Manila has used “West Philippine Sea” since 2011 to assert its maritime claims within its exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, distinguishing it from China’s broader claim over the South China Sea. Beijing has rejected the term, viewing it as a political assertion that challenges its claim of “indisputable sovereignty” over the entire sea.

As of April 17, the label “West Philippine Sea” was visible by default on Google Maps, without the need for users to search for it specifically, which was the case in the past.

“The proper and consistent labeling of the West Philippine Sea on the widely used platform Google Maps is welcome news for every Filipino,” the speaker of the Philippines House of Representatives, Martin Romualdez, said in a statement Tuesday.

“This simple yet powerful update reflects the growing global acknowledgment of the Philippines’ sovereign rights over the maritime areas within our EEZ.”

Armed Forces of the Philippines spokesperson Col. Francel Margareth Padilla said the inclusion of the West Philippines Sea in Google Maps also reflects a 2016 arbitration ruling that invalidated Beijing’s sweeping claims to the South China Sea.

“As defenders of national sovereignty, the AFP sees this as a valuable contribution to truthful representation and public awareness,” Padilla said at a press briefing at Camp Aguinaldo.

China’s foreign ministry said South China Sea is widely recognized by other nations as the correct name.

“For a long time, the South China Sea has been a common geographical name recognized by the international community and widely accepted by countries around the world and international organizations such as the United Nations,” ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a regular press briefing Tuesday.

Ding Duo, a researcher at China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies, told state media that West Philippine Sea “hype” from the Philippines does “nothing to change the fact that China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea islands.”

It’s unclear why Google made the change, but a spokesperson told Agence France-Presse: “The West Philippine Sea has always been labeled on Google Maps. We recently made this label easier to see at additional zoom levels.”

Despite a 2016 Hague tribunal ruling that invalidated China’s expansive South China Sea claims, Beijing has continued to assert control over the region, which is an important route for international shipping.

The court sided with the Philippines, citing violations of its EEZ, but China rejected the decision and has since expanded its presence through militarized islands, patrols and increased maritime activity – fuelling rising tensions.

In April, both nations accused each other of dangerous maneuvers near Scarborough Shoal, a disputed area within the Philippines’ EEZ.

The Philippine Coast Guard reported that a Chinese vessel obstructed a Philippine ship, while China alleged that the Philippine vessel approached dangerously, attempting to fabricate a collision.

The Philippines has also raised concerns about Chinese interference in resource exploration.

Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo said that China was hindering Filipino companies from exploring natural resources in the contested waters, including oil and gas reserves. He cited incidents such as water cannoning, use of lasers and ramming by Chinese forces as examples of harassment.​

In response to these challenges, the Philippines and the United States have strengthened their military cooperation.

The annual “Balikatan” joint military exercises, involving approximately 14,000 troops, are scheduled from April 21 to May 9. These drills aim to enhance defense readiness and interoperability between the two allies.

Edited by Stephen Wright and Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.

Four years ago, Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed the Climate Equitable Jobs Act, an ambitious suite of overlapping goals and deadlines to put Illinois on track to overhaul its economy by 2030: decarbonizing the power sector, propping up electric vehicles, and fast-tracking a clean energy workforce. 

Now, with five years left until several deadlines are due — and a presidential administration that doesn’t believe in climate change — the clock is ticking. As climate action shifts more to the local level, states have to figure out both how to fill the void left by the federal government and how to hit targets that now seem likely out of reach. 

Illinois isn’t the only state to set hard-to-hit goals and come up short. States such as California, New York, and Oregon are playing a similar game of catch-up. That doesn’t come as a surprise to Jackson Morris of the national nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, who added that it shouldn’t be a death knell for climate initiatives either.  

“[The] momentum at the state level, particularly now with what’s going on in Washington, is really where the action is,” said Morris. “ We want to push as hard as we can to meet as many of those targets as we can, even if they happen a year or two years after — the important thing is that we’re on that long term trajectory.” 

Illinois came face-to-face with one of its renewable energy targets this year and came up short, according to John Delurey, with the national advocacy organization Vote Solar.

Before the Climate Equitable Jobs Act, known as CEJA, the state had committed to relying on renewable sources for a quarter of its energy by 2025, Delurey said. But as of 2023, renewable energy only made up about 13.5 percent of electricity generation in Illinois. That figure needs to more than double over five years to catch up with CEJA’s impending deadlines.  

CEJA increased Illinois’ renewable portfolio standard — a policy that requires that a certain share of the energy sold by electric utilities comes from renewable sources — to 40 percent clean energy by 2030, to 50 percent clean energy by 2040, and to 100 percent by 2050.

“We have a long journey ahead and a short time to get there,” Delurey said. “But I don’t know that it’s a foregone conclusion that we will miss our 2030 CEJA goals.”

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In Illinois and across the country, the installation of wind projects has slowed substantially compared to solar, which has soared, particularly with the help of tax credits from former president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. That’s increasingly a problem in Illinois, where over 90 percent of the state’s renewable generation comes from wind. 

Wind has tapered off locally, according to Delurey, due to issues with increased local opposition around where renewables can be installed. 

“At the peak, about 15 counties in the windiest part of Illinois had effectively banned wind projects,” he said. That was before Illinois passed a 2023 bill to limit what local governments could do to restrict wind and solar.

