Monday, September 14, 2020

Gavrilo Princip, conspiracy theories and the fragility of cause and effect

By Ashutosh Jogalekar on June 28, 2014

A hundred years ago this day in Sarajevo, disgruntled nationalist Gavrilo Princip fired a shot. An Archduke and his wife died, the world mourned and fulminated, and in a rash of misunderstanding and patriotic throes the nations of Europe went to war with each other, a war that in its calculated butchery exceeded all that came before it and changed the course of history. Even today the fields of Ypres and the current of the Marne call out to us and demand an explanation. How could a lowly nobody like Princip change everything?

When you read the story of the shots that led to World War 1, what strikes you is how staggering the gulf between cause and effect was, how little it takes for history to change, how utterly subject to accidental and unlikely events the fickle fortunes of men are. Reading the story of Princip and the Archduke, one sometimes gets the feeling of being no more than wood chips being cast adrift on the roaring river of history.

The dark comedy of the assassination of the Archduke and his wife is succinctly narrated in skeptic and writer Michael Shermer's highly readable book "The Believing Brain", and the story is as good an example of the roots of conspiracy theories as any other. It sheds light on human psychology and illuminates conspiracy theorizing in all scientific quarters, ranging from creationism to climate change denial.

Shermer recounts how, on that fateful day, six conspirators waited in the shadows to carry out their deed. When the Archduke's motorcade passed close by, the first two conspirators failed to take any shots because of the crowds and an inadequate line of sight. The next conspirator managed to throw a bomb at the Archduke's car but it simply bounced off and fell into the car behind. The two conspirators quietly disappeared while the third tried to commit suicide by ingesting cyanide but simply vomited and was captured by the police. Unlucky Princip and the other two insurgents gave up and sauntered away. Meanwhile the Archduke made it all the way to the city hall and gave a speech, expressing outrage to the mayor that he had just been subjected to an assassination attempt.

Since the Archduke had just expressed outrage at an attempted assassination, he should have known better than to drive back the same way he came. However it seems that only one of the generals in his entourage suggested taking an alternative route back. But in the heat of the moment, for some reason this timely advice was not communicated to the driver who decided to again drive back through the city center. While this was happening Princip had purportedly given up and was hanging around a bakery, maybe enjoying a pastry. However when he saw the car return on the same route the opportunity was too good to pass; more so since the transmission seemed to be jammed and the driver could not back up. The rest is very much history.

Even after Princip's arrest World War 1 was not foreordained. Nothing is. But as Barbara Tuchman recounts in her marvelous book "The Guns of August", an almost surreal comedy of errors and a mountain of human stupidity on the part of Europe's leaders and diplomats followed the Archduke's murder and led to the Great War. But part of Shermer's motive in recounting Princip's story is to illustrate the absurdity of most conspiracy theories. A lot of conspiracy theorists, including those who deny climate change or evolution, try to convince everyone of some grand machinations going on in the highest reaches of government/industry/secret syndicates that lead to reality being either hidden from the public or being shamelessly manipulated for nefarious ends. But Princip's story tells us how messy reality is; the assassination almost failed, and at every turn its success or failure depended on events that ultimately were a function as much of chance as anything else. Anyone who believes in well-oiled conspiracy theories flawlessly functioning in the dark has simply ignored the great role of historical contingency in the operation of human affairs and the natural world.

But the murder of the Archduke provides us with another valuable window into the fickle nature of history and the minds of conspiracy theorists. This window illuminates the fact that staggeringly important events can result from trivial causes. Even a relative nobody like Gavrilo Princip or Lee Harvey Oswald can change history because of the unpredictable effects of chance and circumstance. But the problem is that the human mind being what is, it looks for causal patterns that are as large as the effects they produce. We find it easy to accept the incalculably evil Nazis as the cause of World War 2 but find it hard to swallow the lowly Princip as the pivotal cause of World War 1. We find it even harder to accept the inconsequential Lee Harvey Oswald as the causal factor for the murder of the consequential John F Kennedy. In the face of disparate differences between cause and effect our mind resorts to what Shermer calls “patternicity” and “agenticity”. Since we believe that the agents responsible for historic effects should be as major as the events themselves, we start conjuring them up to soothe our psychology. So, since Oswald does not fit the right profile as an agent for JFK’s assassination we start invoking the CIA, the Cubans, the Mafia and LBJ as more plausible agents, even if the evidence implicating these entities is thinner than the other evidence. The pattern fits, but only in the comfortable confines of our minds.

