One dead in Myanmar anti-coup protest as ousted MPs urge unity against junta

Hundreds of thousands have continued to protest near-daily across Myanmar, despite crackdowns by the police 


Issued on: 14/03/2021 -

Yangon (AFP)

At least one anti-coup protester was killed Sunday as demonstrators across Myanmar continued to defy military rule, a day after a group of ousted MPs in hiding urged them to overcome the nation's "darkest moment".

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi from power in a February 1 putsch, triggering a mass uprising that has seen hundreds of thousands protest daily for a return to democracy.

The junta has repeatedly justified its power grab by alleging widespread electoral fraud in November's elections, which Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won by a landslide.

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In response, a group of elected MPs, many of whom are in hiding, have formed a shadow "parliament" called the Committee for Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) -- the Burmese word for the country's governing bloc -- to denounce the military regime.

The junta's security forces are staging near-daily crackdowns against demonstrators calling for a return to democracy, deploying tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds to quell anti-coup protests.

More than 80 have been killed in the unrest, according to a local monitoring group.

On Sunday, fresh violence during a protest in the northern jade-producing city of Hpakant saw one man shot dead before noon, according to a doctor and a local news outlet.

"Kyaw Lin Hteik died when he arrived at the hospital... he had a gunshot on the right side of his chest and he lost too much blood," said a local doctor who declined to be named.

He added that another three people were hit by rubber bullets and had to be transferred to state capital Myitkyina, where hospitals are better equipped.

Despite the growing death toll, protesters continued to take to the streets Sunday -- from civil servants hoisting Suu Kyi's poster defiantly at a march through the central city of Monywa to a sit-in in commercial hub Yangon.

"May the fallen heroes who have given their lives in this spring revolution rest in peace!" chanted protesters wearing hard hats in Yangon's Thaketa township.

Two men had been killed in the early hours of Saturday in Thaketa, after protesters had gathered at the police station to demand the release of arrested residents.

State-run media New Light of Myanmar said security forces had fired "warning shots" to disperse the crowd, and "an investigation is underway regarding the cause of death" of the two men.

The city has been utterly transformed since the coup, with key protest townships barricaded with sandbags, wooden fences and stacked tables -- an attempt by demonstrators to stop security forces from entering.

Gunshots were heard Sunday in at least two hotspots of unrest -- garment-producing hub Hlaing Tharyar and the once-bustling shopping junction Hledan.

- 'The darkest moment of the nation' -

The gatherings come a day after the acting vice president of the CRPH called for the people to continue protesting against the military's "unjust dictatorship".

"This is the darkest moment of the nation and the light before the dawn is close," said Mahn Win Khaing Than in a recorded video posted on the CRPH's Facebook page Saturday night.

"This is also a moment testing our citizens to see how far we can resist these darkest times," said the politician, a high-ranking NLD politician who served as speaker of the house during Suu Kyi's previous administration.

"We will try to work through CRPH... to draft necessary laws for people to be able to defend themselves."

Along with other top Suu Kyi allies, he was placed under house arrest during the February 1 power grab, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners monitoring group.

His Saturday address was his first appearance in his capacity as CRPH's acting vice president, and he echoed the anti-coup movement's calls for a "federal democracy" -- which would allow ethnic minority groups to have a role in Myanmar's governance.

"This uprising is also the chance for all of us to struggle together hand-in-hand to establish a federal democracy union," he said.

"We must win the uprising."

The committee has issued several statements since its formation, but the protest movement on the ground appears largely leaderless -- with daily rallies organised by local activists.

The junta -- self-anointed as the State Administration Council -- has said the CRPH's formation is akin to "high treason", which carries a maximum sentence of 22 years in jail.

RIP

Black space engineer, housing advocate Ken Kelly dies at 92



Obit-Kenneth-C-KellyThis Nov. 2020 photo provided by Ron Kelly shows Kenneth C. Kelly in Sherman Oaks, Calif. Kenneth C. Kelly, a Black electronics engineer whose antenna designs contributed to the race to the moon, made satellite TV and radio possible and helped NASA communicate with Mars rovers and search for extraterrestrials, has died. The 92-year-old also worked to erase race barriers in the Navy, in California housing and on the newspaper comics pages. Kelly had Parkinson's disease before his death on Feb. 27, 2021 his son Ron Kelly said. (Ron Kelly via AP)


MICHAEL WARREN
Fri, March 12, 2021

Kenneth C. Kelly, a Black electronics engineer whose antenna designs contributed to the race to the moon, made satellite TV and radio possible and helped NASA communicate with Mars rovers and search for extraterrestrials, has died. The 92-year-old also worked to erase race barriers in the Navy, in California housing and on the newspaper comics pages.

Kelly had Parkinson's disease before his death on Feb. 27, his son Ron Kelly said.

