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Category: Justice

  • South Africa’s Expropriation Act: Between Legal Reform and Historical Justice

    Houses of Parliament (Cape Town, South Africa). Photograph Source: I, PhilippN – CC BY-SA 3.0

    There is no discourse in South Africa more ancient, more unresolved, and more weaponised than that of land. The passage of the Expropriation Act in South Africa has set the air thick with tension, a moment that peels open the past to reveal its jagged edges. A history that never ended, only submerged beneath the language of legality and market transactions, is once again clawing at the present.

    The land is not just dirt and fences—it is memory, survival, identity and belonging, resistance, dispossession of labour, the looting of minerals, and the establishment of racial capital. It is the primordial question—older than the Republic of itself.

    On 23 January 2025, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the controversial Expropriation Act 13 of 2024 into law. Like the screech of rusted gears grinding against time’s stubborn wheel, the Act has sent a raucous clatter through the nation and beyond—its champions hailing it as long-overdue justice for stolen land, its detractors warning of economic ruin, while distant powers, draped in their own self-interest, tighten their grip, their protests echoing not in the name of principle, but of privilege.

    The Act, replacing its apartheid 1975 predecessor, is no mere legislative housekeeping. It is the state’s uneasy reckoning with a history of plunder—a tentative attempt to confront the theft that built South Africa’s economy, the dispossession that cemented its class hierarchies. Yet, as the ink dries, old ghosts stir. Who truly benefits? Who is left behind? And what of the landless, for whom restitution has remained a vanishing horizon, a promise deferred by bureaucracy and broken by politics?

    At its core, the Act seeks to bring the law in step with the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 108 of 1996, aligning the legal framework with the imperatives of land reform. It corrects the lingering contradictions between the outdated Expropriation Act and Section 25 of the democratic constitution, which speaks of expropriation in the public interest, the just terms of compensation, and the broader commitments of a nation still struggling to unshackle itself from its past. The Act echoes previous iterations—2015, 2018—bearing the scars of legislative battles, the residue of failed consultations. It insists: expropriation must not be arbitrary; compensation must be just.

    Yet, as the legal scaffolding is erected, the fundamental question remains—does the law merely refine the mechanics of ownership, or does it reimagine justice itself?

    Since the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck and the Dutch East India Company in 1652 on the shores of Southern Africa, the story of South Africa has been one of land, conquest, and capital. The first wars of dispossession began with the violent subjugation of the Khoi-San, their ancestral land carved up for Dutch settlers who spread inland, waging battles of expansion.

     As they moved eastward, they met fierce resistance from the Xhosa, who for a hundred years fought a series of wars against colonial encroachment. The Xhosa stood as one of the longest-lasting obstacles to settler domination, pushing back against British and Boer forces in a struggle that shaped the landscape of resistance. Yet, even as these wars raged, the British tightened their grip on the Cape, and tensions between white factions deepened—Boers, losing their cheap slave labour, trekked north to claim new territories, leaving a trail of blood and conflict.

    Despite their divisions, settlers were bound by a shared imperative: the extraction of land and labour at the expense of the indigenous majority.

    The discovery of minerals in the late 19th century marked a turning point, shifting South Africa from an agrarian society to an industrial economy fuelled by forced native labour. Capital’s hunger for wealth deepened racial segregation, culminating in the Anglo-Boer Wars, where white capital fought itself before ultimately uniting. In 1910, the Union of South Africa was formed, excluding native South Africans from political and economic power. This exclusion was cemented in 1913 with the passing of the Natives Land Act, which stripped natives of land ownership, confining them to impoverished reserves with the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 and into “tribal” boundaries called homelands by the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951. The foundation for apartheid had been laid—not just through law, but through centuries of war, theft, and the relentless logic of capital.

    The new Expropriation Act of 2024 attempts to pull South Africa’s legal framework closer to the constitutional imperatives of Section 25—the so-called property clause. The legal fiction of “just and equitable compensation” introduced in the Act is an attempt to balance constitutional propriety with the pressure of historical injustice. But whose justice? And what is equitable in a country where land was not bought but taken?

    To date, land reform has largely been cosmetic, measured in hectares redistributed rather than in the dismantling of agricultural monopolies or capital structures. The state has danced cautiously around the issue, unwilling to provoke market unrest or dislodge the deeply entrenched privileges of the white agrarian elite. And so, the Expropriation Act emerges as both a promise and a limitation.

    The Act permits expropriation in the “public interest,” a term rooted in the Constitution but destined to be contested in courts for years, entangling the process in legal bureaucracy. While the Act provides a framework for expropriation with and, in limited cases, without compensation, it does not fundamentally alter the state’s cautious approach to reclaiming large tracts of unused, unproductive, or speculatively held land. Instead, it remains tethered to negotiation, reinforcing a slow and measured redistribution. The Act acknowledges the rights of unregistered land occupiers, yet recognition alone does not guarantee security or restitution—leaving many still at the mercy of protracted legal and administrative processes.

    As argued before, for the nearly 60% of South Africans living off-register in communal areas, informal settlements, or Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses, the Expropriation Act of 2024 offers little more than a symbolic gesture. Without title deeds, their claims to land are not legally secured, yet their histories and lived realities are deeply embedded in it. If expropriation is not accompanied by a robust land administration strategy that formalises tenure rights for the dispossessed, it risks becoming another performance of reform rather than a transformative intervention.

    The Act’s recognition of unregistered land rights is a step forward, but recognition alone does not equate to protection. Unless the expropriation process is integrated with a comprehensive land administration system to document the rights of unregistered occupiers, those most vulnerable to dispossession will remain in legal limbo. The enactment of a Land Records Act, as recommended by the High-Level Panel Report on the Assessment of Key Legislation (2018) and the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform (2019), is essential to ensuring security of tenure.

    Additionally, both panels proposed a National Land Reform Framework Act to establish clear legal principles for redistribution, restitution, and tenure reform. Rather than replacing existing laws, this framework would provide coherence by setting legal criteria for beneficiary selection, land acquisition, and equitable access. It would also introduce mechanisms for transparency, accountability, and alternative dispute resolution, including a Land Rights Protector. The Expropriation Act should not stand in isolation—it must align with these broader legislative efforts to ensure that land reform is not only legally sound but also meaningfully transformative.

    Land, under capitalist relations, is not merely a resource—it is a commodity. Any attempt at expropriation without rupturing this logic is bound to be a compromised one. The Act, while acknowledging that compensation may, in certain instances, be set at nil, does not articulate a decisive framework for when and how this will occur, leaving these decisions to courts and policymakers. The absence of a robust redistributive mechanism means that expropriation may ultimately reinforce rather than disrupt market logic.

    This is not mere conjecture. In countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela, land reform initiatives were sabotaged by a combination of domestic elite resistance and international financial retaliation. In South Africa, capital has already signaled its intention to resist large-scale redistribution, with organizations such as AgriSA warning of economic collapse should expropriation be pursued aggressively. This fearmongering is not new. It echoes the same panic-driven narratives that were used to justify land theft in the first place.

    Beyond South Africa’s borders, the passage of the Expropriation Act has triggered predictable reactions from Western powers. U.S. President Donald Trump, following a well-worn script of white minority protectionism, issued an executive order cutting aid to South Africa, claiming the law targets white farmers. The European Union has expressed “concern,” a diplomatic prelude to potential economic pressures. Additionally, the U.S. administration has threatened to revoke South Africa’s benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a trade agreement that facilitates tariff-free exports to the U.S. market. Yet, even as these forces decry land reform under the guise of defending property rights, Trump’s administration has quietly extended refugee status to white Afrikaners, framing them as victims of persecution. This move—granting asylum to the descendants of colonial settlers while barring refugees from war-torn Middle Eastern and African nations—reveals the racialised logic underpinning Western foreign policy. These responses are not about human rights or democracy. They are about the continued assertion of Western interests in the Middle East and Africa’s resources, protecting economic and racial hierarchies that long predate the Expropriation Act.

    International finance capital is already tightening its grip, with investment ratings agencies hinting at further downgrades should expropriation proceed in ways deemed unfavourable to the market. The South African state, historically timid in the face of international economic leverage, may find itself retreating into a defensive crouch, reducing expropriation to an instrument of negotiation rather than transformation.

    The Expropriation Act has reopened historical wounds, but it is not, in itself, a radical break. Its success or failure will depend on political will, legal battles, and grassroots mobilisation. The Landless People’s Movement, shack dwellers’ organisations, and rural activists have long articulated a vision of land reform that centres the dispossessed rather than the property-owning class. Will the state listen? Or will it once again privilege legal technicalities over substantive justice?

    For expropriation to mean something beyond legalese, it must be tied to a broader transformation of land relations in South Africa. This means:

    + Implementing a National Land Reform Framework Act, as proposed by the High-Level Panel and Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform, to set clear criteria for redistribution and beneficiary selection.

    + Recognising and securing tenure rights for the millions who live without formal documentation of their land occupancy.

    +  Creating mechanisms for community-driven expropriation, where citizens can initiate claims rather than relying solely on the state’s discretion.

    + Dismantling the commercial agrarian monopolies that continue to hoard vast tracts of land.

    Expropriation cannot be reduced to a bureaucratic procedure, a sterile legal exercise bound by the logic of the market. It must be a rupture—a deliberate act of redress, dismantling centuries of theft and exclusion. The state stands at a threshold: waver in hesitation, or grasp the weight of history and reimagine South Africa’s land ownership beyond the margins of negotiation. But history is restless. The dispossessed will not wait in endless queues of policy revisions and court battles. The land is calling—not for half-measures, not for another paper revolution, but for a reckoning that answers the injustice written into the soil.

    The post South Africa’s Expropriation Act: Between Legal Reform and Historical Justice appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sobantu Mzwakali.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • International Women’s Day: For ALL Women and Girls

    This post was originally published on IndigenousX.

  • Ofwat is facing legal action over letting water companies hike our bills

    Environmental group River Action is bringing a legal challenge to the Water Services Regulation Authority otherwise known as Ofwat. They’re accusing Ofwat of:

    acting unlawfully by using recent, significant bill hikes to cover past infrastructure failures—forcing customers, rather than investors, to foot the bill for decades of neglect.

    This particular legal case relates to Lake Windermere in particular, but could have implications for water services around the country.

    Pumping sewage – and Ofwat has enabled it

    Local campaign groups Save Windermere and Windrush Against Sewage Pollution investigated the regulation of water services in Lake Windermere. They discovered that there had been thousands of hours of raw sewage being pumped into the lake.

    Save Windermere explain that when sewage is pumped into bodies of water, this adds phosphorus to the water. This, in turn, creates algal blooms which occur when toxin-producing algae grows rapidly in water. This algae starves the lake of dissolved oxygen. This can be catastrophic for any life forms in the water.

    The group also showed just how much sewage United Utilities have been pumping into Lake Windermere. In 2020, they found that 7,236 hours of untreated sewage was pumped into the water. For 2021 and 2022, the number of hours of sewage pumped was just below 6,000. And, in 2023 8,787 hours of untreated sewage was pumped into Windermere.

    Save Windermere conclude that:

    Over 10 years ago the decision was made not to invest in the removal of United Utilities discharges on the basis of cost. We must stop prioritising cost savings over the protection of the environment.

    River Action shared this conclusion, saying in a statement:

    River Action has commenced legal action claiming Ofwat has allowed the company to divert funds meant for future projects to deal with past failures—rather than investing in vital improvements to wastewater treatment and pumping stations around the lake.

    Effectively, this means that Ofwat has allowed money from customers that should be for infrastructure go to fixing problems that should never have happened, like pumping sewage into a river.

    Customers footing the bill

    River Action believe that many water companies are doing the same thing. River Action’s Emma Dearnaley said:

    We believe Ofwat has acted unlawfully by approving these funds without ensuring they are spent on genuine improvements to essential infrastructure. Instead, this so-called ‘enhanced funding’ is being allowed to be used to cover up years of failure.

    Dearnaley explained why River Action are pushing back against Ofwat:

    Effectively, Ofwat has signed off on a broken system where customers are being charged again for services they have already funded—while water companies continue to mark their own homework and pollute for profit.

    This scandal must be addressed. The cost of fixing the UK’s crumbling water infrastructure should fall on the companies and their investors—not on the British public.

    River Action’s statement concluded:

    River Action is calling for immediate regulatory action to ensure water companies stop passing the cost of failure onto customers—and start taking responsibility for the environmental damage they have caused.

    Denials from Ofwat

    In response to the claims, Ofwat said:

    We reject River Action’s claims. The PR24 process methodically scrutinised business plans to ensure that customers were getting fair value and investment was justified.

    We agree that customers should not pay twice for companies to regain compliance with environmental permits, and have included appropriate safeguards in our PR24 determinations to ensure this, which we will monitor closely, taking action if required. We will respond to their letter in due course.

    The “PR24” they refer to is the Price Review of 2024. However, Ofwat, alongside the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and the Environment Agency (EA) were warned at the end of 2024 that they could be taken to court for failing to regulate sewage dumping. The very idea that Ofwat can claim their safeguards are enough when brazen water companies keep pumping sewage into rivers and upping bonuses for bosses is disconcerting to say the least.

    Now, it appears that environmental groups like River Action, Save Windermere, and Windrush Against Sewage Pollution have had enough of waiting for regulators to do their jobs.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Australian university workers: ‘We will not be silenced over Palestine’

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Markela Panegyres and Jonathan Strauss in Sydney

    The new Universities Australia (UA) definition of antisemitism, endorsed last month for adoption by 39 Australian universities, is an ugly attempt to quash the pro-Palestine solidarity movement on campuses and to silence academics, university workers and students who critique Israel and Zionism.

    While the Scott Morrison Coalition government first proposed tightening the definition, and a recent joint Labor-Coalition parliamentary committee recommended the same, it is yet another example of the Labor government’s overreach.

