Huge cat found etched into desert among Nazca Lines in Peru

Feline geoglyph from 200-100BC emerges during work at Unesco world heritage site


Sam Jones in Madrid Sun 18 Oct 2020
 

The feline figure, seen on a hillside in Nazca, Peru, has been cleaned and conserved since its discovery. Photograph: Jhony Islas/AP


The dun sands of southern Peru, etched centuries ago with geoglyphs of a hummingbird, a monkey, an orca – and a figure some would dearly love to believe is an astronaut – have now revealed the form of an enormous cat lounging across a desert hillside.

The feline Nazca line, dated to between 200BC and 100BC, emerged during work to improve access to one of the hills that provides a natural vantage point from which many of the designs can be seen.

A Unesco world heritage site since 1994, the Nazca Lines, which are made up of hundreds of geometric and zoomorphic images, were created by removing rocks and earth to reveal the contrasting materials below. They lie 250 miles (400km) south of Lima and cover about 450 sq km (175 sq miles) of Peru’s arid coastal plain.
 Archaeologists carry out maintenance work at the site. 

Photograph: Jhony Islas/AP

“The figure was scarcely visible and was about to disappear because it’s situated on quite a steep slope that’s prone to the effects of natural erosion,” Peru’s culture ministry said in a statement this week.


“Over the past week, the geoglyph was cleaned and conserved, and shows a feline figure in profile, with its head facing the front.” It said the cat was 37 metres long, with well-defined lines that varied in width between 30cm and 40cm.

“It’s quite striking that we’re still finding new figures, but we also know that there are more to be found,” Johny Isla, Peru’s chief archaeologist for the lines, told the Spanish news agency Efe.

“Over the past few years, the use of drones has allowed us to take images of hillsides.”

Isla said between 80 and 100 new figures had emerged over recent years in the Nazca and Palpa valleys, all of which predated the Nazca culture (AD200-700). “These are smaller in size, drawn on to hillsides, and clearly belong to an earlier tradition.”

The archaeologist said the cat had been put out during the late Paracas era, which ran from 500BC to AD200. “We know that from comparing iconographies,” said Isla. “Paracas textiles, for example, show birds, cats and people that are easily comparable to these geoglyphs.”

Flesh Gordon? Artwork reveals erotic version that was never made

Draft designs for a planned Nicolas Roeg sci-fi movie in 1979 finally see the light of day


Dalya Alberge Sun 18 Oct 2020 

Artwork for the abandoned film depicts Flash Gordon confronting Ming the Merciless on top of the emperor’s royal spaceship. Photograph: StudioCanal/King Features Inc


Flash Gordon fans worldwide can only imagine what might have been. Futuristic artwork – including lots of phallic imagery – that was created for an aborted 1979 feature film about the cult spaceman superhero and his intergalactic adventures is to be published for the first time.

The production was to have been directed by one of Britain’s foremost film-makers, the late Nicolas Roeg, who had made Don’t Look Now, a horror story starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, and The Man Who Fell to Earth, the arthouse science fiction drama starring David Bowie as an alien.

His Flash Gordon film would have starred Debbie Harry, lead singer of the American band Blondie, as Princess Aura, the seductive daughter of Ming the Merciless, the tyrannical dictator, who would have been played by Hollywood movie star Keith Carradine.

Sam J Jones as Flash Gordon in Mike Hodges’s 1980 film. Photograph: Alamy

But the production was abandoned before Roeg had cast his superhero after he fell out with its producer, Dino De Laurentiis, the movie mogul who made Barbarella, a 1968 science-fiction comic adaptation that turned Jane Fonda into a sex symbol. De Laurentiis had dreamed of three Flash Gordon films. He only made one, the 1980 version directed by Mike Hodges, which became a cult favourite, with huge conventions worldwide despite disappointing reviews.

The film has now been restored by StudioCanal to mark December’s 40th anniversary of its original release.

Flash Gordon was originally created by Alex Raymond, the American artist. In 1933, publisher King Features asked him and writer Don Moore to create a rival to the 1929 comic strip Buck Rogers. Flash Gordon made his newspaper debut in 1934 and became an instant hit, read by more than 50 million people a week in 130 newspapers worldwide.

John Walsh, a film-maker and author, has retrieved about 40 designs for the Roeg version from the British Film Institute (BFI) archives: “It’s public knowledge that Roeg worked on the film’s development. What hasn’t been seen is its artwork.”

Walsh will feature the artwork in his forthcoming book, Flash Gordon: The Official Story of the Film, to be published on 20 November.

One image depicts Flash Gordon confronting Ming for a sword fight on top of the emperor’s royal spaceship. “It is a vast sequence that could not have been realised using 1970s technology,” Walsh said. “This image has more of the flourish of the original Raymond comic strips from the 1930s.”

The artwork was created by the production designer, Ferdinando Scarfiotti, who went on to win an Oscar for The Last Emperor in 1987.

But most of the imagery suggests a very different film, Walsh said: “It would have been a much more sexually explicit sci-fi romp. Dino chose Roeg, who died in 2018, because he’d worked on The Man Who Fell to Earth, which is science fiction and a very good film, but it’s as far from comic strip melodrama as you could get.”
Ferdinando Scarfiotti’s vision of Arboria dwarfed the actors with giant vegetation and trees. Photograph: StudioCanal/BFI

Of the artwork, he said: “Everything’s quite organic. They look like plants… Ming’s spaceship is the most conventional of the designs, but most of the spaceships are a cross between phallic imagery and orchid flowers, reflecting a more adult tone based on the sexualised imagery of the 1930s strip.

“I interviewed John Richardson, who had worked on its special effects for four months before De Laurentiis pulled the plug. He said, I asked Nic one day ‘what do you see Ming’s spaceship looking like?’ He replied, ‘I see it like a heaving, mucus-covered placenta’ [though that] differs from the design shown.

