Last week, Dr. Gianluca Grimalda and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) accepted the settlement proposed by the Kiel Regional Labor Court in the lawsuit filed by Dr Grimalda for unfair dismissal. The settlement was agreed on during the appeals process, after Dr. Grimalda’s original lawsuit was rejected last February.
Dr. Grimalda: a bittersweet victory
On 9 October 2023, IfW notified Dr. Grimalda of the termination of his research contract due to his failure to return to Germany by plane from his fieldwork in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.
Although the original plan approved by IfW was for Dr. Grimalda to return by ‘slow travel’, IfW ordered Dr. Grimalda to return by plane after he failed to show up in Kiel on the agreed date. Dr Grimalda claims that his delay was due to visa deferrals, security threats, volcano activity and other logistical impediments.
This was the first known case of an employee being fired for refusing to take a plane to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The settlement stipulates that the contract was terminated with ordinary dismissal because of incompatible ideological convictions between the parties. The immediate termination by IfW was repealed and IfW will exonerate Dr. Grimalda from any breach of contract.
In view of the strained relationship with his employer if the employment relationship were to continue, he agreed to receive a severance payment from IfW when he left his employment relationship.
‘Sad and happy’
Its exact amount can not be disclosed due to a confidentiality agreement. Dr. Grimalda intends to donate 75,000 euros, part of this severance payment, for the purpose of environmental and climate protection and climate crisis activism.
“I feel sad and happy at the same time”, he said:
Sad because I lost a job I loved. Happy because the judge implicitly recognised the impossibility of dismissing an employee because of his refusal to take a plane. I hope that my case will inspire more employees, institutions and companies to actively support the transition from fossil fuel-based economies to decarbonized and people-centered societies.
I am determined to carry on with my research even though the job applications I made this year were unsuccessful. In 2025, I plan to slow-travel to Papua New Guinea again to further investigate the adaptation of the local population to climate change. Once I am back, my work as a climate activist will resume.
“Academics have multiple channels to alert about the climate and biodiversity crisis, and modifying their personal contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is an important way to demonstrate credibility”, says Wolfgang Cramer, Research Director at CNRS, France, and former contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report.
Dr Grimalda, who has been slow-travelling for more than 10 years, calculated that slow-travelling 28,000km from Papua New Guinea to Europe reduced greenhouse gases emissions, responsible for the rise in temperatures and extreme weather events, by a factor of 10 compared to flying.
An uncertain precedent, despite Dr. Grimalda’s outcome
Lawyer Jörn A. Broschat who defended Dr Grimalda in the lawsuit said:
I am pleased that the flawed decision of the first instance could be revised and that ultimately there was no reason for dismissal. Nevertheless, the legal situation remains uncertain for employees who prefer climate-neutral travel.
This case highlights the growing intersection between labor law and climate-conscious practices. It represents a milestone in the emerging discussion about the rights of employees to stand up for their climate principles as part of their professional obligations.
It is time for lawmakers and collective bargaining parties to take these beliefs more into account and enshrine them as labor rights. This is just the beginning of undoubtedly numerous labor law decisions that will address the complex interplay between climate change and the interests of employees and employers.
On Friday 17 January, the Palestine Action #Filton18 political prisoners will appear at the Old Bailey, London, to enter their pleas for the first time since their arrest.
Palestine Action: #Filton18 in court
They are expected to plead ‘not guilty’ to charges of aggravated burglary, criminal damage and, for some, violent disorder, after an August action againstIsrael’s Elbit Systems research hub in Filton, Bristol.
The action saw activists enter the site, operated by Israel’s largest weapons company, and dismantle the weapons of war inside – including the Elbit ‘quadcopter’ models used for targeted killings of children in Gaza.
Ten of the #Filton18 have been imprisoned since their arrest in August 2024, with a further eight arrested and imprisoned since November, all of them subjected to abuse of ‘Counter Terror’ powers by the British State.
The Crown Prosecution Service are alleging that the charges faced have a ‘terrorism connection’. Amnesty International has stated that the Filton case demonstrates “terrorism powers being misused” to “circumvent normal legal protections, such as justifying holding people in excessively-lengthy pre-charge detention”.
The #Filton18 political prisoners have been subjected to arbitrary and repressive treatment while inside prison – including the withholding of phone calls and mail, prohibitions on communicating with other prisoners, and denials of religious practices and medical privacy.
‘Battle-tested’
Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company, is deeply complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza – providing over 85% of Israel’s armed drones, along with a wide range of munitions, armaments, and military equipment, all of which it markets internationally as having been “battle-tested” on Palestinians.
From Britain, the subsidiary ‘Elbit Systems UK’ is a major exporter to Israel of military drone components, along with arms including weapons sights. The Filton weapons hub was opened in July 2023, with Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotevelyin attendance praising the site for the “very best of Israeli technology”, alongside Elbit’s CEO Bezalel Machlis.
If you want to show support for the #Filton18, be at the Old Bailey, City of London, EC4M 7EH on Friday 17 January at 9:30am.
It cost the American taxpayer $24 million to find out what we knew all along: politics is corrupt.
After four years of being subjected to special prosecutor Jack Smith’s dogged investigation into alleged election interference by Donald Trump, the Justice Department has concluded that Trump would have been convicted of breaking the lawif only he hadn’t gotten re-elected.
In other words, the Deep State wins again.
The revelation here is not that Trump broke the law but the extent to which sitting presidents get a free pass when it comes to misconduct.
None of this is news.
The Deep State has been operating from this exact same playbook for decades, regardless of which party has occupied the White House.
This is how we ended up with an imperial president—empowered to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability—and why “we the people” keep finding ourselves mired in a political swamp of lies, graft, cronyism and corruption.
George Orwell, who died 75 years ago on Jan. 21, 1950, must be rolling in his grave.
In the 75 years since George Orwell died, his works of dystopian fiction—which warn against rampant abuse of power, mind control and mass manipulation coupled with the rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism—have become operation manuals for power-hungry political regimes wedded to the corporate state.
While Orwell’s novel 1984 foreshadowed the rise of an omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state, his novel Animal Farm aptly sums up the state of politics today, propped up by a two-party system designed to maintain the illusion that voting matters.
Orwell understood what many Americans, caught up in their partisan flag-waving, are still struggling to come to terms with: that there is no such thing as a government organized for the good of the people—even the best intentions among those in government inevitably give way to the desire to maintain power and control at all costs.
As Orwell explains:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power… We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
No doubt about it: the revolution was successful.
That January 6, 2021 attempt by President Trump and his followers to overturn the election results was not the revolution, however.
Those who answered President Trump’s call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys, manipulated into creating the perfect crisis for the Deep State—a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State—to amass even greater powers.
It was a set-up, folks.
The Justice Department’s policy of not prosecuting a sitting president was the tell.
The only coup d’etat to undermine the will of the people happened when our government “of the people, by the people, for the people” was overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, techno-corporate state that is in cahoots with a government “of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations.”
This swamp is of the Deep State’s making to such an extent that every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought lock, stock and barrel and made to dance to the Deep State’s tune.
Joe Biden was no different: his job was to keep the Deep State in power.
Trump’s return to the White House has already thrown wide the gates to all manner of swampiness.
Follow the money. It always points the way.
This brings us back to Orwell’s Animal Farm, which turns 80 this year.
Originally titled a fairy story, the satirical allegory recounts the revolutionary struggle of a group of farm animals living in squalor and neglect on a poorly run farm managed by a derelict farmer.
Hoping to create a society where all animals are equal, the farm animals mount a revolution, ejecting the farmer, taking control of the farm, establishing their own Bill of Rights, and operating under the mantra “four legs good, two legs bad.” Not surprisingly, as is the case with most revolutions, the new boss—a pig named Napoleon—turns out to be no different from their old human oppressor. Over time, a ruling class of pigs comes to dominate on the farm, which is policed by dogs, with the pigs starting to dress, walk and talk like their human counterparts. Eventually, the pigs forge an alliance with their former two-legged adversaries in order to maintain their power over the rest of the farm animals. Before long, the pigs’ transformation into two-legged overlords is complete: “they were all alike.”
“No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs,” writes Orwell. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Much like the gullible, easily led creatures of Animal Farm, we find ourselves being brainwashed into believing that the tyrannies meted out against us are for our own good; that the trials are tribulations we experience at the hands of the ruling elite are privileges for which we should feel grateful; and that our bondage to the Deep State is actually, appearances to the contrary, freedom.
Over time, without their realizing it, the Seven Commandments of liberation and equality that were so central to Animal Farm’s revolutionary movement are whittled down to a single commandment: “ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.”
‘In Gaza, only UNRWA has the infrastructure to distribute aid to scale, such as vehicles, warehouses, distribution centres and staff. However, Israeli authorities are making this extremely difficult,’ writes Chris Gunness.
In the last week of January, two Knesset bills ending Israel’s “cooperation” with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) are scheduled to come into force.
If they do, UNRWA’s activities in the territory of the state of Israel would be illegal under Israeli law and any Israeli official or institution engaging with the agency would be breaking the law.
In a letter to the president of the General Assembly in October, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, revealed he had written to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging his government to take the necessary steps to avoid the legislation being implemented.
He also expressed concern that these laws would harm UNRWA’s ability to deliver life-saving services in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
This provoked a detailed response from Israel’s UN Ambassador in New York, Danny Dannon, who responded laying out Israel’s strategic planning pursuant to the Knesset bills.
UNRWA to be expelled from Jerusalem Much about Israel’s strategy was already known, for example its plan to eliminate UNRWA in Gaza and deliver services through a combination of other UN agencies, such as the World Food Programme (WFP) along with the Israeli military and private sector companies.
Dannon made clear that the occupying authorities plan to take over UNRWA facilities in Jerusalem.
According to UNRWA’s website, these include 10 schools, three primary health clinics and a training centre. Students would likely be sent to Israeli schools for the Palestinian population of occupied East Jerusalem, whose curricula have been subject to “Judaisistation” in contravention of Israel’s international humanitarian law obligations to the occupied population.
There is also a major question mark over UNRWA’s massive headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah.
The UNRWA compound, which contains several huge warehouses for humanitarian goods, has been subjected to arson attacks in recent months, which forced it to shut down.
Nonetheless, it seems UNRWA’s Jerusalem HQ may be shut down in the face of Israeli threats, violence and pressure. Staff are being told to relocate to offices in Amman as a result of a performance review and UNRWA says its Jerusalem HQ was only ever temporary.
But a recent communication from UNRWA to its donors makes clear that the agency is ceding to Israeli intimidation: “While the review of HQ functions has been underway for a number of years, the review and decision has been fast-tracked as a result of the administrative and operational challenges experienced by the agency throughout 2024, including visa issuance, visa duration and lack of issuing diplomatic ID cards.
“These challenges have inhibited our effectiveness to work as a Headquarters in Jerusalem.”
De facto annexation If UNRWA is expelled from East Jerusalem, this would have potentially devastating impact on over 63,000 Palestinian refugees who depend on its services.
Moreover, it would have profound political significance, particularly for the global Islamic community because it would set the seal on Israel’s illegal annexation of Jerusalem, home to Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam.
It would also be a violation of the ruling last July by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) demanding that the occupation ends.
The annexation of Jerusalem as the “eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish state” which began with the occupation in 1967, would become another illegal fact on the ground.
Crucially, Jerusalem will have been unilaterally removed from whatever is left of the Middle East Peace Process.
Arab governments, particularly Saudi Arabia and Jordan, must therefore act now, and decisively, to save their holy city. The loss of Jerusalem will undoubtedly provoke a violent reaction among Palestinians and likely lead to calls for jihad more widely. In the context of an explosive Middle East this can only engender further destabilising tensions for governments in the region.
I therefore call on Saudi Arabia to make the scrapping of the Knesset legislation a precondition in the normalisation negotiations with Israel. The Saudi administration must make this clear to Netanyahu and insist that for Muslims, Jerusalem is sacrosanct, and that the expulsion of UNRWA is a step too far.
The Trump transition team has already been warned of the looming catastrophe if Israel is allowed to destroy UNRWA’s operations, and I urge Arab leaders to insist with their Saudi interlocutors that the regional fallout from this feature prominently in the normalisation talks.
Lack of contingency planning Meanwhile, the senior UN leadership has adopted the position that the responsibility to deliver aid is Israel’s as the occupying power. To the consternation of UNRWA staffers, substantive inter-agency discussions across the humanitarian system about a UN-led day-after plan have effectively been banned.
For Palestinians against whom a genocide is being committed, this feels like abandonment and betrayal — a sense compounded by suspicions that UNRWA international staff may be forced to leave Gaza at a time of mass starvation.
Similar conclusions were reached by Dr Lex Takkenberg, senior advisor with Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD), and other researchers who have just completed an as yet unpublished assessment of the implications of Israel’s ban on UNRWA, based on interviews with a large number of UNRWA staff and other experts.
Their study confirms that with the lack of contingency planning, the suffering of the Palestinian population, particularly in Gaza, will increase dramatically, as the backbone of the humanitarian operation crumbles without an alternative structure in place.
Contrary to UNRWA, Israel has been doing a great deal of contingency planning with non-UNRWA agencies such as WFP, which are under strong US pressure to take over aid imports from UNRWA. As a result, the amount of aid taken into Gaza by UNRWA has reduced significantly.
In Gaza, only UNRWA has the infrastructure to distribute aid to scale, such as vehicles, warehouses, distribution centres and staff.
However, Israeli authorities are making this extremely difficult. They claim to be “deconflicting” aid deliveries, but according to UN sources there is clear evidence that Israeli soldiers are firing on vehicles and allowing criminal gangs to plunder convoys with impunity.
Thus Israeli officials are able to say to journalists whom they have barred from seeing the truth in Gaza, that they are allowing in all the aid Gaza needs, but that UNRWA is unfit for purpose. This lie has gone unchallenged in the international media.
Further implications According to Takkenberg, “Mr Guterres’s strategy of calling on Israel as the occupying power to deliver aid has backfired and is inflicting untold suffering on the Palestinians.
“The strategy also feels misplaced, given that Israel is accused of genocide in the UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, and is facing expulsion from the UN General Assembly”.
He adds that Israel “has exploited the UN’s strategy as part of its campaign of starvation and genocide.”
In the face of this, I call on the Secretary-General to mobilise the UN system. He has said repeatedly that UNRWA is the backbone of the UN’s humanitarian strategy, that the agency is indispensable and key to regional stability.
It is time for the UNSG to walk the walk.
He must use his powers under Article 99 of the UN charter, granted precisely for these circumstances, to call the Security Council into emergency session and make his demand that the Knesset legislation must not be implemented the top agenda item. The General Assembly which gives UNRWA its mandate must also be called into session.
Though Guterres faces huge pressure from Israel’s powerful allies, he must stand up on behalf of a people the UN is mandated to protect and double down on those who are complicit in genocide.
The UN’s policy in Gaza along with acceptance of Jerusalem’s annexation with impunity for Israel, has major implications for its credibility and I confidently predict it will lead to further attacks by Israel on other UN agencies, such as the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which has long been an irritant to the Tel Aviv administration.
The de facto annexation of Jerusalem will also see an erosion of the international rule of law.
In its advisory opinion in July last year, the ICJ concluded that Israel is not entitled to exercise sovereign powers in any part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory on account of its occupation. In addition, the expulsion of UNRWA would be in violation of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which obliges Israel as a signatory, to cooperate with UN Agencies such as UNRWA.
The UN’s historic responsibility to the Palestinians Already, through its attack on UNRWA Israel is attempting unilaterally to remove the Palestinian refugees, their history, their identity and their inalienable right of return from the peace process.
As I have argued many times, this will fail. So must Israel’s unilateral attempt to take Jerusalem off the negotiating table by expelling UNRWA and completing its illegal annexation of the city.
That would see the international community and the UN abandoning its historic responsibilities to the Palestinian people and can only lead to further suffering and instability in a chronically unstable Middle East. The Muslim world must act decisively and swiftly. The clock is ticking.
Chris Gunness served as UNRWA’s Director of Communications and Advocacy from 2007 until 2020. This article was first published in The New Arab.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s coalition government has introduced a bill to criminalise “improper conduct for or on behalf of a foreign power” or foreign interference that echoes earlier Cold War times, and could capture critics of New Zealand’s foreign and defence policy, especially if they liaise with a “foreign country”.
