Tycoon’s ‘unvaxxed sperm’ auction taps into conspiracies


By AFP
March 30, 2023

Copyright AFP/File Ed JONES
Anuj Chopra and Marisha Goldhamer

A fugitive Chinese billionaire plans to auction “unvaccinated sperm” on an online platform rife with misinformation — a sale that vaccine skeptics bill optimistically as a chance to buy the “next Bitcoin.”

The sales pitch that sperm from uninoculated men will be in high demand — and therefore fetch top dollar — stems from the widely debunked conspiracy theory that Covid-19 jabs cause mass infertility.

Guo Wengui, a tycoon exiled in the United States who was recently arrested for alleged fraud, is putting that pitch to the test with his much-hyped auction slated for June on the fringe platform Gettr.

“Sperm and eggs from our fellow fighters will be auctioned on our Gettr platform between June 1 and June 6,” Guo said in a livestream in February.

The tycoon, a cult-like figure who is wanted in China and closely tied to Donald Trump’s former political advisor Steve Bannon, claimed to have already stored nearly 6,000 eggs and a “few million sperm” from unvaccinated supporters.

“We will auction off the best sperm and eggs, including of course my own sperm,” he said, adding that trading will be allowed in digital currencies and be open to all races and ethnicities.

It remains unclear whether the auction will go ahead following the arrest earlier this month of Guo, who faces federal charges that he defrauded thousands of online followers of some $1 billion.

But the planned sale has generated buzz on Gettr, where the tycoon’s supporters have hailed it as a “new era for humanity.”

“Giving unvaccinated sperms or eggs not only is an honorable way to gain wealth, but also will save the future of humanity,” said a Gettr post that endorsed Guo.

The post featured a photo with a hand-scrawled message: “Unvaxxed sperm is the next Bitcoin.”

– ‘Pure bloods’ –


“This auction plays off a broader false narrative that Covid-19 vaccines have harmed fertility,” John Gregory, health editor at the watchdog NewsGuard, told AFP.

“Anti-vaccine misinformers pushed that claim even in the face of an abundance of medical studies showing that the vaccines don’t hurt male or female fertility.”

Guo, who goes by other names including Miles Guo, himself is an adherent to the false claim.

The New Federal State of China, an anti-Chinese Communist Party lobby group created by Guo, has also repeatedly made unfounded statements such as “vaccines are a bioweapon.”

Guo’s aides are tight-lipped about the auction. When asked about it this week, a NFSC spokeswoman told AFP to expect a response within 10 minutes, but did not reply and stopped responding to reminders.

Gettr, a right-wing social media company which the US media said was initially bankrolled by Guo, did not respond when asked whether it would allow the auction.

In his livestream, Guo vowed to make struggling Gettr the first global platform to trade sperm and eggs from unvaccinated people.

He pledged to use “scientific methods” for verification and said a letter from an attorney will be required to confirm that the traders are unvaccinated, without giving further details on testing or storage.

But some Gettr staff have expressed skepticism about turning the platform into such a marketplace, noting hurdles including legal restrictions on the sale of semen in other countries, Rolling Stone magazine reported.

If Gettr were to proceed, the platform will likely tap into the “pure bloods,” a shadowy global movement spawned by vaccine misinformation.

Wrongly asserting that Covid-19 vaccines “contaminate” the body, adherents of the movement use online forums to seek out blood, sperm and even breast milk from unvaccinated donors.


– Profit from falsehoods –

The online chatter appears to have fueled a belief among vaccine skeptics that the sperm represents a lucrative financial opportunity.

“The real money is in unvaccinated sperm,” said a post on Gettr.

“It’s the new white gold,” it added, using the hashtag “unvaccinated and proud.”

In another sign of interest, “unvaccinated sperm available” mugs and t-shirts have gone on sale on Amazon and eBay.

Indonesia’s health ministry in February rejected a fabricated article shared on Facebook and Twitter that said the sperm of unvaccinated men “will be highly valuable in the future,” AFP factcheckers reported.

Another social media user suggested that if a “sperm bank for the unvaccinated” ever opened, he could get rich.

“It’s only a ‘precious commodity’ if a person has bought into the false narrative that Covid-19 vaccination harms fertility,” Gregory said.

“This auction fits with an established pattern where anti-vaccine misinformers sell products to profit from their false claims.”

burs-ac/bgs

Meng Wanzhou: Huawei’s ‘princess’ claims her crown

By AFP
March 31, 2023

The daughter of Huawei's billionaire founder, Meng Wanzhou will take over as rotating chairwoman as the Chinese tech giant's profits plummet under US sanctions - 

Copyright AFP STR

The daughter of Huawei’s billionaire founder, Meng Wanzhou will take over as rotating chairwoman as the Chinese tech giant enters choppy waters, with profits plummeting under US sanctions.

The Washington-led pressure campaign has contributed to Huawei losing its top spot in the smartphone market and has throttled its supply chains.

After Huawei’s Friday announcement that its 2022 net profits had plunged 69 percent compared to the previous year, Meng struck a defiant tone at a press conference.

“We might not be successful in the end, but being placed in a fatal impasse, we have no choice but to go all in and fight, with all hands on deck,” she said.

The 51-year-old is not new to being on the front line of the US-China tech war.

In 2018, she was arrested in Canada at the behest of the United States on fraud charges relating to her alleged efforts to hide violations of US sanctions on Iran involving Huawei affiliate Skycom.

