How Turkey’s energy, agricultural policies depopulated Kurdish-majority regions (Part 1)
 

Maaz İbrahimoğlu
Dec 06 2020 
http://ahval.co/en-102089

The Kurdish issue in Turkey has always been multi-faceted, with many seemingly unrelated areas affected by the same underlying cause. Urban poverty, declining biodiversity, severe income inequality, food prices soaring – many more issues can be traced back to the same roots.

Kurds in rural areas were forced to migrate to city centres en masse during the height of Turkey’s fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the 1990s. Various depopulation policies were utilised in Kurdish-majority areas, including the burning of forests and a several thousand Kurdish villages, construction of many small-scale, often quite energy-inefficient, dams and power plants on rivers, declaration of special security zones and construction of giant border walls, among others.

Millions of Kurds were deprived of their livelihoods when the land they both cultivated and used for their livestock was changed and made unusable. People with rural and agricultural skills, fluent in another language, ended up in class and linguistic conflicts in Turkey’s decidedly non-Kurdish western urban environments.

In this two-piece article, Zozan Pehlivan, an environmental historian and a professor at the University of Minnesota, tells Ahval about Turkey’s depopulation and environmental policies, the ‘ecological state apparatuses’, and how the Kurdish people and language have been affected.

The following are Pehlivan’s remarks from the interview, edited for clarity and gathered under separate headers:


The GAP

Kurds in rural areas have been experiencing more economic hardship;m the land can sustain less and less people every day. But, physically speaking, there is in fact more farmland in Kurdish-majority areas now due to the efforts of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), a network of hydroelectric dams and irrigation projects that was the major accelerant for development as it was posed in the 1970s. More lands can be cultivated to the north of Lake Van, in the provinces of Malatya, Gaziantep, Mardin and Şırnak.

More pastures have been converted into irrigated farmlands, but ancestral farmlands around the thousands of villages that were either evacuated or burned down, or both, by state forces in the 1990s have not been utilised, and a whole economy centred around those fields that included millions of livestock has disappeared, translating into a far-reaching practice of impoverishment by the state.

There are frequent power outages in the region, despite the construction of hydroelectric dams regulating virtually every drop of running water in the region and the numerous biomass power plants that have been built. In addition to the outages, forest fires and forced expropriation of property make up a practice of dispossession.

We teach it differently at schools, but Turkey is in reality a very energy-poor country. As such, the state considers any and all exploitation of existing resources to be fair game. The GAP’s main aims were to generate more energy and encourage agriculture-based growth in the region, but what it did only manage to do was to create cheap electricity for the western part of the country.

In a region that is home to the two largest natural water resources, the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, hundreds of thousands of people travel away from home to work elsewhere in the country as seasonal agricultural workers. It must be acknowledged that this phenomenon could have been avoided.

The number of seasonal workers travelling out of the Kurdish-majority regions to elsewhere in Turkey is inversely proportional to the amount of land opened for agriculture. That means the rural working classes travel westward to be subjected to terrifying labour exploitation, while landowners and their international partners are gifted vast swathes of land for industrial farming in the east. The GAP, under these conditions, will never create prosperity or welfare in the region.


The state constructed dams as part of the GAP, which drowned whole villages, towns and valleys, as well as the collective memory of the people, and their social, political, emotional ties to the land and their sense of belonging. The GAP brought historicide, trauma and ecological disasters to the region. The water has transformed everything, in possibly the worst way.

Depopulation

Turkey’s depopulation policies for Kurdish-majority regions go back to the second half of the 1980s. The government’s main motivation was to make the rural population migrate into cities, and of course this in itself had various social, economic and political motivations.

One of the main motivations in the 1990s was to cut off the socio-economic resources the Kurdish movement had in rural areas. Because members of the PKK were young people from surrounding villages, there was a certain familiarity with them to begin with among the law-abiding residents. They could disappear among villagers and obtain resources they needed, whether by kindness or threat, if necessary.

In the end, these efforts resulted in the evacuation or burning down, or both, of 2,000 to 3,000 villages in the region, depending on who is keeping track. Many villages were evacuated in extremely short notice, with people often given mere hours to pack up and leave.

As such, hundreds of thousands of people and millions of livestock were displaced and lost their homes.

Several million villagers exiled from their lands ended up in large cities in the rest of the country: in southern agricultural centres like Adana and Mersin, northwestern industrial hubs like Bursa and Izmit, commerce- and manufacturing-rich Izmir in the west and of course Istanbul, the megacity.

Many people were impoverished, but some made golden opportunities out of their suffering. Many riches were built on the dispossession of millions of rural Kurds.

The matter has not been properly studied in Turkey’s academia yet. Some scholars who tried have faced obstacles, including terrorism charges in several cases, but mostly the atmosphere just did not allow for it.

The village evacuations constituted the first and most extensive pillar of the depopulation policies for the region, which in themselves were quite a dynamic and ever-changing mechanism. Such policies in the 1990s were not the same as the post-2000s policies that emerged during and after the 2013-2015 peace process. There are some similarities to the 1990s in the current forest fires that resulted in depopulation, but they differ significantly in terms of ideology and methodology.

Back in the 1990s, the fundamental goal was the wholesale exile of the rural population. What we witnessed this summer in Şırnak province’s Cudi and Besta regions and in Van province was the state turning concerns over security and a psychology of fear targeting villagers who insist on staying in their rural homes into a political apparatus over its monopoly on violence.

Now the approach has shifted to restricting access to economic resources or even eliminating it altogether, rather than all-out destruction.

