Sikh separatist targeted in California ‘assassination attempt’


Satinder Pal Singh Raju’s truck ‘sprayed with bullets’ on California interstate

Maroosha Muzaffar
THE INDEPENDENT UK
AUGUST 23,2024


India says murdering separatists abroad is ‘not our policy’ amid Canada row

A Sikh separatist leader reportedly survived an “assassination attempt” on 11 August in Sacramento, California.

The truck in which Satinder Pal Singh Raju was travelling was allegedly “sprayed with bullets” on Interstate 505 near Sacramento earlier this month. Mr Raju is the leader and organiser of Sikhs for Justice – an organisation that seeks a separate Sikh state or Khalistan.

Sikhs for Justice said in a statement that a car pulled up next to Mr Raju’s vehicle and opened fire, causing the driver of the truck to veer off the road. Mr Raju and two of his colleagues who were travelling with him in the truck escaped the vehicle and took cover behind a haystack, where they called 911, according to The Sacramento Bee.

The California highway patrol confirmed that there was a shooting on Interstate 505 on 11 August at about 11.30pm and is investigating the incident. The Guardian reported that no arrests have been made so far, according to the agency’s spokesperson, Rodney Fitzhugh.

Mr Raju is reportedly associated with Hardeep Singh Nijjar, another Khalistan advocate who was allegedly assassinated in Canada last year. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau described what he called credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Nijjar in June. The Indian government denied any hand in Nijjar’s killing while also saying Canada was trying to shift the focus from Khalistan activists there.

Sikhs for Justice suggested that India, which has been linked to several plots against Sikh leaders in the US and other countries, could be responsible for the attack in Northern California. They believe that the attack was part of a broader effort by the Indian government to suppress the Khalistan independence movement globally.

Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, lawyer and spokesperson for Sikhs For Justice, said in a statement: “(Indian prime minister Narendra) Modi 3.0 Regime is continuing with its policy of transnational repression to violently suppress the global Khalistan Referendum campaign seeking liberation of Punjab from Indian occupation.”

The Indian government has not yet responded to Mr Pannun’s allegation.

A member of United Hindu Front organisation holds a banner depicting Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a lawyer believed to be based in Canada designated as a Khalistani terrorist by the Indian authorities during a rally along a street in New Delhi on 24 September 2023 (AFP via Getty Images)

In 2023, Mr Pannun was the target of a thwarted assassination attempt in the US, which US officials attributed to the Indian government, though India denies any involvement.

Mr Pannun is also facing terrorism charges in India for his advocacy of an independent Sikh state.

Mr Raju has played a significant role in organising Khalistan referendum votes – a symbolic effort by some Sikhs worldwide to advocate for independence from India. He was involved in votes held in San Francisco and Sacramento earlier this year and also helped with a referendum in Calgary, Canada, in July.

“The American administration and the Canadian government, they have not held India accountable, and Modi feels emboldened,” Mr Pannun said. “They are using their proxies to target leaders of the Khalistan referendum movement.”

Activists of the Dal Khalsa Sikh organisation, a pro-Khalistan group, stage a demonstration demanding justice for Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was killed in June 2023 near Vancouver, after offering prayers at the at Akal Takht Sahib in the Golden Temple in Amritsar on 29 September 2023 (AFP via Getty Images)

Photos from Sikhs for Justice revealed at least four bullet holes in the driver’s side window, marked with what appeared to be police evidence tags. One bullet seemed to have lodged in the truck’s dashboard, while another appeared to have exited through the windshield.

Mr Raju told The Los Angeles Times: “The day of our death is already written. I am happy to survive. But this won’t change the work that we do.”

He is currently helping Sikh activists organise a November referendum in New Zealand.

The Independent has reached out to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs for comment.

Telegram channel of DDoSecrets shut down shortly after publication of Israeli ministry of justice 'leak'

The Telegram channel of DDoSecrets, seen by many as WikiLeaks successor, was shut down with a request from Israel’s 'cyber unit' viewed as the likely cause.

Anas Ambri
23 August, 2024


Telegram shut down a channel of whistleblower website after it published leaked data from Israel's Ministry of Justice [Getty]


The Telegram channel of Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), a journalist collective specialised in the publication of hacked material online, was shut down after sharing more than 1 million leaked documents from the Israeli ministry of justice.

