Communist control is still strong in Lithuania: The treatment of migrants shows indifference to evil

 "At the end of October, only 300 of the 4.2 thousand migrants who arrived illegally from Belarus last year remained in Lithuania. Since the beginning of the year, about two and a half thousand migrants have fled or left their places of accommodation, having obtained the right to move. This year, 640 foreigners voluntarily left for their countries of origin, asylum was granted to 139 foreigners.

 

    The reaction of the Lithuanian authorities to the influx of migrants was shameful, cruel and unjustifiable. The government measures applied to migrants, their forcible deportation to camps and deprivation of liberty, followed by the reversal policy, were against European Union (EU) directives, international law and the European Convention on Human Rights.

 

    The Minister of Internal Affairs, Agnė Bilotaitė, played the first violin, demonizing migrants, creating the impression that they are volunteers of Lukashenka's and Russia's hybrid war seeking to harm Lithuania, and not refugees from the war zone, looking for political shelter or a chance to live better. Hybrid attacks should be curbed with the strictest measures.

 

    Such a reaction was partly understandable in the first months of the influx, when migrants flew to Minsk on special flights, and Belarusian officials accompanied them to the Lithuanian border and helped them cross it. Even then it was clear, or at least it should have been clear, that these migrants did not care about Lithuania at all, but Western Europe, so that under ideal conditions they would have crossed Lithuania in a few hours and traveled far.

 

    I have no doubt that Islamophobia and racism played a significant role in determining this shameful policy. We don't want to see darker-skinned people in Lithuania who are not Europeans and are not nominal Christians.

 

    It is not without reason that international organizations talk about "institutional racism rooted in the migration system". Instead of fighting against such prejudices against European values, the authorities encouraged them with their silence and incessant talk about hybrid attacks. Back in mid-October, Bilotaitė complained that "EU law does not allow us to effectively defend ourselves against the threat posed by authoritarian regimes, so we solve the issue of our security and that of the entire EU with national measures."

 

    The efforts of migrants and refugees to seek a better, safer life are not directly linked to the intentions of authoritarian regimes to endanger national security. It is not fair to try to impose such thinking. So far this year, more than 40 thousand people traveled from France to the United Kingdom (UK) in small boats. Based on Bilotaitė's logic, one would have to ask what kind of authoritarian regime encourages people to invade the UK in order to destabilize it.

 

    Muammar Gaddafi was killed a long time ago, Iran's influence does not reach that far, even the "all-powerful" FSB could not organize such a large-scale movement of people. Spain's response has been subdued as migrants sometimes pour en masse into Ceuta, an autonomous Spanish city in Africa on the Strait of Gibraltar. Madrid does not call it a hybrid attack, does not talk about the intentions of a foreign state.

 

    Lithuanian and UK organizations and politicians react differently to these challenges. Last week, UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman came under fire for suggesting that southern England was facing an "invasion" of illegal migrants. Charities criticized the use of the word "invasion", saying it was "appalling, wrong and dangerous".

 

    Conservative MP Roger Gale said the use of such "inflammatory words" was "totally unacceptable" and could encourage reactionary sections of British society to "resort to violence". Bilotaitė is not reprimanded for similar and even harsher statements, because they are supported by the majority of ruling coalition.

 

    Bilotaitė is not the only politician who is openly and proudly against migrants. Andrius Mazuronis, the vice-chairman of the Seimas and the leader of the "Labour Party", claims that illegal migrants demanded more human rights than Lithuanian citizens, and that Lithuania could have looked more at the interest of national security than the "interest of so-called human rights".

 

    It is difficult to take Mazuroni's opinion seriously. Because migrants were held in captivity for years without a court verdict, locked up in camps where living conditions did not meet normal standards. The fugitives did not pose any serious threat to national security. Almost all migrants left Lithuania, it is possible to assess what they did.

