How a groundbreaking 1964 study 'introduced a genuine neurological argument against free will'

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
November 29, 2021

Brain image (Shutterstock)

For decades, neuroscientists have been debating the question: How much free will do people actually have? Why are some people inclined to make better, wiser decisions than others? And why do some people, even those considered highly intelligent, act on their worst impulses while others don't

Those are the sort of questions that neuroscientists have been grappling with over the years.

New York City-based science writer Bahar Gholipour discussed the "death of free will" in a much-read article published by The Atlantic on September 10, 2019. And he explained why a 1964 study continued to have an impact on how some neuroscientists view that subject.

"The death of free will began with thousands of finger taps," Gholipour wrote. "In 1964, two German scientists monitored the electrical activity of a dozen people's brains. Each day for several months, volunteers came into the scientists' lab at the University of Freiburg to get wires fixed to their scalp from a showerhead-like contraption overhead. The participants sat in a chair, tucked neatly in a metal tollbooth, with only one task: to flex a finger on their right hand at whatever irregular intervals pleased them, over and over, up to 500 times a visit."

Gholipour continued, "The purpose of this experiment was to search for signals in the participants' brains that preceded each finger tap. At the time, researchers knew how to measure brain activity that occurred in response to events out in the world — when a person hears a song, for instance, or looks at a photograph —but no one had figured out how to isolate the signs of someone's brain actually initiating an action."

That German experiment from 57 years ago, according to Gholipour, was groundbreaking because it showed "the brain readying itself to create a voluntary movement."

Gholipour explained, "This momentous discovery was the beginning of a lot of trouble in neuroscience. Twenty years later, the American physiologist Benjamin Libet used the Bereitschaftspotential (readiness potential) to make the case not only that the brain shows signs of a decision before a person acts, but that, incredibly, the brain's wheels start turning before the person even consciously intends to do something. Suddenly, people's choices — even a basic finger tap — appeared to be determined by something outside of their own perceived volition."

Libet, according to Gholipour, "introduced a genuine neurological argument against free will."

"Over time, the implications have been spun into cultural lore," Gholipour wrote in 2019. "Today, the notion that our brains make choices before we are even aware of them will now pop up in cocktail-party conversation or in a review of Black Mirror. It's covered by mainstream journalism outlets, including This American Life, Radiolab, and this magazine. Libet's work is frequently brought up by popular intellectuals such as Sam Harris and Yuval Noah Harari to argue that science has proved humans are not the authors of their actions."

Coal: The end is nigh — or is it?

As coal power is phased out in favor of cheaper renewable energy, the fossil fuel's future looks bleak. Yet coal is making a comeback as it helps power post-pandemic recoveries.



Coal power generation might be surging this winter, but experts say the fossil fuel's days are numbered


Amid a worldwide energy crisis, global coal power emissions are surging to pre-pandemic highs, especially in China and India. Rising oil and gas prices and the onset of winter have conspired with the energy needs of rebounding post-COVID economies to increase coal demand after a long decline.

The renaissance of the most carbon intensive fossil fuel was further reinforced when a commitment to a coal "phase-out" in the Glasgow Climate Pact was weakened to a "phase-down."

Going into COP26, the UK president of the conference Alok Sharma said he hoped the summit would "consign coal power to history" in a bid to keep global heating to around 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). That didn't quite happen.

"A green light for more coal production," was how former Australian resources minister, Matt Canavan, responded to the last-minute diluting of the plan to exit coal.

"The countries in our region, like India, like China, like Southeast Asia, are growing and developing their industries, and their demand for coal almost has no limit," he said in a television interview.

Experts admit that the weakened language in the Glasgow agreement could muddy the broader momentum towards a coal phase-out by 2030 or 2040 at the latest.

But the current spike in coal demand will be a "short-term phenomenon" linked to a strong post-lockdown economic rebound, believes Catharina Hillenbrand von der Neyen, head of research at climate think tank, Carbon Tracker. "I would strongly caution against any view that this is the revival of coal."

Revival unlikely to last

Neyen expects coal to revert to its pre-COVID slide driven by cheaper renewables — including in China, which generated over half of the world's coal-fired power in 2020.

"The structural trend is for steeply falling load factors," she said, meaning that with competition from renewables, coal plants aren't running at full capacity, rendering them unprofitable. While new coal power plants are being built, they contribute to an oversupply that only exacerbates the problem. As a result, 27% of the global coal fleet has become unviable, according to Carbon Tracker.

"If I could put all my eggs into the coal basket again, you might find they drop onto the floor quite quickly," said Hillenbrand von der Neyen of coal's precipitous long-term outlook.

 


Gaurav Ganti, a researcher with Berlin-based think tank Climate Analytics, agrees. "This short-lived renaissance is unlikely to persist, given strong headwinds from low-cost renewables," he said.

Even as China and India power their COVID recovery with coal, the fact remains that the number of planned new coal power plants has declined by 76% since 2015 when the Paris Agreement was signed, according to climate change think tank E3G. This is equivalent to China's whole coal capacity.
'No room for complacency'

China provided about 75% of global coal investment in 2020. However, its decision in September to end funding of coal projects beyond its shores, and to peak its own coal use by 2025 as part of its 2060 net-zero emissions plan, is a further signal of coal's inevitable demise, said Ganti.

"However, there is no room for complacency," he added — even despite the broader commitment by 47 countries at COP26 to phase out coal via the Global Coal to Clean Power Transition Statement. "Our work indicates that keeping to 1.5 C, the warming limit of the Paris Agreement, requires coal-fired power to be phased out by 2030 in developed economies, and 2040 globally. Developing countries will require substantial international support for ditching coal."

And despite the Glasgow conference backing away from firm language on ending coal, individual countries are bringing their phase-out deadlines forward.

