A series of unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) was among a plethora of new equipment on show in China’s 2025 Victory Day parade, held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing on 3 September. While both the GJ-11 Sharp Sword stealthy flying-wing and GJ-2 Wing Loong medium-altitude, long-endurance surveillance-strike UCAVs are known types, four new air combat drones […]
Malaysia is set to receive its first pair of Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile (NSM) launchers in August, as its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) programme finally gains traction after years of delays. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim told the Malaysian parliament that 48 NSMs would be delivered by the end of 2025, as the Southeast Asian nation […]
President Trump is pushing for a major redrawing of Texas’s congressional districts to favor Republicans and shape the outcome of future elections, including next year’s midterms. Voting rights expert Ari Berman says this “unprecedented” Republican gerrymandering scheme manipulates an already-gerrymandered map that “limits democratic representation. It already limits representation for communities of color, and now that would be much worse.” The map was released this week, and a hearing is underway today as Republicans try to ram it through.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Today the Trump administration released an “AI Action Plan,” which outlines its priorities related to the advancement of so-called “artificial intelligence” and the industries supporting it – including massive energy- and water-intensive data centers. Among other things, Trump’s plan seeks to dismantle existing environmental and land use rules that it views as a hindrance to the unfettered growth of these industries.
Yet recent research from Food & Water Watch details the immense and potentially catastrophic impact on water and energy resources an unfettered AI industry could have on communities across the country – especially those in the West that are already suffering through a decade or more of extreme drought. Energy demand from AI servers and data centers in the U.S. is expected to increase up to threefold between 2023 and 2028. Among the report’s findings, by 2028 AI in the United States could consume:
720 billion gallons of water annually just to cool AI servers — equal to more than 1 million Olympic-size swimming pools, or enough water to meet the indoor needs of 18.5 million American households.
300 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy annually — enough electricity to power over 28 million American households.
Meanwhile:
As of 2024, ChatGPT used over half a million kilowatts of electricity each day, equivalent to the daily power use of 180,000 U.S. households.
One Meta-owned data center consumes as much power as 7 million laptops running for eight hours each day.
In Santa Clara Ca., 50 data centers account for 60 percent of the city’s electricity use, while receiving discounted rates on electricity compared to residential rates.
In response, Food & Water Watch’s managing director of policy and litigation, Mitch Jones, made the following statement:
“At its core, President Trump’s AI agenda is nothing more than a thinly-veiled invitation for the fossil fuel and corporate water industries to ramp up their exploitation of our environment and natural resources – all at the expense of everyday people. In communities across the country we are already seeing precious water and energy supplies being diverted to massive data centers, while homes and small businesses are paying ballooning costs for their regular utility needs.
“The expanding data center industry is being leveraged as an excuse to prolong the life of filthy, climate-killing fossil fuel power and dangerous nuclear plants, and even build new ones.
“America’s technological advancements must not come at the expense of everyday families’ water, energy and economic security – plain and simple.”
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.
The official death toll in Gaza has topped 58,000, with Israeli forces continuing to shoot at Palestinians seeking aid and talks over a ceasefire agreement stalled in Doha. This morning’s injured were taken to Nasser Hospital, the largest functioning hospital in Gaza, facing fuel shortages and a widening Israeli offensive in the area. Democracy Now! spoke with Dr. Tarek Loubani, an emergency room medical doctor who has been volunteering in Nasser Hospital in Gaza since June, live from Gaza.
“Every day seems to be a new exercise in the depths of human depravity in terms of targeting men, boys, women and children, especially in terms of the youngest children,” says Loubani. “I think every doctor who operates and works in Palestine will tell you that that’s the most jarring, the most terrible part of our job, is just the war on children on every level.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
The clock is ticking on the Colorado River. The seven states that use its water are nearing a 2026 deadline to come up with new rules for sharing its shrinking supplies. After more than a year of deadlock, there are rumblings of a new plan, but it’s far from final.
So what happens if the states can’t agree before that deadline?
