Firm accused of selling spyware to Turkey files for insolvency amid investigation
By Turkish Minute
- April 1, 2022

A company accused by German authorities of supplying authoritarian countries such as Turkey, Egypt and Myanmar with trojan software that could be used to eavesdrop on dissidents has shut down operations and filed for insolvency, the Bloomberg news website reported.

FinFisher GmbH sold spyware to law enforcement and intelligence agencies that allows users to access address books, chat messages, photographs and videos on targeted smartphones as well as listen in on telephone conversations.

Human rights groups accused the company of providing the technology to authoritarian governments that used it to target activists and journalists.

In 2020, after a criminal complaint filed by several NGOs, German police carried out raids on 15 properties with links to the Munich-based surveillance software firm over allegations that the firm illegally exported trojan software known as FinSpy to various countries including Turkey.

The software is allegedly used in Turkey to spy on opposition politicians and activists.

In early February the Munich-based FinFisher and two related firms — FinFisher Labs GmbH and raedarius m8 GmbH — filed for insolvency, Bloomberg said, citing the German insolvency administrator JAFFÉ Rechtsanwälte Insolvenzverwalter.

A spokesperson for the public prosecutor’s office in Munich told Bloomberg that insolvency has had an impact on the ongoing probe. An order by the prosecutor’s office to seize FinFisher assets is no longer possible due to the insolvency, the spokesperson was quoted as saying.

German news website Netzpolitik, which was was one of the organizations involved in bringing the criminal complaint against FinFisher, previously reported the news of FinFisher’s insolvency.

Spyware infected Turkish dissidents’ devices through fake website

According to a 2018 report by a group named Access Now, which defends the digital rights of users at risk around the world, a fake website targeted supporters of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) during three weeks of protests in July 2017 organized by the party against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Erdoğan is criticized for establishing one-man rule in the country, where dissent is suppressed and opponents are jailed on politically motivated charges.

The fake website, which was made to look like a platform of the organizers of the protests, was designed to persuade visitors to install a smartphone application. The application was a disguise for the FinSpy software, according to the Access Now report.

To avoid misuse, strict laws govern how surveillance software can be exported in Germany, where such products must be approved for export by the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA), part of the Economy Ministry.

According to an analysis of its source code by Access Now, FinSpy was written in 2016, and Germany’s Economy Ministry has issued no new permits for spyware since 2015. The NGOs, therefore, argue that the software must have been exported without a permit.

According to a 2021 report, Finfisher’s Finspy was being used in 34 countries.

Turkish journalist in US faces arrest warrants over articles, tweets critical of Erdoğan government

By Turkish Minute
- April 2, 2022

An arrest warrant was issued in Turkey for a Turkish journalist who lives in exile in the US over an article he wrote critical of the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the aftermath of major graft probes in 2013 that incriminated senior Turkish officials in an Iran sanctions-busting scheme, Nordic Monitor reported.

Hamit (Abdülhamit) Bilici, a 52-year-old veteran journalist, faces two outstanding arrest warrants issued by Turkish courts and has been the subject of nine criminal investigations by prosecutors for his views critical of the Erdoğan government since 2014.

In an indictment filed for dozens of journalists on April 10, 2017, Istanbul public prosecutor İsmet Bozkurt cited the journalist’s several articles and tweets that apparently bothered the Erdoğan government. He submitted them to the court, claiming they were criminal evidence under the country’s anti-terrorism law.

One of the articles was published on December 21, 2013 in Zaman, at one time Turkey’s most highly circulated daily, as criminal evidence to support multiple charges leveled against the journalist.

In his opinion piece Bilici criticized the government for trying to undermine corruption probes that incriminated then-prime minister and current President Erdoğan, his family members and his business and political associates.

Citing cases from Germany and the US on how senior officials reacted when they were accused of breaking the law, Bilici said Cabinet ministers and senior officials in Turkey should follow the same path, resign and excuse themselves from official duties for the sake of a through and transparent investigation. “Instead of investigating solid allegations, conspiracies about American and Israeli plots were fabricated [by the government]. While all this was being done, ministers accused of serious offenses remained in their positions,” he wrote in an article titled “I’m ashamed.

Weathering the storm: Indonesia’s rain shamans

The ritual conducted by Mbak Rara at the MotoGP in Lombok has drawn international attention to an age-old practice.

Mbak Rara's rituals at the Mandalika Circuit drew worldwide attention 

[Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP]

By Aisyah Llewellyn
Published On 1 Apr 2022

Medan, Indonesia – Damai Santoso, who also uses the name Amaq Daud, lives 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) away from the Mandalika International Street Circuit which hosted the MotoGP Grand Prix earlier this month on the Indonesian island of Lombok.

The MotoGP, the first time Indonesia had hosted the race since 1997, went viral thanks to an unexpected interlude by 39-year-old Rara Istiati Wulandari, who took to the circuit barefoot and armed only with a singing bowl and incense, as a thunderstorm battered the track.

The ritual was one that Santoso knows well, as he and Mbak Rara – as Wulandari is affectionately known in Indonesia – are pawang hujan or rain shamans, tasked with controlling the weather so that it does not ruin anyone’s big day.

“Rain shamans traditionally ‘move’ weather from one place to another,” Santoso told Al Jazeera. “We do that by praying to God and asking him to help move the clouds. If lots of people ask for it at the same time, they will be heard. God is always close and he will deliver.”

Santoso knows the Mandalika circuit and the surrounding area well as he has lived and worked there since he was born. Every time there is a big event in the area like a party, wedding or a grand opening, he is the man that people call.