Germany's new governing coalition — comprising Social Democrats (SDP), Greens and Free Democrats (FDP) — is aiming for a 2030 coal exit, eight years ahead of the country's previous schedule.

Germany is Europe's second largest coal consumer and producer, but even amid a nuclear energy phase-out, it already managed to halve coal power consumption between 2010 and 2020. And while it's true that coal energy demand has also spiked in Germany in 2021, this was due in part to unusually poor weather conditions for wind and solar.

 
Financing a global coal phase-out

Along with other EU nations and the US, Germany is also helping to finance a coal phase-out in South Africa, which produces 90% of its energy from coal and is the biggest emitter of the fossil fuel in Africa. Germany's then-environment minister described the $8.5 billion (€7.3 billion) initiative agreed to in Glasgow to fund the shift from coal to clean energy as a potential "blueprint" for other regions.

Meanwhile, Portugal this week completely stopped burning coal for energy, two years ahead of a planned phase-out.

Fossil fuel powerhouse Ukraine has also committed to ending coal-power generation by 2035, or 2040 at the latest. At COP26, the country joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), a coalition of national governments, businesses and organizations committed to an accelerated coal exit.
Stranded coal assets

Researchers are warning that governments who stick with coal could be set to lose billions in stranded assets — as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs — as the world decarbonizes to limit heating to below 2 degrees Celsius. A stranded asset is something that had value or generated income but no longer does.

According to a June 2021 report, one-third of coal mines in Europe, North America and Australia will become stranded assets by 2040 if countries meet their climate targets. Australia, for example, could lose $25 billion (€22 billion) per year in this scenario. Globally, 2.2 million jobs could be at risk unless countries act quickly to transition to a cleaner energy system.

But economics is not the only motivation to get out of coal. "Governments face a choice here," said Gaurav Ganti. "Invest in the fossil fuels of yesterday and risk stranded assets, or invest in renewable energy to get us on a 1.5 C pathway."

Edited by Ruby Russell/Jennifer Collins

Seconds in chess: The search for the decisive gap

The World Chess Championship in Dubai is not just about the two players on the big stage. In the background, two teams of trainers are also competing against each other and tinkering with new sequences day and night.


Research before the storm: At the chess world championship, the seconds play a vital role.
Rustam Kasimdzhanov is familiar with the mood at the start of a World Chess Championship: "The players need to be calm, but for their support teams, it's nerve-wracking."

Kasimdzhanov has been nervous before. Several times he has supported former world champion Viswanathan Anand of India. Three years ago, he was the head coach of challenger Fabiano Caruana of the United States.

The Uzbek grandmaster, once a top professional himself, is considered one of the world's best chess scholars. The 41-year-old describes his task as "always analyzing as much as possible with the help of computers, and finding new possibilities."
Rossolimo, Sveshnikov or Caro-Kann?

One thing is certain: You don't become world chess champion as a lone warrior. Instead, it’s two top teams competing against each other at a World Chess Championship. Chess professionals, equipped with the latest computer technology, prepare the two finalists and try to give them decisive tips during the final match.


Rustam Kasimdzhanov (r.): The top coach comes up with good moves not only for himself

The preparation starts months before the world championship encounter, Kasimdzhanov explains. "At the beginning, a group of grandmasters always meet somewhere in a hotel room. We ask ourselves the question, what can we do differently?"

In top chess, but especially in World Championship duels, the opening moves are of great importance. How the game develops depends on the first moves. Will White manage to come out of the opening phase with a space advantage? Can Black equalize quickly and head for a safe draw? Rossolimo, Sveshnikov or Caro-Kann?

There are many ways to start a game of chess - and top players like Magnus Carlsen or Ian Nepomniatchthi know all about the systems that often carry curious names. But in a World Championship final it's all about subtleties after 15 or 20 moves. Kasimdzhanov: "Our dream is to find a position that we know, but our opponent doesn't."
Nightly search for the decisive gap

Yet the work of the seconds doesn’t start and end when the championship match begins. On the contrary, Carlsen's long-time head coach Peter Heine Nielsen and his Russian opponent Vladimir Potkin have their work cut out for them day and night during the fourteen rounds of this World Championship.

That’s because with each game, the players reveal parts of their preparation. This offers the secondary teams in the hotel rooms the chance to find a gap in the opponent's portfolio of variants. The fact that this rarely happens at a World Championships is one of the reasons why most matches end in a draw.


2018 World Championships: Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana faced off in an epic tiebreak

That's what happened at the last World Chess Championship in London in 2018: Rustam Kasimdzhanov had prepared his protege Caruana very well for Carlsen's attack attempts. Conversely, the world champion surprised with his strong Black repertoire.

Ultimately, neither team reached a decisive breakthrough during the World Championship. The match ended in a tie after twelve drawn games. Magnus Carlsen only managed to defend his title in the rapid chess playoff.
'The pressure is too great'

At this World Championship, Kasimdzhanov, who lives with his wife and two children in Germany, near Bonn, is neither on the sidelines, nor is he just a spectator. Instead, he will narrate every move live for an online chess platform.

Kasimdzhanov, who won the German Chess League with OSG Baden-Baden in October 2021, was even briefly the official world champion himself in 2004. However, his dream match against superstar Garri Kasparov, who was at odds with the World Chess Federation at the time, never came to fruition. A disappointment for Kasimdzhanov.

In the meantime, he is still one of the 100 best players in the world, but not seen at the board as often anymore.

"I don't enjoy classical chess anymore — it's simply too strenuous and the pressure is too great. I don't need it anymore," says the 41-year-old, citing another reason: "You can often make a better living from chess as a coach or second than as a player."


The sport of chess: Rustam Kasimdzhanov competing at the Asian Games in 2010

The Otto Rehhagel of German Chess

As a coach, his professional path regularly takes him back to his home country of Uzbekistan. His successes 15 years ago triggered a veritable chess boom there, Kasimdzhanov recounts. "The young talents there are really, really strong," says the successful coach, beaming with joy.

