OTTAWA

Moms force kids to stomp on rainbow flags in horrifying protest against their LGBTQ+ classmates

"Right on, boys!" one old man cheered the kids.

By Greg Owen 

Monday, June 12, 2023

Photo: Screenshot Twitter

Protests against “gender ideology” in Canada’s capital city Friday brought far-right conservative Christians and Muslims together to attack Ottawa’s local school board for supporting LGBTQ+ students.

The unusual alliance was met by an equal or greater number of counter-protesters defending the rights of LGBTQ+ kids and denouncing “transphobic, fascist ideology.”

Nazi protestors wave swastika & Ron DeSantis flags outside Disney World

“This is the 2023 Republican Party,” wrote gun violence activist Shannon Watts.

A new directive by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board inspired the demonstration, organized by notorious far-right Canadian provocateur Chris Elston, aka Billboard Chris.


The all-staff notice advised the use of they/them pronouns for students until their preferred pronouns were expressed.

Video from the demonstration shows Muslim women and others encouraging young children to stomp and dance on progress Pride flags strewn on the ground and clapping with joy.

The clip shows an older white man holding a large Canadian flag leaning down to shake one kid’s hand in solidarity.

“Right on, boys!” he declares, beaming.



Shouts of “Leave our kids alone!” were heard up and down the street where the protest took place, home to two high schools and a primary school.

“This is going to horrify Justin Trudeau,” posted Keean Bexte, with the far-right media site The Counter Signal. “All of these proponents of childhood mastectomies and penectomies are officially on notice. The minority communities that have propped up your governments have finally had enough.”

It is very rare for transmasculine teens to get mastectomies before the age of 18 and genital surgery is not performed on trans minors.

Police announced they made five arrests at the demonstration, without providing details. Scattered acts of violence were reported.

While a heat wave, fires, and smoke have enveloped the region since the beginning of June, Bexte laid recent high absentee rates at Ottawa schools at the feet of the school board and their nonbinary naming advisory, claiming parents were pulling their kids out in “silent protest” of Pride Month.

Hundreds showed up to counter the right-wing alliance.

The counter-protest “fills my heart,” said Emily Quail, an organizer and mom of a child at one of the nearby schools.

“The only way to correctly counter fascism is by showing up like this on the street and telling them we outnumber them,” she told The Canadian Press.

“We will not let them spread their transphobic, fascist ideology anywhere, here or anywhere else, and that starts with community strength and that’s what I’m really proud to see today.”

The Ottawa area school board condemned Elston for planning the protest in front of schools.

“It really raises doubts about a group that, I think it goes without saying, but it’s a group that is literally targeting children,” said Alex Silas, a school district official.

In 2020, Elston, a Vancouver insurance agent, paid for a billboard declaring, “I ❤️ JK Rowling”, and then wore the message on a sandwich board at protests after it was denounced as “hateful expression” and taken down.

BE STLL MY BEATING HEART
House lawmakers back plans for biggest military pay raise in 22 years
By Leo Shane III
Jun 12,2023

Both House lawmakers and the White House have voiced support for a 5.2% pay raise for military members in 2024. 

(Elise Amendola/AP)

Service members would see their biggest pay raise in 22 years starting in January under budget plans unveiled by a key House committee on Monday.

The move — a 5.2% raise for 2024 — would mean boosts of more than $1,500 for most junior enlisted troops next year and thousands more for higher ranks. Combined with the 2023 pay raise that went into effect five months ago, troops could see a nearly 10% increase in basic pay over a two-year span, and even more financial gains after re-enlistment bonuses and housing stipend increases are factored in.

The plans for a 5.2% pay raise for troops next year are included in the first draft from Republican leaders of the House Armed Services Committee’s annual defense authorization bill, a massive budget policy measure that contains hundreds of spending guidelines and operational changes for the military. President Joe Biden also recommended a 5.2% raise in his budget proposal earlier this year, showing bipartisan support for the proposal.

Troops could see monthly bonuses, better housing pay under House plan

A draft version of the annual defense authorization bill calls for more financial support for younger troops.