Restricted access to forests, meadows or water sources will infinitely impede the livelihood of people who rely on these resources. Herders will have fewer animals because they can’t take them to graze and have less to eat themselves because there is lower diversity and quantity of food to go around. Animals will lose their health because they are no longer in open air, and their increased vulnerability to disease will make it easier for any negative event to wipe out the herd – a devastating loss for villagers.


The methodological and ideological differences are perfectly encapsulated in the tragedy that is the recent dropping of villagers off a military helicopter in Van.

MONTREAL

Scaled-back, virtual ceremonies to mark 31st anniversary of Polytechnique killings

MONTREAL — The anniversary of the attack that cut short the lives of 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique has become a day to reflect and call for action to end gender-based violence, but this year those moments will largely take place alone rather than in groups.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Most of the traditional events, including wreath-layings, speeches and a ceremony to project beams of light into the sky from the Mount Royal lookout, will proceed either virtually or without crowds in what one survivor of the shooting says is sure to be a "difficult" year.

"There’s a lot of human warmth in my life surrounding Dec. 6, a lot of emotions linked to those gatherings, and this year it's a lot cooler," said Nathalie Provost, who was shot four times when a gunman stormed Ecole Polytechnique in 1989.

Fourteen women, many of them engineering students, were killed and more than a dozen people were injured in an attack motivated by the gunman's hatred towards women.

Provost, spokeswoman for gun control group PolySeSouvient, said the efforts to remember the event have gone on, even though health regulations mean people can't congregate in-person.

Earlier this week, a $30,000 scholarship known as the Order of the White Rose was presented to Cree student Brielle Chanae Thorsen, who Provost describes as an "amazing young woman" and engineering student.

And on Sunday at noon, Provost will join a panel of speakers at a park named in honour of the women for a commemoration that will be broadcast online.

But Provost fears participation may be lower this year, noting people are tired of staring at screens.

"Gatherings are important for mourning and for commemoration, and now we’re trying to do them virtually, and my impression is that it’s much harder to achieve," she said.

This diminished participation may come at a time when advocates say the issue of gender-based violence is more urgent than ever.

Elisabeth Fluet-Asselin, a spokeswoman for the Quebec Women's Federation, said the pandemic has led to increased demand for women's shelter space, difficulty in accessing services, and mental health struggles brought on by isolation. She said some groups are particularly affected, including Indigenous women, members of the LGBTQ community, women with disabilities and those in prison.

In addition to a Sunday ceremony at a Montreal park, the federation has organized a number of virtual events as part of its 12 days of action, including podcasts, videos, panel discussions, and art and poetry events -- all designed to highlight and denounce the systemic nature of gender-based violence.

"Violence against women is not just physical, domestic, or sexual, there are lots of other kinds and we can’t forget them, especially in the current context," Fluet-Asselin said in an interview.

Provost, for her part, worries about a rise in online abuse spread on social media, which she said can lead to real, violent consequences.

Over the years, Provost said her own emotions surrounding what happened to her during the massacre tend to ebb and flow.

This year, she mostly feels tired, and frustrated at the slow pace of change when it comes to gun control.

Provost said she was encouraged by a previously announced federal plan to ban some 1,500 types of assault-style firearms. But she said there's still much she'd like to see, including a ban on handguns, stronger tools for police to intervene in so-called "red flag" situations, and action to address the guns currently in circulation.

Eventually, she hopes to turn the page on the shooting, and let the anniversary become a day of quiet remembrance. Instead, she says the opposite seems to be happening as victims of shootings in Toronto, Quebec City and Nova Scotia add their voices to those calling for change.

"We don’t need any more commemorations," she said.

"We don’t want to create new ones. We want it to stop."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 5, 2020

Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press

The Real Crime In Canada

A REPRINT

The Real Crime In Canada: Is violence against women. Today is Dec. 6 and we remember the massacre of women Engineering students in Montreal by Mark Lapine. 

The Real Crime In Canada  

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Is violence against women. Today is Dec. 6 and we remember the massacre of women Engineering students in Montreal by Mark Lapine. And yet in Canada violence against women has not declined, while other forms of violent crime has, including crime linked to drugs. Nurses remember victims of abuse, call for end of violence against women Which makes Harpers get tough on crime announcement on the weekend as misplaced as they get.

"I want to talk about the values of a peaceful, orderly and safe society, and a problem none of the other parties seem to care about -- the problem of crime and the threat it poses to our families and our communities," Harper said at a recreation centre in Burnaby, B.C.

Yep well instead of focusing on the symptoms like drugs or guns, we must look at the culture we live in that continues to allow for domestic violence, sexual assault, violence against women.

"We've got to get to the root causes of crime -- despair, poverty, addiction -- in our communities," Layton said during a campaign stop in Vancouver."That means we've got to put an equal emphasis on the prevention of crime in the first place, as we put on dealing with the results of crime at the end of the day."

Harper would bring in draconian measures that will only lead to a growth in the prison industrial complex, as has occured in the U.S. The Liberals responded after Dec. 6 with tougher gun laws and the billion dollar boondoogle of the Firearms registry, which has not reduced gun crimes but has criminalized gun owners. Nope neither of these approaches will work, until we begin to actually teach about human relationships in our schools.

We can no longer leave this up to the dysfunctional patriarchical families and churches to teach moral and character education on an adhoc basis, or on the basis of patriarchical beliefs that women are the property of their husbands to with as they will. It's time to address the real issues around the crimes against women and children which is the fact that in our society they are still seen as the property of their husbands/fathers, and what happens in the home is not the concern of society.

Such is also the ideology of the Conservatives daycare announcements, that society should not provide early childhood education, rather parents should do this or choose who does it. We don't allow this for children aged 5 and up who HAVE to go to school, nor should we continue to allow it for younger children. We are socially disadvantaging them.

