It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, September 12, 2021
DROP THE SANCTIONS
Iran, IAEA reach deal on servicing nuclear monitoring cameras after talks
Updated 19:44, 12-Sep-2021 CGTN Director General of the IAEA Rafael Grossi (C) speaks with Deputy Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Behrouz Kamalvandi (L) upon his arrival at Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport, Iran, September 11, 2021. /CFP
Iran is to allow the United Nations (UN) nuclear watchdog to service monitoring cameras at Iranian nuclear sites after talks on Sunday with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi, according to the head of Iran's atomic energy body and a joint statement.
"We agreed over the replacement of the memory cards of the agency's cameras," Mohammad Eslami, who heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), was quoted as saying by state media.
Grossi traveled to Iran Saturday for talks and met Eslami on Sunday.
"We had constructive negotiations. There are essentially technical issues between the two sides," said Eslami, according to the Iranian Mehr News Agency.
"IAEA's inspectors are permitted to service the identified equipment and replace their storage media which will be kept under the joint IAEA and AEOI seals in the Islamic Republic of Iran," the nuclear bodies said in a joint statement. "The way and the timing are agreed by the two sides."
"The two sides decided to maintain their mutual interactions and meetings at relevant levels," the statement said, adding Grossi planned another visit to Tehran "in the near future."
Grossi's visit comes after talks between major world powers to save Iran's nuclear deal have become deadlocked.
The 2015 deal promised Tehran sanctions relief in return for curbs on its nuclear program. But the landmark agreement was torpedoed in 2018 by then U.S. President Donald Trump's unilateral decision to withdraw Washington from it and impose a punishing sanctions regime.
A law passed by Iran's parliament in December 2020 mandated the Iranian government to stop implementing the IAEA's Additional Protocol if U.S. sanctions were not lifted by February 23.
Iran and the IAEA reached a three-month temporary agreement on February 23 for the former to store video records of cameras monitoring its nuclear sites, and deliver those records to the IAEA only if and after U.S. sanctions on Iran would be lifted. Iran extended the agreement for one more month on May 23.
(With input from agencies)
Sinopharm says its new vaccines 'very effective' against COVID-19 variants
Updated 17:34, 12-Sep-2021 CGTN
A box of upgraded inactivated COVID-19 vaccine targeting the Delta variant is displayed at the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing, September 6, 2021. /CFP
Chinese drugmaker Sinopharm said on Friday that its newly developed vaccines targeting the Delta and Beta variants of the novel coronavirus are very effective.
Zhang Yuntao, chief scientist of China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a subsidiary of Sinopharm, made the remarks during an aired interview with China Media Group.
The company debuted four upgraded vaccines targeting the now widespread COVID-19 Delta and Beta variants during the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) held in Beijing from September 2 to 7.
The four second-generation COVID-19 vaccines belong to three types: inactivated, recombinant protein and mRNA.
Among them, the broad-spectrum recombinant protein vaccine has completed phase-I and phase-II clinical trials, Zhu Jingjin, Party chief of CNBG, said during the CIFTIS.
The two new inactivated vaccines are the upgraded versions of the two vaccines developed by CNBG's subsidiary Beijing Institute of Biological Products(BIBP) and the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products(WIBP) respectively, which have been on the market since the beginning of this year.
CNBG is seeking approval from China's drug regulator for the clinical trials of the upgraded BIBP and WIBP inactivated vaccines, Zhang said. Since China has controlled the COVID-19 epidemic, and there are not many cases in the country, large-scale clinical trials of the vaccines will be conducted in overseas countries, he said.
The company will speed up the clinical trials of the vaccines in other countries to test their effectiveness against COVID-19 variants once they get approval, he said, adding that the company hopes to obtain the results of the trials by mid-2022 and promote the availability of the vaccines on the market afterward.
The existing inactivated vaccines developed by Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech are still effective against the Delta and Beta variants, he said, citing lab experiment results and real-world data in south China's Guangdong Province and a dozen of countries, including Sri Lanka and Mongolia.
For the time being, those who need a boost dose will still get existing vaccines, he said.
