Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The law enforcement breed can be a pretty dark lot.  To be paid to think suspiciously leaves its mark, fostering an incentive to identify crimes and misdemeanours with instinctive compulsion.  Historically, this saw the emergence of quackery and bogus attempts to identify criminal tendencies.  Craniometry and skull size was, for a time, an attractive pursuit for the aspiring crime hunter and lunatic sleuth.  The crime fit the skull.

With the onset of facial recognition technologies, we are seeing the same old habits appear, with their human creators struggling to identify the best means of eliminating compromising biases.  A paper published by IBM researchers in April 2019 titled “Diversity in Faces” shows that doing so ends up returning to old grounds of quackery, including the use of “craniofacial distances, areas and ratios, facial symmetry and contrast, skin color, age and gender predictions, subjective annotations, and pose and resolution.”

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in identifying a form of predictive criminality perpetuates similar sins.  Police, to that end, have consistently shown themselves unable to resist the attractions supposedly offered by data programs and algorithmic orderings, however sophisticated.  These can take such crude forms as those advanced by Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco, a devotee of that oxymoronic pursuit “intelligence-led policing,” stacked with its snake oil properties.  A 2020 Tampa Bay Times piece on the exploits of that Florida county’s sheriff’s office made it clear that Nocco was keen on creating “a cutting-edge intelligence program that could stop crime before it happened.”

The counter to this was impressive in its savagery.  Such forms of law enforcement featured, in the view of criminologist David Kennedy of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, “One of the worst manifestations of the intersection of junk science and bad policing”, in addition to its utter lack of “common sense and humanity”.

The trend towards data heavy systems that supposedly offer insight into inherent, potential criminality has captured police departments in numerous countries.  A recommendation paper from the European Crime Prevention Network notes the use of “AI tools in hopes of rendering law enforcement more effective and cost-efficient” across the European Union.  Predictive policing is singled out as particularly attractive, notably as a response to smaller budgets and fewer staff.

In the United Kingdom, the government’s Ministry of Justice has taken to AI with gusto through the Homicide Prediction Project, a pilot program that hoovers up data from police and government data sets to generate profiles and assess the risk of a person committing murder.  The program, commissioned by the Prime Minister’s Office in 2023 and involving the MoJ, the Home Office, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and the Metropolitan Police in London, only came to light because of a Freedom of Information request by the charity Statewatch.

According to the Data and Analysis unit within the MoJ the data science program explores “the power of MOJ datasets in relation to assessment of homicide risk”, the “additional power of the Police National Computer dataset” in doing the same, and “the additional power of local police data”.  It also seeks to review the characteristics of offenders that increase such a risk, exploring “alternative and innovative data science techniques to risk assessment and homicide.”

What stands out in the program is the type of data shared between the agencies.  These include types of criminal convictions, the age a person first appeared as a victim (this includes domestic violence), and the age a person had their first encounter with the police. But also included are such matters as “health markers which are expected to have predictive power”, be they on mental health, addiction issues, suicide, self-harm and disability.

The use of predictive models is far from new for the wonks at the MoJ.  Those used in the Offender Assessment System (OASys) have been previously found to profile people differently in accordance with their ethnicities.  The National Offender Management service noted in a 2015 compendium of research and analysis of the system between 2009 and 2013, “Relative predictive validity was greater for female than male offenders, for White offenders than offenders of Asian, Black and Mixed ethnicity, and for older than  younger offenders.”

Statewatch researcher Sofia Lyall has little to recommend the program, renamed for evidently more palatable consumption the Sharing Data to Improve Risk Assessment program. “Time and again, research shows that algorithmic systems for ‘predicting’ crime are inherently flawed.”  The Homicide Prediction Project was “chilling and dystopian”, profiling individuals “as criminals before they have done anything.”  She is also convinced that the system will, as with others, “code in bias towards racialized and low-income communities” while posing grave threats to privacy.

The unit claims that the work is only intended for dry research purposes, with “no direct operational or policy changes” arising because of it, or any individual application to a “person’s journey through the justice system.”  This is a nonsensical assertion, given the sheer temptations open to officials to implement a program that uses hefty data sets in order to ease the task of rigorous policing.  The representatives of law enforcement crave results, even those poorly arrived at, and algorithmic expediency and actuarial fantasy is there to aid them.  The “precrime” dystopia portrayed in Philip K. Dick’s The Minority Report (1956) is well on its way to being realised.

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A frame from the video published by NYT, showing the marked ambulances and personel – Fair Use

It was a massacre.  Fifteen emergency workers, butchered in cold blood by personnel from the Israeli Defense Forces in southern Gaza on March 23.  It all came to light from a video that the IDF did not intend anyone to see, filmed by Red Crescent paramedic Rifaat Radwan in the last minutes of his life.  Caught red handed, the wires and levers of justification, mendacity and qualification began to move.

The pattern of institutional response is a well-rehearsed one.  First came the official claim that the troops only opened fire because the convoy approached them “suspiciously”, enshrouded in darkness, with no headlights or evidence of flashing lights.  The movement of the convoy had not, it was said, been cleared and coordinated with the IDF, which had been alerted by operators of an overhead UAV.  Soldiers had previously fired on a car containing, according to the Israeli account, three Hamas members.  When that vehicle was approached by the ambulances, IDF personnel assumed they were threatened, despite lacking any evidence that the emergency workers were armed.  On exiting the vehicles, gunfire ensues.  Radwan’s final words: “The Israelis are coming, the Israeli soldiers are coming.”