By Leo Shane III and Karen Jowers

While the measure still has numerous legislative hurdles before it becomes law, including this proposed 5.2% pay raise in the initial drafts offers a strong signal that GOP lawmakers will back that mark as a baseline for troops pay. The mark matches federal estimates for keeping military pay on pace with the raise in civilian wages in recent years.

Over the last 20 years, lawmakers have either matched or exceeded the administration’s requests on military pay boosts. Congress has passed the legislation for the last 62 consecutive years.

For an enlisted military member ranked E-4 with three years in service, the 5.2% pay raise would mean about $1,700 more next year in take-home pay compared to their 2023 paychecks. For senior enlisted and junior officers, the hike equals about $3,000 more. For an O-4 with 12 years of service, it’s more than $5,400 in extra pay in 2024.

And junior officers could see even more money in their paychecks under the House plan. The defense authorization draft bill also calls for creation of a monthly bonus for troops rank E-6 and below to counter the effects of inflation. Specifics of how much that extra pay could be have not yet been finalized.

The measure also includes provisions to loosen rules regarding eligibility for the Basic Needs Allowance — a stipend aimed at military families earning at or just above the poverty line — and provide more generous housing stipends in regions where rent prices have risen.

RELATED

Your 2023 Military Times Pay and Benefits Guide
Service members should know how their pay and benefits have changed in 2023, whether its for health care, retirement, education, housing or something else.
By Karen Jowers, Leo Shane III and Meghann Myers

The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to unveil its draft of the annual authorization bill next week. If they also back the 5.2% pay raise mark, the issue is unlikely to be a sticking point in the months of negotiations ahead to reconcile the two chambers’ separate bill drafts.

However, actually providing the money for Defense Department officials to spend falls to the congressional appropriations committees, who have not yet released details of their plans for fiscal 2024 defense spending. The separate committees have generally agreed on the paycheck hikes in the past, and consulted on appropriate spending levels before any one committee commits publicly to a pay raise.

TURKIYE

Acquittal of HDP members overturned

The acquittal of HDP politicians who were accused of "making propaganda for a terrorist organization" has been overturned following an appeal.

ANF
BURSA
Monday, 12 Jun 2023, 

The final hearing of the lawsuit against 7 people, including Peoples' Democratic Party’s (HDP) former Bursa Provincial Co-Chair Aynur Yılmaz and journalist Emrah Çaçan, was held at the Bursa 8th High Criminal Court on January 19, 2021. The seven people on trial were accused of "making propaganda for a terrorist organization".

HDP member Davut Toktaş was sentenced to 3 years and 2 months in prison, and Resul Baykara to 1 year and 6 months, and the execution of the sentence was delayed. Five people, including Yılmaz and Çaçan, were acquitted.

While the prosecutor appealed against the acquittal, Bursa Regional Court of Justice overturned the acquittal, claiming that the defendants "carried pictures or signs of the organization (meaning the PKK), chanted slogans, wore uniforms with signs or pictures of the organization". With their acquittal overturned, the 5 defendants will appear before a judge again. The first hearing will be held on June 14.

Hundreds of tribal members, mostly Navajo, living on Phoenix streets amid fake sober home crackdown


Related video: Navajo Nation sees decline in Native Americans seeking help after Medicaid fraud scheme (ABC15 Phoenix, AZ)   Duration 1:21  View on Watch


PHOENIX (AP) — Navajo law enforcement teams made contact with several hundred Native Americans from various tribes who are living on the streets in the metro Phoenix area, after the state cracked down on Medicaid fraud and suspended unlicensed sober living homes, Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch said Monday.

Teams that included Navajo police officers reported making contact with more than 270 Native Americans, the majority of them Navajo, Branch said.

Many tribal members accepted offers to stay in motel rooms or other temporary housing for a few days before moving to legitimate facilities, while others agreed to return home to their reservations, Branch said. The teams worked with local police agencies and Community Bridges, Inc., a nonprofit that provides services for people with addictions.

“Unfortunately, many of our relatives when they came out of these facilities didn't have cell phones,” Branch said, adding that Navajo police officers allowed the people they found to use their own cell phones to call their families.

While the Navajo law enforcement teams have returned to the reservation for now, the tribe will maintain its presence in Phoenix through an operations center.

