IRAN PROTEST UPDATES

 

Women-Life-Liberty – OpEd

 October 7, 2022  Eurasia Review 

By René Wadlow

The cry “Women-Life-Liberty!” is going up in many different parts of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  It is not possible to know in advance how strong the protests will be and what will be the specific reforms demanded. However the Government is worried. On 3 October, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Guide, justified the repression in a talk to the Military Academy and said that the mainifestations were the work of the U.S.A. and Israel.

The protests began on 13 Sep 2022 at the announcement of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Anini in police custody, having been arrested by the “morality police” for not having the proper dress.  She was an ethnic Kurd.  The protests began in the Kurdish areas but soon spread to all ethnic groups and many parts of the country.  However, the government is worried that support for the demonstrations from Kurds, especially some in Iraq, could grow and lead to multi-ethnic tensions. There have been  Iranian government attacks of Kurdish posts in Iraq.

Women have been a central focus of the social policy of the Islamic government.  Even before coming to power in 1979, Ayatollah Khomenini from his exile in France had said that the overly great liberty of women was a chief obstacle to his policies.  Repressive policies against women with compulsory veiling laws were quickly put into place. However, unlike the Taliban in Afghanistan, women were not barred from higher education.  It is estimated that some 65 percent of university students are women.  Many play important roles within society but must keep a low profile, dress according to the code and be under the control of a man, at least when visible in public.

Now the cry “Women – Life – Liberty” proclaimed by many women and some men indicates the changes in outlook.  Obviously, the government led by the Guide Ali Khamenei and the conservative President Ebrahim Raissi are worried.  The police, the Revolutionary Guards, and other paramilitary forces have been called out.  Some protesters have been killed,  an estimated 100, others wounded.  The number of arrested is unknown.  Journalists have been prevented from reporting, and internet services have been cut or are irregular.  Thus there are few photos of the demonstrations.

There have been waves of protests in Iran before without bringing about major changes in policy. However, some observers believe that there is a new spirit in these protests largely led by youth.   “Women – Life – Liberty” may be the wave of the future and should be watched closely.

René Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Protests in Iran. Photo Credit: The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI)

Iranian schoolgirls come to fore in protests over Mahsa Amini’s death

Agencies Published October 6, 2022  

(L to R) Actors Marion Cotillard, Juliette Binoche and Swedish lawmaker Abir Al-Sahlani cut their hair in solidarity with Iranian protesters.—Reuters

PARIS: Iranian schoolgirls have come to the fore in protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, removing their hijabs and staging sporadic rallies in defiance of a lethal crackdown by the security forces.

Amini, 22, was pronounced dead days after the notorious morality pol­i­ce detained the Iranian Kurd last month for allegedly breaching the Isla­mic republic’s strict dress code for women.

Anger flared at her funeral and spread to become the biggest wave of protests to rock Iran in almost three years, despite the backlash by the security forces that has killed scores and seen hundreds arrested.

Students rallied at the weekend before being confronted by riot police who cornered them in an underground car park of Tehran’s prestigious Sharif University of Technology before hauling them away.

Bare-headed students shout anti-regime slogans, deface images of clerical state’s leaders

Schoolgirls have since taken up the baton around the country, removing their hijabs, shouting anti-regime slogans and defacing images of the clerical state’s leaders.

“Death to the dictator,” a group of bare-headed girls is heard chanting in reference to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as they force a man, reportedly the principal, out of a school in Karaj, west of Tehran, on Monday in a video verified by AFP. Another group of girls sang “Woman, Life, Freedom”, as they marched through the Karaj neighbourhood of Gohardasht.

Schoolgirls were also seen leaving classrooms and appearing in flash-mob protests to avoid detection, in other footage shared online.

One boisterous group of girls were yelling “Get lost, Basiji”, in reference to the paramilitary force, at a man standing at a podium in the southern city of Shiraz, in a video shared by the 1500tasvir social media channel.

AFP has been unable to independently verify the footage.

Singer silenced

In a widening crackdown, Iran has rounded up high profile supporters of the movement and blocked social media access.

On Tuesday night, Iranian pop singer Shervin Hajipour, who was arrested after his song in support of the protests went viral and became an anthem for the movement, was freed on bail.

“I’m here to say I’m okay. But I am sorry that some particular movements based outside of Iran — which I have had no relations with — made some improper political uses of this song,” he told his 1.9 million Instagram followers shortly after his release.

Iran’s judiciary, meanwhile, denied there was any link between the death of teenage girl Nika Shakrami and the protests, after reports she was killed during the unrest. BBC Persian and Iran Wire said authorities had taken possession of her body and secretly buried her on Monday to avoid a funeral that could spark more protests.

Read: Iran and the hijab

At least 92 protesters have been killed in the unrest, according to Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR). Amnesty International has confirmed 53 deaths, while Fars news agency put the death toll at “around 60” last week. At least 12 security personnel have been reported killed.

More than 1,000 have been arrested, but the judiciary said more than 620 protesters had been released from jail in Tehran province alone.

Another 63 people were killed last week when security forces “bloodily suppressed” a protest in Zahedan, near Iran’s southeastern border with Pakistan, said IHR.

The clashes erupted after Friday prayers during protests sparked by accusations a police chief in the region had raped a teenage girl of the Baluch Sunni minority, it said. The crackdown has drawn global condemnation.

On Tuesday, the European Union joined the United States in warning that it was looking to impose tough new sanctions on Iran over the bloody crackdown. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned the EU that it could expect “reciprocal action”.

UK envoy summoned

On Wednesday, Iran summoned British ambassador Simon Shercliff to hear a protest over “meddlesome statements”.

Meanwhile, A Swedish member of the European Parliament lopped off her hair during a speech in the EU assembly in solidarity with anti-government demonstrations in Iran ignited by the death in morality police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.