It is a threat to our democracy and here is why.
Two new offences are:
Offence 78AAA — a person thus charged must include all three of the following key elements — they:
know, or ought to know, they are acting for a foreign state, and
act in a covert, deceptive, coercive, or corruptive manner, and
intend to, or are aware that they are likely to, harm New Zealand interests specified in the offence through their actions OR are reckless as to whether their conduct harms New Zealand’s interests.
Offence 78AAB – a person thus charged must commit:
any imprisonable offence intending to OR being reckless as to whether doing so is likely to provide a relevant benefit to a foreign power.
New Zealand’s “interests” include its democratic processes, its economy, rights provisions, as well as its defence and security. A “Foreign Power” ranges from a foreign government to an association supporting a political party; “relevant benefit to a foreign power” includes advancing “the coercive influence of a foreign power over persons in or outside New Zealand”.
New Zealand’s “interests” include its democratic processes, its economy, rights provisions, as well as its defence and security. A “Foreign Power” ranges from a foreign government to an association supporting a political party; “relevant benefit to a foreign power” includes advancing “the coercive influence of a foreign power over persons in or outside New Zealand”.
The bill also extends laws on publication of classified information, changes “official” information to “relevant” information, increases powers of unwarranted searches by authorities, and allows charging of people outside of New Zealand who “owe allegiance to the Sovereign in right of New Zealand” and aid and abet a non-New Zealander to carry out a “relevant act” of espionage, treason and inciting to mutiny even if the act is not in fact carried out.
Why this legislation is dangerous 1. Much of the language is vague and the terms subjective. How should we establish what an individual ‘ought to have known’ or whether he or she is being “reckless”? It is entirely possible to be a loyal New Zealand and hold a different view to that of the government of the day about “New Zealand’s interests” and “security”.
This proposed legislation is potentially highly undemocratic and a threat to free speech and freedom of association. Ironically the legislation is a close copy of similar legislation passed in Australia in 2018 and it reflects the messaging about “foreign interference” promoted by our Five Eyes partners.
How should we distinguish “foreign interference” from the multitude of ways in which other states seek to influence our trade, aid, foreign affairs and defence policies? It is not plausible that the motivation behind this legislation is to limit Western pressure on New Zealand to water down its nuclear free policy.
Or to ensure that its defence forces are interoperable with those of its allies and to be part of military exercises in the South China Sea. Or to host spyware tools on behalf of the United States. Or to sign trade agreements that favour US based corporates.
The government openly supports these activities, so it seems that the legislation is aimed at foreign interference from current geostrategic “enemies”. Which ones? China, Russia, Iran?
The introduction of a bill to criminalise foreign interference has echoes of earlier Cold War times as it has the potential to criminalise members of friendship organisations that seek to improve understanding and cooperation with people in countries such as China, Russia or North Korea.
It is entirely possible that their efforts could be seen as engaging in conduct “for or on behalf of” a foreign power.
There is also real concern is that this legislation could capture critics of New Zealand’s foreign and defence policy, especially if they liaise with a “foreign country”. There is a global movement of resistance to economic sanctions on Cuba and other countries including Venezuela, and North Korea.
Supporters are likely to liaise with representatives of those countries, and perhaps circulate their material. Could that be considered harming New Zealand’s interests? The inclusion of such vague wording (Clause 78AAB) as “enhancing the influence” of a foreign power is chilling in its potential to silence open debate, and especially dissent or protest.
The legislation is unnecessary Existing law already criminalises espionage which intentionally prejudices the security or defence of New Zealand. There are also laws to cover pressurising others by blackmail, corruption, and threats of violence or threats of harm to people and property.
It is true that diaspora critics of authoritarian regimes come under pressure from their home governments. Such governments seek to silence their critics who are outside their jurisdiction by threatening harm to their families still living in the home country.
But it is not clear how New Zealand law could prevent this as it cannot protect people who are not within its jurisdiction. This is something which diaspora citizens and overseas students studying here must be acutely conscious of. This issue is one for diplomacy and negotiation rather than law.
A threat to democracy The terms sedition and subversion have gone into disuse and are no longer part of our law.
They were used in the past to criminalise some and ensure that others were subject to intrusive surveillance.
In essence both terms justified State actions against dissidents or those who held an alternative vision of how society should be ordered. In Cold War times the State was particularly exercised with those who championed communist ideas, took an interest in the Soviet Union or China or associated with Communists.
Those who associated with Soviet diplomats or attended functions at the Soviet Embassy would often be subject to SIS surveillance.
While mediator Qatar says a Gaza ceasefire deal is at the closest point it has been in the past few months — adding that many of the obstacles in the negotiations have been ironed out — a special report for Drop Site News reveals the escalation in attacks on Palestinians in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Mariam Barghouti in Jenin for Drop Site News
On December 28, 21-year-old Palestinian journalist Shatha Sabbagh was standing on the stairs of her home on the outskirts of the Jenin refugee camp when she was shot and killed.
The bullets weren’t fired by Israeli troops but, according to eyewitnesses and forensic evidence, by Palestinian Authority security forces.
The Palestinian Authority has been conducting a large-scale military operation in Jenin since early December, dubbing it “Operation Homeland Protection”.
A stronghold of Palestinian armed resistance in the occupied West Bank, the city of Jenin and the refugee camp within it have been repeatedly raided, bombed, and besieged by the Israeli military in an attempt to crush the Jenin Brigade — a politically diverse militant group of mostly third-generation refugees who believe armed resistance is key to liberating Palestinian lands from Israeli occupation and annexation.
Over the past 15 months, the Israeli military has killed at least 225 Palestinians in Jenin, making it the deadliest area in the West Bank.
The real aim, residents say, is to crush Palestinian armed resistance at the behest of Israel. Dubbed the “Wasps’ Nest” by Israeli officials, Jenin refugee camp has posed a constant threat to Israel’s settler colonial project.
But the current operation, which is being billed as a campaign to “restore law and order,” is the longest and most lethal assault by Palestinian security forces in recent memory. While the PA claims to be rooting out armed factions and individuals accused of being “Iranian-backed outlaws,” according to multiple residents and eyewitnesses, the operation is a suffocating siege, with indiscriminate violence, mass arrests, and collective punishment.
Sixteen Palestinians have been killed so far, with security forces setting up checkpoints around the city and refugee camp, cutting electricity to the area, and engaging in fierce gun battles. Among those killed are six members of the security forces and one resistance fighter, Yazeed Ja’aysa.
Yet the overwhelming majority of those killed have been civilians, including Sabbagh, and at least three children — Majd Zeidan, 16, Qasm Hajj, 14, and Mohammad Al-Amer, 13.
“It’s reached levels I have never seen before. Even journalists aren’t allowed to cover it,” M., 24, a local journalist and resident of Jenin, told Drop Site News on condition of anonymity for fear of being arrested or targeted by PA security forces.
Dozens of residents, including journalists, have been arrested from Jenin and across the West Bank by the PA in the past six weeks under the pretext of supporting the so-called Iranian-backed “outlaws.”
PA security forces spokesperson Brigadier-General Anwar Rajab has justified the assault as “in response to the supreme national interest of the Palestinian people, and within the framework of ongoing continued efforts to maintain security and civil peace, establish the rule of law, and eradicate sedition and chaos”.
‘Wasps’ Nest’ threat to Israel’s settler colonial project
But the real aim, residents say, is to crush Palestinian armed resistance at the behest of Israel. Dubbed the “Wasps’ Nest” by Israeli officials, Jenin refugee camp has posed a constant threat to Israel’s settler colonial project.
Just one week into the operation, on December 12, PA security forces shot and killed the first civilian, 19-year-old Ribhi Shalabi, and injured his 15-year-old brother in the head. Although the PA initially denied killing Shalabi and claimed he was targeting its security forces with IEDs, video captured by CCTV shows Ribhi being shot execution-style while riding his Vespa.
The PA later admitted to killing Shalabi, saying “the Palestinian National Authority bears full responsibility for his martyrdom, and announces that it is committed to dealing with the repercussions of the incident in a manner consistent with and in accordance with the law, ensuring justice and respect for rights”.
Just two days later, the PA began escalating their attack on Jenin. At approximately 5:00 am on December 14, the Palestinian Authority officially declared the large-scale operation, dubbing it “Himayat Watan” or “Homeland Protection.”
By 8:00 am, Jenin refugee camp was under siege and two more Palestinians had been killed, including prominent Palestinian resistance fighter Yazeed Ja’aisa, and 13-year-old Mohammad Al-Amer. At least two other children were injured with live ammunition.
The roads leading to Jenin are now riddled with Israeli checkpoints while the entrance to the city is surrounded by PA armoured vehicles and security forces brandishing assault rifles, their faces hidden behind black balaclavas.
Eerily reminiscent of past Israeli incursions, snipers fire continuously from within the PA security headquarters toward the refugee camp just to the west, sending the sound of live ammunition echoing through the city. The PA also imposed a curfew on the city of Jenin, warning residents that anyone moving in the streets would be shot.
PA counterterrorism units have also been stationed at the entrance to Jenin’s public hospital, while the National Guard blocked roads with armoured vehicles and personnel carriers, denying entry to journalists.
When I attempted to reach the hospital on December 14 with another journalist to gather information for Drop Site on the injuries sustained during the earlier firefight and follow up on the killing of Al-Amer, the 13-year-old, armed and masked PA security forces claimed the area was a closed security zone. When we attempted to carry out field interviews outside the camp instead, two armed men in civilian clothing who identified themselves as members of the mukhabarat — Palestinian General Intelligence — requested that we leave the area.
“If you stay here, you might get shot by the outlaws,” he warned. Yet, from where we stood between the hospital, the PA security headquarters, and Jenin refugee camp, the only bullets being fired were coming from the direction of the PA headquarters towards the camp.
PA security forces also appear to have been using one of the hospital wards as a makeshift detention center where detainees are being mistreated. While Brigadier-General Rajab, the PA’s spokesperson, denied this; several young men detained by the PA told Drop Site they were taken to the third floor of Jenin public hospital where they were interrogated and beaten.
“They kept asking me about the fighters,” said A., a 31-year-old medical service provider from Jenin refugee camp, who says he was held for hours, blindfolded, and denied legal representation.
“They kept beating me, cursing at me, asking me questions that I don’t have answers for.”
Fear of being arrested, abused again
Since his arbitrary detention, A. has not returned to work out of fear of being arrested and abused again.
According to residents, the PA also stationed snipers in the hospital, firing at the camp from inside the facility. During the past six weeks, according to interviews with several medics in Jenin, PA security forces shot at medics, burned two medical vehicles, beat paramedics, and detained medical workers throughout the siege.
“What exactly are they protecting?” Abu Yasir, 50, asks as he stands outside the hospital, waiting for any news of the security operation to end.
A father of three, Abu Yasir grew up in the Jenin refugee camp. “There are people being killed in the camp just for being there. They didn’t do anything,” he told Drop Site as he burst into tears.
By December 14, with Operation Homeland Protection entering its 10th day, families in the refugee camp had run out of food, the chronically ill needed life-saving medication, and with electricity and water punitively cut from the camp, families found themselves under siege and increasingly desperate.
Women and their children tried to protest in an attempt to break the PA-imposed blockade. They also wanted to challenge the PA’s claim of targeting outlaws. As the women gathered in the dark towards the edge of the camp, several men worked to fix an electricity box to restore power to the camp.
When the lights came on, cheers echoed in the camp — but barely 15 minutes later, PA forces shot at the box, plunging the area into darkness again.
Denying electricity for families
According to residents of the camp, over the course of 10 days, the PA shot at the electric power boxes more than a dozen times, denying families electricity just as temperatures began to plummet.
Elderly women confronted soldiers of the Special Administrative Tasks squad (SAT), a specialised branch of the PA security forces, SAT is trained by the Office of the United States Security Coordinator (USSC) and is responsible for coordinating operations with the United States and Israel, including joint-operations and intelligence sharing.
“I yelled at them,” said Umm Salamah, 62. “They burst through the door, and at first, I thought they were Israelis’” she told Drop Site, pointing to the destroyed door. “I told them I have children in the house. But they forced their way in.
“I told them we already have the Israeli army constantly raiding us, and now you?”
Not only were homes raided, according to Umm Salameh, but PA security forces also fired at water tanks, effectively cutting water supplies to the camp. Jenin refugee camp had already been severely damaged in the last Israeli invasion, during which Israeli military and border-police bulldozed the city’s civilian infrastructure, turning streets into hills of rubble.
Operation Homeland Protection comes just three months following “Operation Summer Camps,” Israel’s large-scale military operation between August and October.
Under the pretext of targeting “Iran-backed terrorists,” Israeli forces destroyed large swathes of civilian infrastructure in the northern districts of the West Bank, namely Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus and Tubas, and killed more than 150 Palestinians over three months, a fifth of whom were children.
Protest over ‘outlaws’ framing
Outside in the mud-filled streets, the group of women began to chant “Kateebeh!” (Brigade) in support of the Jenin Brigade, and in protest of the PA’s attempt to frame them as “outlaws” and a “threat to national security.”
Within minutes, the SAT unit responded with teargas and stun grenades fired directly at the crowd, which included journalists clearly marked with fluorescent PRESS insignia. While elderly women tripped and fell to the ground, children ran back towards the camp as PA security forces kept lobbing stun grenades at the fleeing crowd.
In an interview with Drop Site that evening, Brigadier-General Rajab affirmed that “this operation comes to achieve its goals which are the reclaiming of safety and security of Palestinians and reclaiming Jenin refugee camp from the outlaws that kidnapped it and spread corruption in it while threatening the lives of civilians.”
Days later, the PA had expanded its operations to Tulkarem, where clashes between resistance fighters and PA security forces erupted on December 19. This came just one day following an Israeli airstrike which killed three Palestinian fighters in Tulkarem refugee camp: Dusam Al-Oufi, Mohammad Al-Oufi, and Mohammad Rahayma.
On December 22, Saher Irheil, a Palestinian officer in the PA’s presidential guard was killed in Jenin, and two others injured.
According to official state media and statements by the PA, Lieutenant Irheil was killed by the “outlaws” of Jenin refugee camp. Brigadier-General Rajab claimed “this heinous crime will only increase [the PA’s] determination to pursue those outside the law and impose the rule of law, in order to preserve the security and safety of our people.”
By military order, speakers from mosques across the West Bank echoed in a public tribute to the fallen officer. The same was not done for those killed by the PA, including Shalabi, the 19-year-old whom the PA dubbed “a martyr of the nation” after being forced to admit they killed him.
That week, PA security forces escalated their attack on the Jenin refugee camp, using rocket-propelled grenades and firing indiscriminately at families sheltering in their own homes. PA security officers even posted photos and videos of themselves online, similar to those taken by Israeli soldiers while invading the camp in August and September.
On December 23, security forces shot and killed 16-year-old Majd Zeidan while he was returning to his home from a nearby corner store. The PA claimed Zeidan was an Iranian-backed saboteur.
Killed teenager had bag of chips
“They killed him, then said he was a 26-year-old Iranian-backed outlaw,” Zeidan’s mother, Yusra, told Drop Site. “Look,” she said while pulling her son’s ID card from her pocket. “My son was 16 years old, killed while returning from the store with a bag of chips.”
According to Yusra, not only was her son killed, but her brother who lives in Nablus, was arrested by the PA a few days later for holding a wake for his slain nephew.
“The Preventative Security are detaining my brother because he was mourning a mukhareb,” she said. The term “mukhareb” which roughly translates to “saboteur” is a term derived from the Israeli term “mekhablim” which is commonly used when arresting Palestinians.
The funeral of journalist Shatha Sabbagh who was shot and killed on December 28 in Jenin. The journalist carrying her body the next day on the left (Jarrah Khallaf) was later arrested by the PA. Image: The photographer chose to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal by the PA/Drop Site News
A few days later, on December 28, Shatha Sabbagh, a young journalist, was shot and killed as she stood on the stairs of her home at the edges of the camp. Official PA statements claim that Sabbagh was killed by resistance fighters, not its security forces.
However, accounts by eyewitnesses and the victim’s family belie those claims.
According to testimonies from her family and residents, Sabbagh was killed while holding her 18-month-old nephew; her sister lives nearby, on Mahyoub Street in the refugee camp — the same area PA snipers were targeting. Initial autopsy findings shared with Drop Site show that the bullet that struck her came from the area in which PA snipers were positioned in the camp.
