Survey: 31% of UK motorcyclists would quit riding if forced to go electric
By Loz Blain
May 24, 2021

No gasoline? We quit, say 31% of UK motorcyclists in a new survey from the Motorcycle Action Group

ljsphotography/Depositphotos


In order to shift to a zero carbon economy, fossil fuel powered vehicles will have to be phased out. The UK Government announced last year that new petrol and diesel powered cars and vans will no longer be sold in the UK from 2030, a target that only Norway expects to beat with its own ban starting in 2025.

Motorcycles have not been explicitly included in the ban, but a UK rider advocacy organization has polled some 4,805 motorcyclists to ask how they'd react if petrol-powered bikes were restricted from sale.

The respondents were mainly enthusiasts, as opposed to a random sampling of daily commuters or license holders, so you'd expect to see some resistance to the idea. And indeed, only 8.1 percent of those polled would want the Motorcycle Action Group (MAG) to immediately accept such a ban, with 36.4 percent saying they'd want MAG to delay it and 55.5 percent in complete opposition to such a proposal.

But when asked what they'd do if such a ban was implemented, a surprising number of riders – 31 percent – said they'd quit riding altogether when new petrol-powered bikes become unavailable, rather than continuing to ride petrol-powered bikes as long as possible before switching to electric (56.2 percent) or buying a zero-emissions bike early when petrol-powered models are still available (13 percent).

Now, some of this result can surely be attributed to the clumsy wording of the survey, as shown below.

Some of this result can be attributed to a poorly worded survey question
Motorcycle Action Group UK

But the overall sentiment stands, and it's worth discussing. Motorcycle riders – enthusiasts in particular – have some genuine reasons to resist going electric. When you ride for fun, you want to be able to pile on big miles in a day, while applying throttle the way my grandad applied butter and salt to potatoes.

Using current battery technology, a fast sports touring ride covering 500 miles (800 km) of ground would require several long charge stops, and I've ridden with plenty of riders who start staring daggers if somebody takes too long to smoke a cigarette. Bigger batteries aren't necessarily the answer, either; motorcycles rapidly become less agile as they gain weight.

Then there's the noise thing, which comes in two forms: "loud pipes save lives," and "I just really like the sound of my engine." As to the first, while nobody will ever be convinced to change their opinion, several studies have concluded that the "loud pipes save lives" meme has no basis in evidence.

A Romanian study earlier this year illustrated why; when a car's running its engine at ~2500 rpm with the windows shut and quiet music on the stereo, drivers simply can't hear anything, even when bikes with 110-decibel aftermarket pipes are revving to the redline, as little as 10 meters (33 ft) away. Here, check out the video, as if it'll make any difference.

Do loud pipes save lives? Now you have the answer!

As to enjoying the sound of a screaming engine, I can sympathize. Loud noises are exciting, especially ones that rise in pitch and volume accompanied by a rush of acceleration. The soundtrack of a roaring superbike or a thundering cruiser definitely adds to the adrenaline and the experience. On the other hand, you don't need engine sound on a single-speed electric the way you do on a combustion bike. You're always in the powerband, as it were, with big torque and acceleration available whenever you want it. RPM is much less important, so the sound is no longer essential information.

But to spit the dummy and quit outright, to give up riding altogether rather than have anything to do with an electric motorcycle? Way to miss out on a hell of an experience. The light bulb came on for me back in 2014 with the Zero SR, and the monstrous Lightning LS-218 cemented things for me: riding electric is different, but it's awesome. Without the engine noise, the vibrations, the clutch or the gear lever, there's a pure "you and the painted lines" feeling that lets you concentrate on precision cornering, enjoying super-detailed road surface feedback through the bike and a mammoth rush of speed whenever you want it. It's a different animal, to quote the late, great Kobe Bryant, but the same beast.

Energy storage will be solved, fast charging infrastructure will be rolled out, and combustion vehicles will eventually cease to be sold, however long that takes. The electric-only age is coming. It will offer performance levels even more extreme that what we've been treated to in the oil age. And if you're too hung up on petrol bikes to enjoy it, it seems to me you're only robbing yourself.

Source: Motorcycle Action Group

TO DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

Fisker to build first all-electric popemobile for Pope Francis

By Nick Lavars
May 23, 2021

A render of the electric SUV Fisker is building for Pope Francis
Fisker/Business Wire

After unveiling its long-awaited Ocean SUV at CES last year, electric vehicle startup Fisker is turning its attention to papal transport, revealing plans to develop a purpose-built all-electric vehicle for Pope Francis. The car will be based on the Ocean, which the company says is well-suited to such applications, and is expected to be delivered to His Holiness next year.

Fisker unveiled its Ocean SUV last year, revealing what it calls the world's most sustainable vehicle, with a 80-kWh battery pack offering a range of 250 to 300 miles (402 to 483 km). Other eco-friendly features include vegan-friendly materials throughout the interior, such as carpet made from plastic waste recovered from the ocean. There is also a full-length solar roof that Fisker claims can generate enough energy to power the car across an extra 1,000 miles (1,600 km) each year.

"I got inspired reading that Pope Francis is very considerate about the environment and the impact of climate change for future generations," says Fisker co-founder Henrik Fisker. "The interior of the Fisker Ocean papal transport will contain a variety of sustainable materials, including carpets made from recycled plastic bottles from the ocean."

