Climate Activists Smear Cake on King Charles III's Wax Statue at London's Madame Tussauds

AFP
Last Updated: OCTOBER 25, 2022
London, United Kingdom

Just Stop Oil activists stand next to King Charles III’s statue after hurling a chocolate cake at it 

(Image: @mbindwane/Twitter)

The climate activists and two others were arrested. The activists from the Just Stop Oil group says their direct actions are justified

Climate activists on Monday smeared chocolate cake over a waxwork model of Britain’s King Charles III at London’s Madame Tussauds museum. The Just Stop Oil demonstrators said in a statement they were demanding that the government halt “all new oil and gas licences and consents".

Police said four arrests had been made.

“We responded quickly to an incident at Madame Tussauds after two people threw food at a statue at approximately 10:50 hrs. They have both been arrested for criminal damage," the Metropolitan Police said in a tweet.

A later police tweet said an additional two people had also been arrested for criminal damage.

In a statement released afterwards, Just Stop Oil named the protesters as Eilidh McFadden, 20 and Tom Johnson, 29.

It quoted them as saying that they staged the protest to “protect this green and pleasant land which is the inheritance of us all".

Just Stop Oil says climate change poses an existential crisis for humanity and its direct tactics are justified.

Last week, two of the group’s activists scaled a major road bridge over the River Thames, resulting in its closure.

Days earlier others threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers" masterpiece in London’s National Gallery.

'Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth': Michael Moore dives into his predictions for 2022 midterms

Tiffany Terrell
October 25, 2022

Michael Moore (MSNBC)

During the 2016 presidential election, liberal filmmaker/activist Michael Moore had a prediction that Democratic strategists didn’t like one bit. Moore predicted that New York City real estate mogul turned far-right politician Donald Trump would defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, winning Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — a prediction that proved to be spot on.

Now, in the 2022 midterms, Moore has a prediction that flies in the face of what many pundits have been predicting: He believes that voters, furious because the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, will bring about a massive blue “tsunami.”

Watch a clip below:

'Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth': Michael Moore dives into his predictions for 2022 midterms | RawStory.TV

During an interview with The Guardian published on October 23, the 68-year-old Moore — famous for documentaries that include 1989’s “Roger and Me,” 2002’s “Bowling for Columbine,” 2004’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” and 2007’s “Sicko” — didn’t back down from his prediction. In fact, he doubled down on it.

Moore believes that liberals and progressives can be conditioned to passively expect the worst when it comes to elections — including the 2022 midterms.

Moore told The Guardian, “The effect of this kind of reporting can be jarring — it can get inside the average American’s head and scramble it. You can start to feel deflated. You want to quit. You start believing that we liberals are a bunch of losers. And by thinking of ourselves this way, if you’re not careful, you begin to manifest the old narrative into existence.”

The activist/filmmaker has addressed a variety of important issues over the years, from the outsourcing of American jobs in “Roger and Me” to the horrors of the U.S. health care system in “Sicko” — which was released three years before the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare, was passed by Congress and signed into law by then-President Barack Obama. Now, in 2022, Moore is predicting that the 2022 midterms will become “Roevember” when millions of voters express their anger over Roe v. Wade being overturned with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Care ruling.

Moore told The Guardian, “If I said to you six months ago, ‘You know Kansas, right? It’s a huge pro-abortion state, and this summer, by a margin of 60 percent, they’re going to keep abortion legal,’ you’d think I had made a crazy statement. If I’d told you at the same time that in the congressional election in Alaska, a hard red state, that it’s not only not going to be won by a Democrat, but a Native Alaskan Democrat, again you’d have to question if I was out of my mind…. I’m 68, and I don’t have time to mess around. I’m deadly serious."

Despite a prediction of a blue wave in 2022, Moore was critical of the Democratic Party during his interview with The Guardian. Moore, who has been discussing the midterms in his series of articles for his website/blog he calls “Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth,” believes that millions of Americans will be voting Democratic in November not because of Democratic Party organizers and strategists, but in spite of them.

Moore told The Guardian, “The biggest hurdle to what I’m doing with the series is the Democratic Party…. It’s very disheartening, and it would make even me question how we’re going to pull this off. The Democratic Party consultants are feeding lines that are so lame and weak. They don’t go for the jugular like a Republican would. It doesn’t inspire people at home…. We stand here on the precipice of a very important election, and our greatest enemy could be the Democratic Party itself…. Everyone…. who does care, and feels like our democracy could be hanging on by a thread…. has to do something in these last three weeks”.

Michael Moore predicting blue ‘tsunami’ response to Roe ruling

Julia Mueller - Yesterday - THE HILL

Filmmaker and activist Michael Moore is forecasting Democrats to keep control of Congress with a blue “tsunami” in this year’s midterms.


Michael Moore predicting blue ‘tsunami’ in response to Roe ruling© Provided by The Hill

With Election Day just two weeks away, Moore — who accurately predicted former President Trump’s 2016 win in the face of many pollsters who said otherwise — is anticipating a Democratic wave following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade.

“On November 8th, 2022, an unprecedented tsunami of voters will descend upon the polls en masse — and nonviolently, legally, and without mercy remove every last stinking traitor to our Democracy,” reads the intro to Moore’s “Mike’s Midterm Tsunami of Truth” Substack.

The Oscar-winning documentarian calls his daily report a “series to counter the reporting that the Republicans are going to win the House and Senate. They are not.”

Last month, Moore emphatically predicted a “massive turnout of women” in the midterms in the wake of Roe’s fall.

Moore cautioned against the popular presumption that a sitting president’s party always fares poorly in an off-year midterm election, which can “get inside the average American’s head,” he wrote in a recent update.

“20 days til #Roevember & the media is busy pushing the old narrative that the Dems will lose. Don’t believe it. They’re so focused on predicting the odds, they’ve lost sight of the issues—where the majority is on our side,” Moore said on Twitter.

In a recent interview with The Guardian, Moore cited a handful of recent instances in which conventional political narratives didn’t play out, including new Alaska Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola (D), who beat out Republican candidate Sarah Palin to become the first Alaska Native in Congress.

“If I’d told you [six months ago] that in the congressional election in Alaska, a hard red state, that it’s not only going to be won by a Democrat but a Native Alaskan Democrat, again you’d have to question if I was out of my mind,” Moore told The Guardian.

