Rebel attacks keep Indian-run Kashmir on the boil  

KASHMIR IS INDIA'S GAZA



By AFP
November 14, 2024


Relatives and mourners carry the body of a doctor killed in an October terror attack in Kashmir - Copyright AFP/File Tauseef MUSTAFA

Parvaiz BUKHARI

Ambushes, firefights and a market grenade blast: headline-grabbing attacks in Indian-run Kashmir are designed to challenge New Delhi’s bid to portray normality in the disputed territory, Indian security officials say.

Kashmir has been divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since their partition at the chaotic end of British rule in 1947, and both countries claim the territory in full.

“The attacks are not merely about killing, but also to set a narrative to counter the Indian narrative — that everything is fine,” said the former head of India’s Northern Command forces, retired general Deependra Singh Hooda.

Half a million Indian troops are deployed in the far northern region, battling a 35-year insurgency in which tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels have been killed, including at least 120 this year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government cancelled the Muslim-majority region’s partial autonomy in 2019, a decision accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long communications blackout.

The territory of around 12 million people has since been ruled by a governor appointed by New Delhi — overseeing the local government that voters elected in October in opposition to Modi.



– ‘Larger message’ –



New Delhi insists it helped bring “peace, development and prosperity” to the region.

But military experts say that small bands of rebels — demanding either independence or Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan — use attacks to contradict the claims.

“The larger message being sent out is that the problem in Kashmir is alive,” Hooda said.

India blames Pakistan for arming militants and helping them “infiltrate” across the militarised dividing line to launch attacks, an allegation Islamabad denies.

A “spurt in infiltration” this year by insurgents was “not possible without Pakistan’s army actively allowing it”, Hooda charged.

Many clashes take place in forested mountains far from larger settlements.

But the huge military presence visible in sprawling camps and roadblocks — roughly one in every 25 people in Kashmir is an Indian soldier — serves as a constant reminder.

Many are frustrated by traffic jams caused by military orders that civilian cars stay at least 500 metres (1,640 feet) away from army vehicles.

Yet those who have long lived under the shadow of the grinding insurgency seemingly shrug off the threat.

When an attacker this month hurled a grenade at security forces in a busy market — killing a woman and wounding 11 civilians — shoppers returned within a couple of hours.

This month, thousands attended an army recruitment drive, even as soldiers battled gunmen in a nearby district.



– ‘Low boil’ –



Attacks appear dramatic, including a gun battle in downtown Srinagar in early November that police said killed a commander of the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.

Earlier this year, attacks in the Jammu area — a Hindu-majority region — prompted the army to supply thousands of militia forces, dubbed village defence guards, with rifles.

But the death toll of 120 civilians, soldiers and rebels killed this year is, so far, similar in intensity to 2023, when 130 people died, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a New Delhi-based monitoring group.

“It will remain like this on low boil, as long as Kashmir is divided (between India and Pakistan),” a security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to journalists.

“We control it here; they (Pakistan) will activate it from there.”

The Indian army says around 720 rebels have been killed in the past five years.

Regional army commander MV Suchindra Kumar said in October he believed fewer than 130 remained in the fight.

Another security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said those include “highly trained and well-armed” fighters who had crossed from Pakistan.

“They are causing some damage by surprise attacks,” the official said. “But the situation is under control”.

Hooda, drawing on his long experience as a general, predicts little change as long as violence serves the agenda of India’s rival Islamabad.

“I don’t see this coming down immediately,” he said, referring to the number of attacks.

“Pakistan has always felt that ratcheting up attacks will bring the spotlight on Kashmir”.

NICHE MARKET

Stiff business: Berlin startup will freeze your corpse for monthly fee


By AFP
November 15, 2024

A container to store frozen bodies at Tomorrow Biostasis's facility in Rafz, Switzerland - Copyright AFP Richard A. Brooks

Femke COLBORNE

Becca Ziegler is only 24, but she already has her death planned out: her corpse will be deep-frozen to minus 200 degrees Celsius (minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit) with liquid nitrogen.

Ziegler, a US tech firm worker based in Berlin, has signed up with Tomorrow Biostasis, a startup in the German capital that offers to cryogenically freeze a person’s body after they die.

When the time comes, a team of medics will pump her full of a chemical solution to stop ice crystals from forming in her body and then transport her mortal remains to a storage facility in Switzerland.

The hope is that one day, medical technology might be advanced enough to bring her back to life. Many experts dismiss this gamble on the future as far-fetched, but Ziegler has decided to give it a shot.

“I’m kind of curious to see what the future would be like and, in general, I like life,” said the Californian, who works in educational technology.

“So if I could buy myself more time, that sounds really appealing.”

Once a fringe pursuit reserved for eccentric billionaires, cryogenic freezing — also known as cryonics — has become more accessible in recent years.

Several companies offering cryopreservation have sprung up in the United States and elsewhere, with around 500 people worldwide thought to have been frozen so far.

A persistent myth has it that Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse, is one of them, but this has been debunked, with BBC reporting in 2019 there is “zero evidence” for this.

Tomorrow Biostasis, founded in 2020, is thought to be the first such company offering the service in Europe. It offers to freeze your body after you die and store it for a membership fee of 50 euros a month.

