Everyday Erinyes #313

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:08 am Politics

Apr 102022

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I had some other ideas for this column but then i came upon this and it just dropped my jaw. The sponsor of this (“N. M.”) says, “I just received 16 brief essays by 15-17-year-old lyceum students from Kyiv and its suburbs on what they plan to do after the war ends. They’re written in English, and the teacher says she only made a few minor corrections.” I’ll let them speak for themselves. (just in case you haven’t already guessed – hanky alery.)
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Ukrainian teens’ voices from the middle of war: ‘You begin to appreciate what was common and boring for you’

A residential building destroyed by Russian army shelling in Borodyanka, Kyiv province.
Hennadii Minchenko/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Alexander Motyl, Rutgers University – Newark

A colleague from Kyiv, Ukraine, whom I’ll call N.M., sent me brief essays her students wrote on what they would do when the war ends. As both a scholar and a novelist, I knew that these voices, which expressed a beautifully straightforward and pure yearning for the simplest things that are lost in war, needed to be heard by the world.

The essays were written in English, and N.M., who has a master’s degree in English language and literature, told me she made only “2-3 corrections.” The students attend the 10th and 11th grades at a Kyiv school, are 15 to 17 years old, and hail from the capital city and its suburbs. The essays were written between March 14 and March 18, 2022.

Several themes run through most of the essays. The teens yearn for peace and want to do ordinary things, such as meet family and friends, take walks, enjoy the city. Daily routines have become extraordinary after several weeks of war. All intend to stay in Ukraine. Despair is absent. The students expect the war to end with a Ukrainian victory, and they’re decidedly proud to be Ukrainian.

Their optimism is all the more remarkable in light of the essays’ having been written in mid-March, when anything like victory seemed remote. Many of the students have also learned an important existential lesson: Life can be cut short at any time, and it’s imperative to live it to the hilt.

Several teenagers, smiling and wearing face paint, take a group photo. — Before the war, Ukrainian teens weren’t thinking about bombs or hunger.
Mykola Miakshykov/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Diana captures the overall mood well:

“Literally 2 weeks ago, everyone lived their quiet daily lives, but one night these lives changed forever. Russia attacked our cities and forced some people to leave their homes forever or stay in a dangerous place and live in a fear. But the horror cannot be eternal, the end will come, and it will be significant for our country. After our victory I will definitely meet all my friends and family members, I will say how much I love them. Also I will appreciate every moment spent with family and people of my heart. Also I will definitely help my country to recover what it lost, I will volunteer and after graduating from school, I will enter that faculty which will be useful for Ukraine. Now we can just hope and pray for the best.”

Like Diana, Masha yearns for the ordinary:

“Today the situation in our country is very difficult, and we understand that we did not appreciate our everyday life, our meetings with friends, and even a simple walk. … After all these circumstances, your views on life have changed, you begin to appreciate what was common and boring for you. After the war, we will all be completely different people!”

Dasha’s expectations are equally quotidian:

“When I come back home the first thing that I would do is play the piano. I will play as long as I can. After this, I will water my plants.”

Nastya, meanwhile, says,

“I’ll do everything I didn’t have time to do before the war. For example, I’ll go to the dentist, because it was that Thursday that I had an appointment with him for the evening. But most of all I want to come home to my peaceful and strong Ukraine.”

Anya’s discovered the depth of her patriotism:

“Every morning I get up and thank you God I’m alive. … When I heard explosions, I thought it can be my last minute. I will spend more time with my family and friends. And I will LOVE MY UKRAINE MORE THAN EVER.”

So has Sofia:

“We are strong, I am proud to be Ukrainian.”

A group of teens in a dark room, sitting at a table, listening to someone speak. — Growing up fast: A group of teens listening to a military medic who came to teach them first aid on Feb. 20, 2022, in Skole, Ukraine.
Gaelle Girbes/Getty Images

Vlad is also feeling patriotic:

“When this war is over I will be thanking our Heroes, absolutely fearless defenders, who have been protecting our country this time. I’m totally proud of them. Their behavior inspires all the world and this is wonderful. … Anyway, we’re winning this bloodshed and building new country with freedom for our descendants. … I hope, our culture will be the best in the world and people will start respect it.”

Hlib’s optimism is both religious and political:

“I think that the war will be over when God says, because everything depends on him. Also when the President of Russia is removed or when all the supplies run out and all the soldiers retreat. When the Russian economy will be completely destroyed and the revolution will begin. When everyone will stop being afraid of the President of Russia and will oppose him. But the war will surely be over soon. Because good always wins.”

Anzhelika’s expectations concern politics – and food:

“I pray very much for Kyiv, because this is an incredible city that I dream of returning to! And after the war, of course, everyone will get drunk, so maybe I’ll drink a couple of drops for victory. And I dream of eating sushi, this is my favorite dish, so I’ll eat them all week. And of course I still want to go to university in Ukraine and live in Ukraine with my friends and relatives. And I believe that after the victory, not Ukraine will ask to join NATO, but NATO to [join] Ukraine, because our people have incredible strength! Glory to Ukraine!”

Alina picks up on the theme of Ukraine’s strength:

“These three weeks of a continuous horror changed all of us. Some people were left homeless, some people were left without relatives and a huge amount of Ukrainians lost their lives for peace. But there is at least one principal thing, which is common for all of us: Our nation became stronger. We became stronger. … Everything will be tranquil again. Everything will be Ukraine.”

