TURKEY IMPERIALIST WAR ON SYRIAN KURDISTAN
Turkish drone strike kills 2 Kurdish local officials and their driver in north Syria, officials say

BASSEM MROUE and KAREEM CHEHAYEB
Tue, June 20, 2023

BEIRUT (AP) — A Turkish drone attack killed two Kurdish local officials and their driver in northeast Syria on Tuesday in the latest such strike in the war-torn country, officials said, as talks on Syria’s conflict began in Kazakhstan.

The Kurdish-led authority in northeast Syria said Tuesday’s strike hit a car near the town of Qamishli, killing the co-chairperson of the town’s council, Yusra Darwish, and her deputy, Liman Shweish, as well as their driver. An additional local officials was wounded in the attack.

The attack is the latest in a series of such strikes by Turkey’s military that has been targeting Kurdish officials and fighters in northeast Syria for months. Turkey says the main Syrian Kurdish militia is allied to the outlawed Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, has led an insurgency against Turkey since 1984, which has killed tens of thousands of people.

The authority said in a statement that the four were visiting institutions run by the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria when they came under drone attack while on the road outside Qamishli.

Also Tuesday, a two-day round of talks aimed at resolving the broader conflict in Syria opened in the Kazakh capital, Astana, among officials from Russia, Iran, Turkey and Syria. Attempts at reconciliation between Syria and Turkey, which has troops in Syria and backs opposition fighters, have been slow.

Syrian state media quoted Syrian Assistant Foreign Minister Ayman Sousan saying that “any active results” that come out of the meetings should be based on Turkey agreeing to withdraw its troops from Syria with a “clear timeline.”

The meeting follows ongoing improvement in relations between Syria and Arab countries that once backed opposition groups since the conflict began in March 2011, which has killed half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.

President Bashar Assad attended the Arab Summit in Saudi Arabia in May after Syria’s membership was reinstated 12 years after it was suspended.

In southern Syria, U.S.-based organization the Syrian Emergency Task Force announced Tuesday the first aid delivery to a remote desert camp near the Jordanian border housing some 8,000 internally displaced people since September 2019.

Damascus and Moscow blame U.S. troops stationed nearby for failing to provide security for aid shipments to Rukban camp, allegations denied by the Americans. Jordan closed the border years ago over security concerns.

The humanitarian and advocacy group said the delivery includes seeds and irrigation tools for residents to sustain themselves, as well as school supplies for the over 1,000 children in the camp who have been deprived of education. The aid group said it is preparing to send baby formula, prenatal vitamins, school books, and food items in the coming weeks.

“The world for a long time has been forgetting the crisis of refugees, especially those besieged within Syria,” Omar al-Shogre, the group's director of detainee affairs, told The Associated Press.

It took a few years of talks with the Department of Defense to approve the facilitation of assistance to Rukban via its Denton Program, which aids U.S.-based non-governmental organizations with transporting humanitarian aid. The organization purchases the aid and it is stored on whatever space is available on United States aircraft in the Ain al-Assad base in Iraq’s Anbar province already scheduled to fly to the Al-Tanf garrison near the camp.

Mouaz Moustafa, who heads the organization, says efforts to deliver aid for years formally through the U.N. has “obviously failed” due to the Syrian government’s obstructions.

“You cannot rely on a process that is under the control of the powers besieging the camp,” Moustafa said.

UN chief deplores 'chronic underfunding' of humanitarian aid



Reuters
Wed, June 21, 2023

GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticised on Wednesday what he called chronic underfunding of aid across the globe despite growing humanitarian needs.

"Chronic underfunding and record levels of humanitarian need are stretching the system to the breaking point," he told the Humanitarian Affairs Segment of the U.N. Economic and Social Council.

Only 20% of funds needed under the U.N. Global Humanitarian Appeal have been received halfway through 2023, he said.

"This is causing a crisis within a crisis," Guterres added. "Without a solution to the funding crisis, further cuts are inevitable."

On Monday international donors pledged close to $1.5 billion in aid to Sudan, which has been stricken by a grave humanitarian crisis that has driven some 2.2 million people from their homes.

