Monday, August 07, 2023

Washington’s Undemocratic Military Offspring

The military takeover in Niger is the latest example of U.S.-trained officers overthrowing a democratic government. Brig. Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, the chief of Niger’s Special Operations Forces and one of the leaders of the coup, received training at both Fort Benning, Georgia, and the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. The events in Niger are not an isolated incident. Analysts at the Intercept confirm that U.S.-trained officers have taken part in 11 coups just in West Africa since 2008.

Moreover, the Nigerian military was a prominent U.S. client overall. Since 2012, Washington has spent more than $500 million in Niger – one of the largest U.S, security assistance programs in Africa. The New York Times notes that “Until this past week, Niger was the cornerstone of the Pentagon’s regional strategy. At least 1,100 American troops are stationed in the country, where the U.S. military built multiple drone bases” to attack radical Islamist factions.

For decades, U.S. leaders have contended that Washington’s training of and close ties with militaries in foreign countries have helped strengthen support for civilian rule and democratic values in those client states. In 2022, Maj. Gen. Andrew M. Rohling, the commander of U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa, insisted that the Pentagon’s objective always has been to “showcase a way, the American way, that we train and build leaders not only in their tactical tasks, but in the ethos of the United States Army.”

Even if strengthening democratic values among foreign officers has been the intent of the U.S. military – and there are ample reasons to doubt that claim – the record indicates that the effort has failed. The latest cases of officers who had received U.S. military training going on to stage an epidemic of coups in Africa is reminiscent of the long, odious history of the School of the Americas (SOA). The U.S. Army established that training center in 1946 at Fort Benning, not only to provide instruction in state-of-the-art military tactics, but to educate officers from countries in Latin America about the importance of democratic values and civilian control of the military.

The results were appallingly bad. A December 2000 ABC News story by investigative reporter Barbara Starr noted that “The list of graduates from the School of the Americas is a who’s who of Latin American despots.” Alumni “included Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri of Argentina, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia.”

There is one other troubling similarity between the developments in Latin America during the Cold War and the current stance of the U.S. military regarding Africa. In the former case, U.S. military leaders were so concerned about the communist threat that they were willing to look the other way as their Hemispheric partners unseated democratic governments and committed human rights abuses. Fear regarding the strength of Islamic extremism in Africa now appears to have reached the point that the Pentagon seems content to do the same. The apparent indifference of the U.S. military hierarchy to rogue behavior by African alumni of U.S. training programs is more than a little troubling.

The posture of the U.S. military leadership also is symptomatic of the overall attitude of Washington’s policymaking elites. Despite the abundance of U.S. rhetorical support for democracy around the world over the decades, U.S. conduct tells a very different story. Frequently, the choice has been between interacting with friendly autocrats or unpredictable (perhaps even uncooperative) democratic factions. U.S. administrations have consistently preferred to deal with friendly autocrats.

That tendency was especially pronounced during the Cold War, but it has not disappeared during the post-Cold War era. Washington’s reaction to developments in Egypt during Barack Obama’s administration confirmed the trend. In 2011, demonstrators overthrew the dictatorship of longtime U.S. client (and former general) Hosni Mubarak. The first free elections in Egypt’s history followed, leading to victory by the Muslim Brotherhood and its leader, Mohamed Morsi, who became prime minister in June 2012. Barely a year later, Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi led a coup that ousted Morsi.

Washington’s reaction to Sisi’s extinguishing a fledgling democracy that showed signs of being unfriendly to the U.S. foreign policy agenda was quite revealing. After a brief pause, the Obama administration lavished billions of dollars in both economic and outright military aid on the new regime. True, there have been perfunctory criticisms of the horrible human rights record that Sisi and his colleagues soon amassed, but the aid has continued to flow over the past decade. Average annual economic assistance has been $300 million, while annual military aid has been $1.3 billion. This largesse from U.S. taxpayers persists despite the reality that some 60,000 political prisoners languish in Gen. Sisi’s prisons and thousands more have been executed.

Given Washington’s chronic fondness for friendly military autocrats, we should not be surprised at the prominent role that graduates of U.S. military programs are playing in the wave of coups taking place across Africa. Those developments are entirely consistent with an amoral track record going back decades.

Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute. He also served in various senior policy positions during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,200 articles on international affairs.

ANTIWAR.COM

‘Stigmatised’: Sex workers join criticism of UK banks

By AFP
August 8, 2023

Workers in professions associated with criminalisation -- such as sex work -- often complain that banks discriminate against them despite their income being legal -

Akshata KAPOOR

London-based sex worker Marin Scarlett and right-wing populist Nigel Farage might initially appear unlikely campaigning allies, but when it comes to the pitfalls of banking in Britain they share a common cause.

“It’s ridiculous that financial institutions can act like moral arbiters,” Scarlett told AFP, echoing Farage’s exact same criticism last month after a scandal erupted around his treatment by British banks.

Farage’s complaints about the closure of his account with the upmarket Coutts, a subsidiary of NatWest used by the late Queen Elizabeth II, dominated the news for days, prompted questions in parliament and cost top executives their jobs.

For Scarlett, who is in her thirties and started out as a sex worker 15 years ago, the sudden uproar was galling, given arbitrary account closures have plagued her profession for a “long time”.

She accuses UK banks of applying “absurd, undue scrutiny” to those in the industry.

“Even though I knew everything I was doing was legal, you feel shamed and stigmatised,” she said of the closures, which began in 2018 when a leading payment processor banned her.

