It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
National Survey Reveals “Alarming Tolerance” for Targeted Attacks Among White, Republican Men
Among the hallmarks of the incoming administration is not just a tolerance for intolerance, but a policy of cruelty toward immigrants, hatred toward minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and those seen as part of groups loosely referred to by MAGA adherents as “other”.
While President-Elect Donald Trump’s MAGA followers have referenced what is occurring as a culture war against “Wokeness”, the actual policies that are moving into position include a mass deportation plan for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The unsavory plan was unveiled as a removal of the criminal element. But Trump’s folk are expanding it; voicing threats of inclusion of entire families composed of an American spouse and children born here, speaking out loud their rejection of birth-right citizenship, which happens to be enshrined in the United States Constitution.
Here in Central Colorado, bullying of minority and LGBTQ+ students in one of our local school districts has been uncovered. A local Salida minority businessman was followed and attacked.
Here in Colorado, back in 2021, our lawmakers passed SB21-280 to update language on the existing law on how hate crimes are defined. But it took the death of a shop owner named Lakhwant Singh before that happened. “Go back to your country,” Eric Breeman is reported to have shouted at Singh, just before he ran him over with his car outside Singh’s Lakewood liquor store.
For years, Trump has voiced his dislike of the media and suggested that his MAGA supporters should beat them/us up. This past November, he commented during a rally that he wouldn’t mind if someone tried to shoot through the media riser to assassinate him. That’s not his first allusion to violence.
To his power play, add Trump’s vengeance act — he repeatedly alludes to retribution — threatening jail time for those who cross him (real or imagined), who simply disagree with him, or heavens, criticize him.
He doesn’t stop at that. He goes after news media and journalists if he doesn’t like what we say or write — or even how we edit his own comments. Proof that he said it often doesn’t matter: he has filed multiple lawsuits against news agencies and journalists.
Bias Motivation Categories for Victims of Single-bias Incidents in 2023
The most recent FBI data available in the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program was released in September, 2024, showing bias motivated (hate) crimes continued high, but lower than the jump they had taken in a 2019 survey during Trump’s first term. As we enter 2025 and face his second term — it’s good to pay attention to these statistics.
There were 415 multiple-bias incidents that involved 559 victims
As reported by law enforcement agencies across the country, those agencies reported 11,862 hate crime incidents involving 13,829 offenses.
Writing for the news site The Conversation, Julie Posetti and Waqas Ejaz explained the findings of a national survey they helped commission. It’s a concerning finding: what they call an “alarming tolerance” for attacks on the press in the United States, “particularly among white, Republican men.”
From that report:
While 37 percent of white-identifying respondents thought it was appropriate for political leaders to target journalists and news organizations, only 27 percent of people of color did,” they wrote.
“There was also a nine-point difference along gender lines, with 39 percent of men approving of this conduct, compared to 30 percent of women.
Their conclusion: “It appears intolerance towards the press has a face — a predominantly white, male, and Republican-voting face.”
Why the Dept. of Justice Exists
Most Americans aren’t aware of why the U.S. Department of Justice even exists.
According to our government’s Hate Crimes site, “the Justice Department was founded in 1870. One reason: to protect the rights of Black Americans from the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists who were trying to deprive them of the right to vote. Confronting hate-fueled violence is still central to its mission.”
The Hate Crimes website is a central hub for tracking hate crime resources for victims, advocacy groups, law enforcement, researchers, the media, and other interested individuals and organizations.
That all this increased political use of intolerance has had an impact is undeniable, and the evidence is growing of its impacts on Colorado — even in, or perhaps because of– counties’ status as leaning Republican or Democrat.
CBS News reported that back in 2017, New Yorker staff writer Peter Hessler, who lives in Ridgeway, Colorado attended a Grand Junction Trump rally where he reported that during one of Trump’s rants about the press, a man tried to climb over the barrier of the press pen “and security guards had to drag him away.”
That same year, the publisher of the Sentinel newspaper in Grand Junction made state and national headlines when he considered suing a local Republican state senator who had called his paper “fake news.”
CBS News also reported something that other media has not: this might weigh in regarding this latest attack on their Grand Junction reporters. The district attorney in Grand Junction has a brother in Colorado who happens to be a journalist with documented safety concerns because of his reporting.
Autocracy is the Goal
Something else is odd. There is a small, tight-knit group of white, South African men who have migrated here and amassed significant power in America in the past decade or so. Elon Musk is chief among them; and also happens to be the richest man in the world. They now surround President-elect Donald Trump.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial segregation in South Africa and Namibia from 1948 to the early 1990s. Having left their apartheid country, these rich white men now appear to still weigh in as racist, white male, Christian autocrats. Their goal would appear not to be about left or right– but to ensure autocratic control.
The question becomes not just a policy question– but a human one: Where is this all going? Who and how many are going to join this bandwagon of hate?
Above all, what does this say about who we are as a people that a significant percentage of the population is willing to not just tolerate such intolerance — but celebrate intolerance combined with authoritarianism and unlimited money?
MIT scientists pin down the origins of a fast radio burst
The fleeting cosmic firework likely emerged from the turbulent magnetosphere around a far-off neutron star.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fast radio bursts are brief and brilliant explosions of radio waves emitted by extremely compact objects such as neutron stars and possibly black holes. These fleeting fireworks last for just a thousandth of a second and can carry an enormous amount of energy — enough to briefly outshine entire galaxies.
Since the first fast radio burst (FRB) was discovered in 2007, astronomers have detected thousands of FRBs, whose locations range from within our own galaxy to as far as 8 billion light-years away. Exactly how these cosmic radio flares are launched is a highly contested unknown.
Now, astronomers at MIT have pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst using a novel technique that could do the same for other FRBs. In their new study, appearing in the journal Nature, the team focused on FRB 20221022A — a previously discovered fast radio burst that was detected from a galaxy about 200 million light-years away.
