For Lula’s Victory to Matter: A Proposal for a Unified Palestinian Foreign Policy  

by Ramzy Baroud / November 15th, 2022

Palestinians and their supporters are justified in celebrating the election victory of the leftist presidential candidate, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, in Brazil’s runoff elections on October 30. But Lula’s victory is incomplete and could ultimately prove ineffectual if not followed by a concrete and centralized Palestinian strategy.

Lula has proven, throughout the years, to be a genuine friend of Palestine and Arab countries.

For example, in 2010, as a president, he spoke of his dream of seeing “an independent and free Palestine” during a visit to the occupied West Bank. He also refused to visit  the grave of Theodor Herzl, the father of Israel’s Zionist ideology. Instead, he visited Yasser Arafat’s tomb in Ramallah.

Later that year, Lula’s government recognized Palestine as an independent state within the 1967 borders.

Lula’s rival, soon-to-be former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is an ideologue who has repeatedly professed his love for Israel, and had pledged in November 2018 to follow the US government’s lead in relocating his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Unlike other pro-Israel world leaders, Bolsonaro’s affection is ideological and unconditional. In a 2018 interview with the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, he said: “Israel is a sovereign state … If you decide what your capital is, we will follow you. You decide on the capital of Israel, not other people”.

In a final and desperate move to win the support of Brazil’s Evangelical Christians, Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, donned a t-shirt carrying the Israeli flag. That gesture alone speaks volumes about Bolsonaro’s skewed agenda, which is symptomatic of many of Israel’s supporters around the world.

Lula’s victory and Bolsonaro’s defeat are, themselves, a testament to a changing world, where loyalty to Israel is no longer a guarantor of electoral victory. This has proven true in the case of Donald Trump in the US, Liz Truss in the UK, Scott Morrison in Australia and, now, Brazil.

The Israelis, too, seem to have accepted such a new, albeit unpleasant, reality.

Interviewed by The Times of Israel, Brazilian scholar James Green explained that it behooves Israel to revise its view of Lula. Green said that the newly-elected president should not be seen “as a radical, because he’s not, and in this campaign, he needed to show his moderation on all levels”.

The willingness to engage with Lula, though begrudgingly, was also expressed by Claudio Lottenberg, president of the Brazilian Israelite Confederation, the country’s largest pro-Israel Jewish organization who, on October 31, issued a note, expressing the group’s “permanent readiness for constructive and democratic dialogue” with Lula.

Brazil’s political transformation is sure to benefit the Palestinians, even though Lula’s ideologically diverse coalition makes it more difficult for him to explore the same radical political spaces in which he ventured during his previous presidency between 2003 and 2011.

It is also worth noting that Bolsonaro was a relatively important player in the global conservative, far-right political camp that attempted to legitimize the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Following the recent reversal by the Australian government of a 2018 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Bolsonaro’s defeat is another nail in the coffin in Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’.

True, geopolitical changes are critical to the future of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle, but without a responsible Palestinian leadership that can navigate opportunities and face up and confront growing challenges, Lula’s victory can, at best, be seen as a symbolic one.

Palestinians are aware of the massive changes underway regionally and globally. That has been demonstrated through the repeated visits by Palestinian political groups to Moscow, and the meeting between Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas with Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 13, in Kazakhstan. The latter meeting has raised the ire of Washington, which is incapable of lashing out in any meaningful way so that it may not push the Palestinians entirely into the Russian camp.

Palestine is also becoming, once again, regionally relevant, if not central to Arab affairs, as indicated in the Arab League Summit in Algeria, November 1-2.

However, for all these dynamic changes to be translated into tangible political achievements, Palestinians cannot proceed as fragmented entities.

There are three major political trends that define Palestinian political action globally:

First, the Palestinian Authority, which has political legitimacy as the legal representative of the Palestinian people, but no actual legitimacy among Palestinians, nor a forward-thinking strategy.

Second, Palestinian political groups which are ideologically diverse and, arguably, more popular among Palestinians, but lack international recognition.

And, finally, the Palestinian-led international solidarity campaign, which has gained much ground as the voice of Palestinian civil society worldwide. While the latter has moral legitimacy, it is not legally representative of Palestinians. Additionally, without a unified political strategy, civil society achievements cannot be translated, at least not yet, into solid political gains.

So, while all Palestinians are celebrating Lula’s victory as a victory for Palestine, there is no single entity that can, alone, harness the political and geopolitical change underway in Brazil to a definite building block towards the collective struggle for justice and freedom in Palestine.

Until Palestinians revamp their problematic leadership or formulate a new kind of leadership through grassroots mobilization in Palestine itself, they should at least attempt to liberate their foreign policy agenda from factionalism, which is defined by a self-centered approach to politics.

A starting point might be the creation of a transitional, non-factional political body of professional Palestinians with an advisory role agreed upon by all political groups. This can take place via the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has been marginalized by the PA for decades. This entity’s main role can be confined to surveying the numerous opportunities under way on the global stage and to allow, however nominally, Palestinians to speak in one united voice.

For this to happen, of course, major Palestinian groups would need to have enough goodwill to put their differences aside for the greater good; though not an easy feat, it is, nonetheless, possible.

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Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press). Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs, Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). Read other articles by Ramzy, or visit Ramzy's website.

Intel community sounds alarm about UAE’s US meddling

A new report suggests the Gulf State’s influence over American politics has now risen to the level of a national security challenge.