    It seeks to mould discussion in universities to one that suits its pro-US and pro-Zionist imperialist agenda, while shielding Israel from accountability.

    So far, the UA definition has been widely condemned.

    Nasser Mashni, of Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, has slammed it as “McCarthyism reborn”.

    The Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) has criticised it as “dangerous, politicised and unworkable”. The NSW Council of Civil Liberties said it poses “serious risks to freedom of expression and academic freedom”.

    The UA definition comes in the context of a war against Palestinian activism on campuses.

    The false claim that antisemitism is “rampant” across universities has been weaponised to subdue the Palestinian solidarity movement within higher education and, particularly, to snuff out any repeat of the student-led Gaza solidarity encampments, which sprung up on campuses across the country last year.

    Some students and staff who have been protesting against the genocide since October 2023 have come under attack by university managements.

    Some students have been threatened with suspension and many universities are giving themselves, through new policies, more powers to liaise with police and surveil students and staff.

    Palestinian, Arab and Muslim academics, as well as other anti-racist scholars, have been silenced and disciplined, or face legal action on false counts of antisemitism, merely for criticising Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine.

    Randa Abdel-Fattah, for example, has become the target of a Zionist smear campaign that has successfully managed to strip her of Australian Research Council funding.

    Intensify repression
    The UA definition will further intensify the ongoing repression of people’s rights on campuses to discuss racism, apartheid and occupation in historic Palestine.

    By its own admission, UA acknowledges that its definition is informed by the antisemitism taskforces at Columbia University, Stanford University, Harvard University and New York University, which have meted out draconian and violent repression of pro-Palestine activism.

    The catalyst for the new definition was the February 12 report tabled by Labor MP Josh Burns on antisemitism on Australian campuses. That urged universities to adopt a definition of antisemitism that “closely aligns” with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition.

    It should be noted that the controversial IHRA definition has been opposed by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) for its serious challenge to academic freedom.

    As many leading academics and university workers, including Jewish academics, have repeatedly stressed, criticism of Israel and criticism of Zionism is not antisemitic.

    UA’s definition is arguably more detrimental to freedom of speech and pro-Palestine activism and scholarship than the IHRA definition.

    In the vague IHRA definition, a number of examples of antisemitism are given that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, but not the main text itself.

    By contrast, the new UA definition overtly equates criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism and claims Zionist ideology is a component part of Jewish identity.

    The definition states that “criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic . . . when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel”.

    Dangerously, anyone advocating for a single bi-national democratic state in historic Palestine will be labelled antisemitic under this new definition.

    Anyone who justifiably questions the right of the ethnonationalist, apartheid and genocidal state of Israel to exist will be accused of antisemitism.

    Sweeping claims
    The UA definition also makes the sweeping claim that “for most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity”.

    But, as the JCA points out, Zionism is a national political ideology and is not a core part of Jewish identity historically or today, since many Jews do not support Zionism. The JCA warns that the UA definition “risks fomenting harmful stereotypes that all Jewish people think in a certain way”.

    Moreover, JCA said, Jewish identities are already “a rightly protected category under all racial discrimination laws, whereas political ideologies such as Zionism and support for Israel are not”.

    Like other aspects of politics, political ideologies, such as Zionism, and political stances, such as support for Israel, should be able to be discussed critically.

    According to the UA definition, criticism of Israel can be antisemitic “when it holds Jewish individuals or communities responsible for Israel’s actions”.

    While it would be wrong for any individual or community, because they are Jewish, to be held responsible for Israel’s actions, it is a fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former  minister Yoav Gallant for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    But under the UA definition, since Netanyahu and Gallant are Jewish, would holding them responsible be considered antisemitic?

    Is the ICC antisemitic? According to Israel it is.

    The implication of the definition for universities, which teach law and jurisprudence, is that international law should not be applied to the Israeli state, because it is antisemitic to do so.

    The UA’s definition is vague enough to have a chilling effect on any academic who wants to teach about genocide, apartheid and settler-colonialism. It states that “criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions”.

    What these are is not defined.

    Anti-racism challenge
    Within the academy, there is a strong tradition of anti-racism and decolonial scholarship, particularly the concept of settler colonialism, which, by definition, calls into question the very notion of “statehood”.

    With this new definition of antisemitism, will academics be prevented from teaching students the works of Chelsea Watego, Patrick Wolfe or Edward Said?

    The definition will have serious and damaging repercussions for decolonial scholars and severely impinges the rights of scholars, in particular First Nations scholars and students, to critique empire and colonisation.

    UA is the “peak body” for higher education in Australia, and represents and lobbies for capitalist class interests in higher education.

    It is therefore not surprising that it has developed this particular definition, given its strong bilateral relations with Israeli higher education, including signing a 2013 memorandum of understanding with Association of University Heads, Israel.

    It should be noted that the NTEU National Council last October called on UA to withdraw from this as part of its Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions resolution.

    All university students and staff committed to anti-racism, academic freedom and freedom of speech should join the campaign against the UA definition.

    Local NTEU branches and student groups are discussing and passing motions rejecting the new definition and NTEU for Palestine has called a National Day of Action for March 26 with that as one of its key demands.

    We will not be silenced on Palestine.

    Jonathan Strauss and Markela Panegyres are members of the National Tertiary Education Union and the Socialist Alliance. Republished from Green Left with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Seven decades on, Marshall Islands still reeling from nuclear testing legacy

    By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific Bulletin editor/presenter

    The Marshall Islands marked 71 years since the most powerful nuclear weapons tests ever conducted were unleashed over the weekend.

    The Micronesian nation experienced 67 known atmospheric nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, resulting in an ongoing legacy of death, illness, and contamination.

    The country’s President Hilda Heine says her people continue to face the impacts of US nuclear weapons testing seven decades after the last bomb was detonated.

    The Pacific Islands have a complex history of nuclear weapons testing, but the impacts are very much a present-day challenge, Heine said at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in Tonga last year.

    She said that the consequences of nuclear weapons testing “in our own home” are “expensive” and “cross-cutting”.

    “When I was just a young girl, our islands were turned into a big laboratory to test the capabilities of weapons of mass destruction, biological warfare agents, and unexploded ordinance,” she said.

    “The impacts are not just historical facts, but contemporary challenges,” she added, noting that “the health consequences for the Marshallese people are severe and persistent through generations.”

    “We are now working to reshape the narrative from that of being victims to one of active agencies in helping to shape our own future and that of the world around us,” she told Pacific leaders, where the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres was a special guest.

    President Hilda Heine and UNSG António Guterres at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Nuku'alofa, Tonga. August 2024
    President Hilda Heine and UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, in August 2024 Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis

    She said the displacement of communities from ancestral lands has resulted in grave cultural impacts, hindering traditional knowledge from being passed down to younger generations.

    “As well as certain traditional practices, customs, ceremonies and even a navigational school once defining our very identity and become a distant memory, memorialised through chance and storytelling,” President Heine said.

    “The environmental legacy is contamination and destruction: craters, radiation, toxic remnants, and a dome containing radioactive waste with a half-life of 24,000 years have rendered significant areas uninhabitable.

    “Key ecosystems, once full of life and providing sustenance to our people, are now compromised.”

    Heine said cancer and thyroid diseases were among a list of presumed radiation-induced medical conditions that were particularly prevalent in the Marshallese community.

    Displacement, loss of land, and psychological trauma were also contributing factors to high rates of non-communicable diseases, she said.

    Containment of nuclear waste in the Marshall Islands.
    Runit Dome, also known as “The Tomb”, in the Marshall Islands . . , controversial nuclear waste storage. Image: RNZ Pacific

    “Despite these immense challenges, the Marshallese people have shown remarkable resilience and strength. Our journey has been one of survival, advocacy, and an unyielding pursuit of justice.

    “We have fought tirelessly to have our voices heard on the international stage, seeking recognition.”

    In 2017, the Marshall Islands government created the National Nuclear Commission to coordinate efforts to address testing impacts.

    “We are a unique and important moral compass in the global movement for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,” Heine said.

    Kurt Campbell at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nuku'alofa, Tonga. August 2024
    Kurt Campbell at the Pacific Islands Forum . . . “I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis

    The US Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden-Harris administration Kurt Cambell said that Washington, over decades, had committed billions of dollars to the damage and the rebuilding of the Marshall Islands.

    “I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden, and we are doing what we can to support the people in the [Compact of Free Association] states, including the Marshall Islands,” he said.

    “This is not a legacy that we seek to avoid. We have attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment,” he told reporters in Nuku’alofa.

    A shared nuclear legacy
    The National Nuclear Commission chairperson Ariana Tibon-Kilma, a direct descendant of survivors of the nuclear weapons testing programme Project 4.1 — which was the top-secret medical lab study on the effects of radiation on human bodies — told RNZ Pacific that what occured in Marshall Islands should not happen to any country.

    “This programme was conducted without consent from any of the Marshallese people,” she said.

    “For a number of years, they were studied and monitored, and sometimes even flown out to the US and displayed as a showcase.

    “The history and trauma associated with what happened to my family, as well as many other families in the Marshall Islands, was barely spoken of.

    “What happened to the Marshallese people is something that we would not wish upon any other Pacific island country or any other person in humanity.”

    She said the nuclear legacy was a shared one.

    “We all share one Pacific Ocean and what happened to the Marshall Islands, I am, sure resonates throughout the Pacific,” Tibon-Kilma said.

    UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Pacific head Heike Alefsen at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nuku'alofa, Tonga. August 2024
    UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Pacific head Heike Alefsen at the Pacific Islands Forum . . . “I think compensation for survivors is key.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis

    Billions in compensation
    The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Pacific head, Heike Alefsen, told RNZ Pacific in Nuku’alofa that “we understand that there are communities that have been displaced for a long time to other islands”.

    “I think compensation for survivors is key,” she said.

    “It is part of a transitional justice approach. I can’t really speak to the breadth and the depth of the compensation that would need to be provided, but it is certainly an ongoing issue for discussion.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ITV is about to do a ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’ on the Spycops scandal

    A gripping three-part documentary series for ITV1 and ITVX: The Undercover Police Scandal: Love and Lies Exposed – to be broadcast on 6, 13, and 20 March – is based on the book Deep Deception by founder members of Police Spies Out Of Lives. It will explore the story behind the now-infamous Spycops scandal, from the point of view of some of the survivors.

    The Undercover Police Scandal: Love and Lies Exposed

    Five women who were deceived and blew the lid off this scandal, have entrusted ITV, makers of the award-winning drama series Mr Bates Vs the Post Office, to expose how they turned detective to uncover one of the state’s biggest secrets.

    Speaking together on camera for the first time (some of them disguised with wigs and make-up to protect their anonymity) they explain the disturbing similarities between their experiences and how they brought the scandal to public attention: from the way the women were seduced into these relationships, to the almost identical letters they received when they were abandoned – and ghosted – by the men they loved.

    The women featured in the documentary have been working together to expose this policing scandal since we first met in 2011.

    They said in a joint statement:

    Our lives were devastated by the actions of undercover police and this powerful three-part series highlights how we fought back against dehumanising spycops intrusion and abuse, which was sanctioned by the state for decades to undermine progressive campaigns for change.

    By shining a light on the role of these undemocratic, secret, political policing units, we hope the programmes contribute to a dramatic shift away from the culture of misogyny that the police and security services have normalised and puts pressure on decision makers to reverse the current legislation that places undercover officers completely beyond the law.

    From All3Media production company RAW, The Undercover Police Scandal: Love and Lies Exposed features privileged access to the Guardian journalists who, alongside survivors at the heart of this scandal, broke the story.

    Creating a culture shift

    Together, they exposed the vast, systemic scale of this 40-year undercover policing operation and unearthed the chilling ‘Tradecraft Manual’ the cops created to guide their abhorrent behaviour. Ultimately, this story is ongoing with a fight for truth and justice that reaches into the present day.

    Alison, one of the women who exposed the scandal, said:

    We hope that this contributes to a shift in the culture, a shift away from misogyny and sexism that’s been institutionalised in the police. We hope it makes some change, because that is why we got involved in this in the first place.

    Rebecca North, Executive Producer at RAW, said:

    This is an inspirational, empowering story about women who refused to go away quietly, instead using their ingenuity and tenacity to expose the lies they’d been told by the men they loved, leading to a David vs Goliath battle with the Metropolitan Police. We hope it brings awareness to the scandal.

    Jo Clinton-Davis, Controller of Factual ITV said:

    When I first learnt about this story, I was determined it needed to be made for a TV audience – and made for ITV. That these five women finally agreed to give ITV and RAW up close and personal access is testament to their courage and resilience. They have been up against a state sponsored operation and with many of them turning detective, such a twist in the story could be the stuff of a thriller – except this is all too shockingly true. Another British scandal of major importance.

    Featured image supplied

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Cops pay out £80m in compensation to people in just FIVE years

    In the last five years, police forces in the UK have paid nearly £80m in compensation following claims against them. Figures obtained by Public Interest Lawyers found that 47,658 claims have been lodged against police forces since 2019.

    Claims are often put in against a police force if someone feels they have been mistreated or if they feel the police abused their position.

    Examples of claims against the police include malicious prosecution, wrongful arrest, sexual misconduct, assault, traffic accidents, and property damage.

    Some claims against the police can be made for exceptional circumstances, for example, forces across the UK paid out more than £300,000 in compensation in the last three years after officers raided the homes of innocent people, according to the Express.

    This amount resulted from at least 255 separate cases of police forces battering down the wrong doors.

    Complaints against the police are rocketing

    In 2019/2020, 8,240 claims were lodged against police forces, 2,627 of which were settled, the lowest number of claims over the past five years.

    A year later, this number increased to 8,365 claims, with 2,237 of these settled.