The conservatives disadvantage working mothers, that's a crime, by denying them access to publicly funded and regulated day care. Instead they complain of the Nanny State will funding tax breaks for nannies. Nannies who are from the Phillipines and are exploited in the homes of the rich, because as indentured servants they have no rights, and no one to monitor their working conditions. Again the exploitation of women for the sacred family of patriarchy.

Women are still fired for getting pregnant in some workplaces, including Catholic Schools if they are unwed. And as more women enter the workforce, and remain the primary care givers for children and the elderly, the workplace has yet to meet their needs with onsite daycare. The rare exception, such as the CIBC, gets an innovative workplace award from the Conference Board of Canada, when this should be the norm not the exceptional.

Yes we have crime in society much of it based upon the failure of the nuclear patriarchial family to meet its social obligations, because it is dysfunctional as Wilhem Reich correctly opined. When the right reacts to youth crime, they call for getting tough on hoodlums, tough love. But many of those committing these crimes come from broken homes with little love in the first place. Nor did our social institutions create a home like atmosphere for them, instead shoveling them through agencies and schools until they got expelled from the 'system' with no future.

Such as Mark Lapine who 16 years ago took his frustrations out on women whom he blamed for his low self esteem as a patriarch in training. His upbringing in a single mother family, isolated ,from the community in modern urban Montreal, in his own little world, all this contributed to his madness. Being a patriarch in the making he had no male role model in his own world or in ours. So for his own personal psychological reasons he was going to go out and prove to the world he was a man. And to do so as society around him told him he did it by taking a woman, or in this case women, literally.

His crime was not the gun he used, or his hatred of women, his crime was that of being a patriarch in the making rather than a human being in the making.
His crime was seeking power over others, a crime that politicians, priests and bosses practice everyday.

"We see that the compass of the emotional plague coincides approximately
with the broad compass of social abuse, which has always been and still is
combatted by every social freedom movement. With some qualifications, it can
be said that the sphere of the emotional plague coincides with that of
"political reaction" and perhaps even with the principle of politics in
general. This would hold true, however, only if the basic principle of all
politics, namely thirst for power and special prerogatives, were carried
over into those spheres of life which we do not think of as political in the
usual sense of the word."

"Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly, and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as to primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power."

The Emotional Plague /Listen Little Man by Wilhelm Reich

Lapines crime which so shocked us, is our crime, for society made him the criminal he was as it does all criminals. Locking them away and throwing away the key does not address the real nature or source of crime; the social structure of the authoritarian patriarchical society. It merely reinforces it.

Which is why Harper and the right wing can pass all the laws they want, it will never reduce crime. It is the very reactionary politics that continues to promote the emotional plague that is the social conditioning of patriarchical capitalism.

In Quebec today violent crime including violence against women has decreased, in this largely social democratic country, one that has a fully functioning public day care system. In Alberta on the other hand, home of Harper and the most right wing free market government in Canada, violent crime and violence against women is the highest in Canada. That is the real crime.

For Reich, a key question was: Why did people support the Nazis? Reich stated that he found that several things went together in Nazi Germany:

• Strong paternal authority
• Sexual repressiveness
• authoritarian personalities
• reactional political ideologies

Economically the Nazi program was not in the interest of lower middle class people of Germany, but they gave their support to it. Reich asked, What psychological reason could be found that would make the fascist ideology compelling to this group of people?

His answer was: The combination of authority and rebellion. Reich said the sons would especially admire an authoritarian person above them who was also rebellious. (Like Hitler and Stalin) That way they could fulfill the desire to rebel but with subservience. This was a submission that came with some real resentment.

FAMILY AND WORK. Reich noticed that the family structure and work structure in the German lower middle class overlapped. In their small farms and businesses, both the family authority and the work authority were the same person.In other cases, if you go off to work you're going to work somewhere else. But if you're in a situation where you're working together within the family, the father's capacity to ensure his authority, to have a kind of totalitarian state within the home, goes way up.

• Especially in such situations, fathers are better able to sexually repress their sons. to it. Reich was apparently the first to look at this. Later Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson & Sanford studied this dynamic in much more detail in their social psychological classic, Still later, Milton Rokeach continued this line of inquiry in
So the sons develop a subservient attitude toward authority and a stronger identification with the father, which transfers to other authorities. They develop an authoritarian personality structure. A very strong identification with the authority who is above you and a subservience The Authoritarian Personality. Dogmatism.
• The authoritarian agenda is largely unconscious. People are almost totally unconscious of what they are doing, The parents carry out the intentions of authoritarian society. The authoritarian parent finds meaning through identification with a strong leader and nation. This explains why people get so caught up in their nation "being Number 1."
• Reich held that most of our inner experience has been cut off along with our sexuality, so that "being number 1" is where people of whom this is so find meaning in life.

Reich's explanation: You also get the Oedipus complex from this kind of situation. Sexual desires naturally urge a person to enter into all kinds of relations with the world, and to enter into close contact with others in a variety of forms. If these urges arep reressed, they can only express themselves in the narrow confines of the family. referred to "the emotional hothouse of the family."THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX.Karen Horney 

" The "safeguarding of the family," held Reich, customariily refrers to the male-dominated authoritarian and large family. This, he declared, "is the first cultural precept of every reactionary ideology." 'FAMILY VALUES

Rather than support a variety of family forms, reactionary ideologies bolster the particular form that has an authoritarian male at the head. This sets people up to go for politically conservative ideologies.

Jennifer Stone, a contemporary thinker, declares, "Always remember, 'family values' is a code-word for male supremacy."