The leaked documents, reportedly released in April 2024, contain "personal details of senior officials in the ministry along with sensitive correspondence [and] internal and classified ministry documents", according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Last July, some of the leaked files published by DDoSecrets were used to show that Israel seized and suppressed state secrets contained in a lawsuit against Israeli spyware vendor NSO group.

Last week, The Guardian revealed, thanks to more documents from the leak, that Israeli officials tried to circumvent a foreign agent law in the US as part of their pro-Israel advocacy efforts there.

The Internet Referral Unit within the Israeli State Attorney’s Office, which is part of the Israeli Ministry of Justice, has been accused of being behind the shutdown request.


The unit, sometimes referred to as the ‘cyber unit’, is headed by Dr. Haim Wismonsky and responsible for monitoring the Internet for leaks and reporting them to the platforms where they are hosted.

According to a recent Haaretz article, one of the victims of the cyber unit’s efforts is the Telegram channel of a “WikiLeaks-style website [whose goal is to] provide a safe online haven for leaks of different types".

Many see DDoSecrets as the successor of the now almost defunct whistleblower website Wikileaks.

Speaking to Haaretz, Wismonsky justified his unit’s takedown requests, stating: "These are efforts that require creativity and decisive actions through an array of legal tools."

However, this can also prevent journalists from reporting on the details contained in the leaked documents, especially as the Israeli government has instituted a court order preventing Israeli media from reporting on the leak.

The New Arab contacted Dr. Wismonsky, as well as the Embassy of Israel in London, for comment. No reply was received at the time of publication.
Leaks and gag order

DDoSecrets has one of the largest databases of leaked material online, and in June released one of its first databases in relation to the ongoing war on Gaza, dubbed “Op Cyber Toufan”.

The database contained some 20,000 documents from Israeli governmental organisations and companies, including personal information of Israeli citizens obtained from the ministries of health and of welfare and social security.

This was followed with more releases in July, this time with documents related to the Israeli army and ministries of defence and justice.

Links to the datasets would then be shared on Telegram on a channel called 'Library of Leaks".

Screengrab from one of DDoSecrets' Telegram channel, announcing 'Library of Leaks', where they publish links to leaked material they host [DDoSecrets]

However, a few days after DDoSecrets posted links to the leaked material on its Telegram channel, it was shut down.


Lorax Horne, editor at DDoSecrets, told TNA that Telegram provided no explanation for the removal of their channel from the platform but alleged it was a form of “censorship".

"Taking down the DDoSecrets channel is an escalation, and it is dangerous for Israel to conflate DDoSecrets with the hackers' channels," Horne added.

Shortly after the leaked documents surfaced, the Israeli National Cyber Directorate opened an investigation into the leak and instituted a gag order over all the leaked material, which prevents Israeli media from reporting on it.

Such court orders issued in Israel have been used in the past to prevent access to material published online.

In 2016, +972 Magazine reported that Israeli authorities were enforcing gag orders on posts by journalist and TNA contributor Richard Silverstein he had published in the US.

Telegram’s arbitrary enforcement of take down policies

It is not clear on what basis Telegram chose to shut down the DDoSecrets’ channel, while its Terms of Service section does not provide many details on what it considers to be sanctionable actions on the platform.

Screengrab from DDoSecrets' Telegram channel, where they have published a link to the leaked material from the Israeli Ministry of Justice on 26 July 2024 [DDoSecrets]

In the past, Telegram’s founder and owner Pavel Durov spoke out against the use of gag orders by governmental bodies.

In a December 2021 post, Durov said: “[US] agencies don't even need a court order to extract private information from messaging apps such as WhatsApp... Telegram is one of the few messaging apps that doesn't breach their users’ trust."

However, according to US magazine Wired, Telegram has since shared the personal information of some of its users with national authorities as a consequence of court orders, most notably with German and Indian authorities.

In the context of the war on Gaza, Telegram quickly shut down multiple channels associated with Hamas, in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks.

Telegram was accused of failing to take action against a channel reportedly run by the Israeli army’s psychological warfare department - the so-called ‘72 virgins-uncensored’ channel - which displays extremely graphic videos of Israeli soldiers’ potential war crimes in Gaza. The channel continues to be active until today.

In the ten days after Hamas’ attack, Israel’s Internet Referral Unit submitted some 143 requests for content removal requests to Telegram. It is not clear how many of these requests the complied with.


The New Arab contacted Telegram to provide comment, but no reply was received at the time of publication.

