tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86023899918722225852024-03-05T13:26:48.158-08:00Laura's Page FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.comBlogger1492125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-26319617327385757422023-12-01T23:34:00.000-08:002023-12-01T23:34:51.180-08:00Merriam-Webster’s word of the year – authentic – reflects growing concerns over AI’s ability to deceive and dehumanize<p> </p><h1 class="legacy"></h1>
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According to the publisher’s editor-at-large, 2023 represented ‘a kind of crisis of authenticity.’
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/analog-collage-with-female-portrait-and-her-mirror-royalty-free-image/1304922773?adppopup=true">lambada/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>When <a href="https://apnews.com/article/merriam-webster-word-of-year-2023-a9fea610cb32ed913bc15533acab71cc">Merriam-Webster announced</a> that its word of the year for 2023 was “authentic,” it did so with over a month to go in the calendar year. </p>
<p>Even then, the dictionary publisher was late to the game.</p>
<p>In a lexicographic form of <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/words-were-watching-christmas-creep-slang-definition">Christmas creep</a>, Collins English Dictionary announced <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/01/ai-named-most-notable-word-of-2023-by-collins-dictionary">its 2023 word of the year</a>, “AI,” on Oct. 31. Cambridge University Press <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/15/hallucinate-cambridge-dictionary-word-of-the-year">followed suit</a> on Nov. 15 with “hallucinate,” a word used to refer to incorrect or misleading information provided by generative AI programs. </p>
<p>At any rate, terms related to artificial intelligence appear to rule the roost, with “authentic” also falling under that umbrella.</p>
<h2>AI and the authenticity crisis</h2>
<p>For the past 20 years, Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in the U.S., has chosen a word of the year – a term that encapsulates, in one form or another, the zeitgeist of that past year. In 2020, the word was “pandemic.” The next year’s winner? “Vaccine.”</p>
<p>“Authentic” is, at first glance, a little less obvious.</p>
<p>According to the publisher’s editor-at-large, <a href="https://www.wbbjtv.com/2023/11/27/whats-merriam-websters-word-of-the-year-for-2023-hint-be-true-to-yourself/">Peter Sokolowski</a>, 2023 represented “a kind of crisis of authenticity.” He added that the choice was also informed by the number of online users who looked up the word’s meaning throughout the year.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Print ad with a drawing of a thick book accompanied by the text, 'The One Great Standard Authority.'" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561966/original/file-20231127-27-1x4zx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
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<span class="caption">A 1906 print ad for Webster’s International Dictionary advertised itself an an authoritative clearinghouse for all things English – an authentic, reliable source.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/advertisement-for-websters-international-dictionary-by-g-news-photo/478181481?adppopup=true">Jay Paull/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The word “authentic,” in the sense of something that is accurate or authoritative, has its roots in French and Latin. The Oxford English Dictionary has identified its usage in English as early as the <a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/authentic_adj?tab=meaning_and_use#33027938">late 14th century</a>.</p>
<p>And yet the concept – particularly as it applies to human creations and human behavior – <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-new-science-of-authenticity-says-about-discovering-your-true-self-175314">is slippery</a>.</p>
<p>Is a photograph made from film more authentic than one made from a digital camera? Does an authentic scotch have to be made at a small-batch distillery in Scotland? When socializing, are you being authentic – or just plain rude – when you skirt niceties and small talk? Does being your authentic self mean pursuing something that feels natural, even at the expense of cultural or legal constraints?</p>
<p>The more you think about it, the more it seems like an ever-elusive ideal – one further complicated by advances in artificial intelligence.</p>
<h2>How much human touch?</h2>
<p>Intelligence of the artificial variety – as in nonhuman, inauthentic, computer-generated intelligence – was the technology story of the past year.</p>
<p>At the end of 2022, OpenAI publicly released <a href="https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt">ChatGPT 3.5</a>, a chatbot derived from so-called large language models. It was widely seen as a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, but its rapid adoption led to questions about the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/technology/chatbots-hallucination-rates.html?smid=tw-share">accuracy of its answers</a>.</p>
<p>The chatbot also became popular among students, which compelled teachers <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-schools-plagiarism-lesson-plans/">to grapple with how to ensure</a> their assignments weren’t being completed by ChatGPT. </p>
<p>Issues of authenticity have arisen in other areas as well. In November 2023, a track described as the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/arts/music/beatles-now-and-then-last-song.html#:%7E:text=It%27s%20a%20wistful%20postscript.,after%20the%20Beatles%20broke%20up.">last Beatles song</a>” was released. “Now and Then” is a compilation of music originally written and performed by John Lennon in the 1970s, with additional music recorded by the other band members in the 1990s. A machine learning algorithm was recently employed to separate Lennon’s vocals from his piano accompaniment, and this allowed a final version to be released. </p>
<p>But is it an authentic “Beatles” song? <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/magazine/the-beatles-now-and-then.html">Not everyone is convinced</a>.</p>
<p>Advances in technology have also allowed the manipulation of audio and video recordings. Referred to as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/events-that-never-happened-could-influence-the-2024-presidential-election-a-cybersecurity-researcher-explains-situation-deepfakes-206034">deepfakes</a>,” such transformations can make it appear that a celebrity or a politician said something that they did not – a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/30/1190970436/how-real-is-the-threat-of-ai-deepfakes-in-the-2024-election">troubling prospect</a> as the U.S. heads into what is sure to be a contentious 2024 election season. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/generative-ai-is-forcing-people-to-rethink-what-it-means-to-be-authentic-204347">Writing for The Conversation in May 2023</a>, education scholar Victor R. Lee explored the AI-fueled authenticity crisis.</p>
<p>Our judgments of authenticity are knee-jerk, he explained, honed over years of experience. Sure, occasionally we’re fooled, but our antennae are generally reliable. Generative AI short-circuits this cognitive framework.</p>
<p>“That’s because back when it took a lot of time to produce original new content, there was a general assumption … that it only could have been made by skilled individuals putting in a lot of effort and acting with the best of intentions,” he wrote.</p>
<p>“These are not safe assumptions anymore,” he added. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, everyone will need to consider that it may not have actually hatched from an egg.”</p>
<p>Though there seems to be a general understanding that human minds and human hands must play some role in creating something authentic or being authentic, authenticity has always been a difficult concept to define.</p>
<p>So it’s somewhat fitting that as our collective handle on reality has become ever more tenuous, an elusive word for an abstract ideal is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217171/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/roger-j-kreuz-817382">Roger J. Kreuz</a>, Associate Dean and Professor of Psychology, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-memphis-2147">University of Memphis</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license.</p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-40847257937027266052023-11-05T01:49:00.000-07:002023-11-05T01:49:13.593-07:00AI won’t be replacing your priest, minister, rabbi or imam any time soon<p> </p><figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548135/original/file-20230913-23-yeyvza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=311%2C42%2C6850%2C4939&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
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An android called ‘Kannon Mindar,’ which preaches Buddhist sermons.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-march-9-2019-shows-android-called-kannon-mindar-news-photo/1129444044?adppopup=true">Richard Atrero de Guzman/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Early in the summer of 2023, robots projected on a screen <a href="https://www.worldreligionnews.com/religion-news/artificial-intelligence/">delivered sermons to about 300 congregants</a> at St. Paul’s Church in Bavaria, Germany. Created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna, the experimental church service drew immense interest. </p>
<p>The deadpan sermon delivery prompted many to doubt whether AI can really displace priests and pastoral instruction. At the end of the service, an attendee remarked, “There was no heart and no soul.” </p>
<p>But the growing use of AI may prompt more churches to debut AI-generated worship services. A church in Austin, Texas, for example, has put a banner out <a href="https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/chatgpt-ai-sermon-austin-18360010.php.">advertising a service with an AI-generated sermon</a>. The church worship will also include an AI-generated call to worship and pastoral prayer. Yet this use of AI has prompted concerns, as these technologies are believed to disrupt authentic human presence and leadership in religious life. </p>
<p>My research, alongside others in the <a href="https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/198190">interdisciplinary fields of digital religion</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529782783">human-machine communication</a>, illuminates what is missing in discussions of AI, which tend to be machine-centric and focused on extreme bright or dark outcomes. </p>
<p>It points to how religious leaders are still the ones influencing the latest technologies within their organizations. AI cannot simply displace humans, since storytelling and programming continue to be critical for its development and deployment. </p>
<p>Here are three ways in which machines will need a priest. </p>
<h2>1. Clergy approve and affirm AI use</h2>
<p>Given rapid changes in emerging technologies, priests have historically served as gatekeepers to <a href="https://www.peterlang.com/document/1109122">endorse and invest in new digital applications</a>. In 2015, in China, the adoption of Xian'er, the robot monk, was promoted as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859920977133">pathway to spiritual engagement</a> by the master priest of the Buddhist Longquan Temple in Beijing. </p>
<p>The priest rejected claims that religious AI was sacrilegious and described innovation in AI as spiritually compatible with religious values. He encouraged the incorporation of AI into religious practices to help believers gain spiritual insight and to elevate the temple’s outreach efforts in spreading Buddhist teachings. </p>
<p>Similarly, in 2019, the head priest of the Kodai-ji Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, named an adult-size android “<a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3022716/meet-mindar-humanoid-robot-preaches-sermons-buddhist-temple?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article&campaign=3022716">Kannon Mindar</a>,” after the revered Goddess of Mercy. </p>
<p>This robotic deity, who can preach the Heart Sutra, a classic and popular Buddhist scripture, was intentionally built in partnership with Osaka University, with a cost of about US$1 million. The idea behind it was to stimulate public interest and connect religious seekers and practitioners with Buddhist teachings. </p>
<p>By naming and affirming AI use in religious life, religious leaders are acting as key influencers in the development and application of robots in spiritual practice. </p>
<h2>2. Priests direct human-machine communication</h2>
<p>Today, much of AI data operations remain invisible or opaque. Many adults do not recognize how much AI is <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/02/15/public-awareness-of-artificial-intelligence-in-everyday-activities/">already a part of our daily lives</a>, for example in customer service chatbots and custom product recommendations. </p>
<p>But human decision making and judgment about technical processes, including providing feedback for reinforcement learning and interface design, is vital for the day-to-day operations of AI. </p>
<p>Consider the recent robotic initiatives at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia. At this mosque, <a href="https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/recitation-sermon-robots-launched-at-grand-mosque-1.90474824">multilingual robots</a> are being deployed for multiple purposes, including providing answers to questions related to <a href="https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/watch-multilingual-robot-interacts-with-pilgrims-at-kaaba-kiswa-facility-in-mecca-1.96458732">ritual performances in 11 languages</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548137/original/file-20230913-15-umu34w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in red checked head scarf and flowing white shirt with a robot." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548137/original/file-20230913-15-umu34w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548137/original/file-20230913-15-umu34w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548137/original/file-20230913-15-umu34w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548137/original/file-20230913-15-umu34w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548137/original/file-20230913-15-umu34w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548137/original/file-20230913-15-umu34w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548137/original/file-20230913-15-umu34w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
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<span class="caption">A robot at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia’s holy city of Mecca.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/saudi-staff-works-on-a-smart-sterilising-robot-at-the-grand-news-photo/1234087266?adppopup=true">Fayez Nureldine / AFP via Getty images</a></span>
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<p>Notably, while these robots stationed at the Grand Mosque can recite the Holy Quran, they also provide visitors with connections to local imams. Their touch-screen interfaces are equipped with bar codes, allowing users to learn more about the weekly schedules of mosque staff, including clerics who lead Friday sermons. In addition, these robots can connect visitors with Islamic scholars via video interactions to answer their queries around the clock.</p>
<p>What this shows is that while robots can serve as valuable sources of religious knowledge, the strategic channeling of inquiries back to established religious leaders is reinforcing the credibility of priestly authority. </p>
<h2>3. Religious leaders can create and share ethical guidelines</h2>
<p>Clergy are trying to raise awareness of AI’s potential for human flourishing and well-being. For example, in recent years, Pope Francis has been vocal in addressing the potential benefits and disruptive dangers of the new AI technologies. </p>
<p>The Vatican has hosted technology industry leaders and called for <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2023-01/pope-francis-receives-rome-call-vatican-audience.html">ethical guidelines</a> to “safeguard the good of the human family” and maintain “vigilance against technology misuse.” The ethical use of AI for religion includes a concern for human bias in programming, which can result in inaccuracies and unsafe outcomes. </p>
<p>In June 2023, the Vatican’s culture and education body, in partnership with Santa Clara University, released a 140-page <a href="https://www.scu.edu/ethics/media-mentions/stories/the-vatican-releases-its-own-ai-ethics-handbook.html">AI ethics handbook</a> for technology organizations. The handbook stressed the importance of embedding moral ideals in the development of AI, including respect for human dignity and rights in data privacy, machine learning and facial recognition technologies. </p>
<p>By creating and sharing ethical guidelines on AI, religious leaders can speak to future AI development from its inception, to guide design and consumer implementation toward cherished values.</p>
<p>In sum, while religious leaders appear to be undervalued in AI development and discourse, I argue that it is important to recognize the ways in which clergy are contributing to skillful communication involving AI technologies. In the process, they are co-constructing the conversations that chatbots such as the one at the church in Bavaria are having with congregants.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210679/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/pauline-hope-cheong-1458408">Pauline Hope Cheong</a>, Professor of Human Communication and Communication Technologies, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/arizona-state-university-730">Arizona State University</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-87232476532703128902023-10-23T02:27:00.000-07:002023-10-23T02:27:06.778-07:00A Glimpse into Township Life: Stories and Experiences of the Local Residents<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin_f1_SK0ByD7YRppXbyEDpzWrooYdmwAcj5rmgUn8jFLtF5ptgylyaCnhG5dcWgF1mtqCWsdwG7a4zAHZ8ajva5uImZ0qUMc1Q1dasXFB9tgkln2kyhkJV1klkjgLkp4HpCyLv8cikWkSYY7ANfw5866jyMwhGJBPD2Yh2YjDUWNQ-KnGFqDX8L2R6PyW/s5312/20150518_133607.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5312" data-original-width="2988" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin_f1_SK0ByD7YRppXbyEDpzWrooYdmwAcj5rmgUn8jFLtF5ptgylyaCnhG5dcWgF1mtqCWsdwG7a4zAHZ8ajva5uImZ0qUMc1Q1dasXFB9tgkln2kyhkJV1klkjgLkp4HpCyLv8cikWkSYY7ANfw5866jyMwhGJBPD2Yh2YjDUWNQ-KnGFqDX8L2R6PyW/s320/20150518_133607.jpg" width="180" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p> </p><p>As I walked through the streets of a South African township, I was overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells that surrounded me. The bustling streets were filled with people of all ages, from young children playing games to elderly men and women chatting on street corners.<br /><br />The brightly colored houses stood side by side, with corrugated metal roofs glinting in the hot sun. Laundry hung from lines strung across the streets, adding splashes of vibrant color to the already bright scene.<br /><br />As I walked, I heard music coming from several different sources. The rhythmic beat of African drums echoed through the air, while gospel music floated out of several churches. Children were singing and dancing, and people laughed and chatted in a range of languages.<br /><br />But as much as I was enjoying the vibrant energy of the township, I couldn't help but feel a sense of sadness as well. The poverty that plagued the area was obvious, with many of the houses appearing run down and in need of repair. The streets were littered with trash, and the smell of sewage was strong in some areas.<br /><br />But despite these hardships, the people of the township were welcoming and friendly. I was invited into several homes and offered food and drink by those who had very little to give.<br /><br />As I left the township, I felt both humbled and inspired. The resilience and strength of the people who lived there was truly remarkable, and I felt grateful to have had the opportunity to experience their community. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSwdOeQXuiGQNKmoYgZD3LxsBNdS8qZjFf3DfVCZkmjEFCjIEf0JyCz8TL8B94OYP3k73u2yaYEzh8CM9G9UQT-y4gzQ9S_14hEnnZLepURa4H9pJ19Sb_yBTKnsvs-uK9VBtYbqJARkNGCU5L81GhcW7NH_CSGE9NViCmaOVLT-PG0aT7dP0v6L7duHji/s5312/20150518_140625.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5312" data-original-width="2988" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSwdOeQXuiGQNKmoYgZD3LxsBNdS8qZjFf3DfVCZkmjEFCjIEf0JyCz8TL8B94OYP3k73u2yaYEzh8CM9G9UQT-y4gzQ9S_14hEnnZLepURa4H9pJ19Sb_yBTKnsvs-uK9VBtYbqJARkNGCU5L81GhcW7NH_CSGE9NViCmaOVLT-PG0aT7dP0v6L7duHji/s320/20150518_140625.jpg" width="180" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-63336973466571724512023-10-13T03:20:00.000-07:002023-10-13T03:20:00.717-07:00Israel-Palestine conflict divides South African politicians – what their responses reveal about historical alliances<p> <img alt="Two men assess the destruction cause by Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on October 7, 2023." class="lazyloaded" data-id="552930" itemprop="image" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552930/original/file-20231010-21-fiw5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=926&fit=clip" /></p>
<p>Hamas’ <a href="https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-10-10-23/index.html">brazen and deadly</a> attack on Israel on October 7 elicited varied responses within the South African political scene. These diverse reactions reflect the long history, <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-and-israel-new-memorial-park-in-the-jewish-state-highlights-complex-history-199997">since before democracy in 1994</a>, of South African engagement with the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The conflict holds symbolic significance for many in the country. </p>
<p>As with the war in Ukraine, taking sides on the issue also allows the different parties to highlight their position on the struggle for or against global western dominance</p>
<p>The South African government, led by the African National Congress (ANC), <a href="https://www.dirco.gov.za/south-africa-calls-for-the-immediate-cessation-of-violence-restraint-and-peace-between-israel-and-palestine/">characterised</a> the recent events as a “devastating escalation”. However, it primarily attributed the situation to Israeli policies, including “the continued illegal occupation of Palestine land, continued settlement expansion, desecration of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Christian holy sites, and ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people”.</p>
<p>It called for</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the immediate cessation of violence, restraint, and peace between Israel and Palestine.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It also urged Israel to embrace the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/two-state-solution">two-state solution</a> as a means of resolving the conflict. The two-state solution suggests the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. </p>
<p>For its part, the ANC put out its own statement in the name of the party. This gave even bolder support for Hamas. The party’s national spokesperson, Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri, defended Hamas’ actions, invoking the enduring solidarity between the ANC and the Palestinian cause. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It can no longer be disputed that South Africa’s apartheid history is occupied Palestine’s reality… the decision by Palestinians to respond to the brutality of the settler Israeli apartheid regime is unsurprising.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a far-left pan-Africanist party which was formed after a split from the ANC, and is now the third largest party in parliament, <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2023-10-09-sa-calls-for-end-to-violence-and-peace-in-the-middle-east/">endorsed</a> Hamas’ use of violence. Drawing parallels with the anti-apartheid struggle, the party’s spokesperson squarely placed the blame on Israel.</p>
<p>Conversely, several movements offered their solidarity with Israel. The liberal Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party, vehemently <a href="https://www.da.org.za/2023/10/da-condemns-hamas-unprovoked-attack-urges-immediate-end-to-violence">condemned</a> the “unprovoked attack” by Hamas. It decried the </p>
<blockquote>
<p>senseless violence and all acts of terror against innocent civilians, women and children. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some centrist or traditionalist parties, such as the <a href="https://votepa.org.za/">Patriotic Alliance</a> and the <a href="https://www.ifp.org.za/newsroom/ifp-calls-for-immediate-cessation-of-hostilities-and-resumption-of-dialogue-in-israel-palestine-conflict/">Inkatha Freedom Party</a>, also <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/politics/israel-hamas-war-sa-political-parties-divided-on-who-is-to-blame-for-deadly-violence-20231010">voiced their criticism</a> of the attacks. South Africa’s principal Jewish organisations also <a href="https://www.sajbd.org/index.php?p=media/south-african-jewish-community-stands-with-israel">extended their support for Israel</a>. </p>
<h2>Historical roots</h2>
<p>Unwavering support for Palestinian nationhood has remained a steadfast element of South African foreign policy since the ANC came into power in 1994. This stance has seen the country become one of the most prominent voices critical of Israel globally. </p>
<p>The ANC has thrown its <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/news/anc-international-conference-backs-boycott">support</a> behind the <a href="https://www.bdssouthafrica.com/about-bds/">Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions</a>, a movement aiming to replicate the iconic anti-apartheid boycott campaign. South African officials have consistently accused Israel of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/26/south-africa-calls-for-israels-proscription-as-apartheid-state">practising apartheid</a>. The country’s parliament recently <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/03/south-africas-parliament-votes-downgrade-diplomatic-ties-israel">voted</a> to formally downgrade the country’s relations with Israel from embassy to a liaison office.</p>
