Forensic anthropologists work to identify human skeletal remains and uncover their stories

The Conversation
November 24, 2023 

Crime scene tape (Shutterstock.com)

A seasoned deer hunter is shocked when his hound dog trots up with a human femur clenched between its teeth. A woman veers off her normal urban walking path and happens upon a human skull. New property owners commission a land survey that reveals a set of human remains just below a pile of leaves.

These examples are real cases handled by coroners’ offices where we have assisted as forensic anthropologists.

What happens after someone inadvertently discovers a human body? How are human skeletal remains identified? It can be a major effort, requiring collaboration across law enforcement, forensic anthropologists and death investigators to uncover the identities of the unidentified dead and help bring justice to people who were victims of foul play.

There are nearly 15,000 open cases in the United States involving unidentified people, according to the Department of Justice’s National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a centralized database and resource for unidentified, missing and unclaimed people. This is an underestimate, though, because there is no universal reporting requirement across agencies. Many practicing forensic anthropologists work hard to alleviate what’s routinely referred to as the “nation’s silent mass disaster” – the crisis of so many missing and unidentified individuals.

A specialized branch of anthropology

Anthropology is the holistic study of human culture, environment and biology across time and space. Biological anthropology focuses on the physiological aspects of people and our nonhuman primate relatives. It considers topics ranging from the evolutionary history of our species to the analysis of ancient and modern skeletal remains. Forensic anthropology is a further subspecialty that analyzes skeletal remains of the recently deceased within a legal setting.


In field school courses, future forensic anthropologists learn from models about what can be gleaned from skeletal discoveries. Katherine Weisensee, CC BY-ND

Forensic anthropologists are trained in identifying human skeletal remains. They use scientific techniques to identify deceased people whose faces are unrecognizable – often referred to as “Jane and John Does.” Forensic anthropologists’ skills allow them to interpret from skeletons the trauma and disease a person suffered in life, as well as estimate when that person died.

One of us is employed as a postdoctoral research fellow as well as a forensic anthropologist and deputy coroner through a county coroner’s office; the other is a university professor who responds to local forensic scenes on an as-needed, consulting basis. The realities of forensic anthropology casework are often misrepresented by crime and mystery movies and shows, but our positions reflect how a lot of practicing forensic anthropologists are employed in the United States.

Outside of local work, forensic anthropologists travel to sites of political violence, mass disasters such as the tragedies of 9/11 or the collapse of the Surfside condo building in Miami, and events like the devastating fires in Maui. Normal procedures for handling deaths can quickly become overwhelmed during crises; burial of the dead can take priority over identification, as has been occurring in Gaza.
Scientific tools to identify the unidentified

The complex decomposition process begins as soon as someone dies. Environment, weather, trauma, clothing and location of the death, among other variables, can all complicate how quickly a body decomposes. In cases of advanced decomposition or extreme circumstances such as fires or building collapses, the deceased may no longer be recognizable. That’s a situation in which local law enforcement might want to contact a forensic anthropologist, if possible, to collaborate on figuring out the person’s identity and possibly the circumstances around their death.

A forensic anthropologists’ primary toolkit involves observing subtle variations in features of the skeleton to create a biological profile: an estimation of the individual’s age at death, biological sex, height during life and any potentially unique skeletal characteristics, such as healed trauma or tooth loss that may have been visible during life. Forensic anthropologists assess the entire skeleton, with an emphasis on the skull, pelvis and long bones.

Information learned from the skeleton is then uploaded to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System so it can be compared with missing person records. The goal is to develop leads on the person’s identity. An estimated time of death can also provide a useful point of comparison.

For example, consider a case in upstate South Carolina that one of us assisted on. Human remains were discovered in someone’s yard after a dog dragged several bones out of a creek. Our assessment revealed that the size and shape of the bones were consistent with this Jane Doe being a middle-aged woman. This information allowed local investigators to quickly narrow the pool of missing people in the area who fit that description. Ultimately, they were able to identify this unknown person.

Missing person records can vary at the county and state levels, though, and not all missing people are even reported. These bureaucratic challenges can complicate our attempts to match up information learned from the skeleton with the database.


A forensic artist may create a 3D scan of a skull as a starting point to reconstructing what the person looked like during life. 

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images


In the absence of a match, the next step in the identification process can involve a forensic facial reconstruction. Based on the forensic anthropologist’s assessment, along with any clothing found associated with the decedent, a forensic artist will create a 2D or sometimes 3D facial reconstruction. Law enforcement can release the image to the public through a press release, which may generate leads about who the person was.

DNA can provide other valuable clues, but submitting samples for analysis can be cost-prohibitive. If funding and resources are available, we submit samples from bone or teeth to a lab that can then generate a genetic sequence from the skeletal remains.

Even with a clear sequence, though, the unknown DNA sample must be matched either to a sample collected during life or from a close relative in order to be useful for determining identity. It can take weeks, months or even years to get the unknown sequence back and compare it with known individuals. If no match is found, genetic genealogy may suggest leads through potentially related individuals – but this investigative field is still emerging.

In each step toward identification, there are many logistical and bureaucratic barriers that contribute to an enormous backlog of unidentified people in county morgues and coroners’ offices. Many cold cases remain unsolved for decades, and the process is further compounded in cases involving undocumented people. Despite these hurdles, forensic anthropologists remain committed to returning names to the unidentified.

Madeline Atwell, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, Clemson University and Katherine Weisensee, Professor of Anthropology, Clemson University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What is fentanyl and why is it behind the deadly surge in US drug overdoses? 

A medical toxicology 

The Conversation
November 24, 2023

A Drug Enforcement Administration chemist checks confiscated powder containing fentanyl at the DEA Northeast Regional Laboratory on Oct. 8, 2019 in New York.

 - DON EMMERT/Getty Images North America/TNS


Buying drugs on the street is a game of Russian roulette. From Xanax to cocaine, drugs or counterfeit pills purchased in nonmedical settings may contain life-threatening amounts of fentanyl.

