Scientists warn that farming practices must be adapted to a warmer world and rises in global population Global warming has already harmed the world’s food production and has driven up food prices by as much as 20% over recent decades, new research has revealed. The drop in the productivity of crop plants around the world was not caused by changes in rainfall but was because higher temperatures can cause dehydration , prevent pollination and lead to slowed photosynthesis. Lester Brown , president of the Earth Policy Institute, Washington DC, said the findings indicate a turning point: “Agriculture as it exists today evolved over 11,000 years of reasonably stable climate, but that climate system is no more.” Adaptation is difficult because our knowledge of the future is not strong enough to drive new investments, he said, “so we just keep going, hoping for the best.” The scientists say their work shows how crucial it is to find ways to adapt farming to a warmer world, to ensure that rises in global population are matched by rising food production. “It is vital,” said Wolfram Schlenker, at Columbia University in New York and one of the research team. “If we continue to have the same seed varieties and temperatures continue to rise, then food prices will rise further. [Addressing] that is the big question.” The new research joins a small number of studies in which the fingerprint of climate change has been separated from natural variations in weather and other factors, demonstrating that the effects of warming have already been felt in the world. Scientists have shown that the chance of the severe heatwave that killed thousands in Europe in 2003 was made twice as likely by global warming, while other work showed that the floods that caused £3.5bn of damage in England in 2000 were made two to three times more likely. Food prices have reached new record highs this year, and have been implicated as a trigger for unrest in the Middle East and Africa. A rising appetite for meat is a critical factor, said Wolfram. “We actually have enough calories to feed the world quite comfortably, the problem is meat is really inefficient,” as many kilogrammes of grain are needed to produce one kilogramme of meat, he said. “As countries get richer and have a preference for meat, which is more expensive, they price people in poorer countries out of the market.” “The research provides evidence of big shifts in wheat and maize production,” commented Prof Tim Wheeler at the Walker Institute for Climate System Research, Reading University, UK, who added it had involved “heroic” statistical analysis. But he said that, while long-term climate change impacts were another pressure on food prices, short-term price spikes were linked to extreme weather events, such as the Russian heatwaves and wildfires in 2010 . The study, published in the journal Science , examined how rising temperatures affected the annual crop yields of all major producer nations between 1980 and 2008. Computer models were used to show how much grain would have been harvested in the absence of warming. Overall, yields have been rising over the last decades and the models took this into account. The scientists found that global wheat production was 33m tonnes (5.5%) lower than it would have been without warming and maize production was 23m tonnes (3.8%) lower. Specific countries fared worse than the average, with Russia losing 15% of its potential wheat crop, and Brazil, Mexico and Italy suffering above average losses. Some countries experienced lower production of rice and soybeans, although these drops were offset by gains in other countries. The losses drove up food prices by as much as 18.9%, the team calculated, although the rise could be as low as 6.4% if the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere strongly boosts plant growth and yields – a factor that is not well understood by scientists. Global food prices have risen by about 200% in recent years, says Schlenker. Other causes of the rise are the increased demand for meat and the diversion of food into biofuels . Nonetheless, the researchers conclude that the negative impact on crops overall is “likely to be incurring large economic and health costs”. The US, which has the world’s largest share of overall production, stood out in the analysis because it appears to have lost no production to climate change as yet. Schlenker said this was because the rise in temperature there was very small compared to other parts of the world. This was perhaps due simply to luck with the weather, or the cooling influence of aerosol particles, such as soot, that blocks warming. “US farmers are having a good time in the sense that their yields have not been impacted much and prices have been pretty high, so for them it has been pretty profitable,” he said. “But most climate models predict that eventually the US will warm.” Adapting farming to climate change could involved moving to cooler areas as existing areas warm, said Schlenker, but often soils are poorer in the new locations. He highlighted the potential of biotechnology – genetic engineering – to develop new crop varieties that are more resistant to heat, but said the potential remains unproven. “What happens over the next 20 years depends on how optimistic you are about finding those extra ways of adapting.” Food Farming Climate change The meat industry Climate change Damian Carrington guardian.co.uk