    Services have experienced another rise in claims over the past year, totalling 11,436.

    Another reason for a claim against the police is sexual misconduct. Worryingly, this has become the main source of complaints to the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) – the UK police watchdog.

    In a May 2022 report, the IOPC said it was ‘highly likely’ the scale of sexual misconduct within law enforcement ‘remains under-represented’, as not all victims report misconduct, with some fearing they won’t be believed.

    Signs of inappropriate sexual behaviour by a police officer, such as private contact, nurturing dependence or being overly familiar, have all been grounds for victims to pursue a claim in the past.

    In the year ending March 2023, 1,300 police officers and staff across the 43 UK police forces were referred to formal misconduct proceedings as a result of cases such as police complaints, conduct matters and recordable conduct matters.

    Also, during this time, 51,605 police complaints involving 42,854 identifiable police officers were finalised, involving 120,243 allegations.

    The amount of compensation is also growing

    Public Interest Lawyers also obtained figures on the amount of money police forces in the UK have paid out to successful claims since 2019.

    Over the past five years, forces have paid out a total of £79,373,401.07, with the highest amount coming in 2023/24 standing at £18,201,878.46.

    Compensation claims made against UK police forces since 2019 can include both public claims and those brought internally by police officers and staff.

    The most common reason for claims is property damage, with motor-based claims such as car crashes also ranking high.

    More alarmingly, claims for unlawful arrests, wrongful imprisonments, and forced entries into properties have been submitted more and more against police forces over the years.

    Based on figures gathered from police forces across the country, the forces with the highest claim costs since 2019 have been revealed.

    The Met Police had the highest claim costs at nearly £42m, while Police Service Northern Ireland and West Yorkshire Police also had costs of over £4m.

    The rise in police compensation: endemic of other issues

    Speaking to Public Interest Lawyers, JF Law solicitor Lucy Parker said:

    The number of claims made against police forces in the UK shines a light on a crucial issue and highlights the importance of holding institutions accountable.

    Potential reasons to claim may include wrongful arrest, assault, malicious prosecution, or negligence however, it’s crucial to remember that each case is unique.

    Reasons such as property damage and forced entry by police, without lawful justification, are serious matters and can constitute a significant breach of an individual’s rights.

    If you believe the police have wronged you, it’s essential to seek legal advice promptly to understand your options and potential outcomes.

    Public Interest Lawyers offers support to people who believe the police have mistreated them and free advice on whether they can claim compensation.

    They operate a 24-hour helpline and claim online form, which you can access on their website.

    Police in Warwickshire, Thames Valley, Wiltshire, Surrey, Humberside, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Durham and Cumbria did not respond to Public Interest Lawyers’ Freedom of Information request.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Now Thames Water is trying to get out of its Ofwat fines for sewage spills

    Toxic Thames Water is now trying to get out of the fines that Ofwat imposed upon it for sewage spills and service failures. Predictably, this is on top of the controversial loan that a High Court judge signed off on, despite public outcry. Given the company’s history, all of this was entirely predictable.

    Thames Water: now trying to get out of its public fines

    Thames Water, the UK’s largest water and wastewater services provider, is currently embroiled in a financial crisis, grappling with a debt exceeding £16 billion.

    The company’s creditors, holding approximately £12 billion of this debt, are negotiating a rescue package that may involve converting debt into equity to stabilise Thames Water’s financial standing. A now-shocking aspect of these negotiations is the creditors’ appeal to the industry regulator, Ofwat, to defer fines related to the company’s performance shortcomings, including water leaks and sewage spills, for several years during the company’s turnaround efforts. ​

    The creditors’ rationale for requesting a pause on fines is to ensure that any new capital injected into Thames Water is allocated towards enhancing its deteriorating infrastructure rather than being diverted to pay penalties. They contend that imposing fines during the recovery phase could undermine the effectiveness of the investment, making the rescue plan less viable. A source familiar with the discussions told the Times:

    Without further concessions [from Ofwat], there is no investable case for Thames that works for anybody.

    Thames Water’s financial predicament is exacerbated by its substantial debt obligations, with annual interest payments amounting to approximately £500 million. This financial strain has raised concerns about the company’s ability to maintain operational stability and meet regulatory standards.

    In response, Ofwat has placed Thames Water under a turnaround oversight regime, appointing an independent monitor to regularly assess the company’s operations. The regulator has not publicly commented on the possibility of deferring fines.

    Dodgy ‘refinancing’

    The proposed refinancing plan for Thames Water includes an initial £3 billion loan, which was approved by the High Court despite concerns over its high 9.75% interest rate. Moreover, there was outrage from the public and many politicians over the fact that the judge sided with the company and shareholders.

    This emergency funding is intended to provide the company with sufficient liquidity to continue operations until October 2025. However, junior creditors, who stand to incur significant losses under this plan, have lodged an appeal against the decision, with a hearing scheduled for 11 March.

    Failure to secure the necessary funding could result in Thames Water entering a special administration regime, effectively leading to temporary nationalization. ​

    In addition to the immediate financial challenges, Thames Water is exploring options to attract new investors as part of its broader restructuring efforts.

    Five bidders, including KKR, CK Infrastructure, Covalis, Castle Water, and the existing group of creditors, are reportedly in contention to invest in the company. The outcome of these negotiations will significantly influence Thames Water’s ability to implement its turnaround strategy and address longstanding operational issues.

    Thames Water customers will end up paying

    The situation is further complicated by the potential for substantial fines if Thames Water fails to meet performance targets. The company estimates that it could face up to £1 billion in fines over the next five years, particularly concerning external sewage flooding.

    Ultimately, though, throughout all of this it is the public that is once again footing the bill. Not only will Thames Water customers end up paying for it’s £3bn loan – it now seems that they are also being swindled out of the fines that Ofwat imposed. It remains to be seen how long the Labour Party government can allow this catastrophe to continue without a serious intervention.

    Featured image via the Canar

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • ‘Like a virus’: Corruption has infected the fight against climate change

    Bribery, theft, conflicts of interest, and other forms of corruption are hampering global efforts to fight climate change and protect the environment. That’s according to a new study by Transparency International that reveals countries that experience high levels of corruption often bypass environmental laws to exploit natural resources, and rely on violence to silence resistance. That violence, one author explains, is often directed at Indigenous peoples.

    “Coruption has always existed and probably always will exist unfortunately,” said Brice Böhmer, a researcher with Transparency International. “But at the same time, we have tools to stop corruption like proper consultation and oversight.”  

    Böhmer said the spillover to Indigenous peoples happens when governments adopt weak policies to address climate change, exposing communities to extreme weather events, first, and later, exploiting those communities through fraud, or political manipulation of policies and funds. 

    “This is impacting those groups more than other groups,” said Böhmer.

    According to the report, countries that support democratic principles, like freedom of expression and assembly, are better protected from corruption. Access to information is important too. For instance, last year, the Dominican Republic’s score improved from previous reports after the country implemented data and collaboration practices to address corruption. Russia has also shown increased corruption as of late with the report showing that the invasion of Ukraine has deepened authoritarianism that suppresses “criticism of the government.”

    Indigenous communities have long been stewards of biodiversity, defending vast territories from exploitation — despite that globally, only 35 percent of Indigenous lands are legally protected. Those without protection frequently fall victim to illegal logging, mining and animal trafficking, leading to frequent clashes between land defenders and settlers. In Indonesia, officials look the other way as the production of palm oil destroys Indigenous land. And in Brazil, corruption contributes to the fraudulent sale of protected Indigenous territories, leaving communities vulnerable to displacement and violence.

    “You can think of corruption as a tax on everyone. So it’s an additional cost to the services provided by the government,” said Oguzhan Dincer, the director of the Institute for Corruption Studies at Illinois State University. He added that corruption is using public office for private gain and this affects anyone sending their kids to public schools, using public health care systems, or who wants clean air and water. “It takes a long, long time to get rid of corruption. It’s like a virus,” he said. 

    According to reports from Global Witness, environmental land defenders are at a high risk of intimidation and violence. Last year, nearly 200 people, half of whom were Indigenous or of Afrodescent, were killed for their environmental activism. Since 2012, an estimated 800 Indigenous people have been killed for protecting their lands and territories.  According to Transparency International, most killings have occurred in countries who rank high in corruption. 

    But researchers also found that low levels of corruption did not always correspond with respect for Indigenous peoples. Finland, for instance, is one of the world’s least-corrupt countries according to Transparency International. However, in 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Council urged Finland to undertake justice measures that would address “the legacy of human rights violations endured by the Sámi people. That same year, the United Nations also recommended the country “initiate the process of legal recognition of the rights of Indigenous people to their traditional lands,” because they do not have the protected legal ability to make decisions regarding their homelands. Finnish officials did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

    “People should demand anti-corruption policies and see the damage that corruption causes and be notified of the corrupt acts of the representatives,” Dincer said. “I’m portraying an awful picture here, but unfortunately this is really the case.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Like a virus’: Corruption has infected the fight against climate change on Mar 3, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • In siding with Russia over Ukraine, Trump is not putting America first. He is hastening its decline

    ANALYSIS: By Matthew Sussex, Australian National University

    Has any nation squandered its diplomatic capital, plundered its own political system, attacked its partners and supplicated itself before its far weaker enemies as rapidly and brazenly as Donald Trump’s America?

    The fiery Oval Office meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday saw the American leader try to publicly humiliate the democratically elected leader of a nation that had been invaded by a rapacious and imperialistic aggressor.

    And this was all because Zelensky refused to sign an act of capitulation, criticised Putin (who has tried to have Zelensky killed on numerous occasions), and failed to bend the knee to Trump, the country’s self-described king.


    The tense Oval Office meeting.    Video: CNN

    The Oval Office meeting became heated in a way that has rarely been seen between world leaders.

    What is worse is Trump has now been around so long that his oafish behaviour has become normalised. Together with his attack dog, Vice-President JD Vance, Trump has thrown the Overton window — the spectrum of subjects politically acceptable to the public — wide open.

    Previously sensible Republicans are now either cowed or co-opted. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is gutting America’s public service and installing toadies in place of professionals, while his social media company, X, is platforming ads from actual neo-Nazis.

    The FBI is run by Kash Patel, who hawked bogus COVID vaccine reversal therapies and wrote children’s books featuring Trump as a monarch. The agency is already busily investigating Trump’s enemies.

    The Department of Health and Human Services is helmed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine denier, just as Americans have begun dying from measles for the first time in a decade. And America’s health and medical research has been channelled into ideologically “approved” topics.

    At the Pentagon, in a breathtaking act of self-sabotage, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered US Cyber Command to halt all operations targeting Russia.

    And cuts to USAID funding are destroying US soft power, creating a vacuum that will gleefully be filled by China. Other Western aid donors are likely to follow suit so they can spend more on their militaries in response to US unilateralism.

    What is Trump’s strategy?
    Trump’s wrecking ball is already having seismic global effects, mere weeks after he took office.

    The US vote against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia for starting the war against Ukraine placed it in previously unthinkable company — on the side of Russia, Belarus and North Korea. Even China abstained from the vote.

    In the United Kingdom, a YouGov poll of more than 5000 respondents found that 48 percent of Britons thought it was more important to support Ukraine than maintain good relations with the US. Only 20 percent favoured supporting America over Ukraine.

    And Trump’s bizarre suggestion that China, Russia and the US halve their respective defence budgets is certain to be interpreted as a sign of weakness rather than strength.

    The oft-used explanation for his behaviour is that it echoes the isolationism of one of his ideological idols, former US President Andrew Jackson. Trump’s aim seems to be ring-fencing American businesses with high tariffs, while attempting to split Russia away from its relationship with China.

    These arguments are both economically illiterate and geopolitically witless. Even a cursory understanding of tariffs reveals that they drive inflation because they are paid by importers who then pass the costs on to consumers. Over time, they are little more than sugar pills that turn economies diabetic, increasingly reliant on state protections from unending trade wars.

    And the “reverse Kissinger” strategy — a reference to the US role in exacerbating the Sino-Soviet split during the Cold War — is wishful thinking to the extreme.

    Putin would have to be utterly incompetent to countenance a move away from Beijing. He has invested significant time and effort to improve this relationship, believing China will be the dominant power of the 21st century.

    Putin would be even more foolish to embrace the US as a full-blown partner. That would turn Russia’s depopulated southern border with China, stretching over 4300 kilometres, into the potential front line of a new Cold War.

    What does this mean for America’s allies?
    While Trump’s moves have undoubtedly strengthened the US’ traditional adversaries, they have also weakened and alarmed its friends.

    Put simply, no American ally — either in Europe or Asia — can now have confidence Washington will honour its security commitments. This was brought starkly home to NATO members at the Munich Security Conference in February, where US representatives informed a stunned audience that America may no longer view itself as the main guarantor of European security.


    Vice-President Vance’s controversial speech to European leaders. Video: DW

    The swiftness of US disengagement means European countries must not only muster the will and means to arm themselves quickly, but also take the lead in collectively providing for Ukraine’s security.

    Whether they can do so remains unclear. Europe’s history of inaction does not bode well.

    US allies also face choices in Asia. Japan and South Korea will now be seriously considering all options – potentially even nuclear weapons – to deter an emboldened China.

    There are worries in Australia, as well. Can it pretend nothing has changed and hope the situation will then normalise after the next US presidential election?

    The future of AUKUS, the deal to purchase (and then co-design) US nuclear-powered submarines, is particularly uncertain.

    Does it make strategic sense to pursue full integration with the US military when the White House could just treat Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul and Canberra with the same indifference it has displayed towards its friends in Europe?

    Ultimately, the chaos Trump 2.0 has unleashed in such a short amount of time is both unprecedented and bewildering. In seeking to put “America First”, Trump is perversely hastening its decline. He is leaving America isolated and untrusted by its closest friends.