She remained under house arrest in Vancouver for almost three years while fighting extradition, with the case becoming a major thorn in relations between the three countries.

She was allowed to return to China in September 2021, and in December 2022, the US Justice Department dropped all charges against her.

– Huawei under pressure –

Huawei has been repeatedly targeted by Washington in recent years over cybersecurity and espionage concerns.

The administration of former president Donald Trump effectively barred US companies from doing business with the firm, and his successor Joe Biden has slapped on further sanctions, including a ban on sales of new Huawei equipment in the United States.

Washington has also put controls on the export of sophisticated computer components and chip fabrication equipment to Huawei and other Chinese companies.

Huawei says it has replaced thousands of product components banned for export by the United States with homegrown versions, but it still relies on US chips for many of its 4G smartphones and consumer gadgets.

Consequently, the company is looking to expand its lines of business and develop new supply chains.

Meng on Friday identified Huawei’s cloud business as a key area of growth.

It is also looking into building telecom infrastructure for solar farms and makers of driverless cars, and investing heavily in Africa and emerging economies in South and Southeast Asia.

– ‘Humble’ beginning –



Despite being internally known as Huawei’s “princess”, Meng is said to be approachable and self-deprecating.

According to Chinese media, she started off as a secretary at Huawei and kept her head down for years, to such an extent that few knew her father was founder Ren Zhengfei.

This may have been aided by the fact that she took her mother’s surname from a young age, for reasons that remain unclear.

Ren, a former army engineer, founded Huawei with a few thousand dollars in 1987, growing it into one of the world’s leading suppliers of hardware for telecommunications networks.

“He is a CEO at work, and a father at home,” Meng once said, to emphasise that competence, not connections, determined one’s path at Huawei.

Huawei credits Meng for reorganising the company’s financial and IT architecture, beginning in the early 2000s, so that the company could cope with its rapid global growth.

Meng herself recounted how initially, she and other bookkeepers had to bind the company’s financial records by hand each month, according to a readout of a speech she gave at her former high school last year.

Meng will lead the company for six months until September 30.

Huawei, which is not publicly listed, has two other rotating chairs — Eric Xu and Ken Hu.

Meng said Friday that the company’s future, as it navigates one of its roughest patches yet, would depend on its “collective leadership”.

“In times of pressure, we press on –- with confidence,” she said.
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Op-Ed: ChatGPT vs GPT4 vs Bard, vs Bing vs whatever — Don’t get too impressed with any of it just yet


ByPaul Wallis
PublishedMarch 30, 2023


ChatGPT can deliver an essay, computer code... or legal text, within seconds. - Copyright AFP Abdul MAJEED

A lot of information is being generated by comparisons between AI bots. A hierarchy of sorts is emerging, but performance is highly variable. Selective use of subjects for comparison is another issue. Also, remember that these are first-generation “large language” AIs at work.

The New York Times did a pretty good job of comparing ChatGPT and Bard as executive assistants. ChatGPT did well, Bard didn’t really cut it on any level. The New York Times article is well worth reading because it also defines the parameters for comparison.

The natural inference from this comparison is that ChatGPT, which is now the previous iteration of that AI, has a much stronger learning base. You’d think so from the outcome.

What’s important about this inference is that the bar has been raised so high, so fast. This is like the pre-Windows 95 era, and you can expect the new tech to happen much faster.

The current intrusions into the consumer space are pretty tentative. If you have Bing, you’ll also note that there’s now an AI interface on the search engine. That was a very quick response to the AI breakout into the mainstream, and an attempt to get market share from Google. The obvious point to be made here is that the market is already driving the development, in that sense.

That’s not necessarily good news for the immediate future of AI. You could get a sort of AI domestic servant, not necessarily a high-bandwidth do-everything AI as a market model, sort of “for the housewives” AI.

Tech tends to do that. Most people want something to do all the basics and can live without the more advanced tech because they don’t really need it. So a cut-down version of AI is likely to take market share over a high-end AI.

What’s bad about that is that it reduces the demand for advanced development. Scientific AI, which gets very little attention, is a different type of AI that is ultra-functional and very useful for heavy lifting in the sciences. This “species” of AI is evolved to perform specialist tasks, and it’s doing very well.

If mainstream AI turns into a drudge job worker, you could wind up with dumbed-down purely consumer AI that’s not much more advanced than it is now in 2050. It will be able to do all the basics. The problem with that is that the AI will also have to catch up with current comms, tech innovations, new platforms, etc.

To reboot Moore’s Law – “The number of AIs will increase as the AIs evolve more capability.” That’s likely to mean a pretty high evolution rate and turnover in AI types and models. Which leads to an unavoidable question – How long can your AI be viable?

Add to this technotopia the usual bells and whistles attached to all types of tech. “Our AI can find your soul mate, do your washing, fix your tax return and housetrain the dog”.

Yeah, sure it will. A lot of superfluous and probably expensive crud is likely to come along for the ride. As with digital civilization in general, AI could easily be contaminated with whatever the equivalent of useless apps for AI will be.

Like the useless apps of the past, this will come out like low-quality dye in the wash. What’s likely to be far more important is the public image of AI they will create, which like those apps, will be largely fictional.

Points being:AI has proven its capacity at this current level, and no more.
AI will evolve rapidly, finding new roles.

That’s it. That’s the sum total of predictable information. The rest is paid hype and hysteria. You’re looking at an almost blank slate, colored in by a couple of this year’s “enlightened” chatbots.

