to the Global Property Guide.
A fruit vendor waits for customers near a warning notice for evacuation outside a building demarcated as highly dilapidated © Indranil MUKHERJEE / AFP

Top-end rents can be a dozen times higher than that.

Owners complain restrictive rent control laws mean some long-term tenants pay legacy rent fees far lower than market rates, so they do not have the funds to invest in repairs.

Tenants fear landlords will evict them, promising compensation, and then fail to pay.

"Builders who will profit from redevelopment need to make sure we are adequately compensated," added the tenant, who pays 800 rupees ($9.50) for a 46-square-metre (500-square-foot) apartment.

In a three-storey building in Ghatkopar classified as "dangerous", Jayesh Rambhiya rents a small apartment for around 500 rupees a month.

Rambhiya, who grew up in the building, said he would consider leaving if offered compensation since he'd have to pay around 10 times more for a similar apartment nearby.

"This is our right," he said.
'Not afraid'

City authorities offer temporary "transit housing" for those waiting for their home to be rebuilt, but space is severely limited.

Sanjeev Jaiswal, the MHADA housing authority's deputy head, said they were "almost" full.

Near Grant Road -- where the building collapsed in July -- is another four-storey apartment block. It is also on the "most dangerous" list.

Farida Baja, who runs an animal shelter in the building, received an evacuation order in June.

"This is a very strong building," she said, shrugging off her failure to find new accommodation.

"Even when we have to put a nail in the wall, the nail doesn't go in."

A woman walks past a building marked as highly dilapidated in Mumbai © Indranil MUKHERJEE / AFP

Another tenant had since won a temporary court order staying demolition.

Some residents accuse developers of claiming buildings are worse than they are to force tenants out.

Residents therefore use legal challenges to delay demolition for years.

Baja believes the surveyors are wrong, tapping the condemned walls with confidence.

"I am not afraid," she said. "I know the building is not coming down".

© 2024 AFP

https://files.libcom.org/files/Proudhon%20-%20What%20is%20Property.pdf

South Asia air pollution fell in 2022, but remains major killer: report

Bangkok (AFP) – A surprise improvement in air quality in South Asia in 2022 drove a decline in global pollution, with favourable weather a likely factor, a new report said Wednesday.

Issued on: 28/08/2024 - 

South Asia remains the region with the world's worst air pollution © Arun SANKAR / AFP/File

But the region continues to breathe the world's most-polluted air, with its residents losing more than 3.5 years of life expectancy on average, the annual Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) warned.

And globally, most countries have either no pollution standards or are failing to meet what they have set, subjecting their citizens to air quality that causes a broad range of health problems.

For two decades, air pollution has increased annually in South Asia, but satellite data for 2022 -- the most recent year available -- showed a surprise 18 percent fall.

The declines were recorded in every country in the region apart from Sri Lanka, according to the report, produced by the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute (EPIC).

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"While it is difficult to conclusively determine what reduced PM2.5 levels across South Asia, it is safe to posit that favourable meteorological conditions may have played a part," the report said, referring to tiny particulates that can travel deep into the body.

The widespread nature of the decline, along with the above-average rainfall across the region in 2022, lend support to that theory.

"Only time will tell whether policy changes are having an impact," the report added, warning that people in South Asia are still breathing air eight times more polluted than the World Health Organization deems safe.

"Continued observations, efforts towards policy enforcement and monitoring impacts of policy interventions will be critical for understanding and sustaining these reductions," the report said.

The decline in South Asia led to a nine percent global drop in air pollution, even as poor air quality spiked elsewhere, including in the Middle East and North Africa, with concentrations up 13 percent from a year earlier.

The report warned an ongoing lack of air quality data on the ground is hampering policy-making and implementation.

"Highly polluted countries that have little or no air quality data often fall into a bad feedback cycle where having little data leads to little attention or policy investment in the issue, which reinforces little demand for data," said Christa Hasenkopf, director of EPIC's Clean Air Program.

Earlier this year, the centre launched a $1.5 million fund to finance the installation of air quality monitors that offer open data worldwide.

Air pollution as a whole receives relatively little funding despite its outsized impact on human health.

For example, in some of Africa's most-polluted nations, air pollution "is a more serious threat to life expectancy than HIV/AIDS, tropical diseases, malaria or water, sanitation and handwashing", the report said.

There are bright spots, however, including China's remarkably successful efforts to combat dirty air.

It took measures including restricting the number of cars in big cities, reducing heavy industry capacity and banning new coal plants from certain regions.

