LGBTQ+ Pride Month reaches its grand crescendo on city streets from New York to San Francisco

A person holds a fan that reads “Equality” during the 31st annual San Francisco Dyke March on Saturday, June 24, 2023. (Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
By ASSOCIATED PRESS |

PUBLISHED: June 25, 2023

By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN (Associated Press)

NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of effusive marchers danced to club music in New York City streets Sunday as bubbles and confetti rained down, and fellow revelers from Toronto to San Francisco cheered through Pride Month’s grand crescendo.

New York’s boisterous throng strolled and danced down Fifth Avenue to Greenwich Village, cheering and waving rainbow flags to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall uprising, where a police raid on a gay bar triggered days of protests and launched the modern movement for LGBTQ+ rights.

While some people whooped it up in celebration, many were mindful of the growing conservative countermovement, including new laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender children.

“I’m trying not to be very heavily political, but when it does target my community, I get very, very annoyed and very hurt,” said Ve Cinder, a 22-year-old transgender woman who traveled from Pennsylvania to take part in the country’s largest Pride event.

“I’m just, like, scared for my future and for my trans siblings. I’m frightened of how this country has looked at human rights, basic human rights,” she said. “It’s crazy.”

Parades in New York, Chicago and San Francisco are among events that roughly 400 Pride organizations across the U.S. are holding this year, with many focused specifically on the rights of transgender people.

One of the grand marshals of New York City’s parade is nonbinary activist AC Dumlao, chief of staff for Athlete Ally, a group that advocates on behalf of LGBTQ+ athletes.

“Uplifting the trans community has always been at the core of our events and programming,” said Dan Dimant, a spokesperson for NYC Pride.

San Francisco Pride, another of the largest and best known LGBTQ+ celebrations in the United States, drew tens of thousands of spectators to the city Sunday.

The event, kicked off by the group Dykes on Bikes, featured dozens of colorful floats, some carrying strong messages against the wave of anti-transgender legislation in statehouses across the country.

Organizers told the San Francisco Chronicle that this year’s theme emphasized activism. The parade included the nation’s first drag laureate, D’Arcy Drollinger.

“When we walk through the world more authentic and more fabulous, we inspire everyone,” Drollinger said at a breakfast before the parade.

Along Market Street, House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank were spotted riding together.

In Chicago, a brief downpour at the beginning of the parade didn’t deter parade goers, who took shelter under awnings, trees and umbrellas.

“A little rain can’t stop us!” tweeted Brandon Johnson, the city’s newly elected mayor.

Chicago’s 52nd annual celebration on Sunday featured drag performers Marilyn Doll Traid and Selena Peres, as well as the Bud Billiken dancers, who drew loud praise from the crowd as they represented the celebration of Black roots in Chicago’s South Side.

“It’s very important to have a Chicago Pride parade,” Traid said. “And those that wanna go against us, you have to realize that we all stand together.”

Thousands of people also flooded the streets Saturday night in Houston to celebrate pride parades and embrace the LGBTQ+ community.

“Houston is one big diverse family. Today is about celebrating people who are themselves, their authentic selves and letting everyone know that this is a city full of love, not division, not hate,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.

San Antonio also celebrated its Pride parade Saturday night, with hundreds of people lining downtown streets.

“This year’s theme is ‘Just Say Gay.’ We feel so strongly about the legislation that’s occurring, not only here in Texas, but in other states throughout the United States that are trying to put us back in the closet,” Phillip Barcena, Pride San Antonio president, told KSAT.

Also Saturday, first lady Jill Biden made an appearance at the Pride parade in Nashville, Tennessee, where she told the crowd “loud and clear that you belong, that you are beautiful, that you are loved.”

Many other cities held their marquee events earlier this month, including Boston, which hosted its first parade after a three-year hiatus that began with COVID-19 but extended through 2022 because the organization that used to run it dissolved under criticism that it excluded racial minorities and transgender people.

A key message this year has been for LGBTQ+ communities to unite against dozens, if not hundreds, of legislative bills now under consideration in statehouses across the country.

Lawmakers in 20 states have moved to ban gender-affirming care for children, and at least seven more are considering doing the same, adding increased urgency for the transgender community, its advocates say.

“We are under threat,” Pride event organizers in New York, San Francisco and San Diego said in a statement joined by about 50 other Pride organizations nationwide. “The diverse dangers we are facing as an LGBTQ community and Pride organizers, while differing in nature and intensity, share a common trait: they seek to undermine our love, our identity, our freedom, our safety, and our lives.”

Earlier Sunday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill that would make the state a “safe haven” for transgender youth and forbid law enforcement agencies from providing information that could undermine the ability for a child to get gender-affirming care.

NYC Mayor Adams made a similar move this week, issuing an executive order preventing city resources from being used to cooperate with out-of-state authorities in detaining anyone receiving gender-affirming care in the city.

The Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD, a national LGBTQ+ organization, reported 101 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents in the first three weeks of this month, about twice as many as in the full month of June last year.

Sarah Moore, who analyzes extremism for the two civil rights groups, said many of the incidents coincided with Pride events.

