HINDU NATIONALISM

UK
Work of cult leader wanted by Indian police promoted in Houses of Parliament Diwali pamphlet


Patrick Sawer

TELEGRAPH
Sun, December 11, 2022

A page in the commemorative brochure

The work of a cult leader wanted in connection with allegations of rape, child abduction and fraud was promoted at an event hosted at the Houses of Parliament.

A full page advert for his religious group appeared in a commemorative brochure, alongside messages of support for the event’s organisers, the Hindu Forum of Britain (HFB), from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, former Home Secretary Priti Patel and the current one, Suella Braverman.

One of his prominent supporters also attended the reception.

The brochure for the HFB’s Diwali celebrations carried a full page advert for Kailasa UK, led by Sri Nithyananda, a self-styled “Godman” wanted by the Indian authorities over rape and child abduction claims.

He is on the run and his whereabouts are unknown.

One of his alleged British victims has now spoken publicly for the first time about what she says has been her ordeal.

The health professional said she and her family were “brainwashed” into handing over as much as £600,000 of her family’s savings over a period of five years to help build a golden temple, spiritual retreats and other Nithyananda projects, many of which failed to materialise.

The Nithyananda cult leader representative in the UK (centre)

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Telegraph: “We’d been brainwashed for five years [thinking] this is a charismatic young man who’s doing so much for humanity.”

She described Kailasa’s advert and the presence of one of Nithyananda’s supporters at a parliamentary event as “a disgrace”.

“I really don’t understand how the HFB didn’t see that he has been wanted by police for several years now,” she said.

Kailasa UK, also known as the Nithyananda Meditation Academy UK, is a registered charity founded as part of Sri Nithyananda’s self-styled vision of a "global Hindu community" of groups.

He has even proclaimed his own “nation”, called Kailaasa, as a refuge for persecuted Hindus.

But the 44-year-old guru has been denounced as a fraud by his critics, with the Indian authorities saying he must return to face justice.

He is also being investigated by the French authorities over allegations that he cheated a French national out of $400,000.

The full page advert for Kailasa UK, which appeared in the HFB’s glossy 50-page brochure for its Diwali event in the Cholmondeley Room, the principal function room of the House of Lords, in October, carried a number of images of the cult leader.

The Nithyananda cult leader representative in the UK with Bob Blackman, Conservative MP for Harrow East

The page next to the advert showed photographs of members of the HFB, an umbrella group representing more than 300 organisations, with Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer and other dignitaries.

On nearby pages were also printed messages of support for the HFB from Lord Rami Ranger, chairman of the British Sikh Association; and Bob Blackman, the Conservative MP for Harrow East and chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for British Hindus; along with a photograph of Prime Minister Sunak with a member of the HfB.

At the event was Nithya Atmadayananda, a prominent supporter of Nithyananda, who was photographed with several dignitaries, including Mr Blackman.

In the hours after the event, Kailasa UK tweeted: “By the grace of SPH Sri Nithyananda, Kailasa UK joined & celebrated Diwali with [HFB] at the House of Lords today. Thank you Truptiben Patel, Velji Bhai, Pravin Bhai, Harsha Shukla, Lord Rami Ranger, Lord Navnit Dholakia, Rt. Hon Bob Blackman & the team for this auspicious invite!”

Kailasa has previously issued one of its “religion and worship awards” to Trupti Patel, the president of the HFB, for her work.

Ms Atmadayananda’s presence and the appearance of the advert came despite the fact Nithyananda has been wanted by the police in the Indian state of Gujarat since November 2019, in connection with charges of rape as well as allegedly keeping children captive at his religious retreat in Ahmedabad for the purpose of collecting donations.
Children allege they were tortured

Two children, aged nine and 10, enrolled at the retreat, called an ashram, told police they were tortured, made to work and kept in illegal confinement at a flat in the city for over 10 days. Similar allegations were made by two other children rescued from the ashram, in a complaint filed by their parents.

Gujarat police’s Rural Superintendent R.V. Asari, stated at the time: “Swamy Nithyananda has escaped from the country after a rape case was registered against him in Karnataka.”

The Henry Jackson Society research group said there appeared to have been a lack of “due diligence” by the HFB, giving the impression it endorsed Kailasa, which carried the risk of creating friction between religious groups.

Charlotte Littlewood, of the HJS, said: “Community organisations must question who they are endorsing, ensuring that their actions do not end up inflaming tensions.”

Nathyananda has appealed to the United Nations for recognition for his new country, Kailaasa, claiming threats to his life forced him to flee India.

The medical professional, who is in her 40s, told The Telegraph she had become involved in Nithyananda’s organisation along with her mother in 2016, at a time when they were both emotionally vulnerable from the recent loss of her father.
Deprived of food and sleep

She claims that his followers spend long hours practicing meditation while deprived of sleep and food in order to reach a higher stage of enlightenment, leaving them vulnerable to indoctrination.

“We now realise that all of that is meticulously designed to suck us in and indoctrinate us into a cult which is going to serve his purpose,” said the GP.

She has been forced to give up legal action against Nithyananda and Kailasa in the US, where it has its international headquarters, because of the cost.

Lord Rami Ranger said he had no knowledge of Nithyananda or his activities and had only facilitated the hosting of the event by the HFB in his capacity as a peer.

He said: “I do not know Kailasa or this person. If I had known I would never have attended an event where such unsavoury characters were being promoted.”

Mrs Patel said: “As far as we know this organisation has carried out good work to serve the community and has contributed positively in this country.

“As far as advertisement is concerned, any validly registered organisation can support the Diwali event by putting an advert into the brochure, it promotes positivity and there was no reason not to accept the advert.”

