It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
By Karen Graham AFP June 12, 2023 Enviro Friendly cited data compiled by environmental think tank Ember to look at countries whose solar electricity capacity has grown the most over the past 15 years. - Canva
China’s non-fossil fuel energy sources now exceed 50% of its total installed electricity generation capacity.
According to Yale 360, China set a goal in 2021 for renewable capacity, including wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power to exceed fossil fuel capacity by 2025, a target that it has hit two years ahead of schedule.
By the end of 2022, China’s installed power generation capacity was 2,564.05 GW, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
And while China has devoted extensive resources to the construction of renewable energy capacity in recent years, the Chinese industry accounts for around 60 percent of all electricity demand, according to Bloomberg’s estimates, reports Oil Price.com.
Residential demand for electricity was just 17 percent in 2020. This inconsistent utilization of resources means that China’s energy consumption mix remains weighted toward fossil fuels, principally coal, Reuters reported in March 2023.
It is important to remember that power capacity refers to the maximum amount of electricity a power plant can produce under ideal conditions. It’s a measure of how much electricity a solar farm can generate at noon on a cloudless day, or how much a coal plant can produce when operating at full blast.
Because fossil fuel plants operate closer to their capacity than solar and wind plants do, the newly released figures may obscure how much electricity China is actually drawing from renewables.
PEDOPHELIA PAYMENT JPMorgan Chase agrees to settle with Jeffrey Epstein victims
MAJORITY OF PEDOPHILES ARE STR8
By AFP June 12, 2023 JPMorgan Chase agreed to settle with victims of Jeffrey Epstein as Wall Street reckons with its role in the scandal -
JPMorgan Chase reached an agreement in principle to settle a class action lawsuit brought by victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme, the two sides said Monday.
“The parties believe this settlement is in the best interests of all parties, especially the survivors who were the victims of Epstein’s terrible abuse,” said a joint statement.
It gave no financial details of the agreement, and said the settlement is “subject to court approval.”
The agreement comes on the heels of a parallel Deutsche Bank settlement announced in May, as the litigation forces Wall Street banks to reckon with their role in the scandal involving the disgraced Epstein, who died in prison in 2019.
News of the agreement came on the same day that US District Judge Jed Rakoff granted class-action certification to the claims, which were brought by plaintiff Jane Doe 1 “individually and on behalf of others similarly situated.”
In a 30-page ruling Monday, Rakoff concluded that Jane Doe 1’s fellow victims were numerous enough to qualify as a class and that the case otherwise met the requirements.
“The core of this case — plaintiffs allegation that JPMorgan supported Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking venture while it knew or should have known that venture was in operation — involves a common set of law and fact,” Rakoff wrote.
– ‘We regret it’ –
The lawfirm Boies Schiller and Flexner, which represented plaintiffs in both the Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan cases, hailed the agreement as a step towards justice.
“Taken together or individually, the historic recoveries from the banks who provided financial services to Jeffrey Epstein, speak for themselves,” said David Boies.
“It has taken a long time, too long, but today is a great day for Jeffrey Epstein survivors, and a great day for justice.”
JPMorgan Chase reiterated that it regretted its association with Epstein.
“We all now understand that Epstein’s behavior was monstrous,” said a bank spokeswoman.
“Any association with him was a mistake and we regret it. We would never have continued to do business with him if we believed he was using our bank in any way to help commit heinous crimes.”
In May in a parallel case, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $75 million to settle litigation brought by the victim.
JPMorgan began its banking services with Epstein as early as 1998, but did not cut him off until 2013.
Plaintiffs had alleged that JPMorgan either knew or should have known from 2006 that it was supporting a sexual predator, but that the bank kept Epstein as a client well beyond that period.
The case has included a deposition from JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, with questions focusing on when top officials became aware of Epstein’s conduct and why he wasn’t cut off earlier.
JPMorgan has blamed former executive Jes Staley for maintaining the relationship with Epstein. Litigation between the bank and Staley is ongoing, along with cases between JPMorgan and the US Virgin Islands, according to Monday’s joint statement.
