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how to really help bees
Planting bee-friendly plants seems to be the new fad in many cities around the globe. In the UK, amateur gardeners regularly try to attract such insects, while in France, farmers have offered land to help beekeepers . In other countries, such as Canada, cities adopt pollinators. Even some companies undertake wildflower planting efforts.
But not all plants can satisfy the nutritional requirements of bees and some may be more useful than others in balancing bee diets.
Lavender attracts a variety of pollinating insects and is considered to be one of the most bee-friendly plants. It offers plenty of nectar (energy for pollinating insects) but its pollen is nutritionally imbalanced for bees.
Démosthène / Wikimedia Commons
From early spring to autumn, pollinating insects, such as bees, use the rich food resources supplied by plants in the form of nectar and pollen. Nectar is the source of energy needed for all insect activity, while pollen is a source of building material especially for larvae to achieve their final adult shape.
The nurse bees ingest pollen, nectar and water to feed the larvae and the digested compounds are used to make jelly. But its caloric value relies on the nectar and pollen used.
Honeybee queen larvae floating in royal jelly. Their food is produced by nursing bees from digested pollen, nectar and water.
Waugsberg / Wikimedia Commons
Jelly building blocks
The jelly is organic matter and composed of various organic substrates, such as specific sugars, lipids, proteins, vitamins, amino-acids and enzymes. All these organic substrates are constructed of atoms of specific chemical elements, like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, sodium, potassium, copper and zinc.
Research covering the proportions of various atoms that make up living organisms and their food sources is called ecological stoichiometry or biological stoichiometry. This approach was used for our investigation of honeybees’ nutritional needs and how they may be fulfilled only if pollen diversity and adequate species composition is available for them.
There is an important feature that differentiates organic substrates from atoms. Organic substrates are mutable (for example, they may be transformed into different substrates) and may be produced by living organisms utilising available atoms.
Atoms are immutable – they cannot be transformed into different atoms and cannot be produced by living organisms. Therefore, mutable organic substrates are built of immutable elements. But how is this related to the production of good quality jelly for the growing bee larvae?
Sugars – the source of energy for bees – are made up of only three elements: carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Other organic substrates that are necessary for body-building and body maintenance are composed of other elements in addition to the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, such as nitrogen, phosphorous, sodium, potassium, copper and zinc. Atoms of these other elements must be incorporated into the bodies of growing bee larvae.
Pollen is the exclusive source of these elements for bees. Therefore, to produce good quality jelly, pollen must provide the bees with the required proportions of the atoms of body-building elements. And is every pollen, produced by various plant species, similar in this respect?
Well, no.
Pollen collection by honeybees.
Seven crucial bee foods
Our latest study showed that various species of pollen differ in their elemental composition and therefore provide atoms of particular elements in varying proportions. These proportions are often imbalanced for bees – they contain too many atoms of some elements and too few of others.
Apiary of the Institute of Environmental Sciences, Jagiellonian University (Poland), where the study was performed. Pictured is the coordinator of the research project, Michał Filipiak.
Paweł Dudzik; https://www.facebook.com/paweldudzikphoto/
Our results show that seven elements are particularly important for bees: sodium, sulphur, copper, phosphorous, potassium, nitrogen and zinc.
The atoms of these elements are often scarce in pollen but must be provided in high proportions in the food of growing bee larvae. However, the concentrations of these elements in pollen show high taxonomic variability, which means that some plant species produce pollen scarce in these important elements, while others produce pollen rich in them.
Imagine two pollen species: A and B. Pollen A is rich in sulphur but scarce in potassium and pollen B is scarce in sulphur but rich in potassium. To collect the sulphur and potassium they need, bees need to mix these two pollens.
Working on the research project.
Paweł Dudzik; https://www.facebook.com/paweldudzikphoto/
Pollen mix
But not all plants produce pollen that satisfies the elemental requirements of bees and mixing of random pollen species is not enough. Therefore, plants should not be evaluated and planted as adequate sources of bee food based solely on the quantity of pollen and nectar produced.
Plantations of single-species crops could actually limit bee development. Instead, floral diversity may be necessary to gather the appropriate proportions of nutritional elements and the right mix of pollen.
Sunflowers produce pollen nutritionally imbalanced for bees.
Cybertarge / Wikimedia Commons
A new factor explaining bee decline
Lack of plant diversity is suggested as an indirect factor responsible for the pollinator crisis. But we revealed that the absence of the right mix of pollen is one of the main factors affecting bees. This may improve our understanding of pollinator decline and could result in more successful intervention strategies.
Short movie on honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder.We propose that farmers, gardeners and cities grow plants that help honeybees provide a balanced diet for growing larvae. We know that such plants include clover, broad bean, poppy, gorse, turnipweed, common camellia, magnolia-vine and about 10 other species, but we need more studies, focusing on various pollen-producing plants, including those pollinated by wind.
Why bees are disappearing and how can we help.In particular, we propose planting such plants near areas of single-species crops to limit their negative influence on bee larval development. Additionaly, bees should have access to dirty water, such as puddles rich in decaying matter or slurry. These are willingly utilised by bees to allow them to supplement sodium, which is extremely scarce in pollen. If such a supplementation is impossible, honeybees should be provided with slightly salted water.
So if you want attract bees and give a helping hand to mother nature, think twice about that lavender and sunflower crop and make sure to add some clover and magnolia. The bees will thank you for it.
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The thrill of curing hepatitis C and the pain of watching the disease surge with opioid abuse
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Hepatitis C rates have risen in the U.S. as drug use and opioid abuse have risen. By Zephyr_p/shutterstock.com
When I began my medical career in Hong Kong in the early 1980s, I chose to focus on hepatitis B, in part because it was very common and because the hepatitis C virus had not yet been discovered. I witnessed the devastation that this virus caused – cirrhosis, liver failure and liver cancer – and the lack of treatments we could offer to patients. Back then, scientists knew there was another type of hepatitis but no one could identify it, so we called it non-A, non-B hepatitis. I would never have imagined that during the course of my career I would witness the discovery of what came to be known as hep C and the development of a cure for nearly all patients with chronic hepatitis C in 2014.
The development of treatments other researchers and I have seen over the past 30 years reflects the amazing progress the field has made in tackling hepatitis C in a relatively short period of time. Initially, in the late 1980s, before a diagnostic test became available, some physicians started treating well-characterized cases of non-A, non-B hepatitis (hep C) with interferon, a natural protein that the body makes to fight virus, and ribavirin, an antiviral drug. These medications were not specifically developed for hepatitis C, had to be given as injections for 6-12 months, had many side effects and resulted in a cure in only half of the patients who received treatment. It took more than two decades for the first direct-acting antiviral drugs to be approved by the FDA.
I remember the excitement when I and my colleagues tested one of the new drug combinations in patients and saw the virus count drop from more than 1 million to less than 20 within two weeks. We published the results of our pilot study in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2012. Although the study involved only 21 patients, it was considered a watershed moment because it was the first study to prove that a combination of oral pills without interferon can cure hepatitis C.
World Hepatitis Day is celebrated on July 28, the birthday of Dr. Baruch S. Blumberg, a Philadelphia researcher who shared the 1976 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discovery of the hepatitis B virus. Eddie Adams/AP Photo
Effective treatment for hepatitis C has become even more relevant today in light of the recent surge in new cases of hepatitis C due to rising opioid use.
