Analysts See Continued Profit Declines for Shipping in 

PUBLISHED APR 7, 2023 BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

As the investment community prepares for the start of earnings season with the first of the reports scheduled to be released as early as next week, speculation focuses on what the outlook is for the shipping industry’s financial results. There has been extensive focus on the dramatic declines in container volumes and spot freight rates which changed the trend lines starting last summer. Industry executives in their outlooks all agreed that the bulb has passed, but the question remains how low will profits decline in 2023?

Profits began to decline with the third quarter of 2022 showing the first significant impact after seven quarters of consecutive net income growth. The fourth quarter was the second quarter of sequential declines. Well-known industry analyst John McCown of Blue Alpha Capital in his latest report issued on April 3 calculates that net income was down over 41 percent in the fourth quarter versus Q3 and down by a third versus the year-ago period.

Sea-Intelligence points out that 2022 was overall a very strong year for the industry but that the cracks began to show in profitability. From the public reports, they calculate earnings before taxes and interest (EBIT) was $95 billion. They further estimate when MSC, which is private, CMA CGM which does not report EBIT, and other carriers such as PIL which had not reported were added in, carriers’ EBIT for 2022 reached an estimated $138 billion.

“However, there is a weakness in the market that is highlighted by a sharp contraction in transported volumes, while freight rates, through higher year-over-year, also seem to have slowed down,” cautioned Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.

They are using a measure of EBIT/TEU to illustrate the emerging disparities in the shipping industry and as a signal of what is to come. “While the larger shipping lines have close to doubled their EBIT/TEU, the smaller ones were only able to increase it by a relatively smaller margin,” notes Murphy.

Fourth quarter 2022 Sea-Intelligence believes illustrates the emerging differences by size of the carrier. Large carriers they note were able to maintain EBIT/TEU levels close to Q4 2021 while the smaller lines were not able to maintain their profitability levels. On average, Sea-Intelligence calculates, the carriers recorded EBIT/TEU of $843 per TEU in Q4 down by a third from the year ago. 

The declines in profitability per container they report contributed to an overall 46 percent decline in EBIT year-over-year for the industry. Sea-Intelligence says the fourth quarter shows “visible indications of a weakening market.” They note that all of the shipping lines have remained profitable but the disparity is growing between the larger and smaller carriers.

John McCown points to steps he expects the shipping companies will continue to take to slow the declines. To counter falling rates and volumes he expects the industry will continue to slash capacity primarily by blanking sailings. He points out it worked well at the beginning of the pandemic and is likely to be top of mind for executives as they work to counter current market forces.

Despite these steps, McCown still sees an 80 percent decline in net income for the coming year. “My current placeholder for sector net income in 2023 is $43.2 billion.” He estimates total revenues will come in at $327.6 billion giving the industry a margin of just over 13 percent for 2023. 

“The larger point is that earnings in the container shipping industry are on a different curve than what has occurred in the spot rates, as the large majority of loads move under contract rates,” writes McCown. “While 2023 net income will be down significantly from 2022, my analysis of the latest data suggests the industry will remain profitable.”

Yet, while he predicts the industry will remain profitable, McCown in his report shows the trend line over the last two quarters carrying forward into 2023. Net income he forecasts will be strongest in the first quarter of 2023 at $14.9 billion, sliding to $10.8 billion in the second quarter before it levels off at $8.7 billion for both the third and fourth quarters. He however notes the difficulties in predicting sector results, especially in the current fluid market conditions. 

The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall - REBEL (rebelnews.ie)

Brazilian Air Force destroys aircraft used to smuggle gold from the Yanomami traditional territory

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | April 9, 2023 |

Illegal gold mining in the Yanomami traditional territory. (Image by the Brazilian Air Force).

The Brazilian Air Force (FAB) destroyed, on land, a small aircraft used to smuggle gold out of the traditional territory of the Yanomami in the Roraima state, near the border with Venezuela.


In a media statement, the FAB noted that this was the first action aimed at combating illegal mining and unregulated air traffic following the closure of the air space in the Amazonian region, which was ordered last Friday by the national government.

After almost to 20,000 illegal miners left the Yanomami reserve, the executive power decided to close the air space one month earlier than initially scheduled by a joint order issued by the ministries of justice and defence.

The Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) and the Federal Highway Police (PRF) were also involved in Friday’s operation. Two people were arrested in connection to the illegal runway.

Aircraft used for smuggling gold out of the Yanomami traditional territory. (Image by the Airplane destroyed by the Brazilian Air Force).

