DEJA VU: COLD WAR ANTI COMMUNISM

Florida May Require History of Communism Classes in Public Schools

By T.J. Muscaro

February 20, 2024

The historic Old Florida State Capitol building, which sits in front of the current New Capitol, in Tallahassee, Florida, on Nov. 10, 2018. (Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images)

The Florida State Legislature is one step closer to passing legislation making education on the history, philosophies, and global “atrocities” of communism mandatory in public schools.

Senate Bill 1264 was passed favorably through the Appropriations Committee on Education on Feb. 20 after several survivors of communist regimes around the world, as well as the children and grandchildren of survivors, testified to the atrocities they had to endure.

Sponsored by Republican state Sen. Jay Collins, it calls for the formation of a five-person “History of Communism Task Force” within the Department of Education by the 2026-27 school year. Its aim would be to ensure the creation and integration of an age-appropriate curriculum focused on the history, philosophies, and “atrocities” of communism domestically and internationally.

“What this does is focus on the reality of communism to make sure that we teach the truth about it holistically through our educational system, scaffolding year over year ensuring that we teach the very facts of what is done across the world,” he said.

‘Vital for the Future’

According to a 2020 poll conducted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, 18 percent of Gen Z and 13 percent of Millennials view communism as a system that is more fair than capitalism; 30 percent of Gen Z and 27 percent of Millennials have a favorable view of Marxism, and only 63 percent of both Gen Z and Millennials “believe the Declaration of Independence better guarantees freedom and equality over the Communist Manifesto.”

Jaime Arellano, a political prisoner of the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, was freed only a few months ago and flown to the United States, as part of a deal made by the State Department.

Mr. Arellano stood before the Florida committee and said that, after reading about what was happening in the country, “I got away one from one nightmare to land into another nightmare.”

“I think it’s very important for this country… to teach young kids what communists does [sic],” he said. “What communists take away from you. What communists does [sic] to your family. What communists does [sic]… to your dreams.”

Mr. Arellano was one of more than 15 people from communist countries such as Nicaragua, Vietnam, and Cuba. Some were descendants of those who had escaped.

Many were holding back tears as they retold their or their family’s stories.

Michelle Lee-Chen was seven years old in 1975 when South Vietnam was taken over by the communists. She spoke about how her father, a Major General in the South Vietnamese Army, was sent to a prison concentration camp for 17 and a half years. Her brother was beaten in front of her and her mother, and he was sent to a “new economic zone camp” where many died from brutal punishment, starvation, or illness caused by unsanitary conditions.

It took Ms. Lee-Chen and some of her family five attempts to escape by boat, while her father and mother stayed behind. Along the harrowing voyage, she recalled her sister nearly dying and being chased by Thai pirates. After being rescued by an oil rig, she said sailors of the Malaysian Coast Guard, who were supposed to transport her group safely to Indonesia, molested “pretty much every single woman on that boat.”

“I can still hear the screaming,” she said.

The state of Florida had previously required all public high school students to pass a 30-hour course called “Americanism vs. Communism,” but that course was discontinued in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union.

In 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis officially proclaimed Nov. 7 “Victims of Communism Day.”

Beginning with the 2023-2024 school year, all high school students taking the United States Government class are required to receive at least 45 minutes of instruction on the atrocities of communism from the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the doctrine of Mao Zedong, through the present-day totalitarian regime of Nicolas Maduro and the Chavismo Movement in Venezuela.

“I believe that it’s vital for the future generation [to] learn the truth about life under the tyrannical communist government after the fall of Saigon and to always honor the brave soldiers from the United States, South Vietnam, and our allies who gave so much to protect the ideals of democracy and freedom,” Ms. Lee-Chen said.

Committee chairman Keith Perry, a Republican, also recognized 12 others who appeared in support of the event but waived their opportunity to speak. Two people appeared to waive speaking out in opposition.

Democratic state Sen. Tracie Davis voiced concern about the proposed five-member Task Force, three of whom would be chosen by the governor and come from Florida International University’s Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom, Miami-Dade College, and the general population.

“I really, really would like for you as the sponsor and the carrier of this is very, very important piece of legislation to all of us that the members of that task force accurately represent a body and they are not afraid to place accuracy and the truth of the matter,” she told Mr. Collins. “The good, the bad, and the facts is what we need to be taught in our classrooms.”

