Pride parade runs the gauntlet in German far-right stronghold


By AFP
July 24, 2024

Organisers of Altenburg's pride parade see it as a way to push back against the far-right AfD - Copyright AFP/File JENS SCHLUETER
Clement KASSER

Before the Pride parade by LGBTQ activists in the east German town of Altenburg even started, a small group had been hurling insults and flashing middle fingers at those present.

Far from Germany’s metropolises with their huge, exuberant Pride festivities, Altenburg’s parade was a reminder of the struggles faced by the LGBTQ community in more remote parts of the country — and their fears over the rise of the far-right.

In June’s European elections the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) topped the poll in Altenburg constituency with 37 percent of the vote and is also widely expected to come first in September’s election for the parliament of the surrounding Thuringia region.

Although the party’s co-president Alice Weidel is a lesbian, the AfD is known for its opposition to LGBTQ+ rights including gay marriage and adoption for same-sex couples. Rather, it has promoted the view that families constitute a “father, mother and children”.

For one of the organisers of Altenburg’s parade, 25-year-old Torge Dermitzel, being out and proud is a way of pushing back against the AfD’s rise.

“We still have a few weeks, we’re going to do everything we can to be visible and block the AfD,” he told AFP, shirt open and rainbow fan in hand.

After the first such event he helped organise in 2021, Dermitzel received several death threats.

“I hope we won’t get physically attacked but I expect we’ll get some insults along the way,” Dermitzel said.

Sure enough, AFP saw three small groups of people trying to provoke the marchers as the column of around 200 people made its way briskly through Altenburg’s picturesque old town at the weekend.

– ‘Everyone knows everyone else’ –



“In small towns everyone knows everyone else so it’s tricky to demonstrate with the queer community,” said 58-year-old Isolde Rolle.

Rolle, who works in a medical clinic, said she was moved to join the march in Altenburg for the first time by her “terror” of the AfD.

“When I had my first girlfriend at school here everyone started talking about my sexuality,” Geraldine Streng, an 18-year-old geography student, told AFP as she marched along with several friends.

She admitted to avoiding certain parts of town when alone but added she hoped that “the next generation will be able to go where they want without any funny looks or comments”.

Pride parades have multiplied in more rural parts of Germany in recent years, despite a sometimes challenging climate.

In Pirna, a town of some 40,000 in the neighbouring region of Saxony where the AfD recently won control of the town council, the mayor refused to fly the rainbow flag this year.

Nevertheless approximately 3,000 people turned out for Pirna’s Pride parade in mid-July.



-‘We exist too!’-

According to the VBRG association for the victims of far-right violence, there is “a correlation between the vote for the far-right and the rise in violent attacks” of a homophobic or transphobic nature.

Even last week’s huge Pride march in Cologne, which organisers said brought together more than a million people, did not pass off without 13 men being detained for chanting far-right and homophobic slogans and grabbing rainbow flags from marchers.

In rural eastern Germany it’s harder for victims of anti-LGBTQ hate crimes to get justice, said Heike Kleffner of the VBRG, citing a certain level of “social support” for the perpetrators and “delays or blockages in legal cases”.

Altenburg’s marchers also paid respects to a man who was killed in February 2020 in what many in the community perceived as a hate crime, even if it was not treated as such by the judicial system.

“We don’t live in Berlin, Hamburg or Cologne but we exist too and we have the right to live in peace!” said Demitzel.

Political science student Lenard Pfeuffer said he is also worried about LGBTQ communities in big cities having a blind spot when it comes to their rural counterparts.

He came to Altenburg as part of “Pride Soli Ride”, a Berlin organisation which coordinates groups from the capital to help swell the numbers of Pride marches in smaller towns in the east.

Pfeuffer said that while Berlin’s Pride has become “more of a big party”, Altenburg’s march is “much more militant”, a reminder that of Pride’s political roots.

Giraffes bring peace to Kenyan communities once at odds


By AFP
July 21, 2024

The number of giraffes in Kenya has declined sharply due to illegal hunting and human encroachment on their habitat - Copyright AFP Fabrice COFFRINI
Dylan GAMBA

On a vast farm in Kenya’s Rift Valley, a veterinarian carefully takes aim before shooting a tranquiliser dart and sending another giraffe sinking slowly to the ground before it is roped and blindfolded.

It is the first stage of a delicate operation by the Kenya Wildlife Service to move a group of the endangered animals to a conservancy around 140 kilometres (90 miles) to the east.

The subdued giraffe is kept at the farm in Sergoit along with seven others for an acclimatisation period of about 10 days, before being transported to their new home.

The Rothschild’s giraffes, a distinct subspecies, are being resettled in the Ruko Conservancy in Baringo County as part of a long-running initiative to ease communal tensions there.