Prior to the conference, a U.N. appeal for $2.57 billion for humanitarian support within Sudan this year was about 17% funded, and an appeal for nearly $500 million for refugees fleeing the country was just 15% funded.

(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Gareth Jones)

UN expert urges a different approach to resolve the crisis in Myanmar



EDNA TARIGAN
Wed, June 21, 2023 

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — An independent expert working with the United Nations on the issue of human rights in Myanmar urged the international community on Wednesday to find a different approach to resolve the crisis in the Southeast Asian country, saying the current course of action is not working.

Tom Andrews, a special rapporteur working with the U.N. human rights office, told a news conference in Jakarta the world is looking to Indonesia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for leadership on the situation in Myanmar.

“I came to Indonesia because the human rights situation in Myanmar is dire and getting worse, and because I believe that Indonesia is positioned to play a critical role in the resolution of this crisis,” Andrews said after meeting with Indonesian and ASEAN officials.

Myanmar’s crisis began after its military in February 2021 seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The takeover prompted widespread public protests, whose violent suppression by security forces triggered an armed resistance that now spans much of the country.

Andrews, a former U.S. congressman, said the situation in Myanmar is also losing visibility outside of the country.

He said the Myanmar military has killed more than 3,600 civilians since the crisis began, while more than 19,000 people have been jailed as political prisoners.

ASEAN, of which Myanmar is a member, two years ago agreed on a five-point plan that includes a call for an immediate stop to killings and other violence and the start of a national dialogue. The military rulers in Myanmar initially accepting the plan, but have made little effort to implement it.

Andrews said the 10-member regional bloc should not invite the junta to any of its meetings and should not allow Myanmar military personnel to participate in defense meetings.

“I cannot help but have the impression that there are two different time zones when it comes to ASEAN and the crisis in Myanmar: one being the reality of the people of Myanmar who face daily attacks by junta forces and rapidly deteriorating conditions. The other is the world of ASEAN officials who caution that progress could take years, even decades,” he said.

“The people of Myanmar do not have decades. They need a strong international response to the crisis that is carried out in the same ‘time zone’ as the brutal attacks that they are suffering,” he said.

Special rapporteurs work with the U.N. human rights office in Geneva based on mandates handed out by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council, a 47-member body that currently counts both China and Russia as members.

Why Brexit is partly to blame for the inflation crisis

Eir Nolsoe
Wed, June 21, 2023 

Mark Carney says he has been vindicated after warning about the economic impact of leaving the EU - David Rose

When Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, who headed up Threadneedle Street during the Brexit vote, spoke to The Telegraph last week his message was: “We told you so”.

The Canadian said he had been vindicated after warning that the departure from the EU would push up prices, weaken the pound and hit growth.

On Wednesday, inflation data drove shock waves through the City after an anticipated drop failed to materialise and signs that price pressures are becoming embedded intensified.

The grim figures, which instantly fuelled a rise in the Government’s borrowing costs, are significantly worse than in comparable economies.

While Britain battled unchanged inflation of 8.7pc in May and the highest core inflation in 31 years at 7.1pc, the US and the eurozone are doing considerably better.

In the US, the Fed has paused raising interest rates after consumer price growth fell to 4pc in May.

Core inflation – which strips out volatile components like food and energy – eased somewhat by 0.2 percentage points to 5.3pc.

In the eurozone, the core measure fell by a near similar amount also to 5.3pc, while overall price growth slowed to 6.1pc in May, down from 7pc in April.

But this does not mean the UK’s rampant inflation can be solely blamed on Brexit – although most economists believe it has had some impact.

“A small part of the UK’s inflation problem is attributable to Brexit,” says Gregory Thwaites, a professor in economics at the University of Nottingham.

It is being felt in different ways, he says. Companies are being forced to pay higher costs to trade with the EU, which has a direct impact on imports.

The pound also remains lower than before the referendum in 2016, Thwaites says. But while there initially was a boost to inflation from the weaker sterling, he adds that has now been priced in.

“Then there’s probably a small effect also from the loss of migrants,” Thwaites says.

