Misplaced fears of an ‘evil’ ChatGPT obscure the real harm being done

John Naughton
Sat, 4 March 2023 


On 14 February, Kevin Roose, the New York Times tech columnist, had a two-hour conversation with Bing, Microsoft’s ChatGPT-enhanced search engine. He emerged from the experience an apparently changed man, because the chatbot had told him, among other things, that it would like to be human, that it harboured destructive desires and was in love with him.

The transcript of the conversation, together with Roose’s appearance on the paper’s The Daily podcast, immediately ratcheted up the moral panic already raging about the implications of large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-3.5 (which apparently underpins Bing) and other “generative AI” tools that are now loose in the world. These are variously seen as chronically untrustworthy artefacts, as examples of technology that is out of control or as precursors of so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI) – ie human-level intelligence – and therefore posing an existential threat to humanity.

Accompanying this hysteria is a new gold rush, as venture capitalists and other investors strive to get in on the action. It seems that all that money is burning holes in very deep pockets. Mercifully, this has its comical sides. It suggests, for example, that chatbots and LLMs have replaced crypto and web 3.0 as the next big thing, which in turn confirms that the tech industry collectively has the attention span of a newt.

The most likely outcome is that chatbots will eventually be viewed as a significant augmentation of human capabilities

The strangest thing of all, though, is that the pandemonium has been sparked by what one of its leading researchers called “stochastic parrots” – by which she means that LLM-powered chatbots are machines that continuously predict which word is statistically most likely to follow the previous one. And this is not black magic, but a computational process that is well understood and has been clearly described by Prof Murray Shanahan and elegantly dissected by the computer scientist Stephen Wolfram.

How can we make sense of all this craziness? A good place to start is to wean people off their incurable desire to interpret machines in anthropocentric ways. Ever since Joe Weizenbaum’s Eliza, humans interacting with chatbots seem to want to humanise the computer. This was absurd with Eliza – which was simply running a script written by its creator – so it’s perhaps understandable that humans now interacting with ChatGPT – which can apparently respond intelligently to human input – should fall into the same trap. But it’s still daft.

Related: Everything you wanted to know about AI – but were afraid to ask

The persistent rebadging of LLMs as “AI” doesn’t help, either. These machines are certainly artificial, but to regard them as “intelligent” seems to me to require a pretty impoverished conception of intelligence. Some observers, though, such as the philosopher Benjamin Bratton and the computer scientist Blaise Agüera y Arcas are less dismissive. “It is possible,” they concede, “that these kinds of AI are ‘intelligent’ – and even ‘conscious’ in some way – depending on how those terms are defined” but “neither of these terms can be very useful if they are defined in strongly anthropocentric ways”. They argue that we should distinguish sentience from intelligence and consciousness and that “the real lesson for philosophy of AI is that reality has outpaced the available language to parse what is already at hand. A more precise vocabulary is essential.”

It is. For the time being, though, we’re stuck with the hysteria. A year is an awfully long time in this industry. Only two years ago, remember, the next big things were going to be crypto/web 3.0 and quantum computing. The former has collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity, while the latter is, like nuclear fusion, still just over the horizon.

With chatbots and LLMs, the most likely outcome is that they will eventually be viewed as a significant augmentation of human capabilities (spreadsheets on steroids, as one cynical colleague put it). If that does happen, then the main beneficiaries (as in all previous gold rushes) will be the providers of the picks and shovels, which in this case are the cloud-computing resources needed by LLM technology and owned by huge corporations.

Given that, isn’t it interesting that the one thing nobody talks about at the moment is the environmental impact of the vast amount of computing needed to train and operate LLMs? A world that is dependent on them might be good for business but it would certainly be bad for the planet. Maybe that’s what Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the outfit that created ChatGPT, had in mind when he observed that “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies”.

Is hydrogen really a clean enough fuel to tackle the climate crisis?