Nithyananda’s legal representatives in the UK deny all the allegations against him and say he is being wrongly persecuted as a result of “homophobia on the part of conservative and fundamentalist figures in India”. They also pointed out that he has carried out a large amount of charitable work, founding "many temples, schools and monasteries".

AMERIKAN FASCISTS

Far right protests targeting the LGBTQ community show a troubling correlation with violent attack

Charles R. Davis
Sat, December 10, 2022 

The white nationalist group Patriot Front attends the March For Life 

on January 8, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois.

Kamil Krzaczynski/Getty Images

• Right-wing extremists have held at least 55 protests targeting LGBTQ people this year, ACLED reported.

• That is up from just 16 such protests in 2021, an increase of over 340%

• According to ACLED, a monitoring group, far-right activity is "strongly" linked to violence.

Across the country, right-wing extremists with guns have been showing up at libraries and churches to intimidate parents and children attending drag queen story hours. Groups such as the Proud Boys conflate the reading of books by members of the LGBTQ community with the predatory "grooming" of kids.

Hospitals that provide gender-affirming care have received death threats after being targeted by social media influencers like Chaya Raichik, the former real estate agent who runs the "Libs of TikTok" account on Twitter, and featured in prime-time diatribes by Fox News's Tucker Carlson.

Other soft targets for the hard right have included gay pride parades. Over the summer, 31 members of the neo-Nazi Patriot Front were arrested in Idaho after a concerned citizen reported seeing them loading up a U-Haul with what looked to be a "little army" of men in riot gear.

By the end of November, far-right activists took part in at least 55 public actions targeting members of the LGBT+ community — up from 16 the year before, an increase of some 340% — with a corresponding rise in violent attacks on people perceived to be gay or transgender, according to a report released this week by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED.

Open white nationalism is still the most common feature of far-right protests and militia activity, according to the group, which began monitoring the American far-right in 2020 after years of reporting on political violence abroad. Of the roughly 750 far-right events that have taken place this year — on track to exceed the 780 held in 2021 — some 21% have been explicitly racist in nature, a finding that comes after the FBI issued a report warning that white supremacists continue to "pose the primary threat" of domestic terrorism, account for more than half of all politically motivated killings over the last decade.

While racism remains the primary driver of the far right,  anti-LGBTQ actions have "fueled the largest increase in far-right protest activity," the report states, with the rise in such activity "strongly" correlating with a rise in violent attacks, of which there have been no fewer than 20, including the murder last month of five people at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs. Though we don't have a specific motive the suspect has a history of online and offline bigotry.

Such deadly attacks are often carried out by self-styled vigilantes who are not formally members of any far-right group, Roubadeh Kishi, director of research at ACLED, said in an interview. But where those groups are most active is tied to where attacks then take place.

"They have been inspired by the rhetoric that they might be seeing online, and by the mobilization they might be seeing offline," Kishi said. "Those people are then deciding to take matters into their own hands and engage in violence."

It is almost impossible to link any one act of violence to a specific instance of hateful propaganda to which the perpetrator was exposed. It is also hard to pinpoint the beginning of the latest moral panic: Are those on the extremist fringe doubling down on anti-LGBTQ activity because of its established salience as an issue among the mainstream right, or are they in fact driving the conversation?

"The reality is that there is a bit of a feedback loop here," Kishi told Insider. If a mainstream platform airs an attack on a minority group, then radicals will increase their activity around that sort of attack as a means of recruitment — while perhaps masking their other views, such as organizing under the guise of merely standing up for "free speech," a strategy known as entryism (ACLED's data shows that, despite such rhetorical appeals to the First Amendment, a far-right presence at a demonstration makes that protest "nearly five times more likely to turn violent or destructive").

The issue of the day will change over time. In 2020, it was pandemic restrictions, Black Lives Matter, and false claims of voter fraud. In 2021, anti-racism in education, dubbed "Critical Race Theory," was the issue that brought mainstream conservatives and right-wing extremists together. In light of a generally disappointing 2022 election for candidates who dwelled on issues of sex and gender, the next year will likely bring something different — if not altogether new (think "political correctness" in the 1990s becoming "wokeness" in the 2020s).

"It usually ends up being a resurgence of some kind of old narrative, packaged in a new way," Rishi said.

Transgender Americans Feel Under Siege as Political Vitriol Rises

Maggie Astor
Sat, December 10, 2022 

Participants in the March for Trans Youth protest Gov. Greg Abbott's (R-Texas) order calling for investigations of parents who obtained transition care for their children, at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, on March 1, 2022. (Christopher Lee/The New York Times)

Alejandra Caraballo is used to seeing anti-transgender hatred.

As an LGBTQ rights advocate and a transgender woman, she has received death threats, and her and her family members’ personal information has been published. When she goes to her favorite bar in New York, she sometimes wonders what she would do if someone came in shooting.

But last weekend, it became too much. Members of the Proud Boys and other extremist groups, many of them armed, converged outside a planned drag event in Columbus, Ohio. Neo-Nazis protested another event in Lakeland, Florida. There was an anti-LGBTQ rally in South Florida, also attended by the Proud Boys. All of this just two weeks after the killing of five people — two of them transgender, a third gay — at an LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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“I had a full panic attack and breakdown,” said Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School. “It’s one thing knowing there’s this extremist hate on the internet and seeing it in the abstract, and I can kind of compartmentalize. When this hate becomes manifested in real-life violence and there’s a celebration of it, is when it becomes too much to stomach.”

It was one more month in a year in which intimidation and violence against gay and transgender Americans has spread — driven heavily, extremism experts say, by inflammatory political messaging.

Since far-right social media activists began attacking Boston Children’s Hospital over the summer for providing care for transgender children, the hospital has received repeated bomb threats. Doctors across the country who do similar work have been harassed. The Justice Department charged a Texas man this month with threatening a Boston doctor; it also recently charged at least two others with threatening anti-gay or anti-transgender attacks.