Fisker co-founders Henrik Fisker and Dr. Geeta Gupta-Fisker with the Pope during a visit to Vatican City
Fisker/Business Wire

This isn't the first time we've seen electric vehicles used to improve the eco-credentials of the Vatican, with Pope Francis previously receiving a Nissan Leaf in 2017, and Pope Benedict XVI receiving a modified all-electric Kangoo Maxi Z.E. from Renault back in 2012. But this will be the first all-electric popemobile that is intended for public appearances of the Pope.

Fisker says the Ocean's spacious interior lends itself to the design of an all-glass cupola for clear views in and out of the vehicle as the Pope is transported through or near crowds of people. It plans to deliver the one-off EV to Pope Francis next year, while production for the Ocean SUV is expected to kick off in November 2022, with pricing starting at US$37,499.

Source: Fisker

FISKER HAS NOT BUILT ANYTHING YET, ITS ALL PROMO

Surprisingly high mercury levels detected in Greenland glacier meltwater
By Michael Irving
May 24, 2021

A new study has found unexpectedly high levels of mercury in meltwater from glaciers in Greeland
Maridav/Depositphotos


The Greenland Ice Sheet is associated with a range of environmental issues, but now researchers have discovered a surprising new problem that hadn’t been considered before. Glacial meltwater was found to be unexpectedly high in mercury, which could have consequences for the local fishing industry.

The researchers didn’t specifically set out to study mercury levels – it was just one of many elements they were measuring to determine the quality of the water running off melting glaciers. The team took samples of water from three rivers and two fjords near the ice sheet to study the nutrients being delivered to coastal ecosystems.

The team found that the Greenland glacial meltwater rivers contained dissolved mercury levels of more than 150 nanograms per liter (ng L-1), which is up to 150 times higher than an average river. Even more alarming was the find that particulate mercury in the sediment called glacial “flour” was up to 2,000 ng L-1.

“We didn’t expect there would be anywhere near that amount of mercury in the glacial water there,” says Rob Spencer, lead author of the study. “Naturally, we have hypotheses as to what is leading to these high mercury concentrations, but these findings have raised a whole host of questions that we don’t have the answers to yet.”

The two main questions are, of course, where that mercury is coming from and where it’s going. For the first question, the scientists say they don’t believe it originates from human activity, which sounds like good news but might actually make it harder to control.

“All the efforts to manage mercury thus far have come from the idea that the increasing concentrations we have been seeing across the Earth system come primarily from direct anthropogenic activity, like industry,” says Jon Hawkings, first author of the study. “But mercury coming from climatically sensitive environments like glaciers could be a source that is much more difficult to manage.”

As to where the mercury might be going, the researchers are concerned that the toxic heavy metal could make its way into the aquatic food web. From there, it might end up on our dinner plates, since Greenland is a major exporter of seafood. These potential problems need to be investigated, the team says, to assess their full impact.

The research was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Source: Florida State University

Palestinians Are Dreaming of a Third Intifada

BYSERAJ ASSI
05.25.2021

JACOBIN

Rather than crushing their aspirations for freedom, Israeli brutality has united Palestinians more than in decades. Is a third intifada on the horizon?
A Palestinian man sells balloons in front of the rubble of the al-Shuruq building, destroyed by an Israeli air strike, on May 21, 2021, in Gaza City.(MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)

While Israel has finally halted its brutal bombing campaign in Gaza — which left hundreds of Palestinians dead and thousands displaced and homeless — the grim reality of life under Israeli occupation remains unchanged. The siege of Gaza, the rapid settlement expansion in the West Bank, the “apartheid wall” dividing Israel and the West Bank, the forced displacement of stateless Palestinians in Jerusalem, and the racist violence against Palestinian citizens in Israel all persist even as the bombs have gone quiet. On Monday, Mondoweiss reported that Israeli police are arresting Palestinians en masse in Israel and the occupied territory to “settle scores” following massive demonstrations.

But something crucial has changed. After two weeks of protest — including an unprecedented general strike across Palestine — it’s clear that a new movement of popular resistance has emerged and that Palestinians are more unified than in decades. This cross-border movement both echoes previous uprisings in Palestine and seeks to transcend them.

And nothing looms larger in the collective memory of Palestinians than the two intifadas.

The Two Intifadas

On December 9, 1987, near the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, an Israeli military truck crashed into a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers, three of whom were from the camp. Demonstrations erupted at the Jabalia camp, during which Israeli army patrols fired on Palestinian protesters, killing dozens, including a seventeen-year-old girl who was shot in the head.

For the next six years, Palestinians revolted. The first intifada, or “uprising,” was a grand display of symbolic resistance. Israel, with all its military might, was rocked by the daily spectacle of Palestinian youths throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at heavily armed Israeli soldiers. Images of Palestinian children facing down Israeli tanks with stones, slingshots, or bare hands shook the world. Boycotts, general strikes, and civil disobedience were used to contest occupation and dispossession.

The intifada was not, as Western media depicted it, a spontaneous uprising. Erupting just as Palestinians marked the twentieth anniversary of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, the uprising was led by a new generation of young Palestinians who grew up under the occupation and experienced its inhumanity up close.