Kelly was awarded more than a dozen patents for innovations in radar and antenna technology, work that appears in peer-reviewed journals from 1955-1999. His early work at Hughes Aircraft helped create guided missile systems and the ground satellites that tracked the Apollo space missions, he said in an oral history recorded by his family.

His two-way antenna designs at Rantec Microwave Systems enabled consumers to have DirecTV and Sirius XM connections, and are featured in the massive Mojave Desert radiotelescopes that search for signs of life in space, his son and JPL colleagues said.

After many years working on deep space missions through NASA subcontractors, Kelly worked directly for JPL from 1999 until retiring in 2002, helping to design robotic antennas for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, according to Joseph Vacchione, who manages the JPL's antenna test range.

Kelly appeared in an Associated Press article in 1962 after he moved his family into Gardena, a middle-class suburb that had excluded Black people. To overcome a racist covenant and the repeated refusals of real estate agents, he had to ask a white colleague at Hughes to make the purchase on his behalf.

“We have pretty much the same hopes, fears, ambitions, strengths and frailties that have typified all of human existence,” Kelly wrote in a letter his white neighbors, urging them to set aside “stereotyped notions,” according to the AP story.

Kelly and his wife Loretta later moved near California State University-Northridge, to be closer to his job and have their children attend better schools. According to the 2017 oral history, the agent wouldn’t sell him the lot, so he had to repeat the demeaning experience of having white friends buy it for him before signing over the mortgage.

Kelly became president of the San Fernando Valley Fair Housing Council, testing listings to prove discrimination, lobbying authorities and going to court to prevent whites-only advertising. To do more from the inside, he became a leading Realtor, helping many Black families move into new suburbs in the 1970s.

Kelly had another role in promoting racial harmony after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. A white ally of the Kellys on the Fair Housing Council, schoolteacher Harriet Glickman, had been corresponding with cartoonist Charles Schulz, urging him to add a Black character to his comic strip. At the time, Black people were all but invisible in mass media.

Letters published by the Charles M. Schulz Museum show the cartoonist was reluctant, fearing the move would seem patronizing to Black people in the wake of King's death. Glickman recruited Kelly to persuade Schulz otherwise.

Kelly urged the cartoonist to treat the Black character as a “supernumerary” — just another member of the Peanuts gang. Franklin soon appeared on a beach, helping Charlie Brown build a sand castle.

Born in 1928 in New York City and raised by a single mother who worked as a live-in maid, Kelly began living at 13 in the Harlem YMCA, where he was mentored by older black men including photographer Gordon Parks. He tested into Brooklyn Tech high school, then enlisted in the Navy to be trained as an electronics technician. Told he could only be a steward to white officers, he wrote to the chief recruiter and was allowed to take the engineering exam just when President Harry Truman was moving to desegregate the military.

“I think I’m a crazy optimist,” Kelly said in his oral history. “I’m definitely the half-full glass person. I meet lots of people who are so pessimistic. I always thought I could.”

Kelly's Navy training helped him excel at Brooklyn Polytechnic College and get a job at Hughes Aircraft in 1953. He later learned that his white colleagues had been polled to see if they'd work with a Black man; the few who said they’d quit were told to do so.

Kelly and Loretta were members of the Ethical Cultural Society for decades. He also formed a society of Black scientists and engineers who launched science fairs and outreach programs to minority students in Los Angeles, which was booming with Black people fleeing the South in the post-war period.

“I think the more contact between the ones who have been successful in what they’re doing and the ones who are several steps down the line, the better,” he said.

Kelly felt racism's sting repeatedly in life, but was determined to overcome it.

“We have a terrible real history of defeat, horrible conditions, death, rapes, just a hell of a history of Blacks in this country, but I don’t think knowing it is that valuable unless it encourages you do more to beat it somehow, and I think we can,” Kelly said in his oral history.

Kelly was predeceased by his first wife, Gloria White, and his son David. He is survived by his ex-wife Loretta Kelly, his third wife Anne Kelly, his son Ron Kelly, his stepson Steve Kelly, their wives and two grandchildren.

 

How this market turns 10 tons of food waste into energy every day

Daniel T. Allen , Katie Nixdorf , and Amelia Kosciulek 

Mar 12, 2021

Volume 90%

 

• 
  
• The Bowenpally market in India turns 10 tons of food waste into biogas every day.
• That's enough energy to power over 150 streetlights and a canteen kitchen that feeds 800 people.
• Turning food waste into biogas cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions from landfills, which are the third largest source of human-caused emissions.

Sea slugs lose heads to rid bodies of parasites, Japan researchers show


An Elysia marginata, a species of sea slug, after shedding its body and its self-decapitated head is seen in this handout photo

Rikako Murayama
Thu, March 11, 2021

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese researchers have shown that a type of sea slug are able to self-decapitate and regrow their bodies, a discovery that could have ramifications for regenerative medicine.