“If you’d just been paying attention in the last six months to Kansas, Idaho and Alaska you’d have seen the red flags going up,” he added.

"MIKE'S MIDTERM TSUNAMI OF TRUTH" CAMPAIGN

Mike’s Midterm Tsunami of Truth #14
If the Mainstream Media Thinks There’s a Chance We May Be Right about Roevember, Watch Out.

Michael Moore
Oct 11





(A daily series to counter the myth that the Republicans are going to win the House and Senate)

Just 24 hours ago, the award-winning online magazine Salon, became the first nationwide media outlet to tell the world about our Midterm Tsunami of Truth.

The result? Soon the stale, tired media narrative about how “the party in power always loses miserably in the Midterms!” will be put out to pasture in OK Boomerville.

All it takes is one little crack in the journalism dam that blocks fresh thinking…

Read the Salon analysis below, and get ready —

Four weeks from TODAY, MAGA is about to get the whoopin’ of their lives.



By Sophia A. McClennen

October 10, 2022



Remember when everyone thought Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election? No, I don't just mean win the popular vote: Win it all and win big. FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver's political projection site, had Clinton's chances of winning at 71.4 percent. Frank Luntz tweeted on Election Day, Nov. 8, 2016, "Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States." One GOP insider declared that for Trump to win, "it would take video evidence of a smiling Hillary drowning a litter of puppies while terrorists surrounded her with chants of 'Death to America.'" Pundit after pundit, on the left and the right, joined the chorus of mainstream news outlets to declare that the election was Clinton's.

There was, however, one lone voice of dissent: Michael Moore. In July 2016, Moore wrote "Five Reasons Trump Will Be President." That article mostly went unnoticed by mainstream media after the election, when everyone finally realized Moore was right but it was way too late to make a difference.

Fast forward to the 2022 midterms and we find ourselves in a similar scenario, but turned upside down. Now the media is basically repeating again and again that Democrats will lose in November, while Moore is suggesting the opposite. Moore isn't just echoing the widespread notion that Democrats could hold the Senate while losing the House. He is suggesting that voters "are going to descend upon the polls en masse — a literal overwhelming, unprecedented tsunami of voters — and nonviolently, legally, and without mercy remove every last stinking traitor to our Democracy."

That prediction is likely to cause hyperventilation at all points of the political spectrum. Could he really be right?

To make his point, Moore is going beyond armchair punditry and sending out what he is calling a "tsunami of truth," where each day leading up to the election he offers one specific factual reason why he is right and why it makes sense to be optimistic.

In his second installment, he covered the story of the recent election for the Boise Board of Education, in which Republican Steve Schmidt, an incumbent, was up for re-election. Considering that Trump won Idaho's capital city with 73 percent of the vote, it made sense to assume Schmidt would win again. But as Moore explains, Schmidt had been endorsed by a far-right extremist group, the Idaho Liberty Dogs, that led a campaign against the local library, calling their LGBTQ+ and sex ed materials "smut-filled pornography." According to Moore, they even showed up at local Extinction Rebellion climate strikes brandishing AR-15 assault rifles.

So in a surprising turn of events, the Idaho Statesman, Boise's daily news paper, chose not to endorse Schmidt because he refused to denounce the Idaho Liberty Dogs. Instead, the paper endorsed his opponent, an 18-year-old high school senior and progressive activist, Shiva Rajbhandari, who was also co-founder of the Boise chapter of Extinction Rebellion.

Rajbhandari won. A teenager beat a Republican incumbent in a traditionally red city in one of the reddest states. Moore's point is that if these kinds of seismic shifts are happening at the polls in Boise, there's reason to think that this election won't follow traditional patterns. Voters, he believes, have had enough of the power of right-wing extremists and the threat they pose to democratic values.

In his next "tsunami of truth," Moore reminded readers that despite all the ways that the media tends to make the American right seem massively powerful, they're really just a big bunch of losers. Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the eight last presidential elections. As Moore explains it, "Only because of the slave states' demand for the Electoral College — and the Republicans' #1 job of gerrymandering and voter suppression — do we even have to still deal with their misogyny, their destruction of Planet Earth, their love of guns and greed, and their laser-focused mission to bury our Democracy."

That leads to the next installment: Republicans will lose because this time around they are "running the biggest batch of nutters nationwide in American electoral history." He then promises to offer a list of the top 10 "biggest whackadoodles on the Republican side of the ballot."

No. 10 on Moore's list is Mathew DePerno, Republican candidate for attorney general in Michigan. Like nine other candidates in the 30 state attorney general races this fall, DePerno is an election denier. But he's not just a common, garden-variety election denier; he was allegedly personally involved in a voting system breach. That's right: the Republican candidate who hopes to become Michigan's top law enforcement official is under investigation by the current attorney general for "unauthorized access to voting equipment."

But that isn't the half of it. DePerno also thinks that the Plan B birth control pill is a "form of murder." Moore explains that DePerno "believes that 'life' doesn't begin at conception — he insists it begins BEFORE conception and it should be against the law for anyone to interrupt a sperm on its way to do its 'job.'" As if that weren't enough to categorize DePerno as batshit extreme, he has attacked his opponent with memes that include the white supremacist symbol of Pepe the Frog while comparing his campaign to delivering Michiganders a "really big red pill." Not a Plan B pill, which he likens to fentanyl.

Confirming Moore's view that DePerno's extremism will only going to appeal to a narrow Trumper base, the twitter replies to DePerno are uniformly critical and sarcastic. Like this: "I did nazi that coming. (actually, I did.)." Or this: "I want what you are smoking." Or this post, from @NeverTrumpTexan, "You could just say you were Nazi. It is much easier than what ever that is." Surveying the 50 most recent replies to his tweet, among which include one from Keith Olbermann, every single one is critical and sarcastic.

Moore's 45-day "tsunami of truth" is a clever way to tap into the energy he has described as "Roevember." Moore coined the term back in August, when a funny thing happened in Kansas. Six weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Kansas held an election, which included proposed amendment to the state constitution that could have allowed the legislature to ban abortion. In a surprising shift from typical voting demographics, turnout for the vote was massive, 60 percent higher than in 2018 — and Kansans overwhelmingly voted to reject the anti-abortion amendment.

And that was Kansas, another consistently red state in recent years.