By December 1987, some 2,200 armed Jewish settlers occupied nearly half of the Gaza Strip; 650,000 impoverished Palestinians were crowded into the remaining portion, rendering the Palestinian side of the Gaza Strip one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. The intifada was an uprising against a system that was, as one Israeli historian put it, “founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, manipulation, and an all-prevailing sense of humiliation among Palestinians.”

Israel responded to the resistance with disproportionate force, deploying over eighty thousand soldiers, killing and wounding thousands of Palestinians (including children), and displacing even more. Israeli defense minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered his army to “break the bones of Palestinians” as part of Israel’s “Iron Fist” policy.

The “stones intifada,” as Palestinian hailed it, was not meant to defeat Israel but to show the world the inhumanity of the occupation — the beatings, shootings, killings, assassinations, curfews, military checkpoints, house demolitions, forced evictions and deportations, uprooting of trees, mass arrests, extended imprisonments, and detentions without trial. It was meant to force Israel to recognize Palestinians as a people with legitimate aspirations for freedom and dignity.

Still, the revolt was crushed mercilessly. Over the course of the uprising, the Jewish settler population in the West Bank more than doubled, opening a new chapter in Israel’s sweeping colonization of Palestine and Palestinian dispossession.

The intifada left lasting scars in Palestinians’ memory. Trapped in the iron cage created by Israel, and caught between Arab silence and international apathy, Palestinians were abandoned to their fate, and the prospect of a renewed Palestinian uprising became a distant mirage.

Until the second intifada.

On September 28, 2000, Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon, heavily guarded by Israeli soldiers and policemen, staged a provocative visit to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Within hours, seven Palestinian protesters defending the holy site were killed by the security forces guarding Sharon.

The following day, Israeli soldiers shot dead twelve-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah in his father’s arms. On the fourth day, twelve Palestinians were felled by Israeli bullets, missiles, tanks, and helicopters.

Within days, the uprising spread all over Palestine and across Israel. The second intifada was underway.

Those who witnessed the failure of the Camp David Summit that summer, where Bill Clinton brought together Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were hardly surprised. For years, millions of disenchanted Palestinians had watched in dismay as Israel, in violation of its peace accord with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, reoccupied the West Bank, annexed East Jerusalem, and expanded its illegal settlements into Palestinian lands.

The intifada laid bare the futility of the so-called peace process. After a decade of negotiations, Palestinians came to realize that the road to freedom and liberation would come not through lavish hotels in Western capitals and negotiating tables but through popular resistance. And rather than mere statehood, their struggle was now for freedom, equality, and basic human rights — a struggle against occupation and apartheid.

The second intifada tore down the intercolonial boundaries demarcated by Israel, as Palestinians inside Israel revolted in solidarity with Palestinians across the border, staging mass protests and strikes and blocking major streets in cities like Haifa and Jaffa. Thirteen of those Palestinians were killed by the Israeli police — a brutal reminder that the promise of Palestinian “citizenship” was nothing but a mere political fiction.

The second intifada was more forceful in character than the first. In an attempt to compel Israel to cease its attacks against civilians and withdraw its forces from Palestinian territories, Palestinian groups, notably Hamas and Islamic Jihad, launched counterattacks inside Israel, including suicide attacks. Israel retaliated by launching attacks against Palestinian villages, towns, and cities, and embarked on a campaign of assassinations, targeting field operatives and political leaders of the intifada, including members of the Palestinian Authority.

Like the first intifada, the second intifada, or “the Aqsa intifada,” was crushed ruthlessly. In a five-year span, more than three thousand Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces, including a dozen Palestinian citizens of Israel, and more than ten thousand Palestinian children were wounded.

Palestinians emerged from the uprising with dashed aspirations for freedom and independence. Before the intifada had even been quelled, Israel had started building its apartheid wall — cutting deep into Palestinian territory in the West Bank and rewarding Jewish settlers with the annexed land.
The Next Intifada?

Today, the prospect of Palestinian statehood is virtually dead, thanks to Israel’s unceasing expansion into Palestinian land and the rapid proliferation of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

From the systemic disenfranchisement of Palestinian citizens inside the country to the constant displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, from the daily oppression of those living behind its apartheid wall to the routine humiliation of those living under its apartheid laws — including the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in a stateless limbo in East Jerusalem — Israel continues to brazenly deny Palestinians their basic rights.

Yet rather than eliminating the movement for liberation, Israel’s brutality has begun to unite those subject to its oppressive whims. Palestinians are no longer accepting the segregationist apparatus invented by Israel — a multilayered apartheid system that seeks not only to segregate Palestinians from Jewish settlers but to divide Palestinians themselves into “West Bankers,” “Gazans,” “Israeli citizens,” “Jerusalemites,” and “refugees.” Today, Palestinians everywhere are beginning to stand as one people, united by a shared memory, shared destiny, shared sense of loss and oppression, and shared aspirations for freedom and justice.

As someone who lived through the first and second intifadas, the current protests hit me with a vivid sense of déjà vu. It’s as if every ten or twenty years so a new Palestinian generation rises up in revolt.

Perhaps a third intifada is on the horizon.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR                                                                                                                Seraj Assi is the author of The History and Politics of the Bedouin.