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A second Alina looks at the war’s cost – and how Ukraine will move forward in its aftermath:

“Sooner or later the war will stop. These events will leave an imprint in every Ukrainian. … Maybe we will bury many thousands of people, but they all did not fall in vain. We will remember everyone. Then we will renovate our houses, malls, museums. … Ukrainian will build their future in a progressive country. We will all develop and other countries will respect us. No one will ask anymore ‘Ukraine? Where is it? Is it in Russia?’ Our country will join NATO and European Union. In the end no one will attack us again.”

Alexander Motyl, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University – Newark

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, if you can come up with a way for the people who most need to see and hear this to get exposed to it, you might save the world. Of course that is a continuing problem – and, in the U.S., getting worse instead of better. To what degree does freedom of speech include the freedom to be silent?

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #312

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:21 am Politics

Apr 032022

There are many terms used in national and world affairs which we all “know” what they mean, but aren’t always aware that ther need to have actual legal or quasi-legal definitions in order for nations, or groups of nations, to take any action on them. One such term is “treason.” We all know what it means – at least we all know what we mean by it – but in the United States, the fact is that the Founders chose to define it in the Constitution very narrowly. That’s not surprising as a matter of history, They were fearful that it might be over-used and lead to despotism.

Another of these terms is “genocide.” We all know what it means. But how many of us realized there are very strict elements of it (or, as this author puts it, “warning signs”) which can provide citizens of a nation, or neighbor nations, to see and raise red flags in order to try to put a stop to it. Here’s a look at Russia in Ukraine through the lens of those warning signs.
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Is Russia committing genocide in Ukraine? A human rights expert looks at the warning signs

A Ukrainian soldier observes a destroyed shopping mall in Kyiv on March 29, 2022.
Mykhaylo Palinchak/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Alexander Hinton, Rutgers University – Newark

There’s a real threat that Russia will commit genocide in Ukraine. As evidence of war crimes emerges, there is reason to believe it may already be taking place.

“Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on March 23, 2022. Blinken cited as evidence for his allegation Russia’s destruction of “apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure” and a maternity hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol that was marked with the Russian word for children.

Russia has killed at least 1,189 civilians and wounded 1,901 additional Ukrainians since it began its attack on Ukraine in February 2022, according to the United Nations. This actual death toll is likely much higher.

Such attacks on civilians during conflict are considered war crimes under international law.

But war crimes also often take place in tandem with other atrocity crimes – a legal term that also encompasses ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and genocide.

And indeed, there is evidence Russia has also committed crimes against humanity, or widespread attacks against Ukraine’s civilian population. Such attacks include killings, enforced disappearances, rape and torture.

These also include the mass deportations of Ukrainians into Russia that the Kremlin is reportedly carrying out in eastern Ukraine.

Some observers warn that this violence has the potential to become genocidal, particularly given Russian propaganda and physical destruction of Mariupol and other cities.

Ukrainian officials claim genocide has already begun. “The aerial bombing of a children’s hospital,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on March 9, 2022, “is the ultimate evidence that genocide of Ukrainians is happening.”

Other experts disagree, sometimes arguing that the Russian violence doesn’t meet the legal requirements of genocide.

Given the scale of Russian violence in Ukraine, however, genocide warnings need to be taken seriously.

The field of genocide studies, in which I have long worked, has developed frameworks for assessing the threat of genocide in such volatile situations. These tools, including one used by the U.N., indicate Ukraine is indeed at considerable risk for genocide.

An elderly woman is seated in a wheelchair, carried across dirt by five men, some wearing army uniforms — People help an elderly woman in a wheelchair flee Irpin, Ukraine, on March 7, 2022.
Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images

Historical precedent

Genocide refers to “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

These acts involve not just killing people, but seeking to destroy the target group by causing “serious bodily or mental harm,” creating harsh “conditions of life,” preventing births and “forcibly transferring” children to another group.

One predictor for genocide is a history of mass human rights violations and atrocity crimes, including genocide.

Russia has a long history of mass violence against Ukrainians and other groups.

Perhaps most infamously, the Soviet Union enacted land policies that prompted a food shortage and a famine, killing millions of Ukrainians from 1932 to 1933. This is known as the Holodomor, a Ukrainian word meaning meaning “death by hunger.”

Other Soviet atrocities include forced deportation of national and ethnic groups and massive political purges.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia committed mass violence against civilians in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria. It bombarded and obliterated cities like Grozny in 1995 and Aleppo in 2016.

A black and white photo shows two boys in a pit outside, with a bag full of potatoes. — Two boys with a bag of potatoes they found during the human-caused Holodomor famine in Ukraine in 1934.
Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Political upheaval

Genocide and atrocity crimes are also strongly correlated with political upheaval, especially war. Such upheaval destabilizes a society and makes it less secure – especially for vulnerable groups of people who may be blamed for the political or economic instability.

Genocide has taken place during global conflicts, as illustrated by the Armenian genocide during World War I, and the Holocaust during World War II.

And then there are genocides associated with colonial conquest and invasion, like the destruction of Indigenous peoples in North America.

Such countries as China and Cambodia have also undertaken social engineering projects resulting in genocide.

Russia has experienced a number of political upheavals, including a current economic crisis. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the sort of armed conflict often associated with atrocity crimes.

Ideology and demonization

Genocide is justified by propaganda and language that devalues and demonizes target populations. Historical examples abound, ranging from European colonial caricatures of Indigenous “brutes” and “savages” to Nazi representations of Jews as rats.