“Richardson was taken aback because he was expecting something that had much more of a 1930s Chrysler motor look to it.

“Instead, Roeg was taking it in a completely opposite organic direction. In a sense, Dino was right to pull the plug.”

Wide Awakes: the Lincoln-era youth movement inspiring anti-Trump protests

In 1860, on the brink of civil war, caped young men with lanterns sought to safeguard democracy. 

Now, in a nation divided once more, the group has returned to the light


Ted Widmer Sat 17 Oct 2020 
 

Grand procession of Wide-Awakes at New York on the evening of 3 October 1860. Photograph: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540


On 21 September, a tweeted image of an eyeball, with the words “WIDE AWAKE”, accompanied an urgent appeal to demonstrators in Washington, eager to protest against Republican plans to nominate a supreme court replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

A disputed election, a constitutional crisis, polarisation … welcome to 1876
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The tweet was part of a rapidly growing interest in the Wide Awakes, a shadowy youth movement that rose up in 1860, as the nation teetered toward civil war, then vanished. Now, in another bitterly divided moment, historians, journalists and even fashionistas are converging on the movement, which helped elect Abraham Lincoln.

Who were the Wide Awakes? At any point in history, it can be hard to pinpoint a sprawling youth movement with no central organization. But thanks to surviving photographs, we have a strong sense of what the Wide Awakes looked like. They live on in old ambrotypes and daguerrotypes, staring out resolutely from the faded chemicals, serious young men returning the gaze of the camera.

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There is no single collection – like the original movement, the surviving Wide Awakes are spread out, in libraries and old auction catalogues, on eBay and through the half-life of Pinterest, where so many images refuse to die.

We know, from the historical record, that the Wide Awakes began to assemble in Hartford, Connecticut, on the night of 25 February 1860. An anti-slavery politician from Kentucky, Cassius Clay, came to speak. Escorting him, a group of young men formed a parade by torchlight. Someone improvised a cape, made out of oilcloth, to protect his clothes from the dripping oil of the torches. He was quickly imitated – a dashing new look was born.
 

A Wide Awake, in costume. Photograph: The Progress-Index and Pamplin Historical Park

A week later, the first Wide Awake Club was formed in Hartford. Thirty-six young men agreed to buy their own capes, just in time for the next political visitor. On 5 March, he arrived, an unusual speaker from Illinois, gaunt and angular. Lincoln had just given his great speech at the Cooper Union in New York, and as one observer put it, the “presidential bee” had begun to buzz around him. That night in Hartford, the Wide Awakes lit their torches, donned their capes and escorted Lincoln to his hotel.

The new look spread like … wildfire. The capes were splendid, especially when augmented by military caps, the flickering light of the torches and all those painted eyeballs, staring out from large banners.

 A banner in the the Old Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. Photograph: Michael Christensen

But it was not just a look. It was a genuine feeling, as if young people were waking from a long slumber, and seeing for the first time how much corruption and rot had set in. The country was very young: 51% were 19 or younger. But for as long as anyone could remember, the government had been controlled by Washington’s largest lobby, the Slave Power, which selected mediocre presidents, eager to do its bidding, and placed compliant lackeys on the supreme court.

Three years earlier, in the Dred Scott decision, the court had ruled that black lives emphatically did not matter – that African Americans could never become citizens or hold any rights at all. The day before Lincoln came to Hartford, a large slave ship, the Clotilda, left Alabama for Africa, flouting all laws against the slave trade. Under President James Buchanan, slaveholders were free to do as they liked; as Frederick Douglass complained, slave traders actually flew the Stars and Stripes as they carried their human cargoes back from Africa.

But Lincoln and others had risen in protest against these injustices, which so clearly violated America’s founding ideals. Now the young were joining them, in huge numbers. They wanted their country back. An editor at the Atlantic Monthly wrote that the time had come to decide, once and for all, “whether the American idea is to govern this continent”. In defense of that idea, first hundreds, then thousands of Wide Awakes would pour into the streets in 1860.

 

A Wide Awakes ribbon made for veterans of the movement, in 1892. Photograph: Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Printed Ephemera Collection

The movement grew quickly in the spring and summer, with clubs forming across the north and midwest. Chicago had 48 clubs alone. Shrewdly, they used new networks of communication: one young writer improvised a kind of early comic book, Pipps Among the Wide Awakes, to celebrate the dashing caped crusaders. It was a badge of honor to wear “the Cape of Good Hope”, as one called it, and they thrilled onlookers with huge nighttime parades, fireworks added to the torchlight, and “moving transparencies”, like slide shows, a distant ancestor of what would become cinema. Wide Awake sheet music was printed and quickly sent around the country, thrilling a nation of young people, waking up. Even the dour abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison wrote: “It was hard not to tap one’s feet to the jaunty rhythms.”

Lincoln as Wide Awake, in a news cartoon from 1860. Photograph: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

 

A Wide Awake Club ribbon featuring Abraham Lincoln. Photograph: Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana.

The clubs visited each other, and thousands watched the rallies, including large numbers of women, who formed groups of “Lady Wide Awakes”, sewed uniforms and linked the cause to their own fight for empowerment. A Wide Awake rally in Seneca Falls, New York, was addressed by Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, campaigners for women’s suffrage. African Americans were occasionally invited to join the clubs, especially in Boston – deepening the south’s horror. Southern politicians ridiculed the young marchers as “infants whose mammas didn’t know they were out”, and threatened violence against them. But they were intimidated by the sight of thousands of young men, disciplined, standing up for their non-violent ideals.

The Wide Awakes were not, technically, a part of the Republican party. But they loved Lincoln, whose authenticity mirrored their own. Party leaders shrewdly adapted their message to the movement, which peaked in the fall, as the election approached. William Seward, soon to be secretary of state, gave a speech in Detroit promising that “the young men throughout the land are Wide Awake”. In Boston, Lincoln’s running mate, Hannibal Hamlin, marched through the street with “the boys”. On 3 October, a huge torchlight procession and pyrotechnic display dazzled New York City. Tens of thousands came out.