A lump-sum payment of 200,000 euros ($216,000) — or 75,000 euros if you opt to have just your brain frozen — is also due at the time of death, a cost that can be covered by a life insurance payout.



– Liquid nitrogen –



“One of the main goals of this company is to bring the cost down… so that cryopreservation becomes available to whoever chooses to do it,” said Emil Kendziorra, one of the co-founders of Tomorrow Biostasis.

Kendziorra, 38, from the western German city of Darmstadt, studied medicine and originally worked in cancer research but said he became frustrated with the slow pace of developments in the field.

“The one big advantage of cryopreservation is that it is something that you can do right now,” he said.

When a client dies, Tomorrow Biostasis promises to dispatch a specially equipped ambulance and a medical team that starts cooling the body using ice and water as soon as possible.

The body is then infused with a “cryoprotectant” and transported to the facility in Switzerland where it is stored in a pod surrounded by liquid nitrogen and cooled to around minus 200 degrees Celsius.

Tomorrow Biostasis says it currently has around 700 paying members, and by the end of last year had cryopreserved four people.

The typical customer is aged 30 to 40, healthy, works in technology and is more likely to be male than female, said Kendziorra.



– No guarantees –



No one has ever been brought back to life after being cryopreserved, but proponents say recent advances in technology have made the prospect more plausible.

In an experiment almost a decade ago, scientists said they were able to cryopreserve the brain of a rabbit and recover it in near-perfect condition.

And this year, researchers at China’s Fudan University reported using a new technique to freeze human brain tissue so that it regained normal function after thawing.

Nonetheless, some scientists voice deep scepticism about the bet on a future return to life.

Holger Reinsch, head of the Cryo Competence Center at the ILK Dresden research institute for refrigeration technologies, said bringing a person back to life is still a remote prospect.

“We are rather critical of the concept of cryonics… I personally would advise you against such an endeavour,” he said.

“The magic limit for the life-sustaining cryopreservation of tissue structures is a frog’s heart the size of a fingernail, and this has not changed since the 1970s.”

Even Kendziorra admitted that there are no guarantees.

“I think there’s a good chance for it, but do I know for sure? Absolutely not.”

But whatever happens in the future, Ziegler is confident she will not regret her decision.

“In some ways it’s weird,” she conceded. “But on the other hand the alternative is to be put in a box in the ground and get eaten by worms.”

SPACE/COSMOS

China tests building Moon base with lunar soil bricks


By AFP
November 15, 2024

Beijing, which has poured huge resources into its space programme to catch up with the United States and Russia, is aiming to put humans on the Moon by 2030

 - Copyright AFP KARIM JAAFAR

Ludovic EHRET and Luna LIN

China is expected to push forward in its quest to build the first lunar base on Friday, launching an in-space experiment to test whether the station’s bricks could be made from the Moon’s own soil.

Brick samples will blast off aboard a cargo rocket heading for China’s Tiangong space station, part of Beijing’s mission to put humans on the Moon by 2030 and build a permanent base there by 2035.

It is a daunting task: any structure has to withstand huge amounts of cosmic radiation, extreme temperature variations and moonquakes, and getting building materials there in the first place is a costly procedure.

Constructing the base out of the Moon itself could be a solution to those problems, scientists from a university in central Wuhan province hope.

They have created a series of prototype bricks made of various compositions of materials found on earth, such as basalt, which mimic the properties of lunar soil.

Slivers of those test bricks will be subjected to a series of stringent tests once they reach the Tiangong space station.

“It’s mainly exposure,” said Zhou Cheng, a professor at Wuhan’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

“To put it simply, we put (the material) in space and let it sit there… to see whether its durability, its performance will degrade under the extreme environment.”

The temperature on the Moon can vary drastically between 180 and -190 degrees Celsius (356 to -310 degrees Fahrenheit).

Its lack of an atmosphere means it is subjected to large quantities of cosmic radiation as well as micrometeorites, while moonquakes can weaken any structure on its surface.

The exposure experiment will last three years, with samples sent back for testing every year.



– ‘Good chance of success’ –



Zhou’s team developed their prototype bricks after analysing soil brought back by China’s Chang’e-5 probe, the world’s first mission in four decades to collect Moon samples.

The resulting black bricks are three times stronger than standard bricks, he said, and interlock together without a binding agent.

The team has also worked on the “Lunar Spider”, a 3D printing robot to build structures in space, some of which are conical in shape.

“In the future, our plan is definitely to use resources on-site, that is, make bricks directly from the lunar soil, and then do various construction scenarios, so we won’t be bringing the materials from Earth,” said Zhou.

It’s “an obvious thing to try” because using materials already on the Moon would be much cheaper, said Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University in Britain.

“The experiments have a good chance of success, and the results will pave the way to building moonbases,” he told AFP.

– Lego bricks –

Beijing is far from alone in looking to build the first lunar base.

China’s planned outpost on the Moon, known as the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), is a joint project with Russia.

A dozen countries — including Thailand, Pakistan, Venezuela and Senegal — are partners in the initiative, as well as around 40 foreign organisations, according to Chinese state media.

The United States is aiming to put humans back on the Moon in 2026 and subsequently set up a station there, though its Artemis programme has already seen various delays.

As part of the US preparations, researchers at the University of Central Florida are testing potential building bricks of their own, made using 3D printers.

