Hundreds of red kites turn up at this Welsh farm every day - it's a 'once in a lifetime' sight

MUST HAVE LOTS OF RODENTS

Cerys Gardner
Sun, 21 April 2024 

Red Kites flying over Gigrin Farm 

Tucked away between the Wye and Elan valleys is the best place in Wales to see majestic red kites. Gigrin Farm, just outside Rhayader, Powys, sees 300 to 600 of the birds descend every afternoon for feeding - and you can watch the kites swooping down for their lunch from just metres away.

Red kites are a stunning bird of prey with their distinctive red-brown feathers that unfurl to a wingspan of almost two metres. Their beady eyes give them an extraordinary sense of sight, used to scan the countryside for prey. Gigrin Farm has been feeding the birds for 31 years, since the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds approached them about becoming an official feeding centre.


At that time there were just two breeding pairs in Wales, but there are now 4,400 pairs across the UK. Once the food is put out crows usually arrive first whilst the kites and buzzards circle overhead. Then the kites dive down, either to snatch the meat or flush crows into the air and mug them. The display is a noisy mixture of jackdaw calls and buzzards mewing. Once they have clear airspace the kites will eat their food, still watching out for other birds. Find out about the latest events in Wales by signing up to our What's On newsletter here

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If you want to see this striking display, Gigrin Farm opens at 12.30pm and the kites are fed at 2pm or 3pm depending on the time of year. Feeding can be viewed from five hides, camouflaged shelters, or the viewing field which offers a wider perspective. The kites are the focus but there’s lots more to enjoy including a cafe, a picnic area, and donkeys.

As well as being a great family day out Gigrin Farm is the perfect place for keen photographers. They have specialist hides for photographers that get you even closer to the action. This year they are offering photography workshops for the very first time. “People want to ask lots of questions about how to photograph red kites. We are just expanding what we offer,” said Dominique Powell, owner of the farm.

Kites snatch their meal from the ground and eat it in the air whilst flying -Credit:Paul_Cooper/Getty

It's an awe-inspiring sight -Credit:iStock / Getty Images Plus

One visitor on TripAdvisor said: “There were hundreds of red kites swooping in for food, it was amazing to see. Probably a once in a lifetime experience. Even kept the kids quiet!”, while another said: “An amazing experience, that I’ll never forget. Nature at its magnificent best. The staff are so friendly and helpful. I’m an amateur wildlife photographer, and it’s another tick on my list.”

After you leave the farm you’re only half a mile from the market town of Rhayader, the perfect place for dinner before driving home or to stay in a B&B to explore the Elan valley the next day. Read more about the little town dubbed the 'outdoors capital of Wales' where you can stay in a 'Hobbit House' here. Ms Powell said: “There is plenty for people to do.”

The farm is offering photography classes too, so you can catch shots like this -Credit:Paul_Cooper/Getty

Or this one -Credit:iStock / Getty Images Plus

Ms Powell said she recommends booking in advance through their website because they limit numbers each day and have varied opening times throughout the year. Tickets cost £10 for adults, £6 for kids and three and under are free.

INDIA

Growing Clues That Central Narmada Valley Was Key Hub in Human Story

Saurav Sarkar | 22 Feb 2024

The human skull specimen found in 1982, and over a dozen other fossil bones discovered later, shine a light on the region as a potential hotbed of human evolutionary activity.

In December 1982, a geologist digging in India’s Central Narmada Valley found something he did not expect. Arun Sonakia, who at the time worked for the Geological Survey of India, unearthed a hominid fossil skullcap from the Pleistocene era. The discovery sent shockwaves through the field of paleoanthropology and put South Asia on the map of human prehistory. Some experts concluded that the skull likely belonged to a member of a predecessor species of ours, Homo heidelbergensis, or perhaps was a hybrid of homo species, while Sonakia himself suggested “an affinity… to Homo erectus.”

The specimen remains the oldest human fossil found in the South Asian sub-continent; while expert opinions vary, testing seems to indicate the fossil was between 250,000 and 150,000 years old. For several decades, it was the only ancient human fossil found in South Asia—despite abundant finds of tools and other relics.