A recent report from the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council found that regional grid operators are moving too slowly to keep pace with massive expansion of renewables. As a result, renewable energy projects have been stuck on a waiting list for years before they come online.

Still, Brian Granahan, director of the Illinois Power Agency, which brokers electricity between customers and utilities, said the state has made significant progress toward its 2030 target of 40 percent clean energy.

“In terms of the contracts that have been awarded through our programs and procurements, we’re at 19 percent right now,” Granahan said. That figure, however, includes clean energy projects active today and those that are still under development. 

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Granahan said that Illinois is about halfway to its 2030 deadline. 

“The question is, Over the remaining five years, can we award enough contracts to make up the remaining 20 percent to ensure that we’re making up the other half,” he said. 

It’s not just renewable energy targets that are lagging. So are plans for EV and clean energy workforce training.

The state’s landmark climate legislation set a target of 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030. To date, only about 100,000 EVs have been added in Illinois since Pritzker signed CEJA. 

The state isn’t doing enough to close that gap, according to Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs at Respiratory Health Association, a Chicago-based public health nonprofit.

“There’s not a lot of detail in terms of year-by-year goals,” he said. “It was just a big goal that we’re going to reach by this date.”

The centerpiece of the plan was a $4,000 rebate for Illinois customers with the purchase of a new or used EV, which could be stacked on existing federal tax credits. 

However, funding for the rebate program has been insufficient to meet demand each year since launch. The program’s funding fluctuates, depending on how much Illinois lawmakers set aside for it. Funding for fiscal year 2025 is down to $14 million from a one-time high of $20 million in 2023. This year’s rebate program will only provide payouts for approximately 3,500 EV purchases. That’s not enough, Urbaszewski says

Today, more than 7 million passenger vehicles run in Illinois, the vast majority gas-powered. That means that even if the state adds a further 900,000 EVs on its roads by 2030, the result would still be relatively “modest,” according to Urbaszewski, as only a sliver of total passenger vehicles would be zero-emission.

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency declined a request for an interview and did not return a request for comment.

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Still, there is a glimmer of success.

After a yearslong wait, the state is finally delivering on its promise to build out workforce training for clean jobs. Illinois has committed to $80 million annually to rapidly expand training and certification programs, with an emphasis on Black and Latino communities most affected by pollution from fossil fuels.

As part of that effort, the state established 16 community-run workforce hubs across the state. Their purpose is to provide entry-level training relating to green-economy careers. To date,  there’s already been 15 graduates, and more than a hundred students are currently enrolled. 

It took time to build up the capacity to get these programs operational, according to Francisco Lopez Zavala, a policy expert with The Illinois Environmental Council, an umbrella organization that advances environmental policy statewide. 

“We’re trying to ensure it is done in a way that’s equitable to our communities across the state, and is done right by our communities,” said Lopez Zavala. “It takes time to do right by them.”

As the 2030 deadlines approach, it’s becoming clear that states like Illinois may miss the mark. From the NRDC’s Jackson Morris’ perspective, that’s not necessarily a failure. 

“We always knew that the path to a net zero economy by 2050 was not going to be linear,” said Morris. “There are going to be years where you make more progress and years where you flatline. It’s going to be lumpy.”

Between President Donald Trump’s recent withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and a slew of executive orders to stall renewables, state-led decarbonization efforts — even if they are behind schedule — may soon be the only large-scale greenhouse gas-slashing strategies left in the United States. 

“I’d rather see states take shots from half-court and try to make them,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The odds are Illinois won’t hit its 2030 climate goals on Feb 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco.

In the Arab American-majority city of Dearborn, Michigan, Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by over six percentage points, with third-party candidate Jill Stein capturing nearly one-fifth of the vote. During the primary elections, a majority of Democratic voters in Dearborn selected “uncommitted” over then-presumptive nominee Joe Biden, citing disapproval of the president’s handling of Israel’s aggression in the Middle East. “Uncommitted” voters continued to press the Harris campaign to shift its Israel policy as the election went on, but were routinely ignored. Democrats “made a calculation that they did not need Arab American, Muslim American and Palestinian American voters,” says Palestinian American organizer Linda Sarsour, who was in Dearborn on election night. We speak to Sarsour about the Harris campaign’s failure to secure the support of a previously key part of the Democratic base. “We are going to be in big trouble, and I blame that solely on the Democratic Party and one of the worst campaigns I have seen in my 23 years in organizing.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This article was produced in partnership with The Oregonian/OregonLive. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

When Nike’s shareholders convene in a virtual meeting room on Tuesday, they will hear from dissatisfied investors who hope to shift the company’s approach to climate change, gender equity and labor rights using one of the only tools they have: transparency.

They’re offering a record number of proposals to make the company investigate the problems they perceive and report the results publicly.

But if history is any guide, none of the investors’ proposals will pass.

Every one of the 18 Nike shareholder proposals to reach a vote since at least 1996 has been rejected, according to news archives and securities filings reviewed by ProPublica and The Oregonian/OregonLive. As in past meetings, Nike’s board of directors — the majority of whom are selected by a holding company for co-founder Phil Knight’s stock — opposes this year’s measures.

The demands being made of Nike come from investment funds whose customers wish to back companies that deliver on corporate responsibility, an effort sometimes labeled “environmental, social and governance,” or ESG. Their uphill fight at annual meetings reveals limitations to the influence of shareholder activism on corporate policy.

