Netflix’s adaptation of Heartstopper has been confirmed for two more seasons and we–queer people–are thrilled about it. Originally a webcomic written and illustrated by Alice Oseman, the Netflix series currently has a critic rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
We follow a group of queer British teens as they learn to navigate life, love, and friendship. The romance between two of these teens–Nick and Charlie–is the driving force behind the series. But, where the Netflix series deviates from the original webcomic is in its wider focus on each supporting character. Tao, Elle, Darcy, Tara and Isaac (I’m sensing an aro-ace storyline for Season 2! Editor’s note: Asexual, for those who aren’t familiar with the lingo) all feel like meaningful characters in the story.
As someone who works in a bookstore, I witness the latest bookish trends come and go all the time. When Netflix’s adaptation of Heartstopper hit our computer screens, I watched as what felt like hundreds of queer people ran into store to buy the books. I haven’t gone a day since its release without either a) breaking someone’s heart and telling them we are sold out or b) squealing that yes! We finally have more stock, right this way!
As a queer person, each time I see a queer teen with a pride pin on their school bag bumble into the store, their eyes darting around until they spot the Heartstopper displays, my heart leaps. Sometimes they’re shy and nervous, other times they run in and slam their books down on the counter with glee. I vividly remember one girl who gasped and turned to me to say, “There’s so many!” and I saw my own bewildered joy mirrored in her eyes.
So, what is it about Heartstopper that means so much to us as queer viewers?
Well, one of my close friends, Luke, is slowly working his way through all the classic teen TV shows–we’re talking hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Vampire Diaries and Glee. I’ve come to expect late night messages from him saying: “Guess what, another queer character was killed off and/or their story was used as trauma porn?!” He is genuinely shocked when a queer character doesn’t die, or when they have complex storylines.
We aren’t used to seeing coming-of-age narratives that feature a spectrum of queer identities and experiences. We are not used to seeing queer characters survive for the duration of a show, but we are very familiar with seeing queer pain and trauma play out on screen.
Even TV shows like Glee, which featured some queer characters, those characters came of age through a very particular linear ‘coming out’ narrative that suggests identity “can be revealed in a single moment of truth”.
Journalist Gary Nunn recently wrote an article along this theme; he speaks of the “ambiguous grief” queer people may feel while watching Heartstopper. When I approached him for further thoughts, he reflected that “we wish this had been our story, and we never envisaged a day someone would tell it”.
Gary went on to tell me that it “stings” to realise that we, as queer people, have been taught not to “..expect […] a happy ending” for ourselves. This struck a chord with me. We are shaped by the media we consume, and the coming-of-age narratives that raised me also told me that my queerness is deviant and must be dismissed.
I did not go into Heartstopper with the trepidation or fear that part of me does not belong.
When I talk with my queer friends about Heartstopper, we always come back to the same two words when we attempt to describe it; “safe” and “warm.”
The over-representation of coming out narratives in popular media has been repeatedly interrogated by queer academics, and rightly so. However, Rowan Ellis, a queer author and public speaker, has said that the unapologetic sentimentality and fantasy of Heartstopper gives viewers “a sense of permission to romanticise a queer childhood”.
I connect so deeply with this show and the webcomic because I don’t have to translate a heteronormative coming-of-age narrative to fit my own experiences. My ability to relate to and escape into media has always been dependent on my ability to suppress my identity.
I am a white, cis-gender, able-bodied woman, so I imagine that I do not feel this as intensely as queer people of colour, trans folk and disabled people do. It’s not that I cannot relate to the straight characters on screen. But my queerness is the part of myself that I chipped away so I could enjoy movies or TV shows that simply did not acknowledge queerness, or handled it poorly.
In Episode 3 of Heartstopper, Nick sees Darcy and Tara kiss at a birthday party. The music swells, rainbow lighting strobes, and confetti rains down. Each time myself and my friend Erin watch this scene, we tell ourselves that, “This time, this time, we will not cry.” But we always do.
Tara and Darcy at the party. Picture: Netflix/Rob Youngson.
It feels almost indulgent, after seeing such limited positive sapphic representation, to have two girls kissing on screen in a moment of undeniable joy. The sentimental awe that spreads across Nick’s face in this moment, the over-the-top imagery, Darcy and Tara’s grins, all harmonise in such a way that celebrates queerness.
At the beginning of this same episode, Nick is sitting alone in his room and staring at the results of the ‘Am I Gay?’ quiz he just took on his laptop. We all take different quizzes, we all get different results and respond uniquely to those results. But any queer person with internet access would likely tell you they felt that moment deep in their blood and marrow. To see this moment represented in a coming-of-age narrative was validating, even though it’s been many years since I took one of those quizzes.
The catharsis of seeing Nick’s journey over the course of the show isn’t as escapist as the party scene, but it’s equally as valuable. Rowan Ellis, again, says, “We have this great sense that coming out doesn’t have to be this definitive one time certainty.” In a coming-of-age narrative, it is crucial that queer kids understand that their queerness does not have to be finite or fixed.
Each time I rewatch Heartstopper, I feel like I come of age again and again. I learn from Nick, Charlie and their friends, the varied ways I can take up space as a queer person, the ways I can inhabit my queer body.
Something as simple as seeing a group of young queer teens eat lunch together at school changed how I perceived my queerness. It simply ‘is’.
The gang at the arcade. Picture: Netflix
That we also have a host of other queer characters with their own backstories and relationships to one another is probably my favourite thing about the show. Seeing a piece of media affirm that queerness is not a monolith, that there are many identities and ways to be queer, was cathartic for me.
Heartstopper is not the be-all and end-all of queer teen media; it feels like a new beginning. It does not claim to encompass every queer experience and every queer identity. But this coming-of-age story has given me more hope for the future of queer teen television than I ever thought possible.
Feature image at top: Heartstopper, Season 1, Episode 8. Nick and Charlie at the beach. Photo: Netflix
Let our bleeding proxy negotiate a settlement, NOW.
Since early January, the corporate media have been proving their loyalty and their usefulness to the US foreign policy establishment. With faultless show-business efficiency, they manufactured an international political superstar, at least in Europe and the English speaking world. Vladimir Zelensky appeared on media screens, seemingly everywhere, including a turn on the 2022 Grammy Awards extravaganza.
Sad but resolute Ukrainian refugees became fodder for a blend of news and entertainment that firmly established, in our hearts and minds, who were the Good Guys and who were the Evil Monsters.
And we were encouraged to see that, sooner or later, the Ukrainian Good Guys were going to prevail over the brutal Russian fiends.
But lately there have been some tiny cracks in the wall of totalitarian perception management. And now ….
It’s time. It’s time to recognize the reality. It’s time for our bleeding proxy-warrior Ukraine to negotiate with Russia, in good faith, before it loses everything.
Right off the bat, many readers will exclaim, “You can’t negotiate with Russia! The Russians are guilty of unprovoked and unjustified aggression.”
Unprovoked and unjustified. Like an ancient Greek theatrical chorus, the corporate media have repeated that line until, now, it’s stuck permanently in our synapses. An ear worm, like a catchy melody.
I’d ask those media-addled opponents of diplomacy to imagine, just for a moment, a hypothetical situation: First, make sure you have a complete grasp of the drama’s exposition, the entire, contrived, set of circumstances which the President of Russia was facing on February 24, 2022.
Remember that the clever script writers of the US foreign policy elite had employed their best calculated, cold-blooded cunning to devise the perfect diplomatic double-bind for the drama’s Russian villain. (And, of course, they had choreographed their NATO dance line, to give their “diplomacy” the illusion of legitimacy.)
Now, ask yourself whether any American President, facing a comparable dramatic conflict, would have acted differently?
Or pretend, for a moment, that Winston Churchill, hero of numerous epic films, is, through the magic of your imagination, the President of the Russian Federation. Do you have any doubt that Churchill would have stoutly refused to bow down and appease the US/NATO leadership arrayed against him?
Azov Battalion fighters with Nazi flag (WikiCommons)
A second consideration, on the subject of Russia’s trustworthiness as a negotiating partner: The Western powers and their media mouthpieces have contemptuously dismissed Russia’s stated goal of de-Nazifying Ukraine. Western propaganda would have us believe that there is no serious neo-Nazi, ultra-nationalist threat whatsoever in Ukraine.
To the contrary, a little research reveals that the threat is very real. I’m talking about ferocious, far-right fanatics, who are heavily armed, highly trained, strongly motivated and fiercely disciplined. Their electoral base is small, but that doesn’t matter. In the media-fiction of Ukrainian democracy, with oligarchs pulling many of the strings, the ability to mobilize real-life violence is a powerful tool.
And we should remember that the US and NATO have been deeply involved in arming and training these forces, since 2014, making them an even more formidable part of Ukraine’s governing power structure. This arming and training took place off-stage, to be played out for an audience only when the time was right — when Russian tanks crossed the Belarus-Ukraine border, and the well-rehearsed Ukrainian military was unleashed, causing awesome, real-world damage and death.
Not every Ukrainian soldier is a neo-Nazi or a hard-right ethnic cleanser. But I believe it’s fair to say that those elements are the spine of the Ukrainian military. Without them, I doubt that the media-touted under-dog’s esprit de corps would be nearly as robust.
Let’s do an exercise in make-believe. Take the insurgents who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. As a theatrical event, the staging was a mess. It barely deserved to be called a riot. But that mob of actors was not lacking in motivation. Or raw talent. They clearly believed that their dramatic enactment was real. We in the audience were mesmerized and then relieved, when the play came to a sputtering end.
Now, picture the actors in that mob again. The Justice Department estimates their number to have been between 2,000 and 2,500. In your mind’s eye, multiply them by twenty-five (40,000 to 50,000).
Now, arm them. Train them hard. Organize them into squads, platoons, companies, battalions and brigades. Enforce strict discipline. Motivate them with a continued sense of ethnic superiority.
This little exercise of the dramatist’s imagination, “based upon” our home-grown January 6, should give you some idea of the ultra-right’s strength and influence within the Ukraine power structure.1
The Russians are very serious about confronting Nazis and ethnic supremacists in that country which sits right on their border. In Vladimir Putin’s February 21st speech to the Russian people, he was not using Ukrainian neo-Nazis as a flimsy pretext in a cheap melodrama.
The people of Ukraine don’t need any more media spot-lighting. Their plight doesn’t need more daily dramatizing presented as “news.” Ukrainian civilians need a permanent cease-fire. So let the talks begin. And please, remember: We are in no position to judge the sincerity of Russian negotiators, in potential talks, aimed at a peaceful settlement of this bloody conflict. In the fog of war, you never know what might happen until the diplomatic actors take the stage and begin their dialogue. The old cliche applies: You never know until you try.
The real blockage to peace talks is a triumphalist and misguided NATO and its Godfather in Washington. The US and NATO are going for broke. They are demanding that Ukraine fight on, bleeding and dying, until the US, NATO and their proxy achieve a decisive victory over Russian forces.
Furthermore, if Zelensky and his foreign policy team decide to negotiate, before they lose even more territory, they risk the wrath of the neo-Nazi, ultra-nationalists who permeate their military and police forces. They will not survive without the Godfather’s protection.
(See this article in the Kyiv Post, about veteran Ukrainian Donbas fighters confronting Zelensky, warning him, in 2019, NOT to seek peace in the Donbas. This dramatic verbal clash occurred just after his landslide election victory, playing the rôle of “peace candidate.”)
It’s time. It’s time for President Biden to assume the rôle of statesman. His NATO minions cannot object if Biden tells the government and the people of Ukraine that more billions of dollars worth of weapons will not secure a final battlefield victory over the Russians. Ukraine’s railroads, which are the means of delivering those weapons to frontline fighters, have been severely damaged by Russian air and missile strikes. And the less effective means of transport, heavy trucks, face the obstacle of damaged roads and many destroyed bridges. And finally, as the war grinds on in the Donbas theatre, Ukraine will have fewer and fewer seasoned soldiers to operate the new, more complicated weapons.
Unless Biden steps in, Ukrainians face, at best, a long, bloody stalemate, which Russia is better prepared to endure. (So far, Russia’s leaders have not called for a nation-wide, general mobilization.) Total victory for Ukraine is a cruel pipe-dream.
Biden must come clean with Americans and Ukrainians. The two real geopolitical combatants in this war are Russia and the United States. Ukraine is the USA’s tragic, foolish proxy — our poorly prepared understudy. That’s not stage blood we’re seeing on MSNB-CNN. Ukrainians are bleeding and dying while Biden & Co. prolong the agony in a vicious quest to punish and weaken Russia.
That is no way to ensure future peace. Talk. Now.
From a report on hard right activity in Ukraine since 2014, from FreedomHouse.org:
… [C]urrent polling data indicates that the far right has no real chance of being elected in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections in 2019. Similarly, despite the fact that several of these groups have real life combat experience, paramilitary structures, and even access to arms, they are not ready or able to challenge the state.
Extremist groups are, however, aggressively trying to impose their agenda on Ukrainian society, including by using force against those with opposite political and cultural views. They are a real physical threat to left-wing, feminist, liberal, and LGBT activists, human rights defenders, as well as ethnic and religious minorities.
In the last few months, extremist groups have become increasingly active. The most disturbing element of their recent show of force is that so far it has gone fully unpunished by the authorities. Their activities challenge the legitimacy of the state, undermine its democratic institutions, and discredit the country’s law enforcement agencies.
Freedom House is a non-profit, majority U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights.
The current repression of dissent in Germany is startlingly similar to that in North America. In 2019 as the virus started to spread, the government ordered drastic measures against it. Several distinguished doctors and professors, including an MD who was a former member of parliament, asked the government for evidence and explanations justifying these measures. When they were ignored, they called a rally and gave speeches again asking the government for answers. The government ignored this too, but their press launched a smear campaign labeling these people as unscientific and incompetent. When several current members of parliament spoke out against the mandates, they were defamed and isolated.
The government forced the mandates through, and as the effects of these turned out to be more damaging than the virus, large-scale protests broke out. Politicians warned of the danger to our democracy from right-wing fanatics whom they claimed had taken over the protests. To defend democracy by disrupting the rallies, groups of Antifa tried to drown out speakers by shouting, “Halt die Fresse!” – “Shut your mouth!” Of course, the real danger to democracy comes from trying to silence or exclude anyone, right or left.
Establishment media refused to publish reports of severe side effects from the vaccines. A government statistician who gave evidence that the mandates and vaccines were ineffective and harmful was removed from duty, as were police officers who took part in peaceful rallies. Professors who spoke at demonstrations were shunned by their colleagues and passed over for promotion. Doctors who certified that their patients didn’t need to wear masks were suspended from practice. Some careers were destroyed, many damaged.
People were stunned by the savagery of the response to their demand for more public input into virus policies. They discussed possible reasons for the government’s attack. Conspiracy theories began to circulate, some of them quite wild.
The government broadened its attack. The press was full of interviews with psychiatrists discussing the dangerous psycho-pathology of conspiracy theorists. Wherever vaguely possible, parallels were drawn to Nazi Germany. Aged Holocaust victims were interviewed about their trauma caused by such people. One victim, though, Vera Sharav, made a video saying the government was behaving like the Nazis, but her statement was ignored by the mainstream and appeared only in the alternative media.
Rationality disappeared from public discourse. A seething polarization began to spread. The government recognized a growing threat of losing its hold on the people.
It cut back on testing. The “pandemic” faded. Russia invaded the Ukraine. A new enemy replaced the “killer virus” as a focus for fear.
The government’s campaign of forced lockdowns, masks, vaccines, and repression has unnecessarily and massively damaged millions of people, far more than what the virus has done. But on the positive side it has also turned millions of people against the government, a prerequisite for real change. The next step is ours.
Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. Guns don’t kill people; crazy people kill people. Guns don’t kill people; transsexual leftist illegal aliens kill people. Guns don’t kill people; not enough guns kill people. Guns don’t kill people; too many doors kill people.
Or maybe try this one for a while: The only thing that stops a crazy guy with a gun is a less crazy guy with a gun.
“We need to drastically change our approach to mental health. There are always so many warning signs. Almost all of these disfigured minds share the same profile,” said Trump to the NRA throng shortly after the Uvaldo murders. “And clearly we need to make it far easier to confine the violent and mentally deranged into mental institutions,” he added.
Yeah, that’s the ticket; crazy people without guns on the inside, sane people with 400 million guns on the outside.
So, what is that commonly shared profile of the disfigured mind? What are some of the many warning signs? How about starting with this: It’s a male (98%). It’s a young male (66% of school shooters are less than 18 years old). With that knowledge, if you’re trying to spot likely school shooters, you can pretty much eliminate females and men with grey hair. That leaves just about all males below the age of about 22 as potential mass-murderers. But it still presents a large search base; what if you added this to the profile: It’s a male who has acquired, or is attempting to acquire an assault weapon. Wouldn’t that shrink the threat pool appreciably? And if you wished to widen the scope to include mass-murder threats to the community at large, you could simply expand the age range to include the grey hairs (Stephan Paddock was 64).
To borrow from an old political slogan, “It’s the guns, stupid!” What bigger or more meaningful warning sign could there be? Assault weapons are designed to assault (kill) a large number of human beings in a short amount of time. What’s the likely mind-set of a person (regardless of age) who is fascinated with that potential? Are they healthy and well adjusted? If you purchase a car (like a BMW M8) that can travel 150 mph, you are surely fascinated with the prospect of traveling at unlawful speeds. If you purchase a gun that can kill 58 people in 10 minutes, you are surely fascinated with the prospect of having the power to kill a lot of people in a very short time. Doesn’t the mere desire to possess such a weapon already indicate that you probably shouldn’t have one? Could there be a clearer warning sign that a “disfigured mind” is on the prowl?
“Harden the schools,” seems to be this episode’s NRA backed deflectional talking point. On cue, Texas Senator Ted Cruz suggested eliminating all school doors except one, replacing all window panes with bullet proof glass, and installing metal detectors with armed surveillance at each school’s one remaining door. So, picture it, every academic school, high school, junior high school, middle school, elementary school, and pre-school in the U.S. overhauled and hardened accordingly. Now picture a thousand high school kids lined up every morning (rain or shine) with belts, coins, phones, etc. removed (like at the airport) waiting patiently to enter the one and only door to pass through a metal detector. Can you also picture that “disfigured mind” inside his car in the school parking lot, armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, viewing that line? Or, can you imagine all the students now inside, and a gunman (or more than one) breeching security at the only door and then barricading (and perhaps guarding) it from the inside? How many lives could be taken while the local police force desperately seeks entrance through bullet proof glass and that one barricaded door? Just a few? More than a few? Does it even matter how many?
How about football, baseball, soccer games, etc.? Will they now take place inside the safely hardened schools? And will our schools just be first in line for the great hardening? Will other institutions be incrementally added as we play whack-a-mole with the “disfigured minds” that are just sane enough to seek out the weak spots?
It’s such a crazy, stupid, and idiotic proposal for even Ted Cruz to make. How can he, the NRA, or rational congress members make it with a straight face – millions or billions of dollars spent to futilely “harden” schools rather than addressing the real issue? “It’s the guns, stupid!” It’s the endless proliferation of assault weapons and handguns. Addressing anything other than that is pretense of action, and it doesn’t matter how many prayers or moments of silence are offered up with it.
“Confine the violent and mentally deranged into mental institutions,” the former president suggested. Perhaps we already have. Perhaps we are in it! Doesn’t our country now resemble a mental institution – one whose inmates have taken over the asylum? Loosen the laws; harden the schools; put more guns on the street; lock up the crazy people. Do the Trump’s, the Abbot’s, or the Cruz’s sound like our healthy therapists, or do they sound like us, the deranged inmates? We are there, on the inside with them. Aren’t we now living-out that famous definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? After every shooting we’re shocked and demoralized, offering up and accepting the same platitudes while fervently demanding change. Then we elect another Cruz, or another Abbot, or another Greene, or another whoever with the same affiliations, the same ties to the arms community. Nothing will change until we stop doing the same thing over and over again.
He’s taken a lot of flak. Pete Arredondo, the chief of police for the Uvaldo School District has received a lot of scrutiny and a lot of blame for decisions made as the Uvaldo School shooting unfolded. In retrospect, it seems clear that his judgment was questionable. It seems clear that he didn’t follow current advised protocol. Here’s the thing, though: Arredondo was acting in real time as events unfolded. He may have responded poorly, but he didn’t know ahead of time the repercussions of his response. Governor Abbot, on the other hand, knew what the repercussions would be when he championed and signed into law the many bills that either eased or eliminated gun restrictions in Texas. He knew in advance that his actions would result in more gun related deaths for children and adults. He knew that blood and brain tissue would be splattered on school floors and neighborhood sidewalks. It was a conscious and deliberate decision; more deaths in schools and on the streets were deemed a tolerable trade-off to maintain political power. Unlike Pete Arredondo, Governor Abbot knew exactly what the repercussions would be, and he did it anyway. And here’s the other thing: we voted for Governor Abbot and others like him. We knew exactly what the repercussions would be, and we did anyway. We’ve done it over and over again, all across the nation.
Is the one who pulls the trigger crazier, guiltier, or more murderous than one who knowingly puts the gun in his hands? When our former president says that the shooter “will be eternally damned to burn in the fires of Hell,” will he and all of us who knowingly put the gun in a shooter’s hands be damned to burn in Hell with him? Does Hell have that much room?
It’s not just the mentally deranged shooters, and it’s not just the mentally deranged politicians, and it’s not just the mentally deranged arms merchants. It’s also us, the mentally deranged public. We’re all guilty because we make it happen. It couldn’t happen without the consent of us, the wishfully sane people. We like our guns and the feeling they give us. We’ve bought into the hype that the purveyors put out and we won’t let it go. We like the feeling of power, the feeling of safety, the feeling of purpose that our guns provide. We like that feeling so much that we’re willing to allow the death and mutilation of our neighbor’s children just to feel it again. It’s us; we are the murderers, over and over again. We have met the murderers and they are us.
