France: 'Freedom convoy' copies Canada trucker protests

Drivers from several French cities took off for Paris and then Brussels to demand an end to COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine requirements.



Protesters are rallying against restrictions and vaccine requirements

Protesters in France began on Wednesday what they are calling the "freedom convoy," with the ultimate goal of converging around Paris and Brussels, to demand an end to COVID-19 restrictions.

The vehicular protest was inspired by the ongoing demonstrations in Canada, where a sizeable group of truck drivers have blocked a border crossing to protest a COVID-19 vaccine mandate imposed in January by Canada and the US.

France's convoy took off from several cities. In the Mediterranean city of Nice, some 200 people motorcycles and private cars set off for Paris and Brussels. Many of them are upset about the government's health pass, a vaccination requirement that has shut out the unvaccinated from public life.

Residents of France are obliged to show the health pass, as proof of COVID vaccination, to go to restaurants, movie theaters or ride a train, among other activities.

"Lots of people don't understand why a vaccine pass is in force in France," one participant and coordinator of the event in Nice told Reuters news agency.

"Our work is to communicate to Europe that putting in place a health pass until 2023 is something the majority of our fellow citizens cannot understand," the man added.

The protests come as France is slowly emerging from its omicron wave of the virus and two months before a heavily contested general election.
Organized on social media

A total of six "convoys" have been organized so far. Aside from Nice, residents from Bayonne, Strasbourg and Cherbourg, among other cities, have taken part.

The demonstrators hope to form a major rally in Paris on Friday evening and Brussels on Monday, but organizers have not provided many details on what it will all entail.

The movement has been organized primarily through social media, using the platforms Facebook and Telegram, with each boasting some 23,000 followers, the AFP news agency reported.

"We are just tired of it all. We want to go where we want without being asked for a vaccine pass. At least with this action, I am doing something," an independent truck driver, who joined the protest in the city of Perpignan, told Reuters.

Authorities are aware of the freedom convoy. Police sources told AFP that they were already planning "security measures" ahead of the convoy's convergence, to avoid disturbances.

jcg/fb (Reuters, AFP)

Clashes, arrests as New Zealand police clear Covid protest


PUBLISHED : 10 FEB 2022
WRITER: AFP

Protesters resist police before they moved in to evict mandate protesters in parliament grounds in Wellington on Thursday.

WELLINGTON: Police and anti-vaccine protesters clashed on the grounds of New Zealand's parliament Thursday, with more than 50 arrested after demonstrators who camped outside the legislature for three days were ordered to move on.

Activists chanted the Maori haka and yelled "hold the line" as they scuffled with a line of police moving to clear a makeshift settlement from the lawns of parliament.

Police moved in early Thursday after taking a hands-off approach to the first two days of days of protests, using loudhailers to warn a crowd of about 150 they faced arrest unless they left.

Officers were punched and kicked amid cries of "this is not democracy", "shame on you" and "drop the mandate".

The protest began Tuesday as a copycat of a "Freedom Convoy" action by Canadian truckers, with hundreds of semi-trailers and campervans jamming streets in central Wellington.

Many of the vehicles left after 24 hours but a hardcore of activists remained, vowing to stay "as long as it takes".

Wellington City Council, which also took a low-key approach in the protest's early stages, said its parking officers would begin issuing tickets to convoy vehicles blocking city streets.

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said patience had worn thin among Wellington residents at the disruption caused by the protests and called for police to act.

"Roads are blocked in the city, businesses have had to shut, people felt threatened and intimidated by some of the protesters," he told Radio New Zealand prior to the police operation.

Wellington police commander Superintendent Corrie Parnell said more than 100 extra officers were brought in from outside the capital to clear the protest.

"It is disappointing that despite the grounds being officially closed to the public earlier today, a number of protesters are refusing repeated requests to leave the precinct," he said.

In a rare move, authorities closed the parliamentary precinct to the public to prevent reinforcements joining the protest.

The police initially edged forward across the parliament grounds but halted when it met resistance as officers arrested the most prominent protesters.

One woman, who refused to give her name, accused police of provoking the crowd.

"This has been a peaceful protest, what they've done is a disgrace," she said.

"I never thought I'd see this in New Zealand."

But locals in the capital have complained about being abused for wearing masks and several businesses near parliament have closed after staff were harassed for enforcing vaccine mandates.

Wellington City Council, which also took a low-key approach in the protest's early days, said its parking officers would begin issuing tickets to convoy vehicles blocking city streets.

New Zealand requires mandatory Covid vaccinations for people working in sectors such as health, law enforcement, education and defence, with those who refuse the jab facing the sack.

Proof of vaccination must also be shown to enter restaurants, sports events and religious services.

The "Freedom Convoy" of truckers in Canada has gridlocked the capital Ottawa since late last month, prompting city authorities to declare a state of emergency.

U.S. Army still relies on carbon-based fuels, report says

ByColton Jones

Photo by Sgt. Nathan Franco


The U.S. Army still relies on carbon-based fuels, which will likely remain the primary fuel, according to a report released by Dr. David J. Gorsich and Dr. André Boehman.

