CONSPIRACY THEORY FODDER

Peter Doocy worries Biden will use Canada's proposed handgun ban on Americans

David Edwards

May 31, 2022

C-SPAN/screen grab

Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre what President Joe Biden was going to do in response to Canada's newly proposed gun regulations.

At a White House press briefing on Tuesday, Doocy expressed concern about gun regulations that have been proposed in Canada following the recent mass shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas. The proposed Canadian law would ban assault-style weapons and put a "freeze" on handgun sales and imports. It would also revoke the firearms licenses of Canadians involved in domestic violence-related crimes.

"Canada is making it impossible to buy, sell, transport or import handguns," Doocy complained. "Would President Biden ever consider a similar restriction on handguns here?"

"We'll leave it up to other countries to set their policy on gun ownership," Jean-Pierre replied. "The president has made his position clear. The United States needs to act as I just laid out. He supports a ban on the sale of assault weapons and high capacity magazines and expanded background checks to keep guns out of the dangerous hands."

"He does not support a ban on the sale of all handguns," she reassured Doocy.

Watch the video below from C-SPAN.

Reclaiming identity through hemp in the Lebanese valley of hashish

Tessa Fox

NEW ARAB

Across Lebanon, the infamous Lebanese region of Beqaa Valley is synonymous with hashish cultivation. Deprived of opportunity, and segregated from society, one Lebanese man has chosen to buck the stereotype and has since sparked a hemp revolution.

A defined rhythm is made as Hamza Chamas slaps dried, crunched up hashish stalks onto a plank of wood with nails sticking out of it, in order to soften and break up the fibres before brushing them with a metal comb to produce fine grass-like material.

It’s a raw and laborious way to convert the unused plants of hashish – which are planted and harvested in abundance in the Beqaa, in Lebanon’s east near Syria - into soft fibres which can then be used to make paper and textiles.

Born and raised in the village of Boudai, close to the ancient city of Baalbak but a two-hour drive from the capital of Beirut, Chamas has been experimenting with the many products that can be made from the hashish plant.

"The first thing people say when they know where we’re from is ‘ah you have hashish, oh you’re in a tribe so you kill people, also I have a stolen car, it must be in your village"

“Hash is grown everywhere here, but I’m the first person to be working in hemp,” Chamas told The New Arab, as he sat drinking coffee in his house surrounded by farmland.

Chamas describes all the by-products he uses from the hashish plant as hemp, whereas in places like America and Australia, hemp is a specific plant of the cannabis family that is grown only for its non-smokable products, such as fibres and seeds.

Boudai, and the nearby village of Yammouneh, are well known for producing hashish, and while it isn’t legal in Lebanon, the farms and producers are protected by the tribes of the region.

The first process of making hemp fibres is crushing the dried stalks of the hashish plant

 [photo credit: Tessa Fox]

The Lebanese state, as Chamas said, has left them to their own accord since 2012, “because all the tribes made an agreement that if someone came to destroy the crops or arrest us, or put their hand on the plants, they’ll be killed.”

While this tribal law has long protected the main income of many families in the area, as a child Chamas felt trapped by the customs of the village, as well as isolated from other avenues of knowledge and culture.

“I had no personality because the system of society is based on fear... we don’t know what we want... there was only school, family and television here,” Chamas, now 36, said.

After being crushed and then scraped through metal the hemp fibre becomes softer, almost ready to be used for making paper or textiles [photo credit: Tessa Fox]

As a kid, Chamas felt there were no resources to see what is possible or available outside of the village, and knew he was stereotyped because he was from Beqaa.

“The first thing people say when they know where we’re from is ‘ah you have hashish, oh you’re in a tribe so you kill people, also I have a stolen car, it must be in your village,’” Chamas explained.

After drifting in and out of studying and working in Beirut for seven years, meeting new friends in cultural spaces in the capital, but not “understanding anything because they were all talking about Marxism and liberalism,” Chamas made a post on Facebook that would change his life.

“I wrote: ‘The only source of knowledge in the village is the mother, the father and television, we need books to make a library for children.’ I knew if we had the knowledge we would be without fear,” he said.

From 2017 onwards, Chamas collected more than 2,000 books for the children of his village and forged ahead with creating a library in empty shop spaces, naming it Shahraban, after his mother.

The project gradually grew beyond loaning books to children in the summer holidays; he now provides workshops every two months for the youth of Boudai, ranging from the basics of photography, and cinema, or bringing musicians or rappers to help the kids make their own songs.

For a long time, the people in Boudai continued to tell Chamas that he was wasting his time, that he should get married and have children, and questioned how he would make money to eat.


"Everyone is familiar with hemp, but they know about it just to be smoked, they don’t know how to use it in the different ways Hamza is sharing"

This is how the idea of using hemp was born, as Chamas’ cousin once turned to him and said; “you bring books but how will we eat from them?”

Considering the seeds of the hashish plant are generally used as bird feed, Chamas decided to take them from the nearby farms and make hemp milk, nutritious plant-based milk with a nutty taste, made by blending hemp seeds with water.

