Canada revs up its EV batteries manufacturing

Mathiew LEISER
Thu, 30 March 2023 


As the world accelerates toward emissions-free driving, Canada is making a big push into batteries for electric vehicles -- touting tax incentives, bountiful critical minerals and clean energy to attract multinationals.

Its efforts appear to be paying off with companies such as Volkswagen and Stellantis opening plants and more than Can$18 billion (US$13 billion) in investment attracted to the sector, which is emerging as second only to top battery manufacturer China.

This week Ottawa doubled down with the introduction of a 30 percent tax credit for new machinery and equipment used to manufacture clean technologies, and to mine or recycle cobalt, lithium, nickel and other critical minerals used in EV batteries.


"This is not just a new chapter. It's almost a new book we're writing on the automotive sector in Canada," Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said after announcing in early March that Volkswagen's first North American battery factory would be built in St. Thomas, Ontario.

The Germany-based auto giant is also the first new manufacturer to set up shop in Canada in 35 years.

Multinational automaker Stellantis and LG Energy Solution have also partnered on a new battery plant in Canada, while French tire manufacturer Michelin is expanding its local facility.

And General Motors has signed a longterm agreement with Brazilian mining giant Vale for supplies of Canadian nickel for use in EV batteries.

"Canada has gone from fifth to second in the world in terms of our battery supply chain," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau boasted, referring to the latest ranking by research firm BloombergNEF, which placed the country just behind China.

Canada owes this position in part to its "large raw material resources and mining activity," says the report.

"Making the greenest vehicles in the world is really our intention to attract more investment," said Champagne, as the West seeks to bring back manufacturing lost in past decades to China, which now controls 75 percent of the world's production of advanced lithium-ion batteries.

This handout picture provided by Sayona Quebec shows an employee in front of a lithium deposit at the company's lithium complex in La Corne, Quebec © Mathieu Dupuis / SAYONA/AFP

- Advantage Canada -

Sarah Houde, of economic development agency Propulsion Quebec, said Canada is one of the world's only countries "that has all the minerals necessary for the production of batteries."

The relative proximity of its mines to battery factories and auto assembly plants in both Canada and the United States is also a plus.

"Being close to the major US market... is a key competitive advantage," said Brett Lynch, chief executive of Australian mining company Sayona, which has just started a lithium operation in Quebec.

According to the International Energy Agency, demand for essential minerals could quadruple or even increase sixfold by 2040.

Another reason, and "probably the most important," adds Lynch, lies in the province's abundant and cheap hydroelectricity.

"Nowhere else on this planet has such plentiful, cost-effective and low-polluting green energy," he says. According to government data, 99 percent of Quebec's energy is clean.

Electric school buses are seen on the assembly line of the Lion Electric plant in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, as Canada gears up for increased EV battery manufacturing © Derrick CAKPO / AFP

- Battery recycling -

Clean energy is also the cornerstone of Ottawa's climate plan, with incentives worth about Can$80 billion aimed at spurring investments in non-emitting electricity generation, green technologies and mining over the next decade.

In particular it is pushing the recycling of electric batteries in order to create a circular supply chain.

Several factories are already in place in Canada and make it possible to recycle 95 percent of the strategic metals present in a battery while using "97 percent less water than extraction and refining per ton of battery material" and polluting less, says Louie Diaz of recycling company Li-Cycle.

Canada is also hoping to tap into some of the billions of dollars announced by Washington for electric vehicles, batteries and renewable energy projects.

Li-Cycle, for example, received in February US$375 million from the Pentagon.

Such investments are a reminder too that Canada will have to maintain a "sustained, accelerated pace," argues Houde, if it does not want to "get caught short of other countries."

maw/amc/mlm

Nuclear Restraint

Tanzeela Khalil
March 19, 2023

Pakistan and India have a longstanding and complex relationship marked by political, military and territorial disputes. India’s growing alliances and strategic cooperation with several countries, particularly the United States, has created imbalance of power in the South Asian region leading to increased tensions and instability vis-à-vis its nuclear neighbour Pakistan. America has been providing military arsenal to India, including advanced weapon systems and training, which increases India’s military capability as well as the risk of military conflict with Pakistan. India with a larger military has remained engaged in several military conflicts with Pakistan in the past, posing a constant threat of aggression.

The most recent Indian nuclear brinkmanship, during 2019 Pulwama-Balakot crisis, reflected a resolve at Indian side not to hesitate from escalating the conflict to a nuclear level. The Western accommodation of India’s irrational actions has given impetus to its aggressive doctrines. Pakistan, on the other hand, exercised restraint and prevented the crisis from escalating. Pakistan’s restraint, however, should not be mistaken for its inability to respond to any military aggression from India, rather it should be seen and acknowledged as responsible nuclear behavior.

Pakistan’s minimal nuclear capability provides a credible deterrent against Indian military aggression. Given India’s ever-increasing conventional and nuclear capability—thanks to unbridled simultaneous access to Western and Russian suppliers—the Pakistan must continue to maintain the credibility of its nuclear arsenal by improving the reliability of its weapons, and enhancing the survivability of its nuclear forces. Pakistan continues to maintain a robust, secure, and flexible nuclear command and control system to ensure that its nuclear weapons always remain under centralised control unlike India where nuclear capable missile systems are being “accidentally” fired.