But the development of upgraded vaccines targeting COVID-19 variants is to get people better prepared in the future, he said.
Tides of Change II: China's efforts in offshore wind power crucial for carbon neutrality
By Gao Yun
CGTN Daishan No.4 Wind Farm in in Zhoushan City, east China's Zhejiang Province.
/China General Nuclear Power Corporation
Among China's arduous efforts to honor its commitment to peaking carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, developing offshore wind power, one of the key technologies to meet the goals, is of great significance.
According to a report released by the Global Wind Energy Council on Thursday, China led the world in new offshore wind installations in 2020, for the third year in a row.
The global offshore wind industry installed 6.1 gigawatts (GW) of capacity last year, while China added over 3 GW last year, accounting for half of the global tally, said the council's flagship report titled "Global Offshore Wind Report 2021." The Netherlands with nearly 1.5 GW and Belgium with 706 megawatts (MW) were the next two countries to follow.
By the end of 2020, eight coastal provinces in China had offshore wind power projects connected to the grid, contributing to an installed capacity of about 9 GW, making China the world's second for offshore wind power installations after the UK.
Hailing offshore wind with "the biggest growth potential of any renewable energy technology," the report said a total of 35 GW capacity has been installed worldwide currently, saving 62.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Guodian Zhoushan Putuo No. 6 Offshore Wind Farm in Zhoushan City, east China's Zhejiang Province, June 5, 2018. /CFP
China, with continuous breakthroughs in relevant equipment and technologies as well as decreasing costs, has stepped on a rapid development track for the sector.
In east China's Zhejiang Province, an offshore wind farm in the Zhoushan City initiated the province's offshore wind power deployment.
The construction of the wind farm, named Guodian Zhoushan Putuo No. 6 Offshore Wind Farm, started in 2017.
After over two years' of construction, all the 63 wind turbines went into operation, with a capability of generating over 7 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year for nearly 350,000 households, equivalent to the power created by burning 240,000 tonnes of standard coal, cutting about 700,000 tonnes of carbon emissions annually.
With abundant wind power resources, Zhoushan has also harbored several other offshore wind power farms.
Located near the Zhoushan Islands is one called Daishan No. 4 Wind Farm, which was commissioned and connected to the grid in May this year.
It will form the province's largest group of offshore wind farms with another two wind farms namely Shengsi No. 5 and No. 6, bringing the total wind power generation in the area to 1.44 billion kilowatt-hours once fully operational.
Owned by the China General Nuclear Power Corporation, the Daishan No. 4 Wind Farm comprises 54 wind turbines, with a total installed capacity of 234 MW. It is able to supply 618 million kilowatt-hours of electricity to the power grid a year.
"Compared with a coal-powered plant of the same size, the wind farm helps cut 170,000 tonnes of coal and reduce 470,000 tonnes of harmful gas and dust," Zhao Wen, director of the Daishan wind farm, told CGTN in an interview.
The clean energy will be used to support the development of the oil and gas businesses in Zhoushan, which will play a significant role in optimizing local energy structure, saving energy and reducing emissions, said the Zhoushan Municipal Development and Reform Commission.
The offshore wind power sector has been one of the focuses in Zhejiang Province's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025 (FYP)), which plans to add 4.5 GW of offshore wind power during the period with more projects completed.
Zhang Jianhua, director of China's National Energy Administration, said the 14th FYP is the first five-year period and a critical period for the transition to low-carbon energy before hitting peak emissions by 2030.
"By 2030, the share of non-fossil energy in primary energy consumption should reach around 25 percent, and the total installed capacity of wind power and solar energy should reach over 1,200 GW," said Zhang. "These two goals are daunting but we must achieve them."
Stay tuned with CGTN for more in the Tides of Change II series.
Google reportedly gave some users’ data to Hong Kong authorities in 2020
The company said last year it would stop responding to such requests
Google provided some user data to the government of Hong Kong last year, despite promising it would not process such data requests from authorities, according to the Hong Kong Free Press. The company told the news outlet it “produced some data” in response to three of the 43 requests it received from Hong Kong’s government. Two of the requests had to do with investigations into human trafficking and included search warrants, and a third was an emergency disclosure as part of a credible threat to someone’s life, HKFP reported.
