WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine reports Russian attacks in east, progress in south

Ukrainian forces are resisting a Russian onslaught in eastern areas of the front and face difficulties in the northeast, but are making progress near the shattered city of Bakhmut and in the south, the deputy defence minister said on Sunday.

Russian accounts of the front line said Moscow's forces had repelled Ukrainian attacks near villages ringing Bakhmut and in areas further south, particularly the strategic hilltop town of Vuhlear. They also reported success in containing Ukrainian troops in the northeast.

Reuters could not confirm any of the battlefield accounts.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, presented awards to troops in the port of Odesa and vowed: "The enemy will in no way dictate its terms in the Black Sea!"

Ukraine's military have been engaged in a counter-offensive to recapture areas of the east and south seized in Russia's 16-month-old invasion. The initial Ukrainian advances have focused on securing clusters of villages in the south.

Deputy Ukrainian Defence Minister Hanna Maliar, writing on Telegram, said "everywhere things are hot" in the east, with Russian forces advancing near the beleaguered cities of Avdiivka and Maryinka in Donetsk region.

"In addition, the enemy has started an attack in the Svatove area," she said, referring to a region of northeastern Ukraine where Russian forces have been active. "Fierce fighting is taking place...The situation is quite complicated."

Maliar reported "partial success" south of Bakhmut, taken in late May by Russian forces after months of fierce fighting.

And on the southern front, where Ukrainian forces have recaptured several villages, Maliar said there had been "gradual advances" in two areas.

"Our troops are facing intense enemy resistance, remote mining and the redeployment of enemy reserves, but are tirelessly creating the conditions for the fastest possible advance," she wrote.

General Oleksander Tarnavskiy, responsible for the southern front, said Ukrainian forces were "systematically destroying the enemy" and reported the deaths of several hundred Russian forces over then last 24 hours.

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Zelenskiy and Ukraine's commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhniy, have reported steady, if slow, advances in the campaign. The president acknowledges progress is limited, but says the drive is "not a Hollywood movie" with instant success.

Ukraine has also had to endure persistent Russian air attacks on Ukrainian cities, though the Kremlin denies attacking civilian targets.

Russia launched an overnight drone attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region on Sunday after a 12-day break, with air defence systems destroying all the weapons on their approach.

 

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

CIA sees Ukraine crisis as unique ‘opportunity’

America’s top intelligence official has openly cheered the alleged internal discord that he claims is rising in Moscow because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, saying the CIA has been given an historic opportunity to recruit spies and undermine President Vladimir Putin’s government.

CIA director William Burns claimed on Saturday at a Ditchley Foundation lecture in the UK that “disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership beneath the steady diet of state propaganda and practiced repression.”

“That disaffection creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at CIA, at our core a human intelligence service. We’re not letting it go to waste,” he added.

Burns noted that the CIA launched a Telegram channel in May to recruit military officers, government officials and scientists who can provide intelligence on the Russian leadership and economy. “We had 2.5 million views in the first week, and we're very much open for business,” he said.

Moscow insisted at the time that the spy agency was simply “wasting American taxpayers’ dollars” as attempts to divide Russian society from abroad won’t work, according to Ambassador Anatoly Antonov.

Washington is betting that the Ukraine crisis will stir enough division to help turn potential Russian intelligence sources against President Putin. Burns made his speech one week after private military contractor Evgeny Prigozhin ended his brief rebellion against Russia’s top generals. The aborted mutiny was far less “bloody” than US officials had expected, according to CNN.

Burns has insisted that Washington played no part in the uprising, but argued that Prigozhin’s short-lived revolt was “a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin's war on his own society and his own regime.”

Putin said last week that the Russian people reacted to the crisis by showing unity, spoiling the hopes of foreign enemies that the nation would be “split asunder and drown in a bloody feud.”

Putin’s approval rating among Russians was little changed at 81% after the aborted insurrection, even according to the independent pollster Levada Center, which had been listed as a foreign agent in Russia since 2016.

** Ukrainian commander complains about French tanks – AFP

A Ukrainian military commander has reportedly raised concerns that light combat tanks supplied to the former Soviet republic by France aren’t suitable for attacks against Russian defensive lines because their thin armor can easily be pierced by artillery shells and other weapons.

Touted earlier this year by Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov as a “sniper rifle on fast wheels,” the French AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicle has proven “impractical” during Kiev’s current counteroffensive against Russian forces, Agence-France Presse (AFP) reported on Sunday. One four-man crew has died because of the tank’s thin armor, which can easily be pierced by Russian weaponry, a Ukrainian battalion commander told the media outlet.

“Unfortunately, there was one case when the crew died in the vehicle,”said the 34-year-old Ukrainian major, whom AFP identified only by his call sign, Spartanets. “There was artillery shelling, and a shell exploded near the vehicle. The fragments pierced the armor, and the ammunition set detonated.”

Reznikov was filmed in April riding in an AMX-10 RC, which was among the Western weaponry rushed to Kiev this spring for a long-awaited counteroffensive that finally began in June. “These fast, modern machines with powerful guns will aid us in liberating our territory,” Reznikov said in a Twitter post thanking French President Emmanuel Macron and Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu. “This is what liberty, equality and brotherhood look like.”

However, Spartanets said the French tanks have proven to be ineffective in front-line assaults. “The guns are good, the observation devices are good, but unfortunately, there is thin armor, and it is impractical to use them in the front line,” he said.

Just sending out the vehicles so they get destroyed, I consider it is impractical and unnecessary because it’s primarily a risk for the crew.”