There’s no roadmap for exactly what would happen next, but policy experts and former officials can give us some ideas. It would likely be complicated, messy and involve big lawsuits.
“I think people are looking for a concise answer here,” said Brenda Burman, former commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. “But there isn’t a concise answer.”
While the details of that hypothetical future are fuzzy, experts generally agree on one thing: the states should do everything they can to avoid missing that deadline and heading into uncharted territory.
“It’s our job to make sure that we are setting the path for the next 20 or 30 years of stability,” said Burman, who now manages the Central Arizona Project. “And if we fail in that job, shame on us.”
Rail tracks, emerge above the surface of Lake Powell on November 2, 2022. They are were part of a system to cart away rock during the construction of Glen Canyon Dam in the 1950s and 60s, and were dry again thanks to rapidly-dropping levels in Lake Powell.
Alex Hager / KUNC
Former federal officials can give some of the best insight into what might happen without a state deal, because federal agencies would likely step in to make sure reservoirs and dams stay functional. The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water infrastructure across the West, and its parent agency, the Department of the Interior, would become major power players.
Falling back to a ‘nightmare scenario’
For more than a century, the Colorado River has been governed by a legal agreement called the Colorado River Compact. It was signed in 1922, when the river — and the West — looked a lot different. Over the years, policymakers have added a patchwork of temporary rules to adapt to modern times.
In this century, climate change has driven the need to adapt. The river has been in a megadrought that goes back to 2000. With less water in the river, states have had to cut back on demand, even though the compact promises more water to users than the river itself could ever provide naturally. Drought conditions have become the new normal over the past two decades, and temporary rules that were implemented to rein in water demand aren’t keeping up with the pace of drying.
The current rules for managing water were first implemented in 2007. They were slightly modified in 2012 and then expanded in 2019. All of those rules are set to expire in 2026. That expiration is the reason states are in a pinch to draw up new rules right now.
The absolute last-chance deadline to implement new guidelines is October 1, 2026. If the states fail to submit a plan for managing water by then, the Colorado River would fall back to management rules from the 1970s.
Brenda Burman, then commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, speaks at a conference in Las Vegas in December 2019.
Alex Hager / KUNC
Experts say those rules, known as the Long Range Operating Criteria, or LROC, are “woefully insufficient” to deal with today’s drier, smaller river.
“That’s a nightmare scenario,” said Anne Castle. “And I don’t think that the states or the federal government would allow that to happen.”
Castle, a longtime water lawyer who served as assistant secretary for water and science at the Interior Department, said releasing water in accordance with those 1970s rules would quickly drain the nation’s largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. That would jeopardize hydropower generation at major dams and could make it impossible to pass water from one side of those dams to the people and businesses downstream.
Interior, which would presumably prefer to avoid failure at the dams it runs — Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam — would likely get involved to stop reservoirs from losing their water. In the absence of guidance from the states, the Secretary of Interior could use his authority as the river’s “water master,” a role that gives him some legal power to make decisions about who gets how much water.
And this administration has already made it clear that the current chief — Doug Burgum — would take advantage of that position. Scott Cameron, one of the highest ranking Colorado River officials in the Trump Administration, said as much to a conference of water experts gathered in Colorado in early June.
“Secretary Burgum is prepared to exercise his responsibility as water master,” Cameron said. “He’s not looking forward to that, but in the absence of a seven state agreement, he will do it.”
Federal action and likely lawsuits
Say the Interior Secretary becomes water master and has to pull some levers on the Colorado River. The next big question is, which levers would he pull?
His first option is the path of least resistance — sticking with those 1970s rules. They would send a lot of water from the top half of the river to the bottom. So the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico might want to take Interior to court.
“No one could possibly come up with a set of rules that pleases everyone,” Castle said. “And [Interior will] do what they think they have the authority to do. But we all know that lawyers may disagree.”