Of course, he is also keeping an eye onchess in Germany. The country’s high hopes currently rest on 17-year-old Vincent Keymer, who now tops the German chess rankings.

"There are a lot of strong players internationally in this age group," the elite coach says cautiously. "It's not clear yet who will make it into the top 10."

When it comes to promoting top chess players at the junior level, his adopted country of Germany still has room for improvement, Kasimdzhanov finds. He says that finding younger talent seems like a "sporadic" endeavor in Germany still.

The coach has already worked for the German Chess Federation, and with distinction. In 2011, the German men's national chess team pulled off an almighty upset by winning the European Championship. Kasimdzhanov was responsible for the opening preparation of the German players. He did such a good job that Germany ended up ahead of leading chess nations like Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the final standings.

"That's still one of my favorite stories," the coach recalls. He compares it to a football upset from 2004. "It was something special — kind of like Otto Rehhagel winning the European Championship with the Greek national football team."

This article was translated from German

Marina Abramovic: Provocative performance artist turns 75

The artist has pushed her body and mind to the limits to evoke both human empathy and cruelty. Now 75, she is proud she helped bring performance art to the mainstream.

    

Her recent opera project debuted in 2020 in Munich and featured videos and opera scenes

Born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1946, Marina Abramovic studied art both in her hometown and in Zagreb, Croatia. Early on she developed an interest in performance art, including experiments with sound installations.

In 1973, the young artist was invited to Edinburgh, Scotland, for an international art festival, where she debuted her first provocative performance work.

Titled "Rhythm 10," Abramovic thrust ten sharp knives between her splayed fingers — a daredevil act in which she occasionally missed and drew blood. In Edinburgh, where the young artist and occasional painter met iconic German performance artist Joseph Beuys, she also realized she had found her medium.

"I had experienced absolute freedom — I had felt that my body was without boundaries, limitless; that pain didn't matter, that nothing mattered at all — and it all intoxicated me," recalled Abramovic of that first performance in her 2016 autobiography, "Walk Through Walls."

"I was drunk from the overwhelming energy that I'd received. That was the moment I knew that I had found my medium. No painting, no object that I could make, could ever give me that kind of feeling, and it was a feeling I knew I would have to seek out, again and again and again."

MARINA ABRAMOVIC: A LIFELONG PERFORMANCE
'Marina Abramovic. The Cleaner'
She laid naked on blocks of ice, cut herself and screamed until she lost her voice: Marina Abramovic used her body as a radical tool of expression like no other artist before her. A look back at the life and work.  123456789101112

Testing the limits

Abramovic has since carved a reputation as a pioneering performance artist who continues to test her physical and psychological limits.

Arguably her most provocative early work was 1974's "Rhythm 0," a performance in Italy, this time in Naples. In it, Abramovic directed the audience: "There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired."

The objects included razor blades, knives and a loaded gun. The artist sat motionless as people cut open her clothes or slashed her skin. "If you leave it up to the audience, they can kill," Abramovic said after the performance in which she sought to expose an inherent human cruelty.

At age 75, the performance artist is not ready to retire

Earlier that year, her performance "Rhythm 5" included a burning communist star. She laid herself in the middle of it after cutting and burning her hair and nails. When the fire had consumed all the oxygen, Abramovic passed out.

This career path was soon taken in tandem with German artist Frank "Ulay" Uwe Laysiepen, who in 1976 became Abramovic's lover and collaborator for 12 years.

The 1977 performance "Imponderabilia" was typical of their oeuvre, Abramovic and Ulay stood at the entrance of a Bologna museum naked, forcing visitors to squeeze past them to enter.

Marina Abramovic and Ulay perform "Relation in Space" in Venice in 1976

She and Ulay lived as free spirits in their small Citroen bus for four years, traveling through Europe and performing.

Even their separation in 1988 was sealed with an elaborate performance. In a piece titled "The Lovers," they walked towards each other along the Great Wall of China, starting at opposite ends and meeting in the middle. After covering some 4,000 kilometers (2485 miles), they said goodbye.

Balkan Baroque

The separation inspired the artist to break new ground. In 1997, she performed a work in the international section of the Venice Biennale titled "Balkan Baroque," a comment on the Yugoslav Wars, in which she spent seven hours a day washing a mountain of bloody cow bones. Her performance was awarded a Golden Lion.

Marina Abramovic laid bare the horrors of the Yugoslav Wars in "Balkan Baroque"

Since the 1990s, she has also been teaching her "Abramovic Method" to young performance artists. She moved to New York in 2000, where she developed theater pieces, performances and encounters with other artists, despite some local reticence to her work.

In "House with the Ocean View," the artist spent 12 days in three open rooms in which she created an intimate relationship between herself and viewers.

The theme continued in a 2010 performance at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), "The Artist is Present," in which she locked eyes with audience members at a table from a wooden stool in which she sat for seven hours a day for 75 days — stars like Sharon Stone, Tilda Swinton, Björk and Lady Gaga made use of the chair.

Former lover Ulay, who she had not spoken to in years, famously showed up without warning and stared across at the star artist. They both cried. 

Performing "The Artist is Present" in 2010, at the Museum of Modern Art New York

Deciding to be happy

In the decade since, her works have been characterized less by violence and more by asceticism and recollection. Her method is based on a mix of various esoteric and eastern relaxation and meditation exercises. She spends every year's end in a monastery in India to meditate and recharge her batteries. "We have to create situations where our bodies are healthy and function well," she said. 

The Serbian artist has been accused of trying to evolve from artist to shaman, though she has also suffered much worse throughout a provocative career. In 2018, for instance, she was attacked with a portrait of herself while she held a book signing for, "Marina Abramovic Interviews 1976-2018," in Florence, Italy. After the incident, she returned to her hometown of Belgrade to kick off her retrospective "The Cleaner."