Army’s chief scientist for ground vehicle systems Dr. David J. Gorsich and professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan, director of the university’s Walter E. Lay Automotive Laboratory André Boehman noted in its report that the Army’s requirement calls for the highest energy-density fuel combined with the lowest mass and volume—and gasoline and diesel still win over alternative energy.

Army scientists’ report examined why isn’t the U.S. Army using alternative forms of energy and powertrains more extensively to reduce fuel usage for its vehicles?

Tesla is building large semitrucks, and UPS and FedEx are starting to order these vehicles for delivery operations. It seems the entire automotive industry is migrating toward electrification as battery costs have dropped dramatically and recharge times and range have improved accordingly. With all of the major automobile manufacturers moving toward hybrids and electric vehicles, it’s easy to get confused and wonder why the Army is so far behind.

The reality is that the Army is not behind. It has experts in all of these fields who have been conducting research on alternative energy sources and hybrids for military vehicles for more than 20 years. In fact, the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office recently awarded BAE Systems a $32 million prototype agreement to integrate a hybrid electric drive system onto a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The development program is part of the Army’s effort to increase vehicle efficiency and boost power generation to support integration of future technologies and improve mobility for combat vehicles on the battlefield.

However, the bottom line is that there is a good reason the Army hasn’t unilaterally decided to switch to alternative fuels. The Army has a unique set of operational requirements, and no current fuel source meeting those requirements contains as much energy, by weight, as diesel or gasoline. Nor is there an alternative form of energy that can be carried or generated on board that, in terms of size or volume, is not at least four to 10 times that of gas and diesel. Electrification of the Army’s ground fleet (for example, by fielding integrated starter generators on tactical vehicles), is very important, but it still relies on diesel as the primary energy source.

This analysis focuses on energy density (the amount of energy stored in a system per unit of volume), conversion of that energy, as well as mass and volume requirements, to determine how they compare to current sources. The full technical paper was published in the Journal of Energy Resources Technology by Andrew Mansfield et al. Titled “Assessment of conventional and alternative energy carriers for use in military vehicle platforms,” the paper was published online Aug. 31, 2020.General Dynamics Land Systems’ Advanced Ground Mobility Vehicle with in-hub electric drive. Photo by Stephen Baack

This study builds on past studies conducted primarily through the U.S. Army Hybrid-Electric Vehicle Experimentation and Assessment program. To understand why the Army still relies on diesel and gas, we need to understand the Army’s requirements, operating environment, and how energy is stored and transformed into vehicle motion.

That’s done through a process that starts with an energy carrier, which is a substance (fuel) or “material state” that stores energy that can be later converted to other forms such as mechanical work or power. We use the term “energy carrier” because it refers to energy that can exist in a variety of forms and can be converted from one form to another. Such carriers may include springs, flywheels, electrical batteries, pressurized air, hydrogen, petroleum, coal, wood and natural gas. A flywheel is a spinning mechanical device that is used to store rotational energy that provides continuous energy when the energy source, say torque from the engine, is intermittent.

Thus, energy carriers are the vehicle’s onboard store of energy, which is transformed into useful mechanical energy through a conversion device, such as combustion engines, electric motors or fuel cells. This process provides mechanical energy that can drive a vehicle transmission, which then can produce power such that:

Energy Carrier → Conversion Device → Mechanical Energy

There are several categories of transportation-applicable energy carriers, i.e., those that can reasonably be stored on board a vehicle, such as chemical and mechanical energy carriers. The various energy carriers and conversion devices considered in this analysis are illustrated in Figure 1, below. They are: hydrocarbon fuels (gas or diesel), batteries, supercapacitors, hydrogen (fuel cell) and flywheels.

Batteries and supercapacitors (electrochemical devices similar to batteries but designed to produce very high specific power, i.e. for use in regenerative brakes on hybrid vehicles) are often compared in terms of their energy and power. Batteries have a higher energy density (the amount of energy that the system can store), compared with supercapacitors, which have a higher power density (the rate of energy that the system can release).

That makes supercapacitors particularly suitable for storing and releasing large amounts of power relatively quickly, whereas batteries are capable of storing large amounts of energy over long periods of time.

Key military requirements assume that fuels will need to be transported to the battlefield, so there is a need for high-energy dense fuels with low weight, as well as a way to generate electricity. That’s because a typical Soldier carries four or five electronic devices—and in the future that burden will likely double—and such devices are useless without electrical power generation. Modern lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries cannot keep up with demand even if a Soldier could carry a large supply.

Figure 2 summarizes the performance characteristics of commercial energy carriers and promising future technologies, and illustrates the distinct superiority of diesel and gasoline fuels. They are by far the most widely used energy carriers and are used in conjunction with internal combustion engines or gas turbines with varying levels of commercialization.