On Friday, attorneys for the victims asked the court to order a second round of testimony from Dimon, alleging that the bank had “strategically withheld” documents prior to Dimon’s May 26, 2023 deposition that impeded their questioning.
Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 of paying young girls for massages, but served just 13 months in jail under a secret plea deal.
Later awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex, he killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019 at age 66.
Here are described two sleds, presumed to date to the time of the Clovis (Llano) archaeological culture or approximately 13,500-12,500 years ago, that were discovered at saline springs in New York state and Kentucky state. For what purpose these sleds may have been intended and why they were abandoned are addressed by referring to eastern Eurasian ethnography. The proboscidean components used in their construction may have restricted use of these sleds to ritual activities.
Résumé Dans cet article, sont décrits deux traîneaux, dont on présume qu'ils datent de l'époque de la culture Clovis (Llano), aux environs de 13500 à 12500 ans. Ces traîneaux ont été découverts au niveau de sources d'eaux salées dans les états de New York et du Kentucky. À quoi ces traîneaux ont pu être destinés et pourquoi ont-ils été abandonnés ? Ce sont les questions abordées ici, en se référant à l'ethnographie eurasienne de l'Est. Les composants proboscidiens utilisés dans leurs constructions pourraient avoir restreint l'utilisation de ces traîneaux aux activités rituelles.
Spain begins exhuming civil war victims from Franco basilica By AFP June 12, 2023 The vast hillside mausoleum was built after the civil war by Franco's regime -- in part by the forced labour of 20,000 political prisoners -
Copyright POOL/AFP Ian Vogler
Diego URDANETA
Experts on Monday began exhuming Spanish civil war victims from a huge basilica near Madrid, where the body of former dictator Francisco Franco once lay.
The move comes as Spain gears up for an early general election on July 23 in which Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez faces an uphill battle.
The team will seek to exhume the remains of 128 victims of the 1936-39 civil war from the complex at the Valley of Cuelgamuros, formerly known as the Valley of the Fallen, the democratic memory ministry said.
The aim is to “recover those bodies and deliver them to their families to give them a dignified burial,” the ministry said in a statement sent to AFP.
“This is not about politics, it is simply a matter of pure humanity.”
A laboratory has been set up in the basilica carved into a mountainside to allow the archeologists, forensic experts and scientific police to do their work.
The remains of some 33,000 people from both sides of the civil war are buried anonymously at the complex, which is topped by a 150-metre (500-foot) stone cross.
Many of the remains were moved to the site 50 kilometres (30 miles) northwest of Madrid from cemeteries and mass graves across the country without their families being informed.
While the site is ostensibly dedicated to the memory of all those killed on both sides of the war, only two graves at the basilica were ever marked: those of Franco and of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of Spain’s fascist Falange party.
The government relocated Franco’s remains to a civilian cemetery in 2019, and did the same with those of Primo de Rivera in April. – ‘Long overdue’ –
Many relatives of those buried there have long campaigned to be able to lay their loved ones to rest near their families under their own names.
“Finally, and perhaps too long overdue, Spanish democracy is providing an answer to these victims,’ government spokeswoman Isabel Rodriguez told public television.
Honouring those who died or suffered violence or repression during the civil war and the Franco dictatorship that followed has been a top priority for Sanchez, who came to power in 2018.
A so-called democratic memory law which came into effect in October 2022 aims to turn the Valley of Cuelgamuros into a place of memory for the dark years of the dictatorship.
It also promotes the search for victims who are buried in mass graves across Spain and annuls the criminal convictions of opponents of the Franco regime.
But the law has been politically divisive, with right-wing parties saying it needlessly dredges up the past.
– Long Franco dictatorship –
Opposition leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo, head of the right-wing Popular Party (PP), has vowed to repeal the law if he comes to power in next month’s election.
Surveys suggest the PP will win the snap polls but will need the support of far-right party Vox to govern.
A prominent NGO that represents victims of the Franco regime, the Association for the Reparation of Historic Memory, welcomed the exhumations.