“Until Iran is free, our fury will be bigger than the oppressors. Until the women of Iran are free we are going to stand with you,” Iraqi-born Abir Al-Sahlani said in the parliament in Strasbourg, France, on Tuesday evening. Then, taking a pair of scissors, she said “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” — Kurdish for “Woman, Life, Freed­om” — as she snipped off her ponytail.

Leading French actresses including Juliette Binoche and Isabelle Huppert have also cut locks of hair in protest over Amini’s death after she was arrested in Tehran on Sept. 13 for “inappropriate attire”.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2022

YOU KNOW IT'S BAD WHEN...

UK’s largest nursing union begin biggest strike ballot in more than 100 years


A stethoscope belonging to Sheeba Philip, 44, a Stroke Nurse Consultant at East Lancashire NHS Trust is seen in the pocket of her uniform as she poses for a portrait ahead of International Women’s Day at The Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital in north west England, Britain, March 3, 2021. (Reuters)

Reuters, London
Published: 06 October ,2022

More than 300,000 members of Britain’s largest nursing union will begin voting on Thursday over a strike to demand a pay rise that keeps up with soaring inflation, the biggest ballot in its 106-year history.

The Royal College of Nursing said it had been forced into the move after years of real-terms wage cuts deterred people from joining the state-funded National Health Service (NHS), leaving huge staffing gaps across the service.

“We are understaffed, undervalued and underpaid,” RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Pat Cullen said. “For years our profession has been pushed to the edge, and now patient safety is paying the price.”

The union said it wanted a pay rise of 5 percent above inflation to overcome real-term pay cuts as’ its members struggle to cope with the soaring cost of living.

The union’s boss said below inflation pay meant workers could neither afford to stay in or join the profession, adding that “patient care was at risk” due to thousands of unfilled nursing jobs across Britain.

A spokesperson for the government’s Department of Health and Social Care said they hoped nurses would consider carefully the impact any strike would have on patients.

“We value the hard work of NHS nurses and are working hard to support them,” the spokesperson said, setting out previous pay rises it had given to the sector.

The NHS, still recovering from the hit to services during the COVID-19 pandemic, is facing its worst ever staffing crisis amid a backlog for care.

The NHS, which has provided healthcare free at the point of use since 1948, has also seen a record rise in the number of people waiting to start routine hospital treatment and increased wait times at accident and emergency departments.

Zimbabwe wins global award on efforts to end violence against women

“It pains us to see young girls being married off at a tender age. Girls should reach the legal age of consent of 18 years and must their freewill to get married,” said Headman Shiku of Runde Rural District.

6.10.2022
by Staff Reporter

 

The headman is one of the many gender champions who have been engaged through the joint UN-EU Spotlight Initiative to eliminate violence against women and girls. Headman Shiku said when welcoming the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Mr Edward Kallon and Government Officials to his homestead.

Champions like headman Shiku from across the spectrum of society in Zimbabwe mobilized through the Spotlight Initiative have made it possible for the Zimbabwe’s Spotlight Initiative Country Programme to win Fortitude Award at the Global Learning Symposium held in September 2022 in Cancún, Mexico. The Fortitude Award recognises unforeseen and unpredictable circumstances that Spotlight Initiative faced, the resolve, determination, and resilience demonstrated to ensure that eliminating violence against women and girls work continued regardless.

The Zimbabwe Spotlight Initiative was implemented at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic whereas the country was already grappling with the aftermath shock of Cyclone Idai and socio-economic issues among other challenges. Innovative approaches such as the online #WithHer campaign, virtual advocacy and community engagement promoting an end to violence against women and girls, brought together champions from, government, diplomatic corps, civil society, business, women movements, media, artists, youth groups, and ordinary citizens.

The Zimbabwe Spotlight Initiative Country programme has recorded significant gains. Of note is the High-Level Political Compact (HLPC) on Gender Based Violence which was signed by the President of Zimbabwe in October 2021. It demonstrates a high-level political commitment to end violence against women and girls as well as harmful practices including child marriages.

Laws and policies that protect women and girls from violence and abuse have also been put in place. The Child Marriage Act was passed whilst the Constitutional Court ruled to raise the legal age of sexual consent from 16 to 18 years in May 2022. This will protect young girls from the brunt of child marriages resulting from harmful religious, social, and cultural practices. To date the Zimbabwe Spotlight Initiative programme has reached over FIVE million beneficiaries exceeding the targeted TWO million.

Zimbabwe received  USD 30 million from European Union as one of 22 countries implementing Euro 500 million global joint UN-EU Spotlight Initiative to end violence against women and girls. The programme has been implemented by UN in collaboration with  Ministry of Women Affairs, Community and SME Development; Civil Society Reference Group; and many other partners across the country. The programme directly and indirectly targets beneficiaries particularly rural women and girls, women and girls living with disabilities, and women living with HIV.

Gender-based violence and harmful practices, such as child marriages, continue to be a huge societal problem. They affect women and girls of different socio-economic, cultural, and religious backgrounds and hinder their ability to have a voice, choice, and control over their own lives.

Poilievre pressured to explain misogynist tag used in his YouTube videos

Alex Boutilier and Abigail Bimman - Yesterday 

The Conservative party will not investigate who was responsible for inserting a hidden misogynistic phrase to promote Pierre Poilievre’s YouTube videos, Global News has learned.

Global News reported Thursday that the phrase – #mgtow, or “Men Going Their Own Way” – was hidden in hundreds of Poilievre’s YouTube videos since early 2018.

Read more:
Pierre Poilievre’s YouTube channel included hidden misogynistic tag to promote videos

The #mgtow tag is shorthand for a movement of men that attempt to cut women completely out of their lives. But anti-hate researchers have noted that it overlaps with other forms of “male supremacy,” including the involuntary celibate or “incel” movement.

The tag helped promote Poilievre’s videos — such as his recent tribute to Queen Elizabeth II, videos from his leadership rallies and his messages on inflation and affordability — but was not visible to viewers.

After being approached by Global, Poilievre’s team scrubbed the tag from the videos and began an internal probe to determine who was responsible. But by Thursday afternoon, they had called off their search.