One cross-cultural study found that male dominance in the sultural structure was highly correlated with aggression.

A feminist psychoanalyst, Nancy Chodow, maintains that no matter what you say about sex roles, if mother does all the childcare, it will perpetuate sex roles of traditional patriarchal society.

UK

NHS preparing for 'largest scale vaccination campaign' in UK history

6 December 2020, 

The vaccine will be rolled out on Tuesday in England. Picture: PA  
DELIVERED BY DALEKS


By Maddie Goodfellow@MaddieGoodfell2

NHS hospitals are preparing to start the first phase of the "largest scale vaccination campaign" in UK history.

The first Covid-19 vaccines will arrive at hospitals by Monday, with the first jabs being administered on Tuesday.


GP surgeries in England have also been told to start staffing Covid-19 vaccine centres by 14 December.

Professor Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, said: "Despite the huge complexities, hospitals will kickstart the first phase of the largest scale vaccination campaign in our country's history from Tuesday.

"The NHS has a strong record of delivering large-scale vaccination programmes - from the flu jab, HPV vaccine and lifesaving MMR jabs - hardworking staff will once again rise to the challenge to protect the most vulnerable people from this awful disease."


Health Secretary Matt Hancock told The Sunday Telegraph that he "can't wait" to get rid of the three-tier coronavirus restrictions and "get back to living by mutual respect and personal responsibility, not laws set in parliament".

When asked if the distribution of the vaccine beginning this week could mean restrictions end sooner, he said: "Yes, it will."

He added: "There's no doubt that having the vaccine early... will bring forward the moment when we can get rid of these blasted restrictions but until then we have got to follow them."

Beate Kampmann on rollout of vaccine
LBC Play Video

It comes as the first pictures have been released of freezers packed with coronavirus vaccines in the UK, as each of the four nations prepares to start administering the jabs next week.

Images from Public Health England show specialist Covid-19 vaccine freezers lined up, containing Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine doses awaiting distribution to the NHS.

The pictures were taken at a secure location in England and do not include any images of the vaccine vials due to the problems associated with opening the packaging.

The vaccine needs storage temperatures of minus 70C to minus 80C.

Preparations are under way to roll out the vaccine from as early as Tuesday in what has been described as "one of the greatest challenges the NHS has ever faced".


MHRA chief tells LBC that if she could she would be first in line for vaccine
Play Video

The are a number of operational and logistical steps that need to happen before the vaccine can be administered to the public.

The distribution of vaccine across the UK is being undertaken by Public Health England and the NHS in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland through systems specially adapted from those used for the national immunisation programmes.

So far, Pfizer has dispatched initial volumes of vaccine from Belgium which has arrived at secure locations in the UK.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said this is followed by a "post-delivery quality assurance process" to ensure the vaccine's quality and integrity has been maintained through transit.

This process, which could take 12-24 hours, is carried out by the specialist medical logistics company, and relies upon information on the shipment temperature data being supplied by Pfizer.

Over the following few days, each box needs to be opened and unpacked manually, and temperature data has to be downloaded from each box, the DHSC said.

There are five packs of 975 doses per box, and only sites with the necessary MHRA licence can split the vaccine packs.

Once all checks are complete, the vaccine will be made available to order by authorised sites in the NHS, with around 50 sites in England so far.

The DHSC pointed out that delivering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is complex due to it needing to be stored at very cold temperatures and moved carefully, so it will at first will be administered from hospital hubs.

Defrosting the vaccine takes a few hours and then additional time is required to prepare the vaccine for administering.

The DHSC said more than 1,000 local vaccination centres, operated by groups of GPs, will also come online shortly and these will be increased as more vaccines come into the country.

Stage one of the phased rollout of the vaccine will begin when it has been distributed.

"Once we get more vaccine and are able to split the large packs down, we will be able to do both bigger vaccination centres and smaller arrangements through local pharmacies," the DHSC said.

CALGARY COMMENTARY: We need our TORY political leaders to denounce anti-vaccine nonsense 

© Siphiwe Sibeko/Pool via AP FILE - In this Wednesday, June 24, 2020 file photo, a volunteer receives an injection at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, Johannesburg. This is part of Africa's first participation in a COVID-19 vaccine trial developed at the University of Oxford in Britain in conjunction with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. (Siphiwe Sibeko/Pool via AP)

It obviously remains to be seen just how timely Canadians’ access to coronavirus vaccines will be. All the political spin will be a moot point either way once we have firm dates and once we have vaccines rolled out — and sleeves rolled up — across the country.

The opposition Conservatives have raised concerns about whether the government has acted swiftly enough in ensuring that Canada will be near the front of the line. Conservative premiers like Jason Kenney and Doug Ford seem more confident about the prospect of initial doses arriving in early January. The Trudeau government, of course, insists that everything is and will be just fine.

So while it’s too early to judge whether Conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s pessimism is misplaced, his concern is at least rooted in a recognition of the importance of vaccination and, more specifically, a recognition that we need widespread vaccination to help bring this pandemic to an end.

It is obviously in O’Toole’s own political interest that his message not be undermined by anyone in his party and there’s a broader obligation that O’Toole not allow anyone in his party to undermine important public health initiatives, including and especially vaccination.

There was therefore a disappointing lack of leadership on display this week from O’Toole in the face of a disturbing petition sponsored in the House of Commons by troublesome Conservative MP Derek Sloan.

The petition claims that vaccines are “bypassing proper safety protocols” and equates them to “human experimentation.” That’s absurd, of course, and it’s the sort of rhetoric that elected officials should be denouncing and debunking, not embracing.

