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)
Friday, May 05, 2023
China Covid whistleblower Fang Bin returns home to Wuhan after jail: Report
China Covid Whistleblower Fang Bin: The video which resulted in his arrest showed eight body bags outside a Covid hospital in just five minutes.
Chinese whistleblower- Fang Bin- who documented the initial Covid outbreak in China's Wuhan, has been freed from jail after three years, BBC reported. The citizen journalist was reported to be jailed after he shared videos of scenes in Wuhan- the epicentre of Covid pandemic. He disappeared in February 2020 and was sentenced to three years in jail at a secret trial in Wuhan, the report claimed.
China Covid Whistleblower Fang Bin: Fang Bin has been released from jail, reports claimed. (AFP
The video which resulted in his arrest showed eight body bags outside a Covid hospital in just five minutes. He was the detained but later released.- Later, a video with the message from him came out.
“All people revolt - hand the power of the government back to the people,” he had urged, leading to his arrest again. Another whistleblower - Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, was detained in May 2020 and jailed for four years in December 2020.
She was convicted for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble", according to activists. "Maybe I have a rebellious soul... I'm just documenting the truth. Why can't I show the truth?" Zhang Zhan said in an interview.
Two other citizen reporters Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua also disappeared in Wuhan in February 2020. Although they surfaced months later.
Videos by the citizen journalists offered glimpse into Wuhan in the early months of 2020 while Covid cases were climbing and lockdowns had come into force. Wuhan's 76-day lockdown put the city under severe strain.
Woolly mammoths had testosterone surges like those of male elephants
Hormone measurements from the tusk of a male woolly mammoth show these animals went through musth, a seasonal peak in testosterone seen in elephants
By Riley Black 3 May 2023 Woolly mammoths were driven extinct by humans about 4000 years ago PA Images/Alamy
Testosterone preserved in the tusks of male woolly mammoths reveal that they went through a seasonal change called musth, just like modern elephants do.
Once they reach sexual maturity, male African and Asian elephants go through musth for about three months every year. The shift is marked by a surge in testosterone and is often accompanied by thick, gooey secretions from ducts on the elephants’ temples. Male elephants are said to be more aggressive and restless during this time, although the exact relationship between the hormonal changes and behaviour is unclear.
Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius), which went extinct about 4000 years ago, were closely related to Asian elephants. Their tusks, like those of elephants, grew throughout their lives, and previous studies have recorded hormones such as cortisol, testosterone and progesterone preserved in a tooth tissue called dentine.
Palaeontologists have long suspected that woolly mammoths experienced musth. To test this idea, Michael Cherney at the University of Michigan and his colleagues isolated and analysed testosterone levels in tusks from a male African elephant, a male woolly mammoth estimated to have lived about 35,000 years ago and a female woolly mammoth thought to have lived around 5500 years ago. By sampling many sections along the length of a tusk, they were able to see how the hormone levels fluctuated over the animals’ lifetimes.
Woolly mammoth tusks, teeth and assorted bones collected on Wrangel Island, Russia, by the study team Alexei Tikhonov
In the elephant, testosterone levels peaked at 20 times higher during musth than the rest of the year. The tests showed similar fluctuations in the male mammoth, with testosterone reaching 10 times higher than baseline. There was little variation in testosterone levels in the female mammoth.
“This is such an exciting and fascinating piece of scientific sleuthing,” says Susan Alberts at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who wasn’t involved in the study. “The comparison of the elephant and mammoth tusks is compelling evidence that they are picking up the same signals in the two species.”
Musth was “low-hanging fruit” for an initial study, Cherney says, but the new method has the potential to document many aspects of the lives of mammoths, as well as other extinct animals. “We anticipate being able to identify pregnancies, maturation ages, stress events and other things that could be used to improve our understanding of mammoth and mastodon palaeobiology,” he says.
Star is caught on camera swallowing a planet for the first time
Astronomers have captured a star in the act of engulfing a planet. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick/M. Zamani
Astronomers have observed a dying star engulfing a planet for the first time. It’s something that’s likely to happen to Earth in a few billion years.
While the precursors and after-effects of stars engulfing planets have been observed before, this is the first time a star’s been caught sucking in a planet that strayed too close.
This happens when Sun-like stars get old, expanding in size until they’ve engulfed planets in their star systems.
It’s estimated to only happen a few times a year in the Milky Way, making it a difficult to observe.
The researchers who have just published their observation in Nature, first spotted the evidence of planetary engulfment in May 2020, when they saw a bright flash on a star 12,000 light-years away, in the Aquila constellation.
They were looking for flashes from stellar binaries with data from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF).
Binary star systems occasionally get brighter, as mass from one star is pulled into the other.
“One night, I noticed a star that brightened by a factor of 100 over the course of a week, out of nowhere,” says lead author Dr Kishalay De, a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US.
“It was unlike any stellar outburst I had seen in my life.”
When he cross-referenced this data against observations from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, De couldn’t find any of the tell-tale chemical signatures that binary eruptions normally give off.
Next, the researchers looked at infrared data from the Palomar Observatory.
“That infrared data made me fall off my chair,” says De.