The European Space Agency, meanwhile, has carried out studies on how to assemble bricks based on the structure of Lego.

POLTICAL PRISONERS

French court orders release of Lebanese militant held since 1984

By AFP
November 15, 2024

Abdallah had been sentenced to life in prison 

- Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV

A French court on Friday ordered the release of pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for 40 years for the killing of two foreign diplomats, prosecutors said.

The court said Abdallah, first detained in 1984 and convicted in 1987 over the 1982 murders, would be released on December 6 provided he leaves France, French anti-terror prosecutors said in a statement to AFP, adding that they would appeal.

“In (a) decision dated today, the court granted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah conditional release from December 6, subject to the condition that he leaves French territory and not appear there again,” the prosecutors said.

Abdallah, a former guerrilla in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov.

Washington has consistently opposed his release but Lebanese authorities have repeatedly said he should be freed from jail.

Abdallah, now 73, has always insisted he is a “fighter” who battled for the rights of Palestinians and not a “criminal”. This was his 11th bid for release.

He had been eligible to apply for parole since 1999 but all his previous applications had been turned down, except in 2013 when he was granted release on the condition he was expelled from France.

However the then interior minister Manuel Valls refused to go through with the order and Abdallah remained in jail.

The court’s decision on Friday is not conditional on the government issuing such an order, Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, told AFP, hailing “a legal and a political victory”.

– Veteran inmate –

One of France’s longest serving inmates, Abdallah has never expressed regret for his actions.

Wounded in 1978 during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, he joined the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, which carried out a string of plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s and is banned as a terror group by the US and EU.

Abdallah, a Christian, then in the late 1970s founded his own militant group the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) which had contact with other extreme-left militant outfits including Italy’s Red Brigades and the German Red Army Faction (RAF).

A pro-Syrian and anti-Israeli Marxist group, the LARF claimed four deady attacks in France in the 1980s. Abdallah was arrested in 1984 after entering a police station in Lyon and claiming Mossad assassins were on his trail.

At his trial over the killing of the diplomats, Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison, a much more severe punishment than the 10 years demanded by prosecutors.

His lawyer Jacques Verges, who defended clients including Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal, described the verdict as a “declaration of war”.

There remains a broad swell of support for his cause among the far left and communists in France. Last month, 2022 Nobel literature prize winner Annie Ernaux, said in a piece in communist daily L’Humanite that his detention “shamed France”.

Jailed Russian poet could be ‘killed’ in prison, warns wife


By AFP
November 15, 2024

Russian poet Artyom Kamardin, 34, was jailed for seven years for reciting anti-war poetry. Fellow poet Yegor Shtovba, 23, was sentenced to five a half year for attending the public reading - Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV
Anna SMOLCHENKO

The wife of a Russian poet jailed for seven years for reciting anti-war verses said she was afraid he could be killed in prison after he was sexually assaulted with a dumbbell during his arrest.

Artyom Kamardin was arrested in September 2022 after reciting — on a Moscow square where dissidents have been gathering since the late 1950s — a poem that fiercely criticised Russia’s war against Ukraine.

In December 2023, Kamardin was convicted of inciting hatred and undermining national security. Fellow poet Yegor Shtovba, 23, was sentenced to five and a half years for attending the public reading.

Kamardin, 34, lost his appeal last month and is soon expected to be sent to a penal colony to serve his term.

“I am afraid they will kill him,” his wife Alexandra Popova, 30, who is still based in Russia, told AFP during a visit to Paris. “He is being treated a bit like a Ukrainian. Like a Ukrainian captive.”

In a widely-publicised case, both Kamardin and Popova were beaten and humiliated when security forces stormed their apartment the day after he read his poem, entitled “Kill me, militiaman!”, according to them and rights activists.

The reading took place days after President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilisation, the first such call-up since World War II.

Kamardin’s poem from 2015 is peppered with swear words and takes aim at pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

“Kill me, militiaman! You’ve already tasted blood! You’ve seen how brothers-in-arms dig mass graves for the brotherly people,” Kamardin declaimed near the statue of Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

– ‘Fascist dictatorship’ –

In a statement from jail, Kamardin said poetry helped him reflect on “my homeland’s transformation into a fascist dictatorship”.

“I was born in a free Russia,” he wrote. “Now this country no longer exists, it was killed and devoured by the monster that calls itself Russia now.”

During the raid Kamardin was sexually abused with a dumbbell handle, according to Popova.

Security force members used their phones to record the assault, she said. “There was a lot of blood,” Popova added. Kamardin was then told to go on his knees to record an apology video.

The men also threatened to gang-rape Popova. “At one point they locked themselves in a room with me and pretended to start taking off their trousers,” she said. The couple were also called Nazis.

Amnesty International has said that the details of “his arrest and torture are horrific even against the abysmal human rights standards of today’s Russia.”

Russian propaganda has mounted a campaign of harassment against the couple. “Sit tight, or they will kill you,” Kamardin was already told in jail, according to his wife.

Putin has used the war, now in its third year, to radically transform Russian society.

Independent media outlets have been shut, top rights groups dismantled, criticism of the war outlawed, and dissidents jailed, muzzled or pushed out of the country. Putin’s top opponent Alexei Navalny, 47, died suddenly in an Arctic colony in February.

