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The crypto crash might be making headlines, but crypto theft and fraud should be the focus of regulators. Mike Papantonio is joined by attorney Michael Bixby to talk about this financial Wild West. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio: The crypto crash might be making headlines, but crypto […]
Papua New Guinea’s Energy Minister Saki Soloma and his supporters had to run for their lives when they were attacked by rival candidate supporters in Okapa station on Friday with the national elections due in July.
His supporters were also injured when they protected Soloma from being harmed as they ran helter-skelter.
The mob then set fire to Soloma’s five vehicles that were used for a rally and visit to a market area.
Recalling his life-threatening ordeal, Soloma, who is also the Okapa MP, said: “We were on our way to the market area at about noon when we spotted a huge crowd of supporters at a rally.
“They were unfriendly and did not seem to want us there. A bottle was then thrown at my convoy of vehicles and all hell broke loose.
“We jumped out of our vehicles and ran for our lives.
“When the assailants could not find us, they torched all our vehicles.
‘Bad precedent for elections’
“The attack and burning of my convoy of vehicles is a bad precedent for general elections.
“I’d like to think that it was pre-planned.
“Objects like catapults were also used in the attack.
“My supporters fled in all directions.
“Some received knife wounds but no lives were lost.
“Everyone should be allowed to campaign peacefully and freely.
“Papua New Guineans should also be allowed to make their choice and cast their ballots safely.”
Warning against taking law into own hands
Soloma said he advised and cautioned his supporters to refrain from taking the law into their own hands.
Energy Minister Saki Soloma … ran for his life when opponents attacked his convoy of five vehicles and set them on fire during an election campaign rally. Image: The National
“I have spoken to the provincial police commander. I understand police are investigating,” he said.
“I am very sorry that this had happened.
“It is all a reckless, irresponsible behaviour and jealousy.
“I appeal to other candidates to demonstrate leadership and ensure peace is restored for Papua New Guineans to exercise their right to choose and cast their ballots safely.”
Eastern Highlands commander Superintendent Michael Welly said those responsible would be dealt with accordingly.
Meanwhile, Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai warned that anyone caught pulling down or burning campaign posters and election materials or paraphernalia would be fined or imprisoned.
Shirley Mauludu is a National newspaper reporter. Republished with permission.
The American Government explains its thefts from other countries as being justifiable because the U.S. Government has slapped sanctions upon those countries, and because these sanctions authorize the U.S. Government to steal whatever it wants to steal, from them, that it can grab. Here are just a few such examples:
The United States has confiscated an Iranian oil cargo held on a Russian-operated ship near Greece and will send the cargo to the United States. …
“The cargo has been transferred to another ship that was hired by the U.S.,” the source added, without providing further details.
The development comes after the United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on what it described as a Russian-backed oil smuggling and money laundering network for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force. …
U.S. advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which monitors Iran-related tanker traffic, said the Pegas had loaded around 700,000 barrels of crude oil from Iran’s Sirri Island on Aug. 19, 2021.
Prior to this load, the Pegas transported over 3 million barrels of Iranian oil in 2021, with over 2.6 million of those barrels ending up in China, according to UANI analysis.
In 2020, Washington confiscated four cargoes of Iranian fuel that were bound for Venezuela and transferred them with the help of undisclosed foreign partners onto two other ships which then sailed to the United States. …
On 24 October 2019, USA Today bannered “Pentagon planning to send tanks, armored vehicles to Syrian oil fields” and pretended that if (Syria’s actual invader) America wouldn’t be stealing Syria’s oil, then (Syria’s actual defender, invited into the country in order to help defeat the U.S.-led invasion of it) Russia would be stealing it. Their article closed by saying that: “Nicholas Heras, an expert on Syria with the Center for a New American Security [CNAS], … said, ‘the Pentagon is making contingencies for a big fight with Russia for Syria’s oil.’” Perhaps the intention of that article was to help build Americans’ support for stealing Syria’s oil. (The CNAS is a Democratic Party think tank, and was there endorsing the Republican President Trump’s operation to steal Syria’s oil — it’s a bipartisan goal of the U.S. Government.) By contrast, two days later, Russia’s Sputnik News headlined about America’s thefts of oil from Syria, “The Russian military described the US scheme as nothing less than ‘international state banditism.’” (Russia had no need to deceive anyone about that.)
In a new breach of international laws, the US occupation forces sent today to Qameshli city in Hasaka province a new convoy composed of tanks, ambulances and dozens of vehicles and cars loading military and logistic materials. According to local sources, the convoy illegally entered this morning from Iraq in order to fortify the US occupation forces’ positions in the Syrian Jazeera.
This convoy is the biggest one that entered the Syrian territories since several months.
Over the few past months, the US occupation forces sent through illegal crossing points thousands of vehicles loaded with weapons, military equipment and logistic materials to reinforce their existence in the Syrian Jazeera region and to steal Syrian oil and wealth.
Damascus “condemns in the strongest terms the agreement signed between al-Qasd militia (SDF) and an American oil company to steal Syria’s oil under the sponsorship and support of the American administration”, the Syrian statement said. “This agreement is null and void and has no legal basis.”
Furthermore: “There was no immediate response from SDF officials to a Reuters’ request for comment. There was no immediate comment from U.S. officials.”
The U.S. Government has done this also to Venezuela and other countries that it likewise wants to take over.
On 13 March 2022, Reuters headlined “Sanctions have frozen around $300 bln of Russian reserves, FinMin says,” and reported that “Foreign sanctions have frozen around $300 billion out of $640 billion that Russia had in its gold and forex reserves, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview with state TV.”