Nothing meaningful will change, until we change meaningfully.
You probably heard about the Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) murdered on 11 May. She was killed by a bullet to the head. But you may not have heard about the lesser-known journalist Ghofran Warasnah, who the IOF also killed on 1 June. They shot her in the chest, and reports state that the Israeli occupation prevented paramedics from getting to her for twenty minutes.
It is unsurprising that the IOF stated that Ghofran was carrying a knife. The occupation thinks nothing of saying that the people it murders were armed or carrying out some sort of attack, without providing evidence. The Israeli state makes up truths as it goes along. And its ally countries are all too willing to let it get away with it. Ghofran is a perfect example of this.
Ghofran’s brother Mohammed said of Israel’s claims:
They try to downplay their crimes [with these claims] to save their reputation to the outside world.
Ghofran was on her way to work as a news journalist at Dream Radio in Hebron. Her employer Talab Jaabari said:
Ghofran had applied for a job as a news presenter at our radio two weeks ago.
Jaabari continued:
She went through some qualification tests and was hired and today [Wednesday] was her first day of work. We were waiting for her to be the first to go on air as our new voice, but instead we received the news of her killing.
Ghofran’s brother toldMiddle East Eye that she had prepared her first news report for the radio station. The subject of the report, ironically, was Shireen’s murder.
Let’s remember all victims of Israeli apartheid
Shireen’s murder made headlines around the world for a few reasons: firstly, because she was a prominent journalist for a mainstream media outlet. She had worked for Al Jazeera for 25 years. Secondly, she was not just a Palestinian citizen – she was also an American citizen.
Although the international mainstream media extensively covered her murder, Shireen’s reputation didn’t prevent them from reporting with bias. Outlets like the BBCstated that Shireen’s coffin was “jostled” and that “Israeli police and Palestinians clashed”. This played down the fact that Israeli forces attacked her funeral.
This kind of reporting is, of course, deliberate. And it’s something that the BBC and others have been doing for decades. Biased journalism serves the Israeli state very well: the occupier doesn’t ever have to answer for its crimes.
Ghofran, on the other hand, didn’t have the international credibility for governments or media outlets to deem her a journalist worthy of mourning. There were no big news headlines for her.
She is just one of four people who the occupation murdered within 24 hours of each other. Bilal Kabaha was also murdered on 1 June. According to Middle East Eye, Israeli snipers were positioned on rooftops while the occupation carried out a punitive demolition of a house. Bilal was one of many who turned up to resist the raid on his village. Israeli forces also delayed an ambulance from getting to him.
Meanwhile, on 2 June the IOF murdered Ayman Muhaisen in Dheisheh Refugee Camp. Dheisheh camp is constantly raided by the IOF. His murder leaves three children – aged one, three and five – without a father.
Hours later, the IOF murdered 16-year-old Odeh Sadaqa close to the apartheid wall. He was shot in the back, and the bullet went through his heart and exited through his chest.
Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) released a statement after Odeh’s murder. The organisation said:
Under international law, intentional lethal force is only justified in circumstances where a direct threat to life or of serious injury is present. However, investigations and evidence collected by DCIP regularly suggest that Israeli forces use lethal force against Palestinian children in circumstances that may amount to extrajudicial or wilful killings.
Odeh is the 14th Palestinian child shot and killed by Israeli forces in 2022, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
DCIP continued:
2021 was the deadliest year for Palestinian children since 2014. Israeli forces and armed civilians killed 78 Palestinian children, according to evidence collected by DCIP.
And let’s remember all the prisoners, too
While we mourn all our Palestinian comrades murdered in cold blood, we must also remember those who are locked up in Israeli prisons. Addameer, the prisoner support and human rights association in Palestine, states that there are currently 4650 political prisoners, including 170 child prisoners.
Of the 4650 prisoners is 40-year-old father Khalil Awawdeh, who is in critical condition after 96 days of hunger strike. Another prisoner on hunger strike, Ra’ed Rayan, has refused food for 61 days. Israeli forces are refusing hospital treatment for both prisoners.
Meanwhile, Israel is detaining some 490 Palestinian people pre-trial. And the majority of them are continuing a boycott of the judicial system. Since January, they have been taking part in civil disobedience by organising sit-ins in prison yards.
We need to shout out loud as we mourn for Ghofran and everyone else the IOF has murdered. And we also need to amplify the voices of those on hunger strike in the prisons. Generations after us will look back and ask us what we did to prevent Israeli apartheid. It’s on all of us to see through the propaganda and see Israel for what it really is: a murderous apartheid state. And it’s on all of us to act to stop it from killing more Palestinian people.
A flurry of peaceful rallies and protests erupted in West Papua and Indonesia on Friday, June 3.
Papuan People’s Petition (PRP), the National Committee for West Papua (Komite Nasional Papua Barat-KNPB) and civil society groups and youth from West Papua marched in protest of Jakarta’s plan to create more provinces.
Thousands of protesters marched through the major cities and towns in each of West Papua’s seven regions, including Jayapura, Wamena, Paniai, Sorong, Timika/Mimika, Yahukimo, Lanny Jaya, Nabire, and Merauke.
As part of the massive demonstration, protests were organised in Indonesia’s major cities of West Java, Central Jakarta, Jogjakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, and Bali.
Demonstrators said Papuans wanted an independence referendum, not new provinces or special autonomy.
3/6/22 Wamena, West Papua
“Papua: freedom!”
“Referendum: yes!”
Thousands of protestors are rejecting Jakarta’s arbitrary plan to create new provinces and Special Autonomy status. They are demanding an independence referendum. pic.twitter.com/QnxBu8egHp
— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) June 3, 2022
According to Markus Haluk, one of the key coordinators of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), almost all Papuans took to the streets to show Jakarta and those who want to wipe out the Papuan people that they do not need special autonomy or new provinces.
[CW: blood]
This student protestor is the embodiment of West Papuan spirit. Indonesian forces beat him bloody but he will not be silenced.
— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) June 3, 2022
Above is a text image that captures the spirit of the demonstrators. A young man is shown being beaten on the head and blood running down his face during a demonstration in Jayapura city of Papua on Friday.
The text urges Indonesia’s president Jokowi to be tagged on social media networks and calls for solidarity action.
Numerous protesters were arrested and beaten by Indonesian police during the demonstration.
Security forces brutalised demonstrators in the cities of Sorong, Jayapura, Yahukimo, Merauke, and elsewhere where demonstrations were held.
Hi Prof. Dr. MAHFUD….. where you get 82% people of West Papua supporting your government’s DOB and Otsus Jilid Il?
Even in these pictures can tell you the real fact that 99, 99% of indigenous West Papuans REJECTED your DOB and the Otonomi Jilid Il. pic.twitter.com/e9SS1QTi71
An elderly mother is seen been beaten on the head during the demonstration in Sorong. Tweet: West Papua Sun
People who are beaten and arrested are treated inhumanely and are not followed up with proper care, nor justice, in one of Asia-Pacific’s most heavily militarised areas.
Among those injured in Sorong, these people have been named Aves Susim (25), Sriyani Wanene (30), Mama Rita Tenau (50), Betty Kosamah (22), Agus Edoway (25), Kamat (27), Subi Taplo (23), Amanda Yumte (23), Jack Asmuru (20), and Sonya Korain (22).
Root of the protests in the 1960s
The protests and rallies are not merely random riots, or protests against government corruption or even pay raises. The campaign is part of decades-old protests that have been carried out against what the Papuans consider to be an Indonesian invasion since the 1960s.
The Indonesian government claims West Papua’s fate was sealed with Indonesia after a United Nations-organised 1969 referendum, known as the Pepera or Act of Free Choice, something Papuans consider a sham and an Act of No Choice.
In spite of Indonesia’s claim, the Indonesian invasion of West Papua began in 1963, long before the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969.
It was well documented that the 1025 Papuan elders who voted for Indonesian occupancy in 1969 were handpicked at gunpoint.
In the six years between 1963 and 1969, Indonesian security forces tortured and beat these elders into submission before the vote in 1969 began.
Friday’s protesters were not merely protesting against Jakarta’s draconian policy of drawing yet another arbitrary line through Papuan ancestral territory, but also against Indonesia’s illegal occupation.
The Papuans accuse Jakarta of imposing laws, policies, and programmes that affect Papuans living in West Papua, while it is illegally occupying the territory.
Papuans will protest indefinitely until the root cause is addressed. On the other hand, the Indonesian government seems to care little about what the Papuans actually want or think.
Markus Haluk said Indonesia did not view Papuans as human beings equal to that of Indonesians, and this mades them believe that what Papuans want and think, or how Jakarta’s policy may affect Papuans, had no value.
Jakarta, he continued, will do whatever it wants, however, it wishes, and whenever it wishes in regard to West Papua.
In light of this sharp perceptual contrast, the relationship between Papuans and the Indonesian government has almost reached a dead end.
Fatal disconnect
The Lowy Institute, Australia’s leading think-tank, published an article entitled What is at stake with new provinces in West Papua? on 28 April 2022 that identifies some of the most critical terminology regarding this dead-end protracted conflict — one of which is “fatal disconnect”.
The conclusion of the article stated, “On a general level, this means that there is a fatal disconnect between how the Indonesian government view their treatment of the region, and how the people actually affected by such treatment see the arrangement.”
It is this fatal disconnect that has brought these two states — Papua and Indonesia — to a point of no return. Two states are engaged in a relationship that has been disconnected since the very beginning, which has led to so many fatalities.
The author of the article, Eduard Lazarus, a Jakarta-based journalist and editor covering media and social movements, wrote:
That so many indigenous West Papuans expressed their disdain against renewing the Special Autonomy status … is a sign that something has gone horribly wrong.
The tragedy of this irreconcilable relationship is that Jakarta does not reflect on its actions and is willfully ignorant of how its rhetoric and behaviour in dealing with West Papua has caused such human tragedy and devastation spanning generations.
The way that Jakarta’s leaders talk about their “rescue” plans for West Papua displays this fatal disconnect.
KOMPAS.com reported on June 2 that Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin had asked Indonesian security forces to use a “humanist approach” in Papua rather than violence.
Ma’ruf expressed this view also in a virtual speech made at the Declaration of Papua Peace event organised by the Papuan Indigenous Peoples Institute on June 6.
In a press release, Ma’ruf said he had instructed the combined military and police officials to use a humanist approach, prioritise dialogical efforts, and refrain from violence.
Ma’ruf believes that conducive security conditions are essential to Papua’s development, and that the government aims to promote peace and unity in Papua through various policies and regulations.
The Papua Special Autonomy Law, he continued, regulates the transfer of power from provinces to regencies and cities, as well as increasing the percentage of Papua Special Autonomy Funds transferred to 2.25 percent of the National General Allocation Fund.
Additionally, according to the Vice-President, the government is drafting a presidential regulation regarding a Papuan Development Acceleration Master Plan (RIPPP) and establishing the Papuan Special Autonomy Development Acceleration Steering Agency (BP3OKP) directly headed by Ma’ruf himself.
He also underscored the importance of a collaboration between all parties, including indigenous Papuans. Ma’ruf believes that Papua’s development will speed up soon since the traditional leaders and all members of the Indigenous Papuan Council are willing to work together and actively participate in building the Land of Papua.
Indonesia’s new military commander
General Andika Perkasa. Image: File
Recently, Indonesia’s newly appointed Commander of Armed Forces, General Andika Perkasa, proposed a novel, humanistic approach to handling political conflict in West Papua.
Instead of removing armed combatants with gunfire, he has vowed to use “territorial development operations” to resolve the conflict. In these operations, personnel will conduct medical, educational, and infrastructure-building missions to establish a rapport with Papuan communities in an effort to steer them away from the independence movement.
In order to accomplish Perkasa’s plans, the military will have to station a large number of troops in West Papua in addition to the troops currently present.
When listening to these two countries’ top leaders, they appear full of optimism in the words and new plans they describe.
But the reality behind these words is something else entirely. There is, as concluded by Eduard Lazarus, a fatal disconnect between West Papuan and Jakarta’s policymakers, but Jakarta is unable to recognise it.
Jakarta seems to suffer from cognitive dissonance or cognitive disconnect when dealing with West Papua — a lack of harmony between its heart, words, and actions.
Cognitive dissonance is, by definition, a behavioural dysfunction with inconsistency in which the personal beliefs held, what has been said, and what has been done contradict each other.
Vice-chair of Papuan People’s Representative Council Yunus Wonda. Image: File
This contradiction, according to Yunus Wonda, deputy chair of the Papuan People’s Representative Council, occurs when the government changes the law and modifies and amends it as they see fit.
What is written, what is practised, and what is in the heart do not match. Papuans suffer greatly because of this, according to Yunus Wonda.
Mismanagement of a fatalistic nature
Jakarta continues to mismanage West Papua with fatalistic inconsistent policies, which, according to the article, “might already have soured” to an irreparable degree.
The humanist approach now appears to be another code in Indonesia’s gift package, delivered to the Papuans as a Trojan horse.
The words of Indonesia’s Vice-President and the head of its Armed Forces are like a band aid with a different colour trying to cover an old wound that has barely healed.
According to Wonda, the creation of new provinces is like trying to put the smoke out while the fire is still burning.
Jakarta had already tried to bandage those old wounds with the so-called “Special Autonomy” 20 years ago. The Autonomy gift was granted not out of goodwill, but out of fear of Papuan demands for independence.
However, Jakarta ended up making a big mess of it.
The same rhetoric is also seen here in the statement of the Vice-President. Even though the semantic choices and construction themselves seem so appealing, this language does not translate into reality in the field.
This is the problem — something has gone very wrong, and Jakarta isn’t willing to find out what it is. Instead, it keeps imposing its will on West Papua.
Jakarta keeps preaching the gospel of development, prosperity, peace, and security but does not ask what Papuans want.
The 2001 Special Autonomy Law was supposed to allow Papuans to have greater power over their fate, which included 79 articles designed to protect their land and culture.
Furthermore, under this law, one important institution, the Papuan People’s Assembly (Majelis Rakyat Papua-MRP), together with provincial governments and the Papuan People’s Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Papua-DPRP), was given the authority to deal with matters that are most important to them, such as land, population control, cultural identity, and symbols.
Section B of the introduction part of the Special Autonomy law contains the following significant provisions:
That the Papua community is God’s creation and is a part of a civilised people, who hold high human rights, religious values, democracy, law and cultural values in the adat (customary) law community and who have the right to fairly enjoy the results of development.
Three weeks after these words were written into law, popular independence leader Theys H. Eluay was killed by Indonesian special forces (Kopassus). Ryamizard Ryacudu, then-army chief-of-staff, who in 2014 became Jokowi’s first Defence Minister, later called the killers “heroes” (Tempo.co, August 19, 2003).
In 2003, the Megawati Soekarnoputri government divided the province into two, violating a provision of the Special Autonomy Law, which was based on the idea that Papua remains a single territory. As prescribed by law, any division would need to be approved by the Papuan provincial legislature and MRP.
Over the 20 years since the Autonomy gift was granted, Jakarta has violated and undermined any legal and political framework it agreed to or established to engage with Papuans.
Governor Lukas Enembe … not enough resources to run the five new provinces being created in West Papua. Image: West Papua Today
Papuan Indigenous leaders reject Jakarta’s band aid
On May 27, Governor Lukas Enembe of the settler province of Papua, told Reuters there were not enough resources to run new provinces and that Papuans were not properly consulted.
As the governor, direct representative of the central government, Enembe was not even consulted about the creation of new provinces.
Yunus Wonda and Timotius Murid, two Indigenous Papuan leaders entrusted to safeguard the Papuan people and their culture and customary land under two important institutions — the Papuan People’s Assembly (Majelis Rakyat Papua-MRP) and People’s Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Papua-DPRP) — were not consulted about the plans.
Making matters worse, Jakarta stripped them of any powers they had under the previous autonomous status, which set the precedent for Jakarta to amend the previous autonomous status law in 2021.
This amendment enables Jakarta to create new provinces.
The aspirations and wishes of the Papuan people were supposed to be channelled through these two institutions and the provincial government, but Jakarta promptly shut down all avenues that would enable Papuans to have their voices heard.
Governor Enembe faces constant threats, terrorism Governor Enembe has also been terrorised and intimidated by unknown parties over the past couple of years. He said, “I am an elected governor of Indonesia, but I am facing these constant threats and terror. What about my people? They are not safe.”
This is an existential war between the state of Papua and the state of Indonesia. We need to ask not only what is at stake with the new provinces in West Papua, but also, what is at stake in West Papua under Indonesia’s settler-colonial rule?
Four critical existential issues facing West Papua
There are four main components of Papuan culture at stake in West Papua under Indonesia’s settler-colonial rule:
1. Papuan humans
2. Papuan languages
3. Papuan oral cultural knowledge system
4. Papuan ancestral land and ecology
Papua’s identity was supposed to be protected by the Special Autonomy Law 2001.
However, Jakarta has shown no interest or intention in protecting these four existential components. Indonesia continues to amend, create, and pass laws to create more settler-colonial provincial spaces that threaten Papuans.
The end goal isn’t to provide welfare to Papuans or protect them, but to create settlers’ colonial areas so that new settlers — whether it be soldiers, criminal thugs, opportunists, poor improvised Indonesian immigrants, or colonial administrators — can fill those new spaces.
Jakarta is, unfortunately, turning these newly created spaces into new battlegrounds between clans, tribes, highlanders, coastal people, Papua province, West Papua province, families, and friends, as well as between Papuans and immigrants.
Media outlets in Indonesia are manipulating public opinion by portraying one leader as a proponent of Jakarta’s plan and the other as its opponent, further fuelling tension between leaders in Papua.
Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
The American Government explains its thefts from other countries as being justifiable because the U.S. Government has slapped sanctions upon those countries, and because these sanctions authorize the U.S. Government to steal whatever it wants to steal, from them, that it can grab. Here are just a few such examples:
The United States has confiscated an Iranian oil cargo held on a Russian-operated ship near Greece and will send the cargo to the United States. …
“The cargo has been transferred to another ship that was hired by the U.S.,” the source added, without providing further details.
The development comes after the United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on what it described as a Russian-backed oil smuggling and money laundering network for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force. …
U.S. advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which monitors Iran-related tanker traffic, said the Pegas had loaded around 700,000 barrels of crude oil from Iran’s Sirri Island on Aug. 19, 2021.
Prior to this load, the Pegas transported over 3 million barrels of Iranian oil in 2021, with over 2.6 million of those barrels ending up in China, according to UANI analysis.
In 2020, Washington confiscated four cargoes of Iranian fuel that were bound for Venezuela and transferred them with the help of undisclosed foreign partners onto two other ships which then sailed to the United States. …
On 24 October 2019, USA Today bannered “Pentagon planning to send tanks, armored vehicles to Syrian oil fields” and pretended that if (Syria’s actual invader) America wouldn’t be stealing Syria’s oil, then (Syria’s actual defender, invited into the country in order to help defeat the U.S.-led invasion of it) Russia would be stealing it. Their article closed by saying that: “Nicholas Heras, an expert on Syria with the Center for a New American Security [CNAS], … said, ‘the Pentagon is making contingencies for a big fight with Russia for Syria’s oil.’” Perhaps the intention of that article was to help build Americans’ support for stealing Syria’s oil. (The CNAS is a Democratic Party think tank, and was there endorsing the Republican President Trump’s operation to steal Syria’s oil — it’s a bipartisan goal of the U.S. Government.) By contrast, two days later, Russia’s Sputnik News headlined about America’s thefts of oil from Syria, “The Russian military described the US scheme as nothing less than ‘international state banditism.’” (Russia had no need to deceive anyone about that.)
In a new breach of international laws, the US occupation forces sent today to Qameshli city in Hasaka province a new convoy composed of tanks, ambulances and dozens of vehicles and cars loading military and logistic materials. According to local sources, the convoy illegally entered this morning from Iraq in order to fortify the US occupation forces’ positions in the Syrian Jazeera.
This convoy is the biggest one that entered the Syrian territories since several months.
Over the few past months, the US occupation forces sent through illegal crossing points thousands of vehicles loaded with weapons, military equipment and logistic materials to reinforce their existence in the Syrian Jazeera region and to steal Syrian oil and wealth.
Damascus “condemns in the strongest terms the agreement signed between al-Qasd militia (SDF) and an American oil company to steal Syria’s oil under the sponsorship and support of the American administration”, the Syrian statement said. “This agreement is null and void and has no legal basis.”
Furthermore: “There was no immediate response from SDF officials to a Reuters’ request for comment. There was no immediate comment from U.S. officials.”
The U.S. Government has done this also to Venezuela and other countries that it likewise wants to take over.
On 13 March 2022, Reuters headlined “Sanctions have frozen around $300 bln of Russian reserves, FinMin says,” and reported that “Foreign sanctions have frozen around $300 billion out of $640 billion that Russia had in its gold and forex reserves, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview with state TV.”
The lawyer and geostrategic analyst Alexander Mercouris explains how and why America’s blocking Russia’s international payments of Russia’s sovereign debt, and Germany’s seizure of some of Gazprom’s German assets, “violate the [international-law] principle of sovereign immunity; both the central bank and Gazprom are, after all, owned by the Russian Government. … These were the sort of acts that, once upon a time, governments could legally make only in time of war. But of course Germany and the United States are not formally at war with Russia. So we see how another extraordinary step has been taken, towards … ever-greater illegality.” He wonders “what damage” will be done “to the international legal system and to the international financial system.”