Nevertheless, Roz Gould Keith, who has a transgender son, is heartened by the increased visibility of transgender people at marches and celebrations across the country.

“Ten years ago, when my son asked to go to Motor City Pride, there was nothing for the trans community,” said Keith, founder and executive director of Stand with Trans, a group formed to support and empower young transgender people and their families.

This year, she said, the event was “jam-packed” with transgender people.

___

AP writers Juan Lozano in Houston; Erin Hooley in Chicago; Trân Nguyễn in Sacramento, California; James Pollard in Columbia, South Carolina; Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Trisha Ahmed in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.

San Francisco Pride celebrates love and resilience amid surging anti-LGBTQ+ laws

2023/06/26

Queen Art Babe, of Fremont, California, during the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - 

JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

SAN FRANCISCO — Logan Oretl had known he was gay for as long as he could remember. But as the 20-year-old stood by Market Street — in the thick of waving rainbow flags, dancing drag queens and a flurry of bubbles — on Sunday, he said he’d never felt more accepted.

“I’m not used to seeing so much open love, and to finally be able to walk around without feeling afraid,” said Oretl, who had flown — for the very first time — from his small town in Ohio to attend San Francisco’s 53rd pride parade. “It’s nice to be able to just be happy.”

Oretl was just one of an expected million attendees at the parade, which flooded down Market Street Sunday morning. Politicians gave out hugs to attendees soaked in glitter; people in inflatable unicorn costumes chatted with members of the city’s rainbow-clad fire department. San Francisco’s streets were bursting with people — all there despite an increasingly hostile political climate and a pandemic that has hit the city hard.

Today, there are 633 anti-LGBTQ+ bills either active or being considered across the country, according to suicide prevention organization The Trevor Project, including two introduced in California earlier this year. During the first three months of 2023, the organization said lawmakers introduced 574 such bills nationwide — more than double the number of bills introduced last year.

The ripple effects of those bills — which Republican lawmakers like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has launched a bid for the GOP presidential nomination, have championed — have been massive.

Eighty-six percent of trans and non-binary youth say anti-LGBTQ+ laws have negatively impacted their mental health, according to a poll from The Trevor Project. That’s among a population with already-high levels of mental health challenges: the organization estimates that every 45 seconds, one LGBTQ+ young person attempts suicide.

“I think you can measure society by how it treats those who are most vulnerable. For one of America’s formerly great parties to go after trans kids — among the most vulnerable populations in the country — is shameful,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the Los Angeles-area Democrat who is running to replace outgoing Sen. Dianne Feinstein, during an interview at the parade. “I think it’s more important than ever that we come together to show our support, but also to stand up against hate.”

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who has endorsed Schiff in the Senate race, sat beside her Democratic colleague, posing for photographs and talking to attendees.

“I’m here every year — and all the time in between — to honor our San Francisco values, which are to take pride, show respect, show love to our LGBTQ community, (and) thank them for their patriotism,” Pelosi said. “Their advocating for their freedom and justice makes America more American.”

Some attendees, like Oretl, were there for the first time. Others, like Caryn Dickman, had attended for decades, in her case nearly 40 years. Back in 1969, Dickman marched in New York City’s Stonewall uprising, a violent confrontation between police and gay rights activists that led to six days of protests.

She remembered being pelted by eggs as she walked through the streets, and how at the time, she risked losing her job or being sent to conversion therapy for joining the protests. Despite — and perhaps, because of — those risks, the riots at Stonewall elevated the gay rights movement, sparking pride parades from New York to San Francisco in the year to come.

By the following June, a small group of activists marched down Polk Street for the first pride parade in San Francisco’s history. Fifty-three years later, Dickman was no longer marching. But she was standing beside her wife, Peggy, to watch the parade for the 38th time.

“It’s still incredibly emotional to be here,” said Dickman, 74. “We won’t be quiet anymore, and no matter what happens, we won’t go back in the closet.”

There were also marchers from across the medical field, with doctors, nurses and psychologists representing their institutions and the LGBTQ+ services they provide.

Doug Haldeman, a clinical psychologist walking aside 100 from the California Psychological Association, said he’d been involved with the gay rights movement for 45 years. Early in his career, he worked with people who had been harmed by conversion therapy, the practice of using counseling to try to alter someone’s sexual orientation.

For the next three decades, Haldeman pushed California to ban conversion therapy — helping the state become the first in the country to do so in 2012. Despite that, he and the psychologists around him said it was more important than ever to have a presence at the pride parade this year, given the explosion in anti-LGBTQ+ policies over the last few years.

“It really pisses me off to think that at my age, we’re going back to this fight mode,” said Haldeman, 71. “But on the other hand, it’s very energizing. It gives us a sense of purpose, and reminds us that we’re a resilient community — and that these people are not going to win.”

Despite that, the atmosphere within and around the parade was not one of fear. Lady Gaga poured through the loudspeakers of dozens of colorful floats, and at one point, a group of over 100 corgis and their owners ran to keep up with the crowd. Three young teens — Danika, Noe and Sylvia — watched the parade with rainbow flags draped over their backs, reveling in the feeling of not being alone.