Russia is using this type of demonizing language to justify its invasion of Ukraine. First, Russia depicts its violence as necessary to “denazify” Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin, for example, has referred to the Ukrainian leadership as a far-right “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”

And second, Putin has suggested that Ukrainian identity is not real and that, historically, “Russians and Ukrainians are one people – one nation, in fact.”

The words 'Judd Suss' are shown above the face of a man, demonized with green skin and elongated features — Propaganda, like this 1940 antisemitic advertisement demonizing a group of people, is one warning sign of genocide.
Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images

Understanding the risk

Proving genocidal intent is difficult, especially in a court of law. This is evident in current debates – including an ongoing court case at the International Court of Justice – about whether Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority group.

But it can be inferred by patterns of violence consistent with the legal definition of genocide.

[There’s plenty of opinion out there. We supply facts and analysis, based in research. Get The Conversation’s Politics Weekly.]

Has Russia carried out genocidal acts?

Russia has targeted and killed civilians and reportedly forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, including children, to Russia. It has bombed a maternity hospital.

Russia has also created “harsh conditions of life” in parts of Ukraine. It has destroyed electrical and water supplies, deprived Ukrainians of food and humanitarian aid and displaced more than 10 million people within and outside of Ukraine.

Russia seeks to seize and Russify Donbas and other parts of eastern Ukraine, where, if Putin is taken at his word, an “imaginary” Ukrainian identity will be erased.

There is a significant risk that Russia will commit genocide in Ukraine. It is possible that a genocide has already begun.

Alexander Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University – Newark

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, it’s both interesting and useful that “genocide” can be classified as one of several “atrocity” crimes, any and all of which can be strictly defined. Think of that the next time you want to describe some action or some person as “atrocious.” Sadly, many crimes committed just in the US can fairly be describes as atrocities – particularly when bigotry is involved. You ladies have just about seen everything over the centuries. Help us to recognize what we see.

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #311

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 10:33 am Politics, Religion

Mar 272022

I wanted to share this article because – even before the invasion of Ukraine started, we were hearing things like “I’d rather be Russian than a Democrat,” and now we are hearing “I prefer Putin’s Christian values to Joe Bifen’s values.” And, frankly. that scares the Republication out of me. It doesn’t seem to be scaring many people, and that scares me too. So I have been trying to be alert for anything I could find on the topic
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Why is Russia’s church backing Putin’s war? Church-state history gives a clue

Vladimir Putin speaks to Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill (center) in Samolva, Russia, on Sept. 11, 2021.
Alexei Druzhinin/Pool Photo via AP

Scott Kenworthy, Miami University

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has defended Russia’s actions and blamed the conflict on the West.

Patriarch Kirill’s support for the invasion of a country where millions of people belong to his own church has led critics to conclude that Orthodox leadership has become little more than an arm of the state – and that this is the role it usually plays.

The reality is much more complicated. The relationship between Russian church and state has undergone profound historical transformations, not least in the past century – a focus of my work as a scholar of Eastern Orthodoxy. The church’s current support for the Kremlin is not inevitable or predestined, but a deliberate decision that needs to be understood.

Soviet shifts

For centuries, leaders in Byzantium and Russia prized the idea of church and state working harmoniously together in “symphony” – unlike their more competitive relationships in some Western countries.

In the early 1700s, however, Czar Peter the Great instituted reforms for greater control of the church – part of his attempts to make Russia more like Protestant Europe.

Churchmen grew to resent the state’s interference. They did not defend the monarchy in its final hour during the February Revolution of 1917, hoping it would lead to a “free church in a free state.”

The Bolsheviks who seized power, however, embraced a militant atheism that sought to secularize society completely. They regarded the church as a threat because of its ties to the old regime. Attacks on the church proceeded from legal measures like confiscating property to executing clergy suspected of supporting the counterrevolution.

Patriarch Tikhon, head of the Church during the Revolution, criticized Bolshevik assaults on the Church, but his successor, Metropolitan Bishop Sergy, made a declaration of loyalty to the Soviet Union in 1927. Persecution of religion only intensified, however, with repression reaching a peak during the Great Terror of 1937-1938, when tens of thousands of clergy and ordinary believers were simply executed or sent to the Gulag. By the end of the 1930s, the Russian Orthodox Church had nearly been destroyed.

The Nazi invasion brought a dramatic reversal. Josef Stalin needed popular support to defeat Germany and allowed churches to reopen. But his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, reinvigorated the anti-religious campaign at the end of the 1950s, and for the rest of the Soviet period, the church was tightly controlled and marginalized.

Kirill’s campaigns

The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought yet another complete reversal. The church was suddenly free, yet facing enormous challenges after decades of suppression. With the collapse of Soviet ideology, Russian society seemed set adrift. Church leaders sought to reclaim it, but faced stiff competition from new forces, especially Western consumer culture and American evangelical missionaries.

A priest offers Communion to a woman wearing a kerchief. — A Russian Orthodox Church priest leads a service at the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin in Sokolniki in Moscow on Feb. 15, 2022.
AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

The first post-Soviet head of the church, Patriarch Aleksy II, maintained his distance from politicians. Initially, they were not very responsive to the church’s goals – including Vladimir Putin in his first two terms between 2000 and 2008. Yet in more recent years, the president has embraced Russian Orthodoxy as a cornerstone of post-Soviet identity, and relations between church and state leadership have changed significantly since Kirill became patriarch in 2009. He quickly succeeded in securing the return of church property from the state, religious instruction in public schools and military chaplains in the armed forces.

