Uganda's harsh anti-gay law alarms its original conservative backers

Julius Karugaba
Jun 8, 2023

Semafor Africa

Reuters/Abubaker Lubowa

KAMPALA, Uganda — Conservative groups that pushed Uganda to toughen its anti-gay laws now worry new legislation is too harsh and could backfire on their cause.

The law, which came into force last week, imposes the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" and carries a 20-year sentence for "promoting homosexuality." Same-sex relationships were already illegal in Uganda but the new law imposes some of the most severe penalties in the world.

"The Church of Uganda supports life and, in principle, does not support the death penalty," said Stephen Kazimba Mugalu, Archbishop of Uganda, in a statement issued on May 29, when President Yoweri Museveni signed it to the law. The church supported the original bill proposed in parliament, but capital punishment was later added in an amendment.

Family Watch International (FWI), an American evangelical lobby group, said that its leader Sharon Slater met with President Museveni in April, and suggested amendments to soften the penalties in the first version of the legislation that Parliament had just passed, but the changes were not adopted.

"We are disappointed that the president signed the harsh bill into law," FWI director Lynn Allred told Semafor Africa. "We believe there are individuals who will not be able to obtain help to align their sexual behavior with their personal values," Allred added

U.S. President Joe Biden called the anti-gay law a grave violation of human rights for which the East African nation could suffer cuts to its $1 billion in investment and aid. The World Bank has also signaled it may withhold funds over the legislation which violates its non-discrimination principles. The European Union and Canada also criticized Uganda. In a meeting on Tuesday with US envoy to Uganda Natalie Brown, President Museveni said the West's criticism of the anti-gay law is unjustified and based on a distortion of facts.

Ugandan human rights activists have taken the fight to court to have the law annulled. Two petitions were filed at the constitutional court in Kampala, challenging the law which the petitioners said contravenes the constitution.

"The law is so draconian that it ought to shock the conscience of any human being," says Fox Odoi, lead petitioner and one of only two MPs that voted against the bill on the floor of Parliament. Uganda's Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka told Semafor Africa the government will file a response to the legal action.

The outcome of the petitions could become the blueprint for some 22 African countries, including Kenya and Ghana, that are working on similar laws that would criminalize being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer on the continent.


JULIUS'S VIEW


It's striking that even local and American conservatives say Uganda's new legislation is too harsh. The domestic and international blowback, and the possibility of diplomatic and economic sanctions from the West could well mean passage of the bill actually leads to Uganda having to row back its anti-gay positions.

The passage of the bill also suggests lawmakers went further than the government wanted. President Museveni returned the bill to parliament to have it toned down but still signed it with the clauses referring to capital punishment and life imprisonment for same-sex acts. Regardless, the bill would have become law on its the third reading — with or without his signature.

The future of the law may now be decided in court. Campaigners say due process was not followed in passing the law. After being tabled, the bill on which the law was based was sent to a parliamentary committee for public hearing — a period that is meant to take 45 days, according to parliament’s rules, but was concluded in six days. “We are already a marginalized community and now we are being swept further underground,” gay rights activist Kasha Nabagesera, of Freedom Roam Uganda, told me.


ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Martin Ssempa, a church minister and author, said a “colonial battle” is being waged to reject attempts by the U.S. to impose its views on homosexuality onto Africans. “Aggravated homosexuality is the same offense as aggravated defilement for heterosexual relations, and it attracts a death sentence,” said Ssempa. Aggravated homosexuality is defined here as same-sex sexual acts with children, disabled individuals or anyone else deemed under threat. “Why does anyone want to tell us that it is harsh under homosexuality but it isn’t under straight sex relations? That’s just a frame and we reject that.”


THE VIEW FROM CAPE TOWN


“In South Africa the attack on members of the LGBTIQ community is considered a hate crime,” said Theto Thakane Nareadi Mahlakoana, a human rights activist. ”The legalization of same-sex marriage n November 2006 made the country the exemplar for gay and lesbian rights in Africa and there has been no indication of these laws ever being challenged,” said Mahlakoana.