The campaigner for the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance was told her account would be frozen for six months before an evaluation.

“What do you mean by an evaluation? That’s my money!” she recalled thinking.

Scarlett argues losing access to funds puts sex workers in a particularly vulnerable position.

“You have to do more work in the meantime and rush to accept more bookings which could put you in a weird situation,” she said.

– ‘Layers of insecurity’ –

UK bank account closures have increased yearly since 2016-17, with over 1,000 shuttered each day in 2021-22, according to data compiled by the Financial Conduct Authority watchdog.

Farage, a former leader of the Brexit Party and anti-immigration party UKIP, complained that Coutts removed him as a client over his right-wing political views.

“Banks should be banks, they should not be moral arbiters,” he said last month.

However, most terminations do not impact high-profile figures, with workers in professions associated with criminalisation — such as sex work — often targeted, according to campaigners.

“Financial discrimination against sex workers is an endemic problem in the UK banking industry”, Audrey Caradonna, a spokesperson for Sex Workers Union (SWU), told AFP.

She said denying them new accounts and closing existing ones had been “increasing”, with more and more SWU members “talking about having their accounts frozen”.

Some have become embroiled in legal disputes with bank and payment processors over service denials, Caradonna noted.

An adult content creator on subscription service OnlyFans said one online bank had recently closed both her personal and business accounts without explanation.

“Total discrimination”, the woman, who wished to remain anonymous, told AFP.

While UK regulations grant everyone the right to hold an account, banks can turn down those who could harm their reputations.

Sex work is legal in Britain but related activities, including solicitation and running brothels, are not.

That creates a grey area in which banks choose not to “risk” having sex worker customers, according to Caradonna.

“There are layers of insecurity around sex workers’ access to banking”, she said.

– ‘More vulnerable’ –

Following the furore around Farage, the UK government has proposed changes that would require banks to give longer notice periods and clearer explanations for closures, stating the need for “protecting freedom of expression”.

Scarlett welcomed the new spotlight on the issue but questioned its timing.

“It’s pretty gross that the conversation has to be triggered by this happening to a person that society deems important, powerful or rich enough,” she said.

She recalled ending up “with a load of cash in a shoebox under my bed” after fearing the repercussions of depositing her earnings.

The risk of being shut out of banking “forces you to break rules that you otherwise would not break”, Scarlett added.

Rosie Hodsdon, from National Ugly Mugs, a charity fighting violence against sex workers, agreed that they are often pushed towards the cash economy and made “more vulnerable to robberies” and domestic abuse.

Caradonna fears the ongoing impact of so-called de-banking, as more people turn to sex work amid the UK’s cost-of-living crisis to avoid homelessness and pay bills.

The risk of bank accounts being closed is leaving the most vulnerable sex workers — those on state benefits — “terrified that they are going to wake up one day without access to their finances,” she added.

“They will be forced to work in riskier ways to try and survive,” the advocate warned.

China's industry minister urges BRICS economies to collaborate in building open, inclusive digital economy

(Global Times) 11:12, August 08, 2023

China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong on Monday emphasized the need for BRICS economies to work together to create an open, inclusive and fair environment for the development of the digital economy.

Jin made the remarks at the 7th BRICS Industry Ministers Meeting held via video conference. The meeting centers on promoting the upgrading of manufacturing industry and establishing a sustainable industrial chain and supply chain.

Jin noted that facing challenges and new opportunities in manufacturing transformation and upgrading, BRICS economies should open their doors for development and embrace cooperation with the spirit of openness, inclusiveness, and win-win cooperation.

He called for the BRICS economies to grab the opportunity of the digital era and work together to promote the digital transformation of manufacturing through key means such as industrial internet.

Jin said that BRICS economies should together build an open, inclusive, fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for the development of the digital economy, while creating a safe, stable, efficient, inclusive, and mutually beneficial global industrial supply chain system.

He suggested BRICS economies should focus on demand for talent in key areas such as industrial internet, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and big data, while jointly promoting capacity building in the field of the new industrial revolution among BRICS economies.

Jin said that the Chinese government is actively promoting new industrialization, focusing on supply-side structural reform, intelligent manufacturing and digital technology innovation and application.

The aim is to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, advance the high-end, intelligent, and green development of the manufacturing industry, and promote the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, Jin noted.

The meeting reached an important consensus on topics such as the digital transformation of BRICS economies, cooperation among small and medium-sized enterprises, and the enhancement of industrial supply chain resilience.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)

GEORGIA

Glacier melting, erosion, heavy rains causes of Shovi resort landslide - National Environmental Agency preliminary report

8 August 2023

The landslide in the western Georgian municipality of Oni that killed at least 18 people in the Shovi resort on August 3 was caused by intense melting of glaciers, collapse of rock formations in their headwaters, heavy rains, erosive processes and a glacier runoff, a preliminary report by the National Environmental Agency said on Monday, Azernews reports, citing Agenda.

The Agency said a collapse of a rocky mass on the western side of the Buba glacier had led to its collision with the glacier after coming into motion and caused a collapse of a part of the glacier. The body said the development may have caused an overflow of subglacial waters, with the resulting flow directed through the valley bed at a high speed in the locality.

The report said “erosion centres of different scales” were formed in “practically all tributaries” of the local Bubistskali river, with a solid flow forming in the upper part of the valley and supplemented with landslide masses washed along the river bed as well as debris moved from the tributaries.