The Republicans who came out in force at DNC for Harris – and ditched Trump

Notable Republicans, some who had worked in Trump’s White House when he was president, spoke at the DNC appealing to conservative viewers at home to vote for Harris

Rhian Lubin
12 hours ago

Several prominent Republicans and onetime Trumpworld figures came out in force at the Democratic National Convention in support of Kamala Harris – urging their own party members to vote for a Democrat rather than second Donald Trump back to the White House for a second term.

Notable Republican figures, some who had worked in Trump’s White House when he was president, used their platform at the DNC to speak directly to conservative voters at home, appealing to them to vote for Harris in November.

By contrast, no prominent Democrats spoke at the Republican National Convention in Miluwakee back in July.

Speaking on the second day of the DNC, Trump’s former press secretary Stephanie Grisham unleashed a fiery attack on Trump and the former first lady Melania Trump, when she revealed what happened on the day she quit: January 6 2021.

“On January 6, I asked Melania… I asked if we could at least tweet that while peaceful protest is the right of every American, there’s no place for lawlessness or violence,” Grisham said.

“She replied with one word - ‘no’. I became the first senior staffer to resign that day. I couldn’t be part of the insanity any longer.”

Former Trump White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham speaks on stage at the DNC in front of an apparent text message with former first lady Melania Trump (Getty Images)

Acknowledging how as press secretary she never held any White House briefings, Grisham said it was because “unlike my boss, I never wanted to stand at the podium and lie.”

Advocating for Harris, she said: “Kamala Harris tells the truth, she respects the American people and she has my vote.”

Grisham also claimed Trump calls his loyal supporters “basement dwellers” behind closed doors.

Whene former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan took to the stage, he sent the crowd wild by telling Republican viewers at home: “If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 you’re not a Democrat – you’re a patriot.”


Duncan accused Trump of being “a direct threat to democracy” and described the Republican party as “a cult worshiping a felonist thug.”

Delivering another blow to Trump was former Illinois Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger, who said in his speech: “Donald Trump has suffocated the soul of the Republican Party.”

Republican former Representative from Illinois Adam Kinzinger speaks on the final night (EPA)

He added: “The Republican Party is no longer conservative. It has switched its allegiance from the principles that gave it purpose to a man whose only purpose is himself.


“Donald Trump is a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big. He’s a faithless man pretending to be righteous. He’s a perpetrator who can’t stop playing the victim.”

Olivia Troye, a “lifelong Republican” and former advisor to ex-vice president Mike Pence, described Trump’s White House as “terrifying.”

She told the convention hall: “What keeps me up at night is what’ll happen if he gets back in [the White House]. The guard rails are gone, the few adults in the room the first time resigned or were fired.”

Olivia Troye, a former Mike Pence advisor, said Trump ‘pretends to care about’ Republican values (CNN / YouTube)

Troye added that Trump “pretends to care about Conservative, Catholic, Texan” values.

By contrast, voting for Harris would be “protecting our freedom,” she said, adding that she is “proud to support Kamala Harris.”

“So to my fellow Republicans, you aren’t voting for a Democrat - you’re voting for democracy. You aren’t betraying our party, you’re standing up for our country,” she added.

Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen was also at the convention but not invited to speak. Cohen testified against the former president in his hush money trial which saw Trump convicted on 34 charges of falsifying business records.

Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to Donald Trump, on the second day of the Democratic National Convention (Getty Images)

The Republican Mayor of Mesa, Arizona, John Giles, also appeared at the convention and said: “Trump made a lot of lofty promises, unlimited economic growth, American manufacturing reborn, a secure border. Turns out Donald Trump was all talk. He wanted our votes, but he couldn’t deliver a thing.”

The prominent conservatives appeared at the DNC after the Harris campaign launched “Republicans for Harris”.

The initiative is “a grassroots organizing program to further outreach efforts to the millions of Republican voters who continue to reject the chaos, division, and violence of Donald Trump and his Project 2025 agenda,” the Harris campaign said in a statement.

Commentary

Freedom—Harris’s message to America

Elaine Kamarck and William A. Galston
BROOKINGS INSTITUTE 
August 23, 2024

Many of the convention speeches invoked references to freedom.

Surprising some observers, Harris laid out a tough agenda on defense and foreign policy, promising to maintain the strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world, retain our leading position in NATO, defend Ukraine against Russian aggression, stand up against Iran and North Korea, and take democracy’s side in the struggle with tyranny.