India does not seem to be at peace with a stable nuclear deterrence with Pakistan and has always tried to create and exploit space for conventional war. India, in its desire to dominate the region, remains dismissive of the deterrent equation that has emerged over the past several decades. Indian unwillingness to be governed under a deterrent relationship is manifested in its adoption of provocative conventional doctrines like the Cold Start (CSD) and responding to Pakistan’s corrective countermeasures (Nasr) with counter-threats of revising its N-doctrine and adopting preemptive counterforce options.

If Pakistan were to give up its considered approach of restraint and responsibility and adopt an approach as aggressive as that of India, Pakistan retains several options to reciprocate the Indian nuclear-rattling. Without necessarily engaging in arms race and quantitatively improving its nuclear forces, Pakistan can counter Indian threats of preemptive counterforce targeting by moving away from its known policy of keeping the nuclear warheads and delivery systems in a de-mated form. Such a measure is likely to result in the repetition of concerns over these weapons falling into the wrong hands. However, Pakistan’s professional operationalisation of its nuclear deterrence without any known safety or security lapses should be reassuring.

As the readiness of Pakistan nuclear forces increases, adopting higher alert levels could also become a possibility, if and when the Indian threat of preemptive misadventure becomes imminent. While alert levels that dictate launch on warning protocols may not be pragmatic in the peculiar South Asian geography, launch under attack and Launch on Launch will start to appear the only viable available option for Pakistan to maintain credibility of its nuclear deterrent.

All the measures make perfect sense under the Cold War nuclear deterrence playbook. But their replication in the South Asian environment—however inevitable it becomes—could be much more dangerous than similar actions that maintained the uneasy peace during the Cold War. Imagine the March 2022 Indian “accidental firing” of Brahmos missile occurring in an environment where Pakistan maintained a Launch on Launch posture; all hell could have broken lose.

Pakistan’s restrained nuclear behavior merits Indian reciprocity rather than its continued nuclear bluster and never-ending dismissal of Pakistan’s nuclear capability. Pakistan has been unilaterally shouldering the responsibility of maintaining regional peace, which should not be taken for granted.

A Radical Rethink of the Mars Rover Could Be Key to Human Settlement

What if we could explore subsurface environments just as easily as we’ve been able to explore the surface?

BY LAURENCE TOGNETTI

AND UNIVERSE TODAY

MARCH 18, 2023

NASA

Planetary exploration, specifically within our own Solar System, has provided a lifetime of scientific knowledge about the many worlds beyond Earth. However, this exploration, thus far, has primarily been limited to orbiters and landers/rovers designed for surface exploration of the celestial bodies they visit. But what if we could explore subsurface environments just as quickly as we’ve been able to explore the surface, and could some of these subsurface dwellings not only shelter future astronauts but host life, as well?

These are questions that a team of researchers at the University of Arizona hope to answer as they examine new technologies that could potentially aid both human and robotic exploration of planetary subsurface environments, including lava tubes, lava caves, and even subsurface oceans. This research comes at a particularly unique time with the NASA Artemis missions preparing to send humans back to the Moon in 2025, then hopefully to Mars someday.

“Lava tubes and caves would make perfect habitats for astronauts because you don’t have to build a structure; you are shielded from harmful cosmic radiation, so all you need to do is make it pretty and cozy,” said Wolfgang Fink, who is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UArizona, and lead author of the study.

For the study, the researchers introduced a dynamically deployed communication network (DDCN) that wirelessly connects robot explorers through a mesh topology network which not only lets each robot explorer work autonomously but also as a team, as the network grants them unfettered communication with each other. This type of system is essential since the geological structure being explored might not be able to relay radio signal commands from astronauts on the outside to the robot explorers on the inside, so an autonomous system could be the best option to achieve mission success. The researchers refer to the DDCN as “a Hansel & Gretel-inspired breadcrumb style” communication network based on how the system is used.

“If you remember the book, you know how Hansel and Gretel dropped breadcrumbs to make sure they’d find their way back,” explained Dr. Fink, who is also the founder and director of the Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory at Caltech and UArizona. “In our scenario, the ‘breadcrumbs’ are miniaturized sensors that piggyback on the rovers, which deploy the sensors as they traverse a cave or other subsurface environment.”

Along with the prospects to act as shelter for astronauts, lava tubes and lava caves could also pose astrobiological relevance, as well, as a 2020 paper suggested potential life could evolve within such environments that are shielded from the harsh cosmic radiation.


Image of a lava pit on Mars taken by the HiRISE camera. The pit opening, also called a skylight, is approximately 35 meters (115 feet) across. The pit’s shadow helped scientists estimate that the pit’s depth is approximately 20 meters (65 feet) beneath the surface.

NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

This study builds on previous research undertaken by Dr. Fink, known as tier-scalable reconnaissance, with this study creating a sort of chain of command for the robot explorers without input from human controllers. For example, an orbiter would autonomously control a blimp that’s traversing the surface, which autonomously controls one or more rovers or landers conducting tasks directly on the ground.

Such an autonomous, chain-of-command-like system is already being tested on NASA’s Perseverance rover as it commands its helicopter counterpart, Ingenuity. A proposed mission to explore Saturn’s moon, Titan, could have potentially involved this autonomous system and would have involved an orbiter, balloon, and lander in exploring Titan’s hydrocarbon, methane seas. Unfortunately, the mission was not selected due to funding.

