Debate on Guam’s future as a US territory has intensified with its legislature due to vote on a non-binding resolution to become a US state amid mounting Pacific geostrategic tensions and expansionist declarations by the Trump administration.

Located closer to Beijing than Hawai’i, Guam serves as a key US strategic asset, known as the “tip of the spear,” with 10,000 military personnel, an air base for F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers and home port for Virginia-class nuclear submarines.

The small US territory of 166,000 people is also listed by the UN for decolonisation and last year became an associate member at the Pacific Islands Forum.

• READ MORE: Other Guam reports

Local Senator William A. Parkinson introduced the resolution to the legislature last Wednesday and called for Guam to be fully integrated into the American union, possibly as the 51st state.

“We are standing in a moment of history where two great empires are standing face-to-face with each other, about to go to war,” Parkinson said at a press conference on Thursday.

“We have to be real about what’s going on in this part of the world. We are a tiny island but we are too strategically important to be left alone. Stay with America or do we let ourselves be absorbed by China?”

His resolution states the decision “must be built upon the informed consent of the people of Guam through a referendum”.

Trump’s expansionist policies
Parkinson’s resolution comes as US President Donald Trump advocates territorially expansionist policies, particularly towards the strategically located Danish-ruled autonomous territory of Greenland and America’s northern neighbour, Canada.

“This one moment in time, this one moment in history, the stars are aligning so that the geopolitics of the United States favour statehood for Guam,” Parkinson said. “This is an opportunity we cannot pass up.”

As a territory, Guam residents are American citizens but they cannot vote for the US president and their lone delegate to the Congress has no voting power on the floor.

The US acquired Guam, along with Puerto Rico, in 1898 after winning the Spanish-American War, and both remain unincorporated territories to this day.

Independence advocates and representatives from the Guam Commission on Decolonisation regularly testify at the UN’s Decolonisation Committee, where the island has been listed as a Non-Self-Governing Territory since 1946.

Commission on Decolonisation executive director Melvin Won Pat-Borja said he was not opposed to statehood but is concerned if any decision on Guam’s status was left to the US.

“Decolonisation is the right of the colonised,” he said while attending Parkinson’s press conference, the Pacific Daily News reported.

‘Hands of our coloniser’
“It’s counterintuitive to say that, ‘we’re seeking a path forward, a path out of this inequity,’ and then turn around and put it right back in the hands of our coloniser.

“No matter what status any of us prefer, ultimately that is not for any one of us to decide, but it is up to a collective decision that we have to come to, and the only way to do it is via referendum,” he said, reports Kuam News.

With the geostrategic competition between the US and China in the Pacific, Guam has become increasingly significant in supporting American naval and air operations, especially in the event of a conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

The two US bases have seen Guam’s economy become heavily reliant on military investments and tourism.

The Defence Department holds about 25 percent of Guam’s land and is preparing to spend billions to upgrade the island’s military infrastructure as another 5000 American marines relocate there from Japan’s Okinawa islands.

Guam is also within range of Chinese and North Korean ballistic missiles and the US has trialed a defence system, with the first tests held in December.

The “moment in history” for statehood may also be defined by the Trump administration spending cuts, Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero warned in her “state of the island” address on Wednesday.

Military presence leveraged
The island has in recent years leveraged the increased military presence to demand federal assistance and the territory’s treasury relies on at least US$0.5 billion in annual funding.

“Let us be clear about this: Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter, because housing aid to Guam is cut, or if 36,000 of our people lose access to Medicaid and Medicare coverage keeping them healthy, alive and out of poverty,” Guerrero said.

Parkinson’s proposed legislative resolution calls for an end to 125-plus years of US colonial uncertainty.

“The people of Guam, as the rightful stewards of their homeland, must assert their inalienable right to self-determination,” states the resolution, including that there be a “full examination of statehood or enhanced autonomous status for Guam.”

“Granting Guam equal political status would signal unequivocally that Guam is an integral part of the United States, deterring adversaries who might otherwise perceive Guam as a mere expendable outpost.”

If adopted by the Guam legislature, the non-binding resolution would be transmitted to the White House.

A local statute enacted in 2000 for a political status plebiscite on statehood, independence or free association has become bogged down in US courts.

‘Reject colonial status quo’
Neil Weare, a former Guam resident and co-director of Right to Democracy, said the self-determination process must be centred on what the people of Guam want, “not just what’s best for US national security”.

“Right to Democracy does not take a position on political status, other than to reject the undemocratic and colonial status quo,” Weare said on behalf of the nonprofit organisation that advocates for rights and self-determination in US territories.

“People can have different views on what is the best solution to this problem, but we should all be in agreement that the continued undemocratic rule of millions of people in US territories is wrong and needs to end.”

He said the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence next year can open a new venue for a conversation about key concepts — such as the “consent of the governed” — involving Guam and other US territories.

Republished from BenarNews with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The European Parliament passed a resolution condemning Thailand for repatriating 40 Uyghurs to China, saying the move violated international law.

Wednesday’s resolution said the Uyghurs, who were deported at night on Feb. 27, are at risk of “arbitrary detention, torture and serious human rights violations,” and noted that other countries had offered to resettle the refugees.

The 40 Uyghurs had been in the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok for over a decade. They had entered Thailand in 2014 as part of a larger group of Uyghurs escaping China.

(Natthaphon Meksophon via BenarNews)

Over the past few weeks, Chinese and Thai authorities have been publishing videos of the deported Uyghurs, purportedly showing that they were happily reunited with their families and were not being punished.

There is virtually no way to confirm their state given the lack of access to these men from outside the country. Based accounts from Uyghurs who have attempted to escape China in the past, it is highly likely that the deportees were punished.

Radio Free Asia recently confirmed with police that two Uyghurs who had plans to flee China in 2014 -- but then later abandoned those plans and returned to Xinjiang -- were arrested and sentenced to nine years in prison.

The two men, Memet Awut and Turdi Abla, from Aksu in the western part of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, had traveled to China’s southern province of Yunnan, which borders Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos, with plans to flee the country. But they returned after realizing that doing so would have put their lives in danger.

(RFA)

According to Aksu police, the two were among eight Uyghurs arrested at that time for trying to escape.

Six others were actually caught trying to cross the border, but Awut and Abla had no connection to this group, had never crossed the border, and returned to Xinjiang on their own. They were arrested around eight months after their return, police said.

“They were in the detention center for 22 days and later transferred to Urumqi,” a police officer in Aksu told RFA Uyghur over the phone. “It’s written in their verdict that it was because they went to Yunnan. They came back from Yunnan themselves.”

The officer was not sure how long they stayed in Yunnan.

“The verdict mentions that they couldn’t find a viable way out after moving to Yunnan and came back,” the officer said. “Their crime is attempting to escape.”

A member of the neighborhood committee in their hometown said that Awut and Abla’s sentences should have ended last year, but they are still being held in a prison in Urumqi. Their fate suggests that the treatment currently faced by the 40 deportees may not be as rosy as depicted in Chinese media.

A spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok said that after being reunited with their families, the 40 Uyghur deportees would undergo a period of “vocational skills training.”

The Chinese government has detained nearly 2 million Uyghurs in conscentration camps in Xinjiang, where they were subjected to forced labor. Beijing has claimed the camps are vocational centers where “students” voluntarily learn new skills.

Though the EU resolution condemning the return did not mention the camps directly, it did call on China to respect the rights of those returned and to “ensure transparency about their whereabouts.”

It also acknowledged that Thailand was an important partner of the EU, and encouraged Bangkok to “strengthen its institutions in line with democratic principles and international human rights standards.”

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Eugene Whong for RFA and Shöhrét Hoshür for RFA Uyghur.

Maata Wharehoka (Ngāti Tahinga, Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Kuia. 1950-2025

Maata Wharehoka has been described as the Parihaka Matriarch, Parihaka leader and arts advocate, “champion of Kahu Whakatere Tupapaku, the tikanga Māori practices, expert in marae arts, raranga (weaving) and karanga”, renowned weaver who revived traditional Māori methods of death and burial, “driving force behind Parihaka’s focus to be a self-sufficient community”, Kaitiaki (or guardian) of Te Niho marae for nearly 30 years.

And I want to add Peace Advocate and Activist. She was 74.

At Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa, the National Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPCS) at Otago University, Ōtepoti Dunedin, we were fortunate that Maata brought her knowledge and her exceptional presence to help us learn some of the lessons from Parihaka about peaceful resistance, non-violent communication, conflict resolution, consultation, hospitality, humility and mana.

• READ MORE: Parihaka matriarch Maata Wharehoka dies at age 74

One of her first talks was entitled “Why do I wear feathers in my hair and scribbles on my face?” and she explained to us the significance of the raukura or albatross feathers that signify peace to the people of Parihaka.

She used the moko (tattoos) on her mouth, chin and from her ears to her cheeks to teach us the importance of listening first, before you speak.

Maata taught us the use of the beat of the poi to signify the sound of the horses hooves when the pacifist settlement at Parihaka was invaded by the British militia in 1881.

The poi and waiata have served as a “hidden-in-plain-sight” performative image by the people of Parihaka that represents consistent resistance to the oppression.

Maata had been shocked when she first came to the peace centre that we were only able to sing (badly) what she called a “nursery school” waiata. So she gifted a unique waiata to NCPACS to help with our transition to being a more bicultural centre, now named Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa.

Maukaroko ki te whenua,
Whakaaro pai ki te tangata katoa
Arohanui ki te aoraki
Koa, koa, koa ki te aoraki,
Pono, whakapono
Ki te ao nei
Ko rongo, no rongo, na rongo
Me rongo, me rongo, me rongo

Translation:
Peace to the land
Be thoughtful to all
Great love to the universe
Joy, joy, joy to the universe
Truth, truth to the world
It is Rongo, from Rongo, by Rongo
Peace, peace, peace.

Maata also hosted a number of students from TAOR/NCPACS at Parihaka for both PhD fieldwork and practicum experience, building a link between them and Parihaka that extends to the next generation.

She named her expertise “deathing and birthing” as she taught Māori traditions of preparation for dying and for welcoming the new born. One of the students learnt from Maata about the process where the person who is dying is closely involved in the preparations, including the weaving of the waka kahutere (coffin) from harakeke (flax) for a natural burial.

Maata herself was very much part of the preparations for her own death and would have advised and assisted those who wove her waka kahutere with much love and expertise.

For me, Maata became one of my very best friends. Her generosity, sense of humour, high energy and kindness quite overwhelmed me. We also became close through working and writing together, with Kelli Te Maihāroa (from Waitaha — the South Island iwi with a long peace history) and Maui Solomon (who upholds the Moriori peace tradition).

We collaborated on a series of articles and chapters, and our joint work was presented both locally and at international conferences.

On my many visits to Parihaka I was also warmly welcomed by the Wharehoka family and was able to meet Maata’s mokopuna, all growing up with Māori as their first language and steeped in Māori knowledge and tikanga.

Maata is an irreplaceable person, a true wahine toa, exuberant, outgoing, funny, clever, fiece, talented, indomitable. Maata, we will miss you terribly, but will continue to be guided by your wisdom and ongoing presence in our hearts and our lives.

In the words of Kelli Te Maihāroa “She was an amazing wahine toa, who loved sharing her gifts with the world. Moe Mai Rā e te māreikura o Te Niho Parihaka.’

Dr Heather Devere is chair of Asia Pacific Media Network and former director of research of Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa.

Publications:
Kelli Te Maihāroa, Heather Devere, Maui Solomon and Maata Wharehoka (2022). Exploring Indigenous Peace Traditions Collaboratively. In Te Maihāroa, Ligaliga and Devere (Eds). Decolonising Peace and Conflict Studies through Indigenous Research. Palgrave Macmillan.

Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihāroa, Maui Solomon and Maata Wharehoka (2020). Concepts of Friendship and Decolonising Cross-Cultural Peace Research in Aotearoa New Zealand. AMITY: The Journal of Friendship Studies, 6(1), 53-87 doi:10.5518/AMITY/31.

Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihāroa, Maui Solomon and Maata Wharehoka (2019). Tides of Endurance: Indigenous Peace Traditions of Aotearoa New Zealand. Ab-Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First National and First Peoples, 3(1), 24-47.

Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihāroa, Maata Wharehoka and Maui Solomon (2017). Regeneration of Indigenous Peace Traditions in Aotearoa New Zealand. In Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihaora and John Synott (eds.), Peacebuilding and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Experiences and Strategies for the 21st Century. Cham, Springer.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Asia Pacific.

Maata Wharehoka (Ngāti Tahinga, Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Kuia. 1950-2025

Maata Wharehoka has been described as the Parihaka Matriarch, Parihaka leader and arts advocate, “champion of Kahu Whakatere Tupapaku, the tikanga Māori practices, expert in marae arts, raranga (weaving) and karanga”, renowned weaver who revived traditional Māori methods of death and burial, “driving force behind Parihaka’s focus to be a self-sufficient community”, Kaitiaki (or guardian) of Te Niho marae for nearly 30 years.

And I want to add Peace Advocate and Activist. She was 74.

At Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa, the National Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPCS) at Otago University, Ōtepoti Dunedin, we were fortunate that Maata brought her knowledge and her exceptional presence to help us learn some of the lessons from Parihaka about peaceful resistance, non-violent communication, conflict resolution, consultation, hospitality, humility and mana.

• READ MORE: Parihaka matriarch Maata Wharehoka dies at age 74

One of her first talks was entitled “Why do I wear feathers in my hair and scribbles on my face?” and she explained to us the significance of the raukura or albatross feathers that signify peace to the people of Parihaka.

She used the moko (tattoos) on her mouth, chin and from her ears to her cheeks to teach us the importance of listening first, before you speak.

Maata taught us the use of the beat of the poi to signify the sound of the horses hooves when the pacifist settlement at Parihaka was invaded by the British militia in 1881.

The poi and waiata have served as a “hidden-in-plain-sight” performative image by the people of Parihaka that represents consistent resistance to the oppression.

Maata had been shocked when she first came to the peace centre that we were only able to sing (badly) what she called a “nursery school” waiata. So she gifted a unique waiata to NCPACS to help with our transition to being a more bicultural centre, now named Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa.

Maukaroko ki te whenua,
Whakaaro pai ki te tangata katoa
Arohanui ki te aoraki
Koa, koa, koa ki te aoraki,
Pono, whakapono
Ki te ao nei
Ko rongo, no rongo, na rongo
Me rongo, me rongo, me rongo

Translation:
Peace to the land
Be thoughtful to all
Great love to the universe
Joy, joy, joy to the universe
Truth, truth to the world
It is Rongo, from Rongo, by Rongo
Peace, peace, peace.

Maata also hosted a number of students from TAOR/NCPACS at Parihaka for both PhD fieldwork and practicum experience, building a link between them and Parihaka that extends to the next generation.

She named her expertise “deathing and birthing” as she taught Māori traditions of preparation for dying and for welcoming the new born. One of the students learnt from Maata about the process where the person who is dying is closely involved in the preparations, including the weaving of the waka kahutere (coffin) from harakeke (flax) for a natural burial.

Maata herself was very much part of the preparations for her own death and would have advised and assisted those who wove her waka kahutere with much love and expertise.

For me, Maata became one of my very best friends. Her generosity, sense of humour, high energy and kindness quite overwhelmed me. We also became close through working and writing together, with Kelli Te Maihāroa (from Waitaha — the South Island iwi with a long peace history) and Maui Solomon (who upholds the Moriori peace tradition).

We collaborated on a series of articles and chapters, and our joint work was presented both locally and at international conferences.

On my many visits to Parihaka I was also warmly welcomed by the Wharehoka family and was able to meet Maata’s mokopuna, all growing up with Māori as their first language and steeped in Māori knowledge and tikanga.

Maata is an irreplaceable person, a true wahine toa, exuberant, outgoing, funny, clever, fiece, talented, indomitable. Maata, we will miss you terribly, but will continue to be guided by your wisdom and ongoing presence in our hearts and our lives.

In the words of Kelli Te Maihāroa “She was an amazing wahine toa, who loved sharing her gifts with the world. Moe Mai Rā e te māreikura o Te Niho Parihaka.’

Dr Heather Devere is chair of Asia Pacific Media Network and former director of research of Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa.

Publications:
Kelli Te Maihāroa, Heather Devere, Maui Solomon and Maata Wharehoka (2022). Exploring Indigenous Peace Traditions Collaboratively. In Te Maihāroa, Ligaliga and Devere (Eds). Decolonising Peace and Conflict Studies through Indigenous Research. Palgrave Macmillan.

Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihāroa, Maui Solomon and Maata Wharehoka (2020). Concepts of Friendship and Decolonising Cross-Cultural Peace Research in Aotearoa New Zealand. AMITY: The Journal of Friendship Studies, 6(1), 53-87 doi:10.5518/AMITY/31.

Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihāroa, Maui Solomon and Maata Wharehoka (2019). Tides of Endurance: Indigenous Peace Traditions of Aotearoa New Zealand. Ab-Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First National and First Peoples, 3(1), 24-47.

Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihāroa, Maata Wharehoka and Maui Solomon (2017). Regeneration of Indigenous Peace Traditions in Aotearoa New Zealand. In Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihaora and John Synott (eds.), Peacebuilding and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Experiences and Strategies for the 21st Century. Cham, Springer.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Asia Pacific.

“Instead of tackling rising prices and delivering relief for American families, House Republicans are charging ahead with trillions of dollars in deeply unpopular tax breaks for billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And, they’re paying for their billionaire handouts by ransacking health care, food assistance, and other vital programs that American workers and families rely on.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The American Historical Association, the oldest learned society in the United States, has adopted the “Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza,” condemning Israel’s “intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system.” We speak to Sherene Seikaly and Barbara Weinstein, two scholars who supported the resolution and helped push for the groundbreaking vote. Seikaly, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says, “This moment was one I never thought I would experience,” hailing the resolution as an opportunity for historians to “narrate our past and imagine our future.” Weinstein, who teaches at New York University and previously served as the president of the American Historical Association, adds, “Over the years it has become increasingly clear that we can’t have a narrow definition of what our roles are as historians.”

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

It takes approximately 700,000 megawatt hours of electricity to power Chicago’s more than 400 municipal buildings every year. As of January 1, every single one of them — including 98 fire stations, two international airports, and two of the largest water treatment plants on the planet — is running on renewable energy, thanks largely to Illinois’ newest and largest solar farm.

The move is projected to cut the carbon footprint of the country’s third-largest city by approximately 290,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year — the equivalent of taking 62,000 cars off the road, according to the city. Local decarbonization efforts like Chicago’s are taking on increasing significance as President-elect Donald Trump promises to reduce federal support for climate action. With the outgoing Biden administration doubling down on an international pledge to get the U.S. to net zero emissions by 2050, cities, states, and private-sector players across the country will have to pick up the slack.

Chicago is one of several U.S. cities that are taking advantage of their bulk-buying power to spur new carbon-free energy development. 

“It’s a plan that gets the city to take action on climate and also leverages our buying power to generate new opportunities for Chicagoans and the state,” said Angela Tovar, Chicago’s chief sustainability officer. “There’s opportunities everywhere.”

Chicago’s switch to renewable energy has been almost a decade in the making. The goal of sourcing the city’s power purely from carbon-free sources was first established by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2017. His successor, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, struck a 2022 deal with Constellation, an electricity supplier, to purchase the city’s energy from the developer Swift Current Energy beginning in 2025. 

Swift Current began construction on the 3,800-acre, 593-megawatt solar farm in central Illinois as part of the same five-year, $422 million agreement. Straddling two counties in central Illinois, the Double Black Diamond Solar project is now the largest solar installation east of the Mississippi River. It can produce enough electricity to power more than 100,000 homes, according to Swift Current’s vice president of origination, Caroline Mann. 

Chicago alone has agreed to purchase approximately half the installation’s total output, which will cover about 70 percent of its municipal buildings’ electricity needs. City officials plan to cover the remaining 30 percent through the purchase of renewable energy credits. 

“That’s really a feature and not a bug of our plan,” said Deputy Chief Sustainability Officer Jared Policicchio. He added that he hopes the city’s demand for 100 percent renewable energy will encourage additional clean energy development locally, albeit on a much smaller scale, which will create new sources of power that the city can then purchase directly, in lieu of credits. “Our goal over the next several years is that we reach a point where we’re not buying renewable energy credits.” 

More than 700 other U.S. cities and towns have signed similar purchasing agreements since 2015, according to a 2022 study from the World Resources Institute. Only one city, Houston, has a larger renewable energy deal than Chicago, according to Matthew Popkin, the cities and communities U.S. program manager at Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit whose research focuses on decarbonization. However, he added, no other contract has added as much new renewable power to the grid as Chicago’s.

“Part of Chicago’s goal was what’s called additionality: bringing new resources into the market and onto the grid here,” said Popkin. 

Chicago also secured a $400,000 annual commitment from Constellation and Swift Current for clean energy workforce training, including training via Chicago Women in Trades, a nonprofit aiming to increase the number of women in union construction and manufacturing jobs. 

The economic benefits extend past the city’s limits: According to Swift Current, approximately $100 million in new tax revenue is projected to flow into Sangamon County and Morgan County, which are home to the Double Black Diamond Solar site, over the project’s operational life. 

“Cities and other local governments just don’t appreciate their ability to not just support their residents but also shape markets,” said Popkin. “Chicago is demonstrating directly how cities can lead by example, implement ambitious goals amidst evolving state and federal policy changes, and leverage their purchasing power to support a more equitable renewable energy future.”

Alex Dane, the World Resource Institute’s senior manager for clean energy innovation and partnerships in the U.S. energy program, said many cities have set two renewable energy goals: one for municipal operations and a second goal for the community at large. Even though the latter is “a little bit harder to get to, and the timeline is a little bit further out,” said Dane, the community-side goals begin to seem less lofty once a city has decarbonized the assets it directly controls.

