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  • Biden Should Dismantle US Bases in Iraq and Bring the Troops Home

    Soldiers board a CH-47 Chinook helicopter as they depart from al-Qaim base, Iraq, on March 9, 2020.

    At Bagram Air Base, Afghan scrap merchants are already picking through the graveyard of U.S. military equipment that was until recently the headquarters of America’s 20-year occupation of their country. Afghan officials say the last U.S. forces slipped away from Bagram in the dead of night, without notice or coordination.

    Taliban fighters are rapidly expanding their control over hundreds of districts, usually through negotiations between local elders, but also by force when troops loyal to the Kabul government refuse to give up their outposts and weapons.

    A few weeks ago, the Taliban controlled a quarter of the country. Now, it’s a third. They are taking control of border posts and large swaths of territory in the north of the country. These include areas that were once strongholds of the Northern Alliance, a militia that prevented the Taliban from unifying the country under their rule in the late 1990s.

    People of good will all over the world hope for a peaceful future for the people of Afghanistan, but the only legitimate role the U.S. can play there now is to pay reparations, in whatever form, for the damage it has done and the pain and death it has caused. Speculation in the U.S. political class and corporate media about how the U.S. can keep bombing and killing Afghans from “over the horizon” should cease. The U.S. and its corrupt puppet government lost this war. Now it’s up to the Afghans to forge their future.

    So what about America’s other endless crime scene, Iraq? The U.S. corporate media only mentions Iraq when our leaders suddenly decide that the 150,000-plus bombs and missiles they have dropped on Iraq and Syria since 2001 were not enough, and dropping a few more on Iranian allies there will appease some hawks in Washington without starting a full-scale war with Iran.

    But for 40 million Iraqis, as for 40 million Afghans, America’s battlefield is their country, not just an occasional news story. They are living their entire lives under the enduring impacts of the neocons’ war of mass destruction.

    Young Iraqis took to the streets in 2019 to protest 16 years of corrupt government by the former exiles to whom the United States handed over their country and its oil revenues. The 2019 protests were directed at the Iraqi government’s corruption and failure to provide jobs and basic services to its people, but also at the underlying, self-serving foreign influences of the U.S. and Iran over every Iraqi government since the 2003 invasion.

    A new government was formed in May 2020, headed by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, previously the head of Iraq’s Intelligence Service and, before that, a journalist and editor for the U.S.-based Al-Monitor Arab news website. Despite his Western background, al-Kadhimi has initiated investigations into the embezzlement of $150 billion in Iraqi oil revenues by officials of previous governments, who were mostly former Western-based exiles like himself. And he’s walking a fine line to try to save his country, after all it has been through, from becoming the front line in a new U.S. war on Iran.

    Recent U.S. airstrikes have targeted Iraqi security forces called Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which were formed in 2014 to fight the Islamic State (IS), the twisted religious force spawned by the U.S. decision, only 10 years after 9/11, to unleash and arm al-Qaida in a Western proxy war against Syria.

    The PMFs now comprise about 130,000 troops in 40 or more different units. Most were recruited by pro-Iranian Iraqi political parties and groups, but they are an integral part of Iraq’s armed forces and are credited with playing a critical role in the war against IS.

    Western media represent the PMFs as militias that Iran can turn on and off as a weapon against the United States, but these units have their own interests and decision-making structures. When Iran has tried to calm tensions with the United States, it has not always been able to control the PMFs. General Haider al-Afghani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer in charge of coordinating with the PMF, recently requested a transfer out of Iraq, complaining that the PMFs are paying no attention to him.

    Ever since the U.S. assassination of Iran’s Gen. Qassem Soleimani and PMF commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in January 2020, the PMFs have been determined to force the last remaining U.S. occupation forces out of Iraq. After the assassination, the Iraqi National Assembly passed a resolution calling for U.S. forces to leave Iraq. Following U.S. airstrikes against PMF units in February, Iraq and the United States agreed in early April that U.S. combat troops would leave soon.

    But no date has been set, no detailed agreement has been signed and many Iraqis do not believe U.S. forces will leave, nor do they trust the Kadhimi government to ensure their departure. As time has gone by without a formal agreement, some PMF forces have resisted calls for calm from their own government and Iran, and stepped up their attacks against U.S. forces.

    At the same time, the Vienna talks over the JCPOA nuclear agreement have raised fears among PMF commanders that Iran may sacrifice them as a bargaining chip in order to negotiate a nuclear agreement with the United States.

    In the interest of survival, PMF commanders have become more independent of Iran, and have cultivated a closer relationship with Prime Minister Kadhimi. This was evidenced in Kadhimi’s attendance at a huge military parade in June 2021 to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the PMF’s founding.

    The very next day, the U.S. bombed PMF forces in Iraq and Syria, drawing public condemnation from Kadhimi and his cabinet as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. After conducting retaliatory strikes, the PMF declared a new ceasefire on June 29, apparently to give Kadhimi more time to finalize a withdrawal agreement. But six days later, some of them resumed rocket and drone attacks on U.S. targets.

    Whereas Donald Trump only ordered retaliatory strikes when rocket attacks in Iraq killed Americans, a senior U.S. official has revealed that President Biden has lowered the bar, threatening to respond with airstrikes even when Iraqi militia attacks don’t cause U.S. casualties.

    But U.S. airstrikes have only led to rising tensions and further escalations by Iraqi militia forces. If U.S. forces respond with more or heavier airstrikes, the PMF and Iran’s allies throughout the region are likely to respond with more widespread attacks on U.S. bases. The further this escalates and the longer it takes to negotiate a genuine withdrawal agreement, the more pressure Kadhimi will get from the PMF, and other sectors of Iraqi society, to show U.S. forces the door.

    The official rationale for the U.S. presence, as well as that of NATO training forces in Iraqi Kurdistan, is that the Islamic State is still active. A suicide bomber killed 32 people in Baghdad in January, and IS still has a strong appeal to oppressed young people across the region and the Muslim world. The failure, corruption and repression of successive post-2003 governments in Iraq have provided fertile soil.

    But the U.S. clearly has another reason for keeping forces in Iraq — as a forward base in its simmering war on Iran. That is exactly what Kadhimi is trying to avoid by replacing U.S. forces with the Danish-led NATO training mission in Iraqi Kurdistan. This mission is being expanded from 500 to at least 4,000 troops, made up of Danish, British and Turkish personnel.

    If Biden had quickly rejoined the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran on taking office, tensions would be lower by now, and the U.S. troops still in Iraq might well be home already. Instead, Biden obliviously swallowed the poison pill of Trump’s Iran policy by using “maximum pressure” as a form of “leverage,” escalating an endless game of chicken the United States cannot win — a tactic that Barack Obama began to wind down six years ago by signing the JCPOA.

    The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the JCPOA are interconnected, in that both are essential parts of a policy to improve U.S.-Iranian relations and end America’s antagonistic and destabilizing interventionist role in the Middle East. The third element for a more stable and peaceful region is the diplomatic engagement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, in which Kadhimi’s Iraq is playing a critical role as the principal mediator.

    The fate of the Iran nuclear deal is still uncertain. The sixth round of shuttle diplomacy in Vienna ended on June 20, and no date has yet been set for a seventh round. Biden’s commitment to rejoining the agreement seems shakier than ever, and President-elect Ebrahim Raisi of Iran has declared he will not let the Americans keep drawing out the negotiations.

    In an interview on June 25, Secretary of State Tony Blinken upped the ante by threatening to pull out of the talks altogether. He said that if Iran continues to spin more sophisticated centrifuges at higher and higher levels, it will become very difficult for the U.S. to return to the original deal. Asked whether or when the United States might walk away from negotiations, he said, “I can’t put a date on it, [but] it’s getting closer.”

    What should really be “getting closer” is the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Iraq. While Afghanistan is portrayed as the “longest war” the United States has fought, the U.S. military has been bombing Iraq for 26 of the last 30 years. The fact that the U.S. military is still conducting “defensive airstrikes” 18 years after the 2003 invasion and nearly 10 years since the official end of the war proves just how ineffective and disastrous this U.S. military intervention has been.

    Biden certainly seems to have learned the lesson in Afghanistan that the U.S. can neither bomb its way to peace nor install U.S. puppet governments at will. When pilloried by the press about the Taliban gaining control as U.S. troops withdraw, the president answered:

    For those who have argued that we should stay just six more months or just one more year, I ask them to consider the lessons of recent history. … Nearly 20 years of experience has shown us, and the current security situation only confirms, that “just one more year” of fighting in Afghanistan is not a solution but a recipe for being there indefinitely. It’s the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.

    The same lessons of history apply to Iraq. The U.S. has already inflicted so much death and misery on the Iraqi people, destroyed so many of its beautiful cities and unleashed so much sectarian violence and Islamist fanaticism. As with the shuttering of the massive Bagram base in Afghanistan, Biden should dismantle the remaining imperial bases in Iraq and bring the troops home.

    The Iraqi people have the same right to decide their own future as the people of Afghanistan, and all the countries of the Middle East have the right and the responsibility to live in peace, without the threat of American bombs and missiles always hanging over their heads, and their children’s.

    Let’s hope Biden has learned another history lesson: that the United States should stop invading and attacking other countries.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • France’s Bastille Day parade takes place in shadow of covid pandemic

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    The traditional parade on France‘s national day returns today after a one-year hiatus due to the covid-19 pandemic, reports France 24.

    European special forces involved in anti-jihadist operations in Africa’s Sahel region will get prime position in the Bastille Day celebrations in a sign of President Emmanuel Macron’s military priorities.

    Around 80 French and European special forces drawn from the multinational Takuba force in the Sahel will lead the procession, a choice intended to send a diplomatic message from Paris, reports the newswire.

    Macron, who will preside over the ceremony, is banking on often reluctant European partners to step up their commitments to Takuba. He announced plans for a drawdown of French troops in the Sahel region last month.

    Paris wants Takuba — which numbers only 600 troops currently, half of them French — to take over more responsibilities from the 5100 soldiers in France’s Barkhane operation, who have been battling Islamist groups in West Africa alongside local soldiers for eight years.

    The parade in Paris will be a scaled-down version of the usual event, with only 10,000 people in the stands instead of 25,000.

    A forecast of heavy rains might also disrupt the traditional fly-overs and military pageantry. The weather might also dampen firework shows around the country, another popular feature of Bastille Day, which marks the storming of the Bastille prison, a major event in the 1789 French Revolution.

    Riviera terror attack anniversary
    Alongside the nationwide festivities, the southern Riviera town of Nice will also be marking the fifth anniversary of a terror attack on 14 July 2016 that saw a man kill 86 people after driving a truck through a crowd of people watching Bastille Day fireworks.

    Nice terror attack shrine
    The makeshift shrine honouring the victims of the 2016 Bastille Day terror attack on the Promenade Des Anglais in Nice on the French Riviera. Image: David Robie/APR

    Prime Minister Jean Castex will visit the city for a ceremony at the site of a memorial for the victims, where 86 doves are set to be released as a sign of peace.

    Nice authorities have organised a concert for later in the evening.

    At 10:34pm, the time the truck rampage began, 86 beams of light will illuminate the Mediterranean waterfront to honour the dead.

    Dozens of nationalities were among the victims that day on the Promenade des Anglais.

