Being LGBTQ in Africa still draws stigma, violence and criminal charges

In Africa, same-sex partnerships are only legal in about half of the continent's 54 states. Many countries outlaw homosexuality and LGBTQ people still live in fear of attacks, imprisonment and even the death penalty.



A participant at a protest by the LGBTQ community in Kenya


The persecution of LGBTQ people by the state is brutal in Africa. In some countries, sexual minorities fear for their lives due to the threat of the death penalty or lengthy prison sentences.

There are also drastic restrictions on LGBTQ freedom of expression, as well as discrimination.

That was evident on a football field in France recently.

In mid-May, Senegalese international and Paris Saint-Germain soccer club player Idrissa Gana Gueye refused to wear a rainbow jersey as a symbol of greater tolerance and support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, also known as LGBTQ, and people with other sexual minorities.

 

TOP 10 MOST QUEER-FRIENDLY TRAVEL DESTINATIONS

Canada

Canada is considered the most queer-friendly travel destination in the world. It legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, making it one of the earliest countries to do so. Canada is also well-known for staging numerous LGBTQ events, such as Toronto Pride in June (pictured), and Fierte Montreal Pride Festival in August of each year.

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The rhetoric against LGBTQ people has increased among Senegalese social media users since the incident at a league match in France.

In France, Gueye was criticized but in Senegal the player has received much support for his behavior, even at the highest level.

" I support Idrissa Gueye," Senegal's President Macky Sall tweeted. "His religious beliefs must be respected."

Around 95% of Senegal's population is Muslim and so-called "unnatural acts" with a person of the same sex are punishable by law with prison terms of one to five years.
Increase in attacks

Members of the LGBTQ community report that attacks and homophobic incidents in the West African country have increased in recent years.

Meanwhile, violence against LGBTQ people in Cameroon is also on the rise, according Human Rights Watch.

The country still criminalizes same-sex relationships, according to Lewis Mudge, the organization's director for Central Africa.

"This law creates this atmosphere in which LGBTQ people are targets," Mudge told DW.

"Homosexuality, same-sex conduct, is difficult for some people in Cameroon to accept, as it is in other African countries," he said.

The police are also not on their side, he added.
Where in Africa do LGBTQ people have rights?

In the past decade, five African countries have legalized homosexuality. Angola now allows same-sex relationships after passing a new law that came into force in February 2021.

In a landmark ruling in 2019, Botswana's Supreme Court decriminalized both male and female same-sex relationships.

The new law overturned legislation that dated back to 1965, when the country was still under British rule.

In 2015, Mozambique removed a colonial era clause from its penal code that banned same-sex relationships. It had designated them a "vice against nature."

Lesotho and Seychelles are also among the frontrunners in terms of acceptance, according to a 2020 global overview by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.

Uganda held its first LGBTQ pride march in 2012

Same-sex partnerships are only legal in 22 of Africa's 54 countries, according to the overview.

In some countries, they are punished with imprisonment, in others even with death — that includes Mauritania, a dozen states in Nigeria and Somalia where Sharia law applies.

The maximum sentence is life imprisonment in Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, while in Gambia, Kenya and Malawi, prison sentences of up to 14 years are possible, according to the overview.

In Zambia, President Hakainde Hichilema has just reaffirmed at a church service that his government would not stand up for the rights of homosexuals in the country.

Kenya is often a destination for LGBTQ people fleeing other parts of Africa

While same-sex relationships are not criminalized in Rwanda, members of the LGBTQ community criticize the government for not protecting them enough from stigma and violence by security agencies.

This is confirmed by the Kigali-based Health Development Initiative.
Fighting discrimination and stigmatization

The initiative's director, Aflodis Kagaba, commissioned a study on the challenges facing the LGBTQ community in Rwanda.

"Leaving no one behind means addressing stigma and discrimination," Kagaba told DW.

"We must ensure that all those inequities that make some of us feel unwelcome or condemned in our society are eliminated."

Institutions that support women should also consider LBGTQ people, one Rwandan activist told DW.