NOVEMBER 15, 2022
Written by
Eli Clifton and Ben Freeman

The United Arab Emirates’ well-documented efforts to steer U.S. foreign policy to the Gulf state’s benefit has become a national security challenge, now rising to the attention of the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community’s hub that draws on information from 18 U.S. intelligence agencies and serves as a bridge between the intelligence community and policymakers, according to reporting published over the weekend by Washington Post reporter John Hudson.

The intelligence community’s concerns about the UAE’s efforts to influence U.S. policy, which have been compiled in a classified report, shows that the intelligence community is closely tracking the efforts of the Gulf state to gain influence in Washington, a trend of behavior that journalists and activists have also documented in recent years.

In other words, concerns of UAE meddling in U.S. politics has now risen to a national security concern shared by the U.S. intelligence community. That scrutiny from the intelligence agencies is highly unusual as the agencies are mandated to focus on foreign threats and typically avoid engaging in activities that could be seen as studying U.S. politics or U.S. officials.

Hudson, reporting on conversations he had with anonymous sources in the intelligence community who had read the classified report, wrote:


The activities covered in the report, described to The Washington Post by three people who have read it, include illegal and legal attempts to steer U.S. foreign policy in ways favorable to the Arab autocracy. It reveals the UAE’s bid, spanning multiple U.S. administrations, to exploit the vulnerabilities in American governance, including its reliance on campaign contributions, susceptibility to powerful lobbying firms and lax enforcement of disclosure laws intended to guard against interference by foreign governments, these people said.

While the National Intelligence Council report was privy to classified information about illegal UAE meddling in America, publicly available information shows the UAE operates one of the largest legal influence operations in the United States. As documented in a forthcoming Quincy Institute brief, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) registered lobbying, public relations, and other firms working on behalf of the UAE in 2020 and 2021 reported more than 10,000 political activities on behalf of their Emirati clients.

This included extraordinary outreach to the Hill. In fact, nearly every congressional office was contacted by Emirati lobbyists to help push through arms sales to the UAE, foster greater distrust of Iran, promote the Abraham Accords, and many key policy decisions at the heart of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

The forthcoming Quincy Institute brief also finds that these same members of Congress that were being contacted by UAE lobbyists were also raking in campaign contributions from these same lobbying firms.

More than $500,000 in campaign contributions from FARA registered firms working for UAE interests was given to more than 100 members of Congress these firms had contacted on behalf of the UAE in 2020 and 2021.

While some might consider these practices as pay-to-play politics, they are not illegal. FARA Supplemental Statements, where this information was obtained, make it perfectly clear that these contributions are not being made on behalf of the UAE or any other foreign client, but that they are “from your own funds and on your own behalf,” which shields lobbyists from accusations that they are guilty of helping their Emirati clients violate the Federal Election Commission’s prohibition on campaign contributions from foreign nationals.

Think tanks are another critical component of the UAE’s legal influence efforts in the United States.

“The UAE has spent more than $154 million on lobbyists since 2016, according to Justice Department records,” reported Hudson. “It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars more on donations to American universities and think tanks, many that produce policy papers with findings favorable to UAE interests.”

The UAE is one of the top foreign donors to U.S. think tanks, every year providing millions of dollars in funding to America’s most influential think tanks, including the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Middle East Institute. In some cases, the think tanks funded by the UAE appear to provide public commentary and writing that is in line with the interests of their Emirati funders. Think tanks have even written specific reports at the request of the UAE government and, in at least one case, hired and tasked a former UAE embassy staffer to co-author a report advising policymakers on U.S. strategy in the Middle East.. Given the UAE and other countries’ extraordinary influence at think tanks, in the Quincy Institute report, “Restoring Trust in the Think Tank Sector,” we called for several common-sense reforms to improve transparency and accountability of think tank funding, most notably by requiring all think tanks to publicly disclose their foreign funders.

But despite the documented record of UAE meddling in U.S. policymaking, a record that now has risen to the top levels of the U.S. intelligence community, there’s no clear indication that the UAE is facing any consequences or has even been confronted about its actions.

Hudson spoke with a U.S. lawmaker who had read the classified report and expressed concern about the role of Emirati money in influencing American democracy.

“A very clear red line needs to be established against the UAE playing in American politics,” said the lawmaker. “I’m not convinced we’ve ever raised this with the Emiratis at a high level.

Baby girl born in Manila symbolizes 8 billionth person in the world

Images: Commission on Population and Development

By Coconuts Manila

Nov 15, 2022 |

There are officially eight billion people in the world — and a baby girl born in Manila symbolizes this fact.

Baby Vinice Mabansag, who was born at Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Tondo, Manila on Nov. 15, was chosen to mark the eight billionth person in the world.

Representatives from the Commission on Population and Development were there to welcome Vinice’s birth, who was delivered by her mother at 1:29am.

“We just witnessed the world’s eight billionth baby in the Philippines. So we waited around two hours starting 11 pm last night and the baby was delivered at around 1:29 am, normal spontaneous delivery,” Dr. Romeo Bituin, the hospital’s chief medical professional staff, said according to a report from GMA News.

Vinice’s birth comes as the United Nations predicts the global population would reach eight billion on Tuesday, the day she was born.

“This unprecedented growth is due to the gradual increase in human lifespan owing to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine. It is also the result of high and persistent levels of fertility in some countries,” the UN wrote.

The UN said that while the world’s population took 12 years to grow from 7 to 8 billion, it will take until 2037 or 15 years for it to reach 9 billion — “a sign that the overall growth rate of the global population is slowing.”

The government-run Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital is designated as the country’s national maternity hospital and is known as the world’s busiest maternity facility, with 60 to 80 babies born each day.