Then comes the qualification, the “hand in the cookie jar” retort.  With the video now very public, the IDF was forced to admit that they had been mistaken in the initial assessment that the lights of the ambulance convoy had been switched off, blaming it on the sketchy testimony of soldiers.  Also evident are clear markings on the vehicles, with the paramedics wearing hi-vis uniforms.

After being shot, the bodies of the 15 dead workers were unceremoniously buried in sand (“in a brutal and disregarding manner that violates human dignity,” according to the Red Crescent) – supposedly to protect them from the ravages of wildlife – with the vehicles crushed by an armoured D9 bulldozer to clear the road.  Allegations have been made that some of the bodies had their hands tied and were shot at close range, suggesting a willingness on the part of the military to conceal their misdeeds.  The IDF has countered by claiming that the UN was informed on the location of the bodies.

The Palestinian Red Crescent society is adamant: the paramedics were shot with the clear intention of slaying them.  “We cannot disclose everything we know,” stated Dr. Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Red Crescent in the West Bank, “but I will say that all the martyrs were shot in the upper part of their bodies, with the intent to kill.”

The IDF, after a breezy inquiry, claimed that it “revealed that the force opened fire due to a sense of threat following a previous exchange of fire in the area.  Also, six Hamas terrorists were identified among those killed in the incident.”  This hardly dispels the reality that those shot were unarmed and showed no hostile intent.  The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Palestinian rescuers have offered a breakdown of those killed: eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Palestinian Civil Defence, and one employee from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.

The OCHA insists that the first team comprised rescuers rather than Hamas operatives. On being sought by additional paramedic and emergency personnel, they, too, were attacked by the IDF.

The findings of the probe into the killings were presented on April 7 to the IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir by the chief of the Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor.  On doing so, Zamir then ordered that the General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism be used to “deepen and complete” the effort.  That particular fact-finding body is risibly described as independent, despite being an extension of the IDF.  Self-investigation remains a standard norm for allegations of impropriety.

Since October 7, 2023, the death toll of health workers in the Gaza Strip has been impressively grim, reaching 1,060.  Health facilities have been destroyed, with hundreds of attacks launched on health services.  The World Health Organization update in February found that a mere 50% of hospitals were partially functional.  Primary health care facilities were found to be 41% functional.  Medical personnel have been harassed, arbitrarily detained and subjected to mistreatment.  A report from Healthcare Workers Watch published in February identified 384 cases of unlawful detention since October 7, 2023, with 339 coming from the Gaza Strip and 45 from the West Bank.

In the opinion of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories since 1967, Francesca Albanese, “This is part of a pattern by Israel to continuously bombard, destroy and fully annihilate the realisation of the right to health in Gaza.”

The IDF, which claims to be fastidious in observing the canons of international law, continues to dispel such notions in killing civilians and health workers.  It also continues to insist that its soldiers could never be guilty of a conscious massacre, culpable for a blatant crime.  The bodies of fifteen health workers suggest otherwise.

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Photograph Source: Nokia621 – CC BY-SA 4.0

It was yet another unwelcome development for Mark Zuckerberg’s technology titan Meta, the parent company of Facebook.  The High Court of Kenya has found that the US-based entity can be sued over its alleged role in disseminating content that incited violence in neighbouring Ethiopia.  While the case can be heard in Kenya, the essential harm is alleged to have taken place during the 2020-2022 civil war in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray.

Ethiopians Abrham Meareg and Fisseha Tekle, the latter a former Amnesty International researcher, along with The Katiba Institute, charge Meta with promoting harmful content from November 2020 to November 2022.  Meareg, alleges that his father Meareg Amare Abrha, an academic then in the employ of Bahir Dar University, was killed outside his home in 2021 in the saturating aftermath of threatening, inciting posts on Facebook.  These included details about where he lived, along with false allegations of corruption and the provision of assistance to the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front.  Tekle, for his part, faced a hail of hateful posts and activity on Facebook for his human rights work in Ethiopia.

As cited in the ruling by High Court judge Lawrence Mugambi, the petitioners also make various other arguments.  One is that Meta’s “Facebook algorithm recommends content that amounts to propaganda for war, incitement to violence and advocacy to the Facebook users in Kenya.”  Meta is also accused of “granting preferential treatment to users in other countries as opposed to Facebook users in Africa”, thereby making it discriminative in nature. “The darker the content,” the petition asserts, “the higher the likelihood it will be prioritized.”

The petitioners demand that Meta make a formal apology for the killing of Meareg Amare Abrhal and establish a restitution fund for victims of hate speech and incitement on Facebook to the value of 250 billion KSH (US$2 billion), with an additional 50 billion KSH (US$400 million) for harm arising from sponsored posts.  The company is to also alter Facebook’s algorithm to halt the promotion of viral hate and adjust the algorithm in favour of demoting incitements to violence, including death threats and doxing.  This would be along lines similar to what was adopted in the aftermath of the US Capitol riots of January 6, 2021.

Important here is also the demand that Meta ensure the recruitment of sufficient numbers of content moderators for Facebook to guard against any repetition of those harms caused in East and Southeastern Africa, with particular attention paid to Ethiopia.

The argument by Meta was a tried and failed one.  Kenyan courts, it argued, could not hear the case, as Meta was not a Kenyan company.  It had contended that the Kenyan Constitution had no extraterritorial reach and could not be said to apply to events taking place in Ethiopia.  Nor did it have a base of operation in Kenya.  Any relevant claim, accordingly, could only be heard in the US judicial system.