Originally from the Sasak Indigenous group in Lombok and a devout Muslim, he has been practising as a rain shaman since he was 20 years old. Like almost all shamans, his gift has been handed down over the generations, although not everyone in his family has the ability to control the rain. Santoso, who is now 50, has six brothers and seven sisters but he is the only one in the family in this line of work, and has decided not to pass his knowledge on to his children because it is too “heavy”.

“You have to fast and you can’t go to the toilet when you are working. You have to be as pure and clean as possible before and during a ritual,” he said. “We won’t be heard by God if we are considered dirty.”

Pak Gofur, a rain shaman based in Surabaya in East Java, learned the practice from his grandmother [Courtesy of Pak Gofur]

The fact that Santoso is Muslim sometimes raises eyebrows, and some online commentators were quick to blast Mbak Rara’s appearance at the circuit as one at odds with religious norms in Indonesia.

These included Abu Fatihul Islam of the Islamic Geographic Institute, who described the event as a “state-sanctioned heathen outrage” and a sign of “a moral and intellectual crisis” in the country.

Dicky Senda, a writer and food activist based in Mollo in East Nusa Tenggara, has been working with the local community to catalogue the relationship between residents and how they interact with the natural world and has interviewed rain shamans as part of his research.

“Many people perceive rain shamans as mystical and superstitious, but it depends [on] how you look at it. The majority of people in Indonesia are religious so they see it from a religious perspective. Much of the commentary we saw following the MotoGP event said that this practice was ‘wrong’ according to religion. But we also need to look at it from the perspective of local religions, which existed years before what we can call imported religions.”

Age-old tradition

Indonesia has six “official” religions, including Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism, although animism and Indigenous beliefs long predate the arrival of these religions to the archipelago.

“These rituals have existed for thousands of years, as has the relationship between people and the natural world, but people often use religion as a yardstick to measure traditional practices and say that this is just mysticism or even satanism,” said Senda.

Riders had to compete in hazardous conditions so the rain shaman

 was called to send the rain away 

[Willy Kurniawan/Reuters]

Purnomo, better known as Pak Gofur, a rain shaman based in Surabaya in East Java, learned the practice from his grandmother and told Al Jazeera that he sees no conflict between his religious beliefs as a Muslim and shamanism.

“When we perform a ritual, we burn incense and ask any resident spirits nicely to leave us in peace,” the 67-year-old said. “In Islam, we believe in jinn [genies], which are also created by God. So this is not a belief in the occult which is prohibited in our religion.”

He added that a rain shaman’s motives must be pure in order for a ritual to work.

“Is there a guarantee of success? If God is willing and we pray genuinely in our hearts. If we wonder if we will get an envelope [of money] or not, it won’t work. It is not about the money.”

Pak Gofur is so successful at what he does that he regularly travels all over Indonesia, and was recently asked to work for a timber company in Indonesian Borneo to make sure that it did not rain while they were transporting stocks of heavy logs because of the danger from soggy ground.

“The company made me a special camp in the forest and I prayed there every day for a month,” he said. “Thanks to God, it was a success and did not rain.”

At the MotoGP at the Mandalika Circuit, the rain did indeed stop after Mbak Rara performed her ritual, but it did not silence many of her critics.

In addition to the criticisms of a belief in the occult and idolatry, some Indonesian social media users also expressed embarrassment about the ritual, particularly following video footage of some attendees appearing to laugh at Mbak Rara as she chanted in the rain.

“It’s sad people were laughing at it because it means that people like us who are doing research into local customs, and local communities who are trying to preserve them are seen as not important,” Senda said.

Mbak Rara took to the track barefoot in a torrential downpour to conduct her ceremony. Many Indonesians call on rain shamans to ensure their big events are not spoiled by the weather [Adi Weda/EPA]

Senda also argues that Western knowledge is often used to measure what is considered logical and scientific in Indonesia while local knowledge and traditions are considered unscientific and unresearched.

“The colonial period still has an influence now, including the discrediting of local traditions and beliefs which were thought to be taboo and sinful by the colonisers,” he said.

Indonesia was colonised by the Dutch from the 1800s until independence in 1945, and the Portuguese for more than 300 years before that. The British and Japanese also controlled parts of the archipelago for shorter periods.

“In my research, I have found that local communities often have a very spiritual and close relationship to the Earth that maybe hasn’t yet been scientifically proven but which means that they are very sensitive to their environment and the changing of the seasons and the weather,” said Senda.

“Just because we don’t understand them fully, doesn’t mean that local customs are wrong.”

Why are Indonesians on social media so supportive of Russia?

While Indonesia’s government has condemned the invasion, the mood online is more sympathetic to Russia.

Indonesians are some of the world's most enthusiastic users of social media

 [File: Dita Alangkara/AP Photo]

By Al Jazeera Staff
Published On 19 Mar 2022

Medan, Indonesia – In recent weeks, a story resembling one of Indonesia’s many popular soap operas has been doing the rounds on the country’s social media.

In the tale, a woman and her loyal husband divorced, and he agreed to pay off her debts while giving her custody of their three children. But after a rich neighbour seduced the woman, her ex-husband was so furious that he took one of the children back. The two others, meanwhile, demanded that their father discipline their mother.

But the deeply misogynistic story, with its depictions of domestic violence, is no soap opera.

It is actually pro-Russia messaging, with Russia cast as the wronged man and Ukraine in the role of the ex-wife. The rich neighbour is the United States, and Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, the three children.

