Growing Rainforests Not Humans Killed Off Southeast Asia’s Megafauna, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 October, 2020.

 

Growing Rainforests Not Humans Killed Off Southeast Asia’s Megafauna

By Julien Louys, Griffith University and Patrick Roberts, Max Planck Institute

Thinking of Southeast Asia today may conjure up images of dense tropical rainforests teeming with iconic jungle animals such as orangutans, tigers and monkeys.

Perhaps less well known, but just as important to these ecosystems, are a host of other large-bodied creatures: the goat-like serows and gorals, three species of Asian rhino and the only species of tapir still living in the “Old World”.

The endangered Malayan tapir is the largest of four widely-recognized tapir species and the only one native to Asia. Shutterstock

Together, these creatures comprise Southeast Asia’s megafauna, second only to Africa’s in diversity. These two continental ecosystems are the last vestiges of a world largely lost – one where giants roamed the Earth. But what caused so many megafauna species to go extinct?

Several theories have suggested either humans, climate change, or both drove Southeast Asia’s megafauna to extinction. However, our newest research published today in Nature indicates it was actually the rise and fall of savannah environments that drove this extinction event.

Southeast Asia’s megafauna extinctions

Southeast Asia has lost many large mammal species over the Quaternary period, the past 2.6 million years. They included the world’s largest ever ape, Gigantopithecus, elephant-like creatures known as stegodons and large water buffaloes.

These extinctions also include one of our closest relatives, Homo erectus, and two island offshoots of the human family tree – Homo floresiensis (the “Hobbit”) and Homo luzonensis. One final human species is also recorded in the genes of Southeast Asians today: the Denisovans, who were once likely widespread throughout the region.

According to previous research, the lead antagonist in the megafauna extinction story is humans. Some have suggested the arrival of people to new lands over the past 60,000 years or more – who then overhunted and altered this new habitat – is what led to the loss of giant mammals.

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Read more: New analysis finds no evidence that climate wiped out Australia’s megafauna

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Others researchers have contended changes in climate resulted in the extinction of the megafauna. While others suggest a combination of both human and climate influences.

Toothy insights into past environments

For our research, we examined environmental changes in Southeast Asia over the past 2.6 million years, to determine how they may have impacted extinctions.

We analysed the stable isotopes of the teeth of mammals found in the region today, as well as those from available published fossil records.

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Read more: Meet the giant wombat relative that scratched out a living in Australia 25 million years ago

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Stable isotopes are the non-radioactive forms of many elements. Stable isotopes of carbon and oxygen preserved in mammal teeth record important information on what kinds of plants those animals ate, and how wet their environments were, respectively.

Stable carbon isotopes are particularly helpful in recording whether animals predominantly ate leaves and fruits in shaded forests, or grasses in more open settings. This insight lets us identify shifts in environments over time.

These fossil teeth from extinct Southeast Asian elephants are one example of the various teeth available in the fossil record. Julien Louys, Author provided

The fluctuating presence of forests

During the first 1.5 million years or so of the Pleistocene (the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago), the northern parts of Southeast Asia were largely forest, while the southern parts were woodlands or grasslands.

Later, from about one million years ago, forests retreated everywhere in the region and grasslands dominated. Coincident with these changes, large forest-adapted animals including Gigantopithecus and a giant panda relative disappeared from Southeast Asia’s northern parts.

Gigantopithecus blacki was a large extinct ape that lived during the Pleistocene in what is now Southern China. It’s believed to have gone extinct about 300,000 years ago. Greg Williams/Flickr, CC BY-NC

Later still, around 400,000 years ago, the Southeast Asian Sunda Shelf began to submerge and climate cycles changed. Because of this, forest conditions returned.

At the same time, grassland-adapted creatures that had filled the region, including giant hyenas, stegodons, bovids and Homo erectus began to disappear – and largely went extinct by the end of the Pleistocene. The remainder were driven into the rainforests.

By the last few tens of thousands of years, we see the first evidence of stratified, closed-canopy rainforests in Southeast Asia. These have dominated the region for the past 20,000 years or so.

Rainforest-adapted species should have been advantaged by the return of the rainforests, but one interloper changed that. Homo sapiens appears to be the only species in our family tree that was able to successfully adapt to and exploit rainforest environments.