Among the five proposals that Nike investors will decide on are those asking the world’s largest athletic apparel brand to explain its failure to cut carbon emissions and to evaluate ways to improve working conditions in its supply chain.

Lisa Hayles of Trillium Asset Management, a Boston-based sustainable investing firm that owned $11.7 million in Nike stock as of June 30, said Trillium and others have been “stonewalled” by Nike on questions about labor rights, including allegations that two of its suppliers owe $2.2 million in unpaid wages at two Asian factories shuttered during the pandemic. Nike has said it’s found no evidence to support the allegations.

Hayles said she also wants to know why the company eliminated 20% of its employees working full time on sustainability. The layoffs, first reported by The Oregonian/OregonLive and ProPublica, were part of a broader cost-saving effort but went deeper than cuts of 2% companywide and 7% at Nike’s Oregon headquarters.

“It’s very disappointing to see this lack of response, lack of engagement from the company, coupled with what we know about the layoffs and restructuring of the staff working on sustainability,” she said. “It calls into question: What is the company’s commitment?”

ProPublica and The Oregonian/OregonLive plan to continue reporting on Nike and its sustainability work, including its overseas operations. Do you have information that we should know? Rob Davis can be reached by email at rob.davis@propublica.org and by phone, Signal or WhatsApp at 503-770-0665. Matthew Kish can be reached by email at mkish@oregonian.com, by phone at 503-221-4386, and on Signal at 971-319-3830.

The proposals mainly aim to change Nike’s response to climate change and its handling of women’s and workers’ rights. They also include one from a conservative think tank challenging the company’s support of LGBTQ+ organizations.

Nike declined an interview request. The company said in a statement: “We greatly value the opportunity to engage with and solicit feedback from our shareholders, and we believe that maintaining an open dialogue strengthens our approach to corporate governance practices and disclosures.” The company said it did not engage with the conservative think tank.

The company’s annual meetings are required by law and play out with scripted precision. Investors elect Nike’s board and have a chance to submit questions to top executives. But they aren’t handed a microphone by someone passing through the audience. Unlike meetings of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which draw thousands of people to Omaha, Nebraska, Nike’s meetings are virtual and succinct. Last year’s finished in under 41 minutes.

The activists have to make their case quickly. A two-minute, 58-second audio clip by one activist shareholder group in 2023 appeared to have been edited to remove pauses between sentences. It finished playing just seconds before the polls closed for shareholder voting.

An individual or investment group needs to own only $25,000 in company stock to file a shareholder proposal. For longer-term shareholders, that threshold drops to $2,000, which is roughly 25 shares of Nike. The company is worth about $120 billion.

Investors possess few other ways to force changes at publicly traded companies. The federal Securities and Exchange Commission does not permit investors to micromanage. They can’t require a company to pay men and women the same. But they can try to compel it to say whether it does. Even when investor-led proposals don’t advance, activists say, a public airing of concerns can sometimes spark impact.

In 2018, after The Wall Street Journal and others reported on allegations about a boys’ club culture at Nike, representatives of Trillium asked the company to set diversity goals. Trillium withdrew the proposal after Nike committed to engaging and subsequently announced additional plans to increase the representation of women in its global workforce. (The company faces a sweeping lawsuit, filed in the wake of the 2018 news coverage, from female employees alleging gender discrimination; the company has denied the allegations in court filings.)

Trium Sustainable Innovators, a London-based fund, is behind the proposal asking Nike to explain its record on climate change. The investors want Nike to study and report on why it missed many of its 2020 climate targets and subsequently abandoned some of the metrics. Nike hasn’t seen its emissions budge in the past decade, despite promises to sharply reduce them.

Pointing to Nike statements that consumer preference and marketplace demand drove the 2020 misses, Trium’s proposal says Nike appears “to absolve itself of responsibility” and could have influenced demand through pricing, supply volume and product visibility.

“They will need to pay for carbon emissions one way or another,” Raphael Pitoun, a Trium portfolio manager, said in an interview. “Being so slow in carbon transition is a mistake.”

Pitoun did not specify how much Nike stock Trium owns but put the investment fund’s stake at “a few million dollars.”

Trium wrote three letters to Nike in 2023, then filed the shareholder proposal after the investors said they did not get answers to their questions, including on a call with Nike. Pitoun described the shareholder proposal as the last step in a two-year escalation process.

Nike, for its part, said the report Trium wants would be duplicative, writing in a securities filing that while it is now working toward achieving its 2025 targets, it is “also striving to do more.”

Two groups that advise institutional investors on how to vote on shareholder proposals, Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services, recommended approving the climate proposal. ISS also recommended a yes vote on a proposed study of gender- and race-based pay gaps at Nike.

The climate proposal and the Trillium labor proposal also got a boost on Thursday after Reuters reported that Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which owns a $1.05 billion Nike stake, is backing them. The fund is Nike’s ninth-largest investor, according to the report.

While proposals like the ones facing Nike this month have grown more common in American business, they continue to face long odds, said Douglas Chia, president of Soundboard Governance and a former corporate secretary of Johnson & Johnson.

