Toitū te Tiriti . . . the Māori activist group fighting for the treaty. Video: RNZ
On November 19, the hīkoi is planned to arrive on Parliament grounds, having gathered supporters from the very top and bottom of New Zealand through the nine-day journey.
Toitū te Tiriti organiser Eru Kapa-Kingi told RNZ the hīkoi was as much about Māori unity as it was opposition to government policy — in particular, the Treaty Principles Bill, which had been expected to be tabled at Parliament on November 18, the day before the hīkoi was set to arrive.
In a statement posted to the Toitū te Tiriti Instagram page, Kapa-Kingi said no changes would be made to the planned hīkoi.
“We always knew a shuffle like this would come along, this is not unexpected from this coalition, they have shown us who they are for the past year.
The hīkoi against the proposed Bill is going ahead as planned, despite the Bill’s earlier introduction to Parliament. Image: RNZ/Jessica Hopkins
“However this timing change does not matter, our kaupapa could never be, and will not be overshadowed. In fact, this just gives us more kaha (strength) to get on our whenua and march for our mokopuna.
“Bills come and go, but Te Tiriti is infinite, and so are we; our plans will not change. Kia kaha tātou.”
Disruptions likely on some roads – police Police have warned that some disruption is likely on roads and highways, as the hīkoi passes through.
Superintendent Kelly Ryan said police would keep Waka Kotahi and local councils updated about the roads, so drivers in each area could find updates. She recommended travellers “plan accordingly”.
Police have also been in contact with the hīkoi organisers, she said: “Our discussions with organisers to date have been positive and we expect the hīkoi to be conducted in a peaceful and lawful manner.
“We’ve planned for large numbers to join the hīkoi, with disruption likely to some roads, including highways and main streets along the route.”
NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi said it would also be monitoring the impact of the hīkoi on highways, and would provide real-time updates on any delays or disruptions.
A police Major Operations Centre has been set up at the Wellington national headquarters, to oversee the response to the hīkoi in each area, Ryan said.
“We will continue to co-ordinate with iwi leaders and our partners across government to ensure public safety and minimal disruption to people going about their daily routine.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
California voters chose harsher sentencing, the continuation of forced labor in prisons, and tough-on-crime prosecutors this week in overwhelming numbers.
Proposition 36, a bill that upgrades a raft of petty theft and drug crimes from misdemeanors to felonies, was approved by 70 percent of voters in the initial counts. It is designed to incarcerate thousands more people by reversing a ballot measure passed 10 years ago, Prop 47, which downgraded theft and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors in response to massive prison overcrowding.
On the same ballot, voters rejected a prison reform measure that would have made slave labor illegal in state prisons. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles County, reformist District Attorney George Gascón lost his reelection bid to a former federal prosecutor, who ran on a tough-on-crime campaign. And in Alameda County, voters decided to recall another reform-minded district attorney, Pamela Price, after two years on the job.
News outlets, experts and elected officials have been quick to frame the election day results on crime as a clear sign that California voters want to undo the criminal justice reforms of the past decade.
“The pendulum of public opinion has swung back,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle. Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist told the Los Angeles Times that voters are “notorious course correcters” who “are always adjusting their last decisions to try to make them a little bit better.” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told Politico that he was concerned about effects of mass incarceration from the bill, which he refused to publicly oppose, but said he wasn’t surprised about its passage. “Criminal justice swings back and forth, and four years ago was a huge time of interest in reform,” he said.
Advocates and organizers in criminal justice reform reject the idea that voters are shifting to the right. They instead point to the well-funded, corporate-backed campaign behind Prop 36 that distorted facts, and the complicity of media outlets eager to paint a picture of an unsafe California and echo the fearmongering that became central to Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign. And on the defensive side, some say Democrats and criminal justice organizations themselves failed to mount an opposition campaign until months before election day.
“It’s easy to tell people to blame that on the wrong people for the wrong reasons.”
“All of this was avoidable,” said Lex Steppling, an organizer with Los Angeles Community Action Network, who has been a part of previous successful campaigns against state crime bills and opposed Prop 36. “I don’t want anybody acting like this is just an organic social phenomenon, it’s not. People feel insecure because they’re one paycheck away from having to leave their house, people feel insecure because goods and cost of living has doubled — that is a lack of safety, right? And it’s easy to tell people to blame that on the wrong people for the wrong reasons.”
Jody Armour, a law professor at the University of Southern California, said he was also concerned by the “cyclical and pendulum” analogies being applied to Californians.
“It makes it seem like it’s inevitable, that things are going to go this way and that things are going to go back the other way — no, there is a fierce pitched battle,” Armour said. “This idea that things just happen, it papers over the real pitched battle, the struggle, the political contest going on that makes change happen.”
Copaganda
Police and prison guard groups have tried to roll back Prop 47 multiple times since its passage in 2014, but none have been as well-funded as this year’s Prop 36. Retail giants Walmart, Target, and Home Depot poured more than $6 million into the campaign, while In-N-Out and 7-Eleven each chipped in $500,000. Along with major donations from pro-business PACs and the state prison guards union, the campaign racked up nearly $17 million, dwarfing the opposition.
The opposition raised about $6 million, leaning heavily on major donations from wealthy Democrats such as Patty Quillin, wife of Netflix executive chair Reed Hastings, and oil heiress Stacy Schusterman.
For months, the Prop 36 campaign ran ads presenting the bill as a way to address the fentanyl crisis and make both businesses and consumers safer by putting people committing low-level property crimes behind bars.
After a spike during the initial years of the pandemic, property crimes have again begun to decline across California, continuing a decadeslong trend, which sees rates at about half of what they used to be in the 1990s, according to Department of Justice figures. But that hasn’t stopped media outlets from keeping broadcasts of “smash-and-grab” incidents as mainstays of evening news cycles, often recycling the samefootage.
One recording in particular came to stand in for crime and chaos writ large. During the holiday shopping season in 2021, police in Concord, a suburban city just outside of San Francisco, released grainy surveillance footage showing a group of people in hoodies and masks hacking at glass casings of a Kay Jewelers with hammers and crowbars. That same day, television news outlets acrosstheBayArea and nationally on CNN and NBC News broadcast the police video of the so-called smash-and-grab robbery.
The Yes on 36 campaign seized on the endless news coverage and used the broadcasts, including footage of the 2021 Concord incident, in TV ads and on the campaign’s website.
“You see it almost everyday, smash-and-grab criminals cause stores to raise prices, lock up items and close their doors,” said Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper in a TV ad urging voters to vote yes on the proposition while the Concord footage played over eerie music. The ad also features former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who said voters have to “do more to solve California’s crime problem.”
“Crime is historically low right now — that’s the big story here that everyone has forgotten.”
This paints a deeply misleading picture of reality, according to criminal justice experts. “You can create the image of out of control crime, if you get enough media attention on specific incidents — the smash-and-grab, the kids going into the stores and knocking windows out and snatching the jewelry, that kind of stuff, it plays in the nightly news,” said Daniel Macallair, executive director of Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and a San Francisco State University lecturer. “But it doesn’t represent a bigger trend. Crime is historically low right now — that’s the big story here that everyone has forgotten — and unfortunately factual information, statistics doesn’t make for good media.”
Studies have shown a connection between crime news consumption and concern for safety, even while the prevalence of crime trends downward. And in July, Macallair’s center released a report showing crime rates falling in the period after California began to reform and reduce prison populations.
USC’s Armour agreed and said media organizations need to do a better job at holding institutions accountable in their coverage as watchdogs and providing context when it comes to crime. “But often what I’m hearing in crime reporting isn’t that, but just stenography for the police,” Armour said. “Just kind of matter-of-factly reiterating whatever they say, or giving them the lion’s share of credibility even though they’re repeatedly found to be using disinformation.”
The Trump Effect
Fear and crime were not just common themes in California, but also across the country. President-elect Donald Trump ran yet another campaign that vilified immigrants as dangerous criminals who needed to be locked up and deported. Kamala Harris also presented a carceral vision of the border — committing to bolster the Biden administration’s asylum restrictions, pursue felony charges for those who cross the border without documentation, and continue building the border wall that Trump used as a rallying cry during his path to presidency in 2016.
Claudia Peña, a longtime community organizer and lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles law school, said such rhetoric during the presidential campaign, specifically from Republicans, had an influence on the way people saw crime locally, including in blue California.
“So much of their argument was based on fearmongering and ensuring people are scared of each other, really targeting vulnerable groups,” she said. “And they did that by overemphasizing, manipulating and exaggerating certain trends that began during the pandemic. I think because they were so successful at doing that on a national scale all over television, all over these podcasts, it did have an effect in California.”
Peña attributed the passage of Prop 36 and failure of the measure prohibiting forced prison labor, in part, to Trump’s rhetoric of fear but also said she doesn’t think Californians are swinging the opposite direction from 2020, calling the bills “an aberration.” She noted that Prop 36 was marketed as a “middle of the road” and “balanced” bill that was less extreme than crime bills of the 1990s. Prop 36 also received support from Democratic lawmakers such as Tom Umberg and James Ramos, and liberal local leaders, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, and LA County Board Supervisor Kathryn Barger. “And I think more than anything, I think more people were just scared,” she said.
“We all need to do a better job of continuing to have these conversations so that people who make up the state of California have the right information, to weigh in properly and not be misled and manipulated emotionally to make decisions out of fear,” Peña said. “I believe that when the people of California have enough information and proper access to the right data and stories that are true, the people of California come around.”
Too Little Too Late
As soon as the previous effort to roll back Prop 47 was announced in 2020, a coalition of criminal justice reform groups organized to push back against it. From the American Civil Liberties Union to the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation, which gave more than $1 million to the opposition, the coalition led the messaging and education campaigns across the state on the ballot measure, Prop 20, from day one. Democratic lawmakers campaigned against Prop 20 as well, including Gov. Gavin Newsom. Voters went on to reject the measure with 60 percent voting no.
This year, after backers of Prop 36 submitted more than 900,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot, the same opposition coalition was slow to form. Rather than running a campaign to get voters to oppose the measure, many of the same groups and elected officials who helped lead Prop 20 opposition four years earlier instead attempted to find a solution within the state legislature — a common tactic in California politics.
In April, state lawmakers introduced a slate of bills, titled #SmartSolutions, which were aimed at addressing the concerns raised by Prop 36 backers, such as public safety, retail store theft, and fentanyl addiction. The slate was largely designed as a response to and an effort to deflate the momentum built by the Yes on Prop 36 campaign, and had the support of major criminal justice reform groups like the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Initiate Justice, Smart Justice California, and the Vera Institute of Justice.
But the #SmartSolutions package was also designed to satisfy Newsom’s own crime directive, issued in January, which called on lawmakers to crack down on property crimes. Steppling wondered if the directive was a play by Newsom, who has aspirations for higher office, to appear tougher on crime amid Republican attacks that California was in decline.
Newsom said he opposed Prop 36, but unlike in 2020, he didn’t actively campaign against it. As Democratic lawmakers battled over how to respond to Prop 36, the #SmartSolutions slate was effectively killed when several of its bills were absorbed into a separate Newsom-backed slate that increased punishment for property crimes. Newsom signed the slate of crime bills in August inside of a Home Depot store, one of the major backers of Prop 36.
The “No on Prop 36” coalition eventually formed in the late summer, but by then, support for the measure had grown. By October, polls showed that victory for the prop was likely.
For organizers like Steppling, who coordinated opposition to Prop 36 before the coalition had formed, the delay and mixed priorities among lawmakers and organizers proved frustrating.
“When we’re given time and space to fight for what’s right, we usually win, especially at the ballots — instead we lost four to five months of organizing time,” Steppling said. “You then empower a whole discourse that says, ‘Oh, both the Republicans and Democrats agree that Prop 47 needs to be undone, they just disagree on how.’ Why would you create that mediaclimate, rather than saying, ‘Prop 47 has not caused any problems and it should be the floor and the ceiling.’”
“It wasn’t simply social phenomenon — there has to be a real reckoning in a place like California with how the work is done,” he added.
Armour recalled a similar moment of compromise, shortly after Joe Biden was elected president in 2020. After a summer of mass organizing after the police murder of George Floyd that materialized into a host of local and statewide wins for reform, Biden’s election gave many liberals a false sense of security, he said.
“He comes in, takes a lot of that energy and uses his bully pulpit to say to those same liberals, ‘Fund the police,’ and ‘Nothing is going to fundamentally change,’ and so it isn’t surprising that we got from there to here,” Armour said. He criticized Democratic leaders in California for not sustaining the energy of 2020 and opposing Prop 36 more readily.
Macallair, who has been helping oppose tough-on-crime measures for the past 40 years, said such legislative solutions to aggressive crime bills is an old strategy that rarely works. He recalled the failed efforts to oppose the “three strikes” law in 1994 by introducing a nearly identical bill in the legislature.
“You try to head it off and hope the people who are backing the initiative are going to back off and it doesn’t work that way, because there’s a political strategy behind it that usually goes beyond just the essence of the initiative, the language of the initiative,” Macallair said. “So passing legislation to placate the backers of the initiative, I’ve never seen that work.”
We’re Not in The ’90s
With the passage of Prop 36, prosecutors in California will be able to charge people who get caught stealing items worth $950 or less with felonies, which can lead to prison sentences of up to three years. The law also empowers prosecutors to enhance sentences for certain theft or property damage felonies by up to three years. Such sentences, under the new law, must be carried out in state prisons, rather than county jails, which will likely further isolate individuals from their families and communities. The law does allow for certain people charged with drug possession crimes to get mental health or drug treatment. If they complete the treatment, the charges would be dismissed. But for those who don’t finish the program, they may serve up to three years in prison.
The new law is expected to incarcerate at least several thousands more people in both county jails and state prisons, according to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, increasing prison costs by $10–100 million. Since its peak in 2006, when California incarcerated more than 173,000 people, the nation’s highest, the prison population dropped to around 95,000 people, due to prison reforms and the pandemic. Prop 47 had reduced prison populations by the thousands and saved the state money, which largely went to drug treatment services. That same money will likely be used to imprison more people under Prop 36.
Even so, Macallair said the law is not as punitive as 1994’s three strikes law, which locked up an additional 40,000 people within its first five years. He also pointed to several wins in recent years, such as the closure of the state’s youth prisons, the last of which shut down in 2023. And Armour pointed to the California Racial Justice Act passed in 2020, which remains in place. The law allows defendants to argue for throwing out a case, vacating a sentence, or receiving a reduced sentence if police, prosecutors, judges, jurors, or expert witnesses showed racist bias in the course of a case, whether explicit or implicit, such as making a racist comment. Armour has acted as an expert witness in four cases since the law was enacted.
“I don’t think that we’re anywhere near the ’90s either in like crime and policy and attitude and conversations people are having in the streets,” Peña said, recalling conversations with Californians in the late ’90s with people who celebrated three-strikes policies. “And I rarely hear that anymore, and I don’t think that we’re going to go back there, in part because crime rates will continue to trend down as they already are.”
“The way to create safety is for people to have access to opportunities to live a life of thriving.”
Since the boom of mass incarceration in the ’90s, a growing body of evidence has shown that locking people up for longer periods and threatening them with harsher punishments has no effect on whether someone will commit a crime. And Peña believes that crime rates have been trending down not because of any policies that incarcerate, but due to increased access to necessary goods and services and care opportunities in California.
“When people think about crime and incarceration and other forms of punishment, what they really want is safety,” she said. “We want our communities to be safe, we want our streets to be safe. We want people to be able to walk from school or from work and be OK. People want to be able to have confidence that their home and their property is OK. And that’s universal. The way to create safety is for people to have access to opportunities to live a life of thriving: having access to jobs, having access to housing, having access to health care services. All of these things are what causes drops in crime rates.”
Anger and fear have greeted the return to power of former US strongman Donald Trump, a corrupt far-white extremist coup plotter who is also a convicted felon and rapist, following this week’s shock presidential election result.
Ethnic tensions have been on the rise with members of the historically oppressed minority Black ethnic group reporting receiving threatening text messages, warning of a return to an era of enslavement.
In a startling editorial, the tension-wracked country’s paper of record, The New York Times, declared that the country had made “a perilous choice” and that its fragile democracy was now on “a precarious course”.
President-elect Trump’s victory marks the second time in eight years the extremist leader, who is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of using campaign funds to pay off a porn star he had cheated on his wife with, has defeated a female opponent from the ruling Democratic Party.
Women continue to struggle to reach the highest office in the deeply conservative nation where their rights are increasingly under attack and child marriage is widespread.
This has prompted traumatised supporters of Vice-President Kamala Harris, who had been handpicked to replace the unpopular, ageing incumbent, Joe Biden, to accuse American voters of racism to sexism.
“It’s misogyny from Hispanic men, it’s misogyny from Black . . . who do not want a woman leading them,” insisted one TV anchor, adding that there “might be race issues with Hispanics that don’t want a Black woman as president of the United States.”
Hateful tribal rhetoric
The hateful tribal rhetoric has also included social media posts calling for any people of mixed race who failed to vote for Harris to be deported and for intensification of the genocide in Gaza due to Arab-American rejection of Harris over her support for the continued provision of weapons to the brutal apartheid state committing it.
“Victory has many fathers but defeat is an orphan,” goes the saying popularised by former US President John F Kennedy, who was shot 61 years ago this month.
The reluctance to attribute the loss to the grave and gratuitous missteps made by the Harris campaign has mystified America-watchers around the world.
Harris and her supporters had tried to counter that by claiming that Trump would also be genocidal and that she would ameliorate the pain of bereaved families in the US by lowering the price of groceries.
However, the election results showed that this was not a message voters appreciated. “Genocide is bad politics,” said one Arab-American activist.
Worried over democracy
As the scale of the extremists’ electoral win becomes increasingly clear, having taken control of not just the presidency but the upper house of Congress as well, many are worried about the prospects for democracy in the US which is still struggling to emerge from Trump’s first term.
Despite conceding defeat, Harris has pledged to continue to “wage this fight” even as pro-democracy protests have broken out in several cities, raising fears of violence and political uncertainty in the gun-strewn country.
This could imperil stability in North America and sub-Scandinavian Europe where a Caucasian Spring democratic revolution has failed to take hold, and a plethora of white-wing authoritarian populists have instead come to power across the region.
However, there is a silver lining. The elections themselves were a massive improvement over the chaotic and shambolic, disputed November 2020 presidential polls which paved the way for a failed putsch two months later.
This time, the voting was largely peaceful and there was relatively little delay in releasing results, a remarkable achievement for the numeracy-challenged nation where conspiracy theorists remain suspicious about the Islamic origins of mathematics, seeing it is as a ploy by the terror group “Al Jibra” to introduce Sharia Law to the US.
In the coming months and years, there will be a need for the international community to stay engaged with the US and assist the country to try and undertake much-needed reforms to its electoral and governance systems, including changes to its constitution.
During the campaigns, Harris loyalists warned that a win by Trump could lead to the complete gutting of its weak democratic systems, an outcome the world must work hard to avoid.
However, figuring out how to support reform in the US and engage with a Trump regime while not being seen to legitimise the election of a man convicted of serious crimes, will be a tricky challenge for the globe’s mature Third-World democracies.
Many may be forced to limit direct contact with him. “Choices have consequences,” as a US diplomat eloquently put it 11 years ago.
Patrick Gathara is a Kenyan journalist, cartoonist, blogger and author. He is also senior editor for inclusive storytelling at The New Humanitarian. This article was first published by Al Jazeera and is republished under Creative Commons.
The Enemy Within, by Maire Leadbeater is many things. It is:
• A family history
• A social history
• A history of the left-wing in Aotearoa
• A chilling reminder of the origin and continuation of the surveillance state in New Zealand, and
• A damn good read.
The book is a great example of citizen or activist authorship. The author, Maire Leadbeater, and her family are front and centre of the dark cloud of the surveillance state that has hung and still hangs over New Zealand’s “democracy”.
What better place to begin the book than the author noting that she had been spied on by the security services from the age of 10. What better place to begin than describing the role of the Locke family — Elsie, Jack, Maire, Keith and their siblings — have played in Aotearoa society over the last few decades.
And what a fitting way to end the book than with the final chapter entitled, “Person of Interest: Keith Locke”; Maire’s much-loved brother and our much-loved friend and comrade.