But in more recent years, more than a dozen other fossil bones that have been discovered have shined a light on the Central Narmada Valley as a potential hotbed of human evolutionary activity. Paleoanthropologist Anek R. Sankhyan and his team discovered new fossils between 1983 and 1992, followed by further finds between 2005 and 2010.

Sankhyan shared during an interview that only the Central Narmada Valley has so far yielded human fossils from the Pleistocene period in South Asia. The valley, he says, was a key stop along the migration route from Africa to Southeast Asia for Homo erectus. Homo erectus was an archaic human ancestor that lived between about 1.9 million and 100,000 years ago and adapted to regions from Eastern Africa to China to Southeast Asia. It has not been established whether Homo erectus comprises one species spread wide geographically or multiple species involving local variations.

Sankhyan connects the Narmada Valley with some of the more sophisticated Acheulean stone tool cultures that emerged with Homo erectus in Europe and Africa. Acheulean tools are characterised by multiuse-hand axes used for roles ranging from woodcutting to butchering animals.

In the Central Narmada Valley, Sankhyan’s evidence from his paper—published in Advances in Anthropology in 2020—on the subject seems to show at least two distinct types of hominins represented: the large “robust” line uncovered through Sonakia’s skullcap discovery, and an evolving “short and stocky” hominin line from 150,000 to 40,000 years ago discovered by Sankhyan and his team.

Sankhyan says that the traits of the skullcap found by Sonakia vary among Homo erectus, Homo sapiens , and have features that are unique, making identifying it “confusing.” He concluded that the skullcap is also representative of heidelbergensis, and perhaps might be a heidelbergensis -Neanderthal hybrid. A skull with so many traits is a clue that this region may indeed have been a multispecies melting pot that puts our contemporary sense of human differences to shame.

Heidelbergensis was a species that was the ancestor of both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, and first appeared 700,000 years ago, disappearing 200,000 years ago. It was an intermediate species between Homo erectus and modern human beings and Neandertals. 

Heidelbergensis was likely the first human species to control fire and hunt large game animals. The hominid fossil found by Sonakia likely used tools like an Acheulian pick axe and was found near a crushed molar tooth of a Stegodon, a large, extinct relative of today’s elephants. Sankhyan says that the ecology of the valley during the Lower Paleolithic was that of a warm woodland forest with megafauna like the Stegodon, during his interview.

The “short and stocky” line has been given its own nomenclature: Homo narmadensis by Sankhyan. This species was widespread in the Central Narmada Valley during the “Middle to Upper Paleolithic [era],” and hunted smaller game animals in a “broken forest ecology.” 

Narmadensis was discovered near significant numbers of Mode 3 Acheulean tools, which are more sophisticated than the Mode 2 tools attributed to the heidelbergensis line.

Paleoanthropologist Sankhyan speculates that the “short and stocky” hominin line was the “likely precursor to the ‘short-bodied’ ancient populations of India, including the Andaman pygmy.” Interestingly, he believes that the so-called “hobbit” of Indonesia, Homo floresiensis, also descended from this line. Homo floresiensis was a little more than three-feet tall and lived between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

While Sankhyan says that the government organisation, Anthropological Survey of India, has not conducted further excavations since 2010, according to him, there have been individuals from other departments who “tried sporadic trial digging,” but those digs have not yielded any significant results.

As research continues in this area, we’re likely to get even more insight into the varied hominin types who lived in the Central Narmada Valley in the last hundreds of thousands of years and how they interacted with one another. Regardless, the establishment of South Asia as a centre of human evolutionary activity is likely to have consequences for how the region, and India in particular, understands itself and its prehistory and history.

For decades, nationalists, including representatives of today’s Far-Right Hindu nationalists in India, have promoted the idea that South Asians and Indo-Europeans as a whole originated from within India. Though this theory is false and unnuanced, the evolutionary history of hominins in the Central Narmada Valley offers new ground for Indian nationalists to make the argument that hominins or primates had their roots in India.