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Read more: Old teeth from a rediscovered cave show humans were in Indonesia more than 63,000 years ago

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And although humans lived in Southeast Asian rainforests as early as 73,000 years ago, it was probably only in the last 10,000 years that Homo sapiens began to fundamentally alter these habitats and exploit the mammals within.

A vanishing world

Southeast Asia continues to preserve some of the most critically endangered megafauna on the planet.

Megafauna grassland specialists were the greatest loss as a result of disappearing savannahs 400,000 years ago. Today, rainforest megafauna are also at great risk of extinction.

Luckily for us, our own species’ fortunes changed for the better with the emergence of typical Southeast Asian rainforests. But we’re now the very thing threatening to destroy them forever.

Julien Louys, ARC Future Fellow, Griffith University and Patrick Roberts, Research Group Leader, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Julia Gillard and Those Military Funerals, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 8 October, 2020.

Julia Gillard and Those Military Funerals

By William de Maria with Pearls and Irritations

While sitting in on 24 soldier funerals did Gillard ask herself the same question, in substance, “is it worth it?”. No doubt each time she would have given herself the same answer “yes”.

Even the sun was diffident. What good would come from shining through the sacred windows of the little Baptist Church on Firhill Street in Ashgrove, Brisbane? Would it be enough to light up the deep gloom inside? For therein lay the body of 28-year-old Lance Corporal Jarred “Crash” McKinney.  He was killed 18 days earlier, on 24 August 2010, in a firefight at an undisclosed location in deadly Uruzgan Province. Military intelligence had underestimated the force of the Talban. They hit McKinney’s Mentoring Team Delta with a savagery the Australians had come to expect. Despite wearing his body armour system with plates fitted front and rear, McKinney sustained massive trauma to his chest and died instantly.

So, there he was. Inside the little church for his funeral with full military honours. It was 10 September 2010. Nine years and one day after the 9/11 bombings in New York that drew Australia into its most shameful war.

Sitting in the front row of the church was Jared’s wife Beckie, holding their three-year-old daughter Annabell’s hand. Beckie was pregnant. “Jared was a very loving dad, a doting father, and nothing meant more to him than family. He was really the best husband and we shared the most amazing 11 years together,” she said. Sitting next to her were his parents and other close relatives.

But who is that in the second row? Why Julia Gillard! As prime minister for three of the 13 years Australia was in Afghanistan, Gillard attended 24 of the 41 funerals for soldiers killed in that theatre of war. There she is, squeezed between Tony Abbott, then opposition leader, then defence minister John Faulkner, Anna Bligh, then Queensland premier and a licorice all sorts of other political and military dignitaries. What were they doing there? Have the war-makers became the war mourners?

How much warning did the traumatised McKinney family and the other 40 families of the dead special forces soldiers have of the attendees? They seem to have had little choice but to accept that prime ministers, opposition leaders and other dignitaries would swoop into the military funerals and leave just as quickly. The grim flotilla would have left some families overwhelmed and side-lined. Others would have appreciated the official attention.

Special forces, by training and experience, are deeply clannish. Benjamin Chuck died on a night mission to Hajian on 21 June 2010 when his Blackhawk helicopter descended to the ground too quickly at a speed of about 350 kph and burst into flame. For his funeral, his 2^nd Commando Regiment buddies were flown back from Afghanistan. That’s how tight they were. These soldiers who attended the funerals of their buddies would have seen all but themselves and the soldiers’ families as outsiders. Anger would have run deep on many occasions.

One picture of the McKinney funeral show Gillard and Abbott standing together outside the church. Not because they had put their hatred for each other on hold but because both could not afford to be absent. Gillard was fresh from her election victory of sorts which resulted in a hung parliament. Abbott could smell the prime ministerial leather.

It got too much for some families in the end and requests were made for politicians not to attend.

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EXTRACT FROM HIDEOUT IN THE APOCALYPSE BY JOHN STAPLETON

Straight-faced, former Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop denied on the national broadcaster that 41 Australian soldiers had died in vain.

Old Alex did not agree.

He had interviewed a lot of former soldiers over the years.

They were almost invariably traumatised by their experiences, regarded war as a mistake and held little but contempt for the politicians who had sent them into harm’s way.

Then Prime Minister Julia Gillard attended 24 funerals for Australian soldiers while she was in office.

In a rare display of self-doubt, she said: “Somewhere inside you it does wear away. You really have to sit and reflect to yourself, you know, am I still sure this is worth it? And I would always get to the conclusion that it is, but there was a tussle.”