Physicians like me have seen a rise in unintentional fentanyl use from people buying prescription opioids and other drugs laced, or adulterated, with fentanyl. Heroin users in my community in Massachusetts came to realize that fentanyl had entered the drug supply when overdose numbers exploded. In 2016, my colleagues and I found that patients who came to the emergency department reporting a heroin overdose often only had fentanyl present in their drug test results.

As the Chief of Medical Toxicology at UMass Chan Medical School, I have studied fentanyl and its analogs for years. As fentanyl has become ubiquitous across the U.S., it has transformed the illicit drug market and raised the risk of overdose.

Fentanyl and its analogs

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that was originally developed as an analgesic – or painkiller – for surgery. It has a specific chemical structure with multiple areas that can be modified, often illicitly, to form related compounds with marked differences in potency.


Fentanyl’s chemical backbone (the structure in the center) has multiple areas (the colored circles) that can be substituted with different functional groups (the colored boxes around the edges) to change its potency. 

Christopher Ellis et al., CC BY-NC-ND

For example, carfentanil, a fentanyl analog formed by substituting one chemical group for another, is 100 times more potent than its parent structure. Another analog, acetylfentanyl, is approximately three times less potent than fentanyl, but has still led to clusters of overdoses in several states.

Despite the number and diversity of its analogs, fentanyl itself continues to dominate the illicit opioid supply. Milligram per milligram, fentanyl is roughly 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine.
Lacing or replacing drugs with fentanyl




Drug dealers have used fentanyl analogs as an adulterant in illicit drug supplies since 1979, with fentanyl-related overdoses clustered in individual cities.

The modern epidemic of fentanyl adulteration is far broader in its geographic distribution, production and number of deaths. Overdose deaths roughly quadrupled, going from 8,050 in 1999 to 33,091 in 2015. From May 2020 to April 2021, more than 100,000 Americans died from a drug overdose, with over 64% of these deaths due to synthetic opioids like fentanyl and its analogs.

Illicitly manufactured fentanyl is internationally synthesized in China, Mexico and India, then exported to the United States as powder or pressed pills. China also exports many of the precursor chemicals needed to synthesize fentanyl.

Additionally, the emergence of the dark web, an encrypted and anonymous corner of the internet that’s a haven for criminal activity, has facilitated the sale of fentanyl and other opioids shipped through traditional delivery services, including the U.S. Postal Service.

During the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached an agreement to combat fentanyl trafficking.

Fentanyl is driving an increasing number of opioid overdose deaths.

Fentanyl is both sold alone and often used as an adulterant because its high potency allows dealers to traffic smaller quantities but maintain the drug effects buyers expect. Manufacturers may also add bulking agents, like flour or baking soda, to fentanyl to increase supply without adding costs. As a result, it is much more profitable to cut a kilogram of fentanyl compared to a kilogram of heroin.

Unfortunately, fentanyl’s high potency also means that even just a small amount can prove deadly. If the end user isn’t aware that the drug they bought has been adulterated, this could easily lead to an overdose.

Preventing fentanyl deaths

As an emergency physician, I give fentanyl as an analgesic, or painkiller, to relieve severe pain in an acute care setting. My colleagues and I choose fentanyl when patients need immediate pain relief or sedation, such as anesthesia for surgery.

But even in the controlled conditions of a hospital, there is still a risk that using fentanyl can reduce breathing rates to dangerously low levels, the main cause of opioid overdose deaths. For those taking fentanyl in nonmedical settings, there is no medical team available to monitor someone’s breathing rate in real time to ensure their safety.

One measure to prevent fentanyl overdose is distributing naloxone to bystanders. Naloxone can reverse an overdose as it occurs by blocking the effects of opioids.

Another measure is increasing the availability of opioid agonists like methadone and buprenorphine that reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms and cravings, helping people stay in treatment and decrease illicit drug use. Despite the lifesaving track records of these medications, their availability is limited by restrictions on where and how they can be used and inadequate numbers of prescribers.

Naloxone can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose.

Other strategies to prevent overdose deaths include lowering the entry barrier to addiction treatment, fentanyl test strips, supervised consumption sites and even prescription diamorphine (heroin).

Despite the evidence supporting these measures, however, local politics and funding priorities often limit whether communities are able to give them a try. Bold strategies are needed to interrupt the ever-increasing number of fentanyl-related deaths.

This article was updated on Nov. 16, 2023 to note developments regarding fentanyl at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Kavita Babu, Professor of Emergency Medicine, UMass Chan Medical School

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Viruses: Their infection tactics determine if they can jump species or set off a pandemic

The Conversation
November 24, 2023

Coronavirus illustration. (Shutterstock.com)

COVID-19, flu, mpox, noroviral diarrhea: How do the viruses that cause these diseases actually infect you?

Viruses cannot replicate on their own, so they must infect cells in your body to make more copies of themselves. The life cycle of a virus can thus be roughly described as: get inside a cell, make more virus, get out, repeat.

Getting inside a cell, or viral entry, is the part of the cycle that most vaccines target, as well as a key barrier for viruses jumping from one species to another. My lab and many others study this process to better anticipate and combat emerging viruses.

How viruses enter cells

Different viruses travel into the body in various ways – via airborne droplets, on food, through contact with mucous membranes or through injection. They typically first infect host cells near their site of entry – the cells lining the respiratory tract for most airborne viruses – then either remain there or spread throughout the body.

Viruses recognize specific proteins or sugars on host cells and stick to them. Each virus gets only one shot at putting its genome inside a cell – if their entry machinery misfires, they risk becoming inactivated. So they use several mechanisms to prevent triggering entry prematurely.

After the virus binds to the cell, specific molecules on the cell’s surface or within the cell’s recycling machinery activate viral coat proteins for entry. An example is the SARS-CoV-2 spike that COVID-19 vaccines target. These proteins need to modify the cell membrane to allow the viral genome to get through without killing the cell in the process. Different viruses use different tricks for this, but most work like cellular secretion – how cells release materials into their environment – in reverse. Specialized viral proteins help merge the membranes of the virus and the cell together and release the viral core into the interior of the cell.

This animation depicts HIV fusing its membrane with a cell in order to release its contents inside.