<p>I have been researching the history of the relationship between South Africa and Israel for nearly a decade. My <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/34de28522e0359b9d2ca887862f1e942/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y&casa_token=mfc7qIH5at8AAAAA:441hYgFkv6raDND0C7Zk68iygkPWyCeaZe8HaVA4coMR5JsmaBJu6ROeWkZ1C4pAcCDizWn_">research</a> has found that both the ANC and some pan-Africanist formations once held more complex perspectives on Israel and Zionism. </p>
<p>They generally expressed support for Jewish statehood from the 1940s to the 1960s. For instance, in the early 1960s, both the ANC and its primary rival in the anti-apartheid struggle, the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), considered Israel as a potential ally in their battle against apartheid. The PAC also received substantial financial assistance from Israel until 1970.</p>
<p>However, the ANC’s resentment towards Israel for its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons">collaboration with white minority rule</a> during the 1970s and 1980s, coupled with the perception of Palestinians suffering an apartheid-like oppression, has come to shape the party’s perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.</p>
<p>Since the late 1960s, the ANC has cultivated strong ties with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). By the 1980s, these ties had evolved into a strategic and operational alliance between the two movements. In recent years, with the weakening of the PLO, the ANC has <a href="https://www.sajr.co.za/humus-with-hamas-what-is-the-anc-thinking/">shifted</a> its support towards the PLO’s erstwhile rival, Hamas. The Muslim constituency in South Africa, <a href="https://alqalam.co.za/survey-shows-anc-losing-muslim-support/">many of whom are ANC supporters</a> and activists, further contributes to the party’s pro-Palestinian stance.</p>
<p>The DA’s support of Israel also has historical roots. Historically, liberal or so-called “moderate” parties and individuals in South Africa have been the most consistent pro-Israeli political voice in the country. </p>
<p>Unlike the post-1970s ANC, many liberals have <a href="https://hsf.org.za/publications/focus/issue-40-fourth-quarter-2005/israel-is-a-democracy-in-which-arabs-vote">regarded</a> Israel as a democracy with a decent record in treating minorities. In the Western Cape, which is the only province governed by the DA, there has been a greater willingness to explore <a href="https://www.sajr.co.za/growing-agricultural-partnership-between-western-cape-and-israel/">collaboration</a> with Israel. </p>
<p>In addition, in recent decades, various Christian and traditionalist forces have also strongly tended towards pro-Israeli views.</p>
<p>South Africa last asked people for their religious affiliation in a household survey in 2013. The figures <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/hts/v73n2/01.pdf">at the time showed there were</a> just over 1 million Muslims and just over 101,500 people of the Jewish faith. More recent data indicates that the Jewish population in the country was <a href="https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/what-is-the-future-of-the-jews-of-south-africa-677031">dropped</a> to about 50,000 people. The latest census puts the entire population at <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=16711">62 million</a>.</p>
<h2>Long legacy of international alliances</h2>
<p>The diverse perspectives of South Africa’s political parties on Israel/Palestine also mirror their distinct international allegiances. Having <a href="https://theconversation.com/history-may-explain-south-africas-refusal-to-condemn-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-178657">valued the assistance of the Soviet Union</a> and China in their struggle against apartheid, and nurturing deep-seated grievances against the western role in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4187823">supporting apartheid</a>, the ANC and more radical movements have tended to stand beside actors that challenge the US on the global stage.</p>
<p>This policy has been particularly evident in South Africa’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-pact-with-russia-and-its-actions-cast-doubt-on-its-claims-of-non-alignment-206020">sympathetic stance towards Russia</a>, even amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Conversely, the opposition DA has aligned itself with pro-western stances.</p>
<p>However, it’s uncertain whether most South Africans support the ANC’s approach to contemporary foreign relations issues. A <a href="https://www.thebrenthurstfoundation.org/news/brenthurst-survey-shows-vast-majority-of-south-africans-condemn-russia/">poll</a> from November 2022 found that 74.3% of citizens condemned Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. </p>
<p>It is likely that the Palestinian cause enjoys higher levels of popular support. But, there are indications that views on Israel/Palestine are far from clear-cut. A <a href="https://humanities.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/content_migration/humanities_uct_ac_za/715/files/FINAL_%2520NarrativeReport_FINAL_March2017.pdf">study</a> from 2017, for instance, found that there was similar support in South Africa for both Israelis’ and Palestinians’ “rights to a homeland” (54% and 53%, respectively). But the study also concluded that actual knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was limited, with only 29% having “heard of” the conflict.</p>
<p>South Africa’s official stance on Israel-Palestine is one of the most critical in Africa, particularly compared to other states south of the Sahara. Over the past decade, Israel has seen <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-search-of-advantages-israels-observer-status-in-the-african-union-165773">increasing bilateral relations</a> with various African states. Several opinion <a href="https://globescan.com/2017/07/04/sharp-drop-in-world-views-of-us-uk-global-poll/">polls</a> indicate that public perception of Israel in sub-Saharan Africa is among the most favourable worldwide.</p>
<h2>Lingering divide</h2>
<p>South African politicians have framed the recent escalation between Hamas and Israel within the broader context of their perspectives on global dynamics. As with the war in Ukraine, the governing ANC and more radical elements unequivocally support the Palestinians – their longstanding allies. They view Hamas as representing the Palestinian cause, and perceive Israel as an apartheid state.</p>
<p>The liberal DA’s support for Israel is also shaped by historical and contemporary factors. It mirrors the enduring liberal backing of Israel in South Africa. It also allows the party to align itself with western governments that have recently expressed support for Israel.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215349/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/asher-lubotzky-1408193">Asher Lubotzky</a>, Scholar in Residence, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-houston-870">University of Houston</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="E-mail Signature" ></w:LsdException>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Classic 4" ></w:LsdException>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="99" SemiHidden="false" Name="Table Colorful 1" ></w:LsdException>
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</w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><p class="p" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12,0000pt; mso-font-kerning: 0,0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> <br /></span></p><p class="p" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12,0000pt; mso-font-kerning: 0,0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm01sFhOvYvDsiK9vzqA09mW3fy1QsD-J7wVhyphenhyphenfNCMxRS_fdGUMZE60z17GH1oQx_l52SBQqlHUIOQISKPj8uGupUVB8ZIva9rNLFtt8rAG96xF6h3al_AaGQj4s3yTrFQMsLCay3ENyzmxbcxDKtE8evor0r2rEIwTGxNiuygS1wez6rSMveMhwC3F5PZ/s285/th-529499979.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="160" data-original-width="285" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm01sFhOvYvDsiK9vzqA09mW3fy1QsD-J7wVhyphenhyphenfNCMxRS_fdGUMZE60z17GH1oQx_l52SBQqlHUIOQISKPj8uGupUVB8ZIva9rNLFtt8rAG96xF6h3al_AaGQj4s3yTrFQMsLCay3ENyzmxbcxDKtE8evor0r2rEIwTGxNiuygS1wez6rSMveMhwC3F5PZ/w466-h236/th-529499979.jpeg" width="466" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: times;">As the <b>SUN</b> <b>RISES</b> over South Africa, one thing is certain: the country's power grid is powered by one entity and one entity alone - Eskom. With power plants spread throughout the nation, this state-owned entity is responsible for providing the electricity that powers homes, businesses, and the infrastructure that makes South Africa thrive.<br /><br />But Eskom is not without its challenges. Years of under-investment and corruption have left the utility struggling to keep up with the demands of a growing nation. Power outages are common, and load shedding has become a way of life for many South Africans.<br /><br />Despite these challenges, Eskom soldiers on. Engineers and workers tirelessly work to keep the power on, no matter what. It's not an easy job, but it's a crucial one. Without Eskom, South Africa would be plunged into darkness.<br /><br />The future of Eskom is uncertain. There are calls to privatize the utility, to inject much-needed investment and modernization. But many worry about the impact on workers, and whether a profit-driven model would put the needs of the people second to the needs of shareholders.<br /><br />One thing is for sure - Eskom is woven into the fabric of South African life. It powers the lights, the schools, the hospitals, and the businesses that make the country what it is. And no matter what the future holds, one thing is certain: Eskom will keep on powering South Africa, come rain or shine, load shedding or not.</span><p></p><p class="p" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBLrSKOFIfgJGuOenI6Yvr2P8ZnCQNJnUth8pOi7XUr_kLhwbcXY5Du1bTxXmW3rWJzLNYfEuP24sxmMVe-EdA0rJvvGCi2kmOOYmWI9X8Ue5HMpXN_TenyPnTTnab6SXiEWSs_ZqewuOQk2w1vNEEE7vh8iPxdzP0OB7kWweKhtWmE7MiDnTn381-rrrR/s474/th-2637800577.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: times; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="355" data-original-width="474" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBLrSKOFIfgJGuOenI6Yvr2P8ZnCQNJnUth8pOi7XUr_kLhwbcXY5Du1bTxXmW3rWJzLNYfEuP24sxmMVe-EdA0rJvvGCi2kmOOYmWI9X8Ue5HMpXN_TenyPnTTnab6SXiEWSs_ZqewuOQk2w1vNEEE7vh8iPxdzP0OB7kWweKhtWmE7MiDnTn381-rrrR/s320/th-2637800577.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="p" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">AND DO NOT FORGET THAT</span></b> as the <b>SUN SETS</b> in South Africa, so does the mood of its citizens. For they know that with every passing hour, their access to electricity will soon be diminished. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">Welcome to the world of Eskom's Load-shedding.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"> The darkness engulfs the city like a blanket of fear. The only sources of light now are the flickering candles and the occasional generator that sputters to life. It is during these moments of absolute darkness that one realizes the importance of electricity in modern society.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"> For the people of South Africa, this is not just an inconvenience; it's a way of life. Load-shedding, which is the controlled reduction of power to prevent a complete blackout, is a necessary evil that everyone must endure.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"> But despite this, the resilience of the people is something to be admired. They make the most out of every situation and find a way to survive, even in the toughest of times.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"> In a strange way, Eskom Load-shedding has brought the people of South Africa together. It's a common struggle that they all face, and it has united them in a way that nothing else could.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"> So, as the people of South Africa go to bed with the faint light of their candles guiding their way, they do so with the knowledge that they are not alone in their struggle. They are part of a nation that refuses to be defeated, even in the face of darkness.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p>FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-74384868723542215482023-10-01T22:36:00.000-07:002023-10-01T22:36:20.379-07:00Why the earth quakes – a closer look at what’s going on under the ground<p> </p><h1 class="legacy"></h1>
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<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547877/original/file-20230912-15-58zzx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C6000%2C3970&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
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A man works his way through the rubble of buildings in Marrakesh, Morocco, after a magnitude 6.8 earthquake on Sept. 8, 2023.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/resident-navigates-through-the-rubble-following-a-6-8-news-photo/1653682958?adppopup=true">Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Earthquakes, large and small, <a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/">happen every single day</a> along zones that wrap around the world like seams on a baseball. Most don’t bother anybody, so they don’t make the news. But every now and then a catastrophic earthquake hits people somewhere in the world with horrific destruction and immense suffering. </p>
<p>On Sept. 8, 2023, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco shook ancient villages apart, leaving <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/morocco-earthquake-2023-marrakech-map-death-toll-magnitude-when/">thousands of people dead</a> in the rubble. In February 2023, a large area of <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/turkey-syria-earthquakes-still-living-in-the-rubble-6-months-later/a-66444041">Turkey and Syria</a> was devastated by two major earthquakes that hit in close succession. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=r8FqGBEAAAAJ&hl=en">a geologist</a>, I study the forces that cause earthquakes. Here’s why some seismic zones are very active while others may be quiet for generations before the stress builds into a catastrophic event.</p>
<h2>Earth’s crust crashes into itself and pulls apart</h2>
<p>Earthquakes are part of the normal behavior of the Earth. They occur with the movement of the tectonic plates that form the <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/crust-mantle-and-core-earth">outer layer of the planet</a>.</p>
<p>You can think of the plates as a more or less rigid outer shell that has to shift to allow the Earth to give off its internal heat.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547854/original/file-20230912-21-phdrl7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A world map shows dots for major earthquakes clustered along tectonic plate boundaries." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547854/original/file-20230912-21-phdrl7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547854/original/file-20230912-21-phdrl7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547854/original/file-20230912-21-phdrl7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547854/original/file-20230912-21-phdrl7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547854/original/file-20230912-21-phdrl7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547854/original/file-20230912-21-phdrl7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547854/original/file-20230912-21-phdrl7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A map of all earthquakes greater than magnitude 5 from 1960 to 2023 clearly shows the outlines of the tectonic plates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/earthquakes">USGS/GMRT</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>These plates carry the continents and the oceans, and they are continuously in <a href="https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/plate-boundaries.html">slow-motion crashes</a> with one another. The cold and dense oceanic plates dive under continental plates and back into Earth’s mantle in a process <a href="https://youtu.be/T1QKPoxMdGg">known as subduction</a>. As an oceanic plate sinks, it drags everything behind it and opens a rift somewhere else that is filled by rising hot material from the mantle that then cools. These rifts are long chains of underwater volcanoes, known as <a href="https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/mid-ocean-ridge.html">mid-ocean ridges</a>. </p>
<p>Earthquakes accompany both subduction and rifting. In fact, that is how the plate boundaries were first discovered.</p>
<p>In the 1950s, when a <a href="https://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/%7Erichards/EARTHmat.html">global seismic network was established</a> to monitor nuclear tests, geophysicists noticed that most earthquakes occur along relatively narrow bands that either fringe the edges of ocean basins, as in the Pacific, or cut right down the middle of basins, <a href="https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Plate-Tectonics/Chap3-Plate-Margins/Divergent/Mid-Atlantic-Ridge">as in the Atlantic</a>. </p>
<p>They also noticed that earthquakes along subduction zones are shallow on the oceanic side but <a href="https://www.mheducation.com/highered/product/exploring-geology-reynolds-johnson/M9781260722215.html">get deeper under the continent</a>. If you plot the earthquakes in 3D, they define slablike features that trace the plates sinking into the mantle.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547879/original/file-20230912-17-ed8b9v.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two images show a map of Japan, with the Pacific Plate evident to the east, and a side view of earthquake depths that highlight that subducting plate." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547879/original/file-20230912-17-ed8b9v.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547879/original/file-20230912-17-ed8b9v.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547879/original/file-20230912-17-ed8b9v.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547879/original/file-20230912-17-ed8b9v.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547879/original/file-20230912-17-ed8b9v.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547879/original/file-20230912-17-ed8b9v.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547879/original/file-20230912-17-ed8b9v.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ten thousand earthquake locations from 1980 to 2009 trace the Pacific Plate as it subducts under northern Japan. The top image is a side view showing the depth of the earthquakes beneath the rectangle on the map.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jaime Toro</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An experiment: How an earthquake works</h2>
<p>To understand what happens during an earthquake, put the palms of your hands together and press with some force. You are modeling a plate boundary fault. Each hand is one plate, and the surface of your hands is the fault. Your muscles are the plate tectonic system.</p>
<p>Now, add some forward force to your right hand. You will find that it will eventually jerk forward when the forward force overcomes the friction between your palms. That sudden forward jerk is the earthquake. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547862/original/file-20230912-17-mhw68w.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map shows two creeks with abrupt shifts in their location over the fault." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547862/original/file-20230912-17-mhw68w.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547862/original/file-20230912-17-mhw68w.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547862/original/file-20230912-17-mhw68w.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547862/original/file-20230912-17-mhw68w.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547862/original/file-20230912-17-mhw68w.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547862/original/file-20230912-17-mhw68w.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547862/original/file-20230912-17-mhw68w.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Google Earth image of creeks offset by movement along the San Andreas fault in southern California as the Pacific Plate moves to the northwest with respect to North America.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://earth.google.com/web/">Jaime Toro</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scientists explain earthquakes using what’s known as the <a href="https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/events/1906calif/18april/reid.php">elastic rebound theory</a>.</p>
<p>Fast plates move at up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) per year, driven mostly by the oceanic slabs sinking at subduction zones. Over time, they become stuck to each other by friction at the plate boundary. The attempted motion deforms the plate boundary zone elastically, like a loaded spring. At some point, the accumulated elastic energy overcomes the friction and the plate jerks forward, causing an earthquake.</p>
<p>But the <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/tectonics.html">plate-driving forces</a> do not stop, so the plate boundary starts to accumulate elastic energy again, which will cause another earthquake – perhaps soon or perhaps far in the future.</p>
<p>In the oceans, plate boundaries are narrow and well defined because the underlying rocks are very stiff. But within the continents, plate boundaries are often broad zones of deformed mountainous terrain crisscrossed by many faults. Those faults may persist for eons, even if the plate boundary becomes inactive. That is why sometimes earthquakes occur far from plate boundaries.</p>
<h2>Earthquakes, fast and slow</h2>
<p>The cyclic behavior of faults allows seismologists to <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-you-predict-earthquakes">estimate earthquake risks statistically</a>. Plate boundaries with fast motions, such as the ones along the Pacific rim, accumulate elastic energy rapidly and have the potential for frequent large-magnitude earthquakes.</p>
<p>Slow-moving plate boundary faults take longer to reach a critical state. Along some faults, hundreds or even thousands of years can pass between large earthquakes. This allows time for towns to grow and for people to lose ancestral memory of past earthquakes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547880/original/file-20230912-17-mtu62m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An apartment building leans, its walls are gone and furniture lies under the rubble outside. Other buildings are in similar shape. A person walks on the street among them." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547880/original/file-20230912-17-mtu62m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547880/original/file-20230912-17-mtu62m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547880/original/file-20230912-17-mtu62m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547880/original/file-20230912-17-mtu62m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547880/original/file-20230912-17-mtu62m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547880/original/file-20230912-17-mtu62m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547880/original/file-20230912-17-mtu62m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey on Feb. 9, 2023, destroyed buildings and killed more than 50,000 people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/heavily-damaged-buildings-and-the-debrises-of-collapsed-news-photo/1247415432">Mehmet Kacmaz/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The earthquake in Morocco is an example. Morocco is located on the boundary <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqK-CbuM3Eo">between the African and the Eurasian plates</a>, which are slowly crashing into each other.</p>
<p>The huge belt of mountains that extends from the Atlas of North Africa to the Pyrenees, Alps and most of the mountains across southern Europe and the Middle East is the product of this plate collision. Yet because these plate motions are slow near Morocco, large earthquakes are not so frequent.</p>
<h2>Preparing for the big one</h2>
<p>An important fact about catastrophic earthquakes is that, in most cases, the earthquakes don’t kill people – falling buildings do.</p>
<p>Most Americans have heard of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/07/us/san-andreas-fault-researchers.html">California’s San Andreas Fault</a> and the seismic risk to San Francisco and Los Angeles. The last major earthquake along the San Andreas Fault <a href="https://www.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/earthquakes/loma-prieta">hit at Loma Prieta</a>, in the San Francisco Bay area, in 1989. Its magnitude, 6.9, was comparable to that of the earthquake in Morocco, yet 63 people died compared with thousands. That’s largely because building codes in these earthquake-prone U.S. cities are now designed to keep structures standing when the Earth shakes.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILlyfwDwJVs">exceptions are tsunamis</a>, the huge waves generated when an earthquake shifts the seafloor, displacing the water above it. A tsunami that hit <a href="https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/day-2011-japan-earthquake-and-tsunami">Japan in 2011</a> had horrific consequences, regardless of the quality of engineering in coastal towns.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, earthquake scientists <a href="https://theconversation.com/seismologists-cant-predict-an-impending-earthquake-but-longer-term-forecasts-and-brief-warnings-after-one-starts-are-possible-199666">can’t predict exactly when</a> an earthquake might occur; they can only estimate the hazard.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213337/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jaime-toro-1470306">Jaime Toro</a>, Professor of Geology, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/west-virginia-university-1375">West Virginia University</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-42846410101852412292023-10-01T22:28:00.001-07:002023-10-01T22:28:32.088-07:00Why humans can’t trust AI: You don’t know how it works, what it’s going to do or whether it’ll serve your interests<p> </p><figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547875/original/file-20230912-25-g536dq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C2936%2C1942&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
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Do you trust AI systems, like this driverless taxi, to behave the way you expect them to?