The lawyer and geostrategic analyst Alexander Mercouris explains how and why America’s blocking Russia’s international payments of Russia’s sovereign debt, and Germany’s seizure of some of Gazprom’s German assets, “violate the [international-law] principle of sovereign immunity; both the central bank and Gazprom are, after all, owned by the Russian Government. … These were the sort of acts that, once upon a time, governments could legally make only in time of war. But of course Germany and the United States are not formally at war with Russia. So we see how another extraordinary step has been taken, towards … ever-greater illegality.” He wonders “what damage” will be done “to the international legal system and to the international financial system.”
Many of these actions, by America and its allies, are alleged to be done not in order to reinforce existing international laws (which, of course, they instead violate), but the opposite: to advance “the international rules-based order,” which “rules,” that will be made by the U.S. Government, will be introduced as constituting new legal precedents in order to replace the current source of international laws, which is the U.N. and its authorized agencies. The U.S. Government would gradually replace the U.N., except as the U.N.’s being a sump for unprofitable expeditions that the ‘humanitarian’ and ‘democratic’ U.S. Government can endorse. There would be a further weakening of the U.N., which is already so weak so that, even now, anything which is done by the U.S. and its allies is, practically speaking, not possible to be prosecuted in international courts such as the International Criminal Court, which body is allowed to prosecute alleged crimes only by leaders of “third world” nations. America’s “rules-based international order” would replace that toothless U.N.-based system, and would be backed up by America’s over-800 military bases around the world. Unlike the existing U.N., which has no military, this “rules-based international order” would be enforced at gunpoint, everywhere.
However, even America’s allied nations are getting fleeced, though in different ways, by the U.S. Government. This is being done via international corruption. For example: America’s F-35 warplanes from Lockheed Martin Corporation and its sub-contractors (Northrop-Grumman, Pratt & Whitney, and BAE Systems), are so bad and so very expensive that the U.S. Government wants to cut its losses on the plane without cutting the profits by Lockheed Martin and other ‘defense’-contractors’ on it, and therefore needs to increase its allies’ purchases of these warplanes. NATO is the main marketing organization for U.S. ‘defense’ contractors; and, so, on 15 April 2022, Russia’s RT news headlined “US nuclear bombs ‘shared’ with European allies will be deployed on Lockheed Martin jets, NATO explains,”and reported that,
Jessica Cox, director of the NATO nuclear policy directorate in Brussels, said … that “By the end of the decade, most if not all of our allies will have transitioned” to the F-35. …
Germany would replace its aging Tornado jets with F-35s, committing to buy up to three dozen and specifically citing the nuclear sharing mission as factoring in the decision. …
Finland and Sweden have recently voiced a desire to join NATO, and Helsinki already announced it would buy some 60 F-35s in early February [notably, BEFORE Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th]. …
The F-35 was originally proposed as a cost-effective modular design that could replace multiple older models in service with the US Air Force, Navy, and the Marines. In reality, it turned into three distinct designs with a lifetime project cost of over $1.7 trillion, the most expensive weapons program in US [and in all of global] history.
In addition to the price tag, the fifth-generation stealth fighter has also been plagued with performance issues, to the point where the new USAF chief of staff requested a study into a different aircraft in February 2021.
General Charles Q. Brown Jr. compared the F-35 to a “high end” sports car, a Ferrari one drives on Sundays only, and sought proposals for a “clean sheet design” of a “5th-gen minus” workhorse jet instead. Multiple US outlets characterized his proposal as a “tacit admission” that the F-35 program had failed.
That word “characterized” was there linked through to a number of informative articles, such as these, about the F-35:
That Defense News report said that the basic design-requirements for the F-35 prohibit any speed higher than the speed of sound (Mach 1), because the air-friction above that speed would instantly melt the stealth coating, and,
The potential damage from sustained high speeds would influence not only the F-35’s airframe and the low-observable coating that keeps it stealthy, but also the myriad antennas located on the back of the plane that are currently vulnerable to damage, according to documents exclusively obtained by Defense News.
Though that publication — which could not exist apart from the funding that is provided directly or indirectly from America’s ‘defense’ contractors — used euphemisms to describe this problem, such as “potential damage” and that there would need to be imposed “a time limit on high-speed flight” and that “the F-35 jet can only fly at supersonic speeds for short bursts of time before there is a risk of structural damage and loss of stealth capability,” the actual facts are: those “short bursts” would, in the practical world, be virtually instantaneous, approximating zero seconds, and the phrase “a risk” would be referring to 100% — a certainty. That’s virtually the opposite of the ‘news’-report’s allegation that the F-35 would need to avoid “sustained high speeds,” because the plane would instead need to avoid ANY supersonic speed. In other words: the plane’s stealth capability would need to be virtually 100% effective and at speeds only below the speed of sound, in order for the plane to be, at all, effective, and deserving to be called a “stealth” warplane. The only exception to that would be the F-35A, for the Air Force (not usable by the Navy — from aircraft carriers — nor by the Army).
As regards the F-35A (Air Force F-35 version), Wikipedia says about the F-35 that its maximum speed is Mach 1.6 (1.6 times the speed of sound). By contrast, Russia’s Su-57 (which is less expensive), has a maximum speed of Mach 2.0. The reason why Russia’s is both a better plane and far less costly is that Russia’s military-industrial complex is controlled ONLY by the Government, whereas America’s Government is instead controlled mainly by its ‘defense’-contractors, and is, therefore, overwhelmingly corrupt, which is also the reason why America is the permanent and unceasing warfare-state, ever since 25 July 1945, when its “Cold War” started, and has never ceased.
One of the few honest statements that the world-champion liar and the world’s most respected living person, U.S. President Barack Obama, made about his goals as President, was his 28 May 2014 statement to the graduating class at the West Point Military Academy, that,
The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.