So if we're seeing a swing away from Trump-style Republicans in Kansas and Idaho, there is reason to believe that the combination of Trump fascist nutters on the ballot, the revelations from the Jan. 6 committee hearings, the various investigations into Trump and, last but definitely not least, the fact that the Supreme Court put abortion back on the ballot could lead to the type of voting tsunami Moore is predicting.

Which leads us to wonder why the media isn't covering that story, but is still offering the same stale script about Biden's low favorability and Republican chances of taking back both the House and the Senate. Even Jen Psaki, Biden's former White House press secretary turned MSNBC commentator, offered the downer view that the president wasn't helping his party win.

Media coverage matters. And the fact that the media is largely sticking to pre-established coverage patterns doesn't just mean that it's missing the story, as Moore claims, it also means it's likely influencing the outcome of the election — and not in a good way.

Scholars of media effects know that when news coverage focuses primarily on negative personality coverage, i.e., the "horse race," turnout is depressed. When media focuses on policy, however, including contentious issues like abortion, turnout improves. So all the attention to Biden's supposed unpopularity is not helping.

Further, if the news media tells you the results are a foregone conclusion, that also depresses turnout. I mean, if you are told over and over again that you are going to lose no matter what you do, why bother voting? Even more important, research shows that if the media suggests an election will be close, turnout increases. Some scholars have speculated that the fact that right-wing news outlets reported that the election was close in 2016 elevated the Trump vote, while smug reporting from more liberal outlets, assuming Clinton would win easily, depressed her vote.

Yet almost all news media in the weeks before a major election focuses on predicting the outcome, rather than debating the issues. What's more, the flurry of attention paid to polling, and all the hand-wringing over whether the polling is accurate, only exacerbate the problem. Obsessing over whether or not a given candidate or party will win does almost nothing to help energize voter turnout and engage citizens.



But there's more. For decades, media scholars have described what they call the "protest paradigm." These are the predictable patterns journalists follow when covering protests. They include, for example, a habit of focusing on "small, inappropriate samples of individual protesters," which leads the audience to misunderstand the true nature of the larger movement. The protest paradigm also refers to the news media's habit of allowing elites to frame the story, which misses the positions of average citizens. Even worse, Indiana University professor Danielle Brown explains that this type of coverage "favors spectacle, conflict, disruption and official narratives over the substance of movements that challenge the status quo."

We can observe many of the same habits when the press covers elections. And given that this election in particular could be understood as a protest vote — protesting the assault on women's rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants' rights, democratic rights, etc. — it makes sense to think of this election more in terms of a mass movement than as an example of democracy as usual.

Framing the upcoming vote as a mass uprising of nonviolent civil resistance is exactly Moore's plan. As he explains, his goal isn't just to offer the public another version of the truth; it is also to call out the problems with media coverage. "Much of what many in the media are telling you is patently false and just plain wrong," he writes. "They are simply regurgitating old narratives and stale scripts. They are either too overworked or too lazy or too white and too male to open their eyes and see the liberal/ left/progressive/working class and female uprising that is right now underway."

Moore has a long history of questioning the status quo and bucking conventional thought patterns. Whether getting booed off the Academy Awards stage for opposing the war in Iraq or being the lone voice predicting that Trump would win, Moore has never shied away from disagreeing with the pundit class and political elites. But he doesn't just do it for shock value; he does it because he's paying attention to the political climate in ways the mainstream media tends not to.

Is Moore right that there will be a tsunami of voters determined to defeat the enemies of democracy? The only way to learn the answer is to stop trying to read the tea leaves and focus on making it happen.


ICYMI:

Mike’s Midterm Tsunami of Truths:

Truth #1: The Campaign

Truth #2: Even a kid from 4th hour Trig class can beat this crowd

Truth #3: The Haters, the Bigots and the Supremacists Always Lose in the End

Truth #4: Introducing The Whackadoodle 10

Truth #5: Trump is not the Big Bad Wolf. But he is very afraid of You.

Truth #6: The Easy-to-Digest Republican Party Platform

Truth #7: Biden, Don’t F**k with Me

Truth #8: If you’re not registered, you can’t Roe, Roe, Roe the Vote!

Truth #9: Why will we win? Because the American people hate fascism.

Truth #10: Meet Blake Masters, Whackadoodle No. 9

Truth #11: 147 Reasons We Will Win on November 8th

Truth #12: Biden just gave us a boost and a toke.

Truth #13: Women. That’s it.

BLACK FARMERS CHEATED, AGAIN

U$ Federal government has given $800 million to keep indebted farmers afloat

Jared Strong, Iowa Capital Dispatch
October 19, 2022

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. (Jared Strong / Iowa Capital Dispatch)

More than 13,000 farmers have benefited from nearly $800 million in federal debt relief, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Tuesday.

The assistance came from a new federal initiative to erase farmers’ loan delinquencies to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and private lenders or to resolve their remaining debts after foreclosure.

Going forward, the USDA is expected to give hundreds of millions of dollars of relief to farmers who are facing bankruptcy or foreclosure and to those who are at risk of missing payments on their loans.

“The star of the show here is the farmer,” Vilsack told reporters. “The person that really matters is the farmer, and keeping that farmer, him or her, on the land so that he or she can take care of their family and their community.”

The USDA’s Farm Service Agency gives direct loans to farmers and guarantees loans from banks, credit unions and others to farmers for up to 95% of their value.

The government’s farm loan obligations for the 2022 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, totaled about $5.8 billion, according to USDA records. States with the highest obligations included Iowa at about $484 million, Arkansas at $424 million, Oklahoma at $366 million and Nebraska at $341 million. Virginia’s overall obligations totaled over $67.5 million.

Of those with delinquent direct loans, the average farmer who has failed to make regular payments for at least two months received about $52,000 under a “distressed borrowers” initiative, which is funded with more than $3 billion by the Inflation Reduction Act. That eliminated their delinquencies.

For those with government-backed loans from private entities, the average benefit was about $172,000.

The total number of farmers in the two categories was about 11,000.

For those with direct loans who went bankrupt and still owed money — about 2,100 borrowers — the average benefit was about $101,000. Vilsack said those bankruptcies happened at least a year ago but did not say how long ago they might have occurred.

States with farmers who received the most relief included Oklahoma and Texas, Vilsack said, whereas farmers in the northeastern states of Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island were among those who received the least. Those northeastern states had a combined total of federal farm loan obligations of just $11 million during the 2022 fiscal year, USDA records show.