Ms. Davis voted in favor of the bill.

The Old Florida Capitol, built in 1845 and photographed on March 14, 2023, now serves as a museum, while the government work of Florida is based in a newer Capitol building behind it in Tallahassee, Fla. (Nanette Holt/The Epoch Times)

‘Anti-Communist Curricula’

SB 1264 mirrors House Bill 1349, “Required Instruction on the History of Communism.” Both versions have one more committee to pass through, and the senator’s office confirmed with The Epoch Times that the bills will be identical by the time they return to their respective chambers for voting.

Florida’s legislature is not the only one taking a stance against communism.

In New Hampshire, House Bill 1153, which “requires mandatory ‘anti-communist’ curricula and establishes elective curricula for public schools,” was required to only go through the Education Committee, and is scheduled to be considered on the House floor on Feb. 22.

Unlike Florida’s legislation, which calls for a task force to help create the curriculum based on broader regime-focused requirements, New Hampshire’s bill already lists specifics, and includes required reading of Marxist-Leninist concepts.

New Hampshire congressional candidate Lily Tang Williams escaped communist China 35 years ago. She told The Epoch Times that the bill’s sponsor, Republican state Rep. Mike Belcher, does not expect it to pass due to the slim Republican majority. But the hope is for it to start a conversation that ends with the passing of an amended version in the near future.

Ms. Williams has also worked with the Florida Department of Education to create videos that share her own story for the Oral History of Communism Project, and she is confident Florida’s efforts will pass.

“Even though I encourage homeschool, and private schools, school choice… most people [are] still in public schools,” she said. “So that’s where the red states have to exercise the state’s rights to do educational reforms. And by having the first step to, you know, teach the horrors of communism like Florida is doing, I totally support Florida.”

From The Epoch Times

Georgia Senate considers controls on school libraries and criminal charges for librarians

A proposal that would require school libraries to notify parents of every book their child checks out was advanced by Georgia senators Tuesday, while a proposal to subject school librarians to criminal charges for distributing material containing obscenity waits in the wings. 

(COMSTOCK ACT)

By JEFF AMY Associated Press
FEBRUARY 20, 2024 — 

ATLANTA — A proposal that would require school libraries to notify parents of every book their child checks out was advanced by Georgia senators Tuesday, while a proposal to subject school librarians to criminal charges for distributing material containing obscenity waits in the wings.

The measures are part of a broad and continuing push by Republicans in many states to root out what they see as inappropriate material from schools and libraries, saying books and electronic materials are corrupting children.

Opponents say it's a campaign of censorship meant to block children's freedom to learn, while scaring teachers and librarians into silence for fear of losing their jobs or worse.

Georgia senators are also considering bills to force all public and school libraries in the state to cut ties with the American Library Association and to restrict school libraries' ability to hold or acquire any works that depict sexual intercourse or sexual arousal. Neither measure has advanced out of committee ahead of a deadline next week for bills to pass out of their originating chamber.

The state Senate Education and Youth Committee voted 5-4 Tuesday to advance Senate Bill 365 to the full Senate for more debate. The proposal would let parents choose to receive an email any time their child obtains library material.

Sen. Greg Dolezal, the Republican from Cumming sponsoring the bill, said the Forsyth County school district, which has seen years of public fighting over what books students should be able to access, is already sending the emails. Other supporters said it was important to make sure to guarantee the rights of parents to raise their children as they want.

''I can't understand the resistance of allowing parents to know what their children are seeing, doing and participating in while they're at school, especially in a public school system," said Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, a Dahlonega Republican.

Opponents said it's important for students to be able to explore their interests and that the bill could violate students' First Amendment rights.

''This is part of a larger national and Georgia trend to try to limit access," said Nora Benavidez, a board member of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and lawyer for Free Press, a group that seeks to democratize the media. ''The logical endpoint of where this bill, as well as others, are taking us is for children to have less exposure to ideas.''

The proposal to make school librarians subject to criminal penalties if they violate state obscenity laws, Senate Bill 154, is even more controversial. Current law exempts public librarians, as well as those who work for public schools, colleges and universities, from penalties for distributing material that meets Georgia's legal definition of ''harmful to minors.''