In response to Arizona's announcement last month it was cutting off Medicaid funding to more than 100 unlicensed and fraudulent sober living homes, most of them in metro Phoenix, the Navajo Nation launched its Operation Rainbow Bridge. The targeted homes are closing, leaving many people who had sought professional help to overcome their addictions with nowhere to live.

The Operation Rainbow Bridge toolbox includes a Facebook page and a TikTok account now under construction. There’s also a 211 hotline that the tribe is advertising among its members that allows those affected to find a place to stay and get the services they need.

Navajo officials say that in some cases, people who ended up in the homes were picked up in unmarked vans and driven to the Phoenix area from faraway places on the sprawling Navajo Nation that stretches across northern Arizona, and parts of New Mexico and Utah. It's unclear who paid to transport the people to homes.

The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, which oversees the state’s Medicaid programs, had been paying out money for addiction and other mental health services that state officials say the homes billed for, but never delivered, under the American Indian Health Program.

State officials believe the fake homes have defrauded Arizona out of hundreds of millions of its share of federal Medicaid dollars. Arizona authorities so far have seized $75 million and have issued 45 indictments in the investigation that also includes the FBI and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office.

Arizona officials have said hundreds of fake sober living homes are believed to be currently operating in the Phoenix area and other parts of the state.

Anita Snow, The Associated Press

FIRST HORROR THEN FEAR

Children who survived Colombian plane crash share story of mother's survival for days

AP | | Posted by Singh Rahul Sunilkumar
Jun 12, 2023 

Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest children, told, the oldest of the four siblings had described to him how their mother was alive for about four days.

The four Indigenous children who survived 40 days in the Amazon jungle after their plane crashed have shared limited but harrowing details of their ordeal with their family, including that their mother survived the crash for days before she died.

Soldiers of the Colombian Air Force give medical attention inside a plane to the surviving children of a Cessna 206 plane crash in the thick jungle, while they are transferred to Bogota by air in San Jose del Guaviare, Colombia, June 9, 2023. (via REUTERS)

The siblings, aged 13, 9, 4 and 1, are expected to remain for at least two weeks in a hospital receiving treatment after their rescue Friday, but some are already speaking and wanting to do more more than lie in bed, relatives said. (ALSO READ: Amazon plane crash: How children who were lost for 40 days survived)

Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest children, told reporters outside the hospital Sunday that the oldest of the four siblings — 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy — had described to him how their mother was alive for about four days after the plane crashed on May 1 in the Colombian jungle.

Ranoque said before she died, the mother likely would have told them: “Go away,” apparently asking them to leave the wreckage site to survive. He provided no more details. Authorities have not said anything about this version.

Details of what happened to the youngsters, and what they did, have been emerging gradually and in small pieces, so it could take some time to have a better picture of their ordeal, during which the youngest, Cristin, turned 1 year old.

Henry Guerrero, an Indigenous man who was part of the search group, told reporters that the children were found with two small bags containing some clothes, a towel, a flashlight, two cellphones, a music box and a soda bottle.

He said they used the bottle to collect water in the jungle, and he added that after they were rescued the youngsters complained of being hungry. “They wanted to eat rice pudding, they wanted to eat bread,” he said.

Fidencio Valencia, a child’s uncle, told the media outlet Noticias Caracol that the children were starting to talk and one of them said they hid in tree trunks to protect themselves in a jungle area filled with snakes, animals and mosquitoes. He said they were exhausted.

“They at least are already eating, a little, but they are eating,” he said after visiting them at the military hospital in Bogota, Colombia. On Saturday, Defense Minister Iván Velásquez had said the children were being rehydrated and couldn’t eat food yet.

Later, Valencia provided new details of the children's recovery two days after the rescue: “They have been drawing. Sometimes they need to let off steam.” He said family members are not talking a lot with them to give them space and time to recover from the shock.

The children were travelling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to the town of San Jose del Guaviare when the plane went down.

The Cessna single-engine propeller plane was carrying three adults and four children when the pilot declared an emergency due to engine failure. The small aircraft fell off the radar a short time later and a search for survivors began.

Dairo Juvenal Mucutuy, another uncle, told local media that one of the kids said he wanted to start walking.