Popova, who is part of a six-member collective supporting Russian political prisoners, said the country had changed since the start of the war.

Many people now justify “the killing of other people”.

Even if Moscow’s war against Ukraine comes to an end, repression in Russia might not stop, she said.

“Society has become cruel,” Popova added. “People inform on each other.”

The head of the Kremlin’s Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeyev, said last month there was no repression in Russia, with just “minimal restrictions” against those who he said “are essentially siding” with the West.


– ‘Only chance to save people’ –


Popova urged Western governments to do everything to help free Russian political prisoners.

She praised the release of 16 Russian dissidents and foreign nationals in a prisoner swap on August 1 and said more such exchanges were needed.

“People die in Russian prisons,” she said, calling them “victims of war”.

“These are the people who oppose what is happening now and they pay for their position with their health and lives.”

In July, Pavel Kushnir, a 39-year-old pianist and anti-war activist, died in detention in the city of Birobidzhan near the China–Russia border.

In April, Alexander Demidenko, a 61-year-old volunteer who helped Ukrainian refugees, died in jail in the southern city of Belgorod.

“Artyom has a chance to get out earlier if there are any exchanges of political prisoners,” Popova said.

“The only chance now to save people from Russian prisons is through exchanges.”

While many Kremlin critics have left Russia, Popova said she had no plans to go. She wanted to keep supporting political prisoners, above all her husband.

“My heart is bleeding,” she said. “I have to be near him.”

Russia shuts Moscow’s famed gulag museum


By AFP
November 14, 2024

The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV

Russian authorities ordered the closure from Thursday of Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum, dedicated to the victims of Soviet-era repression.

The closure was officially put down to alleged violations of fire safety regulations, but comes amid an intense campaign being waged by the Kremlin against independent civil society and those who question the state’s interpretation of history.

“The decision to temporarily suspend the activities of the State Gulag Museum was taken for safety reasons,” the Moscow city culture department told AFP on Thursday.

The museum removed content from its website, replacing it with an announcement of the “temporary” closure.

They declined to comment further when contacted by AFP on Thursday.

Established in 2001, the central Moscow museum brings together official state documents with family photographs and objects from gulag victims.

Moscow authorities said 46,000 people visited in the first nine months of the year.

The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union.

Millions of alleged traitors and enemies of the state were sent there, many to their deaths, in what historians recognise as a period of massive political repression.

The Council of Europe awarded the site its Museum Prize in 2021, saying it worked to “expose history and activate memory, with the goal of strengthening the resilience of civil society and its resistance to political repression and violation of human rights today and in the future.”



– ‘Great loss’ –



Outside the museum on Thursday, worker Mikhail, who declined to give his last name, lamented its possible closure.

“It’s a strong museum, very impressive. It’s disappointing that this happened. It’s a loss, a great loss if, God forbid, it’s permanent,” he told AFP.

“We need people to see it, to understand, to know that it must not be repeated.”

But Moscovite Yulia, a musician in her 50s who also declined to give her last name, welcomed the closure.

“I’m against such establishments, I’m not sad,” she told AFP while walking her dog in a nearby park.

“I’m a Stalinist… people die in every era, right now as well. We can’t make monuments for every era.”

Through his 24 years in power, President Vladimir Putin has sought to revise Russia’s historical narrative and its relationship with the Soviet Union.

While occasionally condemning the vast repression under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, Putin more often hails him as a great wartime leader.

School textbooks pay little attention to the millions of victims of the Great Terror, seen as inconvenient in the promotion of the Soviet Union as a great power that defeated Nazi Germany.

Authorities have increasingly targeted individuals and groups who push back against this approach — a campaign that has stepped up amid the Ukraine offensive.

In 2021, authorities ordered the liquidation of Memorial, the Nobel Prize-winning NGO that records victims of both Soviet repression and allegations of human rights violations by the current regime.

Last month the Gulag History Museum staged a “Return of the Names” event — when individuals read out the names of people killed during Soviet terror.

Iran activist kills himself after demanding release of prisoners


By AFP
November 14, 2024

ctress Bridget Moynahan (L) and activist Kianoosh Sanjari at an Amnesty International Concert in New York - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV

Human rights campaigners on Thursday paid tribute to an Iranian activist who killed himself hours after warning he would do so if four inmates seen to be political prisoners were not freed.

Kianoosh Sanjari, an opponent of the Islamic republic’s clerical authorities, warned in a message on X late Wednesday that he would commit suicide if the release of the two men and two women did not take place.

He then took his own life, according to multiple rights campaigners and organisations.

The formal announcement of his death, which is swiftly published by families in Iran when a relative dies, was also widely shared on social media.

Sanjari had demanded the release of veteran campaigner Fatemeh Sepehri, Nasreen Shakarami, the mother of a teenager killed during 2022 protests, rapper Tomaj Salehi and civil rights activist Arsham Rezaei.

“If they are not released from prison by 7:00 pm today, Wednesday, and the news of their release is not published on the judiciary news site, I will end my life in protest against the dictatorship of (supreme leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei and his accomplices,” he said.

He later added: “No one should be imprisoned for expressing their opinions. Protest is the right of every Iranian citizen.

“My life will end after this tweet but let’s not forget that we die and die for the love of life, not death,” he added.