The Ukrainian commander added that the AMX-10 RCs also has been plagued by breakdowns in their gear boxes, possibly because of their use on dirt roads. Kiev’s troops received one month of training in France, which wasn’t adequate to master operating the vehicle, he said.

The 20-ton AMX-10 RC travels on wheels, rather than tracks. It was developed in the 1970s for armed reconnaissance and attacks on tanks. The French military is in the process of replacing its fleet of AMX-10 RCs with the more modern EBRC Jaguar.

Thousands of Ukrainian troops have been killed in the counteroffensive, which has failed to breach Russia’s defensive lines. Dozens of Western-supplied armored vehicles have been destroyed, including German-made Leopard tanks and AMX-10 RCs, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The New York Times reported last week that 17 of the 113 Bradley fighting vehicles supplied to Kiev by the US have been damaged or destroyed.

 

Reuters/RT

Sudan clashes intensify with no mediation in sight

Clashes between Sudan's army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) intensified on Sunday, as the war in the country's capital and western regions entered its 12th week with no attempts in sight to bring a peaceful end to the conflict.

Air and artillery strikes as well as small arms fire could be heard, particularly in the city of Omdurman, as well as in the capital Khartoum, as the conflict deepens a humanitarian crisis and threatens to draw in other regional interests.

The RSF said it brought down an army warplane and a drone in Bahri, in statements to which the army did not immediately respond.

"We're terrified, every day the strikes are getting worse," 25-year-old Nahid Salah, living in northern Omdurman, said by phone to Reuters.

The RSF has dominated the capital on the ground and has been accused of looting and occupying houses, while the army has focused on air and artillery strikes.

Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan last week called on young men to join the fight against the RSF and on Sunday the army posted photos it said were of new recruits.

The Sudanese Doctors Union accused the RSF on Saturday of raiding the Shuhada hospital, one of the few still operating in the country, and killing a staff member. The RSF denied the accusation.

The war has also hit cities in the western Kordofan and Darfur regions, in particular the westernmost city of El Geneina, where the RSF and Arab militias have been accused of ethnic cleansing.

The Combating Violence Against Women Unit, a government agency, said on Saturday it had recorded 88 cases of sexual assault, which it said was a fraction of the likely real total, in Khartoum, El Geneina, and Nyala, capital of South Darfur, with victims in most cases accusing the RSF.

Talks hosted in Jeddah and sponsored by the United States and Saudi Arabia were suspended last month, while a mediation attempt by East African countries was criticised by the army as it accused Kenya of bias.

Last week, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy on the country's Sovereign Council Malik Agar expressed openness to any mediation attempts by Turkey or Russia, though no official efforts have been announced.

 

Reuters

Decree 33 of 1977 saw to the birth of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on April 1 of that year through the merger of the Nigerian National Oil Corporation and the Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel. The main purpose was for it to add value to the nation’s hydrocarbon resources “for the benefit of the nation’s economy…”

NNPC’s Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt Refineries, among others, were built solely for the “benefit” of the Nigerian economy. Completed and commissioned in 1980, the Kaduna Refinery was meant to be a modern conversion refinery having two parts: 50,000 barrels of fuel plant and another 50,000 barrels lubes plant for the production of lubricating oil blendstocks and waxes and bitumen.

The Warri Refinery, commissioned in 1978, was built to process 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day. In 1987 it was upgraded to process 125,000 barrels per day. Mainly, it was supposed to add value to some refinery by-products such as propylene rich stock and decant oil.

There are two refineries in Port Harcourt. The old one was commissioned in 1965 with a capacity of 60,000 barrels per day while the new refinery commissioned in 1989 has an installed capacity of 150,000 barrels per day.

Unfortunately, this is just on paper as Nigeria imports fuel rather than produce for local consumption and for export.

At one point in this country, NNPC was Nigeria’s feeding bottle because it was in charge of Nigeria’s main source of livelihood, the one commodity that provides nearly all our foreign exchange inflows.

However, the audited annual reports and financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2018, for the NNPC and its 20 subsidiaries and business divisions, signed by the group managing director of NNPC, Mele Kyari, and the chief executives of the various subsidiaries showed that the three refineries recorded a combined loss of N154 billion while Kaduna refinery also recorded zero revenue for the group.

Details showed that Kaduna refinery spent N24 billion in direct costs to record zero revenue and an operating loss of N64 billion for 2018, as against N2 billion revenue and N112 billion loss the year before.

A breakdown of the direct costs and administrative expenses showed that it incurred N447.7 million in Training Expenses, Security expenses of N230 million, Communication expenses of N37.3 million, and Consultancy fees of N843 million.

For the Warri Refining Company, the audited financial statement showed that the company earned N1.98 billion as revenue while it incurred N12.74 billion as cost of sales, resulting in a gross loss of N10.57 billion and an operating loss of N45.39 billion.

The Port Harcourt Refining Company’s recorded revenue of N1.45 billion in 2018 is swallowed by expenses of N24.04 billion, a gross loss of N22.58 billion.

In simple words, these three refineries lost almost N160 billion and earned about N3.5 billion in 2018.

Interestingly, NNPC had a total staff strength of 6,621 as of April 20, 2020, whose salaries were in billions – they earn stupendous salaries and are among the best paid in the country. Its directors alone pocket billions in emoluments. A director in NNPC can earn more than N33 million a year. A breakdown of the payments made to directors at the Kaduna Refinery alone showed that total employee cost was put at N23 billion in 2018. This includes salaries and wages, death benefits, administrative expenses, etc.