Indeed, Chicago’s new milestone is the first step in a broader goal to source the energy for all buildings in the city from renewables by 2035. That would make it the largest city in the country to do so, according to the Sierra Club.

Dane said it will be increasingly important for cities, towns, and states to drive their own efforts to reduce emissions, build greener economies, and meet local climate goals. He said moves like Chicago’s prove that they are capable, no matter what’s on the horizon at the federal level. 

“That is an imperative thing to know, that state, city, county action is a durable pathway, even under the next administration, and [it] needs to happen,” said Dane. “The juice is definitely still worth the squeeze.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Chicago keeps its New Year’s resolution: All city buildings now use 100 percent clean power on Jan 2, 2025.

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

Lucrative trade concessions under the EU’s “Everything But Arms,” or EBA, scheme prop up Cambodia’s dominant garment export industry by allowing access to the European market without tariffs.

The EU withdrew about 20% of the EBA scheme in 2020 – equivalent to about US$1.1 billion of Cambodia’s Europe-bound exports – and in March 2023, the regional bloc threatened to further raise tariffs if Cambodia didn’t improve its human rights record.

The EU Parliament’s Nov. 28 resolution condemned “the shrinking of the civic space in Cambodia” and called for “the immediate release of all political prisoners, activists, journalists – including award-winning journalist Mech Dara – human rights defenders and other civil society actors held on politically motivated charges.”

It urged Cambodian authorities to amend the country’s Trade Union Law and its law overseeing non-governmental organizations so that it aligns with international human rights and labor standards, and ensures the protection of workers and civil society.

The resolution also called on companies operating in the EU that source from Cambodia “to conduct thorough human rights due diligence in their supply chains” and recommended that member states look into changes to the EBA scheme “based on the Cambodian Government’s non-cooperation on remedying and preventing human rights violations.”

That would “send a clear message that improving human rights and safeguarding civil society freedoms are preconditions for economic cooperation, trade and investment,” it said.

Assembly’s response

A statement from the assembly, which is dominated by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, called the Nov. 28 resolution “misleading and biased,” and criticized it as being based on false claims and one-sided reports.

“The assertion that authorities are employing criminalization as a tactic to silence civil society is unfounded,” the statement said. “Legal actions are taken in accordance with established laws and procedures, aimed at preserving public order and democracy.”

Cambodia has a large presence of more than 6,000 civil society organizations as well as more than 6,000 trade unions and employers’ associations, the statement said. Concerned EU Parliament members are invited to visit Cambodia “to engage with all related stakeholders on democratic space and labor rights.”

Cambodia’s garment industry depends on the EU trade preferences, said Moeun Tola, executive director of Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights, or CENTRAL, which was mentioned in the EU resolution.

“I recommend that Cambodia consider this matter by restoring civic and democratic space, in particular the essential role of civil society which has no intention to seek power from the state except to assist citizens to understand their rights,” he said.

Kem Sophen, a representative for workers at the Zhen Tai Garment Cambodia factory, told Radio Free Asia that he’s worried that investment and the number of jobs will decline if the EU moves to further withdraw the EBA.

“I insist that relevant institutions, especially the top leaders of the government and the labor minister, take this issue seriously,” he said.

Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Edited by Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Khmer.

A U.N. General Assembly committee passed a resolution on North Korea’s human rights for the 20th consecutive year, while the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill to reauthorize and update the 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act aimed at promoting rights and freedom in the North.

“Noting with concern the possible negative impact on the human rights situation, including that of separated families, following the announcement of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in January 2024 that it would no longer pursue reunification with the Republic of Korea,” the U.N. committee said in its resolution.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea refer to North Korea and South Korea, respectively.

The resolution highlighted North Korea’s “all-pervasive and severe restrictions,” including an “absolute monopoly” on information and total control over organized social life. It also emphasized the urgent need for reforms to ensure fundamental freedoms.

Specifically, the resolution urged the North to guarantee the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion, expression, and association – both online and offline. It called for measures such as allowing independent newspapers and media to operate and repealing or reforming laws and practices that suppress those rights.

The resolution strongly condemned the North Korean government for financing its “unlawful” nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs through human rights violations, including forced labor. It further expressed concern over the “disproportionate” allocation of the state budget to military spending, which undermines the fulfillment of basic human rights, such as the right to adequate food.

Additionally, the resolution requested the North’s leadership to convene a high-level meeting to feature testimony from civil society representatives and experts to address human rights abuses.

It also called for the “immediate” repatriation of all abductees from South Korea and Japan, underscoring the urgency of the issue.

The resolution will be sent to a full General Assembly session for approval in December.

Since 2005, the committee has annually adopted the resolution to highlight human rights violations in North Korea and intensify international pressure on it to address the issue.

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UN Security Council discusses North Korean human rights

South Korea welcomed the resolution.

“We take note of the fact that through this resolution, the international community expressed concerns over the serious human rights situation in North Korea and sent a consistent and unified message calling for the North’s action to improve the situation,” the South’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

North Korea, however, denounced it as a “document of a political plot fabricated for the ulterior purpose of defaming the dignity of the DPRK.”

“The anti-DPRK draft resolution of human rights, tabled by the European Union every year at the instigation of the United States, is a false paper worthy of no deliberation at all as it is full of the fabrication and falsehood,” said North Korea’s ambassador to the U.N., Kim Song .

“The so-called human rights issue cannot exist in our country.”

U.S. North Korean Human Rights Act

In the U.S., the House of Representatives endorsed the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act in a 335-37 vote.

First adopted in 2004, the act was intended to promote rights and freedom of North Korean refugees. The act is updated and reauthorized periodically.

The last reauthorization ended in August 2022, and a reauthorization bill was subsequently submitted to Congress, but the bill has been delayed due to the agenda and other issues.

“The authorization for the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 lapsed in 2022. We must get this legislation signed into law this Congress,” Rep. Young Kim said during a House session.

“We cannot ignore the threat posed by North Korea and holding the North Korean regime accountable without supporting human rights is a nonstarter,” she added.

“Failing to reauthorize a landmark human rights initiative sends a signal to Kim Jong Un that the United States will allow human rights in North Korea and around the world to fall on deaf ears.”

The move came after the U.S., South Korea and Japan affirmed last month their shared commitment to addressing North Korea’s human rights issues.

This declaration came in a joint statement following their first trilateral meeting on North Korean human rights held in Washington, amid concerns that the North’s repressive political climate enables Pyongyang to advance its weapons programs unchecked.

The three countries in their statement highlighted North Korea as “one of the worst human rights violators in the world,” citing credible reports of summary executions, assassinations, abductions – including those of Japanese, South Korean, and other foreign nationals – torture, and unlawful detentions.

They called for a global shift in handling North Korean human rights, urging the international community to move beyond monitoring abuses to actively promoting accountability.

Edited by Mike Firn.

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

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian society leading the global BDS movement, has called for immediate pressure on all states to support the updated resolution tabled at the UN General Assembly calling for sanctions on Israel.

The resolution is aimed at enacting the July 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about the illegality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and its violation of the prohibition of apartheid under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

A vote is expected tomorrow.

• READ MORE: Katz threatens to ‘break and dissolve’ PA if it pushes UN resolution against Israel
• UN likely to vote on push to end Israel presence in Palestinian territory
• Israel has killed over 11,000 students in Gaza, West Bank: Ministry

This resolution, a diluted version of an earlier draft, falls below the bare minimum of the legal obligations of states to implement the ICJ ruling, undoubtedly a result of intense bullying and intimidation by the colonial West — led by the US and Israel’s partners in the ongoing Gaza genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians.

By relegating ending the Gaza genocide to an afterthought, the resolution ignores its utmost urgency.

Despite such obvious failure, the resolution does call for:

• Ending Israel’s illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, within 12 months;
• Ending states’ complicity in aiding or maintaining this occupation by imposing trade and military sanctions such as “ceasing the importation of any products originating in the Israeli settlements, as well as the provision or transfer of arms, munitions and related equipment” to Israel. In April 2024, the UN Human Rights Council called for an embargo on “the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel, the occupying Power;”
• Preventing, prohibiting and eradicating Israel’s violations of article 3 of CERD identified in the advisory opinion, regarding apartheid;
• Imposing sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against individuals and entities engaged in the maintenance of Israel’s unlawful occupation.

Step in right direction
Limited in scope to addressing a mere subset of Palestinian rights, the resolution does not, indeed cannot, legally or morally prejudice the other rights of the Indigenous people of Palestine, particularly the right of our refugees since the 1948 Nakba to return and receive reparations and the right of the Palestinian people, including those who are citizens of apartheid Israel, to liberation from settler-colonialism and apartheid.

Supporting this resolution would therefore be only a step in the right direction. It cannot absolve states of their legal and moral obligations to end all complicity with Israel’s regime of oppression.

Meaningful targeted sanctions by states and inter-state groups (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Arab League, African Union etc.) remain absolutely necessary to stop Israel’s genocide and end its occupation and apartheid.

Failing to do so would further shatter international law’s credibility and relevance to the global majority.

Dozens of UN human rights experts have confirmed that the ICJ ruling “has finally reaffirmed a principle that seemed unclear, even to the United Nations: Freedom from foreign military occupation, racial segregation and apartheid is absolutely non-negotiable”.

The ruling in effect affirms that BDS is not just a right but also “an obligation,” and it constitutes a paradigm shift from one centered on “negotiations” between oppressor and oppressed to one centered on accountability, sanctions and enforcement to end the system of oppression and to uphold the inalienable, internationally recognised rights of the Palestinian people.

States must be pressured
To sincerely implement the ICJ ruling on the occupation and fulfil the legal obligations triggered by the court’s earlier finding that Israel is plausibly perpetrating genocide in Gaza, and in line with the demands by UN human rights experts, all states must be pressured to immediately:

• Impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, including the export, import, shipping and transit of military and dual-use items, military cooperation, and academic and industrial research;
• Impose sanctions on trade, finance, travel, technology and cooperation with Israel;
• “Review all diplomatic, political, and economic ties with Israel, inclusive of business and finance, pension funds, academia and charities,” as stated by UN experts, to ensure an end to all complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation;
• Impose an embargo on oil, coal and other energy exports to Israel;
• Declare support for suspending apartheid Israel’s membership in the UN, as apartheid South Africa was suspended;
• Take immediate actions to ensure that their economic relationship with Israel and the activities of corporations domiciled in their territories do not breach their duty to prevent and to not be complicit in genocide and are not complicit in Israel’s commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity; and
• Reaffirm the right of Palestinian refugees to return, as per UNGA Resolution 194, and fully support UNRWA until this right can be exercised.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian society leading the global BDS movement, has called for immediate pressure on all states to support the updated resolution tabled at the UN General Assembly calling for sanctions on Israel.

The resolution is aimed at enacting the July 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about the illegality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and its violation of the prohibition of apartheid under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

A vote is expected tomorrow.

• READ MORE: Katz threatens to ‘break and dissolve’ PA if it pushes UN resolution against Israel
• UN likely to vote on push to end Israel presence in Palestinian territory
• Israel has killed over 11,000 students in Gaza, West Bank: Ministry

This resolution, a diluted version of an earlier draft, falls below the bare minimum of the legal obligations of states to implement the ICJ ruling, undoubtedly a result of intense bullying and intimidation by the colonial West — led by the US and Israel’s partners in the ongoing Gaza genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians.

By relegating ending the Gaza genocide to an afterthought, the resolution ignores its utmost urgency.

Despite such obvious failure, the resolution does call for:

• Ending Israel’s illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, within 12 months;
• Ending states’ complicity in aiding or maintaining this occupation by imposing trade and military sanctions such as “ceasing the importation of any products originating in the Israeli settlements, as well as the provision or transfer of arms, munitions and related equipment” to Israel. In April 2024, the UN Human Rights Council called for an embargo on “the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel, the occupying Power;”
• Preventing, prohibiting and eradicating Israel’s violations of article 3 of CERD identified in the advisory opinion, regarding apartheid;
• Imposing sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against individuals and entities engaged in the maintenance of Israel’s unlawful occupation.

Step in right direction
Limited in scope to addressing a mere subset of Palestinian rights, the resolution does not, indeed cannot, legally or morally prejudice the other rights of the Indigenous people of Palestine, particularly the right of our refugees since the 1948 Nakba to return and receive reparations and the right of the Palestinian people, including those who are citizens of apartheid Israel, to liberation from settler-colonialism and apartheid.

Supporting this resolution would therefore be only a step in the right direction. It cannot absolve states of their legal and moral obligations to end all complicity with Israel’s regime of oppression.

Meaningful targeted sanctions by states and inter-state groups (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Arab League, African Union etc.) remain absolutely necessary to stop Israel’s genocide and end its occupation and apartheid.

Failing to do so would further shatter international law’s credibility and relevance to the global majority.

Dozens of UN human rights experts have confirmed that the ICJ ruling “has finally reaffirmed a principle that seemed unclear, even to the United Nations: Freedom from foreign military occupation, racial segregation and apartheid is absolutely non-negotiable”.

The ruling in effect affirms that BDS is not just a right but also “an obligation,” and it constitutes a paradigm shift from one centered on “negotiations” between oppressor and oppressed to one centered on accountability, sanctions and enforcement to end the system of oppression and to uphold the inalienable, internationally recognised rights of the Palestinian people.

States must be pressured
To sincerely implement the ICJ ruling on the occupation and fulfil the legal obligations triggered by the court’s earlier finding that Israel is plausibly perpetrating genocide in Gaza, and in line with the demands by UN human rights experts, all states must be pressured to immediately:

• Impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, including the export, import, shipping and transit of military and dual-use items, military cooperation, and academic and industrial research;
• Impose sanctions on trade, finance, travel, technology and cooperation with Israel;
• “Review all diplomatic, political, and economic ties with Israel, inclusive of business and finance, pension funds, academia and charities,” as stated by UN experts, to ensure an end to all complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation;
• Impose an embargo on oil, coal and other energy exports to Israel;
• Declare support for suspending apartheid Israel’s membership in the UN, as apartheid South Africa was suspended;
• Take immediate actions to ensure that their economic relationship with Israel and the activities of corporations domiciled in their territories do not breach their duty to prevent and to not be complicit in genocide and are not complicit in Israel’s commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity; and
• Reaffirm the right of Palestinian refugees to return, as per UNGA Resolution 194, and fully support UNRWA until this right can be exercised.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

As an economy, Fiji has paid a “very high price for being unable to protect freedom” but people can speak and criticise the government freely now, says Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad.

He highlighted the “high price” while launching the new book titled Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, which he also co-edited, at the Pacific International Media conference in Suva last week.

Prasad, a former University of the South Pacific (USP) economics professor, said that he, in a deeply personal way, knew how the economy had been affected when he saw the debt numbers and what the government had inherited.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Media Conference reports

Professor Prasad says the government had reintroduced media self-regulation and “we can actually feel the freedom everywhere, including in Parliament”.

USP head of journalism associate professor Shailendra Singh and former USP lecturer and co-founder of The Australia Today Dr Amrit Sarwal also co-edited the book with Professor Prasad.

While also speaking during the launch, PNG Minister for Information and Communications Technology Timothy Masiu expressed support for the Fiji government repealing the media laws that curbed freedom in Fiji in the recent past.

He said his Department of ICT had set up a social media management desk to monitor the ever-increasing threats on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and other online platforms.

Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad speaking at the book launch. Video: Fijivillage News

• promote media self-regulation;
• improve government media capacity;
• roll out media infrastructure for all; and
• diversify content and quota usage for national interest.

He said that to elevate media professionalism in PNG, the policy called for developing media self-regulation in the country without direct government intervention.

Strike a balance
Masiu said the draft policy also intended to strike a balance between the media’s ongoing role in transparency and accountability on the one hand, and the dissemination of developmental information, on the other hand.

He said it was not an attempt by the government to restrict the media in PNG and the media in PNG enjoyed “unprecedented freedom” and an ability to report as they deemed appropriate.

The PNG Minister said their leaders were constantly being put in the spotlight.

While they did not necessarily agree with many of the daily news media reports, the governmenr would not “suddenly move to restrict the media” in PNG in any form.

The 30th anniversary edition of the research journal Pacific Journalism Review, founded by former USP Journalism Programme head Professor David Robie at the University of Papua New Guinea, was also launched at the event.

The PJR has published more than 1100 research articles over the past 30 years and is the largest media research archive in the region.

Republished from Fijivillage News with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

In 2019, the Trump administration charged Assange with 17 counts of breaching the Espionage Act, arguing that he conspired with Chelsea Manning, a former army intelligence analyst, who spent seven years in prison for leaking material to WikiLeaks. The American Civil Liberties Union has long advocated for the Department of Justice to drop the criminal charges against Assange.

Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, had the following reaction:

“This is a prosecution that should not have been brought. With today’s guilty plea, Julian Assange stands convicted of practicing journalism, and all investigative journalists now face greater legal peril.

“Exposing government secrets and revealing them in the public interest is the core function of national security journalism. Today, for the first time, that activity was described in a guilty plea as a criminal conspiracy. And even if the current Department of Justice stays true to its assurances that the Assange case is unique and will not provide a precedent to be wielded against other publishers, we can’t be confident that future administrations will honor that commitment.

“We’re grateful that today Assange will be on a flight to Australia, and not to Virginia to face trial and further punishment. The precedent set by this guilty plea would have been far more dangerous had it been ratified by federal courts. But make no mistake, the vital work of national security journalists will be more difficult today than it was yesterday.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The New York Times has become notorious for its role in laundering right-wing transphobia for its largely liberal audience (see, e.g., FAIR.org, 12/16/22, 5/11/23, 5/19/23). A recent article (5/20/24) about local school politics serves as yet another example of how the paper’s anti-trans agenda most likely flies under the radar of most readers—making its propaganda that much more effective.

The headline read, “NYC Parents Rebuked for Questioning Transgender Student-Athlete Rules.” The subhead explained further:

Over a dozen Democratic elected officials criticized a parent group that asked for a review of rules that let students play on sports teams that align with their gender identity.

It’s a framing clearly intended to portray the parents as reasonable—they just want to ask questions and review some rules!—and the city officials as censorious. After all, who rebukes people for just wanting to have a conversation?

‘Asked the city to review’

The New York Times (5/20/24) framed a story about a transphobic resolution as “parents” being attacked for merely “questioning.”

The article, by education reporter Troy Closson, began by describing “a group of elected parent leaders”–representing District 2, one of six Manhattan school districts–who “asked the city to review education department rules allowing transgender students to play on sports teams that align with their gender identity.”

“Elected,” so they must be representative, and simply “asked…to review,” so there’s presumably nothing anyone should get upset about. At least, as far as Times readers would be able to tell.

And what was the response? Closson tells readers:

The schools chancellor, David C. Banks, called the proposal “despicable” and “no way in line with our values.”

Democratic officials also have responded to the parent council swiftly, and angrily.

In a letter made public on Monday, a coalition of 18 Democratic elected officials from New York called the proposal “hateful, discriminatory and actively harmful” to the city’s children.

New York City’s Democrats sure sound extreme! Closson did finally give readers at least a glimpse of the other side’s perspective:

The officials argued that while some parents say they were “simply asking for a conversation,” the resolution “was based in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric” that has helped fuel harassment and mental health issues for young people. They demanded that the council formally rescind the resolution.

Toward the end of the piece, Closson acknowledged that, according to another council member, the council “received dozens of messages in opposition and only a handful in support in the lead-up to their meeting on the resolution.”

Crossing ‘political lines’

The Times gave no further context about the resolution or the people behind it that could possibly make the officials’ reactions make sense.

Instead, to help readers understand how out of the mainstream those Democratic officials are, Closson wrote, “But opinions on this issue don’t necessarily break neatly along political lines.” He offered a poll of “registered voters statewide” that found about two-thirds support barring trans athletes from competing with others who share their gender identity, with Republican respondents 30 percentage points more supportive than Democrats.

Of course, New York state is far more conservative than New York City (5–4 Democrat to Republican statewide, versus about 7–1 in the city), so it’s not a very useful barometer of NYC public opinion.

But perhaps more importantly, is it really the opinions of ill-informed voters that should matter here? Or is it the safety and well-being of the city’s public school students?

Like most Times articles about trans politics that FAIR has analyzed (FAIR.org, 5/6/21, 6/23/22, 5/11/23), Closson’s piece marginalized the voices of those most impacted. The piece quoted no students; it quoted one trans person—an “educator who runs a local after-school program”—who opposed the resolution. The rest were officials and parent council members.

A pointless ‘review’

The New York Times didn’t mention that the rules the resolution called for “reviewing” in fact are required under state law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression (CNN, 5/11/24).

Reading about the incident in outlets focused on education news, you get a very different understanding of the situation—including what the resolution could do. And there’s much more backstory to these “concerned parents” than the Times lets on.

First of all, as ACLU lawyer (and trans parent in District 2) Chase Strangio pointed out at the meeting, New York City school guidelines on trans youth athletes already align with state law.

Indeed, when a Republican county executive tried to ban trans athletes from competing on women’s teams in nearby Nassau County, the state attorney general sent him a cease-and-desist letter for contravening New York’s law against gender identity discrimination. A state judge (CNN, 5/11/24) struck down the executive order shortly before the Times article on the school council resolution, suggesting that any sort of “review” of the city’s school anti-discrimination policy would likewise serve no purpose—other than scoring cheap political points by targeting a vulnerable student population.

That would be nothing new for some of the supposedly representative and reasonable leaders involved. For the real story here, you need a little bit of context about those leaders.