 

    How many of them became saboteurs, spreaders of Moscow's lies, how many of them were violent, attacked, robbed people, raped women, etc. t.? If at all, it is very little. It is true that keeping fugitives costs money, but relatively little, because the accommodation conditions are deliberately primitive. These days, the UK pays 6.8 million. pounds sterling per day for lodging fugitives in hotels. Refugees in Lithuania cannot even dream of a hotel.

 

    An alien coming from elsewhere would probably get the impression of a secret meeting, that it was decided not to contradict the authorities' stories. It is not surprising that the ministers, the courts, and the conservatives who portray themselves as holier than saints are silent, the same conservatives who talk non-stop about the politics of values  ​​and scold Western European countries that do not properly arm Ukraine.

 

    Organizations defending human rights are silent, although Seimas Controller Erika Leonaitė spoke openly. The leaders of the churches are silent, although the Scriptures proclaim the brotherhood of all mankind. It is silent, although it should not be silent, although it should expose this reluctance to see what is obvious, oppose it with all its might, appeal to the conscience of believers, urging them not to succumb to the psychology of the herd of sheep. And how can we criticize the Russians for not standing up to the illegal actions of their government, when we ourselves remain silent in the face of evil.

 

    Not all migrants can be accepted, a mass influx would cause serious problems. But Lithuania must respect international norms and give migrants the opportunity to request asylum. Requests may be rejected. We cannot support the conscious efforts of Bilotaitė and some other politicians to portray them as Moscow's helpers or tools, to baselessly, even falsely, explain that they pose a threat to national security, to imprison them in inadequately equipped camps. 

 

What is most puzzling is the general public silence and approval of actions that violate the rights of migrants."

 

Only those who now have the right to speak and control everything are silent - the communists still ruling us. They want to build a new iron curtain, only to find themselves on the western side of that curtain. And ordinary people in Lithuania are not silent, they openly say that emigrants will freely come, go through, and disappear from our sight.

 

Komunistinis raugas dar stiprus Lietuvoje: elgesys su migrantais rodo abejingumą blogiui

"Spalio pabaigoje Lietuvoje buvo likę vos 300 iš 4,2 tūkst. migrantų, pernai neteisėtai atvykusių iš Baltarusijos. Nuo metų pradžios apie pustrečio tūkstančio migrantų iš apgyvendinimo vietų pabėgo ar pasišalino, įgavę teisę judėti. Šįmet į kilmės šalis savo noru išvyko 640 užsieniečių, prieglobstis buvo suteiktas 139 užsieniečiams. 

Lietuvos valdžios reakcija į migrantų antplūdį buvo gėdinga, žiauri, nepateisinama. Migrantams taikomos valdžios priemonės, jų prievartinis suvarymas į stovyklas bei laisvės atėmimas, vėliau taikoma apgręžimo politika prieštaravo Europos Sąjungos (ES) direktyvoms, tarptautinei teisei ir Europos žmogaus teisių konvencijai.

Vidaus reikalų ministrė Agnė Bilotaitė griežė pirmuoju smuiku, demonizuojant migrantus, sukuriant įspūdį, kad tai Lietuvai kenkti siekiantys Lukašenkos ir Rusijos hibridinio karo savanoriai, o ne bėgliai iš karo zonos, ieškantys politinės užuovėjos ar galimybės gyventi geriau. Hibridines atakas esą reikia pažaboti griežčiausiomis priemonėmis.

Tokia reakcija buvo iš dalies suprantama pirmaisiais antplūdžio mėnesiais, kai migrantai specialiais reisais atskrisdavo į Minską, o baltarusių pareigūnai juos palydėdavo iki Lietuvos sienos, padėdavo jiems ją peržengti. Net tada buvo aišku arba bent turėjo būti aišku, kad šiems migrantams rūpėjo visiškai ne Lietuva, o Vakarų Europa, kad idealiomis sąlygomis jie per kelias valandas būtų pervažiavę Lietuvą ir keliavę tolyn.

Ne be pagrindo tarptautinės organizacijos kalba apie „migracijos sistemoje įsišaknijusį institucinį rasizmą“. Užuot kovojusi su šitokiomis Europos vertybėms prieštaraujančiomis išankstinėmis nuostatomis, valdžia jas skatino savo tylėjimu bei nesiliaujančiomis kalbomis apie hibridines atakas.