Known for her reliable reporting during both Israeli and PA raids on Jenin, local residents claim that PA loyalists had been inciting against Sabbagh for some time. Further inflaming tensions, Sabbagh’s killing underscored the risks faced by Palestinian journalists in documenting what the PA would rather conceal.
Soon afterward, Brigadier-General Rajab spoke about the killing of Sabbagh in a live interview with Al Jazeera. He turned off his camera and left the interview, however, as soon as Sabbagh’s mother was brought on air. Sabbagh’s mother, Umm Al-Mutasem, was next to her daughter when she was killed.
On January 5, the Magistrate Court of Ramallah announced a suspension of Al Jazeera’s broadcasting operations in the West Bank, citing a “failure to meet regulations.” This move followed Israel’s closure of Al Jazeera offices during Operation Summer Camps in September of last year.
100 Palestinians arrested in operation
The Preventative Security, an internal intelligence organisation led by the Minister of Interior, and part of the Palestinian Security Services, arrested more than a hundred Palestinians as part of Operation Homeland Protection, including five journalists in Nablus and Jenin. Palestinians were summoned and interrogated, at times tortured, and detained without legal representation.
The PA not only targeted residents of the camp, but also expanded its repressive campaign to target anyone that would sympathise with the camp or is suspected of having any solidarity with the armed resistance.
Amro Shami, 22, who was arrested by the PA from his home in Jenin on December 25 had markings of torture on his body during his court hearing in the Nablus Court the following day. Shami was reported to have bruising on his body and was unable to lift his arms in court.
Despite appeals by his lawyer, the court denied Amro release on bail. Amro’s lawyer was only able to visit 15 days later when he reported additional torture against Amro, including breaking his leg.
An armed resistance fighter of the Jenin Brigade in Jenin refugee camp last month. Image: The photographer chose to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal by the PA/Drop Site News
At the very end of December, as the operation stretched into its fifth week, journalists were able to enter the camp at their own risk. With water and electricity cut off, families huddled outside, burning wood and paper in old metal barrels to try and keep warm.
The camp reeked with uncollected trash piled in the alleyways due to the PA cutting all social services from the camp.
Inside the camp, armed resistance fighters patrolled the streets. After confirming our IDs as journalists they helped us move safely in the dark.
“In the beginning there were clashes between the Brigade and the PA, but we told them we are willing to collaborate with anything that does not harm the community,” H., a 26-year-old fighter with the brigade, told Drop Site. The young fighter was referring to the PA’s claims that they are targeting “outlaws”, in which the Jenin Brigade agreed to hand over anyone that is indeed breaking the law.
However, the PA seemed more interested in the resistance fighters.
Spokesmen of the Jenin Brigade have made several public statements informing the PA that as long as the operation was not targeting resistance efforts, they would fully comply and coordinate to ensure law and order.
‘We are with the law . . . but which law?’
“We are with the law, we are not outside the law. We are with the enforcement of law, but which law? When an Israeli jeep comes into Jenin to kill me, where are you as law enforcement?”
Abu Issam, a spokesman for the Jenin Brigade told Drop Site: “As I speak right now, the PA armoured vehicles and jeeps are parked over our planted IEDs, and we are not detonating them,” he said.
A former member of the PA presidential guard, Abu Issam is no stranger to the PA’s repressive tactics to quell resistance.
“Our compass is clear, it’s against the occupation,” he said. “Come protect us from the Israeli settlers, and by all means here is my gun as a gift. Get them out of our lands, and execute me.
“We were surprised with the demands of the PA. They offered us three choices: to turn ourselves in along with our weapons, offering us jobs for amnesty; to leave the camp and allow the PA to take over; or to confront them.
“We have no choice but to confront,” he says, holding his M16 to his chest. “We want a dignified life, a free life, not a life of security coordination with our oppressors,” H. said.
By the second week of January, not only did the PA expand its security operations to Tulkarem and Tubas, but intensified its violence against Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp as well.
On January 3, PA snipers shot and killed 43-year-old Mahmoud Al-Jaqlamousi and his 14-year-son, Qasm, as they were gathering water. Two days later, PA security forces began burning homes of residents near the Ghubz quarter of the camp.
“Why burn it? I didn’t build this home in an hour, it was years of work, why burn it?” Issam Abu Ameira asks while standing in front of the charred walls of his home.
The operation, ostensibly intended to restore security and order, has instead brought devastation, raising troubling questions about governance and resistance in the West Bank.
“This is not solely the PA. This is also the United States and Israel’s attempt to crush resistance in the West Bank,” H. said. Like him, other fighters find the timing of the operation to be questionable.
“This is an organisation that negotiated with the occupation for more than 30 years, but can’t sit and talk with the Jenin refugee camp for 30 hours?” Abu Al-Nathmi, a spokesperson for the Jenin Brigade, said as he huddled inside the camp while fighters patrolled around us and live ammunition fired continuously in the area.
‘PA acting like group of gangs’
“The PA is acting like a group of gangs, each trying to prove their power and dominance at the expense of Jenin refugee camp,” Abu Al-Nathmi tells Drop Site. “Right now the PA is trying to prove itself to the United States to take over Gaza, but there was no position taken to defend Gaza.”
While the PA continued its attack on Jenin refugee camp, the Israeli military waged military operations on the neighboring villages of Jenin, as well as Tubas and Tulkarem where 11 Palestinians were killed in the first week of January, three of whom were children.
In the 39 days since the PA launched Operation Homeland Protection, more than 40 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military in the West Bank, including six children. Over that same time period, Israeli courts have issued confiscation orders for thousands of hectares of land belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank.
The PA is failing to provide protection to the Palestinian people against continuous settler expansion and amid an ongoing genocide in Gaza, residents of the Jenin refugee camp say.
“The PA is claiming they don’t want what happened to Gaza to happen here, but here we are dying a hundred times,” Abu Amjad, 50, told Drop Site. Huddled near a fire outside the rubble of his home, he cries “we are being humiliated, attacked, beaten, and told there’s nothing we can do about it. In this way, it’s better to die.”
Mariam Barghouti is a writer and a journalist based in the West Bank. She is a member of the Marie Colvin Journalist Network. This article was first published by Drop News.
Environmental charities including the RSPB and the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) have called out the Scottish government’s ‘abject failure’ to meet the access to justice requirements of the UN Aarhus Convention.
Scottish government is failing over access to justice
In 2021, the Convention’s compliance committee gave Scotland six recommendations to remove barriers that are preventing people from taking environmental cases to court. The UK’s final progress report confirms none of the recommendations have been met and it remains ‘prohibitively expensive’ to access justice.
Scotland, as part of the UK, is a signatory to the Aarhus Convention, a UN treaty that guarantees people’s rights to access information, participate in decision-making and access justice in environmental matters.
Following the most recent ruling of non-compliance by the Convention’s governing bodies in 2021, the Scottish government was required to make access to justice affordable, reform time limits for judicial review and reform planning permissions by the deadline of 1 October 2024.
Yet the UK’s Final Progress Report to the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee (ACCC) confirmed that Scotland has made only minor modifications to legal expenses and no concrete commitments for future reform.
Comments on the UK report, submitted jointly by the RSPB, ERCS and Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland, have been scathing in their assessment of government action to date, with signatories remarking that they are ‘deeply concerned and frustrated that, as a whole, the UK has failed to make any tangible progress’.
Access to justice remains unaffordable for two main reasons.
First, it is incredibly difficult to access legal aid for environmental cases.
Second, the ‘loser pays’ rule means that litigants are liable to pay their opponents fees if they lose their case which can cost tens of thousands of pounds.
The ACCC has clearly stated that this causes a ‘chilling effect’ – deterring individuals and organisations taking legal action, even if they have a strong case to do so.
Shivali Fifield, Chief Officer at ERCS, said:
Upholding our environmental rights in court is the ultimate guarantee of the rule of law. Without this credible threat, polluters can act with impunity.
Scotland, as part of the UK, has been a signatory to the Aarhus Convention for nearly two decades, but despite repeated warnings from legal experts and campaigners, it has a record of abject failure when it comes to delivering the reforms needed to guarantee access to justice for environmental cases. After years of broken promises, it would be easy to think that the government is threatened by adhering to international law and making access to justice affordable. If they truly believe in community empowerment and a just transition to net zero, they must make our legal system work for people and planet.
Aedán Smith, Head of Policy & Advocacy at RSPB Scotland, said:
Scotland is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world and we are continuing to lose nature, with 1 in 9 species at risk of national extinction. Yet, despite welcome progress to improve some legal protections for nature over recent years, it remains extremely difficult for individuals and community groups to challenge poor decisions. The Scottish Government must urgently address this to ensure the laws it has introduced can be implemented effectively and as intended.
Belgian Lebanese activist Dyab Abou Jahjah, the founder of the Hind Rajab Foundation, discusses how the organization seeks to hold Israeli soldiers accountable for war crimes committed in Gaza. Named after a 6-year-old girl who was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza almost a year ago, the Hind Rajab Foundation uses evidence gathered from soldiers’ own social media to build cases against them. The group recently filed a complaint against a soldier in Brazil, leading a local judge to issue an arrest warrant for him that he only avoided by fleeing to Argentina. “Unfortunately, the Israeli government smuggled the soldier out of Brazil, which is, of course, obstructing justice,” Abou Jahjah tells Democracy Now! “We are relentless in seeking justice, and we are very convinced that one day justice also will be served in a court of law.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Belgian Lebanese activist Dyab Abou Jahjah, the founder of the Hind Rajab Foundation, discusses how the organization seeks to hold Israeli soldiers accountable for war crimes committed in Gaza. Named after a 6-year-old girl who was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza almost a year ago, the Hind Rajab Foundation uses evidence gathered from soldiers’ own social media to build cases against them. The group recently filed a complaint against a soldier in Brazil, leading a local judge to issue an arrest warrant for him that he only avoided by fleeing to Argentina. “Unfortunately, the Israeli government smuggled the soldier out of Brazil, which is, of course, obstructing justice,” Abou Jahjah tells Democracy Now! “We are relentless in seeking justice, and we are very convinced that one day justice also will be served in a court of law.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! Audio and was authored by Democracy Now!.
A vigil to mark unjustly imprisoned Just Stop Oil activist Gaie Delap’s 78th birthday was held outside Eastwood Park Prison on Friday 10th January. It came after she was sent back to prison – despite having served her sentence – because of failures of the criminal justice system.
Gaie Delap: an outrage and injustice
The vigil for Gaie a peaceful and dignified Quaker-led occasion accompanied by family and friends:
It is now three weeks since Gaie was arrested and returned to prison following systemic failings in the management of her home detention curfew. These include evidence of deceit on the part of Serco EMS who manage tagging arrangements on behalf of the Ministry of Justice (see our New Year’s statement).
Gaie’s brother, Mick, who visited her last Friday said:
Despite her outrage, tempered with resignation, she tries to stay strong. She knows about the vigil. She is overwhelmed with the messages of support she has received. The best birthday present for her would be that common sense and justice prevail and lead to her re-release.
Lily Pridie, her daughter, had this message for her mother:
Please stay strong and keep your spirits up. We are so proud of you. Thousands of people are supporting you. Let’s hope that something positive comes out as a result of this awful situation.
One of the organisers of the vigil Jo Flanagan said:
The vigil will be supported by dozens of singers from the Climate Choir Movement which started in Bristol. Several of the organisers of this movement are Quakers and know Gaie personally and attend the same Quaker Meeting House in Bristol including the two co- founders. Many of the principles on which the choir it is founded align with Quaker values including peacefully singing ‘truth to power’ and standing up against injustice.
Close friend Mike Campbell added:
Gaie makes it clear too that this is not just about her situation. There are other countless women who are impacted by tagging failures. She told us about a woman released late and then recalled because there was no available bus to get home in time for their curfew. She also witnesses daily the impact of imprisonment on other women, those with mental health problems, addiction issues, mothers separated from their children. Like Gaie, these are women who should not be in prison.
Another birthday present for Gaie arrived early. This was in the form of a song called Eastwood Park Blues, written and performed by the Blue House Buoys, with a call to Shabana Mahmood, the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Timpson, Prisons Minister to ‘free Gaie Delap’. “Dearest Gaie, we shower you with love”, said a spokesperson for group.
‘You should not be in prison on your birthday’
Carla Denyer, Green MP for Bristol Central, said “My heart goes out to Gaie who is spending her 78th birthday behind bars – all because the private company responsible for fitting electronic tags couldn’t find one the right size for her. I know her friends and family are desperate to see her come home. Gaie has not broken bail conditions, neither is she a threat to the public. I find it beyond belief that a solution cannot be found to get Gaie home”:
As Gaie’s MP I have tried everything I can to challenge the decision to send her back to prison – including writing to the prisons minister Lord Timpson and the probation service – and I will continue to push for her release.
Hannah Greer, of the Good Law Project who are crowdfunding for Gaie’s legal fees, said:
You should not be in prison on your birthday. On behalf of the hundreds of supporters whose generosity has so far raised over £20,000 you have our continued support and we send birthday greetings.
Melanie Jameson from Quakers in Criminal Justice who are upholding Gaie on her birthday said “With prisons overflowing, this is no place for peaceful climate protesters. In Gaie’s case, we are appalled that Serco’s failings have led to her recall”.
The first Trump administration launched a sprawling campaign to ferret out leakers, which targeted reporters at CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, plus members of Congress and their staff. But a watchdog report released to The Intercept shows that just days before the 2020 presidential election, senior Justice Department officials signed off on leaks to two favored newspapers with conservative reputations, both owned by the biggest name in right-wing media.
The report, which The Intercept obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, sketches the anatomy of a politically expedient leak authorized at high levels. Such leaks were frequent during Trump 1.0 — as in every other administration, in a tradition dating back to Benjamin Franklin’s days as colonial postmaster — and will certainly continue during Trump 2.0.
So will investigations of embarrassing leaks and prosecutions of disfavored leakers. Conservatives have urged Donald Trump, in the words of the Project 2025 manifesto, to “use all of the tools at [the Justice Department’s] disposal to investigate leaks.”
In late October 2020, three senior Justice Department officials leaked information and documents to the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, both owned by conservative magnate Rupert Murdoch. The leaks concerned investigations into Covid deaths at nursing homes in New York and New Jersey. At the time, state officials alleged that the investigations and the strategic leaks were politically timed.
The inspector general found that the Department of Justice officials leaked “to select reporters, days before an election, non-public DOJ investigative information regarding ongoing DOJ investigative matters,” per a high-level summary of the findings released in December.
On Tuesday, in response to FOIA requests from The Intercept and other outlets, the watchdog released its full investigative findings, including some evidence to support “partisan political motivation.”
The inspector general redacted the names of all three former officials from the report.
One of them is identifiable, however, from social media posts that the inspector general found also violated policy: Kerri Kupec Urbahn, the Justice Department’s former top spokesperson and former Attorney General Bill Barr’s “right hand,” who is now a legal editor at another Murdoch media property, Fox News. (Kupec did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.)
The report describes and quotes from the officials’ discussions as they hashed out a press plan, which included leaking letters about the investigation before they were sent to state officials. The Justice Department officials settled on putting the letters together as a “package” and letting the New York Post “break it,” as one official, identified in the report as a senior official in the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs, wrote in a text in mid-October 2020.
“Will be our last play on them before election but it’s a big one.”
“Will be our last play on them before election but it’s a big one,” the official wrote. A week later, the officials decided not to issue a press release about the letters, but instead to “give it to a reporter ahead of time” as part of maintaining “the upper hand.” Another official replied: “Agreed.”
The inspector general concluded that these and other communications “raise questions about whether the senior officials were motivated by partisan considerations to take and announce certain actions in proximity to the then upcoming 2020 election.” The watchdog referred its findings to the federal Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether any of the officials violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits using government positions for partisan purposes.
The evening of October 27, 2020, the New York Post broke the story as planned, reporting that Department of Justice was demanding more data from New York about Covid deaths in the state’s publicly run nursing homes and also opening an investigation into two of New Jersey’s state-run nursing homes. The story included links to both letters.
“This information was provided to the New York Post — and the New York Post published the piece online — before the Department had even provided the letters to New Jersey and New York officials,” the inspector general noted.