To be sure, these events were a kind of entertainment. But true to their banners, the Wide Awakes kept their eyes open as the great day of the election approached. Many served as “patrol-men” at voting stations, on guard against dirty tricks, determined to use “all honorable means” to ensure a fair count

A membership certificate sent to Lincoln from Chicago in June 1860. Photograph: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Abraham Lincoln Papers.

It worked, and Lincoln’s victory owed something to tremendous support from the young. Estimates vary, but as many as half a million young men may have joined the movement, and the number rises quickly when spectators are added.

After Lincoln’s election, the Wide Awakes faded away, as mysteriously as they assembled, but they had accomplished something important. When Lincoln was inaugurated on 4 March – a year to the day after the Clotilda sailed from Alabama – America had come a long way toward reclaiming its ideals. A last contingent of Wide Awakes attended his inauguration, determined to shield him from harm.

Nowadays, the Wide Awakes occasionally resurface in the history books, including a study by Jon Grinspan and a book by Adam Goodheart. Sometimes, they are awakened accidentally – as when the Florida representative Matt Gaetz, a Trump ally, denounced young people as “woketopians” during an angry speech at the Republican convention. But they will always live on in haunting photographs, lingering evidence of a generation that stood up to reclaim its democracy.


Ted Widmer is distinguished lecturer at Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York, and the author of Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington

FacebookTwitterPinterest A protester on 5th Avenue in New York, earlier this month. Photograph: Niyi Fote/via Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

Trump and Barrett's threat to abortion and LGBTQ rights is simply un-American

Republicans won’t tell Americans to wear masks to beat Covid, but will say what women and gay people can and cannot do


Sun 18 Oct 2020
 

Opponents of nominee Amy Coney Barrett demonstrate outside the supreme court in Washington. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Trump and many Republicans insist that whether to wear a mask or to go to work during a pandemic should be personal choices. Yet what a woman does with her own body, or whether same-sex couples can marry, should be decided by government.

It’s a tortured, upside-down view of freedom. Yet it’s remarkably prevalent even as the pandemic resurges – America is back up to more than 60,000 new cases a day, the highest rate since July, and numbers continue to rise – and as the Senate considers Trump’s pick for the supreme court.

By contrast, Joe Biden has wisely declared he would do “whatever it takes” to stop the pandemic, including mandating masks and locking down the entire economy if scientists recommend it.

“I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists,” he said.

Biden also wants to protect both abortion and same-sex marriage from government intrusion – in 2012 he memorably declared his support of the latter before even Barack Obama did so.


What’s public, what’s private and where should government intervene? The question suffuses the impending election

Trump’s opposite approaches, discouraging masks and other Covid restrictions while seeking government intrusion into the most intimate decisions anyone makes, have become the de facto centerpieces of his campaign.

At his “town hall” on Thursday night, Trump falsely claimed that most people who wear masks contract the virus.

He also criticized governors for ordering lockdowns, adding that the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, “wants to be a dictator”. He was speaking just one week after state and federal authorities announced they had thwarted an alleged plot to kidnap and possibly kill Whitmer.

The attorney general, William Barr – once again contesting Trump for the most wacky analogy – has called state lockdown orders the “greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history” since slavery.

Yet at the very same time Trump and his fellow-travelers defend people’s freedom to infect others or become infected with Covid-19, they’re inviting government to intrude into the most intimate aspects of personal life.

Trump has promised that the supreme court’s 1973 Roe v Wade decision, establishing a federal right to abortion, will be reversed “because I am putting pro-life justices on the court”.

Much of the controversy over Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett hinges on her putative willingness to repeal Roe.

While an appeals court judge, Barrett ruled in favor of a law requiring doctors to inform the parents of any minor seeking an abortion, without exceptions, and also joined a dissent suggesting an Indiana law requiring burial or cremation of fetal remains was constitutional.

A Justice Barrett might also provide the deciding vote for reversing Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 supreme court decision protecting same-sex marriage. Only three members of the majority in that case remain on the court.

Barrett says her views are rooted in the “text” of the constitution. That’s a worrisome omen given that earlier this month justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito opined that the right to same-sex marriage “is found nowhere in the text” of the constitution.

What’s public, what’s private and where should government intervene? The question suffuses the impending election and much else in modern American life.

It is nonsensical to argue, as do Trump and his allies, that government cannot mandate masks or close businesses during a pandemic but can prevent women from having abortions and same-sex couples from marrying.

The underlying issue is the common good, what we owe each other as members of the same society.

During wartime, we expect government to intrude on our daily lives for the common good: drafting us into armies, converting our workplaces and businesses, demanding we sacrifice normal pleasures and conveniences. During a pandemic as grave as this one we should expect no less intrusion, in order that we not expose others to the risk of contracting the virus.

But we have no right to impose on others our moral or religious views about when life begins or the nature and meaning of marriage. The common good requires instead that we honor such profoundly personal decisions.

Public or private? We owe it to each other to understand the distinction.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US

'I expected more': Teófimo López stuns Vasiliy Lomachenko to unify titles

López unifies IBF, WBA and WBO titles in major upset win

Bryan Armen Graham Sun 18 Oct 2020

Teófimo López lands a right hand on Vasiliy Lomachenko during their lightweight title unification fight on Saturday night. Photograph: Top Rank/Getty Images

A star was born in the bubble on Saturday night as Teófimo López delivered on his enormous promise with a surprisingly comprehensive victory over Vasiliy Lomachenko, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-weight champion from Ukraine widely regarded as boxing’s pound-for-pound best.