Despite not being selected, the proposed Titan mission demonstrates one of the benefits of the breadcrumb-style approach in that the robotic explorers using this method are able to explore both underground and underwater. Dr. Fink noted that while this technology could prove useful for search and rescue efforts for natural disasters, he also said one of the biggest challenges is transmitting the data from the subsurface environment back to the surface. But the purpose of the DCCN concept is to overcome this issue.

“Once deployed, our sensors automatically establish a nondirected mesh network, which means each node updates itself about each node around it,” said Dr. Fink, who first presented the DDCN idea in a 2019 proposal to NASA.

“They can switch between each other and compensate for dead spots and signal blackouts,” said Dr. Mark A. Tarbell, a senior research scientist in Dr. Fink’s laboratory and a co-author of the study. “If some of them die, there still is connectivity through the remaining nodes, so the mother rover never loses connection to the farthest node in the network.”

For underwater robotic explorers, the lander above the surface—whether floating on a Titan lake or resting on the ice of Europa—would be connected to the submersible via a long cable with communications nodes that could boost any signal trying to get back to the lander. The individual nodes could also have the capability to collect data on their own, such as temperature, pressure, and salinity, and take the data into the cable and send it back to the lander, notes Dr. Fink.


Artist illustration of a future submersible exploring Europa’s ocean.NASA

“Imagine you make it to Europa, you melt your way through miles of ice, make it down to the subsurface ocean, where you find yourself surrounded by alien life, but you have no way of getting data back to the surface,” said Dr. Fink. “That’s the scenario we need to avoid.”

There have been several proposals for sending a lander and even a submersible to Europa, but nothing has been approved as of yet.

How will lava tubes assist in future human and robotic exploration as humanity ventures out farther into the cosmos, and could these subsurface environments host life? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

This article was originally published on Universe Today by Laurence Tognetti. Read the original article here.

 

Silicon Valley Bank UK arm hands out £15m in bonuses days after £1 rescue

Between £15m and £20m in bonus payments were made to staff at SVB UK this week after being signed off by the bank's new owner, HSBC, Sky News learns.

Mark Kleinman
City editor @MarkKleinmanSky
Saturday 18 March 2023 


The British arm of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB UK) has handed out millions of pounds in employee bonuses just days after its insolvency was averted through a Bank of England-orchestrated rescue deal.

Sky News has learnt that the payouts to staff including its senior executives were signed off by HSBC, SVB UK's new owner, earlier this week.

Sources described the bonus pool as "modest", and said it totalled between £15m and £20m.

It was unclear on Saturday how much had been awarded to Erin Platts, the UK bank's chief executive or her senior colleagues.

One insider said the bonus payments were a signal of HSBC's confidence in the talent base at its new subsidiary and that the buyer had been keen to honour previously agreed payments in order to help retain key staff.

Employing about 700 people in Britain, SVB UK is a profitable business but was brought to the brink of collapse last weekend by the travails of its American parent company.

Had it not been acquired solvently, the bonuses would not have been paid this week, according to insiders.

One pointed out that stock held by senior executives and other employees had been rendered worthless by SVB UK's near-collapse.

In the US, its banking arm has been taken into government ownership and its holding company, SVB Financial Group, has now filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it seeks buyers for its other assets.

Read more:
HSBC boss says decision to buy SVB UK took just five hours
Tech bosses show relief over Silicon Valley Bank rescue
Analysis: The inside story of the codenames and secret talks which led to bank buyout 'triumph'

Bonuses were also paid to its US staff just hours before the Santa Clara-based bank collapsed, according to reports last week.

An emergency auction in which Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, played a pivotal role drew interest from challenger banks including Oaknorth and The Bank of London.

HSBC, Europe's biggest lender, struck a deal before markets opened in London on Monday to buy SVB UK for £1.

It was given a waiver from bank ring-fencing rules introduced after the 2008 financial crisis.

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said the rescue had been critical to preserving funding to some of the UK's most promising start-up companies.

"The UK's tech sector is genuinely world-leading and of huge importance to the British economy, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs," he said.

"We have worked urgently to deliver on that promise and find a solution that will provide SVB UK's customers with confidence.

"[This] ensures customer deposits are protected and can bank as normal, with no taxpayer support."

The government had been lobbied intensively last weekend by hundreds of tech entrepreneurs about the parlous state of SVB UK.

They warned of "an existential threat to the UK tech sector", adding: "The Bank of England's assessment that SVB going into administration would have limited impact on the UK economy displays a dangerous lack of understanding of the sector and the role it plays in the wider economy, both today and in the future."

The founders warned Mr Hunt that the collapse of SVB UK would "cripple the sector and set the ecosystem back 20 years".

"Many businesses will be sent into involuntary liquidation overnight," they wrote.

Sky News revealed this week that Ms Platts, who has worked in the lender's British operations since 2007, would remain in her job following talks with Ian Stuart, the HSBC UK chief executive.

SVB UK's independent directors, who include chairman Darren Pope, are also expected to stay on under HSBC's ownership.

That indicates HSBC's intention to enable the technology-focused lender to operate with some degree of autonomy on an ongoing basis.

However, the Silicon Valley Bank brand may disappear in the UK, depending upon its fate in the US, one insider said.

The turmoil at SVB has threatened to escalate into a much broader banking crisis, with the Financial Times reporting on Friday evening that UBS is in talks to take over part or all of its Zurich-based peer, Credit Suisse.

In the US, a group of large lenders including Bank of American and JP Morgan provided a $30bn deposit lifeline to First Republic on Thursday.

However, its shares continued to slump on Friday, raising renewed fears for its health.