But if there are dangers in linking contemporary India with the prehistory of the sub-continent and its place in the world, there are also opportunities. As with India, fossil evidence in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Georgia, and China indicates that these places were repeatedly home to prehistoric population centres—they all have equal claim to being part of a global and gradual humanisation process.

As a result, a non-aligned or regionally connected Global South has a powerful new origin story and better pathways for connections, rooted in evidence outside of the historical narratives imposed on them by the West. Further research will establish what science shows, but it will be politics, geopolitics, and the direction chosen by the world’s people that will contextualise the evidence within the human story.

Saurav Sarkar is a freelance movement writer, editor, and activist living in Long Island, New York. They have also lived in New York City, New Delhi, London, and Washington, D.C. Follow them on Twitter @sauravthewriter and at sauravsarkar.com.

This article was produced by Globetrotter

WE ARE ALL RACE TRAITORS

Science paints a new picture of the ancient past, when we mixed and mated with other kinds of humans

Sun, September 24, 2023 


What does it mean to be human?

For a long time, the answer seemed clear. Our species, Homo sapiens — with our complex thoughts and deep emotions — were the only true humans to ever walk the Earth. Earlier forms, like the Neanderthals, were thought to be just steps along the path of evolution, who died out because we were better versions.

That picture is now changing.

In recent years, researchers have gained the power to pull DNA from ancient hominins, including our early ancestors and other relatives who walked on two legs. Ancient DNA technology has revolutionized the way we study human history and has quickly taken off, with a constant stream of studies exploring the genes of long-ago people.

Along with more fossils and artifacts, the DNA findings are pointing us to a challenging idea: We're not so special. For most of human history we shared the planet with other kinds of early humans, and those now-extinct groups were a lot like us.

“We can see them as being fully human. But, interestingly, a different kind of human,” said Chris Stringer, a human evolution expert at London’s Natural History Museum. “A different way to be human.”

What's more, humans had close — even intimate — interactions with some of these other groups, including Neanderthals, Denisovans and “ghost populations” we only know from DNA.

“It’s a unique time in human history when there are only one of us,” Stringer said.

A WORLD WITH MANY HOMININS

Scientists now know that after H. sapiens first showed up in Africa around 300,000 years ago, they overlapped with a whole cast of other hominins, explained Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program.

Neanderthals were hanging out in Europe. Homo heidelbergensis and Homo naledi were living in Africa. The short-statured Homo floresiensis, sometimes known as the “Hobbit,” was living in Indonesia, while the long-legged Homo erectus was loping around Asia.

Scientists started to realize all these hominins weren’t our direct ancestors. Instead, they were more like our cousins: lineages that split off from a common source and headed in different directions.

Archaeological finds have shown some of them had complex behaviors. Neanderthals painted cave walls, Homo heidelbergensis hunted large animals like rhinos and hippos, and some scientists think even the small-brained Homo naledi was burying its dead in South African cave systems. A study last week found early humans were building structures with wood before H. sapiens evolved.

Researcher also wondered: If these other kinds of humans were not so different, did our ancestors have sex with them?

For some, the mixing was hard to imagine. Many argued that as H. sapiens ventured out of Africa, they replaced other groups without mating. Archaeologist John Shea of New York’s Stony Brook University said he used to think of Neanderthals and H. sapiens as rivals, believing “if they bumped into each other, they’d probably kill each other.”

DNA REVEALS ANCIENT SECRETS

But DNA has revealed there were other interactions, ones that changed who we are today.

In 2010, the Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo and his team pieced a tricky puzzle together. They were able to assemble fragments of ancient DNA into a full Neanderthal genome, a feat that was long thought to be impossible and won Paabo a Nobel Prize last year.

This ability to read ancient DNA revolutionized the field, and it is constantly improving.

For example, when scientists applied these techniques to a pinky bone and some huge molars found in a Siberian cave, they found genes that didn’t match anything seen before, said Bence Viola, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto who was part of the research team that made the discovery. It was a new species of hominin, now known as Denisovans, who were the first human cousins identified only by their DNA.