López upsets Lomachenko in unification bout – as it happened

The 23-year-old Brooklyn native dominated the first half of the hotly anticipated lightweight title unification fight at the MGM Grand Conference Center, then held off a late-round surge and showed the finishing kick of a champion to unify the IBF, WBA and WBO title belts at 135lbs. The three judges at ringside favored López by scores of 119-109, 117-111 and 116-112. (The Guardian had it 116-112.)

López, who captured the IBF’s version of the lightweight championship with a concussive knockout of Richard Commey in December and went off as a 3-1 underdog on Saturday, sprung the upset not with his formidable power but by outboxing the sport’s most technically proficient fighter – an outcome foreseen by virtually no one.

“A lot of people were talking highly about him and I expected more,” López said. “Basic. It was pretty basic, honestly. Maybe it was the 14-month layoff that did it, I don’t know. But I had 10 months laid off, so why does it matter? I fought the guy that everybody says is the pound-for-pound (best).”

López took advantage of a slow start by Lomachenko, a former world champion at featherweight and junior lightweight whose only flickers of vulnerability have come since moving up to lightweight. The 32-year-old southpaw spent the first four rounds throwing punches very sparingly, content to sit back and measure the task before him. López was able to bank rounds easily by touching his opponent with a steady diet of jabs and straight rights to the head and body.

As the fight went into the middle rounds, Lomachenko continued to wait on a mistake that never came and was forced to alter his tactics as his face began to swell from the accumulation of López’s blows. After a warning from referee Russell Mora for leading with his head, Lomachenko burst to life midway through the eighth and landed a three-punch combination followed by a crisp right hand. He landed 19 of 38 punches in the round after connected on a scant 31 in the first seven combined, but the fight at last was on.

Sensing López could not contend with the pressure, Lomachenko picked up in the ninth where he’d left off and continued to let his hands go. He wobbled López with a combination early in the round but the younger champion held his ground and hit back with an uppercut through Lomachenko’s guard. By the 11th, Lomachenko was pouring on the punishment and the momentum had swung clearly in his favor, though whether he’d waited too long to flip the switch

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Teófimo López lands a punch on Vasiliy Lomachenko during Saturday’s fight. 

Photograph: Top Rank/Getty Images

Knowing Lomachenko likely needed a knockout to win entering the 12th, López’s father and trainer urged his son to box from range. But López ignored the advice and bit down in the final round in a clear effort to go for the knockout. He battered and bloodied Lomachenko with straight rights and uppercuts throughout the final three minutes. The referee appeared to spare Lomachenko by calling time on the action after an accidental head butt in the final seconds caused a large gash over López’s right eye, but by then the outcome was all but a handshake away.

“I’m a fighter,” López said when asked why he ignored his father’s counsel. “I got to dig in deep. I knew he was coming. I didn’t know if they had him up on the scorecards or not, and I love to fight. I can bang, too. I don’t care, man. I’ll take one to give one. That’s what a true champion does. I find a way to win.”

Lomachenko connected on 141 of 321 punches compared to 183 of 659 for López, according to Compubox’s punch statistics.

“I think in the first half of the fight, he got more rounds than I did,” Lomachenko said through a translator. “But then in the second half of the fight, I took it over and I was much better. I want to go home and to review the fight to see. I can’t comment right now much about it. But I definitely am not agreeing with the scorecards.”

He added: “At the moment I think (I won the fight). But the result is the result. I’m not going to argue right now.”

Afterward López claimed it as a victory for the younger generation of fighters who are eager to break through, putting himself at the head of an up-and-coming class that includes Shakur Stevenson, Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis and David Benavidez.

“This is the new generation,” he said. “We’re bringing back what the old school was. Fight the best and you push on it. I’m not here to pick and choose who I want to fight because I want to defend my title and keep that ‘O’. No. And now, who knows how my figures are going to go up after this.

“Everyone wants to be like Mayweather. In order to be like Mayweather, you got to be like Pretty Boy first. You go to fight those guys where people don’t think you’ll win. You got to fight the likes of those guys that are undefeated and it’s a good fight in order to make those types of millions that people want to make.”

UK bans any use of mobile phones while driving

Government updates law to ban drivers from using phone in any way, not just calling and texting


Gwyn Topham Transport correspondent
Sat 17 Oct 2020 

 

The government will close the legal loophole which currently only defines the offence as “interactive communication”. Photograph: Alex Segre/Alamy

Drivers who use hand-held phones in any way behind the wheel will face £200 fines and possible bans when changes in the law take account of smartphones.

While making calls or texting on a hand-held mobile while driving is already illegal, taking photos, scrolling through a playlist or even playing games on phones has not been outlawed until now – allowing drivers to escape charges when spotted with a phone.

The government will update the law to close the legal loophole, which currently defines the offence as only “interactive communication”.

Ban hands-free phones in cars after rise in road deaths, MPs suggest

Roads minister Baroness Vere said: “Our roads are some of the safest in the world, but we want to make sure they’re safer still by bringing the law into 21st century.

“That’s why we’re looking to strengthen the law to make using a hand-held phone while driving illegal in a wider range of circumstances. It’s distracting and dangerous, and for too long risky drivers have been able to escape punishment, but this update will mean those doing the wrong thing will face the full force of the law.”

The government said the change, due to come into law after a 12-week public consultation, would allow police to take immediate action if they saw a driver holding and using a phone at the wheel. The offence will incur a £200 fine and six points on the driver’s licence. An automatic ban is normally triggered when drivers accrue 12 points through offences.
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Motorists will still be able to use phones as devices to pay for goods or services at drive-through businesses such as takeaways.

A government spokeswoman said that motorists could still also use phones as satnavs, if not physically holding them. Drivers could still be prosecuted for driving without due care and attention if they try to type in directions at the wheel.

Chief constable Anthony Bangham, the lead for roads policing on the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said: “Using a mobile phone while driving is incredibly dangerous and being distracted at the wheel can change lives for ever. Police will take robust action against those using a hand-held mobile phone illegally, and proposals to make the law clearer are welcome.”

