Author: Hemley Gonzalez

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Before face masks, Americans went to war against seat belts.

A small but vocal minority of people in the US are protesting face-mask mandates.
In the early 1980s, the public safety battle was over seat belts. Most Americans didn’t use them and 65% opposed them being enforced by law. “There was a libertarian streak among resistors,” car safety pioneer Ralph Nader told Business Insider. “They took the stance that ‘you’re not going to tie the American people up in seat belts.'”
More than 50 years after “Unsafe at Any Speed,” Nader said “we are a very hard society to change cognitively.”

State and federal officials nationwide have ordered the use of protective face masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Many businesses have instituted similar policies to protect customers and staff.

It’s a relatively straightforward precaution with proven public health benefits. Still, a small but vocal minority is resisting.

Some are fighting mask policies by invoking the Americans with Disabilities Act. Others are starting fistfights or even killing people.

Backlash against public health safeguards has plenty of precedents: When the influenza pandemic swept through San Francisco in 1919, hundreds of “mask slackers” disobeyed the law and were arrested.

Even the seat belt, one of the most ubiquitous safety devices in modern history, faced a contentious battle for acceptance.

The long road to seat-belt safety
As cars became increasingly popular through the 20th century, vehicular fatalities skyrocketed. Between 1920 and 1960, the rate of auto deaths doubled, from 11 people per 100,000 to 22 people.

Edward J. Claghorn first patented an automobile safety harness in 1885, mainly to help keep tourists from falling out of New York taxicabs. But it wasn’t until the mid-1950s that many carmakers even offered seat belts as an option.

Most motorists declined: In 1956, only 2% of Ford buyers took the $27 seat belt option, and the death toll kept rising.

In 1959, American politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan described the situation as “the epidemic on the highways.”

Then came Ralph Nader.

In 1965, Nader, 31, penned “Unsafe at Any Speed,” a best-selling expose that claimed car manufacturers were sacrificing lives for style and profit.

Nader argued that Detroit willfully neglected advances in auto safety, like roll bars and seat belts, to keep costs down.

His investigation spurred Congress to create what eventually became the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which required all vehicles (except buses) to be fitted with seat belts in 1968.

But using them was strictly voluntary. And many Americans didn’t want to.

As late as 1983, less than 15% of Americans said they used seat belts consistently.

New York became the first state to pass a mandatory seat-belt law, in 1984. Other states soon followed.

While there was already clear evidence seat belts saved lives, these measures faced stiff opposition. A Gallup poll from July 1984 showed that 65% of Americans opposed mandatory belt laws, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In a survey one year later, drivers said they thought the restraints were “ineffective, inconvenient, and uncomfortable.”

Some argued — incorrectly — that it was safer to be thrown clear from a wreck than trapped inside one.

“In this country, saving freedom is more important than trying to regulate lives through legislation,” wrote one staunch opponent in a 1987 Chicago Tribune editorial.

The auto industry actually supported seat-belt requirements, mainly to circumvent legislation that would have mandated airbags.

But the public bristled.

Some people cut the belts out of their cars. Others challenged seat-belt laws in court.

Massachusetts radio personality Jerry Williams transformed his talk-show into a crusade against seat belts, gathering 45,000 signatures in three months. He managed to get a referendum on the ballot to repeal the state’s new belt law.

“We don’t feel we should be forced to buckle up and have a police officer sent in by the state to make sure we’re buckled up,” Williams told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 1986.

“There was a libertarian streak among resistors,” Nader told Business Insider. “They took the stance that ‘you’re not going to tie the American people up in seat belts.'”

‘They’re not community people’
A similar ideology seems to be fueling pushback against face-covering during the pandemic.

Republican governor Mike DeWine of Ohio was forced to rescind his face-mask order, he told ABC News, when he realized Ohioans “were not going to accept the government telling them what to do.”

In California, an anti-lockdown protestor held a sign comparing wearing masks to slavery, Newsweek reported.

Nader says he believes most modern-day mask slackers are fueled by obstinance, not a political agenda.

“It’s just an ornery personality trait by some people,” he said. “They’re not community people.”

The former presidential candidate is quick to mention that few Americans oppose the current public health measures. A recent Washington Post poll found that fewer than 20% of Americans opposed wearing masks and maintaining social distancing.

“It’s a tiny percent of the population — let’s not exaggerate,” Nader said.

Americans have grown comfortable with seat belts, too: More than 90% buckle up regularly. New Hampshire — whose license plates proclaim “Live free or die “— remains the only state without a mandatory seat belt law.