The team zeroed in further to determine the precise location of the radio signal by analyzing its “scintillation,” similar to how stars twinkle in the night sky. The scientists studied changes in the FRB’s brightness and determined that the burst must have originated from the immediate vicinity of its source, rather than much further out, as some models have predicted.
The team estimates that FRB 20221022A exploded from a region that is extremely close to a rotating neutron star, 10,000 kilometers away at most. That’s less than the distance between New York and Singapore. At such close range, the burst likely emerged from the neutron star’s magnetosphere — a highly magnetic region immediately surrounding the ultracompact star.
The team’s findings provide the first conclusive evidence that a fast radio burst can originate from the magnetosphere, the highly magnetic environment immediately surrounding an extremely compact object.
“In these environments of neutron stars, the magnetic fields are really at the limits of what the universe can produce,” says lead author Kenzie Nimmo, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “There’s been a lot of debate about whether this bright radio emission could even escape from that extreme plasma.”
“Around these highly magnetic neutron stars, also known as magnetars, atoms can’t exist — they would just get torn apart by the magnetic fields,” says Kiyoshi Masui, associate professor of physics at MIT. “The exciting thing here is, we find that the energy stored in those magnetic fields, close to the source, is twisting and reconfiguring such that it can be released as radio waves that we can see halfway across the universe.”
The study’s MIT co-authors include Adam Lanman, Shion Andrew, Daniele Michilli, and Kaitlyn Shin, along with collaborators from multiple institutions.
Burst size
Detections of fast radio bursts have ramped up in recent years, due to the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). The radio telescope array comprises four large, stationary receivers, each shaped like a half-pipe, that are tuned to detect radio emissions within a range that is highly sensitive to fast radio bursts.
Since 2020, CHIME has detected thousands of FRBs from all over the universe. While scientists generally agree that the bursts arise from extremely compact objects, the exact physics driving the FRBs is unclear. Some models predict that fast radio bursts should come from the turbulent magnetosphere immediately surrounding a compact object, while others predict that the bursts should originate much further out, as part of a shockwave that propagates away from the central object.
To distinguish between the two scenarios, and determine where fast radio bursts arise, the team considered scintillation — the effect that occurs when light from a small bright source such as a star, filters through some medium, such as a galaxy’s gas. As the starlight filters through the gas, it bends in ways that make it appear, to a distant observer, as if the star is twinkling. The smaller or the farther away an object is, the more it twinkles. The light from larger or closer objects, such as planets in our own solar system, experience less bending, and therefore do not appear to twinkle.
The team reasoned that if they could estimate the degree to which an FRB scintillates, they might determine the relative size of the region from where the FRB originated. The smaller the region, the closer in the burst would be to its source, and the more likely it is to have come from a magnetically turbulent environment. The larger the region, the farther the burst would be, giving support to the idea that FRBs stem from far-out shockwaves.
Twinkle pattern
To test their idea, the researchers looked to FRB 20221022A, a fast radio burst that was detected by CHIME in 2022. The signal lasts about two milliseconds, and is a relatively run-of-the-mill FRB, in terms of its brightness. However, the team’s collaborators at McGill University found that FRB 20221022A exhibited one standout property: The light from the burst was highly polarized, with the angle of polarization tracing a smooth S-shaped curve. This pattern is interpreted as evidence that the FRB emission site is rotating — a characteristic previously observed in pulsars, which are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars.
To see a similar polarization in fast radio bursts was a first, suggesting that the signal may have arisen from the close-in vicinity of a neutron star. The McGill team’s results are reported in a companion paper today in Nature.
The MIT team realized that if FRB 20221022A originated from close to a neutron star, they should be able to prove this, using scintillation.
In their new study, Nimmo and her colleagues analyzed data from CHIME and observed steep variations in brightness that signaled scintillation — in other words, the FRB was twinkling. They confirmed that there is gas somewhere between the telescope and FRB that is bending and filtering the radio waves. The team then determined where this gas could be located, confirming that gas within the FRB’s host galaxy was responsible for some of the scintillation observed. This gas acted as a natural lens, allowing the researchers to zoom in on the FRB site and determine that the burst originated from an extremely small region, estimated to be about 10,000 kilometers wide.
“This means that the FRB is probably within hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the source,” Nimmo says. “That’s very close. For comparison, we would expect the signal would be more than tens of millions of kilometers away if it originated from a shockwave, and we would see no scintillation at all.”
“Zooming in to a 10,000-kilometer region, from a distance of 200 million light years, is like being able to measure the width of a DNA helix, which is about 2 nanometers wide, on the surface of the moon,” Masui says. “There’s an amazing range of scales involved.”
The team’s results, combined with the findings from the McGill team, rule out the possibility that FRB 20221022A emerged from the outskirts of a compact object. Instead, the studies prove for the first time that fast radio bursts can originate from very close to a neutron star, in highly chaotic magnetic environments.
“These bursts are always happening, and CHIME detects several a day,” Masui says. “There may be a lot of diversity in how and where they occur, and this scintillation technique will be really useful in helping to disentangle the various physics that drive these bursts.”
This research was supported by various institutions including the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Trottier Space Institute at McGill University, and the University of British Columbia.
“Magnetospheric origin of a fast radio burst constrained using scintillation”
Elon Musk eyes a deal with his native South Africa to let SpaceX offer Starlink service in exchange for a Tesla battery plant, report says
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk visits Capitol Hill to speak with lawmakers about the external audit committee President-elect Donald Trump appointed him to lead. · Fortune · Al Drago—Bloomberg/Getty Images Paolo Confino
Updated Mon, December 30, 2024
Elon Musk met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to discuss an agreement that would see the South African government loosen rules regarding Black ownership that impede SpaceX from offering Starlink internet services.