In between these pages is a treasure trove of commentary and stories of the development of the surveillance state in the settler colony of NZ and the impact that this has had on the lives of ordinary — no, extra-ordinary — people within this country.
The book could almost be described as a political romp from the settler colonisation of New Zealand through the growth of the workers movement and socialist and communist ideology from the late 1800s until today.
I have often deprecatingly called myself a mere footnote of history as that is all I seem to appear as in many books written about recent progressive history in New Zealand. But it was without false modesty that when Maire gave me a copy of the book a couple of weeks back, I immediately went to the index, looked up my name and found that this time I was a bit more than a footnote, but had a section of a chapter written on my interaction with the spooks.
But it was after reading this, dipping into a couple of other “person of interest” stories of people I knew such as Keith, Mike Treen, the Rosenbergs, Murray Horton and then starting the book again from the beginning did it become clear on what issues the state was paranoid about that led it to build an apparatus to spy on its own citizens.
These were issues of peace, anti-conscription, anti-nuclear, de-colonisation, unemployed workers and left trade unionism and socialist and communist thought. These are the issues that come up time and time again; essentially it was seditious or subversive to be part of any of these campaigns or ideologies.
Client state spying
The other common theme through the book is the role that the UK and more latterly the US has played in ensuring that their NZ client settler state plays by their rules, makes enemies of their enemies and spies on its own people for their “benefit”.
Trade unionist and activist Robert Reid . . . “The book could almost be described as a political romp from the settler colonisation of New Zealand through the growth of the workers movement and socialist and communist ideology from the late 1800s until today.” Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
It was interesting to read how the “5 Eyes”, although not using that name, has been in operation as long as NZ has had a spying apparatus. In fact, the book shows that 3 of the 5 eyes forced NZ to establish its surveillance apparatus in the first place.
Maire, and her editor have arranged this book in a very reader friendly way. It is mostly chronological showing the rise of the surveillance state from the beginning of the 19th century, in dispersed with a series of vignettes of “Persons of Interest”.
Maire would probably acknowledge that this book could not have been written without the decision of the SIS to start releasing files (all beit they were heavily redacted with many missing parts) of many of us who have been spied on by the SIS over the years. So, on behalf of Maire, thank you SIS.
Maire has painstakingly gone through pages and pages of these primary source files and incorporated them into the historical narrative of the book showing what was happening in society while this surveillance was taking place.
I was especially delighted to read the history of the anti-war and conscientious objectors movement. Two years ago, almost to the day, we held the 50th anniversary of the Organisation to Halt Military Service (OHMS); an organisation that I founded and was under heavy surveillance in 1972.
We knew a bit about previous anti-conscription struggles but Maire has provided much more context and information that we knew. It was good to read about people like John Charters, Ormand Burton and Archie Barrington as well more known resisters such as my great uncle Archibald Baxter.
Within living memory
Many of the events covered take place within my living memory. But it was wonderful to be reminded of some things I had forgotten about or to find some new gems of information about our past.
Stories around Bill Sutch, Shirley Smith, Ann and Wolfgang Rosenberg, Jack and Mary Woodward, Gerald O’Brien, Allan Brash (yes, Don’s dad), Cecil Holmes, Jack Lewin are documented as well as my contemporaries such as Don Carson, David Small, Aziz Choudry, Trevor Richards, Jane Kelsey, Nicky Hager, Owen Wilkes, Tame Iti in addition to Maire, Keith and Mike Treen.
The book finishes with a more recent history of NZ again aping the US’s so-called war on terror with the introduction of an anti and counter-terrorism mandate for the SIS and its sister agencies
The book traverses events such as the detention of Ahmed Zaoui, the raid on the Kim Dotcom mansion, the privatisation of spying to firms such as Thomson and Clark, the Urewera raids, “Hit and Run” in Afghanistan. Missing the cut was the recent police raid and removal of the computer of octogenarian, Peter Wilson for holding money earmarked for a development project in DPRK (North Korea).
When we come to the end of the book we are reminded of the horrific Christchurch mosque attack and massacre and prior to that of the bombing of Wellington Trades Hall and the Rainbow Warrior. Also, the failure of the SIS to discover Mossad agents operating in NZ on fake passports.
We cannot but ask the question of why multi-millions of dollars have been spent spying on, surveilling and monitoring peace activists, trade unionists, communists, Māori and more latterly Muslims, when the terrorism that NZ has faced has been that perpetrated on these people not by these people.
Maire notes in the book that the SIS budget for 2021 was around $100 million with around 400 FTEs employed. This does not include GCSB or other parts of the security apparatus.
Seeking subversives in wrong places
This level of money has been spent for well over 100 years looking for subversives and terrorists in the wrong place!
Finally, although dealing with the human cost of the surveillance state, the book touches on some of the lighter sides of the SIS spying. Those of us under surveillance in the 1970s and 1980s remember the amateurish phone tapping that went on at that time.
Also, the men in cars with cameras sitting outside our flats for days on end. Not in the book, but I have one memory of such a man with a camera in a car outside our flat in Wallace Street, Wellington.
After a few days some of my flatmates took pity on him and made him a batch of scones which they passed through the window of his car. He stayed for a bit longer that day but we never saw him or an alternate again.
Another issue the book picks up is the obsession that the SIS and its foreign counterparts had with counting communists in NZ. I remember that the CIA used to put out a Communist Yearbook that described and attempted to count how many members were in each of the communist parties all around the world.
In NZ, my party, the Workers Communist League, was smaller than the SUP, CPNZ and SAL, but one year near the end of our existence we were pleasantly surprised to see that the CIA had almost to a person, doubled our membership.
We could not work out why, until we realised that we all had code names as well as real names and we were getting more and more slack at using the correct one in the correct place. Anyone surveilling us, counting names, would have counted double the names that we had as members! We took the compliment.
Thank you, Maire, for this great book. Thank you and your family for your great contribution to Aotearoa society.
Hopefully the hardships and human cost that you have shown in this book will commit or recommit the rest of us to struggle for a decolonised and socialist Aotearoa within a peaceful and multi-polar world.
And as one of Jack Locke’s political guides said: “the road may be long and torturous, but the future is bright.”
Robert Reid has more than 40 years’ experience in trade unions and in community employment development in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is a former general secretary the president of FIRST Union. Much of his work has been with disadvantaged groups and this has included work with Māori, Pacific peoples and migrant communities. This was his address tonight for the launch of The Enemy Within: The Human Cost of State Surveillance in Aotearoa New Zealand, by Maire Leadbeater.
Representing two Palestinian-Canadian plaintiffs, the Legal Centre for Palestine alongside a coalition of Canadian legal advocates, has commenced proceedings in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice against the Attorney General of the Canadian government. They allege that Canada‘s failure to act to prevent Israel’s genocide is a violation of its legal obligations under the Genocide Convention (1948) and of the plaintiffs’ rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Canadian government and Israel
The plaintiffs, Hany el Batnigi and Tamer Jarada, have experienced unimaginable loss due to Israel’s year-long assault on the civilian population of Gaza. They are represented by the ‘Coalition for Canadian Accountability in Gaza’, which consists of lawyers from the Legal Centre for Palestine (LCP), the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) – Canada, Hameed Law and Dimitri Lascaris. The Coalition is supported by Justice 48, ICJP’s central office in London and Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.
As relief, the plaintiffs seek a declaration that Canada has a duty to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide, and that Canada has violated that duty.
They also seek a declaration that Canada’s acts and omissions have violated the plaintiffs’ Charter rights to security of the person (Section 7) and to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination (Section 15).
Hany el Batnigi
Born in Gaza, Hany el Batnigi fled Palestine with his family during the 1967 war. Following his first return to Gaza, in September 2023, Hany was trapped under the Israeli bombardments commencing on 8 October, and was forcefully displaced several times, without help and crossing a war zone.
During the entirety of his time trying to survive Israel’s bombardment, Canada took no action to exert influence over Israel. In fact, it continued to allow arms exports to Israel, and took no enforcement action to stop the illegal recruitment of volunteers for engagements with the Israeli military.
Canada also actively engaged in military-to-military cooperation with Israel under the Canada-Israel Strategic Partnership, and allowed Canadian charities to funnel money to the benefit of Israel’s Ministry of Defense.
Hany had to make four attempts to cross the border into Egypt. During one of the attempts he was injured in a bomb blast. Although he was able to evacuate on or around 7 November, over the subsequent weeks members of his family were killed by Israeli attacks.
While many members of his family remain in Gaza, Hany was denied eligibility to sponsor them under Canada’s Gaza Special Measures temporary resident visa program due to his ‘financial situation as a pensioner’.
Tamer Jarada
Tamer Jarada, born in Gaza in 1986, has resided in Canada since 2011.
When Israel’s bombardments commenced, Tamer’s parents, sisters, uncle, aunt, and other family members sought shelter in an empty apartment owned by Tamer in Gaza City. The entire building was destroyed by an airstrike on 25 October 2023, claiming the lives of Tamer’s father, uncle, aunt, two sisters, nephews, cousins and many other extended family members, while others have been killed in the months since.
Those who remain alive endure starvation and medical complications.
While some were refused evacuation, members of Tamer’s family (including his sister and her children, his mother-in-law and sisters-in-law) successfully evacuated to Egypt. Tamer’s attempts to sponsor his relatives for safe haven in Canada under the Gaza Special Measures program have been unsuccessful due to administrative dysfunction and elevated security assessments and other limitations not imposed in similar programs for those fleeing conflicts in other regions.
A failure to prevent Israel’s genocide by Canadian government
On behalf of these clients, the advocates’ case claims that Canada has failed in its duty to prevent genocide, including by allowing military exports from Canada to Israel, and by refusing to exercise Canada’s influence over Israel.
The filing alleges that the Canadian government has failed to deploy available tools, including imposing sanctions against Israeli leaders; preventing Canadian citizens from serving in units of the Israeli military; curtailing Canadian charities’ support for illegal acts in Israel; halting military cooperation with Israel; or suspending the memorandum on the Canada-Israel Strategic Partnership, among other omissions.
Additionally, the complaint alleges that the Gaza Special Measures program has failed to assist persons in fleeing Gaza.
With regards their Charter rights, the complaint alleges that Canadian authorities’ failure to fulfill its duty to prevent genocide, including its failure to exert any influence over Israel to restrain its bombardment of Gaza, contributed to a violation of Hany’s security of the person, contrary to Section 7 of the Charter.
It further alleges that Canada’s failure to fulfill this duty, and specifically its failure to provide the Plaintiffs with the governmental assistance they could reasonably expect, is based on their race, religion, and national and ethnic origin as Palestinian-Canadians from Gaza, and that this constitutes discrimination under Section 15 of the Charter.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: As we continue to look at Donald Trump’s return to the White House, we turn now to look at what it means for the world, from Israel’s war on Gaza to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During his victory speech, Trump vowed that he was going to “stop wars”.
But what will Trump’s foreign policy actually look like?
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Fatima Bhutto, award-winning author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Runaways, New Kings of the World. She is co-editing a book along with Sonia Faleiro titled Gaza: The Story of a Genocide, due out next year. She writes a monthly column for Zeteo.
Start off by just responding to Trump’s runaway victory across the United States, Fatima.
Fatima Bhutto on the Kamala Harris “support for genocide”. Video: Democracy Now!
FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, Amy, I don’t think it’s an aberration that he won. I think it’s an aberration that he lost in 2020. And I think anyone looking at the American elections for the last year, even longer, could see very clearly that the Democrats were speaking to — I’m not sure who, to a hall of mirrors.
They ran an incredibly weak and actually macabre campaign, to see Kamala Harris describe her politics as one of joy as she promised the most lethal military in the world, talking about women’s rights in America, essentially focusing those rights on the right to termination, while the rest of the world has watched women slaughtered in Gaza for 13 months straight.
You know, it’s very curious to think that they thought a winning strategy was Beyoncé and that Taylor Swift was somehow a political winning strategy that was going to defeat — who? — Trump, who was speaking to people, who was speaking against wars. You know, whether we believe him or not, it was a marked difference from what Kamala Harris was saying and was not saying.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Fatima, you wrote a piece for Zeteo earlier this year titled “Gaza Has Exposed the Shameful Hypocrisy of Western Feminism.” So, you just mentioned the irony of Kamala Harris as, you know, the second presidential candidate who is a woman, where so much of the campaign was about women, and the fact that — you know, of what’s been unfolding on women, against women and children in Gaza for the last year. If you could elaborate?
FATIMA BHUTTO: Yeah, we’ve seen, Nermeen, over the last year, you know, 70 percent of those slaughtered in Gaza by Israel and, let’s also be clear, by America, because it’s American bombs and American diplomatic cover that allows this slaughter to continue unabated — 70 percent of those victims are women and children.
We have watched children with their heads blown off. We have watched children with no surviving family members find themselves in hospital with limbs missing. Gaza has the largest cohort of child amputees in the world. And we have seen newborns left to die as Israel switches off electricity and fuel of hospitals.
So, for Kamala Harris to come out and talk repeatedly about abortion, and I say this as someone who is pro-choice, who has always been pro-choice, was not just macabre, but it’s obscene. It’s an absolute betrayal of feminism, because feminism is about liberation. It’s not about termination.
And it’s about protecting women at their most vulnerable and at their most frightened. And there was no sign of that. You know, we also saw Kamala Harris bring out celebrities. I mean, the utter vacuousness of bringing out Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé and others to talk about being a mother, while mothers are being widowed, are being orphaned in Gaza, it was not just tone deaf, it seemed to have a certain hostility, a certain contempt for the suffering that the rest of us have been watching.
I’d also like to add a point about toxic masculinity. There was so much toxicity in Kamala Harris’s campaign. You know, I watched her laugh with Oprah as she spoke about shooting someone who might enter her house with a gun, and giggling and saying her PR team may not like that, but she would kill them.
You don’t need to be a man to practice toxic masculinity, and you don’t need to be white to practice white supremacy, as we’ve seen very clearly from this election cycle.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, Fatima Bhutto, if you look at what Trump represented, and certainly the Muslim American community, the Arab American community, Jewish progressives, young people, African-Americans certainly understood what Trump’s policy was when he was president.
And it’s rare, you know, a president comes back to serve again after a term away. It’s only happened once before in history.
But you have, for example, Trump moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. You have an illegal settlement named after Trump in the West Bank. The whole question of Netanyahu and his right-wing allies in Israel pushing for annexation of the West Bank, where Trump would stand on this.
And, of course, you have the Abraham Accords, which many Palestinians felt left them out completely. If you can talk about this? These were put forward by Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who, when the massive Gaza destruction was at its height, talked about Gaza as waterfront real estate.
FATIMA BHUTTO: Absolutely. There’s no question that Trump has been a malign force, not just when it concerns Palestinians, but, frankly, out in the world. But I would argue there’s not very much difference between what these two administrations or parties do. The difference is that Trump doesn’t have the gloss and the charisma of an Obama or — I mean, I can’t even say that Biden has charisma, but certainly the gloss.
Trump says it. They do it. The difference — I can’t really tell the difference anymore.
We saw the Biden administration send over 500 shipments of arms to Israel, betraying America’s own laws, the fact that they are not allowed to export weapons of war to a country committing gross violations of human rights. We saw Bill Clinton trotted out in Michigan to tell Muslims that, actually, they should stop killing Israelis and that Jews were there before them.
I mean, it was an utterly contemptuous speech. So, what is the difference exactly?
We saw Bernie Sanders, who was mentioned earlier, write an op-ed in The Guardian in the days before the election, warning people that if they were not to vote for Kamala Harris, if Donald Trump was to get in, think about the climate crisis. Well, we have watched Israel’s emissions in the first five months of their deadly attack on Gaza release more planet-warming gases into the atmosphere than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations release in a year.
So, I don’t quite see that there’s a difference between what Democrats allow and what Trump brags about. I think it’s just a question of crudeness and decorum and politeness. One has it, and one doesn’t. In a sense, Trump is much clearer for the rest of the world, because he says what he’s going to do, and, you know, you take him at his word, whereas we have been gaslit and lied to by Antony Blinken on a daily basis now since October 7th.
Every time that AOC or Kamala Harris spoke about fighting desperately for a ceasefire, we saw more carnage, more massacres and Israel committing crimes with total impunity. You know, it wasn’t under Trump that Israel has killed more journalists than have ever been killed in any recorded conflict. It’s under Biden that Israel has killed more UN workers than have ever been killed in the UN’s history. So, I’m not sure there’s a difference.
And, you know, we’ll have to wait to see in the months ahead. But I don’t think anyone is bracing for an upturn. Certainly, people didn’t vote for Kamala Harris. I’m not sure they voted for Trump. We know that she lost 14 million votes from Biden’s win in 2020. And we know that those votes just didn’t come out for the Democrats. Some may have migrated to Trump. Some may have gone to third parties. But 14 million just didn’t go anywhere.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Fatima, if you could, you know, tell us what do you think the reasons are for that? I mean, the kind of — as you said, because it is really horrifying, what has unfolded in Gaza in the last 13 months. You’ve written about this. You now have an edited anthology that you’re editing, co-editing. You know, what do you think accounts for this, the sheer disregard for the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza?
FATIMA BHUTTO: It’s a total racism on the part not just of America, but I’m speaking of the West here. This has been betrayed over the last year, the fact that Ukraine is spoken about with an admiration, you know, Zelensky is spoken about with a sort of hero worship, Ukrainian resisters to Russia’s invasion are valorised.
You know, Nancy Pelosi wore a bracelet of bullets used by the Ukrainian resistance against Trump [sic]. But Palestinians are painted as terrorists, are dehumanised to such an extent. You know, we saw that dehumanisation from the mouths of Bill Clinton no less, from the mouths of Kamala Harris, who interrupted somebody speaking out against the genocide, and saying, “I am speaking.”
What is more toxically masculine than that?
We’ve also seen a concerted crackdown in universities across the United States on college students. I’m speaking also here of my own alma mater of Columbia University, of Barnard College, that called the NYPD, who fired live ammunition at the students. You know, this didn’t happen — this extreme response didn’t happen in protests against apartheid. It didn’t happen in protests against Vietnam in quite the same way.
And all I can think is, America and the West, who have been fighting Muslim countries for the last 25, 30 years, see that as acceptable to do so. Our deaths are acceptable to them, and genocide is not a red line.
And, you know, to go back to what what was mentioned earlier about the working class, that is absolutely ignored in America — and I would make the argument across the West, too — they have watched administration after, you know, president and congressmen give billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine, while they have no relief at home.
They have no relief from debt. They have no relief from student debt. They have no medical care, no coverage. They’re struggling to survive. And this is across the board. And after Ukraine, they saw billions go to Israel in the same way, while they get, frankly, nothing.
AMY GOODMAN: Fatima Bhutto, we want to thank you so much for being with us, award-winning author of a number of works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Runaways and New Kings of the World, co-editing a book called Gaza: The Story of a Genocide, due out next year, writes a monthly column for Zeteo.
Coming up, we look at Trump’s vow to deport as many as 20 million immigrants and JD Vance saying, yes, US children born of immigrant parents could also be deported.
Former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has been released from prison, only six months into his 12 months sentence, the Fiji Corrections Service (FCS) said via a statement today.
Bainimarama was jailed in May, alongside former police chief Sitiveni Qiliho, for perverting the cause of justice.
“The Fiji Corrections Service confirms that former Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has been granted early release as of today [Friday], in accordance with section 46(3) of the Corrections Act,” it said.
“This decision follows a comprehensive review of his application, which was processed in line with the relevant legal provisions governing early release and supervised reintegration.”
It said that the section 46(3) of the Corrections Act, allows for early release of inmates based on specific criteria that ensure both the security of the community and the facilitation of an inmates reintegration.
“All requirements were rigorously assessed, including eligibility criteria, conditions for release, and supervisory measures in place, in accordance with the guidelines established under FCS regulations.”
The FCS will continue to oversee Bainimarama’s reintegration to ensure compliance with all conditions associated with his early release.
“This decision reflects the commitment of the FCS to uphold the principles of justice, rehabilitation, and reintegration, as stipulated by the Corrections Act.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Surveying the wreckage of the US elections, here are some observations that have emerged:
Campaigns based on hope do not always defeat campaigns based on fear.
Having dozens of retired high ranking military and diplomatic officials warn against the danger Donald Trump poses to democracy (including people who worked for him) did not matter to many voters.