Twelve times as many anti-LGBTQ incidents have been documented this year as in 2020, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which tracks political violence.

“Being a trans person in particular in this country right now is walking around thinking that it’s possible this could happen any day,” said Sam Ames, director of advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ suicide prevention organization, adding, “We are hearing every day from trans youth who are being impacted by that political rhetoric.”

The rise in threats has accompanied an increasingly vitriolic political conversation.

Over the past couple of years, it has become routine for conservatives to liken transgender people and their allies to pedophiles, and to equate discussion of gender identity with “grooming” children for sexual abuse — part of an intensifying push, reminiscent of campaigns against gay rights dating back to the 1970s, to turn increasing visibility of transgender Americans into a political wedge.

Just before Florida prohibited instruction related to sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, Christina Pushaw, a spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis, called the ban an “anti-grooming bill.” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has accused President Joe Biden of supporting “genital mutilation of children.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., declared that “communist groomers” wanted to “allow a for-profit medical industry to chop off these confused children’s genitals.”

Representatives for Cruz and Greene — both of whose comments falsely characterized the treatment transgender minors receive — did not respond to requests for comment. Pushaw said, “My tweet did not mention transgender people.”

Conservatives say they are trying to protect children from irreversible treatments and ensure women’s sports remain fair; in midterm election ads, right-wing groups argued that transition care amounted to “radical gender experiments” and that allowing transgender athletes to compete on teams matching their gender identity would “destroy girls’ sports.” (The treatments offered to transgender children are endorsed by medical associations and have been shown to reduce suicide risk, and few transgender women and girls seek to participate in women’s and girls’ sports.)

Wes Anderson, a Republican pollster, said he believed those two arguments could pose a “liability” for Democrats — though, he said, they were far from priorities for voters this year.

But experts on political violence say incendiary language has made attacks more likely.

“We know that they are animated by what they’re seeing in online spaces,” Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said of anti-LGBTQ attackers. “Those online narratives, the propaganda that is disseminated by these bad actors, is informed and often legitimized by other voices in our public discussion, whether it’s elected officials or others.”

The false specter of child abuse has long been a way for anti-LGBTQ campaigns to attract “people who otherwise would not join what they consider a homophobic movement,” said Eric Gonzaba, an assistant professor of American studies at California State University, Fullerton, and co-chair of the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History.

It gained prominence 45 years ago, when singer Anita Bryant founded Save Our Children. Accusing gay people of “recruiting” children, the group persuaded voters in Miami-Dade County, Florida, to repeal an anti-discrimination ordinance months after it was passed. Then the movement took its case nationwide.

“Her rhetoric was almost always about the sexualized danger of gay men against children,” said Tina Fetner, a professor of sociology at McMaster University who has studied how the religious right shaped LGBTQ activism. “That’s ‘grooming.’ They have a new term for it now, but it’s the same rhetoric.”

The argument resurfaced in 1992, when two ballot measures sought to ban similar anti-discrimination protections. One, in Colorado, passed but was struck down by the Supreme Court. The other — which would have forbidden Oregon to promote “homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism or masochism” and required “a standard for Oregon’s youth which recognizes that these behaviors are abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse” — did not pass.

These tactics have been used and reused because they can work politically. But history and current events suggest limits.

Bryant’s group stoked a backlash that temporarily blocked anti-discrimination laws, but did not stop society’s gradual movement toward accepting gay Americans. In fact, historians say, it galvanized LGBTQ people to organize more forcefully.

“There’s just incredible resilience and resistance that come out of these moments of hatred and vilification,” said Jen Manion, a professor of history and of sexuality, women’s and gender studies at Amherst College.

Republicans underperformed in this year’s midterms, and several candidates who focused on transgender issues did poorly. Tudor Dixon leaned hard on them but lost the Michigan governor’s race by double digits. The American Principles Project, a super PAC, spent about $15 million on related ads in contests that Republicans also largely lost. (Representatives for Dixon did not comment, and the super PAC did not respond to an interview request for its president.)

In a post-election memo, Paul Cordes, chief of staff for the Michigan Republican Party, blasted Dixon’s campaign and backers for running “more ads on transgender sports than inflation, gas prices and bread and butter issues that could have swayed independent voters.”

Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster, said transgender sports participation simply wasn’t a priority for voters.

“This is not the type of issue that helps Republicans win elections,” Hobart said.

Conservative commentators, however, have continued to focus on it. Tucker Carlson had a guest on his Fox News show after the Colorado shooting who said violence would continue unless transgender advocates’ “evil agenda” stopped. Commentator Matt Walsh told his 1.2 million Twitter followers that people were “soulless demons” if they responded to the attack by denouncing those “who don’t think children should be exposed to drag shows.” (Many drag performances aren’t sexual.)

In the three days after the Colorado nightclub shooting, interactions with public Facebook posts mentioning “pedophiles” rose 613%, and interactions with posts mentioning “groomers” rose 74%, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank.

And after a year in which local officials removed books that discussed gender identity from libraries, states passed more than 15 bills targeting transgender people, and Texas opened abuse investigations against parents whose children received transition care, lawmakers are preparing more anti-LGBTQ bills for next year.

Many focus on transition care for minors; some would even restrict care for adults up to age 21. Others would restrict drag shows.

A pre-filed bill in Montana, titled “Prohibit minors from attending drag shows,” offers a glimpse of what these legislative debates may look like.

“To put forward a bill targeting drag shows right after a mass shooting at a club that hosts drag-queen story hours is to further stoke the hate that is going to get my community killed,” said Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat just elected as the first openly transgender legislator in Montana. She said that friends had killed themselves in the past two years, in which Montana lawmakers voted to restrict transgender sports participation and tried unsuccessfully to restrict transition care, and that others had left the state.