A powerful mud and rock flow moved downstream from the bed and, in about 15 hours and 15 minutes, spread over about 26 hectares in the area of Shovi (the so-called ‘Cottage District’), where it covered buildings and caused human casualties”, it added.

The report also said the approximate volume of solid material that had come into motion in the river valley was about five million cubic metres, most of which entered the beds of Chanchakhi and Rioni rivers, with about 1.5 million cubic metres accumulated in the epicentre of the disaster and in the transit zone of the valley.

The report noted an analysis of the data of the existing hydrological station on the Chanchakhi river had shown no long-term stagnation of water in the valley, either before or during the development of the natural disaster.

It should also be emphasised that until August 3, 2023 there had been no significant flood flows in the bed of the Bubisskali River over the past 100 years”, the report pointed out.

The report also advised against carrying out “any kind of capital protective measures” in the area of the flood formation and transit zone in the river valley due to its “hydromorphological parameters”, and said it was “practically impossible to predict exact times of formation of these types of events in locations across the world”.

Portugal battles wildfires amid third heatwave of the year

By Christy Cooney in London & Alison Roberts in Lisbon

BBC News

Firefighters in Portugal are battling to contain wildfires engulfing thousands of hectares amid soaring temperatures.

Around 800 personnel attended a fire near the southern town of Odemira overnight on Monday, with more than 1,400 people having to evacuate.

At least nine firefighters have been injured tackling the fires.

Temperatures in excess of 40C (104F) are expected to hit much of the Iberian peninsula this week.

Three major fires that scorched hundreds of hectares in Spain over the weekend have been brought under control, but weather alerts remain in place across much of the country.

In Portugal, Monday saw a temperature of 46.4C (116F), the hottest of the year so far, recorded in Santarém.

The fire near Odemira began on Saturday and was driven south into the hilly interior of the Algarve, Portugal's main tourism region, by strong winds.

It has so far destroyed some 6,700 hectares (16,600 acres) of land, while a total of 19 villages, four tourist accommodations and a camping site have been evacuated.

The town's mayor, Helder Guerreiro, has said the situation is "critical, difficult, and complex".

In the centre of the country, other major fires prompted the closure of several stretches of motorway, including parts of the A1 between Lisbon and Porto.

Sixteen waterbombing aircraft have been deployed to support firefighting efforts across the two areas.

Authorities have declared more than 120 municipalities across Portugal at maximum risk of wildfires.

In Spain, fires near the south-western coastal cities of Cadiz and Huelva and in the northern Catalonia region scorched more than 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) in total on Saturday and Sunday.

This week's heatwave will mark the third to hit the Iberian peninsula this summer.

Ruben del Campo of Spain's State Meteorological Agency told Reuters it was being caused by a large mass of hot, dry air from North Africa and would be "generally more intense, more widespread and a little longer-lasting" than the two that hit in July.

Climate change increases the risk of the hot, dry weather that is likely to fuel wildfires.

The world has already warmed by about 1.1C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.

Sublime! ‘Barbie’ tops $1bn globally in first for solo woman director

By AFP
August 6, 2023

"Barbie" has proved a box office doll, raking in more than $1 billion worldwide since its release on July 21, 2023 -

Copyright AFP/File JUSTIN TALLIS

Hollywood’s pink wave has yet to crest as Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” dominated for a third straight weekend in North American theaters, pushing the film’s global haul past $1 billion in a first for a woman director, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations said Sunday.

The Greta Gerwig-directed blockbuster, starring Margot Robbie as iconic doll Barbie and Ryan Gosling as boyfriend Ken, earned a projected $53 million for the Friday-through-Sunday period, for a domestic total of $459 million and a whopping $1.03 billion worldwide.

Not only has “Barbie” thus become the first movie directed solely by a woman to pass the $1 billion mark, but it did so faster than any film — including those directed by men — in Warner Bros.’ 100-year history, executives there said.

The film, which earlier scored the biggest opening weekend of the year, “has captured the imagination of moviegoers around the world and the results are incredibly impressive,” analyst Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore said.

Universal’s “Oppenheimer,” the dark historical drama that has placed second to “Barbie” in their debut weeks, was bumped by Warner Bros. newcomer “Meg 2: The Trench,” an action film featuring gargantuan prehistoric sharks.

“Meg 2” pulled in $30 million for the weekend, while Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” earned $28.7 million to push its global total to $552 million.

That total made the story about the creation of the atomic bomb the all-time top grossing World War II film, ahead of Nolan’s own “Dunkirk” ($527 million) and Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” ($482 million), not adjusted for inflation, according to Hollywood Reporter.

Fourth place for the weekend went to “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” the latest in the franchise about a team of reptilian heroes in a half shell. The Paramount animated comedy, featuring the voices of Jackie Chan and Post Malone, brought in $28 million.

Disney release “Haunted Mansion” slid two spots to fifth, with the lavishly produced kid-centric film — starring LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish and Owen Wilson — earning $8.9 million.

Holding its own in sixth was the independent “Sound of Freedom,” from Santa Fe Films and Angel Studios, at $7 million. The low-budget action thriller has sparked controversy, with critics saying its story about child sex trafficking plays into Qanon conspiracy theories.

All in all, it was an exceptional weekend for Hollywood, with the top four films all raking in $28 million or more.

Not only did the top films come close to doubling the total from the same weekend last year, they surpassed the corresponding pre-pandemic weekend in 2019, analysts said.

Ken might even have said — a line Ryan Gosling reportedly ad libbed during the filming of “Barbie” — that the weekend was “Sublime!”