His second option is a little more involved, but would also likely result in a lawsuit. There’s a catch with Interior’s power on the Colorado River. It is mostly able to make changes in the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada.
If Interior wanted to act boldly and force cutbacks to water use, cuts would likely hit those states disproportionately.
A carving on the Hoover Dam shows one of the Bureau of Reclamation’s responsibilities, along with irrigation, power, and others.
Alex Hager / KUNC
“In either situation,” said Mike Connor, another former Reclamation commissioner. “Somebody is going to object and say, ‘You’re not acting consistent with the law’ and sue the Secretary to say ‘You made a bad decision.’”
Connor, who served from 2009 to 2014, said Interior’s authority has never been specifically defined, but it mostly comes from the 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act. That legislation created Hoover Dam, which creates Lake Mead, and the All-American Canal, which supplies water to California’s Imperial Valley. That gives the federal government some control of the nation’s largest reservoir and the water supply for the Imperial Irrigation District, the river’s single largest water user.
There are a few other options besides Interior’s two paths, but they’re much harder to predict.
While states hold most of the planning power on the Colorado River, other big entities could try to go around them. For example, the water department in a major city, or a large farm group could use their big budgets and legal teams to influence lawmakers and get a form of Colorado River rules passed by the U.S. Congress.
States could also ask for an extension, kicking the can down the road by another year or two. The extended deadline could give them more time to coalesce around new rules, but policy experts say states should try to avoid that and agree on rules that are urgently needed to manage the shrinking river.
“That sort of takes the foot off the accelerator and we haven’t really done anything,” Castle said.
Will the states agree before the deadline?
There is at least some reason to believe the states will steer the Colorado River away from collapse or court. For all of their disagreements, state water negotiators do seem to be on the same page about one thing: keeping their situation out of the Supreme Court.
Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, told KUNC in February that it would be “folly” to take their negotiations to court.
“We are the ones who should really shape the outcome here,” she said. “We’re the experts. We’re the water managers. We understand the system. Why would we want to relinquish that control and that responsibility?”
States appear to be moving closer to implementing new Colorado River rules without any messy court battles. Early details of a proposal to distribute water cutbacks are emerging, and it appears that it could push states long mired in disagreement toward consensus.
Water policymakers from (left to right) Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming speak on a panel at the Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas on December 5, 2024.
Alex Hager / KUNC
Instead of those states leaning on old rules that don’t account for climate change, they’re proposing a new system that divides the river based on how much water is in it today.
State leaders were quick to emphasize that the plan is in its early stages, but cast it as a way to agree before the 2026 deadline.
“I was very pessimistic that we were on a path towards litigation,” said Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s top water negotiator. “I’m more optimistic now that we can avoid that path if we can make this work.”
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC and supported by the Walton Family Foundation.
This morning, despite widespread public opposition to the many clear dangers of the bill, House Republicans are expected to cast the final vote to pass Donald Trump’s reckless budget reconciliation package that will endanger public health, kill clean energy jobs and their economic benefits, and raise costs for working families and small businesses—all to hand big tax breaks to billionaires and corporate polluters.
The final text—the product of a legislative process coordinated by Republicans that seemed designed to do the most harm possible to working families—would expand on- and off-shore drilling, end nearly all clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, gut fuel efficiency standards for cars, stifle industrial innovation, and give massive handouts to fossil fuel companies and polluters.
Several studies of the legislation found that termination of the clean energy tax credits repealed in this bill could raise the average American family’s energy bills by as much as $400 per year by 2035. Additional analyses released earlier this week by the non-partisan CBO estimates that the bill will add $3.4 trillion in debt and result in more than 12 million Americans losing their health care coverage.
In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous released the following statement:
“This is a sad and scary day for all who work to build up our communities, care for our friends and neighbors, and wish to leave this planet in a better place for future generations. Instead of working to make life better for American families and communities, what Donald Trump and his loyalists in Congress have delivered today will mean higher energy costs for working families and small businesses, the end of life-saving health care that millions rely on, and ceding the race to build the clean energy economy of tomorrow to China. Trump and Congressional Republicans have advanced the most anti-environment, anti-job, and anti-American bill in history. The Sierra Club will not forget it. America will not forget it.”
