An African Climate Heroine Turning Waste to Wealth

Meet the “Queen of Recycling”, Isatou Ceesay. Growing up in the Gambia – where there was virtually no recycling infrastructure – Ceesay looked at the piles of waste and burning plastic around her and decided to take matters into her own hands. She created a movement called One Plastic Bag, educating women to cut down on single-use plastic and recycle plastic waste into sellable products for income.

Isatou Ceesay and the Women Turning Waste to Wealth
by Lily Dyu

Isatou stood at the edge of the village and looked at the ugly heap of rubbish piled high on the red earth. Amongst the discarded tins, food and bike tyres, one thing stood out: there were plastic bags everywhere. Mosquitoes swarmed above murky puddles of water pooled on bags on the ground. Two of her neighbour’s goats perched on the rubbish, foraging for food. She shooed them away. Isatou had heard that many people’s goats had died recently. When the butcher cut them open, he had found plastic knotted in their stomachs.

It was 1997, and 25-year-old Isatou Ceesay was taking a walk through her village of N’jau in the centre of the Gambia – the smallest country in Africa. As she turned down the dusty main street, women greeted her from their courtyards as they prepared vegetables and washed clothes. The smell of familiar dishes filled the air. Children played in a clearing by the forest, and cows grazed near a field of peanuts. Later that afternoon, she sat with five friends in the shade of a tree for the first meeting of her women’s group.

Over recent years, Isatou’s community had faced increasing problems with waste. In the Gambia, many people live in poverty. Here and in many countries around the world, there are no weekly rubbish collections to take away waste, so people have no choice but to leave it piled in the streets. Ever since she could remember, in her village, people had thrown their rubbish behind their homes. As a little girl, she had carried shopping back from the market in a basket, but then everyone started using plastic bags instead. Now those bags were killing animals, there were malaria outbreaks from mosquitoes, and vegetables weren’t growing because of rubbish in the soil. Worst of all, Isatou had watched her friends burning plastic as fuel for cooking. This was dangerous, releasing toxic fumes that were harmful to people. The waste problem was huge, but Isatou was determined to do something about it.

Isatou grew up in N’jau with two sisters and a brother. Her parents were farmers. As a girl, Isatou used bits of waste, like scraps of cloth and wood, to make dolls and other toys. This made her popular with her friends because children in her village didn’t have many things to play with. She was a bright girl who loved learning and always came near the top of her class. Sadly, her father died when Isatou was just 10 years old and her mother was left to support the family alone. Isatou desperately wanted to go to high school, but her mother couldn’t afford to send her. She needed Isatou to work to bring money into the home. This wasn’t unusual; in the Gambia an estimated 75 per cent of children do not have access to a proper education.

So Isatou stayed in N’jau, taking jobs and making and selling things. But she didn’t give up her passion for learning; she realised she would have to find her own way of getting the education that she had missed out on. When she was 20, she sold the cow she had inherited when her father died and used the money to attend Gambia Technical Training Institute in the capital city, Banjul, to train as a secretary. After returning home, she became a volunteer with the US Peace Corps, seeing this as a chance to get more training while helping her community. It was through the Peace Corps that Isatou learned about the possibilities of recycling waste, knowledge that would change her life and the lives of many in N’jau and beyond.

"I think that when you abuse your environment, you abuse yourself” -Isatou Ceesay

Isatou’s sister had taught her how to crochet, and this gave her an idea for how to upcycle the plastic bags that were causing so many problems – changing them from waste into something valuable. She would turn them into purses that could be sold to make money. Isatou persuaded five friends to join her to form a new women’s group, and together they collected bags from the rubbish pile, washed them and dried them out. Then, that first afternoon beneath the tree, they carefully cut each bag into a long continuous thread of plastic several centimetres wide – called ‘plarn’, or plastic yarn. With this, they started to crochet small purses for coins, using different coloured plarn to add pretty patterns. It took eight hours or more to make one purse and it used up around 10 plastic bags. The women were delighted with what they had made.

Some people laughed at Isatou and her friends, telling them they were ‘dirty’ for digging around in the rubbish. Some men told her that her plans couldn’t work because she was a woman and too young to be a leader. But Isatou believed in what she was doing. She loved helping others and relished a challenge. In her family, everyone had always worked together to solve problems, and her mother had been a great inspiration to her. In the Gambia, many girls were unable to finish school because they were needed at home to help their mothers. Isatou wanted women to have the chance to learn skills and to earn money, even if they had not been given the chance to finish their education.

Some men did not like to see the women working beneath the tree. Women were expected to take care of their homes and families while the men went out to work, and these men were afraid that the women would learn to no longer obey their husbands. Isatou moved the meetings to her house, where she and her friends could gather at night to chat and crochet purses by candlelight. They worked secretly for months until they had enough purses. Then Isatou took these to a market in the city and managed to sell them all – the city women loved them because they were so unusual.

The women continued with their tiny business, now also making shoulder bags and cosmetic purses from plarn. Many of them were earning money for the first time, and they were able to use it to buy food to help their families through the ‘hungry gap’ – the three months in the year when there were few crops from their farmland. Their husbands noticed how their family’s lives were improving and encouraged their wives in their purse-making. The women no longer worked in secret, and soon others joined them. Within a year, Isatou’s community recycling project had grown to 50 women and she named it the N’jau Recycling and Income Generation Group (NRIGG).

Women in N’jau were now able to save some money, and Isatou helped them to open their own bank accounts. With their savings, many of the women could afford to support their families in ways that would have been impossible before. Their daughters could continue into secondary school and they could pay for medical treatment when they needed it. The women helped their community, too, each contributing some of their earnings to start a community garden to grow vegetables, and to help pay for orphans to go to school.

But Isatou wanted to find more ways to share her knowledge and help people in her village. In 2000, she got a job as a language and culture helper with the Peace Corps and, through this, she helped to secure funding to build a skill centre in N’jau, where the women could meet and work together. Here they could learn about the importance of caring for their environment and about the dangers of burning plastic. Isatou started to teach classes on subjects such as gardening, soap making and tie-dying, and the women were able to sell many of the things they made. She had learned about nutrition and gave cooking demonstrations on how to prepare meals full of vitamins and minerals to keep their children healthy.

