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Saturday, February 11, 2023

China urged to remain focused on economic ties in Middle East, avoid ‘great power game’ with US

Researcher says US and China can find ways to coexist as focuses and approaches are different

Technology, including 5G, seen as main field for competition in region

Kawala Xie
+ myNEWS
Published: 11 Feb, 2023

President Xi Jinping and Arab leaders pose for a group photo during the China-Arab summit in Riyadh in December. Photo: Handout

China should weigh any shift in its Middle East policy cautiously to avoid turning the region into the next geopolitical battleground with the US, a prominent Chinese research institute has warned.

In an article posted on the WeChat social media platform on Tuesday, Niu Xinchun, director of the Institute of Middle East Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), said the country’s Middle East policy was not expected to undergo a major shift over the next few years as it would continue to focus on economic rather than military ties, even though some viewed it as competing with the US in the region.

Nin said that when crafting its Middle East strategy, China should avoid being dragged into a “great power game” with the US – as had already happened in the Indo-Pacific region and Europe.

China’s Xi Jinping visits Saudi Arabia in bid to boost ties amid strained US-Saudi relations

“For a long time, China has mainly participated in the economic affairs of the Middle East,” Niu wrote, adding that adjustments to its global strategic priorities and allocation of resources would be required if preparations were to be made for a great power game in the future.

“In terms of economic affairs, China can maintain a balanced relationship with all regional countries,” he wrote. “Once it enters the deep water in the military and political fields, it is almost impossible to maintain such a relationship.”

“It can be predicted that, if not triggered by major emergencies, China will not take the initiative to substantially adjust the current Middle East policy, but will carefully observe and adjust while interacting with the United States.”

China expected to maintain distance from Middle East conflicts
16 Dec 2022

Many predict the Middle East could become the next arena for competition between the two countries, as China continues to increase its footprint in the region and the United States pivots away.

But Niu said the US and China did not have major conflicts in the region because their focuses and approaches were different, meaning they could find ways to coexist.

“From the perspective of regional influence, the United States enjoys a security advantage, and China has an economic advantage … the influence of China and the United States in the Middle East is different in nature, and it is impossible to replace each other,” he wrote, adding that the cost of challenging each other would be too high.

Vice-President Wang Qishan co-chairs the fifth meeting of China-Israel Joint Committee on Innovation Cooperation via a video link in Beijing in January last year. Photo: Xinhua

US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs Barbara Leaf has said America’s security and defence history in the region gives it a “clear advantage” over China. The US has been the Middle East’s biggest arms supplier for years, while China is the biggest purchaser of oil and gas from the region.

Niu said “the most acute conflict” between the US and China in the Middle East was in technology, as they competed in 5G telecommunications, space and arms.

Xi looks to closer economic ties as China seeks greater Middle East role
9 Dec 2022

China has ramped up technological cooperation with the Middle East over the past decade, with nuclear energy, aerospace and satellites, and new energy listed as promising fields in the 1+2+3 strategy that President Xi Jinping set for Middle East policy in 2016, with energy remaining the main axis and investment and trade as two wings.

Beyond dozens of agreements and proposals on expanding traditional energy and trade cooperation, the first summits between China and Arab and Gulf countries in Saudi Arabia in December also produced a landmark deal for Huawei to provide cloud computing services in the kingdom and a proposal to set up a China-Gulf moon and space exploration centre.

Saudi Arabia signs Huawei deal during Chinese leader Xi’s visit despite US security concerns

Meanwhile, Chinese investment in technology and sensitive infrastructure in Israel has been under increased scrutiny due to national security concerns.

In 2021, Israeli media reports said the US had asked Israel to conduct regular inspections at the Bayport terminal in Haifa, fearing the China-built port would contain surveillance equipment capable of tracking US Navy vessels at a nearby dock.

Niu said that while the US and China did have some “tactical conflicts” in the Middle East, they were not sharp enough at present to result in a further deterioration of relations.

“If these conflicts are properly controlled in the future, they will not harm the overall situation of Sino-US relations; if they are allowed to worsen, or their impacts are deliberately magnified, they will easily become strategic conflicts,” he wrote.