It has reduced air pollution by 41 percent since 2013, meeting its national standards and adding an average of two years of life expectancy for its citizens, AQLI said.

Still, even in China, pollution remains more than five times higher than WHO guidelines, and the benefits of Beijing's measures are unevenly spread.

Air quality remains poor across several major provinces, and in some prefectures has actually increased since 2013.

© 2024 AFP

NETHERLANDS

Feyenoord-Ajax game called off due to police strike

The Hague (AFP) – Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb on Tuesday called off this weekend's football match between arch-rivals Feyenoord and Ajax due to a police strike, saying public safety "cannot adequately be guaranteed".


Issued on: 27/08/2024

Feyenoord and Ajax have a long-running rivalry in Dutch football © Pieter Stam de Jonge / ANP/AFP/File

The call comes after police unions Monday said they will not be present at the highly-charged game, which was scheduled to be played at Feyenoord's De Kuip stadium in Rotterdam on Sunday.

"The safety of players, as well as the public cannot be adequately guaranteed without the involvement of the police," Aboutaleb said in a statement sent to AFP.

"The decision was taken in consultation with safety and security officials and has been communicated to the parties involved," he said.

A new date for the clash has not yet been set.

Dutch police unions have run industrial actions for several months to protest the dropping of a scheme for early pensions for law officers next year.

Traditional rivalry especially among the hardcore support of both clubs has led to clashes in the past, resulting in a ban on visiting supporters for the fixture, called "De Klassieker" in Dutch.

But even then security was not always guaranteed. Last year the match had to be abandoned at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam after hooligans threw fireworks on the field.

Riots broke out after the match in which 15 people were arrested and two police officers were wounded. Feyenoord won 4-0 when the game was completed days later.

In April 2023, a cup game between the two rivals was also stopped after Ajax midfielder Davy Klaassen was hit on the head by a cigarette lighter thrown from the stands.
'Football the victim'

Feyenoord on Tuesday said it was "very disappointing" that the match would not go ahead as planned.

"We understand that people have to stand up for their cause," the club said referring to the police strike.

"But we regret that football, not for the first time, is being used as a tool to enforce something in which we are not involved."

"We understand and agree that the mayor does not consider it reasonable to allow the match to go ahead without the presence of the police," Feyenoord added.

Ajax too said they regretted that football "is the victim in this case".

The Dutch Football Federation (KNVB) warned "should these police actions continue on a weekly basis the playing of competitions could really be jeopardised at some point -- or at least affect the way the sport is played."

The KNVB called on police unions and management to negotiate a solution before the weekend in order for the "Klassieker to simply be played on Sunday".

After a few years of relative quiet, Dutch authorities have been facing a surge of football hooliganism which also included a shock attack by AZ Alkmaar supporters on West Ham fans last year.

Football violence however is not new to the Netherlands which has experienced incidents as far back as the 1970s.

In one of the worst cases Ajax fan Carlo Picornie was beaten to death in 1997 when hardcore Ajax and Feyenoord football supporters clashed by the side of a motorway, an incident later named the "Battle of Beverwijk".

© 2024 AFP

Activists mobilize to reach 1.5M young voters in swing states to defeat Trump

Edward Carver, Common Dreams
August 27, 2024

Kamala Harris takes a photo with young supporters at a rally at Temple University in Philadelphia, Penn., on Aug. 6, 2024. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Sunrise Movement on Tuesday launched a campaign program in support of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, aiming to reach 1.5 million young voters in key swing states

The left-wing, youth-led climate action group didn't endorse Harris—though it's part of the Green New Deal Network, which has— but announced that it would mobilize to help her defeat Republican nominee Donald Trump, whom Kidus Girma, the group's campaign director, referred to as "Big Oil's favorite henchman."

The group's program will include canvassing, phone banking, and digital outreach, as well as protests and the creation of social media videos aimed at stoking youth enthusiasm.

"Young climate voters could decide this election," Stevie O'Hanlon, the group's communications director, said in a statement. "The Harris-Walz ticket means millions more young voters are tuning in and considering voting. We're going all-out to reach those voters and mobilize our generation to defeat Trump this November."

Sunrise argued in the statement that Harris is polling better than President Joe Biden did because she has more support from youth and climate-minded voters.

The group also cited a recent poll commissioned by Climate Power, an advocacy group, that showed the gap between public trust for Harris and Trump is larger on climate—at 23 percentage points—than on any other issue, even slightly more so than abortion. Sunrise wants to see Harris to press that climate advantage.