Armed with these Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes, scientists could compare them to people today and look for chunks of DNA that match. When they did, they found clear signs of crossover.

THE NEW HUMAN STORY

The DNA evidence showed that H. sapiens mated with groups including Neanderthals and Denisovans. It even revealed evidence of other “ghost populations” — groups who are part of our genetic code, but whose fossils we haven’t found yet.

It’s hard to pin down exactly when and where these interactions happened. Our ancestors seem to have mixed with the Neanderthals soon after leaving Africa and heading into Europe. They probably bumped into the Denisovans in parts of East and Southeast Asia.

“They didn’t have a map, they didn’t know where they were going,” the Smithsonian's Potts said. “But looking over the next hillside into the next valley, (they) ran into populations of people that looked a bit different from themselves, but mated, exchanged genes.”

So even though Neanderthals did look distinct from H. sapiens — from their bigger noses to their shorter limbs — it wasn’t enough to create a “wall” between the groups, Shea said.

“They probably thought, ‘Oh, these guys look a little bit different,’” Shea said. “‘Their skin color’s a little different. Their faces look a little different. But they’re cool guys, let’s go try to talk to them.’”

COMPLEX NEANDERTHALS

The idea that modern humans, and particularly white humans, were the pinnacle of evolution came from a time of “colonialism and elitism,” said Janet Young, curator of physical anthropology at the Canadian Museum of History.

One Neanderthal painting, created to reflect the vision of a eugenics advocate, made its way through decades of textbooks and museum displays.

The new findings have completely upended the idea that earlier, more ape-like creatures started standing up straighter and getting more complex until they reached their peak form in H. sapiens, Young said. Along with the genetic evidence, other archaeological finds have shown Neanderthals had complex behaviors around hunting, cooking, using tools and even making art.

Still, even though we now know our ancient human cousins were like us — and make up part of who we are now — the idea of ape-like cave men has been hard to dislodge.

Artist John Gurche is trying. He specializes in creating lifelike models of ancient humans for museums, including the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History, in hopes of helping public perception catch up to the science.

Skulls and sculptures gazed out from the shelves of his studio earlier this year as he worked on a Neanderthal head, punching pieces of hair into the silicone skin.

Bringing the new view to the public hasn’t been easy, Gurche said: “This caveman image is very persistent.”

For Gurche, getting the science right is crucial. He has worked on dissections of humans and apes to understand their anatomy, but also hopes to bring out emotion in his portrayals.

“These were once living, breathing individuals. And they felt grief and joy and pain,” Gurche said. “They’re not in some fairyland; they’re not some fantasy creatures. They were alive.”

MANY CONNECTIONS STILL TO BE FOUND

Scientists can’t get useful genetic information out of every fossil they find, especially if it’s really old or in the wrong climate. They haven't been able to gather much ancient DNA from Africa, where H. sapiens first evolved, because it has been degraded by heat and moisture.

Still, many are hopeful that as DNA technology keeps advancing, we’ll be able to push further into the past and get ancient genomes from more parts of the world, adding more brushstrokes to our picture of human history.

Because even though we were the only ones to survive, the other extinct groups played a key role in our history, and our present. They are part of a common humanity connecting every person, said Mary Prendergast, a Rice University archeologist.

“If you look at the fossil record, the archeological record, the genetic record," she said, "you see that we share far more in common than what divides us.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Maddie Burakoff And Laura Ungar, The Associated Press

Essay

Stormtrooper Syndrome has seduced the West

We have turned the Ukraine War into a fairy tale

BY JOHN MICHAEL GREER

“Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise...” (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

August 14, 2023

Do you remember the Imperial Stormtroopers from the Star Wars movies, lurching around in their white plastic armour? When Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original movie said that no one else was as precise as Imperial Stormtroopers, he was clearly making a joke that Luke Skywalker was too wet behind the ears to catch. The one thing those movies make plain about Imperial Stormtroopers is that they couldn’t hit the broad side of a Death Star even if they were standing the length of one womp-rat away from it. Their job is to fill the air with blaster fire and miss. They do that job very effectively.