This almost total lack of hard information is sparking terror:

AI could replace people. So could other people.

AI could run businesses. That’d probably be an improvement in many cases.

AI could remove those lousy low-paid jobs nobody wants. So what?

What’s really different is that AI is a truly open-ended, real-time, multitasking class of tech. That’s what’s actually new.

Fear of AI is useless. People including Elon Musk are now actually calling for a halt to the training of AI. That’s not going to happen and nobody can make it happen. Google and OpenAI are definitely not going to let their competitors catch up. China is definitely not going to stop development.

The “answer” to AI is critical thinking. The world’s not good at that, and that’s likely to be the real problem.

The risk and reward of ChatGPT in cybersecurity


By Dr. Tim Sandle
March 31, 2023


ChatGPT appeared in November and immediately generated a buzz as it wrote texts including poems - Copyright AFP/File Lionel BONAVENTURE

There is considerable hype and fear there’s been around ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI. This extends to articles about academics and teachers worrying that the platform will make cheating easier than ever. On the other side of the coin, you might have seen there are articles evangelising all of ChatGPT’s potential applications.

Alternatively, there are some more esoteric examples of people using the tool. One user, for example, got it to write an instruction guide for removing peanut butter sandwiches from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible. Another asked it to write a song in the style of Nick Cave; although the singer was less than enthused about the results.

According to JP Perez-Etchegoyen, CTO of Onapsis, amidst all that hype and discussion, there has not been nearly enough attention paid to the risks and rewards that AI tools like ChatGPT present in the cybersecurity arena, as he explains to Digital Journal.

Understanding ChatGPT

Perez-Etchegoyen says that: “In order to get a clearer idea of what those risks and rewards look like, it’s important to get a better understanding of what ChatGPT is and what it’s capable of.”

Perez-Etchegoyen’sclear explanation is: “ChatGPT (now in its latest version, ChatGPT-4, released on March 14th, 2023) is part of a larger family of AI tools developed by the US-based company OpenAI. While it’s officially called a chatbot, that doesn’t quite cover its versatility. Trained using both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques, it can do far more than most chatbots.”

Furthermore: “As part of its responses, it can generate content based on all the information it was trained on. That information includes general knowledge as well as programming languages and code. As a result, it can, for instance, simulate an entire chat room; play games like tic-tac-toe; and simulate an ATM.”

More importantly, for businesses and other large organisations, Perez-Etchegoyen states: “It can help improve businesses’ customer service through more personalised, accurate messaging. It can even write and debug computer programs. Some of those, and other, features mean that it could both be a cybersecurity ally and a threat.”

Education, filtering, and bolstering defences

Looking at a key sector – learning – Perez-Etchegoyen reveals: “On the positive front, there’s a lot to be said for ChatGPT. One of the most valuable roles it could play is also one of the most simple: spotting phishing. Organisations could entrench a habit in their employees whereby they use ChatGPT to determine if any content they’re not sure about is phishing or if it was generated with malicious intent.”

Outlining the importance, Perez-Etchegoyen states: “For all the technological advances made in recent years, social engineering attacks like phishing remain one of the most effective forms of cybercrime. In fact, research shows that, of the cyberattacks successfully identified in the UK in 2022, 83 percent involved some form of phishing.”

In addition: “There are numerous other ways that ChatGPT can be used to bolster cybersecurity efforts. It could, for example, provide a degree of assistance to more junior security workers, whether that’s in communicating any issues they might have or helping them better understand the context of what they’re meant to be working on at any given point. It could also help under-resourced teams curate the latest threats and in identifying internal vulnerabilities.”

The bad guys are using it too

There is a dark side to this AI advancement. Perez-Etchegoyen observes: “Even as cybersecurity professionals explore ways of using ChatGPT to their advantage, cybercriminals are too. They might, for example, make use of its ability to generate malicious code. Alternatively, they might use it to generate content that appears to be human-generated, potentially used to trick users into clicking on malicious links, unknowingly leading to dangerous consequences.”

The unsavoury practices continue in other areas. Here Perez-Etchegoyen adds: “Some are even using ChatGPT to convincingly mimic legitimate AI assistants on corporate websites, opening up a new avenue in the social engineering battlefront. Remember, the success of cybercriminals largely depends on being able to target as many possible vulnerabilities, as frequently and quickly as possible. AI tools like ChatGPT allow them to do that by essentially acting as a supercharged assistant that can help create all assets needed for malicious campaigns.”

Use the tools available

This translates into business advice, which Perez-Etchegoyen draws into a recommendation: “It should be clear then that, if cybercriminals are using ChatGPT and other AI tools to enhance their attacks, your security team should also be using them to bolster your cybersecurity efforts. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone.”

Perez-Etchegoyen further advises: “The right security provider won’t just engage in constant research around how cybercriminals are using the latest technologies to enhance their attacks but also how those technologies can be used to improve threat detection, prevention, and defence. And with the damage that a cybersecurity attack can do to your critical infrastructure, it’s something they should be proactively telling you about too.”

In a follow-up article, Perez-Etchegoyen provides his analysis of ChatGPT-4.

 

The Politics Of Japanese Support For Ukraine By Strategy Page,   Mar 31, 2023 -

Japan had an unusual, for Japan, reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 2014, when Russia took Crimea and parts of two eastern Ukrainian provinces, the Japanese response was rather mild. This was because Japan did not want to antagonize Russia, which shared a sea border off northern Japan. In 2014 Japan feared any Japanese use of the strong sanctions imposed on Russia would lead to Russia and China cooperating in opposing Japan. In 2014 Russia was not on particularly good terms with China and Japan preferred to keep it that way.