Rounding out the top 10 were:

“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1” ($6.4 million)

“Talk to Me” ($6.2 million)

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” ($1.5 million)

“Elemental” ($1.2 million)

UAE 2 YEAR OLD BOONDOGGLE

Mystery in Dubai as mega-wheel stops turning

By AFP
August 6, 2023

The Ain Dubai (Dubai Eye) observation wheel was supposed to close for just a month but its reopening has been postponed indefinitely -

Amanda Mouawad

Two years ago, Dubai’s skyscraper-studded skyline welcomed a Ferris wheel touted as the world’s largest, but it mysteriously stopped turning just months after opening.

The much-touted Ain Dubai (Dubai Eye) was designed as a tourist-luring landmark in the United Arab Emirates’ glam-hub, which is home to the world’s tallest building.

But now it stands idle for undisclosed reasons, its extravagant light fixtures the only parts seemingly still working.

“Ain Dubai remains closed until further notice,” says an official website for the attraction.

“We continue to rigorously work on completing the enhancement works that have been taking place over the past months.”

The wheel was supposed to close for just a month but its reopening has since been postponed indefinitely.

Those behind the project inaugurated in 2021 have failed to reply to enquiries.

At restaurants, shops and cafes built around the attraction, employees remain sceptical that the structure, which took around six years to build, will ever turn again.

“Last year they promised us that in winter it will be open, even now, they are saying that in (the coming) winter it will be open again,” said one employee at a nearby shop.

“But we’re not sure… it will,” said the man who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisal.

– ‘Too slow’ –

The Dubai Eye, built by a consortium of international companies, is located in Bluewaters — a man-made island designed as a retail, residential and entertainment hub.

For more than a year, the main entrance to the attraction has remained closed and ticket booths abandoned. Only a slow trickle of tourists visit the site, snapping pictures of LED lights mounted on its exterior.

“I asked a security guard here about it and he told me that it doesn’t work,” said Marwan Mohammad, an Egyptian tourist.

“I asked him for the reason but he did not give me an answer,” said the 33-year-old business consultant.

In a city filled with record-breaking landmarks, the Dubai Eye stands at a height of 250 metres (825 feet), each of its legs the length of 15 London buses, according to Dubai’s tourism department.

Nearly twice as tall as the London Eye, it is the largest of its kind in the world.

Its 48 passenger cabins, all of them air-conditioned, can carry around 1,750 passengers on a single ride.

Ticket prices range between 100 dirhams (about $27) and 4,700 dirhams (about $1,280), with luxury passes and private cabins on offer.

“The view was very beautiful from above,” said Mohammad who experienced the 38-minute ride before it closed, adding however, that it moved “too slowly”.

– ‘Heavier than island’ –

With no official explanation, rumours are rife on the Ferris wheel’s apparent technical issues, especially among employees at Bluewaters.

They all spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing repercussions from authorities or their employers.

“This is a man-made island. I heard that (the wheel) is heavier than the island itself, that’s why it is very dangerous,” said a waiter at a nearby restaurant, adding that it had been noisy during its few months of operation.

“Now… it’s only for show, just for the lighting and that’s it”.

The giant wheel, made of more steel than the Eiffel Tower, features prominently on the list of Dubai’s top tourist attractions.

They include the Dubai Frame monument and Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.

Patrick Clawson, research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said official silence on the Ferris wheel suggested a complicated problem.

UAE authorities are generally “quick to provide information if they” have a solution, he said.

But with the Dubai Eye, “whatever the problem, the authorities are not confident they have a solution,” he told AFP.

Relief and despair: repeal of logging ban divides Kenya
By AFP
August 6, 2023

The government defended lifting the ban, insisting that only mature trees in state-run plantations would be felled

- Copyright AFP Tony KARUMBA

Nick Perry

It was the news Kenya’s timber industry had waited over five years to hear: a ban on logging was over, and the country’s forests were once again open for business.

But conservationists were dismayed at the announcement in July by President William Ruto, who had cast himself as a champion of the environment, and made planting 15 billion trees a centrepiece of his climate change agenda.

The government defended lifting the ban, insisting that only mature trees in state-run plantations would be felled, and that Kenya’s most biodiverse and carbon-rich wild forests would remain untouched.

The explanation did little to quash charges of hypocrisy, with Ruto just weeks away from hosting a international climate conference in Nairobi.

“Kenya has been a clear leader here, investing in clean green growth and raising forest cover. Now the country is busy clearing its forests while at the same time hosting climate change negotiations,” said opposition leader Raila Odinga.

– ‘Ruto to the rescue’ –

Ruto, who was deputy president when the ban was introduced in 2018, said it was “foolishness” to let trees rot while businesses were importing timber.

The temptation to assist a sector that employs 50,000 people directly — and 300,000 indirectly — would have been strong at a time when anti-government demonstrators are protesting rising prices.

In Molo, a highland town northwest of Nairobi, sawmill owner Bernard Gitau said Ruto had “come to the rescue” after he was forced to lay off workers and curb output because of the ban.

His factory is still only half operational, with machinery laying idle and coated in sawdust.

But a skeleton crew of 50 has been sanding doors and planing lumber as he waits for business to rebound.

“Some of them came and were praying outside my gate there, saying we thank God now that this sawmill has come back to life,” said Gitau, who is also chairman of the Timber Manufacturers Association of Kenya, an industry group.

“The economy of this town is going to improve.”