Musk is turning his newfound influence in U.S. politics to his homeland of South Africa.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to discuss easing certain regulations that would allow for Starlink satellites to operate legally in the country, according to Bloomberg.
Specifically, Musk would like to see South Africa loosen or remove a rule that would require Starlink to be at least 30% Black-owned by sharing equity with local partners.
A possible work-around that South African officials are considering would see foreign companies like SpaceX make guarantees for levels of local investment and jobs.
In exchange for updating these regulations, Ramaphosa hopes for broader investment in South Africa from Musk’s multiple companies. In particular, the South African president wants Tesla to invest in battery production in the country, according to Bloomberg.
SpaceX and a spokesperson for Ramaphosa did not respond to requests for comment.
Efforts to find an agreement between the South African government and SpaceX have increased recently, given Musk’s prominent role in U.S. politics after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the November election.
Throughout the election, Musk spent over $200 million to assist Trump’s campaign. In the weeks since Trump’s win, Musk has taken on a prominent role in certain governmental affairs. For example, Musk has been put in charge of an external committee meant to audit government spending. He also attended calls with foreign leaders like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Starlink, which offers broadband services, is often subject to heavy regulations from countries around the world that aim to protect local internet service providers. Still, some countries have embraced the service as a means to increase internet access. In Africa, Starlink is available in Nigeria, Ghana, and Botswana. In November, Starlink paused new sign-ups for its services in Africa, citing a demand surge, according to an X post from Musk.
Despite having to battle against entrenched telecom companies and internet service providers that are often protected by legislation in their local markets, Starlink has made significant strides in expanding its reach. It is now found in more than 100 countries, and some of them—such as Ukraine and Yemen—are at the center of global geopolitics. SpaceX has also become a critical defense contractor for the U.S. government, a role which is under further scrutiny given Musk’s close relationship with Trump.
South Africa is not the first country to pitch Musk on a deal that combined expanded Starlink access and Tesla battery production. Indonesia, which uses Starlink to provide rural parts of Bali with internet access, asked Musk to build an electric vehicle battery plant for Tesla, a long-held priority for former Indonesian President Joko Widodo. However, he ultimately rebuffed the government’s offer because Indonesia was too far from Tesla’s manufacturing plants, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But Indonesian officials were not discouraged from trying to reach a deal with Musk. They are now set to offer a proposal to build data centers for the tech mogul’s artificial intelligence company, xAI.
Historian warns ‘big guy’ Musk will have undue influence over ‘little guy’ Trump
By Arya Vaishnavi Jan 01, 2025
Discussing what Trump's coming administration could look like, Snyder said that it could prove to be damaging to the future president's relationship with Musk.
Donald Trump's incoming administration would be heavily influenced by his biggest supporter, Elon Musk, according to a renowned Yale historian. In an interview with The Guardian published Wednesday, Timothy Snyder issued a warning for the president-elect's friends and supporters that the Tesla CEO is the “big guy” on whom Trump is dependent for money.FILE - President-elect Donald Trump listens to Elon Musk as he arrives to watch SpaceX's mega rocket Starship lift off for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Nov. 19, 2024. (Brandon Bell/Pool via AP, File)(AP)
Historian explains how Trump could be ‘dependent’ on Musk in his coming administration
Calling Trump the “little guy,” Snyder explained that “Musk is a big guy when it actually comes to having money.” “And I think if you were a friend of Trump, you would be worried,” the author, who is known for bestselling books like On Tyranny (2017) and On Freedom (2024),
Discussing what Trump's second term at the White House could look like, Snyder said that it could prove to be damaging to the future president's relationship with Musk. “I think we overestimate Trump and we underestimate Musk,” he said.
“People can’t help but think that Trump has money, but he doesn’t. He’s never really had money,” the historian went on. “He’s never even really claimed to have money. His whole notion is that you have to believe that he has money.”
Snyder pointed out that Trump has “never been able to pay his own debts.” “He’s never been able to finance his own campaigns,” he continued, adding, “Musk, with an amount of money that was meaningless to him, was able to finance Trump’s campaign, essentially.” ‘Trumpomuskovia’
The historian further highlighted the opposing views about government funding and immigration policies within the Republican Party. “All the threats that Trump is now going to issue – ‘I’m going to primary people, I’m going to sue people’ – Musk is going to pay for that, not Trump. And when Trump needs money for anything, he’s going to be asking Musk,” he said.
“Unless Trump breaks it off right now, he’s going to be in this kind of dependent relationship for the rest of the way, because you get used to people giving you money … and I think if you were a friend of Trump, you would be worried,” Snyder warned.
In light of the “dependency position” that Trump could face should Musk's influence grow on him, “Trumpomuskovia” seems a fitting name for the president-elect's second term at the White House. “I was going to call it Muskotrumpovia, because I think Musk is a more important person, but Trumpomuskovia had a nicer ring to it,” Snyder said.
What is Musk Up to Now on X9
(former Twitter)?
Musk flummoxes internet with ‘Kekius Maximus’ persona.
(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on October 10, 2023, shows (L) SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk during his visit at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, on June 16, 2023 and (R) the new Twitter logo rebranded as X, pictured on a screen in Paris on July 24, 2023.. The EU's digital chief Thierry Breton warned Elon Musk on October 10, 2023, that his platform X, formerly Twitter, is spreading "illegal content and disinformation", in a letter seen by AFP. (Photo by Alain JOCARD / AFP)
Elon Musk adopted the moniker “Kekius Maximus” on X Tuesday, sparking speculation among his 210 million followers about his mysterious new handle that is a mash-up of an alt-right symbol, a memecoin, and the lead character of the movie “Gladiator.”