Motoring organisation the AA welcomed the tighter legislation. Jack Cousens, head of roads policy, said: “Drivers should be focused on the road ahead and not the tweet or email that has just pinged to their phone.”

But he added: “Closing the loopholes are one thing; getting more cops in cars to actually catch people in the act will help deter drivers further.”

The move may disappoint campaigners who called for ministers to go further and ban the use of hands-free functions while driving. Last year the Commons transport select committee recommended that the government consider outlawing the use of hands-free phones at the wheel, saying that they too posed a risk.

James Bond filmmakers receive millions in UK tax credits, report finds

Thinktank questions why studio allowed to save millions despite tiny profits

Jamie Doward

Sun 18 Oct 2020 

 

Daniel Craig as James Bond in the yet-to-be-released No Time to Die. Photograph: YouTube

From Miss Moneypenny to Q, James Bond has long relied upon a series of government officials. Now it has emerged that Her Majesty’s most famous secret agent has also enjoyed the support of another British civil servant: the taxman.

A new report by the investigative thinktank, TaxWatch, suggests EON Productions, the London-based studio that makes the James Bond films, makes very little profit in the UK but has received tens of millions of pounds in tax credits.

Publicly available accounts reveal that Spectre, which came out in 2015, received £30m in tax credits, while the latest film, No Time To Die, whose release has been put back until next year because of the global pandemic, was handed £47m.

The total amount of UK tax credits EON received since the credits were introduced in 2007 is likely to be closer to the £120m mark. Leaked emails revealed that 2012’s Skyfall received £24m in tax credits, while TaxWatch calculates that Quantum of Solace (2008) would have received around £21m.

The postponement of No Time To Die – the 25th 007 blockbuster – was cited by the Cineworld chain as the major reason it recently decided to temporarily close its UK cinemas.

“With cinemas and theatres around the country closing, and cultural sector workers facing real hardship, you have to wonder whether handing over tens of millions of pounds to such a profitable franchise is the best use of public money,” said George Turner, director of TaxWatch.

For a film to receive tax credits it must be certified as “culturally British” by the British Film Institute.

But, then, few brands are as British as the 007 franchise which has generated some $16bn in revenues since it began. Daniel Craig memorably featured alongside the Queen in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.

While many parts of the films are shot abroad, production is centred at Pinewood Studios, near London. Editing and post-production work on Spectre was split between Pinewood and Soho in central London

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Cineworld in Stevenage, Hertfordshire: the company cited the delayed release of No Time to Die as a major reason for its decision to temporarily close its cinemas earlier this month. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

EON does not fund the Bond films, takes no financial risk, and has never held any rights to make the films since producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R “Cubby” Broccoli acquired the rights to Ian Fleming’s Bond novels and established the company in 1961. The following year, Broccoli and Saltzman’s wives, Dana and Jacqueline, created a company called Danjaq – an elision of their names – incorporated in Switzerland

Under the structure set up by the two men, EON would make the films in the UK and sell them to Danjaq. In the 1990s, Danjaq was incorporated in Delaware.

Bond’s political masters would prefer the spy was very much an exclusively British asset. In February 2016, Tory MP Mark Spencer said tax on the profits from the Bond movies “should be paid in this country, not all over the world”. Danjaq said in a statement: “All the income from the James Bond films received by EON and Danjaq is subject to tax in either the UK or the USA. None of the income is sheltered in a tax haven.”

EON states in its 2015 accounts that once the production of a film has been completed, “the film is sold for a price equal to the total cost of production less the amount received in respect of UK Film Tax Credits”.

Such an arrangement is legal and common in the film industry. TaxWatch suggests it means that little profit will be made in the UK – reducing the tax liability that will accrue. How much tax Bond pays abroad is unclear due to the structure of the franchise’s finances.

But it is clear that it is hugely profitable. In 2014, leaked emails, believed to have been obtained by North Korean agents who hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment, revealed that Skyfall, which grossed $1.1bn worldwide, made $232m in profit for distributors MGM and Sony. Danjaq earned $109m.

Spectre grossed $880m worldwide, excluding revenues generated from DVD and VOD sales.

Danjaq said: “Since the 1960s Danjaq has chosen to make the James Bond films in the UK through EON Productions, resulting in the investment of more than a billion dollars in the UK film industry, the employment of tens of thousands of people, and showcasing the talents of British people to the world.

“EON has utilised the tax credits to help fund the making of Bond films in the manner intended by the government. This has enabled the Bond films to be continued to be made in the UK to the benefit of the UK film industry.”

“Every company in receipt of subsidy argues that the public money they receive is necessary to keep jobs in the UK,” TaxWatch’s Turner said.

“The reality is that Bond has been produced in the UK for decades and many years before the film tax credit system was introduced. Is it really credible that Commander Bond would defect to the CIA?”

Alaska's new climate threat: tsunamis linked to melting permafrost

Scientists are warning of a link between rapid warming and landslides that could threaten towns and tourist attractions

Erin McKittrick
Sun 18 Oct 2020 
 

Research has found that over the last 30 years landslides in Alaska’s Glacier Bay correspond with the warmest years. Photograph: Nasa/Operation Icebridge handout/EPA

In Alaska and other high, cold places around the world, new research shows that mountains are collapsing as the permafrost that holds them together melts, threatening tsunamis if they fall into the sea.

Scientists are warning that populated areas and major tourist attractions are at risk.

One area of concern is a slope of the Barry Arm fjord in Alaska that overlooks a popular cruise ship route.

The Barry Arm slide began creeping early last century, sped up a decade ago, and was discovered this year using satellite photos. If it lets loose, the wave could hit any ships in the area and reach hundreds of meters up nearby mountains, swamping the popular tourist destination and crashing as high as 10 meters over the town of Whittier. Earlier this year, 14 geologists warned that a major slide was “possible” within a year, and “likely” within 20 years.