Chomsky: Without US Aid, Israel Wouldn’t Be Killing Palestinians En Masse

Noam Chomsky Interviewed by

 C.J. Polychroniou

May 12, 2021. TruthOut.

Successive Israeli governments have been trying for years to push Palestinians out of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and the latest round of Israeli attacks fall in line with that goal. But to understand the roots of the current escalation — and the possible threat of all-out war — one must examine the U.S.-backed, foundational Israeli government policy of using strategies of “terror and expulsion” in an effort to expand its territory by killing and displacing Palestinians, says Noam Chomsky, in this exclusive interview for Truthout.

Chomsky — a Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT — is internationally recognized as one of the most astute analysts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Middle East politics in general, and is a leading voice in the struggle to liberate Palestine. Among his many writings on the topic are The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and Palestinians; Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians; and On Palestine.

C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, I want to start by asking you to put into context the Israeli attack against Palestinians at the al-Aqsa Mosque amid eviction protests, and then the latest air raid attacks in Gaza. What’s new, what’s old, and to what extent is this latest round of neo-colonial Israeli violence related to Trump’s move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem?

Noam Chomsky: There are always new twists, but in essentials it is an old story, tracing back a century, taking new forms after Israel’s 1967 conquests and the decision 50 years ago, by both major political groupings, to choose expansion over security and diplomatic settlement — anticipating (and receiving) crucial U.S. material and diplomatic support all the way.

For what became the dominant tendency in the Zionist movement, there has been a fixed long-term goal. Put crudely, the goal is to rid the country of Palestinians and replace them with Jewish settlers cast as the “rightful owners of the land” returning home after millennia of exile.

At the outset, the British, then in charge, generally regarded this project as just. Lord Balfour, author of the Declaration granting Jews a “national home” in Palestine, captured Western elite ethical judgment fairly well by declaring that “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”

The sentiments are not unfamiliar.

Zionist policies since have been opportunistic. When possible, the Israeli government — and indeed the entire Zionist movement — adopts strategies of terror and expulsion. When circumstances don’t allow that, it uses softer means. A century ago, the device was to quietly set up a watchtower and a fence, and soon it will turn into a settlement, facts on the ground. The counterpart today is the Israeli state expelling even more Palestinian families from the homes where they have been living for generations — with a gesture toward legality to salve the conscience of those derided in Israel as “beautiful souls.” Of course, the mostly absurd legalistic pretenses for expelling Palestinians (Ottoman land laws and the like) are 100 percent racist. There is no thought of granting Palestinians rights to return to homes from which they’ve been expelled, even rights to build on what’s left to them.

Israel’s 1967 conquests made it possible to extend similar measures to the conquered territories, in this case in gross violation of international law, as Israeli leaders were informed right away by their highest legal authorities. The new projects were facilitated by the radical change in U.S.-Israeli relations. Pre-1967 relations had been generally warm but ambiguous. After the war they reached unprecedented heights of support for a client state.

The Israeli victory was a great gift to the U.S. government. A proxy war had been underway between radical Islam (based in Saudi Arabia) and secular nationalism (Nasser’s Egypt). Like Britain before it, the U.S. tended to prefer radical Islam, which it considered less threatening to U.S. imperial domination. Israel smashed Arab secular nationalism.

Israel’s military prowess had already impressed the U.S. military command in 1948, and the ’67 victory made it very clear that a militarized Israeli state could be a solid base for U.S. power in the region — also providing important secondary services in support of U.S. imperial goals beyond. U.S. regional dominance came to rest on three pillars: Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran (then under the Shah). Technically, they were all at war, but in reality the alliance was very close, particularly between Israel and the murderous Iranian tyranny.

Within that international framework, Israel was free to pursue the policies that persist today, always with massive U.S. support despite occasional clucks of discontent. The Israeli government’s immediate policy goal is to construct a “Greater Israel,” including a vastly expanded “Jerusalem” encompassing surrounding Arab villages; the Jordan valley, a large part of the West Bank with much of its arable land; and major towns deep inside the West Bank, along with Jews-only infrastructure projects integrating them into Israel. The project bypasses Palestinian population concentrations, like Nablus, so as to fend off what Israeli leaders describe as the dread “demographic problem”: too many non-Jews in the projected “democratic Jewish state” of “Greater Israel” — an oxymoron more difficult to mouth with each passing year. Palestinians within “Greater Israel” are confined to 165 enclaves, separated from their lands and olive groves by a hostile military, subjected to constant attack by violent Jewish gangs (“hilltop youths”) protected by the Israeli army.

Meanwhile Israel settled and annexed the Golan Heights in violation of UN Security Council orders (as it did in Jerusalem). The Gaza horror story is too complex to recount here. It is one of the worst of contemporary crimes, shrouded in a dense network of deceit and apologetics for atrocities.

Trump went beyond his predecessors in providing free rein for Israeli crimes. One major contribution was orchestrating the Abraham Accords, which formalized long-standing tacit agreements between Israel and several Arab dictatorships. That relieved limited Arab restraints on Israeli violence and expansion.