Likewise, having former politicians and hundreds of academics, intellectuals, legal scholars, community leaders and social activists repudiate Trump’s policies of division mattered not an iota to the voting majority.
Nor did Kamala Harris’s endorsement by dozens of high profile celebrities make a difference to the MAGA mob.
Raising +US$ billion in political donations did not produce victory got Harris. It turns out outspending the opponent is not the key to electoral success.
Incoherent racist and xenophobic rants (“they are eating the dogs, they are eating the cats”) did not give the MAGA mob any pause when considering their choices. In fact, it appears that the resort to crude depictions of opponents (“stupid KaMAla”)and scapegoats (like Puerto Ricans) strengthened the bond between Trump and his supporters.
‘Garbage can’ narrative
Macroeconomic and social indicators such as higher employment and lower crime and undocumented immigrant numbers could not overcome the MAGA narrative that the US was “the garbage can of the world.”
Nor could Harris, despite her accomplished resume in all three government branches at the local, state and federal levels, overcome the narrative that she was “dumb” and a DEI hire who was promoted for reasons other than merit.
It did not matter to the MAGA mob that Trump threatened retribution against his opponents, real and imagined, using the Federal State as his instrument of revenge.
“Standing up to Trump the duty of every public servant” . . . A New York Times edirtorial reoublished today in the New Zealand Herald.
Age was not a factor even though Trump displays evident signs of cognitive decline.
Reproductive rights were not the watershed issue many thought that they would be, including for many female voters. Conversely, the MAGA efforts to court “bro” support via social media catering to younger men worked very well.
In a way, this is a double setback for women: as an issue of bodily autonomy and as an issue of gender equality given the attitudes of Trump endorsers like Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate. Those angry younger men interact with females, and their misogyny has now been reaffirmed as part of a political winning strategy.
Ukraine, Europe much to fear
Ukraine and Western Europe have much to fear.
So does the federal bureaucracy and regulatory system, which will now be subject to Project 2025, Elon Musk’s razor gang approach to public spending and RFK Jr’s public health edicts.
In fact, it looks like the Trump second term approach to governance will take a page out of Argentine president Javier Milei’s “chainsaw” approach, with results that will be similar but far broader in scope if implemented in the same way.
So all in all, from where I sit it looks like a bit of a calamity in the making. But then again, I am just another fool with a “woke” degree.
Dr Paul G Buchanan is the director of 36th-Parallel Assessments, a geopolitical and strategic analysis consultancy. This article is republished with the permission of the author.
Kamala Harris speaks about border security during a campaign event in Douglas, Ariz., on Sept. 27, 2024.Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Just six weeks after Joe Biden’s inauguration, 80 House Democrats urged the newly sworn-in president to immediately renew diplomatic engagement with Cuba and end the “cruel” sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
The letter encouraged Biden to end the blockade and take executive action to reverse Trump’s policies.
Biden ignored the plea. Not long after the letter was sent, a White House official told Reuters that a quick Cuba policy shift was not a top priority.
Harris embraced Trump’s narrative, if not the rhetoric, and yet had nothing to show for it on Wednesday morning.
The decadeslong U.S. embargo against Cuba rolled on, hitting the Cuban people first and foremost. During the pandemic, this sanctions regime led to severe food and medical shortages on the island. People left in droves.
Since 2020, Cuba has seen the largest exodus in its entire history. Over 1 million people left between 2022 and 2023 alone as a result of the economic crisis.
Cuba became one facet of an immigration debate in the U.S. that took a central role in the presidential election.
Donald Trump railed against immigrants, presenting them as a threat to a supposed American way of life. Kamala Harris, for her part, embraced this same narrative, if not the rhetoric, and yet had nothing to show for it on Wednesday morning.
It was an unsupportable, immoral, and unpopular position. And Harris gained nothing.
It was a typical Democratic folly: the wrong position that is also bad politics. There was a way out of the race to the bottom in the immigration debate — and there still is. If Harris and the Democratic Party are to have any hope, they must learn on this issue, like so many others, to address it by examining its root causes.
Creating Chaos Abroad
It’s a pattern seen all over Latin America: U.S. policies foist hardships on those abroad, who then migrate to the U.S. in search of better lives.
Take Venezuela, which has sent record numbers of immigrants to the U.S. following the imposition of of devastating American sanctions in recent years.
In Honduras and El Salvador too, hawkish U.S. foreign policies built on everything from anti-communism to the drug war have propelled droves of immigrants to U.S. shores.
And yet, within the 2024 presidential race, these root causes of these crises — the push factors — never came up.
Instead, Trump railed against immigrants in general. And, rather than pledging to enact a humane border policy and working internationally to slow emigration, Harris chose to ignore the issue altogether — or to run to Trump’s right.
It did not need to be this way. Harris could have simply listened to the American people, who understand aspects of the immigration conundrum better than politicians seems to understand.
About 71 percent of Americans, including majorities across the political spectrum, believe economic factors are largely behind the recent influx of migrants, whether it’s better opportunities in the U.S. or poor conditions in their home countries, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. Sixty-five percent pointed to violence in migrants’ home countries as a major reason for driving so many people to the U.S.
About 71 percent of Americans believe economic factors are largely behind the recent influx of migrants.
Notably, the report also found that a sizable majority of Americans consider the influx of migrants a crisis or at least a major problem. Though Republicans were more likely to view it as a crisis, Democrats still mostly viewed the situation as a major problem. Only 7 percent of Democrats surveyed said it’s not a problem at all.
Harris touted herself as a former border-state prosecutor who would be tougher on the Southern frontier than Trump. During the presidential debate, Harris bragged about supporting a border bill that would have “put 1,500 more border agents on the border.”
Warning From Inside
It’s increasingly clear that the economic warfare the U.S. unleashes on the world comes with a steep political cost. With Republicans leading the charge, Democrats have little to show for going along with it.
Not every Democrat, however, has acquiesced to right-wing narratives on immigration.
Last year, border state Reps. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, and Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., tried warning Biden again.
“Rather than re-imposing Trump-era deterrence policies,” they wrote, “we must demonstrate a sharp contrast with these approaches by showing compassion towards migrants and upholding our asylum obligations, while simultaneously seeking to curb the broad-based sanctions that contribute to widespread suffering and spur increased migration.”
“You have a historic opportunity to help mitigate economic push-factors driving migration and affecting our border and many of our cities, while reorienting U.S. policy in the hemisphere towards a more holistic approach that eschews destructive sanctions policies to focus on peace, stability, and prosperity for all inhabitants of the Americas,” the letter continued.
That opportunity was available for Harris to seize during the presidential race. She could have offered an alternative vision for how the U.S. treats the world and the people who arrive at our borders from abroad.
Instead, she tried — and failed — to co-opt Trump’s talking points. Despite her best efforts, Trump’s immigration attacks on Harris contributed to her election loss.
Now everyone, immigrants and non-immigrants alike, must suffer the consequences.
Press freedom is a pillar of American democracy. But political attacks on US-based journalists and news organisations pose an unprecedented threat to their safety and the integrity of information.
Less than 48 hours before election day, Donald Trump, now President-elect for a second term, told a rally of his supporters that he wouldn’t mind if someone shot the journalists in front of him.
“I have this piece of glass here, but all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much,” he said.
A new survey from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) highlights a disturbing tolerance for political bullying of the press in the land of the First Amendment. The findings show that this is especially true among white, male, Republican voters.
We commissioned this nationally representative survey of 1020 US adults, which was fielded between June 24 and July 5 2024, to assess Americans’ attitudes to the press ahead of the election. We are publishing the results here for the first time.
More than one-quarter (27 percent) of the Americans we polled said they had often seen or heard a journalist being threatened, harassed or abused online. And more than one-third (34 percent) said they thought it was appropriate for senior politicians and government officials to criticise journalists and news organisations.
Tolerance for political targeting of the press appears as polarised as American society. Nearly half (47 percent) of the Republicans surveyed approved of senior politicians critiquing the press, compared to less than one-quarter (22 percent) of Democrats.
Our analysis also revealed divisions according to gender and ethnicity. While 37 percent of white-identifying respondents thought it was appropriate for political leaders to target journalists and news organisations, only 27 percent of people of colour did. There was also a nine-point difference along gender lines, with 39 percent of men approving of this conduct, compared to 30 percent of women.
It appears intolerance towards the press has a face — a predominantly white, male and Republican-voting face.
Press freedom fears This election campaign, Trump has repeated his blatantly false claim that journalists are “enemies of the people”. He has suggested that reporters who cross him should be jailed, and signalled that he would like to revoke broadcast licences of networks.
Relevant, too, is the enabling environment for viral attacks on journalists created by unregulated social media companies which represent a clear threat to press freedom and the safety of journalists. Previous research produced by ICFJ for Unesco concluded that there was a causal relationship between online violence towards women journalists and physical attacks.
While political actors may be the perpetrators of abuse targeting journalists, social media companies have facilitated their viral spread, heightening the risk to journalists.
We’ve seen a potent example of this in the current campaign, when Haitian Times editor Macollvie J. Neel was “swatted” — meaning police were dispatched to her home after a fraudulent report of a murder at the address — during an episode of severely racist online violence.
Trajectory of Trump attacks Since the 2016 election, Trump has repeatedly discredited independent reporting on his campaign. He has weaponised the term “fake news” and accused the media of “rigging” elections.
“The election is being rigged by corrupt media pushing completely false allegations and outright lies in an effort to elect [Hillary Clinton] president,” he said in 2016. With hindsight, such accusations foreshadowed his false claims of election fraud in 2020, and similar preemptive claims in 2024.
His increasingly virulent attacks on journalists and news organisations are amplified by his supporters online and far-right media. Trump has effectively licensed attacks on American journalists through anti-press rhetoric and undermined respect for press freedom.
In 2019, the Committee to Protect Journalists found that more than 11 percent of 5400 tweets posted by Trump between the date of his 2016 candidacy and January 2019 “. . . insulted or criticised journalists and outlets, or condemned and denigrated the news media as a whole”.
After being temporarily deplatformed from Twitter for breaching community standards, Trump launched Truth Social, where he continues to abuse his critics uninterrupted. But he recently rejoined the platform (now X), and held a series of campaign events with X owner and Trump backer Elon Musk.
The failed insurrection on January 6, 2021, rammed home the scale of the escalating threats facing American journalists. During the riots at the Capitol, at least 18 journalists were assaulted and reporting equipment valued at tens of thousands of dollars was destroyed.
This election cycle, Reporters Without Borders logged 108 instances of Trump insulting, attacking or threatening the news media in public speeches or offline remarks over an eight-week period ending on October 24.
Meanwhile, the Freedom of the Press Foundation has recorded 75 assaults on journalists since January 1 this year. That’s a 70 percent increase on the number of assaults captured by their press freedom tracker in 2023.
A recent survey of hundreds of journalists undertaking safety training provided by the International Women’s Media Foundation found that 36 percent of respondents reported being threatened with or experiencing physical violence. One-third reported exposure to digital violence, and 28 percent reported legal threats or action against them.
US journalists involved in ongoing ICFJ research have told us that they have felt particularly at risk covering Trump rallies and reporting on the election from communities hostile towards the press. Some are wearing protective flak jackets to cover domestic politics. Others have removed labels identifying their outlets from their reporting equipment to reduce the risk of being physically attacked.
And yet, our survey reveals a distinct lack of public concern about the First Amendment implications of political leaders threatening, harassing, or abusing journalists. Nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of Americans surveyed did not regard political attacks on journalists or news organisations as a threat to press freedom. Among them, 38 percent identified as Republicans compared to just 9 percent* as Democrats.
The anti-press playbook Trump’s anti-press playbook appeals to a global audience of authoritarians. Other political strongmen, from Brazil to Hungary and the Philippines, have adopted similar tactics of deploying disinformation to smear and threaten journalists and news outlets.
Such an approach imperils journalists while undercutting trust in facts and critical independent journalism.
History shows that fascism thrives when journalists cannot safely and freely do the work of holding governments and political leaders to account. As our research findings show, the consequences are a society accepting lies and fiction as facts while turning a blind eye to attacks on the press.
*The people identifying as Democrats in this sub-group are too few to make this a reliable representative estimate.
Note: Nabeelah Shabbir (ICFJ deputy director of research) and Kaylee Williams (ICFJ research associate) also contributed to this article and the research underpinning it. The survey was conducted by Langer Research Associates in English and Spanish. ICFJ researchers co-developed the survey and conducted the analysis.
Over 30 years the French government tested 193 nuclear weapons in Māohi Nui and today Indigenous peoples still suffer the impacts through intergenerational cancers.
In 1975, France stopped atmospheric tests and moved to underground testing.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross was eight years old when the French nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa stopped in 1996.
“After poisoning us for 30 years, after using us as guinea pigs for 30 years, France condemned us to pay for all the cost of those cancers,” Morgant-Cross said.
She is a mother of two boys and married to another Māohi in Mataiea, Tahiti, and says her biggest worry is what will be left for the next generation.
As a politician in the French Polynesian Assembly she sponsored a unanimously supported resolution in September 2023 supporting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
It called on France to join the treaty, as one of the original five global nuclear powers and one of the nuclear nine possessors of nuclear weapons today.
As a survivor of nuclear testing, Morgant-Cross has worked with hibakusha, which is the term used to describe the survivors of the US atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.
Together, as living examples of the consequences, they are trying to push governments to demilitarise and end the possession of nuclear arsenals.
Connections from Māohi Nui to Aotearoa Morgant-Cross spoke to Te Ao Māori News from Whāingaroa where she, along with other manuhiri of Hui Oranga, planted kowhangatara (spinifex) in the sand dunes for coastal restoration to build resilience against storms or tsunamis at a time of increased climate crises.
In the 1970s and 1980s, many of the anti-nuclear protests were in response to the tests in Māohi Nui, French Polynesia.
The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement began in Fiji in 1975 after the first Nuclear Free Pacific Conference, which was organised by Against French Testing in Moruroa (ATOM).
The Pacific Peoples’ Anti-Nuclear Action Committee was founded by Hilda Halkyard-Harawira and Grace Robertson, and in 1982 they hosted the first Hui Oranga which brought the movement for a nuclear-free and independent Pacific home to Aotearoa.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross as a baby with mother Valentina Cross, both of whom along with her great grandmother, grandmother, aunt and sister have been diagnosed with cancer. Image: HMC
Condemned to intergenerational cancer “We still have diseases from generation to generation,” she says.
Non-profit organisation Nuclear Information and Resources Services data shows radiation is more harmful to women with cancer rates and death 50 percent higher than among men.
In her family, Morgant-Cross’ great-grandmother, grandmother, aunt and sister have been diagnosed with thyroid or breast cancer.
A mother and lawyer at the time, Morgant-Cross was diagnosed with leukaemia at 25 years old.
Valentina Cross, her mother has continuing thyroid problems, needs to take pills for the rest of her life and, similarly, Hinamoeura has to take pills to keep the leukaemia dormant for the rest of her life.
Being told the nuclear tests were “clean”, Morgant-Cross didn’t learn about the legacy of the nuclear bombs until she was 30 years old when former French Polynesian President Oscar Temaru filed a complaint against France for alleged crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the the nuclear tests.
She then saw a list of radiation-induced diseases, which included thyroid cancer, breast cancer, and leukaemia and she realised it wasn’t that her family had “bad genes”.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross who was breastfeeding during her electoral campaign . . . balancing motherhood, nuclear fights and her career. Image: HMC
Known impacts ‘buried’ by the French state Morgant-Cross says her people were victims of French propaganda as they were told there were no effects from the nuclear tests.
In 2021, more than two decades later, Princeton University’s Science and Global Security programme, the multimedia newsroom Disclose and research collective INTERPT released an investigation — The Moruroa Files — using declassified French defence documents.
“The state has tried hard to bury the toxic heritage of these tests,” Geoffrey Livolsi, Disclose’s editor-in-chief told The Guardian.
The report concluded about 110,000 people were exposed to ionising radiation. That number was almost the entire Polynesian population at the time.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross speaking at NukeEXPO Oslo, Norway, in April 2024. Image: HMC
In Māohi Nui, much of the taxes go towards managing high cancer rates and Morgant-Cross said they were not given compensation to cover the medical assistance they deserved.
In 2010, a compensation law was passed and between then and 2020, RNZ Pacific reported France had compensated French Polynesia with US$30 million. And in 2021, it was reported to have paid US$16.6 million within the year but only 46 percent of the compensation claims were accepted.
“During July 2024 France spent billions of dollars to clean up the river Seine in Paris [for the [Olympic Games] and I was so shocked,” Morgant-Cross said.
“You can’t help us on medical care, you can’t help us on cleaning your nuclear rubbish in the South Pacific, but you can put billions of dollars to clean a river that is still disgusting?”
As a politician and anti-nuclear activist, Morgant-Cross hopes for nuclear justice and a world of peace.
She has started a movement named the Māohi Youth Resiliency in hopes to raise awareness of the nuclear legacy by telling her story and also learning how to help Māohi in this century.
Republished from Te Ao Māori News with permission.
During a court hearing about the “rushed and disingenuous” consultation used to justify proposals to tighten the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was ordered by a judge to disclose key internal documents to Ellen Clifford, a disabled activist bringing a legal challenge over the consultation.
DWP WCA reforms: a looming disaster
The planned DWP WCA reforms relate to which claimants will fall into the limited capability for work (LCW), and the limited capability for work related activity (LCWRA) groups of Universal Credit.
The DWP ran a consultation on these between September and October 2023. As the Canary’s Steve Topple previously detailed:
the DWP is planning to change the WCA. Specifically, it’s planning on taking out or changing the following features:
Factoring in people’s mobility
Bladder or bowel incontinence.
The inability to cope in social situations.
People’s ability to leave their homes.
Work being a risk to claimants or others – a clause which means that an individual is “treated as having limited capability for work and work related activity“
In November, the then Tory-run DWP responded to the consultation. Notably, it laid out how it would proceed with a number of these. Specifically, it decided to take forward DWP WCA changes to:
Work being a risk to claimants. Specifically, it will tighten the criteria for this. Notably, it stated that: “We will specify the circumstances, and physical and mental health conditions, for which LCWRA Substantial Risk should apply.” In other words, the DWP will decide who this will apply to going forward – and will obviously move the goalposts.
People’s mobility – which it’s removing as a descriptor altogether.
People’s ability to leave their homes – which it will now reduce the points for in the assessment.
First, we inherited the last government’s plans to reform the Work Capability Assessment.
We will deliver those savings as part of fundamental reforms to the health and disability benefits system that the Work and Pensions Secretary (Liz Kendall) will bring forward.
Most people have interpreted that to mean that the planned DWP WCA reforms will go ahead.
Ellen Clifford’s legal challenge
However, Clifford has been challenging the reforms in court – specifically over the consultation. Her lawyers argued that the primary motivation in fact appears to be reducing welfare spending.
Under these proposed changes to the DWP WCA, thousands of people would lose £416 per month in benefits and many would be at risk of sanctions.
According to Clifford, this was not made clear during the consultation. Specifically, her lawyers are arguing that:
The government gave insufficient time for consultation on changes to the WCA.
The DWP did not explain the reforms properly.
These reforms do not help more disabled people into work.
People could not respond to the consultation properly.
Where are the documents?
Clifford was in court on 31 October to argue that the DWP should disclose key documents that were relevant to her claim, backed by lawyers from Public Law Project (PLP.) Through the hearing, it was revealed that:
The DWP had not done any employment or disability assessments of the proposals they wished to consult on before the consultation was launched.
They did, however, undertake reviews to work out what savings may be made from the DWP WCA proposals before consulting. This included estimating how many Deaf and Disabled people may no longer be assessed as having limited capacity for work or work-related activity, if proposals were implemented.
No information about potential savings or numbers impacted was provided to consultees as part of the consultation process.
The consultation claimed that reforms had been proposed to reflect that there were now better employment opportunities for some Deaf and Disabled people due to the rise in flexible and home working.
However, the DWP WCA consultation failed to provide any assessment of whether Deaf and Disabled people would actually benefit from the proposed increased workplace flexibility.
Clifford said:
The DWP’s revelation that they carried out absolutely no employment or disability impact assessment has confirmed my fears: this rushed and disingenuous consultation was just a smokescreen for cuts. It was never a legitimate attempt to hear the voices of Deaf and Disabled people or support them into work.