But that shift took time. It also took public service campaigns, legal enforcement, and even regular reminders from our cars themselves.

“We are a very hard society to change cognitively,” Nader said, some 55 years after publishing “Unsafe at Any Speed.”

He hopes holdouts against pandemic precautions come around more quickly.

“The same people who don’t want to do social distancing and face masks get in their car and put their seat belt on,” he said. “Nice irony, huh?”

Source: https://bit.ly/3dwZ9lb

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Christian missionaries are setting fire to sacred Aboriginal objects.

Christian missionaries are causing a fresh wave of upset in outback Australia, promising to bring people back from the dead, and promoting the idea traditional Aboriginal culture is a type of devil worship.

An investigation by Background Briefing has uncovered dramatic scenes in the Kimberley region, where Aboriginal followers of a Tongan-born preacher have set fire to artefacts considered sacred by many local elders, and dismantled and burned a spiritual law ground.

The approach of some recently arrived evangelists has been slammed by some Aboriginal leaders, including Labor senator Pat Dodson.

“They are a type of virus that has really got no credibility,” he said. “If they really understood the gospel then the gospel is about liberation.

“It’s about an accommodation of the diversity and differences that we have in our belief systems.”

He believes the destruction of traditional culture is “an act of bastardry”.

“It’s about the lowest act you could perform in trying to indicate to a fellow human being that you have total disdain for anything they represent.”

But the born-again Christian converts have defended their beliefs and practices, saying it is their decision to make, and finding God has brought them peace and happiness.

The bonfire at Wangkatjungka

The Aboriginal community of Wangkatjungka has been the site of some of the greatest tensions, after dozens of local people were ‘born again’ and baptised following the arrival of young Tongan preacher Ana Makahununiu in 2015.

Local women called her a ‘prophetess’, believing God spoke through her.

A year after Ms Makahununiu arrived, her followers built a bonfire to destroy ‘satanic’ objects they thought were cursing their community, and filmed the process.

One of the women who helped organise the bonfire said the devil had caused disruption and violence in the community.

“We used to getting bashed from our partners and smoking, drinking with them, every family,” she told Background Briefing. “It’s just not good for the kids.

“It’s not the people really who are getting wild, it’s the devil behind them getting wild.”

A grainy video of the bonfire shows people cheering as objects are thrown into the flames and black smoke billows into the air.

“For many years we have been deceived by Satan and his demonic beings,” an unidentified man narrates as the fire burns.

“Now we throw away all the things that have been keeping us in bondage and slavery.”

Local women have told Background Briefing people started burning things associated with ‘sinful’ behaviour, before escalating to cultural items.

“For me, I was a smoker,” one woman said. “I went back home and get a little bit of tobacco and a paper.

“I take it back to the fire and throw it down in the fire. From that day on, I never smoke and I thank the Lord for that.”

The women then burned the dresses they had worn for ‘women’s business’ — the cultural practices and gatherings shared by women — while a local man decided to destroy a bundle of weapons passed down to him by his ancestors.

Later, worshippers turned their attention on a nearby bough shed, or shade structure, where cultural elders gathered when putting local boys through traditional ‘law business’, or coming-of-age rituals.

“We got my car, my Landcruiser,” said one woman. “Then we just slowly moved it, all the bits and pieces, like tin everything, like poles.”

According to the woman, they burnt it all.

The ‘Prophetess’

Ms Makahununiu’s followers said they happily paid for her food and accommodation so she could stay in Wangkatjungka for about three years.

She now lives in Sydney, preaching at a Pentecostal church in Homebush and working cash-in-hand jobs, despite admitting she’s not legally allowed to work in Australia due to her visa status.

Ms Makahununiu said while she didn’t instruct the Wangkatjungka locals to burn sacred objects, she supported them in their decision to try to cleanse the community of evil.

“My focus was for the people who [were] addicted to drugs or alcohol, cigarettes, all those things,” she said.

“Most of them, they was shouting and happy,” she said. “It was really exciting for them.”

“The most important thing for me is to see the people happy and free not to live in bondage anymore.”

She said she started viewing traditional Aboriginal beliefs as devil-worship after arriving in the Kimberley and meeting local people.

“When they talk, and share the type of spirit they’re using, I can say is very demonic.

“I’ve been seeing that is all connected to witchcraft — that is not from God, that’s all from the devil.”

Some local Aboriginal women like Olive Knight agree. She helps run the small but strong Christian fellowship still operating in Wangkatjungka.