While the East African nation is renowned for its spectacular wildlife, its northern counties such as Baringo are more often in the news for banditry and ethnic clashes.

The rival Pokot and Ilchamus communities in Baringo had been at odds for decades, their feuds sometimes escalating into armed clashes.

In the mid-2000s, Pokot and Ilchamus elders took matters into their own hands, launching an initiative to resettle the Rothschild’s, or Nubian, giraffes into the Ruko conservancy around 280 kilometres north of the capital Nairobi.

The goal was twofold: reintroduce an endangered species to a region it had previously deserted, and restore peace to the two communities.

The elders hoped the world’s tallest mammals would attract tourists and income, quelling tensions in the neglected region by providing employment in an area where many young people — like elsewhere in Kenya — struggle to find jobs.

And, said 34-year-old reserve manager Rebby Sebei, it seems to have worked.

“Back 20 years before, Pokot and Ilchamus had a conflict that erupted because of livestock theft and resulted in loss of life, loss of livestock and pushing people to move away from their homeland,” she told AFP.

“This place became deserted, where we are now today was a battleground for the bandits.”

But now, she said, the gentle creatures are helping to “ensure that there is peace between the two communities”.



– ‘One community’ –



Giraffes have seen a dramatic decline in numbers in Kenya in recent decades, as a result of poaching and human encroachment on their habitats.

As the Sergoit giraffes — securely trussed in the back of trucks — made their way slowly towards the reserve, people from the Pokot and Ilchamus communities held welcome celebrations.

Sixteen hours after their departure from Sergoit, having navigated hazardous bridges and low-hanging electrical wires, the giraffes finally arrived at their new home.

The group was to be acclimatised in a small pen before being released into the Ruko reserve, now home to nearly 20 giraffes, both Rothschild’s and Masai.

As people sang and danced in celebration while awaiting the new arrivals, Douglas Longomo, a 27-year-old farmer, said he believed that his Pokot community had changed.

“It took time to understand that the conservancy is important to bring people together,” Longomo said.

Many could not see the point of ending the clashes that have scarred the Rift Valley area for decades, he added.

“Now we are seeing we are living as one community, we can move freely without any fear.”

Longomo’s views were echoed by 28-year-old James Parkitore from the Ilchamus community.

“I think (the conflict) is over now because we are interacting,” he said.

“I hope those giraffes will (create) great jobs for the communities,” said Parkitore, a view shared by Longomo.

Sebei added a note of caution, however, saying that while an increase in tourism had helped, there were still some lingering disputes between the two ethnic groups.

But, she said, “there is peace, and we need to bring more giraffes”.

Trial starts for Vietnam tycoon in $146 million graft case

By AFP
July 22, 2024


Trinh Van Quyet is escorted by policemen into court at the start of his fraud trial in Hanoi - Copyright AFP Anh TUC

A former Vietnamese property and aviation tycoon charged with $146 million in fraud and stock market manipulation went on trial in Hanoi Monday, the latest corruption case targeting the communist country’s business elite.

Trinh Van Quyet, who owned the FLC empire of luxury resorts, golf courses, and the budget Bamboo Airways, had nearly $2 billion in stock market wealth before his arrest, according to state media estimates.

But on Monday the 48-year-old — handcuffed and dressed in a white shirt — was led into court by police officers.

The trial comes just days after the death of former Communist Party of Vietnam leader Nguyen Phu Trong, who is credited with spearheading a crackdown on graft at the highest levels.

Trong, 80, died on Friday at a military hospital in Hanoi “due to old age and serious illness”, the party said, a day after announcing he was standing down to seek medical care.

Tycoon Quyet is accused of illegally pocketing more than $146 million between 2017 and 2022.

Following his arrest in March 2022, 49 other alleged accomplices were picked up — including his two sisters and the former chairman of the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange and its chief executive officer.

According to the prosecution indictment, Quyet set up several stock market brokerages and registered dozens of family members to, ostensibly, trade shares.

But police said while orders to buy shares were placed in hundreds of trading sessions — pushing up the value of the stock — they were cancelled before being matched.

The case is part of a national corruption crackdown that has swept up numerous officials and members of Vietnam’s business elite in recent years.

In April, a top Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death in a $27 billion fraud case, launched an appeal against her conviction.

The head of one of Vietnam’s top soft drinks companies, meanwhile, was jailed for eight years in April in a $40 million fraud case.

Nomadic roots, urban lives: the young Mongolians leading a transition


By AFP
July 22, 2024


Luvsanbaldan Batsukh rests next to his horse after herding sheep and goats in Khishig-Undur in Bulgan province - Copyright AFP Miguel MEDINA
Oliver Hotham and Khaliun Bayartsogt

Freezing from horseback riding in the winter and helping her herder parents tend to livestock during summers spent outdoors — Bat-Erdene Khulan vividly remembers her childhood on Mongolia’s steppe.