The story is thought to have first appeared on the Chinese messaging app Weibo in the days following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but its enthusiastic reception in Indonesia through Whatsapp groups and on other social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, suggests an increasingly pro-Russia stance among Indonesians, which has caught some by surprise.

“Pro-Russian social media has been quick to frame the war to favour Russia,” Alif Satria, a researcher in the Department of Politics and Social Change at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Indonesia, told Al Jazeera.

“Using memes and imagery that are appealing to Indonesians, they portray Russia as a dutiful husband who wants to win back Ukraine, an ungrateful ex-wife who sided with European thugs and has held their children, ethnic Russians, hostage.”

As a result of such imagery, in the three weeks since the war began, something of a split has emerged between Indonesia’s official stance, and social media as well as online commentary that is more sympathetic to Russia, if not outright supportive.

Indonesia voted in favour of a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russian aggression as well as the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights decision establishing an independent commission to investigate alleged human rights violations. President Joko Widodo also called for a ceasefire in an interview with Nikkei Asia on March 9.

Indonesia’s government under President Joko Widodo, seen here meeting Vladimir Putin in 2018, joined the UN resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine

 [File: Sputnik/Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin via Reuters]

According to Yohanes Sulaiman, a lecturer in international relations at Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani in Bandung, part of the issue lies in a dislike of the US harboured by some Indonesians, even though they might previously have come out in protest against Russia’s wars in Chechnya and its attacks on Syria.

Much of the distrust stems from the period after 9/11 and the Indonesian response to the US’s so-called ‘War on Terror’ in the Muslim-majority nation.

“[Pro-Russia Indonesians] do not like and trust the United States. People saw the US attacking Afghanistan and Iraq in the past for reasons that were considered fabricated like the 9/11 conspiracy and the lack of Weapons of Mass Destruction [used as the pretext for war in Iraq].”

“This has had an impact on them questioning the credibility of news sources, in the sense of the US mass media. Many state that they can’t just accept news from the US without reading the other side – but the root of this is their distrust of the US in general,”

Surveys by the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC, have shown more scepticism towards the US in Indonesia than many other countries in the Asia Pacific.

A Pew study released in February 2020 showed just 42 percent of Indonesians with a favourable view of the US, the lowest of the six countries surveyed.

The allure of the macho man

Indonesians also tend to view the situation in Ukraine through the prism of other conflicts.

More than 90 percent of Indonesia’s 270 million people are Muslim, and support for Palestinian rights has traditionally been high. The country has no formal ties with Israel.

“There is a problem of double-standards and whataboutism in which Israel terrorises Palestine, and so why isn’t there a problem with that, but Ukraine is an issue?” said Sulaiman

.

Analysts say some Indonesians view the Russian Invasion of Ukraine through the prism of other conflicts [File: Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana/Reuters]

Still, Satria cautions that online support for Russia in Indonesia remains anecdotal and that there has not yet been “any study or effort to truly grasp and understand how widespread these sentiments are in the Indonesian public.”

Russia is notorious for the activities of its online disinformation campaigns and studies have found the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency worked to manipulate the outcome of the 2016 election in the United States.

The country has also sought to burnish its reputation in the archipelago in recent years, according to Radityo Dharmaputra, a lecturer at the Department of International Relations, Universitas Airlangga, with Moscow making “concerted efforts to portray Russia as a friend and ally of Islam”

Writing in a blog for the University of Melbourne, Dharmaputra notes Russia has established a science and culture centre in Jakarta, set up an Indonesian language version of the Russia Beyond the Headlines website and provided scholarships for Indonesian students as well as funding for centres of Russian Studies at Indonesian universities.

“An absence of credible news outlets with the resources to send their own investigative journalists into the war zone and the apparent lack of Russian and East European specialists in Indonesian academic circles has created (a) vacuum of credible information, informed analysis, and a clear standpoint on the Russian war on Ukraine in Indonesia,” he wrote.

“This has been filled by latent anti-American and anti-western perspectives, the idealisation of strong leaders like Putin, religious arguments suggesting Russia is an ally of Islam, and pervasive pro-Russian public diplomacy and propaganda. Poor digital literacy in Indonesia has meant pro-Russian perspectives have taken hold relatively easily.”

Indonesia is no stranger to strongmen like the Russian president – a man known for his penchant for macho photoshoots.

Late President Soeharto, a former general, ruled Indonesia with an iron fist for more than 30 years until the late 1990s and many Indonesian politicians past and present have had ties to the military or come from politically-elite families.

“The high popularity of a figure like Putin speaks, I think, to Indonesia’s own illiberal and militarist political culture and authoritarian history,” Ian Wilson, a lecturer in politics and security studies at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, told Al Jazeera.

“Authoritarian strongmen have long been perceived favourably, as decisive and steadfast, with aggression and contempt for rights interpreted positively as a sign of resolve. It’s worth remembering that there remains significant sentimentality for the former dictator Soeharto.

“It’s also perhaps no coincidence that popular political figures with militarist pasts and a strongman image, such as Prabowo Subianto [former presidential candidate and now defence minister], have at times been favourably compared to Putin.”

Sulaiman agreed that, for many Indonesians watching from afar, a figure like Putin is more relatable than Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former comedian who won Ukraine’s version of Dancing with the Stars in 2006.

While Zelenskyy has remained in Ukraine and has inspired many with his video updates for the Ukrainian people and stirring speeches to western parliaments, this does not necessarily translate well for an Indonesian audience.