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and a confidant of US President-elect Donald Trump, also replaced his profile picture with one of “Pepe the Frog,” a popular cartoon character, wearing ancient Roman attire and holding a video game joystick.
In typical Musk fashion, the billionaire tech mogul and owner of X -- formerly Twitter -- offered no explanation about the new username and avatar, but the move triggered immediate ripple effects.
The change roiled the cryptocurrency world, sending the value of a memecoin -- a digital currency inspired by an internet meme -- with the same name skyrocketing. Advertisement
It also sent internet sleuths hunting for answers: Was the name change just for the laughs? Was there a hidden message? Was this another thinly-disguised attempt to jolt the crypto markets? More troublingly, was it a wink and a nod to online hate groups?
Musk and X did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.
His new handle appears to be a blend of “Maximus Decimus Meridius” -- a Roman general played by Russell Crowe in the 2000 smash hit “Gladiator” -- and “kek,” an expression popular among the alt-right and internet trolls that is used as a variation of “LOL,” or laugh out loud.
“Kek” is also a reference to a “virtual white nationalist god,” the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center told AFP, adding that Roman male images have been used by white nationalist groups such as Identity Evropa.
Pepe the Frog was originally a cartoon character from the “Boy’s Club” comic series, but during Trump’s first presidential campaign it became associated with the alt-right and white supremacists, with the Anti-Defamation League dubbing it a “hate symbol.” Advertisement
“The majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted,” the ADL wrote on its website.
However, as it proliferated online, the meme was centered on “racist, antisemitic or other bigoted themes,” the ADL added.
- ‘Hate is not a joke’ -
“Manipulators can twist anything to give a wink and a nod to a sub-culture of online hate, while claiming ignorance,” the SPLC said.
“The use of the meme and name are indicative of the continued online culture that claims hateful ideas are simply jokes. Hate is not a joke.”
Before changing his handle, Musk posted a teaser on X: “Kekius Maximus will soon reach level 80 in hardcore PoE.”
PoE is an apparent reference to the popular “Path of Exile 2” video game.
The billionaire is known to play the game, calling it a “hall-of-famer” earlier this month in a post on X.
In the wake of Musk’s handle change, the memecoin Kekius Maximus’s value soared by more than 900 percent as of Tuesday evening, according to the site CoinGecko.
The memecoin was trading at less than one-fifth of a dollar at around 0030 GMT.
In the past, Musk has sent crypto prices on a rollercoaster ride with his social media commentary, but it was not immediately clear if he has any involvement in this particular memecoin.
The billionaire, an advisor to the incoming Trump administration, has been tapped to run the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with reducing government spending.
Musk’s account on X has become increasingly influential -- and has often courted criticism for amplifying misinformation -- since his purchase of the platform for $44 billion in 2022.
Dancing in the street: Kenyan capital emerges as content creation hub
By Africanews
with AP
In Kenya, where white-collar jobs seem increasingly elusive, young people are turning to content creation and photography to make a living.
Leveraging technology, many are tapping into social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to stay ahead.
On Sundays, groups of young people can be seen gathering with cameras, dancing in coordinated moves before uploading their content to these platforms.
With 35% of Kenya's population aged between 15 to 34, the United Nations estimates that 67% of this demographic is unemployed.
For 22-year-old Vincent Otieno, content creation offers him and his group of six dancers from Nairobi's slums a crucial income stream.
They earn money through tips from fans on TikTok and advertisements on YouTube, as well as performing at parties.
On average, each group member makes around $120 per month.
“We post on Instagram Tiktok and YouTube where we make around a hundred dollars in a month, which is better than nothing,” Otieno explains.
For 25-year-old street fashion model Caycee Achieng Mboya, also known as Lupita Nyakisumo, social media is a job like any other.
She says her TikTok account, with over 200,000 followers, is a platform where she advertises various products for clients.
In 2022, Nairobi's county government waived all business permits for photographers and filmmakers, deeming them outdated. Previously, licenses from the Kenya Film and Classification Board were required, and failure to comply could result in hefty fines and arrests by law enforcement.
The dynamic trio of 20-year-olds Angeline Muema, Trisha Pangie, and Cecilia Nyambura have been creating content on TikTok for a year.
Angeline, still a college student, expresses doubts about finding a white-collar job after graduation.
“It's better I do these videos and I get something than just staying idle and I am not getting something and at the end of the day, maybe I might graduate, yes, and I won’t get a job. So I better do these videos and I get something," she says.
Together, the trio makes $600 a month, interacting with fans who give them monetary gifts.
Meanwhile, 25-year-old dancer Mark Maranga, who holds a degree in nursing and public health, turned to social media content creation after struggling to find a job.
For him, the platform offers not only income but also a way to avoid social vices.
"Instead of indulging in activities like stealing and robbery, but now it has helped most of the youths, they engage in this activities of dancing and now they have to get something. With the help of the money, the few cash they get, they can go and feed their families," he says.
For many young Kenyans, creating content for social media has become a lifeline, offering hope and financial support in a job market that has left them with few other options.
Sweetening the Deal for Cocoa Producers
Pan-African collectives are finding new ways to boost the bargaining power of farmers supplying the chocolate industry
Lydia WilsonLydia Wilson is Culture Editor at New Lines magazine
Gillian Goddard tending her homestead just outside Port of Spain, Trinidad. (L. Brodnicke)
When Gillian Goddard was at primary school just outside Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, cocoa pods were on sale in the tuck shop for 5 cents each, the pulpy bits around the bean sucked out as a fruit snack. She didn’t buy them, however. “Why pay the money when you could walk up the hill to an abandoned plantation and pick them yourself?” she asked me. “They were just falling onto the ground there, untended.”