The women of the NRIGG continued to make their bags and purses and, in 2007, they even started to sell them to people in America, with the help of friends Isatou had made through her work. They began to think of ideas for using other types of waste. They turned food waste into compost for their vegetable plots. They sold scrap metal, turned bike tyres into jewellery, and crafted colourful bags from old rice sacks. They made beads from paper and even learned how to turn truck tyres into armchairs and stools. They made skipping ropes and used leftover bits of plastic bags to stuff footballs, so that local children had toys to play with.

And there were other ways they could help the environment too. People usually burned charcoal for fuel, and this was made from trees cut down from the local forest. The women found a way to combine old coconut husks, mango leaves and dried grass to make briquettes. These burned just as well as charcoal, but were cheaper and saved trees. They started to sell these alongside their upcycled crafts.

Soon the women had run out of plastic bags and other useful waste in N’jau, so they started to collect these from neighbouring villages and shared their knowledge about plastic and upcycling with the people there. In 2009, Isatou got a job leading a women’s project for the Swedish NGO, or non-profit organisation, Future In Our Hands. This gave her the opportunity to work with many more communities throughout the Gambia, while also continuing her own education by studying for a diploma in community development.

In 2012, Isatou won a Making a World of Difference Award from the International Alliance for Women. Two years later, NRIGG became the Women’s Initiative Gambia, and today Isatou has trained over 11,000 people all over her country in the dangers of plastic and the opportunities for upcycling waste. But her work has had an even bigger impact as, in 2015, the Gambia’s government banned the import and use of plastic bags.

When she first started making her purses, all those years ago, Isatou’s aims had been to solve the problem of plastic waste and allow women to earn money to support their families. Now she dreams of seeing more women leaders in her country. There are now five women on the N’jau village council, something Isatou would never have imagined possible. And as a mother to three sons, she sees it as her duty to leave the world a better place for future generations. She wants all children to have the chance to go to school. If they are taught to care about the environment, she explains, then we’ll be leaving the planet in good hands.

Isatou has travelled all around the world to share her story, but she’s always happy to return home to N’jau. Today, her village is clean and tidy and you won’t find plastic bags piled in the streets. But she still remembers the villagers’ struggle with waste. Where others saw a problem, Isatou saw an opportunity – an opportunity to create a healthier environment, but above all an opportunity to change people’s lives.

US looting Syrian crude petroleum oil from Northeast

This plunder is still taking place during Biden regime as it was happening with Trump and Obama in office... In doing so, they make the victim pay for the bullet they receive and the remuneration payout for its mercenaries. Just as they have done in Iraq. That's the Western way!!

Kurds are being played by the US. They help the Yanks steal Syria's oil in exchange for a false promise of statehood. They intend to break up Syria and give a large chunk of it to the Kurds -- and by that I mean ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron. Once the Americans dry up the region and do leave, the Kurds will have made enemies with not only the rest of Syria but also Turkey and Iran. Not a wise move for a land-locked nation to get in bed with a foreign power at the expense of neighbors. Ask the Armenians.

‘Just like pirates’: Syrian minister says US controls most crude reserves in northeast, loots oil to strangle country’s economy

20 Mar, 2021

Syria’s petroleum minister has condemned US forces for acting “like pirates” as Washington continues to plunder most of the oil wealth from the country’s resource-rich northeast, where the Pentagon backs Kurdish militia groups.

“Americans and their allies are targeting the Syrian oil wealth and its tankers just like pirates,” Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Bassam Tomeh told state TV this week, adding that the move is designed to cripple Syria’s economy, which depends on oil revenues. 

“What has happened all through [the] Syria war has not happened in any country, in terms of preventing us from tapping our wealth resources and at the same time stopping basic commodities from reaching our country.”

Tomeh said that the total damage inflicted on the Syrian petroleum sector due to the US occupation exceeds $92 billion, noting that Washington currently controls 90% of the crude oil resources in the northeast region.

In an interview last month with the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, the governor of the northeastern Hasakah province, Ghassan Khalil, said that US-backed Kurdish militants were stealing 140,000 barrels of crude oil every day from fields in the area. He claimed the fighters then used tankers to smuggle the oil across the border into Iraq.

Since at least 2015, the Pentagon has offered direct support to the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-dominated faction that controls significant territory in the northeast. The US itself maintains a force of around 900 troops in the country, most embedded alongside the SDF.

While US officials maintain that the military presence in Syria, which is illegal under international law, is meant to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), former President Donald Trump often spoke candidly about desires to grab the country’s oil wealth. 

“We’re keeping the oil – remember that,” then-President Trump said in October 2019. “I’ve always said that: ‘Keep the oil.’ We want to keep the oil. Forty-five million dollars a month? Keep the oil.”

Though Trump largely abandoned former President Barack Obama’s push to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad – which saw the US pour hundreds of millions of dollars into jihadist-linked militant groups – he repeatedly defended the occupation of oil fields while expanding that policy.

Last year, the Trump administration facilitated a deal between the SDF and an American oil firm named Delta Crescent Energy, according to Politico and other outlets. The company is headed up by a former US ambassador to Denmark, James Cain, as well as a retired officer in the Army’s elite Delta Force and a former UK oil executive. Protesting the continued looting of the oil fields, Damascus slammed the agreement “in the strongest terms,” calling the contract “null and void.”

While the Joe Biden administration has signaled that it would no longer prioritize the occupation of Syrian oil resources, just last month, local Arabic-language media reported US forces were constructing a new airport alongside the al-Omar oil field, where Washington maintains a military installation. Around the same time, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby clarified that the DOD is barred from cooperating with energy companies on the ground “except where appropriate under certain existing authorizations,” suggesting Biden may continue the practice on a limited basis. A spokesman for the US-led coalition, Colonel Wayne Marotto, reiterated that stance more recently, though did not mention the loophole cited by Kirby.