    The assailant, who is believed to have been spurred on by jihadist propaganda, was shot dead by police after a two-kilometre rampage down the seaside promenade.

    NZ Bastille week celebrations
    In Aotearoa New Zealand, the French New Zealand Chamber of Commerce (FNZCCI) called on the 10,000 strong Kiwi-French community to gather and celebrate Bastille Week in New Zealand “like nowhere else in the world”.

    The organisation’s has 3000 employees across New Zealand.

    The French New Zealand Chamber of Commerce (FNZCCI) has called on the 10,000 strong Kiwi-French community to gather and celebrate Bastille Week in New Zealand like nowhere else in the world.

    The organisation’s members has 3000 employees across New Zealand.

    They planned regional events, including NZ’s French Business Awards to mark the national day by showcasing the strength, resiliency, and innovation of the French-Kiwi relationship.

    “Bastille week will celebrate the crème de la crème of what France has to offer from Monday, July 12, until Sunday, July 18,” said chamber president Thibault Beaujot.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Ron DeSantis Signs New Law To Boost Popularity & Khashoggi Murdered By U.S. Trainees

    Via America’s Lawyer: FL governor DeSantis signs a law mandating public college students disclose their political affiliations. Plus, four Saudi nationals implicated in the murder of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi received paramilitary training on U.S. soil. Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             Florida’s […]

    The post Ron DeSantis Signs New Law To Boost Popularity & Khashoggi Murdered By U.S. Trainees appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • The US Should Not Send Troops to Haiti, Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

    The U.S. Should Not Send Troops to Haiti, Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

    After the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse at his home in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s interim government says it has asked the United Nations and the United States to send troops to help secure key infrastructure. The U.S. has so far declined, but has sent an inter-agency team from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the situation in Haiti is “extraordinarily delicate and extremely fragile,” and that the U.S. should not send troops to the country. “Our role should be in supporting a peaceful transition and democratic process for selecting a new leader,” she says.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

    As we’ve reported, Haitian police said Sunday they arrested a key figure in Wednesday’s assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse at his home in Port-au-Prince. Haiti’s National Police chief said they arrested Dr. Christian Emmanuel Sanon, Haitian-born Florida doctor, that he arrived in Haiti last month with, quote, “political objectives.” Police said Sanon is one of three Haitian Americans now arrested in the attack, along with 18 Colombians. The Miami Herald reports the Colombians said they were hired by Miami-based company CTU Security, which is run by a Venezuelan man named Antonio Emmanuel Intriago, who is known to be anti-President Maduro of Venezuela.

    Haiti’s interim government says it has asked the United Nations and the United States to send troops to help secure key infrastructure. The U.S. has so far declined but has sent an inter-agency team from the Department of Homeland Security as well as the FBI.

    Colombia has sent their head of military intelligence because the massive number of those involved, it is believed, with the assassination team are former Colombian military or Colombian.

    For more, we are joined by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the U.S. representative for New York’s 14th Congressional District. She represents over 650,000 people across parts of Bronx and Queens, one of the most diverse districts in the United States.

    We want to talk about the mayoral election here in New York. We want to talk about infrastructure and the Green New Deal, Congressmember Ocasio-Cortez. But this latest news in Haiti and the call for U.S. or U.N. troops from some sectors, the interim government of Haiti, what is your concern here with President Biden pulling the troops out of Afghanistan and the possibility of pressure to go back to — the U.S. going back to occupying Haiti?

    REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO–CORTEZ: Well, you know, I think there are an enormous amount of concerns. I, first of all, applaud the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, but this is — you know, the intention of that is to not relocate troops from Afghanistan to anywhere else. And I don’t believe that that was the intention in withdrawal from the White House, either.

    But this situation is extraordinarily delicate and extremely fragile. And I do not believe right now that the introduction of U.S. troops, without — particularly without any sort of plan, sets any community, whether it’s the U.S. or whether it is Haitians, up for success.

    I do believe that with the assassination, the people of Haiti and the country is in a very delicate moment, and our role should be in supporting a peaceful transition and a peaceful democratic process for selecting a new leader, and avoiding any sort of violence, but particularly in really carrying any — supporting any due process for justice here in the United States for any actors that may have been complicit on U.S. soil.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Final chance for justice over Bloody Sunday murder hangs by a thread

    The Bloody Sunday murder trial, which the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) dropped last week, may not be over quite yet. A court ruling means that the brother of one Bloody Sunday victim can contest the decision to drop charges.

    The accused, known as Soldier F, was being tried for the 1972 Derry killings until last week. The Northern Ireland PPS judged that certain evidence was likely inadmissible following a ruling in another case. It decided not to proceed with the case.

    William McKinney died during the massacre in Derry in 1972. And his brother Micheal has now won the right to challenge the judge’s decision. On the same day, 13 people died when paratroopers opened fire on civil rights protestors in the Irish city. Another died later. Many more were wounded.

    In 2010, following years of investigations, the UK government apologised for the killings. Then-PM David Cameron said at the time:

    The conclusions of this report are absolutely clear. There is no doubt, there is nothing equivocal, there are no ambiguities. What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong.

    Legal challenge

    Soldier F had been charged for the murders of William McKinney and a second man James Wray. But the PPS dropped the case after evidence in an earlier, similar trial was ruled out. Proceedings against Soldier F were expected to be fully dismissed at a Derry court on 9 July.

    Meanwhile, Irish News reported that the judicial review Michael McKinney had pushed for would be held in September.

    Justice?

    Michael McKinney told reporters:

    The PPS should not have contemplated discharging Soldier F in circumstances where the High Court is already actively considering the decision making surrounding decisions not to prosecute F for his involvement in two further murders.

    On securing the challenge from the High Court, Michael McKinney said:

    The position it adopted was a source of great distress to our family. This represents a victory for us and Jim Wray’s family and those wounded by Soldier F.

    In this nearly 50-year old case, the judicial review gives the Bloody Sunday families another chance at justice.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Sean Mack

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Boris Johnson says no to inquiry into disastrous 20-year Afghanistan war

    Boris Johnson doesn’t want an inquiry into the 20 year long Afghanistan war. In his withdrawal announcement on Thursday 8 July, he said:

    I don’t think that that is the right way forward at this stage.

    He added that internal investigations had already taken place and mentioned that the Chilcot Report into Iraq had cost millions.

    Johnson had already told the Commons Liaison Committee on Wednesday 7 July that he would not comment until the planned announcement on Thursday. However, he did admit during the hearing that he was concerned about the security situation there.

    He told the committee:

    We have to be absolutely realistic about the situation that we’re in, and what we have to hope is that the blood and treasure spent by this country over decades in protecting the people of Afghanistan has not been in vain.

    Meanwhile, the US withdrew the bulk of its remaining forces on 4 July – US Independence Day – in strange circumstances. AP reported that the military forces based at Bagram Airbase left quietly at night. And they didn’t even tell the local Afghan commander they were going. During the early part of the war, Bagram became notorious as a site of US torture.

    Fierce fighting

    The suggestion that the UK was ever in the business of protecting Afghans is, of course, contestable. But on the ground, the security situation appears to be spiralling out of control. Reports warn of a quick Taliban advance into new territory and cities.

    The western city of Qala-i-Naw was the scene of fierce fighting on 7 July. Taliban forces reportedly captured the local police station before being beaten back by Special Forces.

    Neighbouring countries are also concerned. Tajikistan closed its border and mobilised military reserves. Meanwhile Iran hosted talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Turkey and Russia also shut consulates in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in response to Taliban gains locally.

    Inquiry?

    John Chilcot led the last inquiry into a major war; in that case, Iraq. The Chilcot Report was announced in 2009 and was eventually published several years behind schedule in 2016. It was 2.6m words long and made a number of important findings. They included that the military action had not been warranted and that claims about Weapons of Mass Destruction, used to justify the assault, had been made with unjustified confidence.

    Then-PM Tony Blair, who also led Britain to war in Afghanistan, faced withering criticism. But the inquiry had no legal powers to bring any of the Iraq War leaders to trial.

    It remains to be seen if there will be an inquiry into Afghanistan. But if there is, the 20 year scope of the war is likely to make it even more complex than Chilcot’s investigation into Iraq.

    Featured image via EliteForcesUK/Sgt James Elmer.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Pentagon Undercounts And Ignores Military Sexual Assault In Africa

    All of these incidents, whether the alleged victim was a civilian or a member of the military, are supposed to be included in the Pentagon’s Defense Sexual Assault Incident Database and listed in the annual SAPRO reports to Congress. But it’s not clear whether they are. The annual reports do not tell the whole story.

    The post Pentagon Undercounts And Ignores Military Sexual Assault In Africa appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • RSF’s 2021 ‘Press freedom predators’ gallery includes old tyrants, 2 women

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has published a gallery of grim portraits — those of 37 heads of state or government who crack down massively on press freedom, reports RSF.

    Some of these “predators of press freedom” have been operating for more than two decades while others have just joined the blacklist, which for the first time includes two women and a European predator.

    Nearly half (17) of the predators are making their first appearance on the 2021 list, which RSF is publishing five years after the last one, from 2016.

    All are heads of state or government who trample on press freedom by creating a censorship apparatus, jailing journalists arbitrarily or inciting violence against them, when they do not have blood on their hands because they have directly or indirectly pushed for journalists to be murdered.

    Nineteen of these predators rule countries that are coloured red on the RSF’s press freedom map, meaning their situation is classified as “bad” for journalism, and 16 rule countries coloured black, meaning the situation is “very bad.”

    The average age of the predators is 66. More than a third (13) of these tyrants come from the Asia-Pacific region.

    “There are now 37 leaders from around the world in RSF’s predators of press freedom gallery and no one could say this list is exhaustive,” said RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire.

    “Each of these predators has their own style. Some impose a reign of terror by issuing irrational and paranoid orders.

    Others adopt a carefully constructed strategy based on draconian laws.

    A major challenge now is for these predators to pay the highest possible price for their oppressive behaviour. We must not let their methods become the new normal.”

    The full RSF media predators gallery 2021.
    The full RSF 2021 media predators gallery. Image: RSF

    New entrants
    The most notable of the list’s new entrants is undoubtedly Saudi Arabia’s 35-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is the centre of all power in his hands and heads a monarchy that tolerates no press freedom.

    His repressive methods include spying and threats that have  sometimes led to abduction, torture and other unthinkable acts. Jamal Khashoggi’s horrific murder exposed a predatory method that is simply barbaric.

    The new entrants also include predators of a very different nature such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose aggressive and crude rhetoric about the media has reached new heights since the start of the pandemic, and a European prime minister, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the self-proclaimed champion of “illiberal democracy” who has steadily and effectively undermined media pluralism and independence since being returned to power in 2010.

    Women predators
    The first two women predators are both from Asia. One is Carrie Lam, who heads a government that was still democratic when she took over.

    The chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region since 2017, Lam has proved to be the puppet of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and now openly supports his predatory policies towards the media.

    They led to the closure of Hong Kong’s leading independent newspaper, Apple Daily, on June 24 and the jailing of its founder, Jimmy Lai, a 2020 RSF Press Freedom laureate.

    The other woman predator is Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister since 2009 and the daughter of the country’s independence hero. Her predatory exploits include the adoption of a digital security law in 2018 that has led to more than 70 journalists and bloggers being prosecuted.