Back in January, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ Da Silva ordered the immediate removal of illegal miners operating on Yanomami land, after learning of the humanitarian crisis of hunger and disease caused by their activities in the area.

Later in February, an intense police operation destroyed 200 camps and seized 84 boats, two aircraft, 27 tonnes of cassiterite, 11,400 litres of fuel, 172 engines, and other materials, tools, and machinery used by wildcat miners.

According to the NGO Instituto Escolhas, Brazil produced 47.9 tonnes of gold with evidence of illegality in 2021, which is equivalent to 54% of the national production. Almost two-thirds of that gold came from the Amazon.

The organization also reported that between 2015 and 2020, Brazil traded 229 tonnes of gold with evidence of illegality. This indicates that almost half of the gold produced and exported by the country had an unknown origin.

Mexico’s executive scrutinizes mining concessions in protected areas

Staff Writer | April 9, 2023 | 

The Biosphere reserve Sierra Gorda de Querétaro is among the protected areas that host mining concessions. (Image by Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata, Wikimedia Commons.)

About 7% of Mexico’s mining concessions are located within protected areas, a report presented by the federal government to the parliament shows.


According to the dossier, which is backed by assessments ordered by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, there are 671 mining concessions occupying 1.5 million hectares located within 70 protected areas.

Querétaro, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Coahuila, Baja California and Baja California Sur are the states where most of these land-based concessions are, while Baja California Sur, Chiapas and Oaxaca host 14 deep-sea mining permits.

Local media report that the granting of concessions in protected areas and even in Mexico’s exclusive economic zone and federal maritime-terrestrial zone, started during the Carlos Salinas de Gortari administration, following the passing of the 1992 Mining Law.

The document submitted to the legislative chamber, on the other hand, notes that mining is one of the industrial activities responsible for most of Mexico’s highly polluted sites. Out of 632 identified in 2023, 84 were mining sites and 11 of those exist within protected areas.

Data from the Ministry of Environment also show that the damages caused by mining operations in ecologically sensitive sites range from the loss of vegetation cover, soil layer and habitat to changes in air quality, surface runoff, production of acid mine drainage and mobilization of toxic substances by elements exposed to weathering, groundwater disturbances, seismic vibrations and noise disturbances from blasting, among others.

The presentation of the new report before parliament is part of a presidential initiative to reform, add, and repeal various Mining Code provisions regarding mining and water concessions.

Teck mining magnate stands between Glencore and mega-deal
Bloomberg News | April 8, 2023 |

(Reference image by Teck Resources).

The fate of the biggest mining deal in more than a decade lies in the hands of a Canadian magnate who built a fortune on copper and coal.


Norman Keevil Jr., 85, is the controlling shareholder of Teck Resources Ltd., a mining company he built with his father nearly six decades ago. Today, the Vancouver-based firm produces copper and zinc from a handful of mines scattered across the Americas, and steelmaking coal from lucrative operations in Canada.

Those assets make Teck appealing to global miners hunting for more of the industrial metals that underpin the global transition to cleaner energy, prompting Swiss commodities giant Glencore Plc to make an unsolicited $23 billion bid on March 26.

Glencore’s interest doesn’t guarantee a deal gets done. The Keevil family’s control of Teck through voting shares has long insulated the company from takeovers. While Canadian metals producers like Falconbridge Ltd., Inco Ltd. and Alcan Inc. fell to foreign firms in the early 2000s, the family’s iron grip kept Teck independent. Even now, Keevil shows little interest in selling the company he spent decades building.

“He’s like the last of a generation of mine builders in Canada,” said Pierre Gratton, president of the Mining Association of Canada. “You think of all those people that built Canada’s biggest mining companies, and Norm is the last one standing.”

Keevil was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1938 and spent the better part of his childhood in northern Ontario’s wilderness. His father, a Harvard University graduate turned prospector, abandoned academia in the 1950s to develop a small copper deposit near a remote settlement named Teck Township, about 600 kilometers (375 miles) north of Toronto.

‘Rest on your ores’

The mine became a family business, and Keevil joined his father’s company after completing a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1960s. In a 2017 memoir, Never Rest on Your Ores: Building a Mining Company, One Stone at a Time, Keevil recalled attending monthly board meetings in a log cabin on an island across from the mine.

“Norm and his dad really started the company from grassroots, with nothing,” said Edward Thompson, 87, who befriended Keevil in college and became one of Teck’s first executives.