Neabejoju, kad islamofobija bei rasizmas turėjo nemažą įtaką, lemiant šią gėdingą politiką. Nenorima Lietuvoje matyti tamsesnio gymio žmonių, kurie nėra europiečiai ir nėra nominalūs krikščionys.

Ne be pagrindo tarptautinės organizacijos kalba apie „migracijos sistemoje įsišaknijusį institucinį rasizmą“. Užuot kovojusi su šitokiomis Europos vertybėms prieštaraujančiomis išankstinėmis nuostatomis, valdžia jas skatino savo tylėjimu bei nesiliaujančiomis kalbomis apie hibridines atakas. Dar spalio viduryje Bilotaitė skundėsi, kad „ES teisė nesudaro mums galimybės veiksmingai gintis nuo autoritarinių režimų keliamos grėsmės, todėl savo ir visos ES saugumo klausimą sprendžiame nacionalinėmis priemonėmis.“

Migrantų ir bėglių pastangos siekti geresnio, saugesnio gyvenimo nėra tiesiogiai susietos su autoritarinių režimų kėslais kelti pavojų nacionaliniam saugumui. Nedora mėginti įpiršti tokį galvojimą. Iki šiol šįmet daugiau negu 40 tūkst. žmonių mažais laiveliais keliavo iš Prancūzijos į Jungtinę Karalystę (JK). Pasikliaujant Bilotaitės logika, reiktų klausti, koks autoritarinis režimas skatina žmones veržtis į JK, siekiant ją destabilizuoti.

Muamaras Kadafis seniai nužudytas, Irano įtaka tiek toli nesiekia, net ir „visagalė“ FSB negalėtų suorganizuoti tokio masto žmonių judėjimo. Santūriai reaguoja Ispanijos valdžia, kai migrantai kartais masiškai veržiasi į Seutą, Ispanijos autonominį miestą Afrikoje ties Gibraltaro sąsiauriu. Madridas nevadina to hibridine ataka, nekalba apie užsienio valstybės kėslus.

Lietuvos ir JK organizacijos bei politikai skirtingai reaguoja į šiuos iššūkius. Praeitą savaitę JK Vidaus reikalų ministrė Suella Braverman sulaukė kritikos už pastabą, kad Pietų Anglija susiduria su nelegalių migrantų „invazija“. Labdaros organizacijos kritikavo žodžio „invazija“ vartojimą, esą tai „pasibaisėtina, neteisinga ir pavojinga“.

Konservatorių parlamentaras Rogeris Gale‘as sakė, kad tokių „kurstomųjų žodžių“ vartojimas yra „visiškai nepriimtinas“ ir gali skatinti reakcingus britų visuomenės sluoksnius „griebtis smurto“. Bilotaitė nesulaukia priekaištų už panašius ir net griežtesnius pasisakymus, nes jiems pritaria didžioji visuomenės dalis.

Bėgliai nesudarė jokio rimto pavojaus nacionaliniam saugumui. Beveik visiems migrantams išvykus iš Lietuvos, galima įvertinti tai, ką jie padarė. Kiek jų tapo diversantais, Maskvos melų skleidėjais, kiek jie smurtavo, puolė, apiplėšinėjo žmones, prievartavo moteris, ir t. t.? Jei išvis, tai itin mažai.

Bilotaitė nėra vienintelė politikė, atvirai ir išdidžiai nusiteikusi prieš migrantus. Seimo vicepirmininkas „darbiečių“ lyderis Andrius Mazuronis tvirtina, kad nelegalūs migrantai reikalavo daugiau žmogaus teisių, negu turi Lietuvos piliečiai, o Lietuva esą galėjo labiau žiūrėti nacionalinio saugumo intereso, o ne „vadinamojo žmogaus teisių intereso“.