“The source was insanely bright in the near-infrared.”
This could have indicated that the flash was a red nova – an explosion from two merging stars.
But data from NASA’s infrared space telescope, NEOWISE, showed that the explosion was too small – about one thousandth the size of even a small stellar merger.
“That means that whatever merged with the star has to be 1,000 times smaller than any other star we’ve seen,” says De.
“And it’s a happy coincidence that the mass of Jupiter is about 1/1,000 the mass of the sun. That’s when we realized: This was a planet, crashing into its star.”
Stars like our Sun turn hydrogen into helium in their cores – until they get to old age, when the hydrogen runs out. At this point, helium starts fusing into carbon, and the outer layers of the star expand outwards and glow red as they get cooler. This engulf planets in the inner star system – and when a planet is engulfed, it triggers a flashy outburst of energy and material.
Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld
The researchers believe that the planet was between about one and 10 times the mass of Jupiter.
The initial flash from the planet’s engulfment lasted 10 days, followed by 100 days of a bright infrared emission caused by the engulfing star ejecting material.
“I think there’s something pretty remarkable about these results that speaks to the transience of our existence,” says co-author Dr Ryan Lau, an astronomer at the US National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab.
“After the billions of years that span the lifetime of our Solar System, our own end stages will likely conclude in a final flash that lasts only a few months.”
Italy’s pro-choice gynecologists reel from post-Roe shockwaves
In Italy, where 7 in 10 gynecologists refuse to perform abortions, pro-choice doctors fear for the future of abortion rights GEMELLI HOSPITAL IN ROME/ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Every day, in a secret online group chat, several dozen doctors in Italy discuss the constant pressures they’re facing. Some can’t get the drugs they need for their patients. Others are demoralized by their bosses or thwarted by their colleagues. They’re experiencing these issues for one reason: They provide abortion care.
They are in a shrinking minority. In Italy today, 3 in 10 gynecologists provide abortion care. The rest refuse on the grounds of “conscientious objection.” And in numerous hospital systems around Italy, it’s impossible to find a single gynecologist willing to provide an abortion.
“If your boss is an objector, your working life will be difficult. He might not lay it out in black and white, but he’ll let you know he won’t make it any easier if you continue giving abortions,” said Silvana Agatone, a gynecologist in Rome who leads the Free Italian Gynecologists’ Association, a group dedicated to protecting abortion rights in Italy. “It’s psychologically taxing.”
The group chat has become a refuge where doctors can exchange advice about how to keep doing their work and find some support too. This is critical for doctors like Agatone, who are facing a new wave of anti-abortion sentiment brought on by Italy’s ruling government and by forces across the Atlantic.
“You’re given the hardest shifts, you’re sent continuous letters being reprimanded for this, that or the other. You’re ground down in an environment where you’re persecuted every day,” Agatone told me.
It wasn’t always like this. In 1978, joining a global wave of reforms that followed the legalization of abortion in the U.S., Italy passed a law protecting a woman’s right to an abortion — and doctors’ rights to provide abortion care — in the first 90 days of pregnancy. While the law stipulates that doctors can refuse to provide an abortion on the grounds of conscientious objection, it also says that this should not limit women’s access to abortion care.
But today, abortion access is harder and harder to come by. Catholic universities run many of Italy’s top hospitals — so the heads of gynecology units tend to oppose abortion, Agatone told me. In many cases, entire facilities don’t offer abortion care, due in part to their religious affiliation. Patients regularly come up against doctors who try to coerce them out of the decision or deny them access to abortion pills.
As the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has galvanized far-right, anti-abortion campaigns around the world, the mood among Italian gynecologists who carry out abortions has reached a new low.
“It worries me. It worries me a lot. This movement has touched everyone in different countries. It’s as if we’re having to start all over again to get our rights back,” said Agatone. “It feels like we’re on a roller coaster — we got our rights, now they’re being taken away, and now we have to fight to get them back.”
More and more of Italy’s doctors have declared themselves anti-abortion in recent years, as they’ve faced ever-increasing challenges to their work and their well-being. In the 1970s, 59% of doctors opted out of providing abortion care. But for the last decade, the number has hovered around 65%, with some regions seeing objector rates as high as 80%.
Protesters at a women’s march in Rome, November 2022.
Photo: Isobel Cockerell
In September 2022, Italians voted in a new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who campaigned for years on a platform claiming to champion “family values.” She has made consistent pledges to raise Italy’s birth rate, warning voters that without intervention, the nation is “destined to disappear.”
When she first took office, Meloni softened her stance, saying she had no intention of going after abortion rights. In an interview in March 2023, she pledged that the state would financially support women who might otherwise seek abortions so that they don’t “miss out on the joy of having a child.” But under Meloni, the joy she spoke of is not intended for everyone. The same month, the Italian government stopped the city of Milan from officially recognizing LGBTQ parents on birth registers, leaving these families in legal limbo. Milan was previously the only city in the country where LGBTQ families had full legal recognition. In other regions that had been moving toward a similar equal rights regime, Meloni’s government threatened legal action on the matter shortly after she came to power.
