Month: October 2014

Wary that Hong Kong police might move into protest areas and destroy the array of art created inside the grounds of the democracy movement, a band of “art guardians” has been standing by in case they are needed.

The protests have extended over a month, calling for greater democracy within Hong Kong. The Chinese government continues to deny the calls.

Within the kilometer-long stretch of highway opposite the government headquarters that is the site of the ongoing protest, many pieces of protest art have been created–including the famous “Umbrella Man,” a 12-foot tall wooden sculpture. The umbrella is symbolic of the defense of the people against police batons as well as rain and tropical heat.

New works are constantly being made. Demonstrators sketch chalk art on roads and fold origami umbrellas. Almost all of the walls and pillars is now decorated with art.

The art guardians are ready to protect this art, should police be called in, according to the members.

“Their job is to call me,” Meaghan McGurgan, who runs a theatre blog and founded the Umbrella Movement Art Preservation group. “I can then mobilise the rescue teams standing by.”

This is a people’s art, according to McGurgan. “Everyone can see it, everyone can go, everyone can participate.”

There is currently nowhere for the art to go, however.

“We phoned the museums,” McGurgan said. “They either didn’t get back to us, or said they wouldn’t take the art as it was political. I thought that was really sad.”

A dozen art galleries have offered to take the works temporarily.

Even the “Lennon Wall”–a wall covered in thousands of sticky notes posted by both supporters and detractors of the movement–will be reassembled, according to McGurdan.

“We’ve taken large-scale photographs from far away and gridded them off into sections. If necessary we can put it all together again like a puzzle later on.”

As a last resort, the art guardians will allow the art to be destroyed, McGurdan said. If the police move in and the guardians can’t safely get the art out, they will do their best to document “the destruction of something beautiful”.

By Sid Douglas

China launched an experimental unmanned spacecraft Friday–the country’s first return moon mission. The craft, which had a successful launch atop an advanced Long March-3C rocket and is currently travelling along its planned trajectory, will spend eight days in space before returning to Earth.

The craft successfully entered its expected orbit shortly after launch, according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, the developers of the craft.

The lunar orbiter was launched from the Xichang Satellite Center in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, atop a Long March-3C rocket, according to Xinhua news.

The flight is expected to take eight days, during which time it will half orbit the moon before returning to Earth and landing in Inner Mongolia.

The purpose of the mission is to test technologies that will be used on a future space vessel, Chang’e-5, which will be sent to collect samples on the moon in 2017. Chang’e-5 will be the final of three phases in China’s moon probe project. Chang’e-1 and Chang’e-2 were completed in 2007 and 2010. Chang’e-3–China’s first moon rover, called Yutu–completed a soft landing on the moon in December 2013. Chang’e-4 is a backup probe for Chang’e-3.

The experimental craft launched Friday will gather data and validate re-entry technologies such as guidance, navigation and control, heat shield and trajectory design.

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By Daniel Jackson

Chinese President Xi Jinping has taken direct control of a key law enforcement agency, according to Communist Party state-run media outlets.

In order to focus concern on the reform of China’s legal system, Xi took direct charge over China’s Political and Legal Affairs Commission (PLAC). Xi’s taking charge was an “upgrade” of the government’s control of the agency, according to media outlets–members of the Politburo Standing Committee had been in charge of PLAC in times past.

Xi criticized government corruption harshly at a Central PLAC meeting early this year, and vowed to eliminate corruption and corrupt officials with “the strongest will and the strongest action.”

Xi’s government put former PLAC leader Zhou Yongkang–a top ally of former Chineseleader Jiang Zemin–under formal investigation in July. Under Zhou, PLAC had become a highly powerful organization in charge of all law enforcement authorities, including the Ministry of Public Security, the Armed Police, the courts, the Procuratorate, and prison and labor camps.

Religious practitioners such as Falun Gong members were persecuted under PLAC’s authority, after being banned in 1999. Practitioners were detained, tortured and brainwashed under Zhou.

Petitioners and rights defenders were also suppressed under PLAC and Zhou.

By Sid Douglas

“I hadn’t planned on staying there long–I just wanted some chicken wings,” said 26-year-old Tan Shen, a native of Chengdu in Sichuan, a southwestern province of China. The young woman had been dumped by her boyfriend.

“I was walking around feeling miserable and decided to stop off at the KFC at the train station,” said Tan. She phoned in sick to her job and stayed at the restaurant.

“But once I got in there and started eating I decided I needed time to think. I didn’t want to go back to my apartment because it was full of memories of him. So I stayed.”