Commercialization (COM) refers to the mass-market availability of a particular technology. Generally, the cheaper a technology is, the more widely available it will be for Army use. Therefore, the higher the commercialization ((↑) signifies increasing, and (↓) decreasing), the more practical the fuel is for implementation in Army vehicles. Subsequently, it becomes a factor in our best energy carrier options, and the new equation is as follows:

(Energy Carrier + Conversion Device) + (↑) COM = Mechanical Energy (Best Performance Characteristics)

Factors such as cost, reliability and commercialization strongly impact the usefulness of some of the options in Figure 2. Typical fuels (with their ease of commercialization given in parentheses), can be liquid, such as kerosene (high), diesel (high), gasoline (high) and ethanol (medium); or gaseous, such as methane and natural gas (medium to high). Lithium air (Li–air) batteries and hydrogen are middle to low performers, with similar energy density to fuels but an order-of-magnitude lower specific energy. Li-ion (medium to high) and nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH; high) batteries, as well as flywheels (high) are at the lower end of performance with an order-of-magnitude lower energy density and specific energy values compared with high-performance electrochemical energy carriers.

Ni-MH batteries have become very well established in the marketplace, while Li-ion batteries are more recently commercialized. Li-air batteries (low) are a very promising future technology that is not yet commercial.

Army’s ZH2 fuel-cell electric vehicle

Many full or partially electric vehicles from the past decade use Ni-MH batteries. Newer electric automotive vehicle manufacturers, such as Tesla, have chosen to use Li-ion batteries.

The conversion devices considered were combustion engines, electric motors, and fuel cells. Their performance characteristics can be seen in Figure 3, which shows a measurement of the actual performance of each power source versus its power output. Electric motors have the highest level of performance, but, as we saw earlier, they are connected to batteries that don’t have enough stored energy to last for military applications. Gasoline and diesel combustion engines are next, with methane engines at the lowest level.

Another important factor when considering alternative energy carriers is how much vehicle space will be required to transport the requisite fuel as well as all of the ancillary equipment necessary to operate and adequately power the vehicle system.

In order to assess and compare approximately how much onboard space each alternative energy carrier would require, researchers evaluated the approximate space claims by comparing the energy carrier volume and powertrain mass associated with each carrier with regard to the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) and Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) platforms. Figure 4 illustrates the predicted total powertrain mass and energy carrier volume for various single and dual hybrid energy carriers for the two vehicle systems. The results indicate that diesel and gasoline fuels are clearly the optimal energy carriers for both vehicle systems, with the lowest total powertrain masses and low energy carrier volumes.

This is true of the results for both single energy carriers in the left-side graphs of Figure 4 and for dual hybrid carriers (diesel + battery or supercapacitor) in the right-side graphs. Of the dual hybrid energy carriers, diesel fuel + Li-air hybrid is clearly optimal, yielding the greatest rate of hybridization (50 percent diesel and 50 percent Li-air) considering the relatively small mass and volume increases. These results also clearly indicate the dramatic benefits of Li-ion and Li-air battery technology over more traditionally used Ni-MH.

A prime candidate for alternative-energy carrier for military vehicles would include an optimized fuel source and conversion device, a high level of commercialization, as well as a system mass and volume as small as possible. In general, smaller (↓) mass and volume (M&V) alternatives increase the operational effectiveness of vehicles and, therefore, become part of our equation as follows:

(Energy Carrier → Conversion Device) + (↑) COM + (↓) M&V = Mechanical Energy (Best Performance Characteristics)

With respect to batteries in both single and dual energy systems, the three alternative energy technologies considered here resulted in dramatically different total powertrain mass and energy carrier volumes—much larger than for diesel fuel systems. Use of Ni-MH batteries results in a total mass 15 to 22 times larger and energy carrier volume 25 times larger than the diesel fuel system. Li-ion batteries are a dramatic improvement over Ni-MH, resulting in a total mass only 4.5 to 7 times larger and energy carrier volume 4 times larger than the diesel fuel system.

Even with this improvement, the large mass and volume increase over a diesel fuel system presents a significant challenge to its implementation, as driving performance and usable volume would likely fall dramatically. The effect of large mass and volume increases for Li-ion battery systems in similar large vehicles is evident in the short 300 – 500 mile range of the Tesla semitruck, which uses Li-ion batteries, compared with a more typical 1,000-mile range for a diesel semitruck.

Relative to diesel fuel, both hydrogen and methane yield similar total powertrain masses but significantly larger (3-5 times) energy carrier volumes. This highlights the primary issue with the low energy density of gaseous fuels and indicates that at existing and near-term technology levels, if these fuels are used as the single energy carrier for military ground vehicles, a large portion of their usable payload carrying capacity (volume) would be lost.

The Army has a unique set of requirements that cannot currently be better satisfied with anything other than gas or diesel as the primary energy carrier. Considering the high torque performance of diesel combustion engines, diesel fuel is clearly the optimal energy carrier for the Army’s ground vehicle platforms, from the perspective of both the total powertrain mass (energy carrier + conversion device), and stored energy volume.

Military applications provide common and unique challenges for energy storage systems and energy density, with regard to mass and volume, and are critical challenges for commercial and military energy storage systems. Energy storage systems for military applications must be able to be stored and operate reliably at low and high temperatures (minus 46 to 88 Celsius) and under greater shock and vibration conditions than commercial systems. Cooling systems for military energy storage and export power solutions are complicated by the harsh environmental conditions they must withstand. Consequently, this combined scenario continues to drive the Army toward liquid fuels and their physical properties.