The Accords were a key component of the Trump geostrategic vision: to construct a reactionary alliance of brutal and repressive states, run from Washington, including [Jair] Bolsonaro’s Brazil, [Narendra] Modi’s India, [Viktor] Orbán’s Hungary, and eventually others like them. The Middle East-North Africa component is based on al-Sisi’s hideous Egyptian tyranny, and now under the Accords, also family dictatorships from Morocco to the UAE and Bahrain. Israel provides the military muscle, with the U.S. in the immediate background.

The Abraham Accords fulfill another Trump objective: bringing under Washington’s umbrella the major resource areas needed to accelerate the race toward environmental cataclysm, the cause to which Trump and associates dedicated themselves with impressive fervor. That includes Morocco, which has a near monopoly of the phosphates needed for the industrialized agriculture that is destroying soils and poisoning the atmosphere. To enhance the Moroccan near-monopoly, Trump officially recognized and affirmed Morocco’s brutal and illegal occupation of Western Sahara, which also has phosphate deposits.

It is of some interest that the formalization of the alliance of some of the world’s most violent, repressive and reactionary states has been greatly applauded across a broad spectrum of opinion.

So far, Biden has taken over these programs. He has rescinded the gratuitous brutality of Trumpism, such as withdrawing the fragile lifeline for Gaza because, as Trump explained, Palestinians had not been grateful enough for his demolition of their just aspirations. Otherwise the Trump-Kushner criminal edifice remains intact, though some specialists on the region think it might totter with repeated Israeli attacks on Palestinian worshippers in the al-Aqsa mosque and other exercises of Israel’s effective monopoly of violence.

Israel’s settlements have no legal validity, so why is the U.S. continuing to provide aid to Israel in violation of U.S. law, and why isn’t the progressive community focusing on this illegality?

Israel has been a highly valued client since the demonstration of its mastery of violence in 1967. Law is no impediment. U.S. governments have always had a cavalier attitude to U.S. law, adhering to standard imperial practice. Take what is arguably the major example: The U.S. Constitution declares that treaties entered into by the U.S. government are the “supreme law of the land.” The major postwar treaty is the UN Charter, which bars “the threat or use of force” in international affairs (with exceptions that are not relevant in real cases). Can you think of a president who hasn’t violated this provision of the supreme law of the land with abandon? For example, by proclaiming that all options are open if Iran disobeys U.S. orders — let alone such textbook examples of the “supreme international crime” (the Nuremberg judgment) as the invasion of Iraq.

The substantial Israeli nuclear arsenal should, under U.S. law, raise serious questions about the legality of military and economic aid to Israel. That difficulty is overcome by not recognizing its existence, an unconcealed farce, and a highly consequential one, as we’ve discussed elsewhere. U.S. military aid to Israel also violates the Leahy Law, which bans military aid to units engaged in systematic human rights violations. The Israeli armed forces provide many candidates.

Congresswoman Betty McCollum has taken the lead in pursuing this initiative. Carrying it further should be a prime commitment for those concerned with U.S. support for the terrible Israeli crimes against Palestinians. Even a threat to the huge flow of aid could have a dramatic impact.

CHOMSKY.INFO

Marjorie Taylor Greene tells city council in 2020 

she wouldn’t remove statue of Hitler or Satan



Video resurfaces of Marjorie Taylor Greene saying she wouldn’t take down a statue of Hitler

Footage from 2020 city council meeting shows then-candidate opposing removal of Confederate monuments and hypothetical statues of Hitler and Satan to ‘teach others’

   

Alex Woodward

New York
THE INDEPENDENT

A resurfaced video from 2020 shows Marjorie Taylor Greene opposing the removal of Confederate monuments by suggesting that those statues – or hypothetical statutes of Adolf Hitler or Satan – should remain in place “to teach others about who these people are and what they did.”

The video published by Punchbowl News on Monday – as the Georgia congresswoman continues to defend her remarks comparing coronavirus mask guidance and Covid-19 vaccine policies to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews during the Holocaust – shows then-candidate Green appearing before a city council hearing in Dalton, Georgia on 15 June.

“We’re seeing situations where Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln – all kinds of statues are being attacked, and it seems to be just an effort to take down history,” she says in the video.

“And whether I see a statue that may be something that I would fully disagree with, like Adolph Hitler, maybe a statue of Satan himself, I would not want to say, ‘Take it down,’ but again, it’s so that I could tell my children and teach others about who these people are, what they did and what they may be about.”

The reemergence of the video follows the far-right congresswoman’s remarks comparing mask mandates and Covid-19 vaccination policies to Nazi antisemitism during the genocide of millions of European Jews during World War II.
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CNN anchor sickened by Marjorie Taylor Greene's Holocaust comment

FOUR DAYS LATER

‘Marjorie is wrong’: GOP leader Kevin McCarthy condemns Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘appalling’ Holocaust comments

‘Disgusting, ignorant, offensive’: Marjorie Taylor Greene condemned for new comparison of Covid vaccinations to Holocaust

Last week, she claimed that mask mandates in the House of Representatives during the coronavirus pandemic is “exactly” the same kind of abuse Jews suffered under the Nazi regime, a claim that she has defended several times.

On Monday, she shared a story to Twitter about a grocery store where employees will have name tags that indicate that they have been vaccinated from Covid-19, and claimed that “vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s [sic] forced Jewish people to wear a gold star”.