Sunku rimtai traktuoti Mazuronio nuomonę. Nes migrantai be teismo nuosprendžio metus buvo laikomi nelaisvėje, uždaryti stovyklose, kur gyvenimo sąlygos neatitiko normalių standartų. Bėgliai nesudarė jokio rimto pavojaus nacionaliniam saugumui. Beveik visiems migrantams išvykus iš Lietuvos, galima įvertinti tai, ką jie padarė.

Kiek jų tapo diversantais, Maskvos melų skleidėjais, kiek jie smurtavo, puolė, apiplėšinėjo žmones, prievartavo moteris, ir t. t.? Jei išvis, tai itin mažai. Tiesa, bėglių išlaikymas kainuoja, bet palyginti nedaug, nes apgyvendinimo sąlygos sąmoningai primityvios. Šiomis dienomis JK moka 6,8 mln. svarų sterlingų kas dieną už bėglių apgyvendinimą viešbučiuose. Bėgliai Lietuvoje negali nė svajoti apie viešbutį.

Iš kitur atvykusiam ateiviui, ko gero, susidarytų slapto susikalbėjimo įspūdis, kad nutarta neprieštarauti valdžios pasakojimams. Nestebina, kad tyli ministrai, teismai, už šventuosius šventesniais save vaizduojantys konservatoriai, kurie be pertraukos kalba apie vertybių politiką ir bara Vakarų Europos valstybes, kurios deramai neginkluoja Ukrainos.

Tyli žmogaus teises ginančios organizacijos, nors atvirai pasisakė Seimo kontrolierė Erika Leonaitė. Tyli bažnyčių vadovai, nors Šventraštis skelbia visos žmonijos brolystę. Tyli, nors neturėtų tylėti, nors turėtų demaskuoti šį nenorą matyti, kas akivaizdu, visomis jėgomis jam priešintis, kreiptis į tikinčiųjų sąžinę, ragindami jų nepasiduoti avių bandos psichologijai. Ir kaip galime kritikuoti rusus, kad jie nesipriešina neteisėtiems savo valdžios veiksmams, kai mes patys tylime blogio akivaizdoje.

Visų migrantų negalima priimti, masinis antplūdis sukeltų rimtų problemų. Bet Lietuva turi gerbti tarptautines normas ir suteikti migrantams galimybę prašyti prieglobsčio. Prašymus galima atmesti.

Visų migrantų negalima priimti, masinis antplūdis sukeltų rimtų problemų. Bet Lietuva turi gerbti tarptautines normas ir suteikti migrantams galimybę prašyti prieglobsčio. Prašymus galima atmesti. Negalima pritarti Bilotaitės ir kai kurių kitų politikų sąmoningoms pastangoms juos vaizduoti Maskvos talkininkais ar įrankiais, nepagrįstai, net melagingai aiškinti, kad jie kelia pavojų nacionaliniam saugumui, kalinti juos neadekvačiai aprūpintose stovyklose. Labiausiai glumina visuotinė visuomenės tyla ir pritarimas migrantų teises pažeidžiantiems veiksmams.”

 

Tyli tie, kurie dabar turi teisę kalbėti ir viską valdyti - komunistai. Jie nori sukurti naują geležinę sieną, tik atsidurti vakarinėje tos sienos pusėje. O paprasti žmonės Lietuvoje netyli, atvirai sako, kad emigrantai laisvai ateis, praeis ir išnyks mums iš akių.

Ministrė Bilotaitė prasegė generolo marškinius ir kelnes...

  Ir pamatė ten Lukašenkos hibridinę ataką. Todėl seimas skubiai keičia Lietuvos įstatymus, kad visas šitas mobinguojančių moteriškių išmones įteisinti. Kaipgi kitaip. Juk mes esame visuotinės gerovės valstybė.

Are Trees Talking Underground? For Some Scientists, It’s Still In Dispute.

    "From Ted Lasso to TED Talks, the theory of the “wood-wide web” is everywhere, and some scientists argue that it is overblown and unproven.

 

    Justine Karst, a mycologist at the University of Alberta, feared things had gone too far when her son got home from eighth grade and told her he had learned that trees could talk to each other through underground networks.

