Vigilante fears as Texas Republicans push for special unit to detain migrants

Story by Erum Salam • The Guardian

May 19, 2023

Photograph: Julio Cesar Chavez/Reuters

Anew Texas bill could soon establish a taskforce using civilians that would have the authority to “arrest, apprehend or detain persons crossing the Texas-Mexico border unlawfully”, raising concerns around state-sponsored vigilantism.

House Bill 20, authored by Republican state representative Matt Schaefer, seeks to create a new “border protection unit” that would deter migrants from unlawfully entering Texas using non-deadly force. It could include civilians with prior military experience among its members – such as national guards or former border patrol agents – who would be granted some immunity from prosecution for actions they carried out as members of the force.

Related: Eight-year-old girl dies after being detained by border patrol in Texas

The HB20 bill itself was killed last week in the Texas legislature but then quickly resurrected as HB7 – a slightly different amendment to existing immigration legislation. The proposed unit was renamed the “Texas border force” and put under the command of the Texas ranger division.

With a Republican majority in both the state house and senate, the fresh bill seems likely to pass.

Bernardo Cruz, an attorney for the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told the Guardian: “It’s really an unlawful action or exercise by the state government. We are really afraid it’s going to lead to more racial profiling of current migrants, and also that it affects everyone who lives across the border and the states.”

Although immigration law and enforcement on the US border is under federal jurisdiction, border states like Texas argue they have the right to protect themselves if the federal government fails to do so, as per the “invasion” clause of the US constitution.

Such a drastic move by a state to enforce federal immigration law is likely to end up in court.

Schaefer, one of the Texas legislature’s most conservative members, said in a statement: “Enough is enough. If [Joe] Biden won’t defend this country, we will.”

Related video: Food delivery fills gaps of US-Mexico border wall (India Today)

Duration 0:35  View on Watch

The news of the bill comes shortly after the expiration of Title 42, the pandemic-era policy that gave US officials authority to turn away migrants who came to the US-Mexico border claiming asylum in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Immigration and civil rights activists have condemned the legislation and said its potential passage was “disheartening”. These critics of the bill, such as the non-profit Human Rights Watch, say it will embolden state-sponsored vigilantism.

Testifying in front of the Texas house state affairs committee in April, Bob Libal of Human Rights Watch said the border protection unit would lead to the “codification and expansion of a border policing, court and jailing system that has to date resulted in injuries, deaths, racial discrimination, abusive detention conditions, and a chilling effect on freedoms of association and expression.”

The unit would be overseen by the Texas public safety department and would controversially give its officers broad authority to make arrests, build border barriers and search vehicles they deem suspicious.

Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, told the Dallas Morning News that she was “appalled by this dangerous and unconstitutional proposal designed to violate federal law at the expense of the border community I call home”.

She added: “Not only does this bill mobilize a new military force under the governor, it also allows the head of the force to deputize almost anyone to enforce federal immigration law, including vigilante groups that have targeted Texas border communities.”

The ACLU’s Cruz said the unit would be an extension of Operation Lone Star, another state effort to secure the US border with Mexico, launched by the rightwing Republican governor, Greg Abbott, in March 2021.

Operation Lone Star is a joint operation between the public safety department and the Texas national guard. It was established during an increase of migrants at the state’s border for which Abbott issued a disaster declaration.

“Texas does not have the authority to enforce immigration law,” Cruz said. “There’s clear both federal law and supreme court precedent that establishes that the appropriate entity to enforce immigration laws in this country are federal law enforcement agencies.”

Like Operation Lone Star, Cruz said the new border protection unit would lead to racial profiling.

In a federal complaint filed in July last year, the Texas ACLU, along with the Texas Civil Rights Project, alleged state troopers excessively pull over Latinos as part of Operation Lone Star. The complaint also said at least 30 people were killed in state police car chases connected to Texas’s expansive border security operation.

“We really afraid it’s going to lead to more racial profiling of migrants and also that it affects everyone who lives across the border and the states. There’s nothing in the language it just narrows it to specific area of Texas. So this really is an extremely broad attempt by the state of Texas, to really just militarize communities.

“And that, of course, impacts everyone’s day-to-day life in a negative way.”

Activist moms spy on each other in culture wars over schooling

Story by Elle Reeve • CNN

 Friday, May 18, 2023

Who are Moms for Liberty? A look into the conservative group
CNN  Duration 7:29  View on Watch

Members of the conservative parental rights group Moms for Liberty are known for making impassioned and sometimes spicy speeches to school boards to complain that teachers are supposedly indoctrinating students. This can include mothers, often in the group’s trademark tee, standing at a lectern reading sex scenes from books they deem inappropriate to have near their children.

Supporters post videos of these speeches, some of which have gone viral. And the group has claimed success, pointing to growing membership nationwide as well as policies and elections going their way. But because Moms for Liberty is working on such a local level, opponents have found plenty of opportunities to take action.

“I just got back from forcibly re-closeting myself for 90 minutes to infiltrate a Moms for Liberty meeting. … I got so much juice!” a TikTok user who goes by Morgan Howls said in a video. The video is one of many on social media made by parents who say they’ve “infiltrated” the group and give details of its strategy to others who do not support its politics.

When CNN traveled to Colorado earlier this month to observe a lunch meeting held by the El Paso County chapter of Moms for Liberty, chapter chair Darcy Schoening cautioned that some opponents might show up. It had happened before. Schoening knew there were liberal parents lurking in her chapter’s private Facebook group, because her group had some moles in the liberals’ Facebook group.

“We all know what’s going on. I don’t even know why we keep stuff private,” she said about the clandestine monitoring. She even said she welcomed some of the intended attacks on her group, showing screenshots of opponents messaging about what to tweet in protest.