In the future, for the Army to consider a fleetwide, wholesale change that moves away from hydro carbon fuels, it needs to develop a very detailed strategy and step-by-step paths to acquire any new technologies. This hasn’t happened yet because there are still too many obstacles that need to be resolved before alternative energy carriers can become a viable option for full-scale use. It is unlikely, in terms of scale and scope, that the Army will transform to something else in the next 10 years. While alternative power-generation exists now in many different forms, alternative fuels aren’t ready for prime time when it comes to large-scale Army use.


Colton Jones
Colton Jones is technology editor for Defenсe Blog. He has written about emerging technology in military magazines and elsewhere.

Vladimir Putin: Modern Man

Why the tension in Ukraine may feel deceptively regressive

By Tom McTague
THE ATLANTIC

FEBRUARY 9, 2022, 1:30 AM ET
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There is a peculiar modern tendency to describe things we don’t like as belonging to the past. The Taliban are medieval, Donald Trump supporters backward, Brexiteers nostalgic for empire. Under this rubric, Vladimir Putin is a Soviet throwback and the war he may soon start in Ukraine, as John Kerry once remarked, is like some 19th-century skirmish transplanted into the 21st.

It is no doubt a comfort to imagine that these things that do not conform to our ideas of modernity are, therefore, not modern. To think this way means that we are modern and on “the right side of history.” In this way of looking at the world, all the bad things we see around us are like ghosts from the past whose deathly grip on progress might frustrate it for a while, and with potentially terrible consequences, but cannot stop its wheels from eventually grinding on. This is, of course, total nonsense.


As brutal as the Taliban is, just like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, it is not a medieval organization but the product of our globalized age of digital propaganda, social media, and the like. Similarly, Trumpism is an expression not of 1950s America, but of today’s America. And then there’s Putin, who, whatever we want to believe, is a man very much of our world. In fact, not only is he as modern as any Western leader, but compared with those who seem to think that modernity equates with sometime around the year 2000, he is considerably more modern.

To be sure, modern does not mean “good” or “reasonable” or “right.” Nor does Putin’s modernity mean that he has been—or will be—successful, either for the Russian people or in his stated objectives of pushing back NATO’s frontiers and keeping Ukraine tied to Russia. To say that the Russian president is modern, in fact, is not to make a value judgment at all. He is, as my colleague Anne Applebaum has set out, a violent, kleptocratic danger to the world. Nevertheless, understanding Putin as a modern phenomenon is fundamentally important if we are to avoid the category error that assumes the danger posed by him and his sort is that they might turn back the clock, not speed it up, re-creating old worlds rather than forging new ones.

In fact, while we do not know what the 21st century will look like, it is reasonable to assume that it will far more closely resemble Putin’s vision of Darwinian geopolitical struggle than the kind of harmonious, “rules based” globalization that many in the West have hoped for. Already, for example, the Clintonian dream of a slowly democratizing China benignly slotting into the American world order looks far more archaic than, say, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s surveillance state, which is modern in the extreme.

How many times do we make this mistake, of misinterpreting malign products of modernity with leftovers from the past? I’m currently reading a book on the Cosa Nostra by the British historian John Dickie that shows that for centuries, the authorities in Italy and elsewhere dismissed the “honored society” as a product of Sicily’s backwardness. The Mafia, it was said, was destined to disappear as soon as the forces of modernity took hold on the island, bringing democracy, liberalism, and prosperity.

In fact, the Cosa Nostra was a product of modernity, born out of the enormous profits Sicily was making selling citrus fruits around the world after the breakdown of the old feudal order. In other words, the Mafia was a modern criminal organization preying on a modern economy. Ever since, it has survived by adapting to the modern world, stealing, for example, European Union investment funds designed to develop the island. To believe that the Mafia can be tackled simply by “development” or progress is to fundamentally misunderstand its nature.

Read: The decline of the American world

The risk today is that we repeat the same mistake, only on a much bigger scale with Russia and China. Whatever we think of China, the country’s turn toward autocracy and repression under Xi does not mean that it has taken a step backwards that will weaken its economy or its challenge to the American order. Perhaps it has, but believing so is mere faith. In fact, it is not China’s backwardness that makes it so scary, but its modernity. The plight of the Uyghurs is an appalling case in point.

Something similar is true of Russia, which appears to be a kind of anarcho-Mafia state, controlled by its capo di tutti capi in the Kremlin. But just because this system appears to be fundamentally unstable and disastrous for the Russian people does not mean that it is backward or that it cannot achieve its more limited aims. The Russia that is amassing on the Ukrainian border is not that which came before, under the czars or the Soviets, but something altogether new and frightening.

The reemergence of China and Russia, therefore, poses an imaginative challenge. Suddenly, we are forced to confront the prospect that in the future we may not have “progressed” toward some more enlightened, just, and universal order. Instead, the future might be more particular, competitive, national, or perhaps even civilizational. And if that is the case, what happens if we are on the wrong side of history, not because we were necessarily wrong but because we just got beat?