“Dogs are covered in sequins, and everyone is happy and in love with each other,” said Danielle Ricci, age 40. “It’s just a joyful explosion of absolute love, and absolute joy.”


Members of the Drag Story Hour wave to the crowd during the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

A participant with colorful rainbow balloons dances during the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Rep. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

Arianna Vance, of San Francisco, waves her butterfly wings while skating in the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

Nancy Pelosi waves to the crowd during the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

A parade participant with a rainbow painted on her face dances during the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

Participants march during the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

Parade participants march during the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

Members of Dykes on Bikes participate during the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

Visitors hold signs cheering on parade participants during the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

A pair of rainbow unicorns blow bubbles during the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

A parade participant marches during the 53rd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25, 2023. - JOSE CARLOS FAJARDO/Bay Area News Group/TNS

© The Mercury News

San Francisco’s new drag laureate wants you to be ‘more fabulous’

A new city-funded position aims to elevate drag performers at a time when anti-LGBTQ legislation is sweeping the US.

Playwright and Oasis club owner D'Arcy Drollinger (right) has been named San Francisco's inaugural drag laureate 

[Allison Griner/Al Jazeera]

By Allison Griner
Published On 25 Jun 2023

San Francisco, US – A nimbus of golden curls, teased into a bouffant, she strolled up to the wooden podium, all eyes trained on her.

But D’Arcy Drollinger, 54, was undaunted. It was the start of San Francisco’s Pride Month festivities — the annual celebration of the city’s LGBTQ+ community — and Drollinger was the guest of honour.

KEEP READINGlist of 3 itemslist 1 of 3
LGBTQ communities in the US face ‘rising threat of violence’list 2 of 3
‘Historic’: Biden signs law protecting LGBTQ marriage rightslist 3 of 3
US judge nixes Arkansas’s ban on transgender healthcare for youthend of list

Her job? To serve as an ambassador for one of the city’s most iconic art forms: drag.

As legislation spreads across the United States targeting the LGBTQ+ community, San Francisco has taken a first-of-its-kind step by naming an official drag laureate to represent the city.

For 18 months, Drollinger will act as a spokesperson, championing LGBTQ+ rights and leading community events, all while incarnating a larger-than-life blonde bombshell.

“It is an amazing experience to be standing here with my fellow community leaders and kicking off Pride 2023 as the first drag laureate of San Francisco — and the world,” Drollinger told a crowd assembled on the mayor’s balcony in city hall.

D’Arcy Drollinger, second from left, attends a Pride flag-raising ceremony with state Senator Scott Wiener, third from left, and San Francisco Mayor London Breed, third from right 

[Allison Griner/Al Jazeera]

Dancing from birth

But in an interview afterwards with Al Jazeera, Drollinger readily admitted, “I didn’t set out to get here.” Drag was not a choice so much as something that came naturally.

“I was dancing from the moment I was born. I was a show person,” Drollinger explained. Drollinger uses “she” pronouns when in character, and “he” when not.

Born in San Francisco to an anthropologist and an artist, Drollinger remembered watching the film Mary Poppins as a young child — and feeling inspired by its stern but eccentric heroine.

“I gravitated to these female characters,” Drollinger said. “I wanted to dress like Mary Poppins. And my parents, being free-spirited, went to the thrift store and bought me a little dress and umbrella and a pair of high heels. And I ran around the house as Mary Poppins.”

But work soon called Drollinger’s parents away from San Francisco. Part of Drollinger’s childhood was spent in Samoa, before the family eventually settled in the small gold-rush town of Nevada City, California.

There, junior high school was “tough”, Drollinger recalled. “I was very unpopular. I was teased constantly. And there were people telling me I was gay before I had even thought about it.”

Theatre, however, offered a sanctuary. And by high school, Drollinger was writing and staging his own plays — despite the fact that there was no drama department to rely on. Drollinger ransacked thrift stores for costumes, and sets were hand-painted on stretched canvas.

“I didn’t know how to type. I wrote the scripts all by hand and went and had them Xeroxed,” Drollinger recounted.

As drag laureate, D’Arcy Drollinger has spoken at the city arts commission and the Pink Triangle Ceremony, which honours those who have faced homophobia and other forms of hate

 [Allison Griner/Al Jazeera]

Drag as microscope

But in spite of the difficulties, theatre proved to be Drollinger’s calling: “Once you try and take on something that seems impossible and you do it, it gets very addicting.”

Drollinger followed his passion for performance into adulthood. He toured with a post-punk rock band and worked as an assistant on the original Broadway productions of Hairspray and The Producers.

But in the world of drag — and San Francisco — Drollinger found a home for both his playwriting skills and his acting chops. He moved back in 2010, and by 2015, he and two business partners had converted a former bathhouse into their very own club space, Oasis.

He has since become its sole owner, navigating the club through the coronavirus pandemic with creative ventures like a drag telethon and “Meals on Heels”, a food delivery service that kept performers employed even as stages shuttered.


“Someone was asking the other day: Why is drag important?” Drollinger said. “And it’s like: Why is theatre important? Why is film important? Why is dance?”