“Uncle, I want shoes, I want to walk, but my feet hurt," Mucutuy said the child told him.

“The only thing that I told the kid (was), 'When you recover, we will play soccer," he said.

Authorities and family members have said the siblings survived eating cassava flour and seeds, and that some familiarity with the rainforest’s fruits were also key to their survival. The kids are members of the Huitoto Indigenous group.

After being rescued on Friday, the children were transported in a helicopter to Bogota and then to the military hospital, where President Gustavo Petro, government and military officials, as well as family members met with the children on Saturday.

An air force video released Friday showed a helicopter using lines to pull the youngsters up because it couldn’t land in the dense rainforest where they were found. The military on Friday tweeted pictures showing a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in thermal blankets. One of the soldiers held a bottle to the smallest child’s lips.


Gen. Pedro Sanchez, who was in charge of the rescue efforts, said that the children were found 5 kilometers (3 miles) away from the crash site in a small forest clearing. He said rescue teams had passed within 20 to 50 meters (66 to 164 feet) of where the children were found on a couple of occasions but had missed them.

Two weeks after the crash, on May 16, a search team found the plane in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board, but the small children were nowhere to be found.

Soldiers on helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children. Planes flying over the area fired flares to help search crews on the ground at night, and rescuers used speakers that blasted a message recorded by the siblings’ grandmother telling them to stay in one place.

Colombia’s army sent 150 soldiers with dogs into the area, where mist and thick foliage greatly limited visibility. Dozens of volunteers from Indigenous tribes also joined the search.

Ranoque, the father of the youngest children, said the rescue shows how as an “Indigenous population, we are trained to search” in the middle of the jungle.

“We proved the world that we found the plane... we found the children,” he added.

Some Indigenous community members burned incense as part of a ceremony outside the Bogota military hospital Sunday to give thanks for the rescue of the kids.

Luis Acosta, coordinator of the Indigenous guard that was part of the search in the Amazon, said the children were found as part of what he called a “combination of ancestral wisdom and Western wisdom... between a military technique and a traditional technique.”

The Colombian government, which is trying to end internal conflicts in the country, has highlighted the joint work of the military and Indigenous communities to find the children.

Opinion: Yes, the incel community has a sexism problem, but we can do something about it

by Michael Halpin and Finlay Maguire, The Conversation

June 12,2023

A number of online communities and social media influencers engage in misogynistic 

rhetoric. Incels — short for involuntary celibates — are one of these communities. 

Credit: Shutterstock

A judge in Ontario's Superior Court has ruled that a 2020 attack on a Toronto massage parlor was an incel-inspired act of terror. This is the first time that an incel-related crime has been labeled a terror offense.

Law enforcement groups in Canada and the United States have identified incels as a growing terror threat.

A number of online communities and social media influencers engage in misogynistic rhetoric. Incels—short for involuntary celibates—are one of these communities. Incels are men who see themselves as unable to establish romantic relationships with women. Incels believe they are victims of lookism, which they define as a social bias in favor of attractive people.

Incels have been connected to hate crimes against women and celebrate attacks that target them. Despite the link between incels and violence, public figures like Jordan Peterson defend incels and see them as unfairly marginalized.

Online misogyny

To better understand incel misogyny, we analyzed every comment made on a popular incel discussion board over a period between 2017 and 2021. In total, we collected more than 3.5 million comments. Some incels say they are not misogynistic, but we found that misogyny is widespread within the incel community.

In the comments we analyzed, incels used misogynistic slurs nearly one million times. They use misogynistic slurs to describe women 3.3 times more often than non-misogynistic terms. More than 80 percent of discussion board threads contained at least one misogynistic slur. Some users only referred to women using misogynistic slurs.

Our research is not just about the number of misogynistic slurs that incels use, but also the types of slurs they use. Many of these terms are explicitly hostile and dehumanizing. Slurs like "foid" are used to label women as uncaring machines, while words like "roastie" aim to body shame sexually active women.

While our data shows that incels hate all women, incels particularly target racialized women with sexist and racist terms. Incels dehumanized and sexualized racialized women by saying they were sexually available to all white men. Incels labeled women "race traitors" for dating outside their race.