“What they don’t realize is that they’re doing half the work for us,” Schoening said. “Because the more and more they post… You get those parents that are sitting out there saying, ‘Oh, this doesn’t sound so crazy. I want to go be a part of this.’”


Darcy Schoening says her Colorado Springs chapter of Moms 4 Liberty has about 250 people in it. - CNN

There were no confrontations at the Moms for Liberty meeting held in a Mexican restaurant in Colorado Springs. There was some provocative talk about purported sexual content in library books – Schoening claimed a book about “how do two men pleasure each other” was available to first graders. (She did not name the book or say what school it was supposedly found in.) But the attendees spent more time on how to wield their power.

Activists helped to get conservative majorities elected to several school boards in El Paso County in 2021. At issue then were Covid mandates and teaching about racial injustice, two issues that spurred the creation of Moms for Liberty by two mothers in Florida earlier that same year.

The El Paso County chapter’s latest push was to get Colorado Springs’s District 11 school board to adopt a policy banning teachers from asking kids about their pronouns – whether they preferred “he,” “she,” or “they” – which Schoening described as “grooming.” But the proposal sparked a big backlash, and after protests in March, the board tabled it.

One man at the lunch said some school boards were “afraid to act” on issues like pronouns and bathroom access for trans kids because of the demands of “the loudest minority,” referring to progressives.

“It’s a very loud minority,” another attendee said. “It’s very loud. It’s very intimidating,” a third agreed.

But that was not a justifiable reason, the first speaker said. “The fact of the matter is, when we come out and we campaign for them, and we put them in an office. … We’re their stakeholders, and they’re beholden to us.”

As CNN filmed the meeting, a woman sitting in the back passed the crew a handwritten note: “We have the other side of this story. This is a hate group.” This time, the opponents were being covert, not overt.

The note-passer was Carolyn Bedingfield, who said a like-minded person was coming to the restaurant who had “more info.” In the parking lot, Emily Vonachen was waiting in her car. Vonachen said Colorado Springs had changed a lot in the two years she’d lived there. She’d been researching every conservative power player in the area and how they were all connected. She agreed to an interview, and then called several people from Neighbors for Education, a group set up after the conservatives’ school board wins in 2021.

The dispute between the two groups was clear, and they took it seriously. The Neighbors for Education crowd thought Moms for Liberty was operating in a different reality.

Schoening of Moms for Liberty explained why she viewed asking a child what pronouns they preferred was “indoctrinating” them into questioning their gender.

“If you ask my children, who are 7 and 8, ‘What are your pronouns?’ They don’t even know what that is,” she said. “When you ask that, you’re planting the seed in their minds, that they maybe should identify as another gender or that identifying as another gender is hip or cool – ‘Hey, my teacher’s asking me, so maybe this is what I should do.’”

Naomi Lopez, one of the people gathered by Neighbors for Education, called that “ridiculous.” Lopez is a speech pathologist who works in a District 11 school. She’s also the mom of a trans kid.

“That’s not happening,” she said of Schoening’s scenario. “We’re not going around saying, ‘OK, you know, I want you to think about it, what gender are you?’” When teachers meet new students, they ask how they want to be addressed, she said – a kid named Josiah might want to go by Joe. A kid could say they wanted to use a particular pronoun, and the teacher would respect that.



Naomi Lopez flatly rejected many of the assertions made by Moms for Liberty. - CNN

Schoening made a series of claims that are not true, but are common amid a backlash to advocacy for trans rights.

For example, Schoening raised the idea that a tomboy – a girl who wore flannel and sneakers – would be told by a teacher, “You know, it might be time to gender transition. Let’s go talk to the school therapist. Let’s go talk to a physician. Let’s do this.” Schoening said she did not know any tomboys who’d actually transitioned after social pressure. But, she said, “Imagine the kids that aren’t strong enough to go talk to their parents and say, ‘My teacher is trying to gender transition me.’ We’re speaking for those kids. And those parents who aren’t made aware.”

Further, Schoening claimed 8-year-old boys could get surgery to remove their penises, and that she feared her state would pass a law saying if parents refused to have their boys’ penises surgically removed, the state would take them away. She thought this issue would eventually go to the US Supreme Court.

Medical guidelines do not call for gender affirming surgery on young children, and many health care providers do not offer it to patients under 18. Children diagnosed with gender dysphoria go through many years of care. In some instances, they can receive puberty-blocking hormones at the onset of puberty. These drugs are FDA-approved to treat children who start puberty at a very young age, but are not approved for gender dysphoria.

CNN asked Schoening if she was saying she believed there was some kind of high-level coordinated effort to make more children trans and gay. “There is,” she said. Who would be directing it? “Teachers’ unions, and our president, and a lot of funding sources,” she said. Why would they do that? “Because it breaks down the family unit,” she said. And why would they want that? “So that conservative values are broken down, and that we can slowly erode away at constitutional rights,” she said.

There is no evidence of a coordinated plot to make kids trans.

CNN asked Lopez what she thought of Schoening’s claims. Lopez flatly rejected the idea that teachers would encourage little kids to get surgery. “No, that’s ridiculous. The hell? No,” Lopez said.

CNN asked Lopez if there was a plan by President Biden and teacher unions to make more kids gay and trans to break down the traditional family. She began to get exasperated. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Attacking a whole sector of society who happen to be our children in order to push whatever agenda you have is dangerous, irresponsible, hateful, egregious – should I go on? No.”

And Lopez said there was no evidence that her child’s classmates cared.

“My child thinks it’s ludicrous, that it’s such a big deal, because to them, it’s just normal. To their friends, they don’t care how my child identifies, they love them for who they are.”