At this point, the viral genome can enter the cell and start replicating. Some viruses use only the cell’s machinery to replicate, while others carry along portions of their own replication machinery and borrow some parts from the cell. After replicating their genomes, viruses assemble the components required to make new viruses.

Two central questions scientists are studying about viral entry are how your body’s defenses can disrupt it and what determines whether a virus from other species can infect people.

Immune defenses against viruses

Your body has a multilayered defense system against viral threats. But the part of your immune system called the antibody response is generally thought to be most effective at sterilizing immunity – preventing an infection from taking hold in the first place as opposed to just limiting its scope and severity.

For many viruses, antibodies target the part of the virus that binds to cells. This is the case not just for current COVID-19 vaccines but also the majority of immunity against influenza, whether from vaccines or from prior infection.

However, some antibodies target the entry machinery instead: Rather than preventing the virus from sticking, they prevent the virus from working altogether. Such antibodies are often harder for the viruses to escape from but are difficult to reproduce with vaccines. For that reason, developing antibodies that inhibit cell entry has the been the goal of many next-generation vaccine efforts.


This diagram shows how four different classes of antiviral drugs inhibit HIV. One stops viruses from entering cells, and three inhibit different viral enzymes. 

Thomas Splettstoesser/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Species-hopping and pandemics

The other key question researchers are asking about viral entry is how to tell when a virus from another species poses a threat to people. This is particularly important because many viruses are first identified in animals such as bats, birds and pigs before they spread to humans, but it’s unclear which ones may cause a pandemic.

The part of viruses that stick to human cells varies the most across species, while the part that gets the virus into cells tends to stay mostly the same. Many researchers have thought that viruses changing in ways that bind better to human cells, like influenza viruses that bind to cells in the nose and throat, are some of the most important warning signs for pandemic risk.

However, coronaviruses – the family of viruses containing SARS-CoV-2 – are prompting re-examination of that idea. This is because several animal coronaviruses can actually bind to human cells, but only a few seem to be able to transmit well between people.

Only time will tell whether researchers need to broaden their pandemic prevention horizons or if their current prioritization of risky viruses is correct. The one grim reality of pandemic research, like earthquake research, is that there will always be another one – we just don’t know when or where, and we want to be ready.


Peter Kasson, Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, University of Virginia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate change worsened Chinese extreme heat and flooding event in 2020: study

Agence France-Presse
November 30, 2023 6:24AM ET

This aerial photo taken on July 28, 2020 shows a flooded playground along the Yangtze River in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province 

Man-made global warming exacerbated an incident of extreme flooding and heat in eastern China in 2020, according to a study released Wednesday, which highlighted the need to prepare for increasingly intense episodes of such weather in the country.

Researchers said that warming created by human activity caused an increase in rain that summer by around 6.5 percent, and increased heat by around one degree Celsius (33.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

Record rains fell in June and July around the lower part of the Yangtze River during the monsoon, causing the deaths of more than 100 people and billions of dollars in damage, said the study published in the journal Science Advances.

At the same time, extreme heat hit the south of the country, putting pressure on health care and energy systems, as well as on agriculture and infrastructure.

These simultaneous heat and precipitation phenomena are physically interconnected, and commonly occur at the same time in that part of the world, but in 2020 they were exceptional, the researchers said.

To determine the impact of warming linked to human activity, scientists modeled the weather conditions leading up to and during the events, based on measurements in the real world.

They then constructed a scenario simulating conditions as they might have been without human-caused warming, by adjusting humidity levels, air and ocean temperatures. They finally compared the two models to determine the role of human influence.

The researchers also warned about future weather events, noting that by the end of the century, precipitation in the region could increase by 14 percent compared to 2020, and that the season could be 2.1 degrees Celsius warmer.

The results of the study "underscore the necessity of preparing for more intense spatially compounding flood-heat hazards over eastern China," the researcher said, since they "could lead to increased economic damage and loss of life.

'He seems fixated on it': Pete Buttigieg on Speaker Johnson's comments about gays

M.L. Nestel
December 1, 2023 

Pete Buttigieg speaking with attendees at the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention.

 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

Pete Buttigieg and homosexuality are living rent-free in House Speaker Mike Johnson's head.

The newly minted House Speaker Johnson from Louisiana who took over the reins after his predecessor Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was ousted is credited with penning the foreword of author Scott McKay's book, titled "The Revivalist Manifesto" that reportedly propagates debunked conspiracy theories and homophobic leanings.

It also appears to target Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg by calling the former Indiana mayor "Gay Mayor Pete Buttigieg" and a “queer choice” for Biden's cabinet position, according to CNN.

When asked during an appearance on CNN's "Out Front" with Erin Burnett about his response to the commentary in this book, Buttigieg was appalled by how low the attacks go to knock his character.

"It seems like they just can't think of anything else," he said. "There is no discussion of what we actually did."

The book's foreword glowingly supports the author and the work product.

“Scott McKay presents a valuable and timely contribution with The Revivalist Manifesto because he has managed here to articulate well what millions of conscientious, freedom-loving Americans are sensing,” according to his 300-word foreword from 2022.

CNN reported that Johnson also actively promoted the book on his social media and hosted McKay during a podcast.

A Johnson spokesman told the outlet in a statement that the Speaker actually "never read the passages" in question and that he "strongly disagrees with" them.

"He wrote the foreword as a favor to a friend, supportive of the general theme of the book but not as an endorsement of all the opinions expressed.”

What gets Buttigieg the most is that Johnson is now in a powerful position.

"You have somebody who has been taken seriously by the Speaker of the House of the United States suggesting that the reason that we had supply chain problems in the rebound from COVID wasn't because of the factories in China shutting down and then sending their ships here all at once — it was because the Secretary of Transportation is married to a guy and not to a woman."

"They just can't seem to let go of this."

Burnett cited numerous comments made by Johnson over time.

In 2008, he is quoted as saying, "Homosexual behavior is something that you do, it's not something that you are."

Last month, Johnson said: "One of four students in the United States identify with something other than straight — we're losing the country."

"He seems fixated on it," Buttigieg said. "And it is really troubling for millions of Americans, including me and my husband, and this is, again, not just some fringe radical member of Congress."