He was saying there that all other nations — including U.S. ‘allies’ — are “dispensable.” Consequently, of course, in that view: stealing by the U.S. Government, from any other Government, is acceptable. It’s the U.S. Government’s viewpoint, and is politically bipartisan in America. At least until now, it is an acceptable viewpoint, to most people. Perhaps truths have been hidden from them. Who has been doing this, and why, would then be the natural question on any intelligent individuals’ minds. But certainly there can be no reasonable doubt that the U.S. Government does — and rather routinely — steal from other countries. That’s a fact, if anything is.
This past week, Republicans went out of their way to blame everything except guns for mass shootings, and none of them want to address the actual problem. There is no other way around it: Guns are the problem, and the ease with which Americans can get their hands on weapons of war is terrifying. Ring […]
Crimes without criminals was not a subject for study when I was in law school. The two were seen as part of the same illegal package. That was before notorious corporate lawyers and a cash register Congress combined to separate economic, health and safety crimes from corporate accountability, incarceration and deterrence.
Lawlessness is now so rampant that a group of realistic law professors, led by Professor Mihailis E. Diamantis of the University of Iowa Law School, claim there is no corporate criminal law. I say “realistic” because their assertion that corporate criminal law, does not in fact, exist is not widely acknowledged by their peers.
Most Americans know that none of the executives on Wall Street who are responsible for the lies, deception, and phony investments they sold to millions of trusting investors were prosecuted and sent to jail. “They got away with it,” was the common refrain during the 2008-2009 meltdown of Wall Street that took our economy down and into a deep recession that resulted in massive job loss and the looting of savings of tens of millions of Americans.
Not only did the Wall Street Barons escape the Sheriff but they got an obedient Congress, White House and Federal Reserve to guarantee trillions of dollars to bail them out, implicitly warning that the big banks, brokerage firms and other giant financial corporations were simply “too big to fail.” They had the economy by the throat and taxpayer dollars in their pockets. Moreover, Wall Streeters made out like bandits while people on Main Street suffered.
All this and much more made up a rare symposium organized by Professor Diamantis last year at Georgetown Law School. (See here). He wrote that the “economic impact of corporate crime is at least twenty times greater than all other criminal offenses combined,” quoting conservative estimates by the FBI. It’s not just economic, he continued: “Scholars, prosecutors and courts increasingly recognize that brand name corporations also commit a broad range of ‘street crimes’: homicide, arson, drug trafficking, dumping and sex offenses.”
The litany of corporate wrongdoing ranges from polluting the air and drinking water, dumping microplastics that end up inside human beings, promoting lethal opioids that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, providing millions of accounts or products to customers under false pretenses or without consent, often by creating false records or misusing customers’ identities, (Wells Fargo), manufacturing defective motor vehicles, producing contaminated food, allowing software failures resulting in crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX’s with 346 deaths. (See, Why Not Jail? By Rena Steinzor).
People don’t need law professors to see what’s happening to them and their children. People laugh when they hear politicians solemnly declare that “no one is above the law,” extol “the rule of law” and “equal justice under the law.”
By far the greatest toll in preventable fatalities and serious injuries in the U.S. flows from either deliberate, negligent or corner-cutting corporate crime under the direct control and management of CEOs and company presidents, many of whom make over $10,000 an hour over a 40-hour week.
Five thousand people a week die in hospitals due to “preventable problems,” documents a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine study. The EPA estimates some 65,000 deaths a year from air pollution; OSHA has estimated about 60,000 work-related fatalities from diseases and traumas in the workplace. This carnage does not include the far greater numbers of people suffering from illnesses and injuries.
This range of corporate destruction was pointed out thirty-four years ago by Russell Mokhiber in his classic book, Corporate Crime and Violence: Big Business Power and the Abuse of the Public Trust (Sierra Club, 1988).
What are Congress and the White House saying and doing about this growing corporate crime wave? Saying little and doing almost nothing. Corporate criminal law enforcement budgets are ridiculously paltry. The Department of Health and Human Services recovers less than three percent of the estimated $100 billion a year stolen from Medicare and Medicaid. There are too few cops on the corporate crime beat and the White House and Congress are unwilling to remedy this problem.
Congress doesn’t hold broad hearings on corporate crime, except when a dustup gets headlines like the recent contaminated baby formula from the unsanitary Abbott factory in Sturgis, Michigan.
This is remarkable because since January 2021, two of the rare outspoken lawmakers against corporate criminality, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), both are chairs of subcommittees in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
There are large gaps to be filled and updated in the inadequate federal corporate criminal law. Some regulatory agencies, such as the FAA (aviation) and NHTSA (auto safety) have no criminal penalty whatsoever for willful and knowing violations that directly result in fatalities.
Then there is the patsy Department of Justice (DOJ). For years we’ve asked DOJ officials to ask Congress to fund a corporate crime database (like the street crime database). Attorney General Merrick Garland won’t even respond to letters about this issue. For years, specialists like Columbia Law professor John Coffee have been urging the DOJ to stop settling the few cases they bring against corporate crooks with weak “deferred prosecution agreements” or “non-prosecution agreements.” These deals involve modest fines, no jail time for the corporate bosses and a kind of temporary probation for the corporation.
Corporate attorneys play the DOJ like a harp knowing that the Department has a small budget for prosecuting corporate crime and that many DOJ attorneys are looking for lucrative jobs in these corporate law firms, after a few years of government service. Any one of many giant corporate law firms has more attorneys than all the lawyers working on corporate crime in the Department of Justice.
Professor Diamantis, W. Robert Thomas and their colleagues are prolific writers of law review articles. They argue for a range of effective penalties that will deter recidivism, which is rampant. They probe restructuring the corporate hierarchies of privileges and immunities from the law. They argue for updating the antiquated federal criminal code to match new technological/Internet/artificial intelligence (AI) violations.