Kirill has also promoted an influential critique of Western liberalism, consumerism and individualism, contrasted with Russian “traditional values.” This idea argues that human rights are not universal, but a product of Western culture, especially when extended to LGBTQ people. The patriarch also helped develop the idea of the “Russian world”: a soft power ideology that promotes Russian civilization, ties to Russian-speakers around the world, and greater Russian influence on Ukraine and Belarus.

Although 70%-75% of Russians consider themselves Orthodox, only a small percentage are active in church life. Kirill has sought to “re-church” society by asserting that Russian Orthodoxy is central to Russian identity, patriotism and cohesion – and a strong Russian state. He has also created a highly centralized church bureaucracy that mirrors Putin’s and stifles dissenting voices.

Growing closer

A key turning point came in 2011-2012, starting with massive protests against electoral fraud and Putin’s decision to run for a third term.

Kirill initially called for the government to dialogue with protesters, but later offered unqualified support for Putin and referred to stability and prosperity during his first two terms as a “miracle of God,” in contrast to the tumultuous 1990s.

In 2012, Pussy Riot, a feminist punk group, staged a protest in a Moscow cathedral to criticize Kirill’s support for Putin – yet the episode actually pushed church and state closer together. Putin portrayed Pussy Riot and the opposition as aligned with decadent Western values, and himself as the defender of Russian morality, including Orthodoxy. A 2013 law banning dissemination of gay “propaganda” to minors, which was supported by the church, was part of this campaign to marginalize dissent.

Putin successfully won reelection, and Kirill’s ideology has been linked to Putin’s ever since.

Three women behind a glass panel look out at a courtroom. — Members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot sit in a glass cage at a courtroom in Moscow in 2012. The women were charged with hooliganism connected to religious hatred.
AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the eruption of conflict in the Donbas in 2014 also had an enormous impact on the Russian Orthodox Church.

Ukraine’s Orthodox churches remained under the Moscow Patriarchate’s authority after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, about 30% of the Russian Orthodox Church’s parishes were actually in Ukraine.

The conflict in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, however, intensified Ukrainians’ calls for an independent Orthodox church. Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Orthodox Christianity, granted that independence in 2019. Moscow not only refused to recognize the new church, but also severed relations with Constantinople, threatening a broader schism.

Orthodox Christians in Ukraine were divided over which church to follow, deepening Russia’s cultural anxieties about “losing” Ukraine to the West.

High-stakes gamble

Kirill’s close alliance with the Putin regime has had some clear payoffs. Orthodoxy has become one of the central pillars of Putin’s image of national identity. Moreover, the “culture wars” discourse of “traditional values” has attracted international supporters, including conservative evangelicals in the United States.

But Kirill does not represent the entirety of the Russian Orthodox Church any more than Putin represents the entirety of Russia. The patriarch’s positions have alienated some of his own flock, and his support for the invasion of Ukraine will likely split some of his support abroad. Christian leaders around the world are calling upon Kirill to pressure the government to stop the war.

The patriarch has alienated the Ukrainian flock that remained loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate. Leaders of that church have condemned Russia’s attack and appealed to Kirill to intervene with Putin.

A broader rift is clearly brewing: A number of Ukrainian Orthodox bishops have already stopped commemorating Kirill during their services. If Kirill supported Russia’s actions as a way to preserve the unity of the church, the opposite outcome seems likely.

Scott Kenworthy, Professor of Comparative Religion, Miami University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, there you have it. Any church which promotes ?traditional values” (which I put in quotes because they all fling that phrase about, never addressing “Whose tradition?” “How can you consider oppressing people to be a value” and many other related questions) will always be susceptible to becoming affiliated with autocracy. We have seen this in the Taliban. We have seen this in evangelical Christianity. And now we are seeing it in Russian Orthodoxy. For all of those groups, be they Muslim, Evangelical Christian, or Orthodox Christian, there are many others around the world who are Muslims, western Christians, and Eastern Christians who are horrified that these people who claim to profess the same faith practice it so horrifyingly.

I am not opposed to tradition, But I am opposed to confusing “traditional” with “godly.” I am reminded of the story of the little girl who was watching her mother cut off both ends of the Easter ham before putting it in the ovem, and who asked why. “My mother always did it that way,” was the response. The next time the little girl saw her grandmother, she asked the same question and go the same answer. Finally the little girl was able to speak with her great-grandmother and ask the question again. “When your Great-Grandfather and I were first married, we didn’t have a lot, and our roasting pan was very small. The ham would not fit in it without trimming the ends off.”

I cannot see a partcle of difference between these affiliations of convenience with religion and autocracy, and many others have already seen, spoken about, and written about evangelical Christianity vis-a-vis the Taliban. But I don’t see anyone but me saying that we now have a third example in Russia (and a fourth one in Israel would not surprise me, but I have no evidence for that.) There are many, many examples throughout recorded history as well. That is one history I really, really do not want to repeat.

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #310

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:10 am Politics

Mar 202022

Today, however, the furies and I are taking a day off, in a way. We are just going to share with youa document which is making the rounds of Twitter and to some extent elsewhere. It is – correction, it was – a leter from Putin to the UN> It is now a “There. Fixed it for ya” from the Canadian mission to the UN I don;t think any further comment is required (though I will add “Oh! Canada! Excellent!”)