    Historic predators
    Some of the predators have been on this list since RSF began compiling it 20 years ago. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, were on the very first list, as were two leaders from the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko, whose recent predatory inventiveness has won him even more notoriety.

    In all, seven of the 37 leaders on the latest list have retained their places since the first list  RSF published in 2001.

    Three of the historic predators are from Africa, the region where they reign longest. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 79, has been Equatorial Guinea’s president since 1979, while Isaias Afwerki, whose country is ranked last in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, has been Eritrea’s president since 1993.

    Paul Kagame, who was appointed Rwanda’s vice-president in 1994 before taking over as president in 2000, will be able to continue ruling until 2034.

    For each of the predators, RSF has compiled a file identifying their “predatory method,” how they censor and persecute journalists, and their “favourite targets” –- the kinds of journalists and media outlets they go after.

    The file also includes quotations from speeches or interviews in which they “justify” their predatory behaviour, and their country’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index.

    RSF published a list of Digital Press Freedom Predators in 2020 and plans to publish a list of non-state predators before the end of 2021.

    Asia Pacific Report and Pacific Media Watch collaborate with the Paris-based RSF.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Activists call for peaceful remembering of 1998 Biak massacre in West Papua

    “We Have Come To Testify” … survivors give evidence about the 1998 Biak massacre at a “citizens’ tribunal” hearing hosted by the Centre for Peace Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. Video: Wantok Musik

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    Today — July 6 — marks 23 years since the Indonesian security forces massacred scores of people in Biak, West Papua.

    The victims included women and children who had gathered for a peaceful rally.

    They were killed at the base of a water tower flying the Morning Star flag of West Papuan independence. Other Papuans were rounded up and later taken out to sea where they were thrown off naval ships and drowned.

    No Indonesian security force member has been charged or brought to justice for the human rights abuses committed against peaceful demonstrators.

    According to the Papuan Institute for Human Rights Studies and Advocacy (Elsham Papua), eight people died, three went missing, four were severely wounded, 33 mildly injured, and 150 people were arrested and persecuted during the Biak massacre.

    The report also said 32 bodies were found in Biak water at that time (Tabloid Jubi, July 5 2021)

    Joe Collins of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) said: “it is tragic that 23 years after the Biak massacre, the West Papuan people continue to be arrested, intimated and killed by the security forces and in fact the situation in West Papua continues to deteriorate with ongoing clashes between the security forces and the OPM.

    “It was also reported that a commemoration will be held on the 6th in West Papua.

    “Hopefully, the security forces will allow the West Papuan people to commemorate the tragedy of Biak peacefully without interference.”

    Komnas HAM Papua head Frits Ramandey said: “I have been contacted by those who will commemorate the Biak massacre [in a rally] on July 6. We demand relevant parties [especially the security forces] to facilitate them.”

    Ramandey appealed to Jubi in a phone call on Sunday: “Let the Papuans remember the Biak Massacre.”

    • On 2 July 1998, the West Papuan Morning Star flag was raised on top of a water tower near the harbour in Biak. Activists and local people gathered beneath it singing songs and holding traditional dances for four days in a demand for a self-determination referendum. As the rally continued, many more people in the area joined in with numbers reaching up to 500 people. On July 6, the Indonesian security forces attacked the demonstrators, massacring scores of people.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Report Reveals Khashoggi Assassins Trained In America

    Via America’s Lawyer: Four Saudi nationals implicated in the murder of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi received paramilitary training on U.S. soil. Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             A new report has revealed that four of the Saudi nationals were implicated in the Khashoggi […]

    The post Report Reveals Khashoggi Assassins Trained In America appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • The Pentagon Continues To Stiff US Troops On Medical Malpractice Payments

    Via America’s Lawyer: Hundreds of servicemembers were promised compensation for medical malpractice over a year ago. So why haven’t they seen a penny from the Pentagon yet? RT correspondent Brigida Santos joins Mike Papantonio to explain how troops and veterans are still awaiting payouts to the tune of $2 billion. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, […]

    The post The Pentagon Continues To Stiff US Troops On Medical Malpractice Payments appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • July 4 Glorifies the US Military — a Force With White Supremacy at Its Core

    an illustration of a menacing soldier concealed in red, white and blue camouflage

    In his “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July” speech, Black abolitionist Fredrick Douglass highlighted the gross contradictions of a country that claimed to celebrate freedom and independence while embracing slavery. Douglass, however, took solace in America’s age. “There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages,” Douglass said in his speech on July 5, 1852. The country was 76 at the time.

    Today, the settler-colonial nation-state of the U.S. turns 245 years old. Yet the underlying problems of white supremacism that Douglass addressed in his famous speech persist. Among the contradictions of today’s Independence Day observations will include the honoring of the armed forces for “keeping America safe” and “defending our freedoms,” despite the prevalence of white supremacy in the ranks and the fact that many current and former service members participated in the January 6 breach at the U.S. Capitol, which sought to violently disrupt the certification of a legitimate presidential election.

    On April 1, the Department of Defense “completed” a 60-day stand-down to address the growing problem of white extremism in the military. The review was prompted by the fact that 20 percent of those facing charges from the January 6 events have a background in the armed forces. The stand-down centered around conversations with rank-and-file soldiers that would allegedly “reinforce the military’s values.” The information gleaned from these discussions would be sent up the chain of command. What would happen next is unclear, at least from what we’ve been told by Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby.

    The lack of clarity on next steps is likely due to the fact that no official data would be collected during these conversations. The top brass in charge of coordinating the discussions believe that conversations that reinforce values of the military would be enough, and that data collection would be unnecessary. Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said the stand-down would also be a chance to listen to service members [about] their own feelings about extremism. Such a policy is counterproductive, according to the chief of staff at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Lecia Brooks, who has been calling for more data collection on the scope of right-wing extremism in the military. As Brooks said in a March 25 interview with Democracy Now!, the day after she testified at an Armed Services Committee hearing on extremism in the Armed Forces, “data drives policy.”

    In May, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin created an “extremism task force.” This task force has a July deadline to make “recommendations on potential changes to military justice.” Again, any recommendations will be based on scant official data because the military is notorious for not wanting to acknowledge or document the problem of white supremacism in the ranks.

    This is what we do know: Veterans make up 25 percent of all militia members in the U.S., according to a recent report from The New York Times. In early 2020, one in three active-duty service members reported to the Military Times that they saw evidence of white supremacism in the ranks. An August 2020 poll conducted by the Military Times reported that 57 percent of troops of color have personally experienced some form of racist or white supremacist behavior.

    In 2018, Brandon Russell, a member of the Floridian National Guard, was sentenced to a five-year prison sentence for harboring explosives. It was revealed during the trial that Russell had founded a violent neo-Nazi group. In May 2020, an Air Force sergeant who belonged to a boogaloo extremist movement was accused of murdering a federal security agent. In June 2020, an active-duty soldier named Ethan Melzer was charged with plotting a mass casualty attack in collaboration with his neo-Nazi group.

    Nonetheless, far right Republican leaders like Rep. Pat Fallon from Texas, who was on the post-January 6 committee to address white supremacism in the ranks, was particularly dismissive of the 60-day stand-down, calling it “political theater.” More liberal-minded politicians like House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington) acknowledge that these problems exist but seem unwilling to push for serious changes in policy.

    If the military’s handling of sexual assault is any indication of how the “task force” to confront right-wing extremism will go, then we can assume that there will be plenty of talk without much action to root out the problem.

    One in three women are sexually assaulted in the military. This problem has been acknowledged for many years. Yet the number of women who are assaulted in the military continues to increase.

    In 2020 there were 7,825 reports (a large number of cases go unreported) of sexual assault in all branches of the military, a 3 percent increase over 2019. A number of hearings on sexual assault followed the release of the 2012 Academy Award-nominated documentary “Invisible War.” “Invisible War” exposed the depth of the sexual assault epidemic and resulting cover ups in the U.S. military. Nearly a decade later, promises from generals and politicians to solve the issue have clearly proven empty.

    Very little has been said about the results of the 60-day stand-down since it concluded on April 1. Silence is exactly what top brass and politicians count on because fixing the problem would pose a threat to their first priority — a strong empire that requires violence and oppression to achieve its goals. From the earliest days of supporting the colonization of Turtle Island to the use of the national guard against Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter protests — and from the wars on Japan and Vietnam to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan — the armed forces needed to dehumanize others as irredeemably violent, dangerous and uncivilized in order to encourage its soldiers to treat them as an enemy.

    The U.S. isn’t young anymore. One can’t help but wonder what Fredrick Douglass would say if he were to give a speech on the country’s 245th birthday. The “great streams” of American racism, white supremacy and sexism have indeed worn deep. A full 169 years after Douglass’s speech, the U.S. is still bogged down by many of the same contradictions. Any progress that has been made wasn’t due to benevolent rulers or a compassionate state apparatus, but came as a result of courageous people coming together to shine light on and resist intolerance and oppression.

    As American flags are posted on porches and fill front lawns across the U.S., let’s not let them block the light of justice. This Fourth of July, let’s not hide behind empty promises, cover-ups and manipulative patriotism. Let’s continue to expose what the military and other American institutions want to hide. Let’s fight against empire.

    It’s well past time that we damn the river of hate that continues to run through this country.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Prosecution of ex-soldiers over Troubles cases including Bloody Sunday halted

    The prosecution of two former soldiers for Troubles murders, including two on Bloody Sunday, are to be halted.

    Justice halted

    Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service has announced that the case against Soldier F for the murder of James Wray and William McKinney on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972 will not proceed.

    The prosecution of another veteran, Soldier B, for the murder of 15-year-old Daniel Hegarty in Derry later in 1972, will also not proceed, the PPS said.

    The discontinuation of the high-profile prosecutions comes after the PPS reviewed the cases in light of a recent court ruling that caused the collapse of another Troubles murder trial involving two military veterans.

    The Crown cases against both Soldier F and Soldier B hinged on evidence of a similar nature to that which was ruled inadmissible in April’s trial of Soldier A and Soldier C for the 1972 murder of Official IRA leader Joe McCann in Belfast. Faced with the likelihood of that type of evidence being ruled inadmissible again in any future trial, the PPS has concluded that there is no longer a reasonable prospect of convicting either Soldier F or Soldier B.

    The families of the victims in both cases were informed of the PPS decisions in private meetings in a Derry hotel on 2 July.

    Director of public prosecutions Stephen Herron said:

    I recognise these decisions bring further pain to victims and bereaved families who have relentlessly sought justice for almost 50 years and have faced many setbacks. It is clear to see how these devastating events in 1972, in which the families involved lost an innocent loved one, caused an enduring pain which continues to weigh heavily.

    Bloody Sunday
    Mickey McKinney with his brothers John (right) and Joe (left), the brothers of Bloody Sunday victim William McKinney (Liam McBurney/PA)

    Accused of murder

    Solider F, an ex-paratrooper, was accused of murdering Wray and McKinney on Bloody Sunday on 30 January 1972, when troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Derry’s Bogside, killing 13 people.

    He was also accused of the attempted murders of Patrick O’Donnell, Joseph Friel, Joe Mahon, and Michael Quinn. He faced a further supporting charge of the attempted murder of a person or persons unknown on the day. The case against him had reached the stage of a committal hearing at Derry Magistrates’ Court, to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to proceed to trial.

