Satellites detect California cow burps, a major methane source, from space

Reuters
April 30, 2022


By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Satellites have detected methane emissions from belching cows at a California feedlot, marking the first time emissions from livestock - a major component of agricultural methane - could be measured from space.

Environmental data firm GHGSat this month analyzed data from its satellites and pinpointed the methane source from a feedlot in the agricultural Joaquin Valley near Bakersfield, California in February.

This is significant, according to GHGSat, because agricultural methane emissions are hard to measure and accurate measurement is needed to set enforceable reduction targets for the beef-production industry.

GHGSat said the amount of methane it detected from that single feedlot would result in 5,116 tonnes of methane emissions if sustained for a year. If that methane were captured, it could power over 15,000 homes, it said.

Agriculture contributes 9.6% to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and about 36% of methane emissions, mostly from livestock.

The Biden administration late last year announced its plan to crack down on methane emissions from the U.S. economy.

The EPA unveiled its first rules aimed at reducing methane from existing oil and gas sources that require companies to detect and repair methane leaks. The Agriculture Department rolled out a voluntary incentive program for farmers.

At last year's climate talks, more than 100 countries pledged to cut methane emissions by 30% and to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. Much of this reduction would need to come from the livestock industry, according to the U.N. food agency, which said that livestock accounts for 44% of man-made methane emissions.

Several methods to reduce livestock methane emissions are being tested, including adding seaweed to cattle diets.

GHGSat provides its data to the United Nations' International Methane Emissions Observatory program.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Outrage erupts over anti-Semitic evangelical having the chutzpah to declare he would lead Holocaust march at Auschwitz

Bob Brigham
April 30, 2022

Photo by Eelco Böhtlingk on Unsplash

Former Donald Trump evangelical advisor Dr. Michael D. Evans created a stir when he announced he would be leading a "March of the Living" from Auschwitz to Birkenau in Poland to commemorate Yom HaShoah, a Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Writing in Religion Dispatches, Ben Lorber and Aidan Orly wrote "progressive Jewish activists such as ourselves have long expressed discomfort over the nationalist, militarist version of Holocaust memory on display at the March of the Living. This year, however, we were doubly concerned when headlines briefly declared that prominent Christian Zionist leader and antisemite Mike Evans would be leading the march."

"Within hours, March organizers clarified that although Evans would be attending, “he has no official role in the planned events.” But why would Evans have the chutzpah to jubilantly make such a patently false declaration to the press? And what does this tell us about the contemporary Christian Zionist movement? Among other things it tells us that in spite of (or rather, in line with) the movement’s support for an expansionist, reactionary, and exclusively Jewish Israel, Christian Zionism is one of the largest antisemitic movements in the world today," they wrote.

In 2017, Evans visited the White House to present Trump a Friends of Zion Award.

"Evans’ brand of antisemitism, masked as philosemitism and enthusiastic support for Israel, is common amongst Christian Zionist leaders. These leaders tend to believe Jewish ingathering in Israel is key to hastening the End Times, in which Jesus will return to Earth to bring salvation to Christians while non-Christians, including Muslims and Jews, will either accept Jesus as their Savior or face eternal damnation and physical annihilation," they wrote. "Many right-wing Israeli outlets celebrated the false news that Evans would lead the march, reinforcing the close relationship between Christian Zionist leaders and the Israeli Right in the post-Trump era."

Read the full analysis here.

Special Message Battle for the Soul of America Dr Mike Evans

www.youtube.com

Blasting out Earth’s location with the hope of reaching aliens is a controversial idea – two teams of scientists are doing it anyway

The Conversation
April 30, 2022

Planets in space and a spiral galaxy (Shutterstock.com)

If a person is lost in the wilderness, they have two options. They can search for civilization, or they could make themselves easy to spot by building a fire or writing HELP in big letters. For scientists interested in the question of whether intelligent aliens exist, the options are much the same.

For over 70 years, astronomers have been scanning for radio or optical signals from other civilizations in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, called SETI. Most scientists are confident that life exists on many of the 300 million potentially habitable worlds in the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers also think there is a decent chance some life forms have developed intelligence and technology. But no signals from another civilization have ever been detected, a mystery that is called “The Great Silence.”