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.
As Israeli warplanes continue to pummel Tehran and other parts of the country, President Trump has given mixed messages on whether the U.S. will join Israel’s war on Iran. Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered a message on Thursday that Trump will decide on direct U.S. involvement in the next two weeks. Leavitt delivered the message shortly after Trump met with his former advisor Steve Bannon who has publicly warned against war with Iran. The U.S. is reportedly considering dropping “bunker buster” bombs on underground Iranian nuclear facilities. “It’s reminiscent of the beginning of the Iraq War, when they said it’s going to be a cakewalk,” says William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
A U.S.-based Iranian human rights group reports that the Israeli attacks have killed at least 639 people in Iran, while Iran’s retaliatory strikes in Israel have killed an estimated two dozen.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
BANGKOK – The Trump administration plan to allow mining of deep sea metals in the Pacific Ocean would unequivocally violate international law, experts said, making any attempt to sell the minerals – used in batteries, weapons and smartphones – open to challenge by other nations.
President Donald Trump last month signed an executive order to speed development of the contentious deep sea mining industry, including in off-limits international waters governed by a treaty most nations are signatory to. The order said action is needed to “counter China’s growing influence over seabed mineral resources.”
Unilateral action on deep sea mining by the U.S., legal experts said, also has the potential to weaken its legitimacy in attempting to enforce international law generally, including freedom of navigation in flashpoint waters such as the South China Sea or in combating illegal fishing.
“It is hazardous for the U.S. to throw out the rule book,” said Duncan Currie, an international lawyer, who advises conservation groups and testified to Congress last month on the risks of deep sea mining.
Foreshadowing the executive order, Nasdaq-traded The Metals Company, or TMC, which has been at the forefront of ambitions to exploit the seabed, in March applied for exploration and mining permits under the U.S. umbrella for areas in the Pacific Ocean.
It is attempting to bypass the International Seabed Authority, or ISA, a U.N. organization mandated to set rules by consensus for deep sea mining in international waters. Under ISA jurisdiction, TMC has worked with Tonga and Nauru to explore their allocated areas in a vast swath of the Pacific, but now says the ISA has failed by not agreeing rules after several decades of effort.
The Metals Company CEO Gerard Barron (right) congratulates Leticia Carvalho on her election as International Seabed Authority secretary-general in Kingston, Jamaica, Aug. 2, 2024.(Stephen Wright/RFA)
Critics of the nascent industry say the copper, cobalt, manganese and nickel found in the potato-sized nodules that carpet parts of the seafloor is already abundant on land. They warn that hoovering the nodules up from depths of several kilometers will cause irreparable damage to an ocean environment still poorly understood by science.
Amid a general retreat by large corporations from commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, deep sea mining companies have recently emphasized defense uses and security of mineral supply. Previously the nodules were touted as a source of metals needed for green technologies, such as electric vehicles, that would reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
According to Currie’s congressional testimony, the arguments for deep sea mining rest on fallacies. China’s dominance in the cobalt and nickel markets is due to it processing those minerals imported from Congo and Indonesia and deep sea mining would not significantly change that equation. Also a growing proportion of batteries in electric vehicles no longer rely on cobalt and nickel
“TMC promised the people of Nauru jobs and prosperity,” said Shiva Gounden, head of Greenpeace’s Pacific chapter. “But it has taken the first chance it got to turn its back on Nauru and it will do the same to any other Pacific country,” Gounden said in a statement.
Gerard Barron, TMC‘s chief executive, said the company’s partnerships with Tonga and Nauru remain “rock solid.”
“They too have been let down by the lack of performance at the ISA,” he told Radio Free Asia.
The case made by Barron and the Trump administration is that deep sea mining is a legitimate freedom in waters beyond national jurisdiction – an idea that has become antiquated as international law evolved over decades.