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Rolling coverage as results come in from elections to the Scottish parliament, the Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies and 279 English councils 9.52pm: Mike Smithson at PoliticalBetting is running a poll on which AV poll will turn out to be most accurate. He lists four polls, ranging from YouGov putting the no camp on 60% to ICM putting it on 68%. 9.42pm: My colleague Severin Carrell has sent me a note about the boundary changes in Scotland. The Holyrood elections have an extra twist to them: boundary changes last year means that many of the Scottish parliament’s 73 constituencies are more difficult to call, lending this year’s election campaign greater unpredictability. A seat-by-seat analysis by David Denver of Lancaster university last year suggests the Tories gain most: if the 2007 election had been fought on the new boundaries, the Tories could have had 19 seats, not 18, while Labour would fall back one to 45 and the SNP to 46, rather than the 47 they actually won. Denver says 42 seats have seen “major change”, leaving 19 new ones as “hotly contested”. In theory, SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon would very narrowly lose the new seat of Glasgow Southside to Labour, while the SNP would take Aberdeen Central from Labour and their first seat in the Borders: Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale. 9.40pm: To put the figures we get tonight into perspective, here are some other national share of the vote figures. From the 2007 local elections, when the seats up for election today were last contested. This is the estimated national equivalent share of the vote figure. I’ve taken it from the chart on page 6 of this House of Commons research paper (pdf). Conservatives: 40% Labour: 26% Lib Dems: 24% From the 2010 general election. (These are the real GB voting figures for Westminster.) Conservatives: 37% Labour: 30% Lib Dems: 24% From the latest YouGov poll of voting intentions in a general election (pdf). Conservatives: 36% Labour: 40% Lib Dems: 11% 9.17pm: One of the key Labour targets in the north of England is Sheffield. My colleague Martin Wainwright will be at the count. He’s just sent me this. Labour has an easy task on the face of it in Sheffield, where the joy of embarrassing local MP Nick Clegg is a much-touted bonus of knocking out the Lib Dem minority administration. But the party is well aware that they only just managed to end the LD’s overall majority last May, and tough-as-boots Lib Dem leader Paul Scriven also survived Coun Bill Curran’s defection to Labour in September. That left Scriven with 41 members against 40 Labour, two Green and an independent. A third of the seats – 28 – are up for election tonight and there are plenty of close battlegrounds. Curran’s Walkley ward sees Lib Dem cabinet member for housing Penny Baker defend a majority of 36 last time she stood. Her colleagues in Gleadless Valley and East Ecclesfield are defending margins of 51 and 74. Nick Clegg isn’t lying low. Far from it. He voted this morning in his Sheffield Hallam constituency, bright an early, and said that local people understood that the government had a difficult job and was trying to do it “fairly, compassionately and responsibly.” First results at the English Institute of Sport are expected between 1 and 2am and a clear picture by 2.30am. 8.56pm: What are the key councils to watch? The best guide I’ve read is the one produced by Andy Sawford at the Local Government Information Unit. He’s written mini profiles of 50 councils where the results will be particularly interesting. 8.29pm: So, how do we work who’s having a good night? All parties manage expectations before elections and this year, in relation to the English local elections, we’ve seen some really blatant examples of this. This is what the three main parties have been saying. Conservatives “We’ll be pleased if we don’t lose 1,000 seats,” is the offical line from Tory HQ. Maybe I’m too cynical, but I interpreted that as evidence that they are fairly sure they won’t lose 1,000 seats. They are defending more seats than Labour and the Lib Dems combined. But, if the national opinion polls are anything to go by, the story of the night will be the collapse in the Lib Dem vote, and around 75% of the Lib Dem seats up for election are being contested in areas where the Tories are their main rivals. David Cameron could conceivably do quite well from Nick Clegg’s unpopularity (which is another reason why tonight could have an interesting impact on coalition relations). Labour Labour say that, on the basis of the way people have been voting in local council byelections, their share of the vote is 38%, the Conservatives’ 35% and the Lib Dems’ 18%. In these elections – real elections – Labour are ahead, but not by as much as they have been in most recent national opinion polls. They say that on this basis they would expect to gain between 400 and 600 seats. Their problem is that Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher of Plymouth University’s Elections Centre, who are the acknowledged experts on local elections, have also been looking at voting in council byelections and, according to this story in the Sunday Times (paywall), they think the trend suggests Labour could win as many as 1,300 seats. Rallings and Thrasher think the Tories could lose nearly 1,000 seats, and the Lib Dems about 400 seats. I’ve asked Labour to explain why the Rallings and Thrasher extrapolated figures are so different from the Labour party’s, but the officials I spoke to were unable to provide an explanation. Lib Dems “We are going to lose hundreds of seats,” a Lib Dem source told me tonight. That does fit with the Rallings and Thrasher analysis. But the Lib Dems are worried that the media will focus on the number of councils under Lib Dem control, and not on seats. There are a number of councils in the north of England where Labour could win control on the basis of just a handful of seats changing hands, I was told. The Lib Dems will claim that such losses don’t represent a drastic collapse in support. 