1. Environment, 2. Health, 3. Operations in Hot Zones, 3.1. Venezuela, 3.2. Congo, Uganda, Colonialism, 4. Mephysis, Soft Targets and Living Shields. 4.1. Synthetic Biology, 5. Viral Misinformation, -5.1. Disinformation in Elections, so what else is new, 5.2. Is it Fake or is it Faux, 5.3. Mutating Disease Tropes, From PDWN 190707
Other topics: Glaciers, Drought, Iraq, Displaced populations, Alaska, Heat Wave, Grey Zone (Cold War redeux), Deforestation, Uganda, Ukraine, Attacking Water Supplies, Deepfake, Mass Gatherings, Synthetic Biology, Balmy Alaska, Tigris and Euphrates
-1. Environment: A few months ago it would have been speculation about the possibility of not only a sea passage between Europe and Asia, but that there could be active ports in Alaska 190707-2*, Far North Russia, Nordic Countries, Canada, and possibly farming [Map]. Same for Antarctica which will become several islands, if all the ice is gone exposing land, and then submerging it with sea level rise [Map]. If Thwaites Glacier Collapses, Global Coastlines Could Change Forever -2-, [Map -2-]. *Baking Alaska: Record Heat Spurs Wildfires and Mass Mortality Events, Anchorage Cancels Fourth of July Fireworks Due to Extreme Heat Wave, It Was a Balmy 90 Degrees Yesterday in Anchorage – for the First Time on Record.
-1.1. Why Iraq’s Great Rivers Are Dying, and it couldn’t happen at a worse time. Iraq is in a fragile state. The country is trying to rebuild itself after thirty years of near constant war. The Euphrates and the Tigris run down the length of the country supplying drinking water, irrigation, and hydroelectricity to a booming population. Where these rivers combine, the Shatt al-Arab, became so poisonous last summer that 100,000 people were hospitalized; sparking riots in the city of Basra.
-1.2. Climate Change Is Not Causing Wars – Yet. While the influence of climate is tangible, affecting and exacerbating conflicts, it has not so far been the root cause of war. Old problems such as poor socioeconomic development, inequality, bad statesmanship and a recent history of violence are still much more influential. Climate variability or change has substantially increased risk across 5% of conflicts to date. This is likely to rise to 13% if the global mean temperature rises by two degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels, and 26% for four degrees. Stanford Led Study Investigates How Much Climate Change Affects the Risk of Armed Conflict. So far most forced migrations, which likewise can leave to conflict, have been due to conflict and famine, but it is fuzzy about the concurrent climate changes role, I Want to Get the Hell out of Here: Thousands of Palestinians Are Leaving Gaza -3.1↓. On the other had peace has its own environmental problems How the End of Civil Conflicts Can Lead to Increased Deforestation.
-2. Health: Experts Warn of Antimicrobial Resistance, Additional Threats to National Biosecurity, 190707-Vaccine-2A. Puerto Rico Isn't Ready to Care for Veterans in a Hurricane, House Committee Warns, <ADDED 190707-180715-4>.
-2.1. City in Tokyo Approves Imports of Ebola Virus by Research Facility. Importing the Ebola virus and other infectious diseases is intended to help strengthen Japan’s inspection system for diseases that have never spread within the country, in preparation for an expected increase in visitors from abroad ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, in recent years the average attendance is about 1 million. Fortunately Japan can learn from another country that has a mass gathering quadrennially, Public Health Risks Related to Communicable Diseases During the Hajj 2019, Saudi Arabia, 9-14 August 2019, which averages about three million annually.
-3. Operations in Hot Zones:
-3.1. Venezuela. How Trump’s Weaponized Use of Foreign Aid Is Backfiring, <ADDED 190303>9. <ADDED 190707-181209-4>. Rule of Law in Venezuela Eroded: UN Rights Chief, Venezuela Abuse Report Drives Protesters Back to Streets. Venezuela Accounts for 68% of Central America’s Measles Cases, Measles Migrating from Venezuela -2.1↑.
-3.2. Ebola Outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo: It’s More Than a Public Health Problem. While this is certainly a public health crisis, the solution isn’t solely a medical one. Rather, it’s essential to recognize that volatile relations between the DRC government and the its citizens – as well as the ongoing effects of conflict – play a central role in perpetuating the problem. How Congo’s Ebola Epidemic Became the World’s Second Deadliest. Inside Congo’s Ebola emergency: • Responders must involve local communities to help build trust and prevent further attacks. • Dealing with attacks requires understanding the local context, which is decades of conflict. • Militarisation makes things worse, treating people as biothreats can alienate communities. • A vaccine is only as good as the ability to vaccinate. <ADDED 190707-180513-1.1>. How Conflict Minerals Funded a War That Killed Millions, and Why Tech Giants Are Finally Cleaning up Their Act 2014. Sometimes We Have to Abandon the Patients: Treating Ebola in Congo's Warzone. More Violence as DRC Officials Report 51 Ebola Cases in Recent Days.