The U.S. has not ratified the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which governs international waters and also established the seabed authority, but in practice recognizes and attempts to enforce its principles.
The U.S. in 1970 also formally recognized that a law of the sea treaty accepted by most countries would establish the rules even for states not a party to it.
“For the last thirty years, the United States has engaged in acts that uphold the object and purpose” of the law of the sea treaty, said Coalter G. Lathrop, director of international law firm Sovereign Geographic, in a blog post this month for the European Journal of International Law.
Even so, the Trump executive order appears to be a new lease on life for The Metals Company.
At the end of March, it had only US$2.3 million cash in the bank and short-term debt of US$10 million. This week it announced a sale of shares in the company that will raise about US$37 million, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. TMC said the money would keep it afloat until it gets a U.S. license for commercial mining.
Its U.S. application has been criticized by France, China and other countries. A coalition of Pacific island civil society organizations called for TMC to be blacklisted by the seabed authority and for Nauru and Tonga to end their agreements with the company.
Deep sea mining is depicted in a mural at the International Seabed Authority office in Kingston, Jamaica, July 30, 2024.(Stephen Wright/RFA)
Currie said the U.N. treaty presents numerous obstacles to TMC realizing its ambitions.
“This casts doubt on whether any metals brought up by TMC under a unilateral permit could be sold,” he told Radio Free Asia.
TMC is a Canadian company while Allseas, the company that owns the ship and mining equipment used by TMC, is Swiss. Both countries, Currie told RFA, have obligations under the U.N. treaty to ensure their nationals don’t participate in breaches of it.
TMC also has an agreement for metals processing with a company based in another treaty signatory nation – Japan.
TMC‘s prospectus for its share sale acknowledges the possibility of legal consequences if it gets a U.S.-issued mining permit.
The ISA and many nations that are signatories to the law of the sea treaty “are likely to regard such a permit as a violation of international law,” it said.
This could “affect international perceptions of the project and could have implications for logistics, processing and market access” including legal challenges in the court systems of treaty member nations.
Attempting a unilateral route to mine the international seabed risks severe geopolitical repercussions “and it could be U.S. interests that get burnt,” said Greenpeace deep sea mining campaigner Louisa Casson.
“Going against the Law of the Sea could trigger impacts far beyond deep sea mining – for maritime boundaries, freedom of navigation and other security interests,” she told RFA.
Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Stephen Wright for RFA.
Today, House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee released the text of their tax bill, which would provide massive tax giveaways to billionaires and big corporations. The Republicans’ bill would be paid for by making massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition for children, and other vital programs. In response, Americans for Tax Fairness, released a new analysis unpacking the committee’s plans for the Trump tax bill and sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to repeal this deeply harmful bill.
“The House GOP has revealed in broad daylight that their tax bill is a clear scam—one that hands out massive giveaways to their billionaire and corporate donors off the backs of their constituents with a price tag of over $5 trillion,” said David Kass, ATF Executive Director. “The plan’s massive cuts to vital programs like Medicaid and SNAP will drive up healthcare and food prices for millions of workers and families, while billionaires pocket the money and the national debt soars. Working and middle-class families—and future generations—shouldn’t have to pay higher prices simply to enrich billionaire elites and the politicians in their pocket.”
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.
Australia’s plan to recruit from Papua New Guinea for its Defence Force raises “major ethical concerns”, according to the Australia Defence Association, while another expert thinks it is broadly a good idea.
The two nations are set to begin negotiating a new defence treaty that is expected to see Papua New Guineans join the Australian Defence Force (ADF).
Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James believes “it’s an idiot idea” if there is no pathway to citizenship for Papua New Guineans who serve in the ADF
“You can’t expect other people to defend your country if you’re not willing to do it and until this scheme actually addresses this in any detail, we’re not going to know whether it’s an idiot idea or it’s something that might be workable in the long run.”
However, an expert associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College, Jennifer Parker, believes it is a good idea.