“(Poilievre) has confirmed with current staff who were working with his office in 2018 that they did not add the tag. When Global News brought it to his attention, Mr. Poilievre had the tag immediately removed and condemns the group in question along with all misogyny,” wrote Anthony Koch, a spokesperson working with Poilievre’s team, in a statement.



poilievre-mgtow-youtube.jpg© Provided by Global News

A screen grab of the source code of a recent YouTube video from Pierre Poilievre, which included the #mgtow tag. The tag was removed after Global News approached the Conservative Party with questions.


“According to YouTube records, the tag in question was added in early 2018 and it has remained there since that time. Because Mr. Poilievre has had many staff upload videos who have passwords over the years, including in 2018, his office is unable to determine who exactly added the tag.”

Poilievre was under pressure to explain how the hidden misogynistic phrase was used to promote his YouTube videos over the last four years, with Liberal politicians – including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – demanding an apology from the Conservative leader.

“The Conservative leader has been purposefully using his videos to appeal to far-right, misogynistic online groups. These are anti-women movements and they have had devastating real-life consequences,” Trudeau said during a testy question period exchange Thursday.

“I call on the Conservative leader to stand in this House, take responsibility and apologize.”

Read more:
This is Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party. What will he do with it?

“I condemn this organization, and I corrected the problem as soon as it became known to me. I condemn all forms of misogyny, including when the prime minister fired the very first female Indigenous attorney general,” Poilievre shot back, in reference to the 2019 SNC-Lavalin scandal and former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Canadian security and intelligence officials have warned that violent misogyny is considered a national security threat and a form of “ideologically motivated violent extremism.”

“Of course, we on this side reject all misogyny and all acts of extremism, and that is how we will always conduct ourselves over here,” Poilievre said when pressed on the issue in the House of Commons on Thursday morning.

In a statement to Global News on Wednesday, Poilievre’s office said that he was unaware of the #mgtow tag in his videos “which were initially set up and automated to accompany each video” since March 2018.

Three senior Conservative sources described Poilievre as very hands-on when it comes to his posts and messages on social media. The sources agreed to discuss Poilievre’s approach on the condition they not be named.

“He’s hands-on with everything. Pierre has always approved every social media post,” said one source.

A fourth source close to Poilievre agreed that the Conservative leader is intensely involved in scripting his social media messages and personally approves most of them. But the source said Poilievre is not involved in the actual mechanics of posting, and was unaware of the tags on the videos.

The first known appearance of the #mgtow tag in Poilievre’s video came when he was a Carleton MP and the party’s finance critic — with only a handful of staff, rather than the Office of the Leader of the Opposition he runs now.

FROM THE RIGHT

Chris Selley: Misogynist hashtag should be a wake-up call to Pierre Poilievre

Opinion by Chris Selley - 

On Thursday afternoon, the Conservative Party of Canada announced it was calling off the search for whoever added the hashtag #mgtow to hundreds of videos on Pierre Poilievre’s YouTube channel beginning in 2018. The hashtag refers to “Men Going Their Own Way,” a group of proudly pitiful males who have decided society is too poisoned by feminism for them ever to find a partner, and therefore think it best they limit their social group to other male failures. That might sound like a win at first blush, but similarly radicalized men — so-called “incels” — have committed some notable atrocities.

The hunt for the culprit was only a few hours old. Global News reported on the hashtags, which are hidden in the coding of YouTube videos and designed to steer viewers toward content they might want to see, on Thursday morning. “(Poilievre) has confirmed with current staff who were working with his office in 2018 that they did not add the tag,” the outlet reported later in the day. Poilievre had ordered the hashtag removed, condemned the men who are going their own way and in the House of Commons on Thursday reminded us that Justin Trudeau dressed up repeatedly in blackface. Apparently that’s supposed to be the end of it.

Unless the culprit was Poilievre himself, trying to leave it there seems like a very bad idea. This episode could well leave a bigger bruise on Poilievre’s pre-election record than all the other attempts thus far to link him with right-wing extremism.

Those attempts usually require some time to explain to the unfamiliar, and asking them to make some assumptions: Poilievre met congenially in Ottawa with Convoy Person X, who is friends with Very Nasty Person Y, who adheres to Very Unpleasant Cause Q or who at the very least knows Person Z who adheres to it. (This is why politicians don’t generally wade out in support of not-very-well-understood protests that have shut down large parts of nations’ capitals. All risk, not much reward: The convoyers are most likely to vote for the People’s Party, if at all.) When Conservatives cry “double standard!” they are often quite right: For example, no one accused Naomi Klein and her NDP friends of undermining Canadian democracy when they trafficked in woolly-headed World Economic Forum-related conspiracy theories.

Stockwell Day says he's worried about how Poilievre will treat socially conservative Leslyn Lewis

Pierre Poilievre plans to scrap the carbon tax, but will he unveil a climate plan?

That is not a good reason to traffic in, wink to or nod at crazy people or ideas — not unless you see politics primarily as a campus-politics game of Gotcha, which Poilievre often seems to.

But this hashtag business is cut and dry. MGTWs, and similar groups of militant male social rejects, are likely unknown to the vast majority of Canadians. But as bizarre and bewildering as their worldview is, it’s not hard to explain. Basically they blame women for all their problems in the same way anti-Semites blame the Jews. Their scarcity is their only saving grace. They aren’t a voting bloc, let alone one worth wooing.

If a political party isn’t willing to try to justify something like this, then it had better look interested in finding out who made it happen and why. It didn’t happen by accident. And Poilievre is, after all, auditioning to be prime minister — auditioning to replace a famously tone-deaf, out-of-touch prime minister whose mouth is just as capable of astonishing feats of stupidity as his government. “It’s just a stupid hashtag,” Conservative partisans insist on social media. OK, so what the hell was it doing there?