"We want to see ways they can improve their social or economic status, in the private or public sphere, without paying attention to gender identity or sexual orientation because we are more than that."

Prejudices are also evident in schools, workplaces or in the health care system, according to Jean Claude Cedric, an LBGTQ activist from Rwanda.

"The employees in health centers openly refuse to treat us. This forces many people in our community to stop visiting these facilities. Our government must enact laws that improve our lives and fight those in the community who harass us," Cedric told DW.

QUEER LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA: ZANELE MUHOLI'S PHOTOGRAPHY

Black is beautiful

Zanele Muholi, shown here in a self-portrait, celebrates the lives of the LGBTQ communities of South Africa through photography and other kinds of visual art. The language of Muholi's depictions of queer African identities builds on visual contrast, and also focuses on the explicit portrayal of acts of introspection.

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South Africa as a role model

Many persecuted people seek refuge outside their home country, especially in comparatively more liberal South Africa.

Although violence and social discrimination against LGBTQ people is still widespread there, the rights of sexual minorities are enshrined in the country's Constitution.

In this respect, South Africa is a role model in Africa.

Other countries are also seeing some progress.

The small kingdom of Eswatini, which neighbors South Africa, held its first gay pride parade in 2018 — an event that has been on the public calendar in South Africa for years.

In 2006, South Africa became the first country in Africa — and one of just a few nations worldwide at the time — to legalize same-sex marriage.

Nasra Bishumba contributed to this article. It was originally written in German and has been adapted by Benita van Eyssen.

Russians fleeing war and repression seek solace in Istanbul

Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has prompted thousands of people critical of the war to leave Russia. Istanbul has proved a popular choice, either for transit or a new home.

Like hundreds of other Russians, Anneliya Garifulina and Ruslan Bobrik

moved to Istanbul after the Russian invasion of Ukraine

In an elegant patisserie on the Asian side of Istanbul, I am waiting for Irina Gaisina to come back from the immigration office. The 39-year-old psychologist and politician left Russia for Turkey in early March, leaving behind her three children and husband.

The reason was her work in politics — she was elected to the municipal council of St. Petersburg from Russia's opposition Yabloko Party in 2019. Gaisina attended rallies for jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny and signed anti-war petitions after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

"The last demonstration I participated in was at the end of February. I was not arrested but some of my friends were," she says. "I woke up and read news about my friends accused of terrorist activities. Their homes were raided. I was next."

Her husband agreed to stay with their children and told her to leave Russia. The next day, she took a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul where she knew a journalist friend from St. Petersburg who was already there. For Gaisina, Turkey had been a frequent destination for business and leisure until the war in Ukraine began.

She went directly to a shelter managed by "The Ark," a support group for Russians fleeing their country in the wake of the war, in the conservative Istanbul district of Fatih.

"I really got along with people there because we were coming from the same background, sharing the same political opinions," Gaisina told DW Turkish. "It is nice to be in touch with people who are in the same situation as you and speak your language."

Psychologist and politician Irina Gaisina is waiting for her family to join her in Istanbul

With international financial companies suspending operations in Russia and cutting off transactions, her credit cards are blocked. Only the debit card works from time to time.

Gaisina has a Turkish bank account now, and managed to find her own apartment with the help of a Turkish friend as she waits for her family to join her in Istanbul. Since her children don't speak Turkish and private Russian schools are expensive in Istanbul, they will attend online school after arriving Turkey.

But Gaisina hopes to return to Russia when the war is over and Putin leaves office.

"I got a one-year residence permit," she said. "We want to move to Europe, preferably Germany. I will miss my friends. Some already left, some are in jail. We fell apart and it is not going to be restored. This is so sad."

'Most Russians want to go to Europe'

Eva Rapoport, photographer and cultural anthropologist, is one of the coordinators of the "The Ark." They have helped hundreds of Russians since March, providing temporary shelter and psychological support in the Armenian capital Yerevan as well as Istanbul.