In reality, a lot of people will struggle to pay everyday bills if these proposed changes go ahead.
DWP WCA reforms: all about cuts
Aoife O’Reilly, the PLP lawyer acting for Clifford, said of her DWP WCA court challenge:
Ellen Clifford has maintained throughout her challenge that the true or primary motive behind the consultation was to reduce spending on disability benefits, rather than being about consulting on proposals that would help more Deaf and Disabled People to enter the workforce or access support with a view to doing so.
The fact that lawyers for the DWP have now confirmed to the Court that no employment or disability impacts were carried out before the consultation began further supports her position that this was a money-saving exercise, disingenuously presented to some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
We are pleased that the judge has ordered DWP to hand over more documents, which are clearly documents that her legal team should see. We are also pleased that DWP will now reconsider whether there may be other documents it should provide to Clifford, in light of concerns expressed by the judge about how they’ve considered this so far.
Hand over the documents
In court, the judge expressed concern at how the DWP had seemed to misunderstand Clifford’s case and her disclosure application.
He noted the possibility that the DWP WCA evidence on what relevant documents it had in its possession may have been based on an overly narrow understanding of what Clifford’s case was actually about. The judge said this was including a failure to appreciate the potential relevance of analysis DWP may have done after 5 September 2023 to Clifford’s claim.
Ellen Clifford said:
I am delighted the judge has agreed that DWP need to hand over these documents.
Withholding key documents in the context of this legal claim undermines our ability to challenge harmful and dehumanising proposals effectively. Deaf and Disabled People deserve clarity and accountability, and to be consulted in a way that is fair, especially when our livelihoods are on the line.
For thousands of people, the stakes are very high when it comes to the Work Capability Assessment. The previous Government’s proposed reforms would push a lot of Deaf and Disabled and chronically ill people into destitution.
This week, Rachel Reeves promised to deliver the savings promised by the previous Government when they proposed these reforms. We are now asking the Government to look beyond the savings and recognise the real people who will be harmed.
They should not continue with reforms when those impacted were not given any meaningful opportunity to explain why they should not be implemented.
Clifford’s DWP WCA claim is due to be heard at a two-day hearing on 10 and 11 December 2024 at the Royal Courts of Justice, which will be a landmark moment in the fight for disability rights and welfare support in the UK.
Durban, November 4, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes Gambian President Adama Barrow’s decision to withdraw a civil defamation lawsuit against The Voice newspaper and its editor-in-chief and urges Attorney General Dawda A. Jallow to drop related false news charges against the editor and a colleague.
“We are relieved that President Barrow responded to appeals from local media representatives, the National Human Rights Commission, and CPJ by retracting the lawsuit against The Voice and its editor Musa Sekour Sheriff,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program. “We trust that the false news charges will also be dropped by the time Sheriff and his colleague, Momodou Justice Darboe, next appear in criminal court.”
Information Minister Ismaila Ceesay, Gambian Press Union President Muhammed S. Bah, and the Newspaper Publishers’ Association told CPJ by messaging app that representatives of the local groups and the Media Council were informed that the president would withdraw the lawsuit unconditionally when they met him at the State House in the capital of Banjul on Monday. According to Bah, Seine, and Sheriff, the false news charges are expected to be dropped before Sheriff and Darboe’s criminal trialresumes on December 10.
Sheriff and Darboe were arrested on September 26 in Banjul when they arrived for police questioning a day after receiving a letter from the president’s lawyer threatening a civil defamation lawsuit over an article alleging that Barrow was preparing an exit plan and had chosen a successor for the 2026 presidential election. The journalists were then charged with false publication and broadcasting.
CPJ urged Barrow in a September 27 letter that the charges be dropped. On October 7, CPJ wrote to Gambia’s National Human Rights Commission chairperson, Emmanuel Joof, seeking mediation. Joof and Commissioner Iman Baba Leigh met Barrow on October 23 at the president’s holiday retreat to raise the issue, and also met Sheriff five days later, Jarboo and Sheriff told CPJ.
In late October, yet another video from Gaza showed dozens of Palestinian men rounded up, blindfolded, and hauled away by Israeli soldiers. In the footage, broadcast by an Israeli news channel, the Palestinian hostages, reportedly from the besieged city of Jabalia in northern Gaza, were crammed inside the cargo bed of an Israeli military truck.
The vehicle appears to be an Oshkosh M1085 5-Ton Long Cargo medium tactical vehicle.
Over the last year, the Israeli military has received at least 100 of Oshkosh armored vehicles like the one in the video. They arrived on vessels operated by the commercial shipping and logistics giant A.P. Moller Maersk.
Israel has long used armored vehicles as killing machines throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. Images of Palestinians crushed by Israeli tanks and trucks are now grimly familiar to anyone paying attention to the ongoing Israeli onslaught in Gaza.
Maersk’s role in shipping the Oshkosh armored vehicles came to light as part of a new investigation from researchers with the Palestinian Youth Movement and Progressive International. The investigation details how Maersk has shipped millions of pounds of military goods, including hundreds of armored and tactical vehicles and their components, to the Israeli Ministry of Defense since Israel’s genocidal war began last year.
The findings, shared in advance with The Intercept, reveal the significant role that Maersk — a publicly traded, family-controlled company — has played in delivering military goods to Israel, including tanks and other armored vehicles or their parts, aircraft components, armored plates, parts for artillery systems, and many hundreds of shipments that are unidentified or unspecified “military equipment.”
Analyzing shipment export data from over 2,000 shipments over the last year, the researchers report that they were able to reveal a commercial supply chain rife with materiel bound for use in Israel’s assault on Gaza. The researchers said the available shipping data suggests that Maersk ships violated a Spanish embargo policy by transiting through the port of Algeciras.
The Spanish embargo bars cargo ships carrying weapons that could be used for war crimes from making calls in Spanish ports; in May, the foreign ministry said the rule would apply to military goods bound for Israel. Since then, Maersk ships with military goods headed for Israel, including equipment for putting bombs on aircraft, frequently transited through Algeciras, one of the largest ports in Europe, said Palestinian Youth Movement and Progressive International researchers. (Maersk did not respond to a request for comment.)
In response to a request for comment from El Diario, a Spanish newspaper which also had advanced access to the researchers’ findings, a spokesperson from the Spanish foreign ministry said the government was reviewing the information and that “all necessary measures will be taken” to enforce the embargo.
“We can clearly state that Spain is violating the law,” said Irene Montero, a member of European Parliament from the Spanish left party Podemos. “Article 8.1 of Law 53/2007 on the Foreign Trade of Arms states that the authorization for the transit of military material must be suspended when there are ‘rational indications’ that the material will be used to exacerbate conflicts, in a manner contrary to human dignity, or in a human rights violation.”
She added, “This means that even if the official destination of the military material is not Israel, if there are indications that the material could reach Israel and be used in a way that constitutes a human rights violation, the Spanish government should also prohibit the transit of those arms.”
Spanish authorities turned away a ship with weapons bound for Israel in May, shortly after the embargo was explicitly imposed.
“This is the first time we have done this because it is the first time we have detected a ship carrying a shipment of arms to Israel that wants to call at a Spanish port,” Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said at the time. “The foreign ministry will systematically reject such stopovers for one obvious reason: the Middle East does not need more weapons, it needs more peace.”
The Research
Calling for Spanish authorities to search the vessels and enforce the ban, the researchers said data shows Maersk has made almost 1,000 shipments of goods to the Israeli military through Algeciras since the embargo announcement.
“This is an American genocide, financed by U.S. military sales and manufactured by U.S. arms companies.”
Organizers with the Palestinian Youth Movement and Progressive International hope that their research into Maersk will draw attention to the global supply chains enabling Israel’s war, so that activists can hone their strategies.
“This is an American genocide, financed by U.S. military sales and manufactured by U.S. arms companies,” said Kaleem Hawa of the Palestinian Youth Movement, a lead researcher on the Maersk campaign. “Theirs is a cumulative system; of arms components flowing to the U.S. manufacturers, of weapons flowing to the Israeli military, and of goods from stolen land flowing out of Palestine — every chain of complicity that sustains the Israeli project of mass death depends on logistics companies like Maersk.”
The Palestinian Youth Movement, a Palestinian-led diaspora group, launched the “Mask Off Maersk” campaign last June to shed light on the shipping firm’s role in facilitating the circulation of materiel deployed in Israel’s assaults on Palestine and Lebanon. The group aims to build a movement around an extra-congressional strategy, which it calls a “people’s arms embargo.” The idea is to target the infrastructure that makes Israel’s Western-backed assault possible, through a strategy of mobilizations, divestment, and labor action.
Palestine solidarity protesters organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement demonstrate outside the Maersk office in Mississauga, Canada, on June 11, 2024.Photo: Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu via Getty Images
The U.S. government is responsible for providing nearly 70 percent of Israel’s imported arms, such as fighter jets, missiles, and thousands of devastating 2,000-poundbombs.
Though it is often unclear what materiel Maersk ships, the company has been contracted by the Pentagon to transport weapons to Israel. Information on Maersk shipments to the Israeli military on behalf of the American government is hard to uncover, the researchers said, due to the limited information available to the public about the nature of the shipments.
“Freight Forwarders”
The Palestinian Youth Movement and Progressive International’s research focuses on the millions of pounds of military goods transported to Israel aboard Maersk commercial vessels in the last year.
Most of the shipments reviewed departed from the port of Elizabeth, in New Jersey, Maersk’s largest East Coast terminal, operated by its subsidiary APM, which handles more than 2,500 trucks’ worth of daily shipments. The campaign’s researchers sifted through shipment data to scrape Harmonized System Codes, or HS Codes, to establish the nature of the contents sent from Elizabeth to Israel’s military.
Interglobal Forwarding Services, an American firm incorporated in New Jersey, operates as the U.S.-based freight forwarder for the Israeli Ministry of Defense — that is, the company that organizes the movement of shipments.
The use of freight forwarders allows the Israeli military to obscure from the public the original manufacturer of the military goods, with only the freight forwarder listed as the “shipper.” Only through decoding data from bills of lading — the term for shipping contracts and documents — were researchers able to trace the contents to manufacturers of military goods.
Among the firms involved were the Oshkosh Corporation and Rolls-Royce Solutions America, which makes the engines used in Israel’s Namer armored personnel carrier — also shipped by Maersk. (Oshkosh, Rolls-Royce, and Interglobal did not respond to requests for comment.)
According to the researchers, several of the shipments’ listed contents correspond with “at least three” arms deals made between the U.S. and Israel in the last year. The Biden administration has repeatedly approved U.S. funding for Israel to buy American-made weapons, for example, blessing more than $700 million in both aid for and sales of Oshkosh tactical vehicles.
In addition to the traceable shipments, data reviewed by the researchers reveals vast amounts of unidentified and uncategorized military cargo sent from the U.S. to the Israeli military on Maersk container ships.
“While most records in the dataset contain descriptions of the items contained within each shipment, a substantial number of records omit any such information,” the researchers said in a statement. “Unidentified cargo — shipments with entirely blank descriptions of their contents in their respective bills of lading — accounted for almost 35 percent of all observed shipments since the beginning of the war on Gaza.”
Over 6 million pounds of cargo have been shipped to the Israeli military by Maersk with contents “unidentified” in shipping logs, without any specific content code or listing of a specific manufacturer as the sender. Only Interglobal Forward Services is listed.
Interglobal came under fire in a 2017 report by the International Peace Information Service, an independent human rights research institute, for its shipping activities during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza. At the time, the freight forwarder’s shipping documents did not report the name of the companies that were actually shipping military equipment to Israel.
The 2017 report noted that, as much as a decade ago, “the bills of lading accompanying shipments of military and associated equipment to Israel on commercial vessels” were “poorly described and mostly in generic terms.” As with the Maersk shipments in the last year, “Hundreds of bills of lading only included ‘military equipment’ as a description of the cargo.”
Now, some Spanish observers want their government to take actions to halt the flow of military goods through Spanish ports.
“The government of Spain has lied repeatedly about the sale, purchase and transit of weapons destined for Israel throughout this year of Genocide,” said Ione Belarra, a politician with Podemos. “It is time for Spain and Europe to comply with their legal obligations and suspend all commercial and diplomatic relations with a terrorist state like Israel.”
Western publics are being subjected to a campaign of psychological warfare, where genocide is classed as ‘self-defence’ and opposition to it ‘terrorism’. Jonathan Cook reports as the world marked the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists at the weekend.
ANALYSIS:By Jonathan Cook
Israel knew that, if it could stop foreign correspondents from reporting directly from Gaza, those journalists would end up covering events in ways far more to its liking.
They would hedge every report of a new Israeli atrocity – if they covered them at all – with a “Hamas claims” or “Gaza family members allege”. Everything would be presented in terms of conflicting narratives rather than witnessed facts. Audiences would feel uncertain, hesitant, detached.
Israel could shroud its slaughter in a fog of confusion and disputation. The natural revulsion evoked by a genocide would be tempered and attenuated.
For a year, the networks’ most experienced war reporters have stayed put in their hotels in Israel, watching Gaza from afar. Their human-interest stories, always at the heart of war reporting, have focused on the far more limited suffering of Israelis than the vast catastrophe unfolding for Palestinians.
That is why Western audiences have been forced to relive a single day of horror for Israel, on October 7, 2023, as intensely as they have a year of greater horrors in Gaza — in what the World Court has judged to be a “plausible” genocide by Israel.
That is why the media have immersed their audiences in the agonies of the families of some 250 Israelis — civilians taken hostage and soldiers taken captive — as much as they have the agonies of 2.3 million Palestinians bombed and starved to death week after week, month after month.
That is why audiences have been subjected to gaslighting narratives that frame Gaza’s destruction as a “humanitarian crisis” rather than the canvas on which Israel is erasing all the known rules of war.
Western media’s human-interest stories, always at the heart of war reporting, have focused on the far more limited suffering of Israelis than the vast catastrophe unfolding for Palestinians. Image: www.jonathan-cook.net
While foreign correspondents sit obediently in their hotel rooms, Palestinian journalists have been picked off one by one — in the greatest massacre of journalists in history.
Israel is now repeating that process in Lebanon. On the night of October 24, it struck a residence in south Lebanon where three journalists were staying. All were killed.
In an indication of how deliberate and cynical Israel’s actions are, it put its military’s crosshairs on six Al Jazeera reporters last month, smearing them as “terrorists” working for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They are reportedly the last surviving Palestinian journalists in northern Gaza, which Israel has sealed off while it carries out the so-called “General’s Plan”.
Israel wants no one reporting its final push to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza by starving out the 400,000 Palestinians still there and executing anyone who remains as a “terrorist”.
These six join a long list of professionals defamed by Israel in the interests of advancing its genocide — from doctors and aid workers to UN peacekeepers.
Sympathy for Israel Perhaps the nadir of Israel’s domestication of foreign journalists was reached last month in a report by CNN. Back in February whistleblowing staff there revealed that the network’s executives have been actively obscuring Israeli atrocities to portray Israel in a more sympathetic light.
In a story whose framing should have been unthinkable — but sadly was all too predictable — CNN reported on the psychological trauma some Israeli soldiers are suffering from time spent in Gaza, in some cases leading to suicide.
Committing a genocide can be bad for your mental health, it seems. Or as CNN explained, its interviews “provide a window into the psychological burden that the war is casting on Israeli society”.
In its lengthy piece, titled “He got out of Gaza, but Gaza did not get out of him”, the atrocities the soldiers admit committing are little more than the backdrop as CNN finds yet another angle on Israeli suffering. Israeli soldiers are the real victims — even as they perpetrate a genocide on the Palestinian people.
One bulldozer driver, Guy Zaken, told CNN he could not sleep and had become vegetarian because of the “very, very difficult things” he had seen and had to do in Gaza.
What things? Zaken had earlier told a hearing of the Israeli Parliament that his unit’s job was to drive over many hundreds of Palestinians, some of them alive.
CNN reported: “Zaken says he can no longer eat meat, as it reminds him of the gruesome scenes he witnessed from his bulldozer in Gaza.”
Doubtless some Nazi concentration camp guards committed suicide in the 1940s after witnessing the horrors there — because they were responsible for them. Only in some weird parallel news universe, would their “psychological burden” be the story.
After a huge online backlash, CNN amended an editor’s note at the start of the article that originally read: “This story includes details about suicide that some readers may find upsetting.”
Readers, it was assumed, would find the suicide of Israeli soldiers upsetting, but apparently not the revelation that those soldiers were routinely driving over Palestinians so that, as Zaken explained, “everything squirts out”.
Banned from Gaza Finally, a year into Israel’s genocidal war, now rapidly spreading into Lebanon, some voices are being raised very belatedly to demand the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza.
This week — in a move presumably designed, as November’s elections loom, to ingratiate themselves with voters angry at the party’s complicity in genocide — dozens of Democratic members of the US Congress wrote to President Joe Biden asking him to pressure Israel to give journalists “unimpeded access” to the enclave.
Don’t hold your breath.
Western media have done very little themselves to protest their exclusion from Gaza over the past year — for a number of reasons.
Given the utterly indiscriminate nature of Israel’s bombardment, major outlets have not wanted their journalists getting hit by a 2000lb bomb for being in the wrong place.
That may in part be out of concern for their welfare. But there are likely to be more cynical concerns.
Having foreign journalists in Gaza blown up or executed by snipers would drag media organisations into direct confrontation with Israel and its well-oiled lobby machine.
The response would be entirely predictable, insinuating that the journalists died because they were colluding with “the terrorists” or that they were being used as “human shields” — the excuse Israel has rolled out time and again to justify its targeting of doctors in Gaza and UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
But there’s a bigger problem. The establishment media have not wanted to be in a position where their journalists are so close to the “action” that they are in danger of providing a clearer picture of Israel’s war crimes and its genocide.
The media’s current distance from the crime scene offers them plausible deniability as they both-sides every Israeli atrocity.
In previous conflicts, western reporters have served as witnesses, assisting in the prosecution of foreign leaders for war crimes. That happened in the wars that attended the break-up of Yugoslavia, and will doubtless happen once again if Russian President Valdimir Putin is ever delivered to The Hague.
But those journalistic testimonies were harnessed to put the West’s enemies behind bars, not its closest ally.
The media do not want their reporters to become chief witnesses for the prosecution in the future trials of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, at the International Criminal Court. The ICC’s Prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking arrest warrants for them both.
After all, any such testimony from journalists would not stop at Israel’s door. They would implicate Western capitals too, and put establishment media organisations on a collision course with their own governments.
The Western media does not see its job as holding power to account when the West is the one committing the crimes.
Censoring Palestinians Journalist whistleblowers have gradually been coming forward to explain how establishment news organisations — including the BBC and the supposedly liberal Guardian — are sidelining Palestinian voices and minimising the genocide.
An investigation by Novara Media recently revealed mounting unhappiness in parts of The Guardian newsroom at its double standards on Israel and Palestine.
Its editors recently censored a commentary by preeminent Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa after she insisted on being allowed to refer to the slaughter in Gaza as “the holocaust of our times”.
Senior Guardian columnists such as Jonathan Freedland made much during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader of the Labour party that Jews, and Jews alone, had the right to define and name their own oppression.
That right, however, does not appear to extend to Palestinians.
As staff who spoke to Novara noted, The Guardian’s Sunday sister paper, The Observer, had no problem opening its pages to British Jewish writer Howard Jacobson to smear as a “blood libel” any reporting of the provable fact that Israel has killed many, many thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.
One veteran journalist there said: “Is The Guardian more worried about the reaction to what is said about Israel than Palestine? Absolutely.”
Another staff member admitted it would be inconceivable for the paper to be seen censoring a Jewish writer. But censoring a Palestinian one is fine, it seems.
Other journalists report being under “suffocating control” from senior editors, and say this pressure exists “only if you’re publishing something critical of Israel”.
According to staff there, the word “genocide” is all but banned in the paper except in coverage of the International Court of Justice, whose judges ruled nine months ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing genocide. Things have got far worse since.
Whistleblowing journalists Similarly, “Sara”, a whistleblower who recently resigned from the BBC newsroom and spoke of her experiences to Al Jazeera’s Listening Post, said Palestinians and their supporters were routinely kept off air or subjected to humiliating and insensitive lines of questioning.
