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Families do not want to return to polluted Fukushima areas
the cleanup extends to only 20 meters around each house, and three-quarters of the village is forested mountains. In windy weather, radioactive elements are blown back onto the fields and homes.
The government is forcing people to go back, some argued, employing a form of economic blackmail, or worse, kimin seisaku — abandoning them to their fate.
The evacuation orders for most of the village of Iitate have been lifted. But where are the people?, Japan Times, BY DAVID MCNEILL AND CHIE MATSUMOTO, 14 May 17
"…….A cluster of 20 small hamlets spread over 230 square kilometers, Iitate was undone by a quirk of the weather in the days that followed the nuclear accident in March 2011. Wind carried radioactive particles from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which is located about 45 kilometers away, that fell in rain and snow on the night of March 15, 2011. After more than a month of indecision, during which the villagers lived with some of the highest radiation recorded in the disaster (the reading outside the village office on the evening of March 15 was a startling 44.7 microsieverts per hour), the government ordered them to leave.
Now, the government says it is safe to go back. With great fanfare, all but the still heavily contaminated south of Iitate, Nagadoro, was reopened on March 31.
The reopening fulfills a pledge made by Mayor Norio Kanno: Iitate was the first local authority in Fukushima Prefecture to set a date for ending evacuation in 2012, when the mayor promised to reboot the village in five years. The village has a new sports ground, convenience store and udon restaurant. A clinic sees patients twice a week. All that's missing is people.
Waiting to meet Kanno in the government offices of Iitate, the eye falls on a book displayed in the reception: "The Most Beautiful Villages in Japan." Listed at No. 12 is the beloved rolling patchwork of forests, hills and fields the mayor has governed for more than two decades — population 6,300, famous for its neat terraces of rice and vegetables, its industrious organic farmers, its wild mushrooms and the black wagyu cow that has taken the name of the area.
The description in the book is mocked by reality outside. The fields are mostly bald, shorn of vegetation in a Promethean attempt to decontaminate it of the radiation that fell six years ago. There is not a cow or a farmer in sight. Tractors sit idle in the fields. The local schools are empty. As for the population, the only part of the village that looks busy is the home for the elderly across the road from Kanno's office…….
There has been no official talk of abandoning it. Indeed, any suggestion otherwise could be controversial: When industry minister Yoshio Hachiro called the abandoned communities "towns of death" in September 2011, the subsequent outrage forced him to quit a week later.
Instead, the area was divided into three zones with awkward euphemisms to suggest just the opposite: Communities with annual radiation measuring 20 millisieverts or less (the typical worldwide limit for workers in nuclear plants) are "being prepared for lifting of evacuation order," districts of 20-50 millisieverts per year are "no-residence zones" and the most heavily contaminated areas of 50 millisieverts or more per year, such as Nagadoro, are "difficult-to-return."…..
the cleanup extends to only 20 meters around each house, and three-quarters of the village is forested mountains. In windy weather, radioactive elements are blown back onto the fields and homes.
"All that money, and for what?" asks Nobuyoshi Itoh, a farmer and critic of the mayor. "Would you bring children here and let them roam in the fields and forests?"…..
Though nobody knows the true figure, the local talk is that perhaps half of the villagers have permanently left. Surveys suggest fewer than 30 percent want to return, and even less in the case of Nagadoro.
Yoshitomo Shigihara, head of the Nagadoro hamlet, says many families made their decision some time ago. His grandchildren, he says, should not have to live in such a place.
"It's our job to protect them," Shigihara says. …….
The government is forcing people to go back, some argued, employing a form of economic blackmail, or worse, kimin seisaku — abandoning them to their fate.
Itoh is angry at the resettlement. For him, politics drives the haste to put the disaster behind.
"It's inhuman to make people go back to this," he says. Like the physical damage of radiation, he says, the psychological damage is also invisible: "A lot of people are suffering in silence."
Itoh believes the government wants to show that the problems of nuclear power can be overcome so it can switch the nation's idling nuclear reactors back on. Just four are in operation while the fate of 42 others remains in political and legal limbo. Public opinion remains opposed to their restart.
Many people began with high hopes in Iitate but have gradually grown distrustful of the village government, says Kenichi Hasegawa, a farmer who wrote a book titled "Genpatsu ni Furusato o Ubawarete" ("Fukushima's Stolen Lives") in 2012. Right from the start, he says, the mayor desperately tried to hide the shocking radiation outside his office……. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/13/national/social-issues/fukushima-land-return/#.WRkB8UWGPGh
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text:
A yeshiva bochur who was jailed for failing to present himself at an IDF enlistment office for preliminary conscription processing was released today.
The 18-year-old bochur, Yaakov Yisrael Paz, followed the directive of Rav Shmuel Auerbach, who opposes any cooperation with the state regarding the enlistment of yeshiva bochurim and instructs yeshiva bochurim not to report to the IDF, even for the beginning of the bureaucratic process
Yaakov Yisrael Paz, who is from Ashdod, was arrested by military police and jailed at IDF Prison 6, near Chaifa.
A large crowd greeted Yaakov Yisrael as he left jail, and the bochur declared that sitting behind bars for the Torah Hakedoshah is "a kiddush Hashem."
Yaakov Yisrael related that he was in a room with 22 other people and that he earned the respect of his prison-mates. He described his time at Prison 6 as "uplifting and inspiring."
{Matzav.com Israel News Bureau}

subset: commoncrawl


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Washington Youth Tour 2020
Washington Youth Tour 2020
Canoochee EMC is accepting applications from area high school juniors to compete for an all-expense-paid spot on the 2020 Washington Youth Tour. This inspiring, week-long leadership trip offers participants the opportunity to experience U.S government and U.S. history first-hand while having fun, making new friends, and developing leadership skills.