Poilievre’s central campaign plank is arguably one of the most important we have seen in recent times. “Young people, who did everything we asked them to do are stuck trapped in their parents’ basements,” he tweeted on Thursday. “Since Trudeau took office, the price of the average house has doubled, as local gatekeepers block new home construction. Remove the gatekeepers. Build more houses now.”

Easier said than done. But there is huge potential for social unrest in not doing it. To pick one remarkable data point among many, courtesy of economist Mike Moffatt: In May of this year the average price of a home in Tillsonburg, Ont. — a town of 19,000 people roughly halfway between Toronto and Windsor, served by neither intercity transit nor a four-lane highway — was greater than that of a condominium in Tokyo.

It’s pure political malpractice on the other parties’ behalf that that issue was just sitting there, waiting to be embraced and meshed perfectly with traditional conservative thinking: Get rid of red tape; build, build, build. If Poilievre could help break down the NIMBY barriers he wants to by withholding federal funding to intransigent provinces and municipalities — a big if, but there are crazier ideas out there in Canadian politics — he could make a huge, lasting and positive mark on Canadian history.

This hashtag debacle should be the last reminder he needs to wipe the smirk off his face, abandon the campus-politics schtick (if he’s capable of it) and get busy selling that vision to the unconverted.

This global steel boss says Australia is not investing enough in coal

Far from phasing out the blast furnaces that use coking coal, Tata Steel will build new ones in India for a decade. But is Australia willing to supply the coal?

Peter Ker

Resources reporter

Huge volumes of coking coal leave Queensland every year bound for the steel mills that Tata Steel runs in India, Thailand, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, but Tata’s managing director Thachat Viswanath Narendran wants to buy much more.

Not content with buying 33 per cent of all Australian coking coal exports last year and being the single biggest destination for Australian coking coal in five of the past six years, India has vowed to double its steel production to 300 million tonnes a year by 2030.

Mr Narendran says Tata will be part of that growth; the company plans to continue building new blast furnace steel mills that consume coking coal in India for at least another ten years.

He expects the new mills built in the decade ahead to run for at least 20 years.

Even if they are entirely powered by renewables, blast furnace steel mills emit large volumes of carbon dioxide because the process requires the carbon in coal to strip away the oxygen in iron ore.

Many miners and steel mills, including Tata, are researching ways for hydrogen or other products to replace coking coal in the steelmaking process and thereby solve the “hard to abate” emissions from the steel sector.

But Narendran told Carbon Challenge those new technologies would not replace blast furnaces for many decades, and Indian demand for Australian coking coal would rise for many years before there was any decline.

Tata Steel chief executive Thachat Viswanath Narendran. Paul Harris

With close to 90 per cent of Indian steel consumed domestically, he doesn’t expect carbon border taxes in places like Europe to make much difference to Indian coal demand.

Narendran came to Australia over the past week to express his concerns that investment in new Australian coking coal mines is not happening as swiftly as India needs


This is an edited transcript of his interview with Carbon Challenge:

What brings you to Australia on this trip?

We buy a lot of coal from Australia, particularly from Queensland so every year we come and do a session with our suppliers, one to one meetings, host a dinner, meet the government officials and basically share what our plans are and hear from our suppliers and the government on what their thoughts are on the future of coking coal in Queensland.

How has your message to Australia changed in recent years?

Three years ago my concern was more about the logistical bottlenecks. At that time we were having a lot of problems on the movement of coal from the mines to the ports here and that was making the supply chain a bit erratic and we were struggling with that. So at that time my pitch was more about the need for us to sort out infrastructure related issues in Queensland.

Today, my message is essentially the same, which is to say that demand for coking coal in India is going to grow, it is going to double in the next 10 years. India is already a bigger importer of coking coal than China.

The concern I have on this visit is a bit more that I don’t see too much investment happening in growing coking coal capacities in Queensland because there is a concern about coal as a whole. I draw the distinction between coking coal and thermal coal. For thermal coal there are maybe issues to think about but coking coal certainly has a future.

The second thing is the [helping the mining] industry see its future as secure enough to make investments. That’s a concern because if India does not see the coking coal supply from Australia increasing over the years then obviously India will have to start looking at other sources which would be a pity because India and Australia have a strong relationship – we signed an FTA [free trade agreement].

Will Tata potentially buy stakes in Australian coal mines to be an exemplar of the coal mine investment you want to see?

Currently we are focused on increasing our steel production in India, spending our capital on growing what we know best which is to make steel and build relationships and partnerships with [coal] suppliers who could invest to grow their businesses. We could have an arrangement where we have [coal] offtake agreements so we give them security of demand. That is the thinking, so we are not looking at investing in coal mines.

Big Japanese steelmakers went the other way historically; they bought minority stakes in Australian coal mines. Some Chinese steel mills did too. In hindsight did they not take the right approach?

The plant operated by Tata Steel in Port Talbot, UK. The Indian operates steel plants all around the world and expects its appetite for coking coal to grow. Chris Ratcliffe

It is slightly different for us because we are very big in mining in India. We do about 35 million tonnes of iron ore mining, for instance. All the iron ore we need we mine ourselves and we have been mining for 100 years. We also do some coal mining. We do about 3 million tonnes of coal mining in India but that only takes care of about 20 per cent of our requirements in India.

So it is not that we are averse to mining, but if we want to double our capacity in the next 10 years in India, that is building 20 million tonnes of steel capacity which calls for a lot of capital. So I would like to prioritise the use of capital in increasing steelmaking capacity in India and increasing iron ore mining in India to cater to the steel requirements than spread it thin over other inputs that we need to buy.

Is Russia the likely alternative if you can’t get enough coal from Australia?

It is. Tata Steel has stopped buying from Russia for the last few months, but many of our peers in India continue to buy from Russia, India is trading with Russia so it is certainly an alternative. But you [in Australia] have better quality coals, a better range of coals and well established supply chains already so there is no reason why we should not leverage what is already there rather than give it up to somebody else.