All those art forms are mirrors for truth, but in the exaggerated performance style of drag, Drollinger found a unique perspective to share with audiences.

“Drag blows things up in sometimes comical, sometimes dramatic ways. You look at things under a microscope in a sense,” Drollinger explained. “You can see things in a different way.”

As San Francisco’s drag laureate, D’Arcy Drollinger had the honour of raising the rainbow Pride flag from a balcony at city hall

 [Allison Griner/Al Jazeera]

A mainstream entertainment

But the very thing that makes drag powerful can also make it “disquieting” to some viewers, according to drag historian Joe E Jeffreys.

“Drag un-tethers sex from gender. And that is not a concept that some people find comfortable,” he explained.

While some drag practitioners trace the origins of the art form as far back as ancient Greece — where men played female roles — Jeffreys believes the roots of modern drag more accurately lie in 19th- and 20th-century vaudeville.


“In fact, some of the highest-paid performers in vaudeville were male and female impersonators,” Jeffreys said.

Styles ranged from the camp caricatures of Bert Savoy to the naturalistic performances of Julian Eltinge, who disappeared into the women he portrayed — only to burst the illusion by plucking off his wig at the end of his shows.

“I think we need to consider that drag has always been part of the mainstream entertainment,” Jeffreys said. “There used to be any number of — and there still are — large nightclubs that presented lavish female impersonation shows primarily to heterosexual audiences.”

Oasis, D’Arcy Drollinger’s nightclub, presents parody performances of TV shows like Sex and the City and The Golden Girls

 [Allison Griner/Al Jazeera]

But just as drag has its precursors, so too does anti-drag legislation. In the 19th century, more than 40 US cities had laws restricting “cross-dressing” — including San Francisco. An 1863 ordinance banned individuals from appearing in public in “dress not belonging to his or her sex”.

“This is nothing new,” Jeffreys said of the current spate of anti-drag legislation sweeping the US.

On June 3, a federal judge struck down one of the most wide-ranging bans in Tennessee, which would have barred “male or female impersonators” from appearing on public property or in the presence of children.

Critics feared its broad language would have criminalised not just drag performance but also transgender and nonbinary identities.

“What’s really going on is they’re trying to legislate how gender is presented in society — that non-conforming genders should not be visible,” Jeffreys said. Other states, including North Dakota, Texas and South Carolina, have considered similar legislation.

D’Arcy Drollinger plays Samantha Jones in a drag parody of the TV show Sex and the City [Allison Griner/Al Jazeera]

Drag, a political force

The proposed bans come at a time of heightened visibility for drag, buoyed by the success of TV shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Honey Mahogany is an alumna of that show. Now, she chairs the San Francisco Democratic Party. She sees the two experiences as a natural fit.

“To me, drag has always been at the forefront of the queer political movement,” Mahogany said.

That history, she explained, began with figures like José Sarria, a drag performer who, in 1961, became the first openly gay person to run for public office in the US.

And it continued with the Compton’s Cafeteria riot and the Stonewall Uprising — acts of resistance against police violence in San Francisco and New York, respectively.

“Those things were led by gender non-conforming people — drag queens, trans people — at that time because I think they had the least to lose,” Mahogany said. “It was, for us, life or death.”

A billboard advertises D’Arcy Drollinger as San Francisco’s new drag laureate 

[Allison Griner/Al Jazeera]

Drag, at that time, had a regional flavour.

In the South, it was shaped by pageant traditions, while in New York, ballroom culture and Broadway exerted their sway. But San Francisco drag, Mahogany said, was more “punk rock” — less glam and more transgressive, with styles like “genderf***” that eschewed traditional binaries.

Still, despite its rebellious nature, San Francisco’s drag scene was not insulated from outside pressures. Mahogany remembers that, during the fight to legalise same-sex marriage in the US, drag became “almost a dirty word”.

“There was a strong push towards assimilation in the LGBTQ community, to prove we were like everyone else, that we wanted to get married and have kids,” she said. That “sanitised” version of the LGBTQ community did not involve the outré performance styles of drag.

From left, Vanilla Meringue, D’Arcy Drollinger, Sue Casa and Steven LeMay take a curtain call after their stage show, Sex and the City Live 

[Allison Griner/Al Jazeera]

An ‘easy target’

But that perspective has changed over the last decade, Mahogany said. “We have swung in the other direction, and drag has taken centre stage and is very much celebrated right now within the LGBTQ community.”

Unfortunately, she added, that has also made performers “an easy target to attack”, even in the famously left-leaning San Francisco Bay Area.

Last June, at the San Lorenzo Library, members of the far-right group Proud Boys disrupted a Drag Story Hour, a read-along event designed to promote child literacy. Earlier this month, protesters returned to the library to denounce another Drag Story Hour reading.

Mahogany herself leads Drag Story Hour at the San Francisco branch where she received her first library card, right across from her pre-school. Her latest reading went off “without incident”, she said — but the library did have two security guards on hand, just in case.

Even at Drollinger’s club, Oasis, heightened security has become the norm.