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/WaymoRobotaxiExpansion/c339a6a2c683436fbb4910ffd7927e55/photo">AP Photo/Terry Chea</a></span>
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<br />
<p>There are alien minds among us. Not the little green men of science fiction, but the alien minds that power the facial recognition in your smartphone, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2021.2023262">determine your creditworthiness</a> and write <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/10/1142045405/opinion-machine-made-poetry-is-here">poetry</a> and <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/ai-latest-trick-writing-computer-code">computer code</a>. These alien minds are artificial intelligence systems, the ghost in the machine that you encounter daily. </p>
<p>But AI systems have a significant limitation: Many of their inner workings are <a href="https://umdearborn.edu/news/ais-mysterious-black-box-problem-explained">impenetrable, making them fundamentally unexplainable</a> and unpredictable. Furthermore, constructing AI systems that behave in ways that people expect is a significant challenge. </p>
<p>If you fundamentally don’t understand something as unpredictable as AI, how can you trust it?</p>
<h2>Why AI is unpredictable</h2>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trust/">Trust</a> is grounded in predictability. It depends on your ability to anticipate the behavior of others. If you trust someone and they don’t do what you expect, then your perception of their trustworthiness diminishes. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547368/original/file-20230910-116122-4yelon.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A diagram with three columns of dots, two on the left, four in the center and one on the right, with arrows connecting the dots from left to right" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547368/original/file-20230910-116122-4yelon.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547368/original/file-20230910-116122-4yelon.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547368/original/file-20230910-116122-4yelon.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547368/original/file-20230910-116122-4yelon.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547368/original/file-20230910-116122-4yelon.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547368/original/file-20230910-116122-4yelon.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547368/original/file-20230910-116122-4yelon.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In neural networks, the strength of the connections between ‘neurons’ changes as data passes from the input layer through hidden layers to the output layer, enabling the network to ‘learn’ patterns.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neural_network_example.svg">Wiso via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many AI systems are built on <a href="https://www.mathworks.com/discovery/deep-learning.html">deep learning</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-neural-network-a-computer-scientist-explains-151897">neural networks</a>, which in some ways emulate the human brain. These networks contain interconnected “neurons” with variables or “parameters” that affect the strength of connections between the neurons. As a naïve network is presented with training data, it <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/how-do-we-train-neural-networks-edd985562b73">“learns” how to classify the data</a> by adjusting these parameters. In this way, the AI system learns to classify data it hasn’t seen before. It doesn’t memorize what each data point is, but instead predicts what a data point might be. </p>
<p>Many of the most powerful AI systems contain <a href="https://the-decoder.com/gpt-4-has-a-trillion-parameters/">trillions of parameters</a>. Because of this, the reasons AI systems make the decisions that they do are often opaque. This is the <a href="https://www.nist.gov/artificial-intelligence/ai-fundamental-research-explainability">AI explainability problem</a> – the impenetrable <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-black-box-a-computer-scientist-explains-what-it-means-when-the-inner-workings-of-ais-are-hidden-203888">black box</a> of AI decision-making.</p>
<p>Consider a variation of the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doing-allowing/#TrolProb">“Trolley Problem</a>.” Imagine that you are a passenger in a self-driving vehicle, controlled by an AI. A small child runs into the road, and the AI must now decide: run over the child or swerve and crash, potentially injuring its passengers. This choice would be difficult for a human to make, but a human has the benefit of being able to explain their decision. Their rationalization – shaped by ethical norms, the perceptions of others and expected behavior – supports trust. </p>
<p>In contrast, an AI can’t rationalize its decision-making. You can’t look under the hood of the self-driving vehicle at its trillions of parameters to explain why it made the decision that it did. AI fails the predictive requirement for trust.</p>
<h2>AI behavior and human expectations</h2>
<p>Trust relies not only on predictability, but also on <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/">normative or ethical</a> motivations. You typically expect people to act not only as you assume they will, but also as they should. Human values are influenced by common experience, and moral reasoning is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-022-00217-w">dynamic process</a>, shaped by ethical standards and others’ perceptions. </p>
<p>Unlike humans, AI doesn’t adjust its behavior based on how it is perceived by others or by adhering to ethical norms. AI’s internal representation of the world is largely static, set by its training data. Its decision-making process is grounded in an unchanging model of the world, unfazed by the dynamic, nuanced social interactions constantly influencing human behavior. Researchers are working on programming AI to include ethics, but that’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/technology/can-a-machine-learn-morality.html">proving challenging</a>.</p>
<p>The self-driving car scenario illustrates this issue. How can you ensure that the car’s AI makes decisions that align with human expectations? For example, the car could decide that hitting the child is the optimal course of action, something most human drivers would instinctively avoid. This issue is the <a href="https://intelligence.org/stanford-talk/">AI alignment problem</a>, and it’s another source of uncertainty that erects barriers to trust. </p>
<figure>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WvmeTaFc_Qw?wmode=transparent&start=0" width="440"></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">AI expert Stuart Russell explains the AI alignment problem.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Critical systems and trusting AI</h2>
<p>One way to reduce uncertainty and boost trust is to ensure people are in on the decisions AI systems make. This is the <a href="https://media.defense.gov/2022/Jun/22/2003022604/-1/-1/0/Department-of-Defense-Responsible-Artificial-Intelligence-Strategy-and-Implementation-Pathway.PDF">approach taken by the U.S. Department of Defense</a>, which requires that for all AI decision-making, a human must be either in the loop or <a href="https://www.japcc.org/essays/human-on-the-loop/">on the loop</a>. In the loop means the AI system makes a recommendation but a human is required to initiate an action. On the loop means that while an AI system can initiate an action on its own, a human monitor can interrupt or alter it.</p>
<p>While keeping humans involved is a great first step, I am not convinced that this will be sustainable long term. As companies and governments continue to adopt AI, the future will likely include nested AI systems, where rapid decision-making limits the opportunities for people to intervene. It is important to resolve the explainability and alignment issues before the critical point is reached where human intervention becomes impossible. At that point, there will be no option other than to trust AI.</p>
<p>Avoiding that threshold is especially important because AI is increasingly being integrated into <a href="https://www.hstoday.us/featured/artificial-intelligence-critical-systems-and-the-control-problem/">critical systems</a>, which include things such as electric grids, the internet and <a href="https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/cybersecurity/perspective-why-strong-artificial-intelligence-weapons-should-be-considered-wmd/">military systems</a>. In critical systems, trust is paramount, and undesirable behavior could have deadly consequences. As AI integration becomes more complex, it becomes even more important to resolve issues that limit trustworthiness.</p>
<h2>Can people ever trust AI?</h2>
<p>AI is alien – an intelligent system into which people have little insight. Humans are largely predictable to other humans because we share the same human experience, but this doesn’t extend to artificial intelligence, even though humans created it. </p>
<p>If trustworthiness has inherently predictable and normative elements, AI fundamentally lacks the qualities that would make it worthy of trust. More research in this area will hopefully shed light on this issue, ensuring that AI systems of the future are worthy of our trust.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213115/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/mark-bailey-1467535">Mark Bailey</a>, Faculty Member and Chair, Cyber Intelligence and Data Science, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/national-intelligence-university-4447">National Intelligence University</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-76393926519918314642023-10-01T22:23:00.002-07:002023-10-01T22:23:45.389-07:00The family home in South African townships is contested – why occupation, inheritance and history are clashing with laws<p> <img alt="Aerial view of dense settlement of houses of similar design." class="lazyloaded" data-id="547530" itemprop="image" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547530/original/file-20230911-8175-pid8s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=926&fit=clip" /></p>
<p>During apartheid, black South Africans could not own land – and therefore their homes – in what were classified as “white” cities. In racially segregated townships, living in “family houses” and passing them on depended officially on a <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA02586568_844#page=5">range of permits</a>. These were usually to rent from state authorities, but in some cases confusingly to build or buy a house without owning the plot underneath it, which was owned by the state.</p>
<p>A crucial measure in undoing apartheid was transferring ownership of township houses to their long-term residents. <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA02586568_844#page=8">In 1986</a>, a few years before apartheid’s end, the law changed to enable outright ownership for black people in urban areas. Subsequently, processes for transfer on a large scale were established.</p>
<p>This massive redistribution of public housing stock, alongside legal change, involved hundreds of thousands of homes. Township houses were now assets. The promise was improved security, rights, and inclusion in the property market.</p>
<p>But change did not necessarily give families greater security. Some family members benefited while others were left vulnerable. That is because the transfers – and the legal definitions of property and inheritance – do not account for how many people understand their homes: collective and cross-generational, available to an extended lineage.</p>
<p>This has led to confusion and heartache for hundreds of thousands of people. That confusion, I showed <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/120/479/219/6132108">in a paper in 2021</a>, extended to encounters with state administration, which can become the stage on which family disputes are played out.</p>
<p>As I argued in another <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02587203.2019.1632737">paper</a>, with Tshenolo Masha, these understandings of home and kinship warrant legal recognition – indeed, constitutional recognition – as urban custom. Various state officials have taken seriously the collective ownership of family houses, as a matter of customary norms and practice, through administration and court judgments. But they face the rigid limits of existing law.</p>
<p>The family house is central but effectively legally invisible, leaving many people uncertain about what it even means to own or inherit.</p>
<h2>Collective home but individual property</h2>
<p>For many residents, family houses belong collectively to multi-generational lineages. Often, a group of siblings is at the core – the children of an earlier, typically male, household head. Family members might build extra structures on the site to live in. Or they might come and go, but the home is a place to return to. The family house is defended as customary, drawing parallels with the rural homestead.</p>
<p>By the end of apartheid <a href="https://www.britannica.com/question/How-did-apartheid-end">in 1994</a>, regulation was patchy at best, but the occupancy permits were understood to affirm group entitlement because they listed family members, not just the householder.</p>
<p>In statutory law, at stake is an asset with one or more named owners – an indivisible plot or <a href="https://www.saflii.org/za/legis/consol_act/dra1937172/">“erf” of land</a> that includes its built structures. Owners can sell, or they can evict; other occupants have no legal right to stop them. When family houses were transferred, one person was generally registered as owner.</p>
<p>In some cases, the allocation to the registered householder was automatic. In others, there were hearings, but even here residents found their ideas of home and ownership marginalised. A family member would come forward as family “representative” and “custodian” of the collective home. But that representative would typically become the sole titleholder.</p>
<p>In many cases, relatives were unaware that this had happened, or even that an application for title had been made.</p>
<h2>Inheritance: an added layer of complexity</h2>
<p>Inheritance has added another layer to the problem.</p>
<p>Under apartheid there were separate inheritance rules for black people without wills. These were finally struck down by the Constitutional Court in <a href="https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2000/27.html">2000</a> and <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2004/17.html">2004</a>. Magistrates’ courts were replaced by the dedicated inheritance office, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/master/">Master of the High Court</a>. Inheritance by the eldest son was replaced by rules for all South Africans, prioritising spouses and children in nuclear families.</p>
<p>Once again, essential redress had the effect of narrowing which relationships would be recognised. When a custodian died, wider family members first discovered that they were not collective owners; then they realised they would not even inherit.</p>
<p>The family house is not a static idea in fights over the home. Warring parties may draw on both customary and legal concepts, sometimes at the same time. Among families that approach the state – and many do not – some subsequently drop out of official process. </p>
<p>There is <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/120/479/219/6132108">no simple consensus</a> about who gets what or about how this should be decided.</p>
<h2>Efforts to resolve the issue</h2>
<p>The family house is contested, yet it is key to arguments about what is fair – based not just on who owns, but on the nature of ownership.</p>
<p>State officials have repeatedly tried to make the system more responsive. In Gauteng province, where Johannesburg is located, housing tribunals were set up in the late 1990s to decide ownership and to broker family house rights agreements. They were intended to prevent custodians from selling houses or evicting relatives. But it turned out that they held no legal water: from the point of view of deeds registration, custodians’ <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/120/479/219/6132108">ownership was unrestricted</a>. </p>
<p>In the Master’s Office, where inheritance is administered, kin complain that their family home somehow became the property of one relative. In Johannesburg, officials <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/120/479/219/6132108">try to explain the law</a>, while where appropriate querying how title came to be acquired.</p>
<p>What they cannot do, though, is change the rules.</p>
<p>The courts, too, have highlighted problems with rigid law and procedure. In a 2004 Constitutional Court <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2004/17.html">decision on inheritance</a>, a dissenting judge warned that customary understandings of home and custodianship risked being sidelined by standardisation.</p>
<p>More recently in 2018, automatically upgrading householders to owners was <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2018/42.html">declared unconstitutional</a>.
Men were usually documented as householders under apartheid, and gender discrimination was extended by giving them exclusive property rights. </p>
<p>Other judgments recognise the spirit of collective belonging and access, and they stop individuals from taking the house out of the families’ hands by inheritance or sale. But they cannot make legislation, so they send the question of who owns the house back to a tribunal.</p>
<p>Once again, solutions are restricted to workarounds.</p>
<h2>Towards legal recognition</h2>
<p>In 2022, the <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAGPPHC/2022/441.html#_ftnref78">Shomang judgment</a> in the North Gauteng High Court called for legally recognising the family house. </p>
<p>A sufficiently flexible notion of family title would be challenging to work out, and doubtless the basis for countless disputes. Surviving spouses need as much protection as the siblings in a lineage. But it would enable administrators and judges to mediate disputes in terms recognisable to the families involved. And to offer more than ad hoc workarounds.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213100/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/maxim-bolt-263481">Maxim Bolt</a>, Associate Professor of Development Studies, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-oxford-1260">University of Oxford</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-62416475620115868242023-09-17T22:44:00.000-07:002023-09-17T22:44:15.059-07:00South Africa can’t crack the inequality curse. Why, and what can be done<p> <img alt="Crowded urban landscape of shacks and multiple storey buildings." class="lazyloaded" data-id="548035" itemprop="image" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548035/original/file-20230913-15-wc6fcg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=926&fit=clip" /></p><h1 class="legacy"></h1>
<br />
<p><i>South Africa is ranked <a href="https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099125303072236903/p1649270c02a1f06b0a3ae02e57eadd7a82">one of the most unequal societies in the world</a>. The Conversation Africa spoke to Imraan Valodia, the Director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, about inequality in South Africa.</i></p>
<h2>Has income inequality got worse in the last 20 years?</h2>
<p>According to the most <a href="https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099125303072236903/p1649270c02a1f06b0a3ae02e57eadd7a82">recent data</a>, South Africa has the highest income inequality in the world, with a Gini coefficient of around 0.67. The Gini coefficient is a widely used statistical measure of how income is distributed in the population of a country. It takes a value between 0 and 1. A coefficient of 1 indicates perfect inequality – where one individual in a country would earn all the income in that country. Conversely, a coefficient of 0 is an indicator of perfect equality, where the income of the country is distributed perfectly equally among all its citizens. </p>
<p>South Africa’s Gini is exceptionally high. A number of other African countries have high Ginis too. For example, Namibia’s is 0.59, Zambia’s 0.57 and Mozambique’s 0.54. </p>
<p>Countries in Europe, especially Scandinavian countries, have much lower Ginis. They range between 0.24 and 0.27. Among the developed countries, the US has a high level of inequality with a Gini of 0.41. </p>
<p>China’s is 0.38 and India’s is 0.35. Russia’s is similarly relatively low at 0.37. Brazil, like South Africa, has a much higher level of inequality at 0.53. </p>
<p>In South Africa, <a href="https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099125303072236903/p1649270c02a1f06b0a3ae02e57eadd7a82">the evidence</a> suggests that income inequality has risen in the post-apartheid period, though it has fluctuated.</p>
<p>What is clear is that levels of inequality are not decreasing.</p>
<h2>What’s driving the trend?</h2>
<p>There are a number of drivers.</p>
<p>First, the fact that large numbers of South Africans are <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/P02112ndQuarter2023.pdf">unemployed</a> and report no or very low incomes. According to the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey, the rate of unemployment in South Africa, in June 2023, <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/P02112ndQuarter2023.pdf">was estimated</a> to be 32.6%. But this doesn’t include people who have given up trying to find work. (The internationally accepted definition of unemployment requires people who are classified as unemployed to be searching for work.) If we include these discouraged workers, the unemployment rate increases to 44.1%. </p>
<p>There are about <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/P02112ndQuarter2023.pdf">40.7 million</a> people in South Africa between the ages of 15 and 64 – this is the group that could potentially work. Those who are not able to work, because they’re at school, or ill, or for some other reason, are estimated to number 13.2 million. That leaves 27.5 million people. Of these, only 16.4 million are working. </p>
<p>Of the 16.4 million, only 11.3 million are employed in the formal sector, where income tends to be higher. </p>
<p>These figures make it clear that the economy is just not able to generate sufficient numbers of employment opportunities.</p>
<p>The second driver is that, among those who are employed, many earn very low wages. Of those who do have work, about 3 million people subsist in the informal economy, where incomes are very low. Another 900,000 people work in agriculture and about 1 million as domestic workers, where incomes are very low.</p>
<p>Even in the formal sector, wages, especially for non-unionised workers, tend to be <a href="http://new.nedlac.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/NMW-Report-Draft-CoP-FINAL1.pdf">extremely low</a>. </p>
<p>And third, the incomes at the top end of the income distribution are very high. It’s more difficult to provide reliable statistics on this, because incomes for rich households tend to come from a variety of sources. One way to get a sense of this is to look at household expenditure – a good proxy for incomes. Unfortunately, South Africa’s income and expenditure survey is now quite dated. But what’s available <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/Report-03-10-19/Report-03-10-192017.pdf">shows</a> that the richest 10% of South African households are responsible for some 52% of all expenditure. The poorest 10% of households contribute only 0.8% of all expenditure.</p>
<h2>Is South Africa an outlier?</h2>
<p>Yes. However, there are probably many countries that have higher levels of inequality – we just don’t have the data for them. So, while people often say South Africa has the highest Gini in the world, it would be more accurate to say that South Africa has the highest Gini among countries that have data on income inequality.</p>
<p>South Africa’s data is generally very good, reliable and independent. </p>
<h2>What steps have been taken? Why didn’t they work?</h2>
<p>The major intervention in post-apartheid South Africa was to address inequality in terms of race. This is, of course, extremely important. Among other steps, government introduced the Employment Equity Act to address race-based discrimination in employment, and various measures to address ownership by race. There is controversy about some of the measures. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that they have been very <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/871137/pdf">successful</a> in changing the patterns of inequality in South Africa.</p>
<p>However, not enough has been done – race-based inequality is still a real problem. In general, high income South African households, irrespective of race, have done well over the last three decades, which is why inequality has remained stubbornly high. </p>
<h2>What steps should be taken now?</h2>
<p>I don’t think there is any one policy that would address the issue. Some focus on the labour market and argue that employment is not growing because of labour protections. But I think this is incorrect and does not deal with the nuance of the country’s political and economic situation.</p>
<p>I think we should rather be thinking about how to direct the benefits of economic growth and redistribution policies to benefit those at the bottom end. This could involve, for example, raising incomes at the bottom, creating new opportunities and employment for those who don’t have them, and ensuring that the benefits of growth do not disproportionately benefit those at the top end of the income distribution.</p>
<h2>What is the difference between income inequality and wealth inequality?</h2>
<p>Income inequality measures only a portion of the real inequality in South Africa. Measuring inequality in wealth gives a more complete picture of how unequal a society is. Income is only one factor that determines wealth. Wealth also includes inheritance, earnings from assets and so on. </p>
<p>The broad picture is that in South Africa wealth inequality is much worse than <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/scis/research-projects/wealth-inequality/working-papers-and-research-output/">income inequality</a>. Some striking statistics are that the top 0.01% of people – just 3,500 individuals – own about 15% of all of the wealth in South Africa. The top 0.1% own 25% of the wealth. The net wealth of the top 1% is R17.8 million (about US$944,000). In contrast, the bottom 50% have a negative wealth position (they have more liabilities than they do assets) of R16,000 (around US$850).</p>
<p><i>This article is part of a media partnership between Wits University’s Southern Centre for Inequality Studies and The Conversation Africa for the Annual Inequality Lecture which will be given by Professor Branko Milanovic, titled “Recent changes in the global income distribution and their political implications”. You can register for the event <a href="https://wits-za.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_unBI0A-QQA2JGzqrUDZjUQ#/registration">here</a>.</i><!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213132/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/imraan-valodia-191711">Imraan Valodia</a>, Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality and Director Southern Centre for Inequality Studies., <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-the-witwatersrand-894">University of the Witwatersrand</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-24340441115659795682023-08-16T06:10:00.005-07:002023-08-16T06:10:49.810-07:00Depression isn’t just sadness – it’s often a loss of pleasure<p> </p><figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541899/original/file-20230809-17-ocu5qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C0%2C6274%2C4179&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
<figcaption>
No longer enjoying the things you used to can also be a symptom of other mental health conditions.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bored-young-upset-woman-lying-on-2002100318">fizkes/ Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<br />
<p>It’s often thought that if someone is depressed, they will feel sad or low most of the time. But what many don’t realise is that these aren’t the only symptoms of depression. Another common symptom of depression that is sometimes overlooked is the feeling that you no longer find the things you used to enjoy to be interesting or pleasurable. </p>
<p>Known as anhedonia, this symptom is present in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032706003582?via%3Dihub">up to 75%</a> of adults and <a href="https://www.psychiatrist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/11617_clinical-characteristics-depressive-symptoms-children.pdf">young people</a> with depression. But despite how common this symptom is, it remains one of the most difficult symptoms to treat and manage.</p>
<h2>Loss of pleasure</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181880/#:%7E:text=Anhedonia%20refers%20to%20the%20reduced%20ability%20to%20experience%20pleasure.,psychiatric%20disorders%20and%20maladaptive%20behaviors.">Anhedonia</a> is defined as the reduced interest or pleasure in all – or almost all – activities a person previously enjoyed. If a person has anhedonia for an extended period of time (at least two weeks consistently), they can be diagnosed with depression – even if they may not feel sad or low.</p>