You drew a distinction between coking coal for steel making and thermal coal for power generation, but coking coal also produces greenhouse gases. How will your plan to grow steel production fit with Tata’s goal to have net zero emissions by 2045?

Steel and cement do have a carbon footprint, but you need steel and cement. Now you need to find alternative ways to make steel and cement by reducing the carbon footprint. We are looking at solutions for that.

In Europe it is about transitioning from coal to gas to hydrogen [as a reductant] or leveraging scrap [steel] more and more to make steel. You have a leaner carbon footprint that way, but that is possible in Europe because the policy framework is in place, there is a carbon border mechanism coming in, customers are willing to pay a premium for green steel, there is a lot of scrap available, the hydrogen infrastructure is being built, so on and so forth.

Unless all of that is in place, other economies cannot just make the transition to a zero carbon future. Look at India for instance; India’s net zero goal is 2070 because India will use a lot of coal for a long time because India doesn’t have gas. India is working on hydrogen but it will take some time. India is working on renewables, but it can never fully substitute the grid. It is OK for many applications but for processing industries you need to find storage solutions ,so there are a lot of complexities in that transition.

The point is, as you make this transition you will continue to need to use coal ... so rather than say all coal is bad, look at the coals that can be substituted for other alternatives and look at the coals that can’t be substituted.

Should Australians expect Tata will not be buying our coking coal beyond 2045 given your net zero target?

The way we see it, even in 2045 we will be running blast furnaces, but we will have fully captured a lot of the carbon dioxide that is being emitted at that time. That is why carbon capture becomes a very important part of the solution. There will be a rising share of production without using coking coal, but there will not be [zero] production with coking coal, that may happen let’s say by 2070 or some time in the future.

The point is coking coal demand is not going to fall off a cliff. Tata Steel has a 2045 ambition, but no other steel producer in India has said net zero by 2045, and we are going to be only 20 per cent of the production in India. So there is a huge market for coking coal out there. It is not as though five or 10 years later there will no demand for coking coal.

How will your Indian steel mills be net zero by 2045?

We believe we will be building blast furnaces [which consume coking coal as a reductant and give off carbon dioxide as a waste] in India for at least another 10 years, by which time we expect gas will be available in eastern India where pretty much all our production is and the iron ore is in eastern India. So any capacity we build after then will likely be gas-based production and eventually when hydrogen is available we will substitute the gas with hydrogen [to serve as the agent that reduces iron ore to iron].

A typical blast furnace life is 20 years and then you do the re-lining, so when we need to do the second re-lining of a blast furnace we will shut it down and substitute it with gas based direct reduced iron.

For the existing blast furnaces we are looking at how can we reduce the carbon footprint so we signed an MOU with BHP for instances to look at what we can do to reduce the carbon footprint of the blast furnaces and we are doing some work with CSIRO here.

There are various other options on carbon capture and storage because we believe those solutions will also need to be scaled up.

We are also setting up electric arc furnace-based facilities and trying to use greener energy as much as possible.

So there are multiple initiatives that will take us to that net zero by 2045. The path is clear to 2025 or 2030 but from 2030 to 2045 is a bit more evolving because a lot depends on how quickly hydrogen is available, the gas is available and the carbon capture storage technology is available.

The Tianqi lithium hydroxide facility in Kwinana, Western Australia. Thachat Viswanath Narendran says Australia’s plunge into so-called green metals such as lithium comes at the expense of continued investment in coking coal production which is also needed to make steel for the electrification of industry.

You mentioned you will continue building new blast furnaces that consume coking coal for quite a few years. If you can see these new methods and technologies are emerging for making steel with a lower carbon footprint, why not go straight to building those types of mills rather than new blast furnaces?

Because today there is no hydrogen available in India, and like your question about why we aren’t investing in [Australian] coal mines, we cannot be making hydrogen ourselves because somebody else is probably better at doing that. So even if you say let’s shift to gas today, there is no gas in eastern India and even more so now there is a [global] gas shortage.

That is why the transition from coking coal to other sources will take time ... you need LNG terminals, you need gas pipelines, you need to have the infrastructure. Unless the ecosystem [is there] you cannot spend a billion dollars setting up a steel plant based on gas if there is no gas or the gas is not guaranteed.

Even for scrap [scrap steel as a lower carbon feedstock for steel mills], there is only so much scrap available in India so you would need to import scrap and today more and more countries are discouraging exports of scrap because they want to use the scrap in-house.

Can gas or hydrogen fully replace coking coal in your blast furnace steel mills?

No. You can substitute some of the coking coal with gas or with hydrogen or biochar, but a blast furnace will dominantly be using coking coal, the biggest component will be coking coal. So if you want to get out of coking coal you need to shift the process.

Are you confident the world can achieve net zero emissions by 2050 if India has a 2070 goal and China has a 2060 goal?

That’s a climate justice issue right? Why should everyone chase 2050, why can’t somebody be 2040 or 2030 and some of the other countries in an earlier stage of development be 2060 and 2070 so that the world is a bit closer to net zero at that point in time?

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The second point the Indian government has made is that when the [2015] Paris accord was signed there was supposed to be $US100 billion a year of funding to help the poorer countries transition. I don’t think that has come either in the last many years. There is a cost and complexity to this transition and who is going to pay the cost?

Ultimately it has to be shared between the governments, industry and the customers. The question is also between the developed and developing world because in India today the focus is on making sure electricity is available to everyone. India has made huge progress on renewables and is one of the biggest producers of renewable energy in the world, but coal will still be used to generate electricity for some time. Incremental capacity will be more renewables, but the existing capacities will still need coal.

So the journey is complex. I think sometimes we underestimate the cost and complexity of this transition, the impact it will have on society at large.

Will a carbon border mechanism in Europe force Indian steel mills and manufacturers to decarbonise sooner and indirectly hurt Australia’s coking coal export industry?

Today India exports about 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the steel it produces, but even that has slowed down because the Indian government has put a tax on exports. So Indian steel producers are more dependent on the domestic market than international markets.