    The PPS has now requested a court date to formally withdraw the proceedings against Soldier F.

    Bloody Sunday
    Family members of Bloody Sunday victim James Wray (left to right), Margaret, John, Doreen, family solicitor Greg McCartney and Liam Wray, in Londonderry (Liam McBurney/PA)

    The family of McKinney have vowed to challenge the PPS decision in the High Court in an effort to prevent the case being dropped. After meeting with the PPS, Mickey McKinney, William’s brother, said the campaign for justice would continue. He said:

    This issue is far from concluded. We will fight on.

    The Wray family said they did not intend to take further legal action but would support other families pursuing that course.

    In the case of Solider B, the PPS had announced in 2019 an intention to prosecute him for the murder of Daniel and the wounding with intent of his cousin Christopher Hegarty, then aged 16.

    Bloody Sunday
    Des Doherty, the solicitor for the family of Daniel Hegarty, speaks to the media (Liam McBurney/PA)

    Shot dead

    The shooting happened during Operation Motorman, an Army operation mounted against the IRA. Daniel and Christopher, who had gone to watch the military operation, were shot after encountering an Army patrol in the Creggan area in the early hours of 31 July, 1972.

    The PPS had not yet got to the stage of issuing summons to formally begin the prosecution of Soldier B – a delay caused by the veteran’s unsuccessful High Court bid to challenge the move to bring charges against him. The planned prosecution will now no longer proceed.

    A lawyer for the Hegarty family urged the police to obtain a fresh statement from Soldier B, potentially by arresting him, to enable the prosecution to continue.

    Daniel Hegarty died on July 31, 1972
    Daniel Hegarty died on July 31, 1972 (Family Handout/PA)

    Solicitor Des Doherty said:

    Unless the PPS, through their direction to police, now invite Soldier B to voluntarily attend with the police to be interviewed in relation to the murder of Daniel and the attempted murder of Christopher, then Soldier B should be arrested because there is still time to cure the problem.

    Inadmissable evidence

    Two distinct sources of evidence were deemed inadmissible by justice O’Hara in his highly significant April 30 ruling that led to the collapse of the Joe McCann murder trial. The first were statements taken from the two accused soldiers by the Royal Military Police in 1972. The judge ruled those unreliable because the soldiers were denied several basic legal rights and safeguards when giving their statements to the RMP, including a formal caution and access to legal representation.

    The second evidential source found inadmissible was latter-day evidence emanating from the veterans’ engagement in 2010 with a specialist police unit investigating legacy cases, the Historical Enquiries Team (HET).

    Bloody Sunday
    A man receives attention during the shooting incident in Londonderry which became known as Bloody Sunday (PA)

    O’Hara said it would be unfair to admit that as evidence due to ambiguity over the HET’s purpose – to fact-find or to conduct criminal investigations – and the fact the accused were not informed what offence they were suspected of when cautioned.

    The case against Soldier F over the Bloody Sunday murders hinged on the contents of statements taken by the RMP from two other soldiers involved in the events of Bloody Sunday. Without those statements, the Crown would have been unable to prove that Soldier F was in the Bogside when the shots were fired.

    In the Soldier B prosecution, an account of the shooting he gave to the HET in 2006 would have been crucial to the PPS case against him.

    Bloody Sunday
    Crowds on the road to watch the funeral procession of those who died during Bloody Sunday (PA)

    The broader picture

    A total of seven legacy cases involving military personnel were looked at by the PPS in the wake of O’Hara’s ruling. In four of the cases a decision to prosecute had already been taken.

    While the Bloody Sunday and Daniel Hegarty cases will no longer proceed following formal reviews, the prosecution of former soldier Dennis Hutchings for the attempted murder of John Pat Cunningham in Co Tyrone in 1974 will continue. So too will the case against David Jonathan Holden, who is accused of manslaughter by gross negligence in relation to the 1988 shooting of Aidan McAnespie at a checkpoint close to the Irish border.

    Those cases are not affected by the same evidential issues

    The three other cases involving former military personnel are still awaiting initial prosecution decisions and the O’Hara judgment will be factored into those ongoing processes.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Classified documents found at Kent bus stop hint at reality of UK military strategy

    Secret military documents found at a Kent bus stop show us how British foreign policy works. The papers were reportedly found by a member of the public and then ended up with the BBC.

    The documents contained important details of a naval confrontation between Russian forces and a UK warship. And an investigation is being conducted into their loss. The documents provide a brief snapshot of the UK’s international conduct and also ask serious questions about it.

    Crimea clash

    On 23 June, the destroyer HMS Defender passed close to waters claimed by Russia. The ship had left Odessa, where UK defence firms had signed a deal with Ukraine to build military bases and supply patrol ships.

    Aboard were BBC journalists. Defender found itself ‘buzzed’ by Russian aircraft and ships. The journalists filmed the events. And the entire incident was framed as one of Russian aggression.

    However, the surprise discovery of the papers turns the UK narrative on its head.

    Theatre

    Among the details revealed by the BBC after receiving the documents were plans for the Crimean mission, dubbed Op [Operation] DitroIte. And the BBC‘s reporting appears to show officials discussing possible outcomes of the ship’s passage. Their comments suggest that the UK sought an aggressive reaction from Russia.

    A Powerpoint slide in the files shows two possible routes. One was close to Crimea and likely to attract what officials term a “welcoming party”. But the other did not pass through contested waters.

    The BBC reported:

    Alongside the military planning, officials anticipated competing versions of events.

    We have a strong, legitimate narrative”, they said, noting that the presence of the embedded journalists (from the BBC and Daily Mail) on board the destroyer “provides an option for independent verification of HMS Defender’s action.

    Arms exports

    The documents contained details of arms exports.

    The BBC was cagey about what it disclosed. On the arms exports its says:

    The bundle includes updates on arms exports campaigns, including sensitive observations about areas where Britain might find itself competing with European allies.

    The shadow war

    The files also suggested that high-level discussions were underway about Afghanistan troop deployments after withdrawal this year.

    Because the US appears to have requested UK special forces troops stay in the country after withdrawal in 2021. The BBC reported few details, saying they could endanger lives.

    The files acknowledged great danger to any troops who remain, for instance:

    “Any UK footprint in Afghanistan that persists… is assessed to be vulnerable to targeting by a complex network of actors,” it says, noting that “the option to withdraw completely remains.”

    Behind-the-scenes

    Naturally, the BBC released very little about the files.

    And it appears the Crimea incident was stage-managed at the British end to shape public perceptions. So it seems quite likely the BBC were onboard to report the UK narrative.

    These files may only represent a snapshot. But subjected to stage-managed events like Crimea, it’s no wonder the public can’t easily understand Britain’s role in the world. Moreover, serious questions need to be asked about how the UK media works with the UK military.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Royal Navy

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Macron hosts French ‘truth and justice’ Pacific nuclear test legacy talks

    By Walter Zweifel, RNZ Pacific reporter

    While a Paris roundtable about the legacy of nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls is eagerly awaited by the French Polynesian government, the nuclear veterans organisations wonder whether the victims are really represented at the talks. Like every year, they will instead mark tomorrow — July 2 — as the day in 1966 when France detonated its first nuclear bomb in the South Pacific. Walter Zweifel reports.

    A high-level roundtable on France’s nuclear legacy in French Polynesia is being held in Paris this week, aimed at “turning the page” on the aftermath of the weapons tests.

    Between 1966 to 1996, France carried out 193 tests in the South Pacific, yet 25 years later there are still outstanding claims for compensation and the test sites remain no-go zones monitored by France.

    The two-day Paris meeting was called by the French president Emmanuel Macron in April shortly after a new study about a 1974 atmospheric weapons test caused another wave of outcry.

    Analysing declassified French documents, the study Toxique by the news website Disclose concluded that the fallout affected the entire population and not only the immediate testing zone around Moruroa as the public had been led to believe.

    Macron’s initiative to put the recent history on the table has been welcomed by French Polynesia’s president Edouard Fritch, but has been dismissed by the opposition, nuclear veteran groups and the dominant Maohi Protestant Church, which will stay away, saying the delegation from Tahiti lacks credibility and legitimacy.

    For Fritch, the problems thrown up by the nuclear test era have been discussed with French politicians for the past 25 years but he says it is Macron who at last wants to deal with this “pebble in the shoe” in the relationship with Tahiti.

    This harks back to Macron’s 2017 presidential election campaign when his team promised Tahitians that Paris would assume key responsibility for health care and to pay in full for the medical costs incurred by those suffering from radiation-induced illnesses.

    Tests’ impact on health, environment
    Fritch told media that the upcoming talks should bring ‘truth and justice’, with an agenda looking at the tests’ impact on health and the environment, and the financial costs.

    The Tahitian delegation also wants France to acknowledge its nuclear legacy in the constitution.

    French President Emmanuel Macron and French Polynesian President Edouard Fritch
    French President Emmanuel Macron and French Polynesian President Edouard Fritch … the initiative to put the recent history on the table has been welcomed – and dismissed. Image: RNZ

    Fritch said he would “ask the President of the Republic to give us a precise timetable and above all to send us competent people in the matters that will be discussed”.

    Accompanying Fritch is a representative of the Territorial Assembly and the territory’s members of the French legislature, such as Lana Tetuanui, as well as employer and union delegates.

    Among the French participants will be the health minister but the defence minister is not certain to attend.

    French Polynesia’s former president Gaston Flosse, who for decades defended France’s testing regime, was not invited.

    Reflecting the simmering dissonance in Tahiti, the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party of Oscar Temaru rejected the invitation to Paris outright, labelling the planned talks a sham.

    Temaru said any such talks should not be held in the capital of the colonising power, but rather in New York under the auspices of the United Nations.

    While France refuses to acknowledge the 2013 UN decision to reinscribe French Polynesia on the decolonisation list, Temaru insists that “the right of peoples to self-determination is a sacred right, and there is no mixing the sacred and the vile, that is money. Our people are not for sale, Mā’ohi Nui is not for sale.”

    The main nuclear test veterans organisation, Moruroa e tatou, decided to boycott the talks.

    Its leader Hiro Tefaarere said that after 50 years of people suffering from the test legacy, those going to Paris put money at the forefront of their demands and not ethics.

    He said Fritch would not have joined the roundtable had not it been for the release of Toxique which identified the French state’s “secrecy, lies and negligence”.

    ‘Crime against humanity’
    Rejecting the French invitation, the Māohi Protestant Church, which is the main denomination in Tahiti, has in turn invited Macron to attend its synod when he is expected to visit Tahiti in the next few weeks.

    The head of the church, Francois Pihaatae, said that by going to Paris, they would have the “wool pulled over their eyes”, but once Macron was in Tahiti the presence of the local people would create a counterweight.

    The church has been critical of the French state, saying it proceeded with the tests in full knowledge of the impact of nuclear testing since before 1963.

    Both the church and Temaru’s Tavini Huiraatira Party alleged that this amounted to a crime against humanity.

    Three years ago, they announced that they had taken their case to the International Criminal Court (ICC), but it is not known if the court has accepted jurisdiction for their complaint.

    Paris roundly rejected the claims, condemning what it called the misuse of the court’s international jurisdiction for local political purposes.