But it deplored that families concerned “learned of the exhumation from the press and are not there.”
“The Franco family was able to carry the dictator’s body from the Valley of the Fallen on their shoulders,” it added in a tweet.
Franco ruled Spain with an iron fist since the end of the civil war intil his death in 1975, one of Europe’s longest dictatorships.
His regime was notorious for imprisoning, torturing and killing people who spoke out against his rule.
Initial Heathrow strikes suspended after new pay offer
Unions had announced 31 days of strike action over the summer months -
Planned strike action by security staff at London’s Heathrow airport later this month has been called off after unions recommended they accept a pay deal, both sides said on Monday.
The two-day walkout scheduled for June 24 and 25 risked causing misery for travellers at one of the busiest times of the year.
But the Unite and PCS unions have now urged their members to accept an offer after eight months of talks.
“We are pleased to have agreed a pay deal which unions are recommending their members to accept,” an airport spokesperson said in a statement.
“While a ballot takes place, the first weekend of strikes has been cancelled.”
The ballot to accept or reject the deal runs from Tuesday until June 23.
The deal — if approved — includes a 10-percent pay increase, backdated to January 1, and effective from July.
It will rise to 11.5 percent from October with a guarantee of an inflation-linked pay increase for 2024.
Unite confirmed that the strikes had been called off “as a gesture of goodwill” while its more than 2,000 members voted on the proposals.
But it warned that they could still walk out for 29 days over the busy summer months to August 27 if the offer is rejected.
Britain has been hit for the past year by a wave of public and private sector strikes over pay as it grapples with stubbornly high inflation and a cost-of-living crisis.
Some 1,400 security staff went on strike over 10 days as talks broke down, coinciding with the busy Easter holidays getaway in April.
Heathrow said it had “robust contingency plans” in case the unions rejected the deal, and did not anticipate flight cancellations in the event of future strikes.
46, half children, killed in ‘vile attack’ in east DR Congo
By AFP June 12, 2023 Commanders of the CODECO militia, which is accused of numerous ethnic killings in eastern DRC, pictured in Ituri in February, 2022 - Copyright AFP Birol BEBEK
At least 46 people, half of them children, were killed in a militia attack on a camp for displaced people in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where civilians are suffering increasing violence.
A militia group involved in numerous brutal ethnic killings in the area attacked the camp in northeastern Ituri province overnight Sunday to Monday, Richard Dheda, an official of the local administration for Bahema Badjere in Djugu territory, told AFP.
The Kivu Security Tracker (KST), a network of observers based in DR Congo’s restive east, counted “at least 46” dead in the Lala camp.
Community leader Desire Malodra gave the same death toll of 46, adding that 23 of them were children.
He added that the toll was still provisional as “the search continues” for victims.
A statement from the UN mission MONUSCO condemned the “vile attack”, and reported “more than 45 dead and a dozen injured.” – ‘People were burned to death’ –
The CODECO militia, or Cooperative for the Development of the Congo, claims to protect the Lendu community from another ethnic group, the Hema, as well as the DR Congo army.
“They began to fire shots, many people were burned to death in their homes, others were killed by machete,” Malodra said.
The Lala camp for displaced people is five kilometres (three miles) from Bule, the site of a UN peacekeeper base.
Ituri province is one of eastern DR Congo’s violence hotspots, where attacks claiming dozens of lives are common.
CODECO militiamen attacked an army position in the Djukoth area of Ituri province’s Mahagi territory late on Saturday, killing seven civilians.
The group is accused of the massacre of more than 60 people in a grisly machete attack in another displacement camp in Ituri.
After a decade of calm, the conflict between the Hema and Lendu communities rekindled in 2017, resulting in thousands of deaths and forcing more than 1.5 million people from their homes.
Much of eastern DR Congo is plagued by dozens of armed groups, a legacy of regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.
– UN protection –
Hundreds of thousands of displaced people in eastern DR Congo receive protection “almost exclusively” from UN troops, in one of the organisation’s largest and costliest operations in the world.