While SETI has long been a part of mainstream science, METI, or messaging extraterrestrial intelligence, has been less common.

I’m a professor of astronomy who has written extensively about the search for life in the universe. I also serve on the advisory council for a nonprofit research organization that’s designing messages to send to extraterrestrial civilizations.

In the coming months, two teams of astronomers are going to send messages into space in an attempt to communicate with any intelligent aliens who may be out there listening.

These efforts are like building a big bonfire in the woods and hoping someone finds you. But some people question whether it is wise to do this at all.
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The Pioneer 10 spacecraft carries this plaque, which describes some basic information about humans and the Earth.
Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, Linda Salzman Sagan, NASA Ames Research Center via WikimediaCommons

The history of METI

Early attempts to contact life off Earth were quixotic messages in a bottle.

In 1972, NASA launched the Pioneer 10 spacecraft toward Jupiter carrying a plaque with a line drawing of a man and a woman and symbols to show where the craft originated. In 1977, NASA followed this up with the famous Golden Record attached to the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

These spacecraft – as well as their twins, Pioneer 11 and Voyager 2 – have now all left the solar system. But in the immensity of space, the odds that these or any other physical objects will be found are fantastically minuscule.

Electromagnetic radiation is a much more effective beacon.

Astronomers beamed the first radio message designed for alien ears from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in 1974. The series of 1s and 0s was designed to convey simple information about humanity and biology and was sent toward the globular cluster M13. Since M13 is 25,000 light-years away, you shouldn’t hold your breath for a reply.

In addition to these purposeful attempts at sending a message to aliens, wayward signals from television and radio broadcasts have been leaking into space for nearly a century. This ever-expanding bubble of earthly babble has already reached millions of stars. But there is a big difference between a focused blast of radio waves from a giant telescope and diffuse leakage – the weak signal from a show like “I Love Lucy” fades below the hum of radiation left over from the Big Bang soon after it leaves the solar system.


The new FAST telescope in China is the largest radio telescope ever built and will be used to send a message toward the center of the galaxy.
Ou Dongqu/Xinhua via Getty Images

Sending new messages

Nearly half a century after the Arecibo message, two international teams of astronomers are planning new attempts at alien communication. One is using a giant new radio telescope, and the other is choosing a compelling new target.

One of these new messages will be sent from the world’s largest radio telescope, in China, sometime in 2023. The telescope, with a 1,640-foot (500-meter) diameter, will beam a series of radio pulses over a broad swath of sky. These on-off pulses are like the 1s and 0s of digital information.

The message is called “The Beacon in the Galaxy” and includes prime numbers and mathematical operators, the biochemistry of life, human forms, the Earth’s location and a time stamp. The team is sending the message toward a group of millions of stars near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, about 10,000 to 20,000 light-years from Earth. While this maximizes the pool of potential aliens, it means it will be tens of thousands of years before Earth may get a reply.

The other attempt is targeting only a single star, but with the potential for a much quicker reply. On Oct. 4, 2022, a team from the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station in England will beam a message toward the star TRAPPIST-1. This star has seven planets, three of which are Earth-like worlds in the so-called “Goldilocks zone” – meaning they could be home to liquid and potentially life, too. TRAPPIST-1 is just 39 light-years away, so it could take as few as 78 years for intelligent life to receive the message and Earth to get the reply.


The center of the Milky Way galaxy may be home to intelligent life, but some researchers think contacting aliens is a bad idea.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/STScI

Ethical questions

The prospect of alien contact is ripe with ethical questions, and METI is no exception.

The first is: Who speaks for Earth? In the absence of any international consultation with the public, decisions about what message to send and where to send it are in the hands of a small group of interested scientists.

But there is also a much deeper question. If you are lost in the woods, getting found is obviously a good thing. When it comes to whether humanity should be broadcasting a message to aliens, the answer is much less clear-cut.

Before he died, iconic physicist Stephen Hawking was outspoken about the danger of contacting aliens with superior technology. He argued that they could be malign and if given Earth’s location, might destroy humanity. Others see no extra risk, since a truly advanced civilization would already know of our existence. And there is interest. Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner has offered $1 million for the best design of a new message and an effective way to transmit it.