If you look at Japan and Korea they were exporting 30 per cent to 40 per cent of their [steel] production. I don’t think India will ever be at that level. I think around 10 per cent to 15 per cent is around the level at which India will operate in international markets.

On the carbon border adjustment mechanism, we have a [steel making] footprint in Europe, so we are in favour of that because if you make significant investments to transition to cleaner process routes you need to be sure there is some support because otherwise cheaper steel will come from elsewhere which will not be clean.

In India the policy to promote use of green materials is evolving; today the greening of the economy is focused more on renewables targets and things like that but I think possibly soon you will see some sort of carbon trading mechanism in India as well.

 Aug 11, 2022 – 

News and analysis on the obstacles and opportunities in the transition to a net-zero economy.

AMLO NEOLIBERAL FASCISM

‘Strange, intimidating and puzzling’: Tourism experts on Mexican army’s plans to offer leisure services

Aside from how military-trained personnel will run tourism hospitality services, the initiatives beg the question: will tourists even want to avail themselves of such resources?

CODY COPELAND / October 6, 2022

Courthouse News

Mexican army and air force soldiers relax during the inaugural celebrations for the Felipe Ángeles International Airport on Mar. 21, 2022. The airport is one of several megaprojects built, owned and operated by Mexico's military during President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's term.

 (Cody Copeland/Courthouse News)

MEXICO CITY (CN) — When she heard that Mexico's army plans to get in on the country's civilian tourism game, Kathleen Andereck was stumped.

“I don’t quite get why,” Andereck told Courthouse News in a phone interview.

As a professor of community development, sustainability and natural resource management at Arizona State University, she has worked with local, state and federal agencies and organizations and seen a variety of approaches to vacationing. But she had to admit that the military running regular tourism services is out of the ordinary.

“There may be some things like this in Cuba or other more socialist or communist countries, but it definitely is unusual in a place like Mexico, which is essentially a market-driven economy,” she said.

Other specialists in the vacation business were similarly surprised by the idea.

“Interesting. I have never heard of such a thing,” Terry Selk of the Tourism Expert Network said of the initiative.

The only comparable enterprise that Dallen Timothy of Arizona State’s Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation could think of was the Demilitarized Zone along the border between North and South Korea, where South Korean soldiers give the tours. Still, the militarization is the draw there, while Mexico’s military has customary beach and jungle vacations in mind.

During President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s term, the armed forces have been put in charge of several tourism infrastructure projects, including Mexico City’s new airport AIFA, another in the Caribbean coastal town of Tulum, and two lines of the Maya Train tourist railway.

The military also administers the Quinamétzin Paleontological Museum located on the Santa Lucía air base, where the capital’s new airport was built.

But a massive leak of documents hacked from the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) released last week revealed that the army’s plans to get into the tourism game are much more elaborate and diversified than was previously known.

Leaked by a group of hackers known as Guacamaya (Macaw), the internal Sedena documents reveal that Mexico’s army has plans to operate hotels, national parks, more museums and an airline.

Army soldiers walk among civilians at the inauguration of Mexico City's new airport AIFA on Mar. 21, 2022. (Cody Copeland/Courthouse News)

In September, the federal government authorized a company run by the navy to operate ferries and other tourism services at the Islas Marías, an archipelago off the Pacific coast near the state of Nayarit.

Aside from how military-trained personnel will run tourism hospitality services, the initiatives beg the question: will tourists even want to avail themselves of such resources?

“I don’t think you’d find a lot of people in the U.S. — and probably a lot of other countries, either — being especially supportive or positive about the military running tourism businesses,” said Andereck. “If you have the military walking around with guns in their hands, obviously, that’s intimidating.”

The United States is Mexico’s biggest foreign tourism market. U.S. tourists make up around 80% of the air arrivals of foreign nationals, according to Mexico’s Secretariat of Foreign Affairs.

While tourists are accustomed to high levels of security in airports, Andereck said that they may not take too kindly to heavily armed officers in the other businesses the army is venturing into.

“I don’t think it would go over well in most other countries,” she said.

Other potential problems include tourism sector jobs being taken by military personnel, rather than civilians from the communities where the services are provided, “which is a really negative aspect of it,” Andereck added.

The government has said that enterprises like the Islas Marías company will be “of low environmental impact,” but the construction of the Maya Train may put such a claim in doubt. A lawsuit brought by conservationists in April was just one of dozens of legal challenges against the project. That suit held that construction on the train had begun without the legally necessary environmental impact surveys and that the train threatens the Yucatán peninsula’s water supply and biodiversity.

Given the private sector’s environmental track record in tourism, however, the army will likely do no more harm than nonpublic enterprise, Andereck said.

She also questioned whether or not the military has the professional knowledge and skill to operate the companies successfully.

Mexican National Guard soldiers carry long guns among civilians on opening day at Mexico City's new airport AIFA on Mar. 21, 2022. (Cody Copeland/Courthouse News)

It will have to organize vacations on top of its duties to build infrastructure megaprojects, provide aid during natural disasters and participate in public safety operations, among other responsibilities.

“There’s also that whole issue of spreading themselves too thin, not just in terms of numbers of people to do the work, but also in terms of expertise,” she said.

Many in the tourism profession hold 4-year degrees in hospitality, sustainability, resource management or other fields, and there are several specializations within the sector itself.

“An airport is not a hotel, so then the expertise is spread even more thin,” said Andereck. “They just don’t have those levels of expertise in the military.”

But quality of service is not really the point, according to security specialist Alejandro Hope.

"Customer service isn't really the priority," he said. "The companies they're planning on making will be done with the same logic as AIFA and the Maya Train. They're going to suck on the budget, they'll be heavily subsidized, and whether they earn or lose money is irrelevant."

For Hope, what has stood out among the documents released from the Guacamaya hack has been the low level of quality of the projects and activities of the military, and he sees no reason why its venture into tourism should be any different.