The ban was introduced at a time when Kenya’s forests were being cleared at a rate of 5,000 hectares a year, depleting water supply in the drought-prone country, and contributing to global warming.

Forests have slowly started recovering since the ban took effect but, without it in place, questions are being asked about how Ruto can more than double the nation’s tree cover by 2032 as he’s promised.

“This time you’re talking about planting, tomorrow you’re talking about cutting. It does not add up,” said Godfrey Kamau, chair of the Thogoto Forest Family, a conservation group protecting 53 hectares of native forest outside Nairobi.

Environmentalists won a reprieve on August 1, when a court temporarily barred the government from issuing logging licences until a legal challenge is fully heard.

– ‘Rampant corruption’ –

The move has also revived scrutiny of the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), the state agency tasked with policing the scheme and allocating logging permits.

KFS said the process would be transparent, and replanting carried out in cleared areas.

But critics say the KFS has not undertaken adequate reforms since being accused of “rampant corruption” as well as the “wanton destruction” and “plunder and pillaging” of forests by a government taskforce in 2018.

Sawmill owner Gitau said concerns over native forests being logged were misplaced.

The timber industry was only interested in the fast-growing trees introduced during British colonial rule like pine and eucalyptus, he said, not indigenous species found in protected forests.

“We know the law,” he said. “It is prohibited.”

But in the nearby Mau Forest, a vast mountain ecosystem and crucial water source, Environment Minister Soipan Tuya said trees were being illegally cleared just days after the ban was lifted.

She ordered additional KFS rangers to Mau and other threatened hotspots as part of a “ruthless” campaign to stamp out illegal logging.

“People who imagine that our forests are available for encroachment should forget it,” she said.

The mixed messages from the government undermine community efforts to discourage logging, said Kamau, whose organisation works with locals to protect Thogoto Forest.

“The president stood and said that logging has been allowed… The common wananchi (people) will decide now it’s time to start cutting a tree,” he told AFP in Thogoto, which is hemmed in by hundreds of acres of plantation forest.

He lamented the focus on replanting and extracting timber rather than indigenous trees that attract wildlife, store carbon and support nature for generations to come.

“It feels like you have been doing zero work at the end of a day.”

Why is a rusty Philippine warship involved in the South China Sea dispute?

By AFP
August 7, 2023

The 100-metre (328-foot) BRP Sierra Madre vessel began its life as the US tank-landing ship USS LST-821, which served in World War II

- Copyright AFP Fayez Nureldine

Cecil MORELLA

A crumbling World War II-era Philippine navy vessel stranded on a submerged reef in the South China Sea has long been a flashpoint between Manila and Beijing in their territorial dispute over the waters.

Tensions flared again on Saturday when the China Coast Guard allegedly blocked and fired water cannon at Philippine vessels seeking to deliver food, fuel and water to Filipino troops stationed on the BRP Sierra Madre at Second Thomas Shoal.

AFP looks at how a rusting hulk named after a Philippine mountain range ended up at the centre of the latest diplomatic spat over the South China Sea.

– What is the Sierra Madre? –

The 100-metre (328-foot) BRP Sierra Madre vessel began its life as the US tank-landing ship USS LST-821, which served in World War II.

It was later renamed the USS Harnett County and deployed during the Vietnam War, where it was used as a helicopter gunship base, according to the United States Naval Institute.

After the war, it was acquired by the Philippine Navy and later renamed the BRP Sierra Madre.

– Why is it stuck on a reef? –

The Philippine military deliberately grounded the BRP Sierra Madre on Second Thomas Shoal in the late 1990s in an effort to check the advance of China in the hotly contested waters.

The unorthodox tactic to establish Philippine presence on the shoal was in response to China’s occupation of the nearby and then-uninhabited Mischief Reef, also claimed by Manila, a few years earlier.

Beijing has turned Mischief Reef and other reefs and outcrops into artificial, militarised islands to assert its claims in the waters.

Second Thomas Shoal, located in the Spratly Islands, is about 200 kilometres west of the western Philippine island of Palawan and more than 1,000 kilometres from China’s nearest major landmass of Hainan island.

– What’s happening there? –

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, which includes Second Thomas Shoal, and deploys hundreds of vessels there to patrol the waters and swarm reefs.

Beijing has ignored a 2016 international court ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.

Manila says China’s coast guard and navy vessels routinely block or shadow Philippine ships patrolling the waters.

They also regularly attempt to disrupt re-supply operations to the tiny Philippine garrison on Second Thomas Shoal, according to Manila.

The handful of Philippine marines deployed on the BRP Sierra Madre depend upon those resupply missions to survive their remote assignment.

The Philippine Coast Guard fears China will seek to occupy Second Thomas Shoal if the military detachment leaves.

– Why does all this matter? –

The South China Sea is seen as a powder keg and many fear a miscalculation or accident could ignite a military conflict.

The Philippines is poorly armed, but the United States has said it would defend its longtime ally in the South China Sea under a decades-old mutual defence pact.

The US has no territorial claim over the waters, but has persisted in conducting its own patrols there, angering Beijing.

Washington says this is to ensure what it terms “freedom of navigation” in the sea, through which trillions of dollars in trade passes annually.

Antarctica 'suffering' due to fossil fuels, say scientists

Global warming is causing extreme events that were 'unthinkable' 30 years ago

Travellers in Antarctica. Photo: Unsplash

Gillian Duncan
Aug 07, 2023

Sea ice around Antarctica is at its lowest level since satellites began tracking it in 1979, according to researchers, who say the frozen continent is “suffering” due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Global warming is causing extreme events that were unthinkable 30 years ago, scientists have said.