New York’s then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a prominent Trump critic, called foul on the strategic leak to a friendly outlet. “It should come to no one’s surprise that we learned of this letter from the New York Post,” a Cuomo spokesperson told Politico at the time. “They should have figured this out themselves, but there’s an election in a week and this federal government is clearly seeking to deceive and distract any way it can.”
The next day, the DOJ officials leaked the New Jersey letter and non-public details about the New Jersey investigation to the Wall Street Journal, the inspector general found.
Kupec, using her official DOJ account, posted links to both storieson Twitter that evening, which the inspector general deemed an “additional violation.”
All three senior officials either declined to be interviewed by the inspector general or didn’t answer its request, according to the report, as did former attorney general Barr. The inspector general has no authority to compel testimony from former DOJ employees, and referred the misconduct findings to other department components “for any action those offices deem appropriate.”
The orchestrated leaks played out parallel to the DOJ’s efforts, with Barr’s personal authorization, to investigate leakers and journalists. As detailed in another long-awaited inspector general report released last year, between May and November 2020 Barr signed off on seizing eight reporters’ email and phone records without notifying the outlets or providing an opportunity to challenge the dragnet.
One DOJ official told the inspector general that Barr had “made it very clear leak investigations were a priority of the Department.” But as the latest report shows, the Justice Department’s concern about leaks was selective.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! As we continue our discussion of President Jimmy Carter’s legacy, we look at his policies in the Middle East and North Africa, in particular, Israel and Palestine.
On Thursday during the state funeral in Washington, President Carter’s former adviser Stuart Eizenstat praised Carter’s work on facilitating the Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978.
STUART EIZENSTAT: Jimmy Carter’s most lasting achievement, and the one I think he was most proud of, was to bring the first peace to the Middle East through the greatest act of personal diplomacy in American history, the Camp David Accords.
For 13 days and nights, he negotiated with Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, personally drafting more than 20 peace proposals and shuttling them between the Israeli and Egyptian delegations.
And he saved the agreement at the 11th hour — and it was the 11th hour — by appealing to Begin’s love of his grandchildren.
For the past 45 years, the Egypt-Israel peace treaty has never been violated and laid the foundation for the Abraham Accords.
AMY GOODMAN: The Abraham Accords are the bilateral normalisation agreements between Israel and, as well, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel and Bahrain, signed in 2020.
In 2006, years after he left office, Jimmy Carter wrote a book called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in which he compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s former racist regime.
It was striking for a former US president to use the words “Palestine,” let alone “apartheid,” in referring to the Occupied Territories. I went down to The Carter Center to speak with President Jimmy Carter about the controversy around his book and what he wanted the world to understand.
JIMMY CARTER: The word “apartheid” is exactly accurate. You know, this is an area that’s occupied by two powers. They are now completely separated.
The Palestinians can’t even ride on the same roads that the Israelis have created or built in Palestinian territory.
The Israelis never see a Palestinian, except the Israeli soldiers. The Palestinians never see an Israeli, except at a distance, except the Israeli soldiers.
So, within Palestinian territory, they are absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in South Africa, by the way. And the other thing is, the other definition of “apartheid” is, one side dominates the other.
And the Israelis completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people.
AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t Americans know what you have seen?
JIMMY CARTER: Americans don’t want to know and many Israelis don’t want to know what is going on inside Palestine.
It’s a terrible human rights persecution that far transcends what any outsider would imagine. And there are powerful political forces in America that prevent any objective analysis of the problem in the Holy Land.
I think it’s accurate to say that not a single member of Congress with whom I’m familiar would possibly speak out and call for Israel to withdraw to their legal boundaries, or to publicise the plight of the Palestinians or even to call publicly and repeatedly for good-faith peace talks.
There hasn’t been a day of peace talks now in more than seven years. So this is a taboo subject. And I would say that if any member of Congress did speak out as I’ve just described, they would probably not be back in the Congress the next term.
AMY GOODMAN: President Jimmy Carter. To see that whole interview we did at The Carter Center, you can go to democracynow.org.
For more on his legacy in the Middle East during his presidency and beyond, we’re joined in London by historian Seth Anziska, professor of Jewish-Muslim relations at University College London, author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo.
What should we understand about the legacy of President Carter, Professor Anziska?
Late former US President Jimmy Carter’s opposition to Israeli apartheid. Video: Democracy Now!
SETH ANZISKA: Well, thank you, Amy.
I think, primarily, the biggest lesson is that when he came into office, he was the first US president to talk about the idea of a Palestinian homeland, alongside his commitment to Israeli security. And that was an enormous change from what had come before and what’s come since.
And I think that the way we understand Carter’s legacy should very much be oriented around the very deep commitment he had to justice and a resolution of the Palestinian question, alongside his commitment to Israel, which derived very much from his Southern Baptist faith.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the whole trajectory. Talk about the Camp David Accords, for which he was hailed throughout the various funeral services this week and has been hailed in many places around the world.
SETH ANZISKA: Well, I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about the legacy of Camp David is that this is not at all what Carter had intended or had hoped for when he came into office. He actually had a much more comprehensive vision of peace in the Middle East, that included a resolution of the Palestinian component, but also peace with Syria, with Jordan.
And he came up with some of these ideas, developed them with Cyrus Vance, the secretary of state, and Zbigniew Brzeziński, his national security adviser. And in developing those ideas, which came out in 1977 in a very closely held memo that was not widely shared inside the administration, he actually talked about return of refugees, he talked about the status of Jerusalem, and he desired very much to think about the different components of the regional settlement as part of an overall vision.
This was in contrast to Henry Kissinger’s attitude of piecemeal diplomacy that had preceded him in the aftermath of the 1973 war. So we can understand Carter in this way very much as a departure and somebody who understood the value and the necessity of contending with these much broader regional dynamics.
Now, the reasons why this ended up with a far more limited, but very significant, bilateral peace treaty between Egypt and Israel had a lot to do both with the election of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1977, as well as the position of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and also the role of the Palestinians and the PLO.
But what people don’t quite recall or understand is that Camp David and the agreement towards the peace treaty was in many ways a compromise or, in Brzeziński’s view, was a real departure from what had been the intention.
And that gap between what people had hoped for within the administration and what ended up emerging in 1979 with the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty also was tethered very much to the perpetuation of Palestinian statelessness. So, if we want to understand why and how Palestinians have been deprived of sovereignty or remain stateless to this day, we have to go back to think about the impact of Camp David itself.
AMY GOODMAN: Interesting that Sadat would be assassinated years later in Egypt when Carter was on the plane with Nixon and Ford. That’s when they say that cemented his relationship with Ford, while they hardly talked to Nixon at all.
But if you could also comment on President Carter and post-President Carter? I mean, the fact that he wrote this book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, using the word “Palestine,” using the word “apartheid,” to refer to the Occupied Territories — I remember chasing him down the hall at the Democratic convention when he was supposed to speak. This was the Obama Democratic convention. And it ended up he didn’t speak. And I chased him and Rosalynn, because . . .
SETH ANZISKA: Remember that in 1977, there was a very famous speech that he gave in Clinton, Massachusetts, talking about a Palestinian homeland. And that raised huge hackles, both in the American Jewish community among American Jewish leaders who were very uncomfortable and were already distrustful of a Southern Democrat and his views on Israel, but also Cold War conservatives, who were quite hawkish and felt that he was far too close to engaging with the Soviet Union.
And so, both of those constituencies were very, very opposed to his attitude and his approach on the Palestinian issue. And I think we can see echoes of that in how he then was treated after his presidency, when much of his activism and much of his engagement on the question of Palestine, to my view, derived from a sense of frustration and regret about what he was not able to achieve in the Camp David Accords.
And his commitment stemmed from the same values that he had been shaped by early on, a sense of viewing the Palestinian issue through the same lens as civil rights, in the same lens as what he experienced in the South, which is often, what his biographers have explained, where his views and approach towards the Palestinians came from, but also a particularly close relationship to biblical views around Israel and Zionism, that he was very much committed to Israeli security as a result.
And that was never something that he let go of, even if you look closely at his work in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Some of his views on Israel are actually quite closely aligned with positions that many in the Jewish community would feel comfortable with.
The fact that people criticised and attacked him for that, I think, speaks to the taboo of talking about what’s happening or what has happened, in the context of Israel and Palestine, in the same kind of language as disenfranchisement around race in apartheid South Africa.
And, of course, as Carter said in the interview you just ran that you had done with him when the book came out, the situation is far worse in actuality with what is happening vis-à-vis Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN:Seth Anziska, I want to thank you so much for being with us, professor of Jewish-Muslim relations at University College London, author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo, speaking to us from London.
Bethany Bourgeois-George unlocked the door to the aluminum mailbox of her downtown Vancouver condo on the morning of August 16, 2021, only to find the letter she had been dreading: a request from the U.S. Postal Service to pick up a package. Although the notice did not state what the package was or whom it was from, Bourgeois-George already knew — she had been expecting it for over eight months.
When Bourgeois-George later picked up the box, she was shocked by how heavy it was. Then, she looked down at her hands. They were covered with a gray, dusty substance. The ashes of her father, Alfred Bourgeois, were seeping out.
“The ashes were so heavy and I didn’t expect that. It was like a punch to the gut because it just reminded me of him as a person, like a heavy human being. And then there he was, just minimized to ashes,” Bourgeois-George said.
As she looked inside the box, she realized it was the closest she had been to her father in almost 19 years, since the day of her high school graduation dinner in LaPlace, Louisiana. They had shared a deep embrace when they said their goodbyes. Bourgeois-George didn’t think much of it, but then a month passed without hearing from him.
She would eventually learn that he had been arrested in Corpus Christi, Texas, for the sexual abuse and murder of his 2-year-old daughter, Ja’karenn Gunter, Bourgeois-George’s half sister. He was convicted on federal charges in 2002 and maintained his innocence until his death. The Trump administration executed the 56-year-old Bourgeois in December 2020, despite evidence of an intellectual disability that would make his execution unconstitutional. He was the 10th out of 13 people executed in an unprecedented federal killing spree.
Bourgeois-George is convinced of her father’s innocence. For the past four years, she has waged a sometimes-lonely battle to clear his name, pointing to myriad filings by his death penalty attorneys that cast doubt on his conviction. The filings include sworn statements from medical experts stating that Ja’karenn’s death could be explained by an internal head injury due to ingestion of salt water during a recent trip to a California beach, rather than abuse.
Her advocacy ranges from media interviews and public appearances to efforts to secure a retrial of the case. Most recently, she submitted a posthumous pardon request to President Joe Biden, whose decision late last month to commute the sentences of almost all of the men on federal death row renewed Bourgeois-George’s hope in getting justice for her father. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
“The wrongful conviction and execution of Alfred Bourgeois represent a moral failure of our justice system—a failure that can and must be addressed,” Bourgeois-George wrote to Biden. “While nothing can bring Alfred back, granting a posthumous pardon would restore his dignity, acknowledge the truth, and send a message that the United States values fairness, accountability, and human life.”
Left/Top: Bethany Bourgeois-George stands with her father Alfred Bourgeois and sisters Alfredesha and Ja’karenn at her high school graduation in 2002. Right/Bottom: Bourgeois-George poses with her father, mother, and boyfriend on the day of her high school graduation.Photos: Courtesy of Bethany Bourgeois-George
A Tragic Loss
In the summer of 2002, Bourgeois took a road trip with his wife at the time, Robin Batiste, and three of his daughters, including Ja’karenn. He was a truck driver, and the family traveled out west in an 18-wheeler truck in a mix of leisure and work. On the morning of June 26, when Bourgeois was making a delivery to a Corpus Christi naval base, Batiste awoke to find Ja’karenn, her stepdaughter, unconscious. The parents took Ja’karenn to the hospital, where she died the next day. The official cause of death was “an impact to the head resulting in a devastating brain injury.”
Batiste and Bourgeois’s 6-year-old daughter Alfredesha quickly identified Bourgeois as a suspect; because they were on federal property at the naval base, he was charged by federal prosecutors. Alfredesha would later testify that she saw her dad hit Ja’karenn’s head against the backseat window four times and physically abuse her. Though Alfredesha blamed her dad for the killing, she also said that she enjoyed being in her father’s truck, where on many occasions she would talk into the speaker and type on the computer for fun during their trips. She also said her dad never hit her or her younger sister and that he treated her “like an angel.”
Bourgeois vehemently denied the allegations and said he was deeply troubled by losing his daughter. At trial, he testified that he never harmed Ja’karenn, never touched her inappropriately, and did not cause her death.
He was the only witness for the defense, court documents show. In an interview, Bourgeois-George said that she, along with more than 20 others — including Alfred’s pastor, family members, and childhood friends — were subpoenaed to testify by her father’s defense team, only to be told that they would not be called. Most of them, including Bourgeois-George, weren’t even allowed in the courtroom.
When Ja’karenn was hospitalized, a sexual abuse nurse examined her and found no evidence of sexual abuse. The autopsy also showed no such evidence. Still, the government argued that Bourgeois had abused his daughter, pointing to a single forensic test that indicates the presence of p30, a prostate-specific antigen that is widely understood as faulty because it can also be found in female fluids. In the years since, the FBI has reportedly abandoned its practices of testing for p30 because it is incapable of reliably determining the presence of semen.
In closing arguments, Bourgeois’s lawyers argued to the predominantly white jury that even if they believed that he had abused and killed Ja’karenn, there was still no evidence of premeditation. After deliberating for less than two hours, the jury found Alfred, a Black man, guilty.
In the coming years, Bourgeois’s appellate lawyers would challenge his conviction, arguing that his trial counsel was ineffective in presenting readily available evidence that cast doubt on his guilt. His appellate lawyers also revealed that the prosecution did not disclose that four people in jail were promised some benefit in exchange for testifying against Bourgeois.
A month after his execution, Bourgeois’s death row attorney shared his case file with Bourgeois-George. The documents — including autopsy reports, affidavits, witness testimony, clemency, and stay of execution petitions — help form the basis of her request for a posthumous pardon.
A Valentine’s Day picture Alfred Bourgeois painted of Bethany Bourgeois-George and her husband, given to her by her father’s attorneys.Photo: Courtesy of Bethany Bourgeois-George
Expert Opinion
Among the key pieces of evidence against Bourgeois that his lawyers questioned was an examination of Ja’karenn’s brain after her death, which showed that she had a subarachnoid hemorrhage — bleeding between the brain and its membrane — caused by the burst of a weakened blood vessel wall, with no skull fracture. The consultation report also cited bruising and hematomas, or a collection of blood that forms outside of a blood vessel.
In 2007, Dr. Werner Spitz, a pathologist and chief medical examiner, wrote an affidavit as part of an appeal for Bourgeois’s innocence saying that the suggestion of bruising was “misleading and exaggerated,” that the photo had been enhanced, and that “dark skinned individuals frequently have variations of skin pigment and tones often mistaken for injuries.” Spitz also testified that the hematoma was at least a week old.
“I disagree with the witness testimony whereby the child’s head was struck multiple times on the interior of the vehicle,” Spitz wrote in the affidavit. “The findings place in question causation of the injuries and their timing.”
Four years later, Dr. Jan Edward Leestma, a consultant in forensic neuropathology, testified in an appellate hearing that what he observed of the subdural hematoma was not consistent with an injury that was inflicted within the 24-hour period that they were on federal grounds in Corpus Christi. While the doctors at the time found new blood (no more than three days old) in the subdural hematoma, Leestma said there was no indication that the injury occurred on the naval base. They had no reliable means to age and date it, Leestma said, noting that existing subdural hematomas from over a week can bleed without additional injury.
Bourgeois’s lawyers consulted additional medical experts as they prepared a clemency petition ahead of his scheduled execution in 2020. One doctor who reviewed the medical evidence, Roland Auer, said that there were no findings that would be expected of a fatal blow to the head in a 2-year-old girl, “especially when the skull is as thin as observed in the autopsy.” Auer explained that the injuries were consistent with venous thrombosis, a blood clot blocking a vein, which he said was possibly caused by ingestion of salt water from the family’s trip to the beach in California just over a week before the death. That could be why the brain injuries predated the day of the alleged murder, Auer said.
Elizabeth Rouse, the doctor who examined the autopsy for the prosecution at the time of the trial, reviewed Auer’s findings and said she “did not disagree” that Ja’karenn “suffered venous thrombosis, occurring more than a week before death, or that the venous thrombosis was possibly caused by the ingestion of salt water,” according to the clemency petition.