NNPC’s salary structure is such that an entry-level worker can have four times the salary of another entry worker in other sectors. Therefore a barely passed degree holder who secured employment there can have four times the salary of a first-class graduate who is employed as a teacher elsewhere.

Apparently, instead of being there “for the benefit of the nation’s economy”, NNPC is just there for the benefit of less than 7,000 privileged Nigerians. No wonder, only the well connected get employed there. In truth, the NNPC is a burden Nigeria can ill afford to continue shouldering.

In the build-up to the last election, Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, at a town hall meeting with Kaduna State ward, local government and state party leaders, said that the NNPC had failed to serve the purpose for which it was established in 1977 and promised to sell it if elected.

He lamented that Nigeria, one of the biggest producers of crude oil, still imports refined products for local consumption at exorbitant prices to the detriment of the common man. Atiku was of course vilified but an organisation filled with fat cats can cause a lot of propaganda damage to anyone who wants to wean it off its feeding pipe.

Nigeria and NNPC remind me of a donkey and salt story I read many years ago. There was a man who had a donkey and used it to transport some bags of salt to the market in another village half a day’s journey away or something like that.

Halfway to the market, there was a bridge over a small pond. One day, the donkey accidentally fell into the pond. When it came out of the pond, its load was lighter because almost half of the salt had dissolved in the water and so it happily moved on. If donkeys could whistle, that donkey must have whistled happily all the way to the market.

The next day, the now enlightened donkey ran towards the bridge and jumped into the pond and came out to continue the journey, its burden easier to bear. It repeated this the next day, which made the salt trader wisen up to his donkey’s game. He then came up with a solution. The next day he loaded his bags on the donkey as usual and they started on their journey. On getting to the spot, the donkey saw the pond and, as usual, it jumped in with relish. However, this time around it came out grunting, for the load on its back had tripled in weight. The salt trader had loaded cassava flour (garri) instead of salt on the donkey. Since that day, the donkey carefully avoided falling into the pond again.

Nigeria is trudging under the weight of the NNPC and it needs to shed this weight. But who will bell the cat?

Employment Slots

When did we descend this low as a nation? Since when have appointments and even admissions to government institutions become property to be shared?

This practice is well known, even if not accepted by helpless Nigerians. One cannot get a federal job except if a member of the National Assembly or head of a ministry, department or agency who gets slots, slots in one’s name. This practice is replicated at the state levels by state counterparts of the aforementioned. Traditional rulers, too, get their own share and, depending on their national status, even get at the federal level. Some of these “beneficiaries” even take theirs to the markets and sell to the highest bidders.

Unfortunately, this illegal practice, which has no respect for merit, serves more to dampen the spirit of the active youth and deprives them of hope in the future. Hope is what makes one work hard; without it, people lose the zeal to put in their best and they psychologically feel alienated from society.

Such a class of people ultimately become disenchanted with the system, feel betrayed by their leaders and never ask what they can do for their country. They become idle and indolent, and an idle mind is the devil’s playground. So they readily form the recruitment base for all types of crimes. Some may even take up arms against a country they see as having consigned them to the backwaters of society.

This breeds the discontent and restiveness we see all over the country and gives rise to the ‘them’ and ‘us’ schism that is dangerous to societal peace.

Members of the legislature and executive may fall on the excuse that their constituents inundate them with CVs. However, it is also true they started the whole untidy business while trying to compensate loyal ‘boys’.

We were recently regaled with the drama of Mr Festus Keyamo and lawmakers in the House of Reps over this “sharing” formula. The lawmakers were not satisfied with 15% slots in the federal government’s determination to give temporary jobs to 1000 people per local government. Nigerians ever in search of heroes hailed Keyamo. But the truth is that the executive, ever wily and always painting the legislature as the devil’s incarnate, wanted to hijack the remaining share.

A few days later, Keyamo, however, accompanied his senior minister back to the lawmakers to apologise for his behaviour. Didn’t anybody tell him that after such grandstanding, the honourable thing was to resign rather than go back to his vomit?

It is high time we build competitiveness and confidence in our youth by encouraging them to work hard and reap the reward of working hard irrespective of who they are or where they come from. It is the only way for a nation to develop and Nigeria can only develop when we begin to promote hard work and merit.

This was published July 13, 2020 but still relevant.

** Hassan Gimba is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Neptune Prime.

 

Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan claimed her first Diamond League win of the season in the women’s 100m hurdles on Sunday night.

Amusan won the hurdles — which took place at the Olympic Stadium in Stockholm — with an impressive time of 12.52 seconds.

The Nigerian athlete defeated Sarah Avalanche of Ireland, who finished second in 12.73 seconds, while Pia Skrzyszowska of Poland claimed the third spot in 12.78 seconds.

On Friday, Amusan came second behind Puerto Rico’s Jasmine Camacho-Quinn at the Lausanne Diamond League.

The reigning world champion and record holder finished the 100m hurdles with a season-best matching time of 12.47 seconds.

The 26-year-old Commonwealth Games champion will defend her title at the World Athletics Championship later this year in Budapest.

Amusan had a stellar 2022 where she delivered brilliant performances at the Diamond League, Commonwealth Games, and World Athletics Championships.

She became the first Nigerian world champion after she clocked a wind-aided 12.06 seconds — ineligible as a world record because of +2.5 meters per second strong wind.

The sprinter consolidated her feat with a gold medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games before retaining her Diamond League title to put a brilliant wrap on her season.

She was nominated for the 2023 Laureus World Breakthrough of the Year award in February.

The award recognises individuals and teams from the world of sports along with sporting achievements throughout the year under review.