    And, in doing so, the world’s most powerful nation has also made the world a more dangerous, uncertain and ultimately an uglier place to be.The Conversation

    Dr Matthew Sussex, is associate professor (adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and research fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Israel’s genocide is expanding into the West Bank – but Western media ‘ignores’ it

    Pacific Media Watch

    With international media’s attention on the Israeli and Palestinian captives exchange,  Israel’s military and settlers have been forcibly displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, says Al Jazeera’s Listening Post media programme.

    The European Union has condemned Israel’s military operation in West Bank, attacking and killing refugees, and destroying refugee camps while the Western media has been barely reporting this.

    It has also criticised the violence by settlers in illegal West Bank villages.

    Israel’s military operation in the occupied territory has been ongoing for more than 40 days and has resulted in dozens of casualties, the displacement of about 40,000 Palestinians from their homes, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.

    The EU has expressed its “grave concern” about Israel’s continuing military operation in the occupied West Bank in a statement.

    “The EU calls on Israel, in addressing its security concerns in the occupied West Bank, to comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law by ensuring the protection of all civilians in military operations and allow the safe return of displaced persons to their homes,” the statement read.

    “At the same time, extremist settler violence continues throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

    Israel ‘has duty to protect’
    “The EU recalls that Israel, as the occupying power, has the duty to protect civilians and to hold perpetrators accountable.”

    The bloc also condemned Israel’s policy of expanding settlements in the West Bank, and urged that demolitions “including of EU and EU member states-funded structures, must stop”.

    “As we enter the holy month of Ramadan, we call on all parties to exercise restraint to allow for peaceful celebrations,” the EU said.

    Meanwhile, Israeli journalists are parroting military talking points of security operations.


    Israel invades the West Bank.  Video: AJ: The Listening Post

    Contributors:
    Abdaljawad Omar – Assistant professor, Birzeit University
    Jehad Abusalim – Co-editor, Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
    Ori Goldberg – Academic and political commentator
    Samira Mohyeddin – Founder, On the Line Media

    On the Listening Post radar:
    This week, the return of the Bibas family bodies dominated Israeli media coverage.

    Tariq Nafi reports on how their deaths have been used for “hasbara” — propaganda — after the family accused Netanyahu’s government of exploiting their grief for political purposes.

    The Kenyan ‘manosphere’
    Populated by loudmouths, shock artists and unapologetic chauvinists, the Kenyan “manosphere” is promoting an influential — and at times dangerous — take on modern masculinity.

    Featuring:
    Audrey Mugeni – Co-founder, Femicide Count Kenya
    Awino Okech – Professor of feminist and security studies, SOAS
    Onyango Otieno – Mental health coach and writer


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iowa Becomes the First State to Repeal Civil Rights Protections for Trans People

    Protesters fill the Iowa state Capitol to denounce a bill that would strip the state civil rights code of protections based on gender identity, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
    Protesters fill the Iowa State Capitol to denounce a bill that would strip the state civil rights code of protections based on gender identity on Feb. 27, 2025, in Des Moines. Photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP

    Over the last five years, legislators across the country have escalated their attacks on trans youth and adults.

    Iowa, however, now holds the dubious distinction of becoming the first statehouse to repeal civil rights protections for trans people. The bill legislators passed on Thursday explicitly removes civil rights protections that had been enshrined in state law. Once the pro-discrimination bill is signed by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, trans people in Iowa will no longer be considered a protected category under state law.

    The bill’s supporters were clear: They want to be able to discriminate against trans people — and don’t want any barriers like pesky civil rights protections in the way.

    “If signed, Iowa will become the first state in American history to remove a protected class from its Civil Rights Act,” wrote Erin Reed, a journalist and trans rights advocate, “setting a dangerous precedent for broader rollbacks of anti-discrimination protections.”

    Introduced last week, the new legislation was pushed through at breakneck speed. The Republican-led Iowa Legislature voted 60 to 36 in the House and 33 to 15 in the Senate to pass the bill, which now heads to Reynolds’s desk for signing. Reynolds has been a keen participant in the Republicans’ anti-trans onslaught so is unlikely to push back.

    Iowa included gender identity in its civil rights code since 2007 with the aim of protecting against employment, housing, health care, education, and other widespread discrimination that trans people face.

    A 2024 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that 82 percent of trans people reported experiencing discrimination or harassment at work due to their gender identity or sexual orientation — nearly double the number of cis LGBTQ+ individuals who reported experiencing discrimination. One in 5 trans people have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives.

    The move to revoke civil rights — and remove “gender identity” as a protected category — is directly at odds with the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects employees against discrimination based on sex and gender identity. In line with the Trump administration’s anti-scientific enforcement of two strictly binary sexes, the Iowa bill defines sex as assigned by anatomy at birth.

    The Republicans behind the law were unambiguous that civil rights protections were a barrier to enforcing other anti-trans laws on their traditionalist, pro-natalist agenda. It is harder to ban people from bathrooms, from educational spaces, from the public and professional sphere, when those people are understood to have rights.

    “All of these common-sense policies are at risk so long as gender identity remains in the Iowa civil rights code,” state Rep. Steven Holt, a Republican supporter of the bill, said on the House floor.

    Holt was, of course, referring to the sort of policies that have led to the harassment of both trans and cis people in women’s bathrooms. Such measures have opened the door to proposed genital inspections for children who want to play sports, not to mention the denial of potential lifesaving health care — all in the name of a “common-sense” gender fascism that, for all its alleged naturalness, takes an extraordinary amount of effort and violence to enforce.

    Republican claims to women’s safety concerns are based on a phantasma of threat, and part of a broader drive to erase bodily autonomy.

    It should not need repeating that trans women have never been found to pose a higher risk of perpetrating an assault in a women’s bathroom than cis women; there is no correlation between trans-inclusive policies and a rise in safety risks. Rather it is trans people, particularly trans people of color, who are at significantly elevated risks of violence, including deadly violence.

    I only restate this here because much mainstream coverage of anti-trans attacks like the Iowa legislation — including in the New York Times — depicts these discriminatory assaults as if they represent a debate with two reasonable opposing sides, without clarifying the truth: Republican claims to women’s safety concerns are based on a phantasma of threat, and part of a broader drive to erase bodily autonomy.

    Over 2,500 people arrived at the Iowa State Capitol on Thursday to protest the bill, with hundreds filling the building’s rotunda. Their understanding of the situation was far more accurate than the mainstream press. “Fuck you, fascists!” they chanted, as lawmakers took away their fellow Iowans’ civil rights

    The post Iowa Becomes the First State to Repeal Civil Rights Protections for Trans People appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Four decades after Rongelap evacuation, Greenpeace makes new plea for nuclear justice by US

    Asia Pacific Report

    In the year marking 40 years since the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents and 71 years since the most powerful nuclear weapons tested by the United States, Greenpeace is calling on Washington to comply with demands by the Marshall Islands for nuclear justice.

    “The Marshall Islands bears the deepest scars of a dark legacy — nuclear contamination, forced displacement, and premeditated human experimentation at the hands of the US government,” said Greenpeace spokesperson Shiva Gounden.

    To mark the Marshall Islands’ Remembrance Day today, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior is flying the republic’s flag at halfmast in solidarity with those who lost their lives and are suffering ongoing trauma as a result of US nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.

    On 1 March 1954, the Castle Bravo nuclear bomb was detonated on Bikini Atoll with a blast 1000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

    On Rongelap Atoll, 150 km away, radioactive fallout rained onto the inhabited island, with children mistaking it as snow.

    The Rainbow Warrior is sailing to the Marshall Islands where a mission led by Greenpeace will conduct independent scientific research across the country, the results of which will eventually be given to the National Nuclear Commission to support the Marshall Islands government’s ongoing legal proceedings with the US and at the UN.

    The voyage also marks 40 years since Greenpeace’s original Rainbow Warrior evacuated the people of Rongelap after toxic nuclear fallout rendered their ancestral land uninhabitable.

    Still enduring fallout
    Marshall Islands communities still endure the physical, economic, and cultural fallout of the nuclear tests — compensation from the US has fallen far short of expectations of the islanders who are yet to receive an apology.

    And the accelerating impacts of the climate crisis threaten further displacement of communities.


    Former Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony deBrum’s “nuclear justice” speech as Right Livelihood Award Winner in 2009. Video: Voices Rising

    “To this day, Marshall Islanders continue to grapple with this injustice while standing on the frontlines of the climate crisis — facing yet another wave of displacement and devastation for a catastrophe they did not create,” Gounden said.

    “But the Marshallese people and their government are not just survivors — they are warriors for justice, among the most powerful voices demanding bold action, accountability, and reparations on the global stage.

    “Those who have inflicted unimaginable harm on the Marshallese must be held to account and made to pay for the devastation they caused.

    “Greenpeace stands unwaveringly beside Marshallese communities in their fight for justice. Jimwe im Maron.”

    The Rainbow Warrior crew members hold the Marshall Islands flag
    Rainbow Warrior crew members holding the Marshall Islands flag . . . remembering the anniversary of the devastating Castle Bravo nuclear test – 1000 times more powerful than Hiroshima – on 1 March 1954. Image: Greenpeace International
    Chair of the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission Ariana Tibon-Kilma
    Chair of the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission Ariana Tibon-Kilma . . . “the trauma of Bravo continues for the remaining survivors and their descendents.” Image: UN Human Rights Council

    Ariana Tibon Kilma, chair of the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission, said that the immediate effects of the Bravo bomb on March 1 were “harrowing”.

    “Hours after exposure, many people fell ill — skin peeling off, burning sensation in their eyes, their stomachs were churning in pain. Mothers watched as their children’s hair fell to the ground and blisters devoured their bodies overnight,” she said.

    “Without their consent, the United States government enrolled them as ‘test subjects’ in a top secret medical study on the effects of radiation on human beings — a study that continued for 40 years.

    “Today on Remembrance Day the trauma of Bravo continues for the remaining survivors and their descendents — this is a legacy not only of suffering, loss, and frustration, but also of strength, unity, and unwavering commitment to justice, truth and accountability.”

    The new Rainbow Warrior will arrive in the Marshall Islands early this month.

    Alongside the government of the Marshall Islands, Greenpeace will lead an independent scientific mission into the ongoing impacts of the US weapons testing programme.

    Travelling across the country, Greenpeace will reaffirm its solidarity with the Marshallese people — now facing further harm and displacement from the climate crisis, and the emerging threat of deep sea mining in the Pacific.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Landlord Convicted in Hate Crime Stabbing of 6-Year-Old Palestinian American Boy

    For two years, Joseph Czuba, had a friendly relationship with his Palestinian American tenants in Plainfield, Illinois. But after the war on Gaza ignited, a switch flipped.

    Days after October 7, 2023, Czuba told his tenant Hanan Shaheen that she needed to move out, citing the war, and insinuated she was dangerous, Czuba’s ex-wife testified. On the morning of October 14, Shaheen later told investigators that Czuba said he was angry at her for what was happening in Jerusalem. “Let’s pray for peace,” Shaheen responded.

    That day, Czuba attacked her and her 6-year-old son with a knife, saying “You, as a Muslim, must die,” Shaheen recalled in testimony this week. Stabbed more than a dozen times, Shaheen escaped to the bathroom and called 911. Czuba then attacked her son, Wadee Alfayoumi, stabbing him 26 times across his body. Alfayoumi did not survive. 

    An Illinois jury on Friday convicted Czuba, 73, of first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery, and hate crimes, bringing to a close one of the most shocking hate crime trials to shake the nation after the war on Gaza broke out. He faces up to life in prison.

    Czuba’s hateful comments about Palestinians and Muslims took center stage in the trial this week at Will County Courthouse, about 45 miles southwest of Chicago. It included testimony from about 20 witnesses, police footage, and 911 call recordings. 

    Hate crimes are notoriously difficult to prosecute, but experts say damning evidence of both the killing and the motive in this case likely paved the way for a guilty verdict. 

    Jeannine Bell, a law and social justice professor at Loyola University Chicago, said there is “abundant evidence” of Czuba’s motivation based on the gruesome nature of the assault and his comments expressing anti-Palestinianism and Islamophobia. 

    In the final stretch of the trial Thursday, prosecutors played a clip of Czuba’s comments about Arabs and Muslims after the stabbing. 

    “I can’t believe all the protests of people that are supporting PLO,” Czuba said in a video from the back of a patrol car, referring to the Palestine Liberation Organization. “It’s so evil.” 

    “They are just like infested rats,” he said.

    Czuba said that he was afraid for his life and for his wife. He said he was trying to help Shaheen out, and that she couldn’t afford a house. “Didn’t tell me she is a Muslim.”

    Czuba said he “begged” Shaheen to “get out for three days,” and she wouldn’t leave. At one point, he said she was a “trained fighter.” “Let me tell you she was a problem.”

    Czuba’s attorney, George Lenard, attempted to poke holes in the prosecutions and the police investigation, and argued that just because his client dislikes the PLO does not mean he is hateful. 

    Abed Ayoub, director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee who has been involved in civil rights advocacy for about two decades, says the common thread in hate-fueled instances is ignorance, and attackers are often people who are easily “radicalized.” 

    “We need to pay attention in this country to what is driving these …individuals to do this, to commit these crimes, and it’s no secret. It’s the hate rhetoric itself,” Ayoub said.

    In Czuba’s case, prosecutors said he had shown a deep interest in the war abroad and had been listening to conservative talk radio.

    Related

    The Vicious Things Republicans Have Said About Palestinians Since October 7

    Ayoub noted he has also seen a rise in anti-Palestinianism and Islamophobia from media and politicians across the spectrum since the war on Gaza began.

    “Now we’re seeing it in the open,” he said. 