Patrick Porter, an international-security professor at the University of Birmingham, told me that the fallacy at the heart of our thinking is imagining competitive power politics as either modern or premodern. We have begun to think of it as such, he said—somewhat ironically—because of a particular moment in history, the fall of the Soviet Union, after which, for a short time, America had no real rival in world politics. Now it does once again, and it’s facing the prospect of a rival country invading somewhere.

“People say things like ‘You don’t do this in the 21st century,’” Porter said. “But what is this 21st century you speak of?”

Aforthcoming book called Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, by the Cambridge University professor Helen Thompson, charts the geopolitical, economic, and political challenges faced by the West since the end of the Cold War. Thompson told me that the crisis on Ukraine’s border today is part of a wider—and much older—issue of how to manage the nations between Russia and Germany, only now in the new setting of the 21st century, in which the European Union cannot defend itself and a wider Western military alliance is led by a hegemon preoccupied with China. We think of Putin as anachronistic, she said, only because we have convinced ourselves that we have moved beyond his form of power politics, based on raw national interest, to something post-national.

The problem is that while overt displays of nationalism are now viewed as somewhat distasteful, passé, and dangerous in the West, the nation-state itself remains the foundation not just of international relations, but of Western democracies. As Thompson said, for the people to choose their representatives, there has to be a people in the first place, and historically the nation has defined who any particular democratic people is. Democracy and nationalism, in other words, go hand in hand.

But the thing about nations is that they are just groups of people who agree that they are a nation. And people can disagree. In an essay published by Putin last year, the Russian president spent 7,000 somewhat turgid words attempting to establish that Russians and Ukrainians are really one people, occupying the territory of “historical Russia.” In his essay, Putin blames Bolshevik leaders for creating a separate Ukraine, accusing them of treating the Russian people as “inexhaustible material for their social experiments,” including an attempt to wipe out nation-states entirely. “That is why they were so generous in drawing borders and bestowing territorial gifts,” he writes bitterly. This does not seem like a man looking to re-create the Soviet Union, even if he does want its borders back.

In response, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace published his own account, countering that Putin’s claim that “Ukraine is Russia and Russia is Ukraine” is wrong, arguing instead that “Ukraine has been separate from Russia for far longer in its history than it was ever united.” He also rejected Putin’s argument that the people of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine are one people descended from the “Ancient Rus,” dismissing this as a form of ethno-nationalism based on a fabrication of history.

The problem in all of this is that no real history can establish the degree to which Ukraine is or is not separate from Russia.

In a sense, Wallace is engaging Putin on his own terms: that history is the judge here. But nations can and do change (as Americans can attest). Indeed, nations themselves are relatively modern constructs. Taking the long view, people lived in things other than “nations” far before there were German, American, Ukrainian, and Russian nation-states. The Romanovs in Russia ruled over Tatars, Germans, Russians, and Finns. In the 18th century, the court language in St. Petersburg was French and the provincial nobility was German. Not until the reign of Alexander III, in the late 19th century, did Russification become the official dynastic policy, long after the idea of being Ukrainian had emerged, as the historian of nationalism Benedict Anderson shows in his book Imagined Communities.

Read: The leaderless world

None of this is to ridicule Putin’s account of Russian history. All nations are, in effect, made up, requiring somewhat mythical narratives. But just because nations are imagined does not make them fake. Far from it. As the philosopher John Gray put it to me: “The whole human experience is imaginary. Money, borders, laws, power—they only work if we all agree that they exist.” The important point is what the people in Russia and Ukraine think and whether one side can impose its will on the other.

Here is where Putin is both strongest and weakest. In the crisis he has created, Putin has an obvious escalatory dominance over the West. He has the means and potentially the will to invade Ukraine. The West will simply not fight a war for Ukrainian independence, though it will exact an extremely high price from Putin for any incursion. Putin’s behavior, then, reflects the world that exists today—one in which the EU cannot defend the nations that want to join it and the United States is psychologically retreating from its imperial borders.

Yet the very nature of Putin’s threats appear to have hardened attitudes in Ukraine against any notion of Russo-Ukrainian kinship. The paradox of Putin is that in threatening Ukraine and the wider European security order, he appears to grasp the consequences of America’s imaginative retreat from the world and the fundamental reality of geopolitical power. But he either underestimates the imaginative lure of the West for Ukrainians or understands it too well and is seeking to crush it through force. There could not be a more modern conflict than this battle between power and imagination.

Karl marx noted that in moments of revolutionary crisis the spirits of the past are summoned up to present the new scene in a way we can understand. That is what Putin is doing today. The point, as Marx spotted, is not to actually make the old spirits rise again, but to use their memory to glorify the new struggle, magnifying the task in the public imagination.

History matters, then, because it shapes how we think about the world and our place in it. And the principal way we understand history is through the history of nations. As such, national histories are necessarily stories, not scientific studies. Were millions of Ukrainians starved to death under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin? Yes. Were ordinary Russians also the victims of Bolshevism, as Putin argues? Yes. Was the collapse of the Soviet Union a liberation or a tragedy? It depends on who you were. To many, it was probably both.