“At the beginning, the people in the village thought they would get high from it,” Chamas said.

So he took the milk to a lab to test it and the results came back that THC – the psychoactive chemical in cannabis – wasn’t present, but it was indeed packed with protein, amino acids, vitamins and minerals such as phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and iron, which is why it has been labelled a superfood.

A shed filled with hashish plant stalks in Boudai village, normally burnt but saved by Hamza Chamas to make fibres for paper, textiles and hempcrete [photo credit: Tessa Fox]

Chamas often goes to Beirut to sell the hemp milk as well as cakes he makes from the milk and seeds, to generate income to support the library in Beqaa.

“In the future, the library will be fully funded from the hemp products... to create this circle of knowledge, economy and culture,” he envisioned.

His library workshops have also expanded to include how to make the milk, as well as fibres which can be used to make paper and textiles, and more recently hempcrete – a natural building material made from hemp fibres, clay and lime to replace conventional bricks or cement.

Various samples of hempcrete blocks were made by Hamza Chamas and his community. The darker block has more clay in the mix while the white brick has more lime added [Tessa Fox]

Raneen Chamas, 25, first learnt how to make paper and textiles from Chamas in Boudai and loved the creative process of it.

“It’s like you’re recycling the gifts of your soil and land by not throwing it away for nothing,” Raneen Chamas told The New Arab.

“By making paper to write on… you’re using nature to learn and teach more,” she continued.

Raneen Chamas also believes using the hemp will improve the village economically seeing as so many people already grow the crop.

“Everyone is familiar with hemp, but they know about it just to be smoked, they don’t know how to use it in the different ways Hamza is sharing,” she said.

He feels his community is too busy working in farming the money crops of hash, as well as apples to a lesser degree, so would be less interested in making hemp milk at home.Mohamed, 30, from Yammouneh – who didn’t want to share his last name for fear of the police monitoring his village - is interested in building chalets out of hempcrete blocks.

“The main concern is to sell hash [to generate income] but if they see that the hempcrete is working they would start building with it,” Mohamed told The New Arab.

Chamas wants to share the knowledge and process of making hempcrete with all the surrounding villages, though if they use the hempcrete for business purposes, as Mohamed intends to, they also need to provide a space in the village for Chamas to create another library.

Seeing as producing the fibres by hand is so labour intensive, Chamas is hoping to buy a machine which can be installed in Boudai in order for the community to benefit from the hash stalks they normally burn.

Importing a machine for the fibres will certainly be expensive, though Chamas is hesitant to approach any NGO for support in funding it because they often don’t understand the identity or background of the community, and people of the region feel NGOs are trying to instil their own values, as he said.

“I know the people’s mentality here which is why I won’t bring books that will make problems… I don’t want to change the village, I just want to create a window, to work with the children… develop their tools, be connected [and] to know that there are choices in this life,” Chamas said.

Tessa Fox is a freelance journalist and photographer covering war and conflict, human rights and humanitarian affairs across the Middle East.

Follow her on Twitter: @Tessa_Fox

Arabs assemble: Why Moon Knight's Scarlet Scarab is a victory for the Palestinian diaspora


Tariq Raouf

Moon Knight's cultural significance continues to reverberate across the Arab world. In particular, Palestinian-Egyptian actress Maya Calamawy's role as Scarlet Scarab has given hope to the Palestinian diaspora and helped counter misrepresentation.

In the final episode of Disney’s original Marvel series, Moon Knight, a new Egyptian superhero was born. The Scarlet Scarab is the result of Layla El-Fouly (May Calamawy) reluctantly agreeing to become the Avatar for the Egyptian goddess, Taweret, in a bid to save the world.

This new character’s transformation is not only an epic opportunity for further Egyptian representation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but a win for Palestinians across the diaspora thanks to Calamawy’s portrayal of her.

Sporting golden wings and matching bracelets, the Scarlet Scarab may remind viewers of a certain DC superhero who donned a very similar outfit in theatres not too long ago: Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman. But while the two characters may have very similar aesthetics, culturally speaking they could not be any more different – thanks to the women who play them.


"When I saw an Egyptian-Palestinian woman walk out of that temple in Moon Knight’s finale, dressed head-to-toe in superhero gear for the first time, I cried. And again when the small girl asked her, are you an Egyptian superhero?"

Many are already familiar with Gadot’s Israeli nationality, and that she served in the Israeli military when she was young.

A pro-Zionist and supporter of the IDF, Gadot has repeatedly come under fire for her statements on the violence happening in Gaza, by the Israeli military against Palestinian targets, while painting Israel as the victim and simultaneously not mentioning anything of the Palestinian civilians killed or daring to mention Palestine by name at all in any of her statements.

And though one may argue that one’s personal life should not necessarily affect your professional one, Gadot’s latest film, Wonder Woman: 1984, was panned by Middle Eastern critics for its blatant Islamophobia and racist caricature portrayals of Arabs.