Taken as a whole, Harris’s acceptance speech positioned her as a center-left Democrat in the mold of Joe Biden rather than Bernie Sanders.

Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on Day 4 of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., August 22, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake

Governance Studies Media Office

gsmedia@brookings.edu



In their 2024 national convention, Democrats reclaimed the mantle of freedom.

It’s about time.

The first indication was Vice President Harris’s choice of Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” as her campaign anthem. It has been playing at her rallies and it played at the end of the film before her entrance onto the stage. In addition to placards that said, “Thank you Joe” or “Vote” or “Coach Walz,” the DNC had thousands of placards printed for the delegates to wave that simply read, “Freedom.” Many of the convention speeches invoked the term in some way. Governor Walz’s acceptance speech for the vice presidency was especially heavy on it:

“Freedom. When Republicans use the word freedom, they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. Corporations—free to pollute your air and water. And banks—free to take advantage of customers.

“But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And yeah, your kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall.”

Freedom was an especially welcome theme in this convention because, in recent political history, Democrats ceded freedom to the Republicans. This was wrong. Nothing is as central to America’s cultural DNA as freedom. After all, we as a nation were born out of a desire for freedom from King George.

One of the seminal speeches of the 20th century was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address. In it, he announced what he called the “Four Freedoms”—freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear—principles that were incorporated into the war aims of the Allied Powers, and eventually into the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A generation later, the Civil Rights Movement marched for freedom from the oppression of segregation and unequal citizenship, goals that the modern Democratic Party embraced. After the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down in 1973, Democrats defended women’s freedom to choose against conservative attempts to restrict access to abortion, and even to prohibit it nationwide.

Since the 1980s, however, Republicans claimed freedom for themselves; starting with the presidency of Republican Ronald Reagan, they narrowed it to mean free markets and limited government. This redefinition rested on the argument that government represented the main threat to freedom, which is at best a half-truth. Yes, government can become oppressive. But weak government can also pose a threat to freedom. Citizens cannot live free from fear unless government minimizes threats to the security of persons and property as citizens act within the structure of law. They cannot enjoy freedom from want unless government protects markets from force, fraud, and threats to competition, and unless it protects individuals from economic privation. In his 1944 State of the Union, FDR declared: “Necessitous men are not free men. Men who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

Despite the power of such arguments, modern Democrats have found it difficult to persuade the electorate that they were the true champions of freedom. And then in 2022, the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and jeopardized women’s freedom of choice across the nation. The reaction has been striking; with one decision, the government was suddenly in the middle of the most personal decisions women and men could make.

Since then, not a month has passed without some horror story making national news about a woman denied abortion care that could save her life and/or her fertility. On stage at the Democratic convention, some of these women told their heartbreaking stories. Since then, abortion has been on the ballot in seven states—many of which, like Kansas and Kentucky, are conservative, deep red states. And in every single instance, the pro-choice position won. Since then, abortion has played a major role in the Virginia legislative elections, the congressional midterm elections, and many special elections. In 2024, abortion referendums will be on the ballot in eight states, two of which, Arizona and Nevada, are swing states and where the issue may very well bring out young Democratic voters.

Against this backdrop, it’s not surprising that Harris’s speech spent more time on abortion than any other single policy issue. Her unique ability to prosecute this issue was evident back when she was a senator from California who asked then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh if he could think of a law that controlled men’s bodies. In addition to warning the country about Republican plans to take away reproductive freedom by enacting a national abortion ban and installing a national anti-abortion coordinator in the White House, Harris expanded on threats to freedoms.

“In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake. The freedom to live safe from gun violence—in our schools, communities, and places of worship. The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. The freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. And the freedom that unlocks all the others. The freedom to vote.”

Beyond the articulation of a freedom agenda, the speech had other tasks, which Harris crisply carried out. She introduced herself to the country as a child of a middle-class family and declared that building a strong middle class would be one of the defining purposes of her administration. To that end, she advanced her vision of an “opportunity economy” where everyone would have a chance to compete and where success for some need not mean failure for others.

Harris took on inflation and immigration, two areas of potential vulnerability for her campaign. She promised to bring down prices of everyday goods and services and to attack the nation’s housing crisis. On immigration, she sought to turn the tables on Donald Trump, reminding her audience that he had subverted a bipartisan reform bill that would have helped secure the border.