<p>Although mainly associated with depression, anhedonia can also be a symptom of other disorders – such as <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/7854_2022_321">schizophrenia</a>, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/anhedonia-as-a-transdiagnostic-symptom-across-psychological-disorders-a-network-approach/16944105BC5723E08D67CDE7871F9416">anxiety</a> and <a href="https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.11110332">Parkinson’s disease</a>. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00787-019-01364-y">in-depth interviews</a> my colleagues and I conducted with young people about depression, anhedonia was described by many as not just a loss of joy, but also less motivation to do things. For some, this lack of drive was only related to specific things – such as going to school or seeing friends. But for others, it was more severe, and they felt they didn’t want to do anything at all – not even live.</p>
<p>But despite how troubling anhedonia can be, it’s often not the main target of depression treatment.</p>
<p>It’s recommended that cases of mild depression are treated with <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/depression-in-adults/treatment/">talking therapy</a>. People with more moderate or severe cases of depression may be prescribed antidepressants. While all these treatments aim to help patients cope with and overcome symptoms, over half of people with depression don’t respond to their first recommended treatment. Even after changing treatments, approximately <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3363299/">30% of patients</a> still experience symptoms.</p>
<p>It’s been argued that one reason for these low response rates may be because current treatment techniques don’t <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23904408/">adequately target anhedonia</a>. Research also shows that having anhedonia predicts <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11167315/">chronic relapsing</a> of depression. It’s even possible that some antidepressant treatments might <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20034615/">make anhedonia worse</a>.</p>
<p>Why might this be? One possibility is that current standard treatments focus mainly on treating the <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-63311-031">depressed mood</a> and brain processes that underpin low mood – but not anhedonia. For example the main aim of talking therapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, is to reduce <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-63311-031">negative thinking in patients</a>. The most common antidepressant medications also mainly target <a href="https://www.nhsinform.scot/tests-and-treatments/medicines-and-medical-aids/types-of-medicine/antidepressants#:%7E:text=It's%20thought%20that%20antidepressants%20work,pain%20signals%20sent%20by%20nerves.">serotonin</a>, which is thought to underpin in part, how the brain processes negative information.</p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="Man playing a computer game looks bored." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541900/original/file-20230809-25-dfgvim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541900/original/file-20230809-25-dfgvim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541900/original/file-20230809-25-dfgvim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541900/original/file-20230809-25-dfgvim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541900/original/file-20230809-25-dfgvim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541900/original/file-20230809-25-dfgvim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541900/original/file-20230809-25-dfgvim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Experiencing anhedonia for at least two weeks consistently is a sign of a depression.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-plays-computer-games-home-young-1893679678">Ponomarenko Anastasia/ Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But as anhedonia is reduced joy in life, treatments such as <a href="https://www.gmmh.nhs.uk/behavioural-activation/">behavioural activation</a> (a form of talking therapy) could be better for anhedonia. This is because behavioural activation aims to help people with depression take simple, practical steps towards enjoying life again. Yet some studies find behavioural activation is no better than <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005796722001565">standard treatments</a> in managing anhedonia. This might be because the very nature of anhedonia includes a lack of motivation – making it difficult for patients to <a href="https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/papt.12307#papt12307-bib-0029">engage in any therapy</a>, even forms which may most benefit them.</p>
<p>Anhedonia has also been linked to <a href="https://www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences/fulltext/S0166-2236(11)00192-5">dysfunctional reward mechanisms</a> in the brain. As such, treatments which focus more on improving the way the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40473-019-00186-1">brain processes reward</a> could help alleviate anhedonia more effectively than current treatments.</p>
<p>But the brain’s reward system isn’t straightforward, and actually involves various subprocesses – including anticipation, motivation, pleasure and learning about reward. Problems with any one of these subprocesses could be contributing to anhedonia. As such, it will be important for research to uncover <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154618300202?casa_token=-3vcGkOpOQQAAAAA:jt35S3r9Kwpw9k0X7A69n_XRwXIXiGKAw22m3_iQmxCSDtQkx5S5SWpw0hxaZDq8v2DIHoexWA">how these subprocesses operate</a> in people with anhedonia to develop better targets for treatment.</p>
<h2>Treatment options</h2>
<p>While anhedonia may be complex, that doesn’t mean there’s no hope for those who are affected by it. </p>
<p>For instance, research shows that talking therapies which <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/7854_2021_291">focus on reward processing</a> could help reduce anhedonia. A recent <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(23)00261-4/fulltext">pilot study</a> also found that a new type of talk therapy called augmented depression therapy may work better than cognitive behavioural therapy in treating depression. This is because augmented depression therapy specifically targets anhedonia by having patients focus on both their negative and positive experiences.</p>
<p>Further, antidepressants that target neurotransmitters involved in the reward system (such as <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/enhanced-neural-response-to-anticipation-effort-and-consummation-of-reward-and-aversion-during-bupropion-treatment/8DB607550A3105F09BD50E83EFC91BD9">dopamine</a>) might be better suited for patients with anhedonia. Early work examining drugs such as <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-022-06105-9">ketamine</a>, which can affect dopamine activity, suggest it may have promise for treating anhedonia. </p>
<p>And while it can be hard to find motivation if you’re experiencing anhedonia, trying to find time for fun, enjoyable activities or experiences like a hobby you used to love – or even a new hobby – could help alleviate anhedonia.</p>
<p>If you think you have anhedonia – or other symptoms of depression – it’s important not to ignore your feelings so you can get the help and treatment you deserve. If you aren’t sure where to begin, you could try sharing how you feel with a loved one or with your GP.</p>
<p>You could also contact <a href="https://www.samaritans.org/">Samaritans</a> – call 116 123 or email <a href="mailto:jo@samaritans.org">jo@samaritans.org</a> if you need to talk to someone soon. It’s free and anonymous.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210429/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ciara-mccabe-601563">Ciara McCabe</a>, Professor of Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology and Mental Health, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-reading-902">University of Reading</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-82642803899158195892023-05-03T01:15:00.000-07:002023-05-03T01:15:27.286-07:00South Africans are fed up with their prospects, and their democracy, according to latest social attitudes survey<p> </p><h1 class="legacy"></h1>
<figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523014/original/file-20230426-28-q31z4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
<figcaption>
29 years of democracy has left its mark.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rather battered and frayed South African flag billowing in the wind against a cloud-strewn sky.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The mood among South Africans has soured. The latest findings from the representative <a href="http://archivesite.hsrc.ac.za/en/departments/sasas?_gl=1*1fljwft*_ga*MTM3MDA1OTM4MS4xNjgyNTI1Mjc2*_ga_6KN2L6JN85*MTY4MjUyNTI3NS4xLjEuMTY4MjUyNTI5MC4wLjAuMA..*_ga_8T91XDZ2CX*MTY4MjUyNTI3NS4xLjEuMTY4MjUyNTI5MC4wLjAuMA..&_ga=2.78387604.1479165019.1682525277-1370059381.1682525276">survey</a> that’s done every year by the country’s Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) shows some disturbing new trends.</p>
<p>The most marked are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>a decline in <a href="https://hsrc.ac.za/uploads/pageContent/1607/How%20South%20Africans%20Rate%20Their%20Quality%20of%20Life.pdf">levels of life satisfaction</a> as a whole</p></li>
<li><p>a downturn in people’s views about what lies ahead in their lives</p></li>
<li><p>a growing sense of despondency, and </p></li>
<li><p>a declining satisfaction with democracy.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The sense of hopelessness and despondency with democracy that emerges from the survey does not bode well for the future of the country’s democracy. As the survey shows, as despondency increases, so too does a sense of hopelessness.</p>
<p>The 2021 <a href="http://archivesite.hsrc.ac.za/en/departments/sasas?_gl=1*1fljwft*_ga*MTM3MDA1OTM4MS4xNjgyNTI1Mjc2*_ga_6KN2L6JN85*MTY4MjUyNTI3NS4xLjEuMTY4MjUyNTI5MC4wLjAuMA..*_ga_8T91XDZ2CX*MTY4MjUyNTI3NS4xLjEuMTY4MjUyNTI5MC4wLjAuMA..&_ga=2.78387604.1479165019.1682525277-1370059381.1682525276">survey</a> – with the most recent available results – consisted of 2,996 South Africans aged 16 years and older living in private residences. The data were benchmarked and weighted to be representative of the adult population.</p>
<p>The survey echoes key points in our forthcoming work on life satisfaction and democracy in the Human Science Research Council’s flagship publication, <a href="https://hsrc.ac.za/special-projects/sasas/">State of the Nation</a>. This details increasing life dissatisfaction amid growing unhappiness with democracy and despondency. </p>
<p>Based on our two decade involvement in <a href="https://hsrc.ac.za/special-projects/sasas/">social attitudes</a> research in South Africa, we argued that while South Africans were increasingly unhappy with democracy, their levels of life satisfaction remained stable. But we are now noting a significant decline in life satisfaction in the context of increased democratic despondency, weak political efficacy and mediocre service delivery.</p>
<p>It is this sense of hopelessness that could potentially signal political instability in the future.</p>
<h2>What are people are saying</h2>
<p>The Social Attitudes Survey is a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey. Conducted annually since 2003, it measures underlying public perceptions, values and social fabric in South African society. </p>
<p>The survey represents a notable tool for monitoring evolving social, economic and political values among South Africans. We also believe it shows promising use as a predictive mechanism that could inform decision makers and policy-making processes. </p>
<p>The most recent survey results show a marked downturn in the mood in the country since 2021, most notably around life satisfaction and future life improvement or optimism. </p>
<p><b>A downturn in life satisfaction:</b> South Africans show a recent downturn in their general life satisfaction, a measure that has remained relatively stable over the last 18 or so years (Figure 1). When asked to reflect on their current personal life circumstances, only 41% were satisfied with their lives in late 2021 compared to 52% in 2014. This is a significant decline for a measure that is usually quite stable. </p>
<p>This points to appreciable strain on life satisfaction, something that is likely to be more acutely felt among poor and vulnerable citizens.</p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522968/original/file-20230426-742-hp6qm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522968/original/file-20230426-742-hp6qm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522968/original/file-20230426-742-hp6qm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522968/original/file-20230426-742-hp6qm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522968/original/file-20230426-742-hp6qm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522968/original/file-20230426-742-hp6qm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522968/original/file-20230426-742-hp6qm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><b>Outlook on future life:</b> Trends in the outlook South Africans have for their future in the medium term also highlight despondency and hopelessness (Figure 2). In 2014, 44% felt their lives would improve over the next five years. In late 2021 this had fallen to 29%. The number who felt that life would worsen rose from 25% in 2014 to 39% in 2021. Those who believed that their situation would remain unchanged fluctuated between 22% and 30% over this period. </p>
<p>The 2021 results suggest that a threshold has been crossed, with a pessimistic outlook becoming more dominant than an optimistic one.</p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522969/original/file-20230426-14-zownio.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522969/original/file-20230426-14-zownio.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522969/original/file-20230426-14-zownio.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522969/original/file-20230426-14-zownio.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522969/original/file-20230426-14-zownio.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522969/original/file-20230426-14-zownio.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522969/original/file-20230426-14-zownio.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><b>A sense of despondency:</b> This was observed across all race and gender groups. But from a age profile perspective, older people held more negative views on future life optimism (Figure 3).</p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522970/original/file-20230426-16-27qhcp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522970/original/file-20230426-16-27qhcp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=202&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522970/original/file-20230426-16-27qhcp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=202&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522970/original/file-20230426-16-27qhcp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=202&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522970/original/file-20230426-16-27qhcp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522970/original/file-20230426-16-27qhcp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522970/original/file-20230426-16-27qhcp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The drivers</h2>
<p>Our analysis shows that personal future outlook of South Africans is strongly shaped by factors relating to the government performance evaluations, trust in institutions and general democratic evaluations.</p>
<p>Those with a more positive outlook were also more satisfied with government efforts at delivering a range of serives. These included the provision of water, sanitation and electricity, tackling crime and corruption, as well as job creation and social grants. </p>
<p>Those who thought these services were sliding had a more negative outlook.</p>
<p>Similarly, those expressing trust in national and local government, parliament, the Independent Electoral Commission, political parties and politicians all reported a sunnier outlook than those who were more sceptical.</p>
<p>As an example of the scale of these effects, in Figure 4 below, we present the scale of difference in the share offering positive future expectations based on those that are satisfied and dissatisfied with democracy. On average over the 2014-2021 period, the difference between these two groups is 28 percentage points, rising to a high of 33 percentage points in 2021.</p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522972/original/file-20230426-20-m0lbdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522972/original/file-20230426-20-m0lbdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522972/original/file-20230426-20-m0lbdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522972/original/file-20230426-20-m0lbdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522972/original/file-20230426-20-m0lbdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522972/original/file-20230426-20-m0lbdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522972/original/file-20230426-20-m0lbdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Democracy outlook</h2>
<p>Up until 2020 there was evidence that South Africans, in common with other citizens across the subcontinent and Latin America, conventionally took a more optimistic view of the future through expressing that life would get better in the next five years.</p>
<p>However, as democratic despondency increases, so too does a sense of hopelessness in South Africans. </p>
<p>This begs the question of whether the Freedom Day 2023 mood should be a celebratory one, or one of sober reflection, and re-commitment to the social compact and spirit of accountability and government responsiveness that characterised the dream of 1994.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204566/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/joleen-steyn-kotze-194983">Joleen Steyn Kotze</a>, Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-the-free-state-1944">University of the Free State</a></i> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/benjamin-roberts-478245">Benjamin Roberts</a>, Research Director: Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES) research division, and Coordinator of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/human-sciences-research-council-2144">Human Sciences Research Council</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license.</p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-68359737838640262972023-01-22T22:10:00.000-08:002023-01-22T22:10:19.026-08:00A year on, we know why the Tongan eruption was so violent. It’s a wake-up call to watch other submarine volcanoes<p> </p><h1 class="legacy"></h1>
<figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503988/original/file-20230111-16-rr5zat.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C34%2C1024%2C587&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
<figcaption>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sung-Hyun Park/Korea Polar Research Institute</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<br />
<p>The Kingdom of Tonga exploded into global news on January 15 last year with one of the most spectacular and violent volcanic eruptions ever seen. </p>
<p>Remarkably, it was caused by a volcano that lies under hundreds of metres of seawater. The event shocked the public and volcano scientists alike. </p>
<p>Was this a new type of eruption we’ve never seen before? Was it a wake-up call to pay more attention to threats from submarine volcanoes around the world? </p>
<p>The answer is yes to both questions.</p>
<p>The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano was a little-known seamount along a chain of 20 similar volcanoes that make up the Tongan part of the Pacific “<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/why-are-earthquakes-common-in-the-pacific-ring-of-fire/a-36676363">Ring of Fire</a>”. </p>
<p>We know a lot about surface volcanoes along this ring, including Mount St Helens in the US, Mount Fuji in Japan and Gunung Merapi of Indonesia. But we know very little about the hundreds of submarine volcanoes around it. </p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="A map of the Pacific Ring of Fire" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504118/original/file-20230111-11-byabvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504118/original/file-20230111-11-byabvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504118/original/file-20230111-11-byabvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504118/original/file-20230111-11-byabvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504118/original/file-20230111-11-byabvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504118/original/file-20230111-11-byabvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504118/original/file-20230111-11-byabvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scientists have good understanding of land-based volcanoes along the Pacific Ring of Fire, but far less so about seamounts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is difficult, expensive and time-consuming to study submarine volcanoes, but out of sight is no longer out of mind. </p>
<h2>Tongan eruption breaks records</h2>
<p>The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption has firmly established itself in the record books with the highest ash plume ever measured and a <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL100091">58km aerosol cloud</a> “overshoot” that touched space beyond the mesosphere. It also triggered the <a href="https://www.xweather.com/annual-lightning-report">largest number of lightning bolts</a> recorded for any type of natural event. </p>
<p>The injection of large amounts of <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL100248">water vapour into the outer atmosphere</a>, along with “<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.abo7063">sonic booms</a>” (atmospheric pressure waves) and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00024-022-03215-5">tsunami</a> that travelled the entire world, set new benchmarks for volcanic phenomena.</p>
<p><img src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/2499/2022-12_Hunga_Tonga_hunga-Loop_with_logo%281%29.gif?1673469814" width="100%" /> </p>
<p>COVID hampered access to Tonga during the eruption and its aftermath, but local scientists and an international scientific collaborative effort helped us discover what drove its extreme violence.</p>
<h2>Eruption creates a giant hole</h2>
<p>A team from the Tongan Geological Services and the University of Auckland used a multi-beam sonar mapping system to precisely measure the shape of the volcano, just three months after the January blast. </p>
<p>We were astonished to find the rim of the vast submarine volcano was intact, but the formerly 6km diameter flat top of the submarine cone was rent by a hole 4km wide and almost 1km deep. </p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503985/original/file-20230111-26-pf4c3w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503985/original/file-20230111-26-pf4c3w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503985/original/file-20230111-26-pf4c3w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503985/original/file-20230111-26-pf4c3w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503985/original/file-20230111-26-pf4c3w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503985/original/file-20230111-26-pf4c3w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503985/original/file-20230111-26-pf4c3w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai crater and caldera before and after the eruption.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sung-Hyun Park/Korea Polar Research Institute</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is known as a “caldera” and happens when the central part of the volcano collapses in on itself after magma is rapidly “pumped out”. We calculate over 7.1 cubic kilometres of magma was ejected. It is almost impossible to envisage, but if we wanted to refill the caldera, it would take one billion truck loads.</p>
<p>It is hard to explain the physics of the Hunga eruption, even with the large magma volume and its interaction with seawater. We need other driving forces to explain especially the climactic first hour of the eruption. </p>
<h2>Mixed magmas lead to chain reaction</h2>
<p>Only when we examined the texture and chemistry of the erupted particles (volcanic ash) did we see clues about the event’s violence. Different magmas were intimately mixed and mingled before the eruption, with contrasts visible at a micron to centimetre scale. </p>
<p>Isotopic “fingerprinting” using lead, neodymium, uranium and strontium shows at least three different magma sources were involved. Radium isotope analysis shows two magma bodies were older and resident in the middle of the Earth’s crust, before being joined by a new, younger one shortly before the eruption.</p>
<p>The mingling of magmas caused a strong reaction, driving water and other so-called “volatile elements” out of solution and into gas. This creates bubbles and an expanding magma foam, pushing the magma out vigorously at the onset of eruption. </p>
<p>This intermediate or “andesite” composition has low viscosity. It means magma can be rapidly forced out through narrow cracks in the rock. Hence, there was an extremely rapid tapping of magma from 5-10km below the volcano, leading to sudden step-wise collapses of the caldera. </p>
<p>The caldera collapse led to a chain reaction because seawater suddenly drained through cracks and faults and encountered magma rising from depth in the volcano. The resulting high-pressure direct contact of water with magma at more than 1150℃ caused two high-intensity explosions around 30 and 45 minutes into the eruption. Each explosion further decompressed the magma below, continuing the chain reaction by amplifying bubble growth and magma rise.</p>
<p>After about an hour, the central eruption plume lost energy and the eruption moved to a lower-elevation ejection of particles in a concentric curtain-like pattern around the volcano. </p>
<p>This less focused phase of eruption led to widespread pyroclastic flows – hot and fast-flowing clouds of gas, ash and fragments of rock – that collapsed into the ocean and caused submarine density currents. These damaged vast lengths of the international and domestic data cables, cutting Tonga off from the rest of the world. </p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="This map shows the sites of ongoing venting after the eruption." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503990/original/file-20230111-24-b3kaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503990/original/file-20230111-24-b3kaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503990/original/file-20230111-24-b3kaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503990/original/file-20230111-24-b3kaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=709&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503990/original/file-20230111-24-b3kaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503990/original/file-20230111-24-b3kaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503990/original/file-20230111-24-b3kaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This map shows the sites of ongoing venting after the eruption.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marta Ribo/AUT</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Unanswered questions and challenges</h2>
<p>Even after long analysis of a growing body of eyewitness accounts, there are still major unanswered questions about this eruption. </p>
<p>The most important is what led to the largest local tsunami – an 18-20m-high wave that struck most of the central Tongan islands around an hour into the eruption. Earlier tsunami are well linked to the two large explosions at around 30 and 45 minutes into the eruption. Currently, the best candidate for the largest tsunami is the collapse of the caldera itself, which caused seawater to rush back into the new cavity.</p>
<p>This event has parallels only to the great 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia and has changed our perspective of the potential hazards from shallow submarine volcanoes. Work has begun on improving volcanic monitoring in Tonga using onshore and offshore seismic sensors along with infrasound sensors and a range of satellite observation tools. </p>
<p>All of these monitoring methods are expensive and difficult compared to land-based volcanoes. Despite the enormous expense of submarine research vessels, intensive efforts are underway to identify other volcanoes around the world that pose Hunga-like threats.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175734/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/shane-cronin-908092">Shane Cronin</a>, Professor of Earth Sciences, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-auckland-1305">University of Auckland</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-72016920124922739412023-01-22T22:00:00.002-08:002023-01-22T22:00:44.279-08:00How Edgar Allan Poe became the darling of the maligned and misunderstood<p> </p><figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505203/original/file-20230118-7884-ogudaj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C2%2C795%2C544&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
<figcaption>
Could the pugnacious writer ever have imagined that he would one day become a cult hero?