“The spiritism that I grew up with, it was so restrictive, there was lots of fear, retribution all the time,” she said.

“Would it be better to live in a culture that … there’s nothing but fear and retribution, or go to someone who’s loving, a loving God?”

Ana Makahununiu is planning on returning to the Kimberley soon, with a team of missionaries from Sydney.

“We are planning to rise up again and we’re going to travel to Wangkatjungka, and then I believe this will be a time we’re going to bring everybody all together.”

Pentecostalism rising in the Kimberley

Christian missionaries have a long history of trying to assimilate Aboriginal people in the Kimberley, and discouraging them from practicing their traditional religious beliefs.

Peter Murray is the CEO of the Yanunijarra Aboriginal Corporation south of Fitzroy Crossing.

He thinks some of the new wave Pentecostal preachers don’t understand Indigenous culture and are destroying it, instead of allowing Christianity and traditional culture to live side by side.

“People in the Kimberley are moving onto other churches,” he said. “People are choosing something more exciting that will give them blessings.”

Pentecostalism is the type of Christianity behind popular mega-churches like Hillsong and Horizon Church, which is attended by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The number of Pentecostals grew by 20 per cent in the decade to 2016, while other Christian denominations shrank.

But the Pentecostalism flourishing in remote areas is based on a more literal interpretation of the Bible and focuses on God’s ability to affect real-world change for followers. Practices like being ‘slain in the spirit’, with parishioners collapsing during prayer in religious ecstasy, as well as speaking in tongues are increasingly common.

‘Penetrate the Aboriginal’

Forward in Faith is one of the Pentecostal churches that has entered the Kimberley in recent years.

Founded in Zimbabwe, the church has 68 congregations in Australia, many in largely Aboriginal towns and communities in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

At a recent prayer meeting in the town of Port Hedland, Elder of the church Kenneth Chihwayi told Background Briefing Aboriginal spirituality is not compatible with Christian faith.

“We don’t touch on their culture, but you’ll find that slowly, slowly they will stop their culture, because there are some bad things in their culture which do not meet with the Christian faith,” he said.

“They were into drugs, they were drinking, they had broken marriages, they had bitterness, they had all these things,” he said.

“We preach the love of God, and when a person understands and accepted the love of God inside him, he will decide I want to stop drinking, this is not good. That’s how we have managed to penetrate the Aboriginal.”

Mr Chihwayi believes his church is particularly well placed to appeal to the Aboriginal community.

“Generally speaking, Aboriginals mistrust white people,” he said. “They consider Africans as brothers, so they open up to us.”

Aboriginal converts to Forward in Faith believe the church has helped them in their everyday lives, including Bidyadanga resident Sue Mandijello.

“In this Ministry, Forward in Faith, I have found that I changed my life,” she said. “Some years back I was on dialysis for five-and-a-half years and come 2011, I received a new kidney, so just believing God, this is a gift from him.”

But others are cynical about the promised benefits, including Karajarri man Gordon Marshall, who worked for more than 20 years as a police liaison officer in the Kimberley.

“These people, they’re vulnerable, and they [the church] come along and catch them and say, ‘I can help you’,” he said. “I think they just prey on vulnerable people.”

He said one of the most disturbing incidents he heard about was an attempt by born-again Christians in the central Kimberley to bring a baby back from the dead.

Raising the dead

A belief circulating among born-again Christians in several remote communities Background Briefing visited is deceased people can be resurrected through prayer.

Witnesses described distressing scenes at one funeral held in 2015, where Pentecostal converts attempted to resurrect a baby girl who’d died of an illness.

It’s understood the burial was delayed for several hours while people sang, danced and prayed for the baby to ‘wake’.

Witnesses have told Background Briefing the instigator for the resurrection attempt was a pastor with the Zimbabwean Church Forward in Faith.

A church spokesperson said they had no knowledge of the incident, and raising people from the dead was not “part of the Gospel we preach”.

He said the pastor allegedly involved has been on medical leave for about two years, and does not act on behalf of the church.

For Senator Dodson, promises faith could solve the problems of poverty and disenfranchisement are dangerous and misleading. He said real solutions still required work.

“It is about getting effective, real education into these locations,” he said.

“At the end of the day, it’s about strengthening leadership, and the leaders getting supported in their stands for what they understand and know are true to their cultures and societies.”

Source: https://ab.co/2XXIGkv

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The Dunning-Kruger effect, or why the ignorant think they’re experts.

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Vaclav Smil: “Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that.”