Zephyr said she had spoken with several Republicans who did not want to pass bills focused on transgender or gender-nonconforming people. One, state Rep. Mallerie Stromswold, said in an interview that she found her party’s focus on these issues “disheartening.”

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Braxton Mitchell, a Republican, responded to a request for comment by asking why it was “all of the sudden a critical requirement for someone in drag to be in every school,” but would not provide an example of any official calling for that. He described drag shows as adult entertainment; while some are, many are “story hours” where performers read books.

The advocacy group GLAAD has identified 124 protests and threats against drag events this year. Many were targeted after being publicized on right-wing social media.

In the long term, based on history, several scholars said they expected anti-transgender campaigns to fade.

“I think it’s unlikely that attitudes are going to become more negative over time,” Fetner said. “That hasn’t been the pattern for any discriminatory attitude.”

But short term, the effects loom large.

People tend to become more accepting when they know LGBTQ people personally. But Lindsey Clark, deputy director for the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative, who is transgender and nonbinary, said it was hard to ask transgender people to reach out when doing so could put them in danger.

Jay Brown, the Human Rights Campaign’s senior vice president of programs, research and training, said, “We need to hurry up history.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

DEC 10

Indian sex workers march for Human Rights Day

THE MANLY ART OF KNOCKING THE OTHER GUY OUT

Crawford knocks out Avanesyan to retain WBO welterweight world title

Issued on: 11/12/2022 -

 A CLASSIC PHOTO

WBO champion Terence Crawford celebrates after knocking out David Avanesyan in the sixth round of their welterweight world title fight in Omaha, Nebraska 

© Ed Zurga / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP


Los Angeles (AFP) – Unbeaten American Terence Crawford knocked out David Avanesyan in the sixth round on Saturday to retain his World Boxing Organization welterweight world title.

Crawford, fighting in front of home fans at the CHI Health Center arena in Omaha, Nebraska, sent Avanesyan sprawling with a right hook at 2:14 of the sixth, improving to 39-0 with 30 knockouts.

A former undisputed light welterweight world champion, Crawford made his sixth defense of the title he claimed when he stopped Australian Jeff Horn in the ninth round in June of 2018.

No opponent has taken Crawford the distance in more than six years.

He punished Avanesyan in the sixth with repeated left upper-cuts, finally following one short left with the right hook that knocked the challenger out cold.

Crawford's 10th straight knockout ended the six-fight winning streak of London-based Russian Avanesyan, the reigning European Champion in the 147-pound division who fell to 29-3 with one draw and 17 knockouts.

Crawford's latest victory could at last pave the way for a long-awaited matchup with fellow American Errol Spence Jr., unbeaten holder of the World Boxing Association, World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation titles.

The two had been in talks for a meeting this year and when that failed to materialize Crawford opted for the title defense against Avanesyan that was his lone bout in 2022.

Spence, who owns a record of 28-0 with 22 knockouts, returned from surgery to repair a detached retina to score a 10th-round technical knockout of Yordenis Ugas in April to add the WBA belt to his WBC and IBF titles.

Spence had been set to fight Manny Pacquiao in August 2021 but withdrew from the matchup because of the eye injury.

It was the second major setback of Spence's career after an October 2019 car crash led to him being hospitalized.

On Saturday, Spence posted a video on Instagram saying he'd been in another car accident, showing damage to his vehicle and saying he was hit by a 14-year-old driver who had run a red light after taking his parents' car.

"It always happens to me," Spence says in the video.

Pacquiao returns to ring for clash with South Korean YouTuber

Issued on: 11/12/2022 - 

Pacquiao (R) lands one on D.K. Yoo in Goyang, South Korea, on Sunday © Jung Yeon-je / AFP


Seoul (AFP) – Philippine boxing great Manny Pacquiao returned to the ring Sunday for the first time since retiring from the sport last year, facing off against a South Korean YouTuber in an exhibition match near Seoul.

The 43-year-old fighter turned politician stepped away from boxing to launch a bid for the Philippine presidency that failed. He also served as a senator between 2016 and May this year.

On Sunday Pacquiao fought D.K. Yoo in a showcase match on the outskirts of the South Korean capital to raise money for Ukraine and homeless Filipinos.

Dressed in a shiny red robe with gold trimming, Pacquiao emerged into the KINTEX arena in Goyang to roars of excitement from the crowd.

For his opponent Yoo, a martial artist and internet star, it was only the second time in a boxing ring -- his previous encounter an exhibition match against former UFC fighter Bradley Scott.

Yoo, dubbed the "Korean Bruce Lee" in his homeland -- was no match for Pacquiao despite being significantly taller and heavier.

The South Korean was visibly tired and winded after the second round as a speedy Pacquiao moved in with an explosion of rapid-fire punches.

Pacquiao, who turns 44 next week, was the winner by unanimous decision and hinted that more appearances in the ring could lie ahead.

In a television interview, he said he would continue training to get back in shape. When asked about the prospect of a fight in 2023, he replied: "You'll see."

He had suggested prior to the match that he may not be done with fighting, calling Sunday's bout a "very good stepping stone to come back".

"This is a great opportunity to come back in the ring," he added. "I thought it was easy to retire... I really missed boxing."

Pacquiao, a multiple world champion who hung up his gloves with a 62-8-2 record after winning 12 major titles in eight weight classes, admitted: "I felt lonely when I retired from boxing."

© 2022 AFP

COP15
Activists warn a toothless UN nature pact will fail

AFP

Montreal
Published: 10 Dec 2022

Protestors from the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB) demonstrate outside of the room where negotiators are meeting to discuss Target 3 (30x30 target) at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on 10 December, 2022.AFP


The world's next global pact for nature is doomed without clear mechanisms for implementing targets, conservation groups said Saturday on the sidelines of UN talks, as hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Montreal demanding greater action.