The artist performed "7 Deaths of Maria Callas" in September 2021, at the Greek National Opera

In 2020, the artist debuted the operatic project, "7 Deaths of Maria Callas," at Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper. In it, she re-enacted seven of Callas' most famous on-stage deaths. "Like many of the opera heroines she created on stage, she, too, died of love. She died of a broken heart," said Abramovic of the star — whom she greatly admired. 

When considering her own legacy this November, Abramovic told Interview Magazine, "I really think that one important thing is that I am one of the people responsible for making performance art into mainstream art." 

"You need night to understand yourself," Abramovic told DW on the occasion of her 70th birthday. "Getting older means getting wiser," she added. "You know that you're going to the last part of your life and that you have to concentrate on the most important things. And I've decided to be happy."

Edited by: Sarah Hucal

Stonehenge builders were fuelled by sweet treats, excavation suggests

Nov 30, 2021

© Andre Pattenden/ English Heritag/PA Media/dpa

London (PA Media/dpa) - The builders of Stonehenge fuelled themselves with sweet treats containing foraged fruit and nuts, according to English Heritage.

Evidence found as part of excavations at Durrington Walls, the settlement inhabited by the builders of the monument in about 2,500 BC, suggests they gathered and cooked hazelnuts, sloes, crab apples and other fruit.

Remnants of charred plant remains have led researchers to suggest recipes may have been followed to help preserve and make foods palatable.

It is believed the builders of Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, were eating pork, beef and dairy, but until now whether or not they consumed sweeter foods was unclear.

There is no direct evidence for pastry being used, but people at the time knew how to grow cereal crops and could have made pastry from wheat, hazelnut or acorn flour.

Neolithic "mince pies" could have been baked using a flat stone or ceramic pot heated in the embers of a fire, rather like a Welsh cake, English Heritage said.

English Heritage volunteers will be baking festive pies, inspired by the discovery, around the hearth in the Neolithic Houses at Stonehenge every Monday in December.

Susan Greaney, the charity's senior properties historian, said: "We know that midwinter and feasting were really important to the builders of Stonehenge and thanks to the Stonehenge Riverside Project, we're lucky to have evidence which tells us that they had access to nutritious fruit and nuts, and that they may even have made and cooked recipes.

"Adding meat fats to hazelnuts and fruit would have made a great energy bar, full of calories.

"Such foods might have been eaten for celebration as well as sustenance, with the sharing of food helping the community to bond, encouraging people to travel from far and wide to help build Stonehenge.

"We'll never know for certain what recipes they favoured, but it's fun to imagine travellers being greeted with a tray of mince pies."

POSTMODERN ROBBER BARON

Elon Musk: SpaceX faces possible bankruptcy because of engine woes
SpaceX founder Elon Musk is shown on stage in Austin, Texas, on October 8. He said last week the company is facing bankruptcy because of woes with its Raptor engine. 

File Photo courtesy of Tesla/UPI

Nov. 30 (UPI) -- SpaceX founder Elon Musk told his employees the space company faces a "genuine risk of bankruptcy" because of its struggles in developing its engine for its Starship flights.

In an email obtained by the website Space Explored, Musk called the company's struggle with its Raptor engine production at its base in Boca Chica, Texas, a "crisis." The Starship is a hulking space vehicle created to deliver goods and people to the moon and eventually Mars.

"What it comes down to, is that we face a genuine risk of bankruptcy if we can't achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year," Musk said in the email.

Musk canceled a scheduled break he planned to take during Thanksgiving to address the Raptor engine issue.

"Unfortunately, the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it had seemed a few weeks ago," Musk said. "As we have dug into the issues following the exiting of prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this."

Last week, SpaceX's vice president of propulsion Will Hetsley left the company after he was removed from the Raptor engine project for lack of progress, CNBC reported. Musk recently said that a "complete design overall" of the engine was necessary."

On Nov. 17, Musk said he hoped SpaceX would conduct its first orbital flight of the Starship in January or February, pending regulatory approval by the Federal Aviation Administration as well as ironing out technical issues.

SpaceX has a lot riding on the line with the engines. It recently beat out Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin for a $2.9 billion NASA contract and has a valuation of more than $100 billion while employing 7,000 people.

Saudis used ‘incentives and threats’ to shut down UN investigation in Yemen

Saudi Arabia used “incentives and threats” as part of a lobbying campaign to shut down a UN investigation of human right violations committed by all sides in the Yemen conflict, according to sources with close knowledge of the matter.

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA

 A Yemeni passes portraits of slain Houthi fighters before being placed on their graves at a cemetery on 29 November.

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington 

The Saudi effort ultimately succeeded when the UN human rights council (HRC) voted in October against extending the independent war crimes investigation. The vote marked the first defeat of a resolution in the Geneva body’s 15-year history.

Speaking to the Guardian, political officials and diplomatic and activist sources with inside knowledge of the lobbying push described a stealth campaign in which the Saudis appear to have influenced officials in order to guarantee defeat of the measure.

Related: ‘We have failed Yemen’: UN human rights council ends war crime probe

In one case, Riyadh is alleged to have warned Indonesia – the most populous Muslim country in the world – that it would create obstacles for Indonesians to travel to Mecca if officials did not vote against the 7 October resolution.

In another case, the African nation of Togo announced at the time of the vote that it would open a new embassy in Riyadh, and receive financial support from the kingdom to support anti-terrorism activities.

Both Indonesia and Togo had abstained from the Yemen resolution in 2020. This year, both voted against the measure.

The resolution was defeated by a simple majority of 21-18, with seven countries abstaining. In 2020, the resolution passed by a vote of 22-12, with 12 members abstaining.

“That kind of swing – from 12 no’s to 21 – does not just happen,” said one official.