Community education councils in New York City, unlike school boards in many places, have no authority to change school policies; their resolutions are nonbinding and their role is advisory only. In part because of this—and because prior to 2021, council positions were filled by PTAs, not by popular vote—awareness of and participation in the elections are both extremely low, making them easy targets for small but organized activist groups. (In the 2021 elections, only 2% of eligible voters participated.)

Out of PLACE

PLACE co-founder Maud Maron (The City, 4/28/23) called New York City schools an “oppressor woke environment where DOE employees make them pledge allegiance to their LGBTQI+ religion.”

In New York, just such a group took advantage of that low-hanging fruit: PLACE NYC. Founded in 2019 to oppose city efforts to address some of the worst school segregation rates in the country by reforming screened admissions and gifted programs, PLACE-endorsed candidates won a whopping 40% of council seats in the 2023 elections (The City, 4/28/23).

PLACE does not advertise a particular stance on LGBTQ issues, but its leadership overlaps with other “parent rights” groups that take anti-trans positions, including the far-right Moms for Liberty.

The anti-trans resolution in New York City’s District 2 passed by 8 votes to 3. Of these eight concerned council members, seven were endorsed by PLACE in the 2023 elections, including three who are in leadership roles at the organization.

Leonard Silverman, president of the council, was quoted by the Times; it didn’t mention that he is also a founder of PLACE. PLACE treasurer Craig Slutkin was another “yes” vote.

Another founder (and former president) of PLACE, Maud Maron, sponsored the anti-trans resolution. Maron is a well-known local activist, a proud member of the Moms for Liberty who, in an unsuccessful long-shot bid for Congress last year, advocated for a trans youth athlete ban. Maron and fellow council and PLACE member Charles Love spoke at a recent Moms for Liberty panel (Chalkbeat, 1/18/24).

‘No such thing as trans kids’

A city councilmember characterized PLACE leaders’ private texts as “demeaning, transphobic smears that are reminiscent of playground bullies” (The74, 12/14/23).

Back in December, education news site The74 (12/14/23) reported on a leaked WhatsApp chat among Maron, fellow council and PLACE member Danyela Egorov and other parent leaders. In it, Maron declared that “there is no such thing as trans kids.” When a parent expressed concern about how many LGBTQ kids were in her child’s school, Maron responded, “The social contagion is undeniable.” She also falsely claimed of gender-affirming hormone therapy: “Some of these kids never develop adult genitalia and will never have full sexual function. It’s an abomination.”

Three months later, Maron called an anonymous high school student who penned a pro-Palestinian op-ed in their school paper a “coward,” and accused them of “Jew hatred” in the New York Post (2/24/24). After numerous parent and official complaints about her conduct, the NYC Department of Education (The74, 4/18/24) investigated and issued an order last month to Maron to

cease engaging in conduct involving derogatory or offensive comments about any New York City Public School student, and conduct that serves to harass, intimidate or threaten, including but not limited to frequent verbal abuse and unnecessary aggressive speech that serves to intimidate and cause others to have concern for their personal safety.

This very relevant context was reported just a few weeks before Closson’s Times article.

PLACE and its controversial members and history are well known among local education activists and reporters. So Closson, who specifically covers the Times‘ “K–12 schools in New York City” beat, would appear to be either remarkably uninformed about his beat or intentionally obscuring the background to his story.

‘An attempt to roll back protections’

Chalkbeat‘s report (4/23/24) put the focus on “protections for trans students,” not on “questioning” parents.

Meanwhile, Chalkbeat (4/23/24), which covers education news in a handful of large US cities, covered the council meeting with the headline “An Attempt to Roll Back Protections for Trans Students in Sports Angers NYC Students and Families.”

Unlike Closson, reporter Liz Rosenberg quoted a number of people directly impacted by the resolution: a local trans teen, a local seventh grader who had started a Gay/Straight Alliance, and a parent who had moved to New York from Florida to protect her young trans child from the anti-trans laws there.

Rosenberg explained Maron’s history, including the cease-and-desist letter she had received only a week before the meeting. She quoted experts who described the documented negative impacts on trans kids when exclusionary or restrictive anti-trans laws are enacted, including a sharp rise in K–12 hate crimes against LGBTQ students.

Over at The74 (3/22/24), Marianna McMurdock also provided the back story on Maron. She noted, as Closson did not, that “dozens of community members spoke out against the gender resolution with only one expressing support.” According to McMurdock, the messages received by the council about the resolution were even more lopsided than Closson reported: 173–2.

Where Closson wrote that it was “unclear…whether the issue has affected sports teams in the city,” but that “some parents worried that their children could be disadvantaged or injured if transgender girls joined girls’ teams,” even non-local outlet Politico (3/20/24) noted directly that there was no evidence that any cisgender girls in the district had been harmed by the city schools’ policy.

In other words, it’s not terribly difficult to provide the kind of context that helps readers understand what’s “true and important” about this story. But on trans issues, the New York Times has proven itself time and again less interested in what’s true and important than in acting as a trojan horse for organized right-wing transphobia.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

Janine Jackson interviewed IPS’s Phyllis Bennis about the Gaza ceasefire resolution for the March 29, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Reuters (3/22/24)

Janine Jackson: Reuters reported on March 22 that the United Nations Security Council had rejected a resolution, proposed by the US, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and a hostage deal between the Israeli government and Hamas. Russia and China vetoed the measure, readers were told, while Algeria also voted no and Guyana abstained on a measure that “called for an immediate and sustained ceasefire lasting roughly six weeks that would protect civilians and allow for the delivery of humanitarian assistance.”

US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, cited in AP, said that the US had been “working on a hostage deal for months” that would call for a “six-week period of calm,” from which, she said, “we could then take the time and the steps to build a more enduring peace.” Well, what does that wording mean, and what do UN resolutions generally mean, if politicians and news media interpret them variously?

So helping us to sift through these attempts to respond to the violence of Israel’s ongoing war on Palestinians in Gaza is Phyllis Bennis; she’s senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and international advisor to Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as author of, among other titles, Understanding the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict: A Primer.

She joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Phyllis Bennis.

Phyllis Bennis: Great to be with you, Janine.

JJ: So the US introduced a resolution at the UN, nominally calling for a ceasefire, but also vetoed another resolution calling for a ceasefire, because, Thomas-Greenfield said, it would interfere with negotiations around freeing Israeli hostages. And then there’s this effort to portray the current decision as non-binding. It’s very confusing, especially for laypeople. Does the US want a real ceasefire or not? What’s happening here?

Al Jazeera (5/19/21)

PB: You raise all the right questions, Janine. The real issue has to do with the US view of the United Nations, which is that it’s annoying at best and a threat to US domination at worst, from Washington’s vantage point. So that earlier veto by Russia and China and opposition by Algeria, the abstention by Guyana, of the US resolution came after a history, a long history that goes back years, in fact, of the US vetoing calls for a ceasefire in situations when Israel is attacking, mostly Gaza, on occasion Lebanon, and the Security Council calls for a ceasefire, and the US says, “No, we don’t need a ceasefire yet.” Always meaning, “We haven’t killed enough people yet.” So there’s a long history of that. We don’t really have time to go into that.

But the US did it twice in a row on the Gaza question, where there were proposals for a ceasefire that the US vetoed, which would’ve passed. The US refused. Then the US comes up with its own resolution, which was a very, very sneaky one, because that quote that you read about what it says, those words were indeed in the resolution, but it did not call for them. The resolution did not call for an immediate ceasefire. There was a recognition by the Security Council, according to this resolution, that a ceasefire would be a good idea, and then went on to say and  therefore the Security Council should go on cheerleading—they didn’t use that word—but saying should support the US-controlled negotiations that are already underway in Qatar.

So it was a fake resolution. That’s why others did not like it, and weren’t willing to accept it as if it were an actual call. In international law, which is very complicated in a lot of ways, but certain parts of it are pretty clear. One of the parts that’s pretty clear, Article 25 of the UN Charter, says that all decisions, all resolutions, passed by the Security Council are international law. They’re all binding. That’s what the real world of international law says.

So when a resolution is passed, it needs to say the Security Council demands a ceasefire, period, full stop. If it talks about how the Security Council recognizes that such and such would be a good idea, that’s nothing to be binding on, right? That’s just a statement of what we think is nice.

Common Dreams (3/25/24)

So that’s what was distinctive, the new resolution that was passed just a few days ago that the United States was willing to allow to be passed, 14-to-0, with one abstention—the US abstained rather than vetoing it; that was a great step forward. And that one, crucially, did call for an immediate ceasefire, and it also called for release of all the hostages and compliance with international law in the treatment of all those detained by all sides, which is a clear reference to the Palestinian prisoners that Israel is holding. And it also, crucially, demanded lifting all barriers to the massive amount of humanitarian assistance that’s desperately needed as famine is moving across Gaza. So that was a huge shift.

At the same time, the US had weakened it in many ways. It removed the word “permanent” from the description of the ceasefire it was demanding, and said, “We just want a ‘lasting’ ceasefire”; nobody knows what that means. And, crucially, the other weakness was that the ceasefire is only called for for two weeks. It said that the ceasefire should last for the month of Ramadan, but it was passed two weeks into Ramadan, so there’s only about two weeks left, so that’s way too short. And there’s other limitations as well. But it was a very significant shift in the US position, and it really speaks to how the Biden administration is hearing, if not yet fully responding to, but feeling like they have to answer, the demands of this rising movement that is so powerful across the United States and now globally, saying we need a ceasefire now, and we need access for massive amounts of humanitarian aid, without any of the barriers that Israel is putting up.

Those things are desperately needed, and what we’re looking at now is a question of how that movement is rising, what the impact could be on the elections, that’s one of the biggest pressure points for the Biden administration. If they want to win this election, they have to be seeing that the only way to do it is to change their policy on what has been, up until now, unconditional support for Israel.

With all the language about criticisms of Netanyahu, and the massive amount of press  about how there’s this big divide between Biden and Netanyahu, between the US and Israel, that’s true only on the level of talking. On the level of acting, the US hasn’t changed a thing. $4 billion a year as a starting point of military aid; all the additional weapons that Israel wants, Israel gets.

Al Jazeera (3/6/24)

There’s just been no shift in the reality that the US is arming and financing a genocide, and as long as that’s underway, there’s people across this country that are mobilizing this “uncommitted” campaign, in places like Michigan and Minnesota, where those votes really matter, and it’s spreading. It’s about to happen in Wisconsin.

And at the end of the day, this isn’t just about the election, this is about what has to happen to stop this genocide. And I think what has to happen is that there has to be a way of convincing Joe Biden personally, not just others in his administration.

And right now, the pressure is rising, and the issue is going to be, how much longer can he keep up the political credibility, when he has people in his own administration resigning in protest of his policies? He has the staff of his own Biden/Harris campaign committee coming out with a public letter saying, “Mr. President, we can’t do our job. We can’t get you reelected with this policy.”

You have the White House interns. This is my personal favorite of all these protests. These are the most ambitious kids in the country. They all want to be president, right? And yet they’re willing to come out and say, “Mr. President, we are not leaders today, but we aspire to lead in the future, and we can’t do it with this kind of a model, when there is a genocide underway.”

So the US can do all it wants to say that this is a non-binding resolution, but that’s just not true. They can go out of their way to say that the South African initiative at the International Court of Justice, that led to a finding that Israel is plausibly committing genocide right now, or is moving towards a genocide, that that extraordinary brief prepared by the South African legal team somehow is “meritless.” They can claim that, but the rest of the world isn’t buying it, and increasingly US voters aren’t buying it.

JJ: Let me just ask you, finally, I do see also just a lot of regular folks reading things like US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood calling for a “lengthy pause to this conflict” and saying, “Well, we’re not calling for a pause to the conflict. We’re calling for a resolution. We’re calling for a way forward.” And then you see with concerns about a wider war, we have folks like John Kirby, White House National Security Council, on the Today Show saying, “Well, we don’t want a wider war in the region, but we got to do what we have to do.”

This is terrifying, but I also feel like folks are seeing through it. And so maybe let’s end on that note, that folks are figuring out that this politics-speak, they’re seeing it for what it is—and, more importantly, for what it isn’t.

Phyllis Bennis: “What we need is a real ceasefire. That doesn’t mean two weeks to release all the hostages, and then we go back to war.”

PB: That’s exactly right, Janine, and I think the good news, if there is any in this extraordinarily devastating time of real genocide in real time in front of our eyes on an hourly basis, the good news is exactly as you say: More and more people in this country and globally are seeing through those false claims.

It’s a false claim that the UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire is not binding. It is binding. It’s a false claim that the South African charges at the International Court of Justice were meritless. They had all the merit in the world.

All of these claims are designed to distract us. It’s all a distraction. The change in language is a distraction.

What we need is a real ceasefire. That doesn’t mean two weeks to release all the hostages, and then we go back to war. That’s not the point here. The point is to stop the fighting, stop the slaughter, stop the denial of food and water and medicine, which is deliberately causing massive starvation on a level that all of the experts in international humanitarian crises admit is the worst they have ever seen—not in terms of ultimate numbers, because the population in Gaza is not very big, but in terms of the percentage of people. Never have we seen 100% of a population facing extreme hunger, with 55% facing immediate famine. This has never happened before, as long as the international humanitarian organizations have been tracking famines. It’s shocking.

And the fact that it is going on while we watch, with weapons we provide, that we pay for with our tax money, is finally reaching everybody in this country. More and more people are saying no, not in our name, not with our tax money, not anymore.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Phyllis Bennis. You can find her recent work on UN resolutions on Gaza on CommonDreams.org, as well as ips-dc.org.

Phyllis Bennis, we have to end it here for today, but of course we’ll stay in conversation. Thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

PB: Thank you, Janine.

The post ‘This Is About What Has to Happen to Stop This Genocide’:  <br></em><span class='not-on-index' style='color:#000000; font-size: 23px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 25px; font-family: 'Open Sans','sans-serif'; padding-bottom: -10px;'>CounterSpin interview with Phyllis Bennis on Gaza ceasefire resolution appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

Located in Mae Sot, a town straddling the Thai-Myanmar border, VK Garments appeared to be a promising employer, especially since it was a supplier for the British retail giant Tesco. Yet, Phyu’s dreams quickly dissolved into disillusionment.

Despite the initial optimism, Phyu Phyu Mar and 135 of her colleagues found themselves embroiled in a struggle against debt, job insecurity and the loss of their legal status in Thailand after being laid off in 2020.

Their termination by the management of VK Garments came as a direct result of their complaints about labor violations and demands for rightful wages. Although they sought justice through the legal system and were partially compensated in October 2020, the awarded sum fell significantly short of their claims.

Now, years later, the repercussions of their stand for fair treatment continue to profoundly affect their lives, and the hope for resolution hinges on two court cases, one local and one international, which they hope will conclude their protracted ordeal.

Thailand case

In January, employees lodged an appeal against VK Garments with Thailand’s Supreme Court, seeking 34 million baht (US$946,000) for unpaid overtime and severance. 

According to the case’s lawyer, Charit Meesidhi, the labor inspector reviewing evidence for the prior court case failed to collect appropriate evidence like pay documentation and interviews that would have allowed Phyu Phyu Mar and her co-workers to prove their case.

But Charit remains cautious about the prospects of the new case as well. 

“According to the legal requirements, the chance to convince the Supreme Court to review the case is extremely difficult,” the lawyer said. “This is subject exclusively to the authority of the Supreme Court and in most cases, it does not accept to review the case.” 

Workers have also not seen a cent of the earnings they say they’re owed because the amount is disputed by all parties in the Thai court cases, causing many to take on increasing debt, work low-paid jobs and become illegal migrants in their adopted homeland. 

Khin Mar Aye, another former VK Garments employee, said she was reduced to taking agricultural jobs that pay as low as 36 baht (US$1) a day. 

“At that time, we didn’t have any income for our survival. We had to go to the plantation and we had to work at the onion field,” she said. “For one kilogram of onion, we receive eight baht (22 U.S. cents). We don’t always have this work, maybe 15 or 20 days in a month. We’ve been doing this kind of work until now.” 

U.K. case

In the United Kingdom’s high court, the workers filed a lawsuit on Dec. 18, 2022 against Tesco, its former Thai subsidiary Ek-Chai Distribution Systems, auditor Intertek Group PLC and Intertek Testing Services Limited, all linked to alleged labor violations stemming from VK Garments, for negligence.

Despite manufacturing jeans for the U.K.-based Tesco Group intended for distribution in Thailand, workers earned a mere 2,000 baht (US$55) per month, according to former employees.

They often struggled to receive even this modest amount as management deducted charges for accommodation in worker dormitories, legal work documents they often did not receive and other unexplained fees, significantly reducing their actual take-home pay.

Workers have also made other allegations of enduring near 100-hour work weeks, unsafe housing that led to the rape of an employee’s child and being forced to purchase other equipment, like lightbulbs, to sew at their stations after dark.

Phyu Phyu Mar said workers had to use a lake in front of the factory for water and that accommodation and bathrooms were unsafe and filthy. 

“I think almost all the workers who are working inside the factory feel like they’re going to prison every day, not a workplace,” she said. 

“Mae Sot doesn’t have industrial zones, it has refugee camps. We are all refugees in this situation.”

A spokesperson for Tesco told Radio Free Asia that they “continue to urge the supplier to reimburse employees for any wages they’re owed.”

“The allegations highlighted in this report are incredibly serious, and had we identified issues like this at the time they took place, we would have ended our relationship with this supplier immediately,” the spokesperson said in a written statement. 

VK Garments declined to comment. 

Waiting game

Khin Mar Aye and Phyu Phyu Mar have seen their debt burgeon during their prolonged wait. 

Initially incurred at VK Garments, their financial obligations have escalated to 50,000 (US$1,413) and 100,000 baht (US$2,823) respectively, due to borrowing from the factory and other lenders at steep interest rates of up to 20%. This was a desperate measure to cover the basic necessities of food and shelter for their families.

Whether or not they will see a resolution soon remains to be seen. Given the complexity of the case, the case’s stakeholders were made aware that the process could take years, said Priscilla Dudhia, public outreach coordinator for Clean Clothes Campaign. 

The group has been involved in the workers’ case since it was flagged in 2020, and it, involving other non-profits, connected workers to Leigh Day, their legal representation in the U.K. 

“Our hope has always been that Tesco and Intertek come to the table and agree to fully compensate the workers for the harms that they’ve suffered,” she said. “One of the big reasons for this is because this claim was issued in 2021 – we’re in 2024, and we’re still not in a position where all the defendants have been served.”

Despite facing harassment by factory staff about the ongoing case, Phyu Phyu Mar says she hopes this will be an example for employers in Thailand.

“I want justice and fairness from that case,” she said. “We had to work very strenuously in the factory, but we faced a lot of violations of our rights and entitlement. This case should be kind of a lesson for the employer, the employer needs to face these kinds of things.”

Edited by Taejun Kang and Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kiana Duncan for RFA.

Located in Mae Sot, a town straddling the Thai-Myanmar border, VK Garments appeared to be a promising employer, especially since it was a supplier for the British retail giant Tesco. Yet, Phyu’s dreams quickly dissolved into disillusionment.

Despite the initial optimism, Phyu Phyu Mar and 135 of her colleagues found themselves embroiled in a struggle against debt, job insecurity and the loss of their legal status in Thailand after being laid off in 2020.

Their termination by the management of VK Garments came as a direct result of their complaints about labor violations and demands for rightful wages. Although they sought justice through the legal system and were partially compensated in October 2020, the awarded sum fell significantly short of their claims.

Now, years later, the repercussions of their stand for fair treatment continue to profoundly affect their lives, and the hope for resolution hinges on two court cases, one local and one international, which they hope will conclude their protracted ordeal.

Thailand case

In January, employees lodged an appeal against VK Garments with Thailand’s Supreme Court, seeking 34 million baht (US$946,000) for unpaid overtime and severance. 

According to the case’s lawyer, Charit Meesidhi, the labor inspector reviewing evidence for the prior court case failed to collect appropriate evidence like pay documentation and interviews that would have allowed Phyu Phyu Mar and her co-workers to prove their case.

But Charit remains cautious about the prospects of the new case as well. 

“According to the legal requirements, the chance to convince the Supreme Court to review the case is extremely difficult,” the lawyer said. “This is subject exclusively to the authority of the Supreme Court and in most cases, it does not accept to review the case.” 

Workers have also not seen a cent of the earnings they say they’re owed because the amount is disputed by all parties in the Thai court cases, causing many to take on increasing debt, work low-paid jobs and become illegal migrants in their adopted homeland. 

Khin Mar Aye, another former VK Garments employee, said she was reduced to taking agricultural jobs that pay as low as 36 baht (US$1) a day. 

“At that time, we didn’t have any income for our survival. We had to go to the plantation and we had to work at the onion field,” she said. “For one kilogram of onion, we receive eight baht (22 U.S. cents). We don’t always have this work, maybe 15 or 20 days in a month. We’ve been doing this kind of work until now.” 

U.K. case

In the United Kingdom’s high court, the workers filed a lawsuit on Dec. 18, 2022 against Tesco, its former Thai subsidiary Ek-Chai Distribution Systems, auditor Intertek Group PLC and Intertek Testing Services Limited, all linked to alleged labor violations stemming from VK Garments, for negligence.

Despite manufacturing jeans for the U.K.-based Tesco Group intended for distribution in Thailand, workers earned a mere 2,000 baht (US$55) per month, according to former employees.

They often struggled to receive even this modest amount as management deducted charges for accommodation in worker dormitories, legal work documents they often did not receive and other unexplained fees, significantly reducing their actual take-home pay.