    The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a nonprofit civil rights organization, tracked a dramatic rise in complaints in wake of Israel’s assault on Gaza. The organization said it documented 8,061 complaints in 2023 — nearly half of which were from the last three months — the highest tally CAIR has recorded since its founding in 1994. 

    Bell, of Loyola University, noted similar spikes in hate crimes at two points since the turn of the century: after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, and during the first election of President Donald Trump.

    The trial comes amid an attack on civil rights legislation. Trump effectively ordered a freeze on the Justice Department’s current civil rights prosecution and banning new cases. If the order remains in place, one expert says people will have to rely on a patchwork of state laws in hate crime cases.

    “Our hate crimes law enforcement system simply is dysfunctional, or non-functional, and has-been.”

    “That means that we cannot rely on the federal government to prosecute hate crimes, and so states are going to have to do it for there to be meaningful prosecution of hate crimes,” said Richard Wilson, a law and anthropology professor at the University of Connecticut.

    Most cases are tried in state court, and hate crime laws vary significantly across the U.S. Removing federal litigation could have major consequences, especially in jurisdictions with weak protections, Wilson said. Washington state and New York, for instance, have a rigorous prosecution record; South Carolina and Wyoming do not, he said.

    “Our hate crimes law enforcement system simply is dysfunctional, or non-functional, and has-been,” Wilson said. 

    While convictions like Czuba’s show the importance of state law, the federal retreat poses a major problem. “The conclusion has to be that we tolerate hate crimes,” Wilson said.

    The post Landlord Convicted in Hate Crime Stabbing of 6-Year-Old Palestinian American Boy appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • University of Cambridge loses authoritarian legal attempt to stop pro-Palestine protests

    The University of Cambridge has lost its legal bid to stop pro-Palestine, anti-genocide protests on certain parts of its campus.

    University of Cambridge: draconian actions

    Palestine campaigners have welcomed an important victory in defence of their rights to protest. At short notice the University of Cambridge attempted to secure a draconian five year long injunction to prevent specifically Israel and Palestine-related protest at key sites on campus.

    This unprecedented attack on the right to protest and freedom of expression was defeated in court by the ELSC, who intervened in support of campaigners.

    The University of Cambridge attempted to argue that the injunction until 2030 was urgently required before graduation ceremonies this weekend, but the judge Mr Justice Fordham dismissed this application, saying he would grant only a “very narrow and limited court order” until Saturday 1 March 2025.

    This only prohibits entry and erecting structures – other protest is not injuncted.

    A further hearing is scheduled for March as the judge said it was “a matter of significant concern” that the university’s application offered little time for potential interested parties to properly respond.

    Ahead of the hearing, ELSC, PSC, Liberty, and UCU were joined by Cambridge SU and the UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Assembly to condemn the university’s discriminatory attack on fundamental rights to protest, which disproportionately affects Palestinian students and staff.

    The university sought to silence those demanding that it ends its complicity in Israel’s genocide. PSC research has previously found that British universities invest nearly £430m in companies complicit in Israel’s violations of international law.

    A significant victory

    Ben Jamal, PSC director, said:

    This is an important victory for freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, both of which should be cornerstones of university life. The University of Cambridge tried to single out Palestinian staff and students and those speaking up for international law, and subject them to draconian restrictions not applied to protestors on any other issue. This decision should mark a watershed in defence of freedom of expression and the right to protest.

    Anna Ost, senior legalofficer, ELSC, said:

    This is a significant victory – one that sends a strong message to other universities attempting to impose such draconian restrictions on freedom of assembly and protest. The University of Cambridge’s efforts to undermine its students’ civil liberties – by seeking an injunction to effectively ban expressions of Palestine solidarity both on and off campus until 2030 – represented the broadest restriction on university protests to date. We are thrilled that the court has refused to grant it today, but this fight is not over. Another hearing is scheduled for the end of March, and we hope the court will recognise, as we do, that this is a blatant violation of students’ fundamental rights.

    Since October 2023, we have witnessed ongoing attempts to undermine students’ right to protest and to challenge their institutions’ complicity in violations of international law and genocide. It is our responsibility to fight this wider pattern of repression against our movement, on university campuses or otherwise, and against our civil liberties in the legal terrain.

    Cambridge 4 Palestine commented:

    This decision represents a massive political victory for our movement in solidarity with Palestine, and for student political expression at large. The court has revealed that Cambridge’s racist targeting of Palestinian identity, and demonisation of students and staff who protest the University’s complicity in genocide is baseless and unacceptable.

    At the same time, however, C4P asserted that “the freedom to protest is the bare minimum and a fundamental right. Our true win will come when we see an end to the University’s partnership with Israel’s genocidal campaigns”.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Trump Administration Abolishes Rules Protecting Trans Prisoners

    The Trump administration has officially eliminated guidelines that protect transgender people in federal prisons. It is the latest step in implementing one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting trans inmates and detainees in federal custody.

    In a brief directive circulated to federal Bureau of Prisons employees on Thursday, a copy of which was reviewed by The Intercept, the acting director of the federal Bureau of Prisons, William Lothrop, rescinded the agency’s Transgender Offender Manual. The guidelines were removed from the BOP website in late January, but the agency has continued to cite them in ongoing lawsuits over Trump’s executive order.  

    Lothrop’s memo, dated February 25, cancels the Transgender Offender Manual “effective immediately” and orders it removed from the BOP intranet and prison libraries.

    BOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    “The Transgender Offender Manual was based on constitutional protections and federal law, so I think it is a very dangerous step backwards,” said Richard Saenz, an attorney at Lambda Legal.

    The guidelines had been last updated in 2022, reversing changes made during the first Trump administration. They had instructed prison wardens and staff on minimal protections for trans inmates, consistent with federal regulations and the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The policy reflected the “increased risk of suicide, mental health issues and victimization of transgender inmates.”

    Related

    Trump Is Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: Federal Prisons Are Purposely Inhumane

    Under the prior guidelines, protections included considering housing placements for trans and intersex prisoners on a “case-by-case basis” to “ensure the inmate’s health and safety,” as well as shielding trans women from being searched by male guards and forbidding staff from deliberating misgendering inmates.

    In separate guidance circulated last week, a copy of which was also shared with The Intercept, the BOP acknowledged that Trump’s executive order “does not supersede or change BOP’s obligation to comply with Federal law and regulations.” Saenz also emphasized that the Trump administration cannot erase constitutional protections for incarcerated trans people.

    “It’s attempting to defy these well-established protections” for inmates’ safety and adequate healthcare, Saenz said of the BOP’s rescission order.

    The new guidance says nothing about how BOP will proceed with plans to move trans women to male facilities, which is currently being challenged in court. “The risk of serious violence Plaintiffs face if transferred to men’s facilities is known to BOP and is why these individuals were permitted to live in female facilities in the first place,” lawyers for a dozen trans women in federal custody wrote in a court filing earlier this week.

    On Monday, a federal judge blocked BOP from transferring the women to male prisons, finding this likely violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

    The BOP’s new guidance for trans prisoners is also silent about gender-affirming care, which Trump’s executive order also attempts to eliminate. On Monday, the judge also ordered the BOP to maintain the same medical care for the dozen inmates that the bureau received before Trump took office.

    But under the new agency guidance, search accommodations for trans inmates “are no longer authorized.” BOP staff must “refer to individuals by their legal name or pronouns corresponding to their biological sex.”

    The new guidance also prohibits inmates from receiving “clothing accommodations,” such as “undergarments that do not align with an inmate’s biological sex.” The rescinded manual allowed trans inmates to select undergarments that reflected their gender identity, and wardens could approve other items on an individualized basis. Under the new guidance order, inmates who previously purchased commissary items can keep them, a reversal of moves by some wardens earlier this month to confiscate clothing items.

    Although the immediate impact of rescinding the BOP guidelines is unclear as lawsuits proceed over Trump’s executive orders, advocates fear the signal that such moves send to corrections officials around the country.

    “These unconstitutional and dangerous attacks by the Trump administration should not be seen as a green light for state systems to follow along,” Saenz said. “These actions and this hostile, hateful rhetoric does not change the fact that there are laws protecting trans people.”

    The post Trump Administration Abolishes Rules Protecting Trans Prisoners appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Fiendish Experiments: Trump’s Guantánamo Bay Migrant Detentions

    Guantánamo Bay has been a fiendish experiment in US law for decades. The fiendishness lies in the subversion. Operating as a naval base in Cuba, this contentious facility has been the site and location for the cruelties of paranoia and empire, a place where such laws as due process are subverted, and the presumption to innocence soiled. In this contorted way, the civilian and military branches have mingled and corrupted, the result proving a nightmare for legal authorities keen to ensure that such a facility does, at the very least, observe that sad, dusty relic known as the rule of law.

    Legal sharpshooters have been baffled by the latest experiment with the facility, this time from the Trump administration and its efforts to use it as a detention centre for unwanted migrants. On January 29, the US president directed the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security “to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States”. Furthermore, the secretaries were directed “to address attendant immigration enforcement needs identified” by the departments. The first flight transferring migrants from US soil to the facility took place on February 4 this year.

    The intention is to house up to 30,000 people, but it is already clear that not all, contrary to what the president claims, are “the worst criminal aliens threatening the American people.” Some have been found to be of a “low-threat” category, hardly the sort to terrify the peace of mind of your average US citizen. Yet again, we find himself inhabiting a world of dismal illusions.

    Such an authorisation can hardly be said to fall within the all too conveniently expansive 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which focuses on the interminable prosecution of the formerly known Global War on Terror. The MOC is its own beast, a separate instrument controversial for “housing” (as opposed to “detaining”) its residents. It is located on the Leeward side of the base and was created to house Caribbean migrants interdicted at sea in the 1990s.

    The entities relevant to running the MOC are the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) responsible to the Department of Homeland Security. Interdicted migrants are assessed to see if they deserve “protected” status, one that is granted if the individual has a genuine fear of harm arising if they are returned to their country or origin. Historically, during the phase of their assessment, migrants receive a basic set of services in healthcare, housing, education, and job training.

    The use of the island to deal with immigrants has been a blighted practice undertaken by US administrations since the 1970s. The Ford and Carter administrations held Haitians at the base as they awaited asylum interviews. After a cessation of immigration detention onsite under the Reagan administration, the unsavoury practice was resumed in 1991. Again involving Haitians, only this time in greater numbers, given the military coup, some 12,500 were transferred to a shoddy, makeshift camp. Under Bill Clinton’s presidency, the camp was emptied, but the rights of those interdicted was systematically stripped to enable them to be repatriated. In 1994, the camp, in all its squalid ingloriousness, was reopened to house Cubans and Haitians in their tens of thousands.

    The issue of valid authorisation is not a mere semantic quibble. Trump’s actions have consequential disturbances to the rule of law. The administration is seemingly pushing, not merely a smudging of the categories in terms of dealing with migrants, but their obliteration. What we are left with is a nasty mixture of terror and malfeasance, a point that utterly repudiates basic protections offered by the UN Refugee Convention.

    Nor is it clear whether the administration can legally carry out these measures. The MOC migrants being transferred will not be deprived of legal rights afforded them under the US Constitution, which include access to the judicial system and legal counsel, due process protections which cover arbitrary or indefinite detention, the right to appropriate conditions of confinement, and the right to seek release from unlawful detention. It is also important to distinguish those immigrants interdicted at sea who seek asylum in the United States, and those already on US soil. A case is currently pending on the issue before US Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C., though a court date is yet to be set.

    In terms of both cost and logistics, this detention measure is also untenable. It has been estimated that the average cost for an immigration detention bed will be quintupled from its current annual total of $57,378. Ensuring access to legal counsel and guaranteeing humane treatment will also present a nightmarish scenario for the authorities, given the scale of the expansion sought by Trump.

    So far, lawyers from the Justice Department have unconvincingly claimed that the limited availability of phone calls to counsel located off the base was a “reasonable and consistent” measure when it comes to the “temporary staging” of migrants with final deportation orders to other countries.

    The Trump administration’s waspish approach to unwanted immigrants replicates the pattern of deterrence and demonisation used by other countries (member states in the European Union and Australia comes to mind) that have treated unwanted arrivals as an interchangeable commodity with political objects and national security: the terrorist, the hardened criminal, the deviant, the immoral figure best barred from entering their borders. But at the very least, a firmly established legal system, if mobilised correctly, has some prospect of sinking this hideous experiment.

    The post Fiendish Experiments: Trump’s Guantánamo Bay Migrant Detentions first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • America’s avocado obsession is destroying Mexico’s forests. Is there a fix?

    Avocados are entrenched in American cuisine. The rich, creamy fruit, swaddled in a coarse skin, is often smashed into guacamole, slathered on toast, or minced into salads.

    The nation’s demand for Persea americana has surged by 600 percent since 1998. Most of the avocados consumed in the U.S., and many of those eaten elsewhere in the world, are a single variety grown in Michoacán, a state in west-central Mexico with an immensely profitable export industry worth at least $2 billion annually. But this “green gold rush” has come at a steep climatic cost, as vast tracts of protected land are razed for orchards. 

    “We are losing the forest,” said Alejandro Méndez López, who has been the secretary of environment in Michoacán since 2022. Every year, up to 24,700 acres are illegally cleared for avocado production. “The main contribution of Michoacán for climate change is land-use change. So I think the whole world should be concerned.”

    The state government hopes to mitigate that through a certification program that ensures packinghouses that ship the fruit to international markets are buying sustainably grown avocados. The effort, called Pro-Forest Avocado certification, launched last fall, and uses satellites to monitor orchards for signs of clear-cutting. Ultimately, the aim is to do away with deals between processors and producers that aren’t adhering to Mexico’s sweeping anti-deforestation law. 

    That hasn’t gone over well with everyone in a business that has grown so profitable that it’s attracted interest from drug cartels and civilian militias.