John Fisher, the Geneva director of Human Rights Watch, said: “It was a very tight vote. We understand that Saudi Arabia and their coalition allies and Yemen were working at a high level for some time to persuade states in capitals through a mixture of threats and incentives, to back their bids to terminate the mandate of this international monitoring mechanism.”

He added: “The loss of the mandate is a huge blow for accountability in Yemen and for the credibility of the human rights council as a whole. For a mandate to have been defeated by a party to the conflict for no reason other than to evade scrutiny for international crimes is a travesty.”

Representatives from the Indonesian and Saudi embassies in Washington and the foreign ministry in Togo did not respond to a request for comment.

The HRC first voted to establish a team of experts who would investigate possible violations of humanitarian law and human rights in Yemen in 2017.

Yemen’s civil war had intensified in 2015 after a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, using weapons procured in the US and UK, intervened on behalf of the internationally recognised Yemeni government against Houthi rebels. More than 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict and 4 million have been displaced, activist groups say.

Saudi Arabia, which is not a voting member of the UN human rights council, initially supported the effort.

Related: ‘The Saudis couldn’t do it without us’: the UK’s true role in Yemen’s deadly war

The experts – known as the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen (GEE) – were never granted permission to travel to Yemen, but their reports grew more “damning” over the years, one person who closely followed the matter said.

In 2020, the GEE recommended for the first time that the international community focus their attention on accountability for potential war crimes. They included five recommendations, including that the matter be referred to the prosecutor of the international criminal court by the UN security council.

One person who followed the matter said: “I think that must have been the trigger moment when the Saudi coalition realised this is really going too far.”

Nations that supported the measure, which was led by the Netherlands, were apparently caught off guard by the Saudis’ aggressive tactics.

During the negotiations, none of the countries that would later change votes from abstaining to “no” raised objections to the resolution, which differed from the 2020 version in only one substantive way: it sought to extend the mandate to two years instead of one.

Sources said it was not until about a week before vote that “alarm bells” began to ring for proponents of the measure. when they grasped that the Saudi campaign “was very different from previous years” – in part because Saudi had engaged with policy makers in individual capitals around the world.

“You could see the whole thing shift, and that was a shock,” said one person familiar with the matter. Usually, voting positions are known days before a vote is taken. But in October, member countries resisted sharing what their final position would be, which proponents saw as a worrying sign that some countries were under intense pressure.

Supporters of the resolution decided to proceed with the vote, even though its outcome was uncertain.

“For the Saudis to win this battle at the expense of the Yemeni people is terrible. But it’s also a textbook case for other countries like the Russia and China to torpedo any other investigation. It really shook everyone to the core. The scrutiny should be on those members of the council that couldn’t withstand the pressure,” said one person close to the matter.

Members of the HRC serve for a period of three years. Of the countries that served both in 2020 and 2021, four changed their votes from abstention to “no” on the Yemen resolution: Indonesia, Bangladesh, Senegal and Togo.

The vote came when the foreign minister of Togo was on an official visit to Saudi Arabia, and coincided with the announcement of the new embassy in Riyadh.Togo also announced that it would be receiving counter-terrorism funding from the Saudi-based International Center for the Fight against Extremist Ideology.

In the case of Indonesia, it is understood that a Saudi Arabia communicated that Indonesian Covid vaccination certificates might not be recognised for Indonesians traveling to Mecca if the country did not reject the measure. One observer said the alleged threat showed Saudis were willing to “instrumentalise” their access to a holy place.

One week after the vote, the UAE, an ally of Saudi Arabia in the Yemen conflict, invited Senegal to sign a memorandum of understanding to establish a joint Emirati-Senegalese business council. The aim of the council was for the UAE chamber of commerce to “boost cooperation” between the “two friendly countries”.

The UAE did not respond to a request for comment.

Documentation Project of Yemen Massacres

Introduction:

This work is one of the largest documentation projects that records massacres committed since the start of the Saudi-US aggression on Yemen, on March 26, 2015, based on information released by well-known sources.

We assure, through this project, that the blood of Yemen’s oppressed martyrs and injured will persist in the conscience of the free people. This blood will also constitute a mark of disgrace for all who contributed to the bloodshed in Yemen.

 

Objective:

Documentation of widespread massacres perpetrated by the Saudi-US aggression across Yemen through an interactive and innovated map that can be considered a reference to rights activists, media outlets and journalists as well as to specialists and public opinion.

 

Definition of a Massacre:

A killing is considered a massacre in this project when at least one civilian gets martyred by Saudi-led aggression fire.

 

Map Characteristics:

• Every dot on the map represents a massacre
• Dots are classified by colors, every color refers to a year
• The color of dots gets bolder as per the number of martyrs
• Every massacre is recorded according to:
  • Date of the massacre
  • Place of the massacre
  • News summary
  • Link of the news story
  • Number of martyrs
  • Number of injured
  • Related photos and video (if available)
• The map allows the search feature according to:
  • Place of the massacre (mainly provinces)
  • Date of the massacre
  • Keywords
• Yemeni Center for Human Rights was considered the main source regarding the number of victims. Hence, there would be an overlap between the toll which appears on the map and the news summary
• Areas where the massacre occurred are approximate

Characteristics of the Interactive Frontpage:

• Represents statistical reference to massacres
• The map is the source for figures on the frontpage

Notes:

We don’t claim that this project has covered all massacres committed by the US-Saudi aggression on Yemen. Therefore, we are glad to receive any addition, either on the level of massacres or the visual material at: yemen-map@almanar.com.lb

 

Thanks to all who contributed to this work.

https://english.almanar.com.lb/

Four decades since AIDS epidemic began, but still no vaccine

Issued on: 01/12/2021 - 

AIDS has killed 35 million people worldwide over the four decades since it was first detected. © Aaron Favila, AP (file photo)

Covid vaccines began to show promise just months after the novel coronavirus started spreading across the globe. So why have decades of HIV/AIDS research yielded so little progress on a jab to prevent a disease that claimed some 680,000 lives in 2020?