-A. Uganda Ebola Screening Points Set Ablaze in Kasese (District) after a boy from DRC was screened with high temperatures and rushed to a Hospital. Unfortunately his relatives reacted angrily, attacking teams at the screening points, claiming the diagnosis was wrong diagnosis. People from across the border have vowed to put down all the screening tents erected on the Ugandan side, because they are the ones spreading Ebola to DR Congo due to the screening points established and that if not removed, they will all be burnt; Two Ebola Screening Centres Razed at Uganda-Congo Border. New Spike in Displacement in Eastern DRC Further Complicates Ebola Response, Requires Urgent Relocation and Response. Minister Aceng's visit to Arua angers immigration officials
-B. Just speculation, and even if true this may not be applicable as it is from a different area [Map]. Uganda has a different colonial history than the DRC, despite having a shared ethnic history. Though paternalistic, Can We, Together, Lift One Village out of the Middle Ages 2007, launching an ambitious Guardian aid experiment, a few hours from London - and 700 years back in time, this difference may be the basis of a resentment about Uganda’s relatively better fortune, perhaps an anger that it has become more Westernized. Katine: What's it All About 2008. The Story of Katine: Introduction 2010. The Future Should Be Bright: Katine Farmers Ready to Fend for Themselves 2015. Now Katine Is Famous: How a Guardian Project Wrought Change in Rural Uganda 2017. The above are selection for of a series of stories that could be interpreted as benign interest of what was done to help people, or as illusionary self congratulations. Either way this worldview of a benevolent landlord is still in evidence today, Could this Local Experiment Be the Start of a National Transformation.
-4. Mephysis: Strikes on what should not be targeted under Geneva Convention Rule 25 & other Customary IHL, to include the use of living shields to deter attack, will be part of Mephysis now. Airstrike on Migrant Detention Center in Libya Kills at Least 44 People, Starved, Tortured, Bombed: the Fate of Refugees Trapped in Libya, -5.3↓. China Muslims: Xinjiang Schools Used to Separate Children from Families.
-4.1. U.S. Army Making Synthetic Biology a Priority. That will feed directly into existing Synthetic Plague tropes. Re Thinking Biological Arms Control for the 21st Century.
-4.2. Pentagon Report: Russian Leaders Believe They Are Already at War with the United States – in the Gray Zone, the conceptual space in which countries take action that lies somewhere on the continuum between warfare and peaceable relations. Millions of People Risk Being Cut off from Safe Water as Hostilities Escalate in Eastern Ukraine, Where Getting Water Means Putting Your Life on the Line, UN Calls for Protection of Civilians after Attacks on Water Facility Workers.
-5.1. This will be interesting to watch what will happen with the viral story. Wonder how the Russian Trolls will respond. Likely it will be through false flag proxies and unwitting agents. New Study Shows Russian Propaganda May Really Have Helped Trump The study does not prove Russian interference swung the election to Trump, but it did find Trump's poll numbers improved when Russian trolls were active. Trump Poll Numbers Went up Each Time Russian Internet Research Agency Twitter Accounts Became Active. Russian Twitter Propaganda Predicted 2016 US Election Polls. Study Suggests Russian Social Media Trolls Had Impact on 2016 Election. How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump. Yes, Russian Trolls Helped Elect Trump$ 2018, No, Russian Twitter Trolls Didn’t Demonstrably Push Trump’s Poll Numbers Higher. Russian Disinformation Campaign to Help Donald Trump Bigger than Thought, Twin Studies Claim. #Document Internet Research Agency Twitter Activity Predicted 2016 U.S. Election Polls. Russian Trolls Who Interfered in 2016 U.S. Election Also Made Ad Money. #Book Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President - What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know [Cover]. It isn’t unusual for lightning rod topics to get a wide variety of slanted articles. On the first day of the release of the report has been unusually objective. It normally takes a day before conspiracy theory minded media begin to counterattack, usually with a priori and cherry picked narratives, Trolls Using Instagram to 'Try to Show Trump as a Russian Puppet,' Influence 2020 US Presidential Election, and at the same time allowing themselves outs in case they need to defend/ backpedal themselves, Shocking Scale of Russia’s Sinister Social Media Campaign Against US Revealed.