    Méndez López helped create this program and is its public face. He has spent the past month meeting with angry avocado growers throughout Michoacán, always in a car outfitted with bulletproof windows and accompanied by police. Despite his attempts to ease their concerns, he says many leave no less irate. Their problem isn’t so much with him, but what his presence represents: the government’s rollout of a program that is voluntary for packinghouses but leaves growers fearing they have little choice but to comply. 

    “They were very angry. I was telling them that this certification is not compulsory, but many of them believe that this is a hidden way to tax them,” he said. Given the powerful role cartels play in the avocado business, his efforts to address the industry’s ecological and climatic impact has created no small risk to his safety. Some growers have started anonymously boycotting packinghouses that join, denouncing them as “traitors.” “I don’t want to be killed,” he said. “I’m a bit afraid, because right now we are touching their economic interests.” 

    Climate activists and analysts say the program could replicate the market changes seen with other ethical labeling efforts like fair trade coffee and dolphin-free tuna. Locals are more skeptical, and worry that the industry’s history of corruption will undermine progress. And there’s always the question of it receiving the support needed to succeed. But Méndez López believes this is a legitimate solution to a grave issue. Even threats of violence won’t deter the work.

    “We have very few resources,” he said. “They can come to my office and put a gun to my head, but they won’t be able to shut down a satellite.”  

    A worker holds an avocado in an orchard on February 6, 2025 in Tenancingo de Degollado, Mexico.
    Cristopher Rogel Blanquet via Getty Images

    Nearly a third of the avocados consumed worldwide — more than 2 million metric tons annually — are grown in Michoacán’s “Avocado Belt.” Fertile volcanic soils, elevated terrain, and warm, subtropical microclimates with ample rainfall make it the only region in the world with large-scale production year-round. 

    Michoacán started moving toward the center of the global avocado trade in 1994 when the North American Free Trade Agreement opened the U.S. to imports from south of the border. By 2007, it was the only Mexican state authorized to send avocados throughout the U.S. This provided consumers with year-round access to the fruit, which further drove demand. Since 2019 alone, avocado exports to the United States have surged 48 percent. (Some 90 percent are the market-dominating Hass variety.)

    That explosive growth has brought opportunity to economically disadvantaged areas. Juan Gabriel Pedraza, an Indigenous Purépecha farmer in the town of Sicuicho, told Grist that his people plant orchards even as they strive to protect the forests. He raises roughly 720 avocado trees alongside the pines. The crop “has brought life” to his community, which was once “extremely, extremely poor.” 

    “We are like guardians of the forest, because if the forest disappears, then it’s going to affect everything else,” he said in Spanish. “We are always careful with keeping the forest healthy. It’s a duty of ours.”

    Over the years, enormous avocado export profits have led to an escalation of violence that has surged alongside demand. Local cartels have bribed agricultural officials and police and extorted or kidnapped growers to maintain a stronghold in the lucrative business, while civilian militias have fought for control of their communities. Avocados are now Michoacán’s, and one of Mexico’s, biggest agricultural exports. This booming industry has triggered widespread violation of a federal law banning clear-cutting without government approval. About 95 percent of the deforestation in Mexico happens illegally. 

    The problem has since expanded to neighboring Jalisco, the only other Mexican state authorized to ship avocados to the U.S. Some 40,000 to 70,000 acres across the two states were cleared between 1983 and 2023 to grow the fruit destined for American supermarkets, according to a Climate Rights International report. It also found that major U.S. supermarket chains, including Costco, Target, and Walmart, bought from packinghouses whose supply chains included orchards on recently deforested land. 

    “More and more, these forests were disappearing and being transformed into avocado orchards,” said Antonio González-Rodríguez, a forest conservation scientist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Michoacán’s capital city of Morelia. 

    In 2022, his team estimated that another 100,000 hectares of orchards could be established in Michoacán by 2050 — an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan — of which more than two-thirds would lead to forest loss. That includes protected reserves home to endangered species like the eastern Monarch butterfly. Such a loss would represent “more than 10 percent of the remaining forest,” said González-Rodríguez. 

    That comes with a staggering planetary cost. Chopping down forests eliminates vital carbon sinks and diminishes an ecosystem’s ability to store carbon. Meanwhile, warming threatens to reduce the amount of land highly suited to avocado cultivation by up to 41 percent worldwide within 25 years. 

    Clear-cutting also contributes to water scarcity by increasing soil erosion and disrupting natural filtration processes, throwing off the water cycle. Over the course of one decade, deforestation can have the same impact on a community’s access to clean drinking water as a 9 percent decrease in rainfall. This is increasingly an issue as Mexico faces a severe supply crisis.

    It doesn’t help that avocado trees need a lot of water and are only getting thirstier as the world warms. Water demand for the crop in Uruapan, Michoacán’s second largest city, rose nearly 24 percent from 2012 to 2017, with orchards drawing 120 percent of the amount allocated to agriculture, creating shortages. Last year, droughts prompted some growers to illegally siphon it from lakes or basins into unlicensed irrigation ponds. 

    “The expansion of the avocado industry is creating a conflict over water,” González-Rodríguez said. “It’s going to become one of the more serious problems, socially and politically.” 

    A group of avocado growers in a forest
    Juan Gabriel Pedraza, an Indigenous Purépecha farmer in the town of Sicuicho, told Grist that his people plant orchards even as they strive to protect the forests. Juan Gabriel Pedraza

    Voluntary certification programs that rely on public interest in fair and sustainable practices have reshaped consumer purchasing of everything from coffee to tuna. But assessing their impact can be difficult, said Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director of the Center for Biological Diversity. 

    One fundamental flaw many of these efforts share is a reliance on self-reporting, with little accountability and inadequate follow-up. Those that operate independently of the government often lack regulatory oversight, while others attempt to cover so many products, or so large a geographic area, that they rarely disrupt large industries or markets, she said. Crops associated with widespread deforestation, such as the Cavendish banana, often end up bogged down in too many certification schemes, with multiple retailers requesting several iterations of “sustainable” labels. At worst, these efforts provide little more than greenwashing, and typically at a high cost to producers.

    Michoacán’s Pro-Forest program sidesteps many of those issues by focusing on a single product grown in a specific region and sold primarily to one international market. Its labeling scheme was created by a forest conservation nonprofit working in collaboration with the state government, researchers at local universities, and environmental organizations. It could soon end up boosted by Mexico’s federal government, which on January 30 announced the forthcoming launch of a national program to eliminate deforestation and water exploitation for agricultural exports. A week later, Michoacán Governor Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla issued anti-deforestation certificates to six packing plants and two orchards that together supply roughly 31 percent of the state’s avocados sold to the U.S. 

    Orchards qualify for the scheme if they’ve had no deforestation since 2018, no forest fires since 2012, and do not operate on protected land. Government subsidies cover enrollment costs for packinghouses, while growers are charged about $40 for every 2.5 acres for certification. Growers must also pay for the conservation of a forest area to make up for the water consumption of their avocado cultivation. In a “plus” version of the program, companies commit to prioritizing buying from locally certified orchards. (No incentive for this tier exists just yet). 

    So far, about 10 percent of the state’s packinghouses that send avocados to the U.S. have signed on. That means they’ve agreed to be informed which orchards are complying with the guidelines — and to cease working with those that do not. Packinghouses that continue buying from orchards in violation of the anti-deforestation guidelines lose the ability to certify their avocados as sustainably sourced.

    But no one is promising to buy avocados only from orchards bearing the state’s official seal of approval, because there simply aren’t enough of them. As it stands, 937 out of the state’s 53,105 orchards have signed up, a number that changes almost daily, Heriberto Padilla Ibarra told Grist. Ibarra leads Guardian Forestal, the nonprofit overseeing the program’s remote sensing efforts.  

    The scant participation may reflect the fact that local producers must pay for certification that packinghouses receive for free. It could also be because growers like Icpac Escalera have little faith in government initiatives. Escalera runs his family’s organic avocado orchard in the town of Acuitzio del Canje. Although he considers the labeling a valiant effort, he says the 2018 date barring deforestation “is not enough.” He also doubts the state has sufficient resources to enforce it, and is worried that it will further disenfranchise smaller producers “without political clout.” 

    “The political situation hasn’t really helped anything in terms of making sure that deforestation is being properly handled,” Escalera said in Spanish. “Many politicians have avocado fields. It’s a well-known secret. There are not enough incentives for the smaller producers to maintain the forest, and because of that, the forests are disappearing.” 

    All the while, global demand for avocados continues to soar. Production in other top exporters like Colombia, Peru, and the Dominican Republic is booming, and breeders are developing new varieties. Even as avocados could overtake pineapples and mangos to become the world’s most traded tropical fruit as early as this year, regulators are stepping in to minimize their environmental and climatic impacts.

    The European Union is set to begin implementing “deforestation-free” product regulations in December. The United States took strides in that direction one year ago when several senators urged the Biden administration to address the role the country takes in driving the crisis as a primary market for avocados. Ken Salazar, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, announced that avocados grown in illegally cleared orchards should be blocked from the market, before the administration released a policy framework on how to begin doing so for all agricultural imports in December.

    President Donald Trump has yet to address the topic, but given his administration’s hostility toward climate action, he isn’t likely to do much about the issue for that reason. But the impending threat of tariffs on Mexico imply the administration may be interested in doing something about it, if for no reason than to limit overall imports from the country, said James Sayre, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis. “In a way, the Trump administration could end up acting on the deforestation issue,” he said. 

    Despite the controversial reputation of product labeling, Méndez López remains optimistic about Michoacán’s certification initiative. He hopes to see Mexico and its biggest avocado market federally mandate the need for such schemes. “It would be wonderful if the U.S. had a compulsory [requirement] for the imports of avocado to be deforestation-free. That would be perfect. But, we didn’t get so far [with the Biden administration]. And I don’t know if this new administration will do that,” he said. 

    For Julio Santoyo Guerrero, an environmental activist in the Michoacán municipality of Madero, the program, while “barely a lifeline” is at least a measure that warns people of the dire ethical and environmental costs linked to every avocado they consume. 

    “Our biggest cancer is corruption … I believe that the cause that originated the expansion of avocados, the market demand, will be the same thing that can stop it,” said Guerrero in Spanish. “If the market continues to function without regulation, our forests will continue to be destroyed.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline America’s avocado obsession is destroying Mexico’s forests. Is there a fix? on Feb 28, 2025.

  • Indigenous organisations need more support to respond to climate change, and the disasters it causes

    This post was originally published on IndigenousX.

  • After Nine Execution Dates and Three Last Meals, Richard Glossip May Soon Walk Free

    Just minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion granting Richard Glossip a new trial, his attorney Don Knight started receiving an avalanche of texts. “My phone blew up, my email blew up,” Knight said. By the time he spoke to his client on the phone, Glossip had already heard the news. His wife Lea had read the opinion to him over the phone: The court had ruled that Oklahoma City prosecutors failed to correct the false testimony of their star witness against Glossip and that his conviction and death sentence could not stand. “Because the prosecution violated its obligations,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court’s majority, “we reverse the judgment below and remand the case for a new trial.”

    The opinion was a stinging rebuke to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, which has repeatedly rejected Glossip’s appeals despite mounting evidence of his innocence in the 1997 murder of motel owner Barry Van Treese. The ruling is also a major victory for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who had previously taken the extraordinary step of asking the OCCA to vacate Glossip’s conviction after he concluded that it had been fatally tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. Finally, it is a momentous victory for Glossip, who has been scheduled for execution nine times and has been served three last meals, as well as for Knight who has spent the last decade fighting to free his client.

    “Rich Glossip, who has maintained his innocence for 27 years, will now be given the chance to have the fair trial that he has always been denied.”

    Glossip’s case will ultimately be sent back to Oklahoma City where the elected district attorney will have to decide whether Glossip should be retried. If she declines to do so, Glossip could soon walk out of prison.

    “Today was a victory for justice and fairness in our judicial system,” Knight said in a statement. “Rich Glossip, who has maintained his innocence for 27 years, will now be given the chance to have the fair trial that he has always been denied.”

    Glossip was twice convicted and sentenced to die for the murder of Van Treese inside a seedy Best Budget Inn on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. No physical evidence linked Glossip, the motel’s live-in manager, to the crime. The case against him was based almost entirely on the testimony of a 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed, who admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to death but insisted it was Glossip’s idea. In exchange for testifying against Glossip, Sneed escaped the death penalty and was sentenced to life without parole.

    At trial, prosecutors portrayed Sneed — a chronic drug user prone to unpredictable bouts of violence — as a hapless follower who acted under Glossip’s complete control. “It’s as if Justin Sneed was a Rottweiler puppy … and Richard Glossip was the dog trainer,” prosecutors argued to Glossip’s jury in 2004. “No matter how you slice it, no matter how you parse it, the person that says ‘sic ’em’ is the person that makes the decision.”

    In 2022, the state began releasing to Glossip’s attorneys boxes of previously undisclosed case documents revealing that Sneed gave false statements at Glossip’s second trial — and that prosecutors were aware of his misstatements yet failed to correct his testimony. In other words, jurors condemned Glossip to die based on the testimony of a known liar.

    While he was in jail, Sneed had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed lithium to manage it. However, when he testified against Glossip, Sneed denied ever seeing a psychiatrist and said he had no idea why he’d been given lithium. 

    The records included notes from a meeting between Sneed and prosecutor Connie Smothermon that took place not long before Glossip’s 2004 retrial. In the notes, Smothermon wrote the name of a doctor — “Dr. Trumpet?” — and a reference to the powerful mood stabilizing drug lithium — “on lithium?”