Why are incels targeting women? Incels argue that women and society treat them like subordinate, failed men and "beta males." As we argue, incels weaponize this subordination by saying women should be rented, bought and sold like property to "solve" the "incel problem." Incels see themselves as the "real victims," who are being attacked by women, feminism and society. They think eliminating women's rights will improve society.

What can we do to address online misogyny?

Our study shows that incels do not become misogynistic within the incel community. Instead, they are already misogynistic when they arrive in the community. This suggests that men are becoming misogynistic in other communities, such as men's rights groups like Men Going Their Own Way and those formed around online influencers like Andrew Tate. These communities can serve as a pipeline for incels.

Efforts to disrupt online misogyny will need to focus on multiple communities and the networks between them. Simply shutting down online forums or discussion boards is not likely to be effective. Incels and other communities pop up in new locations, and these groups see censorship as validation of their beliefs.

Instead, academics, policymakers and the public need to directly challenge misogyny. We can engage with and challenge incel communities to disrupt their ability to operate as misogynistic echo-chambers.

We also need to keep supporting organizations that advance gender equity. In addition to organizations that advocate for women, we also need to support groups for men that challenge sexism and promote healthy and positive ideas about masculinity.

We can amplify the voices of men who have left the incel community. We can also identify and support men who decide not to join the incel community, particularly because our data suggests that the men who did not make misogynistic comments appeared to leave the community.

All of us can challenge how science is misused to create misogynistic misinformation. A page on the incel website we analyzed provided links to hundreds scientific studies that they believe support their sexist claims.

Many of these studies were misinterpreted, misquoted or presented out of context. We can adapt existing tools, such as online fact-checkers, to more efficiently counter such incorrect and misleading misogynistic claims.

What can incels do? The site we studied tells its members to not persecute, harass or attack others. Based on our research, those rules don't seem to apply to attacking or harassing women. To the extent that incel communities care about misogyny, they need to do better at challenging it in each other.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Incel terrorist attacks pose an increasing threat

New life breathed into Tunisia’s bagpipes


By AFP
June 11, 2023

Tunisian musician Montassar Jebali, 32, says the mizwad is 'gaining ground' and will have its international breakthrough -

 Copyright AFP FETHI BELAID

Aymen JAMLI

At his workshop in Tunisia’s capital, Khaled ben Khemis pieces together a type of bagpipe once banned from airwaves but now embraced by artists infusing its sound into new musical styles.

Known as a “mizwad”, it “must be made from natural elements”, the 50-year-old craftsman said, taking two cow horns and connecting them to pieces of river reed and a goatskin bag for producing the musical notes.

He has made the instrument for 30 years.

Most musical historians agree the mizwad first appeared in Tunisia at the beginning of the 20th century and was confined to working-class suburbs for decades before growing in stature to now be incorporated into other genres, including hip-hop and jazz.

The increased popularity has seen commercial manufacturers turning out mizwads.

But modern variations that replace natural materials with plastic “do not have the soul of those made with reeds”, ben Khemis said of the new models, which cost up to 1,000 dinars ($320).

He acknowledged the instrument has, however, evolved.

“Before we played out of tune, and we made it in a hurry,” he said.

– Bad image –

The mizwad spawned its own musical style that was frowned upon by authorities for associations with alcohol, drugs and prison — where many songs were composed.

“It was a musical genre whose reputation was bad just like those who played it,” said Noureddine Kahlaoui, a self-described mizwad “activist” aged in his seventies.

“Criminals and those on the run were always found by authorities at mizwad concerts,” said the popular artist who has played the instrument for 40 years.

The songs address “daring subjects criticising society, politics, migration and racism”, said Rachid Cherif, a musicology researcher.

Mizwad concerts are traditionally held in poor and marginalised neighbourhoods, particularly for weddings.

Song lyrics can be abrasive and considered rude, drawing resentment from families and sometimes triggering brawls at parties.

These elements combined to see Tunisia’s authorities ban the mizwad on public television channels until the 1990s — leading folk artists to undertake a restoration of the instrument’s image.