SYRIA

Sanctions removal contradicts U.S. previous claims of not targeting humanitarian effort -- experts

(Xinhua) 16:00, February 11, 2023

DAMASCUS, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. decision to lift sanctions on Syria in the wake of international condemnation contradicts what it has claimed, namely that the sanctions did not target humanitarian aid to the quake-hit country, Syrian experts have said.

The U.S. Treasury Department issued a six-month sanctions exemption for Syria-bound humanitarian aid on Thursday, three days after massive earthquakes and aftershocks struck Türkiye and neighboring Syria that have left more than 24,000 dead and tens of thousands injured in both countries.

"The announcement of the U.S. Treasury is a confession that what Washington was claiming that the sanctions did not affect humanitarian aid was a false and misleading claim," political expert Muhammad al-Omari said.

Political expert Kamal al-Jafa said that if Washington's previous claims were legitimate and convincing, it would not have decided to lift the embargo.

"The United States knows that the sanctions imposed on the Syrian people were unjust and led to worsening the living conditions of the Syrians over the past few years," he said.

The Syrian government has repeatedly urged Washington to remove sanctions as they were unjust and inhumane, particularly after the strong earthquakes. On Tuesday, it lambasted the United States for blocking humanitarian relief work in Syria.

Sanctions have been a main U.S. tactic toward Syria ever since the latter was listed as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979.

Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the United States and its Western allies have imposed a number of economic sanctions and restrictions that denied Syrians the means to pursue growth as well as access to daily necessities. U.S. sanctions intensified with the passing of the Caesar Act in 2019.
(Web editor: Cai Hairuo, Kou Jie)

Meta’s attempt to dodge trial in Kenya thwarted by judge

A lawsuit alleges forced labour, human trafficking and union busting in Facebook’s content moderation hub in Nairobi

Mukanzi Musanga
7 February 2023

Mercy Mutemi, a lawyer representing a former content moderator, after filing a lawsuit against Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc and its local content moderation contractor Sama, in May 2022 |

REUTERS

A Kenyan court has ruled against Meta’s attempt to have its name struck off a lawsuit that alleges forced labour, human trafficking and union busting in Facebook’s content moderation hub in Nairobi.

Facebook’s parent company had sought to be removed from the case, which is brought by former Facebook content moderator, Daniel Motaung. The tech giant argued that it cannot be sued in Kenya because it is not registered there.

In a ruling on Monday, Jacob Gakeri Kariuki, the presiding judge at the Nairobi Employment and Labour Relations Court, ruled that Meta is a “proper party” to the case.

The court proceedings will now move to the next stage, with Motaung’s legal team expected to file another application to serve Meta’s US headquarters with Kenyan legal papers, before the hearing of courtroom arguments can start. The next court session is scheduled for 8 March.

In May 2022, Motaung, a former content moderator at Facebook, sued the social media company and its outsourcing contractor, Samasource Kenya EPZ Ltd, for a raft of alleged workers’ rights violations, including exploitation, union busting and pay discrimination.

The South African whistleblower said that while working to moderate Facebook content, he not was not only exposed to depictions of violence that made him mentally ill but was also poorly paid and fired by Sama when he tried to unionise his colleagues. In the suit, he wants Meta to reform how it handles content moderation in Africa, arguing that the current approach is “exploitative” and harms workers.

The judge directed all parties in the case to not speak about it publicly. Sama announced earlier this year that it would not renew its contract with Meta when it ends next month. Analysts have argued that the case could set an important precedent for African governments wanting to hold Big Tech firms, which are often domiciled in the West and have deeper pockets than entire nations on the continent, accountable.

Leah Kimathi of the Council for Responsible Social Media, a Kenyan non-profit, told openDemocracy that the court’s ruling was “vindication and a validation of what Kenyans demand – that the government must defend their digital dignity and protect them from social media harm”.

She added that Facebook’s refusal of accountability of its operations in Kenya was reminiscent of the exploitative African colonial project that was “premised on extracting profits from Kenya with no (or minimal) investments and that would enable them to extract profits. It’s what big tech is doing in Africa”.