The force has a current strength of about 16,000 uniformed personnel, mainly deployed in Congo’s east — a mineral-rich region that militias have plagued for three decades.
But the UN comes in for sharp criticism in DR Congo, where many people perceive the peacekeepers as failing to prevent violence. Dozens of people were killed during anti-UN protests last year.
UN Under-Secretary-General for peacekeeping operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix, who visited a camp in Ituri recently, said that peacekeepers should withdraw from the conflict-torn central African country “as quickly as possible” yet responsibly.
Meanwhile, in the neighbouring province of North-Kivu, an attack by suspected Islamic State group-affiliated ADF rebels left eight dead on Sunday, according to local sources.
UN backs idea of creating global AI watchdog to tackle misinformation
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says such a model could be "very interesting" but notes that "only member states can create it, not the Secretariat of the United Nations".
REUTERS
Generative AI technology that can spin authoritative prose from text prompts has captivated the public since ChatGPT launched six months ago and became the fastest growing app of all time.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has backed a proposal by some artificial intelligence executives for the creation of an international AI watchdog body like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"Alarm bells over the latest form of artificial intelligence – generative AI – are deafening. And they are loudest from the developers who designed it," Guterres told reporters on Monday. "We must take those warnings seriously."
He has announced plans to start work by the end of the year on a high-level AI advisory body to regularly review AI governance arrangements and offer recommendations on how they can align with human rights, the rule of law and the common good.
But he added: "I would be favourable to the idea that we could have an artificial intelligence agency ... inspired by what the international agency of atomic energy is today."
Guterres said such a model could be "very interesting" but noted that "only member states can create it, not the Secretariat of the United Nations".
The Vienna-based IAEA was created in 1957 and promotes the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies while watching for possible violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has 176 member states.
Generative AI technology that can spin authoritative prose from text prompts has captivated the public since ChatGPT launched six months ago and became the fastest-growing app of all time.
AI has also become a focus of concern over its ability to create deepfake pictures and other misinformation.
Summit on AI safety regulation
ChatGPT's creator OpenAI said last month that a body like the IAEA could place restrictions on deployment, vet compliance with safety standards and track usage of computing power.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has also supported the idea and said he wants Britain to be home to global AI safety regulation.
Britain is due to host a summit later this year on how coordinated international action can tackle the risks of AI.
Guterres said he supported the plan for a summit in Britain, but said it should be preceded by "serious work".
He said he plans to appoint in the coming days a scientific advisory board of AI experts and chief scientists from UN agencies.
SOURCE: TRTWORLD AND AGENCIES
Homework will ‘never be the same’ says ChatGPT founder
ByAFP June 12, 2023 ChatGPT burst into the spotlight late last year, sparking huge investment but also widespread criticism - Copyright AFP/File Marco BERTORELLO
Artificial intelligence tools will revolutionise education like calculators did, but will not supplant learning, ChatGPT’s founder Sam Altman told students in Tokyo on Monday, defending the new technology.
“Probably take-home essays are never going to be quite the same again,” the OpenAI chief said in remarks at Keio University.
“We have a new tool in education. Sort of like a calculator for words,” he said. “And the way we teach people is going to have to change and the way we evaluate students is going to have to change.”
ChatGPT has captured the world’s imagination with its capacity to generate human-like conversations, writing and translations in seconds.
But it has raised concern across many sectors, including in education, where some worry students will abuse the tool or turn to it rather than producing original work.
Altman was in the Japanese capital as part of a world tour where he is meeting business and political leaders to discuss possibilities and regulations for AI.
He has regularly urged politicians to draft regulations for AI, warning “if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong”.
“The tools we have are still extremely primitive relative to tools we are going to have in a couple of years,” he said Monday, again urging safety measures and regulation.
He said he felt “positive” about new regulatory frameworks for AI after meeting world leaders, without offering details, but reiterated his fears.
“We will feel super responsible, no matter how it goes wrong,” he said.