Surprising some observers, Harris laid out a tough agenda on defense and foreign policy, promising to maintain the strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world, retain our leading position in NATO, defend Ukraine against Russian aggression, stand up against Iran and North Korea, and take democracy’s side in the struggle with tyranny. She articulated a firm pro-Israel stance while mentioning the suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants and endorsing Palestinians’ right to dignity and self-determination.

Taken as a whole, Harris’s acceptance speech positioned her as a center-left Democrat in the mold of Joe Biden rather than Bernie Sanders. It embraced what she termed the pride and privilege of being an American. And as if to show that Republicans have not cornered the market on patriotism and American exceptionalism, she told her audience that together, they had the opportunity to write the next chapter of the most extraordinary story ever told. She ended her speech in the most traditional way imaginable, by asking God to bless the United States of America.

Harris’s speech, which the convention received with unfeigned enthusiasm, did nothing to interrupt the momentum of one of the most explosive campaign launches in American history.


Authors


Elaine KamarckFounding Director - Center for Effective Public Management, Senior Fellow - Governance Studies@EKamarck


William A. GalstonEzra K. Zilkha Chair and Senior Fellow - Governance Studies

IRELAND

‘Stop the genocide’: Pro-Palestine protest held outside Leinster House


Protesters take part in a pro-Palestine protest on Kildare Street outside Leinster House, Dublin (Brian Lawless/PA)

By Gráinne Ní Aodha, 

PA

Today 

A protest has been held outside Ireland’s houses of parliament to call for an immediate end to the killing of people in Gaza.

The demonstration was organised in response to a US delegation visiting the Irish parliamentary building, Leinster House, on Friday.

Protesters criticised the US for continuing to arm Israel and called for the killing of civilians in Gaza to stop.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 11 months since the October attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage.



Protesters wearing a Joe Biden mask and Benjamin Netanyahu mask take part in a pro-Palestine protest outside the Merrion Square entrance to Leinster House, Dublin (Brian Lawless/PA)

Much of Gaza has been devastated by Israel’s subsequent military operation, which has destroyed water and sanitation services and limited food supplies to the Palestinian enclave.

UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians, said this week there was now a risk of a polio outbreak due to the collapse of the region’s health services and a confirmed case in a 10-month-old child.

At the protest outside the gates to Leinster House on Dublin’s Merrion Street, people held signs with the slogans “Stop the genocide” and “Genocide Joe”, referring to US President Joe Biden and the US continuing to support Israel.

People carried signs reading “I’m a mother, not a target” and “I’m a child, not a target” and two protesters wore masks featuring the faces of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Biden.

At the Kildare Street end, a larger demonstration was held to the beat of drums, with people chanting “Free, free Palestine” and “Occupation no more” while waving Palestinian flags.



Protesters take part in a pro Palestine protest outside the Merrion Square entrance to Leinster House, Dublin (Grainne Ni Aodha/PA)

People Before Profit TD Brid Smith said she was informed in July that a US delegation would visit the Dail chamber, to which she responded to say that her party did not approve in the context of US support for Israel.

“If the US weren’t funding Israel it would have come to an end,” she said of the destruction in Gaza.

She said when she heard nothing back, she told the Irish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and Mothers Against Genocide and they organised the protest on Friday.

She said she understands that the protest will continue until the delegation leaves Leinster House.

“It is a very young and very loud and very vibrant protest,” she said.

“People are disgusted and raging that the Dail chamber was used in this way,” she said, adding that “the world knows now how much Israel depends on the US”.

Afghan Transgender people also face harassment in Pakistan

August 23, 2024 

By Muska Saf

Alina is an Afghan transgender person who fled Afghanistan to Peshawar, Pakistan, after the Taliban took over the country. Alina says her life would be in danger if she returned to Afghanistan, but she is also facing threats in Peshawar. Muska Safi has the report, narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.

Most Turks feel anxious about expressing their views on social media: survey

ByTurkish Minute
August 23, 2024




An overwhelming majority of Turks feel unsure and anxious when they post messages on social media, an apparent result of increasing government scrutiny of people who express critical views on online platforms, the results of a recent survey show.

The survey, conducted by the İstanbul-based Areda Survey, with the participation of 3,307 people July 29-31, showed that 63.2 percent of respondents feel anxious when they express their views on social media.

Similar surveys conducted by the company in 2021 and 2022 showed that there was a growing number of people who felt unsure about their social media posts over the past three years.

In 2021 34.5 percent of respondents felt anxious about their social media posts, while it was 43 percent in 2022.

