The World Today for July 17, 2023

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NEED TO KNOW

The Autocrat, the Lapdog

BELARUS

Belarussian artist and political dissident Ales Pushkin, 57, recently died in prison from an undisclosed cause. His crime: painting a picture.

Prosecutors said, incredibly, that his work glorified Nazism. As the Moscow Times reported, however, the timing of his arrest suggests his true transgression. Police nabbed Pushkin in 2021 as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in office since 1994, was cracking down on anti-government protests.

In another example of the twisted, oppressive civic culture of the former Soviet republic, as described by Human Rights Watch, Belarusian authorities recently charged an attorney and a journalist with aiding extremism because they shared information about the attorney’s disbarment – even though the information is also publicly available on government websites.

The ridiculousness of these criminal cases reflects the absurd state of Belarus today. The dictatorial Lukashenko persecutes citizens who challenge his rule. Yet he is arguably the biggest lapdog in Europe as Belarus has become a “vassal state” of Russia, wrote the New York Times.

Lukashenko allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to install nuclear weapons in Belarus, putting a target on his country for American, British, and French ballistic missiles. Factories in Belarus, one of the poorest countries in Europe, produce uniforms for Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. Lukashenko needed Russian economic aid and security guarantees after he squelched anti-government unrest a few years ago. He downplays talk of a union between Belarus and Russia, but Putin now openly discusses it.

Belarus has not contributed troops to the war in Ukraine, but Lukashenko has provided support to Putin in every other way, including hosting Russian troops who could conceivably open a second front against Ukraine, added Bloomberg. These developments led the Telegraph to declare that Russia has been stealthily invading the country.

Furthermore, as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explained, Lukashenko allegedly helped broker a peace deal between Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group, who recently led an aborted coup against leaders in the Kremlin. Oddly, however, Prigozhin doesn’t appear to have ever moved to Belarus where, under the deal, he was supposed to receive asylum.

However, the BBC reported that Wagner folks are training troops in Belarus.

Belarus’s poor human rights record, its role in the Ukraine war and related issues are why Belarussian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya recently exhorted NATO leaders to pay more attention to her country. “For almost a year, there has been no new pressure against the regime,” Tsikhanouskaya told Radio Free Europe. “This is viewed as a weakness of democracy – Lukashenko and his cronies do crime after crime, and there is no punishment for that.”

The absurdity can’t last forever, though, analysts believe. The lapdog’s time will come.

THE WORLD, BRIEFLY

The Rules Rebound

IRAN

Iran’s morality police resumed their operations across the country, authorities announced Sunday, less than a year after the death of a 22-year-old woman in their custody sparked mass demonstrations in the Islamic Republic, the Associated Press reported.

Officials said there will be a new campaign to force women to wear the Islamic headscarf – the hijab – in public, adding that the police unit would resume notifying and detaining women who violate the dress code.

The morality police retreated from public view following the death of Mahsa Amini in September, who was accused of violating the country’s strict hijab rules.

Her death prompted outrage in conservative Iran and resulted in months-long, women-led protests calling for the removal of the dress code. The demonstrations soon turned into calls for the overthrow of Iran’s clerical leaders.

But the protests were quelled earlier this year after Iranian authorities launched a bloody crackdown that saw more than 500 people killed and nearly 20,000 detained.

During the protests, reports emerged that the morality police had been disbanded – but officials denied that claim.

Iran’s government insisted throughout the crisis that the rules had not changed, adding that the hijab was a key pillar of the 1979 Islamic revolution. Officials also blamed the protests on foreign interference.

No Exit

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

Hundreds of people took to the streets of the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR) over the weekend to protest a constitutional referendum later this month that would remove term limits for the president, Africanews reported.

The demonstration was organized by the opposition coalition, the Republican Bloc for the Defence of the Constitution (BRDC), and took place despite a government ban on protests.

It comes less than two months after President Faustin-Archange Touádera announced a referendum on a new constitution that is scheduled for July 30.

The amendments would abolish the two-term limit for the president and ban dual-nationality citizens from running for the post.

Touádera’s allies said presidential term limits were uncommon in many neighboring countries. But his critics countered that the move was a power play by the president to run for a third term in 2025, Al Jazeera wrote in May.

Touádera was elected in 2016 and was returned for a second term in 2020, despite widespread allegations of electoral shenanigans and an ongoing rebellion against his rule after years of civil war.

Human rights groups and United Nations officials warned that the referendum risks complicating the country’s human rights situation.

Truth in Stitches

FRANCE

The French government will pay citizens a “repair bonus” to have their clothes and shoes fixed instead of throwing them away, a scheme aimed at cutting waste and reforming the textile industry, the Guardian reported.

Starting in October, people will be able to claim back between $6 and $28 of the cost of mending their textiles in workshops or at cobblers that have joined the scheme.

State Secretary of Ecology Bérangère Couillard announced this week that sewing workshops and shoemakers are invited to join the initiative, which will be run by the eco-organization Refashion.

She said the repair bonus will be paid from a $173 million government fund, adding that the scheme will encourage workshops and retailers to offer repair services with “the hope of recreating jobs.”

More than 700,000 tons of clothing are thrown away in France every year, with two-thirds ending up in landfill.

Refashion hopes that the plan will encourage people to repair and reuse their textiles. It will also help reduce the amount of purchased clothes and encourage donations.

The bonus is part of a broader effort by the French government to tackle the issue of “fast fashion” in the textile industry – one of the most polluting industries on the planet.

The new measures would require clothing and textile stores to label items with the materials used and the country where it was made.

The repair bonus is similar to another government scheme offering bonuses to individuals who have household appliances repaired.

In 2020, France passed a law aimed at transforming production methods and consumption habits related to household goods. The legislation aims to reduce waste, preserve natural resources, protect biodiversity and address the climate crisis.

DISCOVERIES

A Bird’s Sense of Irony

Crows and magpies are building heavily fortified, near impregnable nests using anti-bird spikes, a discovery that scientists have called “the ultimate adaptation” to city life, the Independent reported.

The bird species belong to the Corvidae family, which are known for their superior cognitive skills, including the ability to use sticks and stems as tools.

In a new paper, Dutch biologists reported finding a number of nests made up of anti-bird spikes across the Netherlands and Belgium. Those spikes are usually placed on the eaves of buildings to keep birds away.

Researchers said that one nest had up to 1,500 metal spikes. They noted that these spikes served a defensive purpose – “to keep other birds away from their nest.”

“Just when you think you’ve seen it all after half a century of studying natural history, these inventive crows and magpies really surprise me again,” said study co-author Kees Moeliker.

Moeliker and his team noted that anti-bird spikes weren’t the only material: Some magpie nests were made up of barbed wire and knitting needles.

Birds are known to use a number of discarded objects to build their nests, including face masks, cigarette butts and sunglasses.

Still, this is the first time that birds have been found to use the very material deployed by humans to deter them as nesting material.

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