“Virtually every state in the country has a borrower or several borrowers or groups of borrowers that are impacted by this,” Vilsack said. “I think you’re probably talking about some very, very small operators, and you’re probably talking about a few that would be considered to be mid- or large-sized operators. So it’s across the board.”

The debt relief initiative is the subject of a new lawsuit by non-white farmers who claim that the government improperly reneged on its plans to forgive loan debts of “socially disadvantaged” farmers, which was part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. That initial version of the plan was challenged by lawsuits that claimed it was discriminatory.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 amended the debt relief program to eliminate its prescribed goal to help Asian, Black, Hispanic and Native American farmers. Vilsack described the farmers who have been aided by the amended initiative as those who “couldn’t get credit anywhere else.”

On Sept. 21, Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, sent a letter to Vilsack urging the federal government “to provide swift and equitable relief for borrowers with at-risk agricultural operations” and “take immediate action to ensure that producers with farm loans guaranteed by the USDA are protected from foreclosure.”

The letter was signed by 11 other members of Congress including Virginia Rep. Donald McEachin, D-Richmond.

The USDA suspended its foreclosures of direct loans in January 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic, which was especially tough on livestock producers. Meatpacker closures because of the virus abruptly choked demand for the animals and led in some cases to mass euthanasia. The supply costs for farmers have also soared, notably for fertilizers.

This story originally appeared in the Iowa Capital Dispatch, a sister publication of The Virginia Mercury within the States Newsroom network


Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

UK's financial watchdog proposes rules to stop greenwashing

It plans to implement 'sustainability labels' for investment products and restrictions on how terms like ESG, green and sustainable can be used

Britain’s financial watchdog has proposed new rules to prevent funds from misleading consumers by ‘greenwashing’ or exaggerating their environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) intends to implement new sustainability labels for investment products and restrictions on how terms like ESG, green and sustainable can be used.

Three main categories aim is to keep things relatively simple for investors:A 'sustainable focus' label for funds investing at a high threshold of at least 70% in environmentally or socially sustainable assets,
The 'sustainable improvers' label would be for funds aiming to improve the environmental or social sustainability of their assets over time,
While 'sustainable impact' is for funds investing in solutions to environmental or social problems to achieve a positive, measurable real-world impact.

Restrictions will also be made on whether fund managers can use sustainability-related terms such as ‘ESG’, ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ in product names and marketing for products that don’t qualify for the sustainable investment labels.

The FCA is also proposing a "more general anti-greenwashing rule" covering all regulated financial firms. This will help avoid misleading marketing of products.

It said the reason for its new rules was sparked by the fast growth in recent years of the number of investment products marketed as ‘green’ or making wider sustainability claims, with "exaggerated, misleading or unsubstantiated claims about ESG credentials" often damaging confidence in legitimate products.

Independent research, for example, recently found that hundreds of supposed ESG funds potentially had not invested in anywhere near enough sustainable investments to qualify for their label.

"The FCA wants to ensure that consumers and firms can trust that products have the sustainability characteristics they claim to have," the regulator said in a statement.

Becky O'Connor, author of the ESG Investing Handbook and Interactive Investor's head of pensions and savings, said: "Investors who want to make their money make a difference need to be able to trust that the investment they are buying actually does what it says on the tin.”

But it also marks a major shift from incentivising the transfer of money towards sustainable investments to now minimising the risk of greenwashing, said Lorraine Johnston, a financial lawyer at Ashurst.

"The new proposals place further burdens on fund managers who are trying to do the right thing but who now face a hodgepodge of international disclosure requirements," she said, though each company will be responsible for how to apply the rules in classifying a product, with the FCA only challenging categorisation rather than constantly vetting all firms.

Products are expected to have more detailed disclosures to aid consumers in understanding key sustainability features.

The FCA's rules will be finalised by mid-2023 but will not come into effect until at least 2024.

Critics of the current system say that the lack of common reporting standards, clear terminology and easy-to-understand classification and labelling make it impossible for consumers to compare and accurately access and identify the products that align with their moral values.

The European Union and the US are already in the process of finalising a package and writing rules to combat greenwashing.

Richard Stone, chief executive of the Association of Investment Companies (AIC), said more robust rules were needed as greenwashing was "increasingly undermining consumers’ confidence in ESG claims", with recent AIC research showing that 58% of investors surveyed are not convinced by ESG claims from funds, up from 48% last year.

He also applaud the FCA’s decision to include investment companies in the proposed sustainable investment labels, which he said, "creates a level playing field for all funds which is vital for consumers who need to be confident that they are comparing like with like when choosing a sustainable fund".

 

Report: Billionaire Says Britain May Be Forced to Seek Bailout From IMF if It Does Not Renegotiate Brexit Deal

British billionaire investor Guy Hands has reckoned that Britain will become “the sick man of Europe” and may be forced to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if it does not renegotiate its Brexit deal. The billionaire insisted the United Kingdom’s current economic woes are the result of a poorly negotiated Brexit deal and not the Liz Truss government’s controversial tax cut proposals.

Billionaire Says Poor Brexit Deal Is Source of UK’s Economic Woes

The British billionaire investor Guy Hands has warned that Britain needs to renegotiate Brexit if it is to avoid seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a report has said. According to Hands, Britain’s poorly negotiated exit from the European Union is the primary cause of the United Kingdom’s ongoing economic woes.

As per a report by The Telegraph, Hands believes Britain’s period of economic pain — which seemingly reached its crescendo when the pound fell to its lowest exchange rate versus the dollar — started six years ago and could eventually see the country become “the sick man of Europe.”

While Britain might not need the bailout right away, Hands, founder of private equity firm Terra Firma, insists seeking such financial assistance will become a reality if U.K. ministers fail to renegotiate the Brexit deal. Hands warned about the current course of the country:

Steadily increasing taxes, steadily reducing benefits and social services, higher interest rates and eventually the need for a bailout from the IMF.

Hands, who is a supporter of the ruling Conservative Party, reportedly suggested that he does not think the outgoing Liz Truss government’s tax cut proposals are to blame for the United Kingdom’s financial mess.

Hands: Conservatives Must Own Up to Their Mistake

Tax cut proposals by Kwasi Kwarteng — the United Kingdom’s former chancellor of the exchequer — reportedly spooked financial markets, causing the pound to fall to its lowest ever level versus the U.S. dollar.