The company told HKFP that none of the three responses included users’ content data.
Last August, Google said it would stop responding to data requests from Hong Kong’s government, unless the requests were made in cooperation with the US Department of Justice. The move was in response to a new Hong Kong national security law imposed by China, which included a possible sentence of life in prison for people found guilty of subversion. China has used subversion charges to detain political protesters and dissidents in the Chinese mainland. Facebook and Twitter also halted the processing of data requests from Hong Kong’s government in response to the security law.
Google didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from The Verge on Saturday
Here’s Why U.S. Crude Oil Supplies Took Such a Big Hit From Ida
Sergio Chapa and David Wethe,Bloomberg News Sep 11, 2021
A damaged home in floodwater after Hurricane Ida in Pointe-Aux-Chenes, Louisiana, U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. The electric utility that serves New Orleans has restored power to a small section of the city after Hurricane Ida devastated the region's grid. Photographer: Mark Felix/Bloomberg , Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Ida unleashed such furious winds and waves that almost two weeks later oil drillers, power suppliers and refiners are still picking up the pieces. They won’t be done any time soon.
The damage to offshore platforms, pipelines and even heli-pads was so severe that two out of every three barrels of crude normally pumped from the U.S. sector of the Gulf of Mexico are unavailable. The ripple effects are still playing out as refiners and brokers scour the globe for replacements and the Gulf’s biggest oil producer, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, tells some customers it can’t honor supply commitments.
It will be weeks -- maybe longer -- before normal conditions can be restored off the Louisiana coast and in the warren of oil-processing and chemical plants that occupies a 100-mile (160-kilometer) corridor from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.
“What’s different is this is lasting longer,” Bert Winders, 63, a Baker Huges Inc. health and safety manager, said in reference to how Ida’s disruption compared with previous cyclones. “It’s just demanding on people. Three to five days, they can deal with. But when you start talking two, three, even four weeks, that’s really tough on a family.”
The recovery efforts are being closely watched around the world in large part because of the unprecedented scale and duration of the oil outages. Within days of the hurricane, traders were seizing on arbitrage opportunities created by the disappearance of some U.S. Gulf grades of oil such as Mars blend. For example, crude from Russia’s Ural Mountains is a popular alternative to Mars because they share similar characteristics.
Ida’s drawn-out aftermath offers a chastening glimpse of what may be in store as climate change fuels ever-more furious storms along low-lying coastal regions dotted with heavy industry and vital fuel-making facilities.
Typically, when tropical storms and hurricanes menace the oil-producing region of the Gulf, drillers batten down hatches, shut off the subsea wells funneling oil up to platforms and evacuate crews. When the skies clear, they often can chopper inspection teams back out in a matter of hours or days and resume production shortly thereafter.
When Louisiana was battered by Hurricane Laura last year, offshore crude output bounced back quickly.
Direct Hit
After Ida, that wasn’t remotely possible. The monster storm’s direct hit on Port Fourchon a few hours before sundown on Aug. 29 completely disabled the primary jumping-off point for helicopters and vessels that service hundreds of offshore platforms and rigs.
Even the lone road connecting Port Fourchon to the rest of the state -- Louisiana Highway 1 -- was knocked out of commission by Ida’s massive wall of sea water and the tons of sand it swept ahead.
“When Port of Fourchon is out of service, it breaks a link in the chain,” said Winders, a Louisiana native who’s been working in the oil industry for four decades.
Into Darkness
At the height of the disaster, more than a million homes and businesses were cast into darkness as Ida’s 150 mile-per-hour (240 kph) winds destroyed most of the transmission infrastructure in southeast Louisiana.
But by late Friday, there were still almost 200,000 without power or air conditioning -- a telling illustration of the extent of the destruction. As for Port Fourchon, the area isn’t expected to get full electricity restored until the end of this month, according to utility company Entergy Corp.