The Court found, however, that it was empowered to determine whether rights protected under the Kenyan Bill of Rights were breached, even in the novel circumstances posed by the use of artificial intelligence.  It followed that the petition raised “substantial questions of law”, thereby satisfying the threshold requirements of the Constitution.

As the ruling goes on to mention, “The issues raised are substantial and transcend the interests of the parties involved in the Petition.  These are matters of general public importance relating to the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms in the digital era.”  An uneven number of judges, as stipulated by section 165 of the Constitution of Kenya, will be empanelled by Chief Justice Martha Koome, even as Meta’s legal representatives seek to appeal the decision.

Lawyers representing the company should have known better.  The jurisdictional argument has been run in two separate cases involving the unlawful sacking of content moderators working for Facebook in Kenya in 2022 and 2023.  Kenyan courts have given short shrift to claims that they lack jurisdiction no less than three times.  To this can be added defeats for Meta in the Employment and Labour Relations Court and the Court of Appeal.  This particular High Court ruling is notable for, in its words, helping identify “a clear jurisprudential path that ensures observance of human rights in a borderless digital community.”

Nora Mbagathi, executive director of the Katiba Institute, underlined the salience of the decision: “The court here has refused to shy away from determining an important global matter, recognising that homegrown issues must be addressed directly by our courts.”  Abrham Meareg also had sharp words for Zuckerberg, who “may imagine that justice begins and ends at the US border.”  It is yet another example of holding the conduct of tech behemoths to account for the convulsive information ecosystem they have so blithely created and exploited.

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Photograph Source: Rehman Abubakr – CC BY-SA 4.0

Paranoia manifests in various ways.  It can eat away individuals in desperate solitude, whittling away sanity and balance.  It can be enlisted in the making of policy.  The latter can be particularly dangerous, notably when readying for a fantastic threat.  For the Baltic States, Poland and Finland, there is much talk about the Russia threat, one that will supposedly manifest in boots, armour and missiles once the war against Ukraine concludes.  Unfortunately, that talk is now manifesting in preparations for war.  So eager are these countries in making such preparations, they are willing to exit important treaties in doing so.

The 1997 Ottawa Convention, otherwise known as the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, is one such document.  The number of state parties is impressive: 164 in all.  The omissions are, however, also notable, including the United States, China, Russia, India and Pakistan.  Despite such impediments, the Convention has been instrumental in inducing a near halt of global production and reduction in the deployment of these weapons.

With the vibrant war chat that has gripped European capitals, the stockpiling and use of landmines is now being revisited as a genuine possibility.  Even Ukraine, which is a signatory to the Convention, has received landmines from the United States and stated that its compliance with the treaty “is limited and is not guaranteed.”

Last month, the defence ministers of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia released a statement expressing their belief “that in the current security environment it is paramount to provide our defence forces with flexibility and freedom of choice to potentially use new weapons systems and solutions to bolster our defence of the alliance’s vulnerable Eastern flank.”  For that reason, a unanimous recommendation was made: that all parties withdraw from the Ottawa Convention.  “With this decision, we are sending a clear message: our countries are prepared and can use every necessary measure to defend our territory and freedom.”

This liberation from obligations imposed by international humanitarian law was seen as entirely consistent – and here, perversity creeps in – with all states’ continued willingness to observe it, “including the protection of civilians during an armed conflict.  Our nations will continue to uphold these principles while addressing our security needs.”

Estonia’s Defence Minister, Hanno Pevkur, attempted to give the recommendation some context, while trying to dispel notions that these countries had somehow scorned important legal obligations, let alone a global consensus on landmines.  “Decisions regarding the Ottawa Convention should be made in solidarity and coordination within the region.  At the same time, we currently have no plans to develop, stockpile, or use previously banned anti-personnel landmines.”

In a post on the X platform, Finland’s President Alex Stubb declared his country’s intention to join the four states, while still making the claim that “Finland will always be a responsible actor in the world”.  The decision, which was already being considered last November given Russia’s liberal use of such weapons in Ukraine, was made “based on a thorough assessment by the relevant ministries and the Defence Forces.”

Rather anomalously, Stubb went on to claim that Finland was “committed to its international obligations on the responsible use of mines.”  Similarly, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Sari Essayah told reporters that Helsinki would “use mines in a responsible way, but it’s a deterrent we need.”

Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, in keeping with language that has become very modish, also stated that exiting the Ottawa Convention would allow preparations “for the changes in the security environment in a more versatile way”.  Despite admitting that Finland was not in any immediate danger from Moscow, he was confident that it posed a continuing, European-wide threat.

Given that such devices are indiscriminate and lingering in their lethal and maiming potential, squaring their use with the dictates of international customary law is nigh impossible.  Despite their inherently clumsy nature, their skulking defenders can be found.  In January 2020, then US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper authored a memorandum reversing a 2014 ban on US production and acquisition of antipersonnel landmines, while permitting their use outside any future conflict on the Korean Peninsula. In doing so, he insisted in rather novel reading that landmines were essential to “becoming more lethal, resilient, agile, and ready across a range of potential contingencies and geographies.”

In its 2023 Landmine Monitor report, Human Rights Watch found that the active remnants of landmines killed more than 1,600 people and injured 3,015 in 2022.  Of these, 85% were civilians, with children accounting for half of them.  (So much for the protective principle and civilians.)  The report also noted various groups most vulnerable to such weapons: nomads, hunters, herders, shepherds and agricultural workers, along with refugees and internally displaced persons.