NOTABLE

The "language and presentation of luring and recruitment" in campaigns to crack down on homosexuality is "an export of a made-in-the-USA movement and ideology" birthed in evangelical churches, argues Caleb Okereke in Foreign Policy.

CIA; DIS, MIS, MAL,INFORMATION
In bold move challenging the United States, Cuba agrees to host a Chinese spy base

2023/06/08

China's President Xi Jinping in Beijing on April 6, 2023.

 - Ludovic Marin/GETTY IMAGES EUROPE/TNS

In a move underscoring its geopolitical ambitions in the Western Hemisphere, China is going to establish an espionage base in Cuba just 90 miles from Florida, for which the Chinese government will reportedly pay billions of dollars to the cash-strapped Caribbean nation.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the secret deal citing officials familiar with the classified intelligence, the eavesdropping facility would allow Chinese intelligence agencies to monitor ship traffic and electronic communications throughout the U.S. southwestern region where the Doral-based U.S. Southern Command and other military facilities are located.

China is believed to already have a military presence in Cuba in a listening station in Bejucal, a town south of Havana, where there were reports in 2018 of a new radar surveillance installation. It is unclear if the new deal entails expanding this facility or constructing a new one.

The news follows intense speculation that Russia, not China, was planning to reopen its Soviet-era espionage base in Lourdes, a town near Havana, which it shut down in 2002. High-ranking Russian national security officials and diplomats have been traveling to the island recently and the two governments appear as close as ever, with Cuban leaders offering public support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

But when publicly asked about reopening the Lourdes base during his trip to Havana in April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did not directly address the question. And despite several economic agreements recently announced by Russian and Cuban authorities, including land-lease deals, the news about a Chinese spy base speaks to the realities on the ground: The island is desperate for cash as its economy continues sinking. Russia had limited resources even before embarking on a war against Ukraine — and China can pay.

On May 20, Cuba’s Interior Minister, Gen. Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, met with China’s Minister of Public Security, Wang Xiaohong.

“China stands ready to work with Cuba to implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries and deepen pragmatic cooperation in various fields, especially in law enforcement and security,” a Chinese government statement said.

The news about the spy base comes as the Biden administration has been taking steps to improve its strained relationship with China, which is considered the United States’ primary military and economic rival.

At the same time, State Department officials and members of Congress have been raising concerns about China’s increased influence in Latin America and the Caribbean. China has become South America’s largest trading partner and has exploited the Biden administration’s reluctance to new trade deals and has inked a free trade agreement with Ecuador, while Uruguay and Panama are in line, U.S. Rep Maria Elvira Salazar, a Miami Republican, said during a congressional hearing she chaired on Wednesday.

“That is very troublesome,” Salazar said, blaming the Biden administration for ignoring the pleas of allies in the region with conservative governments “to the benefit of our enemies.”

When asked by representative Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, why the United States has seemed to become “more passive” and allowed China to increase its influence in the Western Hemisphere, the State Department’s top diplomat for the region acknowledged the administration needs to act with a sense of urgency.

“This is the most challenging moment I have seen in 30 years in our hemisphere, and we have to do everything that we can to help our neighbors and our partners around the region to succeed and resist these strategic competitors from outside,” Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs Brian Nichols said.

The China deal also complicates U.S. policy towards Cuba.

The administration has lifted some restrictions on flights and remittances, resumed the family reunification program for Cubans and reestablished migration and law enforcement talks with the Cuban government. But it stopped short of easing other embargo restrictions and removing Cuba from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, which the Cuban government had made a condition to improving relations.

The cozying up to Russia and China indicates the Cuban government has chosen to seek further support from its longtime political and ideological allies rather than pursuing normalization of relations with the U.S. at a time Cuban authorities perceive their grip on power is at risk.

Cuba is facing its worst economic crisis in decades and serious political challenges from a population that has taken to the streets to protest and demand regime change.

Ebrahim Raeisi, the president of Iran, another major U.S. adversary, is set to travel to the island after visiting Venezuela and Nicaragua next week.

The strategy suggests something else: The Cuban military is calling the shots on the island, not the civilian team led by Cuba’s handpicked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Florida Republicans in Congress quickly reacted to the report on the China espionage base deal to highlight what they said is an increasing national security threat coming from Cuba.