It is this inability to grasp the disparities between cause and effect that leads to some of the most prominent conspiracy theories involving science, including climate change and evolution denial. For instance, consider some of the questions that both camps raise when confronted with the evidence: How can puny humans cause the global climate to change? How can “microevolution” be responsible for “macroevolution”? How can minor policies that we undertake today be useful for ameliorating the untoward influences of climate change tomorrow? Even when the mountain of evidence is monumental, conspiracy theorists will try to discredit the entire edifice based on tiny details. Transitional fossils? Too sparse to say anything about evolution. Melting of ice sheets? Too inconsequential to say anything about global climate change. Bacterial change (as demonstrated massively through the patient experiments of Richard Lenski)? Too minor to account for change in higher animals. Conspiracy theorists either cannot accept or actively deny the role of simple details in the larger picture, although the former trait is definitely widespread.

But the tiny details matter. Over the ten decades following that unfortunate day in June, it is science itself that has provided some of the answers to these conspiracy theorists. Not that the evidence will make most of them change their mind, but we have found for instance the sensitive dependence of natural phenomena on initial conditions, a finding which is at the heart of chaos theory; as demonstrated by the famous “butterfly effect”, even slight changes in initial conditions can lead to enormous changes in the outcome. There is an entire science of complex systems now devoted to such effects. Through physics we have also discovered the ultrasensitive dependence of the features of the known universe on the slightest differences in the values of the fundamental constants; change the strong force in nuclei by one percent and it may make the difference between a universe with or without life. As recounted in the recent book “The Butterfly Defect”, we have also realized the complex web of interdependencies between both natural and human events that globalization has stitched together; for instance a recent natural catastrophe in Hong Kong affected the shipping and distribution of a significant percentage of hard drives around the world because the major manufacturers of these drives happened to be located there. And none of these phenomena are really predictable; they are really the product of chance and contingency.

Science therefore has now provided at least some justification for what the human mind always suspected, but what some human minds refuse to believe; that small changes can lead to big changes, that these small changes can be random and unpredictable, that fickle accidents of history can affect both the human and the natural worlds. Today as we contemplate Princip’s actions and the rupturing of world affairs that followed, it is wise to also contemplate this web of interconnections and to use it as a bulwark against those who would deny its implications and instead try to foist their own deterministic prejudices upon its gossamer threads. As the old proverb goes, we now know and can even rationalize how for want of a horseshoe an entire kingdom can be lost. Whether we find this fact fascinating or heartbreaking, we need to accept it as a fact at the heart of reality itself

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Ashutosh Jogalekar

Ashutosh Jogalekar is a chemist interested in the history, philosophy and sociology of science. He is fascinated by the logic of scientific discovery and by the interaction of science with public sentiments and policy. He blogs at The Curious Wavefunction and can be reached at curiouswavefunction@gmail.com.

AUSTRALIA
Conspiracists say lasers and exploding smart meters used to start bush fires to make way for a new train network

15 Jan, 2020

Thousands of Australians appear to believe lasers and exploding smart meters are being used to start fires to make way for a new train network. Photo / Supplied
news.com.au

By: Ben Graham and Peter Bodkin

Thousands of Australians appear to believe lasers and exploding smart meters are being used to start our bushfires to make way for a new train network.

A Storyful investigation with news.com.au has found the conspiracy theory has spread far and wide on social media — with "directed-energy weapons" (DEWs) posts being shared tens of thousands of times in the past few weeks.