The Furies and I will be back)

Everyday Erinyes #309

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 2:20 pm Politics

Mar 132022

I can’t imagine there is anyone here who is not concerned about radiation, not only in Ukraine, but about what could happen to the rest of the world. This article is not going to answer every question or address every fear. But, as far as it goes, it is based on sound science, not on propoganda. It can be trusted. And it can be confidently shard.
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Military action in radioactive Chernobyl could be dangerous for people and the environment

Much of the region around Chernobyl has been untouched by people since the nuclear disaster in 1986.
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Timothy A. Mousseau, University of South Carolina

The site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine has been surrounded for more than three decades by a 1,000-square-mile (2,600-square-kilometer) exclusion zone that keeps people out. On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl’s reactor number four melted down as a result of human error, releasing vast quantities of radioactive particles and gases into the surrounding landscape – 400 times more radioactivity to the environment than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Put in place to contain the radioactive contaminants, the exclusion zone also protects the region from human disturbance.

Apart from a handful of industrial areas, most of the exclusion zone is completely isolated from human activity and appears almost normal. In some areas, where radiation levels have dropped over time, plants and animals have returned in significant numbers.

fox against grassy background — A fox near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
T. A. Mousseau, 2019, CC BY-ND

Some scientists have suggested the zone has become an Eden for wildlife, while others are skeptical of that possibility. Looks can be deceiving, at least in areas of high radioactivity, where bird, mammal and insect population sizes and diversity are significantly lower than in the “clean” parts of the exclusion zone.

I’ve spent more than 20 years working in Ukraine, as well as in Belarus and Fukushima, Japan, largely focused on the effects of radiation. I have been asked many times over the past days why Russian forces entered northern Ukraine via this atomic wasteland, and what the environmental consequences of military activity in the zone might be.

As of the beginning of March 2022, Russian forces controlled the Chernobyl facility.

Why invade via Chernobyl?

In hindsight, the strategic benefits of basing military operations in the Chernobyl exclusion zone seem obvious. It is a large, unpopulated area connected by a paved highway straight to the Ukrainian capital, with few obstacles or human developments along the way. The Chernobyl zone abuts Belarus and is thus immune from attack from Ukrainian forces from the north. The reactor site’s industrial area is, in effect, a large parking lot suitable for staging an invading army’s thousands of vehicles.

The power plant site also houses the main electrical grid switching network for the entire region. It’s possible to turn the lights off in Kyiv from here, even though the power plant itself has not generated any electricity since 2000, when the last of Chernobyl’s four reactors was shut down. Such control over the power supply likely has strategic importance, although Kyiv’s electrical needs could probably also be supplied via other nodes on the Ukrainian national power grid.

The reactor site likely offers considerable protection from aerial attack, given the improbability that Ukrainian or other forces would risk combat on a site containing more than 5.3 million pounds (2.4 million kilograms) of radioactive spent nuclear fuel. This is the highly radioactive material produced by a nuclear reactor during normal operations. A direct hit on the power plant’s spent fuel pools or dry cask storage facilities could release substantially more radioactive material into the environment than the original meltdown and explosions in 1986 and thus cause an environmental disaster of global proportions.

grassy foreground with industrial buildings in the distance — View of the power plant site from a distance, with the containment shield structure in place over the destroyed reactor.
T.A. Mousseau, CC BY-ND

Environmental risks on the ground in Chernobyl

The Chernobyl exclusion zone is among the most radioactively contaminated regions on the planet. Thousands of acres surrounding the reactor site have ambient radiation dose rates exceeding typical background levels by thousands of times. In parts of the so-called Red Forest near the power plant it’s possible to receive a dangerous radiation dose in just a few days of exposure.

Radiation monitoring stations across the Chernobyl zone recorded the first obvious environmental impact of the invasion. Sensors put in place by the Ukrainian Chernobyl EcoCenter in case of accidents or forest fires showed dramatic jumps in radiation levels along major roads and next to the reactor facilities starting after 9 p.m on Feb. 24, 2022. That’s when Russian invaders reached the area from neighboring Belarus.

Because the rise in radiation levels was most obvious in the immediate vicinity of the reactor buildings, there was concern that the containment structures had been damaged, although Russian authorities have denied this possibility. The sensor network abruptly stopped reporting early on Feb. 25 and did not restart until March 1, 2022, so the full magnitude of disturbance to the region from the troop movements is unclear.

If, in fact, it was dust stirred up by vehicles and not damage to any containment facilities that caused the rise in radiation readings, and assuming the increase lasted for just a few hours, it’s not likely to be of long-term concern, as the dust will settle again once troops move through.

But the Russian soldiers, as well as the Ukrainian power plant workers who have been held hostage, undoubtedly inhaled some of the blowing dust. Researchers know the dirt in the Chernobyl exclusion zone can contain radionuclides including cesium-137, strontium-90, several isotopes of plutonium and uranium, and americium-241. Even at very low levels, they’re all toxic, carcinogenic or both if inhaled.

aerial view of fire burning on wooded landscape — Forest fires, like this one in 2020 in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, can release radioactive particles that had been trapped in the burning materials.
Volodymyr Shuvayev/AFP via Getty Images

Possible impacts further afield

Perhaps the greater environmental threat to the region stems from the potential release to the atmosphere of radionuclides stored in soil and plants should a forest fire ignite.