With regard to gender distribution, men are more concerned about their social media posts in comparison to women. While 66.9 percent of the men in this year’s survey said they feel insecure about their social media posts, 59.5 percent of the women said the same.

In terms of age group, those aged over 55 have a high anxiety level, with 68.1 percent feeling anxious when expressing their views on social media. They are followed by 62.2 percent of the 18-34 age group and 60.6 percent of those aged 35-54.

The survey’s results come at a time when detention or prosecution of people for simply expressing a view on their social media accounts is a daily occurrence in Turkey.

The frequency of prosecution of people is so widespread in Turkey that the German Foreign Ministry had to warn its citizens in a travel advisory earlier this month about the risks of traveling to Turkey, including the possibility of prosecution for social media posts.

The advisory warned German citizens that actions protected under freedom of expression in Germany—such as social media posts, comments, or even simply liking content—could lead to prosecution in Turkey.

A report released by the US-based Freedom House in October showed that internet freedom in Turkey has steadily declined over the past decade, with the country again ranking among the “not free” countries concerning online freedoms.

Turkey has a score of 30 in a 100-point index, with scores based on a scale of 0 (least free) to 100 (most free).

A new media law, known as the “disinformation law,” passed by the Turkish parliament in October 2022 is also seen as contributing to the declining internet freedoms in the country as reporters and social media users could be jailed for up to three years for spreading “fake news.”

Belated Orthodox Mass at Sümela Monastery takes place amid nationalist fury

By Turkish Minute
August 23, 2024

The 11th annual Orthodox Mass at the historic Sümela Monastery in Turkey’s Black Sea province of Trabzon took place later than scheduled on Friday with the participation of fewer people amid a nationalist backlash over the service, the Gazete Duvar news website reported.

The Divine Liturgy celebrating the Assumption of Mary is normally marked every August 15, but the service had to be postponed after it was targeted by nationalist İYİ (Good) Party politicians and ultranationalist groups.

Friday’s service, which began in the morning and lasted approximately three hours, was attended by a limited number of people due to an order from the Trabzon Governor’s Office: Around 80 people, mostly from Greece, Georgia, Russia and İstanbul were present, although there were more than 350 attendees at the event in past years.

The governor’s office also limited the number of journalists following the Mass and accredited only 18 members of the press, with others not allowed to cover the service.

This year’s service was led by Gallipoli Metropolitan Bishop Stephanos Dinidis, although İstanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians globally, had been expected to conduct the Mass as in previous years.

In his sermon Dinidis prayed for peace and solidarity among Christians and Muslims and offered his thanks to Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy and local administrators for allowing the service at Sümela.

Bartholomew’s refusal to attend this year’s service at Sümela has been interpreted as a protest against the postponement of the service.

Nationalists cite Lausanne Treaty

Turkish nationalists oppose the liturgy by invoking the “principle of reciprocity,” a legal principle that involves mirroring legal effects in situations where foreign countries also recognize those effects. Articles 37 to 44 of the Lausanne Treaty mandate that Turkey respect the rights of minorities and ensure their freedom of religion.

However, Article 45 states that Greece should grant the same rights to the Muslim minority within its borders. Citing this article, nationalists argue that since Greece does not permit Islamic rituals at the Fethiye Mosque in Athens, Turkey should, in reciprocity, disallow such rituals in areas where Christian Greeks are not present in significant numbers.

İYİ Party Trabzon provincial branch chair Muhammet Erkan called the service “a dirty Pontic show,” referring to the ethnically Greek group indigenous to the region of Pontus in northeastern Anatolia, expressing his anger over the postponement of the service earlier this month and calling for its cancellation.

He said the postponement of the event was like ridiculing the intelligence of the Turkish people and nationalists, claiming that allowing the service a week later would not make a difference.

Retired rear admiral Cihat Yaycı, who has long been campaigning against the ritual at Sümela Monastery, was in Trabzon on Friday where he had meetings with local administrators, journalists and civil society leaders for an indefinite cancellation of the annual Mass at the monastery.

He said the people of Trabzon should ensure the cancellation of the service while claiming that there were “evil” efforts in the city, prompting the city’s nationalists to question their roots, as to whether they come from the Pontic people.

The postponement of the service also had to do with celebrations marking the conquest of Trabzon by the Ottomans.

In 2022 Turkish authorities designated August 15 as the day commemorating Trabzon’s conquest by the Ottomans. Prior to that, the celebrations were held on October 26.

