Monday, July 29, 2024

ISTANBUL BLOG: Can Erdogan’s nationalist allies avoid the destiny of the Gulenists? 

ISTANBUL BLOG: Can Erdogan’s nationalist allies avoid the destiny of the Gulenists?
Suleyman Karadeniz, head of the police special forces, kisses MHP leader Devlet Bahceli's hand. Photo credit: T24. / Screenshot, T24FacebookTwitter
By Akin Nazli in Belgrade July 28, 2024

“I also congratulate all of my brothers who have pledged their support for this process from beyond the ocean. And given that there are messages that go from here to beyond the ocean, we should also send a message to those who send messages.”

It was September 12, 2010 and Turkey’s then prime minister, and current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was giving a victory speech following the day’s constitutional referendum. The first mention of “beyond the ocean” references Fethullah Gulen, the 83-year-old Turkish preacher, who has lived in the US since 1999.

Prior to the referendum, Gulen addressed his followers with the words: “If it were possible, you should even wake up those who are in the grave to make them vote ‘yes’ in the referendum. I think they would do so.”

This call to his followers was seen by observers as an order given by Gulen to militants to rig the poll with the casting of fake votes on behalf of dead people.

Erdogan’s second reference to “beyond the ocean” is a response to critics who sent “messages” claiming that the constitutional amendment was a joint project run by Erdogan and Gulen to take over Turkey’s judiciary.

End of “military tutelage”

The September 12 referendum marked the peak of the Erdogan-Gulen partnership and the official end of the “military tutelage” regime in Turkey.

Since 2007, the military had been tamed using the “Ergenekon” court trials. The Ergenekon operation was conducted by Gulenist police, prosecutors, judges and journalists.

The Gulenist police planted fake evidence in targets’ computers and leaked details of their investigations to Gulenist journalists.

The journalists were used to prepare the public ahead of Gulenist prosecutors demanding the detention of suspects. The Gulenist judges subsequently issued orders for arrests and the suspects were jailed pending trials.

Erdogan, who defined himself as “the prosecutor of this case”, provided the required political support for the operation.

Gulenist fugitives and prisoners

Today, there are thousands of Gulenists who are fugitives abroad and thousands more in prison in Turkey. They have been subjected to one of the most radical demonisation campaigns of the age.

The Gulenists are no exception when it comes to allies who were eventually rejected by Erdogan and his henchmen.

The so-called liberals were also by 2011 among stakeholders in the Erdogan regime. Many of them are nowadays abroad or alienated

Osman Kavala, a businessman and human rights activist, has been in prison since 2017. The regime has made an example of him. He is a warning to “liberals” in the country who consider not bowing to Erdogan.

And let’s not forget the Kurds. The Kurds were rather too optimistic about Erdogan. By 2015, when Erdogan “turned over the table” in talks aimed at solving the Kurdish question, Erdogan and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were coalition allies.

Yet Erdogan then became the biggest slaughterer, jailer, oppressor and insulting disparager of Kurds in history.

Let’s also not forget the foreign stakeholders. In 2017, Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Erdogan issued an arrest warrant for author and former CIA officer Graham E. Fuller, a man who could be described as the godfather of the AKP project.

Fuller’s close associate Henri Barkey shared his friend’s destiny.

Amusingly enough, Fuller, along with colleague George Fides and Morton Abramowitz, a former US ambassador to Ankara, was among those who provided Gulen with a reference when the preacher applied to the US for a “global talent” visa.

Another ally tossed into the trash by Erdogan was Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Erdogan and Assad families once took vacations together, and Turkey and Syria held occasional joint cabinet meetings.

The list of friends made enemies sometimes seems endless. But, let’s move on to Erdogan’s “junior ally” of the last decade, namely the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

And so to the point, the MHP

In 2014, Erdogan acquired a new partner, the MHP, in what was by then an intensifying war with the Gulenists. Gulenists who held public posts were increasingly replaced.

In times of late, however, there have been signs of turbulence in relations between Erdogan and the MHP.

In May, bne IntelliNews noted: “Although, so far, there are not enough significant developments to say it will make any difference, the gangs that make up the Erdogan regime are currently clashing.”