Egyptian-Palestinian actress May Calamawy attends the premiere of Moon Knight [Getty Images]

There’s even an unbelievably tone-deaf scene included in the film, of Wonder Woman saving three children playing football on a beach from getting killed.

When you learn that in 2014 four Palestinian children were killed by an IDF missile while playing on the beach in Gaza, you can see how this is an unmistakable attempt to re-write the story of Zionists killing innocent civilians, making the Zionist superhero the saviour in the end.

As a Palestinian, seeing a pro-Zionist portray one of the world’s most beloved superheroes always hurt.

Knowing that behind the character I was watching on the screen there was a woman who supported the bombings in Gaza, who was part of the military structure that carried on those bombings, and who never mentioned Palestine in any of her statements on the violence happening there… it always removed my ability to suspend my disbelief.

So, when I saw an Egyptian-Palestinian woman walk out of that temple in Moon Knight’s finale, dressed head-to-toe in superhero gear for the first time, I cried. And again when the small girl asked her, “are you an Egyptian superhero?”

Because even though I was watching a story taking place in Egypt, even though everything about this show is Egyptian, and not Palestinian at all, behind that hero was a woman who gave Palestinians a chance to be seen in a global blockbuster in a way we never have before.

Palestinian representation is a rare thing in Hollywood, and there are only a handful of household names that have Palestinian heritage. When it comes to something as global as Disney and Marvel, the only other names that come close to that level of fame are Bella Hadid and DJ Khalid.

Two names, two people who have the chance to be on the same level as someone like Gal Gadot, and neither of them are really in any major films or television shows.

Calamawy’s presence in a Marvel series, her character’s creation for the MCU, gives us just one more chance to be heard and counteract the pro-Zionist narrative carried on by actors like Gadot and in films like Wonder Woman: 1984.

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And though Calamawy’s Palestinian heritage is not advertised or flaunted, the fact that she is Egyptian-Palestinian is enough to hold me over.

In this industry, Palestinians have to fight to be heard, and to flaunt your Palestinian heritage is to kiss your chances of success goodbye. Speaking from experience, we face an incredible amount of racism and undue labelling as anti-Semitic for merely supporting our people, or having pride in our identity.

But when I see Calamawy climb the rungs of Hollywood’s ladder, I have a deep pride knowing that maybe one day my Palestinian identity won’t keep me from reaching that, too.

So, yes, to some it may seem like the Scarlet Scarab is just a small superhero in a small TV show, but to Palestinians around the globe, she is a symbol of strength and power, and a visual representation of the battle we have been fighting for nearly a century: A chance to be seen.

Tariq Raouf is a Palestinian-American Muslim writer, based in Seattle. You can follow them on their journey of rediscovering their roots with their newsletter, Finding Palestine

Follow them on Twitter: @tariq_raouf

Enabling Economic Growth Through Energy

A DISCUSSION OF 

Fixing the Disconnect Around Energy Access

BY MICHAEL O. DIOHA, NORBERT EDOMAH, KEN CALDEIRA

RESPONSES FROM

Moussa P. Blimpo
Todd Moss, Katie Auth

In “Fixing the Disconnect Around Energy Access” (Issues, Winter 2022), Michael Dioha, Norbert Edomah, and Ken Caldeira contrast the tale of two communities in Nigeria to highlight the daunting challenge of bringing universal energy access to low-income countries in a financially sustainable way. Although the article focuses on two communities in Nigeria, it speaks to a broader issue across the African continent.

In a recent World Bank book that I coauthored, Electricity Access in Sub-Saharan Africa: Uptake, Reliability, and Complementary Factors for Economic Impact, we addressed this very issue and laid out ways to think about electrification in sub-Saharan Africa. We reported an example similar to that of Kigbe, one of the authors’ case studies. In this case, the community of Gabbar, Senegal, implemented an off-grid solar energy system to help in producing onions for export to cities across the country. Elsewhere, we have also seen financially strained communities trying to get off a $7 per month installment contract they signed to acquire a solar home system—only to realize that they cannot afford the cost a few months down the road.

We also argued, as do Dioha and coauthors, that all electrification efforts should start with viewing it as a means to a greater end rather than an end in itself. This perspective is even more important in poorer countries that may lack the means to plan, fund, and excuse rapid electrification. It also requires understanding that although energy is crucial to most modern productive economic activities, it is still an input that needs complementary investments to turn access into impact.

Although energy is crucial to most modern productive economic activities, it is still an input that needs complementary investments to turn access into impact.

The question is, why is this seemingly straightforward logic broken? Dioha and coauthors provide an excellent diagnostic of the problem, but they do not address the why. Understanding the main reasons this is happening can help pave the way to better global development policies in areas beyond energy. In the mid-1970s, the British economist Charles Goodhart coined the Goodhart’s law, stipulating that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), and in this particular case SDG’s Goal 7, which calls for ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all, has fallen prey to Goodhart’s law. Counting the number of households that gained some form of access to modern energy from one year to the next has become an end in itself.