"We ask people to fill out an online application form to confirm their political background," Rapoport says. "We have to make sure everybody is safe in shelters and no one has a hidden agenda."

Rapoport, who has been living in Istanbul since 2020, left Russia when she decided not to pursue her career in a country that she says has "no future." She estimates that around 3,000 Russians moved to Turkey after the war.

Some had to leave Turkey soon after they arrived because of financial problems. "For Russians in exile, it is quite difficult to survive financially," she says. "Most people want to go to Europe to seek political asylum. It is not easy to find a job in Turkey. Integration is not easy too."

Eva Rapoport is a photographer and cultural anthropologist who helps

 Russian dissidents arriving in Istanbul

'When we moved to a nice apartment here, it felt like home'

Georgia, Armenia, and Turkey have been the three main destinations for Russian political exiles after the war. Russians in Istanbul connect on virtual chat groups, organizing events and sharing experiences about how to build a new life in Turkey. Thousands of people join Telegram groups to ask each other about how to rent a cheap apartment and open a bank account in Istanbul.

Anneliya Garifulina and Ruslan Bobrik also moved to Istanbul after the war. They already had plans to leave Russia, but the war accelerated their flight.

"The situation was getting worse and the future was not bright," Garifulina, a model and blogger, says. "When the war began, we did not want to be stuck in Russia. I was also afraid Ruslan would be enlisted in the army."  

She was in a wheelchair with a broken leg at the time. When she was asked at the airport about their plans, the 35-year-old-said they were leaving to get treatment in Turkey. They left Moscow with their three dogs.

The Russian couple signed a lease for a year in the Sisli district, a commercial area in downtown Istanbul. They are both taking Turkish classes right now.

"When we moved to a nice apartment here, it felt like home. Ruslan is here, my dogs are here and I feel safe," Garifulina says now. "I won't be going back to Russia until big changes happen. But I don't see a possibility of change in the foreseeable future."

'We say 'save it for the dark day,' and the dark day came'

When the beauty blogger posted on her Instagram account "maquillage_diary" that she had left Russia because of the war using the #MakeLoveNotWar hashtag, she says she lost around 1,000 followers. She wanted to share that post before leaving Russia but her husband stopped her.

"At (airport) security, they were checking phones," she says. "Some people were deleting their messages and social media posts. I didn't feel safe in Russia because of the free speech situation. It is not safe to say you are against the war."

Ruslan Bobrik, a 43-year-old finance and IT consultant, defines himself as a digital nomad, and he worked in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan before moving to Moscow.

"After moving to Istanbul, I realized that I miss Moscow. It is actually surprising because I am too rational to miss something," he says.

The two say they didn't have any negative experiences as Russian citizens while looking for a place through real estate agencies. The high inflation in Turkey hasn't affected them much, though they have grown used to surging prices since March.

"The economic crisis was coming so I made some savings for the future. Our savings saved us," Bobrik says. 

"We say, 'Save it for the dark day,'" Garifulina adds. "And the dark day came."

Artist and curator Olesia Bessmeltseva says she felt good leaving

 Russia and plans to stay on in Turkey

'I felt so good leaving Russia'

Olesia Bessmeltseva studied IT engineering and German literature and was a curator in St. Petersburg. She got a new job just two days before the war started.

Feeling depressed, 36-year-old Bessmeltseva had already wanted to leave because of the deteriorating political situation. Moreover, her critical works made it harder to make money as an artist. In March, she left Russia for Istanbul with a political activist friend who was in danger.

"At St. Petersburg airport, I shot a video of myself to show my friends I am actually okay and it is still possible to feel better. I felt so good leaving Russia," she says.

Putin's decision to invade Ukraine brought her to a point in her life when political activism no longer felt useful. Unlike most Russian exiles, she is planning to stay in Turkey instead of going to Europe. And she does not miss her homeland.

"Wars ruin lots of people's lives. If you can't save people, you can save yourself and still keep doing something for people in need," Bessmeltseva says.

Edited by: Sonia Phalnikar

Is nuclear fusion the key to fighting climate change?