Some producers have reportedly grown increasingly reluctant to bring on air vulnerable Palestinians, some of whom have lost family members in Gaza, because of concerns about the effect on their mental health from the aggressive interrogations they were being subjected to from anchors.
According to Sara, BBC vetting of potential guests overwhelmingly targets Palestinians, as well as those sympathetic to their cause and human rights organisations. Background checks are rarely done of Israelis or Jewish guests.
She added that a search showing that a guest had used the word “Zionism” — Israel’s state ideology — in a social media post could be enough to get them disqualified from a programme.
Even officials from one of the biggest rights group in the world, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, became persona non grata at the BBC for their criticisms of Israel, even though the corporation had previously relied on their reports in covering Ukraine and other global conflicts.
Israeli guests, by contrast, “were given free rein to say whatever they wanted with very little pushback”, including lies about Hamas burning or beheading babies and committing mass rape.
An email cited by Al Jazeera from more than 20 BBC journalists sent last February to Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, warned that the corporation’s coverage risked “aiding and abetting genocide through story suppression”.
Upside-down values These biases have been only too evident in the BBC’s coverage, first of Gaza and now, as media interest wanes in the genocide, of Lebanon.
Headlines — the mood music of journalism, and the only part of a story many of the audience read — have been uniformly dire.
For example, Netanyahu’s threats of a Gaza-style genocide against the Lebanese people last month if they did not overthrow their leaders were soft-soaped by the BBC headline: “Netanyahu’s appeal to Lebanese people falls on deaf ears in Beirut.”
Reasonable readers would have wrongly inferred both that Netanyahu was trying to do the Lebanese people a favour (by preparing to murder them), and that they were being ungrateful in not taking up his offer.
It has been the same story everywhere in the establishment media. In another extraordinary, revealing moment, Kay Burley of Sky News announced last month the deaths of four Israeli soldiers from a Hezbollah drone strike on a military base inside Israel.
With a solemnity usually reserved for the passing of a member of the British royal family, she slowly named the four soldiers, with a photo of each shown on screen. She stressed twice that all four were only 19 years old.
Sky News seemed not to understand that these were not British soldiers, and that there was no reason for a British audience to be especially disturbed by their deaths. Soldiers are killed in wars all the time — it is an occupational hazard.
And further, if Israel considered them old enough to fight in Gaza and Lebanon, then they were old enough to die too without their age being treated as particularly noteworthy.
But more significantly still, Israel’s Golani Brigade to which these soldiers belonged has been centrally involved in the slaughter of Palestinians over the past year. Its troops have been responsible for many of the tens of thousands of children killed and maimed in Gaza.
Each of the four soldiers was far, far less deserving of Burley’s sympathy and concern than the thousands of children who have been slaughtered at the hands of their brigade. Those children are almost never named and their pictures are rarely shown, not least because their injuries are usually too horrifying to be seen.
It was yet more evidence of the upside-down world the establishment media has been trying to normalise for its audiences.
It is why statistics from the United States, where the coverage of Gaza and Lebanon may be even more unhinged, show faith in the media is at rock bottom. Fewer than one in three respondents — 31 percent — said they still had a “great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media”.
Crushing dissent Israel is the one dictating the coverage of its genocide. First by murdering the Palestinian journalists reporting it on the ground, and then by making sure house-trained foreign correspondents stay well clear of the slaughter, out of harm’s way in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
And as ever, Israel has been able to rely on the complicity of its Western patrons in crushing dissent at home.
Last week, a British investigative journalist, Asa Winstanley, an outspoken critic of Israel and its lobbyists in the UK, had his home in London raided at dawn by counter-terrorism police.
Though the police have not arrested or charged him — at least not yet — they snatched his electronic devices. He was warned that he is being investigated for “encouragement of terrorism” in his social media posts.
Police told Middle East Eye that his devices had been seized as part of an investigation into suspected terrorism offences of “support for a proscribed organisation” and “dissemination of terrorist documents”.
The police can act only because of Britain’s draconian, anti-speech Terrorism Act.
Section 12, for example, makes the expression of an opinion that could be interpreted as sympathetic to armed Palestinian resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation — a right enshrined in international law but sweepingly dismissed as “terrorism” in the West — itself a terrorism offence.
Those journalists who haven’t been house-trained in the establishment media, as well as solidarity activists, must now chart a treacherous path across intentionally ill-defined legal terrain when talking about Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Winstanley is not the first journalist to be accused of falling foul of the Terrorism Act. In recent weeks, Richard Medhurst, a freelance journalist, was arrested at Heathrow airport on his return from a trip abroad. Another journalist-activist, Sarah Wilkinson, was briefly arrested after her home was ransacked by police.
Their electronic devices were seized too.
Meanwhile, Richard Barnard, co-founder of Palestine Action, which seeks to disrupt the UK’s supply of weapons to Israel’s genocide, has been charged over speeches he has made against the genocide.
It now appears that all these actions are part of a specific police campaign targeting journalists and Palestinian solidarity activists: “Operation Incessantness”.
The message this clumsy title is presumably supposed to convey is that the British state is coming after anyone who speaks out too loudly against the British government’s continuing arming and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Notably, the establishment media have failed to cover this latest assault on journalism and the role of a free press — supposedly the very things they are there to protect.
The raid on Winstanley’s home and the arrests are intended to intimidate others, including independent journalists, into silence for fear of the consequences of speaking up.
This has nothing to do with terrorism. Rather, it is terrorism by the British state.
Once again the world is being turned upside down.
Echoes from history The West is waging a campaign of psychological warfare on its populations: it is gaslighting and disorientating them, classing genocide as “self-defence” and opposition to it a form of “terrorism”.
This is an expansion of the persecution suffered by Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who spent years locked up in London’s Belmarsh high-security prison.
His unprecedented journalism — revealing the darkest secrets of Western states — was redefined as espionage. His “offence” was revealing that Britain and the US had committed systematic war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, on the back of that precedent, the British state is coming after journalists simply for embarrassing it.
Late last month I attended a meeting in Bristol against the genocide in Gaza at which the main speaker was physically absent after the British state failed to issue him an entry visa.
The missing guest — he had to join us by zoom — was Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, who was locked up for decades as a terrorist before becoming the first leader of post-apartheid South Africa and a feted, international statesman.
Mandla Mandela was until recently a member of the South African Parliament.
A Home Office spokesperson told Middle East Eye that the UK only issued visas “to those who we want to welcome to our country”.
Media reports suggest Britain was determined to exclude Mandela because, like his grandfather, he views the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid as intimately linked to the earlier struggle against South Africa’s apartheid.
The echoes from history are apparently entirely lost on officials: the UK is once again associating the Mandela family with terrorism. Before it was to protect South Africa’s apartheid regime. Now it is to protect Israel’s even worse apartheid and genocidal regime.
The world is indeed turned on its head. And the West’s supposedly “free media” is playing a critical role in trying to make our upside-down world seem normal.
That can only be achieved by failing to report the Gaza genocide as a genocide. Instead, Western journalists are serving as little more than stenographers. Their job: to take dictation from Israel.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years and returned to the UK in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011, Cook was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism for his work on Palestine and Israel. This article was first published in Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
This election, organizers have a new concern and a new talking point as they canvass communities affected by mass incarceration: Project 2025.
“Under Project 2025, the Justice Department would be used to undermine and crack down on so-called progressive district attorneys.”
The wide-ranging policy document from the Heritage Foundation has been disavowed by the Trump campaign, but groups in Philadelphia fear it could still be used as a road map for a federal power grab.
“Under Project 2025, the Justice Department would be used to undermine and crack down on so-called progressive district attorneys,” said Saleem Holbrook, the executive director of criminal justice advocacy group Straight Ahead. “It was hard enough fighting that battle on the state level. We can only imagine how difficult it would be to fight that battle on the state and federal level.”
Along with expanding the death penalty, however, Project 2025 also offers a road map for criminal justice policies that include fighting reform-minded prosecutors such as Krasner.
An undated photo of an activist with Straight Ahead canvassing formerly incarcerated voters in Philadelphia.Photo: Sergio Hyland
Ominously for prosecutors such as Krasner who have exercised their prosecutorial discretion, it suggests initiating “legal action against local officials — including District Attorneys — who deny American citizens the ‘equal protection of the laws’ by refusing to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions.”
Holbrook’s group has not endorsed in the presidential election, but Project 2025 comes up often when its canvassers hit the streets to encourage the formerly incarcerated and their communities to vote.
Sergio Hyland, a 43-year-old Philadelphia native, spent more than 20 years in prison before his release in 2022. Now he’s an organizer with Straight Ahead, visiting communities where many people have been to prison or know someone who has.
If Project 2025 is implemented, Hyland warns voters, “criminal justice reform would be all but wiped out. We could forget about any progress we have made.”
Low Former Incarcerated Turnout
Straight Ahead is part of a larger cohort of groups across the country encouraging the formerly incarcerated to vote, said Ariel White, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“You see groups all over the place doing this now, and I think particularly in places where people have previously organized to expand or regain the right to vote,” White said.
State laws on voting rights for the formerly incarcerated vary widely. Even in places that have expanded those rights in recent years, however, White said that registration and turnout rates are still “substantially lower” than the general population.
“The biggest challenge is apathy,” Holbrook said. “And that’s not just this election cycle, that’s every election cycle, because people do feel like the system is not working for them.”
“The biggest challenge is apathy.”
Going door to door, the presidential campaign inevitably comes up in conversations with voters, Hyland said. What does he focus on? “The issues: ‘This is what our community needs, this is what you’re telling us you need,’” he said. “‘This is what this candidate represents, this is what that candidate represents.’”
Nationally, there isn’t good data on how the formerly incarcerated are planning to vote, White said. A survey of 54,000 people behind bars conducted by the Marshall Project found surprisingly strong support for Donald Trump, given his often draconian rhetoric about law and order.
Polls show Kamala Harris losing support among the Black and brown men whose communities have been most affected by mass incarceration, although Holbrook said his experience has been that she is not losing support “en masse.”
“It’s the misinformation that is driving some Black men to go over to Donald Trump, and that is the importance of us being out on the streets, talking to them about real issues,” said Holbrook. “Don’t get me wrong, there are legitimate complaints about how Democrats have engaged or moved in Black and brown communities.”
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Israel’s deadly siege on northern Gaza has entered a 30th day. Early week, the World Health Organisation managed to deliver some medical supplies to the Kamal Adwan Hospital, but on Thursday, Israeli fighter jets bombed the hospital’s third floor, where the supplies were being stored.
Al Jazeera reports Israeli forces are continuing to shell Beit Lahia, the scene of multiple massacres last week. On Wednesday, an Israeli attack on a market in Beit Lahia killed at least 10 Palestinians. Earlier in the week, Israel struck a five-story residential building, killing at least 93 people, including 25 children.
Meanwhile, at the United Nations, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese, has released a major report accusing Israel of committing genocide.
Albanese concludes that Israel’s war on Gaza is part of a campaign of, “long-term intentional, systematic, state-organised forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians” . The report is titled Genocide as Colonial Erasure.
AMY GOODMAN:Francesca Albanese is now facing intensifying personal attacks from Israeli and US officials. She was set to brief Congress earlier last week, but the briefing was cancelled. On Tuesday, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, wrote on social media, “As UN Special Rapporteur Albanese visits New York, I want to reiterate the US belief she is unfit for her role. The United Nations should not tolerate antisemitism from a UN-affiliated official hired to promote human rights.”
On Wednesday, Francesca Albanese spoke at the United Nations and responded to the US attacks.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I have the same shock that you have, looking at how the United States is behaving in this context, in the context of the genocide that is unfolding in Gaza. I’m not — I’m not surprised that they attack anyone who speaks to the facts that are, frankly, on our watch in Gaza. And they do that so brutally because they feel called out, because it’s not that it’s that the United States is simply an observer. The United States is being an enabler in what Israel has been doing.
AMY GOODMAN: That was UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese speaking at the United Nations on Wednesday. She joins us here in our studio.
Welcome back to Democracy Now! Thanks so much for joining us.
Well, before we get you to further respond to what the US and Israel is saying, can you lay out the findings of your report?
Colonial Erasure’: UN expert Francesca Albanese on Israel’s “intent to destroy” Gaza Video: Democracy Now!
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Absolutely. First of all, thank you for having me.
I have to say that this report is the second I write on — and I present to the United Nations on the topic of genocide. And it has been very reluctantly that I’ve taken on the responsibility to be the chronicler of — the chronicler of an unfolding genocide in Gaza.
In March this year, I concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Israel had committed at least three acts of genocide in Gaza, like killing members of the protected group, Palestinians; inflicting severe bodily and mental harm; and creating conditions of life that would lead to the destruction of the group. And the reason why I identified these were not just war crimes and crimes against humanity is because I identified an intent to destroy.
And I understand that even in this country, people are quite confused about what is genocidal intent, because it’s not a motive. One can have many motives to commit a crime. And I understand genocide is a very insidious one, and it’s difficult to identify what’s a motive. But this is not about the motives. The intent to commit genocide is the determination to destroy, which is fully evident in — especially in the Gaza Strip, as I identified in — as argued in March already.
The reason why I continue to write about genocide — and, in fact, this report walks on the heels of the previous one — is in order to better explain the intent, especially state intent, because there is another misunderstanding that there should be a trial of the alleged perpetrators in order to have — to attribute responsibility to a state.
No, because not only you have had acts committed that should have been prevented by the — in a rule of law, in a proclaimed rule of law system like Israel, where there is the government, the Parliament, the judiciary, working as checks and balances, genocide has not only been not prevented, [it] has been enabled through the various organs of the state.
And I explain what has happened as of October 7, which has provided the opportunity to escalate violence, to build on the rage and on the fury of many Israelis, turning the soldiers into willful executioners, is that there was already a plan, hatred.
I mean, the Palestinians, like Ilan Pappé says, are victims not of war, but of a political ideology that has been unleashed. Palestinians have always been an unwanted encumbrance in the Israeli mindset, because they are an obstacle both as an identity and as legal status to the realisation of Greater Israel as a state for Jewish Israelis only.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:So, we’ll go back to — because I do want to ask about the Israeli state institutions that you name and the branches of the Israeli state that have been involved in forming this state’s intent. But if you could elaborate on the point that you make, the difference between intent and motive, and in particular what you say in the report about how it’s critical to determine genocidal intent, “by way of inference”?
You know, that’s a different phrasing than one has heard in all of this conversation about genocide so far. If you explain what you mean by that and what such a determination makes possible? So, rather than just looking at genocidal intent in other forms, what it means to infer genocidal intent?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: So, first of all, what constitutes genocide is established by Article II of the Genocide Convention, which creates a twofold obligation for member states, to prevent genocide so genocide doesn’t have to complete itself. When there is a manifestation of intent, even genocidal intent, there is already an obligation to intervene, because a crime is unfolding.
And then there is an obligation to punish. How the jurisprudence, especially after Rwanda and after former Yugoslavia, there have been cases both for criminal proceedings, where individual perpetrators have been investigated and tried, and [the] responsibility of the state, litigated before the International Court of Justice. This is how the jurisprudence on genocide has developed.
And the intent has been further elaborated upon what the Genocide Convention says. And while it might be difficult to have direct intent, meaning to have — it’s difficult but not impossible, in fact, to have a state official say, “Yes, let’s go and destroy everyone” — although I do believe that there is direct intent in this genocide in Gaza.
But the court also established that genocide can be inferred from the scale of the attack on the people, the nature of the attack, the general conduct. And what it says is that normally there should be a holistic approach in order to identify intent, which is exactly what I’ve done.
And indeed, this is why I proposed in this report what I called the triple lens approach. We need to look at the conduct, like the totality of the conduct, instead of studying with a microscope each and every crime. We need to look at the whole, against the totality of the people, the Palestinians as such, in the totality of the land, that Israel has slated as its own by divine design.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: No, absolutely. And then, if you could — the other precedent you’ve just spoken about — of course, Rwanda and former Yugoslavia — another case that you cite in the International Court of Justice is The Gambia v. Myanmar. So, how is that comparable to what we see happening in Gaza? Why is that a relevant example and different from both Rwanda and former Yugoslavia?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Let me tell you what I see as the major differences in the case of Israel, because it’s a very complex discussion. But in all four cases, there is a toxic combination of hatred, ideological hatred, which has informed political doctrines. And this is true in all the various contexts we are mentioning. The other common element is that there is [a] combination of crimes. Like, forced displacement is not an act of genocide per se, but the jurisprudence says that it can contribute to corroborate the intent.
But, again, mass killing or mass destruction of property, torture and other crimes against a person, which translate into an infliction of physical and mental harm to the group, not individuals as such, but individuals as part of the group, these are common elements to all genocides.
What I find characteristic in this one is, first of all, this is not — I mean, the state of Israel is not Myanmar and is not Rwanda 30 years ago. This is not war-torn former Yugoslavia. This is a state which has a separation of powers, different organs, as I said, checks and balances. And let me give you a specific example, because you asked me to comment on the state functions.
In January this year, the International Court of Justice issued a set of preliminary measures in the context of its identification, before even looking at the merits of the case initiated by South Africa for Israel’s breach, alleged breach, of the Genocide Convention, which identified the plausibility of risk for the rights protected — of the rights of the Palestinians protected under the Genocide Convention, which means plausibility — it’s semantics, but it’s plausibility that genocide might be committed against the Palestinians in Gaza.
And the provisional measures included an obligation to investigate and prosecute the various cases of incitement, genocidal incitement, that the court had already identified. And it mentions leaders, senior leaders, of the Israeli state. Has there been any investigation? Has there been any prosecution?
But I’m telling you more. The genocidal statements didn’t resonate as shocking in the Israeli public, not only because there was rage, an enormous rage and animosity, of course. I mean, this is understandable, that the facts of October 7 were brutal and traumatized the people.
But at the same time, hatred against the Palestinians and hate speech, it’s not something that started on October 7. I do remember, and I do remember the shock I felt because no one was reacting, and years ago, there were Israeli ministers talking of — freely, of killing, justifying the killing of Palestinians’ mothers and children because they would turn into terrorists.
AMY GOODMAN: Francesca Albanese, talk about the title of your report, Genocide as Colonial Erasure.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: This is another element which I think — and, in fact, it’s the most important, where we see the difference between this genocide and others, because there is a settler-colonial component. And again, if you look at what the International Court of Justice in July this year concluded, when it decided that the — when it found that Israel’s 57 years of occupation in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem is unlawful and needs to be withdrawn totally and unconditionally, as rapidly as possibly, which the General Assembly says by September 2025.
The court said that it amounts to — that the colonies amount to — have led to a process of annexation and racial segregation and apartheid. And these are the features of settler colonialism, the taking of the land, the taking of the resources, displacing the local population and replacing it. This has been a feature.
Now, it is in this context that we need to analyse what is happening today. And by the way, don’t believe, don’t listen only to Francesca Albanese. Listen to what these Israeli leaders and ministers are saying — reoccupying Gaza, retaking Gaza, recolonising Gaza, reconquesting Gaza. This is what they are saying.
And there are settlers on expeditions, not only to Gaza but also to Lebanon. So, this is why I say that the main difference, the main feature of this genocide, apart all the horrible aspects of it, is that this is the first settler-colonial genocide to be ever litigated before a court, an international court.
And this is why coming to this country, which is a country birthed from a genocide, when I meet the Native Americans, for example, I feel the pain of these people. And I say if we manage to build on the intersectionality of Indigenous struggle, the cry for justice behind this case for Palestine will resonate even louder, because it will somewhat be an act of atonement from the settler-colonial endeavor, which has sprouted out of Europe, toward Indigenous peoples. So there is a lot of symbolism behind it.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, you know, the analogy — first of all, you talked about the case brought by South Africa, so what they share, apart from South Africa and Israel-Palestine, is both the fact that they were colonial-settler states, as well as the fact that apartheid has been established as having occurred in both places.
Now, in the case of South Africa, it was a decision that was taken by the United Nations at the time of apartheid, was unseating South Africa from the General Assembly. There have been calls now to do the same with Israel. So, if you could — if you could comment on that?
