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… read about what bitcoin doesn’t offer Palestine.

In the modern world, money is a function of the state, subject to state power. This has been an enduring challenge in Palestine, where after 1967 Israel forced out local bans and routed Palestinian finances through Israel’s institutions, making those finances subject to control by an occupying state, a problem only slightly alleviated by the terms of the 1994 Oslo Accords. It is in this world that cryptocurrency boosters like Fadi Elsalameen propose bitcoin as a way to route around state-run financial systems. “But in fact, the monetary relationship between Israel and the Palestinians reflects a more fundamental political asymmetry of power,” reports [[link removed]] Michelle Woodward. “The sabotaging of the Palestinian economy is an outgrowth of this political reality, which cannot be skirted via cyberspace.” Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies function as a speculative asset, not a medium of exchange, and any investment in them is risky at best, even if people had the means to buy in. “Cryptocurrencies require widespread internet and reliable electricity. Access to both is regularly withheld and purposefully destabilized by Israel,” writes Woodward. “If organizations manage to operate despite those obstacles, they will still need to convert their funds to fiat currencies to buy food, clothing, building materials and other goods that people need.”

Dread Rocks

Abandoned uranium mines litter the Navajo nation, with residents waging a decades-long fight for accountability. As the federal government of the United States proposes close-up storage of nuclear waste and contaminated material, community organizations and the Navajo Nation have called for more permanent, and further-away, storage.

“As the federal government continues to delay the cleanup of these uranium mines, residents fear officials want to wait and hope the Navajo Nation and its people will forget the 40 years of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation and the largest radioactive spill,” reports Arlyssa D. Becenti of The Arizona Republic [[link removed]].

Becenti opens her story with an in-depth look at the materials produced to teach kids about the hazards of contaminated water and debris piles. It’s a stark reminder that some of this waste poses a generational problem.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] unfree by degree

When people in the United States invoke the loss of freedom, it is often framed as a short march to authoritarian control. Josh Kramer, writing at New_ Public [[link removed]], asks Americans to instead consider a medium degree of online unfreedom as a possible future, using Indonesia as a template for something between the May 2022 state of the US internet and China’s Great Firewall.

“That may be the single biggest distinction: the Indonesian government is willing to turn off websites, demand social posts be removed, or deplatform whole apps,” writes Kramer (emphasis in original). “According to Freedom House [[link removed]], in 2019, the government limited access to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp in the days before the national elections. In some cases, the government completely turns off the network.”

While this power has allowed the government to block COVID and election disinformation, it also allows Indonesia to curtail unflattering news, regardless of its veracity. As sex workers specifically targeted by SESTA/FOSTA in the United States already know, the internet can be made more legally dangerous to use without access being outright taken away.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Where Wolves: Part II

When wolves are exterminated from an environment, their wake is marked by abundance. For farmers, that abundance comes in unattacked livestock, but for drivers on rural roads, that abundance is a deadly one. Deer, freed from predation, multiply, devouring crops and gardens and crossing roads, sometimes killing drivers in the process.

Reintroducing wolves, often framed as a naive environmental act, changes that abundance. Wolves will on occasion eat the occasional cow or pig or other domesticated animal left near a forest. But more importantly, wolf predation will reduce the size of herds of deer, rebalancing the environment into an ecology that can support both prey and predators.

Last week, Critical State dove into the world of wolf attacks [[link removed]], and how the political salience of such visible animal action leads to electoral benefits for right-wing parties. Much of that political power comes from the visibility of the attacks. When a wolf kills a farmer’s cow, the farmer can point to the cow corpse and then blame animal reintroduction for his woes.

What is missing from this picture, what is essential to our understanding of animal populations, is the way wolves can reduce danger. The dead cow is visible; the deer culled in the woods that never causes a car accident is invisible. In “ Wolves make roadways safer, generating large economic returns to predator conservation [[link removed]],” authors Jennifer Raynor, Corbett Grainger, and Dominic Parker demonstrate that, while it is harder to observe, thebenefits of predation on an environment is still quantifiable.

“About 1 million [Deer Vehicle Collisions] occur every year in the United States, causing 29,000 human injuries, 200 human fatalities, and nearly $10 billion in total economic losses.,” write the authors. “Europe experiences similar problems, with a lower frequency of collisions with ungulates (such as deer and moose) but a higher rate of fatalities and injuries.”

Deer populations have flourished in the wake of exterminated wolves. The reintroduction of wolves reduces the harm from deer in two ways: by reducing the number of deer, and by changing how deer interact with the environment, largely by scaring them out of the roads and trails that wolves like to use.

Looking at changes in deer-vehicle crashes in Wisconsin, the authors find that “Across the 29 counties with wolves present, these savings generate a $10.9 million aggregate reduction in [Deer Vehicle Collisions] losses each year.”

Quantifying the value of predators is hard, because the harms of unchecked prey only flourish in their absence. Reintroduction of apex predators species like wolves allows for a deeper understanding of the benefits from living in a complete ecology, rather than a fractured one.

The benefits of such predation come strongest in rural areas, where the harms are also most visible. “This finding may help dampen political polarization around wolf reintroduction that generally pits rural and urban voters against one another,” write the authors. While research has shown the right can campaign on the visceral impact of wolf attacks, the tangible improvements to rural life from reduced deer populations and deer collisions could offer a counter. The wolves cannot campaign for their economic benefit, but armed with this data, politicians could.

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Doreen Horschig studied [[link removed]] the norms of nuclear weapons in Israel. While the United States remains the only nation to have killed with nuclear weapons in war, nine countries today possess nuclear arsenals. Much theorizing around nuclear strategy assumes leaders will act to avoid nuclear war, or at least be deterred from its use, but public opinion may not always support that. “In a recent experimental study [[link removed]] that I conducted in Israel, I found that when faced with a threat to their security, respondents showed high support for nuclear use,” wrote Horscig. “I found that when respondents are reminded of their own mortality, they are more likely to support a nuclear strike.”

Shirin Jaafari spoke [[link removed]] with Syrians living outside the country about a Jackie Chan-produced movie being filmed in the ruins of Al-Haraj al-Aswad. The city was the site of much fighting during the civil war fighting, first as a Free Syrian Army base, then an ISIS stronghold, and then reclaimed by Assad’s government. Years of fighting have left it damaged, making it a workable stand-in for the Yemen-set plot of “Home Operation,” a story of China’s navy rescuing Chinese citizens trapped in the country. “As far as we know, there might still be bodies under the rubble,” Alia Malek, a Syrian American writer told Jaafari.

Emily Haavik tracked [[link removed]] polar bears across the vanishing ice of the Svalbard archipelago. The bears are versatile predators, but as the planet warms and the arctic warms fastest, polar bears have a harder time hunting the same prey they depend upon to survive. “The polar bears that live on Svalbard appear to be hunting more reindeer and taking more birds’ eggs. Mother bears are swimming farther to get to their denning areas,” wrote Haavik. “These are clever workarounds, but they’re not necessarily efficient.” Sea ice, essential for seal hunting, is shrinking, and may not return, leaving the archipelago-based bears stranded, though they may find refuge in the more northern arctic.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

Watching luxury beach houses topple into the rising seas is a reminder that politics never stops at water’s edge [[link removed]].

Little Miss brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttttt [[link removed]].

Electronic warfare at its most twee [[link removed]].

Several lonches, please [[link removed]].

Keep calm and remember the context [[link removed]] of social mobilization against the horrors of the blitz.

Follow the powdery white lines [[link removed]].

Gimme a break [[link removed]].

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Critical State is written by Kelsey D. Atherton with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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