 

House Speaker Penned Foreword for Conspiracy Theory-Laden Book Last Year

Johnson described the book as “a valuable contribution” to political discourse.

By Chris Walker , TRUTHOUT

Published December 1, 2023

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) applauds alongside fellow lawmakers as the House of Representatives holds an election for a new Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol on October 25, 2023 in Washington,

 D.C.WIN MCNAMEE / GETTY IMAGES

Before being named speaker of the House in October, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) penned the foreword to a book written by a far right blogger in his home state that espouses a number of conspiracy theories.

The book, “The Revivalist Manifesto,” written by blogger Scott McKay, also includes derogatory comments about LGBTQ people and condemns the Movement for Black Lives.

Johnson’s foreword for the book, as well as his subsequent promotion of it, suggests that he endorses such views.

Although Johnson’s decision to attach himself to the book was made in 2022, CNN unearthed the lawmaker’s foreword in a report published this week. Johnson’s relative anonymity within the House of Representatives before being named speaker likely helped to keep the news under the radar when he penned the foreward last year.

Among the far right conspiracy theories that are included in the text, McKay baselessly alleges that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was blackmailed into siding with liberal bloc members of the Court on some cases, errantly tying Roberts to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. McKay also parrots the “Pizzagate” hoax, falsely alleging that Democratic Party insiders were using a pizza restaurant in Washington D.C. as a front for child trafficking.

RELATED STORY

Mike Johnson Once Said Only God Gives Authority for Presidents to Take Office
The current speaker of the House was a key figure in Trump’s allies’ plans to overturn the 2020 election.
By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUTNovember 20, 2023

The book disparages Democratic Party officials, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whom McKay describes as a “queer choice” for an official in President Joe Biden’s cabinet, which he claims was made to appease LGBTQ supporters. McKay also calls Interior Secretary Deb Haaland “half oppressed” because her mother is Native American while her father has Norwegian roots, and claims that Obama’s primary appeal to voters was “that he was black.” McKay also defended podcast host Joe Rogan’s past use of the n-word.

Johnson wrote around 300 words of praise for McKay’s book in the foreword last year.

“Scott McKay presents a valuable and timely contribution with ‘The Revivalist Manifesto’ because he has managed here to articulate well what millions of conscientious, freedom-loving Americans are sensing,” Johnson said in the foreword.

Johnson also actively promoted McKay’s book, hosting him on his podcast the same year to discuss its contents. “I obviously believe in the product, or I wouldn’t have written the foreword. So I endorse the work,” Johnson said.

Within that podcast, McKay derided what he referred to as “the trans movement,” and called on listeners to fight to “preserve” far right values by opposing it. Johnson also endorsed the “deep state” conspiracy theory, which is often pushed by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Johnson’s extremist viewpoints are largely unknown to the American public, despite the fact that he’s second in line for the presidency. Johnson likely isn’t a household name because he was chosen as a consensus option for Republicans after weeks of disagreement on a nominee for the speakership this fall.

An Economist/YouGov poll published this week demonstrates just how little Americans know about Johnson, as a plurality of respondents — 39 percent — say they don’t know enough to have an opinion on him. Thirty-five percent of respondents say they have an unfavorable view of Johnson, while just 25 percent say they have a favorable view.

Johnson has repeatedly espoused Christian nationalist views. He believes there should be no separation between church and state, and has said that God gives authority to elected officials to govern. He has expressed support for criminalizing consensual sexual relationships between gay partners, and touts the Bible as the basis of his political philosophy (while ignoring, as many right-wing politicians do, teachings about uplifting people who are dispossessed and marginalized).

“Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview,” Johnson said after being named speaker.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

CHRIS WALKER  is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people. He can be found on Twitter: @thatchriswalker

SCI-FI-TEK

Japanese experimental nuclear fusion reactor inaugurated

Agence France-Presse
December 1, 2023

The world's biggest experimental nuclear fusion reactor in operation was inaugurated in Japan on Friday, a technology in its infancy but billed by some as the answer to humanity's future energy needs (Handout)

The world's biggest experimental nuclear fusion reactor in operation was inaugurated in Japan on Friday, a technology in its infancy but billed by some as the answer to humanity's future energy needs.

Fusion differs from fission, the technique currently used in nuclear power plants, by fusing two atomic nuclei instead of splitting one.

The goal of the JT-60SA reactor is to investigate the feasibility of fusion as a safe, large-scale and carbon-free source of net energy -- with more energy generated than is put into producing it.

The six-storey-high machine, in a hangar in Naka north of Tokyo, comprises a donut-shaped "tokamak" vessel set to contain swirling plasma heated up 200 million degrees Celsius (360 million degrees Fahrenheit).

It is a joint project between the European Union and Japan, and is the forerunner for its big brother in France, the under-construction International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

The ultimate aim of both projects is to coax hydrogen nuclei inside to fuse into one heavier element, helium, releasing energy in the form of light and heat, and mimicking the process that takes place inside the Sun.

Researchers at ITER, which is over budget, behind schedule and facing major technical problems, hope to achieve nuclear fusion technology's holy grail, net energy.

Sam Davis, deputy project leader for the JT-60SA, said the device will "bring us closer to fusion energy".

"It's the result of a collaboration between more than 500 scientists and engineers and more than 70 companies throughout Europe and Japan," Davis said at Friday's inauguration.

EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson said the JT-60SA was "the most advanced tokamak in the world", calling the start of operations "a milestone for fusion history".


"Fusion has the potential to become a key component for energy mix in the second half of this century," Simson added.

The feat of "net energy gain" was managed last December at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States, home to the world's largest laser.

The US facility uses a different method to ITER and the JT-60SA known as inertial confinement fusion, in which high-energy lasers are directed simultaneously into a thimble-sized cylinder containing hydrogen.


The US government called the result a "landmark achievement" in the quest for a source of unlimited, clean power and an end to reliance on carbon-emitting fossil fuels that cause climate change as well as geopolitical upheaval.