And then, I just want to quote another short sentence from your report, in which you say, “As the world watches the first live-streamed settler-colonial genocide, only justice can heal the wounds that political expedience has allowed to fester.” So, if you could talk about the International Court of Justice’s case in that context, what role you think they can play, South Africa’s case, in resolving or addressing — seeing and addressing this wound?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: First of all, let me unpack the question of the unseating Israel, because this is one of the recommendations I made in my report. Under Article 6 of the UN Charter, a member state can be suspended of its credentials or its membership by the General Assembly upon recommendation of the UN Security Council. And the first criticism I got is that we cannot do that, because every states commit international law violations. Absolutely. Absolutely.
But there are two striking features here. First, Israel is quite unique in maintaining an unlawful occupation, which has deemed such by — in at least one full occasion, but again, there was already a case brought before the ICJ in 2004, so there have been two ICJ advisory opinions.
There is a pending case for genocide. There has been the violations of hundreds of resolutions by the — on Israel — over occupied Palestinian territory, by the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, and steady violation of international humanitarian law, human rights law, the Apartheid Convention, the Genocide Convention. So this is quite unique.
But all the more, this year alone, Israel has conducted an attack, an unprecedented attack, against the United Nations. It has attacked physically, through artillery, weapons, bombs, UN premises. Seventy percent of UNRWA offices and UNRWA buildings, clinics, distribution centers have been hit and shelled by the Israeli army.
Two hundred and thirty UN staff members have been killed by Israel in Gaza alone. UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have been attacked. And this doesn’t even take into account the smear, the defamation against senior UN officials, the declaration of the secretary-general as persona non grata, the referring to the General Assembly as a “cloak of antisemites”.
Again, this has mounted to a level — the hubris against the United Nations and international law has been unchecked and unbounded forever, but now, especially after the Knesset passed a law outlawing UNRWA, declaring UNRWA a terrorist organisation, and therefore disabling it from its capacity to deliver aid and assistance especially in Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem, this is the nail in the coffin of the UN Charter.
And it can also contribute to that sense of colonial erasure, because here it’s not just at stake the function of a UN body — and UNRWA is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly, so it’s even more serious. But there is the capacity of UNRWA to deliver humanitarian aid in a desperate situation, and also the fact that UNRWA is seen by Israel as the symbol of Palestinian identity, especially the Palestinian refugees. So there is an attempt to erase Palestinianness, including by hitting UNRWA.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about your trip here, as we begin to wrap up. The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, quoted on — tweeted on Tuesday, “As UN Special Rapporteur Albanese visits New York, I want to reiterate the US belief she is unfit for her role. The United Nations should not tolerate antisemitism from a UN-affiliated official hired to promote human rights.” If you can further address their charge of antisemitism against you?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what happened. You were supposed to come to Congress and speak and brief them, but that was cancelled this week.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, it was canceled. But let me — first of all, I’m very embarrassed to read this, because a senior US official who writes this, I mean, it shows a little bit of desperation. I’m sorry, but, you know, I’m very candid.
And let me unpack my antisemitism for the audience. So, what I’ve been accused of — the reason why I’ve been accused of antisemitism — is because I’ve allegedly compared the Jews to the Nazis. Never done. Never done.
What I’ve said, what I’ve done is saying, and I keep on saying, that history is repeating itself. I’ve never done such a comparison where I draw the parallel. It’s on the behaviour of member states who have the legal and moral obligation to prevent atrocities, including an unfolding genocide.
In the past, they have done nothing — nothing — until the end of the Second World War, to prevent the genocide of the Jews and the Roma and Sinti. And they’ve done nothing to prevent the genocide of the Bosnians.
And they’ve done nothing to prevent the genocide of the Rwandans. And they are doing the same today. This is where I insist that now, compared to when there was the Holocaust, now we have a human rights framework that should prevent this. The Genocide Convention to prevent this. So, this is one of the points.
The second point, — which leads to portray me as an antisemite, which is really offensive — is that I’ve said that October 7 was not — I’ve contested, I’ve challenged the argument that October 7 was an antisemitic attack. October 7 was a crime, was heinous. And again, I’ve condemned the acts that were directed against the Israeli civilians, and expressed solidarity with the victims, with the families. I’ve been in contact with the families of the hostages.
But I’ve also said the hatred that led that attack, that prompted that attack, to the extent it hit civilians, not the military, but it was prompted not by the fact that the Israelis are Jews, but the fact that the Israelis — I mean, the Israelis are part of that endeavor that has kept the Palestinians in a cage for 17 years and, before, under martial law for 37 years. And Palestinians have tried — it’s true they have used violence, but before violence, they have tried dialogue. They have tried collaboration. They have tried a number of means to access justice, and they have gone nowhere.
I can — I mean, let me relate just this case, because last year I worked with children. And someone who was 17 years old before October 7 last year had never set foot out of Gaza. This is the reality. And I spoke with children while I was writing my report on “unchilding”, the experience of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. And one of them — I mean, there were these two girls fighting, because one of them had been able to go to Israel and the West Bank because she had cancer and could be treated, and the other was jealous, because, she said, “At least she was sick, and she could go, she could travel. I’ve never seen the mountains.”
And again, this doesn’t justify violence, but, please, please, put things in context. And even Israeli scholars have said claiming that October 7 was prompted by antisemitism is a way to decontextualize history and to deresponsibilise Israel.
I condemn Israel not because it’s a Jewish state. It’s not about that, but because it’s in breach of international law through and through. And were the majority of Israelis Buddhists, Christians, atheists, it would be the same. I would be as vocal as I am now.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Francesca, just one last question, and we only have a minute. Your recent book, J’Accuse, you take the title, of course, from the letter Émile Zola wrote during the Dreyfus Affair to the French president. You came under severe criticism for the choice of that title. Could you explain why you chose it and what it means in this context?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Absolutely. I have the sense that whatever I say comes under scrutiny and criticism. But J’Accuse is — first of all, it’s the title that was proposed by the editor, the publisher. And I was against it until October 7.
When I saw the narrative, the dehumanization of the Palestinians after October 7, and what it was legitimising, I said, “This is the title. We need to use it,” because I draw the parallel between what is happening to the Palestinians and what has happened to other groups, particularly the Jewish people in Europe.
I say the Holocaust was not just about the concentration camps. The Holocaust was a culmination of centuries of discrimination, and the previous decades had led the Jewish people in Europe to be kicked out of jobs, professions, to be treated like subhumans, as animals. And it’s this dehumanisation that we need to look at in the face today, in the eyes today, and recognise as leading to atrocity crimes.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you for being with us, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
The Philippine Supreme Court has granted temporary protection to an environmental activist abducted in Pangasinan earlier this year.
In its resolution dated September 9 — but only made public this week — the court granted Francisco “Eco” Dangla III’s petition for temporary protection, and prohibited the respondents, including high-ranking soldiers and police officers, to be near the activist’s location.
“Furthermore, you, respondents, and all persons and entities acting and operating under your directions, instructions, and orders are PROHIBITED from entering within a radius of one kilometer of the person, places of residence, work, and present locations of petitioner and his immediate family,” the resolution read.
Philippine Army chief Lieutenant General Roy Galido
Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Police General Rommel Francisco Marbil
Brigadier General Gulliver Señires (in his capacity as 702nd Brigade commanding general Brigadier)
Ilocos Region police chief Police Brigadier General Lou Evangelista
Police Colonel Jeff Fanged (in his capacity as Pangasinan police chief)
Aside from giving Dangla temporary protection, the court also granted his petition for writs of amparo and habeas data. A writ of amparo is a legal remedy, which is usually a protection order in the form of a restraining order.
The writ of habeas data compels the government to destroy information that could cause harm.
These extraordinary writs are usually invoked by activists and progressives in the Philippines as they face intimidation from the government and its forces.
Dangla’s abduction Dangla and another activist, Joxelle Tiong, were abducted in Pangasinan last March 24.
According to witnesses, they saw two men who were forced to board a vehicle in Barangay Polo, San Carlos City.
The two activists, who who had been red-tagged for their advocacies, were serving as convenors of the Pangasinan People’s Strike for the Environment.
They “vocally defended the people and ecosystems of Pangasinan against the harms of coal-fired power plants, nuclear power plants, incinerator plants, and offshore mining in Lingayen Gulf,” at the time of their abduction.
Three days later, several groups announced that Dangla and Tiong were found safe, but that the two had gone through a “harrowing ordeal.”
“Bruised but alive” . . . the environmental activists abducted in Pangasinan but found safe, Francisco ‘Eco’ Dangla III (left) and Joxelle ‘Jak’ Tiong. Image: Rappler
The reality The protection given to Dangla is only temporary as the Court of Appeals still needs to conduct hearings on the petition. In other words, the Supreme Court only granted the writ, but the power to whether grant or deny Dangla the privilege of the writs of amparo and habeas data lies with the Court of Appeals.
There have been instances where the appellate court granted activists the privilege of writ of amparo, like in the case of labour activists Loi Magbanua and Ador Juat, where the court issued permanent protection orders for them and their immediate families.
Unfortunately, this was not the case for other activists, such as young environmentalists Jhed Tamano and Jonila Castro.
The two were first reported missing by activist groups. Security forces later said they were “safe and sound” and that they had allegedly “voluntarily surrendered” to the military.
However, Tamano and Castro went off-script during a press conference organised by the anti-insurgency task force and revealed that they were actually abducted.
In February, the High Court granted the two temporary protection and their writs of amparo and habeas data petitions. However, the appellate court in August denied the protection order for Tamano and Castro.
Associate Justice Emily San Gaspar-Gito fully dissented in the decision and said: “It would be uncharacteristic for the courts, especially this court, to simply fold their arms and ignore the palpable threats to petitioners’ life, liberty and security and just wait for the irreversible to happen to them.”
In a significant legal victory, Palestinian student Dana Abu Qamar has won her appeal at the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) against the Home Office’s attempt to cancel her student visa in December 2023. This decision comes after court documents showed that then-immigration minister Robert Jenrick personally intervened in the matter, enquiring with the Home Office whether it would be “possible to revoke her student visa”. The case centred around support for Palestinian resistance.
Dana Abu Qamar
The Tribunal’s decision is a landmark ruling, rebuffing the British government’s relentless attempts to conflate solidarity with Palestine with ‘terrorism’ or ‘antisemitism’ and reaffirming the right to support Palestinian resistance under International Humanitarian Law.
The decision was upheld despite a change in government, with the new Labour Party-appointed home secretary, Yvette Cooper, refusing to reverse the initial punitive decision – illustrating how Labour has continued Tory policies that stifle advocacy and solidarity for Palestinian rights.
The decision to cancel Abu Qamar’s visa came in the midst of a major crackdown by the previous government against the growing mobilisation in solidarity with Palestine in the wake of Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza that has now been ongoing for over a year.
Significantly, the Tribunal declared that Abu Qamar was ‘not an extremist’ and ruled that the Home Office had failed to demonstrate that Abu Qamar’s statements in support of Palestinian resistance made her presence in Britain ‘not conducive to the public good’ – the test at the heart of Britain’s sweeping powers to deport individuals and deprive them of British citizenship.
The Tribunal also recognised that Abu Qamar’s description of Israel as an “apartheid state,” aligned with the views of numerous human rights organisations and that references to Palestinians “actively resisting” and as “breaking free” are widely understood to relate to lawful acts of resistance.
Supporting Palestinian resistance does not equal extremism
Subsequently, ruling that support for Palestinian resistance does not constitute extremism and falls within protected free speech pursuant to Article 10 of the ECHR and thus attempts at revocating Dana’s visa under these grounds violates her fundamental rights.
Dana Abu Qamar’s win is a boost for the Palestine solidarity movement and a blow to the British government’s shameless attempts to criminalise protestors and bully them into silence.
The decision raises questions about the deeply politicised use of security and counter-terrorism powers against the Palestine movement and increasingly against those engaging in political activism and protest against the state.
The European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) calls for an end to the punitive use of counter-terrorism measures to suppress critical dissent and urges the UK government to uphold international human rights standards, protecting the rights of all communities to advocate for justice and lawful resistance against settler colonialism freely.
A battle against state repression
Dana Abu Qamar said:
After a year-long legal battle against state repression and disregard of human rights, specifically targeted against pro-Palestinians, justice has prevailed.
This case has reinforced Palestinians’ right to resist occupation in the domestic context; that the expression in support of that right cannot be conflated with support for terrorism; that there is no room for abuse of power by ministers and arbitrary decision-making to undermine the rule of law. I hope that this ruling inspires and strengthens supporters of the Palestinian movement to continue advocating against Israel’s flagrant violations of international law.
I am grateful to the ELSC, my legal team, comrades, friends and family for their support throughout the whole process.
Tasnima Uddin, from ELSC, stated:
Dana Abu Qamar’s landmark legal victory is a powerful reminder that government measures are often wielded to criminalise dissent, particularly within Palestinian, Muslim, and other minority communities.
This decision underscores the misuse of vague security terms—like ‘non-conducive to the public good’—to stifle expressions of solidarity with Palestine, particularly in an atmosphere increasingly charged by racist political agendas, such as those spearheaded by figures like Robert Jenrick.
Abu Qamar’s victory is a crucial step against the erosion of civil liberties and sends a clear message: solidarity with Palestine is not a crime. Supporting Palestinian resistance is internationally recognised and is not extremism.
Israel is the world’s second-worst offender after Haiti in letting the murder of journalists go unpunished, according to a new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, reports Al Jazeera.
According to the CPJ’s 2024 Global Impunity Index, released yesterday, Somalia, Syria and South Sudan round up the list of the top five countries allowing journalists’ killers to evade justice.
“What’s clear from our index is that Israel is not committed to investigating or punishing those who have killed journalists . . . Israel has deliberately targeted journalists for being journalists,” CPJ chief executive Jodie Ginsberg told Al Jazeera.
The CPJ index also noted that globally, nobody was held accountable for 80 percent of cases related to the murder of journalists, and in at least 241 killings there had been evidence that the journalists were directly targeted for their work.
Rise of criminal gangs
The index — which was launched in 2008 — comprises 13 nations this year and includes both democracies and non-democratic governments.
Haiti, which tops the list, has been challenged by the rise of criminal gangs, who played a role in destabilising the country’s administrative and judicial institutions, resulting in the murders of at least seven journalists remaining unresolved in the country, the index said.
Meanwhile, Israel, which ranks second on the list, has appeared on the index for the first time since its inception.
The CPJ said the country’s “failure to hold anyone to account in the targeted killing of five journalists in Gaza and Lebanon in a year of relentless war”, had resulted in its ranking on the index.
While the press freedom NGO is investigating the killings of at least 10 journalists, the CPJ said the number of murdered journalists might still be higher, considering the scale of Israel’s war in Gaza and Lebanon.
Israel ‘deliberately targeted journalists’ At least 128 journalists and media workers are among the tens of thousands of people Israel has killed in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon over the past year — the deadliest time for journalists since the CPJ began to track the killings more than four decades ago.
The CPJ index also noted that Mexico has recorded the highest overall number of unpunished murders of journalists – 21 – during the index period and ranks eighth on the index because of its sizeable population.
Asian countries like Afghanistan, Myanmar, Pakistan and the Philippines have been appearing on the index regularly since its inception.
Calling on the international community to help journalists, Ginsberg said in a statement: “Murder is the ultimate weapon to silence journalists.”
“Once impunity takes hold, it sends a clear message: that killing a journalist is acceptable and that those who continue reporting may face a similar fate.”
I recently signed a letter drafted by Amnesty UK to MPs which included this message:
“The human rights violations taking place in Gaza have long been at catastrophic levels. Despite knowing this, the UK still hasn’t suspended all transfers of arms to Israel. Stopping some arms isn’t enough, there should be no loopholes and no UK arms to Israel
“The International Court of Justice has warned of a plausible risk of genocide against Palestinians by the Israeli authorities. Continuing to allow some arms transfers is not in line with international legal standards and demonstrates a dire need for accountability in arms transfers.”
Our newly-elected MP John Cooper, a Conservative, replied with the sort of pro-Israel froth we’ve heard many times before from his party. Here are some of his remarks, which presumably represent the ‘party line’, and my own responses….
JC began by saying: “Israel suffered the worst terror attack in its history at the hands of Hamas, and Palestinian civilians continue to face a devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. My thoughts are with the families of those still held hostage.”
Stuart Littlewood: What Israel suffered on October 7 last year was nothing compared with the terror, illegal occupation and dispossession inflicted on Palestinian civilians by Israel’s brutal occupation forces for the last 76 years. In the 23 years leading up to October 7, Israelis were slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Actual figures: Palestinians killed by Israelis 10,651 including 2,270 children and 6,656 women; Israelis killed by Palestinians 1,330 including 145 children and 261 women (source: Israel’s B’Tselem).
You seem worried only for Israeli hostages held by Hamas rather than the 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, languishing in Israeli jails on the day before the attack. Over 1,200 were imprisoned under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’.
Add the fact that Gaza had been under cruel military blockade for 17 years with Israel regularly “mowing the grass” (you surely know what that means), and October 7 was clearly a retaliation. Or do you think the Palestinians should have taken all that lying down?
JC: “I want to see the Gaza conflict brought to a sustainable end as quickly as possible…. Pauses can also help to create the conditions necessary to bring about a permanent and sustainable end to hostilities.”
SL: How would pauses bring about a permanent end to hostilities? Under international law the correct way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and theft of Palestinian resources. Wouldn’t that be a more sensible way forward?
JC: “In the longer term, I continue to support a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution of Israel and Palestine.”
SL: The Israeli regime has said repeatedly that it will not permit or accept a Palestinian state.
The only credible pathway was mapped by international law decades ago but never followed because it doesn’t suit Western powers’ ambitions in the region. They prefer lopsided negotiations through dishonest brokers like the US (and unfortunately the UK). This ensures the problem drags on indefinitely while Israel continues annexing Palestinian land and creating irreversible ‘facts on the ground’.
There can be no peace without law and justice. Failure to understand that simple truth has brought us all to the present horrific crisis.
JC: “I support Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with international humanitarian law. Indeed, it is important that international humanitarian law be respected and civilians protected….”
SL: Indeed it is. But Israel has no claim to self-defence against a threat from the territory it belligerently occupies. That has been made perfectly clear by the UN and many other authorities. It’s the Palestinians who have a cast-iron right to self-defence, using “armed struggle” if necessary, against Israel’s illegal military occupation and murderous oppression (UN Resolutions 37/43 and 3246). As China reminded everyone at the ICJ, “armed resistance against occupation is enshrined in international law and is not terrorism”.
It does no good to keep saying that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel has no intention of doing so, and everyone knows it. Israel wants to dominate the Holy Land and has advertised its evil intent very clearly for a very long time. As is well documented, it was a criminal enterprise from the start.
JC: “The UK’s position, which I support, is clear and longstanding. There should be a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, with Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states, and a fair and realistic settlement for refugees. The UK has consistently called – bilaterally and via the UN – for an immediate end to all actions that undermine the viability of the two-state solution.”
Longstanding is the word. So longstanding that you might ask why it hasn’t happened yet. It’s because Britain has played a leading part in blocking the two-state idea. We promised a Palestinian state back in 1915 in return for Arab help in defeating the Turks but repeatedly reneged on it – in 1917, in 1923, in 1948 – and continue to sidestep the issue. The UK position is anything but clear.
What would this “negotiated” two-state solution look like? Our Government can’t or won’t describe it. Why must Israel be “safe and secure” and Palestine only “viable”? One’s security is no more important than the other’s. The UK still stands in the way of Palestinian statehood while 140+ other nations have recognised it. At the same time the UK has done nothing to prevent Israel overstepping its 1947 UN Partition boundaries and seizing swathes of Palestinian land and key resources at gunpoint. And the UKGov (of both flavours) has been shamefully supportive of Israel’s year-long genocide and war of extermination which has sickened all decent-minded people.
In any case, why should Palestinians have to negotiate their freedom in their own homeland? Notice how keywords like law and justice are always missing in the UK’s position statements.
JC: “The Government’s decision to announce an arms embargo on the day that Israel was burying murdered hostages, and within weeks of British military personnel and arms defending Israel from Iranian attack, was difficult to swallow…. We must be clear that there is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the democratically elected Government of Israel.”
SL: Yes indeed, there is no moral equivalence. Hamas were democratically elected under the scrutiny of international observers at the last election permitted in Palestine (2006). Israel is no Western-style democracy with Western values — it is an unpleasant ethnocracy which recently enacted discriminatory nation state laws to prove it.