 

WAR

 

COLD WAR REDUX
Why U.S. science needs costly supercomputers; China could overtake US

Carolyn Krause
Wed, June 29, 2022 

Jack Dongarra spoke to the Friends of ORNL recently.

Thanks to Frontier, the Department of Energy’s first $600 million exascale supercomputer — located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory — the United States ranks first on the Top500 supercomputer list in the number of calculations that can be performed per second. But Jack Dongarra noted that China, which has two supercomputers ranked sixth and ninth on the list, could overtake the United States' computing capacity for solving scientific and technological problems.

Dongarra, who has appointments at the University of Tennessee, ORNL, and the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, is this year’s winner of the prestigious A.M. Turing Award from the Association of Computing Machinery, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computing. It carries a $1 million prize.

Dongarra recently spoke to Friends of ORNL (FORNL).

Jack Dongarra is photographed inside his office on the University of Tennessee at Knoxville campus on Monday, May 2, 2022. Dongarra is the 2021 Turing Award recipient.

In 1993, he explained, he provided a software standard or benchmark for evaluating the relative performances of the world’s top 500 supercomputers twice a year by having them address a problem of solving linear equations. He and two others manage the Top500 list.

Jack Dongarra

Dongarra told FORNL that Frontier has executed calculations at a rate of 1.1 exaflops, or 1.1 quintillion calculations per second — that is, a billion times a billion floating point operations per second, or FLOPS (e.g., addition and multiplication of numbers with decimal points). Frontier is five times faster than the most powerful supercomputers in use today.

The latest TOP500 list shows that DOE’s Frontier supercomputer at ORNL is ranked No. 1 in the world.

To help his audience grasp the power of Frontier, which takes up the space of two tennis courts, Dongarra suggested that we imagine that UT has 60 Neyland Stadiums, each with 100,000 filled seats. To perform the number of calculations per second you can get on Frontier, you must give each person a laptop capable of 166 billion FLOPS and connect the laptops in all the stadiums together.

China

Dongarra has been out of touch with Chinese computer scientists in the past two years, but he has heard rumors that China may have built two exascale computers, but chooses to keep its achievement under wraps. He said that the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. supplies American and Chinese companies with state-of-the-art semiconductor fabrication for supercomputers. Taiwan is an independent democracy that has a strong partnership with the U.S. and resists becoming part of Communist China.

Dongarra noted that China leads the world with 173 supercomputers used for science. The U.S. comes in second with 126 supercomputers. One of the American supercomputers is Summit at ORNL, which once ranked first and now is fourth in the Top500. Dongarra said it will be disassembled when it is five years old because its maintenance cost will be too high.

Teams of dedicated people overcame numerous hurdles, including pandemic-related supply chain issues, to complete Frontier’s installation. Despite these challenges, delivery of the system took place from September to November 2021. 

Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The cost

The U.S. Department of Energy's Exascale Computing Program will cost taxpayers $3.6 billion over seven years. Next year, in addition to Frontier at ORNL, two more $600 million DOE exascale supercomputers — Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory and El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — should be in operation, running 21 science applications.

Thanks to Frontier, a $600 million exascale supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the United States ranks first on the Top500 supercomputer list in the number of calculations that can be performed per second.

These exascale supercomputers will test mathematical models that simulate complex physical phenomena or designs, such as climate and weather, evolution of the cosmos, small modular reactors, new chemical compounds that might be used in vaccines or therapeutic drugs, power grids, wind turbines, and combustion engines.

Although rapid calculations can be made using cloud computing, Dongarra said that large, powerful supercomputers are needed to provide “better fidelity and more accuracy in our calculations” and to get “three-dimensional, fully realistic implementation of what scientists are trying to model, as well as better resolution as they find out at a deeper level what is going on at a finer scale.”

The equations being solved are based on the laws of physics, and most supercomputers are programmed using the Fortran and C++ languages.