With such grim assessments and bloody statistics, the recent volte face towards international humanitarian law by Poland, Finland and the Baltic states seems even more remarkable and ill-founded.  Paranoia is producing its casualties.

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Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

There has been a fascinating, near unanimous condemnation among the cognoscenti about the seemingly careless addition of Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic to the chat chain of Signal by US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz.  Condemnation of the error spans the spectrum from clownish to dangerous.  There has been virtually nothing on the importance of such leaks of national security information and the importance they serve in informing the public about what those in power are really up to.

Rather than appreciate the fact that there was a journalist there to receive information on military operations that might raise a host of concerns (legitimate targeting and the laws of war come to mind), there was a chill of terror coursing through the commentariat and Congress that military secrets and strategy had been compromised.  Goldberg himself initially disbelieved it.  “I didn’t think it could be real.”  He also professed that some messages would not be made public given the risks they posed, conceding that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s communications to the group “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”

This seemingly principled stance ignores the bread-and-butter importance of investigative reporting and activist publishing, which so often relies on classified material received via accident or design.  Normally, the one receiving the message is condemned.  In this case, Golberg objected to being the recipient, claiming moral high ground in reporting the security lapse.  Certain messages of the “Houthi PC small group channel” were only published by The Atlantic to throw cold water on stubborn claims by the White House that classified details had not been shared.

The supposed diligence on Goldberg’s part to fuss about the cavalier attitude to national security shown by the Trump administration reveals the feeble compromise the Fourth Estate has reached with the national security state.  Could it be that WikiLeaks was, like the ghost of Banquo, at this Signal’s feast?  Last year’s conviction of the organisation’s founding publisher, Julian Assange, on one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the Espionage Act of 1917, or section 793(g) (Title 18, USC), might have exerted some force over Goldberg’s considerations.  Having been added to the communication chain in error, the defence material could well have imperilled him, with First Amendment considerations on that subject untested.

As for what the messages revealed, along with the importance of their disclosure, things become clear.  Waltz reveals that the killing of a Houthi official necessitated the destruction of a civilian building.  “The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”  Vance replies: “Excellent.”

As Turse reminds us in The Intercept, this conforms to the practices all too frequently used when bombing the Houthis in Yemen.  The United States offered extensive support to the Saudi-led bombing campaign against the Shia group, one that precipitated one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises.  That particular aerial campaign rarely heeded specific targeting, laying waste to vital infrastructure and health facilities.  Anthropologist Stephanie Savell, director of the Costs of War project at Brown University, also noted in remarks to The Intercept that fifty-three people have perished in the latest US airstrikes, among them five children.  “These are just the latest deaths in a long track record of US killing in Yemen, and the research shows that US airstrikes in many countries have a history of killing and traumatizing innocent civilians and wreaking havoc on people’s lives and livelihoods.”

The appearance of Hillary Clinton in the debate on Signalgate confirmed the importance of such leaks, and why they are treated with pathological loathing.  “We’re all shocked – shocked!” she screeched in The New York Times.  “What’s worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat.  That’s dangerous.  And it’s just dumb.”  As a person with a hatred of open publishing outlets such as Wikileaks (her own careless side to security was exposed by the organisation’s publication of emails sent from a private server while she was Secretary of State), the mania is almost understandable.

Other countries, notably members of the Five Eyes alliance system, are also voicing concern that their valuable secrets are at risk if shared with the Trump administration.  Again, the focus there is less on the accountability of officials than the cast iron virtues of secrecy.  “When mistakes happen, and sensitive intelligence leaks, lessons must be learned to prevent that from recurring,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stated gravely in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  “It’s a serious, serious issue, and all lessons must be taken.”

Former chief of Canada’s intelligence agency, Richard Fadden, was even more explicit: “Canada needs to think about what this means in practical terms: is the United States prepared to protect our secrets, as we are bound to protect theirs?”

Signalgate jolted the national security state.  Rather than being treated as a valuable revelation about the latest US bombing strategy in Yemen, the obsession has been on keeping a lid on such matters.  For the sake of accountability and the public interest, let us hope that the lid on this administration’s activities remains insecure.

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Photograph Source: Chenspec – CC BY-SA 4.0

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is waging a war on many fronts.  He has ended the tense ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza in spectacularly bloody fashion and resumed bombing of Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon.  Missiles fired at Israel from the Houthi rebels in Yemen also risk seeing a further widening of hostilities.

Domestically, he has been conducting a bruising, even thuggish campaign against Israeli institutions and their representatives, an effort that is impossible to divorce from his ongoing trial for corruption.  He has, for instance, busied himself with removing the attorney journal, Gali Baharav-Miara, a process that will be lengthy considering the necessary role of a special appointments committee.  On May 23, the cabinet passed a no-confidence motion against her, prompting a sharp letter from the attorney general that the Netanyahu government had ventured to place itself “above the law, to act without checks and balances, and even at the most sensitive of times”.

High up on the Netanyahu hit list is the intelligence official Ronen Bar, the Shin Bet chief he explicitly accuses of having foreknowledge of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.  “This is a fact and not a conspiracy,” a statement from the prime minister’s office bluntly asserted.  At 4.30am that morning “it was already clear to the outgoing Shin Bet head that an invasion of the State of Israel was likely.”