Meanwhile, the billionaire investor suggested there has to be some reckoning that the Brexit deal is poor and that it only put Britain on a disastrous economic path. In his remarks directed at the Conservative Party, which has since chosen Rishi Sunak to become the UK’s next prime minister, the billionaire said:

“I think if the Tory party can own up to the mistake in how they negotiated Brexit and have somebody leading it that actually has the intellectual capability and the authority to negotiate Brexit, there is a possibility of turning around the economy, but without that the economy is frankly doomed.”

After touching a low of 1.03 per one dollar, the pound has since recovered and is trading at £1:$1.13 at the time of writing.

Terence Zimwara is a Zimbabwe award-winning journalist, author and writer. He has written extensively about the economic troubles of some African countries as well as how digital currencies can provide Africans with an escape route.

Activists see red over Iceland's blood mares

Agence France-Presse
October 25, 2022

Pregnant mares stand in the meadow of a 'blood farm' near Selfoss, Iceland, Animal -- but animal welfare groups are up in arms about the practice

 Jeremie RICHARD AFP

On an autumn day on a lush green prairie, more than a dozen pregnant mares are waiting to be bled for the last time this year.

This "blood farm" near Selfoss in southern Iceland is collecting blood from pregnant horses raised for the sole purpose of extracting a special hormone used in the veterinary industry.

The practice has had animal welfare groups up in arms ever since a shocking video of horses in Iceland being maltreated emerged on YouTube a year ago.

People working in the industry now insist on anonymity when speaking to the media.

"There is no way we can make the public understand completely this kind of farming", says the 56-year-old owner of the farm near Selfoss.

"The public in general is too sensitive".

At farms like this one, several litres of blood are collected from each horse in order to extract the PMSG hormone (Pregnant mare serum gonadotropin), also known as eCG, produced naturally by pregnant mares.

Sold by the veterinary industry, farmers use the hormone to improve the fertility of other livestock like cows, ewes and sows around the world.

The foals are meanwhile usually sent to the slaughterhouse.

Iceland is one of the rare countries -- and the only one in Europe -- to carry out the controversial practice, along with Argentina and Uruguay, and to a lesser extent Russia, Mongolia and China.

The video published last year showed farmhands beating and prodding horses with sticks, dogs sometimes biting horses, and the horses weakened after giving blood.

Some of the horses could be seen collapsing from exhaustion after struggling against the restraints in their boxes.

The video caused a shockwave, both abroad and in Iceland.

Lucrative business

At the farm near Selfoss, the mares stand in single file in a special wooden structure, waiting patiently for their turn to enter a box.

Planks are placed around their legs to prevent them from moving and a halter is put on their head to hold it up.

"The horses ... can get stressed, agitated. All these restraints are basically to protect them" so they don't get hurt in the box, said a 29-year-old Polish veterinarian, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

A local anesthetic is first administered, then a large needle is injected into the jugular vein. Only a certified veterinarian is authorized to carry out the procedure.

The halter "allows us to see the vein properly because we need to know exactly where it is", he added.

Up to five liters of blood are drawn from each mare in just a few minutes, in an operation they undergo weekly for eight weeks.

The blood collection, carried out from the end of July until early October, is profitable: the 56-year-old running the operation near Selfoss -- who also works as an attorney -- makes up to 10 million kronur ($70,000) a year from the business.

"In many cases, the mares show signs of short-term discomfort during the blood collection", says Sigridur Bjornsdottir, a horse specialist at the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority (MAST).

But "this is not considered a serious change (of their condition) unless the symptoms are severe, extended, or the mare shows signs of chronic stress".

In 2021, Iceland had 119 blood farms and almost 5,400 mares raised for the sole purpose of giving blood, a figure that has more than tripled in the past decade.

The PMSG hormone is turned into a powder by Icelandic biotech group Isteka, the biggest producer in Europe handling around 170 tons of blood per year.

'Noble' cause?

The figure is likely to be lower this year, after the controversial video prompted some farmers to quit the business amid concerns about animal welfare activists.

"Farmers were severely hit and shocked by the video", said Isteka managing director Arnthor Gudlaugsson.

While he acknowledged there were problematic cases, Gudlaugsson said the video, filmed with a hidden camera, was designed "to give an overly negative description of the process".

The video did lead to a police investigation and the farms featured were identified.

MAST inspected all of Iceland's blood farms this summer and "no serious deviations" were observed, and none were ordered to shut down.

The scandal has also sparked debate in Iceland, where most inhabitants learned about the practice for the first time even though it has been going on since 1979.

"This makes us think about where we stand in our ethics", the vice chair of Animal Welfare Iceland, Rosa Lif Darradottir, told AFP.

"To make a fertility drug that is used on farm animals ... to enhance their fertility beyond their natural capacity, just so that we can have a stable flow of cheap pork ... The cause is not noble", she said.

"It's purely and simply maltreatment of animals and we have a word for that: animal cruelty", said opposition MP Inga Saeland, who has repeatedly proposed a ban on the practice, to no avail.

Stricter regulations did, however, enter into force in August, giving authorities more power to monitor the industry and "assess its future" over the next three years.

© 2022 AFP

‘I felt solidarity’: Afghan women monitor Iran protests, vow to continue fight for basic rights

Agence France-Presse
October 25, 2022

Afghan female students chant "Education is our right, genocide is a crime" during a protest in Herat, Afghanistan, on October 2,2022. © Mohsen Karimi, AFP

Since the Taliban takeover last year, Afghan women and girls have been demonstrating for their right to education and employment. So, when women in Iran began anti-regime protests after the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody, their Afghan sisters have been monitoring the situation across the border, hoping for a spillover effect.

Raihana M* was in her living room in the Afghan capital, Kabul, when she first heard of protests erupting across the border in neighbouring Iran following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict dress code.

The Afghan social worker saw footage of the protests in Iran on Manoto TV, a London-based Persian language TV station, and said she felt an immediate, almost physical, rush of solidarity for her Iranian sisters.

“I was really shocked and sad. As an Afghan, as a woman, I felt solidarity because we are experiencing the same thing. Only it’s worse for women in Afghanistan,” she explained in a phone interview from Kabul.