The group's program marks an increase in organizational ambition from what was planned in support of Biden's reelection bid—before Harris replaced him, Sunrise's voter engagement goal had been 1 million.

"The difference in excitement between Biden and Harris among young people we've been talking to is night and day," O'Hanlon toldThe Washington Post.

Media outlets have in the last three months made much of Sunrise's refusal to endorse either Biden or Harris, starting with Axios in early June and continuing with the Post on Tuesday.

Sunrise has explained that it's waiting for more information on Harris' climate policies, as well as her approach to Israel's war on Gaza. So far, climate hasn't been a point of emphasis for her; the issue received scant attention at last week's Democratic National Convention.

The group took a similar tack in 2020, mobilizing in support of Biden but declining to endorse him. They are trying to steer the Democratic nominee toward stronger climate action.

"We will continue to urge the Harris campaign to put forward a bold vision that will energize young voters," O'Hanlon said.

Sunrise has long been a lightning rod for criticism, not just from Republicans but also from the more technocratically oriented establishment wing of the Democratic Party. Jonathan Chait wrote a scathing column, full of straw man arguments, about the group in New York in June.

The Post on Tuesday suggested that any attempt by Harris to draw in younger voters with new climate or Gaza policies could alienate "moderate" voters in swing states, where fossil fuel groups have launched ad campaigns attacking her climate record and claiming she would ban gasoline-powered cars. Harris has already walked back some of the climate pledges she made while running for president in the 2020 cycle, including a ban on fracking.

Amid the challenges of operating in a media sphere and political system heavily influenced by corporate interests, Sunrise has continued to work with Democratic leaders while also pushing them to be bolder. Many progressives see the group's past work as key to the development of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—the most notable climate action law in U.S. history, however flawed it may have been.

O'Hanlon, in an interview with Mother Jones on Thursday, expressed optimism that more change could be forthcoming, pointing out that the Democratic Party's climate platform is in fact strong.

"The 2024 platform calls out Big Oil, pledges to make polluters pay, and targets oil and gas company subsidies, which is really substantial," O'Hanlon said.

'I feel sick': Pelosi raged against Trump in newly-uncovered J6 footage

Matthew Chapman
August 27, 2024 

Nancy Pelosi (AFP)

Newly uncovered footage reviewed by Politico reveals the rage of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) during and in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

This comes two years after the release of other footage that showed Pelosi frantically calling for backup as rioters breached the building to try to stop the 2020 election from being certified.

“I just feel sick about what he did to the Capitol and the country today,” said Pelosi in the new footage, taken in her SUV the day after the attack. “He’s got to pay a price for that.”

Other footage taken during the evacuation showed she initially didn't want to leave, saying, “If they stop the proceedings, they will have succeeded in stopping the validation of the presidency of the United States."

In another clip, she inquired about how many times members asked, "Are we prepared?"

"We’re not prepared for the worst,” Pelosi continued. “We’re calling the National Guard, now? It should’ve been here to start out. I just don’t understand it. Why do we empower people this way by not being ready?”

This line in particular calls into question Trump's repeated false claim that he offered National Guard troops at the Capitol and Pelosi refused them. Pelosi notably has no authority over the National Guard.

Yet other footage showed Pelosi conferring with other congressional leaders, during which Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) speculated "How quick can Trump pardon them?"

Trump didn't pardon any Jan. 6 rioters, hundreds of whom have been convicted or taken plea agreements for their involvement in the chaos, although in recent months he has suggested he could do so if re-elected.

Trump national security team watched in horror as China's Xi Jinping 'ate his lunch': book

Brad Reed
August 27, 2024 

Trump said he was ready for a "historic" deal with China as the leaders kicked off their meeting and Xi told him "dialogue" was better than confrontation

 AFP / Brendan Smialowski


Former Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster has written a new book filled with disparaging stories about his former boss, and the New York Times reports that it even features of a story of the former president being blatantly manipulated by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The incident in question came during a visit to China in November of 2017 in which McMaster tried to warn Trump against letting Xi make him stray from his prepared talking points

Trump, however, had other ideas.

"In the Great Hall of the People, the president strayed from his talking points," according to the Times's report. "He agreed with Xi that military exercises in South Korea were 'provocative' and a 'waste of money' and suggested that China might have a legitimate claim to Japan’s Senkaku Islands. McMaster, his stomach sinking, passed a note to Gen. John Kelly, the chief of staff: Xi 'ate our lunch,' it read."