The PMO failed to mention Netanyahu’s self-interest in targeting Bar, given that Shin Bet is investigating the office for connections with the Qatari government allegedly involving cash disbursements to promote Doha’s interests.

While Bar has been formally sacked, a measure never undertaken by any government of the Israeli state, the Israeli High Court has extended a freeze on his removal while permitting Netanyahu to consider replacement candidates.

It is the judiciary, however, that has commanded much attention, pre-dating the October 7 attacks.  Much of 2023 was given over to attempting to compromise the Supreme Court of its influence and independence.  Some legislation to seek that process had been passed in July 2023 but the Supreme Court subsequently struck down that law in January 2024 in an 8-7 decision. The relevant law removed the Court’s means to check executive power through invalidating government decisions deemed “unreasonable”.  In the view of former Chief Justice Esther Hayut, the law was “extreme and irregular”, marking a departure “from the foundational authorities of the Knesset, and therefore it must be struck down.”

Even in wartime, the Netanyahu government’s appetite to clip the wings of an active judiciary remained strong.  In January 2025, it made a second attempt, with a new, modified proposal jointly authored by Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.  The law, passed by the Knesset in its third and final reading on March 27, alters the committee responsible for appointing judges.  The previous nine-member judicial selection committee had been composed of three judges, two independent lawyers and four politicians, equally divided between government and opposition.  Now, the relevant lawyers will be government and opposition appointees, intended to take effect after the next elections.

The convulsions in Israeli politics have been evident from various efforts to stall, if not abandon the legislation altogether.  The law changing the judicial appointments committee had received 71,023 filed objections.  While it passed 67-1, it only did so with the opposition boycotting the vote.  Benny Gantz, the chair of National Unity, wrote to Netanyahu ahead of the readings pleading for its abandonment.  “I’m appealing to you as someone who bears responsibility for acting on behalf of all citizens of this country.”  He reminded the PM that Israeli society was “wounded and bleeding, divided in a way we have not seen since October 6 [2023].  Fifty-nine of our brothers and sisters are still captive in Gaza, and our soldiers, from all political factions, are fighting on multiple fronts.”

The warning eventually came.  To operate in such a manner, permitting a parliamentary majority to “unilaterally approve legislation opposed by the people, will harm the ability to create broad reform that appeals to the whole, will lead to polarization and will increase distrust in both the legislative and executive branches.”

Before lawmakers in a final effort to convince, Gantz, citing former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, issued a reminder that “democracies fall or die slowly when they suffer from a malignant disease called the disease of the majority”.  Such a disease advanced gradually till “the curtain of darkness slowly [descended] on society.”

Gantz also tried to press Levin to abandon the legislation ahead of the two Knesset plenum readings.  In a report from Channel 12, he called it a “mistake” to bring the legislation forward.  The response from Levin was that the legislation was a suitable compromise that both he and Sa’ar had introduced as a dilution on the previous proposal that would have vested total control in the government over judicial appointments.  The revision was “intended to heal the rift of the nation”.

Healing for Netanyahu is a hard concept to envisage.  His authoritarian politics is that of the supreme survivalist with lashings of expedient populism.  Sundering the social compact with damaging attacks on various sacred cows, from intelligence officials to judges, is the sacrifice he is willing to make.  That this will result in a distrust in Israeli institutions seems to worry him less than any sparing from accountability and posterity’s questionable rewards.

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The International Olympic Committee, the sporting world’s equivalent of a white-collar crime family, has made its decision on who will succeed the outgoing president, Thomas Bach.  Representatives gathered in Greece at Costa Navarino, to make their decision.

From the list of seven candidates, former Zimbabwean athlete and winner of seven medals, Kirsty Coventry, received the minimum number of votes for a first-round win: 49 of the 97 cast.  She had been Bach’s preferred choice, bettering Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. (28 votes) and Sebastian Coe (8 votes).  At 41, she is the second-youngest IOC chief in history and its first woman president.  From time to time, crime families will change tack.

It is clear that Coventry’s election might leave a strong impression that something is changing at the IOC.  It gives the impression that a top female sporting administrator is necessarily going to improve the reputation of a body that has found escaping the orbit of habitual corruption and cynicism impossible.

The wheels of propaganda were certainly turning quickly after the vote.  The Sports Examiner gave a good example of this, noting the increasing emphasis by the IOC leadership on the importance of picking athletes for top administrative positions, as opposed to the customary string of dreary businessmen, millionaires and entitled royalty.  Bach’s 12 years in office had seen the elevation of both the number of athletes and women in the body of elected members, supplying “the demographic building blocks of Coventry’s 49 votes and her first-round victory.”

To stress that point was Israeli member and her country’s first Olympic medal winner, Yael Arad.  “I think it’s big history for the Olympic Movement,” she declared to the same publication.  “I think with great candidates with a lot of experience and two of them were Olympic champions, and I think for many of us it counts to be with a lot of skills and experience, but also really come from the bottom of the heart of the sport.”

Not merely content with this observation, Arad offered the believe-in-yourself gloss over Coventry’s victory.  Here was “a great message” in both sport and “the world at large”, one for the dreamers.  If you “work hard enough and you believe in yourself and people believe in you, you can make it.”  If sporting administration is your thing, so be it.

The other aspect of Coventry’s campaign also tilted at Africanness, marked by rather generous references to the Ubuntu philosophy, which emphasises the collective over the individual: “I am because we are.”