 

    Her colleague, Jason Hoeksema of the University of Mississippi, had a similar feeling when watching an episode of “Ted Lasso” in which one soccer coach told another that trees in a forest cooperated rather than competed for resources.

 

    Few recent scientific discoveries have captured the public’s imagination quite like the wood-wide web — a wispy network of fungal filaments hypothesized to shuttle nutrients and information through the soil and to help forests thrive. The idea sprouted in the late 1990s from studies showing that sugars and nutrients can flow underground between trees. In a few forests, researchers have traced fungi from the roots of one tree to those of others, suggesting that mycelial threads could be providing conduits between trees.

 

    These findings have challenged the conventional view of forests as a mere population of trees: Trees and fungi are, in fact, coequal players on the ecological stage, scientists say. Without both, forests as we know them wouldn’t exist.

 

    Scientists and nonscientists alike have drawn grand and sweeping conclusions from this research. They have posited that shared fungal networks are ubiquitous in forests around the world, that they help trees talk to each other and, as “Ted Lasso’s” Coach Beard articulated, that they make forests fundamentally cooperative places, with trees and fungi united in common purpose — a dramatic departure from the usual Darwinian picture of interspecies competition.

 

    The concept has been featured in numerous media reports, TV shows and best-selling books, including a Pulitzer Prize winner. It even shows up in “Avatar,” the highest-grossing movie of all time.

 

    And the theory could be starting to influence what happens in real forests. Some scientists, for example, have suggested managing forests explicitly to protect fungal networks.

 

    But as the wood-wide web has gained fame, it has also inspired a backlash among scientists. In a recent review of published research, Dr. Karst, Dr. Hoeksema and Melanie Jones, a biologist at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, found little evidence that shared fungal networks help trees to communicate, swap resources or thrive. Indeed, the trio said, scientists have yet to show that these webs are widespread or ecologically significant in forests.

 

    For some of their peers, such a reality check is long overdue. “I think this is a very timely talk,” said Kabir Peay, a mycologist at Stanford University, about a presentation Dr. Karst recently gave. He hoped it could “reorient the field.”

 

    Others, however, maintain that the wood-wide web is on firm ground and are confident that further research will confirm many of the hypotheses proffered about fungi in forests. Colin Averill, a mycologist at ETH Zurich, said that the evidence Dr. Karst marshaled is impressive. But, he added, “the way I interpret the totality of that evidence is completely different.”

 

    🌳🍄🍄🌳

 

    Most plant roots are colonized by mycorrhizal fungi, forming one of Earth’s most widespread symbioses. The fungi gather water and nutrients from the soil; they then swap some of these treasures with plants in exchange for sugars and other carbon-containing molecules.

 

    David Read, a botanist then at the University of Sheffield, showed in a 1984 paper that compounds labeled with a radioactive form of carbon could flow via fungi between lab-grown plants.

 

    Years later, Suzanne Simard, then an ecologist with the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, demonstrated two-way carbon transfer in a forest between young Douglas fir and paper birch trees. When Dr. Simard and her colleagues shaded Douglas firs to reduce how much they photosynthesized, the trees’ absorption of radioactive carbon spiked, suggesting that underground carbon flow could boost young trees’ growth in the shady understory.

 

    Dr. Simard and colleagues published their results in 1997 in the journal Nature, which splashed it on the cover and christened the discovery the “wood-wide web.” Soon after, a group of senior researchers criticized the study, saying it had methodological flaws that confounded the results. Dr. Simard responded to the critiques, and she and her colleagues designed additional studies to address them.

 

    Over time, the criticisms faded, and the wood-wide web gained adherents. Dr. Simard’s 1997 paper has garnered almost 1,000 citations and her 2016 TED Talk, “How trees talk to each other,” has been viewed more than 5 million times.

 

    https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_ simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other?language=en

 

    In his book “The Hidden Life of Trees,” which has sold more than 2 million copies, Peter Wohlleben, a German forester, cited Dr. Simard when describing forests as social networks and mycorrhizal fungi as “fiber-optic internet cables” that help trees inform each other about dangers such as insects and drought.