Workers have also made other allegations of enduring near 100-hour work weeks, unsafe housing that led to the rape of an employee’s child and being forced to purchase other equipment, like lightbulbs, to sew at their stations after dark.

Phyu Phyu Mar said workers had to use a lake in front of the factory for water and that accommodation and bathrooms were unsafe and filthy. 

“I think almost all the workers who are working inside the factory feel like they’re going to prison every day, not a workplace,” she said. 

“Mae Sot doesn’t have industrial zones, it has refugee camps. We are all refugees in this situation.”

A spokesperson for Tesco told Radio Free Asia that they “continue to urge the supplier to reimburse employees for any wages they’re owed.”

“The allegations highlighted in this report are incredibly serious, and had we identified issues like this at the time they took place, we would have ended our relationship with this supplier immediately,” the spokesperson said in a written statement. 

VK Garments declined to comment. 

Waiting game

Khin Mar Aye and Phyu Phyu Mar have seen their debt burgeon during their prolonged wait. 

Initially incurred at VK Garments, their financial obligations have escalated to 50,000 (US$1,413) and 100,000 baht (US$2,823) respectively, due to borrowing from the factory and other lenders at steep interest rates of up to 20%. This was a desperate measure to cover the basic necessities of food and shelter for their families.

Whether or not they will see a resolution soon remains to be seen. Given the complexity of the case, the case’s stakeholders were made aware that the process could take years, said Priscilla Dudhia, public outreach coordinator for Clean Clothes Campaign. 

The group has been involved in the workers’ case since it was flagged in 2020, and it, involving other non-profits, connected workers to Leigh Day, their legal representation in the U.K. 

“Our hope has always been that Tesco and Intertek come to the table and agree to fully compensate the workers for the harms that they’ve suffered,” she said. “One of the big reasons for this is because this claim was issued in 2021 – we’re in 2024, and we’re still not in a position where all the defendants have been served.”

Despite facing harassment by factory staff about the ongoing case, Phyu Phyu Mar says she hopes this will be an example for employers in Thailand.

“I want justice and fairness from that case,” she said. “We had to work very strenuously in the factory, but we faced a lot of violations of our rights and entitlement. This case should be kind of a lesson for the employer, the employer needs to face these kinds of things.”

Edited by Taejun Kang and Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kiana Duncan for RFA.

BBC (3/28/24)

This week on CounterSpin: A senior UN human rights official told the BBC that there is a “plausible” case that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, a war crime. Meanwhile, US citizens struggle to make sense of White House policy that seems to call for getting aid to Palestinians while pursuing a course of action that makes that aid necessary, if insufficient.

Phyllis Bennis is senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, an international advisor with Jewish Voice for Peace and a longtime UN-watcher. She joins us with thoughts on the evolving situation.

American Prospect (10/31/19)

Also on the show: As reporter Alex Sammon outlined five years ago in the American Prospect, the Boeing scandal is an exemplar of the corporate crisis of our age. Putting resources that should’ve been put into safety into shareholder dividends and stock buybacks, selling warning indicators that alert pilots to problems with flight-control software as optional extras, and outsourcing engineering to coders in India making $9 an hour—these weren’t accidents; they were choices, made consciously, over time. So why are media so excited about Boeing’s CEO stepping down, as though his “taking one for the team” means changing the playbook? We hear from Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen.

The post Phyllis Bennis on Gaza Ceasefire Resolution, Robert Weissman on Boeing Scandal appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

We speak with former top U.N. human rights official Craig Mokhiber after the Security Council voted Monday on a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all remaining hostages. The United States abstained from the vote, allowing it to pass after nearly six months of obstructing similar efforts at the Security Council. Mokhiber, who resigned in October over the U.N.'s failure to address rights violations in Israel-Palestine, says “Israel has the world record” for violating U.N. resolutions and is certain to violate this ceasefire resolution, as well, even though it expressed “the very broad consensus across the global community against Israel's onslaught on Gaza.” Israel continued bombing Gaza after Monday’s vote, and top Israeli leaders have vowed to continue the war that has killed over 32,000 Palestinians so far. “What this genocide has done is it has revealed the weaknesses, the political compromises, the moral failings of the United Nations and other international institutions,” says Mokhiber, who adds that continued pressure from civil society is needed to end the bloodshed.

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

Former U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn reacts to the United Nations Security Council’s resolution for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, which passed 14-0 on Monday after the United States declined to use its veto by abstaining from the vote. Corbyn calls the war and suffering in Gaza “a global disgrace” and says the ceasefire must be enforced. “It’s time to stand with the Palestinian people.”

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

At the U.N. Security Council, China and Russia have vetoed a U.S. draft resolution on the war in Gaza. The U.S. resolution appeared to call for a ceasefire, but it was written in a way to make the resolution unenforceable. Our guest Phyllis Bennis says this was mere “wordplay” and a “convoluted” attempt by the Biden administration to play both sides, as it comes under increasing internal and external criticism over its close relationship with Israel. Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and an international adviser to Jewish Voice for Peace. She has written several books on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East. When it comes to dissent over U.S. support of Israel, “the pressure is mounting in ways that I’ve certainly never seen,” she says, adding that it’s imperative for the public to continue pushing for more action, as “it’s crucial that the weapons sales be cut” and a real ceasefire be reached immediately.

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

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Idaho Statesman. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

For decades, school districts across Idaho have struggled to pass bonds to repair and replace their aging, crumbling buildings. A legislative proposal introduced Wednesday could change that by starting the process of lowering the vote threshold school districts need to pass a bond.

Idaho is one of only two states that require two-thirds of voters to support a bond for it to pass. Most states require either a majority or 60% of voters.

The resolution, introduced by Republican Rep. Rod Furniss, R-Rigby, would propose changing the Idaho Constitution to lower the threshold to 55% during years when statewide elections are held, such as presidential election years, when turnout is traditionally higher. The two-thirds threshold would remain in years with only local elections.

The resolution is intended to ease the requirements when more community members turn out to vote. Local elections often have low turnout while general elections have typically drawn 60% to 80% of registered voters, according to data from the Idaho secretary of state.

“What this does is this focuses on elections where we have higher participation rates. Hopefully, the idea is that we will know the will of the people from these votes,” Furniss told a legislative committee. “Fifty-five percent, that would increase our chances of funding these.”

Superintendents and school board members said the two-thirds threshold has been unachievable.

“It’s about time,” Mountain Home Superintendent James Gilbert told the Idaho Statesman and ProPublica. “It’s something that’s needed to be done for decades. That supermajority threshold is becoming virtually impossible to pass bonds on.”

The new resolution will need support from two-thirds of legislators in each chamber to place it on the general election ballot. It would then require approval from a majority of voters to change the state constitution.

The resolution is the second proposal to address the state’s school facilities funding crisis this legislative session, following a Statesman and ProPublica investigation that showed some students are learning in freezing classrooms, sometimes with leaking ceilings and damaged equipment after their districts failed to pass bonds.

This month, Idaho Republican leaders introduced a bill that would add $1.5 billion and redirect an additional $500 million over 10 years to help districts repair and replace their buildings. But some lawmakers and school district officials have raised concerns that the bill would not adequately address the needs of rural areas because it’s based on attendance, which favors larger urban districts.

That legislation followed a call from Gov. Brad Little during his State of the State address to make school facilities funding “priority No. 1” this legislative session. The House will soon vote on the proposal, House Bill 521, after a panel of lawmakers sent it to the floor last week.

Aside from distributing funds based on average daily attendance, the bill would also eliminate the August election as an option for school districts to run bonds and levies and lower the state’s income tax rate. Little celebrated the legislation as the largest investment in school facilities in state history.

Jason Knopp, an Idaho School Boards Association board member and Melba School District board chair, told the Statesman and ProPublica that the bill is a good first step but likely won’t be enough for districts like Melba to construct new schools without bonds. Melba would get about $3.1 million in a lump sum and additional money each year to help pay off its bonds and levies, according to estimates shared with the Statesman by the governor’s office on Feb. 20.

Superintendents have said this funding wouldn’t eliminate the need to pass bonds and levies, which can be big lifts for districts across the state.

Swan Valley School District Superintendent Michael Jacobson said he hopes to replace his school’s coal boiler, which requires constant maintenance and raises health concerns, with an electric boiler — a cost of nearly $1 million. If the funding bill passed as is, Swan Valley would receive about $200,000, according to the estimates.

He believes all districts should get a base amount, in addition to funds determined by attendance, to help level the playing field for rural districts, which make up a majority of Idaho’s school districts.

“The majority of the funding should not always go to the larger districts,” Jacobson said.

He said that he could see how lowering the threshold would be a win for other districts, but that it won’t make much of a difference in his community, given the lack of support for a bond.

Some superintendents have said they’ve given up on trying to pass bonds altogether. Others have run multiple bond elections but failed every time. Still others have come within a few votes of meeting the threshold.

Paired with a bill to lower the two-thirds threshold, the proposals could have a huge impact on school districts and communities, Knopp said. “That’s a great pairing coming together. We can lower the tax burden on the people who live in our school districts and also help make it easier for us to bond with less tax burden,” he said.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Becca Savransky, Idaho Statesman, and Asia Fields, ProPublica.

Consider this paradox: without the Soviet Union (U.S.-designated nemesis since 1917), the United States would have never succeeded at placing the planet under its unilateral grip—often referred to by U.S. imperialists as the “new world order”. Or, rephrased differently, a world whereby the U.S. wants to rule unchallenged. This how it started: first, forget the Soviet Politburo—Mikhail Gorbachev practically annulled its role as the supreme decision-maker body of the Soviet Communist Party before proceeding to dismantle the Soviet state. In sequence, he, his foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, other anti-communists in his inner circle, and the Yeltsin group were the material instruments in the downfall of the USSR thus leading to U.S. success.

By a twist of events, with its unrelenting policy of economic, geopolitical, and military pressure to submit the new Russia to its will, the United States effectively forced it to intervene in Ukraine many years later. After 33 years from the dismantling the Soviet Union (first by Gorbachev’s contraptions of perestroika and glasnost, and then by Yeltsin’s pro-Western free-marketers), Russia is now breaking up the monstrous American order it helped create. Today, it seems that Russia have reprised its founding principles in the world arena—not as an ideologically anti-imperialist Soviet socialist republic, but as an anti-hegemonic capitalistic state.

The process for the U.S. world control worked like this: taking advantage of Gorbachev’s dismantlement of the socialist system in Eastern Europe and his planned breakup of the USSR, the United States followed a multi-pronged strategy to assert itself as the sole judge of world affairs. The starting point was the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. With the success of its two-stage war to end that occupation (Operations: Desert Shield, 1990, and Operation: Desert Storm, 1991) the United States achieved multiple objectives. Notably, it removed the USSR completely from the world scene even before it was officially dismantled, and it put Iraq and the entire Arab world under its effective control, and it tested its new world order.

Far more important, with a considerably weakened Russia taking the seat of the USSR at the Security Council, the United States finally completed its takeover of the United Nations. Although the hyperpower is known for routinely operating out of the international norms and treaties, and has myriad methods to enforce its influence or control over foreign nations, it is a fact that whoever controls the Security Council can use its resolutions—and their ever-changing interpretations— as authorization for military interventions in the name of so-called collective international legality.

Still, it is incorrect to say that the United States has become the omnipotent controller without considering the other three permanent members of the Security Council:  Britain, France, and China. First, aside from being the two states with a known history of imperialism and colonialism, Britain and France are NATO countries. As such, they pose no threat to U.S. authority. This leaves China. (For now, I shall briefly discuss China’s role vis-à-vis the U.S. taking control of the Security Council after the demise of the USSR, while deferring its relevance to U.S. plans in Ukraine to the upcoming parts)

China has been rising as world power since the early 1990s onward. That being said, China’s world outlook has been consistently based on cooperation and peace among nations. China is neither an imperialist nor expansionist or interventionist state, and its claim on taking back Taiwan is historical, legal, and legitimate. That being said, China’s abstention from voting on serious issues is seriously questionable. Interpretation: China seems primarily focused on building its economic and technological structures instead of antagonizing U.S. policies that could slow its pace due to its [China] growing integration in the global capitalistic system of production. Consider the following two Western viewpoints on China’s voting practices:

• The Australian think tank, Lowy Institute, states, “China used its UN Security Council rotating presidency in August … China did not veto any UN Security Council resolutions between 2000 and 2006.”

Observation: but the period 2000–2006 was the post-9/11 Orwellian environment in which the United States broke all laws of the U.N. and turned the organization into its private fiefdom. Does that mean China had caved in to U.S. pressure and subscribed to its objectives? Based on its history, ideals, stated foreign policy principles, and political makeup, my answer is no. Yet, we do know that China has often been moving alongside U.S. objectives—by remaining silent on them. Examples include the U.S. 13-year blockade of and sanctions on Iraq (starting in 1990 and theoretically ending after the U.S. invasion in 2003), as well post-invasion occupation that is lasting through present by diverse ways and methods.

• Wikipedia (Caveat: never take anything printed on this website seriously unless you verify content rigorously) stated the following on China, “From 1971 to 2011, China used its veto sparingly, preferring to abstain rather than veto resolutions not directly related to Chinese interests. China turned abstention into an “art form”, abstaining on 30% of Security Council Resolutions between 1971 and 1976. Since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, China has joined Russia in many double vetoes. China has not cast a lone veto since 1999.”

Observation: by abstaining, China seems to be playing politics and patently taking sides with Washington on critical issues. Is china conspiring, in some form, with the U.S. for selfish reasons? Are there other reasons?

No science is needed to prove that China is neither fearful of the United States nor subservient to it or uncertain about its own great place in the world. Simply, China favors dialogue over confrontation and patience over nervous impulses. Although such conduct may unnerve some who want to see China stand up to the hyper-imperialist bully, the fact is, China is no hurry to play its cards before the issue of Taiwan is resolved. Still, by its own problematic actions at the Security Council, China is not a dependable obstacle to U.S. plans. Of interest to the anti-imperialist front, however, is that China’s voting record on Iraq, Libya, and Yemen has left dire consequences on those nations.

Russia’s Intervention in Ukraine: Dialectics 

Russia’s intervention in Ukraine was calculated and consequential. It was calculated based on symmetric response to U.S. long-term planning aiming at destabilizing it. The consequentiality factor is significant. Russia’s action did not precede but followed a protracted standoff with Ukraine following U.S.-organized coup in 2014. Not only did that coup topple the legitimate government of Viktor Yanukovych, but also veered Ukraine’s new rulers toward a fanatical confrontation with Russia and ethnic Russians—a sizable minority in Donbass.

Could comparing U.S. and Russian reactions to each other’s interventions shed light on the scope of their respective world policies? How does all this apply to Ukraine? First, Ukraine is not a conflict about territory, democracy, sovereignty, and all that jargon made to distract from the real issues and for the idle consumption of news. Second, to understand the war on Ukraine, we need to place Russia’s intervention in Ukraine in a historical context that —at least since the dismantlement of the USSR.

Premise 

The study of reactions by political states to military interventions and wars is an empirical science. By knowing who is intervening, who is approving, and who is opposing, and by observing and cataloging their conduct vis-à-vis a conflict, we can definitely identify pretexts, motives, and objectives. For example, when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, the reaction of the United States, key European countries, Israel, Arab Gulf states, Egypt, and Jordan were unanimously approving—and supporting with instigation, money, weapons, and logistics. The Soviet Union on the other hand, called for dialogue, negotiation, and other ways to end the conflict.

In the Iraq-Iran War, the U.S., Europe, and Israel wanted the war to continue so both would perish by it. Henry Kissinger the top priest of U.S. Zionism simplified the U.S. objective with these words, “The ultimate American interest in the war (is) that both should lose”. Consequently, Western weapons sales to both contenders skyrocketed—war is business. The Arab Gulf states, for example, financed and wanted Iraq to defeat Iran—its revolutionary model threatened their feudal family systems of government. They also looked for surgical ways to weaken Iraq thus stopping its calls for the unification of Arab states.

It turned out, when the war ended after eight years without losers and winners, that U.S. and Israel’s objective evolved to defeat Iraq that had become, in the meanwhile, a regional power. The opportunity came up when Iraq, falling in the U.S. trap (April Glaspie’s deception; also read, “Wikileaks, April Glaspie, and Saddam Hussein”) invaded Kuwait consequent to oil disputes and debts from its Gulf-U.S.-instigated war with Iran. As for Iran, it became the subject of harsh American containment and sanction regimes lasting to this very date.

Another example is the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. While the USSR, China, Arab States, and countless others only condemned but did nothing else as usual, Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, approved and sent his marines to break up the Palestinian Resistance and expel it from Lebanon, which was an Israeli primary objective.

United States: Reaction to the Russian Invasion of Afghanistan

When the USSR intervened in Afghanistan in 1979, that country became an American issue instantly. Cold war paradigms played a paramount role in the U.S. response. Not only did the U.S. (with Saudi Arabia’s money) invent so-called Islamist mujahedeen against the Russian “atheists” (operation Cyclone), but also created ad hoc regional “alliances’—similar to those operating in Ukraine today—to counter the Soviet intervention.

Russia: Reaction to U.S.’s many interventions and invasions 

When Lyndon Johnson invaded the Dominican Republic (1965), when Ronald Reagan mined the Nicaraguan ports (1981-85), and when George H.W. Bush invaded Panama (1989) and moved its president to U.S. prisons, the USSR reacted by invoking the rules of international law—albeit knowing that said law never mattered to the United States. The Kremlin of Mikhail Gorbachev stated that the invasion is “A flagrant violation of the fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter and norms of relations among states”.

But did he do anything to hold the U.S. accountable? Gorbachev knew well that words are cheap, and that from an American perspective such charter and norms are ready for activation only when they serve U.S. imperialist purpose. The U.S., of course, did not give a hoot to Gorbachev’s protestation—and that is the problem with Russian leaders: they avoid principled confrontation with the futile expectation that the United States would refrain from bullying Russia. One can spot this tendency when Russian leaders kept calling U.S. and European politicians “our partners” while fully knowing that the recipients are probably smirking in secret.

Another catastrophic example is Gorbachev’s voting (alongside the United States) for the U.N. Resolution 678 to end Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait by January 15, 1991. According to my research, that was the first time in which a resolution came with a deadline. Meaning, the United States (and Gorbachev) were in a hurry to implement Bush’s plan for world control.

Not only did the Gorbachev regime approve Resolution 678, but also approved all U.S. resolutions pertaining to Iraq since the day it invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. The statement is important. It means that Gorbachev’s role was structurally fundamental in allowing the United States to become the de facto “chief executive officer” of world affairs. At the same time, his role was also the material instrument in turning Russia into a U.S. vassal for over two decades since the dissolution of the USSR. [After becoming a former president of a superpower, Gorbachev made a living by taking commissioned speeches at various U.S. universities and think tanks]

From attentively reading Resolution 678, it is very clear that the objective was not about the withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait. Decisively, it was about the disarming of Iraq for the sake of the Zionist entity in Palestine. In fact, the U.S. bombing of Iraq in 1991 was never meant just to end that occupation by dislodging Iraqi forces from Kuwait. It was enacted to destroy Iraq’s civilian structures and infrastructures, its army, and its nascent military industry including its nuclear capabilities.

The point: Gorbachev as a convert from communism to capitalism closed his eyes to U.S. objectives in Iraq and the world—these were unimportant to his plan since he obviously tied a deeply altered USSR to the wheel of U.S. imperialism while thinking he and his regime still mattered. With that, he doomed future Russia to protracted hardship and the world to suffer at the hands of U.S. violent imperialists and Zionists.

The Example of Libya: Zionist hyper-imperialist Barack Obama bombed Libya in 2011. [For the record, the Jerusalem Post (top publication in the Zionist state) called Obama, “An insider’s view: Eight years watching the first Jewish US president”. (Describing Obama as Jewish is irrelevant. He was a Zionist at the service of Israel via a constructed career powered by opportunism and sycophancy) Obama’s bombing of Libya is testimony to Russia’s betrayal of just causes when that suits its calculations.

Russia of Dmitry Medvedev (and Putin as his prime minister) explicitly accepted the U.S. plan by not vetoing UNSC 1970, and UNSC Resolution 1973 that declared the whole of Libya a No-Fly Zone. Once the resolution was passed, the U.S. (and NATO) transformed it at once into a colossal bombing of that country. (Debating whether Russian’s general conduct toward U.S. tactics was an expression of pragmatism, concession, collusion, or weakness goes beyond the scope of this work. I reported on Lavrov’s statement on the Libyan issue further down in this series.)

As for the United States, a fascist Hillary Clinton disguised as an “intelligent diplomat” epitomized the U.S. role for government change in Libya as follows. Referring to the brutal murder of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Obama’s Secretary of State said, “We came, we saw, he died”. Aside from theatrically debasing Mark Anthony’s famous victory exclamation with her crazed laughter, Clinton’s “WE” confirmed the basics: Odyssey Dawn was a code name, not for a romantic beginning for Libya but for Obama’s imperialist war to conquer its oil and depose its leader.

Two other events are significant for their long-term implications: U.S. invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). Regardless of U.S. pretexts, Russia reacted to each invasion differently. In the case of Afghanistan, it sided with the United States in spite of the fact that Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban had nothing to do with the still very much suspicious attack on the United States on September 11, 2021. It is imperative to recall what Tony Blair said prior to the Anglo-American invasion. Media and public records of the British government can confirm that Blair thundered to the Taliban, “Surrender Bin Laden, or lose power”. The Taliban offered to comply if the U.S. could prove that Bin Laden was behind the attack. The U.S. never responded—it just invaded.