“When Meta challenges that the Kenya government does not have jurisdiction over their operations in Kenya, it's condescending and reminds us of the colonial project and its very exploitative nature. It felt like the subjugation of Africa once again,” said Kimathi, adding that yesterday’s decision was an emancipatory one.

London-based tech justice legal non-profit, Foxglove, which is supporting Motaung and The Signals Network, an international whistleblowers collective, also celebrated the court’s decision. The executive director of Amnesty International Kenya, in a joint statement with other organisations, said that the ruling “should send a message to Facebook, and by proxy, to all Big Tech in Africa. Kenyan justice is equal to any tech giant”.

In a separate case, Meta is being sued in Kenya allegedly for failing to moderate Facebook content that stirred hate attacks during Ethiopia’s war in Tigray. In a December interview with openDemocracy, one claimant said he holds Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg directly responsible for his father’s death.

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12 August 2022 | Nanjira Sambuli
It’s time for the social media giants to stop exploiting and traumatising low-wage workers in Africa

How Brazil’s homeschooling movement cheered the country’s failed coup

Social media posts show homeschooling advocates supported far-right attempts to overturn Lula’s win against Bolsonaro

Diana Cariboni Joana Oliveira
7 February 2023,

Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings in an attempted coup on 8 January 2023 |
Ton Molina / Fotoarena / Sipa USA / Alamy Stock Photo

Advocates of Brazilian homeschooling organisations supported the attempted coup on 8 January that tried to topple the country’s newly elected leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, openDemocracy has found.

Some engaged in or praised anti-democratic discussions after the election last October, amplified misinformation and supported calls for a military coup. Others supported online attacks against supreme court justices. Some seem to have actually participated in the insurrection. Multiple social media posts were removed and some accounts were deactivated or made private after openDemocracy contacted the relevant individuals for comment.

Soon after the election, in which former president Jair Bolsonaro was narrowly defeated by Lula, Bolsonaro supporters alleged that Lula’s victory was a fraud, perpetrated by the supreme electoral court and its head, Alexandre de Moraes, allegedly to impose a communist dictatorship. The Bolsonaristas’ solution: overturn the results and reinstate Bolsonaro as president, by military intervention if necessary.

The Brazilian authorities have found no evidence of any electoral fraud.

Pro-Bolsonaro demonstrations began in several states in November and became more violent in December. On 8 January, a week after Lula’s inauguration as president, rioters stormed the three main government buildings in the capital, Brasilia.

The homeschooling movement has risen out of the larger evangelical population within Brazil, which has long supported Bolsonaro, and has affiliations with US Christian nationalist organisations. A majority of evangelicals (68%) believe the allegation of election fraud, according to a survey released on 10 January. More than 64% also expressed support for a military coup, while 50% considered the storming of Congress justified.

openDemocracy analysed dozens of social media posts (including on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube) from key figures in the homeschooling movement. All the social media posts mentioned below (unless linked to) are no longer available to view.

Gaba Costa and Simeduc

Gaba Costa is a high-profile homeschooling advocate in Brazil. Her company Simeduc (whose full name translates as Online Symposium on Home Education) sells the ultra-conservative Christian US homeschooling programme ‘Classical Conversations’ in Brazil. She’s also a board member of the Global Home Education Exchange, a group of international conservatives platformed by the US organisation Home School Legal Defense Association, which has a major influence on the Brazilian movement.

Posts on Costa’s personal Instagram account, and on her company’s Instagram and Facebook accounts, encouraged the protests and shared false claims of electoral fraud and support for military intervention. The Instagram accounts were made private and the Facebook posts were removed after openDemocracy contacted Costa for comment on 20 January.

On 8 January, when thousands of pro-Bolsonaro rioters invaded and rampaged through Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace in Brasilia, the Simeduc Instagram account posted a video from the scene of the riot, with more than 3,000 likes. One follower reacted: “Proud of you for representing me and more than 50% of the Brazilian people.” The post was removed on 18 January.

A video of Lula’s inauguration, punctured by fictional news headlines announcing corruption charges against him and his Workers’ Party, appeared on the same account, also on 8 January. “It’s unacceptable to watch all this from the sofa,” the post said. Among more than 2,000 favourable reactions from followers, only a few condemned the riots and destruction seen in Brasilia.