A pricey drug and new generics
The first combo pill with two drugs that inhibits different steps in hepatitis C replication was approved by the FDA in 2014. This pill is taken once a day for 8-12 weeks, has little to no side effects and improved the cure rate to 90-95 percent. It was hailed as a magical cure, but it came with a price tag of US$94,500 for a 12-week course of treatment. That led many insurers in the United States and national health departments in other countries to limit access to treatment.
Since then, several other combo pills with similar cure rates that are equally well-tolerated have become available, and the cost has markedly decreased. In addition, low-cost generics and special pricing arrangements are available in many resource-limited countries.
While the current price of hepatitis C virus drugs is still very high, one needs to remember that for 95 percent of patients, this is a cure. It is unlike medicines for many illnesses that need to be taken for a long time, sometimes for the rest of the patients’ lives. Indeed, a cure for hepatitis C virus has allowed some patients who were on the liver transplant waiting list to reverse their liver failure, making transplantation unnecessary. This is good news not only for these patients but also for others on the waiting list.
The remarkable success of hepatitis C treatment has reenergized efforts to find a cure for hepatitis B. Current treatments can suppress hepatitis B virus replication but do not eliminate it. Most patients need to be on long-term treatment to prevent flares of hepatitis when the virus reemerges after treatment is stopped.
Deaths from hepatitis B and C infections rising worldwide
Learning from the hepatitis C experience and with better understanding of the biology of hepatitis B virus and improved animal models, drugs that target different steps of the hepatitis B virus life cycle are being developed. While cure for hepatitis B will be more challenging because it can integrate into the patient’s DNA, enabling it to evade the patient’s immune response, I am optimistic that we will witness the availability of new combination of drugs that will move us nearer the goal of an hepatitis B virus cure.
Members of Delhi Network of Positive People, a support group for HIV-positive people, shout slogans during a protest in New Delhi, India, Friday, March 21, 2014. The activists urged the Indian government to allow production of generic versions of direct-acting antivirals, that can help thousands get affordable oral doses of medicine to control hepatitis C. Infection progresses more rapidly to damage the liver in HIV-positive patients, and co-infection of HIV and hepatitis C virus is common among HIV-infected injection drug users. Saurabh Das/AP Photo
But the news is not all positive. While we’ve seen mortality rates from HIV, TB and malaria decline in recent years, mortality from hepatitis B and C has risen. Globally, an estimated 257 million people have chronic hepatitis B virus infection, and 71 million have chronic hepatitis C virus. Together hepatitis B and C caused 1.34 million deaths in 2015. This led the World Health Organization to challenge countries around the world to develop national plans to eliminate these two viruses by 2030.
Hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus are usually spread through contact with blood or body secretions such as semen from infected persons by sharing needles or sexual exposure. But they can also be spread through contaminated needles used for medical treatment, which continues to happen in many parts of the world. In addition, hepatitis B virus can be spread from infected mothers to newborn babies unless vaccination is given immediately after birth.
For hepatitis C virus, roughly two-third suffer chronic infection. For hepatitis B virus, the chance of chronic liver infection decreases the later the patient encounters the virus: 90 percent if infected during infancy; 20-30 percent if infected during childhood; and 2-5 percent if infected in adult life. Some people infected with hepatitis B virus or hepatitis C virus can recover on their own, but many go on to chronic infection (lasting more than six months and often years or lifelong). Those with chronic infection are at risk of cirrhosis (severe liver damage), liver failure and liver cancer.
Opioid epidemic, homeless lead to rise in hepatitis B and C infections
In this Nov. 8, 2017, photo, Christine Wade sits among her children in front of their donated tent in the city-sanctioned encampment on a parking lot in San Diego. The Wade family is among several hundred people living in the city’s first campground open for the homeless, set up to curb the worst hepatitis A outbreak in the United States in decades. Gregory Bull/AP Photo
In the United States, the number of new hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus infections has been decreasing for many years, but this trend has been reversed during recent years due to the opioid epidemic as more people use injection drugs, share needles or other paraphernalia and practice high-risk sexual behavior. This is particularly true for hepatitis C, where the number of new cases in the past 10 years has more than doubled, highlighting the need for a preventive vaccine, which is a vital tool if we want to eliminate hepatitis C. The increase in number of new cases of hepatitis B is smaller and mainly seen in adults in their 30s because most younger persons have benefited from hepatitis B virus vaccination.
When we talk about viral hepatitis, the focus is on hepatitis B and C because they can cause chronic infection, while hepatitis A causes only acute infection and will not lead to cirrhosis or liver cancer. However, starting late 2016, many states in the U.S. have witnessed outbreaks of hepatitis A. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received more than 2,500 reports of hepatitis A between January 2017 and April 2018 associated with person-to-person transmission, with risk factors in two-thirds of these cases being drug use or homelessness or both. In the state of Michigan, where I live, 859 cases of hepatitis A including 27 deaths were reported between July 2016 and June 2018. We can prevent hepatitis A through vaccination and improved hygienic conditions.
As we celebrate World Hepatitis Day on July 28, a day chosen in honor of the late Dr. Baruch Blumberg, who received a Nobel Prize for discovering the hepatitis B virus, I marvel at how much progress we have made in the last three decades and am delighted to be not just an observer but also a contributor to the progress. Our work is not finished. Much more needs to be done to completely eliminate new cases of viral hepatitis and deaths from chronic hepatitis B and C.
Anna Suk-Fong Lok has served on advisory panels of Roche, Viravaxx, and Spring Bank. She receives research funding from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead, the National Institutes of Health, and the Patient Center for Outcome Research Institute provided to the University of Michigan.
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Who chooses abortion? More women than you might think
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The abortion debate is at the center of U.S. political dialogue. As of June 2018, 49 percent of Americans consider themselves pro-choice, while 45 percent consider themselves pro-life. Voices from both sides flood social media feeds, while newspapers, radio and television programs frequently cover the topic.
Since 2011, politicians have enacted 400 pieces of legislation restricting this medical procedure.
One important group’s voice is often absent in this heated debate: the women who choose abortion. While 1 in 4 women will undergo abortion in her lifetime, stigma keeps their stories untold. As an obstetrician/gynecologist who provides full spectrum reproductive health care, including abortion, I hear these stories daily.
Unintended pregnancy
In 2011, nearly half of pregnancies in the U.S. were unintended. This reflects a 6 percent drop in unintended pregnancies since 2008, largely due to Title X family planning programs and easier access to birth control.
One of my patients is a working mother of two small children. She came to see me when her youngest was five months old. She was breastfeeding and did not think she could become pregnant. She couldn’t afford childcare for a third child, and her family depended on her salary to survive.
Unintended pregnancy remains most common among poor women, women of color and women without a high school education. Women living in poverty have a rate of unintended pregnancy five times higher than those with middle or high incomes. Black women are twice as likely to have an unintended pregnancy as white women.
Barriers to birth control play a major role. Among women with unintended pregnancies, 54 percent were using no birth control. Another 41 percent were inconsistently using birth control at the time of conception.
Forty-two percent of women with unintended pregnancy choose to end their pregnancies.
The women who choose abortion
Abortion is a routine part of reproductive health care. Approximately 25 percent of women in the U.S. will undergo an abortion before the age of 45. The Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy institute in New York City, has been tracking these data for the last 50 years.
American women have abortions with similar frequency to women living in other developed nations. The bulk of abortion patients are in their 20s.
Women of all races and ethnicities choose abortion. In 2014, 39 percent of abortion patients were white, 28 percent were black and 25 percent were Latina. Similarly, women of all religious affiliations choose to end their pregnancies.
Most of these women understand what it means to parent a child. More than half of abortion patients in 2014 were already mothers.