The mechanism is believed to be an extreme method for the organism to rid itself of parasites, researchers Sayaka Mitoh and Yoichi Yusa wrote in a study published in Current Biology this week. The green slugs have algae cells in their skin, so they can feed off light like a plant until they develop a new body, which takes about 20 days.

Mitoh, a doctoral researcher at Nara Women's University, noticed one day that a sea slug, known as a sacoglossan, had spontaneously detached its head from its body.

"I was surprised and thought it was going to die, but it continued to move around and eat quite energetically," Mitoh said. "I kept an eye on it for a while, and it regenerated its heart and body."

That prompted a study showing that five of 15 lab-bred slugs and one from the wild split its body off from a particular point on the neck during their lives. One did so twice. Each time, the animal's heart was left behind in the body, which continued to live for some time, but didn't regrow a head.

"One of the amazing things about stem cells is that they can be used to regenerate a heart and body from the edge of the animal's head," Mitoh said. "With further study, we may be able to apply these findings to regenerative medicine, but that's still a distant hope at this stage."

Other animals have been known to intentionally detach and regrow body parts, a mechanism known as autotomy, but this extreme form was previously unknown, the researchers said.

They initially thought it might be a method to escape predators, but they now think it's done to get rid of parasites that inhibit reproduction.

(Reporting by Rikako Murayama and Rocky Swift in Tokyo; Editing by Karishma Singh)

Study: Lack of diversity in Hollywood costs industry $10B



Film-Diversity Study

FILE - The Hollywood sign appears near the top of Beachwood Canyon adjacent to Griffith Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles on Jan. 29,2010. : For years, researchers have said a lack of diversity in Hollywood films doesn’t just poorly reflect demographics, it’s bad business. A new study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates just how much Hollywood is leaving on the table: $10 billion. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)

JAKE COYLE
Thu, March 11, 2021, 

NEW YORK (AP) — For years, researchers have said a lack of diversity in Hollywood films doesn’t just poorly reflect demographics, it’s bad business. A new study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates just how much Hollywood is leaving on the table: $10 billion.

The McKinsey report, released Thursday, analyzes how inequality shapes the industry and how much it ultimately costs its bottom line. The consulting firm deduced that the $148 billion film and TV industry loses $10 billion, or 7%, every year by undervaluing Black films, filmmakers and executives.

“Fewer Black-led stories get told, and when they are, these projects have been consistently underfunded and undervalued, despite often earning higher relative returns than other properties,” wrote the study’s authors: Jonathan Dunn, Sheldon Lyn, Nony Onyeador and Ammanuel Zegeye.


The study, spanning the years 2015-2019, was conducted over the last six months and drew on earlier research by the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California and Nielsen. The BlackLight Collective, a coalition of Black executives and talent in the industry, collaborate with McKinsey researchers. The company also interviewed more than 50 executives, producers, agents, actors, directors and writers anonymously.

McKinsey attributed at least some of Hollywood's slow progress to its complex and multi-layered business — an ecosystem of production companies, networks, distributors, talent agencies and other separate but intertwined realms.

But the lack of Black representation in top positions of power plays a prominent role. The study found that 92% of film executives are white and 87% are in television. Agents and executives at the top three talent agencies are approximately 90% white — and a striking 97% among partners.

Researchers found that films with a Black lead or co-lead are budgeted 24% less than movies that don't — a disparity that nearly doubles when there are two or more Black people working as director, producer or writer.

Among other measures, McKinsey recommends that a “well-funded, third-party organization" be created for a more comprehensive approach to racial equality. The film business, it said, is less diverse than industries such as energy, finance and transport.

Following the Black Lives Matter protests last year, McKinsey said it would dedicate $200 million to pro-bono work to advance racial equality.

CATWOMAN VS LADYBIRD

When Eartha Kitt Condemned Poverty and War at the White House


It was supposed to be a genteel luncheon with the first lady dedicated to discussing crime policy. The chanteuse had other ideas.

Eartha Kitt c. 1970
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

By: Livia Gershon
March 13, 2021

If you think Americans are divided today, consider 1968, a time of enormous conflict over war, racism, and poverty. As Janet Mezzack writes, that January, Eartha Kitt brought all those conflicts into the sedate setting of a White House luncheon hosted by the first lady, Lady Bird Johnson.

A Black cabaret singer, actor, and celebrity, Kitt had been invited to a “Women Doers’ Luncheon” focused on crime, an issue of growing importance to the Johnson administration at the time. Mezzack writes that the speakers and guests included leaders of local anticrime groups, volunteers with community organizations like Head Start, judges, politicians’ wives, and teachers. After hearing from the speakers, Kitt spoke up, drawing on her authority as someone who had “lived in the gutters” and was involved with youth organizations in poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. She suggested that the luncheon’s speakers had missed a key point.
Kitt said that a teenage boy who was aware that men with criminal records weren’t sent to war had little incentive to avoid illegal activities like smoking marijuana.