Many of these actions, by America and its allies, are alleged to be done not in order to reinforce existing international laws (which, of course, they instead violate), but the opposite: to advance “the international rules-based order,” which “rules,” that will be made by the U.S. Government, will be introduced as constituting new legal precedents in order to replace the current source of international laws, which is the U.N. and its authorized agencies. The U.S. Government would gradually replace the U.N., except as the U.N.’s being a sump for unprofitable expeditions that the ‘humanitarian’ and ‘democratic’ U.S. Government can endorse. There would be a further weakening of the U.N., which is already so weak so that, even now, anything which is done by the U.S. and its allies is, practically speaking, not possible to be prosecuted in international courts such as the International Criminal Court, which body is allowed to prosecute alleged crimes only by leaders of “third world” nations. America’s “rules-based international order” would replace that toothless U.N.-based system, and would be backed up by America’s over-800 military bases around the world. Unlike the existing U.N., which has no military, this “rules-based international order” would be enforced at gunpoint, everywhere.
However, even America’s allied nations are getting fleeced, though in different ways, by the U.S. Government. This is being done via international corruption. For example: America’s F-35 warplanes from Lockheed Martin Corporation and its sub-contractors (Northrop-Grumman, Pratt & Whitney, and BAE Systems), are so bad and so very expensive that the U.S. Government wants to cut its losses on the plane without cutting the profits by Lockheed Martin and other ‘defense’-contractors’ on it, and therefore needs to increase its allies’ purchases of these warplanes. NATO is the main marketing organization for U.S. ‘defense’ contractors; and, so, on 15 April 2022, Russia’s RT news headlined “US nuclear bombs ‘shared’ with European allies will be deployed on Lockheed Martin jets, NATO explains,”and reported that,
Jessica Cox, director of the NATO nuclear policy directorate in Brussels, said … that “By the end of the decade, most if not all of our allies will have transitioned” to the F-35. …
Germany would replace its aging Tornado jets with F-35s, committing to buy up to three dozen and specifically citing the nuclear sharing mission as factoring in the decision. …
Finland and Sweden have recently voiced a desire to join NATO, and Helsinki already announced it would buy some 60 F-35s in early February [notably, BEFORE Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th]. …
The F-35 was originally proposed as a cost-effective modular design that could replace multiple older models in service with the US Air Force, Navy, and the Marines. In reality, it turned into three distinct designs with a lifetime project cost of over $1.7 trillion, the most expensive weapons program in US [and in all of global] history.
In addition to the price tag, the fifth-generation stealth fighter has also been plagued with performance issues, to the point where the new USAF chief of staff requested a study into a different aircraft in February 2021.
General Charles Q. Brown Jr. compared the F-35 to a “high end” sports car, a Ferrari one drives on Sundays only, and sought proposals for a “clean sheet design” of a “5th-gen minus” workhorse jet instead. Multiple US outlets characterized his proposal as a “tacit admission” that the F-35 program had failed.
That word “characterized” was there linked through to a number of informative articles, such as these, about the F-35:
That Defense News report said that the basic design-requirements for the F-35 prohibit any speed higher than the speed of sound (Mach 1), because the air-friction above that speed would instantly melt the stealth coating, and,
The potential damage from sustained high speeds would influence not only the F-35’s airframe and the low-observable coating that keeps it stealthy, but also the myriad antennas located on the back of the plane that are currently vulnerable to damage, according to documents exclusively obtained by Defense News.
Though that publication — which could not exist apart from the funding that is provided directly or indirectly from America’s ‘defense’ contractors — used euphemisms to describe this problem, such as “potential damage” and that there would need to be imposed “a time limit on high-speed flight” and that “the F-35 jet can only fly at supersonic speeds for short bursts of time before there is a risk of structural damage and loss of stealth capability,” the actual facts are: those “short bursts” would, in the practical world, be virtually instantaneous, approximating zero seconds, and the phrase “a risk” would be referring to 100% — a certainty. That’s virtually the opposite of the ‘news’-report’s allegation that the F-35 would need to avoid “sustained high speeds,” because the plane would instead need to avoid ANY supersonic speed. In other words: the plane’s stealth capability would need to be virtually 100% effective and at speeds only below the speed of sound, in order for the plane to be, at all, effective, and deserving to be called a “stealth” warplane. The only exception to that would be the F-35A, for the Air Force (not usable by the Navy — from aircraft carriers — nor by the Army).
As regards the F-35A (Air Force F-35 version), Wikipedia says about the F-35 that its maximum speed is Mach 1.6 (1.6 times the speed of sound). By contrast, Russia’s Su-57 (which is less expensive), has a maximum speed of Mach 2.0. The reason why Russia’s is both a better plane and far less costly is that Russia’s military-industrial complex is controlled ONLY by the Government, whereas America’s Government is instead controlled mainly by its ‘defense’-contractors, and is, therefore, overwhelmingly corrupt, which is also the reason why America is the permanent and unceasing warfare-state, ever since 25 July 1945, when its “Cold War” started, and has never ceased.
One of the few honest statements that the world-champion liar and the world’s most respected living person, U.S. President Barack Obama, made about his goals as President, was his 28 May 2014 statement to the graduating class at the West Point Military Academy, that,
The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.
He was saying there that all other nations — including U.S. ‘allies’ — are “dispensable.” Consequently, of course, in that view: stealing by the U.S. Government, from any other Government, is acceptable. It’s the U.S. Government’s viewpoint, and is politically bipartisan in America. At least until now, it is an acceptable viewpoint, to most people. Perhaps truths have been hidden from them. Who has been doing this, and why, would then be the natural question on any intelligent individuals’ minds. But certainly there can be no reasonable doubt that the U.S. Government does — and rather routinely — steal from other countries. That’s a fact, if anything is.
On 17 May, ten boys appeared at Manchester Crown Court in a conspiracy case. They didn’t kill anyone. But the jury found four boys to be guilty of conspiracy to murder, and six to be guilty of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm (GBH). As this was a conspiracy case, the prosecution didn’t need to convince the jury that violence had taken place, just that the boys had conspired to cause violence.
One of the boys involved in this case caused GBH using a knife and a car while another was present. Both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to cause GBH, but were found guilty of conspiracy to murder. The other eight boys were found guilty on conspiracy charges despite evidence that they were not involved in the incident.
There has been no murder. There has been harm committed by a small minority, which has been admitted to. There is no victim at the centre of this case. While we do not seek to minimise the harm caused, as defence teams have argued, there was no intention or agreement to murder, and that has been denied by all.
Evidence used against the boys in court included text messages, song lyrics, and expressions of grief following the death of their childhood friend. This is a heartbreaking case in which marginalised young people who should have been met with support and safety have instead been traumatised, criminalised, and imprisoned by the state. They are due for sentencing on 30 June. Given the severity of these charges, they will likely face a long time behind bars.
Guilty by association
Manchester Evening News coverage of this case incorrectly framed the group of boys as a ‘gang’ which conspired to avenge their friend’s death. However, according to Kids of Colour founder Roxy Legane, this group of boys are connected by a Telegram group chat created following the death of their friend who they all ‘knew in different ways’. Some knew each other through a music group called M40, which Manchester Evening News has framed as a ‘gang’. Some were school friends or local acquaintances.
Following the verdict, Legane told The Canary:
The outcome of this trial, in which 10 black boys have been found guilty on conspiracy charges, is heart breaking. For the boys, for families, for friends, for all who knew these boys for who they are, and not what they’ve been constructed to be. Knowing four of the boys, myself and others who love and work with them, know full well they are not gang members: as all of these boys have stated throughout the trial.
She added:
But these boys have been found guilty by association. Their interests, emotions or friendships criminalised. And now they are in prison for violence they did not commit.
Joint enterprise
Although the boys were not tried under the controversial joint enterprise doctrine, it follows the same principle of guilt by association and reflects many joint enterprise cases. Joint enterprise enables a court to jointly convict individuals for something they didn’t all do if they were aware that it would take place.
With help from the media, there is a shared incorrect narrative that the Joint Enterprise doctrine is about gangs, broken Britain and the ‘alleged’ feral youth that needs to be served justice.
JENGba adds:
This doctrine is a tool used by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to imprison people to mandatory life sentences for crimes committed by others. People can be wrongly charged and convicted when they have been within close proximity of a crime, have a random connection with the actual perpetrator or via text or mistaken phone call or they might not even have been at the scene of the crime.
A 2016 Supreme Court case found that judges had wrongly interpreted the joint enterprise doctrine for 30 years. In spite of this landmark ruling, Manchester Crown Court convicted 11 Black and mixed-race children and young people of murder of manslaughter in 2017 after just one of them fatally stabbed Abdul Wahab Hafidah in a spontaneous attack. JENGba is campaigning for a public inquiry to review all joint enterprise cases in the wake of the 2016 judgement.
This 2022 case reflects the discriminatory nature of guilty by association convictions. Working-class racialised young people bear the brunt of this flawed principle.
Racist and unfounded ‘gang’ narratives
Legane documented the entire trial. Following the verdict, she told The Canary:
the prosecution have been smart here. Choosing conspiracy has meant that that is the offence, not the violence. For many, they manipulated moments of grief and social media connections to form a racist gang narrative, and widen their net of criminalisation. It cannot stand.
This was one of the first cases to take place in Manchester’s new ‘super courtroom‘, a space specifically designed to host large-scale ‘gangs’ trials.
A youth worker who witnessed the trial from the court’s public gallery told Kids of Colour:
I question if it was ever possible for these boys to have a fair trial under conspiracy charges. I don’t believe they have had one – portrayed as a gang for listening to drill music and having nick names is ridiculous. Put black boys together on a stand and call them a gang – they don’t have a chance at disputing that narrative.
According to Legane and other witnesses, the prosecution falsely constructed this group of young musicians, school friends and acquaintances as a criminal ‘gang’ throughout the trial. The reliance on drill rap lyrics, videos and the boys’ general interest in rap, drill, and grime music as evidence in court demonstrates that this case is an out-and-out war against working-class Black British culture.
‘The odds felt stacked against them’
JENGba witnessed the trial. The group told Kids of Colour:
We lost track of the amount of times these young people called themselves a music group and not a gang. Yet the accusation of them being a gang was repeated over and over again. These young people appear to have been on trial for their taste in music. For the words used as lyrics, emotional outbursts on Snapchat when they were clearly grieving the death of a friend.
According to Legane, much of the ‘evidence’ used against the boys in court was weak, inaccurate, at times even laughable. For example, she states that during their attempt to frame the boys as a ‘criminal gang’, an officer misinterpreted the slang quoted in one boy’s text. One piece of evidence submitted was a photo of a supposed ‘opposing gang’ in nearby Rochdale. This turned out to be an image of a London-based music group with the capital’s skyscrapers in the background.
Legane recounts that on one of the trial days, an officer mistook a message that one of the boys received about slain American rappers Notorious B.I.G and Tupac Shakur to be about Manchester gang members. The utter ridiculousness of slip ups like this may well have been lost on the judge, jury and prosecution of predominantly white, middle-class adults who decided the fate of these Black and brown boys.
A University of Manchester academic who witnessed the trial noted:
Watching the boys in court surrounded almost exclusively by white middle class men in wigs, the odds felt stacked against them, such were the visible power inequalities at play.
Black boys can’t grieve
Most of the boys involved in this case have been criminalised for simply expressing their pain and anguish following the traumatic death of their childhood friend. As Kids of Colour stated:
most have done nothing, it is words being used against them, words framed as a desire for ‘revenge’.
Expanding on this in a sensitive portrayal of the boys involved in the case, Legane said:
If someone killed someone we knew, every single one of us would have immediate feelings of anger, and a want for harm. We would share these feelings with people, undoubtedly, maybe regretting them later. One person’s intentions with those feelings are not another person’s, even if those feelings occur in the same sphere (a key thing connecting boys here, being social media). But sadly, when it’s the racist framing of black young people as ‘gangs’, they are all the same.
During the trial, Legane shared that “[t]his case sets a concerning precedent for the policing of grief”. Indeed, the prosecution used messages the boys sent in a group chat shortly after their friend’s death as evidence against them. This was the only evidence used against some of the boys who are now behind bars.
Regarding a message that one of the boys sent following the death of his friend, Legane tweeted:
he’s on trial for that moment of grief, because black boys aren’t allowed to grieve.
Not an isolated case
Writing a Kids of Colour blog post in May 2021, one of the boys involved in the case shared:
The system has not only labelled me, which has led to a self-fulfilling prophecy, but made me feel as though it was set up to fail people like me.
Indeed, the state criminalises young people like him by design. Research by Manchester Metropolitan University academics Patrick Williams and Becky Clarke found that Black people are overwhelmingly overrepresented in joint enterprise convictions. Further, they found that prosecutors had described 78.9% of racially minoritised people imprisoned under joint enterprise as gang members, compared to only 38.5% of white people.
Meanwhile, police target working-class Black and brown boys and young men through stop and search, the gangs matrix and Knife Crime Prevention Orders. These are all rooted in racist, classist, and inaccurate ‘gangs’ narratives which seek to control and suppress marginalised young people.
Missed opportunities
Legane’s account of the trial highlights harrowing cases of systemic state neglect. For example, having been excluded from school and unable to find a job during the pandemic, one of the boys was pushed into homelessness. This extremely vulnerable young person was exploited by an adult to sell drugs so that he could feed himself and sleep with a roof over his head.
At every turn, this boy should have been provided with the support and safety he needed. Instead, he was left to fend for himself and pushed further to the margins of society. In court, his exploitation was used as evidence of ‘gang’ membership. This is a clear and familiar example of how the UK’s school-to-prison pipeline works.
According to Legane, the two boys who caused GBH in this case had already attempted to hurt someone at college. Instead of seeking routes to support and accountability, the college excluded them. This clearly represents a missed opportunity to prevent further harm from occurring.
We need support systems, not punishment
This case is so deeply unjust. While these boys will likely face years in prison for expressing their grief, the state and its institutions are emboldened in their deliberate neglect of vulnerable young people. The immediate reaction to this case should have been to surround them with love, care, and support. We should be seeing immediate investment in specialised youth services and safe spaces where young people can express and process their confusing thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
Regarding the two boys who were involved in causing GBH – locking them up and throwing away the key is no route to justice or accountability. We will only see an end to the complex social issues that plague the lives of our young people through community-based restorative justice approaches that enable healing and growth. It is our collective responsibility to tackle youth violence at its root and to prevent further harm from occurring. Prisons and police do not and cannot facilitate this.
The government’s draconian ‘tough on crime‘ approach coupled with its exacerbation of the cost of living crisis is set against the backdrop of a decade of cuts to social services. As a result, we will no doubt see more and more vulnerable, racialised and working-class people pushed into the criminal justice system.
We must urgently work towards a society in which every child and young person is unconditionally nurtured and supported. We can achieve this through community-centred approaches, food and housing justice, a transformed education system, and real opportunities for young people to pursue their passions and talents.
Now is the time to stand in solidarity with these boys and their loved ones, and raise our collective voice to say that we do not accept this indefensible mass conviction.
A pause for breath Australia and New Zealand should be concerned about China’s increasingly visible presence in the Pacific Islands. A coercive Chinese presence could substantially constrain Australia’s freedom of movement, with both economic and defence implications.
And Pacific states and people have reason to be concerned. The restrictions on journalists during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Solomon Islands demonstrate the potential consequences for transparency of dealing closely with China.
And there are questions about the implications of the Solomon Islands-China security agreement for democracy and accountability.
But before we work ourselves into a frenzy, it is worth pausing for breath.
The leaked drafts are just that: drafts.
They have not yet been signed by any Pacific state.
At least one Pacific leader, Federated States of Micronesia President David Panuelo, has publicly rejected them. Panuelo’s concerns are likely shared by several other Pacific leaders, suggesting they’re also unlikely to sign.
Fiji is joining U.S. President Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the White House said, making it the first Pacific Island country in the plan that is part of a U.S. effort to push back on China’s growing regional influence https://t.co/XByydU09IPpic.twitter.com/7xphYtRdv0
China wields powerful tools of statecraft — particularly economic — but Pacific states are sovereign. They will ultimately decide the extent of China’s role in the region.
And these drafts do not mention Chinese military bases — nor did the China-Solomon Islands agreement.
Rumours in 2018 China was in talks to build a military base in Vanuatu never eventuated.
What if some Pacific states sign these documents? First, these documents contain proposals rather than binding obligations.
If they are signed, it’s not clear they will differ in impact from the many others agreed over the last decade. For example, China announced a “strategic partnership” with eight Pacific states in 2014, which had no substantive consequences for Australia.
So common — and often so ineffectual — are “strategic partnerships” and “memoranda of understanding” that there is a satirical podcast series devoted to them.
Second, the drafts contain proposals that may benefit Pacific states.
For example, a China-Pacific Islands free trade area could open valuable opportunities, especially as China is a significant export destination.
Third, the drafts cover several activities in which China is already engaged. For example, China signed a security agreement with Fiji in 2011, and the two states have had a police cooperation relationship since.
It’s worth remembering Australia and New Zealand provide the bulk of policing assistance. The executive director of the Pacific Island Chiefs of Police is even a Kiwi.
The drafts do contain concerning provisions. Cooperation on data networks and “smart” customs systems may raise cybersecurity issues. This is why Australia funded the Coral Sea Cable connecting Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea to Australia.
Provisions relating to satellite maritime surveillance may cause friction with existing activities supported by Australia and its partners.
Greater Chinese maritime domain awareness of the region – meaning understanding of anything associated with its oceans and waterways – would also raise strategic challenges for Australia, New Zealand, and the US.
But there is a risk of over-egging the implications based on our own anxieties.
The omission of #PNG from the new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework set up by the US to contest China in the region is a huge mistake & a missed opportunity, especially with China on the prowl in the Pacific Islandshttps://t.co/tRse7G3dvi
— Keith Jackson AM FRSA FAIM (@PNGAttitude) May 27, 2022
China’s interests Much of China’s diplomacy has been opportunistic and not dissimilar to what Australia and other partners are doing.
Although the region is strategically important to Australia, the southern Pacific islands are marginal to China. And apart from Kiribati and Nauru, the northern Pacific islands are closely linked to the US.
China’s interest may primarily be about demonstrating strategic reach, rather than for specific military purposes.
So, amplifying narratives about China’s threatening presence may unintentionally help China achieve its broader aim of influencing Australia.
And framing China’s presence almost exclusively as threatening may limit Australia’s manoeuvrability.
Given the accelerating frequency of natural disasters in the region due to climate change, it is only a matter of time before the Australian and Chinese militaries find themselves delivering humanitarian relief side-by-side. Being on sufficiently cordial terms to engage in even minimal coordination will be important.
If China really has benign intentions, it should welcome this opportunity. The compact, a mechanism created by Pacific states, could help ensure China’s activities are well-coordinated and targeted alongside those of other partners.
Amplifying threat narratives also feeds into Australia’s perceived need to “compete” by playing whack-a-mole with China, rather than by formulating a coherent, overarching regional policy that responds to the priorities of Pacific states.
What will Australia offer next? There is a risk some Pacific states may overestimate their ability to manage China. But for the time being it is understandable why at least some would entertain Chinese overtures.
New Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong has rushed to Fiji days into the job with sought-after offers of action on climate change and expanded migration opportunities. Pacific leaders might be wondering what Australia will offer next.
On 25 May, senior civil servant Sue Gray’s long-awaited report on the Downing Street parties during the height of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic was published. The ‘Partygate’ report reveals the extent of the government’s law-breaking gatherings. Notably, it exposes the disrespect with which partygoers treated Downing Street’s low-wage workers.
Led by Johnson, the government has fostered a culture that regards the lives of working people as totally insignificant and disposable. This is reflected in the examples of the poor treatment of low-paid Downing Street staff set out in the Gray report. This disregard for low-wage workers’ lives has had a devastating impact on poor and working people.
Mistreating low-wage workers
Some of the most infuriating details in the report include government aides’ and civil servants’ “unacceptable” treatment and expectations of cleaners and security staff. The report notes:
multiple examples of a lack of respect and poor treatment of security and cleaning staff.
The incidents included partygoers leaving red wine stains and sick for low-wage workers to clean up. In another instance, No. 10 aides mocked and “laughed at” a security guard who raised concerns that Downing Street parties were in breach of lockdown regulations.
An insider said:
I remember when a custodian tried to stop it all and he was just shaking his head in this party, being like, ‘This shouldn’t be happening.’ People made fun of him because he was so worked up that this party was happening and it shouldn’t be happening.
Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana responded to these revelations, saying:
Imagine being a Downing Street cleaner, having your social life cancelled by lockdown and then having to clean-up vomit and wine spilt on the walls at a party, only to be mistreated by the government staff responsible?
That's the elitist culture Boris Johnson is responsible for.
The government’s disdain for working people goes far beyond snobbish behaviour and attitudes. It has devastating and far-reaching consequences for vulnerable workers.
The government forced its own outsourced, low-paid cleaners, security guards and other low-wage staff to work through the pandemic, often without personal protective equipment or sick pay. This inhumane anti-worker model proved fatal for some.
Ministry of Justice cleaner Emmanuel Gomes was one of the government’s low-paid, outsourced workers. Throughout lockdown, workers like Gomes were forced to risk their health working in an empty parliament while MPs worked from home. This continued in spite of union concerns that these workers were being put in “unnecessary danger”.
Denied access to full sick pay, Gomes couldn’t afford to take sick leave. Gomes worked with suspected coronavirus symptoms for five days, and didn’t take time off to seek medical help. He died on 23 April.
Remembering Gomez, independent media outlet Tortoise tweeted:
This is Emanuel Gomes.
He was a cleaner at the Ministry of Justice, working for £9.08 an hour, which was just above the legal minimum.
He continued to come into work during the early days of the lockdown.