Another person in the Neighbors for Education group, Tiana Clark, said the controversy was a waste of time and resources. Clark is a parent and substitute teacher in that district. After one parent complained about five books, the school district had to form a committee to determine whether each book could stay in the school library. Clark sat on a committee.

“Of the five books, three of them had never been checked out. Two of them were only checked out once,” Clark said. All five books remained in the library, but the effort cost more than $20,000, she said, and asked, “What could that $20,000 have been spent on?”

DEMILITARIZE, DISARM, DEFUND 

Want to know how Hamilton police used its $279K armoured rescue vehicle? It'll cost you over $5K

Story by Bobby Hristova • CBC

Thursday, May 18, 2023

Hamilton Police Services (HPS) has had a 15,000 pound "armoured rescue vehicle" at its disposal for 10 years.

It first hit the streets in June 2013, police said at the time, to evacuate people from extreme situations, protect officers from gunfire, help in off-road situations and move obstacles.

The truck, which cost taxpayers $279,180 and stoked debate about if it was really needed at that cost, has also been used at community events.

But despite using the custom-built vehicle for almost a decade — and being asked about its use in the past — HPS says it has never created a system to track how often the vehicle was deployed, used, where it was used and why.

CBC Hamilton filed a freedom of information request for those details, along with maintenance costs since 2012.


Hamilton police says it has spent $60,490 to maintain the vehicle.© Andrew Collins/CBC

The HPS freedom of information unit said, based on its interim estimate, the vehicle has made at least 1,000 trips, but doesn't have an exact number.

And among those trips, it's unclear how many times the truck was actually used. It's also unclear how many times the truck was used in extreme situations versus training, community events or at the gas station for a fill up.

HPS said it would take 10,000 minutes of work and cost $5,060 to get details on those 1,000 trips — and the service added the true cost of the request could be much higher given the vehicle has probably been deployed over 1,000 times.

CBC Hamilton is appealing the interim decision by HPS through Ontario's privacy commissioner.

Policing advocates and researchers say the response from Hamilton police raises questions.

"This is all an excuse," John Sewell, a member of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition and a former mayor of Toronto, said. "Surely they know how often that vehicle has left the garage."

The HPS freedom of information unit said the service didn't track the data because it never had such a request before.

Back in 2014, CBC Hamilton asked about how many times the truck was used in 2013, but was told HPS didn't have the numbers ready.

Glenn De Caire, the police chief back at the time, declined to answer any questions about it on Wednesday.

HPS didn't provide an interview and spokesperson Jackie Penman didn't directly answer questions about why the data hasn't been tracked.

Penman said the truck is "regularly deployed" and last year, police put roughly 2,000 kilometres on the vehicle.

It's unclear exactly what the 2,000 kilometres entails, but Penman notes it includes training.

She also said HPS has spent $60,490 on parts and labour on the vehicle, including an engine replacement.

Kevin Walby, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg, said he thinks HPS would likely have a "simple log" with info on the truck and it shouldn't cost thousands of dollars to get the information.

"Every bullet … is numbered, tracked," he said. "I find it pretty hard to believe deployment of this vehicle would not be."

Walby said if they haven't made a log of the truck's movement "the only other answer is it's a complete waste of taxpayer dollars and it was just a toy they bought for which there is no use."

But Walby thinks that isn't the case because he thinks there is a log of the truck.

"If they want us to believe this is the last stack of paper in Canadian policing, I think that tells us something about what Hamilton police think about journalists and the public," he said.



Pat Mandy is chair of the police board.© Samantha Craggs/CBC

Pat Mandy, HPS board chair, said Thursday morning she hasn't heard anything controversial about the truck.

"I'm not quite sure why it's coming forward right now … there's lots of special vehicles," she said.

Mandy said there are "millions of things we can ask about" and said if there were concerns about the vehicle, the board would ask HPS.

"I understand it's very useful for the safety of public and officers," she said.

The truck was made by Terradyne Armoured Vehicles, a company based out of Newmarket, Ont.

HPS previously used a refurbished 1969 Brinks truck.

Hamilton police aren't the only ones with a truck like this. Police in Toronto, London, Peel, Durham, Ottawa and other Canadian cities all have armoured vehicles.

Terradyne's website includes the following specs about the truck HPS has:
6.7 L V8 turbo diesel. 300 HP, 660 lb-ft of torque
6-speed automatic
4x4 shift on the fly. 4.88 ratio limited slip differential
40 gallons
Tires on the vehicle are rated for speeds of 110 km/h
15,000 pounds

REACTIONARY ANTI DRUG MORALITY
Poilievre-backed motion calls for an end to safe drug policies and more cash for treatment

Story by Peter Zimonjic • 

Thursday, May 18, 2023

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre introduced a motion to the House of Commons Thursday calling on the Liberal government to halt all programs providing non-toxic drugs to those suffering with addictions and redirect funding to treatment services.

"Crime and chaos, drugs and disorder rage in our streets. Nowhere is this worse than in the opioid overdose crisis that has expanded so dramatically in the last several years," Poilievre told the House of Commons on Thursday morning.

The Conservative leader said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, backed by "tax-funded" activists, big pharma and others, is wrong to argue that providing addicted persons "powerful heroin-like drugs that are uncontaminated" will steer them away from street drugs.

"We're told that giving out and decriminalizing hard drugs would reduce drug overdoses," Poilievre told the House. "These so-called experts are typically pie in the sky theorists with no experience getting people off drugs or they're members of the misery industry; those paid activists and public health bureaucrats whose jobs depend on the crisis continuing."

The Conservative leader said that government-funded drugs were being sold by the addicted and the proceeds are being used to buy fentanyl laced opioids that lead to overdose deaths.