Another purpose for bigger supercomputers, he added, is to “optimize a model” of, say, a combustion engine by “running thousands of different models with adjusted parameters” to identify an engine design that uses fuel with maximum efficiency and minimum emissions of pollutants.

Dongarra said that computational simulations are the third pillar of science after theory and experimentation. He noted that researchers use computer models to get answers to some questions because, for example, it is too difficult to build large wind tunnels and too dangerous to try a new chemical on humans to see if it would be an effective drug.

We would have to wait too long to find out how much the climate would change if we doubled our combustion of fossil fuels, he indicated.

Frontier was built by Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) using an interconnect from Cray (which HPE recently purchased), and almost eight million compute processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) made by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) that must be coordinated. GPUs, which are used for videogames and video editing and have more transistors than CPUs, perform complex mathematical and geometric calculations needed for graphics rendering.

“The GPUs are providing 98% of the performance capability of Frontier,” Dongarra said. He added that the calculation speed could be quadrupled if the sizes of the numbers with decimal points were represented in a compressed way (e.g., in the case of pi, from 3.14159265 to 3.14). That could increase Frontier’s peak performance of 2 exaflops for modeling and simulation to 11.2 exaflops.

To explain supercomputer performance, Dongarra used a car analogy.

“When driving your car, your speedometer might indicate you can go up to 160 miles per hour. That’s the theoretical potential of your car. But the highest speed you can achieve safely on the road is 120 mph. That’s what we are trying to measure — the achievable rate of execution in the supercomputer’s performance," he said.

In his summary, Dongarra said that supercomputer hardware is constantly changing, so programmers must keep developing algorithms and designing software to match hardware capabilities. He added that a major revolution in high-performance computing will be the upcoming increase in the use of artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of a computer program or machine to learn and think like humans by finding patterns in a vast database.

An example is the supercomputers behind weather predictions, Dongarra said.

“Weather forecasting starts by constructing a three-dimensional model of today’s weather. AI learns by searching data on all the weather conditions over the past hundred years to get insights. Based on knowledge of those conditions and of physical laws, it can predict with accuracy what the weather will be in the next few days," he said.

At ORNL, Summit has already used AI for some of its simulations.

The future is here.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Why U.S. science needs costly supercomputers

RENT INCREASES = INFLATION
Tenants struggle with rising rent spikes, prices at all time highs

RENTIER CAPITALI$M

Sara Edwards, USA TODAY
Fri, July 1, 2022 

At a time when rising gasoline and food prices are already straining Americans’ budgets, many apartment tenants are grappling with soaring rents.

The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan area in Florida saw overall median rent soar over 50% in April from a year ago, to $3,045 a month, according to Realtor.com.

The next biggest increase? The central Florida metropolitan area made up of Orlando, Kissimmee and Sanford, where the median rent jumped 32.9% from April last year to $1,927, the firm said.

Nationally, the median rent climbed to $1,827, an increase of about 17% versus the same month last year, according to Realtor.com, which tracks rental listings in the 50 biggest U.S. metropolitan areas.

PANDEMIC PROFITEERING PRICE GOUGING

“The fact that rents are rising much higher than we’ve seen historically is a reflection of the unique time that we’re in, where the economy is adjusting to a couple of extraordinary years and shifts in preferences,” said Danielle Hale, Realtor.com’s chief economist.

National median rent has set new all-time highs for 14 months in a row. At the current pace of increases, it could hit $2,000 by August, Hale said. Rents as measured by the U.S. consumer price index haven’t risen this fast since May 1991.

Where to rent: Here are the 10 cheapest cities for renters

Rent Inequity: How rising rent prices are affecting BIPOC communities

In a recent survey of renters and landlords by Realtor.com more than 66% of tenants said higher rents were the biggest strain on their finances, while about 76% noted they’re unable to save as much money every month as they did a year ago.

Tenants are likely to see further rent hikes this year. About 72% of the landlords surveyed said they were planning to increase rents within 12 months.

Landlords have the leverage to ask for higher rents because demand is strong. Years of rising home prices and the recent surge in mortgage rates have left many would-be homebuyers with little choice but to keep renting.