It took a few more decades for Goddard to return to these early days of casual harvesting of cocoa and, when she did, it certainly wasn’t to eat the pulpy fruity part. In fact, it wasn’t even anything to do with cocoa for its own sake. “I don’t actually like chocolate,” she threw out untruthfully during an international conference dedicated to craft chocolate, in frustration at the overemphasis on the quality of the product versus the well-being of the people. But despite this personal ambivalence to the globally successful commodity, Goddard has been part of a new movement, changing how chocolate is produced, not only in Trinidad but around the world. From 17th-century York, England, to the plantations of East Africa to Trinidad, this tiny bean from a lacy flower has transformed societies — and continues to do so today.
Ilive in York, a city famous for chocolate. Since the 17th century, it has been home to a large population of Quakers, who believed alcohol underpinned many of society’s problems and promoted sugary treats and drinks as an alternative. Famous chocolate brands, including Rowntree’s and Terry’s, were founded by York families, who began making sweets in the 18th and 19th centuries. One factory is still there and, on good days with a gentle wind blowing the right way, the scent of chocolate wafts into the city. It used to belong to Rowntree’s, before it was taken over by Nestle. Various members of my family worked there during university holidays. (My father notoriously couldn’t eat another KitKat for 20 years after his summer of unlimited supply; my aunt still can’t face an After Eight, more than five decades on. She can’t even stand the smell. “If we get given a box, your uncle has to eat them in the garden,” she told me over Christmas.)
Despite the Quakers’ anti-slavery stance, the chocolate they were producing was still heavily reliant on the labor of enslaved people, from the cocoa and sugar plantations to the transportation of the ingredients across the globe. But the legacy of this system goes far beyond profiting directly from slavery. To this day, the systems put in place to transport beans to factories in York and many other cities continue to keep cocoa farmers impoverished while creating profits for Western sweet manufacturers.
“I think about this in terms of a reservoir,” Goddard tells me. “I feel that’s how money is being hoarded in the Global North.” This “reservoir” of money is fed by rivers or tributaries from all over the world, with all countries, rich and poor, contributing to the wealth of the West through their labor and products. “This hoarding isn’t happening where the water is being produced,” Goddard continues, “it’s being diverted to this reservoir elsewhere. And it makes sense to try and get access to some of that water.” There are many ways to try and do that. “You can redirect the water before it gets to the reservoir. You can go there and develop relationships with the people who own the reservoir. Or you can meet those taking the water out and make a relationship with them.”
The cocoa plantation up the hill from Goddard’s school wasn’t the only place where cocoa trees dropped their pods to the ground, unharvested. Trinidad and Tobago’s economy is largely based on oil and gas, enriching the small islands but distorting other sectors. It has become harder and harder to make money farming, meaning many old estates lie abandoned, their grand colonial houses falling into disrepair. “It’s a working-class gig now,” Goddard tells me. Under an earlier, colonial-era law, cocoa beans could only be sold through the government, limiting any possibility for negotiating prices. This changed around the time Goddard started her venture in 2015, giving her and the cocoa farmers of Trinidad an opportunity to sell their harvests themselves.
Goddard began collecting meticulous data; she showed me the bewildering table. “This harvest here,” she said, highlighting a cell of the spreadsheet, “could be sold as beans, for $2,000.” But if they made it into chocolate, she calculated, they could sell the same harvest for $12,000, though a lot of work was needed to get to that price. There were other ingredients and possibly machinery to buy, packaging to design and pay for and distribution and sales to figure out. But it was clear there was greater revenue to be had if the work was done. “The more value you add to the cocoa beans, the more money stays in the community,” Kelly Fitzjames, assistant director of the Alliance of Rural Communities (ARC), summarized. Adding value to the product at home in Trinidad was the first way Goddard found to stem the flow of water to the reservoir.
Indigenous communities had a far longer relationship with the plant, and “dancing the cocoa” — when farmers dance and stamp on the harvested beans — is an important part of not only processing the beans but also of Trinidad’s culture, where a common phrase is “cocoa is king.” Leila Capildeo remembers visiting the cocoa estate where her father grew up and seeing the long house where the cocoa was stored, with an internal ceiling that could be pulled out like a massive drawer in order to dry the beans in the sun. The stories from her father included the ritual of dancing the cocoa as part of this drying process, to ensure air gets through and the beans dry evenly.
Cocoa beans drying in the sun, San Juan Estate, Trinidad. (Anthony Vahni Capildeo)
Goddard studied these traditional practices as well as YouTube videos and experimented and spread the word. Cocoa farmers were soon producing Trinidadian chocolate, though this was not the ultimate goal for Goddard. Rather, chocolate was one of her tools for the wider aim of building cooperatives. Cocoa was useful because it was a crop that didn’t easily spoil and could be easily transported, so it became a plank of the cooperatives — but just one, among many, guided by Goddard’s land-based approach.
Her model for her organization, ARC, was businesses as ecosystems. “Forests move resources around, through water, fungi, creatures and so on, and really that’s all businesses are doing, moving resources around,” she said. Diversity, she continued, means resilience in both forest and business, a particular characteristic of lush Trinidad, home to a range of ecosystems — including rainforest, woodland, swamp forests, marshes and savannahs — despite its small size. (At around 1,840 square miles, it is slightly smaller than Delaware.) These different landscapes support approximately 420 bird species and 85 reptile species as well as rare plants and migratory birds.
Feedback loops are also important in ecosystems, and so the cooperatives began expanding. Soon, locals were leading tours of their areas, setting up cafes and shops for their goods, distributing vegetable boxes and, of course, selling chocolate, wholesale and retail, on top of their farming activities.
This approach stood them in good stead during the COVID-19 pandemic, when certain aspects of the business, such as tourism, collapsed completely, though deliveries of vegetable boxes shot up. The strict lockdown provided another opportunity that was to prove transformative for global chocolate production.