 

The Cable

Not a day goes by without someone telling me that they have an idea for the next big thing. Now, it could very well be that those people are right. 

But, nine times out of ten, they haven't done any research to actually determine if their idea is doable. Here are five questions founders ask themselves when deciding whether to move forward with a startup idea.

1. Has anyone done it before?

I've spoken about this countless times, but before you write one line of code, do market research.

Figure out if someone has done it before you. Were they successful? Can your idea compete with theirs?

Many entrepreneurs like to skip competitive analysis, but without it, the chances of success are zero. Your million-dollar idea might be awesome enough that many people have already done it.

2. Who is your target audience?

Great, so you have an idea. Now, who needs this product? If you can't identify and define your target audience, you won't be able to decide on features or how to market the product later on.

An idea is just an idea until you build it and someone buys it. 

3. Is it a 'must-have' or a 'nice-to-have'? 

This one is crucial. If you're building something that's just nice to have, by definition, it'll be less successful than something that is a must-have.

That's not to say that people don't buy things for convenience. They do. But, perhaps consider slightly pivoting to add something to your product that people feel they can't live without.

4. How big is the market?

So, you've determined that the market is not too saturated and that there is a target audience for your product, great. Now ask yourself how big that audience is.

It's simple math. Think about the unit economics here. How many products do you need to sell to achieve profitability? Is that a number you can achieve? If not, perhaps consider going back to the drawing board.

If you find that the market is too small and not enough people will buy this thing, well, you know what to do.

5. How much capital will I need? 

This one is debatable. Think about your costs and your burn rate. How much money do you need in order to transform this idea into a business?

It's a chicken-and-egg situation here. You need money to build a product, but you need a product to raise money.

So ask yourself, can you build a minimal viable product with little capital? If not, you might find yourself struggling to keep your head above water with both time and money wasted. 

An idea is just an idea. If you think you can just run with it without preparation, you're in for a wake-up call.

 

Inc

Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has empowered telecommunications companies (Telcos) to deactivate inactive subscribers on their networks after six months of inactivity.

This is one of the high points of the new guidelines approved for Telcos by the NCC that would take effect any moment from now.

According to the new guidelines, if the inactivity of a subscriber persists for another six months, the subscriber may lose the number, except for a network-related fault inhibiting an RGE.

“A subscriber’s line may be deactivated if it has not been used, within six months, for a Revenue Generating Event (RGE), and if the situation persists for another six months, the subscriber may lose their number, except for a network-related fault inhibiting an RGE,” the guidelines stipulated.

To recover their lines, the commission said subscribers must provide “proof of good reason for absence and are at liberty to request for line parking.”

The commission however said on credit alert while on call, telcos would be expected to send “a single short-beep to the call initiator, two minutes, and at 30 seconds to termination of the ongoing call.”

NCC added that low credit announcement to be played while the call is being originated in a situation where the call cannot last up to 30 seconds.

The commission said the new guidelines were in accordance with section 57 of the NCC Act to allow stakeholders to make contributions to the policy.

The new NCC guidelines, titled, ‘Draft Quality of Service Business Rules’, stipulate the minimum quality and standards of service, associated measurements, and key performance indicators for measuring the quality of service.

In the document, NCC directed telcos to attend to customers within 30 minutes upon arrival at any of their service centres across the country.

“For customer care centres, waiting time to be physically attended to by relevant staff at customer care centres is 30 minutes. The licensee shall provide means of measuring the waiting time, starting from the time of arrival at the premises,” according to the document.

The commission also said telcos must ensure that customers could speak to a customer care representative within five minutes when they call a telco’s helpline.“Lines should not be more than three times; maximum number of rings before a call is answered by either an IVR machine or a live agent should not be more than five; and where a customer decides to speak to a live agent, the maximum duration allowable on the queue/IVR should be five minutes before answer,” NCC said.

“In exceptional cases where a live agent may be unavailable within five minutes to answer the call, a customer should be given an option to hang up to be called back within a maximum time of 30 minutes. Customer care lines that can be accessible through 21 free access numbers and if one number, then it should accommodate multiple other network calls at the same time,” NCC further said.

 

Thisday

A new paper published in the European Journal of Risk Regulationconsiders the danger from existential terrorism, defined as acts that threaten the existence of humanity. The authors highlight what they term ‘spoiler attacks’ involving AI or other new technology, which might enable a group with limited resources to cause unprecedented destruction.

“I don't expect existential terrorism to be at the top of global agendas, nor do I believe it should be,” Zachary Kallenborn, one of the report’s, authors told me. “But global discourse is clearly changing around existential risk.”

Kallenborn is a Policy Fellow at the Schar School of Policy and Government, an officially proclaimed U.S. Army 'Mad Scientist', and a national security consultant. The paper is part of a special issue on long-term risks and special governance, with the unexpected effects of emerging technology being a key consideration.

“Technology is definitely bringing more power to the people,” says Kallenborn. “The open question is how much capability is really needed to generate existential harm.”

Kallenborn notes that unlike state actors, terrorist groups generally lack capacity to build effective weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear warheads. The best-known apocalyptic group, the Aum Shinrikyo cult, carried out several research projects including work on biological warfare. But they were forced to scale back their ambitions, and the cult's final effort was a nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 which caused fourteen deaths and affected thousands more. This was an appalling total, but still far short of the group’s apocalyptic goal.

Rather than developing a superweapon themselves, a modern terrorist group could carry out a form of sabotage, a spoiler attack, to cause a cataclysm.