“I have to have metal detectors now at my nightclub. It sucks,” Drollinger said. “We have to live with this constant threat of intimidation by these people that are trying to squash a few people trying to bring joy into other people’s lives.”

D’Arcy Drollinger hopes to use her role as drag laureate to inspire others to feel ‘more fabulous’ [Allison Griner/Al Jazeera]

But Juliano Innocenti, a nurse practitioner who performs as Shalita Corndog with the outreach group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, believes the drag laureate position can help turn the tide of hate.

“The creation of a drag laureate says so much with so little,” Innocenti said. He predicts the role will trigger a “trickle effect”, fostering similar drag laureate positions in other cities.

“It will just be a matter of time before we see them pop up in Chicago and New York and Los Angeles and Miami and Dallas and some of these progressive cities,” Innocenti explained. “And then that will start to trickle into some of the smaller ones, including places in conservative areas.”

Already, West Hollywood is on the verge of naming a drag laureate, and New York has previously weighed launching its own version.

For Drollinger though, the goal for the next 18 months is simple: Inspire people “to walk through the world a little more fabulous”.

“If you can just be a little more authentic and a little more fabulous, you inspire others around you to be more fabulous,” Drollinger explained.

“And if everyone’s a little more fabulous, there’s a little less room in their hearts and in their heads for anger and hostility and prejudice and violence.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

The big clean-up operation is underway at Glastonbury

As thousands of music lovers leave Worthy Farm after the five-day festival. Team leader for the clean up Kristine Carr says they started at 6am on Monday morning on the section right in front of the Pyramid Stage. "There is a lot of glasses here, people bring their own bottle and I don't know why", she said.

Drought affects Thailand’s cassava output

Thailand's exports of cassava and cassava products are estimated at 9 million tonnes this year, down from 11 million tonnes last year due to reduced output caused by drought, according to the Foreign Trade Department under the Ministry of Commerce.

VNA Monday, June 26, 2023 
https://link.gov.vn/zlzL39pn

Illustrative image (Photo: Internet)

Bangkok (VNA) – Thailand's exports of cassava and cassava products are estimated at 9 million tonnes this year, down from 11 million tonnes last year due to reduced output caused by drought, according to the Foreign Trade Department under the Ministry of Commerce.

Ronnarong Phoolpipat, director-general of the department, said there is high demand for tapioca and tapioca products from Thailand when customers are willing to buy all available quantities, but this year Thai production has been affected by drought conditions, denting output.

He advised farmers not to rush harvesting small cassava roots that are unsuitable for sale during periods of high prices, as it may affect the overall quality.

In the first five months of this year, Thailand exported 4.73 million tonnes of cassava and cassava products valued at 7 billion USD, marking year-on-year decreases of 21% and 19%, respectively.

China remains Thailand's top export market for cassava products, accounting for 65% of the total.

Thailand is expected to import about 2.4 million tonnes of cassava chips from neighbouring countries, such as Laos and Cambodia, to meet the demand./.

Armenian Lawyers On Strike Over ‘Police Violence’

Anush Mkrtchian

Armenia - Lawyers demonstrate in Yerevan, June 26, 2023.


Dozens of court hearings in Armenia were cancelled on Monday as lawyers went on strike to show support for their colleagues allegedly beaten up by police officers.

One of the lawyers, Karen Alaverdian, claims to have been subjected to “undue physical force” after trying to stop several policemen kicking and punching his client at the police headquarters of Yerevan’s central Kentron district earlier this month.

Armenia’s Investigative Committee effectively denied the allegations on June 13, saying that Alaverdian himself shoved and even hit the officers in a bid to free the criminal suspect. They had to briefly detain the lawyer, the law-enforcement agency said, adding that he was rightly charged with “hooliganism” and obstruction of legitimate police actions.

Armenia’s Chamber of Advocates voiced support for Alaverdian and demanded a proper investigation into the incident. The national bar association organized the one-day strike to protest against what it sees as an official cover-up of the incident. Dozens of its members marched to the Kentron police headquarters to demand the sacking of its chief officer.

“We believe that if the police service does not react strongly to this case it will implicitly take full responsibility for this situation,” said one of the protesters.

Armenia - Lawyer Karen Alaverdian speaks during a news conference, June 13, 2023.

Two other lawyers claimed to have been ill-treated at another Yerevan police station in February while representing a teenage criminal suspect. Their allegations were likewise denied by the police and the Investigative Committee.

The chairman of the Chamber of Advocates, Simon Babayan, decried the fact that the police have not even suspended or taken other disciplinary action against any officers accused of assaulting the lawyers. He said prosecutors and investigators dealing with those incidents must also face disciplinary proceedings.

The Office of the Prosecutor-General announced, meanwhile, that it has assigned the probe of Alaverdian’s alleged beating to the National Security Service. Alaverdian welcomed that decision, saying he hopes that the incident will now be investigated in earnest.

“This problem is not so much about me or my client as about addressing the causes of all this and reviewing state mechanisms for countering torture,” the lawyer told journalists.

Human rights activists say that ill-treatment of criminal suspects remains widespread in Armenia despite sweeping law-enforcement reforms promised by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government.