“The threat to America from Cuba isn’t just real, it is far worse than this,” Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted. “But to date, not only does the Biden White House not care, they have people who actually want to appease the regime.”

“The Cuban regime is auctioning off land to the Russians, hosting the Iranians, and letting the Chinese open a base to spy on the U.S.,” Salazar tweeted. “Just 90 miles from our coast, the dictatorship has opened the door to our greatest enemies!”

© Miami Herald

Cuban, US governments deny secret Chinese spy base in Cuba


The Wall Street Journal said Beijing and Havana secretly agreed on the facility, some 100 miles off Florida. The Cuban government denied the "unfounded" reports, while the White House said it wasn't "accurate."

The Cuban and US governments have both denied a Wall Street Journal report saying Havana and Beijing agreed to establish a Chinese electronic eavesdropping facility in Cuba, some 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Florida.

If true, a spy base with such proximity to several US military bases in the southeastern region of the country would allow Beijing to collect electronic communications and monitor ship traffic, the newspaper said.

The agreement was reached in principle, The Wall Street Journal said, in exchange for "several billion dollars" for the cash-strapped Latin American country.

Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez De Cossio said the report was a US fabrication, describing it as "totally mendacious and unfounded."

He stressed his country rejects all foreign military presence in Latin America, including the bases maintained in the region by the US.

What did the US government say?

The White House said the report was "not accurate." White House National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby told the Reuters news agency the US still had "real concerns" regarding China and Cuba's close relationship, adding that it was being closely monitored.

US Defense Department spokesman Patrick Ryder also dismissed the report.

"We are not aware of China and Cuba developing a new type of spy station," he said

However, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who are often briefed on important security matters, said the report left them "deeply disturbed."

Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Marco Rubio stressed in a statement the US had to respond to China's "ongoing and brazen attacks on our nation's security."

"We must be clear that it would be unacceptable for China to establish an intelligence facility within 100 miles of Florida and the United States," they added.
What is the historical context?

Tension between Washington and Beijing has been on the rise lately, with issues such as Taiwan and economic competition souring relations.

Earlier this year, the US shot down what it says was a Chinese spy balloon above its skies. Beijing denied the balloon had surveillance purposes.

Cuba, like China, is a communist state with historic disagreements with the US.

In 1962, Cuba became a potential location for what was feared to be the most direct confrontation between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War.

The US rejected the Soviet Union's positioning of missiles on its Latin American neighbor's soil, triggering what came to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The crisis was seen as the closest both countries have come to threatening to use their nuclear arsenal.

rmt/sms (AFP, Reuters)

Snowden warns today's surveillance technology makes 2013 look like 'child's play'

Julia Conley, Common Dreams
June 8, 2023

Edward Snowden, the fugitive US intelligence agent, was granted political asylum by Russia after he flew in from Hong Kong in June 2013 (AFP Photo/The Guardian)

With this week marking 10 years since whistleblower Edward Snowden disclosed information to journalists about widespread government spying by United States and British agencies, the former National Security Agency contractor on Thursday joined other advocates in warning that the fight for privacy rights, while making several inroads in the past decade, has grown harder due to major changes in technology.

"If we think about what we saw in 2013 and the capabilities of governments today," Snowden told The Guardian, "2013 seems like child's play."

Snowden said that the advent of commercially available surveillance products such as Ring cameras, Pegasus spyware, and facial recognition technology has posed new dangers.

As Common Dreams has reported, the home security company Ring has faced legal challenges due to security concerns and its products' vulnerability to hacking, and has faced criticism from rights groups for partnering with more than 1,000 police departments—including some with histories of police violence—and leaving community members vulnerable to harassment or wrongful arrests.

Law enforcement agencies have also begun using facial recognition technology to identify crime suspects despite the fact that the software is known to frequently misidentify people of color—leading to the wrongful arrest and detention earlier this year of Randal Reid in Georgia, among other cases.

"Despite calls over the last few years for federal legislation to rein in Big Tech companies, we've seen nothing significant in limiting tech companies' ability to collect data."