How can this challenge be addressed at the global level? The successor of the SDGs, if any, should focus on fewer targets centered on prosperity and let the local contexts determine how to get there. Alternatively, the SDGs should be much more ambitious. The Modern Energy Minimum produced at the Energy for Growth Hub, listed as a recommended reading by Dioha and coauthors, is an excellent example of rethinking the SDG’s Goal 7. This kind of effort should extend beyond energy to rethink more broadly a new approach to setting global targets for development.

MOUSSA P. BLIMPO
Senior Fellow, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy
University of Toronto
Senior Fellow, Clean Air Task Force
Fellow, Energy for Growth Hub

Michael O. Dioha, Norbert Edomah, and Ken Caldeira highlight that electricity access programs too often fail to deliver “much-needed outcomes in pace, scale, and improvements in quality of life.” Drawing on two Nigerian mini-grid case studies, the authors argue that in order to transform lives, energy access interventions must be paired with economic empowerment. While they focus specifically on community-level interventions, their three core messages also apply to larger, national-scale efforts.

First, Dioha and coauthors argue that community-level energy access programs must focus on more than connecting individual households to electricity; they must be paired with support for broader economic activity. This is equally important at larger scales. The primary international metrics for defining electricity access and success toward eradicating energy poverty focus principally on power consumption at home. These metrics drive much of the global energy development agenda, placing a political premium on achieving universal household access. But globally, 70% of electricity is consumed outside the home, where it powers economic activity and job creation. Energy development efforts, including electrification programs, need to balance connecting households with targeted investments in energy for businesses, manufacturing, and industry. These larger consumers not only power economic activity and job creation, but also serve as anchors for a more diversified and financially sustainable system.

Energy development efforts, including electrification programs, need to balance connecting households with targeted investments in energy for businesses, manufacturing, and industry.

Second, the authors stress the need to consult with affected communities, making the essential point that energy is a social challenge, not just a technical or economic one. At the community level, people gaining access to electricity for the first time need the “the opportunity to imagine what they would do with electricity access and how they might use it to change their lives.” This is equally true at the macro-level. Efforts to support large-scale energy systems development—especially those driven by outside funders and partners—need to better account for national development plans and industrialization goals. This means, first of all, listening to what communities, states, and nations want to achieve with energy—and then helping figure out how to power it. The reverse approach, of having a technological solution and then looking for a place to sell it, is unfortunately all too common.

Finally, the authors rightly point out that many energy access programs have focused too heavily on electricity supply, rather than on the broader enabling infrastructure that ensures power can be distributed and consumed. At a macro-scale, investing in modern grid infrastructure is crucial and often overlooked. Solving this bottleneck will become even more relevant as countries work to build flexible, resilient systems with greater shares of variable renewable power.

While we do see progress in each of these areas, there is much work left to do. The authors have done a service in highlighting these important issues and recommending a path forward.

TODD MOSS

Executive Director
KATIE AUTH

Policy Director

Energy for Growth Hub

CITE THIS ARTICLE

“Enabling Economic Growth Through Energy.” Issues in Science and Technology 38, no. 3 (Spring 2022).

NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINEARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

VOL. XXXVIII, NO. 3, SPRING 2022FORUM

Does US have evidence of aliens visiting us on Earth?

What did the recent US Congress hearings on ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ reveal?

Steven Tingay, The Conversation

Deputy Director of US Naval Intelligence Scott Bray points to a video of a 'flyby' as he testifies during the first open congressional hearing on 'UFOs'. | Joey Roulette/ Reuters

The United States Congress recently held a hearing into government information pertaining to “unidentified aerial phenomena” .

The last investigation of this kind happened more than 50 years ago, as part of a US Air Force investigation called Project Blue Book, which examined reported sightings of unidentified flying objects (note the change in name).

The current hearings are the result of a stipulation attached to a 2020 Covid-19 relief bill, which required US Intelligence agencies to produce a report on unidentified aerial phenomena within 180 days. That report appeared in June last year.

But why would governments be interested in unidentified aerial phenomena? One exciting line of thought is unidentified aerial phenomena are alien spacecraft visiting Earth. It is a concept that gets a lot of attention, by playing on decades of sci-fi movies, views about what goes on in Area 51, and purported sightings by the public.

A much more prosaic line of thought is governments are interested in unexplained aerial phenomena – especially those within their own sovereign airspace – because they may represent technologies developed by an adversary.

Indeed, most discussion at the recent hearing revolved around potential threats from unidentified aerial phenomena, on the basis they were such human-made technologies.Footage of three unidentified aerial phenomena from US Navy pilots.

None of the public testimony went any way towards supporting a conclusion that alien spacecraft have crashed on, or visited, Earth. The hearings did include closed classified sessions that presumably dealt with more sensitive security information.

There is no doubt unexplained phenomena have been observed, such as in footage obtained by navy pilots (above) showing fast moving airborne objects. But the leap to aliens requires far more substantial and direct evidence – incredible evidence – that can be widely scrutinised using the tools of science.