Poor women account for the majority of abortion patients. Fifty-three percent of women pay out-of-pocket for their abortion. The rest use private or state-funded insurance plans.
Women choose abortion for multiple reasons. The most common reason cited is that pregnancy would interfere with education, work or ability to care of dependents.
Financial stress also plays a major role in women’s decision making. Seventy-three percent of women reported that they could not afford a baby at the time. Nearly half cited relationship difficulties or wanting to avoid single motherhood. More than a third of women felt their families were complete.
Twelve percent chose abortion due to their own health problems. For example, one of my patients and her husband were thrilled to find out she was pregnant for the first time. Then she received the diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer. She had to choose between lifesaving chemotherapy and radiation or her pregnancy.
Safety of abortion
Nine in 10 women who receive abortions undergo abortion in the first trimester. Only 1.3 percent of abortions happen with pregnancies past 20 weeks gestation.
When performed legally by skilled practitioners, abortion is a safe medical procedure with a low complication rate. The risk of major complications – such as hospitalization, infection, blood transfusion or surgery – in first-trimester procedures is less than 0.5 percent. The risk of dying in childbirth is 14 times higher than the risk of dying from safe abortion.
Studies show that abortion is not linked to long-term health complications, including breast cancer, infertility, miscarriage or psychiatric disorders. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the nation’s leading professional organization of obstetricians and gynecologists, has reaffirmed the safety of abortion.
Conversely, the negative impacts from abortion restrictions are well-documented. Women unable to obtain abortions are more likely live in poverty or depend on cash assistance, and less likely to work full-time.
Furthermore, banning abortion is ineffective at reducing abortion. Countries with the most restrictive abortion policies have higher rates of abortion, the majority of which are unsafe, performed by untrained individuals without proper equipment or facilities.
In my view, women need safe access to abortion as part of their health care.
Luu D Ireland is affiliated with Physicians for Reproductive Health.
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What is a 'poison pill'?
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Papa John’s recently forced founder and former Chairman John Schnatter to resign over allegations he made a racial slur. Now the pizza chain is battling to keep him from clawing his way back into the company.
To do so, Papa John’s says it’s taking advantage of a corporate strategy often used to fend off hostile takeover attempts: the “poison pill.” Schnatter, who is suing to access internal documents, still owns about 30 percent of the company, making him the largest single shareholder.
What is a poison pill, why would a company use it and does it actually work?
Raising the cost of a takeover
The modern publicly traded corporation is often the theater of fierce battles for control.
It’s therefore no surprise that hostile takeovers – in which an outside entity tries to take over a company by convincing shareholders to sell their stakes – have become increasingly popular in the U.S. One way companies handle such a threat is by passing protective measures like the poison pill, which was conceived in the 1980s during the heyday of junk bonds and hostile takeovers.
In short, the poison pill is designed to make the company’s purchase by a “hostile” suitor dramatically more expensive.
Two types exist. The so-called “flip-in” allows shareholders other than the acquirer to buy additional shares at a highly discounted rate if the board of directors does not approve the takeover. The other is called a “flip-over,” which permits stockholders to buy the shares of the acquirer at a discount if the takeover is successful.
Schnatter had literally become the face of Papa John’s. AP Photo/Charles Krupa
Both strategies dilute shares held by the acquirer, making the takeover attempt more costly and difficult. A poison pill also puts pressure on the suitor to negotiate directly with the board.
Do they work?
While many corporations have adopted poison pills during the past decades, their use has been equivocal and vividly debated among practitioners and academic researchers. More recently, companies have been increasingly repealing poison pills or allowing them to expire.
As a scholar of corporate strategy, I’ve found that studies of their effectiveness show mixed results.
For example, some empirical research has shown no relationship between the adoption of a poison pill and the probability of whether a company is ultimately acquired. Some scholars have also argued that poison pills can signal that the company has entrenched “ineffective” managers and is trying to protect them from market oversight.
Other scholars have found value in the use of poison pills, for example by enabling top management to focus on long-term performance – rather than worrying about hostile takeovers – and resulting in more profit for investors after a sale. And researchers have found evidence that poison pills do in fact lower the likelihood of acquisition.
Yannick Thams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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10 of 11 black rhinos now dead after relocation attempt in Kenya takes tragic turn
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Last month, officials with the Kenya Wildlife Service attempted to move 11 endangered black rhinos from two national parks, Nairobi and Lake Nakuru, to a third, Tsavo East. Nine of them died shortly after arriving in their new home from what an autopsy has shown to be salt poisoning and dehydration. Today, the Kenyan government announced that a tenth rhino has died and that the eleventh — now the sole survivor of the translocation operation — was attacked by lions yesterday and is clinging to life. According to a report from eNews Channel Africa, Kenyan Tourism Minister Najib Balala said at a press briefing in Nairobi this morning that an investigation had determined that “negligence” by the transfer team had led to the 10 rhinos’ deaths due to “multiple stress syndrome intensified by salt poisoning.” The rhinos were taken to Tsavo East National Park in southern Kenya, one of the country’s oldest and largest parks, in order to establish a new breeding ground for the animals in the hopes that they would start a new population. The black rhinoceros is a Critically Endangered species, according to the IUCN Red List. Only about 5,500 individuals are believed to survive in the wild today, 750 of them in Kenya. Autopsies found the water at the endangered black rhinos’ new home in Tsavo East had such a high concentration of salt that it was harmful to the animals, Balala said at the press conference. The BBC reports that Balala added that the Kenyan…
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With hacking of US utilities, Russia could move from cyberespionage toward cyberwar
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What constitutes cyberwar? manusapon kasosod/Shutterstock.com
Even before the revelation on July 23 that Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer systems of U.S. electric utilities and could have caused blackouts, government agencies and electricity industry leaders were working to protect U.S. customers and society as a whole. These developments, alarming as they might seem, are not new. But they highlight an important distinction of conflict in cyberspace: between probing and attacking.
Various adversaries – including Russia, but also China, North Korea and Iran – have been testing and mapping U.S. industrial systems for years. Yet to date there has been no public acknowledgment of physical damage from a foreign cyberattack on U.S. soil on the scale of Russia shutting off electricity in the Ukrainian capital or Iran attacking a Saudi Arabian government-owned oil company, destroying tens of thousands of computers and allegedly attempting to cause an explosion.
The U.S. and its allies have substantial capabilities, too, some of which have reportedly been directed against foreign powers. Stuxnet, for instance, was a cyberattack often attributed to the U.S. and Israel that disrupted Iran’s nuclear weapons development efforts.
The distinction between exploiting weaknesses to gather information – also known as “intelligence preparation of the battlefield” – and using those vulnerabilities to actually do damage is impossibly thin and depends on the intent of the people doing it. Intentions are notoriously difficult to figure out. In global cyberspace they may change depending on world events and international relations. The dangers – to the people of the U.S. and other countries both allied and opposed – underscore the importance of international agreement on what constitutes an act of war in cyberspace and the need for clear rules of engagement.
Advanced adversaries
In July the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University, where we serve, hosted a forum on protecting energy infrastructure. At that event, a Duke Energy Corporation executive reported that in 2017, the company experienced over 650 million attempts to intrude into their system. That number is startling, though hard to contextualize. More generally, however, some efforts directed against the U.S. are extremely sophisticated.
Federal officials have said that starting in 2016, continuing in 2017 and likely still ongoing, Russian government attacks took advantage of trusting relationships between key vendors of services related to equipment and operations for utility companies. Compromising the vendors’ computers was the first step toward breaching the security of systems not directly connected to the internet.