Anyone who knows anything about actual firefights involving professional soldiers will know that this isn’t what happens. (First-timers in combat, sure, but Stormtroopers are supposed to be competent.) In other words, Stormtroopers aren’t there to do anything useful. They’re there to provide the illusion of deadly peril so that the fake heroics of the protagonists look a little less unconvincing to movie audiences.

There’s a reason for this kind of absurdity, of course. Popular entertainment in Western industrial nations today is as thickly larded with moral posturing of this sort as anything Victorian parents inflicted on their children. In most popular genres, the basic premise is that the Good People always win, and the Bad People always lose

That colossus of the modern imagination, J.R.R. Tolkien, has some responsibility for all this. In his programmatic essay “On Fairy-Stories”, he discussed one of the central plot schemes of fairy tales, which he called “eucatastrophe”: in plainer English, a sudden improbable turn for the better that saves the day when all is lost. As you’d expect from a devout conservative Christian like Tolkien, this theme is ultimately religious in nature — he described the resurrection of Jesus as the ultimate eucatastrophe — and it provided the frame for his two gargantuan fairy tales, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

To give him due credit, Tolkien went out of his way to make his eucatastrophes as plausible as he could. Most of the ninth-rate Tolkien imitators whose fetid output bathes the brains of today’s mass-media consumers stopped worrying about such petty concerns a long time ago. It doesn’t matter how much stronger and smarter and better armed the Bad People are; they have to lose because they’re the Bad People. Nor does it matter how idiotic the plan the Good People decide on, the Bad People are required to make the mistakes that will enable it to succeed. When the chips are down, you know that Harry Potter will always manage to drop the One Ring from his X-wing into the cooling port of Mount Doom.

This sort of silliness makes for dreary storytelling, but I’m convinced that it can also cause serious cognitive disabilities. Children who are raised on a steady diet of this kind of schlock are apt to end up thinking that this is how the world works. If they get out into the real world and bloody their noses a few times, they generally learn better, but if they live in a society that doesn’t let them fail, they may well reach adulthood without ever encountering that salutary lesson. Instead, they are seduced by Stormtrooper Syndrome: the conviction that no matter what, you’ll inevitably win because you think you’re morally superior to your enemies.

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There’s no shortage of examples of Stormtrooper Syndrome these days, but I’m going to focus on the most important of the lot, the one that bids fair to transform the world’s political and economic landscape in the years immediately ahead. Yes, we need to talk about Ukraine. Now, this emphatically does not mean that we need to talk about who gets to claim the roles of Good People and Bad People. The unwelcome truth is that the outcome of this war does not depend on which side is morally better than the other. In the real world, in terms of military victory and defeat, who’s right and who’s wrong don’t matter once the cannon start to roar.

The roots of the Russo-Ukrainian war go back a very long time, but for present purposes we can begin in 2014 — when a coup overthrew Ukraine’s pro-Russian government and replaced it with a pro-Nato one. With the new regime in place, and following the Russian military incursion into eastern Ukraine, the US and its allies began funding a build-up that gave Ukraine the second-largest army in Europe. That army was armed and trained with an eye toward a massive shift in military affairs that was then underway.

In 2006, the Israelis launched one of their periodic incursions into Lebanon. To the surprise of many, the Hezbollah militia dealt the Israelis a bloody nose and forced them to withdraw with their main goals unachieved. The Israelis, like every other modern army at that time, used the tactics that had been pioneered by the Wehrmacht in 1939 and 1940, and perfected by Soviet and US militaries in the years immediately following: massive assaults by tanks and mobile infantry supported by air superiority, driving deep into enemy territory to get behind the defenders’ lines.

What Hezbollah demonstrated is that those tactics had passed their sell-by date. Having built a network of underground shelters and urban strongholds, they lay low while the Israeli vanguard moved past, then popped up and started clobbering Israeli units with sudden ambushes using state-of-the-art weapons. A decade later, the Ukrainian military imitated these tactics, building a massive network of defensive works just west of the Russian-held areas of the Donbas.