To date, no international regulations govern METI, so the experiments will continue, despite concerns.

For now, intelligent aliens remain in the realm of science fiction. Books like “The Three-Body Problem” by Cixin Liu offer somber and thought-provoking perspectives on what the success of METI efforts might look like. It doesn’t end well for humanity in the books. If humans ever do make contact in real life, I hope the aliens come in peace.

Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Does this dinosaur ‘graveyard’ reveal their final day on Earth? An expert explores the evidence

The Conversation
May 01, 2022

David Attenborough presents the BBC’s groundbreaking documentary, Dinosaurs: The Final Day. 

BBC Studios / Ali Pares / Sam Barker / Chris Lavington-Woods / Lola Post Production

Buried in the rocks in North Dakota lies evidence of the exact day the dinosaurs were obliterated from the planet, some 66 million years ago. That’s the claim of palaeontologist Robert DePalma and colleagues, whose work was captured by the BBC in its recent landmark documentary Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough

For the last ten years, DePalma has focused his work on a fossil rich site – which he has named “Tanis” – in North Dakota’s Hell Creek Formation. And since 2019, he and his colleagues have put forward some very strong claims about what Tanis tells us about the end of the Cretaceous period.

DePalma believes that Tanis is a mass graveyard of creatures killed during the asteroid strike.

There is no doubt that an asteroid led to the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs – and at least 50% of other species – 66 million years ago. But there has been some controversy around DePalma’s claim that the site documents the very day that the asteroid struck – and reveals direct evidence of the very last dinosaurs on Earth.

So, let’s take a look at what we know about this most important time in our planet’s history – and what remains uncertain.

The huge asteroid collision

When the asteroid impact theory was first proposed in 1980, there was no crater. The only evidence was two sites with substantial enrichment of iridium – an element that arrives on the Earth’s surface from outer space – in the rocks exactly at the level of the end of the Cretaceous.

Now there are hundreds of places worldwide showing the iridium spike, at what is known as the K-Pg (Cretaceous-Paleogene) boundary, a geological signature in the sediment.

And then in 1991 came the huge breakthrough - the Chicxulub crater was found in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico.

At 180km (110 miles) wide, and 20km (12 miles) deep, the crater shows that a huge 10km (six mile) wide asteroid crashed into the sea. Its force was so great, that it unleashed huge tsunami waves, as well as massive amounts of rock debris and dust containing iridium into the atmosphere – and also triggered a powerful heat wave.

Most experts agree that all life within around 1,700km (1,000 miles) of the collision would have been wiped out instantly.

But Tanis was more than 2,800km (or 1,800 miles) away. And up until now, there was no evidence of the very last dinosaurs. So, what’s the basis for DePalma’s groundbreaking revelation that Tanis finally provides the elusive evidence of the dinosaurs’ last day?

Asteroid evidence at Tanis

There is little doubt that the Tanis site lies close to the end of the Cretaceous Period, because DePalma has identified the iridium layer immediately above the fossil bed, which places it at the K-Pg boundary.

He has also presented some compelling pieces of evidence that the site marks the exact day the asteroid struck.

First, there are the ancient channels in the sedimentary rocks at Tanis – these are evidence of the huge standing water (or “seiche”) waves which engulfed Tanis. At that time North America was divided by a great seaway that passed close to the Tanis site: the seiche waves would have run up the creeks, and out again, several times, mixing fresh and sea waters to create the waves.

The ground-borne shock waves from the asteriod impact – which caused the devastating water surges – could readily travel through the Earth’s crust from the impact site to Tanis.

When the asteroid crashed into Earth, tiny ejector spherules, glassy beads about 1mm wide, were formed from melted molten rock – and were able to travel up to around 3,200km (2,000 miles) through the atmosphere because they were so light.

Astonishingly, DePalma found these glassy spherules at the site, and also in the gills of sturgeon fossils which occupied the Tanis streams. He believes the spherules were produced by the Chicxulub impact because of their shared chemistry, with some even encapsulating “fragments of the asteroid” itself. If this is true, their occurrence at Tanis would indeed confirm that they mark the actual day of impact, because the spherules would have fallen to the ground within hours of the impact.