Developers are responding by ramping up apartment construction to the fastest pace in decades.

Developers are ramping up apartment construction, but these likely 

won't hit the market for a few years

NOT APARTMENTS;CONDOS!!!

Newly started construction of apartment buildings climbed to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 612,000 units in April, according to the Commerce Department. That’s up 42.3% from a year earlier and the fastest seasonally adjusted annual rate since April 1986.

That additional supply should help eventually, but it can take months or years for projects to hit the market, especially given supply chain and labor constraints that have delayed all manner of construction during the pandemic.

While the national homeownership rate is around 65%, there are more renters than homeowners in many large metropolitan areas, such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, Hale said.

And the burden of sharp rent increases tends to fall mostly on a segment of the population that tends to be younger and less financially flexible.

“The renter population tends to be different than the homeowner population,” Hale said. “They tend to be younger, they tend to have less wealth, and also be lower income, generally speaking, which can make it more difficult for them to navigate price increases.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rent prices across US at all-time high; tenants struggle with hikes

 

 

White rhinos return to Mozambique park after 40 years

Fri, July 1, 2022 


A Mozambican park welcomed its first white rhinos in 40 years on Friday after 19 of the threatened animals completed a 1,600-kilometre (thousand-mile) truck ride from South Africa, conservationists said.

The rhinos were reintroduced to Zinave National Park in southern Mozambique under an initiative to restore wildlife and boost the local economy.

Wildlife in the 4,000-square-kilometre (1,500-square-mile) haven was decimated by Mozambique's decades-long civil war, which ended in 1992, and by poaching.

"The return of the rhino allows for Zinave to be introduced as a new and exciting tourism destination in Mozambique," said Werner Myburgh, head of Peace Parks Foundation (PPF), the conservation group that led the project.

Zinave is now the only national park in Mozambique to house all "Big Five" African game animals -- elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and buffalo -- Myburgh said in a statement.

Since 2015, 2,400 animals from 14 species have been released into the reserve.

The rhinoceroses were hauled to Zinave from neighbouring South Africa over several days in June, in what the PPF said was the longest-ever transfer of rhinos by road.

On Friday, some of the animals were released from their enclosures into a sanctuary featuring extra security to protect them from poachers.

The ceremony was attended by President Filipe Nyusi and Environment Minister Ivete Maibaze.

"The protection of biodiversity is a universal imperative and together we will continue to fight for the preservation of our natural heritage," said Nyusi.

"Only then will future generations be able to enjoy the benefits of nature and join our mission of preserving our natural resources."

The white rhinoceros is classified as near-threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) while its cousin, the African black rhino, is listed as critically endangered.

The PPF said it planned to more than double the park's rhino population over the next three years, adding more from both species.

vid-ub/sn/giv/ri

New Zealand Designates Proud Boys a Terrorist Group

The far-right Proud Boys are not known to operate in the country, but the designation makes it illegal for New Zealanders to support them.

New Zealand’s minister of police, Chris Hipkins, discussed the Proud Boys and the Base on Thursday in Wellington. “These are white supremacist terrorist groups,” he said.

Credit...Mark Mitchell/NZME, via Associated Press

By Daniel Victor

The New York Times
July 1, 2022

New Zealand has declared the Proud Boys, the far-right American group that played a key role in the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to be a terrorist organization, making it illegal for New Zealanders to participate in or support its activities.

There was no evidence that the group was operating in New Zealand, but its activity has been observed in Australia and Canada, which designated the group a terrorist organization last year.

New Zealand’s prime minister can designate groups terrorist entities if they have carried out at least one terrorist act, and the government believed the Proud Boys’ involvement in the Jan. 6 attack was “consistent with the definition of a terrorist act,” it said in a statement from June 20. It said that the group’s “extreme right-wing ideology was founded on racist and fascist principles” and that it had shown a consistent fondness for violence.