Until, however, these scholars can make it into the mainstream media to reach enough citizens and get this “law and order” agenda adopted by candidates campaigning for elective office, the ideas they advance will circulate mostly among themselves indefinitely.
Papua New Guinea police have warned the public to take precaution with criminals now operating in large numbers in some suburbs of the second city Lae after an attack on University of Technology students.
Metropolitan police commander Chief Superintendent Chris Kunyanban issued the warning following the attack on Unitech when more than 30 armed criminals entered the female dormitory and robbed the students.
He warned such crimes were taking place at particular areas of Igam block, Stone Gat and East and West Taraka.
“These are the areas that criminals are operating in large numbers to steal small things such as household items to breaking and entering a store,” Chief Superintendent Kunyanban said.
According to police reports, the criminals stole mainly personal belongings such as laptops, phones and bags.
A female student was injured during the robbery when she tried to scream for help.
The student was admitted to hospital and police are continuing investigation.
‘Serious security breach’
“It is a serious security breach and the institution must be very considerate with the safety of its students, especially with female students or employees living in the campus,” Chief Superintendent Kunyanban said.
“Security should be sufficient to guarantee the students’ safety.”
He said police investigations were still underway to determine what really happened and how many things were stolen.
“It is also dangerous when you have a large number of people going around causing damage in the communities because the impact can be great and people can get injured like the recent incident,” he said.
Chief Supt Kunyanban said security measures on campus were internal matters of the institution.
According to police, more than 30 criminals went into the dormitory on early Friday morning and held up the students.
A student victim, who requested anonymity, said there were more than 10 men who broke into her room as she could not count.
‘Pointed guns at me’
“They pointed guns at me and were asking for my laptop,” she said.
She described the guns as brand new and almost all of the men had one.
“We couldn’t scream or call for help as we had guns pointed at us,” she said.
“One of the burglars asked for my phone and I told him that it was outside and he hit me on my side with a crowbar.”
She said the Uniforce arrived about 20 minutes later.
Men from the staff residential area arrived earlier and tried to pursue the robbers but without success.
This is not a lament for Shireen, nor is it a political article. It is not a press report, nor is it a study. It is not a tribute or condolence, because Shireen Abu Akleh deserves more than all of these.
These are mere observations and impressions of The Assassination of Shireen, of the deep sadness that has stricken people, all people, not only in Palestine, but across the world.
These are impressions of “real funerals” rather than metaphorical, of the sanctity of the casket and coffin, of the raised flags, and those that fell to the ground, of the capital and the conflict over the capital, of the tragic departure of a dear friend, an exceptional human at all levels.
I do not write this to praise her virtues, everyone has done so already, although she deserves a lot, and a lot from us.
Shireen Abu Akleh renewed Palestine and the values of the Palestinian people Shireen was insidiously and aggressively assassinated. With her martyrdom, every Palestinian felt that they had lost their own someone dear.
Shireen, who had entered every house through Al Jazeera for a quarter of a century of hard, respectful, and professional journalism, is entering houses this time as a member of every Palestinian family, in the east, west, north, and south.
Every Palestinian felt personally touched by her martyrdom, and thus felt subjugated and humiliated. Everyone is asking “how could a well-known journalist be killed in the field dressed in such a way that clearly indicates that she is a journalist: a helmet and a vest with the word ‘PRESS’?”
This act targets those who tell the truth, the truth about daily killing in Palestine.
The assassination of Shireen, turning her into news, is an Israeli attempt to hide the truth; and to discipline, intimidate, and deter those who seek to show it. However, the reaction to her murder exceeded all expectations, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets to express their anger, not only in solidarity with Shireen’s small family, but because to most of them Shireen is family.
Mourners carry slain Al Jazeera veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during her funeral procession in the Old City of Jerusalem on 13 May 2022. Image: Jeries Bssier/APA
This large and massive participation in the funeral is but an expression of great anger, and the retrieval of the concept of Palestine, that is still under occupation, thus the retrieval of collective values of people under occupation, the most important of which is the collective sense of the need to be rid of this occupation and end it through resistance.
With all its political and religious diversity, including diversity imposed by the Israeli occupation (West Bank, Palestinians of lands occupied in 1948, and the Gaza Strip), the Palestinian people expressed unprecedented national and on-the-ground unity.
What made this unity special is that it was not emotional or sentimental, but an extension and an accumulation of what happened in May 2021 during attacks on the Gaza Strip and Sheikh Jarrah, an extension of the great solidarity with the prisoners of the Freedom Tunnel last September.
These heroic prisoners, whose heroic and courageous actions reverberated around the whole world, are still being punished by the occupation through the murder of their siblings.
Now comes the martyrdom of Shireen Abu Akleh, which served to crown, perpetuate, and define this moment of a great unitary struggle, which will inevitably be understood in the future as a moment of continuity with the events of the past year.
Jerusalem the capital
“Jerusalem is Arab”; this is not just a slogan that the residents of the West Bank shouted near Israeli checkpoints that surround the city, which they are forbidden from entering, these are the cheers of hundreds of thousands who shouted from the walls of the Old City, and in its alleyways.
This simply means that the conflict over the city has been resolved by Palestinian and Arab consciousness, by global popular consciousness and, will of course be introduced and reintroduced, in international forums.
As for the nuclear state, with a smart, powerful, and technologically advanced, “most ethical” army, as it claims, it proceeded for six consecutive hours to confiscate Palestinian flags carried by mourners, who not only raised the Palestinian flag, but also removed Israeli flags off their flagpoles at Jaffa Gate, one of the gates of the Old City of Jerusalem.
This means that 74 years on, this “strong” state is still not able to control neighbourhoods in its capital or in “the capital”, which says a lot.