Screenshot of a Simeduc Instagram reel on 6 November 2022, depicting a broken-hearted avatar of Gaba Costa.

Posts on the same account from last year, before and after the election, reveal Costa’s pro-Bolsonaro leanings. On 6 November, next to a short video of a Bolsonaro demonstrator praying, an avatar of Costa with a broken heart says: “They say we are criminals.”

On 7 November, another post read: “We don’t accept a criminal government. Lula out!” Instagram labelled the post – and several others in Costa’s social media accounts – with a warning of fake electoral information.

We will not recover this nation without a civil war. It’s sad! But we need to prepare for the worst
Gaba Costa

Similar messages were posted on Simeduc’s Facebook page, where Costa has also expressed pro-Bolsonaro positions. The page includes pictures of Costa with the then president in Brasilia.

On 24 November, a post said: “I don’t see any chance of a peaceful resolution… If you want peace, prepare for war… I hadn’t expected a real war… But we’re running short of resources… We will not recover this nation without a civil war. It’s sad! But we need to prepare for the worst.”

Two days later, she posed for a photograph at a military facility in Río de Janeiro, repeating: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

The day after the riots in Brasilia, another Facebook post read: “If the Supreme Court keeps acting violently against the Constitution and the Brazilian people, more Dantesque scenes will be seen across Brazil.”

Costa and other homeschooling advocates also made use of the hashtag #BrazilWasStolen. An analysis by the Digital Forensic Research Lab, which tracks online disinformation, concluded that the hashtag was part of a “coordinated campaign” that received more than 1.5 million Twitter mentions between 30 October and 9 November.

Costa also wrote that she had shared through her Telegram channel a YouTube video from 7 November by the far-right Brazilian blogger Allan dos Santos, in which he proposes an armed rebellion against the “Brazilian illegitimate state… just as De Gaulle did in France to repeal the Nazis”. In 2020, Santos fled Brazil to the US, to avoid being arrested for allegedly leading criminal misinformation networks.

Simone Quaresma

Controversial evangelical author Simone Quaresma is another familiar face in Brazilian homeschooling circles, where her talks, books and articles are widely shared. One of her books, which was banned in 2000 for advocating corporal punishment, has been sold by Kairós Consultoria Educacional, as well as by Simeduc.

In a video on her YouTube channel, posted the day after the Brazil election, she said the left “wants to destroy the people of God and the family”.

On her Twitter account on 6 November, she tweeted a picture of a family holding posters with the message: “In God we believe. In the armed forces we trust.” Quaresma commented: “This family was yesterday in downtown Rio, urging the military to defend Brazil. I don’t know them, but I’m proud of Brazilians teaching values to their children!”

e Quaresma retweeted a video by the far-right Bolsonaro influencer Paulo Souza.

She also tweeted several pictures of herself taking part in protests against the alleged electoral fraud, and also retweeted videos and other content urging an escalation of demonstrations in Brasilia in order to build a case for a coup by Bolsonaro and the military. This included a video in which the far-right Bolsonaro influencer Paulo Souza proposed more demonstrations in order to build a case for a coup led by Bolsonaro.
Alexandre Magno Moreira

Alexandre Magno Moreira was legal director from 2010 to 2018 of the National Association for Home Education (ANED), the most vocal Brazilian group promoting homeschooling and pushing for legalisation by federal, state and municipal bodies.

Moreira, who remains a legal adviser to ANED, also served as Bolsonaro’s national assistant secretary for human rights in 2019 and 2020. He is the author of an online course for homeschooling parents in which he advises on how to spank children while dodging the law, as revealed last year in an openDemocracy and Agência Pública investigation.

Unlike the other people in this article, Moreira has not explicitly commented on either the coup or the allegations about the supreme court. However, on 14 November, he retweeted footage showing the judge Alexandre de Moraes being insulted in a New York street, and commented: “Alexandre de Moraes became Brazil emperor. With absolute powers, he orders to arrest or censor whoever criticises him. He invented the lese-majesty [insult to the king] crime in Brazil.”