A spokesman for SVB UK declined to comment on the bonus payments handed out this week

UK
John Lewis 'exploring' plan to change staff-owned model, reports say

The John Lewis Partnership is the UK's largest employee-owned business.

Credit: PA

Sunday 19 March 2023 

The John Lewis Partnership (JLP) is reported to be exploring a plan to change its staff-owned model as a way of attracting investment.

The retail giant - which runs the department store chain and the Waitrose supermarket arm - last week cautioned over potential job cuts as it told staff it will not hand out a bonus, for only the second time since 1953 after a hefty loss.

According to The Sunday Times, chairwoman Dame Sharon White is in the early stages of exploring a plan to change its mutual structure in an attempt to raise between £1-2 billion of new investment.

The sale of a minority stake could require a change to the John Lewis constitution, which would have to be voted on by its partnership council - a group of about 60 staff.
John Lewis to give free meals to staff to help with rising cost of living

Any money raised through selling shares would go into the business, rather than the pockets of staff.

A JLP spokesperson said: "We've always said we would seek partnerships to help fund our transformation and exciting growth plans. We've done this with Ocado in the past and now with abrdn.

"Our partners, who own the business, will be the first to hear about any developments."

The business was born when John Lewis opened a small draper's shop on Oxford Street, London, in 1864.

His son, John Spedan Lewis, created the partnership more than 70-years-ago as an experiment into a better way of doing business by including staff in decision making, the firm's website says.

The JLP is the UK's largest employee-owned business, with its retail brands owned in trust by its 80,000 partners.

 

Pak govt to consult legal team for declaring Imran Khan's party ‘proscribed’ outfit: Sanaullah

'Weapons, petrol bombs, etc have been recovered from the residence of Imran Khan which is enough evidence to file a case against the PTI for being a militant organisation'

Imran Khan

File image

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PTI   |   Islamabad   |   Published 19.03.23

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Pakistan Interior Minister Rana Sanuallah has said that the government plans to consult experts on initiating a process to declare Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party a “proscribed” outfit after police claimed to have seized weapons and petrol bombs from the former premier's residence in Lahore.

Leaders of the ruling alliance lashed out at Khan who travelled from Lahore to Islamabad on Saturday to mark his presence at a district court here, amidst mayhem and chaos, as his supporters clashed with police.

While Khan was in Islamabad, over 10,000 armed Punjab police personnel launched a major operation at his Zaman Park residence in Lahore and arrested dozens of his supporters and claimed to have seized weapons and petrol bombs.

Interior Minister Sanuallah said at a press conference on Saturday that the government would consult its legal team to assess whether a process could be initiated to declare the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party a proscribed group, Dawn newspaper reported.

“Terrorists were hiding in Zaman Park. Weapons, petrol bombs, etc have been recovered from the residence of Imran Khan which is enough evidence to file a case against the PTI for being a militant organisation,” Sanaullah said.

On the government’s plan to initiate the process to ban Khan’s party, the minister said: “Primarily it is a judicial process to declare any party proscribed. However, we will consult our legal team on the issue.” Separately, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif appeared to agree with the assertion by his niece PMN-L Senior Vice President Maryam Nawaz that Khan’s party is a “militant organisation”.

“If anyone had any doubt, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Niazi’s antics of the last few days laid bare his fascist and militant tendencies," he said in a tweet.

Maryam said Khan was afraid of going to jail.

“I wonder if he calls himself a politician. Politicians are not afraid of going to jail and accountability. Only thieves and terrorists do. Fear of arrest shows cases against him (Imran) are genuine,” she said and taunted the court on marking the attendance of Khan in the Toshakhana case without his appearance before it.

“He is a coward as he left the court without marking his attendance”.

Many PML-N Cabinet members held pressers to justify the police action against Khan and chided his party’s “hooliganism” at the Islamabad judicial complex, according to the newspaper.

Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar told reporters that in his 30-year professional career as a lawyer, he had never witnessed a court seeking a signature (from a suspect) in a vehicle to mark his attendance like in the case of Imran Khan.

“Don’t make a joke of your judicial system,” Tarar said.

Federal Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb also took on the judiciary for giving a “bundle package of bail” to Khan.

“Those terrorists who attacked police, the judicial system and the state got a bundle package of bail. This gives a message that he (Khan) is above the Constitution and law,” she said.

Aurangzeb said that followers of Khan had not thrown petrol bombs on police and rangers alone, but they did so on the court orders as well. All state institutions are responsible for maintaining the writ of the government, she asserted.

“Today, again law and court’s sanctity were trampled. He is trying to influence the court by bringing the people there. The court must take notice of it, otherwise, other political parties will follow suit,” Minister for Climate Change and Pakistan Peoples Party leader Sherry Rehman said.

Khan arrived at the Islamabad Judicial Complex from Lahore on Tuesday to appear before the court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Zafar Iqbal to attend proceedings on a complaint filed by the Election Commission of Pakistan for allegedly concealing details of gifts in his assets declarations.

Khan went back to Lahore after waiting for hours at the entrance of the court as police were unable to clear the way occupied by his supporters.

Finally, the judge agreed to let the former premier mark his attendance on a document from his vehicle as the hearing in the Toshakhana case was adjourned till March 30. 

How U.S. Evangelicals Helped Homophobia Flourish in Africa

Anti-gay sentiment had previously existed on the continent, but white American religious groups have given it a boost.

By Caleb Okereke, a Nigerian journalist and the co-founder and managing editor at Minority Africa. 