TURKIYE'S WAR ON KURDISTAN

Turkey to pursue Syria targets after Iraq operation against Kurdish militants


A file photo shows Turkish soldiers in military vehicles return from the Syrian town of Tal Abyad, as they are pictured on the Turkish-Syrian border in Akcakale, Turkey, October 24, 2019. (Reuters)

Reuters
Published: 15 November ,2022:

Turkey plans to pursue targets in northern Syria after it completes a cross-border operation against outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in Iraq, a senior official said on Tuesday, after a deadly weekend bomb in Istanbul.

The government has blamed Kurdish militants for the blast on Istanbul’s Istiklal Avenue on Sunday that killed six people and injured more than 80.

Threats posed by Kurdish militants or ISIS extremist group on Turkey are unacceptable, the official told Reuters, adding that Ankara will clear threats along its southern border “one way or another.”

“Syria is a national security problem for Turkey. There is work being done on this already,” the official said, declining to be named as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

“There is an ongoing operation against the PKK in Iraq. There are certain targets in Syria after that is completed.”

There was no immediate comment from Turkey’s foreign ministry.

No group has claimed responsibility for the blast on the busy pedestrian avenue, and the PKK and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have denied involvement.

Turkey has conducted three incursions so far into northern Syria against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which it says is a wing of the PKK. President Resep Tayyip Erdogan has previously said that Turkey could conduct another operation against the YPG.

While the PKK is deemed a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, Washington allied with the YPG against ISIS in the conflict in Syria.

Turks are concerned that more attacks could occur ahead of elections set for June 2023, which polls suggest Erdogan could lose after two decades in power. A wave of bombings and other attacks began nationwide when a ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK broke down in mid-2015, ahead of elections that year.

Palestinian Official: Netanyahu's Govt Reflects Israel's Extremism, Racism

Monday, 14 November, 2022 - 

During Benjamin Netanyahu's assignment ceremony (dpa)
Ramallah - Asharq Al-Awsat

A Palestinian official criticized Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu's assignment to form a new government in Israel after winning the recent parliamentary elections.

Member of the Executive Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Ahmed Majdalani, told the official Palestinian radio that the next cabinet headed by Netanyahu reflects "the transformation of Israeli society towards extremism and racism."

Majdalani said the Israeli government would include "right-wing fascist members," and that its political vision and program did not reference the two-state solution as the acceptable international solution based on international legitimacy resolutions.

He stated that the PLO Executive Committee would meet in Ramallah on Tuesday, headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to discuss mechanisms for managing the relationship with the new government in Israel.

The upcoming Israeli government "requires a new Palestinian vision and a different policy" he added, in light of its agenda on the Palestinian cause and its expression of extremism and racism.

Earlier, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the international community to refuse to deal with the far-right ministers appointed by Netanyahu's government to protect democracy and the two-state solution.

Zakhiku: The ancient city in Iraq revealed by severe drought

The ruins of a submerged city on the Tigris River that emerged this year belonged to a little-known empire.

An aerial view of the excavations at Kemune that have revealed new details about the ancient riverside city which flourished under the Mittani Empire

 [Courtesy of the University of Tübingen]

By Tessa Fox

Al Jazeera
Published On 15 Nov 2022

As the climate crisis causes water levels to plummet, riverbeds to dry and glaciers to melt, artefacts like old warships, an ancient city and human remains have emerged. This story is part of “Climate artefacts”, a miniseries telling the stories behind the people, places and objects that have been discovered due to drought and warming temperatures.

Around 3,800 years ago, traders in the ancient city of Zakhiku would wait for wooden beams, cut down from the forests in the mountains in the north and east of Mesopotamia – spanning what is today Iraq, Kuwait and parts of Turkey, Iran and Syria – to float down the Tigris River. Once the logs reached Zakhiku, they were collected and taken to storehouses.

From the same mountainous regions in what is present-day Turkey and Iran, merchants transporting metals and minerals such as gold, silver, tin and copper would travel by donkey or camel to Zakhiku. To protect against bandits, they would make the difficult journey as caravans of travellers. After selling their wares in Zakhiku, the merchants would cross the Tigris before continuing on to the borderlands.

Zakhiku was founded around 1,800 BC by the Old Babylonian Empire that ruled Mesopotamia between the 19th and 15th centuries BC. With only water and soil in the area, Zakhiku was established to take advantage of the traffic of caravans and a flourishing trade route in the Near East, which includes the present-day Middle East, Turkey and Egypt.

The trading post grew into an important commercial city in the region for about 600 years before it was hit by an earthquake and later abandoned.

Zakhiku disappeared altogether in the 1980s, when – as part of the Mosul Dam project, built under the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein – it was flooded and submerged. Previously known as Saddam Dam, it is Iraq’s largest and most important water reservoir used for downstream irrigation.

Iraq is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, and its southern governorates, where temperatures surpass 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in the summer, have faced severe drought since 2019, forcing farmers to abandon their dying crops. Last December, water was released from the dam to irrigate farmland.

As the water levels fell, Zakhiku emerged earlier this year in the Kurdish region of Iraq. A team of local and German archaeologists sprang into action to excavate the site, uncovering new details about the city following a brief initial excavation in 2018 that revealed a palace.

“With the recent excavation the local people have become aware of Zakhiku; they visit the site … it was broadcasted on the local television … and people start knowing their history [more deeply] and they’re proud of it,” says Peter Pfälzner of the University of Tübingen, Germany, an archaeologist working at the site, known as Kemune.