Concerns over homeschooling

The homeschooling movement is small in Brazil – only 70,000 children are educated at home, according to unofficial figures from ANED, compared to more than 46.7 million of students enrolled in primary and high schools – but it gained influence during the Bolsonaro administration, when the president and several of his ministers promised that legalising homeschooling was a top priority.

Supporters succeeded last year in passing a bill to legalise and regulate homeschooling in the lower chamber of Congress. It is still under consideration by the upper chamber.

Related story

Spank your children, Brazil’s homeschooling industry tells parents
18 July 2022 | Alice de Souza , Clarissa Levy , Mariama Correia , Diana Cariboni
Influential figures are promoting physical violence as a teaching tool – just as homeschooling is set to become legal

The potential promotion of corporal punishment by homeschoolers, an act banned in Brazil in 2014, was raised in openDemocracy’s investigation last year. Some 81% of cases of violence against children in Brazil happen at home, according to the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship.

ANED, Simeduc and eight other homeschooling groups and companies endorsed and campaigned for Bolsonaro’s re-election via a series of online panels, which included topics such as ’Why Bolsonaro is the only choice’ and ‘The progressive agenda and the educational freedom under threat in Latin America’.

One speaker claimed that sex education materials included “the promotion of incest… teachings on demonology”, all of which make “a malign, violent burden for children”.

In a written statement to openDemocracy, ANED president Ricardo Dias said none of the organisation’s members had participated in the events of 8 January. ANED “vehemently repudiates any and all acts of violence against people, institutions and public authorities of any powers of the union,” said the statement.

Alexandre Magno Moreira, Gaba Costa and Simone Quaresma did not respond to our requests for comment. They are not among the 1.406 people who were arrested or investigated for participating in anti-democratic attacks in Brasilia. So far, Brazilian authorities have not confirmed whether Simeduc is among the organisations investigated for promoting the attacks.

The West is wrong to assume it has global support in the war against Putin

OPINION: Experience of Western war and colonialism in the Global South change perspectives on the conflict in Ukraine

Paul Rogers
11 February 2023,

Russian destruction in Ukraine mirrors Western attacks on Raqqa and Mosul |
Thomas Krych / Alamy Stock Photo

The Russian war in Ukraine is in full swing, with military budgets surging across NATO, Russia and beyond. In the space of barely a week, NATO’s arming of Ukraine has already moved on from tanks to fighter aircraft.

The tanks will start arriving in the next couple of months. Meanwhile, as last week’s column reported, Putin’s call-up is adding up to 300,000 more troops, many of them raw conscripts. Russian arms factories are reported to be working on triple shifts to keep up the flow of munitions, and while there may be problems getting high-tech components from abroad, Russia has plenty of capacity for producing basic materiel such as shells for heavy artillery.

On the NATO side, Poland has been given the go-ahead from the White House to buy $10bn-worth of multiple-launch rockets, including the HIMARS system, and is planning to build its own HIMARS factory. And Lithuania has become the third of the Baltic states, after Estonia and Latvia, to order the same system.

With multiple conflicts and potential conflicts around the world, it really is a very good time to be involved in the arms industry. Look at the violence across the Sahel and the Horn of Africa; tensions between North and South Korea; the burgeoning arms market in the Gulf states, not least for the war in Yemen; and always remember the useful new threat from China. Whatever the impacts on people at the point of delivery, business for the armourers within the war-promoting hydra is booming.

Now, to cap it all, a brand new Cold War between Russia and the West is underway, meaning prospects for military spending are looking good for a decade or more.

One thing that is missing from the reporting of this latter conflict in the mainstream Western media is much sense of attitudes across the Global South. While it may seem to be a straightforward ‘good guys versus bad guys’ scenario, even a cursory look shows a very different interpretation in much of the world. There simply isn’t the universal support for the West and opposition to Russia that many Westerners assume.

When Russia crossed the border into Ukraine a year ago, votes in the UN showed majority condemnation, but as the war intensified, the way that governments had voted was not representative of public moods in many countries. Instead, while condemnation of the Russian assault tended to be strong, it was bound up with a sense of ‘a plague on both your houses’.