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Lehr/The Conversation via DALL-E 2</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<br />
<p>Edgar Allan Poe, who would have turned 214 years old on Jan. 19, 2023, remains one of the world’s most recognizable and popular literary figures.</p>
<p>His face – with its sunken eyes, enormous forehead and disheveled black hair – adorns <a href="https://outofprint.com/products/edgar-allan-poe-ka-dots-gray-tote">tote bags</a>, <a href="https://www.blackcraftcult.com/products/poe-molded-ceramic-mug">coffee mugs</a>, <a href="https://www.etsy.com/market/edgar_allan_poe_shirt">T-shirts</a> and <a href="https://www.bluelips.com/pd-edgar-allan-poe-lunchbox.cfm">lunch boxes</a>. He appears as a meme, either sporting a popped collar and aviator shades as <a href="https://technical.ly/startups/who-is-edgar-allan-bro-twitter/">Edgar Allan Bro</a>, or riffing on “Bohemian Rhapsody” by muttering, “I’m just Poe boy, nobody loves me” as a raven on his shoulder adds, “He’s just a Poe boy from a Poe family.” </p>
<p></p>
<p>Netflix has sought to capitalize on the writer’s popularity, recently releasing the mystery-thriller “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14138650/">The Pale Blue Eye</a>,” which features Poe as a West Point cadet, <a href="https://www.usace.army.mil/About/History/Historical-Vignettes/General-History/139-Poe-and-West-Point/">where he spent less than a year</a> before being court-martialed. Netflix also has a Poe-inspired miniseries, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15567174/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Fall of the House of Usher</a>,” set to be released sometime in 2023. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mfHlxkMAAAAJ&hl=en">But as a Poe scholar</a>, I sometimes wonder whether Poe’s appeal is less about the power and complexity of his prose and more about an attraction to the idea of Poe. </p>
<p>After all, Poe’s most famous literary creations tend to be unsympathetic villains. There are psychopaths who perpetuate seemingly motiveless murders in “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2148/2148-h/2148-h.htm#chap2.7">The Black Cat</a>” and “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2148/2148-h/2148-h.htm#chap2.20">The Tell-Tale Heart</a>”; protagonists who abuse women in “<a href="https://poestories.com/read/ligeia">Ligeia</a>” and “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2148/2148-h/2148-h.htm#chap2.8">The Fall of the House of Usher</a>”; and characters who exact cruel, fatal revenge on unwitting victims in “<a href="https://xroads.virginia.edu/%7EHyper/POE/cask.html">The Cask of Amontillado</a>” and “<a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7EHyper/POE/hop_frog.html">Hop-Frog</a>.”</p>
<p>The degenerate characters whose perspectives Poe invites readers to inhabit don’t exactly align with a cultural moment characterized by the #MeToo movement, safe spaces and trigger warnings. </p>
<p>At the same time, the conception of Poe the writer seems to tap into a cultural affection for outsiders, nonconformists and underdogs who ultimately prove their worth.</p>
<h2>A character assassination that misfires</h2>
<p>The idea of Poe the underdog began with his death in 1849, which was greeted by <a href="https://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1827/nyt49100.htm">a cruel notice in the New York Tribune</a>: “This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.”</p>
<p>The obituary writer, who turned out to be Poe’s sometime friend and constant rival <a href="https://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1827/nyt49100.htm">Rufus W. Griswold</a>, claimed that the deceased had “few or no friends” and proceeded with a general character assassination built on exaggerations and half-truths. </p>
<p>Strange as it seems, Griswold <a href="https://poemuseum.org/rufus-wilmot-griswold-poes-literary-executor">was also Poe’s literary executor</a>, and he expanded the obituary into a biographical essay that accompanied Poe’s collected works. If this was a marketing ploy, it worked. The friends that Griswold claimed Poe lacked rose to his defense, and journalists spent decades debating who the man really was.</p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="Black and white drawing of man with beard and thinning hair." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505204/original/file-20230118-19-5zsave.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505204/original/file-20230118-19-5zsave.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505204/original/file-20230118-19-5zsave.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505204/original/file-20230118-19-5zsave.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505204/original/file-20230118-19-5zsave.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505204/original/file-20230118-19-5zsave.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505204/original/file-20230118-19-5zsave.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rufus W. Griswold penned the first draft of Poe’s life and legacy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/rufus-w-griswold-royalty-free-illustration/186797733?phrase=rufus%20w.%20griswold&adppopup=true">raveler1116/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During Poe’s lifetime, most readers encountered his work through magazines, and he was rarely well paid. But Griswold’s edition <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=NyEumvZL1QMC&printsec=frontcover&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false">went through 19 printings in the 15 years after Poe’s death</a>, and his stories and poems have been endlessly reprinted and translated ever since.</p>
<p>Griswold’s defamatory portrait, along with the grim subject matter of Poe’s stories and poems, still influences the way readers perceive him. But it has also produced a sustained reaction or counterimage of Poe as a tragic hero, a tortured, misunderstood artist who was too good – or, at any rate, too cool – for his world. </p>
<p>While translating Poe’s works into French in the 1850s and 1860s, the French poet Charles Baudelaire <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=NyEumvZL1QMC&printsec=frontcover&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false">promoted his hero as a kind of countercultural visionary</a>, out of step with a moralistic, materialistic America. Baudelaire’s Poe valued beauty over truth in his poetry and, in his fiction, saw through the self-improvement pieties that were popular at the time to reveal “the natural wickedness of man.” Poe struck a chord with European writers, and as his international stature rose in the late 19th century, literary critics in the U.S. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=NyEumvZL1QMC&printsec=frontcover&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false">wrung their hands</a> over his lack of appreciation “at home.” </p>
<h2>Poe’s underdog story takes off</h2>
<p>By the turn of the 20th century, the stage was set for Poe to be embraced as the perennial underdog. And Poe often did appear on stage around this time, as the subject of several biographical melodramas that depicted him as a tragic figure whose lack of success had more to do with a hostile cultural and publishing environment than his own failings. </p>
<p>That image appeared on the silver screen as early as 1909 in D.W. Griffith’s short film “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allen_Poe_(film)">Edgar Allen Poe</a>.” With Poe’s wife, Virginia, languishing on a sick bed, the poet ventures out to sell “The Raven.” After meeting rejection and scorn, he manages to sell his manuscript and returns home with provisions for his ailing wife, only to find that she has died.</p>
<p>Later films also depict Poe as being misunderstood or underappreciated in his lifetime. A wildly inaccurate biopic, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034997/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe</a>,” released in 1942, ends with a voice-over commenting, “…little did [the public] know that the manuscript of ‘The Raven,’ which he tried in vain to sell for $25, would years later bring the price of $17,000 from a collector.”</p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="Movie poster featuring headshots of various actors." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505205/original/file-20230118-23-o9c2of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505205/original/file-20230118-23-o9c2of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505205/original/file-20230118-23-o9c2of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505205/original/file-20230118-23-o9c2of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505205/original/file-20230118-23-o9c2of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505205/original/file-20230118-23-o9c2of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505205/original/file-20230118-23-o9c2of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In ‘The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe,’ Poe’s talents are overlooked, as ‘men scoffed at his greatness.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-loves-of-edgar-allan-poe-poster-from-left-mary-howard-news-photo/1137205217?phrase=the%20loves%20of%20edgar%20allan%20poe%20movie%20poster&adppopup=true">LMPC/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In real life, while an early draft of “The Raven” was declined by one editor, Poe had no trouble selling the poem, <a href="https://muse-jhu-edu.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/pub/1/article/643024">and it was an immediate sensation</a>.</p>
<p>But here “The Raven” becomes a stand-in for Poe himself, something dark and mysterious that, according to legend, people in Poe’s time failed to appreciate. </p>
<p>Poe is an obscure writer and amateur detective in the 1951 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043782/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Man with a Cloak</a>,” which ends with a saloonkeeper allowing the rain to wash away the ink on an IOU that Poe gave him. On the reverse side of the note is a manuscript of the poem “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44885/annabel-lee">Annabel Lee</a>,” as its bearer declares, “That name’ll never be worth anything. Not in a hundred years.” </p>
<p>Of course, the audience watching this film almost exactly 100 years after Poe’s death knew better. </p>
<h2>The most interesting plants grow in the shade</h2>
<p>Which brings us to “The Pale Blue Eye,” in which Henry Melling portrays Cadet Poe, an outcast with a keen crime solver’s intellect. In a refreshing change, this younger Poe is not a tortured artist or a haunted, brooding figure. He is, however, picked on by his peers and underestimated by his superiors – yet again, an underdog viewers want to root for. </p>
<p>In that sense, the Poe in “The Pale Blue Eye” fits well with his contemporary image, which also permeates the early episodes of “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13443470/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Wednesday</a>,” Netflix’s Addams Family spinoff set at Nevermore Academy that’s chock full of Poe references. </p>
<p>The headmistress of Nevermore Academy – a Hogwarts-like school for outcasts – refers to Poe as “our most famous alumni,” which explains why the school’s annual boat race is the Poe Cup and why there’s a statue of Poe guarding a secret passage.</p>
<p>The delightfully antisocial protagonist, Wednesday, played by Jenna Ortega, is an outcast among outcasts – the Poe figure at a school whose name evokes Poe. In one scene, a sympathetic teacher urges her not to lose “the ability to not let others define you. It’s a gift.” She adds, “The most interesting plants grow in the shade.”</p>
<p>When John Lennon sang “Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe” in “<a href="https://genius.com/The-beatles-i-am-the-walrus-lyrics">I Am the Walrus</a>,” he didn’t have to say who was kicking him or why. The point was, Poe deserved better; the most interesting plants do grow in the shade, unlovely and unloved. </p>
<p>And that’s exactly why so many people – aspiring writers and artists, but also everyone when they’re lonely and misunderstood – see a little bit of themselves in the weary-but-wise image of Poe.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197784/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/scott-peeples-1407139">Scott Peeples</a>, Professor of English, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/college-of-charleston-734">College of Charleston</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-51717042002178914912022-11-05T23:01:00.005-07:002022-11-05T23:01:55.270-07:00The same app can pose a bigger security and privacy threat depending on the country where you download it, study finds<p> </p><figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486346/original/file-20220923-13704-kn2fv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C141%2C3552%2C2478&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
<figcaption>
Same app, same app store, different risks if you download it in, say, Tunisia rather than in Germany.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/blinkee-city-rental-scooter-is-seen-in-warsaw-poland-on-news-photo/1031626648">NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Google and Apple have removed hundreds of apps from their app stores at the request of governments around the world, creating regional disparities in access to mobile apps at a time when many <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/267209/global-app-economy/">economies are becoming increasingly dependent on them</a>. </p>
<p>The mobile phone giants have removed over <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/garena-free-fire-to-tiktok-all-the-273-chinese-apps-that-indian-govt-banned-so-far-1913141-2022-02-15">200 Chinese apps</a>, including widely downloaded apps like TikTok, at the Indian government’s request in recent years. Similarly, the companies removed LinkedIn, an essential app for professional networking, from Russian app stores <a href="https://fortune.com/2017/01/08/russia-linkedin-google-apple/">at the Russian government’s request</a>. </p>
<p>However, access to apps is just one concern. <a href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/7550024?hl=en">Developers also regionalize apps</a>, meaning they produce different versions for different countries. This raises the question of whether these apps differ in their security and privacy capabilities based on region. </p>
<p>In a perfect world, access to apps and app security and privacy capabilities would be consistent everywhere. Popular mobile apps <a href="https://iapp.org/news/a/the-case-for-a-global-data-privacy-adequacy-standard/">should be available without increasing the risk</a> that users are spied on or tracked based on what country they’re in, especially given that not every country has strong data protection regulations.</p>
<p>My colleagues and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=mWT_pCcAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">I</a> recently studied the <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity22/presentation/kumar">availability and privacy policies</a> of thousands of globally popular apps on <a href="https://play.google.com/about/howplayworks/">Google Play</a>, the <a href="https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-google-play-1616720">app store for Android devices</a>, in 26 countries. We found differences in app availability, security and privacy. </p>
<p>While our study corroborates reports of takedowns due to government requests, we also found many differences introduced by app developers. We found instances of apps with settings and disclosures that expose users to higher or lower security and privacy risks depending on the country in which they’re downloaded.</p>
<h2>Geoblocked apps</h2>
<p>The countries and one special administrative region in our study are diverse in location, population and gross domestic product. They include the U.S., Germany, Hungary, Ukraine, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, Hong Kong and India. We also included countries like Iran, Zimbabwe and Tunisia, where it was difficult to collect data. We studied 5,684 globally popular apps, each with over 1 million installs, from the top 22 <a href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9859673?hl=en#zippy=%2Capps">app categories</a>, including Books and Reference, Education, Medical, and News and Magazines. </p>
<p>Our study showed high amounts of geoblocking, with 3,672 of 5,684 globally popular apps blocked in at least one of our 26 countries. Blocking by developers was significantly higher than takedowns requested by governments in all our countries and app categories. We found that Iran and Tunisia have the highest blocking rates, with apps like Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, Flipboard and Google Books all unavailable for download.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486347/original/file-20220923-214-6f3tzz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="three text boxes stacked vertically" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486347/original/file-20220923-214-6f3tzz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486347/original/file-20220923-214-6f3tzz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486347/original/file-20220923-214-6f3tzz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486347/original/file-20220923-214-6f3tzz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486347/original/file-20220923-214-6f3tzz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486347/original/file-20220923-214-6f3tzz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486347/original/file-20220923-214-6f3tzz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Attempting to download the LinkedIn app in the Google Play app store is a different experience in, from top to bottom, the U.S., Iran and Russia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/sec22-kumar.pdf">Kumar et al.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We found regional overlap in the apps that are geoblocked. In European countries in our study – Germany, Hungary, Ireland and the U.K. – 479 of the same apps were geoblocked. Eight of those, including Blued and USA Today News, were blocked only in the European Union, possibly because of the region’s <a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/">General Data Protection Regulation</a>. Turkey, Ukraine and Russia also show similar blocking patterns, with high blocking of virtual private network apps in Turkey and Russia, which is consistent with the recent upsurge of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/18/russia-growing-internet-isolation-control-censorship">surveillance</a> laws.</p>
<p>Of the 61 country-specific takedowns by Google, 36 were unique to South Korea, including 17 gambling and gaming apps taken down in accordance with the <a href="https://www.hapskorea.com/south-koreas-complex-relationship-with-gambling/">national prohibition on online gambling</a>. While the Indian government’s takedown of Chinese apps happened with full public disclosure, surprisingly most of the takedowns we observed occurred without much public awareness or debate. </p>
<h2>Differences in security and privacy</h2>
<p>The apps we downloaded from Google Play also showed differences based on country in their security and privacy capabilities. One hundred twenty-seven apps varied in what the apps were allowed to access on users’ mobile phones, 49 of which had additional permissions deemed “dangerous” by Google. Apps in Bahrain, Tunisia and Canada requested the most additional dangerous permissions. </p>
<p>Three VPN apps enable clear text communication in some countries, which allows unauthorized access to users’ communications. One hundred and eighteen apps varied in the number of ad trackers included in an app in some countries, with the categories Games, Entertainment and Social, with Iran and Ukraine having the most increases in the number of ad trackers compared to the baseline number common to all countries. </p>
<p>One hundred and three apps have differences based on country in their privacy policies. Users in countries not covered by data protection regulations, such as GDPR in the EU and the California Consumer Privacy Act in the U.S., are at higher privacy risk. For instance, 71 apps available from Google Play have clauses to comply with GDPR only in the EU and CCPA only in the U.S. Twenty-eight apps that use dangerous permissions make no mention of it, despite <a href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/10144311?visit_id=637995492293465522-1318183419&rd=1">Google’s policy</a> requiring them to do so. </p>
<h2>The role of app stores</h2>
<p>App stores allow developers to target their apps to users based on a wide array of factors, including their country and their device’s specific features. Though Google has taken <a href="https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/05/new-safety-section-in-google-play-will.html">some steps toward transparency</a> in its app store, our research shows that there are shortcomings in Google’s auditing of the app ecosystem, some of which could put users’ security and privacy at risk.</p>
<p>Potentially also as a result of app store policies in some countries, app stores that specialize in specific regions of the world are becoming increasingly popular. However, these app stores may not have adequate vetting policies, thereby allowing altered versions of apps to reach users. For example, a national government could pressure a developer to provide a version of an app that includes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/SP40000.2020.00072">backdoor access</a>. There is no straightforward way for users to distinguish an altered app from an unaltered one.</p>
<p>Our research provides several recommendations to app store proprietors to address the issues we found:
</p><ul>
<li>Better moderate their country targeting features
</li><li>Provide detailed transparency reports on app takedowns
</li><li>Vet apps for differences based on country or region
</li><li>Push for transparency from developers on their need for the differences
</li><li>Host app privacy policies themselves to ensure their availability when the policies are blocked in certain countries
</li></ul><p><!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189099/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: none; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/renuka-kumar-1372197">Renuka Kumar</a>, Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Engineering, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-michigan-1290">University of Michigan</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-32047813401419719852022-07-02T22:45:00.002-07:002022-07-02T22:45:40.026-07:00How the Satanic Temple is using ‘abortion rituals’ to claim religious liberty against the Texas’ ‘heartbeat bill’<p> </p><h1 class="legacy"></h1>
<figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422452/original/file-20210921-23-x5k5cz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C295%2C4928%2C2707&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
<figcaption>
Two women hold mock pro-life signs in what they call an ‘Abortrait room’ at the Satanic Temple’s headquarters to protest abortion laws.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mercy-maelica-and-joy-davenport-hold-up-pro-life-signs-in-a-news-photo/1174663556?adppopup=true">Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Texas’s controversial anti-abortion law known as the “Heartbeat Bill” went into effect at midnight on Sept. 1, 2021. Less than 24 hours later, the U.S. Supreme Court declared it would not <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/01/texas-abortion-clinic-follow-new-law/">block the law</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Satanic-Temple-texas-abortion-law-16441269.php">In response</a>, The Satanic Temple, a nontheistic group that has been recognized by <a href="https://religionnews.com/2019/04/25/the-satanic-temple-is-a-real-religion-says-irs/">the IRS</a> as a religion, announced that it would fight back by invoking the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, to demand exemption from abortion restrictions on religious grounds. RFRA laws, which came into effect in 1993, restrict the government’s ability to burden religious practices.</p>
<p>Like the Heartbeat Bill itself, The Satanic Temple’s efforts to circumvent abortion restrictions on religious grounds involve a creative and complicated legal strategy. As a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/speak-of-the-devil-9780190948498?cc=us&lang=en&">scholar</a> who studies the ways in which The Satanic Temple’s provocations affect public debates about religious freedom, I anticipate their latest legal argument will challenge some assumptions about RFRA and the freedoms it was designed to protect.</p>
<h2>The Heartbeat Bill</h2>
<p>In the pivotal 1973 abortion case <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18">Roe v. Wade</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1991/91-744">Planned Parenthood v. Casey</a> in 1992, the Supreme Court established that abortion is a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/section-1/abortion">Constitutional right</a>. However, states can still pass laws that severely restrict access to abortion. The question is how severely. </p>
<p>Texas’s new law was designed to <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/meet-the-legal-strategist-behind-the-texas-abortion-ban/">effectively shut down</a> all abortion while protecting the state from judicial review.</p>
<p>First, the bill bans abortion after six weeks – the point at which <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/02/texas-abortion-heartbeat-bill/">Texas lawmakers claim</a> a fetus’s heartbeat can be detected. Most women are <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-absurd-pregnancy-math-behind-the-lsquo-six-week-rsquo-abortion-ban/">not aware</a> they are pregnant before six weeks, and Texas abortion providers estimate <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/01/texas-abortion-clinic-follow-new-law/">85% of abortions</a> in the state are performed after this period.</p>
<p>Second, the law allows anyone to sue those they can accuse of “aiding and abetting” an abortion for US$10,000. Critics of the law claim this is an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/24/heres-what-makes-texass-heartbeat-abortion-bill-uniquely-dangerous/">intimidation tactic designed to threaten the clinics</a> with so much potential liability that legal abortion becomes impossible. </p>
<p>But outsourcing enforcement to the public is also intended to protect the state. Proponents of the bill claim that since no state official is enforcing the law, abortion providers have <a href="https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/bypassing-the-texas-two-step-to-save-reproductive-right/">no one to sue</a>.</p>
<h2>The Religious Freedom Restoration Act</h2>
<p>The 1990 Supreme Court case <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1989/88-1213">Employment Division v. Smith</a> considered arguments that a member of the Native American Church had a religious right to use peyote, a controlled substance. </p>
<p>The court ruled that freedom of religion was no excuse from compliance with a generally applicable law – a law that applies equally to everyone and does not single out specific groups. With <a href="https://www.aclu-or.org/en/cases/smith-v-employment-division">this decision</a>, it appeared that the free exercise of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment meant very little.</p>
<p>In response, Congress wrote the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/1308#:%7E:text=Religious%20Freedom%20Restoration%20Act%20of%201993%20%2D%20Prohibits%20any%20agency%2C%20department,government%20may%20burden%20a%20person's">Religious Freedom Restoration Act</a>, which was signed into law in 1993.</p>
<p>Under RFRA, the government cannot burden the free exercise of religion unless: 1) it has a compelling reason for doing so, and 2) the government acts in the least restrictive way possible to achieve its purpose. </p>
<p>Four years later, in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1996/95-2074">Boerne v. Flores</a>, the Supreme Court ruled that RFRA applied only to the federal government and not to individual states. So <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/state-rfra-statutes.aspx">many states</a>, including Texas, passed similar legislation, sometimes called “mini-RFRAs.”</p>
<p>In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2013/13-354">Burwell v. Hobby Lobby</a> that under RFRA, the federal government could not require the Christian company Hobby Lobby to fund insurance that provided their employees with certain forms of birth control. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/satanists-troll-the-hobby-lobby-decision/375268/">This decision</a> inspired The Satanic Temple by linking the question of religious liberty with that of reproductive rights.</p>
<h2>The Satanic Temple and RFRA</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422207/original/file-20210920-20-cbf8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C18%2C4013%2C2975&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A statue of Baphomet, a winged-goat creature, installed by The Satanic Temple, a group of atheistic Satanists." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422207/original/file-20210920-20-cbf8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C18%2C4013%2C2975&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422207/original/file-20210920-20-cbf8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422207/original/file-20210920-20-cbf8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422207/original/file-20210920-20-cbf8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422207/original/file-20210920-20-cbf8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422207/original/file-20210920-20-cbf8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422207/original/file-20210920-20-cbf8cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Satanic Temple’s seven tenets include the belief that one’s body is subject to one’s own will alone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SatanicTemple/fc28a9277fc6499dab6fb9281368d0e2/photo?Query=satanic&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=208&currentItemNo=4">AP Photo/Hannah Grabenstein</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Satanic Temple <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-satanic-temple-is-and-why-its-opening-a-debate-about-religion-131283">began in 2013</a> and has launched a number of political actions and lawsuits related to the separation of church and state. <a href="https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/find-a-congregation">Texas is home to four congregations</a> of The Satanic Temple, more than any other state.</p>
<p>Although The Satanic Temple does not believe in or worship a literal Satan, they revere Satan as described in the works of English poet John Milton and the <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781403911827">Romantic movement</a>, an intellectual movement that originated in late 18th-century Europe, as a powerful symbol of rebellion against authority. </p>