Zakhiku was initially founded for its location on a flourishing trade route plied by caravans of merchants [Courtesy of the University of Tübingen]

A city in a little-known empire

Around 1,500 BC, the Old Babylonian city of Zakhiku fell along with its empire as the Hittites, an Indo-European group of people from Anatolia – present-day Turkey – conquered Mesopotamia, but had no interest in setting up a new administration there.

As the Hittites returned to their northern lands, the Mittani Empire, native to northeast Syria, took over Zakhiku.

“That was the occasion the Mittani Empire had to fill this vacuum [left by the Hittites] to establish a very big and powerful empire,” says Pfälzner, who shared his excavation findings with Al Jazeera.

Few sites with layers or buildings that can be attributed to this empire have been discovered, and little is known about the people who lived in Zakhiku or what the population was in its heyday. But the city thrived under its second ruling empire.

The majority of the empire’s population were Hurrian – like the people of northern Mesopotamia – and settled in present-day Syria and northern Iraq, and spoke a language of the same name.

Infrastructure built during the Mittani reign and found by the archaeologists includes a palace for the local ruler, fortifications for the city to protect against any invading forces, and a massive public storehouse for trade goods and harvests – all made from bricks moulded from mud.

All of this seems to have been made possible by the good relations the local king had with the emperor. According to Pfälzner, Zakhiku was something of a vassal state for the larger empire, with the capital in modern northeast Syria.

The king’s palace was grander than the houses, boasting thicker walls, larger rooms and even pavements made of baked, not just dried, mud bricks sealed with bitumen – formed from oil – for waterproofing.

With so few remains from the Mittani Empire, including its capital, having been found to this day, the excavation cultivates new knowledge about Mittani culture. “Zakhiku is very important because it opens a great window on how a Mittani city looked like,” Pfälzner says

.

Cuneiform tablets made during the Assyrian period of rule in the city could reveal more about the impact of the earthquake that destroyed Zakhiku when it was a Mittani city [Courtesy of the University of Tübingen]

Clay messages

A key feature of Zakhiku was the storehouse that boasted rooms up to 6m (20 feet) wide and 8m (26 feet) long and housed piles of wheat and barley as well as imported metal and wood.

Farmers would haul their season’s production to the storehouse where it would be noted by the state workers, according to Pfälzner.

The sheer size of the rooms for public harvests points to the city being active and well-populated.

Mesopotamia has long been known as the first place where wheat was domesticated about 10,000 years ago, and bread was the staple food for the people of Zakhiku, often eaten alongside big pots of vegetable soups and stews, according to Pfälzner.

Sheep, goats, cows and pigs were also kept by each household, providing a steady source of milk and also meat, reserved for special occasions.

The Hurrian language was unknown outside of the immediate region, and scribes employed for public functions across the state such as in city palaces or in the storehouses were educated in Akkadian, the most widespread language and lingua franca in the ancient Near East during the late Bronze period, which extended from 3,300 BC to 1,200 BC.

Using wet clay, says Pfälzner, craftspeople made 15cm by 15cm square tablets – and while the material was still wet, scribes would carve notes about anything from a log about a newly stored harvest to a note destined for another kingdom before placing it in the sun to dry.
An earthquake

The Mittani city of Zakhiku came to a devastating end when an earthquake demolished it somewhere between 1,400 BC and 1,300 BC, according to Pfälzner, collapsing the walls around the residents.

With the buildings so heavily damaged, it was impossible to rebuild Zakhiku to its previous eminence, and if there were survivors, they abandoned it.

Around 1,300 BC, the Assyrians who are indigenous to Mesopotamia settled in the same city, building their houses amid the ruins, and using whatever structures were still standing from the Mittani period as outer, supporting walls.

“They created a new life in the city, that was … really nice to see how things start to grow again,” Pfälzner says.

Apart from those belonging to the Mittani period, excavated cuneiform tablets that date back to after the earthquake will hopefully tell archaeologists more about the city’s change in rule.

Zakhiku was abandoned by the Assyrians just 50 years after they arrived, between 1,270 BC and 1,250 BC. They decided to build their new provincial capital, Mardaman, 25km (15.5 miles) away in the plains of Mesopotamia, in modern-day Bassetki, a village in Dohuk governate.

The trade hub benefits Zakhiku brought to its inhabitants in the Tigris River Valley for around 600 years faded as the Assyrians – who were very careful planners – wanted to exploit the now-famous fertile soil of Mesopotamia.

The move to Bassetki was for economic and strategic reasons, according to Pfälzner, considering agricultural areas were smaller along the Tigris River compared to the fields in the plains which would yield greater economic profit.

In February, Pfälzner and the team of archaeologists halted the excavation as the dam waters rose again and Zakhiku disappeared underwater.

Dr Bekes Jamal Al Din, antiquities director at the Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage in Duhok, which is collaborating with the archaeologists, told Al Jazeera that the excavation indicates that this region was a powerful influence in the Mittani Empire. Still, he acknowledges that learning about this history comes at a cost to the country’s water needs.

“We do not hope that the water [in the Mosul Dam] will recede again due to the importance of the water to the region,” he says. “But if it does, we will certainly start excavations again, and the results will be beneficial for the history of the region.”

KEEP READING

Photos: Iraq’s mighty Tigris river is drying up

Photos: Iraq UNESCO site opens to tourists after years of strife

Archaeologists discover 9,000-year-old shrine in Jordanian desert

Archaeologists in Saudi Arabia excavate ‘forgotten kingdoms’

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

UK TORY LORD 

Zac Goldsmith brands XR 'bullies' in row over 11-year-old activist confronting him at Cop27

She earlier hit out at the Lord, saying: "If he can do nothing then why he is a minister?