Poilievre's motion says that between 2016 and 2022 almost 35,000 people died from complications related to opioid overdoses in Canada, a number backed up by the federal government.

He called on members of the House to vote in favour of asking the Liberal government "to immediately reverse its deadly policies and redirect all funds from taxpayer-funded, hard drug programs to addiction, treatment and recovery programs."

Toxic supply a factor of 4 of 5 overdose deaths

Poilievre told the House that because these deaths had taken place since Trudeau came to office, the prime minister could not dismiss them as an inherited problem, but had to accept this was a problem of his own making.

According to the federal government's Health Infobase, where the 35,000 number can be found, the toxic supply of contaminated street drugs is "a major driver" of the opioid crisis.

"A total of 5,360 apparent opioid overdose deaths occurred from January to September of 2022. This is approximately 20 deaths per day. It is a 173 per cent increase from 2016, the first full calendar year [Trudeau] was in office," Poilievre said.

Health Infobase reports that of the 5,360 deaths, 81 per cent involved the street drug fentanyl, a substance not present in government-supplied drugs given to people with addictions.


Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Carolyn Bennett says doctors should be more willing to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade alternatives to street drugs, because they save lives.

© Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images

Related video: Poilievre doubles down on commitment to further restrict bail (The Canadian Press)  Duration 2:04  View on Watch

Health Infobase also says that 78 per cent of the opioid overdose deaths from January to September last year came from a non-pharmaceutical supply; something the safer supply strategy is trying to eliminate.

Those numbers reflect similar conclusions in April from the BC Coroners Service, which said that there have been 11,807 overdose deaths in British Columbia between April 2016 and the first three months of 2023.

"Unregulated drug toxicity continues to be the leading cause of unnatural death in British Columbia, accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, motor vehicle incidents, drownings and fire-related deaths combined," The B.C. Coroners Service said in April.

"There continues to be no evidence that prescribed safe supply is contributing to illicit drug deaths."

The rising rate of opioid deaths in Canada

In 2016 opioid overdose deaths in Canada happened at a rate of 7.8 per 100,000, but by 2021 that number had risen to 20.9 per 100,000 Canadians. From January to September 2022, the rate fell slightly to 19 deaths per 100,000.

The three provinces that had the most deaths were B.C., Alberta and Ontario. In B.C., the death rate in 2016 was 16.6 per 100,000, rising to a rate of 44.8 by 2021. In Alberta there were 14.3 opioid overdose deaths per 100,000 in 2016 compared to 36.5 in 2021, while In Ontario the rate went from 6.2 per 100,000 in 2016 to 16.6 per 100,000 in 2021.

All of those provinces, however, saw a decline in their opioid overdose death rates from 2021 to the first nine months of 2022 according to Health Infobase. Alberta's rate fell from 36.5 to 32.4, B.C.'s rate fell from 44.8 to 42.9 while Ontario's rate fell from 19.3 in 2021 to 16.4 in 2022.

Poilievre said the upward trend of opioid deaths in Canada is proof that more money needs to be directed away from providing pharmaceutical grade drugs to the addicted and given instead to treatment programs.

Addictions minister says safe supply save lives

Carolyn Bennett, the minister of mental health and addictions, told the House during the debate over the motion that the safe supply of pharmaceutical drugs saves lives, especially in cases where people are too weak to suffer through the shock of withdrawal.

"It seems that this party wants to take us back to the failed ideology of the Harper-era of drug policy," Bennett said in the debate.

"This fight against evidence-based programs that are actually saving lives just has to stop," she said.

"People are dying but not for the reasons they're giving."

Bennett said the driving force behind the overdose deaths is the toxic drug supply accessed by people with addictions.

"By implementing safer drug supply initiatives we can save lives and provide individuals with the opportunity to break free from the cycles of addiction," she said.

The NDP's Gord Johns said Poilievre should be less focused on the supply of pharmaceutical grade drugs by the government and more focused on the toxic supply of illegal drugs flooding the streets.

"It's not a safe supply that's killing people, its fentanyl," he said.

A vote on the motion is expected to take place before the end of the month.

Family says man killed by US strike in Syria was father of ten out grazing sheep

Story by Eyad Kourdi • CNN

Yesterday 

A drone strike carried out by the US military this month in northwest Syria killed a 56-year-old father of ten out grazing his sheep, his relatives have told CNN, hours after US Central Command said a civilian may have been killed in the operation.

The strike, carried out on May 3 in northwest Syria, targeted a senior al-Qaeda leader, Central Command said in a tweet announcing the operation that day.

The combatant command, which oversees operations in the Middle East and the surrounding region, said it would provide more information “as operational details become available.”

Officials boasted about the success of the operation, confident that the strike had achieved its mission, even though it was difficult to positively identify the target of the strike, since the US has no military footprint in northwest Syria, an area still recovering from the effects of a devastating earthquake.

There were no reports of any other casualties of the drone strike.

In the two weeks that have passed since the operation, Central Command has not released any more information about the intended target.

CENTCOM “has been made aware of allegations that the strike may have resulted in a civilian casualty” and is investigating to see where the strike “may have unintentionally resulted in harm to civilians,” Central Command spokesperson Michael Lawhorn said in a statement.

The Washington Post first reported that the US military is investigating whether a civilian was killed in the strike.

Killed alongside his sheep

Relatives of a man who was killed in a lone strike on the same day in the same area have since come forward with their version of events, saying he was a family man with no links to militancy.

Loutfi Hassan Mesto was herding his sheep in the village of Qurqaniya in Idlib province the morning of Wednesday, May 3 when his brother said he heard blasts and rushed to the site.