Throughout his entire incarceration, Bourgeois was held in isolation. He was not allowed visits, phone calls, or letters with his family. With all this time alone, Bourgeois-George said that he developed an intellectual disability, which his lawyers used to contest his execution. The Supreme Court has deemed it unconstitutional to execute someone with an intellectual disability, yet the justices declined to step in to spare his life.
Bourgeois was killed on December 11, 2020. “I did not commit this crime,” he said in his final statement. “I love my kids with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.”
Bourgeois-George filed her request to Biden almost exactly four years later, on December 17. She says that as time passes, the feelings of grief get harder, not easier, especially with the possibility he might never get justice. Though she sees no end in sight, she is determined to keep fighting. “My father did not deserve this. He was a good father. He was a wonderful man,” she said. “He was tortured and tormented by his own country for 18 and a half years, and this is how his story ended.”
A Palestine solidarity advocate today appealed to New Zealanders to shed their feelings of powerlessness over the Gaza genocide and “take action” in support of an effective global strategy of boycott, divestment and sanctions.
“Many of us have become addicted to ‘doom scrolling’ — reading or watching more and more articles on what is happening in Palestine,” Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chair Neil Scott told supporters in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square.
“Then becoming depressed because we have watched it month after month without feeling we can do anything about it.”
The news over the 15-month war was depressing daily as the “official” death toll in Gaza from Israel’s war in the besieged enclave topped 46,000 this week, mostly women and children, and Israeli raids on neighbouring Lebanon in breach of the ceasefire and also on Yemen continued unabated.
The medical research journal Lancet also reported yesterday that the real death toll had been underreported and it was 40 percent higher with an estimated 64,200 killed in the first nine months of the war ending June 30.
PSNA national secretary Neil Scott . . . “When we do nothing in the face of the genocide we see going on in Gaza, that causes us to be stressed and be uncomfortable.” Image: APR
“If you’re like me, you will be scrolling around the available information sources finding out the truth about the crimes against humanity of apartheid and genocide that the Israeli military and the illegal settlers are doing,” Scott said.
“Along with this, we’re all feeling disgusted at the lack of action by the government.
“Who feels helpless about what is happening and feel as if they can’t do much about it? A common feeling,” he admitted.
Action good for health
Scott said there was evidence that taking some action was actually good for people’s mental health. Feeling helpless added to “the stress we feel”.
“There is a concept of ‘Bearing Witness’ — this is about exposing ourselves to the suffering of the Palestinians.
“It basically means being aware of those abuses. Something I think we all do.
“Then there is ‘Taking Action’ — this is about participating in a tangible way to try to help alleviate or prevent the suffering we witness the Palestinians living through.
Lancet study: Gaza toll 40% higher. Video: TRT News
“When we do nothing in the face of the genocide we see going on in Gaza, that causes us to be stressed and be uncomfortable.
“But we, as individuals, can do something.
“All human rights activists, unless we are absolutely overwhelmed at the moment, should probably spend a couple of hours a week taking action. Not all in one go but spread throughout the week.
Using ‘doom scrolling’ energy
“We can do something with all that doom scrolling stress or energy.
“We can turn it into taking action.”
PSNA’s Neil Scott speaking at the BDS rally today. Image: APR
Protesters have embarked on a three-week cycle addressing the global BDS Movement’s strategy of “boycott, divest and sanctions” in support of Palestine’s right to be a state while still seeking a ceasefire. Boycott was today’s theme.
Tasneem Gouda addressing the BDS rally today. Video: APR
The rally MC, Tasneem Gouda, reminded the crowd that they had been protesting over the massacres for 66 weeks and that “the BDS movement works”.
“We have enabled one of the most popular chains to close down and to lose billions of dollars.
“And to everyone who chooses to continue buying from these brands, let me tell you that every drink, every fry that you buy has blood on it.
“It has the blood of a Palestinian child. It has the blood of a mother.
“Shame on you.”
The BDS rally in support of Palestine at Auckland’s Te Komitanga Square today. Image: APR
The BDS Movement was launched by Palestinians in 2005 with more than 170 organisations backing the initiative. Coordination of the movement followed a couple of years later with a conference in Ramallah, Occupied West Bank.
Aotearoa New Zealand is part of the Asia-Pacific sector of the global movement, grouping Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand.
The Malaysian government is preparing a draft resolution for the United Nations General Assembly to expel Israel over its system of apartheid and the genocide, as South Africa was suspended in 1974 (it was reinstated 20 years later following the end of apartheid).
A poster calling for the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador to New Zealand. Image: APR
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Convicted of 34 felony counts in his hush money case, Donald Trump could have faced severe consequences. Each of the felony counts of falsifying business records was punishable by up to four years in prison and fines of up to $5,000. Yet U.S. District Judge Juan Merchan took a remarkably light approach in sentencing Friday, issuing Trump an “unconditional discharge” — meaning no jail time, no fines, and effectively no punishment except that he retains his felony conviction.
For many in the criminal justice reform and abolitionist space, his feather-light sentence further highlights the widespread inequities and failures of a criminal legal system where hundreds of thousands of Americans remain behind bars without ever even being convicted, let alone of a felony.
Despite the nonexistent penalties (aside from limits on his ownership of firearms and a requirement that he provide a DNA sample for a New York state database), Trump continued to rail against his prosecution. He called it “a very terrible experience” that was politically motivated, echoing his previous claims that he was facing a “two-tiered justice system.”
In the same city across a thin stretch of river, Ann Mathews, managing director of the Bronx Defenders, a public defenders nonprofit serving low-income Bronx residents, agrees that this case highlights the two tiers of justice. Just not in the way Trump means.
“This never happens for our clients,” said Mathews. “We felt the outrage. And then I think, wow, imagine the people we represent.”
Paul Henderson, a former San Francisco prosecutor, agrees that such a sentencing is unheard of in a case like this. “I’ve been a prosecutor for a long time; I’ve worked in accountability my entire career; I don’t see sentences like that; I just don’t,” said Henderson.
This type of special treatment is nothing new for the former president, who has routinely been treated by the justice system as if he was above the law — most notably in the Supreme Court decision in July granting him immunity from prosecution for “official acts.”
Throughout the trial, Mathews noted, Trump was granted liberties that are never given to her clients, including having his attorneys present at his probation interview. “We’re never allowed to accompany our clients, and in fact, are specifically prohibited from being there during a probation interview, which is an incredibly important moment in the case for a client who is going to be sentenced,” said Mathews.
The public defender said she doesn’t take issue with the fact that he was allowed his attorney. “The point is, everybody should have an attorney present during a probation interview, and that should be the norm,” she said.
Inequity is a central feature of the criminal justice system in which Mathews works. Clients with deep pockets have a clear advantage. Some judges, she said, treat defendants with paid counsel differently than those who have to rely on free services like the Bronx Defenders.
“If you are somebody who is able to retain counsel, and you have either an unlimited or significant sort of money source upon which to fund your defense, there are any number of resources that even the most well-funded public defender office does not have,” she said.
It’s not just the wealthy who have a leg up; race is another layer of inequity in the system, said Vincent M. Southerland, NYU Law School professor and faculty director of NYU’s Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law.
“We have — and this is part of a long history of America — this kind of presumption of criminality and dangerousness that attaches to brown skin and one’s race,” said Southerland.
“That kind of presumption of dangerousness and criminality will seep into the sorts of judgments that folks who are making decisions about whether or not someone should be held in custody, what sentence they should be, what sentences that might be appropriate for them, what charges should be labeled against them,” he said.
Mathews said she doesn’t take issue with the fact that Trump was granted the unconditional discharge. She just wishes that some of that same leniency could be shown in other cases. “Why is it that in so many similar situations, and even arguably less serious at least in terms of the charges,” she said, “we see much harsher sentencing?”
The conventional wisdom holds that the Super Bowl is the most lucrative sporting event in the world, generating as much as $1 billion in revenue. Aside from the game itself, the halftime show performance, which features major music icons, has long been a main draw for viewers. This year’s show — sponsored by Apple Music, produced by Roc Nation and Diversified Production Services, and featuring rapper Kendrick Lamar — will be no exception.
Advertisers will reportedly spend $7 million on average for a 30-second spot in Super Bowl LIX, reaping a huge windfall for Fox. With millions more viewers tuning in for halftime than the game itself in recent years, that cost can be expected to be higher for advertisers who want the slots during the break.
Not everyone, however, is cleaning up on the halftime entertainment.
The workers tasked with setting up and breaking down the large, elaborate stages and displays on the field for the roughly 15-minute performance hardly get to cash in. For this year’s halftime show, field crew workers are set to make as little as $12 per hour during rehearsals and during Super Bowl LIX itself, according to an online job listing. The job stretches across eight days and includes about 48 hours of work.
The role requires workers to be able to “push, pull, bend and lift” heavy objects, up to 50 pounds in weight, according to the listing. Workers will be “moving and assembling the large rolling stage carts and other scenic elements on and off the field” for the show, which typically costs $10-15 million to produce. The crews are not given a ticket to watch the game.
Cities often compete with each other to host the Super Bowl, chasing the NFL’s promise that the annual event will inject millions in revenue into the local economy. But the benefits often fall short of projections.
“The reality is we see these jobs, whether it’s working the halftime show, whether it’s working in a concession stand, or even the restaurant work that is getting extra hours because the Super Bowl is coming — these aren’t high-paying jobs,” said Michael Edwards, a professor at North Carolina State University who researches the ethics and social responsibility of sports and sporting events. “These are all service industry event-type gig jobs that are going to be low-paying with no benefits at all.”
Roc Nation, Diversified Production Services, and the NFL did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment. The listed email address on the Super Bowl Productions website, which posted the gig, also did not immediately respond to request for comment.
While there may be short-term gains for some workers and businesses, research shows that the overall revenue share for local taxpayers is about a quarter of what is promised. That income is a fraction compared to what the NFL makes from ticket and merchandise sales and broadcasting deals, 100 percent of which the league pockets.
“Most of the economic impact of the Super Bowl is realized by corporations and leaks out of the local economy.”
The $12-per-hour wages are compliant with labor laws in Louisiana, which lacks a state minimum wage and follows the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Even so, estimates show that fast-food workers on average make more at $18 an hour, with the lower end of the average range at about $13 an hour. Food workers and labor advocates have been pushing for nearly a decade to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, with many low-wage workers unable to pay for health care, utilities, and bills.
“There is always this vague, but highlighted, statement about X number of jobs created by hosting the Super Bowl,” Edwards said. “Most of the economic impact of the Super Bowl is realized by corporations and leaks out of the local economy. What actually ends up in the pockets of local residents is typically much less.”
History of Labor Issues
The Super Bowl, and the halftime show in particular, has been notorious for labor exploitation, from low pay to allegations of wage theft and unpaid work. The NFL regularly leans on unpaid, volunteer work during the Super Bowl.
Ahead of this year’s game, the league is actively recruiting unpaid volunteer “ambassadors.” The unpaid workers are expected to assist visitors at airports, hotels, and NFL-sanctioned events, working three four-hour shifts leading up to the game.
In 2016, for the Super Bowl 50 halftime show in the San Francisco Bay Area, production managers recruited volunteers for the field crew work with no pay. The arrangement was a potential violation of California’s labor laws, which limit the use of volunteer work for commercial events. However, after a local news report by a Bay Area ABC affiliate station aired, the NFL said it would pay its crew of around 500 field workers.
Several years later in 2021, however, at the Super Bowl in Tampa, Florida, production teams hired by the NFL were recruiting unpaid volunteers to perform as a part of the halftime show, according to old listings for the event.
“The Super Bowl or the NFL isn’t any different than any other corporation.”
The halftime show for the Super Bowl in 2022, held in the Los Angeles area, also drew controversy for offering unpaid roles for dancers, recruiting them for 72 hours of unpaid rehearsal time, as well as the performance. The NFL eventually agreed to pay dancers $15 per hour, which still disappointed dance and labor advocates.
Pay for the 500 field crew workers for the performance, sponsored by Pepsi, was also $15 per hour, which at the time was minimum wage for California.
Concession workers at last year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas made as little as $14.25 per hour — slightly more than Nevada’s minimum wage, but less than the $18 beers they were serving. And after the 2019 Super Bowl in Atlanta, 200 workers, hired by a firm authorized by the NFL, worked 72 hours, including 14-hour days, but did not receive pay.
“The Super Bowl or the NFL isn’t any different than any other corporation in the U.S. or the world: There’s always an equity issue,” Edwards said. “There’s always an argument that could be made that the owners should share more profits with labor.”
He pointed out that players have been able to bargain for higher paying contracts through its powerful union, the NFL Players Association, but that hasn’t trickled down to the front-line workers in the NFL.
He said, “The front-line staff are always going to be paid as low as, in some cases, management can get away with.”
“Built to Host” New Orleans?
As it vied to host the Super Bowl, New Orleans marketed itself as the “Built to Host” city, with robust tourism infrastructure already in place. That capacity has brought the big game to the Crescent City 10 times in the past.
Hosting the Super Bowl this year has not been without controversy. The city is already facing blowback for its enforcement of the NFL’s “clean zones,” which restrict portions of downtown New Orleans near the Superdome from unauthorized advertising and commercial activities. Such policies shut out street vendors from cashing in on the event — in a city with a rich tradition of selling everything from drinks to tunes right on the sidewalk.
Violating the policy can carry a fine of up to $500. Similar regulations have spawned lawsuits from small businesses and an environmental activist who was arrested for tabling in one of the “clean zones.”
Policing and surveillance of street vendors is common in Super Bowl events, including in 2022 near Los Angeles, when the NFL called on the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to crack down on unlicensed vendors, who are often immigrants and sometimes undocumented.
Such heavy-handed enforcement should spur more careful debate within communities who are considering the chance to host the Super Bowl, said Edwards.
“Certainly there’s a certain prestige, there may be a certain kind of exposure of hosting a Super Bowl, and what it means to some communities, as well as any mega-sporting event,” he said. “But the reality is, there’s a lot of costs, there’s a lot of negative impacts whether it’s environmental, whether it’s human rights impacts, whether it’s social impacts. And I think, from a public’s perspective, understanding all those costs and understanding all the ways in which there could be negative impacts don’t get enough coverage in the conversation.”
He also listed other human rights and labor issues surrounding other global sporting events, such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup. Major stadium construction projects have fueled displacement and gentrification of communities, as well as worker exploitation and slave labor in the case of Qatar leading up to the 2022 World Cup.
“When communities are thinking about: Do we want to host? Do we want to publicly finance a stadium to get a Super Bowl? Do we want to invest in this infrastructure cost for hosting the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup?” Edwards said. “If we’re not going to generate the types of economic impacts they’re claiming, what are the benefits? How do we ensure those benefits are equitably distributed among the population?”
A Just Stop Oil supporter who climbed an M25 gantry after an unprecedented 40c heatwave in the UK was found guilty by a jury in Chichester on Thursday 9 January. Abigail Percy Ratcliff took action in July 2022 to demand an end to new licences and consents for oil and gas projects in the UK, something which has subsequently become government policy.
Just Stop Oil: another supporter sentenced
Abigail, 25, a student from London, was among five supporters who blocked the M25 in three places by climbing on the overhead signs after Just Stop Oil declared the M25 a site of civil resistance on 20 July 2022.
The action was prompted by news that UK temperatures had recently topped 40c for the first time ever, causing multiple fires to break out and resulting in the busiest day for the London Fire Brigade since the WWII.
Before taking action in 2022 Abigail said:
The UK crossed the 40 degree threshold yesterday, runways melted, wildfires raged and hundreds died. This is not the new normal, it will keep getting worse until we just stop oil. We must act now. I joined Just Stop Oil because I was worried about my future, about my sister’s future, but I think a lot of us have realised this week that we’re not talking about the future, we’re talking about now, it’s happening today.
Abigail was found guilty of public nuisance, and given an eight month suspended sentence plus £1,500 in costs. She was previously remanded to prison in November 2022 for three and a half months.
Her sentence comes just days after Just Stop Oil supporter Dr Patrick Hart appeared before Judge Mills at Chelmsford Crown Court on Tuesday 7 January after being found guilty in October 2024 of Criminal Damage. He had been disabling petrol pumps at Esso Thurrock Services on the M25 on 24 August 2022. The judge sentenced him to a year in prison.