    The French High Commissioner Rene Bidal said at the time the definition of a crime against humanity centred on the Nuremburg trials after the Second World War and referred to killings, exterminations, and deportations.

    Soon after making his charge, Temaru was forced out of office over an election campaign irregularity, which his Tavini Huiraatira party said was orchestrated by France to “politically assassinate” him in retribution for the ICC case.

    Until 2009, France claimed that its tests were clean and caused no harm, but in 2010, under the stewardship of Defence Minister Herve Morin, a compensation law was passed.

    Over a decade, it proved to be a source of frustration because most claimants, who suffered from any of the 23 recognised types of cancer, failed with their applications.

    This prompted a loosening of the eligibility criteria and then again a tightening, leaving it still open for further amendments.

    French Polynesia’s social security agency CPS has repeatedly called on the French state to reimburse it for the medical costs caused by its tests.

    It said that since 1995 it had paid out US$800 million to treat a total of 10,000 people suffering from cancer as the result of radiation.

    Temaru said the money was a debt, pointing out that if a crime was committed it was not up to the victims to have to pay.

    View of the advanced recording base PEA "Denise" on Moruroa atoll.
    Remnants of the French nuclear testing infrastructure on Moruroa atoll where tests were staged until the ended in 1996. Image: RNZ/AFP

    Risks around Moruroa
    The question of the tests’ lasting intergenerational effects remains unanswered.

    In 2018, a study was planned after the former head of child psychiatry in Tahiti, Dr Christian Sueur, reported pervasive developmental disorders in zones close to the Moruroa weapons test site.

    The findings — reported in the Le Parisien newspaper — caused an uproar in Tahiti and Fritch accused Dr Sueur of causing panic.

    The psychiatrist had reported that a quarter of children he treated for pervasive developmental disorders had intellectual disabilities or deformities which he attributed to genetic mutations.

    However, three years on a study by a geneticist is yet to be commissioned.

     

    Calls for a clean-up of the Moruroa test site continue.

    Although France stopped its weapons tests in 1996, it has refused to return the excised atoll to French Polynesia and declared it a no-go zone.

    The Tavini’s Moetai Brotherson, who is also a member of the French National Assembly, said France might lack either the technology or the financial means to remove radioactive sediments.

    He also said the cracks on Moruroa were a concern which might explain why France’s biggest investment in the region is the US$100 million Telsite monitoring system against a possible tsunami.

    There are fears the atoll could collapse as result of the more than 140 underground nuclear blasts.

    Plans for a memorial to be built in Pape’ete have had lacklustre support from those who keep mistrusting France.

    While the roundtable is eagerly awaited by the French Polynesian government, the nuclear veterans organisations wonder whether the victims are really represented at the talks.

    Like every year, they will instead mark tomorrow — July 2 — as the day in 1966 when France detonated its first nuclear bomb in the South Pacific.

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

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Otago conflict studies centre founder awarded global peace prize

    Otago University News

    Retired foundation director of Otago’s National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies Professor Kevin Clements has been awarded the International Studies Association’s (ISA) 2022 Distinguished Scholar Award in its peace studies section.

    The ISA said the award was given each year to a scholar who had a substantial record of research, practice and/or publishing in the field of peace and conflict studies.

    The association’s selection committee was deeply impressed by the breadth and quality of Professor Clements’ work on disarmament, conflict resolution and problems of historical memory and reconciliation in Asia-Pacific, as well as his institution – and organisation – building work.

    “I would like to share this honour with all of my colleagues since, among other things, the committee noted my ‘institution and organisation building work’. I could do no institution building without all of your talent, hard work and support,” Professor Clements said.

    “I look forward to acknowledging my NCPACS and Australian peace and conflict studies colleagues at the award ceremony.”

    At the upcoming 2022 International Studies Association conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Professor Clements will join the Distinguished Scholar Awards Roundtable to celebrate his contributions to the field.

    Professor Clements was at Otago for 11 years before retiring in 2020. He was awarded the NZ Peace Foundation’s 2014 Peacemaker Award and served as secretary-general of the International Peace Research Association and past secretary-general of the Asia Pacific Peace Research Association.

    Prior to taking up these positions he was the professor of peace and conflict studies and foundation director of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

    His career has been a combination of academic analysis and practice in the areas of peacebuilding and conflict transformation. Professor Clements has been a regular consultant to a variety of non-governmental and intergovernmental organisations.

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • £17bn of UK arms sold to rights’ abusers

    Weapons licensed for export to two-thirds of states on ‘not free’ register, including Libya, Saudi Arabia and Turkey

    Two-thirds of countries classified as “not free” because of their dire record on human rights and civil liberties have received weapons licensed by the UK government over the past decade, new analysis reveals.

    Between 2011-2020, the UK licensed £16.8bn of arms to countries criticised by Freedom House, a US government-funded human rights group.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘Don’t trust Indonesian military,’ says OPM warning civilians to leave conflict

    IndoLeft News

    The West Papua National Liberation Army-Free Papua Organisation (TPNPB-OPM) has warned the Papuan people not to trust that the TNI (Indonesian military) and the Polri (Indonesian police) can provide them with security guarantees in the region.

    OPM spokesperson Sebby Sambom said that they had “sounded the drums of war” against the security forces so civilian population that were still in certain areas could avoid becoming casualties, reports CNN Indonesia.

    “You (the civilian population) shouldn’t listen to the orders by the TNI-Polri saying, ‘We guarantee [the safety of] the civilian population’– there’s no such guarantee, the TNI-Polri are deceiving you,” said Sambom in a video release received by journalists.

    Sambom is appealing civilian populations from all groups to leave regions which the OPM had designated as “war zones”. He said that there were several such conflict areas. including Intan Jaya, Puncak Jaya, Ndugama, the Bintang Highlands and Yahukimo.

    Sambom said that the OPM — which has been labeled as a “terrorist” organisation by Jakarta — would not be responsible for civilians that died.

    “If you’re a construction worker, a motorcycle taxi driver, all of you [must] leave the conflict areas. Because we cannot be responsible for your lives, we have warned you,” he said.

    “But you listen to the TNI-Polri which deceives you by saying we guarantee [your safety], they are deceiving you,” Sambom said.

    OPM call criticised
    Joint Defence Area Command III (Kogabwilhan III) spokesperson Colonel Czi Gusti Nyoman Suriastawa responded by claiming that the OPM’s call was “a deception” which had been endlessly repeated by the group.

    He said that there were no regions in Papua which are war zones. According to Suriastawa, every incident which had occurred was due to the OPM “terrorist movement”.

    Moreover, he claimed that the OPM was becoming increasingly isolated.

    “Let them (the OPM) say what they want. Up until now, there are no conflict areas that are war zones, what there is the OPM terrorist movement which is increasingly being squeezed because their capacity to move [is limited because] they are constantly being pursued by TNI-Polri personnel”, Suriastawa told CNN Indonesia.

    He said that the Papuan people were increasingly showing their opposition to armed pro-independence groups which the government had now designated as terrorists.

    According to Suriastawa, the public was no longer influenced by the “propaganda” of the OPM which he alleged was acting outside the law and even killed Papuan people themselves.

    “This shows just how angry the ordinary people are at seeing the brutality and arbitrary actions of the OPM,” he claimed.

    Workers fired on
    Earlier, an armed group is alleged to have fired on five construction workers working on the Kuk River Bridge in Samboga village, Seradala district, Yahukimo regency, last Thuraday.

    Four of the five have been declared dead while the surviving victim is being treated for injuries sustained from broken glass.

    During the incident, an armed group numbering about 30 militants fired on a convoy of trucks carrying workers. They were attacked with a variety of weapons including knives, arrows, machetes, samurai swards and rifles.

    Based on witness testimonies gathered by police, four other workers were being held hostage by the armed group at an unknown location.

    Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “OPM Tuding Aparat Abaikan Warga, TNI Sebut Gertakan Teroris”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The UK military should stop recruiting children, human rights organisations say

    The UK military must stop recruiting under 18s, a coalition of human rights groups has urged. An open letter to defence secretary Ben Wallace said the military should change its recruiting policy. Human rights organisations such as Liberty, Medact, Amnesty, War Child, and Amnesty International UK signed the letter.

    The letter highlights that while “most states worldwide now allow only adults to be recruited”, the British Army “still recruits more soldiers at 16 than any other age”. And they said this was especially true for combat infantry roles. 

    The letter rejected the military’s claim that joining up helps kids:

    The army argues that it provides underprivileged teenagers with a route out of unemployment, but since four-fifths of disadvantaged teenagers now continue in school or college from age 16, their enlistment typically brings their full-time education to an early end.

    Incompatible with child rights

    The signatories warned that:

    the evidence now clearly shows that recruiting from age 16 draws them into the armed forces prematurely.

    They added:

    The risks and legal obligations involved are unambiguously incompatible with their rights and welfare.

    They said the problem is fixable:

    just a small increase in adult recruitment would facilitate transition to all-adult armed forces.

    New resources

    CRIN (Child Rights International Network) coordinated the letter. CRIN also worked with poet Potent Whisper to produce resources like a rhyming guide which challenges potential young recruits to reflect on what they might give up by joining.

    Other resources available on CRIN’s website include:

    Outcomes

    Researcher David Gee has previously worked on the issue of under 18s recruitment He tweeted that very young recruits are vulnerable on several metrics:

    In a bid to stop the recruitment of 16 and 17 year olds, CRIN urged people to write to their MP and lobby for the minimum age to be raised to 18.

    Armed Forces Bill

    MPs debated a new Armed Forces Bill on 23 June. On 22 June, Labour announced a review into veterans care. And using language previously espoused by a Tory minister, Keir Starmer said:

    I want Britain to be the best place in the world to serve and be a veteran.

    It’s not clear if the new consultation means 2019 Manifesto pledges will be abandoned. These included better military pay and housing, and a federation-style body for troops. That body would effectively be a union without the right to strike.

    Whether we are dealing with very young recruits, or soldiers leaving the military, there’s clearly a long way to go on human rights and proper aftercare.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Mike Weston/ABIPP

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Recruitment of under-18s to British military should end, ministers told

    Human rights groups call for bar on junior entry, which accounts for quarter of intake to army

    Ministers have been urged to stop the practice of recruiting children to Britain’s military by a coalition of 20 human rights organisation as MPs debate the armed forces bill.

    The pressure to end the practice also comes as figures showed that girls aged under 18 in the armed forces made at least 16 formal complaints of sexual assault to military police in the last six years – equivalent to one for every 75 girls in the military.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Alternative Jewish Voices: Not at this hui, and not in our names

    COMMENT: Alternative Jewish Voices

    We, Alternative Jewish Voices, hope for a productive and unifying second day at the Christchurch anti-terrorism hui. Security is something we build together and give each other. A threat may be singular, but our safety is collective.

    We are saddened to hear that such a kaupapa has been disrespected and we are, additionally, horrified to hear Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses double down on her claim that she was expressing the sentiment of our national Jewish community.

    It was wrong to coopt the hui for statements that (according to the comments of those present) “securitised” and “essentialised” the Muslim community.

    We object to any statement that presumes Palestinian solidarity must imply a love of violence. Such statements are wrong, period; and it was additionallty wrong to bring those politics into the anti-terrorism venue in particular.

