“I think we can do a lot, if a critical mass of organizations steps forward and develops a plan to go public and visible calling out the undemocratic and dangerous reality of what the Supreme Court majority is doing, particularly these shadowy, opaque, undemocratic ‘emergency’ decisions. Just like we have had and will be having, on October 18, successful mass actions of millions in the streets around the country calling for No Kings, worker justice, women’s rights, climate justice, racial justice and more, it is time for such a nationally coordinated action sometime this fall focused on this issue.”
This is what I wrote in a column about a month ago about the Supreme Court. Now that the mass mobilization for October 18 is over, as will be the fall elections as of November 5, I think, at that time, there’s a need for a much closer look at what an activist strategy could be to call out the conservative/MAGA majority on the Supreme Court.
I am fully aware that it is very rare for progressives to do something like this. There is understandable concern that doing so could be seen as “inappropriate,” or “too risky,” or “bad strategy.” After all, in the US system of government, judges have a lot of power. To some extent they are seen as, and often are, above the fray of politics, something seen as often corrupt and dishonest by a lot of people, on the right, left and center.
Of course, “above the fray of politics” sure doesn’t apply to this usually Trump-supporting Supreme Court.
Just in the last few months I have considered with others active in the climate movement whether we should publicly demonstrate calling for a key judicial body, not the Supreme Court, to do the right thing when it comes to a long-term campaign we are leading. We collectively decided it wasn’t the right thing to so.
But it’s different with this Supreme Court. First, there’s the fact that it was very much “politics” that is responsible for the 6-3 conservative majority. Two of the conservatives, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Conan Barrett, obtained their seats because of Republican Party political hypocrisy and raw power politics. Following Antonin Scalia’s death on February 13, 2016 and President Obama’s subsequent nomination of Merrick Garland to replace him, Senate Republicans refused to hold a hearing and vote on that nomination, saying it was too close to the upcoming Presidential election eight months later! This led to the seat being vacant for 14 months until Trump, in 2017, nominated Neil Gorsuch.
Conan Barrett was nominated only 40 days, not eight months, before the 2020 election to replace the deceased Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Republicans didn’t care then about it being “too close” to a Presidential election, and she was confirmed.
So what would be the objective of some kind of activist campaign, or even just a national day of action, focused on the Supreme Court?
One would be, for sure, to remind the country of how Gorsuch and Conan Barrett were nominated, the hypocrisy involved which has led to a court now “out of balance” when it comes to representing the differing views of US law as well as the reality of US public opinion.
Another would be to draw attention to proposals that have been made to address the fundamental unfairness of the present Supreme Court reality. The most broadly-supported proposal, the TRUST Act (Transparency and Responsibility in Upholding Standards in the Judiciary) was put forward this spring by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman Hank Johnson. It is co-sponsored by 26 Senators and 10 House members.
When might a national day, or national week, of action happen? It’d be good if it happened soon, but there are plenty of current fights that need a lot of support, and then there are the holidays, so sometime in the new year seems more realistic.
How about this? March 8 and March 15 are the birthdays of two deceased but still important Supreme Court justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. on the 8th, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on March 15. March 8 is also International Women’s Day.
Ginsburg was the second woman in US history to serve on the Supreme Court, so there’s a definite connection there.
Here’s what the Wikipedia entry for Holmes summarizes as his main contributions legally: “Holmes is one of the most widely cited and influential Supreme Court justices in American history, noted for his long tenure on the Court and for his pithy opinions – particularly those on civil liberties and American constitutional democracy – and deference to the decisions of elected legislatures.” Wow, very timely for sure!
Just like Trump, the Supreme Court is not above the law!
Middle East political analyst Zeidon Alkinani says Israel’s military is continuing “business as usual” to the east of the yellow line in Gaza in spite of the ceasefire deal.
The military withdrew behind the yellow line as part of the ceasefire deal, while the government works to ensure “absolute gains” in the enclave and the continuation of its “political, economic and military occupation”, Alkinani told Al Jazeera.
While “the attacks are much more minimised” compared with before the ceasefire, Israel’s political establishment was still trying to exert leverage over Gaza’s future — including the makeup of an international security force.
Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, Jordan, because Al Jazeera is banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank, said that the Israelis had been putting a lot of pressure on mediators, specifically the United States.
“They’re saying they’re not ready for any talks on phase two or what’s next of this deal until the remaining 13 bodies of captives are brought back from Gaza,” she said.
“Hamas has said they don’t know where those bodies are, and they need assistance on the ground in the form of specialised teams and heavy machinery.”
Israel had been reluctant at first to allow this to happen.
Turkish team barred
“In fact, there was a Turkish team of about 80 people who were on the other side of the border just last week, whom Israel denied entry to,” Salhut said.
“But now they have allowed in an Egyptian team, alongside the Red Cross. Hamas too are now searching in areas that are technically under Israeli control, outside that yellow line perimeter where Israeli forces withdrew from.”
Meanwhile, an emergency doctor at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital says her team is treating a growing number of Palestinians who have been injured by unexploded ordnance when they return to their homes following their displacement by the war.
“As people come back to the north after the heavy bombardment . . . they’re moving into their old homes, they’re setting up tents in the rubble, and there are so many unexploded missiles,” said the doctor, who gave her name as Harriet.
She said children were among those being injured by the ordnance left scattered across the territory, adding her team had recently treated siblings aged five and seven who had sustained blast and shrapnel injuries from a bomb.
About 66,000 tonnes of unexploded ordnance remain lying around Gaza, and at least 53 people have been killed by the bombs so far.
UNRWA international staff and humanitarian aid continue to be denied entry into #Gaza.
Food, hygiene kits, tents, and other supplies are desperately needed.
Still, about 12,000 of its local staff are pushing ahead with the delivery of “healthcare, psychosocial support, and education to the people, often under unimaginable conditions”, the agency said in a post on X.
Israel had banned UNRWA from operating in territory it controls last year, claiming a number of its employees were members of Hamas.
The International Court of Justice ruled last week that Israel, as an occupying power, must support relief efforts provided by the UN and its entities, including UNRWA. It also found that Israel had not substantiated its claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees were Hamas members.
In its post, UNRWA said “a ceasefire alone is not enough.
“Food, hygiene kits, tents, and other supplies are desperately needed,” it added.
United States top diplomat Marco Rubio says the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) “is not going to play any role” in aid delivery in Gaza, reports Al Jazeera.
He also rejected the possibility of Hamas being involved in any future governance of the besieged enclave.
Speaking during a news conference while on a visit to Israel yesterday, the US Secretary of State claimed UNRWA had become “a subsidiary of Hamas”, echoing an Israeli government line that has been discredited by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
In response, UNRWA insisted that its presence “remains vital to meeting urgent humanitarian needs” across the bombarded and starved enclave, where a deadly Israeli offensive has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians in two years.
In a statement posted on X, the agency also highlighted that the ICJ had recognised that “no organisation can replace the UNRWA’s role in supporting the people of Gaza”.
Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, also dismissed Rubio’s characterisation.
“You’ve already heard us talk about how UNRWA is not linked to Hamas,” he told reporters at the UN. “UNRWA is the backbone of our humanitarian operations in Gaza.”
Israel banned the agency from operating after accusing some of its staff of taking part in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack without providing evidence.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said the proclamation by Rubio that UNRWA was a Hamas “subsidiary” was “quite shocking” and “devastating” for UNRWA and all who were involved in Gaza.
UNRWA exonerated by ICJ
UNRWA was not only exonerated by the ICJ and two separate commissions of inquiry, but also had the largest, most extensive aid mechanism in Gaza, Odeh said.
“It has thousands of employees, it has the data to distribute aid to Palestinians with dignity and in an orderly fashion,” she said.
“Nobody has that kind of infrastructure and history in Gaza.”
PRESS RELEASE: The #ICJ delivers its Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of Israel in relation to the Presence and Activities of the United Nations, Other International Organizations and Third States in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory https://t.co/uMXJBTcJq6pic.twitter.com/YuTGwDzPwP
Despite a US-mediated ceasefire that took effect earlier this month, Israel has continued launching attacks across Gaza. At least two people were killed in shelling east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza yesterday, a source at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital told Al Jazeera Arabic.
Israel has also kept the Rafah crossing near Egypt sealed, blocking large-scale aid deliveries that were stipulated in the truce agreement.
In his remarks on Friday, Rubio voiced hope of soon putting together an international security force to police the ceasefire in Gaza and said Israel, which opposes including Turkiye, could veto participants.
In Suva, The Fiji Times reports that Israel says Fiji’s “neutral and highly skilled military” could play a valuable role in future peacekeeping efforts once negotiations on Gaza’s next phase were complete.
The indication came as Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel said discussions between Israel, the United States and Arab nations would determine the structure and participants of any peacekeeping arrangement.
“I have to say that we do trust the Fijian forces,” Haskel said during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka before she left for her controversial visit to New Zealand.
The Department of Homeland Security has sent unaccompanied immigrant teenagers $5,000 fines for illegally entering the United States, according to youth advocates and fine notices reviewed by New York Focus and The Intercept.
Roughly 10 teenagers in New York, ages 14 to 17, received the fine in mid-October, said Meena Shah, managing director of the Legal Services Center at The Door, a New York City-based nonprofit that serves young people. At least one teenager in Michigan has received the fine too, according to the teen’s lawyer. New York Focus and The Intercept reviewed copies of the fine notices delivered in both New York and Michigan.
The fine is one of several new financial penalties for immigrants created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed in July. The federal government is issuing the fines under a section of the law titled “Inadmissible alien apprehension fee,” which is set at $5,000 and can be applied to people apprehended between official ports of entry. Homeland Security’s application of the fine hasn’t been previously reported.
Shah and Ana Raquel Devereaux, the attorney representing the teenager in Michigan, both said the kids are living in shelters overseen by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, which takes custody of unaccompanied immigrant children while they wait to be released to an adult sponsor.
Devereaux, who works for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, pointed out that kids in government custody have no ability to work.
“It’s really about creating fear,” Devereaux said. “There’s no way that a child in this situation would be able to pay this, and the penalties are so severe.”
Minors in Texas and Pennsylvania have received the fines too, according to a staff member at a national nonprofit who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the nonprofit’s leadership fears being targeted by the Trump administration.
The fine is one of several ways the Trump administration has sought in recent weeks to pressure minors who entered the U.S. alone to return to their home countries. Over Labor Day weekend, the government attempted to deport dozens of unaccompanied Guatemalan children who were in ORR custody; kids were loaded onto planes before a judge halted the plan. In early October, the government said it was offering $2,500 to unaccompanied minors 14 years and older who agree to leave the country.
The notices reviewed by New York Focus and The Intercept state that “Payment in full is due now” and list an array of potential consequences for failure to pay, including collection litigation and negative impacts on their immigration cases. Fines that aren’t paid in full will accrue interest, the notices say.
“They’re trying to pressure and coerce these young people into taking voluntary departure,” Shah said. “These are the stressors you’re putting very young kids under.”
Border Patrol teased the apprehension fee in a September 24 Facebook post, which included a megaphone emoji and said anyone 14 years or older could be fined. Money collected from the fines will be credited to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the text of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Other fees created by the new law include $100 to apply for asylum, plus $100 every year the application is pending; $550 for asylum-seekers to apply for a work permit; and $5,000 for anyone ordered removed in absentia and then arrested by ICE. Lack of clarity over exactly how and when to pay the $100 fees recently sparked panic among asylum-seekers in New York and a flood of misinformation and potential scams, New York Focus recently reported.
In response to questions about the $5,000 fee being applied to minors, the Department of Homeland Security referred New York Focus and The Intercept to a press release about a different fee of $1,000 for immigrants paroled into the U.S. The agency did not respond to follow-up questions.
Supporters of the fine argue that it will incentivize people to cross at legal entry points rather than traverse dangerous desert terrain and take up Customs and Border Protection resources. Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for restrictions on immigration, said he understood the argument that a teenager won’t be able to pay a $5,000 fine, but said their parents or relatives would then be on the hook.
“This isn’t, you know, ‘We want to punish 14-year-old kids,’” Arthur said. “This is, ‘We want to discourage parents from paying smugglers to bring their kids to the United States.’”
It’s unclear how many immigrants have received the $5,000 fine. Several attorneys who work with unaccompanied minors in New York and other states told New York Focus they’d heard about the fines secondhand but hadn’t seen any cases personally. All of the cases New York Focus and The Intercept were able to verify involved teenagers in ORR custody, but advocates said they had heard of minors outside of federal custody receiving the fines.
Under Trump, the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border and entering ORR custody has plummeted. In September, about 2,000 kids were in ORR custody on average, down from more than 6,000 last October.
Theo Liebmann, a law professor at Hofstra University who runs a legal clinic for immigrant youth, said unaccompanied kids in ORR custody are particularly vulnerable because they often don’t have lawyers, having recently arrived in the U.S.
Liebmann, who doesn’t have any clients who have received the fine, said it appeared to be an effort to “go after the kids who are especially defenseless and won’t be able to understand how to look at this threat, how real this threat is, and what they can do in response.”
By the time the cops showed up to arrest him for sharing a derisive meme responding to the killing of Charlie Kirk, Larry Bushart Jr. had posted on Facebook more than 100 times on Sunday alone.
It was past 11 p.m. on September 21, and Bushart, 61, was still up with his wife at their home in Lexington, Tennessee, a small city halfway between Nashville and Memphis. It had been a normal weekend. On Saturday, they went to see a community theater performance of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” The next day, they moved furniture to prepare for a new carpet delivery. And, as he did almost every day, Bushart spent hours on his phone, posting on Facebook a torrent of liberal memes.
Born and raised in West Tennessee, Bushart worked as a police officer and sheriff’s deputy for 24 years, then spent another nine with the Tennessee Department of Correction before retiring from law enforcement last year. His politics made him an outlier among his neighbors. Like many people, he reserved his most strident opinions for the internet. On Facebook, Bushart slammed President Donald Trump and his followers, who he likened to a cult. He quarreled with vaccine skeptics and fought with election deniers. As things took a darker turn during Trump’s second term, Bushart posted memes decrying the president’s increasingly authoritarian moves. After Kirk’s killing on September 10, Bushart posted furiously, repeatedly, about why the right-wing activist did not deserve to be lionized — and warning about the escalating assault on free speech.
His posts were not limited to his own feed. That Saturday morning, in a Facebook group called “What’s Happening in Perry County,” Bushart spotted a thread about an upcoming candlelight vigil honoring Kirk in the county seat of Linden, a small town some 45 minutes away. He fired off a rapid series of trollish memes. One showed a scene from “The Sopranos.” “Tony, Charlie Kirk died,” Carmela Soprano says. “Who gives a shit,” Tony replies. Another quoted Kash Patel’s press conference after Kirk’s murder, where he said, “I’ll see you at Valhalla,” depicting the FBI director in a Viking costume and holding a rubber chicken. The most vulgar meme appeared to capture the moment Kirk was shot, accompanied by the words, “Release the Epstein Files.”
But it was a more innocuous post that would soon send Bushart’s life spiraling out of control. It was an image he had previously posted to his own feed to little response: a photo of Trump alongside a quote, “We have to get over it.” The meme, which had been circulating for more than a year, drew from remarks Trump madeafter a January 2024 school shooting in Perry, Iowa. Beneath the quote was a line providing context: “Donald Trump, on the Perry High School mass shooting, one day after.” Above the image were the words “Seems relevant today.”
If Bushart shared the posts to taunt those mourning Kirk, the reactions on the forum remained relatively mild. “Jeez Larry, take a stress pill or something,” one man commented. “Mow the lawn, get off the computer. A simple, concise statement like ‘I HATE Charlie’ would be sufficient.” Some of Bushart’s posts were received more positively; a meme arguing that “Billionaires fund the class war. Charlie Kirk sold it as a race war” got several likes. The Trump meme, meanwhile, was ignored.
By Sunday evening, however, the posts had gotten the attention of Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems. An avid Facebook user himself, Weems had shared the information about the Kirk vigil on his own page a few days earlier. He had also posted his own emotional response to the news of Kirk’s murder in September, warning ominously about the “evil” in our midst. “Evil could be your neighbor,” he wrote. “Evil could be standing right beside you in the grocery store. It could be your own family member and you never even know it.”
Weems contacted his investigator. Just under an hour later, in Lexington, Bushart wrote a two-line post on Facebook at 7:53 p.m. “Received a visit from Lexington PD regarding my posted memes on ‘What’s Happening in Perry County,’” he wrote. The police had come at the behest of Perry County, he said, but did not elaborate.
If he was concerned, Bushart didn’t show it. He went back to posting. At 9:48 p.m., Bushart shared a meme from a page called Blue Wave 2026, featuring an unhinged-looking Roseanne Barr. “Many maga are claiming that Obama used the pressure of his office and the FCC to get Rosanne cancelled just like Trump did to Kimmel,” it read. “Except Obama wasn’t president in 2018. Care to guess who was?”
It would be his last post that night. At 11:15 p.m., police knocked on his door again. This time there were four officers, one of whom was holding a warrant for his arrest, which had been sent from Perry County. Body camera footage obtained by The Intercept shows police following Bushart inside his house and waiting while he slips on his shoes. Then they handcuff him on his front porch and lead him away.