Keevil shared his father’s penchant for high-stakes business gambles, and when Keevil took over as chief executive officer in 1982 he enacted a flurry of acquisitions that netted the company some of its most lucrative base metal operations. At the apex of the 1980s oil shock, he borrowed heavily to finance oil and coal projects in Canada’s western provinces. Later, he sought backing from Japanese and Chinese investors to pitch in on expensive mining ventures further north.

Keevil didn’t possess the typical bravado of mining executives of the time, Thompson said, calling him “aggressive in business, but quite soft-spoken — almost shy.”

“When we’re together, I sometimes have trouble hearing him because he’ll talk so quietly,” he said.

Still, Keevil rarely minced words when it came to business. During the battle to acquire Inco in 2006 — which drew bids from foreign firms as well as Teck — Keevil said its CEO “sold Canada out for his own purposes.”

Today, Keevil lives in British Columbia and has largely retreated from public life. He holds a spot in the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame and has departments named after him at the University of Toronto and University of British Columbia. Keevil didn’t respond to Bloomberg requests for comment.

After Glencore’s proposal, Keevil — who holds an honorary position as chairman emeritus at Teck — issued a brief statement on April 3: “I unequivocally support the board’s decision to reject Glencore’s unsolicited offer to acquire Teck. Now is not the time to explore a transaction of this nature.”

Teck has been protected from such takeovers thanks to the Keevil family’s unusual choice in 1969 to separate shares of the company into two classes, with one set carrying more power than the other. Through a holding company called Temagami Mining Co., the family has the majority of class A shares, each entitled to 100 votes, while the public has class B shares, which carry one vote.

“Without the protection of our dual-share structure, Teck would have been swallowed up,” Keevil wrote in his memoir. “We could have been the target of an opportunistic takeover and a longtime Canadian mining champion lost to foreign hands.”

Corporate filings released on April 3 showed that Teck board members began talks with Keevil a year ago to consider collapsing the share structure, citing growing investor unrest. Keevil and the board spent about four months negotiating before arriving at an agreement in January.

That deal, which requires approval from shareholders in an April 26 vote, would give the Keevils six more years of control of a company they’ve so carefully guarded.

“It’s like giving your baby away,” Thompson said. “It’s tough to see something you spent a lifetime creating disappear.”

(Reporting by Jacob Lorinc).

Canadian entrepreneur Lassonde plans to buy blocking stake in Teck’s Elk Valley – Globe and Mail

Reuters | April 8, 2023 |

Pierre Lassonde. (Image by Gilbertus, Wikimedia Commons.)

Canadian entrepreneur Pierre Lassonde is planning to buy a blocking stake in Elk Valley Resources, the steel-making coal unit to be spun off by Teck Resources, the Globe and Mail reported.


In an interview with the Canadian newspaper published on Friday, Lassonde expressed his interest in the soon-to-be divested unit of Teck, saying he wanted the company’s assets to “remain Canadian.”

Lassonde’s comments came after Teck Resources rejected an unsolicited takeover offer of $22.5 billion from Glencore Plc earlier this week, citing reluctance to expose its shareholders to thermal coal, oil, LNG and related sectors through the merger.

Lassonde would “love” to own up to 20% of Elk Valley, the report said, adding that he is planning to put together a group of investors who would buy up to C$300 million of the company’s shares, giving them a 10%-20% stake.

Teck Resources could not be reached immediately for comment. There was no contact information for Lassonde immediately available.

Under terms of a deal offered previously by minority shareholder Nippon Steel, the Elk Valley unit will have an enterprise value of C$11.5 billion. Teck Resources in February said it will receive an 87.5% interest in gross revenue royalty from the steel-making coal business through the transition period.

(Reporting by Rahat Sandhu in Bengaluru and editing by Leslie Adler).

Researchers find unexpected link between Benin Bronzes and Germany

Staff Writer | April 9, 2023 

Detail of a manilla bracelet concreted to part of a pot from a Flemish trader excavated by the Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi off Getaria, Basque Country, northern Spain. (Image by Ana Maria Benito-Dominguez, Public Library of Science CC-BY 4.0).

Researchers at Germany’s Technische Hochschule Georg Agricola recently discovered that the renowned Benin Bronzes are composed of metal sourced from Germany.


In a paper published in the journal Plos One, the scholars explain that the Benin Bronzes collectively refers to thousands of African artworks in the form of heads, plaques, figurines, and other objects produced by the Edo people of Nigeria between the 16th and 19th century AD. It is commonly thought that the metal in these sculptures was sourced from small brass rings called “manillas” which were used as currency in European trade in West Africa, but this has been difficult to confirm.

The artifacts have also been the subject of controversy in light of the ongoing repatriation discussions between Nigerian officials and many museums holding the Benin Bronzes.