As of 2022, celebrations marking the conquest of İstanbul overlap with the day of the Divine Liturgy, leading to even more anger among the nationalists.

Turks who advocate for the performance of the liturgy argue that human rights are inalienable and that international treaties should not impede them.

Sümela Monastery, which dates back to the fourth century, is considered one of Turkey’s most important faith tourism sites and is included in UNESCO’s temporary list of World Heritage Sites.

It was reopened on August 15, 2010 for the Orthodox community following an 88-year hiatus. But it has remained closed since 2015 due to the risk of landslide from the neighboring Mount Karadağ. The monastery is nestled in a steep cliff at an altitude of around 1,200 meters in the Maçka district. It is reopened to visitors for short periods of time.

In Turkey, Christians as a minority group experience various challenges and rights violations, according to the 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom released by the US Department of State. The 1923 Lausanne Treaty formally recognizes the rights of Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Christians, Jews and Greek Orthodox Christians. However, Christian denominations still find themselves grappling with limitations on their religious rights.

Marine Geoengineering Will Not Save the Oceans or the Climate

Alexis Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Aug 23, 2024

LILI FUHR and JAMES KERRY

Marine geoengineering, often touted as a potential solution to global warming, poses a grave threat to the ecosystems that sustain all living things. To prevent further damage to our oceans, we must restrict marine-geoengineering experiments and prevent these dangerous technologies from being deployed.

BERLIN/ZURICH – Life on Earth would not exist without the oceans and their interconnected and fragile ecosystems, many of which we barely understand. In addition to providing livelihoods for billions of people, marine ecosystems serve as the planet’s lungs, producing roughly 50% of the oxygen we breathe, while absorbing 30% of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions and nearly all the associated excess heat. As the legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle succinctly put it: “No water, no life. No blue, no green.”

But over the past few decades, the world’s oceans have been under massive pressure from climate change, pollution, habitat destruction, acidification, and overfishing. And these fragile ecosystems now face a new threat: high-risk attempts to manipulate the oceans through technological interventions. These efforts, collectively known as marine geoengineering, could exacerbate human-caused ocean degradation, thereby jeopardizing our planet’s life-support systems. To protect ocean health, citizens and scientists worldwide must urge policymakers to restrict these technologies.

Marine geoengineering – encompassing techniques like seeding the ocean with iron to stimulate the growth of carbon-absorbing phytoplankton and increasing the reflectivity of clouds by spraying them with saltwater mist – is often touted by its proponents as a potential solution to climate change. Tellingly, however, none of these approaches tackle the root cause of climate change: fossil fuels. And, in fact, major polluters and big business are already investing in these interventions as a ploy to maintain their usual practices.

In reality, marine-geoengineering technologies will not work, cannot be scaled, or are so dangerous that they should never be deployed. Consider, for example, ocean liming. This technique aims to increase the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide by adding large quantities of alkaline substances to the ocean.

One analysis suggests that liming the ocean at the scale required to make a dent in atmospheric CO2 levels would necessitate the use of nearly all the active large ships in the world. Given that most ships are powered by fossil fuels, the resulting GHG emissions alone would render the effort self-defeating.

Moreover, obtaining the necessary amounts of alkaline substances would mean a significant expansion of the highly polluting mining industry. One estimate suggests that achieving this would require 3,000 terawatt hours of electricity and an additional ten billion tons of processed rock, surpassing the total production of the global coal-mining industry over the past 250 years.

While it is well established that ocean acidification threatens marine life, the biological and ecological impacts of ocean liming are not well understood but are likely to be just as harmful. Rapid changes in the chemical makeup of water would likely harm or kill species that have evolved to live in stable and specific environmental conditions. The introduction and unpredictable spread of mineral particles would contaminate the water, block sunlight, and suffocate plankton and other marine organisms, thereby disrupting the biological carbon pump that is crucial to storing CO2 in the deep ocean.

Marine cloud brightening, which involves pumping seawater into the atmosphere to increase cloud reflectivity, is another geoengineering technique that poses significant risks. At scale, it would likely shift rainfall and monsoon patterns, thereby potentially exacerbating droughts and hurricanes. Marine ecosystems could be severely affected by increased salt deposits on the sea surface, slowing carbon absorption and reducing light levels and ocean temperatures. If implemented at scale, marine cloud brightening could not be quickly stopped because the shock of termination would result in a sudden increase in temperatures, leading to unforeseeable and potentially catastrophic consequences.