Nina Lakhani
Tue, 7 March 2023 

Hydrogen is the smallest, lightest and most abundant molecule in the universe. On Earth, it does not occur by itself naturally, but can be separated from water (H2O) or hydrocarbon compounds (fossil fuels) like gas, coal and petroleum to be used as an energy source. It’s already used for rocket fuel, but it is now being pushed as a clean and safe alternative to oil and gas for heating and earthly modes of transport. Political support is mounting with almost $26bn of US taxpayer money available for hydrogen projects thanks to three recent laws – the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the Chips Act. Hydrogen is politically hot, but is it the climate solution that its cheerleaders are claiming?

Why all the hype about hydrogen?

The short answer is that the fossil fuel industry sees hydrogen as a way to keep on drilling and building new infrastructure, and has successfully deployed its PR and lobbying machines over the past few years to get policymakers thinking that hydrogen is a catch-all climate solution. Research by climate scientists (without fossil fuel links) has debunked industry claims that hydrogen should be a major player in our decarbonised future, though hydrogen extracted from water (using renewable energy sources) could – and should – play an important role in replacing the dirtiest hydrogen currently extracted from fossil fuels. It may also have a role in fuelling some transportation like long-haul flights and vintage cars, but the evidence is far from clear. However, with billions of climate action dollars up for grabs in the US alone, expect to see more lobbying, more industry-funded evidence and more hype.

What’s the difference between blue, grey, brown, pink and green hydrogen?

A green hydrogen production facility project in Africa at Namaqua Engineering in Vredendal with the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. 

Photograph: Esa Alexander/Reuters

Extracting hydrogen is energy intensive, so the source and how it’s done both matter. Currently, about 96% of the world’s hydrogen comes from coal (brown) and gas (grey), with the rest created from nuclear (pink) and renewable sources like hydro, wind and solar. Production of both grey and brown hydrogen release carbon dioxide (CO2) and unburnt fugitive methane into the atmosphere. This super-polluting hydrogen is what’s currently used as the chemical base for synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, plastics and steel among other industries.

Blue hydrogen is what the fossil fuel industry is most invested in, as it still comes from gas but ostensibly the CO2 would be captured and stored underground. The industry claims to have the technology to capture 80-90% of CO2, but in reality, it’s closer to 12% when every stage of the energy-intensive process is evaluated, according to a peer-reviewed study by scientists at Cornell University published in 2021. For sure better than nothing, but methane emissions, which warm the planet faster than CO2, would actually be higher than for grey hydrogen because of the additional gas needed to power the carbon capture, and likely upstream leakage. Notably, the term clean hydrogen was coined by the fossil fuel industry a few months after the seminal Cornell study found that blue hydrogen has a substantially larger greenhouse gas footprint than burning gas, coal or diesel oil for heating.

Green hydrogen is extracted from water by electrolysis – using electricity generated by renewable energy sources (wind, solar, hydro). Climate experts (without links to fossil fuels) say green hydrogen can only be green if new renewable sources are constructed to power hydrogen production – rather than drawing on the current grid and questionable carbon accounting schemes. The industry disagrees: “Strict additionality rules requiring electrolytic hydrogen to be powered by new renewable energy is not practical, especially in the early years, and will severely limit the development of hydrogen projects,” said BP America.

“There may be some small role in truly green hydrogen in a decarbonised future, but this is largely a marketing creation by the oil and gas industry that has been hugely overhyped,” said Robert Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, a co-author of the paper on blue hydrogen.Interactive

What’s at stake?

In addition to $26bn in direct financing for so-called hydrogen hubs and demo projects, another $100bn or so in uncapped tax credits could be paid out over the next few decades, so lots and lots of taxpayers’ money. Fossil fuel companies are also using hydrogen to justify building more pipelines, claiming that this infrastructure can be used for “clean hydrogen” in the future. But hydrogen is a highly flammable and corrosive element, and it would be costly to repurpose oil and gas infrastructure to make it safe for hydrogen. And while hydrogen is not a greenhouse gas, it is not harmless. It aggravates some greenhouse gases, for instance causing methane to stay in the atmosphere for longer.