After all, the existence of life elsewhere in the universe is a fascinating question of science and society. So the search for extra-terrestrial life is a legitimate pursuit, subject to the same burden of evidence that applies to all science.

Drop in ocean

On and off over the past decade, I have used radio telescopes to perform wide ranging experiments to search for technosignatures – signs of technological civilisations on planets elsewhere in our galaxy (the Milky Way). But after decades of many teams of experts using powerful telescopes, we still have not covered much territory.

If the Milky Way is considered equivalent to the Earth’s oceans, the sum total of our decades of searching is like taking a random swimming pool worth of water out of the ocean to search for a shark.

On top of that, we are not even sure sharks exist and, if they do, what they would look like or how they would behave. While I believe life will almost certainly exist among the trillions of planets in the universe – the sheer scale of the universe is a problem.

Making contact

The vast volume of the universe makes it very difficult to achieve interstellar travel, receive signals, or communicate with any potential far-off lifeforms (at least according to the laws of physics as we know them).

Speeds are limited to the speed of light, which is around 3,00,000 km per second. It is pretty fast. But even at that speed it would take a signal roughly four years to travel between Earth and the nearest star in our galaxy, which is four light years away.

But Einstein’s theory of special relativity tells us that, in practice, the speed of a physical object such as a spacecraft will be slower than the speed of light.

Also, thanks to the inverse square law of radiation, signals get weaker in proportion to the square of the distance they have travelled. Over interstellar distances, that is a killer.

So for planets hundreds or thousands of light years away, travel times are likely in the many thousands of years. And any signals originating from civilisations on those planets are incredibly weak and difficult to detect.

Cover ups?

Could it be aliens have crashed on Earth and the US government is just covering it up, as Republican Congressman Tim Burchett claimed in his reaction to the hearing?

For airlines belonging to the International Air Transport Association, the chance of plane crash is about one in a million. That begs the question: do we think an alien spacecraft that can travel for thousands of years, across interstellar distances, is more robust and better designed than our planes?

Let us say it is a hundred times better. Which means the chance of a crash is one in a hundred million. So to end up with alien wreckage stashed away at Area 51, we would need one hundred million visits from alien spacecraft. That would be 2,739 visits from aliens per day, every day, for the past 100 years.

So, where are they? The near-Earth environment should be constantly buzzing with aliens.

With radars constantly scanning space, billions of mobile phone cameras, and hundreds of thousands of amateur astronomers photographing the sky (as well as professional astronomers with powerful telescopes), there should be a lot of really good evidence in the hands of the general public and scientists – not just governments.

It is much more likely the unidentified aerial phenomena presented in evidence are home-grown, or due to natural phenomena we do not yet understand.

In science, Occam’s Razor is still a great starting point – the best explanation is the simplest explanation consistent with the known facts. Until there is much more – and much, much better evidence – let us conclude aliens have not visited yet.

I cannot lie though, I am hoping I will see a time when that evidence exists. Until then, I will keep searching the skies to do my bit.

Steven Tingay is the John Curtin Distinguished Professor (Radio Astronomy) at Curtin University.

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

Renters In America Are Running Out Of Options

VICE NEWS

The need for affordable housing continues to grow in urban centers. The traditional form of affordable housing for suburban and rural areas, mobile homes, have become overrun with speculation, pricing people out through a new type of landlord - private equity.

RENTIER CAPITALISM

COMPLETE COCK UP

French interior minister accused of lying over Champions League chaos

Wed, June 1, 2022, 


French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin came under pressure on Wednesday over the chaos that marred the Champions League final at the weekend between Liverpool and Real Madrid which he has blamed on ticket scams.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused him of lying and said he should resign after he defended the French police and blamed ticket counterfeiting, disorganised supporters and unruly behaviour by English fans for the crushes.

"The facts are extremely serious and the lie by the minister is extremely serious," Le Pen told France 2 television.

"In any other democracy, faced with such a fiasco, with chaos that occured in front of 400 million people watching on television, which offered a dreadful image of France, then he should consider himself that he should resign," she added.

Darmanin gave a televised press conference on Monday, two days after the final which was delayed because thousands of Liverpool supporters were unable to enter the stadium, many of them suffering teargas, pepper spray and crushes on the way in.

The 39-year-old blamed "massive, industrial-scale and organised fraud in fake tickets" and said that 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool fans had turned up at the stadium either without tickets or with counterfeited tickets.

He also claimed that at some check-points outside the Stade de France as many as 70 percent of tickets were found to be fraudulent by staff.

- 'Wholly disrespectful' -

But sources within UEFA and the French football federation told AFP on Tuesday that only 2,800 fake tickets were detected at the final, suggesting the problem was more about managing flows of ticketless fans around the stadium.

Darmanin is a pugnacious rightwinger from northern France who was recently extended in his role as interior minister by President Emmanuel Macron following presidential elections in April.