Those who believe the theory say the bushfires in this unprecedented season are being started using weapons which harness the focused power of technology such as lasers or microwaves, news.com.au reports.

And, many of the posts claim the fires have been deliberately started by a shadowy global elite in order to clear land for a high-speed rail network from Brisbane to Melbourne.

The deadly bushfires have also been seized on by networks of local and international conspiracy theorists, many of whom claim the fires are part of UN-led global plot to depopulate the world and seize control for a one-world government under the guises of climate change.

Conspiracy theorists claim Australia's bush land is being cleared for a high-speed rail network. Photo / Supplied

As part of this wider conspiracy, theorists believe the alleged high-speed rail network will force all of us into big cities where we can be controlled by the government.

Posts to Facebook show bright lines — supposedly laser beams — emanating from unsourced and unverified pictures of Australia's bushfires to back up their argument.

The admin of one of the largest Facebook conspiracy pages wrote that residents in bushfire-affected communities say forests around their homes "just exploded out of no-where".

Theorists have also been sharing maps that show parallels between the locations of the fires and the supposed high-speed rail network.

One blog post from a fringe conspiracy theory site State of the Nation linking the bushfires to the "global warming hoax" has made a huge impact on social media.

It is unclear if this pic has been doctored. Photo / Supplied

The article titled 'OPERATION TORCH AUSTRALIA: A Special Report on the Geoengineered Firestorms and DEW-triggered Arson Fires' claimed to draw "striking parallels" between the fires and previous wildfires in California.

The post, alongside others from the site linking the Australian fires to directed-energy weapons, had been shared thousands of times on Facebook.

They were spread through a network of local and international pages, many of which were themed around deep state conspiracy theories, chemtrails or 5G networks.

And it's not just Star Wars-style lasers they reckon are starting the fires.

In one case, a Facebook user whose profile said they lived in Byron Bay shared a post to the Stop 5G Mid North Coast group with the comment: "Smart meters can be activated to explode."

It is claimed these bright lines are created by high-powered weapons. Photo / Supplied

One of the most active pages in Australia sharing conspiracy theories linking the fires to directed-energy weapons and various alleged government plots has been the Higgins Storm Chasers page which, despite having only around 10,000 followers, generates thousands of shares and reactions for its posts.

Several of these posts claimed to display evidence of energy weapons being used in the fires – such as photos of trees burning on the inside – with one post adding it showed "geoengineering not climate change".

While Facebook has moved to crack down on misinformation around some topics such as vaccinations, there appears to be little stopping the spread of conspiracy theories surrounding bushfires on the platform.

Similarly, conspiracy theories around the fires have flourished on YouTube, with some videos also running ads on the platform, allowing channels to make money while spreading misinformation around the bushfires, including that they were designed to make way for a planned high-speed rail link between Australia's cities.

Australian conspiracy theorist Max Igan, who has generated nearly a million views for his series of videos decrying the "Australian Holocaust".

'Exploding smart meters' have been blamed for the fires. Photo / Facebook

In one, Mr Igan claimed that an unspecified cabal had been "spraying this country with accelerants" while also deliberately drying the continent to create "the perfect storm".

"They're going to blame all this on climate change … they intend to genocide this country," he told viewers.

The video had been shared more than 12,000 times on Facebook alone.

Dr Will Grant – a senior lecturer in science communication at the Australian National University – believes these theories were being spread by the far right.

"The theory aligns with ideas there's a deep state (a clandestine government) out there armed with secret weapons," he said.

Dr Grant believes it is gaining traction because of the "extreme" polarisation between the political left, often associated with city living, and right, often associated with rural living.

"This high-speed rail conspiracy comes out of the idea the left and the government want us to live in cities with a smaller carbon footprint and closer to work, and many on the left say this is a good thing," he said.