Dolezal argues that school librarians should be subject to such penalties, although he offered an amendment Tuesday that makes librarians subject to penalties only if they ''knowingly'' give out such material. He argues that Georgia shouldn't have a double standard where teachers can be prosecuted for obscenity while librarians down the hall cannot. He said his real aim is to drive any such material out of school libraries.

''The goal of this bill is to go upstream of the procurement process and to ensure that we are not allowing things in our libraries that cause anyone to ever have to face any sort of criminal prosecution," Dolezal said.

Supporters of the bill hope to use the threat of criminal penalties to drive most sexual content out of libraries, even though much sexual content doesn't meet Georgia's obscenity standard.

''If you are exploiting children, you should be held accountable," said Rhonda Thomas, a conservative education activist who helped form a new group, Georgians for Responsible Libraries. ''You're going to find that our students are falling behind in reading, math, science, but they're definitely going to know how to masturbate.''

Robert ''Buddy'' Costley, of the Georgia Association of Educational Leaders, said the bill won't solve the content problems that activists are agitated about.

''My fear is is that if we tell parents that this is the solution — your media specialists, the people that have been working for 200 years in our country to loan books, they're the problem — we will have people pressing charges on media specialists instead of dealing with the real problem,'' Costley said. ___

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Nora Benavidez worked for PEN America. She is a board member of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and lawyer for Free Press, a group that seeks to democratize the media.

RELIGION VS SCIENCE

Critics slam Alabama court ruling that frozen embryos are ‘children’

By AFP
February 20, 2024

An embryologist examines a dish with human embryos under a microscope 

- Copyright AFP EVARISTO SA

An Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos outside the womb are “children” has drawn criticism from the White House and the top US infertility association, which called the decision a “terrifying development.”

“All across the country, women are being forced to grapple with the devastating consequences of action by Republican elected officials -– from undermining access to reproductive care and emergency care to threatening access to contraception,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.

Resolve: The National Infertility Association said the Alabama ruling could have “devastating consequences” for fertility clinics in the southern state that offer in-vitro fertilization (IVF).

“Alabama’s Supreme Court ruling is a terrifying development for the 1 in 6 people impacted by infertility who need in-vitro fertilization to build their families,” Resolve said in a statement.

“This new legal framework may make it impossible to offer services like #IVF, a standard medical treatment for infertility,” Resolve said.

The Alabama high court’s ruling stems from a lawsuit filed against a fertility clinic under the state’s 1872 Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

The suit was filed by three couples whose frozen embryos were destroyed by a patient who “managed to wander into” a cryogenic nursery where they were stored and accidentally dropped several of them on the floor.

A lower court ruled the embryos could not be defined as a “person” or “child” and dismissed the wrongful-death claim.

But the Alabama Supreme Court, in a 7-2 ruling Friday, disagreed, saying “the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies on its face to all unborn children, without limitation.”

“It applies to all children, born and unborn,” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in an opinion sprinkled with quotes from the Bible.

“The People of Alabama have declared the public policy of this State to be that unborn human life is sacred,” Mitchell said in a reference to the state’s near-total ban of abortion.

“We believe that each human being, from the moment of conception, is made in the image of God, created by Him to reflect His likeness,” Mitchell said.

“It is as if the people of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you,'” he wrote.

– ‘Great concern’ –

Dana Sussman, deputy executive director of Pregnancy Justice, described the Alabama ruling as a “natural extension of the march toward fetal personhood.”

“This is a cause of great concern for anyone that cares about people’s reproductive rights and abortion care,” Sussman said.

Alabama is one of some two dozen states that banned or restricted abortion access following the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning the constitutional right to the procedure enshrined in Roe v Wade.

Jean-Pierre said the Alabama ruling was “exactly the type of chaos that we expected when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and paved the way for politicians to dictate some of the most personal decisions families can make.”

The Medical Association of the State of Alabama warned in a brief to the court of the “potential detrimental impact on IVF treatment in Alabama” of a ruling that frozen embryos outside the womb were children.

“The increased exposure to wrongful death liability as advocated by the Appellants would –- at best –- substantially increase the costs associated with IVF,” it said.