“So other things equal, if we were still in the EU, it’d be slightly easier to get workers from the EU and we would have slightly lower inflation because of that.”

The UK has suffered the same energy shock as the eurozone, while like the US it has also experienced a drop in labour market participation from Covid – meaning it is suffering the worst of both worlds.

Labour shortages – driven by a rise in long-term sickness and people choosing to retire early – have helped fuel record wage growth of 7.2pc in the three months to April.


This is higher than in both the eurozone and the US. Meanwhile, the absence of workers from the EU has added further constraints on labour supply.

The pressures have been most intense in industries that are typically less skilled and were until recently highly reliant on EU workers such as hospitality, retail and care work.

Ruth Gregory, of Capital Economics, says that the red-hot rise in pay is adding to pressure on core inflation.

“Some of that strength in the UK does stem from its bigger and more persistent shortfall in the supply of labour,” she says.

“I think part of that may be due to Brexit and part may be due to long NHS waiting lists which are contributing to labour market inactivity through long-term sickness,” she says.

This view is shared by James Smith at Dutch bank ING. He says that inflation in the cost of services has proved more stubborn “certainly compared to the eurozone”.

“Some of that will come back to the labour market inevitably,” he says.

“The extent to which that’s linked to Brexit, I think it is at least partly, but it is also born out of other trends. We seem to have this particular issue with worker illness, which other countries haven’t experienced.”

The UK has a whole host of problems, which means that separating the impacts of Brexit on inflation from shocks from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine is difficult.

One often overlooked aspect also comes back to productivity which has only just recovered to 2019 levels, says Thwaites.

This is where Brexit would have an impact by raising costs and “reducing the extent to which we can specialise in what we’re best at”, he adds.

Thwaites says the UK used to be able to have wage inflation of 4pc without consumer prices growing faster than 2pc, because companies were getting more productive every year. This meant they could pay higher wages with the extra productivity.

“Now we’ve got wage inflation of 7pc, we’ve actually got productivity falling by 1pc or something like that. So actually firms’ costs, rather than going up by 7pc, are going up by 8pc and that’s just their wage costs,” he says.

“The problem is we can’t handle any wage inflation at the moment because the productivity performance of the economy is so bad. That’s what we need to fix. That is partly to do with the way that we left the European Union but there are loads of other things as well.

“If you want high wages, you need to have high productivity, and if you want low inflation, you need to have high productivity growth.”

For now, Britain is stuck in a spiral of rapidly rising wages and even faster inflation.

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Ukraine dam: Satellite images reveal Kakhovka canals drying up

Erwan Rivault, Mark Poynting & Rob England - BBC Verify
Thu, June 22, 2023

A view shows bank of Kakhovka Reservoir with Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on an opposite bank after the Nova Kakhovka dam breached, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near the town of Nikopol, in Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine June 9

One of Europe's largest reservoirs is drying up after the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine.

Satellite images, analysed by BBC Verify, show four canal networks have become disconnected from the reservoir.

The UN says drinking water supplies could be affected for more than 700,000 people, mostly in Russian-occupied areas.

Experts say the loss of water from the canals would be critical for food production in the region.

The Kakhovka Dam was destroyed in the early hours of 6 June, causing widespread flooding which hit settlements and farmland across the region.

Since the dam collapsed, satellite images show water levels in both the reservoir and the canals it feeds have continued to drop.

As well as the canals being a source of drinking water to large parts of southern Ukraine, they also provided irrigation for vast areas of farmland. The dam acted as a flood defence to places downstream, mainly to the south and south-west.

A satellite map showing the vast network of canals in southern Ukraine, including Crimea

BBC Verify monitored the four canal entrances using satellite imagery, and by 15 June, all had become disconnected as the reservoir water level kept dropping.

Further images reveal the reservoir, which previously held 18 cubic kilometres of water, had dried up significantly.

Two images of Kakhovka reservoir, one at 5th June when reservoir was full and another on 20th June when reservoir water levels have dropped significantly

Shallower parts of the reservoir were exposed first, revealing some of the original shape of the Dnipro River prior to the dam's construction in 1956.