It’s not just electric utilities – crucial though they are to almost every aspect of modern society. The Russian intrusion targeted computerized industrial control systems that are at the beating hearts of every part of critical public and private infrastructure, including water, energy, telecommunications and manufacturing. In the U.S., more than 85 percent of those critical potential targets are owned and operated by private companies. Once considered safely on home soil far from conflict, these firms are now at the center of the international cyberspace battleground.
Setting up defenses
The energy industry has invested heavily in protecting itself, and is leveraging a sector-wide collaboration called the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center to communicate between companies about warnings and threats to grid operations. But the task is too great – and the consequences to public health and safety too severe – for private companies to handle the burden on their own. As a result, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been investigating breaches like the Russian intrusions, and briefing industry leaders about what it finds.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen speaks to government, corporate and academic experts on critical infrastructure. U.S. Department of Homeland Security
For instance, the Wall Street Journal reported that DHS cybersecurity experts are “looking for evidence that the Russians are automating their attacks, which … could presage a large increase in hacking efforts.” That possibility, taken together with the energy-sector focus of the utility-hacking effort and the perpetrators’ interest in industrial control systems, could be a signal that Russia may be considering shifting from exploring U.S. utility systems to actually attacking them.
An upcoming meeting may deepen federal-corporate collaboration: On July 31, the Department of Homeland Security is hosting a National Cybersecurity Summit to bring together government, industry and academic experts in protecting the country’s most important infrastructure. It will take all their efforts to keep up with the threats, particularly as the underlying techniques and technologies continue to evolve. The “internet of things,” for instance, connects physical devices in ways that merge the virtual world with the real one – making people only as safe as the weakest link in the network or supply chain.
The federal hint about identifying automated attacks offers a glimpse into the not-too-distant future. In 2017, Russian President Putin declared that “Whoever becomes the leader in [artificial intelligence] will become the ruler of the world.” In May 2018, Chinese President Xi Jinping told the Chinese Academies of Sciences and Engineering of his plan to make China “a world leader in science and technology,” which includes “integration of the internet, big data, and artificial intelligence with the real economy.”
Those statements, and the inexorable march of research and development, mean that machine learning – and ultimately quantum computing too – will play an increasing role in cyberespionage and cyberwarfare, as well as cybersecurity. The line between probing and attacking – and between defensive readiness and offensive preparation – may get even thinner.
Frank J. Cilluffo is affiliated with the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, the National Consortium for Advanced Policing, BlackHorse Solutions, and Nisos.
Sharon L. Cardash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Families at the border are reunited briefly, if at all
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A mother and daughter reunited after their separation in late May. AP Photo/Eric Gay
Some, but not all, immigrant families have been reunited after a court gave the U.S. government a deadline to reverse its separation of children from adults at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Those separations happened between May and June. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 20 to end immigrant family separations. Now, the government has failed to meet the court’s July 26 deadline for reunification of all eligible families.
I’ve been writing about the impact of the U.S. government’s immigration policies on undocumented families for years, and I believe that for the families that remain separated, the likelihood of reunification may grow remote.
The numbers
The exact numbers of children who are still separated from their families are difficult to nail down. On July 23, a government representative reported that 1,012 parents had been reunited with their children out of approximately 1,637 who were deemed eligible.
The government has deemed some parents ineligible for reunification because they are currently in criminal custody, have criminal records or suffer from communicable diseases. Others cannot be located.
However, the ACLU reported on July 23 that at least 917 parents remained separated from their children. More than half of these parents, 463, have already been deported.
Even for those who have been reunited, the relief has been brief. Many parents still face deportation orders and must make the decision of whether to be deported with or without their children.
Challenges to reunification
When immigrant children are separated from their parents or guardians, the two enter very different legal tracks. In most cases, the parents will remain in detention centers until their cases are heard by immigration judges, at which point they will face immediate deportation.
Under President Trump’s family separation policy, hundreds of immigrant children were placed in state foster care facilities across the country. In these cases, state family law often takes a harsh view of illegal entry. As a result, many undocumented parents will have a difficult time proving their right to reunification. In June, former ICE Director John Sandweg predicted this outcome when he said expected hundreds of cases “where children are permanently separated from their parents, becoming wards of the United States.
Many of the facilities receiving these children, such as Cayuga Centers in New York, had already been caring for immigrant children for years. In 2014, the government awarded Cayuga Centers US$92.5 million to fund shelter services for unaccompanied minor children. As a result, the organization was equipped to provide long-term care for hundreds of recently separated immigrant children.
Once in foster care, these children become wards of the state. This means they will have their care and custody decisions handled by state welfare agencies and then by a state court. During these proceedings the children’s parents will have the opportunity to demonstrate their eligibility for reunification but sadly, undocumented parents have often fared badly in such proceedings and this is especially true as the length of separation increases.
Role of state family law
Immigrant parents have the same legal right to the care and custody of their children as American citizens. Immigrant parents should be granted reunification with their children as long as they are deemed fit. However, history shows courts frequently use a parent’s immigration status as a proxy for fitness. State court decisions are also highly influenced by the parents’ residency in a country with high rates of violence and the child’s opportunity for adoption in the United States.
State courts and welfare agencies have frequently considered a parent’s undocumented status and their willingness to cross the border illegally as proof of parental unfitness sufficient to terminate parental rights.
For example, in In re Angelica L., a case from 2009, a Nebraska juvenile court determined an undocumented mother was unfit based on the fact that she "either A) embarked on an unauthorized trip to the United States with a newborn premature infant or B) gave birth to a premature infant in the United States” after entering the country illegally. Without deciding between the two, the court held that either scenario demonstrated “that [the mother] did not provide the basic level of prenatal and postnatal care.”
In addition, courts have often demonstrated little sympathy for the fact that detention and deportation can make a parent’s efforts to reunite with their children extremely difficult. For example, in Perez-Velasquez v. Culpeper County Department of Social Services, another case from 2009, the trial court declared the undocumented father unfit because he had, “without good cause, failed to maintain continuing contact with and to provide or substantially plan for the future of the [children] for a period of six months after the child’s placement in foster care.”
The father challenged this decision. He argued his failure to maintain contact with his children was due to his incarceration and deportation, and was therefore not willful. However, the court found this explanation irrelevant.
For deported parents seeking reunification with their children, the prohibition on re-entry can be a major hurdle. It means parents cannot enter the U.S. to contest the termination of their parental rights. If parents do attempt re-entry after deportation they risk arrest, which further hampers their efforts to be reunited with their kids. Courts have repeatedly confirmed that an undocumented immigrant’s motivations for illegal reentry are irrelevant, and thus treat deportation as abandonment.
A final issue is the efforts of third parties to gain custody of the removed children. The longer the children remain in foster care, the more likely it is that attachments will grow. Many of these foster families will seek to adopt these children.
In the past, courts, faced with the prospect of returning children to foreign countries versus allowing them to stay in America with an adoptive family, have often chosen the latter. They decide that to go home under such conditions is not in the children’s best interest. This, in the eyes of the court, justifies terminating their biological parents parental rights.
I believe it’s likely today’s separated families will have the same difficulties regaining custody. The policies the Trump administration is enforcing are for the most part similar to those first enacted under President Barack Obama. In 2014, during a surge in illegal border crossings, the Obama administration attempted to detain hundreds of families indefinitely.
Even before the 2014 surge, the Obama administration increased efforts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants within the U.S., resulting in numerous family separations. It is reasonable to expect that the eventual outcomes of today’s separations will mirror these earlier ones.