Liverpool have asked for an apology from French authorities for the treatment of their fans, while the chairman of the club has condemned separate comments from French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera.

Oudea-Castera initially blamed Liverpool for failing to properly organise its supporters who travelled to Paris.

Liverpool chairman Tom Werner called the statement "irresponsible, unprofessional, and wholly disrespectful" in a letter leaked to the local Liverpool Echo newspaper on Tuesday.

Darmanin and Oudea-Castera are expected later to appear before a Senate commission where they will face questions about security at the game which tarnished France's image ahead of the rugby World Cup next year and the Paris Olympics in 2024.

"What we expect is clarity and, I almost want to say, honesty," the head of the Senate commission, François-Noel Buffet, told Franceinfo radio.

On the number of counterfeited tickets, "we need to know what the truth is. The two ministers need to say on what they are basing their statements on," added Buffet, who is from the opposition Republicans party.

"If this fraud was massive and genuinely true and real, there's an issue, but if it's not the truth, then there's another subject which is about trust in public statements and the real understanding of the ministers in charge of this area," he added.

el-adp/pi

Dozens protest in Turkey against attempt to close anti-femicide group

Several hundred women protested outside an Istanbul court on Wednesday ahead of a hearing to close a well-known anti-femicide campaign group.

© Adem Altan, AFP

Waving banners with slogans such as "You will never walk alone!" and "We will stop women's murders," the protesters gathered outside Istanbul's main court to demonstrate against a case to shut down We Will Stop Femicide Platform, one of Turkey's leading feminist organisations.

An Istanbul prosecutor had filed a lawsuit in April, accusing the group of "activity against law and morals".

We Will Stop Femicide Platform campaigns against the murder and abuse of women in the mostly Muslim but officially secular state.

Group representative, Nursen Inal, slammed the trial as politically motivated.

"There's an organised, massive women's groups on the streets, and we believe this court case is an attack against women's struggle for their rights," she told AFP outside the court.

The association was a vocal critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision last year to pull Turkey out of the Istanbul Convention, which requires countries to set up laws aimed at preventing and prosecuting violence against women.

Social conservatives in Turkey claim the convention promotes homosexuality and threatens traditional family values.

We Will Stop Femicide has organised large rallies in support of the convention.

The platform says 160 women were killed in Turkey this year, many of the murders committed by family members, and this number stood at 423 last year.

"We are under pressure from the government because we publicise name by name each and every woman's murder," Inal said.

"This contradicts the government's thesis which says women's murder is in the decline."

(AFP)

An ocean first: Underwater drone tracks CO2 in Alaska gulf

By MARK THIESSEN


1 of 13

This May 4, 2022, photo shows oceanographers Andrew McDonnell, left, and Claudine Hauri, middle, along with engineer Joran Kemme after an underwater glider was pulled aboard the University of Alaska Fairbanks research vessel Nanuq from the Gulf of Alaska. The glider was fitted with special sensors to study ocean acidification. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)


SEWARD, Alaska (AP) — In the cold, choppy waters of Alaska’s Resurrection Bay, all eyes were on the gray water, looking for one thing only.

It wasn’t a spout from humpback whales that power through this scenic fjord, or a sea otter lazing on its back, munching a king crab.

Instead, everyone aboard the Nanuq, a University of Alaska Fairbanks research vessel, was looking where a 5-foot (1.52-meter) long, bright pink underwater sea glider surfaced.

The glider — believed to be the first configured with a large sensor to measure carbon dioxide levels in the ocean — had just completed its first overnight mission.

Designed to dive 3,281 feet (1,000 meters) and roam remote parts of the ocean, the autonomous vehicle was deployed in the Gulf of Alaska this spring to provide a deeper understanding of the ocean’s chemistry in the era of climate change. The research could be a major step forward in ocean greenhouse gas monitoring, because until now, measuring CO2 concentrations — a quantifier of ocean acidification — was mostly done from ships, buoys and moorings tethered to the ocean floor.

“Ocean acidification is a process by which humans are emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through their activities of burning fossil fuels and changing land use,” said Andrew McDonnell, an oceanographer with the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks



Oceans have done humans a huge favor by taking in some of the C02. Otherwise, there would be much more in the atmosphere, trapping the sun’s heat and warming the Earth.

“But the problem is now that the ocean is changing its chemistry because of this uptake,” said Claudine Hauri, an oceanographer with the International Arctic Research Center at the university.

The enormous amount of data collected is being used to study ocean acidification that can harm and kill certain marine life.

Rising acidity of the oceans is affecting some marine organisms that build shells. This process could kill or make an organism more susceptible to predators.

Over several weeks this spring, Hauri and McDonnell, who are married, worked with engineers from Cyprus Subsea Consulting and Services, which provided the underwater glider, and 4H-Jena, a German company that provided the sensor inserted into the drone.



Most days, researchers took the glider farther and farther into Resurrection Bay from the coastal community of Seward to conduct tests.