‘Democracy has failed to protect us’
Speaking prior to the trial Abigail said:
This protest I’m on trial for was back in 2022, during a heatwave that broke temperature records and killed thousands of people in the UK. And the government at the time was planning to approve 100 new licenses for oil exploration in the North Sea, in light of the evidence of the harm it would cause. The most vulnerable among us were killed that summer and the UK government went ahead and approved those licenses anyway, flagrantly denying the evidence that the climate disaster was already a threat to this nation. It was under those circumstances that I took action.
Democracy has failed to protect us. Both the labour and Tory parties are neglecting to take serious action on the climate. We have now passed 1.5 degrees warming over pre-industrial levels. There is absolutely no time for talking about whether it’s okay to block a road. It’s not okay to sell future generations’ futures off for a profit, and that’s exactly what these fossil fuel companies are doing. It’s exactly what our government is allowing them to do. Peaceful protesters are filling our prisons while the real criminals sit in power handing down a death sentence to future generations. We mustn’t go without a fight.
Another of those taking action on 20 July 2022 was Louise Lancaster. She was prosecuted in October 2022 for contempt of court for breaking the M25 protest injunction, but received a suspended sentence. Three others who took action on the same day were also given suspended sentences after being found guilty of public nuisance in May 2024.
However, that was before ‘Lord’ Walney called for Just Stop Oil to be treated like a terrorist organisation and the courts started dishing out multi-year prison sentences for nonviolent action. These disproportionate sentences are being challenged at the court of appeal at the end of this month.
Just Stop Oil will be stepping into action again in 2025. To join a talk or sign up for action, register at juststopoil.org
Anti-Defamation League national director Jonathan Greenblatt speaks at the group’s conference in New York on Nov. 10, 2022.Photo: Michael Brochstein/Sipa via AP
If you listen to its most vociferous backers, Israel is doing a lot of winning. It’s winning in Gaza (read: the Strip’s total destruction). It’s winning in Lebanon (read: decapitated Hezbollah). It’s winning in Syria (read: seizing land in the chaos over the end of the Assads).
Amid the parade of self-congratulations for all the “winning” going on out there, it was easy to miss the head of one the most prominent U.S. pro-Israel groups, the Anti-Defamation League, admitting to Israel’s parliament that it has been failing on one important front: the fight against global antisemitism.
“Nobody likes to admit when they’ve fallen short,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO, told the Knesset on Tuesday, according to eJewishPhilanthropy. “I don’t like to lose. I personally hate to lose. However, sometimes we need to acknowledge the reality.”
The reality was stark: Antisemitism, Greenblatt said, is on the rise, especially online. The admission was a stunning one, since the ADL was founded to fight antisemitism. That is the banner under which all of its vociferous advocacy for Israel occurs. So for the group to fail in this way raises big questions — questions that need big answers.
“We need the kind of genius that manufactured Apollo Gold Pagers and infiltrated Hezbollah for over a decade to prepare for this battle,” Greenblatt said. “This is the kind of ingenuity and inventiveness that have always been a hallmark of the State of Israel, that have always been a characteristic of the Jewish people. I know we can do it.”
Is Greenblatt serious? Does he honestly think it’s possible for Israel to address global antisemitism by blowing it up like hundreds of pagers or by razing it to the ground? Can the ADL stage an attack on the hatred of the Jews relentlessly like everything else — as if it’s yet another front of a war — alongside Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Iran?
Sadly, this does seem to be what Greenblatt is talking about: pointing a gun at the collective heads of the entire world and demanding that they love Jewish people.
ADL’s Checkered Past
This type of militarist rhetoric is nothing new for supporters of Israel, certainly not since October 7, but it’s not where the Anti-Defamation League began.
The group was founded in response to the rise of the American KKK and the trial of Leo Frank, a Jewish American businessman convicted of murdering a 13-year-old girl, likely a false allegation. When Frank’s death penalty was commuted to life in prison, he was kidnapped from prison and summarily lynched by an antisemitic mob. The ADL went on to expand its mission to combating all kinds of bigotry but retained its focus on antisemitism.
For over a century after that, the efforts of the ADL became a game of whack-a-mole. When Henry Ford’s newspaper published articles from antisemitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the ADL pounced. It pressured Ford until, in 1927, he issued an apology. In the 1950s and ’60s, the ADL was conducting spy operations inside neo-Nazi groups and campaigning for civil rights. By 2016, the ADL was slamming Donald Trump for his repeated use of antisemitic tropes.
The ADL has a darker side too, including spying on pro-Palestine organizations from the 1960s through the 1990s and surveilling them more recently, as well as taking overtly anti-Muslim positions in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Much of the the group’s more troublesome history was justified as part of its battle against antisemitism.
All Antisemites!
Classical antisemitism — and racism in general — is rooted in a basic fear of the Other. But its modern form, dubbed “new antisemitism,” has restructured the terms in a different way, arguing that anti-Zionism, and frankly any criticism of Israel’s policies, is inherently antisemitic. This isn’t a problem in abstraction.
Benjamin Netanyahu so regularly accuses every critic of Israel of antisemitism that the prime minister has become a parody of himself. College campus protesters? Antisemitic. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan? “One of the great antisemites in modern times.” The United Nations? An “anti-Israel Flat Earth Society.” Gaza? Yemen? Lebanon? Iran? Ireland? Hollywood? All antisemites!
There is no controversy in noting that these blanket accusations of antisemitism provide political cover for Israel’s endless aggression against all of its perceived enemies, all the way to genocide. In many ways, it is simply a new form of “hasbara,” a diplomatic PR and propaganda strategy to explain Israel’s military actions, whether or not they are actually justified.
It is important to question whether advancing this theory of “new antisemitism” and equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism is actually serving the aim of peace and security for anyone in the Middle East.
And it is important to question whether Greenblatt childishly telling the Knesset that it needs to ramp up its war on hatred has any utility whatsoever.
It takes nuance, consideration, mutual understanding, and delicate engagement to address deep-seated racism in society. The Jewish community is not going to temper online trolls by blowing up TikTok commenters, either attacking them as enemies in an information war, or using the mechanisms of hasbara to overwhelm them with “alternative facts.”
To be Jewish does not mean an automatic identification with the rogue state of Israel. Nor does it mean that Jews are automatically threatened by criticism of Israel, yet our media and Labor and Liberal politicians would have you believe this is the case.
We are seeing a debate in Australia about the so-called rise of antisemitism which includes rally chants for Gaza at a time when we are witnessing the most horrific Israeli genocide of Palestinians in which our government is complicit.
Jewish peak bodies here and internationally have continually linked their identity to that of Israel.
Why? Can generations of Jews in this country still believe that Israel represents anything like the myths that were perpetrated at its inception?
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Zionist Federation of Australia, the Jewish Board of Deputies and others, all staunchly defend this apartheid state that is accused of plausible genocide by the UN International Court of Justice and confirmed by dozens of human rights and legal NGOs, UN Rapporteurs, medical organisations and holocaust scholars.
Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defence Minister have been charged as war criminals by the International Criminal Court and must be arrested and tried in the Hague, yet Australia maintains a cosy relationship with Israel and our media dutifully repeats its outright lies verbatim.
Conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism has been the main focus of the Israeli state and its defenders for decades. With the emergence of the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement in 2005, Israel’s narrative was countered, leading to a persistent Israeli directed campaign to link BDS with antisemitism.
Colonial, occupying power
BDS focuses on the actions of Israel as a colonial, occupying power violating international law against the indigenous people of Palestine. It is anti-racist and human rights-centred.
On December 11, we heard Prime Minister Albanese at the Jewish Museum in Sydney combining his support for Jewish people with his ongoing condemnation and active campaigning against BDS.
He referred to the Marrickville Council BDS motion, (which I proposed back in 2010 along with my Greens councillor colleague, Marika Kontellis), and again repeated the bald-faced mistruths that were spread back then about BDS and the intent and focus of the Marrickville motion.
“I was part of a campaign against BDS in my own local government area. At the time I argued that if you start targeting businesses because they happen to be owned by Jewish people, you’ll end up with the Star of David above shops.
“And that ended in World War II, during the Holocaust, with six million lives lost, murdered. We need an end to antisemitism.”
In one sentence we see Albanese’s extremely offensive equation of the horror of the Holocaust and antisemitism, directly linked to BDS. Why would a prime minister and local federal member deliberately mischaracterise BDS, given the movement has always been clear that its targets are global companies and corporations that are complicit in the Israeli state’s apartheid and genocidal actions, as well as Israeli government bodies and arms companies?
What is in it for Albanese, Wong, Plibersek or Dutton and all of the politicians back in 2010/2011 who appeared to think there was political advantage in scapegoating BDS by jumping on the frenzied anti-BDS campaign?
Fawning support for Israel
It was obvious back then, as it is now, that their fawning support for the rogue Israeli state knows no bounds. Lock step in line with the United States outlier position, Australia has maintained its repugnant inaction in the face of 15 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza despite continued condemnation by the UN and a majority of states.
But Australia has, however, appointed a public supporter of Zionism and the Israeli state, as its special envoy on antisemitism.
The inaction by all states since 1948 to apply sanctions has gifted Israel the impunity that’s led to its industrial scale slaughter of innocents in Gaza and its continuing violence and killing of civilians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. All governments must bear responsibility for this.
At the time of the Marrickville BDS, he used the situation to attempt to discredit the Greens who were challenging the incumbent Labor state member, Carmel Tebbutt (his former wife). He fanned the national media frenzy that was fed by pro-Israel Jewish lobbyists who were the long-time custodians of the “reputation” of Israel.
Marrickville Council and the Greens were characterised as antisemites who would be pulling Jewish books out of the local library.
This insanity was akin to what is happening today. The legitimate opposition to the worst, most egregious, brutality of the Israeli state has somehow been cleverly morphed into so-called expressions of antisemitism.
Absurd claims on protest
In the media conference of December 11, Albanese also made absurd claims that the peaceful 24-hour protest outside his electorate office in Marrickville was displaying Hamas symbols in a vile attempt to discredit the constituents he had refused to meet for more than eight months.
He and his colleagues in Canberra continue to appease the powerful Israel lobby at the expense of our rights and the rights and visibility of the whole Palestinian population here and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories who are now literally on death row.
Back then, we heard locally that he and the party had bullied the four Labor councillors to vote to rescind the Marrickville BDS motion that they had all previously wholeheartedly supported. Some months earlier these same councillors had also supported a motion condemning the latest Israeli strike against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
The meaning of BDS was no secret to them — they appreciated that it was important for a council to check its ethical purchasing guidelines to ensure that it was not supporting companies that were in violation of international human rights law by operating in the illegal Israeli settlements or by providing technology or services that maintained Israel’s apartheid and dispossession of Palestinians.
They knew then, as we know now, that this is not antisemitic. They knew then that no Jewish businesses per se were the target of this peaceful civil rights movement. And they knew then that the Labor Party was lying for political gain.
Now, as for far too many decades, political parties in power in this country have failed Palestinians for political gain and at the behest of Israel lobby groups which dare to speak on behalf of anti-Zionist Jews like me.
Despite all the gratuitous rhetoric, these politicians have failed to uphold the basic precepts of human rights law — rights they regularly give lip service to, but rights they will never defend by taking the action required of them as signatories to numerous UN conventions.
Australia must sanction Israel
To act with humanity and to act as required by international law, Australia must sanction and end all economic and military ties with the Israeli state.
We must expel the Israeli ambassador and bring our ambassador back and we must prosecute any Australian citizen or resident who has joined the IDF to kill Palestinians. We must also support Palestinian refugees and take all action necessary to assist those in Gaza for as long as it takes.
But as we have seen so clearly this year, most governments have not acted to pressure Israel to end its barbaric colonial project. To protest as allies and to call out the hypocrisy of governments and politicians that speak of a rules-based order while enabling a state that has continually breached fundamental human rights laws, is to be called antisemitic.
The pressure applied to governments, universities and the like in recent years to adopt the discredited IHRA definition of antisemitism is precisely because it equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
It’s the perfect tool for shutting down condemnation of Israel’s grave human rights violations. We’ve seen some universities and parliaments endorse it in deference to this pressure, despite the serious flaws that have been identified, including from Jewish Israeli experts.
Now more than ever BDS is imperative.
BDS campaigns will work to isolate Israel as it should be isolated until it complies with international law. Multinational companies are increasingly loath to be associated with this terror state.
Major pension funds are divesting from companies that are complicit in Israel’s human rights violations and local councils, unions and universities are taking steps to ensure they divest from any partnerships or investments that would make them part of the chain of complicity and liable for prosecution by the International Court of Justice as enabling Israel’s genocide.
The facts are indisputable. Australia’s complicity with Israel’s genocide and colonisation of Palestine can be countered by individuals, churches, unions, councils and students taking immediate and urgent BDS action.
Do not wait for Labor or Liberal politicians in this country to act, as they are doing their best to shut us down and to appease Israel. Their complicity will never be forgotten.
Cathy Peters is a former Greens councillor on the Marrickville Council from 2008-2011 and the co-founder of BDS Australia. She worked as a radio producer and executive producer for the ABC for 30 years making some documentaries on the Israeli occupation. She is Jewish and her grandparents and other relatives perished in the Holocaust. She has travelled to Gaza and throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories on a number of occasions and is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights and justice. First published in the Australia social policy journal Pearls and Irritations and republished with permission.
A descendant of one of the original translators of New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi says the guarantees of the Treaty have not been honoured.
A group, including 165 descendants of Henry and William Williams, has collectively submitted against the Treaty Principles Bill, saying it was a threat to the original intent and integrity of te Tiriti.
Bill submissions reached a record of more than 300,000 on Tuesday night with Parliament’s Justice Select Committee extending the deadline for a week until 1pm, Tuesday, January 14, due to technical issues with the overloaded website.
The Williams brothers translated te Tiriti o Waitangi and promoted it to Māori chiefs in 1840.
William William’s great-great-great grandson, Martin Williams, told RNZ Morning Report they want to see the promises of the treaty upheld.
“Fundamentally, it’s time that we as Pākeha stood up and be counted . . . we prefer a future for our nation that isn’t premised on the idea that Māori were told a big lie in 1840.”
“It’s very concerning that the Waitangi Tribunal has described this bill as the worst, most comprehensive breach in modern times so it’s time for us to stand up and be counted and stand alongside tangata whenua.
‘We need to honour Te Tiriti’
“We need to honour Te Tiriti, not tear it up and scatter it to the wind.”
The two version of the Treaty — English and Māori — have become the source of debate and confusion over the intervening centuries because of varying content and wording.
Williams said his ancestors had faithfully followed the instructions of Governor Hobson and James Busby when translating the Treaty into te reo Māori.
“We don’t think that there was anything wrong about the way the Treaty was prepared and Henry did it under enormous time pressure, but the outcome was exactly as intended by those instructing him.”
“In essence, the Crown was conferred the right to govern for peace and good order and Māori retained their full rights as chiefs, Tino Rangatiratanga.
“That was the essence of the bargain and we’re wanting that bargain because that was the version that was signed by Māori to be honoured today, and we think it can be. If it is the future for our nation is bright, and if it isn’t the opposite applies.”
Williams said he and his whānau disagreed that the bill would make all New Zealanders, including Māori, equal under the law.
‘Equality’ not a Treaty principle
“Ask Māori who are involved in abuse in state care, whether they enjoyed equal rights during that time of their lives.”
“Equality before the law is a great legal principle, but it’s not a Treaty principle.”
Minister for Regulation David Seymour, the bill’s architect . . . seeking to “promote a national conversation about [New Zealanders’] place in our constitutional arrangements”. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
“Māori very much, I think, as a result of systemic breach of the Treaty by the Crown again over decades are in a position where they have to start from way behind the line to have any hope of catching up with Pākeha for things that they take for granted.”
Williams said equity and equality were not the same thing.
The bill’s architect, Minister for Regulation David Seymour, argues the interpretation of the Treaty principles has been developed through the Waitangi Tribunal, courts and public service, and “New Zealanders as a whole have never been democratically consulted on these Treaty principles”.
Purpose to ‘provide certainty The principles have been developed to justify actions many New Zealanders feel are “contrary to the principle of equal rights”, he says, including co-governance in the delivery of public services.
The purpose of the bill, says Seymour, is to provide certainty and clarity and to “promote a national conversation about their place in our constitutional arrangements”.