McMaster also says that foreign leaders treated Trump like a "chump" and quickly discovered they could manipulate him by boosting his ego.

"Flattery and pomp from leaders like Xi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Russian president Vladimir V. Putin seem to have been all that was required to get in Trump’s good graces," writes the Times.

"In 2018, McMaster found Trump in the Oval Office scrawling a cheerful note to Putin across a New York Post article reporting that the Russian president had denigrated the American political system but called Trump a good listener. Like a child with his Christmas wish list, the leader of the free world asked McMaster to send it to the Kremlin."


Looking forward, writes the Times, McMaster questions whether the 78-year-old Trump is still able to "perform well the sometimes grueling job of president" and he notes that Trump seven years ago became "tired" by a 13-day trip to Asia.

Harvard neurology expert reveals study on how religious fundamentalism impacts the brain

Sarah K. Burris
August 27, 2024

Brain (Shutterstock

People with brain lesions are more susceptible to religious fundamentalism, according to a study authored by a Harvard University neurology instructor.

Michael Ferguson, an instructor at Harvard Medical School, published a paper along with several other academic experts on brain research about the impact of religious fundamentalism on those with brain lesions.

Brain lesions aren't isolated to brain tumors. Those with congenital disorders, degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer's, Lewy body dementia, and Parkinson's can add to brain cell death or malfunction, The Cleveland Clinic explains. There are also immune and inflammatory conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or lupus, that can lead to lesions in the brain. Problems like epilepsy, a stroke, traumatic brain injury or brain aneurysms can all cause brain lesions.

Read Also: A neuroscientist explains how religious fundamentalism hijacks the brain

"The whole brain functional connectivity pattern was then correlated with religious fundamentalism scores on a voxelwise basis," wrote Ferguson in a thread on X using a number of illustrations.

"Even when applying a conservative family-wise error multiple comparison correction, we found robust neuroanatomical clusters that were statistically significant in their associations with religious fundamentalism scores," he said.

The survey looked at two data sets, one with lesions and one without. They could reproduce the same patterns in both sets, making them believe the results were "real."

He went on to say that the researchers had "cross-validation" in that they could see one dataset predicted fundamentalism scores for another.

"Lastly, we explored whether our religious fundamentalism brain network resembled the neuroanatomy associated with various neurobehavioral conditions," he continued.


"The strongest similarities to the neuroanatomy linked with confabulation and criminal behavior," he said.

Confabulations are fake or distorted memories that aren't made with any deception. The individual believes they're real, however.

As for crimes, the comparisons for behavior came from violent crimes like assault, rape, and murder.

"Although highly sensitive, these results may shed light on pathways through which religious fundamentalism can, in some cases, convert to outgroup hostility," Ferguson explained.

These researchers didn't only look at one particular religion but across all religions.

Read the full study here.

BEHIND PAYWALL

From Nixon to Trump: How the GOP has weaponized 'othering' for political gain

Thom Hartmann
August 26, 2024 

Donald Trump and Richard Nixon

“Identity politics” can be either helpful to society or destructive of social cohesion and democracy itself. When used to bring people of different races, religions, and gender identities into the larger structure of society — to empower and lift up those who’ve traditionally been oppressed — identity politics becomes a platform for ultimately ending itself; once everybody has equal opportunity, it’s no longer needed.

The dark side of identity politics occurs when the dominant race/religion/gender (in today’s America that’s white Christian men) identifies people who aren’t part of their group as an “other” and uses this otherness as a rallying cry to enlist members of the powerful in-group against the “outsiders.”

This is what the GOP has been doing ever since 1968, when Richard Nixon picked up the white racist vote that Democrats abandoned in 1964/1965 when LBJ pushed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act through Congress.

Nixon talked about his white “silent majority.” Reagan emphasized “states’ rights” to suppress the civil and voting rights of minorities. GHW Bush used Willie Horton to scare white voters in 1988 the same way his son vilified Muslims to win re-election in 2004. And, of course, Trump has been “othering” nonwhite people and women ever since he started his notoriously racist and hateful birther movement in 2008.

Science, however, is catching up with the Republican’s strategy, and showing us both how powerful it can be and also how to defeat it.

Rob Henderson’s excellent Newsletter turned me onto the new book The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution by Richard Wrangham, who does a deep dive into the past 600,000 years of our species and its immediate predecessors.