"This is an army that has not modernized in decades, that has not been forced by external threats or internal pressures to change the way it thinks and functions, and it's bringing that mindset to a whole range of new activities," he said, adding that the military will likely find private sector partners to help with its tourism operations, "once the private sector realizes that as long as Morena is in power, they can't lose money."

With these highly subsidized, poor quality tourism services, the losers in the game will ultimately be the Mexican taxpayer and the clients that hire the army's services.

"There's all kinds of ways in which this could end up being a mistake," said Andereck.

TOXIC U$A
Groups sue to force a more aggressive cleanup of old Rocketdyne site

A cleanup of the abandoned nuclear power and rocket engine testing site was first promised in 2007. A new plan, activists say, doesn't go far enough.

HILLEL ARON / October 6, 2022

Courthouse News

An aerial view of part of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory

 in the Simi Hills in Southern California. 

(U.S. Department of Energy )

(CN) – Three groups filed a petition in Ventura County Superior Court on Thursday to block a settlement signed this year by the state of California and Boeing that set up protocols for cleaning up soil and water in an area occupied by the now-abandoned Santa Susana Field Laboratory.

Formerly known as Rocketdyne, the 2,850-acre lab sits just outside the city of Los Angeles near Simi Valley. From 1947 to 2006, it was used to test and develop rocket fuel, engines, chemical lasers and small-scale nuclear reactors. Over the years, the land and water around the lab was contaminated in myriad ways. The lab operated 10 low-power nuclear reactors, some of which had various accidents, including a partial meltdown in 1959 and a radioactive fire in 1971. According to the complaint, "Two open-air burn pits were operated at the site in which radioactive and toxic wastes were burned."

Jeff Ruch, the director of Pacific Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), calls the Santa Susana lab "one of the most toxic places in California," and one with a great potential for harm since it sits at a high elevation near the headwaters of the Los Angeles River, meaning that runoff from the site flows into two large watersheds.

Boeing, NASA (which had used the site for some time), the U.S. Department of Energy and California all signed a consent order in 2007 to clean up the lab. But the parties never agreed on how much cleanup should be done — that is, what levels the contaminants should be lowered to. And so the cleanup never got started. When Governor Gavin Newsom announced the new agreement in May, he promised that was about to change.

“Santa Susana Field Lab is one of our nation’s most high-profile and contentious toxic cleanup sites," Newsom said after he signed the cleanup agreement. "For decades, there have been too many disputes and not enough cleanup. Today’s settlement prioritizes human health and the environment and holds Boeing to account for its cleanup.”

But groups suing to block the settlement say the cleanup plan isn't nearly enough. Ruch said the new agreement is a "a substantial weakening" of the old cleanup plan" and that if it goes through, "the site will never be inhabited." It will be open space — safe enough to walk through but not safe enough to live on.

"They would rather it be a recreation area," says Ruch. "That’s well less than a full cleanup. For the residents that live around there, there will be a significant amount of runoff, which is what’s causing illnesses and will affect property values and other things."

The groups say instead of going through the normal process of environmental review that solicits public comments, the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control "engaged in a secret process with Boeing to foreclose DTSC's consideration of alternatives remediation the site to achieve background levels of contaminants and levels protective of agricultural and residential uses."

The lawsuit, Ruch added, won't "necessarily slow down the cleanup. They could begin the cleanup if they were of a mind to. This concerns when the cleanup ends."

In a written statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Toxic Substances Control said, "While DTSC does not comment on pending litigation, we are confident in our legal position on the comprehensive settlement agreement with Boeing."

Along with PEER, Parents Against Santa Susana Field Lab, a group of nearby residents, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, a physician-led group founded in the 1960s to address concerns over nuclear weapons — shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 — joined the petition. They are represented by Michael Lozeau and Amalia Bowley Fuentes of the firm Lozeau Drury in Oakland, California.

Why is Israel allowed to annex occupied land, but Russia isn't?

October 4, 2022 

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) speaks with Israeli 

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett during their meeting, in Sochi,

 Russia on 22 October 2021 

[YEVGENY BIYATOV/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images]


Motasem A Dalloul
abujomaaGaza
October 4, 2022 

Russian President Vladimir Putin formally announced last Friday that his country is to annex four regions in Ukraine. He referred to them as "new regions" of Russia.

"I want to say this to the Kyiv regime and its masters in the West: people living in the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia [regions] are becoming our citizens forever," said Putin. He also called on Ukraine to sit down with him for talks to end the ongoing war.

Responding to Putin's announcement, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the annexation as a "violation" of international law; a "dangerous escalation" in the seven-month war between Russia and Ukraine. "The Charter is clear," explained Guterres. "Any annexation of a State's territory by another State resulting from the threat or use of force is a violation of the Principles of the UN Charter."

In Washington, US President Joe Biden condemned Russia's move as "fraudulent" and a contravention of international law. "Russia is violating international law, trampling on the United Nations Charter, and showing its contempt for peaceful nations everywhere." The United States, he added, will always honour Ukraine's internationally-recognised borders. "We will continue to support Ukraine's efforts to regain control of its territory by strengthening its hand militarily and diplomatically, including through the $1.1 billion in additional security assistance the United States announced this week."

As a result of this measure, Russian officials and their families were subjected to US sanctions.

The EU followed suit: "We firmly reject and unequivocally condemn the illegal annexation by Russia of Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions." By carrying out this measure, the EU member states claimed, Russia is putting global security at risk. They accused Moscow of "wilfully undermining the rules-based international order and blatantly violating the fundamental rights of Ukraine to independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, core principles as enshrined in the UN Charter and international law."

OPINION: Putin's nuclear threat

The Head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, added that, "All territories illegally occupied by Russian invaders are Ukrainian land and will always be part of this sovereign nation [Ukraine]."