This is an updated version of an article originally published on June 25.
Marcia Zug does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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In Malaysia, an island drowns in its own development
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GEORGE TOWN, Malaysia — Muddy carpets and soaked furniture lay in moldering piles on the streets of this state capital. It was Sunday morning, Oct. 29, 2017. Eight days earlier, torrents of water had poured off the steep slopes of the island’s central mountain range. Flash floods ripped through neighborhoods. A landslide killed 11 workers at a construction site for a high-rise apartment tower, burying them in mud. It was Penang Island’s second catastrophic deluge in five weeks. Kam Suan Pheng, an island resident and one of Malaysia’s most prominent soil scientists, stepped to the microphone in front of 200 people hastily gathered for an urgent forum on public safety. Calmly, as she’s done several times before, Kam explained that the contest between Mother Earth’s increasingly fierce meteorological outbursts and the islanders’ affection for building on steep slopes and replacing water-absorbing forest and farmland with roads and buildings would inevitably lead to more tragedies. “When places get urbanized, the sponge gets smaller. So when there is development, the excess rainwater gets less absorbed into the ground and comes off as flash floods,” she said. “The flood situation is bound to worsen if climate change brings more rain and more intense rainfall.” Five days later it got worse. Much worse. On Nov. 4, and for the next two days, Penang was inundated by the heaviest rainfall ever recorded on the island. Water flooded streets 3.6 meters (12 feet) deep. Seven people died. The long-running civic discussion that weighed new construction against…
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Is Trump winning his trade war with Europe?
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There appears to be a cease-fire in the trade war brewing between the U.S. and the European Union.
After a meeting at the White House between U.S. President Donald Trump and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the two leaders declared a temporary truce to escalating trade tensions and agreed to begin negotiations to eliminate tariffs and subsidies on everything but cars. Juncker also agreed to buy billions of dollars more in U.S. soybeans and natural gas.
Since to some it seems like the U.S. got more than it gave in this tentative deal, it’s a good time to ask: Is Trump winning the trade war he began with Europe?
My research on international trade suggests that a good way to analyze what’s happening is not in terms of conflict but as a soccer match. Let’s say it’s halftime and the U.S. and EU are tied at 1-1. Who wins will depend most on the strategy each team works out in the locker room and how well it’s executed in the second half.
So let’s examine their game plans.
The lay of the pitch
Juncker’s visit was meant to cool the temperature and avoid the full-blown trade war the U.S. is already fighting with China.
The “game” began in March when Trump levied tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. The EU was initially granted an exemption that expired in May. The EU responded with its own tariffs on US$3.2 billion of U.S. imports. And Trump has since threatened to levy hefty tariffs on EU automobile imports.
For his part, Trump believes that the EU is a trade “foe” of the U.S. and that his tariffs are necessary and appropriate. The EU, naturally, disagrees, as evidenced by its complaint to the World Trade Organization.
The US side
A big advantage enjoyed by the U.S. is that it is able to make decisions quickly since there’s only one American president, while the EU has 28 leaders who all must agree to major decisions.
In addition, the U.S. runs a trade deficit with the EU, which means Americans buy more stuff from the Europeans than vice versa. Armed with these advantages, Trump’s strategy seems to be to use the threat of tariffs to create uncertainty, sow dissension within the EU and extract concessions.
Perhaps Trump thinks that because he can impose tariffs on more goods than the Europeans, the U.S. will win the game. He may also believe that his threat of steep tariffs on cars will compel Germany to force the EU to capitulate because Chancellor Angela Merkel won’t want to hurt her export-oriented auto industry.
While Trump somewhat effectively employed this strategy with South Korea, it may not work with the EU.
The EU’s divided union
That’s because the EU is no pushover.
The EU trades $3.7 trillion worth of goods and services with the rest of the world, four times more than South Korea and more than the United States’ $3.5 billion.
That said, the key problem in the EU is that different nations are displaying different levels of interest in a trade fight with Trump, making it hard to take advantage of its inherent economic heft and act in unison. As long as Germany is less interested in fighting this war than France because of the importance of its U.S. exports, the EU is hamstrung in its decision-making. This makes it more likely that it will yield to Trump’s demands. While some claim this is what happened in the July 25 meeting, I think the outcome was more like Juncker buying time in hopes of getting Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron to unify over a common EU response.
If the EU manages to unite, however, the bloc could focus on becoming more competitive in other markets, such as China – where many American exports are now subject to tariffs – which would hurt the U.S. So there is an opening for the EU to sell goods to China that previously the Chinese would have bought from the U.S.
In other words, halftime is almost over, and the two teams will soon be on the field. Will Trump’s strategy of divide and conquer continue to work?
A lot more is at stake in this game than a trophy and bragging rights. Nothing less than the rules-based international trading system – which has brought prosperity to much of the globe, including to both Americans and Europeans – may be on the line. Let’s hope we don’t have to go to penalty kicks.
Amitrajeet A. Batabyal has received research funding from the Giannini Foundation for Agricultural Economics, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the Charles Koch Foundation.
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Global marine wilderness has dwindled to 13 percent, new map reveals
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Humans have wiped out most of the pristine parts of the world’s oceans, a new study has found. In the first global mapping of human impacts on marine environments, a team of scientists from Australia, Canada and the United States demonstrated that few corners of the globe have been left untouched by shipping, mining and commercial fishing. Just 13 percent of the world’s oceans hold intact ecosystems and are free of these impacts — the team’s definition of marine wilderness. And of the remaining underwater wilderness, less than 5 percent is protected. “We know how valuable and how unique places in the ocean [are] that don’t have high levels of human activity,” Kendall Jones, a conservation scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, said in an interview. They’re home to a wide variety of life, including many of the ocean’s top predators, he added. But unlike our understanding of how wilderness has disappeared on land, “we had no real global map of where those locations are” in the ocean, said Jones, who is also a doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland in Australia. Video by Kendall Jones, Carissa Klein and James Watson. To develop that map, Jones and his colleagues plotted out the locations of 19 human “stressors” on the world’s oceans, ranging from intensive fishing and shipping to land-based factors such as fertilizer runoff. They then drilled down to a resolution of 1 square kilometer (0.4 square miles) and picked out the places in the marine environment that exhibited the least…
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Why mangroves matter: Experts respond on International Mangrove Day
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The tsunami that struck Southeast and South Asia in late 2004 killed nearly 230,000 people and destroyed villages, towns and cities across 14 countries. But some affected areas escaped the massive devastation that other regions saw — thanks to healthy mangroves dotting their coastline and acting as protective barriers. Sitting at the edge of land and sea, mangroves are unique in many ways. The mangrove trees and shrubs form dense forests, their special, intertwining roots helping them survive in the saline and brackish waters they call home. These forests are skilled at filtering pollutants from river water. They are adept at trapping excess sediment before it reaches the ocean. They are also carbon powerhouses, a tract of mangrove locking away many times more carbon in the soil than a similarly sized area of rainforest. Moreover, mangrove swamps are important nurseries for several fish species, and support a massive diversity of wildlife, including tigers, crocodiles, otters, turtles and several species of birds and insects. Given all that mangroves do, it is unsurprising that the forests have a special day dedicated to them: July 26, International Mangrove Day. However, mangroves have declined rapidly around the world, losing out to shrimp farms, tourist resorts, agricultural and urban land over the past decades. What does the disappearance of this special forest ecosystem mean for our planet? This is what some mangrove experts have to say. Tall, dense mangrove trees on the shore of Pulau Balang, Indonesia. Image by Basten Gokken/Mongabay. Catherine E. Lovelock, professor of biological sciences at the University of…