    We feel for those who have been hurt, but we are heartened to hear that the hui will continue with its mission.

    We have challenged the Jewish Council’s claim to represent our community. We repeat our statement in order to challenge Ms Moses’s present claim that the council’s politics represent the fears of all NZ Jews.

    The NZ Jewish Council records its mission thus: “The council is the representative organisation of New Zealand Jewry. Its objective is to promote the interests, welfare and wellbeing of New Zealand Jewry.”

    Chosen by regional councils
    However, as we understand it, NZ Jewish Council members are chosen by a number of regional Jewish councils. The NZ Jewish Council members seem to be appointed through a series of indirect institutional processes.

    Members of Alternative Jewish Voices who belong to synagogues — some for many years — have never had any direct input to the composition of the NZ Jewish Council. Jews who are not members of a synagogue don’t appear to have any voice in these processes at all.

    The NZ Jewish Council does not attempt to elicit, include or represent the spectrum of views within the Jewish community.

    We want our neighbours to understand that the ardent Zionist voices of the NZ Jewish Council and Israel Institute do not represent the whole community of New Zealand Jews. They emphatically do not represent us.

    Alternative Jewish Voices wishes all participants in the Christchurch hui wisdom and unity. We all need your kaupapa and we will all benefit from it.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • President Biden Is Packing The Pentagon With Defense Contractors

    Via America’s Lawyer: President Biden continues to spin the revolving door between defense contractors and the Pentagon. Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             President Biden is packing his defense department with people from the defense industry, a sign that, that not much has […]

    The post President Biden Is Packing The Pentagon With Defense Contractors appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Nine reasons why Jakarta has branded Papuan armed rebels as ‘terrorists’

    By Benny Mawel in Jayapura

    The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) believes that the Indonesian government has nine motives behind the branding of National Liberation Army of West Papua as terrorists.

    Executive director Markus Haluk of ULMWP said this during a seminar and book discussion “Demanding Dignity, Papuans Are Punished” in Jayapura on Friday.

    He said it was believed that one of the reasons the Indonesian government labels armed groups as terrorists was to stem and limit ULMWP diplomacy in various Melanesian countries, the Pacific, and in other countries worldwide.

    “We’ve been reading that since a few months ago,” said Haluk.

    He said the Indonesian the government continued to strive to increase its influence in a number of international forums attended by the ULMWP delegation.

    In these various forums, the Indonesian delegation strived to minimise the role of the Papuan delegation.

    “They started with the issue [that] Papua could not afford to pay the dues (For the Melanesian Spearhead Group). Papua has already handled [the various efforts].

    ‘Terrorism’ issue raised again
    “[Then] Indonesia raised the issue of terrorism again,” said Haluk, who delivered a presentation entitled “Revealing the government’s motivation with the terrorist label to Papua”.

    According to him, the terrorist brand was also an attempt to silence and isolate the movement of indigenous Papuans.

    As a result, whatever the activities of the indigenous Papuans are they would come to the attention of the Indonesian government because they were associated with the terrorist label.

    “The terrorist label is a way of isolating the Papuan issue and silencing Papuans’ freedom of expression,” Haluk said.

    Haluk said that the effort to silence the expressions of indigenous Papuans was part of the Indonesian government’s efforts to pass a revision of Law No. 21/2001 on Papua’s Special Autonomy.

    This happened because the Papuan people continued to reject the Indonesian government’s efforts to extend the Special Autonomy Law, including by holding demonstrations and collecting the signatures of the Papuan People’s Petition (PRP).

    “Clearly, there was the arrest of Victor Yeimo, spokesman for the [international West Papua National Committee] and the PRP. There have been expulsions of students from Cenderawasih University student dormitories and flats, internet access has been cut off,” Haluk said.

    Easier for Indonesian weapons
    “Haluk suspects that the terrorist label for armed groups (West Papua National Liberation Army) is an effort to smooth the way for procurement of weapons and combat equipment for the TNI/POLRI (Indonesia National Army/Indonesia National Police).

    The designation of armed groups in Papua as terrorists would also increase the opportunity for members of the TNI/POLRI to participate in various cooperation exercises in dealing with terrorists with other countries and increase the opportunity to obtain funds for handling terrorists from the European Union, United States, Australia and New Zealand.

    Haluk said that the terrorist label would also be a means of intimidation against executive and legislative officials in Papua.

    In addition, the terrorist label would facilitate the state’s efforts to secure investment and the interests of national and international investors.

    “Indonesian political elites play a big role in investment interests, for example in forest concession rights, selling alcoholic beverages, and mining,” he said.

    The labeling of terrorists could even be used as a stage for politicians to contest the general election in Indonesia.

    “[It could be] a political stage for the sake of the legislative and presidential elections in 2024, as well as for the interests of the local Papuan political stage, for example, seizing the leadership of the Democratic Party in Papua, or the 2023 Papuan gubernatorial election,” Haluk said.

    ‘Branding’ not new
    The president of the Fellowship of West Papua Baptist Churches, Reverend Dr Socratez Sofyan Yoman, who is also a member of the Papuan Church Council, said that the label of terrorists was not new.

    “The label appeared in the 1960s. [There is a label] Free Papua Organisation, separatist, KKB, KKBS, GPK, [then now] we are facing the terrorist label. It’s a repetition of all those [labels],” he said.

    According to Yoman, the various labels were created to smooth over or legalise the actions of the state apparatus to commit violence against Papuans.

    “Papuans continue to be tortured and killed in their own country,” said Reverend Yoman.

    This article from Tabloid Jubi has been translated by a Pacific Media Centre correspondent and is republished with permission.

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Previously unknown fifth death revealed 20 years on from the Deepcut army scandal

    Nearly 20 years ago, a scandal rocked the British military and attracted major press attention. It emerged that between 1995 and 2002, four young army recruits died of gunshot wounds at the Surrey training base known as Deepcut Barracks. Now, a fifth death during the same period has been reported.

    Sean Benton, 20, and Cheryl James, 18, died while on guard duty at the camp in June and November 1995 respectively. Geoff Gray, 17, died in September 2001, and also while carrying out sentry duties. James Collinson, 17, was also on guard when he died of gunshot wounds in March 2002.

    Their deaths would send shockwaves through the army and attract ongoing public and media scrutiny. Surrey Police would eventually be heavily criticised for errors in their investigation. And a long series of inquests would be driven by their grieving families.

    Culture of cruelty

    Since the deaths were first reported, details of the culture at the camp have gradually emerged. In 2016, the Independent reported that when the first deaths happened in 1995, a ‘culture of cruelty’ was evident at the base. It was claimed rape and sexual assault were common. But up to 60 allegations made by recruits at the time were not pursued by police.

    Des James, father of Cheryl James, said in 2016:

    I believe there was a serious problem with the culture in that camp. I think there was a culture that breached regulations, a culture of drug use, alcohol bingeing, bullying and sexual intimidation. There was very little respect for individual recruits

    The army has been repeatedly censured for its failings. In 2005, sources close to one inquiry found that officers had overseen a “catastrophic” failure at Deepcut.

    Private Eye reporter and journalism professor Brian Cathcart covered the story for years. He wrote a cutting analysis of the MOD’s attempts to “kill a story that it would have preferred we had never known about”. He also praised the families of those who died for fighting back.

    Fifth death

    Until now, only four deaths had been made public – all from gunshot wounds while on armed guard duty. On 10 June, however, news of a fifth death broke. Private Anthony Bartlett reportedly died of a drug overdose in 2001. But the police officer investigating the two deaths of Gray in 2001 and Collinson in 2002 was never made aware of Batlett’s death.

    Now retired, DCI Colin Sutton – who led the investigation – said he had never been told about Bartlett’s death despite it occurring just two months before Gray’s in 2001. The new details have emerged in an Audible podcast called Death at Deepcut. As a result, Sutton was interviewed on BBC Newsnight on 10 June.

    He said it was ‘staggering’ that he’d not been told of the fifth death, which had been investigated by police at the time. Sutton said Bartlett’s death had been “kept hidden from [him] effectively”.

    “Nobody told me about it”, he said:

    If you’re the senior investigating officer looking at the deaths of two soldiers at Deepcut and there’s another death of a soldier that you’re not told about, you know, it’s just staggering to me.

    He added:

    I just don’t understand how that information can be kept from an investigation team that’s looking at this at that barracks.

    Justice

    Family members, many of whom have never fully accepted the suicide verdicts in the four better known cases, spoke to the BBC. Yvonne Collinson, mother of James Collinson, said:

    All these years of experience with the Army and the police, they don’t offer any truths and try and hide things from you that they think might cause them a bit of trouble

    She added:

    I also feel for the family of this young man. I suspect they didn’t get very much support from the Army because I know we certainly didn’t. Only we understand how it feels. My condolences to them.

    Unresolved

    A proper public inquiry has been called for by those affected. This has been echoed in recent years by two senior army generals: Richard Dannatt and Nick Carter.

    It remains to be seen if the calls for a full inquiry will be listened to. Until a full and frank hearing, the Deepcut scandal will continue to haunt the British military. And, more importantly, the families of those who lost loved ones at the base. In some cases over two decades ago.

    Featured image via Wikipedia/Ron Strutt

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Wenda accuses Jakarta’s military of ‘massacre’ after killing of 3 Papuans

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    The United Liberation Movement of West Papua has accused Indonesian “colonial forces” of a new massacre with the killing of three civilians, “adding to the hundreds of thousands of West Papuans killed during six decades of occupation”.

    Interim president Benny Wenda of the ULMWP has also claimed that Jakarta has put the entire population of 4.4 million “at risk of being swiped out” by Indonesian security forces by being labelled “terrorist”.

    In a statement, Wenda said a husband and wife, Patianus Kogoya, 45, and Paitena Murib, 43, had been killed at Nipuralome village, along with another Papuan man, Erialek Kogoya, 55.

    “They were shot dead by joint security services on June 4 in Ilaga, Puncak regency. Three others, including a five year old child, were wounded during the massacre,” he said.

    “Local churches have confirmed the incident, even as the colonial Indonesian police have spread hoaxes to hide their murders.”

    Wenda said cold blooded murder was becoming the culture for the security forces.

    “West Papua is the site of massacre on top of massacre, from Paniai to Nduga to Intan Jaya to Puncak. This is heart-breaking news following the killing of our religious leaders like Pastor Zanambani,” he said.

    ‘Count more of our dead’
    “We now have to count more of our dead. How much longer will this continue?”

    Wenda said Indonesia had labelled the OPM (Free Papua Moivement) “terrorist”.

    “The OPM is all West Papuans who have hopes for freedom and self-determination, all organisations that fight for justice and liberation in West Papua,” he said.

    “I am OPM, the ULMWP is OPM. If you label the OPM ‘terrorist’, you are labelling the entire population of West Papua ‘terrorist’.

    “The Indonesian state is targeting all West Papuans for elimination – the evidence is there in Ilaga last week, with unarmed civilians being gunned down.

    “How do they justify this killing? With the ‘terrorist’ label.”

    Wenda claimed these “stigmatising labels” were part of Jakarta’s systematic plan to justify its presence in West Papua and the “deployment of 21,000 troops to our land”.

    He said that the ULMWP continued its urgent call for Indonesia to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights into West Papua.