Last month, journalists and civil society groups called for a global moratorium on the sale and transfer of spyware like Pegasus, which has been used to target dozens of journalists in at least 10 countries

Protecting the public from surveillance "is an ongoing process," Snowden told The Guardian on Thursday. "And we will have to be working at it for the rest of our lives and our children's lives and beyond."

In 2013, Snowden revealed that the U.S. government was broadly monitoring the communications of citizens, sparking a debate over surveillance as well as sustained privacy rights campaigns from groups like Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Fight for the Future.

"Technology has grown to be enormously influential," Snowden told The Guardian on Thursday. "We trusted the government not to screw us. But they did. We trusted the tech companies not to take advantage of us. But they did. That is going to happen again, because that is the nature of power."

Last month ahead of the anniversary of Snowden's revelations, EFF noted that some improvements to privacy rights have been made in the past decade, including:The sunsetting of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which until 2020 allowed the U.S. government to conduct a dragnet surveillance program that collected billions of phone records;
The emergence of end-to-end encryption of internet communications, which Snowden noted was "a pipe dream in 2013";
The end of the NSA's bulk collection of internet metadata, including email addresses of senders and recipients; and
Rulings in countries including South Africa and Germany against bulk data collection.

The group noted that privacy advocates are still pushing Congress to end Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the warrantless surveillance of Americans' communications, and "to take privacy seriously," particularly as tech companies expand spying capabilities.

"Despite calls over the last few years for federal legislation to rein in Big Tech companies, we've seen nothing significant in limiting tech companies' ability to collect data... or regulate biometric surveillance, or close the backdoor that allows the government to buy personal information rather than get a warrant, much less create a new Church Committee to investigate the intelligence community's overreaches," wrote EFF senior policy analyst Matthew Guariglia, executive director Cindy Cohn, and assistant director Andrew Crocker. "It's why so many cities and states have had to take it upon themselves to ban face recognition or predictive policing, or pass laws to protect consumer privacy and stop biometric data collection without consent."

"It's been 10 years since the Snowden revelations," they added, "and Congress needs to wake up and finally pass some legislation that actually protects our privacy, from companies as well as from the NSA directly."

VESTIGIAL CONFEDERATE STATE

Slavery as punishment for crimes is on the chopping block in Ohio

David McAfee
June 8, 2023

Ohio Chamber of Commerce / YouTube screen grab

The Ohio Constitution currently allows slavery when it's used "for the punishment of crime," but that may not be the case for long, according to a CNN report.

Rep. Dontavius Jarrells, a Democrat, reportedly teamed up with Republican Rep. Phil Plummer to introduce an amendment to the state constitution that would remove slavery and involuntary servitude entirely from the document. The proposed change was referred to the Constitutional Resolutions Committee on Wednesday, according to CNN.

"Lawmakers are proposing the language to change to, 'There shall never be slavery in this state; nor involuntary servitude,'" according to the report.

It continues:

"Jarrells told CNN that he wants to change 'archaic and outdated language.' He added that many people he has spoken to about the bill are shocked because they don’t know such language exists in the state Constitution."

“I want my children, when they grow up, to live in a state where the vestiges of slavery no longer exist,” Jarrells said, according to the CNN piece.

According to Jarrells, the proposal must be passed by the House and the Senate before it would be put on the general election ballot. At that point, he told CNN, it would require a 50% majority vote plus one to pass.

"While other lawmakers have tried to amend this clause before, this is the first time a measure has bipartisan support," CNN reported. "In 2016, former Ohio State Rep. Alicia Reece introduced a bill to change the language and Rep. Cecil Thomas introduced another joint resolution in 2020 to remove the exception for slavery and involuntary servitude from the Constitution."

Oceans warmer last month than any May on record
Agence France-Presse
June 7, 2023

Patrick Meinhardt / AFP/File

Sea temperatures at a depth of about 10 metres were a quarter of a degree Celsius higher than ice-free oceans in May averaged across 1991 to 2020, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

Year-round, long-term trends have added 0.6C to the ocean's surface waters in 40 years, said C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess, noting that April had also seen a new record for heat.