In 2015, a similar landslide, on a slope that had also crept for decades, created a tsunami that sheared off forests 193 meters up the slopes of Alaska’s Taan Fiord.

“When the climate changes,” said geologist Bretwood Higman, who has worked on Taan Fiord and Barry Arm, “the landscape takes time to adjust. If a glacier retreats really quickly it can catch the surrounding slopes by surprise – they might fail catastrophically instead of gradually adjusting.”

After examining 30 years of satellite photos, for instance, geologist Erin Bessette-Kirton has found that landslides in Alaska’s St Elias mountains and Glacier Bay correspond with the warmest years.

The great thaw: global heating upends life on Arctic permafrost – photo essay


Warming clearly leads to slides, but knowing just when those slides will release is a much harder problem. “We don’t have a good handle on the mechanism,” Bessette-Kirkton said. “We have correlations, but we don’t know the driving force. What conditions the landslide, and what triggers it?”

Adding to the problem, global heating has opened up water for landslides to fall in. A recent paper by Dan Shugar, a geomorphologist at the University of Calgary, shows that as glaciers have shrunk, glacial lakes have grown, ballooning 50% in both number and size in 18 years. In the ocean, fjords lengthen as ice retreats. Slopes that used to hang over ice now hang over water.

Over the past century, 10 of the 14 tallest tsunamis recorded happened in glaciated mountain areas. In 1958, a landslide into Alaska’s Lituya Bay created a 524-meter wave – the tallest ever recorded. In Alaska’s 1964 earthquake, most deaths were from tsunamis set off by underwater landslides.

To deal with the hazard, experts hope to predict when a slope is more likely to fail by installing sensors on the most dangerous slopes to measure the barely perceptible acceleration of creeping that may presage a slide.

‘Guns are a way to exercise power’: how the idea of overthrowing the government became mainstream
POLITICAL POWER GROWS 

FROM THE BARREL OF THE GUN 
MAO TZE TUNG

Josh Horwitz says the concept of a violent insurrection is at the heart of American gun culture; and that guns will be used to settle political disputes

Lois Beckett Sun 18 Oct 2020 US gun control
 

An armed protester stands at the Michigan capitol building in Lansing, Michigan, on 30 April. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Josh Horwitz has been an American gun control activist for nearly 30 years. In 2009, he co-wrote a book warning that the idea of armed revolt against the government was at the center of the US gun rights movement.

Now, after a year that has seen heavily armed men show up at state capitols in Virginia, Michigan, Idaho and elsewhere to confront Democratic lawmakers over gun control and coronavirus restrictions, more Americans are taking gun owners’ rhetoric about “tyrants” seriously. Some of the same armed protesters who showed up at Michigan’s state house and at a pro-gun rally this summer were charged last week with conspiring to kidnap Michigan’s governor and put her on trial for tyranny.

Other members of the “boogaloo” movement have allegedly murdered law enforcement officers in California and plotted acts of violence across the country in hopes of sparking a civil war.

Horowitz spoke to the Guardian about how mainstream the idea of insurrection has become in American politics, and why lawmakers have failed to challenge it for decades.

The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You argue in your book that the idea of violent insurrection against the American government is at the heart of American gun culture. What do you mean by that?

There’s a belief among some American gun owners that the second amendment is highly individualized and was placed in the constitution as an individual right to fight government tyranny. Therefore, each individual has the right to own whatever and however many weapons they want, free from any government interference. A licensing law or a universal background check law would mean the government knows who’s got a gun. If you believe there’s an individual right to insurrection, you can’t have any gun laws.

The drive to purchase semi-automatic assault weapons, like AR-15s, those weapons are often not purchased for self-defense, but for fear of government tyranny.
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When the NRA says, “Vote Freedom First”, it’s not “Vote self-defense first”. They mean you get to decide when the government becomes tyrannical. The problem is that one person’s tyranny is another’s universal healthcare bill.

Is this concept of “insurrection” as the reason Americans should have unrestricted gun rights a very fringe idea?

It’s not every gun owner. But this movement is way larger than people think. And guns are now seen by a large portion of that community as a tool for political dissent.

When National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre says things like, “The guys with the guns make the rules”, or politicians and elected officials say, “We will rely on second amendment remedies”, what they mean is that people with guns will, in fact, set the political agenda and settle political disputes. That is a profoundly undemocratic idea. As Abe Lincoln famously said, “Any appeal from the ballot box to the bullet box must fail.” We are a country based on the rule of law. Guns don’t make you a super citizen with the ability to make special rules or have special political influence because you happen to be armed.


Guns don’t make you a super citizen with the ability to make special rules or have special political influence because you happen to be armed

Where does this “insurrectionary idea” come from? When did it take hold?
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The idea that individuals have the right to fight against tyranny is as old as the republic. But you can trace the modern incarnation of this principle to the early 1990s, and the rise of the militia movement during Bill Clinton’s presidency, when national gun violence prevention laws, including the assault weapons ban and background checks, were instituted. There’s a path from Ruby Ridge and Waco [deadly standoffs between citizens and federal agents, both involving illegal gun charges] to the Oklahoma City bombing. The Michigan militia is where Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, got this start. He was making his living at gun shows. He bought fully into the gun rights agenda, and he ended up killing a lot of kids. I started to pick up the resurgence of this idea in the mid-2000s, at the end of Bush’s presidency and the beginning of Obama’s presidency.

How does racism play into this idea of “insurrection” and its place in US politics?

There is a big racial element to this. White men, especially, are feeling that the political reins of power are pulling away from them, and their grip on power is falling away. Guns are a way to exercise power, let’s face it. Power over policy. Power over people.

You first published Guns, Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea in 2009. What kind of response did it get?