“From time to time, this publication reports that the gangs are ‘jostling’. At the moment, things are beyond ordinary jostling activities.”

“Erdogan’s gangs are attacking his junior coalition partner [MHP leader] Devlet Bahceli’s gangs. Some police have been arrested and some scandalising trials are being held.”

“In the most extreme of outcomes, as seen in the coup attempt in 2016, factions have battled with military tanks and F-16 jets on and above the streets. So far, it does not seem like we could get to such a showdown,” this publication also noted.

On July 19, Alican Uludag, a journalist who has been closely following the trials in question, wrote that the trial over the murder of the ex-head of the MHP’s youth wing, Sinan Ates, was progressing as the MHP wished.

“In other words, the MHP is ensuring Erdogan does what it wants in the Sinan Ates case, it is rescuing its men from the court. The government is also doing whatever is demanded for now to avoid a collapse in the People’s Alliance [between AKP and MHP],” he added.

Smaller and smaller “cake”

The tension between Erdogan and Bahceli stems from the fact that the “cake” has been getting smaller and smaller. Since Turkey’s 2018 currency crisis, there has been less and less to go round.

Erdogan has, meanwhile, made the new chair of the  main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Ozgur Ozel, his new chump, asking him for support in “softening the political atmosphere in the country”.

Photo: Ozel has lately been pictured with Erdogan on numerous occasions. Numan Kurtulmus, speaker of the parliament, who is conducting talks on Erdogan’s constitutional amendments, is seen between the pair.

The scheme Erdogan is working on is centred on making further amendments to the constitution. The aim is to scrap the “50% plus one vote” approach to declaring a victory in the first round of the presidential election (the elections usually go to a second round, a decider, because no candidate achieves more than 50% in the first round).

If Erdogan can secure what would be a switch to a one-round-only, first-past-the-post system, he would be able to get rid of Bahceli.

The CHP as a crutch

It’s important to note that the CHP has consistently swung behind Erdogan over the years in his battle against the Gulenists. The “main opposition party” (yes, the adjective “opposition”should be used sparingly when it comes to the CHP) has been there for Erdogan whenever he’s needed a crutch.

So, if the same equation holds sway in Erdogan’s present dealings as regards the MHP, the CHP will be there for the despot once again.

Bahceli acting strangely

A showdown, then, could be on the cards, but, to stress, the clear outlines of one are not visible as things stand. Bahceli, however, has recently been acting strangely at various events.

On July 15, he visited the police special forces. A photo, which showed Suleyman Karadeniz, head of the forces, kissing Bahceli’s hand, was circulated by local media.

In August 2010, a month before the September referendum and during the peak of the Erdogan-Gulen alliance, Hanefi Avci, ex-deputy chief of the intelligence unit of the police and the then incumbent provincial police chief in Eskisehir, published a book entitled Halic’te Yasayan Simonlar (The Simons Living in the Golden Horn).

The book related how the Gulenists had taken control of the police as well as the judiciary.

That an incumbent police chief was the author of the book came as a big shock.

During those times, anyone who mentioned Gulen publicly and made claims about his influence on the Turkish state was quickly detained.

Avci spent some time in jail.

In 2013, the Gulenists targeted Erdogan with a corruption case. This spurred on Erdogan as he moved to root out the Gulenists from the police and judiciary.

Erdogan’s new partners, including the MHP’s men, were on hand to replace the Gulenists in the bureaucracy.

By 2016, when the coup attempt was staged, the police were under Erdogan’s control. 

National Vein

In 2016, a month before the coup attempt and during the peak of the Erdogan-Bahceli alliance, Avci filed a criminal complaint against a gang structure within the state called Milli Damar (National Vein). And, note, presently, anyone who says the name Milli Damar on TV eventually finds themselves detained. 

On June 25, Avci went so far as to call for the MHP to be prosecuted as an organisation.

Loyalty amid attempted coup

It is also interesting to recall how local media circulated information that Umit Dundar, then chief of the First Army in Istanbul, called Erdogan on the evening of July 15, 2016, while the coup attempt was under way.