She also claimed on Monday that universities requiring vaccinations to attend in-person classes are using “Nazi practices”

“This is exactly what I was saying about the gold star,” she said.

The Georgia congresswoman then claimed that she “never compared” coronavirus policies to the Holocaust, “only the discrimination against Jews in early Nazi years”, despite the use of badges at concentration camps.

Her remarks were condemned by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Minority Whip Steve Scalise, newly elected GOP caucus chair Elise Stefanik and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But GOP lawmakers, including Ms Greene, have instead accused Democrats of enabling antisemitism within their party, and none are calling for Ms Greene to face any consequences for her remarks. RACIST ISLAMOPHOBIC COMMENT ON THE SQUAD

House Democrats voted to strip her of her committee assignments following resurfaced comments and social media posts that appeared to show her advocating violence against her political opponents and far-right conspiracy theories.

UK

Boris Johnson delayed autumn lockdown because ‘Covid is only killing 80 year olds’, Dominic Cummings expected to tell MPs

Former chief of staff expected to make allegations about Boris Johnson’s attitude to deaths

Jon Stone
Policy Correspondent@joncstone

THE INDEPENDENT 

Virus Outbreak Britain Politics 

DOMINIC CUMMINGS THE RICHEALU OF NO.10
(Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Dominic Cummings is expected to tell MPs that Boris Johnson justified delaying lockdown in the autumn by claiming “Covid is only killing 80-year-olds”.

In a highly-anticipated appearance before the Commons technology and health committees the ex-Downing Street aide is expected to reveal the behind-the-scenes details of the government's response to coronavirus.

The alleged comments expected to be attributed to Mr Johnson, reported by ITV News, come after other allegations that the prime minister said he would rather "let the bodies pile high" than other another lockdown – before the second wave took Britain's death toll to over 150,000.

But amid scattered reports of what he is expected to say at the committee evidence session, Mr Cumming on Tuesday urged caution, posting on social media: "One way to sift the journalists writing about the inquiry is: if they quote childish military metaphors like ‘grenades’ from supposed ‘allies’, they’re inventing either the quote or the ‘ally’ or probably both."

No.10 is yet to comment on Mr Johnson’s alleged comments. Pressed on LBC radio about she was "nervous" about Mr Cummings appearing before MPs, Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey said: "I'm not nervous at all. It is right that Parliament has these inquiries and scrutiny.
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Watch live as Dominic Raab takes urgent question on Belarus plane ‘hijacking’

Who has the most to lose from Dominic Cummings’s testimony?

"Of course, next year we will have the full public inquiry because the Government is still focused on tackling the coronavirus and also the road map to recovery.

"We are still busy getting on with the job and I'm sure there will be more interest tomorrow on what is said and the questions asked."

Mr Cummings had previously claimed that it was UK government strategy to pursue "herd immunity" for the UK by not fully suppressing Covid-19 – which ministers deny but for which there is some evidence dating from March.


Allies of Mr Cummings briefed newspapers over the weekend that he is ready to “napalm” Mr Johnson’s administration.

The ex-chief of staff had on Saturday bombarded social media with a long thread alleging incompetence and “lies” from the government over lockdown.

The former top Downing Street aide said the media had failed to properly scrutinise the government and instead “parroted” its claims to have never advocated herd immunity, despite evidence to the contrary.

He also lashed out at his former colleagues in government and claimed that the country could have avoided the need for lockdowns had it had “the right preparations and competent people in charge”.

Despite previously being a central part of Boris Johnson's administration, enmity between Mr Cummings and the government has grown since his departure in November.

Months of silence from the former adviser turned to riotous anger in April after No 10 sources blamed Mr Cummings for leaking the prime minister’s texts.

The former Vote Leave strategist hit back hard, denying the claims and dropping several other related and unrelated bombs on the government operation.

He accused the PM of a “mad and totally unethical” scheme to get Tory donors to pay for a Downing Street flat refurbishment, and claimed Mr Johnson had refused to accept a leak inquiry to protect a friend of Ms Symonds.

He will be appearing at a session titled Coronavirus: Lessons Learnt, and is expected to accuse Mr Johnson of being responsible for excess deaths during the pandemic.

Britain has suffered one of the worst death rates in the world from Covid-19, with repeated delays and dithering over the introduction of lockdown measures blamed.

In a 5 March 2020interview, Boris Johnson said there was “a need to strike a balance” in imposing restrictions that would flatten the peak of the pandemic to reduce strain on the NHS but allow “the disease, as it were, to move through the population”.

The government’s chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance told the BBC at the time: “If you suppress something very, very hard, when you release those measures it bounces back and it bounces back at the wrong time.”

He added: “Our aim is to try to reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely. Also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission, at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable to it.”

At a press conference a week later, on 12 March, Sir Patrick added: “Our aim is not to stop everyone getting it, you can’t do that. And it’s not desirable, because you want to get some immunity in the population. We need to have immunity to protect ourselves from this in the future.”

He later told MPs that herd immunity, through simply letting the virus rip through the population, was never the plan for the pandemic response.

UK

This is just the beginning, says Good Law Project founder ahead of PPE ruling

Jolyon Maugham QC, the founder of the Good Law Project, has said there is ‘an awful lot more to come’ in the challenges against the Government.