For his part, Sloan claims that he sponsors petitions that reflect the concerns his constituents have. However, this petition did not originate in his riding. Moreover, Sloan even claimed that the petition raised “some good points.”

There was no obligation on Sloan or any other MP to sponsor such a petition. I’m sure Sloan would be much less inclined to back a petition denouncing him as an embarrassment and demanding his resignation. That he would choose to give this nonsense a platform is on him, and his constituents can judge their elected representative for themselves.

But there’s also nothing that obligates the leader of the party to remain silent. It’s O’Toole’s decision as to what views he’s prepared to tolerate within his caucus, but if MPs are free to voice their opinions then surely that includes the leader, too.

Yet on this matter, O’Toole chose to bite his tongue. And that silence speaks volumes.

Not only did O’Toole not volunteer a response, he very deliberately avoided answering direct questions on the matter. When asked by reporters about Sloan and the petition, O’Toole simply fell back on his talking points about the government and its vaccination plans. Well, if we were to take this ridiculous petition at face value, then there’d be no faulting the government for foot-dragging when it comes to vaccines that are being irresponsibly rushed for presumably sinister purposes. That alone should give O’Toole a reason to publicly denounce this.

But imagine for a moment if O’Toole’s concerns and criticisms of the government were being undermined by a Conservative MP who was publicly praising the Liberals on this issue. Does anyone really think that O’Toole would refrain from commenting or refrain from publicly disagreeing with that MP?

It’s not the first time Sloan has embarrassed his party and it probably won’t be the last. It’s hard to see what’s gained by allowing him to remain in caucus. But even if O’Toole isn’t inclined to give Sloan the boot, he can certainly make it clear that he rejects the ideas expressed in the petition and that he would vehemently disagree with any MP who would give oxygen to those sorts of ideas.

The development of vaccines to target this novel coronavirus has been a remarkable story of scientific and medical ingenuity. Obviously, there is still a rigorous review process and high standards for approval, as there should be. We need responsible political leaders to speak to these facts, not to pander to the cult of pseudoscience.

Rob Breakenridge is host of 'Afternoons with Rob Breakenridge' on Global News Radio 770 Calgary and a commentator for Global News.

SPACE RACE 2.0

Asteroid dust collected by Japan probe arrives on Earth

In a streak of light across the night sky, samples collected from a distant asteroid arrived on Earth on Sunday after being dropped off by Japanese space probe Hayabusa-2.

© Morgan Sette A capsule carrying asteroid samples that was dropped off by the Hayabusa-2 probe created a shooting star-like fireball as it entered Earth's 

atmosphere

© Janis LATVELS 

After dropping off the asteroid samples Japan's Hayabusa-2 space probe starts a new mission

Scientists hope the precious samples, which are expected to amount to no more than 0.1 grams of material, could help shed light on the origin of life and the formation of the universe

.

© Handout A JAXA artist's rendering of the separation of the capsule (centre L) carrying the asteroid sample from the space probe Hayabusa-2

The capsule carrying samples entered the atmosphere just before 2:30 am Japan time (1730 GMT Saturday), creating a shooting-star-like fireball as it entered Earth's atmosphere.


"Six years and it has finally come back to Earth," an official narrating a live broadcast of the arrival said, as images showed officials from Japan's space agency JAXA cheering and pumping their fists in excitement.


The capsule separated from Hayabusa-2 on Saturday, when the refrigerator-sized space probe that launched into space in 2014 was 220,000 kilometres (137,000 miles) away from Earth.

It landed in the southern Australian desert, where it will be recovered from an area spanning some 100 square kilometres, with search crews guided by beacons emitted as the capsule descended.

Scientists at the Royal Australian Air Force's (RAAF) Woomera Range Complex in South Australia closely monitored the capsule's descent.

Samples in the capsule were collected from the asteroid Ryugu, some 300 million kilometres from Earth during two crucial phases of Hayabusa-2's mission last year.

The probe collected both surface dust and pristine material from below the surface that was stirred up by firing an "impactor" into the asteroid.

© Yutaka IIJIMA Officials from Japan's space agency JAXA celebrate after asteroid samples were dropped off on Earth by the Hayabusa-2 space probe

The material collected from the asteroid is believed to be unchanged since the time the universe was formed.

Larger celestial bodies like Earth went through radical changes including heating and solidifying, changing the composition of the materials on their surface and below 

.

© Morgan Sette Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) officials and reporters tour the roof of the Royal Australian Air Force's Woomera Range Complex in South Australia ahead of capsule's arrival

But "when it comes to smaller planets or smaller asteroids, these substances were not melted, and therefore it is believed that substances from 4.6 billion years ago are still there," Hayabusa-2 mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa told reporters before the capsule arrived

.

© Morgan Sette Scientists at the Royal Australian Air Force's Woomera Range Complex closely monitored the capsule's descent

- Samples with organic material? -

Scientists are especially keen to discover whether the samples contain organic matter, which could have helped seed life on Earth.

"We still don't know the origin of life on Earth and through this Hayabusa-2 mission, if we are able to study and understand these organic materials from Ryugu, it could be that these organic materials were the source of life on Earth," Yoshikawa said.

Once the samples are recovered, they will be processed in Australia and then flown back to Japan.

Half the material will be shared between JAXA, US space agency NASA and other international organisations, and the rest kept for future study as advances are made in analytic technology

© David Lory Videographic presentation of the Hayabusa-2 mission

- More tasks for Hayabusa-2 -

The work isn't over for Hayabusa-2, which was launched in December 2014.

The probe will now begin an extended mission targeting two new asteroids.