8.27pm: Before we get going, here are some facts about the seats that are up for election today. English local elections Some 279 English councils are holding elections. In English local government some councils put all seats up for election (“all-out elections”) every four years and some councils hold more frequent elections with just a third of the seats up for grabs each time. Today’s poll is a particularly large one – more than 31 million people in England can participate in council elections – because both types of contest are taking place. To be precise, elections are taking place in 49 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 194 non-metropolitan districts. Some 9,396 seats are being contested. That’s 52% of all English council seats. On a party basis, they divide up like this: Conservatives: 5,029 (55% of all Conservative council seats in England) Labour: 1,620 (39%) Lib Dem: 1,867 (52%) Scotland All 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament are being contested. Some 73 constituency MSPs will be elected by first past the post. Another 56 MSPs will be elected by proportional representation from regional lists. The boundaries have changed since the last elections in 2007. These are the “notional” results for 2007, based on what academics believe the results would have been if that election had been fought on the new boundaries. SNP: 46 seats Labour: 45 Conservatives: 19 Lib Dems: 17 Greens: 1 Others: 1 Wales All 60 seats in the Welsh Assembly are being contested. Some 40 constituency AMs will be be elected by first past the post, and another 40 will be elected from lists using PR. In 2007 the results were: Labour: 26 seats Plaid Cymru: 15 Conservatives: 12 Lib Dems: 6 Independent: 1 Northern Ireland All 108 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly are being contested. Members are elected in 18 six-member constituencies by the single transferable vote PR system. In 2007 the results were: Democratic Unionist Party: 36 Sinn Fein: 28 Ulster Unionist Party: 18 Social Democratic and Labour Party: 16 Alliance: 7 Green: 1 Progressive Unionist Party: 1 Independents: 5 8.00pm: According to the Independent, it’s Super Thursday. There have been parliamentary or assembly elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and local elections in England and Northern Ireland. There are local elections in England every year, but this is the biggest set of elections in the four-year local government election cycle and more than 30 million people in England have had the chance to take part. On top of that, we’ve all had the chance to take part in the referendum on the alternative vote. Outside of a general election, an election night doesn’t come much bigger than this. Elections are always exciting because of what they tell you about the state of the parties nationally, and as the results come in over the next 24 hours I’ll be posting furiously about what they have to tell us about Ed Miliband’s attempts to revive the Labour party, about what being in government has done to the standing of David Cameron’s Conservative party and about quite how disastrous it all is for the Liberal Democrats and Nick Clegg. But this time there’s even more than usual at stake. The result of the AV referendum seems likely to kill all prospects of electoral reform for a generation (which could have quite profound consequences for the Lib Dems, as yet probably not fully understood). The character of Westminster coalition seems to have changed fundamentally as a result of the campaign and the way it has been conducted. Wales and Northern Ireland are electing assemblies enjoying more self-confidence and power than they’ve had before. And if, as expected, Alex Salmond wins a second term as Scotland’s first minister, then we’ll have to conclude that his long-term plan to achieve independence by stealth seems to be going reasonably well. The future of the Union hasn’t been much of an issue in the Scottish election campaign, but conceivably tonight’s results could have considerably bearing on it. Here’s a timetable of what’s coming up. Thursday night 10pm: The polls close. Counting starts in most of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly seats, and in many of the 279 English councils where elections are taking place. 10.30pm: Sky News starts its election programme, Decision Time 2011, with Adam Boulton presenting. 11.35pm: The BBC’s election programme, Vote 2011, starts on BBC 1, with David Dimbleby presenting. Around 12pm: The first Welsh results and English council results are expected. Sunderland is often the first English council to declare. Friday Around 2am: The first Scottish results are expected. A large number of English council results are expected between 2am and 3am. Around 3am: Results should be coming in thick and fast. Sheffield, a key Labour target, is one of the councils expected to declare around about now. 7.30am: Counting starts in the Leicester South byelection. 8am: Counting starts in the Northern Ireland assembly elections. Around 9am: Counting starts in Northern Ireland and in the Leicester South byelection Around 11am: Results start to come in from the small number of Scottish and Welsh constituencies that did not count overnight and from the 160-odd English councils counting on Friday. Around 2pm: Results start to come in from Northern Ireland. Around 2.30pm: The Electoral Commission is expected to announce the turnout in the AV referendum. 4pm: Counting of the votes in the AV referendum starts. The full results are not due in until around 9pm or later, but one side – the no camp, unless the polls are totally wrong – may well get more than 50% of the vote before then. By Friday night almost all the counting will be over. But the final results of the Northern Ireland assembly elections are not expected until Saturday afternoon, and the counting in the Northern Ireland local elections does not start until Monday. I’ll be blogging until around 6am tomorrow. My colleague Hélène Mulholland will then take over as we launch a new blog, and I’ll be back on Friday afternoon in time for the AV results. Local elections Local elections 2011 Welsh Assembly Government Welsh elections 2011 Welsh politics Scottish politics Scottish elections 2011 Elections 2011 Northern Irish politics Local politics Local government Alternative vote AV referendum Labour Liberal Democrats Conservatives Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