    As Glossip’s lawyers later argued to the Oklahoma court, “Trumpet” was clearly a reference to Lawrence Trombka, the lone psychiatrist working in the Oklahoma City jail at the time Sneed was incarcerated there, and thus the only person authorized to diagnose Sneed’s disorder and to prescribe lithium. The notes made clear that Sneed had, at best, misrepresented the situation under oath, when he testified that while in jail he had a cold and asked for Sudafed, but that “somehow they ended up giving me lithium for some reason. I don’t know why,” he said. “I never seen no psychiatrist or anything.”

    “So you don’t know why they gave you that?” Smothermon asked.

    “No,” Sneed replied.

    Related

    The “Power, Pride, and Politics” Behind the Drive to Execute Richard Glossip

    This exchange was at the heart of Drummond’s 2023 motion to vacate Glossip’s conviction. “There is no dispute that Sneed was the state’s key witness at the second trial. If Sneed had accurately disclosed that he had seen a psychiatrist, then the defense would have likely learned … the true reason for Sneed’s lithium prescription,” Drummond wrote in a motion to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. “With this information plus Sneed’s history of drug addiction, the state believes that a qualified defense attorney likely could have attacked Sneed’s ability to properly recall key facts at the second trial.”

    In its ruling, the Supreme Court majority agreed. The entire case against Glossip rested on Sneed’s testimony, Sotomayor wrote in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Because Sneed’s testimony was the only direct evidence of Glossip’s guilt of capital murder, the jury’s assessment of Sneed’s credibility was necessarily determinative here,” Sotomayor wrote. “Besides Sneed, no other witness and no physical evidence established that Glossip orchestrated Van Treese’s murder. Thus, the jury could convict Glossip only if it believed Sneed.” And Sneed’s credibility as a witness would have been undermined if the jury had been aware of the truth. Glossip’s prosecutors had failed to correct Sneed’s misleading testimony as they were constitutionally required to do, the court ruled. “A prosecutor’s midtrial revelation that Sneed lied on the stand would have significantly undercut” his account, Sotomayor wrote.

    But the court did not stop there, noting that the violation was part of a constellation of prosecutorial misconduct. “Additional conduct by the prosecution further undermines confidence in the verdict,” Sotomayor wrote. The state had destroyed key evidence before Glossip’s retrial and had hidden evidence that Sneed sought to recant his testimony implicating Glossip in the crime. She also pointed to an attempt by state prosecutors to have Sneed revise his testimony about the murder to better conform to their theory of the crime.

    The full-throated court victory came as a surprise to many close to the case, who had speculated after the court heard oral arguments last October that it would likely send the case back for an evidentiary hearing. In a partial dissent, Justice Amy Coney Barrett argued that this would have been the more appropriate action, while agreeing that prosecutors had violated Glossip’s constitutional rights. But the majority ultimately decided this was not necessary. “Because ample evidence supports the attorney general’s confession of error in this Court, there also is no need to remand for further evidentiary proceedings at the OCCA.” 

    Related

    Shocking Vote by Oklahoma Parole Board Clears the Way for Richard Glossip’s Execution

    Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the majority, writing his own opinion, which was joined by Justice Samuel Alito. In Thomas’s view Sneed’s testimony was “patently immaterial” to the outcome of Glossip’s trial. He also endorsed the OCCA’s absurd opinion that Sneed’s testimony was not “clearly false” because he “was more than likely in denial of his mental health disorders” — even though there was nothing in the record to support that assertion. The majority flatly rejected the idea. “Sneed’s beliefs are beside the point,” Sotomayor wrote. “What matters is that his testimony was false and a prosecutor knowingly let it stand nonetheless.”

    At a press conference following the ruling, Drummond, who is running for Oklahoma governor, reiterated his support for the death penalty, emphasizing that he has attended all eight executions carried out since he took office. Drummond told reporters that when he became attorney general he reviewed all of the state’s death penalty convictions “and one stood out.” The “mission” of his office is to “seek justice, not to defend the prosecution,” he said, which is why he sought to have Glossip’s conviction overturned. 

    Drummond said he was “pleased the high court has validated my grave concerns with how this prosecution was handled, and I am thankful we now have a fresh opportunity to see that justice is done.”

    Now, Glossip’s case will be returned to Oklahoma City where the current district attorney, Vicki Behenna, will review the evidence and decide whether to try Glossip for a third time. If she decides against doing so, Glossip would ultimately be released from prison. During his press conference, Drummond said he has conferred with Behenna and that the two plan to “review the evidence with fresh eyes.” 

    Twenty-eight years after the murder, and with no evidence aside from Sneed’s highly questionable account of the crime, it is hard to see how prosecutors could move forward with another trial. One potential resolution to the case is that they offer Glossip a deal to plead guilty to a lesser crime — specifically, of being an accessory-after-the-fact to Van Treese’s murder. This is arguably the only charge that ever had any basis in fact — and is what Glossip was originally charged with in 1997. On the night that he bludgeoned Van Treese, Sneed told Glossip that he’d killed the motel owner. Glossip didn’t immediately share this information with the police, he later told them, because he didn’t believe what Sneed was saying. 

    For now, Knight is preparing Glossip for whatever comes next. Knight credited his colleague, paralegal Meri Ellzey, for being an instrumental part of his decade-long fight to free Glossip, and he sounded cautiously optimistic that his client’s long ordeal will finally end. 

    “I’m still a one-step-at-a-time kind of guy,” Knight said. “I understand where I am right now, and I realize that, you know, I’m not to the finish line, but, by God, I can see it now.”

    The post After Nine Execution Dates and Three Last Meals, Richard Glossip May Soon Walk Free appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Relatives of slain PNG police officer block Highlands Highway over unresolved killing

    By Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent

    The family of a Papua New Guinea police constable, killed in an ambush last month, has blocked a section of the Highlands Highway in Goroka, Eastern Highlands Province, demanding justice for his death.

    Constable Harry Gorano succumbed to his injuries in intensive care two weeks ago after spending three weeks in a coma.

    He was attacked alongside colleagues in the Southern Highlands in January, during which fellow officer Constable Noel Biape was fatally shot.

    Gorano’s relatives, frustrated by the lack of arrests in the case, staged the roadblock early today, halting traffic on a key transit route.

    They have repeatedly called for authorities to arrest those responsible for the ambush.

    Additional personnel have been deployed to Goroka to assist local officers in managing tensions.

    Forces in neighboring regions have also been placed on standby amid concerns that the protest could spark broader unrest.

    The incident highlights the ongoing risks faced by PNG’s police force.

    Since 2017, more than 20 officers have been killed in the line of duty, with many perpetrators still at large.

    Investigations into Constable Gorano’s death remain ongoing.

    The family of a police constable, killed in an ambush last month, has blocked a section of the Highlands Highway in Goroka.
    Protesters block a section of the Highlands Highway outside Goroka. Image: RNZ Pacific/Lae-Morope Crime Alert via WhatsApp

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    Family of late constable urges authorities to fast-track investigation

  • Nullifying the Constitution Won’t Make America Great Again

    Anyone who wants to put America first needs to start by putting the Constitution first.

    This should be non-negotiable.

    Winning an election does not give President Trump—or any politician—the authority to sidestep the Constitution and remake the government at will.

    That’s not how a constitutional republic works, even in pursuit of the so-called greater good.

    Thus far, those defending the Trump administration’s worst actions, which range from immoral and unethical to blatantly unconstitutional, have resorted to repeating propaganda and glaring non-truths while insisting that the Biden administration was worse.

    “They did it first” and “they did it worse” are not justifications for disregarding the law.

    For that matter, omitting the Constitution from the White House website—pretending it never existed—does not give the president and the agencies within the Executive Branch the right to circumvent the rule of law or, worse, nullify the Constitution.

    Mounting a populist revolution to wrest power from the Deep State only to institute a different Deep State is not how you make America great again.

    How you do something is just as important as why you do something, and right now, the means by which the Trump administration is attempting to accomplish many of its end goals are antithetical to every principle on which this nation was founded: natural rights, popular sovereignty, the rule of law, the rejection of monarchical law, the need for transparency and accountability, due process, liberty, equality, and limited government, to name just a few.

    Whether the concerns driving this massive overhaul of the government are legitimate is not the question. We are certainly overdue for a reckoning when it comes to our bloated, corrupt, unaccountable, out-of-control bureaucracy.

    So far, however, the Trump administration’s policies have exacerbated government dysfunction, undermined constitutional rights, and deepened public distrust.

    Trump is not making America great again. In fact, things are getting worse by the day.

    Nowhere is this clearer than in the erosion of fundamental freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights. Government officials are muzzling the press, threatening protesters, and censoring online speech. Due process is being ignored altogether.

    The government’s haphazard, massive and potentially illegal firing spree is leaving whole quadrants of the government understaffed and unable to carry out the necessary functions of government as it relates to veterans, education, energy, agriculture, and housing.

    Rather than draining the swamp of corrupt, moneyed interests, Trump has favored the oligarchy with intimate access to the halls of power.

    Rather than reducing the actual size of the government, it appears that the groundwork is being laid by Trump’s administration to replace large swaths of the federal workforce with artificial intelligence-powered systems, expanding automation rather than shrinking bureaucracy.

    Despite claims of saving the country billions through massive layoffs and terminations, cancelled leases and contracts, and the discovery of wasteful or corrupt spending, the supporting documentation provided by DOGE, the so-called department of efficiency headed up by Elon Musk, has been shown to be riddled by errors and miscalculations.

    While claiming to cut back on wasteful government spending in order to balance the federal budget, Trump is pushing to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion while adding at least that much in tax cuts to benefit corporations and billionaires, all of which would be paid for by the already overburdened middle- and lower-classes.

    Despite campaign promises to bring down prices “on Day One,” inflation is on the rise again and financial markets are tumbling on fears that Americans will be the ones to pay the price for Trump’s threatened tariffs.

    In defiance of states’ rights and in a complete about-face given his own past statements about the authority of state and local governments, Trump is increasingly attempting to browbeat the states into compliance with the dictates of the federal government. Historically, legal precedent has tended to favor the states, whose sovereignty rests in the Tenth Amendment.

    All appearances to the contrary, Trump is not so much scaling back the nation’s endless wars as he appears to be genuflecting to authoritarian regimes in the hopes of building an international authoritarian alliance with fascist governments, while announcing plans to seize other countries’ lands, a clear act of military provocation.

    Trump’s eagerness to expand the U.S. prison system and impose harsher punishments, including the death penalty, would inevitably result in more American citizens being locked up for nonviolent crimes. The Trump administration has also floated the idea of imprisoning American “criminals” in other countries.

    Then you have Trump’s frequent references to himself as an imperial ruler (the White House even shared images of Trump wearing a royal crown), coupled with his repeated trial balloon allusions to running for a third term in contravention of the 22nd Amendment, which bars presidents from being elected more than twice.

    Nothing adds up.

    Not the numbers, not the policies, not the promises.

    If Trump continues to put into power people who are more loyal to him than they are to the Constitution, the consequences will be dire.

    Nullifying the Constitution is not how you make America great again.

    Trump may not have been given a mandate to act as a dictator or a king, but he was given a mandate to rein in a government that had grown out of control.

    That mandate came with one iron-clad condition, which Trump swore to abide by: the U.S. Constitution.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, no government official should be allowed to play fast and loose with the rule of law.

    So where does that leave us?

    The job of holding the government accountable does not belong to any one person or party. It belongs to all of us, “We the people,” irrespective of political affiliations and differences of race, religion, gender, education, economics, social strata or any other labels used to divide us.

    No politician, of any party, will save America.

    Only the Constitution—and the people who defend it—can do that.

    The post Nullifying the Constitution Won’t Make America Great Again first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Jewish Council slams Australian universities’ ‘dangerous, politicised’ antisemitism definition

    Asia Pacific Report

    An independent Jewish body has condemned the move by Australia’s 39 universities to endorse a “dangerous and politicised” definition of antisemitism which threatens academic freedom.

    The Jewish Council of Australia, a diverse coalition of Jewish academics, lawyers, writers and teachers, said in a statement that the move would have a “chilling effect” on legitimate criticism of Israel, and risked institutionalising anti-Palestinian racism.

    The council also criticised the fact that the universities had done so “without meaningful consultation” with Palestinian groups or diverse Jewish groups which were critical of Israel.

    The definition was developed by the Group of Eight (Go8) universities and adopted by Universities Australia.

    “By categorising Palestinian political expression as inherently antisemitic, it will be unworkable and unenforceable, and stifle critical political debate, which is at the heart of any democratic society,” the Jewish Council of Australia said.

    “The definition dangerously conflates Jewish identities with support for the state of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism.”

    The council statement said that it highlighted two key concerns:

    Mischaracterisation of criticism of Israel
    The definition states: “Criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions and when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel or all Jews or when it holds Jewish individuals or communities responsible for Israel’s actions.”

    The definition’s inclusion of “calls for the elimination of the State of Israel” would mean, for instance, that calls for a single binational democratic state, where Palestinians and Israelis had equal rights, could be labelled antisemitic.

    Moreover, the wording around “harmful tropes” was dangerously vague, failing to distinguish between tropes about Jewish people, which were antisemitic, and criticism of the state of Israel, which was not, the statement said.

    Misrepresentation of Zionism as core to Jewish identity
    The definition states that for most Jewish people “Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity”.

    The council said it was deeply concerned that by adopting this definition, universities would be taking and promoting a view that a national political ideology was a core part of Judaism.

    “This is not only inaccurate, but is also dangerous,” said the statement.

    “Zionism is a political ideology of Jewish nationalism, not an intrinsic part of Jewish identity.

    “There is a long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, from the beginning of its emergence in the late-19th century, to the present day. Many, if not the majority, of people who hold Zionist views today are not Jewish.”

    In contrast to Zionism and the state of Israel, said the council, Jewish identities traced back more than 3000 years and spanned different cultures and traditions.

    Jewish identities were a rightly protected category under all racial discrimination laws, whereas political ideologies such as Zionism and support for Israel were not, the council said.