Chia, who also teaches at Rutgers Law School, said of Nike: “Companies where founders, someone like a Phil Knight, own a huge chunk, it’s very difficult.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Rob Davis, ProPublica, and Matthew Kish, The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Photograph Source: Chatham House – CC BY 2.0

“I support Zionism without qualification”.

– Keir Starmer, statement to Jewish News, February 2020

“Israel must always have the right to defend her people”.

– Keir Starmer, October 2023

To use a Britishism, the Labour party leader Keir Starmer has got his knickers in a twist over the Israel-Hamas conflict.

At the end of the recent Labour Party annual conference, Starmer gave a round of media interviews. On LBC radio the politician who had been a human rights lawyer said something that would have landed him in the proverbial soup with his teachers in an Intro to Law class: “Hamas’ actions are terrorism and Israel has the right to defend herself”. He added: “Israel has the right” to withhold power and water from Palestinian civilians. “Obviously, everything should be done within international law”.

Withholding power and water from noncombatant civilians amounts to a collective punishment forbidden by international law, so Starmer’s rider that “everything should be done within international law” was moot and downright contradictory.

As his own party began to protest at the Zionist Starmer’s dishonesty, it took him several days to come up with a lame clarification: ‘It is not and never has been my view that Israel had the right to cut off water, food, fuel or medicines”.

Meanwhile, Israel was bombing Gaza to smithereens, and posters went up in Labour areas with significant Muslim electorates, naming Labour councillors who were toeing Starmer’s line on Gaza and calling on local voters not to vote for these Starmerites in forthcoming elections.

Starmer has not called for a ceasefire or truce (as the UN has done), instead backing humanitarian “pauses” to help aid reach Gaza. He said through a spokesperson that such “pauses” would make humanitarian support possible “without stopping Israel taking action to disable the terrorists who attacked them in the first place”.

This ”softly softly” approach towards Israel has split Labour down the middle. Around 20 town and city councilors have left the party in protest at Starmer’s failure to call for a formal ceasefire. In Oxford, Labour lost control of the city council when 9 of its councilors resigned from the party. Three senior Labour figures—Sadiq Khan (London mayor), Andy Burnham (Manchester mayor), and Anas Sarwar (Scottish Labour leader)– called for a ceasefire.

In Westminster, 39 Labour MPs, including shadow minister Imran Hussain, signed a parliamentary petition calling for an “immediate de-escalation and cessation of hostilities”, while dozens of Labour MPs have said publicly they want a ceasefire. Starmer toeing the line taken by the US, EU, and the Tory government may be too much to stomach.

Starmer, renowned for his tin-ear when it comes to politics, attempted to defuse the situation by holding a virtual meeting between his leadership team and Labour council leaders.  He also went to a mosque in South Wales, where he tweeted a demand for the return of hostages. Stung by this evidence of Starmer’s real priorities, the mosque issued a statement repudiating his views on Gaza. Starmer then made his third U-turn after an ITV interview, in which he denied supporting Israel’s right to cut off water and food (a lie), and by issuing an open letter to councilors in which he said with palpable insincerity how much he felt the plight of the Palestinian people, before repeating his call for a “humanitarian pause” in the bombing, something which the prime minister Rishi Sunak had already done a few hours before.

Starmer is in something of a dilemma.

Nearly all the above-mentioned Labour politicians represent areas of the “red wall” with large Muslim electorates that Labour needs to win back in the next election if it is to beat the Tories. Starmer has shed a boatload of members (over 200,000 of them and their fees) since becoming leader, and has attempted to overcome the ensuing financial shortfall by pandering instead to wealthy donors, many of them Zionists. Several of his colleagues have followed suit. Pleasing Zionist donors does not go down well with Muslim voters, while condemning Israel in order to retain the Muslim vote alienates Starmer’s Zionist donors.

Starmer, like Biden, insists that “Israel has the right to defend itself”. On the specific matter of international law, this is not a legal right. Israel, an aggressor because of its two-decade-long siege/blockade of Gaza, cannot claim “self-defense” to justify its violence against armed resistance to this illegal siege/blockade. When a Nazi claimed that Germany attacked Russia in “self-defense” during WW2, a judge at the Nuremberg Tribunal said:

“One of the most amazing phenomena of this case which does not lack in startling features is the manner in which the aggressive war conducted by Germany against Russia has been treated by the defense as if it were the other way around. …If it is assumed that some of the resistance units in Russia or members of the population did commit acts that were in themselves unlawful under the rules of war, it would still have to be shown that these acts were not in legitimate defense against wrongs perpetrated upon them by the invader. Under International Law, as in Domestic Law, there can be no reprisal against reprisal. The assassin who is being repulsed by his intended victim may not slay him and then, in turn, plead self-defense”. (Trial of Otto Ohlendorf and others, Military Tribunal II-A, April 8, 1948)

This principle– an aggressor can’t legally claim “self-defense” as a justification when it exacts reprisals on those who resist the aggressor– is central to international law.

Starmer’s problem over Gaza blends into a wider predicament—opinion polls indicate consistently that voters loathe the Tories, but don’t at the same time love Starmer and his party. Equivocating over Palestine-Gaza is not likely to help his cause.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kenneth Surin.