If chosen, the student(s) will become one of the delegate sponsored by Canoochee EMC and join 115 teens from other EMCs across Georgia to represent the state during the 2020 Washington Youth Tour to be held June 18-25, 2020.
The fast-paced, high-energy program is designed to give students a taste of democracy in action, expose them to the nation's rich history through visits to national monuments and museums, and encourage students to become politically aware citizens.
"The Youth Tour taught me that the most unexpected people can become some of your best friends, and you will create a bond that will link you all together forever," remarked Layla Tucker, Youth Tour Delegate from Canoochee EMC. "114 strangers turn into family."
That sentiment, expressed by many former delegates, underscores the significance of the program – making connections with other high-achieving peers while participating in an unforgettable week-long journey in the nation's capital that includes face-to-face meetings with state and national leaders, leadership training, and discussions on important issues with students from other states.
"The Washington Youth Tour has taught me that no matter who you are or where you come from, you have an opportunity to rise up and make the world a better place," said Tucker.
The tour begins in Georgia where students get to know each other before boarding an airplane and flying to Washington, D.C. where they connect with more than 1,800 students from across the country. Plans are in the works to cruise down the Potomac River, lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery, meet with Georgia's U.S. senators and representatives, take photos outside the White House and tour the U.S. Supreme Court, the United States Capitol, Mount Vernon and the National Cathedral.
Students will visit memorials honoring Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington. They will also visit the Martin Luther King Jr., World War II, Korean and Vietnam Veterans memorials. Plus, they will have the opportunity to see the U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps and the Silent Drill Platoon perform at the Marine Memorial (Iwo Jima statue) as well as spend time at the Smithsonian and Holocaust Museums.
Contact Joe Sikes at firstname.lastname@example.com to find out how to apply.


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New era for Tourism Rossland
His social media expertise made Andras Lukacs a good candidate for the position of executive director of Tourism Rossland.
In March 2017, the board of Tourism Rossland, B.C., hired Andras Lukacs (Andrash Loo-katch) to replace its veteran executive director, Deanne Steven. How did this Hungarian-born track runner, educated in the United States on an athletic scholarship, end up as executive director of tourism for Rossland, via nine years in Yellowknife? Simple: along with an impressive education and technical skills, he has a Canadian wife.
Lukacs met his future wife, Kim, while he was attending university in Detroit, before acquiring his PhD in sociology at Loyola University in Chicago. His primary focus was new media, communications and generational networks, and though he was fully immersed in his academic life—writing and publishing articles, editing books and teaching—he was not completely invested in that option as a lifelong choice.
When the couple decided to give Canada a try for a year, they moved to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Lukacs found work with the government of the Northwest Territories in the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Division of Tourism and Parks. It was a good opportunity for him to use his research, academic and sociology skills in a more results-oriented and policy-driven environment. And one year became nine.
While continuing his government job and working with a number of provincial and territorial projects and working groups, Lukacs was also a board member with the Canadian Travel Tourism Research Association. Into this busy and interesting mix, the Rossland opportunity presented itself in early 2017, and Lukacs and his wife decided to make a big change.
"We truly love Rossland," Lukacs said. "My wife is a teacher, and she and our kids actually just came down here on July 1, so we're still in the honeymoon phase, discovering the area, pinching ourselves that we actually live here. For us, as true northerners, it's really hot right now, but we'll get used to it."
Picking up the reins
Deanne Steven is a hard act to follow.
"Those have been pretty big shoes to fill, obviously," said Lukacs. "I didn't have to come in and put out fires, because Deanne left everything running smoothly. Coming in, there's a pretty steep learning curve for me. She was able to build relationships over the 10 years she was in this office, and I don't have those yet. So everything takes me longer than it should, and I just really want to be patient.
"I'm trying to not make decisions that could have long-lasting impact in the future before I really understand what exactly is happening. While working with academia or the government, you're not necessarily exposed to the day-to-day interactions with small businesses or media or visitors or local stakeholders, so having constant feedback and interaction is an interesting challenge for me. It's great, but it's new for me."
Everything for the visitors
At the moment, Lukacs is focused on more fully understanding the visitor experience: trip planning, which services and amenities visitors most want in Rossland and all aspects of the economic impact of tourism. He is also looking to leverage existing data about past visitors to improve the experience for future visitors.
His skillful use of social media was one of the reasons the board of Tourism Rossland wanted Lukacs for its executive director. Social media is an important tool for attracting visitors, and Tourism Rossland intends to form strategic partnerships with key social media influencers.
"I don't take any credit for this—it's the general progression and trajectory of the organization," Lukacs said. "With the budgets we have, I think that working with social media will give us the best return on investment. We have to balance that with other forms of marketing, but social media will be key to our strategy in the future."
Marketing the region
Through the Lower Columbia Tourism Marketing Project, funded by Community Directed Funds from Columbia Basin Trust, Tourism Rossland works collaboratively with the communities of Fruitvale, Montrose, Trail and Warfield to promote the Lower Columbia region. The project will officially end in December, and the stakeholders are currently exploring ways to continue the collaboration.
"Tourists and visitors don't much care about municipal or organizational boundaries," said Lukacs. "Wherever there's an interesting experience, they go there. Our strategic goal is to develop into a true four-season destination, and to do that, we need to look beyond Rossland to a more regional approach."
He added that Deanne Steven, the board of directors, other stakeholders, tourism businesses and the City have all been extremely supportive of him during his transition period. "I'm really grateful for that. I'll still be learning for a long time."