Gomes was one of countless low-paid workers nationwide who – due to outsourcing, persistent employment and income insecurity, and unjust sick packages – were forced to continue working through the pandemic.
The devastating case of Belly Mujinga springs to mind. Mujinga was a medically vulnerable public transport worker who died with Covid after a passenger allegedly spat and coughed at her.
The government’s elitist, profit-driven socioeconomic model is responsible for deaths like these.
The rich stay rich
Following the publishing of the Gray report, chancellor Rishi Sunak announced plans for a support package to help some households with rising energy bills.
Suggesting that this announcement is a bare-faced distraction tactic, political activist and commentator Femi Oluwole said:
BREAKING: Rishi Sunak is announcing new support for the cost of living on the same day as the Sue Gray Report.
TRANSLATION: The government was happy to watch people freeze and starve for months, but only thought it was worth helping if it could help distract from their crimes.
Lest we forget that through a decade of cuts, failure to cap fuel costs, and a general hatred for poor people – the Tories are responsible this crisis.
This announcement comes just days after the chancellor refused to help struggling families, saying that “the next few months will be tough”. This is the same man who the Sunday Times named as one of the richest people in the UK, with a shocking £730m fortune. This reflects the huge chasm between the lived realities of working people and that of those in power.
Reflecting on this, author Mikey Walsh tweeted:
There is only ONE Reason Many People this Rich Work in parliament, & that's to Stay rich, while f*cking the rest of us.
While low-income migrant workers were left with little choice but to work to death through the pandemic, toffee-nosed government aides laughed in their faces. The British public must not forgive or forget these grave injustices.
We must demand respect for the rights and dignity of all working people. We can do this by wholeheartedly supporting the work of grassroots unions such as United Voices of the World that continue to demand better wages, sick pay, and protections for the UK’s most vulnerable low-wage workers.
Boris Johnson should resign. I think it. You think it. According to YouGov, the majority of the Great British public seem to think it. A look at Twitter suggests that lots of centrists – and even some Tories – think it too. And for once, those particular cohorts are right about something. How they must regret putting him in power in the first place.
However, there is a difference between me and them: I, for one, am not labouring under the fantasy that calling politely for the PM to pack up and leave No. 10 is going to make it happen. Nor will petitions. And nor will polls.
Vapid and performative
But there is something to be learnt here. Sometimes a particular demand or view can tell you more about the people making it than it does about the issue it wants to address. And the weekly, vapid, vacuous, performative calls for Johnson to step down suggest a complete disengagement in thinking:
Adam Curtis voice: and then a funny thing happened. Boris Johnson didn't resign.
The truth is this: if there ever was an age in which civility and honesty were the key ingredients in British politics (spoiler alert: this has never happened) then this is not it. So by all means tweet your tearful platitudes about the decay of ‘moral standards in public life’, but know that doing so tells on nobody but yourself:
"In the old days 'taking personal responsibility' was almost a synonym for 'I am about to resign'. Well, I don't know what it means now."
Johnson, like Thatcher, and Blair, and every other parliamentarian who ever lived (including the tiny collection of ‘nice’ ones in Labour), is in the business of power. That is to say, getting power, wielding it, and keeping it for as long as possible.
There is precisely a snowball’s chance in hell that Johnson will pack up Carrie, the dog, and their pricey soft furnishings, and march out of No. 10 because affronted liberals on Twitter have demanded it.
Territory of the comfortable
The fact they continue to do so tells us something very important – that the way this country works has escaped them. Which in turn suggests they have no skin in the proverbial game.
Those touched by austerity, by the hostile environment, those whose energy bills may be fatal, those who have been subject to brutal racist policing, those whose wages are frozen, and more besides do not labour under the notion that good manners will always win the day. That is the territory of the comfortable, a luxury reserved for people who are un-bloodied by the class war.
By all means, tweet your resignation demands and rail against Boris Johnson as if he is not simply the logical product of a system you yourself would seem at ease with. But expect nothing, because even on the miniscule off-chance he leaves the office you handed him, there are many more like him waiting in the wings.
On Monday 23 May, Matthew O’Neill was sentenced to 5 years in prison for his part in Bristol’s 21 March 2021 Kill the Bill uprising, after pleading guilty to riot and arson.
The public gallery was packed with supporters during his sentencing.
He was the second person to be sent to prison this month for the events of 21 March. 18 people have now been imprisoned since last year, for a total of over 63 years between them.
Police clashed with protesters against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (policing bill) outside Bristol’s Bridewell Police station. The night ended with several police vehicles on fire and demonstrators breaching police lines to break through the windows of the station. The police brutally attacked the demonstrators, hitting them over the heads with batons and the edges of their riot shields.
To read an account of the events of 21 March click here, and click here to read The Canary‘s prior coverage of the trials.
Several juries have failed to convict for riot
In the last few weeks, the state has been having an increasingly hard time persuading juries to convict defendants of riot as harrowing evidence of police violence comes out. Earlier this month, Kadeem Yarde was found not guilty of all charges, while juries in the cases of Indigo Bond and Joe Paxton were unable to decide on a verdict, and both will have to face a retrial next year.
Yet another jury was unable to come to a decision about whether to convict a third defendant (whom we don’t have permission to name) last week, and instead found him guilty of the lesser – although still very serious – charge of violent disorder. He was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has responded to these failures to convict for riot by moving the goalposts and trying to prosecute some defendants for lesser offences. On Monday 23 May, Fleur Moody – who had originally been charged with riot – pled guilty to the lesser offence of affray. Fleur’s case is the first time the CPS haven’t doggedly tried to pursue the charge of riot for kill the bill protestors.
The Bristol ‘riot’ trials are set to continue until at least this Autumn, with retrials currently being scheduled for January 2023.
Unlike the mainstream press, we won’t be lazily copying and pasting police press releases about those being sent down, or publishing details of their personal lives. We are not intimidated or ashamed to say that the people facing the wrath of the courts are our comrades. We are proud of them. The fight that they were a part of was started long before the events of March 21 2021, and it is still going on now. That fight is not just about the policing bill – the fight we are talking about is much broader than that. It is the ever present struggle of the people against power.
At Bristol Crown Court this month, one of the defendants reminded us of just that.
“This whole thing’s deeper than any of us”
I was in the courtroom during Matthew O’Neil’s sentencing, sitting in the public gallery. The feeling of anger and rage around me was palpable.
The balance of power in the courtroom was clearly weighted towards the prosecutor and the judge, in their ridiculous wigs and gowns. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) were backed up by several police officers, while the defendant was locked in a glass box.
The truest things in any situation are often said by those with the least power, and that day was no different. As the judge listed the accusations against Matthew – of using force against officers and destroying police property on 21 March – he said:
This whole thing’s deeper than any of us
And isn’t that the truest thing of all about these trials? Those charged with the ‘riot’ are forced to explain their actions to the court in terms of a narrow legal definition of self-defence. That is to say that at any given moment when they used any force against the police, they did so to fend off an attack, or because they were in fear of an attack by the police.
The CPS have argued consistently that the defendants were not consistently under attack by the police, and at some points they were taking the offensive.
But – and let’s talk frankly – why shouldn’t we take the offensive when the police use force against our communities every day?
The police take the offensive against our people all the time. They do that when they push ahead with punitive measures against some groups, but not against others. They do it when they use violence against working class people and communities of colour, while protecting those with money and power. And, when they donned their riot gear outside Bridewell they were ready to use that violence again.
Is it really relevant who started it on 21 March, when the police started it long ago? They have been attacking us all our lives.
“We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning”
At demonstrations in support of the ‘riot’ defendants, supporters have displayed a police riot shield painted with the words “We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning”.
That phrase encapsulates how wrong it is to see the events of 21 March as anything other than an uprising against the violence and oppression of the police.
The disproportionality in the use of force against Black people adds to the irrefutable evidence of structural racism embedded in policing practices.
In the days after the Bristol ‘riot’, we wrote:
The siege of Bridewell was an act of resistance against the police violence which is felt daily by communities in the UK. Against the violence routinely faced by protesters. Against police harassment and police killings.
In January, 24-year-old Mohamud Hassan died after being detained at Cardiff Bay police station, not so far away from Bridewell. Five weeks later, 29-year-old Mouayed Bashir also died in police custody, this time in Newport. Police violence is felt disproportionately by People of Colour in the UK. Non-white people are twice as likely to be shot dead by the police, and a Person of Colour is more than twice as likely to be killed in police custody.
In the moments before the Bristol Kill the Bill protesters marched on Bridewell, one of the demonstrators made a speech over a megaphone, saying:
There’s one reason why we’re here today, and that’s the encroachment of the police state into our lives…
People then called on the crowd to march on Bridewell police station.
An uprising in defence of GRT peoples’ existence
One of the motivations for the 21 March uprising at Bridewell was the proposed new police powers to arrest people living in vehicles and confiscate their homes.
As of this month, the repressive powers proposed in the policing bill have been agreed upon by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and the bill has become an Act. This will herald a new wave of oppression and violence against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) people.
A great many of those arrested after the 21 March Bristol ‘riot’ are from a Traveller background. Many of the defendants have said in evidence that they joined the protest because of the Bill’s proposed attack on GRT people, and a disproportionate amount of the defendants live in vehicles themselves, or have close friends who do.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and oppressive attitudes towards GRT people are still endemic among the police. A 2018 Traveller Movement study reported that one officer had heard phrases to the effect of ‘the only good Gypsy is a dead Gypsy’ being used by a colleague, and that this kind of extremely defamatory language is not uncommon. A 2021 report found that GRT people were “over-policed”, and that GRT women made up 6% of the prison population, but only 0.1% of the general population.
In 1985, a police pogrom against a convoy of Travellers who were on their way to Stonehenge resulted in 24 people being hospitalised and 537 Travellers being arrested. That event – dubbed ‘The Battle of the Beanfield’ – occurred during a mass movement against the Thatcher government’s Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJA), an act which brought in new police anti-trespass powers and created a new offence of ‘aggravated trespass’. ‘Aggravated trespass’ allows the police to arrest trespassers if they are disrupting ‘lawful business’. It can be used to repress GRT people and demonstrators. The 2022 PCSC Act builds on the repressive powers of the CJA, protecting the ‘rights’ of the wealthy and propertied by explicitly making it illegal to trespass on land with an intent to reside.
It’s not surprising, then, that people with lived experience of the oppressive policing of travelling people chose to rise up against a Bill which represented a direct attack on their existence. Narrow legalistic definitions of self-defence don’t make much sense when viewed in that light.
Matt fought back “bravely” “for himself and others around him”
The Canary spoke to one of Matt’s supporters, who was there at the trial. He said:
Matt is from a traveller background and is well used to being attacked by the system in so many ways. He’s had a life of it so far. In his case there was talk of how he “went overboard” in his response to the police violence. What he actually did was react against their brutality and bravely fight back for himself and others around him.
With the very real threat posed to the travelling way of life, marginalised communities and the right to protest by this government and its authoritarian new laws, the anger felt by Matt and so many others is entirely legitimate.
He said that – in the face of the state attack that the PCSC Act represents – we need more rage, not less:
We really need more people to respond and resist with more rage, not less. Now is not the time for well mannered, ineffective protests or staying passive. We need to make their new laws unworkable.
The state should expect more trouble like that seen when people in Bristol stood together and fought back on 21st March 2021. We will never accept more powers for an already paramilitarised, violent and racist police. They get impunity and praise in their courts while we get punishment and prison. We see in all the current trials just how stacked their so called justice is against us.
There’s an old saying, “When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free”. Alongside that we could remember “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.”
Guilty pleas “should not detract from the police violence defendants face”
The Network for Police Harassment (NETPOL) has released a statement about the case of Fleur Moody. It says:
On Monday 23rd May, Fleur Moody pleaded guilty to affray at Bristol Crown Court.
But – NETPOL maintains – Fleur’s guilty plea “should not detract from the police violence she faced in Bristol that night.”
Fleur, like many others, wanted to act in solidarity with GRT people:
Fleur, a vulnerable young woman, suffering from PTSD and complex mental health problems, attended the protest on 21st March in solidarity with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities whose way of life is criminalised by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act.
The statement goes on to describe the appalling police violence that Fleur suffered at the hands of the police. According to NETPOL:
Any actions that Fleur took that night pale in comparison with the violence she, and countless others, faced on the streets of Bristol.
Fleur was knocked unconscious by police before being sprayed with CS gas. Harrowing footage shows Fleur screaming in pain, her hair covered in blood, after a fellow protester carried her into the police station for treatment. Police officers are seen standing by, doing nothing, as she loses consciousness again on the floor of the police station.
NETPOL commented on the injustice of Fleur spending a year with a riot charge hanging over her head:
Like other defendants, Fleur was charged with riot. She has spent over a year facing the prospect of up to ten years in prison for the crime of being beaten up by the police.
Just a week before trial, the Crown Prosecution Service, presumably shaken by recent acquittals and hung juries, dropped the charge to the less serious offence of affray.
A statement from Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign said:
Guilty pleas should never be seen as an admission of guilt but rather a lack of belief that a fair trial could truly be had. The threat of a longer sentence [if defendants refuse to plead guilty] essentially blackmails people into accepting them
We need to remember whose side we’re on
The courts and the mainstream media want to depoliticise Bristol’s Kill the Bill uprising. When people are forced to defend themselves in court their deeply political actions are shoe-horned into a dangerously liberal framework. In the language of the courtroom, narrow legalistic definitions of things like self defence begin to take the place of what is right and what is wrong.
We need to reject their framework and reclaim the narrative. One way to do that is to support all of the defendants, whether they plead guilty, or are found guilty or innocent.
We need to see the 21 March for what it was: a battle fought by ordinary people against authoritarian state power. It is a battle that is still raging all around us.
We need to organise ourselves to continue that fight, and to defend the rebels of Bridewell. You can donate to their crowdfunder here.
Featured image via Shoal Collective / NETPOL (with permission)
The treatment to which Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee subjected Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing was atrocious. The first ever African-American woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court, Brown Jackson faced GOP senators who were unabashedly insolent. Collectively, they ran her through a proverbial right-wing mill that included condemnations of Critical Race Theory, distortions of certain anti-racist children’s books, and allegations that she is “soft on crime.” She was also questioned about the role that race plays in her position as a federal judge, something no white male would ever be asked.
Republican Senators spent the largest portion of their allotted time attacking Jackson’s sentencing record on child pornography convictions alleging that her leniency was outside the boundaries of conventional jurisprudence. By imputation at the very least, right-wingers hold that she fails to take “sex offenders who prey on children” seriously. This is the sordid stuff of QAnon, and Republicans are up to their necks in it. As for Brown Jackson, she made it clear in her testimony that she is not convinced about the efficacy of child pornography sentencing guidelines. In fact, most of the prosecutors arguing such cases in her court room share her uncertainty as do a majority of district judges throughout the country. In other words, Judge Brown Jackson is in line with her judicial colleagues.
As everyone, including Republican senators, knows, Judge Jackson’s extensive and diverse legal background makes her eminently qualified for the position to which she has been nominated. She clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer whose seat on the bench she will fill. She served as a federal district court judge, a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and currently serves as a federal appellate judge. Each of these positions required Senate approval. Her three previous confirmations were passed by way of “voice” votes which essentially meant that she faced no opposition and a bi-partisan “roll call” vote. Once seated on the Supreme Court Judge Jackson will become only the ninth justice to have worked as an attorney in private practice. Moreover, she will also be the first former public defender to sit on the highest court in the land.
Judge Jackson has written almost 600 opinions during her years on the federal bench and has had only a dozen of them overturned by appellate court review. Among the cases over which she presided were several involving Donald Trump while he was in the White House. In one instance, she rejected his claim to absolute executive immunity in ordering a top-level aide to defy a congressional subpoena. In another, Judge Jackson drew the ire of conservatives for deciding against the Trump Administration’s attempt to reduce collective bargaining protections for federal workers. She further antagonized the political right in an immigration opinion blocking a Trump policy intended to increase the number of asylum seekers who could face accelerated return to their place of origin. While her decisions in these cases lean to the left, her resume conveys an independent legal mind that may on occasion displease political progressives. For example, Brown Jackson presided over 22 cases in which Black plaintiffs sued their employers on grounds of racial discrimination. Of those, 22 were brought to the court by Black workers. In these cases, she found in favor of the companies 19 times.
As would be expected, liberals supported Brown Jackson’s selection and conservatives opposed it. In fact, the GOP began priming itself from the moment that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden announced that, if elected, he would fill a vacancy on the High Court with an African-American woman. Republicans responded that doing so would be tantamount to making an “affirmative action” appointment. Conservatives were conspicuously silent when both Reagan and Trump stated that they would nominate a woman to the bench. They were also quiet when Trump said that he would only consider choosing individuals committed to overturning Roe v Wade. Republican hypocrisy could not be clearer. The GOP seized upon Biden’s appointment of Brown Jackson because she is a Black woman.
Judge Jackson’s hearing played out like reality television. While it is common for senators on both sides of the aisle to perform for the cameras and their constituents back home, the behavior and comments of Republicans were especially ugly. They had indicated that they would be civil and respectful yet they proved to be neither. The so-called “culture warriors” simply could not help themselves. Following more than twenty hours of testimony, the committee members voted 11-11 along party lines. This necessitated that Democrats employ a “discharge motion” allowing them to send Judge Jackson’s nomination to the Senate floor without a committee report. The full body’s 53-47 vote to confirm included three Republicans. At long last, and more than fifty years after the first Black man rose to a seat on the Court, she will become its first African-American woman justice.
*****
By the time Thurgood Marshall appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1967 as a nominee to the United States Supreme Court, he had won 29 of the 32 cases that he argued before that imposing body. While Brown v Board of Education (1954) striking down segregation in public education is the most famous example, other historically significant instances include Smith v Allright (1944) which prohibited states from conducting “white only” primary elections, Shelley v Kraemer (1948) which overturned race-based housing compacts, and Sweatt v Painter (1950) which declared that racially segregated post-graduate college and university programs were unconstitutional.
After more than two decades as a pioneering civil rights attorney, Marshall was appointed to the federal bench in 1961 by President John Kennedy. This made him only the second African-American federal appellate jurist in American history. Despite the racism that he faced, Marshall was confirmed by the full Senate although not before his nomination was held up by Southern segregationists for many months. Four years later, President Lyndon Johnson picked Marshall to serve as the first Black Solicitor General of the United States. Responsible for litigating cases on behalf of the federal government, Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases that he brought before the High Court.
When an opening on the Supreme Court appeared in 1967, President Johnson nominated Marshall to fill the vacancy. He would face the same Southern segregationists who had tried to scuttle his previous judicial appointment six years earlier. Often returned to office without electoral opposition, incumbent Dixiecrats relied upon seniority status in the chamber to secure and hold onto powerful committee chair positions. Furthermore, their animosity for Marshall was deep-seeded because of the role he had played in Brown. If the segregationists were on the wrong side of history, they had no intention of simply walking away from the table.
James Eastland (D-MS) was the judiciary committee chair for Marshall’s appellate court appointment as well as for his Supreme Court nomination. Eastland, who served in that capacity for a longer period than any chairperson in history, ranked among the most racist of legislators. During the 1961 proceedings, however, he allegedly told Attorney General Robert Kennedy that he was willing to horse trade. If JFK would concede to Eastland a favored appointee, then he would give the president “his nigger.” Moreover, during Marshall’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings six years later, Eastland shamelessly had the nerve to ask if he was biased against white southerners.
Other notable instances of hostility towards Marshall during the hearings came from John McClellan (D-AK), Sam Ervin (D-NC), and Strom Thurmond (R-SC), the latter of whom had switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in 1964. For his part, McClellan focused on increasing crime rates and social unrest. Attempting to incite the nominee, he called Marshall “soft on crime” which remains a commonly used and racially coded phrase to this day. The Arkansas senator then turned and hammered away at Miranda v Arizona (1966), asserting that the ruling was anti-law enforcement. Marshall refused, however, to engage this line of questioning, continually stating that he could not and would not speak about court cases and legal issues that were recently decided, currently in the docket pipeline, or might be conceivably argued before the court at a later date.
Then it was Ervin’s turn. From the North Carolinian’s perspective, the idea of “civil rights” was simply a way for the federal government to take from whites and give to Blacks. In other words, the federal government was overstepping its legitimate jurisdictional boundaries. Ervin championed the Senate filibuster as a means to derail 1960s civil rights legislation. In fact, he employed this procedural tactic more than any other senator in history. He finished his questioning with an example of what is now called “originalism.” Senator Ervin asked Marshall if he believed that the Supreme Court’s role was to establish the framers’ intentions. The nominee agreed so long as the Constitution was understood to be a “living document.”
Last but not least came Strom Thurmond. The South Carolina senator subjected Marshall to a series of arcane questions, more than sixty in all. Among other things, Thurmond asked the nominee if he knew who drafted the 13th Amendment. He also asked Marshall to name the members of the committee that formulated the 14th Amendment and he questioned whether the nominee could cite a legal basis for the Civil Rights Act of 1866. While Marshall answered some of Thurmond’s questions, he responded to a number of them with “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember.” Thurmond’s obscure queries about the post-Civil War constitutional amendments were aimed at making Marshall appear uneducated. This display of bigotry carried over to debate on the Senate floor where Thurmond called Marshall “stupid.”
Notwithstanding Marshall’s experience, Supreme Court confirmation hearings were not always the nasty fisticuffs that they are today. The process was business like and procedures were routine. Few nominees appeared before the judiciary committee prior to the post-Brown era. In fact, regular hearings were themselves a product of this same period as Southern segregationists adopted a strategy of pressing nominees “up close and personal” on civil rights matters. Given that Marshall was the first African-American Supreme Court nominee in the nation’s history, it is not surprising that his confirmation process deviated from the norm. Prior to his nomination, for example, judiciary committee hearings generally lasted for a couple of days, several hours each day. In Marshall’s case, the committee met for five days, five hours each day, over a period of two weeks, the longest sessions up to that point in U.S. history.