She has since studied a master’s degree in Luxembourg, found work as a financial consultant, and made Mongolia’s capital city Ulaanbaatar her family home after moving away from her nomadic roots.

For millennia, Mongolians have lived off the land with their livestock in round ger dwellings that they pack up and move with the seasons.

A quarter of Mongolia’s 3.4 million people still lead nomadic lives, according to the World Bank, but hundreds of thousands have moved over the past two decades into Ulaanbaatar, now home to half the population.

And it is women like Khulan, who won a government scholarship for her master’s and is now 36, who have led the transition.

Speaking to AFP in the Ulaanbaatar apartment where she lives with her husband and their seven-year-old son, Khulan said many others raised on the steppe like her have rejected a life of physical labour and fighting the elements.

“They choose to live differently in the city,” she said, where they are offered greater access to modern amenities, education and welfare.

Khorol Enkhtuya, 42, a civil servant specialising in welfare, was also among them.

She was raised in Bayan-Unjuul south of Ulaanbaatar by parents who hoped she would follow in their footsteps as herders.

“I read by candlelight,” she told AFP at a cafe near Ulaanbaatar’s Government Palace.

“I read folk stories. It was the only book I had, but half of it was torn,” she said.

“I kept reading the same story again and again — my mum thought: ‘She needs to pursue education.'”

Her parents sent her 150 kilometres (93 miles) from home so she could attend secondary school.

Life in the city was not easy, Enkhtuya said, and during her university years she cooked, cleaned, and babysat for families to pay rent while studying at night.



– ‘Stay in the steppe’ –



Still, she felt lucky, as education was an opportunity that many older Mongolian women simply did not have.

Around 50 kilometres from the capital, Khulan’s mother, Sanduijav Altakhuyag, 60, told AFP she had missed out during the tumult of Mongolia’s transition to democracy.

“I want my kids to achieve what I didn’t,” she said.

Khulan’s parents have over the years moved closer to the capital city, though they still live as herders.

Khulan tries to visit them as often as she can, dutifully helping her mother prepare lunch in the ger as her son, raised in the city, scampers through lush, green fields.

Not everyone has the opportunity to balance city and rural life in this way, she told AFP.

“The boys stay in the steppe, raising the animals, but girls go to cities, study and stay there working,” Khulan said.

That reflects traditional Mongolian patriarchal norms: the son inherits the livestock and responsibility for the family’s livelihood.

But Khulan said that often means their “right to study is violated”.



– ‘Lonely’ young men –



In Khishig-Undur, Bulgan province, 25-year-old herder Luvsanbaldan Batsukh said he missed the opportunity to study as much as he had wanted.

He tried working two years as a construction worker in the city, but it wasn’t to his liking.

Now, he lives with his family in a small cluster of remote gers.

He said life gets “lonely” in the winter, when temperatures plunge to well below zero and the days grow very short.

Finding a partner to share that life with is hard.

“The girls who grew up playing in the river here have moved to the city and don’t want to come back,” Batsukh said, gazing out into the field as his goats munched on grass.

Further north, fellow herder Gan-Erdene Ganbat, 27, pins his hopes for fame, fortune and marriage on his prize horse, a fixture at local traditional races.

“If I have one thousand sheep, nobody knows me. If I have a single fast horse, the whole country will know me,” he told AFP after tending to his stallion, his friends nearby giddy from the day’s racing win.

He acknowledged the isolation many of his fellow young herders felt: a dwindling social circle, arrogance from city dwellers who look down on rural folks, and slim opportunities for dating.

“Herders like us are very timid people. You talk to girls, but it’s very difficult for us to attract them,” he said.

“Nowadays, women tend to do things their own way and they prefer the city.”

Herders like him aren’t suited to that life, he insisted — despite the opportunities available.

“I tried to work in the city, but I realised I can’t be a salaryman,” he said.

It’s “difficult seeing a cement roof instead of your livestock”, he said — a common refrain from herders, so accustomed to life outdoors and the freedom of the steppe.

– ‘Fed up’ with the city –

Life in Ulaanbaatar isn’t easy: traffic and noise pollution are rife, and for months each year the city is enveloped in thick smog.

Many born-and-raised city dwellers in Mongolia believe that the countryside offers a better life, and some have joined a global back-to-the-land trend seen from China to the United States.

Among them is former skincare entrepreneur, Chagdgaa Battsetseg, who now fishes, herds goats and keeps bees for a living.

“The pollution in Ulaanbaatar city where I was born and grew up reached the highest level… it was terrible,” Battsetseg told AFP.

“One day I just decided to go to the countryside.”