ACT would argue the principles have a very influential role in decision-making, political representation and resource allocation that has gone too far. Seymour believes it is necessary to define the principles “or the courts will continue to venture into an area of political and constitutional importance”.
People have expressed frustration and outrage this week after persisent technical issues stopped them from submitting online feedback about the bill before the midnight on Tuesday night deadline.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Less than 12 hours after a massive fire began ripping through the Pacific Palisades on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Fire Department made a rare request. All LAFD firefighters, including those off-duty, were asked to phone in their availability. Stoked by high winds, the blaze was growing quickly, and the LAFD was already fighting a losing battle. Such a summons hadn’t been issued in nearly two decades.
As of January 8, the Palisades Fire is 0 percent contained. Two additional wildfires, the Hurst Fire and the Eaton Fire, are also currently at zero containment as they scorch greater Los Angeles County, burning thousands of acres, destroying over 1,100 structures, and killing at least five people. As hundreds of firefighters race to stop the spread, gusting Santa Ana winds and a landscape desiccated by a bone-dry winter — an anomaly linked to broader climate change trends — aren’t the only obstacles the LAFD is facing.
The LAFD makes up about 6 percent of the city’s expense budget; the LAPD receives 15 percent.
In June, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed an adopted $12.8 billion budget that cut the fire department’s funding by more than $17.5 million, or around 2 percent of the previous year’s budget of $837 million. It was the second-largest departmental operating cut to come out of the city’s 2024-25 fiscal year budget, which shaved funding from the majority of city departments — but not the police. The Los Angeles Police Department received a funding bump of nearly $126 million. The LAFD makes up about 6 percent of the city’s expense budget; the LAPD receives 15 percent of the funds.
“What is currently happening and unfolding is what we have been warning about,” said Ricci Sergienko, a lawyer and organizer with People’s City Council LA. “The consistent defunding of other city programs in order to give the LAPD billions a year has consequences, and these elected officials do actually have blood on their hands. The city is unprepared to handle this fire, and Los Angeles shouldn’t be in that position.”
Other departments that received major cuts included the Bureau of Street Services, the Bureau of Sanitation, and General Services, for an overall budget decrease of nearly $250 million. Funds for rental support, homelessness services, and street lighting were also reduced.
Only three city councilmembers — Hugo Soto-Martínez, Nithya Raman, and Eunisses Hernandez — voted against the budget last May, noting in a press release that it allocated tens of millions of dollars to fund LAPD positions that would likely remain vacant. That’s because the LAPD has struggled to recruit officers in recent years, even as it continues to request and receive funding for those empty positions.
An LAPD spokesperson reached by The Intercept said that they could not respond to questions by the time of publication.
The controversial cuts were ostensibly made to help close the city’s budget deficit. Critics, however, have noted that defunding the fire department is a recipe for disaster as the climate crisis brings increasingly devastating fires to the drought-stricken region. While it’s unclear that any amount of staffing could have fully contained the fires raging across Los Angeles this week, the call for help — and the firefighters traveling in to assist from across California and nearby states — shows that any additional capacity could have been useful.
A spokesperson for Los Angeles’s chief auditor, City Controller Kenneth Mejia, said that the most recent LAFD budget cuts included a reduction in sworn payroll, reduced funds for operating supplies, and cuts to 58 positions. In December, the Board of Fire Commissioners sent a report to Bass and the City Council outlining how the funding cuts had adversely impacted the department’s crucial services.
“The Los Angeles City Fire Department (LAFD) is facing unprecedented operational challenges due to the elimination of critical civilian positions and a $7 million reduction in Overtime Variable Staffing Hours,” wrote Fire Chief Kristin Crowley. “These budgetary reductions have adversely affected the Department’s ability to maintain core operations, such as technology and communication infrastructure, payroll processing, training, fire prevention, and community education.”
The LAFD’s Fire Prevention Bureau, for instance, had six of its roles cut and its overtime hours reduced. Crowley wrote that the decrease in overtime hours created an “inability to complete required brush clearance inspections, which are crucial for mitigating fire risks in high-hazard areas.”
While most departments received cuts, LAPD’s budget continues to bloat, and Mejia has pointed to overspending on police liability claims as one major source of the city’s deficit. The city spent more than double its annual liability payouts budget in the first six months of this fiscal year, with the LAPD leading the spending at more than $100 million in legal settlements. Recent payouts include a $17.7 million settlement with the family of a mentally disabled man who was fatally shot by an off-duty officer inside a Costco, and a $11.8 million payout to a man who sustained a traumatic brain injury in a car accident when an LAPD detective ran a red light.
Diana Chang, Mejia’s communications director, highlighted two forces that are driving a rise in liability payouts, most of which are made from the city’s General Fund rather than department-specific appropriations. Departments are either “not held accountable for liabilities they give rise to,” Chang wrote, or they are “underfunded / understaffed and cannot keep up with the necessary demands and needs of the City.”
“We just give more money to the police, who then end up costing us more money, due to all of these settlements. It’s a never-ending loop.”
Sergienko, of People’s City Council LA, bristled at the use of taxpayer money to fund police abuse settlements. “We’re paying for state-sanctioned violence instead of having money to deal with the climate crisis,” he said. “We just give more money to the police, who then end up costing us more money, due to all of these settlements. It’s a never-ending loop.”
Looking ahead, the LAPD has already requested another increase for the 2025-26 fiscal year. In November, the LA Board of Police Commissioners approved a spending package that included a request for an additional $160.5 million from the city’s budget — an increase of more than 8 percent. Bass is currently reviewing the proposal; she’s expected to unveil the city’s next budget plan in late April.
Bass’s office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has publicly clashed with Mejia over his criticism of the city budget. Last spring, after Mejia called the deductions to public services “short-sighted,” Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl dismissed the remarks as “theatrical exaggeration and doomsday projections.”
For many Angelenos, that doomsday is now here. The fires burning across the county are already the most destructive in modern LA history, forcing more than 80,000 evacuations with no signs of abating. Whole blocks in the Palisades are leveled. The Eaton fire is eating its way through Altadena, Pasadena and the surrounding communities, taking at least five lives so far.
Los Angeles is no stranger to wildfires, but a January disaster is unusual. Studies show that climate change is contributing to longer, more destructive fire seasons. Still, in 2020, LA’s then-Mayor Eric Garcetti cut another $500,000 in funds set aside for a Climate Emergency Mobilization Office.
“The impact of this catastrophic event will be felt by our community well past today, but we hope that our City’s coordinated efforts will provide assistance to ensure the smoothest recovery possible,” Chang wrote in a statement. “As always, we support putting resources and meaningful investments toward saving lives through emergency preparedness, wildfire prevention, and serious climate action, and encourage the City’s decisionmakers to prioritize these resources and investments.”
A family doctor has been sentenced to one year in prison for taking action with climate crisiscampaign group Just Stop Oil.
Another Just Stop Oil activist sentenced
Dr Patrick Hart took action in August 2022 to demand an end to new licences and consents for oil and gas projects in the UK, something which has subsequently become government policy.
Hart appeared before Judge Mills at Chelmsford Crown Court on Tuesday 7 January after being found guilty in October 2024 of Criminal Damage. He had been disabling petrol pumps at Esso Thurrock Services on the M25 on 24 August 2022.
Esso is a subsidiary of the Oil giant Exxon Mobil which infamously concealed the alarming findings of its own scientists, which showed that fossil fuels caused global warming. Exxon subsequently ploughed millions into a disinformation campaign which initially sewed doubt and later confusion around the emerging climate science.
The law is an ass
In his closing statement at Chelmsford Crown Court during his trial, Hart said:
I disrupted people as an act of care. I damaged the petrol pump screens as an act of care, because in times of great peril, a caring person has to stand up for what is right. My actions have already cost me greatly.
I have been handed a suspended prison sentence, and thousands of pounds in costs through a civil injunction for this exact same action. I have been penalised at work and stand to be suspended or lose my licence to practise as a doctor.
But I regret nothing. Because to not do it, would have been to give up on caring, and that would be worse.
In the face of the permanent collapse of our climate, our economy, our society and life on Earth, the only thing that keeps me going is our continued capacity as people to care, regardless of what happens. Yes, I fear prison, but I am ready to go if I must
Hart has already faced civil charges for this action and been fined, as the Thurrock Esso petrol station is subject to a private injunction. He will also face a tribunal after being referred for a disciplinary hearing by his professional regulator, the General Medical Council (GMC).
Just Stop Oil will continue
In the last 12 months, the GMC has suspended two doctors from the medical register following their convictions for non-violent climate protest. As such Hart stands to be penalised three times for the same action.
Before sentencing, Hart said:
Right now, the greatest health threat to all of us is the unfolding climate catastrophe. It is the greatest health threat we have ever faced. All healthcare workers have a responsibility to protect the health of their patients.
If we do not stand up to the oil and gas executives who are wreaking havoc on our climate and the politicians who enable them, if we do not end the burning of fossil fuels, then we will have failed as a profession and the health systems that we have developed over centuries will collapse.
I will continue to fight against the death sentence of fossil fuels for as long as I have strength in me. I have no greater duty as a doctor at this moment in history.
Today’s sentencing comes after a jury found three Just Stop Oil supporters ‘not guilty’ in June of 2024 for disabling petrol pumps in the same manner as Hart.
Just Stop Oil will be stepping into action again in 2025. To join a talk or sign up for action register at juststopoil.org
A former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Alon Liel, has warned over a “dangerous” attitude of younger generations in Israel towards the war on Gaza.
“They’re accepting the fact that there is no alternative to fighting, and this is the majority, especially the young people today,” he told Al Jazeera in an interview.
He added that as part of the older generation in Israel, he could remember a time when even the right wing used to say they wanted peace.
“Now young people . . . say we don’t want peace. We will not benefit from peace,” he said.
Liel said that he believed it ws “a very dangerous attitude that is developing” and there needed to be “a very fundamental change in the thinking of Israel, and maybe a fundamental change in the attitude of the international community to the conflict, too”.
He also said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had so far failed to achieve his goals in the 15-month war — “destroying” Hamas and freeing the hostages.
Israelis were frustrated that captives remained in Gaza and surprised that, in recent weeks, Israeli military activity there had intensified, Liel said.
‘Surprised’ over military intensity
“Generally speaking, Israelis are quite surprised that the intensity of the military activity is growing. I think the general feeling here was a month or two ago that [the war] will fade away and slow down, but it is not,” he said.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and six wounded yesterday in further battles with the Palestinian resistance in northern Gaza.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, still faced the problems of looking like he had no victory in the war, and that any prisoner exchange with Hamas could topple him, he added.
“Any exchange will involve the release of many prisoners we have in our jails, and might — and probably will — topple his government,” Liel said.
“So he’s trying to manoeuvre and trying to find the point in time in which we will not be seeing the Hamas people and their supporters dancing in Gaza when they get the prisoners back and describing the result as a victory.”
Brazil court order over Israeli soldier
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestine, hailed a decision by a court in Brazil to order a probe against a visiting Israeli soldier, saying legal actions against Israelis suspected of crimes in Gaza were “necessary and overdue”.
The remarks on X came in response to the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) announcing that a Brazilian court had acted on a complaint it had filed against Israeli solider Yuval Vagdani and ordered the country’s police to launch an investigation.
Israeli media later reported that Vagdani had fled the South American country.
The Hind Rajab Foundation was established to breaking the cycle of Israeli impunity and honouring the memory of Hind Rajab and all those who have perished in the Gaza genocide.
Hind Rajab was a five-year-old girl murdered by Israeli soldiers on 29 January 2024 in a car in which six family members were also killed, and two would-be paramedic rescuers were also slaughtered. She died with 335 bullet wounds in her body.
“Apartheid Israel will go to great lengths to shield its soldiers since a conviction abroad for crimes against Palestinians is a precedent it cannot afford,” Albanese wrote on X.
“Yet, justice is unstoppable,” she said.
In #Brazil and elsewhere, legal actions against Israelis suspected of crimes in Gaza are necessary and overdue. #Apartheid Israel will go to great lengths to shield its soldiers since a conviction abroad for crimes against Palestinians is a precedent it cannot afford. Yet,… https://t.co/y9nNd9GqN3
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) January 5, 2025
Israeli plans to help accused soldiers The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports Israel’s government was preparing to assist soldiers who may face arrest for participating in war crimes in Gaza when they travel abroad.
So far, more than 50 complaints have been filed against Israeli soldiers in South Africa, Sri Lanka, Belgium, France and Brazil.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) ban on Al Jazeera is part of a broader attempt to silence criticism of its security operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, say activists and analysts.
The ban came almost a month after the PA launched a crackdown on a coalition of armed groups that call themselves the Jenin Brigades, reports Al Jazeera.
Since early December, the PA has besieged the Jenin camp and cut off water and electricity to most of its residents in an ostensible attempt to restore “law and order” across the West Bank.
An Israeli apartheid placard at last Saturday’s Auckland solidarity for Gaza health professionals . . . the crime against humanity includes the “intent to maintain domination of one racial group over another”. Image: APR
indiscriminate Jenin tactics
However, its indiscriminate tactics in Jenin coincide with a wider attack on free speech, activists and human rights groups told Al Jazeera.
Critics have claimed that the PA crackdown due to pressure by the Israeli authorities which have also imposed recent bans on Al Jazeera.
The PA originated with the Oslo Accords between Palestinian and Israeli leaders in 1993. It mandated that the PA recognise Israel and eliminate Palestinian armed groups in exchange for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by 1999.
Israel, however, has used the last 30 years block statehood while to expanding illegal settlements on large swathes of stolen Palestinian land, nearly tripling the number of settlers in the occupied West Bank to 700,000.
As an occupying power, it still controls most aspects of Palestinian life and frequently carries out raids, killings and arrests in the West Bank, even in areas where the PA is supposed to be in full control.
The following article is a comment piece by 16 imprisoned activists. You can read more on their stories here.
We are some of the Lord Walney 16 – the sixteen peaceful people imprisoned for a combined 41 years for refusing to be bystanders to the most horrific crimes. We should have been 17. Xavi Gonzalez-Trimmer, our beloved friend, should have been with us. He will always be with us.
Our sentences will be reviewed by the Court of Appeal on 29 and 30 January.
Lord Walney: subverting free speech and the right to protest
We were jailed after former Labour Party MP John Woodcock (‘Lord’ Walney) – lobbyist for the arms and oil industry – called for those resisting genocide, whether from carbon emissions or Israeli bombs, to face the harshest response from the government, the police and the judicial system.
The brutal sentences that followed his report were aimed at ‘deterrence’. They were designed to make us give up.
To be locked up in Britain’s cruel prison system, witnessing the violence and harm undertaken by the state against its own citizens is harrowing. But our resistance is not like the addiction to fossil fuels – a habit to be broken. It is the consequence of a profound commitment to nonviolence and the refusal to be complicit in the destruction of our fellow human beings and the poisoning of life on earth.
We can never give up. The state sponsored assault on our living planet gives us no choice. We will never give up.
And we call on you – all of you who know that what is happening is so wrong – to join us in refusing to be bystanders.
When and where: the Royal Courts of Justice, London, 29-30 January
You can find out more information and sign up to attend here.
Signed:
Anna Holland
Cressida Gethin
Daniel Shaw
Gaie Delap
Dr Larch Maxey
Louise Lancaster
Lucia Whittaker De Abreu
Paul Bell
Paul Sousek
Phoebe Plummer
Roger Hallam
United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) provisional government interim president Benny Wenda has warned that since Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto took office in October, he has been proven right in having remarked, after the politician’s last February election, that his coming marks the return of “the ghost of Suharto” — the brutal dictator who ruled over the nation for three decades.
Wenda, an exiled West Papuan leader, outlined in a December 16 statement that at that moment the Indonesian forces were carrying out ethnic cleansing in multiple regencies, as thousands of West Papuans were being forced out of their villages and into the bush by soldiers.
Prabowo coming to top office has a particular foreboding for the West Papuans, who have been occupied by Indonesia since 1963, as over his military career — which spanned from 1970 to 1998 and saw rise him to the position of general, as well as mainly serve in Kopassus (special forces) — the current president perpetrated multiple alleged atrocities across East Timor and West Papua.