While it was common practice for committee staff to prepare questions for a nominee, this typically generated only a relative few of them. However, thanks to Dixiecrats, Marshall faced hundreds of questions. Moreover, adding further insult to injury, Chairman Eastland held up the committee’s 11-5 recommendation to confirm for several weeks after the hearings were over. Comprising a “gang of four” Eastland, McClellan, Ervin, and Thurmond were joined in the nay column by George Smathers (D-FL). In the final analysis, Southern segregationists failed to mount a filibuster by two votes with twenty of them casting no vote at all. Eventually, Marshall was duly confirmed by a vote of 69-11 in the full Senate. Upon assuming his seat on the bench, he served for twenty-four years as an Associate Justice. Thurgood Marshall retired from the United States Supreme Court in 1991 and passed away two years later.
*****
Despite taking place more than five decades apart, the roads that Marshall and Brown Jackson took to the Supreme Court were similar. For one thing, both of their careers included representing criminal defendants, a rare attribute among Supreme Court justices. Secondly, racial animus was paramount in both confirmation hearings. On one hand, Marshall faced off against Southern segregationists who opposed civil rights and were Democrats in name only. On the other hand, Brown Jackson was confronted by right wing Republicans whose intent is to “roll back” gains made towards racial and gender equality. In a moment reminiscent of Marshall being quizzed about civil rights, Judge Brown Jackson was brazenly asked to define the word “woman” and was mocked when she said that she was a judge not a biologist.
Both nominees were eventually confirmed, but each had to contend with a race-baiting and demeaning state of affairs. Though clearly frustrated at times by the tenor of the proceedings, Judge Jackson kept her cool by relying upon an approach to answering questions that limits the scope of what nominees will and will not address. While a nominee’s refusal to engage certain lines of inquiry is commonplace today, Marshall employed this tactic at his 1967 hearing. In fact, he ranks among the least forthcoming of Supreme Court nominees as a result of his refusal to play the racist Q&A hand that he was dealt.
More than 90% of Supreme Court justices in American history have been white men. In contrast, there have been two Black male justices, four white women justices, and one Latina justice. Today, gender, ethnic, and racial diversity have come to be seen as integral to the mechanisms of the Court and with the addition of Brown Jackson, there will be four women sitting on the bench. However, the Court that Jackson Brown will serve on is far-removed from the one upon which Marshall sat. His ascension to the High Court kept alive a five-justice liberal majority that voted as a bloc almost all of the time. He was in a position to shape not only the Court’s agenda but its outcomes as well. However, the progressive wing with which Marshall was so strongly identified declined over time. The resulting shift in the balance of power means Justice Brown Jackson will begin her service on a Supreme Court comprised of a super-majority of six right-wing justices. Combined with her status as the most junior member of the Court, her ability to have an impact early on will be limited. Nevertheless, she is only fifty-one years of age and could conceivably serve on the Court for decades.
Culture war hysteria is the cornerstone of Tim James’s 2022 Alabama gubernatorial campaign. Similar to many Republicans running for office around the country during this election cycle, most of James’s campaign ads have centered on attacking teachers and LGBTQ+ folks.
Labor has been burned more than once by false promises from politicians.
His campaign, however, has taken one minor yet notable detour from the 2022 Republican playbook: making a direct appeal to striking workers. While Republican politicians at the local, state, and federal levels have stayed overwhelmingly silent as coal miners and their families here in Alabama have been on strike for over a year, possibly the longest strike in state history, James broke ranks and voiced his support for the mineworkers. This is something that even many Democrats have, perplexingly, refused to do, regardless of the fact that unions and the struggles of working people for better pay, working conditions, and a more democratic say at work consistently get higher approval ratings than either political party.
James’s vocal support paid off when he received the official endorsement of the Coal Miners Political Action Committee (COMPAC) of United Mine Workers of America District 20, which represents UMWA members in the southern part of the United States, including about 1000 workers who are currently on strike against private-equity owned Warrior Met Coal.
It’s no surprise the miners are looking to shore up any support they can get from the political class. If James is offering that support, it makes sense to accept it.
Endorsing James is not an unreasonable political calculation on the part of the miners. Barring an act of God (and even that is no guarantee), a Republican will win the governor’s race in Alabama. Tim James seems to be vying for a place in the runoff with current Gov. Kay Ivey, and he has made strong, concrete commitments to provide material support to the miners if he wins. In an interview on The Valley Labor Report, a weekly union talk radio show that I co-host with Adam Keller,James stated that, immediately upon taking office, he would end the deployment of state troopers to provide security for the company and to escort scabs across the picket line. He also said he would fight the injunction that Judge James Roberts Jr. of the Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa County granted at the behest of Warrior Met Coal, which has restricted strikers’ legally protected right to picket. As James said in our interview, “a limitation like that is absurd on its face” and, as governor, he would “probably resolve it in an afternoon”; moreover, James bucked the trend in his party to further repress speech by saying he would oppose the controversial anti-riot bill that was in the legislature this cycle. Perhaps most importantly, he made a commitment to use the office of the governor to pressure Warrior Met, saying he didn’t think their management would be interested in getting into a fight with a governor who has the power to “inspect the coal mines” and who can ask “tough questions” about the company’s business practices. (President Biden, it should be noted, also has the authority to do such things, but has thus far refused to.)
On top of these strong material commitments, James has utilized strong pro-worker rhetoric when asked about the Warrior Met strike, seeming to channel Bernie Sanders as he rails against “corporate greed.”
With seemingly no viable candidates on the Democratic side and so few options on the Republican side (as far as I can tell, James is the only gubernatorial candidate who even took the initiative to seek the UMWA endorsement in the first place), weary from a long fight with a company owned in large part by the largest private equity firm in the world, and having been left on the vine by a Democratic-controlled federal government that has provided no real support, it’s no surprise the miners are looking to shore up any support they can get from the political class. If James is offering that support, it makes sense to accept it.
It’s important to vet commitments like this, though. Labor has been burned more than once by false promises from politicians. During his 1980 campaign, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan made commitments to the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) to provide better equipment, ensure better working conditions, and hire more air traffic controllers, earning him their endorsement. In fact, PATCO was one of the few unions to endorse Reagan over his opponent, the Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter. Less than a year after his inauguration, Reagan fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers and, with sensational cruelty, barred them from federal employment for life, thus sending a strong signal to bosses all over the country that it was open season on workers and the organized labor movement.
During his 2007 campaign, presidential candidate Barack Obama promised to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, and labor supported him enthusiastically. “I’ve fought to pass the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate,” Obama said in a 2008 speech to the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. “And I will make it the law of the land when I’m president of the United States of America.” He did not make it the law of the land when he became president of the United States of America. Not only did he fail to do that, Obama failed to ever put on his walking shoes and support striking workers during his two terms as president; instead, he elevated school privatizers in the federal government and sat idly by as Scott Walker took a sledgehammer to public sector workers and the labor movement in Wisconsin.
The people of Alabama, and especially the coal miners who have stuck their neck out for him, deserve to know Tim James’s thoughts on his family’s political track record when it comes to (not) supporting workers when they needed it most.
During his 2016 campaign, presidential candidate Donald Trump swayed many voters, especially within de-industrializing pockets of the country, with bold promises of spurring a manufacturing resurgence. Along with the Carrier furnace plant in Indianapolis, Trump’s campaign promise to revive US manufacturing focused attention on the famous GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio, where he infamously told a crowd of autoworkers “don’t sell your house” because the jobs were “all coming back.” The jobs didn’t come back. Instead, just one decade after getting bailed out by the taxpayers to the tune of $49.5 billion, GM announced near-record profits and pushed forward with a “restructuring plan” that involved eliminating 14,000 jobs and closing or idling a number of manufacturing plants in the US, including Lordstown.
So how can we, as workers, vet commitments like this? Because Tim James has been rejected by the voters of Alabama in his past election runs, he has no record in public office that we can point to. Of course, we can look to what he is saying on the campaign trail, but for the reasons outlined above this feels insufficient.
Tim James may not have a political track record that we can thoroughly examine, but people around him do—specifically, his father, Fob James, who was governor from 1979 to 1983 and again from 1995 to 1999.
Let’s not be coy. This is the primary connection that has gotten Tim James all that he has: his businesses, his nonprofits, and his current position as a potentially viable candidate for governor. Had his father not been governor, we would not know who Tim James is.
So what does Fob James’s record look like when it comes to labor? Well… not good.
In 1980 we can see a situation with almost eerie similarities to the current strike by the 1,000 coal miners in Brookwood. Champion Paper, based in the North, had a plant in Courtland, Alabama, that employed hundreds of union workers. With inflation at 13.5% that year, workers were determined to get raises to match. After an insulting offer from the company that came in at more than 5% below inflation, the workers went on strike. They had injunctions placed on them too, limiting the number of strikers who could be on the picket line to 2. Management refused to budge and refused to bargain with the union.
Instead of siding with Alabama workers, Fob James chose to side with Yankee bosses, much like Kay Ivey today. He did nothing about the injunctions, made no statements in support of the striking paper workers, and utilized state troopers to an even greater degree than Ivey has— sending in over 100 troopers and a helicopter to break up a mass picket. Dozens of striking workers were arrested.
Ultimately, the use of state violence combined with the corporation’s greed made the workers feel that they could not win this battle, and they voted to accept the terms they originally walked out over.
Educators received similar treatment from Gov. Fob James. In 1979, almost 600 teachers and over 100 support staff in Walker County went on strike, shutting down 27 schools for nearly a month. The country saw a wave of teacher strikes that year, and in some of those states governors stepped in with discretionary funds and the influence of their office to reopen schools. James declined and, instead, simply sent in the state troopers. This was just one flashpoint in a series of battles between Fob James and the education community, particularly the Alabama Education Association, with educators threatening a statewide walkout in 1980 in response to Fob’s school budget schemes.
Of course, Tim James is not Fob James. But it is likely that the same types of people (if not literally the same people) who advised former Gov. Fob James would be advising a Gov. Tim James. That isn’t a wild assumption. Because of this, the people of Alabama, and especially the coal miners who have stuck their neck out for him, deserve to know Tim James’s thoughts on his family’s political track record when it comes to (not) supporting workers when they needed it most. Does he condemn his father’s actions? Will he commit to blacklisting staffers who were involved in those decisions when his father was governor? Will he commit to taking a different approach to labor relations than his father?
Because of the strong commitments and pro-worker rhetoric Tim James expressed on The Valley Labor Report and in his speech at a UMWA District 20 union hall, one would think this would be an easy statement to give. However, after nearly a month of requesting comments, he has refused to address this issue. For anyone hoping James means what he says, and that he isn’t just another lying politician trying to win union volunteers and PAC money, this should be cause for worry.
The Queen’s Jubilee celebrations are set to pop up next week. June is going to begin with a four-day bank holiday weekend, a pageant in London, and the promise (or threat?) of street parties across the country. A lemon trifle has been crowned the Platinum Pudding, beating out 5000 other desserts. You’d be forgiven for thinking the whole country’s gone mad.
Unfortunately, it’s very British to have a mass event that celebrates a monarchy whilst most people suffer under Tory rule. A cost of living crisis is making life much more expensive for the poorest people, the Home Office is trying its best to restrict protest, the climate crisis is rapidly worsening, and to top it all off, politicians are mired in corruption.
And it’s not like the royal family’s image is faring much better. The Queen’s son, Andrew, had his military titles and royal patronages stripped after sexual assault allegations. Meghan and Harry stepped aside from formal royal duties after telling Oprah about the racism Meghan faced. However, those scandals fit into the pattern of who the royal family is, and how desperately the monarchy needs to be abolished.
Timing of the Jubilee
In fact, it’s good timing for the royals – they can distract everybody with an extra-long bank holiday weekend and some readymade patriotism. Supermarkets eager to cash in are readily jumping on the idea of white people gathering under Union Jack bunting to eat terrible sandwiches and soggy trifle.
But in reality, huge numbers of people are turning to food banks. The Trussell Trust says that, aside from the first year of the pandemic, they’ve had to give out 2.1 million food parcels for the first time ever. Meanwhile, charity Turn2Us found that since the government decided to take away the £20 Universal Credit uplift, 4 in 10 families on Universal Credit have become food insecure. That means they can’t afford to eat. And some food banks are even turning away donations of potatoes because people can’t afford the energy costs to cook those potatoes.
Enter the royal family. Or, should I say, enter the taxpayer-funded royal family. Last year, the government gave the Queen £85.9m. The press teams of these parasites haven’t yet made clear how much taxpayer money the Jubilee celebrations will cost. We can be sure, however, that it’s going to be a huge amount of money that would be better spent on making sure people can feed their families and heat their homes.
Who doesn’t want to celebrate?
It may come as a surprise to some in Britain, but people aren’t particularly fond of the British Empire because of the devastation it caused across the world. At its peak – way back in 1922 – the British Empire covered a quarter of the Earth’s land surface. Britain invaded and pillaged so many foreign lands that 65 countries have had to fight for their independence from the British. Atrocities of empire include the Mau Mau uprising, in which thousands of Kenyan people were raped and tortured. The partition of India displaced 14-16 million people, and some estimates say that it killed 2 million. Winston Churchill famously starved 4 million Bengali people to death. During the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar, British soldiers fired continuously and without warning until they ran out of ammunition. They killed hundreds of people, and the British general who gave the order was celebrated as a hero.
There are so many more atrocities that the British empire has committed. Britain has done nothing to reckon with its colonial past. Other countries make serious attempts to recognise and remember past wrongs, but empire is barely taught in British schools. In fact, a YouGov poll from 2016 found that 43% of British people thought the empire was a good thing. And 44% were even proud of Britain’s colonialism.
But there’s a reason why the Union Jack is known at the butcher’s apron. The British empire has murdered, displaced, and tortured millions of people. It doesn’t take a genius to understand why people living in Britain who come from countries that the British empire ransacked might not be too eager to pick up a cucumber sandwich and sit down with Sally and George from across the street to celebrate the Jubilee.
Test of belonging
Even now, the Commonwealth includes 54 countries, with the Queen as their figurehead. But, she’s not just a figurehead – she’s a colonial figurehead. She is British colonialism, stolen gems and all. Colonialism is by no means over. So often, when the British empire is brought up, white people rush to say it wasn’t them who committed genocide, so why should they have to listen to angry people of colour banging on about colonialism?
It’s because the Queen is the head of an institution which wouldn’t exist in its current form were it not for the British empire. Britain would not be the country that it is now without empire. The royals’ recent tour of the Caribbean had them come face to face with even more countries who want reparations and independence. The continued Windrush deportations show that Britain doesn’t just have a legacy of colonialism. It has a present built on colonialism, and if the elites get their way, a future that’s also colonial. See, for example, the money that Britain pumps into aiding Saudi Arabia with the bombing of Yemen or the ongoing scramble for oil and other resources in Africa.
Why so mad?
The reason British people get so mad when the Queen doesn’t receive adoration, and when people don’t want to see Union Jacks littered all over the place, is because national events like the Jubilee celebration are a test of belonging. They want everyone to join in the good time and unquestioningly raise a glass to the parasite in chief.
That’s not going to happen though. It doesn’t matter if you tell us to go back home, or if you ask why we’re here if we hate it so much. Britain’s colonialism brought us here. And we’re happy to ignore a set of days that celebrates privileged people while others are sinking into poverty and hardship.
It’s typically backwards of Britain to even have a monarchy. It’s unspeakably arrogant to expect everyone to be pleased about the Queen and her little party. And it doesn’t matter one bit if white British people are offended on behalf of their Queen. After all the terror the British empire has wrought, and continues to wreak – too bloody bad.
This story originally appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus on May 18, 2022. It is shared here with permission.
As a progressive activist, I am dismayed at the election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the former dictator, by a landslide in the recent Philippine presidential election. But as a sociologist, I can understand why.
The Marcos vote can be interpreted as being largely a protest vote that first surfaced in a dramatic fashion in the 2016 elections that propelled Rodrigo Duterte to the presidency.
I am not referring to the malfunction, intended or unintended, of 1,000-plus voting machines. I am not alluding to the massive release of billions of pesos for vote buying that made the 2022 elections one of the dirtiest in recent years. Nor do I have in mind the decade-long online campaign of disinformation that transmogrified the nightmare years of martial law during the senior Marcos’s rule into a “golden age.”
Undoubtedly, each of these factors played a role in the electoral result. But 31 million plus votes—59 percent of the electorate—is simply too massive to attribute to them alone.
The truth is the Marcos victory was largely a democratic outcome in the narrow electoral sense. The challenge for progressives is to understand why a runaway majority of the Philippine electorate voted to bring an unrepentant, thieving family back to power after 36 years.
How could democracy produce such a wayward outcome?
Illiberalism is Popular
No matter how slick or sophisticated the internet campaign was, it would have made little impact had there not already been a receptive audience for it.
While the Marcos revisionist message also drew support from among the middle and upper classes, that audience was in absolute numbers largely working class. It was also a largely youth audience, more than half of whom were either small children during the late martial law period or born after the 1986 uprising that ousted Marcos—better known as the “EDSA Revolution.”
That audience had no direct experience of the Marcos years. But what they had a direct experience of was the gap between the extravagant rhetoric of democratic restoration and a just and egalitarian future of the EDSA Uprising and the hard realities of continuing inequality and poverty and frustration of the last 36 years.
That gap can be called the “hypocrisy gap,” and it’s one that created greater and greater resentment every year the EDSA establishment celebrated the uprising on February 25 or mourned the imposition of martial law on September 21. Seen from this angle, the Marcos vote can be interpreted as being largely a protest vote that first surfaced in a dramatic fashion in the 2016 elections that propelled Rodrigo Duterte to the presidency.
From the French Revolution to the Philippine Revolution to the Chinese Revolution to the global anti-war movement of the 1960s to the First Quarter Storm, it was the left that usually offered the vision that youth latched on to to express their generational rebellion.
Though probably inchoate and diffuse at the level of conscious motivation, the vote for Duterte and the even larger vote for Marcos were propelled by widespread resentment at the persistence of gross inequality in a country where less than 5% of the population corners over 50% of the wealth. It was a protest against the extreme poverty that engulfs 25% of the people and the poverty, broadly defined, that has about 40% of them in its clutches.
Against the loss of decent jobs and livelihoods owing to the destruction of our manufacturing sector and our agriculture by the policies imposed on us by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and the United States.
Against the despair and cynicism that engulf the youth of the working masses who grow up in a society where they learn that the only way to get a decent job that allows you to get ahead in life is to go abroad.
Against the daily blows to one’s dignity inflicted by a rotten public transport system in a country where 95% of the population doesn’t own a car.
These are the conditions that most working class voters experienced directly, not the horrors of the Marcos period, and their subjective resentment primed them for the seductive appeals of a return to a fictive “Golden Age.”
In the presidential elections, the full force of this resentment against the EDSA status quo was directed at Marcos’s main opponent, Vice President Leni Robredo. Unfairly, since she is a woman of great personal integrity.
The problem is that in the eyes of the marginalized and the poor that went for Marcos, Robredo was not able to separate her image from its associations with the Liberal Party, the conservative neoliberal Makati Business Club, the family of the assassinated Benigno Aquino, Jr., the double standards on corruption that rendered Benigno Aquino III’s “where there is no corruption, there is no poverty” slogan an object of ridicule, and—above all— with the devastating failure of the 36 year old EDSA Republic to deliver.
The rhetoric of “good governance” may have resonated with Robredo’s middle class and elite base, but for the masa (masses) it smacked of the same old hypocrisy. Good governance or “tapat na papamalakad” sounded in their ears much like the Liberals’ painting themselves as the “gente decente” or “decent people” that led to their rout in the 2016 elections and the ascendancy of Rodrigo Duterte.
Moreover, the Marcos base was not a passive, inert mass. Fed with lies by the Marcos troll machinery, a very large number of them eagerly battled on the internet with the Robredo camp, the media, historians, the left—with all those that dared to question their certainties. They plastered the comment sections of news sites with pro-Marcos propaganda, much of it memes either glorifying Marcos or unfairly satirizing Robredo.
Generational Rebellion
This protest against the EDSA Republic had a generational component.
Now, it is not unusual that a new generation sets itself against that which the old generation holds dear. But it is usually the case that the younger generation rebels in the service of a vision of the future, of a more just order of things.
What was unusual with the millennial and Gen Z generations of the working masses was that they were not inspired by a vision of the future but by a fabricated image of the past—the persuasiveness of which was enhanced by what sociologists like Nicole Curato have called the “toxic positivity” of Marcos Junior’s online persona. He was reconstructed by cybersurgery to come across as a normal, indeed benign, fellow who simply wanted the best for everyone.
From the French Revolution to the Philippine Revolution to the Chinese Revolution to the global anti-war movement of the 1960s to the First Quarter Storm, it was the left that usually offered the vision that youth latched on to to express their generational rebellion.
One cannot overemphasize significant state repression exercised against some sectors of the left, but what was decisive was the perception that the left was irrelevant or, worse, a nuisance by large sectors of the population as memories of its heroic role during martial law faded away.
Unfortunately, in the case of the Philippines, the left has simply been unable to offer that dream of a future order worth fighting for. Ever since it failed to influence the course of events in 1986 by assuming the role of bystander during the EDSA Uprising, the left has failed to recapture the dynamism that made it so attractive to youth during martial law.
The left’s decision to deliberately sideline itself during the EDSA Uprising led to the splintering of the progressive movement in the early 1990s. Moreover, socialism, which had served as the beacon for generations since the late 19th century, was badly tarnished by the collapse of the centralized socialist bureaucracies in Eastern Europe.