Temperatures over the ocean could be further boosted in coming months "as we are seeing the El Nino signal continuing to emerge in the equatorial Pacific," she said in a statement, referring to a periodic, natural shift in ocean winds that enhances warming globally.

Above water and over land, meanwhile, Earth's surface temperature last month tied as the second hottest for May, according to C3S.

The Copernicus finding are based on computer-generated models that draw on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations worldwide.

Oceans, which cover 70 percent of Earth's surface, have kept the planet livable as global warming caused by human activity -- mainly the burning of fossil fuels -- has accelerated.

The surface of the planet is, on average, 1.2C hotter than pre-industrial levels, a level which has already unleashed devastating climate impacts.

'Out of control'

Oceans absorb a quarter of the CO2 we spew into the atmosphere, and 90 percent of the excess heat generated by climate change.

But at a terrible price.

Widespread marine heatwaves are decimating coral reefs and the ecosystems that depend on them, including more than half-a-billion people.

The accelerated disintegration from below of giant ice sheets could lift oceans by a dozen meters, and ocean acidification is disrupting life cycles and food chains from the tropics to the poles.

Moreover, oceans -- along with forests and soil, which soak up an even larger percentage of human-generated greenhouse gases -- are showing signs of battle fatigue, and their capacity to soak up CO2 could diminish.

Copernicus also reported that temperatures in several parts of the world were higher than normal, including Canada, where wildfires over the last several weeks have so far decimated more than three million hectares (8 million acres).

There are 413 wildfires burning across the country from Pacific to Atlantic, including 249 deemed "out of control".

Earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said there's a 60 percent chance that an El Nino will form before the end of July, and an 80 percent change by the end of November.

Most of the warmest years on record have occurred during El Ninos, and scientists are concerned that this summer and next could see record temperatures on land and in the sea.

In Antarctica, meanwhile, sea ice extent reached a monthly record low for the third time this year, with satellite data showing it was 17 percent below average in May.

© 2023 AFP

World warming at record 0.2C per decade, top scientists warn

Agence France-Presse
June 8, 2023

This NASA illustrative image obtained on March 25, 2020 shows NASA's new three-dimensional portrait of methane, the world's second-largest contributor to greenhouse warming, as it arises from a diversity of sources on the ground and how it moves through the atmosphere. © Handout, AFP

Record-high greenhouse gas emissions and diminishing air pollution have caused an unparalleled acceleration in global warming, 50 top scientists warned Thursday in a sweeping climate science update.

From 2013 to 2022, "human-induced warming has been increasing at an unprecedented rate of over 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade," they reported in a peer-reviewed study aimed at policymakers.

Average annual emissions over the same period hit an all-time high of 54 billion tonnes of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases -- about 1,700 tonnes every second.

World leaders will be confronted with the new data at the critical COP28 climate summit later this year in Dubai, where a "Global Stocktake" at the UN talks will assess progress toward the 2015 Paris Agreement's temperature goals.

The findings would appear to close the door on capping global warming under the Paris treaty's more ambitious 1.5C target, long identified as a guard rail for a relatively climate-safe world, albeit one still roiled by severe impacts.

"Even though we are not yet at 1.5C warming, the carbon budget" -- the amount of greenhouse gases humanity can emit without exceeding that limit -- "will likely be exhausted in only a few years," said lead author Piers Forster, a physics professor at the University of Leeds.

That budget has shrunk by half since the UN's climate science advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), gathered data for its most recent benchmark report in 2021, according to the Forster and colleagues, many of whom were core IPCC contributors.

Unintended consequences

To have even a coin-toss chance of staying under the 1.5C threshold, emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other drivers of warming generated mostly by burning fossil fuels must not exceed 250 billion tonnes (Gt), they reported.

Bettering the odds to two-thirds or four-fifths would reduce that carbon allowance to only 150 Gt and 100 Gt, respectively -- a two- or three-year lifeline at the current rate of emissions.

Keeping the Paris temperature targets in play would require slashing CO2 pollution at least 40 percent by 2030, and eliminating it entirely by mid-century, the IPCC has calculated.