Like the rest of us, Goddard had learned to use Zoom to communicate during the pandemic and thought it could be used to teach yet more cocoa farmers about adding value to their harvests — and not just in Trinidad. A friend had moved to Uganda and found a brother and sister who were interested; a Canadian filmmaker was just back from filming a women’s cocoa cooperative in Ghana and passed on their details. The word went out and soon there were interested farmers from Nigeria, Jamaica, Cameroon and also diaspora chocolate makers in America and the United Kingdom. This was the birth of the Cross Atlantic Chocolate Cooperative, or CACC, now called Chocolate Rebellion. In 2021, they brought out a box of 12 chocolate mini-bars: 11 were from 11 different cocoa-producing countries, while the 12th was a so-called “melting pot,” produced in the United States using beans grown across Africa.
The Ghanaian representative, Leticia Yankey, had also stumbled into cocoa farming but in a very different way from Goddard, though perhaps motivated by a similar sense of fighting for social justice. Yankey was volunteering with HIV-positive and AIDS patients, many of whom were abandoned by their families when diagnosed. “There was no psychosocial support back then for these people,” she told me. “So I took it on myself, visiting them in their homes, counseling them, being there.” One man reacted very badly to the antiretroviral drugs she managed to get him on, falling into a coma. Yankey stayed with him in hospital for four weeks, during which he woke up and told her he needed to see her regularly for the rest of his life, and would get her a cocoa farm in his community to make that happen. She laughed, thinking it was a joke. “I told him I don’t even have an idea about cocoa farming, let alone the land!” But the man was insistent and told her he wouldn’t take his medicine if she refused. “Honestly, I said yes to please him, so he’d stay alive.” When his health improved, he arranged a meeting with a man who offered her land on credit and she eventually did plant cocoa, feeding the soil with sawdust and chicken droppings, “doing things the organic way.”
Within a year, her cocoa plants blossomed and she was hooked. “We describe it in Ghana as the golden tree,” Yankey said, “as it’s the backbone of our economy.” (Ghana is the second-highest producer of cocoa beans in the world, after the Ivory Coast.) Yankey also planted tomato, cassava and plantain, and got some chickens. “It wasn’t a plan, or even a choice,” she told me. “But every day I was yearning to visit my farm. Within three years, I had cocoa beans and had paid off the loan.”
She researched and experimented with her cocoa farm and noticed that “women do almost all the work on cocoa production,” she said. “Men clear the land but women do the planting, weeding, harvesting, they fetch water, spray the pesticide. Men only dry for the first day, then the women take over. Women carry it all to be sold — then men collect the money.” When she began to gain recognition for her work in cocoa farming, winning the cocoa board’s regional award for the most enterprising cocoa farmer in 2016 and then the national award in 2019, she began to share her approach — with women. She began in 2019 with 10, and now her collective has a staggering 809 women, all supporting each other.
In Ghana, as in Trinidad, there was a law, dating from colonial times, that said all cocoa had to be sold through the Board of Cocoa, which set the prices. The chocolate resulting from the beans was virtually all being made by Western companies, who were reaping the majority of the profits. When she began to think about the economics of the industry, Yankey had the same breakthrough as Goddard and came to the same conclusion: She decided to make her own. “I was threatened with jail,” she told me, when the board told her she had to sell all her beans to them. She answered that the law did not say what form the beans should be in and hers were in the form of chocolate, with value added, and therefore commanded a higher price. “There was nothing they could say!” she told me, laughing. “In this way, I defeated them.” The law in Ghana still holds, unlike in Trinidad, although it only benefits foreign powers, not Ghanaians themselves.
I asked how she learned. “Instagram was my teacher, in the beginning,” she replied. “But then [Goddard] called me.” They met regularly on Zoom and “through our virtual meetings, she taught me how to temper and all the other methods I needed to know.” Goddard managed to ship a grinder to Ghana to help Yankey develop the business and gave constant support and connections to help with selling or providing technical know-how. This was the power of the Cross Atlantic Cocoa Cooperative.
“Most of us are farmers, a few are not, but all of us have this common motivation of bridging the gap between the well-to-do and the less endowed,” Yankey said, echoing many of my conversations with Goddard. Dee Woods, another member of the Chocolate Rebellion and the cofounder of the African and Caribbean Heritage Food Network in London, is aligned with these aims. “It truly excites me as a Pan-Africanist and reparationist to see this growing global movement of care, repair, agency and collective economics,” she told me. “[It’s] a life-changing strategic system change.”
But although their chocolate is already being sold around the world, Goddard feels there is still a lot to do. She might be diverting some of the water from heading to the reservoir in the Global North but there are structures still in place that ensure much of the profit still flows that way.
The data Goddard collected, showing that $2,000-worth of cocoa beans from Trinidad could be sold for $12,000 if made into chocolate, also showed that Western companies could make a further $5,000 on the ready-made chocolate, “even without doing anything much.” This is because “the structure is established and exploitative. The Global North will always win at this point, and that’s why we want to own the whole supply chain.” For example, the shipping companies going from the Caribbean or Africa to factories in the West are owned by Western companies. And so Goddard is planning a crowdsourced ship to transport the collective’s chocolate — “a sailing ship, so that it doesn’t rely on fossil fuels.”
This shows the holistic approach Goddard takes, in keeping with her view of businesses, communities and societies as ecosystems. Her work isn’t about chocolate, but rather chocolate is a vehicle for the work. “It’s about setting the philosophy, not aiming for the product” is the way Goddard put it. “The philosophy or intention is indigeneity, that is, centering diversity and centering relationships, seeing the importance of each thing in the system rather than assuming the supremacy of humans.” The ARC tagline is “centering the periphery.” When I tell her that that’s always been the unofficial motto of New Lines, she’s delighted with the serendipity. “If that is the basic approach,” she tells me, “you don’t need to worry about the end product. It will look after itself.”