As recently as on June 22, a man in Yerevan claimed that the Investigative Committee chief, Argishti Kyaramian, personally tortured and threatened to kill him following his arrest on June 17. A spokesman for Kyaramian denied the allegations.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

PwC Australia vows 'severe' consequences for tax leak staff

The acting CEO of the Australian branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has faced a parliamentary inquiry, her first public appearance since her predecessor resigned over a tax-avoidance and conflict of interest scandal.


DW

JUNE 26,2023

PwC or PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia is facing major difficulties that could yet intensify

Image: Joel Carrewtt/AAP/IMAGO

The acting CEO of PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) Australia, Kristin Stubbins, told a parliamentary inquiry on Monday that staff will face "severe" consequences if they are found to have acted improperly in a scandal over sharing secret Australian government tax plans with major multinationals to help them avoid paying.

PwC is currently conducting an internal investigation and has already suspended a series of executives, some of whom it has named and others it has not.

Stubbins told the Senate for the state of New South Wales that once the investigation was complete, PwC would release all the identities of those found to have transgressed the rules.

"We will expect to announce consequences and you'll see that publicly, and they will be severe," Stubbins told the inquiry.

In the meantime, a criminal investigation is also running against the company.

It was Stubbins' first public appearance since taking up the job last month, when her predecessor resigned over the scandal.

It also came one day after PwC Australia issued a statement saying it was selling its public sector business for a symbolic sum of AU$1 (roughly €0.60 or $0.67) in a bid to ensure such a conflict of interest could not repeat itself.

What is the case about?

PwC is under fire after a former partner, Peter-John Collins, had access to information about Australian government plans to revise its tax laws — primarily in a bid to ensure multinational tech giants like Google, Facebook, or Amazon could not so easily avoid paying taxes in Australia.

He had signed a non-disclosure agreement with the government as he worked with it on the project, promising to keep the information secret.

But Collins shared the information with colleagues at PwC, who then used it to try to help private sector clients take preemptive steps to limit the new laws' impact on their balance sheets.

Although the figures are hard to pin down with certainty, past studies suggest that taxing the modern US tech giants more effectively could bring a huge boost to state coffers in multiple countries

The case raises serious conflict of interest questions, with PwC a major service provider for Australian authorities.

"We failed the standards we set for ourselves as an organization and I apologize on behalf of our firm," Stubbins told parliament on Monday.

News of the indiscretions, which date back around a decade, first came to light early in the year.

But the probe has gathered pace over the last month or so, as the scope of the scandal started to become more apparent, in no small part thanks to the contents of internal company emails released by the inquiry on May 2.

Some of these partly redacted emails showed staff celebrating "the accuracy of the intelligence" on Australia's incoming tax plans provided by Collins, and how it had been giving them an edge with potential clients, particularly US-based tech multi-nationals.

In the last month, PwC Australia's former CEO Tom Seymour has resigned, criminal investigations have been launched, nine partners have been suspended without being named, and four have been suspended and identified — although two of them have publicly denied any wrongdoing.


Who are PwC and what do they do?

PricewaterhouseCoopers is one of the so-called "Big Four" consultancy giants, the largest professional services networks in the world, along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and KPMG.

These companies might only be genuine household names in specialist circles, but they're among the most significant in the world for the public and private sectors alike.

They provide services like auditing and consultancy (advice or analysis on all manner of issues, potentially), and their main clients tend to be national governments and large private sector businesses.

Their proximity to both sectors, and the comparable or overlapping services they provide to each, has long prompted questions of possible conflicts of interest.

Strictly speaking, none of the "Big Four" are single entities. Technically, they are networks of companies each operating in individual countries but all agreeing to coalesce under one global badge and to abide by the same standards. All four parent entities are UK-registered.

Combined, the four groups' revenues for the last financial year were in the region of $190 billion — to give a sense of scope, that's roughly comparable to the national GDP of Iraq or Greece.

The Big Four - Accounting firms under scrutiny   42:36

Public sector work to move to new company

Last month, PwC had promised to ring-fence its public sector work from its private contracts going forward.

But on Sunday, its incoming CEO Kevin Burrowes issued a statement saying PwC would be splitting completely, selling its public sector operations for a symbolic sum of one Australian dollar to another company, Allegro.

A Green member of parliament, Abigail Boyd, said she worried this recent switch was nothing but a "PR move," and asked Stubbins if the decision amounted to an admission that PwC could not conduct government business in an "ethical manner."

"No, it doesn't," Stubbins said. "It's an announcement that looks at the situation and what is best for our people, and to ensure continuity of service to our government clients."

"There will be no question around management of conflict at all in a completely separate business," she said.

But these measures might not satisfy politicians in New South Wales. State Labor Senator Deborah O'Neill has already said that she will lead another inquiry into PwC given the new developments of the last few weeks. She has even hinted that the government is considering legislative or regulatory changes targeting the industry.

"We have a self-regulation model operating in this sector," O'Neill told Australian public broadcaster ABC. "I don't think it's too much to say that it's palpably failed."

msh/nm (AP, Reuters)

Germany: Minimum wage to increase to €12.41 in 2024

DW

The minimum wage in Germany is set to rise in two stages from the current €12 to €12.82 per hour. The first increase to €12.41 is to take place next year, with a second boost to follow in 2025.