Arriving at the local jail, the officer with the warrant unfolded the piece of paper. “Just to clarify, this is what they charged you with,” he told Bushart, pointing and reading aloud: “Threatening Mass Violence at a School.”
“At a school?” Bushart said, sounding confused.
But the officer had no further explanation. “I ain’t got a clue,” he said, chuckling. “I just gotta do what I have to do.”
Bushart laughed too. “I’ve been in Facebook jail but now I’m really in it,” he said. He hadn’t committed a crime, he said. “I may have been an asshole but…”
“That’s not illegal,” the officer said.
Bushart was booked at the Perry County Jail in Linden on September 22, just before 2 a.m. He has been there ever since. His bail was set at $2 million — a shocking amount, wildly beyond his financial capacity. Under Tennessee law, Bushart would have to pay at least $210,000 to get out of jail, under onerous conditions. Although his defense attorney has filed a motion asking General Sessions Judge Katerina Moore to reduce his bail on the grounds that he is not a flight risk and does not pose a threat to the community, a hearing on the motion was reset at prosecutors’ request. Bushart’s next court date is not scheduled to take place until December 4.
Bushart is one of countless people whose lives have been upended due to social media posts shared after Kirk’s death. The murder triggered an extraordinary crackdown on speech, wielded against Americans from every level of government, with the White House and its allies targeting those whose public reactions they considered offensive. Vice President J.D. Vance urged Americans to report people to their employers. At the Pentagon, nearly 300 employees were investigated. And more recently, the State Department revoked the visas of people who spoke ill of Kirk.
In Tennessee, a wave of firings and suspensions took place across the state, with numerous public employees and college and university staffers punished for their posts. A high school science teacher was suspended after being targeted by the right-wing website The Federalist for an Instagram story calling Kirk a “POS” and quoting his reaction to the 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville, which left seven dead, including three 9-year-old students. “It’s worth to have, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights,” Kirk had said. And, under pressure from Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who is running for Tennessee governor, a university fired a theater professor for posting an old article about Kirk’s comments, issuing a statement explaining that the professor had “reshared a post on social media that was insensitive, disrespectful and interpreted by many as propagating justification for unlawful death.”
But Bushart’s case is in a class of its own. He is almost certainly the only person who was arrested and held on a serious criminal charge for a Facebook post in the wake of Kirk’s death — a charge that seems clearly divorced from reality. Among those who have heard of it, the case has been met with shock, outrage, and considerable confusion. On TikTok, Reddit, and a “Justice for Larry Bushart” page on Facebook, many see the case as a form of government overreach that puts all Americans in danger. And though the case is undeniably part of the broader assault on free speech sparked by the Kirk assassination, it is also locally rooted: a perfect storm of bad law, overzealous policing, and a political climate that has emboldened law enforcement officials to punish perceived enemies.
At the heart of the controversy is elected Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems. In office since 2015, his previous claim to fame in Tennessee was his response to the 2018 shooting at Parkland High School in Florida, which killed 17 people. In an impassioned open letter, he criticized politicians who failed to protect students, pledging $500 of his own money to install barricade locks on school doors in Perry County. His rallying cry: “Not Our Children!”
More recently, Weems has availed himself of a Tennessee law passed after the Covenant School shooting, which sought harsh new punishments for “recklessly making a threat of mass violence.” The American Civil Liberties Union and other free speech experts cautioned at the time that the language was so broad, “it could potentially criminalize a wide range of adults and children who do not have any intent of actually causing harm or making a threat” — and this is precisely what has happened. The law has ensnared numerous students for social media activity that, by all rational interpretations, are not actually threatening actual violence. Earlier this year, ProPublica and WPLN/Nashville Public Radio reported on a group of middle school cheerleaders who were slapped with criminal charges by the local sheriff for filming a TikTok video in which one girl said, “Put your hands up,” while other girls dropped to the floor.
In Bushart’s case, the warrant affidavit contains a short narrative summarizing the ostensible evidence against him. “At approximately 1900 hours,” writes Perry County Sheriff’s Investigator Jason Morrow, “I … received a message from Sheriff Nick Weems regarding a Facebook post Larry Bushart made on the What’s Happening in Perry County, TN Facebook page stating ‘This seems relevant today…’ with an image of Donald Trump and the words ‘We have to get over it.’” Morrow quotes the rest of the meme and notes that it was posted “on a message thread regarding the Charlie Kirk vigil.” He then writes: “This was a means of communication, via picture, posted to a Perry County, TN Facebook page in which a reasonable person would conclude could lead to serious bodily injury, or death of multiple people.”
A screenshot of the meme Larry Bushart Jr. posted to Facebook.Source: Larry Bushart Jr.'s Facebook page
It’s possible, perhaps, to imagine how the Trump meme might have set some members of the Facebook group on edge — at least upon first glance. The post invoked a school shooting at a “Perry High School.” The local high school in Linden is called Perry County High School. Moreover, just one month earlier, Weems had reported an alleged threat against the school, prompting administrators to cancel all classes “for the safety of our students and staff.” Still, it was easy to discern that, apart from the name “Perry,” there was nothing connecting the meme to Linden.
Chris Eargle, who created the “Justice for Larry Bushart” Facebook page, first heard about the case from news reports posted on social media. Like many online commenters, he figured there had to be more to the story. “I was very skeptical when I first saw it,” he said. “He couldn’t have just been thrown in jail with a $2 million bond just for posting a Trump meme.” But the closer he looked at the case, the more it seemed clear that’s exactly what happened. “I was like, ‘Oh, wow, they actually did charge him for posting a meme.’”
Eargle requested to join the “What’s Happening In Perry County” group and was granted access. He also started commenting on different Facebook pages linked to the sheriff. “Unwise persecution of people for their political views will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars,” he wrote in a review on the “Re-Elect Weems for Sheriff” page. “He should never be allowed near public office again.” Before long, the page was taken down. So was the Perry County Sheriff’s Office page.
Weems had been happy to publicize Bushart’s arrest at first. In the earliest news story on September 22, local radio station WOPC published Bushart’s mugshot along with a statement from the sheriff, who said that Bushart’s meme had alluded to “a hypothetical shooting at a place called Perry High School.” According to Weems, “That message caused considerable concern within the community and we were asked to investigate.”
Readers found this perplexing. “I’m confused,” one woman wrote on Facebook after the story was posted on the station page. “He was talking about shooting up the school or shooting up a vigil. How are the two things connected?” Another reader speculated that Weems hadn’t heard of the Iowa shooting and misinterpreted the post as a threat. “A man is in jail because the sheriff didn’t use google.”
In a comment that has since been deleted, Weems personally replied to correct the record. “We were very much aware of the meme being from an Iowa shooting,” he wrote later that afternoon. The meme “created mass hysteria to parents and teachers … that led the normal person to conclude that he was talking about our Perry County High School.”
This did not go over well. Most people would not read the meme as a threat, several commenters pointed out. But even if the meme had caused some people to panic, one man wrote, “your department arrested a man for expressing free speech because you listened to public hysteria rather than doing an investigation?”
Others didn’t buy the notion that there had been panic at all. “Mass hysteria is a lie,” another man wrote. “I hope he sues you.”
As the story spread, confusion persisted over the basic facts. Because the Facebook thread was only visible to members of the Perry County group, it was unclear to most people when, exactly, Bushart posted the memes or how people reacted — let alone whether the response could be described as “mass hysteria.” But Weems insisted that Bushart wanted to sow panic, telling The Tennessean that “investigators believe Bushart was fully aware of the fear his post would cause and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community.”
Yet there were no public signs of this hysteria. Nor was there much evidence of an investigation — or any efforts to warn county schools. Although the Perry County Schools District did not respond to messages from The Intercept, attorneys with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a series of open records requests with the school district asking for any communications to or from staff pertaining to the case — including terms like “shooting,” “threat,” and “meme.” In response, the director of schools wrote that there were no records related to Bushart’s case. “The Perry County Sheriff’s Department handled this situation,” he wrote.
“You would think that if a school district or a school was the target of a serious threat, they would have an email or a text message or something to students, to parents, to the safety officer, to the community, saying, ‘Here’s what has happened. Don’t worry. Everything is all right,’” said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with FIRE who has been monitoring the case. “They have nothing.”
Meanwhile, the Perry County Sheriff’s Office has not responded to records requests by FIRE. In a phone call with The Intercept, a sheriff’s deputy told The Intercept that any records related to the case would have to be subpoenaed. “I’m not releasing anything due to the scrutiny and the harassing phone calls we’ve had,” he said, then hung up. But Weems himself responded to an email earlier this week. He said that the Perry County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page “has been in the process” of being deleted since July but declined to comment further. “There is a lot of false quotes being made in regard to this case,” he wrote. “Therefore, I’m not gonna continue to discuss the case until it’s settled in court.”
Bushart’s lawyer has not responded to messages about the case. Bushart’s wife declined to speak on the record on the advice of the attorney. But Bushart’s son defended his dad on social media, calling the prosecution “an egregious violation of his 1st Amendment rights” and spelling out what has been clear from the start: The meme he shared was meant to show “the hypocrisy in honoring Charlie Kirk while ignoring other tragic incidents of mass violence.”
For now, Bushart faces the prospect of spending Thanksgiving in jail. On Tuesday, a member of the Justice for Larry Bushart page created a GiveSendGo account to raise money for his legal defense. “This isn’t just for Larry; this is a stand against overzealous law enforcement acting on skewed interpretations of free speech,” it reads. “Remember: today it’s someone else; tomorrow it could be you or me.”
To Steinbaugh, who has litigated First Amendment violations all over the country, Bushart’s case stands out. “One thing that’s unique about it is that nobody has done a course correction here,” he said. “It would be one thing to have law enforcement overreacting and detaining someone … and then the next day, saying, ‘OK, message received, we’ve done our due diligence. That’s all we need to do here.’ This guy’s been incarcerated since this happened over quoting the president. Cooler heads should have prevailed by now.”
Returning to Aotearoa after half a year in the occupied West Bank, Cole Martin says a peace deal that fails to address the root causes — and ignores the brutal reality of life for Palestinians — is no peace deal at all.
COMMENTARY:By Cole Martin
A ceasefire in Gaza last week brought scenes reminiscent of January’s brief pause — tears, relief, exhaustion and devastation as families reunited after months, years and even decades in captivity.
Others were exiled or discovered their entire family had been killed; thousands returned to their homes in northern Gaza, others to rubble – but just like last time, it didn’t last.
An Israeli checkpoint near Al-Khalil, Hebron . . . Palestinians stand in a crowded, fenced corridor with metal bars, waiting to pass through a turnstile gate. Image: Cole Martin
The prevention of food, water, aid and critical infrastructure continues; the borders remain closed; and across the rest of Palestine, Israel’s brutal system of domination, apartheid and displacement continues.
It’s impossible to ignore two critical elements that this deal omitted: a failure to address the root causes and a jarring lack of international accountability.
I returned to Aotearoa this week after six months documenting and reporting from the occupied West Bank, where Israel continues its campaign of violent displacement and colonial expansion. Almost everyone I know has tasted the terror of Israeli domination.
Broke into bedroom
My Arabic tutor described how soldiers broke into her bedroom at night to interrogate her family about a man they didn’t even know. My climbing partner warned you can be shot for climbing in the wrong place, with most of their crags now inaccessible.
I visited Jerusalem with a friend who scored a one-day permit. He lives in Bethlehem, just a half-hour away, but they’re barred from visiting and must return by midnight; a process involving biometric scanners and intrusive searches.
And I was based in Aida refugee camp, one of dozens across the land where thousands of families have lived since their violent displacement in 1948 — the ethnic cleansing which saw 750,000 expelled, 15,000 killed and 530 villages destroyed.
Refused the right to return, their homes are now dormant ruins in “nature reserves” or inhabited by Israeli families. Israel was built on the land, farms, businesses and stolen wealth of these families — and countless more who remain as “present absentees” within the state of Israel.
Left: Palestinian climbers enjoy one of their last accessible crags, the others too dangerous to access because of settler violence. Right: Yacoub Odeh, 84, walks the ruins of his childhood village Lifta, denied his right to return to live, despite living just 10 minutes away. Images: Cole Martin
I visited the Ofer military courts and witnessed a corrupt system designed to funnel Palestinians to prison based on extortion, plea bargains and “secret evidence” which the detainee and lawyer aren’t allowed to see. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers receive full legal rights in Israeli civil courts; two vastly different legal systems based on race — if the settler is arrested at all.
Almost everyone I met has experienced detention firsthand or through a close family member — involving beatings, humiliation, starvation and threats. A nurse my age humorously asked why I wasn’t married yet; when I asked the same, he explained he’d only recently left years of Israeli captivity.
His killer was free within five days, back harassing the family, and has established an illegal settlement in the middle of their village — destroying homes, olive groves, water and electrical infrastructure with no repercussions.
Tariq Hathaleen stares at the bloodstained courtyard where his cousin and best friend Awdah was shot. Tariq was detained for several days following Awdah’s death. Image: Cole Martin
I visited countless communities across the West Bank who face daily harassment, violence and incursions from Israeli settlers, police and military. Settlements continue to expand, preventing Palestinians from reaching their land.
All of this continues, none of it is halted by the “ceasefire”; and most of it will escalate as soldiers leave Gaza and look to exert their dominance elsewhere.
I’m truly fearful for my friends in the West Bank, particularly as Israel openly threatens annexation. A peace deal that ignores these realities is no peace deal.
Resilience and courage
But I also witnessed resilience and courageous persistence. Palestinian civil society and individuals have spent decades committed to creative non-violence in the face of these atrocities — from court battles to academia, education, art, demonstrations, general strikes, hīkoi (marches), sit-ins, civil disobedience.
These are the overlooked stories that don’t make catchy headlines, but their success depends on the international community to provide accountability. Without global support, Palestinians have been refused their right to self-defence, resistance and self-determination.
If we really care about peace, we need to support justice. To talk about peace without liberation is to suggest submission to a system of displacement, imprisonment, violence and erasure.
This is not the time to turn away, this is the time to ensure that international law is upheld, that Palestinians are given their dignity, self-determination, right to return and reparations for the horror they’ve faced.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist who has been based in the occupied West Bank for six months and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by the The Spinoff and is republished with the author’s permission.
In a win for the welfare and well-being of children, the government plans to repeal the legal principle which enshrines presumption of parental involvement within the family court system. Put simply, this means that in cases of domestic abuse the court will not assume that it is always in the best interests of children to have contact with both parents. Instead, evidence will be considered on a case by case basis.
The move will reform the long-problematic ‘pro-contact’ culture. Crucially, it will prioritise for the first time children’s safety over the parental rights of perpetrators of domestic abuse. Before this change, courts have operated on the presumption that having contact with both parents is in the best interests of a child.
Family court law change will finally put children’s wellbeing first
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Justice announced the plan to repeal the ‘presumption of parental involvement’. In 2014, parliament had introduced this into the Children Act 1989.
In principle, this meant that in contact cases in the family courts, the court had to presume that the continued involvement of both parents would be in a child’s best interests.
However, domestic abuse campaigners have long been raising the alarm over its dangers. Because in reality, the result has been a system which has placed the rights of abusive parents – primarily fathers – above the safety and wellbeing of children.
The government’s announcement coincided with the anniversaries of the deaths of two children from these legal failures. Domestic violence survivor and Women’s Aid ambassador Claire Throssell MBE has tirelessly campaigned for the repeal of this legal principle. 11 years ago to the day of the announcement (22 October 2014), the abusive father of her two children killed her son Paul. On 27 October 2014, he then killed their son Jack. The presumption had effectively sidelined Throssell’s warnings that he was a danger to them. However, the repeal could have prevented their homicides.
Repealing the ‘outdated’ presumption of parental involvement
For almost a decade, Women’s Aid and I have worked together, campaigning to change the family courts and improve laws, to ensure that children at risk of further harm from abusive parents have a brighter, safer future, free from fear and oppression. Every child deserves to be heard, seen, supported, and believed; to have a childhood and to live.
Successive governments have failed to protect children, standing by an outdated presumption that it is in a child’s best interests to have contact with both their parents, even when there have been allegations of domestic abuse. We have campaigned tirelessly to have this presumption removed from the family law and practice, because until this narrative changes, more children, like Jack and Paul, will continue to die.
Although today’s announcement can never bring back Jack and Paul it will give children further protection against preventable harm in their lives. No child should have to hold out a hand for help in darkness to a stranger and say that they have been hurt by someone who should love and protect them most. No parents should have to hold their children as they die, from the abuse of a perpetrator, as I did a decade ago.
A pro-contact culture that prioritised the parental ‘rights’ of domestic abusers over children
The ministry brought forward the decision off the back of the recommendations from the 2020 Conservative government’s harm panel. This had found that the pro-contact culture:
placed undue priority on ensuring contact with the non-resident parent, which resulted in systemic minimisation of allegations of domestic abuse.
Consequently, the panel advised the government “urgently review” the presumption of parental involvement.
Of course, since the panel recommended this, family courts have placed many more children at risk of harm.
In July, domestic violence charity Women’s Aid published a harrowing report illustrating the abominable consequence of this pro-contact legal principle. Titled 19 More Child Homicides, the report detailed the tragic and avoidable deaths of 19 children the family court system had utterly failed. The children, aged between just over three weeks old to age 11, had been killed by parental perpetrators of domestic abuse.