Japanese policy changed in 2022 when Japan fully embraced harsh Western economic sanctions on Russia and considered supplying military assistance to Ukraine. Opinion polls in Japan showed strong support for such military aid. What stopped this were changes to Japan’s post-World War II constitution that prohibited exporting weapons. Now Japan can do that, but not to nations engaged in a war. Japanese attitudes saw the Russian aggression in Ukraine as similar to what China threatens against Taiwan. Japan has become part of an informal alliance with South Korea, the Philippines and other nations threatened by Chinese claims to the South China Sea. The Japanese public wants a stronger response to Chinese and Russian threats.

Russia has long been particularly aggressive against Japan and potential threats to Russian Pacific Coast territories. For example, in 2021, after a decade of effort Russia finally completed its coast defense rebuilding program. This was mainly about installing Bastion-P coastal defense missile batteries on Sakhalin Island. Sakhalin is 43 kilometers from Hokkaido, the northernmost of the Japanese home islands. The waters between them are called the La Perouse Strait, which is the passage between the Russian dominated Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. The strait is closed up to four months a year by ice and transit by submerged submarines is difficult because of strong currents and relatively shallow (as little as 51 meters) depth. The eastern part of the Sea of Okhotsk is covered by the Kamchatka Peninsula, which already had Bastion-P batteries installed. That provides coastal defense extending into Arctic waters. The southernmost region of the Russian Far East, containing the port of Vladivostok and the most densely populated portion of the Russian Far East, was always well defended. This Pacific coast region is huge, at seven million square kilometers. That is almost the size of the continental United States, but only has a population of 8.3 million. While the Far East region contains 40 percent of Russian territory and less than six percent of Russia’s population, it also contains many naval and ballistic missile bases as well as ports that provide the cheapest way to get goods from the rest of Russia to the Far East. The Trans-Siberian Railroad alone cannot support the population and economy of the Far East. That explains the importance of defending the Far East from naval attack.

From the 1970s to the 1990s Russian coastal areas in the north and along the Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific coasts were guarded by mobile and fixed batteries of Rubezh missiles. These were 2.5 ton solid-fuel cruise missiles that only had a range of 80 kilometers and much less capable guidance systems than the 21st century Bastion system. Although the Rubezh missiles underwent upgrades through the 1980s, all that stopped in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The government later revealed that by 2000 Russian coasts were largely undefended and it was with great urgency that work began on developing the Bastion system.

By 2010 Bastion was in production and the first priority was the northern, Baltic and Black Sea coasts. Finally, in mid-2016 Russia deployed at least one battery of Bastion-P (K-300P or SSC-5) land based anti-ship missiles in the Kuril Islands, a chain of 56 small islands that extend over a thousand kilometers from Sakhalin Island to the Kamchatka Peninsula. Up until 1945 Japan controlled four of the Kuril Islands closest to Sakhalin. Russia took these four islands from Japan after World War II and Japan wants them back. The presence of Bastion-P coastal defense missiles on these islands reminds Japan that they are not getting the islands back.

The three-ton K-300P missiles used by Bastion have a range of 600 kilometers and a 250 kg (550 pound) warhead. Russia says the Bastion-P uses composites for the casing, making it stealthier, as in harder for radar to spot and track. The stealth is important because after launch the missile initially travels at high altitude (nearly 10,000 meters/30,000 feet) where radar can spot it. But at that altitude the missile can move faster (maximum speed of 3,000 kilometers an hour). Speed makes it harder to intercept and means it takes five minutes or less to reach its target. Guidance is GPS or inertial to reach the general area of the target, which is usually a ship or other small target, then radar (in the anti-ship version) that will identify the specific target and hit it. For its final approach, the missile drops to an altitude of five meters (16 feet) to make it more difficult to spot and stop. The high speed at impact causes additional damage because of the weight of the entire missile.

A Bastion-P battery consists of one or two control vehicles, a support vehicle, four launcher vehicles (each with two missiles in separate canisters) and four reload vehicles. Minimal deployment would be one launcher vehicle and one command vehicle. Several models of 6x6 trucks are used for the command, launcher, support and reload vehicles.

Six years before Bastion-P entered service, the Bal coastal defense missile system was deployed. This was something of an interim coast defense system that used the 670 kg Kh-35 anti-ship missile. This was the Russian answer to the American Harpoon missile and is still used on ships and carried by aircraft. Originally Bal used the early version of Kh-35, which had a range of 130 kilometers. Not much later these were supplemented or replaced by the latest, 260-kilometer version of Kh-35. Because these missiles were smaller and lighter, each launcher vehicle carried eight of them. In the Far East the Bastion system is preferred because much longer coastlines are involved. But for key areas, like major ports or naval bases, the Bal system is useful.

Bastion-P is another variant of the Yakhont (3M55, Oniks and P-800), a design that was able to complete development with an investment from India. This partnership produced the BrahMos for India while Russian used the new BrahMos tech to perfect the 3M55. While officially entering service in 1999, the 3M55 was not really ready for action until BrahMos development was completed in 2006. Because of that it wasn’t until 2010 that Bastion-P entered service. Before deliveries were completed in the Far East Bastion-P was stationed in Crimea and sold to Syria and Vietnam. Russia also plans to install one Bastion-S system in the Far East. Bastion-S is a stationary system with the missiles stored and launched from underground silos. Bastion-S makes sense in the Far East where there are not a lot of roads for launcher vehicles to use and military bases are fewer and larger compared to western Russia.