The first offshore wind farm in the US began operations in late 2016 off Block Island in Rhode Island. Photograph: Michael Dwyer/AP

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in actual zero-emission solutions, but could be a disaster if the federal government pours scarce resources into infrastructure and technologies that could make the climate crisis worse and cause further public health harms,” said Sara Gersen, clean energy attorney at Earthjustice. “Sowing confusion about hydrogen is a delay tactic, and delay is the new denialism.”
Is there any role for hydrogen in a decarbonised future?

Yes, but a limited one – given that it takes more energy to produce, store and transport hydrogen than it provides when converted into useful energy, so using anything but new renewable sources (true green hydrogen) will require burning more fossil fuels.

According to the hydrogen merit ladder devised by Michael Liebreich, host of the Cleaning Up podcast, swapping clean hydrogen for the fossil fuel-based grey and brown stuff currently used for synthetic fertilisers, petrochemicals and steel is a no-brainer. The carbon footprint of global hydrogen production today is equivalent to Germany’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, so the sooner we swap to green hydrogen (created from new renewables) the better. This could also be useful for some transportation, such as long-haul flights and heavy machinery, and maybe to store surplus wind and solar energy – though none are slam dunks for hydrogen as there are alternative technologies vying for these markets, said Liebreich.

But for most forms of transport (cars, bikes, buses and trains) and heating there are already safer, cleaner and cheaper technologies such as battery-run electric vehicles and heat pumps, so there’s little or no merit in investing time or money with hydrogen. Howarth said: “Renewable electricity is a scarce resource. Direct electrification and batteries offer so much more, and much more quickly. It’s a huge distraction and waste of resources to even be talking about heating homes and passenger vehicles with hydrogen.”

Thousands of shacks gutted in Bangladesh Rohingya refugee camp fire

Blaze, now under control, leaves thousands of people homeless

Md. Kamruzzaman |05.03.2023 


DHAKA, Bangladesh

Thousands of temporary shelters were burnt in a fire that broke out at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh on Sunday, officials said.

The fire hit Camp 11 in Cox’s Bazar, a border district which hosts more than a million Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

There were no casualties, and a police official said the cause of the blaze was not clear, but it is likely because of gas cylinders used for cooking. The fire spread quickly as most of the homes are made of bamboo and tarpaulin.

The Armed Police Battalion, the force in charge of maintaining law and order in the refugee camps, said in a statement that nearly 2,000 tents were gutted and 12,000 Rohingya left homeless.

“The Rohingya would be shifted to different camp-based learning centers and other shelters under the supervision of Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner’s office, and donor agencies including the UNHCR and World Food Program will provide them food and other support,” said the statement.

The UNHCR in Bangladesh said Rohingya volunteers trained on firefighting, and local fire services brought the fire under control, adding that multiple shelters and facilities were destroyed.

Similar fires occurred at the camps in January 2022 and March 2021. While the blaze last year only damaged homes, the one in 2021 killed 15 community members and destroyed over 10,000 settlements.

Vase is first evidence of a real gladiator fight in Roman Britain

Leo Sands, Mar 08 2023

COLCHESTER MUSEUMS AND COLCHESTER CITY COUNCIL
The Colchester vase is believed to date to the late 2nd century.

Elaborately armed, two gladiators named Memnon and Valentinus faced each other in brutal combat almost 2000 years ago.

Historians have known since a clay vessel was discovered in 1853 that Memnon, an enslaved past champion who experts say was probably Black, won this match.

Valentinus, also enslaved, can be seen raising an index finger toward the sky, a gladiatorial gesture of submission equivalent to the waving of a white flag.

But unknown until now was where the match took place: Colchester, England.

Archaeologists say it is the only depiction of a real gladiator match that took place in Roman Britain.

While there are other artifacts suggesting that gladiators were in Britain, on the outer reaches of the empire in its heyday, none depicted specific matches taking place.

An analysis conducted by archaeologists collaborating across British universities reveals that the two gladiators almost certainly met for combat near where the pot was found - a city in what's now the eastern county of Essex.