When I ask about the future, she admits she had it easy with chocolate, a popular product that is straightforward to make, transport and sell. At home in Trinidad, they market a range of traditional products, including cocoa tea and the fine chocolate that doesn’t travel well, as well as selling the more robust forms of chocolate to the global market.
“I would like to do the same with mining, to own the supply chain, but that’s far more dangerous to take on.” But with indigeneity as the philosophy, there’s no need to plan. “Nothing is directly planned,” she says, “at least not with any deliberate intention. The forest doesn’t have any intention but does fine when left to itself.” The Cross Atlantic Cocoa Cooperative grew this way, to encompass a community cafe in Baltimore, Degentrification, which does far more than chocolate. The chocolate, again, is one plank of an approach to building communities, serving as a model for what can be achieved through centering the peripheries.
At home in York, the Rowntree’s factory is the only one left of the big old family sweet firms, but that’s not the end of the connection between the city and chocolate. Artisanal chocolate makers are springing up and my Christmas present from a York-based uncle was a selection of chocolate from York Cocoa Works: truffles, bars of single-origin chocolate and drinking chocolate. They make it on the shop premises in town, and also have an on-site cafe. With tours of the facility and chocolate-making workshops, their diverse business model would delight Goddard.
As I taste the fine chocolate from Sierra Leone, handmade from beans proven to have a nonexploitative supply chain, I seem to sense it anew, aware of the potential of the bar to change lives. The heat of Trinidad and Ghana, which I observed in my interviews from my desk in the darkness of York’s midwinter, is transformed by this “king” or “golden” tree into the sweetness so central to our Christmas celebrations. There isn’t an inherent problem with such a globalized world; it is the structural problems left over from colonial times which keep the producers of the product in poverty while enriching companies elsewhere. With this different approach being pioneered by Goddard and others, we can start to enjoy our chocolate with a clear conscience.
Disaster-wary Philippines leads push for climate justice
Ana P. Santos in Manila
DW
As the site of several climate-related disasters, the Philippines is hard to ignore when officials advocate for accountability from polluters. The country is pushing for support for nations facing similar climate crises.
The Philippines endured six major storms in November alone, just two months after suffering Typhoon Yagi as it tore through Southeast Asia
MDRRMO Viga Catanduanes/AP/picture alliance
As the impacts of climate change intensify, vulnerable nations such as the Philippines face increasing devastation. The archipelago has become the country most vulnerable to extreme weather brought on by climate change.
Lorena Ivy Bello Ogania lives in Samar, a province in the central Visayas region, which faces the Pacific Ocean.
In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones on record, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened villages and devastated Samar. Living on the front lines
"As a child, I loved playing in the rain. Now, it terrifies me," Ogania told DW, as two days of relentless rains left her on edge.
She recalled how she was pregnant with her third child at the time and how she gave birth in a tent.
Recovery from the typhoon was painfully slow, with the province enduring months without electricity.
Tony Abletes lived in the Philippine capital, Manila, during Haiyan and still remembers fearing for his family in Samar.
"I was on the phone with my mother when the line went dead," he said. "For five days, I didn't know if she was alive."
Both Ogania and Abletes live on the front lines of the climate crisis, grappling with the trauma of surviving extreme weather.
Toward the end of 2024, the Philippines was pounded by six major storms in less than a month.
The Philippine government has struggled to deal with the impact of major storms
For Ogania, Abletes and others living in coastal communities such as Samar, the climate crisis has become almost a daily battle for survival.
Compensating climate losses
Nations vulnerable to natural disasters linked to global warming, including the Philippines, had long requested financial assistance to help deal with the loss and damage caused by devastating weather events.
COP27, the 2022 UN climate conference in Egypt, produced what was deemed a "historic agreement" to establish a fund for loss and damage. The Loss and Damage (L&D) Fund was officially launched a year later at COP28 in Dubai.
The fund compensates developing nations that contribute little to global warming but face its worst impacts, covering losses such as destroyed livelihoods, infrastructure and biodiversity.
By requiring wealthy high-polluting nations to contribute, the fund attempts to address global warming inequities. In 2024, the Philippines was selected to host the L&D Fund Board to strategize fund disbursement and address urgent climate needs.
Philippines hit by another major typhoon, more on the way
Typhoon Usagi is the fifth major storm to hit the Philippines in a month, with the weather service warning of torrential rain and "life-threatening" coastal waves. Thousands have sought refuge in emergency shelters.Image: Noel Celis/AP/dpa/picture alliance
Fifth major storm in three weeks After four storms that claimed the lives of more than 160 people, displaced millions and devastated farmland, infrastructure and thousands of homes, another typhoon has now swept across the Philippines. On Thursday, the storm hit the coast near Baggao in the north of the country's largest island, Luzon, with wind speeds of 175 kilometers per hour (about 110 miles per hour).Image: AFP
John Leo Algo, national coordinator of Aksyon Klima, a civil society network for climate action, told DW that the L&D Fund must function as a grant, not a financing agreement. "Funds disbursed from the L&D Fund should not further burden countries that are already vulnerable to the climate crisis," he said, calling such a scenario "unacceptable and unjust."
Bridging the funding gap
Algo said the fund should prioritize climate-affected communities, ensuring accessibility and availability during peak emergencies.
While hosting the L&D Fund Board doesn't give the Philippines priority access, it highlights the country's front-line experience with the climate crisis.
"Our role is to inform the board about emerging loss and damage trends worldwide, as we've experienced some of the highest risks and vulnerabilities in recent years," Mark Dennis Joven, board member of the Fund Responding to Loss and Damage, told DW.
Joven, however, acknowledged the critical funding gap, with only $750 million (€725 million) in pledges secured globally — far short of the billions needed.