Similar factors were widely blamed for the failure of the last 10-year biodiversity deal, adopted in 2010 in Aichi, Japan, which was unable to achieve nearly any of its objectives.

"Strong text that commits countries to review progress against global targets and ratchet up action over time is essential to hold governments accountable," said Guido Broekhoven of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), adding he was "very worried" about the current state of negotiations on this point.

Implementation mechanisms are at the heart of the Paris agreement on the fight against global warming, in the form of "nationally determined contributions."

However, the current text on biodiversity only "urges" countries to take into account the conclusions of a global review in four years' time -- without committing them to enhance action if the review finds targets aren't on track.

"So what we have on the table is barely an encouragement to maybe do better," Aleksandar Rankovic, of the US nonprofit Avaaz, told AFP.

"And there is no compliance mechanism being discussed that could help organize this necessary conversation between governments, on how they could cooperate better."

The UN meeting, called COP15, running from 7 - 19 December, bringing together nearly 5,000 delegates from 193 countries to try to finalize "a pact of peace with nature," with key goals to preserve Earth's forests, oceans and species.

On a freezing Saturday, people young and old, including a large contingent of Indigenous Canadians, braved the biting cold to make their voices heard in Canada's second city.

Some wore costumes, dressed as birds, trees, and even caribou -- an emblem of Canada's boreal forests that are now threatened.

"The people are trying to speak, trying to say you can't just talk, you have got to act," said Sheila Laursen, part of the group Raging Grannies.

"Let's not forget that... to protect biodiversity we need to protect Indigenous people first, Indigenous people are protecting biodiversity," Helena Gualinga, who belongs to a tribe in the Ecuadoran Amazon.


Missing critical elements


Saturday was supposed to be the last day for delegates to work on the implementation text, before their environment ministers arrive on December 15 for the home stretch of the negotiations. Under pressure, an additional meeting day next week was approved.

"If biodiversity targets are the compass, implementation is the actual vessel to take us there," Li Shuo of Greenpeace told AFP.

"The implementation negotiations are missing critical elements that will ensure countries to ramp up their action over time: this is like a bicycle without gears."

"There has been some progress," Juliette Landry, a researcher at French think tank IDDRI added, pointing out that the countries have for the first time adopted common planning and reporting templates, making cross-comparison possible.

WAGES DO NOT CAUSE INFLATION

‘Everything increasing except wages’: inflation batters Ethiopia

AFP Published about 6 hours ago


ADDIS ABABA: “Everything is increasing except our wages,” Ethiopian porter Zerihun told AFP, summing up the financial crisis facing the Horn of Africa nation as it reels from skyrocketing inflation and an economic slowdown.

After a decade of dynamic growth during the 2010s, Africa’s second most populous country has suffered multiple shocks, including the Covid-19 pandemic, a record drought, a two-year war in its northernmost region of Tigray and the global impact of the invasion of Ukraine.

Annual average inflation is expected to hit 30 percent in 2022 (compared to 26 percent last year), driven by an increase in food costs.

“Groceries, food, rent, all prices have gone up,” said Zerihun, a 30-year-old father of two working at the sprawling Merkato market in the capital Addis Ababa.

“Because of the cost of living, life is very difficult… life has become expensive,” said his colleague Sintayeh Tadelle, who has two sons aged 12 and six and “no savings”.

Were it not for handouts from the Addis Ababa municipal government including uniforms, books and school meals, his family would struggle to survive, the 29-year-old porter told AFP.

The porters at Merkato, considered Africa’s largest open-air market, earn five birr (nine US cents) for loading or unloading a crate.

On average, a good day brings in than five dollars in wages.

“The economy is slow, so there’s less work and my pay is less,” said Zerihun.

‘Very difficult’

Packed with thousands of stalls stocking everything from clothing to industrial machinery, the busy lanes of Merkato teem with buyers, sellers, touts and day labourers.

But regulars say business has taken a sharp hit this year as inflation dampens customer appetite for spending.

“Business is very cold, not only here but in all sectors,” said Hamat Redi, manager of a shop selling televisions and washing machines.

Envoy urges traders to visit Ethiopia, explore opportunities there

A few doors down, shopkeeper Sisai Desalegn complained about a nationwide shortage of foreign currency, making it difficult for him to import the sound equipment and solar panels sold in his store.

“Because of the shortage, we are not getting enough foreign exchange from the bank to import goods,” he told AFP.

“We estimate that our business has lost 40 percent in two years,” Desalegn said, adding that the downturn has forced him to sell everything at the purchase price, putting profits out of reach.

As a result, he has reduced his daily expenses.

“It’s very difficult to make do with what you have,” he said, underlining that the war in Tigray meant his former customers – traders and farmers from the north – were no longer coming to the market.

The slowdown in trade with the north has also seen fewer trucks turning up at Merkato, meaning less work for porters like Zerihun and Sintayeh.

Multiple causes

The conflict put pressure on government finances and hit key sectors such as agriculture and industry.

It also scared away investors and foreign partners, contributing to a shortage of foreign currency in an importing nation.

A peace deal signed last month between the federal government and Tigrayan rebels has raised hopes of an economic recovery.

“I hope the peace agreement will make the situation better in the future,” said Zerihun.

But Ethiopia’s economy hit roadblocks before the war began in November 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic triggering a sharp slowdown.

Growth, which averaged 9.7 percent between 2010 and 2018, fell to 6.1 percent in 2020 and is forecast to drop below four percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The drought ravaging the Horn of Africa has weighed on agriculture – a key employer in the largely rural nation – and contributed to the explosion in food prices, with the conflict in Ukraine also affecting the cost of living.