 

    Subterranean forest research has continued to grow, too. In 2016, Tamir Klein, a plant ecophysiologist then at the University of Basel and now at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, extended Dr. Simard’s research into a mature Swiss forest of spruce, pine, larch and beech trees.

 

    His team tracked carbon isotopes from one tree to the roots of other nearby trees, including different species, in an experimental forest plot.

 

    The researchers attributed most of the carbon movement to mycorrhizal fungi but acknowledged they had not proven it.

 

    Dr. Simard, who has been at the University of British Columbia since 2002, has led further studies showing that large, old “mother” trees are hubs of forest networks and can send carbon underground to younger seedlings. She has argued in favor of the view that trees communicate via mycorrhizal networks and against a long-held idea that competition between trees is the dominant force shaping forests. In her TED Talk, she called trees “super-cooperators.”

 

    But as the wood-wide web’s popularity has soared both inside and outside scientific circles, a skeptical reaction has evolved. Last year, Kathryn Flinn, an ecologist at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio, argued in Scientific American that Dr. Simard and others had exaggerated the degree of cooperation among trees in forests. Most experts, Dr. Flinn wrote, believe that groups of organisms whose members sacrifice their own interests on behalf of the community rarely evolve, a result of the powerful force of natural selection among competing individuals.

 

    Instead, she suspects, fungi most likely distribute carbon according to their own interests, not those of trees. “That, to me, seems like the simplest explanation,” she said in an interview.

 

    Even some who once promoted the idea of shared fungal networks are rethinking the hypothesis. Dr. Jones, one of Dr. Simard’s co-authors in 1997, says she regrets that she and her colleagues wrote in the paper that they had evidence for fungal connections between trees. In fact, Dr. Jones says, they did not examine whether fungi mediated the carbon flows.

 

    For their recent literature review, Dr. Karst, Dr. Hoeksema and Dr. Jones rounded up all the studies they could find that made claims about either the structure or the function of such underground fungal networks. The researchers focused on field studies in forests, not lab or greenhouse experiments.

 

    In an August presentation based on the review at the International Mycorrhiza Society conference in Beijing, Dr. Karst argued that much of the evidence used to support the wood-wide web hypothesis could have other explanations. For example, in many papers, scientists assumed that if they found a particular fungus on multiple tree roots or that resources moved between trees the trees must be directly linked. But few studies ruled out alternate possibilities, for instance that resources could travel part of the way through the soil.

 

    Some experimenters, including Dr. Karst and her colleagues, have installed fine meshes and have sometimes added trenches or air gaps between seedlings to disrupt hypothesized fungal networks and then tested whether those changes altered growth. But those tactics also reduce how much soil a seedling can directly gather nutrients or water from, or they alter the mix of fungi growing inside the meshes, making it difficult to isolate the effect of a fungal network, Dr. Karst said.

 

    The researchers also found a growing number of unsupported statements in the scientific literature about fungal networks connecting and helping trees. Frequently, papers such as Dr. Klein’s are cited by others as providing proof of networks in forests, Dr. Karst and colleagues found, with caveats that appeared in the original work left out of the newer studies.

 

    “Scientists,” Dr. Karst concluded in her presentation, “have become vectors for unsubstantiated claims.” Several recent papers, she notes, have called for changes in how forests are managed, based on the wood-wide web concept.

 

    Dr. Karst said, “it’s highly likely” that shared fungal networks do exist in forests. In a 2012 study, Dr. Simard’s team found identical fungal DNA on the roots of nearby Douglas fir trees. The researchers then sampled soil between the trees in thin slices and found the same repeating DNA segments known as “microsatellites” in each slice, confirming that the fungus bridged the gap between the roots. But that study did not examine what resources, if any, were flowing through the network, and few other scientists have mapped fungal networks with such rigor.