“In Indonesian political culture ‘strongmen’ are characteristically autocratic, demagogic and dismissive of democratic processes,” said Wilson. “Many see this in Putin, but not in a figure such as Zelenskyy who is often characterised in commentary as a ‘puppet’ of external forces, despite his emergence as a genuine leader in a time of crisis.”

“Putin is considered a cool, strong person, and many netizens really like that kind of figure,” Sulaiman agreed

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a concert marking the eighth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, Russia, March 18, 2022 (Sputnik/Ramil Sitdikov/Kremlin via Reuters)

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

‘It matters’: US marks Arab American Heritage Month

Advocates say government recognition of month celebrating Arab Americans can help reduce bigotry.

This 2018 file photos shows Ibrahim Alhasbani, owner of Qahwah House 

in Dearborn, Michigan, measuring coffee beans harvested on his family's

 farm in Yemen [File: Carlos Osorio/AP Photo]

By Ali Harb

Published On 1 Apr 20221 Apr 2022

Washington, DC – The White House, US State Department and other government agencies have released statements celebrating Arab American Heritage Month, an event that advocates hope will quell the bigotry Arab-American communities face.

Arab American Heritage Month was born out of grassroots effort by Arab activists to gain acknowledgement for their communities at the local level. But in recent years, there has been a more concerted push by Arab-American advocacy groups to get federal recognition for the month in April.

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“It used to happen in different municipalities, different cities, school boards that have passed resolutions to recognise it, and then [it] started taking off about a decade ago on a more national level,” said Abed Ayoub, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

The Arab America Foundation, an educational group that promotes Arab culture in the US, says it launched formal efforts in 2017 to get Arab American Heritage Month recognised by state and local officials and celebrated nationally.

“Last year, through our efforts we received proclamations from 37 governors and this year we are shooting for 50,” said Warren David, co-founder of the Arab America Foundation.

In a statement sent to Arab organisations in the US on Friday, President Joe Biden heaped praise on Arab Americans, saying that they make the country stronger and “more diverse and vibrant”.

“We also recognize that too many Arab Americans continue to be harmed by discrimination, bias, and violence,” Biden said. “As president, I have made it a top priority to strengthen the Federal Government’s response to hate crime and to advance a whole-of-government approach to racial justice and equity so that all Americans, including Arab Americans, can meet their full potential.”

The State Department also paid tribute to Arab communities in the US, saying that “immigrants with origins from the Arab world have been arriving to the United States since before our country’s independence and have contributed to our nation’s advancements in science, business, technology, foreign policy, and national security”.

‘Breakthrough moment’

In 2019, Michigan congresswomen Debbie Dingell and Rashida Tlaib – who is of Palestinian descent – introduced a congressional resolution to officially recognise April as Arab American Heritage Month.

But a “breakthrough moment” came last year when State Department spokesman Ned Price honoured the month during a news briefing, said Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington-based think tank.

Dozens of governors and state legislatures also recognised the month over the past few years.

“Happy Arab American Heritage Month! Let’s come together to honor and celebrate our Arab American friends here in Michigan and across the nation,” Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, home to one of the largest Arab populations in the US, tweeted on Friday.

Municipalities, school boards, universities and local officials across the country also released statements and social media posts in recognition of Arab Americans.

Berry said these statements from mainstream institutions are important given the biases and institutional discrimination that Arab Americans face. “People need to understand that the biases and stereotypes they hold against this community are deeply flawed and hurtful. And they have a real negative impact on people,” Berry told Al Jazeera.

A 2017 AAI poll found that 23 percent of respondents, including 36 percent of Republicans, hold unfavourable views of Arab Americans.

Ayoub, of ADC, echoed Berry’s remarks on why the government statements celebrating Arab Americans matter. “It matters. Representation always matters,” he told Al Jazeera. “It shows that the government acknowledges who we are, and it takes a moment to acknowledge our contributions to this country to its history. And it’s a celebration of our culture and heritage.”

Fighting for representation

Advocates say Arab Americans – who number approximately 3.7 million in the US, according to the AAI – have faced government discrimination, including racial profiling, surveillance and restrictive immigration policies for decades.

The US Census Bureau still considers Arab Americans to be white, making data about their communities, including in demographics and public health, difficult to find – an issue that was underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A years-long effort to add a Middle East and North Africa (MENA) category to the 2020 Census form did not materialise. Both Berry and Ayoub said having a MENA category on the census is a priority for Arab Americans.

“We continue to be a community that’s rendered highly visible and invisible at the same time,” Berry said, adding that while Arab Americans are viewed through a national security lens that leads to violations of their civil rights, they are not seen as their own group on the Census.

Yet Berry added that despite these policy challenges, it is heartening to see fellow Americans celebrate Arab American Heritage Month.

“It’s about the fact that this will trickle down to that fifth-grader who has his fellow students celebrating with him. The fact that the kids can now see themselves being honoured makes me just so happy,” she told Al Jazeera.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

#POLITICALPRISONER

Brittney Griner’s teammates break silence amid Russia detention

USA Basketball teammates express support for Griner after weeks in detention, say, ‘It could have been any of us’.

Two-time Olympic gold medallist Brittney Griner has been detained in Russia since mid-February on drug charges

 [File: Brian Snyder/Reuters]

Published On 1 Apr 2022

Brittney Griner’s teammates have broken their silence amid the US basketball player’s continued detention in Russia, saying they are hopeful that everything is being done to get her home safely.

Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medallist and All-Star centre in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), has been detained in Russia since mid-February on charges of carrying vape cartridges that contained cannabis oil in her luggage.

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Her detention comes at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Russia over the continuing war in Ukraine, and US officials have kept a low profile publicly amid concerns Griner could be used as a pawn in the dispute.

The WNBA also has said little publicly about Griner’s detention, though the league said in a statement on March 23 that it was continuing to work with government officials and others to get Griner home.

“We’re not talking about BG the basketball player, we’re talking about BG the wife, the daughter, the sister, the human being,” A’ja Wilson, the 2020 WNBA most valuable player and Griner’s teammate on the US national team, said on Friday at USA Basketball training camp.

Griner is a two-time Olympic gold medallist and WNBA All-Star 

[Mark Ralston/Pool via Reuters]

“That’s what I’m caring about. I get the silence and you don’t want to talk about it. I can’t even imagine to put myself in that situation. It’s tough,” Wilson said. “Hopefully, everyone’s doing what they need to do to make sure she gets home safe.”

Last month, US Department of State spokesman Ned Price said an American diplomat in Moscow was granted consular access to Griner and found her to be in “good condition“. Price added, “We will continue to do everything we can to see to it that she is treated fairly throughout this ordeal.”

But a Moscow court in mid-March extended Griner’s detention until May 19, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported – and concerns have persisted about the WNBA star’s fate.

An official with a Russian agency that monitors prison conditions said last month that the only problem the six-foot, nine-inches (206cm) Griner faces in detention is her height. “The beds in the cell are clearly intended for a person of lesser height,” Ekaterina Kalugina of the Public Monitoring Commission told TASS.

Griner, who plays for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, was in Russia to play club basketball before the US season resumed, a common practice for players, who can earn much higher salaries in foreign leagues than on domestic teams.
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The 31-year-old played in Russia for the last seven years in the winter, earning more than $1m per season — more than quadruple her WNBA salary.

Breanna Stewart of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm says women basketball players need to be valued more in the US [Eric Gay/AP Photo]

USA Basketball and Seattle Storm WNBA player Breanna Stewart, who also earns more than $1m to play in Russia, seized on this deeper problem in comments about Griner’s detention earlier this week.

“The big thing is the fact that we have to go over there. It was BG, but it could have been anybody,” Stewart said from the US training camp in Minneapolis. “WNBA players need to be valued in their country and they won’t have to play overseas.”

That was echoed by Angel McCoughtry, another two-time Olympic gold medallist who plays for the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx. “People are saying she’s 6-foot-9, she’s different. It’s really not about that,” McCoughtry said on Wednesday. “It could have been any of us.”

Meanwhile, USA Basketball coach Cheryl Reeve said on Friday that the US national team and the WNBA are “not going to forget about Brittney Griner”.

“Brittney’s not here, we’re going to do the things she would have done. She’s very philanthropic. Try to honour her in that way until the highest level of government can work this out,” Reeve said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

Imprisoned Griner gets support from USA Basketball teammates

By DOUG FEINBERG

1 of 9

USA National Basketball Team's A'ja Wilson, center, teammate to Brittney Griner who is imprisoned in Russia, and teammates take part in a spring training practice session, Friday, April 1, 2022, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A’ja Wilson wishes that she and her USA Basketball teammates could do more to help Brittney Griner right now.

They’ve all been straddling the line of trying not to say anything that could potentially hurt the WNBA star’s case as she’s still imprisoned in Russia on drug allegations, but also wanting Griner and her family to know that they care about her.

“We’re not not talking BG the basketball player, we’re talking about BG the wife, the daughter, the sister the human being,” Wilson, the 2020 WNBA MVP, said Friday at USA Basketball training camp.

“That’s what I’m caring about. I get the silence and you don’t want to talk about it. I can’t even imagine to put myself in that situation. It’s tough,” she said.

Griner, one of many stars who play in Russia during the WNBA offseason, was detained after arriving at a Moscow airport in mid-February. Russian authorities said a search of her luggage revealed vape cartridges that allegedly contained oil derived from cannabis, which could carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

The 6-foot-9 Phoenix Mercury center was returning to the country after the Russian League took a break for the FIBA World Cup qualifying tournament. The two-time Olympic gold medalist recently had her detention extended to the middle of May.

“Hopefully everyone’s doing what they need to do to make sure she get’s home safe,” Wilson said. “That’s going to be the top priority of all of us. I know it’s tough and hard.”

Players have been keeping discussions about how to best help Griner within their community. WNBA players have been very cohesive in the past when rallying behind issues such as voter registration or the Black Lives Matters movement.

For the first few weeks following Griner’s detention, it was decided that it was clearly better for them to say less. That’s changed over the last few days as players have been more available and willing to talk.

“I can guarantee you this, this group here and women of the WNBA , we’re not going to forget about Brittney Griner,” USA Basketball coach Cheryl Reeve said. “Brittney’s not here, we’re going to do the things she would have done. She’s very philanthropic. Try to honor her in that way until the highest level of government can work this out.”

Breanna Stewart has stepped up to help The Phoenix Rescue Mission, a charity that Griner has been involved with for a long time.

“While BG is away I wanted to support her and her charitable efforts and do what I can from an off-the-court standpoint to help her and her family,” Stewart said.

Griner’s legal team has been quietly seeking her release and has declined to speak out about the case since her arrest was made public.

Of the thousands of U.S. citizens arrested and jailed in prisons abroad, a small subset are designated by the U.S. government as wrongfully detained — a category that affords their cases an extra level of government attention and places them under the auspices of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the State Department. The U.S. government has not yet put Griner’s case in that category.