Against this backdrop, the recent decision by the California town of Alameda to refuse to host a marine-cloud-brightening experiment is a welcome development. This decision reflects growing public and governmental awareness of the dangers posed by these technologies, even in their infancy. It should serve as a model for other cities, states, and countries.

With our oceans under increasing strain, we must combat all forms of marine pollution. As the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea declared in a landmark judgment in May, this includes GHGs. But we cannot geoengineer our way out of the climate crisis. Marine-geoengineering technologies essentially aim to replace one form of pollution – CO2 – with another, in clear violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. In doing so, they distract us from the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels.

Alarmingly, international institutions appear ill-equipped to slow the development and commercialization of marine geoengineering, even though a de facto moratorium on these technologies has been in place under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity since 2010.

The need for effective global regulation was reiterated by the parties to the London Protocol in an October 2023 statement that recognized the ability of marine-geoengineering technologies to cause “deleterious effects that are widespread, long-lasting, or severe” and warned against their deployment.

Attempts to monetize marine carbon-removal technologies even before their effectiveness and impacts can be established are another cause for concern. Companies and startups in this emerging field are already selling carbon credits, thereby prioritizing profit over precaution. Worse, some of these startups are financially supported by fossil-fuel companies.

Oceans are humanity’s greatest allies in the fight against climate change. We cannot afford to manipulate these vital and complex ecosystems, especially when doing so would distract us from the urgent imperative of phasing out fossil fuels. To protect the ecosystems that sustain all life on Earth, we must restrict marine-geoengineering experiments and prevent these technologies from being deployed.

LILI FUHR
Writing for PS since 2014
Lili Fuhr is Director of the Fossil Economy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law.

JAMES KERRY
Writing for PS since 2024
James Kerry, Senior Marine and Climate Scientist at OceanCare, is an adjunct senior research fellow at James Cook University.

Meta and Spotify CEOs criticize AI regulation in the EU

Sarah Perez

 • August 23, 2024

Meta and Spotify are once again teaming up — this time, on the matter of open source (or to be precise, open-weight) AI which the companies claim are being hampered by regulations. In joint statements published to both companies’ respective websites on Friday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek complain that EU privacy regulations around AI are holding back innovation. Meta, for instance, points out that it has been prevented from being able to train its AI models on public data across Facebook and Instagram because regulators haven’t crafted legislation to address how this should be handled as of yet.

“In the short term, delaying the use of data that is routinely used in other regions means the most powerful AI models won’t reflect the collective knowledge, culture, and languages of Europe—and Europeans won’t get to use the latest AI products,” Meta’s blog post warns. It also stresses that Europeans won’t be able to access the latest open source technology and instead will be left with AI “built for someone else.”

The post additionally confirmed previous reports that Meta would withhold its next multimodel AI model from customers in the European Union due to a lack of clarity from regulators. Notes Meta, it will not be able to release upcoming AI models like Llama multimodel, which has the ability to understand images because of this.

Meanwhile, Spotify points to its early investment in AI technology as a reason its streaming service became so successful in the first place, as it developed a personalized experience for each individual user.

“As we look to the future of streaming, we see tremendous potential to use open-source AI to benefit the industry. This is especially important when it comes to how AI can help more artists get discovered. A simplified regulatory structure would not only accelerate the growth of open-source AI but also provide crucial support to European developers and the broader creator ecosystem that contributes to and thrives on these innovations,” its post reads.

Reading between the lines, it’s not a stretch to assume that Spotify would like to use Meta’s AI technology to improve its products but is similarly impacted by the lack of clarity around AI regulations in the EU.

Of course, neither of these companies are against regulation when it works to their advantage.

For instance, the two share a common enemy in Apple — specifically, its App Store monopoly, which saw EU regulators dubbing the iPhone maker a Big Tech “gatekeeper” before forcing it to open up to alternative app stores, app distribution methods and payment systems, among other things. Meta and Spotify didn’t criticize the regulation itself, only how Apple had responded. In this case, Zuckerberg joined Ek in criticizing Apple’s new business rules for EU developers under the region’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) — as being so onerous that he doubted any developer would opt in. Spotify had also called Apple’s compliance plan “extortion” and a “complete and total farce.”

Meta and Spotify have a history of working together in recent years, having earlier teamed up on music initiatives that included a miniplayer on Facebook that streamed Spotify directly from the app.