These defences were useful when the full-scale invasion came, denying Russia a swift victory and tying them into a gruelling stalemate. As strategies go, this was fairly good, but it had two serious weak points. The first was that it needed to be twinned with an economic sanctions package from the West that would succeed in breaking Russia’s domestic economy and forcing them to withdraw. The second was that it assumed the Russians would stick to pre-2006 military doctrine no matter how badly things went. That’s where Stormtrooper Syndrome first showed up. The decision-makers in Washington, Brussels, and Kyiv had convinced themselves that those weak points didn’t matter because the Ukrainians were the Good People and the Russians were the Bad People.

Then, last February, war broke out. At first, events seemed to play into the West’s hands. The Russians launched a classic Blitzkrieg operation, driving deep into Ukrainian territory, only to find that the Ukrainians fell back on prepared defences and urban strongholds. Some Russian units suffered embarrassing defeats; others found themselves overextended in hostile territory and retreated. Meanwhile, the US and the EU slapped sanctions on the Russian economy.

But that’s when the plan ran straight off the rails. The first difficulty was that most of the world’s nations didn’t cooperate with the sanctions. Some, such as Iran and China, that are hostile to the US saw the situation as an opportunity to extend a middle finger to their enemies. Others, such as India and Brazil that are non-aligned powers, saw the situation as a chance to demonstrate their independence. Still other nations wanted Russian oil and grain and weren’t willing to forgo them, so they acted in accordance with their interests rather than ours.

Yet there was another difficulty with the sanctions’ efficacy. Do you remember all those big corporations that loudly announced that they were leaving the Russian market? They couldn’t take their outlets and infrastructure with them, and so the Russians simply rebranded those and kept going. A soft-drink bottling company partially owned by Coca-Cola, for example, now produces something called Dobry-Cola in Russia. It tastes very similar to Coca-Cola, and it’s in a very slightly different red can. The crucial point is that the profits from sales of Dobry-Cola and similar products and services aren’t flowing out to stockholders in the US, they’re staying in Russia, where they’ve given a timely boost to the Russian economy. This presumably wasn’t what US and Nato elites had in mind.

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But the worst news for Nato came from the battlefields. What happened there has an odd personal dimension for me. Some years ago I wrote an essay, “Asymmetric tactical shock: a first reconnaissance”, about what happens when an army becomes too dependent on complex technologies and its enemies figure out how to monkey-wrench those. The example I used came from the end of the Bronze Age, but the lesson applies more broadly: the monkey-wrenched army faces total disaster unless it does something most people these days can’t even conceive of doing. My essay circulated quietly among people interested in such things, and I have no reason to think that anybody in the Russian General Staff pays the least attention to obscure American fringe intellectuals like me. Yet the fact remains that when the Ukrainians monkey-wrenched the Russian version of Blitzkrieg, the Russians did exactly what I suggested an army in that situation should do: they fell back on an older form of warfare that wasn’t vulnerable to the monkey-wrenching tactics.

This is why the Russians abandoned their deep thrusts into Ukrainian territory, retreated from vulnerable areas around Kharkiv and Kherson, launched a mass-mobilisation of troops and a major expansion of their already large munitions industry, and got to work building entrenched defensive lines to guard the territory they had seized. Meanwhile, the Russian government strengthened ties with Iran and North Korea — two nations that have large munitions industries autonomous from Western technology and capital.

That is to say, since the new Ukrainian tactics made it impossible for the Russians to refight the Second World War, the Russians switched to First World War tactics. The defensive lines and urban strongholds on which the Ukrainians relied to defeat Russian tank columns didn’t provide anything like the same defence against massed Russian artillery bombardment. While the Russian Army was retooling for the new (or rather old) mode of war, mercenary units — Wagner PMC most famously, but there were others — took over the brunt of the fighting, tested out First World War tactics against entrenched Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, and won.