All these coastal defense systems rely on other target data from aircraft, ships, satellites or land-based radars.

Japan got Russia’s attention with energetic enforcement of the 2022 sanctions. In the past Japan was a source of tech and components used by Russian commercial and military equipment. That ended in 2022 and only added to the isolation Russia is now experiencing. Russia lost most of its active duty ground forces and their armored vehicles in Ukraine and has run out of high-speed guided missiles to use against Ukraine. The Bastion-P missiles are still on the Pacific Coast, if only because Japan is seen as a threat, not a patsy.

Source:Ocnus.net 2023

American children are working hazardous jobs – and it’s about to get worse By Robert Reich, Guardian  Mar 31, 2023 - Child labor violations – including kids working night-shifts and with dangerous equipment – are rising in the US. Republicans want even fewer protections When I was secretary of labor 30 years ago, one major goal was to crack down on companies that employed children, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. I remember being horrified to discover that even in the early 1990s, children who should have been in school were working, often in dangerous jobs. We made progress. Child labor declined in the United States. But it was a hard slog. By law, the highest fines I could levy against companies that put children to work were relatively small. Some firms treated them as costs of business. Other businesses dragged their feet. The US Chamber of Commerce and other corporate lobbying groups argued that almost any minimum standard of decency at work – whether barring child labor, setting a minimum wage, or requiring employers to install safety equipment – was an intrusion on the so-called “free market” and therefore a “job killer”. My argument was that the nation’s goal was not just more jobs; it was more good jobs, safe jobs, jobs that allowed kids to go to school, jobs that upheld minimum standards of decency. In the years since then, I’ve assumed that progress was continuing on eliminating child labor in America. Sadly, I was wrong. Serious child labor violations are once again on the rise, including in hazardous meatpacking and manufacturing jobs. Children are working with chemicals and dangerous equipment. They are also working night shifts. In just the last year, the number of children employed in violation of child labor laws increased 37%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. You might think that in the face of this mounting problem, lawmakers around the country would rush to protect these children. You’d be wrong. In fact, state legislatures are rushing in the opposite direction, seeking to weaken child labor protections. This month, after young children were found working at a factory owned by Arkansas’s second-largest private employer, Tyson Foods, the Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, signed legislation making it easier for companies to employ children – eliminating a requirement that children under 16 get a state work permit before being employed. In the past two years, 10 states have introduced or passed legislation expanding work hours for children, lifting restrictions on hazardous occupations for children, allowing children to work in locations that serve alcohol, and lowering the state minimum wage for minors. Already in 2023, bills to weaken child labor protections have been introduced in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota. One bill introduced in Minnesota would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work on construction sites. Across the country, we’re seeing a coordinated effort by business lobbyists and Republican legislators to roll back federal and state regulations to protect children from abuse – regulations that had been in place for decades. Why is this going on now? Four reasons. Since the surge in post-pandemic consumer demand, employers have been having difficulty finding the workers they need at the wages employers are willing to pay. Rather than pay more, employers are exploiting children. And state lawmakers who are dependent on those employers (such as Tyson) for campaign donations have been willing to let them. A second reason is that the children who are being exploited are considered to be “them” rather than “us” – disproportionately poor, Black, Hispanic and immigrant. So the moral shame of subjecting “our” children to inhumane working conditions when they ought to be in school is quietly avoided, while lawmakers and voters look the other way.     We are witnessing across America a resurgence of cruel capitalism – a form of social Darwinism Third, some of these children (or their parents) are undocumented. They dare not speak out. They need the money. This makes them vulnerable and easily exploited. Finally, we are witnessing across America a resurgence of cruel capitalism – a form of social Darwinism – in which business lobbyists and lawmakers justify their actions by arguing that they are not exploiting the weak and vulnerable, but rather providing jobs for those who need them and would otherwise go hungry or homeless. Conveniently, these same business lobbyists and lawmakers are among the first to claim we “can’t afford” stronger safety nets that would provide these children with safe housing and adequate nutrition. Yet when it comes to handouts from the government in the form of tax loopholes, subsidies and bailouts, these same business lobbyists and lawmakers claim that the nation can easily afford them and that businesses need and deserve them. Obviously, the Department of Labor needs more inspectors and authority to levy higher fines. But that’s not all that’s needed. America seems to be lurching backward to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when workers – including young children – were treated like cow dung and robber barons ruled the roost. The public must demand that child labor once again be relegated to the dustbin of history.