Members of the transgender and LGBTQ community light candles as they pay tribute to victims of hate crimes in Uganda and all over the world, in Kampala, Uganda, on Nov. 23, 2019.

Members of the transgender and LGBTQ community light candles as they pay tribute to victims of hate crimes in Uganda and all over the world, in Kampala, Uganda, on Nov. 23, 2019. SUMY SADRUNI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

ARGUMENT

An expert's point of view on a current event.

MARCH 19, 2023, 2:00 AM

Uganda’s parliament is set to debate a new anti-gay bill next week, as the country’s president called for a “medical opinion” on the deviancy of homosexuals. The bill, besides criminalizing homosexuality, also criminalizes the “promotion” and “abetting” of homosexuality and follows a January parliamentary investigation into an alleged promotion of homosexuality in schools. It’s no surprise, given how rampant anti-gay sentiment is in the country.

In September, I came across a video that was going viral on Twitter in Uganda. In the video, 26-year-old Elisha Mukisa, who is reported to have been previously imprisoned on defilement charges, speaks for a little over eight minutes detailing how he was lured as a minor into acting in gay porn by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG)—a nongovernmental organization (NGO) based in Kampala working to support and defend LGBTQ+ persons in the country.

The video caught my attention for several reasons. The first was the anti-gay rhetoric it catalyzed in the following days and the corresponding moral panic. In the ensuing conversation on social media, SMUG was defined as a threat to children that parents had to watch out for. One Twitter user, @Ashernamanya, wrote: “Uganda must be for God Almighty not for Bum lickers the Gays. SMUG an NGO is recruiting young children into Homosexuality and acting the gay. They need to be arrested.”

The previous month, the Ugandan government had shut down the organization. The country’s NGO board released a statement after the announcement, claiming that SMUG’s registration was rejected for being “undesirable.” Mukisa alleged in this video that the shutdown was because of evidence he had provided to the NGO board.

The second reason the video kindled my interest was that it added to the growing list of instances of mass media being weaponized in Uganda to propagate the “ex-gay” narrative, in which a person claims to have been “lured” and “recruited” into homosexuality. It was also organized by the Family Life Network’s Stephen Langa, who in March 2009 put together a similar seminar called “Exposing the Homosexuals’ Agenda.” The language and presentation of luring and recruitment (as though it were a job listing) were not, in fact, novel to my ears, and it is a phenomenon I have seen across African news media.

It has deep links to white evangelical Christianity and is an export of a made-in-the-USA movement and ideology that is polarizing African countries and harming and endangering LGBTQ+ people.

While it looked innovative, it was not the first time such a press conference was creatively planned to spark panic and parade out a person claiming to be ex-gay. It was also not peculiar to Uganda; it is a method that was and continues to be used in both puritanical and evangelical Christianity in countries from Ghana to Kenya and Nigeria.

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From the days of European colonialism, when sodomy warranted the death penalty, the church has been the face of the anti-LGBTQ+ movement and has deployed language and framing consistent with present-day ex-gay movements.

The rhetoric relies on a “prodigal son” framing that checks out with the Bible, in which gay people are only valid as long as they turn away from their sexuality. (In the Bible story, the prodigal son’s welcome was contingent on his return in the same way the evangelical church would only welcome gay people on account of their conversion.)

When the pro-conversion therapy Christian group Exodus International put Yvette Cantu Schneider and other ex-gay spokespeople on TV in the 2000s to talk about being formerly gay, it was because of such beliefs. Schneider herself wrote on Instagram that a straight white male leadership team handpicked her. (Exodus International ceased operating in 2013.)

The post reads in part: “They were looking for a spokesperson who had been gay. And I was told, ‘you’re gonna be great because you’re young, you have the Hispanic last name, and you don’t look gay.’”

A made-in-the-USA movement and ideology is polarizing African countries and harming and endangering LGBTQ+ people.

This same belief seemed to spawn the Mukisa video, the homosexual recruitment press conference, and other such events. The prodigal son parable has propped up the ex-gay movement in Uganda, ensuring there are open arms to gay people who can speak about previously being in that life of “sin” and denounce their gayness publicly. It seems that as the ex-gay movement lost its grip in the United States, it started to reach for relevance elsewhere.

In 2009, George Oundo, whom news reports described as a former trans woman and LGBT activist, went on a media tirade in Uganda on how they got initiated into homosexuality at 12 years old. Oundo said in a TV interview that they “recruited many, many boys in Jinja”—a town in southeast Uganda. They also published a book titled My Long Journey to Victory: Bound by the Chains of Homosexuality.

In 2018, Val Kalende, an LGBTQ+ rights activist who even went on a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour in 2010 for her activism, went on TV during a church service to renounce lesbianism. Kalende in 2022 wrote an op-ed titled “Unchanged: A lesbian Christian’s journey through ‘ex-gay’ life,” in which she apologized to Uganda’s LGBTQ+ community for her renunciation.

The church has been involved in manufacturing and sustaining the ex-gay framework in more than subtle and metaphorical ways. Evangelical preachers have traveled across Africa, verbalizing this harmful language.

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In the early 2000s, American evangelical Scott Lively was part of a series of anti-gay events that culminated in Uganda’s 2009 “Kill the gays” bill, which called for the death penalty for what it described as “aggravated homosexuality.” Lively had written books such as The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party and Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child against what he described as “pro-homosexual indoctrination.” The bill—which Lively opposed as too harsh—was introduced after Lively spoke at the March 2009 conference organized by Langa that hosted U.S. representatives of the ex-gay movement.