It was not immediately clear how he killed himself. Sanjari had late Wednesday posted an image that appeared to have been taken looking down on the street from the upper floor of a Tehran tower block.

– ‘Islamic Republic killed him’ –

Figures from across the opposition spectrum expressed grief, saying the suicide was indicative of the climate in the Islamic republic due to the crackdown that followed the 2022-2023 nationwide protests which shook the authorities.

Activists said Senjari had been repeatedly arrested and summoned in Iran since returning to take care of his elderly mother in 2015 after a stint working in the US for Voice of America.

“His death is a warning to all of us of how heavy the price of silence and indifference can be,” said campaigner Arash Sadeghi, who endured a lengthy spell in jail during the protests.

Atena Daemi, a labour activist released from jail in 2022, wrote on X that the “Islamic Republic had killed him bit by bit…. the Islamic republic is responsible for his death.”

The US-based son of the ousted shah, Reza Pahlavi, said: “our fight is for life against the regime of death and execution.”

British actor of Iranian origin Nazanin Boniadi said the chorus of tributes was in stark contrast to the arguments that often mark exchanges in Iranian opposition circles.

“A unity that should exist in life, not just in death. We have one common enemy: the Islamic republic regime. Let’s behave accordingly,” she said.

COMMODITY FETISH

Jeff Beck guitar collection to go under the hammer in January

By AFP
November 15, 2024

Jeff Beck's guitars are to be auctioned at Christie's in London in January 

- Copyright AFP Richard A. Brooks

A collection of guitars and other musical equipment owned by influential rock guitarist Jeff Beck will go on sale in London in January, Christie’s auctioneers announced on Friday.

Some of the 130 guitars, amps and “tools of the trade” used by Beck during his decades-spanning career are expected to fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds (dollars) when they go under the hammer on January 22, it said.

They include the rock legend’s 1954 “Oxblood” Gibson Les Paul, famously depicted on the cover of his seminal 1975 solo instrumental album “Blow By Blow” and used on several tracks.

It is estimated to fetch up to £500,000 ($634,000).

Beck, who rose to stardom with 1960s supergroup The Yardbirds and later enjoyed a prolific solo career, died in January last year aged 78.

His widow, Sandra Beck, said it was “a massive wrench” to part with the instruments but that they needed to be “shared, played and loved again”.

“These guitars were his great love and after almost two years of his passing, it’s time to part with them as Jeff wished,” she said in a statement.

“I hope the future guitarists who acquire these items are able to move closer to the genius who played them.”

The collection includes another Gibson Les Paul from 1958, dubbed the original “Yardburst” as it was bought in 1966 while Beck was in the seminal British rock group. It is valued at up to £60,000.

Meanwhile, a Fender Telecaster and Gibson hybrid crafted by world-renowned guitar designer Seymour Duncan specifically for Beck in 1973 is predicted to sell for as much as £150,000.

Highlights from the guitar haul will be on public view in Los Angeles on December 4-6.

The full collection will go on show for a week at Christie’s London headquarters before the January 22 sale.

Christie’s Amelia Walker said the auctioneers were “honoured to have been entrusted” with the sale of instruments belonging to a “rock pioneer whose influence on his peers was unmatched”.

She added Beck’s guitars had “shared his emotion and voice” with the world and the auction would “pay tribute to his enduring legacy”.

Dinosaur skeleton fetches 6 million euros in Paris sale


By AFP
November 16, 2024

The buyer has pledged to donate the apatosaurus nicknamed Vulcan to a museum - Copyright AFP/File Alexander NEMENOV, Ting Shen

The skeleton of a 22-metre-long dinosaur (70 feet) fetched six million euros ($6.4 million) Saturday, AFP learned from auction houses Collin du Bocage and Barbarossa.

An anonymous collector snapped up the vegetarian apatosaurus, which was dug up in the United States, for 4.7 million euros rising to 6 million including costs. It is the largest dinosaur ever to be auctioned in France.

The buyer pledged to allow it to be displayed in a museum.

“We are happy that the buyer intends to lend it to an institution,” said Olivier Collin du Bocage. They skeleton of the giant herbivore is made up of 75 to 80 percent of the original bones and is roughly 150 million years old.

The giant creature’s skeleton, which weighed around twenty tonnes during its lifetime, spent the summer in the orangerie of Dampierre-en-Yvelines, a chateau some 50 kilometres (30 miles) southwest of Paris, where the sale took place.

The remains of the apatosaurus, nicknamed Vulcan, were discovered in 2018 in Wyoming, in the United States, where the law allows individuals to acquire concessions in the hope of excavating prehistoric bones. Excavations took place between 2019 and 2021, financed by a French investor.

The fossil, which includes 300 bones, was then shipped to France to be restored.

Its presale value at auction had been estimated at between three and five million euros.

Under the contract of sale the future owner undertakes to give paleontologists access to the dinosaur to study it.

IAEA chief tours sensitive Iran nuclear plants


By AFP
November 15, 2024

UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi (L) speaks with Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi ahead of their tour of sensitive Iranian uranium enrichment plants - Copyright AFP Eyad BABA
Sébastien RICCI, Ramin KHANIZADEH

The UN nuclear chief toured two Iranian uranium enrichment plants that have been the focus of Western concern on Friday after Tehran said it was ready to address “doubts” about its ambitions.