Syrian officials, including President Assad himself, have condemned Washington’s oil theft on a number of occasions, even vowing legal action. Soon after Biden’s inauguration, Syria’s UN envoy, Bashar al-Jaafari, pleaded with the new president to withdraw US forces and cease occupying the oil fields.

“The new US administration must stop acts of aggression and occupation, plundering the wealth of my country, withdraw its occupying forces from it, and stop supporting separatist militias, illegal entities, and attempts to threaten Syria's sovereignty,” Jaafari said.

Biden has so far shown little interest in pulling out of Syria, launching a series of airstrikes on militia groups based in the country last month, though US officials have nonetheless said they are reviewing the troop presence there.

The decade-long war has taken a massive toll on Syria’s oil sector, underscoring the cost of the continued American occupation. According to a report by British Petroleum, overall oil production dropped by more than 90% between 2011 and 2019, or from 353,000 barrels per day to just 24,000.

Free Speech as practised in the West...

Most people are disillusioned to think that the West allows unlimited free speech allowance, but they actually fool themselves to think that way.

They Don’t Work To Kill All Dissent, They Just Keep It From Going Mainstream
Caitlin Johnstone
February 20, 2021

One of the most consequential collective delusions circulating in our society is the belief that our society is free. Our society is exactly free enough to create the illusion that we have freedom; from that line onwards it’s just totalitarianism veiled in propaganda.

I get comments from people every day wagging their fingers at my criticisms of western imperialist agendas against nations like China or Iran saying “If you lived over there you wouldn’t be allowed to criticize the government the way you criticize western governments!”

It is true that dissidents are permitted to criticize the government systems of the US-centralized empire to an extent, but only to an extent. Yes, as long as my criticisms of capitalism, oligarchy and imperialism remain relegated to the fringes of influence I am indeed permitted to express my views unmolested. If however I somehow ascended to a position of significant mainstream influence I would be targeted and smeared until my reputation was ruined or I had a psychological breakdown and went
away. You may be certain of this.

The managers of empire do not work to crush and silence all dissent like a conventional totalitarian regime would do. They are much more clever than that.

In a society that maintains the illusion of freedom in order to prevent outrage and revolution, it does not serve rulers to stifle all dissent. Just the opposite in fact: their interests are served by having a small number of dissidents hanging around the fringes of society creating the illusion of freedom. If Johnny Hempshirt over there is allowed to stand on a soapbox and criticize the US war machine, then the US must be a free country.

So they don’t work to silence all dissent. What they do is work to make sure that dissent never hits a critical mass and goes mainstream. That’s their sweet spot. That’s what the entire imperial propaganda engine is geared toward accomplishing. Not to eliminate socialist and anti-imperialist voices, but to make sure they never attain enough influence to be politically consequential.

This is why you rarely see anyone who opposes the empire platformed on mainstream media. The imperial narrative managers work to shrink the Overton window of acceptable debate to get people arguing about how best to support imperial interests, rather than arguing about whether those interests should be supported or whether there should be an empire at all. Having on people who oppose imperialism, oligarchy and capitalism would widen that Overton window, which is against the empire’s interests.

This is also why you saw the imperial narrative managers completely lose their minds during the Tulsi Gabbard presidential campaign. It wasn’t because they feared she could win the election, it was because there was a US congresswoman standing on mainstream liberal platforms criticizing certain critical aspects of US warmongering. Someone had attained a position of influence and was using that influence to disrupt narratives that are very important for powerful people to maintain. She therefore needed to be smeared very aggressively to nullify the influence she was having.

So the good news is that they can’t get rid of us altogether or they’ll shatter the illusion of freedom, while the bad news is that they’re working tirelessly to prevent us from ever attaining a critical mass of political consequence. Our job is to find a way to outmaneuver them and attain that critical mass anyway so that we can use the power of our numbers to force real change.

We know they can’t shut us down completely or else they’ll break the illusion of freedom and lose the ability to propagandize effectively, which is an ability the entire empire depends upon.

Our job is to wake up the mainstream public. This is very feasible, as trust in the imperial media is at an all-time low while our ability to network and share information is at an all-time high. It does mean we need to stop thinking of ourselves as radicals (we’re not radical, we’re just sane) and push inward from the fringes to the heart of the mainstream public as hard as we can.

We’ve got creativity, inspiration and humor on our side, and if we can wake up a critical mass of people to the fact that they live in a profoundly unfree society disguised by propaganda we’ll have the numbers too. We absolutely can win this thing, we just have to push hard enough for it.

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2021

This list marks 20 years since we began compiling an annual selection of the year’s most important technologies. Some, such as mRNA vaccines, are already changing our lives, while others are still a few years off. Below, you’ll find a brief description along with a link to a feature article that probes each technology in detail. We hope you’ll enjoy and explore — taken together, we believe this list represents a glimpse into our collective future.

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2021
by the Editors of MIT Technology Review
February 24, 2021

1) Messenger RNA vaccines

We got very lucky. The two most effective vaccines against the coronavirus are based on messenger RNA, a technology that has been in the works for 20 years. When the covid-19 pandemic began last January, scientists at several biotech companies were quick to turn to mRNA as a way to create potential vaccines; in late December 2020, at a time when more than 1.5 million had died from covid-19 worldwide, the vaccines were approved in the US, marking the beginning of the end of the pandemic.

The new covid vaccines are based on a technology never before used in therapeutics, and it could transform medicine, leading to vaccines against various infectious diseases, including malaria. And if this coronavirus keeps mutating, mRNA vaccines can be easily and quickly modified. Messenger RNA also holds great promise as the basis for cheap gene fixes to sickle-cell disease and HIV. Also in the works: using mRNA to help the body fight off cancers. Antonio Regalado explains the history and medical potential of the exciting new science of messenger RNA.

2) GPT-3

Large natural-language computer models that learn to write and speak are a big step toward AI that can better understand and interact with the world. GPT-3 is by far the largest — and most literate — to date. Trained on the text of thousands of books and most of the internet, GPT-3 can mimic human-written text with uncanny — and at times bizarre — realism, making it the most impressive language model yet produced using machine learning.