This “strong” state attempted to limit the number of mourners participating in Shireen’s funeral, and planned to implement this order, demanding that the funeral be limited to religious rites, and that mourners would not raise Palestinian flags, and thus deployed police forces to the vicinity of the (St Louis) French Hospital to tighten its control over the funeral.
This “strong” state permitted itself to do what no one in history has done, no matter their religion, and assaulted the casket in a very hideous way that will forever be engraved in people’s memories. With this assault, Israel assassinated Shireen Abu Akleh again, but in doing so, it strengthened the resolve of mourners to participate mightily in the funeral, in a manner deserving of a martyr from Palestine, and instilled in the minds of people in the entire world the most heinous picture of this occupation.
Israeli security forces attack pallbearers carrying the casket of Shireen Abu Akleh out of the St Louis French Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood before being transported to a church and then her resting place in Jerusalem. Image: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP
The heroes: Protectors of the funeral and coffin Let’s imagine for a second the brutality with which young Jerusalemites and non-Jerusalemites who carried Shireen’s coffin on their shoulders were beaten. Let’s imagine the thick batons that the (Israeli) police used to beat them.
Let’s imagine the poisonous gasses that polluted the air of the funeral, the filthy wastewater that contaminated the area, on a sanitary level, since it was in the vicinity of a hospital, as well as on an ethical level, since it held the body of a martyr.
These heroes received batons, punches, and severe beatings, and yet held on to the coffin, they endured this much blind loathing and held on to the coffin, raised high on their shoulders, as a martyr from Palestine deserves, as Shireen Abu Akleh deserves.
The hero and heroes who saved Shatha Hanaysha and tried to save Shireen at the outskirts of the camp the moment of the crime It is not only the brutal image of the occupation and its crimes that would remain engraved in our minds, nor just the pictures of the funeral, nor just the pictures of the young men who climbed the walls of the Old City, but the pictures of the heroes who could not care less about their lives, and insisted on reaching the site of Shireen’s martyrdom, with journalist Shatha Hanaysha, whom they saved from a certain death.
They managed to take Shireen to a hospital despite the intensity of the murderers’ bullets at the site. These young men, although not fighters, have turned into heroes in everyone’s eyes. Is there an act higher than the sacrifice they have made?
Al Jazeera journalist Guevara Al Budairi bids farewell to Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed during an Israeli raid in the West Bank city of Ramallah on 12 May 2022. Image: Wajed Nobani/APA
Walid, Guevara, Sandy, Wissam, Najwan, Samir, Elias and injured Ali Samoudi, as well as other al-Jazeera crew members working in Palestine
About those heartbroken by the death of a friend, colleague, sister and journalist, about their bravery to continue to report, pictures and news, despite their great loss, and about their heavy tears as they covered the news, and about their coherence in the funeral, during the burial procession, and in funeral homes.
It was as if they had agreed to postpone their grief until after they finished their duty of covering (the news) in a way that their colleague Shireen deserved. They continued their coverage for five days, covering not only the funeral route and the ceremony, but also the news of Palestine — specifically, the raids against the Jenin refugee camp on the day of the funeral.
Iman, Manal, Wasim, Carol, Jamal, Michael, Nadia, Nay, Marian, Rita, Malak, Faten, Fouad, Haitham, and other close friends All of these friends concurred that Shireen had honoured them with her friendship, and that their loss was great and very painful; to Shireen they were family, and at the same time Shireen was family to them.
The impact of her loss was enormous, a great silence ensued, and their eyes reflected the entire sadness of this tragedy. But the determination of Shireen’s colleagues and friends to take part in her farewell from Jenin to Jerusalem, through all the cities and towns, to commemorate her, and the continued talk of her, gave them the strength to cope with the shock of her departure.
Her brother Antoine, his wife Lisa, son Nasri and daughters Lena and Larrain Antoine, the brother who received the news of his sister Shireen’s injury, and then her martyrdom, via breaking news thousands of miles away from Palestine, for him to begin the risky return journey from Somalia, where he works with the United Nations, which was under complete closure due to general elections, he had to travel most of the distance to the airport on foot and reached it without a ticket or any preparation to travel in the times of covid-19 and its procedures.
On board, he saw everything happening in Palestine, he saw the Israeli police storming his home in Beit Hanina, he had to experience a thousand thoughts all while also experiencing this overwhelming sadness.
An only brother loses his only sister, his two daughters and son lost their only aunt, they were deprived of an aunt; Antoine’s wife, Lisa, lost her sister-in-law, her friend and her sister. What brutality is this?
What consoles Antoine, Lisa and their children is that Shireen regained the Arabism of Jerusalem, she united Palestinians, restored the spirit of international solidarity with Palestine, and redirected the compass to its rightful place.
Shireen conjured Palestine up with her death, and this may be a consolation for her small family and for all of us.
Finally, the murderer’s narrative Shireen’s greatest passion was to expose the crimes of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, and through her work as a journalist, she exposed murders, confiscations, Judaisation, repression, and racial discrimination. She was always face-to-face with the Zionist narrative, exposing its lies and claims.
I do not want to go into the mazes of the investigation, nor the identity of who is behind the murderer, or the justifications they gave to media, let alone their ghastly confusion, their attempt to confuse the world’s public opinion in turn, the ensuing obfuscation, and so on.
There is a known murderer with a name and a commander, the commander has a higher commander, and the higher commander reports to a political official, all of whom decided on the 11 May 2022 to continue to shed Palestinian blood.
Those behind the crime are the occupation authorities who sent their special forces to practice what they do best: killing Palestinians wherever they are, regardless of profession.
Over time, the occupation has killed journalists, lawyers, doctors, children, young men, and women, without being prevented by any taboos.
I repeat that there is a known murderer, and when the occupation ceases to carry out daily killings in villages, cities and refugee camps in Palestine, it will lose its raison d’être.