Griner is not the only American detained in Russia. Marine veteran Trevor Reed was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2020 on charges alleging that he assaulted police officers in Moscow. And Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence on espionage charges that his family and the U.S. government have said are false. U.S. officials have publicly called for Moscow to release them.

Johnson to ‘bet big’ on nuclear energy despite Sunak’s reservations

Delayed strategy expected to focus less on onshore wind turbines in England amid Conservative backlash

The prime minister is said to be determined to press on with plans to build nuclear power stations, despite the chancellor’s concerns over cost. Photograph: Reuters

Rowena Mason

THE GUARDIAN

Deputy political editor
Sat 2 Apr 2022

Boris Johnson wants his promised energy security strategy to “bet big” on nuclear despite Rishi Sunak’s reservations – but he has cooled on more onshore wind turbines in England amid a Conservative backlash.

The prime minister is determined to press ahead with plans to build up to eight new nuclear power stations even though the chancellor has concerns about the cost, projected to reach more than £13bn.

It is understood the energy strategy, expected to be announced next week, is likely to contain targets for nuclear but will not put a figure on the cost.

Johnson will also commit to a “stretching” target on offshore wind, according to a Whitehall source. But he is now said to be less enthusiastic about the possibilities of onshore wind in England, believing Scotland offers a better landscape for new turbines.

One ally of the prime minister said he would “not really [be] pushing for onshore wind in England” although it would “be in the strategy as an option where people want it, which realistically means in Scotland”.

Johnson and Sunak are understood to have discussed the new strategy this week, which was commissioned to ensure security of supply amid soaring gas prices fuelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The document was delayed owing to a row over the scale of its ambitions on nuclear, but is now likely to be published at the end of next week.

Sunak will be in London for the launch of the strategy. However, he is reported to be going on holiday in California, where he has a second home, at some point over parliamentary recess, despite rising pressure over the lack of measures to help with the cost of living and energy bills in the spring statement.


Johnson’s energy strategy held up over nuclear funding row with Sunak

The Treasury is understood to have concerns about expanding nuclear power in the UK, with the cost of new plants due to be loaded on to people’s energy bills under the fresh funding system. The government would also be likely to take minority stakes in new projects, and has set aside an estimated £1.7bn on getting one plant, Sizewell C, in a position to go ahead.

But with a renewed focus on weaning the UK off gas, Johnson is insistent on the need to press ahead with new plants, with a draft target of around 16GW of nuclear power in the medium term and closer to 30GW in the longer term. According to the government’s own impact assessment, it takes on average 13 to 17 years from initial investment to electricity being generated by a new nuclear plant.

On onshore wind, allies of No 10 had described Johnson as “open-minded”, but “passionate about offshore”. He appears to have cooled on the prospect of more onshore wind, as well as the potential for fracking in England, because Tory MPs are resisting developments in their constituencies.

The idea of giving communities discounts on their energy bills if they accept onshore developments in their areas has been mooted, meaning the prospect of new developments is “not impossible”, but still difficult, sources said.

However, Johnson has been giving out mixed messages on onshore wind after telling a group of industry leaders this week that he was “horrified” how long the planning process takes. He was told that a wind turbine can be put up in a day, but planning permission can take a decade.

Officials expect No 10 will approve an energy bill to set targets and strategy for energy security, to be announced in the Queen’s speech in May.

The UK has struggled to build new nuclear power stations in recent decades, with the Japanese conglomerate Hitachi in 2020 pulling out of plans to build a new reactor at Wylfa, north Wales, and a move against allowing Chinese investment in Sizewell C on the Suffolk coast.

Can nuclear power solve the energy crisis? 

It depends who you ask

The path to net zero is unclear



The Conversation

What’s holding up the UK government’s strategy for securing the country’s energy supply in light of the Russia-Ukraine war and soaring market prices of oil and gas? According to The Guardian, a split between the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, over proposals for new nuclear reactors.

Johnson has told industry figures that he wants nuclear power to meet 25% of the UK’s energy demand by 2050, up from 16% today. That would mean roughly 30 gigawatts (GW) from a source that is currently set to shrink to 3.6GW by 2030, as all but one of the UK’s eight plants are due to be decommissioned by the end of the decade.

Sunak is reported to be unhappy with the £13 billion price tag attached to eight new nuclear reactors. But Open University’s professor of energy William Nuttall argues new reactors are worth the upfront cost for the part they can play on an all-renewable grid:

Large nuclear power stations have huge turbine generators spinning at high speed. These hold their speed in the face of small national fluctuations [in energy supply], providing stability to the grid. A constant base supply of nuclear power could continue to meet demand when renewable generation falters because the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

Nuclear power generation can be dialed up to cover gaps in supply from renewable sources, a job that coal and gas generators are often called upon to do now. Another low-carbon way to do this is to build batteries big enough to store the electricity generated by green sources.

More bang for your buck with batteries?

While the falling costs of solar and wind energy continue to exceed expectations, nuclear construction projects remain expensive behemoths with “a history of cost overruns … around the world” argue MV Ramana and Xiao Wei, experts in security and energy supply at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

We’re researchers who have examined the economics of electricity generation in Ontario, and we’ve demonstrated that as the costs of batteries decline, the cost of supplying electricity using a combination of renewables and battery storage would be cheaper than using nuclear power.