“We work in shifts here and the restaurant is open 24 hours a day, so we get a lot of people coming through,” said restaurant worker Jiang Li Lung. “At first no one really noticed her. But after a few days I began thinking she looked really familiar.

“Then I realised we had been serving her for the past three days and that she hadn’t actually left. When we asked her if she was ok, she said she was and just needed time to think. And then asked for another box of chicken wings with extra large fries.”

“She was after all a paying customer, even if a bit of an odd one,” said Jiang, who also said that Tan was doing no harm eating boxes of chicken. The staff let her stay.

After a week, though, Tan left the restaurant. She said she was starting to get sick of the taste of the food.

“I was getting sick of the taste of chicken so there was no point in staying there anymore.”

“I decided the best thing to do would be to leave the city and go back to my parents,” said Tan. “I had already told work I was off sick, so phoned them and said I was leaving.”

Tan then boarded a train to her parents’ house.

Jiang said of their unusually long staying guest, “I guess we kind of miss her. It certainly made work more interesting.”

By Heidi Woolf

Although mountain glaciers around the world are melting at increasing rates in our warming climates, at least one range is unaffected. Pakistan’s Karakoram range, the highest point in Pakistan and the source of much of the water of the Indus River, is not melting–and scientists expect that it will not melt, but may put on snowmass in coming years.

Scientists are not sure why Karakoram range is not melting. An early theory was that the range was covered in rubble that may have had an insulating effect.

But now, researchers at Princeton University think they may have a better answer: seasonal weather patterns.

In their recent report, “Snowfall less sensitive to warming in Karakoram than in Himalayas due to a unique seasonal cycle,” the scientists credit Karakoram’s snowmass retention to temperatures that never rise enough to melt mountain glaciers–all year round.

Although most of the Himalaya’s experience heavy summer rains stemming from the South Asian monsoon, which far outweigh winter snows, this is not the case in Karakoram, where cold winter winds from Central Asia bear most of the precipitation. The South Asian monsoon seldom reaches Karakoram–it is uniquely blocked by the Great Himalayan Range to the south.

Investigating Karakoram for data has been a challenge. The topography of the area is extreme. K2 and three other pinnacles exceed 8,000 meters. In the past, researchers relied on average altitudes for the region, but the Princeton study used high-resolution maps and monthly precipitation data to create climate model simulations from 1861 to 2100.

While Karakoram does experience some warming in summer, the higher slopes were too cold in summer for glaciers to melt, the researchers found.

Not only are the glaciers and snowmass above 4,500 meters not melting, the scientists expect them to remain until at least 2100, which is good news for Pakistan.

The range provides water to most of Pakistan through the Indus River. Although snow and ice at lower altitudes will melt, these declines will be offset by the higher cold. The cold upper regions provide water at a controlled rate, rather than the boom-bust cycle of flood and dry associated with sudden melts.

The rest of the Himalayas are bound to melt too, the researchers believe. They expect sharp glacial declines in coming years.

“Something that climate scientists always have to keep in mind is that models are useful for certain types of questions and not necessarily for other types of questions,” said Sarah Kapnick, a postdoctoral research fellow in Princeton’s Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and lead researcher on the work. “While the IPCC models can be particularly useful for other parts of the world, you need a higher resolution for this area.”

By Sid Douglas

Despite Attempts by recruiters from organizations such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS), Xinjiang Uighurs will not join the jihadist movements of Islamic caliphates, according to exile Uighur activists. Uighurs do not share the same ideology, according to the activists, despite caliphate claims that the region should be “recovered [into] the shade of the Islamic Caliphate.”

These claims will have “little impact,” said Alim Seytoff, president of the Uyghur American Association and director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project in a recent interview.

“These claims are mostly likely attempts by these groups to lure and recruit disillusioned young Uighurs to their cause. That is not going to happen because Uighurs do not share their ideology.”

“The Uighur people will simply ignore such claims,” said Seytoff.

The Chinese government, which administers the far-western province of Xinjiang, has taken advantage of recent Islamist terrorist movements, according to Seytoff.

“China has been opportunistically taking advantage of the rise of ISIS and attempting to artificially create links between ISIS and the Uighurs in the world in order to mute international criticism of its systematic and egregious human rights violations of the Uighur people in East Turkistan,” he said.

“This has not prevented the Chinese government from demonizing the Uighurs as supporters and sympathizers of these groups in order to justify its heavy-handed repression of the Uighur people since 9/11.”

By Sid Douglas