In July 1991, a “Nouba” concert that mixed folk, popular and Sufi music was staged in Carthage’s ancient Roman amphitheatre and broadcast on television, marking a fundamental step in the mizwad’s rehabilitation.

But some snobbery toward the instrument remains.

In 2022, officials from Tunis’s municipal theatre refused to allow a mizwad show, deeming the institution too prestigious to host such a concert.

– Jazz and rap –

“Despite the criticism, we have worked so that this original heritage can progress,” said Kahlaoui, who describes the mizwad’s evolution as “dazzling”.

For the researcher Cherif, “the mizwad occupies a prominent place in the history of Tunisian popular music” due to its fundamental identity. It “consolidates the idea of belonging to a nation, an ethnic group and a culture”, he said.

In recent years, a new generation of musicians has taken up the instrument, mixing it with contemporary genres offering more room for creativity such as rap and world music.

“Thanks to what I learnt during my studies, I understood what could be done with this instrument,” said Montassar Jebali, 32, who plays mizwad in several jazz and hip-hop ensembles.

Jebali studied Arabic music at the Higher Institute of Music of Tunisia, where the mizwad is not taught.

“I used my academic knowledge to find out which instrument it went well with,” he said.

Jebali’s concerts and those of other contemporary mizwad players have been popular with young Tunisians.

“The mizwad is gaining ground” and will have its international breakthrough, he said. “Perhaps not tomorrow, but after tomorrow.”

Experts warn of ‘one of the most dangerous periods in human history’ amid nuclear arsenal development 

BY LAUREN SFORZA - 06/12/23 
THE HILL

Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP
This photo made from video provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, March 29, 2023, shows a Yars missile launcher of the Russian armed forces being driven from a shelter in an undisclosed location in Russia. The Russian military on Wednesday launched drills of its strategic missile forces, deploying Yars mobile launchers…

A group of experts warns that that the development of nuclear arsenals is leading to a perilous period in history.

“We are drifting into one of the most dangerous periods in human history,” Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said in a statement. “It is imperative that the world’s governments find ways to cooperate in order to calm geopolitical tensions, slow arms races and deal with the worsening consequences of environmental breakdown and rising world hunger.”

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s new report shows that the rising number of nuclear warheads in military stockpiles threatened global security and stability. The global inventory of warheads in military stockpiles increased by 86 in 2023, according to the report.

The report noted that the United States and Russia have nearly 90 percent of all nuclear weapons across the globe. China has increased its arsenal from 350 warheads to 410 warheads in 2023, a move that the report said could signal that China may have as many intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as either Russia or the United States by 2030.

“China has started a significant expansion of its nuclear arsenal,” said Hans Kristensen, a fellow at the organization’s weapons of mass destruction program. “It is increasingly difficult to square this trend with China’s declared aim of having only the minimum nuclear forces needed to maintain its national security.”

The report said that India and Pakistan were both expanding their arsenals, as well as North Korea. The report added that it estimated North Korea may have assembled about 30 warheads and has enough material for between 50 and 70 warheads.

The report also added that the Russia-Ukraine war has set back nuclear arms control and disarmament diplomacy, saying that countries were being less transparent about nuclear forces in the wake of the conflict.

“In this period of high geopolitical tension and mistrust, with communication channels between nuclear-armed rivals closed or barely functioning, the risks of miscalculation, misunderstanding or accident are unacceptably high,” Smith said. “There is an urgent need to restore nuclear diplomacy and strengthen international controls on nuclear arms.”

China expands nuclear arsenal as global tensions grow: study

By AFP

June 12, 2023

China's DF-41 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles are shown off during a military parade in Beijing to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China - Copyright AFP/File GREG BAKER

The nuclear arsenals of several countries, especially China, grew last year and other atomic powers continued to modernise theirs as geopolitical tensions rise, researchers said Monday.

“We are approaching, or maybe have already reached, the end of a long period of the number of nuclear weapons worldwide declining,” Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told AFP.

The total amount of nuclear warheads among the nine nuclear powers — Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the United States — was down to 12,512 at the outset of 2023, from 12,710 at the start of 2022, according to SIPRI.

Of those, 9,576 were in “military stockpiles for potential use”, 86 more than a year earlier.