“I think it's reasonable to assume that with the Antarctic heat event that we've seen, that is the sort of thing that has been expected with global heating because of burning fossil fuels and it has happened,” said Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Exeter.

“It could be, because we've done a lot of scientific evidence, that it was just one of those one-in-1,000-year events, but that's so unlikely, and I think it's perfectly scientifically reasonable to make the assumption that it is linked to our heating planet.

“Antarctica is suffering as a consequence of burning fossil fuels and there will be more to come.”

Sea ice this year beat the previous minimum record set in 2022, when a winter heatwave in March saw temperatures soar nearly 40°C above the norm in East Antarctica, from about minus 50°C to minus 10°C.

Had that happened in summer, it would have begun melting the surface of the ice sheets, which scientists said they have never seen before.

Research by Abu Dhabi scientists sheds light on why Antarctica is melting

Because of Antarctica's harsh environment and remote location, there is less data available to unequivocally link events such as these with human-induced climate change, but scientists say they are to be expected on a warming planet.

Together with scientists from across the UK, Chile and South Africa, Mr Siegert has been examining evidence of extreme events in Antarctica and said it is “virtually certain” that their severity will increase unless greenhouse gas emissions are controlled.

Publishing their work in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science, they identified nearly a dozen ways that human actions are changing the Antarctic, from melting sea and land ice, the collapse of ice shelves, warming oceans and atmosphere, the near-extinction of marine animals and introduction of foreign species such as moss and grass.

Scientists are particularly concerned about what might happen over the next few years as the warming effects of El Nino take hold.

Anna Hogg of the University of Leeds said: “As somebody who watches this happen on a day-to-day basis, I'm finding it really surprising and staggering to see the changes occur at the scale that they are already.”

She said it would take centuries for collapsed ice shelves to recover, if it was even possible.

Greenland ice sheet disintegration – Rising temperatures causing the retreat of the ice sheet, which would cause sea levels to rise.

These collapses do not directly add to sea level rise as the ice is already floating, but it means ice from the land pours into the sea much faster via glaciers, which is speeding up the rate of sea-level rise.

If all the ice in Antarctica were to melt – although scientists do not believe this will happen anytime soon – it would push up the global sea level by 57 metres.

Extreme events such as ice shelf collapse or heatwaves combine in cascading or multiplying effects that reach across the world but also threaten native species.

The team of scientists are calling for more environmental protection measures to be put in place to help conserve increasingly fragile ecosystems that are becoming more exposed.

Melting ice could result in better access for ships bringing more people for example, who therefore must take care not to bring non-native seeds on their boots.

The UK Foreign Office is looking to give better protection to emperor penguins, which are a “climate-vulnerable” species, said the department's head of polar regions Jane Rumble.

Mr Siegert said: “I think the scientific community has been shocked by this season's lack of sea ice, so much lower than has happened in previous years.

“The enormous Antarctic heatwave that happened last time, the staggering loss of ice shelves, it just wasn't really relevant in 1990.

“So things are changing and they're changing because of burning fossil fuels. And that is going to continue.”

South American summit seeks roadmap to save Amazon

By AFP
August 7, 2023

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon decreased 66 percent in July 2023 compared to the same period last year, reaching the lowest figure for this month in five years, according to data released in by Brazil's government -

Eugenia LOGIURATTO

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and fellow South American leaders face pressure to set out bold solutions to save the damaged Amazon as they open a summit Tuesday on the world’s biggest rainforest.

Brazilian officials have vowed to seek an ambitious roadmap to stop deforestation at the two-day meeting of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization in Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon river.

It is the first summit in 14 years for the eight-nation group, set up in 1995 by the South American countries that share the Amazon basin: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.

Home to an estimated 10 percent of Earth’s biodiversity, 50 million people and hundreds of billions of trees, the vast Amazon is a vital carbon sink, reducing global warming.

But scientists warn deforestation is pushing it dangerously close to a “tipping point,” beyond which trees would die off and release carbon rather than absorb it, with catastrophic consequences for the climate.

The region’s countries are determined “not to let the Amazon reach a point of no return,” Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva told a ministerial meeting ahead of the summit.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said the summit would produce a joint declaration setting out “instructions” for the eight countries to implement “new targets and new tasks” to protect the rainforest from deforestation.

The working draft “was negotiated in record time — just over a month,” he said.

– Brazil, Colombia: competing priorities –

Deforestation is driven mainly by cattle ranching, though it is fueled by a murky mix of corruption, land-grabbing and organized crime whose tentacles extend to the illegal traffic in drugs, arms, timber and gold.

In Brazil, the world’s top exporter of beef and soy and home to 60 percent of the Amazon, the destruction has already wiped out around one-fifth of the rainforest.

Environmental groups are pressuring all eight countries to adopt Brazil’s pledge to eradicate illegal deforestation by 2030, though host country officials have indicated those negotiations may need more time.

“Each country has its dynamics. We don’t work by imposing one point of view. It’s a consensual, progressive process,” Silva said Monday.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro is meanwhile pushing other countries to adhere to his pledge to ban all new oil exploration — a touchy subject for oil-rich Venezuela and also Brazil, whose state-run oil company, Petrobras, is controversially seeking to explore new offshore blocs at the mouth of the Amazon river itself.

Silva hailed both leaders’ initiatives.