“Everything is linked to this movement that doesn’t want contraception, divorce or homosexuality,” said Agatone, who believes that the money and influence of these groups continue to be a top concern in Italy.
In some parts of Italy, abortion access is hanging on by a thread, with just one pro-choice gynecologist serving entire regions. Patients needing an abortion have to navigate a number of bureaucratic and practical obstacles before the 90-day deadline. They must observe a mandatory “cooling-off period” of seven days before undergoing the procedure. And some now have to make journeys of hundreds of miles before they can find a doctor willing to provide the care they need. For a person facing serious health repercussions from an unviable pregnancy, these obstacles are dangerous. It’s a system that Human Rights Watch described in 2020 as “labyrinthine” and “burdensome,” demonstrating “how the country’s outdated restrictions cause harm instead of providing protection.” Agatone described how her colleagues would thwart her when she was trying to take care of her patients by refusing to give them the medication they needed or by putting women having abortions into labor and delivery units, where other women were giving birth. “I would try in every way to have them put in a different ward, and I’d have to fight with the staff,” she said.
Obstetricians and gynecologists in Europe only have to look at the United States to see what might come next. This January, anti-abortion activists firebombed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Illinois. And the U.S. is facing an acute shortage of OBGYN specialists, particularly in anti-abortion states, where the number of medical students pursuing gynecology residencies has plummeted since the reversal.
“The fact that abortion has been overturned in America has made people think that they can’t be complacent about the right,” said Mara Clarke, the co-founder of Supporting Abortions for Everyone (SAFE), a European abortion charity she started in February 2023 to combat the attack on abortion rights in Europe. “When the right rises,” she said, referring to the political right, “women, children and LGTBQ people are the first targets.”
Italy — alongside other European states like Poland and Hungary — has long been a target for pan-Christian conservative movements that promote anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and lobby for a rollback of those rights in Europe. Often, the first step in their strategy is to limit access to abortion care with tactics like imposing waiting periods and restrictions on abortion medications. But the ultimate goal is to introduce a blanket ban, according to research by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights.
Rather than banning abortion completely, the current strategy is “more a chipping away of rights,” said Irene Donadio of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, who spoke to me in a personal capacity.
For years, these networks and their myriad backers — including Russian oligarchs, Italian politicians, European aristocrats and American Christian conservatives — have made significant inroads. One network, Agenda Europe, is thought to have played a key role in influencing Poland’s abortion ban, while successfully lobbying against same-sex marriage during referendums in Croatia, Slovenia and Romania.
The “family values” movement reached a fever-pitch in Italy in 2019, when Verona played host to the World Congress of Families, the flagship event of the U.S.-based International Organization of the Family — a coalition of groups that promote anti-abortion and anti-LGTBQ agendas in the name of “affirming, celebrating and defending the natural family.” Among the speakers was Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s far-right League party, and Giorgia Meloni herself. In a speech at the event, Meloni warned of a world in which a woman is “forced to have an abortion because she sees no viable alternative” and added: “Is it right for a society to spend a lot more energy and resources on finding immediate, easy, quick ways to get rid of human life rather than on fostering it? Is that normal? Can you call that ‘civilization?’” She also spoke of her opposition to the use of surrogates by gay families, likening it to “snatching a puppy dog away from its mother.”
“In this cultural climate, which is becoming heavier and heavier, it’s becoming harder every day for young gynecologists to declare themselves non-objectors,” said Agatone, referring to the high number of OBGYN practitioners who opt out of providing abortion care. At 69, she sees pro-choice doctors like herself, who trained in the 1970s and 1980s, during an impassioned era of pro-choice activism, aging out of the system.
“I believe abortion access in this country could lapse,” said Agatone. “Because even if there’s a law protecting people’s rights to abortion, if no one’s there to do them, then that’s that.” Isobel Cockerell is a Senior Reporter at Coda.
Published originally under the title "Syria is Welcomed Back into the Fold."
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad (right) pictured with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left). (YouTube screenshot)
The profound brutality that Syrian President Bashar Assad exhibited toward demonstrators during the 12 years since the eruption of the Arab Spring led him to be shunned by most of his Arab neighbors. Arab efforts to reintegrate Assad's Syria back into the fold of Arab states have gained significant momentum for several years and are getting closer to fulfillment. All major U.S. Arab allies, with Qatar's notable exception, have been steadily moving away from the U.S. stance and toward acceptance of Assad's victory in the civil war.
It is important for the U.S. and Israel to view the reintegration of Syria as the likely outcome of current geopolitical shifts despite their wishes and thus to start calculating the opportunities and challenges that may emerge from such a new reality. Abhorrent as it may sound, Assad Won.
The Anti-Assad Camp Splinters
Shortly after the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Syria became a field in which the regional geopolitical alignments were drawn most sharply, pulling in all kinds of political actors. The main fault line was drawn between support for the regime of Bashar Assad, a security apparatus dominated by Alawaite leadership, and support for the Syrian opposition, a diverse incohesive body of political movements and militias opposing Assad. Russia, Iran, and Iranian proxy Hezbollah quickly rallied to support Assad and protect his rule regardless of humanitarian cost. The United States and its allies, namely, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, rallied to support the opposition hoping to overthrow Assad and end the brutal war.