“When we went over the mountain, we saw Loutfi dead with six of his sheep,” his older brother Mohammad Mesto told CNN on Friday.


Minutes after receiving the location on their local emergency number, the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, said they arrived at the location.

“The team noticed only one crater caused by the missile, which was next to the man’s body,” the Syrian Civil Defense said in a statement to CNN on Friday, also confirming that the man had been grazing his sheep.

“When the team arrived, his wife, neighbors, and other people were at the location,” the group added.

A video provided to CNN by the Syrian Civil Defense showed the moments the team arrived on site.

A woman could be heard crying as a young man hugged the man’s body lying motionless on the ground.

Three men pulled the young man away as another covered the body on the ground with a piece of cloth.

“He is a martyr, God willing,” an unknown voice said in the video.

The Syrian Civil Defense then transferred the body to a local medical facility.

Loutfi, who had 10 children, including a five-year-old, never left his village during the Syrian uprisings and did not support any political faction, his brother said.

“No Free Syrian Army (FSA), no Syrian regime, no ISIS, no al-Qaeda, no Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), no nothing, he is just a civilian who is trying to make a living,” his brother added, reeling of a list of various factions within Syria’s brutal civil war.

Mohamed Sajee, a distant relative living in Qurqaniya, also told CNN that Loutfi was never known to be in favor or against the Syrian regime.

“It’s impossible that he was with al-Qaeda, he doesn’t even have a beard,” he said.

The issue of civilian casualties is a sensitive one for the Pentagon, and especially Central Command, following a drone strike in the closing days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan that killed 10 civilians, including seven children.

The military had initially claimed that it had targeted and killed an ISIS-K operative, pointing to secondary explosives as proof that the target was storing explosive material.

But the explanation eventually fell apart, and the military acknowledged that the operation was a terrible mistake.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ultimately decided no one would be punished over the botched operation, even as he instructed Central Command and Special Operations Command to improve policies and procedures to prevent civilian harm more effectively.

Austin committed to adjusting Defense Department policies to better protect civilians, even establishing a civilian protection center of excellence, saying at the time that “leaders in this department should be held to account for high standards of conduct and leadership.”

CNN.com

Syria's Assad wins warm welcome at Arab summit after years of isolation

Story by By Aziz El Yaakoubi and Samia Nakhoul • Yesterday 

Saudi Arabia hosts the Arab League summit in Jeddah© Thomson Reuters

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) -Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was given a warm welcome at an Arab summit on Friday, winning a hug from Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince at a meeting of leaders who had shunned him for years, in a policy shift opposed by the U.S. and other Western powers.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shook hands with a beaming Assad as the summit got underway in Jeddah, turning the page on enmity towards a leader who drew on support from Shi'ite Iran and Russia to beat back his foes in Syria's civil war.


Saudi Arabia hosts the Arab League summit in Jeddah© Thomson Reuters

The summit showcased redoubled Saudi Arabia efforts to exercise sway on the global stage, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in attendance and Crown Prince Mohammed restating Riyadh's readiness to mediate in the war with Russia.


Saudi Arabia hosts Arab League summit, in Jeddah© Thomson Reuters

Oil powerhouse Saudi Arabia, once heavily influenced by the United States, has taken the diplomatic lead in the Arab world in the past year, re-establishing ties with Iran, welcoming Syria back to the fold, and mediating in the Sudan conflict.

With many Arab states hoping Assad will now take steps to distance Syria from Shi'ite Iran, Assad said the country's "past, present, and future is Arabism", but without mentioning Tehran - for decades a close Syrian ally.



Saudi hosts Arab League Summit in Jeddah© Thomson Reuters

In an apparent swipe at Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who has backed Syrian rebels and sent Turkish forces into swathes of northern Syria, Assad noted the "danger of expansionist Ottoman thought", describing it as influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood - an Islamist group seen as a foe by Damascus and many other Arab states.



Jordan's King Abdullah II arrives to attend the Arab League Summit in Jeddah© Thomson Reuters

Crown Prince Mohammed said he hoped Syria's "return to the Arab League leads to the end of its crisis," 12 years after Arab states suspended Syria as it descended into a civil war that has killed more than 350,000 people.

Saudi Arabia would "not allow our region to turn into a field of conflicts", he said, saying the page had been turned on "painful years of struggle".

Washington has objected to any steps towards normalisation with Assad, saying there must first be progress towards a political solution to the conflict.

"The Americans are dismayed. We (Gulf states) are people living in this region, we're trying to solve our problems as much as we can with the tools available to us in our hands," said a Gulf source close to government circles.

Bashar al-Assad in from the cold.

Duration 2:01 View on Watch

WIONGravitas: 

Syria attends Arab League summit | Iran hails Syria's reinstatement

6:20

CNBC

Arab states are trying to 'lure' Syria's Assad away from Iran, analyst says

1:32

France 24

Syria's Assad 'creates a problem but presents himself as a solution,' analyst says

3:44

A Gulf analyst told Reuters that Syria risked becoming a subsidiary of Iran, and asked: "Do we want Syria to be less Arab and more Iranian, or ... to come back to the Arab fold?"

Having welcomed back Assad, Arab states also want him to curb a flourishing Syrian trade in narcotics, which are being produced in Syria and smuggled across the region.

UKRAINE

Addressing the summit, Zelenskiy, who wants to build support for Kyiv's battle against Russian invaders, asked the delegates to support Ukraine's formula for peace and thanked Riyadh for its role in mediating a prisoner release last year.

In a letter to the summit, President Vladimir Putin said Russia attached "great importance to the development of friendly relations and constructive partnership" with regional states.

Gulf states have tried to remain neutral in the Ukraine conflict despite Western pressure on Gulf oil producers to help isolate Russia, a fellow OPEC+ member.