Dundar reportedly offered protection to Erdogan if he could get to Istanbul. He was also said to have told the president to talk to Bahceli to verify his loyalty.

Dundar has denied that he spoke on the phone with Erdogan that night. However, it might be the case that it is not only some police officers who are sympathetic to Bahceli, but some soldiers as well.

Posing with militants

After his kissing-of-the-hand photo with the police chief, Bahceli posed with two militants of the Free Syrian Army (FSA/OSO), Erdogan’s jihadist organisation in Syria.

The jihadists group faces questionable prospects since Erdogan is signalling a normalisation with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Alaattin Cakici, a mafia boss released from jail on the demand of Bahceli, posed with the same OSO militants.

Providing another parallel that is suggestive of the operation against the Gulenists, Erdogan said on May 15 after meeting with his intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin and justice minister Yilmaz Tunc that no bureaucratic tutelage would be allowed.

“Tutelage” was among the key words used during the purging of the military and then the Gulenists.

On Tuesday July 23, Bahceli’s routine again took an odd turn. He held a press conference. Normally, he holds a group meeting with his MPs on a Tuesday.

Bahceli fainted last time he was at the parliament. Perhaps, he preferred to avoid the fuss at the legislature. Erdogan’s health condition is not too bright either.

During his press conference, Bahceli said that his party has compiled a list of 154 people who had spoken against the MHP on TV.

In recent years, a series of journalists and politicians have been beaten up thanks to the MHP. Since the actions of the party “mistakenly” led to the killing of Sinan Ates, such assaults have not taken place.

On July 5, Ayse Ates, the wife of the late Sinan Ates, confirmed that her husband organised the physical assaults in question on orders that emerged from MHP headquarters.

The 154 people on the list are potentially in serious jeopardy.

Dog fight stalls country

One of Bahceli’s strange remarks made during the press conference referred to how the MHP “may” vote against the stray dog bill in the parliament.

The regime has stood back watching for years while the population of stray dogs in Turkey has reached a critical level. The dogs frequently attack children. Recently, some children have been killed in such attacks.

The regime is really talented in creating a crisis and blowing the coals of what results.

Now, it aims to slaughter all the stray dogs. Erdogan is to become the biggest murderer of hounds in history.

The aim of the law is surely not to solve the problem at hand. However, it is a good item to have on the agenda to stall the country.

The CHP also loves topics such as this one that generate all kinds of heated nonsense. It has built up a sharp stance against the dog bill.

Turkish politics has again dropped everything of major importance. This time, they are fighting over dogs. It’s a Turkey classic.

The dog bill has also caught some international attention. Erdogan loves such moments. He will again show all the infidels their place. 

Although the debate over the issue has become quite ridiculous, if Bahceli moves against Erdogan’s dog bill, it will actually amount to the first such rejection since they formed their alliance.

On July 23, the parliamentary commissionapproved the dog bill. The MHP did not stop it at the commissioning stage, but it will soon move to the vote on the floor of parliament.

To conclude, it should be reiterated that an upcoming showdown between Bahceli and Erdogan is still not visible on the horizon. However, the photographs and publicity surrounding Bahceli’s recent itinerary are fuelling speculation as to whether he is building up a front.




 

Global wildfires pump out four times more CO2 than aviation sector

Global wildfires pump out four times more CO2 than aviation sector



 
Devastation after a wildfire in Slave Lake, Alberta / Mrsramsey
By by Roberta Harrington July 28, 2024

Raging wildfires exacerbated by climate change are pumping out vast quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2). This pollutes the atmosphere, raising temperatures even more and creating a fires-climate feedback loop that will only get worse, say experts. 

In northern latitudes, which are especially prone to this feedback loop, Canada and Russia are this summer suffering devastating and unprecedented wildfires.

Canada, at least, does not account to the UN for the CO2 from wildfires.

In western Canada in late July, as much as 10% of oil production was endangered by 170 wildfires, of which 53 were out of control. For Canada, the 2023/2024 winter season was the warmest on record.

As many as half of the buildings in tourist town of Jasper in Alberta in the Rocky Mountains were incinerated, with some 20,000 tourists and 5,000 residents fleeing the flames.