Bill Lee and Michael Rushton, lecturers in nuclear energy at Bangor University, are unconvinced. They argue that battery technology simply isn’t advanced enough to do what reactors are already capable of doing within the vanishing window of opportunity to avert catastrophic global warming.

Even today’s largest battery stores can only provide back-up electricity for a few hours, which is not always enough to cover extended periods of low wind or shorter daylight hours during winter. Battery technology is improving all the time, but it may not do so fast enough to meet rising electricity demand.

Rolling out lots of electric vehicles could squeeze the supply of batteries even further, potentially even increasing their cost.

Scientists are still working out the kinks in grid-scale batteries. 

EPA/Jens Buettnert

They argue that balancing supply represents just a fraction of nuclear power’s potential contribution to decarbonization. The government has also nudged the industry regulator to begin the approval process for Rolls-Royce SMR’s small modular reactor design.

The company announced in 2020 that it hoped to bring 16 of these reactors — which are much smaller, cheaper to build, and typically generate one-third of the energy of a traditional nuclear power plant — online by 2025.

“Because they burn the fuel more efficiently, this new generation of reactors also produces much less nuclear waste,” say Lee and Rushton. They believe that:

Future nuclear reactors will not just be big kettles making steam to drive turbines that generate electricity. The heat produced during the nuclear reaction can be diverted to power processes that are currently difficult to decarbonise.

Take heating in buildings, for example. Heat cooler than 400°C can be extracted after the turbine, and pumped into district heating systems, replacing fossil fuels like natural gas. This is a process that is already carried out daily from municipal waste incinerators across Europe.

And that’s not all, they say.

High-temperature heat (between 400 and 900°C) could be diverted from nearer the reactor, before it reaches the turbine in a nuclear plant. It could be used to power processes that produce low-carbon hydrogen fuel, ammonia and synthetic fuels for ships and jets. This heat could also supply industries such as steel, cement, glass, and chemical manufacturing, which often otherwise use burners powered by fossil fuels.
Future threats and opportunities

Not everyone is convinced that nuclear power is a reliable tool in the effort to slow global warming and shore up energy supplies though. Paul Dorfman is an honorary senior research associate at UCL’s Energy Institute. He argues that “nuclear energy is, quite literally, “on the frontline of climate change – and not in a good way”.

“Nuclear power is often credited with offering energy security in an increasingly turbulent world, but climate change will rewrite these old certainties,” Dorfman says.

“Nuclear power plants must draw from large sources of water to cool their reactors, hence why they’re often built near the sea,” Dorfman highlights. “Two in five nuclear plants operate on the coast and at least 100 have been built just a few meters above sea level.

In a world made increasingly turbulent by climate change, that’s a problem, Dorfman argues.

“A recent US Army War College report also states that nuclear power facilities are at high risk of temporary or permanent closure due to climate threats – with 60% of US nuclear capacity at risk from future sea-level rise, severe storms, and cooling water shortages.”

Could nuclear fusion save us? It wasn’t so long ago that Boris Johnson’s Conservatives were bullish about the prospect of a reactor being able to harness the power within stars by 2040. Thomas Nicholas, a Ph.D. candidate in plasma science and fusion energy at the University of York, set the record straight in 2019:

“Unlike current nuclear power plants — which split atoms in a process called fission — nuclear fusion binds atomic nuclei together. This releases much more energy than fission and produces no high-level nuclear waste.”

Because of the embryonic status of fusion research (what many hailed as a recent breakthrough still puts the world on track for possible demonstration fusion power plants by the 2050s), Nicholas argues that:

The likely role for fusion would be as an energy source in a post-carbon society … Climate policy should prioritise deploying proven technologies immediately, without relying on speculative solutions. Stopping climate change is too important to leave to the last minute.

This article by Jack Marley Environment + Energy Editor, UK edition, is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Time to decamp from cold-war ideas

Sections of the left which still think of the world in blocs, Sheri Berman writes, are guilty of blocked thinking.

SHERI BERMAN

28th March 2022

Playing for peace: a concert by the Ukraine National Opera near Lviv 

on Saturday (Ruslan Lytvyn / shutterstock.com)

The Russian invasion of Ukraine presents the greatest threat to peace in Europe since the end of the cold war and the wars in former Yugoslavia. Maintaining peace throughout the globe is one of the left’s primary goals, so its responses to this crisis are critical. Unfortunately, parts of the left remain mired in a pathology which weakened it morally and politically during the cold war—‘campism’.

Campism views the world as divided into two hostile camps: an aggressive, imperialist one led by the United States and an anti-imperialist one composed of America’s ‘opponents’. During the cold war, this Manichean worldview led parts of the left to rationalise or ignore crimes committed by the Soviet Union, China and other adversaries of the US.

Although the cold war ended, parts of the left remain mired in this worldview, allowing its responses to world events to be driven by what it opposes (the US), rather than what it stands for—progressive principles. This has led parts of the left to blame the US for the invasion of Ukraine, it having purportedly threatened Russia via the ‘expansionist drive’ of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Empirical problems

There are obvious empirical problems with this position. Leave aside that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has trampled on numerous international agreements impinging on Ukraine’s sovereignty over recent years. The timeline of the intervention, as indeed those in the other former Soviet republics of Chechnya and Georgia, does not correlate with actual prospects for NATO membership.

For the first decade or so of the 21st century, Ukraine wavered in its leanings between Russia and the west. Even after Russia intervened in Ukraine’s 2004 election and invaded Georgia in 2008, public support for accession to NATO remained low. What changed this was direct Russian aggression.