Arab leaders attending included Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who said in 2018 the region could not tolerate "a war criminal" like Assad. Qatar has reluctantly withdrawn its opposition to Riyadh's move to readmit Syria.

The Syrian state news agency said Sheikh Tamim shook hands with Assad, though Qatari media did not confirm that and Sheikh Tamim abruptly left the gathering as the speeches were getting underway. A regional official said the two did not speak.

Salem Al-Meslit, a prominent figure in the Syrian political opposition to Assad, wrote on Twitter that his attendance was a "free reward for a war criminal".

The war has shattered Syria's economy, demolishing infrastructure, cities and factories. Assad could benefit from Gulf investment in his country, though U.S. sanctions complicate any commercial ties with Damascus.

The Arab rapprochement with Assad gained momentum after China negotiated an agreement in March that saw Riyadh resume diplomatic ties with Iran, which with Russia has helped Assad defeat Sunni rebels and regain control of some major cities.

A large swathe of Syria, however, remains under Turkish-backed rebels and radical Islamist groups as well as a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia.

Finding a political solution to the 12-year-old conflict remains a big dilemma for Arab and Western countries.

According to UNHCR since 2011, more than 14 million Syrians have fled their homes, and about 6.8 million remain displaced in their own country, where 90% of the population live below the poverty line. About 5.5 million Syrian refugees live in neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.

CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Ahead of the summit, the U.S. State Department reiterated opposition to normalisation of relations with Damascus and said sanctions should not be lifted.

But State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel added that "we have a number of shared objectives" such as bringing home Austin Tice, a former U.S. marine and journalist who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012.

Then U.S. President Donald Trump branded an "animal" for using chemical weapons in 2018 - a weapon he consistently denied using. Assad rarely left Syria after the war began, going only to Iran and Russia until 2022, when he visited the United Arab Emirates - his first trip to an Arab country since 2011.

Assad's return to the Arab fold is part of a wider trend in the Middle East where adversaries have been taking steps to mend ties strained by years of conflict and rivalry.

(Additional reporting by Jana Choukeir, Nayera Abdallah, Clauda Tanios in Dubai; Andrew Mills in Doha; Simon Lewis in Washington; Guy Faulconbridge; Writing by Michael Georgy, Maha El Dahan and Tom Perry; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Alex Richardson, William Maclean)

ChatGPT Is Already Obsolete

Story by Matteo Wong • Yesterday 

The Atlantic

ChatGPT Is Already Obsolete© Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty

Last week, at Google’s annual conference dedicated to new products and technologies, the company announced a change to its premier AI product: The Bard chatbot, like OpenAI’s GPT-4, will soon be able to describe images. Although it may seem like a minor update, the enhancement is part of a quiet revolution in how companies, researchers, and consumers develop and use AI—pushing the technology not only beyond remixing written language and into different media, but toward the loftier goal of a rich and thorough comprehension of the world. ChatGPT is six months old, and it’s already starting to look outdated.

That program and its cousins, known as large language models, mime intelligence by predicting what words are statistically likely to follow one another in a sentence. Researchers have trained these models on ever more text—at this point, every book ever and then some—with the premise that force-feeding machines more words in different configurations will yield better predictions and smarter programs. This text-maximalist approach to AI development has been dominant, especially among the most public-facing corporate products, for years.

But language-only models such as the original ChatGPT are now giving way to machines that can also process images, audio, and even sensory data from robots. The new approach might reflect a more human understanding of intelligence, an early attempt to approximate how a child learns by existing in and observing the world. It might also help companies build AI that can do more stuff and therefore be packaged into more products.

GPT-4 and Bard are not the only programs with these expanded capabilities. Also last week, Meta released a program called ImageBind that processes text, images, audio, information about depth, infrared radiation, and information about motion and position. Google’s recent PaLM-E was trained on both language and robot sensory data, and the company has teased a new, more powerful model that moves beyond text. Microsoft has its own model, which was trained on words and images. Text-to-image generators such as DALL-E 2, which captivated the internet last summer, are trained on captioned pictures.

These are known as multimodal models—text is one modality, images another—and many researchers hope they will bring AI to new heights. The grandest future is one in which AI isn’t limited to writing formulaic essays and assisting people in Slack; it would be able to search the internet without making things up, animate a video, guide a robot, or create a website on its own (as GPT-4 did in a demonstration, based on a loose concept sketched by a human).

[Read: ChatGPT changed everything. Now its follow-up is here.]

A multimodal approach could theoretically solve a central problem with language-only models: Even if they can fluently string words together, they struggle to connect those words to concepts, ideas, objects, or events. “When they talk about a traffic jam, they don’t have any experience of traffic jams beyond what they’ve associated with it from other pieces of language,” Melanie Mitchell, an AI researcher and a cognitive scientist at the Santa Fe Institute, told me—but if an AI’s training data could include videos of traffic jams, “there’s a lot more information that they can glean.” Learning from more types of data could help AI models envision and interact with physical environments, develop something approaching common sense, and even address problems with fabrication. If a model understands the world, it might be less likely to invent things about it.

Related video: Head of ChatGPT Maker Calls for AI Regulation - TaiwanPlus News 

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The push for multimodal models is not entirely new; Google, Facebook, and others introduced automated image-captioning systems nearly a decade ago. But a few key changes in AI research have made cross-domain approaches more possible and promising in the past few years, Jing Yu Koh, who studies multimodal AI at Carnegie Mellon, told me. Whereas for decades, computer-science fields such as natural-language processing, computer vision, and robotics used extremely different methods, now they all use a programming method called “deep learning.” As a result, their code and approaches have become more similar, and their models are easier to integrate into one another. And internet giants such as Google and Facebook have curated ever-larger data sets of images and videos, and computers are becoming powerful enough to handle them.