Out on the high seas, drilling has returned to just 29% of pre-Ida levels. There were four rigs operating in the U.S. sector of the Gulf as of Friday, well below the 14 plying the waters before the storm, according to data from Baker Hughes, which has been tracking drilling activity since 1944.
Hobbled Refineries
Shell is gearing up to reopen many of the Gulf pipelines that carry crude to shore in the next week, according to a person familiar with the operations, a key step to potentially restoring offshore crude output. Still, a crucial conduit for Mars oil and other grades will remain shut as damage assessments continue, the person said. The company declined to comment.
Further inland, the crippling effects of the cyclone are still being assessed. A New Orleans-area refinery owned by Phillips 66 suffered so much damage and flooding that the company may not even restart it, depending on how expensive it’ll cost to repair.
Shell’s Norco refining and chemical complex north of New Orleans may remain shut for several more weeks because of extensive damage.
Meanwhile, Marathon Petroleum Corp. managed to resume fuel production at its massive Garyville facility on Friday, although five other Louisiana refineries with combined daily capacity to process one million barrels remain shut.
As the latest strong storm that passed through the U.S. Gulf of Mexico showed, hurricanes are testing the resilience of offshore oil and gas facilities and pipelines. Hurricane Ida made headlines as it left 1 million customers in the state of Louisiana without power and shut-inas much as 95 percent of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico's oil production just before making landfall in Louisiana on August 29.
Unfortunately, the continued disruption to oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico was not the only headline-grabbing consequence of Hurricane Ida. Oil spills also raised eyebrows after offshore oil and gas infrastructure was damaged by the storm.
The oil spills shed light on some of the aging offshore infrastructure that were unable to withstand the forces of nature. It also proved that whichever hurricanes come next could also damage pipelines and platforms.
The damage to facilities and resulting oil spills also underscore what the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report made public in April: The U.S. Department of the Interiorlacks a robust oversight process to monitor and ensure the safety and integrity of some 8,600 miles of active offshore oil and gas pipelines located on the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico.
The impact of Hurricane Ida on the Gulf of Mexico offshore infrastructure and production is also an argument that environmental organizations could use to call for restrictions on offshore drilling.
Damages And Oil Spills
The hurricane caused damage to platforms while refineries were waiting for power to begin the restart process.
For example, Shell said last week that it had identified damage to its West Delta-143 offshore facilities, which serve as the transfer station for all production from the oil giant's assets in the Mars corridor in the Mississippi Canyon area to onshore crude terminals. As of Wednesday evening, September 8, damage assessment of the West Delta-143 continued,said Shell, which has begun the process of redeploying personnel to its Appomattox platform, and continues to redeploy personnel to the Enchilada/Salsa and Auger assets. However, Appomattox, Mars, Olympus, Ursa, Auger, and Enchilada/Salsa remain shut-in. Around 80 percent of Shell-operated production is currently offline.
Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE)data as of Wednesday showed that 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd)—or 76.88 percent—of U.S. Gulf of Mexico production was still offline.
Related: OPEC May Cut 2022 Oil Demand ForecastThere have been as many as350 reports of incidents that the U.S. Coast Guard has prioritized for further investigation by authorities, as it continued to assess the damage and environmental threats across Southeast Louisiana a week after Hurricane Ida made landfall.
In one of the largest incidents, divers identified a one-foot pipeline as the source ofan oil spill after it was displaced by the hurricane and ruptured. The oil spill occurred in Bay Marchand Block 5, off the coast of Port Fourchon,said Talos Energy, which led response efforts to contain and control the release, although none of its assets were the source of the spill. Talos ceased production from the block in 2017, and all its pipeline infrastructure was removed by 2019, the firm said.
"The Company has observed several non-Talos owned subsea pipelines that were likely impacted by Hurricane Ida, including a 12" diameter non-Talos owned pipeline that appears to be the source of the release," it added.
GoM Offshore Pipelines Need Better Regulation
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, a recentreport from GAO that the U.S. needs updated regulations to improve offshore pipeline oversight and decommissioning looks increasingly topical, as Reuters reminds us in anexplainer article.