Hayabusa-2 will complete a series of orbits around the sun for around six years before approaching the first of its target asteroids -- named 2001 CC21 -- in July 2026.

The probe won't get that close, but scientists hope it will be able to photograph it and that the fly-by will help develop knowledge about how to protect Earth against asteroid impact.

Videographic presentation of the Hayabusa-2 mission

Hayabusa-2 will then head towards its main target, 1998 KY26, a ball-shaped asteroid with a diameter of just 30 metres. When the probe arrives at the asteroid in July 2031, it will be approximately 300 million kilometres from Earth.

It will observe and photograph the asteroid, no easy task given that it is spinning rapidly, rotating on its axis about every 10 minutes.

But Hayabusa-2 is unlikely to land and collect samples, as it probably won't have enough fuel to return them to Earth.

kh-sah/ch/acb

Japan capsule with asteroid samples retrieved in Australia


TOKYO — Japan’s space agency said its helicopter search team has retrieved a capsule, which is carrying asteroid samples that could explain the origin of life, that landed on a remote area in southern Australia as planned Sunday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“The capsule collection work at the landing site was completed . . .," the space agency said in a tweet about four hours after the capsule landed. ”We practiced a lot for today ... it ended safe."

Hayabusa2 had successfully released the small capsule on Saturday and sent it toward Earth to deliver samples from a distant asteroid that could provide clues to the origin of the solar system and life on our planet, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.

Early Sunday the capsule briefly turned into a fireball as it reentered the atmosphere 120 kilometres (75 miles) above Earth. At about 10 kilometres (6 miles) above ground, a parachute was opened to slow its fall and beacon signals were transmitted to indicate its location.

“It was great ... It was a beautiful fireball, and I was so impressed," said JAXA's Hayabusa2 project manager Yuichi Tsuda as he celebrated the successful capsule return and safe landing from a command centre in Sagamihara, near Tokyo. “I've waited for this day for six years."

Beacon signals were detected, suggesting the parachute successfully opened and the capsule landed safely in a remote, sparsely populated area of Woomera, Australia, said JAXA official Akitaka Kishi.

About two hours after the capsule's reentry, JAXA said its helicopter search team found the capsule in the planned landing area. The retrieval of the pan-shaped capsule, about 40 centimetres (15 inches) in diameter, was completed about two hours later.

The fireball could be seen even from the International Space Station. A Japanese astronaut, Soichi Noguchi, who is now on a six-month mission there, tweeted: “Just spotted #hayabusa2 from #ISS! Unfortunately not bright enough for handheld camera, but enjoyed watching capsule!”

Hayabusa2 left the asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million kilometres (180 million miles) away, a year ago. After it released the capsule, it moved away from Earth to capture images of the capsule descending toward the planet as it set off on a new expedition to another distant asteroid.

The capsule descended from 220,000 kilometres (136,700 miles) away in space after it was separated from Hayabusa2 in a challenging operation that required precision control.

JAXA officials said they hoped to conduct a preliminary safety inspection at an Australian lab and bring the capsule back to Japan early next week.

Dozens of JAXA staff have been working in Woomera to prepare for the sample return. They set up satellite dishes at several locations in the target area inside the Australian Air Force test field to receive the signals.

Australian National University space rock expert Trevor Ireland, who was in Woomera for the arrival of the capsule, said he expected the Ryugu samples to be similar to the meteorite that fell in Australia near Murchison in Victoria state more than 50 years ago.

“The Murchison meteorite opened a window on the origin of organics on Earth because these rocks were found to contain simple amino acids as well as abundant water,” Ireland said. “We will examine whether Ryugu is a potential source of organic matter and water on Earth when the solar system was forming, and whether these still remain intact on the asteroid.”

Scientists say they believe the samples, especially ones taken from under the asteroid’s surface, contain valuable data unaffected by space radiation and other environmental factors. They are particularly interested in analyzing organic materials in the samples.

JAXA hopes to find clues to how the materials are distributed in the solar system and are related to life on Earth. Yoshikawa, the mission manager, said 0.1 gram of the dust would be enough to carry out all planned researches.

For Hayabusa2, it’s not the end of the mission it started in 2014. It is now heading to a small asteroid called 1998KY26 on a journey slated to take 10 years one way, for possible research including finding ways to prevent meteorites from hitting Earth.

So far, its mission has been fully successful. It touched down twice on Ryugu despite the asteroid’s extremely rocky surface, and successfully collected data and samples during the 1 1/2 years it spent near Ryugu after arriving there in June 2018.

In its first touchdown in February 2019, it collected surface dust samples. In a more challenging mission in July that year, it collected underground samples from the asteroid for the first time in space history after landing in a crater that it created earlier by blasting the asteroid’s surface.

Asteroids, which orbit the sun but are much smaller than planets, are among the oldest objects in the solar system and therefore may help explain how Earth evolved.

Ryugu in Japanese means “Dragon Palace,” the name of a sea-bottom castle in a Japanese folk tale.

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Mari Yamaguchi, The Associated Press

COVID VACCINE ROLL OUT

WHO warns virus crisis not over as vaccine rollout starts


The World Health Organization warned that vaccines were no magic bullet for the coronavirus crisis, as Russia started vaccinating its high-risk workers Saturday and other countries geared up for similar programmes. 

© Ina FASSBENDER There may be lights, but at least in Switzerland there won't be much singing as Christmas caroling has been banned in the streets

The WHO warned about what it said was an erroneous belief that the Covid-19 crisis is over with jabs on the horizon, nearly a year after the start of the pandemic that has killed 1.5 million people worldwide

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© Loic VENANCE Coronavirus has made it more difficult for homeless shelters, with this one in the French city of Nantes using tents

"Vaccines do not equal zero Covid," said WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan, adding that not everyone will be able to receive it early next year.

