Saturday 31 August 2019

A modest proposal indeed: Academia considers cannibalism


A modest proposal indeed: Academia considers cannibalism
The thought-leaders and philosophers of the Western world have recently turned their attention to a rather radical method of reducing our carbon footprint and self-regulating the Earth’s population.
Ever since we diverged from our chimpanzee cousins five million years ago, human beings have picked up a diverse skillset. We sharpened rocks into axes, mastered fire, built civilizations and came up with the atomic bomb. It’s been a rocky couple of eons, but one thing we’ve managed to completely leave behind is the ultimate taboo: cannibalism. 
However, is there a small but dedicated cannibal lobby working to reclaim it from psychopathic, penis-devouring killers and Liberian warlords? Despite some odd clickbait headlines, positive coverage of cannibalism in the media is all but nonexistent.
Academics, however, are unconstrained by nasty ‘social constructs’ like morality, ethics and ‘not eating your grandmother.’ Far away from the real world, professors steeped in postmodernism – a doctrine that reigns supreme in social science departments and rejects notions of objective reality – have been suggesting for some time that we embrace our inner beast and break the taboo.
“Cannibalism occurs in every class of vertebrates,” wrote American Museum of Natural History researcher Bill Schutt in ‘Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History.’ After discussing which wine pairs best with human placenta, Schutt mused whether one day food shortages and overcrowding might lead us to eat our own. The New York Times, incidentally, called the book “refreshing.”Additionally, researchers at UC San Diego declared in 2017 that as cannibalism helps limit the spread of disease in some species, it could benefit us too.
“We are flipping the paradigm, with regards to cannibalism,” the researchers said, with an accompanying press release from the university declaring “For some populations, cannibalism may be just what the doctor ordered.”
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While actual scientists research the nitty-gritty of eating corpses, social scientists busy themselves pondering its cultural significance. Last year, a conference was held at the University of Warwick, entitled “Bites Here and There,” where such topics as “Help Yourself: Autophagy as Response to Global Crises,”“Cannibalism and Intimacy,” and “‘Ethical’ Foodways: Justifying Cannibalism in Contemporary Speculative Fiction” were discussed.
Despite persuading their test subjects with several moral and ethical arguments in favor of cannibalism, the authors of one research paper packed it in when they found that, no matter what the circumstances, these subjects refused to eat human flesh. However, they did offer a ray of hope for aspiring autophagists, noting that while chowing down on corpses disgusts us “for now,” we should “be able to adapt to human flesh if need be.”
It’s easy to mock the notions of academics, who are after all paid to think up abstract ideas and publish impenetrable research papers. But their ideas tend to percolate down into mainstream media, and from there into our culture. 
The idea that insects could replace meat as a viable food source was the stuff of science and academia for decades, and a slow but steady trickle of research papers lent weight to the argument. In true postmodernist fashion, anthropologists argued that our revulsion at eating winged, flying, crawling monsters was nothing more than another social construct to be overturned.
Fast forward to today, and we’re told that insects are the delicious, nutritious, and the solution to our planet’s woes. Newspaper think-pieces and cable news segments trumpet the virtues of eating bugs almost daily. Sainsbury’s now stock ‘Eat Grub’s Smoky BBQ Crunchy Roasted Crickets’ in the snack aisle, and Dutch retailer Jumbo has been selling mealworm burgers and crunchy locusts since 2014.
At the risk of making a massive generalization, people buy edible insects for only two reasons: curiosity and virtue signaling. “Look at me!” they can say. “I’m ahead of the curve. I’m part of the solution, not the problem.” The customer base for edible insects likely overlaps significantly with the soulless millenials who pay good money to consume trendy soy-slop from companies like Huel and Soylent in place of solid food.
And so it may well go with cannibalism. Whether the taboo is broken by the slow and steady work of academics, or bucked by one forward-thinking influencer, once man-flesh enters the mainstream it might not be long before thousands are lining up for their first bite. And who knows, maybe they’ll even ask for seconds.  
Graham Dockery is a journalist based in Ireland