The visit to Iran by International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Grossi comes after he warned “the margins for manoeuvre are beginning to shrink” over its nuclear programme.

On Friday, Grossi visited the Natanz and Fordo enrichment plants in central Iran, the official IRNA news agency reported.

He was accompanied by Iran’s atomic energy organisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi, photographs posted by IRNA showed.

Expectations have run high that US President-elect Donald Trump will take a harder line with Tehran when he takes office in January, although the New York Times reported Thursday that his tech billionaire ally Elon Musk had met Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in a bid to defuse tensions.

Neither the Trump transition team nor Iran’s mission to the United Nations immediately confirmed the encounter with ambassador Saeed Iravani. The Iranian mission said it had no comment.

During his first term in the White House, Trump unilaterally abandoned a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers and reimposed blistering economic sanctions in a policy of “maximum pressure”.

Tehran eventually responded by rolling back its own commitments under the deal, which barred it from enriching uranium to above 3.65 percent.

The IAEA says Iran has significantly expanded its stocks of uranium enriched to 60 percent, a level that has triggered international alarm as it is much closer to the 90 percent level needed for a nuclear warhead.

Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state to enrich uranium to 60 percent, the UN agency has said.



– ‘Proliferation-sensitive’-



Samuel Hickey of the Washington-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said Grossi’s tour of the two plants was “significant for both technical monitoring and symbolic reasons”.

“Natanz serves as Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility, while Fordo houses some of its most advanced centrifuges,” Hickey said.

Fordo “is among Iran’s most proliferation-sensitive sites,” he added.

Hickey said that by allowing Grossi to visit the plants Iran “is signalling that the easiest access to these facilities is through diplomatic engagement.”

Grossi’s visit comes ahead of a meeting of the IAEA’s board of governors later this month at which Britain, France and Germany could propose a new resolution critical of Iran.

In talks with the IAEA chief in Tehran on Thursday, President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran was ready to resolve any “doubts and ambiguities” about its nuclear ambitions.

But in his meeting with Grossi, Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami threatened instant “countermeasures” if the board adopts an “interventionist resolution”.

“Iran wants to both act like it will cooperate so as to undermine support for a harsh board resolution,” while also threatening retaliation if the board passes one, Institute for Science and International Security head David Albright told AFP.

The outgoing administration of President Joe Biden expressed scepticism about the show of cooperation by Tehran.

“Ultimately, what we want to see from Iran is actual behavioural change and action, not just signs of something or indications of something,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.

Lebanon rescuer picks up ‘pieces’ of father after Israel strike


By AFP
November 15, 2024

Unlike many first-respondeer facilities previously targeted by Israel during the war against Hezbollah, the centre in Douris on the edge of Baalbek city was state-run and without political affiliation. - Copyright AFP Sam SKAINEH
Sleiman Amhaz

Suzanne Karkaba and her father Ali were both civil defence rescuers whose job was to save the injured and recover the dead in Lebanon’s war.

When an Israeli strike killed him on Thursday and it was his turn to be rescued, there wasn’t much left. She had to identify him by his fingers.

Karkaba then rushed back to the bombed civil defence centre to search for her fellow first responders under the rubble.

Israel struck the centre, the main civil defence facility in the eastern Baalbek area, while nearly 20 rescuers were still inside, said Samir Chakia, a local official with the agency.

At least 14 civil defence workers were killed, he said.

“My dad was sleeping here with them. He helped people and recovered bodies to return them to their families… But now it’s my turn to pick up the pieces of my dad,” Karkaba told AFP with tears in her eyes.

Unlike many first-responder facilities previously targeted during the war, this facility in Douris, on the edge of Baalbek city, was state-run and had no political affiliation.

Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Friday morning, dozens of rescuers and residents were still rummaging through the wreckage of the centre. Two excavators pulled broken slabs of concrete, twisted metal bars and red tiles.

Wearing her civil defence uniform at the scene, Karkaba said she had been working around-the-clock since Israel ramped up its air raids on Lebanon’s east in late September.

“I don’t know who to grieve anymore, the (centre’s) chief, my father, or my friends of 10 years,” Karkaba said, her braided hair flowing in the wind.

“I don’t have the heart to leave the centre, to leave the smell of my father… I’ve lost a part of my soul.”

– ‘Now we are targets’ –

Beginning on September 23, Israel escalated its air raids mainly on Hezbollah strongholds in east and south Lebanon, as well as south Beirut after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges of fire.

A week later Israel sent in ground troops to southern Lebanon.

More than 150 rescuers, most of them affiliated with Hezbollah and its allies, have been killed in more than a year of clashes, according to health ministry figures from late October.

Friday morning, rescuers in Douris were still pulling body parts from the rubble, strewn with dozens of paper documents, while Lebanese army troops stood guard near the site.

Civil defence worker Mahmoud Issa was among those searching for friends in the rubble.

“Does it get worse than this kind of strike against rescue teams and medics? We are among the first to… save people. But now, we are targets,” he said.

On Thursday, Lebanon’s health ministry said more than 40 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country’s south and east.

The ministry reported two deadly Israeli raids on emergency facilities in less than two hours that day: the one near Baalbek, and another on the south that killed four Hezbollah-affiliated paramedics.