“The youth of America today are angry,” she said.

She pointed to causes including high taxes, low levels of support from government welfare programs, and…the war that the Johnson administration was prosecuting in Vietnam. Kitt said that a teenage boy who was aware that men with criminal records weren’t sent to war had little incentive to avoid illegal activities like smoking marijuana.

“You take the best of the country and send them off to a war and they get shot,” she said. “They don’t want that.”

Mezzack writes that Betty Hughes, the wife of New Jersey Governor Richard Hughes, immediately rose to respond to Kitt, noting her family’s military service and insisting that “anybody who’s taking pot just because there is a war in Vietnam is some kind of a kook.” Johnson also responded to Kitt, saying that she was praying for peace but in the meantime believed that reformers should keep “our energies fixed on constructive aims.”

The day after the luncheon, Johnson issued a formal statement saying she was sorry “the good constructive things which the speakers on the panel said were not heard—only the shrill voice of anger and discord.” Kitt, meanwhile, told reporters that her remarks were unplanned, but “I think I am speaking for millions of Americans across the country and the world.”

Newspapers around the country published front-page stories about the incident, and the White House was flooded with responses, most of them supporting the first lady. Some came from mothers of men fighting in Vietnam, praising their sons’ sacrifices. President Johnson’s (white) pastor, the Rev. Dr. George R. Davis, sent a telegram to the White House apologizing “for any member of [the American] family including Negroes who are ill-mannered, stupid and arrogant.” The next Sunday, protesters interrupted Davis’s sermon and handed out fliers defending Kitt.

Ultimately, Mezzack writes, the incident worked out for the Johnsons, drawing attention to their anticrime agenda. And while antiwar activists and some Black Americans viewed it as a symptom of the administration’s lack of interest in their concerns, a majority of politically engaged Americans apparently came down on the Johnsons’ side.



Resources

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR

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"Without Manners You Are Nothing": Lady Bird Johnson, Eartha Kitt, and The Women Doers' Luncheon of January 18, 1968

By: JANET MEZZACK

Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 4, Modern First Ladies White House Organization (FALL 1990), pp. 745-760

Wiley on behalf of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress

Covid fallout 'undermining nature conservation efforts'

Helen Briggs - BBC science correspondent
Thu, March 11, 2021


Baby monkey poached in Indonesia

Covid-19 is taking a "severe toll" on conservation efforts, with multiple environmental protections being rolled back, according to research.

Conservation efforts have been reduced in more than half of Africa's protected areas and a quarter of those in Asia, said the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

And 22 countries are rolling back protection of natural areas.

Protected areas encompass some of the world's most precious ecosystems.

They include pristine forests, wilderness areas and natural habitat that supports endangered species.

IUCN Director General Dr Bruno Oberle said the new research revealed "how severe a toll the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on conservation efforts and on communities dedicated to protecting nature".

He added: "Let us not forget that only by investing in healthy nature can we provide a solid basis for our recovery from the pandemic, and avoid future public health crises."


Fears of rise in poaching amid pandemic poverty


A glimmer of hope for gorillas?


Ivory from shipwreck reveals elephants' decline.

The research is published in a special edition of an IUCN journal dedicated to areas of the globe protected for nature.

In one paper, researchers looked at government policies on economic recovery put in place between January and October last year that had an impact on the funding and protection of areas for nature.

Road built through the rainforest

They identified some positive examples, with 17 countries, such as New Zealand, Pakistan and eight countries within the EU, maintaining or increasing their support for protected and conserved areas.

In contrast, 22 countries had rolled back protections in favour of unsustainable development including road construction or oil and gas extraction in areas designated for conservation.

Rachel Golden Kroner of Conservation International is a co-chair of the IUCN taskforce looking into the impact of Covid-19 on protected areas, and lead researcher on the study.

She told the BBC: "We found that more funding and more of the economic stimulus has gone towards activities that undermine nature rather than that support it, globally. So we're not yet on the whole moving in the right direction."

In other papers, researchers found:

Conservation efforts in Africa and Asia were most severely affected. More than half of protected areas in Africa reported that they were forced to halt or reduce field patrols and anti-poaching operations as well as conservation education and outreach. A quarter of protected areas in Asia also reported that conservation activities had been reduced.


The pandemic has affected the livelihoods of protected area rangers and their communities. A survey of rangers in more than 60 countries found that more than one in four rangers had seen their salary reduced or delayed, while 20% reported that they had lost their jobs due to budget cuts. Rangers from Central America and the Caribbean, South America, Africa and Asia were more severely affected than elsewhere.

Herbs & Verbs: How to Do Witchcraft for Real

Like for real real.