“Australia having a closer relationship with Papua New Guinea through that cross pollination of people going and working in each other’s defence forces, that’s incredibly positive.”
Parker said recruiting from the Pacific has been an ongoing conversation, but the exact nature of what the recruitment might look like is unknown, including whether there is a pathway to citizenship or if there would be a separate PNG unit within the ADF.
Extreme scenario
When asked whether it was ethical for people from PNG to fight Australia’s wars, Parker said that would be an extreme scenario.
“We’re not talking about conscripting people from other countries or anything like that. We’re talking about offering the opportunity for people, if they choose to join,” she said.
“There are many defence forces around the world where people choose, people who are born in other countries, choose to join.”
However, James disagrees.
“Whether they’re volunteers or whether they’re conscripted, you’re still expecting foreigners to defend your society and with no link to that society.”
Both Parker and James brought up concerns surrounding brain drain.
James said in Timor-Leste, in the early 2000s, many New Zealanders in the army infantry who were serving alongside Australia joined the Australian Army, attracted by the higher pay, which was not in the interest of New Zealand or Australia in the long run.
Care needed
“You’ve got to be real careful that you don’t ruin the Papua New Guinea Defence Force by making it too easy for Papua New Guineans to serve in the Australian Defence Force.”
Parker said the policy needed to be crafted very clearly in conjunction with Papua New Guinea to make sure it strengthened the two nations relationship, not undermined it.
Australia aims to grow the number of ADF uniformed personnel to 80,000 by 2040. However, it is not on track to meet that target.
Parker said she did not think Australia was trying to fill the shortfall.
“There are a couple of challenges in the recruitment issues for the Australian Defence Force.
“But I don’t think the scoping of recruiting people from Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, if it indeed goes ahead, is about addressing recruitment for the Australian Defence Force.
“I think it’s about increasing closer security ties between Papua New Guinea, the Pacific Islands, and Australia.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Organizers across the United States are planning a massive day of May Day protests against the Trump administration. Organizers say that they have broad support from groups targeted by the administration, including immigrants, federal workers and more. “Instead of attacking only one community … they are attacking everybody at the same time, and that enabled us to gather a really broad coalition,” says Jorge Mújica, strategic organizer for Arise Chicago.
In New York, organizers are calling on people to march alongside them in Foley Square. “We need to fight this corporate takeover,” says Nisha Tabassum, lead organizer for worker issues at Make the Road New York. “We are the many; they are the few.”
Los Angeles organizers are expecting hundreds of thousands of protesters to join them in opposition to Trump’s policies. “We are taking our power back,” says Georgia Flowers Lee, National Education Association vice president for United Teachers Los Angeles.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
In their legal submission, they say “the proscription has hindered the group’s ability to broker a political solution to the conflict, stifled conversations in securing a long-term political settlement, criminalised ordinary Palestinians residing in Gaza, and undermined the possibility of a peaceful settlement”.
They also argue that being branded terrorists infringes fundamental rights and has a disproportionate impact on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and open debate and political expression, which makes sensible journalism and public discourse on Israel’s actions in Palestine impossible.
Hamas’s submission also points out that Britain’s Terrorism Act “covers all groups and organisations around the world that use violence to achieve political objectives, including the Israeli armed forces, the Ukrainian Army and, indeed, the British armed forces”.
And it claims proscription obstructs humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip because any form of assistance can be labelled “terrorism” if it is “seen as supporting a group that has been labelled a terrorist organisation”.
On the other hand, proscribing Hamas was a clever move because it makes it so much easier for Israel’s stooges at Westminster to avoid having to explain that regime’s far worse war crimes and crimes against humanity. We have to thank Priti Patel who, while International Development Secretary, was so taken-in by Zionist claptrap and so adoring of Israel that, in 2017, she reportedly had around a dozen meetings with Israeli politicians and organisations during a family holiday in Israel without telling the Foreign Office, her civil servants or her boss Theresa May, and without government officials present. This was not only a middle finger to the Ministerial Code of Conduct but a gross breach of security.