There’s a practical reason for the change too. The internet, no matter how incomprehensibly large it may seem, contains a finite amount of text for AI to be trained on. And there’s a realistic limit to how big and unwieldy these programs can get, as well as how much computing power they can use, Daniel Fried, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon, told me. Researchers are “starting to move beyond text to hopefully make models more capable with the data that they can collect.” Indeed, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO and, thanks in part to this week’s Senate testimony, a kind of poster boy for the industry, has said that the era of scaling text-based models is likely over—only months after ChatGPT reportedly became the fastest-growing consumer app in history.

How much better multimodal AI will understand the world than ChatGPT, and how much more fluent its language will be, if at all, is up for debate. Although many exhibit better performance over language-only programs—especially in tasks involving images and 3-D scenarios, such as describing photos and envisioning the outcome of a sentence—in other domains, they have not been as stellar. In the technical report accompanying GPT-4, researchers at OpenAI reported almost no improvement on standardized-test performance when they added vision. The model also continues to hallucinate—confidently making false statements that are absurd, subtly wrong, or just plain despicable. Google’s PaLM-E actually did worse on language tasks than the language-only PaLM model, perhaps because adding the robot sensory information traded off with losing some language in its training data and abilities. Still, such research is in its early phases, Fried said, and could improve in years to come.

We remain far from anything that would truly emulate how people think. “Whether these models are going to reach human-level intelligence—I think that’s not likely, given the kinds of architectures that they use right now,” Mitchell told me. Even if a program such as Meta’s ImageBind can process images and sound, humans also learn by interacting with other people, have long-term memory and grow from experience, and are the products of millions of years of evolution—to name only a few ways artificial and organic intelligence don’t align.

[Read: AI search is a disaster]

And just as throwing more textual data at AI models didn’t solve long-standing problems with bias and fabrication, throwing more types of data at the machines won’t necessarily do so either. A program that ingests not only biased text but also biased images will still produce harmful outputs, just across more media. Text-to-image models like Stable Diffusion, for instance, have been shown to perpetuate racist and sexist biases, such as associating Black faces with the word thug. Opaque infrastructures and training data sets make it hard to regulate and audit the software; the possibility of labor and copyright violations might only grow as AI has to vacuum up even more types of data.

Multimodal AI might even be more susceptible to certain kinds of manipulations, such as altering key pixels in an image, than models proficient only in language, Mitchell said. Some form of fabrication will likely continue, and perhaps be even more convincing and dangerous because the hallucinations will be visual—imagine AI conjuring a scandal on the scale of fake images of Donald Trump’s arrest. “I don’t think multimodality is a silver bullet or anything for many of these issues,” Koh said.

Intelligence aside, multimodal AI might just be a better business proposition. Language models are already a gold rush for Silicon Valley: Before the corporate boom in multimodality, OpenAI reportedly expected $1 billion in revenue by 2024; multiple recent analyses predicted that ChatGPT will add tens of billions of dollars to Microsoft’s annual revenue in a few years.

Going multimodal could be like searching for El Dorado. Such programs will simply offer more to customers than the plain, text-only ChatGPT, such as describing images and videos, interpreting or even producing diagrams, being more useful personal assistants, and so on. Multimodal AI could help consultants and venture capitalists make better slide decks, improve existing but spotty software that describes images and the environment to visually impaired people, speed the processing of onerous electronic health records, and guide us along streets not as a map, but by observing the buildings around us.

Applications to robotics, self-driving cars, medicine, and more are easy to conjure, even if they never materialize—like a golden city that, even if it proves mythical, still justifies conquest. Multimodality will not need to produce clearly more intelligent machines to take hold. It just needs to make more apparently profitable ones.

Russia bans Greenpeace

Undesirable Organization: Greenpeace was until Friday the last international environmental organization not attacked by repressive authorities in Russia.

Last year, Greenpeace activists blocked a transshipment of 100,000 tonnes of Russian oil between two supertankers at sea in Danish waters. The activists demanded a ban on fossil fuels from Russia in order to stop fuelling the war economy. 

Photo: Kristian Buus / Greenpeace

By Thomas Nilsen    
May 19, 2023
BARENTS OBSERVER

The Prosecutor General’s Office in Moscow on Friday afternoon decided to list Greenpeace as undesirable in the territory of the Russian Federation.

Now every international environmental organization has been banned or severely limited in Russia. Greenpeace in particular had brought attention to Arctic oil spills and wildfires ignored by the authorities.

The procurator’s office says it made a review of materials received about Greenpeace’s activities and concluded that the organization poses a threat to the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation.

This argumentation is similar to the wording when the Norwegian non-governmental environmental group Bellona last month was declared “undesirable”.

For Greenpeace, the Procurator General added “…. Greenpeace’s environmental activities are actually accompanied by an active promotion of a political position, attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of the state and are aimed at undermining its economic foundations.”

“Greenpeace activists are engaged in anti-Russian propaganda, calling for further economic isolation of our country and tougher sanctions measures,” the ruling says.

Moscow’s crackdown on environmental groups started with the new “foreign agents” laws introduced in 2012. A long list of non-governmental groups working to protect nature and health in Russia were listed, among them Priroda i Molodezh in Murmansk, AETAS in Arkhangelsk and World Wild Life Found.

Greenpeace first established a Russian branch in 1992 and had its main office in Moscow.

Prirazlomnoye action

In 2013, the organization made headlines in the North when activists attempted to scale Gazprom Neft’s Prirazlomnaya drilling rig in the eastern Barents Sea as part of a protest campaign against exploration of oil in the Arctic.