For example, terrorists could leverage the potential risks in advanced AI research, an area which which some warn carries “risk of extinction,” and leading to calls for strict safeguards on research. Rather than building their own super-intelligent AI, terrorists might carry out a spoiler attack to break through the safeguards preventing an AI from being developed beyond a certain stage or released. This might be carried out remotely via hacking, on the spot by recruiting or subverting researchers, or by an armed intrusion into a research facility.

Spoiler attacks might also target biological research or nanotechnology projects, both areas where high levels of safeguarding are required. The authors note that new tools such as CRISPR, rapid DNA sequencing and DNA/RNA synthesis mean that there are now far more groups working on potentially hazardous biological projects. The unproven lab leak theory that Covid-19 escaped from a Chinese research facility could be a blueprint for a spoiler attack.

A spoiler attack breaching safeguards will not necessarily bring about the end of the world, or even cause casualties. A super-AI might be entirely benevolent, and a virus might be relatively harmless, or easily brought under control. Escaping nanotechnology might not bring about the sort of world-ending gray goo nightmare that technologists fear and commentators, including now-King Charles have warned about. But a spoiler attack is a low-cost approach with a small but significant chance of triggering a global catastrophe. It is a risk that governments need to be aware of.

“To combat existential terrorism, governments should focus on incorporating terrorism-related risks into broader existential risk mitigation efforts,” says Kallenborn. “For example, when thinking about artificial super intelligence risks, governments should think about how terrorists might throw a wrench in their plans or simply ignore safeguards.”

This is not so very different to the requirement that nuclear power stations need to be robust enough to withstand terrorist attack, except that the threat is broader and the stakes even higher.

“Governments should dedicate resources to more effectively characterizing and assessing the threat and response options,” says Kallenborn. “That's not a big investment.”

It might be argued that the risk of existential terror attacks has receded as millennial cults have now declined. The 90s saw a slew of such groups obsessed with the end of the world. In some cases these groups were involved with loss of life on a large scale, including Aum Shinrikyo, Heaven’s Gate and the Branch Davidians. These days such groups much less visible, but that may be because they are now harder to recognize.

Gary Ackerman, an associate professor and associate dean at the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany and the report’s other co-author, told me that the many of the conspiracy-minded, internet-based movements of today are modern incarnations of the same philosophies.

“There are several ideologies that foresee doom, whether these are environmentally-based or technology-based,” says Ackerman. “A lot of the more modern movements are also more syncretic in that they tend to blend, often in a contradictory manner, a variety of strains of thought...Many of these groups are simply lumped in with all the other far-right extremist groups, when they actually have a much more apocalyptic outlook that encompasses many of the worldviews of previous cults.”

As the paper notes, world-ending terrorists might be motivated by something other than religion, such as extreme environmentalism. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement seeks to phase out humans, and it is a small step from there to genocide to save to planet. The authors also mention Strong Negative Utilitarianism, the philosophical view that human suffering can best be ended by ending humans.

Existential terror may sound like the stuff of Hollywood thrillers rather than real life, something for people to worry about in the far future. But it would be a mistake to ignore it.

“There are lots of uncertainties exactly when the threat might grow to something that is significant,” says Ackerman. “But if we don’t start at least thinking about it and monitoring the threat fairly regularly, it might be too late to do anything about it whenever the inflection point is reached.”

Until recently, a global pandemic was also considered a theoretical risk, one which experts said was possible but only happened in the movies. Now we know how such threats can easily become reality, perhaps existential terrorism will get the attention it needs.

 

Forbes

Elon Musk is temporarily limiting the number of tweets people can read.

Musk, who is the CTO and owner of Twitter, said Saturday the move was to address "extreme levels of data scrapping & system manipulation."

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted that verified accounts would be able to read 10000 tweets a day and unverified accounts would be able to read 1000 tweets a day. Newly created unverified accounts will be limited to 500 tweets a day. Musk initially announced stricter limits, but he changed it within hours.

He did not mention when the restriction would be lifted.

The announcement comes after users reported they were met with error messages that read "Cannot retreive tweets."

Thousands said they were unable to access the social media site, according to website Downdetector, which tracks internet disruptions.

Twitter on Friday began restricting content to users without an account, with Musk saying Friday that "drastic and immediate action was necessary due to EXTREME levels of data scraping."

Data scraping refers to a process where data or content is extracted from one site, often without permission, to be displayed on another.

Twitter previously allowed people to view content without having signed in.

The site has suffered technical difficulties in recent months.

Musk shakes up Twitter

Musk bought Twitter last year in October for $44 billion (€40.4 billion) after months of legal wrangling over the company.

But in the months following the takeover, Musk, as the CEO of the company, faced criticism over management of the site as offensive content began appearing a lot more on the website and advertising revenue declined.

He then introduced Twitter Blue, a paid subscription service that verifies people with a blue checkmark.

The blue tick to verify people previously used to authenticate influential people.

But the symbol, since becoming paid, has declined in status.

 

DW

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia resumes overnight drone attacks on Kyiv, Ukraine military says

Russia launched an overnight drone attack on Kyiv after a 12-day break, a Ukrainian military official said on Sunday, with air defence systems preliminarily destroying all targets on their approach.

"Another enemy attack on Kyiv," Serhiy Popko, a colonel general who heads Kyiv's military administration, said in a post on the Telegram channel. "At this moment, there is no information about possible casualties or damage."

Reuters witnesses heard blasts resembling the sound of air defence systems hitting targets. There was no immediate information about the scale of the attack.