"Pipelines can contain oil or gas if not properly cleaned in decommissioning. But the Bureau doesn't ensure that standards, like cleaning and burial, are met. It also doesn't monitor pipeline condition or movement from currents over time," the report from the GAO found.
BSEE lacks a robust process to ensure that decommissioned pipelines do not pose risks during and after decommissioning, the GAO added. The BSEE does not thoroughly account for such risks while reviewing decommissioning applications. This has contributed to the BSEE and its predecessors authorizing companies to leave over 97 percent (about 18,000 miles) of all decommissioned pipeline mileage on the Gulf of Mexico seafloor since the 1960s, GAO noted.
Another fault that the office found was that "BSEE does not monitor decommissioned pipelines left on the seafloor or have funding sources for removal if they later pose environmental or safety risks."
The GAO recommends that the BSEE implement updated pipeline regulations to address those long-standing limitations in its ability to ensure pipeline integrity and address safety and environmental risks associated with pipeline decommissioning. The Interior agreed with this recommendation, the GAO said in the report.
"Hurricane Season and Offshore Drilling Are a Reckless Combination"
In 2020, a year before Hurricane Ida and ten years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Oceana, an advocacy group for protecting the oceans,said that "Large hurricanes have the potential to not only devastate coastal communities, but also destroy oil and gas infrastructure, which can lead to more oil spills."
"Hurricane-caused damage to oil and gas infrastructure is a leading cause of oil spills. In 2005, high winds and flooding from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed more than 100 platforms and damaged over 500 pipelines," Oceana's Sarah Giltz wrote in a blog post in July 2020.
Hurricane Ida left an extensive trail of damaged homes, infrastructure, and lives from Louisiana to New England. It also has left a stain on the sea. Two weeks after the storm, several federal and state agencies and some private companies are working to find and contain oil leaks in the Gulf of Mexico.
The U.S. Coast Guard has assessed more than 1,500 reports of pollution in the Gulf and in Louisiana, and it “is prioritizing nearly 350 reported incidents for further investigation by state, local, and federal authorities in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.” The Coast Guard is working with the Environmental Protection Agency, the state of Louisiana, the National Ocean Service, and other agencies to chronicle and monitor the state of coastal waters and infrastructure.
On September 3, 2021, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this natural-color image of apparent oil slicks off the southeastern Louisiana coast near Port Fourchon, a major hub of the oil and gas industry.
Hurricane Ida caused the disruption of 90 to 95 percent of the region’s crude oil and gas production, while also damaging current and abandoned pipelines and structures. According to many news reports, the surface oil slicks near Port Fourchon (shown above) are likely related to as many as three damaged or ruptured submarine pipelines. It is unclear how much oil has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has conducted aerial surveys of some offshore waters and has released the photos online. The NASA-sponsored Delta-X research team has also been working in the area and was called upon to make some observations of the slicks and other coastal changes with synthetic aperture radar.
Beyond active oil and gas extraction platforms, the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico is covered in a maze of pipelines, capped wellheads, and other infrastructure that can be vulnerable to storm events. In a report issued earlier this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office stated: “Since the 1960s, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has allowed the offshore oil and gas industry to leave 97 percent of pipelines (18,000 miles) on the seafloor when no longer in use. Pipelines can contain oil or gas if not properly cleaned in decommissioning.”
In 2017, students demanding Harvard divest from fossil fuels blocked the entrance to University Hall.
KEITH BEDFORD/GLOBE STAFF/FILE
For nearly a decade, Harvard University has been the target of sit-ins, protests, and petitions, even resounding votes from its faculty, all calling for the university to divest its massive endowment of investments in fossil fuels.
But year after year, the university resisted, claiming, among other things, that it did not want to use its endowment as a political tool. Then suddenly, on Thursday afternoon, it changed course.
In a letter to students and faculty that did not use the word “divestment,” Harvard president Lawrence Bacow disclosed the $41 billion endowment has effectively divested its fossil fuel holdings.
“We must act now as citizens, as scholars, and as an institution to address this crisis on as many fronts as we have at our disposal,” Bacow wrote. “I write today to describe what Harvard has done — and will do — to ensure that our community is fully engaged in the critical work ahead.”