A few days after the war started a year ago, openDemocracy published a prescient article from an East African perspective. Contrasting with NATO’s belief in the ‘good fight’, Khatondi Soita Wepukhulu pointed out: “The rest of the world has experienced NATO, Europe and the US in other ways than ‘good’ – and we are allowed to express the anger and scepticism that highlights hypocrisy and calls for caution about Western solutions.”

She placed these views in their historical context: “All African countries (apart from Ethiopia and Liberia) were colonised, our homes cut up and shared like cake among European powers at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 and in later years. The result? Some of the bloodiest subjugations in human history. No African country was ever colonised by members of the former USSR.”

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Africans support the Ukrainian people, but centuries of experience also make us wary of ‘solutions’ by our former colonisers

Across the Middle East and North Africa, this kind of experience is even more recent. Twenty-four-hour reporting in the Western media has covered many of the appalling atrocities carried out by Russian troops, but you could scour the mainstream media in vain for coverage of similar incidents perpetrated by invading Western troops from the Iraq or Afghan wars. This does not mean there were none – a few such incidents came to light at the time, and more have emerged since. But many of these are thanks to Wikileaks and Julian Assange, currently facing deportation to the United States.

Among the exceptions to the lack of coverage are two specific reports by highly regarded Western war correspondents that were published at the time, rather than long afterwards. Writing in The Washington Post in April 2004, Pamela Constable reported an incident in which Marines rescued troops from a convoy that had been ambushed in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The US troops suffered casualties but not deaths, but the Marines ordered a devastating response that night, with AC-130 Spectre gunships flattening a six-block area of the city, virtually destroying the area. It was described as a “punitive raid”.

Two years later, Tom Lasseter reported in the Houston Chronicle on the aftermath of an ambush by paramilitaries of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division. Again, the US forces took casualties but not deaths, but their response was to tie two of the corpses of the insurgents to the front of their jeeps and parade them through the nearby town. As they did, Lasseter reported that “Iraqi families stood in front of the surrounding houses. They watched the corpses ride by and glared at the American soldiers.”

The Marines and the soldiers of the 101st Airborne believed they were fighting terrorists in a just war linked to 9/11, which was still very fresh in their minds. But to the Iraqis, the Americans were violent occupiers being resisted by brave young defenders.

In Ukraine, Russian troops have flattened towns and large parts of cities, but six years ago the US-led coalition in the anti-ISIS air war flattened the old city of Mosul in northern Iraq. Even now, recovery continues to be slow as “children play in bomb craters”.

After Mosul, the US/UK/French coalition moved on to Raqqa in Syria, the focus of ISIS control, and reduced much of the city to ruins. A joint analysis by Amnesty International and Airwars concluded that at least 1,600 civilians had been killed in the assault.

There may not be direct equivalence, and some Russian behaviour has very likely exceeded the worst that took place in the Western wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya, but it is easy to forget the overall impact of the wars.

According to the Costs of War programme at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, “Over 929,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence, and several times as many due to the reverberating effects of war.” The report says that more than 387,000 civilians were killed as a result of fighting, and the wars also created 38 million refugees and displaced persons. The conflicts were “accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the US and abroad”. The report puts the US price tag for post 9/11 conflicts at over $8trn.

The Institute also reports that deaths as a direct result of war in Afghanistan and Pakistan alone in the 20 years to August 2021 ran to 243,000, including over 70,000 civilians. Note the emphasis is on direct deaths. The indirect deaths from hunger, malnutrition, cold, lack of medical facilities and other factors will be very much higher.

For the general reader across the Western world, little of this would be recognisable unless they are in the minority who follow the few outlets that dig beyond the mainstream media. But these stories and statistics will resonate with readers across the majority of the world, and perhaps help explain those radically different world views on the war in Ukraine.

HOW WW3.0 STARTS

Kalibr cruise missile launched by Russian Navy against Ukraine enters airspace of Romania

: Naval News February 2023 Navy Forces Maritime Defense Industry; POSTED ON SATURDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 2023

According to information published on its Twitter account, on February 10, 2023, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, reported that two Kalibr cruise missiles launched by Russian navy ships against Ukraine entered the airspace of Romania.
Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link

The Kalibr is a Russian-made naval cruise missile that can be launched from ships or submarines with a range of up to 2,600 km. (Picture source Youtube footage Screen Shot )

Citing the Ukrainian General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, on February 10, 2023, Russian armed forces launched massive missile attacks on the Ukrainian territory including 71 Kalibr and Kh-101 cruise missiles, up to 35 S-300 surface-to-air missiles as well as 7 Shahed kamikaze drones.