The former camp largely kept its posture and unity, while the latter coalition eventually fragmented into competing interests. The U.S. had misgivings about the heavy presence of al-Qaeda and other Jihadist groups among the opposition forces it supported, ultimately shifting its focus into countering the ISIS mission with the support of Kurdish troops.
Qatar insisted on continuing support for Jihadist and Islamist groups leading to a regional conflict with the anti-Islamist Arab camp led by Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. The latter two powers also developed misgivings about the American reluctance and lack of commitment to Arab interests leading to the significant empowerment of Iran and its allies as well as the rise of global jihadist nihilism, which they saw as facilitated by American and European incompetence. With Russian and Iranian support, Assad persevered.
The Failed State of Syria
Syria, which emerged from this prolonged conflict, is a shell of a country that contains nothing but the embodiment of regional and international failures paid for by millions of innocent Syrians. The country is fragmented between a Damascus corridor ruled by the Iranian-Russian-backed Assad regime, with its peripheries serving as operation grounds for Iranian militias and their activities against Israel as well as the former's retaliation; a Kurdish no-fly zone protected by U.S. troops in which the Kurds are utterly dependent on American support for their security and livelihood; a Turkish enclave which is at odds with both former territories; and finally, various regions controlled by the remaining fragmented opposition groups and terrorist organizations.
This regional pit of dysfunction and hopelessness is also the prison of 16 million Syrians who are left to suffer violence, isolation, poverty, and natural disasters. In view of such a reality, many came to view the U.S. sanctions against Assad to be nonsensical. Assad and his generals are living posh opulent lives in their palaces protected by Iran and Russia and funded by the amphetamine trade of Captagon pills that is now Syria's largest export while the Syrian people are the ones paying the price of everyone's failure.
This is very briefly the picture that traditional U.S. Arab allies, namely Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, came to see in Syria. Not to mention how from the point of view of their interests, Syria became a large hub of narcotic trade that is threatening their population, an Iranian backwater, and a breeding ground for Jihadism.
The Interests of the Gulf States
While these Arab powers have no delusion about the destructive role Qatari and Iranian intervention played, they seem to hold the United States primarily responsible for the ultimate failure and dysfunction, a calculation that is central to their new strategic calculus that seeks to expand their foreign policy alliances beyond Washington. They view Assad, still young and likely to last another 20 years in office, as someone with nothing left to lose and who could sit happily in his palace in Damascus, letting his country become a large amphetamine lab and posing a serious hazard to Arab growth visions and plans for the region. Meanwhile, the Syrian people will remain isolated and unable to participate in the new economic visions of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.
The opposition to Assad, simply put, no longer serves any Arab Gulf interests. Ultimately, along with the new calculus with Iran and China, this led Arab states, and even Turkey, to abandon the firm U.S. stance against Assad and seek his normalization, given he provided some concessions to the opposition.
The push for reintegration is led by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria and is already advanced enough for Assad to receive a presidential welcome in Abu Dhabi and receive the Saudi foreign minister in his palace in Damascus. The bid they launched to re-admit Syria into the Arab League was opposed by Qatar, which remains a patron of the Syrian opposition. Yet the Qatari rejection came with the caveat that it will stand as long as there are no concessions to the oppositions, which leaves the possibility open for the Qataris to agree, given their clients in Syria are protected. Even Turkey's Erdogan, who is now more fearful of a Kurdish state than he is of Assad, announced that he is willing to meet with Assad and discuss the future relations between the two countries.
The U.S. and Israel Are Left Isolated
This ultimately leaves the U.S., and by extension, Israel, isolated from the current geopolitical shifts. Inside Washington, the foreign policy establishment seems to be divided on what should be done. Some officials are generally willing to consider the Arab efforts, given they require serious concessions from Assad, while others are completely opposed to the possibility.
Regardless of how one morally feels about the unfortunate situation, it should be clear by now that Assad won, and we are the ones who have to deal with it. Arab states will help Assad reintegrate regionally and perhaps internationally, and it's better for the U.S. to be part of the discussion in order to help shape the demands in a way conducive to both American and Israeli interests. If the U.S. continues to oppose this, it will happen anyway, however, without any regard for American or Israeli input. The U.S. must face the reality that it cannot support the Kurds the way it is currently doing forever, and failing to guarantee Kurdish interests in a new arrangement will ultimately hurt the Kurds and deal the last blow to any remnant of American credibility in the region.
Moreover, Israel has serious security interests in Syria, given the heavy presence of IRGC forces and militias. These security needs are becoming increasingly pressing given the rising prospects of a conflict with Iran over its nuclear program and an Arab wish to stay away from any such conflict leaving Israel to shoulder the cost alone.
Recognizing Reality
These and other calculations should push Washington to swallow its pride and start talking to Israel and its Arab allies about how best to shape the regional demands to be put in front of Assad in exchange for regional acceptance. This should not just be regarded as a foreign policy failure but a recognition of a bad situation that is in need of creative reorganization.