Kyiv, its region and a number of central and eastern Ukraine's regions were under air raid alerts for about an hour after 2 a.m. local time (2300 GMT).

** Serious threat remains at Ukraine nuclear plant, Zelenskiy says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned on Saturday that a "serious threat" remained at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and said Russia was "technically ready" to provoke a localized explosion at the facility.

Zelenskiy cited Ukrainian intelligence as the source of his information.

"There is a serious threat because Russia is technically ready to provoke a local explosion at the station, which could lead to a (radiation) release," Zelenskiy told a news conference alongside visiting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

He gave no further details. Ukrainian military intelligence has previously said Russian troops had mined the plant.

Zelenskiy called for greater international attention to the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe's largest civil nuclear facility, and urged sanctions on Russia's state nuclear company Rosatom.

Zelenskiy later held a meeting of the top military command and nuclear power officials at another of Ukraine's five nuclear plants, in Rivne, in the northwest of the country.

"The key issues discussed were the security of our northern regions and our measures to strengthen them," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, standing in front of the Rivne plant.

Zelenkiy's trip to Rivne was a rare journey for the Ukraine leader to an area relatively far from the fighting. But it is near the border with Belarus, where Russia's Wagner mercenaries have a deal to go after last week's aborted uprising. Their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was offered the option of resettling in Belarus, on Ukraine's northern border.

Energoatom, Ukraine's nuclear power authority, said on Friday it had conducted two days of exercises simulating the effects of an attack on the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, issued a statement describing the Ukrainian allegations as "simply preposterous". Russia has dismissed any suggestion it plans to attack or sabotage the Zaporizhzhia plant. Each side accuses the other of shelling near the facility.

Sanchez said his visit to the Ukrainian capital was meant to underscore his support for Ukraine as Spain kicks off the six-month rotating EU presidency. Spain would provide an additional 55 million euro ($60 million) financial package for Ukraine to help the economy and small businesses, he said.

The Zaporizhzhia plant, located near the city of Enerhodar in southern Ukraine, has been occupied by Russia since shortly after Moscow's invasion in February 2022.

Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, suffered the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986, when clouds of radioactive material spread across much of Europe after an explosion and fire at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.

 

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Kiev must show ‘battlefield results’ in next ten days – Zelensky

Ukraine wants to make some progress on the battlefield in its counteroffensive against Russia before the upcoming NATO summit, President Vladimir Zelensky said on Friday, although he admitted that this would lead to new losses.

Speaking to several Spanish media outlets, the Ukrainian leader stated that Kiev has to “show results” before NATO leaders convene in Vilnius, Lithuania, on July 11, adding that “every kilometer costs lives.” 

Zelensky noted that “torrential rains… slowed down some processes quite a bit” and reiterated calls for Kiev’s Western backers to continue sending arms to Ukraine. He also claimed that Ukraine’s offensive operations conducted last autumn were undermined by the late arrival of artillery.

“We stopped because we couldn’t advance. Advancing meant losing people and we had no artillery,” he explained. “We are very cautious in this aspect. Fast things are not always safe.” 

The Ukrainian president also reiterated his long-standing demands that Kiev eventually be admitted to NATO. “NATO without Ukraine is not NATO,”he stated, claiming that there were no other armies on the continent like Ukraine’s that had the same battlefield experience.

Zelensky’s comments come after Igor Zhovka, a deputy head of the president’s office, warned that the Ukrainian leader could skip the NATO summit altogether if the bloc did not make a serious commitment to Kiev’s accession. Earlier, Jens Stoltenberg, the head of the US-led military bloc, stated that any discussions about Ukraine’s membership could start only on the condition that it prevails over Russia.

Ukraine launched a large-scale offensive against Russian positions in early June but has failed to gain any ground and has suffered heavy losses, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Zelensky himself has admitted difficulties, saying that the offensive is proceeding “slower than desired” in the face of “tough resistance” from Russian troops.

According to a Financial Times report from earlier this week, Western officials have been unimpressed by Ukraine’s performance on the battlefield, with the paper’s sources noting that long-term Western support for Kiev is contingent on the eventual outcome of the offensive.

** Kiev to be ready for talks if Ukrainian forces gain control of 1991 border — Zelensky

The government in Kiev will be ready to hold talks to end the conflict in Ukraine if its armed forces gain control of the borders that the country believes are recognized internationally, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said at a joint news conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Saturday.

These borders would include the Crimea, Donbass and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, the president said, when asked if Ukraine would be ready for talks if its troops regained control of the positions they had held before Russia started its special military operation in February 2022.

"Are we ready for diplomatic settlement and what kind of diplomatic settlement are we ready for if we're at the borders as of February 24?" Zelensky said, repeating a question from a reporter, according to a video of the news conference that he posted to Telegram.

"It wasn't our borders on February 24, it was a line of engagement," he went on to say. "And so we emphasize once again: Ukraine will be ready for some format of diplomacy when we are really on our borders, on our real borders according to international law."

Zelensky also brought up the issue of the country’s much-desired NATO membership. He said he believes that there is every reason for the alliance to invite the country to join when the bloc convenes for a summit in Vilnius on July 11-12. He said he was expecting a clear signal in this context.

 

Reuters/RT/Tass

 

Two issues engage this piece today. Each of them is reflected in animal imageries. The first has dog as totem of its analysis. The second too is better explained by the bestial engagement of rams. Let us begin with the latter.