She was also said to have tried persuading colleagues to send British taxpayers’ money as aid for an Israeli forces project in the Golan Heights…. and she actually visited the Golan. As everyone and his dog knows, the Golan Heights is Syrian territory stolen in 1967 by the Israelis who have illegally occupied it ever since. Touring it with the thieving occupation army was another serious diplomatic blunder.
Patel’s meetings are said to have been arranged by Lord Polak, an official of the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the 1980s who joined the Conservative Friends of Israel in 1989, and served as its director for 26 years until appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for political service and made a life peer. It’s difficult to see what political service Polak performed for anyone other than the Israeli regime.
Patel was forced to resign but later restored to favour and promoted to Home Secretary. She proscribed Hamas’s political wing in 2021 with hardly a murmur of opposition. There seemed no legitimate reason for doing so unless it was part of the UK/US/Israel axis aim to bring about coercive regime change. But would that be legal? Are the Palestinians to be denied self-determination and the right to choose their own government? Well, yes, so it seems.
What’s to fear from Hamas?
No-one in the UK Government has properly explained, probably because no-one has bothered to sit down and shoot the breeze with them. Instead they eagerly welcome Netanyahu and his thugs with red-carpet hugs, handshakes and vows of affection and endless co-operation, and soak up the nonsense they talk.
And has anyone at Westminster bothered to read Hamas’s 2017 Charter? If so, did they notice Sections 16 and 20? They are reasonably in tune with international law while the Israeli government pursues policies that definitely are not.
Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.
Under international law the correct way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is (and always has been) by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and theft of Palestinian resources.
JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace), who claim to be the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, said of the genocide in Gaza: “We’re organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of US Jews into solidarity with Palestinian freedom struggle.” Here’s an extract from their no-nonsense statement on the hostilities in Palestine.
“The Israeli government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence. Reality is shaped by when you start the clock.
For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, unrelenting siege and daily humiliation. In recent weeks, Israeli forces repeatedly stormed the holiest Muslim sites in Jerusalem.
For 16 years, the Israeli government has suffocated Palestinians in Gaza under a draconian air, sea and land military blockade, imprisoning and starving two million people and denying them medical aid. The Israeli government routinely massacres Palestinians in Gaza; ten-year-olds who live in Gaza have already been traumatized by seven major bombing campaigns in their short lives.
For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians, operating an apartheid regime. Palestinian children are dragged from their beds in pre-dawn raids by Israeli soldiers and held without charge in Israeli military prisons. Palestinians’ homes are torched by mobs of Israeli settlers, or destroyed by the Israeli army. Entire Palestinian villages are forced to flee, abandoning the homes orchards, and land that were in their family for generations.
The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to US complicity in the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation. The US government consistently enables Israeli violence and bears blame for this moment. The unchecked military funding, diplomatic cover, and billions of dollars of private money flowing from the US enables and empowers Israel’s apartheid regime.”
The Zionists’ Dalet Plan, or Plan D
It’s not just America’s complicity and Britain’s 110-years of betrayal that have brought us to this appalling situation. Plan D was the Zionists’ terror blueprint for their brutal takeover of the Palestinian homeland drawn up 77 years ago by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency, and relentless pursued by the Israeli regime to this day.
Plan D was a carefully thought-out, step-by-step plot choreographed ahead of the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood. It correctly assumed that the British authorities would no longer be there.
It’s a sign of the shoddy times we live in that the lawyers involved in the appeal case felt obliged to state that Hamas did not pay them or the experts who provided evidence for their submission, as it is illegal to receive funds from a group designated as a terrorist organisation.
Hopefully their appeal will skewer the Government’s utter hypocrisy and undying support for the real terrorists in the Holy Land. Priti Patel will have to reckon with the consequences of her actions in terms of the huge numbers of innocent lives lost or reduced to unimaginable misery.