15 November 2022

Licypriya Kangujam confronted Zac Goldsmith at Cop27. Picture: Twitter/Alamy 

By Daisy Stephens

@daisysteph_

Zac Goldsmith has branded Extinction Rebellion "bullies" in a row over an 11-year-old girl confronting him at Cop27

Licypriya Kangujam tracked down Lord Goldsmith in Sharm El-Sheikh to question him on camera, asking: "When are you going to release the climate activists your Government arrested for protesting against new oil and gas licences?"

At that point Lord Goldsmith, the minister for overseas territories, commonwealth, energy, climate and environment, began walking away, with Licypriya in pursuit.

Their conversation is not audible but she said he replied that he "can do nothing about it".

"He replied, 'No idea' & run away!" she tweeted.

The video was then shared by Extinction Rebellion, who asked for the identity of a civil servant Licypriya claimed pushed her twice to get her to stop talking to Lord Goldsmith - leading to the Peer to label them "bullies".

Licypriya Kangujam speaks during Cop25 in 2019. Picture: Alamy

Extinction Rebellion tweeted their thanks to Licypriya "for speaking up for those in prison in the UK" and said Lord Goldsmith owes her answers.

The group also said the "civil servant that pushed an indigenous 11 year old away for asking a question owes an apology", adding: "Anyone at #COP27 know who she is?"

Lord Goldsmith, the failed London mayoral candidate who was handed a peerage after he lost his seat as an MP in the 2019 general election, responded: "What bullies you are.

"She did nothing of the sort as the video shows. She couldn't have been gentler.

Read more: 58 people charged after four-day Just Stop Oil protests on M25 which will be 'paused' to urge Government to stop new oil and gas licences

Read more: Just Stop Oil cause more chaos as they climb M25 gantries for fourth time on Tube strike day

"But I'll tell you what she does do: works relentlessly-at a fraction what she'd earn elsewhere-fighting to protect nature. & she succeeds. You should thank her & then apologise

"'Anyone know who she is?' Makes me so angry this. She's a civil servant who can't answer back, who works her a**e off for the env & has helped achieve amazing things.

"If we turn things around it will be because of people like her...the person you are seeking to bully. Just awful."

Licypriya is already a seasoned campaigner, having been protesting against the crisis for about five years, starting in her native India.

She earlier hit out at the Lord, saying: "If he can do nothing then why he is a minister?

"Why he's coming to #COP27?

"This is unacceptable.

"This is not fair."

A number of Just Stop Oil protesters were jailed following a string of disruptive demonstrations on the M25 last week.

Activists scaled overhead gantries, bringing traffic to a standstill.

The group is calling for the government to end all new oil and gas licences in response to the climate crisis.

How a ‘Doomsday vault’ stows the seeds of our future against disaster

The Global Seed Vault in Longyearbyen, built to withstand natural and even nuclear threats, an insurance policy for Earth’s biodiversity.

By Lex Harvey

Transportation Reporter
Tue., Nov. 15, 2022


LONGYEARBYEN, Norway—You’ll need to carry a rifle if you wish to visit the world’s biggest collection of agricultural diversity. Here on Norway’s wild and vast Svalbard archipelago, polar bears outnumber people — and you can never be too careful (though of course, killing one is strictly a last resort).

In the icy tundra of Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost town, few crops grow. But deep within its permafrost — layers of soil, gravel and sand, frozen in place — lay the keys to securing the world’s food supply, in the form of more than one million types of seeds.

Dubbed the “doomsday vault,” the Global Seed Vault has a certain sci-fi quality to it. The concrete structure jutting out of the hillside is built to withstand the most severe natural disasters, and even a nuclear bomb, according to its manufacturer. But at its core, the vault’s mission is quite simple.

“It’s just seed storage inside the mountain,” says Åsmund Asdal, the vault’s co-ordinator and only full-time employee. Still, since it was built in 2008, the vault has acted as something of an insurance policy for Earth’s biodiversity, a role of increasing importance in a world ravaged by political instability, war and the urgent threat of climate change.

At 78 degrees N, about 1,000 kilometres away from the North Pole, you’d be hard pressed to find a more remote (yet still accessible) place to safeguard the world’s seeds. The vault sits just outside Longyearbyen, up the hill from the world’s northernmost commercial airport. For three months of the year, the vault resides in complete darkness, after the sun sets for the Arctic’s long polar night.



The seeds live in a chilled room, carved more than 100 metres into the rock, through a long tunnel and behind a large steel door that keeps out unwanted visitors. The vault is closed to the public, and its doors are only opened a few times a year to make way for new seeds. But the shimmering exterior, dressed in a design of steel and mirror shards by Norwegian artist Dyveke Sanne, hints at the magic that lies inside.

The Global Seed Vault, which is operated by the Norwegian government and a German nonprofit called the Crop Trust, is part of a broader network for seed storage. About 1,750 gene banks scattered across the globe hold the genetic codes to the world’s crops, both past and present, in the form of seeds or other plant tissues called germ plasm. Together, these facilities contain about 7.4 million types of germ plasm, according to the UN’s food and agriculture agency.


Around the world, crop diversity is decreasing, as food production converges around a globalized diet. A 2019 University of Toronto study found just four crops — soybeans, wheat, rice and corn — occupy nearly half of the world’s agricultural lands. The researchers also pointed to a lack of genetic diversity within individual crops; for example, in North America, just six individual corn genotypes make up over half of all corn crops. When a small number of crop genotypes dominate globally, that makes our food supply more vulnerable to disease and disaster.