Queen Elizabeth II holidayed there, and Hollywood’s royalty – such as Marilyn Monroe, Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine – often frequented too.

Smoke had reached as far as Chicago.

Canada’s 2024 wildfire season – driven by hot and dry weather – may be worse than 2023, when there was billions of dollars of damage and air pollution that darkened the skies as far away as Europe and China. 

According to the respected Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland, Canada’s 2023 wildfires burned around 7.8mn hectares of forests — more than six times the annual average since 2001.

This amount of tree cover loss produced roughly 3bn tonnes of CO2 – nearly four times the carbon emissions of the entire global aviation sector in 2022, and 25% more than from all tropical primary forest loss combined in 2023.

“Due to Canada’s emissions accounting methods, most of the country’s wildfire-related emissions will not be officially reported in the UN’s global inventory, despite their substantial contribution to climate change,” said WRI.

Not all countries fail to account for wildfire-caused emissions. But Canada does. According to a 2021 report by a special advisor to Nature Canada, excluding wildfire emissions in managed forests in Canada may underestimate the country’s GHG emissions by 80mn tonnes per year (tpy).

The 2023 wildfires in Canada accounted for more than a quarter of all tree cover loss globally that year, said WRI. Québec, Northwest Territories, Alberta and British Columbia all experienced record-high tree cover loss due to fires in 2023, said the research think-tank.

“The planet is burning up and climate change is indeed a significant factor,” Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, Jonathan Wilkinson, said at a press conference earlier this summer. He said that climatologists are forecasting “an alarming but all too predictable trend. The intensity of wildfires will continue.”

Wildfires are currently blazing out of control in large parts of the western US

Another recent WRI analysis suggests that globally, forest fires are burning nearly twice as much tree cover today as 20 years ago. In northern latitudes, land surface temperatures are warming at rates roughly double the global average, says the think-tank.

Higher temperatures caused by the climate crisis desiccate the landscape and make forests more vulnerable to fire, driving lengthier fire seasons and larger fires.

As larger forested areas burn, more carbon is emitted into the atmosphere, further exacerbating climate change and contributing to even more fires as part of a fires-climate feedback loop, added the WRI.

“With climate change expected to increase annual burned area by 30-50% globally by the end of the century, wildfires will become an increasingly large source of carbon emissions, further exacerbating climate change,” said the think-tank.

Russian fires

In Russia, wildfire destruction is at nearly 5mn hectares of forest so far this summer, says the Aerial Forest Protection Service, quoted by the Moscow Times. The republic of Sakha in the Far East, which encompasses parts of the Arctic, is the worst hit.

The area devastated has increased for three years in a row. In the entire wildfire season in 2023 and 2022, blazes destroyed 4.6mn and 3.5mn hectares respectively, said Kedr Media. 

As of July 22, as many as 126 wildfires were burning in forests in 11 Russian regions of covering ​​428,726 hectares, Kedr Media also reported. Sakha accounted for the most, 64,500 hectares of wildfires in forests, then Irkutsk Oblast (5,092 hectares) and Buryatia (2,404 hectares), said the environmental outlet.

According to space monitoring data as of July 16, the acreage ravaged by ​​all fires – in forests, on steppes and in peat areas – in Russia was more than 8.8mn hectares, said Kedr. 

In 2021, record-breaking fires charred 18mn hectares of forests – let alone steppes and peat – across Russia, says the Moscow Times. The Sakha Republic was especially hard hit.

Peat fires, in drained marches, can burn for months. They can even smoulder underground through the winter, despite snow.

In the devastating wildfire season of 2010 in Russia, the country’s hottest summer in a millennium, the NGO Wetlands International estimated that 80-90% of the smog in Moscow was from nearby peatland fires, not forest fires, reported Reuters.

‘Zombie fires’ can also occur in northern Canada. In April, smouldering fires left by last year’s wildfires were threatening oil and gas wells. As many as 50 zombie fires were still burning beneath the snow near wells, according to government data analysed by Bloomberg.  

Fire emissions

Recently, the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service’s (CAMS) global fire assimilation system data showed that the June 2024 monthly total estimated wildfire carbon emissions for the global Arctic were high, at just under 8.2 mega-tonnes of carbon. Most of the activity was in Sakha, in Russia.