Tanis fossil findings

From decades of study of the rocks and fossils at Hell Creek Formation, we know that Tanis was a warm and wet forest environment, with a thriving ecosystem full of dinosaurs, pterosaurs (flying reptiles), turtles and early mammals. Although they are yet to be described in detail, DePalma and colleagues reveal some incredible new fossils of animals – and he believes they could well have died on the day of the impact itself, due to their location in the doomed Tanis sandbank.

First, there’s an exceptionally preserved leg of the herbivorous dinosaur Thescelosaurus, which shows not only the bones, but also skin and other soft tissues.

But that’s not all. There is a pterosaur baby, just about to hatch from its egg – and, some incredibly well preserved Triceratops skin, which is an extremely unusual find.

Even more astonishingly, there is a turtle impaled by a stick, which DePalma believes could be evidence of a tragic death in the turbulent seiche waves set off by the impact.

DePalma’s final claim is that the impact, and final day, occurred in May, based on microscopic and geochemical analysis of growth rings in the fin spines of the fossil sturgeon. The bones show seasonal banding – where bone grows rapidly when food is abundant and slowly when conditions are poorer, so often summers are shown by a wide pale band and winters by a narrow dark band. The last banding cycle in the sturgeon confirms it died in May. And a further study this year has confirmed this.

So, why the uncertainty?

There is no doubt that DePalma’s claims have been controversial since they were first presented to the world in 2019 – probably because the announcement was in the New Yorker magazine rather than a peer-reviewed journal.

But the findings about seiche waves were then published in an academic paper only a month later, and most geologists were convinced.

It is true that the fossils, which were revealed for the first time in the BBC documentary – along with the evidence that the glass spherules at Tanis are linked to the Chicxulub impact – have yet to be published in scientific journals, where they would be subject to peer review.

But, experience shows that most of what DePalma has revealed in the past has been backed up subsequently by peer-reviewed papers.

Over the past two years I worked as one of the independent scientific consultants to the BBC, verifying the claims, as they made the documentary. Both I and my colleagues, and many other experts, are satisfied that the Tanis site probably does reveal the very last day of the non-avian dinosaurs.

And of course, as we all know, the impact of the asteriod went far beyond that one day. It led to a freezing dark planet, on a global scale, lasting for days or maybe weeks – and, from this mass extinction worldwide, the age of the mammals emerged.

Michael J. Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of Bristol

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Turkish police detain dozens in May Day demonstrations

Reuters
May 01, 2022


ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish riot police detained dozens of protesters trying to reach Istanbul's main Taksim Square for May Day demonstrations against economic hardship caused by raging inflation.

The Istanbul governor's office had allowed May Day celebrations to be held in another district and deemed gatherings in all other locations as unauthorised and illegal.

A Reuters journalist saw riot police brawling with and handcuffing protesters, images of which were shown on television by domestic broadcasters.

Police also detained 30 people in central Besiktas and 22 others in Sisli districts, the Demiroren News Agency reported.

A statement from the Istanbul governor's office on Sunday said that 164 protesters had been detained across the city for "attempting to hold illegal demonstrations".

Marches led by workers and unions are held on May 1 every year as part of International Labour Day celebrations in many countries.

Turkey's annual inflation rate is expected to rise to 68% in April, driven higher by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and rising commodity prices, receding only slightly by the end of the year, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday.

The soaring inflation and the economic hardship it causes were cited in May Day statements from several groups.

"Our main theme this year had to be cost of living," the head of the Confederation of Turkish Labor Unions (Turk-Is), Ergun Atalay, said as he placed a wreath in Taksim Square and demanded that minimum wages be adjusted monthly to reflect rising prices.

"Inflation is announced at the beginning of each month. The inflation rate should be added to wages every month," he said.

(Reporting by Murad Sezer; Writing by Ece Toksabay; Editing by David Goodman)

















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Democrats target oil giants for 'ripping off' motorists

AFP
April 28, 2022

Democrats say Big Oil is 'ripping off' US motorists, like these pictured during rush hour in Los Angeles


US Democrats announced legislation Thursday to punish fuel companies they accuse of unfairly raising prices at the pump, as record inflation threatens the party's prospects in November's midterm elections.

The reforms would allow regulators to impose heavy fines on companies exploiting the war in Ukraine and a pandemic-related surge in crude prices to cash in at the expense of American motorists.