“More ominously, the increased risk of legal exposure might result in Alabama’s fertility clinics shutting down and fertility specialists moving to other states to practice fertility medicine.”

Unlike liberalism, ubuntu does not believe there are primary differences between people

By Muxe Nkondo - 21 February 2024
GENDER AND CULTURE


Ubuntu is based on a simple yet radical premise, that there are no primary differences between people. If we take that message into our politics and legal systems we can address the failings of liberalism, writes Muxe Nkondo.

Many of the forces that have shaped history have been underpinned by a false belief that there are fundamental, primary differences between people. Imperialism, apartheid, and patriarchy created hostility, contempt, condescension accompanied by social, economic, and political mistreatment. The belief in primary difference is not restricted to the powerful. It is also found amongst the oppressed and excluded.

There is no scientific backing, nothing to justify the broad range of beliefs, attitudes, and practices based on the perception of difference. Research across various disciplines shows that belief in primary difference has no basis, no legitimacy whatsoever. Reference by those who belief the difference is real to a metaphysical reality has been exposed for what it is – a fallacy, a myth. No scholar has been able to establish the reality of racial, ethnic, or gender essence. It is based on ignorance, irrationality, and unreasonableness.

What can be done to convince a racist, a tribalist, or a patriarch, for example, that recognition of a common humanity would enhance the possibilities of peace? This is an internal and social phenomenon. It is a matter of attitude, thinking, and behaviour. The good news is, that it is possible because human beings are capable of empathy and fairness, which moves human behaviour beyond egotistic desire and appetite.

The idea of primary difference and its political sociology is complex. It takes identity difference for granted. It presumes that human populations can be partitioned into distinct kinds based on their cultural and physical difference. Racial, ethnic, and gender differences make no sense without belief in primary difference. It is not the presence of objective physical differences that creates races, ethnic groups, and gender enclaves, but social interpretations upon such differences can create antagonism. It is categorical in that it takes for granted the presence of identity groups as natural kinds, not historical and contingent constructions. It is also one-dimensional.

Primary difference relegates gaps and asymmetries between groups to a realm of primary, antagonistic differences. With the differences regarded as fundamental an insurmountable, individuals in such groups become irredeemably negative to each other. Other people in other groups are not viewed as companions but, at most, as means to ends. Nothing can be learnt from such people, the thinking goes. The only way to deal with them is through power and violence, both subjective and systemic.

But as we reject the idea of primary difference, we should also avoid rejecting the individuals who perpetrate it, dismissing them as monsters, ineducable and unsociable. If we reject them, we will just be one more example of intolerance, leaving no space for learning and mutual recognition.
The politics and limits of liberalism

Liberalism’s constant enlargement of its sympathies without fundamentally transforming how the self relates to the other, its moral philosophy, has now found its limit. It is not enough for liberalism to pride itself on constantly extending sympathy and adapting itself to the other. Tolerance is not enough; it leaves the egotistic self as the centre of reference to which the other is just a blank page on which to inscribe its story. This is the challenge; to make the self open, cordial, flexible, and responsive to the other.

Individualism, a core principle of liberalism, maintains that the rights of individuals are fundamental and justifies the actions of coercive government as promoting those rights. Ubuntu maintains that the rights of individuals are not fundamental and that the collective can have rights that are independent of and even opposed to what liberals claim are the rights of individuals. The principle of secondary difference takes equality and justice to be the basic ideal and justifies power insofar as it promotes the common or public good.
The self and the other

A major principle of the African philosophy of ubuntu is, in short, take care of yourself but care for the next person as well. But for us now, in the grip of individualism, this notion is rather obscure and faded. Without doubt, the liberal system overemphasises individualism at the expense of social cohesion. A whole field of antagonistic relations between the self and others have been constructed and institutionalised world-wide, grounded in the liberal notion of individualism.

To shift this balance, we have to make sure that the new values and principles have to be inscribed in policy and law. They have to be inscribed in a Bill of Rights and a Bill of Responsibilities to ensure implementation, just like liberal principles have been.