Some of the 313 manillas excavated by the Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi from a Flemish trader lost in 1524 off Getaria in Basque Country, northern Spain. (Image by Ana Maria Benito-Dominguez, Public Library of Science CC-BY 4.0).

For this study, the researchers performed chemical analyses on 67 manillas recovered from five Atlantic shipwrecks and three land sites in Europe and Africa dating between the 16th and 19th centuries. Specifically, they wanted to identify lead isotope signatures and trace element compositions of the metal.

The group found a strong similarity between the metal composition of the Benin Bronzes and that of the manillas used in Portuguese trade prior to the 18th century, suggesting these manillas were a major source of metal for the sculptures.

Furthermore, the composition of those manillas is similar to ores from the German Rhineland, suggesting that Germany was the main source of metal for the production of pre-18th century manillas and, ultimately, the Benin Bronzes. The consistency in the metal composition of the Bronzes suggests that African metalsmiths were very selective about what metal they would use.

“The Benin Bronzes are the most famous ancient works of art in all of West Africa. Where their brass came from has long been a mystery. Finally, we can prove the totally unexpected: the brass used for the Benin masterpieces, long thought to come from Britain or Flanders, was mined in western Germany,” Tobias Skowronek, lead author of the paper, said in a media statement. “The Rhineland manillas were then shipped more than 6,300 kilometres to Benin. This is the first time a scientific link has been made.”

Skowronek noted that analyses of other German-produced metal wares from this time might shed further light on the details of early Atlantic trade. He also said that Portuguese manillas were likely not the only source of metal for the Benin Bronzes, thus, there are more questions to be answered about the manufacturing of the famous sculptures.

Twitter Changes Label On NPR Account From ‘State-Affiliated’ To ‘Government Funded’

Matt Novak
Contributor
FOIA reporter and founder of Paleofuture.com, writing news and opinion on every aspect of technology.

Apr 8, 2023



The NPR Twitter account as it currently appears, annotated to highly the new label of ... [+]TWITTER

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has changed the way National Public Radio is listed on the social media platform yet again, slapping a “government funded” label on the organization’s Twitter account. And it sounds like other media outlets will probably get the new label soon.

Twitter caused some controversy this past week when the social media platform added a label to NPR’s account declaring it was “state-affiliated media.” The move put NPR, which receives some funding from the government, on par with Russia’s RT and China’s Xinhua propaganda outlets. But Twitter has changed NPR’s label to read “government funded” on Saturday, leaving the “state affiliated” label on Xinhua and RT. At least for now.

NPR gets roughly 1-2% of its funding from the federal government, while the majority of its funding comes from corporate sponsorships and fees charged to local radio stations, according to the New York Times. And while NPR does get some government funding, it has editorial independence much like other state-funded broadcasters around the world.

Australia’s ABC News and the UK’s BBC are just two examples of state-funded broadcasters that doesn’t necessarily agree with the sitting Prime Ministers of their respective countries on everything at any given time. The BBC and Australia’s ABC don’t have any label on Twitter, but that might change according to the latest reports.

NPR’s Bobby Allyn, a technology reporter for the media outlet, tweeted on Saturday that Elon Musk told him Twitter would be applying the “government funded” label to “a larger number of institutions.”

Allyn was quick to point out that Tesla has also benefited from government funding, but that isn’t disclosed on Musk’s social media network.

“Tesla, which has received billions of dollars in government subsidies over the years, does not appear to have the label,” Allyn tweeted on Saturday.

While Tesla has indeed historically benefited from government funding, Musk’s other company SpaceX is arguably much more dependent on government money. SpaceX is privately held, so it’s tough to know for sure, but some back-of-the-napkin estimates have estimated about 98% of SpaceX funding comes from government contracts.

It’s not immediately clear when the “government funded” label will start popping up on other Twitter accounts. Twitter responded to a request for comment on Saturday afternoon with a poop emoji, an automated email that was set up by Musk to respond to all reporters.


The poop emoji response all reporters now receive when they try to email Twitter for comment.GMAIL

Musk has ruffled plenty of feathers in recent weeks, not just with his controversial new labeling strategy for NPR. Musk started putting a warning on all Twitter links going out to Substack, the writing platform that’s become incredibly popular. That choice cause Matt Taibbi, a journalist who worked on the so-called Twitter Files, to say he was leaving Twitter on Friday since it meant he couldn’t effectively share his work.

“It turns out Twitter is upset about the new Substack Notes feature, which they see as a hostile rival. When I asked how I was supposed to market my work, I was given the option of posting my articles on Twitter instead of Substack,” Taibbi wrote.