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Videos: spectacled bear’s home in the dry forests of Peru revealed
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Laura is now part of the history of Peru. She is an Andean spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus) and the face of the first coin of one sol (equivalent to $0.31) from the Peruvian Endangered Wildlife collection launched in July 2017. Laura is shown laying on a tree in her habitat in the dry forests of Peru – in the Batán Grande Archaeological Complex, Lambayeque region. It is not just her appearance in the coin collection that makes Laura famous. She is the first bear to wear a GPS collar in this part of Peru, an ecosystem that offers greater visibility than cloud forests. Laura and about 50 other bears are part of the population that has been monitored for ten years by the Spectacled Bear Conservation Peru (SBC). The project began when the Canadian researcher Robyn Appleton arrived in Peru in 2006 in search of the Andean bear. Appleton, along with Peruvian Javier Vallejos, who was her guide, found this population of spectacled bears in the dry forests of Batán Grande, an unusual habitat for this species. “Andean bears inhabit from Venezuela to southern Bolivia, in the humid forest, they live mainly in the fog. But ten years ago we found this small population in a unique ecosystem in the dry forest of Peru,” Appleton said during a Wildlife Conservation Network conference. A different habitat for the spectacled bear Renzo Piana, director of science and conservation of SBC Peru, explains that this species lives mainly in areas near the Andes…
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Peru park’s biodiversity at risk from illegal mining, drug production
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If the locations of illegal activities were marked on a map, the magnitude of the illegal mining and drug-trafficking problems in Peru’s Bahuaja-Sonene National Park would be obvious. The natural protected area covers 10,900 square kilometers (4,200 square miles) and mainly includes the rainforests of the Puno region in southern Peru, as well as the southern part of the Madre de Dios region. The park protects “the only display of the tropical savanna climate in Peru and its characteristic wildlife,” according to the National Service of Natural Protected Areas (SERNANP). But this protected area is in danger. Illegal mining and drug trafficking are taking place in the park’s buffer zone and, in some cases, have even crossed into the park. According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Bahuaja-Sonene National Park has the world’s highest amount of illegally cultivated coca within a protected area: 118 hectares (290 acres) are growing within the park. Local authorities say that due to drug trafficking, about 473 hectares (1,170 acres) have been deforested within the park, an area nearly one and a half times the size of New York City’s Central Park. Pedro Gamboa, the director of SERNANP, says the issue has become a threat to park rangers’ lives, forcing one of the directors of the national park to resign. An unauthorized airstrip has even been identified within the protected area, according to a 2015 report by SERNANP. Since 2012, illegal coca crops have taken over certain areas that once produced one…
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Why the rescued Thai soccer team has ordained as Buddhist novice monks
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Members of the team who were rescued from a flooded cave prepare to be ordained to become Buddhist novices and monks. AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit
After their dramatic rescue from Nang Non cave, the Thai boys and their soccer coach have ordained as novice monks for a period of nine days, as a part of paying respect to the Thai Navy SEAL, Saman Gunan, who died during the efforts to save them.
Ordaining as a full monk – known as “bhikkhu” in Pali, the religious language of the Theravada Buddhism – is only available to men over 20. Only the coach has become a full monk. Eleven of the boys, excluding one who is a Christian, are instead ordained as novices, or “nen,” who undergo fewer restrictions.
This act of ordaining is not surprising. In Theravada Buddhist practice, ordaining to be a monk and donating the merit thus gained is one of the greatest honors that a person can give to another.
Monasticism in Thai life
Monks in Southeast Asia, with their saffron robes and shaven heads, are iconic. They can be seen on the roadside with alms bowls, accepting handfuls of rice from villagers in early morning processions, or gathered in the evenings chanting Pali scriptures in the Buddhist temples that lie at the heart of most Thai villages. In my own research, I spent hours talking with monks – from abbots of major temples to those who had been ordained for a short period.
I also met monks engaged in “magical” activities such as healing, to those who saw their role as scholars. My first impression, like that of many travelers, was of a group of men seeking enlightenment through isolation from the world.
Meditating Buddhist monks in Thailand. CC BY
Indeed, this isolation is at the core of Buddhist teachings. For Buddhists, worldly desires lead to suffering. Therefore, cessation of desires can lead to happiness and eventually enlightenment.
But monks are not a homogeneous group. Buddhists join the monkhood – the “sangha” - for many different reasons, only some of which are related to achieving transcendence and enlightenment. While some may choose to remain monks for their entire lives, most Buddhists ordain for a limited period. Thai Buddhists with whom I’ve worked have ordained for a few months during childhood, for the length of the rainy season, or even just for a day before undertaking a dangerous journey or following the death of a parent.
Buddhism, as it is practiced in Thailand, addresses many worldly needs. It takes into consideration the lives of people who are not necessarily ready to renounce the world quite yet.
Monastic education
Before the advent of government-run schools in the late 19th century, the Buddhist temple was the key institution for the education of young boys in Thailand. Boys as young as 5 entered the temple to learn to read and write, and to study the basics of Buddhism.
When Theravada came to Southeast Asia from India in the second millennium A.D., replacing local versions of Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism, this religious focus on promoting education within the village was revolutionary, as it became a central part of village life.
Theravada was focused not on the trappings of kingship and rule, but on serving communities. The temple in the center of the village served as the school, fairgrounds, hostel and welfare office in addition to its role as a religious center.
Today, this role of educating Thai boys has largely been replaced by government-run schools. This transition has allowed for the education of girls.
But some Buddhist schools remain, especially in Thailand’s North, that keep a focus on mostly men’s religious education. They teach the local Northern Thai script (distinct from Central Thai and largely fallen out of use) in addition to the religious languages of Pali and Sanskrit.
Karma and merit
But education is not the only reason to seek to be ordained.
Most Thai men get ordained in order to make merit – known as “tham bun.” Devoting oneself to the study of the Buddha’s teachings, the dharma, is one of the most holy acts that one can do. Buddhists who get ordained are believed to acquire a great deal of bun, or merit.
For Buddhists, this life is but one in a cycle of deaths and rebirths, where the good deeds one does in the past determine where and in what form – human, animal, divine being – one is reborn. Eventually, over many lifetimes, enough knowledge and merit will allow for escape from this cycle and transcendence.
But as anthropologist Lucien Hanks described, in Thai religious system, practitioners can donate and receive merit from others. Normally, the recipient of the merit are parents. It is a way to thank them for their sacrifices.
The boys and their coach, however, are offering the merit they will make to Officer Saman, in order to ensure a better rebirth in his next life.
The obligation of a gift
Like many languages, Thai has certain concepts that do not translate well into English. One of these, “krengjai,” refers to the feeling of obligation toward someone who has given a gift too great to repay. It is a heavy feeling.
Thais at a cleansing ceremony and memorial service for Saman Gunan, the Navy SEAL officer, who lost his life during the rescue operation. AP Photo/Vincent Thian
For observers, it is easy to imagine the gratitude that the boys must feel to Officer Saman, but it is just as easy to overlook the sense of responsibility that must weigh on the boys as well. As the classic anthropological theorist Marcel Mauss pointed out, gifts come with obligations, and the sacrifice of a life is no different.
In this way, the boys become monks not to reflect upon their own fate or experience in the cave. Rather, they are doing this to repay Saman’s sacrifice with the greatest gift that they can offer.
This is an updated version of an article first published on July 17, 2018.