Significantly, the report found that there had been a spike in the number of families facing these avoidable child deaths. Notably, this had risen 50% in the previous 10 years. As such, it pointed to the devastating impact of this legal presumption.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism highlighted a further report published earlier this month. Domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales Nicole Jacobs tasked academics at Loughborough University to produce the report based on a pilot study they conducted. The reports findings compound the concerns Women’s Aid raised in its research.
The pilot study analysed more than 300 family case files. Notably, it found evidence of domestic abuse in 87% of them. Despite this, it identified in more than half of these cases, judges were sending children to stay with potentially abusive parents.
A significant step, but it must just be the start
While the move marks a significant step in the right direction, the repeal alone will not overhaul a system that has deeply-embedded this pro-contact culture. The 2020 harm panel itself noted that before parliament introduced the statutory presumption:
it was already well established in case law that the involvement of both parents in a child’s life will usually further the child’s welfare and that compelling reasons must be demonstrated for the court to suspend contact.
For too many poor, chronically ill, disabled, and racially minoritised mothers and caregivers, the systemic violence and marginalisation of the family justice system has long put them and their children at unconscionable risk. Family courts will continue endangering the lives of children until listening to and amplifying their voices and the voices of domestic violence survivors is the standard. This repeal should only signify the start of such reforms.
As Paramaribo, Suriname, flooded with shin-high water during a rainstorm in June, hundreds of taxis jostled for space on a recently paved street on the outskirts of the capital city. Passengers in suits disembarked alongside an overgrown canal. The visitors, some of whom had come from as far away as Texas and Malaysia, were there to commemorate this small country’s entry into the ranks of the world’s major oil producers.
Paramaribo sits on the northeast coast of South America, at the edge of a relatively undisturbed section of the Amazon rainforest. This massive jungle covers more than 90 percent of Suriname’s landmass, making it the world’s most forested country by percentage. It also allows Suriname to claim itself as “carbon-negative,” meaning that the nation absorbs more greenhouse gases than it emits.
Sources: USGS, Staatsolie
Jesse Nichols / Grist
As a result, Suriname is one of the few countries that can make an unimpeachable claim to being on the right side of the climate crisis. But all that is about to change.
In 2028, the country’s first offshore oil platform will begin pumping almost a quarter-million barrels of crude each day, roughly enough to supply the daily needs of all the drivers in the state of Colorado. In its first year alone, this project from the French oil major TotalEnergies is expected to generate billions of dollars of revenue for the government and billions more in private spending, causing the country’s economy to grow by more than half. More offshore rigs are expected to follow.
The air at the fifth annual Suriname Energy, Oil, and Gas Summit in June buzzed in anticipation of this coming prosperity. Hundreds of oil industry figures and Surinamese politicians crowded into the conference tents. They drank rum cocktails and sampled canapes, gabbed at trade show booths with representatives from drilling companies and construction firms, and then took taxis to after-parties where DJs shouted out conference sponsors such as the consulting firm EY.
Cars drive along a busy street in central Paramaribo. The capital city’s urban infrastructure struggles to handle rainfall and floods during many storms Juan Barreto / AFP via Getty Images
All the while, they celebrated what they saw as a global shift away from aggressive climate policy. A speaker from Shell praised the emergence of a “balanced energy transition” approach, while those from development banks and market analysis firms spoke about a new emphasis on “energy addition,” rather than “transition.” As the attendees saw it, there was nothing odd about the spectacle of a carbon-negative country hosting a celebration of new oil extraction — amid damaging floods only likely to become more frequent with more global warming.
From one angle, the launch of Suriname’s oil industry is a retelling of a familiar story: A massive oil company wins over a country with the promise of riches, enlisting it in an effort to produce more of a commodity that is destroying the world. But from another, it’s the story of a country seeking to balance its economic growth with the welfare of the planet, in the absence of global infrastructure to help it develop in other ways.
To hear Suriname’s leaders tell it, the oil project would allow the nation to uplift its citizens without harming the climate.
“The new dawn … means that Suriname is given a new chance for sustainable development,” said Chandrikapersad Santokhi, the country’s outgoing president, in his opening remarks at the conference. “The development of the oil and gas industry and carbon offsets go hand in hand in our country. We are not pursuing growth at any cost.”
A statue in Paramaribo celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Staatsolie, the state oil company of Suriname. Jake Bittle / Grist
Up until now, Suriname’s coveted “carbon-negative” status has been inextricably linked to its underdevelopment. Its slice of the Amazon sequesters more carbon than the country can emit only because its citizens by and large cannot afford the energy-intensive lifestyles that much of the world takes for granted. The average resident earned less than $500 per month in 2024.
Now, Suriname’s leaders want to alleviate that poverty without becoming a net source of carbon. The plan is not just to make money and employ people, but also to use oil as a financing mechanism to build an economy that will someday become independent of fossil fuels, according to senior government officials who have served across the country’s recent administrations.
This means a host of new infrastructure projects and social welfare programs that check the boxes of sustainable development: Suriname will seed green industries such as ecotourism and climate-smart agriculture, build mangrove sea barriers and storm-drain systems to stop flooding, and transition away from the use of imported bunker fuel and toward solar and hydropower.
Elsy Poeketie collects water at her daughter’s house in Paramaribo after heavy rainfall. Ranu Abhelakh / AFP via Getty Images
But it also means allowing Total, the world’s sixth-largest oil company by market capitalization, to pump around 750 million new barrels of oil — more than will come from a massive oil development such as ConocoPhillips’s Willow project in Alaska. And that’s the bare minimum, assuming that no other multinationals strike crude and drill their own rigs.
“We have to diversify,” said Marciano Dasai, Suriname’s former environment minister. “We can say, ‘OK, we’re going to do the oil and gas,’ or we can say, ‘OK, let’s do the oil and gas … to get us out of debt and do the transformation to a green economy.’”
Suriname’s history reads like an argument against the idea that exploiting natural resources can bring about prosperity. When the country gained independence from the Netherlands in 1975, the U.S. aluminum firm Alcoa had been mining a mineral known as bauxite in the country for decades, but it offshored most of the profits. Since independence, the government has helped develop gold mines and two small onshore oil fields, but living standards are still low and inequality high.
In the years leading up to the coronavirus pandemic, Suriname sank into a debt spiral, the result of excessive household power subsidies and low prices for commodities such as gold that are its main source of export revenue. The country owed around half a billion dollars to China, $88 million to the Paris Club, and another half-billion to private bondholders that had lent money to the government to help it prop up public budgets. In 2020, the government defaulted on its sovereign debt, leading the International Monetary Fund to step in with strict curbs on government spending.
But as this debt crisis unfolded, seeming salvation was waiting offshore. In 2015, Exxon Mobil made a major oil discovery off the coast of neighboring Guyana. Drilling studies soon found that the offshore ridge near Suriname contained billions of barrels’ worth of oil, much of it lightweight and easy to extract, plus vast stores of natural gas. A half-dozen firms started exploring in Suriname’s water, and in 2021, Total struck oil.
A discovery such as this often leads to disaster through the so-called resource curse: When poor countries become reliant on new fossil fuel revenue, it leaves them vulnerable to global price fluctuations, and their governments sometimes embezzle or misuse oil money rather than sharing it with citizens.
A companion phenomenon, known as Dutch disease, occurs when a country’s overwhelming focus on one new industry leads to a decline in the rest of its economy, as Suriname’s former colonizer experienced after a gas field discovery in the 20th century. Countries including Cameroon, Guyana, and South Sudan, to name a few, have developed oil projects over the decades that never delivered broad prosperity.
The new headquarters of TotalEnergies rises above the outskirts of Paramaribo. The French supermajor plans to extract hundreds of millions of barrels of oil from an offshore platform starting in 2028. Jake Bittle / Grist
In theory, Suriname is in danger of falling into this trap. The country has a history of corruption, and until 2020, it was ruled by Dési Bouterse, a former soldier who staged a military coup in the 1980s and was later elected president. But it also had a secret weapon in its negotiations with Total. Because it had already developed a small onshore oil field in the 1980s, Suriname had a public oil company called Staatsolie, which operated relatively independently. While it had nowhere near the resources needed to drill for oil offshore — Total’s revenue was two thousand times greater — the state-owned company’s leaders had more fossil fuel expertise than those in most small countries.
Led by a mild-mannered engineer named Annand Jagesar, Staatsolie drove a hard bargain with Total: The smaller company insisted on a royalty rate of 6.25 percent, more than twice what Guyana was able to negotiate, as well as a 36 percent corporate income tax and a guarantee that Total would hire locals. Staatsolie also secured a $1.6 billion loan from development banks, which allowed it to take a 20 percent stake in the project. In all, Suriname will get up to 70 percent of the revenue from Total’s oil.
The talks were so tense that at one point, Total threatened to walk out. But Staatsolie held firm, and the larger company came back to the table.
Total “was not nice in the beginning, and we were not nice in the beginning, but I must tell you, this project is one of the best projects in the world,” Jagesar said at the conference in June. (The company did not respond to interview requests.)
Even before the Total deal was final, Suriname used the promise of future wealth to reverse its debt spiral. In 2023, the government restructured its Wall Street debt, and it passed legislation the following year to divert a chunk of oil revenue into a sovereign wealth fund modeled on Norway’s.
The turnaround was remarkable. Just a few years after defaulting on its debt, Suriname was on a path to being debt-free. Other major oil companies such as Chevron, Petronas, and Shell were staking out developments, encouraged by Total’s success.
Last October, Total made its final decision to proceed with the oil project, which the company called GranMorgu. The name was a pun — it is the name of a wide-mouthed fish that is native to Suriname’s offshore waters, but in the unofficial national language of Sranan Tongo, it means “new dawn.” Given the scale of change that the oil project would bring to Suriname, the name seemed more than appropriate.
A mural in the offices of Staatsolie celebrates the career of Rudolf Elias, one of the state-owned oil company’s former directors. Jake Bittle / Grist
This oil project is good news for Suriname — its people are poised to get higher-paying jobs, more foreign business, and far better public services. But in the eyes of many of the world’s climate advocates, it’s a disaster, particularly at a moment when governments are supposed to be turning away from fossil fuels.
“As a sovereign state, we do have the right to exploit our resources in the way we see fit,” said Gina Griffith, the head of the Suriname chapter of Conservation International, a leading environmentalist nonprofit. “But it’s so contradictory.”
That Suriname has championed a new oil development is symptomatic of the impasse that plagues global climate policy. The 2015 Paris Agreement enshrined a principle known as “common but differentiated responsibilities”— in essence, the idea that rich countries, which got rich in part by producing the lion’s share of carbon emissions, must do more to fight climate change than poor countries. Wealthy nations have agreed in principle to not only reduce their own emissions but also to help protect poor countries against climate change and develop their green economies.
But rich countries have lagged on both tasks, particularly the responsibility to aid green development. They have failed to provide poor countries with anything like the money that would be necessary for “sustainable development,” or economic growth without fossil fuels.
This aerial view shows the coast of the Weg naar Zee resort in Paramaribo. Suriname faces severe challenges from flooding and coastal erosion. Juan Barreto / AFP via Getty Images
The reason is simple: Such development is expensive, even more so than paying for infrastructure to protect against disasters. There have been isolated efforts by rich countries to create so-called just energy transition partnerships, or investment consortia that would help speed up decarbonization in certain countries, but these have largely failed to achieve deep carbon reductions — despite channeling huge amounts of money toward places such as South Africa ($8.5 billion), Vietnam ($15.5 billion), and Indonesia ($20 billion). The Colombian government is struggling to raise money for its own proposal to build a post-oil economy.
So countries fall back on the old models of development. This rush toward fossil fuels in places such as Nigeria and Senegal often elicits a lecture from wealthy countries that are decarbonizing, but the truth is that these countries don’t have much of a choice. President Donald Trump’s second administration, and in particular Energy Secretary Chris Wright, have argued that this is good, that ending “energy poverty” through coal, oil, and gas development is ideal even if it harms the climate. The administration has cut foreign aid, withdrawn from the Paris climate accord, and slashed funding for the United Nations and other bodies, which will make financing green development harder for the rest of the world.
Suriname’s leaders argue that they have found a way to thread this needle. The country is building out a fossil fuel industry, with two big caveats. First, it is taking every possible step to reduce the emissions from its oil infrastructure while protecting its rainforest. Second, it is only developing oil as a means of building a low-carbon economy and raising the living standards of its citizens. Essentially, Surinamese officials say they are using oil revenue to do the development that rich countries won’t pay for.
“A lot of countries say, ‘How can you do oil and gas, and then you have this forest? This is something that is contradictory,’” said Dasai, the environment minister. “We say that in this phase, especially now, the climate financing mechanisms are not working yet.” Given that the massive wealth transfer promised under the Paris Agreement has not happened, developing countries such as Suriname must both raise the living standards of their citizens and work to prevent harm to the global climate.
A view of the Staatsolie oil refinery in Wanica. Even as Suriname builds out a fossil fuel industry, it is also branding itself as a climate leader. Ranu Abhelakh / AFP via Getty Images
Total could be a good partner for such an effort, as perhaps the only supermajor oil company that has not retreated from its climate commitments. During the conference in June, Total executives pointed to plans for an offshore rig that will cut down on carbon emissions. The entire rig will be electric, and Total has agreed to reinject almost all natural gas that comes to the surface, flaring it only in emergencies. (Electricity use and gas flaring account for a large share of the emissions associated with getting oil out of the ground.) Suriname’s carbon ledger will technically remain negative overall.
But the center of this mitigation effort will be the rainforest. Suriname’s relatively pristine Amazon jungle is the source of its carbon-negative status, but new mining and logging developments claim more of it each year. The country has lost about 1.5 percent of its forest cover since the turn of the century, according to one watchdog group. If left unchecked, deforestation could threaten the country’s carbon-negative status sometime in the next decade. So even as the country sells oil on the global market, it also wants to sell so-called carbon offsets, or monetized guarantees that the forest will stay intact. Many countries and companies purchase these credits on international exchanges to help counterbalance their own emissions.
The carbon offset industry is rife with fraudandnegligence, and many offset projects around the world have fallenapart, but most experts anticipate that demand for these offsets will grow over the next few decades. For Suriname, rainforest credits could act as a companion product to barrels of oil, allowing foreign countries to buy both the fuel that they need and a counterweight to that fuel’s emissions. For Suriname, the credits could be a way to replace the financial benefits of destructive sectors such as mining and logging.
“The world has everything to gain from Suriname protecting its forests,” said John Goedschalk, a policy consultant who advises Suriname’s new president on climate finance. Total has offered to buy $50 million of Suriname’s potential carbon credits to appease its climate-conscious shareholders, and countries including Japan and Singapore have expressed interest in purchasing credits as well. (The country has not yet made a deal with any of these parties.)
An aerial view of the Suriname River at Pokigron. More than 90 percent of Suriname’s land is undeveloped rainforest, which makes the country one of just a few carbon-negative nations on earth. Michael Runkel / Getty Images
For attendees of the fifth annual Suriname Energy, Oil, and Gas Summit, the promise of low-emissions drilling and carbon credits were enough to allay the potential climate guilt that the rum cocktails didn’t assuage. Everyone present, from Santokhi and his ministers to the senior Total executives, insisted that developing an offshore oil project would not threaten Suriname’s carbon-negative status, and that it was consistent with a world where fossil fuel growth slows relative to the explosion in renewable energy — a world, in other words, where “transition” takes place at a comfortable pace for all parties.
However, this claim about carbon-negativity relies on imperfect arithmetic. Countries only tally the carbon emissions from within their borders. For Suriname, that means that it only has to count the emissions that come from pumping oil out of the ocean and loading it onto tankers for export; it does not have to worry about the emissions that come from burning the oil itself.
Just counting in-country emissions, it’s true that Suriname can build GranMorgu without becoming carbon-positive. But Scope 3 emissions, from actually burning oil in trucks and planes, account for as much as 90 percent of the emissions produced by an oil company such as Total. The project will produce around 80 million barrels of oil per year, and burning all those barrels of oil will create more than 30 million tons of carbon dioxide — dozens of times more than Suriname’s rainforest can sequester. The project may not add much to Suriname’s own side of the carbon ledger, but the oil will still be burned somewhere.
Yet not all barrels of oil are created equal. As long as the world continues to use crude, it will find that crude from somewhere, and Suriname’s leaders argue that their oil is better for the climate. It is far cheaper and cleaner to extract than oil from places such as the Canadian tar sands, and GranMorgu will produce far less methane leakage than oil infrastructure in places such as Iraq. If global oil demand flattens or declines, Suriname could, in theory, outcompete and displace oil from other places, with marginal benefit for the climate.
A view of fuel tanks operated by GOw2, a local fuel company in Wanica, Suriname, on September 26, 2022. Ranu Abhelakh / AFP via Getty Images
In a scenario where demand falls fast due to rapid deployment of renewables and electric vehicles, Suriname may end up producing oil instead of rich countries rather than alongside them. Then, it could make a case for itself as a pragmatic climate leader, a country that is leveraging its resources while causing minimal new damage to the planet.