"At this time of war -- at any time -- there is no excuse for Big Oil companies to profiteer, to price gouge or exploit families," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a news conference.

"That is why Democrats are moving forward with forceful action that will stop, and hold accountable, oil and gas companies for profiteering and manipulating markets."

The push comes with gasoline prices skyrocketing from an average of $2.89 a gallon a year ago to $4.14, according to data published by AAA on Thursday.

The Democrats' proposals would give the Federal Trade Commission and individual states increased authority to go after businesses that manipulate prices in both wholesale and retail sales.

They are hoping to pass legislation before the end of May but would need support from Senate Republicans, who are pressing instead for hikes in domestic fossil fuel production.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone said however that oil giants were "ripping off the American people" by suppressing production to maximize profits.

Maria Cantwell, Pallone's counterpart in the Senate, said elevated pump prices were driving inflation -- which is at a 40-year high -- and threatening the post-pandemic recovery.

'Political posturing'

"In the state of Washington, many of my constituents are paying $4.50 a gallon and that means that average Washington drivers will be forced to shell out $750 more to fill up this year than they did in 2021," she said.

The American Petroleum Institute suggested however that the Democrats' announcement amounted to "political posturing" rather than a genuine attempt to fix rising costs.

"This is an industry of price takers, not price makers, and repeated in-depth investigations by the FTC have shown that changes in gasoline prices are based on market factors and not due to illegal behavior," senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs Frank Macchiarola told AFP.

"The price at the pump that Americans are currently paying is a function of increased demand and lagging supply combined with geopolitical turmoil and policy uncertainty from Washington."

In March, President Joe Biden announced a record release from US strategic oil reserves of a million barrels per day for six months to "ease the pain" of soaring prices.

Some Democrats facing tough re-election fights in November have also floated a federal gas tax holiday that would save motorists around 18 cents a gallon, but Pelosi appeared to rule out the idea.

"There had been some interest in the holiday. The pros of it are that it's good PR," she said.

"The cons are that there's no guarantee that the saving... would be passed on to the consumer. We have no evidence to think that the oil companies would pass that on."

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm argued at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Thursday that the Ukraine invasion underlined the need for Americans to stop relying on the volatile oil market.

"Ultimately, these crises tell us that global energy security, energy independence and energy affordability all depend on a shift toward American-made clean energy," she said.

THE HERESY OF PROTESTANTISM
Catholic League calls on Congress to sanction Marjorie Taylor Greene after she linked church leaders to Satan

Matthew Chapman
April 28, 2022

Marjorie Taylor Greene (Screen Grab)

On Thursday, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights released a statement calling on Congress to sanction Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her recent statements attacking the Catholic Church.

"Greene has a history of offending African Americans and Jews, so bigotry is something that is apparently baked into her," wrote Catholic League President Bill Donohue in the letter to House Ethics Committee leaders Ted Deutch (D-FL) and Jackie Walorski (R-IN).

"The time has come for her to be either reprimanded or censured," Donohue added. "Her irresponsible behavior has already caused her to be removed from committee assignments. Accordingly, her burst of anti-Catholicism now demands stronger sanctions against her."

Greene, who has said she grew up Catholic but is now an evangelical Protestant, stirred controversy earlier this week when she claimed in an interview with Church Militant that the Catholic Church is "controlled by Satan," citing the work of Catholic charities that help immigrants in the United States, and the Church's history of covering up clergy who have committed sexual abuse of children.

"The Church is not doing its job, and it's not adhering to the teachings of Christ," she said in that interview.

The comments have drawn rebuke from other right-wing commentators, like Erick Erickson, who called Greene's attack on Catholics "inexcusable."

Greene, who has promoted QAnon conspiracy theories, was already stripped of her House committee assignments last year after the emergence of social media activity in which she appeared to endorse the killing of prominent Democratic politicians for treason.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: HERESIOLOGY 

WAITING FOR HER $20 BILL

Harriet Tubman led military raids during the Civil War as well as her better-known slave rescues

The Conversation
April 28, 2022

Harriet Tubman statue in Harlem, New York 

stockelements / Shutterstock.com

Harriet Tubman was barely 5 feet tall and didn’t have a dime to her name.