    “Intervention is needed now. What is happening in Palestine is happening in West Papua,” he said.

    Wenda appealed to solidarity groups in the Pacific and internationally to speak up for “freedom and justice”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Policing and Militarism Go Hand in Hand. We Must Abolish Both.

    Members of the national guard stand outside the Hennepin County Government Center

    Policing and militarism are a two-headed monster that protects and upholds the foundation upon which racial capitalism was built — exploitation of the lives of poor Black and Brown people.

    Although much attention has been placed on recent expansions of police militarization, these threads have long been intertwined. For Black Americans, police have always acted as an occupying force within our communities. But during the 1960s, a decade of unprecedented Black radical resistance, the lines between police and military and national defense became even more blurred.

    On December 8, 1969, the SWAT unit of the Los Angeles Police Department raided the Black Panther Party’s headquarters in Los Angeles, California. Four days prior, the Chicago Police Department had violently raided the home of and assassinated Fred Hampton, the chairman and leader of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, based out of my hometown of Chicago. It is in the legacy and practice of militarism that SWAT teams were created — as a means to decentralize and suppress Black resistance.

    As a Black femme abolitionist and organizer from the west side of Chicago, I fight in the spirit of Fred “Baba” Hampton, in a movement that is built upon the community-based power around which the Panthers mobilized to combat militarism, colonialism and occupation.

    The attack on the Black Panther headquarters in 1969 was one of the first publicly known uses of newly emerging SWAT teams, but they quickly spread. Throughout the past two decades, SWAT units have become more heavily armed and funded and used all too regularly as a tactic of instant response in predominantly Black cities, particularly in response to uprisings. The 1033 Program, created as a part of the 1977 National Defense Authorization Act, allows the Department of Defense to supply local authorities with its military-grade equipment. War weaponry, such as assault rifles, riot gear, grenade launchers and military tanks, is awarded to police departments and used to perpetuate harm against Black and Indigenous people putting their lives on the line to oppose colonization, white supremacy and policing.

    The facts are simple: When masses of Black people mobilize, gangs of police move in, and terrorize.

    Since the start of the 1033 Program, around 10,000 law enforcement agencies have received around $7.4 billion worth of equipment.

    This equipment funds the type of raids that killed Breonna Taylor, it funds teargas being used against Black people in Kenosha and Minneapolis, it funds the batons the Chicago Police Department uses to beat youth in the streets, it funds the water cannons used at Backwater Bridge at Standing Rock. It funds the murder of millions at the hands of policing, war, militarism, colonialism and imperialism. It is a never-ending cycle of violence.

    Given all of this, calls to defund police and end wars are bigger than just targeted demands; they are calls to invest in life, abundance and an abolitionist world in which we don’t depend on the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex or policing to sustain our communities.

    This struggle is very personal to me. I am an abolitionist from a city that spends $4.8 million a day and about $2 billion a year on policing — and a city in which taxpayers spend about $38 million yearly to arm, aid in and fund apartheid, genocide and state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians.

    Militarism is a strategy of using violence to keep people in positions of power in control and to maintain the racial, economic and other social hierarchies that uphold this power.

    $4.8 million a day is the allowance police are given daily to uphold militarism in Chicago.

    Divesting from education, mental health services, violence prevention that addresses the root causes, housing, and all other necessities of life keeps the racial, economic and social hierarchies in place that justify the supposed need for police.

    This is why in this same city the yearly budget for mental health services is around $9.4 million — equal to less than two days of the police budget.

    This is why the budget for substance abuse treatment is only 2.6 million — a half-day worth of police budget on any given day. And only $1.5 million is spent yearly in violence prevention — a proactive way to combat violence without the reactionary nature of police.

    This is why in 2013, my elementary school and nearly 50 others — all of which were located on the predominantly Black South and West Sides of the city of Chicago — were closed down in one of the largest public school closures of United States history. The city claimed the closures were due to lack of funding, but four years later, the city proposed spending $95 million to build a police training academy in my neighborhood — where they previously closed schools that they supposedly could not afford to keep open.

    It is why, as a 12-year-old in 2013, I went to community hearings begging then-mayor Rahm Emanuel to keep my elementary school open. It is why five years later, I joined #NoCopAcademy, a youth-led campaign against the city-proposed policy academy — and for a change in notion that community safety is directly tied to policing. And it is why, today, I am organizing around demands to defund police and to get the cops — who are being prioritized for funding above education — out of Chicago Public Schools.

    It is why, as I joined other #NoCopAcademy organizers on the day of the vote over whether to build the police academy, I was beaten in the stairwells of city hall, while Mayor Lori Lightfoot awarded the Chicago Police Department with a new $95 million police school. The violence perpetrated against my being was accompanied by the violence of more resources being poured into state-sanctioned violence.

    It is why my voice was ignored in 2013, and again in 2019 when the cop academy was approved. Now, as I scream Rekia Boyd’s name in the street, chant in her legacy and demand divestment from the institution which was responsible for her death, I am again ignored.

    The 2022 fiscal budget under President Joe Biden requests $753 billion in national security funding. This is a 1.6 percent increase that includes $715 billion for the Department of Defense. In 2016, the military utilized about $610 billion. Just as national defense budgets continue to increase drastically year by year, local police department budgets continue to rise as wars are waged in poor Black communities via hyper-policing, surveillance and police torture.

    Many of my closest comrades from the hood experience trauma from witnessing and experiencing police violence and torture. For nonwhite people — for people who live in hoods flooded by police and abandoned in every other way, and for those of us who watched our sisters and brothers be tortured and targeted by police on a daily basis — conversations about “defund,” “divest” and “abolish” are not new. They are demands, necessities, discussions we’ve been having in our communities for years, and even decades. And for Black Chicagoans, this is about our lives. This violence happens daily. We don’t need another video of Black trauma. We didn’t need to see George Floyd, or Rekia Boyd, or Adam Toledo, or Laquan McDonald or Breonna Taylor be murdered to know policing is violence. We didn’t need to see genocide, war and crisis unfold in Palestine, Yemen or Nigeria to know militarism is violence.

    Police and the military operate under the same practices of militarism. Police move into external communities and occupy. Military forces move into external communities and occupy. The idea that Black and Brown communities need “law and order” and that these institutions implement it alongside safety is flawed. Safety for Black, Brown and Indigenous people doesn’t look like more police. It looks like access and abundance, because when you think about the safest place in the world and the places where you feel most safe, it is very likely that they are places with the most resources and the least police.

    As campaigns to defund and divest from death and to fight for liberation continue, the struggle for an abolitionist world lives on through every chant at an action; every ancestor that shows us the way; every community relationship we build; and all the steps we take to become a global community connected in love, liberation and abundance.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Temaru calls for Tahiti nuclear tests roundtable in New York – not Paris

    RNZ Pacific

    French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru says high-level talks on France’s nuclear legacy due in Paris this month should be held at the United Nations in New York instead.

    French President Emmanuel Macron called the meeting in response to a report which accused France of misleading the public about the fallout after a 1974 atmospheric weapons test.

    Temaru said such a meeting should not be held in the capital of the colonising power, describing it as a sham.

    He warned those attending that the French Polynesian people and its resources were not for sale.

    While French Polynesia’s delegation is being finalised, the leading politicians of the late testing era, Temaru and Gaston Flosse, will not be present.

    In the lead-up to the talks, the French social security agency CPS again called on the French state to reimburse it for the medical costs caused by its tests.

    It said since 1995 it had paid out US$800 million to treat a total of 10,000 people suffering from any of the 23 cancers recognised by law as being the result of radiation.

    Temaru said the money was a debt, pointing out that if a crime was committed it was not up to the victims to have to pay.

    Between 1966 and 1996, France carried out 193 nuclear weapons tests in French Polynesia.

    The test sites of Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls remain excised from French Polynesia and are French military no-go zones.

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

    Oscar Temaru
    French Polynesian pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru … will not be at the nuclear talks. Image: Johnny Blades/RNZ

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • UK spending millions of taxpayers’ money on military project that’s putting endangered whales at risk

    The UK government is spending over £23m of taxpayers’ money on expanding its naval base at Duqm port in Oman. As the investigative media outlet Declassified UK reported on 3 June, the expansion could have a “large adverse” impact on an endangered whale population.

    The UK is also hosting the G7 summit from the 11 to 13 June. The government says one of its policy priorities for the summit is “tackling climate change and preserving the planet’s biodiversity”. The UK’s actions in Oman, however, are threatening ocean biodiversity and its ability to tackle the climate crisis. So too are the actions of other G7 countries in areas of the ocean.

    “Failing in its most basic responsibilities to nature”

    Declassified UK reported that it had asked the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for the environmental impact assessments it had undertaken for the base. As the outlet pointed out, the base appears to have been operational since at least 2018, with the £23.8m cash injection for expansion announced in September 2020.

    It took the MoD six months to answer Declassified UK‘s request. In January this year, the ministry confirmed it had not yet carried out an environmental impact assessment. It’s international security directorate said the ministry would conduct these assessments “as the bases developed”, Declassified UK reported. Green Party peer Natalie Bennett commented:

    We hear endlessly from this government that it is ‘world-leading’ on environmental issues, yet once again on a crucial issue for a keystone species it is trailing behind others, failing in its most basic responsibilities to nature.

    Whale species at “high risk of extinction”

    Other studies have assessed the situation for Arabian Sea humpback whales. One 2016 analysis by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), for example, highlighted that the population is “in the ‘at high risk of extinction’ category’”. Unlike many other whales, they don’t migrate and live in a “relatively constrained geographic location” that ranges from the coastal waters of Yemen and Oman to Iran, Pakistan, and India. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says that the whale’s population numbers less than 100 in the coastal waters of Oman.

    A 2017 study carried out in relation to an oil refinery at the port, meanwhile, asserted that further construction there would harm the ocean’s wildlife. As Declassified UK reported:

    The consultants found there was a “large adverse” risk to the whales from “ship strikes, underwater noise and changes in prey distribution and abundance arising from disturbance and dispersion of sediments during dredging”.

    The outlet also noted that the port says “it has put measures in place to protect marine life, such as a speed limit”.

    A video by the Environment Society of Oman says that the country’s coastline is home to “20 species of whales and dolphins, and also four species of turtles”.

    UK not alone

    There are similar extinction worries for whales living in waters around other G7 countries, such as North Atlantic right whales. These critically endangered whales numbered less than 250 mature individuals as of 2018. They live mainly in the eastern coastal waters off the US and Canada. As the New York Times recently reported, these whales regularly get entangled in fishing gear or hit by ships and a new study suggests this may be “stunting their growth”. The analysis found that the whales’ body length is currently around 7% shorter than in 1981, based on an evaluation of 129 whales in comparison to earlier generations. As the outlet highlighted, this is “reducing their chances of reproductive success and increasing their chances of dying”.

    On the other side of the US, meanwhile, the critically endangered population of beluga whales who live in Alaska’s Cook Inlet are in serious decline. An article in Anchorage Daily News argued that “climate change, prey availability, coastal development and pollution” are potentially contributing to their demise. On pollution specifically, the outlet explained that Alaska issues permits:

    that allow the dumping of billions of gallons of toxic substances into the inlet, where critical habitat has been designated for belugas. It’s the only coastal water body in the country where a loophole allows oil and gas companies to dump toxic waste.