This was what gave the country such allure for Total, Chevron, and the other majors that staked out the conference. Even in 30 years, if oil prices fall and countries get picky about where they import from, GranMorgu and other projects will still be marketable. The European Union will impose a carbon tariff on oil imports by 2030, slapping an extra fee on dirtier barrels, and Total will be well-positioned to sell oil into the continent’s new climate-conscious market.
Of course, if demand doesn’t fall — if countries scuttle their climate policies and keep using more fossil fuels — then Suriname will be taking the same path as other developing countries before it, compromising the world’s future for the sake of its economic development. Even the bullish oil executives and market analysts in Paramaribo acknowledged that oil demand could not go up forever, but the world’s experts are divided on when this peak demand will arrive: The International Energy Agency expects a peak as early as 2029, but BP expects demand to continue rising well into the 2030s. OPEC no longer forecasts a peak at all.
The trajectory of oil demand is critical for the future of the planet, but Suriname’s leaders couldn’t wait around to see whether and when the curve starts to fall. With no other pathways toward development and the rich countries of the world still lagging, they had no choice but to start pumping.
The other big uncertainty is whether Suriname will achieve the green development that its leaders have promised or get stuck in a fossil fuel rut.
Suriname’s leaders had only just begun to answer that question this year when the country held a national election in May. Santokhi faced voter ire during the campaign for cutting the fuel and power subsidies, which contributed to a cost-of-living crisis. In his reelection pitch, Santokhi unveiled an oil royalties program that promised every citizen a one-time dividend of at least $750, equivalent to about six weeks’ wages. This model is similar to the long-running Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays out regular oil dividends to state residents.
Voters still spurned Santokhi’s party, depriving him of a majority. Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, whose party won the most seats, formed a coalition in July and became the country’s first woman to serve as president. Geerlings-Simons is seen as level-headed, but her populist party had serious baggage — it was the party of the disgraced Bouterse, who died in exile after being convicted of assassinating political opponents and trafficking cocaine.
Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, the leader of the National Democratic Party, or NDP, attends a rally in Paramaribo in May. Geerlings-Simons became Suriname’s first female president this summer. Juan Barreto / AFP via Getty Images
In Paramaribo, many Surinamese expressed skepticism about the new government. They said they trusted Staatsolie to regulate oil production but worried that elected officials would mismanage or embezzle new public revenue.
“If you look at the way the government has done things, there’s a lot of corruption,” said Jonathan Blackman, a vendor at a Javanese market in central Paramaribo. He said he wants the government to improve health care and road infrastructure in tangible ways rather than handing out cash. “They need to … make sure people have a better life,” he said. “Then they can keep the $750.” (Earlier this month, Geerlings-Simons’ administration paused the oil royalties program, saying it would instead invest future crude income in building a sustainable economy.)
Jonathan Blackman sells phone accessories and other products in the Javanese market in central Paramaribo. He hopes that the Surinamese government uses oil revenue to build new industries and expand social services. Jake Bittle / Grist
There is no shortage of ways in which the government of Suriname could improve people’s lives. One of the most urgent investment needs is for projects that help Paramaribo adapt to the floods that clog the city almost every time it rains. The government could use oil money to expand drainage networks, extend sewer systems to fortify Paramaribo against rainstorms, and restore mangrove forests to protect outlying communities from sea level rise and saltwater intrusion. It could also improve its roads and airports to stoke ecotourism, or build schools and hospitals to upskill workers and improve health outcomes. The government is already partnering with the Inter-American Development Bank to plan new investments in renewable energy, which will help the country end its reliance on the imported bunker fuel it burns for electricity. New revenue from Total’s crude could — somewhat paradoxically — help further those transition plans.
In the long term, the government will need to use oil profits to build an economy that plays to Suriname’s other strengths. Government leaders and climate experts in Suriname cite industries like rainforest ecotourism and sustainable agriculture as potential growth areas. Yet again, marketing carbon credits will be a centerpiece of this strategy: If the country can become an ecotourism destination, develop a thriving farm sector, and generate tens of millions of dollars a year through the sale of rainforest offsets, it may not need oil revenue by the middle of the century.
To arrive at this outcome would take careful planning, but it can be done. Santokhi had only just begun to confront this dilemma when he was ousted. In February, his administration released a “green development strategy,” naming several options for what “green development” might look like. But the government drafted no formal plan for how to spend oil money, held no public engagement on the subject, and hasn’t managed to sell a single rainforest carbon credit, despite international demand.
“There is no discussion being held, no national debate, about what we are going to do with our oil revenues,” said Griffith, of Conservation International, during the June conference. “We’ve been doing gold for the past 50 years and we’re still poor. I just think that we have been focusing too much only on the extractives and not diversifying and looking for other means of income.”
In her inaugural address, Geerlings-Simons said that her government has “the task of ensuring that the profits from the oil and gas sector improve the standard of living for every Surinamese.” Implicit in this promise was a recognition that it is not enough for the oil boom to improve Suriname’s dire finances. The country must also build a new economy with the consent and participation of its citizens. This will require ample public engagement, long-term planning, and transparency, none of which are hallmarks of the country’s recent past.
Suriname’s leaders have a cautious optimism that they can avoid the fate of other countries that have developed oil without planning for the energy transition and escape a legacy of corruption and instability. If Geerlings-Simons and her fellow leaders succeed, they will have done more than make the best of a bad hand — they will have gone a long way toward solving a problem that the rest of the world has failed to tackle. But if they fail, they will leave their own country dependent on the whims of the global oil market. They’ll also leave the world a little hotter and a little closer to catastrophe.
“If we do this right, then Suriname could become like a Valhalla,” said Goedschalk, the climate consultant, who will likely advise Geerlings-Simons on green development issues. “There’s so much to do, and a big part of what there is to do is to build an economy, because that was never done.”
A replica of an oil pumpjack in Block 58, a new oil-themed bar in central Paramaribo. The bar takes its name from the offshore zone where TotalEnergies will soon be pumping oil. Jake Bittle / Grist
The optimism is starting to catch on among some residents of Paramaribo. Down the street from the conference hotels, a computer technician named Jerry Goercharn runs Block 58, a bar that he’s named after the offshore section where Total found oil. Goercharn opened the bar a year ago amid the first news about the Total project. He filled the walls with maps of Suriname’s offshore oil and bought a model pumpjack for the entranceway, a sign of his optimism about the future.
“It’s definitely good, though it all depends on how the government will spend it,” he told me on an afternoon before the conference.
But it was too early to tell what Suriname’s future would look like, or to predict how the country would use its newfound wealth. Even as the sun set and dinner hour approached, the bar was still empty.
The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) claims more than a dozen civilians have been killed in the Papuan highlands, including three men who were allegedly tortured and a woman who was allegedly raped.
However, the Indonesian government claims the accusations “baseless”.
ULMWP president Benny Wenda said 15 civilians had been killed, and the women who was allegedly raped fled from soldiers and drowned in the Hiabu River.
A spokesperson for the Indonesian embassy in Wellington said the actual number was 14, and all those killed were members of an “armed criminal group”.
The spokesperson described the alleged torture and rape as “false and baseless”.
“What Benny Wenda does not mention is their usual ploy to try to intimidate and terrorise local communities, to pressure communities to support his lost cause,” the spokesperson said.
‘Covert military posts’
According to the Indonesian embassy spokesperson, those killed were involved in burning down schools and health facilities, while falsely claiming they were being used as “covert military posts” by Indonesia.
“Their accusations were not based on any proof or arguments, other than the intention to create chaos and intimidate local communities.”
The spokesperson added the Indonesian National Police and Armed Forces had conducted “measured action” in Kiwirok.
West Papua Action Aotearoa spokesperson Catherine Delahunty said Indonesia’s military had become more active since President Prabowo Subianto came to power in October last year.
“The last year or so, it’s depressing to say, but things have actually got a whole lot worse under this president and a whole lot more violent,” Delahunty said.
“That’s his only strategy, the reign of terror, and certainly his history and the alleged war crimes he’s associated with, makes it very, very difficult to see how else it was going to go.”
Delahunty said the kidnapping of New Zealand helicopter pilot Phillip Mehrtens in 2023 also triggered increased military activity.
Schoolchildren tear gassed
Meanwhile, a video taken from a primary school in Jayapura on October 15 shows children and staff distressed and crying after being tear gassed.
The Indonesian embassy spokesperson said authorities were trying to disperse a riot that started as a peaceful protest until some people started to burn police vehicles.
They said tear gas was used near a primary school, where some rioters took shelter.
“The authorities pledge to improve their code and procedure, taking extra precautions before turning to extreme measures while always being mindful of their surroundings.”
Jakarta-based Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono said the level of care using tear gas would have been much higher if the students were not indigenous Papuan.
“If it is a school with predominantly settler children, the police will be very, very careful. They will have utmost care,” he said.
“The mistreatment of indigenous children dominated schools in West Papua is not an isolated case, there are many, many reports.”
‘Ignored by world’
Despite the increased violence in the region, Wenda said the focus of Pacific neighbours like New Zealand and Australia remained on the Middle East and Ukraine.
“What has happened in West Papua is almost a 60-year war. If the world ignores us, our people will disappear,” he said.
Delahunty said there had been a weak response from the international community as Indonesia used drones to bomb villages.
“The reign of terror that is taking place by the Indonesian military, they’re getting away with it because nobody else seems to care.
“If you look at the recent Pacific Islands Forums, it’s very disappointing, it came up with a very standard statement, like ‘it would be good if Indonesia would invite the human rights people from the UN in’.
“We close our eyes, Palestine rightly gets our support and attention for the genocide that’s being visited upon the people of Palestine, but in our own region, we’re not interested in what is happening to our neighbours.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has been given a 12-month suspended prison sentence by the Fiji High Court in Suva, local news media reports say.
Bainimarama, 71, was found guilty of “making an unwarranted demand with menace” on October 2. The court found he used his position as Prime Minister in 2021 to pressure the country’s then-Acting Police Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu into sacking two officers.
He is the first person in Fiji to be convicted under this specific offence.
The former military commander and coup leader had pleaded not guilty. However, High Court Judge Thushara Rajasinghe found him guilty of making an unwarranted demand to a public official under Fiji’s Crimes Act.
The maximum penalty for this charge is 12 years’ imprisonment. Bainimarama was sentenced to 12 months in prison and suspended for three years — meaning he will not go to jail unless he recommits the offence within that period.
In a separate case, he was jailed in May last year for perverting the course of justice in a case related to him blocking a police investigation involving the University of the South Pacific in 2021.
He was released from prison in November 2024 — six months into his one-year sentence — following a comprehensive review by the Fiji Corrections Service.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Fifteen years ago today a contingent of six New Zealanders drove three aid-packed ambulances into Gaza as part of the epic international Viva Palestina 5 solidarity convoy of 145 vehicles — to a rock-star reception from locals.
The featured PressTV report includes a short interview with Kia Ora Gaza team volunteer Hone Fowler.
Kia Ora Gaza was established from a series of public meetings to organise Kiwi participation in international efforts to end the siege of Gaza and promote practical solidarity for Palestine.
This followed the Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara-led peace flotilla in international waters in 2010 which resulted in the deaths of 10 civilian peace activists.
Since then Kia Ora Gaza has organised or supported many projects.
Many more reports, photos and videos of this historic siege-busting convoy can be seen by by scrolling back to October 2010 on the Kia Ora Gaza website.
New Zealand’s opposition parties have promised to repeal the coalition government’s changes to the Marine and Coastal Area Act (MACA) if re-elected in the face of criticism over “mindsets of colonisation”.
It has been contested in the courts, with a key Court of Appeal ruling making it easier for groups to win customary title in 2023.
The Supreme Court went on to overturn that decision last year, though the government considered it and said the test remained too broad.
National had agreed to tighten up the legislative test, making it harder for Māori to secure titles, in its coalition agreement with New Zealand First.
It has been contested in the courts, with a key Court of Appeal ruling making it easier for groups to win customary title in 2023.
The Supreme Court went on to overturn that decision last year, though the government considered it and said the test remained too broad.
The coalition has pitched changes to the Marine and Coastal Area Act as restoring the legislation to its original intent, while critics argue they diminish Māori rights. Image: RNZ/Nick Monro
National had agreed to tighten up the legislative test, making it harder for Māori to secure titles, in its coalition agreement with New Zealand First.
‘This is not something that we’ve done lightly’ – Justice Minister Speaking in the third reading last night, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said the courts had interpreted the test in a way that “materially reduced” its intended effect.
“The bill clarifies the wording of the current test and provides additional guidance to decision makers in interpreting and applying the test,” he said.
Justice Minister Dr Paul Goldsmith . . . “more tightly defining what exclusive use and occupation means.” Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
“Key elements include more tightly defining what exclusive use and occupation means, requiring decision makers to base any inferences on a firm basis of physical evidence, not just cultural associations in that second part of the test, and thirdly placing the burden of proof more squarely on applicants to demonstrate that they meet both legs of the test.”
Goldsmith said the legislation was retrospective, overriding court decisions made after 24 July 2024, and the government had provided $15 million to support Māori groups to cover the costs of going back to court.
“I recognise that this will be very disappointing to groups who have been through the process. This is not something that we’ve done lightly but there is a long way to go and much of our coastline still to be considered and we believe as a government that it’s important to get that right.”
New Zealand First’s Casey Costello . . . “This is not removing the rights for Māori.” Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
New Zealand First’s Casey Costello said her leader Winston Peters had been a “champion of equal citizenship and protecting the legitimate interests of all New Zealanders and the marine and coastal area of New Zealand”.
“This is not removing the rights for Māori. Māori, like any New Zealander, have the opportunity to enjoy their coastline and enjoy their benefits.”
The ACT party’s Todd Stephenson said the bill restored the exacting test to establish customary marine title that had been undermined by a number of court decisions.
“We will be supporting this because it does restore what Parliament intended.”
ACT’s Todd Stephenson . . . restored the exacting test to establish customary marine title. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
Labour says bill ‘treating Māori as second class citizens’ Labour’s Peeni Henare said the bill’s third reading continued a “long legacy” of Parliament “treating Māori as second class citizens”.
“For whatever reason, this government continues to say co-governance, co-management, or working alongside Māori is not the thing to do and would rather score political points instead of underscoring the good frameworks that are already in place that allow management of places like the marine and takutai moana.”
The Green Party’s Steve Abel said New Zealand had no decent future if Parliament kept doing “shitty legislation like this”.
“No good can come from a bill of this character. It is a bill that explicitly leads in to those worst mindsets of colonisation; that at every turn Māori are cut against and undermined and undone and for all the efforts of this chamber and this house to make amends for those cruel histories of colonisations, this bill forces the Crown back into a position of dishonorability.”
The Green Party’s Steve Abel . . . “this bill forces the Crown back into a position of dishonorability.” Image: RNZ/Mark Papalii
Te Pāti Māori’s Tākuta Ferris said Māori would mobilise, given no government in history had ever had the right or authority to extinguish the Tiriti-based rights of Māori.
“What this government is doing now guarantees that the fight for Te Tiriti justice only deepens from this point on and continues on into the next generations.
“They’ve set the playing field for generations to come, condemning our children, our tamariki to needless, endless, perpetual fighting, costly court cases, societal disharmony and time, energy and money-wasting on a staggering scale.”
Te Pāti Māori MP Tākuta Ferris . . . “the fight for Te Tiriti justice only deepens from this point on.” Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica has stepped down from his position on the eve of his court appearance for corruption-related charges.
Kamikamica has been charged by the country’s anti-corruption office with perjury and providing false information in his capacity as a public servant.
Kamikamica, who also serves as the Minister for Trade and Communications, informed Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka yesterday that he would focus on clearing his name in relation to the charges laid against him by the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC).
He is one of three deputy prime ministers in Rabuka’s coalition government.
“I have accepted his decision to step down, and he has assured me of his unwavering commitment to the government and the people of Fiji,” Rabuka said in a statement.
“I will be overseeing his portfolio responsibilities for the foreseeable future.”
The deputy prime minister was overseas on official duties and was returning to the country.
His case is scheduled to appear at the Suva Magistrates Court today.
FICAC has not publicly commented on the specifics of the case.
The charges were filed following investigations related to the Commission of Inquiry report into the appointment of Barbara Malimali as FICAC chief, according to the state broadcaster FBC.
FBC reported that FICAC officers had seized Kamikamica’s mobile phone in July during the execution of a search warrant.
Kamikamica is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
FBC reports that Kamikamica’s legal representative, Wylie Clarke, appeared before the court today and raised serious concerns about the validity of the charges.
Clarke told the court that the case was fundamentally flawed, both in its legal foundation and in the evidence supporting it.
Israel and the West pretend they want a real peace in Israel-Palestine yet the Israelis have beaten unconscious the man most likely to help realise a sustainable end to the conflict: Marwan Barghouti.
The ethnocentrism of Western culture is such that 20 Israeli hostages received vastly more coverage than thousands of Palestinian hostages, nearly 2000 of whom were released as part of the recent exchange.
These prisoners, physically emaciated, most emotionally shattered, many children, most having never been charged, some held for decades, emerged from the Dantesque Inferno of the Israeli prison system. Most had some kind of disease, commonly scabies, due to the infested and infected conditions of the gulag.
Five Palestinian detainees released and exiled to Egypt brought with them terrible news: the great Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti — the person most likely to lead a free Palestine — had recently been beaten unconscious by his captors.