Gender representation, being African, or athletic pedigree aside, much of the praise, a good deal of it needlessly cloying, says little about whether the practices of the IOC, let alone the implementation of their various policies, will dramatically alter under Coventry’s reign.

During her press conference as President-elect, Coventry gave scanty details on what would follow.  She would maintain the status quo regarding the neutral flag participation of Russian and Belarussian athletes for the 2026 Winter Games, believing that “we need to do anything and everything to protect and support athletes from all conflict areas.”   On transgender participation, she was stolidly bureaucratic: “I want the IOC to take a little more of a leading role.  And we’re going to do that by setting up a workforce, a task force that will look and analyse everything.”

Little was given away on the more environmental or ecological aspect of the Games, which persist in altering local landscapes, redirecting and using valuable resources, and causing social disruption and hardships to local populations.  Hovering in the background is the ghost of climate change in the planning of Olympic events, a point emphasised by over 400 athletes in their recent letter to IOC candidates.  It asks the new president “that over the years and the course of your presidency one issue be above all others: the care of the planet.”

If Bach’s tenure is anything to go by, we will see a more cunning, slier version of planning in this regard.  Having embraced an emissions reduction policy (50 per cent of direct and indirect emissions by 2030), the IOC would have you believe it’s wholeheartedly serious.

Grand claims, for instance, were made for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics as being “carbon neutral”.  This was hard to square with the destruction of 20,000 trees in the Songshan National Nature Reserve in constructing an Olympic ski run, or the creation of artificial snow, thereby depleting invaluable water supplies.

The 2024 Paris summer games was also heralded as ecologically sound, with French Olympian Tony Estanguet promising an unsurpassed degree of sustainability. A carbon budget was generated, dividing travel at 34 per cent and operations (catering, accommodation, logistics), coming in at 33 per cent.  Emphasis was placed on using existing and temporary infrastructure, in contrast to previous games such as Athens 2004.  Bio-sourced materials were used, and reuse and recycling stressed.

The staging of the event suggested other things at play.  Such sporting mega-events are incongruously described as sustainable despite making various omissions.  The largest source of emissions arising from their staging tends to come from travel to and from the relevant location.  (An estimate of 80 per cent is offered by Madeleine Orr.)  The organisers of Paris 2024 also used what that keen observer of the Olympics, Jules Boykoff, called “dubious measurement instruments” marked by “processes […] too often shrouded in mystery.”  The use of questionable carbon offsets was a particular feature of this.

The IOC also makes extensive use of deceptive carbon offsets in its highly misleading and exploitative Olympics Forest project.  These have been made in the context of exploiting developing economies in the Global South, typified by the predatory practices of carbon credit companies prone to human rights abuses, land seizure practices and environmental degradation.  Opacity is the name of the game.

Were Coventry to be truly revolutionary – and nothing so far suggests it – she would have to dissatisfy the wishes of both the administrators and the athletes.  Short of the healthiest option – the abolition of the Games – would be a dramatically pared-back version marked by smaller audiences and less travel.  What a different sight that would be.

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Photograph Source: JJ Harrison (jjharrison89@facebook.com) – CC BY-SA 3.0

The influencer might be defined as a modern, junked cretin of arrested moral and ethical capacity – with specific skills. Such an individual, for instance, is often able to use technological platforms with aptitude for two mundane purposes: to manipulate the gullible and rake in the cash.  The essence of this effort lies in the technology.  Drone drumming feeds, instant imaging, updates on the guff and drivel of a visit (probably false) to some venue or location, a product’s claimed merits (almost certainly false) and some scientific proposition (absolutely false).

Sam Jones, who claims to be such an influencer, and a wildlife biologist and environmental scientist to boot, thought it wise to pick up a young wombat, thereby separating it from its distressed mother.  The whole episode was, unnaturally, filmed.  Even for someone of Jones’s sparse intellect, she at least observed the following: “Momma’s right there and she’s pissed.  Let’s let him go.”  She makes some effort to beef up her credibility by claiming the following: “I ran, not to rip the joey away from its mother, but from fear that she might attack me.”  At the end of the now deleted video, she claims that she did reunite the mother and joey, though did so by essentially making them potential roadkill victims.

Her account remains inconsistent and contradictory, something not helped by her record of images on Instagram displaying an evident, bloodthirsty delight for the hunt.  Carcasses of slain animals feature, suggesting a desire to accumulate trophies rather than promoting any keen environmental interest.  Jones remains, in that sense, rather traditional: the exotic, the bizarre or the dangerous shall be killed, snapped by camera or just teased for social media purposes.  There is no evident awareness about the cruelty inherent in these measures.

The response to Jones in Australia proved heated.  A petition seeking deportation was launched, receiving over 40,000 signatures.  The Wombat Protection Society expressed shock at the “mishandling of a wombat joey in an apparent snatch for ‘social media likes’.”

Even the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, thought it worth mentioning.  “It’s a shocker.  You know, a wombat is a slow moving, peaceful animal, and to take a baby wombat from its mum was distressing, quite clearly,” he spoke in a radio interview.  He also claimed to have found the video “really distressing”, wondering “what the hell this woman thought she was doing.”  Jones herself claims to have been threatened by “thousands” of the irate.