The causes behind the crisis may be manifold and complex, but the impact is easy to see, according to Zerihun.

“Eventually, all this affects low-income people like us,” he said.

MANIA

Cash crops: Dutch use bitcoin mining to grow tulips


Danny KEMP
Sat, December 10, 2022 


Tulips and bitcoin have both been associated with financial bubbles in their time, but in a giant greenhouse near Amsterdam the Dutch are trying to make them work together.

Engineer Bert de Groot inspects the six bitcoin miners as they perform complex sums to earn cryptocurrency, filling the air with a noisy whine along with a blast of warmth.

That warmth is now heating the hothouse where rows of tulips grow, cutting the farmers' reliance on gas whose price has soared since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The servers in turn are powered by solar energy from the roof, reducing the normally huge electricity costs for mining, and cutting the impact on the environment.

Meanwhile both the farmers and de Groot's company, Bitcoin Brabant, are earning crypto, which is still attracting investors despite a recent crash in the market.

"We think with this way of heating our greenhouse but also earning some bitcoin we have a win-win situation," flower farmer Danielle Koning, 37, told AFP.

The Netherlands' love of tulips caused the first stock market crash in the 17th century when speculation bulb prices caused prices to soar, only to later collapse.

Now the Netherlands is the world's biggest tulip producer and also the second biggest agricultural exporter overall after the United States, with much grown in greenhouses.
- 'Improving the environment' -

But the low-lying country is keenly aware of the effect of the agricultural industry on climate change, while farmers are struggling with high energy prices.

Mining for cryptocurrency meanwhile requires huge amounts of electricity to power computers, leading to an environmental impact amid global efforts to tackle climate change.

De Groot, 35, who only started his business earlier this year and now has 17 clients including restaurants and warehouses, says this makes bitcoin and tulips a perfect fit.

"This operation is actually carbon negative, as are all the operations I basically build," says the long-haired de Groot, sporting an orange polo shirt with his firm's logo.

"We're actually improving the environment."

He is also selling tulips online for bitcoin via a business called Bitcoinbloem.

The collaboration started when Koning saw a Twitter video de Groot had made about bitcoin mining, and called him up.

Now there are six servers at their hothouse, whose exact location Koning asked to keep secret to avoid thieves targeting the 15,000-euro machines.

Koning's company owns half of them and keeps the bitcoin they produce, while de Groot is allowed to keep his three servers there in exchange for monthly visits to clean dust and insects out of the servers' fans.

With a 20 degree Celsius difference between the air entering the machine and leaving them, this provides the heat needed to grow the tulips, and to dry the bulbs that produce them.

- 'No worries' -

"The most important thing we get out of it is, we save on natural gas," says Koning. "Secondly, well, we earn Bitcoin by running them in the greenhouse."

Huge energy costs have driven some Dutch agricultural firms that often rely on greenhouses to stop growing this year, while others have even gone bankrupt, says Koning.

Meanwhile, the philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who developed the idea of the unpredictable but historic "black swan" event, has compared Bitcoin to the "Tulipmania" that engulfed the Netherlands nearly 400 years ago.

This saw prices for a single bulb rise to more than 100 times the average annual income at the time before the bubble burst in 1637, causing banks to fail and people to lose their life savings.

The cryptocurrency sector is currently reeling from the collapse of a major exchange -- with Bitcoin currently worth around $16,300 per unit, down from a high of $68,000 in November 2021 -- but De Groot isn't worried.

"I have absolutely no worries about the long-term value proposition of an immutable monetary system," he says.

"Bitcoin will last for ever."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Tulip mania - Wikipedia 

Tulip mania (Dutch: tulpenmanie) was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable ...

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market_bubble.asp

Tulipmania: About the Dutch Tulip Bulb Market Bubble - Investopedia 

The Dutch tulip bulb market bubble, also known as tulipmania, was one of the most famous market bubbles and crashes of all time.

https://www.history.com/news/tulip-mania-financial-crash-holland

The Real Story Behind the 17th-Century 'Tulip Mania' Financial Crash 

Mar 16, 2020 ... While tulip mania and the ensuing crash didn't flatline the Dutch economy as Mackay asserted, there was still some collateral damage. From court ...

Top China expert says Covid 'spreading rapidly' after rules easing

Issued on: 11/12/2022 - 

Beijing (AFP) – One of China's top health experts has warned of a surge in Covid-19 cases, state media said Sunday, in the wake of the government's decision to abandon its hardline coronavirus strategy.

Shops and restaurants in Beijing are deserted as the country awaits a spike in infections following the decision to reduce the scope of mandatory testing, allow some positive cases to quarantine at home and end large-scale lockdowns.

Top epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan told state media in an interview published Sunday that the Omicron strain of the virus prevalent in China was highly transmissible and could lead to a surge in cases.

"The (current) Omicron mutation... is very contagious... one person can transmit to 22 people," said Zhong -- a leading advisor to the government throughout the pandemic.

"Currently, the epidemic in China is... spreading rapidly, and under such circumstances, no matter how strong the prevention and control is, it will be difficult to completely cut off the transmission chain."

The easing of China's so-called "zero-Covid" policy followed nationwide protests against harsh virus rules that had battered the economy and confined millions to their homes.

But the country is now facing a surge of cases it is ill-prepared to handle, with millions of elderly still not fully vaccinated and underfunded hospitals lacking the capacity to take on huge numbers of patients.

The country has one intensive care unit bed for 10,000 people, Jiao Yahui, director of the Department of Medical Affairs at the National Health Commission, warned Friday.

She said 106,000 doctors and 177,700 nurses will be redirected to intensive care units to cope with the spike in coronavirus patients, but did not offer details on how this would affect the health system's ability to treat other diseases.