As the globe marks World AIDS Day on Wednesday, why is there still no vaccine to protect people from the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)?

One answer is that the political will and colossal investment that have spurred on Covid vaccine development have largely been missing from AIDS vaccine research since HIV was discovered in 1983.

But another lies in the complexity of the science behind HIV.

“With Covid vaccines, researchers worry about the vaccine being able to fend off a handful of variants that have become particularly worrisome,” reads a June report by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).

“But for HIV, there are millions and millions of different viruses that have resulted from the virus’s stealth ability to rapidly mutate... It is this astonishing level of diversity that any HIV vaccine must contend with.”

Olivier Schwartz, head of the viruses and immunity unit at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, says that while most people can recover naturally from an initial coronavirus infection and thus acquire immunity, this is not the case for HIV.

“HIV mutates much more easily than Covid and so it is more difficult to generate so-called broadly neutralising antibodies that could prevent infection,” he said.

Only a handful of people naturally produce these antibodies when exposed to HIV.

Research into a vaccine has meant studying those rare responses, understanding how they work, and trying to replicate them in healthy people’s immune systems.

An mRNA jab?

Several dozen vaccines are being studied, with one by US firm Moderna seeking to use the same mRNA delivery method as its popular Covid vaccine.

The June report describing the research explains how the mRNA jab is meant to deliver instructions for a process called “germline targeting”.

This means “guiding the immune system, step by step, to induce antibodies that can counteract HIV”, the report explains.

So far, the technique is complex, involving an initial shot to activate important B-cells before several jabs attempt to spur the body into producing a range of antibodies.

Being able to visualise a way forward has given researchers hope, and some say it’s thanks in no small part to the pandemic.

“These last few years have seen unprecedented growth in our understanding of the immune system,” Serawit Bruck-Landais of French AIDS organisation Sidaction told AFP.

But even with seeming breakthroughs, Bruck-Landais says, progress on an HIV jab is “not enough to be able to say we will have an AIDS vaccine soon”.

The US clinical trials for the Moderna vaccine that were set to begin in August are still listed on the National Institutes of Health website as “not recruiting”.

‘Lack of investment’

Researchers looking into vaccines say they are overlooked in terms of funding.

“The market is too weak for pharmaceutical groups and there’s a disappointing lack of investment,” says Nicolas Manel, a research director at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM).

“Many researchers are very motivated, but they have to make do with the funds they have.”

In the absence of a vaccine, focus has historically been on promoting preventative measures like protected sex, clean needles, and overall better access to healthcare for marginalised populations.

Some 38 million people across the globe live with the virus.

Monsef Benkirane, research director at the France-based Institute of Human Genetics, points to important improvements in medicine that allow many people with HIV to live longer, healthier lives.

Importantly, by reducing an infected person’s viral load, HIV treatments today can vastly decrease or eliminate a person’s chances of transmitting HIV to another person.

But Benkirane says many people lack access to the treatments, while those who do have access sometimes struggle to follow through and take all the necessary medications.

“In addition to improving access to treatments, there are still problems with people actually sticking to the treatment regimens, even in Europe,” he said.

(AFP)

Leftist wins Honduran presidential vote after rival concedes

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Honduras ruling party conceded defeat Tuesday in presidential elections held two days earlier, giving victory to leftist opposition candidate Xiomara Castro and easing fears of another contested vote and violent protests.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Tegucigalpa Mayor Nasry Asfura of the National Party said in a statement that he had personally congratulated Castro, despite only about half the voting tallies being counted from Sunday's election.


Castro had 53% of the votes and Asfura 34%, with 52% of the tallies counted, according to the National Electoral Council. The council has 30 days from the election to declare a winner.

Asfura said he had met with Castro and her family.

“Now I want to say it publicly," the conservative candidate said. “That I congratulate her for her victory and as president elect, I hope that God illuminates and guides her so that her administration does the best for the benefit of all of us Hondurans, to achieve development and the desires for democracy.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken congratulated Castro minutes later.

“The United States congratulates the people of Honduras on their election and Xiomara Castro on her historic victory as Honduras’ first female president,” Blinken said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the next government of Honduras. We congratulate Hondurans for the high voter turnout, peaceful participation, and active civil society engagement that marked this election, signaling an enduring commitment to the democratic process.”

Asfura’s recognition of the outcome was a relief to many Hondurans who had feared a contested election after a debacle in 2017 led to street protests that left 23 people dead.

Castro rode a wave of popular discontent with 12 years of National Party governance, which peaked in the second term of outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernández.

Expectations of a Castro victory drove thousands into the streets of Tegucigalpa Sunday in celebration. On Monday, the capital’s streets were quiet as if it were a holiday and on Tuesday Hondurans exhaled in relief that the election had not taken a violent turn.

But Castro will face major challenges.

Unemployment is above 10%, northern Honduras was devastated by two major hurricanes last year and street gangs drag down the economy with their extortion rackets and violence.

On Tuesday, Vielka Yossira López folded jeans at a stand in the sprawling Comayaguela street market.

The 24-year-old single mother of two said she didn’t vote, but hoped for change.

“How am I going to lose a day of work to go vote,” López said. “I don’t work, I don’t eat.”

When López contracted COVID-19, she wasn’t able to work for two months. In that time she sold her bed, her refrigerator, television and cellphone so she could buy food and diapers for her children, ages 3 and 6.

López makes 200 lempiras, about $8.25 per day. She pays $1.60 of that just for transportation to and from work each day.

Her 6-year-old has been out of school for more than a year. Initially, it was the pandemic, but then it was the cost of getting him there. She said he’s smart and she wants him to resume her studies, but for now it works better to pay the babysitter to keep an eye on both kids.