"We need to act fast so we don't lose momentum," he said. "Operationalizing the fund and deploying funds quickly will encourage stronger commitments from donor countries."
Joven emphasized the importance of mainstreaming L&D as the third pillar of climate financing, alongside mitigation and adaptation.
"Unlike project-linked finance, L&D allows for rapid deployment and direct budget support, critical to achieving climate justice," he said. Domestic measures
As international talks on the L&D Fund continue, advocates in the Philippines continue to push for the Climate Accountability (CLIMA) Bill, which aims to hold carbon polluters accountable by creating a fund for climate loss and damage victims and linking reparations to corporate responsibility.
The CLIMA Bill is similar to recent legislative actions in the United States.
Under a bill signed into law last week, the US state of New York will fine fossil fuel companies $75 billion over 25 years to cover climate damage costs, with funds directed at mitigating impacts such as by adapting infrastructure.
New York follows Vermont, which passed a similar law over the summer, both modeled on superfund laws that require polluters to pay for toxic waste cleanup.
This push for accountability echoes global efforts. Virginia Benosa-Llorin, a senior campaigner for Greenpeace Philippines, told DW that polluters need to face the consequences.
"Every nation must ensure the biggest polluters pay. Without action, life-and-death climate impacts will become the new normal." Benosa-Llorin said.
Edited by: Keith Walker
Russia cuts off gas to Moldovan separatists, risking humanitarian crisis
The Moscow-backed breakaway region is unable to heat homes after being cut off by Kremlin patrons.
Transnistria is a foremost hurdle for Moldova’s accession to the EU. | Maxim Shipenkov/EFE via EPA
Hundreds of thousands of people in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria are facing the prospect of winter without heating or power after Russia ended the flow of natural gas to the unrecognized republic.
Early Wednesday morning, local authorities in the disputed territory announced they were cutting off supplies of hot water and heating for apartment buildings in the face of the gas shortage. They advised people to seal gaps in their windows as temperatures hover around freezing.
Russia’s state energy giant Gazprom turned off the taps earlier Wednesday following expiration of a long-term transit agreement that allowed it to export via pipelinesrunning across neighboring Ukraine.
Speaking to POLITICO, Moldova’s national security advisor, Stanislav Secrieru, accused Russia of “weaponizing” its energy exports “to destabilize Moldova economically and socially, weaken the pro-reform government ahead of the elections, and manufacture political demand for the return of pro-Russian forces to power.”
According to Secrieru, Moldova — which has been an ardent supporter of Ukraine since the start of Moscow’s invasion, and has secured EU candidate status — isn’t facing an “energy crisis — it’s a deliberately induced security crisis and a shaping operation ahead of the 2025 parliamentary elections.”
Pro-Western President Maia Sandu and her government face another key nationwide vote by summer after the country’s EU referendum passed by the narrowest of margins following an alleged Russian influence campaign. Sandu offered humanitarian aid for Transnistria, but said local leaders have so far rejected it.
According to key European policymakers, Transnistria is a foremost hurdle for Moldova’s accession to the bloc, with more than a thousand Russian troops stationed in the separatist-run region. Transnistria had free access to gas as part of a sweetheart deal with the Kremlin that allowed it to sell electricity to the rest of Moldova, funding local salaries and pensions in Transnistria.
Last year, Moldovan officials told POLITICO that ending the country’s dependency on Russian gas could spell the end of Transnistria’s de facto independence. “We buy electricity from the region not because we have to, but because the alternative is to throw the region into a humanitarian crisis,” said then-Energy Minister Victor Parlicov.
Russians Outside of Moscow Identify Very Different Stories as Important than Do Muscovites
Paul Goble
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
Staunton, Dec. 31 – Not surprisingly, in any large country, people in one part of it identify as the most important stories a very different list than do people in other parts. In Russia, this divide is less among the regions than it is between the regions and Moscow, whose residents and rulers set the weather as far as most people are concerned. That makes a list of stories the readers of the NeMoskva portal selected as the most important for them particularly significant because it shows that many beyond the ring road have a very different image of what has been going on over the last twelve months than do people in the capital and those who rely on them (nemoskva.net/2024/12/31/oglyanemsya-na-2024-j/). It is not based on anything like a representative sample: readers of the portal wrote in with their choices. But it is a useful correction to the end-of-year lists that are now filling up the Russian and Western media about what Russians consider important. Most of them reflect what Muscovites may but not what other Russians do. The list as reported and described by NeMoskva includes: • Turning point of the year: invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the Kursk region • Line of the year: farewell to Alexei Navalny in Moscow • Protest of the year: street protests in Baymak, Bashkortostan • Aggravation of the year: terrorist attacks in Moscow and Dagestan and conflicts on ethnic grounds in different regions of Russia • Disasters of the year: floods and forest fires across the country • Solidarity of the year: “Day of Unity of Ingushetia” • Breakthroughs of the year: pipes and dams are breaking all over the country • Disasters of the year: the crash of a plane flying to Chechnya and tankers in the Kerch Strait • Spit of the year: closure of a center for children with disabilities in Kemerovo Novokuznetsk • Resignations of the year: fall of governors in the regions • Flashbacks of the year: the return of cards in Kaliningrad and the remains of a murdered journalist in St. Petersburg • Attempt of the year: installation and demolition of pillars in memory of those repressed in Tomsk • Clash of the year: the dismissal of a teacher from Khabarovsk for dancing in heels - and speeches in his defense • Surprise of the year: acquittal of a Buryat human rights activist • Trip of the year: Siberian circumnavigation
FILE - President-elect Donald Trump listens to Elon Musk as he arrives to watch SpaceX's mega rocket Starship lift off for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Nov. 19, 2024. (Brandon Bell/Pool via AP, File)(AP)