As the Second World War historian Allan Allport told me, Putin, like everybody else, is both shaped by history and uses it for his own purposes. “We all operate on these two levels,” he said. The point, Allport argues, is not really whether historical narratives are true, but whether they are functional. But who decides what is functional and what is dysfunctional? In Britain, for example, there is the myth of the Blitz spirit, the idea that ordinary Londoners rallied together under German aerial bombardment. Even at the time, Allport said, people knew this was a myth. “It was less a way to describe the present than a model of how to behave.” Even today, Brits like to draw on this myth to keep calm and carry on, which is often positive but can also, depending on your political view, be a form of apathy. Maybe there are times when being less sanguine would be better.

Read: How Britain falls apart

Today Brits like to believe what Allport described as the “self-excoriating myth” that they are uniquely obsessed with the Second World War, when “the reality is everybody is obsessed with the Second World War.” This obsession just plays out in different ways in different places, as we are now seeing with the differing French, German, British, and American reactions to Putin’s threats to Ukraine. In each case, these reactions can be seen as reflections of the lessons drawn from World War II: Germany must pursue peace; France must show its independence; Britain must not appease; America must lead.

The truth is that nations and their ideas matter; we have not consigned them to the past and moved into some kind of post-national or “rational” world. That we thought we had was itself a myth we chose to believe, because it helped make sense of our Western-dominated world, causing us to feel good. We in the West like to ignore the reality that behind this apparently international order sits the enormous and slightly veiled Leviathan of American power. For most of us in the West, this is no bad thing—indeed, our place in this imperial order is enormously beneficial. Ukrainians today would, it seems, very much like to be a part of it. But we have yet to face up to what will replace it.

That moment when we in the West all bathed contentedly under the American sun has gone. The U.S. is and will likely remain the preeminent power in the world, but it is in relative decline because of China’s extraordinary growth. This is the context for Russian revanchism, an expression of the modern world, not of the one that has long since faded from view.

Putin, then, is a modern man, reacting to the modern world, using modern methods in an attempt to make something new. He is conjuring up the spirits of the past in his service, dressing up his aggression in time-honored disguise. Yet we should not be fooled by the old costumes and slogans; the reality is new and real. Putin is trying to bury the old world, not re-create it. And the very fact that he feels he can suggests that we have already arrived somewhere new. The question is who will have the tools—and imagination—to shape it.

Archbishop of Canterbury criticises Church of England for taking too long to remove slavery memorial

Justin Welby asked 'why is it so much agony to remove?'

Carl Bennett

SENIOR DIGITAL PRODUCER
PUBLISHED

 Wednesday 09 February 2022 - 05:20

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said the Church of England is taking too long to remove a memorial to a man who funded the slave-trade.

The plaque memorialising Tobias Rustat, who invested in the Royal African Company, is located inside a Cambridge University college chapel.

In comments carried by the BBC, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby asked: “Why is it so much agony to remove a memorial to slavery?”

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby speaks at the annual Lord Mayor's Banquet at the Guildhall in central London. Aaron Chown

Jesus College requested last year that the plaque be moved and exhibited in a “place of learning”.

Mr Welby asked why that was “so difficult” and said “we need to change our practices”.

Earlier, Lord Boateng, chair of the Archbishops’ Commission on Racial Justice, said at the General Synod that a lack of action on recommendations to address racial injustice was “chilling” and “a scandal”.

“Why is it so much agony to remove a memorial to slavery?”

The Archbishop of Canterbury

He said: “The most chilling thing about this report, the most concerning thing about this report, are the appendices, the long lists of previous recommendations which have not been implemented, promises made that have not been fulfilled.

“It is chilling, it is wounding, it is a scandal, and it has to be addressed.”

Credit Suisse vice chair faces opposition to re-election – FT

Posted on February 9, 2022

A man enters the Credit Suisse offices in the Manhattan borough of New York

ZURICH (Reuters) – Credit Suisse Vice Chair Severin Schwan faces opposition to his re-election to the board of the embattled Swiss lender, The Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

Some investors said they will try to block any move to extend the tenure of the Roche chief executive, who has been vice chair at Credit Suisse since April 2017.

The investors were not named by the paper, which said they belonged to the 10 biggest shareholders in Credit Suisse.

Having joined the bank’s board in 2014, Schwan is also the lead independent director. During his stint, Credit Suisse’s share price has slumped by 64% after it became embroiled in a string of scandals and losses.

Schwan had intended to leave before the bank’s annual meeting in April, the newspaper said, citing three people familiar with the matter.

But he has been asked by other board members to reconsider his departure to maintain stability under the new chair, Axel Lehmann, who took charge last month following the abrupt departure of Antonio Horta-Osorio following breaches of coronavirus quarantine rules.

The FT said investors had serious concerns about Schwan’s ability to lead pharmaceuticals and diagnostics group Roche while also acting as the bank’s vice-chair.

“If he’s up for election there will be a fight,” one top 10 shareholder told the FT.