 

AFRICA Russian Mercenaries Are Pushing France Out of Central Africa By Justin Ling, FP:, Mar 21, 2023 - The Wagner Group’s propaganda has a clear target: Paris. “For those of you here for the first time, the Central African Republic is a country of opportunity, and everybody has the possibility to come back,” Pamir, the hero of the 2021 Russian movie Tourist, tells his assembled crew of military instructors. “Take advantage while the boat is full.” Pamir (a callsign) and his dozen Russian compatriots are in the country on a training mission to help the embattled government regain control in the civil war-torn country. Unbeknownst to the Russians, there is a plot afoot: An ex-president, nefarious European powerbroker, and greedy Catholic priest are conspiring to launch a coup against the government. But the Russians are in the way, so the French-speaking European raises a militia to attack their base. “We need a little victory that will be globalized by the media,” the Francophone tells his ordained co-conspirator. He offers a word of prescient caution: “The Russians know how to fight—and, unfortunately, they do it well.” The militants launch their assault on the base but are thwarted—almost single-handedly—by the brave Russians. The coup-plotters’ plan to disrupt the nascent country’s election is derailed, and the Russians go back home. Some, indeed, come back to continue helping the government try to maintain control. As a movie, Tourist feels like a direct answer to the jingoistic Americana of Rambo 2 or Top Gun. But the film is more than just popcorn fodder. The film’s financier is one of the most powerful men in Russia, Yevgeny Prigozhin; and the subject matter is his own mercenary company, the Wagner Group. Prigozhin and his quasi-private personal military have become an extension of the Russian state. The group is active from Syria, where his mercenaries have tortured and brutally murdered civilians; to Ukraine, where his forces have scored some of the only Russian military advances in recent months; to Francophone Africa, where he has won over some rare allies for an increasingly isolated Moscow. The Wagner Group’s growing global footprint is causing some anxiety in Western capitals. But in a growing number of African nations, Russia is supplanting those old colonial powers as a reliable partner. “The Central African Republic does not get a lot of attention,” Louisa Lombard, associate professor of anthropology at Yale, said. “But the attention that it does get these days is entirely about the Russians and Wagner.” Lombard has studied and written extensively on conflict in the republic. “This is a country that has had more than a dozen peacekeeping missions since the mid-1990s,” she said. The largest of those missions launched in 2014. “Despite the [Western] presence—of a lot of diplomats, and a lot of international peace builders—the Central Africans have not seen real improvement in their situation,” Lombard said. “In fact, there are still just about as many people displaced now as there ever have been; it’s been fairly stable at a quarter of the population over this entire period. Food security has not gotten better. Schools are still rarely open. All of these problems remain for Central Africans.” That creates a space for Moscow. The Central African Republic “has been a kind of testing ground for [the Russians], a place to try out different things,” Lombard said. Ostensibly, Wagner is in the region to bring security to the Sahel: to succeed where France and the United Nations have failed. Like in the group’s previous deployments to Syria, Libya, and elsewhere, Wagner—and its various affiliated companies—claims to be fighting rebel groups, building domestic security capacity, and carrying out development aid. It has been carrying out those missions, which it bills as explicitly anti-colonialist, in the region since roughly 2017. There’s some truth to Wagner’s rosy assessment of its work in Africa. Its willingness to conduct dangerous operations—particularly in partnership with the military juntas that rule in Mali and Burkina Faso—is winning over local support. The Central African Republic, or CAR, has signaled its plans to be a lasting importer of Russian grain and foodstuffs. The republic was one of just 14 countries to vote against a 2022 United Nations resolution calling on Russia to pay war reparations to Ukraine. During a visit from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Mali’s foreign minister pledged to deepen economic ties between the two countries—and blasted Western efforts to sanction Russia. When a coup brought a new military faction to power in Burkina Faso last fall, amid statements of concern from the United States and France, Prigozhin published a statement congratulating the coup plotters and their struggle against “colonialists, who robbed the people.” As France exits the region, Russia’s successful courting of the Sahel has expanded its illiberal bloc of countries that serve as trading partners and diplomatic colleagues for an otherwise-isolated Moscow. Source:Ocnus.net 2023 Top of Page

Notre-Dame fire revealed hidden marvels of Gothic building technique

Issued on: 17/03/2023 

One of the rose windows below the damaged roof of Notre-Dame-de Paris on 16 April 2019, a day after a fire that devastated the cathedral. © Amaury BLIN / AFP

Text by: Michael Fitzpatrick

The fire that engulfed Notre-Dame Cathedral in central Paris four years ago exposed a long-hidden secret about the Paris landmark: it was the first Gothic cathedral in which iron staples were used as reinforcements during the construction of what was the tallest building of its time.

It took the near destruction and the ongoing restoration project to allow a team of archaeologists to discover the iron reinforcements.

The construction of the famous cathedral in the heart of the French capital began in 1160 and was not completed until almost a century later.

In the absence of detailed plans and documentation, architects have long been mystified as to how their medieval counterparts managed to build such thin walls to a then-unprecedented height of 32 metres, and have them support the cathedral's massive vaulted roof structure.

A study led by Maxime L'Heritier, an archaeologist at University Paris 8, shows that builders used as many as 1,000 iron staples to stitch the soaring structure together.

The 2019 fire exposed some of these previously invisible reinforcements, while others fell to the ground as they were dislodged by the heat of the blaze.
Dynamic Gothic architecture

The staples come in varying sizes, ranging from 25 to 50 centimetres long, some weighing several kilos.

They were found in many different parts of the cathedral, including in the walls of the nave, the choir tribunes and in parts of the roof-level cornice.

"This is the first truly massive use of iron in a Gothic cathedral, in very specific places," L'Heritier says.

Staples have been discovered in the walls, floor and pillars of the Gothic masterpiece, as documented in a study published in the journal PLOS One. © 2023 L’Héritier et al.

Iron staples were used in construction since Antiquity, including in Rome's Colosseum and Greek temples.

But in those cases they were simply used to keep large stone blocks secure on the lower floors.

Notre-Dame shows a "much more dynamic conception of architecture", according to L'Heritier.