"Vaccination will add a major, major, powerful tool to the tool kit that we have. But by themselves, they will not do the job."

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also cautioned against the "growing perception that the pandemic is over" with the virus still spreading fast, putting enormous pressure on hospitals and health care workers.

© Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV Russia's vaccination programme prioritises high-risk workers

Health officials in Moscow said they had opened 70 coronavirus vaccine centres in the Russian capital that would initially offer jabs for health, education and social workers.

© Nikolay KORZHOV Moscow begins Covid-19 vaccination for vulnerable workers

The WHO caution came as the United States clocked a record number of Covid-19 cases for a second day in a row Friday, with the country preparing for what US President-elect Joe Biden has called a "dark winter".

America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended "universal face mask use" indoors and Biden said he would scale down his January inauguration ceremony to mitigate the virus risk.

It comes as countries prepare for the approval and rollout of several vaccines that have proven effective in trials.

- Massive logistical effort -

The WHO says 51 candidate vaccines are currently being tested on humans, with 13 reaching final-stage mass testing.

Britain on Wednesday became the first Western country to approve an inoculation, from a Pfizer-BioNTech, for general use, piling pressure on other countries to swiftly follow suit.

© Simon MALFATTO Spread of the coronavirus

The United States is expected to give a green light later this month.

VIDEO Moscow begins Covid-19 vaccination for vulnerable workers

Belgium, France and Spain have said jabs will begin in January for the most vulnerable.

With the imminent arrival of vaccines that need storage at ultra-low temperatures, US companies are preparing for a massive logistical effort to aid their distribution.

Firms specializing in insulating containers are on a war footing after Pfizer and BioNTech said their vaccine needs to be stored at -94 degrees Fahrenheit (-70 Celsius).

Meat processing giant Smithfield said it was ready to put the cold rooms at its abattoirs at the disposal of vaccine rollout operations.

And US logistics giant UPS is producing 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of dry ice an hour in its depots and has developed portable freezers capable of storing the vaccines at temperatures down to -112 Fahrenheit.

- 'Follow the science' -

Standing in the way of success are growing signs of vaccine skepticism, with misinformation and mistrust coloring public acceptance of inoculation.

In Russia, Levada polling agency recently found that only 36 percent of respondents were prepared to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Several high-profile figures have pledged to receive the vaccine in public in an effort to build confidence, including Biden, Tedros and former US presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The United States recorded 225,000 new infections on Friday -- the second daily record in a row for the world's worst-hit nation.

Biden said the surging number of cases meant he would scale back his inauguration ceremony set for January.

"We're going to follow the science and the recommendations of the experts," Biden told reporters.

- Christmas spike expected -

More than 65 million people have contracted Covid-19 globally with the death toll from the disease topping 1.5 million since it first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

British medical chiefs said the arrival of a vaccine should see deaths reduce "significantly" by early next year but warned social mixing over Christmas could cause another spike before then.

"By spring the effects of vaccination will begin to be felt in reducing Covid admissions, attendances and deaths significantly but there are many weeks before we get to that stage," they said.

Italy is seeing a dramatic resurgence of infections after it largely tamped down an earlier outbreak by enforcing a strict lockdown, while Latin America and the Caribbean region has seen an 18 percent spike in cases in a week.

Other countries are als0 unveiling holiday restrictions, with Switzerland banning Christmas caroling in the streets and Madrid cancelling most New Year events in the city centre.

Moscow opens dozens of coronavirus vaccination centres

MOSCOW — The city of Moscow opening 70 vaccination facilities where thousands of doctors, teachers and others in high-risk groups had signed up to receive COVID-19 vaccines starting Saturday, a precursor to a sweeping Russia-wide immunization effort.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The centres in the capital started giving shots to willing recipients three days after President Vladimir Putin ordered the launch of a “large-scale” COVID-19 immunization campaign even though a Russian-designed vaccine has yet to complete the advanced studies needed to ensure its effectiveness and safety in line with established scientific protocols.

The Russian leader said Wednesday that more than 2 million doses of Sputnik V will be available in the next few days, allowing authorities to offer jabs to medical workers and teachers across the country starting late next week.

Moscow, which currently accounts for about a quarter of the country's new daily infections, moved ahead of the curve with the opening of the vaccination facilities on Saturday. Doctors, teachers and municipal workers were invited to book a time to receive a shot. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that about 5,000 signed up in a few hours after the system began operating on Friday.

“Of course I had doubts, especially given that all the clinical trials haven’t ended," said Tatyana Kirsanova, who received the vaccine Saturday at a Moscow clinic. "But I decided to go ahead and protect myself with all possible options.”

Russia boasted that Sputnik V was the world’s “first registered COVID-19 vaccine” after the government gave it regulatory approval in early August. The move drew criticism from international experts, who pointed out that the vaccine had only been tested on several dozen people at the time.

Putin has shrugged off doubts about it, saying in August that one of his daughters was among the early vaccine recipients.

Sputnik V has been offered to medical workers and teachers for several months even though the vaccine was still in the middle of advanced trials. Several top Russian officials said they had gotten the required two jabs, and the Russian military this week began vaccinating the crews of navy ships scheduled to depart on a mission.

Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said Wednesday that more than 100,000 people in Russia have received the shots.

Russia is offering the vaccine for free to people aged 18 to 60 who don’t suffer from chronic illnesses and aren’t pregnant or breastfeeding.

The two-shot Sputnik V was developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute. An advanced study among 40,000 volunteers was announced two weeks after the vaccine received government approval and that is still ongoing.