“His role as Roche CEO does not benefit Credit Suisse . . . he should (leave Credit Suisse) and go on to another board,” another top 10 shareholder told the newspaper.

The bank, which releases its annual results on Thursday, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did Roche.

Schwan is undecided whether he will stand for re-election at the bank’s shareholder meeting in April 29, he told Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in January.

“In any case, the task now is to stabilise the bank, and I am happy to support the new chairman in this,” he added.

(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Michael Shields)

GOP lawmaker pushing trans sports ban didn’t even know her state already had a trans athlete policy

Wyoming has been letting trans girls play sports for eight years without a problem. Someone finally told state Sen. Wendy Schuler.

By Molly Sprayregen

Tuesday, February 8, 2022

: A supporter holds a sign that says "Support Trans Youth" in Washington Square Park on the 8th Annual Trans Day of Action on June 22, 2012 in New York City.Photo: Shutterstock

The lawmaker behind a Wyoming bill seeking to ban trans women from playing high school and college sports on women’s teams didn’t even know that the state already had a policy in place regarding trans athlete participation.

Ron Laird, the commissioner of the Wyoming High School Activities Association, told the York News-Times that he recently spoke to the bill’s lead sponsor, state Sen. Wendy Schuler (R), and said she was completely unaware of this statewide policy.

Related: Michael Phelps’s trans ex-girlfriend blames him for Lia Thomas’s teammates’ anti-trans letter

The policy says all students can be “considered for the opportunity to participate in Wyoming High School Activities Association activities in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on a student’s records.”

Athletes can also appeal decisions to a “gender identity eligibility committee.”

“We feel that our policy has worked,” Laird said, adding that it makes more sense for these decisions to be handled on a local level where those who actually know the students are making the decisions.

“The school makes the determination, and that’s why its effective – because the school knows that student,” Laird said.

Schuler has also since been made aware not only that the policy exists, but that it has rarely even been necessary to use it. Nevertheless, she has maintained her position that the bill will “protect women and girls.”

“Let’s just nip it in the bud,” she said. “I’m just trying to be proactive. I think it will become bigger deal than it is now. This bill would make it pretty black and white.”

Bisexual speedskater Ireen Wüst is the first individual athlete to win gold at 5 Olympic Games

Ireen Wüst is the Winter Olympics' third winningest athlete and has more medals than any other speedskater.

By Molly Sprayregen Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Ireen Wust at the 2014 Winter OlympicsPhoto: Screenshot/YouTube

Dutch bisexual speed skater Ireen Wüst has become the first athlete to win an individual gold medal in five different Olympic Games after winning the women’s 1,500-meter race on Monday.

It was her fifth Olympics winning gold and it was her sixth gold medal. With five silvers and one bronze as well, she is the Winter Olympics’ third winningest athlete and has more medals than any other speedskater.

Related: At least 6 out athletes are representing the United States at the 2022 Winter Olympics

“The first time is the easiest one to win,” Wüst told the New York Times. “Winning for the fifth time is the hardest.”

If all of those accomplishments weren’t enough, 35-year-old Wüst is also the oldest speed skater to ever win gold, and in her most recent race, she even broke an Olympic record, with a time of 1 minute 53.28 seconds.

“When it’s really important, I can show something extra,” she said. “And that’s the feeling I had when I woke up.”

She also said this will be her final season competing. She plans to retire and marry girlfriend Letitia de Jong this summer. She is looking forward to the next chapter in her life, during which she plans to have children.

NEW DEFINITION OF FAMILY VALUES

GOP governor candidate busted as part of swingers group. He didn’t pull out.

But he really wants you to know that he's completely heterosexual and wasn't into the other dudes because he's the family values candidate.

By Bil Browning Tuesday, February 8, 2022

A post by Sandy, OR Mayor Stan Pulliam to a swingers Facebook group showed he and his wife in multiple pictures

Photo: Twitter screenshot

Sandy, Oregon Mayor Stan Pulliam, one of the leading GOP gubernatorial primary candidates forged in the image of former president Donald Trump, has admitted that he and his wife were part of a swingers group a few years ago.

While he acknowledged the open relationship, he didn’t pull out of the race. Instead, he assured potential voters that he is 100% heterosexual.

Pulliam told the media during an interview with his spouse, MacKensey, that the two “explored relationships, mutual relationships with other couples, for a brief period of time before ultimately deciding that it wasn’t for us.”

“I think people can relate from all different parts of the state who have been involved in marriages,” he said. “There are different stages of marriage and different ebbs and flows. This is something that was for a brief period in our past and is in the past.”

Open relationships are perhaps more common among the LGBTQ community, and groups for married opposite-sex couples to “swap” partners for consensual sex have existed for decades. Still, the idea of sex outside of marriage has been a major taboo for the religious right and conservative politicians.

While Pulliam was more than willing to give his own family some leeway in the morals department, he still made sure to assuage voters’ fears that he might have done something sexual with another man. He explicitly told the media that he is not bisexual.

“I’m a heterosexual male,” Pulliam asserted. “And I’ve only personally engaged in heterosexual activity.”