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• President Biden welcomes Indian Prime Minister with a pomp filled state visit.
• Divided House Republicans send an impeachment resolution against President Biden to committee.
• Senate Democrats beat back an effort to overturn a rule on gun braces.
• Brazil’s largest meat producer accused of “cattle laundering” to hide extent of grazing in the Amazon.
• San Francisco activists protest cuts in housing and for children in Mayor’s budget plan.
• A lithium mining company sues Native American protestors.

Image by: Ms Sarah Welch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The post President Biden rolls out economic and military agreements during Indian Prime Minister’s visit; Republicans at odds with each other over impeachment resolution for President Biden; Lithium mining company sues Native American protestors: The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – June 22, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

The post Unstable Trump Double Down as the Odds Against Him Increase appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ralph Nader.

In Samira’s Dream, we follow Samira over a period of seven years as she grows and develops without losing sight of her objectives. The length of time taken to make this documentary reminded me of the fictional film Boyhood which is made and takes place over a period of 12 years, an accomplishment whereby “we watch the actors getting older for real, which gives their characters a sense of authenticity.”

The same can be said for Samira’s Dream as we see the difficulties and real problems she faces over the years, where even being filmed exerted so much pressure at one point that she asks for it to be stopped. She was never sure that she could overcome all the problems she encountered along the way, and the sometimes tense atmosphere during the filming added to the authenticity. As the film’s director Nino Tropiano noted: “Werner Herzog said that filmmaking is not about aesthetics, it is about athletics. In other words, you have to work hard.”

Samira’s Dream (Ndoto Ya Samira) (2022) – Trailer

This is easy to forget in an age where everyone seems to be constantly taking selfies and filming themselves doing the most insignificant things. Having a documentary made about you would be many teenagers’ greatest fantasy and desire. Yet, in societies where liberal freedoms cannot be taken for granted, and your dreams are not easily accomplished (especially for women), there is no sure ending.

Samira gets knocked down, and she gets up again, and again. She works hard, gets help wherever she can, and has the support of a husband who (although anxious about the effect her high level of education might have on their marriage) still gives her wishes his blessing.

For Tropiano this long project was not like Michelangelo’s sculpture where a start had already been made on the block of marble he fashioned into David. The film took shape very gradually, as Tropiano explains:

Here I am thinking where will I start? I called a friend of mine who had spent a few months in Zanzibar. Where is that!? A traditional Muslim society. That’s intriguing. One of her photos in particular, struck me. A group of young female students walking out of a madrassa in a very orderly manner. It was then I knew the subject matter for my film – female education. So, I needed to write down a synopsis of some sort. I imagined a young woman coming from a remote village, who dreams of moving to town to get a college education. By following her life, I would have a film.

Even when Tropiano arrived there, he still did not have a subject for his documentary. A chance meeting with a friendly group of schoolgirls led to some general interviews and his choice of Samira for “her natural charisma, open-minded attitude, and cheerful approach”. Diplomacy then ensued as he had to gain the trust of the local people, the Shia Leader of the community, and the teachers in town. Over the next 7 years, a friendship built up which allowed for a constant revisiting and filming that made for a much deeper story than a single visit would have told. By keeping a low-key profile he was able to fly below state officialdom and keep costs down. Over the years Tropiano was able to gain the confidence of the people, demonstrated by the relaxed humour and friendly disposition of the protagonists while, at the same time, capturing the natural beauty of the landscape and the colourful clothes of the people in some beautiful photography.

Nino Tropiano came to Ireland in the mid-90s where he graduated from the National Film School in Dublin with a 50-minute film entitled My Daughter Does Madonna. He went on to direct and produce Mary’s Last Show, Class Reunion and a short film called The Fall. Later his documentary Chippers (2008) was awarded Best Documentary Memorie Migranti at Gualdo Tadino in 2010.

Chippers: The story of the Italian community in Ireland

Even though fish and chips is an English fast food tradition, by a strange quirk of fate it was mainly Italians who set up the fish and chip shops all over Ireland. Tropiano delves into the history of the Italian peasant farmers who sought work abroad and ended up selling English traditional food to the Irish. Irish efforts to mimic the business soon discovered that selling fish and chips was hard work with very long and unsociable hours.

Tropiano’s ability to be a fly-on-the-wall and let ordinary people tell their own story is very evident in Chippers and this style of filmmaking pays off handsomely in Samira’s Dream. With a minimal voiceover, much of the narrative is conveyed in Samira’s own words.

His own struggles to get funding, the difficulties of getting to Zanzibar and the problems of production and editing, could have led him to give up the project altogether. He notes:

Each time I got turned down when I applied for funds, I faced an existential crisis, followed by an upsurge that fed in me the ability to see things in perspective. In hindsight, things went the way they were meant to.

However, Tropiano is also aware of Western tropes, a trap whereby authors/filmmakers/artists make themselves the centre of their own work and lose sight of their original intention: “I faced many obstacles along the way and I suspect that in the hands of other filmmakers, Samira’s story would have come second with the focus shifted towards the struggling life of a filmmaker trying to tell a story in Africa. I resisted the temptation to put myself into the film, to narrate some thrilling backstories in fear they might divert from Samira’s quest into the unedifying and morally bankrupt African tale Western audiences generally look for and festivals tend to love and give awards to.”