The New Zealand government also classified the Base, a separate American white supremacist group, as a terrorist organization in a statement from June 20. It called the group a “neo-Nazi, accelerationist, paramilitary, survivalist group both planning for and intending to bring about the collapse of the U.S. government” and said it had tried to expand into Australia.

“These are white supremacist terrorist groups, and we don’t believe, and I don’t think New Zealanders believe, that any New Zealander should be enabling and supporting them,” the police minister, Chris Hipkins, said Thursday, according to Stuff, a news outlet in New Zealand.

Though the groups were not known to be active in New Zealand, the country has been on high alert for extremism since a man espousing white nationalist hatred shot and killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch in 2019. The attack was not directly associated with a specific group, but the gunman was steeped in the language of online extremism.

The New Zealand government described the Proud Boys’ techniques as “cryptofascist,” shrouding white nationalist tropes with obfuscation, humor and irony to offer its members plausible deniability and increase its appeal to “mainstream” or “normal” people. Underneath the layers of disguise, the group embraces violence against its perceived political enemies, the government said.

White nationalist groups have increasingly been identified by governments as threats in recent years. In 2020, the Trump administration designated the Russian Imperial Movement, an ultranationalist group based in Russia, a terrorist organization, the first time the United States applied the label to a white supremacist group.

The United States has not classified the Proud Boys or the Base as terrorist organizations. But more than 40 members of the Proud Boys have been indicted in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, including several of its leaders, who face charges of seditious conspiracy.

A New York Times investigation showed that members of the group moved in a coordinated fashion, riled up other protesters and directly joined in the violence, playing an aggressive role in several of the Capitol breaches. Prosecutors have said the Proud Boys began planning the assault as early as Dec. 19, 2020; lawyers for the Proud Boys have denied that they conspired to attack the Capitol.

In an EV world, Europe’s automakers are even more reliant on China

By Mary Hui
Reporter

QUARTZ
Published July 1, 2022

Three major German carmakers have separately made announcements this month that underscore just how important China is to their electric vehicle ambitions.

Mercedes-Benz has just kicked off production of its all-electric EQE model at its factory in Beijing. Soon after, BMW officially opened a new factory in the northeastern city of Shenyang. Days after that, Audi broke ground on a new manufacturing plant in the northeastern city of Changchun.

The companies’ back-to-back announcements caught the attention of Chinese media. “The three major German luxury car makers…simultaneously held a new factory production or groundbreaking ceremony in China, something that has not happened in the past decade or so,” noted the Economic Observer (link in Chinese), a business newspaper.

Chinese state media outlet Xinhua calls European carmakers’ continued investments in China a “show [of] confidence” in the country’s pandemic control and economic development.

But more than anything, the recent developments show the degree to which the European auto companies see China as indispensable to their plans to be major EV players.

Mercedes-Benz, for instance, plans to be all-electric by 2030. Audi will end production of internal combustion engine cars by 2026. And BMW expects sales to be 50% EVs by the end of this decade.

To achieve those goals, they will need a lot of minerals, capacity to process those minerals, and batteries. Setting up production in China, which dominates the EV supply chain, places the carmakers in proximity to all those inputs.

Of course, it also means significant dependence on a country with which Europe’s relations are increasingly strained.

Volkswagen, Audi’s parent company, illustrates the risks of relying on authoritarian states. The group relies on China for at least half its annual net profits, according to the Financial Times. And it has consistently defended its operations in Xinjiang, where China is accused of carrying out human rights abuses on a massive scale.

That’s now an increasingly difficult position for Volkswagen. In May, the German government denied the group investment guarantees for projects in China over human rights concerns. Earlier this month, Germany’s largest trade union questioned the company’s continued presence in Xinjiang. A major shareholder has also called on the firm to scrutinize the human rights abuse allegations.

Despite European automakers’ recent announcements, the tide may well be slowly turning against businesses’ heavy dependence on China.

“It’s a bellwether for a bigger change that’s coming,” says Gregor Sebastian, an analyst at the German think tank Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), referring to the rejection of investment guarantees for Volkswagen. “This automatism that what is good for [German businesses] abroad is good for Germany at home—I think that’s gone.”