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RIM has introduced a new encryption system recently for its App World for the Playbook. With the advent of the recent PlayBook OS 2.0.1 update, the apps and games downloaded via App World are encrypted. These apps will only function if they are run on a single Playbook with the BlackBerry ID you used when you made a purchase. For example, if I purchase an app and gave one of my readers the BAR file, it would not work. This is an important step for the beleaguered company to secure its ecosystem and attract new developers to its existing store and BB10.
Since all purchases you make on the Blackberry Playbook are now encrypted to work with the original purchaser, this should curb some of the rampant piracy going on. For the last seven months, people have been pirating apps at an accelerating rate. A few websites that purveyed in these endeavors have been summarily shut down by RIM. The big reason the company secured its ecosystem is because of the lack of developer support for App World. Alec Saunders and other evangelists from the company are seeing a very non-committal attitude from Netflix, Skype, and other big name companies. Many of these top apps are not available on App World and likely won't until BB10 comes out next year.
Although purchases you make from App World are encrypted this does not prevent people from side-loading in their own applications and games. The Android emulator runs on a different system and allows anyone to install a working BAR file.
If you are looking for the latest Android Apps and Games converted to BAR format, make sure you checkout our own Good e-Reader App Store! We have over 800 Playbook apps on our system!
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times.


text: Pop music these days, I discover it through Glee or memes. This song was from a meme. The song is catchy as fuck, and the video is adorable. I think her band has a secret game: whoever pulls the most focus from Taylor doesn't have to pay for beer that night. The bearded bear dude is the winner of Mean, too.


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Posts Tagged 'feminism'
women and warfare, part 2: humans, bonobos, coalitions and care
Shortly before I started writing the first part of this article, I read a sad and disturbing piece in a recent New Scientist, about an Iron Age citadel in modern Iran, called Hasanlu. Its tragic fate reminded me of the smaller scale tragedies that Goodall and others recount in chimpanzee societies, in which one group can systematically slaughter another.
Hasanlu was brutally attacked and destroyed at the end of the ninth century BCE, and amazingly, the massacred people at the site remained untouched until uncovered by archeologists only a few decades ago. One archeologist, Mary Voigt, who worked the site in 1970, has described her reaction:
I come from a long line line of undertakers. Dead people are not scary to me. But when I dug that site I had screaming nightmares.
Voigt's first discovery was of a small child 'just lying on the pavement', with a spear point and an empty quiver lying nearby. In her words:
The unusual thing about the site is all this action is going on and you can read it directly: somebody runs across the courtyard, kills the little kid, dumps their quiver because it's out of ammunition. If you keep going, there are arrow points embedded in the wall.
Voigt soon found more bodies, all women, on the collapsed roof of a stable:
They were in an elite part of the city yet none of them had any jewellery. Maybe they had been stripped or maybe they were servants. Who knows? But they were certainly herded back there and systematically killed. Its very vivid. Too vivid.
Subsequent studies found that they died from cranial trauma, their skulls smashed by a blunt instrument. And research found many other atrocities at the site. Headless or handless skeletons, skeletons grasping abdomens or necks, a child's skull with a blade sticking out of it. All providing proof of a frenzy of violence against the inhabitants. There is still much uncertainty as to the perpetrators, but for our purposes, it's the old story; one group or clan, perhaps cruelly powerful in the past, being 'over-killed', in an attempt at obliteration, by a newly powerful, equally cruel group or clan.
Interestingly, while writing this on January 4 2019, I also read about another massacre, exactly ten years ago, on January 4-5 2009. The densely populated district of Zeitoun in Gaza City was attacked by Israeli forces and 48 people, mostly members of the same family, and mostly women, children and the elderly, were killed, and a number of homes were razed to the ground. This was part of the 2008-9 'Gaza War', known by the Arab population as the Gaza Massacre, and by the Israelis as Operation Cast Lead. The whole conflict resulted in approximately 1200-1400 Palestinian deaths. Thirteen Israelis died, four by friendly fire. And of course I could pick out dozens of other pieces of sickening brutality going on in various benighted parts of the world today.
Attempts by one group of people to obliterate another, whether through careful planning or the frenzy of the moment, have been a part of human history, and they're ongoing. They are traceable as far back, at least, as the ancestry we share with chimpanzees.
But we're not chimps, or bonobos. A fascinating documentary about those apes has highlighted many similarities between them and us, some not noted before, but also some essential differences. They can hunt with spears, they can use water as a tool, they can copy humans, and collaborate with them, to solve problems. Yet they're generally much more impulsive creatures than humans – they easily forget what they've learned, and they don't pass on information or knowledge to each other in any systematic way. Some chimp or bonobo communities learn some tricks while others learn other completely different tricks – and not all members of the community learn them. Humans learn from each other instinctively and largely 'uncomprehendingly', as in the learning of language. They just do it, and everyone does it, barring genetic defects or other disabilities.
So it's possible, just maybe, that we can learn from bonobos, and kick the bad habits we share with chimps, despite the long ancestry of our brutality.
Frans De Waal is probably the most high-profile and respected bonobo researcher. Here's some of what he has to say:
The species is best characterized as female-centered and egalitarian and as one that substitutes sex for aggression. Whereas in most other species sexual behavior is a fairly distinct category, in the bonobo it is part and parcel of social relations–and not just between males and females. Bonobos engage in sex in virtually every partner combination (although such contact among close family members may be suppressed). And sexual interactions occur more often among bonobos than among other primates. Despite the frequency of sex, the bonobos rate of reproduction in the wild is about the same as that of the chimpanzee. A female gives birth to a single infant at intervals of between five and six years. So bonobos share at least one very important characteristic with our own species, namely, a partial separation between sex and reproduction.Bonobo sex and society, Scientific American, 2006.