This predicament faced by the artist is discussed by the writer James Joyce who discusses creativity (in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) in terms of the developing maturity of the the artist:

The image, it is clear, must be set between the mind or senses of the artist himself and the mind or senses of others. If you bear this in memory you will see that art necessarily divides itself into three forms progressing from one to the next. These forms are: the lyrical form, the form wherein the artist presents his image in immediate relation to himself; the epical form, the form wherein he presents his image in mediate relation to himself and to others; the dramatic form, the form wherein he presents his image in immediate relation to others.

Tropiano moves away from making his art about himself, or about his encounters with others. He takes himself out of the equation while guiding his project in such a way that it becomes a story that the real hero, Samira, can take centre place in, all the while providing inspiration for many women who aspire to achieve similar educational goals.

It is so easy in Western society to fulfill the role of the individualist, Romantic hero telling of his adventures far away from home in distant lands. Western cinema is full of heroes and superheroes, but to create something which turns an ordinary local into an extraordinary example and symbol is a real achievement in art.

Back in Zanzibar at a music and film festival, Samira’s Dream (Ndoto Ya Samira in Swahili) was to be screened. After two hours of dancing to live music Tropiano was called to the stage to speak:

I prepared a little speech in Swahili and the crowd jeered at my blunders. Then magic happened. There were about six hundred people, and they sat, remaining glued to the screen till the end. That was my reward: I realised the film deserves to be promoted and be seen as it creates a true sense of awareness in Tanzania.

Samira’s Dream is a story that takes us through the hardships and joys of life, over a timescale that is a rare experience in cinema and which demonstrates dedication to a craft and an idea which takes time to be perfected and achieved so well.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Caoimhghin O Croidheain.

We launch into 2023, with big, ambitious plans for the coming year, buoyed by last year’s successes — including six exonerations, two vacated death sentences, over 10 policy wins, a first-of-its-kind research convening and so much more. 

While we continue our core exoneration and policy work, and deepen our understanding of the role of racial bias in wrongful conviction, we are warily observing a dangerous trend that threatens to undermine our country’s progress toward a truly fair and equitable criminal legal system. Increasingly, we’re seeing policymakers ignoring the lessons of the past and embracing the tough-on-crime rhetoric that drove decades of mass incarceration and countless wrongful convictions.

We must never forget how incendiary language and stiff criminal codes led to an unprecedented rise in incarceration — and wrongful conviction — in the ‘80s and ‘90s, as well as a proliferation of unjust law enforcement practices targeting Black, brown, and poor communities that transformed a generation. Today, we are still working to undo these harms, which have come at a high and unnecessary cost  — almost $182 billion every year, according to one report — to the government and impacted families. 

Yet, we’re still seeing a renewed emphasis on tough-on-crime policies and rhetoric, despite the fact that throughout the country violent crimes, including murders, were down in 2022. For example, since taking office last year, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has embraced tough-on-crime policies, arguing that judges be allowed to consider a person’s “dangerousness” when determining whether bail should be granted. And in New Jersey, we’re seeing an influx of proposed tough-on-crime bills. 

It is not lost on us that the recent tough-on-crime talk and policy proposals come on the heels of significant reforms, which include amendments to New York’s cash bail system and the election of progressive prosecutors across the country. In the bigger picture, this chatter and these proposals follow the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the murder of George Floyd, and the broad calls for racial justice and criminal legal system reform.

This phenomenon of oscillating between progress and retrenchment is, of course, not new. Instead, it is a tragic hallmark of our country’s history. 

After the Civil War and Reconstruction, we saw the emergence of Black Codes, convict leasing, and lynchings. After the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the government passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, which gave significant funding and power to law enforcement. As Black incomes soared in the 1990s, President Clinton passed one of the most draconian crime bills in history and the New York City Police Department implemented a stop-and-frisk policy that — at its height — resulted in almost 700,000 innocent Black and Latinx people being stopped and searched on public streets. Less than 10% of those stops produced arrests or seizures of guns, drugs, or contraband. And despite the creation of President Obama’s 21st Century Policing Task Force that, amongst other things, called for greater regulation of surveillance technologies, we have seen an increased use of these unreliable and unvalidated technologies, like facial recognition technology, in already overpoliced communities of color with potentially damaging consequences. 

The Rush to Convict and Imprison

The case of the Exonerated Five — who celebrated the 20th year of their exoneration last December — powerfully demonstrates how tough-on-crime approaches can and do ensnare the innocent. The Five were convicted in the midst of a wave of such policies, and just about every factor that we know contributes to wrongful convictions — racism, police and prosecutorial misconduct, the use of lies and deception in the interrogations of minors, false confessions, and a trial by media — played a role.

At the time of their prosecution, the War on Drugs and the juvenile superpredator myth drove a perception of lawlessness and unchecked danger to which policymakers responded with a bevy of tough-on-crime rhetoric, policies, and practices.

Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Yusef Salaam at the Innocence Project gala in May 2019. (Image: Matthew Adam Photography)

It was in this overheated climate that Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise and Antron McCray — all of whom were teenagers — faced police who, in an overzealous attempt to secure confessions, made false statements which unfairly pressured the teens to falsely implicate themselves. This tactic — which remains legal in most states — is known to produce false confessions, especially among children. Indeed, 27% of the Innocence Project’s 241 exonerations and releases, and 11% of the cases recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations since 1989, were the product of such false confessions. Through our advocacy, five states have now outlawed the use of deception in the interrogation of juveniles. Ultimately, as you know, the Five were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to serve between five and 15 years in prison. 