Battsetseg shared her plans on social media — and learned “there were about four hundred people who wanted to join me”.

For Khurtsbaatar Enkhbilig, 43, a former publisher, the decision to move to the countryside and become a herder was years in the making.

“People are fed up with city life,” he told AFP on his land in Khutag-Undur in northern Mongolia.

His wife was initially opposed. But after several excursions out — and a promise they would have four solid walls and modern plumbing — she decided she could take the plunge.

Some of Enkhbilig’s new neighbours, also former city-dwellers, have stopped short of taking up a completely nomadic lifestyle.

For instance, ger-dwelling millennials Chimedtseren Uyanga and Battulga Tugsjargal work remotely for jobs in the city.

But Enkhbilig has fully switched careers, posing proudly with his motorbike as his hundreds of goats bleat nearby.

“All of us have a place where we are very much needed,” he explained.

“I moved here because it was a necessity.”

But he admitted that relations with the locals — who initially did not believe he was cut out for the job — have been tough.

“When the locals started to become familiar with me, they thought that I would only last a year,” he laughed.

“They would say that only a wild person could do this.”

“You are starting from the beginning — new connections, new understandings, it is like moving to a foreign country,” he said.

Adjusting to a complete reliance on nature for his livelihood, and to a lack of the support networks and social welfare available in the city, “you have to learn things”, he added.

– ‘We don’t understand each other’ –

Many say that the divide between rural and urban people is deepening, with both sides increasingly dismissive of the struggles the other faces.

“People in urban areas are snobby,” herder Ganbat complained.

“They have the wrong impression of us,” he said.

This year, a devastating winter froze the ground and made it impossible for livestock to graze, killing millions of animals.

While experts say climate change was largely to blame, some city dwellers took to social media to accuse herders of worsening the blight with overgrazing to boost their earnings.

Khulan worried people in Ulaanbaatar were “bullying” their countryside compatriots.

“They are telling herders they are lazy, and blaming them for overgrazing, without asking the question of ‘why?'” she said.

In turn: “Herders don’t understand that urbanites have their own difficulties.”

“Although we are communicating in the same Mongolian language, we don’t understand each other.”

NAKBA II

West Bank village lives in constant fear of Israeli settler raids

By AFP
July 22, 2024

'This land is ours,' says Mohamed al-Nawajaa, 78, talking with a Doctors Without Borders coordinator in Susya village, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank - Copyright AFP MOSAB SHAWER
Shahzad Abdul

The stress shows on the face of Samiha Ismail who since October 7 has been stuck in her home in an occupied West Bank village that lives in constant fear of attack by Israeli settlers.

The day after the Hamas raid into southern Israel, settlers entered Susya, a hilltop village in the south of the West Bank, vowing retribution and “humiliation”, the 53-year-old Palestinian recalled.

More than nine months on, Ismail is among 450 inhabitants who spend most of the day indoors. Even their sheep are not allowed out of their sheds.

“Every time we take them to pasture, the settlers chase us,” the panicked Ismail told AFP.

Instead, the sheep of Israeli settlers now dot the nearby hills.

Susya’s inhabitants say their livelihood has gone. One international aid group has sent counsellors to help Susya residents with their mental health.

“Before the war, we would have defended our land, but today nobody moves,” she said.

The settlers are armed and protected by the army, she added, and her husband and son have been “beaten up” several times.

Israeli authorities did not respond to AFP’s questions about violence in the region.



– Land grab –



Since the start of the Gaza war, Israeli settlement of the occupied West Bank — considered illegal under international law — has hit new records.

Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, some 490,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank alongside some three million Palestinians.

In June, the Israeli government declared more than 12 square kilometres (4.5 square miles) of the West Bank to be state land, the largest land appropriation since the 1993 Oslo Accords set out the foundations for land use in the territory.

Land that is declared as Israeli state property can be used for more settlements.

In addition, 25 settlement outposts — not even authorised by Israel — have sprung up across the West Bank since the start of the year, according to Peace Now, a settlement watchdog.

Men in military fatigues have meanwhile raided Susya at night, kicking down doors and looting property including donkeys and mules, locals told AFP.

Some have even entered houses at night to intimidate residents.

“Most of us no longer sleep at night,” Ismail said.

Mohamed al-Nawajaa, 78, was born before the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians when Israel was created in 1948 — known as the Nakba, or catastrophe, to Palestinians.

“After October 7, they took all these hills. We were kicked out in 1948, 1967… and now again in 2024. But this land is ours,” the shepherd said, his head wrapped in a traditional keffiyeh scarf.



– ‘Gun to the head’



The October 7 attack that sparked war in Gaza resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 44 confirmed dead.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 39,006 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Since the war erupted, violence has soared in the West Bank, with at least 579 Palestinians killed in violence with settlers or Israeli troops, according to the Palestinian authorities.