In the case of Iraq, Russia, together with France and Germany, vehemently opposed the planned invasion but only within the realm of the UNSC. The U.S. and Britain invaded nevertheless. Aside from protesting, however, neither Russia nor any other country took any punitive action against the top two imperialist powers. More than that, Russia of the first Putin presidency sent neither weapons nor money to Iraq and Afghanistan to help them fight the invaders. Germany and France did the same. Was that for “solidarity” with invaders or fear from U.S. retribution?

What is worse, Russia and China had even accepted the U.S.‑imposed U.N. resolution 1483 that crowned the United States and Britain as the occupying powers of Iraq. That acceptance is a moral, historical, and legal blunder that the passing of time will never erase. This how it should be interpreted politically: with the passing of that resolution, Russia and China had not only legalized the U.S. imperialist occupation of Iraq, but also lent international legitimacy to the invasion and it is false motives.

A question: why did not the United States and Britain try to declare themselves as the occupying powers of Afghanistan? The answer is prompt: look no farther than the Zionist Israeli project to re-shape and control Iraq and other Arab countries via the United States. Accordingly, Afghanistan is not relevant to this scheme.

To close, I’m not suggesting that interventions by any country are tolerable as long as “A” can do whatever “B” does or vice versa, or, as long as they do not stand in the way of each other. That would void the struggle for a just world system where natural states could enjoy independence and security. Rather, to address persistent questions on the current configuration of the world order, we must tackle first the issue of exclusive entitlement. That is, we like to know according to what rule Russia, China, or any other country should remain mute while the dictatorial, violent hyper-empire continues staking its claim to arrange the world according to its vision? If this rule turns out to be by means of fire, death, and printed money, then we may finally understand the miserable situation of the world today and find all possible means to end it.

It is no small matter, but the “indispensable nation” [Madeleine Albright’s words and Barack Obama] seems to think it deserves this exclusivity. American biblical preachers, hyper-imperialists, multi-term politicians, think tanks, proselytes of all types, military industry, and neophyte politicians seeking promotions within the system, and, before I forget, Zionist neocon empire builders often declare that the U.S. is predestined to rule over others. Biden, a self-declared Zionist has recently re-baptized the notion of U.S. ruling over others when he declared that the U.S. must lead the new world order.

Another Subject: American ideologues of permanent wars persistently talk about what appears to be a fixed target: Ukraine must win and Russia must lose. What hides behind such frivolous theatrics? First off, why Ukraine must win and Russia must lose? Stating so because Russia intervened in Ukraine is non sequitur. The United States, Britain, France, and Israel have been punching the world with invasions for decades without anyone being able to stop them. Ineluctably, therefore, there should be fundamental reasons for wanting to see Russia lose.

To begin, U.S. tactics to frame wars in terms of winning and losing is at the very least childish and makes no sense. Further, whereas waging wars of domination are built on a hypothetical model that ends with “we win they lose”, the resulting indoctrination paradigm is invariably translated into an ideological construct whereby winning is a sign of power and losing is a sign weakness. Again, that makes no sense. One could lose not out of weakness or could win not out of strength. In endless situations, winning or losing in any field is a function of varied dynamic and static forces leading to either outcome by default.

In real context, the fabricated philosophy pivoting around the must-win scenario while discarding potential devastating reactions by a designated adversary is of paramount significance to understand the dangerous mindset of American politicians and war planners. As they prepare pretexts for a war by choice, they completely jump over the possibility that an opposite response could devastate them. How does the process work?

Read Part 1 and 2.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by B.J. Sabri.

Gillam’s 1896 political cartoon, Uncle Sam stands with rifle between the Europeans and Latin Americans – Public Domain

Now, 200 years after President James Monroe first promulgated his dictate giving the Yankees dominion of the rest of the hemisphere, a congressional resolution calls for annulling the Monroe Doctrine and replacing it with a “new good neighbor” policy. The intent is to “foster improved relations and deeper, more effective cooperation” with our neighbor nations.

Led by Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) and cosponsored by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Delia Ramirez (D-IL), Chuy García (D-AZ), and Greg Casar (D-TX), House Resolution 943 notably calls for ending unilateral coercive economic measures against Cuba and other regional states. Initially introduced on December 19, 2023, Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Hank Johnson (D-GA) added their co-sponsorships on January10. Others may join them.

Rap sheet on Monroeism

While the Monroe Doctrine ingenuously claimed to protect hemispheric independence from foreign interference, HR 943 charges that the policy has, in fact, been used as a “mandate” to give the US license to interfere in the internal affairs of other states to promote its own narrow interests.

The resolution forcefully begins with noting the “massive, forced displacement and genocide of Native peoples” by the North American colonialists.

The resolution goes on to enumerate the further progression of the US imperium on the hemisphere. Back in the 1840s, the US took 55% of Mexico. In 1898, Puerto Rico (still possessed) and Cuba (Guantánamo still controlled) were seized. From 1898-1934, Washington intervened militarily in Cuba, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

In 1904, “international police power” to protect US and foreign creditors in the region was claimed under the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. In 1947, the CIA was created with authorization for covert action in the region. Then in 1954, Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown in the “first” CIA coup in the Americas.

In 1961, the US facilitated a 21-year military dictatorship in Brazil. The following year, the still continuing embargo (really a blockade) of Cuba was initiated. In 1973, Washington backed a coup in Chile and the succeeding 15-year military dictatorship.

From 1975-1980, the US coordinated Operation Condor with terroristic military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. In 1983, the US invaded and overthrew the government of Grenada. And in the 1980s and early 1990s, the US backed “dirty wars” in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.

In 1991, the US covertly financed a military coup in Haiti. Another coup in Haiti was precipitated in 2004. Starting in 2000, billions were provided for Plan Colombia, implicated in massive human rights abuses. Meanwhile, from 1941-2003, US Naval operations in Vieques, Puerto Rico, caused deaths and lethal illnesses. In 2002, the US supported an unsuccessful coup in Venezuela. US-backed coups in Honduras in 2009 and in Boliva in 2019 were both followed by Washington’s support for the subsequent illegitimate governments.

Although this amounts to an appalling rap sheet, the resolution just highlights some of the more obvious transgressions. Omitted, for instance, is the 1989 US invasion of Panama and overthrow of that government.

US-imposed institutions of regional control

The resolution notes that the Washington-based and largely US-controlled Organization of American States (OAS) ignores “the many egregious abuses perpetrated” by the US and its client states.

Similarly, the largely US-dominated International Monetary Fund is implicated in the regional debt crises, which has resulted in austerity and stagnant development. Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions, which are often imposed by the US in free-trade agreements, are also criticized in the resolution.

The resolution blames the massive regional immigration of displaced persons partly on Washington’s own policies. The Central American “dirty wars” in the 1980s and 1990s and more recently the US-sponsored drug wars and free trade agreements are cited among the problematic contributing causes.

Regarding foreign intervention in the hemisphere, although not noted in the resolution, has been the US’s actual abetting of foreign interference; that is, when it aligns with its interests. Just this month, the British sent a warship to Guyana. At the same time, a US deputy secretary of defense was meeting with the Guyanese, backing the claims of a US oil company in territory disputed between Guyana and Venezuela.

Further, the US fully backs what amount to European colonies, regardless of whether they are called dependencies, overseas territories, or even departments. France claims French Guiana, Guadeloupe Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, and Martinique. Netherlands possesses Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. The UK has Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Malvinas. Washington, too, has its own de facto colonies of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

Remedies

Following this devastating bill of particulars, the resolution calls for remedies. The first of which is for the State Department to “send a strong signal” by annulling the Monroe Doctrine. A “good neighborhood policy” is proposed to replace it.

That sounds nice. But, as the resolution notes, then US Secretary of State John Kerry mouthed similarly soothing words in 2013 and nothing came of that.

Notably, this resolution adds a bite to the bark, specifically calling for terminating all unilateral coercive economic sanctions. These measures are a form of collective punishment and as such are illegal under international law and condemned by the United Nations.

Regarding the recidivist US practice of backing “extra-constitutional transfer of power,” the resolution urges Congress to legislate automatic reviews of assistance to coup governments. Aid would only be reinstated after the both the US and the majority of regional states agree that constitutional order has been re-instituted.

Interestingly, the resolution calls for the “prompt” declassification of all US secret documentation on coups, dictatorships, and human rights abuses. Cover-ups from the past would be exposed.

In terms of regional governance, the resolution insists that the OAS be reformed. Without naming US-sycophantic Luis Almagro, the resolution requests accountability for unethical and criminal activities by the organization’s secretary general plus full transparency on financial and personnel decisions (not explicitly named, but including his girlfriend). An ombudsman’s office is proposed. Human rights rapporteurs and electoral observation would be independent. Similarly, the US is asked to work cooperatively with other regional bodies such as CELAC, CARICOM, and UNASUR.

Unspecified reforms of the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions are proposed to ensure equity for loans to developing countries. International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights are cited, which would help regional development and climate adaptation. Contributions are also recommended to the Amazon Fund.

Citizen initiatives

 Of the sponsors of the resolution, three had been on a delegation to Brazil, Colombia, and Chile in August facilitated by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), where they met with high-level officials. CEPR’s Director of International Policy Alexander Main commented that the delegation sought to “promote a fresh approach to US relations.”

CEPR publishes the monthly Sanctions Watch, which reports on the asphyxiating impact of the unilateral coercive economic measures. Longest sanctioned, Cuba is in dire need of humanitarian relief from Uncle Sam. Particularly debilitating for Cuba was President Trump’s inclusion of the island nation on the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list, which cuts it off from otherwise available aid.

The SSOT policy has been continued by President Biden. A call to reverse the policy is absent from the proposed congressional resolution, which is sponsored by Biden’s fellow Democrats. However, the National Network on Cuba (NNOC) and the Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect (ACERE) are among the many organizations working to get Cuba off that list. These include faith-based groups such as the Presbyterian Mission and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Even the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), which is the DC-based think tank that serves to give a liberal gloss to State Department policies, wants Cuba removed from the list.

The Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition (NSC) works on reversing US sanctions there and is gearing up against a new congressional initiative to extend the grueling collective punishment. Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice (FTT) and the Venezuela Solidarity Network are among the North America groups working to take the US sanctions burden off of Venezuela.

The SanctionsKill campaign opposes all economic coercive measures, including those imposed by the United Nations. A growing coalition started by Friends of Latin America, CodePink, and the Alliance for Global Justice is working for an “Americas without sanctions.” CodePink and World Beyond War hosted a mock “funeral” for the Monroe Doctrine in December.

Counter initiative

Earlier on December 1, María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Chip Roy (R-TX) had introduced a resolution, which was opposite of the intent of the resolution led by Velázquez. This other resolution celebrated the Monroe Doctrine’s bicentennial and was joined by fourteen other Republican representatives as cosponsors. They asserted that the need is greater than ever to protect against “malign overseas influence.” Salazar warned, “China, Russia and Iran are trying to invade the Western Hemisphere.”

Although Velázquez’s and her fellow Democrats’ HR 143 calls for annulling the Monroe Doctrine and ending sanctions, we should have no illusion that their resolution will end US imperialism any time soon. Unfortunately, many on the blue team including their standard bearer have developed a fervor for American exceptionalism similar to the wing-nuts on the other side of the aisle.

But, given the seemingly unlimited bipartisan appetite for foreign intervention, it is at least a step in the right direction and a platform that can be used for organizing, particularly against sanctions. As the Spanish daily El País commented, the resolution to annul is a “charge against two centuries of US expansionist policy.”

The post US Congressional Resolution Calls for Annulling the Monroe Doctrine and Ending Sanctions appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Roger Harris.

Led by Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) and cosponsored by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Delia Ramirez (D-IL), Chuy García (D-AZ), and Greg Casar (D-TX), House Resolution 943 notably calls for ending unilateral coercive economic measures against Cuba and other regional states. Initially introduced on December 19, 2023, Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Hank Johnson (D-GA) added their co-sponsorships on January10. Others may join them.

Rap sheet on Monroeism

While the Monroe Doctrine ingenuously claimed to protect hemispheric independence from foreign interference, HR 943 charges that the policy has, in fact, been used as a “mandate” to give the US license to interfere in the internal affairs of other states to promote its own narrow interests.

The resolution forcefully begins with noting the “massive, forced displacement and genocide of Native peoples” by the North American colonialists.

The resolution goes on to enumerate the further progression of the US imperium on the hemisphere. Back in the 1840s, the US took 55% of Mexico. In 1898, Puerto Rico (still possessed) and Cuba (Guantánamo still controlled) were seized. From 1898-1934, Washington intervened militarily in Cuba, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

In 1904, “international police power” to protect US and foreign creditors in the region was claimed under the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. In 1947, the CIA was created with authorization for covert action in the region. Then in 1953, Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown in the “first” CIA coup.

In 1961, the US facilitated a 21-year military dictatorship in Brazil. The following year, the still continuing embargo (really a blockade) of Cuba was initiated. In 1973, Washington backed a coup in Chile and the succeeding 15-year military dictatorship.

From 1975-1980, the US coordinated Operation Condor with terroristic military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. In 1983, the US invaded and overthrew the government of Grenada. And in the 1980s and early 1990s, the US backed “dirty wars” in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.

In 1991, the US covertly financed a military coup in Haiti. Another coup in Haiti was precipitated in 2004. Starting in 2000, billions were provided for Plan Colombia, implicated in massive human rights abuses. Meanwhile, from 1941-2003, US Naval operations in Vieques, Puerto Rico, caused deaths and lethal illnesses. In 2002, the US supported an unsuccessful coup in Venezuela. US-backed coups in Honduras in 2009 and in Bolivia in 2019 were both followed by Washington’s support for the subsequent illegitimate governments.

Although this amounts to an appalling rap sheet, the resolution just highlights some of the more obvious transgressions. Omitted, for instance, is the 1989 US invasion of Panama and overthrow of that government.

US-imposed institutions of regional control

The resolution notes that the Washington-based and largely US-controlled Organization of American States (OAS) ignores “the many egregious abuses perpetrated” by the US and its client states.

Similarly, the largely US-dominated International Monetary Fund is implicated in the regional debt crises, which has resulted in austerity and stagnant development. Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions, which are often imposed by the US in free-trade agreements, are also criticized in the resolution.

The resolution blames the massive regional immigration of displaced persons partly on Washington’s own policies. The Central American “dirty wars” in the 1980s and 1990s and more recently the US-sponsored US drug wars and free trade agreements are cited among the problematic contributing causes.

Regarding foreign intervention in the hemisphere, although not noted in the resolution, has been the US’s actual abetting of foreign interference; that is, when it aligns with its interests. Just this month, the British sent a warship to Guyana. At the same time, a US deputy secretary of defense was meeting with the Guyanese, backing the claims of a US oil company in territory disputed between Guyana and Venezuela.

Further, the US fully backs what amount to European colonies, regardless of whether they are called dependencies, overseas territories, or even departments. France claims French Guiana, Guadeloupe Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, and Martinique. Netherlands possesses Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. The UK has Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Malvinas. Washington, too, has its own de facto colonies of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

Remedies

 Following this devastating bill of particulars, the resolution calls for remedies. The first of which is for the State Department to “send a strong signal” by annulling the Monroe Doctrine. A “good neighborhood policy” is proposed to replace it.

That sounds nice. But, as the resolution notes, then US Secretary of State John Kerry mouthed similarly soothing words in 2013 and nothing came of that.   Notably, this resolution adds a bite to the bark, specifically calling for terminating all unilateral coercive economic sanctions. These measures are a form of collective punishment and as such are illegal under international law and condemned by the United Nations.

Regarding the recidivist US practice of backing “extraconstitutional transfer of power,” the resolution urges Congress to legislate automatic reviews of assistance to coup governments. Aid would only be reinstated after the both the US and the majority of regional states agree that constitutional order has been re-instituted.

Interestingly, the resolution calls for the “prompt” declassification of all US secret documentation on coups, dictatorships, and human rights abuses. Cover-ups from the past would be exposed.

In terms of regional governance, the resolution insists that the OAS be reformed. Without naming US-sycophantic Luis Almagro, the resolution requests accountability for unethical and criminal activities by the organization’s secretary general plus full transparency on financial and personnel decisions (not explicitly named, but including his girlfriend). An ombudsman’s office is proposed. Human rights rapporteurs and electoral observation would be independent. Similarly, the US is asked to work cooperatively with other regional bodies such as CELAC, CARICOM, and UNASUR.

Unspecified reforms of the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions are proposed to ensure equity for loans to developing countries. International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights are cited, which would help regional development and climate adaptation. Contributions are also recommended to the Amazon Fund.

Citizen initiatives

Of the sponsors of the resolution, three had been on a delegation to Brazil, Colombia, and Chile in August facilitated by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), where they met with high-level officials. CEPR’s Director of International Policy Alexander Main commented that the delegation sought to “promote a fresh approach to US relations.”

CEPR publishes the monthly Sanctions Watch, which reports on the asphyxiating impact of the unilateral coercive economic measures. Longest sanctioned, Cuba is in dire need of humanitarian relief from Uncle Sam. Particularly debilitating for Cuba was President Trump’s inclusion of the island nation on the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list, which cuts it off from otherwise available aid.

The SSOT policy has been continued by President Biden. A call to reverse the policy is absent from the proposed congressional resolution, which is sponsored by Biden’s fellow Democrats. However, the National Network on Cuba (NNOC) and the Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect (ACERE) are among the many organizations working to get Cuba off that list. These include faith-based groups such as the Presbyterian Mission and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Even the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), which is the DC-based think tank that serves to give a liberal gloss to State Department policies, wants Cuba removed from the list.

The Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition (NSC) works on reversing US sanctions there and is gearing up against a new congressional initiative to extend the grueling collective punishment. Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice (FTT) and the Venezuela Solidarity Network are among the North America groups working to take the US sanctions burden off of Venezuela.

The SanctionsKill campaign opposes all economic coercive measures, including those imposed by the United Nations. The Latin America and the Caribbean Policy Forum, spearheaded by CodePink, is working for an “Americas without sanctions” with the Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) and others. CodePink and World Beyond War hosted a mock “funeral” for the Monroe Doctrine in December.

Counter initiative

Earlier on December 1, María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Chip Roy (R-TX) had introduced a resolution, which was opposite of the intent of the resolution led by Velázquez. This other resolution celebrated the Monroe Doctrine’s bicentennial and was joined by fourteen other Republican representatives as cosponsors. They asserted that the need is greater than ever to protect against “malign overseas influence.” Salazar warned, “China, Russia and Iran are trying to invade the Western Hemisphere.”

Although Velázquez’s and her fellow Democrats’ HR 143 calls for annulling the Monroe Doctrine and ending sanctions, we should have no illusion that their resolution will end US imperialism any time soon. Unfortunately, many on the blue team including their standard bearer have developed a fervor for American exceptionalism similar to the wing-nuts on the other side of the aisle.

But, given the seemingly unlimited bipartisan appetite for foreign intervention, it is at least a step in the right direction and a platform that can be used for organizing, particularly against sanctions. As the Spanish daily El País commented, the resolution to annul is a “charge against two centuries of US expansionist policy.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Roger D. Harris.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

An estimated 570,000 people in the Gaza Strip are now starving. Three-quarters of the territory’s 36 hospitals are closed. The remaining nine, all in southern Gaza, are “partially functional.” The shuttered hospitals in the north are serving as impromptu shelters for some of the 85 percent of Palestinians in Gaza who have been displaced, but did not trek south to escape the ravages of Israel’s ground invasion. Beyond an estimated death toll of 20,000, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, a devastating 355,000 are suffering from infectious diseases as conditions in the territory worsen.

Amid all of this suffering, President Joe Biden delayed a United Nations vote for humanitarian aid to Gaza at least eight times, watering it down until he felt satisfied enough to not veto it.

The vote is on a U.N. Security Council proposal, put forward by the United Arab Emirates and repeatedly whittled down just for Biden, that calls for limiting the hostilities in Gaza and expanding aid distribution. Officials reportedly crafted the resolution in such a way that it would be “tolerable” enough for the Biden administration to avoid a veto. The U.S. has long been Israel’s guarantor at the Security Council, using its veto as a permanent member of the council to block almost every measure critical of Israel.

For Biden, the preemptive concessions were not enough, and he continued to delay the UAE resolution. The main sticking points for Biden were the resolution’s use of the word “cessation” in a call to end fighting and on allowing an independent inspection of aid going into Gaza, rather than the Israel-administered checks that have slowed aid shipments to a crawl.

As negotiations edged into Thursday evening, the vote was kicked once again, to Friday — but not without reward for Biden. He was able to force out language that does not establish a mechanism for U.N. inspection of aid, nor call for the “suspension of hostilities.”

On Friday, the fateful vote was finally held — after the U.S. first vetoed a Russian amendment to restore the resolution’s originally stronger language for a “suspension.” Indeed, the 15 member nations instead voted on a resolution calling for “the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” The resolution passed, 13-0-2. Russia abstained out of frustration. The United States abstained, even after getting what it wanted.

Nevertheless, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield delivered remarks celebrating the passage, as if she hadn’t just voted to abstain from the resolution on behalf of Biden. 

“This was tough, but we got there,” she began. “Since the start of this conflict, the United States has worked tirelessly to alleviate this humanitarian crisis … to push for the protection of innocent civilians and humanitarian workers and to work towards a lasting peace. Today’s votes bolsters those efforts.”

“Biden is effectively running war crimes management for the Israelis.”

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says the appeasement of Biden has made the resolution increasingly meaningless. “These changes would ensure that Israel’s slaughter in Gaza continues while minimizing the U.N.’s insight into what increasingly appears to be a genocide,” he told The Intercept. “This is Biden’s contribution to the resolution. Biden is effectively running war crimes management for the Israelis.”