The departure of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh entails a lot of work that the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian and international human rights institutions have to do to expose the practices of this occupation.
The forces of political and civil society have a lot of burdens to bear in order to maintain the momentum of solidarity that the departure of martyr Abu Akleh has left, an unprecedented international solidarity that must be preserved, observed, developed, and supported.
Khaled Farraj is the director-general of the Institute for Palestine Studies. This article was first published by the Institute for Palestine Studies on 17 May 2022 and has been translated for Mondoweiss and republished with their permission. Translated by Nina Abu Farha.
A former Arby’s manager has admitted to urinating in the milk shake mix – as he’s being investigated for child pornography. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio: A former Arby’s manager has admitted to urinating in milkshake mix. Wow. Is, it’s […]
The change in marijuana laws across the US raises issues far beyond, “Hey, dude, we can blow a joint now without getting busted.” The racism that permeated the age of criminalization now lurks throughout the phase of decriminalization. The burgeoning business of growing pot raises the specter of corporate agriculture with its threats to human health and natural ecosystems. Are there ways to enjoy weed while challenging racism and corporate domination over the environment?
An Attack on Black and Brown Cultures
Spanish-speaking people, who have lived in the US since it stole half of Mexico’s land, have a tradition of smoking marijuana. Amid a growing fear of Mexican immigrants in the early twentieth century, hysterical claims about the drug became widespread, such as allegations that it caused a “lust for blood.” The term cannabis was largely replaced by the Anglicized marijuana, perhaps to suggest the foreignness of the drug. Around this time many states began passing laws to ban pot.
In “Why Is Marijuana Illegal in the US?” Amy Tikkanen wrote that in the 1930s, Harry J. Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, turned the battle against marijuana into an all-out war. He could have been motivated less by safety concerns—the vast majority of scientists he surveyed claimed that the drug was not dangerous—and more by a desire to promote his newly created department. Anslinger sought a federal ban on the drug, and initiated a high-profile campaign that relied heavily on racism. Anslinger claimed that the majority of pot smokers were minorities, including African Americans, and that marijuana had a negative effect on these “degenerate races,” such as inducing violence or causing insanity.
Furthermore, he noted, “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.” Anslinger oversaw the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Although that particular law was declared unconstitutional in 1969, it was augmented by the Controlled Substances Act the following year. That legislation classified marijuana—as well as heroin and LSD, among others—as a Schedule I drug. Racism was also evident in the enforcement of the law. African Americans in the early 21st century were nearly four times more likely than whites to be arrested on marijuana-related charges—despite both groups having similar usage rates.
In her 2016 film, 13th Amendment, producer, Ava Duvernay documented drug laws and policies which increased incarceration rates of Black and brown people over the last six decades.
President Nixon’s “War on Crime” of the 1970s targeted protests by the anti-war movement as well as liberation movements by gays, women, and Blacks. “Crime” became a code word for race. Nixon’s Adviser, John Ehrlichman, admitted that the “War on Drugs” was all about throwing Black people into jail to disrupt those communities. These efforts were to gain southern voters.
In the 1980’s, President Reagan’s “War on Drugs” portrayed drugs as an “inner city problem,” allowed for mandatory sentencing for crack cocaine, and tripled the federal spending on law enforcement. The War on Drugs became a war against Black and Latino communities, with huge chunks of Black and brown men disappearing into prison for a “really long” time. The exploding mass incarceration rates felt genocidal. This was again pandering to racist voters.
In his effort to appear “tough on crime” during the 1990’s, President Bill Clinton pushed the $30 billion Federal Crime Bill which expanded prison sentences, incentivized law enforcement to do things we now consider abusive, and militarized local police forces. Increased incarceration rates due to the Clinton administration included introduction of the terms “super predators,” Mandatory Minimum Sentences, “Truth in Sentencing” (which eliminated parole), and “three strikes and you’re out” laws whereby those convicted of three felonies were mandated to prison for life. Such a criminal justice system needs constant feeding of young men and women of color.
Racism during Marijuana Criminalization
Poverty plays a central role in mass incarceration – people put in prison and jail are disproportionately poor. The criminal justice system punishes poverty, beginning with the high price of money bail. The median felony bail bond amount ($10,000) is the equivalent of eight months’ income for the typical defendant. Those with low incomes are more likely to face the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration – it is also frequently the outcome, as a criminal record and time spent in prison destroys wealth, creates debt, and decimates job opportunities.
It’s no surprise that people of color — who face much greater rates of poverty — are dramatically overrepresented in the nation’s prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who make up 38% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 12% of US residents.
Police, prosecutors, and judges continue to punish people harshly for nothing more than drug possession. Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of almost 400,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. Police still make over one million drug possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences. Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses. The enormous churn in and out of correctional facilities is 600,000 persons per year. There are another 822,000 people on parole and a staggering 2.9 million people on probation – 79 million people have a criminal record; and 113 million adults have immediate family members who have been to prison.
One in five incarcerated people is locked up for a drug offense. Four out of five people in prison or jail are locked up for something other than a drug offense — either a more serious offense or a less serious one. The terms “violent” and “nonviolent” crime are so widely misused that they are generally unhelpful in a policy context. People typically use “violent” and “nonviolent” as substitutes for serious versus nonserious criminal acts. That alone is a fallacy, but worse, these terms are also used as coded (often racialized) language to label individuals as inherently dangerous versus non-dangerous.
Decriminalization Reinvents Marijuana Racism
The decriminalization which is sweeping across the US carries with it the obvious facts that (a) pot is not and never has been a dangerous drug, and (b) criminalizing drugs has never brought anything positive. This suggests that those who have been victimized were done so wrongfully and therefore should be compensated for the wrongs done to them. However, victims have been predominantly people of color and American racism reappears during the decriminalization phase in the form of trivializing harms done and offering restitution that barely scratch the surface of what is needed.