This put Ukraine and its Nato backers into a very difficult position. In First World War-style combat, the winner is the side with the largest munitions industry and the biggest pool of recruits to draw on. Russia has a huge advantage on both counts. First, Nato countries no longer have a political consensus supporting mass military conscription, while Russia does. Second, while the US and its allies dismantled most of their munitions factories at the end of the Cold War, Russia did not, and it also has those good friends in Tehran and Pyongyang. All these give the Russians an edge the Nato nations can’t match in the near term.

Why Ukraine's offensive has stalled   BY EDWARD LUTTWAK

This wasn’t a message that Nato was willing to hear. To a very real extent, it was a message they weren’t capable of hearing. It’s been 70 years — since the end of the Korean War — since the United States and its allies last fought a land war against a major power. The entire Nato officer corps got its training and experience in an era when they had overwhelming superiority over their enemies, and they have no idea how to fight without it. (Even then — Afghanistan comes to mind — they aren’t too good at winning.) That’s when Stormtrooper Syndrome really came into play, because it never occurred to Nato that Ukraine could lose — defined as they were as the war’s Good People.

And so the elites in Washington, Brussels, and Kyiv convinced themselves that the Russians couldn’t possibly ramp up their munitions industry to a pitch that would permit them to carry on trench warfare for years at a time. (Remember all those confident reports that insisted the Russians were about to run out of shells and rockets?) They told themselves that the Russians were using mercenaries because their army was too demoralised and brittle to stand up to the rigours of combat. They drew up plans for a grand Ukrainian offensive to turn the tide of the war, and funnelled more arms to Ukraine..

The counteroffensive began on 4 June. Two months on, it is clear that it has failed. A successful assault against fortified positions in modern war requires a three-to-one advantage in soldiers on that region of the battlefield, a large advantage in artillery, and air superiority. Ukraine has none of these things, and somehow or other no eucatastrophe showed up to save the day.

The Russo-Ukraine war isn’t over yet, and the fortunes of war may yet favour the Ukrainian side — though this looks very improbable just now. Meanwhile, history is not waiting around for the details to be settled. Towards the end of last month, the heads of state of 40 African nations gathered in St. Petersburg to sign agreements giving Russia a leading position in the economic and military affairs of the world’s second largest continent, while Russia’s defence minister was in North Korea negotiating further arms deals. It seems the Russians know better than to wait for miracles to save them from the consequences of their own actions.

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None of this is to say that the mess in Ukraine is the only way that Stormtrooper Syndrome has shaped recent history; it’s just the most obvious example right now. It was because of Stormtrooper Syndrome, for instance, that so many people suffered nervous breakdowns when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, their reaction amounting to: “He’s a Bad Person, he’s not supposed to win!”. Afterwards, the same factor also kept them from wondering why so many disillusioned voters were willing to settle for Trump, of all people, as an alternative. Nor, to be fair, is Stormtrooper Syndrome in short supply on the Right, where shrill moral dualism is far more common than thoughtful discussion about how to deal constructively with the cascading crises overwhelming America today.

Really, it’s hard to name anything in contemporary Western life that hasn’t been twisted bizarrely out of shape by the efforts of our privileged classes to pretend to be the heroes of their own Star Wars sequels. Yet the lesson being whispered by the winds from Ukraine is that nobody and nothing else is required to play along. That lesson may end up costing a great many people bitterly in the not too distant future.

John Michael Greer is the author of over thirty books. He served twelve years as Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America.

RIP DAME EDNA EVERIDGE 1934-2023

Sir Peter Jackson mourns death of The Hobbit's Great Goblin, Barry Humphries

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Barry Humphries as the Great Goblin. Photo: AFP / Warner Bros

Sir Peter Jackson says the world is a "poorer place" without Barry Humphries, the iconic Australian performer who died this weekend, aged 89.

Humphries was best-known for his character Dame Edna Everage, whom he inhabited on stage and screen for more than 60 years.

But his work with Sir Peter saw him taking on a much less glamorous role - that of The Hobbit's Great Goblin.