SIPRI distinguishes between countries’ stockpiles available for use and their total inventory — which includes older ones scheduled to be dismantled.

“The stockpile is the usable nuclear warheads, and those numbers are beginning to tick up,” Smith said, while noting that numbers are still far from the over 70,000 seen during the 1980s.

The bulk of the increase was from China, which increased its stockpile from 350 to 410 warheads.

India, Pakistan and North Korea also upped their stockpiles and Russia’s grew to a smaller extent, from 4,477 to 4,489, while the remaining nuclear powers maintained the size of their arsenal.

Russia and the United States together still have almost 90 percent of all nuclear weapons.

“The big picture is we’ve had over 30 years of the number of nuclear warheads coming down, and we see that process coming to an end now,” Smith said.

– China ‘stepping up’ –

Researchers at SIPRI also noted that diplomatic efforts on nuclear arms control and disarmament had suffered setbacks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

For instance, the United States suspended its “bilateral strategic stability dialogue” with Russia in the wake of the invasion.

In February, Moscow announced it was it was suspending participation in the 2010 Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START).

SIPRI noted in a statement that it “was the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty limiting Russian and US strategic nuclear forces”.

At the same time, Smith said the increase in stockpiles could not be explained by the war in Ukraine as it takes a longer time to develop new warheads and that the bulk of the increase was among countries not directly affected.

China has also invested heavily in all parts of its military as its economy and influence have grown.

“What we’re seeing is China stepping up as a world power, that is the reality of our time,” Smith said.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

WAR IS ECOCIDE

Riverside Ukraine city left with mud and memories

ByAFP

June 12, 2023

Upstream of the destroyed Kakhovka dam, the banks of Dnipro have become stinking mudflats -

 Copyright JIJI PRESS/AFP/File STR

Dave CLARK

Zaporizhzhia residents braved grey skies and driving rain to visit the banks of the Dnipro, not to relax in riverside bars and resorts, but to contemplate a sea of mud.

When the Kakhovka dam was breached last week — in what Kyiv and its allies believe was an act of Russian sabotage — the river level upstream dropped dramatically.

In the city of Zaporizhzhia, a sandy beach now gives way to a stinking mudflat, and sightseers have been left to survey the damage 15 months of war has dealt to their environment.

Despite the devastation, the riverside is still a place of contemplation for some, like 32-year-old Andrii Vlasenko, who was walking alone sweeping the mud with his metal detector.

Andrii and his wife and child fled a Russian-occupied area to the south of the city a year ago and he has so far been unable to find work.

Five months ago, his 63-year-old father was killed by shellfire in his home village.

For him, the newly exposed riverbed is an opportunity to forget his pain and indulge his peaceful hobby as a metal detectorist.

“I came maybe to find something. At least, while searching my soul retreats. That’s why,” he said.

His morning’s haul was meagre — no gold or silver, but one Ukrainian coin and one Soviet-era kopek.

Before the war, citizens of Zaporizhzhia had access to beach holiday resorts on the Azov Sea coast, now occupied by Russian forces and completely beyond reach.

Now, with the retreat of the Dnipro, even the small family resorts in the forests south of the city no longer open onto sandy riverbanks but onto slimy silt.

– Knee-deep in silt –

Yuriy Kara, a 39-year-old IT specialist, sheltered from the rain under the hatchback of his car, sipping a coffee and bitterly reflecting on the scene.

“I was here in the first day when water started dropping. On June 9, the water was closer. It drops every day,” he said, as a seabird splashed into the shallows to search for food.

“I was just discussing it with my friend, that soon there will be no Dnipro river for us.”

Opinions differ about how far the river has fallen but retired steel worker Gennadiy, stripped to his underpants and knee-deep in water under a tall jetty, had the answer.

Pointing at the tide marks on the stone pile towering above him, he made his estimate.

“So the water level was… How can I show you? It was up there. Look, see that brick? It was up to the higher one, three metres,” he told AFP reporters.

The changes to the Dnipro have also served as a reminder to the city that, even though Ukraine is counter-attacking Russian troops nearby, the war can still reach them in unsettling ways.