    Growing numbers of dissenting Jews
    “While many Jewish people identify as Zionist, many do not. There are a growing number of Jewish people worldwide, including in Australia, who disagree with the actions of the state of Israel and do not support Zionism.

    “Australian polling in this area is not definitive, but some polls suggest that 30 percent of Australian Jews do not identify as Zionists.

    “A recent Canadian poll found half of Canadian Jews do not identify as Zionist. In the United States, more and more Jewish people are turning away from Zionist beliefs and support for the state of Israel.”

    Sarah Schwartz, a human rights lawyer and the Jewish Council of Australia’s executive officer, said: “It degrades the very real fight against antisemitism for it to be weaponised to silence legitimate criticism of the Israeli state and Palestinian political expressions.

    “It also risks fomenting division between communities and institutionalising anti-Palestinian racism.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • PNG govt’s latest ID plan unlikely to be achieved, says academic

    RNZ Pacific

    The Papua New Guinea government wants to have everyone on their National Identity (NID) card system by the country’s 50th anniversary on 16 September 2025.

    While the government has been struggling to set up the NID programme for more than 10 years, in January the Prime Minister, James Marape, announced they aimed to have 100 percent of Papua New Guineans signed up by September 16.

    However, an academic with the University of PNG, working in conjunction with the Australian National University, Andrew Anton Mako, said there was no chance the government could achieve this goal.

    Anton Mako spoke with RNZ Pacific senior journalist Don Wiseman:

    ANDREW ANTON MAKO: The NID programme was established in November 2014, so it’s 10 years now. I wouldn’t know the mechanics of the delay, why it has taken this long for the project to not deliver on the outcomes, but I can say a lot of money has been invested into the programme.

    By the end of this year, the national government would have spent about 500 million kina (over NZ$211 million). That’s a lot of money to be spent on a particular project, and then it would have only registered about 30 to 40 percent of the total population. So there’s a serious issue there. The project has failed to deliver.

    DON WISEMAN: Come back to that in a moment. But why does the government think that a national ID card is so important?

    AAM: It’s got some usefulness to achieve. If it was well established and well implemented, it would address a number of issues. For example, on doing business and a form of identity that will help people to do business, to apply for jobs in Papua New Guinea or elsewhere, and all that. I believe it has got merit towards it, but I think just that it has not been implemented properly.

    DW: Does the population like the idea?

    AAM: I think generally when it started, people were on board. But when it got delayed, you see a lot of people venting frustration on the NID Facebook page. I think [it’s] popularity has actually fallen over the years.

    DW: It’s money that could go into a whole lot of other, perhaps, more important things?

    AAM: Exactly, there’s pressing issues for the country, in terms of law and order, health and education. Those important sectors have actually fallen over the years. So that 500 million kina would have been better spent.

    DW: So now the government wants the entire country within this system by September 16, and they’re not going to get anywhere near it. They must have realised they wouldn’t get anywhere near it when the Prime Minister made that statement. Surely?

    AAM: It’s not possible. The numbers do not add up. They’ve spent more than 460 million kina over the last 10 years or so, and they’ve only registered 36 percent of the total — 3.3 million people. And then of the 3.3 million people, they’ve only issued an ID card to about 30 to 40 perCent of them . . .

    DW: 30 to 40 percent of those who have already signed up. So it’s what, 10 percent of the country?

    AAM: That’s right, about 1.2 million people have been issued an ID card, including a duplicate card. It is not possible to register the entire country, the rest of the country, in just six, seven or eight months.

    DW: It’s not the first time that the government has come out with what is effectively like a wish list without fully backing it, financially?

    AAM: That’s right. The ambitions that the government and the Prime Minister, their intentions are good, but there is no effective strategy how to get there.

    The resources that are needed to be allocated. It’s just not possible to realise the the end results. For example, the Prime Minister and his government promised that by this year, we would stop importing rice. That was a promise that was made in 2019, so the thing is that the government has not clearly laid out a plan as to how the country will realise that outcome by this year.

    If you are going to promise something, then you have to deliver on it. You have to deliver on the ambitions. Then you have to set up a proper game plan and proper indicators and things like this.

    I think that’s the issue, that you have promised something [and] you must deliver. But you must chart out a proper pathway to deliver that.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Kyrgyzstan Supreme Court upholds lengthy prison terms for Temirov Live journalists

    New York, February 25, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists is dismayed by the Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court’s February 25 decision confirming sentences against three Temirov Live journalists on charges of calling for mass unrest, including a six-year prison term for Makhabat Tajibek kyzy, director of the anti-corruption investigative outlet, a five-year prison term for presenter Azamat Ishenbekov, and a five-year suspended sentence for reporter Aike Beishekeyeva.

    “Today’s Supreme Court ruling in the case of prominent investigative outlet Temirov Live was a chance for Kyrgyzstan to right the most egregious press freedom violation in the country’s modern history. Instead it serves to underline the apparently irreversible course towards authoritarianism under President Sadyr Japarov,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director. “Kyrgyz authorities should immediately release Temirov Live journalists Makhabat Tajibek kyzy and Azamat Ishenbekov, withdraw all charges against them and Aike Beishekeyeva and Aktilek Kaparov, and end their attacks on the country’s once-free press.”

    Kyrgyz police arrested 11 current and former staff of Temirov Live, a local partner of the global Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), in January 2024. In October, a court convicted Tajibek kyzy, Ishenbekov, Beishekeyeva, and former reporter Aktilek Kaparov and acquitted the remaining seven. Kaparov, who like Beishekeyeva was given a five-year suspended sentence with a three-year probation period, has yet to file a Supreme Court appeal. The four convicted journalists remained in detention pending the October verdict; the seven who were acquitted were previously moved into house arrest or released under travel bans in March and August.

    A review of the case by TrialWatch, a global initiative of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, concluded that the convictions suggest “improperly that negative statements [in Temirov Live videos] about the government can serve as a basis for inciting mass unrest” under Kyrgyz law, and said the journalists’ right to a fair trial was violated, “as the court apparently relied almost exclusively on prosecution experts’ conclusions” and failed to address major gaps and inconsistencies in their testimony.

    Temirov Live founder Bolot Temirov, who works from exile after being deported from Kyrgyzstan in retaliation for his reporting in 2022, told CPJ that Tajibek kyzy, Ishenbekov, and Beishekeyeva plan to file complaints against their convictions with the United Nations Human Rights Council.

    In November 2024, CPJ submitted a report on Kyrgyz authorities’ unprecedented crackdown on independent reporting under Japarov to the Human Rights Council ahead of its 2025 Universal Periodic Review of the country’s human rights record in May.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Title 42 Isn’t About Public Health — It’s About Keeping Immigrants Out

    During his first term, President Donald Trump issued a public health emergency known as Title 42 to expel asylum-seekers and other immigrants in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. President Joe Biden used the same tactic to empower U.S. Customs and Border Protection to block immigrants from countries with Covid outbreaks.

    Now, even as his administration works to disassemble U.S. public health infrastructure, Trump is expected to deploy Title 42 again — this time to block immigrants from countries with recent cases of tuberculosis.

    Experts argue there’s even less of a justification for invoking Title 42 now, noting the hypocrisy of using public health as an excuse to deny rights to asylum-seekers while systematically enabling the spread of disease at home and abroad. 

    “The first [Trump administration], there didn’t seem to be that much concern over masking and getting vaccines widely dispersed,” said Juan Pedroza, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “And that seems to still be the case now with the new Trump administration being very skeptical of research science when it comes to public health. At the same time that they’re saying they’re concerned about public health when it comes to immigration.” 

    Last week, the Trump administration blocked federal funding for schools with Covid-19 vaccine mandates. Earlier this month, the administration significantly reduced funding to the National Institutes of Health, halting $1.5 billion in medical research funds. And the administration’s cuts to humanitarian assistance have plunged global vaccine efforts into chaos, leaving millions more susceptible to disease. 

    “America is going to become less secure from a global health security [perspective], which increases chances of epidemics and pandemics.”

    Dr. Paul Spiegel, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University, described the situation as “ironic.”

    “You have the administration pulling out of the World Health Organization and the pandemic treaty. You have them pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and there’s no question that climate change is going to have a big effect on where diseases are going to move and survive,” he said. “America is going to become less secure from a global health security [perspective], which increases chances of epidemics and pandemics.”

    Even with the administration taking many steps that will make a global pandemic more likely in the long run, Spiegel said there is “absolutely” no public health justification for shutting the southern border at this time. 

    The epidemiologist pointed to recent cases of outbreaks of serious communicable diseases in the U.S., such as the measles outbreak in Texas. The issue there wasn’t immigrants; it was low rates of vaccination. 

    Erroneously linking immigrant communities to the spread of infectious diseases is, unfortunately, a “tale as old as time,” said Pedroza at UC Santa Cruz. “You can find in the United States plenty of evidence of people saying that immigrants are bringing disease and will be contaminating the nation, including public health.” 

    Pedroza pointed to historical examples such as the screenings and quarantines at Ellis Island for incoming immigrants and the racist policies along the southern border used against Mexican immigrants. “This is not the first time we’ve been here,” he said.

    To Amada Armenta, an immigrant rights professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Trump’s desire to invoke Title 42 is clearly divorced from actual health concerns. “Him wanting to shut down the asylum system is 100 percent not about public health at all,” she said. 

    Despite the transparent nature of Trump’s efforts, Armenta said that connecting immigrants to disease has real-world consequences that ricochet past the border. “Whether he calls them criminals or people who carry diseases — which we know are not true — his rhetoric drives opinion,” she said. 

    But the biggest price, if the administration issues Title 42, will be paid by immigrants and asylum-seekers along the southern border. 

    “People have the right to apply for asylum,” she said. “And really, what this does is it just completely traps people in places where they’re very vulnerable.”

    The post Title 42 Isn’t About Public Health — It’s About Keeping Immigrants Out appeared first on The Intercept.

    This post was originally published on The Intercept.

  • Barred European Union politician brands Israel as ‘a rogue state’

    Asia Pacific Report

    Israel has now banned another European Union parliamentarian from entering the country, reports Al Jazeera.

    The government gave no reasons why Lynn Boylan, who chairs the European Parliament EU-Palestine delegation, was denied entry.

    “This utter contempt from Israel is the result of the international community failing to hold them to account,” Boylan, an Irish MP in Brussels, said in a statement.

    “Israel is a rogue state, and this disgraceful move shows the level of utter disregard that they have for international law.

    “Europe must now hold Israel to account.”

    Boylan said she had planned to meet with Palestinian Authority officials, representatives of civil society organisations, and people living under Israeli occupation.

    She is a member of the Sinn Fein party in Ireland, which has been among the most vocal countries in criticising the Israeli government over its treatment of Palestinians.

    France’s Hassan also refused
    Earlier, EU lawmaker Rima Hassan was also refused entry at Ben-Gurion airport and ordered to return to Europe.

    “Hassan, who is expected to land from Brussels in the coming hour, consistently works to promote boycotts against Israel in addition to numerous public statements both on social media and in media interviews,” said Israeli Interior Minister Moshe Arbel’s office.

    Hassan is a French national of Palestinian origin known for her support of the Palestinian cause and for speaking out against Israel’s war on Gaza.

    Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, outlined a range of worries about the situation in war-battered Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

    “We have constantly called on all parties, including Israel, to respect international humanitarian law,” she said, adding that Europe “cannot hide our concern when it comes to the West Bank”.

    ICC raps Merz over warrants
    Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has declared that states cannot unilaterally “determine soundness” of its rulings

    Earlier, it was reported that Germany’s election winner Friedrich Merz was saying he planned to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit the country — despite an ICC war crimes warrant issued for his arrest, which Merz claimed did not apply.

    The ICC responded by saying states had a legal obligation to enforce its decisions, and any concerns they may have should be addressed with the court in a timely and efficient manner.

    “It is not for states to unilaterally determine the soundness of the court’s legal decisions,” said the ICC in a statement.

    Israel rejects the jurisdiction of the court and denies war crimes were committed during its devastating war on Gaza.

    Germans feel a special responsibility towards Israel because of the legacy of the Holocaust, and Merz has made clear he is a strong ally. But Germany also has a strong tradition of support for international justice for war crimes.

    Amnesty slams ‘shameful silence’
    Amnesty International and 162 other civil society organisations and trade unions have signed a joint letter calling on the EU to ban trade and business with Israel’s settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

    “Despite EU consensus about the settlements’ illegality and their link to serious abuses, the EU continues to trade and allow business with them,” the letter said.

    This contributes to “the serious and systemic human rights and other international law abuses underpinning the settlement enterprise”, it added.

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July issued a landmark advisory opinion affirming that states must not recognise, aid or assist the unlawful situation arising from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Injustice of Justice: Keith LaMar Speaks from Ohio Death Row as Movement Grows to Save His Life


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Injustice of Justice: Keith LaMar Speaks from Ohio Death Row as Movement Grows to Save His Life


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Injustice of Justice: Keith LaMar Speaks from Ohio Death Row as Movement Grows to Save His Life

    Seg3 lamar 2

    We speak with death row inmate Keith LaMar live from the Ohio State Penitentiary, after the release of The Injustice of Justice, a short film about his case that just won the grand prize for best animated short film at the Golden State Film Festival. “I had to find out the hard way that in order for my life to be mine, that I had to stand up and claim it,” says LaMar, who has always maintained his innocence. LaMar was sentenced to death for participating in the murder of five fellow prisoners during a 1993 prison uprising. His trial was held in a remote Ohio community before an all-white jury. On January 13, 2027, the state intends to execute him, after subjecting him to three decades in solitary confinement. LaMar’s lawyer, Keegan Stephan, says his legal team has “discovered a lot of new evidence supporting Keith’s innocence” that should necessitate new legal avenues for LaMar to overturn the conviction.


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.