In 2023, we will be supporting legislation in over 10 states to stop deceptive interrogation tactics. And we will continue to push to ensure that all 50 states record all police interrogations as a means of improving transparency and creating an indisputable account of the proceedings. Thirty states are already doing this, so we’re over halfway there. 

An Overloaded System and the Guilty Plea Problem

Tough-on-crime policies and the aggressive, high-volume police and prosecution practices they demand also obstruct true justice and drive wrongful convictions by backlogging courts, overwhelming public defenders, holding people in jail for months before trial, and incentivizing guilty pleas — whether accurate or not. 

In the U.S., 95% of felony convictions are secured through guilty pleas. And according to the National Registry of Exonerations, 25.6% of the 3,343 exonerations in the United States since 1989 involved a guilty plea.

The case of exoneree and Innocence Project Re-entry Coach Rodney Roberts is a perfect illustration. In 1986, Mr. Roberts was arrested in New Jersey after getting into a fight. After several days in jail, he was blindsided when he learned that he was being charged with the kidnapping and rape of a 17-year-old girl. His public defender told him he would face life in prison if he went to trial, so Mr. Roberts pleaded guilty, believing that doing so was his only chance to return home to his family and, in his words, “salvage my life.” He spent seven years behind bars and another 10 years fighting for his innocence before DNA testing helped to exonerate him.

Exoneree and Innocence Project Re-entry Coach Rodney Roberts shares his experience with wrongful conviction in a video for GuiltyPleaProblem.org. (Image: Innocence Project)

In an effort to counter the guilty plea phenomena, the Innocence Project is working with a coalition of organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and many more, to end the trial penalty — the substantial difference between the sentence offered in a plea deal prior to trial versus the sentence a person may receive after trial. In New York, we joined the New York State Task Force on the trial penalty and offered several reform recommendations, including one that would eliminate mandatory minimums and another that would lift the ban on people who plead guilty — but do not have the benefit of DNA in their cases — from seeking relief in court post-conviction. All of our policy recommendations are serving, and intend to serve, as the foundation for legislative proposals.

Advancing a Path for Justice

For all of these reasons, policymakers must learn from history and avoid rolling back progress  — as this country has so often done — in the fight for a more equitable society.  

As an organization guided by science, we know there is more to be learned and understood about wrongful conviction, particularly amid heightened concerns about public safety. We will continue to collaborate with researchers on the cutting edge of their disciplines to better inform our work in ensuring that our criminal legal system protects all people.

It’s this work and more that energizes us everyday at the Innocence Project. I am deeply grateful for your support, advocacy, and commitment to changing the system for the better. Together, we can drive the change we want and need.

With gratitude,

Christina Swarns, Executive Director Innocence Project

The post ‘Tough-on-Crime’ Policies Are at Odds With the Presumption of Innocence appeared first on Innocence Project.

This content originally appeared on Innocence Project and was authored by Justin Chan.

Iranian demonstrators take to the streets during protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 21, 2022.

Photo: Obtained by AFP via Getty Images

There are only a few possibilities for how a viable revolutionary uprising could play out. If recent history has taught us anything, none of them are likely to be pretty.

Iran’s government will change some day. We can only hope that the change looks closer to Czechoslovakia than Syria.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by openDemocracy RSS.

Calling Big Tech's profit-maximizing business model "fundamentally at odds with children's well-being," a broad coalition of 60 leading advocacy groups working in public health, privacy, and education urged Congress on Tuesday to enact stronger online protections for young people.

"Tech companies are more interested in profiting off of vulnerable children than taking steps to prevent them from getting hurt on their platforms."

In a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the coalition endorsed President Joe Biden's recent assertion that "we must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they're conducting on our children for profit" and implored lawmakers to safeguard kids' health and safety by passing legislation to improve online privacy and put an end to targeted advertising and discriminatory algorithms aimed at minors.

"It's long past time for Congress to put a check on Big Tech's pervasive manipulation of young people's attention and exploitation of their personal data," Accountable Tech co-founder and executive director Nicole Gill said in a statement.

Josh Golin, executive director at Fairplay, pointed out that "Congress last passed legislation to protect children online 24 years ago—nearly a decade before the most popular social media platforms even existed."

Since then, the letter states, "digital platforms have become vital spaces for learning, socializing, and relaxing."

"Children and teens should be able to engage freely with this environment," the letter continues, "without being manipulated into spending more time online, spending more money, watching ads targeted to their vulnerabilities, surrendering more data, or engaging with content that undermines their well-being."

Instead, according to Katharina Kopp, policy director at the Center for Digital Democracy, young people find themselves "at the epicenter of a pervasive data-driven marketing system that takes advantage of their inherent developmental vulnerabilities."

Golin argued that the failure to meaningfully regulate surveillance advertising and other Big Tech practices "has led to a race to the bottom to collect data and maximize profits, no matter the harm to young people."