In 2013 the ‘Euromaidan’ protests erupted in Kyiv’s huge central Independence Square (maidán means square in Ukrainian). The Russian-oriented president, Viktor Yanukovych, had refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union, already agreed by the parliament, and was attempting instead to tie Ukraine to the Russian-led Eurasian economic union.

After months of protests and deadly clashes between unarmed protesters and the police, Yanukovych fled and was replaced by a new government. Putin refused to accept this outcome—as a dictator he was of course threatened by having a country to which his own people felt a sense of kinship turn towards Europe and overthrow a leader who had ignored the will of, and used violence against, his people.

Putin proceeded to invade Ukraine, annexing Crimea and supporting separatists in the eastern Donbas region. (He has also supported pro-Russian dictatorships in Belarus, Kazakhstan and other parts of the former Soviet empire, without even the fig-leaf of potential NATO membership as a pretence.) Before Putin’s invasion NATO membership wasn’t on the political agenda in Ukraine—perhaps unsurprisingly, after 2014 it was.

Bizarre and counterproductive

Putting to one side the question of how much NATO membership actually mattered to Putin, blaming the invasion on Ukraine’s desire to join the alliance is bizarre and counterproductive, since it rests on a principle the left normally vehemently opposes. That is that big, powerful countries, such as Russia, are entitled to ‘spheres of influence’, while smaller, less powerful countries, such as Ukraine, are not entitled to determine their own political alliances and fates—they should accept that they are essentially ‘second-class citizens in the community of states’. (This is, as some note, an ‘anti-imperialism of fools’.)

Campism has also led parts of the left not merely to align themselves with, but cite approvingly, figures fundamentally opposed to progressive principles. For example, campists have consistently referred to the arguments of international-relations ‘realists’ such as John Mearsheimer and Henry Kissinger, who, unlike their current left-wing fans, at least have the virtue of being clear and consistent in justifying great-power predation, regardless of its source. They believe, as Thucydides famously put it, that ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’. Other campists have praised right-wing dictator-sympathisers such as Tucker Carlson of Fox News for his ‘entirely sensible position on Ukraine’.

This stance has also led parts of the left to engage in the type of ‘westplaining’ it normally abhors. As two scholars from the region have complained, ‘it’s galling to watch the unending stream of Western [intellectuals] and pundits condescend to explain the situation in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, often in ways that either ignore voices from the region, treating it as an object rather than a subject of history, or claiming to perfectly understand Russian logic and motives’. Parts of the left simply assume, without any further investigation, that NATO ‘expansion’ was driven by the aggressive, imperialist desires of the US and western Europe, rather than by the wishes of east Europeans themselves.

Another commentator from the region more colourfully bemoaned those who ‘know fuck-all about Eastern Europe’ but whose ‘Orientalism’ leads them to claim to understand the interests of its peoples better than they do:

We see NATO in a completely different, and I dare say much more nuanced way. When you say ‘Fuck NATO’ or ‘End NATO expansion’, what I hear is that you do not care about the safety and wellbeing of my Eastern European friends, family and comrades …

What is this NATO alternative you are advocating for? Have you considered asking us what we think of it? Or did you just decide, as you did many times in your history, and to many other countries you felt superior towards, that it will be you, and your leaders, who will be setting the cards on the table, and we just need to submit? Did you already take out your ruler to make straight lines on the map, except that this time it will be the map of the place where I grew up?

Weak and hypocritical

During the cold war, disgust with American foreign policy led parts of the left to adopt a campist world view, which went beyond justified criticism of the US to unjustified rationalisations of the often-even-worse crimes of its opponents. Despite the end of the cold war and the advent of the very different multipolar world we now inhabit, the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes clear that this tendency continues to infect parts of the left, leading it to make intellectually weak and hypocritical arguments and justify the actions of an aggressive dictator.

In so doing, campists allow the left’s opponents to point out the weaknesses, hypocrisies and obvious anti-American sentiments lying beneath their arguments. This enables them therefore to avoid dealing with the absolutely critical claims which the left should with all its energy be promoting: peace, democracy, human rights and justice.

This is a joint publication by Social Europe and IPS-Journal



SHERI BERMAN is a professor of political science at Barnard College and author of Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day (Oxford University Press).

MSF Suspending Some Operations in Haiti Due to Gang Violence

April 02, 2022 
Agence France-Presse

A woman guides a child past a demonstration against increasing violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, March 29, 2022.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI —

The French charity Doctors without Borders (MSF) announced Friday that it is temporarily suspending operations in an impoverished suburb of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, due to rising gang violence.

The security situation in Haiti has been deteriorating for months, with gangs exerting influence far beyond the poor neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince.

The Caribbean nation is also facing an increase in kidnappings: between five and 10 people are abducted every day in Haiti, according to Haitian human rights organizations.

"We condemn all forms of obstruction and violence against medical services, our patients and staff members," said Thierry Goffeau, MSF's director for Haiti, in a statement announcing the temporary closure of a hospital in the Cite-Soleil neighborhood.

The hospital will remain closed "as long as security conditions are not guaranteed," the statement said.

The Cite-Soleil hospital opened more than a decade ago, and provides emergency care, although its service for serious burns had already been transferred to another hospital in the capital due to a previous wave of violence.

Last August, MSF was forced to permanently close a hospital it had been operating for 15 years in the Martissant neighborhood, one of the most disadvantaged in Port-au-Prince, after police fled their local station and a wave of gang violence and looting forced thousands to flee their homes.