According to Wenda, the incumbent Indonesian president can “never clean the blood from his hands for his crimes as a general in West Papua and East Timor”. He further makes clear that Prabowo’s acts since taking office reveal that he is set on “creating a new regime of brutality” in the country of his birth.
Enhancing the occupation “Foreign governments should not be fooled by Prabowo’s PR campaign,” Wenda made certain in mid-December.
“He is desperately seeking international legitimacy through his international tour, empty environmental pledges and the amnesty offered to various prisoners, including 18 West Papuans and the remaining imprisoned members of the Bali Nine.”
Former Indonesian President Suharto ruled over the Southeast Asian nation with an iron fist from 1967 until 1998.
In the years prior to his officially taking office, General Suharto oversaw the mass murder of up to 1 million local Communists, he further rigged the 1969 referendum on self-determination for West Papua, so that it failed and he invaded East Timor in 1975.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto (left) and West Papuan exiled leader Benny Wenda . . . “Foreign governments should not be fooled by Prabowo’s PR campaign.” Image: SCL montage
Wenda maintains that the proof Prabowo is something of an apparition of Suharto is that he has set about forging “mass displacement, increased militarisation” and “increased deforestation” in the Melanesian region of West Papua.
And he has further restarted the transmigration programme of the Suharto days, which involves Indonesians being moved to West Papua to populate the region.
Wenda considers the “occupation was entering a new phase”, when former Indonesian president Joko Widodo split the region of West Papua into five provinces in mid-2022.
Oksop displaced villagers seeking refuge in West Papua. Image: ULMWP
And the West Papuan leader advises that Prabowo is set to establish separate military commands in each province, which will provide “a new, more thorough and far-reaching system of occupation”.
West Papua was previously split into two regions, which the West Papuan people did not recognise, as these and the current five provinces are actually Indonesian administrative zones.
“By establishing new administrative divisions, Indonesia creates the pretext for new military posts and checkpoints,” Wenda underscores.
“The result is the deployment of thousands more soldiers, curfews, arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses. West Papua is under martial law.”
Ecocide on a formidable scale Prabowo paid his first official visit to West Papua as President in November, visiting the Merauke district in South Papua province, which is the site of the world’s largest deforestation project, with clearing beginning in mid-2024, and it will eventually comprise of 2 million deforested hectares turned into giant sugarcane plantations, via the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands.
Five consortiums, including Indonesian and foreign companies, are involved in the project, with the first seedlings having been planted in July. And despite promises that the megaproject would not harm existing forests, these areas are being torn down regardless.
And part of this deforestation includes the razing of forest that had previously been declared protected by the government.
A similar programme was established in Merauke district in 2011, by Widodo’s predecessor President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who established rice and sugarcane plantations in the region, aiming to turn it into a “future breadbasket for Indonesia”.
However, the plan was a failure, and the project was rather used as a cover to establish hazardous palm oil and pulpwood plantations.
“It is not a coincidence Prabowo has announced a new transmigration programme at the same time as their ecocidal deforestation regime intensifies,” Wenda said in a November 2024 statement. “These twin agendas represent the two sides of Indonesian colonialism in West Papua: exploitation and settlement.”
Wenda added that Jakarta is only interested in West Papuan land and resources, and in exchange, Indonesia has killed at least half a million West Papuans since 1963.
And while the occupying nation is funding other projects via the profits it has been making on West Papuan palm oil, gold and natural gas, the West Papuan provinces are the poorest in the Southeast Asian nation.
Indonesian military forces on patrol in the Oksop regency of the West Papua region. Image: ULMWP
And part of the agreement was that West Papuans undertake the Act of Free Choice, or a 1969 referendum on self-determination.
So, if the West Papuans did not vote to become an autonomous nation, then Indonesian administration would continue.
However, the UN brokered referendum is now referred to as the Act of “No Choice”, as it only involved 1026 West Papuans, handpicked by Indonesia. And under threat of violence, all of these men voted to stick with their colonial oppressors.
Wenda presented The People’s Petition to the UN Human Rights High Commissioner in January 2019, which calls for a new internationally supervised vote on self-determination for the people of West Papua, and it included the signatures of 1.8 million West Papuans, or 70 percent of the Indigenous population.
The exiled West Papuan leader further announced the formation of the West Papua provisional government on 1 December 2020, which involved the establishment of entire departments of government with heads of staff appointed on the ground in the Melanesian province, and Wenda was also named the president of the body.
But with the coming of Prabowo and the recent developments in West Papua, it appears the West Papuan struggle is about to intensify at the same time as the movement for independence becomes increasingly more prominent on the global stage.
“Every element of West Papua is being systematically destroyed: our land, our people, our Melanesian culture identity,” Wenda said in November, in response to the recommencement of Indonesia’s transmigration programme and the massive environment devastation in Merauke.
“This is why it is not enough to speak about the Act of No Choice in 1969: the violation of our self-determination is continuous, renewed with every new settlement programme, police crackdown, or ecocidal development.”
Israel is forcing two hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate under threat of attack as its ethnic cleansing campaign continues.
Israeli forces have surrounded the Indonesian Hospital, where many staff and patients sought shelter after nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was destroyed in an Israeli raid last week, reports Al Jazeera.
Late on Friday, a forced order to evacuate was also issued for the al-Awda Hospital, where 100 people are believed to be sheltering.
The evacuation order came today as New Zealand Palestine solidarity protesters followed a silent vigil outside Auckland Hospital yesterday with a rally in downtown Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square today, where doctors and other professional health staff called for support for Gaza’s besieged health facilities and protection for medical workers.
Protester Jason holds a placard calling for Kamal Adwan Hospital medical director Dr Hussam Abu Safiyyan to be set free at today’s Palestinian solidarity rally in Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR
When one New Zealand medical professional recalled the first time that the Israel military bombed a hospital in in Gaza November 2023, the world was “ready to accept the the lies that Israel told then”.
“Of course, they wouldn’t bomb a hospital, who would bomb a hospital? That’s a horrible war crime, if must have been Hamas that bombed themselves.
“And the world let Israel get away with it. That’s the time that we knew if the world let Israel get away with it once, they would repeat it again and again and we would allow a dangerous precedent to be set where health care workers and health care centres would become targets over and over again.
“In the past year it is exactly what we have seen,” he said to cries of shame.
“We have seen not only the targeting of health care infrastructure, but the targeting of healthcare workers.
“The murdering of healthcare workers, of aid workers all across Gaza at the hands of Israel — openly without any word of opposition from our government, without a word of opposition from any global government about these war crimes and genocidal actions until today.”
In an impassioned speech about the devastating price that Gazans were paying for the Israeli war, New Zealand Palestinian doctor and Gaza survivor Dr Abdallah Gouda vowed that his people would keep their dream for an independent state of Palestine and “we will never leave Gaza”.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for an investigation into the Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals and medical workers.
Volker Türktold the UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East that Israeli claims of Hamas launching attacks from hospitals in Gaza were often “vague” and sometimes “contradicted by publicly available information”.
Tino rangatiratanga and Palestinian flags at the Gazan health workers solidarity rally in Auckland today. Image: David Robie/APR
Palestine urges UN to end Gaza genocide, ‘Israeli impunity’ Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the UN, said: “It is our collective responsibility to bring this hell to an end. It is our collective responsibility to bring this genocide to an end.”
The UNSC meeting on the Middle East came following last week’s raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital and the arbitrary arrest and detention of its director, Hussam Abu Safia.
“You have an obligation to save lives”, Mansour told the council.
“Palestinian doctors and medical personnel took that mission to heart at the peril of their lives. They did not abandon the victims.
“Do not abandon them. End Israeli impunity. End the genocide. End this aggression immediately and unconditionally, now.”
Palestinian doctors and medical personnel were fighting to save human lives and losing their own while hospitals are under attack, he added.
“They are fighting a battle they cannot win, and yet they are unwilling to surrender and to betray the oath they took,” he said.
Norway is the latest country to condemn the attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and medical workers.
On X, the country’s Foreign Ministry said that “urgent action” was needed to restore north Gaza’s hospitals, which were continuously subjected to Israeli attack.
Without naming Israel, the ministry said that “health workers, patients and hospitals are not lawful targets”.
Urgent action is needed to restore North Gaza’s hospitals and uphold international humanitarian law.
Protecting healthcare saves lives.
We share WHOs concern at #UNSC
A critical “NZ media is Zionist media” placard at today’s Auckland solidarity rally for Palestinian health workers. Image: APR
Israel ‘deprives 40,000’ of healthcare in northern Gaza The Israeli military is systematically destroying hospitals in northern Gaza, the Gaza Government Media Office said.
In a statement, it said: “The Israeli occupation continues its heinous crimes and arbitrary aggression against hospitals and medical teams in northern Gaza, reflecting a dangerous and deliberate escalation.”
These acts, it added, were being carried out amid “unjustified silence of the international community and the UN Security Council”, violating international humanitarian law and human rights conventions.
The statement highlighted the destruction of Kamal Adwan Hospital, where its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, was arrested and reportedly subjected to physical and psychological abuse.
The GMO described these acts as “full-fledged war crimes”.
According to a recent report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Israeli military had conducted more than 136 air raids on at least 27 hospitals and 12 medical facilities across Gaza in the past eight months.
The GMO report demanded an independent international investigation into these violations and accountability for Israel in international courts.
Protesters at today’s Auckland rally in solidarity with Palestinian health workers under attack from Israeli military. Image: David Robie/APR
Amnesty International criticises detention of Kamal Adwan doctor Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of the human rights watchdog Amnesty International, said Israel’s detention of Dr Hussam Abu Safia underscored a pattern of “genocidal intent and genocidal acts” by Israel in Gaza.
“Dr Abu Safia’s unlawful detention is emblematic of the broader attacks on the healthcare sector in Gaza and Israel’s attempts to annihilate it,” Callamard said in a social media post.
“None of the medical staff abducted by Israeli forces since November 2023 from Gaza during raids on hospitals and clinics has been charged or put before a trial; those released after enduring unimaginable torture were never charged and did not stand trial.
“Those still detained remain held without charges or trial under inhumane conditions and at risk of torture,” she added.
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa secretary Neil Scott speaking at today’s Auckland rally supporting health workers under Israeli attack in Gaza. Image: David Robie/APR
A man has been charged with the rape and sexual assault of one of the Virgin Australia crew members in the early hours of New Year’s Day, near a nightclub in Martintar, Nadi.
Police confirm he has been charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of rape.
They say he is in custody and will appear in the Nadi Magistrates Court on Monday.
Police have yet to charge anyone in relation to the robbery of another crew member.
Meanwhile, the crew members have now returned to Australia.
A female crew member, who was allegedly sexually assaulted near the club, flew back to Australia yesterday while her male colleague returned on Thursday after receiving treatment for facial wounds.
Five other crew members remained in Fiji to assist the investigation, staying close to their hotel as directed by their airline’s headquarters.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Tourism Viliame Gavoka said in an earlier statement that regrettably incidents like this could happen anywhere and Fiji was not immune.
He reminded tourists to exercise caution in nightclub areas and late at night.
Republished from Fijivillage News with permission.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWinesigned into law on Thursday changes to the state’s public records statute that allow law enforcement agencies to charge hundreds of dollars for body camera footage. Though such videos are central to watchdog reporting and police oversight, Ohio opted to join a handful of states that have made it easier for cops to put a steep price tag on transparency.
“Public bodies should be in the business of making it easier — not harder — for the public and the press to access important government records like body worn camera footage,” said Gunita Singh, an attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “There’s no need to impose vast sums of money onto requesters doing their part to foster transparency and accountability.”
Over the past decade, more law enforcement agencies have deployed body cameras — and the footage they provide has become central to covering cops and stemming police brutality. At the same time, law enforcement agencies and police unions have begun complaining about the time and expense of turning these videos over to the public when requested. Some states have responded by authorizing fees for processing footage: In 2023, Arizona passed a law allowing charges up to $46 “per video-hour reviewed.” In 2016, Indiana authorized fees as high as $150 per video.
“Crucial records will now be sequestered behind a paywall few can afford.”
Ohio’s enacted law, House Bill 315, which was quietly introduced in the state legislature in late December, creates a new provision for requesting law enforcement videos. State and local law enforcement agencies can now charge steep fees for reviewing and redacting videos — up to $75 per hour of footage produced and a maximum of $750 per video. Police can require that the fees be paid in advance.
Press advocates and civil liberties groups urged DeWine to veto the hastily approved measure. He declined.
In a signing statement, DeWine said House Bill 315 was “a workable compromise to balance the modern realities of preparing these public records and the cost it takes to prepare them.”
Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, was alarmed that the bill was passed and signed with “zero legislative debate.”
“Ohioans deserve government transparency, especially regarding policing. Instead, crucial records will now be sequestered behind a paywall few can afford,” Daniels said. “Advocates, news media, and victims of police actions are right to be concerned how these unnecessary changes will impact their safety and insight into how police operate in and around the state.”
“We are disappointed that this law was enacted last minute, without an opportunity to be heard on our concerns,” said Monica Nieporte, president and executive director of the Ohio News Media Association. “We feel this law has many deficiencies and will lead to unnecessary barriers to records access both for journalists and the public.”
Nieporte said her group was “committed to working with the legislature, Governor DeWine and Attorney General [Dave] Yost to amend this language immediately.”
Bourbon Street hadn’t even reopened when House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., was settling on what he saw as one of the main culprits behind the deadly New Year’s truck-ramming attack: DEI.
In a Thursday interview with a talk radio station in New Orleans, Scalise claimed that diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives bore part of the blame for law enforcement’s failure to disrupt the attack that left 15 people dead and dozens more injured.
Pressed repeatedly for evidence by a conservative radio host, Scalise returned to his DEI talking points. He also claimed that the truck attack was the first instance of terrorism in a decade, glossing over multiple attacks that include a strikingly similar truck rampage by another adherent of the Islamic State in 2017.
“Their main focus is on diversity and inclusion as opposed to security.”
“Some of these agencies have gotten so wrapped up in the DEI movement — call it wokeness, call it whatever you want — where their main focus is on diversity and inclusion as opposed to security,” Scalise said. “And they’re two very different things. We’ve got to get back to that core mission.”
Scalise’s comments were the latest example of DEI as the ultimate conservative scapegoat for the alleged failings of law enforcement and the military, no matter how tenuous the connection.
In the wake of the July assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, Republican members of Congress were quick to blame DEI policies for the Secret Service’s failures. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., described the head of the Secret Service, a woman, as a “DEI hire.”
Appointees in the upcoming administration have also suggested they would install policies that effectively repudiate even long-standing diversity initiatives. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, has said women should be excluded from combat roles, remarking that he would try to fire “woke” generals.
Police cordon off the area around the site of the overnight attack in the French Quarter of New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025.Photo: Matthew Hinton/AFP via Getty Images
“Are You Just Speculating?”
In turning the conversation around the Bourbon Street attack to DEI initiatives, Scalise was offering up a reliable piece of red meat. What he could not offer to WWL radio host Tommy Tucker was any kind of evidence.
Tucker asked several times whether there were any signs that law enforcement had missed, or whether Scalise had any evidence to back up his claims.
“Do you have any proof that diversity, equity, and inclusion contributed to missing this guy that drove his truck down Bourbon Street, or are you just speculating as to this?” Tucker said at one point.
“I mean, each agency has a mission, Tommy, and when you move away from your main mission — Homeland Security, I’ll start there, their mission is to keep Americans safe in our homeland, and they have started to move away from that,” Scalise said. “At some point if you’re moving away from that mission, then you’re missing out on what you’re supposed to be doing. And that’s when things get missed.”
Later on in the interview, Scalise said there had not been a terror attack on U.S. soil in a decade. While the definition of “terrorism” is often disputed, federal authorities have deemed several attacks during the past decade as such — including the mass shooting at a congressional baseball game practice in 2017 that left Scalise and others grievously wounded.
After the interview was over, Tucker, the conservative radio host, noted that in October 2017 another man claiming fealty to ISIS used a truck in a vehicle-ramming attack on Manhattan’s west side that left eight people dead.
“Just to be clear, on October 31, 2017, a guy drove a rented pickup truck into cyclists and runners for about a mile on Hudson River Park’s bike path,” Tucker said. “That was during the Trump administration. So, to throw the Homeland Security Department under the bus and say there was no attack prior to this, I don’t think is completely accurate.”
”Let’s clear up what happened here, before we start making partisan political points.”