López is hopeful that if Castro becomes president she will bring with her a better understanding of what it takes to raise a family.

“Hopefully there will be a change by having a woman,” López said. “She has children and everything.”

Christopher Sherman, The Associated Press

IN-DEPTH
Carbon emissions to pool noodles: oilsands producers seek a ‘beautiful’ rebrand

A leak of the newest industry PR offensive reveals an effort to steer attention away from pollution and toward the potential of carbon capture

By Drew Anderson
Nov. 30, 2021 

An aerial view of a reclaimed Suncor tailings pond. The company is one of the oilsands producers pitching a pathway to net-zero emissions.
Photo: Suncor Energy / Flickr

Alberta’s major oilsands producers want you to look at a barrel of bitumen and see a pool noodle.

A leaked PR campaign from the oilsands giants shows the companies are eager to rebrand the carbon-intensive industry as a net-zero resource that effortlessly turns its emissions into everything from water toys to carbon fibre boats and microchips.

Currently being tested in focus groups, the Oil Sands Pathway Alliance campaign focuses on transforming carbon into everyday products with the tagline “Energy. Beautifully Designed.”

A pitch video, initially posted online for focus group participants to view, but which has now been taken down, was sent to The Narwhal by Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, shows what the campaign will prioritize.

“Creating jet fuel out of our petroleum while using carbon from that process to make carbon fibre boats is a beautiful thing,” a voice over the video says.

“Developing microchips out of carbon capture for refined oil is beautiful. Producing barrels of oil and making Styrofoam chips out of the resulting carbon. That’s beautiful. Producing oil and from the resulting carbon making pool noodles that kids can float on. Beautiful.”


The campaign was prepared for a group composed of Suncor, Imperial, Canadian Natural Resources, MEG Energy, ConocoPhillips and Cenovus, who together are responsible for what they say is about 95 per cent of oilsands production. Only MEG Energy responded to The Narwhal’s requests for comment, reiterating statements given by Pathways Alliance.

The alliance was formed to push forward a plan for net-zero emissions from the oilsands by 2050.

But the focus on promoting positive messages about the oilsands, as revealed in the leaked material, is only the latest in a series of public relations and marketing campaigns over the years by both industry and government. Many of the campaigns were aimed at countering criticism about environmental impacts of extracting heavy oil from Alberta’s oilsands, a region that holds the world’s third largest reserves of crude, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, and requires large amounts of energy and water in production.

“I think this will be the fifth or sixth attempt to rebrand the oilsands,” Stewart said.

A pitch video for a proposed oilsands PR campaign that was shown to focus group participants.

 Video: Oil Sands Pathways Alliance.

The basic premise of the Pathways plan to achieve net-zero emissions is this: continue producing bitumen in the oilsands, but couple that production with carbon capture and utilization technologies in a bid to decrease the overall carbon pollution of the industry. This includes a carbon dioxide pipeline from the oilsands region to a sequestration hub approximately 440 kilometres away, near Cold Lake, Alta.

In a video posted to the Pathways site, MEG Energy President and CEO Derek Evans said it will be the largest carbon capture, utilization and storage facility in the world, “in terms of breadth” and the amount of carbon dioxide it would capture.

The plan to remove emissions relies heavily on the development of new technologies to achieve its goals and the campaign is vague about the details of converting carbon to pool noodles.

“This suggests that we can somehow separate the bad stuff — carbon — from the good stuff — oil as energy,” Shane Gunster, an associate professor in the school of communication at Simon Fraser University, told The Narwhal. “And then that bad stuff we can, with technology, magically turn it into the good stuff that we want.”

The plan highlights projects in Norway and the Netherlands as inspiration for the carbon capture utilization and storage component of the plan, though these projects aren’t yet operational.

‘The wonderful world of oil’ not a new advertising strategy: expert

The proposed campaign would join ongoing efforts from industry groups like the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, and its campaign offshoot Canada’s Energy Citizens, which describes itself as the largest oil and natural gas advocacy organization in Canada. The Alberta government’s own war room — officially dubbed the Canadian Energy Centre — also pumps out content touting the responsible development of the province’s oil and gas sector.

The recent public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns called for a long-term rebranding strategy in collaboration with industry and pointed to past campaigns from individual oil companies and organizations as “flawed in their approach.”

Patrick McCurdy, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Ottawa, has tracked the last 15 years of evolving marketing strategies of oilsands stakeholders.

In a 2018 paper, McCurdy found that the recommendation to brand and better sell the benefits of the oilsands dates back to a 1995 report from the Alberta Chamber of Resources — a resource sector industry group. But that recommendation wasn’t taken seriously until 2010 as a response to mounting pressure from environmental campaigns.

That was the year the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers launched its “responsible Canadian energy” campaign alongside efforts by the Government of Alberta to pitch the oilsands directly to U.S. consumers.

The focus of that campaign was on oilsands workers, while simultaneously extolling the work done to protect the environment from the worst effects of oil extraction.

These latest ads represent the evolution of the marketing strategies at play, morphing from a focus on what companies are doing to protect the environment to a focus on how oil and gas can improve lives. But for McCurdy, it’s nothing new.

“The wonderful world of oil … was a common advertising strategy,” he said in an interview with The Narwhal, noting it’s a “strategy that harkens back to the rise of petrochemicals” in the middle of the 20th century.

The proposed Pathways campaign riffs off earlier industry ads like those from Cenovus in 2011 that highlighted other products made from petroleum — from artificial limbs to ultrasounds — but goes further by implying society can keep consuming oil and gas, and other products made from fossil fuels, as long as the resulting carbon is captured or reused.