This does not mean that there are no risks in such a possibility. Assad, after all, committed crimes against his own people and oversaw some of the worst atrocities in recent history. Washington is right to view an acceptance of Assad as a major blow to international norms that the international community worked for a long time to establish. Moreover, there is no guarantee that rehabilitating Assad will prevent a repetition of the Saddam scenario where he reproduces his Baathist state in even more repressive forms or that he will be able to control Iranian activities in Syrian territories successfully. These are genuine risks that Washington should push Arab states not to undermine. Either way, Washington is better involved than absent in a region that is increasingly willing to go its own way.
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour is a fellow at the Middle East Forum and director of the Program for Emerging Democratic Voices from the Middle East at the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET).
Iran president lands in Damascus in first since Syria conflict began
Ebrahim Raisi in Syria for the first time since 2011
May 3, 2023 at 8:42 am
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi landed in Damascus today, Syrian state media reported, for talks with his Syrian counterpart Bashar Al-Assad, in the first such visit by an Iranian head of state since war broke out in Syria in 2011.
With military help and economic support from both Iran and Russia, Assad was able to turn the tide of the conflict and regain control of most of his country.
It is estimated that Iran has spent $20-30 billion in Syria and now sells to recoup some of its funding by helping rebuild the devastated country and taking advantage of its oil, gas and phosphate resources.
The Iranian government and entities linked to it have signed a memorandum of understanding to run a mobile phone operator in Syria. It has also been given agricultural land and plans to develop university branches.
Republican lawmakers to introduce national ‘stand your ground’ bill
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) plan to introduce a national “stand your ground” bill Thursday, as several similar state laws face scrutiny amid a series of high-profile shootings.
The legislation would allow people to use deadly force if they “reasonably” believe it is necessary to “prevent imminent death or great bodily harm” to themselves or others, or to “prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.”
“Every American has the right to defend themselves and their loved ones from an attacker,” Gaetz said in a statement. “If someone tries to kill you, you should have the right to return fire and preserve your life.”
“It’s time to reaffirm in law what exists in our Constitution and in the hearts of our fellow Americans,” he added. “We must abolish the legal duty of retreat everywhere.”
Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager from Kansas City, Mo., was shot by a white homeowner in mid-April when he mistakenly went to the wrong address to pick up his twin brothers. The homeowner, 84-year-old Andrew Lester, claimed in an initial statement to police that he was “scared to death” by the teenager.
Just two days later, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was fatally shot in upstate New York after pulling into the wrong driveway. The following week, two cheerleaders in Texas were shot and injured for accidentally getting into the wrong car at a grocery store parking lot.
Thirty states, including Missouri and Texas, have versions of the “stand your ground” law, according to the Giffords Law Center.
Mayday, mayday: a warning from the labour movement
Having battled one crisis after another, a fresh round of austerity could be the last straw for workers.
The Covid-19 crisis upended norms on social esteem—no longer monopolised by men in suits, now typically attached to women in uniforms
(Cryptographer/shutterstock.com)
In Britain the economist and commentator Grace Blakeley recently observed:
The problem for the government is that working people have been subject to so much suffering over the last decade that many feel they have little left to lose. When you can barely heat your home and put food on the table, not demanding wage increases in line with inflation seems like a greater risk than doing so.
Much the same could be said of the mood of many workers worldwide—including in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Canada where there has been an unprecedented rise in strike action for higher wages in response to the cost-of-living crisis. It is also true in France, even if worker fury is more directed at the pension ‘reform’ pressed by the president, Emmanuel Macron, which will force millions to work longer and pay more towards their retirement. Series of crises
The current crisis is only the latest in a series since 2008. And working people are organising in unions because they don’t want to pay the price for another crisis caused by a greedy elite.
The latest, cost-of-living crisis was triggered by spikes in energy prices caused by sanctions against Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine—’triggered’ in the sense that inflation was subsequently driven by companies exploiting energy-related cost increases to add further price increases to boost their profits. That is not just a trade union view: it is expressed by the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, among others. Economists are now discussing the profit-price spiral and ‘greedflation’.
Before there was the Covid-19 crisis. Many workers were required to continue their ‘normal’ work in what had become a life-threatening context. When the lives of the public were at stake, the nurses, shop workers, lorry drivers and cleaners who provided key services were rightly acknowledged as essential—rather than the far more highly remunerated business managers and bankers lionised in the era of the ‘heroic CEO’. Job losses were stemmed but not stopped by government support for businesses and real wages declined.
The period before the pandemic was dominated by the austerity following the financial crisis. The cuts in the United Kingdom were savage—precipitating the slowest recovery in recorded British history—and the fiscal straitjacket imposed on Greece, Spain, Portugal and other countries by the European Union Stability and Growth Pact caused damage from which workers have not yet fully recovered. Greece in particular is still worse off than before the financial crisis.
Regressive policies
Despite inflation being driven by profits, and the absence of evidence that wages are to blame, some politicians and economic bodies, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, are promoting regressive policies—such as supporting interest-rate increases, cautioning against wage rises and calling for more ‘flexible’ labour markets (which usually means more insecure work for less pay).