On that same trip and speaking at the same conference as Lively were evangelicals Caleb Lee Brundidge, who said he was formerly gay, and Exodus International board member Don Schmierer. Schmierer spoke on a lack of good upbringing as a cause of homosexuality and was quoted as saying that 56 percent of homosexuals experienced abuse as children, which turned them into homosexuals.

Following that conference, Lively also spoke to the Ugandan Parliament, where he framed homosexuality as a Western import intending to spread “the disease” to children.

If gay people are not successfully framed as predators, then extreme measures against them could be questioned.

This recasting of homosexuality as akin to pedophilia, alongside the widespread use of similar language, is meant to legitimize the response and crackdown by governments and institutions. If gay people are not successfully framed as predators, then extreme measures against them could be questioned. However, the violence that LGBTQ+ people experience in Africa has been justified by these anti-gay groups through the construction of a narrative of intent by “them” to target children.

That same rhetoric drawing connections between homosexuality and pedophilia has remained largely unchanged from how evangelicals created panic around gay people in the early days of the anti-gay movement. In a 1981 letter, U.S. preacher Jerry Falwell described gay people as out to “recruit,” saying “many of them are out after my children and your children” and that they “must not be recruited to a profane lifestyle.” Falwell also added that gay people threatened families because they didn’t reproduce.

It is similar to the rhetoric of individuals such as Peter LaBarbera, who in 2007 falsely claimed that there was “a disproportionate incidence of pedophilia” among gay men.

These comments on recruitment, destruction, and being a threat to families now cloud much of the discourse around homosexuality in several African countries. They were present in the Mukisa press conference, are currently in use as Ghana’s Parliament debates a draconian anti-gay bill, and continue to swirl across the anti-LGBTQ+ movement on the continent. In an African context, visits and speeches from prominent Americans such as Lively and Falwell have the effect of legitimizing homophobia; their straight white male identities crown it with credibility.

I do not mean to exonerate Uganda, Ghana, or other African countries of homophobia or suggest that they are incapable of it without external backing. They are.

Even though LGBTQ+ identities had existed in Africa since before colonialism, their existence was not always welcomed and tolerated. For instance, while homosexuality to the Zande people in South Sudan was indigenous and commonplace, they were harsher on women; lesbianism was considered witchcraft and could even warrant execution.

Abrahamic religions have exacerbated homophobia, and it might have become prevalent on the continent without U.S. evangelical backing. This trend is clearest in Senegal, a majority-Muslim country, where the capital, Dakar, used to be considered Africa’s “gay capital” but is now experiencing rising homophobia. Just last year, protesters lined the streets of Dakar demanding stricter laws and longer prison sentences for gay people in the country.

However, claiming that homosexuality is uniquely Western offers the United States’ ex-gay movement the opportunity to present itself as being on the right side of history, as being close to the sources of “moral decadence” but still resisting it. For Ugandan and African homophobes, the reverse is the case. It gives them a premise for absolution—an anticolonial veneer that allows them to say, “This was brought here from abroad, and we need to eradicate it.”

Proponents of ex-gay and anti-gay philosophies depend on the permanence of gay people for their message to be relevant. They require an enemy for their fight to be valid, and they go to great lengths to construct this enemy as a well-funded and all-powerful foreign movement while falsely presenting the local anti-gay movement as a grassroots underdog, despite its heavy reliance on U.S. evangelicals for publicity.

Caleb Okereke is a Nigerian journalist and the co-founder and managing editor at Minority Africa. Twitter: @CalebOkereke

 

Largest River And Wetland Restoration Initiative In History Launched At UN Water Conference

Friday, 24 March 2023, 
Press Release: United Nations

* Freshwater Challenge led by Colombia, DR Congo, Ecuador, Gabon, Mexico, Zambia

* Aims to restore 300,000km of rivers and 350 million hectares of wetlands by 2030

New York, 22 March 2023 - A coalition of governments today launched the Freshwater Challenge - the largest ever initiative to restore degraded rivers, lakes and wetlands, which are central to tackling the world’s worsening water, climate and nature crises.

Announced at the UN Water Conference in New York, the Freshwater Challenge aims to restore 300,000km of rivers - equivalent to more than 7 times around the Earth - and 350 million hectares of wetlands - an area larger than India - by 2030.

Along with water supplies, healthy freshwater ecosystems provide a wealth of benefits to people and nature, and are critical to mitigating and adapting to climate change, and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet one-third of the world’s wetlands have been lost over the past 50 years, and we are still losing them faster than forests. Rivers and lakes are the most degraded ecosystems in the world, with fish populations, many of which are vital for community food security, pushed to the brink.

Released this week, the IPCC’s sixth assessment report outlines the serious impacts of climate change on freshwater ecosystems, highlighting the need to protect and restore them to enhance adaptation and build resilient societies, economies and ecosystems.

Championed by the governments of Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Gabon, Mexico and Zambia, the Freshwater Challenge calls on all governments to commit to clear targets in their updated National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans, National Determined Contributions and National Implementation Plan for the SDGs to urgently restore healthy freshwater ecosystems.

Susana Muhamad, Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Colombia: said "This initiative is in line with the priorities of the National Development Plan 2022-2026, which will allow the country to strengthen Territorial Planning around Water by protecting all water systems from a perspective of water as a common resource and fundamental right. This implies the participation of communities to resolve socio-environmental conflicts, respecting cultural diversity and guaranteeing the conservation of biodiversity".