What she did have was a deep faith and powerful passion for justice that was fueled by a network of Black and white abolitionists determined to end slavery in America.

“I had reasoned this out in my mind,” Tubman once told an interviewer. “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.”

Though Tubman is most famous for her successes along the Underground Railroad, her activities as a Civil War spy are less well known.

As a biographer of Tubman, I think this is a shame. Her devotion to America and its promise of freedom endured despite suffering decades of enslavement and second class citizenship.

It is only in modern times that her life is receiving the renown it deserves, most notably her likeness appearing on a US$20 bill in 2030. The Harriet Tubman $20 bill will replace the current one featuring a portrait of U.S. President Andrew Jackson.
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In another recognition, Tubman was accepted in June 2021 to the United States Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. She is one of 278 members, 17 of whom are women, honored for their special operations leadership and intelligence work.

Though traditional accolades escaped Tubman for most of her life, she did achieve an honor usually reserved for white officers on the Civil War battlefield.


After she led a successful raid of a Confederate outpost in South Carolina that saw 750 Black people rescued from slavery, a white commanding officer fetched a pitcher of water for Tubman as she remained seated at a table.
A different education

Believed to have been born in March 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was named Araminta by her enslaved parents, Rit and Ben Ross.


“Minty” was the fifth of nine Ross children. She was frequently separated from her family by her white enslaver, Edward Brodess, who started leasing her to white neighbors when she was just 6 years old.

At their hands, she endured physical abuse, harsh labor, poor nutrition and intense loneliness.

As I learned during my research into Tubman’s life, her education did not happen in a traditional classroom, but instead was crafted from the dirt. She learned to read the natural world – forests and fields, rivers and marshes, the clouds and stars.


She learned to walk silently across fields and through the woods at night with no lights to guide her. She foraged for food and learned a botanist’s and chemist’s knowledge of edible and poisonous plants – and those most useful for ingredients in medical treatments.

She could not swim, and that forced her to learn the ways of rivers and streams – their depths, currents and traps.

She studied people, learned their habits, watched their movements – all without being noticed. Most important, she also figured out how to distinguish character. Her survival depended on her ability to remember every detail.


After a brain injury left her with recurring seizures, she was still able to work at jobs often reserved for men. She toiled on the shipping docks and learned the secret communication and transportation networks of Black mariners.

Known as Black Jacks, these men traveled throughout the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic seaboard. With them, she studied the night sky and the placement and movement of the constellations.

She used all those skills to navigate on the water and land.

“… and I prayed to God,” she told one friend, “to make me strong and able to fight, and that’s what I’ve always prayed for ever since.”

Tubman was clear on her mission. “I should fight for my liberty,” she told an admirer, “as long as my strength lasted.”

The Moses of the Underground Railroad

In the fall of 1849, when she was about to be sold away from her family and free husband John Tubman, she fled Maryland to freedom in Philadelphia.

Between 1850 and 1860, she returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland about 13 times and successfully rescued nearly 70 friends and family members, all of whom were enslaved. It was an extraordinary feat given the perils of the 1850 Slave Fugitive Act, which enabled anyone to capture and return any Black man or woman, regardless of legal status, to slavery.

Those leadership qualities and survival skills earned her the nickname “Moses” because of her work on the Underground Railroad, the interracial network of abolitionists who enabled Black people to escape from slavery in the South to freedom in the North and Canada.


Harriet Tubman, far left, poses with her family, friends and neighbors near her barn in Auburn, N.Y., in the mid- to late 1880s. Bettmann/Getty Images

As a result, she attracted influential abolitionists and politicians who were struck by her courage and resolve – men like William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown and Frederick Douglass. Susan B. Anthony, one of the world’s leading activists for women’s equal rights, also knew of Tubman, as did abolitionist Lucretia Mott and women’s rights activist Amy Post.

“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years,” Tubman once said. “and I can say what most conductors can’t say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
Battlefield soldier

When the Civil War started in the spring of 1861, Tubman put aside her fight against slavery to conduct combat as a soldier and spy for the United States Army. She offered her services to a powerful politician.