People didn’t react the way that I hoped, by saying: this is going to be a big deal unless we move forcefully to oppose it. Instead, a lot of elected officials, including a lot of Democratic elected officials, acquiesced to the idea of an insurrectionary second amendment. People running for president in 2004 and 2008 would use lines like, “The second amendment isn’t for hunting. It has to do with protecting ourselves, our homes, our families and our country from tyranny.” Nobody followed up with: “What do you mean? You think it’s OK to shoot politicians?”

This year, we saw the Michigan legislature taken over, the Idaho legislature taken over, and it’s like – there’s no opprobrium. There’s a sort of, “boys will be boys” response.

Why has politicians’ response to rhetoric about violent revolt been so muted?

I think there’s the idea that if this really happened, the US army would just mow these people down. “Oh, it’d be suicide if they did that.” But the US military should not be deployed in civilian places to begin with. What are we going to do, have tanks on our own soil? We’re not going to do that. The other thing is that this movement is really well armed. There’s a lot of firepower in civilian hands: .50 caliber sniper rifles, AR-15s, AK-47s.

If they really did it, it would be very, very complicated.
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How significant are the numbers of US military members and police who personally believe in this insurrectionist idea themselves? This year, US military veterans and active duty service members have been charged in a number of violent plots, including some that were allegedly designed to spark a civil war.

There are some elements of law enforcement that are sympathetic to this. A lot are not, especially those in leadership. I have friends in the military, and, to many of them, this idea is complete anathema. But a lot of the demographics in the military are young white men who like guns. I do think the vast majority of law enforcement and the military will do their duty, but that doesn’t mean that everyone will.

What shifts have you seen since 2009 in how insurrectionism is playing out?

There’s been a huge change in the last four years, since Trump came to power. He doesn’t condemn violence. What he said about Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer was awful. When he’s asked about a peaceful transition of power and he hedges, I believe it’s because he thinks he has a private militia that will back him up.

The insurrectionist idea is about fighting government tyranny, but it would be especially dangerous if it became in service of particular officials, and that’s what you’re seeing now.

What’s also changed: the amount of weapons that the boys have these days is obscene. The number of AR-15s and high-capacity magazines and assault weapons they have should scare anybody.

Are you worried that there could be a major insurrection against the US government?

Yes.

My fear is that there will be violence if the election is contested, or if it looks like Trump’s losing. I worry that there will be efforts at intimidating election officials and voters.

I’ve always been concerned about the one-off person, the lone wolf who takes these ideas to the max. I am much more concerned now about organized efforts to subvert elections, democratic power, courts.


I am much more concerned now about organized efforts to subvert elections, democratic power, courts

You issued a report focused on how states can ban gun-carrying at polling places. Are you concerned about what could happen on election day itself?
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I don’t think there’s going to be widespread violence at the polls. I think there will be places where people with guns will attempt to intimidate voters, but not by shooting or anything like that, and I think those places will be relatively rare. It’s really important that each polling place knows what their rights are, but I think there’s been enough time to get them up to speed. I don’t want people to be scared: the ultimate response to the insurrectionary second amendment is to go vote.

What do you think should be done now in response to all of this public conversation about insurrection?

Number one: there needs to be a clear public response, that people who exercise this “right” are not patriots, but traitors.

The second piece is a policy response. We need to limit access to assault weapons. As soon as legislatures open in 2021, they should ban guns at polling places. I would like to see them banning open carry everywhere. Peaceful protesters are now routinely intimidated by armed insurrectionists. The way they intimidate people is by openly carrying weapons. We have proved we can’t handle that as a society.

And people who have the bully pulpit need to be careful not to endorse the idea of an insurrectionary second amendment. Even if you believe in an individual right to own a firearm, the purpose of that right cannot be to kill government officials.

Have you seen any tipping point in how Democratic politicians are now responding to this kind of insurrectionist rhetoric?

Let me be completely clear: the biggest problem is Republican elected officials, and the Republican who consistently use the insurrectionary idea and cheer on this type of behavior. While I wish Democrats would stand up and not just acquiesce, the Republican party has bought into a “second amendment remedies” idea that is now a danger, a grave danger, to America.

The Republican elected officials in Virginia thought the gun rights march on the state capitol was the greatest thing since sliced bread. There are plenty of Republican officials who just think this is great.

Dying birds and the fires: scientists work to unravel a great mystery

A flock of birds in Oakland, California, where smoke from wildfires turned the sky blood orange this autumn. Photograph: MediaNews Group/The Mercury News/Getty Images

Nobody knowns precisely how wildfire smoke affects birds’ health and migratory patterns. Now, citizen birdwatchers are stepping in

by Kari Paul in Oakland Sun 18 Oct 2020 

The yellow Townsend Warbler lay lifeless on the gravel ground near Grant county, New Mexico, the eyes in its yellow-striped head closed, its black feathery underbelly exposed.

Just days before, the migrating bird – weighing 10 ounces, or the equivalent of two nickels – might have been as far north as Alaska. But it met an untimely demise in the American south-west, with thousands of miles still to go before reaching Central America, its destination for the winter.

The warbler is one of hundreds of thousands of birds that have recently turned up disoriented or dead across the region, where ornithologists have described birds “falling from the sky”.

The mass die-off has been tentatively attributed to the historic wildfires across California, Oregon and Washington in recent months, which may have forced birds to rush their migration. But scientists do not know for sure – in part because nobody knows precisely how wildfire smoke affects birds.

A photo of the dead warbler was uploaded to iNaturalist, a crowd-sourced app used to identify plants and animals, as part of the Southwest Avian Mortality Project, a collaboration between New Mexico State University and others that invited users to crowd-source information about the die-off. The project has now logged more than 1,000 observed dead birds, encompassing 194 species – data that is being shared with the researchers to better understand what led to such a major mortality event.