He also repeated previous attempts to calm fears that AI could make many existing jobs obsolete, though he conceded that “some jobs will go away”.
“I don’t think it is going to quite have the employment impact that people expect,” he added, insisting that “new classes of jobs” will emerge.
“Almost all of the predictions are wrong,” he said.
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Can you trust your ears? AI voice scams rattle US
By AFP June 12, 2023 Can you trust your ears? AI voice scams rattle US -
Copyright AFP Chris Delmas
Anuj Chopra and Alex Pigman
The voice on the phone seemed frighteningly real — an American mother heard her daughter sobbing before a man took over and demanded a ransom. But the girl was an AI clone and the abduction was fake.
The biggest peril of Artificial Intelligence, experts say, is its ability to demolish the boundaries between reality and fiction, handing cybercriminals a cheap and effective technology to propagate disinformation.
In a new breed of scams that has rattled US authorities, fraudsters are using strikingly convincing AI voice cloning tools — widely available online — to steal from people by impersonating family members.
“Help me, mom, please help me,” Jennifer DeStefano, an Arizona-based mother, heard a voice saying on the other end of the line.
DeStefano was “100 percent” convinced it was her 15-year-old daughter in deep distress while away on a skiing trip.
“It was never a question of who is this? It was completely her voice… it was the way she would have cried,” DeStefano told a local television station in April.
“I never doubted for one second it was her.”
The scammer who took over the call, which came from a number unfamiliar to DeStefano, demanded up to $1 million.
The AI-powered ruse was over within minutes when DeStefano established contact with her daughter. But the terrifying case, now under police investigation, underscored the potential for cybercriminals to misuse AI clones. – Grandparent scam –
“AI voice cloning, now almost indistinguishable from human speech, allows threat actors like scammers to extract information and funds from victims more effectively,” Wasim Khaled, chief executive of Blackbird.AI, told AFP.
A simple internet search yields a wide array of apps, many available for free, to create AI voices with a small sample — sometimes only a few seconds — of a person’s real voice that can be easily stolen from content posted online.
“With a small audio sample, an AI voice clone can be used to leave voicemails and voice texts. It can even be used as a live voice changer on phone calls,” Khaled said.
“Scammers can employ different accents, genders, or even mimic the speech patterns of loved ones. [The technology] allows for the creation of convincing deep fakes.”
In a global survey of 7,000 people from nine countries, including the United States, one in four people said they had experienced an AI voice cloning scam or knew someone who had.
Seventy percent of the respondents said they were not confident they could “tell the difference between a cloned voice and the real thing,” said the survey, published last month by the US-based McAfee Labs.
American officials have warned of a rise in what is popularly known as the “grandparent scam” -– where an imposter poses as a grandchild in urgent need of money in a distressful situation.
“You get a call. There’s a panicked voice on the line. It’s your grandson. He says he’s in deep trouble —- he wrecked the car and landed in jail. But you can help by sending money,” the US Federal Trade Commission said in a warning in March.
“It sounds just like him. How could it be a scam? Voice cloning, that’s how.”
In the comments beneath the FTC’s warning were multiple testimonies of elderly people who had been duped that way. – ‘Malicious’ –
That also mirrors the experience of Eddie, a 19-year-old in Chicago whose grandfather received a call from someone who sounded just like him, claiming he needed money after a car accident.
The ruse, reported by McAfee Labs, was so convincing that his grandfather urgently started scrounging together money and even considered re-mortgaging his house, before the lie was discovered.
“Because it is now easy to generate highly realistic voice clones… nearly anyone with any online presence is vulnerable to an attack,” Hany Farid, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information, told AFP.
“These scams are gaining traction and spreading.”
Earlier this year, AI startup ElevenLabs admitted that its voice cloning tool could be misused for “malicious purposes” after users posted a deepfake audio purporting to be actor Emma Watson reading Adolf Hitler’s biography “Mein Kampf.”
“We’re fast approaching the point where you can’t trust the things that you see on the internet,” Gal Tal-Hochberg, group chief technology officer at the venture capital firm Team8, told AFP.