Images show the canals still contain water further away from the reservoir. It is unclear how long it will take for them to run dry.

Before the war, about 5,840 sq km (584,000 hectares) of cropland on both sides of the Dnipro river could potentially be serviced by the canals, with more than half the area reliant on irrigation systems.

These areas yielded about two million tonnes of grain and oil seeds in 2021, according to the Ukrainian government.

Many areas downstream of the reservoir were initially flooded after the dam was destroyed, but the long-term issue facing food production will be the loss of water supply due to extensive canal systems drying up, according to Inbal Becker-Reshef, program director at NASA Harvest, a consortium researching global food security.

"[The canals] primarily irrigate summer planted crops… like corn, soy beans, some sunflower. But they also irrigate some wheat, which is a winter crop, and then a lot of vegetables and fruit like melons," she said.

Breaching the Kakhovka dam – who benefits?


What we know about Ukraine dam incident


Maps and images show scale of Ukraine dam floods

While some crops can be fed by rain alone, a dry canal system can leave farmland vulnerable to drought. This also has consequences for drinking water.

Dr Becker-Reshef said canals can start to fill in with silt if left dry, reducing their effectiveness, and the longer they are left in this condition, the worse they will become.

Martin Griffiths, Emergency Relief Coordinator for the UN, previously told the BBC there would be a "huge impact on global food security" as a result of the destruction of the dam, describing the area as "a breadbasket not only for Ukraine but also for the world".

Ukraine is a major exporter of sunflower, maize, wheat and barley. The war has caused global supply issues, particularly threatened in Middle Eastern and African countries, which rely heavily on Ukrainian grain.
Is there a solution?

Rebuilding the dam seems to be one of the only long-term solutions to restore water security to the area.

"Now the water level has dropped, the water simply does not reach the [canal] systems. To raise it, we need to rebuild the dam," according to Mykola Solskyi, Ukraine's Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food.

Experts warn the area is at greater risk of both drought and flooding, because the dam helped regulate extreme highs and lows in water levels.

"There's now a whole downstream catchment of the river that is not controlled," said Jaap Flikweert, a flood and coastal management advisor at engineering consultancy Royal HaskoningDHV. "In the wetter periods flood waves will just come through."

Unless the dam is repaired, or extensive flood defences put in place, Mr Flikweert said some areas may prove unsuitable for settlement because they lie so close to river level.

"I expect those tens of thousands of people who were evacuated will have to stay away for a while as long as those solutions are not in place. It is difficult to see people coming back to those communities in this situation."

BBC Verify logo

Read more about BBC Verify: Explaining the 'how' - the launch of BBC Verify

Mines dislodged by Ukraine dam collapse could wash up on beaches - UN official



Reuters
Wed, June 21, 2023 

GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations official said on Wednesday that the mines dislodged by the flood waters from Kakhovka dam in Ukraine could float downstream and reach as far as Black Sea beaches.

Paul Heslop, head of U.N. Mine Action at the United Nations Development Programme in Ukraine, told reporters in Geneva that PMF-1 mines, also known as "butterfly" mines, were light enough to float downstream for a large distance.

"I would not be surprised to see that those mines have either got down as far as the sea or over the coming months, as the water is continuing to flow, will be transported down there," he said.

"Unfortunately, we could see anti-personnel pressure mines washing up on beaches around the Black Sea."

Henslop said anti-tank mines, which are heavier than anti-personnel mines, were less likely to float long distances.

The collapse of the Russian-held dam on June 6 unleashed floodwaters across southern Ukraine and Russian-occupied areas of the Kherson region, killing more than 50 people and destroying homes and farmland.

Ukraine's environment minister said on Tuesday that the dam's collapse had caused 1.2 billion euros in damage.

Ukraine accuses Russia of blowing up the Soviet-era dam, which has been under Russian control since the early days of its invasion. The Kremlin has accused Kyiv of sabotaging the hydroelectric facility.