No, it was not “worth it”.

The dead weren’t her sons, her brothers, her husband, her father, her friends. She could dismiss them, rationalise their deaths, because their funerals were simply part of her political duties. But their families could not.

Those men, yes, they were all men, died not because their homeland was under threat, not to help the people of another country, but for the sake of a military alliance built around multi-billion dollar procurement contracts and intelligence sharing; because, just as it had done in Vietnam, Australia always unquestioningly followed America into conflict no matter how patently unjust, counterproductive or clearly mismanaged.

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While sitting in on 24 soldier funerals, did Gillard ask herself the same question, in substance, “is it worth it?”.

No doubt each time she would have given herself the same answer “yes”.

To me this doesn’t feel like moral reflection but more like political pragmatism. Her second-term priorities contained no mention of working towards the end of the Afghanistan engagement. Her objectives included the usual bi-partisan fervour to maintain the US alliance above all else. Afghanistan got a peripheral mention as a reverse jihad against the Taliban to keep American citizens safe in the future.

Gillard will be remembered for 23 words, “I say to the Leader of the Opposition [Tony Abbott] I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not.” First female prime minster, brave advocate of education for girls and a strong voice for mental health. These will take her into history.

But some will remember she was the prime minister who stood by and watched the Afghanistan carnage in the killing fields of Uruzgan Province and beyond. Up to 86,000 unarmed Afghan civilians pockmark this dry land with their tombstones.

Yes, Gillard is safe for now. But with her decision to allow a permanent US Marine presence in Darwin as part of the Pentagon’s Pivot in the Pacific policy against China, we must ask how safe has she made Australians not yet born?

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William De Maria’s next book, Australia’s War of Shame: Afghanistan 2001-2013, is due out in 2021, the 20th anniversary of the occupation of Afghanistan year.

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Kate Bush Joins Glittering Line-up of Songwriting Talent, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 7 October, 2020.

 

Kate Bush Joins Glittering Line-up of Songwriting Talent

By Adrian York, University of Westminster

Kate Bush, the grand dame of British pop, has just been awarded a prestigious fellowship of the Ivors Academy, the UK’s independent professional association for music creators. It’s an appropriate honour – Bush is the artist who in many ways opened the door for women creators in the UK music industry.

She had the first female self-penned number one single and was the first to write all the songs for a debut album selling over a million copies. She also broke new ground by producing her own albums and taking control of her own management and music publishing.

Bush’s accolade follows hot on the heels of singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading, who received the same honour at the beginning of September 2020. Both women have distinct artistic voices, with Armatrading’s often guitar-driven songs investigating the complexities of personal relationships and Bush’s focusing more on narrative, mood and ambient soundscapes. A common musical feature is a shared engagement with rhythmic complexities, which they both handle with great sophistication and subtlety.

The Ivors Academy Fellowship is regarded as the ultimate recognition for UK composers and songwriters as it is bestowed by fellow creatives. The list of fellows is a who’s who of pop music’s great and good, including Paul McCartney, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Annie Lennox, Elton John, Peter Maxwell Davies and David Arnold. Membership of this elite club spans the musical theatre, pop and classical worlds – and the addition of Armatrading and Bush adds some welcome diversity.

Me, myself, I: Joan Armatrading performing in Dublin in the 1980s. Eddie Malin/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

With the Ivors Awards having existed for 64 years, the fellows represent the post-war generation of baby-boomers and the global success of the British popular music and entertainment industry, now under threat from the consequences of COVID-19.

Scaling the heights

Bush grew up near Bexley, Kent in the south-east of England. With a Catholic upbringing, her father was a GP and her Irish mother was involved with the traditional Irish dance movement. The family were musical and Bush’s brothers were active in the local folk scene. She taught herself piano at the age of 11 and, supported by her family, soon started writing her own songs.

Through a friend of her family, Bush got in touch with Dave Gilmour, guitarist and singer with Pink Floyd, who helped her put together some demo recordings. On the back of these demos Bush signed a record deal with EMI, aged 16, and used part of her advance money to fund training as a mime artist and dance classes with David Bowie’s teacher Lindsay Kemp. This involvement with movement and theatricality was to become a hallmark of her music videos and live shows.

The impact of Kate Bush’s first single, Wuthering Heights, followed by the album The Kick Inside, was immediate and powerful. Released in February 1978, when she was 19, the track was ethereal, sophisticated and displayed an unnervingly complete artistic vision. It existed in a completely different world to what was in the charts at the time.