The ship “Arctic Sunrise” was arrested and 28 activists and two freelance journalists were detained in Murmansk for three months. The ship itself was released half a year later.
6 years in jail

The law on undesirable organizations has been expanded several times and can be used to hinder any foreign or international organization that allegedly undermines Russia’s constitutional order, military, or security.

When blacklisted, any “undesirable organization” must cease all activities in Russia or face criminal sanctions.

A 2021 amendment to the law makes it easier to open criminal cases for people affiliated with an undesirable organization. Offenses carry a punishment of up to six years in prison.

ДРИЛЬ ДЕТСКАЯ ДРИЛЬ*

On remotest Arctic coast lie huge stacks of oil pipes ready for Russia's new monster project

War and sanctions notwithstanding, Russian state oilmen proceed with the development of the Vostok Oil project. It is to produce more than 100 million tons of oil per year and will be paramount for Putin to reach his much-desired ambitions for Arctic shipping.

At least 21 km of oil pipes stacked along the shores of the Yenisey River ready to be assembled as part of pipelines for the Vostok Oil. 

Photo: Vankorneft on VK

By Atle Staalesen
BARENTS OBSERVER
May 19, 2023

The Russian president wants the Northern Sea Route to become a competitive global trade corridor and has commissioned his men in government to do what it takes.

This week, loyal government officials again confirmed to the state leader that everything is proceeding according to plans and that the Northern Sea Route will soon see an unprecedented boost in shipping.

In an online meeting with Putin and top officials, Minister of the Far East and Arctic Aleksei Chekunkov said that infrastructure along the Arctic route is built for shipping to reach 100 million tons of goods in year 2026 and 200 million tons in 2030.

Ship delivers Vostok Oil construction goods to a terminal facility in the sea-ice of the Yenisey River. Photo: Vankorneft on VK

Already in 2024, shipping on the route will exceed 70 million tons, he assured the president. It is all outlined in a federal development plan for the route covering the period until 2035, he explained.

Vladimir Putin might be happy with the affirmative words by Minister Chekunkov. However, ever since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine and the subsequent massive international sanctions against Moscow there have been growing doubts about Russia’s actual ability to develop its large Arctic projects.

Novatek and its new natural gas project Arctic LNG 2 has experienced serious troubles with replacing technology that originally was to be provided by European and U.S manufacturers, and the projected construction of Arctic-class tankers and carriers has been hampered by cancelled Western contracts.

Likewise, the export market for many of the projects have vanished.

The sanctions and growing economic troubles notwithstanding, Arctic Minister Chekunkov appears confident about the situation.

The new industrial projects now developed by companies Rosneft, Gazprom Neft, Novatek, Nornickel, Severnaya Zvezda and Baymskaya will alone provide 190 million tons of goods traffic on the Northern Sea Route, he told Putin.

And it is Rosneft’s Vostok Oil project that is the by far biggest of the Russian Arctic adventures. When fully developed, the far northern oil project will have an annual output of more than 100 million per year.

All of it is to be transported by a new network of pipelines built across the tundra of the Taymyr Peninsula and to the project terminal of Sever Bay on coast of the Kara Sea.

Since project development started in 2022, ships loaded with construction materials have been shuttling to the Yenisey River. According to Rosneft, a total of 71 shipments have been made since the start of 2023 and 570,000 tons of various construction materials brought to project development sites.

Photos shared by Rosneft subsidiary Vankorneft show a major number of oil pipes stacked in the area ready to be assembled as part of the new pipelines.

Visual estimates indicate that the pipes have a total length of at least 21 kilometres. It is only be minor share of the total number of pipes needed. According to Rosneft leader Igor Sechin, the Vostok Oil will include the building of as much as 800 km of pipelines. That includes a 7 km long pipeline under the Yenisey river.

The state-owned Russian oil company is now hectically lobbying the project to potential partners in India and China. And Vostok Oil can easily be developed without western tech, the company argues.

According to Vladimir Chernov, the Vostok Oil General Director, as much as 98 percent of all the project’s materials and equipment will be produced domestically in Russia.

*DRILL BABY, DRILL

Chances Of World Reaching Net-Zero By 2050 Unlikely: Exxon

By Julianne Geiger - May 18, 2023

The likelihood of the world reaching net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 is remote, Exxon said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission communication.

The IEA's 2050 Net Zero Emissions does not "meet the level of likelihood required to be considered in our financial statements," Exxon said, adding that the world is not on its way toward achieving net zero by 2050. Exxon also cautioned that cutting energy production to levels that fall below consumption would push energy prices higher, like in Europe.

The IEA has said that all new oil exploration would have to have stopped in 2021 in order to reach the 2050 target, and countries would have to ditch fossil fuels in favor of renewables.

"It is highly unlikely that society would accept the degradation in global standard of living required to permanently achieve a scenario like the IEA NZE," Exxon said, pointing out that by the IEA's own assessment, Net Zero 2050 is unlikely.

The statements were made in response to an Exxon shareholder proposal that would request a report on how much it would cost to abandon projects. The proposal is set to be voted on at the end of this month.

"The requested report clearly would not provide new, decision-useful information," Exxon said.

The proposal is also asking for Exxon to evaluate the ramifications of a worst-case oil spill offshore Guyana.

Despite the pushback from Exxon on the shareholder proposal and the IEA's zeal for its Net Zero scenario, Exxon's CEO Darren Woods said in March that the company's Low Carbon business has the potential to outperform its legacy oil and natural gas business within a decade, generating hundreds of billions in revenues.

Nevertheless, ExxonMobil scrapped its 14-year-old algae biofuels project in the same month due to the project's lack of economic viability.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com