According to the Times of Israel, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who oversees the Israeli Prison System says he is “proud that Barghouti’s conditions have changed drastically”.
What Nelson Mandela would say about the beating of Marwan Marwan Barghouti — Palestine’s most loved and revered leader, a living symbol of the resistance — was beaten unconscious by 8 Israeli guards, according to the testimony of fellow prisoners on arrival in Cairo. The attack left the 66-year-old with broken ribs and head injuries.
When called on to demand his protection, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other Western leaders yawned and looked the other way. That response defined the depths that the Western world has reached in its permissiveness of violence towards Palestinian prisoners.
Marwan Barghouti is commonly referred to as the Palestinian Mandela, a man who has the attributes to not only unite the many Palestinian factions but also negotiate a lasting peace, if given the opportunity.
Mandela couldn’t have been “Mandela” without him surviving and being released — which is a tribute to the ANC and other fighters for freedom, as well as to the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns that finally convinced the regime to negotiate.
The same was true of the Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland which saw the release of prisoners that one side considered terrorists. The British also came to accept that negotiation with leaders like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness of the IRA was essential precisely because they had the street credibility to deliver peace.
It is worth pointing out that Mandela said he was not personally beaten during his 27 years of captivity by the racist South African apartheid regime.
Barghouti, who has spent the last 23 years in prisons has had at least four beatings by the Israelis in the past three years alone. The Israelis have shown nothing but contempt for the Geneva Conventions, the laws of war, Red Cross requests, or any benchmark of human decency.
They are our “friends and allies” with whom we share values.
‘He has been in a struggle for 50 years’. Video: TRT News
Rules on prisoner treatment
After leaving Robben Island to eventually become South Africa’s first black President, the convicted terrorist and revolutionary Prisoner 46664 helped author the Nelson Mandela Rules on prisoner treatment, adopted by the United Nations in 2015. He had seen the mistreatment of many of his comrades by racist white South Africa, a close ally of most of our governments.
The scale of what is being done by Israel in its mass torture centres would be beyond anything Mandela could have imagined. Unlike morally repellent leaders like New Zealand’s Luxon, UK’s Starmer, France’s Macron or Germany’s Merz, he would never have failed to act.
A central tenet of the Mandela Rules is that people behind bars are not beyond human rights. Countries — and, yes, that includes Israel — must adhere to minimum standards such as, “No prisoner shall be subjected to, and all prisoners shall be protected from, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, for which no circumstances whatsoever may be invoked as a justification.”
Recently released Palestinians, most in shocking physical condition, talked of having to drink toilet water, beatings, being denied medical treatment, constant humiliations, including sexual violence, committed by the Israelis.
This kind of behaviour has long been documented by international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — and largely ignored by the mainstream media.
The Israelis, never forget, are our close friends, with whom we share “values”.
I have written a number of articles about Marwan and, to avoid repetition, I recommend those unfamiliar with his astonishing story to read them. My last article, Saving Marwan Barghouti is our duty, in August, was part of a global push to prevent Marwan facing further mistreatment. I was shocked at the time to see the video that Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir posted to show the power he personally had over Marwan whose physical condition had obviously deteriorated to a terrible extent. Now he has been beaten, for the fourth time.
“It is a clear declaration that they are threatening my father’s life,” his son Arab Barghouti said this week.
Prisons are ‘Israeli sadism in a nutshell’ One person who watched the release of the prisoners last week was veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass, correspondent on the Occupied Palestinian Territories for Israel’s leading newspaper Haaretz.
“It was a kind of parade of skeletons,” Hass said. “These last two years, it’s like the Israeli prisons have become Israeli sadism in a nutshell,” she told Democracy Now!.
“The way that prisoners were treated during these two years is unprecedented in Israel. They didn’t only come out emaciated; they came out ill, sick. Some of them have lost limbs. It’s indescribable.”
Hass’s own parents were Holocaust survivors, her mother surviving nine months in the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Now, along with all of us, she is witness to genocide.
She makes the fine observation that people aren’t born cruel; they become so. I would add: we in the West helped the Israelis become so depraved by ignoring their abuses for so long. Former human rights lawyer Keir Starmer is a case in point.
“Can I ask the Prime Minister what recent representation his government has made in the last few days to secure the immediate release of Mr Barghouti, given his widespread popularity as a unifying voice for Palestinian rights, dignity and freedom, and therefore his potential crucial role in securing a meaningful and lasting peace in the region?”
Starmer is an avatar for the West: complicit in genocide and disturbingly detached from the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Starmer is an avatar for the West . . . complicit in genocide and disturbingly detached from the suffering of the Palestinian people. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
Starmer, who has less human decency in his entire being than Nelson Mandela had in one nostril hair, refused to even mention Barghouti by name. His lawyerly reply:
“Thank you for raising the individual case. We offer to provide such further information as we can, as soon as we can, in relation to that particular case.”
Western leaders, including in my own country, have refused to even reply to requests that petitions/insistences be made to the Israelis to save the great Palestinian leader. They have shown more empathy for the remains of deceased Israeli hostages crushed under the rubble of buildings bombed by the Israelis, hypocritically blaming Hamas for not releasing the remains fast enough!
Such is the moral calibre of our leaders.
None of them, it should be pointed out, had anything to say when footage appeared of Israeli soldiers committing gang rape at Sde Temein Prison last year. Not only were the men not punished but by week’s end they had been blessed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s spiritual mentor Rabbi Meir Mazuz who assured one of the rapists that he had done “no wrong” and “In another country they would have given him an award”.
Never forget, the Israelis are our close friends and allies with whom, our leaders tell us, we share values.
‘Israel doesn’t want peace – they want ethnic cleansing’ Such is Marwan Barghouti’s standing that he is respected by all Palestinian factions and acknowledged as a unifying figure, a peacemaker and someone who should be leading Palestine not getting his head punched by Israeli thugs.
“That’s why they see him as a danger,” says his son, Arab Barghouti. “Because he wants to bring stability, he wants to end the cycle of violence.
“He wants a unifying Palestinian vision that is accepted by everyone, and the international community as well. But they’re [Israelis] not interested in any political settlement; they’re only interested in ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people.”
True words, those — and they demolish the fake narrative peddled by Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders that there was “no partner for peace” on the Palestinian side.
The Israelis have killed so many Palestinian negotiators, so many Palestinians leaders that the opposite is now clear: the Israelis and the West are the true enemies of peace.
I’ll give the last word to another Palestinian. I dedicate it to Keir Starmer, Christopher Luxon, Anthony Albanese and all those other leaders who stand deaf, dumb and blind to Marwan Barghouti and the thousands of Palestinian souls still suffering in Israeli captivity:
“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’
– Matthew 25, King James Bible
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and he contributes to Asia Pacific Report. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.
In addition to deploying tens of thousands of federal agents from across the federal government to carry out his deportation agenda, President Donald Trump is rapidly expanding the network of state and local police going after immigrants through partnerships with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
The aggressive, nationwide law enforcement regime, all taking place under orders from the White House, amounts to what scholars, attorneys, and now a federal judge say are steps toward the creation of a national police force. And the ranks of ICE partners won’t be filled with just local cops: In at least three states, the administration is joining forces with agencies typically tasked with environmental and marine protection, lottery control, and gaming to target immigrants.
“This is quite a common tactic,” said Charis Kubrin, a professor at the University of California, Irvine who studies immigration and crime. ”There’s this idea that we’re going to get local, not just police officers, but nurses and teachers and other public officials involved in enforcing immigration laws.”
It started largely with immigration, using federal agents and a little-remarked-upon program known as 287(g) to funnel funding to local law enforcement for partnerships. The widespread ICE incursions and local police partnerships, however, have also been justified by the myth of an immigrant crime wave.
“The research is pretty unequivocal that these policies have no impact on public safety.”
“There is this moral panic now about migrant crime. This is rhetoric that is at odds generally with what we know about immigration and crime,” Kubrin said. “The research is pretty unequivocal that these policies have no impact on public safety whatsoever.”
“We didn’t really need this increased cooperation,” she said. “The foundational assumption of this widespread immigrant criminality upon which all of these policies and practices are based, is patently not true.”
Recruiting and paying local police to do immigration work, however, is just one part of the bigger project of creating such a national police force, said the American Civil Liberties Union’s Naureen Shah. And critics are worried that with Trump’s willingness to leverage state power for his own ends, such a security force could become a tool for carrying out the president’s political agenda.
Shah, who leads the ACLU’s policy and advocacy work on immigration, said, “Their larger project is to blur the lines between different law enforcement agencies in the military and create one national police force that is essentially under the command of the president.”
Local Partners
By funneling money to local police to do immigration work that falls under the federal government’s purview, Trump is effectively bolstering a police force answerable to his own authority by slowly buying up state and local police on a massive scale. The administration announced last month that 1,000 agencies had partnered with ICE to help target people for deportation.
The money is coming through a program that was falling out of favor prior to Trump’s first term: the 287(g) program, named for the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that forms the legal basis for local partners to detain and begin the process of deporting people targeted by the federal government.
For an administration eager to increase its sway over local law enforcement, immigration makes for a good starting point because the government has allocated astronomical sums of cash toward arresting, detaining, and deporting immigrants.
Paired with Trump’s military deployments to U.S. cities, the expansion of federal control over local police is the first step down a slippery slope, said Shah.
“It starts with immigration, and it’s through immigration, but it’s not limited to immigration.”
“They’re having federal law enforcement agencies scale up taskforces with state and local law enforcement so that when they talk about deploying into whatever city it is, they are not deploying on their own just as an invading force,” she said. “It starts with immigration, and it’s through immigration, but it’s not limited to immigration.”
The Fall and Rise of 287(g)
287(g) agreements were on the decline before Trump was first elected in 2016. During his 2020 campaign, former President Joe Biden pledged that he would end all 287(g) agreements made by Trump. And, in recent years, local sheriffs ran for office on promises to refuse to work with ICE.
“There’s a reason why the federal government has largely been tasked with policing immigration, and that’s why there was a lot of resistance to 287(g) including among police chiefs,” said Kubrin, the UC Irvine professor.
Both tacks to reduce the agreements faltered. Biden ended a handful of contracts but largely left the agreements in place. And political pressure on law enforcement mounted to form agreements. Several Republican governors, for instance, sued sheriffs who refused to work with ICE and, in some cases, won cooperation with Trump’s deportation agenda.
Now, the mixture of financial incentives and politics are driving a surge. Since Trump took office, partnerships that deploy state and local police to go after immigrants have increased 600 percent.
The number of law enforcement agencies signing on to aid Trump’s deportation machine is surging in part because local police agencies strapped for cash welcome additional funding. The Department of Homeland Security announced in September that it would pay out “performance awards” and fully reimburse police for annual salary and benefits for each 287(g) officer, including partial overtime coverage.
ICE is also offering signing bonuses of up to $50,000, along with student loan forgiveness, for new recruits, and airing ads to attract police in at least a dozen cities.
In addition to shoring up their finances, law enforcement agencies are also responding directly to political pressure from the White House.
“I think it has to do with political pressure for these jurisdictions to get involved,” Kubrin said. “There’s lots of political pressure.”
Much of the narrative around recruiting police to take on Trump’s deportation agenda has taken for granted that police should be helping ICE carry out their work, said the ACLU’s Shah. It’s not so much that ICE doesn’t have adequate resources, it’s that they need local police on their side to carry out Trump’s political agenda.
“They’re grabbing for local police because local police are all over the place,” Shah said. “It’s very linked to the larger threats of authoritarianism in the country, and I don’t see that in any of the coverage.”
More Than Just Cops
The massive, nationalized police force taking shape as Trump expands his reach into state and local agencies around the country is not limited to just police.
In Florida, for instance, the Trump administration has active 287(g) agreements with other state agencies, including the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Department of Environmental Protection law enforcement division, the Gaming Control Commission, and the Department of Lottery Services. Wildlife commissions in Louisiana and Virginia are also partnering with the administration to target immigrants for deportation, as well as Virginia’s Marine Resources Commission. (A spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources said the agency has not been requested to participate in any activities related to its 287(g) agreement since it entered into the partnership this summer.)
Since April, the administration has also partnered with university police or trustees for at least nine Florida state universities.
Partnering with agencies that aren’t traditionally focused on law enforcement is part of a strategy to enlist local officials outside of police in enforcing immigration laws, said Kubrin. The same strategy shaped laws like Arizona’s infamous S.B. 1070 migrant racial profiling law and others modeled after it in states like Georgia and Indiana.
Kubrin said she harbored a serious worry about eventually having to identify undocumented students in her own UC Irvine classes.
“It’s 10 times worse,” she said, “when you’re asking medical officials and teachers to be also policing immigration.”
The Invasion
The creep of federal control into state and local police departments comes as Trump has sent more than 35,000 troops to cities around the country. In a rambling address to military leaders earlier this month, Trump called to use American cities as training grounds for the military to fight a “a war from within.”
In a ruling last month against Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles, a federal judge wrote that Trump had used the troops as his own police force and styled himself as chief.
“Almost three months after Defendants first deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles, 300 National Guard members remain stationed there,” the judge wrote. “Moreover, President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have stated their intention to call National Guard troops into federal service in other cities across the country—including Oakland and San Francisco, here in the Northern District of California—thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief.”
Though Trump’s efforts to deploy the National Guard to Portland and Chicago have met legal roadblocks, the president is signaling that more cities could see National Guard deployments in the coming months. Several states have also agreed to use the National Guard to assist ICE.
None of it is likely to do much, Kubrin said.
“These policies and programs are not cashing in on the promise that they will lower crime rates,” Kubrin said. “But they are doing potential harm in communities.”
“Mass shootings, gun violence, gender based violence, corporate crime,” she said. “Immigrant crime is a very small slice of the crime problem.”
A Paris appeal court has confirmed that Kanak pro-independence leader Christian Téin is now cleared to return to New Caledonia.
In September, a panel of judges had pronounced they were in favour of Téin’s return to New Caledonia, but the Public Prosecution then appealed, suspending his return.
However, in a ruling delivered on Thursday, the Paris Appeal Court confirmed the Kanak leader is now free to travel back to the French Pacific territory.
In June 2024, at the height of violent riots, Téin and other pro-independence leaders were arrested in Nouméa and swiftly flown to mainland France aboard a specially-chartered plane.
They were suspected of playing a key role in the riots that broke out mid-May 2024 and were later indicted with criminal charges.
The charges for which Téin remains under judicial supervision include theft and destruction of property involving the use of weapons.
His pre-trial conditions had been eased in June 2025, when he was released from the Mulhouse jail in eastern France, but he was not allowed to return to New Caledonia at the time.
Téin’s lawyers react to the decision Téin’s lawyers said they were “satisfied and relieved”.
“This time, Téin is allowed to go back to his land after 18 months of being deprived [of freedom],” one of Téin’s counsels, Florian Medico, told French national media.
One main argument from the Public Prosecution was that under “fragile” post-riot circumstances, Téin’s return to New Caledonia was not safe.
Public Prosecutor Christine Forey also invoked the fact that an investigation in this case was still ongoing for a trial at a yet undetermined date.
Previous restrictions imposed on Téin (such as not interfering with other persons related to the same case) were also lifted.
The ruling also concerns four other defendants, all pro-independence leaders.
Case not closed yet “It’s now up to the investigating judges, in a few months’ time, to decide whether to rule on a lack of evidence, or to bring the indicted persons before a court to be judged . . . But this won’t happen before early 2026,” lawyer François Roux told reporters.
Téin is the leader of a CCAT “field action co-ordinating cell” set-up by one of the main pro-independence parties in New Caledonia — the Union Calédonienne (UC).
Although jailed at the time in mainland France to serve a pre-trial term, he was designated, in absentia, president of the main pro-independence umbrella, the FLNKS, during a congress in August 2024.
However, during the same congress, two other pillars of the FLNKS, the moderate pro-independence UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie) and PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party), distanced themselves and de facto split from the UC-dominated FLNKS.
The two parties have since kept away from FLNKS political bureau meetings.
Meanwhile, in January 2025, the case was transferred from a panel of judges in Nouméa to another group of magistrates based in Paris.
They ruled on June 12 that, while Téin and five other pro-independent militants should be released from custody, they were not allowed to return to New Caledonia or interfere with other people associated with the same case.
Now allowed
But in a ruling delivered in Paris on September 23, the new panel of judges ruled Téin was now allowed to return to New Caledonia.
The ruling was based on the fact that since he was no longer kept in custody and even though he had expressed himself publicly and politically, Téin had not incited or called for violent actions.
He still faces charges related to organised crime for events that took place during the New Caledonia riots starting from 13 May 2024, following a series of demonstrations and marches that later degenerated, resulting in 14 dead and over 2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion) in damage.
The 2024 marches were to protest against a plan from the French government of the time to modify the French Constitution and “unfreeze” restrictions on the list of eligible voters at local provincial elections.
The Indigenous pro-independence movement says these changes would effectively “dilute” the Kanak Indigenous vote and bring it closer to a minority.
Back in New Caledonia, the prospect of Téin’s return has sparked reactions.
Outrage on the pro-France side On the pro-France side, most parties who oppose independence and support the notion that New Caledonia should remain part of France have reacted indignantly to the prospect of Téin’s return.