Known for his campaign to form the all-Black 54th and 55th regiments, Massachusetts Gov. John Andrew admired Tubman and thought she would be a great intelligence asset for the Union forces.

He arranged for her to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, to work with Army officers in charge of the recently captured Hilton Head District.

There, she provided nursing care to soldiers and hundreds of newly liberated people who crowded Union camps. Tubman’s skill curing soldiers stricken by a variety of diseases became legendary.

[Like what you’ve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter.]

But it was her military service of spying and scouting behind Confederate lines that earned her the highest praise.

She recruited eight men and together they skillfully infiltrated enemy territory. Tubman made contact with local enslaved people who secretly shared their knowledge of Confederate movements and plans.

Wary of white Union soldiers, many local African Americans trusted and respected Tubman.

According to George Garrison, a second lieutenant with the 55th Massachusetts Regiment, Tubman secured “more intelligence from them than anybody else.”

In early June 1863, she became the first woman in U.S. history to command an armed military raid when she guided Col. James Montgomery and his 2nd South Carolina Colored Volunteers Regiment along the Combahee River.


The ruins of a slave cabin still remain in South Carolina where Harriet Tubman led a raid of Union troops during the Civil War that freed 700 enslaved people.

Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

While there, they routed Confederate outposts, destroyed stores of cotton, food and weapons – and liberated over 750 enslaved people.

The Union victory was widely celebrated. Newspapers from Boston to Wisconsin reported on the river assault by Montgomery and his Black regiment, noting Tubman’s important role as the “Black she Moses … who led the raid, and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted.”

Ten days after the successful attack, radical abolitionist and soldier Francis Jackson Merriam witnessed Maj. Gen. David Hunter, commander of the Hilton Head district, “go and fetch a pitcher of water and stand waiting with it in his hand while a black woman drank, as if he had been one of his own servants.”

In that letter to Gov. Andrew, Merriam added, “that woman was Harriet Tubman.”
Lifelong struggle

Despite earning commendations as a valuable scout and soldier, Tubman still faced the racism and sexism of America after the Civil War.


Harriet Tubman is seen in this 1890 portrait.

MPI/Getty Images

When she sought payment for her service as a spy, the U.S. Congress denied her claim. It paid the eight Black male scouts, but not her.

Unlike the Union officers who knew her, the congressmen did not believe – they could not imagine – that she had served her country like the men under her command, because she was a woman.

Gen. Rufus Saxton wrote that he bore “witness to the value of her services… She was employed in the Hospitals and as a spy [and] made many a raid inside the enemy’s lines displaying remarkable courage, zeal and fidelity.”

Thirty years later, in 1899, Congress awarded her a pension for her service as a Civil War nurse, but not as a soldier spy.

When she died from pneumonia on March 10, 1913, she was believed to have been 91 years old and had been fighting for gender equality and the right to vote as a free Black woman for more than 50 years after her work during the Civil War.

Surrounded by friends and family, the deeply religious Tubman showed one last sign of leadership, telling them: “I go to prepare a place for you.”

Kate Clifford Larson, Visiting Scholar Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

RUSSIFICATION OF UKRAINE

Russia introduces the Ruble in the Kherson region of Ukraine

CULTURAL GENOCIDE

World » UKRAINE | April 28, 2022, Thursday 

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The ruble will be introduced in the Russian-controlled Kherson region of Ukraine on May 1, a spokesman for the region's pro-Russian military-civil administration said.

Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of Russia's military-civilian administration in the Kherson region, told the Novosti news agency that both the Russian ruble and the Ukrainian hryvnia will be used in the region over the next four months. He added that after the transition period, only the ruble will remain in circulation.

Stremousov rejected allegations by the Ukrainian side that a referendum on independence was being prepared in the region, stressing that the main task now was to restore the region's economy.

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened a "lightning response" in the event of foreign intervention in Ukraine.

"We have all the tools to do that. Tools that no one can brag about. We will not brag. We will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know that."

Meanwhile, the Belgorod Oblast administration in Russia announced new explosions last night. Locals said on social media that the air defenses had been activated. So far no reports of casualties and destruction.

Do elites capture foreign aid?

Does foreign aid end up in the pockets of elites instead of contributing to inclusive economic development? A recently published journal article offers new evidence of elite capture of World Bank loans by analysing data on bank accounts and shell companies in offshore financial centers.