<p>The Satanic Temple’s <a href="https://thesatanictemple.com/blogs/the-satanic-temple-tenets/there-are-seven-fundamental-tenets">seven tenets</a> include the belief that “one’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.” It interprets state restrictions on abortion access as a burden on this sincerely held religious belief. </p>
<p>In 2015, The Satanic Temple began a series of lawsuits against the state of Missouri, where women seeking abortions must view sonograms and then <a href="https://dss.mo.gov/fsd/a2a/files/Missouri-Informed-Consent-Booklet.pdf">review a booklet</a> stating, “The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.” After this, the women must spend 72 hours considering their decision before finally receiving an abortion.</p>
<p>The Satanic Temple argued that this practice was an unconstitutional effort by the state to impose its religious views onto vulnerable women. Furthermore, it claimed that under Missouri’s RFRA law, Satanic women could not be forced to comply with these procedures. Instead of answering whether RFRA protected members of The Satanic Temple from abortion restrictions, the court dismissed these cases on procedural grounds. </p>
<p>The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that since the plaintiff, a woman known as “Mary Doe,” was <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/satanic-temples-missouri-abortion-law-challenge-dismissed/">no longer pregnant</a> by the time her case wound its way through the courts, she no longer needed an abortion and therefore had no legal standing to sue. The Satanic Temple appealed this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/112320zor_7l48.pdf">declined to hear it</a>.</p>
<p>To prevent similar rulings, ministers for The Satanic Temple created an “<a href="https://religiondispatches.org/satanic-temples-satanic-abortion-ritual-may-challenge-states-anti-abortion-laws/">abortion ritual</a>,” in which a woman affirms her own autonomy, obtains an abortion, and then concludes the ritual. </p>
<p>Since abortion is part of the ritual, The Satanic Temple argues, subjecting a woman to a waiting period is akin to the government interfering with a baptism or communion. In February 2021, The Satanic Temple filed a <a href="https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/texas-lawsuit">new lawsuit</a> against Texas, arguing that the state was violating the religious liberty of its new plaintiff, referred to as “Ann Doe.”</p>
<h2>The devil is in the details</h2>
<p>The Satanic Temple raises <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-satanic-temple-is-and-why-its-opening-a-debate-about-religion-131283">important questions</a> about what counts as a religion. Opponents of the group argue that abortion is a medical procedure, not a protected religious practice. But The Satanic Temple’s lawyer, Matthew Kezhaya, points to a 2009 case, <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/tx-supreme-court/1347663.html">Barr v. City of Sinton</a>, in which Texas pastor Richard Barr was told the halfway house he operated violated a zoning ordinance. </p>
<p>The Texas Supreme Court ruled that excluding Barr’s halfway house from the city violated Texas’s RFRA law. Key to this argument was the court’s statement that, “The fact that a halfway house can be secular does not mean that it cannot be religious.” Likewise, Kezhaya argues, abortion can be both secular and religious, depending on context.</p>
<p>Kezhaya also disagrees that outsourcing the enforcement of abortion to private lawsuits makes the state of Texas immune to judicial review. He compared this situation to “<a href="https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/racially-restrictive-covenants-bloomingdale/">racially restrictive covenants</a>” of the Jim Crow era in which white residents signed legal agreements never to sell or rent their homes to African Americans. </p>
<p>The Supreme Court initially declined to hear cases challenging these covenants because they were considered private contracts. But in 1948, it ruled that a court enforcing these contracts was a state action that violated the 14th Amendment.</p>
<p>The Satanic Temple also has an even more creative strategy. The Food and Drug Administration, which controls the distribution of the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol, is subject to the federal RFRA law. <a href="https://thetexan.news/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Satanic-Temple-FDA-Letter.pdf">The Satanic Temple sent a letter</a> to the FDA explaining that its prescription requirements illegally burden their abortion ritual. Currently, these drugs are only available with a doctor’s prescription, and the doctor must adhere to any state restrictions before providing them.</p>
<p>The Satanic Temple proposed an accommodation in which Satanic women can obtain a doctor’s note indicating only that these medications are safe for them to use, and then receive medication directly from The Satanic Temple rather than a state-approved provider. </p>
<p>In an interview with me in September 2021, Kezhaya, The Satanic Temple’s lawyer, admitted this was experimental territory. Assuming a court approved this accommodation, it could legally make The Satanic Temple a pharmacy, in addition to a religious entity, because it would be distributing controlled medications.</p>
<h2>Is RFRA a “loophole?”</h2>
<p>The Satanic Temple’s opponents claim it is abusing RFRA and using it as a “loophole” to circumvent the law. However, Lucien Greaves, a co-founder of The Satanic Temple, counters that RFRA was always intended to protect religious minorities from the government. If anyone is abusing it, he claims, it is companies like Hobby Lobby that invoked it to restrict the choices of their employees.</p>
<p>Critics of RFRA, such as legal scholar Marci Hamilton, warn that religious exemptions can turn the law into “<a href="https://verdict.justia.com/2014/08/07/circle-starts-close">Swiss cheese</a>.” In other words, there could be so many religious loopholes that laws become meaningless. Whether or not this is a serious concern, it is certainly true that RFRA must not benefit <a href="https://www.salon.com/2014/06/30/here_are_the_highlights_of_justice_ginsburgs_fiery_hobby_lobby_dissent/">only the Christian majority</a>. </p>
<p>This is why constitutional law professor <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=27312">Jay Wexler</a> has encouraged the work of groups like The Satanic Temple, stating, “Only by insisting on exercising these rights can Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and everybody else ensure that the Court’s new religious jurisprudence does not result in a public space occupied exclusively by Christian messages and symbols. At stake is nothing less than our national public life.”</p>
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<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/joseph-p-laycock-163984">Joseph P. Laycock</a>, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/texas-state-university-1546">Texas State University</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-81808589217206884202022-04-18T00:52:00.000-07:002022-04-18T00:52:46.525-07:00Surprise! There might be salmonella in your chocolate<p> </p><figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457864/original/file-20220413-9289-ldw894.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C8%2C6000%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
<figcaption>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/two-halves-broken-chocolate-egg-children-2126860385">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the past three months, more than <a href="https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/news/rapid-outbreak-assessment-multi-country-salmonella-outbreak-linked-chocolate-products">150 cases of salmonella food poisoning across Europe</a> have been linked to Kinder chocolate products. Most of the cases have been in children under ten years old.</p>
<p>Health officials have traced the outbreak to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/eu-salmonella-outbreak-chocolate-eggs-due-bad-milk-84031934">bad milk in a factory in Belgium</a>, and many products have been <a href="https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/industry/foodrecalls/recalls/Pages/Kinder-chocolate-products-.aspx">recalled from shelves</a> as Easter approaches.</p>
<p>As consumers, we often think of the risk of food poisoning from raw or under-cooked meat, <a href="https://theconversation.com/christmas-leftovers-how-long-is-it-safe-to-keep-them-84484">leftovers</a> or even <a href="https://theconversation.com/salmonella-in-your-salad-the-cost-of-convenience-54325">packaged salad</a>. It’s less common to worry about chocolate.</p>
<h2>Salmonella outbreaks in chocolate</h2>
<p>While reports of salmonella bacteria in chocolate are not common, there have been several high-profile outbreaks. Most documented cases of salmonellosis have been in Europe and North America, perhaps because chocolate consumption is high and monitoring and surveillance is in place. </p>
<p>Outbreaks include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>1970: cocoa powder contaminated with salmonella was used in confectionery products and subsequently caused <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4650740/">an outbreak that affected 110 people in Sweden</a></p></li>
<li><p>1973–74: 95 cases of salmonellosis, acquired from Christmas-wrapped chocolate balls, were <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S031554637573804X">reported in Canada</a> and another 30 in the United States </p></li>
<li><p>1982–83: a salmonella outbreak involving 245 people in the United Kingdom was <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140673683928222">traced to two types of chocolate bars</a> produced in Italy</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457077/original/file-20220408-20-pb8skx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457077/original/file-20220408-20-pb8skx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457077/original/file-20220408-20-pb8skx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457077/original/file-20220408-20-pb8skx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457077/original/file-20220408-20-pb8skx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457077/original/file-20220408-20-pb8skx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457077/original/file-20220408-20-pb8skx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457077/original/file-20220408-20-pb8skx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Salmonella outbreaks linked to chocolate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Bean</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li><p>1985–86: 33 cases of gastroenteritis due to salmonella were <a href="https://meridian.allenpress.com/jfp/article/52/1/51/166460/An-International-Outbreak-of-Salmonella-Nima-from">reported in Canada and the US</a>, and eventually traced back to chocolate coins imported from Belgium</p></li>
<li><p>1987: 361 confirmed cases of salmonellosis in Norway and Finland were <a href="https://journals.asm.org/doi/abs/10.1128/jcm.28.12.2597-2601.1990">part of an outbreak</a> linked to chocolate contaminated with salmonella (it is estimated the actual number of infections was 20,000-40,000)</p></li>
<li><p>2001–02: an outbreak of salmonella occurred in Germany, resulting in<a href="https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2334-5-7"> at least 439 reports of infection</a>, traced to a specific brand of chocolate distributed exclusively through a single supermarket chain</p></li>
<li><p>2006: an outbreak in the UK was <a href="https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/esw.11.26.02985-en">traced to chocolate</a>, with 56 cases reported.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Why do salmonella outbreaks occur?</h2>
<p>Chocolate begins its life as various agricultural products, the most important of which is cacao. Much of the world’s cacao comes from small farms in West Africa. </p>
<p>Beans from the cacao tree are harvested, fermented and dried on these farms. There are plenty of opportunities for the beans to become contaminated with salmonella from animals and the environment.</p>
<p>When the beans reach a chocolate factory, they are roasted. This will kill any salmonella on the beans. But if salmonella is present on the raw beans it can potentially be a source of contamination. </p>
<p>It is important raw beans are well segregated from roast beans to prevent cross-contamination. </p>
<p>As well as this segregation, chocolate factories must be well maintained and have risk-control mechanisms in place. The 2006 outbreak in the UK, for example, was ultimately linked to <a href="https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2006/08/02/Cadbury-contamination-proves-costly">water leaks from pipes onto chocolate</a>.</p>
<h2>Salmonella in chocolate</h2>
<p>Even when chocolate is made using appropriate food safety techniques, it has inherent properties that make it <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4939-2062-4_14">very capable of spreading bacteria</a>. </p>
<p>While salmonella will not <i>grow</i> in chocolate (there isn’t enough water), it <i>survives</i> in chocolate very well. Chocolate may even protect the salmonella during its passage through the gut. </p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="A photograph of a person pouring molten chocolate from a pot into a tray." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457869/original/file-20220413-9145-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457869/original/file-20220413-9145-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457869/original/file-20220413-9145-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457869/original/file-20220413-9145-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457869/original/file-20220413-9145-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457869/original/file-20220413-9145-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457869/original/file-20220413-9145-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Salmonella won’t grow in chocolate, but it survives there very well.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/production-cooking-people-concept-confectioner-filling-1283944153">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This means a batch of chocolate product contaminated with salmonella may remain a food safety risk for a long time and be distributed over a large geographical area. This explains why chocolate-related outbreaks can affect large numbers of people in multiple countries.</p>
<p>Another important consideration is who often consumes chocolate: children. Children are often disproportionately represented in these outbreaks and may be more susceptible to severe infections.</p>
<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>Most confectionery manufacturers operate under stringent guidelines to ensure quality and safety of their products. Good manufacturing processes and food safety guidelines are well established to ensure chocolate is safe. </p>
<p>Manufacturers would prefer to eliminate pathogens (disease causing microorganisms) such as salmonella in chocolate, or at least detect it during manufacturing. </p>
<p>However, the current Kinder recall and others like it are evidence of the system working, albeit late in the process. When a recall notice is issued, consumers should take the advice seriously.</p>
<p>So don’t put off a little Easter indulgence! In the absence of a recall notice in a specific product, it is safe to assume eating chocolate won’t make you sick – unless perhaps you over-indulge.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180813/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: currentcolor none medium; padding: 0px;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-bean-226457">David Bean</a>, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/federation-university-australia-780">Federation University Australia</a></i> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/andrew-greenhill-226455">Andrew Greenhill</a>, Associate Professor in Microbiology and Fermentation Technology, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/federation-university-australia-780">Federation University Australia</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-63975803171594765472022-02-15T05:10:00.000-08:002022-02-15T05:10:01.042-08:00FF Plus – ‘Horror of farm murders remains shocking, Jan Kempdorp’<p> </p><div class="td-post-featured-image"><figure><a class="td-modal-image" data-caption="FF Plus - 'Horror of farm murders remains shocking, Jan Kempdorp'" href="https://i0.wp.com/southafricatoday.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Blood-hand.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1"><img alt="FF Plus - 'Horror of farm murders remains shocking, Jan Kempdorp'" class="entry-thumb" height="400" src="https://i0.wp.com/southafricatoday.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Blood-hand.jpg?resize=600%2C400&ssl=1" title="Blood hand" width="600" /></a></figure></div>
<p>Although farm murders often occur and the government does not
consider them a priority crime, they remain shocking and unnecessary.</p><p>In the latest incident, Mr. Ernst Human was killed over the weekend at Jan Kempdorp in the Vaalharts area.</p>
<p>Mr. Human was part of a farm security group that was connected to
each other by radio. Other group members investigated after he did not
respond to his radio call.</p>
<p>The incident reiterates the vulnerability of people on farms and in rural areas, even within security groups.</p>
<p>The FF Plus’ prayers accompany Mr. Human’s loved ones.</p>
<p>Read: <a href="https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/northern-cape/farm-murder-body-of-farmer-discovered-in-his-home-jan-kempdorp/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Farm murder, body of farmer discovered in his home, Jan Kempdorp</a></p>
<p>It was further reported in the media that Ernst Human was found with his hands and feet tied and then brutally murdered. </p>
<p>Read about more <a href="https://southafricatoday.net/tag/farm-attack/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">farm attacks here</a></p>
<p>Read the original article in Afrikaans by Dr. Wynand Boshoff on <a href="https://vfplus.org.za/media-releases/grusaamheid-van-plaasmoord-soos-nou-weer-by-jan-kempdorp-bly-skokkend" rel="noopener" target="_blank">FF Plus</a></p><p> <a href="https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/northern-cape/ff-plus-horror-of-farm-murders-remains-shocking-jan-kempdorp/">SOURCE</a> <br /></p><p> </p>FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-79849600686060598282021-12-15T21:07:00.001-08:002021-12-15T21:07:56.970-08:00How vulnerable is your personal information? 4 essential reads<p> </p><figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433600/original/file-20211124-18-1bwu0dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2000%2C1128&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
<figcaption>
Chances are some of your data has already been stolen, but that doesn’t mean you should shrug data breaches off.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/dark-red-bg-with-data-breach-glitch-effect-royalty-free-illustration/1159096315">WhataWin/iStock via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When you enter your personal information or credit card number into a website, do you have a moment of hesitation? A nagging sense of vulnerability prompted by the parade of headlines about data breaches and hacks? If so, you probably push those feelings aside and hit the submit button, because, well, you need to shop, apply for that job, file that insurance claim, apply for that loan, or do any of the other sensitive activities that take place online these days.</p>
<p>First, the bad news. If you regularly enter sensitive information online, chances are you’ve had some data stolen somewhere at some point. By one estimate, the average American <a href="https://www.techrepublic.com/article/average-us-citizen-had-personal-information-stolen-at-least-4-times-in-2019/">had data stolen at least four times</a> in 2019. And the hits keep coming. For instance, a data breach at the wireless carrier T-Mobile reported in August 2021 <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/akg8wg/tmobile-investigating-customer-data-breach-100-million">affected 100 million people</a>. </p>
<p>Now for some good news. Not all hacks are the same, and there are steps you can take to protect yourself. The Conversation gathered four articles from our archives that illuminate the types of threats to your online data, what data thieves do with your stolen information, and what you can do about it.</p>
<h2>1. Take stock of your risk</h2>
<p>Not all cyberattacks are the same, and not all personal data is the same. Was an organization that has your information the victim of a ransomware attack? Chances are your information won’t be stolen, though the organization’s copy of it could be rendered unusable. </p>
<p>If an organization you deal with did have customer data stolen, what data of yours did the thieves get? <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/merrill-warkentin-570030">Merrill Warkentin</a>, a professor of information systems at Mississippi State University, writes that you should ask yourself some questions to <a href="https://theconversation.com/ransomware-data-breach-cyberattack-what-do-they-have-to-do-with-your-personal-information-and-how-worried-should-you-be-162404">assess your risk</a>. If the stolen data was your purchase history, maybe that won’t be used to hurt you. But if it was your credit card number, that’s a different story.</p>
<p>Data breaches are a good opportunity “to change your passwords, especially at banks, brokerages and any site that retains your credit card number,” he wrote. In addition to using unique passwords and two-factor authentication, “you should also consider closing old unused accounts so that the information associated with them is no longer available.” </p>
<h2>2. The market for your stolen data</h2>
<p>Most data breaches are financial crimes, but the hackers generally don’t use the stolen data themselves. Instead, they sell it on the black market, usually via <a href="https://qz.com/260716/these-are-the-websites-where-hackers-flip-stolen-credit-card-data-after-an-attack/">websites on the dark web</a>, for other criminals and scammers to use.</p>
<p>This black market is awash in personal data, so much so that your information is probably worth a lot less than you would guess. For example, stolen PayPal account information <a href="https://www.privacyaffairs.com/dark-web-price-index-2021/">goes for $30</a>. </p>
<p>Buyers <a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-how-much-your-personal-information-is-worth-to-cybercriminals-and-what-they-do-with-it-158934">use stolen data in several ways</a>, writes <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ravi-sen-1224935">Ravi Sen</a>, an associate professor of information and operations management at Texas A&M University. Common uses are stealing your money or identity. “Credit card numbers and security codes can be used to create clone cards for making fraudulent transactions,” he writes. “Social Security numbers, home addresses, full names, dates of birth and other personally identifiable information can be used in identity theft.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jYOhtd-87n8?wmode=transparent&start=0" width="440"></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The T-Mobile breach revealed in August 2021 exemplifies the challenges consumers face when hackers steal their information from large corporations.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. How to prepare for the inevitable</h2>
<p>With all this bad news, it’s tempting to throw up your hands and assume there’s nothing you can do. <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/w-david-salisbury-664918">W. David Salisbury</a>, a professor of cybersecurity management, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/rusty-baldwin-664994">Rusty Baldwin</a>, a research professor of computer science at the University of Dayton, write that there are <a href="https://theconversation.com/data-breaches-are-inevitable-heres-how-to-protect-yourself-anyway-109763">steps you can take to protect yourself</a>.</p>
<p></p>
<p>“Think defensively about how you can protect yourself from an almost inevitable attack, rather than assuming you’ll avoid harm,” they write. The key is focusing on the information that’s most important to protect. Uppermost are your passwords, particularly for banking and government services. Use different passwords for different sites, and use long – though not necessarily complicated – passwords, they write.</p>
<p>The most effective way to protect your data is to add another layer of security via multifactor authentication. And rather than rely on websites to text or email you authentication codes, which can be hijacked, you should use an app or USB device that uses <a href="https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/deep-dive-end-end-encryption-how-do-public-key-encryption-systems-work">public-key encryption</a>, they write.</p>
<h2>4. Don’t make it easy for the thieves</h2>
<p>The risk to your personal information isn’t just having it stolen from a third party. <a href="https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-recognize-and-avoid-phishing-scams">Phishing attacks</a> can get you to do the thieves’ work for them. These emails fool people into entering personal information and passwords on fake websites controlled by data thieves.</p>
<p>It turns out that you’re probably pretty good at sensing when something is off about an email message. <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/rick-wash-1266664">Rick Wash</a>, an associate professor of information science and cybersecurity at Michigan State University, found that the average person <a href="https://theconversation.com/you-know-how-to-identify-phishing-emails-a-cybersecurity-researcher-explains-how-to-trust-your-instincts-to-foil-the-attacks-169804">is as good as a cybersecurity expert</a> at sensing when something is weird about an email message. </p>
<p>The trick to protecting yourself from phishing attacks is remembering that phishing exists and could explain what you’re sensing about an email message. </p>
<p>“The people who were good at noticing phishing messages reported stories about specific phishing incidents they had heard about,” he wrote. “Familiarity with specific phishing incidents helps people remember phishing generally.”</p>
<p><i>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</i><!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172203/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: currentcolor none medium; padding: 0px; text-shadow: none;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/team#eric-smalley">Eric Smalley</a>, Science + Technology Editor, <i><a href="http://www.theconversation.com/">The Conversation</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-47026102015226886672021-11-01T00:45:00.002-07:002021-11-01T00:45:29.872-07:00How many satellites are orbiting Earth?<p> </p><figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421399/original/file-20210915-14293-1wjwc0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C1%2C750%2C499&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
<figcaption>
Thousands of the satellites orbiting Earth are small – like this cubical satellite seen here being released from the International Space Station.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/24783645598/in/photolist-DL3Eos-2g25mh1-wYYTTe-X7fcWU-USsm8j-cWHRnY-tjYH6M-J4A9e5-2ggsEWo-2k3awWv-2dC3kEA-QZJn5h-YW2NkG-zkcYxm-hxEFAE-hxGaqc-N4fitw-k4woYu-kfZ3vX-2ke6Fxp-2kXUfFa-9ZT3gD-2j8CjNG-2mf1prm-2jaNJDv-soW6Bf-27r4vpy-9Nz3As-2jRr1P9-2kHskod-2kHwtaX-rs6muf-9dMsRi-s7wkDA-s7vaDW-rshGun-yEZ8FJ-smNyRh-2j9QNJa-rs6mbj-2keqFBm-oPKN18-2gr3mkN-m2SWHp-s7D7v6-2kHvXuJ-2jE3zHs-2ioBQGW-kfZ3tn-k31c8m">NASA</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421720/original/file-20210916-25-2hsnlo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421720/original/file-20210916-25-2hsnlo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421720/original/file-20210916-25-2hsnlo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421720/original/file-20210916-25-2hsnlo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421720/original/file-20210916-25-2hsnlo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421720/original/file-20210916-25-2hsnlo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421720/original/file-20210916-25-2hsnlo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It seems like every week, another rocket is launched into space carrying <a href="https://theconversation.com/bringing-mars-rocks-back-to-earth-on-feb-18-perseverance-rover-landed-safely-on-mars-a-lead-scientist-explains-the-tech-and-goals-153851">rovers to Mars</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/spacex-inspiration4-mission-will-send-4-people-with-minimal-training-into-orbit-and-bring-space-tourism-closer-to-reality-167611">tourists</a> or, most commonly, <a href="https://theconversation.com/beanie-babies-the-invention-of-cubesat-and-student-designed-and-built-satellites-115354">satellites</a>. The idea that “<a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/space-is-becoming-too-crowded-rocket-lab-ceo-warns/ar-BB19NaOA">space is getting crowded</a>” has been around for a few years now, but just how crowded is it? And how crowded is it going to get?</p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://www.uml.edu/Profiles/supriya-chakrabarti.aspx">professor of physics</a> and director of the <a href="https://www.uml.edu/Research/LoCSST/">Center for Space Science and Technology</a> at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Many satellites that were put into orbit have gone dead and burned up in the atmosphere, but thousands remain. <a href="https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/osoindex/search-ng.jspx?lf_id=">Groups</a> that track <a href="https://brycetech.com/reports">satellite launches</a> don’t always report the same exact numbers, but the overall trend is clear – and astounding.</p>
<p>Since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik – the first human-made satellite – in 1957, humanity has steadily been putting more and more objects into orbit every year. Over the the second half of the 20th century, there was a slow but steady growth, with <a href="https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/osoindex/search-ng.jspx?lf_id=#?c=%7B%22filters%22:%5B%7B%22fieldName%22:%22en%23object.status.inOrbit_s1%22,%22value%22:%22Yes%22%7D%5D,%22sortings%22:%5B%7B%22fieldName%22:%22en%23object.status.objectStatus_s1%22,%22dir%22:%22asc%22%7D,%7B%22fieldName%22:%22object.status.dateOfDecay_s1%22,%22dir%22:%22desc%22%7D%5D,%22match%22:null%7D">roughly 60 to 100 satellites launched yearly until the early 2010s</a>.</p>
<p>But since then, the pace has been increasing dramatically.</p>