The minimum wage in Germany is set to rise in two stages from the current €12 per hour to €12.82

Image: Maksym Yemelyanov/Zoonar/picture alliance/dpa

Germany is set to raise its minimum wage to €12.41 ($13.51) per hour beginning on January 1, 2024, based on new recommendations from the country's Minimum Wage Commission. The current minimum wage is €12 per hour.

A year later, on January 1, 2025, the minimum wage is to be raised again, to €12.82, according to the recommendations, which are almost always put into effect by the German government.

Every two years, the commission, which is made up of representatives from companies, trade unions and science, issues a recommendation on the future level of the minimum wage.

Labor representatives on the commission, however, opposed the minimum wage hike as insufficient for workers hurt by high inflation.

"The resolution comes at a time of weak economic growth and persistently high inflation in Germany, which poses great challenges for companies and employees alike," the commission said in its decision.

How a German firm is attempting to bridge gender pay gap   02:38

Rise is not enough, trade unions say

The German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) sharply criticized the decision. Board member Stefan Körzell, who is also a member of the Minimum Wage Commission, said that the €0.41 nominal raise would in fact amount to an enormous wage cut for the country's roughly 6 million minimum-wage workers, given high inflation.

Körzell said labor representatives had pressed for an increase to at least €13.50 but were rebuffed by company representatives and the chairwoman of the commission, Christiane Schönefeld.

Germany's Social Democrat-led coalition government last year bypassed the commission to hike the country's minimum wage from €10.45 to €12 in October. The increase had been a key campaign pledge of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Germany first introduced a statutory minimum wage in 2015. It was initially €8.50 per hour but has been increased repeatedly since then.

dh/nm (dpa, AFP)

IRONY

Here lie 12,000 Nazi troops killed in Arctic battle. Now a memorial site devoted to Russian warriors killed in Ukraine is built alongside

The 250 trees planted to commemorate soldiers killed in the war against Ukraine stand immediately adjacent to the German 2WW cemetery in Pechenga. Photo: Pechenga on VK

Russian authorities build a so-called 'memorial garden' in Pechenga next to the cemetery that houses many of Hitler's troops killed in the 2WW attack on Murmansk.

By

Atle Staalesen

    

June 26, 2023

“We all acknowledge the importance of Victory Day and the Great Patriotic War [2WW], but it is no less important to talk about the heroes of today that have gone to protect the Motherland, its sovereignty and independence, the future of our kids and grandkids and sacrifice their own lives,” says Andrei Kuznetsov, the local Mayor of Pechenga.

The leader of the far northern municipality was one of several regional dignitaries that on the 25th of June assembled outside the town of Pechenga to plant trees for the new “garden.”

The site chosen for the project is the cemetery that houses about 12,000 of the German and Austrian men killed in Hitler’s attempt to conquer Murmansk in the period 1941-1944. Back at that time, Pechenga was called Parkkina and belonged to Finland. It was a key place for the German onslaught and housed a hospital and a seaport.

According to the organisers of the ‘memorial garden,’ a total of 250 pine trees were planted alongside the cemetery. All of them were marked with the name of a soldier killed in Ukraine.

It is likely that the 250 names belong to men that either come from the Murmansk region or served in regional brigades. Only few kilometres from the graveyard and the new ‘memorial garden’ are the bases of the 61st Naval Infantry Brigade and the 200th Motorised Rifle Brigade. Both of the brigades have suffered major losses in the war, and a Norwegian intelligence report estimates that their military capacity is today reduced to only about one fifth of their former power.

Among the names shown on photos from the ceremony is Andrei Olegovich Krasnov, a soldier from Olenegorsk, who was killed in early 2023.

 

One of the trees is devoted to Andrei Krasnov from Olenegorsk. Photo: Zhensovet Pechenga on VK

 

Several hundred local men are believed to have vanished in the war. Some of them are identified by the Barents Observer and included in news reports.

Among the latest local names added to the quickly growing death lists are Aleksandr Martynov and Mikael Aliev, both of them originally workers in the Severny nickel mine in Zapolyarny.

Sergei “Hans” Kalyaganov from the Pechenga area was killed in Ukraine in early 2023. Photo: local VK pages

Among them is also Sergei Kalyaganov, a local war veteran with combat experience from Chechnya. Kalyaganov operated under the nickname “Hans” and was part of a local military-patriotic group.

In Russia’s perverted narrative about the war, it is all about the “denazification” of Ukraine.

Paradoxically, in the new ‘memorial garden’ the name plates of Russian men killed in Ukraine stand immediately alongside the graves of Nazi warriors killed in the 2WW.

“The memorial garden will immortalize the memory of participants in the special military operation, and everyone that passes by will remember them,” says Pechenga Mayor Kuznetsov. The local politician is known for his strong pro-war stance and drives a car marked with a large “Z,” the Nazi-inspired symbol of Russia’s war against its neighbouring country.