China is seeing a spike in infections following the government's decision to reduce the scope of mandatory testing, allow some positive cases to quarantine at home and end large-scale lockdowns © Noel CELIS / AFP

'I'm afraid to step out'

Long lines sprung up outside pharmacies in Beijing on Sunday as residents rushed to stockpile cold and fever medicines and antigen test kits.

Some told AFP they were ordering drugs from pharmacies in nearby cities.

"I've asked my family in Shijiazhuang to courier fever medicine because nearby pharmacies don't have stocks," said Julie Jiang, a Beijing resident.

Dozens of restaurants and small businesses in Beijing put up signs saying they were "temporarily closed", without offering details.

Several major online grocery and food delivery platforms including Meituan, Fresh Hippo and Ding Dong were struggling to operate in Beijing without enough delivery drivers.

"I'm afraid to step out," said Liu Cheng, a mother of two young children living in central Beijing's Jianguomen area.

"Many of my friends with Covid symptoms have tested positive when self testing, but they haven't reported this to the authorities or gone to the hospital."

Official caseloads in China have dropped sharply in the wake of the government's decision to scrap routine mass testing, with only special groups including healthcare workers and delivery drivers exempt from the rules.

© 2022 AFP

Iran strengthens political, economic hold over Iraq

Issued on: 11/12/2022

Air conditioners and electrical appliances imported from Iran are unloaded in Baghdad in February 2019 © SABAH ARAR / AFP/File


Baghdad (AFP) – Sanctions-hit Iran is consolidating its hold over neighbouring Iraq, an economic lifeline where pro-Tehran parties dominate politics, all to the chagrin of the United States, experts say.

For years, Iraq has been caught in a delicate balancing act between its two main allies Tehran and Washington, themselves arch foes.

After a 2003 US-led invasion toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Iran's influence has grown through political links among both countries' Shiite-Muslim majorities.

Pro-Iran parties now dominate Iraq's parliament, and in October they named a new prime minister following a year-long tussle with their Shiite rivals.

Iraq has become an "economic lifeline" for Iran, said Ihsan al-Shammari, a political scientist at the University of Baghdad.

This is "even more so with sharpening Western economic sanctions and nuclear negotiations that do not seem to be leading to a favourable deal for Iran", Shammari said.

"Iran's role will be even more important than during previous (Iraqi) governments"

During a visit to Tehran late last month, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and Iranian officials urged greater bilateral cooperation in all fields.

Iranian visitors shop for rings at a jewellery store in the Iraqi city of Najaf © Ali NAJAFI / AFP/File

He thanked Iran which provides gas and electricity -- around one-third of Iraq's needs -- and added this would continue until Iraq was self-sufficient.

His country is already the number one importer of Iranian goods.

In Shammari's view, Tehran has an "urgent need" to keep Iraq close.
'Contested'

Under a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran agreed to curbs on its atomic programme in exchange for relief from economically crippling sanctions.

The deal began unravelling in 2018 when then-president Donald Trump withdrew the United States, and reimposed financial penalties including a ban on Iran's oil exports. Efforts to revive the nuclear deal since then have largely stalled.

Western countries have imposed additional sanctions following Iran's crackdown on protests that have rocked the country since September.

Iran accuses exiled Kurdish opposition groups of fomenting the unrest, and has carried out cross-border strikes in Iraq against them.

"Iraq is contested by the United States and Iran, with Turkey in third place in the north," said Fabrice Balanche, from France's Lumiere Lyon 2 university.

An Iraqi peddler displays Iranian currency for sale in Baghdad in 2018 © AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP/File

"With a pro-Iranian figure at the head of the government, Iran will be able to further take advantage of the Iraqi economy," he added, referring to Sudani, who is close to pro-Iran former prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Iran's influence can also be seen through its links with Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi, a former paramilitary force made up mainly of pro-Iran militias that have since been integrated into the regular forces.

The Hashed played a major role in defeating the Islamic State group in Iraq and now has a significant presence in the country's politics.

Its representatives are part of the Coordination Framework parliamentary bloc, which controls 138 of the legislature's 329 seats and is made up of pro-Iran factions, including that of Maliki.

'Not fair'

Last month, Iraq's government handed the Hashed control of a new public company, endowed with around $68 million in capital.

The Al-Muhandis firm's mission in oil-rich but war-ravaged Iraq is "provincial rehabilitation and development: infrastructure, housing, hospitals, factories", said a Hashed communications official on condition of anonymity, in keeping with the low profile officials have adopted over the project.

The company's name is in homage to Hashed deputy commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. He was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020 along with Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, who headed that country's Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In November, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said it was "not fair" to consider his coalition government "an attachment" to Iran's.

Iran's influence can be seen through its links with Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi, shown in a security operation near Najaf city © Ali NAJAFI / AFP/File

The Iraqi Kurdish diplomat pointed to its multi-party and multi-confessional make-up as showing "balance" between the different forces.

But pro-Iran parties appear to now have free rein, after rival Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr tried for months to name a prime minister and prevent Sudani's appointment.

The standoff led to deadly clashes in late August that pitted Sadr supporters against Hashed members and the army.

As Iran's influence grows, ally the United States still remains present, with around 2,500 US troops stationed in Iraq as part of ongoing efforts to combat the Islamic State group.

Sudani has held several meetings with the US ambassador Alina Romanowski since her appointment.

Balanche noted that Washington monitors Iraq's banking system to ensure Iran is not using it to evade existing restrictions, and US influence is present via "the threat of financial sanctions".

"The United States is staying in Iraq so as not to totally abandon the country to Iran," he added.