Preserving living crop genotypes in gene banks means plant breeders can tap into that diversity to create new, resilient crops. “We need diversity to create something new,” Axel Diederichsen, a researcher for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, who works at Canada’s plant gene bank, in Saskatoon. “If we only have one type of wheat and we want to make a new wheat, it’s very difficult. But if we have a collection with diverse wheat, then we can make crosses.”

Canada also has two other gene banks: one in Harrow, Ont., which holds fruit trees and small crops; and another, in Fredericton, which stores the genetic material for more than 200 types of potatoes.

But gene banks are fallible. “Many gene banks all over the world have lost seeds, due to flooding, due to fires, due to war and conflict, due to electricity failures, lack of resources,” said Asdal, the vault’s co-ordinator. Anything from a dropped envelope to a natural disaster can threaten the preservation of seeds in gene banks.


That’s where the Global Seed Vault comes in. Gene banks are invited to store duplicates of their seeds in the Svalbard vault, as a backup. Canada has about 32,000 envelopes in Svalbard, each containing about 200 seeds, to grow crops like barley, oat and wheat, Diederichsen said. Since 2008, Canada has made seven deposits in the Global Seed Bank, he said, and has another planned for October.

The vault currently hosts 5,947 plant species, many of which no longer grow on this earth, from 91 gene banks, according to its website. With each new deposit, the vault’s library grows richer. In June, Lithuania and Spain backed up seeds in the Global Seed Vault for the first time, as part of a large deposit that welcomed varieties of rice bean, lablab and a yard-long bean.

The vault’s value has already been tested. In 2015, after Syria’s bloody civil war forced an important gene bank in Aleppo to relocate to Beirut, researchers retrieved more than 100,000 seed samples from the Arctic to replant in the new facility.

The Global Seed Vault’s far-flung location in an Arctic territory of politically stable Norway makes it a comfortable and safe home for the world’s seeds. Svalbard’s chilly climate and hundreds of metres thick permafrost make it a good choice, too. When seeds are frozen, they can stay alive for centuries, Asdal said. The mountain permafrost has a stable temperature of between -3 and -4 C, and the vault uses artificial cooling to keep the seeds at an icy -18C. But even if the cooling system were to fail, the seeds would stay frozen, Asdal said.

But even this so-called doomsday vault isn’t immune to the world’s collective climate change. Svalbard is the fastest warming place on earth, heating at a rate five to seven times that of the rest of the world, and rapidly rising temperatures are causing the permafrost to thaw. After an unusually warm winter in 2017, a flood of meltwater breached the vault. No seeds were harmed, but the scare prompted the Norwegian government to spend about $30 million fortifying the vault.

Despite the existential threats Svalbard is facing — from melting glaciers, to avalanches, to landslides — the Global Seed Vault is safe, Asdal assures, though it may need to use a bit more electricity to keep things cool as the planet warms.

Still, the world will need to lean on the genetic resources in the vault and other gene banks as the climate crisis accelerates, to replant crops that are destroyed in major weather events, and to breed new, adaptive plant varieties. Our food security depends on it.

Lex Harvey is a Toronto-based transportation reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @lexharvs

COLD TRUTHS

In a tiny Arctic village in Norway, Russians and Ukrainians keep an uneasy peace

In the Russian coal mining settlement of Barentsburg — 1,000 kilometres from the North Pole — citizens of the two nations appear to get along. Many don’t have a choice.

By Lex Harvey

Transportation Reporter
Tue., Nov. 15, 2022

BARENTSBURG, Norway—The Russian tour guide welcomes me with just a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“We were desperately waiting for you all day long.”

It’s nearing midnight, but the tiny Arctic town is golden under the June sun.

Smoke billows from the nearby mine, casting a shadow over the surrounding turquoise Grønfjord, which in turn spills into mountains that are beginning to shed their snow with the early signs of summer.

The guide is Natalia Maksimishina, a young, blue-eyed scholar in Russian Arctic history. And I am the town’s only overnight visitor.

I’ve come to Barentsburg, a Russian coal mining settlement on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.

The words “peace to the world,” adorned on the mountain above, might seem ironic in wartime, but here in Barentsburg, where Russians and Ukrainians have worked alongside each other for a century, the atmosphere is eerily peaceful. Though in this unexpected oasis, tensions from a war waged thousands of kilometres away bubble beneath the surface.


Maksimishina says when Russian rocket strikes first hit Kyiv on Feb. 24, the community’s reaction was “basically absent.” People here rarely talk politics, she tells me, and they always stop before things get heated. “As soon as it gets uncomfortable, they just switch the topic.”

The congeniality is, at least in part, circumstantial. Far from many of the luxuries of modern life — such as fresh food, at least in between bimonthly shipments from Russia — in a land where polar bears roam and darkness descends for four months of the year, getting along with your neighbours has long been essential to survival.

Barentsburg is the second largest settlement on Svalbard — 1,000 kilometres shy of the North Pole.

Once home to more than 1,000 people, Barentsburg’s population has whittled down to about 300, two-thirds of them Ukrainian, most from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, which historically have had close ties to Russia.



A 1920 treaty designates Svalbard as Norway’s, but gives signatories equal rights to access, fish, hunt and mine here. Moscow has historically operated several mines on Svalbard, though Barentsburg is the only active one. A second, Pyramiden, was abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union, and is now marketed to tourists as a “ghost town.” Russian state-run company Trust Arktikugol owns and operates both towns and employs most of the people in them.