The ministry urged the international community to “put an end to these dangerous violations”.

More than 3,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since the clashes began last year, according to the ministry, the majority of them since late September.

US finalizes up to $6.6 bn funding for chip giant TSMC

ALL CAPITALI$M IS $TATE-CAPITALI$M

By AFP
November 15, 2024

The first of TSMC's three new facilities in Arizona is set to fully open by early-2025, according to President Joe Biden - Copyright AFP Richard A. Brooks
Beiyi SEOW

The United States will award Taiwanese chip giant TSMC up to $6.6 billion in direct funding to help build several plants on US soil, officials said Friday, finalizing the deal before a new administration enters the White House.

“Today’s final agreement with TSMC –- the world’s leading manufacturer of advanced semiconductors –- will spur $65 billion dollars of private investment to build three state-of-the-art facilities in Arizona,” said President Joe Biden in a statement.

The Biden administration’s announcement comes shortly before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has recently criticized the CHIPS Act, a major law passed during Biden’s tenure aimed at strengthening the US semiconductor industry.

While the US government has unveiled over $36 billion in grants through this act, including the award to TSMC, much of the funds remain in the due diligence phase and have not been disbursed.

But once a deal is finalized, funds can start flowing to companies that have hit certain milestones.

TSMC is the second company after Polar Semiconductor to finalize its agreement.

“Currently, the United States does not make on our shores any leading-edge chips, and this is the first time ever that we’ll be able to say we will be making these leading-edge chips in the United States,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters Thursday.

“I want to remind everyone that these are the chips that run AI and quantum computing. These are the chips that are in sophisticated military equipment,” Raimondo added.

Making these chips in the United States, she noted, helps address a national security liability.

The first of TSMC’s three facilities is set to fully open by early-2025, Biden noted.

At full capacity, the three facilities in Arizona are expected to “manufacture tens of millions of leading-edge logic chips that will power products like 5G/6G smartphones, autonomous vehicles, and high-performance computing and AI applications,” the Commerce Department said.

It added that “early production yields at the first TSMC plant in Arizona are on par with similar factories in Taiwan.”

The investment is anticipated to create around 6,000 direct manufacturing jobs.

A senior US official told reporters on condition of anonymity that they expect at least $1 billion to go to TSMC this year.

Besides the $6.6 billion in direct funding, the United States is also providing up to $5 billion in proposed loans to TSMC Arizona.

While the United States used to make nearly 40 percent of the world’s chips, the proportion is now closer to 10 percent — and none are the most advanced chips.

TSMC shares were down by 0.6 percent in New York early Friday.

'Terrible’ AI has given tech an existential headache: activist


By AFP
November 14, 2024

'AI has no has no benefit to society,' said Sage Lenier

 - Copyright AFP/File Fabrice COFFRINI

Joseph BOYLE

Technology firms are ceaselessly promoting new AI products, but climate activist Sage Lenier says AI is useless, unsustainable and has given the industry an existential problem.

“AI has no benefit to society,” she told AFP on the sidelines of the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon.

The CEOs who have become enraptured by a “useless” product class have smashed the idea of tech as an essential utility.

“And now they have an existential problem,” she said.

Lenier first garnered attention as a 19-year-old student in 2018 when she founded and led a course at the University of California, Berkeley, titled “Solutions for a Sustainable & Just Future”.

She has said students like her were sick of the kind of climate education that offered no hope — she wanted to focus on the solutions not just the problems.

Hundreds joined the course at Berkeley over the years and eventually hundreds more online, and Lenier has since built a nonprofit around it and now hopes to launch a documentary series.

The California native, who now lives in New York, said she was largely positive about tech.

But her climate focus makes her an outsider at the Web Summit — “I’ll keep coming if they want me to shout at them,” she said.

Last year, she told the crowd: “Some of you could be considered directly responsible for architecting the ecological crisis.”

She implored tech bosses to embrace the circular economy, which relies on reusing and recycling rather than creating products that end up being junked.

But one year on, Microsoft, Google and others have unleashed an endless stream of energy-gobbling AI products.

They have rushed to reopen nuclear plants, pledged to build many more data centres — and crashed through their climate targets.

– ‘Waste of emissions’ –

Yet AI, Lenier said, “has a million negatives”.

“It is terrible for the planet. It’s terrible for every community that you’re running data centres in. And it’s useless. I think it’s just a waste of emissions,” she said.

She points out that it was not always this way in the tech sector.

“It was the only industry, at least in America, where for years and years they tried to portray themselves as clean, green and pro-future,” she said.

“Bill Gates has written multiple books on climate change.”

The CEOs really want the image, and succeeded in dodging the kind of scrutiny put on the fashion and automotive industries.

“Then the moment they got an opportunity, with AI, to increase shareholder returns… every single one of them slammed the red button,” she said.

– ‘So bad so fast’ –

Although Lenier came to prominence by focusing attention on the solutions to the climate crisis, she sees a bleak future coming within a generation.

“Shit is going to get so bad so fast. The food chain is going to break. We will see mass malnourishment if not mass starvation,” she said.

The power grid, too, will break down.

Against this background, products like cars and new clothes are superfluous.

“You can’t have cars in the long term. It doesn’t matter if they’re electric or not. They’re unsustainable,” she said.