Such fires have recently increased in frequency, size and intensity, likely because of climate change, and these fires have released radioactive materials back into the air and and dispersed them far and wide. Radioactive fallout from forest fires may well represent the greatest threat from the Chernobyl site to human populations downwind of the region as well as the wildlife within the exclusion zone.

Currently the zone is home to massive amounts of dead trees and debris that could act as fuel for a fire. Even in the absence of combat, military activity – like thousands of troops transiting, eating, smoking and building campfires to stay warm – increases the risk of forest fires.

bird held in hands with tumor visible through feathers — A bird from Chernobyl with a tumor on its head.
T. A. Mousseau, 2009, CC BY-ND

It’s hard to predict the effects of radioactive fallout on people, but the consequences to flora and fauna have been well documented. Chronic exposure to even relatively low levels of radionuclides has been linked to a wide variety of health consequences in wildlife, including genetic mutations, tumors, eye cataracts, sterility and neurological impairment, along with reductions in population sizes and biodiversity in areas of high contamination.

There is no “safe” level when it comes to ionizing radiation. The hazards to life are in direct proportion to the level of exposure. Should the ongoing conflict escalate and damage the radiation confinement facilities at Chernobyl, or at any of the 15 nuclear reactors at four other sites across Ukraine, the magnitude of harm to the environment would be catastrophic.

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Timothy A. Mousseau, Professor of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, you, being goddesses, are, I trust, immune to the effects of radiation suffered by hmans, animals, and plants. Anything you can think of that will kelp preserve the rest of us will be appreciated. (I doubt that Democritus can help. He is probably still in shock, awe, and disbelief.)

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #308

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 12:16 pm Politics

Mar 062022

I’ve already said(or implied) that I am too emotionally invested in the Russia-Ukraine confit to wrote about it, and that is still true. This is not so much about the conflict itself as the science behind certain actual and/or possible developments from that conflict. I think this is important, and I’m sure I’ll get agreement on that.
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Military action in radioactive Chernobyl could be dangerous for people and the environment

Timothy A. Mousseau, University of South Carolina

As of the beginning of March 2022, Russian forces controlled the Chernobyl facility.

Why invade via Chernobyl?

Environmental risks on the ground in Chernobyl

Possible impacts further afield

Perhaps the greater environmental threat to the region stems from the potential release to the atmosphere of radionuclides stored in soil and plants should a forest fire ignite.

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Timothy A. Mousseau, Professor of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, some of this could probably have been anticipated by educated people who stay up to date. Other aspects were surprising (who knew that, from Chernobyl, after all this time, it might still be possible to “turn off the lights in Kyiv”?) And there is still so much we don’t know.

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #307

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:31 am Politics

Feb 272022

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

Since it’s still Black History month for one more day, I thought we might enjoy an article about a Black (or more accurately biracial) author who latched on to the vogue for “Uncle Remus”-like stories and characters, and jumped into the genre to make such subtle fun of the white people that they didn’t even get it. His name was Charles Chesnutt, and the character he created was called “Uncle Julius.” If you click on the link attached on the title “The Conjur Woman,” the name of an 1899 collection of Uncle Julius stories, it will bring you to the Gutenberg Project’s free download of the entire book plus an appendix of three more stories and another, non-fiction, book on Superstition and Folklore. (I created a shortcut to it for myself, and also made a custom icon for it, derived from the cover picture on one of its editions [not the first edition, whose cover is noce, but too dark for an icon], which I will gladly share if anyone wants it.)

I have only read one story so far. That’s enough to observe that the “local color” dialect is thick indeed, and that the white narrator, from Ohio, is pompous (as was the fashion of the day) and also pretty well taken in. The humor is subtle but definitely there. The n-word is used by Uncle Julus but not by any white character, and in such a way as to read like more exploitation of white gullibility, which may hep prevent cringing. Chesnutt did know what he was doing.
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How a Black writer in 19th-century America used humor to combat white supremacy

Charles Chesnutt was one of the first widely read Black fiction writers in the U.S.
RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Rodney Taylor, University of South Carolina

Any writer has to struggle with the dilemma of staying true to their vision or giving editors and readers what they want. A number of factors might influence the latter: the market, trends and sensibilities.

But in the decades after the Civil War, Black writers looking to faithfully depict the horrors of slavery had to contend with readers whose worldviews were colored by racism, as well as an entire swath of the country eager to paper over the past.

Charles Chesnutt was one of those writers. Forced to work with skeptical editors and within the confines of popular forms, Chesnutt nonetheless worked to shine a light on the legacy of slavery.

His 1899 collection of stories, “The Conjure Woman,” took place on a Southern plantation and sold well. At first glance, the stories seemed to mimic other books set in the South written in a style called “local color,” which focuses on regional characters, dialects and customs.

But Chesnutt had actually written a subversive counternarrative, using humor to poke holes in the nostalgic myths of the South and expose the contradictions of a racist society.

Rewriting the past

After the Civil War, there was a concerted effort to portray the South as a pastoral place possessed with a culture of honor. Slavery, meanwhile, had been a nurturing, even benevolent, institution.

These beliefs bled into the era’s fiction, with white authors such as Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris writing stories that sentimentalized and softened the complex histories of the past.

Broadsheet with portrait of man. — Writer and editor Joel Chandler Harris published a magazine named for his famous character Uncle Remus.
Jay Paull/Getty Images

Many of these stories feature a formerly enslaved older male who’s given the affectionate moniker “Uncle.” These characters tended to describe the Civil War as an affront on the Southern way of life, while presenting the South and its landed gentry as heroic.