“For really solid science, it is good to have long-term data trends,” said Allison Salas, a researcher who helped establish the project. “But with increasing changes to climate and rising temperatures, we do not have enough time to collect the data – things are changing faster than we can keep up with.”
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This sort of platform, and the citizen birdwatchers who populate them, have become a critical tool for scientists trying to unravel the mysteries at the intersection of birds, wildfires and climate change.

“There are many more citizen scientists distributed in diverse arrays than there are professional scientists or wildlife rehabilitators,” said Andrew Farnsworth, a senior research associate at Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the institute that runs eBird, a popular app for logging bird sightings.

“The power of eyes in many places is huge.”

A physiological mystery

Rodney Siegel is the executive director of the Institute for Bird Populations, a non-profit group that works with professional scientists and amateur naturalists to monitor bird populations for conservation. He said that while scientists believe that birds, like humans and other animals, are susceptible to the effects of smoke, “there is still a lot we don’t know”.

“We don’t have a ton of information on the immediate, direct effects of smoke and wildfire on individuals,” he said.

When it comes to the effect of wildfire smoke on birds, ‘there is still a lot we don’t know’, says scientist Rodney Siegel. Photograph: Mark Blinch/Reuters

It may seem unbelievable that this question about one of the most ancient creatures on Earth remains unanswered, but there are several good reasons, Siegel said. For one, it is difficult to properly survey the before and after effects of fire when we rarely know in advance where the next wildfire will emerge. And, of course, because birds can fly, they are not trapped in smoke-filled areas as often as other species.

“It probably hasn’t been addressed a whole lot by scientists yet because, unlike a lot of other wildlife, birds can escape fire and smoke relatively readily,” Siegel said.

The power of eyes in many places is huge Andrew Farnsworth, researcher

But the ability to escape is diminishing. In the case of the recent fires on the west coast, there were few places birds could have traveled without smoke. Hazardous air quality choked the majority of the west for weeks, with smoke rising thousands of feet into the atmosphere, turning the skies orange. In early September, the growing plume from historic wildfires could be seen from space and eventually made its way to the skies over the east coast.

“These enormous smoke plumes are harder to escape than those from smaller fires that have been more typical for the last century,” Siegel said. “This is a really unusual phenomenon without a lot of precedent – and it is unknown how that might affect birds.”

It’s important to note that not all fire is bad for birds, he added. California is home to more than 400 species of birds, making it one of the country’s most diverse states in terms of wildlife. Many ecological systems and the birds that inhabit them thrive in the aftermath of small fires. Some like the lazuli bunting, known as a “fire-following” species, have even evolved to thrive in the aftermath of fire events. This bolsters the theory that smaller, less severe fires could be good for wildlife long-term.
Some theories

A leading theory behind the south-west die-off is that widespread smoke pollution may have forced birds to start migration sooner than expected, said Roger J Lederer, who taught ornithology and ecology at the California State University, Chico, and has written several books about birds and their behavior.

“Most of the birds we saw dying were migratory; migration had just started and they were trying to flee the smoke-filled areas but couldn’t find any food,” he said. “It wasn’t the physiological effects of smoke necessarily, they just starved to death.”

Beyond the effects of smoke on migration patterns, the rise of megafires is also drawing unprecedented attention to the effects smoke may have on a bird’s delicate breathing.

They were trying to flee the smoke-filled areas but couldn’t find any food Roger J Lederer, ornithologist

Birds and their lungs are certainly affected by smoke, Lederer said, even if we don’t know exactly how. Most of us have heard the phrase “canary in a coalmine”, which comes from the fact that birds are particularly sensitive to toxins in the air. Lederer has also heard many reports of pet birds dying due to different kinds of fumes in the home.

The sensitivity could have something to do with birds’ unique respiratory system. While humans and other mammals use their diaphragm to inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, birds possess a far more efficient system, essentially inhaling and exhaling at the same time. This allows them to get enough oxygen to fuel near-constant activity and to breathe at much higher altitudes than mammals.

To do this, birds have tube-like structures called parabronchi, similar to human alveoli in the lungs, which are covered with sacs and capillaries for gas exchange. And as in humans, smoke damage can burst those bubbles, creating less surface area to exchange oxygen and making it more difficult to breathe.

“This is unprecedented – there have been fires for years and years but this is the first year everyone is paying attention to the impact on birds,” Lederer said.

 

Scientists say that increasingly intense wildfires have put unprecedented attention on the impact to birds. Photograph: André Penner/AP

Community scientists fill in the gaps

As scientists at New Mexico State University began to recognize the size and scale of the mass bird die off this year, they invited members of the public to log bird deaths on iNaturalist.

The format is collaborative: one person can upload a photo of a flower or animal, and more experienced naturalists can comment to confirm what it is. The data is all geotagged when uploaded, giving scientists details about locations.

“There are limitations in science – we can’t be in every place all the time,” Salas said. “Being able to incorporate a standardized way of collecting data from everybody across the country or the world is extremely helpful.”

Researchers are increasingly relying on data collected by citizen scientists and birdwatchers to better understand the effects of climate change, including intensifying wildfires, on bird populations, Salas said.

“Citizen science or community projects are great because they are real time, they are happening in the moment, and it allows us to kind of keep up with everything that’s going on and still be able to document it over time,” she said.

One of the most popular tools for the average birder is eBird, an app created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology alongside the National Audubon society, to crowdsource data on the locations and numbers of bird populations globally.

In recent years it has recorded as many as 100m bird observations per year. Citizen data is “invaluable” for tracking where, when, what, and how many birds are present in a particular area, said Andrew Farnsworth, who works there. “Leveraging many sources of information is critical.”


Birding is particularly amenable to new and amateur naturalists, said Lederer. Crowdsourced data from people of all skill levels is helpful to scientists who “just don’t have enough manpower”, he said, especially as climate change and its effects become more widespread.

“People are paying attention now more than ever, which is a good thing. Until we know what is happening, I’m not sure we can do anything about it.”