But Musk disagreed with Taibbi’s characterization, insisting Twitter wasn’t blocking links to Substack. And while it’s technically true that you could still get to the link, most normal people wouldn’t click on it simply because Twitter made it look like something that would harm your computer.

On top of all that, Twitter has stopped anyone from retweeting or even liking tweets with Substack posts, a bizarre move considering Substack Notes is still a beta project that most people can’t even access yet. Musk also appears to be picking fights with friendly investors who support Substack, including venture capitalist Paul Graham.

“Elon has asked me to ‘please tell people on Twitter that you are an investor in the company trying to kill Twitter,’ so for anyone who didn't already know, Substack is a YC company,” Graham tweeted on Saturday.

“It's not because I'm an investor that I think it's a mistake to penalize links to Substack though. It's just the wrong way to run a forum. You can't put your interests before users' like that. I would tell Substack the same thing,” Graham continued.

Musk is clearly free to do whatever he wants on Twitter. The billionaire bought the social media site for $44 billion back in October 2022 and he’s free to slap labels on whichever accounts he likes while blocking links to anything on a whim. But it’s hard to see how he’s going to make his users very happy by severely hampering usability of the site in increasingly bizarre ways.


Matt Novak
I’m a technology reporter and founder of Paleofuture.com, a website I started in 2007 that looks at past visions of the future, from flying cars and jetpacks to utopias and dystopias. Paleofuture was formerly hosted at Smithsonian magazine (2011-2013) and Gizmodo (2013-2020).

UK: How Braverman's comments on 'grooming gangs' will fuel Islamophobia

Nadeine Asbali
6 April 2023 

Muslim men in the country are repeatedly portrayed as predators or terrorists, helping to drive the government's racist policies

Home Secretary Suella Braverman during a press conference following the launch of new legislation on migrant channel crossings at Downing Street on 7 March, 2023 (Reuters)

As a Muslim woman, I’ve certainly been guilty of presuming that we are unique in how we experience gendered Islamophobia in the UK.

The way misogyny, racism and Islamophobia intersect for Muslim women confines us to outdated and damaging boxes. It is exhausting to never be allowed to escape ideals of us as meek and oppressed, hyper-sexualised and threatening, all at once.

But if there’s anything I’ve learned from recent comments by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, it’s that Muslim men experience a particularly pernicious strain of gendered Islamophobia too - one that portrays them as predators or terrorists, or a drain on the system. And it’s no coincidence that these stereotypes form the perfect scapegoat for a government looking to shift criticism away from its own successive policy failings.

Appearing on Sky News over the weekend, Braverman described grooming gangs as “overwhelmingly” consisting of “British Pakistani males”, and their victims as “white English girls”.

Ignoring the legacy of heinous abuse enacted by high-profile individuals such as Jimmy Savile and figures within the Catholic church, Braverman instead repeated far-right notions of brown men as predatory and dangerous - notions that have haunted migrant communities for decades.

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It is politically expedient for a government that relies on rightwing votes and sits upon years of successive failings to create a scapegoat out of Pakistani (read: Muslim) men. The truth is irrelevant in the quest to sow discord and to ensure the public is distracted from what more than a decade of austerity and hostile politics has done to the most vulnerable in our society.

There is overwhelming evidence from the Home Office itself that “group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white”, Braverman has doubled down on the notion that men with brown skin are the primary threat.

On Wednesday, twenty-one people, all white, have been convicted for their parts in the largest ever child sex abuse case investigated by West Midlands Police.

It is ironic that the home secretary, who presides over a police force found just last month to be institutionally racist and riddled with sexual offenders, insists that British Pakistani men “hold cultural values totally at odds with British values”.
Anti-woke agenda

Braverman’s comments carry weight, and in my opinion, this isn’t about the very serious issue of sexual abuse. Dig a little deeper past the headlines and you’ll see that the government - including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak himself - is using this as a cause to spearhead the same anti-woke, anti-“political correctness” agenda that has long defined the increasingly right-wing Tory party.

Feed the flames of an existing far-right preoccupation with Muslim immigrants taking over, in which Muslim men are cast as sexual predators who systemically target white girls, and you have the perfect political environment for the Conservatives to push their policies - from the unethical plan to deport migrants to Rwanda, to banning those who enter the UK by boat from claiming asylum.


No matter what Muslim men do, they cannot escape this association with violence and misogyny, which has been deliberately attached to them

If migrant communities have already been dehumanised to the extent that they are seen as nothing but a threat, ready to pounce on a vulnerable native population, then there is very little persuasion needed to support the government’s increasingly hostile, divisive and racist politics.