But GPT-3 doesn’t understand what it’s writing, so sometimes the results are garbled and nonsensical. It takes an enormous amount of computation power, data, and money to train, creating a large carbon footprint and restricting the development of similar models to those labs with extraordinary resources. And since it is trained on text from the internet, which is filled with misinformation and prejudice, it often produces similarly biased passages. Will Douglas Heaven shows off a sample of GPT-3’s clever writing and explains why some are ambivalent about its achievements.

3) TikTok recommendation algorithms

Since its launch in China in 2016, TikTok has become one of the world’s fastest-growing social networks. It’s been downloaded billions of times and attracted hundreds of millions of users. Why? Because the algorithms that power TikTok’s “For You” feed have changed the way people become famous online.

While other platforms are geared more toward highlighting content with mass appeal, TikTok’s algorithms seem just as likely to pluck a new creator out of obscurity as they are to feature a known star. And they’re particularly adept at feeding relevant content to niche communities of users who share a particular interest or identity.

The ability of new creators to get a lot of views very quickly — and the ease with which users can discover so many kinds of content — have contributed to the app’s stunning growth. Other social media companies are now scrambling to reproduce these features on their own apps. Abby Ohlheiser profiles a TikTok creator who was surprised by her own success on the platform.

4) Lithium-metal batteries

Electric vehicles come with a tough sales pitch; they’re relatively expensive, and you can drive them only a few hundred miles before they need to recharge—which takes far longer than stopping for gas. All these drawbacks have to do with the limitations of lithium-ion batteries. A well-funded Silicon Valley startup now says it has a battery that will make electric vehicles far more palatable for the mass consumer.

It’s called a lithium-metal battery and is being developed by QuantumScape. According to early test results, the battery could boost the range of an EV by 80% and can be rapidly recharged. The startup has a deal with VW, which says it will be selling EVs with the new type of battery by 2025.

The battery is still just a prototype that’s much smaller than one needed for a car. But if QuantumScape and others working on lithium-metal batteries succeed, it could finally make EVs attractive to millions of consumers. James Temple describes how a lithium-metal battery works, and why scientists are so excited by recent results.

5) Data trusts

Technology companies have proven to be poor stewards of our personal data. Our information has been leaked, hacked, and sold and resold more times than most of us can count. Maybe the problem isn’t with us, but with the model of privacy to which we’ve long adhered—one in which we, as individuals, are primarily responsible for managing and protecting our own privacy.

Data trusts offer one alternative approach that some governments are starting to explore. A data trust is a legal entity that collects and manages people’s personal data on their behalf. Though the structure and function of these trusts are still being defined, and many questions remain, data trusts are notable for offering a potential solution to long-standing problems in privacy and security. Anouk Ruhaak describes the powerful potential of this model and a few early examples that show its promise.

6) Green hydrogen

Hydrogen has always been an intriguing possible replacement for fossil fuels. It burns cleanly, emitting no carbon dioxide; it’s energy dense, so it’s a good way to store power from on-and-off renewable sources; and you can make liquid synthetic fuels that are drop-in replacements for gasoline or diesel. But most hydrogen up to now has been made from natural gas; the process is dirty and energy intensive.

The rapidly dropping cost of solar and wind power means green hydrogen is now cheap enough to be practical. Simply zap water with electricity, and presto, you’ve got hydrogen. Europe is leading the way, beginning to build the needed infrastructure.

Peter Fairley argues that such projects are just a first step to an envisioned global network of electrolysis plants that run on solar and wind power, churning out clean hydrogen.

7) Digital contact tracing

As the coronavirus began to spread around the world, it felt at first as if digital contact tracing might help us. Smartphone apps could use GPS or Bluetooth to create a log of people who had recently crossed paths. If one of them later tested positive for covid, that person could enter the result into the app, and it would alert others who might have been exposed.

But digital contact tracing largely failed to make much impact on the virus’s spread. Apple and Google quickly pushed out features like exposure notifications to many smartphones, but public health officials struggled to persuade residents to use them. The lessons we learn from this pandemic could not only help us prepare for the next pandemic but also carry over to other areas of health care. Lindsay Muscato explores why digital contact tracing failed to slow covid-19 and offers ways we can do better next time.

8) Hyper-accurate positioning

We all use GPS every day; it has transformed our lives and many of our businesses. But while today’s GPS is accurate to within 5 to 10 meters, new hyper-accurate positioning technologies have accuracies within a few centimeters or millimeters. That’s opening up new possibilities, from landslide warnings to delivery robots and self-driving cars that can safely navigate streets.

China’s BeiDou (Big Dipper) global navigation system was completed in June 2020 and is part of what’s making all this possible. It provides positioning accuracy of 1.5 to two meters to anyone in the world. Using ground-based augmentation, it can get down to millimeter-level accuracy. Meanwhile, GPS, which has been around since the early 1990s, is getting an upgrade: four new satellites for GPS III launched in November and more are expected in orbit by 2023. Ling Xin reports on how the greatly
increased accuracy of these systems is already proving useful.

9) Remote everything

The covid pandemic forced the world to go remote. Getting that shift right has been especially critical in health care and education. Some places around the world have done a particularly good job at getting remote services in these two areas to work well for people.

Snapask, an online tutoring company, has more than 3.5 million users in nine Asian countries, and Byju’s, a learning app based in India, has seen the number of its users soar to nearly 70 million. Unfortunately, students in many other countries are still floundering with their online classes.

Meanwhile, telehealth efforts in Uganda and several other African countries have extended health care to millions during the pandemic. In a part of the world with a chronic lack of doctors, remote health care has been a life saver. Sandy Ong reports on the remarkable success of online learning in Asia and the spread of telemedicine in Africa.

10) Multi-skilled AI

Despite the immense progress in artificial intelligence in recent years, AI and robots are still dumb in many ways, especially when it comes to solving new problems or navigating unfamiliar environments. They lack the human ability, found even in young children, to learn how the world works and apply that general knowledge to new situations.