But we are not naïve – a cosmopolitan social democratic community is hard to achieve. It is work in progress. Changing people’s beliefs and attitudes is a very tall order, but the failure of liberalism in modern history points in this direction. Consequences on the lives of people must be the measure of leadership. It is learnable, our being allows it. The happiness and well-being of all require it. It will enable us to move in and out of our identity spaces: the translatability of language and culture as they move in space and time proves that much. New vocabularies are possible.





Muxe Nkondo is a social policy, national strategy development, and discourse analysis scholar and practitioner, former Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic Affairs) at the University of North (now Limpopo) and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Venda, South Africa, a Harvard Andrew Mellon Fellow in English

This first appeared on the Africa@LSE blog.(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Photo by El gringo photo

 

The Evolution Of The Human Pair Bond – OpEd

 February 21, 2024  

By Brenna R. Hassett

Our species stands out from the animal kingdom in many ways. Some of them are obvious: we are big-brained primates who use tools and language, a social species with symbols, culture, and art. These are all artifacts of our evolution, the process by which our ancestors found adaptations that allowed them to succeed in a natural world that is often red in tooth and claw.

Often, however, we think of evolution as affecting our physical bodies—changing the shape of our hominin ancestors so they could walk upright, or grow bigger brains. But evolution has other ways to act on a species, particularly in clever, social species like ours. It can shape the way we socialize and bond, the way we pass on learning and care, and even whom we love. This is why we find that one of the most remarkable adaptations our species has ever made lies in our very, very unlikely mating system: monogamy.

Monogamy is a strange word and an even stranger concept. The way we use it in our societies today to imply two people romantically linked for life is a far cry from what a scientist who actually observes primates like us would call it. Monogamy, simply put, is pair-bonding between two animals. Often it is pair-bonding with an eye towards reproduction, but it can also include animals that can’t reproduce together who form a pair-bonded social unit anyway. Perhaps the most famous example, though certainly not the only one, might be Roy and Silo , two chinstrap penguins from New York’s Central Park Zoo who formed a pair bond and even raised a chick together. There are other critical differences between what a scientist would define as a pair bond and what we commonly understand monogamy to be.

While humans tend to define monogamy as a once-in-a-lifetime pairing, with rituals and cultural rules that reinforce the idea of a lifetime bond, even the most pair-bonded of animals rarely are pair-bonded for life. Perhaps the most extreme animal monogamists on the planet are the far-flying seabirds albatrosses and petrels (all from the family Procellariiformes ); almost every single pair is mated for life. However, even in these pairs, factors can intervene to disrupt the pair bond. Beyond simply losing one member of the pair, even allegedly mated-for-life albatrosses have cases of ‘extra-pair paternity‘—almost 10 percent of chicks surveyed in one sample had a male parent who was not their female parent’s partner.

Humans, even those with strong cultural proscriptions against adultery, have very similar rates of extra-pair paternity—about 10 percent. While some cultures, particularly those that do not allow a great deal of female agency in choosing a partner, have slightly higher rates than others, this figure seems to be broadly the same across our species. While genetic monogamy—where two individuals breed exclusively with each other—may be elusive, even in the allegedly monogamous sea birds, social monogamy is not. Social monogamy is the type of pair bonding where the partners fulfill all the social roles needed in a pair bond without necessarily producing any genetic offspring—like Roy and Silo, tending a chick that was not their own. This suggests that it is social monogamy that is the most important part of pair bonding for many species—including our own.

Why would social monogamy benefit a species? It must offer some sort of advantage to our species, or we would not have adopted it—and we have indeed adopted it. Despite our very human flair for variety and adaptation,most societies around the world set a pair-bonded couple at the heart of how their members reproduce. Of course, there are examples of polygamy—marriage of one male to multiple females—and even polygyny—one female to many males in our wide array of cultural practices, but the vast majority of our fellow Homo sapiens will have social expectations of forming a monogamous pair bond.

So why have we evolved to have these bonds? It is not at all automatic that pair-bonds would be of adaptive value. In species that have evolved to sexually reproduce, the distribution of risk and reward for breeding behavior depends on how much each partner will need to invest in reproduction in order to produce a successful offspring. For the partner that makes the small gamete (sperm), investment costs are lower from the get-go, meaning strategies that maximize opportunities for reproduction. In fact, pair bonding is an incredibly rare phenomenon in the animal kingdom. Outside of birds, who are uncommonly fond of the state—90 percent of bird species create pair bonds—only 5 percent of animal species settle for ‘the one’ and form pair bonds. About 15 percent of primates, however, opt for pair-bonding.