Unlike fission, fusion carries no risk of catastrophic nuclear accidents -- like that seen in Fukushima in Japan in 2011 -- and produces far less radioactive waste than current power plants, its exponents say.

‘Real estate’ for corals: Swiss organization builds artificial reefs with art, tech
Agence France-Presse
December 1, 2023 

Rrreefs cofounder Marie Griesmar is seen diving next to the organisation’s prototype installed off the coast of the island of San Andrés, Colombia, in September 2021.

© Leila Tazi

In the depths of Lake Geneva, near Switzerland’s second-largest city, a team of divers began work on an underwater castle – a marine palace fit for corals.

Rrreefs, a Zurich-based organization founded in October 2020 that designs artificial coral reefs in clay using a 3D printer is an ecological project that combines art, science and new technologies.

Stacked on a platform, the clay sculptures looked like dungeons waiting to be sent to the bottom of the sea. Ochre in hue with ribbed surfaces, they were soft to the touch and weighed 7 kilograms. They have been carefully designed to collect coral larvae carried by ocean currents. When encrusted, these tiny animals can develop the hard skeletons that eventually form a natural reef.

Although coral reefs make up just a modest portion of the seabed, 25 percent of underwater life depends on these fragile structures. Their benefits are manifold: Reefs serve as a refuge, a breeding ground and a source of food for fish, and protect coastlines from erosion.

Clay bricks, designed by Rrreefs, that are intended to form artifical coral reefs. The organisation tested its new-generation bricks in Lake Geneva on September 10, 2023.

© Pauline Grand d'Esnon

Maintaining corals’ resistance to global warming

Mountains of coral – jewels of the natural world – are disintegrating due to overfishing, water pollution and marine heatwaves. Half of them have died over the past 40 years

"When stressed, corals expel the symbiotic algae that feeds them and starve to death," explained Rrrefs co-founder Marie Griesmar, sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with a fish.

She stretched out a hand to her co-founder Hanna Kuhfuss, hampered by her wetsuit, to lift her out of the water.

Rrreefs does not claim to stop the coral disintegrating but it is on a mission to offer shelter to surviving larvae and give coral reefs a second chance to grow and take in other living organisms.

"I'm an estate agent for special animals," Griesmar said with a smile.

“What I like about our project is that it uses a passive restoration method,” explained Kuhfuss, a marine biologist by training. “Other coral preservation systems use cloning, but if one of the organisms is sick, it affects them all. Our technique lets nature take its course, encouraging the development of the offspring of corals best adapted to global warming. By relying on natural reproduction, we can maintain their resistance.”

Four complementary talents

Rrreefs draws on the talents of four different people. The idea for the project was first sparked at Swiss technology institute ETH Zurich, where Griesmar, an art student, was thinking about how she could connect her passions for art and diving. She crossed paths with Ulrike Pfreundt, a scientist specialising in the preservation of tropical ecosystems, who was doing her final-year project on the effects of currents on artificial structures.

They began to talk about their plans/dreams for ocean preservation. They were then joined by Josephine Graf, who helped Pfreundt to develop the organisation and find customers. Marine biologist Kuhfuss was the fourth person to join the group. Rrreefs was founded in late 2020.

Rrreefs’ first attempts were encouragingly successful. Their first trial, launched in the Maldives with 100 clay bricks of various shapes, began to prosper. "These larvae settle in, and the moment they do, this system attracts a whole community: spores, fish," said Kuhfuss. "And a balanced ecosystem develops, where the sea urchins eat the algae, and so on. In three months, we had almost as many fish as a natural reef!"

The prototype designed by Rrreefs, here photographed after its installation in October 2022, is already occupied by corals and marine life. 

© Aldahir Cervantes

With crowdfunding, Rrreefs then launched its first complete prototype, made up of 228 bricks, in partnership with local scientists in Colombia. "The teams on site call it El Castillo! (the castle)" said Griesmar proudly.

The goal of Sunday’s operation near Geneva was not to attract corals, which live quite far from Swiss lakes. Rather, it was to test their new products in real-life conditions: new-generation bricks that are larger and heavier, with a view to a new installation in the Philippines that just received the green light.

Nothing was left to chance in the bricks’ design: their porousness, shape and colour are the result of three years of testing. "We chose a natural colour that resembles red-violet algae. It’s the visual indicator of a healthy substrate," explained Griesmar. The bricks fit together thanks to a protrusion on each side, similar to a small chimney. Like a children’s game, all you have to do is put them together.
‘To make an impact, you need money’

In the lake, things were heating up. Part of the team planted anchors at the bottom to install platforms that will house the reefs. On the surface, volunteers lowered brick after brick into the water by rope. At a depth of just a few meters, a diver picked them up, placed them on a platform and took them to the reef assembly site.

However, real-life testing has its share of surprises. "We can't see anything down there, we got lost! It took us twenty minutes to find the others," said Mauro Bischoff, the latest addition to the permanent Rrreefs team, as he removes his diving mask.

The activity in the lake – divers hammering the bottom to install the anchors, and bathers higher up – clouded visibility underwater. It’s time for Plan B: the team unrolls a long red cord from the platform to the marker buoy, so that divers can spot each other from the bottom. "There are always things we don't plan," jokes Griesmar. "We have to be creative!"

The team, whose average age is barely 30, is comprised mostly of Swiss nationals who converse in English, German or French. Leaning over a black waterproof notebook with sketches that accompany them underwater, Griesmar and Bischoff examine a miniature version of their marine castle.

Bischoff, who has a tribal neck tattoo under his mullet and a twinkle in his eye, is also an art student. He met Griesmar at ETH Zurich, and devoted his final-year project to designing an improved version of the Rrreefs structures. Around them, a handful of volunteers supported the small team, transporting bricks, filming the work and solving problems.

Busy with full-scale tests, appeals for donations, winning prizes and recruiting customers, Rrreefs is at a crossroads and preparing to become a company. It is the only way, according to its founders, to generate the money needed for its expansive ambitions.

"We're going to retain the organisation to do research, but to have an impact, you need money," said Griesmar. The co-founders, who make collegial decisions about all the developments of their projects, envisage partnerships with hotel chains. "It would be great to raise awareness among tourists (and) show them this project," she explained.