Cellphone company employee Anna Lashuna, 28, and her sisters fled Russian-occupied territory in June last year and are fearful for an elderly grandmother they left behind.

“No-one even thought that they could do something like this,” she said of the shrunken river.

“We do not know what to expect next from them. It could get worse. I hope it will end as soon as possible.”

KNOW THE 1%; GNOME OF ZURICH
Sergio Ermotti: George Clooney of Swiss banking tasked with mega-merger

By AFP
June 12, 2023

UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti, 62, is nicknamed the "George Clooney of Paradeplatz" - 

Copyright AFP/File ARND WIEGMANN

Nathalie OLOF-ORS

Sergio Ermotti returned as chief executive of UBS to mastermind the merger with Credit Suisse — an onerous task which begins in earnest on Monday after the takeover was finalised.

“Today we welcome our new colleagues from Credit Suisse to UBS,” he said, vowing: “We’ll create a bank that our clients, employees, investors and Switzerland can be proud of.”

Ermotti has to smooth out the controversial shotgun marriage of two of the world’s most important banks.

Nicknamed the “George Clooney of Paradeplatz”, after the Hollywood star and the Zurich square at the heart of Switzerland’s banking industry, the silver-haired 63-year-old is known for always being immaculately dressed.

The Swiss banker has a reputation that lives up to such star billing, having turned around the fortunes of UBS after the 2008 global financial crisis as he ran Switzerland’s biggest bank from 2011 to 2020.

His rise has also been like a Hollywood tale having gone from local apprentice to the two-time boss of a top global bank.

Having steadied the ship once before at UBS, can Ermotti do it again?

– Bumpy flight –

Ermotti has warned the coming months will be “bumpy” for the new megabank, whose sheer size has raised concerns in Switzerland in the event that it runs into trouble one day.

At the Swiss Economic Forum conference in Interlaken on Friday, he was asked if he saw himself as a kind of Superman figure, a clean-up man responsible for restoring order, or the new coach of a football team.

He chose the latter option, saying the task was to “make something good out of a not ideal situation”.

Ermotti will have to merge two institutions which were both among the 30 banks around the world deemed of global importance to the banking system — in short, too big to fail.

Following the collapse of three banks in the United States, Credit Suisse’s share price plummeted on March 15 as investor confidence evaporated.

On March 19, the Swiss government, the central bank and the financial regulators strongarmed UBS into buying Credit Suisse for $3.25 billion to prevent it from collapsing — and potentially triggering a global banking meltdown.

UBS chairman Colm Kelleher turned once more to Ermotti, thinking him the “better pilot” to navigate the bank’s completely altered flight path than its Dutch CEO Ralph Hamers.

Hamers swiftly vacated the hotseat and Ermotti returned to the helm on April 5.

– Path to the top –

As a child, Ermotti dreamed of a career in football but made his mark instead as one of the most talented bankers of his generation.

At 15, he quit school to become an apprentice at the Corner private bank in Lugano, his home town in the Italian-speaking south of Switzerland.

From there, he started out on a dazzling journey seen as a shining example of the Swiss apprenticeship system.

After a stint at the US bank Citigroup, he rose through the ranks of the US investment bank Merrill Lynch between 1987 and 2004, completing his training along the way via the advanced management programme at Britain’s prestigious Oxford University.

In 2005, he joined the Italian bank UniCredit for five years, where he notably headed the markets and investment banking division.

He was then entrusted with the CEO role at UBS, running Switzerland’s biggest bank from 2011 to 2020.

UBS came in for fierce criticism after its bailout by the state during the 2008 financial crisis.

But the losses in 2011 of a rogue trader who blew $2.3 billion in shady transactions was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Heads rolled and UBS turned to Ermotti, who was little-known within Switzerland, having made his career mainly in London, New York and Milan.

But he returned home after being overlooked for the CEO role at UniCredit.

He made cuts in the investment bank, refocused UBS on wealth management and settled the disputes accumulated by the bank, including the Libor and exchange rate manipulation scandals.

In 2021, he became the chairman of the reinsurance giant Swiss Re.

But when Kelleher sounded him out about returning to UBS to integrate Credit Suisse, Ermotti said he felt the “call of duty” to return.