In past days, Israeli forces allegedly bulldozed sick and injured civilians outside a hospital; were accused by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem of besieging a church, killing a mother and daughter with sniper fire; said by the U.N. to have summarily executed at least 11 Palestinians; killed three of their own country’s hostages in Gaza, who were shirtless and waving white flags; bombed a maternity ward; and killed numerous journalists.

With or without the concessions to Biden, the resolution takes less of a hard line against Israel’s assault than two previous resolutions at the U.N. — both opposed by the U.S. Two weeks ago, the U.S. blocked a Security Council call for an immediate ceasefire and hostage release; the resolution nearly passed, until the U.S. veto. Instead, that same day, the Biden administration approved the sale of 14,000 shells for Israeli tanks worth $106.5 million, to be delivered immediately, without congressional approval.

Days later, a similar U.N. resolution, this one in the General Assembly, which doesn’t have the power to take binding positions, passed 153-10; the U.S. was one of 10 nations, including several vassal states and Israel, to vote against it.

The latest, watered-down resolution was designed from the outset not to gain U.S. support but simply to win its abstention, avoiding the veto. Even still, Biden wouldn’t play ball. In fact, as negotiations have been ongoing, the administration has been busy throwing wrenches elsewhere. State Department officials are apparently trying to block a conference about Israeli violations of the Geneva Conventions. 

And the U.S. was one of four nations to vote against a resolution on Tuesday that affirmed the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and emphasized achieving “a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement between the Palestinian and Israeli sides.” The resolution passed 172-4.

Though the U.S. expresses concern about civilian harm in Gaza, Israel appears to have done little to heed American warnings. The result, said some analysts, is that the U.S. is isolating itself from the world even as it maintains no leverage on Israel.

“You claim to be saying to the Israelis, ‘We want to see a different way of conducting this operation,’” said Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project and a former Israeli negotiator. “And at the same time, you’re providing the weapons, offering the diplomatic cover, watering down resolutions, vetoing resolutions, with no questions asked.”

“I think it’s so demeaning, the position they’re putting themselves in,” Levy told The Intercept. “The world is watching.”

While Biden’s strong support for Israel is in line with the pro-Israel consensus in Washington, poll after poll has shown a staying majority of Americans supporting a ceasefire, including most Democrats. On the question of sending more aid to Israel — as Biden has proposed — a recent poll found Americans opposed, 46 to 45, a 16-point hike in opposition in one month.

Even on Capitol Hill, Democrats are increasingly turning against the Israeli assault on Gaza as the destruction continues with no clear war aim. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has, like Biden, echoed Israel advocates’ talk of the country’s “right to defend itself” since the war started on October 7, but this week urged the U.S. to vote “YES” on the latest U.N. resolution. (The next day, Sanders modified his language to demand the U.S. “not veto a reasonable resolution to stop the hostilities.”) Republican hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina also conceded this week that Israel could do more to limit civilian deaths.

Also this week, six moderate House Democrats known for their national security backgrounds sent a letter to Biden, expressing their concern for Israel’s military strategy and the civilians they have killed. “We have dedicated our lives to national security and believe our nation’s values are a source of credibility and power,” Reps. Jason Crow, Mikie Sherrill, Chrissy Houlahan, Seth Moulton, Abigail Spanberger, and Elissa Slotkin wrote. “We know from personal and often painful experience that you can’t destroy a terror ideology with military force alone. And it can, and in fact, make it worse.” 

Meanwhile, Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, like many of his political rivals, holds no brief for Biden and would likely welcome a return of Donald Trump, who frequently acquiesced to Israel’s demands without even Biden’s grumbling. 

The resulting picture is one of Biden undermining his own campaign: alienating his base for a foreign ally likely to side with his GOP rival, and isolating the U.S. instead of rebuilding relationships post-Trump. 

Levy, the former Israeli negotiator, said the repeated moves at the U.N. against worldwide opinion stood in sharp contrast to Biden’s claim to restore U.S. prestige abroad. “You can’t do both,” Levy said. “You can’t claim the mantle of the upholder of an international order and be its primary underminer at the same time.”

Update: December 22, 2023
This article has been updated with the results of the Friday vote in the U.N. Security Council.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Prem Thakker.

In a debate on Israel and Palestine in Parliament last week, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Affairs Leo Docherty got up and said:

There is no scenario in which Hamas can be allowed to control Gaza again. That is why we are not calling for a general ceasefire, which would allow Hamas to regroup and entrench their position. I am pleased to say that the government’s position is shared by the Opposition Front Bench. Instead, we are focused on urging respect for international law…

What a fatuous statement. If the UK government had any concern for international law Israel would not have been allowed to breach it continuous and with impunity for the last 75 years and the horrendous slaughter we’ve all been watching would never have happened.

As a foreign office minister, Docherty should be aware that Hamas is the legitimate government in Gaza, having won the last election fair and square. Israel, the US and UK might not like the result but that’s beside the point. What Docherty and his colleagues are contemplating is coercive regime change, which is hardly in line with international law or Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Meanwhile, David Cameron, hurriedly parachuted in from outside Parliament as our new Foreign Secretary and breaching all democratic niceties, was telling everyone that there can be no resolution to the conflict in the Middle East if Hamas is still “armed to the teeth” and capable of attacking Israel. And he defended the UK’s decision to abstain on the UN vote for a Gaza ceasefire on the grounds that the UN was calling for an immediate armistice plus a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, and “those two things don’t go together… If you have an immediate ceasefire but Hamas [is] still armed to the teeth, launching rockets into Israel, wanting to repeat 7 October, you’ll never have a two-state solution.

“Long-term security I think requires there to be a state for Palestine as well,” he said, sounding wonderfully generous, adding that he did not agree with “disappointing” comments made by Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, on Wednesday 13 December that Tel Aviv would not back a two-state solution.

Had he been paying attention Cameron would know that the apartheid regime, from its very inception in 1948, has refused to contemplate the existence of a Palestinian state. That would thwart Israel’s ambition to establish sovereignty over the entire territory “from the river to the sea”, which is the express aim of Hotovely’s (and Netanyahu’s) vile party, Likud.

Britain, on the other hand, promised a Palestinian state back in 1915 but repeatedly reneged on it – in 1917, in 1923, in 1948 – and continues to sidestep the issue while forever prattling on about a two-state solution.

Cameron is also saying that Israel “must take stronger action to stop settler violence and hold the perpetrators accountable”. But his lordship should be telling Israel to do much more than that. To comply with international law Israel must remove its settlers and its thuggish military from the West Bank altogether, remembering that the West Bank includes East Jerusalem (and the Old City) and Gaza.

What needs eliminating is the threat posed by Israel

As I write, Cameron is changing tack slightly and now calling for a “sustainable” ceasefire because it has dawned on him that “too many civilians have been killed” by Israel. A joint article in the Sunday Times by him and German Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock comes amid growing pressure on Israel over its methods in the war on Gaza. It states: “We do not believe that calling right now for a general and immediate ceasefire, hoping it somehow becomes permanent, is the way forward. It ignores why Israel is forced to defend itself: Hamas barbarically attacked Israel and still fires rockets to kill Israeli citizens every day.”

The usual misinformation. They ignore why the Palestinians are compelled to defend themselves, i.e. the brutal and murderous decades-long illegal occupation by Israel using military force.

“Hamas must lay down its arms,” say Cameron and Baerbock. And in a tepid warning to Israel, the two foreign ministers say: “Israel has the right to defend itself but, in doing so, it must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel will not win this war if its operations destroy the prospect of peaceful coexistence with Palestinians. They have a right to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas.”

But do they really? Where in international law does it say that an illegal occupier (such as Israel) can claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it illegally occupies?

Under UN Resolution 37/43, however, the Palestinians, as victims of illegal military occupation, have an unquestionable right to eliminate the threat posed by Israel in their struggle for “liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.

Resolution 37/43 also condemns “the constant and deliberate violations of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the expansionist activities of Israel in the Middle East, which constitute an obstacle to the achievement of self-determination and independence by the Palestinian people and a threat to peace and stability in the region”.

The Palestinians’ right to armed struggle in self-defence is also confirmed in UN Resolution 3246, which calls for all States to recognise the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subject to colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation and to offer them moral, material and other forms of assistance in their struggle to exercise fully their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.

Resolution 3246 reaffirms the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle, and demands full respect for the basic human rights of all individuals detained or imprisoned as a result of their struggle for self-determination and independence, and strict respect for article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under which no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

There’s no sign that Cameron and the rest of the UK government understand any of this.

And what right does the UK have to prevent Palestinians choosing their own government? None. The correct way to “eliminate the threat posed by Hamas” is to require Israel to end its occupation.

International law trampled to suit Israeli plans for domination

It is ludicrous to keep repeating that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel has no intention of doing so, and everyone knows it. Israel wants to dominate the Holy Land and has made that abundantly clear. Western governments and Western Christendom seem paralysed. The presumption must be that Biden and Cameron (both self-proclaimed Zionists, as were most of their predecessors) are overly sympathetic towards Israel and happy to trample international law to ensure the success of the apartheid regime’s criminal enterprise.

Many in the UK question why our parliamentarians are so concerned about the 1,200 Israeli dead following Hamas’s breakout attack and the 200-odd hostages when they couldn’t care less about the 10,651 Palestinians (including 656 women and 2,270 children) slaughtered by Israel in the 23 years before 7 October. Or the 7,200 Palestinian hostages held in Israeli jails, including 88 women and 250 children. Over 1,200 are held under “administrative detention” without charge or trial and denied due process.

An authority on international law, Dr Ralph Wilde, has produced a legal opinion on the Israeli occupation which might be helpful in putting an end to Cameron’s & co’s claptrap.

He points out that:

• There’s no valid basis in international law for the occupation and it is an unlawful use of force, an aggression, and a violation on the part of Israel against the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. And aggression is a crime on an individual level for senior Israeli leaders. “As a result, the occupation is existentially illegal and must end immediately.”
• What’s more, an end to the occupation cannot be delayed by Israel’s failure to agree to the adoption of a peace agreement or by the unreadiness of the Palestinian people, by ‘facts on the ground’, or by waiting for the approval of the UN, the Quartet, the White House, the British Foreign Office or anybody else. Every day the occupation continues is a breach of international law.
• Palestinian people are treated in international law as a collective entity with rights, notably the right of self-determination and the right to freely choose whether or not to enter into international agreements. Palestine is what’s called a Self-determination Unit. The territory it covers is everything that is ‘not Israel’, legally, and includes Al-Quds/Jerusalem in its entirety, the rest of the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
• Israel’s recognition and UN membership did not include sovereignty over any part of Al-Quds/Jerusalem. Palestinians also enjoy the right of external self-determination (i.e. freedom from external domination) which has been universally accepted and affirmed by states and UN institutions including the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the International Court of Justice.
• And Palestine is a state in the international law sense because (a) there’s a presumption in favour of statehood for people with a right of external self-determination; and (b) a large majority (138) of the world’s states collectively recognized Palestinian statehood when the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’. This had the effect of establishing statehood.
• External self-determination is a right to be free of any external domination, including occupation or other forms of non-sovereign territorial control which prevent the full exercise of that right. Such domination must end so that this right can be exercised.
• The right operates and exists simply and exclusively by virtue of the Palestinian people being entitled to it. It is not something that depends on anyone else agreeing to it, such as Israel, the Quartet, the UN, other states, etc. It is a right; so there is no need for Palestinians to negotiate or compromise with Israelis as the price for ending their occupation.
• Israel’s exercising control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, preventing the Palestinian people from full and effective self-governance, has for decades been a fundamental impediment to the realization of the right of self-determination which the Palestinian people are entitled to enjoy under international law. And there was no actual or imminent armed attack that justified the occupation as a means of self-defence prior to 7 October.
• Furthermore, there is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.
• Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force, over those areas of the West Bank.

Advice to Messrs Sunak, Cameron and Docherty is surely to first get on the right side of international law – and human decency – and recognise Palestinian statehood without any more foot-dragging. Furthermore, to join with other states and tell Israel, firmly, that all cooperation, collaboration and favoured nation privileges are cancelled until the apartheid regime ends its illegal occupation, removes its squatters, lifts its siege, ceases interference with free movement and fulfils its obligations under the UN Charter and resolutions. And completes a probationary period demonstrating good behaviour before being welcomed back into the community of nations.

Otherwise, what is international law worth? Our political leaders must realise that the British public don’t want a so-called ally that’s bent on genocide and the wholesale destruction of another people’s homeland and heritage, and is as hateful, racist and disrespectful of human rights and norms as Israel has been for as long as most of us can remember.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.

According to one analysis, the series of tax cuts approved under former Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for the bulk of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001.

Social Security, by contrast, is not a driver of federal deficits.

"If we want to ensure long-term solvency [for Social Security], there are two choices: Some on the other side think we should cut benefits, I think we should ask the ultra-rich to pay their fair share. We don't need a commission to tell us that," McGovern said during his testimony. "And my fear is that a commission would be used by some as an excuse to slash Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal anti-poverty programs."

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a member of the House Budget Committee who served on the infamous Bowles-Simpson commission that proposed deep cuts to Social Security, expressed similar concerns during Wednesday's hearing.

Schakowsky said she was "happy" the Bowles-Simpson proposals—which she vocally opposed at the time—weren't adopted and warned that a fiscal commission of the kind backed by Republicans and right-wing Democrats is "a way for members of Congress to get out from under having to take the blame for the kinds of cuts that may be presented."

In an op-ed for Common Dreams on Wednesday, Schakowsky wrote that "if Republicans cared about improving our fiscal position, they would demand the rich pay their fair share."

"If Republicans wanted to actually solve our budget challenges, they would robustly fund tax enforcement to ensure corporations are complying with laws already on the books," she added. "But Republicans aren't serious about the deficit. They aren't even serious about governing. They are serious about only one thing, and that's ripping away Social Security from seniors behind closed doors."

Wednesday's hearing examined three pieces of legislation put forth by bipartisan groups of lawmakers in the House and Senate.

A bill introduced earlier this month by Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—both of whom testified at Wednesday's hearing—would form a 16-member bipartisan, bicameral fiscal commission comprised of 12 elected officials and four outside experts tasked with crafting legislation to "improve solvency of federal trust funds over a 75-year period."

If approved by the commission, the legislation would be put on a fast track in the House and Senate.

Romney insisted during his testimony Wednesday that he doesn't know of a single Republican or Democrat who wants to cut Social Security and said benefit reductions should be off the table.

But Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group, pointed out that a proposal released earlier this year by the Republican Study Committee (RSC)—a panel comprised of 175 House Republicans—called for raising the Social Security retirement age, which would de facto cut benefits across the board.

Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who presided over Wednesday's hearing, is a member of the RSC. During his opening remarks, Arrington described efforts to prevent what he called a "sovereign debt crisis" as "our generation's World War."

Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, told Common Dreams that "at today's hearing, Republicans made the true purpose of their 'fiscal commission' crystal clear: demolish Social Security and Medicare behind closed doors, while avoiding accountability from voters."

"Chairman Jodey Arrington referred to the commission's supporters as 'partners in crime,'" Lawson added. "That's exactly what they are: criminals who are plotting to reach into our pockets and steal our earned benefits."

"It should be a national scandal that middle- and working-class families have to pay Social Security taxes on all of their income but millionaires and billionaires do not."

Instead of taking the deeply unpopular step of slashing benefits, Democrats who spoke at the budget committee hearing argued that Congress should pass legislation requiring the rich to contribute more to Social Security. This year, because of the payroll tax cap, millionaires stopped paying into the program in late February.

"It should be a national scandal that middle- and working-class families have to pay Social Security taxes on all of their income but millionaires and billionaires do not," said McGovern.

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said at Wednesday's hearing that Congress could extend Social Security's solvency through the end of the century by requiring the rich to pay more in taxes.

"I think that is fair. I think that is appropriate," said Boyle. "And for those who disagree, I would be very interested in seeing what their plan is and their alternative."

Following the hearing, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) delivered a speech on the House floor condemning Republicans for working to "establish a death panel commission to gut earned benefits" and described the effort as part of a "cycle" that must be opposed.

"First, Republicans pass tax handouts for their filthy rich donors, promising a trickle-down miracle that never has and will never happen—from Reaganomics to Trump's tax scam," said Lee. "Then, when their tax scam causes the economy to slow and deficits to grow, they refuse to correct their mistake. Instead they blame immigrants, poor folks, Black folks, and brown folks."

"Then they repeat the cycle," she continued, "hoping enough of us will forgive or forget their scheme to tear away Medicare and Social Security and believe their lie that they were 'only after' food assistance, healthcare, and housing for poor folks—not your earned benefits—when the truth is that they always were and always will be after it all."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Photograph Source: Colin Crowley – CC BY 2.0`

A country broken by constant foreign interventions, its tyrannical regimes propped up by the back brace of the United States (when it wasn’t intervening to adjust it), marred by appalling natural disasters, tells a sad tale of the crippled Haitian state. Haiti’s political existence is the stuff and stuffing of pornographic violence, the crutch upon which moralists can always point to as the end, doom and despair that needs change. Every conundrum needs its intrusive deliverer, even though that deliverer is bound to make things worse.

Lately, those stale themes have now percolated through the corridors of the United Nations to renewed interest. The staleness is evident in the menu: servings of failed state canapes; vicious, murderous, raping, pillaging gangs as the main musical score; collapse of civic institutions as the dessert. It’s the sort of menu to rile and aggravate any mission or charity, and yet, military-security interventions continue to capture the feeble imagination.

Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, the constant theme in reporting from Haiti is that of rampant, freely operating gangs. Sophie Hills, a staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor, offered this description in October last year: “Armed gangs have immobilized the capital, Port-au-Prince, shutting down the already troubled economy and creating fear among citizens to even walk the streets.”

This October 23, the UN special envoy to Haiti, María Isabel Salvador, reported to the UN Security Council that the situation had continued “to deteriorate as growing gang violence plunge the lives of the people of Haiti into disarray and major crimes are rising sharply to new record highs.” These included killings and sexual violence, the latter marked by instances of rape and mutilation.

To add further complexity to the situation, vigilante groups such as the “Bwa Kale” movement have responded through resorting to lynching (395 alleged gang members are said to have perished in that gruesome way between April 24 and September).

Moïse’s opportunistic replacement, Ariel Henry, has served as acting prime minister, persistently calling for foreign intervention to right the worn vessel he is steering into a sunset oblivion. The past presidential elections were last held in 2016, but Henry has not deemed it appropriate to stage elections, preferring the bureaucratic formula of a High Transition Council (HTC) tasked with eventually achieving that goal. When the announcement establishing the body was made in February, Henry loftily claimed that this was “the beginning of the end of dysfunction in our democratic institutions.”

These weak assertions have not translated into credible change on the ground. The contempt with which the HTC has been viewed was indicated by the news from the UN envoy that its Secretary General had been kidnapped by gang members posing as police officers.

In September, Henry addressed the UN hoping to add some mettle to the Haitian National Police, urging the Security Council to adopt measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to “authorize the deployment of a multinational support mission to underpin the security of Haiti”.

The measure can be read as a stalling measure to keep Henry and his Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK) ensconced. This is certainly the view of the National Haitian-American Elected Officials Network (NHAEON) and the Family Action Network Movement (FANM). In their September letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the organisations warned that, “Any military intervention supporting Haiti’s corrupt, repressive, unelected regime will likely exacerbate the current political crisis to a catastrophic one.” The move would “further entrench the regime, deepening Haiti’s political crisis while generating significant civilian casualties and migration pressure.”

In its eternal wisdom, the United Nations Security Council felt that an intervention force consisting of Kenyan police, supplemented by assistance from other states, would be required for this mission. Resolution 2699, establishing a Multinational Security Support Mission led by Kenya, received a vote of 13 in favour, with Russia and China abstaining. This would entail a co-deployment with Haitian personnel who have melted before the marauding gangs. Thus, history continues to rhyme (the US occupation, 1915-1934 and the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) from 2004-2017).

Armed gangs feature as a demonic presence in the UN deliberations, regularly paired with such opaque terms as “a multidimensional crisis”. It is telling that the cliché-governed reasons for that crisis never focus on how the gang phenomenon took root, not least those mouldering state institutions that have failed to protect the populace. Little wonder then, that the Russian representative Vassily Nebenzia felt that sending in armed elements was “an extreme measure” that unnecessarily invoked the provisions of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations.

Undeterred by such views, the US representative Jeffrey Delaurentis noted that the mission would require the “inclusion of dedicated expertise in anti-gang operations, community-oriented policing, and children and women’s protection.” That Washington approved the measure can be put down to endorsing a policy which might discourage – if only in the short term – the arrival of Haitian asylum seekers which have been turned around en masse.

Despite claiming a different tack from his predecessor in approaching the troubled Caribbean state, President Biden has sought to restrict the influx of Haitian applications using, for instance, Title 42, a Trump policy put in place to deport individuals who pose a pandemic risk, in spite of any asylum credentials they might have. Within 12 months, the Biden administration was responsible for expelling more than 20,000 Haitians – or as many as the combined totals of three different presidents over two decades.

Resolution 2699 also suffers from another glaring fault. Kenya’s dominant contribution to the exercise has raised searching questions back home. Opposition politician Ekuru Aukot, himself a lawyer who had aided in drafting Kenya’s revised 2010 constitution, saw no legal basis for the government to authorise the Haitian deployment. In his view, the deployment was unconstitutional, lacking any legal backbone or treaty.

In granting Aukot an interim injunction, this point was considered by the Nairobi High Court worthy of resolution. Judge Enock Mwita was “satisfied that the application and petition raise substantial issues of national importance and public interest and require urgent consideration.” The judge accordingly issued a conservatory order “restraining the respondents from deploying police officers to Haiti or any other country until 24^th October 2023.”