One promising approach to improving the skills of AI is to expand its senses; currently AI with computer vision or audio recognition can sense things but cannot “talk” about what it sees and hears using natural-language algorithms. But what if you combined these abilities in a single AI system? Might these systems begin to gain human-like intelligence? Might a robot that can see, feel, hear, and communicate be a more productive human assistant? Karen Hao explains how AIs with multiple senses will gain a greater understanding of the world around them, achieving a much more flexible intelligence.

A small, open-aired vehicle called Rolla...

Rolla isn’t a functioning device planned for mass production, it’s a feasible, near-future idea that could solve some of our biggest pain points in traversing a city.

The Rolla might be the best of all worlds
Mark Wilson

FASTCompany, Mar 4, 2021

Uber. Bike and scooter shares. And public transit. This trifecta seems like it covers every urban transportation need. But the truth is that each solution comes with its own flaws. Ubers clog the roads. Bikes can make you sweat. And especially during the COVID-19 era, sharing enclosed spaces with other people can feel scary.

In response to the current moment, the design firm NewDealDesign has revealed a compelling new concept in urban mobility that mixes all of these ideas into one package. It’s a small, open-aired vehicle called the Rolla. While the Rolla isn’t a functioning device planned for mass production, it’s a feasible, near-future idea that could solve some of our biggest pain points in traversing a city.

The Rolla is essentially an open-air, autonomous trolley, with standing room only. It’s an electric vehicle with a skateboard design, meaning all of the batteries and motors are in the bottom chassis. Rollas would run popular routes much like buses, cruising at somewhere between 8 and 12 miles per hour. They’d fit two to three people comfortably, and up to six with a real squeeze. You could hop on one to ride the public route, or commandeer it, like an Uber, to take you directly to your destination. The idea is that the Rolla is a highly flexible solution that could fill specific niches in a city-by-city context.

“There are benefits to micromobility options like bikes and scooters for some people, but for a lot [of circumstances], they don’t fit,” says Gadi Amit, founder of NewDeal Design. “If you want to dress nicely, if you’re taking your daughter to school, if you bought something large, you’re not going to ride a bike or scooter.”

Bikes and scooters also aren’t particularly accessible for people who have trouble walking or balancing. So the Rolla is built to ride low to the ground, meaning it’s easy to step on board, or even roll a wheelchair or stroller onto the platform from a curb. It cruises slowly enough that you might be able to hop right on. Or you could hail it, with an app, to stop.

The open-air design means that the Rolla isn’t built for extreme winters. But that approach enables unlimited airflow. Theoretically, that could make it safer to ride than closed vehicles with poor air circulation. (Note: Researchers believe riding the subway is fairly safe during COVID-19, but the recirculated air on subway platforms is full of dangerous particulates.) The open cabin also connects you more intimately to the city itself. “You’re still listening to the street. If you see an interesting store, you hop off,” says Amit. “We tend to underestimate the social element of urban environments.”

For sanitary purposes, Quinn Fitzgerald, the director of industrial design at NewDealDesign, who led the development of the concept, says he designed the Rolla to be something that you could literally hose down. Alongside the Rolla itself, the team conceptualized a cleaning unit, which is basically a small trailer. It could be dropped off by a truck and fit into a stock parking spot to sterilize and recharge Rollas without bringing them to some central facility.

As for the Rolla’s two walls covered in flashy LCD screens, Fitzgerald readily admits they could be filled with ads to subsidize the project (much like existing subway ads or Citibank’s sponsorship of the Citi Bike). Amit imagines that a restaurant might buy a Rolla, plaster its name all over the vehicle, and use it to offer diners a free trip to dinner.

So how could a city actually implement the Rolla? That could be through a private business or public investment. In either case, the barrier to entry would be much lower than something like a subway system, which can cost billions of dollars and many years to extend. NewDealDesign imagines that the system could be tested with just a few units in a city, and more units could easily be purchased and put onto streets to meet demand.

That model is relatively well understood, following the explosion of electric scooters. The trickier proposition might be exactly where the Rolla can drive. It’s designed with the same footprint as a typical bike, but while it could technically squeeze into a bike lane, the Rolla might run slower than a quick cyclist. At the same time, it’s too slow to cruise among cars.

NewDealDesign ultimately suggests that the Rolla might need a third dedicated lane on busy streets, while in more closed environments, such as college and corporate campuses, it might be safe enough to cruise amid pedestrians on walkways. That means the Rolla wouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all transit option for every city. Rather, cities would need to make some accommodations to bring Rollas to their streets.

“The vehicle itself doesn’t require much of a headache to develop it,” says Amit. “The mindset [to implement it] . . . needs a lot of massaging.”

When a ship appears to be floating in sky!

A P&O cruise ship has left social media stumped, after appearing to be floating in the air rather than sailing on the water.

P&O cruise ship appears to be floating in sky in optical illusion
Alice Fuller
The Sun, March 10, 2021

Another mind-bending photo appears to show a ship floating in the sky.

A bizarre optical illusion is to blame for the spooky sightings – which have stretched the length of the country.

The latest image shows a massive cruise liner ‘hovering in mid-air’ in Lyme Bay between Devon and Dorset.

Dave Medlock spotted the boat as he was out walking his dog on Sunday.

“It looks like something from Back to the Future, but I know it’s a special type of mirage,” he said.

Despite looking like it was floating, the boat was actually in the water.

It appeared to be suspended due to a phenomenon known as a superior mirage.

This causes an image to appear above where it really is, making this P&O cruise ship look like it’s flying.

It is one of many ‘floating ships’ which have left social media feeling all at sea.

Last week, David Morris spotted one as he walked along the Cornish coastline near Falmouth.

He was left “extremely baffled” when he spotted a large vessel apparently floating just above the waves.

Days earlier, several cruise ships were also seen “hovering” above the waters off the coast of Paignton, Devon.

Then Colin McCallum spotted a large red “floating vessel” on the horizon as he travelled through Banff, Aberdeenshire.

“When I first saw the boat, I had to do a double take because I genuinely thought it was floating,” he said.