With values calculated up to 26 June, estimated wildfire carbon emissions for the Arctic for the month were already the third highest in the service’s data record dating back two decades.

"The Arctic has been warming at a rate well above that of the planet as a whole, said CAMS senior scientist Mark Parrington. “As a result, conditions at high northern latitudes are becoming more conducive to wildfires and a recent study shows that the northeast Arctic region, and boreal and temperate forests, have been experiencing increases in extreme wildfires.

“We witnessed this in 2019, 2020 and 2021, when the eastern Arctic and sub-Arctic regions experienced very high levels of wildfire activity, and again in 2023, especially at high latitudes in Canada," he said.  

The Arctic is ground zero for climate change, says Professor Gail Whiteman from the University of Exeter and founder of Arctic Basecamp, a team of Arctic experts and scientists.

“The increasing Siberian wildfires are a clear warning sign that this essential system is approaching dangerous climate tipping points,” she said. “What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay there – Arctic change amplifies risks globally for all of us. These fires are a warning cry for urgent action," she said.

Paris exhibition celebrates global spread of surrealism

Jennifer Rankin in Brussels
Sun, 28 July 2024 


Max Ernst: The Fireside Angel (The Triumph of Surrealism)
.Photograph: Classicpaintings/Centre Pompidou

One hundred years ago, in a tiny studio flat in a bohemian district of Paris, a former medical student turned writer set out to define surrealism “for once and for all”. In his Manifesto of Surrealism André Breton called for a new kind of art and literature fired by the unconscious, “the dictation of thought free from any control by reason, exempt from aesthetic or moral preoccupation”.

Far from settling surrealism “for once and for all”, the handwritten document was a departure point for a sprawling, subversive movement of bad dreams, haunting landscapes, fantastical alien creatures, unsettling portraits and visual tricks. Now, a century later, a major exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, opening in September, will celebrate how surrealism spread around the world, far beyond the environs of the French capital.

The Paris exhibition is the second in a sequence of five. The show opened in Brussels and will move on to Madrid, Hamburg and Philadelphia in 2025. Organisers say it is an unprecedented way to organise an exhibition: while some works and themes remain constant in each city, others change and each museum tells its own story.

Perfect, then, for a movement that always aimed to subvert traditional artistic norms.

When the Pompidou Centre last held a major exhibition on surrealism in 2002, it was characterised as an essentially European movement emanating from a group in Paris. Since then, a great deal of research by universities and museums has enlarged that view, said Marie Sarré, the curator of the show at the Pompidou Centre, the organisation that initiated the project. “This exhibition, on the centenary, aims to show surrealism in all its diversity,” she said.

“It is important to remember that surrealism was a movement that spread – and this is exceptional for an avant-garde movement – around the world, in Europe, but also the United States, South America, Asia and the Maghreb.”

What unites all these artists is Breton’s call to live by the imagination, she suggests. “There is this attention to the wondrous in everyday life. [Surrealism] wants to provoke, to shock, [to show] the wonderful aspect of everyday life that comes from consciousness or access to dreams.”

At the heart of the exhibition will be Breton’s first manifesto, with pages of the original manuscript on display, in a loan from the French national library, which acquired the document in 2021 after it was declared a national treasure.

The emblematic names of the surrealist movement will be present, with works by René Magritte and Salvador Dalí. But visitors will find less well-known figures, such as Japanese artist Tatsuo Ikeda, whose art evoked the horrors of war and the toxic consequences of Japan’s postwar reindustrialisation, and Rufino Tamayo, a Mexican painter active in the middle of the 20th century, who is credited with fusing modernism with pre-Columbian motifs in vividly coloured works.

Reflecting a growing tendency, the Pompidou Centre restores to view neglected female artists, who were long reduced to girlfriends and muses with colourful bit parts in the surrealist story, rather than complex creatives in their own right, such as Leonora Carrington, Dorothy Tanning and Dora Maar.