Ironically, one of the big climate success stories of the last decade has inadvertently hastened the pace of global warming, the new data reveal.

A gradual drop in the use of coal -- significantly more carbon intensive than oil or gas -- to produce power has slowed the increase in carbon emissions.

But it has also reduced the air pollution that shields Earth from the full force of the Sun's rays.

Particle pollution from all sources dampens warming by about half-a-degree Celsius, which means -- at least in the short term -- more of that heat will reach the planet's surface as the air becomes cleaner.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Earth System Science Data, the new study is the first in a series of periodic assessments that will help fill the gaps between IPCC reports, released on average every six years since 1988.

Deadly heat

"An annual update of key indicators of global change is critical in helping the international community and countries to keep the urgency of addressing the climate change crisis at the top of the agenda," said co-author and scientist Maisa Rojas Corradi, who is also the environment minister of Chile.

Co-author Valerie Masson-Delmotte, a co-chair of the 2021 IPCC report, said the new data should be a "wake-up call" ahead of the COP28 summit, even if there is evidence that the increase in greenhouse gases has slowed.

"The pace and scale of climate action is not sufficient to limit the escalation of climate related risks," she said.

Researchers also reported a startling rise in temperature increases over land areas -- excluding oceans -- since 2000.

"Land average annual maximum temperatures have warmed by more than half a degree Celsius in the last ten years (1.72C above preindustrial conditions) compared to the first decade of the millennium (1.22C)," the study reported.

Longer and more intense heat waves will pose a life-and-death threat in the coming decades across large swathes of South and Southeast Asia, along with areas straddling the equator in Africa and Latin America, recent research has shown.

(AFP)

YouTube demonetizes Candace Owens’ anti-trans videos, citing hateful conduct

2023/06/08

Candace Owens speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference at The Rosen Shingle Creek on Feb. 25, 2022, in Orlando, Florida. - Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America/TNS

YouTube announced it has demonetized multiple videos on the channel of conservative commentator Candace Owens, citing violations of its policies concerning hateful and derogatory content.

The company specified these violations stem from instances of misgendering or deadnaming, although those actions are not stated publicly as part of their policy, reports NBC News.

In a statement Monday, Owens said YouTube extended “an option to delete every video that I’ve ever done pertaining to gender, in which I have accurately gendered someone.” She referred to “accurately gendering” as using the pronouns assigned at birth instead of those preferred by trans people.

In a podcast episode titled “I Have An Announcement to Make,” Owens shared YouTube’s decision to classify her misgendering remarks as “hateful conduct.”

The company blocked ads on “several videos on Candace Owen’s channel for violating our monetization policies, including those against hateful and derogatory content,” Google spokesperson Michael Aciman said.

According to the company’sguidelines on hateful content, YouTube is allowed to restrict ads from running on content which “promotes discrimination, disparages, or humiliates an individual or group of people.”

Aciman said the policy could lead to action against content that “may include deliberate deadnaming or misgendering of transgender individuals,” which is considered an attack on the LGBTQ+ community.

The decision seems to be a shift for the company, which reportedly stated in 2022 that it does not consider purposeful misgendering as a violation of its rules, according to Axios.

Conservatives like Owens have commonly used deliberate misgendering as way to harass transgender people.

The action stands at the center of a continuing cultural debate online of what constitutes free speech versus hate speech.

© New York Daily News

Hipster couple who run 'pagan home decor' shop exposed as Putin agents

Matthew Chapman
June 8, 2023

A pair of struggling artists known for their outspoken "anti-war" views have been exposed as influence agents of the Kremlin who are trying to destabilize the Eastern European country of Moldova to help Vladimir Putin expand his Ukraine assault, reported The Daily Beast on Thursday.

"The couple, 37-year-old Aleksey Losev and 33-year-old Anna Travnikova, were sanctioned by the U.S. government on Tuesday for their role in 'the government of the Russian Federation’s destabilization campaign and continued malign influence campaigns in Moldova,' along with five other Russian nationals, a press release from the U.S. Treasury’s office said," reported Noor Ibrahim.