Vaclav Smil is a distinguished professor emeritus in the faculty of environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Over more than 40 years, his books on the environment, population, food and energy have steadily grown in influence. He is now seen as one of the world’s foremost thinkers on development history and a master of statistical analysis. Bill Gates says he waits for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next Star Wars movie. The latest is Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities.

You are the nerd’s nerd. There is perhaps no other academic who paints pictures with numbers like you. You dug up the astonishing statistic that China has poured more cement every three years since 2003 than the US managed in the entire 20th century. You calculated that in 2000, the dry mass of all the humans in the world was 125m metric tonnes compared with just 10m tonnes for all wild vertebrates. And now you explore patterns of growth, from the healthy development of forests and brains to the unhealthy increase in obesity and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Before we get into those deeper issues, can I ask if you see yourself as a nerd?

Not at all. I’m just an old-fashioned scientist describing the world and the lay of the land as it is. That’s all there is to it. It’s not good enough just to say life is better or the trains are faster. You have to bring in the numbers. This book is an exercise in buttressing what I have to say with numbers so people see these are the facts and they are difficult to dispute.

Growth is a huge book – almost 200,000 words that synthesise many of your other studies, ranging across the world and exploring far into the past and future. Do you see this as your magnum opus?

I have deliberately set out to write the megabook on growth. In a way, it’s unwieldy and unreasonable. People can take any number of books out of it – economists can read about the growth of GDP and population; biologists can read about the growth of organisms and human bodies. But I wanted to put it all together under one roof so people could see how these things are inevitably connected and how it all shares one crystal clarity: that growth must come to an end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that.

I first came across your work while I was writing a book about the Chinese environment. Time and again, you had the data that I was looking for – and it often revealed how dubious many of the official statistics were. You have been described as a “slayer of bullshit”. Is that your goal?

I was brought up in Czechoslovakia during the era of the Soviet bloc. Having spent 26 years of my life in the evil empire, I do not tolerate nonsense. I grew up surrounded by commie propaganda – the bright tomorrow, the great future of mankind – so I’m as critical as they come. It’s not my opinion. These are the facts. I don’t write opinion pieces. I write things that are totally underlined by facts.

You debunk overly rosy projections by techno-optimists, who say we can solve all our problems with smarter computers, and economists, who promise endless capitalist growth. In many countries, the downside of material growth now seems greater than the upside, which leads to what you call “anthropogenic insults to ecosystems”. Is that a fair summary?

Yes, I think so. Without a biosphere in a good shape, there is no life on the planet. It’s very simple. That’s all you need to know. The economists will tell you we can decouple growth from material consumption, but that is total nonsense. The options are quite clear from the historical evidence. If you don’t manage decline, then you succumb to it and you are gone. The best hope is that you find some way to manage it. We are in a better position to do that now than we were 50 or 100 years ago, because our knowledge is much vaster. If we sit down, we can come up with something. It won’t be painless, but we can come up with ways to minimise that pain.

So we need to change our expectations of GDP growth?

Yes, the simple fact is that however you define happiness, we know – and we have known this for ages – that the amount of GDP is not going to improve your satisfaction with life, equanimity and sense of wellbeing. Look at Japan. They are pretty rich but they are among the unhappiest people on the planet. Then who is always in the top 10 of the happiest people? It is the Philippines, which is much poorer and smitten by typhoons, yet many times more happy than their neighbours in Japan. Once you reach a certain point, the benefits of GDP growth start to level off in terms of mortality, nutrition and education.

Is that point the golden mean? Is that what we should be aiming for rather than pushing until growth becomes malign, cancerous, obese and environmentally destructive?

Exactly. That would be nice. We could halve our energy and material consumption and this would put us back around the level of the 1960s. We could cut down without losing anything important. Life wasn’t horrible in 1960s or 70s Europe. People from Copenhagen would no longer be able to fly to Singapore for a three-day visit, but so what? Not much is going to happen to their lives. People don’t realise how much slack in the system we have.

The growth of information is not just a flood or an explosion. Those adjectives are inadequate. We are buried under information. It’s not doing anyone any good
You cite Kenneth Boulding’s distinction between the “cowboy economy” and the “spaceman economy”. The former is wide-open spaces and seemingly endless opportunities for resource consumption. The latter is a recognition that planet Earth is more like a closed spaceship on which we need to carefully manage our resources. The challenge is to shift from one way of thinking to another. But human history is thousands of years of cowboys and only a few decades of spacemen. Aren’t we hardwired?