A frontispiece from Grete Herball, a 1526 English herbal manuscript.
via Wikimedia Commons

By: Hillary Waterman
October 25, 2017

Magic is first and foremost a technology, a primeval tool that humans stumbled upon eons ago for accessing an invisible realm that they sensed held the key to their well-being. Magic gave people an avenue to attain what their hearts desired—protection, divination, healing, luck, vengeance and, most of all, a sense of empowerment. It’s a measure of comfort in a cold, dark world.

Although the world’s magical practices are diverse, appearing at first to be a kaleidoscopic array of random symbols and incoherent mutterings, if we dig a little deeper, we find common constitutive elements. Try to discern which of the following is not an incantation:


A. Abracadabra

B. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

C. As the moon wanes, so may I decrease…

D. Nasagwagusa, isawagusa
inai gogona
inai gogona
narada nabwibwi…

B is nothing special, just an old-timey physician’s prescription for minor complaints. It accomplishes nothing, save for foisting responsibility back onto the patient. In contrast, A, C, and D are special purpose magical language, used to make things happen in the world.
Abracadabra is the Swiss Army Knife of incantations, reached for in cases where the caster offers no particular spell.

Abracadabra is an ancient magic word of perhaps Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic etymology (no one seems to know, which adds to its mystery). It’s the Swiss Army Knife of incantations, reached for in cases where the caster offers no particular spell. It’s often the first magic word a child learns, and has become ubiquitous in pop-culture depictions of magic. In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Avada Kedavra is the dreaded Killing Curse, of which Harry himself is the only known survivor. Abracadabra has even been co-opted by top-hatted, cape-draped performing magicians and featured to comic effect in a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon.

C is a charm for inducing weight-loss from a paperback booklet of magic spells that caught my eye at the grocery store checkout as a chubby pre-teen. The instructions were to utter the words on the full moon while burning a white candle. As I was not allowed to burn candles in my room, nor did I have the wherewithal to get my hands on special herbs for the draught that would activate the spell, I was never able to test its efficacy.

D is authentic magic. It’s an excerpt from a Trobriand Islands spell for growing yams. The words are uttered over a tufa whetstone called a nasagwagusa, which is used to hone the knife with which a woman will harvest the yams when they mature. The stone, a talisman, is then pressed against the cut seedlings as the rest of the verse is recited. Yams are central to the Trobriand social economy, and constitute women’s wealth and status in the society.



Language has power in the social world—on that we can agree. People use words to hurt, conceal, soothe, and dominate, to evoke emotions in others. More than that, in certain contexts and conditions, the right words effect real change. Words can alter the legal standings of individuals (“I now pronounce you husband and wife”), transfer ownership of goods (“That’ll be $8.99…”), mitigate personal injury (“I apologize”), or establish a legal context (“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”). In linguistic terms, this kind of language is called performative, language that is, in itself, action. This specialized linguistic form is one common ingredient of magic, where the power is in the words themselves.

Common to all kinds of magic are:
Actors—a practitioner, a subject, and an agent (a spirit or energy source)
A decontextualizing of the language and actions from everyday life and resituating them within a special and powerful—and abstracted (often mythic)—context
A special-purpose language or speech register
Rituals and taboos
Use of herbs and talismans
Altered states of consciousness induced by chanting, fasting, or herbal draught

In “The Language of Magic in Two Old English Metrical Charms,” the medievalist L.M.C. Weston analyzes the poetic language of The Nine Herbs Charm, a healing spell dating to the tenth century C.E. West also looks at Wið færstice, a popular charm for relieving a stabbing pain. Weston calls them “magico-medical texts… [in which] ritual and poetry combine… to create and enforce an altered consciousness, in which and through which magic can occur.” They use performative language in Old English verse, magical numbers (multiples of 3), and a characteristic rhythm combining the alliterative structure of Old English verse with counter rhythms that index its special status as magical. There is a lot of repetition.

In Wið færstice, Lines 6, 12, and 15 (all multiples of 3), are practically identical in their refrain:

Ut lytel spere, gif her innie sie
Ut lytel spere, gif her innie sy
Ut lytel spere, gif her innie sy

In subsequent verses, says Weston, “The healer speaking the words over an herbal potion and knife (spere)… becomes a warrior under a shield, engaging in archetypal battle with vaguely identified, supernatural enemies.”

In abstracting away from the particular battle depicted in the poem to a mythic realm, the healer draws on the power of that realm, collecting it in order to discharge it, producing the desired transformation (healing). It is, says Weston “magical in purpose and poetic in method.”
Spells have two distinct phases, the first one concentrating on gathering in power, the second on releasing it.