In “A Story of the War,” for example, Harris introduces the character Uncle Remus, who recounts the time his master went away to fight the Civil War. Overcome with concern for the man who enslaved him, Uncle Remus follows him and witnesses a Northern soldier preparing to shoot him. In a moment of panic, Remus shoots the Northerner, wounding him.

“A Story of the War,” like most Southern local color tales, appealed to readers invested in the Lost Cause of the Old South, a revisionist ideology that depicts the creation of the Confederate States and cause of the Civil War as just and heroic.

Historian Fred Bailey notes that stories like Page’s and Harris’ were “hailed by the South’s upper-classes,” while associations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy routinely read from these works at their meetings.

Chesnutt’s revisionist humor

At first glance, it would seem Chesnutt, who was mixed-race and could have easily passed for white, was merely working within the dominant literary form of his time and fashioning stories geared to a white audience.

Like his white contemporaries, Chesnutt, in “The Conjure Woman,” includes a character who’s an “uncle” living on the abandoned plantation where he once toiled.

But Chesnutt, as literary historian Dickson Bruce points out in his 2005 essay “Confronting the Crisis: African American Narratives,” used the setting of the plantation to present a more authentic representation of slavery.

Book cover with elderly Black man and two rabbits. — The first edition cover of Charles Chesnutt’s ‘The Conjure Woman.’
Documenting the American South

Uncle Julius, who appears in each of the collection’s stories, isn’t nostalgic for some bygone era. Instead, he reflects on his own life and seeks to show the humanity of the enslaved. He uses his ability as a raconteur to cleverly swindle a white carpetbagger who bought the plantation Julius lived on during his bondage and after the Civil War. The stories are descriptive, corrective – and, most importantly, funny.

While Chesnutt’s tales explicitly engage with the hard history of slavery, each of the stories ends on a lighter note, with Uncle Julius often getting what he wants. Throughout the collection, he parodies the conventions of Southern fiction – whether refuting racist tropes or showing the cruelty of the ruling class – subtly poking fun at a culture enveloped by the fog of nostalgia.

Bound by form

At the same time, Chesnutt felt as if he couldn’t simply write broadsides against myths like the Lost Cause. In order to be published, Black writers needed to appeal to the sensibilities of white readers and the demands of editors.

For example, Uncle Julius spoke in a Black dialect that sounded similar to those of the uncles authored by white writers. This didn’t come easily for Chesnutt. In one letter to his editor, Chesnutt described writing in this dialect as a “despairing task.”

Nonetheless, he avoided completely pandering to mainstream expectations of how Black characters should be portrayed.

He rejected the emergent historiography of Reconstruction that refused to recognize the agency of African Americans, and despite working within the form, Chesnutt didn’t present Julius as a buffoon who was happy to serve the whites in his midst.

Even though his stories didn’t overtly denounce racism, Chesnutt hoped they might still chip away at prejudice:

“But the subtle almost indefinable feeling of repulsion toward the negro, which is common to most Americans – and easily enough accounted for, cannot be stormed and taken by assault; the garrison will not capitulate: so their position must be mined, and we will find ourselves in their midst before they think it.”

Humor opens doors

Chesnutt is far from the only Black artist asked to make compromises. Poet Langston Hughes had a falling out with his patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason, who viewed African Americans as a link to the species’ primitive past and wanted his work to be devoid of political progressivism.

As Hughes wrote in his 1940 autobiography, “The Big Sea,” “I was only an American Negro – who had loved the surface of Africa and the rhythms of Africa – but I was not Africa. I was Chicago and Kansas City and Broadway and Harlem. And I was not what she wanted me to be.”

In Chesnutt, I also see ties to contemporary Black comedians who center their humor around race.

During the third season of “Chappelle’s Show,” Dave Chappelle famously suffered from an existential crisis because the comedian wasn’t sure how people were responding to his humor. In a 2006 interview with Oprah Winfrey, he explained how, when filming a sketch in blackface, “someone on the set, that was white, laughed in such a way – I know the difference of people laughing with me and laughing at me. And it was the first time I’d ever gotten a laugh that I was uncomfortable with.”

Shortly after, Chappelle quit the show.

Man sitting on stage in front of red curtain. — Comedian Dave Chappelle struggled over whether the audience was laughing with him or at him.
Riccardo Savi/Getty Images

While Chesnutt was certainly not the first African American artist to use humor to depict the horrors of slavery, he was one of the first to reach the American mainstream.

The humor disarms readers, helping them cross a psychological threshold and enter a space where a more nuanced conversation about the history of the country can take place.

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Rodney Taylor, Postdoctoral Fellow in African American Studies, University of South Carolina

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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AMT, I find it nice to be able to read what the man actually wrote, and not just what some scholar, however knowledgeable, says about him. It will take me a while to get through all on it – but after reading one story, I for one want more.

The Furies and I will be back.

Everyday Erinyes #306

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 12:08 pm Politics

Feb 202022

If by any chance you were looking for a good example of the law of unintended consequences, here is one. Although “good” is probably not the appropriate word – it isn’t good at all. It is strong and convincing, however. What to do about it, I really don’t know. I wsh I did – although that might even be more frustrating if no one would listen.
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After the FDA issued warnings about antidepressants, youth suicides rose and mental health care dropped

The link between antidepressant use and increases in suicidal thoughts or behaviors among treated youth is unproven.
FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images

Stephen Soumerai, Harvard University and Ross Koppel, University at Buffalo

Depression in young people is vastly undertreated. About two-thirds of depressed youth don’t receive any mental health care at all. Of those who do, a significant proportion rely on antidepressant medications.