Here we can start to unravel part of the mystery of the human pair bond, by examining what our other clever, social primate relatives use pair bonding for. The evolution of monogamy, or pair-bonding, has been a topic of major debates in anthropology and primatology . Most of the primate species that form pair bonds are actually quite distant from our species evolutionarily—the smaller monkey species like the marmosets, titi monkeys, and owl monkeys. Many of the original investigations of primate monogamy sought to explain the phenomenon in very Darwinian terms, looking at the advantage in genetic terms gained by reproducing monogamous pairs. In the 1970s, primatologist Sarah Hrdy suggested that pair-bonding might have evolved to be protective against infanticide because marauding male monkeys would not be motivated to harm their own genetic offspring but would be motivated to remove any offspring from a group that were not theirs.

This interpretation has been challenged in more recent times, particularly by anthropologist Holly Dunsworth. She argues that the kind of cognitive powerrequired for a primate to understand whether offspring is genetically theirs or not is just not present in primate species. Perhaps pair-bonded species don’t have infanticide not just because the male primates are trying to maximize their genetic reproductive potential, but because primates are social animals and those male primates are simply primed to be ‘nice’ to the offspring of the females they are bonded to.

Current theories for why pair bonding exists , even though it doesn’t allow male primates to maximize their mating opportunities, follow several lines of evidence to understand what the actual adaptive benefit might be. One theory is that pair-bonding is the only way for males to keep up with females who roam over large territories; it allows them the opportunity to mate because otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to encounter any females. This is something that seems particularly applicable to the smaller monkeys like marmosets, where females hold territory.

Another theory for the evolution of pair bonding in primates looks at the reproductive benefit not just to the individual parent, in terms of the number of offspring possible, but to the effects on the next generation of having one more pair of helping hands. This looks at the net benefit to the offspring itself of having two parents provisioning it. In many species of primates, the offspring are helpless and a considerable burden on their carer. Having another pair of hands around may make the difference between growing an expensive, big-brained baby and falling out of the evolutionary race. Looking again at examples from the primate order we can see that the role of the male parent can be critical in the survival of the species—our male titi monkey will carry his offspring for the first year of their life, until they are old enough to move around on their own.

What does this mean for our own species? Well, we definitively have adopted a pair-bonded architecture—social monogamy is at the core of our societies. Why we have done so is less clear—but as more and more work is done on understanding the benefits of monogamy to a species we see that there are several factors that may have influenced our ancestors’ choices to develop such an outré mating system. In fact, monogamy in primates seems to have evolved multiple times, and for multiple reasons. Computational models that have examined the likelihood of different evolutionary explanations have used these multiple evolutionary episodes in our nearest relatives to predict that, for humans, multiple factors may have given us the monogamy we have now. Adaptations to pair bonding that ensure males meet roving females might have been a stepping stone to developing the kind of multiple-parental care that keeps something as extraordinarily demanding as a human baby alive. So while our cultural perceptions of monogamy might not fit the evolutionary reality, we can say that as a species, we are awfully fond of a pair bond.

• About the author: Brenna R. Hassett, PhD, is a biological anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Central Lancashire and a scientific associate at the Natural History Museum, London. In addition to researching the effects of changing human lifestyles on the human skeleton and teeth in the past, she writes for a more general audience about evolution and archaeology, including the Times (UK) top 10 science book of 2016 Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death, and her most recent book, Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood. She is also a co-founder of TrowelBlazers, an activist archive celebrating the achievements of women in the “digging” sciences.
• Source: This article was produced by Human Bridges.

Brenna R. Hassett, PhD, is a biological anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Central Lancashire and a scientific associate at the Natural History Museum, London. In addition to researching the effects of changing human lifestyles on the human skeleton and teeth in the past, she writes for a more general audience about evolution and archaeology, including the Times (UK) top 10 science book of 2016 Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death, and her most recent book, Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood. She is also a co-founder of TrowelBlazers, an activist archive celebrating the achievements of women in the "digging" sciences.