I am happy to see the international community united against an oppressive state or action that harms the interests of others, and undermines their sovereignty, security, safety, independence and other fundamental rights. However, it is both sad and hypocritical that the international community condemns such violations by one state but celebrates and protects those carried out by another. Why is Israel allowed to annex occupied land, but Russia isn't?

In 1967, Israel occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip; the Syrian Golan Heights; and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. "In June 1967, immediately upon occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israel annexed some 70,000 dunams of West Bank land to the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem and applied Israeli law there, in breach of international law," Israeli rights group B'Tselem has pointed out.

The only thing that the international community did in response to this occupation and annexation was get the UN to issued several resolutions calling the measures "invalid" and calling for Israel to rescind them. "All legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel," concluded the UN Security Council at the time, "including expropriation of land and properties thereon, which tend to change the legal status of Jerusalem, are invalid." They "cannot change" the status of the city.

No practical measures have ever been taken against Israel to end its occupation and annexation of the Palestinian territories. Such a weak response by the international community encouraged the Israeli parliament to annex occupied East Jerusalem on 29 July 1980 and the occupied Golan Heights in 1981.

The UN Security Council condemned the annexation of the Golan Heights, but again did nothing on the ground to push Israel to rescind the move. Israel's annexation did trigger international responses, but they were only temporary. The real position, I believe, was agreed behind closed doors, and backed the annexation. The US under Donald Trump, of course, infamously gave public recognition to Israel's annexation of Syrian and Palestinian land in 2018, and he duly moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to "Israel's eternal and united capital", Jerusalem.

Even when the then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to annex the occupied West Bank and Jordan Valley, where Israeli laws are already applied to illegal Jewish settlers, the international community simply warned that such a step would trigger a wave of violence, nothing more. No threats of sanctions and suchlike. Nothing.

WATCH: Zelenskyy shocked by Israel's failure to support Ukraine with weapons

The EU, which is Israel's biggest commercial partner, claimed that it would have likely used diplomatic means to "discourage" Israel from carrying out its annexation, but we have never seen anything more concrete and practical to "discourage" the occupation state's daily violations of international law, even though the volume and nature of EU-Israel links give Brussels the leverage to do something more than spout mere words.

Has any country imposed sanctions on Israel, or cut diplomatic relations until it ends its occupation and annexation of Palestinian land? On the contrary, the West continues to give the apartheid state unconditional diplomatic, political, economic and military support. The peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel has even been criminalised in some states.

While Russia apparently gave the Russian-speaking residents of the areas that it has annexed a choice about the move — and in referendums they opted for Russia, it seems — Israel has gone the other way, making every effort to clear the occupied land of the indigenous Palestinian population by demolishing their homes, withdrawing residence permits and, when all else fails, simply killing them. Alone among all UN member states, Israel has never declared where its borders lie, and it is allowed to expand through annexation with impunity.

Ever since its illegal annexation of Jerusalem, Israel "has treated the Palestinian residents of the city as unwanted immigrants and worked systematically to drive them out of the area." However, there are no sanctions imposed against Israel and no millions of dollars and weapons being poured in to help the Palestinian victims free themselves from Israeli colonialism. Is it not paradoxical that the international community is supporting, funding and arming the state which violates international law on a daily basis, while cutting real support for the victims of annexation and colonialism? And that when the victims offer up legitimate resistance to the occupation and colonisation of their land they are described as terrorists by the same people now declaring pompously that Russia has broken international law? The biggest irony is that Israel is also condemning Russia's annexation of Ukrainian territory. You couldn't make this stuff up.

WATCH: Russia vs Israel, Irish MP slams western hypocrisy

I am convinced that Putin was right to say that the West does not have the moral high ground in such matters, and certainly no moral right to speak about democracy. And that Western states are simply acting as the imperialists that they "always have been".

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

 

Wind-Turbine Maker Siemens Gamesa Lays Off 2,900 Workers

Wind turbine operations at the port of Hull, UK (File image courtesy Siemens Gamesa)

PUBLISHED OCT 2, 2022 11:36 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

Siemens Gamesa intends to lay off 2,900 employees after revealing that inflation and supply chain issues are affecting its bottom line. Rising costs for energy, raw materials and transport are cutting into margins, while shortages of components, port congestion and supply delays are impacting production. 

Three days after the world’s largest offshore wind turbine maker called for EU governments and regulators to provide the wind industry with “simple safeguards” to enable it deliver energy security and timely energy transition, the company announced it was cutting jobs across its global operations.

The layoffs will affect 2,900 employees globally. Denmark will take the biggest hit with 800 job losses followed by Spain with 475, Germany 300 and the United Kingdom another 50. The company said that further reductions are planned in other countries across the world, with details for all affected countries being worked out in negotiations with workers’ councils.

The move to cut its global head count by about 10 percent is the next step in the implementation of the company’s new operating model. Under what the firm calls its "Mistral" strategy, it will reorient towards a simplified, leaner structure. 

“It is never easy to make such a decision, but now is the time to take decisive and necessary actions to turn the company around and ensure a sustainable future. We need to build a stronger and more competitive Siemens Gamesa to secure our position as a key player in the green energy transition,” said Jochen Eickholt, Siemens Gamesa CEO.

The company posted a 12 percent decline in revenues to $6.2 billion for the first nine months of the year, and it attributed the reduced performance to volatile market dynamics. Siemens Gamesa is also grappling with internal challenges, including a difficult ramp-up for its 5.X onshore platform and higher costs, driven mainly by component failures and repairs in legacy onshore platforms.

However, the company believes that it is well positioned to unlock renewables’ growth potential. It has a record backlog of $33.2 billion, up four percent, and an order intake of $3.4 billion in the third quarter of fiscal year 2022.

Siemens Gamesa has warned that Europe needs to do more at a policy level to support the wind sector. Unless EU governments treat the wind turbine supply chain as a strategic industry, "the energy transition here in Europe will become unattainable and Europe will lose its position as a global leader in the wind industry," Siemens Gamesa’s CEO Jochen Eickholt cautioned in a statement last week.