Now, I'm a bit reluctant to emphasise sex too much here (though I'm all for it myself), but there appears to be a direct relationship in bonobo society between sexual behaviour and many positives, including one-on-one bonding, coalitions and care and concern for more or less all members of the group. My reluctance is probably due to the fact that sexual repression is far more common in human societies worldwide than sexual permissiveness, or promiscuity – terms that are generally used pejoratively. And maybe I still have a hankering for a Freudian theory I learned about in my youth – that sexual sublimation is the basis of human creativity. You can't paint too many masterpieces or come up with too many brilliant scientific theories when you're constantly bonking or mutually masturbating. Having said that, we're currently living in societies where the arts and sciences are flourishing like never before, while a large chunk of our internet time (though far from the 70% occasionally claimed) is spent watching porn. Maybe some people can walk, or rather wank, and chew over a few ideas at the same (and for some it amounts to the same thing).
So what I do want to emphasise is 'female-centredness' (rather than 'matriarchy' which is too narrow a term). I do think that a more female-centred society would be more sensual – women are more touchy-feely. I often see my female students walking arm in arm in their friendship, which rarely happens with the males, no matter their country of origin (I teach international students). Women are highly represented in the caring professions – though the fact that we no longer think of the 'default' nurse as female is a positive – and they tend to come together well for the best purposes, as for example the Women Wage Peace movement which brings Israeli and Palestinian women together in a more or less apolitical push to promote greater accord in their brutalised region.
Women's tendency to 'get along' and work in teams needs to be harnessed and empowered. There are, of course, obstructionist elements to be overcome – in particular some of the major religions, such as Catholic Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, all of which date back centuries or millennia and tend to congeal or 'eternalise' the patriarchal social mores and power structures of those distant times. However, there's no doubt that Christianity, as the most western religion, is in permanent decline, and other religions will continue to feel the heat of our spectacular scientific developments – including our better understanding of other species and their evolved and unwritten moral codes.
The major religions tend to take male supremacy for granted as the natural order of things, but Melvin Konner, in his book Women after all, has summarised an impressive array of bird and mammal species which turn the tables on our assumptions about male hunters and female nurturers. Jacanas, hyenas, cassowaries, montane voles, El Abra pygmy swordtails (a species of fish) and rats, these are just a few of the creatures that clearly defy patriarchal stereotypes. In many fish and bird species, the females physically outweigh the males, and there's no sense that, in the overwhelming majority of bird species – whose recently-discovered smarts I've written about and will continue to write about – one gender bosses the other.
Turning back to human societies, there are essentially three types of relations for continuing the species – monogamy, polyandry and polygyny. One might think that polyandry – where women can have a harem of males to bed with – would be the optimum arrangement for a female-centred society, but in fact all three arrangements can be turned to (or against) the advantage of females. Unsurprisingly, polygyny (polyandry's opposite) is more commonly practiced in human society, both historically and at present, but in such societies, women often have a 'career open to talents', where they and their offspring may have high status due to their manipulative (in the best sense of the word) smarts. In any case, what I envisage for the future is a fluidity of relations, in which children are cared for by males and females regardless of parentage. This brings me back to bonobos, who develop female coalitions to keep the larger males in line. Males are uncertain of who their offspring is in a polyamorous community, but unlike in a chimp community, they can't get away with infanticide, because the females are in control in a variety of ways. In fact, evolution has worked its magic in bonobo society in such a way that the males are more concerned to nurture offspring than to attack them. And it's notable that, in modern human societies, this has also become the trend. The 'feminine' side of males is increasingly extolled, and the deference shown to females is increasing, despite the occasional throwback like Trump-Putin. It will take a long time, even in 'advanced' western societies, but I think the trend is clear. We will, or should, become more like bonobos, because we need to. We don't need to use sex necessarily, because we have something that bonobos lack – language. And women are very good at language, at least so has been my experience. Talk is a valuable tool against aggression and dysfunction; think of the talking cure, peace talks, being talked down from somewhere or talked out of something. Talk is often beyond cheap, it can be priceless in its benefits. We need to empower the voices of women more and more.
This not a 'fatalism lite' argument; there's nothing natural or evolutionarily binding about this trend. We have to make it happen. This includes, perhaps first off, fighting against the argument that patriarchy is in some sense a better, or more natural system. That involves examining the evidence. Konner has done a great job of attempting to summarise evidence from human societies around the world and throughout history – in a sense carrying on from Aristotle thousands of years ago when he tried to gather together the constitutions of the Greek city-states, to see which might be most effective, and so to better shape the Athenian constitution. A small-scale, synchronic plan by our standards, but by the standards of the time a breath-taking step forward in the attempt not just to understand his world, but to improve it.
Melvin Konner, Women after all, 2015
New Scientist, 'The horror of Hasanlu' September 15 2018
Max Blumenthal, Goliath, 2013
women and warfare, part 1: humans, chimpanzees and patriarchy
Recently listened to a bit of historian Margaret McMillan, along with some military reps, on the radio talking about warfare past and future. It was recorded during a public talk on the topic. I've got her book, The Uses and Abuses of History, which I've only just started to read, but I was struck by her pessimistic attitude. Of course she's right to say that warfare isn't about to disappear, and dog knows we have a proliferation of macho thugs on the global scene at present, but her somewhat dismissive description of Pinker's thesis, that the world is getting less violent, rather irked me. She described the thesis as 'persuasive but too positive' or some such term (which struck me as odd if not disingenuous – obviously she wasn't persuaded). To me, considering that, almost to the end of the nineteenth century, warfare was a way of life for many a European male, and that the so-called Great War showed so many people how disastrous zero-sum game nationalism and one-eyed patriotism can be, and how far we have come, generally, from seeing other cultures as 'savage' or backward, and especially how far we have progressed in multiculturalism over the past century or so, I can't accept that we haven't made great strides in reducing warfare among civilised nations in the 20th century and beyond. Not, of course, without great cost, in the early half of that century especially.