“Upon further inspection, however, I noticed that it was in fact just a remarkable optical illusion.”

The phenomenon – known as Fata Morgana – is created when the sun heats up the atmosphere above either the land or the sea.

A layer of warmer air sits on top of a layer of cold air, causing the light from the ship to bend and making colours blend together.

For a Fata Morgana to appear, the atmospheric conditions have to be just right, reports the Mail Online.

It starts with a cold air mass close to the ground or surface of the water that is topped by a warm layer of air higher in the atmosphere.

Although the phenomenon can occur on land, they are more common at sea because water helps to form the cool air layer required.

Speaking of the Cornwall sighting, a Met Office spokesman said: “The images appear to show evidence of a phenomenon called Fata Morgana.

“A rare and complex form of mirage in which horizontal and vertical distortion, inversion and elevation of objects occur in changing patterns.

“The phenomenon occurs over a water surface and is produced by the superposition of several layers of air of different refractive index.”

BBC meteorologist David Braine said the phenomenon was caused by conditions in the atmosphere which bend light.

“Superior mirages occur because of the weather condition known as a temperature inversion, where cold air lies close to the sea with warmer air above it,” he said.

“Since cold air is denser than warm air, it bends light towards the eyes of someone standing on the ground or on the coast, changing how a distant object appears.”

The mirage takes its name from Morgan le Fay – a sorceress from Arthurian legend – said to use her witchcraft to lure unwitting sailors into her traps.

It is thought to be the reason for sightings of the Flying Dutchman, a 17th century “ghost ship” doomed to sail the seas forever.

US Weapons Lobby Shoots Down Opposition

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

“When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.” -- J. Robert Oppenheimer

Weapons Lobby Shooting Down Opposition

Intense lobbying by aerospace and defense technology giant Northrop Grumman resulted in the company being awarded an uncontested bid in September 2020 for the $13.3 billion engineering, manufacturing, and development phase of America's new $100 billion nuclear missile project.

This latest weapon is another ground-based strategic deterrent (GBSD), and it has a lot of critics. A new report out next week from the non-partisan think tank, Federation of American Scientists (FAS), says the US is building this Cold War-era nuclear missile based on a set of flawed and outdated assumptions, and without a clear sense of what it will achieve.

FAS argues the GBSD is being driven by intense industry lobbying and politicians from states that will benefit the most economically, rather than a clear assessment of the purpose of the new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Currently, there are 400 Minuteman missiles spread over five states: Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. All except Colorado have Republican governors. Many arms-control advocates argue that the ICBMs should not be replaced, but phased out entirely due to their vulnerability and instability. And as the report notes, "there has not been a serious consideration of what role these cold war-era weapons are supposed to play in a post-Cold War security environment."

The price tag for the new GBSD was deliberately made to look like it costs less than extending the life of the Minuteman III missile it would be replacing. An independent assessment suggests the actual price tag of a totally new weapon could be two to three times more. A 2019 congressional effort to mandate a study on the comparative costs was blocked with help from the industry lobby.

GBSD supporters cite China's rising military power as a rationale for building the new weapon. But FAS maintains that America’s ICBMs are irrelevant to deterring China, because any launch from the Great Plains and over the Arctic could be interpreted by Moscow as an attack on Russia, potentially widening an already catastrophic conflict. Former secretaries of defense and military commanders skeptical of ICBMs say in the event a nuclear attack against the US is confirmed, the better course for retaliatory action would be to use US nuclear bombers and submarine-launched missiles, the other two legs of the nuclear triad.

The Biden administration is preparing its first defense budget, which might reveal its intentions regarding the GBSD. Some critics support delaying funding to give the administration time to conduct a nuclear posture review. However, the administration isn't expected to rethink the triad, which has been US nuclear orthodoxy since early in the Cold War.

One former defense secretary worries the wrong decision will be made. "These arguments in favor of maintaining the triad have been so ground into us through the years it’s very unlikely they will find a way of rising above that.” (Guardian)

Biden's Khashoggi Murder treatment exposed US Foreign Policy

That the U.S. opposes tyranny is a glaring myth. Yet it is not only believed but often used to justify wars, bombing campaigns, sanctions, and protracted conflict.

Human rights abuses are never the reason the U.S. acts against another country. Human rights abuses are the pretext the U.S. uses — the propagandistic script — to pretend that its brute force retaliation against non-compliant governments are in fact noble efforts to protect people. 

Biden's Protection of Murderous Saudi Despots Shows the Hidden Reality of U.S. Foreign Policy

Glenn Greenwald
Substack, Mar 3, 2021

A staple of mainstream U.S. discourse is that the United States opposes tyranny and despotism and supports freedom and democracy around the world. Embracing murderous despots is something only Donald Trump did, but not normal, upstanding American Presidents. This belief about the U.S. role in the world permeates virtually every mainstream foreign policy discussion.

When the U.S. wants to start a new war — with Iraq, with Libya, with Syria, etc. — it accomplishes this by claiming that it is, at least in part, motivated by horror over the tyranny of the country’s leaders. When it wants to engineer regime change or support anti-democratic coups — in Venezuela, in Iran, in Bolivia, in Honduras — it uses the same justification. When the U.S. Government and its media partners want to increase the hostility and fear that Americans harbor for adversarial countries — for Russia, for China, for Cuba, For North Korea — it hauls out the same script: we are deeply disturbed by the human rights violations of that country’s government.

Yet it is hard to conjure a claim that is more obviously and laughably false than this one. The U.S. does not dislike autocratic and repressive governments. It loves them, and it has for decades. Installing and propping up despotic regimes has been the foundation of U.S. foreign policy since at least the end of World War II, and that approach continues to this day to be its primary instrument for advancing what it regards as its interests around the world. The U.S. for decades has counted among its closest allies and partners the world’s most barbaric autocrats, and that is still true.