‘Think Hamas, think terror’ is what UKGov and mainstream media teach us. Branding Hamas a terrorist organisation was a propaganda masterstroke. It has allowed Zionists and other pro-Israel elements within our Government to avoid having to explain Israel’s far greater terror record, and instead focus hatred on Hamas (and now Hezbollah).
But the inescapable fact is, the Israelis wrote the manual on terrorism long before Hamas (and Hezbollah) came into being. Read their Dalet Plan, or ‘Plan D’. This was the Zionists’ blueprint for the violent and bloody takeover of the Palestinian homeland drawn up in early 1948 by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency. Plan D anticipated the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood, and plotted the ethnic cleansing that was to follow. They have pursued it relentlessly ever since.
You mention British military personnel and arms defending Israel from Iranian counter-attack. Why weren’t they defending Palestinian women and children from Israeli genocide?
JC: “For many years, the UK has been very clear that Settlements are illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace and threaten the physical viability and delivery of a two-state solution. Settler violence and the demolition of Palestinian homes is intolerable, and I expect to see Ministers firmly raising these issues with the Israeli Government, and taking robust action where necessary.”
SL: Agreed. But it’s pointless merely “raising” these issues with the Israeli Government. Settlements have been key to Israel’s expansionist ambitions since 1967. Pointless also sanctioning settler organisations. Many of the settlers are racist thugs on a terror mission. You need to sanction the criminals who send them into Palestinian territory, pay them and arm them – and that’s the Israeli Government itself.
Respected legal opinion (Ralph Wilde) puts it this way:
“There is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.
“Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force.…”
JC also mentioned: “the planned new Free Trade Agreement with Israel”.
SL: This is now is being championed by Jonathan Reynolds, the new Business Secretary. For him and the Starmer Government it’s business as usual with the apartheid regime while it conducts its non-stop genocide against the women and children of the Holy Land. No surprise there when you realise that Reynolds is a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel which, it seems to me, puts him in breach of the Government’s Ministerial Code and Principles of Public Life which (see ‘Integrity’) state: “Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work….. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.” Like all the other Israel stooges embedded in Westminster he doesn’t.
Question 1 – Why is the UK so head-over-heels in love with a depraved, criminal regime like Israel?
It is certainly not because we the British people share the Israelis’ moral values (although some in leadership positions at Westminster apparently do). The answer is probably to be found in America’s QME doctrine. In 2008 Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). This ensures the apartheid state always has the upper hand over it neighbours. It is central to US Middle East policy and guaranteed to keep the region at or near boiling point and ripe for exploitation.
The UK seems to have superglued itself to America’s cynical partnership with Israel for security reasons and in the hope of profiting from the misery and unrest, though it would never admit this. But the world, and especially the Middle East, is changing. Our track record out there is abysmal and we’re increasingly disliked.
Question 2 – Why prolong the UK’s century of betrayal by still not recognising Palestinian statehood?
Freedom and self-determination are a basic right which doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as the US-UK-Israel axis, agreeing to it. The UK thinks otherwise when we should be among the vast majority of nations that have already recognised Palestinian statehood. When 138 of the world’s states at the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’, it had the legal effect of establishing statehood. But the UK and other Western influencers who are dragging their feet need to finally accept it before statehood become effective on the world stage.
UKGov recognised Israeli statehood quickly enough in 1949 after Zionist gangs carried out countless atrocities including massacres at the King David Hotel, Deir Yassin, Lydda and elsewhere, trashed 500 Palestinian towns and villages, drove 700,000 civilians out of their national homeland, and made clear Israel’s ambition to dominate the entire Holy Land “from the river to the sea”.
It’s time our political leaders understood that the British public don’t want to be tainted by defending and protecting a so-called ally that’s bent on genocide and the wanton destruction of another people’s homeland and heritage, and has been contemptuous of human rights and norms of decency for as long as most of us can remember.
Activists target the Elbit Systems offices in Merrimack, N.H., blocking entrances and painting the facility red, on Nov. 20, 2023. Photo: Maen Hammad
In mid-November, four young women will start two-month jail sentences for an action attempting to halt operations last November at a weapons factory in Merrimack, New Hampshire, operated by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer.
It could have been far worse for the Merrimack 4, as the women are called by fellow activists. New Hampshire prosecutors had originally charged them with multiple felonies carrying sentences up to 37 years — an extreme overreach given that the defendants were alleged to have engaged in trespass and minor property damage at the facility.
After a drawn out process, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office eventually dropped the felony charges and the co-defendants pleaded guilty to misdemeanor criminal mischief and criminal trespass. Alongside jail time, they received a 24-month suspended sentence and a stay-away order from every Elbit Systems facility, including 6 factories.
The Merrimack 4 are not worried about 60 days in jail. Or, as two of them told me, they keep their situation in perspective.
“I’ve talked with friends from Palestine who’ve been arrested and interrogated and tortured in prisons,” said Calla Walsh, 20, a co-founder of Palestine Action U.S. She contrasted her own sentence with the Israeli practice of detaining Palestinians indefinitely in “administrative detention” without trial: “At least we know how long we’ll be in for.”
The activists’ concern, rather, is that the wrong lessons will be taken from their cases. What they don’t want is for movement participants to look at their sentences and shy away from escalation and direct action. There remains, they said, an urgent need to shut down the production and circulation of arms deployed in the ongoing atrocities against Palestine and Lebanon.
The action in November last year, less than two months after Israel’s war on Gaza started, was part of a campaign, under the banner of Palestine Action U.S., where autonomous groups around the country targeted Elbit for demonstrations. In Merrimack, activists blockaded the road leading to the Elbit facility, threw red paint on the building’s facade, broke several windows, and released green, white, and red smoke flares from the roof — Palestine’s national colors.
“Our action has only become understood as more logical and reasonable and righteous.”
“I think our action, when it happened, was seen as illogical and dangerous. And the more that the genocide has gone on and the more that the movement in the U.S. has grown in militancy, especially with the student encampments,” said Walsh, “I think our action has only become understood as more logical and reasonable and righteous, while also acknowledging we did not engage in these tactics perfectly.”
“We don’t want anyone to replicate what we did,” Walsh told me. “We want them to learn from it and whatever they’re going to do, do it more effectively than us.”
Rupturing Supply Chains
Questions of strategy and tactics hang heavily over a movement that, a year into Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide, is run through with desperation. Efforts like the “Uncommitted” movement to put pressure on Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign have, while impressive in garnering numbers, extracted no concessions from the Democratic nominee.
Gaza solidarity encampments on campuses, although powerful in their politicizing and radicalizing effects, were swept away with violent police raids, with participants facing unprecedented campus repression.
Countless mass marches, boycotts, and open letters calling for a ceasefire and an end to U.S. complicity have been met with silence, if not outright disdain. Money and arms continue to flow, without conditions, to Israel’s expansionist campaign.
It is only reasonable that activists would search for ways to directly rupture the supply chains on which Israel’s war machine runs.
Paige Belanger, 33, an herbalist and co-founder of Palestine Action U.S. and one of the Merrimack 4, said, “Most of the response in the United States was an emphasis on these nonviolent, peaceful protests that were really toothless calls to those in power, to somehow appeal to their morality and change the way that weapons were imported into Israel to commit genocide on the Palestinians.”
Consequences
For the Palestine Action U.S. founders, the need for escalation and direct action was and remains clear.
“There’s no peaceful protest that’s going to appeal to the fascist morality enough to change it and create a better world for us,” said Belanger.
Walsh and Belanger helped found Palestine Action U.S. in mid-October last year, as Israel’s campaign of collective punishment was already well under way. Palestine Action U.K. — which shares no organizational structure with the decentralized U.S. movement — had already been active since 2020, with the aim of dismantling Israel’s weapons trade in Britain.
There have been successes. In England, Elbit shuttered its facilities in Tamworth, Oldham, and Leicester, as well as closing its London offices after repeated protests, vandalism, and short-term occupations led to expensive damages and ever greater security costs.
According to the U.K. network, four U.K. companies, including property managers and employee recruiters, cut ties with Elbit following Palestine Action pressure. In the U.S., a sustained campaign of weekly protests at Elbit’s offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, forced the company to end its lease there.
The risks for activists are hardly negligible. In August, four activists in Scotland were jailed for 12 months, and one for 14 months, for throwing smoke bombs and engaging in low-level property damage at a weapons equipment factory in Glasgow.
The FBI has reportedly opened an investigation into Palestine Action U.S., even though the network is not a formal organization, and functioned rather as a banner for autonomous actions and an online platform for sharing news. (As of August, the Palestine Action U.S. platform announced that it would be reconstituting itself as a “propaganda front” renamed Unity of Fields.)
Walsh, who lives in Cambridge, also faces further felony charges, along with another Merrimack co-defendant, Sophie Ross, and other activists for their involvement in a protest last October 30 against Elbit’s Cambridge location.
“I’m facing a felony from that day for allegedly throwing an egg,” said Walsh, “a charge that’s been dragged out for a year.”
“A Huge Victory”
The shuttering or temporary disruption of a small number of weapons facilities may seem Pyrrhic victories when participants face arduous and expensive legal processes, as Israel’s genocide continues unhindered and Elbit makes its profits. Elbit CEO Bezhalel Machlis told Reuters that the company’s sales goal of $7 billion by 2026 would be reached “much earlier” because of military demand.
The anti-genocide movement is on the back foot at a time when nonviolent protest camps on college lawns are deemed grounds for police raids. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu called the action against Elbit — a multibillion-dollar weapons firm — an act of “antisemitism” and “hate”; no opposition to Israel’s actions appears exempt from such perverse demonization.
Prosecutorial overreach is also rife, as it has been in the efforts in recent years against the Black liberation uprisings, and the related movement to stop the construction of police training compounds in Atlanta and elsewhere. Hefty and groundless charges are thrown at activists, draining movement resources and chilling solidarity efforts, only to be dropped or reduced over time, as in the Merrimack case.
“We initially were facing these extreme charges, 37 years with five felonies. And the plea that we’ve agreed to at this point is no felonies, pleading guilty only to misdemeanors and 60 days in jail,” said Walsh. “I look at our plea as a huge victory and want to impart that to everybody: We face this kind of repression, but they weren’t successful in that tactic in putting us in jail for decades.”
No effort by the Palestine solidarity movement has so far been successful in ending the Israeli assault on Palestinian and Lebanese people, but militant direct action has not been attempted in great numbers. This is no time to leave tactics on the table.
“Petty vandalism is obviously not a means to an end,” Walsh noted. “I think the goal of any action is to create the next level of action that is possible.”
In the nearly four years since supporters of former President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol building, federal prosecutors have indicted at least 35 current or former law enforcement officers for their role in the insurrection, according to an Intercept analysis.
Among their targets was Alan Hostetter, a former California police chief who entered the Capitol grounds with a hatchet in his backpack on January 6, 2021. He was sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison late last year, among the longest sentences so far out of more than 1,500 prosecutions stemming from the events of that day.
An Instagram post shows Alan Hostetter, left, at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Screenshot: Court filing, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
Hostetter, who represented himself at trial, spouted a wide range of conspiracy theories during his closing argument, including that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. The judge overseeing Hostetter’s case emphasized his experience as a police officer during the proceedings. “No reasonable citizen of this country, much less one with two decades of experience in law enforcement, could have believed it was lawful to use mob violence to impede a joint session of Congress,” U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said in court last year. In July, Lamberth denied Hostetter’s request to be released from prison while he appeals his case, noting that it’s too risky for him to be freed ahead of the “looming” November election. (Hostetter did not respond to efforts to reach him before his conviction.)
Before his journey from police chief in La Habra, California, to insurrectionist, Hostetter spent 22 years at the Fontana Police Department, a small agency in the mostly working-class region southeast of Los Angeles known as the Inland Empire. The area has a history as a hotbed for white supremacist views most commonly associated with the deep South, which have earned it the nickname “Invisible Empire”— a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
For more than three years, filmmaker Stuart Harmon and I have investigated the culture of policing in Fontana. We spoke with several veterans of the local police department, including four whistleblowers who are featured in a new film published today by The Intercept. We also reviewed hundreds of pages of internal documents, interviewed residents and attorneys, and made several attempts to speak with the police department’s leadership. They declined to answer our questions.
In the aftermath of the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which reignited nationwide protests against police racism and impunity, many departments across the country — including the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — came under renewed scrutiny for officers’ misconduct and abuses. But there are thousands more small-town police departments across the country that are rarely scrutinized, an untold number of them run with near-absolute authority by police leadership whom few residents, let alone officers, have the courage to challenge.
The Fontana Police Department, which in 2013 earned the grim nationwide record for “worst minority representation” among cities with more than 100,000 residents, offers a snapshot of how such departments are run. And as we learned, its history of violence and racism is deeply intertwined with that of the city itself.
Decades of industrial development — and later abandonment — transformed Fontana’s demographics and character from an orange farm town attracting white settlers a century ago, to a booming steel town after World War II, to a trucking hub for warehouses and low-wage shift jobs today.
Throughout the city’s history, demographic change was met with racist backlash. As recently as 1981, men in white hoods marched through downtown Fontana, near the police station — a moment captured in archival photos. A year earlier, a Black lineman was shot by members of the KKK and left paralyzed. The incidents echoed earlier ones, including the burning to death of a Black family in their home, in the 1940s, after they refused to leave their all-white neighborhood.
Today, Fontana is home to a majority Latino population. But the mansion of a former grand dragon of the KKK still stands, not far from the police department — underscoring a point that the late writer Mike Davis, who was born in Fontana, made in his monumental work “City of Quartz.” “The past is not completely erasable,” Davis wrote, “even in Southern California.”
Rare, Unvarnished Testimony
I began looking into the Fontana Police Department days after the January 6 insurrection. Hostetter, who left the department in 2009 after climbing the ranks to deputy chief, had not yet been publicly identified as one of the law enforcement veterans involved, but one of his previous subordinates emailed me a tip about “a White Supremacy group operating at my former police agency.”
David Moore, a 25-year veteran officer who started his career at the LAPD before transferring to Fontana, had come across an investigation I had published years earlier, revealing the FBI’s longtime, quiet probe into white supremacist infiltration of police departments across the country. While the FBI’s involvement was news at the time, the infiltration itself had been an open secret in many of those departments. Moore, who is Black and currently works for a federal defense contractor, didn’t mention Hostetter in his email but wrote instead of widespread racism reaching all the way to the top of the department’s leadership. At times, Moore wrote, that racism crossed the line into white supremacist extremism.
Moore had already described the racism in horrific detail in a discrimination lawsuit he filed against the Fontana PD in 2016. (He amended the lawsuit to charge wrongful termination once he was fired in 2017 in what he says was retaliation for his whistleblowing. In a legal filing, the Fontana PD dismissed many of the allegations around racism as irrelevant to the case. The department settled with Moore and another officer earlier this year, and the case was dismissed in April.)
In his email, Moore laid out a long list of allegations, including that officers routinely used racial slurs to refer to both residents and colleagues of color, and that once, his co-workers had performed a mock lynching of a Martin Luther King Jr. figurine.
One claim in particular was shocking for its cruelty. In 1994, before Moore joined the department, a homeless Black man’s body was found outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken near police headquarters only half an hour after he was released from police custody. He had been fatally choked and later stabbed, according to an autopsy report. When he was taken in for the autopsy, someone placed a half-eaten chicken wing in his hand and took a picture. For years, officers at the department circulated the photograph, which they treated as a joke. An officer who spoke up about the incident told The Intercept he was later forced out.
As Moore grew increasingly disillusioned with department leadership, he began researching the emblems he saw his colleagues sport. He learned that the lightning bolts, runes, and the German eagle that were tattooed on their bodies or featured on their badges were symbols associated with neo-Nazi ideologies. The department’s Rapid Response Team, an elite and notoriously violent unit, displayed as its logo a Nordic owl, another symbol favored by white supremacists.
Moore had denounced all this for years, first internally, then in his lawsuit, and eventually to a local writer, who published the allegations to a muted response. Fontana was a forgotten place, he told me, whose residents, many of them poor and undocumented, are too busy working multiple jobs and fearful of retaliation to openly criticize the department, despite knowing its abuses firsthand.
It is in small departments like this that extremism could fester in silence, he believed. “We must show people in California and the U.S. in general, that White supremacy is alive and active in law enforcement,” Moore wrote. “Very few Officers have the courage to speak out about it.”
Moore, who spent the better part of the last decade embroiled in a fight against the Fontana PD at a huge personal cost, knows from experience why so few officers speak up. Others who denounced problems internally — including his co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, Andy Anderson — were also forced to leave their jobs or resigned out of fear and frustration. One even moved to a police department across the country to get away from Fontana.
We spoke with Moore and Anderson long before they settled their lawsuit, an agreement that neither they nor the police department wanted to talk about. “While the City and its Police Department believe their conduct was in all respects proper and legal, the City’s insurer recognizes the uncertainty litigation presents, as well as costs associated with litigation,” Christopher Moffitt, a lawyer representing the police department, wrote in an email. “David Moore and Andrew Anderson believe a settlement is in their best interest for these same reasons. The Parties have agreed to limit our comments about the lawsuit to this statement.”
Moffitt also said that the police department could not respond to The Intercept’s other questions “in connection with your reporting on the litigation.”
As The Intercept has previously reported, police departments large and small are shrouded in a code of silence that rewards loyalty over ethics. And as a powerful 2021 USA Today investigation exposed, officers who denounce abuse and misconduct by colleagues are ostracized, forced out of their jobs, or worse. Many current and former Fontana officers, Moore cautioned back in 2021, would never speak about what they had witnessed. But he offered to connect me to three who would speak to me on the record, and more who would talk but would not want to be named.
It was a rare offer of access to officers’ unvarnished testimony, now captured in a film that offers an unusually blunt perspective on policing from within — even as it comes from individuals who remain deeply committed to the institution itself.
“Sadly, the silent majority complacently stands by while rogue officers seem to take the lead,” Moore wrote. “This needs to stop.”
The Vital Projects Fund supported the reporting and production of this film.
Footage of Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa swaying along to the siva dance as she sat beside Britain’s King Charles III encapsulated a palpable national pride, well deserved on delivering such a high-profile gathering.
Getting down to the business of dissecting the meeting outcomes — in the leaders’ statement and Samoa communiqué — there are several issues that are significant for the Pacific island members of this post-colonial club.
As expected, climate change features prominently in the text, with more than 30 mentions including three that refer to the “climate crisis”. This will resonate highly for Pacific members, as will the support for COP 31 in 2026 to be jointly hosted by Australia and the Pacific.
Samoa’s Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa opening CHOGM 2024. Video: Talamua Media
One of the glaring contradictions of this joint COP bid is illustrated by the lack of any call to end fossil fuel extraction in the final outcomes.
Tuvalu, Fiji and Vanuatu used the CHOGM to launch the latest Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative report, with a focus on Australia’s coal and gas mining. This reflects the diversity of Commonwealth membership, which includes some states whose economies remain reliant on fossil fuel extractive industries.
As highlighted ahead of CHOGM, this multilateral gave the 56 members a chance to consider positions to take to COP 29 next month in Baku, Azerbaijan. The communiqué from the leaders highlights the importance of increased ambition when it comes to climate finance at COP 29, and particularly to address the needs of developing countries.
Another drawcard
That speaks to all the Pacific island nations and gives the region’s negotiators another drawcard on the international stage.
Then came the unexpected, Papua New Guinea made a surprise announcement that it will not attend the global conference in Baku next month. Speaking at the Commonwealth Ministerial Meeting on Small States, PNG’s Foreign Affairs Minister Justin Tkatchenko framed this decision as a stand on behalf of small island nations as a protest against “empty promises and inaction.”
As promised, a major output of this meeting was the Apia Commonwealth Ocean Declaration for One Resilient Common Future. This is the first oceans-focused declaration by the Commonwealth of Nations, and is somewhat belated given 49 of its 56 member states have ocean borders.
The declaration has positions familiar to Pacific policymakers and activists, including the recognition of national maritime boundaries despite the impacts of climate change and the need to reduce emissions from global shipping. A noticeable omission is any reference to deep-sea mining, which is also a faultline within the Pacific collective.
The text relating to reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery required extensive negotiation among the leaders, Australia’s ABC reported. While this issue has been driven by African and Caribbean states, it is one that touches the Pacific as well.