"When you now look at this vase, you know that you're seeing real people on it. They fought here, in Colchester," which was known to the Romans as Camulodunum, Glynn Davis, a senior curator at Colchester Museums, said in a telephone interview Monday. The vase is believed to date to the late 2nd century.

"It was a revelation," he said.

COLCHESTER MUSEUMS AND COLCHESTER CITY COUNCIL
Archaeologists say it is the only depiction of a real gladiator match that took place in Roman Britain.

Because of the sophistication of the frieze, archaeologists previously assumed that the pot had been imported from elsewhere in the Roman Empire.

Archaeologists studying the lettering scratched onto the pot's surface and its clay material concluded that the description was carved while the clay was still soft before it was fired in a Colchester kiln.

That means, according to Davis, that Memnon and Valentinus met for battle nearby.

"The clay is like a fingerprint for where it's been made," said Davis, who worked alongside a team of experts to examine its composition. "It matched identically with the local clay."

A separate analysis of the Latin lettering inscribed across the pot's surface found that Memnon and Valentinus's story was spelled out before the pot entered the kiln and not scratched onto the surface later.

"We were looking at an inscription that couldn't have been scratched on after firing," he said. "The T's and the X's you can only achieve in soft clay. If you tried to do that in fired clay - it would chip."

The researchers concluded that the vase was commissioned, designed and fired locally, upending previous assumptions that it had been imported from elsewhere in Europe or that it may have been manufactured as a generic with details added afterward. "This can't have been a generic souvenir," Davis said.



Memnon had a heavy advantage in the fight, according to the vase's depiction. He carried a sword and a large shield and had a helmet that completely encased his head except for eyeholes, considerably better than his rival's weaponry and armour. The inscription says this was his ninth victory as a gladiator.

It is also highly likely that he was Black, said King's College London archaeologist John Pearce, who was involved in the research.

Memnon, probably a stage name, is an apparent reference to the King of the Ethiopians in Homer's Troy, Pearce said.

The mythological figure recurs throughout Roman literature and is frequently accompanied by a reference to his ethnicity or that of his companions.

"It seems to us plausible that the choice of name for this particular gladiator was influenced not only by his martial abilities but also by his skin colour," Pearce said via email.

"He could be a star performer brought a long distance or could himself have been born in Britain to parents from places far to the south who had come to the province as forced or willing migrants."

"Inscriptions and increasingly analysis of human skeletal remains show us the presence of individuals of Middle Eastern and African geographical origin in Roman period Britain, especially in the province's cities," Pearce added.

The vase shows Valentinus, Memnon's rival who appears to have been left-handed, armed with just a trident that has dropped to the ground. He wears only a padded sleeve and shoulder guard for protection.

Not shown on the pot, according to Pearce, is the match's referee - who would have been gesturing to Memnon to pause combat until the fight's sponsor decided whether to order the defeated combatant to be shown mercy or slain.

The crowd may have influenced that decision, cheering on behalf of the defeated gladiator if he had fought well - or encouraging Memnon to kill him. One thing we still don't know: Valentinus's fate.

With pails and mugs, Philippine residents clean up oil spill

MARCH 07, 2023

A volunteer dressed in personal protective equipment gathers the oil spill 

collected from the sunken fuel tanker MT Princess Empress, on the shore 

of Pola, in Oriental Mindoro province, Philippines, March 7, 2023.

Reuters

POLA, Philippines — Residents of a central Philippine province affected by an oil spill from a sunken tanker endured the powerful stench of petroleum as they cleaned it up using buckets and mugs while authorities raced to contain environmental damage.

Wearing personal protective equipment and masks, residents of the town of Pola in Oriental Mindoro, with the help of Philippine coast guard crew, collected debris soaked in oil and wiped thick sludge from rocks along the shore.

"Here in our area the oil is really thick and the smell is strong," said 34-year-old resident Maribel Famadico while cleaning along the shore with other volunteers.