A Belgian couple stopped to admire the miniature reef. Griesmar paused her preparations to talk about Rrreefs once more. "This project isn't just about doing a good deed. It comes from the heart," she said.

This article has been translated from the original in French.

Traffic exhaust could increase blood pressure, study finds
2023/11/30

Research has already established that exposure to car fumes can lead to increased risk of stroke or heart attack. 

- Welcomia/Dreamstime/TNS

SEATTLE — Even brief exposure to highway pollution could cause significant increases in blood pressure, a new study from the University of Washington has found, adding to a growing body of work correlating vehicle exhaust with negative health outcomes.

The effects are near immediate: Two hours in Seattle’s rush hour was enough to increase blood pressure by nearly 5 millimeters of mercury, a jump that would push someone with normal levels to elevated or from elevated levels to stage 1 hypertension.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was conducted by a team at the UW, led by Dr. Joel Kaufman, a university physician and professor of environmental and occupational health sciences. The increase, he said, was about what you’d expect to see in someone who switched from a low-salt to high-salt diet.

“It’s a real interesting, important number that if you think of millions of people having this exposure every day, that’s moving a lot of people from the normal to the high blood pressure range,” Kaufman said. “That has a lot of impact on the risk of heart attacks and strokes.”

At a micro level, the study suggests a need for improved filtration in vehicles; absent a HEPA filter, most cars fail to catch possibly harmful particles piped in from the outside.

On a broader level, it’s another data point in a larger conversation around how the country’s highway system harms those whose daily lives are shrouded in tailpipe fumes. Low-income and working-class communities, often with large populations of people of color, are disproportionately likely to live near major highways. When the highway system was built to begin with, it was often through well-established Black or Latino neighborhoods.

“The big issue here is not just about being in the car,” said Kaufman. “The big issue is that lots of people breathe traffic-related air pollution. That could be walking or biking or living, and historically these major roadways were cut right through low-income areas.”

Research has already established that exposure to car fumes can lead to increased risk of stroke or heart attack. And some lab-based work has suggested blood pressure spikes may be a factor.

The UW team took the question further. To start, they tested participants in a closed setting — piping small amounts of diesel fumes into a room and measuring blood pressure. They saw a bump in blood pressure among the roughly 40 participants.

But that setting, the team concluded, was more likely to test occupational exposure to exhaust, rather than more typical ambient highway pollution.

So the team moved the experiment to the streets. Using a Dodge Caravan equipped with advance filtration and monitors, a driver carted each participant — screened to exclude most confounding factors — through Seattle’s rush hour traffic for two hours on three different occasions. On two of the drives, the air was unfiltered; on one, it was filtered. The participants did not know which was which.

Researchers found that, during the unfiltered drives, the blood pressure increases were similar to those seen in the lab, of just under 5 millimeters of mercury.

This was a surprise even to the research team because the number of particles measuring 2.5 micrometers in diameter or less — which are measured to gauge air quality and are high during wildfire season — was less than in the lab setting.

However, the number of ultrafine particles measuring 0.1 micrometers or less — which do not show up on air quality reports — was roughly the same. That suggests the tiniest particles may be closely tied to blood pressure increases.

The study, funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Institutes of Health, was small, a limitation noted by the Annals of Internal Medicine. Just 13 participants returned usable data. However, Kaufman said he’s confident in the statistical significance because the study is comparing people to themselves.

As for what’s happening in the body, Kaufman speculated it was a mini fight-or-flight reaction — that when the small particles entered someone’s lungs or bloodstream, the body would perceive them as a threat.

What the blood pressure jump means long term, if anything, is unclear. However, after 24 hours, participants still had elevated levels.

Environmental inequities, often the result of highway placement, have received increased attention in recent years. As part of its massive infrastructure bill, the Biden administration set aside $1 billion for communities that were upended by highway construction and whose residents still breathe the toxic results. It’s a pittance when compared to the issue, but an acknowledgment that the issue is in fact real.

_____

© The Seattle Times

On World AIDS Day, DOJ says Tennessee law discriminates against those with HIV

Matt Keeley, The New Civil Rights Movement
December 2, 2023 

AIDS Ribbon on Gate AFP

The DOJ released a report Friday that the state's aggravated prostitution law violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. A person arrested under the aggravated prostitution law is normally changed with a misdemeanor, and faces up to six months in prison and a $500 fine. However, if the person arrested has HIV, the crime becomes a felony, and if they're convicted, they would face between three and 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

“Tennessee’s aggravated prostitution law is outdated, has no basis in science, discourages testing and further marginalizes people living with HIV,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “People living with HIV should not be treated as violent sex offenders for the rest of their lives solely because of their HIV status. The Justice Department is committed to ensuring that people with disabilities are protected from discrimination.”

READ MORE: Activists Arrested After AIDS Funding Protest in Kevin McCarthy’s Office

The law was originally passed in 1991. It classifies HIV-positive sex workers as violent sex offenders, according to WKRN-TV. This means that in addition to the sentence, those convicted are put on the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry, usually for the rest of their lives.

The DOJ advised the state—and particularly, the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office, which enforces the statute most frequently, the department says—to stop enforcing the law. It also calls on the state to repeal the law and remove anyone from the registry when aggravated prostitution is the only offense. If this doesn't happen, Tennessee could face a lawsuit.

Tennessee isn't the only state to have laws applying to only those living with HIV. In 1988, Michigan passed a law requiring those with HIV to disclose their status before sex, according to WLNS-TV. The law is still on the books, but was updated in 2019 to lift the requirement if the HIV-positive person has an undetectable viral load. The law now also requires proof that the person set out to transmit HIV

Laws like these can work against public health efforts, according to the National Institutes of Health. The NIH says these types of laws can make people less likely to be tested for HIV, as people cannot be punished if they didn't know their status. In addition, critics say, the laws can be used to further discriminate. A Canadian study found a disproportionate number of Black men had been charged under HIV exposure laws.

World AIDS Day was first launched in 1988 by the World Health Organization and the United Nations to highlight awareness of the then-relatively new disease. The theme of the 2023 World AIDS Day is "Let Communities Lead," calling on community leaders to end the AIDS epidemic.