“We can’t be producing 80 billion garments of clothing a year in a low carbon future.”

A year ago, she said she might have argued that tech was something different.

“It’s a piece of our infrastructure, we built our societies around it,” she said.

But with AI, “they’ve given themselves their own little fast fashion”.

PAKISTAN

Protecting Chinese investments

Khurram Husain 

November 14, 2024 

DAWN

THERE are two critical dialogues taking place between the governments of China and Pakistan. One of them concerns the rescheduling of payables owed to Chinese project sponsors by the government of Pakistan. The second revolves around protection of Chinese investments and nationals in Pakistan in the wake of deadly attacks.

There is now a string of statements from Chinese officials, going back a few years in time, stressing how important it is for them that the state of security for their nationals living and working in Pakistan be improved. Recently, we had a joint statement released on Oct 15, after the visit to Islamabad by Chinese premier Li Qiang for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which spoke of the need to “jointly create a safe environment” for Chinese investments and personnel in Pakistan.

That statement came couched heavily in diplomatic language. The security concerns expressed by the joint statement were mild compared to other statements, such as a vexed retort by the Chinese ambassador to Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar’s off-the-cuff remark that Pakistan is unique to the Chinese in that they are willing to invest here despite the security risks their personnel face, or earlier statements following the March attack on Chinese workers on the Dasu hydropower project.

However, the matter is far more serious. On Monday, for example, two things happened arou­­nd this question. One was a routine press conference by the Chinese foreign ministry in which the Reuters correspondent asked specifically about “recent attacks on Chinese nationals in Pakistan” and received another diplomatic answer with no specifics, using language like ‘China will continue to support Pakistan in fighting terrorism’.

The Pakistani authorities have done the right thing to not grant the request for an expanded Chinese security presence in the country.

But on the same day, almost at the same time, Pakistani officials in the city of Karachi hosted a press conference in which they provided minute details of the terror attack on Oct 6 outside Karachi airport that took the lives of two Chinese nationals and one Pakistani citizen.

The level of detail shared during that presser on the sequence of events that led up to the actual attack was impressive. Through the presser, hosted by the IG Police and the home minister of Sindh, the authorities seemed to be conveying an important message: we are getting to the bottom of this, our investigation is producing results.

The next day, Reuters put out a story saying “Beijing is pushing Pakistan to allow its own security staff to provide protection to thousands of Chinese citizens” working in Pakistan. The push by Beijing came after the October attack, which the story said has “angered China, which has pushed Pakistan to begin formal negotiations for a joint security management system”. The story was sourced to “five Pakistani security and government sources with direct knowledge of the previously unreported negotiations”.

The following day, another article in the Financial Times, written from Taipei and Islamabad, carried the same message. Beijing was unhappy with the security situation in Pakistan and was demanding a greater role for itself in securing its nationals from attacks. The demand to allow Chinese authorities to protect Chinese investments and nationals was originating from within the managements of the enterprises already operating in Pakistan, according to the FT article, which cited a number of Chinese executives in Pakistan.

To some extent, the request had been granted. In some cases, cited by the article, Chinese security engineers were already on the ground to set up the security plan, hire local guards, run background checks, and “gather intelligence”. But pressure is apparently mounting to grow this role.

A subtle change in approach seems to have come about in how the Chinese are dealing with Pakistan when stressing their security concerns for their investments and personnel here. In previous cases, official Chinese announcements made their displeasure with the security situation explicit, and generally downplayed other aspects of the relationship. But now that equation has been reversed.

The joint statement issued after the last SCO, for example, talks at great length about “consolidating” and “deepening” and “promoting practical cooperation”. It lists some areas where this cooperation will be deepened, such as the ML-1 railway upgradation and Karakoram Highway realignment, but points to issues to be worked out in the financing arrangements for these critical projects. And the language containing the security concerns is muted and couched in the language of overall cooperation. The same happened on Monday, when Beijing was asked specifically about the security concerns and responded by talking more about cooperation.

Privately, though, things are different, as most recently evidenced by the Reuters and FT articles, but also by numerous other off-the-record interactions that people have had with Pakistani and Chinese officials. Privately, the Chinese are raising the deteriorating security situation repeatedly, and are demanding a more intrusive role for themselves in safeguarding this security.

This presents a very slippery slope. Where would such a role end? Would Chinese guards be used? Will they be armed? Under what conditions will they be authorised to use lethal force? Will they have the power to conduct surveillance, “gather intelligence”, flag suspects, apprehend people, detain them, question them, and so on? More importantly, Chinese security guards means more Chinese personnel in the country, which means more targets for the militants. Who will guard the guards?

The Pakistani authorities have done the right thing to not grant the request for an expanded Chinese security presence in the country. But for their part, it seems the Chinese are finding out that Pakistani authorities have a performative approach to solving problems. They say things, do things, and look busy, all the while letting the problem in question fester while trying to keep it out of sight.

This is how economic problems have been allowed to fester, problems like inadequate government resources, liquidity constraints in the foreign exchange markets, low savings to finance investment with, and so on. But now the time has come to solve the security problem. And the performative approach is reaching its limits.

The writer is a business and economy journalist.

khurram.husain@gmail.com

X: @khurramhusain

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2024