‘Anti-Semitic’: Benjamin Netanyahu slams HBO series about murder of Palestinian


‘Anti-Semitic’: Benjamin Netanyahu slams HBO series about murder of Palestinian
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for a boycott of the producers of a HBO series which, he says, is “anti-Semitic” and “slanders Israel.”
Netanyahu took to Facebook to call for a boycott of “propaganda” Channel 12 and its owner Keshet for creating the show ‘Our Boys’, which he says “besmirches the good name of Israel. He urged his followers to stop watching the channel, especially those who have a ratings meter in their homes. 
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‘Our Boys’ tells the story of the murder of Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was kidnapped and burned alive by two Israeli teenagers and an adult in 2014. 
Netanyahu slammed the series for not focusing on the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, who had been killed by Hamas militants before Khdeir’s kidnapping, sparking riots and Israel’s war on Gaza in 2014. 
“We were drawn to understanding the perpetrators of this murder more than we were interested in understanding the victimhood of our side,” Hagai Levi, one of the filmmakers, told Drama Quarterly about the motivation for the show.
Netanyahu is no fan of Channel 12 and said he was “used to them blackmailing me on a daily basis.” On Friday the High Court rejected a petition by his Likud party to stop the channel from publishing matters about corruption cases against him. 
Families of victims of terrorism in Israel have also written a letter criticizing the series, saying it gave the wrong impression of Israelis. “The balance is not clear to someone viewing the show, who thinks ‘we murder them, they murder us’,”Merav Hajaj, whose daughter, a soldier, was killed in a Palestinian car-ramming incident in 2017, told Reuters. 

‘Good morning, Donald Trump’: Iran shows off satellite ‘undamaged’ in launch pad explosion


‘Good morning, Donald Trump’: Iran shows off satellite ‘undamaged’ in launch pad explosion
An Iranian satellite involved in this week’s failed launch miraculously survived a large on-site explosion, according to a Tehran minister who taunted the US president with the photo of the “undamaged” device.
“Me & Nahid 1 right now. Good Morning Donald Trump!” tweeted Communications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi, uploading a picture that purported to show him with the Nahid 1 – a solar-powered communications satellite that was set to be taken into space this Thursday.
But the mission failed before it started, as the Safir-1B rocket reportedly exploded on the launch pad. Commercial satellite imagery published by international media also indicated an explosion, showing a thick plume of black smoke rising from the launch site.
The minister’s tweet was apparently in response to a remark by US President Donald Trump, in which he ruled out any US involvement in the accident, adding that he wishes Tehran “good luck in determining what happened at Site One.”
Iran did not pin the blame on any particular state, though Trump’s Twitter intervention has only muddied the waters regarding the failure, launching speculation that it could have been an act of sabotage, rather than technical failure.
The US has long been suspicious about Iran’s space efforts, claiming that it could boost its ballistic missile technology.
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The current US-Iran spat dates back to May 2018, when President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal signed by Tehran and six world powers. Later on, he brought back sweeping economic and financial sanctions, targeting Iran’s oil trade and key industries.
Tehran responded by suspending some commitments set out in the deal. The crisis saw an Iranian tanker briefly seized in Gibraltar, and another captured by Iran in response.

IAEA Report: Iran Has Increased Stockpile of Enriched Uranium

Quarterly report shows stockpile up to 241 kg


Jason Ditz 


In their new quarterly report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that Iran’s stockpile of civilian enriched uranium continued to grow beyond the 202 kg limit that was originally meant to be in place for the P5+1 nuclear deal.

That the stockpile further grew is unsurprising, as Iran has expanded their enrichment capacity, and has not shipped any uranium abroad for fuel conversion in the last couple of months, meaning it was only going to go up.

Iran has argued that the cap on the P5+1 deal no longer applied after the US withdrew, and has suggested they could quickly reverse their excess once they get a new deal with the other parties on shoring up the sanctions relief the US has failed to deliver. 

The IAEA report put Iran’s stockpile at 241.6 kg of low-enriched uranium, far below any stockpile that would be a proliferation risk, and all enriched to 3.6% or 4.5%, both well below the 90% needed for even potential weaponization. 


Iran’s decision to exceed the cap was very publicly made, with officials arguing it was meant to push the EU in particular to ensure trade, with Iran in particular wanting to be allowed to keep selling oil.