The Freshwater Challenge is a country-driven initiative with an inclusive, collaborative approach to implementation, where governments and their partners will co-create freshwater solutions with indigenous people, local communities, and other stakeholders.

Building on the Global Biodiversity Framework agreed in Montreal in December 2022, which included the restoration of 30% of the world’s degraded ‘inland waters’, the Challenge will contribute to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. The UN Decade is a drive to revive our planet, co-led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director said, “Healthy rivers, lakes and wetlands underpin our societies and economies, yet they are routinely undervalued and overlooked. That is what makes the commitment by the governments of Colombia, DR Congo, Ecuador, Gabon, Mexico and Zambia so commendable. While countries have pledged to restore one billion hectares of land, the Freshwater Challenge is a critical first step in bringing a much-needed focus on freshwater ecosystems.”

Stuart Orr, Freshwater Lead at WWF International said, “The clearest sign of the damage we have done - and are still doing - to our rivers, lakes and wetlands is the staggering 83% collapse in freshwater species populations since 1970. The Freshwater Challenge puts the right goals and frameworks in place to turn this around - benefiting not only nature but also people across the world. We need governments and partners to commit to this urgently as part of the Water Action Agenda coming out of this UN conference.”

The Freshwater Challenge will focus on providing the evidence needed at country level to effectively design and implement restoration measures, identify priority areas for restoration, update relevant national strategies and plans, and mobilise resources and set up financial mechanisms to implement the targets.

Championed by the coalition of countries, the Freshwater Challenge is supported by the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the Secretariat of the Convention on Wetlands, WWF, IUCN, The Nature Conservancy, Wetlands International and ABinBev.

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Belarus: ILO tightens pressure over workers’ rights violations

Thursday, 30 March 2023, 5:51 am
Press Release: ITUC

The ILO is increasing pressure on the Belarus government over its continued and severe violations of fundamental workers’ rights.

Belarus has failed to abide by key findings of a 2004 ILO Commission of Inquiry, and the Lukashenko regime has continued the persecution of trade unionists, imprisoning several union leaders and staff in recent months and liquidating trade unions.

Last week, the tripartite ILO Governing Body concluded that any ILO engagement with Belarus, except for securing immediate and full compliance with the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry, will be frozen, and submitted a resolution to this year’s International Labour Conference.

The resolution calls on governments, as well as social partners, to:

• Review any relations they have with Belarus.
• Respect the principle of not forcing refugees or asylum seekers to return to Belarus (non-refoulement) given the risks there to any trade unionist or human rights defender.

It also includes the ILO formally alerting other international organisations of Belarus’ failure to comply with the 2004 Inquiry and requesting they review any cooperation with Belarus and “cease as soon as possible any activity that could have the effect of directly or indirectly justifying the absence of actions to redress the situation concerning the non-respect of trade union rights in the country.”

It further calls on the Lukashenko government to accept an urgent tripartite ILO mission to examine the situation, including a visit to the independent trade union leaders and activists in prison or detention.

On 24 March, the Belarus Supreme Court rejected an appeal against the prison sentences imposed on officials and staff of the independent trade union centre BKDP, Aliaksandr Yarashuk, Siarhei Antusevich and Iryna But-Husaim. Yarashuk is a member of the ILO Governing Body.

“These are very strong measures from the ILO. International pressure will continue and build until the Lukashenko government respects workers’ fundamental rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. The Supreme Court decision shows that the government is continuing to ignore the ILO and flout international law. We again call upon the authorities to drop the charges against trade unionists for simply undertaking legitimate trade union activities, and to release them from prison immediately,” said ITUC President Akiko Gono.

Other key decisions of the Governing Body included the ILO preparing regulation to better secure decent work in the platform economy, and implementation of a new strategy on decent work in supply chains. Discussions also included a review of ILO strategy on occupational safety and health, which is now an ILO Fundamental Right at Work, as well as ILO action in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Venezuela and around Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

Why Sabotage Is A Growing Form Of Warfare 

Article: Globetrotter

By John P. Ruehl

On February 8, Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh published an article detailing the role of the U.S. and Norway in the September 26, 2022, Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions. U.S. officials denied the findings, while Russia, which previously blamed the UK for the attack, hailed the article as proof of Western involvement.

There remains “no conclusive evidence” indicating Russia was behind the Nord Stream attack, according to a December 2022 article by the Washington Post. At the same time, apart from Hersh’s report, there is little evidence currently indicating the U.S. was responsible for the explosions. Nonetheless, the ongoing dispute has underlined the increasing role of sabotage in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Around two weeks after the Nord Stream explosion on October 8, another explosion took out much of a key bridge, which connects the Russian mainland to Crimea. While no one has taken responsibility for the attack, Russia blamed Ukraine for it. Weeks before in September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy encouraged Ukrainians in Russian-occupied territory to “sabotage any enemy activity” and “interfere with any Russian operations.”

Throughout the war, dozens of mystery fires in Russia have damaged or destroyed transportation routes, commercial and industrial centers, military and government facilities, and other infrastructure. Believed to be the work of both Ukrainian commandos and Russian dissidents, some U.S. experts also believe the U.S. and NATO states may be responsible for these “covert sabotage operations.” The Ukrainian government has typically neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in most attacks.