    Japan, another G7 country, controversially resumed commercial whale hunting in 2019. There is an international ban on whaling, which is observed by most countries other than Norway, Iceland, the US, the Faroe Islands, and Japan.

    “Worth thousands of trees”

    Whales are critical to the planet’s health and an essential ally to humans in their fight against the climate crisis. They are a keystone species. That means they support the ecosystem they exist in and if they vanish ecological systems can collapse because so many other species are dependent on them. Those ecosystems in turn prop up the wider climatic stability of the Earth.

    Furthermore, whales can play an immense role in capturing and storing (sequestering) carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 emissions, mostly created by the burning of fossil fuels, are the main driving force behind global warming. As an International Monetary Fund (IMF) article pointed out, great whales sequester an average 33 tons of CO2 in their bodies during their lifetime (all living things are made of carbon). Their activities also impact other aquatic life-forms in ways that can massively increase the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon. As the IMF article explains, this means that:

    When it comes to saving the planet, one whale is worth thousands of trees

    Holistic policy priorities

    Most of the issues whales currently face are within governments’ power to change or mitigate. By saving whales, governments would in turn also be greatly bolstering their efforts to tackle the climate crisis and restore ecological equilibrium.

    If the world’s governments wholeheartedly started factoring in and prioritising potential ecological impacts in their policy-making, such cyclical and mutually beneficial outcomes would be possible. That’s the sort of holistic policy priorities that global political leaders, like those assembling for the G7 summit, should have on their agenda.

    Featured image via ESOMediaChannel / YouTube

    By Tracy Keeling

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Despite health and safety concerns, the British Army’s £3.5bn tank delivery goes ahead

    The British Army’s £3.5bn fleet of Ajax tanks could cause tinnitus and joint problems for soldiers inside them. Despite the warnings carried in a leaked report, the MOD still says the new vehicles will be delivered and on time.

    That leaked report is from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA). And the IPA believes the Ajax won’t be delivered on schedule.

    Leaked report

    Ajax is meant to replace the army’s ageing tank fleet, but the leaked assessment says the new vehicle faces multiple issues. These include:

    • An inability to reverse over obstacles higher than 20cm.
    • The tank can’t achieve its top speed of 40 mph.
    • Soldiers inside suffer joint swelling and hearing damage if they drive at more than 20mph.
    • Excessive vibration means crews are limited to 90 minutes at a time in the Ajax and have needed to take hearing tests.
    • The vibration also means the main weapon of the tank cannot be fired

    Yet the MOD insists the vehicle will be delivered into service on time. Ajax is expected to enter service fully in 2024. This is despite the issues detailed in the leak forcing a six week pause to trials in 2021. Since the Ajax project began in 2010, development issues also caused an 18-month delay.

    Problems

    Defence procurement has long been a problem for the UK. In April this year The Canary reported that less than half of the combat jets on new aircraft carriers were British. The others are American.

    The F-35 jets themselves were plagued with problems. In 2021, the US media claimed that the Pentagon’s own in-house report warned that the aircraft still had 871 existing problems. However, it’s hard to know what these are because the Pentagon hasn’t released the report yet.

    Exceptionalism

    Britain’s equipment problems have many causes. One of these is what one former army officer described in 2020 as “exceptionalism”.

    This egregious state of affairs is exacerbated by what defence analysis Francis Tusa has labelled “British exceptionalism”, sometimes described less kindly as “not invented here syndrome”

    He described this as an:

    institutionalised resistance in the equipment procurement system to anything that does not originate within the UK or from UK initiatives, which is surprising given that the British armed services are awash with weapons systems sourced from abroad. The “exceptionalism” bit kicks in when, even when accepting another country’s AFV, for example, as being the best fit for the requirement, there is insistence on a multitude of changes to make it “ours”.

    As the Guardian points out:

    Particular difficulty was caused by problems integrating a separately designed 40mm cannon insisted upon by the MoD

    The US firm General Dynamics made Ajax and Lockheed Martin made the F-35. Both US companies. So once again the main beneficiaries of the UK’s military equipment programmes are big global arms firms.

    Featured image via Wikipedia/Richard Watt MOD

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • West Papua and other critical issues – why is NZ media glossing over them?

    COMMENT: By David Robie in Auckland

    International reporting has hardly been a strong feature of New Zealand journalism. No New Zealand print news organisation has serious international news departments or foreign correspondents with the calibre of such overseas media as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

    It has traditionally been that way for decades. And it became much worse after the demise in 2011 of the New Zealand Press Association news agency, which helped shape the identity of the country for 132 years and at least provided news media with foreign reporting with an Aotearoa perspective fig leaf.

    It is not even much of an aspirational objective with none of the 66 Voyager Media Awards categories recognising international reportage, unlike the Walkley Awards in Australia that have just 34 categories but with a strong recognition of global stories (last year’s Gold Walkley winner Mark Willacy reported “Killing Field” about Australian war crimes in Afghanistan).

    Aspiring New Zealand international reporters head off abroad and gain postings with news agencies and broadcasters or work with media with a global mission such as Al Jazeera.

    Consequently our lack of tradition for international news coverage means that New Zealand media tend to have many media blind spots on critical issues, or misjudge the importance of some topics. Examples include the Samoan elections in April when the result was the most momentous game changer in more than four decades with the de facto election of the country’s first woman prime minister, unseating the incumbent who had been in power for 23 years.

    The recent Israel-Palestine conflict in May was another case of where reporting was very unbalanced in favour of the oppressor for 73 years, Israel. Indonesian’s five decades of repression in the Melanesian provinces of West Papua is also virtually ignored by the mainstream media apart from the diligent, persistent and laudable coverage by RNZ Pacific.

    There is a deafening silence about the current brutal and draconian attack on West Papuan dissidents in remote areas with internet unplugged.

    No threat to status quo
    As national award-winning cartoonist Malcom Evans wrote in a Daily Blog column on the eve of last week’s Voyager Media Awards that whoever won prizes, “it’s a sure bet that, he or she, won’t be someone whose work threatens the machinery that manufactures our consent to a perpetuation of the status quo”.

    He continued:

    “There will be no awards for anyone like Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, but none either for our own Nicky Hager or Jon Stephenson, who exposed war crimes committed in Afghanistan by New Zealanders, and none for Chris Trotter, Bryan Bruce or Susan St John whose writings have consistently exposed the criminal outcomes wrought on New Zealanders by neo-liberalism.”

    Evans also cited “Indonesia’s rape of West Papua and East Timor” and the “damning Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians” as examples of lack of media exposure of “New Zealand duplicity and connivance”.

    Palestinian protesters target NZ media "bias"
    Palestinian protesters target NZ media “bias” at the first Nakba Rally in Auckland last month. Image: David Robie/APR

    Hanan Ashrawi, the first woman member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), told Middle East Eye in the wake of the conflict that left 256 Palestinians — including 66 children — and 13 Israelis dead that it was illogical to expect Israel to be both the “gatekeeper and to have the veto”.

    “Israel has never implemented a single UN resolution at all, since its creation [in 1948]. And Israel has always existed outside the law. So why do you expect Israel suddenly to become a state that will respect others, human rights, international law and the multilateral system.

    “Israel is the country, the only country that legislated a basic law that says only Jews have the right to self-determination in this land which is all of historical Palestine.

    “Israel has destroyed the two-state solution.

    When Israel opens up …
    “Only when Israel opens up, when this system of discrimination, repression, apartheid is dismantled, only then will you begin to see that there are opportunities of equalities and so on.”

    However, Ashrawi was complimentary about the new wave of youth leadership and support for the Palestinian cause sweeping across the globe. She was optimistic that a new political language, new initiatives for a solution would emerge.

    New Zealand media did little to reflect this shifting global mood of support for Palestine – apart from Stuff and its publication of Marilyn Garson’s articles from Sh’ma Kolienu – and it ignored the massive second week of protests for a lasting peace.

    RNZ Mediawatch’s Hayden Donnell was highly critical over the lack of news coverage of the “newsworthy and historic” Samoan elections on April 9, commenting: “For nearly two days, RNZ was the only major New Zealand news website carrying information about the election results, and analysis of the outcome.”

    As he pointed out, since 1982, the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) had been in power and the current prime minister, Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi (now caretaker), had been prime minister since 1998.

    “It’s very monumental that we’ve had a political party [opposition FAST Party led by Fiame Naomi Mata’afa] come through so quickly within 12 months to challenge the status quo in many different ways.”

    Fiame has a slender one seat majority, 26 to 25, in the 51-seat Parliament, and was sworn in as government in still-disputed circumstances. But the New Zealand media coverage has still been patchy in spite of the drama of the deadlock.

    Tension high in Samoa stand-off
    “Tension high in Samoa stand-off” – New Zealand Herald on 26 May 2021. Image: APR screenshot

    Woke up to Samoa crisis
    The New Zealand Herald    , for example, finally woke up to the crisis and splashed the story across its front page on May 24, but then for the next three days only published snippets on the crisis, all drawn from the RNZ Pacific coverage. For the actual election result, the Herald only published a single paragraph buried on its foreign news pages.

    "Democracy in crisis" - New Zealand Herald
    “Democracy in crisis” – New Zealand Herald on 25 May 2021. Image: APR screenshot

    As for West Papua, the silence continues. Not a single major New Zealand newspaper has given any significant treatment to the current crisis there described by The Sydney Morning Herald as a “manhunt for 170 ‘terrorists’ slammed as a ‘licence’ to shoot anyone”.

    Singapore-based Chris Barrett and Karuni Rompies reported that “Indonesian forces are chasing 170 members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement [OPM]. The crackdown has reportedly displaced several thousand people.

    “Tensions have been high since the separatists’ shooting in April of two teachers suspected of being Indonesian spies and the burning of three schools in Beoga, Puncak.”

    This is the worst crisis in West Papua since the so-called Papuan Spring uprising and rioting in protest against Indonesian racism and repression in August 2019.

    The Jakarta government was reported to have deployed some 21,000 troops in the Melanesian region, ruled since the fiercely disputed “Act of Free Choice” when 1025 people handpicked by the Indonesian military in 1969 voted to be part of Indonesia. The latest crackdown followed the killing in an ambush of a general who was head of Indonesian intelligence on April 25.

    Indonesian police carry a body in the current crackdown near Timika, Papua.
    Indonesian police carry a body in the current crackdown near Timika, Papua. Image: seputarpapua.com

    Discrimination against Papuans
    This latest round of strife marks widespread opposition to Indonesia’s 20-year autonomy status for the region which is due to expire in November and is regarded by critics as a failure.

    Interim president Benny Wenda of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) denounces Indonesian authorities who have variously tried to label Papuan pro-independence groups “separatists”, “armed criminal groups”, and “monkeys” (this sparked the 2019 uprising).

    “Now they are labelling us ‘terrorists’. This is nothing but more discrimination against the entire people of West Papua and our struggle to uphold our basic right to self-determination,” he says.

    Wenda has a message for the United Nations and Pacific leaders: “Indonesia is misusing the issue of terrorism to crush our fundamental struggle for the liberation of our land from illegal occupation and colonisation.”

    The West Papua issue is a critical one for the Pacific, just like East Timor was two decades ago in the lead-up to its independence. Why is our press failing to report this?

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.