And it will show surrealism’s contemporary resonances, suggests Marré, citing the surrealist preoccupation with the forest as an echo of modern environmentalism. Surrealism’s anticolonial messages also feature – the Paris exhibition includes artists’ tracts against France’s 1954-62 war in Algeria.

In Brussels, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts took the concept of surrealism backwards in time, looking at the links between late 19th-century symbolists and the surrealists, long seen as separate movements.

“There was no real rupture between what happened before and after the first world war,” said Francisca Vandepitte, the curator of the Brussels exhibition, which closed in late July. “Our fundamental approach is trying to show, for the first time, the links,” she said, citing Fernand Khnopff’s austere, somewhat unsettling late 19th-century portrait of his sister as an influence on Magritte’s 1932 work The Unexpected Answer, which shows a person-sized hole in a similarly sterile-looking doorway.

Related: Keeping it surreal: my Dalí-inspired art trip to Catalonia

Many of the works that were on display in Brussels are going to Paris, although the show will continue to evolve as it tours. The Royal Museum of Fine Arts is lending one of the jewels of its collection to Paris: René Magritte’s The Dominion of Light, where a clear blue sky filled with white fluffy clouds frames a row of trees and houses shrouded in nocturnal light. “If only the sun could shine tonight,” went a 1923 Breton poem that Magritte quoted.

But “it is not the classic travelling exhibition”, said Vandepitte. Instead, similar themes will emerge in some, but not of all the museums, themes suggested by Breton’s manifesto: dreams and nightmares, night, forests, the cosmos. “Each partner puts on the exhibition, building on the richness of its own collections and heritage,” she said.

After Paris, the exhibition moves to the Fundacíon Mapfre in Madrid, which will turn the spotlight on surrealists from the Iberian peninsula, such as Dalí and Joan Miró. Then it is on to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, which will explore the heritage of German romanticism, before arriving at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in late 2025 to tell the story of surrealists in the Americas during their second world war exile.

Fleeing the Nazi advance, artists came to the US, Mexico and the Caribbean, where they encountered new influences. In Mexico, for instance, surrealists discovered traditional mythologies about volcanoes, “wonderful fodder for the surrealist mindset”, says Matthew Affron, the curator of the Philadelphia exhibition.

“Someone who sees all five versions [of the exhibition] is going to have a wonderfully varied and broad understanding both of the character of surrealist art, in terms of its themes and styles, [and] its main concerns,” he said.

Perhaps the changing nature of the exhibition is particularly well suited to surrealism in all its strange and transgressive variety. “There is no such thing as surrealist style,” Affron said. “I would say it’s really a philosophy of life, almost, and a mindset. One of the key ideas of surrealism is that we must let the imagination be freed to take us to places that we have not yet been.”

Surrealism is at the Pompidou Centre in Paris from 4 September to 13 January



PHOTO ESSAY
Thousands protest Serbia’s deal with the European Union to excavate lithium


Two woman take a selfie in front of a podium prior to a protest in Sabac, Serbia, Monday, July 29, 2024. Thousands of people rallied in several towns in Serbia to protest a lithium excavation project the Balkan country’s government recently signed with the European Union.
 (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)


BY IVANA BZGANOVIC
AP
 July 29, 2024


SABAC, Serbia (AP) — Thousands of people rallied in several towns in Serbia on Monday to protest a lithium excavation project the Balkan country’s government recently signed with the European Union.

The protests were held simultaneously in the western town of Sabac and the central towns of Kraljevo, Arandjelovac, Ljig and Barajevo. They followed similar gatherings in other Serbian towns in recent weeks.

The deal reached earlier this month on “critical raw materials” could reduce Europe’s dependency on China and push Serbia, which has close ties to Russia and China, closer to the EU. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attended the summit in Belgrade.

The deal, however, has been fiercely criticized by environmentalists and opposition groups in Serbia who argue it would cause irreversible damage to the environment while bringing little benefit to its citizens.

The biggest lithium reserve in Serbia lies in a western valley that is rich in fertile land and water. Multinational Rio Tinto company had started an exploration project in the area several years ago which sparked huge opposition, forcing its suspension.

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Earlier this month, however, Serbia’s constitutional court overturned the government ‘s previous decision to cancel a $2.4 billion mining project launched by the British-Australian mining company in the Jadar valley, paving the way for its revival.