The Russian government often blames Ukraine for these fires but has downplayed their effects. While acts of sabotage can be used by governments to garner support for their cause, they may be wary of admitting successive instances of sabotage for fear of encouraging more, as well as showing their inability to protect the population and country. Furthermore, relentless acts of sabotage demonstrate that the effects of war have come home to populations thought to be removed from the conflict.

The attacks on the Nord Stream pipeline and the bridge in Crimea likely escalated the Kremlin’s resolve to respond to Western and Ukrainian sabotage efforts. While Russia’s most pressing concern is undermining Ukraine and damaging its capacity to sustain its war effort, conducting sabotage operations across the West has also become a major Kremlin policy.

Even before the war, Russia had indicated its ability to disrupt global underwater communications networks through its Main Directorate of Deep-Water Research (GUGI). In recent years, Russia has taken steps to develop submarines specifically to sever undersea cables that transport the world’s internet traffic. In early February 2022, Russia held military exercises in the Atlantic Ocean at a critical juncture where several submarine cables between the U.S., the UK, and France are located as a show of force.

The same month, France declared it would develop a fleet of underwater drones to protect undersea cables, while the European Defence Agency is expected to release a proposal soon for “a dedicated program for critical seabed infrastructure protection.” These developments show how seriously Western governments are preparing for Russian sabotage, particularly as recent cuts to Taiwan’s internet cables are believed to be the work of Chinese vessels and serve as an example of “a dry run for further aggression.”

Several incidents in Europe and North America in recent months have raised suspicions over the Kremlin’s involvement in these attacks, even if government agencies do not always label Russia as being responsible for them. On January 13, 2023, for example, an explosion at a gas pipeline in Lithuania near the Latvian border led to the nearby town of Valakelie being evacuated. While the pipeline’s operator dismissed suggestions of sabotage, Latvia’s Defense Ministry said it could not be ruled out. “Western leaders stopped short of publicly blaming Russia for the attack, but privately briefed their suspicions that Moscow was behind it,” stated a Daily Mail article about the explosion.

On February 7, 2023, a fire broke out at a U.S. company drone production facility in Latvia that supplies Ukrainian forces and NATO allies, with the local police stating that there was “no indication” of it being an act of sabotage. Moldovan President Maia Sandu, meanwhile, declared on February 13, 2023, that Russia was planning a coup, including the use of sabotage, to destabilize the country.

In January 2023, Polish authorities questioned and later released three divers who claimed to be Spanish citizens off the coast of northern Poland. The divers were rescued after their boat broke down while they were apparently looking for amber deposits. But amber farming is difficult to carry out in the dark and the divers also lacked the proper “amber-hunting equipment,” according to a CBS News article, raising suspicion about the explanation offered by them. Despite being caught near vital Polish energy infrastructure, the trio were let go and left Poland altogether shortly after. Speaking after the incident, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that “amid the war in Ukraine, when the risk of sabotage by Russia increased immeasurably, it was necessary to strengthen the supervision of critical infrastructure. We are also reviewing this supervision.”

Western Europe has also emerged as a major target of apparent Russian sabotage efforts. On October 8, the same day as the Crimean bridge explosion, German officials stated that sabotage caused a three-hour halt in rail traffic in the north of the country after “cables vital for the country's rail network were intentionally cut in two places.” On October 10, undersea cables providing electricity to the Danish island of Bornholm were cut. And barely a week later, internet cables in southern France were also cut, impacting connectivity “to Asia, Europe, U.S. and potentially other parts of the world.”

Suspicion over these attacks and others in Europe has fallen on Unit 29155, part of Russia’s military intelligence agency General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU). As mentioned in an article in the New York Times in 2020, the unit is believed to operate small groups across Europe and was responsible for a 2014 ammunition depot explosion in the Czech Republic, the 2018 poisoning of Russian dissident Sergei Skripal in the UK, and other attacks on the continent.

From 2012 to 2015, Russian-backed patriotic youth camps also emerged in California, Washington, and Oregon. Often targeting Russian and Slavic communities for recruitment, they mirrored attempts to develop militia groups in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. While it is difficult to say whether these groups are active, these initiatives demonstrate the Kremlin’s intention to make them viable actors in the U.S.

A series of train derailments in the U.S., fires at food processing plants, attacks on energy facilities, and other incidents across the country since 2022 have caught the attention of international news outlets and fueled conspiracy theories over who is responsible. Considering Russia’s reach in Europe, the possibility of Russian assets being responsible for some of these incidents in the U.S. cannot be ruled out entirely. On March 3, 2023, Peter Karasev, a Russian immigrant, was charged for two separate attacks on Pacific Gas and Electric transformers in San Jose, which took place on December 8, 2022, and January 5, 2023.

Russia, of course, is not the only country capable or willing to target the U.S. through sabotage. Several Iranian/Hezbollah sleeper agents in the U.S. have been caught in recent years surveilling vulnerable targets within the country to attack should they be given the greenlight. The downturn in U.S.-Iranian relations in recent years suggests that Iran too may be actively seeking to covertly harm the U.S. as payback.

Officially, the Russia-Ukraine war remains a conflict between the two states. Nonetheless, Russian and Ukrainian allies have supplied Moscow and Kyiv with significant aid. But sabotage is increasingly seen by both sides as a viable option to undermine their opponent. We should expect more sabotage incidents, not only in Ukraine and Russia but also across the Western world and beyond, as the conflict rages on.

Thursday, 9 March 2023

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

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