Better still, if “political correctness” is made into a pernicious enemy that allows brown men to rape white women and get away with it, then it becomes even easier for rabidly racist views to become commonplace in the name of fighting said political correctness.

The result is a specifically gendered Islamophobia that follows Muslim men wherever they go. This is nothing new, whether it’s the long-held tabloid obsession with grown men from Muslim countries posing as children to sneak into the country (propelled to the front of the agenda by a former home secretary), or assumptions that any practising Muslim man is a terrorist.

No matter what Muslim men do, they cannot escape this association with violence and misogyny, which has been deliberately attached to them by a government intent on distracting from its own failings with a convenient scapegoat.
Normalising violence

Such notions are even present in the things we watch on western television, according to a survey released last year, which found that 30 percent of Muslim male characters were portrayed as violent.

Even rising to the highest political office is not enough to stunt such stereotypes: After posting a photo of his family praying on their first night in Bute House, newly elected Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf received a tirade of abuse on Twitter for the lack of women in the photo - a clear nudge to the presumption that all Muslim men are raging misogynists.

But the danger goes deeper than mere accusations, negative articles or vitriol on social media. When Muslim men are routinely dehumanised and associated with threats and perversions, then violence towards them becomes normalised.

Why the British government is in no hurry to define IslamophobiaRead More »

The man who drove a van into worshippers outside Finsbury Park Mosque during Ramadan in 2017 had reportedly become obsessed with media depictions of Muslim men grooming white girls, even leaving a note in the van describing Muslim men as rapists, “in-bred” and “feral”.

Likewise, the attacker who firebombed a Dover migrant centre last year had shared anti-Muslim sentiments on his Facebook page, displaying a clear link between far-right ideology and acts of violence towards those who are visibly Muslim.

It’s impossible to truly understand how nefarious the government’s criminalisation of Pakistani men - and by association, the entire Muslim community - is without considering the economic and social realities for most British Muslims. According to the Muslim Census survey, half of all Muslims in the country live in poverty, compared with 18 percent of the general public.

Muslim communities are disproportionately impacted by financial instability. They are acutely disenfranchised and vulnerable to harsh state policies, which aim to scapegoat a community already placed in a position of precarity by a government committed to growing the chasm between the rich and poor.

Braverman’s comments are nothing short of incendiary, especially in light of recent incidents where two elderly men were set on fire while leaving mosques in Birmingham and London, putting anyone who is visibly Muslim on edge. Most worryingly, these comments are only an indicator of more dangerous things to come from a government intent on growing its popularity among the far-right.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.


Nadeine Asbali is a British-Libyan writer and teacher based in London.

Saudi, Omani envoys reach Sanaa to hold talks with Houthi leader

CGTN

Saudi and Omani delegations have arrived in Yemeni capital Sanaa to hold talks with the head of Yemen's Houthi Supreme Political Council, Houthi-run news agency Saba said on Sunday.

Quoting a source in the Houthi presidential council, Saba said the delegations and Mahdi al-Mashat would discuss "lifting the siege with all its repercussions", an end to aggression, and the restoration of the Yemeni people's rights, including paying the salaries of all state employees from oil and gas revenue.

A visit by Saudi officials to Yemen indicates progress in Oman-mediated talks between Riyadh and the Houthis, which run in parallel to UN peace efforts, as well as a reduction in tensions after Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to restore relations.

The arrival of Saudi and Omani officials come a day after the Houthis received 13 detainees released by Saudi Arabia in exchange for a Saudi detainee freed earlier, which is part of a wider prisoner exchange agreed by the warring sides.

At talks in Switzerland last month, attended by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, Yemen's Saudi-backed government and the Houthis agreed to free 887 detainees.

The UN special envoy to Yemen has said the deal is one of several developments reflecting movement towards ending the eight-year conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and caused a humanitarian crisis.

Algerian author Said Khatibi: 'To avoid war, destroy the myth of purity'

In an interview with Middle East Eye, the acclaimed Algerian author talks about his new novel 'Sarajevo Firewood'

Said Khatibi's latest book takes aim at the idea of 'pure' identity (Banipal Books)

By MEE correspondent
30 March 2023 

Life's spontaneity and diversity, the awkward mixing of sadness and joy, is something Algerian author Said Khatibi says he understands well.

At a wake for a close relative in the Algerian town of Bou Saada, an occasion for mourning turned to celebration when a publisher messaged him to say he had been shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

Born in 1984, Khatibi spent his formative years in Algeria during the civil war, which pitted the state against various Islamist armed groups.