More than 200 scientists are among the teams of specialists working on restoring Notre-Dame, with the project due to be completed by the end of 2024.

Read also:

Republican Senator Rand Paul blocks bid to ban Chinese-owned TikTok


TikTok creators at a news conference to speak out against a possible ban of TikTok. — Reuters pic

Thursday, 30 Mar 2023

WASHINGTON, March 30 — US Republican Senator Rand Paul yesterday blocked a bid to fast-track a ban of popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, which more than 150 million Americans use, citing concerns about free speech and uneven treatment of social media companies.

“I think we should beware of those who use fear to coax Americans to relinquish our liberties,” Paul said on the Senate floor. “Every accusation of data gathering that has been attributed to TikTok could also be attributed to domestic big tech companies.”

Republican Senator Josh Hawley had sought unanimous consent for a TikTok ban bill. “It protects the American people and it sends a message to Communist China that you cannot buy us,” Hawley said, adding the app is spying on Americans.

“If Republicans want to continuously lose elections for a generation they should pass this bill to ban TikTok — a social media app used by 150 million people, primarily young Americans,” Paul said on the Senate floor. “Do we really want to emulate Chinese speech bans?... We’re going to be just like China and ban speech we’re afraid of?”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said last week he expects the house will take up a bill to address TikTok but the timing is unclear. It is also not clear what a final bill to address TikTok might look like.

A small but growing number of Democrats and Republicans have raised concerns, citing free speech and other issues and have objected to legislation targeting TikTok as overly broad.

TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew appeared before Congress last week and faced tough questions about national security concerns over the ByteDance-owned app.

Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a TikTok video on Friday opposed a TikTok ban, calling it “unprecedented” and said Congress has not gotten classified TikTok briefings. “It just doesn’t feel right to me,” she said.

Last week, three Democrats in the House of Representatives opposed a TikTok ban, as do free speech groups like the American Civil Liberties Union.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration demanded TikTok’s Chinese owners divest their stakes or face a US ban. Then President Donald Trump’s attempts in 2020 to ban TikTok were blocked by US courts. TikTok says it has spent more than US$1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts and rejects spying allegations.

Many Democrats argue Congress should pass comprehensive privacy legislation covering all social media sites, not just TikTok.

Senators Mark Warner, a Democrat, and John Thune, a Republican, have proposed the RESTRICT Act, which now has 22 Senate cosponsors, to give the Commerce Department power to impose restrictions up to and including banning TikTok and other technologies that pose national security risks. It would apply to foreign technologies from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

Paul said the bill “would basically be a limitless authority for the president to ban speech”.

A growing number of conservatives oppose the measure. Former Republican Representative Justin Amash said the “RESTRICT Act isn’t about banning TikTok; it’s about controlling you. It gives broad powers to the executive branch, with few checks, and will be abused in every way you can imagine.”

A Warner spokesperson said, “To be extremely clear, this legislation is aimed squarely at companies like Kaspersky, Huawei and TikTok that create systemic risks to the United States’ national security — not at individual users.” 

— Reuters

Afro Peruvians have high hopes even during their current national crisis

by josh.barker and JESÚS CHUCHO GARCIA Translated by KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO

March 30, 2023

Members of CEDET march against racism in Peru

 (Photos by Oswaldo Bilbao and Antonio Quispes)

The current crisis rattling the Peruvian people is due to the impeachment of President Pedro Castillo.

A former union leader and schoolteacher, Castillo served as president of Peru from July 28, 2021, through December 7, 2022. He was impeached and arrested after he announced his intention to dissolve Congress, install an emergency government, and draft a new constitution. Legislators claimed he was attempting a coup d’état and had Castillo detained.

This led to an unprecedented spiral of violent protests, with people being killed in the streets in different parts of the country.

Afro Peruvian singer Susana Baca, a three-time Grammy award-winner who served as Peru’s minister of culture in 2011, condemned Dina Boluarte, who replaced Castillo as Peru’s president. The Peruvian National Police have violently repressed protests against the Boluarte presidency. So far, 67 people have been killed and more than 300 arrested by security forces. Amnesty International stated on March 17 that “thousands of people have been injured, several of them seriously, mostly in the southern regions of Ayacucho, Apurímac, and Puno.”

Baca told the investigative news program Hablemos Claro Exitosa, “I was very excited when they named her [Dina Boluarte] president, when they gave her the presidential sash. I said ‘at last a woman.’ We women have a very great intuition…But the only thing I can ask of this lady is [to] step down before she is accused of committing crimes against humanity.

“When you don’t have the qualifications for the position you hold, the best thing you can do is to step down. But before retiring, you have to get elections brought forward. We hope that because of this terrible situation, we will know how to make a better choice. That is the only way.”

The African presence in the Republic of Peru is the result of the painful slave trade and the ways in which slavery was maintained: through rigidly controlled productivity systems like sugar cane plantations and the nation’s gold and silver mines. Black people staged constant rebellions against enslavement, such as the one led by Francisco Congo in 1713, which led to the establishment of a liberated space called the Palenque de Guachipa.

Slavery was abolished on December 3, 1854, but social marginalization and racial discrimination have been a constant up through today. Afro Peruvian culture is expressed in its dances, cajon music, the quija de burro, the Peruvian waltz, marineras, the poetics of the Santa Cruz brothers, the creation of Pisco (an Afro Peruvian spirit drink), foods––from the carapulcra to the seafood batea to the ceviche. All represent a culture of resistance and creativity that gives a face to the cultural diversity of the country.