But it was a response during question time that has prompted me to write. MacMillan was asked whether things would be better if, say, the US President was a woman, or some such thing. Anyway the gist of the question was whether warfare would be reduced if women were in charge. Macmillan was again sceptical/pessimistic, citing Indira Ghandi's record as India's PM. Of course she could've cited others, like Margaret Thatcher, or even Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace prizewinner who's been so much under fire for Burma's treatment of its Rohingya population. But I found this response to be shallow and fatuous. The case of Aung San Suu Kyi is most telling – she's largely a captive of the all-male military, all Buddhists like the all-male monks who've been most active in the Rohingya persecutions. But it's the same for all female heads of state. Their cabinets and their political advisers are overwhelmingly male, they have to deal with a military sector which is entirely male, and a business sector which is much the same. All the power in all the lands you care to mention is massively male. Massively. In order to seriously answer the question 'What if women were in charge?' you have to imagine a 'world turned upside down'. Anything less, as I say, would be a fatuous and shallow response. You would have to imagine a world with a more or less all-female political-military-business sector. And if you think that's crazy, why don't you think the current more or less all-male power situation is crazy?
The fact is that statistically, women are less aggressive than men. We can go into all sorts of genetic, hormonal, cultural and environmental reasons for this – and it's important to explore all of that – but the fact itself is undeniable. It also appears that women are more collaborative – more able to work especially with other women. Of course women can be aggressive and highly competitive – I love women's sports, but I notice that in women's soccer and basketball I've never once seen the kind of all-in biffo that quite regularly spoils the men's version of these sports. This is no accident.
Wars in the past have always been associated with manliness – not just physical warfare, but the kind of business and political warfare that Trump – the archetypal wannabe macho 'winner' – engages in. And in an increasingly interconnected and inter-reliant global scenario, this kind of warfare is proving more and more counter-productive.
I believe that one day – though hardly in the near future – we will socially evolve, out of sheer necessity, into civilisations in which women hold the balance of power. It won't simply be a 'world turned upside down' but more like a move from chimp-like society to bonobo-like society. I've held this view for a long time but I've hardly dared express it. Luckily, so few people read my writing that I'm unlikely to experience much blowback, but in any case many would argue that it's illegitimate to compare humans with other species. Not just because of the essentially religious idea of 'human specialness', but because 'civilisation' or 'culture' have so altered the human psyche that it's essentially useless to compare us with species that either don't have culture or have it in only the most rudimentary form.
I doubt if Darwin would agree, as much of his work focussed on the extraordinary complexity of non-human species, and the 'instinctiveness' of humans. In any case I'll focus now on other primates, all of whom are socially organised in one way or another.
The lemurs of Madagascar are prosimians, species of primates that are considered less 'evolved' than simians. Outside of their current island home, lemurs were out-competed by the more adapted species they gave rise to. Fascinatingly, all lemur species are female-dominant, though not always through sexual dimorphism. Lemurs live in small groups, with a generally even male-female ratio. A key feature of lemur social life is the creation of coalitions, especially as regards sexual behaviour, and sexual behaviour, obviously, is key to any species' survival and development. The lemurs are something of a mystery in regard to their female-dominant traits, which has even given rise to a slightly pejorative title for the mystery – the lemur syndrome. In any case, understanding their group dynamics, involving coalitions, competition and sex, inter alia, and linking this behaviour to genes, gene expression and neurological findings – which are being increasingly honed and targeted – is essential to solving the mystery.
The same goes, of course, for all prosimian and simian species. The vast majority of them are male-dominant, often, but not always reflected in a greater or lesser degree of sexual dimorphism. Size isn't everything in species with complex and sometimes gender-based group dynamics. And so I come to that old favourite topic, chimps and bonobos, our equal-closest living relatives.
Chimps can be violent towards each other, often to a sickening degree – almost as sickening as humans – but, as with humans, this violence is clearly not ultimately self-destructive. For example, when a gang of chimps come across a stray member of a neighbouring group, it's not uncommon for them to bite, kick and stomp the unfortunate to death. There have even been occasions when one group has slaughtered another wholesale, though one or two might survive by flight – and again, human comparisons spring to mind.
Chimps live in fission-fusion social groups, meaning that they form small, relatively unstable groups within a larger association which may amount to hundreds. Within these groups, large or small, there is a male linear dominance hierarchy, in which the group has one alpha male, who dominates all the others, followed by a beta male, who dominates everyone but the alpha, and so on down the line. Males remain in their birth communities, but females emigrate more or less at adolescence. This means that the young females entering a new group are of lower status and are viewed with suspicion (think of refugees at the US southern border). It also means that the females break kinship ties more than the males. Males also bond through co-operative hunting and boundary patrolling, and in attacking other groups. Again, think of human tribal behaviour. In some chimp communities kinship has been observed to be more important than other coalitions, in others not, but in either case male bonding adds to dominance over females. Co-operative hunting, it should be added, is having serious effects on the hunted, which is usually the red colobus monkey, which is in serious decline in multiple sites where chimps are thriving.