When I first heard Wuthering Heights as a 16-year-old schoolboy, I was bowled over by the musicianship of Bush’s piano playing and singing, the melodic, metrical and harmonic complexity, the extraordinary emotional world, the literary allusions and the otherworldly sexual and musical allure that she exuded. How could anyone just three years older than me be that cool; that talented?

Bush’s influences seemed clear – the pastoral prog rock of Genesis and singer-songwriters Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro spring to mind. But Bush’s work combined this with a very English female sensibility infused with a Gothic twist to create something totally unique.

Still running up that hill

With a body of work that includes 25 UK top 40 hits and ten UK top 10 albums, nobody could accuse Bush of neglecting her public. But there have been long pauses between albums – and an almost unbearably long gap for her fans between her 1979 “Tour of Life” and her 2014 residency at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. It was this series of 22 theatrically conceived shows which were the hottest ticket in town and reaffirmed Bush’s position in the hearts of the British public.

How do Bush’s albums that followed The Kick Inside stand up to scrutiny? Lionheart was the 1978 follow up and is more of a companion piece than a development. In the 1980s, a sequence of five albums – starting with Never For Ever in 1980 – saw Bush using the new sampling technologies of the Fairlight CMI synthesiser, which – at times – seems to overpower the skill of her songwriting. https://www.youtube.com/embed/wp43OdtAAkM?wmode=transparent&start=0

In 1985, Hounds of Love was a return to commercial form with an A-side chock full of hit singles, including Running Up That Hill. But the next album of original material did not emerge until 1989 with The Sensual World and its standout track, the plangent This Woman’s Work. The subsequent studio album was 1993’s The Red Shoes, with the soul-influenced Rubberband Girl as the hit single. https://www.youtube.com/embed/85wZw1O83aE?wmode=transparent&start=0

In 2005 after a lengthy career break, Bush released the double album Aerial, nominated for Best British Female Solo Artist and Best British Album at the 2006 BRIT Awards. But there was still no tour to placate Bush’s fans.

Her tenth album, 50 Words for Snow, came out in 2011 and swiftly established itself as both a fan and critic’s favourite reaching number five in the UK charts. The duet with Elton John, Snowed in at Wheeler Street, is particularly emotionally affecting.

Bush’s career has set a high bar and a template for musicians wanting artistic freedom and a freedom to manage their own pathway through the promotional merry-go-round. The hope is now that this honour will spur her on and we’ll be hearing from England’s siren queen with the new album and live shows that her fans so desperately thirst for.

Adrian York, Senior Lecturer in Commercial Music Performance, University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Victorian Government Is Causing Harm: Doctors Call Out Covid Insanity, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 7 October, 2020.

 

The Victorian Government Is Causing Harm: Doctors Call Out Covid Insanity

From The Australian Covid Medical Network. Below is their full statement, issued this week.

It has become increasingly clear that the response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus by the Victorian  government is now doing more harm than good, and will cause more deaths and result in far more  negative health effects than the virus itself and risks creating Victoria’s worst ever public health  crisis. 

Many Australian doctors and other health professionals consider the lockdown measures to be  disproportionate, not scientifically based, unilaterally authoritarian and the cause of widespread  suffering for many Victorians.  

Thereby, we Australian Doctors and Health Professionals, in solidarity with thousands of  international doctors, call for the cessation of all disproportionate measures that contravene the  International Siracusa Principles. 

Hundreds of Australian Doctors Call for an End to Victorian Madness

These Siracusa Principles are part of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to  which Australia is a signatory, and are recommended by the World Health Organisation. They require all public health management policies to meet standards of legality, evidence-based  necessity and proportionality, and that they recognise our basic, universal and non-derogable  human rights. 

Of particular concern is the needless harm and suffering being experienced by the young, especially children and adolescents, by the denial of normal social interactions such as play,  schooling and relationships with family and friends.

We hold grave concerns that these effects on  child and adolescent health will impact their future wellbeing for many years to come⁴. This is  occuring despite the fact that the virus poses a negligible risk to children. 

‘Health is a state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of a disease or infirmity’. 

WHO CONSTITUTION, 1948. 

We consider the ambition for ‘viral elimination’ and the intent of achieving “zero cases for a period  of time”⁵, to be both irrational and unachievable, according to the best local and international  evidence. Furthermore, the latest evidence suggests that ‘lockdown measures’ in general have  limited effectiveness in reducing the viral health impacts in the long term.  