Jolyon Maugham QC, the founder of the Good Law Project / PA Archive

By Jess Glass
EVENING STANDARD

MAY 25,2021

The founder of a campaign group challenging the Government over contracts for personal protective equipment has said their recent High Court battle “is just the beginning”.

The Good Law Project and EveryDoctor claim the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) unlawfully awarded contracts worth more than £700 million to supply PPE at the height of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

The campaign groups took legal action over contracts awarded to pest control firm PestFix and the hedge fund Ayanda Capital

They argue that millions of pounds worth of equipment, which was “useless to the NHS”, was purchased in April and May 2020 without proper technical checks, at inflated prices, as a result of the contracts provided through a “VIP lane”.

“The outcome of all of this was a truly tragic waste of public money,” Jason Coppel QC, for the groups, told the court last week.

It's not about who is in office, it's about right and wrong. And I'm afraid the present crop don't seem to have a sufficient interest in what right and wrong looks like.

Mr Coppel said the VIP lane was reserved for referrals from MPs ministers and senior officials, adding that DHSC “then prioritised suppliers including PestFix and Ayanda because of who they knew, not what they could deliver.”

Speaking to the PA news agency on Tuesday as the High Court case concluded, the Good Law Project’s founder Jolyon Maugham QC said he was “incredibly proud” of bringing the case to public attention.

“It was really only in consequence of us being in this litigation that we discovered the existence of the VIP lane,” Mr Maugham said.

He added: “I think once upon a time we lived in a country where we thought that politicians could be relied upon to be honest and to serve the public interest. I don’t think we can rely on politicians to do that anymore.”

Mr Maugham said there will be “an awful lot more to come” in cases against the Government, adding: “This is just the beginning.”

During the five-day hearing, the groups argued that “well over half” of the approximately £595 million spent with PestFix and Ayanda Capital was “wasted” on PPE which did not meet technical standards for use in the NHS.

“These are vast sums of public money, money that’s being withheld from doctors and nurses who made enormous sacrifices for the rest of us in the pandemic… yet the politically well-connected are, we are showing time and again, making vast fortunes,” Mr Maugham said

.  

The Royal Courts of Justice in London / PA Wire

The High Court has ruled in March that the Government unlawfully failed to publish details of more than 500 coronavirus-related contracts within the required time, following a separate case brought by the Good Law Project.

The group has also brought a case against NHS England over delays to healthcare for transgender people, and is challenging a Government decision to award a polling contract to a company with alleged links to former advisor Dominic Cummings.

“Any one of these stories that Good Law Project has broken would in the past have seen a ministerial resignation,” Mr Maugham said. “Now, it seems that there’s nothing that a minister might do to cause him or her to be to be sacked.”

He added: “I don’t really want to sound like a boring political campaigner. This stuff sits beyond politics.

“It’s not about who is in office, it’s about right and wrong. And I’m afraid the present crop don’t seem to have a sufficient interest in what right and wrong looks like.”

DHSC “wholeheartedly rejects” the case over PPE contracts against it, with its barrister Michael Bowsher QC telling the High Court this week that the Government “put together an unprecedented programme, on a huge scale, at commendable speed, during a serious crisis”, when the market for PPE had been “fundamentally reshaped” by the pandemic.

He also said the VIP lane was rational and resulted in a “large number of credible offers”.

The court heard the programme involved procuring £14 billion in PPE from more than 1,000 contracts.

“It is really hard to imagine that sort of scale of procurement being carried out in that period,” Mr Bowsher said.

  

Surgical gowns, aprons and masks were all parts of contracts the campaign groups claim were unlawfully awarded / PA Wire

The barrister said the DHSC’s actions were a rational response to the pandemic, telling the court: “Urgent action was required and the importance was to save lives and protect those dealing with those infected with Covid-19.

Mr Bowsher later stressed the urgency of the situation early in the pandemic, with deals able to fold within “minutes”.

In a statement at the start of the proceedings, DHSC said: “This was an enormous cross-government effort, drawing upon expertise from a number of departments together with fantastic support from the military and private sector partners.

“Officials worked day and night to secure these contracts. We prioritised procurement and we make no apology for that.”

The case before Mrs Justice O’Farrell concluded on Tuesday afternoon and the judge has said she will issue her written judgment at a later date.

UK

GCHQ mass surveillance powers violated human rights rules, European Court finds

The case centred on concerns raised about privacy rights in the face of powers given to security services.

Someone on a computer / PA Wire

By Martyn Landi
EVENING STANDARD
MAY 25,2021

The methods used by GCHQ to carry out the bulk interception of online communications and its regime for the collection of data were “not in accordance with the law”, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.

The court’s grand chamber ruled that there were deficiencies in the bulk interception regime used by the UK’s spy agencies which broke privacy rules and that it contained insufficient protection for confidential journalistic material.

But it added that the decision to operate such a scheme itself did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights.

It also concluded that the regime for sharing sensitive intelligence with foreign governments was not illegal.


The judgment is the culmination of a legal challenge to GCHQ’s methods around intercepting online communications first brought by privacy rights group Big Brother Watch and other organisations in 2013 in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations on mass surveillance techniques used by the UK and US.

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The case centred on complaints about powers given to security services under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa), which has since been replaced by the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.