There is a deep tradition both in the eastern and western traditions of frugality, living within your means and a contemplative life. It has always been like this. Now there is this louder voice calling for more consumption and a bigger bathroom and an SUV, but it’s increasingly apparent that cannot go on. It will be something like smoking, which was everywhere 50 years ago. But now that people realise the clear link to lung cancer, this is restricted. The same will happen when people realise where material growth is taking us. It is a matter of time I think.

How do we move in that direction before the risks become unmanageable?

To answer this, it’s important not to talk in global terms. There will be many approaches which have to be tailored and targeted to each different audience. There is this pernicious idea by this [Thomas] Friedman guy that the world is flat and everything is now the same, so what works in one place can work for everyone. But that’s totally wrong. For example, Denmark has nothing in common with Nigeria. What you do in each place will be different. What we need in Nigeria is more food, more growth. In Philippines we need a little more of it. And in Canada and Sweden, we need less of it. We have to look at it from different points of view. In some places we have to foster what economists call de-growth. In other places, we have to foster growth.

Your one-man statistical analysis is like the entire output of the World Bank. Did this research make you feel we are closer to the end of growth than you previously realised?

People ask me if I am an optimist or a pessimist and I say neither. I am not trying to be deliberately agnostic: this is the best conclusion I can come up with. In China, I told people how bad the environment was and the picture totally shocked people. They said: “When will it collapse?” And I’d answer: “It’s collapsing every day, but it’s also being fixed every day.” They used more coal and got more air pollution, but they also took billions from the World Bank and finally have modern water treatment in big cities. Now they are using modern farming, so they use less water for irrigation. This is how it is. This is what kind of species we are: we are stupid, we are negligent, we are tardy. But on the other hand, we are adaptable, we are smart and even as things are falling apart, we are trying to stitch them together. But the most difficult thing is to calculate the net effect. Are we up or down? For all the analysis, we don’t know this.

Your book notes that the entire library of Rome, 2,000 years ago, contained about 3 gigabytes of information, but now the global internet has more than a trillion times more. You are clearly sceptical this has been a net positive or that it has improved our ability to deal with our problems.

The growth of information is not just a flood or an explosion. Those adjectives are inadequate. We are buried under information. It’s not doing anyone any good. There are satellites above us producing huge amounts of information, but there are not enough people to analyse it. Yes, computers can help and shrink the amount, but someone still has to make decisions. There is too much to grasp.

Did you experience any statgasms (statistical orgasms) is the course of the research?

I am a biologist by training, so I was delighted to read new studies about the world’s biggest trees – the redwoods and eucalyptus. They never stop growing. And for elephants, they have indeterminate patterns of growth and never really stop until they die. We humans stop when we are 18 or 19. But the biggest species on the planet keep on growing until they die.

And on human population?

What is most remarkable is how rapid the decline has been. For more than a 100 years, the growth rate accelerated. The 1930s faster than the 20s, the 40s faster than the 30s and so on. By the 1960s, the world population was growing so fast that a famous paper in Science said that by 2024, it would be growing at an infinite rate – like a population singularity moment, which is, of course, absurd. Since then, the rate has declined every year. Population continues to grow in absolute terms, but in percentage terms it has been declining since the mid-60s.

Overall, I would say the tone of the book is pessimistic, but you also mention the possibility of a more optimistic scenario in which the global population does not expand beyond 9 billion – as is currently predicted – and in which the energy transition is faster than expected. Even if material demands peak before 2050, that still leaves us several decades of rising pressure. Given the already apparent strains on the climate, the soil, biodiversity and social stability, how do we get over this dangerous bulge?

That is the difficult part. In the western world and Japan, we are almost there. China still has a way to go because it is at the level of Spain in the 1960s in terms of energy. The real bulge is coming in Africa, where 1 billion more people will be born. Just to bring the current African population to a decent level of living, like Vietnam and Thailand, is tough. To do that with an extra billion will be extraordinarily hard. You can bring it all down to one figure – it is gigajoules of consumption of energy per person per year, but the unit is not important. Just consider the comparison. The US is about 300. Japan is about 170. The EU is about 150. China is now close to 100. India is 20. Nigeria is 5. Ethiopia is 2. To grow from Nigeria to China is a 20-fold increase just on per capita terms. Such is the scale of the bulge. So you can cut consumption in Copenhagen or Sussex, but not in Nigeria.

Is ageing Japan a model? It strikes me as incredible that the country has been able to weather a long decline of property prices, stock market values, population vitality and influence without sliding into chaos. Are there lessons there for others who face involuntary retreat?