“We are going to need new technology to know if the person you think you’re talking to is actually the person you’re talking to,” he said.
AI does not understand traditional borders, needs regulation: Rishi Sunak
AI is one of the big themes at this year’s London Tech Week, alongside virtual reality, augmented reality, climate tech, and fintech
London: Artificial intelligence (AI) regulation, a topic that has been much debated, is poised to see decisive progress in the UK. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, while inaugurating the tenth edition of the London Tech Week on Monday, said the UK will take the lead in regulating AI. This is one of the three big missions Sunak listed, including focus on researching and building AI safeguards as well as deploying AI solutions including a £900 million investment in compute technology and £2.5 billion in quantum
.
Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (left) speaks during the London Technology Week at the QEII Centre in London, on Monday. (AP)
“AI doesn’t respect traditional national borders. So, we need global cooperation between nations and labs,” said Sunak. The UK will also host the first-ever summit on global AI safety, later this year. “I want to make the UK not just the intellectual home, but the geographical home of global AI safety regulation,” Sunak added.
AI companies are already making the first moves towards safeguards and regulation. “AI will play a critical role in shaping the future of our economy and society,” said Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder, Google Deepmind.
This definitive call for global regulation for AI comes at a time when more and more consumers facing as well as enterprise solutions rely on machine learning and generative AI. For consumers, the most exciting development has been the rise in AI chatbots, which now see millions of active users globally — examples include OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot with Google’s Bard being the latest arrival.
AI is one of the big themes at this year’s London Tech Week, alongside virtual reality, augmented reality, climate tech, and fintech. India will play a big role, something the UK too would require, in the formation of AI regulations globally. The official figures peg the import of tech from India at £20.8 billion at the end of Q4 2022, an increase of 35%, or £5.4 billion, compared with 2021.
An illustration of the interest in AI, is the fact that Bing AI chatbot clocked 100 million users within the first week, when Microsoft released it earlier this year.
“Realising the potential of world-leading digital hubs like the UK and India, we can together create a culture of innovation, pave the way for next generation of technological advancement and global challenges together,” Harjinder Kang, UK’s Trade Commissioner for South Asia, told HT.
It is history that Sunak is taking inspiration from, referencing a letter written by Charles Babbage in the 1830s to the then Chancellor, thanking him for funding the difference engine, which is how the journey of the modern computers started.
Sunak hopes AI companies and the academia will work together to develop AI standards and safeguards. “We’re going to do cutting edge safety research here in the UK,” he said. The estimated investment earmarked for an AI task force is £100 million. Even within Europe, UK attracts more tech investment than France and Germany combined, a position the country wants to leverage.
“We’re dedicating more funding to AI safety than any other government,” said Sunak.
AI companies are already making progress, with confirmation that AI companies Frontier Labs, Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, will give priority access to models for research and safety purposes, for evaluations and to better understand the risks of these systems.
“Now it is essential for both the public and private sectors to tackle this monumental challenge,” said Joanna Shields, CEO of Benevolent AI, talking about the need for regulation as well as safeguards for AI.
Any and all regulation, as well as the development of safeguards for AI, will cover not just chatbots but the larger generative AI space, including text to image tools, including the likes of Midjourney, Stability Diffusion and the recently announced Adobe Firefly integration within the popular Photoshop tool.
According to the latest estimates by Precedence Research, the generative AI market will be worth $118.06 billion globally, by the year 2032. This, up from an estimated $13.71 billion in 2023
However, generative AI-based solutions have been in the focus lately, for allowing users the tools to create fake images. Further pushing the case for regulation have also been the struggles of conversational AI, which often generates misinformation as part of search results.
Netherlands and Canada lodge joint UN complaint against Syria over alleged widespread torture of civilians
Allegations against Syrian regime include torture, murder, poison gas attacks
Netherlands and Canada have collaborated to submit a joint complaint to the highest judicial body of the United Nations against Syria.