<p>By 2020, 114 launches carried around 1,300 satellites to space, surpassing the 1,000 new satellites per year mark for the first time. But no year in the past compares to 2021. As of Sept. 16, roughly 1,400 new satellites have already begun circling the Earth, and that will only increase as the year goes on. Just this week, SpaceX <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/spacex-launchjes-51-starlinks-into-polar-orbit/ar-AAOpIcI">deployed another 51 Starlink satellites</a> into orbit. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421405/original/file-20210915-14-pryq7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three people in white lab coats and hairnets working on a satellite roughly the size of a loaf of bread." sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421405/original/file-20210915-14-pryq7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421405/original/file-20210915-14-pryq7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421405/original/file-20210915-14-pryq7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421405/original/file-20210915-14-pryq7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421405/original/file-20210915-14-pryq7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421405/original/file-20210915-14-pryq7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421405/original/file-20210915-14-pryq7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ever-shrinking size of technology has led to tiny satellites like the one students are working on here.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edwin Aguirre/University of Massachusetts Lowell</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Small satellites, easy access to orbit</h2>
<p>There are two main reasons for this exponential growth. First, it has never been easier to get a satellite into space. For example, on Aug. 29, 2021, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_CRS-23">SpaceX rocket</a> carried several satellites – including one <a href="https://www.uml.edu/Research/LoCSST/Research/spacehauc/news.aspx">built by my students</a> – to the International Space Station. On Oct. 11, 2021, these satellites will deploy into orbit, and the number of satellites will increase again.</p>
<p>The second reason is that rockets can carry more satellites more easily – and cheaply – than ever before. This increase isn’t due to rockets getting more powerful. Rather, satellites have gotten smaller thanks to the electronics revolution. The vast majority – 94% – of all spacecraft launched in 2020 were smallsats – <a href="https://brycetech.com/reports">satellites that weigh less than around 1,320 pounds (600 kilograms)</a>. </p>
<p>The majority of these satellites are used for observing Earth or for communications and internet. With a goal of bringing the internet to underserved areas of the globe, two private companies, <a href="https://www.starlink.com">Starlink by SpaceX</a> and <a href="https://onewebsatellites.com/about-us/">OneWeb</a> together launched almost 1,000 smallsats in 2020 alone. They are each <a href="https://www.osa-opn.org/home/articles/volume_32/may_2021/features/will_satellites_cripple_ground-based_astronomy/">planning to launch more than 40,000 satellites</a> in the coming years to create what are called “mega-constellations” in low-Earth orbit.</p>
<p>Several other companies are <a href="https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html">eyeing this US$1 trillion market</a>, most notably <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/amazons-project-kuiper-is-more-than-the-companys-response-to-spacex">Amazon with its Project Kuiper </a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5h2t9Oyg2o0?wmode=transparent&start=0" width="440"></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Large satellite constellations – like SpaceX’s Starlink, seen in the video above – are set to dramatically increase the number of objects orbiting Earth and are already causing problems.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A crowded sky</h2>
<p>With the huge growth in satellites, fears of a crowded sky are starting to come true. A day after SpaceX launched its first 60 Starlink satellites, astronomers began to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytUygPqjXEc">see them blocking out the stars</a>. While the impact on visible astronomy is easy to understand, radio astronomers fear they may <a href="https://www.science.org/news/2020/10/starlink-already-threatens-optical-astronomy-now-radio-astronomers-are-worried">lose 70% sensitivity in certain frequencies due to interference from satellite megaconstellations</a> like Starlink.</p>
<p>Experts have been studying and discussing the <a href="https://aas.org/satellite-constellations-1-workshop">potential problems posed by these constellations</a> and ways the <a href="https://aas.org/satellite-constellations-2-workshop">satellite companies could address them </a>. These include reducing the number and brightness of satellites, sharing their location and supporting better image-processing software.</p>
<p>As low-Earth orbit gets crowded, <a href="https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/ESA_s_Space_Environment_Report_2021">concern about space debris</a> increases, as does a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03446-y">real possibility</a> of <a href="https://swfound.org/media/6575/swf_iridium_cosmos_collision_fact_sheet_updated_2012.pdf">collisions</a>.</p>
<h2>Future trends</h2>
<p>Less than 10 years ago, the <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/space/2015-04-20/democratization-space">democratization of space was a goal yet to be realized</a>. Now, with <a href="https://www.wcvb.com/article/umass-designed-satellite-launched-up-to-international-space-station/37477067">student projects on the Space Station</a> and more than <a href="https://space.skyrocket.de/directories/sat_c.htm">105 countries</a> having at least one satellite in space, one could argue that that goal is within reach. </p>
<p>Every disruptive technological advancement requires updates to the rules – or the creation of new ones. SpaceX has tested ways to <a href="https://www.osa-opn.org/home/articles/volume_32/may_2021/features/will_satellites_cripple_ground-based_astronomy/">lower the impact of Starlink constellations</a>, and Amazon has disclosed plans to <a href="https://www.space.com/amazon-kuiper-satellite-constellation-fcc-approval.html">de-orbit their satellites within 355 days after mission completion</a>. These and other actions by different stakeholders make me hopeful that commerce, science and human endeavors will find sustainable solutions to this potential crisis.</p>
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<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/supriya-chakrabarti-717779">Supriya Chakrabarti</a>, Professor of Physics, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-massachusetts-lowell-1534">University of Massachusetts Lowell</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-38151772024991271432021-11-01T00:42:00.002-07:002021-11-01T00:42:54.834-07:00The spooky and dangerous side of black licorice<p> </p><figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363719/original/file-20201015-13-1edro0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C40%2C6689%2C4416&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
<figcaption>
Black licorice gets its distinctive flavor from licorice root.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/heap-of-licorice-roots-and-black-salt-licorice-royalty-free-image/1171067902?adppopup=true">PicturePartners/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Black licorice may look and taste like an innocent treat, but this candy has a dark side. On Sept. 23, 2020, it was reported that black licorice was the culprit in the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/archive-04cf918055b735ea69483dd00e281253">death of a 54-year-old man in Massachusetts</a>. How could this be? Overdosing on licorice sounds more like a twisted tale than a plausible fact.</p>
<p>I have a longstanding interest in how chemicals in our food and the environment affect our body and mind. When something seemingly harmless like licorice is implicated in a death, we are reminded of the famous proclamation by Swiss physician Paracelsus, the Father of Toxicology: “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.”</p>
<p><a href="https://wjsulliv.wixsite.com/sullivanlab">I am a professor </a> in the department of pharmacology and toxicology and <a href="https://authorbillsullivan.com">author of the book</a> “<a href="https://www.nationalgeographicpartners.com/press/2019/10/-pleased-to-meet-me--genes--germs--and-the-curious-forces-that-m/">Pleased to Meet Me: Genes, Germs, and the Curious Forces That Make Us Who We Are</a>.” </p>
<h2>The root of the problem</h2>
<p>The unfortunate man who succumbed to excessive black licorice consumption is not alone. There are a smattering of similar case reports in medical journals, in which patients experience <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26380428/">hypertension crisis</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.5414/cn107011">muscle breakdown</a> or even death. Adverse reactions are most frequently seen in people over the age of 40 who are eating far more black licorice than the average person. In addition, they are usually consuming the product for prolonged periods of time. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMcpc2002420">In the most recent case</a>, the Massachusetts man had been eating a bag and a half of black licorice every day for three weeks.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365280/original/file-20201023-18-upsl27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365280/original/file-20201023-18-upsl27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365280/original/file-20201023-18-upsl27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365280/original/file-20201023-18-upsl27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365280/original/file-20201023-18-upsl27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365280/original/file-20201023-18-upsl27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365280/original/file-20201023-18-upsl27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365280/original/file-20201023-18-upsl27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" /></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><i>Glycyrrhiza glabra</i> is a species native to Eurasia and North Africa from which most confectionery licorice is produced.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Glycyrrhiza_glabra_-_K%C3%B6hler%E2%80%93s_Medizinal-Pflanzen-207.jpg">Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Licorice is a flowering plant native to parts of Europe and Asia. Its scientific name, <i>Glycyrrhiza</i>, is derived from the Greek words “glykos” (sweet) and “rhiza” (root). The aromatic and sweet extract from its root has long been used as an herbal remedy for a wide variety of health maladies, from heartburn and stomach issues to sore throats and cough. However, there is <a href="https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/black-licorice-trick-or-treat">insufficient evidence to support that licorice is effective in treating any medical condition</a>.</p>
<p>Glycyrrhizin (also called glycyrrhizic acid) is the chemical in black licorice that gives the candy its signature flavor, but it also leads to its toxic effects. </p>
<p>Glycyrrhizin mimics the hormone <a href="https://www.yourhormones.info/hormones/aldosterone/">aldosterone</a>, which is made by the adrenal glands when the body needs to retain sodium and excrete potassium. Sodium and potassium work together as a kind of cellular battery that drives communication between nerves and the contraction of muscles. Too much glycyrrhizin upsets the balance of these electrolytes, which can raise blood pressure and disturb the heart’s rhythm. Other symptoms of excessive licorice intake include swelling, muscle pain, numbness and headache. Examination of the man who died from consuming too much licorice revealed that he had <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMcpc2002420">dangerously low levels of potassium, consistent with glycyrrhizin toxicity.</a></p>
<p>It should be noted that a number of licorice-based foods do not contain real licorice, but use a flavoring substitute called anise oil, which does not pose the dangers discussed here. In addition, despite its name, <a href="https://www.livestrong.com/article/537724-black-licorice-vs-red-licorice/">red licorice rarely contains licorice extract</a>. Instead, red licorice is infused with chemicals that impart its cherry or strawberry flavor.</p>
<p>Products that contain real licorice are usually labeled as such, and list licorice extract or glycyrrhizic acid among the ingredients. Be advised that some products, such as black jelly beans or Good & Plenty, are mixtures of different candies that contain both anise oil and licorice extract.</p>
<figure class="align-center">
<img alt="" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365294/original/file-20201023-23-1uee3ur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365294/original/file-20201023-23-1uee3ur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365294/original/file-20201023-23-1uee3ur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365294/original/file-20201023-23-1uee3ur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365294/original/file-20201023-23-1uee3ur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365294/original/file-20201023-23-1uee3ur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365294/original/file-20201023-23-1uee3ur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" />
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Red licorice is sickly sweet but safe to eat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/wall-of-licorice-royalty-free-image/103742661?adppopup=true">Darren Boucher/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hidden dangers that increase risk</h2>
<p>Glycyrrhizin has the distinct licorice flavor and is <a href="https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?contenttypeid=19&contentid=Licorice">50 times sweeter than sugar</a> and has been used in other types of candy, soft drinks, tea, Belgian beers, throat lozenges and tobacco. This can make it challenging to keep track of how much glycyrrhizin has been consumed, and a combination of these products could trigger adverse effects.</p>
<p>Some people take dietary or health supplements that already contain licorice, which increases the risk of toxic effects from eating black licorice candy. Certain medications such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.5414/cn107011">hydrochlorothiazide</a> are diuretics that cause increased urination, which can lower potassium levels in the body. Glycyrrhizin also lowers potassium levels, further disrupting the balance of electrolytes, which can produce muscle cramps and irregular heart rhythms.</p>
<p>People with certain preexisting conditions are more susceptible to black licorice overdose. </p>
<p>For example, patients who already have low potassium levels (hypokalemia), high blood pressure or heart arrhythmia are likely to have greater sensitivity to the effects of excessive licorice. Those with liver or kidney deficiencies will also retain glycyrrhizin in their bloodstream for longer times, increasing their risk of experiencing its adverse effects.</p>
<h2>What to do?</h2>
<p>If you’re a fan of black licorice, there is no need to ban it from your pantry. Eaten in small quantities from time to time, licorice poses no significant threat to otherwise healthy adults and children. But it is advisable to monitor your intake.</p>
<p></p>
<p>With Halloween approaching, be sure to remind your kids that candy is a “<a href="https://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@global/documents/downloadable/ucm_305557.pdf">sometimes food</a>,” especially the black licorice. The <a href="https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/black-licorice-trick-or-treat">FDA has issued warnings</a> about the rare but serious effects of too much black licorice, advising that people avoid eating more than two ounces of black licorice a day for two weeks or longer. The agency states that if you have been eating a lot of black licorice and experience an irregular heart rhythm or muscle weakness, stop eating it immediately and contact your health care provider.</p>
<p>Some scientists have further cautioned against the routine use of licorice in the form of a dietary supplement or tea for its alleged health benefits, including the treatment of cough <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/emp2.12411">associated with COVID-19</a> or other respiratory infections. A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2042018812454322">review article from 2012</a> warned that “the daily consumption of licorice is never justified because its benefits are minor compared to the adverse outcomes of chronic consumption.”</p>
<p><i>Article updated to mention concerns about using licorice as a COVID-19 treatment.</i><!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147001/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: currentcolor none medium; padding: 0px; text-shadow: none;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/bill-sullivan-703249">Bill Sullivan</a>, Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology; author of Pleased to Meet Me: Genes, Germs, and the Curious Forces That Make Us Who We Are, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/indiana-university-1368">Indiana University</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license.</p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-41988038922195654522021-09-27T00:20:00.001-07:002021-09-27T00:20:41.756-07:00Diagnoses of doom mask denial about real problems facing South Africa<p> </p><h1 class="legacy"></h1>
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<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418474/original/file-20210830-14-1i3xxjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
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South African president and leader of the ruling ANC Cyril Ramaphosa.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michele Spatari/NurPhoto via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>To understand South Africa today, we need to recognise that people can focus endlessly on a country’s problems but still live in a state of denial.</p>
<p>Hand-wringing about problems which are said to spell the doom of South Africa’s negotiated democracy is a well-established custom. It began only months after the first election in which all adults could vote <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333701830_The_More_Things_Change_South_Africa's_Democracy_and_the_Burden_of_the_Past">in 1994</a>. It has become louder over the past decade and dominates the national debate, which is the preserve of the minority who enjoy access to media. </p>
<p>Right now, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-lies-behind-social-unrest-in-south-africa-and-what-might-be-done-about-it-166130">violence</a> in the KwaZulu Natal province, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-zuma-uses-war-metaphor-to-fight-allegations-of-graft-in-south-africa-156223">attacks on the judiciary</a> by former president Jacob Zuma and his supporters, and an <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0211/Presentation%20QLFS%20Q2_2021.pdf">unemployment rate of 34%</a> are the immediate causes of dismay. </p>
<p>But, while the issues change, claims that the country is in deep trouble are routine.</p>
<p>Despite this, the national debate – which is restricted to an elite comprising around <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/prisoners-of-the-past/">a third of the population</a> – is in denial. </p>
<p>How can this be? </p>
<p>The debate’s diagnoses of doom denounce what works in post-1994 South Africa while ignoring or misrepresenting the stubborn and very real problems which prevent democracy from realising its potential. In particular, blaming the governing African National Congress (ANC) has become a substitute for facing deep-rooted problems which would remain whoever governed.</p>
<h2>How the denial works</h2>
<p>To illustrate how this type of denial works, the three problems which are currently in focus are all real – but far too real to be blamed only on some politicians. </p>
<p>The violence <a href="https://theconversation.com/violence-in-south-africa-an-uprising-of-elites-not-of-the-people-164968">was a result of an incomplete journey to democracy</a>, which means that the security forces are deeply factionalised and that corrupt networks will use violence to protect their turf. </p>
<hr />
<p>
<i>
<b>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/violence-in-south-africa-an-uprising-of-elites-not-of-the-people-164968">Violence in South Africa: an uprising of elites, not of the people</a>
</b>
</i>
</p>
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<p>Yet it is blamed purely on police incompetence or poverty. And the ANC is blamed for both.</p>
<p>The attacks on judges <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/lawyers-warn-against-baseless-attacks-on-judiciary-da0907ca-53e9-4fab-96af-6ef705b4d1e7">are treated with alarm</a> despite the fact that they are no threat to the constitutional order. They have little credibility in the national debate because they are clearly ploys by politicians desperate to escape prosecution for corruption. Their credibility is further undermined by the fact that those who denounce the judges never hesitate to use the courts when this suits them. </p>
<p>But a real threat to the justice system which has been evident for years – in which grassroots citizens whose living areas are plagued by violence are impatient with <a href="https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/community-demands-student-murder-suspect-be-denied-bail/">due legal process and the courts</a> – is hardly noticed in the now routine rush to blame ANC politicians.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2021/08/24/sa-unemployment-rate-increases-to-34-4-in-q2-of-2021-stats-sa">unemployment figures</a> have prompted much denunciation of the government. But there was no similar reaction in 2003 when <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/51660/ancs-employment-rhetoric-a-timeline/">the rate was 31%</a>. This went unnoticed because the economy was doing well for the minority able to benefit from it. Since they dominate the debate, it simply ignored reality. </p>
<p>Nor has anyone pointed out that unemployment has been growing for 50 years and that the lowest jobless numbers of the past two decades were higher than those in the Netherlands <a href="https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2009/12/unemployment-in-1930s-unprecedentedly-high">during the Great Depression</a>. </p>
<p>The debate is in denial over the reality that unemployment is a deep-rooted and long-standing problem.</p>
<p>The denial does not necessarily target the governing party directly. So, a prominent theme is criticism of the political system despite the fact that it works largely as it meant to for the minority whose voices are heard. </p>
<p>Moves are afoot to change the electoral system “<a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-07-30-is-electoral-reform-the-best-way-to-build-a-better-south-african-democracy/">to ensure more accountable government</a>”, despite the fact that local government already has the system to which the debate wants to move and is widely agreed to be a site of very little accountability. </p>
<p>A set of hearings at the <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">commission of inquiry</a> into Zuma-era corruption began a pattern in which parliament <a href="https://www.polity.org.za/article/busy-mps-didnt-sit-and-do-nothing-during-state-capture-baleka-mbete-tells-zondo-commission-2021-05-19">is said to be defective</a> because it did not hold the ANC to account. The search is on for legal fixes which will force it to do what the one-third who take part in the debate want. Secret ballots are demanded for parliamentary votes in the hope that legislators will do what the debate wants, not what the parties for whom citizens voted want.</p>
<p>None of the proposed changes would make democracy work better – most would weaken it. Changing to an electoral system used by deeply unpopular municipalities will solve nothing; encouraging legislators to hide from voters when they cast ballots will strengthen elites and weaken the citizenry. </p>
<p>The whole point of parliaments is that they give the power to make decisions to the party which wins a majority. Rules to curb that will take the country back to minority rule, not forward to a brighter future. South African democracy works well for those who can make themselves heard – so well that, in a country where it was once common to fear that the ANC would control too much, it is routinely denounced by anyone who wants to be taken seriously by the debate.</p>
<p>Why this frenzy to fix what is not broken? Because the political system will not satisfy the debate as long it allows the ANC to govern. Supporters of a changed electoral system claim it would <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/opinion/2021/2021-03/south-africa-is-ripe-for-electoral-reform.html">weaken “party bosses”</a>. So do those who want to force parliament to do what they want and those who want legislators to be allowed to cheat on their voters. </p>
<p>In all three cases, “party bosses” is code for the leadership of the governing party.</p>
<h2>Facing deep-rooted problems</h2>
<p>The key point here is not that the ANC should not be held to account. Trying to ensure that the governing party does what citizens want it to do is a core feature of democracy. Voters being rude about the governing party is a democratic habit. </p>
<p>The ANC has much for which it should be forced to account: it did not create most of the patterns for which it is blamed, but has done far too little to change them and often seems happy simply to live with them. </p>
<p>But there is a huge difference between holding a governing party to account and making it an excuse for failing to face deep-rooted problems. Fixating on the ANC has given the one-third an excuse not to face difficult realities.</p>
<p>South Africa is a country beset by many problems, only one of which it solved in 1994 – the fact that 90% of the population were denied citizenship rights. Its problems routinely create crises which could be opportunities to face deep-rooted problems. But the opportunities are routinely wasted by a national debate which finds blaming a political party and its current leaders a convenient way of ducking responsibility for tackling these realities.</p>
<p>As long as that continues, the problems will persist because the prospect of tackling them will be drowned out by angry denial.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166968/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: currentcolor none medium; padding: 0px; text-shadow: none;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/steven-friedman-297963">Steven Friedman</a>, Professor of Political Studies, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-johannesburg-1275">University of Johannesburg</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-48633354548964428982021-09-27T00:13:00.000-07:002021-09-27T00:13:28.642-07:00Unpacking South Africa’s excess deaths. What is known and where the gaps are<p> </p><h1 class="legacy"></h1>
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<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421578/original/file-20210916-15-pg9an2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
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A pop-up site in Johannesburg aimed at encouraging mini-bus taxi operators and commuters to vaccinate on site.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Luba Lesolle/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p><i>In the 2000s experts from the University of Cape Town and the South African Medical Research Council built a system to track AIDS mortality on a monthly and a yearly basis, using data from the Department of Home Affairs. In 2020 researchers built on this system to track COVID-19 deaths in South Africa. Now, South Africa is one of few countries in the developing world that have managed to build a near-real time mortality tracking system. The South African Medical Research Council publishes a <a href="https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-africa">weekly report</a> on deaths in the country. The Conversation’s Ina Skosana spoke to demographer Tom Moultrie about what the data shows.</i></p>
<hr />
<p><b>Who, according to your figures, is dying, and where are they?</b></p>
<p>The weekly mortality <a href="https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-africa">report</a> provides information on deaths registered in almost real-time on the National Population Register. These are used to determine the actual number of deaths that have occurred in the country and calculate the number of excess deaths over and above the numbers that would be expected had the historical mortality trends before the COVID-19 pandemic continued. </p>
<p>In South Africa between May 2020 and early September 2021, over a quarter of a million more people have died from natural causes than was predicted for that time period. </p>
<p>The vast majority – three quarters – are over the age of 60. </p>
<p>The burden of this has been very heavily felt by those at older ages. But it is not completely unaffecting those aged under 60. And that is because of the high <a href="https://www.samrc.ac.za/media-release/silent-killer-why-south-africa%E2%80%99s-health-could-crumble-under-pressure-non-communicable#:%7E:text=The%20four%20major%20NCDs%20share,NCD%20epidemic%20in%20South%20Africa.">prevalence</a> of noncommunicable diseases. South Africa has a high <a href="https://www.samrc.ac.za/media-release/silent-killer-why-south-africa%E2%80%99s-health-could-crumble-under-pressure-non-communicable#:%7E:text=The%20four%20major%20NCDs%20share,NCD%20epidemic%20in%20South%20Africa.">incidence</a> of diseases and conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity. These are all <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-care/underlyingconditions.html">known</a> cofactors for COVID-19 related mortality </p>
<p>The geography of where people are dying is largely a reflection of where people are living. The actual count of excess deaths is lower in the sparsely populated Northern Cape than more densely-populated provinces such as the Western Cape or Gauteng. Allowing for population size and age-distribution, the three most-affected provinces are the Northern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Eastern Cape; while the three least-affected provinces are the Western Cape, North West, and Gauteng.</p>
<p><b>What are the leading causes of death?</b></p>
<p>This is the real problem we have with trying to understand COVID-19 deaths in the country. We get the data we use from the Department of Home Affairs, which only classifies deaths by natural or unnatural causes.</p>
<p>Unnatural causes of death would be homicides, suicides and accidents. Natural causes refers to medical causes of death. </p>
<p>At the time of death, a doctor or medical attendant records the chain of causes leading to death on an official death notification form. But that information is not captured in real time by the Department of Home Affairs. This data is only released by Statistics South Africa many years after the fact. For example, the mortality and causes of death <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P03093/P030932018.pdf">report release in 2021</a> reflects deaths recorded through to 2018. However, the actual data are still only available through to 2017. </p>