At least 16 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in attacks involving Palestinians, according to official Israeli figures.

Nawajaa said his biggest concern is his grandchildren. He does not let them leave the house.

He said the settlers had struck him and left him lying on the floor of his house. Others in the village have had similar experiences.

“They come at night, around 3:00 am. They say ‘this house is mine’,” he told AFP.

The harassment has frayed nerves in Susya. The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity set up tent clinics this year due to concerns for the villagers’ mental health.

“There is no doubt that this is the biggest problem here,” Simona Onidi, an MSF coordinator, told AFP. “We can’t talk about post-traumatic disorder here. It’s never post, it’s a permanent trauma.”

Abdul Rahim al-Nawajaa is despondent for the future. “The suffering is endless”, said the 60-year old Bedouin as he pruned his acacia tree, the only one left standing since his olive trees were “vandalised”.

Settlers killed his father a few years ago in a dispute over a sheep, and have demolished Abdul’s house “several times”.

“The settlers act in total impunity. A soldier might put a gun to your head and you can’t do anything,” the shepherd said.

Fears of a new forced exodus stalk Susya. But Mohamed al-Nawajaa defiantly declared: “We will stay in our houses”.

Pointing to the ground, he added: “We will live on our land and we will die here.”

Deep ocean ‘dark oxygen’ find could rewrite Earth’s history

NO SEA BED MINING


By AFP
July 22, 2024

The depths of the Pacific Ocean are rich in strange "rock-like" nodules that give off an electric -- and seemingly produce oxygen

 - Copyright AFP EVARISTO SA

Juliette Collen

In the total darkness of the depths of the Pacific Ocean, scientists have discovered oxygen being produced not by living organisms but by strange potato-shaped metallic lumps that give off almost as much electricity as AA batteries.

The surprise finding has many potential implications and could even require rethinking how life first began on Earth, the researchers behind a new study said on Monday.

It had been thought that only living things such as plants and algae were capable of producing oxygen via photosynthesis — which requires sunlight.

But four kilometres (2.5 miles) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, where no sunlight can reach, small mineral deposits called polymetallic nodules have been recorded making so-called dark oxygen for the first time.

The discovery was made in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), an abyssal plain stretching between Hawaii and Mexico, where mining companies have plans to start harvesting the nodules.

The lumpy nodules — often called “batteries in a rock” — are rich in metals such as cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese, which are all used in batteries, smartphones, wind turbines and solar panels.

The international team of scientists sent a small vessel to the floor of the CCZ aiming to find out how mining could impact the strange and little understood animals living where no light can reach.

– No sunlight required –

“We were trying to measure the rate of oxygen consumption by the seafloor,” lead study author Andrew Sweetman of the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) told AFP.

To do so, they used a contraption called a benthic chamber which snatched up a bunch of sediment.

Normally, the amount of oxygen trapped in the chamber “decreases as its used up by organisms as they respire,” Sweetman said.

But this time the opposite happened — the amount of oxygen increased. This was not supposed to happen in complete darkness where there is no photosynthesis.

This was so shocking that the researchers initially thought their underwater sensors must have been on the blink.

So they brought up some nodules to their ship to repeat the test. Once again, the amount of oxygen increased.

They then noticed how the nodules were carrying a startling electric change.

On the surface of the nodules, the team “amazingly found voltages almost as high as are in an AA battery,” Sweetman said.

This charge could split seawater into hydrogen and oxygen in a process called seawater electrolysis, the researchers said.

This chemical reaction occurs at around 1.5 volts — around the charge of a AA battery.

– ‘Exciting’ –

SAMS director Nicholas Owens said it was “one of the most exciting findings in ocean science in recent times”.

The discovery of oxygen produced outside of photosynthesis “requires us to rethink how the evolution of complex life on the planet might have originated,” he said in a statement.

“The conventional view is that oxygen was first produced around three billion years ago by ancient microbes called cyanobacteria and there was a gradual development of complex life thereafter,” Owens added.

But the team’s discovery showed that “life could have started elsewhere than on land,” Sweetman said.

“And, if the process is happening on our planet, could it be helping to generate oxygenated habitats on other ocean worlds such as Enceladus and Europa and providing the opportunity for life to exist?” Sweetman asked.

The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The work was partly funded by Canada’s The Metals Company, which is aiming to start mining the nodules in the CCZ next year.

Lula rallies G20 countries against world hunger ahead of meeting


By AFP
July 23, 2024


Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday will launch a new initiative against world hunger ahead of an upcoming G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro - Copyright AFP EVARISTO SA
Ali BEKHTAOUI et Lucia LACURCIA

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday will launch a new initiative against world hunger ahead of an upcoming G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro.