In its judgment, the court ruled unanimously that the UK’s spy agencies had violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers citizens’ rights to have their private life and communications respected, and Article 10, covering freedom of expression.

The court said there were three “fundamental deficiencies” in the methods used: that bulk interception had been authorised by the Secretary of State and not by an independent body; that categories of search terms defining the kinds of communications that would become liable for examination had not been included in the application for a warrant; and that search terms linked to an individual – for example, specific identifiers such as an email address – had not been subject to prior internal authorisation.

The judgment acknowledged that “owing to the multitude of threats states face in modern society”, such regimes were not illegal, but that they had to be subject to “end-to-end safeguards”.

Responding to the ruling, Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, one of the organisations which took part in the legal challenge, said: “The court has set out clear criteria for assessing future bulk interception regimes, but we believe these will need to be developed into harder red lines in future judgments if bulk interception is not to be abused.

“As the court sets out, bulk interception powers are a great power, secretive in nature, and hard to keep in check.

“We are far from confident that today’s bulk interception is sufficiently safeguarded, while the technical capacities continue to deepen. GCHQ continues to share technology platforms and raw data with the USA.

“This judgment is an important step on a long journey.”

A Government spokesperson said: “The UK has one of the most robust and transparent oversight regimes for the protection of personal data and privacy anywhere in the world.

“This unprecedented transparency sets a new international benchmark for how the law can protect both privacy and security whilst continuing to respond dynamically to an evolving threat picture.

“The 2016 Investigatory Powers Act has already replaced large parts of the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) that was the subject of this challenge. We note today’s judgment.”

Breakthrough optogenetic therapy partially restores blind man's vision
By Nick Lavars
May 24, 2021

Using a light-sensing protein found in glowing algae, scientists have shown how vision can be partially restored in a patient suffering from common vision loss
hquality/Depositphotos

In a major breakthrough for regenerative medicine, scientists have partially restored vision in a blind man using an emerging technique called optogenetics. The approach involved injecting the patient's eye with genes that code for light-sensitive proteins found in green algae, and represents the first successful clinical application of the technology, which enabled the patient to locate and identify objects for the first time in decades.


Some cells in the body contain proteins that make them especially sensitive to light, and by targeting these cells scientists can use light to control their behavior. Optogenetics involves inserting genes into otherwise regular cells to equip them with this kind of light sensitivity, and by stimulating these modified cells, scientists hope to develop treatments for a range of health conditions, ranging from paralysis to pain relief.

One of the more promising possibilities for this technology is in tackling progressive forms of vision loss, such as retinitis pigmentosa, which progressively destroys light-sensitive photoreceptor cells in the retina, eventually leading to blindness. Using optogenetics to implant light-sensitive proteins in the retina has long been seen as a way to address this deterioration, and we've seen promising early results in experiments on mice and embryonic chicks.

But these kinds of results have never been seen before in humans. Looking to change that, an international team of researchers conducted a pioneering study involving a Parisian man who was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa 40 years ago. The scientists injected the patient's weakest eye with genes that encode for a light-sensitive protein called channelrhodopsin protein ChrimsonR, which is found in glowing algae and, when subjected to light, responds by changing its shape and facilitating the flow of ions in and out of cells.

This caused specific neurons in the retina of the weaker eye to produce the ChrimsonR protein, effectively turning them into new light-sensitive cells. The team targeted ganglion cells because of the role they play in collecting light signals from photoreceptor cells and relaying them to optic nerves in the brain, where they are translated into vision.

The optogenetic approach proved to be an effective way to address vision loss by sidestepping the broken photoreceptor cells altogether. The modified ganglion cells were instead charged with picking up the light signals from objects directly, but only with the help of some external hardware was the system able to function as intended.

A purpose-made pair of goggles equipped with a camera was used to record the environment and beam light pulses directly onto the retina, with its new array of light-sensitive cells. The goggles did this in a way that transforms the image into a single wavelength of light on the safer amber spectrum, which causes the ChrimsonR proteins to change shape, open up the ion channels and detect and relay the light signals to the brain.

The scientists waited four months after injection for the proteins to take hold before starting visual training. But seven months after starting this training, the patient was able locate, identify and even count objects using his vision.

“Adjusting to using the glasses takes time,” says first author of the study José-Alain Sahel, chair of ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh. “Initially, the patient didn’t find the glasses very useful, but after a few months, he started to see the white stripes on a crosswalk and after several training sessions was able to recognize other objects, big and small.”

The findings represent the first ever case of using optogenetics for partial vision restoration, or indeed partial recovery from any neurodegenerative disease. The scope of the technology extends far beyond blindness, with scientists hoping to use optogenetics to one day tackle conditions like epilepsy, Parkinson's and depression. But for now, these promising results make treatment of retinitis pigmentosa a particularly promising, near-term pathway.

“Retinitis pigmentosa is one of the most common causes of blindness in young people and results from the loss of the light-sensing photoreceptor cells in the retina at the back of the eye," says Robert MacLaren, Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Oxford, who was not involved in the research. "In this trial the researchers used gene therapy to reprogram other cells in the retina to make them light sensitive and thereby restore some degree of vision. This is a significant milestone and undoubtedly further refinements will make optogenetic therapy a viable option for many patients in future.”

The research was published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Source: University of Pittsburgh