Spells have two distinct phases, the first one concentrating on gathering in power, the second on releasing it, with focused intent, in a particular direction. In the case of Wið færstice, this is marked by a change in verb tense from the first to second half of the charm, which signals a shift from potential power to present use, also using the subject “I” to indicate the healer’s agency. The recipient of the charm is also reframed, from the herbs in phase one to the patient in phase two.

The Nine Herbs Charm calls for an assemblage of herbs: chamomile, mugwort, lamb’s cress, plantain, mayweed, nettle, crab-apple, thyme, and fennel. These are crushed and mixed into a salve. The charm is sung three times over each ingredient and again over the patient and chanted as the salve is applied. If properly executed, the Nine Herbs Charm protects the patient from illnesses believed to come from toxins in the air.

Incantations combining specialized language, plants, and symbolic objects are hardly unique to the Anglo-Saxon world. In Papua, New Guinea, the Trobriand Islands peoples have long been known for their reliance on magic. In “Magical Conversation on the Trobriand Islands,” the psycholinguist Gunter Senft deconstructs the texts of thirteen magic spells, showing how their magic works.

Trobrianders have spells for black magic, for weather, healing, agriculture, fishing, dance, beauty, love, sailing and canoes, and anti-witch (or shark) magic. Magic pervades their cosmology. They employ a special register of their Austronesian Kilivila, which they designate “biga megwa” or “the language of magic.”

Incantations are understood as magical conversations with only one speaker. The magician speaks, or, they say, “whispers” and the addressee, the interlocutor—a plant, animal, a topographic feature, or spirit—acts in the desired way, to bring about a desired effect. A number of conditions must be met. The magician must strictly observe cleansing rituals and food taboos. The correct magical formula must be repeated for the prescribed amount of time with no mistakes or omissions.

For weather magic to bring sunshine, one native magician named Kasiosi explains, he must first slice a ginger root and place the slices in a paper basket with a tiny slit. While he removes a bit of ginger with his fingers, he recites a 144-line magical formula. He chews the ginger, spits it out, and recites the formula again. This may be repeated as many times as he pleases. The name of this spell is magaurekasi; Kasiosi does not know what the name means. Magic words often have no meaning in the mundane world; in fact, this is a common feature of magical language.
Trobriand magic, much like the Old English charms, relies on “speech-action.”

Kasiosi’s incantation first addresses the clouds and rain using a special second person plural form not used in ordinary speech. It orders them to retreat, invoking the names of the former owners of the magic. Trobriand magic can be transferred from one person to another, even bought and sold. In this way, Kasiosi draws on their power and collects it in for himself. He names all the paths along which the bad weather should retreat, along the village path, away from his house and the village, toward the sea. The order bulitabai is repeated no less than fifteen times.

In the second half of the formula, he orders the rain to “disperse,” bulegalegisa, nine times, and to “disappear,” bulilevaga/bulilevaga twelve times. “If we look at the formula as a whole,” says Senft, “we see that the various orders or commands are weighted and seem to follow a certain pattern.” The stanzas follow a formula, A-F, with ordered combinations of commands, invocations and assertion of the desired effects.

Trobriand magic, much like the Old English charms, relies on “speech-action,” ritualized in formulas between esoteric specialists, and special addressees. For the Trobrianders, magic is woven into the fabric of their everyday lives. Senft argues that it is also a “cultural phenomenon,” with the implicit goal of diffusing social tensions by enacting “clearly defined conventions and rules.”

These days, the Trobriand islands face the forces of globalization—Senft did his fieldwork there in the 1980s—and the islanders don’t much rely on magic anymore. And Saxon charms are but a relic of early medieval pagan practice. Yet some ancient mysticism and superstitions have worked their way into contemporary life and belief systems. One can collect magic spells on Pinterest, join a coven online, or use aromatherapy to help fall asleep. Magic survives, and people still find the idea of it, well, enchanting.

THE LANGUAGE OF MAGIC IN TWO OLD ENGLISH METRICAL CHARMS
By: L.M.C. Weston
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Vol. 86, No. 2 (1985), pp. 176-186
Modern Language Society

Magical Conversation on the Trobriand Islands
By: Gunter Senft
Anthropos, Bd. 92, H. 4./6. (1997), pp. 369-391
Anthropos Institut

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Marxferatu: Teaching Marx with Vampires

For a younger generation trying to understand Marxism, the best way in may be: vampirism.


By: Matthew Wills
October 30, 2018

Bram Stroker’s Dracula, published in 1897, is usually seen as the birth of the undying vampire industry. But what about Karl Marx? True, Marx didn’t write vampire fiction. But he was fascinated by the metaphor of capitalism as vampirism. For instance, in Das Kapital, Marx describe his subject as “dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”

Students come to college with more knowledge of popular culture vampires than awareness of Marx.

Perhaps influenced by the European fascination with vampirism, Marx circled back to vampirism throughout his work. But vampirism wasn’t just a visceral literary device for him, it was key to his understanding of capitalism: the blood of labor being sucked by capital. And this, thinks political scientist Jason J. Morissette, is a way to teach Marx to a generation of college students raised on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Twilight series, and True Blood.