But perhaps most damaging was a failure of political imagination. The left failed to offer an attractive alternative to the neoliberal order that reigned from the late 1980s on, with its presence on the national scene being reduced to a voice yapping at the failures and abuses of successive administrations.
This failure of vision was coupled with the incapacity to come up with a discourse that would capture and express people’s deepest needs, with its continued reliance on stilted, formulaic phrases from the 1970s that simply came across as noise in the new era. There was also the continuing influence of a “vanguardist” mass organizing strategy that might have been appropriate under a dictatorship but was disconnected from people’s desire for genuine participation in a more open democratic system.
The times called for Gramsci, but much of the left here stuck with Lenin.
This vanguardism in mass organizing was coupled, paradoxically, with an electoral strategy that de-emphasized class rhetoric, threw overboard practically all references to socialism, and satisfied itself with being a mini partner in elections with contending factions of the capitalist elite. To be sure, one cannot overemphasize significant state repression exercised against some sectors of the left, but what was decisive was the perception that the left was irrelevant or, worse, a nuisance by large sectors of the population as memories of its heroic role during martial law faded away.
Nature abhors a vacuum, as they say, and when it came to capturing the generational energy of working class youth in the late EDSA period, that vacuum was filled by the Marcos revisionist myth.
The Coming Instability
This is the history against which the 2016 and 2022 elections unfolded. But the great thing about history is that it is open-ended and to a great extent indeterminate.
As one philosopher observed, women and men make history, but not under conditions of their own choosing. The ruling elite may strive for control of where society is headed, but this is often frustrated by the emergence of contradictions that create the space for the subordinate sectors to intervene and influence the direction of history.
The Marcos-Duterte camp is currently gloating behind the façade of calls for “burying the hatchet,” and we should expect this froth to overflow in the period leading up to June 30. Beginning that date, when it formally assumes power, reality will catch up with this gang.
The Marcos-Duterte alliance, or what is now the circle of multiple political dynasties around the Marcos-Duterte axis, is a connivance of convenience among powerful families. Like most alliances of this type, which are built purely on the sharing of spoils, it will prove to be very unstable.
One would not be surprised if after a year, the Marcoses and Dutertes will be at each other’s throats—something that might be foreshadowed by Vice President-elect Sara Duterte’s being denied the powerful post of chief of the Department of National Defense and given instead the relatively powerless position of Education Secretary.
This inevitable struggle for power will unfold against a backdrop of millions realizing they have not been led to the promised land of milk and honey and the 20 pesos per kilo of rice, disarray in a business sector that still has memories of the crony capitalism of the Marcos Sr. years, and splits in a military that will have to work overtime to contain the instability triggered by the return of a controversial dynasty that the military itself—or a faction of which—contributed to overthrowing in 1986.
But probably the most important element in this volatile scenario is a large sector, indeed millions, who are determined not to provide the slightest legitimacy to a gang that have cheated and lied and stolen and bribed their way to power.
In voting for Marcos, 31 million people voted for six years of instability. That is unfortunate. But that is also the silver lining in this otherwise bleak scenario. One of the world’s most successful organizers of change observed, “There is great disorder under the Heavens but, hey guys, the situation is excellent.”
The inevitable crises of the Marcos-Duterte regime offer opportunities to organize for an alternative future, and this time we Filipino progressives better get it right.
With the Australian general election largely done and dusted, and with a clear (if still-to-be-quantified) mandate, Anthony Albanese faces greater and more immediate international challenges than any Australian Prime Minister since the Cold War began.
Between climate change and an increasingly truculent — not to say belligerent — China, Pacific island countries are searching for reassurance, safety and support. Reassurance that we are valued and respected, and that a rules based order has the same rules for everyone else as it has for us.
Safety, from the increasingly violent buffeting of climate change, and from the risk of losing our balance in the increasingly straitened geopolitical space we occupy. And support for our own self-determination, territorial integrity and survival.
Each if these will have significant impacts on the Albanese government’s domestic policies.
Each will have lasting impact on the Pacific islands region.
Let’s hope they’ve got a plan in place. They do not have the luxury of time.
Part of this fight will have to happen while they’re still strapping on the gloves. We’ve already looked at some of the challenges Penny Wong is likely to face when she (almost certainly) becomes Foreign Minister.
In this issue, we’ll enumerate some of the immediate challenges faced by Wong and her cabinet colleagues.
PIF Secretariat in shambles
The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat is in a shambles right now, in no small part because of Australia’s call for a vote during the selection of its most recent Secretary-General, rather than enduring more painstaking but traditional method of consensus-building our leaders learned in the village meeting house.
The voting split the membership, and the Micronesian contingent still have not reconciled themselves completely.
There is little Australia can do to fix that. But they can offer unconditional support to the body itself, and for the idea it embodies. They can formally uphold the Boe Declaration, which lists climate change as the single greatest security threat faced by the Pacific islands region, by re-basing (sorry) their security stance on this premise.
They can fund and support the Blue Pacific strategy. They can fund the Secretariat’s climate indemnity scheme. They can show our reluctant leaders that the PIF is worth being part of.
More importantly, they can promote our voices in Washington and at the UN. Our plight on the world stage resembles the challenges women have faced since… forever. Ignored, subverted, explained to, denied agency over our own body politic. We don’t need people to speak for us. We need people to listen when we speak for ourselves.
Endorsement and sponsorship for voices like those of our esteemed Pacific Elders would go a long way to achieving that.
Even more ambitiously: Is a Pacific COP possible? I’d be pleasantly surprised if this Labor government proved willing to spend the time and effort reaching a landmark such as this.
Port Vila’s Bauerfield airport … flooded for the first time in living memory. Image: The Village Explainer
Immense time, resources needed The time and resources required would be immense, and would compete with dozens of looming challenges in the foreign relations/defence space.
Despite the massive victory it could bring, the opportunity costs are immense. If a COP were achieved, it would build a legacy that could be relied on for years to come, but as we’ve stated before, all this would have to be achieved with a lethargic, hidebound DFAT bureaucracy.
It’s sadly much easier to imagine Australia lurching from crisis to crisis, as it has for decades.
In terms of bilateral relations, the stakes are even higher. It is clear now that China intends to build on its perceived momentum in the Pacific, and to test Labor’s mettle from the very start.
Wang Yi’s tour of four (or five?) Pacific island nations is only days away. His diplomats have been working hard to replicate the success they achieved with Solomon Islands PM Manasseh Sogavare, who signed an unprecedented security agreement that would allow personnel to be stationed in-country and ships to visit and re-victual.
It doesn’t appear that Wang will get what he wants. The pressure is on in Kiribati, but the government there has paid a hefty political price for its whole-throated support of China.
Since 2020, it’s been feeling much more phlegmatic than it was in the past.
Chinese base in Kiribati a worry
Good thing, too. A Chinese base in Kiribati is one that even I worry about. Having AA/AD capabilities just a hop, skip and a jump from Honolulu would force a fundamental re-evaluation of the US Navy’s Pacific stance.
I’ve pooh-poohed talk of bases in Vanuatu and Solomon Islands in the past. I worry about Kiribati.
Vanuatu, at least, has managed to keep dancing on the head of an increasingly pointy pin. Resisting pressure at the highest level to include an overt security component in Wang Yi’s gift bag, it has instead signed on to a massive upgrade for its Luganville airport, which will allow wide-body aircraft to fly there directly from Asia.
The island of Espiritu Santo has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. An upgrade to its international airport is part of Vanuatu’s 2018 tourism development strategy.
Yes, it’s undeniably true that any airport that can handle an A330 NEO can also handle a C17 or a Xi’an Y-20. But Vanuatu has — for the moment, at least — avoided explicitly allowing any such flights, except possibly for humanitarian reasons.
Vanuatu’s example is illuminating. They appear to have translated a high-stakes geopolitical gambit into an economic development gain that fits the country’s plans, and which will provide a massive economic boost to its moribund tourist industry.
But they are faced with increased stridency from all sides, and if they lose the space to manoeuvre, either through rising geopolitical tensions or because climate change pushes us past the point of resilience, then we will be more at risk ourselves, and more of a risk to our neighbours.
A precarious truth in the Pacific
This precarious truth applies even more so in Solomon Islands, in PNG, in Fiji … in fact everywhere in the region. Security begins with stability and predictability. We need to know we’ll be around in a generation’s time before we make any other promises.
And we need to know that Australia’s promises will be kept this time, rather than sacrificed at the altar of domestic politics, as they have under every Liberal and Labor government since the millennium began.
Can Penny Wong unilaterally undo these all tensions? No. But she can fight for a foreign policy that changes Australia’s trajectory, rather than one that attempts to change ours.
Rather than trying to align us to Australia, she can fight to align Australia to confront our common existential threats, to listen to how we expect to address them, and then to be a proper friend, and act on our words.
The Village Explainer by Dan McGarry is a semi-regular newsletter containing analysis and insight focusing on under-reported aspects of Pacific societies, politics and economics. Republished with permission.
This story originally appeared in Black Agenda Report on May 3, 2022. It is shared here with permission.
From April 11-13, 2022, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela hosted the “International Summit Against Fascism ” in Caracas. Two hundred journalists and activists from five continents attended the summit, where the 20th anniversary of the short-lived coup d’état against Hugo Chávez was commemorated. The summit served as an occasion to highlight the importance of media in revolutionary movements and as a milestone in the continued fight against the global consolidation of right-wing political forces and rising fascism.
The three-day event featured panel discussions about the right-wing forces the people of Venezuela defeated in 2002 and how they compare to the fascist elements operating in countries across the Global South, and now in Ukraine, as well as the relevant emergence of fascism in the United States that emanates from both political parties in their support of dictators and police states.
Popular communication and the role of media were extensively discussed, and the complicity of the Venezuelan media in the attempted coup was recalled in several panel discussions. The coordination of all major Venezuelan media outlets to disseminate the lie that former President Hugo Chávez had relinquished his presidency in 2002 was not only recounted as part of the timeline of events of the overturned coup, but it was also compared to the present consolidation of media within the US and among its allies, the effects of which have been made apparent in the media coverage of the proxy war in Ukraine. The willingness of media CEOs and news anchors to lie to the people of Venezuela in 2002 seemed to be an omen for what was described as the media dictatorship that is spinning an equally false narrative about Ukraine right now.
Kidnapped by the fascist plotters in the government, whose coup was in part facilitated by and through the media, Chávez was secreted away and held captive for two days while the Venezuelan people were told that there was a new president in town. But if that were the end of the story, there would have been no need for this conference.
The Venezuelan media was not the sole topic to be examined regarding the 2002 coup attempt. The United States government’s support of the violent and undemocratic right wing in the country was also a common theme raised by many presenters, as well as the roles played by members of the US foreign policy team such as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet, whose demonization of Chávez in hearings before Congress set the stage for US intervention in Venezuela. Chávez—who had been president for just two years at the time of the coup—had committed two unforgivable offenses:
He held meetings with the leaders of the sworn enemies of the US: Cuba, Iran, and Libya;
He criticized the US response to 9/11 in Afghanistan.
Kidnapped by the fascist plotters in the government, whose coup was in part facilitated by and through the media, Chávez was secreted away and held captive for two days while the Venezuelan people were told that there was a new president in town. But if that were the end of the story, there would have been no need for this conference.
The play-by-play of the coup revealed details that most Americans have surely never heard before—like, for instance, how all the media outlets declared there was a new government in place on the morning of the coup, but then those same outlets proceeded to play nothing but cartoons on every station for the rest of the day while the coup government was hastily being legitimized. The most fascinating and important aspects of this important historical event was the role of communication among the people in returning Chávez to power and restoring the constitutional democracy that the people shaped under him.
During the panel on Popular Resistance and Response, Yesenia Fuentes , president of the Association of Victims of April 11, recounted how she—a poor single mother—heard from neighbors that the media had lied, that Chávez had not resigned and was still president. Having not been particularly political before Chávez, Fuentes said she joined her neighbors and countrymen who took to the streets and marched toward Miraflores, the presidential palace, to demand answers regarding the whereabouts of the president they elected in a landslide just two years earlier.
It is important that Fuentes survived being shot in the face by Venezuelan soldiers ordered to open fire on the people. But what might be more important, in a purely political sense, is that Fuentes and tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets in defiance of the intense media propaganda, in defiance of deadly fascist violence, to demand that the constitution the people helped shape after the landslide election of Hugo Chávez be restored. Yes, the people wanted their president back, but they were fighting for the democracy they shaped even more.
This was the context in which the people appealed to the military to join them in demanding the release of President Chávez two days after he was kidnapped. Images began to circulate of the people flooding the streets, pressing against the gates of Miraflores, with signs demanding to know, “Dónde está Chávez? Qué hablas! [Where is Chavez? What do you say?]”
These details and others about how popular resistance among the people overturned the first-ever media-led, US-backed fascist coup in 2002 were shared during the panel, which also connected that history to the need to commit to and expand popular communication today.
The coup in 2002 was an example of how media consolidation was used to subvert the will of the people then, and how media consolidation does the same thing today.
The challenges facing popular communication were raised in panels involving current Venezuelan journalists, who talked about World War 2.0: Digital Political Communication In Globalization. They focused on the power of social media and independent media in the struggle against global fascism and its rapid consolidation. The coup in 2002 was an example of how media consolidation was used to subvert the will of the people then, and how media consolidation does the same thing today.
To accentuate that point, Ukrainian journalist Liubov Alexandriana Korsakov presented details about the 8-year civil war that has been raging in the Donbas region. She spoke of media silence on that war, as well as the media’s complicity in crafting a false narrative about the Russian military action in Ukraine. At the end of her presentation, she held up a flag of the Donbas militia, emblazoned with the letter “Z,” and she urged continued support for and journalistic attention to the fight against fascists in the Kiev army who were armed and legitimized by the US. (That flag and a letter, incidentally, have been banned in Kiev by the so-called democratic government of Volodymyr Zelensky.)
Attending Militia Day celebrations was a disconcerting experience since, in the US, citizens’ relationship with the police and military is not an amicable one, even though many of their ranks come from the working-class and poor masses. However, the legacy of April 11-13 as well as the Bolivarian Revolution reshaped the relationship between the people and the military. Carlos Ron, Venezuela’s Vice Minister of North America, shared the story of how the famous letter from President Chávez was delivered to the people. A young soldier heard from the media that Chávez had resigned. Tasked with guarding the kidnapped president, the soldier asked Chávez if it was true, if he had really resigned. Chávez answered that he had not and he never would do such a thing. The soldier convinced Chávez to write a letter, sign it, and put it in a nearby trashcan because no one would look for anything there. He would retrieve the letter and get it to whomever Chávez told him to. Letter in hand, the soldier delivered it to the former Attorney General, then he went on to tell his fellow servicemen that the news about Chávez resigning was a lie and that he had proof.
Meanwhile, the Attorney General took the letter to the media and uttered one sentence, “President Chávez has not renounced.” That was enough to send the people into the streets to defend their constitution and demand the return of Chávez. On the way, though, they were met by soldiers and pleaded with them to adhere to the constitution they also participated in shaping, and many did.
Therefore, Militia Day does not present the contradictions of the military being agents of the state who are against the people, as they operate in the US. Despite whatever internal struggles and contradictions they experience, the military largely supported and continues to support the Bolivarian Revolution that they were pivotal in restoring on April 13.
President Nicolas Maduro commemorated April 11 with a press conference to honor the people’s popular resistance to the coup, with the attendees of the summit as his special guests. President Maduro sat behind a remarkably simple long desk with a portrait of Simon Bolivar and the Venezuelan flags adorning the podium as he recounted the deep history of April 11-13, showing relevant newsreels and providing several well-timed and sharply pointed jabs at the coup-plotters and their backers in the US. But even as he recounted the steps leading up to the coup and how it was overturned by popular resistance and communication, he took the opportunity to not just focus on Venezuela’s struggle, but to offer solidarity to Chilean victims of fascist police violence in the city of Renato, and offered assistance to Colombians suffering the same fate.
The current struggles in Venezuela against ongoing US repression are not disconnected from Hugo Chávez. Chávez is not in the past; he is very present in the consciousness of the people he focused on the most—the Indigenous, Afro-Venezuelans, the peasants in the mountains, and the poor in the barrios in the hills above Caracas and throughout the country.
The Cuartel de la Montaña 4F (also known as the Military Historical Museum)—the final resting place and museum for President Chávez—is located among the people in the mostly poor barrio of the Monte Piedad sector, where Chávez tried to wage his armed struggle against the fascist government of Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992. After being pardoned from prison in 1994, Chávez started the Fifth Republic Movement, which was more centrist than revolutionary, but was focused on lifting up those Venezuelans who had been left out of the political process and society, bringing them into participating in a new kind of government.
The current struggles in Venezuela against ongoing US repression are not disconnected from Hugo Chávez. Chávez is not in the past; he is very present in the consciousness of the people he focused on the most—the Indigenous, Afro-Venezuelans, the peasants in the mountains, and the poor in the barrios in the hills above Caracas and throughout the country.
Visiting the museum at the Cuartel de 4F, where his body lies in a marble-encased tomb surrounded by ceremonial guards and reflective pools of water, Chávez’s grassroots political education efforts—the speeches he gave in those neighborhoods on flatbed trucks, speaking to people in forgotten villages in the mountains, and in the middle of the most impoverished barrios in the cities—is showcased. Inspired by his desire to free all Venezuelans from poverty, inequality, oppression, and political isolation, the people voted in record numbers to put Chávez in the presidential office in 2000. As a result, one of his first acts was to immediately begin the process of including the people who voted for him in rewriting the country’s constitution. This was the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution, and the coup in 2002 was designed to stop a true people-powered and people-focused state from taking shape.
Walking through the new exhibit commemorating April 11-13, the sights, sounds, and lessons of that time illuminate how Chávez’s revolution spurred the people to defend their new democracy against the most powerful fascist state in the world. The inspiration he drew upon—from his own upbringing as one of the forgotten poor in a small village, to his faith in Jesus Christ as a force for social equality and liberation, to his commitment to protecting the people and environment they live in—was on full display, erasing any confusion about the capacity for those concepts of faith and revolution to co-exist successfully. They did in Chávez, and they still do in the hearts of many Venezuelans who will openly weep if asked how they feel about their Comandante.
At the end of the summit, the word “democracy” had a legitimate meaning, and the phrase “The people, united, will never be defeated” took on a whole new and relevant life.
Because Venezuela continues to prove that statement to be true.
Pieces marked as Opinion may contain views that do not necessarily reflect or align with those of The Real News Network; they also may contain claims that could not be fully corroborated by TRNN’s editorial team.
Policy failure over the last eight years — including a massive cut to the ABC’s international funding — has weakened Australia’s voice in the Pacific to its lowest ebb since the Menzies government established the first radio shortwave service across the region more than 80 years ago. Now, with China’s media expansion and the recent Solomon Islands crisis, it is obvious that Australia can’t afford to waste any more time in properly re-establishing its media presence and engagement with our Pacific neighbours. A new parliamentary report outlines a way forward, but the Coalition government has not yet pledged any substantial funding. Labor has promised an extra $8 million a year for the ABC’s international operations if it wins the federal election tomorrow. Former ABC international journalist Graeme Dobell, now with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), outlines the latest developments.
ANALYSIS:By Graeme Dobell
Australia’s polity grapples with the need to remake and rebuild our media voice in the South Pacific.
Domestic political battles and budget cuts have degraded the central role Australia played in islands journalism in the 20th century. Australia’s media voice in the South Pacific is at its weakest since Robert Menzies launched the shortwave radio service in 1939.
Now we must reimagine that role and empower that voice for the 21st century — a new model of talking with, not to, the South Pacific.
The policy failure that has so weakened our voice in the past decade had one deeply familiar element — recurring Oz amnesia about our interests, influence and values in the islands.
See the amnesia lament offered by a Canberra wise owl, Nick Warner, in his Financial Review op-ed about “Australia’s long Pacific stupor’”: “For two generations, since the end of World War II, Australia has squandered the chance to build deep and enduring relations with our neighbours in the South Pacific. And now it’s almost too late.”
This is a candid view from the heart of the Canberra system. You don’t get much more plugged in and powerful than Warner, who served as our top diplomat in Papua New Guinea, led the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, and then headed the Department of Defence, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and the Office of National Assessments.
‘Stupor’ history framing
Warner’s “stupor” history frames his diagnosis of how China could clinch a security treaty with Solomon Islands:
“China is now seemingly entrenched in Solomons and will also be looking for other opportunities for a base elsewhere in the Pacific. But, for better or worse, Pacific politics seldom provide certainty. It’s not too late for Australia to shore up its place in the South Pacific and to protect its strategic interests.”
The need to “shore up our place” that Warner points to brings us back to a specific example of the stupor/amnesia — the degrading of our media voice in the islands and the role of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
In the South Pacific, Radio Australia and the international television service, ABC Australia, still do great work. But they have only a third of the budget they enjoyed a decade ago. Underline that stupor/amnesia fact: spending on the ABC as our Indo-Pacific media voice has been cut by two- thirds.
Political payback in Canberra produced a gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight tragedy in the South Pacific. The Abbott aim was to scratch the anti-Aunty itch, but he badly wounded a major instrument of Australian foreign policy. The damage was compounded when the ABC turned off shortwave in 2017; here again was a domestic focus that damaged our regional interests.
Aunty as the villain
In this long-running melodrama with elements of dark comedy, a valiant ABC is also a victim — with foes instead seeing Aunty as villain. What a long run the drama has had: three generations of Murdochs have warred with Aunty, starting in the 1930s with Keith Murdoch’s bitter fight against the creation of an independent ABC news service.