Japan can only be a partial model, because until recently it was such a frugal and disciplined society that people there can tolerate what others would not accept. But we have slack. We are so fat in terms of material consumption. There is room to cut back. But there is no easy answer. If there were, we would have already done it.

Can businessmen accept an end to growth? Have you mentioned this to Bill Gates?

I don’t need to tell him. He knows a lot about the environment. Put aside the billions of dollars and he is just a guy who likes to understand the world. He reads dozens of books every year. Like me.

What Microsoft founder Bill Gates says about Vaclav Smil’s books

Energy and Civilization: A History
(MIT Press, 2017)

“Smil is one of my favourite authors and this is his masterpiece. He lays out how our need for energy has shaped human history – from the era of donkey-powered mills to today’s quest for renewable energy.”

Making the Modern World: Materials & Dematerialization
(Wiley, 2013)

“If anyone tries to tell you we’re using fewer materials, send him this book. With his usual scepticism and his love of data, Smil shows how our ability to make things with less material – say, soda cans that need less aluminium – makes them cheaper, which actually encourages more production. We’re using more stuff than ever.”

Harvesting the Biosphere
(MIT Press, 2013)

“Here [Smil] gives as clear and as numeric a picture as is possible of how humans have altered the biosphere… it tells a critical story if you care about the impact we’re having on the planet.”

Source: https://bit.ly/3chIK34

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Sudan criminalises female genital mutilation, welcoming new era for women’s rights in the country.

Sudan has criminalised female genital mutilation (FGM), making it punishable by three years in jail, a move campaigners said ushered in a ‘new era’ for women’s rights in the African nation.

Almost nine out of 10 women and girls in predominately Muslim Sudan have undergone FGM, United Nations data show. The procedure usually involves the partial or total removal of the female genitalia and can cause a host of health problems.

The Sudanese government approved an amendment to its criminal legislation on 22 April, stating that anyone who performs FGM either inside a medical establishment or elsewhere faces three years’ imprisonment and a fine.

Women’s rights groups said the punishment would help to end FGM, but warned it would be difficult to change minds in communities that view the traditional practice as necessary to marry their daughters.

‘Having a law against FGM acts as an important deterrent, however, Sudan may face challenges in enforcing legislation. People who still believe in the practice might not report cases or act to stop FGM when they know it is happening.’

Communities may look for ways to avoid detection, while officials who believe in the practice may not uphold the law, warned Mohamed.

An estimated 200 million girls and women worldwide have undergone FGM, which is practised in at least 27 African countries and parts of Asia and the Middle East. Girls can bleed to death or die from infections, while FGM can also cause fatal childbirth complications later, say health experts. In Sudan, more than three-quarters of procedures are conducted by nurses, midwives or other medical personnel, says anti-FGM campaign group 28 Too Many.

In many cases, most of the vaginal opening is sewn up after removal of the external genitalia, a practice known as reinfibulation that can lead to cysts, injury to the urethra, painful sex and inability to orgasm.

Sudanese women face a barrage of threats, from child marriage to domestic violence and rape. Yet there are few policies in place to protect women and girls. Marital rape and child marriage, for example, are not considered crimes.

Women’s issues have however gained greater attention in the last year, following the prominent role women and girls played in nine-month-long street protests which ousted veteran autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April last year.

The transitional government has pledged to prioritise the women’s rights and Prime Minister Abdulla Hamdok has appointed women to cabinet positions of foreign affairs, youth and sports, higher education and labour and social development.

The new regime also repealed its public order act, which tightly restricted women’s freedom of dress, movement, association, work and study during Bashir’s three-decade rule.

Anti-FGM campaigners said criminalisation of the internationally condemned practice was a sign of the new government’s commitment towards democracy and equality.

‘Sudan has truly entered a New Era for Girl Rights with Criminalisation of FGM. What an incredible day for my sisters and the future of Africa,’ tweeted Somali-born British campaigner Nimco Ali.

‘Sudan I am so proud of you. May Allah guide give you and your people the peace and democracy you have longed for. And thank you for placing the protection of women and girls at the heart of this new chapter.’

Source: http://dailym.ai/3ftaFPD

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The world is on lockdown. So where are all the carbon emissions coming from?

Pedestrians have taken over city streets, people have almost entirely stopped flying, skies are blue (even in Los Angeles!) for the first time in decades, and global CO2 emissions are on-track to drop by … about 5.5 percent.