Restrictive fiscal policies are the last thing needed after a period of decline in the range and quality of public services in most countries. Education, childcare, long-term care and health services—and access to affordable housing—demand more expenditure, not less.
Moreover, public investment is urgently needed to save our planet from climate change and to abandon fossil fuels for clean, green energy. Investment is also required to equip working people with the skills for an era of digitalisation and artificial intelligence.
Postwar settlement
The OECD of all organisations should be alive to the dangers of the situation facing workers today. Set up after the end of World War II, it is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.
The OECD is widely credited with the Marshall plan for recovery and is closely associated with the postwar settlement, when ruling elites were terrified by the fear that workers supported Communism. The result was nationalised industries, the birth of welfare states and important elements of workers’ democracy, including widespread collective bargaining and ‘social dialogue’ (of which the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD is an example).
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That postwar settlement began however to be dismantled in the 1980s—with privatisation, tax cuts for the rich, attacks on trade unions and collective bargaining, allied to cuts in public spending and an explosion in CEO salaries. And with austerity, the pandemic and now a cost-of-living crisis caused by excessive profits, things really have gone too far.
Alarming growth
Even before the latest crisis, the social and political situation looked perilous. Certainly, decision-makers should show a lot more concern for those forced to live in poverty despite working long hours, spending a large portion of their income on basics such as childcare or unable to work because of lack of eldercare. But they should at minimum be concerned about the alarming growth of the far right and the threat it poses to democracy.
It takes little intelligence to grasp that the rise of populism has taken place against a backdrop of people feeling left behind: by globalisation, by delocalisation and outsourcing, by privatisation, by the decline of industry, public services, real wages and living standards—and by the parallel increase in inequality.
A fresh round of austerity to tackle inflation could be the last straw. What is needed instead is a new social settlement—a clear commitment to invest in a socially-just transition to a digital and carbon-neutral future, and in public services, social protection and jobs, while promoting social dialogue and collective bargaining.
That is what the OECD should be leading on in its 75th-anniversary year—along with every government and international organisation that cares about the future for working people and democracy.
Veronica Nilsson is acting general secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
To 'Uphold Human Right to Privacy,' Global Coalition Demands Safeguards for Encrypted Services
"The need for privacy has never been more urgent," said one advocate. "Encryption is a shield that protects everyone but most especially the most targeted and vulnerable communities." "Encryption is a critical tool for user privacy, data security, safety online, press freedom, self-determination, and free expression," states an open letter published on May 3, 2023. (Photo: d3sign via Getty Images)
A global coalition of more than 40 companies and digital rights groups on Wednesday urged governments around the world to publicly vow to "protect encryption and ensure a free and open internet."
The coalition sent its open letter to policymakers in Australia, Canada, the European Union, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States on World Press Freedom Day because digital privacy safeguards are particularly important to journalists and their sources, though advocates stressed they're essential to preserving democracy and human rights at large.
"Encryption is a critical tool for user privacy, data security, safety online, press freedom, self-determination, and free expression," states the letter. "Without encryption, users' data and communications can be accessed by law enforcement and malicious actors."
"Government attacks on encrypted services threaten privacy and put users at risk," the letter continues. "This might seem like a distant problem primarily faced in authoritarian countries but the threat is just as real and knocking at the doors of democratic nations."
"Policymakers understand the importance of privacy when it comes to opening someone else's physical mail, accessing their banking or other private information, but limit such protections online."
As the coalition, organized by Tutanoa, Fight for the Future, and Tor, explained, the value of end-to-end encryption "in defending privacy cannot be overstated, but is also seen as a threat to law enforcement who argue that the ability to freely access individuals' communications is critical for criminal investigations."
In a statement, the coalition condemned the aforementioned proposals as "alarming examples of democratic governments following in the path of authoritarian governments like Russia and Iran, who actively limit their citizens' access to encrypted services thereby weakening their human rights."
Pushing back against such measures, the letter calls on "democratic leaders" to "protect encryption and uphold the human right to privacy."
Specifically, signatories implored all governments to:Ensure that encryption is not being undermined via overreaching legislative initiatives; Ensure that technologies providing secure, encrypted services are not being blocked or throttled; and Revisit any bills, laws, and policies that legitimize undermining encryption or blocking access to services offering encrypted communication.
"Encrypted services are at the forefront of the battle for online privacy, freedom of the press, freedom of opinion and expression," says the letter. "Many journalists, whistleblowers, and activists depend on secure, encrypted solutions to protect their data as well as their identity. Access to these tools can be literally life or death for those who rely on them."
The open letter echoes United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres' fresh warning that "in every corner of the world, freedom of the press is under attack."
"Freedom of the press is the foundation of democracy and justice," said Guterres. "It gives all of us the facts we need to shape opinions and speak truth to power."
"Meanwhile, journalists and media workers are directly targeted on and offline as they carry out their vital work. They are routinely harassed, intimidated, detained, and imprisoned," he added. "At least 67 media workers were killed in 2022—an unbelievable 50% increase over the previous year."