Pulliam was responding to a screenshot of a Facebook post he made that has rocketed around Oregon political services. The post, with photos of the couples, was made to the “Swinger Facebook Group PDX” in 2016. Another photo circulated online showed him at the Portland Erotic Ball in 2011.

Those sharing the screenshot are implying that Pulliam is, in fact, bisexual and that his campaign has been working with anti-LGBTQ groups. He denied that.

The Republican mayor has made a name for himself in local politics by challenging out bisexual Gov. Kate Brown’s (D) coronavirus prevention mandates. He also echoes Trump’s Big Lie and racist attacks on “critical race theory.”

With over a million dollars in the bank for his campaign, Pulliam polls second among Republican voters, but can he maintain the lead? Evangelical voters will willing to overlook Trump’s depravities and sexual peccadilloes, but would they do the same for Pulliam?

“Donald Trump can get away with it.” Pacific University political science professor Jim Moore told Willamette Week. “Stan Pulliam—I don’t think he can. He’s still introducing himself to people. He’s raised nearly a million dollars—he needs to be spending a lot of it right now on pictures of flags and kittens and puppies.”

Donald Trump joked that Mike Pence thinks “it’s a crime to be gay”

Donald Trump was considering naming an out gay Supreme Court justice but worried what Mike Pence would think.

By Alex Bollinger 

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Donald Trump and Mike Pence shake hands onstagePhoto: Shutterstock

Donald Trump joked that Mike Pence thought “it’s a crime to be gay” in the days leading up to his 2017 inauguration, according to a new book by out New York Times journalist Jeremy W. Peters.

The book, Insurgency: How Republicans lost their party and got everything they ever wanted, says that Pence, Trump, and former Fox News contributor Andrew Napolitano had a meeting at Trump Tower in late 2016 where the three talked about the possibility of naming Napolitano, who is gay, to the Supreme Court.

Related: Donald Trump says Mike Pence ‘wants to hang’ all gay people

“During their meeting, for part of which Mike Pence was present, Trump ribbed Pence for his anti-gay rights views,” Peters wrote. “Addressing Napolitano, Trump gestured toward the archconservative vice-president-elect and said, ‘You’d better be careful because this guy thinks it’s a crime to be gay. Right, Mike?’ When Pence didn’t answer, Trump repeated himself, ‘Right, Mike?’ Pence remained silent.”

The book says that Trump at the time was considering naming several TV personalities to the high court, “not lawyers or judges he admired for their legal philosophies or interpretations of the Constitution.” That led Republicans to privately worry about how seriously he was taking the job.

Fox host Jeanine Pirro was another name Trump floated, according to the book, because Trump “regularly watched and occasionally planned his flight schedule around, directing his personal pilot to adjust the route accordingly so the satellite signal wouldn’t fade.”

If Trump had named Napolitano to the Supreme Court, he would have been the first out LGBTQ person to serve as a Supreme Court justice.

Instead, Napolitano was fired by Fox News after being accused of sexual harassment by a co-worker in a lawsuit.

Biden admin attacks Florida GOP for trying to ban teachers from talking about LGBTQ people

President Joe Biden wants LGBTQ youth to know they're "loved exactly for who they are."

By Alex Bollinger Wednesday, February 9, 2022

President Joe BidenPhoto: Shutterstock

The White House has denounced a bill in Florida that would ban teachers from discussing LGBTQ people in primary school, which has been called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

“Every parent hopes that our leaders will ensure their children’s safety, protection, and freedom,” a White House spokesperson said. “Today, conservative politicians in Florida rejected those basic values by advancing legislation that is designed to target and attack the kids who need support the most – LGBTQI+ students, who are already vulnerable to bullying and violence just for being themselves. But make no mistake – this is not an isolated action.”

Related: Gay Republicans accuse Buttigieg of “wet dreams of gender fluid, indoctrinated, & groomed children”

The statement is referring to H.B. 1557, which was passed by both chambers in Florida’s legislature. LGBTQ advocates like Chasten Buttigieg has pointed out that LGBTQ teens are at a heightened risk of suicide and the bill would cut them off from help from their teachers.

Meanwhile, proponents of the bill, like the Log Cabin Republicans, have been comparing discussing LGBTQ families in school to pedophilia.

And the White House called out conservatives for that hateful tactic.

“At every step of the way, Republicans have peddled in cheap political attacks, instead of focusing on the issues parents, students, and teachers care about,” the White House statement said.

“Instead of making growing up even harder for our young people, President Biden and his administration are focused on keeping schools open, providing resources to combat learning loss, and supporting students’ mental health. The difference in leadership could not be more stark, and the Biden-Harris Administration will not shy away from holding leaders accountable for dangerous actions that hurt our nation’s students.”

“Just imagine what it would feel like to be a kid watching the leaders in your state bully you through legislation that tries to erase your existence,” the spokesperson continued. “These types of attacks are the root cause of the mental health crisis that LGBTQI+ [people] face.”

“The president wants LGBTQI+ young people who may be feeling scared or alone because of these legislative attacks to know that they are loved exactly for who they are, and that he won’t stop fighting for the protections and safety they deserve.”


Biden later tweeted about what he called the “hateful bill.”