Finance ministers for grouping’s member states will convene Thursday and Friday in the Brazilian metropolis, one of the final gatherings before the G20 summit takes place on November 18-19 in the same city.

The initiative, dubbed the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, will seek to secure common financial resources to combat world hunger and replicate successful programs that have worked locally.

“The fight against inequality, the fight against hunger, the fight against poverty are all fights that cannot be done by one country,” Lula told reporters Monday.

“It has to be done by all the countries that are willing to take on this historic responsibility.”

The initiative is one of Lula’s major priorities ahead of the G20 summit.

A recent report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations outlining the state of world hunger will be presented at the meeting to illustrate the scale of the endeavor.





– Billionaire taxation –

Aside from the world hunger initiative, the agenda for this week’s meeting of G20 finance ministers will involve discussions of how to achieve another objective set by Brazil: figuring out ways to tax the ultra-wealthy.

The initiative, first discussed during a meeting in Sao Paulo in February, involves determining methodologies to tax billionaires and other high-income earners based on the work of French economist Gabriel Zucman.

However, talks have been highly contentious, and any forward progress is far from guaranteed.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen opposed international negotiations of the subject during a G7 finance meeting held in May in Italy.

“We think that probably the most effective and impactful tax solutions in this space will almost certainly vary fairly widely across jurisdictions,” a senior US Treasury official said.

The meeting will also discuss taxation of multinational corporations nearly three years after an agreement was signed to create a plan on the initiative.

Founded in 1999, the Group of 20 assembles 19 of the world’s largest economic powers, as well as the European Union and the African Union.

The organization was originally focussed on global economic issues but has increasingly taken on other pressing challenges of the moment.

Lula says ‘scared’ by Maduro’s bloodbath warning ahead of Venezuela vote


By AFP
July 22, 2024

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's decision to restore relations with Maduro's socialist government -- accused of human rights violations and trampling on democracy -- has drawn criticism from opponents - Copyright AFP EVARISTO SA
Thomas MORFIN

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday he had been “scared” by Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro’s warning of a “bloodbath” if he loses elections on Sunday.

“I was scared by Maduro’s statements that if he loses the election there will be a bloodbath,” Lula told international news agencies in Brasilia, as the Venezuelan leader prepares to seek a third six-year term amid accusations of foul play and opposition persecution.

“Maduro has to learn: if you win, you stay (in power). If you lose, you go. And you prepare to contest another election,” said the leftist icon, back in office since last year after serving two previous terms until 2010.

“I hope that is what happens, for the sake of Venezuela and for the sake of South America,” he added.

On Saturday, Maduro had warned the vote’s outcome would decide the future of the economically devastated country: “whether it becomes a peaceful Venezuela or a convulsed, violent and conflict-ridden Venezuela. Peace or war.”

And days earlier, he said Venezuela risks a “bloodbath” if he loses.

“Venezuela’s fate in the 21st century depends on our victory on July 28. If they do not want Venezuela to become a bloodbath, a fratricidal civil war produced by the fascists, let us guarantee the greatest success, the greatest electoral victory of our people,” he said at a campaign event in Caracas.

Institutions loyal to 61-year-old Maduro — in office since 2013 — have barred wildly popular opposition leader Maria Corina Machado from the race on what she and others dismiss as trumped-up corruption charges.

Others, too, were disqualified or have pulled out, and the opposition Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) picked 74-year-old Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a little-known ex-diplomat, as a last-minute figurehead candidate.

Gonzalez Urrutia is far ahead in polls, but observers fear Maduro will never allow him to win.



– ‘Harassment, persecution and repression’ –



Lula had cultivated close ties with Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez.

But relations between the neighbors were severed under Lula’s far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

Lula’s decision to restore relations with Maduro’s socialist government — accused of human rights violations and trampling on democracy — has drawn criticism from opponents.

Lula said Monday he had spoken to Maduro twice, and “he knows that the only way for Venezuela to return to normality is for there to be an electoral process respected by all.”

Last month, Lula criticized obstacles placed in the way of the opposition by Venezuela’s electoral authority, loyal to the regime, and called for more international vote observers after Caracas withdraw an invitation to monitors from the European Union.

He also called for the lifting of international sanctions against the Caribbean nation.

Lula said Monday his government would send two members of Brazil’s electoral court and his own foreign affairs advisor Celso Amorim to observe Sunday’s balloting.

Last week, Argentina, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Paraguay and Uruguay urged Caracas to cease the “harassment, persecution and repression” of opponents and “the release of all political prisoners.”