He says the death and destruction he witnessed taught him and others around him "how to live", especially the experience of finding moments of happiness between spells of misery.

Khatabi used his own experiences of the Algerian civil war when writing his latest book (Banipal Books)

The resulting revelation was that in the organic flow of life, the human experiences of joy and grief were interconnected.

It's this lesson that shines forth in Khatibi's latest novel, Sarajevo Firewood, which has recently been translated into English.

Set in the late 90s, Sarajevo Firewood tells the story of Salim, a jaded Algerian journalist covering the war in the Balkans.

He arrives in Slovenia at the request of his uncle and discovers he has been lied to about the identity of his real father.

There, he meets Ivana, who has fled the war in Bosnia, her psychotic sister and defeatist mother.

Weighed down with an unsatisfying job and tormented by memories of her abusive father, she hopes to pursue her ambition of becoming a playwright in Slovenia.

As the story progresses, the characters come to personify the manipulation and deceit inherent in war.

Written in a minimalist and accessible prose, the reader is challenged to question their sense of identity; who or what they belong to, and their values and purpose in life.

Salim returns to Algeria a broken man, determined to retrace his own origins and unravel the web of deceit that is his life.

Middle East Eye spoke to Khatibi about some of these important themes.

MEE: There are an array of themes interwoven in the novel. One of the most striking is the idea of 'origins'. Why did you write about this?

Said Khatibi: All wars at the end of the 20th century began with the question of origins: ethnic or religious. To avoid such wars, we must first destroy the myth of purity. We are all the result of a mix.

The modern citizen is a collage of many identities, not just one. Identity is a sensitive fibre. And politicians know it. They attract supporters by pressing on this sensitive fibre.


'The modern citizen is a collage of many identities, not just one. Identity is a sensitive fibre'
- Said Khatibi

In a country where there is no personal freedom, people become prisoners of murderous identities, as (Lebanese author) Amin Maalouf said.

He means, because of this attachment to origins - to identities - people kill each other.

In Algeria and Bosnia, the wars were led by people blinded by their unhealthy attachment to religious or nationalist identities.

MEE: The protagonists struggle with freedom, professionally and personally. How has this struggle impacted you?

SK: The lack of individual freedom is a major issue in Algeria. Since independence in 1962, the Algerian regime has treated people like children - as insignificant.

It has written its own history, not the history of the people. Individual freedom is necessary to be able to question the beliefs we take for granted.

Without it, I have seen how we lose freedom, confidence in ourselves, and trust in others. We become victims of our fears. Anyone who is different becomes an enemy.

MEE: Salim is confronted with a harsh truth in the novel, a truth many take for granted; that we are who we are told we are. As someone who has lived through civil war, how important is it to question what we assume to be true?

SK: We need time to question what we believe to be true. To get rid of the myths of identity and ethnicity we have to question our official histories.

The real challenge in Algeria today, as in Bosnia, is accepting the multicultural, multi-ethnic history of these two countries.

I come from two cultures, like millions of Algerians: Arab and Amazigh. We cannot reduce a country to a singular ethnicity, culture or language. There are variants within all of these. Within the Amazigh, there are also variants. For centuries the two have lived together.

At home we mix the two languages, we celebrate the Amazigh year, but we are also from an Arab culture. The two complement each other.

MEE: In order for Ivana to fulfil her purpose, she chooses not to carry her dark past into the future. The novel seems to say the past does not have to repeat itself, no matter how strong its grip on us is. That has huge significance when we look at the political order today, which wants us to stay stuck in the past.

SK: How can we break from the past? I don’t believe in breaking with the past. Life is a continuous chain and there are no breaks.

I believe it is necessary to write, to document events so that they do not repeat themselves.

In Algeria, we wanted to quickly turn the page on the nineties. We had an amnesty and armed groups have integrated into ordinary life; victim and assassin now live together.
 

This 1994 picture shows village guards in the Kabylia region of Algeria at the height of the civil war (AFP)

We wanted to make people forget ten years of terror, but people still remember it.

In Bosnia, there are museums, monuments, etc. But people want to forget quickly.

We can only “break from the past” if we admit our mistakes, if we rectify our history of false myths, if we admit that we are supposed to live together with our multitudinous origins.

MEE: There are some horrendous murders in the novel; a young girl being beheaded. You spoke to families who experienced extreme violence during the Algerian civil war as part of your research. How painful was it?

SK: I am from a family of victims myself. Many tragic stories are still unreported.