Indeed, all other things being equal, when it comes to countries with important resources or geo-strategic value, the U.S. prefers autocracy to democracy because democracy is unpredictable and even dangerous, particularly in the many places around the world where anti-American sentiment among the population is high (often because of sustained U.S. interference in those countries, including propping up their dictators). There is no way for a rational person to acquire even the most minimal knowledge of U.S. history and current foreign policy and still believe the claim that the U.S. acts against other countries because it is angry or offended at human rights abuses perpetrated by those other governments.

What the U.S. hates and will act decisively and violently against is not dictatorship but disobedience. The formula is no more complex than this: any government that submits to U.S. decrees will be its ally and partner and will receive its support no matter how repressive, barbaric or despotic it is with its own population. Conversely, any government that defies U.S. decrees will be its adversary and enemy no matter how democratic it was in its ascension to power and in its governance.

In sum, human rights abuses are never the reason the U.S. acts against another country. Human rights abuses are the pretext the U.S. uses — the propagandistic script — to pretend that its brute force retaliation against non-compliant governments are in fact noble efforts to protect people.

The examples proving this to be true are far too long to chronicle in any one article. Entire books have been written demonstrating this. In May, journalist Vincent Bevins released an outstanding book entitled The Jakarta Method. As I wrote in my review of it, accompanied by an interview with the author:

The book primarily documents the indescribably horrific campaigns of mass murder and genocide the CIA sponsored in Indonesia as an instrument for destroying a nonaligned movement of nations who would be loyal to neither Washington nor Moscow. Critically, Bevins documents how the chilling success of that morally grotesque campaign led to its being barely discussed in U.S. discourse, but then also serving as the foundation and model for clandestine CIA interference campaigns in multiple other countries from Guatemala, Chile, and Brazil to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Central America: the Jakarta Method.

When people who want to believe in the core goodness of the U.S. role in the world are confronted with those facts, they often dismiss them by insisting that this was a relic of the Cold War, a necessary evil to stop the spread of Communism which no longer applies. But the fall of the Soviet Union did not even minimally retard this tactic of propping up and embracing the world’s worst despots. It remains the strategy of choice of the permanent bipartisan Washington class known as the U.S. Foreign Policy Community.

And nothing makes that point clearer than the long-standing and ongoing support the U.S. provides to the Saudi regime, one of the most savage and despotic tyrannies on the planet. As the Biden administration is now demonstrating, not even murdering a journalist with a large U.S. newspaper who resided in the U.S. can ruin or even weaken the tight, loyal friendship between the U.S. government and the Saudi monarchy, to say nothing of the brutal repression which Saudi monarchs have imposed on its own population for decades.

An intelligence report released by the U.S. Government on Friday claims what many have long assumed: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally and directly approved the gruesome murder in Turkey of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the subsequent carving up of his corpse with a buzz saw for removal to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis continue to deny this allegation, but it is nonetheless the official and definitive conclusion of the U.S. Government.

But beyond a few trivial and inconsequential gestures (sanctioning a few Saudis and imposing a visa ban on a few dozen others), the Biden administration made clear that it intends to undertake no real retaliation. That is because, said The New York Times, “a consensus emerged inside the White House that the cost of such a breach, in terms of Saudi cooperation on counter terrorism and in confronting Iran, was simply too high.” Biden officials were also concerned, they claimed, that punishing the Saudis would push them closer to China.

Not only is the Biden administration not meaningfully punishing the Saudis, but they are actively protecting them. Without explanation, the U.S. withdrew its original report that contained the name of twenty-one Saudis it alleged had “participated in, ordered, or were otherwise complicit in or responsible for the death of Jamal Khashoggi" and replaced it with a different version of the report that only named eighteen — seemingly protecting the identity of three Saudi operative it believes to have participated in a horrific murder.

Even worse, the White House is concealing the names of the seventy-six Saudi operatives to whom they are applying visa bans for participating in Khashoggi’s assassination, absurdly citing “privacy” concerns — as though those who savagely murder and dismember a journalist are entitled to have their identities hidden.

Worse still, the U.S. is not imposing any sanctions on bin Salman himself, the person most responsible for Khashoggi’s death. When pressed on this refusal to sanction the Saudi leader on Sunday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed — falsely — that “there have not been sanctions put in place for the leaders of foreign governments where we have diplomatic relations and even where we don't have diplomatic relations.” As the foreign policy analyst Daniel Larison quickly noted, that is blatantly untrue: the U.S. has previously sanctioned multiple foreign leaders including Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, currently targeted personally with multiple sanctions, as well as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the now-deceased Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe.

It cannot be disputed that Biden has quickly and radically violated his campaign pledge: “I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them, we were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them the pariah that they are." As even CNN noted: “It was a far cry from a comment in November 2019, in which Biden promised to punish senior Saudi leaders in a way former President Donald Trump wouldn't.” Even the new administration’s early announcement that they would cease helping the Saudis wage war in Yemen was accompanied by a vow to continue furnishing the Saudi regime with “defensive” weapons.

It is in instances such as now — when U.S. propaganda becomes so unsustainable because the government’s actions diverge so glaringly from the mythology, such that the contradictions cannot elude even the most partisan and gullible citizens — that White House officials are forced to be candid about how they really think and behave. When they see the Biden administration protecting one of the most despicable regimes on the planet, they are left with no choice: nobody will believe the standard fictions they typically spout, so they have to defend their real mentality to justify their behavior.

And so that is exactly what Psaki did on Monday when confronted with the glaring disparities between Biden’s campaign vows and their current reality of coddling the Saudi murderous despots. She admitted that the U.S. is willing to tolerate and support even the most barbaric tyrants. “There are areas where we have an important relationship with Saudi Arabia” and Biden, in refusing to harshly punish the Saudis, is “acting in the national interest of the United States.”

Now, there are some who believe that the U.S. should be indifferent to the human rights practices of other governments and should simply align and partner and even install and prop up whatever dictators are willing to serve U.S. interests, regardless of how tyrannical and repressive they are (what constitutes “U.S. interests,” and who typically benefits from their promotion, is an entirely separate question). In the past, many have advocated this view explicitly. Jeane Kirkpatrick catapulted to Cold War-era fame when she insisted that the U.S. should support pro-U.S. right-wing autocrats because they are preferable to left-wing ones. Henry Kissinger’s entire career as an academic and foreign policy official was based on his “realist” philosophy which was explicitly welcoming of despotic regimes that were of use to “U.S. interests” as defined by the ruling class.