The uproar included reactions from outspoken leaders Nicolas Metzdorf and Sonia Backès, who insist that Téin’s return to New Caledonia could cause more unrest.
Le Rassemblement-LR leader Virginie Ruffenach also reacted saying she wondered whether “the judges realise the gravity of their ruling”.
“We’re opposed to this . . . it’s like bringing back a pyromaniac to New Caledonia’s field of ashes while we’re trying to rebuild,” she told local media.
Meanwhile, a “non-political” petition has been published online to express “firm opposition” to Téin’s return to New Caledonia “in the current circumstances” because of the “risks involved” in terms of civil peace in a “fragile” social and economic context after the May 2024 riots.
Since 30 September 2025, the online petition has collected more than 10,000 signatures from people who describe themselves as a “Citizens Collective Against the Return of Christian Téin”.
“Immense relief”: FLNKS Reacting on Friday on social networks, the FLNKS hailed the appeal ruling, saying this was “an immense relief for their families, loved ones and the whole pro-independence movement”.
“The struggle doesn’t stop, it goes on, even stronger”, the FLNKS said, referring to the current parliamentary battle in Paris to implement the “Bougival” agreement signed in July 2025, which FLNKS rejects.
Within the pro-independence movement, a rift within FLNKS has become increasingly apparent during recent negotiations on New Caledonia’s political future, held in Bougival, west of Paris, which led to the signature, on 12 July 2025, of a text that posed a roadmap for the French territory’s future status.
It mentions the creation of a “State of New Caledonia”, a short-term transfer of powers from Paris, including in foreign affairs matters and the dual French-New Caledonian nationality.
But while UPM and PALIKA delegates signed the text with all the other political tendencies, the UC-dominated FLNKS said a few days after the signing that the Bougival deal was rejected “in block” because it did not meet the party’s expectations in terms of full sovereignty.
Their negotiators’ signatures were then deemed as invalid because, the party said, they did not have the mandate to sign.
In a letter to French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, and copied to French President Emmanuel Macron and Speakers of both Houses of Parliament, in early October 2025, the FLNKS reiterated that they had “formally withdrawn” their signatures from the Bougival deal and that therefore these signatures should not be “used abusively”.
Bougival deal continues
However, despite a spate of instability that saw a succession of two French governments formed over the past two weeks, the implementation of the Bougival deal continues.
In the latest cabinet meeting this week, the French Minister for Overseas, Manuel Valls, was replaced by Naïma Moutchou.
France’s newly-appointed Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou . . . there “to listen” and “to act”. Image: Assemblée Nationale
Last Wednesday, the French Senate endorsed the postponement of New Caledonia’s provincial elections to June 2026.
The same piece of legislation will be tabled before the Lower house, the French National Assembly, on October 22.
In a media conference on Wednesday, Union Calédonienne (UC), the main component of FLNKS, warned against the risks associated with yet another “passage en force”.
“This is a message of alert, an appeal to good sense, not a threat”, UC secretary-general Dominique Fochi added.
“If this passage en force happens, we really don’t know what is going to happen,” Fochi said.
“The Bougival agreement allows a path to reconciliation. It must be transcribed into the Constitution,” Lecornu told the National Assembly.
Also speaking in Parliament for the first time since she was appointed Minister for Overseas, Naïma Moutchou assured that in her new capacity, she would be there “to listen” and “to act”.
This, she said, included trying to re-engage FLNKS into fresh talks, with the possibility of bringing some amendments to the much-contested Bougival text.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New Zealand’s major Palestine advocacy and protest group Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has condemned Defence Minister Judith Collins for “dog-whistling to her small choir” over Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza enclave.
Claiming that Collins’ open letter attacking teachers at the weekend was an attempt to “drown out Palestine” in discussions with the government, PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal said that it demonstrated more about her own prejudices than teacher priorities.
Teachers, who had devoted their lives to educating children in Aotearoa, would be “appalled at the wholesale slaughter” of Palestinian school children in Gaza, he said in a statement today.
Israel has killed at least 97 Palestinians and wounded 230 since the start of the ceasefire, and violated the truce agreement 80 times, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
“Teachers who are committed to the education and development of the next generation of our country would feel a special affinity with the children of another nation, who are being killed by Israeli bombing in their tens of thousands, seeing all their schools destroyed, and who will suffer the consequences of two years of malnutrition for the rest of their lives,” Nazzal said.
He added that just two months ago, Collins had featured on television standing next to a damaged residential building in Kiev while condemning Russia for attacks which had killed Ukrainian children.
“But not a critical word of Israel from her, or her cabinet colleagues, despite Israel just now resuming its mass bombing in Gaza,” Nazzal said.
Children ‘deserve protection’
“Ukrainian, Palestinian and New Zealand school children all deserve protection and we should expect our government to speak up loudly in their defence, without having to have a teachers’ union raise government inaction on Gaza with them.
“But even after 24 months of genocide, Collins won’t find the words to express New Zealand’s horror at the indiscriminate killing of school children in Gaza.
PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal . . . “not a critical word of Israel from her . . . despite Israel just now resuming its mass bombing in Gaza.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
“But she’s in her element dog-whistling to her small choir in the pro-Israel lobby.
“Collins has already been referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, for complicity in Israel’s genocide by facilitating the supply of military technology for Israeli use.
“It’s more than time for Luxon to pull back his Israeli fanatic colleagues and uphold an ethical rule-based policy, and not default to blind prejudices.”
A critique of the Collins open letter published in The Standard . . . “she makes a number of disturbing claims, as valued workers (doctors, mental health nurses, scientists, midwives, teachers, principals, social workers, oncologists, surgeons, dentists etc) ramp up to one of the biggest strikes in history”. Image: The Standard
A Fiji deputy prime minister has been charged by the country’s anti-corruption office with perjury and providing false information in his capacity as a public servant, according to local news media reports.
Manoa Kamikamica, who also serves as the Minister for Trade and Communications and a key part of Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government, is currently overseas on official duties.
His case is scheduled to be called on Wednesday at the Suva Magistrates Court.
According to Mai TV’s Stanley Simpson, Kamikamica will not attend court hearing and will be represented by his legal counsel Wylie Clark, who is the current head of the Fiji Law Society.
“The case, brought by the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption [FICAC] is listed under case number 06/25 in the Magistrates’ Anti-Corruption Division at Suva Court 4,” Simpson said.
“Kamikamica has referred all questions to his legal counsel.”
FICAC has not publicly commented on the specifics of the case.
According to the state broadcaster FBC, the charges were filed following investigations linked to the Commission of Inquiry report into the appointment of Barbara Malimali as FICAC chief.
“FICAC officers had seized Kamikamica’s mobile phone in July during the execution of a search warrant.”
Kamikamica is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) has faced a barrage of criticism this week from those spied upon by police and security services. The UCPI is tasked with uncovering the truth about how a Met Police unit infiltrated and undermined peaceful campaigns on issues such as racial justice and animal rights. Solicitors for Blacklist Support Group (BSG) leader Dave Smith has hammered the investigation for not permitting the persecuted former construction worker to provide oral evidence. The BSG has also accused the UCPI, chaired by John Mitting, of failing to sufficiently broaden the scope of the inquiry to examine how spycops evidence was used by the likes of MI5, and how it may still be in use today to ‘vet’ job applicants at the likes of the BBC.
One particularly egregious shortcoming, however, is its continued policy of allowing the very cops at the centre of the scandal to escape scrutiny. A key figure still permitted to skulk in the shadows is HN86, the former Met Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) manager described by spycop turned whistleblower Peter Francis as “overtly racist”. Francis was tasked by HN86 with gathering information on the campaign for justice undertaken by the Lawrence family. It was headed by Doreen and Neville Lawrence, whose son Stephen was murdered on 22 April 1993 by a gang of racist white thugs. A statement produced by solicitors for Neville Lawrence said the killing “remains a stain on the national conscience”.
Racist senior police officer said about Lawrence campaign: “the monkeys were being organised”
Francis was one of four cops to spy on the Lawrences, though he is the only one to be definitively identified by his real name. Intelligence gathering on the Stephen Lawrence campaign was described by Francis as the “SDS’ number one priority”. He said he was instructed by HN86 to:
…report anything I could find out about the Lawrence family and/or the campaign that could fundamentally alter the perception of the public about the campaign.
HN86 also:
…made reference to ‘stopping’, ‘undermining’, ‘combatting’ and ‘smearing’ the campaign.
The still anonymous bigot was concerned about the progress of the Lawrences in seeking justice, declaring that “the monkeys were being organised”.
The former SDS leader has been able to remain concealed thanks to a 2018 restriction order placed on both his cover name and real name by Mitting, on the basis that it would enable HN86 to participate as fully as possible while “mitigating personal harm”. The inquiry chair explained that he viewed it as more important to receive his evidence – given he was a manager – than to reveal his identity.
However, the racist boss is still refusing to provide oral evidence even with the cloak of secrecy flung around him. Mitting has moved to compel him to appear, but solicitors for HN86 have launched a Judicial Review to block the inquiry’s demand, arguing that it has no powers to force an individual living overseas to appear. HN86’s current country of residence is unknown.
Spycop traumatised by his own crimes dodges giving evidence
Another formerly uniformed abomination who continues to dodge the harsh glare of public scrutiny is HN81, known to have used the codename ‘David Hagan’ while intruding on grieving parents. The statement from Neville Lawrence says he is:
…deeply disappointed that HN81 (“David Hagan”) has been excused from giving evidence in person. As we identify below, HN81 was one of the most significant officers reporting on the Lawrence family and their supporters, and his evidence goes to the heart of the issues of race discrimination this Inquiry must confront.
He is thought to have supplied evidence on the separation of Doreen and Neville in the aftermath of their son’s murder. Doreen Lawrence’s statement on this cuts to the heart of much of what the inquiry is supposed to be about, pointing out this focus on “intimate facts about a bereaved couple” says:
…something clear about institutional priorities: at the very moment when confidence required a relentless focus on racist violence, the state was gathering and rating personal information about the victim’s family.
Hagan attempted to justify this obscene intrusion by saying the anti-racist campaign group he infiltrated – Movement for Justice (MFJ), which was supporting the Lawrences – might “exploit” news of the separation to disrupt public order. This was a common justification for much of the illegitimate spying done by the SDS – the notion that entirely peaceful political campaigns were perennially on the verge of triggering some form of insurrection.
Police claim they were saving Lawrences from ‘white saviours’
Another absurd justification that officers have put to Doreen Lawrence is that the surveilling:
…was done to ‘protect’ her and her family from left wing or anarchist groups displaying a form of racism known as the ‘white saviour complex’.
As her solicitors point out, among other issues with this reasoning, this explanation “strips Baroness Lawrence of her autonomy and intellectual capacity” and:
Undermines the legitimacy of the justice campaign by associating it with perceived extremist or politically motivated elements, rather than acknowledging its foundation in genuine grief and a demand for racial justice.
‘Hagan’ is also known to have participated in brawling that took place on the day that the five men were accused of murdering Stephen Lawrence. He had involved himself in the disorder, which the police ultimately quelled with CS gas, to avoid having his cover blown. The former SDS man has been permitted to recuse himself from proceedings on medical grounds, having been diagnosed with “post traumatic stress disorder in 2001”, now characterised as “complex post traumatic stress disorder”, according to a letter provided to the inquiry by a Doctor Tehrani. The medical opinion asserted Hagan’s:
…condition is such that the giving of oral evidence would risk a significant impact upon his behaviour and well-being when doing so.
Tom Fowler, host of Spycops Info podcast, described Dwayne Brooks as “furious” at the continued non-appearance of Hagan/HN81. Brooks was a close friend of Stephen Lawrence, and was with him at the time of his killing. It’s fair to say Fowler also isn’t the biggest fan of inquiry chair Mitting.
Officers were mere foot-soldiers for an establishment out to crush the left
These persecutors of the Lawrences are just two of the cops at the centre of the inquiry’s current phase who will evade the spotlight. HN26 (cover name ‘Christine Green’) infiltrated animal rights groups from the mid 90s until early 2000s, before being exposed in 2017. She will not be called to give oral evidence. Likewise HN123, another to be excluded on mental health grounds.
More serious than this, however, is the prospect that senior politicians potentially involved in the scandal will not have their misdeeds accounted for. The solicitors for Doreen Lawrence raise the:
…reporting of ‘great sensitivity around the Lawrence issue with both the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister extremely concerned that the Metropolitan Police could end up with its credibility …..completely undermined’.
They ask:
Who was this Home Secretary and Prime Minister? Baroness Lawerence is deeply concerned that little, to no attention, is being paid by this Inquiry to those who were ultimately accountable for the conduct at the heart of this Inquiry.
The statement calls out the “cowardly fashion” in which officers hide from their crimes, but ultimately they are mere foot soldiers for an entire establishment that sought to use police and security services to undermine the left more broadly. Until an inquiry tackles this and meaningfully holds to account those who truly wield the levers of power, there will likely be more cruel invasions into the private lives of those who campaign for a fairer world.
Maria Heavener had opened the windows of her first-grade classroom to let in the unusually warm October breeze when the sound of helicopters, sirens, and a flood of notifications compelled her to slam them shut. During a raid on a nearby grocery store, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had hurled tear gas canisters into a parking lot across the street from Chicago’s Funston Elementary School, spreading a thick, choking smog toward the building while class was in session.
Heavener had heard rumors that ICE was planning to detain unaccompanied minors and that schools could be a target, but this scenario had never crossed her mind. “We definitely didn’t expect what happened,” she said. “We didn’t expect them to throw tear gas right outside of our school building.”
For the last month, the Trump administration has kept Chicago under siege. Customs and Border Protection agents arrested a 15-year-old U.S. citizen earlier this weekafter unleashing tear gas into a crowded residential neighborhood. Earlier in October, masked federal agents raided a five-story apartment building in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Chicago and zip-tied naked children as they dragged their parents away.
“We didn’t expect them to throw tear gas right outside of our school building.”
The Trump administration’s war on immigrants has had a disastrous impact on the city’s children, Chicago teachers told The Intercept.
“The smoke bombs that they dropped in front of school right at dismissal, the detainment of grown-ups after they drop off their children, or as they’re picking them up. All of that is violent. All of that is traumatic,” said Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union. “And for the first time, that is what many students in this city are experiencing.”
Heavener said she struggled to explain the events that occurred on October 3 to her class of 6 and 7-year-olds. “A lot of them were sad, worried, scared, nervous,” she said. “Some of them said they’re scared because they don’t want their own family members to be taken away.”
One of her students became so overwhelmed that he had a panic attack. “It’s very scary because this is their normal,” said Heavener. “You start forming your memories more solidly around 4 or 5 years old, so they have some happy kindergarten memories. But now all of sudden, this is going to take over their experiences and worldview, and it’s going to shape a lot for them, and it’s traumatic, and they’re all going to hold that in their bodies as they grow up.”
The stakes feel even higher at schools with older kids, where Heavener and other staff fear students will become targets. The recent arrest of the 15-year-old, Heavener said, has had a particular chilling effect. His lawyers allege that the teenager was detained in a federal facility for five hours without anyone telling his family where he was being held. The Department of Homeland Security denied that CBP “kidnapped” the teen, noting that “a U.S. citizen teenager threw eggs and hit a CBP Officer in the head.”
“The media is sadly attempting to create a climate of fear and smear law enforcement. These smears are contributing to our ICE law enforcement officers facing 1,000% increase in assaults against them,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin wrote in a statement.“ICE is not conducting enforcement operations at, or ‘raiding,’ schools. ICE is not going to schools to make arrests of children. Criminals are no longer be able to hide in America’s schools to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense.”
“Attendance at a lot of [schools] is down,” Gates told The Intercept. “Senior nights have been cancelled. Fall sports and after-school activities have been sparsely attended … because of the unpredictability and the violence of Trump’s troops.”
“It makes me want to cry,” said Heavener. “Generally, the societal norm is that children are sacred, and we take care of our children. Now it seems like they’re being targeted.”
Amid the chaos, Gates said that teachers, parents, students, and community organizers had come together to help make students safer. At Funston Elementary, for example, community members lined the streets to form a safe walking corridor for students and their families after the tear-gas incident. Heavener said the community has remained vigilant for ICE activity — although Facebook shuttered local groups used to alert schools about ICE’s presence.
Kathryn, an elementary school music teacher who wanted to use her first name to protect her school from being targeted by ICE, has tried to make her classroom a safe space for her students.
“It’s even more important right now that we have stable, predictable classrooms and especially places where students can continue to be imaginative and experience joy and learn to work with other people,” she said, “and especially learn to work with people who are different from them.”
Still, she said normalcy and joy are difficult to achieve in the current environment.
“I’m worried every day,” said Kathryn. “I’m worried that we’ll have kids here waiting to be picked up and nobody will ever come for them, because we’ve seen it happen.”
A middle school student was recently at home when ICE came to detain their parents. Through the process, Kathryn learned how to navigate the fact “that you can set up temporary guardianship for a minor if it’s less than a year,” she said. “I would like to live in a world where that’s not a thing I need to know, but I do.”
Despite claims from the Trump administration that Chicago is unsafe, Kathryn argues they’re the ones who’ve turned the streets into a war zone. “I was born and raised in Chicago,” said Kathryn. “I’ve never seen the city as unsafe as it is right now with them here.”