-A. New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social Media Involvement in US Politics$ 2018 The Nation is interesting as it has the logical fallacy of big events have to have big causes, Far from being a sophisticated propaganda campaign, it was small, amateurish, and mostly unrelated to the 2016 election. The success of a covert operation is based on subtlety and being indirect – i.e. don’t attack directly but target something that will logically lead to the intended target, for example a moral panic. Egos would have been hurt if it was realized how little and how unsophisticated was needed to point a mob in a particular direction, and how hard to stop it once it has momentum. New Report on Russian Disinformation, Prepared for the Senate, Shows the Operation's Scale$ 2018, The Russians Didn't Swing the 2016 Election to Trump. But Fox News Might Have$ 2018. It is also useful to troll through the rabid and prolific zealots on both sides of an issue. Makes in easier to direct a debate toward the desired outcome, which is to increase distrust of each side for the other, disruption of more sane communication, and put people in vested positions which makes it difficult for them to revise their stance later. Unfortunately, when people do discover they have been manipulated, played for fools, were gullible, the backlash can be a horrendous unintended consequence. This social contagion is analogous to using a bioweapon that continues to spread and eventually reaches the people who started it. Russian State Run Media Took Trump’s July 4 Event as an Opportunity to ‘Troll’ the U.S.
-B. Russian Trolls Mobilized on Twitter on Oct 6 2016. Why$ PDWN has another dimension to this, in October 2014 there was a very active social media and pundit campaign that fanned Ebolaphobia, and then abruptly ended after the November elections. The curator noted at the time it had the characteristics associated with dezinformatsiya but the impact of the social contagion was the focus at the time. The database notes for the social aspects of the West African Ebola outbreak are not available online, but the system is designed so I can easily extract the pertinent data if provide if of interest. The same was noted in October 2016 prior to the November election of that year, but at the time this was outside Parademic interest. Since then with the policies and actions related to health and environment it has very much become of interest. So much so that much of the data collected is not included in the weekly PDWN, but is in the database. -5.3‡.
-5.2. Deepfake Technology Is Changing Fast — Use These 5 Resources to Keep up. The 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes once imagined a demon that could make people experience a reality that wasn’t real. Nearly 400 years later, a user on social news platform Reddit conjured realistic pornographic videos featuring Hollywood actresses who weren’t really there. The user’s handle: Deepfake. Identifying a Fake Picture Online Is Harder than You Might Think was found on Vaccine Confidence Project even though there is no mention of vaccine in the article. This disinformation is so common now that reliable information sources on vaccination don’t need to explain what an article on this topic is included.
-5.3. Fox & Friends Guest Uses Measles Outbreak to Spread Fear of Immigrants, previously she pushed debunked rumors of migrants bringing Ebola, 190623-Polemic-5.1A. There is however a real threat of The Dangers of Disease in Migrant Children Detention Centers. DHS Watchdog Warns That ‘Dangerous Overcrowding,’ Inhumane Conditions at Detention Facilities Require Swift Action Listicle, How a Lack of Personal Care Products Contributes to Harrowing Conditions for Detained Migrants. It would not be a stretch to make this into propaganda that is based on fact, 190630-Polemic-3.7, -4↑. However, why would foreign agitation propaganda be needed when part of the US already is appalled about the situation, and the another part only pays attention to only what supports their conformity bias. Trump Says Migrants Living ‘Far Better’ in Detention Than at Home. No, Migrants Aren’t Being Quarantined with an Unknown Disease at the U.S.-Mexico Border.
-‡. How Can Health Officials Help Contain the Panic over Outbreaks and Epidemics, #Book Disease, Rumor, and Panic in India’s Plague and Influenza Epidemics, 1896-1919, Outbreak Deja Vu: Rumor, Conspiracies, Folklore Link Disease Narratives, No Safe Place: Disease and Panic in American History, When Epidemics Go Viral, Panic over Rumours of Disease Ridden Thermoses in Africa, #Book Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties. -5.1B↑.
-From PDWN 190707
-190630-2.2‡>. A Chernobyl redux: Putin, after Three Days, Says Fire Hit Russian Submarine Was Nuclear Powered.
-181118-VCP-China>. So far have not seen an open source claim that the US is responsible for the continued African Swine Fever outbreaks in China to win trade war. That would explain away why there are still outbreaks after officials have claimed it was contained and controlled. An official and/or public statement could easily escalate to conventional armed warfare, 190623-Polemic-5.1A.
-190707-Vaccine-4. Misinformation and Growing Distrust on Vaccines, ‘Dangerous as a Disease’ Says UNICEF Chief, UNICEF Chief Warns Against Misinformation on Vaccination. St. Jude Inpatient Visiting Guidelines how antivaxxers use (outdated) guidelines to convince people that shedding from vaccines is a problem.
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