Buckets used to clean up the oil spill from the sunken fuel tanker MT Princess Empress are placed on the shore of Pola, Oriental Mindoro province, Philippines, March 7, 2023.
PHOTO: Reuters

"There is so much oil that we become nauseous when we are not wearing protection. Many are feeling unwell because of the stench," she added.

Philippine authorities said on Monday (March 6) they believed they have found the tanker that sank off Oriental Mindoro last week and that they planned to deploy a remotely-operated autonomous vehicle to pinpoint its exact location.

The tanker, the MT Princess Empress, is thought to be lying at about 1,200 feet (366 metres) below sea level, off Oriental Mindoro province, though the information still needed to be verified, according to the environment ministry.

The vessel was carrying about 800,000 litres of industrial fuel oil when it suffered engine trouble on Feb 28 in rough seas.

Famadico said ridding the shore and rocks of oil will likely take days.

"[The oil] comes back with the tide. Yesterday we cleaned this area but there is more again today," she said.

Marine scientists at the University of the Philippines said about 36,000 hectares (88,958 acres) of coral reef, mangroves and sea-grass were potentially in danger of being affected by the oil slick.

Central Asia’s poorest farmers know the value of their land
Farmland and pastures across Central Asia are far less productive after decades of monocropping.

Mar 8, 2023

Depleted land needs more water, which is already insufficient across much of Central Asia. (David Trilling)

The soils of Central Asia yield far less meat, dairy and produce today than they did a few decades ago. While that is an undisputed driver of poverty, new research examining the relationship between poverty and soil management challenges the idea that the rural poor are shabby stewards of the land, and could foster novel approaches to soil restoration.

In a paper published this month, Alisher Mirzabaev of the University of Bonn and two Russian colleagues use household survey data from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to examine the "vicious cycles between poverty and environmental degradation."

Mirzabaev has previously calculated that reduced crop yields, lower livestock productivity, and increasing needs for costly inputs such as fertilizer and labor – all signs of land degradation – cost the Central Asian economies $6 billion a year; the land is 4.8 times less productive than it was in the early 1980s. Degraded land often needs more water, as well, to wash salts out of the topsoil.

But does poverty worsen soil degradation?

The poorest farming households, Mirzabaev and his coauthors found, are more likely to use their land sustainably, for example by reducing tillage (to cut down on fuel costs), diversifying and rotating crops. It stands to reason that farmers who are cash-poor have less money to spend on fuel and fertilizer and other environmentally unfriendly inputs: “Our results show that the poor households have adopted more SLM [sustainable land management] practices than their richer counterparts.”

SLM can be labor-intensive. But for the poorest farmers, who frequently live in rural areas with high unemployment, labor is often one thing they have in surplus.

This lack of alternative local work opportunities “reduces the opportunity cost of family labor, especially for women due to labor market inequalities, leading to increased allocation of family labor to farm production. From the view of land management, lack of non-farm employment opportunities may, thus, allow for the adoption of more labor-intensive SLM.”

In other words, the poorest farmers are putting more hours into tending the land by hand, doing less of the mechanized work that can deplete soils most rapidly.

The authors acknowledge their work could suffer a "survivorship bias," meaning that the farmers surveyed do not include those who have quit trying to farm depleted fields: "We are looking into the areas where land degradation has not trespassed the irreversibility points and thresholds beyond which no agricultural production is possible."

Forced labour victims protest in wheelchairs, reject South Korea deal on Japan

MARCH 07, 2023

Kim Seong-ju, a survivor of forced labour under Japan's 1910-1945 colonial occupation, leaves after a protest denouncing the government plan to resolve a dispute over compensating forced labor victims, at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, on March 7, 2023.

Reuters

SEOUL - Two elderly South Korean victims of wartime forced labour took to the streets in wheelchairs on Tuesday (March 7), saying they rejected a compensation deal announced this week, potentially complicating Seoul's efforts to end a diplomatic spat with Japan.

Under President Yoon Suk-yeol's plan, South Korea would compensate former forced labourers through an existing public foundation funded by South Korean private-sector companies, rather than seeking payments from Japan. The two victims, whose consent is required for the deal to proceed, rebuffed the proposal saying Tokyo should pay compensation and apologise.