There is always one power that females have in these societies, the power to produce offspring – to maintain the species. Estrus in chimps is marked by visible swelling of the anogenital region, though the first of these swellings occurs before the young female is fertile, and may be a way of attracting males in her new community. Females are able to give birth (parturition) at 13-14 years, but if they aren't accepted in the community, there's a danger of infanticide by males, especially as females often use promiscuity to establish themselves. Infanticide tends to reduce the female's interbirth interval, and favours the genetic line of the male doing the killing (one wonders if they have a way of 'knowing' that the murdered child isn't theirs). Chimp sexual activity is generally promiscuous, though it most often occurs during estrus (maximal tumescence). The female, of course, has to strategise to find the best opportunity for producing healthy and communally favoured offspring – not an easy task, as it leads to secretiveness, suspicion, jealousy and so forth.
Of course, I'm writing this to draw comparisons between chimp societies and early human societies, out of which our modern civilisations developed. Human societies are more complex, naturally, reflecting individual, neurological complexity, and greater, more diverse cultural complexity, but the basis of our patriarchy can certainly be traced in our chimp relatives. Bonobos, however, are quite different, and remarkably so considering their relatively recent divergence from their chimp cousins. Humans have one great advantage over chimps and bonobos, I think. We can consciously teach ourselves to change, to be better adapted to a biosphere we have increasingly recognised is interdependent and precious in its astonishing diversity. And we can learn a lot about this from bonobos.
The bandwagon of macho thuggery rolls on
Brazil has just elected a macho thug to lead its country down the descent to demagogic doom. So now, just off the top of my head, we have the USA, Russia, China, North Korea, Cambodia, the Philippines, Poland, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Belarus, Iran, Saudia Arabia, all full of shit leaders.
Tears of rage, tears of grief. Women, women, we need you to save us! Rise up, flush these scumbags down the toilet, and never never let a man run your country again! Never!
Essai a la facon de Montaigne – a discursive piece, mainly about women
I'm at Adelaide writer's week, in the book tent. I've not been to writer's week for some years. These days I read almost entirely non-fiction, mostly science for the scientifically challenged. I feel as if, over the years, I've been suffering the literary version of a gender crisis. You might call it a genre crisis. I've been categorised wrongly – I've categorised myself wrongly – in the arts instead of the science section. Though of course I want to feel comfortable in both. Mostly I feel comfortable in neither.
I glance at a book called Beyond Veiled Clichés. It looks to be a book about western misrepresentations of women under Islam. Ah, the veil. I'm with Ayaan Hirsi Ali on this, to obsess over women's headgear misses the point. To me the point is patriarchy.
I loathe patriarchy. I really mean that. I'd like to stab it in the eye and watch it die slowly, writhing in agony. I often have these nasty macho fantasies. The other day I read the opening to Robert Sapolsky's book Behave, which describes a fantasy of torturing and murdering Hitler. It validates, in some sense, my own brutish fantasies, vis-à-vis Trump, Putin, Stalin, and others I'm ashamed to admit. At least I've never had such fantasies about women, which goes to the fact that men are in all cultures more violent than women, and their violence is directed mostly – but far from always – at other men. But I know also that some women have such fantasies; we're different in degree, not in kind, I hope.
But I wonder if Beyond Veiled Clichés has much to say about patriarchy. Certainly a book called Beyond Patriarchy would interest me more. And I certainly don't want to get started on middle eastern cultures, our own is bad enough. On the way to writer's week I passed through the ground floor of a major department store, a cathedral-like space dedicated to the worship of beauty culture, someone's idea of femininity. Or fem-inanity. Here, and only here, is where I declare myself a new-ager, favouring the natural over all those chemicals. And they don't even have to reveal the ingredients. Selling a dream that mostly isn't worth having, at inflated prices. Women's clothing, hairstyles and other paraphernalia all cost more than their mostly perfunctory male counterparts, yet I can't help but notice women earn, on average, quite a bit less than men. I'll be long dead before it all gets overturned, yet I'm confident it will, which will help ensure the survival of the species.
And now it's International Women's Day, how coincidental. We don't have an International Men's Day, we certainly don't need one, and that's the indicator of women's situation, when there's no need for an IWD, we'll have made it. So, a bit of history. March 8 was first mooted as an IWD of sorts way back in 1910, at an International Socialist Women's Conference in Copenhagen. Unlike women, socialists are a bit thin on the ground these days, so it's fascinating that in Russia – that country that Putin is so happy to drive backwards at full tilt – March 8 was declared a national holiday in 1917, when women gained universal suffrage. On March 8 of that year, women textile workers held a massive demonstration in Petrograd, which some historians claim to mark the beginning of the Russian revolution. Hoping for another one there soon. But that March 8 date seems to have resonated since 1910. On that date in 1914 Germany held an IWD to promote women's right to vote, but they had to lose a war first, and women didn't get the vote there till 1919. Interestingly on that same day, March 8 1914 there was a march in London for women's suffrage, during which Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested. So, definitely a worthy day.
A day to look back and look forward. And to examine the state of things for women right now. We still have a big problem, in Australia and other advanced nations, with women in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) fields. Our 45th parliament is composed of 32% women (44% Labor, 21% Liberal). Compare 31% New Zealand, 29% Canada. These percentages are gradually increasing, not fast enough. A quick look at a government website shows that of 41 front-benchers (ministers, junior and assistant ministers), 8 are women, not sufficient, and of course we've only had one PM in our history. In the US congress, again the left outperforms the right in female representation, though by a higher percentage. There are currently 106 women of the 535 reps from both houses – that's only 19.8%. There's 79 Democrats versus 27 Republicans, almost a 3:1 ratio. All this is a crude measure of political power, but it indicates something, and it certainly makes me frustrated. I dare not look at the corporate sectors of these nations, where arguably the real power lies. Interestingly, the proportion of female judges across Europe is 51% (as of late 2016), but Britain lags behind (England and Wales 30%, Scotland – my birth country – only 24%). Surprisingly, Romania's judiciary is 74% female – whuda thunkit? It might be worth doing a deeper dive into this conundrum in the future. Percentages are also high in Montenegro and Bosnia-Hercegovina.