What makes it worse is that the money the administration is spending to deploy federal agents to patrol outside of elementary schools could genuinely make a difference in Chicago Public Schools. An estimate from the National Priorities Project found that a National Guard deployment to Chicago, currently blocked in federal court, could cost roughly $1.59 million a day. The latest Republican spending bill added $29.9 billion to ICE’s enforcement budget — a boost that nearly triples the $10.25 billion operating budget for the entire Chicago public school system, which includes 630 schools.
“Our school budget was slashed by two-thirds here,” said Kathryn. She pointed out that ICE is offering “$50,000 signing bonuses for people who are willing to kidnap other people,” while she finds herself telling kids: “Sorry, you can’t join the band right now because I don’t have enough instruments.”
Tafitoala village has been directly affected by the maritime disaster.
Resident Fagailesau Afaaso Junior Saleupu said the New Zealand High Commission and Samoa government held a short meeting regarding potential compensation options this week.
Three options were tabled around the distribution process. One involved the Samoa government being responsible for the distribution of payments among families and affected businesses. Another involved the district authority being responsible for distributing payments.
The Samoa government has previously said it intends to finalise the compensation process once it passes a budget, which it reportedly intends to do at the end of this month.
Tight timeframe
Fagailesau said this week’s meeting, which involved representatives from Samoa’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, seemed to be on a tight timeframe.
“It’s not enough time for us to raise questions and . . . give them our opinion about the problem.”
He believed the Samoa government should be responsible for distributing the money directly to those affected and said many people were concerned that the wreckage remained on the reef.
“I don’t think it’s good for us in the long run.”
Fagailesau also said many locals feared the compensation amount — which equates to WST$10 million — simply was not enough to manage the long-term impacts of the wreckage on the environment.
He also said families in Tafitoala had been severely limited by the 2km prohibition zone around the wreckage.
“My village — we are fighting for a big amount for us because we are the . . . people that are really affected.
“The 2km zone — it covers the area that we access for fishing every day. We’re eating tinned fish.”
More meetings
Fagailesau also said the Samoa government told locals it intended to hold more meetings over compensation in the future.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said he had not been aware of any locals eating tinned fish due to the wreckage.
Peters spoke to RNZ Pacific Waves about the Manawanui. He reiterated that the Sāmoa government was leading the ongoing process around compensation and the wreckage, which included any discussion around its removal.
He also denied there was any cover-up over the environmental impacts of the wreckage.
To date, no environmental report on the impacts of Manawanui sinking has been made public.
“It’s not a matter of being covert or secretive about it,” Peters said.
“It’s analysing what we’re dealing with, and I think that probably better explains what’s happening here.”
Open and transparent
Peters said the New Zealand government had been open and transparent in it’s dealing and continued to work with the Sāmoa government over the Manawanui incident.
“This terrible tragedy happened, which we massively regret — no one more than me.”
But Samoa surf guide Manu Percival said the New Zealand government’s behaviour had not been good enough.
For months, Percival had been in contact with the New Zealand High Commission about compensation for the boat fuel he used in the immediate aftermath of the disaster to assist with clean-up.
“It’s real crazy. No one’s got any compensation.”
He also said it had been difficult to get any concrete answers from the Sāmoa government over the future of the wreckage and compensation.
“It’s kind of getting tossed between two different government departments.”
Percival believed New Zealand should remove its wreckage and that the compensation amount paid to the Samoa government was “an absolute joke”.
However, Peters said the NZ$6 million was the amount requested by the Samoa government.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
In a move that probably shouldn’t surprise anyone, Donald Trump has pardoned the notorious fraudster George Santos. Santos wasn’t just any conman, either — he was a Republican congressman who lied his way to the top, then publicly crashed down to the bottom:
Explaining why he pardoned Santos, Trump openly admits crime is ok if you’re a loyal Republican pic.twitter.com/7NIYKM8JlT
Any normal politician would avoid pardoning a liability like Santos, but this is Trump we’re talking about. If anything, Trump might elevate him into an even greater position of prestige.
“Have a great life!”
Santos arguably only lied about one thing, but that ‘one thing’ was his life story. The lies, falsehoods, and swindles of Santos include:
If you’re particularly repulsed by that last one, you should know that Trump also hates dogs. That said, we can’t definitively say that Santos ‘hates dogs’ — just that he really didn’t like that one (allegedly).
Trump commuting the sentence of George Santos and pardoning 1500 insurrectionists, while enjoying immunity from prosecution — all while trying to lock up protesters and political opponents shows that his version of “law and order” is just fascism that rewards loyalty. pic.twitter.com/moFWoWaEl1
As such, the entertaining Santos will almost certainly show up on Trump-friendly media in the future. Speaking of which, here he was in 2024:
George Santos says that Congress needs more people like him in office. (Santos was being interviewed by far-right broadcaster Stew Peters, who is a vehement antisemite, violent conspiracy theorist, vicious bigot, and virulent racist.) pic.twitter.com/ooBTgHWLjQ
He also had his own podcast on YouTube called ‘Pants on Fire‘, but the views were notably up and down. In his last episode, he sought ‘prison advice’ in anticipation of his conviction. This was the fourth-best-performing video on the channel with 17k views; most episodes received less than a thousand watchers.
We’re not sure where Santos will end up next, but in Trump’s America, the sky’s the limit for a fraudster like him.
British politicians and pundits have seemingly decided they’re all pro-hooliganism. They’re not just supporting hooliganism in general, either; they’re supporting the introduction of foreign hooligans who pose a risk to British citizens. The hooligans in question are the ultras of Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv, and this isn’t the first time the British establishment has attempted to gaslight us on this:
The media reporting over Tel Aviv Maccabi fans is an absolute disgrace.
It’s not journalism. It’s propaganda.
Last year, Sky News produced a package of what Maccabi fans actually did in Amsterdam.
2/Even the tweet accompanying the video has changed. It has explicitly shifted from mentioning anti-Arab slogans to removing the phrase “anti-Arab” and using antisemitism. It also removes mention of vandalism by Israeli fans. An extremely clear editorial shift! pic.twitter.com/6i2MXddLLL
Many outlets immediately described the scenes of 70’s style hooliganism as a 30’s style pogrom against Jewish people. And they’re still trying to present that narrative today:
In November last year Yuval Gal explained that some of the Maccabi supporters who rioted in Amsterdam were Israeli soldiers who have been committing genocide in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/6DQDD4NoDp
UK culture secretary Lisa Nandy wants to “see if there’s a way” to stop the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending a football game in Birmingham next month.
Here’s a video of the team’s supporters singing: “Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there”. pic.twitter.com/ospA3KTT7H
Politics aside, these are football ‘fans’ in the true ‘fanatic’ sense. This isn’t normal behaviour for European games in the 21st century, and British people have no interest in bringing it back:
Britain’s media and political classes out of touch with the public on hooliganism.
So, Birmingham is against it and the broader public are against it.
But is there someone we forgot to ask?
The establishment steps in
Increasingly, British politicians and pundits are on something of an auto-psychotic kamikaze mission to blow up their own reputations. Anyone looking at the facts of this situation can see that there’s an obvious risk to British safety. And yet – and fucking yet – these establishment ghouls are once again trying to say that it’s antisemitism.
Here’s Sky News getting in on it:
On the left, Skys sports correspondent @SkyJacquie saying that away fans are normally banned when they’ve caused violence before but “thats not the case here”
On the right, Maccabi ‘fans’ beating a man unconscious in Athens earlier this year. pic.twitter.com/tEDA5RSqh7
Here’s ex Liberal Democrat leader and current weirdo Tim Farron talking as if he was in Football Factory:
‘We’re not banning them because they’re Jewish, it’s because they’re hooligans…’ is the risible defence for the MT ban from people who know nothing about football or hooliganism, but are desperate not to acknowledge or admit their own racism. This is a stain on Britain.
These selfish British journalists and politicians are playing an incredibly dangerous game. If you keep pointing at soldiers carrying out a genocide or hooligans doing hooliganism and saying ‘this is all Jewish people‘, eventually some portion of the public is going to believe you.
To be honest, we think they can see what they’re doing, and they just don’t care.
The antisemitism smear worked well enough for a time, and they’re going to keep pushing it for as long as they can to provide cover for their genocidal Israeli allies.
The International Criminal Court has rejected Israel’s bid to appeal against arrest warrants for its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant over the Gaza genocide, reports TRT World News.
In a ruling that made headlines worldwide, the ICC last November found “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bore “criminal responsibility” for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
The warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant sparked outrage in Israel and in the United States, which later imposed sanctions on senior ICC officials.
Netanyahu denounced the ruling as an “anti-Semitic decision,” while then-US President Joe Biden called it “outrageous.”
Israel asked the court in May to dismiss the warrants while it pursued a separate challenge over whether the ICC had jurisdiction in the case.
The court rejected that request on July 16, saying there was “no legal basis” to quash the warrants while the jurisdiction issue was pending.
A week later, Israel sought permission to appeal the July ruling, but judges yesterday dismissed the bid, stating that “the issue, as framed by Israel, is not an appealable issue”.
Broader challenge “The Chamber therefore rejects the request,” the ICC said in its 13-page ruling.
ICC judges are still considering Israel’s broader challenge over the court’s jurisdiction.
When the arrest warrants were first issued in November, the court simultaneously rejected an earlier Israeli objection to its authority.
However, in April, the ICC’s Appeals Chamber ruled that the Pre-Trial Chamber was wrong to dismiss Israel’s challenge and ordered it to review the arguments in greater detail.
It is not yet clear when the court will issue a final ruling on jurisdiction.
People charged under the Terrorism Act for supporting Palestine Action – in reality for opposing the government’s decision to ban the non-violent anti-genocide group as ‘terrorists’ – will face non-jury trials limited to only thirty-six minutes with verdicts decided only by a judge under a judge’s plans for ‘Starmer Courts’ conducting mass trials of anti-genocide protestors, according to information obtained by former ambassador Craig Murray. Most of those arrested have been pensioners and disabled people.
the epitome of judicial prejudice. When Julian Assange appeared before Snow in the first hearing after being dragged from the Embassy, Snow called Assange a “narcissist” even though Assange had said nothing but to confirm his name, and no evidence had been led.
Snow’s plan means that the cases involving the two thousand or so people charged under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act for supporting Palestine Action will be heard:
in batches of five at the rate of ten people a day – giving 36 court minutes for each defendant. This is a farce, a spectacle of mass show trial. The 36 minutes includes both prosecution and defence cases and cross-examination.
At a scheduling hearing on Wednesday, one of the accused, 72 year old Deborah Wilde, objected that these trials would be far too short to present a proper defence.
Snow snapped back “I’m satisfied that the time is sufficient. I am not going to give more time. Your only remedy is the High Court”.
As I am sure Snow realises, ordinary people cannot afford to go to the High Court. The worrying thing is that the trials will be held before judges including the appalling Snow, with no jury.
And, as Murray notes, the unfit-for-purpose – unless the purpose is to allow the government to abuse citizens – Terrorism Act means that just arousing suspicion in a police officer’s head is an actual offence under the legislation (emphases added):
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this draconian legislation is that arousing suspicion is actually the offence. It does not matter if the suspicion turns out to be well-grounded or not. The suspicion could be totally wrong, but if you aroused the suspicion on “reasonable grounds” in a policeman’s head, you are guilty.
It is an offence of strict liability. Your intent is not considered; you may have been most concerned to stop a Genocide, or to oppose the destruction of free speech. Judge Snow and his ilk will not care. They only want to know if some half educated cop suspected you of supporting a terrorist organisation. There is no jury to whom you can explain your actions – and which would be highly likely to sympathise.
I have seen it, as an offence of strict liability, likened to possession of Class A drugs. But actually it isn’t. The correct analogy would be a crime where the offence was arousing a suspicion you possessed Class A drugs, whether you actually had any or not.
The UK has become an unequivocal police state under Starmer, whose Stalinist instincts have always been clear. Murray and others who are fighting this appalling legislation and its misuse have set up a crowd fund to raise money for the legal costs the fight will incur.
The entrance of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, on July 4, 2025.Photo: Mark David Smith/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Federal prosecutors are making good on the Trump administration’s threat to treat antifa-related activity as terrorism.
On Thursday afternoon, prosecutors in Texas announced that terrorism charges had been filed against two people for alleged involvement in a shooting during a July 4 protest against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, in which a local police officer was injured.
This is the first time federal terrorism charges have been deployed in association with the “antifa” label, just a month after President Donald Trump announced that he was designating antifa a “major terrorist organization” – a designation that does not exist under law for domestic groups.
The Prairieland case is setting a chilling example for how the government will use so-called counterterrorism efforts to crush anti-fascist dissent. Neither of the people named in the indictment are accused of shooting the gun. Instead, Zachary Evetts and Autumn Hill are accused of “providing material support to terrorists” and having “aided and abetted” the alleged attempted murder of government officers.
“The framing of the case by the federal government should worry all of us.”
The federal indictment accuses Hill, who prosecutors dead-named, and Evetts as being part of an “antifa cell.”
The terrorism charges are an escalation of government efforts to criminalize protest movements by attempting to attribute collective guilt.
With tactics like using RICO laws built to combat organized crime, the government has made a habit of mass-prosecuting activists for individual, individuated crimes alleged to have taken place in the context of legal protest activity — even when there is no direct link between those charged and the alleged crimes. Though such charges frequently don’t stick, the lengthy prosecutions hamper protest movements and chill dissent.
“The framing of the case by the federal government should worry all of us,” a support committee for arrested protesters said in a statement on its website. “The glaring inconsistencies in the official narrative and the alarmist accusations are a clear attempt to bolster the Trump administration’s claims that the United States is on the verge of chaos, and to excuse a dramatic increase in militarized police action.”
“Investigation by Proclamation”
On the night of July 4, protesters from Dallas-Fort Worth held a noise demonstration and set off fireworks outside the ICE facility. Federal officers called local police to the scene. There was an exchange of gunfire between an Alvarado police officer and one other person, in which the officer was injured. The cop was taken to a hospital and released within a few hours.
In a lengthy preliminary federal hearing in September, an FBI official told the court that he could not say for certain whether or not the police officer shot first.
Nine people were arrested that night in the area, and numerous others were arrested in the days that followed, including during aggressive multi-agency raids on homes and community spaces. Seventeen people in all now face a mixture of state and federal charges relating to the event, including state terrorism charges.
Neither of the two people now charged with federal material support for terrorism were arrested at the detention center. Members of a support committee for friends and loved ones of the arrestees fear that further federal terrorism and other hefty charges are in the pipeline.
While there is no such thing as a terrorism designation for domestic organizations, and while there is no centralized formal organization known as “antifa,” by associating the antifa label and anti-fascist activism with terrorism, Trump’s administration can marshal and direct vast law enforcement powers and resources into investigating and targeting networks of left-wing activists.
Even though there are no designated domestic terrorism organizations, only “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” there are domestic terrorist offenses under U.S. law. The government is attempting to portray the Prairieland Detention Center shooting as one such act.
The “terrorism” label has, after all, always been a tool for the government to categorize ideological enemies and deploy extraordinary resources to target them. At another preliminary hearing in July, prosecutors said that as many as 200 FBI agents were working on the Prairieland case – a massive overreach for a singular shooting incident leading to a minor injury in the context of a protest.
“This appears to be investigation by proclamation instead of investigation by sound intelligence,” Thomas Brzozowski, a former Justice Department lawyer working on domestic terrorism, told the New York Times on Thursday in reference to the government’s treatment of the Texas defendants as an “enterprise.”
“That’s what happens,” he said of Trump’s targeting of antifa, “when you open such a broad investigation into what is essentially an idea.”
Testing Ground for Repression
The Prairieland case has so far provided a convenient testing ground for state repression.
Gunshots were fired and a police officer was injured. The government has pitched the activists as “heavily armed” even though, aside from a small number of guns found near the detention center, the guns found were in the cars or homes of the defendants — in Texas!
The case, however, has not been lifted up as a national cause celebre against Trumpian overreach, possibly because a gun was indeed fired and acts of vandalism were reportedly carried out against ICE property.
Yet the Texas case reveals precisely the strategies the Trump administration will use, with the assistance of state forces, to target whole movements and communities with prosecutorial overreach and a logic of guilt by association. Government action here has been extreme in its treatment of an array of normal First Amendment-protected activity as evidence of terrorism; the blunt force effort to treat anti-fascism as terrorism should worry us all, even those who may want to distance themselves from any notion of protest militancy.
“What happened July 4th was a normal protest,” the support committee noted. “Regardless of what transpired that night, it’s clear that the scale and aggression of the police response is a fear tactic to send a message not only to DFW” — the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area — “but across the country of how this administration will treat anyone standing against their rising authoritarianism.”
During preliminary hearings, prosecutors have pointed to the flimsiest of grounds to describe organizers as a terroristic enterprise, including references to typical and legal activist activities like making zines and using encrypted messaging apps.
Thursday’s indictment explicitly cites the use of encrypted, disappearing messages — a practice that is common for activists and gossiping friend groups alike.
The prosecutors also note that activists discussed bringing firearms to the scene, which is completely legal in Texas. According to the indictment, one message described the plan to bring rifles to the protest as a way to have police “back off” – that is, a defensive tactic. According to the support committee, “the state has provided no evidence that there was coordination to fire at police.”