Labor’s idea is a good first step to restart Australia’s conversation with the islands, Jemima Garrett writes, but it “seems to be simply pushing out more ‘Australian content’ and crowding the regional airwaves with ‘Australian voices’. This is ‘soft power’ in a crude form – a one-way monologue when what is needed is a dialogue — a 21st century conversation in which Australia and Australians talk ‘with’ and not ‘to’ our Pacific neighbours.”
Preferring hard power to soft power, Prime Minister Scott Morrison called Labor’s policy “farcical”, saying that in the South Pacific, “I sent in the AFP [Australian Federal Police]. The Labor Party wants to send in the ABC, when it comes to their Pacific solution.”
Australia, of course, needs it all—the AFP and the Australian Defence Force, but also the ABC.
In this argument, I declare my love of Aunty. I worked as a journalist for Radio Australia and the ABC (1975–2008) and had the huge privilege of spending much time as a correspondent in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
I did break the habit of a lifetime by putting the boot into Aunty when it switched off shortwave. The ABC had damaged its international role, set by parliamentary charter, in favour of its domestic responsibilities.
Soft-power thinking Labor’s soft-power thinking is work in the minor key compared to the recent effort of parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade.
In the final sitting week before the start of the election campaign, the committee issued its report “Strengthening Australia’s relationships in the Pacific”. The media recommendations were the most ambitious to come out of Canberra in many a day:
“The Committee notes the media environment within the Pacific is becoming more contested, and recognises Australia has a national interest in maintaining a visible and active media and broadcasting presence there. The Committee recommends the Australian Government considers steps necessary to expand Australia’s media footprint in the Pacific, including through:
– expanding the provision of Australian public and commercial television and digital content across the Pacific, noting existing efforts by the PacificAus TV initiative and Pacific Australia;
– reinvigorating Radio Australia, which is well regarded in the region, to boost its digital appeal; and
– consider[ing] governance arrangements for an Australian International Media Corporation to formulate and oversee the strategic direction of Australia’s international media presence in the Pacific.’
I own up to the idea for the creation of an Australian international media corporation, contained in my submission [No 21] to the inquiry. The committee’s findings and the idea of a new international body, to build on the ABC foundations, will be the next column in these musings on the Oz media voice in the South Pacific.
This article was first published in The Strategist journal of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). Graeme Dobell is ASPI’s journalist fellow and this is republished with the author’s permission.
It’s official – inflation hit 9% in April. We know what that means: the cost of everything we buy has gone through the roof. However, inflation isn’t the same on everything we buy. So, across the course of an average day, how much more does it cost just to live? Hint: it’s a lot more expensive for the poorest people than it is for the richest.
The rate shot up to 9% last month – its highest level since comparable readings in 1982.
It also noted that almost three-quarters of the rise came from the 54% increase in energy prices. However, this isn’t the whole story – as a day in the life of many of us shows.
Don’t even try to live a life
You’d best start putting less milk in your morning tea, because that’s gone up by 12.2%. If you want some toast to go with that, spread the jam thinly – it now costs 15.6% more. But you might want to skip both, given that the transport costs of doing the school run, getting to work, or going to sign on at the Department for Work and Pensions have rocketed by 13.5%. Let’s hope your car (if you can afford one) doesn’t run on diesel – because the price of that has gone up by 36%.
Lunch could be a no-no, unless you can afford the 22.7% increase in margarine to spread on the bread. Fortunately, that’s only gone up by 4.9% – so you can just eat it dry. Now, don’t forget to check on your baby – but only if you can afford to reproduce in the first place. Baby-related products have gone up by 15.9%. When the older kids get back from school, check their shoes for tears and tape them up if necessary; there’s been an 11% increase in the cost of children’s footwear.
It doesn’t really matter what (if anything) you choose to have for dinner – overall food prices have gone up by 10.6%. But if you want to make stuff from scratch, even that is costing a lot more. Because while the price of flour has risen by 9.3%, ready meals have only gone up by 7.8%. And if you can’t afford the gas/electric to cook or heat either of those things? Hey – at least the ready meal can technically be eaten cold.
Inflation = class war
If you try to navigate all this, you’d best not be poor. Because while headline inflation is 9%, for the poorest households it’s actually 10.2%. Take comfort from the fact that the inflation rate for the richest households is less than yours and the headline figure – sitting at 8.7%. Luckily for them, the cost of their servants has only gone up by 1.4%. They can jet off on a package holiday that’s only gone up by 3.1%, knowing that the kids will be well looked-after in their absence.
The point being, the government knows that inflation hits poor people the hardest. Yet it still chooses to do nothing about it – making the current chaos we face an intentional class war, not a cost of living crisis.
But don’t worry – if all this is utterly depressing, the cost of chocolate has actually fallen by 0.4%, and fags have only gone up by 7.5%. So, you can gorge and smoke yourself to an early, heart attack-induced grave safe in the knowledge that the cost of a funeral has only gone up by 3.5%. Small mercies, hey?
When Marilyn Garson’s memoir of working in Gaza was published, Radio NZ scheduled an interview. On the day of the interview, RNZ first promoted and then cancelled it. In response to her OIA request, RNZ disclosed this internal email:
The RNZ quote about a 2019 Gaza interview … bookended “balance” the Israeli way. Image: Marilyn Garson
It reads in full, “Hi guys, given the huge flood of formal complaints we get any time we do a Palestine story without Israeli balance, [e]ither we have to drop it or set up another interview — which you would have to mention before and after tonights one.”
We hear about Israel casually, without always hearing from Palestine before and after. But we are not allowed to hear a first-person story of Gaza unless it is bookended by something, anything, from Israel. That’s not journalistic balance, that’s a one-way concession to the possible inconvenience of complaint.
On Sunday, May 15, Nakba Day, Wellington Mayor Andy Foster was advised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) to disallow an already-approved display of Palestinian colours on a public building.
Although the same building had recently displayed Ukrainian colours without evident concern for the Russian ambassador’s feelings, MFAT advised that “displaying the Palestinian colours could result in complaints from the Israeli ambassador and other Israeli groups.” The Mayor shut it down — leaving Justice for Palestine to get the job done on the following evening.
Again, Palestinian expression was forbidden because someone might complain. Forget the validity of the complaints – there were none to evaluate. The mere prospect of Palestinian stories or the display of a Palestinian flag was problematised in advance.
When the right to be Palestinian in public is made contingent, policy has become racially intolerant. We share this space and we are prevented from enjoying it equally. That makes the suppression of Palestine everyone’s issue.
MFAT’s advice angers us as Jews
MFAT’s advice is further inappropriate in ways that anger us as Jews. A government ministry issued advice that “displaying the Palestinian colours could result in complaints from the Israeli ambassador and other Israeli groups.”
The Israeli ambassador is a guest in Aotearoa, whose presence ought not to drive our municipal policy. Given the frequency with which his government is characterised as apartheid, and given the exceptional brutality it has displayed in the past week, he might benefit from seeing the healthy exercise of pluralist public expression.
See our joint open letter to the Prime Minister on the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and the desecration of her funeral procession by Israeli police.
And exactly who are these “other Israeli groups” whose sensitivities preempt citizens’ peaceful public expression? Is Mossad operating here again? Or does a ministry of our own government truly not know the difference between the Jewish community of New Zealand and an Israeli interest group — can that possibly be??
MFAT, RNZ, Mayor Foster; we are Aotearoa Jews and you need to outgrow your stereotypes of our community.
Members of Aotearoa’s Jewish community express our identities in many ways. Some Jews place a nationalist project called Israel at the centre of their identity.
We and other Jews who love justice oppose the apartheid that Israel enacts in our names. We sharply distinguish it from our Jewish identity and we accept a responsibility to pursue justice and peace for all who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
We hold equal citizenship
You do not aid Aotearoa’s Jews by marginalising our Palestinian neighbours. Do not prevent us from sharing our city and our airwaves by perpetuating such a zero/sum model of belonging. We hold equal citizenship and we enjoy equal rights to public space and expression.
We are members of a pluralist community that needs to unite against exclusion or racism in all of its forms.
Our support of Palestinian expression is pro-democratic, not anti-anyone. We uphold Palestinian rights as we expect others to stand with us when we need them.
Our safety lies in the mutual respect we build with our neighbours. That is a necessity, not a nicety. We live together in a dangerous time and we are each others’ best hope.
Alternative Jewish Voices. Republished with permission.
Nothing justifies the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the wounding of her colleague Ali al-Samoudi during an Israeli raid on Jenin in the Occupied West Bank. Nothing.
I believe the renowned reporter died at the hands of Israeli armed forces and that she was deliberately targeted because she was a journalist, easily identified by the word PRESS on the flak jacket and helmet that did not protect her from the shot that killed her. Her wounded colleague was identically dressed.
I am left in no doubt about the culpability of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on a number of grounds.
Several eyewitnesses, including an Agence France-Presse photographer and another Al Jazeera staffer, were adamant that there was no shooting from Palestinians near the scene of the killing. Shatha Hanaysha, the Al Jazeera journalist who had been standing next to Abu Akleh against a high wall when firing broke out, stated they were deliberately targeted by Israeli troops.
Israeli spokesmen who initially laid the blame on Palestinian militants became more equivocal in the face of the eyewitness accounts, although they would go no further than saying she could have been accidentally shot from an armoured vehicle by an Israeli soldier.
That is about as close to an admission of guilt as the IDF is likely to get.
However, perhaps the strongest evidence of IDF culpability is the fact that the killing of Abu Akleh is part of a pattern of targeting journalists. Reporters Without Borders — which has called for an independent international investigation of the death that it says is a violation of international conventions that protect journalists — says two Palestinian journalists were killed by Israeli snipers in 2018 and since then more than 140 journalists have been the victims of violations by the Israeli security forces.
30 journalists killed since 2000
By its tally, at least 30 journalists have been killed since 2000.
Of course, those deaths are but one consequence of the IDF’s disproportionate response — in terms of the number of victims — to actions by Palestinian militants over the occupation of the West Bank. Since the present Israeli government took office last year, 76 Palestinians have died at the hands of Israeli forces.
There has been condemnation of such deaths, particularly when they include a number of children. So the reaction to the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh was sadly predictable. In other circumstances the outcry would dissipate and Israeli forces would continue to carry out their government’s wishes.
However, three things may make the condemnation louder, longer and more effective.
First was the fact that, although she was born in Jerusalem, she was a United States citizen. This could well explain the US Administration’s statement condemning the killing and its willingness to back a similarly reproachful UN Security Council resolution.
The second factor was that, although a Palestinian, Abu Akleh was not a Muslim. She was raised in a Christian Catholic family. It may not be a particularly becoming trait but the ability of the West to identify with a victim affects the way in which it reacts.
However, it is the third factor that may have the most telling effect on the long-term consequences of her death. I am referring to the desecration of her funeral by baton-wielding armed Israeli police.
Pallbearers assaulted by police
The journalist’s coffin was carried in procession from an East Jerusalem hospital to the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin in the Christian Quarter of the Old City where a service was held before burial in a cemetery on the Mount of Olives. However, shortly after the pallbearers left the hospital the procession — waving Palestinian flags and chanting — was assaulted by police.
It is the third factor that may have the most telling effect on the long-term consequences of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh’s death … the desecration of her funeral by baton-wielding armed Israeli police. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot APR
Mourners were hit with batons, stun grenades were detonated, and a phalanx of armed police in riot gear advanced on the coffin. The procession scattered in disarray and, as the pallbearers tried to avoid the police action, the coffin tilted almost vertical and was in danger of falling to the road.
At that point, an Al Jazeera journalist providing commentary on live coverage of the funeral said an an anguished voice: “Oh my God. Such disrespect for the dead, for those mourning the dead. How is that a security threat? How is that disorderly? Why does it require this kind of reaction, this level of violence on the part of the Israelis?”
Why did the police act as they did? Apparently because it is illegal to display the Palestinian flag and chant Palestinian slogans. Even after Abu Akleh’s coffin was transferred to a vehicle, police ran alongside to tear Palestinian flag from the windows.
The message was clear: There was no contrition on the part of Israeli authorities for the death of the Al Jazeera journalist. The justification for the police action was pathetic. There were lame excuses that stones had been thrown at them. In other words, it was business as usual.
That may not be the way the world sees it. Nor, indeed, the way it may be seen by many ordinary Israelis who would have been affronted by the indignity shown to the remains of a widely respected woman who died doing her job.
‘Time for some accountability?’
Yaakov Katz, the editor of the Jerusalem Post, an English-language Israeli newspaper, said on Twitter: “What’s happening at Abu Akleh’s funeral is terrible. This is a failure on all fronts.” In a later message he asked: “Is it not time for some accountability?”
The targeting of journalists aims to intimidate and to prevent them from bearing witness, particularly where authorities have something to hide. That is why, for example, we have seen seven journalists killed in Ukraine, 12 of their colleagues injured by gunfire, and multiple reports of clearly identified journalists coming under fire from Russian forces.
One might have thought the international community — and in particular Israel’s close friend the United States — would have put significant pressure on Tel Aviv to cease such intimidation a year ago after Israeli aircraft bombed the Gaza City building that was home to various media organisations including Al Jazeera and the US wire service Associated Press.
Israel claimed, without any evidence and contrary to AP’s own knowledge, that the building was being used by Hamas, the Palestinian nationalist organisation.
Associated Press chief executive Gary Pruitt said after that attack that “the world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today”. Aidan White, founder of the Ethical Journalism Network described the bombing as a “catastrophic attempt to shut down media, to silence criticism, and worst of all, to create a cloak of secrecy”.
That, no doubt, was what Tel Aviv intended.
Yet there were no recriminations sufficient to change the course Tel Aviv was on. As the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh so tragically illustrates, Israel has continued its policy of intimidation and violence against journalists.
Sooner or later, it will come to realise that such actions diminish a government in the eyes of the world. The death of Abu Akleh and the indignity shown to her remains have added significantly to the damage to its reputation.
Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes a website called Knightly Views where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.
The targeting of journalists aims to intimidate and to prevent them from bearing witness, particularly where authorities have something to hide … One of the images of slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh shown in a “guerilla-projection” by a pro-Palestinian group at Te Papa yesterday to mark the 74th anniversary of the Nakba, the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948. Image: Stuff screenshot APR
On Saturday 14 May, Ukraine celebrated its Eurovision Song Contest victory. A day later, Palestinians around the world mourned the 74th anniversary of the Nakba, when Zionist forces ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians from their land, and the state of Israel was declared.
The people of Europe (as well as Israel and Australia) politically voted for Ukraine to win Eurovision. Yes, Ukraine’s song was catchy, but would it have won if there wasn’t outrage over Russia’s bombing of the country? Very unlikely.
So, what’s this got to do with the Palestinian Nakba? Well, everything, actually.
Celebrating Apartheid Israel
In 2018, people around the world voted for Israel’s Netta Barzilai to win Eurovision. There was no Europe-wide outrage for the bombed Palestinians of Gaza, or for those in the West Bank murdered in cold blood by the Israeli occupation forces. In fact, quite the opposite happened: Europe decided to celebrate Israel.
The win meant that Israel hosted the contest in 2019. This gave the Israeli state a key opportunity to pinkwash its actions in Palestine.
Palestinians and their supporters called for an international boycott of Eurovision that year. And they urged musicians – including Madonna – to pull out from performing. Celebrities wrote an open letter, declaring:
We, the undersigned artists from Europe and beyond, support the heartfelt appeal from Palestinian artists to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 hosted by Israel. Until Palestinians can enjoy freedom, justice and equal rights, there should be no business-as-usual with the state that is denying them their basic rights.
Of course, there was backlash around the world. Prominent people in the entertainment industry, such as Stephen Fry and Simon Callow, even signed a letter in support of holding Eurovision in Israel. The letter declared that “music is our shared language”. Ironic, then, that Russia was disqualified from Eurovision 2022.
The 2019 event went ahead largely unaffected, and those who knew of Israel’s war crimes conveniently looked the other way (in the name of popular culture, of course).
Since 1973 – the year that Israel joined the contest – there has never been an all-out ban on the country participating. Not even after Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2008, in which it murdered around 1,400 Palestinians. And not after 2012’s Operation Pillar of Defense, which saw tens of thousands fleeing their homes. In fact, Israel hosted Eurovision 2019 at the same time as its depraved snipers were gunning down Palestinians who were protesting in the Great March of Return.
Racist Europe
When it comes to which war victims we deem worthy of our support, Eurovision 2022 showed our clear bias. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against Ukraine winning the contest. But I struggle with the racism of Eurovision’s voters – many of whom won’t actually be conscious that they’re being racist – when they support Ukraine while also celebrating Apartheid Israel in the competition.
As the European public puts Ukrainian flags in the windows of our houses, we consistently ignore not just the murdering of Palestinians but also the killing of Kurdish people by the Turkish state. We ignore the Yemeni people bombed by Saudi Arabia with weapons from Britain; and the decades-long suffering of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, largely caused by UK government intervention. If we care about all victims of war, and if we care about peace, why aren’t we flying the Yemen flag, too? Or the Palestine flag?
Eurovision viewers will likely support sanctions against Russia, too. But where is the support for the Palestinians who having been calling for international boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli state since 2005? Their calls have largely been ignored around the world.
Now it would be all too easy to argue that this isn’t the fault of the general public, that we are all influenced by of our governments’ policies – depicting Israel as a victim rather than an aggressor, for example – and by our mainstream media’s depictions of war. This is true, to an extent. We are all influenced by what we read and what we’re told.
But this isn’t the full picture. We need to reflect on why, as white people, we see Ukrainian victims of war as more worthy. Why are we more touched when it is white people being bombed? Why do we campaign hard for Ukrainian refugees to be welcomed with open arms, but barely bat an eyelid when brown refugees drown in the English Channel?
Are there racist stereotypes in our heads that categorise some people as ‘worthy’ victims of war and others as ‘unworthy’?
Reflect on the racism inside us
Even if it makes us uncomfortable, let’s reflect on the racism that plays out in all of us who were born with white privilege. Author Austin Channing Brown said:
White people desperately want to believe that only the lonely, isolated ‘whites only’ club members are racist. This is why the word ‘racist’ offends ‘nice white people’ so deeply. It challenges their self-identification as good people. Sadly, most white people are more worried about being called racist than about whether or not their actions are in fact racist or harmful.
It is essential for all of us to truly analyse this within ourselves. Because the impact of our racism goes on to affect generations after us. You might not see it as such, but the apathy we show towards the people of Palestine is not just a lack of interest: it is an act of racism. If you’re outspoken about Ukraine but silent about an Israeli soldier shooting dead a child in the West Bank, while knowing that this is happening, then you’re being racist. It’s time for all of us to really look at how we’re deeply conditioned by systems built on white supremacy, and to support each other to rid our minds of racism.
The world reacts over the assassination of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the desecration of her funeral by Israeli security forces. Video: Al Jazeera
OPEN LETTER to the Foreign Minister of Aotearoa New Zealand, Nanaia Mahuta:
Kia ora Nanaia,
We have been informed that the Wellington City Council has been advised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not to light up the Michael Fowler Centre in the colours of the Palestinian flag tomorrow — which has been arranged through councillor Tamatha Paul and approved by council — because Aotearoa New Zealand does not recognise a Palestinian state and this will cause offence to the Israeli Embassy in Wellington.
This is outrageous advice. We want you to intervene and immediately override this advice from your ministry officials so the Fowler Centre can be lit up tomorrow.
Firstly New Zealand’s official policy is to support a “two-state” solution in historic Palestine and this policy in effect recognises a Palestinian state. You cannot have a “two-state solution” with just one state.
The New Plymouth City Council flies the Palestinian flag today after being requested by the local PSNA group to mark Nakba Day. Image: PSNA
Secondly it is deeply insulting to Palestinians to have official recognition of their national day — Nakba Day — effectively vetoed by ministry officials and the “sensitivities” of the Israeli embassy. It is Israel which is refusing to allow a Palestinian state to be formed.
The current Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, has said he refuses to meet with Palestinian leaders, refuses to negotiate a peace deal and will refuse to recognise a Palestinian state while he is Prime Minister.
Why should Israel’s veto over a Palestinian state dictate Aotearoa New Zealand’s support for Palestinians?
Why would we take any notice of the “sensitivities” of an embassy which is supporting and promoting what every international human rights organisation has declared to be an apartheid state?
Parliament has flown the Ukrainian flag in recent weeks over Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine so why shouldn’t New Zealand fly the Palestinian flag in recognition of Israel’s ongoing brutal military occupation of the entire area of historic Palestine?
Aotearoa New Zealand is bigger than the venal, self-serving advice of cowardly MFAT officials.
Please direct your ministry officials to approve Wellington City Council lighting up the Fowler Centre tomorrow in the colours of the Palestinian flag.
Asia Pacific Report editors join the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) in solidarity with this open letter protest over the Nakba Day censorship and in memory of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh assassinated by Israeli troops last Wednesday.
A notorious food delivery company has just signed a deal with an equally contentious trade union. It reeks of corporate capitalist cronyism. And, it looks set to completely undermine workers’ rights – despite what both parties are claiming.
GMB Union: the bosses’ Trojan horse
The GMB Union is hardly radical. From its backing of fossil fuel-burning, earthquake-causing fracking to its support for Lisa Nandy in Labour’s 2020 leadership contest – the GMB is as centrist as a union gets. Now, its deal with Deliveroo cements the union’s status as a scabbing, right-wing, bosses’ Trojan horse.
It gleefully announced on Twitter:
BREAKING NEWS :@Deliveroo and GMB Union announce a new joint agreement for Riders.
The accompanying video was a nauseating piece of PR. It stated things like:
Together, Deliveroo and GMB are standing up for what matters to riders.