"Many policymakers believe they can have a 'magical key' to access encrypted communication—completely ignoring technical facts: Encryption is either securing everyone or it is broken for everyone."
While legislative and regulatory attempts to undermine encryption are especially hazardous to reporters and dissidents, experts made clear that weakening digital privacy ultimately endangers everyone.
"Encryption is a necessary tool for safeguarding our digital rights and the principles of a free and open society. By upholding encryption within messaging apps, websites, file sharing, and other online services, we empower journalists to report on important issues while protecting their sources without fear of surveillance and retribution," said Isabela Fernandes, executive director of the Tor Project. "The Tor network is underpinned by encryption, and we have partnered with many news outlets and social media sites to launch Onion Sites that bypass censorship and allow people to safely and anonymously access, share, and publish information."
Fight for the Future campaigner Eseohe Ojo argued that "the need for privacy has never been more urgent."
"Encryption is a shield that protects everyone but most especially the most targeted and vulnerable communities," said Ojo. "This ranges from journalists and activists to LGBTQ+ folks, abortion seekers, [and] ethnic and other minorities. Why take away the tools needed to help protect them at a time they need these tools the most?"
"Policymakers understand the importance of privacy when it comes to opening someone else's physical mail, accessing their banking or other private information, but limit such protections online," she added. "Encrypted services protect and empower individuals. It is about time governments recognize and safeguard access to these tools."
Tutanota co-founder Matthias Pfau lamented that "many policymakers believe they can have a 'magical key' to access encrypted communication—completely ignoring technical facts: Encryption is either securing everyone or it is broken for everyone."
"If policymakers want a 'magical key,' they will ultimately destroy the security of all citizens, including journalists and whistleblowers who depend on encryption to expose abuses of power or other grievances in society," Pfau warned. "That's why we at Tutanota will never weaken our encryption. If governments outlaw encryption, they need to block access to our encrypted email service, just like Russia and Iran are already doing."
Fake Content Industry, AI Poses Threat to Fact-Based Journalism Worldwide
"The unprecedented ability to tamper with content is blurring the lines between true and false," said Reporters Without Borders in its annual report on press freedom.
An Internet user checks ChatGPT on his mobile phone in Suqian, Jiangsu province, China on April 26, 2023. (Photo: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Along with the threats to journalists' safety that watchdog groups have documented for years, the 2023 World Press Freedom Index on Wednesday warned that the rapidly growing artificial intelligence and fake content industries are endangering the livelihoods of journalists around the world and cutting down on people's ability to access fact-based news.
The annual report, released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), includes a section titled "Effects of the fake content industry," which notes that out of 180 countries evaluated by the group, 118 of them reported "massive disinformation or propaganda campaigns" in which political figures have been involved.
"The unprecedented ability to tamper with content is blurring the lines between true and false," RSF said in a video shared on social media as it released the report.
The report points to recent, realistic-looking viral images that were shared widely on social media showing former U.S. President Donald Trump being accosted by police and imprisoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a comatose state, which were produced by the AI program Midjourney.
After the Trump photo went viral, journalist and researcher Arthur Holland Michel warnedPBS Newshour in March that the technology could just as easily be used to make fake photos or videos, also known as deepfakes, of private citizens for any number of reasons.
"From a policy perspective, I'm not sure we're prepared to deal with this scale of disinformation at every level of society," Michel wrote in an email. "My sense is that it's going to take an as-yet-unimagined technical breakthrough to definitively put a stop to this."
Blurred lines between fact and fiction are among the factors that are "jeopardizing the right to information," RSF reported, along with the "arbitrary, payment-based approach to information" that Twitter CEO Elon Musk has pushed, charging $8 per month for verified accounts which were once given to users including news outlets that had demonstrated merit.
Both developments are turning social media platforms into "quicksand for journalism," said RSF.
The report was released two days after NewsGuard published its own analysis, Rise of the Newsbots: AI-Generated News Websites Proliferating Online. That report showed that along with artificial intelligence (AI) companies that create fake images, dozens of websites populated entirely with AI-generated content have begun to "churn out vast amounts of clickbait articles to optimize advertising revenue."
"In April 2023, NewsGuard identified 49 websites spanning seven languages—Chinese, Czech, English, French, Portuguese, Tagalog, and Thai—that appear to be entirely or mostly generated by artificial intelligence language models designed to mimic human communication—here in the form of what appear to be typical news websites."
The websites publish hundreds of articles per day in some cases, about topics including politics, health, and finance—without ever disclosing their ownership or control or ensuring a human employee reads the information before it's shared with millions of internet users.
The lack of human input led at least one of the inauthentic websites analyzed by NewsGuard, CelebrityDeaths.com, to publish a false obituary of U.S. President Joe Biden in April, which stated that Vice President Kamala Harris was acting as president before continuing, "I'm sorry, I cannot complete this prompt as it goes against OpenAI's use case policy on generating misleading content."
OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT, currently the fastest-growing app in the world. New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote last month that the app, which launched in November is "already changing" journalism by offering assistance with finding synonyms, writing whole paragraphs of articles for journalists at Insider, and summarizing complicated documents.