Losev and Travnikova, who run a workshop called Julleuchter by Perko which “offers exclusive pagan home decor and specializes in Yule lanterns,” have been active on social media appearing to condemn the war in Ukraine. “In all my life I have not met a single person who would want war. And despite this, wars in our world continue to occur with enviable regularity. I feel pain and powerlessness,” wrote Losev in one post.

But at some point, the couple pivoted to a secret operation to try to expand the war across Eastern Europe, the report alleged.

"According to the announcement, the freshly sanctioned Russians operated as malign influence agents in a 'large global information operation connected to the Russian Federation that targets Ukraine, countries bordering Ukraine including Moldova, Balkan countries, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States,'" said the report. "They are accused of 'provoking, training, and overseeing' anti-government activities in Moldova while maintaining ties to Russian intelligence services."

Maia Sandu, the pro-NATO president of Moldova, has long warned that there is a covert Russian effort to engineer a coup in the country; Transnistria, a largely Russian-speaking region of the country, has long had a separatist movement, but the region has been drifting closer to Western alignment and Russian forces have been trying to counteract this shift.

All of this comes as the Russian invasion in Ukraine, which has lasted over a year, lain waste to cities, and killed tens of thousands of people, is now facing a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Commentary: Do we face nuclear confrontation? The erosion of agreements has heightened the risk

2023/06/08

Drew Angerer/Getty Images North America/TNS

You may not know it from watching cable news, going grocery shopping or doing any other mundane chore of daily life, but the world is at an increased risk of nuclear confrontation. That’s at least the assessment of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who delivered a speech at the Arms Control Association last week about a multidecade arms control structure that is gradually losing its sturdiness.

The system of nuclear agreements and risk-reduction measures spurred on by the 1962 Cuban missile crisis “has begun to erode,” Sullivan told the group. His boss, President Joe Biden, was even more dramatic in October when he told a Democratic Party fundraiser that the chances of nuclear Armageddon were at their highest since that high-stakes gambit six decades earlier when President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev stared each other down for 13 long days in October.

While discussions about nuclear proliferation are often subject to hysteria, troubling developments have led Biden and Sullivan to these worrisome conclusions. Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the process of deploying tactical nuclear warheads, Iskander-M missiles and nuclear-capable Su-25 aircraft to his ally Belarus. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is pressing forward with his own nuclear development plans, including but not limited to the miniaturization of nuclear warheads, the testing of military reconnaissance satellites and the production of solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, China’s nuclear modernization remains in full swing, with the Pentagon estimating that Beijing’s nuclear arsenal could reach 1,500 warheads by 2035 if its current pace is maintained. And let’s not forget that the New START accord, the last major nuclear agreement between Washington and Moscow, is no longer operable; last week, the U.S. responded to Russia’s February withdrawal from the deal by limiting the usual information it sends to the Russians.

All of this sounds frightening to those who study nuclear weapons for a living. It’s clearly frightening to the Biden administration as well; otherwise, a senior U.S. security official wouldn’t have spent part of his day delivering an address on the topic.

Fortunately, the White House has a plan to deal with all of this. Unfortunately, the plan has very poor odds of success.

According to the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, Washington’s strategy relies on two planks: modernizing the U.S. nuclear weapons apparatus to ensure that deterrence holds and exploring new nuclear transparency and risk-reduction measures to manage or, better yet, downgrade nuclear rivalry between the U.S. and its adversaries.

“Mutual, verifiable nuclear arms control offers the most effective, durable and responsible path to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our strategy and prevent their use,” the strategy states. Sullivan reiterated those points last week, reminding everyone in the room that the U.S. is willing to get back to the table with Russia on developing a new arms control framework and enter nuclear talks with China without preconditions.

It takes more than one party for diplomacy to work, however. And as sober-minded as the Biden administration wants to be with one of the most important subjects on the planet, it’s largely talking to itself. Russia, China and North Korea are at best uninterested in pursuing a nuclear dialogue with the U.S.

The three countries all have their own reasons for staying away from the negotiating table.