Wait, what? Even with the global economy at a near-standstill, the best analysis suggests that the world is still on track to release 95 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted in a typical year, continuing to heat up the planet and driving climate change even as we’re stuck at home.

A 5.5-percent drop in carbon dioxide emissions would still be the largest yearly change on record, beating out the financial crisis of 2008 and World War II. But it’s worth wondering: Where do all of those emissions come from? And if stopping most travel and transport isn’t enough to slow down climate change, what will be?

“I think the main issue is that people focus way, way too much on people’s personal footprints, and whether they fly or not, without really dealing with the structural things that really cause carbon dioxide levels to go up,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

Transportation makes up a little over 20 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. (In the United States, it makes up around 28 percent.) That’s a significant chunk, but it also means that even if all travel were completely carbon-free (imagine a renewable-powered, electrified train system, combined with personal EVs and battery-powered airplanes), there’d still be another 80 percent of fossil fuel emissions billowing into the skies.

So where are all those emissions coming from? For one thing, utilities are still generating roughly the same amount of electricity — even if more of it’s going to houses instead of workplaces. Electricity and heating combined account for over 40 percent of global emissions. Many people around the world rely on wood, coal, and natural gas to keep their homes warm and cook their food — and in most places, electricity isn’t so green either.

Even with a bigger proportion of the world working from home, people still need the grid to keep the lights on and connect to the internet. “There’s a shift from offices to homes, but the power hasn’t been turned off, and that power is still being generated largely by fossil fuels,” Schmidt said. In the United States, 60 percent of electricity generation still comes from coal, oil, and natural gas. (There is evidence, however, that the lockdown is shifting when people use electricity, which has some consequences for renewables.)

Manufacturing, construction, and other types of industry account for approximately 20 percent of CO2 emissions. Certain industrial processes like steel production and aluminum smelting use huge amounts of fossil fuels — and so far, Schmidt says, that type of production has mostly continued despite the pandemic.

The reality is that emissions need to be cut by 7.6 percent every year to keep global warming from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — the threshold associated with the most dangerous climate threats — according to an analysis by the United Nations Environment Program. Even if the global lockdown and economic slump reduce emissions by 7.6 percent this year, emissions would have to fall even more the year after that. And the year after that. And so on.

In the middle of the pandemic, it’s become common to point to clear skies in Los Angeles and the cleaner waters of Venice as evidence that people can make a difference on climate change. “The newly iconic photos of a crystal-clear Los Angeles skyline without its usual shroud of smog are unwanted but compelling evidence of what can happen when individuals stop driving vehicles that pollute the air,” wrote Michael Grunwald in POLITICO magazine.

But these arguments conflate air and water pollution — crucial environmental issues in their own right! — with CO2 emissions. Carbon dioxide is invisible, and power plants and oil refineries are still pumping it into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, natural gas companies and livestock farming (think cow burps) keep releasing methane.

“I think people should bike instead of driving, and they should take the train instead of flying,” said Schmidt. “But those are small, compared to the really big structural things that haven’t changed.”

It’s worth remembering that a dip in carbon emissions won’t lead to any changes in the Earth’s warming trend. Some scientists compare carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to water flowing into a leaky bathtub. The lockdown has turned the tap down, not off. Until we cut emissions to net-zero — so that emissions flowing into the atmosphere are equivalent to those flowing out — the Earth will continue warming.To first order, think of CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere as the water in a bathtub & CO₂ emissions as the tap. The lockdowns mean the tap has been turned down slightly, so CO₂ is still streaming into the bathtub (& some leaks out the bottom)

That helps explain why 2020 is already on track to be the warmest ever recorded, beating out 2016. In a sad irony, the decrease in air pollution may make it even hotter. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, explained that many polluting particles have a “masking” effect on global warming, reflecting the sun’s rays, canceling out some of the warming from greenhouse gas emissions. With that shield of pollution gone, Ramanathan said, “We could see an increase in warming.”

Appreciate the bluer skies and fresher air, while you can. But the emissions drop from the pandemic should be a warning, not a cause for celebration: a sign of how much further there is to go.

Source: https://bit.ly/3d7ePuB

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Economic Recovery Will Require ‘Lessening Of The Wealth Gap,’ Says Hedge Fund Titan.

Ray Dalio is known for making lucrative predictions. His hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, is the largest in the world. But Dalio, a billionaire himself and one of the world’s most successful investors, says capitalism is broken.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Dalio had warned that the wealth gap represented a “national emergency.” The outbreak, he says, is only exacerbating the disparities between the rich and the poor.