Meanwhile, disruptions from China’s zero-covid policies are forcing firms to reconsider their operations there. A recent survey by the European Chamber of Commerce showed that nearly one in four European firms are considering shifting out of China (pdf, p.12).

But for now, money talks. And for Germany’s carmaking trio, there’s a lot of money still to be made in China.

Fishing Report: Symposium tackles 'Climate Impacts' on anglers


Dave Monti
Fri, July 1, 2022 

The 2022 Baird Symposium wrapped up on June 24, 2022, with a reception and premiere screening of a video on "Climate Impacts on Recreational Fishing and Boating." The event took place at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography in Narragansett.

Anglers, climate/fisheries scientists and non-governmental organizations that participated in the symposium expressed a number of key findings that deserve further exploration.

Bob Hurrie and Capt. Kurt Rivard with the 13-pound summer flounder (fluke) they caught off Newport.

Anglers and charter captain panelists confirmed an abundance of warm-water fish in the region, such as scup and black sea bass, and the departure of cold-water fish, such as winter flounder and American lobster.

New and abundant bait profiles are in our waters, including a variety of mackerel species, herring and Atlantic menhaden with silversides, sand ells, peanut bunker and squid having a strong presence also.

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The abundant bait is attracting pelagic fish in greater numbers, such as mahi, bluefin tuna, cobia, even wahoo, offshore.

Additionally, anglers felt that the migrating and spawning behavior of some species are being affected. For example, fishing author and kayak fishing expert Todd Corayer said: “In December, we caught striped bass to 36 inches with lice on them in our coves and estuaries. These fish decided not to migrate; they were out in front in our ocean (as the lice would indicate) and when it got cold, they came into our sanctuaries. I caught over a dozen nice keeper-sized fish in two days. The fishing continued through January and February.”

Scientists, offshore wind industry and non-governmental organizations presenting at the symposium highlighted a number of initiatives that are being conducted to address climate impacts. Meredith Moore, director of the Fish Conservation Program at the Ocean Conservancy, said: “We need to adapt fisheries management so it can react to climate impacts faster throughout the management process.”

Greg Vespe, executive director of the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association, said: “Fishing crosses every social, ethnic and financial demographic there is … to have climate impacts on recreational fishing recognized by the URI Graduate School of Oceanography by our U.S. Senators and Janet Coit, chief of NOAA Fisheries, gives me great hope that we can be proactive on how we address rapidly changing fisheries.”

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Greg DeCelles of Ørsted North America, which constructed the Block Island wind farm, said, “As part of our research and monitoring plans, we are conducting acoustic telemetry tagging studies on pelagic fish such as sharks, bluefin tuna, cod and false albacore. … We expect wind farms to be fishing destinations for anglers.”

Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and Coit, attended the Baird Symposium reception. “I would like to recognize Jennifer McCann [director of the U.S. Coastal Resource Center and director of Extension Programs for Rhode Island Sea Grant] for her work bringing forward science- based discussions on key climate and renewable energy issues over the years.”

Rhode Island Sea Grant and the Coastal Resource Center at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography hosted the event. Lead supporting sponsors included Ørsted, owners of the Block Island Wind Farm and Ocean Conservancy. Participating organizations included the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association, NOAA Fisheries Northeast Science Center, the American Saltwater Guides Association, Safe Harbor Marinas, Rhode Island Marine Trades Association, Save the Bay and The Natures Conservancy.

Visit https://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/special-programs/baird for recordings of both workshops and the key learnings video, which is expected to be posted in the next few days.

Dave Monti holds a captain’s master license and charter fishing license. He serves on a variety of boards and commissions and has a consulting business that focuses on clean oceans, habitat preservation, conservation, renewable energy and fisheries-related issues and clients. Forward fishing news and photos to dmontifish@verizon.net or visit noflukefishing.com.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI Fishing Report: Symposium tackles 'Climate Impacts' on local anglers