A number of academics from Australian universities tell us, in tepid language via The Conversation, that this sort of behaviour is becoming ever more frequent.  “Unfortunately,” they lament, “we are seeing a rise in people directly interacting with wildlife through feeding them or taking risks to get close to them, often driven by the pursuit of social media attention.  These interactions can hurt wildlife in many different ways.”  They also note that Jones was fortunate not to receive injuries, given that wombats can “weigh up to 40 kilograms and have teeth and claws they can use for defence.”  Furthermore, she might (here, the delight is barely concealed) have gotten scabies, given the mange many wombats have caused by the relevant parasitic mite.

The incident does give us some room for pause.  Mighty moralism about Australia’s treatment of animals is certainly something to question from the start.  Foamy indignation at the behaviour of a visitor offers mighty distraction given Australia’s less than comfortable relationship with its various species.  Jones herself alludes to this by pointing out the “treatment of its native wildlife”, which includes the expenditure of “millions of your tax dollars to mass slaughter native Australian animals, as well as Snowy River and Kosciuszko brumbies, wild pigs and numerous deer species.”

Peter Singer, the noted Australian bioethicist and author of the seminal tract Animal Liberation, feels that Jones is on some sensible ground.  He takes particular issue with harvesting kangaroos for commercial profit and reducing their numbers as competitors for pasture.  He also notes, however, that the destruction of wombats remains less widespread, while also grudgingly conceding that culling pest species that pose a threat to native habitats and wildlife may be necessary.

Jones could also count on partial agreement from Tania Clancy of Wombatised, a volunteer wildlife rescue and rehabilitation group. “Thousands [of wombats] each year are shot, poisoned to suffer, and trapped legally,” she notes.  “Landowners rip up wombat burrows with heavy machinery, poison them with fumigation and shoot them whenever they can.”

For a continent that tops the league table of species extinction, indignation at such acts of stupidity and exploitation requires some cooling.  The animals of Australia are superficially revered for their singular qualities but their treatment by the human populace has been less than admirable.  Be it debatable culling practices, expansive land clearing, the ongoing and insatiable hunger for exporting commodities and the unshakeable power of the mining industry in politics, Mother Nature Down Under has been, and continues to be roughed and violated.

The current federal government also demonstrated an almost head-high contempt in abandoning the creation of an Environmental Protection Agency, something that arose, in large part, from state premiers worried about a puncture in mining profits.  Besides, animal species don’t tend to go to the ballot box.

At the very least, the insufferable, trophy craving simpleton who took that wombat joey from its mother for sporting shots brought some attention to the fraught relationship between humans and Australia’s beleaguered animal species.

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Photograph Source: Tilman2007 – CC BY-SA 4.0

With the Ukraine War and the retreat of the United States from what has routinely been called Europe’s security architecture, states are galloping to whatever point of presumed sanctuary is on offer.  The general presumption is that the galloping is done in the same step and rhythm.  But Europe, for all the heavy layers of union driven diplomacy, retains its salty differences.

Poland is particularly striking in this regard, having always positioned itself as a defender against the continent’s enemies, perceived or otherwise.  This messianic purpose was well on show with the exploits of King John III Sobieski in his triumphant defence of Vienna against the Ottoman Empire in 1683.  The seemingly endless wars against Russia, including the massacres and repressions, have also left their wounding marks on a fragile national psyche.

These marks continue to script the approach of Warsaw’s anxiety to its traditional enemy, one that has become fixated with a nuclear option, in addition to a massive buildup of its armed forces and a defence budget that has reached 4.7% of its national income.  While there is some disagreement among government officials on whether Poland should pursue its own arsenal, a general mood towards stationing the nuclear weapons of allies has taken hold.  (As a matter of interest, a February 21 poll for Onet found that 52.9 percent of Poles favoured having nuclear weapons, with 27.9 percent opposed.)

This would mirror, albeit from the opposite side, the Cold War history of Poland, when its army was equipped with Soviet nuclear-capable 8K11 and 3R10 missiles.  With sweet irony, those weapons were intended to be used against NATO member states.

The flirtatious offer of French President Emmanual Macron to potentially extend his country’s nuclear arsenal as an umbrella of reassurance to other European states did make an impression on Poland’s leadership.  Prudence might have dictated a more reticent approach, but Prime Minister Donald Tusk would have none of that before the Polish parliament.  In his words, “We must be aware that Poland must reach for the most modern capabilities also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons.”  According to the PM, “this is a race for security, not for war.”

The Polish President, Andrzej Duda, is also warm to the US option (he has been, over his time in office, profoundly pro-American), despite Tusk’s concerns about a “profound change in American geopolitics”.  He was already ruminating over the idea in 2022 when he made the proposal to the Biden administration to host US nuclear weapons, one that was also repeated in June 2023 by then-Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.  To have such weapons in Poland was a necessary “defensive tactic […] to Russia’s behaviour, relocating nuclear weapons to the NATO area,” he explained to the BBC.  “Poland is ready to host this nuclear weapon.”

Duda then goes on to restate a familiar theme.  Were US nuclear weapons stored on Polish soil, Washington would have little choice but to defend such territory against any threat.  “Every kind of strategic infrastructure, American and NATO infrastructure, which we have on our soil is strengthening the inclination of the US and the North Atlantic Alliance to defend this territory.”  To the Financial Times, Duda further reasoned that, as NATO’s borders had moved east in 1999, “so twenty-six years later there should also be a shift of the NATO infrastructure east.”