In a report published on March 8 last year, 15 nations had female political leaders, eight of whom were the first female leaders of their countries. Three contentious figures were excluded – Park Geun-hye, South Korean President, who was then being impeached; Tsai Ing-wen, President of Taiwan, presumably because the report is worried about the macho thugs in China, and Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma/Myanmar who is the effective leader but constitutionally barred from bearing that title. So, adding some backbone to the report, it's fair to say we have 17 national female leaders. Of these, I might single out Sheikh Hasina, current PM of Bangladesh, who has held that position, not without interruption, for 14 years, and Angela Merkel, now in her 13th year as Chancellor of Germany. Nice to see that in the Baltics, both Lithuania and Estonia have female leaders.
Of course we're still scratching the surface, but it's worth taking the long view – comparisons with 100 years ago, 200 years ago, etc. I'm speaking to myself here, I'm impatient for change. It's unlikely we'll get rid of all the macho thugs soon, no use railing about it, we just have to get on with it, and celebrate and and make a noise about the many great female scientists and artists and teachers and mentors and sacrificers who struggle and endure and sometimes succeed. I hope to feature more of them in future posts.
three quite pleasurable little rants and rallies
on Chinese women, fantasy and reality
I've been watching The General and I, a charming if generally ludicrous multi-million dollar Chinese historical fantasy series about a woman whose leadership abilities all men defer to. Fat chance of that happening in the real China, where the dictatorship of macho thugs has reigned supreme for decades. But could today's fantasy – minus all the superhero powers – ever become tomorrow's reality?
China, like every other country, has traditionally been highly patriarchal, and to be fair the dictatorship (I refuse to endorse the charade of calling the country a people's republic) is moving with the times in calling for greater gender equality. However the political reality is clear. China's dictatorship is essentially based on the nine members of the 'Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party', and of course these individuals are regularly replaced over time. No woman has ever been Standing (or even Sitting) on this Committee, and according to Wikipedia, 'since 1997, China has fallen to 53rd place from 16th in the world in terms of female representation at its parliament, the National People's Congress, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union'.
It's a disastrous situation, especially considering that in terms of women in the workforce, China is one of the world's most egalitarian nations, outdoing the USA, Japan and many other developed countries. There seems to be little motivation to encourage women into the really important political jobs – the jobs they'd be best suited for as the more collaborative gender, and Angelababy's Bai Ping Ting (actually not the most collaborative of females) is unlikely to change the situation. There doesn't seem to be any woman of anywhere near the political stature of Cixi or Soong Ching-ling today. So I'd urge the smart women of China – there are millions of them – to rise up and demand their government to open its doors and let them in. They can't do a Tianenman Square on you this time!
on the archbishop of everywhere and nowhere
The same-sex marriage/marriage equality no-brainer has dragged on for far too long here. The other day I heard a fat archbishop of somewhere-or-other being introduced by the ABC to put the nope case. He started on about marriage being meant to be between a man and a woman, and I switched him off. Ahhh, but to have spent some time alone with him…Ok, I'd promise to have my hands tied behind my back. I'd ask him, how may female archbishops are there, mate? I mean, throughout history? In round figures? How many female bishops? Cardinals? Popes? You don't think that's relevant? Are you prepared to admit that your organisation's hierarchy is extremely patriarchal? Like, the most patriarchal institution in the western world by a million miles? No, don't blether on about your Mamma Superiors, I'm talking about the big decision-makers, you know that. And have you noticed how the most patriarchal societies in the world – look at the Middle East, Africa, parts of Asia and Eastern Europe – are also the most homophobic? You think that's coincidence? Bullshit, patriarchy and homophobia hang together like a pair of testicles, and if you were a female archbishop, as you should be, you wouldn't be sitting there spewing shit. But no, the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church would rather collapse under the weight of its own criminality than appoint a female to high office. So let me now turn to women everywhere, but especially to educated women who identify as Catholic. What the fuck are you thinking? How can you sleep at night? How can you more or less passively support the most retrograde and destructive institution in the western world? If you haven't the sense to recognise your own interest, do it for other women, straight or gay, religious or no, and make a stand, surely you can do no other.
on the history of marriage
'Marriage has always been between a man and a woman, and I see no reason to change it.' These, from memory, were the words of our former PM Julia Gillard, who was otherwise a good leader. Of course, even it it were true that marriage had always been between blokes and sheilas, that wouldn't be sufficient reason to continue with that exclusive system. It's a bit like saying 'blacks have always had to sit at the back of the bus and use the back entrance and eat the leftovers…' But has marriage always been between men and women (or little girls)? Or even between humans (I'm sure I've heard of a few blokes marrying horses and such). Who of us has witnessed the first marriage? Or the second or the fiftieth or the 500th? Where and when did they take place? Ten thousand years ago? Fifty thousand? Presumably at the time of mitochondrial Eve, some 180-200,000 years ago from memory, humans – and she was most definitely Homo sapiens – didn't marry. There was little need for it as far as I can see, as there wouldn't have been much in the way of property to protect and hand down to your legitimate heirs. And that's interesting because, since mEve definitely had children, and we're all descended from them, that makes us all bastards.