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The US president has attended a moving ceremony at the site of the 9/11 bombings in New York, joined by the emergency services and the families of those who died
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Commons debate renews calls for parliament to consider passing a privacy law to give courts clearer guidance An MP has taken out a superinjunction, allegedly to prevent embarrassing details about his life being exposed, it has been alleged during a debate in the Commons. Neither the identity, nor the party, of the MP said to have resorted to the law for a gagging order was revealed. The issue emerged at Westminster as MPs discussed whether to debate the impact of judge-made privacy laws and the increased use of superinjunctions and anonymity orders in the courts. Pressing the leader of the House, Sir George Young, to allocate government time for a debate, the Tory MP Matthew Offord, who represents Hendon, north London, said: “There has been much public discussion on the increasing use of superinjunctions and the ability of judges to decide policy instead of elected parliamentarians. Is the leader of the House aware of the anomaly this creates, if, as has been rumoured, a member of this place seeks a superinjunction to prevent discussion of their activities?” Young replied: “This is a very important issue about how we balance, on the one hand, an individual’s right to privacy and, on the other hand, the freedom of expression and transparency.” He pointed out that an inquiry by Lord Neuberger, Master of the Rolls, examining superinjunctions “and other issues relating to injunctions which bind the press”, is due to be published soon. “The government will await the report from the Master of the Rolls before deciding the next step,” Young said, “and it may then be appropriate for the House to have a debate on this important issue.” Offord told the Guardian that he intended to approach the MP alleged to have acquired the superinjunction and raise the issue “as soon as possible” as he did not believe that public figures should resort to injunctions “to promote false images of themselves”. Offord is not the first MP to exploit parliamentary privilege to try to challenge the use of restrictive legal orders, in the belief that they undermine free speech. Two months ago, Lib Dem MP John Hemming named Sir Fred Goodwin, the former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive, as the subject of a superinjunction. That gagging order banned references to Goodwin – nicknamed “Fred the Shred” – as “a banker”. Last week Hemming gave the Treasury select committee a copy of the full text of the injunction and asked its members to consider publishing it if they believed it shed light on public interest matters about the near collapse of RBS in 2008. Calls for parliament to consider passing a privacy law to give the courts clearer guidance have been growing. In a blog on the Inform website, Hugh Tomlinson QC, a member of Matrix chambers, that legislation was now necessary. “The only alternative to abdicating responsibility for the development of privacy law to the Strasbourg judges is for the press and parliament finally to accept that privacy is a proper subject for legislation,” he wrote. Superinjunctions House of Commons Owen Bowcott guardian.co.uk
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Four Met officers deny assault during and after dawn raid on British Muslim’s south London home A British Muslim has told a court how specialist police officers had beat him so badly in a dawn raid at his home that he had thought he was going to die. Southwark crown court heard from Babar Ahmad, 37, how he was the subject of a prolonged and vicious attack, starting in the bedroom of his home and continuing in a police van and at a London police station. Ahmad was under surveillance, and the officers had been told he had been trained as a terrorist and fought in Bosnia, the court has been told. Giving evidence on the second day of the trial of four officers who deny charges of assaulting Ahmad, he said that, after he had been repeatedly kicked and punched, one officer put him in a headlock in the back of the police van. The jury heard from him that one officer straddled him and said: “You will remember this day for the rest of your life, you fucking bastard. Do you understand me?” Ahmad said: “He squeezed and kept on squeezing. I remember the pressure to the side of my neck. He squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, and held it in that position. “I thought he would hold it for a few seconds, and, if I hold my breath, I could bear it and he would let go. But he didn’t let go. I was panicking because I couldn’t do anything or move. It’s like drowning. There is nothing you can do. He kept squeezing to the point where I thought ‘This guy is going to kill me. He wants to kill me. I am going to die in this van’.” Medical examinations carried out four days later showed blood in Ahmad’s urine and that there had been bleeding in the middle of both of his ears. Shortly after the arrest in December 2003, he was released without charge. The court has heard that in the 1990s Ahmad had travelled to Bosnia to fight with the Muslim forces, and was under surveillance prior to his 2003 arrest. In 2004, he was re-arrested, following a request from the United States, over claims that he helped raise money to fund terrorism. He has been in custody in the UK ever since. Earlier the jury heard Ahmad describe how he had been in bed with his wife at 5am when officers from the Met’s territorial support group smashed their way into his south London home. Moments later the officers, dressed in full protective clothing, entered his bedroom, where they carried out what he called a “sustained and very violent assault”. “It was complete confusion and shock. I had just woken up and lots of things were going through my mind: ‘Why have they come up here? Have they mixed me up with someone else? Is there a robber hiding in my house or have they come to arrest me?’ All these things were going through my mind.” The prosecutor, Jonathan Laidlaw QC, asked if he had fought or struggled. Ahmad, 37, replied: “I was completely compliant, because I had made my mind up when they came towards me I was going to co-operate and reassure them they had nothing to fear from me whatsoever “At no point did I struggle or make it difficult for them. At no point did I say anything to them, other than: ‘Can you stop hitting me’ I didn’t make it hard for them or provoke them whatsoever.” At one stage, he told the jury, he was pushed into a praying position and asked “where is your God now … pray to him.” The security service, MI5, had Ahmad under surveillance and had bugged the room. A recording of the raid was played to the seven men and five women of the jury but the contents were largely inaudible.. The court had heard that the attack continued in a police van and at Charing Cross police station. Police constables Mark Jones, Roderick James-Bowen and Nigel Cowley and Detective Constable John Donohue deny assaulting Ahmad. The arrest took place less than a year after another terror suspect, Kamel Bourgass, stabbed an anti-terror squad officer to death during a raid on a house in Manchester. The hearing continues. Police Matthew Taylor guardian.co.uk
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Fresh doubts raised over the legality of killing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden Pakistan’s foreign minister said on Thursday that US forces may have breached his country’s sovereignty, raising fresh doubts about the legality of killing Osama bin Laden. Clutching UN security council documents, Salman Bashir said: “There are legal questions that arise in terms of the UN charter. Everyone ought to be mindful of their international obligations.” His comments, at a press conference in Islamabad, may have been aimed as much at preventing India from launching a unilateral raid on Pakistan territory in revenge for the 2008 Mumbai massacres as reproaching Washington. Bashir added that this “violation of sovereignty, and the modalities for combating terrorism, raises certain legal and moral issues which fall … in the domain of the international community”. As more detailed accounts of the assault on Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad by US special forces emerged, international lawyers, religious leaders and human rights groups called for clearer justification of the legitimacy of the raid. In London, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said American confirmation that the al-Qaida leader was not holding a weapon when he died was disturbing. “The killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done,” he said. “When we are faced with someone who was manifestly a war criminal in terms of the atrocities inflicted it is important that justice is seen to be served.” In the wake of reports that only one of those who died opened fire on the US Navy Seals team, repeated revisions of the initial, official version of events have reinforced international unease. The veteran Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, was among those who exploited those doubts. The US president, he wrote, “has no way to hide that Osama was executed in the presence of his children and wives”. Following years of targeted killings by US drones along the Afghan/Pakistan border and in Yemen, the death of Bin Laden plays into a climate of legal and political suspicion about the lawfulness of American overseas strikes. The International Committee of the Red Cross discussed the Bin Laden case in Geneva. “The ICC do not … have enough facts to assess the legal and humanitarian implications,” a spokesman said. Earlier this week, the UN’s independent investigator on extrajudicial killings, Christof Heyns, said there was “considerable dispute in legal circles as to whether we are dealing with an armed conflict in respect of al-Qaida in Pakistan”. Prof Nick Grief, an international lawyer at Kent University, said that the attack had the appearance of an “extrajudicial killing without due process of the law”. He added: “It may not have been possible to take him alive… but no one should be outside the protection of the law.” Even after the end of the second world war, Nazi war criminals had been given a fair trial, Grief added. Comparisons between Bin Laden and Nazi war criminals have set the context for debates over whether greater effort should have been made to capture the founder of al-Qaida alive and bring him to justice in an international court. The writer Toby Young said that a different second world war analogy applied, since al-Qaida had not surrendered, unlike the Nazis in 1945. Comparisons should not be with Nazi war trials, he wrote, “but with the plot to assassinate Hitler … Had the Allies succeeded in assassinating any of the Nazi leaders during the Second World War, we would have applauded those responsible.” Most legal opinion in the United States has accepted the White House’s rationale that the US is at war with al-Qaida. Steven Ratner, a professor at the University of Michigan law school, said: “A lot of it depends on whether you believe Osama bin Laden is a combatant in a war or a suspect in a mass murder.” If Bin Laden was a combatant, then “whether he has a gun or not really doesn’t matter”, Ratner said. “You’re lawfully permitted to kill combatants.” The US administration has asserted that he had two weapons within reach. But David Scheffer, of Northwestern University school of law, pointed out that Bin Laden