<p>The numbers reported by the national Department of Health every night reflect those known to have died from COVID-19 and who were known to have been infected with the virus. But those reports miss many deaths, especially of those who do not die in a health facility. </p>
<p>In the meantime, however, we can look at the proportions of people testing positive, the excess deaths (above what was expected) as well as the officially reported COVID-19 deaths to get a sense of how these relate to each other. The estimates of excess deaths produced every week show that the peaks of the excess deaths follow almost exactly the peaks of reported COVID-19 deaths, as well as the cases reported a week or so earlier. </p>
<p>The South African Medical Research Council and University of Cape Town collaboration, who produce the estimates of excess deaths every week, has come to the view that between 85% and 95% of the excess natural deaths in the country are related to COVID-19. </p>
<p>But we do not know for certain. That’s one of the great tragedies of vital registration systems in sub-Saharan Africa and the developing world generally.</p>
<p><b>How can this information be used in the COVID-19 response?</b></p>
<p>The excess deaths shows that the effects of COVID-19 are far more severe than that reflected in the national data. We can see that even at a more granular level by looking at the provincial data. The number of COVID-19 deaths reported in the Western Cape – which has the best-functioning health data system in the country – is about 70% of the number of excess deaths estimated for the province. Based on this information we can be fairly certain that other provinces are missing COVID-19 deaths.</p>
<p>But even if we can’t attribute all of those excess deaths to COVID-19, we can say with a high degree of certainty that a lot more people have died from COVID-19 than has been reported by the National Department of Health.</p>
<p>Another thing that we’ve managed to do during this period of <a href="https://www.gov.za/covid-19/resources/regulations-and-guidelines-coronavirus-covid-19">repeated lockdowns and changes in regulations </a> has been to try and tease out the effects of the various alcohol bans and curfews on the number of unnatural deaths. Unnatural deaths – as a consequence of homicide, suicide, and accidents – tend to be strongly associated with alcohol. And one of the things which we have managed to show in the <a href="http://www.samj.org.za/index.php/samj/article/view/13345">paper</a>, which we published in the South African Medical Journal, was exactly how extreme the effects of banning alcohol are in terms of their impacts on the number of unnatural deaths. We also showed that the partial restrictions on the sale of alcohol are largely ineffective. </p>
<p>So this data contributes to the evidence base which government can draw on to determine what their COVID-19 response should be.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167920/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: currentcolor none medium; padding: 0px; text-shadow: none;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/tom-moultrie-405535">Tom Moultrie</a>, Professor of Demography, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-cape-town-691">University of Cape Town</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-33107815934730790312021-08-28T23:51:00.004-07:002021-08-28T23:51:50.245-07:00How poverty and violence are linked with anxiety in young South Africans<p> </p><h1 class="legacy"></h1>
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Young people living in urban informal settlement are exposed to high levels of violence and poverty.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Darren Stewart/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>Over the past 10 years there has been increasing awareness of the importance of promoting good mental health in <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC189311">South Africa</a>. Most of the mental health awareness campaigns have been around <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/world-health-day-2017-16-nov-2016-1003">depression</a>, suicidal thoughts and suicide, and <a href="https://www.safmh.org/speak-your-mind-campaign/">alcohol abuse</a>.</p>
<p>Important and often overlooked forms of poor mental health are anxiety disorders. The most recent estimates of anxiety disorders in South Africa are from a 2009 nationally representative <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/samj/article/view/50764">study</a>. Anxiety disorders were the most common form of poor mental health reported by South Africans in the research. More than 8% reported anxiety disorder in the past year. Anxiety disorders include agoraphobia, which is the fear of places or situations that may cause embarrassment, as well as panic attacks. A broader form of anxiety is generalised anxiety disorder. It manifests itself as ongoing generalised worry. </p>
<p>This worry can be about many things – from money to how to provide for children and hopes for the future. Such generalised anxiety is associated with increased <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/1107248">substance misuse</a>, greater risk of acquiring HIV, as well as <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/481732">other mental health disorders</a>. It may also reduce people’s economic well-being through limiting their ability to look for work, or go out and work.</p>
<p>Studies <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6522/eaay0214.abstract">globally</a> have broadly <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032715302330">identified</a> two main structural drivers of anxiety: poverty and violence.</p>
<p>In South Africa <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=12075">half of adults</a> are living below the poverty line, defined as earning an income of less than R1,183 per month. Similarly, experiences of violence in childhood and later life are common. A <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214109X18300603">study</a> among 15-17-year olds found that 10% of boys and 15% of girls had experienced sexual violence in their lifetime. Violence and injuries are the <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60948-X/fulltext">second leading cause</a> of lost disability-adjusted life years in South Africa. </p>
<p>Yet the challenges of poverty, violence and chronic stress experienced by many South Africans daily and for many years are not uniform. Young people, particularly those living in the challenging contexts of urban informal settlements, may be more at risk of experiencing generalised anxiety disorder. This is because poverty and community violence are more common in these spaces than in other communities. </p>
<p>Few studies look at anxiety. But it remains the most common form of mental health disorder in South Africa.</p>
<p>Understanding the causes is important for starting to understand how to address generalised anxiety disorders. In our <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666560321000104">recent research</a> we spoke to young people living in informal settlements in eThekwini Municipality, in KwaZulu-Natal. We asked them about their symptoms of anxiety, as well as potential risk factors for anxiety. These included abuse in childhood, interpersonal violence, food insecurity and stress related to poverty.</p>
<p>Symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder were higher in respondents who reported experiencing particularly extreme levels of poverty and experiencing violence. Addressing these two factors is critical for reducing poor mental health and its future impacts on individuals and potentially their children. </p>
<h2>Anxiety in urban informal settlements</h2>
<p>Our study was conducted in 2018. The study participants were young women and men (ages 18-30) who were already part of an intervention trial called <a href="https://www.whatworks.co.za/global-programme-projects/stepping-stones-and-creating-futures-south-africa">Stepping Stones and Creating Futures</a>. This intervention was run by the South African Medical Research Council and Project Empower, and sought to reduce poverty and violence among young people living in urban informal settlements.</p>
<p>We asked the respondents (488 women and 505 men) about their own experiences of symptoms related to generalised anxiety disorder. These are symptoms such as feeling nervous, not being able to stop worrying and being restless. In our study we found a high rate of women and men reporting moderate or severe symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder – 18.6% and 19.6%, respectively – as assessed through <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/410326">seven questions</a> which comprised the Generalised Anxiety Disorder 7 Scale. </p>
<p>We asked women and men a range of questions about their experiences of poverty, violence and stress. We also looked at multiple potential risk factors for anxiety. Women with more severe symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder, as compared to those with few symptoms, were more likely to have stolen because of hunger in the past month, and be stressed about lack of work. They were also likely to have experienced more adverse events such as witnessing the death of someone or being robbed at knife or gunpoint, and to have experienced violence from a partner in the past year.</p>
<p>For men, a similar pattern to women was seen. More severe generalised anxiety disorder symptoms were associated with poverty and experience of violence. Specifically, men with more anxiety symptoms, as compared to those with fewer symptoms, had stolen in the past month because of hunger, reported more adverse experiences as children, and had more adverse experiences in adulthood. </p>
<h2>Addressing anxiety in South Africa</h2>
<p>Our findings show how poverty, experiences of violence and adverse events are key contributing factors for generalised anxiety disorder among young people living in urban informal settlements.</p>
<p>South Africa must address the wider structural drivers of poor mental health, specifically poverty, unemployment and violence. It is the only way to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and specifically Goal 3.4, which emphasises the need to promote mental health and well-being.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166443/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: currentcolor none medium; padding: 0px; text-shadow: none;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/andrew-gibbs-459909">Andrew Gibbs</a>, Senior specialist scientist: Gender and Health Research Unit, Medical Research Council, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/south-african-medical-research-council-1976">South African Medical Research Council</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-49637071634809214502021-05-16T02:23:00.000-07:002021-05-16T02:23:07.370-07:00Why an amnesty for grand corruption in South Africa is a bad idea<p> </p><h1 class="legacy"></h1>
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<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363935/original/file-20201016-23-au6zjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
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Thuli Madonsela, professor of law and former Public Protector of South Africa.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA</span></span>
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<p>South Africa’s former Public Protector, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-south-africas-public-protector-has-set-a-high-bar-for-her-successor-63891">Thuli Madonsela</a>, provoked a political storm recently when she suggested that public servants implicated in grand corruption should be given the chance to apply for <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-10-13-a-chance-to-start-with-a-clean-slate-thuli-madonsela-urges-sa-to-consider-amnesty-for-the-corrupt/">amnesty</a>.</p>
<p>Many South Africans, weary of rampant, unchecked and unaccountable corruption, could be forgiven for asking: what on earth was she thinking?</p>
<p>Madonsela won the admiration of many South Africans because of her steely resolve in the face of malfeasance and breaches of the rules of integrity in public office. Her proposal suggested she might be going soft on corruption.</p>
<p>To be effective as the Public Protector Madonsela required many attributes, as I set out in my 2013 book, <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/richard-calland-the-zuma-years/lwlk-1845-g5a0"><i>The Zuma Years</i></a>. These included independence of mind, a very thick skin and a certain contrarian eccentricity that rendered her far less susceptible to the numerous attempts to intimidate her as she took on then president Jacob Zuma and his state capture network.</p>
<p>Her amnesty idea displays all of these characteristics. </p>
<p>It should be taken seriously, if only to affirm the merit of a diametrically opposed position.</p>
<p>It’s an inherently bad idea.</p>
<h2>Bad timing</h2>
<p>Madonsela’s timing is especially unfortunate. It is only in very recent times that <a href="https://www.saps.gov.za/dpci/index.php">the Hawks</a>, the priority crimes investigating police unit, and other agencies of the criminal justice system appear to have recovered the institutional capacity to begin prosecuting those responsible for the deep-lying state capture project.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/opposition-parties-welcome-arrests-of-alleged-masterminds-behind-free-state-asbestos-contract-20200930">Recent developments</a> have begun to suggest that the net is finally tightening around the bigger fish that are the true architects of systematic corruption in the country.</p>
<p>This has been widely <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/arrest-of-corruption-suspects-welcomed--sacp">welcomed</a>. Accountability, at last.</p>
<p>Against the grain of this public view, Madonsela, <a href="https://blogs.sun.ac.za/inaugural-lectures/event/prof-thuli-madonsela/">a law professor</a>, entered the fray to suggest that instead of being tough on the perpetrators, an olive branch should be extended.</p>
<p>This is an example of the “independent-mindedness” for which Madonsela was <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-south-africas-public-protector-has-set-a-high-bar-for-her-successor-63891">rightly acclaimed</a> during her seven-year term as Public Protector from 2009-2016.</p>
<p>It is also not only contrarian, but also eccentric in that it makes so little sense. </p>
<p>To be fair to her, she tried to clarify later that she did not mean amnesty for every perpetrator, and certainly not the big fish. Her idea is targeted at those whose “status”, <a href="https://www.702.co.za/podcasts/415/the-john-perlman-show/370859/former-public-protector-prof-thuli-madonsela-calls-for-a-corruption-amnesty-for-public-servants">she says</a>, “in the food chain is quite junior”.</p>
<p>But the first of a series of fatal flaws in her idea is about where to draw the line: on what basis should one distinguish the smaller from the bigger fish?</p>
<p>Those who had played a “minor but critical” role was how she framed her idea. There is already a problem here: is it possible for something to be both “critical” to a (criminal) enterprise and yet still “minor”? </p>
<p>I think not.</p>
<h2>Half-baked idea</h2>
<p>Madonsela confirmed that amnesty should be available on a legal rather than a moral basis. Yet, in a radio <a href="https://www.702.co.za/podcasts/415/the-john-perlman-show/370859/former-public-protector-prof-thuli-madonsela-calls-for-a-corruption-amnesty-for-public-servants">interview</a> after she’d floated the idea, and drawn a lot of flak, she added to the confusion.</p>
<p>At first Madonsela spoke of people who may have “bent the rules” unwittingly, in which case, they may well have a legal defence to criminal conduct. Later, she clarified that she intended to cover individuals with “agency”, even to the extent that their palms have been “greased with money” (which, she argued, they would have to pay back in return for amnesty).</p>
<p>If the right to amnesty was indeed to be a legal entitlement, then the terms on which entitlement to amnesty applies have to be very clearly and carefully drawn. This much has been revealed in Constitutional Court decisions concerning the legal rationality of presidential amnesties or pardons in the case of <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/1997/4.html">women convicts</a> and <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2010/4.html">perpetrators of apartheid era offences</a>.</p>
<p>Madonsela’s public policy rationale appears to be that without an inducement, the smaller cogs in the bigger wheels of state corruption may seek to hide and avoid prosecution when what is required is that they should come forward with information about the bigger fish.</p>
<p>Perhaps, then, an offer of amnesty – in effect, a legal right to indemnity from prosecution – deserves to be given serious consideration. This, especially if it is the case that the <a href="https://nationalgovernment.co.za/units/view/66/national-prosecuting-authority-of-south-africa-npa">National Prosecuting Authority </a> is struggling to pull together the evidence to bring strong prosecutions against the most powerful perpetrators of state capture corruption.</p>
<p>But there is no evidence that this is the situation. And, moreover, there are major downsides to be weighed in the balance. </p>
<h2>The case against amnesty</h2>
<p>First of all: deterrence. </p>
<p>The fact that amnesty has been granted in the past may encourage future corrupt actors to take the risk. The corollary is that the successful prosecution of corrupt officials is likely to discourage repetition.</p>
<p>Secondly, the arguments put forward by Madonsela would, in my view, provide grounds for mitigation in sentencing – not for amnesty. One example would be “small fish” cooperating with the investigative authority and providing evidence about the bigger fish. Another example would be if someone could show that they were bullied into bending procurement rules by a superior and more powerful individual in the system.</p>
<p>Another possible avenue – common practice in criminal justice systems around the world – is the use of a “plea bargain”. Here an accused person trades information in return for facing a less serious charge.</p>
<p>Amnesty would, in effect, deprive them of this opportunity and could thereby undermine the integrity of the whole criminal justice system.</p>
<p>The other major consideration is perception – both in the eyes of key stakeholders, such as the investment community and, secondly, the general public.</p>
<p>Investors are especially eager to see if South Africa has the capacity to hold to account those who contaminated the democratic state and so undermined fair competition by enabling a rent-seekers’ paradise. It is about the strength of the rule of law. Investors want to feel confident that this is one destination where the rule of law holds and where, because of state capture prosecutions, there is less risk of a repeat.</p>
<p>And surely, above all else, the public will feel cheated if perpetrators of state capture corruption, however “minor”, get away scot-free. This, more than anything, would encourage a lawless society, steeped in a culture of impunity rather than accountability.</p>
<h2>A dangerous path to tread</h2>
<p>Attempts to trade amnesty for information about state corruption have caused conflict as well as controversy in other countries. One notable example was in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tunisia-politics-corruption-idUSKCN1BO218">Tunisia in 2017</a>. </p>
<p>But the biggest danger is that it simply sends the wrong message. This was aptly spelt out by esteemed South African artist William Kentridge reflecting on a previous attempt at taking the amnesty road in South Africa through the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> process. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A full confession can bring amnesty and immunity from prosecution or civil procedures for the crimes committed. Therein lies the central irony of the Commission. As people give more and more evidence of the things they have done they get closer and closer to amnesty and it gets more and more intolerable that these people should be <a href="https://www.academia.edu/907785/_Learning_From_the_Absurd_Violence_and_Comparative_History_in_William_Kentridge_s_Ubu_Tells_the_Truth_">given amnesty</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Admittedly, Madonsela has a different purpose in mind than the national reconciliation ambition of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process. But, no, Advocate Madonsela, a blanket amnesty would send the wrong message at the worst possible time.<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148279/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: currentcolor none medium; padding: 0px; text-shadow: none;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/richard-calland-182127">Richard Calland</a>, Associate Professor in Public Law, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-cape-town-691">University of Cape Town</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8602389991872222585.post-26825206715932667122021-03-06T23:47:00.002-08:002021-03-06T23:47:10.419-08:00South Africans are revolting against inept local government. Why it matters<p> </p><figure>
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385266/original/file-20210219-23-1982qok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" />
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Failures by municipalities to do their work are forcing many residents to take matters into their own hands.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span>
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<p>A sea change is under way at local government level in South Africa, one which all political parties had better watch out for. Citizens’ groups are taking control of municipal functions, some with the support of courts, and are delivering services where this sphere is collapsing.</p>
<p>The trend is being driven by voters who are sick of corrupt politicians – as every poll <a href="https://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/global-corruption-barometer-africa-2019/">makes clear</a>. For example, a poll <a href="https://citizensurveys.net/">run in late 2019</a> showed growing mistrust in political parties and politicians. There was a deep-seated belief that the country was headed in the wrong direction. <a href="https://citizensurveys.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Abridged-South-African-Citizens-Survey-2018-Q4-Core-Report.pdf">Over 80%</a> of respondents thought corruption was increasing.</p>
<p>The sad state of the local sphere has been lamented by many, not least the late Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu. He <a href="https://www.agsa.co.za/Portals/0/Reports/MFMA/201819/GR/Section%201%20-%20Executive%20summary.pdf">noted</a> in 2018 that “on average almost 60% of the revenue shown in the books will never find its way into the bank account”, raising the alarm that such rampant corruption and incompetence would inevitably result in a growing revolt against rates and taxes.</p>
<p>The consequence has been precisely that – talk of withholding rates and taxes, and going further to simply do what has to be done – but which government seems incapable of doing. The “<i><a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/gatvol">gatvol</a></i>” (fed-up) tipping point seems to be upon us.</p>
<h2>Growing discontent</h2>
<p>It is against this background that the country will have local government <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2021-02-11-2021-local-government-elections-will-go-ahead-as-planned-cyril-ramaphosa/">elections</a>, currently scheduled for August this year. </p>
<p>Soon the media will be replete with pundits talking about the low turnout that <a href="https://www.kas.de/documents/261596/10543300/The+South+African+non-voter+-+An+analysis.pdf/acc19fbd-bd6d-9190-f026-8d311078b670?version=1.0&t=1608150183902">generally affects local elections</a>. Some will touch on the way all parties are commonly “punished” at local rather than national elections, others will talk to the winners, losers and likely coalition partners. All this will be pretty predictable. Some of it may even be correct. But something more subterranean and interesting is happening.</p>
<p>There has been growing discontent with many local authorities. In some this has gone as far as concerned citizens successfully calling for the municipality to be dissolved and <a href="https://theconversation.com/landmark-court-ruling-highlights-crisis-in-south-africas-cities-and-towns-130140">put into administration</a>, as happened in Makhanda in the Eastern Cape province in 2020.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, citizen groups have found other ways of simply taking matters into their own hands. Instead of just moaning, people are taking action. </p>
<p>Events in <a href="https://www.kgetlengrivier.gov.za/">Kgetlengrivier Local Municipality</a>, in the platinum-rich North West province, have shown just how serious the situation has become.</p>
<p>In December 2020, in what was described as an <a href="https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/south-africa/north-west-residents-take-matters-into-their-own-hands-and-get-courts-blessing/">“astonishing judgment”</a>, a judge in the North West High Court ordered the imprisonment of the municipal manager of Kgetlengrivier for 90 days. The sentence was suspended on condition that sewage spilling into the Elands and Koster rivers be cleared up. </p>
<p>Remarkably, the judge also gave the residents’ association the right to take control of the area’s sewage works, and to be paid by local and provincial governments for its efforts.</p>
<p>The local residents duly took over the job of clearing sewage, successfully.</p>
<p>The legality of this will be tested on appeal, and may well be overturned by a more risk averse higher court. But the seeds have been sown, and national government seems to agree – national ministers were respondents in the case, and did not appeal. And the governing African National Congress (ANC) had better be careful – most of the places where these events are occurring are in ANC-held municipalities.</p>
<p>Take events in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-51479450">Harrismith</a> in the Free State, were residents also took over fixing the sewerage; or <a href="https://southcoastherald.co.za/250426/umdonis-tyred-citizens-threaten-withhold-rates/">Umdoni Municipality</a> in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ward15umdoni/">Scottburgh</a>, in KwaZulu-Natal, where residents are threatening to stop paying rates. In Graaff-Reinet, in the Eastern Cape, residents have objected to increases in municipal rates, frustrated by the <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-02-17-raw-sewage-flows-into-sundays-river/">broken down sewerage</a> system and other municipal services.</p>
<p>This could be construed as anarchy. And it may well be. But anarchy is often criticised and used as a pejorative – a “descent” into anarchy – rather than analysed or understood as one possible “ascent” from a corrupt and coercive politics. It means something along the lines of a belief in abolishing all government, and organising residents on a voluntary, non-coercive, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-anarchism-all-about-50373">cooperative basis</a>. </p>
<p>And this is happening, across the country, from withholding rates and taxes to taking over key service delivery functions.</p>
<p>South Africans may be leading themselves from the trough of corruption to something much more interesting, contested and dangerous to a young democracy. When an entire sphere of the state is <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-02-22-we-are-living-in-a-pigsty-lament-standerton-residents/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=We+are+living+in+a+pigsty%2C+lament+Standerton+residents+%7C+J%26J+vaccine+is+not+yet+official%2C+say+experts%C2%A0&utm_term=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sowetanlive.co.za%2Fnews%2Fsouth-africa%2F2021-02-22-we-are-living-in-a-pigsty-lament-standerton-residents%2F">close to dysfunctional</a> and can have its power, functions and revenue turned over to citizen groups because of incompetence or malfeasance, something is very seriously wrong. Yet political parties still want voters to trust them, come election time.</p>
<h2>Loss of trust</h2>
<p>Trust in all spheres of government is close to rock bottom, as is trust in political parties. In the last <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-za">Ipsos poll</a>, no party was trusted by <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-za/political-party-landscape-south-africa-amidst-covid-19">a third of its own supporters</a>. The opinion voters have of politicians could not be lower, matched by pessimism: less than half of respondents felt the country was heading in the right direction.</p>
<p>The final straw may well have been watching with revulsion as the most politically connected stole money meant for life-saving <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/1-774-service-providers-under-investigation-for-ppe-corruption-spree-siu-report-reveals-f7d93b31-4079-48af-a586-d6a6e470378b">COVID-19 protective equipment</a>. </p>
<p>Talk of withholding rates and taxes has now become commonplace. Community groups have been seeking legal advice on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pg/Graaff-Reinet-Residents-Ratepayers-Association-102908934831171/posts/?ref=page_internal">withholding rates</a> and are sharing legal opinions about the issue. Why pay, if your money is merely going to be “eaten”? This is now backed up the North West High Court ruling. Who needs government?</p>
<p>If pollsters want to understand where South Africa is going, it seems that measuring political parties and their campaigns is perhaps necessary – much as a visit to the dentist is necessary – but it may miss the point.</p>
<p>They should be polling those who no longer care about the local sphere, and who see themselves as constituting a more legitimate and, frankly, competent part of the governance infrastructure. And while taps run dry, power cuts continue due to corruption or incompetence, and no politician has yet been jailed, who is to say they are wrong?<!--Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE.--><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155483/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: medium none; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1px; max-width: 1px; min-height: 1px; min-width: 1px; opacity: 0; outline: currentcolor none medium; padding: 0px; text-shadow: none;" width="1" /><!--End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines--></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-everatt-290336">David Everatt</a>, Professor of Urban Governance, <i><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-the-witwatersrand-894">University of the Witwatersrand</a></i></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. </p>
FunwithDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11476536187937888508noreply@blogger.com0