Wrangham points out how violent our chimp cousins are: female chimps are routinely beaten into submission before being raped and impregnated by the most powerful of the male chimps. He notes, “One hundred percent of wild adult female chimpanzees experience regular serious beatings from males.”

The consequence of this is that over generations genes for aggression have come to dominate that species; chimp society very much operates along the lines Thomas Hobbes argued human society would without “the iron fist of church or state.” Chimp life is nasty, brutish, and short.

But at some point in our prehistory, as humanity was evolving into its modern form, we developed language. Using that new ability to communicate, we developed complex societies.

Citing biologist Richard Alexander, Wrangham writes:
“In his 1979 Darwinism and Human Affairs, Alexander argues that at some unknown point in our evolution, language skills developed to the point where gossip became possible. Once that happened, reputations would become important.

“Being known as a helpful individual would be expected to have a big effect on someone’s success in life. Good behavior would be rewarded. Virtue would become adaptive.”

For human societies to survive and prosper in the face of an often-hostile natural world, cooperation became more important than dominance. We left behind the violence of alpha male chimps and instead embraced human teamwork and social harmony.

In my most recent book, The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living, I document how Native Americans had, at the time of first contact in the 15th through 17th centuries, shared with Europeans how they’d developed highly democratic systems of governance. To a large extent, our Constitution was based on things learned directly from native people.

As I showed from that era, and Wrangham does with hunter/gatherer tribes across the world while examining anthropological evidence of early humanity, psychopathic and hoarding alpha males were consistently brought under control by the rules of human society itself.

Wrangham shows how, in multiple ancient and modern hunter/gatherer societies, when what we’d today call sociopathic or psychopathic alpha males would begin hoarding wealth or asserting dominance over others, they were simply killed.

Over thousands of generations, he posits, this altered our gene pool in a way that only a very small percentage of us — psychologists estimate between one and five percent — still carry and can act out the alpha male role in a way that involves high-level hoarding and social dominance. We call them sociopaths, billionaire hoarders, and violent psychopaths.

The good news is that they’re very much in the minority; the majority of us are not psychopaths, and are deeply wired for cooperation and social cohesion.

This evolutionary process, which I also document in American Democracy, makes societies more stable, enhances a culture’s or nation’s chances for survival in the face of crises, and improves the quality of life for the largest number of members of a society.

But, as both Wrangham and I point out, when societies are taken over by hoarding, violent, psychopathic men (Hitler, Saddam, Mussolini, Putin, Trump, Iran’s Ayatollahs, etc.) they become top-heavy and brittle, and thus more vulnerable to disruption by both external and internal events (including the death of the leader).

While the evolutionary basis of this, which Wrangham brings to us in his book, is new, the idea of a society or nation being most resilient when it’s most democratic is not; it’s been the subject of speculation, documentation, and scientific and social inquiry from the time of Socrates through the Enlightenment and the creation of the United States (as I detail in American Democracy).

What struck me from Wrangham’s book as most relevant to this moment, though, was his assertion that we humans are, both genetically and socially, vulnerable to psychopathic alpha males taking over when they use one particular strategy to gain and hold power: identifying an “other” who they can successfully characterize as a threat.

On the one hand, Wrangham points out how we’re capable of great tenderness and compassion. In his book’s introduction, he writes:
“In short, a great oddity about humanity is our moral range, from unspeakable viciousness to heartbreaking generosity. From a biological perspective, such diversity presents an unsolved problem. If we evolved to be good, why are we also so vile? Or if we evolved to be wicked, how come we can also be so benign?”

The answer, in short, is that we’re tender and loving to our own group, but perfectly willing to be astonishingly violent toward any “other” group that we see as substantially different from us and believe is a threat to us.

This, on the other hand, is a key part of preparing soldiers to fight in wars and violate that core human imperative of not killing: First, we must “other” the enemy. My dad, who volunteered to fight in World War II straight out of high school in 1945, referred to Germans and Japanese as “krauts” and “japs” to his dying days. Such a racist “other” perspective was pounded into our soldiers throughout basic training, just like veterans of George W. Bush’s Middle Eastern wars often refer to Arab people as “ragheads” and other slurs.

This “othering” of members and supporters of violent dictatorships we must go to war against is arguably a useful or even necessary tool to prepare our young men and women to kill or be killed on the field of battle.

Because it’s grounded in genetically-mediated survival instincts and strategies as ancient as humanity, it’s relatively easy to intentionally program into people, and, once they come to believe there is a real threat from an “other,” very hard to defy. During both WWI and WWII in America, for example, those who protested against those wars were vilified, ostracized, and, in some cases, even imprisoned, all with popular support for that separation from society.