The Ukrainian air defense forces shot down 61 cruise missiles and 5 drones. Reporting information from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the Kalibr missiles were launched by Russian navy ships deployed in the Black Sea.

Kalibr cruise missiles have been widely used by Russian forces since the beginning of the War in Ukraine, and the invasion of the country on 24 February 2022. The invasion started with the launching of 30 cruise missiles, targetting command and control points, air bases, and air-defense batteries. The missiles were likely fired by the Buyan-class corvettes, Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates, and Kilo-class submarines of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

On January 21, 2023, eleven vessels of the Russian navy were deployed in the Black Sea, including five ships able to fire Kalibr cruise missiles, according to information published by the Ukrainian navy intelligence services.

The core of Russia’s conventional long-range strike capabilities are provided by air and sea-launched cruise missiles, namely, the Kh-50, AS-23A/B (Kh-101/Kh-102), and SS-N-30 Kalibr with firing ranges of 1,500, 4,500 and 2,000 km respectively.

An enlarged derivative of the Kalibr, the Kalibr-M, is also under development and will feature an increased range of 4,500 km, and due to enter service in the mid-2020s.15 It will equip surface ships and submarines, with a ground-launched variant also under development.

Kalibr (NATO reporting name: SS-N-27 Sizzler) is a Russian cruise missile engineered and produced by the Yekaterinburg-based Novator Design Bureau (part of Almaz-Antey defense manufacturer). The Russian armed forces currently operate shipborne Kalibr-NK and submarine-launched Kalibr-PL missile modifications.

The Kalibr can be launched from a surface ship using a Vertical Launching System (VLS) or by submarines using torpedo tubes. The range of the Kalibr against ground targets (as of 2012) is 2,600 km, and against sea targets, the range is 375 km. According to other reports, the 3M14 has a range of 2,000 to 2,600 km with thermonuclear warheads.

The Kalibr cruise missile can be armed with a fragmentation-fuzed or penetrating high explosive warhead with TNT equivalent of 200-450 kg, or a tactical thermonuclear warhead of 50 kt.

Germany won’t excavate WWI tunnel containing hundreds of soldiers’ bodies

By Amarachi Orie and Nadine Schmidt, CNN
Sat February 11, 2023

More than 200 German soldiers died at the entrance of the Winterburg tunnel in France on May 4, 1917.

Francois Nascimbeni/AFP/Getty Images

CNN —

The remains of more than 200 German soldiers who were buried alive in a tunnel in northeastern France during the World War I will not be recovered.

The German government has instead decided to declare the burial site a war memorial and put it under state protection.

Germany’s war grave commission, the Volksbund, and the French government announced the decision at the Caverne du Dragon museum in northeastern France on Friday afternoon.

“Rescue efforts to reach the remains in 2021 and 2022 had proven very difficult,” a spokeswoman for the Volksbund told CNN on Friday, adding that there had been “several attempts” to open the “very deep and very long” tunnel, which is located in a nature reserve with “sandy ground still contaminated with ammunition.”

Although the Franco-German team managed to see as far as 64 meters (210 feet) down the tunnel, they “did not find any remains,” the spokesperson said.

Many WWI battles took place between the French armed forces and German troops positioned on the Chemin des Dames, or “Lady’s Way,” a crest between two valleys.

On May 4, 1917, during one of the biggest battles of the war, the French army was firing on German soldiers with heavy artillery. An artillery shell hit the entrance of the Winterberg tunnel on the Chemin des Dames, according to the Volksbund.

Some of the German troops, from the 111th Baden Reserve Infantry Regiment, fled further into the tunnel, where stored ammunition had exploded and toxic fumes were being released.

The soldiers created a barricade to try to protect themselves from the poisonous gases until they could be rescued, but heavy shelling prevented help from reaching them.