That was in late September, not long after 22-year-old Amini was declared dead by the Iranian authorities. Raihana then took to social media, watching clips of protests across Iranian cities and towns.

Other Afghan women living under the Taliban regime were also doing the same. Within days, a group of around 30 Afghan women gathered outside the Iranian embassy in Kabul chanting, “Zan, zendagi, azadi!” (Women, life, freedom), echoing the protest cry from Iran. They also held banners proclaiming, “From Kabul to Iran, say no to dictatorship!”.

Taliban officials then moved in to break up the demonstration, firing into the air and threatening to hit the women with their rifle butts.

Lina Qasimi, an Afghan teenager who has been unable to go to school since the Taliban shut down secondary schools, has also been keenly following the protests in Iran. “I feel very close to this. It’s really terrible. No one should be killed for just showing their hair. But in Afghanistan, it’s not just hair, it’s women. Just being a woman is a problem for the Taliban,” she said.

With a 921 km border dividing the two countries, Tehran and Kabul have a complicated history of wars, border skirmishes, smuggling networks, migrations, and discrimination in Iran against Afghan refugees. But they also share cultural ties, common linguistic traditions, and centuries of empathy that is probably best described in the lyrics of revered Iranian songwriter, Bijan Taraghi, who famously wrote, “Though your child threw a stone at our window/It did not break our lasting bond”.

‘Afghan women are really alone’

As protests spread across Iran, both Raihana and Qasimi were struck by the extraordinary scenes of Iranian men joining the women in their anti-regime demonstrations. “The difference is, in Iran, all the people are standing up. Iranian women and men are really protesting in unity,” noted Raihana. “In Afghanistan, it’s not like that – people are so afraid. Afghan women are really alone.”

That’s true, says Tamim Asey, co-founder of the Kabul-based Institute for War and Peace Studies and a former Afghan deputy defence minister. “Iranian women have the support of men in considerable ways. Afghan women don’t have that. Afghan men have suffered 40 years of war, so much violence, so much killing. The Taliban are also putting tremendous pressure on the men. If some women protest, they find their husbands, fathers, brothers and arrest them,” he explained.

Afghan women began protesting the week after the Taliban seized control of Kabul on August 15, 2021, despite the grave risk of confronting a movement of hardline Islamist male fighters.

The crackdown has been brutal and extends to male relatives of 'troublesome' women, according to rights groups. In a report last week, the New York-based Human Rights Watch detailed the arrests of three women, who were arrested with their husbands and children, separated under detention and severely tortured. The detained women include Tamana Paryani, who filmed herself pleading for help as the Taliban broke into her house at night in January after she joined a women’s protest demanding the right to education and work.

‘We are not allowed to do anything’

And yet, the women’s protests in Afghanistan have continued. Following an October 1 attack on an education centre in Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barachi neighbourhood, which killed more than 50 mostly female students, protests by women and girls erupted in several Afghan cities, including Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat and Bamiyan.

But they failed to get the sort of media attention and solidarity displays that the Iranian protests have attracted across the world.

On Saturday, around 80,000 people from across Europe demonstrated in Berlin in solidarity with the protest movement in Iran. Global celebrities, including leading French actress Juliette Binoche, have filmed themselves cutting locks of hair in public displays of protest against Amini’s death in custody.

“The international support for Iranian women has been phenomenal. US President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, actors, designers, celebrities have all condemned the persecution and expressed support for the Iranian protesters. The same thing does not happen for Afghan women – even though they originally started the protest movement that had a spillover effect in Iran. And they raised their voices against a far more brutal, dogmatic regime,” said Asey.

The international engagement in Afghanistan, followed by the disastrous fallout of the hasty US withdrawal, could account for the lack of global interest, according to experts. “Over the last 20 years, Western countries have supported Afghan women in various forms and forums. The West feels it’s done so much, now it’s time for Afghan women to take it on. In Iran, that support wasn’t there,” explained Asey.

But for Afghan women, taking on the Taliban’s restrictive policies is a monumental task.

The fear of crackdowns and surveillance have forced Qasimi and her friends to take to social media and avoid the streets. But even the online solidarity is restricted to “live stories” – which typically expire after 24 hours – and not “posts” that stay online until they are deleted.

“It’s the only way I can say anything. It’s too dangerous to post anything critical. The Taliban will find you and they can do anything. We are not allowed to do anything. We’re not allowed to go to school, even if we just go outside, we fear we may not come back home,” explained the Afghan teenager.

At 26, Raihana, on the other hand, completed her education during the US intervention years. She is among the few, lucky women in the country to still have her job, at an international NGO. The Afghan aid worker did not want her real name or that of her employer revealed due to the security risks. And there are many. In the mornings, Raihana dons an all-covering abaya, an all-black robe worn in Gulf countries that has made its way to Afghanistan. The office car, with female and male colleagues, takes different routes each day to avoid Taliban checkpoints as they make their way to work, offering essential humanitarian services that the Taliban fails to provide Afghans.

The difference between the women-led protest movements in Afghanistan and Iran extends to the scope of their demands, according to Barnett Rubin, a leading Afghanistan expert and former special advisor to the late US Ambassador for Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke. “The Iranian demonstrations are centrally against enforcement of hijab and then more broadly “freedom." Education of girls and women is a non-issue in Iran. In Afghanistan, women are protesting about issues of basic rights and survival and not, so far, about hijab,” explained Rubin in emailed comments to FRANCE 24.

Spillover effect – or not

From her home in Kabul, Raihana says she is closely monitoring the situation in Iran. “If the protests work, if the Iranian government makes changes, if the restrictions on hijab change, I think the Taliban will see it. They will learn that if they continue like this, it could happen here,” she said.

But Asey is not as optimistic. “My assessment and reading of the situation is that the Taliban barely cares about the women’s movement in Iran. They’re not afraid of a spillover,” he maintained.

As a former deputy defence minister, Asey explained that Kabul’s main concerns with Tehran are focused on border issues, including drug trafficking and migration.

Protests in Iran have indeed spread to the impoverished province of Sistan-Baluchistan – which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan – including a September 30 “Black Friday” massacre, when Iranian security forces opened fire on protesters, killing at least 66 people.

But the unrest in the remote Iranian border province involves longstanding governance and religious rights issues between the predominantly Sunni Baloch ethnic group and Shiite authorities in Tehran, explained Asey.