Bacow explained that Harvard Management Company, which manages the world’s largest university endowment fund, currently has no direct investments in companies that explore for or develop reserves of fossil fuels, and that it doesn’t intend to make those kinds of investments in the future. Though some 2 percent of its fund is still in investments with fossil fuel holdings, Bacow wrote that those are in “runoff mode” and will not be renewed once they come to an end.
The announcement is being hailed a major success by organizers on campus and beyond, and supporters of the broader movement hope that Harvard’s announcement will add fuel to the growing divestment movement — and not just on college campuses. Already, states, financial institutions, and private companies have joined the effort, in the hope the decisions they make with their investment dollars will pay dividends in the fight to combat the climate crisis. Given the size of Harvard’s endowment, its history of resistance, and its storied position as an institute, the decision to divest could have profound implications.
“The richest school on earth, which in 2013 pledged never to divest, has been forced to capitulate,” activist and divestment movement leader Bill McKibben wrote in a series of tweets. “I can’t overstate the power of this win. It will reverberate the world around.”
In recent years, divestment as a means of pressuring fossil fuel companies has gained steam. The concept is relatively simple: The less money that fossil fuel companies have at their disposal, the harder it is for them to operate. The less fossil fuels are burned, the less extreme the consequences of the climate crisis. RELATED: These lawmakers wrote the climate bill. They’re worried the state won’t achieve it
In the academic world, Cambridge, Oxford, and the University of California systems are among the notables that have taken the step. Earlier this year, the state of Maine divested its pension fund — the first state to do so via a vote by its legislature — and similar steps are being debated or are in the works in California, New York, Minnesota, and on Beacon Hill.
Meanwhile, the six largest US banks said last year that they would not provide funding to fossil fuel companies to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a step that may be at least partially responsible for a Trump-era oil leasing sale being a flop. No major oil companies bothered to bid.
Harvard University did not respond to a request for comment, and Harvard Management Company declined to comment. The letter from Bacow cited the “undeniable evidence of the world to come” — from massive fires to record heat waves — and said that “without concerted action, this dire situation is only going to get worse.”
Last year, the university announced that its endowment would reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This week’s announcement would seem to accelerate that timeline by decades. According to Bacow, Harvard Management Company has been shedding its fossil fuel investments for some time.
“Given the need to decarbonize the economy and our responsibility as fiduciaries to make long-term investment decisions that support our teaching and research mission, we do not believe such investments are prudent,” Bacow wrote.
Earlier this year, students, alumni, and professors from Harvard filed a complaint with Attorney General Maura Healey’s office arguing that the university’s fossil fuel investments violate a state act that dictates certain charitable responsibilities for all nonprofit institutions. Members of the Harvard divestment movement noted that some of the language included in Bacow’s letter this week echoed what they argued in their complaint — perhaps a sign that the university feared the results of that lawsuit.
On Thursday, members of Fossil Free Divest Harvard — the student activist group that has for a decade led the effort on campus — said they were caught off guard by Bacow’s e-mail.
“I was leaving my social studies lecture and I just checked my e-mail and I was like, ‘Oh my god,’” said Suhaas Bhat, a core organizer of the group. “I mean, I thought this would just keep going forever, and that I’d be one person in a long chain of activists that have been fighting this forever. The fact that this just happened is insane.”
Bhat and his colleagues hailed the announcement as “an incredible victory,” but that doesn’t mean they are letting up. In an online response, the group listed three steps it wants to see the university take next: immediately phase out the 2 percent of remaining investments; address holes in its net-zero by 2050 endowment pledge, by focusing more on the total elimination of carbon emissions; and stop allowing fossil fuel companies to fund academic research and programming or recruit on campus.
Elsewhere on campus, the tone of Bacow’s announcement frustrated some who have long supported the divestment movement. “The temerity to reject scientific, economic, political, legal, & moral arguments of faculty & students for a decade, then reverse course & feign leadership, is breathtaking but unsurprising,” tweeted Geoffrey Supran, a research fellow at the university.