"In short, as numerous and more powerful AI tools have been unveiled and made available to the public in recent months, concerns that they could be used to conjure up entire news organizations—once the subject of speculation by media scholars—have now become a reality," said NewsGuard.
RSF wrote that the challenges posed by AI and fake content—both for journalists and news consumers—are compounding "volatility" in the world of journalism, where reporters around the globe are also still in danger of being imprisoned, persecuted, or murdered for their work.
Threats to press freedom were classified as "problematic" in 68 countries in the last year, "difficult" in 38 countries, and "very serious" in 20 countries.
The safest countries for journalists were found to be Norway—in the top spot for the seventh year running—followed by Ireland and Denmark.
Among the worst nations for press freedoms, according to the report: Vietnam, where independent reporters and commentators have been targeted and jailed by the government; China, the world's biggest jailer of journalists and a top source of propaganda and fake content, and North Korea.
"The World Press Freedom Index shows enormous volatility in situations, with major rises and falls and unprecedented changes, such as Brazil's 18-place rise and Senegal's 31-place fall," said RSF Secretary-General Christiophe Deloire. "This instability is the result of increased aggressiveness on the part of the authorities in many countries and growing animosity towards journalists on social media and in the physical world. The volatility is also the consequence of growth in the fake content industry, which produces and distributes disinformation and provides the tools for manufacturing it."
Federal Lawsuit Aims to Protect Texas From 'Exploding Rockets' of Elon Musk
"It's vital that we protect life on Earth even as we look to the stars in this modern era of spaceflight."
Debris litters the ground on April 22, 2023, two days after the SpaceX Starship exploded in Boca Chica, Texas. (Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
In the wake of a SpaceX explosion that coated coastal Texas in ash, environmental organizations on Monday filed a federal lawsuit intended to safeguard local wildlife from more "exploding rockets" and ensure residents' access to regional beaches and parks.
"It's vital that we protect life on Earth even as we look to the stars in this modern era of spaceflight," declared Jared Margolis, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Federal officials should defend vulnerable wildlife and frontline communities, not give a pass to corporate interests that want to use treasured coastal landscapes as a dumping ground for space waste."
The Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy, Surfrider Foundation, Save RGV, and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas are suing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—and Billy Nolen, the acting administration planning to leave the post this summer—for permitting billionaire Elon Musk's space company to conduct 20 rocket launches over the next five years.
"For the sake of future generations, let's protect the healthy habitats we have left instead of treating them as wasteplaces for pollution and fuselage."
The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket, collectively called Starship, is "the world's most powerful launch vehicle ever developed," according to SpaceX—which conducted the first test flight on April 20, an event ending with an explosion that sent debris raining down miles away from the launch site.
The green groups' complaint argues that the FAA "has authorized the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program at Boca Chica, Texas, without complying with bedrock federal environmental law, without fully analyzing the significant environmental and community impacts of the SpaceX launch program—including destruction of some of the most vital migratory bird habitats in North America—and without requiring mitigation sufficient to offset those impacts."
American Bird Conservancy president Mike Parr pointed out that "by now, most people know that birds are in serious declines—and shorebirds like those that rely on Boca Chica are among the fastest-disappearing."
"Overall, we've lost nearly 3 billion birds from the United States and Canada since 1970. At what point do we say, 'Space exploration is great, but we need to save habitats here on Earth as a top priority?'" Parr asked. "For the sake of future generations, let's protect the healthy habitats we have left instead of treating them as wasteplaces for pollution and fuselage."
The region is vital to not only bird species such as piping plovers and northern aplomado falcons but also Gulf Coast jaguarundi, ocelots, and critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtles. The launch site is located near state and federal conservation, park, and recreation lands.
"The administration's failure to fully analyze the dangers of a rocket test launch and manufacturing facility mere steps from the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge and two state parks is an astonishingly bad decision," said Mary Angela Branch, a board member at Save RGV. "So many threatened and endangered species are counting on the agency to get this right."
The SpaceX project will shut down a roadway used to access spots such as the Boca Chica Beach for up to hundreds of hours per year. Sarah Damron, senior regional manager for the Surfrider Foundation, said that "800 hours of closure fly in the face of the Texas Open Beaches Act, the state constitution, and Texans' rights to free and unrestricted access to Texas beaches."
"That's the equivalent of 20 40-hour work weeks every year that Texans and visitors will be deprived of access to Boca Chica Beach," Damon explained. "What's worse is that these closures can happen at almost any time with little to no notice to the public, so the beach, park lands, and refuge lands are ostensibly closed to anyone who needs to make plans. This is an unacceptable loss to area residents and to the people of Texas."
Juan Mancias, tribal chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, highlighted how the SpaceX project also impacts the ability of his people to hold ceremonies and leave offerings for their ancestors.
"The Carrizo/Comecrudo people's sacred lands are once again being threatened by imperialist policies that treat our cultural heritage as less valuable than corporate interests," said Mancias. "Boca Chica is central to our creation story. But we have been cut off from the land our ancestors lived on for thousands of years due to SpaceX, which is using our ancestral lands as a sacrifice zone for its rockets."