Their opposition could mean that a proposal hailed as "groundbreaking" by US President Joe Biden may not be a done deal, prolonging a dispute that has undercut US-led efforts to present a unified front against China and North Korea.

The two women, Yang Geum-deok and Kim Sung-joo, both now aged 95, worked at a Mitsubishi Heavy aircraft factory in Nagoya, Japan when they were teens during World War II.

Living outside Seoul, the ailing women travelled to a demonstration at the parliament, joining hundreds of supporters including opposition lawmakers, who waved red cards and banners, calling Yoon's diplomacy "humiliating" and demanding the deal be withdrawn.

"We can forgive, if Japan tells us one word, we are sorry and we did wrong. But there's no such word," Kim said, with hands shaking by the effects of a stroke.

"The more I think about that, the more I cry," she said, escorted by her son.

On Tuesday, Yoon said the proposal was a result of meeting both countries' common interest.

Relations plunged to their lowest point in decades after South Korea's Supreme Court in 2018 ordered Japanese firms to pay reparations to former forced labourers. Fifteen South Koreans have won such cases, but none has been compensated.

Read Also

South Korea announces plan to compensate victims of Japan wartime forced labour

Japan has said the matter was settled under a 1965 treaty and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Monday his government's stance had not changed.

The two victims were part of so-called "Labour Corps" where young Korean girls were drafted to work in Japanese munitions factories during the war.

Kim had her finger chopped while cutting metal plates for fighter jets. During the day, Yang wiped rusted machine parts with thinner and alcohol but had no gloves, so her hands were bleeding at night.

After Japan lost the war in 1945, they returned home but didn't get paid for their 17-month-long labour stint.

Overall there are about 1,815 living victims of forced labour in South Korea, according to government data.

The compensation for each woman was estimated at around 210 million won (S$216,000), according to the Victims of Japanese Wartime Forced Labour support group.

Like Yang and Kim, some of the 15 plaintiffs say they will reject the government's plan, setting the stage for more legal battles.

"It is so unfair. I don't know where Yoon Suk-yeol is from. Is he truly a South Korean? I won't take that money even if I starve to death," said Yang, chanting "Yoon Suk-yeol out".

Source: Reuters

US Occupation Of Syria To Continue – OpEd

File photo of US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

 Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

March 8, 2023 
By M.K. Bhadrakumar


The sudden unannounced arrival of the top US military officer General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a dusty American base in Syria’s remote northeast on Friday may call to mind a famous quote by Dick Cheney, vice-president in the George W Bush presidency: “The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is.”

According to eyewitness accounts, as recently as last week, on 27 February, US troops transported at least 34 tankers filled with stolen Syrian oil through the illegal Al-Mahmoudiya border crossing to their bases in Iraq. In the estimation of the Syrian foreign ministry, the cumulative losses incurred by the country’s oil and gas sector on account of theft and other US actions were to the tune of $107 billion as of August last year.

Oil is a unique mineral that anaesthetises thought, blurs vision, corrupts. But according to a Reuters report, Milley’s visit was about something else than oil — purportedly “to assess efforts to prevent a resurgence” of the Islamic State militant group and “review safeguards for American forces against attacks, including from drones flown by Iran-backed militia.”

Now, that is a stretch for two reasons — one, there are only around 900 US troops all in all in Syria and Milley doesn’t have to undertake such routine mission; two, there is actually no history of the Islamic State [ISIS] having ever attacked the US forces in Syria.

On the contrary, the folklore among regional states is that the US mentors the Islamic State, gives training to the cadres of the shadowy militant group at the remote American base at Al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi border, and even provides logistical support to the group’s operations in Syria’s desert region.

It is unclear whether Milley met with commanders of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that have been the main ally of US forces in north-eastern Syria.