was indicted in Manhattan US district court in 1998 for conspiracy to attack US defence installations. “Normally when an individual is under indictment, the purpose is to capture that person to bring him to court to try him,” Scheffer said. “The object is not to summarily execute him if he’s under indictment.” Such questions may only be resolved if the instructions given to the US navy Seals are published and clarification given about what efforts were made force Bin Laden to surrender. Osama bin Laden Pakistan United States United Nations Owen Bowcott guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Really, Fox Business? You irresponsible idiots. That’s right, let’s just all make a joke out of torture, shall we? As if it’s not bad enough that you jerks make a concerted effort to convince your viewers that immoral, unethical, violent behavior is perfectly fine, now you joke about it? Yes, Fox Business asked their twitter buddies who should be waterboarded next. And their Twitter buddies responded. Among their choices: President Obama, Alan Colmes, Rachel Maddow, Joy Behar and Keith Olbermann. There were more, but isn’t this enough? Perhaps the only light moment came when Monica Crowley said waterboarding Eric Bolling wouldn’t help because he has no “actionable intelligence.” Neither, evidently, do the idiots who program this show. What an incredible waste of bandwidth. Transcript of list-reading : BOLLING: I wanted to know who else at home who you thought should be waterboarded. So, Louise says, waterboard “Joy Behar.” Patti says “Senate Dems… and then Obama… and then the kooks on The View, starting with Joy.” Jerry says he wants to see Alan Colmes get waterboarded. “The secrets of the left wing cabal will come pouring out of that boy.” This guy’s a bit more sentimental, go ahead, waterboard “my ex-wife.” Denise says Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow. And Mike says “Waterboard the Westboro Baptists Church.” I agree with them. Did Bolling agree with all of the suggestions, or just the Westboro suggestion? It’s not clear to me…and it’s hard to want to give him the benefit of the doubt given his obvious glee at asking the question and receiving the answers he did. [h/t Media Matters ]
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Spain’s government publishes first country-wide map of locations of more than 2,000 mass graves from the civil war The bones of 62-year-old Severina Gómez and 23 others whose remains had lain together for 75 years, surrounded by bullet cases and with hands tied behind backs, have finally been removed from their mass grave in countryside near the central Spanish village of Loma de Montija. Anxious family members watched last week as forensic archaeologists and volunteers scraped through layers of mud to uncover evidence of a crime committed in the heat of a civil war that still haunts parts of Spain – and that served as a curtain raiser to the bloodshed of the second world war. After a decade of bitter debate over how to heal the wounds left by conflict and dictatorship without stoking ancient hatreds, Spain’s government on Thursday published on the internet the first countrywide map showing the location of more than 2,000 mass graves from the civil war. The map is part of a series of measures, including a searchable database of victims and graves , designed to satisfy the demands of people such as Gómez’s grandson, Agustín Fernández, who led a local campaign to dig up the Loma de Montija grave. “We used to go and lay flowers there on All Saints’ Day, but the police would try to stop us and others would take them away. Even now the village is split,” said Fernández, 64, who is waiting for DNA tests to identify his grandmother. Severina Gómez was one of some 120,000 leftwing sympathisers killed away from the frontline by the nationalist forces of the rightwing dictator General Francisco Franco after he rebelled against Spain’s elected government in 1936. “My father died with the pain of never having recovered his mother’s corpse,” Fernández said. In 2007 the socialist government introduced what became known as the “historical memory” law, which recognised victims of the Franco regime. Other measures by the government have included removing 570 Francoist monuments and symbols from public places, awarding 13,400 pensions to people orphaned or sent into exile as children and giving Spanish nationality to 188,000 descendants of exiles. Presenting the results of almost four years of work, the interior minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, said: “No human being should be buried in a ditch.” Not everyone, however, agrees that the government of prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has achieved its aim of closing wounds. “It is an aberration,” complained Maria Eugenia Yague, daughter of one of Franco’s most infamous civil war generals, in a recent letter to the defence ministry after her father’s bust was removed from a sports centre in nearby Burgos. “This is no way to govern.” Others think the government should do much more. “It is great that the government publishes a map,” said Emilio Silva, president of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. “But I don’t understand why it refuses to look for and dig up the victims itself, leaving it to volunteer groups like us. “The crimes are as bad as they can get: kidnapping, torture, murder and the concealment of corpses,” he said, adding that his group received just ¤46,000 (£41,000) a year to carry out the work. So far, about 250 of the more than 2,000 mass graves have been excavated, with 5,400 bodies found. He also criticised an announcement by Rubalcaba that it would be too difficult to recover and identify the tens of thousands of corpses that Franco ordered to be moved to the Valley of the Fallen basilica near Madrid, where he himself would be buried two decades after the civil war. Silva is the man who