“We have two presidents arriving with strong commitments: the Colombian president with zero petroleum, and Lula with zero deforestation,” she said.

– Lula test –

The summit is a key test for veteran leftist Lula, who previously served as president from 2003 to 2010 and returned to office in January vowing “Brazil is back” in the fight against climate change after four years of surging destruction in the Amazon under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazil said its goals for the summit included the creation of an international police task force for the region and a scientific research group modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the advisory board to the UN climate talks.

The summit is also something of a dress rehearsal for the COP30 UN climate talks, which Belem will also host in 2025.

The summit “should deliver concrete results if the region is serious about becoming a leader in climate action,” said US-based activist group Avaaz.

Indigenous groups — whose protected reservations are crucial buffers against the destruction of the world’s forests, according to experts — urged South American leaders to take bold actions.

“Our struggle isn’t just for Indigenous peoples, it’s for the entire world, so future generations can survive on this planet,” Nemo Guiquita, head of Ecuadoran Indigenous confederation CONFENIAE, told AFP.

Delight and dismay as Colombia’s Petro marks one year in office

By AFP
August 7, 2023

Copyright AFP/File MICHAEL DANTAS
Juan Sebastian SERRANO, David SALAZAR

While Colombian farmer Crisanto celebrates finally getting the deed to his land, widow Yaneth believes an increased laxness in security contributed to the murder of her policeman husband.

One year after Gustavo Petro became Colombia’s first left-wing president, the country is as polarized as ever, with his successes overshadowed by corruption scandals and persistent insecurity.

Petro, 63, came to power vowing to shake up a country long ruled by a conservative elite, and dogged by massive social inequality and decades of armed conflict with armed groups and drug traffickers.

He launched an ambitious plan to negotiate with a variety of armed groups — guerrillas, paramilitaries, and criminal gangs — in his quest for “total peace,” signing various ceasefires, some of which later collapsed.

“Petro’s arrival created very high expectations, people imagined that everything was going to change and disappointment is deep,” said Eugenie Richard, an analyst at the Externado University.

The president’s popularity has plummeted to 34 percent, according to a June poll.

Petro’s main support came from the marginalized and the youth, drawn to his promises to tackle hunger and inequality, and his grassroots supporters still believe he can transform the country.

– Precious title deeds –

One area where he has made gains is in tackling the country’s historic battle with unequal land distribution — an issue at the heart of the country’s six decades of armed conflict. The FARC rebel group was initially formed to fight for land rights and protect poor rural communities.

Over subsequent decades, the conflict drew in paramilitary groups and state forces in what became a many-sided war fueled by drug trafficking.

In Villapinzon, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Bogota, Crisanto Heredia and Maria Romero — who farm potatoes and cattle — battled since 2005 to win formal ownership of the land they briefly lost in fighting between the state and FARC.

At the end of June, the couple finally got their title deed.

“We are very happy to have this document in our hands,” said Heredia.

Petro’s government says it has already given title deeds for more than one million hectares of land to farmers and Indigenous people, compared to the 1.4 million hectares given out by his conservative predecessor Ivan Duque over his four-year mandate (2018-2022).

The president has also won support from those who were held in prison after protesting Duque’s government, and released after he came to power.

“We can’t say everything is perfect, but Gustavo has given hope back to the youth,” said Laura Ramirez, 25, who was imprisoned for eight months. She now works for the new government.

– ‘They have given too much’ –

One of the main criticisms faced by Petro is that his efforts to negotiate with armed groups — which include an order for the army to suspend operations against them — has in fact allowed criminals to expand into new territories.

“They have given too much to the rebels,” said Yaneth Calvo, who is mourning the death of her policeman husband. In March, Ricardo Arley Monroy was stabbed by protesters who took a group of officers hostage while demonstrating against an oil company in the south of the country.

The government says the protesters are being manipulated by dissident FARC rebels, who did not sign a historic peace accord in 2016.

Calvo said her husband “felt that security forces had been abandoned and deprived of the means to defend themselves” since Petro took office.

In the southern region of Meta, governor Juan Guillermo Zuluaga is alarmed at what he sees as the growth of armed groups in regions that had previously been spared.

“We are allies of the government in the search for peace, but ‘total peace’ without total security, does not exist.”

Petro’s efforts to reform the country have butted up against a hostile political environment, and he has since lost the political majority he needs to pass reforms, such as an amnesty for gang members who give themselves up, the redistribution of unproductive land, and reforms to labor and pension rules.

The president’s first year has also been tainted by scandal, such as claims of the illegal financing of his election campaign.

His son, Nicolas Petro — who was arrested for money laundering — admitted to prosecutors that money he received from a drug cartel filtered into his father’s campaign, but without the president’s knowledge.

Indigenous leader inspires an Amazon city to grant personhood to an endangered river

In late June, the Amazon city of Guajara-Mirim approved a law that designates the Komi Memem River “as a living entity and subject to rights.”

ByFABIANO MAISONNAVE, TERESA DE MIGUEL and ANDRÉ PENNER

Associated Press
August 7, 2023

An Indigenous Wari' girl carries her brother after swimming in the Komi Memem River, named Laje in non-Indigenous maps, in Guajara-Mirim, Rondonia state, Brazil, Friday, July 14, 2023.

GUAJARA-MIRIM, Brazil -- On the banks of the Komi Memem River, the activity never ceases: women go down the embankment from Laje Velho village carrying basins to wash clothing, while men embark in small canoes on hunting and fishing expeditions. At day’s end, it’s the children’s turn to dive into its tea-colored waters.