One plausible explanation will be that Milley came on White House instructions against the backdrop of a legislation to end the US involvement in Syria that will be up for a vote in the US Congress this week. US Congressman Matt Gaetz (Republican from Florida) who last month introduced a War Powers Resolution to direct President Joe Biden to remove the US Armed Forces from Syria has frontally attacked Milley’s visit.

Gaetz said in a statement on Friday, “If General Milley wants this war so bad, he should explain what we are fighting for and why it is worth American treasure and blood. An America First foreign policy demands realism, rational thought, and seriousness.”

He pointed out that “Syria is a quagmire of a tinderbox. America has no discernible interest in continuing to fund a fight where alliances shift faster than the desert sands.”

But Milley is unfazed. Asked by reporters if he believed the Syria deployment is worth it, Milley said, ”I happen to think that’s important.” Milley added, “So I think that an enduring defeat of ISIS and continuing to support our friends and allies in the region … I think those are important tasks that can be done.”

Congressman Gaetz tabled the draft legislation following a press release by the US Central Command on February 17 announcing that four service members were wounded during a helicopter raid in northeastern Syria when an explosion was triggered from the ground.

The bottom line is that there is no rationale other than geopolitical considerations for the continued US occupation of about a third of Syrian territory. These considerations are principally: Need to keep US footprint in the strategic Eastern Mediterranean;

US’ troubled relations with Turkey;

 
Israel’s security;

 
Russian bases in Syria;

 

the Russian-Syrian-Iranian axis; and, most important,

 
the geo-strategy to keep Syria weak and divided for the foreseeable future.

A commentary last year in the government-owned China Daily poignantly captured the Syrian tragedy: “The alleged plunder of Syrian oil by the United States and its proxies will only worsen conditions in the sanctions-hit country as it struggles to rebuild after years of war… consumption of Syria’s limited resources by the hegemonic power and its proxy groups in the troubled nation will encourage militancy and undermine efforts to stabilise the wider region.”

The commentary cited the Syrian Foreign Ministry to the effect that the presence of US forces in the country’s northeast and the plundering of Syrian oil is an attempt to obstruct a political solution and undermines stability and security. It said “the way Washington is acting and its unlimited support of terrorist groups show the hypocrisy of the US in the region, a situation that is no longer acceptable morally or politically.”

The Assad government’s normalisation process with the regional states in the Gulf — especially, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar — as well as Egypt and Turkey has put the US in a predicament. It is particularly galling for the US that Russia is mediating the Turkish-Syrian rapprochement.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov announced on Monday that his country, Turkey, Iran, and Syria are discussing organising a meeting of their respective foreign ministers — “We are working on it. I can say that we agreed not to disclose details for the time being; not everything is so simple; we must work discretely on the principles of quiet diplomacy,” he added in an oblique reference to devious attempts to derail the process.

Suffice it to say that Washington is increasingly left with no option but to stir up the Syrian pot again and create turmoil with a view to create an alibi for the continued occupation of Syria. The Syrian government has drawn attention to this in a statement condemning Milley’s “illegal visit to an illegal US military base.”

The statement alleged that “the international community knows very well that Daesh [ISIS] is an illegitimate offspring of US intelligence… [and] the support provided by the US forces to terrorist and separatist militias in the areas of its occupation is a declared American stance aimed at prolonging the terrorist war against Syria for goals that are no longer hidden from anyone.”

Milley himself has been candid that the US military occupation must continue. Given Milley’s professional reputation as a ‘yes’ man, who is acutely conscious of the ‘wind factor’ (as the Chinese would say) in the corridors of power in DC at any given time, it is entirely conceivable that President Biden will now get exactly the feedback and recommendation he needs to block the momentum in the US Congress for withdrawal of American troops from Syria.

The Moscow daily Vedmosti reported, citing an informed diplomatic source, that Assad plans to pay an official visit to Russia in mid-March. Assad last visited Russia in September 2021.

The Russian daily estimated that humanitarian issues relating to the recent earthquake and Russian assistance would be the focus of the talks, but it is also “important for the parties to compare each other’s positions and develop common approaches” on a range of political issues. Russia, Turkey, Iran and Syria have a common position calling for an end to the 7-year old US occupation of Syria.