Both countries assert that Syria has engaged in numerous breaches of international law and seek provisional measures from the International Court of Justice. Despite the lack of success in international endeavors, several national courts have managed to convict numerous officials from the regime within their respective jurisdictions.
The Netherlands and Canada jointly filed a complaint against Syria on Monday before the United Nations’ highest judicial body, alleging the regime of Bashar Assad has tortured thousands of civilians, in violation of a U.N. convention.
The pair say Syria has "committed countless violations of international law" and want the International Court of Justice to issue provisional measures ordering Damascus to halt an alleged widespread torture program against anyone opposed to the government during the country’s long-running civil war.
The Dutch first announced three years ago a plan to hold Syria accountable for what it called "horrific crimes," asking Assad’s government via diplomatic note to enter into negotiations under the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Canada joined the process in 2021.
The 1984 treaty requires parties to enter into mediation before bringing the dispute to The Hague-based court. The complaint says that the process has failed.
The Netherlands and Canada say there is ample evidence that the regime has engaged in systemic gross human rights violations against its own people since 2011. "Syrian civilians have been tortured, murdered, disappeared, attacked with poison gas or lost everything when they fled for their lives," Foreign Affairs Minister Wopke Hoekstra said in a statement.
The complaint cites the findings of the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism on Syria, the United Nations body tasked with investigating crimes during the conflict. Attempts to create a special tribunal to prosecute those crimes, however, have been blocked by Russia. President Vladimir Putin has backed Assad during more than a decade of violence and Russian mercenaries have been accused of indiscriminately bombing civilians.
The pressure has mounted on the international community to do something to bring Syria to account as the country moves to normalize diplomatic relations. Last month, the Arab League reinstated Syria, ending a 12-year suspension from the regional union.
"We’ve been looking creatively at ways to bring justice to the victims," Toby Cadman, an international human rights lawyer who is working on the case for the Netherlands, told The Associated Press.
While international efforts have so far been unsuccessful, national courts have convicted a number of regime officials in their own courts. Invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction, Germany has convicted several former regime officials for torture, crimes against humanity and war crimes. All of the men had applied for asylum in Germany.
Last month, French judges cleared the way for three former senior members of the regime to stand trial for crimes against humanity for killing two Syrian-French dual nationals. The trio are not in French custody.
The Dutch and Canadian complaint is only the second time a case alleging violations of the 1984 convention has been brought at The Hague-based court. In 2009, Belgium filed a complaint against Senegal, arguing that by refusing to prosecute the exiled former president of Chad, Hissene Habre, the West African country was failing to meet its obligations under the treaty.
Three years later, the ICJ ordered Senegal to prosecute Habre without delay. He died of COVID-19 in 2021 while serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity for the deaths of some 40,000 people.
Libya green group battles to save remaining forests
June 12, 2023
QASR AL-QARAHBULLI, LIBYA (AFP) – War-ravaged Libya is better known for its oil wealth than its forests, but environmentalists hope to save its remaining green spaces from logging, development and the impacts of climate change.
The “Friends of the Tree” group works to raise awareness about green areas around the capital Tripoli that are quickly disappearing because of drought, human activity and desertification.
“Man has destroyed forests” and much of the vegetation, said the group’s leader Khalifa Ramadan, who has been working in agriculture and gardening for 40 years.
At his farm in Tajura, an eastern suburb of Tripoli, Ramadan has planted eucalyptus, palm and laurel trees, which the group plans to replant around the capital.
The group meets weekly to launch media campaigns and carry out activities to confront “the dangers facing Tripoli and other coastal cities”, said Ramadan.
Rainfall is scarce in the largely desert country, which is only starting to recover from the years of bloody conflict that followed the 2011 uprising which toppled dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
The group, which includes dozens of agronomists, horticulturists and volunteers, ultimately would like to revive a “green belt” project from the 1950s and ’60s that has withered during decades of dictatorship, war and turmoil. Back then, Libyan authorities dipped into the country’s wealth to plant forests across an area stretching from Tripoli to the port city of Misrata, 200 kilometres to the east.