(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Emma Rumney)

Black Sea dolphins threatened with extinction due to Russian ecocide

Andriy Yermak
The New Voice of Ukraine
Tue, June 20, 2023 

Flooded as a result of Russians undermining Kakhovka HPP Kherson

About 150 dolphin carcasses were found on Black Sea coasts in Turkey and Bulgaria following the Russian destruction of the Kakhovka Dam and the species may be threatened with extinction, presidential chief-of-staff Andriy Yermak said on June 20.

The bodies of other animals, including roe deer, foxes, and hares, may also be carried by the Black Sea current. Over 20,000 species resided in the southern areas of Ukraine, where more than 50,000 hectares of forests have been flooded. At least half of these forests will not survive.

Read also: Animal genocide – animals have ‘no chance of survival’ as 55,000 hectares of forest flooded in Kherson Oblast

Additionally, Yermak stated that approximately 150 tons of grease or oil stains are flowing down the Dnipro River and could potentially reach the Mediterranean Sea.

The surface of the Nova Kakhovka Reservoir itself is covered with dead fish, amounting to approximately 95,000 tons of biomatter.

Read also: Border guard video shows Odesa Oblast sea transformed into ‘dumpsite and graveyard for animals’

On the night of Tuesday, June 6, Russian troops detonated the Kakhovka Dam, which had been under occupation for over a year. Cities and villages downstream of the dam on the Dnipro River were completely or partially flooded.

Ukrainian hydropower operator Ukrhydroenergo reported that the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant was completely destroyed and is beyond repair. Ukraine's Southern Command clarified that although the entire dam was not destroyed, significant damage occurred.

The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office has initiated an investigation into the incident, charging it as ecocide.

Read also: Zelenskyy criticizes international community for timidity after Kakhovka Dam explosion

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described Russia's attack on the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant as the largest man-made environmental disaster in Europe in decades.

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine

CELIBACY COVER UP
Australian ex-priest convicted of child sex abuse pleads guilty to 72nd victim


In this photo made from video on May 27, 2015, Gerald Ridsdale gives evidence during a child sex abuse royal commission. Australian ex-priest Gerald Ridsdale, who is serving a 39-year sentence for a series of convictions for abusing children, pleaded guilty Thursday to sexually abusing a 72nd victim. (Royal Commission/AAP Image via AP) 

Thu, June 22, 2023 

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian ex-priest convicted of child sex abuse pleaded guilty Thursday to sexually abusing a 72nd victim.

Gerald Ridsdale, 89, has been in prison since 1994. He is serving a 39-year sentence for a series of convictions for abusing children between 1961 and 1988 while he worked as a Roman Catholic priest in churches and schools across his home state of Victoria.

Bedridden, he pleaded guilty in the Ballarat Magistrates' Court by video link from a prison hospital to a new charge of indecently assaulting a 13-year-old boy in 1987 while Ridsdale worked as an assistant priest at a school in Horsham, a town about 300 kilometers (200 miles) northwest of Melbourne.

Ridsdale will return to court Aug. 15 for sentencing on his 193rd conviction for child sex abuse.

His prison sentence has been extended seven times over the decades as more victims have come forward. In October, Ridsdale’s earliest release date was extended to April 2027 after he admitted abusing two brothers between 1981 and 1982.

Through his lawyer, Ridsdale told Magistrate Hugh Radford that he had been unable to walk since mid-2022 and his doctors have recommended palliative care. His medical conditions were not detailed.

Ridsdale accepted that the only appropriate sentence for his new conviction was additional prison time.

During his 29 years as a priest, Ridsdale was shuffled between 16 church posts. In 2017, a government inquiry into child sex abuse found his frequent relocations were evidence of the church covering up his crimes.

The inquiry found that the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, who became the third-highest ranking cleric in the Vatican in 2014, knew Ridsdale had been sexually abusing children years before his arrest. Pell denied any previous knowledge of criminal allegations against Ridsdale.

The Pell and Ridsdale families had long been close in Victoria. Pell spent 13 months in prison before his own child abuse convictions were overturned on appeal in 2020. Pell died in January

Moscow court rules US journalist Evan Gershkovich must stay in jail until late August





Russia US Detained Reporter Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a glass cage in a courtroom at the Moscow City Court in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, June 22, 2023. Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter detained on espionage charges in Russia, appeared in court Thursday to appeal his extended detention. 

(AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)


Associated Press
Thu, June 22, 2023 

MOSCOW (AP) — A Moscow court on Thursday ruled that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich must remain in jail on espionage charges until at least late August, rejecting the American journalist’s appeal to be released.

The 31-year-old U.S. citizen was arrested in late March while on a reporting trip. A Moscow court ruled last month to keep him in custody until Aug. 30, but his lawyers had challenged the decision.

Gershkovich, wearing a black T-shirt and light blue jeans, looked tense and paced inside a glass defendant’s cage while waiting for the hearing to begin at the Moscow City Court. Then other journalists in the courtroom were asked to leave and the proceedings took place behind closed doors.

The ruling was broadcast to reporters, who watched it on two large TV screens in a separate room in the courthouse.

While waiting for the judge, Gershkovich smiled and chatted to his parents, who were present. U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy also attended.

“Evan continued to show remarkable strength and resiliency in these very difficult circumstances,” she told reporters afterward.

Tracy said she was “extremely disappointed” by the ruling, reiterating that Gershkovich was “an innocent journalist” and Russia’s charges against him were baseless.

“Such hostage diplomacy is unacceptable, and we call on the Russian Federation to release him,” she said.

Gershkovich and his employer have denied the allegations, and the U.S. government has declared him to be wrongfully detained.

His arrest in the city of Yekaterinburg rattled journalists in Russia, where authorities have not detailed what, if any, evidence they have to support the espionage charges.

Gershkovich is being held at Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, which is notorious for its harsh conditions. Tracy said the U.S. Embassy was denied consular access to Gershkovich on three occasions since she last visited him in jail in April.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters the ministry is considering another visit request from the embassy.

Tonga undersea volcano created most intense lightning storm ever recorded

Keith Cooper

SPACE
Tue, June 20, 2023 

satellite image of a huge plume created by an undersea volcanic eruption near tonga in january 2022, with blue dots superimposed on top that represent lightning strikes within the plume

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcanic eruption, which produced the most powerful atmospheric explosion ever recorded, also generated a record number of lightning strikes in a supercharged thunderstorm that lasted 11 hours and spread across 150 miles (240), a new study reports.

The volcano, which is located in the southern Pacific Ocean, began erupting in December 2021, but its most explosive event did not occur until Jan. 15, 2022. Despite the volcano's caldera being 500 feet (150 meters) below sea level, the blast burst through the water and sent a plume of ash towering 36 miles (58 km) high, with an eruption rate of 11 billion pounds (5 billion kilograms) per second — an order of magnitude greater than the Mount St. Helens eruption in May 1980.

"There are theoretical limits for how high a plume can go and how fast the eruption rate can be, and the Hunga Tonga eruption just smashed them all," the study's lead author, Alexa Van Eaton of the U.S. Geological Survey, told Space.com.

Related: Huge Tonga volcanic eruption spawned record-breaking winds at the edge of space

Another record the eruption shattered was the number of lightning strikes. The plume produced the most intense lightning storm ever seen, with 2,600 flashes per minute at its peak and totaling about 192,000 flashes over the course of 11 hours. What's more, this lightning storm took place at an unprecedented altitude of between 12 and 19 miles (20 to 30 km), higher than any lightning has been seen before. These lightning strikes were detected by both a network of radio antennae designed to track storms and two Earth-orbiting spacecraft, the GOES-17 satellite operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Japanese Meteorological Agency's Himawari-8 satellite.

"We've never seen anything like this sheer rate of lightning before, and at such high altitudes," Van Eaton said.

The satellite imagery shows that the lightning wasn't randomly spread across the plume but rather occurred in several concentric rings that seemed to be linked to each explosive outburst from the volcano. As the plume rose upward, it billowed out to form an "umbrella cloud," with overspilling material falling down onto it and oscillating around a layer of neutral buoyancy.