Tourists have largely drained from Barentsburg since the war, thanks to a call by Svalbard’s main tourism board for its members to boycott Russian businesses. Planning an overnight trip here required contacting two separate companies offering the few day trips to Barentsburg from the archipelago’s capital of Longyearbyen, and organizing for one to drop me off and the other to pick me up.

On our midnight stroll, Maksimishina is frank and approachable, her voice high and upbeat. She jokes about not being able to buy a new set of underwear since Russian bank cards no longer work in Norway, a NATO member, but is quick to mention it’s a small price to pay for what Ukrainians are facing. That night, I am the only guest in the local hotel of about 50 rooms.



The next morning over coffee, Barbara Mokshtadt, another Russian guide, says she does not support the invasion, but that she tries not to discuss it with her neighbours.

One of her colleagues is pro-war, she says, but “for me, it is more important that we are friends, now, here, without talking about mine or his position.”

Behind the cash register in the town’s gift shop, Marina, a Ukrainian from Luhansk, tears up as she tells me about the home her family built, now reduced to rubble. (Marina asks me to keep her last name private since she works for a Russian company and could face retribution for speaking out.)

Speaking in Russian through a translator, Marina says she doesn’t view Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February, as an aggressor, and supports people on both sides. While her family in Luhansk, which has been controlled by Russia-backed separatists since 2014, agrees with Russia’s actions, her husband’s family, also in Ukraine, is against the invasion.

When pressed to clarify her position on the war, Marina says, “There is politics outside the settlement on the mainland, and here we live like a big family, all together.”



But everything about Russia’s presence on Svalbard, which is located strategically between the Barents, Greenland and Norwegian seas, is political.

Steps away, in a gated, burgundy building, lives Sergey Gushchin, the bearded, ponytailed consul general — Moscow’s eyes and ears in Barentsburg.

Gushchin has been spreading the Kremlin’s war message in the Arctic, in April dismissing photos of Russian destruction in Ukraine as staged to Norwegian online newspaper, Nettavisen.

When I walk up to the consulate and ring the doorbell, I see Gushchin in the foyer but he quickly makes himself scarce while an aide explains he is too busy for an interview.

Timofey Rogozhin, Russia’s one-time head of tourism in Barentsburg, tells me later that Gushchin could be a factor in Barentsburg’s apparent peacefulness.


Rogozhin says he was forced out of the top tourism job last spring for criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin on social media. Since the war broke out, Rogozhin believes about 100 Ukrainians who do not agree with the war have left the settlement.


One Russian in Barentsburg who asked to remain anonymous, fearing they could lose their job, said Trust Arktikugol managers told employees not to speak about the war online. Then, after thinking for a second, the Russian said, actually, if the posts are pro-Russia it’s probably OK.

The town pub is shut most days, suffering from a lack of clientele because of sanctions affecting Russian bank cards.

Sometimes, locals say, a Ukrainian friend will pick up the tab.

As I sail back to Longyearbyen, it is this image that sticks with me. With the war in Ukraine dividing the world’s powers, in this tiny Arctic village, a Ukrainian buys a round of drinks for their Russian neighbours.

Lex Harvey is a Toronto-based transportation reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @lexharvs

Western allies look to Ukraine as a testing ground for weapons

A drone operator shares footage of an attack against a Russian position with fellow soldiers of the Ukrainian army’s Carpathian Sich Battalion at an underground base in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. | LYNSEY ADDARIO / THE NEW YORK TIMES


BY LARA JAKES
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Nov 15, 2022

Three months ago, as Ukrainian troops were struggling to advance against Russian forces in the south, the military’s headquarters in Kyiv quietly deployed a valuable new weapon to the battlefield.

It was not a rocket launcher, cannon or other kind of heavy artillery from Western allies. Instead, it was a real-time information system known as Delta — an online network that military troops, civilian officials and even vetted bystanders could use to track and share desperately needed details about Russian forces.

The software, developed in coordination with NATO, had barely been tested in battle.

But as they moved across the country’s Kherson region in a major counteroffensive, Ukraine’s forces employed Delta, as well as powerful weaponry supplied by the West, to push the Russians out of towns and villages they had occupied for months.

The big payoff came Friday with the retreat of Russian forces from the city of Kherson — a major prize in the nearly nine-month war.

Delta is one example of how Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come.

The battle for Ukraine, to be sure, remains largely a grinding war of attrition, with relentless artillery attacks and other World War II-era tactics. Both sides primarily rely on Soviet-era weapons, and Ukraine has reported running low on ammunition for them.

But even as the traditional warfare is underway, new advances in technology and training in Ukraine are being closely monitored for the ways they are changing the face of the fight.

Beyond Delta, they include remote-controlled boats, anti-drone weapons known as SkyWipers and an updated version of an air-defense system built in Germany that the German military itself has yet to use.

“Ukraine is the best test ground, as we have the opportunity to test all hypotheses in battle and introduce revolutionary change in military tech and modern warfare,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation.

Fedorov was speaking in October at a NATO conference in Norfolk, Virginia, where he publicly discussed Delta for the first time. He also emphasized the growing reliance on remote-controlled aircraft and boats that officials and military experts said have become weapons of choice like those in no previous war.

“In the last two weeks, we have been convinced once again the wars of the future will be about maximum drones and minimal humans,” Federov said.

Since last summer, Ukraine and its allies have been testing remote-controlled boats packed with explosives in the Black Sea, culminating in a bold attack in October against Russia’s fleet off the coast of Sevastopol.