Strict laws at the time aimed to control urban expansion and soil erosion and to stop the desert from sweeping into Tripoli, while also opening new areas for agriculture.
Today Libyan state institutions, weakened by rivalries and continued insecurity, have struggled to bring stable governance, including on protecting the environment.
In recent years, at least 1,700 criminal cases have been identified involving activities such as unauthorised logging and illegal construction, says the agricultural police.
In Garabulli, a coastal area east of Tripoli – famed for its pristine white sands and its centuries-old eucalyptus trees, acacias and wild mimosas – tree trunks litter the ground next to some illegal constructions, recently demolished on judicial instruction.
“The green belt has become the target of numerous violations over the past few years,” said spokesman for the agriculture police General Fawzi Abugualia.
The police unit is ill-equipped to deal with all these challenges, but has nevertheless managed to score some points, he said.
With help from other security services, the agriculture police “have put a stop to these criminal acts”, he said, referring to the destruction at Garabulli.
James Cameron feels he ‘walked into an ambush’ in Argentine lithium dispute
June 11, 2023
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) – Movie director James Cameron says he feels he “walked into an ambush” this week during a visit to Argentina in which he believes there was an attempt to use his image as an environmentalist to give a positive spin to lithium mining operations despite Indigenous opposition.
Cameron, the director of “Avatar” and “Titanic,” said Friday he would now devote attention and money from his Avatar Alliance Foundation to support Indigenous communities opposing lithium operations in South America.
“Ironically, the outcome of this is that I am now aware of the problem and we will now assist through my foundation with the issue of Indigenous rights with respect to lithium extraction,” Cameron told a group of journalists gathered in his hotel room in the capital of Buenos Aires Friday evening.
Cameron came to Argentina this week to speak at a sustainability conference in Buenos Aires on Friday.
“I believed that I was coming here to make a kind of motivational speech about environmental causes,” Cameron said.
As part of the visit, Cameron travelled to northern Jujuy province Thursday to visit a large solar power plant with Governor Gerardo Morales and says he was never told lithium would be part of the discussion.
Director James Cameron walks in Purmamarca, Jujuy province, Argentina on Thursday. PHOTO: AP
After Cameron’s visit, Morales wrote a message on social media thanking Cameron for the visit, writing that the province was looking to “transform the energy matrix” through projects such as the solar power plant and “lithium extraction.”
The director received a letter that a group of 33 Indigenous communities from the area had written to him a few days earlier asking him to either cancel his trip or meet with them so they could explain their long-held opposition to lithium mining projects they say affect their land rights and negatively impact the environment.
“I feel like I walked into an ambush,” Cameron told journalists after meeting with local environmentalists, saying he was unaware of controversy involving lithium projects. “I feel like I was put into an optic that had meaning that I wasn’t aware of.”
Although Cameron says he “doesn’t know the exact architecture” of how the “ambush” happened, he feels there was an effort to use his image not just because of his support for environmental causes but also because of the overarching message of “Avatar.”
“‘Avatar’ is the highest grossing film in history. It is about the conflict between an extraction industry and the rights of Indigenous people,” Cameron said. “If you could generate an optic where I appear to be approving of lithium mining, then you have a mandate of some sort or an approval of some sort.”
In their letter to Cameron, representatives of the Indigenous communities made a direct reference to “Avatar” to appeal for the director’s support.
“Jujuy is Pandora, and it is under the threat of the greed of the mining industry, and we are the Na’vi,” reads the letter, referring to the fictional world where “Avatar” takes place and its inhabitants who battle against colonizing miners.
Before leaving Argentina, Cameron met with Verónica Chávez, the representative of one of the Indigenous communities from Jujuy.
Argentina is the fourth-largest producer of lithium and is part of what is known as the “lithium triangle,” an area that contains a large share of the world’s proven reserves of the metal and also includes neighbouring Chile and Bolivia. Demand for lithium is soaring amid the transition to renewable energy around the world and the growth in electric vehicles that are powered by lithium batteries.