Last Wednesday, Osun State witnessed a bestial ram fight. Children in, especially Northern and western parts of Nigeria, grew up to see the perennial rituals of ram – called agbo in Yoruba – fights. By the way, ram flaunts during Id-el Kabir celebrations are more than part of the pot-pourri of a religious festival. They are a celebration of financial muzzles, a display of how well off and wealthy the Islamic adherent is. The Quran makes it mandatory for adherents able to afford it to offer a ram for sacrifice. Here in Nigeria, however, rams at Id are a signification of wealth. Now, it has transcended wealth to a blood sport organized between large-horned male sheep known as rams. Venue of the animal duel is always an open field. Ram owners, especially during this festival, as a way of reinforcing the sport, preparatory to the festival, make large investments on specially training the rams from their infancy, in readiness for these ram competitions. Grand prizes are even given for the most animalistic of the rams. During this Islamic festivity, young people gather at open fields to watch the fights as they exhibit brawns and animal superiority. It is a sport that is looked up to as an exciting feature of the festival. Pool betters rake money off the bestiality.

In Osun last Wednesday, two Moslems in high places – a senator of the 9th National Assembly and indeed, former Senate spokesperson – Bashiru Ajibola and governor of the state, Ademola Adeleke, chose to make a sport of their scuffle. Like rams preparatory to Eid-el-Kabir. The drama occurred at the Osogbo central prayer ground as the governor’s aides engaged in a clash with Senator Bashiru in contest for space and I daresay, political relevance. A rumpus ensued which ultimately prevented Governor Adeleke from observing the prayer rites as he stormed out of the place. Media reports said Bashiru sat at the front seat usually reserved for the governor. In the bid to ask the ex-Senator to vacate the space, he flared up. The governor’s media team thereafter issued a release insinuating that Adeleke escaped assassination, with back and forth allegations flying about from the two parties.

By the way, for several years, I had sought to put the face of reality to a particular flesh-singeing track from Yoruba Apala music great, Ayinla Omowura. In the track, while attacking a traducer, Omowura had said that anyone he was older than their mother could not look down on him. In an interview on Rave FM in Osogbo, Muniru Adebayo Raji, who had been at the centre of the Id-El-Kabir rukus, explained his role in the crisis, connecting the dot of this song with Bashiru. I enjoyed the physical unraveling of Omowura’s song in the rukus.

For the first time in its entire bigotry pursuit, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) made sense in its intervention on the Osun Eid crisis. That was before MURIC then descended into its usual gutter of bigotry. In its call after the clash, its Executive Director, Ishaq Akintola, pointedly told the two warring politicians to desist from desecrating a consecrated Muslim prayer ground. This was a necessary and profound call because in turning the praying ground into a tiff party, both leaders of the warmongers, themselves Muslims, behaved like rams in blood fight. For them to turn an event as significant and sobering as an Eid prayer into an avenue to score cheap political point, to the extent of desecrating the holy ground, was an affront on its holiness. By the way, Islam enjoins Moslems not to offer to Allah a blemished ram. If in the process of using an Id-El-Kabir ram for fight, its horns get broken or the ram sustains injury, it is not worthy of being offered as sacrifice. So, it stands to reason that the two “rams” fighting at the holy praying ground have injured their horns and as such, their sacrifice on that day was haram. These two political agbo “o wo’leya” as the lingo of Eid-El-Kabir says. Their blood fight vitiates whatever sacrifices they made.

Now, to the second issue. Ancient, non-science perception of the dog is that it is a very fatty animal. Even medicine confirms this. For a gourmet, dog’s fatty drippings while being prepared for roast may be a put-off. A roasted dog meat meal, called the ayangbe aja, is a pain in the neck for a grillardin chef. This is because it requires painstaking wait for the chef to get rid of its surplus fat. Like the proverbial patient ones who alone can extract milk from the mammary of a lioness, the wait for the fire to divest the dog meat of its fat could be very unsettling. It is similar to making an interminable walk through a long tunnel whose end is nowhere in sight. So, Yoruba elders pose a query to the chef who demands patience for the laborious process of grilling the dog meat of its fat to come to maturation. Yes, of a truth – gourmands angrily tell the chef – we are aware that if we are patient enough for you to defrost the dog meat of its fat, dog meat is a fascinating delicacy; but what if we starve to death between the long walk through roasting the dog and eventually getting fat off the meat?

The roasted dog meat anecdote is usually thrown up, not as a measure of the people’s unbelief in patience. It is usually a riposte to taskmasters who give their servants laborious tasks, declaring the times austere but cavorting in plenty.

The ayangbe aja anecdote may be an explainer of the painful time that Nigerians are passing through today. The Nigerian grillardin chef is in the kitchen, no doubt. His cap and apron speak to the tiresome process he is embroiled in. Smoke even oozes out of the rafters, heralding the reality of the meat we salivate for being on the hot gauze grill. But, as the chef performs his culinary magic, the people’s palates are dry. These times are certainly not the best for the Nigerian. Since the month of May, hardship has walked leisurely into homes like an unwelcomed rapist. It is as if the biblical King Rehoboam had been sworn in to the throne of his forefathers. Nigerians’ yokes have proved heavier, even more than the days of Muhammadu Buhari. In the subsidy removal, Nigerians are not only loaded with a heavy yoke, like whips and scorpions, poverty-inducing policies of the last four weeks have chastised Nigerians daily like whips and scorpions. Fewer cars are on the road, no thanks to the outrageous cost of fuel. We are told it is a tip of the iceberg. We will soon buy fuel at N700. Cost of living has risen agonizingly. If we were a statistical people, we would have seen sharp rises on the curve of suicides, bludgeoning crime and violence rates as a result of the hopelessness in the land.