Morissette reasons that students come to college with more knowledge of popular culture vampires than awareness of Marx. Moreover, Marx’s “language is dense, the arguments are sophisticated, and the early industrial era during which Marx and his collaborator Frederick Engels wrote seems like ancient history.” Morissette also notes that “a growing number of college students enter the classroom prepared to actively resist any attempts at ‘Marxist indoctrination’ by their ‘agenda-pushing’ professors.”

Morissette argues that using vampirism as a window into Marx’s thought is an excellent way using a contemporary cultural phenomenon to shed light on the past. As an example, he discusses the exploitative and conflict-producing relationship between what Marx called “dead labor” or capital, and “living labor,” or workers:

Motivated solely by profit, factory owners emerge as a form of economic vampires, improving their bottom line through longer hours, lower wages, and poorer working conditions. Capitalists are, in effect, draining away the value of their workers’ labor to enrich themselves—just as supernatural vampires drain their victims’ life force to grow stronger.

The figure of the vampire is the ultimate individual: predatory, inhuman, anti-human, with no moral obligation to others. Of course, this selfishness leads to alienation. One of the great themes of vampire fiction is the tragedy of the vampire’s inability to connect with life except in a murderous way, or to live for centuries in what is the ultimate gate community. The only escape is the stake through the heart.

Does it work? (The vampire pedagogy, not the stake through the heart.) Morissette stresses that “reconciling the Marxist critique of capitalism with dominant trends in contemporary popular culture” is only an entry point to getting students to think about the ideas involved. It’s necessarily an “imperfect representation of Marx’s ideas,” such as class conflict, alienation, and false consciousness but it’s a start for those who have “grown up immersed in both classical and contemporary vampire fiction.”

Business is booming for the $24 billion plasma industry - but it may be putting vulnerable donors at risk

Julia Press,Robin Lindsay
Thu, March 11, 2021, 

The US supplies two-thirds of the world's plasma, and it's one of the few countries where donors get paid.

In fact, thousands of Americans rely on plasma donation as a main source of income.

The pandemic has increased demand for plasma, and desperate volunteers may be putting themselves at risk to continue giving.

For thousands of Americans, donating plasma is a lifeline. In the 90 minutes it takes to donate, they make five times the federal minimum wage.

Americans supply two-thirds of the world's blood plasma. The industry is worth over $24 billion today, according to the Marketing Research Bureau, and that number could nearly double by 2027, as global demand for plasma-derived medicine rises by 6% to 8% each year.

Plasma is the yellowish liquid that makes up more than half of blood volume. Hospitals use it in transfusions to treat burns and liver failure, relying on unpaid donors. Biopharmaceutical companies also use it to manufacture life-saving drugs. Unlike those going toward transfusions, plasma donations destined for medication do not need to be labeled as voluntary or paid.

That's led to a boom in private, for-profit plasma centers across the US, with the number of centers tripling over the past 15 years. According to analysts at Fortune Business Insights, two-thirds of these centers are owned by one of three companies: CSL Plasma, Grifols, and BioLife.

Even before the pandemic hit, global demand for plasma far outpaced supply. That gap only worsened in 2020, as a mix of social distancing, cleaning requirements, and donor reluctance caused global donations to drop 15%, according to the Marketing Research Bureau. Meanwhile, plasma has been in high demand, as antibody transfusions show promising results in treating COVID-19 and private companies use plasma from COVID patients to develop potential drugs.

With no synthetic substitute for plasma, drug manufacturers rely on a steady stream of human donors to make up their supply. Treating just one patient with plasma therapies for a year takes between 130 and 1,300 donations.

"The bottom line is if the US didn't compensate donors, there would not be enough plasma and lives would be lost globally," the president of the Immune Deficiency Foundation wrote in a February 2019 statement.

But the burden is falling on vulnerable donors, many of whom rely on plasma compensation as a source of income.

"There's nothing wrong with giving plasma," said researcher Analidis Ochoa. "There is a problem when you feel that there's no other option."

Plasma centers attract donors in need of money.

Stephen Craib, 42, makes his 15th plasma donation to the NHS Blood and Transplant Convalescent Plasma Programme in London. Kirsty O'Connor/PA Images/Getty Images

Liz Savage visits a CSL Plasma center in Glen Burnie, Maryland, twice a week.

"I could pretend that I do it because it helps people and I'm glad that it does help people," she said. "But I only found out about it because it pays you money, and I only find myself doing it when I need money."

Savage has used plasma money to supplement her income throughout her life - as a college student in Idaho, a young adult in Tennessee, and now, as a mother in Maryland - to pay for family expenses like her children's new school clothes.