© 2022 AFP 

Iran protests

Two Iran protesters at imminent risk of execution, activists warn

Iranian protesters Mohammad Mehdi Karami (L) and Mahan Sadrat (R) are at imminent risk of execution, activists have warned. (Twitter)

Yaghoub Fazeli, Al Arabiya English
Published: 10 December ,2022


At least two young men arrested during anti-regime protests in Iran are at imminent risk of execution, activists warned on Saturday, two days after Tehran carried out its first execution over demonstrations sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death.

“The case of Mahan Sadrat, one of the protesters sentenced to death, has been transferred to verdict enforcement and he may be executed at any moment,” the activist group 1500tasvir, which monitors protests and rights violations in Iran, said on Twitter.

Sadrat, 23, has been transferred to Rajaei Shahr prison in the city of Karaj, west of the capital Tehran, where he will be executed, Iran-based human rights activist Atena Daemi said on Twitter.

Mohammad Mehdi Karami, 21, is another protester who has been sentenced to death and whose life is “in danger,” warned 1500tasvir.

“Mohammad Mahdi Karami’s life is in danger. He is only 21 years old and has been sentenced to death,” the group said on Twitter.

Karami has told his family that he has been “under severe physical, sexual, and psychological torture,” 1500tasvir said.

Iran carried out on Thursday its first execution over the ongoing protests in the country, hanging 23-year-old Mohsen Shekari.

Shekrai had been convicted of wounding a member of the security forces and blocking a street in Tehran, in what rights groups called a “sham trial.”

The execution triggered global condemnation.

At least 11 others who were arrested during protests have been sentenced to death and are “in serious and imminent danger of being executed,” Oslo-based rights group Iran Human Rights (IHR) said following Shekari’s execution.

For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.

Protests – referred to by the regime as “riots” – have swept across Iran since September 16 when 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Amini died after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran.

Since Amini’s death, demonstrators have been calling for the downfall of the regime in a movement that has become one of the boldest challenges to the Islamic Republic since its establishment in 1979.

At least 458 people, including 63 children and 29 women, have been killed by security forces in the protests, according to IHR.

Read more:

Raisi says Iran will pursue punishing protesters ‘with determination’

Iran says shown ‘restraint’ in dealing with protests after executing demonstrator

Niece of Iran’s supreme leader sentenced to 3 years in prison after backing protests

More Iranians at imminent risk of execution: rights groups

Issued on: 11/12/2022 

Many activists want the international response to go further, even extending to severing diplomatic ties with Iran 

© Tobias Schwarz / AFP/File

Paris (AFP) – Several Iranians were on Sunday at risk of imminent execution over protests that have rocked the country's clerical regime, rights groups warned, after an international backlash over Iran's first hanging linked to the movement.

The almost three-month protest movement was sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by the Islamic republic's morality police.

It is posing the biggest challenge to the regime since the shah's ousting in 1979.

Iran calls the protests "riots" and says they have been encouraged by its foreign foes.

Authorities are responding with a crackdown activists say aims to instill fear in the public.

Iran on Thursday executed Mohsen Shekari, 23, who had been convicted of attacking a member of the security forces. Rights groups said his legal process, which they described as a show trial, was marked by undue haste.

Iran's judiciary has reported that 11 people received death sentences so far in connection with the protests, but campaigners say around a dozen others are facing charges that could see them also receive the death penalty.

Unless foreign governments "significantly increase" the diplomatic and economic costs to Iran, the world "is sending a green light to this carnage", said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

Amnesty International said Iran was now "preparing to execute" Mahan Sadrat, 22, just a month after his "grossly unfair" trial. He was convicted of drawing a knife in the protests, accusations he strongly denied in court.

On Saturday Sadrat was transferred from Greater Tehran Prison to Rajai Shahr prison in the nearby city of Karaj, "sparking concerns that his execution may be carried out imminently", Amnesty said.
'Show trial'

"Like all other death row prisoners, he was denied any access to his lawyer during the interrogations, proceedings and show trial," said another group, Oslo-based Iran Human Rights.

Amnesty warned the life of another young man arrested over the protests, Sahand Nourmohammadzadeh, was also at risk "after a fast-tracked proceeding which did not resemble a trial".

He was sentenced to death in November on accusations of "tearing down highway railings and setting fire to rubbish cans and tires", the group said.

Among others given the same sentence is rapper Saman Seyedi, 24, from Iran's Kurdish minority. His mother pleaded for his life on social media in a video where she stated "my son is an artist not a rioter."

Another dissident rapper, Toomaj Salehi, who expressed support for anti-regime protests, is charged with "corruption on earth" and could face a death sentence, Iranian judicial authorities confirmed last month.

"We fear for the life of Iranian artists who have been indicted on charges carrying the death penalty," United Nations experts said in a statement, referring to the cases of Sayedi and Salehi.

Amnesty and IHR have also raised the case of Hamid Gharehasanlou, a medical doctor sentenced to death. They say he was tortured in custody and his wife was coerced into giving evidence against him which she later sought to retract.
'Boundless contempt'

"Protester executions can only be prevented by raising their political cost for the Islamic Republic," IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said, calling for a "stronger than ever" international response.

The US, European Union members and UK strongly condemned the execution of Shekari. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it showed a "boundless contempt for human life".

Iran on Saturday and Friday again summoned the British and German ambassadors to protest their countries' actions, marking the 15th time in less than three months Tehran has called in foreign envoys as the demonstrations continue.

Many activists want the foreign response to go further, extending even to severing diplomatic ties with Iran and expelling Tehran's envoys from European capitals.

After the widespread international outrage at Shekari's execution, Iran said it was exercising restraint, both in the response by security forces, and the "proportionality" of the judicial process.

Iran's use of the death penalty is part of a crackdown that IHR says has left at least 458 people killed by the security forces.

According to the UN, at least 14,000 have been arrested.

© 2022 AFP