After its first nighttime mission, a crew member spotted it bobbing in the water, and the Nanuq — the Inupiat word for polar bear — backed up to let people pull the 130-pound (59-kilogram) glider onto the ship. Then the sensor was removed from the drone and rushed into the ship’s cabin to upload its data.

Think of the foot-tall (0.30-meter) sensor with a diameter of 6 inches (15.24 centimeters) as a laboratory in a tube, with pumps, valves and membranes moving to separate the gas from seawater. It analyzes CO2 and it logs and stores the data inside a temperature-controlled system. Many of these sensor components use battery power.

Since it’s the industry standard, the sensor is the same as found on any ship or lab working with CO2 measurements.

Hauri said using this was “a huge step to be able to accommodate such a big and power hungry sensor, so that’s special about this project.”

“I think she is one of the first persons to actually utilize (gliders) to measure CO2 directly, so that’s very, very exciting,” said Richard Feely, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s senior scientist at the agency’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. He said Hauri was a graduate student in 2007 when she accompanied him on the first acidification cruise he ever led.

The challenge, Feely said, is to make the measurements on a glider with the same degree of accuracy and precision as tests on board ships.

“We need to get confidence in our measurements and confidence in our models if we are going to make important scientific statements about how the oceans are changing over time and how it’s going to impact our important economic systems that are dependent on the food from the sea,” he said, noting that acidification impacts are already seen in the Pacific Northwest on oysters, Dungeness crabs and other species.

Researchers in Canada had previously attached a smaller, prototype CO2 sensor to an underwater drone in the Labrador Sea but found it did not yet meet the targets for ocean acidification observations.

“The tests showed that the glider sensor worked in a remote-harsh environment but needed more development,” Nicolai von Oppeln-Bronikowski, the Glider Program Manager with the Ocean Frontier Institute at Memorial University of Newfoundland, said in an email.

The two teams are “just using two different types of sensors to solve the same issue, and it’s always good to have two different options,” Hauri said.

There is no GPS unit inside the underwater autonomous drone. Instead, after being programmed, it heads out on its own to cruise the ocean according to the navigation directions — knowing how far to go down in the water column, when to sample, and when to surface and send a locator signal so it can be retrieved.    

As the drone tests were underway, the U.S. research vessel Sikuliaq, owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by the university, conducted its own two-week mission in the gulf to take carbon and pH samples as part of ongoing work each spring, summer and fall.

Those methods are limited to collecting samples from a fixed point while the glider will be able to roam all over the ocean and provide researchers with a wealth of data on the ocean’s chemical makeup.

The vision is to one day have a fleet of robotic gliders operating in oceans across the globe, providing a real-time glimpse of current conditions and a way to better predict the future.

“We can ... understand much more about what’s going on in the ocean than we have been before,” McDonnell said.

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More Associated Press climate change stories can be found here.

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Follow Mark Thiessen on Twitter: @mthiessen

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

COVID-19, shootings: Is mass death now tolerated in America?

YES! 

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — As the nation marked 1 million deaths from COVID-19 last week, the milestone was bookended by mass shootings that killed people simply living their lives: grocery shopping, going to church, or attending the fourth grade. The number, once unthinkable, is now an irreversible reality in the United States — just like the persistent reality of gun violence that kills tens of thousands of people every year.

Americans have always tolerated high rates of death and suffering — among certain segments of society. But the sheer numbers of deaths from preventable causes, and the apparent acceptance that no policy change is on the horizon, raises the question: Has mass death become accepted in America?

“I think the evidence is unmistakable and quite clear. We will tolerate an enormous amount of carnage, suffering and death in the U.S., because we have over the past two years. We have over our history,” says Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist and professor at Yale who, before that, was a leading member of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP. He made his comments in an interview last week, before the latest massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 21 people were killed on Tuesday, including 19 children.

“If I thought the AIDS epidemic was bad, the American response to COVID-19 has sort of ... it’s a form of the American grotesque, right?” Gonsalves says. “Really — a million people are dead? And you’re going to talk to me about your need to get back to normal, when for the most part most of us have been living pretty reasonable lives for the past six months?”

Certain communities have always borne the brunt of higher death rates in the United States. There are profound racial and class inequalities in the United States, and our tolerance of death is partly based on who is at risk, said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota who studies mortality.

“Some people’s deaths matter a lot more than others,” she lamented in an interview last week. “And I think that’s what we’re seeing in this really brutal way with this coincidence of timing.”

In the shooting in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, the alleged shooter was a racist bent on killing as many Black people as he could, according to authorities. The family of 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, one of 10 people killed there in an attack on a grocery store that served the African American community, channeled the grief and frustration of millions as they demanded action, including passage of a hate crime bill and accountability for those who spread hateful rhetoric.

“You expect us to keep doing this over and over and over again — over again, forgive and forget,” her son, former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield, Jr., told reporters. “While people we elect and trust in offices around this country do their best not to protect us, not to consider us equal.”