The area that today is known as Pechenga was site for brutal battles during Hitler’s war against the USSR. For most of the war, the frontline was about 40 km further east, along the Zapadnaya Litsa river

The Germans buried many their fallen men on the sandy stretches where the Pechenga river runs into the Pechenga Bay. The graves were dug by Soviet prisoners of war.

After the war, Soviet tanks bulldozed the graves. Then, in the 1990s, the cemetery was restored with German and Austrian funding and the site is today known as ‘Land of Unity.’ Also 600 Soviet troops are buried on site.

The graveyard is located on military land and access to the area is restricted.

Azerbaijani police lock down village after environmental protests

 22 June 2023

ByIsmi Aghayev

Women confronting riot police in Soyudlu. Screengrab from video shared on social media

Entry and exit to the village of Soyudlu has been blocked since Wednesday, after riot police clashed with local people protesting environmental damage caused by a goldmine. Ten protesters were detained, while 15 were reportedly injured in confrontations with riot police. 

Two journalists are also reported to have been detained and had their phones confiscated while covering the protests on Thursday. 

On 20 June, over a hundred residents of the village of Soyudlu in the Gadabay District gathered to protest pollution of the area by a mining company, assembling near an artificial lake reportedly used to dump acid waste from the mine. 

They were also protesting plans to construct a second, similar artificial lake in the village. Protesters claimed that waste from the mines has caused significant damage to human health and the nature of the region. 

Residents reported that around 15 people were injured and five detained on Tuesday after riot police were called in to disperse the protesters. Five more were reported to have been detained the following day, as protests continued.

Videos from Soyudlu showed police using tear gas, pepper spray, and physical violence against those protesting. In a widely-shared video, an elderly woman walking away from riot police is pepper-sprayed in the face, with later footage showing her lying on the ground as other protesters attempt to assist her.

Many Azerbaijanis expressed outrage over the footage online, and demanded that police be punished for using violence against peaceful protesters.

On Wednesday, the Interior Ministry and the head of the region both acknowledged that protesters had been injured, but suggested that protesters had acted violently and police had shown restraint in their handling of the situation.  

The following day, Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Mukhtar Babayev visited Gadabay District and stated that the issue would be investigated. 

‘Monitoring has already started. We will try to quickly clarify all questions and prepare and present the necessary proposals to the Cabinet of Ministers’, said Babayev. 

The gold mines are officially operated by a British company, Anglo Asian Mining Plc, managed by Iranian businessperson Reza Vaziri. However, a 2016 investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found that the mines were in fact owned by the two daughters of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. 

Poisoned waters

The protesters were objecting to pollution of the area by waste from the mines, which they state has caused significant damage to the health of local people. 

Residents stated that a lake in the village, which has allegedly been used to drain acid and dump waste from the goldmines for around 11 years, was damaging the nature around it and emitting toxic fumes, making it hard to breathe and causing lung damage. 

Protesters chanted and carried signs saying ‘natural waters are being poisoned’, ‘The River Kur is being poisoned’, and ‘people die of lung disease at the age of 50’. 

They also voiced their objections to plans to construct a second artificial lake in the area. 

‘The inside of [the first] lake is acid. It’s burned nature in a radius of 100 metres. In order to increase gold production, they are now building a second lake in the village’, one protester told journalists. 

She added that this lake would be close to a river. 

‘Can you imagine what that means? Nature will be destroyed as far as Shamkir, Tovuz, and Ganja.’ 

The protests continued for a second day on 21 June, with police obstructing efforts to resume protests on Thursday. On Wednesday night, police blocked roads to the village, which remain closed for entry and exit to all except for residents. 

Residents told local media that ten protesters had been arrested in total on Tuesday and Wednesday, and that their relatives were not being allowed to meet them. 

One woman told journalists that all of those detained at the protests were ‘imprisoned for 20 days’. She added that she was not allowed to visit her son, who had been detained. 

On Wednesday afternoon, the head of Gadabay District, Orkhan Mursalov, met with the protesters but claimed that their concerns were unfounded and based on ‘disinformation’ spread on social media. 

‘This grandmother is 78 years old’, said Mursalov, referring to one of the woman seen being pepper sprayed by police. ‘If the lake were poisonous, she wouldn’t be louder than me at this age.’ 

‘What do we know about the toxicity of cyanide? Who says it? This is disinformation spread on social networks.’

He added that there were currently over 50 pregnant women in the village, and the local administration had not received any ‘appeals’ from them regarding issues related to pollution. 

He also stated that while he knew that some protesters had been injured the previous day, they had thrown stones at the police, which no one had the right to do. 

On Wednesday, Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry spokesperson stated that an investigation was being conducted into the use of pepper spray against one of the protest participants. 

‘The police officer was overcome with emotion and committed a serious offence against the woman, and we accept it’, said Elhad Hajiyev. 

However, he added that women taking part in the protests had made many ‘inappropriate statements and illegal actions’.

‘It is clear that the police officers showed high restraint and discipline towards those women’, said Hajiyev. ‘How many times have police officers been subjected to illegal acts unbecoming of an Azerbaijani woman? No special measures were applied against those women, nor was the issue of punishment raised.’