"However, what we're seeing here is the far right taking this to an extreme – saying 'they're forcing us to be vegan and live in apartment' – which is obviously not true."

It's claimed that this picture (of unknown origin) proves trees were ignited from the inside. Photo / Supplied

He said the theories around "exploding smart meters" and 5G being used for nefarious purposes play into "legitimate" concerns around big corporations and the data they have on us.

"We should be careful, because this is ripe ground for a conspiracy theorist," he said. "What they are doing is taking a legitimate truth and playing it up, adding paranoia, and making it into something else."

Another concern is that foreign governments are spreading these conspiracies to exploit cracks in Western nations about climate change.

"We've seen this with the Russian troll army in the US," Dr Grant said.

"Now we're not America in terms of size and influence. But what's obvious is that, right now, there's a huge crack in Australian society about climate change and how to deal with it.

"It could be exploited as another crack in the ability of Western countries to have democracy, so I wouldn't be surprised if a state actor was interested in this."

Blazes destroying Brazil's national parks, threaten tropical wetlands
14 Sep, 2020

Birds fly past as a fire consumes the Pantanal wetlands near Pocone, Mato Grosso state, Brazil. AP Photo / Andre Penner

By: Dbora Alvares of AP

A vast swath of a vital wetlands is burning in Brazil, sweeping across several national parks and obscuring the sun behind dense smoke.

Preliminary figures from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, based on satellite images, indicate that nearly 1.5 million hectares have burned in the Pantanal region since the start of August — an expanse comparable to the area consumed by the historic blazes now afflicting California. It's also well beyond the previous fire season record from 2005.

Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, whose satellites monitor the fires, said the number of Panantal fires in the first 12 days of September was nearly triple the figure for the same period last year. From January through August, the number of fires more than tripled, topping 10,000.

Fernando Tortato, who has been working and living near the Encontro Das Aguas reserve since 2008, said he's never seen the fires as bad as this year.

A volunteer tries to douse the fire on the Transpantaneira road in the Pantanal wetlands in Brazil. AP Photo/Andre Penner

"It is an immense area that has been burned and consumed by the fire. And we still have another two, three or four weeks without rain" ahead, he said.

Firefighters, troops and volunteers have been scrambling to find and rescue jaguars and other animals before they are overtaken by the flames, which have been exacerbated by the worst drought in 47 years, strong winds and temperatures exceeding 40C.

While illegal logging, mining and farming operations have been blamed for most of the fires in the Amazon region to the north, a spokesman for Mato Grosso state's firefighters, Lieutenant Colonel Sheila Sebalhos, said one of the causes of this year's Pantanal fires is the practice of burning roots to smoke wild bees from their hives to extract honey.

An recently burned area at the Encontro das Aguas park at the Pantanal wetlands near Pocone, Mato Grosso state, Brazil. AP Photo / Andre Penner

The Pantanal holds thousands of plant and animal species, including 159 mammals, and it abounds with jaguars, according to the World Wildlife Fund. During the rainy season, rivers overflow their banks flood the land, making most of it accessible only by boat and plane.

In the dry season, wildlife enthusiasts flock to see the normally furtive jaguars lounging on riverbanks, along with macaws, caimans and capybaras.

About 200 jaguars in the area already have been injured, killed or forced from their territories by the fires, according to Panthera, an international wild cat conservation organisation.

Veterinarians treat an injured bird rescued from an area affected by the fires at the Pantanal wetlands. AP Photo / Andre Penner

Firefighters and the Mato Grosso environment ministry have created a centre for rescued animals.

"We feel a little discouraged, but we try to have hope to rescue the few animals we can," said veterinarian Karen Ribeiro, 26, who was treating an injured bird on Friday.

On Friday, Brazil's navy used a helicopter to rescue a burned jaguar cub and take it to a veterinary hospital. - AP

Tiny island Kastellorizo at centre of growing confrontation between Greece and Turkey

14 Sep, 2020

The Greek island of Kastellorizo, the most southeastern inhabited Greek island in the Dodecanese, situated two kilometres off the south coast of Turkey. Photo / Getty

Kastellorizo, lying in the crystal clear waters of the eastern Mediterranean, is an idyllic, bijou beauty.