sparked the historical memory movement by digging up his own grandfather and a dozen other victims from a mass grave in the northern town of Priaranza del Bierzo in October 2000. A grassroots campaign to dig up graves eventually broke down decades of government silence and popular fear of raking over the coals of the civil war, which often pitted neighbour against neighbour and left lasting wounds in towns and villages across the country. With archives finally open for proper study, volunteers and local historians across Spain have slowly revealed the full scope of Francoist repression for the first time. Last month the British historian and Franco biographer Paul Preston published, in Spanish, a definitive study of the repression on both sides of the civil war called The Spanish Holocaust, which is to be published in English later this year. He distinguishes between the impulsive violence of uncontrolled thugs and leftwing extremists among those defending the republic and the systematic, deliberate nationalist repression which one Francoist general called an attempt to eliminate “all those who do not think like us”. “A programme of terror and annihilation constituted the central plank of their plan,” says Prof Preston. Spain Europe Giles Tremlett guardian.co.uk
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Spain’s government publishes first country-wide map of locations of more than 2,000 mass graves from the civil war The bones of 62-year-old Severina Gómez and 23 others whose remains had lain together for 75 years, surrounded by bullet cases and with hands tied behind backs, have finally been removed from their mass grave in countryside near the central Spanish village of Loma de Montija. Anxious family members watched last week as forensic archaeologists and volunteers scraped through layers of mud to uncover evidence of a crime committed in the heat of a civil war that still haunts parts of Spain – and that served as a curtain raiser to the bloodshed of the second world war. After a decade of bitter debate over how to heal the wounds left by conflict and dictatorship without stoking ancient hatreds, Spain’s government on Thursday published on the internet the first countrywide map showing the location of more than 2,000 mass graves from the civil war. The map is part of a series of measures, including a searchable database of victims and graves , designed to satisfy the demands of people such as Gómez’s grandson, Agustín Fernández, who led a local campaign to dig up the Loma de Montija grave. “We used to go and lay flowers there on All Saints’ Day, but the police would try to stop us and others would take them away. Even now the village is split,” said Fernández, 64, who is waiting for DNA tests to identify his grandmother. Severina Gómez was one of some 120,000 leftwing sympathisers killed away from the frontline by the nationalist forces of the rightwing dictator General Francisco Franco after he rebelled against Spain’s elected government in 1936. “My father died with the pain of never having recovered his mother’s corpse,” Fernández said. In 2007 the socialist government introduced what became known as the “historical memory” law, which recognised victims of the Franco regime. Other measures by the government have included removing 570 Francoist monuments and symbols from public places, awarding 13,400 pensions to people orphaned or sent into exile as children and giving Spanish nationality to 188,000 descendants of exiles. Presenting the results of almost four years of work, the interior minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, said: “No human being should be buried in a ditch.” Not everyone, however, agrees that the government of prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has achieved its aim of closing wounds. “It is an aberration,” complained Maria Eugenia Yague, daughter of one of Franco’s most infamous civil war generals, in a recent letter to the defence ministry after her father’s bust was removed from a sports centre in nearby Burgos. “This is no way to govern.” Others think the government should do much more. “It is great that the government publishes a map,” said Emilio Silva, president of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. “But I don’t understand why it refuses to look for and dig up the victims itself, leaving it to volunteer groups like us. “The crimes are as bad as they can get: kidnapping, torture, murder and the concealment of corpses,” he said, adding that his group received just ¤46,000 (£41,000) a year to carry out the work. So far, about 250 of the more than 2,000 mass graves have been excavated, with 5,400 bodies found. He also criticised an announcement by Rubalcaba that it would be too difficult to recover and identify the tens of thousands of corpses that Franco ordered to be moved to the Valley of the Fallen basilica near Madrid, where he himself would be buried two decades after the civil war. Silva is the man who sparked the historical memory movement by digging up his own grandfather and a dozen other victims from a mass grave in the northern town of Priaranza del Bierzo in October 2000. A grassroots campaign to dig up graves eventually broke down decades of government silence and popular fear of raking over the coals of the civil war, which often pitted neighbour against neighbour and left lasting wounds in towns and villages across the country. With archives finally open for proper study, volunteers and local historians across Spain have slowly revealed the full scope of Francoist repression for the first time. Last month the British historian and Franco biographer Paul Preston published, in Spanish, a definitive study of the repression on both sides of the civil war called The Spanish Holocaust, which is to be published in English later this year. He distinguishes between the impulsive violence of uncontrolled thugs and leftwing extremists among those defending the republic and the systematic, deliberate nationalist repression which one Francoist general called an attempt to eliminate “all those who do not think like us”. “A programme of terror and annihilation constituted the central plank of their plan,” says Prof Preston. Spain Europe Giles Tremlett guardian.co.uk