"It was our honour to count Barry as a friend and a colleague," Sir Peter wrote on social media on Sunday, a day after Humphries' passing.

"We were overjoyed when he agreed to play the Great Goblin in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - not one of his most glamorous roles, but one which he tackled with enthusiasm and disarming authenticity."

Photo: Supplied / Facebook

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was the first in the Hobbit trilogy, released in 2012.

While it had mixed reviews, Humphries' performance - voice and via motion capture - was warmly received, many reviewers comparing the grotesque villain to Star Wars' Jabba the Hutt.

Celebrities from Australia and around the world mourned Humphries on social media, including Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who called him a "great wit, satirist, writer and an absolute one-of-kind".

Australian comedian, actor and author Barry Humphries, dressed as his alter ego, Dame Edna Everage, at a press conference in Sydney on 5 July, 2012. Photo: AFP / Pool / Greg Wood

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Humphries a "a comic genius who used his exuberant alter egos, Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, to say the otherwise unsayable".

"To say Barry was beloved is an understatement," added Sir Peter.

"His ability to spread laughter, whilst making astute and telling observations, was unrivalled. Barry always had a twinkle in his eye - undoubtedly because his marvellous mind was up to some kind of mischief.

"He was truly a scholar, a gentleman and one glorious Dame. We will miss you, Barry.

Comedian Barry Humphries and his wife Lizzie Spender pose for a photograph as they arrive at St Bride's church for a service to celebrate the wedding between media Mogul Rupert Murdoch and former supermodel Jerry Hall which took place on Friday, in London, Britain March 5, 2016. 

REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/File Photo

Britain's Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, presents Barry Humphries the Wizard of Oz award for his fictional character Sir Les Patterson at the Oldie Of The Year Awards 2021 at The Savoy Hotel in London, Britain, October 19, 2021. 

Chris Jackson/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

 Barry Humphries accepts the Wizard of Oz award for his fictional character Sir Les Patterson at the Oldie Of The Year Awards 2021 at The Savoy Hotel in London, Britain, October 19, 2021. 

Chris Jackson/Pool via REUTERS

'One of a Kind': Australians Pay Tribute to 'Icon' Barry Humphries

Sunday, 23 April, 2023 -

Australia's Barry Humphries poses after receiving his Most Excellent Order of the British Empire from the Queen at Buckingham Palace, London October 10, 2007. 

REUTERS/Steve Parsons/Pool/

Asharq Al-Awsat

Australians have paid tribute to Barry Humphries, the comedian best known for his character Dame Edna Everage, as both a "one-of-a-kind" entertainer and a charming and intelligent man.

The Sydney Morning Herald said Humphries died on Saturday at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, where he had been treated for various health issues. Humphries was 89, said Reuters.

Humphries, born and raised in Melbourne, rose to fame in Britain in the 1970s playing a host of Australian caricatures including Dame Edna, repulsive drunk diplomat Les Patterson and Sandy Stone, a decrepit rambling senior.

St Vincent’s Hospital chaplain Martin Maunsell said he met Humphries when the comedian was being treated for a fall, describing him as "charming" and "intelligent".

“He was one of a kind,” Maunsell said. “I don’t think we’ll ever see someone like him ever again in Australia.”

In the beachside suburb of Coogee, Sydney resident Dani Kersh said Humphries was like a "complete ray of sunshine".

"He provided a good dose of comedy and humor and entertainment across Australia. What a legend,” Kersh said.

Another Sydneysider, Lucy Bloom, said it felt like the character of Dame Edna would never come to an end.

“Dame Edna is a character you expect to live forever, so I was really, really shocked to see that we would have no more Dame Edna," Bloom said "I met her in 2015 in San Francisco and will never forget.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese led the local tributes following Humphries' death, calling him a "great wit, satirist, writer and an absolute one-of-kind".

"Barry Humphries entertained us through a galaxy of personas, from Dame Edna to Sandy Stone. But the brightest star in that galaxy was always Barry," Albanese wrote on Twitter.