Much of this seems like theatrical, puffy nonsense, given Poland’s membership of the NATO alliance, which has, as its central point, Article 5.  Whether it involves its protection by a fellow NATO ally using conventional or nuclear weapons, hosting such nuclear weapons is negated as a value.  Poland would receive collective military aid in any case should it be attacked.  But, as Jon Wolfsthal of the Federation of American Scientists reasons, an innate concern of being abandoned in the face of aggression continues to cause jitters.  Tusk’s remarks were possibly “a signal of concern – maybe to motivate the United States, but clearly designed to play on the French and perhaps the British.”

The crippling paranoia of the current government in the face of any perceived Russian threat becomes even less justifiable given the presence of US troops on its soil.  According to the government’s own information, a total of 10,000 troops are present on a rotational basis, with US Land Forces V Corps Forward Command based in Poznań.  In February, Duda confirmed to reporters after meeting the US envoy to Ukraine Gen. Keith Kellogg that there were “no concerns that the US would reduce the level of its presence in our country, that the US would in any way withdraw from its responsibility or co-responsibility for the security of this part of Europe.”

Duda goes further, offering a sycophantic flourish. “I will say in my personal opinion, America has entered the game very strongly when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine.  I know President Donald Trump, I know that he is an extremely decisive man and when he acts, he acts in a very determined and usually effective way.”  With those remarks, we can only assume that the desire to have massively lethal weapons on one’s own soil that would risk obliterating life, limb and everything else is but a sporting parlour game of misplaced assumptions.

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Photograph Source: U.S. Army Europe photo by Visual Information Specialist Markus Rauchenberger – Public Domain

We live in dangerous times, and politicians are happy to be cheerleaders of that supposed fact.  They do not care to reassure; they merely care to strike fear into hearts and feed the sort of pernicious despondency that encourages conflict.  Hope is not a political currency worth trading.  These days, fear is the bankable asset, easily cashed at a moment’s notice.

The March 6 meeting of the Special European Council was a chance for 27 leaders of the European Union to make that point.  It was time to cash in on the Russia threat and promote a strategic vision that spoke of elevated dangers.  It was, in other words, a good time to be throwing money at the militaries of the various member states.

The language was clear from the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a figure who has become increasingly hawkish in pushing the barrow of the military-industrial complex.  Announced on March 4, her ReArm Europe plan entails various measures intended to free up to EUR 800 billion in defence funding.  A notable one is enabling member states to use the escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact to bypass the Excessive Deficit Procedure.  Without giving too much by way of details, von der Leyen claims that EUR 650 billion of “fiscal space” could be created were EU countries to increase defence spending by 1.5% of GDP.  So much, it would seem, for the bloc’s emphasis on fiscal frugality.

Another measure involves the provision of EUR 150 billion of loans to member states under Article 122 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) that will go into such defence initiatives as air and missile defence, artillery, missiles, armed drones and anti-drone systems, and cyber security.  But this is not all: this initiative is not only intended for European defence but aiding Ukraine and, it follows, prolonging the war.

Vague suggestions are also on the table. Von der Leyen babbles about “cohesion policy programmes” that might be used to increase military expenditure, with money drawn from the EU budget.  Private capital will also be raised through the Savings and Investment Union and the European Investment Bank.

The five-point agreement that emerged from the summit was approved by 26 of the 27 members.  (Hungary did not disappoint in vetoing the leaders’ statement).  It spoke to such compulsory conditions as Ukrainian participation in peace talks, and European involvement on matters touching upon its security.  “Ukraine’s, Europe’s, transatlantic and global security,” the statement pompously reads, “are intertwined”.  EU funding in the order of EUR 30.6 billion was also promised for 2025.

The move brings some unwanted attention to the workings of EU policy.  Of interest here is the issue of using Article 122, an emergency provision that is non-legislative in nature and has been previously used in responding to the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  In other words, it is an executive pathway that purposely bypasses the European Parliament.

Resorting to the article in this instance did not impress Manfred Weber, who leads the European People’s Party (EPP) group in the Parliament.  “Bypassing Parliament with Article 122 is a mistake,” opined Weber to his colleagues in the Strasbourg plenary.  “Europe’s democracy stands on two pillars: its citizens and its member states, (and) we need both for our security.”

European Parliament president Roberta Metsola also urged EU leaders at the March 6 summit that, “Working through the European Parliament, especially on decisions of this magnitude, is a way of fostering trust in our union.”  While “swift action” was needed, “acting together is the only way of ensuring broad and deep public backing.”

In a non-legislative resolution, 419 MEPs encouraged member states to, amongst other matters, increase defending expenditure by at least 3% of GDP, create a bank for defence, security and resilience and pursue a system by which European defence bonds might be used to pre-finance military investment.  While these approving members thought Europe was “facing the most profound military threat to its territorial integrity since the end of the Cold War”, 204 chose to vote against it, with 46 deciding to abstain.

In the process of reaching the final resolution, it is worth noting that certain MEPs from The Left and The Greens/EFA attempted to include an amendment that was rejected by 444 votes.  “The Parliament,” it read, “deplores the choice to use Art. 122 […] for the new EU instrument meant to support members states defence capabilities; expresses deep concern for being excluded from decisional process”.

While the March summit suggested a new turn towards bellicose militarism, the trend is unmistakable and troublingly inexorable: Europe is spending more on defence, and was doing so even before the return of Donald Trump to the White House.  In 2024, military budgets increased by 11.7% in real terms, with a number of countries reaching the target of 2% of GDP expenditure agreed by NATO members in 2014.  Throughout Europe, the merchants of death, an eloquent, accurate term coined in the 1930s, can only be crowing.

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