On October 24, Judge Mwita extended the duration of the interim order till November 9, when an open session is scheduled for the petition to be argued. “This court became seized of this matter earlier than everyone else and it would not make sense for it to set aside or allow the interim orders to lapse.” The whole operation risks being scuttled even before it sets sail.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

We speak with Illinois Congressmember Delia Ramirez, one of the 18 members of the U.S. House of Representatives who have signed a resolution calling for an immediate deescalation and ceasefire in Israel and Palestine. “The only way we move forward is deescalating,” says Ramirez. “The aid that we send cannot be used to kill innocent lives. It’s unacceptable, it’s not moral, and I can’t stand behind that.”

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

Lately, those stale themes have now percolated through the corridors of the United Nations to renewed interest.  The staleness is evident in the menu: servings of failed state canapes; vicious, murderous, raping, pillaging gangs as the main musical score; collapse of civic institutions as the dessert. It’s the sort of menu to rile and aggravate any mission or charity, and yet, military-security interventions continue to capture the feeble imagination.

Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, the constant theme in reporting from Haiti is that of rampant, freely operating gangs.  Sophie Hills, a staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor, offered this description in October last year: “Armed gangs have immobilized the capital, Port-au-Prince, shutting down the already troubled economy and creating fear among citizens to even walk the streets.”

This October 23, the UN special envoy to Haiti, María Isabel Salvador, reported to the UN Security Council that the situation had continued “to deteriorate as growing gang violence plunge the lives of the people of Haiti into disarray and major crimes are rising sharply to new record highs.”  These included killings and sexual violence, the latter marked by instances of rape and mutilation.

To add further complexity to the situation, vigilante groups such as the “Bwa Kale” movement have responded through resorting to lynching (395 alleged gang members are said to have perished in that gruesome way between April 24 and September).

Moïse’s opportunistic replacement, Ariel Henry, has served as acting prime minister, persistently calling for foreign intervention to right the worn vessel he is steering into a sunset oblivion.  The past presidential elections were last held in 2016, but Henry has not deemed it appropriate to stage elections, preferring the bureaucratic formula of a High Transition Council (HTC) tasked with eventually achieving that goal.  When the announcement establishing the body was made in February, Henry loftily claimed that this was “the beginning of the end of dysfunction in our democratic institutions.”

These weak assertions have not translated into credible change on the ground.  The contempt with which the HTC has been viewed was indicated by the news from the UN envoy that its Secretary General had been kidnapped by gang members posing as police officers.

In September, Henry addressed the UN hoping to add some mettle to the Haitian National Police, urging the Security Council to adopt measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to “authorize the deployment of a multinational support mission to underpin the security of Haiti”.

The measure can be read as a stalling measure to keep Henry and his Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK) ensconced.  This is certainly the view of the National Haitian-American Elected Officials Network (NHAEON) and the Family Action Network Movement (FANM).  In their September letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the organisations warned that, “Any military intervention supporting Haiti’s corrupt, repressive, unelected regime will likely exacerbate the current political crisis to a catastrophic one.”  The move would “further entrench the regime, deepening Haiti’s political crisis while generating significant civilian casualties and migration pressure.”

In its eternal wisdom, the United Nations Security Council felt that an intervention force consisting of Kenyan police, supplemented by assistance from other states, would be required for this mission.  Resolution 2699, establishing a Multinational Security Support Mission led by Kenya, received a vote of 13 in favour, with Russia and China abstaining.  This would entail a co-deployment with Haitian personnel who have melted before the marauding gangs. Thus, history continues to rhyme (the US occupation, 1915-1934 and the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) from 2004-2017).

Armed gangs feature as a demonic presence in the UN deliberations, regularly paired with such opaque terms as “a multidimensional crisis”.  It is telling that the cliché-governed reasons for that crisis never focus on how the gang phenomenon took root, not least those mouldering state institutions that have failed to protect the populace. Little wonder then, that the Russian representative Vassily Nebenzia felt that sending in armed elements was “an extreme measure” that unnecessarily invoked the provisions of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations.

Undeterred by such views, the US representative Jeffrey Delaurentis noted that the mission would require the “inclusion of dedicated expertise in anti-gang operations, community-oriented policing, and children and women’s protection.”  That Washington approved the measure can be put down to endorsing a policy which might discourage – if only in the short term – the arrival of Haitian asylum seekers which have been turned around en masse.

Despite claiming a different tack from his predecessor in approaching the troubled Caribbean state, President Biden has sought to restrict the influx of Haitian applications using, for instance, Title 42, a Trump policy put in place to deport individuals who pose a pandemic risk, in spite of any asylum credentials they might have.  Within 12 months, the Biden administration was responsible for expelling more than 20,000 Haitians – or as many as the combined totals of three different presidents over two decades.

Resolution 2699 also suffers from another glaring fault.  Kenya’s dominant contribution to the exercise has raised searching questions back home.  Opposition politician Ekuru Aukot, himself a lawyer who had aided in drafting Kenya’s revised 2010 constitution, saw no legal basis for the government to authorise the Haitian deployment.  In his view, the deployment was unconstitutional, lacking any legal backbone or treaty.

In granting Aukot an interim injunction, this point was considered by the Nairobi High Court worthy of resolution.  Judge Enock Mwita was “satisfied that the application and petition raise substantial issues of national importance and public interest and require urgent consideration.”  The judge accordingly issued a conservatory order “restraining the respondents from deploying police officers to Haiti or any other country until 24th October 2023.”

On October 24, Judge Mwita extended the duration of the interim order till November 9, when an open session is scheduled for the petition to be argued.  “This court became seized of this matter earlier than everyone else and it would not make sense for it to set aside or allow the interim orders to lapse.”  The whole operation risks being scuttled even before it sets sail.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The modern Israeli city of Ashkelon, 20 kilometers north of the Gaza border, presents a picturesque setting along the Mediterranean coast.

Sparkling white beaches matched by white-faced apartment buildings, green lawns, and several wide boulevards depict a tranquil and content city. Ashkelon, the modern city with a biblical name, is not peaceful. Grad rockets from Gaza have struck the city on several occasions. By arguments of war, the damage has not been extensive, but no damage can be ignored.

More noticeable is that Ashkelon has an important story, relating a narrative that describes the Middle East conflict. The story begins with the Canaanites of 1800 B.C.

Ashkelon’s archaeological park has a treasure; a Canaanite gate from the walled city that gave the modern city its name. The Canaanites constructed a port on the Mediterranean Sea and used the sea, together with city walls, to provide a unique defense against invaders. The archaeological park contains artifacts from the Canaanite and succeeding civilizations; Philistines, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, and Crusaders, all of whom eventually ruled the area until the Mamelukes destroyed Ashkelon in the year 1270 A.D.

Missing from the list of conquerors of Ashkelon are the Israelites. No substantiated history or archaeological finds describe Israelite administration of the coastal areas. This lack of coastal identification is surprising because, if the biblical claims of the extent of David and Solomon’s realms are true, would not these empires include seaports and fortifications close to the defendable Mediterranean Sea? A Canaanite gate from 1800 B.C. is extant, but not a single identifiable structure from the reported eras of David and Solomon has been uncovered along the coast.

This brings us to the year 1596 A.D. In that year, the Arab village of al-Majdal in the Ottoman Empire, located close to the ruins of ancient Ashkelon, had a population of 559 inhabitants. An industrious village, known for a weaving industry that produced silk for festival dresses, Al-Majdal’s population grew to 11,000 by 1948. The poetic naming of their fabrics: ‘ji’nneh u nar’ – ‘heaven and hell’, ‘nasheq rohoh’ – ‘breath of the soul’ and ‘abu mitayn’ – ‘father of two hundred, signified the pride and originality of the Al-Majdal weavers.

Al-Majdal and its citizens suffered the fate of many Palestinian villages that hoped to escape the hostilities but became engulfed in the 1948-1949 war. Its residents sustained more than the usual injustices that were committed after the passage of United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution 181, the Partition Plan for Palestine.

Not well recognized is that the territory awarded to the Palestinians in Resolution 181 extended along the coast to present-day Ashdod, 38 kilometers above Gaza. Al-Majdal had been awarded to the new Palestinian state. Also, not sufficiently explored is the reason that the Egyptian army, after its entrance into the war, refrained from entering deeply into territory awarded to the Jewish state because its purpose was to defend the Palestinian state against Israeli transgression. Egypt’s army captured the Yad Mordechai kibbutz, eight kilometers south of Al-Majdal, and stopped at Ashdod. Its army crossed the Negev (awarded to Israel) and attacked Jewish settlements in its advance. The Egyptian military proceeded to defend Beer Sheeva, which had also been awarded to a Palestinian state and continued through Palestinian territory to safeguard Hebron and other parts of the new Palestine state. Egyptian military attacked Tel Aviv by air and sea, but the Egyptian army did not occupy territory awarded to Ben Gurion’s government. Reasons given for the Egyptian failure to seize territory awarded to Israel include (1) damage done to the Egyptian army in a battle at Ashdod halted its advance, (2) four Messerschmitt aircraft delivered by Czechoslovakia to Israel alarmed Egyptian soldiers, and (3) battles with Negev kibbutzim deterred the Egyptian army. All of these reasons are conjecture and not sufficiently convincing.

Despite the over-expressed statement that the Egyptians, together with other Arab armies, intended to “throw the Israelis into the sea,” the Egyptians did not have the military strength to accomplish the task. The path taken by Egyptian troops indicates more of a defense of the new Palestinian state rather than an occupation of the new Jewish state. The inescapable reality is that the Israelis figuratively threw the Palestinians into the sea, or at least into refugee camps, by expelling 750,000 Arabs and barring their return to the lands and homes they had possessed for centuries. History needs a more in-depth analysis of Egypt’s intentions in entering the war.

With war raging in their midst, the citizens of Al-Majdal temporarily retreated 15 kilometers to a haven in Gaza. On November 4, 1948, Israeli forces captured the city. In August 1950, by a combination of inducements and threats, Al-Majdal’s 1000-2000 remaining inhabitants were expelled and trucked to Gaza. According to Eyal Kafkafi(1998), Segregation or integration of the Israeli Arabs – two concepts in Mapai, International Journal of Middle East Studies 30: 347-367, as reported in Wikipedia, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan promoted the expulsion while Pinhas Lavon, secretary-general of the Histadrut, “wished to turn the town into a productive example of equal opportunity for the Arabs.” Despite a ruling by the Egyptian-Israel Mixed Armistice Commission that the Arabs transferred from Majdal should be returned to Israel, this never happened. When I visited in 2010, I was told that only two Arab families live in Ashkelon today.

The nightmare for the expelled residents of Al-Majdal did not end with their arduous trip to Gaza. Without going into detail, the years from 1948 until the present have been years of internment in refugee camps, brutal occupation, constant strife, military raids in their neighborhoods, destruction of facilities, denial of everyday life, denial of livelihood, denial of access to the sea, denial of access to the outside world. In 1994, after the signing of the Oslo Accords, Israel constructed a 60-kilometer fence around the Gaza Strip and from December 2000 to June 2001 reinforced and rebuilt parts of the fence. Israel might be correct in presenting the fence as a necessary deterrence to infiltration, especially for terrorist acts. Personal bombings on southern Israel have declined dramatically but have been replaced by rocket bombings. Infiltration by Israeli forces into Gaza did not decline and bombings of Gaza homes and citizens continued. Whatever the reason, the lives of the surviving Al-Majdal refugees and their descendants evolved from being wards of the United Nations to virtual imprisonment in an overly crowded environment.

The Gazan wars are a coda to the horrific drama that plagued the Al-Majdal and other Palestinian refugees. The massive destruction inflicted upon the Gaza people is well documented and can be reviewed by searching the Internet. The accusations by Amnesty International and other agencies of war crimes committed by Israel are incomplete. Eyewitnesses verify the intentional destruction of small industrial businesses, educational institutions, animal husbandry, and withholding of irrigation that resulted in extensive strawberry crop losses; evidence that Israel also targeted the Gaza economy.

No discussion of Ashkelon is complete without reference to its neighboring Erez Crossing. For those entering northern Gaza, the crossing’s concrete walls and huge terminals, the traces of the 60-kilometer fence around the Gaza Strip in the distance, and an overhead balloon hanging in the sky like a full moon, evidently surveying the entire area, shock the senses.

A description by someone who exited Gaza through the checkpoint was so complicated that it was difficult to absorb and accurately report. The 100-meter walk along the empty road, remote control turnstiles, advanced body scanners, and other Kafkaesque security equipment are well described by my similar experience.

The Soviet Union previously set the bar for tyrannical control. Those who passed through a Soviet checkpoint between East Germany and Berlin during the Cold War know the fear and uncomfortable feeling of this control. Enter a barren room and gaze around in puzzlement. Finally, after several minutes, a slit in the wall opens and a voice announces, “Die papieren bitte.” Place the papers in the slit and wait in the room without knowing the time length of the wait. Realize that the room is wired and all words are heard while hidden eyes observe all movements. It is a sweating and terrifying experience. The exit from Gaza through Erez seemed magnitudes more terrifying. Israel has raised the bar on security control.

What happens when a Palestinian attempts to enter Israel from Gaza? A story related by a person, whose credentials are impeccable and whose words can be trusted, went like this.

A Palestinian, who had moved to Canada and had a Canadian passport, returned temporarily to Gaza. A friend in Ashkelon (who told me the story) invited the Palestinian with a Canadian passport for a visit. It took several weeks to prepare documentation, submit the necessary papers, and obtain approval from the Israeli military for the visit. With everything certified the Palestinian proceeded to the Erez Crossing for exit to Israel. His friend waited at the checkpoint and waited and waited. The Palestinian did not arrive. Six weeks later, the drama unfolded.

Israel’s security stopped the Palestinian, not because Israel suspected he had compromised its security – just the opposite – Israel compromised his security. If the man agreed to inform on his associates in Gaza, Israel would make life easy for him, allow him to travel, and his family would receive special conveniences. He was finally released after six weeks of being held incommunicado. Other Palestinians, who crossed the border, have complained of similar insidious activities.

The creation of modern Ashkelon and its consequences contain elements that have been subdued in public discourse but have been a major contributor to the Middle East conflict and a guide for one side of the struggle. We have Israel seizing control of an ancient area, which, for millennia, had been controlled by others. UN Resolution 181, which awarded the area to the Palestinian state, has been violated in the seizure. The original inhabitants are expelled without cause. The Arab town of Al-Majdal is mostly destroyed and memories of an Arab presence are erased. The town’s name is slowly changed, evolving from Al-Majdal to Migdal-Gad, Migdal-Ashkelon, and finally to Ashkelon; as if the city descended directly from the original bronze era seaport. The victims are consistently oppressed and reduced to impoverishment. Foreigners occupy the properties of the dispossessed. Sorrow, pain, and feelings of helplessness burst into violence against injustice and oppression. Although the violence is minimal, the retaliation is major. Al-Majdal has no escape from suffering.

Ashkelon has a story. It is the story of the Middle East conflict.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The resolution also urged the government to raise the issue of Beijing’s actions in the strategic waterway before the United Nations General Assembly. These allegedly violate a 2016 international arbitration ruling that nullified Beijing’s expansive claims to the potentially mineral-rich sea.

“It is hereby resolved by the Senate of the Philippines to strongly condemn the continued harassment of Filipino fishermen and the incursions in the West Philippine Sea by the Chinese coast guard and militia vessels,” the resolution said, according to a copy obtained by reporters.

The West Philippine Sea is the name that Filipinos use for waters claimed by Manila in the South China Sea.

The resolution urged the Philippine government to take appropriate action “in asserting and securing the country’s sovereign rights over its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf,” in the South China Sea.

The final resolution consolidated two authored separately by Sen. Risa Hontiveros and Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri.

“This bipartisan effort tells the Filipino people that when it comes to matters of national sovereignty, we will never be bullied into submission,” Hontiveros said in a statement.

“The fight against China’s reckless behavior in the West Philippine Sea does not end here,” she said. 

Hontiveros said she hoped that with the resolution, Manila would take the necessary steps to “consolidate” global support for the 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

Countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia, to name a few, have hailed the ruling, but Beijing has continued to ignore it. 

On Monday, Ursula von der Leyen, the visiting president of the European Commission, said the European Union backed the “legally binding” ruling.

The Chinese Embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have territorial claims in the South China Sea. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to these disputes, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.

The Senate resolution also urged the Department of Foreign Affairs to bring international attention to continued violations of The Hague ruling.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., though, appears disinterested in involving the U.N.

“Generally speaking, foreign policy is not set by the legislature. Generally speaking, foreign policy is left up to the executive,” he told reporters last week.

“The United Nations entertains governments, not parts of government. They deal with governments.”

Jojo Riñoza and Gerard Carreon in Manila contributed to this report.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By BenarNews Staff.

The post European Parliament Approves Vicious Anti-Cuba Resolution appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by W. T. Whitney.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) joined the bill's sponsors—Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.)—and other Democrats for a Tuesday press conference, during which they condemned MAGA Republicans' attacks on U.S. democracy.

"These attacks demand a federal response," said Klobuchar. "The Freedom to Vote Act will set basic national standards to make sure all Americans can cast their ballots in the way that works best for them, regardless of what ZIP code they live in. This bill will ensure Americans can request a mail-in ballot and have access to drop boxes, have at least two weeks of early voting, and can register to vote on Election Day."

"It's past time for Congress to act and protect Americans' freedom to vote."

While the bill is unlikely to reach the desk of President Joe Biden—who is running for reelection—during this term, given the GOP-controlled House and divided Senate hamstrung by the filibuster, campaigners echoed Democrats' assertions of the need for the bill's reforms.

"It has been 10 years since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted voting rights, and two years since a president attempted to overturn the will of voters to remain in power," notedPublic Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert—calling out former President Donald Trump, who is seeking the GOP's 2024 nomination despite inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

"Between the Shelby v. Holder decision and extremists in Congress and state houses—supported by wealthy interests who don't want democracy—we are in dangerous territory," Gilbert warned. "We must enshrine our democratic freedoms in federal legislation that would blunt the multipronged attacks on our democracy."

Stand Up America founder and president Sean Eldridge agreed, declaring that "it's past time for Congress to act and protect Americans' freedom to vote. As MAGA Republicans continue to erect barriers to the ballot box, particularly for communities of color, we need national standards to ensure voting access for every American, no matter where they live."

Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of Black Voters Matter, said that "the reintroduction of the Freedom to Vote Act is essential to overcoming the obstacles of new voter suppression laws we see taking shape every day in states like Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. In addition to the wave of voter suppression laws seen in 2021 and 2022, this year has seen hundreds of additional voter suppression bills attempted, and at least 11 states have passed such restrictions."

"Just yesterday, lawmakers in Alabama voted to advance a new congressional map that does not include a second majority-Black district, completely ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling that mandates the state's maps must include this majority-Black district," he pointed out. "The fight for our rights is playing out on the state level and continues to permeate our daily lives in the South. That is why national legislation that is pro-voter and anti-corruption is absolutely necessary at this moment in history."

A coalition of climate and environmental groups—Clean Water Action, Climate Hawks Vote, Earthjustice, Endangered Species Coalition, Greenpeace USA, Interfaith Power & Light, League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and WE ACT for Environmental Justice—also celebrated the bill's reintroduction.

"While we recognize that our democracy has never truly worked for all Americans, the Freedom to Vote Act will help move us closer to the mountaintop, where every American has equitable access to the ballot, and a brighter light will shine on the fossil fuel billionaires and corporations who pour big money into anti-environmental politicians and misleading ads hampering our ability to combat the climate crisis," the coalition said.

Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center and a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, highlighted that "the aims of the Freedom to Vote Act—prohibiting partisan gerrymandering, protecting the freedom to vote, and increasing the transparency of money spent in federal elections—are supported by a significant majority of Americans, regardless of party."

While opposition to the Freedom to Vote Act has mostly come from GOP lawmakers, some Democrats have helped block it. Early last year, Democratic right-wing Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), who is suspected of considering a 2024 presidential run, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), who switched from Democrat to Independent in December, teamed up with Republicans to kill a proposed change to the Senate filibuster that would have cleared the way for passing a voting rights package.

At the time, lawmakers were fighting to pass a megabill that included not only the Freedom to Vote Act but also the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation named for a late Democratic congressman and civil rights icon. Some campaigners also emphasized the importance of the latter on Tuesday.

Leslie Proll, senior director of the voting rights program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, similarly stressed the importance of both bills.

"We urge both chambers of Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act so we can build a multiracial democracy that works for all of us," said Proll. "We also look forward to Congress reintroducing and passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act."

Common Cause interim co-president Marilyn Carpinteyro on Tuesday sent a letter to all members of Congress on behalf of her group and its more than 1.5 million members and supporters "in strong support of the Freedom to Vote Act and in strong opposition to the 'American Confidence in Elections' (ACE) Act," which was introduced by House Republicans earlier this month.

"The ACE Act is a giant step backward and would silence the voices of everyday Americans by putting up barriers to voting and by allowing millions of dollars more in secret money to infiltrate our political system," Carpinteyro wrote. "To strengthen free and fair elections and help get big, secret money out of politics, Congress must instead pass the Freedom to Vote Act."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) joined the bill's sponsors—Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.)—and other Democrats for a Tuesday press conference, during which they condemned MAGA Republicans' attacks on U.S. democracy.

"These attacks demand a federal response," said Klobuchar. "The Freedom to Vote Act will set basic national standards to make sure all Americans can cast their ballots in the way that works best for them, regardless of what ZIP code they live in. This bill will ensure Americans can request a mail-in ballot and have access to drop boxes, have at least two weeks of early voting, and can register to vote on Election Day."