We don't even know if humans were particularly monogamous at that time – we know sweet FA about their sexual liaisons, though it seems likely they were more free and easy than they are now – together with plenty of fighting over best mates. Of course the romantic in me likes to think that a twist of fate could've taken us the way of the bonobo, but there's still time, and I'll fight for that twist for the rest of my days. Meanwhile, marriage, if we must have it (and I'd rather not) is always what we make it, and making it as inclusive as possible is surely the best for us, and will maybe bring us full circle…
beyond feminism – towards a female supremacist society
Canto: I'ves decided to declare myself as a female supremacist.
Jacinta: Really? I thought you had nothing to declare but your genius. So you've come out at last?
Canto: Well it's not as if I've been stifled in the closet for years. I've rarely thought about it before. I've always considered myself a feminist, but recently we've been looking at female-male differences, and it's been making me feel we need more than just equality between the sexes.
Jacinta: You've got a hankering for that bonobo world, haven't you? Females ganging up on you and soothing your aggressive macho emotions with a bit of sexual fourplay.
Canto: Well, yes and no. I first learned about bonobo society almost twenty years ago, and of course it excited me as a model, but then the complexity of human societies with all their cultural overlays made me feel I was naive to imagine a non-human society, without even its own language, could teach us how to improve our own. And the sex stuff in particular – well, that really got me in, but then it seemed too good to hope for. Too much self-serving wishful thinking, to model our society on a bunch of oversexed, indolent banana-eaters.
Jacinta: Do they have bananas in the Congo?
Canto: Absolutely. They have a town there on the Congo River, called Banana.
Jacinta: Oh wow, sounds like heaven. I love bananas. Let's go there.
Canto: Anyway, now I'm thinking that a female-supremacist society is what we need today, though not necessarily based on bonobos….
Jacinta: That's disappointing. I think it should be based on bonobos. Bonobos with language and technology and sophisticated theories about life, the universe and everything. Why not?
Canto: Well then they wouldn't be bonobos. But do you want to hear my reasons for promoting female supremacy?
Jacinta: I probably know them already. Look at the male supremacist societies and cultures in the world – in Africa, in India, in the Middle East. They're the most violent and brutish societies. We can't compare them to female supremacist societies because there aren't any, but we can look at societies where discrimination against women is least rampant, and those are today's most advanced societies. It might follow that they'll become even more enlightened and advanced if the percentage of female leaders, in business, politics and science, rises from whatever it is today – say 10% – to, say 90%.
Canto: Yes, well you're pretty much on the money. It's not just broader societies, it's workplaces, it's schools, it's corporations. The more women are involved, especially in leadership roles, the more collaborative these places become. Of course I don't deny female violence, in schools and at home, against children and partners and in many other situations, but on average in every society and every situation women are less violent and aggressive than men. In fact, all the evidence points to a female-supremacist society being an obvious solution for a future that needs to be more co-operative and nurturing.
Jacinta: So how are you going to bring about the female-supremacist revolution?
Canto: Not revolution, that's just macho wankery. I'm talking about social evolution, and it's already happening, though of course I'd like to see it speeded up. We'll look at how things are changing and what we can hope for in some later posts. But the signs are good. The feminisation of our societies must continue, on a global level!
he for she
I have to say, from a very young age, I considered myself a feminist. And then I read (sometime in the seventies, long before Emma Watson was born, bless her cotton socks) that you couldn't be a feminist as a male, because it was some kind of uniquely female thing, whereas I, like Emma, thought it was a simple matter of believing that females were equal to men in every respect, and that it didn't matter who did the believing – male, female, androgyne or alien.
Emma Watson's Hermione is an iconic figure. Perhaps I should say J K Rowling's Hermione, though millions identify Emma as Hermione. Yet, interestingly, Emma described herself in her speech, self-depracatingly, as 'that Harry Potter girl', inadvertently reminding us of her role as support to the main protagonist.
I don't in any way want to disparage the Harry Potter novels, which I'm sure would have been just as successful with Harriet Potter as the heroine – at least I hope so. I personally have observed how much Hermione has inspired young girls, as an intelligent, level-headed problem-solver. So it was with great delight that I, along with many others, have been able to see that Emma was not just playing a part as Hermione; that she genuinely wants to use her prominence to push for the recognition of women globally.
I would go further – and I suspect she would agree, though she didn't go that far in her speech – and say that the world would be better for having more women in prominent positions – that it would be safer, more collaborative, and more congenial. But maybe I'm being a little idealistic…
In any case, the 'he for she' initiative is one that I endorse whole-heartedly, because it allows men to have their say without experiencing any of the weird responses from both sides. It's simply about equality, and respect.


text:
ISTO welcomes a ten of PhD students each year. Most of them will be followed by the doctoral school 552 Energie, Matériaux, Sciences de la Terre et de l'Univers (EMSTU) at the Université d'Orléans.
If you come at ISTO for a PhD, you can benefit from :
○ the diversity of research field that help to broaden your horizons ;
○ a lot of scientific equipments for experiments, physic and chemistry analysis but also for computing and modelling plateform ;
○ various funding opportunities from: state or region administration, specific scholarships (ADEME, BRGM, LABEX, ...), CIFRE, etc. ;
○ a favorable local framework for scientific fullfilment with other close laboratories from OSUC, CNRS, BRGM, Université d'Orléans, private companies, etc. ;
○ an international support with the network of each reserchers but also other international PhD students coming in France as a part of their work ;
○ the possibilty to add other activities linked to research such as teaching in the Université d'Orléans and Polytech, the Édifice program, scientific development (Fête de la Science, Conferences, etc.), ...
You can find more detailed examples in the webpage on ongoing and defended PhD.