Despite the odd border clashes and demonstrations over the mistreatment of Afghans in Iran, the Taliban have managed a working relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran since the August 2021 takeover of Afghanistan.

Both administrations are wary of the West, particularly the US. When it comes to women’s rights, the situation in Iran may not be as bleak as in Afghanistan, but the two Islamic administrations are joined in their bid to silence female voices – and blame the West’s “corrupting influence” when that fails.

“I understand that the Taliban and Iran have some connection. There are meetings, discussions between them,” said Raihana. “Also, the Taliban stopped the protest in support of Iranian women outside the Iranian embassy in Kabul. It shows some support for each other.”

But Afghan women are also drawing moral support from their Iranian sisters across the border and are determined to keep up the pressure for their basic human rights.

*Name changed to protect identity

'Not a single global indicator is on track' to reverse deforestation by 2030: Analysis

Kenny Stancil,

 Common Dreams
October 25, 2022

A photo from Mercy for Animals drone investigation of Amazon deforestation. 

(Image: Mercy for Animals)

Although halting and reversing deforestation by 2030 is key to averting the worst consequences of the climate and biodiversity crises, the world is off course to achieve these critical targets and urgent international action is needed, an analysis warned Monday.

"Funding for forests will need to increase by up to 200 times to meet 2030 goals."

During the United Nations' COP26 climate summit last November, 145 nations signed the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration "to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation" by the end of the decade.

One year later, "not a single global indicator is on track to meet these 2030 goals of stopping forest loss and degradation and restoring 350 million hectares of forest landscape," according to the annual Forest Declaration Assessment.

"To be on course to halt deforestation completely by 2030, a 10% annual reduction is needed," the report notes. "However, deforestation rates around the world declined only modestly, in 2021, by 6.3% compared to the 2018-20 baseline. In the humid tropics, loss of irreplaceable primary forest decreased by only 3.1%."

"Tropical Asia is the only region currently on track to halt deforestation by 2030," thanks to the "exceptional progress" made by Indonesia and Malaysia, which reduced clear-cutting by 25% in 2021, states the report. "While deforestation rates in tropical Latin America and Africa decreased in 2021 relative to the 2018-20 baseline, those reductions are still insufficient to meet the 2030 goal."

Globally, 26,000 square miles of forest—an area roughly equivalent to the Republic of Ireland—were destroyed in 2021. This deforestation decimated biodiverse ecosystems and released 3.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, about as much as the European Union.

Experts have long warned that it will be virtually impossible to maintain a habitable planet unless the world stops felling trees to make space for cattle ranching, monocropping, and other harmful practices.

Even though "notable progress in afforestation and reforestation efforts over the last two decades have resulted in new forest new forest areas the size of Peru, with net gains of forest cover in 36 countries... overall losses exceeded gains over the same period, resulting in a net loss of 100 million hectares globally," according to the report.

Furthermore, "forest cover gains, through reforestation and afforestation activities, do not compensate for forest loss in terms of carbon storage, biodiversity, or ecosystem services," the report explains. "Therefore, highest priority efforts should be directed towards safeguarding primary forests from losses in the first place."

Fran Price, global forest practice lead at World Wildlife Fund, one the groups involved in the report, called the Forest Declaration Assessment "another warning signal that efforts to halt deforestation are not enough and we're not on track to achieve our 2030 goals."

"There is no pathway to meeting the 1.5°C target set out in the Paris agreement or reversing biodiversity loss without halting deforestation and conversion," said Price. "It's time for bold leadership and for daring solutions to reverse this alarming trend."

Key findings from the report's section on sustainable production and development include:
We are not on track to achieve the private sector goal to eliminate deforestation from agricultural supply chains by 2025, and corporate action in the extractives sector also remains limited;
REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) programs have not yet yielded a reduction in deforestation, and only a handful of countries have received payments for forest emission reductions;
In most countries, governments have yet to make the bold sectoral reforms needed to protect forests;
There are very few examples of government-led poverty reduction programs that both prioritize forest impacts and are implemented at scale; and 200 land and environmental defenders were killed in 2021, and the mining and extractives sector is consistently ranked as one of the deadliest for defenders.

"To ensure that 2025 and 2030 do not pass as 2020 did—with limited progress toward global forest goals—governments, companies, and civil society must collaborate to accelerate forest action," states the report.

The authors recommend that governments adopt and enforce much stronger regulations to prevent deforestation and human rights abuses while also calling on corporations to "increase the scope and stringency" of efforts to remove deforestation from their supply chains and reduce the negative forest impacts of extraction.

According to the section on forest finance, "It will cost up to $460 billion per year to protect, restore, and enhance forests on a global scale. Currently, domestic and international mitigation finance for forests averages $2.3 billion per year—less than 1% of the necessary total."

"Funding for forests will need to increase by up to 200 times to meet 2030 goals," notes the report. "Finance pledges made in 2021 demonstrate a substantial increase in ambition to meet 2030 forest goals. If they are fully delivered, they would quadruple annual finance for forests from 2021-25 to $9.5 billion. Yet, funding would still need to increase by up to 50 times to meet investment needs."

"It's time for bold leadership and for daring solutions to reverse this alarming trend."

"IPs [Indigenous peoples] and LCs [local communities], who are the most effective stewards and guardians of their forest territories, receive far less funding than their estimated finance needs for securing tenure rights and preserving forest ecosystems," the report finds. "Only 1.4% of total public climate finance in 2019-20 was targeted toward IPs and LC's needs, and only 3% of the financial need for transformational tenure reform is being met annually."

Moreover, "most financial institutions still fail to have any deforestation safeguards for their investments," the assessment points out. "Almost two-thirds of the 150 major financial players most exposed to deforestation do not yet have a single deforestation policy covering their forest-risk investments, leaving $2.6 trillion in investments in high deforestation-risk commodities without appropriate safeguards."

Spending $460 billion per year on global forest protection and restoration—substantially less than the United States' annual military budget—"is an investment that we cannot afford not to make," the authors emphasize. "Achieving the 2030 forest goals is essential for ensuring a livable world in line with the Paris agreement."

To that end, the report implores "governments, companies, and financial institutions to utilize all tools at hand to substantially increase their investments in forests, while also shifting finance away from harmful activities."

A final section on forest governance argues that more robust policy and legal frameworks are required to curb deforestation, land degradation, and human rights violations.