Andrew Alan Johnson receives funding from Princeton University. He is affiliated with the Association for Asian Studies and the American Anthropological Association.
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Supreme Court struggles to define 'searches' as technology changes
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Beyond a physical inspection, what constitutes a search? AP Photo/Jessica Hill
What the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution means when it protects citizens against an unreasonable search by government agents isn’t entirely clear. It certainly includes police physically entering a person’s home, but for almost 100 years, the Supreme Court has tried to define what else might qualify, including keeping the law up-to-date with new technologies – as a recent case illustrates.
In that case, the FBI used cellphone records to show that a crime suspect’s mobile phone had been near the location of several robberies. The agency had gotten those records, without a warrant, from the company that provided the suspect with mobile service. The suspect argued that because the records were so invasive of his privacy – by revealing his physical locations over a period of time – obtaining them should be considered a search under the Constitution, and therefore require a warrant. The Supreme Court agreed.
To someone like me, who teaches law students about the relationship between the Constitution and police investigations, this case is another milestone in the back-and-forth between the police and the citizenry over technology and privacy.
An early wiretapping case
Justice Louis Brandeis. Harris and Ewing, Library of Congress
As technology has developed, police have found new ways of collecting incriminating information without trespassing onto the suspect’s property. A century ago, police were beginning to tap phone lines to listen in on suspects’ conversations. In 1928, the Supreme Court ruled that wiretaps didn’t need warrants, so long as police didn’t enter the target’s own property to install the wires. The Supreme Court said the Fourth Amendment was concerned only with protecting material things, such as a person’s home or papers.
The decision came with a notable dissent from Justice Louis Brandeis, who argued that police listening in on phone conversations was indeed a search, because the Constitution’s authors meant to protect more than just tangible property:
“They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”
Expectation of privacy and the risk of sharing information
In 1967, the Supreme Court decided that Brandeis was right after all. Limiting the Fourth Amendment to material searches left too much of modern life completely outside the protections of the Constitution. Explaining that the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places, the justices ruled that police tapping into a private phone conversation – in that case by attaching a listening device to the outside of a public telephone booth – was a search.
In its decision, the Supreme Court created a new way of thinking about what is a search: As long as an individual is seeking to preserve something as private, and his expectation of privacy is one that society as a whole recognizes as reasonable, then official intrusion is a search. For example, when a person steps into a phone booth and closes the door, he is seeking to have a private conversation, and reasonably expects that the call will remain private from those outside the phone booth. Therefore, tapping into that call is a search.
But in the 1970s and 1980s, the Supreme Court narrowed the protection, for instance declaring that police didn’t need a warrant to find out what number the person called. The logic went that the caller voluntarily shared the recipient’s number with the phone company, and therefore willingly took the risk that it might be shared with police.
Privacy protections reemerge
In the past two decades, though, the Supreme Court has expanded Fourth Amendment protections against police searches. In 2001, the Supreme Court concluded that police needed to get a warrant before using a thermal imager to spot a marijuana growing operation inside a house. In 2012, the justices ruled officers needed a warrant before placing a GPS tracker on a suspect’s car. Add to these the most recent decision, that obtaining a person’s historical cell tower location data also requires a warrant.
The justices – like society as a whole – are increasingly recognizing that new technologies, especially digital ones, pose growing privacy challenges. For example, the Supreme Court said a few years ago that, while police could still search a person after their arrest without a warrant, they needed one to search the data on the arrested person’s cellphone.
In its most recent decision, the Supreme Court noted that cell service providers save cell tower data for five years. That kind of information can reveal a huge amount about a person’s private life, especially when coupled with additional information that may be publicly available.
Smartphones have become an integral part of modern life over the past decade – and using one inherently involves sharing location data with the cell company. The justices have realized that regular people aren’t willing to accept the risk that participating in modern society means police could discover their movements over the previous five years without even getting a warrant.
A potential new rationale
The justices are also increasingly focused on the Fourth Amendment’s language and history. The Fourth Amendment says nothing about privacy as such, but establishes the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch. U.S. Supreme Court
In the cell tower case, the newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, dissented from the privacy reasoning of the majority’s decision, saying courts should stick more closely to the original text of the Fourth Amendment. But he then went on to say that the Supreme Court could interpret “papers and effects” to include digital information.
It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will extend Fourth Amendment protections to emails stored on Gmail or Microsoft servers, or to password-protected websites people use to share photos with family and friends. As digital technology evolves and integrates into people’s lives in new ways, the Supreme Court will continue to wrestle with how to interpret the static text of the Fourth Amendment, adopted in 1791, in the 21st century.
Behzad Mirhashem does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Haiti’s deadly riots fueled by anger over decades of austerity and foreign interference
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Protesters have set up road blocks to disrupt traffic and commerce along key streets in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery
At least seven people are dead and Haitian Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant has resigned after weeks of violent protests in Haiti that were sparked by a sudden increase of fuel prices.
Demonstrations began on July 6, when the Haitian government said that gas prices would go up 38 percent to US$4.60 per gallon because the International Monetary Fund, a major Haitian creditor, recommended ending petroleum subsidies.
The average income in Haiti is $5 a day, and 78 percent of people live on less than $2 a day.
Haitian officials announced the unpopular price hike – which also affected diesel and kerosene – during a World Cup match between Brazil and Belgium, evidently hoping the news would go unnoticed.
Within hours after the game’s end, thousands of Haitians had taken to the streets in major cities across the country.
Anti-austerity protests
The destruction, which appeared to be well organized, was mainly directed at Haiti’s business elite.
In Port-au-Prince, the capital, demonstrators set up road blocks on key roads. Masked protesters also set fire to businesses in affluent neighborhoods.
Reginald Boulos, president of the National Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Haiti and a supporter of Haiti’s international lenders, lost three of his Delimart supermarkets to the flames, reporting a $20 million loss.
The targeted violence reflects widespread discontent with creditor-imposed economic policies that benefit Haiti’s business class while most people live in extreme poverty.
Haiti runs on borrowed funds. In 2017 its national debt of $2.13 billion – comprised of loans from Venezuela, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund – was roughly one-third of the country’s gross domestic product.
Creditors typically require recipient governments to increase domestic revenue and invest in infrastructure to boost the private sector. The International Monetary Fund, or IMF, made raising Haitian gas prices a condition of receiving $96 million in loans and grants from the European Union, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank later this year.
Such growth-oriented policies benefit corporations and some Haitian business leaders. But they usually mean financial hardship for average Haitians.
A history of occupation and protest
Haiti’s current unrest reflects a pattern of popular resistance to externally imposed economic policies.
As I learned while conducting my anthropology field work in Haiti in 2013 and 2014, Haitians trace such top-down economic development policies back a century, to the United States’ occupation of Haiti in the early 20th century.
On July 28, 1915, U.S. Marines arrived in Port-au-Prince, allegedly to restore political and economic stability after the killing of Haitian President Villebrun Sam the day before. They stayed for 19 years, ruling the country as if it were a military conquest.
U.S. Marines marching in Haiti in 1934. Bettman/Corbis
Under the U.S. occupation, Haiti’s economy – which had been heavily agricultural, decentralized and self-supporting since enslaved Haitians overthrew French colonial rule in 1804 – underwent dramatic changes.
Almost immediately, American administrators imposed an austerity budget, raising taxes on Haitian citizens, reducing them for corporations and slashing trade tariffs.
To “modernize” the island, American administrators created educational programs, built roads and promoted industrial development. To centralize power in Port-au-Prince, they cut regional budgets and closed the provincial ports that supported the agricultural trade.