"This imparted a vertical motion into the cloud so huge that the wave, moving outward from the center of the plume, was 10 vertical kilometers [6 miles] from crest to trough," said Van Eaton. This oscillating pressure wave, also known as a gravity wave (not to be confused with gravitational waves from merging black holes or neutron stars), was the source of the lightning.

There are two ways the lightning may have formed within this ring-shaped gravity wave. Since the Hunga Tonga eruption took place underwater, it injected lots of water into Earth's atmosphere, the resulting ice crystals adopting positive and negative charges. In addition, some of the volcanic ash that was formed of fragmented rock and magma blown into the air by the eruption also become ionized, leading to more areas of positive and negative charge. It's the gradient in electrical charge that sets off sudden sparks of lightning.

While lightning rings have been seen in volcanic plumes before, the Hunga Tonga eruption was the first time multiple rings had been seen — four in total, matching the four phases of the volcano's eruption — and the lightning rode the rippling rings like a surfer on ocean waves.

Related: Jupiter's lightning is strikingly similar to Earth's

Related stories:

— Tonga eruption was so intense, it caused the atmosphere to ring like a bell

— Newborn volcanic island spotted from space (satellite photo)

— Images: 10 incredible volcanoes in our solar system

Lightning rings are also termed "lightning holes," because inside the ring there usually is no lightning. However, this was just another way in which the Hunga Tonga eruption was different: the holes started filling with lightning within minutes of the gravity wave rippling by. The mechanism that prompted this infilling remains unclear.

Regardless, the presence of lightning highlights how electrical flashes could be used to provide early warning of an eruption. Normally, volcanologists must wait 10 or so minutes for an orbiting satellite to detect and image a volcanic plume and emergency services to be alerted, by which time resulting tsunamis may have drowned coastal regions, hurricane winds flattened trees and homes, pyroclastic flows wiped out tens of square miles and ash bunged up aircraft jet engines. Lightning strikes, however, are detected at radio frequencies at the speed of light. It goes without saying that this is faster than satellites, winds, seismic waves and infrasound.

Besides breaking records in the present day, the Hunga Tonga eruption could also teach us about volcanism on the early Earth, and even potentially on other celestial bodies. The eruption is a type referred to as a phreatoplinian volcano, which occurs when a huge amount of molten rock erupts through a thick layer of water. An explosive underwater volcano on this scale has only previously been seen in the geological record.

Furthermore, the eruption could "plausibly have implications for the way that lightning gets going on other planets, such as Venus, or other planetary bodies that wouldn't typically support traditional lightning," said Van Eaton.

Evidence of active volcanism on Venus was discovered earlier this year, in archive data from NASA's Magellan mission to the second planet from the sun. However, volcanism is plentiful on the Jupiter moon Io, while forms of cryovolcanism occur on the Saturn moon Enceladus and possibly also the Jovian satellite Europa.

"Enceladus has major water jets that just shoot off. Could they support lightning?" wondered Van Eaton. "I don't know, but it seems that this is a way to create a major atmospheric perturbation that we haven't really been thinking about for other worlds."

The research was published online today (June 19) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Follow Keith Cooper on Twitter @21stCenturySETI. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Kaepernick on joining Marxists to edit new book: Black liberation ‘isn’t possible under capitalism’



Olafimihan Oshin
Tue, June 20, 2023 

Former NFL quarterback and social activist Colin Kaepernick says he’s working with two Black academics who describe themselves as Marxists to edit a new book because Black liberation “isn’t possible under capitalism.”

In an interview with The New Republic published Monday, Kaepernick was asked about his work with Robin D.G. Kelley and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on a new anthology titled Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies.

“I’ve long admired Keeanga and Robin’s work as well as their uncompromising political analysis and understanding that Black liberation simply isn’t possible under capitalism,” Kaepernick told the New Republic.

“I think the anthology makes this argument quite well, and I hope it challenges readers to see that racism is not white supremacy’s only ingredient,” he added. “White supremacy persists in part because of its relationship with capitalism, heteropatriarchy, ableism, and so on.”

The new anthology features essays from W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Angela Davis, Octavia Butler, bell hooks and Huey Newton.