A Ukrainian drone operator changes batteries while hunting for Russian positions to target with artillery near the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk. | 

FINBARR O’REILLY / THE NEW YORK TIMES

Military officials have largely declined to discuss the attack or provide details about the boats, but both the United States and Germany have supplied Ukraine with similar ships this year. Shaurav Gairola, a naval weapons analyst for defense intelligence firm Janes, said the Black Sea strike showed a sophisticated level of planning, given the apparent success of the small and relatively inexpensive boats against Russia’s mightier war ships.

The attack “has pushed the conflict envelope,” Gairola said. He said it “imposes a paradigm shift in naval war doctrines and symbolizes an expression of futuristic warfare tactics.”

The use of remote-controlled boats could become particularly important, military experts said, showing how warfare at sea might play out as the United States and its allies brace for potential future naval aggressions by China in the East and South China seas, and against Taiwan.

Inevitably, the Russians’ increased use of drones has spurred Ukraine’s allies to send new technology to stop them.

Late last year, Ukraine’s military began using newly developed drone-jamming guns known as SkyWipers to thwart Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region. The SkyWipers, which can divert or disrupt drones by blocking their communication signals, were developed in Lithuania and had been on the market for only two years before they were given to Ukraine through a NATO security assistance program.

Nearly nine months into the war, the SkyWipers are now only one kind of drone jammer being used in Ukraine. But they have been singled out as a highly coveted battlefield asset — both for Ukrainian troops and enemy forces that hope to capture them.

It is not known how many SkyWipers have been sent to Ukraine, although Lithuania reportedly sent several dozen in October 2021. In a statement to The New York Times, Lithuania’s defense ministry said it sent 50 SkyWipers in August after Ukrainian officials called it “one of the top priorities.”

Dalia Grybauskaite, who was Lithuania’s president when the SkyWipers were being designed, said her country’s defense industry made a calculated turn toward producing high-tech equipment during her time in office, from 2009 to 2019, to update a stockpile of weapons that “were mainly Kalashnikovs” and other Soviet-era arms.

“We’re learning in Ukraine how to fight, and we’re learning how to use our NATO equipment,” Grybauskaite said in an interview last week. “And, yes, it is a teaching battleground.”

She paused, then added: “It is shameful for me because Ukrainians are paying with their lives for these exercises for us.”

The Western lethal aid that is being sent to Ukraine consists, for the most part, of recently updated versions of older weapons. That was the case with the German-made infrared, medium-range homing missiles and launchers known as IRIS-T, which protect against Russian rocket attacks.

They have a longer range than the previous generation of air-defense systems that debuted in 2015. Germany’s own military has not yet used the updated version of the systems, which were shipped to Ukraine last month. Additional missiles were delivered last week.

Rafael Loss, a weapons expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that by themselves the upgraded air defenses do not “represent a game-changer.” But he said their use in Ukraine showed how the government in Kyiv had evolved beyond Soviet-era warfare and brought it more in line with NATO.

Senior NATO and Ukrainian officials said the Delta network was a prime example.

More than an early alert system, Delta combines real-time maps and pictures of enemy assets, down to how many soldiers are on the move and what kinds of weapons they are carrying, officials said.

That is combined with intelligence — including from surveillance satellites, drones and other government sources — to decide where and how Ukrainian troops should attack.

Ukraine and Western powers determined they needed the system after Russia instigated a separatist-backed war in Ukraine’s east in 2014. It was developed by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry with NATO assistance and first tested in 2017, in part to wean troops off Russian standards of siloing information among ground units instead of sharing it.

It has been included in training exercises between Ukraine’s military and other NATO planners in the years since.

Information sharing has long been a staple for American and other NATO forces. What NATO officials said was surprising about the Delta system was that the network was so broadly accessible to troops that it helped them make battlefield decisions even faster than some more modern militaries.

In Kherson, Delta helped Ukrainian troops quickly identify Russian supply lines to attack, Inna Honchar, commander of the nongovernment group Aerorozvidka, which develops drones and other technology for Ukraine’s military, said in a statement Sunday.

“Bridges were certainly key points,” Honchar added. “Warehouses and control points were damaged, and the provision of troops became critical” as Russians became increasingly isolated, she said.

Delta’s first real test had come in the weeks immediately after the February invasion as a Russian convoy stretching 40 miles long headed toward Kyiv. Ukrainian drones overhead tracked its advance, and troops assessed the best places to intercept it. Residents texted up-to-the-minute reports to the government with details that could only have been seen up close.

All the information was collected, analyzed and disseminated through Delta to help Ukraine’s military force a Russian retreat, Ukrainian officials said.

“That was the very first moment when Delta capabilities were realized at max,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement. It said Delta had since helped identify 1,500 confirmed Russian targets across the country on any given day — with “hundreds of them being eliminated” within 48 hours.

The test runs in Ukraine are helping senior officials and defense planners in the United States and its allies decide how to invest military spending over the next two decades.

Even routine missions in Ukraine — like how to get fuel to missile-toting vehicles on the edge of enemy territory — have set off discussions in American commands over how to design equipment that is not dependent on supply lines.

And longer-term strategy about how to coordinate and communicate among allied troops, which officials now say was a challenge during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is being developed as the battle against Russia continues to unfold.

Such strategic military reforms were being discussed before Ukraine was invaded, said Gen. Philippe Lavigne of France, who leads NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, but “our early observations of this war is that those assumptions are still valid.”

He said Ukraine had shown how future warfare was likely to be fast-paced and highly contested — not just on the ground or in the skies, but also, most importantly, in cyberspace.

“This is the future operating environment,” Lavigne said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2022 The New York Times Company

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