From the 1980s to the present day, Afro Peruvian social movements have been fighting against exclusion, racism, and racial demagogy.

Afro Peruvians have been speaking out about the current political climate in the nation.

Antonio Quispe, a lawyer, musician, and activist, said that “Peru is undergoing one of those cyclical crises that affect the capitalist system. This has existed since Peruvian society declared its independence from the colonial system: There is a coexistence of a conservative Peruvian society with the extreme tasks left unfinished by a liberal revolution. Today, when social protests have turned political, there is an obvious deficiency of leadership. This interim regime is a mockery of the 200 years of the Republic… its actions have not only exposed the infamous economic and social [class] inequality, but also a lack of class organization and political perspective from the popular sectors.

“The political crisis that we are living in Peru is against the economics of the people itself (particularly Afro Peruvians), who, despite not having suitable tools, continue to mobilize in search of better living conditions and opportunities. The slogans that are being chanted, almost spontaneously, reflect a history of exclusions and hardship.”

The human rights group Center for Ethnic Development (CEDET) said in a statement: “We express, first of all, our indignation and rejection of the loss of life that occurred during the period of December 7–9, 2022, and January 9, 2023, the date on which we write this proclamation.”

“Life being the principal and most sacred of all the rights of humanity, the attack against it constitutes the most flagrant opprobrium in a constitutional state of law. And here, treaties, norms, and all international jurisprudence fully agree that the government, through its officials, is politically, socially, and legally (criminally) responsible for its dissemination, protection, and effective compliance.

“Furthermore, it is evident the continuity of the exercise of power based on centralism, classism, and structural racism, because, as in the past, the victims of the crisis are the most vulnerable sectors, which, in their own way, or as they can, call for a fair and rapid solution to the crisis. We, therefore, demand from the Peruvian government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial), the immediate cessation of the deaths of Peruvians; the cessation of the criminalization of protest; and the creation of bridges of dialogue that guarantee a period of peace and tranquility.

“Secondly, and not because it is secondary but rather because of the structural and historical nature of its correlate which requires greater political and social dialogues and agreements, we raise our voices, demanding the updating of the Social Pact, which will lead us to a more supportive and equitable society. At the end of the day, a more humane society. It is the political model or system that has collapsed in our country; we have had six presidents in the period corresponding to one, and that is only the tip of the iceberg…

“We, therefore, demand the immediate holding of general elections, guaranteeing true popular participation. We also call on all the forces of the nation to reflect on the need to re-organize the basic structures of the national government, to make it a true leader of the common welfare, and able to respect the unrestricted fundamental rights of all individuals and communities, collectives and peoples of our territory.”

U.S. wins release of jailed hero of ‘Hotel Rwanda’

by GIN

March 30, 2023

Paul Rusesabagina Credit: GIN photo

(GIN) — From the cinematic screen of “Hotel Rwanda” to solitary confinement in a Rwandese jail, Paul Rusesabegina has been there and back.

Now, after a round of quiet diplomacy with two U.S. senior officials of the Biden administration and a final meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Rusesabegina is free and heading to the U.S. to be reunited with his family in Texas. This ends an ordeal of 900 days linked to Rwanda President Paul Kagame and his war on dissent at home and against opponents abroad.

Rusesabagina was accused of terrorism over his ties to the Rwanda Movement for Democratic Change, a group that opposes Kagame’s rule. He has admitted having a leadership role in the group but denies links to its armed wing.

Found guilty of the charges, he was sentenced to 25 years in the Mageragere prison in 2021. His captors kept him blindfolded, and security forces stepped on his neck and denied him food and sleep. A cancer survivor with hypertension and a history of cardiovascular disease, Rusesabagina was threatened with shortages of food, water, and his medication.

In the Oscar-nominated film “Hotel Rwanda,” viewers were given a rare look inside Rusesabagina’s luxury Hotel des Mille Collines in the capital Kigali. There, 1,268 Rwandans, both Tutsis and Hutus, were saved from genocidal forces waiting beyond its walls. Rusesabagina was depicted as a hero who saved these lives.

As Rusesabagina, a Hutu married to a Tutsi, described in his autobiography, “An Ordinary Man,” it was his ability to persuade the killers against targeting those who had sought refuge in the Hotel des Mille Collines that spared them.

He was also able to use his connections and call in favors with some of the high-profile people who used to pass through the upmarket hotel. He also had cash.

The international community was slow to learn the horrific details of the Rwandan genocide as described in “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families,” a book by Philip Gourevitch, staff writer of the New Yorker magazine. Gourevitch wrote about a Hutu pastor, Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, and his son Gerard, who were found guilty of summoning the Hutus to butcher the Tutsis in what became the worst single massacre in the entire 1994 genocide.

The Hollywood movie may have saved the disaster from oblivion as audiences filled theaters to watch Don Cheadle in the role of Rusesabagina in 2004.

The U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom was among the honors awarded to Rusesabagina over the years for risking his life to shelter hundreds of people when ethnic Hutus killed more than 800,000 people, mostly from the Tutsi minority.

“Rusesabagina’s release will conclude a case that has highlighted Rwanda’s blatant disregard for international norms when it seeks to target people deemed [enemies] of the state—even those far beyond their border,” Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, on the International Right to Truth Day (March 24), Kagame critic Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza called for an independent commission of inquiry to investigate mysterious deaths and disappearances of opposition members, “including those of my friends and colleagues.”