Kaepernick garnered national attention in 2016 for kneeling during the national anthem at multiple NFL games to raise awareness about police brutality and racial inequality in the U.S.

He criticized Republicans for seeking to ban the teaching of critical race theory in the interview.

“Black studies and, more generally, a critical engagement with U.S. history, threatens the white supremacist status quo,” he said. “Any attempt to whitewash the past should actually be understood as a concrete step toward fascism and a desire to build a nation-state where power is concentrated in the hands of a self-anointed — read: white — few.”

How ex-Confederates spread racist attitudes far and wide after the Civil War

Chelsea Stahl

Curtis Bunn
Wed, June 21, 2023

A new study outlines how white people’s migration during and after the Civil War, from the Confederate South to the West, bolstered white supremacy and institutional racism in non-slave states, helping create the vast racial disparities that exist today nationwide.

Five researchers from separate colleges collaborated on the study, called “Confederate Diaspora,” to compile and study census data that tracked the migration to the West of white Americans, including 60,000 former plantation owners. The former Southerners took on local positions of authority, like police officers, clergy and politicians, giving them influence to create a post-Civil War culture that continued to oppress Black people even after slavery had ended.

This results in structural and systemic racism in almost every walk of life today — education, housing, jobs, health care and wealth, among other areas — that continues to hamper progress for Black people, according to a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research this month.

The former Confederates “continued to transmit norms to their children and non-Southern neighbors,” the researchers wrote, “shaping racial inequities in labor, housing, and policing.”

Researcher Patrick Testa, an assistant professor of economics at Tulane University in New Orleans, said the impact of the Confederates on other parts of the country was deep and long-lasting.

In the three decades following the Civil War, white Southerners were more likely than other white people to take on work in governance, he said, and former slaveholders were even more likely to assume those positions, he said.

“What we show ultimately is that these migrants,” Testa said, “through these governance channels and channels of public-facing authority, helped lay the groundwork for these types of symbols and racial norms and a broad-base Confederate nostalgia to really take off at a national level by the early 20th century.”

One of those “norms” was the institution of the Ku Klux Klan and the racial terror it inflicted in many parts of the country. In the report, the researchers identify “overrepresentation of first-and second-generation migrants in the KKK,” adding that the second generation of the KKK established in 1915 helped to “rejuvenate and mainstream Confederate culture.”

Those born in the South were 11% more likely to belong to the KKK in the Denver metropolitan area, for example, a major hub of Klan activity in the 1920s beyond the South, the report said.

“The harmful legacies of slavery persist beyond those that experience being slaves, but across generations and across places,” Testa said.

Along with census data, the group of researchers analyzed KKK membership records of second-generation Confederate migrants who were born outside of the South but maintained slavery-era norms. “This suggests,” Testa said, the passing down of racial animus from generation to generation may have been “an important vehicle for sustaining diaspora influence long after the initial Confederate migrants had passed.”

As the California Reparations Task Force is set to hand over its recommendations to the state’s Legislature next week, this new study crystalizes how states that did not legally allow slavery, like California, still contributed mightily to oppressing Black people.

Some detractors of reparations have argued that California was not a slave state and therefore, it should not offer reparations. But in the later part of the 19th century it became the home of numerous former Southerners and it was populated by so many Confederate-aligned citizens that it supported John C. Breckinridge in the 1860 presidential election. Breckinridge advocated for the expansion of slavery and supported the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, which required the return of an enslaved person to a plantation even if he was found in a “free state.”

“It’s important to look beyond the South, even to places like California,” Testa said, “and look for ways such as reparations … to heal these divisions, to heal the socio-economic gaps.”

Because many parts of California favored Breckinridge, it became a popular destination for Southerners at the time. “Outside of the South, California is maybe the most intense in terms of a cultural index that indicates how it accepted racism,” Testa said.

Studying the spread of former Confederates was important, Testa said, because it provides clear data on how the ills of slavery and the Confederate ideology spread across America.

“For the purposes of understanding the multifarious roots of racial division in American society, which continues to be persistent long after, it’s important,” Testa said.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com