It becomes particularly dangerous, though, when violent psychopathic alpha males in a political leadership position turn that same strategy against members of their own society, turning average citizens into monsters. As Wrangham writes:
“The killers who committed genocide in World War II, Cambodia, and Rwanda were caught up in societies where moral boundaries became excessively crystallized. Yet most were not sadistic monsters or ideological fanatics. They were unremarkable individuals who loved their families and countrymen in conventional moral ways.
“When the anthropologist Alexander Hinton investigated the Cambodian genocide of 1975–79, he met a man called Lor who had admitted to having killed many men, women, and children. ‘I imagined Lor as a heinous person who exuded evil from head to toe….I saw before me a poor farmer in his late thirties, who greeted me with the broad smile and polite manner that one so often encounters in Cambodia.’ The combination of horror and ordinariness is routine.
“According to the anthropologists Alan Fiske and Tage Rai, ‘When people hurt or kill someone, they usually do so because they feel…that it is morally right or even obligatory to be violent.’ Fiske and Rai considered every type of violence they could think of, including genocide, witch killings, lynchings, gang rapes, war rape, war killings, homicides, revenge, hazing, and suicide.”

Like Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler used this “othering” strategy against Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals so successfully that “good Germans” largely went along with the Holocaust, often enthusiastically. Stalin did the same against Ukrainians who were part of his Soviet Union, starving to death over four million human beings — men women, and children — in the Holodomor.

And now Donald Trump and his followers and enablers in the Republican Party — and thirty or so almost certainly psychopathic alpha male billionaires — are using this “othering” strategy against American citizens and immigrants to gain and hold political power.

In doing so, they’re playing with the most deadly form of fire known to humanity.

Because our instinctual willingness — or even enthusiasm — for dominating, destroying, and killing any “other” we see as a threat is deeply rooted in our genetic code, it’s damn near impossible for people who’ve been inculcated with a clear identification and deep fear of an “other” to resist embracing forms of violence ranging from discrimination to excessive policing and imprisonment to outright extermination.

It’s so archetypal that it’s the essence and message of every Bruce Willis-type movie: “Use violence to destroy the bad people.” As we watch that story play out on the screen, and we cheer the murder of the bad guys, we feel a release and exhilaration that keeps bringing people back to the theater.

We didn’t “learn” to love this violence: it’s wired into our DNA. All of us. We are all vulnerable to this type of emotional manipulation.

Trump’s open embrace of rounding up 12 million “other” immigrants and putting them into concentration camps prior to deportation seems unspeakably cruel, but we forget the brutality of his family separations and caging of young Hispanic children at our own peril.

He and his acolytes are fully capable of committing horrors like the world sees in various places every few generations when an alpha male psychopath uses “othering” to gain and hold wealth and political power.

In both Wrangham’s book and mine, we find the way to combat this: shatter the “othering” meme by converting the “them” Republicans identify (queer people, racial and religious minorities, “liberals,” and women) into a massive, collectively diverse “us.”

This fracturing of the GOP “othering” efforts was hugely on display last week during the Democratic National Convention, as people of all races, religions, gender identities, and disabilities were featured as part of a grand, collective “us.” Increasingly, we’re also seeing it in our media, from commercials featuring queer and multiracial couples to movies and TV programs with diverse casts.

To restore to our society the kind of resilient culture that has helped humanity survive to this point, we must defeat Donald Trump, JD Vance, and the psychopathic hoarder billionaires funding their attempt to take over America.

We must stop their effort to convert us into a fractured society with rich white Christian men in charge and everybody else subservient for another generation or more. As President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his prescient farewell address:
“…America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.” He added: “We pray … that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”

America defeated fascists who had used “othering” to seize and assert power eighty years ago; they forced us to do it on the battlefield. Here at home, we fought back against and thwarted the psychopathic alpha male Robber Barons of the 1880-1930 era with antitrust law, union organizing, and heavy taxation of the morbidly rich.

Now we have an opportunity to bring Americans together, to embrace a collective and inclusive “us,” and to repudiate hate and “othering” as a political strategy.

If successful, we’ll usher in a new and beautiful America, and a grand example for the rest of the world. This could quite literally be a positive turning point for humanity for generations.

If only enough of us show up at the polls this November, and then stay engaged for at least a few years thereafter. As Tim Walz said, “We can sleep when we’re dead.”