WAR CRIMINAL ESCAPES JUSTICE

'My blood boils': Kissinger's bitter legacy in Southeast Asia

Bangkok (AFP) – As global tributes to late US diplomat Henry Kissinger poured in, his death stirred fury across Southeast Asia.

Issued on: 02/12/2023

Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger at a ceremony honoring his diplomatic career in 2016 at the Pentagon 

© Brendan Smialowski / AFP


Homage has been paid to Kissinger's realpolitik and intellectual heft as secretary of state to US presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

But in Southeast Asia, millions have remembered when the United States bombed swathes of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War, an onslaught ordered by Kissinger and Nixon.

"Every single time I hear Kissinger's name, my blood boils," Sera Koulabdara, who fled Laos with her family at age six, told AFP.

The bombing was a failed attempt to disrupt rebel movements and strengthen Washington's hand as it pulled out of Vietnam.

Koulabdara said her father remembered the bombing.

"He described it as a roaring rain, but instead of water, it was flames."

Laos became the world's most-bombed country per capita from 1964 to 1973 as the United States dropped more than two million tonnes of ordnance, equal to a plane load of bombs every eight minutes.

Since then, unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the impoverished country has killed or wounded at least 20,000 Laotians.

"The life-threatening problem that exists in Laos is a direct result of the US's barbaric decisions and one of the main architects, Kissinger," said Koulabdara, who heads advocacy group Legacies of War.

Demining work continues.

"Laos is still the country most polluted by cluster munitions in the world," said Reinier Carabain of Handicap International –- Humanity & Inclusion, an organisation that has destroyed nearly 47,000 pieces of UXO since 2006.

"Every day, civilians in a quarter of the villages in Laos run the risk of being killed or injured by explosive remnants".

'I am hopeless'

In neighbouring Cambodia, the bombing campaign helped fuel the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime, which killed about two million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979 in acts later ruled as genocide by the kingdom's UN-backed court.

Former leader Hun Sen had long called for Kissinger to be charged with war crimes.

UXO still litter the countryside, killing an estimated 20,000 Cambodians in the past four decades.

Heng Ratana, director general of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, told AFP the decision to bomb "our beautiful country and peaceful people by destroying everything" was Kissinger's true legacy.

Henry Kissinger laughs during a press conference after the final communique on the Vietnam Peace Accords, signed by Kissinger and Le Duc Tho 

© - / AFP

"I am hopeless," said 60-year-old Cambodian Sam En, who was blinded and lost the use of both arms after he tried to remove a cluster bomb at his Kratie province home in 2014.

Sam En, who relies on his daughter for care, said he felt differently about Kissinger after his death.

"Before I felt angry. But now he has died, so as a Buddhist follower, I forgive him."
'Suffering'

In Vietnam, where some see Kissinger's rapprochement with China as paving Beijing's rise to dominance in the region, he leaves a complex legacy.

Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiations to end the Vietnam War, even though the conflict did not immediately finish and his North Vietnamese counterpart, Le Duc Tho, declined to accept the prize.

Pham Ngac, a former Vietnamese diplomat and interpreter for North Vietnam's delegation during the Paris Peace Accords © Nhac NGUYEN / AFP

Pham Ngac, an interpreter for North Vietnam during the Paris Peace Accords negotiation, called Kissinger an "outstanding" diplomat.

"He was the most... persuasive diplomat, to the benefit of the US," the 88-year-old former diplomat told AFP.

Neither the Vietnamese nor Cambodian governments responded to AFP requests for comment on Kissinger's death.

"He was the one that helped cause a lot of suffering for Vietnamese people," Tran Quy Tuyen, a soldier in Hanoi's air defence division between 1965 and 1973, told AFP.

"I guess many Vietnamese would say that he should have died years ago," the 78-year-old said.

© 2023 AFP

Chile, where Kissinger backed coup, remembers his 'moral wretchedness'
Agence France-Presse
December 1, 2023 


Henry Kissinger warmlArchivo General Histórico del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores

While leaders around the world remember Henry Kissinger fondly and praise him as a brilliant, hard-driving US statesman, the silence from Latin America is deafening.

"A man has died whose historical brilliance never managed to conceal his moral wretchedness," Chile's ambassador to the United States, Juan Gabriel Valdes, wrote on X, the former Twitter.

The envoy posted his acerbic remark after the death Wednesday of Kissinger, who greenlighted the 1973 coup that brought down Chile's elected socialist president and installed the rightwing dictatorship of general Augusto Pinochet.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric quietly reposted that X message, and the foreign minister said nothing at all about the man who dominated post-World War II US foreign policy and is often associated with "realpolitik" -- diplomacy driven by raw power and a country's self-interest.

Kissinger, first as national security adviser and then secretary of state under Richard Nixon (1969-1974) and Gerald Ford (1974-1977), was instrumental in the establishment of ties between the United States and China and in expanding the war in Vietnam to Cambodia and Laos.

But he also approved the putsch in which Pinochet overthrew president Salvador Allende, and was key in backing other authoritarian regimes in Latin America, such as in Brazil and Nicaragua.

"For Kissinger, Latin America was a piece on the global geostrategic chessboard. His only priority was the war against communism. All other considerations were of little importance," said Michael Shifter, former president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank, and a professor at Georgetown University.

"In that context, Kissinger was indifferent to human rights violations under military governments in the region," he added.

Kissinger played a prominent role in destabilizing the Allende government, bringing it down and then supporting the Pinochet dictatorship, which ran from 1973 to 1990.

In 1970, before Allende was elected, Kissinger said: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

He said this to the 40 Committee, a multi-agency US government body that approved covert operations.

- Fear of contagion -

Declassified CIA documents show that after Allende was elected in 1970, Kissinger oversaw disruptive operations designed to keep him from taking power, such as the attempted kidnapping of the army commander in chief, General Rene Schneider.


Schneider resisted, opening fire to defend himself, and was shot dead.