In the handful of days after the shooting in Buffalo, a man 1,700 miles away in Texas legally purchased one AR-style rifle, then another, along with 375 rounds of ammunition, according to state senators briefed by law enforcement. He then carried out the attack on Robb Elementary. Just 10 days had passed.

The sense that politicians have done little even as the violence repeats itself is shared by many Americans. It’s a dynamic that’s encapsulated by the “thoughts and prayers” offered to victims of gun violence by politicians unwilling to make meaningful commitments to ensure there really is no more “never again,” according to Martha Lincoln, an anthropology professor at San Francisco State University who studies the cultural politics of public health.

“I don’t think that most Americans feel good about it. I think most Americans would like to see real action from their leaders in the culture about these pervasive issues,” said Lincoln, who spoke before the attack on the school in Texas, and who adds that there is a similar “political vacuum” around COVID-19.

The high numbers of deaths from COVID-19, guns and other causes are difficult to fathom and can start to feel like background noise, disconnected from the individuals whose lives were lost and the families whose lives were forever altered.

American society has even come to accept the deaths of children from preventable causes.

In a recent guest column published in The Advocate newspaper, pediatrician Dr. Mark W. Kline pointed out that more than 1,500 children have died from COVID-19, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite the “myth” that it is harmless for children. Kline wrote that there was a time in pediatrics when “children were not supposed to die.”

“There was no acceptable pediatric body count,” he wrote. “At least, not before the first pandemic of the social media age, COVID-19, changed everything.”

There are many parallels between the U.S. response to COVID-19 and its response to the gun violence epidemic, according to Sonali Rajan, a professor at Columbia University who researches school violence.

“We have long normalized mass death in this country. Gun violence has persisted as a public health crisis for decades,” she said last week, noting that an estimated 100,000 people are shot every year and some 40,000 will die.

Gun violence is such a part of life in America now that we organize our lives around its inevitability. Children do lockdown drills at school. And in about half the states, Rajan said, teachers are allowed to carry firearms.

When she looks at the current response to COVID-19, she sees similar dynamics. Americans, she said, “deserve to be able to commute to work without getting sick, or work somewhere without getting sick, or send their kids to school without them getting sick.”

“What will happen down the line if more and more people get sick and are disabled?” she asked. “What happens? Do we just kind of live like this for the foreseeable future?”

It’s important, she said, to ask what policies are being put forth by elected officials who have the power to “attend to the health and the well-being of their constituents.”

“It’s remarkable how that responsibility has been sort of abdicated, is how I would describe it,” Rajan said.

The level of concern about deaths often depends on context, says Rajiv Sethi, an economics professor at Barnard College who has written about both gun violence and COVID-19. He points to a rare but dramatic event such as an airplane crash or an accident at a nuclear power plant, which do seem to matter to people.

By contrast, something like traffic deaths gets less attention. The government last week said that nearly 43,000 people had died on the nation’s roads last year, the highest level in 16 years. The federal government unveiled a national strategy earlier this year to combat the problem.

Even when talking about gun violence, mass shootings get a lot of attention but represent a small number of the gun deaths that happen in the United States every year, Sethi said in an interview last week. For example, there are more suicides from guns in America than there are homicides, an estimated 24,000 gun suicides compared with 19,000 homicides. But even though there are policy proposals that could help within the bounds of the Second Amendment, he says, the debate on guns is politically entrenched.

“The result is that nothing is done,” Sethi said. “The result is paralysis.”

Dr. Megan Ranney of Brown University’s School of Public Health calls it a frustrating “learned helplessness.”

“There’s been almost a sustained narrative created by some that tells people that these things are inevitable,” said Ranney, an ER doctor who did gun violence research before COVID-19 hit, speaking before Tuesday’s Texas school shooting ended 21 lives. “It divides us when people think that there’s nothing they can do.”

She wonders if people really understand the sheer numbers of people dying from guns, from COVID-19 and from opioids. The CDC said this month that more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, setting a record.

Ranney also points to false narratives spread by bad actors, such as denying that the deaths were preventable, or suggesting those who die deserved it. There is an emphasis in the United States on individual responsibility for one’s health, Ranney said — and a tension between the individual and the community.

“It’s not that we put less value on an individual life, but rather we’re coming up against the limits of that approach,” she said. “Because the truth is, is that any individual’s life, any individual’s death or disability, actually affects the larger community.”

Similar debates happened in the last century about child labor laws, worker protections and reproductive rights, Ranney said.

An understanding of history is important, said Wrigley-Field, who teaches the history of ACT UP in one of her classes. During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, the White House press secretary made anti-gay jokes when asked about AIDS, and everyone in the room laughed. Activists were able to mobilize a mass movement that forced people to change the way they thought and forced politicians to change the way they operated, she said.

“I don’t think that those things are off the table now. It’s just that it’s not really clear if they’re going to emerge,” Wrigley-Field said. “I don’t think giving up is a permanent state of affairs. But I do think that’s where we’re at, right at this moment.”

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Michelle R. Smith is an Associated Press reporter, based in Providence. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/mrsmithap