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Research suggests pre-emptive mass culling of cattle may not be necessary The mass culling of cattle and funeral pyres that blighted the countryside during the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic may not be needed if the disease comes back, according to scientists who have shown that it is detectable in cattle up to 24 hours before they become infectious. This could provide a window to quarantine infected animals and stop the spread of the disease to neighbouring farms. The researchers also found that cattle infected with the foot and mouth virus remained infectious for an average of only 1.7 days, much less than previously thought. At least 6 million animals were culled during the 2001 outbreak, most of them sheep. The Royal Society estimated losses of about £3.1bn to agriculture and the food chain, and about £2.5bn was spent by the government in compensation for slaughtered animals and payments for disposal and cleaning up. There were only 2,030 confirmed infections, but millions more animals were culled – killed pre-emptively because they lived near infected farms. Had government advisers understood more about the disease, it might have been possible to control it without mass culling. “The reason those animals were culled was because they may already have been infected by the time we knew they were at risk,” said Mark Woolhouse of the Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh. “What this suggests is a window where we can detect animals before that has happened so there’s no need, in that case, for the pre-emptive culling.” Mark Woolhouse of the Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh, said: Woolhouse added: The new research is published in the journal , shows there here is this short window, a day or two, where we can tell a cow is infected with foot and mouth disease but it’sthe disease can be detected but the animal not yet infectious to other cows – even under ideal conditions it doesn’t transmit the virus. . “If we could detect and remove animals in that window of opportunity, then they won’t have the chance to infect to infect other animals.” The new research is published in the journal Science . For the study, a team led by Bryan Charleston of the Institute for Animal Health in Pirbright infected cows with foot and mouth disease in the laboratory and then watched how the virus spread to uninfected cows. The time from infection to the onset of clinical signs was approximately four days. The animals became infectious at around the same time and stayed that way for, on average, 1.7 days. Until now, scientists had thought that cattle became infectious up to four days before they showed clinical signs, and then remained infectious for up to four to eight days afterwards. But Charleston also found there was a point where virus detection was possible before the animals became infectious. “After an animal becomes infected, you can start to detect virus in blood and in nasal samples approximately two to three days later, that’s before they show clinical signs and before they are able to transmit the virus,” he said. The government’s chief vet, Nigel Gibbens, said: “While these types of tests aren’t currently practical for use on the ground during an outbreak, we are continuing to fund their development and are working with the Institute of Animal Health so the best possible tests and equipment is available. Quick reporting of suspect cases of the disease by farmers and veterinarians and selective culling of animals, with vaccination where that can make an effective contribution to control, remain the best way of stopping this disease.” The 24-hour window allows farmers and scientists to isolate and cull the infected herd before they can spread the infection to neighbouring herds. “It’s not the animals that are infected that are saved, it’s the ones they might have put at risk, all the animals in the next-door farms,” said Woolhouse. Joe Brownlie , emeritus professor of veterinary pathology at the Royal Veterinary College, said the pre-emptive culling policy in 2001 was “quite draconian” and the new research would prevent the death of large numbers of animals in future. “Many of us have had difficult times justifying and living with what happened. This is exciting and very important science.” A spokesperson for the National Farmers Union described the study as an “important development”. “The outbreaks of foot and mouth disease in 2001 and 2007 show just how devastating this disease is for farm businesses and the wider rural economy. “It’s clear that the researchers are some way from developing a reliable on-farm test and the protocols that may be needed in its application. Nevertheless, this is a valuable development that could help control FMDV spread during future outbreaks.” Translating the research into a practical technology for the field will take some time. “This we can do in the laboratory, we can detect infections before the animals are infectious – it is going to be a significant challenge to do that in the field during an epidemic,” said Woolhouse. “As a result of the work we’re reporting today, we know that such an approach could be much more effective than we’ve realised before, so this is definitely an avenue we should be pursuing.” Apart from the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic, a smaller outbreak of the disease in 2007 was localised to a farm near Guildford, when 60 animals tested positive. Foot and mouth Rural affairs Alok Jha guardian.co.uk
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