But, not to worry. The World Bank has asked Nigerians to lift up their cymbals and rejoice. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have lauded President Bola Tinubu’s decision to effect key economic reforms as “bold choices.” The two key reforms of foreign exchange unification and fuel subsidy removal to reset the economy were commended as bold moves that would jerk up the economy.

Nigerians are one of the most resilient people on earth, global statistics have said. They can walk through the thorns and briers of today, with blood dripping from their feet, in anticipation of a great tomorrow. They even do not care if they die in the process, once there is an assurance that their children won’t go through the deprivation that is their lot. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote on a thrust almost similar to today’s, invoking the spirit and song of late Yoruba Sakara music great, Yusuff Olatunji and his song, O ye ka ni’fura – we should be watchful. I called for us to adopt the strategic adultery attentiveness that Olatunji adumbrated in that song, using an adulterous man seeing off his married woman liaison as a motif.

My counsel was that, even in our infantile excitedness about the “new dawn” which we have opened our curtains to see, we should reserve a space in our hearts for critical thinking and dispassionate evaluation of the unfolding drama. We have trodden this road of titivating excitedness about a “new dawn” before, beginning from the military hijack of power in 1966. On each occasion, from Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Muhammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Shehu Shagari, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha to the present moment, we have always shown exhilaration and hope of “a new dawn” whenever there is a regime change. Yet, we are where we are, constantly struggling with, in the words of Francis Egbokhare of the University of Ibadan, an exponential decay of bad and unreflective leadership whose cancerous afflictions ruin us from top to bottom. Only a foolish woman falls prey a second time to the wiles of a man who had earlier lured her to bed, the elders counsel. Some people said my counsel was borne out of a foundational disdain for the new men in power. My response is, the rainmaker who invokes downpour would himself go home drenched. The babalawo who proclaims famine in the town will partake of the drought too. It is in our interest that this “new dawn” brings purity and succor or we are all done for.

Even if times are harder than this, getting as hard as – God forbid – the biblical Samarian famine scenario where father and mother, in a consensus, agreed on which of their children to slaughter for dinner, the level of our fascination for this “new dawn” is such that, we believe it cannot transform into thick darkness. Don’t the Yoruba say that eni aye nfe o l’arun kan lara – the one beloved of the world is beyond reproach? Great optimism. All I ask for is strategic thinking and not sheepish following.

While Nigerians are ready to be patient and starve, if possible, to see the interminable process of grilling this dog meat for dinner, they disdain the optics of the chef tossing huge chunks of meat into his mouth within the period of the long wait. Last week’s optics of the president in a convoy of hundreds of cars from the airport, even if most of the cars belonged to his well-wisher power apparatchiks as it is claimed, was nauseating and sickening. In a country where a peremptory decree of subsidy removal was made, off-the-cuff jerking prices of fuel to an all-time high of over N500, with threats that prices would soon hit N700, it was very absurd and inappropriate to see the president and his cabal junketing in such sickening flaunt of wealth and worth. Retiring service chiefs will coast home to billions of perks and officials of the exited government will smile home with trillions of Naira. But Nigerian people are to endure pains.

It is good that the president is embracing neo-liberalism as an economic policy. Neo-liberalism connotes market-oriented reform policies, such as eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy. Till date, this “new dawn” is yet to pay the tiniest attention to the lowest rung of the ladder of society. What is in this for the poor? Or, don’t they matter? It will seem like putting the cart before the horse to remove fuel subsidy when no attempt is made to cater for the welfare of the people yet. In four weeks, Nigeria is said to have saved N400 billion from subsidy removal. Great news. Do we trust the new men in power enough to believe that the dividends will be invested in the lives of the people? Do their antecedents speak to the probability of doing so? Again, we must listen to the wise counsel of Baba Yusuff Olatunji.

In this “new dawn,” do we sincerely envisage a Nigeria of our dream coming out of this ensemble? My pessimism takes the best of me. I wish you good luck if your optimism is as fertile as to expect “a new dawn.” There are already allegations of political office seekers paying multiple of millions and even billions to surrogates of “new dawn” to clinch top ministerial positions. And these are the midwives of our optimism. Again, we should not throw Olatunji’s counsel on how to deal with an adulterous relationship like this out of the window. We will need it.

 

Kola Balogun’s light

About a year ago, the people of Ososami area of Oke-Ado, Ibadan, Oyo State, reached out to me. Their decades-old electricity transformer had become a total burden as it grumpily transmitted power to their homes. A resident with knowledge of its history claimed the transformer was brought in the 1960s. They needed a new one. As they spoke, I suspected they expected me to go inside my purse and bring out the multiple millions of Naira required to fix their pain. Did they expect an ordinary purveyor of words to afford this?

So, I navigated through the then-existing power barometer of the state and found out that Senator Kola Balogun’s jurisdiction fell on that axis. I then made a call to him, in my mind, to fulfill all righteousness. Politicians were notorious for their opaqueness, I thought. And I literally went to bed. A few days after, someone who identified himself as the senator’s legislative assistant gave me a call. Some people would be coming from Abuja to visit the site, he said. That soon? Then I linked him up with some members of the landlords’ association. Six months after, an almost six decades old transformer was replaced. The people of this area have since been enjoying a brand new, newly installed transformer, courtesy of Balogun.

I am writing this, not to actually thank Balogun, for that was his responsibility: to cushion the pains of his constituents. He was there for his people. I am writing it because this pen is always quick to apportion blames. Balogun did this for his people of Ososami and it is marvelous in their sights. Oh, where are my manners: Thank you, Senator Kola Balogun!