At least if there is that sort of candor, the real scheme of motives can be engaged. But the laughably false conceit that the U.S. is motivated by a genuine and profound concern for the freedom and human rights of others around the world and that this noble sentiment is what animates its choices about who to attack, isolate and sanction, or befriend, support and arm, is so blatantly propagandistic that it is truly stunning that anyone continues to believe it.

And yet not only do they believe it, it is the predominant view in the mainstream press. It is the script that is non-ironically hauled out every time the U.S. wants to go to war with or bomb a new country and we are told that nobody can oppose this because the leaders being targeted are so very bad and tyrannical and the U.S. stands opposed to such evils.

Biden’s protection of bin Salman is not, to put it mildly, the first post-Cold-War example of the U.S. lavishing praise, support and protection on the world’s worst tyrants. President Obama sold the Saudis a record amount of weapons, and even cut short his state visit to India — the world’s largest democracy — to fly to Saudi Arabia along with top officials in both political parties to pay his respects to King Abdullah upon his death. Our Snowden reporting in 2014 revealed that the Obama-era NSA “significantly expanded its cooperative relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Interior, one of the world’s most repressive and abusive government agencies,” with one top secret memo heralding “a period of rejuvenation” for the NSA’s relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Defense.

British Royal Family's Colonialist Past & Racist Present

True colour of British Royal exposed once again via Oprah Winfrey's interview with Meghan Markle.

The royal family can’t keep ignoring its colonialist past and racist present
Benjamin T. Jones
Lecturer in History, Central Queensland University Australia
The Conversation, March 9, 2021

The most explosive element of the Sussexes’ highly anticipated interview with Oprah Winfrey was the claim that someone within the royal household had “concerns” over how dark-skinned the couple’s son Archie might be.

While Winfrey later clarified neither the Queen nor the Duke of Edinburgh were behind the remark, Meghan also suggested their son was denied the title of prince because of his mixed race.

The interview points to a larger issue of racism in the British monarchy, both contemporary and historical.

When the couple began dating, some hoped it would usher in a period of royal renewal. Meghan, who has an African-American mother and a white father, was presented as a symbol of the modern, inclusive monarchy. These hopes were gradually dashed with consistently negative media coverage, including unfavourable comparisons with Meghan’s sister-in-law, Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge.

Meghan revealed to Winfrey that the pressure to perform official duties in the face of mounting criticism led to depression and suicidal thoughts. The couple lamented the lack of support they received from the royal family.

It is a tragic story at an individual level but it also points to a history of structural racism within the monarchy. Harry noted that the press attacks on his wife had “colonial undertones”, which the royal family refused to address. These are part of a longer history of colonialism and racism in which the Windsors are entangled.

The slave trade

The Queen’s distant ancestor, Elizabeth I, was integral to establishing the British slave trade. One of the founders of the trade in the 16th century, Sir John Hawkins, impressed Elizabeth by capturing 300 Africans. His biographer Harry Kelsey calls him “Queen Elizabeth’s Slave Trader” and notes that she contributed her ship, Jesus of Lubeck to his next voyage in 1564.

In 2018, Prince Charles denounced Britain’s role in the slave trade as an “atrocity” but there have been calls for the Queen also to apologise on behalf of the monarchy.

Republican campaigner Graham Smith has led the charge noting that the current royals “are sitting on a hugely significant amount which was acquired from slavery and empire”.
A colonial mindset

The British empire contracted after the World Wars and eventually dissolved in 1960s. Nevertheless, a colonial mindset has persisted. This has been regularly demonstrated by the casual racism of Prince Philip. Visiting Australia in 2002, he asked an Aboriginal Australian if they were “still throwing spears”.

In 1999, he mused that an old-fashioned fuse box must have been “put in by an Indian”. In 1986, he warned British students in China that they would become “slitty-eyed” if they stayed too long. Australia, China, and India, are just three of dozens of countries touched by British colonisation.

While the Prince’s comments — and many others — are often dismissed as “gaffes” or poor jokes, they tie into a culture war, suggesting colonialism was ultimately a net good and Britain was spreading civilisation throughout the world.

Journalist Peter Tatchell has argued that the institution of monarchy is itself inherently racist as there have only been, and likely will only ever be, white monarchs. He notes,

"A non-white person is […] excluded from holding the title of head of state, at least for the foreseeable future. This is institutional racism."

While this could change, of course, the treatment of Meghan and the alleged concerns over her son’s skin colour suggest the privileging of whiteness is deeply ingrained.

Being seventh in line to the throne, there was never a realistic chance Archie would become king. The notion that his mere proximity to the throne has sparked concerns, and the failure to defend Meghan from racist attacks, again points to a structural issue.

The marriage of Harry and Meghan in 2018 by charismatic African-American Bishop Michael Curry, serenaded by a gospel choir, was a public relations coup for the royals. The Sussexes’ exit from royal life after such a short period, and the reasons why, is highly damaging.

Royal silence

The monarchy has remained largely silent on the history of racism in Britain and how the royal family has benefited from racism and colonialism.

After the death of George Floyd sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, thousands across Britain were quick to show their support and solidarity. So strongly did the movement resonate, in 2020 the English Premier League had the words Black Lives Matter printed on players’ shirts, opening matches with players taking a symbolic knee.

The royal family said nothing. By protocol, the monarchy does not comment on political issues but its role is to offer moral leadership. Without explicitly endorsing Black Lives Matter, the Windsors could have contributed to the zeitgeist by offering statements condemning all forms of racism and visibly championing anti-racism charities.

As a society, Britain is having a difficult national conversation about its imperial past. Statues of slave owners are being torn down and attempts to de-colonise the curriculum are gathering pace.

If the royal family is not able to make similar attempts to confront the racism in its past and present, it risks falling ever further out of touch with the people it is supposed to represent.