This mainly benefited a small business and political elite in the capital while hurting Haiti’s large rural population.
Numerous peasant rebellions against these structural changes were violently quashed. In 1929, all of Haiti went on strike to protest the American occupation.
The U.S. military officially left Haiti in 1934, but U.S. administrators kept control over the Haitian budget until 1947 to make sure Haiti would pay back the American loans taken out after the invasion.
Consolidating corporate power
The U.S., allied with wealthy Haitians, had turned the Haitian government into little more than a loan administrator. It would not be the last time.
In 1953, Haiti joined the IMF and the World Bank, two multinational lending institutions created in 1944 to foster global economic cooperation and raise living standards worldwide.
Haitian dictators François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier worked with these organizations from 1957 to 1986, allegedly to develop the country. In practice, the Duvalier regime was siphoning off international funds to enrich their family and associates.
Meanwhile, agricultural production in Haiti declined because of severe droughts, a U.S.-inherited policy of rural neglect and continued low import tariffs on foreign farm products.
By the mid-1980s, poverty and hunger were so intense that Haitians began migrating en masse to the U.S., often by boat. Food riots occurred throughout the country.
Despite this crisis, the IMF in 1983 imposed an austerity plan, hoping to attract more foreign investment to Haiti. President Jean-Claude Duvalier cut state spending by 25 percent, which decimated public education and health services. This followed a 1982 IMF-backed tax hike on flour, vegetable oil and other staples.
Years of painful austerity, coupled with the Duvalier dictatorship’s growing political repression, pushed Haitians to rebel. Duvalier was ousted in 1986.
Austerity and revolts
The International Monetary Fund’s de facto control over the economy continued under consecutive future Haitian governments.
In the mid-1990s, the IMF and other creditors were pushing developing countries worldwide to implement economic “structural adjustments” that would “eliminate financial imbalances, reduce the role of the public sector, liberalize the trade regime and eliminate regulations and restrictions that impede private investment.”
In Haiti, thousands of state employees were fired, which crippled national institutions and led to massive job loss. Import tariffs on rice were also lowered, from 50 percent to 3 percent, flooding Haitian markets with subsidized U.S. rice – another blow to the country’s struggling agricultural sector.
In 1997, a group called the Haitian Anti-International Monetary Fund Committee led one of the largest strikes in the country’s history.
“Structural adjustment” was later shown to have deepened economic stagnation not just in Haiti but for most IMF member countries.
Gas revolt redux
For decades, Haitians have met every major austerity push by the IMF with violent waves of protest.
In 2004, anti-austerity demonstrations contributed to the ouster of yet another Haitian leader, helping to push out President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.
Gas prices have fueled the protests several times before, as they have today. In 2000 and 2003, the Haitian government tried to increase the prices of fuel products. Protesters took the streets.
Mass protests in 2003 unseated Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. AP Photo/Pablo Aneli
These demonstrations, organized by political groups and community leaders, specifically target both the international lenders and the government that implements their economic policies.
This year, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse listened to protesters’ demands: He revoked the gas price hikes. But it’s not clear whether his deeply indebted government can actually end Haiti’s century of austerity.
Vincent Joos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Millennials are so over US domination of world affairs
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Millennials are not into the 'We are the greatest country' idea. Shutterstock
Millennials, the generation born between 1981 and 1996, see America’s role in the 21st century world in ways that, as a recently released study shows, are an intriguing mix of continuity and change compared to prior generations.
For over 40 years the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which conducted the study, has asked the American public whether the United States should “take an active part” or “stay out” of world affairs.
This year, an average of all respondents – people born between 1928 and 1996 – showed that 64 percent believe the U.S. should take an active part in world affairs, but interesting differences could be seen when the numbers are broken down by generation.
The silent generation, born between 1928 and 1945 whose formative years were during World War II and the early Cold War, showed the strongest support at 78 percent. Support fell from there through each age group. It bottomed out with millennials, of whom only 51 percent felt the U.S. should take an active part in world affairs. That’s still more internationalist than not, but less enthusiastically than other age groups.
There is some anti-Trump effect visible here: Millennials in the polling sample do identify as less Republican – 22 percent – and less conservative than the older age groups. But they also were the least supportive of the “take an active part” view during the Obama administration as well.
Four sets of additional polling numbers help us dig deeper.
• Military power: Only 44 percent of millennials believe maintaining superior military power is a very important goal, much less than the other generations. They also are less supportive of increasing defense spending.
And when asked whether they support the use of force, millennials are generally disinclined, especially so on policies like conducting airstrikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, using troops if North Korea invades South Korea, and conducting airstrikes against violent Islamic extremist groups.
• American ‘exceptionalism’: Millennials also were much less inclined to embrace the idea that America is “the greatest country in the world.” Only half of millennials felt that way, compared to much higher percentages of the other three generations. In a related response, only one-quarter of millenials saw the need for the U.S. to be “the dominant world leader.”
These findings track with the 2014 American National Election Study, which found that while 78 percent of silent, 70 percent of boomer and 60 percent of Gen X respondents consider their American identity as extremely important, only 45 percent of millennials do.
• Alliances and international agreements: Millennials are especially supportive of NATO, at 72 percent. In this measure, they are close to the other generations’ levels of NATO support. Their 68 percent support for the Paris climate agreement is higher than two of the other three age groups. And their 63 percent support for the Iran nuclear nonproliferation agreement is even with boomers and higher than Gen X.
• Globalization and key trade issues: Millennials’ 70 percent agreement with the statement that “globalization is mostly good for the United States” is higher than all the other age groups. Similarly, 62 percent believe that NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) is good for the U.S. economy – well above the others surveyed. The margin is also positive although narrower on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
These and other polls show millennials to have a world view that, while well short of isolationist, is also not as assertively and broadly internationalist as previous generations.
Millennials’ worldview and its implications
Why do millennials see the world the way they do? And with millennials now the largest generation and emerging into leadership positions, what does it mean for American foreign policy?
In my view, the “why” flows from three formative experiences of millennials.
First, the United States has been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for close to half the lives of the oldest millennials, who were born in 1981, and most of the lives of the youngest, born in 1996. Despite America’s vast military power, neither war has been won.
The U.S. has been fighting in Afghanistan for 17 years. AP/U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Justin T. Updegraff
So, from the millenials’ point of view, why make military superiority a priority? Why spend more on defense? Why not be skeptical about other uses of force?
Second, as a generation which is generally “defined by diversity,” as Brookings demographer William H. Frey describes them, millennials take a less extreme view of Islam. A 2015 Pew Research Center poll showed only 32 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds agreed that Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its followers. Compare that to 47 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds and a little more than half of the two older age groups.
Third, globalization infuses the lives of millennials in many ways.
“For younger Americans,” the Chicago Council study authors write, “the Internet, the steady flow of iPhones, computers and other products from abroad, and the expansion of global travel may have all contributed to a rising comfort level with the rest of the world generally, and to the acceptance that international trade is simply part of the fabric of the modern world.”
What are the implications and impact on foreign policy politics of millennials’ views?
In my opinion, even more significant than issue-specific positions is millennials’ disinclination to buy into American exceptionalism. These younger Americans show a greater willingness to get beyond the “We are the greatest country” paeans. Such exceptionalism, subscribed to more avidly by older generations, takes a rose-colored view of American foreign policy’s history and ignores the profound changes shaping the 21st century world.
In this respect in particular, we’d do well to learn from millennials’ more measured views.
Bruce Jentleson is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs which conducted this study, but had nor role or input into this particular study, and receives no compensation.
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