"I've tried DoorDash, I've tried, you know, little things here and there, but this is consistent. There is a need for it," she said.

Savage's story is a common one. A study from the Center for Health Care Research and Policy found that 57% of donors at one Cleveland center reported at least a third of their income that month would come from donating plasma. Researchers like Ochoa have found that plasma centers tend to be concentrated in states with lower minimum wages and cities with more people living under the poverty line.

"These are the areas where people who are most in need of income live," she said.

According to CSL Plasma, the company selects new locations "based on population density, availability of property, and local zoning laws." BioLife said it "looks for areas with a large population where it doesn't have a presence, real estate availability, and the amount of skilled staff nearby." Grifols declined to comment.

Regular donors told Insider they spend their plasma money on gas, rent, phone bills, food, and student loans. While some expressed a desire to help others as a motivating factor, many confessed that compensation was their primary influence. Even for those with other means of income, plasma donations are a popular way to make cash quick.

"There is at least a third of our church who donate," said Raquel Marruffo, who lives in Arizona. "All of them have jobs. It's just extra income."

Incentives to donate have only grown during the pandemic. Centers that usually offer between $35 to $50 per visit have paid an average of $65 per donation, according to the Marketing Research Bureau. That's in addition to referral bonuses, rewards programs, and incentives for those who donate twice a week or eight times a month.

Plasma donors have earned as much as $65 per donation during the pandemic, during which demand has grown. Reuters

Demand for plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients was so great that at times, they could make as much as $200 in a single visit. That inspired students at Brigham Young University-Idaho to intentionally try to contract the virus "with the hope of getting the disease and being paid for plasma that contains COVID-19 antibodies," according to an official notice released by the school.

BioLife Plasma said it "compensates individuals who donate plasma in recognition of the time, commitment, and effort required," and CSL Plasma emphasized that donating is a choice donors make freely, regardless of motivating factors. "In some instances, the compensation provided to donors provides a much-needed supplement to other sources of income," a CSL representative told Insider.
Paying donors increases the world's plasma supply.

The ethics debate is so involved, Georgetown associate teaching professor Peter Jaworski has focused his career on it. He falls firmly on the side of paying donors.

"There is no country in the world that is self-sufficient in plasma for plasma therapies unless it pays donors," Jaworski said.

In the Czech Republic, legalizing paid donation led to a sevenfold increase in liters donated in three years. In 2017, Italy - where donors can take a paid day off work, but are not compensated - needed 545,000 more liters of plasma than it collected, whereas Germany - which allows paid donation - had a surplus of 704,000 liters.

But the American system still outpaces that of its pay-for-plasma peers because of its comparatively lenient restrictions on donation.

Through a process called plasmapheresis, only the liquid plasma is removed from a donor's body, and since the human body replenishes plasma within 48 hours, that allows for much more frequent donation. That means while US donors have to wait eight weeks between blood donations, plasma can be given up to twice a week.

According to the Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association, only 14% of US donors made over 50 donations in 2017. Still, without much research on the health effects of donating 104 times a year - the US legal limit - researchers like Ochoa worry that the American system could put donors at risk.

"Our concern is that people who are vulnerable are giving their plasma to make ends meet," said Ochoa. "And we don't actually know what the long-term repercussions of this is."
Patients who rely on plasma-based therapies are bracing for a shortage.

Christina Brown is one of many Americans who rely on plasma-based medicine every day. Insider

When Christina Brown was in college, she got sick a lot.

"I had 15 UTIs in one year," she said. "Five bouts of bronchitis, two different pneumonias, a bunch of sinus infections."

She was diagnosed with common variable immunodeficiency, meaning her body doesn't make antibodies it needs to protect her from illness. Now, she injects herself with 100 milliliters of a plasma-derived drug each week.

"It's literally saved my life in every single way," Brown said. "I'm able to have a life and to be alive."

When she read the Immune Deficiency Foundation's warning of an impending plasma shortage, Brown's heart sank.

"I knew this meant people were going to die and I could be one of them," she said.

It takes seven to 12 months for plasma to go from a donor to the drug store shelf, so as the pandemic's drop in plasma supply catches up with production, patients like Brown are bracing themselves.

"I'm getting refills the day that I can get a refill, so maybe I can have an extra bottle or two on hand, because this is going to happen," Brown said. "It's not an 'if,' but a 'when' and 'to what extent' are we going to have this shortage."

For patients like Brown to access the life-saving drugs they need, global plasma donations have to rapidly increase. But as the system currently exists, that can't happen without drug companies relying on the desperation of some donors.

"The fact that they are providing a need to low-income Americans, I think is undeniable," said Ochoa, who believes both private industry and public policy can do more to protect donors. "That is the government that can step in to provide a safety net that is more adequate to the needs of Americans, particularly during difficult times."

Read the original article on Business Insider