Draining Resources
Thus far, other significant efforts to collectively prosecute activists have failed – overreaching RICO charges against 61 participants in the Atlanta-based Stop Cop City movement charges were dismissed by a judge last month; the government’s efforts in Trump’s first term to mass prosecute over 200 “J20” protesters with hefty felony riot charges also fell apart.
As I’ve noted, both these recent examples of failed mass prosecutions illustrate that malicious cases don’t need to be successful to drain movement energies and resources, and spread fear. The Atlanta and J20 examples also highlighted the need for collective defense campaigns.
The same is true for the now grimly precedent-setting North Texas case.
Ngāti Toa Rangatira have gathered near the peak of their sacred maunga, Whitireia, to celebrate its historic return to iwi ownership.
Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira has purchased 53 ha of land at Whitireia — just north of Tītahi Bay — from Radio New Zealand (RNZ) for just under $5 million — adjoining an earlier settlement acquisition on the peninsula.
Ngāti Toa have waited 177 years to get the whenua back. In 1848, the iwi gifted around 202 ha to the Anglican Church in exchange for the promise of a school to be built for Ngāti Toa tamariki.
The school was never built, but the land remained in church ownership.
That prompted Wiremu Te Kakakura Parata, a Ngāti Toa rangatira and MP, to take court action against the Bishop of Wellington who argued the whenua “ought to be given back to the donors” because the promise of a school was never fulfilled.
In his 1877 judgement, Chief Justice James Prendergast ruled that the Treaty of Waitangi was a “simple nullity” signed by “primitive barbarians”. It denied Ngāti Toa ownership of their maunga for decades and set a damaging precedent for other Māori seeking the return of their land.
Kuia Karanga Wineera . . . it’s “wonderful” to see the maunga finally returned. Image: RNZ/Mark Papalii
Ngāti Toa kuia Karanga Wineera, 96, remembers listening to her elders discuss how her people had fought to reclaim Whitireia over the decades.
She told RNZ seeing the maunga finally returned was “wonderful”.
‘Wonderful gift’
“It’s a most wonderful, wonderful gift to Ngati Toa to have Whitireia come home after so many years of fighting for Whitireia and not getting anywhere, but today, oh, it’s wonderful,” she said.
In the early 1900s, Whitireia was vested in the Porirua College Trust Board, allowing the whenua to be sold. In 1935, the New Zealand Broadcasting Service purchased 40 ha for what would become Radio 2YA, now RNZ.
The maunga was returned to the iwi in a formal ceremony. Image: RNZ/Mark Papalii
Iwi members, rūnanga chiefs and representatives from police, the Anglican Church and RNZ attended a formal ceremony to commemorate the sale.
In his speech, Ngāti Toa chair Callum Katene said the deal showed what a “Te Tiriti-centric” New Zealand could look like.
“The birds still sing here at dawn, the same winds sweep the hills and carry the scent of the sea. Beneath us, the earth remembers every footprint, every prayer — Whitireia holds these memories… in this morning, as the first light spills across the harbour, we are reminded that history is not carved in stone, it is living breath,” he said.
“As we look ahead, Whitireia can shine as a beacon of hope, a reminder that reconciliation is not about reclaiming the past so much, but about realising the future envisaged in 1848 — education, faith, unity, and enduring partnership.”
The rūnanga say all existing leases, easements, and public access agreements have been transferred to them as part of the acquisition and day-to-day operations for tenants, recreational users, and visitors will not change.
Lease back for AM
They will lease back 12 ha to RNZ to continue AM transmission operations.
Ngāti Toa Rangatira had a first right of refusal on the property under the Ngāti Toa Rangatira Claims Settlement Act 2014 and Public Works Act.
Speaking to media after the ceremony, Katene said he could not speak highly enough of how “accommodating” RNZ had been during the negotiation process, but admitted there were a few “hiccups”.
“There were a few hiccups when it came to the technical details of the exchanges, there always are in these sorts of things.
“The important distinction for us is this isn’t a financial transaction, it’s not economic for us — it’s returning the land,” he said.
RNZ chair Jim Mather . . . the RNZ board has responsibilities as governors of assets held in the interest of the public of Aoteaora. Image: RNZ/Mark Papalii
Asked why the land could not be gifted back free of charge, RNZ chair Jim Mather said the possibility of gifting the land back was raised during negotiations.
“The return of the land recognised that Ngāti Toa Rangatira had been compensated previously as part of the settlement and were now in a position to actually effect that transaction,” he said.
“If it was up to us as a board we would have handed it over, but we have responsibilities as governors of assets held in the interest of the public of Aotearoa.”
Rūnanga chief executive Helmut Modlik Helmut Modlik . . . still a “conversation” that should be revisited. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
Breach of the Treaty
Rūnanga chief executive Helmut Modlik said while the negotiations were “principled”, there was still a “conversation” worth “revisiting” at some time.
“As everybody has admitted, the loss of this land was as a result of a breach of the Treaty, and as everybody knows, Treaty settlement processes are a take it or leave it exercise, and we weren’t able to have this whenua returned at that point,” he said.
“To me, that’s a matter of principle that’s worth a future conversation.”
Ngā uri o Wi Parata spokesperson Kahu Ropata . . . RNZ returning the whenua is a “great step” towards reconciliation. Image: RNZ/Mark Papalii
Ngā uri o Wi Parata spokesperson Kahu Ropata said because Wiremu Te Kakakura Parata had had the audacity to take the case up he was discriminated against by the “Pākehā propaganda machine”.
The whānau have had to grow up with that hara (offence) against their tūpuna, he said.
“We grew up with the kōrero that it cost him his health and his wealth fighting this case.
“And so for many years, we grew up in that, I suppose, for some of my uncles and aunties, in that trauma of a loss of mana, I suppose you could say, and for a rangatira of his ilk, it would have been quite damaging knowing that he was to go to the grave and the case actually not settled in his name.”
Ropata said RNZ returning the whenua was a “great step” towards reconciliation.
“We’re still in discussions with the Anglican Church in terms of the whānau and the iwi about reconciliation and moving forward.
“Fifty-three-odd hectares, there’s still another . . . 450-odd acres that we still need to reconcile [and we’re] looking at discussions around how we can accomplish that.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Over two years of nearly incessant bombardment, Israeli forces have killed over 60,000 Palestinians, at least a third of whom are children. The human toll has been called genocide by human rights organizations around the world, and a United Nations commission, but a new report from an Israeli research center points to environmental devastation: Gaza’s soil is polluted after the destruction of wastewater treatment plants, sewage contamination is widespread, and particulate matter left by exploded bombs is increasing rates of respiratory illness.
According to a new report by the Arava Institute, an environmental research institute based in Israel, Gaza is covered with an estimated 61 million tons of rubble, much of which contains asbestos, unexploded munitions, and unburied human remains. “The environmental situation in Gaza, before October 7th, was a disaster,” said Dr. Tareq Abuhamed, who leads the Arava Institute and is Palestinian. Rebuilding even to that prior state of disaster is likely to take decades.
A report from the United Nations, published in late September, estimated that nearly $70 billion in damage had been done to Gaza’s roads, buildings, and infrastructure over the past two years while over 80 percent of cropland had been destroyed. Less than 10 percent of all hazardous waste is being safely disposed of, and most, by necessity, is being burned or piled in open-air landfills. Untreated wastewater, meanwhile, is dumped directly on the land or into the sea.
“The garbage becomes mountains, and the mountains are a breeding site for mosquitos and rodents, which spread malaria,” said Dr. Yasser El-Nahhal, an environmental chemist and eco-toxicologist with the Islamic University of Gaza.
Long before Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, Israeli blockades prevented easy access to water, electricity, and food. Rolling blackouts have been common in Palestine for the last 20 years and many residents relied on small-scale desalination units, plants that make seawater drinkable, and private water tankers to purchase potable water. Now, the aid organization Doctors Without Borders says that only one out of every 10 of their requests for water to be imported are approved by Israeli authorities.
“The environment has been destroyed before the war,” said El-Nahhal. “But since the war, it has been destroyed several times above imagination.”
Palestinian researcher Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh of Bethlehem University’s Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, calls what is happening now ecocide: a term broadly defined as the severe, long-term, and widespread destruction of the environment. A growing coalition of countries hopes to legally define ecocide as a crime the International Criminal Court might prosecute.
“Gaza, of course, was a functioning society, even though it was subjected to significant sanctions in the past 16 years that limited supplies,” Qumsiyeh said. “They had a functioning society. They had schools, universities, sewage treatment facilities, and a desalination plant. All of this was destroyed in this genocidal, ecocidal war.”
Earlier this month, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the world’s largest conservation congress, signed a resolution asserting that ecocide should be treated as a criminal offense. Jojo Mehta, founder of the legal advocacy group Stop Ecocide International, said that while the resolution defines ecocide quite broadly, it could certainly be applied to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. “What’s been happening in terms of the environment in Gaza is horrific,” Mehta said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt in anybody’s mind that it’s ecocidal.”
Israeli officials did not return multiple requests for comment on this story.
The Arava report calls for unimpeded aid to Gaza, as well as potable water systems and personal hygiene kits to mitigate disease. The United Nations, in their September report, wrote that to make Gaza’s environment livable again “will require a cessation of hostilities. The first phase of recovery will focus on saving lives, through restoration of essential services and removal of debris.”
Nonetheless, Qumsiyeh of Bethlehem University said, Palestinians will continue to rebuild – even if, as he believes is likely, this current ceasefire falls apart. “I don’t claim we have a huge success rate,” he said, “But imagine your community being destroyed dozens of times, and you continue to rebuild. That shows an incredible amount of hopefulness.”
Three major labor unions sued the federal government on Thursday to stop a sweeping social media surveillance program designed to revoke the visas and green cards of immigrants who hold “hostile attitudes” about the government.
The unions say the AI-powered “catch and revoke” program has suppressed the free speech of their members, including graduate students who have been targeted by the State Department for expressing pro-Palestine views.
The First Amendment applies to everyone who lives in the U.S., the lawsuit filed on the unions’ behalf by three civil liberties groups notes. Other lawsuits have challenged visa revocations, but this is the first to take on the surveillance program itself, said Lisa Femia, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that works on digital privacy and is part of the plaintiffs’ legal team.
“We are the first challenging the surveillance program that is upstream of the immigration enforcement actions, that is both leading to negative enforcement actions, that is also at a broad scale suppressing and chilling speech of many, many people, both non-citizens and citizens alike,” Femia told The Intercept.
The plaintiffs in the case are the United Automobile Workers, the Communications Workers of America, and the American Federation of Teachers.
Defendants in the case include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, their agencies, and the U.S. government. (The State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
The unions are seeking a judge’s order halting the surveillance program, which would deal the Trump administration a major setback in its attempt to weaponize the immigration enforcement system against people whose views it disfavors.
Policing Viewpoints
Only weeks after Trump’s inauguration, Rubio announced a “catch and revoke” program, which he said would take aim at student and visitor visa holders who expressed anti-American views. He singled out protesters taking part in pro-Palestine demonstrations on campus.
“Buildings are being taken over, activities going on — this is clearly an organized movement,” Rubio said on March 28. “And if you are in this country on a student visa and are a participant in those movements, we have a right to deny your visa.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security also launched its own “tiger team” to target student protesters, drawing on information posted to the secretive Canary Mission website.
The government’s efforts to police the views of immigrants has extended to lawful permanent residents such as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, both pro-Palestine activists who have fought monthslong challenges to the government’s attempts to deport them.
The American Association of University Professors filed suit against the targeting of academics and students. In September, a federal judge issued a withering decision finding that the government’s efforts to target noncitizen residents of the U.S. at universities violated the First Amendment.
That has not stopped the government from policing online speech. On Tuesday, the State Department announced that it was revoking the visas of people who had criticized Charlie Kirk in social media posts after his assassination.
Instead of deportations and visa revocations, the lawsuit takes aim at the web of surveillance the government conducts to populate its list of targets.
The exact tools the government is using are shrouded in mystery, but it has repeatedly stated that it is using artificial intelligence and other software as part of a continuous vetting process of every visa holder.
Intimidation Campaign
The government has also engaged in a public intimidation campaign, the lawsuit says, warning noncitizens that it will be policing their social media feeds and ejecting them out of the country if it finds content it dislikes.
International graduate students have gone silent in response — including union members who responded to internal surveys.
Of the 770 participants in a UAW member survey who had heard of the government surveillance, 61 percent said they had changed their behavior as a result. The percentage was even higher among noncitizens, 84 percent of whom said they were changing their behavior online.
Union members have backed away from signing onto public statements, joining union group chats, serving in leadership roles, and even voting in a union election for fear the government will target them, the lawsuit says.
“The Trump administration’s use of surveillance to track and intimidate UAW members is a direct assault on the First Amendment — and an attack on every working person in this country,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement. “If they can come for UAW members at our worksites, they can come for any one of us tomorrow. And we will not stand by and let that happen.”
United States President Donald Trump had the time of his life on Monday at the Israeli Knesset, where he was welcomed as “the president of peace”. His captive audience showered him with applause, laughs and too many standing ovations to count.
Two protesting lawmakers undertook a brief outburst in support of “Palestinian sovereignty” but were swiftly bundled out, earning the president more laughs and applause for his remark: “That was very efficient.”
It was a typical stream-of-consciousness Trump speech although he mercifully refrained from rambling about escalators and teleprompters this time.
I had initially hoped the fact that the US head of state was promptly due at a Gaza summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, might have kept the tangents to a minimum. Such hopes were dashed, but Trump did manage to devote a good bit of time to speculating about whether his summit counterparts might have already departed Egypt by the time he arrived.
Trump’s Knesset appearance was occasioned by the ostensible end — for the moment — to the US-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has over the past two years officially killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Some scholars have suggested that the real death toll may be in the vicinity of 680,000.
Obviously, the Palestinian genocide victims were of scant concern at the Knesset spectacle, which was essentially an exercise of mutual flattery between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a celebration of Israel’s excellence in mass slaughter.
To that end, Trump informed Israel that “you’ve won” and congratulated Netanyahu on a “great job”.
‘Best weapons’
As if that weren’t an obscene enough tribute to genocide, enforced starvation and terror in Gaza, Trump boasted that “we make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.”
There were also various references to what he has previously called on social media the “3,000 YEAR CATASTROPHE”, which he fancies himself as having now resolved. This on top of the “seven wars” he claims to have ended in seven months, another figure that seems to have materialised out of thin air.
But, hey, when you’re a “great president”, you don’t have to explain yourself.
In addition to self-adulation, Trump had plenty of praise for other members of his entourage, including US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — who merited a lengthy digression on the subject of Russian President Vladimir Putin — and Trump’s “genius” son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was also in attendance despite having no official role in the current administration.
During Trump’s first term as president, Kushner served as a senior White House adviser and a key player in the Abraham Accords, the normalisation deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, which essentially sidelined the Palestinian issue in the Arab political arena.
Trump’s Knesset performance included numerous sales pitches for the Abraham Accords, which he noted he preferred to pronounce “Avraham” because it was “so much sort of nicer”. Emphasising how good the normalisation deals have been for business, Trump declared that the four existing signatories have already “made a lot of money being members”.
To be sure, any expansion of the Abraham Accords in the present context would function to legitimise genocide and accelerate Palestinian dispossession. As it stands, the surviving inhabitants of Gaza have been condemned to a colonial overlordship, euphemised as a “Board of Peace” — which Trump has hailed as a “beautiful name” and which will be presided over by the US President himself.
‘Path of terror’
This, apparently, is what the Palestinians need to “turn from the path of terror and violence”, as Trump put it — and never mind that the Palestinians aren’t the ones who have been waging a genocide for the past two years.
Preceding Trump at the podium was Netanyahu, adding another level of psychological torture for anyone who was forced to watch the two leaders back to back. Thanking the US president for his “pivotal leadership” in supposedly ending a war that, mind you, Netanyahu didn’t even want to end, the Israeli prime minister pronounced him the “greatest friend that the State of Israel has ever had in the White House”.
Netanyahu furthermore put up Trump as the first non-Israeli nominee for the Israel Prize and assured him he’d get his Nobel, too, soon enough.
I didn’t time Trump’s own speech although I’d calculate that it was several aneurysms long. At one point in the middle of his discussion of some topic entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand, I wondered if my anguished cries at having to listen to him speak might elicit the concern of my neighbours.
When Trump at long last decided to wrap things up, his final lines included the proclamation: “I love Israel. I’m with you all the way.”
And while US affection for a genocidal state should come as no surprise to anyone, it’s also a good indication that “peace” is not really what’s happening at all.
Belén Fernández is the author of The Darién Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas (Rutgers UP, 2025), Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Detention Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), and other books and has written widely for global news media. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
“I think we can do a lot, if a critical mass of organizations steps forward and develops a plan to go public and visible calling out the undemocratic and dangerous reality of what the Supreme Court majority is doing, particularly these shadowy, opaque, undemocratic ‘emergency’ decisions. Just like we have had and will be having, on October 18, successful mass actions of millions in the streets around the country calling for No Kings, worker justice, women’s rights, climate justice, racial justice and more, it is time for such a nationally coordinated action sometime this fall focused on this issue.”
BREAKING: Trump has just pardoned disgraced former Republican Congressman George Santos and he will be released from prison immediately.
(@IainDale) 