I hasten to add that I am no supporter of Hamas. I support truth and justice, simple as that. And of course the Laws of Cricket.
On March 21, the Japan Ministry of Defense Joint Staff Office announced the successful monitoring of movements by two Chinese Navy vessels in waters near Uotsuri Island in the Senkaku Islands and between Yonaguni Island and Taiwan. This maritime surveillance operation, conducted by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) from March 16 to 20, leveraged […]
Observers on Monday dismissed plans announced by Myanmar’s junta to hold elections in the war-torn country by January, saying the military won’t be able to hold the vote in territory it doesn’t control — about half the country — and that the public will view the results as a sham.
On March 7, while on a visit to Russia and Belarus, junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing announced that the elections are “slated for December 2025, with the possibility of … January 2026,” according to a report by the official Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
On Sunday, a day after Min Aung Hlaing returned to Myanmar from his March 3-9 trip, junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Htun confirmed the timing of the ballot in a briefing to military-controlled media outlets.
The generals who seized power in a February 2021 coup d’etat hope that elections will end widespread opposition to their grip on power politics.
But opponents say any vote under the military while the most popular politicians are locked up and their parties are banned will be illegitimate.
Additionally, the junta is in control of only about half the country after significant losses to pro-democracy and ethnic minority insurgents fighting to end military rule, and observers on Monday questioned how the results of such a limited vote could be seen as legitimate.
Sai Leik, the general secretary of the ethnic Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, which has not yet filed its party registration, told RFA Burmese it is “uncertain whether the election will take place at all.”
Even if it happens, it will likely be limited to cities such as Yangon, Naypyidaw, and Mandalay, he said. “This will create significant tensions between areas where the election is held and those where it is not.”
Sai Leik said that a limited election that fails to reflect the will of the people “will only worsen the conflict between opposing sides.”
He noted that the junta has repeatedly vowed to hold an election since August 2022, but has been unable to implement one.
Less than half of townships under junta control
Voting is expected to be held in fewer than half of Myanmar’s 330 townships in the first phase of a staggered vote, a political party official said late last year after discussion with election organizers.
In Myanmar’s last election in 2020, voting was held in 315 out of the 330 townships.
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, or NLD, party swept the vote, as it did in a 2015 election, but the army complained of cheating and overthrew her government. The junta jailed her in the aftermath of its coup and has since sentenced her to 27 years in prison.
Political commentator Than Soe Naing said that the people of Myanmar won’t trust a junta-run election.
“Even if the junta attempts it, it will never happen,” he said.
Myanmar Junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing inspects the electronic voting system and its machines on Feb.9, 2023.(Myanmar Military)
Than Soe Naing said that past attempts by the junta had been stymied by its lack of territorial control, the ongoing conflict across Myanmar, the lack of security for representatives and campaigns, and the restrictions of the junta-backed election commission.
Rather than taking those concerns into account, Hla Thein, a spokesperson for the pro-junta Union Solidarity and Development Party told RFA that Min Aung Hlaing likely chose the end of the year for elections so that political parties and the election commission “will have more time to prepare.”
Independent observers?
Meanwhile, Min Aung Hlaing said on Sunday that Russia and Belarus had committed to sending officials to observe the elections in Myanmar.
But a vote monitored by those two countries cannot be considered “free and fair,” an election observer who requested anonymity for security reasons said.
“Russia and Belarus are not really countries with a good reputation for democratic, free and fair elections,” the observer said. “And since they have stood with and supported the junta in various ways, their observers won’t be fair. They are meant only for political support.”
So far, more than 50 parties have registered with and been approved by Myanmar’s election commission. Nearly all of them are military-aligned, while the country’s most popular party — the NLD — was banned in the aftermath of the coup and cannot be added to the ballot.
Tun Myint, an NLD Central Working Committee member, warned that the junta’s elections would be nothing more than a “sham.”
“No one … who wants justice will accept the junta’s elections,” he said.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