This article was published by Indian Punchline

SHOULD HAVE INCLUDED POT
Canada moves to expunge historical abortion, indecency convictions

AFP
Published March 7, 2023

Canada's Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino, seen in November 2022, announced convictions that would be expunged - Copyright AFP Louisa GOULIAMAKI

Canada on Tuesday moved to expunge historical convictions for abortions or indecency — laws that are no longer on the books and that have traditionally harmed women and members of the LGBTQ community.

The announcement builds on a 2018 law that sought to correct past injustices and created a path for individuals to clear their criminal records.

A year earlier, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau officially apologized for government policies and practices that led to oppression and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told a news conference on Tuesday that “convictions under the Criminal Code for bawdy houses and indecency-based offences are now eligible for expungement.”

“Historically, Canada has criminalized venues that were considered to be safe spaces for 2SLGBTQI+ communities, such as bath houses, nightclubs and swingers’ clubs,” he said.

“And as a result, owners, employees and patrons of these venues were convicted under the Criminal Code unjustly.”

Mendicino also announced that anyone convicted of abortion-related offences would be eligible for expungement.

Canada’s high court struck down restrictions on abortions in 1988, while bawdy house offences were repealed in 2019.

Applying for an expungement order is free, and family members or trustees can apply on behalf of people who have died.

WHY NOT CHECHENS

US intelligence sees 'pro-Ukraine group' behind Nord Stream sabotage: report

Issued on: 07/03/2023 -

Gas leaking from the damaged Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022 

© Handout / DANISH DEFENCE/AFP/File

Washington (AFP) – US officials have seen new intelligence that indicates a "pro-Ukrainian group" was responsible for the sabotage last year of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

In a cautious report that did not identify the source of the intelligence or the group involved, the Times said the US officials had no evidence implicating Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in the pipeline bombing.

But the attack benefitted Ukraine by severely damaging Russia's means of reaping millions by selling natural gas to Western Europe.

At the same time, it added to the pressure of high energy prices on key Ukrainian allies in Western Europe, particularly Germany.

The intelligence suggested the perpetrators behind the sabotage were "opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia", the Times report said.

US officials had no indication of who exactly took part and who organized and paid for the operation, which would have required skilled divers and explosives experts.

They believed those involved were probably Ukrainian or Russian nationals, and that none were from the United States or Britain.

Rented yacht

German investigators believed the unidentified group were made up of five men and one woman using professionally falsified passports, according to a separate report by several German media.

German officials had identified the boat suspected to have been used in the attack, according to the broadcasters ARD, SWR and weekly Zeit.

The yacht in question is said to have been rented out by a company based in Poland, belonging to two Ukrainians, per the German report, which referred only to sources in multiple countries.

The commando group are said to have set sail from the north German port of Rostock on September 6, 2022 and was localised the following day on the Danish island of Christianso in the Baltic.

The yacht was subsequently returned to the owner uncleaned, with investigators able to find traces of explosives on the table in the cabin, according to the detailed report.

The pipelines were ruptured by subsea explosives on September 26, seven months after Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

US officials have "no firm conclusions" about the intelligence, "leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services", the Times said.

The lack of a firm suspect meant international intelligence officials had not ruled out the possibility of a "false flag" operation to link the attack to Ukraine, per the German media.

'Wrong to speculate'

Authorities in Germany, Sweden and Denmark have opened probes into the incident.

A spokeswoman for the German government said it had "taken note" of the New York Times' report, referring back to the ongoing investigation.

"There is an ongoing preliminary investigation in Sweden, so I do not intend to comment on those reports," Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told reporters late Tuesday.

Speaking at the same press conference, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg echoed the remarks, saying it would be "wrong to speculate" before the investigations were completed.

In February, veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the United States was behind the operation to bomb the Nord Stream pipelines and that Norway assisted.

The White House blasted Hersh's report, which cited an unnamed source, as "complete fiction."

© 2023 AFP