Fishing boats bob in its calm harbour and colourful houses give way to olive tree flecked hills.

The petite 12 sqm gem is the "remote treasure of the Aegean" says a tourism website.

But trouble is brewing in the sun splashed seas that surround Kastellorizo and two European nations, officially allies, are bracing for battle, news.com.au reported..

Already ships from Greece and Turkey have collided. One expert has said the pair are once again on the "brink of war," yet this time there seems to be little appetite to slam on the brakes.

It's a conflict that has now sucked in France, Libya, Egypt, Israel, the US and more nations besides.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has demanded Greece enter talks, or else.

"They're either going to understand the language of politics and diplomacy, or in the field with painful experiences," he said.

The issue is as clear as day in Kastellorizo, also known as Megisti. The island – part of the Dodecanese chain – is Greece's most easterly inhabited point. It lies more than 550 kilometres from the capital, Athens. But just 2kms from the coast of Turkey. On a clear day you cannot only see Turkey, you could probably swim over for a spot of lunch.

Both countries are members of the NATO military alliance, but both have longstanding animosities. One of the main grumbles is just how close scores of Greek islands, like Kastellorizo, are to Turkish soil.

It's a simmering tension that goes back a century or more. But the hornet's nest has recently been disturbed by the discovering of potentially vast amounts of gas in the eastern Mediterranean.

The question is who is entitled to the reserves – Greece or Turkey?

BOAT AT THE CENTRE OF FEUD

"Turkey and Greece have been at loggerheads in the Aegean (a sea that is part of the wider Mediterranean) since the mid-1970s but have abstained from unilateral actions that might result in full conflict. They have been able to defuse several escalations," says academic Cihan Dizdaroglu from the UK's Coventry University inThe Conversation.

"Adding the eastern Mediterranean into the mix complicates matters though. The two sides appear to have opened Pandora's box."

Ground zero for the international spat is a boat – the Oruc Reis. Painted with a giant Turkish flag, this research vessel has been busy surveying the seabed off the Turkish coast looking for likely gas deposits.

Last month, the Greek military was scrambled as it sailed in waters close to Kastellorizo.

Greece sent naval ships to shadow the Oruc Reis, which was being escorted by Turkish military vessels.

Turkish research vessel the Oruc Reis which has been sailing into waters claimed by Greece. Photo / Getty

On 10 August, a Greek frigate collided with one of the Turkish military escorts between the Greek island of Crete and Cyprus. It was a big escalation that prompted France to send one of its own frigates and two fighter jets to the area to support Greece.

Greek news publication Protothema showed a large gouge in the side of the Turkish vessel.

At the heart of the issue is how you divide up the waters of both the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean seas.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of modern Turkey, in the early 20th century led some of its former lands to be officially divided up between countries it once ruled.

The 1924 Lausanne Treaty formalised Greece's control of almost all of the major islands off the coast of Turkey as far east as Kastellorizo.

The maritime borders, however, are trickier. It's generally accepted that nations have exclusive economic zones (EEZ) that extend a distance from their coasts.

Damage sustained by the Turkis vessel which came into contact with a Greek frigate, from Greek news publication Protothema. Photo / Supplied

TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS

Ankara claims the Greek islands box Turkey in and effectively bar it from large areas of the sea that are rightfully its to exploit. Kastellorizo's position, to the south of Turkey, potentially gives Greece control over a huge stretch of the eastern Mediterranean.

"Greece claims 40,000 square kilometres of maritime jurisdiction area due to this tiny island," Cagatay Erciyes, a Turkish foreign ministry official, said of Kastellorizo.

Not so, says Athens. Given the islands are Greek territory they have EEZs that extend deep into the sea and that should be respected.