Kirill Dmitriyev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that bankrolled Sputnik V’s development, said last month that more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine were expected to be produced outside of Russia next year.

Last month, developers of the vaccine said interim analysis of trial data showed it was 91.4% effective. The conclusion was based on 39 infections among 18,794 study participants that received both doses of either the vaccine or a placebo, which is a much lower number of infections than Western drugmakers have looked at when assessing the effectiveness of their vaccines. Two other Russia-designed vaccines are also undergoing tests.

On Wednesday, Britain became the first country in the West to authorize the use of a vaccine against the coronavirus developed by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.

Russia has been swept with a resurgence of the outbreak this fall, with numbers of new infections exceeding the levels recorded early in the pandemic, but the authorities so far have refrained from a tight lockdown imposed in the spring.

On Saturday, Russia reported a new record high of daily infections at 28,782, including 7,993 in Moscow. The government task force has recorded a total of 42,684 virus-related deaths since the start of the outbreak.

Russia’s total of over 2.4 million confirmed cases is currently the fourth-largest caseload in the world behind the United States, India and Brazil.

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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak 

and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Vladimir Isachenkov, The Associated Press

THIRD WORLD USA 

First shipments of Covid-19 vaccine will fall short

State health departments and governors' offices across the country are finally being told by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Operation Warp Speed how many doses of the coronavirus vaccine they will initially be receiving once the vaccine is authorized, and it's not enough.

© Pfizer Pfizer manufacturing facility in Kalamazoo, MI.

With the Pfizer vaccine emergency use authorization expected later this month, and perhaps also for the Moderna vaccine, states are learning there's not enough for them to fully vaccinate those designated as their first and top priority.

Earlier this week, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended that the very first batch of Americans to get vaccinated should be frontline health care workers and residents of long term care facilities such as nursing homes. Together, they add up to about 24 million people.

Federal officials estimate about 40 million vaccines will be available by the end of the month if both Moderna and Pfizer get US Food and Drug Administration authorization -- only enough to vaccinate 20 million people, because two doses are needed for each person.

But even that number will fall short. Pfizer is only expected to have 6.4 million doses of vaccine ready by mid-December.

A CNN analysis of 27 states' vaccine data showed that none were getting enough vaccine in the first shipment to vaccinate all their first priority group, including health care workers and long-term care residents. CNN was able to confirm the expected size of the first shipment of vaccine for at least 45 states, and the number of people prioritized in a least 27 states.

Now states must decide how they will ration the vaccine among their top priority groups and how the small first installment affects the timetable of when groups down the line can be vaccinated. Some states are already being forced to triage -- choosing which health care workers are a higher priority than others.

California must vaccinate 2.4 million healthcare workers first and Gov. Gavin Newsom said earlier this week that the state is only receiving 327,000 doses of the vaccine from Pfizer to start with.

Since that covers just a fraction of the healthcare workers needed to get vaccinated, Newsom said Thursday the state would be trimming its list of top priority group of healthcare workers even further to decide who gets vaccinated first.

"It's one thing when you hear the national news about, well, we broadly all agree that our healthcare workers and skilled nursing residential care and assisted living facilities should be prioritized, but that is millions and millions of people. When you only have a few hundred thousand doses of vaccines -- doses, you need two doses -- you can cut that in half in terms of the total number of people that actually will be fully vaccinated. We have to look at some prioritization of those doses, and we've done just that," Newsom said Thursday.

The Covid-19 vaccine in California will now go first to acute care facilities, nursing homes, dialysis centers and first responders before going to groups like home healthcare workers.

Alabama is receiving far less of the Pfizer vaccine than they were first promised from the initial shipment. Instead of their first shipment being 112,000 doses from Pfizer, the state will receive 40,950 doses, according to Alabama Department of Public Health Officer Karen Landers. The state has designated 300,000 health care workers and 22,000 residents of long-term care facilities as among the highest priority group to be vaccinated.

"The Alabama Department of Public Health will follow its Phase 1a allocation of Covid-19 vaccine and, as necessary, ask providers to sub-categorize persons within Phase 1a based upon supply," Landers told CNN. "For example, healthcare personnel who work in emergency rooms, Covid-19 units, have underlying health problems, or other factors, may receive the initial vaccines."

Montana is only receiving around 9,750 doses of the Pfizer vaccine from the first shipment when it has more than 40,000 healthcare workers to vaccinate before moving on to the rest of the state's population.

"We'll likely be receiving several thousand subsequent doses in the coming weeks" Gov. Steve Bullock said in a news conference earlier this week.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state will receive 170,000 doses of Pfizer's vaccine on December 15th. The state's highest priority groups include 85,000 nursing-home residents and 130,000 nursing home facility workers.

For some states, the difference between the amount of vaccine they expect to receive and the number of people labeled as the state's highest priority are not as far off.

In Texas, the state expects 224,250 doses of the Pfizer vaccine the week of December 14, but will end up with 1.4 million doses when combining shipments from Pfizer and Moderna by the end of December. The state estimated it needs to vaccinate 1.6 million health care workers to complete its first phase of the process.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice gave more detail in his Friday announcement of what the state will be receiving by sharing not only the initial shipment, but the ordering cap for each week. Justice said that West Virginia is expected to receive 60,000 doses of the vaccine from Pfizer on December 15 and 26,000 from Moderna the week after. The state can order up to 16,000 new doses from Pfizer a week and up to approximately 5,000 from Moderna each week.

The state has said its first priority group is approximately 100,000 healthcare workers, long-term care facility staff and residents, individuals critical to community infrastructure and emergency response, public health officials, and first responders.