The river, named Laje in non-Indigenous maps, is vital to the Oro Waram, one of the six subgroups of the Wari’ people, who have inhabited the Western Amazon for centuries. However, this immemorial relationship is under increasing threat. The relentless expansion of soybeans and pastures encroaches on their land, while land-robbers promote illegal deforestation.

To protect themselves, the Wari’ people are resorting to a new strategy: the white man’s law. In June, the municipality of Guajara-Mirim passed a groundbreaking law proposed by an Indigenous councilman that designates the Komi Memem and its tributaries as living entities with rights, ranging from maintaining their natural flow to having the forest around them protected.

The law comes as representatives of eight South American governments gather Tuesday and Wednesday in Brazil to discuss ways to preserve the Amazon rainforest to help stave off climate change and protect its Indigenous peoples.

The Komi Memem, a tributary of a larger river that's unprotected, is now the first among hundreds of rivers in the Brazilian Amazon to have a law that grants it personhood status. This is part of a new legislative approach to protect nature that has made inroads in many parts of the world, from New Zealand to Chile.

“We are further organizing ourselves to fend off invaders,” councilman Francisco Oro Waram, the law’s proponent, told The Associated Press. “We can’t fight with arrows; we have to use the laws.”

A teacher by profession, Oro Waram lives with his family in Laje Velho village, a 40-minute drive from downtown Guajara-Mirim, mostly on paved highway surrounded by pasture. Right before the village entrance, heavy machinery was preparing soil for soybean crops, which are fast replacing cattle ranching throughout this part of the Amazon in Rondonia state.

“There are many generations to come, so the elders protect the water,” Oro Waram said of the river. “We don’t pollute it or cut the trees that surround it. It is a living being for us.”

Satellite images show the encirclement of the Indigenous Land Igarapé Lage, a green rectangle amid deforestation. This is where Laje Velho is located. In the past decades, the federal government has created six non-continuous Indigenous territories. One, Rio Negro Ocaia, has been awaiting the federal government’s approval of the expanded boundaries established by an anthropological study 15 years ago.

The Wari’ people lived independently until the late 1950s and early 1960s and are the largest group of Chapakuran speakers, an isolated language family. In the initial years after contact with outsiders, three out of five Wari’ died from introduced diseases, dwindling to as low as 400 people. The population has increased tenfold since then, but they now occupy less than one-third of their original territory, according to anthropologist Beth Conklin from Vanderbilt University, who has worked with them for nearly four decades.

“The Wari’ value their cosmology and rituals. And all of it centers around promoting human thriving in relationships with the non-human, with the larger world, and the well-being of your people," Conklin told the AP. “So this law is a 21st century update of these very traditional social, biological, ecological values that are at the center of Wari’ culture.”

The expansion of soy, with heavily pesticide-dependent crops, poses a significant threat to the Komi Memem River. But it is not the only one. Upriver from Laje Velho, an invasion by land-robbers has blocked the Wari’ people from accessing their essential fishing grounds.

Moreover, the river’s headwaters are located near Guajará-Mirim State Park, a former Wari’ territory. Despite being a protected area, it has been extensively invaded and deforested by land-robbers in the past few years.

Instead of evicting them, the state governor, Marcos Rocha, an ally of the far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, signed a law in 2021 reducing the park’s boundaries to legalize the land-grabbing. A judicial order subsequently overruled that law, but the invasion and deforestation have not stopped.

Last February, the river's tea-colored water turned muddy red, scaring Oro Waram. “I had never seen it in my lifetime,” said the 48-year-old, who blames the episode on rampant illegal deforestation.

The councilman says that due to pollution from cattle farms and soybean crops, his village no longer drinks water directly from the river, as their ancestors did. Instead, they rely on artesian wells.

Sometimes the threat is very direct. On June 6, about 60 armed men invaded Linha 26 village, expelling its inhabitants. They only returned after the Federal Police went to the locale and retook it, according to the Wari’ umbrella organization.

“The loggers entered and divided up the Indigenous land,” Gilmar Oro Nao, vice president of the Oro Wari' association, told the AP. “They threaten food security. Our relatives have nowhere to fish, the Brazil nut trees were cut down. Today, they have nowhere to draw their survival from.”

Oro Nao said that the Wari’ don’t trust the National Indian Foundation's local employees. He said there is widespread suspicion that they collaborate with illegal loggers and land-robbers.

The AP sent emails to the Indian Foundation, but received no response. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office, whose responsibility includes overseeing Indigenous rights, said it has opened an investigation on the invasions and has been monitoring the situation.

The Wari’ hope that the new law giving the river personhood status can help address what they see as inaction of Funai and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. Its main provision creates a committee to monitor the river with a board that would include Indigenous and non-Indigenous members, including a representative of the Rondonia Federal University.

The committee will produce an annual report about the river’s status and propose actions to ensure the rights secured by the new law.

In an Amazon region where agribusiness has become the economic powerhouse, it came as a surprise for many that the law had the unanimous approval of the city council of Guajara-Mirim, a city of 40,000 people with more than 90% of its territory inside protected areas.

“We are very happy with the law. It brought visibility to our municipality and sets an example to other cities and Indigenous territories,” said the mayor Raissa Paes Bento, who signed the law.

Protection of the Komi Memem River is also important for non-Indigenous inhabitants, Bento said, because fishing is a major economic activity and a source of food. “It is very good to have it preserved and clean.”

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