It's not a new argument and generally it's just bubbled quietly away. Until riches were found beneath the seabed.

"Large reserves of oil and gas were discovered in the region a decade ago. The estimates are worth trillions of dollars to the surrounding countries even at today's prices," said Clemens Hoffman, a lecturer in politics at Britain's Stirling University.

'BRINK OF WAR'

Last year, Greece and a number of Mediterranean governments including Cyprus, Israel, Egypt and Palestine, signed a deal to co-operate on exploiting the gas reserves. A pipeline, to transport the gas to Europe, bypassing Turkey, is on the cards.

Turkey reacted to this snub by signing a deal with the UN backed Libyan government – there are several governments in Libya – to create an EEZ stretching across the Mediterranean. If accepted, this would both block the pipeline and see Turkey potentially drilling just off the coast of several Greek islands.

So Greece declared an EEZ between its islands and Egypt straight through the line Turkey and Libya had just drawn.

It's left research vessels and warships bobbing around the Mediterranean in waters claimed by one another. Greece has already held naval exercises with some EU countries and the United Arab Emirates.

"Greece and Turkey have endured plenty of incidents that brought them to the brink of war, particularly in the Aegean Sea, but these were eased through dialogue and mediation," said Professor Dizdaroğlu in The Conversation.

"There is no dialogue mechanism established for a conflict over the eastern Mediterranean and that really matters in this conflict-ridden region."

The stoush is about hydrocarbons, for sure, but there's a large streak of nationalism running through it too, fanned by Turkey's President Erdogan.

"We are defending our blue homeland," said Cem Gürdeniz, a former Turkish admiral.

"It is a defensive doctrine after our continental shelf was stolen by Greece and Cyprus and represents the greatest geostrategic challenge of the century."

To some in Turkey, the Lausanne Treaty was a capitulation that saw a new nation blindsided and hastily, and unnecessarily, sign away the islands.

The Greek island of Kastellorizo, the most southeastern inhabited Greek island in the Dodecanese, situated two kilometres off the south coast of Turkey. Photo / Getty

FRANCE AND US ENTER THE FRAY

On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron met Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and declared he was siding with his European Union partner over a NATO ally.

Turkey was "no longer a partner" in the eastern Mediterranean, President Macron said.

"We Europeans must be clear and firm, not with Turkey as a nation or as a people, but with the government of President Erdogan."

Turkey has fumed at the comments and called Macron "arrogant" and his remarks "colonial reflexes".

Erdogan's top press aide, Fahrettin Altun, took a swipe at Macron in a tweet, describing him as a "wannabe Napoleon" on a Mediterranean campaign.

The Greek PM has urged the EU to impose "meaningful sanctions" on Ankara if there is no change to the impasse by the end of the month.

"If Europe wants to exercise true geopolitical power, it simply cannot afford to appease a belligerent Turkey," said Mr Mitsotakis.

The US has now entered the fray, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying he will intervene to seek a "diplomatic and peaceful" resolution.

The waters of Kastellorizo remain calm and clear. But one more collision, unwanted incursion or stray bullet, and this tiny island could find itself at the centre of a European battle.

IT WAS THE TINY NATION OF FERDINAND POO THAT WAS INVADED AS A FALSE FLAG OP THAT BEGAN THE WAR IN ILLUMINATIS

Fernando Poo | The Illuminatus! Trilogy Wiki | Fandom

illuminatus.fandom.com › wiki › Fernando_Poo

In the book the name of the island is changed from Po to Poo, why this is is not certain, it could be down to a spelling error. The relevance of the original spelling ...

POO IS OBVIOUSLY BATHROOM HUMOUR

Bioko - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Bioko

Bioko is an island 32 km (20 mi) off the west coast of Africa and the northernmost part of ... In 1494 it was renamed Fernando Pó in his honor after being claimed as a colony by the Portuguese. ... Fernando Poo (sic) is the setting for a Cold War standoff in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus Trilogy.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment