Man arrested after federal officials say he sought to destroy Nashville power site


The Nashville, Tenn., skyline is reflected in the Cumberland River July 11, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

BY KIMBERLEE KRUESI
 November 4, 2024

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Department of Justice said Monday that federal agents have arrested a Tennessee man with ties to white nationalist groups who they say attempted to use what he believed to be an explosive-laden drone to destroy a Nashville energy facility.

According to court documents, Skyler Philippi, 24, is accused of planning to attach several pounds of C-4 explosives to an aerial drone with the intent of destroying an electric substation in Nashville.

The newly unsealed court records reveal that Philippi in July allegedly told a confidential source who was working with the FBI that he wanted to attack several substations to “shock the system.” That confidential source later introduced Philippi to an undercover FBI employee, who began to collect information about Philippi’s plan with other undercover agents.

“Philippi researched previous attacks on electric substations and concluded that attacking with firearms would not be sufficient,” wrote Angelo DeFeo, an FBI special agent, in the court records released Monday. “Philippi, therefore, planned to use a drone with explosives attached to it and to fly the drone into the substation.”

Philippi allegedly told undercover law enforcement officials that he was affiliated with several white nationalist and extremist groups, including the National Alliance, which calls for eradicating the Jewish people and other races. Such extremist groups increasingly have viewed attacking the United States’ power grid as a means of disrupting the country.

The U.S. grid includes more than 6,400 power plants and 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines that span the country.

In September, Philippi provided the undercover officials with excerpts of his so-called manifesto, which focused heavily on preserving the white race.

On Saturday, Philippi and undercover employees drove to his intended Nashville launch site and prepared to fly a drone that authorities say Philippi believed had 3 pounds of C-4 attached to it. The material had been provided by the undercover employees, according to court documents.

Law enforcement agents arrested Philippi shortly after arriving at the site.

“As charged, Skyler Philippi believed he was moments away from launching an attack on a Nashville energy facility to further his violent white supremacist ideology – but the FBI had already compromised his plot,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

A federal public defender was appointed to represent Philippi and a request for comment was sent to the attorney on Monday. Philippi is expected to appear in court on Nov. 13.

C-4 explosive attack plotted against energy facility to ignite race war: feds

Matthew Chapman
November 4, 2024 

RAW STORY

Crime scene tape (Shutterstock.com)

A 24-year-old white supremacist has been charged with plotting to use weapons of mass destruction on an energy facility in Nashville, Tennessee, federal prosecutors said in a news release Monday.

Skyler Philippi, a so-called "accelerationist" who believes the destruction of society must be hastened to bring about race war, planned to use a drone equipped with explosives to target an electric substation, telling a confidential source such an attack would "shock the system" and bring down large parts of the power grid, the Justice Department said.

Philippi was also flagged earlier this year in a Raw Story exclusive investigation into online networks radicalizing young people into racial extremist groups. He was an administrator of a white nationalist Telegram channel known as the Primal Aryan Warlord Gang, or PAWG, which celebrated white supremacist violence and racially motivated mass killings.

"In September 2024, Philippi drove with undercover employees (UCEs) of the FBI to an electric substation previously researched and targeted by Philippi, and Philippi conducted reconnaissance of the substation," prosecutors said in the release. "While driving, Philippi ordered a plastic explosive composition known as C-4 and other explosives from the UCEs. Philippi later purchased black powder to be used in pipe bombs, which Philippi intended to use during the attack on the substation."

“If you want to do the most damage as an accelerationist, attack high economic, high tax, political zones in every major metropolis,” Philippi allegedly texted an informant, adding, “Holy s---. This will go up like a f---in fourth of July firework.”

Philippi was busted after he performed a ritualistic prayer to Odin and drove to the operation site with informants, where he was apprehended by federal agents.

“Those fueled by hate and inspired to violence by racial or ethnic bias pose a grave threat to our national security,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said of the case. “We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to identify, disrupt, and hold accountable those who seek to wage such hate-fueled violence, which has no place in America or anywhere else.”

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Hundreds of UK police sacked for misconduct

A BUSHEL OF BAD APPLES


By AFP
November 4, 2024

Last year London police said 1,071 officers were or had been under investigation for domestic abuse or violence against women and girls - Copyright AFP/File Philip FONG

Nearly 600 police officers in England and Wales were sacked in the year to March 2024, figures showed Tuesday, as police chiefs battle to restore public confidence after a string of scandals.

The sackings — a 50 percent rise on the 394 dismissed the previous year — include 74 officers kicked out of policing for sexual offences and misconduct.

Another 18 officers were dismissed for possessing indecent images of children, according to the figures compiled by the College of Policing, an independent public body.

The reputation of policing in the UK has been left in tatters since the 2021 kidnap, rape and murder of marketing executive Sarah Everard by a serving officer in London’s Metropolitan Police who was later jailed for the rest of his life.

In another shocking case, an officer from the same unit last year received 36 life sentences for a “monstrous” string of 71 sexual offences, including rapes against 12 women.

The most common reason for dismissal, with 125 cases, was dishonesty, according to the latest figures. Another 71 were forced out for discriminatory behaviour.

Assistant Chief Constable Tom Harding of the College of Policing said it was “hugely disappointing to see the conduct of a number of officers falling far below the standard that we set… and which the public rightly expects”.

But he said the number being sacked was also an indication of the “effective, robust procedures in place to identify and deal with these officers swiftly”.

“Their behaviour tarnishes policing and erodes public trust,” he added.

In January 2023, the Met revealed that 1,071 officers in the 34,000-strong force had been under investigation for domestic abuse and violence against women and girls.

England and Wales has a police workforce of more than 147,000 across the 43 forces.

Greenland seeks to capitalise on ‘last-chance tourism’


By AFP
November 5, 2024

A woman looks out from a tour boat as it sails away from a glacier between Maniitsoq and Sisimiut in Greeceland - Copyright AFP James BROOKS

A frozen landscape with breathtaking views, Greenland wants to attract more tourists, but its remote location and fragile environment — which make it a unique destination — also pose challenges.

“The effects of global heating are at their most pronounced in the Arctic,” Michael Hall, a University of Canterbury professor and tourism expert, told AFP.

Global warming is accelerating “the loss of Arctic sea ice in summer, (as well as) the melting of permafrost, ice shelves and glaciers”, he said, referring to elements that contribute to the island’s uniqueness.

Across Greenland, locals are witnessing first-hand the effects of global warming.

On the southwestern coast, in Maniitsoq, the sea ice has not been solid enough to walk on since 2018. Residents have also seen it shrink from year to year, in addition to less abundant snowfalls.

Tourists are nonetheless awestruck by the vistas.

“It’s terra incognita,” said Amy Yankovic, a 55-year-old American tourist.

The Texan native travelled for almost 24 hours to get to Greenland, taking three connecting flights.

Tourism accounts for around eight percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations, most of which is attributed to transportation.

There is “a kind of ‘last-chance tourism’, where visiting these endangered sites is about wanting to see them before they disappear”, said Emmanuel Salim, a geography lecturer at the University of Toulouse in France.

He said similar destinations such as Churchill in Canada — known as the “polar bear capital of the world” — “have tried to position themselves as places for ‘learning’ about the environment”.

But while such destinations can raise awareness about better environmental practices, their carbon footprints continue to rise, he lamented.

Developing tourism in a fragile environment is a tricky balancing act.

“Mitigation of the impacts of global heating on the Arctic is a global responsibility,” said Hall, adding that “current mitigation attempts are greatly inadequate.”

Greenlandic authorities insist they want a prudent development of the tourism sector, in order to create jobs.

“In recent years we’ve seen that young people have started to become tour operators,” Maniitsoq mayor Gideon Lyberth told AFP.

“We’re very, very happy, because young people have been leaving here for Nuuk, to live there, but now they’re coming back,” he said.

“Clearly such developments will usually be seen as a good idea, at least in the short term,” Hall said.

Greenland eyes tourism takeoff with new airport runway


By AFP
November 5, 2024


Passengers disembarking at the airport of Nuuk, Greenland, which will soon the capacity for international flights - Copyright AFP Jason Redmond

Camille BAS-WOHLERT

A new runway at Greenland’s Nuuk airport that can accommodate international flights is expected to lift the tourism sector, at the risk of inundating the Arctic island’s infrastructure and fragile ecosystem.

To get to Greenland’s capital, travellers have had to fly from Iceland or by transiting through Kangerlussuaq, a former US military base in the north with the only runway big enough for international flights to land.

The airport in Nuuk will finally have the capacity to welcome bigger planes from November 28.

Another new runway is due to open in Ilulissat, north of Nuuk, in 2026.

“In the past, it was very difficult to travel to Greenland, and the new airports will completely change the infrastructure to get here,” airport spokesman Milan Lund Vraa told AFP.

Home to about a third of the Danish autonomous territory’s 57,000 residents, Nuuk will have to boost its hospitality capacity.

“There will be so many (tourists) that there will not be enough places for them,” predicted Gideon Lyberth, mayor of the town of Maniitsoq a little north of Nuuk.

He hopes his town will benefit from a rise in visitors coming to admire the island’s pristine fjords, icebergs and untouched wilderness.

The number of tourists travelling to Greenland has increased by nine percent per year in recent years, Lund Vraa said.

But Nuuk will need more hotel rooms by 2027 if the number of tourists grows by five percent per year, according to a recent report.

New restaurants will probably also be needed, with Nuuk currently home to just 15 eateries.

Tourism numbers could grow even more than that, with new upcoming flights from Denmark and North America, including a twice-weekly direct flight from New York to Nuuk.

The new runway “represents an enormous opportunity for travellers keen on adventure and who want to be the first to visit a new and unique destination,” Heather Kelly, director of research at the Adventure Travel Trade Association, told AFP.



– ‘Venice of Greenland’ –



Dubbed the “Venice of Greenland” with coloured houses built on a mountainside overlooking the water, Maniitsoq is home to 2,500 inhabitants.

Hopes are high here for a tourism boom.

“We need it. In my town, there are fewer and fewer people, people are moving to bigger towns with more jobs,” said a sailor named Michael who declined to give his last name.

Locals are cautiously dipping their toes into the tourism business.

“In recent years we’ve seen that young people have started to become tour operators,” said Lyberth, the town’s mayor.

In 2023, the tourism sector brought in 1.9 billion Danish kroner ($278 million), accounting for almost 10 percent of Greenland’s gross domestic product.

A full-scale tourism boom, similar to the one Iceland has had over the past 15 years, will take time.

“All of the infrastructure needs to be in place beforehand, and that’s not something that will happen in a day,” said Taatsi Fleischer, a spokesman for Arctic Circle Business, which supports entrepreneurs in western Greenland.

But do Greenlanders really want a tourism boom?

Feelings are lukewarm towards the massive, heavily-polluting cruise ships increasingly descending on the island, and legislation is being considered to ban them from some areas.

The tourists that pour out of the ships “walk around town … and don’t talk to people” before leaving a few hours later, said the sailor Michael.

He prefers travellers who fly in for longer stays.



– Disappearing landscapes –



Arctic tourism is being affected by climate change.

Skiing, hiking and cruise ships “are directly impacted by the shrinking ice sheet and the associated processes that affect access to sites”, said Emmanuel Salim, a geography lecturer at the University of Toulouse in France.

“In order to develop a destination like this today, you have to think about the image and the reality of a future post-Arctic landscape, in which snow-capped mountains, polar bears and ice floes — which have shaped the image of these places — no longer exist.”

Locals are aware of the need to develop tourism slowly.

“I don’t think Greenland is ready for mass tourism, mostly because of the infrastructure we have,” said Nuuk resident Paaliit Molgaard Rasmussen.

“The hospital is understaffed and the walking paths aren’t maintained,” she said.

Boosting tourism will only work if the local economy is integrated, University of Canterbury professor and tourism expert Michael Hall said.

“If you are going to develop tourism infrastructure it needs to be seen as part of long-term development, with it also being high quality to make it resilient to environmental change,” he said.

New Hampshire hamlet tied in first US Election day votes


ByAFP


PublishedNovember 5, 2024


Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tied in the village of Dixville Notch's first-in-the-nation vote - Copyright AFP Joseph Prezioso

Joseph Prezioso

Voters in the US hamlet of Dixville Notch launched Election Day in the first minutes of Tuesday with a tied vote, mirroring the incredibly close national polls in the White House race.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump each got three ballots in the tiny community in the northeastern state of New Hampshire which for decades has kicked off Election Day at the stroke of midnight Monday — hours before the rest of the country’s polling stations open.

The Democratic vice president and Republican ex-president have been battling in a tense and exceptionally close race, with opinion polls largely tied.

To a gathered crowd of journalists, the vote opened with a rendition of the US national anthem performed on an accordion.

Electoral laws in New Hampshire allow municipalities with fewer than 100 residents to open their polling stations at midnight and to close them when all registered voters have fulfilled their civic duty.

Dixville Notch’s residents voted unanimously for then candidate Joe Biden in 2020, reportedly only the second presidential hopeful to get all the votes since the midnight voting tradition began in 1960.

Most polling stations on the East Coast will open at 6:00 or 7:00 am (1100 or 1200 GMT) on Tuesday.

Dixville Notch voters handed a surprise unanimous victory to Republican White House hopeful Nikki Haley in New Hampshire’s primary in January.

Haley ultimately quit the race due to an insurmountable Trump lead — but Tuesday’s vote shows that three voters opted not to back the billionaire in the general election.

VASSAL STATE

Myanmar junta chief visits key ally China


By AFP
November 5, 2024

This photograph taken and released in August, 2024 by the Myanmar Military Information Team shows Myanmar's military chief Min Aung Hlaing (right) meeting with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Nyapyidaw. China is a key ally of the military junta - Copyright MYANMAR MILITARY INFORMATION TEAM/AFP/File -

Myanmar’s embattled junta chief arrived in China Tuesday — his first reported visit since leading a coup in 2021 — but analysts say the invitation is only a lukewarm endorsement from his key ally and could backfire.

Min Aung Hlaing was in the southwestern city of Kunming for a summit of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) — a group including China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia — starting Wednesday.

The senior general will meet Chinese officials “to develop and strengthen economic and multi-sectoral cooperation”, the junta said on Monday.

When the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected civilian government in 2021, Chinese state media refused to describe it as a coup, preferring “major cabinet reshuffle”.

China has stood by the junta since, even as others shun the generals over their brutal crackdown on dissent which opponents say includes massacring of civilians, razing villages with air and artillery strikes.

Richard Horsey, Crisis Group’s senior Myanmar adviser, said Min Aung Hlaing had been lobbying for an official invitation ever since the coup, as a public show of support.

But Beijing has stressed the regional focus of the Kunming gathering, saying it wanted to consult “all sides” against “a background of a weakening global recovery and geopolitical turbulence”.

“While this (invitation to the summit) still implies recognition as head of state, it does not have the same diplomatic weight as a bilateral invitation to visit Beijing,” Horsey told AFP.



– Battlefield losses –



Ming Aung Hlaing’s trip comes with the junta reeling from a devastating rebel offensive last year that seized an area roughly the size of Bosnia — much of it near the border with China.

Analysts say Beijing is worried about the possibility of the junta falling and suspicious of western influence among some of pro-democracy armed groups battling the military.

Myanmar is a vital part of Beijing’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative, with railways and pipelines to link China’s landlocked southwest to the Indian Ocean.

“Beijing has now made clear its intentions for the Myanmar military to succeed,” said Jason Tower of the United States Institute of Peace.

China has been reluctant to give a clear show of official recognition since the coup, Crisis Group’s Horsey said, but this may be changing.

“China has pivoted to greater support for the regime — not because it is better disposed with the regime or its leader, but out of concern at a disorderly collapse of power in Naypyidaw,” he said.



– Deep mistrust –



But the relationship is wracked by longstanding mistrust.

The junta’s top brass are wary of China, insiders say — stemming from Beijing’s support for an insurgency waged by the Communist Party of Burma in the 1960s and 1970s.

China gave its tacit backing to last year’s rebel offensive, military supporters say, in return for the rebels dismantling online scam compounds in territory they captured.

Those compounds were run by and targeting Chinese citizens in a billion-dollar industry and major embarrassment for Beijing.

But the rebels pushed further and in August captured the city of Lashio — miles from the scam compound heartland and home to a regional military command.

The fall of Lashio, home to around 150,000 people to the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) was a step too far for Beijing, said Tower.

China has since cut electricity, water and internet services to the MNDAA’s traditional homeland on the border with Yunnan province, a source close to the group told AFP.

A visit to China is “unlikely to resolve Min Aung Hlaing’s internal troubles,” said Tower.

“If anything, it could create new problems, as the general is likely to be perceived as making major economic and geo-strategic concessions to Beijing in exchange for Chinese assistance,” he told AFP.

One demand from Beijing will be speeding up elections the junta has promised to hold, said Tower — polls China’s foreign minister announced Beijing’s backing for in August.

Opponents of the polls say they will be neither free nor fair while clashes continues across the country and with most of the popular political parties banned.


The marble ‘living Buddhas’ trapped by Myanmar’s civil war


By AFP
November 4, 2024

Moving marble across areas divided by Myanmar's civil war has become an expensive, difficult and dangerous mission, leaving artisans without raw material

 - Copyright AFP Sai Aung MAIN

Lynn MYAT

Sculptor Aung Naing Lin has spent decades carving Buddha statues to help guide Myanmar’s faithful — but getting the marble he needs from rebel-held quarries in the midst of civil war is now a perilous task.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has been mired in bloody conflict since the military toppled the government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, terminating a 10-year experiment with democracy and sparking a widespread armed uprising.

In recent months, opponents of the military have advanced with rocket and drone attacks on Mandalay — the country’s second-biggest city, with a population of 1.5 million.

The rebels have also seized the hillside quarries that have for generations provided the marble that adorns Mandalay’s palaces and monasteries, as well as the shrines in ordinary homes.

Now, moving the precious stone and roughly carved statues by truck across the divide of the civil war, from rebel to junta-held territory, is expensive, difficult and dangerous.

“The situation around the Madaya township (where the quarries are located) is not very good,” Aung Naing Lin told AFP at his noisy workshop in Mandalay, his face and hair speckled with white dust.

“It is not easy to go, and we cannot bring the stones back.”

Surrounded by dozens of blank-faced Buddha statues waiting to be given eyes, ears and lips, Min Min Soe agreed.

“Sales are not that bad, but the challenge is bringing the statues here,” he said.

“We can sell only the statues we have here and we cannot bring new raw statues in.”

The owner of another workshop, who did not want to be named, said associates of his were recently arrested when taking a shipment of marble from rebel-held Madaya.

“They were detained by the local military column and were asked how they brought the stones out from the village as that area was controlled by the PDF,” they said.

“People’s Defence Forces” are units made up of former students, farmers and workers who have left their lives behind to take up arms and oppose the junta’s coup.

There are dozens of PDFs across the country, and they have dragged the junta into a bloody stalemate.

The junta has designated them as “terrorists”, and contact with them can bring years in prison.

“Later, they released the people who had been detained and gave the stones back,” the workshop owner said.

“It’s like a warning to all. We dare not to bring stones from the village under this situation.”


– Madaya quarries –


The quarries of Madaya have long been interwoven with the cultural and religious history of Myanmar.

In the 1860s, following two disastrous wars with the British, then-king Mindon commissioned craftsmen in Mandalay to transfer Buddhist scriptures from palm leaf manuscripts onto 720 blocks of solid marble to ensure they survived any further destruction.

The stone also resonates with the military that has ruled Myanmar for much of its history since independence from Britain in 1948.

In 2020, it sanctioned the building of a 25-metre (82-foot) high statue of the Buddha made from Madaya marble to adorn its custom-built capital Naypyidaw.

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing declared the statue finished last year and a visit has since become a stock feature of the itineraries of the few foreign delegations that visit the isolated junta.


– ‘Living Buddhas’ –


While the fighting continues north of Mandalay, Min Min Soe and others work to put the finishing touches on the dozens of roughly hewn statues.

Their forefathers used chisels, but nowadays, craftsmen use drills to etch everything from Buddha’s face, the folds in his robe, fingernails and the lotus flower he sits on.

The laborious final stages of smoothing the rough edges are done by women using sandpaper, said Min Min Soe.

“Women are better at this as they are more patient,” he said.

A finished statue around 25 centimetres (10 inches) high fetches between 100,000 – 200,000 Myanmar kyat ($50-$100 at the official exchange rate), he said.

Outside one of the workshops on the busy street, workers packed a sitting Buddha statue into a wooden protective frame before shipping it off to a customer.

Min Min Soe says looking after the dozens of his creations still in stock helps him find his own peace amid rumours of an attack on Mandalay.

He considers them “living Buddhas”.

“I clean the statues at 4 am every day… This is not only for my business but also to gain merit,” he said.

“I want them to be clean and good-looking no matter if they are sold or not.”

SPACE/COSMOS

World’s first wooden satellite launched into space


By AFP
November 5, 2024

LignoSat, a satellite made from wood and developed by scientists at Kyoto University and Sumitomo Forestry, shown during a press conference in May, 2024 - Copyright JIJI PRESS/AFP/File STR

The world’s first wooden satellite has blasted off on a SpaceX rocket, its Japanese developers said Tuesday, part of a resupply mission to the International Space Station.

Scientists at Kyoto University expect the wooden material to burn up when the device re-enters the atmosphere — potentially providing a way to avoid generating metal particles when a retired satellite returns to Earth.

These particles may negatively impact both the environment and telecommunications, the developers say.

Each side of the box-like experimental satellite, named LignoSat, measures just 10 centimetres (four inches).

It was launched on an unmanned rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Kyoto University’s Human Spaceology Center said.

The satellite, installed in a special container prepared by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, “flew into space safely”, it said in a post on X.

A spokeswoman for LignoSat’s co-developer Sumitomo Forestry told AFP the launch had been “successful”.

It “will arrive at the ISS soon, and will be released to outer space about a month later” to test its strength and durability, she said.

Data will be sent from the satellite to researchers who can check for signs of strain and determine if the satellite can withstand extreme changes in temperature.

“Satellites that are not made of metal should become mainstream,” Takao Doi, an astronaut and special professor at Kyoto University, said at a press conference earlier this year.

Fake X accounts promote COP hosts UAE, Azerbaijan

By AFP
November 4, 2024

The disinformation efforts come as the UAE and Azerbaijan were chosen to host the COP28 climate change summit last year and forthcoming COP29 slated to kick off on November 11 in Baku - Copyright AFP/File Eva HAMBACH

Théo MARIE-COURTOIS, Claire-Line NASS

The social media platform X has for months been aflush with praise for United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan in posts shared by hundreds of profiles — and all found to be fake.

Analysed by AFP over several days, the large-scale operation, powered by artificial intelligence, points to a sophisticated, coordinated influence campaign not unlike those carried out by Russia in recent years — though its instigator and objectives remain unclear.

“French people, (if you are) disappointed and weary of endless debate, it is time to think about an alternative, such as the United Arab Emirates, where business conditions are really attractive,” one sham account wrote.

It is part of a network of more than 2,300 active accounts in a dozen languages, including English, French and German, according to the collective Antibot4Navalny which monitors influence operations on X and teamed up with SourcesOuvertes to identify the campaign. Some boast up to a few hundred followers.

To accrue visibility and credibility, the bogus profiles comment on posts by mainstream media, local news organisations, and influential accounts.

While they discuss a breadth of topics, what they have in common is their fervent acclaim for the UAE and Azerbaijan, and particularly their flourishing economies.

The profiles also agree on a “desire to change elected officials, established institutions and status quo” in the West, with the Emirati model depicted as “the most successful alternative”, said Antibot4Navalny in a series of posts published on X last week.

Some convey political messages, such as “Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan”, and Baku “has the right to claim its occupied territories”, referring to the sovereignty conflict over the disputed region, while others support Azeri athletes.

Former Soviet republics Azerbaijan and Armenia have seen decades of war and tension over the breakaway ethnic Armenian province, recognised as part of Azerbaijan.

The international community has been ramping up pressure for an agreement between the neighbours before the COP29 summit later this month.

– COP hosts –

The disinformation efforts come as the UAE and Azerbaijan were chosen to host the COP28 climate change summit last year and forthcoming COP29 slated to kick off on November 11 in Baku.

While environmental protection NGOs have criticised the decision to have the oil-rich nations organise the conferences, the accounts have gloated over the initiative.

Nothing new under the sun. Shortly before the launch of COP28 in Dubai last year, dozens of false users cropped up and exuded a refreshing optimism about the role of the Gulf state in promoting climate action.

Now with COP29 around the corner, a wave of hundreds of accounts promoting its Azeri host has washed over the social platform, Northwestern University in Qatar Associate Professor Marc Owen Jones has found.

Yet this time, the tactic is more insidious — boasting more elaborate profiles that claim varied “interests” and credentials ranging from “farmer” and “environmental activist” to “football fan”.

The goal of the campaign “is to legitimise the account, so that it can be picked up by potentially real people, who have an audience and a sounding board”, said Christine Dugoin-Clement, researcher at IAE Paris-Sorbonne.

– ‘Recurrent themes’ –

To seem more “real”, the profiles also tailor the content they publish to the target country — for France, some bots openly slam President Emmanuel Macron’s policies or react to statements by political figures. The posts also target Spain and Germany.

Emirati authorities did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

While its impact is difficult to measure, the suspicious activity grabbed the attention of French authorities, security sources told AFP.

They reported that “the modus operandi in use requires significant financial means that simultaneously allow for the management of numerous accounts, the adaptation of posts to targeted content and countries, as well as the adoption of behaviours to get past the X platform’s moderation policy”, one source said.

Yet clues suggest the posts are not authentic.

Not only did the analysed accounts become active over the summer, despite having been created months earlier, but they also discussed “recurrent themes, some of which appear across multiple languages”, Antibot4Navalny told AFP.

Many used AI-generated images and the same account often reused the same phrases. Words out of place or in another language, such as Chinese characters in a message in French, sometimes slipped through the cracks.

Using AI “reduces the entry cost of this type of operation”, said Dugoin-Clement.

In November 2023, Viginum, a French government agency set up to detect digital disinformation campaigns, linked a campaign to smear the 2024 Paris Olympics to Azerbaijan.

Amid devastating floods in Spain, activists rally against Shell’s record profits

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead

2 November, 2024

LEFT FOOT FORWARD 

‘It’s time for Shell to pay up’


Devastating floods in the Valencia region of Spain have claimed at least 155 lives this week. Scientists are pointing to climate change as a major factor exacerbating the disaster.

“No doubt about it, these explosive downpours were intensified by climate change,” said Dr Friederike Otto from Imperial College London, who leads an international group of scientists who try to understand the role that global warming plays in these type of events.

Amid harrowing images of the flooding in Spain, news broke of Shell’s $6 billion profits for the third quarter, surpassing forecasts by 12 percent.

On October 31, activists gathered outside Shell’s headquarters in London in protest of the fuel giant’s quarterly profit announcement. Armed with banners reading ‘Make polluters pay,’ and ‘Shell stop sucking the life out of us,” a range of speakers addressed the crowd, including Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a high-profile climate justice activist from the Philippines.

The campaigners are calling on Shell to pay up for what they describe as the “devastation caused to communities by their oil extraction and operations,” and are urging for funding for a “rapid, just transition away from fossil fuels.”

Joanna Warrington, spokesperson for Fossil Free London, which organised the event, said they are “seriously scared of the destruction Shell is causing.”

“From the communities in the Niger Delta whose water has been poisoned by Shell’s operations, to flash floods in Spain which are happening right now due to climate change, it’s time for Shell to pay up.”

The protest ended the ‘Make Polluters Pay’ week of action, which included climate workshops and a campaign on social media highlighting Shell’s excessive profits. Activists encouraged the public to contact their MPs, pushing for a government commitment to levy taxes on polluters to fund a loss and damage fund.

“The climate crisis is here. Spain is flooding and people are dying whilst Shell makes £4.6 billion in profits. How is this fair? The fossil fuel industry needs to pay up for the damage they have caused,” the activists posted on X.

Image credit – X screen grab Make Polluters Pay

Behind the huge loss of life in Valencia

The death toll from floods in Spain has now risen to over 150 people. Scientists observe that the climate crisis is making rainstorms of this kind more extreme and more frequent, and Greenpeace Spain are demanding that fossil fuel companies should pay for the damage wrought. However, the loss of life suffered in the eastern region of Valencia may also be the product of short-term posturing by right wing politicians. Sue Lukes reports.

All eyes are on Valencia, the Spanish region where over 150 people have died in the flash flooding on 29th October 2024. Were they killed by the floods? Or by corrupt governments, climate denial and the far right? 

Valencia has been plagued by corruption for decades. For over 20 years, the Partido Popular was in power, and Valencia was the focus of many corruption investigations and trials: the Gurtel plot, the Brigal, Terra Mitica, Valmor, Imelsa cases among others.

Almost all the region’s PP presidents were named or charged in them. Some 130 PP officials faced court proceedings.  In 2018 the electorate had enough and a new regional government formed by PSOE, the Spanish Socialist Party, and Compromis, took office, facing debts of €5,400m caused by waste on megaprojects, some associated with the corruption. 

But in May 2023, the PP got back into power in Valencia, this time in alliance with VOX, the far right party, known for its policies and statements demonising migrants, feminists, LGBT people, and its hostility to government expenditure on welfare and infrastructure and those in favour of devolution or autonomy within the Spanish state. It dismisses action on climate change as “the green religion” and voted against the Spanish law on it in 2021.

Four months after taking power, the new Valencia regional PP/Vox government passed an emergency decree closing down the Valencia Emergencies Unit that had been created by the PSOE government before it to ensure a rapid regional response to emergencies. On November 29th 2023, the Valencian PP tweeted proudly that it was the “first organisation created by Ximo Puig (former PSOE president) closed down by Carlos Mazon (current PP president).” 

The PP and Vox had demanded the Unit be shut down before it was even set up, calling it a “chiringuito” (a beach bar, so a vanity project) of the Socialist government. Once they got into government, Vox was given the post of Minister of Justice, and so the fate of the Unit, which was within that ministry, was sealed. 

The Spanish weather service issued a red alert at 7:04 on October 29th, saying the danger from floods was such that people should only travel if strictly necessary. But with no coordinated regional response to the emergency, the Valencian government activated its flood emergency plan only at 19:30, after the River Magro had already burst its banks and several towns were already flooded and people trapped.

Local employers also ignored the weather report and insisted that people stay in their workplace, which ensured that many were travelling home as the worst floods hit.  The Valencia government sent out a general alert via mobile phones to the whole population only at 20:12, by which time many were already trapped, and, as we now know, scores of people died in the floods. 

Sue Lukes was an Islington Labour Councillor from 2018 to 2022 and is a writer and consultant on migration issues.

Image: Cars lay scattered and piled on top of each other after a mudslide in Valencia today. (APpic)     

https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2024/10/30/flooding-kills-51-in-spains-valencia-region/ Licence: Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0

REST IN POWER

John Rose: an inspiration for revolutionaries

John’s greatest contributions to the struggle were to the fight for a free Palestine

John Rose

By Ken Muller
Saturday 02 November 2024

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue
Obituaries

John Rose’s death this week is a huge and cruel loss to his family, friends, comrades and all who hope and struggle for a better world. But his life—and the outstanding contributions he made to understanding the obstacles to winning such a world and how to overcome them—are an inspiration.

John was born into a Jewish family in Harrogate and grew up as a Zionist. In 1966 he started at the London School of Economics (LSE) and joined the LSE Socialist Society. Shortly afterwards, he met Tony Cliff, the Jewish revolutionary and founder of the International Socialist tradition

After hearing Cliff and the South African revolutionary Ronnie Kasrils speak at a teach-in on Israel’s Six Day War, John learned a profound lesson. “During those six days I learned that Zionism and Jewish humanism were incompatible. I never looked back,” he later recalled.

It took great courage to withstand the pressure of family ideology and break with Zionism. After intense discussions with Cliff, John joined the predecessor of the Socialist Workers Party, the International Socialists (IS).

John played a leading role in the battles fought out at the LSE against the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa and Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia.

Kasrils had recruited John, along with other LSE IS students and some Communist Party worker members, to go to South Africa. He put his life and liberty in jeopardy when he went to South Africa on behalf of the African National Congress (ANC). He carried leaflets against the apartheid regime and explosives which would scatter the leaflets far and wide in public places.

If caught, John would have got ten years in jail. His immense modesty is witnessed by the fact that for decades he never told even his closest friends. Indeed, during the ten years we shared a flat together in Kentish Town in the 1980s, he never once mentioned it to me.

After leaving the LSE, John became west London IS organiser. He was later central to organising against the fascist National Front (NF) following the racist killing of Gurdip Singh Chagger in the summer of 1976 and the police murder of Blair Peach in Southall 1979.

John joined Socialist Worker as a journalist in 1978. Two years later, he succeeded Cliff as editor and was elected to the Central Committee, the national leadership of the SWP. In 1982 he left full-time work for the SWP.

He went on to work for many years at Southwark College organising strikes and on several occasions walkouts against the 2003 Iraq war.

John’s greatest contributions to the struggle were to the fight for a free Palestine and the Jewish question. Sadly, in the last part of his life, he had to follow this from his bed in a care home following a stroke early in 2022.

His 1986 pamphlet, Israel: the Hijack State named Israel a terrorist state and pointed to Egypt’s working class as key to a socialist revolution across the region. His unconditional defence of the Palestinians’ right to resist played a key role in winning a generation of Egyptian activists to socialist politics.

It helped to sow the seeds for the foundation of a new revolutionary socialist movement in Egypt in the 1990s. John’s arguments also reached wider audiences in the Arab world through translations of some of his key works, such as The Myths of Zionism.

John was a pioneer when it came to the issue of Zionism and the Jewish question. Like most post-war Jewish students, he’d been brought up to believe Israel was a necessary haven if Jews were to avoid another Holocaust. But he quickly took on board Cliff’s rejection of Zionism as the remedy for antisemitism.

He was also an innovator when it came to the broader question of identifying who were the Jewish people. Were they a race, a religion, or, in revolutionary Abram Leon’s words, a “people-class”? How could one account for their survival from ancient times to the modern world? Wasn’t socialism the real answer to antisemitism, as the brief heroic experience of workers’ democracy in the Russian Revolution demonstrated?

John remained passionately committed to the struggle for workers’ power throughout his life and continued to break new intellectual ground until a few years before his death. His last major writing was his forthcoming book. It analyses the successes and failures of independent workers’ movements in the struggles to overthrow tyrannies in Poland, South Africa, Iran and Brazil. Like all his work, it was resonant with the voices of ordinary people fighting to change the world.

As Jim Nichol reflected yesterday, “John was his own man. There was no telling him what to do or think. He queried and interrogated political ideas and strategy wherever they came from. He was thoughtful. He would voice his opinions.”

Like all his family and close friends and comrades, I’m going to miss John enormously.

But he will have expected us to continue the struggle—to mourn, maybe, but then to organise. Our love, solidarity and best wishes go to John’s partner and comrade, Elaheh and the rest of their family.

Thank you to other comrades who have contributed to this obituary.