Prior to addressing the shortcomings for wrongful damages for marijuana laws, the US should publicly apologize for the wrongheaded and thoroughly racist “War on Drugs” and pledge to compensate those who have suffered from it in ways that are comparable to cannabis-related issues below.
Victims should be compensated for time spent in jail. Prisoners might receive compensation for labor performed in prison; but it can be as low as $0.86 to $3.45 per day for most common prison jobs. At least five states pay nothing at all. Private companies using prison labor are not the source of most prison jobs. Only about 5,000 people in prison — fewer than 1% — are employed by private companies through the federal PIECP (Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program), which requires them to pay at least minimum wage before deductions. (A larger portion work for state-owned “correctional industries,” which pay much less. But this still only represents about 6% of people incarcerated in state prisons.)
There cannot be a serious discussion of compensating victims if many continue to rot in jail. They must be release immediately, regardless of what state they are in. Many of those released have not had records of their arrests, convictions and sentencing cleared (“expunged”). According to Equity and Transformation Chicago, there is a 5-8 year wait for expunging records. Records must be expunged as rapidly as would be done if it really affected people’s lives (because it does).
A core component of repairing harm done to those imprisoned would be prioritizing them (according to amount of jail time served) to receive licenses for growing, processing, transporting and dispensing marijuana. Various states have taken baby steps in the right direction. For example, Chicago’s Olive Harvey College is offering training in cannabis studies to those with past marijuana arrests. Participants receive “free tuition, a $1,000 monthly stipend, academic support and help with child care, transportation and case management.” As of March, 2022 there were 47 studying for jobs as growers, lab directors and lab or quality control technicians.
Another effort pointing forward is New York’s program to grant licenses for marijuana storefronts for individual or family members who have been imprisoned for a marijuana-related offense. An executive for the program expects 100-200 licenses to go to such victims.
Let’s put these model programs in perspective. Nice as they are, 47 students receiving study grants in Chicago and 100-200 retail licenses in New York do not even make a dent in the over 867,000 who have been arrested.
While current programs are infinitesimally small, barriers to legal victims are enormous. Missouri grants licenses only to those “having legal marijuana experience” (such as handling legal medical cannabis) to apply for licensing for growing, dispensing, and processing. Illinois denies licenses and loans to felons, even though 1 in 3 Chicago adults have a criminal record. Illinois also prevents those with cannabis-related convictions from entering the cannabis industry by its high application fees.
Financial barriers for marijuana victims to receive licenses seem insurmountable. People and communities negatively impacted by the War on Drugs have high incarceration rates and lowaverage salaries due to limited job opportunities by ex-felons. Therefore, they lack the financial resources for high non-refundable application fees ($10,000 to $50,000) awarded in lotteries to match the state-designated number of growers, dispensaries, processors, and transporters. In Illinois, access to credit and small business loans are difficultfor persons with criminal records to obtain. Each dispensing organization applicant must have at least $400,000 in liquid assets. That is why people of color cannot participate as owners of legalized marijuana businesses in Illinois.
Unfortunately, even if all these barriers were to be overcome, there would be serious health issues throughout the marijuana industry, whether legal or illegal. If people of color receive priority in all phases of the industry, then a new form of environmental racism will emerge. People in that industry will become part of the environmental destruction to their communities while they experience damage to their own health from pesticide poisoning.
An excellent review of concerns with cultivation of cannabis by a team working with Zhonghua Zheng finds it heavily associated with environmental and health concerns whether it is grown outdoors or indoors. Needing considerable water, cannabis requires twice as much water as wheat, soybeans and maize. Diverting water to irrigate cannabis crops often results in dewatered streams affecting other vegetation. Water quality is also worsened (especially by illegal growers) by use of herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, fungucides and nematodes.
Human health problems which can be linked to chronic pesticide exposure include memory and respiratory issues as well as birth defects. Other health effects are weakened muscle functioning, cancer and liver damage. The organization Beyond Pesticides documents serious threats due to two factors: (a) “Pesticide residues in cannabis that has been dried and is inhaled have a direct pathway into the bloodstream;” and, (2) up to “69.5% of pesticide residues can remain in smoked marijuana.”
Perhaps the most overlooked source of pesticide poisoning is due to the synthetic piperonyl butoxide (PBO), which is a synergist, used to boost the effectiveness of active ingredients in pesticides. PBO can itself damage health due to neurotoxicity, cancer and liver problems.
Fertilizers and pesticides make their way into surface water, groundwater and soil, where they threaten the food supply. The high demand for weed affects watersheds, having damaging effects at least for endangered salmonid fish species and amphibians including the southern torrent salamander and coastal tailed frog.
Outdoor cannabis farms disturb fine-sediment adjacent to streams, thereby threatening other rare and endangered species. Its cultivation can contribute to deforestation and forest fragmentation. Fertilizers used for cannabis hurt air quality due to the release of nitrogen. Excess nitrogen increases soil acidification and well as water eutrophication.
Growing cannabis indoors raises its own issues, most notably health risks from exposure to mold and pesticides. Mold in damp indoor environments is associated with wheeze, cough, respiratory infections, and asthma symptoms in sensitized persons.
Perhaps the most surprising problems with indoor cultivation of cannabis is its effects on climate change via electricity. This is due to its annual $6 billion energy costs in the US, making it responsible for at least 1% of total electricity. Inevitably, decriminalization will lead to increased use of energy.
The major sources of energy usage are lighting and microclimate control. High-intensity lighting alone accounts for 86% of electricity use for indoor cannabis. Dehumidification systems are used to create air exchanges, temperature, ventilation and humidity control 24 hours per day. Due to the complexity of indoor requirements, growing one kilogram of processed marijuana can result in 4600 kilograms of CO2 emissions!