He and others said Harvard’s decision now shines a light on peers within the academic world that have resisted divesting, including Boston College, MIT, Princeton, and Yale.
There are currently 166 active divestment movements on campuses nationwide, according to Divest Ed, a training and strategy hub that helps the movements. Senior organizer Gracie Brett said Harvard’s activists had been hearing “probably the most persistent ‘no’s’ that anyone in the movement has received.”
That makes the change of tune that much more impactful, she said.
“It just is a great roadmap for the rest of the divestment movement, that even if you receive a ‘no,’ if you have the people power and are persistent, you can have victory,” Brett said. “And I think the implications for our movement will be huge.”
'Dune' director longing for sequel as sci-fi makes N.America debut
Issued on: 12/09/2021
Canadian "Dune" director Denis Villeneuve is revered critically and successful commercially for making original, big, grown-up movies like "Sicario" and "Blade Runner 2049"
Geoff Robins AFP
Toronto (Canada) (AFP)
Denis Villeneuve always planned for his wildly ambitious sci-fi "Dune" to be seen on the biggest screen possible, and the director got his wish Saturday as the much-hyped film made its splashy IMAX premiere at the Toronto film festival.
Boasting terrifying giant sandworms, warring interstellar tribes and an A-list cast spanning Timothee Chalamet, Javier Bardem and Zendaya, the long-delayed epic based on a beloved novel has already drawn strong reviews.
The publicity blitz for Warner Bros studio's $165 million gamble moved from Venice to North America's biggest festival this weekend, where Villeneuve told AFP that watching his film in the extra-large, immersive screen format was "the proper way to see the movie."
"You receive the full power and the landscape, and at the same time it's the most powerful way to increase intimacy with the characters."
However, from October 22 it will be viewable on the small-screen HBO Max platform -- the same day it hits regular theaters.
That controversial decision -- announced while the pandemic kept movie theaters closed last year -- was blasted by Villeneuve himself for showing "no love for cinema, nor for the audience."
More is at stake, however, than the creative vision of the Canadian auteur, who is revered critically and commercially for making big, intelligent, grown-up movies like "Sicario" and "Blade Runner 2049."
His "Dune" film splits Frank Herbert's seminal 1965 sci-fi novel in two parts, but Warner has yet to officially green-light the sequel, presumably waiting to gauge its performance with the public.
And there are fears that giving viewers the option to skip the theater for the small screen could undermine the first film's box office returns, potentially spelling doom for any follow-ups.
"I can say nothing! If ever it happened it would be fantastic," said Villeneuve, discussing sequel plans on the Toronto red carpet Saturday.
"Because for me, I just laid the ground -- the world is explained to the audience now. 'Dune Two' would be just pure cinematic pleasure for me."
- 'Challenge' -
Rebecca Ferguson, who plays royal concubine Lady Jessica, said she was in the dark about any sequel too, but would love to return.
"Has he written it? I don't know. I'm hoping," she told AFP. "Unless he casts someone else!"
The fact that "Dune" got made at all is in some ways remarkable, given the dire track record of previous efforts.
While it profoundly influenced later sci-fi epics such as "Star Wars," the original novel -- about the battle for a valuable resource called "spice" on a hostile desert planet of the future -- has been considered unwieldy or even "unfilmable" for the screen.
That is largely due to its length, sprawling scale, and elaborate detail concerning the universe's various religions, technologies and "Game of Thrones"-esque feuding families.
David Lynch's 1984 film flopped after producers -- alarmed by its run-time -- savagely chopped it down. A previous bid by cult Franco-Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky never made it past its gargantuan draft screenplay.
But Villeneuve said he was not put off by any such fears.
"It's a book that I've been haunted by (for) almost 40 years," said Villeneuve.
"I knew that I could try to take this challenge -- when you make a movie you never know if it's going to be a success or not. It's part of the game. It's part of the risk of making art."
"I didn't think about what was made before."
However, that is not to say any part of making the film was easy.
"It was technically by far the most difficult thing I have ever tried with a camera," said Villeneuve.
The Toronto International Film Festival runs until September 18.
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