The effectiveness of foreign aid remains controversial. Some scholars assert that aid plays a pivotal role in promoting economic development in the poorest countries. Others are sceptical. Many studies emphasize that aid effectiveness depends crucially on the quality of institutions and policies in the receiving countries.

A specific concern often voiced by sceptics is that aid may be captured by economic and political elites. In our journal article, recently published in the Journal of Political Economy we study aid capture by combining data on aid disbursements from the World Bank (WB) and foreign deposits from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The former covers all disbursements made by the WB to finance development projects and provide general budget support. The latter covers foreign-owned deposits in all major financial centres — including havens such as Switzerland, Cayman Islands, and Singapore, all known for financial secrecy.

Some aid money gets diverted straight to offshore accounts

We study whether aid disbursements trigger money flows to bank accounts in havens focusing on the 22 most WB aid-dependent countries in the world. Our main finding that aid disbursements induce outflows to havens is illustrated in Figure 1. A country’s deposits in havens increase sharply in the same quarters that it receives an aid disbursement. The outflows are both statistically and economically significant: aid disbursements equivalent to 1% of GDP are associated with an increase in haven deposits of around 3.4%. The implied leakage rate is 7.5%. In other words, for each dollar of aid disbursed, haven deposits increase by 7.5 cents.

Figure 1. The relation between aid disbursements and outflows to tax havens (Source: Deposit data from the BIS locational banking statistics, disbursement data from World Bank).

While our analysis documents that aid disbursements are associated with wealth accumulation on offshore accounts, the macro nature of the deposit data represents an important limitation. We do not observe who stores wealth in havens and therefore cannot directly infer the economic mechanism. In any case, it is almost certain that the beneficiaries of the money flowing to havens at the time of aid disbursements belong to economic elites, as offshore bank accounts are overwhelmingly concentrated at the very top of the wealth distribution.

Several reasons to suspect elite capture in the most aid-dependent countries

A number of additional results suggest that the increase in haven deposits around aid disbursements reflect capture by ruling elites.

First, we find no similar increase in deposits in non-havens. While aid disbursements trigger money flows to places like Zurich, the global centre for banking secrecy and private wealth management, there are no analogous flows to other international banking centres such as New York, London, and Frankfurt. If the money derives from corruption and embezzlement, it is natural that it flows to banking centres with institutionalized financial secrecy.

Second, the estimated effect varies across countries and projects in ways that are consistent with elite capture. We find that aid disbursements cause more money flows to havens when countries are more corrupt and have less democratic checks and balances (according to standard measures) and when projects have unsatisfactory outcomes (according to the World Bank's ex post evaluation).

Third, analysing leaked data from corporate service providers and corporate registries in havens such as the British Virgin Islands, Panama, and the Bahamas, we find that aid disbursements cause an increase in the number of offshore corporations with links to the receiving country. These corporations typically have no substantial activities and are known to play a key role in facilitating illicit financial flows.

The estimated leakage rate of 7.5% most likely represents a lower bound since it only includes money diverted to foreign accounts and not money spent on real estate, luxury goods, and pet projects. It also does not include money diverted to the accounts of offshore corporations. In principle, it may also overstate true diversion to the extent that some of the funds appearing on haven accounts around aid disbursements reflect other mechanisms; e.g., local contractors receiving payments under WB-sponsored projects and funnelling the payment to haven accounts to evade taxes.

Finally, we find strong evidence that the leakage rate varies positively with aid-dependence. When we include a wider range of countries in the analysis, including countries that are less dependent on WB aid, the estimated leakage rate drops and becomes statistically insignificant.
A corruption conundrum

When we zoom in on a smaller set of countries that depend the most on WB aid, the estimated leakage rate surges. This pattern suggests that the average leakage rate across all aid-receiving countries is much smaller than in the main sample. Donors are therefore confronted with a corruption conundrum — aid is most likely to be diverted in countries that need it most.

Jørgen Juel Andersen is a Professor at the Norwegian Business School (BI).

Niels Johannesen is a Professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Bob Rijkers is Senior Economist at the World Bank.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or the United Nations University, nor the programme/project donors.