 

    Even if intertree fungal networks exist, however, Dr. Karst and her colleagues say common claims about those networks don’t hold up. For example, in many studies, the putative networks appeared to either hinder tree growth or to have no effect. No one has demonstrated that fungi distribute meaningful amounts of resources among trees in ways that increase the fitness of the receiving trees, Dr. Hoeksema said. Yet nearly all discussions of the wood-wide web, scientific or popular, have described it as benefiting trees.

 

    🌳🍄🍄🌳

 

    Others, however, remain convinced that time will vindicate the wood-wide web.

 

    While how ubiquitous shared fungal networks are and how important they are to tree growth remain open questions, Dr. Averill of ETH Zurich said the title of Dr. Karst’s presentation — “The decay of the wood-wide web?” — incorrectly suggests that the very concept is faulty. Instead, he hopes scientists will build on the tantalizing clues gathered so far by looking for networks in more forests. Indeed, members of Dr. Karst’s team have generated what Dr. Averill considers some of the most compelling evidence for the wood-wide web.

 

    “It’s very clear that in some forests in some places, different trees are absolutely connected by fungi,” he said.

 

    Dr. Klein of the Weizmann Institute said his team has placed its speculation about a network on firmer ground by using DNA sequences to map fungi in a 2020 follow-up study of the same Swiss forest and a 2022 lab study using forest soil. (Dr. Karst and her colleagues said that in their view, even those studies did not truly map fungal networks in a forest.)

 

    And while Dr. Klein agrees that scientists still need to improve their understanding of why trees and fungi are moving all that carbon around, he is more optimistic than the Karst team that some of the bolder claims will be born out.

 

    “If you ask me if in the future, we will be showing that trees actually can communicate, I would not be surprised,” he said.”

 

    Dr. Simard agreed that few real-world fungal networks have been mapped using DNA microsatellites because of the difficulty in doing such studies. Kevin Beiler, the graduate student who led the field work for the 2012 study with Dr. Simard, “spent five years of his life mapping out these networks,” Dr. Simard said. “It’s very time consuming.”

 

    In spite of those challenges, she said, studies published on other forests using other methods have convinced her that shared fungal networks are common.

 

    “The field of mycorrhizal networks has been sort of plagued by having to keep going back and redoing these experiments,” Dr. Simard said. “At some point you have to move to the next step.”

 

    Comprehensive field studies of the type Dr. Hoeksema seeks would be a heavy lift for most university scientists working on typical grant timelines, Dr. Simard said. “None of these studies can do everything all at once, especially when you’re working with graduate students,” she said. “You have to piece it together.”

 

    And while Dr. Simard has for years called for forest managers to consider her findings, she said she was not aware of any forest being managed solely on behalf of fungal networks. Neither was Mr. Wohlleben.

 

    The new critique is the latest flare-up in a decades-old debate about the role of fungi in forest ecosystems, said Merlin Sheldrake, an independent mycologist whose book “Entangled Life” was referenced in the “Ted Lasso” episode that alarmed Dr. Hoeksema. Scientists have long struggled to interpret intriguing but fragmentary shreds of evidence from the invisible underground realm.

 

    Since Dr. Karst gave her talk, she, Dr. Hoeksema and Dr. Jones have submitted a paper to a peer-reviewed journal. And lest you worry that a less webby woods could feel a tad drab, the researchers maintain that there’s plenty of intrigue even if it turns out that trees aren’t whispering secrets to each other via subterranean fungal channels.

 

    “The true story is very interesting without this narrative put on it,” Dr. Karst said. The forest “is still a very mysterious and wonderful place.”"

 

Darwin developed his theory based on Malthus's idea that there are too many people in the world and we will soon die of starvation - natural selection will take place. Malthus was wrong. Human ingenuity and ability to cooperate not only saves us from hunger, but also makes our life more and more interesting. Darwin was also wrong. The cooperation of the trees, not the stupid fight of all the trees against all, saves the forests.

 

Since the opponents of the cooperative theory of trees are ideologically driven, their view will disappear only when they all die out. Thank you, Great Natural Selection...