Israeli hostage father takes protest to Washington

By AFP
July 22, 2024

Yehuda Cohen, one of the most outspoken of the families of hostages held in Gaza, demonstrates outside a minister's house - Copyright AFP EVARISTO SA
Laignee BARRON

In his fight to get his kidnapped soldier son back from Gaza, Yehuda Cohen has marched through the desert, addressed tens of thousands, been spat at and called a traitor. Now, he’s going to Washington.

Cohen is determined to hound the man he blames for failing to get his son Nimrod out of Hamas detention: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As the Israeli leader visits the United States this week to bolster support for the Gaza war, a group of hostage families, including Cohen, plans to publicly challenge him at each step.

They see it as a chance to convince Israel’s main backer that Netanyahu is sabotaging a truce deal that would free their loved ones.

“Netanyahu is only interested in his political survival,” said Cohen, who is at the forefront of a swelling contingent of critical hostage families.

“His extremist coalition does not want this war to end.”

With far-right ministers threatening to collapse the government over any truce, Netanyahu has ramped up military force and reiterated his pledge to eliminate Hamas.

He has also sewn a rift among the hostage families by inviting some to accompany him as he addresses the US Congress on Wednesday.

Some declined, while those who accepted face furious opposition.

“He is using you,” Dani Elgarat, whose brother Itzik was taken to Gaza on October 7, wrote on social media to rescued hostage Noa Argamani.

“If you are part of Netanyahu’s delegation, we will find ourselves in the absurd situation of protesting against you, and we wouldn’t want that.”

By tailing Netanyahu to Washington, Cohen aims “to represent the other side, to talk to senators, to the media, to the Jewish community so they understand Israel is not just this horrible government working against its own people.”



– ‘I will do anything’ –



Cohen was never a Netanyahu supporter, but his derision has sharpened after nearly 300 days of staring at his son’s empty bedroom.

Palestinian militants took Nimrod Cohen from his tank after faulty brakes stymied its response to the Hamas-led attacks. His father saw it in videos posted by Hamas.

“I don’t believe in feelings, but I have to believe he is still alive,” said Cohen.

The Israeli military estimates 116 hostages remain in Gaza, alive and dead, among 251 seized during the October 7 attacks, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel’s response has killed at least 39,006 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

The military has rescued seven hostages, while more than 100 were released during a November truce. Many hostage families believe a ceasefire is their only option.

In 10 months of lobbying, Cohen, a talkative algorithm engineer with a ponytail and rimless glasses, has tried demonstrations, speeches, meeting foreign delegations and heads of state.

He took part in one four-day walk across the desert from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. His publicity blitz has earned the derision of strangers, who have spat at and thrown eggs at protesting hostage families.

“I am the father of a soldier who has been kidnapped,” he said. “I’m a patriot.”

Not all the hostage families appreciate his tirades, or willingness to join anti-government demonstrators. The coalescing of protest camps has enabled Netanyahu and his supporters to dismiss them as ideologues.

“He has managed to make them look like they are concentrated on their individual interests over the nation’s wellbeing,” said Tamar Hermann, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute.

To the government supporters, the hostages are seen as “collateral damage” while in general, Israelis are “getting used to having hostages there”, she said.

To combat attention fatigue, the families have resorted to increasingly dramatic tactics: climbing in cages dangled from overpasses, disrupting government meeting, the four-day trek in summer heat and, now, following the prime minister overseas.

The crisis “drives each and every one of us to do things we never thought we would do,” Meirav Leshem Gonen, mother of hostage Romi Gonen, told a recent news conference.

“Try to think that this is your daughter. What would you do?”

For Cohen, there is no limit. “I will do anything to push for a deal to save my son.”

Netanyahu’s US visit reminder of ‘ingrained’ US support of Israel

By AFP
PublishedJuly 22, 2024


Copyright POOL/AFP ABIR SULTAN
Louis Baudoin-Laarman and Chloe Rouveyrolles-Bazire

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting Washington to speak at the United States Congress this week in a context of tense relations between the two countries over the Gaza war.

His visit comes just after President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race.

US officials have criticised the toll that Israel’s war against Hamas militants in Gaza has had on Palestinian civilians. But experts interviewed by AFP said American support for Israel remains steadfast, as suggested by words of the US invitation for Netanyahu to “highlight America’s solidarity with Israel”.

– Invited despite the war? –



Across United States campuses and on the Democrats’ left wing, calls to pressure Israel to end the war in Gaza have reached unprecedented levels. Such appeals have not, however, convinced establishment Democrats to apply significant pressure to bring the war to an end, the analysts told AFP.

Netanyahu was invited by both Republican and Democratic congressional leaders.

Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli national security adviser, told AFP that the idea came from Republicans, and “Biden and the Democrats had to go along with it”.

Michael Horowitz, a geopolitical analyst for Le Beck International, a Middle East-based security consultancy, said the visit will force Democrats “to find a complicated balance” between opposition to war casualties and historic support for Israel.