All the stories are painful, without exception, but the most painful thing is to know that the criminals (still) live today, side by side with the victims, without asking for forgiveness.

Some have become public figures, untouchables, guests on TV, while the families of victims are abandoned.

MEE: Victims need to tell their stories. How easy is that in a country like Algeria?

SK: Freedom of expression has never really existed. It’s a nonsense phrase.

In Algeria, where there should be freedom of expression, instead it is under control.

Many TV channels have been suspended or closed in recent years. Many people are in jail because of a post on Facebook.

As a journalist, I’ve experienced intimidation. Sometimes death threats on social networks because of an article. Every time I go to Algeria, I feel (like) I will be arrested by the police.

Many of my colleagues have already been to prison or are being prosecuted.

Intellectuals were always the favourite target. After independence, they were imprisoned. Bachir Hadj Ali, for example.

In the 90s they were killed by extremist groups. People like Tahar Djaout and about a hundred other writers and journalists.

They want us to believe that we are free to express our opinions and thoughts, but as soon as we criticise the political system and its foundations, or taboos, the door to prison will be opened for us.

Editor's note: Questions and answers have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity. Sarajevo Firewood is available now and is published by Banipal Books.

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

Turkey 'targets SDF commander' in Iraq strike for second time in months
Kurdish armed group denies its leader has been targeted following a drone attack in Sulaymaniyah

Mazloum Abdi gives a press conference near the northeastern Syrian Hassakeh province on 24 October 2019 (AFP)

By Levent Kemal in Istanbul, Turkey
Published date: 8 April 2023

A senior Kurdish military leader was reportedly targeted in a drone attack on Friday in Iraq's Sulaymaniyah, which Iraqi and Kurdish officials blamed on Turkey.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq said that an explosion occurred near the Sulaymaniyah airport in the afternoon but left no casualties or damages.

The target was a convoy which included Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and three US military personnel, Kurdish activists and US officials have said.

There were no casualties in the strike, which was confirmed by a spokesperson for US Central Command, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The KRG and the SDF denied the reports that Abdi was targeted.

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Turkey has not commented on the strike.

Middle East Eye asked Turkish authorities for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

Abdi on Saturday blamed Ankara for the attack but stopped short of confirming if he was in the targeted convoy.

Iraqi President Abdel Latif Rashid called on Turkey to apologise for the shelling and said in a statement that Ankara had no legal justification to "continue its approach of intimidating civilians under the pretext that forces hostile to it are present on Iraqi soil".

Iraq-Syria: Helicopter crash might have revealed a secret PKK air route 

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The city of Sulaymaniyah has come under the spotlight in recent weeks after the discovery of an apparent air corridor between Iraq and Syria allegedly carrying senior fighters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) at the behest of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

The PUK is the second largest party in the semi-autonomous region and the dominant force in Sulaymaniyah, a city where Turkey has long carried out operations against PKK figures.

The PKK, a Kurdish separatist group, has been in conflict with the Turkish state since the 1980s, involving violence that has killed tens of thousands of people. It's designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US and the EU.

The SDF, a US-backed militia spearheaded by PKK-linked groups, said last month that nine of its members died in the Eurocopter AS350 helicopter crash en route to Sulaymaniyah.

The Turkish foreign ministry said last week that Turkish Airlines flights to Sulaymaniyah would be suspended until 3 July. It linked the decision to "the intensification" of the PKK's activities in Sulaymaniyah and its "penetration" of the airport, "thus threatening flight security".

'Hunt' for Abdi

The Friday drone attack was not the first to target Abdi.

The Turkish military launched a series of drone, artillery and air strikes in November against the SDF in northern Syria in the aftermath of the deadly Istanbul bombing.

One of the attacks targeted Abdi as he came out of a meeting with US military advisers, which was held at an SDF base in Hasakah province.

The US Central Command said at the time that there was "a risk to US troops and personnel" during the attack but did not mention the meeting.

Several members of Abdi's protection team were killed in the attack.

Turkish authorities, however, have not publicly confirmed that they were responsible for the Hasakah assassination attempt.

Turkish sources familiar with the strike told MEE that it took place during a drone reconnaissance flight. A group of SDF fighters were spotted and attacked.

The sources declined to comment on whether Abdi was directly targeted.

According to Turkish sources involved in the fight against the PKK and YPG, Ankara believes closer ties between the US-backed SDF and the PKK have become more evident amid the fragile security situation along the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Turkish sources said that increased meetings between Abdi, the PUK and the US were under constant surveillance, likening the situation to a "hunt".