Policies such as curfews, local travel restrictions, reduced exercise and outdoor activities, imposed  isolation and the quarantining of the healthy, enforced mask wearing in open spaces, the denial of  children’s play, socialisation and education with friends and peers and the disruption of family  relationships, as well as the arbitrary application of laws, are contrary to common-sense and are  seriously compromising the health of individuals and the wider society.  

Violent Australia: The Mob Rises

Furthermore, these policies have resulted in interruptions and delays of both public and private  health-care services, created unnecessary patient fear and panic, which has adversely impacted  access to general health-care and resulted in delayed presentations of many serious medical  conditions, including cancers and heart disease.

They have also caused a dramatic increase in  mental health problems due to the imposition of isolation and loneliness on the elderly and the  vulnerable, the creation of significant financial and relationship strain for many families and  induced unnecessary levels of fear and anxiety among health-workers and their loved ones. 

These measures are especially concerning given the growing evidence of the very limited virulence  of the SARS-CoV-2 virus for the vast majority of the population. These concerns are amplified when  one considers the serious limitations and problems of PCR Covid swab tests for population  screening and the resultant lack of clarity concerning definitions of ‘Covid cases’ and so called  ‘Covid Deaths’, especially in the setting of Residential Aged Care. 

These measures represent a culture of ‘anti-health’ and a denial of the principles of good medical  practice. Such a disproportionate approach, coupled with a fear-based media narrative comprised  of inadequate and misleading information, is a great concern and must cease as soon as possible. 

Inhumane Lockdowns Compound Australia’s Covid Fiasco

It is incumbent on all of us to examine the bigger picture and the terrible harms that have been  inflicted on our society, in the name of a very narrow concept of ‘health’. We must re-evaluate the  importance of our basic rights and freedoms and reflect deeply on what kind of society we wish to  live in.  

We believe there is a better way forward for Victorians and all Australians. A path founded on the  principles of good medical practice, including: 

 Openness and Honesty  

 Humility and Consultation 

 Collaboration and Respect for Autonomy  

 To always encourage with Care, Hope and Reassurance; 

 

Never to provoke Fear, Panic or Terror.  

COVID MEDICAL NETWORK

“…COVID-19 may pose a material risk of substantial injury or prejudice to health of human beings even when the rate of  community transmission of COVID-19 in Victoria is low or there have been no cases of COVID-19 in Victoria for a period of  time.”

In light of these concerns we respectfully call for the following seven actions: 

ONE

An open, honest and transparent discussion with the general public, with easily accessible  information made available about the evidence and underlying assumptions used to  inform decisions about the management of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.

This should include, in particular, the evidence to justify the grave impacts on children and adolescents as well  as clear estimates of the broader health and socio-economic costs and impacts.

TWO 

More collaboration and engagement with a broader range of medical specialists, other healthcare professionals and a diverse group of interdisciplinary leaders who can inform  and assist in responding to the growing public health and socio-economic crisis we are  witnessing, especially among the young, the disadvantaged and the vulnerable in our  community. 

THREE

An urgent review of the role of State of Emergency and State of Disaster powers in the  management of public health issues and crises, with consideration given to how other  more democratic approaches could be utilised in the future.

FOUR

An urgent review of the general management of pandemics in Australia, including an  examination of the need for better communication, coordination and collaboration  between State and Federal Governments.

There is also an urgent need to establish clear  and well-defined ‘stand-down’ parameters, in case of ‘false alarms’ or when it becomes  foreseeable or evidential that the harms of the controlling policies are greater than the  direct health impacts, or fatal potential, of the disease under consideration. 

FIVE

Consideration of the Commonwealth Government taking on greater responsibility and a  more central role in organising and implementing a coherent and effective nationwide  response in the management of future pandemics and national public health crises.  

SIX

Consideration of an international initiative to create reliable and effective ‘early warning  systems’ which would deliver accurate assessments of the dangers and realities of  emerging pandemics, and would assist in more considered and proportionate responses to bio-security threats in the future. 

SEVEN: LAST BUT BY NO MEANS LEAST

Finally, we implore the governments of Australia, state and federal, to be ever mindful of  the balance between loss of freedoms and basic rights and the promotion of public health,  never losing sight of the potential for collateral harms to exceed the effects of the disease being managed.

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