Mairav Zonzsein, an International Crisis Group analyst, said Netanyahu’s invitation despite popular protests “shows that there’s a lot of gaps and contradictions in the American positioning on the war in Gaza right now.”

– How are US-Israel relations now? –



“There’s a lot of rhetoric, there’s been a lot of pushback throughout this war on the humanitarian issue,” said Zonzsein, citing the stalling of arms shipments and sanctions on Israeli settlers, which the academic says are unprecedented.

But, she added, it would take more to change the diplomatic status quo between the two countries.

“I don’t think you can say there’s a crisis in the US-Israeli relationship because that’s something that is so ingrained in both American and Israeli politics”.

Freilich had a similar view.

“I wouldn’t say at the moment there’s a crisis, but there’s a lot of tension there, and the next few months will have an important impact on where it goes.”

– What about weapons to Israel? –



After initial delay the US eventually approved a 500-pound bomb shipment to Israel, but the Biden government is still withholding a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs, over concerns for civilian casualties.

The mere mention of arms supply restrictions is unprecedented.

“In the past, no one ever raised the issue of arms supply. It was self-evident, the arms relationship, and almost sacred, so to speak,” said Freilich.

He said though the embargo on 2,000-pound bombs could have been lifted during Netanyahu’s visit, “it’s harder for the US now after the attack on (Mohammed) Deif, where I think it was four 2,000-pound bombs used”.

On July 13, an Israeli bombing operation in Gaza aimed at Deif, the Hamas military commander, in the southern area of Al-Mawasi killed more than 90 people, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

“I don’t think the Biden administration will change its mind during Netanyahu’s visit”, said Horowitz of the 2,000 pound bombs.

– What effect of Biden’s withdrawal? –



Biden’s announcement Sunday that he would not seek re-election in November and his support for his Vice-President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee changes the terms of Netanyahu’s visit, but not of the fundamental relationship, analysts said.

“He’s in an even more difficult position now to appease the Democrats”, said Freilich, making the visit “even more unnecessary” in his view.

Zonszein concurred, arguing that Biden’s withdrawal ahead of the meeting showed that “this trip was in many ways quite meaningless, both for the Israeli public and for the American public.”

She added that Biden’s withdrawal makes Netanyahu’s incentive to meet Donald Trump all the more urgent.

Though the experts AFP spoke with agreed on this, none could tell whether Netanyahu would manage to meet the former Republican president.

UK warned Israel over ‘out of control’ troops in 2002: archives


By AFP

July 22, 2024

UK prime minister Tony Blair's ambassador to Israel voiced concerns about the military operation launched by his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon in 2002 - Copyright AFP JOEL SAGET

Britain accused Israel of allowing its troops to run “out of control” during a huge military operation in the occupied West Bank two decades ago, UK government archives showed Tuesday.

The newly-released files highlight Western concern over the Palestinian death toll during Operation Defensive Shield launched by then-Israeli premier Ariel Sharon in March 2002.

The comments are similar to concerns expressed by some Western allies over Israel’s current military operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Britain’s ambassador to Israel at the time warned Sharon’s foreign policy adviser that the incursion by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was a “major strategic mistake” which was undermining support for Israel among its allies.

“If some of the reports we were receiving were credible, the IDF’s behaviour was more worthy of the Russian army than that of a supposedly civilised country,” Sherard Cowper-Coles told the adviser, according to his report of the meeting.

“I was not suggesting that such behaviour was a matter of policy. But there was no doubt that individual soldiers were out of control and committing acts which were outraging international opinion,” the diplomat added.

The operation came amid the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which occurred between 2000 and 2005.

Sharon launched the operation in the West Bank after a wave of suicide attacks claimed dozens of Israeli lives.

The Israeli military surrounded the compound of then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah.

Troops cut off phone lines and power supplies, while intense street-to-street fighting raged for eight days further north in the Jenin refugee camp.



– Bush concern –



The offensive was at the time the largest military operation in the Palestinian territories since Israel captured them in 1967.

Then-US president George W. Bush complained in private call with UK prime minister Tony Blair that the hardline policies of Sharon were turning Arafat into a martyr similar to 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, the files show.

“While Arafat had effectively been marginalising himself, Sharon had succeeded in making a martyr of him –- building him up to the point where he was becoming the new bin Laden,” Bush complained, according to a note of the call by the then-UK leader’s office.

“The US had tried to persuade Sharon privately, but he just would not listen. The bottom line was that Sharon was undermining the US’s ability to pursue the war on terrorism. That was not the action of a good ally,” the note added.

Operation Defensive Shield lasted just over a month and resulted in the deaths of about 500 Palestinians, according to estimates by the United Nations.

Israel’s current war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 44 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 39,006 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.