"Kissinger's obsession with Chile stemmed from the path that Allende had chosen to move toward his socialist utopia project," said Fernando Reyes Matta, a Chilean diplomat and former official of the Allende government.

This path involved democratic elections bringing socialists to power, the diplomat said.

"If this experiment succeeded to some extent, it could spread to countries in Italy such as Italy, France or Greece," said Reyes Matta.

After the US effort to keep Allende from taking power failed, and Allende actually assumed office, Kissinger rejected any notion of working with the new Chilean government.

And, rejecting advice from those around him, he pressed on with clandestine operations and tried to undermine the Chilean economy.

"Unfortunately Kissinger did not pay attention to the recommendation of his own team, such as Peter Vaky, his national security adviser, who stated clearly that Allende did not represent a mortal threat to the United States. So Kissinger's strategy was immoral and went against democratic values," said Shifter.

After Allende was overthrown on September 11, 1973 Kissinger -- who that same year shared the Nobel peace prize for leading the US side in talks to end the Vietnam war -- was a firm supporter of the brutal Pinochet regime.

"My evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world and that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government which was going communist," Kissinger told Pinochet in 1976.

Kissinger said this even though he was under pressure to call Pinochet out over human rights violations under his regime, which left some 3,200 people dead or missing.

Henry Kissinger: War criminal

Robert Reich
November 30, 2023 

Henry Kissinger has died, at the age of 100.

When a former high government official as well known as Kissinger passes, the conventional response is to say nice things about what they accomplished.

I’m sorry but I cannot. In my humble opinion, Kissinger should have been considered a war criminal.

One telling illustration was Kissinger’s role in overthrowing the elected socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile, and encouraging the mass murder of hundreds of innocent Chileans.


On September 12, 1970, eight days after Allende’s election, Kissinger initiated a discussion on the telephone with CIA Director Richard Helms about a preemptive coup in Chile.

“We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger declared.

“I am with you,” Helms responded.

Three days later, Nixon, in a 15-minute meeting that included Kissinger, ordered the CIA to “make the [Chilean] economy scream,” and named Kissinger as the supervisor of the covert efforts to prevent Allende from being inaugurated.

Kissinger ignored a recommendation from his top deputy on the NSC, Viron Vaky, who strongly advised against covert action to undermine Allende.

On September 14, 1970, Vaky wrote a memo to Kissinger arguing that coup plotting would lead to “widespread violence and even insurrection.” He also argued that such a policy was immoral: “What we propose is patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets .… If these principles have any meaning, we normally depart from them only to meet the gravest threat to us, e.g. to our survival. Is Allende a mortal threat to the U.S.? It is hard to argue this.”


After U.S. covert operations, which led to the assassination of Chilean Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces General Rene Schneider, failed to stop Allende’s inauguration on November 4, 1970, Kissinger lobbied Nixon to reject the State Department’s recommendation that the U.S. seek a modus vivendi with Allende.

While Schneider was dying in the Military Hospital in Santiago on October 22, 1970, Kissinger told Nixon that the Chilean military turned out to be “a pretty incompetent bunch.” Nixon replied: “They are out of practice,” according to documents released in August by the U.S. National Security Archive.

In an eight-page secret briefing paper that provided Kissinger’s clearest rationale for regime change in Chile, he emphasized to Nixon that “the election of Allende as president of Chile poses for us one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere” and “your decision as to what to do about it may be the most historic and difficult foreign affairs decision you will make this year.”

Not only were a billion dollars of U.S. investments at stake, Kissinger reported, but so was what he called “the insidious model effect” of his democratic election.

There was no way for the U.S. to deny Allende’s legitimacy, Kissinger noted, and if he succeeded in peacefully reallocating resources in Chile in a socialist direction, other countries might follow suit.

“The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on — and even precedent value for — other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.”

The next day Nixon made it clear to the entire National Security Council that the policy would be to bring Allende down. “Our main concern,” he stated, “is the prospect that he can consolidate himself and the picture projected to the world will be his success.”

In the days following the September 11, 1973, coup, Kissinger ignored the concerns of his top State Department aides about the massive repression by the new military regime. He sent secret instructions to his ambassador to convey to Pinochet “our strongest desires to cooperate closely and establish firm basis for cordial and most constructive relationship.”

When Kissinger’s assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs asked him what to tell Congress about the reports of hundreds of people being killed in the days following the coup, Kissinger issued these instructions: “I think we should understand our policy-that however unpleasant they act, this government is better for us than Allende was.”

The United States assisted the Pinochet regime in consolidating, through economic and military aid, diplomatic support and CIA assistance in creating Chile’s infamous secret police agency, DINA.

When Nixon complained about the “liberal crap” in the media about Allende’s overthrow, Kissinger advised him: “In the Eisenhower period, we would be heroes.”

At the height of Pinochet’s repression in 1975, Kissinger met with the Chilean foreign minister, Admiral Patricio Carvajal.

Rather than press the military regime to improve its human rights record, Kissinger opened the meeting by disparaging his own staff for putting the issue of human rights on the agenda.

“I read the briefing paper for this meeting and it was nothing but Human Rights,” Kissinger told Carvajal. “The State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there are not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State.”

When Kissinger prepared to meet Pinochet in Santiago in June 1976, his top deputy for Latin America, William D. Rogers, advised him make human rights central to U.S.-Chilean relations and to press the dictator to “improve human rights practices.”

Instead, a declassified transcript of their conversation reveals, Kissinger told Pinochet that his regime was a victim of leftist propaganda on human rights. “In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here,” Kissinger told Pinochet. “We want to help, not undermine you. You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”

The Chilean government has formally requested that the Biden administration publish documentation from 1973 and 1974 on what was said in the Oval Office before and after the coup led by Pinochet.

“We still don’t know what President Nixon saw on his desk the morning of the military coup,” Chile’s ambassador to the United States, Juan Gabriel Valdés, says. “There are details that remain of interest to [Chileans], that are important for us to reconstruct our own history.”

An appropriate response to Kissinger’s death would be for the U.S. to own up to the ] entirety of what Nixon and Kissinger wrought.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/11/henry-kissinger-war-criminal-beloved-by.html