For China, it’s partly a matter of basic arithmetic. From where Beijing sits, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to enter into bilateral nuclear talks with a country whose nuclear arsenal is nearly 13 times the size of its own. The U.S. has more than 5,200 nuclear warheads in its inventory to China’s 410, according to a Federation of American Scientists assessment.

The Chinese are already at a massive disadvantage numerically, which means any mutual weapons reductions wouldn’t alter the overall picture for the country. It should therefore be no surprise why Beijing would dismiss Washington’s offer to talk. Sadly, there is unlikely to be any U.S.-China nuclear reduction negotiations unless one of two things occurs: Washington drops to Beijing’s level or Beijing rises to Washington’s.

For Russia, the situation is different. Unlike China, Russia is largely at parity with the U.S. — in fact, Russia’s nuclear arsenal is larger than America’s. Yet because U.S.-Russia relations are so acrimonious today, principally over the war in Ukraine, it is almost unfathomable to envision Putin greenlighting serious, substantive nuclear talks with the U.S., Ukraine’s biggest military supplier. Whereas Washington and Moscow have historically separated strategic stability from other issues of dispute, this no longer appears to be the case.

The Russians are currently using the prospect of nuclear arms talks as a way to leverage concrete changes to U.S. foreign policy. This includes reentering arms control agreements, such as New START, that have long been in effect. As Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said over the weekend, Moscow will return to New START only if the U.S. abandons what he called “its fundamentally hostile policy toward Russia.”

As far as North Korea is concerned, what is there to discuss? A nuclear deterrent is the ultimate insurance policy for an internationally isolated state that shares a heavily militarized border with a neighbor, South Korea, whose military is more sophisticated than its own and that considers the world’s predominant superpower its main enemy. North Korea isn’t any more likely to abandon its nuclear weapons program than the U.S. is. No amount of talk about denuclearization from State Department officials is going to change that basic dynamic.

We all like to envision a world without nuclear weapons. Reality, however, has a habit of crushing hopes and dreams.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Anger as pre-historic stones destroyed for French DIY store

Agence France-Presse
June 8, 2023, 

The fields of stone megaliths in Carnac, northwest France, are a highly protected prehistoric treasure

© FRED TANNEAU / AFP

Around 40 standing stones thought to have been erected by prehistoric humans 7,000 years ago have been destroyed near a famed archaeological site in northwest France to make way for a DIY store, an angry local historian has revealed.

The stones in Carnac were between 50-100 centimeters (20-40 inches) high and stood close to the main highly protected areas of one of Europe's largest and most mysterious pre-historic tourist attractions.

"The site has been destroyed," local archaeologist Christian Obeltz told AFP on Wednesday, having revealed the clearance of the land in the Ouest-France newspaper.

He believes 39 standing stones -- known as menhirs -- have been lost, estimating their age to be around 7,000 years based on carbon dating conducted on stones nearby in 2010.

The land was granted a building permit from the local mayor's office in August last year and DIY chain Mr. Bricolage is currently building a new store there.

Mayor Olivier Lepick told AFP that he had "followed the law" and pointed to the "low archaeological value" of objects found during checks before the construction process began.

The land was not situated in a protected area and had been earmarked for commercial use, he added.

Carnac is famed for its vast fields of stone megaliths which stand in long lines close to the Atlantic coast in the windswept Brittany region.

There are around 3,000 of them on the two main protected areas which extend over more than six kilometers (four miles).

The stones are thought to have had a sacred and funereal function, although various theories exist.

The Regional Office of Cultural Affairs (Drac) for Brittany, which is responsible for ensuring the law protecting cultural monuments is respected, played down the importance of the losses.

"Given the uncertain and in any case non-major character of the remains, as revealed by checks, damage to a site of archaeological value has not been established," it said in a statement on Wednesday.

But local archaeologist Obeltz believes local authorities failed to properly investigate.

"There weren't archaeological excavations in order to know if the stones were menhirs or not," he said.

"We're witnessing a series of failings. The state no longer protects our fellow citizens or our heritage. Appalling," far-right leader Marine Le Pen said on Twitter.

When contacted, the Mr. Bricolage group said it "sincerely regretted the situation" but pointed to authorizations for its store granted last year.