“We will have ahead of us the question of who’s going to pay the bills and how will we redefine things,” he says, adding that the solutions will “necessitate a lessening of the wealth gap.”

Dalio spoke with NPR’s Morning Edition on Wednesday about what he thinks the crisis will mean for income inequality and the future health of the economy more broadly. Here is what he had to say:

You’ve been concerned about the wealth gap since before this, before the pandemic. Is there a set of circumstances in which that gets better? And what are those circumstances?

Well, history has shown the same things happen over and over again. You have the crash in the ’30s as a great model. There’s the United States, there’s other countries and there is a lot of fighting over wealth just as a basic principle. The United States maintained a civility, but there was a wealth gap, there needed to be a shift in wealth. And there [were] jobs programs. There were changes in taxation and so on. And the United States did it in the best way in the world.

Over the weekend, the pope in his Easter address appeared to endorse a universal basic income — a government guarantee that every citizen receives a minimum income. What do you think about a universal basic income to address some of the structural inequalities that have you so worried that capitalism is not working the way it should?

We are now in an era of universal basic income.

Oh, you mean now with the pandemic, people getting checks in the mail?

Right, and it won’t be adequate. And the only question is how long that lasts.

How long should it last?

It has to last long enough so that there’s subsistence. It’s the quick and easy way for getting a certain amount of purchasing power in the hands of those people. And of course, it’s a transfer of wealth and that should exist. And I think there’s a wonderful opportunity here if we can operate well to restructure the way the system is working in a way to increase the size of the pie and divide it well.

What does the U.S. economy look like when this is over?

We will have a lot of people suffering financially, not just here, but around the world. I worry about the anger and the fighting and what that might be like. And we’re going to be much more isolated, not just because of the virus, but because of the fact that everybody knows that they have to have self-sufficiency from the individual all the way to the country. In either case, we still have the greatest asset of humanity — the ability to adapt, invent and come up with things. And we will do that effectively and we will get past it. But it may take a few years and it may be nasty in the process.

Source: https://n.pr/3cfkBdv

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Dutch court allows euthanasia in advanced dementia cases.

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WHO officials are unclear if recovered coronavirus patients are immune to second infection.

World Health Organization officials said Monday not all people who recover from the coronavirus have the antibodies to fight a second infection, raising concern that patients may not develop immunity after surviving Covid-19.

“With regards to recovery and then reinfection, I believe we do not have the answers to that. That is an unknown,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s emergencies program, said at a press conference at the organization’s Geneva headquarters on Monday.

A preliminary study of patients in Shanghai found that some patients had “no detectable antibody response” while others had a very high response, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s lead scientist on Covid-19. Whether the patients who had a strong antibody response were immune to a second infection is “a separate question,” she added.

More than 300,000 of the 1.87 million coronavirus cases across the world have recovered, WHO officials noted, adding that they need more data from recovered patients to understand their antibody response, whether that gives them immunity and for how long.

“That’s something that we really need to better understand is what does that antibody response look like in terms of immunity,” Van Kerkhove said.

Ryan said there are questions about whether the virus can reactivate after a patient recovers and tests negative for Covid-19.

“There are many reasons why we might see reactivation of infection either with the same infection or another infectious agent,” he said. In general, “there are many situations in viral infection where someone doesn’t clear the virus entirely from their system.” Some patients can also clear the main infection but develop a secondary bacterial infection, he said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that it is developing a test to detect the presence of coronavirus antibodies to determine if a person could be immune to the disease. While such a test can determine who has been exposed to the virus, it’s not clear if it can identify those immune to reinfection, according to the WHO.

WHO officials also warned Monday against lifting social distancing restrictions and reopening businesses, even as U.S. political leaders, from President Donald Trump to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, have said they hope to reopen businesses as soon as it is safe to do so.

“While Covid-19 accelerates very fast, it decelerates much more slowly. In other words, the way down is much slower than the way up,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference at the organization’s Geneva headquarters on Monday. “That means control measures must be lifted slowly and with control. It cannot happen all at once.”

Tedros outlined a checklist for countries before they should consider lifting social distancing measures:

• Transmission of the virus should be controlled.
• A surveillance system should be in place to detect, isolate and treat patients.
• Outbreaks in hospitals and nursing homes should be minimized.
• Preventive measures in essential locations such as schools and workplaces should be in place.
• The risk of importing the disease from abroad should be under control.

“Control measures can only be lifted if the right public health measures are in place, including significant capacity for contact tracing,” Tedros said.

Source: https://cnb.cx/3er2Cm8