Environmental and health problems with growing marijuana will intensify greatly if decriminalization allows control by corporate agriculture. The so-called “Green Revolution” emphasizes use of enormous monocultures which maximize ecological destruction from extreme use of irrigation and fertilizers.
As of early 2022, at least 36 US states have adopted some form of decrimalization of marijuana, adding to the explosion of businesses in every phase of its production. In 2018, Bloomberg reported “Corona beer brewer Constellation Brands Inc. announced it will spend $3.8 billion to increase its stake in Canopy Growth Corp., the Canadian marijuana producer with a value that exceeds C$13 billion ($10 billion).”
Coca-Cola has been eyeing the market for drinks containing CBD which eases pain without getting the user high. Pepsi may have jumped the gun on Coke. A New Jersey hemp and marijuana producer, Hillview, has an agreement with Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. of New York to makes CBD-infused seltzers which would sell for $40 per eight-pack. The deal aims to cover Long Island, Westchester and all five New York boroughs.
With industrial giants like Coke and Pepsi jumping into the cannabis market, it is a sure bet that they will not be buying marijuana from thousands of mom-and-pop growers. Look for big soft drink to seek contracts with big ag.
The commercial growth of crops based on monoculture (a single or very few crops grown) becomes a breeding ground for pests, creating an artificial need for control via chemical poisons. A fundamental principle of organic agriculture is that growing 10, 15 more more plant species together reduces any need for chemicals. In the corporate ag model, if the single species grown is invaded by pests, then the entire crop can be lost. In the organic model the farmer anticipates that 1, 2 or 3 may be hurt by pests, but the majority will survive.
According to farmer Patrick Bennett, “for a fraction of the cost of a single bottle of synthetic liquid fertilizer, you can get the same, if not better yield, flavor, and cannabinoid content in your crop at home by simply using organic farming practices.” Marijuana has been grown for centuries (or millennia) without pesticides. Current organic growers have found five plant-based insecticides that protect their crops well:
Neem oil is “extracted from the seeds and fruit of the tropical neem tree, [and] controls many insects, including mites, and prevents fungal infections, like powdery mildew.”
Azadirachtin controls “control over many insects, including mites, aphids, and thrips” but does not provide fungal protection.
Pyrethrums kills insects that attack cannabis plants, including thrips. Pyrethrins, however, the synthetic version of pyrethrums, should not be used due to their environmental persistence.
Bacillus Thurengensis (BT) is very effective in controlling larval insects and fungus gnats.
Beneficial Nematodes are microscopic organisms occurring naturally in soil, keeping it healthy while controlling soil-born pests such as fungus gnats.
Techniques such as these have proven effective. Mike Benziger told interviewer Nate Seltenrich that he grows fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs along with cannabis. He includes multiple plants that attract insects like ladybugs and lacewings that gobble up harmful mites and aphids. Organic growers often rely on mulching and crop rotation. Such methods are especially critical for protecting workers growing the plants, neighboring wildlife, farm owners, distributors and, of course, marijuana users.
As of 2015, Maine was prohibiting use of any pesticides. Yet, its is important to remember that legislation can be weakened or repealed by subsequent laws, making it critical to have enduring guidelines. Such guidelines should include practices like those in Washington DC and Maine which require producers to demonstrate knowledge of organic growing methods.
Moving Forward
Since federal law classifies marijuana as a narcotic there are no federal guidelines for growing it. This makes it tempting to demand that it be declassified and brought under the auspices of bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency. This is a worthwhile goal, but the problem is that federal and state bodies are controlled by corporate powers seeking the weakest standards possible. Goals such as the following should be stated to counter racism and have genuine environmental protection with real (not fake) organic standards:
1. Restitution must begin with an apology which acknowledges that criminalization of marijuana included an attack on those cultures using it; was a part of a greater attack which used drugs as one of many weapons to destroy communities; and caused suffering for an enormous number of individuals.
2. All communities affected by criminalization of marijuana and the larger attack upon them should decide what financial and cultural restitution they should receive.
3. Individuals harmed by marijuana criminalization should receive financial compensation for any arrest, trial, incarceration and post-incarceration damages. Funds for growing, preparing and dispensing legalized marijuana should be made in direct proportion to the harm that individuals have suffered – those who have been harmed the most should receive the greatest compensation. In particular, the greater the harm an individual has suffered, the higher priority that individual should have for receiving a license related to dispensing marijuana.
4. Organic growing must be a core component of protecting the health of marijuana workers, producers and users. All who grow marijuana must receive free education on how to do so without the use of chemical poisons (“pesticides”). This must include how to intersperse marijuana with other crops so that pests are not as threatening as they are with monocultures. All who grow, process and disperse marijuana must obtain certification that their product is free of chemical contaminants. There should be no limitations on the number of marijuana plants an individual may grow, as long as those plants are grown with genuine organic principles.
Prior to decriminalization, health and environmental damages of growing and using marijuana were more or less similar for all ethnic and cultural groups. But that will not continue to be the case if restitution for damages from criminalization are put into place. If those hurt most by harassment and incarceration for marijuana receive priority for licenses to produce and distribute cannabis, they will receive the most pesticide poisoning if organic methods are not required. The only way to avoid continued harm to those previously victimized is to employ organic cultivation.
Abolition of exploitation of all agricultural workers requires similar restrictions on chemical use when growing all herbs, fruits and vegetables. Organic growing of cannabis should become a model for transferring production via corporate megafarms using mono cropping, chemicals, and exploited labor to organic methods based on small farms, chemical-free growing for local communities and good treatment for workers encouraged to form strong unions for collective self-protection.
[The Green Party of St. Louis adopted a marijuana perspective that synthesizes anti-racism with organic growing principles. You can read it at: marijuana-platform.]
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