As the letter to congressional leaders explains in greater detail:

The current unregulated business model for digital media is fundamentally at odds with children's well-being. Digital platforms are designed to maximize revenue, and design choices that increase engagement and facilitate data collection, all of which put children at risk. Data gathered on young people, which can include information about their race, ethnicity, religion, income, and network of friends, can be used in discriminatory ways that may harm their access to opportunities and services. It is estimated that online advertising firms hold 72 million data points on the average child by the time they reach the age of 13, allowing marketers to target children's vulnerabilities with extreme precision. And algorithms designed to maximize engagement often promote harmful content, often aimed at young people's greatest vulnerabilities, such as their interest in dieting or self-harm.

Excessive use of digital media use and social media is linked to a number of risks for children and adolescents, including obesity, lower psychological well-being, decreased happiness, decreased quality of sleep, depression, and increases in suicide-related outcomes such as suicidal ideation, plans, and attempts. Fifty-nine percent of U.S. teens have reported being bullied on social media, an experience which has been linked to increased risky behaviors such as smoking and increased risk of suicidal ideation.

The pressure to spend more time on digital media platforms and maximize interactions with other users also puts children at risk from predation. Twenty-five percent of nine- to 17-year-olds report having had an online sexually explicit interaction with someone they believed to be an adult.

Digital technologies already played a substantial role in the lives of children and teens before the Covid-19 pandemic, but the situation has been "exacerbated by the dramatic changes to daily life" experienced during the past two years, said Dr. Moira Szilagyi, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"Pediatricians see the impact of these platforms on our patients and recognize the growing alarm about the role of digital platforms, in particular social media, in contributing to the youth mental health crisis," said Szilagyi. "It has become clear that, from infancy through the teen years, children's well-being is an afterthought in developing digital technologies."

"Strengthening privacy, design, and safety protections for children and adolescents online is one of many needed steps to create healthier environments that are more supportive of their mental health and well-being," she added.

The coalition—composed of a diverse mix of organizations, including Public Citizen, the National Eating Disorders Association, and the Network for Public Education—called on Congress to pass legislation that would:

• Protect children and teens wherever they are online, not just on "child-directed" sites;
• Expand privacy protections to all minors;
• Ban targeted (surveillance) advertising to young people;
• Prohibit algorithmic discrimination of children and teens;
• Establish a duty of care that requires digital service providers to both make the best interests of children a primary design consideration, and to prevent and mitigate harms to minors;
• Require platform to turn on the most protective settings for minors by default; and
• Provide greater resources for enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission.

Pointing to Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen's October revelations about the ways that social media platforms prioritize profits over the well-being of children, the coalition said the need for congressional action is evident.

"There will never be a better time to pass legislation to protect young people online," states the letter. "Parents from across the political spectrum want Congress to do more to... make children safer, give parents and caregivers peace of mind, and promote an internet that serves children, rather than taking advantage of them."

Justin Ruben, co-founder and co-director of ParentsTogether, stressed that "it's clear tech companies are more interested in profiting off of vulnerable children than taking steps to prevent them from getting hurt on their platforms. American kids are facing a mental health crisis partly fueled by social media and parents are unable to go it alone against these billion-dollar companies."

"Now is the time," Kopp emphasized, "for Congress to act and enact safeguards that protect children and teens."

"It's also long overdue," she added, "for Congress to enact comprehensive legislation that protects parents and other adults from unfair, manipulative, discriminatory, and privacy-invasive commercial surveillance practices."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

• As Senate returns Republicans and Democrats remain at odds over coronavirus relief funding.
• President Donald Trump campaigns in Florida, signs offshore oil and gas drilling moratorium.
• Wildfires scorch 2 million acres in California, hundreds rescued out of Sierra National Forest.
• Lightning caused fire threatens giant sequoias and mountain residents in southern California.
• Governor Gavin Newsom eases coronavirus restrictions in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties.

Photo by the National Guard on Twitter.

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This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

• President Donald Trump at odds with another coronavirus Task Force member: Dr. Debra Birx.
• California coronavirus infections down, deaths up, including Fresno teen death.
• Lawmakers remain at odds, make slow progress on next coronavirus relief bill.
• California coronavirus relief bills include a millionaires tax and renter protections.
• New York prosecutor claims criminal conduct in request for President Trump’s tax records.
• Isaias strengthens to hurricane, heads towards Carolinas.
• Proposed legislation would force cell phone towers have 48 hours of power storage.

Photo from Mike Licht, 2017 Tax March, Washington DC.

The post Lawmakers at odds over coronavirus relief bill in D.C.; California has first minor coronavirus death; State lawmakers propose millionaire tax – August 3, 2020 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

• President Donald Trump pressures congress to approve nominees during pandemic.
• President Trump faces backlash for halting World Health Organization funding.
• New York now requires face masks, could last up to 18 months.
• Senate Democrats propose $30 billion coronavirus testing bill to reopen economy.
• California to give undocumented immigrants coronavirus economic relief payments.
• Black religious leaders condemn disporportions in black coronavirus deaths.
• Coalition of homeless advocates urges state/local officials to commandeer hotels.
• San Francisco Supervisors and Mayor at odds over locating homeless in hotels.

The post President Trump faces backlash for halting W.H.O. funding; Senate Democrats propose $30 billion coronavirus testing bill to reopen economy; San Francisco Supervisors and Mayor at odds over locating homeless in hotels – April 15, 2020 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

The post Democrats and Republicans at odds over coronavirus relief bill as schools, sports, and entertainment events close down – March 12, 2020 appeared first on KPFA.

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