Eh? If the GMB is working “together” with Deliveroo – then who is the union “standing up for”? What exactly do they think riders care about? It could be they care about inflation that keeps making their slave wages worth even less?
No, of course not. If GMB are in bed with Deliveroo, then they’re saying that the most basic function of a trade union – standing up to bosses – is surplus to their requirements.
Fuming
The IWGB Union, which has brilliantly represented Deliveroo workers for years, was fuming. It said:
Deliveroo… has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds fighting the IWGB in court to prevent collective bargaining with its riders. Deliveroo has always claimed that collective bargaining would come at the cost of flexible working, but this partnership proves that this has always been a lie to scare workers away from unionising. Now as we appeal our collective bargaining case to the Supreme Court, Deliveroo has cynically made this backroom deal with the GMB, which has no record of organising couriers and presents no threat to their exploitative business practices, to protect itself in the event that it loses at the final stage.
So, the GMB has effectively scabbed on another union.
Scabs gon’ scab
The bosses and scabs who organised this dodgy deal with Deliveroo should be ashamed. But they probably won’t be. Because just think: was this even a difficult choice for GMB? No, it’s an easy choice for those shitheels. And, it’s nothing new for a centrist Labour-affiliated union.
because the ideology of the ruling-class has permeated the Labour Movement and corrupted influential sections of the leadership…Trade Union leaders have become… closely tied with Monopoly-Capitalists. And as a corollary of this, some of those Labour officials are now actively preaching capitalist control and planning, and at the same time helping Ministers of a Tory-disguised Government to make regulations against the fundamental interests of the working-class. In this way, the Corporate State is being gradually introduced.
Ring any bells? That’s exactly where we’re at now. It’s time for every decent trade unionist to drop the GMB Union quicker than Keir Starmer can gulp down a curry and a beer. These scabs don’t stand up for workers. They represent no-one but themselves.
Al Jazeera Media Network has condemned the “blatant murder” of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh that violates “international laws and norms”. Video: Al Jazeera
COMMENTARY:By Mazin Qumsiyeh
It is so hard for me to write today — too many tears. The US-supported Israeli occupation forces’ crimes continue daily but some days are harder than others.
Shireen Abu Akleh, wearing a blue helmet and vest with “PRESS” written over it has been assassinated by Israeli occupation forces.
All journalists on the scene explained how Israeli snipers simply targeted journalists. The first three bullets were a miss, then a hit on one male journalist (in the back). Then when Shireen shouted that he was hit, she was killed with a bullet beneath the ear.
Shireen was also a US citizen (she was a Bethlehemite Christian who lived in Jerusalem). But that is no protection.
Rachel Corrie was run over by an Israeli military bulldozer and killed intentionally in Rafah two decades ago and the killers were rewarded. Both killings happened as the world was distracted by other conflicts (Iraq and now Ukraine).
The US government cares nothing about its own citizens because politicians are under the thumb of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Thousands of others were killed and the murderers still roam free and are funded by US taxpayers.
War crimes and crimes against humanity continue daily here. The US government is a partner in crime (just note how the US Ambassador simply hoped for an investigation — why not send the FBI to investigate the murder of countless US citizens). The events and the reaction in Western corporate (“mainstream”) media and Western governments makes us so mad.
Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh … “If you are not outraged to act, you are not human.” Image: AJ screenshot APR
Same day murder of teenager
If you are not outraged to act, you are not human. In the same day today the apartheid forces murdered 15-year-old Thaer Alyazouri as he was returning from school.
As we pointed out before, Palestine remains the fulcrum and the litmus test and it exposes hypocrisy and collusion.
It is actually the achilles heel for Western propaganda. Like with South Africa under apartheid, Western leaders’ empty rhetoric of human rights and democracy is exposed by their direct support for apartheid and murder.
May this intentional murder of a journalist finally be the straw that breaks the back of hypocrisy, Zionism and imperialism.
Millions of people mourn this brave journalist murdered by a fascist racist regime. Millions will rededicate themselves to challenge Western hypocrisy and US-supported Israeli crimes against humanity.
The Nakba atrocities
My 90-year-old mother born before the Nakba told me about the atrocities done since 1948 and before by the terrorist Zionist militias in their quest to colonise Palestine. From the first terrorist attack (and yes, Zionists were first to use terrorism like bombing markets or hijacking airplanes) to the 33 massacres during the 1948-1950 ethnic cleansing of Palestine (Tantura, Deir Yassin etc).
We will not forget nor forgive. Justice is key to peace here and justice begins with ending the nightmare called Zionism and prosecuting its leaders and collaborators and funders in real fair trials.
Only then will Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all others flourish in this land of Palestine. Palestine will then retun to be a multiethnic, multicultural, and multireligious society instead of a racist apartheid state of Israel.
It is inevitable but we can accelerate it with our actions.
We honour Shireen, Rachel and more than 110,000 martyrs by acting as they did: telling truth, challenging evil deeds, working for justice (which is a prerequisite for peace).
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities. He previously served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke, and Yale Universities. He and his wife returned to Palestine in 2008, starting a number of institutions and projects such as a clinical genetics laboratory that serves cancer and other patients. Qumsiyeh has been harassed and arrested for non-violent actions but also received a number of awards for these same actions.
Sadly, the Philippines has sold its soul. Thirty six years ago a People Power revolution ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos after two decades of harsh authoritarian rule.
Yesterday, in spite of a rousing and inspiring Pink Power would-be revolution, the dictator’s only son and namesake “Bongbong” Marcos Jr was elected 17th president of the Philippines.
On the eve of the republic’s most “consequential election” in decades, Filipina journalism professor Sheila Coronel, director of practice at the Columbia University’s Toni Stabile School of Investigative Journalism in New York, said the choice was really simple.
Significantly more than half of the 67.5 million voters have apparently chosen to forget – including a generation that never experienced the brutal crackdowns under martial law in 1972-1981, and doesn’t want to know about it. Yet 70,000 people were jailed, 35,000 were tortured, 4000 were killed and free speech was gagged.
Duterte’s erosion of democracy
After six years of steady erosion of democracy under Duterte, is the country now about to face a fatal blow to accountability and transparency with a kleptomaniac family at the helm?
Dictator Marcos is believed to have accumulated $10 billion while in power and while Philippine authorities have only been able to recover about a third of this though ongoing lawsuits, the family refuses to pay a tax bill totalling $3.9 billion, including penalties.
In many countries the tax violations w
President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines in 1972 … killing democracy and retaining power for 14 years. Image: Getrealphilippines.com
ould have disqualified Marcos Jr from even standing for the presidency.
“A handful of other autocrats were also busy stealing from their people in that era – in Haiti, Nicaragua, Iran – but Marcos stole more and he stole better,” according to The Guardian’s Nick Davies.
“Ultimately, he emerges as a laboratory specimen from the early stages of a contemporary epidemic: the global contagion of corruption that has since spread through Africa and South America, the Middle East and parts of Asia. Marcos was a model of the politician as thief.”
Tensions were running high outside the main office of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Intramuros, Manila, today as protests erupted over alleged voting irregularities and the expected return of the Marcoses to the Malacañang Palace.
The Comelec today affirmed its dismissal of two sets of cases – or a total four appeals – seeking to bar Marcos Jr. from the elections due to his tax conviction in the 1990s.
Ruling after the elections
The ruling was released a day after the elections, when the partial, unofficial tally showed that the former senator was on the brink of winning the presidency.
It wasn’t entirely surprising, as five of the seven-member Comelec bench had earlier voted in favour of the former senator in at least one of the four anti-Marcos petitions that had already been dismissed
Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr … commanding lead in the Philippine presidential elections. Image: Rappler
One further appeal can be made before the Supreme Court.
As mounting allegations of election fraud and cheating greeted the ballot result, groups began filing formal complaints.
One watchdog, Bakla Bantay Boto, said it had received “numerous reports of illegal campaigning, militarised polling precincts, and an absurd [number] of broken vote counting machines (VCMs)” throughout the Philippines.
STATEMENT ON THE MAY 9, 2022 PHILIPPINE ELECTIONS – Fraud, violence, electioneering, and unreliable voting machines have stained the 2022 Philippine national elections#BaklaBantayBoto2022pic.twitter.com/vWqhmVgwii
— Bakla Bantay Boto (@baklabantayboto) May 9, 2022
“Intensified violence has also marked today’s election. Poll watchers have been tragically killed in Buluan, Maguindanao and Binidayan, Lanao del Sur, while an explosive was detonated in a voting centre in Kobacan, Cotabato.
“The violent red-tagging of several candidates and party lists [was] also in full force, with text blasts to constituents and posters posted within polling precincts, insinuating that they are linked to the CPP-NPA-NDFP [Communist Party of the Philippines and allies].”
Social media disinformation
Explaining the polling in the face of a massive social media disinformation campaign by Marcos supporters, Rappler’s livestream anchor Bea Cupin noted how the Duterte administration had denied a renewal of a franchise for ABS-CBN, the largest and most influential free-to-air television station two years ago.
This act denied millions of Filipinos access to accurate and unbiased news coverage. Rappler itself and its Nobel Peace laureate chief executive Maria Ressa, were also under constant legal attack and the target of social media trolls.
A BBC report interviewed a typical professional troll who managed hundreds of Facebook pages and fake profiles for his clients, saying his customers for fake stories “included governors, congressmen and mayors.”
Presidential candidate Leni Robredo … only woman candidate and the target of Filipino trolls. Image: DR/APR
Meta — owners of Facebook — reported that its Philippines subsidiary had removed many networks that were attempting to manipulate people and media. They were believed to have included a cluster of more than 400 accounts, pages, and groups that were violated the platform’s codes of conduct.
Pink Power candidate human rights lawyer Leni Robredo, who defeated Marcos for the vice-presidency in the last election in 2016, and who was a target for many of the troll attacks, said: “Lies repeated again and again become the truth.”
Academics have warned the risks that the country is taking in not heeding warnings of the past about the Marcos family. Dr Aries Arugay, an associate professor of the University of Philippines, reflects: “We just don’t jail our politicians or make them accountable … we don’t punish them, unlike South Korean presidents.”
As Winston Churchill famously said in 1948: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
The supreme court ruling to overturn Roe vs Wade in the US has sparked enormous global discussion about women’s bodily autonomy and what should be an indisputable right to decided what happens with that body.
Abortion is a common and essential health service roughly 88,000 abortions occur in Australia every year; even with a majority of voters self-identifying as “pro-choice” it took until 2021 for abortion to be legal in all states and territories and is still difficult to access for a majority of women.
There is valid concern that if the Roe v Wade legislation is overturned it will embolden the religious right in western culture who want women’s bodies controlled.
In 2018 I was pregnant, my doctor said to me and my husband: “Your HCG levels are rising but not enough, we aren’t sure if the baby will be OK. I want to prepare you that there might be some tough choices coming up.”
A bit of backstory. My mental health at that time was fragile; a survivor of domestic abuse, I lost a baby in 2013 the recovery was slow. Then in 2016, I gave birth to a beautiful daughter. My pregnancy with her was not easy, it never is for women after a loss. After she was born, she had health complications, this led to a crushing post-natal depression; a fog that was only starting to lift.
So, in 2018 when I found myself pregnant once again, the pressure of knowing this new pregnancy wasn’t going well was overwhelming. I was unable to work or fully participate in family life; a zombie trying to stay hopeful. My traumatised brain would not let me engage with what was happening with my body to protect itself.
I lost this baby – it wasn’t a choice. It was a necessity.
It seems unbelievable that in 2022 this discussion is taking place. The standard argument on the pro-life side is that children can be adopted or fostered. This is an inherently flawed discussion as it is not a pregnant person’s responsibility or moral obligation to fulfil someone else’s dream of having children. Currently in the United States there are roughly 440,000 children in the foster care – this system is complex to navigate. Research shows it can be an extremely damaging service that can lead to longer term complications in mental health with 25% percent of former foster care children reporting CPTSD in later life. In a country that openly rejects universal health care, with specialised mental health treatments unattainable to those who need them, how are people supposed to change their situation?
Betsy who recently adopted her sons from foster care said this
There is a worrying trend in western society to apply a religious lens to public policy – we’ve seen examples of this with the current NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet voting against the decriminalisation of abortion, announcing in 2019 he felt those who supported the bill would be on the “wrong side of history”.
To be clear, all global research indicates making abortion illegal and inaccessible, does not stop abortion.
Women who have their reproductive rights legislated risk being enslaved by the state – public policy dictating what their bodies are to be used for. In 1973 Australia abolished military conscription by law; this is the only similar circumstance that can be compared for men. In 1985 Margaret Atwood wrote the dystopian novel the “Handmaid’s Tale” asked the question: If women are fulfilling a ‘need of the state,’ will the state be paying for all the pregnancy costs, including the cost of raising a child? The state of social services in Australia would assure us this is not case.
My experience was a personal choice; I can never make that choice for another person. No one can, and nor should they want to. Pro-choice/ Pro-life. I’m actually Pro Woman.
“We’re forced to pick up the crumbs from the table of the landowners,” Guy Shrubsole tells me, as we hike along a forestry track. He continues:
We’re expected to be grateful for having access to just 8% of England, to be grateful for the little permissive footpath that we’re just walking on, at the permission of the landowner.
The land we’re trespassing on is off-limits to the public. It’s used as both a forestry plantation and a pheasant shoot. This trespass is part of a wider movement to campaign for our right to roam in England, to claim back our rights to walk, play, sleep and forage on our land.
Demonising the working class
When campaigning for our right to roam, it’s essential to acknowledge that access to nature is very much a class issue. This is shockingly apparent as we trespass on this particular piece of land, owned by one of the country’s richest men, who’s using it as a playground to shoot game birds.
It is, of course, working class people, as well as Black people and people of colour (BPOC), who have the least access to nature. In 2020, as the pandemic hit the country and international travel was banned, many of us took holidays in beautiful parts of England to give us a break from the cooped-up cities. One of the places that people travelled to was Dartmoor, the only area in England where we’re permitted to camp freely. But we were demonised by both privileged people and the mainstream media.
Of course, with the sudden influx of outsiders, there was outrage about tourists littering and ruining the moorland. News about tents being left on the moor made national headlines. Meanwhile, the Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) put a temporary ban on camping. Instead of appreciating that the pandemic was an exceptional period in history, and instead of posing the obvious question as to why there aren’t more spots where we can freely camp to take pressure off Dartmoor, the DNPA began a consultation on new by-laws that would restrict public camping for good.
This nationwide demonisation of outsiders littering our beautiful moorland does, of course, play right into the land-owning elite’s hands. It suits them to portray us as incapable of looking after nature. If enough people believe that, then they won’t have to truly consider giving us the right to roam our countryside. They can go on as normal, misusing vast swathes of land for their game-bird and stag-shooting bloodsports. And they can continue the disgraceful practice of burning peat moors for grouse shooting, releasing vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere in the name of tradition.
However, as we trespass the Duke of Somerset’s pheasant-shooting land, it’s crystal clear to all of us that it is the ruling class that’s trashing the land.
Shrubsole tells me:
People often say, ‘you can’t have more people in the countryside. They’ll just trash it. They’ll create lots of litter and cause lots of damage.’ Now, often it is the landowners who are the ones causing the greatest damage to the countryside.
He continues:
Everybody hates litter, but let’s look at the bigger picture here. The Lulworth Estate objected to – as he called it – ‘culturally diverse’ people coming to his land [during the pandemic]. That’s what he said. There was, rightly, fury about that, because of the casual racism, saying ‘I don’t want you townies coming here, you don’t know how to behave.’ But look at how much damage is being caused by the ecosystem here at this pheasant shoot by this landowner, and by landowners like him across the countryside, and that never gets questioned.
Bloody carcasses
On a previous trespass in Brighton last year, Shrubsole told me about photos published in the press of piles of pheasant carcasses being thrown away after shoots. And sure enough, right next to where we are stood, there’s a small quarry, hidden by brambles, that’s being used as a mass grave for dead pheasants. As well as the bloody carcasses, there’s wire fencing that’s been discarded. And there’s even an old washing machine that’s been thrown in there. Shrubsole says:
This is the hidden side of the countryside. Behind the ‘keep out’ signs and the barbed wire fences this is the damage that’s going on, and yet it’s the public who get blamed for littering. We really need to draw back the curtain on that and say that it’s time for all of us to feel welcome in the countryside, and it’s time for us to reconnect to the nature that we’ve been cut off from for so long.
Shrubsole tells me that 50 million pheasants are released into the British countryside every year. And the weight of these birds is more than the biomass of all of the wild birds in Britain put together. It’s an unregulated act by those so privileged that they can do whatever they like to the land – and to wildlife – and not bear any consequences. As we walk together, we pass a giant grain-feed storage bin. With international news headlines reporting a European grain shortage, and with reports of the subsequent food poverty that’s likely to hit the UK, the irony isn’t lost on us.
Shrubsole says:
There’s no regulation over pheasant shooting. You try and re-release a beaver into the countryside, which was here for thousands of years before we killed it off: the amount of paperwork that re-wilders have to go through to reintroduce beavers is insane. And you don’t have to do anything if you want to release thousands of pheasants into your massive shooting estate.
I ask Shrubsole if he thinks the right to roam is enough, or whether he feels that we should aim bigger. He tells me that the campaign is the “leading edge” in the fight for land reform, because it engages a lot of people. He says:
I would like there to be far more awareness of who owns land. Then there’s more that needs to be done to help resolve the housing crisis, and create affordable housing, tenancy, security. There needs to be far more done about land value tax and about the ridiculous farce of farm subsidies being paid out to land owners according to how much land they own, and instead actually being obliged to do something in return for that money if they’re going to get it. And there also needs to be the community right-to-buy as they have in Scotland. So yes, there’s lots more that needs to be done.
Of course, the Tory government is unlikely to willingly hand over this most basic of rights: the right to roam our land. It continues to take away our civil liberties right under our noses, bringing in countless new racist and classist laws. On 28 April, the repressive Police Bill was finally passed. The new act will disproportionately target Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, criminalising anyone living in a vehicle or caravan. And on 20 April, the government announced that it had quashed a review into the right to roam in England and is refusing to publish any results.
However, the right to roam campaign is gathering momentum fast, and more and more people are joining the struggle. As a working class person, I urge you to join us on the next mass trespass. I urge you to be an ally not only to the country’s least wealthy but to BPOC people, too, as we aim to decolonise the countryside of its middle- and upper-class whiteness.
This story originally appeared in openDemocracy on May 6, 2022. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
As Russia continues to inflict untold suffering and devastation in Ukraine, many around the world are profiting amid the horrific bloodshed.
Amid continuing war in Ukraine, escalating tensions between Russia and the West, a cost-of-living crisis in Europe and the wider world, and ongoing global warming, investors are backing those firms that directly benefit from geopolitical conflict, commodity market instability, and our continued dependency on fossil fuels.
Depressingly, given the spiraling climate crisis, fossil fuel firms—and their investors—are the biggest winners of the war, reaping the benefits of surging energy prices and new governmental measures to expand oil production.
Coal companies and offshore drilling services have done the best out of the geopolitical crisis, both registering an astonishing 42% increase in their market value.
But who else is cashing in on the emerging war economy? To determine this, we must look closer at the market capitalisation data, which reveals investors’ expectations about different firms’ earnings capacities.
The more the market value of a firm rises, the higher it ascends in the overall corporate hierarchy. With this in mind, the graph below shows the 20 corporate sectors that have enjoyed the largest increase in company market value—outperforming 153 others—since the Russian invasion began on 24 February.
Aside from those involved in the extraction, processing and distribution of fossil fuels—which, remarkably, directly relate to seven of the 20 highest performing sectors—arms manufacturers are, predictably, the other major beneficiaries.
Such firms have seen a 15% increase in their market value due to the heightened demand for military hardware and the commitment by NATO governments to expand military spending.
Agricultural commodity traders have also seen 10% growth in market capitalisation in the past two months, profiting hugely from the market instability and rising commodity prices brought about by the conflict.
This has led critics to argue that, in many ways, these traders actually promote the disruption in food systems that they then benefit from.
The situation is decidedly gloomy. Amid continuing war in Ukraine, escalating tensions between Russia and the West, a cost-of-living crisis in Europe and the wider world, and ongoing global warming, investors are backing those firms that directly benefit from geopolitical conflict, commodity market instability, and our continued dependency on fossil fuels.
There are, however, some glimmers of hope. Alternative fuels companies—which operate in areas ranging from the installation of charging points for electric vehicles to the production of bioenergy and the manufacture of hydrogen fuel cells—have seen their market value grow by 38%.
Companies engaged in generating electricity from renewable sources, such as wind and solar power, have also enjoyed a 15% rise.
Governments must play a larger role in directly investing in renewables, rather than relying on equity markets that prioritise short-term profits above all else.
This indicates that investors are generally willing to back renewable energy in the context of its increasing share of the overall energy mix, even as they persist in supporting fossil fuel firms profiting from the continued growth in the volume of hydrocarbons consumed worldwide.
But even if the green energy firms had been the big winners of the past two months, this would not be an unalloyed good.
The firms have environmental and social costs, such as the heavy deforestation in South East Asia to meet the increased demand for palm oil from the biodiesel sector. Or the vast quantities of cobalt—a key component of the batteries that store renewable energy and power electric cars—that are mined in highly exploitative and ecologically destructive conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Given these concerns, governments must play a larger role in directly investing in renewables, rather than relying on equity markets that prioritise short-term profits above all else. In doing so, they must also enforce standards on materials procurement and labour conditions in renewable energy supply chains. Equally, they should focus on curtailing fossil fuel extraction rather than enabling its expansion.
Overall, while the current actions of equity investors offer a grim augury for the future, it is ultimately governmental action that will determine whether we move on a path towards justice and ecological restoration.
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