African Development Bank: High Cost of Living in Africa Could Cause Unrest

February 20, 2024 
By Timothy Obiezu

Pedestrians shop for pepper and other food items at the Mile 12 Market in Lagos, Nigeria, Feb. 16, 2024. Nigerians are facing one of the West African nation's worst economic crises in many years.

ABUJA, NIGERIA —

The African Development Bank is warning that the rising cost of energy, food and other commodities in several African countries, including Angola, Ethiopia and Kenya, could trigger social unrest. Already, people in Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, have been marching to protest the high cost of living, prompting the government to release grain from the national reserves.

The African Development Bank's notice was contained in its biannual Africa Macroeconomic Performance outlook publication released last week.

The bank said in its 2024 forecast that energy and food price increases — along with a currency depreciation in Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria — could spark internal conflict, despite Africa showing overall economic growth.

The bank also said conflicts in eastern Europe and the Middle East could trigger supply chain disruptions, exacerbate inflation across the world, and make Africa's situation more precarious.

This, as protests over hunger and the cost of living grow in Nigeria.

Hundreds protest food prices

On Monday, hundreds of people demonstrated in southwestern Oyo state, asking authorities to take steps to bring down the cost of food or resign from office.

Security analyst Senator Iroegbu agrees with the African Development Bank's projections.

"It's obvious for even the blind to see that there will be social unrest because [of] the three basic needs of life, food, shelter and clothing. The most important is feeding," said Iroegbu. "Nobody can survive without food and that is the level Nigerians are heading to, so people are becoming restless. In fact, if one-tenth of what happens in Nigeria happens in another place, there will be serious unrest but the elasticity of that is being tested."

The African Development Bank said Africa has several rapidly growing economies, such as Ivory Coast, Libya, Niger, Rwanda and Senegal.

But the bank said performance varies from country to country depending on economic policies.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu embarked on bold economic reforms including the scrapping of expensive fuel subsidies and floating of the country's currency, upon taking office last May.

While authorities say the policies are bound to pay off, the immediate shocks are having an impact on the economy.

Last week, Nigeria's inflation hit 29.9% — its highest mark since mid-1996. In response, authorities ordered the release of 102,00 metric tons of grain, including rice and maize, to lower food prices.

Government 'not sleeping,' says official

On Tuesday, Nigeria's chief of defense staff, Major General Christopher Musa, spoke to journalists in Abuja about the situation.

"The entire world is feeling the heat; it's not only peculiar to Nigeria," said Musa. "We've had a few riots here and there. Why I'm happy is that the government too is not sleeping, it's stepping up to ensuring that they address these challenges. You've seen that grains have been released, measures are being put in place to bring succor all over the country. The issue of dollar and exchange rate, everything is tied to it and that's why we're having these issues."

The African Development Bank says economic growth in Africa is expected to average 3.8% and 4.2% in 2024 and 2025, respectively — higher than projected global averages in the same period.

But protesters say unless they can afford food and life's basics, they will continue to march in the streets.

 

French aid workers in Ukraine killed by ‘deliberate’ attack: probe

By

 AFP

A Swiss aid group said Tuesday that an investigation into the killing of two French staff in Ukraine had determined they died in a “deliberate” drone attack.

France has already accused Russia of responsibility for the February 1 strike in the Ukrainian town of Beryslav.

Four other staff — three French nationals and a Ukrainian — were injured in what the Swiss Church Aid group (HEKS) described as a “brutal and unjustifiable” attack.

On February 2, French President Emmanuel Macron said on X, the former Twitter, that the attack had been “a Russian strike. A cowardly and outrageous act.”

The Russian ambassador to France was summoned to the foreign ministry over the deaths.

The probe showed that “this deliberate attack was carried out by drones”, said the HEKS, which provides humanitarian assistance around the world for victims of natural disasters and armed conflicts.

“Following the attack, the French and Ukrainian governments have opened a war crimes investigation,” it added in a statement.

The two men killed in the attack were HEKS senior security coordinator Guennadi Guermanovitch, 52, and Adrien Baudon de Mony-Pajol, 42, who headed the organisation’s home repair unit.

The HEKS investigation showed that its six staff, who had been sent to evaluate the humanitarian situation determine what aid could be provided, had followed all security procedures.