This does represent a departure from earlier industry efforts to deny the existence of human-caused climate change altogether. The campaign joins a larger push to paint the industry in a different climate light and relieve the guilt and anxiety that many feel while trying to navigate a changing world, according to Gunster.

“[Industry] has been trying for a while now, especially certain parts of the industry, the bigger players, to integrate themselves into how we as a country, how we as a world, address climate change,” Gunster said.

“[Companies are] trying to position themselves as part of the solution, rather than part of the problem,” he said.

For Stewart of Greenpeace, that cuts to the heart of the issue.

“Their problem is performance, not PR,” he said.

Emissions from the oilsands have increased 400 per cent since 1990

The emissions performance of the oilsands, long a source of concern for those interested in reducing Canada’s climate impact, is of increasing importance for producers and their long-term financial viability.

In its recent world energy outlook, the International Energy Agency pointed to the real possibility of declining oil and gas demand, particularly for high cost, high emissions resources like the oilsands in Canada.

The performance is also increasingly under the watchful eye of the federal government, with its pledges of net-zero emissions in Canada by 2050 and its recent announcement at the United Nations climate change summit in Glasgow, COP26, that it would put a cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector.

It’s all part of the reason that companies have been working to reduce their emissions intensity — the amount of carbon produced for each barrel of oil — even while ramping up production.

Together these companies account for the vast majority of the 83 megatonnes released by the oilsands in 2019 from production alone. That’s equivalent to the yearly energy use of almost 37 million homes. The oilsands make up 11 per cent of Canada’s overall emissions — and they’re increasing.

Emissions from the oilsands have climbed from 15 megatonnes in 1990, an increase of over 400 per cent.

Adding the emissions associated with refining the bitumen in other countries and combustion would increase that number significantly.

If all goes well with carbon capture utilization and storage, coupled with the possible use of small nuclear reactors and the emergence of new technologies, the Pathways Alliance projects it could eliminate 68 megatonnes of emissions per year by 2050.
Oilsands advertising has an ‘ideological function’

Stewart said he thinks this campaign is part of the coming negotiations with industry stakeholders who want to avoid costly regulations while lobbying for subsidies.

The Pathways Alliance did not make anyone available for an interview on the campaign and did not respond to questions about the viability of the technologies it promotes, but it did send a written statement.

“Pathways is focused on our goal of net-zero emissions from oilsands operations by 2050 to help Canada meet its climate goals, including its Paris Agreement commitments and 2050 net-zero aspiration,” spokesperson Alain Moore wrote in an email.

“We know Canadians want to learn more about our plan to meet this ambitious goal. We’re building on our current communications to help share that information. However, nothing has been finalized at this time.”Justin Trudeau’s Liberals pledged during the election campaign to cap emissions from oil and gas and reiterated that commitment at the recent COP26 meeting. Photo: Justin Trudeau / Flickr

Gunster, from Simon Fraser, said the campaign falls squarely into the political realm as a response to the mounting pressure from governments and citizens increasingly concerned about the direct impacts of climate change.

Canadians don’t buy products from oil companies directly, he said, noting there’s no oil section aisle where you choose between Cenovus and Suncor like you do Coke and Pepsi.

“Their advertising … has a kind of ideological function, it has a political function, which is to try and advance a vision of the world, the problems of the world and how to fix the problems,” Gunster said.
Oil pitched as ‘guilt free’: marketing professor

These kinds of campaigns can have an impact.

Analysis of the previous oilsands campaign launched by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers over a decade ago and released through access to information requests in 2012, showed that effort resulted in improved impressions of the oilsands and reduced concerns about their environmental impact.

“The large majority of Conservative and the majority of Liberal supporters say the campaign makes them more inclined to believe that there is an effort to limit environmental impacts, a more responsive industry and that oilsands can be developed in a responsible way,” reads the 2011 analysis conducted by public opinion and market research firm Harris Decima. “NDP supporters are also positively impacted by the campaign, but at a lower rate.”

Rishad Habib is a professor of marketing at what is now known as X University in Toronto. In an interview, she said the campaign appears to be aimed at those who aren’t heavily involved in sustainability or the oil and gas industry and won’t be swayed by facts and statistics on what the industry hopes to accomplish.

“Part of it seems to be like, ‘oh, here’s a guilt-free option, you don’t have to feel guilty about using it anymore. Because it’s energy, it’s beautifully designed.’ So you can use oil and still feel good about yourself,” she said after being shown the pitch video.

That appeal to emotions in the Pa thways campaign can be powerful, and political, but it can also backfire, Habib said — particularly as the effects of climate change, like the wildfires in B.C. this year, start having a big impact in Canada.
Alberta’s oilsands face strong headwinds from alternatives

For Chris Bataille, an associate researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, the move to limit carbon pollution from the oilsands is part of a conversation dating back decades that should have been acted on much sooner.

“My frustration is that we could have been doing this [in] 2006, 2007, 2008 and could have rode that into the high oil price through 2014, which then collapsed,” he said, noting the additional costs involved in trying to eliminate emissions and the price slump of recent years.

“But they didn’t do any of it. So there’s just this real lack of intention there.”

Bataille added that it is questionable whether the oilsands producers, whose product is piped to the U.S. to be refined into various petroleum products, can withstand the shift to electric and hydrogen vehicles.

That said, Bataille also argued Alberta is one of the best jurisdictions in the world for being able to effectively store carbon emissions underground, as long as companies pay for the infrastructure themselves.

The campaign, however, doesn’t get bogged down in those details.

“All across our country, beauty surrounds us, wherever we are, it’s there,” intones the Pathways Alliance video.

“We need beauty in our lives, but we also need energy.”

Stewart said the campaign fails to capture the current mood, pointing to the visceral and real impacts of climate change that Canadians are experiencing — including B.C.’s devastating wildfires.

“If the companies are serious about net zero, then that means changing their business model so they’re no longer selling oil and gas,” he said.