The Serbian government’s decision to cancel the excavation plans came after thousands of protesters in Belgrade and elsewhere in Serbia blocked major roads and bridges in 2021 to oppose Rio Tinto. Those protests were the biggest challenge yet to the increasingly autocratic rule of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić.

Vucic has said that any excavation would not start before 2028 and that the government would seek firm environmental guarantees before allowing the digging. Some government officials have hinted a referendum on the issue could also be held.

Protesters who gathered on Monday in Serbian towns said they did not trust the government and would not allow the excavations to go ahead.

“They have usurped our rivers, our forests,” said activist Nebojsa Kovandzic from the town of Kraljevo. “Everything they (government) do they do for their own interests and never in the interest of us, citizens.” The crowd in Kraljevo chanted ‘thieves, thieves.’

In Sabac, protesters waved Serbian flags and held a march through the town after the rally.


A man holds an old Yugoslav Communists’ flag during a protest in Sabac, Serbia, Monday, July 29, 2024. Thousands of people rallied in several towns in Serbia to protest a lithium excavation project the Balkan country’s government recently signed with the European Union. 

A man wearing a mask attends a protest in Sabac, Serbia, Monday, July 29, 2024. Thousands of people rallied in several towns in Serbia to protest a lithium excavation project the Balkan country’s government recently signed with the European Union.


A girl reacts during a protest in Sabac, Serbia, Monday, July 29, 2024. Thousands of people rallied in several towns in Serbia to protest a lithium excavation project the Balkan country’s government recently signed with the European Union.


A woman demonstrates during a protest in Sabac, Serbia, Monday, July 29, 2024. Thousands of people rallied in several towns in Serbia to protest a lithium excavation project the Balkan country’s government recently signed with the European Union.


A man wearing a traditional Serbian hat with Palestinian flag and badge reads: “We don’t give Jadar (area with lithium)!” attends a protest in Sabac, Serbia, Monday, July 29, 2024. Thousands of people rallied in several towns in Serbia to protest a lithium excavation project the Balkan country’s government recently signed with the European Union. 

A woman with drawn four Cyrillic letters for “S” on the Serbian cross, meaning: ''Only Unity Saves the Serb’’ demonstrates during a protest in Sabac, Serbia, Monday, July 29, 2024. Thousands of people rallied in several towns in Serbia to protest a lithium excavation project the Balkan country’s government recently signed with the European Union. 

A boy waves a Serbian flag during a protest in Sabac, Serbia, Monday, July 29, 2024. Thousands of people rallied in several towns in Serbia to protest a lithium excavation project the Balkan country’s government recently signed with the European Union. 


A boy waves a Serbian flag during a protest in Sabac, Serbia, Monday, July 29, 2024. Thousands of people rallied in several towns in Serbia to protest a lithium excavation project the Balkan country’s government recently signed with the European Union. 

(AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Union for Maryland Apple workers reaches first labor deal

By Ehren Wynder


Employees at Apple's Towson, Md., store reached a labor agreement before other high-profile unionization efforts, such as Starbucks and Amazon. File Photo by Brian Kersey/UPI | License Photo

July 27 (UPI) -- The union representing workers at Apple's Towson, Md., store said it reached the first labor deal with the tech giant.

The tentative labor agreement Friday, which is the first of its kind for any U.S. Apple workers, was touted as a "historic" milestone by the union.
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The 85 retail employees represented by the International Association of Machinists union are set to vote on whether to ratify the agreement in August.

The Machinists union said the contract includes pay increases averaging 10% over the three-year term of the contract, an increase in starting pay for some job positions, scheduling protections for part- and full-time workers and a disciplinary process with "protections and accountability."

Employees also would be able to maintain their current benefits and have the option to bargain over future additions.

"By reaching a tentative agreement with Apple, we are giving our members a voice in their futures and a strong first step toward further gains," the union said a statement, adding it now plans to win the right to represent retail workers at other stores.

Workers at the Towson Apple store have been seeking to win their first contract since they voted in June 2022 to join the Machinists union. This past May, they voted to authorize a strike without providing a deadline after they accused the company of stalling negotiations.

Despite voting to unionize long before the Towson Apple workers, notable unionization efforts at Starbucks and Amazon have not yet produced labor agreements for their workers.

Apple's store in Oklahoma City is the only other one where workers have voted to unionize. Those workers, represented by the Communications Workers of America, also have not yet gotten a labor deal.

Apple owns and operates some 270 retail stores in the United States.
UK
Labour must speed up wind power expansion or miss targets, says renewables industry

Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent
THE GUAARDIAN
Sun, 28 July 2024 

RWE's Gwynt y Mor, eight miles off Liverpool Bay, off the coast of north Wales. Labour has been told it must increase the scale and funding of offshore wind auctions.Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA


Labour’s clean energy targets may already be in jeopardy just weeks after the party came to power with the promise to quadruple Britain’s offshore wind power, according to senior industry executives.

The offshore wind industry has said there will not be enough time to develop the projects needed to create a net zero electricity system by the end of the decade unless ministers increase the ambition and funding of the government’s upcoming “make or break” subsidy auctions.

A delay to Labour’s planned renewable energy rollout – which calls for a doubling of onshore wind, tripling of solar power and quadrupling of offshore wind capacity – would also risk derailing Britain’s legally binding climate ambition to be net zero overall by 2050.


“It’s crunch time,” said Damien Zachlod, managing director of the UK arm of the German energy company EnBW. “How close we get to the government’s 2030 offshore wind target depends on whatever happens in the next 18 to 24 months.”

The government may have already missed its chance to meet its 2030 target, according to Zachlod, because “the fastest that you could develop an offshore windfarm is seven years” and “more often than not it takes 10 to 12 years”.

Senior wind power executives fear the industry may fall further behind the 2030 target because the government’s summer auction for offshore wind subsidy contracts, which are paid through home energy bills, is only large enough for a fraction of the developers eager to build windfarms off the UK coast to secure a deal.

They have called on Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, to almost double the budget for the £800m auction so that more projects can secure a contract and accelerate the industry’s progress towards the 2030 target.

The intervention comes after one of the UK’s leading energy analysis providers warned that a “step-change” in government policy was required to bring forward £48bn in private spending to close the renewable investment gap needed to meet its 2030 targets.

The government set out plans last week for GB Energy, its state-owned power company, to partner with the king’s property management firm, the crown estate, to accelerate the development of enough offshore wind to power 20m homes. This is expected to benefit projects that begin generating electricity in the 2030s but do little to meet the near-term target.

Keith Anderson, the chief executive of Scottish Power, one of Britain’s biggest renewable energy investors, said that even if the government allows more developers to compete in the auction this summer there will “still be developers lining up to compete for contracts in the auction in one year’s time”.

This is partly because the previous Conservative government failed to award a single offshore wind contract in last year’s auction by setting the price too low, in what critics have called the biggest clean energy policy failure in almost a decade.

Anderson added that there was a “very low risk” of the new government saddling households with higher energy bills by encouraging more projects to be built because the cost of offshore wind is below forecasts for future energy market prices.

“There is a big opportunity here to invest in the future of the UK’s clean growth, and a lot of projects which are ready to take that up. Now is the time for the government to go faster,” Anderson said.

Nathan Bennett, the head of communications at RenewableUK, said more than 10GW-worth of new offshore wind was eligible for bids in this summer’s auction, but the current funding available would only be enough for half this capacity.

He said the green energy trade body was urging ministers to raise the budget to allow for more winning bids to “make up lost ground” from last year’s auction and create the substantial pipeline of projects needed to accelerate supply chain investment and growth in the UK.

RenewableUK is understood to have called on ministers to nearly double the £800m funding pot for offshore wind to £1.5bn in the upcoming auction. The government has also set aside £105m for a separate auction for floating windfarms, which should it raise to £464m, according to the trade group.

“We need to make the UK the most attractive business environment to secure the maximum amount of private investment in clean energy in the face of intense international competition,” Bennett said.

A government spokesperson said Miliband was “carefully considering” whether to increase the budget for the summer auction and would “confirm his decision soon”.