They had sought and received permission to travel from civilian and military authorities in the Kherson region.

They were travelling in two well-marked white vehicles emblazoned with the HEKS logo and a symbol indicating there were no weapons onboard, and they were all wearing helmets and bulletproof vests.

They had reached Beryslav — a small community on the banks of the Dnipro River near the frontline in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But when they were leaving, “they were suddenly attacked by drones”, the statement said, adding that Guermanovitch and Pajol were fatally injured.

The four other staff were hurt, but managed to carry their colleagues’ bodies and seek refuge in two nearby houses. 

When night fell, they sought medical assistance at a local health centre, before they were taken to Kyiv for specialised treatment the next day, HEKS said.

The organisation said that the injured staff members were “doing well considering the circumstances”.

The three injured French nationals had returned to France, it said.

Ex-Sarawak chief minister Taib Mahmud dies at 87

Former Sarawak chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud and his wife, Toh Puan Ragad Kurdi Taib, leaving a polling centre during the 2022 General Election. 

PHOTO: BERNAMA
UPDATED
FEB 21, 2024, 11:32 AM

SIBU - Former Sarawak chief minister Tun Abdul Taib Mahmud, the politician and tycoon who became known for enabling the destruction of rainforests in Malaysia’s biggest state in pursuit of economic development, has died due to illness. He was 87.

He died in a private hospital in Kuala Lumpur at 4.28am on Feb 21 after a prolonged illness, his daughter Hanifah Hajar Taib said in a Facebook post. Mr Taib had retired from public life in January 2024, ending his 10-year tenure as Sarawak’s governor.

During his 33 years as chief minister of Sarawak, the resource-rich state on Borneo’s north coast, Mr Taib drew global attention like few of his peers in Malaysia.

With a tight grip on power, he ushered in far-reaching infrastructure projects that created thousands of jobs and turned the sleepy state into an economic engine powered by fossil fuels, timber and palm oil.

These developments came on the back of what some critics called an environmental atrocity.

Under Mr Taib’s purview, millions of acres of Sarawak’s rainforest were felled, eradicating entire ecosystems and displacing thousands of people from native forest communities. The logging, which coincided with the ascent of the conservation movement, thrust Sarawak and Mr Taib into the international spotlight.

Malaysian leaders dismissed the criticism as neocolonial bullying. Mr Taib and his supporters contended that he was attempting to lift Sarawak into a new economic age.

In the process, he amassed a vast personal fortune.

Government contracts

Court documents filed in the early 2010s revealed his family owned assets worth more than US$1 billion (S$1.34 billion), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, including interests in dozens of companies, oil palm land, and hotels and office buildings.

Mr Taib faced allegations, both at home and abroad, of corruption linked to logging concessions and construction projects. Though he denied all accusations of wrongdoing and never was charged with a crime, his political influence began to fade. He resigned as chief minister in 2014 and assumed the largely ceremonial role of Sarawak’s governor.

Reported to be in poor health, Mr Taib stepped down as governor in January, capping an almost unbroken six-decade stretch of holding various political offices.

Mr Taib was born on May 21, 1936, near Miri, then a nascent oil town in Sarawak, the eldest of 10 children. His father was a carpenter for Royal Dutch Shell, which operated wells on the town’s outskirts.

Scholarships carried him through secondary school and law studies at University of Adelaide.

Sovereign country

He returned to Sarawak in 1962 as Malaysia was transitioning from a British colony to a sovereign country – a time of big change and big opportunities.

With help from his uncle Abdul Rahman Ya’kub, a prominent politician who would serve 11 years as chief minister, Mr Taib joined Sarawak’s state cabinet aged 27 and later cycled through different government roles both there and in Kuala Lumpur.

In 1981, he succeeded his uncle as Sarawak’s chief minister, the state’s top political executive. The name of the position was changed to premier in 2022.

He and his first wife Laila had four children: Jamilah Taib Murray, Mahmud Abu Bekir Taib, Sulaiman Abdul Rahman Taib and Hanifah. After Laila’s death in 2009, he married Toh Puan Raghad Kurdi Taib.

In 2023, his two sons and Ms Ragad began a legal fight over control of some of the family’s fortune. 

BLOOMBERG

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