Tools such as "moratoria, strengthened enforcement capacity, smart conservation policies, and improved transparency and accountability are effective in protecting forests—as evidenced by remarkable reductions in deforestation in various periods since 2004 when these tools have been employed in Indonesia, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guyana, and Brazil," the report notes.

However, the report points out, "some of these achievements have been reversed—notably in Brazil—or are at risk of being reversed as countries phase out or roll back policy gains through recent or proposed amendments."

Since assuming office in 2019, far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has accelerated the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, endangering the future of human beings and other species. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his popular leftist opponent who was president from 2003 to 2010 when Brazil made progress toward halting deforestation, currently has a six percentage point lead in the polls ahead of Sunday's runoff election.

"The Brazilian elections are not just about the future of Brazil, the result will have an impact on all of humanity," Paul Morozzo, senior food and forests campaigner at Greenpeace U.K., said earlier this month. "If we lose the Amazon, we lose the fight against the climate crisis."

While the report is focused on forest ecosystems, the authors stress that "globally, terrestrial and coastal ecosystems including savannas, grasslands, scrublands, and wetlands are all under threat of conversion and degradation."

"Countering this threat for all ecosystems is essential to meeting global climate and biodiversity goals" and "will require a drastic reduction in the conversion and degradation of all natural ecosystems and a very large increase in restoration and reforestation activities, which must be pursued through equitable and inclusive measures," they continue.

The report adds that "nothing less than a radical transformation of development pathways, finance flows, and governance effectiveness and enforcement will be required to shift the world's forest trajectory to attain the 2030 goals."

Most Americans do trust scientists and science-based policy-making – freaking out about the minority who don’t isn’t helpful

The Conversation
October 25, 2022

Scientist using a microscope in a laboratory (Shutterstock)

Most Americans – 81% – think government investments in scientific research are “worthwhile investments for society over time,” according to the Pew Research Center’s latest survey on public perceptions of science.

A similar proportion said they have at least “a fair amount” of confidence that scientists act in the public’s best interests: 77% for all scientists, and 80% for medical scientists. As with previous surveys, this puts confidence in scientists at about the same level as in the military – 77%. It’s also much higher than for any other group pollsters asked about and, unlike most groups, fairly stable over time, despite recent increasing political polarization.

Science supporters want researchers to share their insights to help address societal problems. Scientists themselves want their research to have an impact. So public judgments like those identified in the Pew report matter because of what they suggest about how Americans might see evidence-based guidance on issues such as climate change and public health.

Don’t fixate on the negatives

It would be easy for the scientific community to look at this data and lament the 1 in 5 Americans who said they don’t think government investments in science are important or who said they do not have confidence in scientists.

Same with the fact that confidence in scientists has retreated from a small surge that Pew surveys previously identified starting in late 2018, or the reality that Republicans appear to have increasingly more negative views about scientists and scientific investments than Democrats do.

But I suspect there are more shades of gray behind the black and white numbers themselves.

For instance, while two-thirds of Democrat-oriented respondents said they supported scientists’ involvement in policy debates, less than a third of Republican-oriented respondents said they share this perspective, a further decrease from the proportion of Republicans who expressed this view in both 2019 and 2020.

But consider that this specific question only gave people two choices. Respondents could say they want scientists to take an “active role” in policy or “focus on establishing sound scientific facts.”

Given the choice, I suspect many respondents from across the political spectrum would have given a more nuanced answer. Even the biggest science boosters likely want scientists to devote most of their time to research and teaching.

Within this new survey, in fact, only about a third of Republicans said scientists currently have “too much” influence in public policy debates and about a quarter said scientists have “not enough” influence. The plurality – 39% – said they have “about the right amount.”

From my perspective, yes, it is disheartening that about 2 in 10 Republicans think scientists are “usually worse” at “making good policy decisions about scientific issues” than “other people” and that this proportion has doubled since 2019.

But about a quarter of Republicans still said scientists’ decisions are “usually better” than others, with about half saying scientists’ decisions are “neither better nor worse.”

And it seems possible that while current Republicans responded to the survey they were thinking about issues such as abortion or COVID-19 policies that involve medicine, but also ethics and economics and personal values. Additionally, many Republicans presumably recognize that most scientists oppose current directions in the party and may be using their poll answers to communicate their sense of alienation.

What could improve overall perceptions

Data such as those provided by the Pew Research Center point to potential problems; they don’t suggest a fix. Taking a positive view, though, puts the focus on potential solutions.

As Anthony Dudo and I argue in our new book on science communication strategy, anyone who wants to be trusted – including scientists – should consider social science research about what enhances trust and perceptions of trustworthiness.

Key among these findings: people perceive others as trustworthy if they appear to be caring, honest and competent.

Looking back at the Pew Research Center’s 2019 surveys on trust in science, which are consistent with other research, it seems that Americans largely perceive scientists as fairly competent. However, Americans tend to be less likely to believe scientists “care about people’s best interests,” are “transparent about conflicts of interest” or willing to take “responsibility for mistakes.”

These perceived characteristics help explain the chunk of the American population who don’t feel confident about scientists’ motivations. They are also perceptions that scientists, like others, can take responsibility for through their choices about how they behave and communicate.

Further, Americans tend to see “research scientists” less positively than science-focused practitioners such as doctors, suggesting that they feel more distant from academic researchers.
Looking on the bright side for better results

Focusing too heavily on the minority of people with negative perceptions is dangerous for those of us who want science to play a strong role in society because attacking one’s critics may exacerbate the problem.

While it might feel righteous to “fight” for science, being aggressive toward people who question one’s trustworthiness seems unlikely to spur positive perceptions.

Unlike politicians, science supporters probably can’t win by making others look bad. Just like the press, members of the scientific community want to ensure their field’s long-term place in society. Research suggests that for scientists, building real relationships with other members of the public will depend on communicating and behaving in ways that demonstrate caring, honesty and expertise.

Loud griping by scientists and their supporters about how too many people just don’t appreciate science’s place in society, or insults toward those who don’t see its value, are bound to be counterproductive.

The stakes are high as humanity confronts a number of science-related challenges, including climate change, infectious diseases and habitat destruction. Anyone who wants scientific evidence to have a seat at the table where solutions are being discussed may need to follow the evidence on how to make that happen.

John C. Besley, Ellis N. Brandt Professor of Public Relations, Michigan State University

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