The tunnel’s entrance collapsed during the attack and just three soldiers out of an infantry of more than 200 were saved. The others suffocated, died of thirst or shot themselves.

Over the years, there had been numerous – including illegal – attempts to find the buried tunnel entrance in the state forest of Vauclair, according to the Volksbund.
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Last May, more than a century after the event and following years of work, the Volksbund and French partners used precise drilling to confirm the tunnel’s location, discovering a large cavity deep underground, with the burial site intact.

Volksbund, the German war graves commission, and French partners confimed the location of the Winterberg tunnel, in May last year.

Francois Nascimbeni/AFP/Getty Images

By designating the site a memorial, German and French authorities hope to dignify and protect the soldiers’ resting place. “This guarantees that the soldiers will continue to rest in peace,” said a Volksbund spokeswoman.

“In the past years and months we have been cooperating with our French partners in a spirit of trust,” said Dirk Backen, chief executive of the Volksbund.

“We are very grateful for this – and are pleased to be able to present a joint solution today,” he added.

Once the legal requirements for a war cemetery site are met, planning for the memorial site will begin, and the site could be inaugurated as early as next year, French and German officials said.

IT'S POLITICAL USE OF A SOCIAL CRIME
In Assam, crackdown on child marriages leaves trail of broken families

Relatives gather near the Mayong police station in India's Assam state as people allegedly involved in child marriages are being taken to a court on Feb 4. PHOTO: AFP

Debarshi Dasgupta and Nirmala Ganapathy

NEW DELHI – Jahanara Khatun is someone authorities claim to have rescued from the clutches of child marriage in the north-eastern state of Assam. But it was a knock on her door at around 11pm on Feb 5 from the police, who came to act seemingly on her behalf, that turned her “peaceful” life upside down.

Back in 2018, she was 17 years 3 months old when she fell in love with Mohammed Akhirul Hoque and chose to marry him. She gradually settled into married life, giving birth to a daughter in 2021.

Yet, for the authorities, she is a victim. India’s legislation against child marriage mandates a girl must be more than 18, and a boy 21, before marriage. The police therefore came to arrest her husband and father-in-law at their house in Bausatari, a village in Assam’s Goalpara district.

The swoop was part of a controversial statewide crackdown that began in the last week of January against child marriage, a social ill still prevalent in many parts of India across different communities due to patriarchy, lack of education and poverty.

With around 2,800 arrests, authorities have been compelled to convert a stadium and a detention centre for foreigners into temporary jails, even as they face criticism over retrospective punitive arrests that have split families from poor socioeconomic backgrounds, put their main breadwinners into jails and thrown their future into disarray.

Mr Hoque, who was a little more than 18 at the time of his marriage, had fallen foul of The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act. It bans a man above 18 from marrying a girl child.

The police did not find Mr Hoque, who works some 2,795km away in the southern city of Bangalore, but arrested his father Mohammed Amejuddin, 65, for allowing the marriage to go ahead. Ms Khatun’s father Mohammed Jahanuddin, 40, was also taken into custody from his house.

This intervention, however, has left Ms Khatun more worried than ever. She has no news about her husband, who has been untraceable, even switching off his phone to evade arrest. She and her daughter are, meanwhile, dependent on her brothers-in-law for support.

The state has said it is working on a rehabilitation policy for victims of child marriage but that is little consolation. “I had a peaceful life but the government has completely messed it up,” Ms Khatun told The Straits Times on the phone. “I want my father and father-in-law to be released and my husband to return safely,” she added.

It was on Jan 23 that Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party, announced a crackdown on child marriages, referring to worrying data from a government survey released last year. The percentage of women aged 15-19 who were mothers or pregnant in Assam was 11.7, compared to 6.8 for the country’s average.

Around 31.8 per cent of women aged 20-24 in the state were also married before they turned 18. This figure was 23.3 per cent for India.

There are also multiple instances where girls, often seen as a burden in poorer families, being forced into marriage against their will or being ill-treated at their husband’s home.

Yet, the arrests have prompted concern from child rights activists, the media and legal experts who argue the clampdown is hardly the right way to solve the problem that has deep-rooted social complexities.