‘Blackbirding’ reparative justice
South Sea Islander “blackbirding” is one of the colonial practices that will be considered within the context of reparative justice. During the period many tens-of-thousands of Pacific Islanders were indentured to Australia’s cane fields, Fiji’s coconut plantations and elsewhere.
The trade to Queensland and New South Wales lasted from 1847 to 1904, while those destinations were British colonies until 1901. Indeed, the so-called “sugar slaves” were a way of getting cheap labour once Britain officially abolished slavery in 1834.
The next secretary-general of the Commonwealth will be Ghana’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey. Questions have been raised about the quality of her predecessor Patricia Scotland’s leadership for some time and the change will hopefully go some way in alleviating concerns.
Notably, the CHOGM has selected another woman to lead its secretariat. This is an important endorsement of female leadership among member countries where women are often dramatically underrepresented at national levels.
While it received little or no fanfare, the Commonwealth has also released its revised Commonwealth Principles on Freedom of Expression and the Role of the Media in Good Governance. This is a welcome contribution, given the threats to media freedom in the Pacific and elsewhere. It reflects a longstanding commitment by the Commonwealth to supporting democratic resilience among its members.
These principles do not come with any enforcement mechanism behind them, and the most that can be done is to encourage or exhort adherence. However, they provide another potential buffer against attempts to curtail their remit for publishers, journalists, and bloggers in Commonwealth countries.
The outcomes reveal both progress and persistent challenges for Pacific island nations. While Apia’s Commonwealth Ocean Declaration emphasises oceanic issues, its lack of provisions on deep-sea mining exposes intra-Commonwealth tensions. The change in leadership offers a pivotal opportunity to prioritise equity and actionable commitments.
Ultimately, the success of this gathering will depend on translating discussions into concrete actions that address the urgent needs of Pacific communities facing an uncertain future.
But as the guests waved farewell, the question of what the Commonwealth really means for its Pacific members remains until leaders meet in two years time in Antigua and Barbuda, a small island state in the Caribbean.
Tess Newton Cain is a principal consultant at Sustineo P/L and adjunct associate professor at the Griffith Asia Institute. She is a former lecturer at the University of the South Pacific and has more than 25 years of experience working in the Pacific Islands region. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.
Five years after the killing of Paulo Paulino Guajajara, an Indigenous Amazon Guardian who was gunned down by illegal loggers, his family still waits for justice.
Paulo’s death was widely covered by the world’s press, but despite the global outcry, the killers have never been brought to trial. Two men, Antônio Wesly Nascimento Coelho and Raimundo Nonato Ferreira de Sousa, have been charged, but not tried.
Paulo Paulino, known also as Kwahu Tenetehar, was shot in the neck and died in the forest after an ambush by loggers. His colleague, Tainaky Tenetehar, was shot in the back and arm but escaped.
The Amazon Guardians have patrolled their territory in the eastern Amazon, which has been heavily invaded by loggers, for more than 15 years. Uncontacted members of the Awá people also live in the territory.
At least six Guardians have been killed, and many of their relatives shot dead, as loggers and land grabbers target their territory, known as Arariboia – one of the last areas of forest left in that region, in the eastern state of Maranhão.
Survival has supported the Guardians for many years. Survival’s Brazil researcher Sarah Shenker, who accompanied the Guardians on one of their operations, said five years ago: “Kwahu was completely dedicated to defending his forest and his uncontacted relatives, despite the risks. He was also one of the most humble people I’ve ever met.
“He knew that he might pay with his life, but he saw no alternative, as the authorities did nothing to protect the forest and uphold the rule of law.”
After years of pressure from the Guardians, and from contacted Awá people, Brazilian authorities have finally begun construction of a guard post in the Arariboia territory, to help them monitor, and prevent incursions by, illegal loggers.
In a statement to mark the anniversary of Paulo’s murder, the Guardians said: “We feel the distress of the Guajajara people over the continued impunity of our people’s murderers, and especially of the warrior Paulo Paulino, who we will always remember, above all for his struggle to protect our ancestral territory.
“The Guardians are preparing an act of remembrance to mark five years of impunity, and we join Survival for this moment of denunciation, and to demand that those responsible for the murder of Paulo Paulino are duly tried and sentenced.”
Fiona Watson, Survival International’s Director of Research and Advocacy, said today: “Five years ago Paulo Paulino paid with his life to protect his beloved rainforest home, and the Indigenous people who live in it.
“He was one of countless Indigenous people in Brazil killed every year for defending their land – and the killers persist because they know it’s unlikely they will ever face justice. Brazil’s government pays lip service to the need to protect what is left of the Amazon – but the people defending it on the ground are sacrificing their lives as the rainforest is destroyed around them. How much longer will this appalling injustice continue?”
On Wednesday 23 October, four Palestine Action activists on trial for blockading the gates of Elbit’s Leicestershire drone factory were convicted. But it was only on one charge, and the judge gave them non-custodial sentences.
Palestine Action: acting out of “desperation”
The four activists were found guilty by district judge MC Wilkinson, having earlier been cleared of the charge of Obstructing Lawful Business. They were each sentenced to 18 months conditional discharge, and ordered to pay £300 court costs. Locking-on was only made a criminal offence under the Public Order Act 2023. The judge told them:
I’m satisfied you took these steps out of desperation, for people trapped in suffering not of their own making.
On 27 February 2024, as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 30,000, Palestine Action shut down Elbit’s drone factory, UAV Engines, in Shenstone, Leicestershire.
Elbit, Israel’s largest weapons company, use the site to design and manufacture Wankel-type, or AR-80-110, rotary engines, for Israel’s Hermes killer drone fleet. In the action, four activists locked themselves to two sets of gates, effectively closing down the factory. The trial of the #Shenstone4 started this week, at Wolverhampton Magistrates Court, with the activists facing charges under the Public Order Act 2023.
The activists were initially charged with both Obstructing Lawful Business, and Locking-On, but they were cleared of the former charge on the first day of the trial.
Also giving evidence for the firm was ‘Quality Manager’ Jody Yates, who claimed that the drones manufactured at the site weren’t capable of carrying a payload.
When pressed about the Hermes 450 drones, which have played a central role in the Gaza Genocide, and were used in the slaughter of the World Central Kitchen aid workers, Yates said that he had seen this in the tabloid press, but that he didn’t have that level of “insider knowledge”.
After the prosecution case concluded, the four Palestine Action defendants took to the stand, giving powerful evidence, not least in terms of their motivation.
Someone had to do something about Elbit
Harriet Rollins told the court:
It started when I made a Palestinian friend. She was born in Gaza. I was worrying for her, and her family. They had moved back there before 2023. Hearing the news, knowing she was there, and then with the media blackouts, not hearing from her for days on end. Her granddad was murdered, specifically by one of those drones. It was a breaking point for me…that engine, for that drone, could have been made at UAV.
For her part, the next defendant, Hannah, when asked what led her to take part in the action against UAV Engines, said:
Protests didn’t seem to be having an effect. The UK vetoed at the UN, my MP abstained on the SNP motion for a ceasefire, aid money had stopped going into Gaza – the UNWRA funding – for healthcare, for food, for shelter, and education. Nothing had started to change, it seemed to get worse.
Rae told the court:
Every day, I was waking up, and going to sleep, to seeing people’s bodies, buried under the rubble, babies with heads barely attached…I started trying to do things, sending emails to my MP, attending all the talks, and demos, I could. I tried to get my Uni to divest… It brought awareness, but made no difference to the Genocide happening in Palestine.
Rae went on:
I wanted to bring the murderous drones to a stop.
Lastly, the fourth Palestine Action defendant, Miss Maan, said:
This really hit home for me. I’m Sikh, in 1984 there was a Sikh Genocide. My mum escaped.
She continued:
It was all happening, streamed live. The protests weren’t doing anything. And then the Al Shifa hospital was destroyed. Live videos were streamed on Instagram. I was watching these people suffering, on the floor of a hospital, while I lay in my bed.
We do what we can, where we are. I am a human being, at the end of the day, and I was seeing babies being decapitated.
Palestine Action will ‘continue to do everything they can’
While convicted on the one charge, the four Palestine Action activists walked free from court, with their heads held high.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action said:
These four courageous young people had to risk their liberty, trying to stop the production of engines, for Israeli killing machines, at Elbit’s Leicestershire drone factory. While we welcome the non-custodial sentences, it should be Elbit in the dock, charged with actively assisting in the Gaza Genocide.
Until that day comes, we will continue to do everything we can to shut Elbit down, and to target all those who enable and support them, in bringing death to the children of Palestine.
On Thursday 24 October, hundreds of peaceful protesters gathered outside the Ministry Of Justice (MoJ). They were there to demand Richard Hermer, the Labour Party government’s attorney general, ‘free political prisoners‘ of groups like Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action.
Free political prisoners
Since the publication of the government’s political violence tsar John Woodcock’s report in May, calling for members of groups such as Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action to be treated as organised crime groups, more than 50 members of those groups have been jailed.
Some of them have been incarcerated for as long as four or five years, following trials in which they have been banned from explaining to the jury why they have done what they have done.
The group Defend Our Juries along with Plan B have been campaigning on this issue. In September, they blocked the road outside the MoJ. Now, on 24 October they were back.
Around 300 people blocked the road to traffic in both directions outside the MoJ:
The action was carefully designed to be a lawful expression of democratic rights, in accordance with the Supreme Court judgement in Ziegler and others. That is, police should not arrest activists:
In recent times however, people have been arrested for far less. So, all those participating were prepared to be unlawfully arrested.
Protesters held up images of political prisoners, past and present, to the windows of his office, defying him to turn a blind eye:
They called for an end to the role of oil and arms industry lobbyists, such as John ‘Lord Walney’ Woodcock and Policy Exchange, in silencing and jailing their political opponents:
The action fell fittingly upon United Nations Day. This will intensify the pressure upon the attorney general to bring the UK back into compliance with international law, as called for by the United Nations.
There was also a strong message over the role of juries in the justice system:
Jury equity as well as free political prisoners
As the Canary has documented, ‘jury equity’ is a vital constitutional safeguard that juries can acquit a defendant as a matter of conscience, irrespective of a judge’s direction that there is no available defence (also called ‘jury nullification‘). This ensures that all defendants have the opportunity to explain their actions when their liberty is at stake, including by explaining their motivations and beliefs.
Famously, the principle was used to acquit the civil servant, Clive Ponting in 1985, after he leaked information exposing the government’s misinformation over the sinking of the General Belgrano – despite the judge directing the jury that Ponting had no defence to breach of the Official Secrets Act.
The principle of jury equity has recently become contentious over juries repeatedly acquitting members of groups taking action for political purposes, such as members of Extinction Rebellion, Palestine Action, and the Colston 4. However, some now-notorious judges have been ignoring this – even threatening to charge jurors themselves with Contempt of Court if they use equity.
Everyone has the right to freedom of assembly
The peaceful protesters were outside the MoJ for 90 minutes. They then suddenly stop up, and a gospel choir began to sing. The assembly then marched through Westminster:
The action finished on a green in the middle of SW1, where the names of some of the people on free political prisoners placards were read out:
Tim Crosland from Plan B said at the protest that, regarding free political prisoners:
People are talking about it and are thinking about it because everyone here, including the police officers who are listening here, knows it is crazy to be filling our jails with peaceful people for taking direct action to protect life and uphold the law. Nobody can think that is a good thing.
There was an irony being at the MoJ for this free political prisoners protest. A sign on the main window read:
Be you never so high, the law is above you
That is, of course, demonstrably false. As Israel currently commits countless war crimes, Michelle Mone enjoys the high life, and Boris Johnson gets to publish a book – people who have peacefully protested languish in jail.
Defend Our Juries’ calls to free political prisoners resonated. Now, we all need Labour to act.
Featured image and additional images via the Canary
The hearing to finalise Shell’s anti-protest injunctions against 13 Just Stop Oil supporters and persons unknown has concluded. Judgement will be given at a later date, but lawyers acting for Shell have said that the company will not be seeking costs for anyone named on the injunction owing to the substantive submissions made in court.
Just Stop Oil versus Shell: all our fights
Two Just Stop Oil supporters, Charles Phillip Laurie and Emma Ireland have been representing themselves at the High Court this week to directly challenge Shell ‘s anti-protest injunctions. They are among 13 who have refused to sign undertakings not to take action at oil terminals, petrol stations and Shell’s HQ in future.
The hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice before Mr Justice Dexter Dias relates to three Shell injunctions which were secured in May 2022 following Just Stop Oil’s historic resistance at oil terminals and petrol stations. That campaign led to over 1,000 arrests and had a significant impact on fuel availability at petrol pumps across the South East and the Midlands.
One of the people challenging the injunctions is Charles Phillip Laurie, a father of three, Quaker, and retired civil engineer. In his evidence which he addressed to Shell’s representatives he said:
the products you make will cause the deaths of hundreds of millions of deaths- not in some specified time in the future but in the next few years, probably within my lifetime, certainly within the lifetime of my children.
In his written evidence, Laurie wrote:
The products sold by fossil fuel companies such as Shell are one of the major causes of climate change. These companies know the risks their products pose. Their role is totally malign. They deny the impact, delay action, destroy lives and environments.
They take no responsibility for the output of their products, at all times seeking to maximise their sales which is a death sentence for many people and the planet.
Politicians captive to Big Oil
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said:
Shell, Exxon and their captive politicians have known for over 50 years that burning more oil, gas and coal will lead to catastrophic warming. It is now clear that the collapse of human civilization and the death of millions if not billions of people means nothing to these people. Their only concern is to protect their profits and while hiding the damage that their products cause.
Shell, which generates billions in profit, has spent the last three years persecuting ordinary people who have taken nonviolent action to save lives in the face of continued inaction on the climate emergency. These injunctions are private laws that would prevent anyone from taking action to highlight the role that Shell plays in the ongoing climate crisis, even when criminal laws exist to govern the behaviour that they object to.
No-one should be immune from the consequences of their actions least of all Shell. It’s time they faced the full force of the law. Prosecute the real criminals.
Just Stop Oil says it stands “with our 24 supporters in prison, with the 1,800 victims of our broken criminal justice system imprisoned for over a year without trial and with the 1,700 murdered across the global south, for protecting all our lives”:
Everyone knows that politics is broken and we cannot rely on politicians (or judges) to save us — not from poverty, not from the cost of living crisis, not from complete climate collapse. The Labour government doesn’t work for ordinary people, they work for corporations and billionaires, while supporting genocide in Gaza. It’s time to put this right.
As a prefigurative day of action we will be actively inviting and welcoming a large number of groups to come together – including the climate and nature movements, palestine solidarity, inequality and democracy movements to join forces and march on Parliament and join us after at the Umbrella Rally, Banquet, Peoples Assembly and After Party.
Last Friday, 13 police officers gathered in the early morning hours outside an off-campus residential building in West Philadelphia. It was the home of several University of Pennsylvania students.
Donning their full tactical gear, including riot helmets, and armed with assault rifles and handguns, the police threatened to break down the door with a battering ram and pointed a gun at a neighbor before storming the residence.
The sound of police coming up the stairs woke the students up. As they stepped out of their rooms, police trained guns on them, according to one student present during the raid who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of their personal safety.
Police identified themselves as 12 officers from the University of Pennsylvania Police Department and one from the Philadelphia Police Department, the student said, but refused to provide names, badge numbers, or a warrant. Police seized another student’s personal device and took the student in for questioning. They were released later that morning with no charges or arrests made.
“I’m pretty concerned that the university is using extreme tactics to try and suppress student movements.”
In the course of questioning, the student was provided with a copy of the warrant for suspicion of vandalism, according to the first student who spoke to The Intercept. The warrant related to an incident in September where red paint was thrown on the Benjamin Franklin statue on campus.
At the time, Penn’s public safety department received a report of an incident and responded. Student activists posted on Instagram that “an autonomous group” was responsible.
“I’m pretty concerned that the university is using extreme tactics to try and suppress student movements. It’s been pretty consistent this entire year,” said state Rep. Rick Krajewski, a Democrat who represents West Philadelphia. “A legal warrant is one thing, but the amount of force used for that warrant against young students is extremely alarming.”
He said, “At the end of the day 12 cops showed up with tactical gear and rifles against kids in a quiet neighborhood. It’s hard for me to believe that was justified, legal or not.”
“The raid on Friday was a clear act of institutional and state-sponsored terror,” the student who was present for the raid told The Intercept. “It comes a year after Penn disciplining students, suspending them, sending 300 riot cops to arrest and brutalize us multiple times over, throwing their own students and community members in jail. This is just another outrageous mark in their timeline of escalation.”
The way police handled the raid was jarring, said Radhika Sainath, senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal. “The disproportionate use of force over a suspected vandalism incident that occurred over a month ago quite honestly shocks the conscience.”
Penn in the Hot Seat
Since the surge of encampments protesting the war on Gaza across the country this spring, Penn has cracked down on Palestine solidarity activism with increasing force.
The Ivy League school was in the spotlight last winter after university president Liz Magill caved to pressure from pro-Israel donors and resigned after testifying before Congress. In the wake of the hearing, Penn Board of Trustees Chair Scott Bok also resigned, along with Harvard University President Claudine Gay.
Months later, in the spring, Penn called Philadelphia police in to clear the Gaza encampment in the spring.
Miguel Torres, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department, directed questions to Penn and the Philadelphia district attorney. University spokesperson Ron Ozio did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Penn’s Division of Public Safety confirmed the raid but said they do not comment on open criminal investigations. The statement said the warrant was revised by the DA’s office, approved by a bail commissioner, and executed following proper policies and procedures.
Philadelphia district attorney spokesperson Dustin Slaughter confirmed that the DA approved the warrant for the search based on information provided by Penn police. Asked about student reports that the warrant cited suspicion of vandalism, Slaughter said he could not discuss specifics.
“On October 16, 2024, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office reviewed and approved a search warrant for a location in West Philadelphia based on information provided to the DAO’s Charging Unit in connection to an ongoing investigation led by the University of Pennsylvania’s Police Department and Public Safety Division,” Slaughter said.
He said the DA office had no role in the execution of the warrant and had not received any requests from Penn police to approve charges.
“If and when that time arrives,” Slaughter said, “we will carefully review the evidence submitted by the appropriate law enforcement authorities and make a fair and just determination.”
Despite calling in Philadelphia Police to crack down on encampments this spring, the university historically prided itself in keeping city police separate from student affairs.
These days, the student at the raid said, the police presence at Penn and in West Philadelphia is overwhelming. The raid on Friday was part of an increasing militarization of campus and city police that targets both activism for Palestine and the city’s Black and brown residents.
“The Penn police and the PPD have long been a repressive force in West Philly,” the student said. “Police violence in Philly is far too present. You go through something like this and can’t help but be reminded of the PPD bombing an entire block in 1985” — referring to the police attack against the radicals of the MOVE commune in West Philadelphia.
Penn has shown stark imbalances in how it’s responded to activism for Palestine and activism for other causes, the student said. “It’s no surprise that Penn police are trained by the Israeli occupation forces, sponsoring trips to Israel for training and participating in counterterrorism seminars. It’s also no surprise that Penn is funding this genocide and terrorizing their own students,” they said.
The raid was unprecedented in Penn history, said Huda Fakhreddine, an associate professor of Arabic literature and member of Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine who organized a Palestine literature festival at Penn that became the subject of attack from university donors last September.
“As some of us watch with horror the destruction of our homelands and the extermination and displacement of our families in Palestine and Lebanon, UPenn resorts to obscene intimidation tactics to silence anti-genocide speech, going as far as unleashing an armed police force on students in their residence,” she said.
“Not only is the university obstructing students’ and faculty’s ability to teach, learn, and exchange ideas,” she added, “it is also criminalizing grief, shamefully clamping down on students, accusing them of trespassing in their own campus, and threatening them with arrest when they mourn the hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed by Israel’s genocide in Palestine and now Lebanon.”
“One of Penn’s tactics is to isolate students.”
The aim of the raid was to isolate students and chill further activism in support of Palestine, the student said.
“One of Penn’s tactics is to isolate students,” they said. “I don’t think they understand anything about how strong and how broad this movement is.”
Retaliation of this sort is a sign that powerbrokers are afraid of the growing international movement organizing against genocide.
“If you’re shocked by this happening to students in the West, then think about the campaign of violence and terror that the West has been imposing on Palestine for decades,” they said. “They’ve only made all of this more visible.”