Since 2003, however, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned that young people might experience suicidal thinking and behavior during the first months of treatment with antidepressants.

The FDA issued this warning to urge clinicians to monitor suicidal thoughts at the start of treatment. These warnings appear everywhere: on TV and the internet, in print ads and news stories. The most strongly worded warnings appear in black boxes on medication containers themselves.

We are professors and researchers at Harvard Medical School, the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and University at Buffalo. For over 30 years, we have been studying the intended and unintended effects of health policies on patient safety.

We have found that FDA drug warnings can sometimes prevent life-threatening adverse effects, but that unintended consequences of these warnings are also common. In 2013, working for the FDA itself, we published a systematic review of the effects of previous FDA warnings on a variety of medications. We found that about a third backfired, resulting in underuse of needed care and other adverse effects.

In our more recent study from 2020, we found that the FDA antidepressant warnings have led to reduced mental health care and increased suicides among youth – even though researchers have yet to find a clear link between antidepressants and increased suicidality in young people.

Further, despite the warnings, monitoring by clinicians of suicidal thoughts at the start of treatment has not increased from its tiny rate of less than 5%.

Youth suicides rose following FDA warnings

For our 2020 study, we obtained 28 years of data, between 1990 and 2017, on actual suicide deaths in the U.S. among adolescents and young adults. We used data from the WONDER Database, maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which contains mortality counts based on death certificates for U.S. residents and population counts for all U.S. counties.

We found that during the pre-warning period, there was a 13-year stable downward trend in youth suicides, following availability of new and safer antidepressants.

That trend reversed, we found, soon after the FDA began antidepressant warnings in late 2003. Youth suicide deaths increased significantly.

Then we applied our findings to the whole U.S. population of adolescents and young adults. The results of that analysis suggest that there were almost 6,000 additional suicide deaths in just the first six years after the FDA issued the boxed warnings, from 2005 through 2010. The rates also continued to rise thereafter.

Over this same time period, older adults – whose depression is not targeted by the warnings – experienced much lower increases in suicide.

Fewer depressed youths got treatment

Our findings align with a growing body of research that confirms these warnings have had serious unintended effects: scaring many patients, as well as their parents and doctors, away from both antidepressant medications and psychotherapy that can reduce major symptoms of depression.

These studies include a rigorous 2017 study that analyzed mental health care trends among 11 million youths who rely on Medicaid for insurance coverage. This research documented that immediately after the FDA warnings began in 2003, there was a sudden and sustained 30%-40% drop in youth visits to doctors for all depression care, including antidepressant prescriptions.

Seven years after the first FDA warning, doctor visits for depression by young people had dropped by around 50%, compared with the pre-warning trend, thus severely reducing treatment and suicide prevention.

That trend included Black and Latino youths, who have already long suffered from undertreatment.

Almost simultaneously, youth poisonings via prescription drugs, such as sleeping pills, went up. Research has shown that prescribed medications are a widespread method by which young people attempt suicide. This finding adds to the evidence that the antidepressant warnings increased suicidal behavior.

A tattooed teenage girl speaks to a therapist during a group psychotherapy meeting. Three other young people, sitting in the background, are listening. — About two-thirds of depressed young people in the U.S. receive no mental health treatment at all.
Katarzyna Bialasiewicz/iStock via Getty Images

In 2018, researchers reported on two patients in their 20s whose experiences illustrate the potential real-life impacts of the black-box warnings. Both young adults had been prescribed antidepressants for major depression and severe panic attacks, but they refused to take them because of the FDA’s message.

Their conditions worsened, and eventually both attempted suicide. Fortunately, family members were able to intervene in time, and each young adult was then hospitalized.

After they accepted the reassurances of hospital psychiatrists that the benefits of the medications would likely exceed any risks, both patients began to take their prescribed antidepressants. These medications, combined with talk therapy, alleviated their symptoms without intensifying suicidal thoughts.

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Reevaluating the warnings

As scientists, we are trained to always seek potential alternative explanations – some additional factor not included in the research – that could explain the reduction in care or increase in suicides that we and others have recorded in our studies.

However, the sudden, simultaneous and large effects – all of which directly reduced treatment and increased suicidal behavior – strongly suggest this is not a coincidence. It is unlikely that any outside factor can account for the multiple parallel effects on depression care, suicidal behavior and suicide deaths.

A large and growing body of evidence shows that the FDA’s black-box warnings on antidepressants need to be reevaluated.

More generally, there’s a need for independent researchers to monitor the effects of FDA warnings on public health – both intended and unintended.

Stephen Soumerai, Professor of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University and Ross Koppel, Professor of Medical Informatics and Adjunct Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania; Professor of Biomedical Informatics, University at Buffalo

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, This is another situation in which I have been very fortunate and thrived while too many others have suffered. When I decided to seek prescriptive help for my condition, I had done dome research and had a particular drug in mind. The Doctor and I were not in total agreement on what the condition actually was – but the drug I had researched was used for both, and he was amenable to prescribing it for me. It worked very well, and I ave been stable on it for – well, actually decades. But not everyone can find (or trip over) the right places to research, not everyone can find a doctor who listens, and matbe even more to the point, not everyone can safely make it into their 40’s without self-harn.

The Furies and I will be back.

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