"It's past time for Congress to act and protect Americans' freedom to vote."

While the bill is unlikely to reach the desk of President Joe Biden—who is running for reelection—during this term, given the GOP-controlled House and divided Senate hamstrung by the filibuster, campaigners echoed Democrats' assertions of the need for the bill's reforms.

"It has been 10 years since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted voting rights, and two years since a president attempted to overturn the will of voters to remain in power," notedPublic Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert—calling out former President Donald Trump, who is seeking the GOP's 2024 nomination despite inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

"Between the Shelby v. Holder decision and extremists in Congress and state houses—supported by wealthy interests who don't want democracy—we are in dangerous territory," Gilbert warned. "We must enshrine our democratic freedoms in federal legislation that would blunt the multipronged attacks on our democracy."

Stand Up America founder and president Sean Eldridge agreed, declaring that "it's past time for Congress to act and protect Americans' freedom to vote. As MAGA Republicans continue to erect barriers to the ballot box, particularly for communities of color, we need national standards to ensure voting access for every American, no matter where they live."

Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of Black Voters Matter, said that "the reintroduction of the Freedom to Vote Act is essential to overcoming the obstacles of new voter suppression laws we see taking shape every day in states like Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. In addition to the wave of voter suppression laws seen in 2021 and 2022, this year has seen hundreds of additional voter suppression bills attempted, and at least 11 states have passed such restrictions."

"Just yesterday, lawmakers in Alabama voted to advance a new congressional map that does not include a second majority-Black district, completely ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling that mandates the state's maps must include this majority-Black district," he pointed out. "The fight for our rights is playing out on the state level and continues to permeate our daily lives in the South. That is why national legislation that is pro-voter and anti-corruption is absolutely necessary at this moment in history."

A coalition of climate and environmental groups—Clean Water Action, Climate Hawks Vote, Earthjustice, Endangered Species Coalition, Greenpeace USA, Interfaith Power & Light, League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and WE ACT for Environmental Justice—also celebrated the bill's reintroduction.

"While we recognize that our democracy has never truly worked for all Americans, the Freedom to Vote Act will help move us closer to the mountaintop, where every American has equitable access to the ballot, and a brighter light will shine on the fossil fuel billionaires and corporations who pour big money into anti-environmental politicians and misleading ads hampering our ability to combat the climate crisis," the coalition said.

Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center and a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, highlighted that "the aims of the Freedom to Vote Act—prohibiting partisan gerrymandering, protecting the freedom to vote, and increasing the transparency of money spent in federal elections—are supported by a significant majority of Americans, regardless of party."

While opposition to the Freedom to Vote Act has mostly come from GOP lawmakers, some Democrats have helped block it. Early last year, Democratic right-wing Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), who is suspected of considering a 2024 presidential run, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), who switched from Democrat to Independent in December, teamed up with Republicans to kill a proposed change to the Senate filibuster that would have cleared the way for passing a voting rights package.

At the time, lawmakers were fighting to pass a megabill that included not only the Freedom to Vote Act but also the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation named for a late Democratic congressman and civil rights icon. Some campaigners also emphasized the importance of the latter on Tuesday.

Leslie Proll, senior director of the voting rights program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, similarly stressed the importance of both bills.

"We urge both chambers of Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act so we can build a multiracial democracy that works for all of us," said Proll. "We also look forward to Congress reintroducing and passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act."

Common Cause interim co-president Marilyn Carpinteyro on Tuesday sent a letter to all members of Congress on behalf of her group and its more than 1.5 million members and supporters "in strong support of the Freedom to Vote Act and in strong opposition to the 'American Confidence in Elections' (ACE) Act," which was introduced by House Republicans earlier this month.

"The ACE Act is a giant step backward and would silence the voices of everyday Americans by putting up barriers to voting and by allowing millions of dollars more in secret money to infiltrate our political system," Carpinteyro wrote. "To strengthen free and fair elections and help get big, secret money out of politics, Congress must instead pass the Freedom to Vote Act."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) joined the bill's sponsors—Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.)—and other Democrats for a Tuesday press conference, during which they condemned MAGA Republicans' attacks on U.S. democracy.

"These attacks demand a federal response," said Klobuchar. "The Freedom to Vote Act will set basic national standards to make sure all Americans can cast their ballots in the way that works best for them, regardless of what ZIP code they live in. This bill will ensure Americans can request a mail-in ballot and have access to drop boxes, have at least two weeks of early voting, and can register to vote on Election Day."

"It's past time for Congress to act and protect Americans' freedom to vote."

While the bill is unlikely to reach the desk of President Joe Biden—who is running for reelection—during this term, given the GOP-controlled House and divided Senate hamstrung by the filibuster, campaigners echoed Democrats' assertions of the need for the bill's reforms.

"It has been 10 years since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted voting rights, and two years since a president attempted to overturn the will of voters to remain in power," notedPublic Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert—calling out former President Donald Trump, who is seeking the GOP's 2024 nomination despite inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

"Between the Shelby v. Holder decision and extremists in Congress and state houses—supported by wealthy interests who don't want democracy—we are in dangerous territory," Gilbert warned. "We must enshrine our democratic freedoms in federal legislation that would blunt the multipronged attacks on our democracy."

Stand Up America founder and president Sean Eldridge agreed, declaring that "it's past time for Congress to act and protect Americans' freedom to vote. As MAGA Republicans continue to erect barriers to the ballot box, particularly for communities of color, we need national standards to ensure voting access for every American, no matter where they live."

Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of Black Voters Matter, said that "the reintroduction of the Freedom to Vote Act is essential to overcoming the obstacles of new voter suppression laws we see taking shape every day in states like Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. In addition to the wave of voter suppression laws seen in 2021 and 2022, this year has seen hundreds of additional voter suppression bills attempted, and at least 11 states have passed such restrictions."

"Just yesterday, lawmakers in Alabama voted to advance a new congressional map that does not include a second majority-Black district, completely ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling that mandates the state's maps must include this majority-Black district," he pointed out. "The fight for our rights is playing out on the state level and continues to permeate our daily lives in the South. That is why national legislation that is pro-voter and anti-corruption is absolutely necessary at this moment in history."

A coalition of climate and environmental groups—Clean Water Action, Climate Hawks Vote, Earthjustice, Endangered Species Coalition, Greenpeace USA, Interfaith Power & Light, League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and WE ACT for Environmental Justice—also celebrated the bill's reintroduction.

"While we recognize that our democracy has never truly worked for all Americans, the Freedom to Vote Act will help move us closer to the mountaintop, where every American has equitable access to the ballot, and a brighter light will shine on the fossil fuel billionaires and corporations who pour big money into anti-environmental politicians and misleading ads hampering our ability to combat the climate crisis," the coalition said.

Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center and a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, highlighted that "the aims of the Freedom to Vote Act—prohibiting partisan gerrymandering, protecting the freedom to vote, and increasing the transparency of money spent in federal elections—are supported by a significant majority of Americans, regardless of party."

While opposition to the Freedom to Vote Act has mostly come from GOP lawmakers, some Democrats have helped block it. Early last year, Democratic right-wing Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), who is suspected of considering a 2024 presidential run, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), who switched from Democrat to Independent in December, teamed up with Republicans to kill a proposed change to the Senate filibuster that would have cleared the way for passing a voting rights package.

At the time, lawmakers were fighting to pass a megabill that included not only the Freedom to Vote Act but also the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation named for a late Democratic congressman and civil rights icon. Some campaigners also emphasized the importance of the latter on Tuesday.

Leslie Proll, senior director of the voting rights program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, similarly stressed the importance of both bills.

"We urge both chambers of Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act so we can build a multiracial democracy that works for all of us," said Proll. "We also look forward to Congress reintroducing and passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act."

Common Cause interim co-president Marilyn Carpinteyro on Tuesday sent a letter to all members of Congress on behalf of her group and its more than 1.5 million members and supporters "in strong support of the Freedom to Vote Act and in strong opposition to the 'American Confidence in Elections' (ACE) Act," which was introduced by House Republicans earlier this month.

"The ACE Act is a giant step backward and would silence the voices of everyday Americans by putting up barriers to voting and by allowing millions of dollars more in secret money to infiltrate our political system," Carpinteyro wrote. "To strengthen free and fair elections and help get big, secret money out of politics, Congress must instead pass the Freedom to Vote Act."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Although they never fail to take us aback, French riots have followed the same distinct pattern ever since protests broke out in the eastern suburbs of Lyon in 1981, an episode known as the “summer of Minguettes”: a young person is killed or seriously injured by the police, triggering an outpouring of violence in the affected neighbourhood and nearby.

Sometimes, as in the case of the 2005 riots and of this past week’s, it is every rough neighbourhood that flares up.

Throughout the past 40 years in France, urban revolts have been dominated by the rage of young people who attack the symbols of order and the state: town halls, social centres, schools, and shops.

• READ MORE: France unrest appears to be ebbing but more than 700 arrested
• Slain teenager’s grandmother calls for end to riots in France
• Other reports on French police and racism

An institutional and political vacuum
That rage is the kind that leads one to destroy one’s own neighbourhood, for all to see.

Residents condemn these acts, but can also understand the motivation. Elected representatives, associations, churches and mosques, social workers and teachers admit their powerlessness, revealing an institutional and political vacuum.

Of all the revolts, the summer of the Minguettes was the only one to pave the way to a social movement: the March for Equality and Against Racism in December 1983.

Numbering more than 100,000 people and prominently covered by the media, it was France’s first demonstration of its kind. Left-leaning newspaper Libération nicknamed it “La Marche des Beurs”, a colloquial term that refers to Europeans whose parents or grandparents are from the Maghreb.

In the demonstrations that followed, no similar movement appears to have emerged from the ashes.

At each riot, politicians are quick to play well-worn roles: the right denounces the violence and goes on to stigmatise neighbourhoods and police victims; the left denounces injustice and promises social policies in the neighbourhoods.

In 2005, then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy sided with the police. France’s current President, Emmanuel Macron, has expressed compassion for the teenager killed by the police in Nanterre, but politicians and presidents are hardly heard in the neighbourhoods concerned.

We then wait for silence to set in until the next time the problems of the banlieues (French suburbs) and its police are rediscovered by society at large.

This is what started the French Riots!

Police eventually shoot the driver who is a 17 year old Algerian pic.twitter.com/eShWGHEfHC

— Redneck Azn (@LMFireSystems1) June 29, 2023

Lessons to be learned
The recurrence of urban riots in France and their scenarios yield some relatively simple lessons.

First, the country’s urban policies miss their targets. Over the last 40 years, considerable efforts have been made to improve housing and facilities. Apartments are of better quality, there are social centres, schools, colleges and public transportation.

It would be wrong to say that these neighbourhoods have been abandoned.

On the other hand, the social and cultural diversity of disadvantaged suburbs has deteriorated. More often than not, the residents are poor or financially insecure, and are either descendants of immigrants or immigrants themselves.

Above all, when given the opportunity and the resources, those who can leave the banlieues soon do, only to be replaced by even poorer residents from further afield. Thus while the built environment is improving, the social environment is unravelling.

However reluctant people may be to talk about France’s disadvantaged neighbourhoods, the social process at work here is indeed one of ghettoisation – i.e., a growing divide between neighbourhoods and their environment, a self-containment reinforced from within. You go to the same school, the same social centre, you socialise with the same individuals, and you participate in the same more or less legal economy.

In spite of the cash and local representatives’ goodwill, people still feel excluded from society because of their origins, culture or religion. In spite of social policies and councillors’ work, the neighbourhoods have no institutional or political resources of their own.

Whereas the often communist-led “banlieues rouges” (“red suburbs”) benefited from the strong support of left-leaning political parties, trade unions and popular education movements, today’s banlieues hardly have any spokespeople. Social workers and teachers are full of goodwill, but many don’t live in the neighbourhoods where they work.

This disconnect works both ways, and the past days’ riots revealed that elected representatives and associations don’t have any hold on neighbourhoods where residents feel ignored and abandoned. Appeals for calm are going unheeded. The rift is not just social, it’s also political.

#France #AFP
Police arrest 1,000 in French riots ahead of teen’s funeral. pic.twitter.com/p24dtYtkUu

— AFP Photo (@AFPphoto) July 1, 2023

A constant face-off
With this in mind, we are increasingly seeing young people face off with the police. The two groups function like “gangs”, complete with their own hatreds and territories.

In this landscape, the state is reduced to legal violence and young people to their actual or potential delinquency.

The police are judged to be “mechanically” racist on the grounds that any young person is a priori a suspect. Young people feel hatred for the police, fuelling further police racism and youth violence.

Older residents would like to see more police officers to uphold order, but also support their own children and the frustrations and anger they feel.

This “war” is usually played out at a low level. When a young person dies, however, everything explodes and it’s back to the drawing board until the next uprising, which will surprise us just as much as the previous ones.

But there is something new in this tragic repetition. The first element is the rise of the far right — and not just on that side of the political spectrum. Racist accounts of the uprisings are taking hold, one that speaks of “barbarians” and immigration, and there’s fear that this could lead to success at the ballot box.

The second is the political and intellectual paralysis of the political left. While it denounces injustice and sometimes supports the riots, it does not appear to have put forward any political solution other than police reform.

So long as the process of ghettoisation continues, as France’s young people and security forces face off time and time again, it is hard to see how the next police blunder and the riots that follow won’t be just around the corner.

Dr François Dubet, professeur des universités émérite, Université de Bordeaux. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

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.

An event featuring U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib commemorating the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland during Israel's War of Independence 75 years ago—went ahead as scheduled Wednesday evening, despite an attempt by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to derail it.

Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only Palestinian-American in the House of Representatives—is the featured speaker at the event, "Nakba 75 & the Palestinian People," which as of press time was underway in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Hearing Room in a Senate office building in Washington, D.C. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) chairs the panel.

"May 15th marks 75 years since the beginning of the Nakba, which means 'catastrophe,'" the event's organizers said in an Eventbrite invitation. "Seventy-five years ago, Zionist militias and the new Israeli military violently expelled approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland in what became the state of Israel."

"The Nakba is not an antisemitic trope, it's a historical fact."

On Tuesday, McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that "the event in the U.S. Capitol has been canceled" and replaced with "a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the U.S.-Israel relationship."

"It's wrong for members of Congress to traffic in antisemitic tropes about Israel," the congressman toldTheWashingtonFree Beacon. "As long as I'm speaker, we are going to support Israel's right to self-determination and self-defense, unequivocally and in a bipartisan fashion."

However, Tlaib issued a statement Wednesday clarifying that the event was still on.

"We fully plan on moving forward with this event and we will continue to ensure that Palestinian voices are heard," the congresswoman asserted. "We will not be silenced."

"Speaker McCarthy wants to rewrite history and erase the existence and truth of the Palestinian people, but he has failed to do so," Tlaib continued. "This event is planned to bring awareness about the Nakba and create space for Palestinian-Americans who experienced the Nakba firsthand to tell their stories of trauma and survival."

"The Nakba is a well-documented historical event that is recognized by the United Nations," Tlaib added. "We cannot allow the same people who want to ban books and erase history simply because they're uncomfortable with the truth to silence Palestinian voices."

More than 750,000 Arabs from hundreds of cities, towns, and villages fled or were expelled from Palestine—sometimes by massacre, "death march," and other violence—during the formation of the modern state of Israel in 1947-49. Hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed to make way for newcomers whose only prerequisite for Israeli citizenship is being Jewish.

The militarized segregation of Israelis and Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and elsewhere is considered a crime of apartheid by numerous Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights groups, as well as by prominent international figures including United Nations officials, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and other Nobel laureates, and South African leaders who lived under apartheid during the 20th century.

Meanwhile, more than 7 million Palestinian refugees have been denied the right of return guaranteed under United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.

Co-hosts of Wednesday's event include: the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, Project48, Democracy for the Arab World Now, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, American Friends Service Committee, Virginia Coalition for Human Rights, Emgage Action, and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action.

"This month, Palestinians will mark 75 years since the Nakba. Understanding the truth of the Nakba is not only about acknowledging historical facts, but also vital to understanding the ongoing violence of Israeli apartheid," JVP Action executive director Stefanie Fox said in a statement Wednesday. "We are proud to be part of the massive and growing number of Jews facing painful truths as part of working toward a shared future of justice, equality, and freedom."

For the second straight year, Tlaib on Wednesday reintroduced a resolution recognizing the Nakba and calling on Congress to "condemn all manifestations of Israel's ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people," particularly the "illegal theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; Israel's displacement of Palestinians by destroying their homes and forcing them from their land; and the daily brutality and violence inflicted by the Israeli military and Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians."

Reps. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), and Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—all of whom endorsed Tlaib's 2022 resolution—co-sponsored this year's version.

Tlaib's resolution was published as Israeli military forces continued to bombard Gaza in retaliation for earlier rocket fire by Palestinian resistance fighters responding to the death of Khader Adnan, a Palestinian activist imprisoned in Israel without charge or trial, during an 87-day hunger strike in an Israeli prison.

At least 21 Palestinians, no less than a dozen of whom were civilians—including at least six women and six children—have been killed in the latest Israeli airstrikes.

On Wednesday, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor urged the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for the "leaders of apartheid Israel" who are "supporting the massacre of the people of Palestine."

"South Africa is a longstanding partner in solidarity with the people of Palestine given that they supported our own struggle for freedom," Pandor said. "We call on the world to be as concerned about the deaths of Palestinians as they are concerned about deaths of [people in] any other nation of the world."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Backed by climate, health, and labor groups, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey on Thursday reintroduced the Green New Deal Resolution, which the progressive leaders have been fighting for since they first unveiled it in February 2019.

"In the four years since we first introduced the Green New Deal, the tides of our movement have risen and lifted climate action to the top of the national agenda," Markey (D-Mass.) said of the resolution, which envisions a 10-year mobilization that employs millions in well-paying union jobs to help the country respond to the climate emergency.

"Thanks to the persistence of the Green New Deal movement, we succeeded in securing historic progress through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act," he noted, "and now we have an obligation to honor the origins of that success—which sprung from the young people and workers who never once stopped organizing for their future—by putting those dollars to work to create dignified jobs, rectify generations of systemic injustice, and reverse climate damage."

Along with reintroducing the resolution—a largely symbolic move given the current makeup of Congress—the pair released a guide for cities, states, tribes, nonprofits, and individuals about how those two laws "help bring the Green New Deal to life."

"Finally, it is understood that the climate crisis demands a full transformation of our economy and society that the government must lead."

While some progressives criticized the Inflation Reduction Act for pouring "gasoline on the flames" of the climate crisis by extending the fossil fuel era, it was still widely heralded for investing a historic $369 billion in "energy security and climate change."

Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that "when we first introduced the Green New Deal, we were told that our vision for the future was too aspirational. Four years later, we see core tenets of the Green New Deal reflected in the Inflation Reduction Act—the largest ever federal investment in fighting climate change, with a focus on creating good, green jobs."

"But there is still much, much more to do to make environmental justice the center of U.S. climate policy," the congresswoman acknowledged. "Today's reintroduction marks the beginning of that process—of strengthening and broadening our coalition, and of laying the policy groundwork for the next fight."

\u201cWe need a #GreenNewDeal \u2013 for the environment, for education, for housing, and for health care. Our planet and our future depend on it.\n\nProud to stand with @SenMarkey, @RepAOC, and @RepRoKhanna in demanding bold, holistic action that creates jobs and saves lives.\u201d

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@Rep. Pramila Jayapal) 1682015641

The resolution is co-sponsored by several lawmakers in both chambers of Congress and endorsed by dozens of groups, including the Sunrise Movement, whose executive director, Varshini Prakash, said that Thursday "marks our recommitment to the bold vision of the Green New Deal—the only plan to stop the climate crisis at the speed and scale that science and justice demand."

"Since the Green New Deal was first introduced, we have made climate a rallying cry for our generation and a political priority for our politicians," Prakash continued. "And in just a few years, through our organizing, we have elected new leaders, helped pass the biggest climate bill in U.S. history, and built a new consensus in the Democratic Party—finally, it is understood that the climate crisis demands a full transformation of our economy and society that the government must lead."

“Across this country, millions of young people still dream of a Green New Deal," she added. "So as fossil fuel billionaires and right-wing extremists take on the battle for control of our classrooms and communities, we are fighting back. Together, we will take over, classroom by classroom, school by school, city by city until we win the Green New Deal in every corner of this country."

\u201cWe\u2019re so grateful for this vast coalition of climate, labor, racial justice, & tribal communities who have brought a Green New Deal vision from the political fringes to a near-reality.\n\nAnd we\u2019re not done yet!\n\nCheck out today\u2019s livestream of the GND resolution reintroduction \u2b07\ufe0f\u201d

— Green New Deal Network (@Green New Deal Network) 1682012847

Markey declared that "we have demonstrated that our movement is a potent political force, and in the run-up to the 2024 elections, we will direct this power to demanding solutions to the intersectional crises Congress has yet to address: in healthcare, childcare, schools, housing, transit, labor, and economic and racial justice."

Also on Thursday and as part of that pledge, Markey partnered with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to introduce the Green New Deal for Health, a bill "to prepare and empower the healthcare sector to protect the health and well-being of our workers, our communities, and our planet in the face of the climate crisis, and for other purposes."

The senator stressed that "the American healthcare system is broken—from the exorbitant medical bills and outlandish insurance premiums to maxed out emergency rooms and shuttering hospitals. With climate disasters on the rise, the health and safety of frontline environmental justice communities is more precarious than ever."

\u201cThe people came together to build a multi-racial, multi-generational movement for a Green New Deal. \n\nTo the wrongs of environmental racism, to demand clean air & water, union jobs, lower costs, and a livable future.\n\nToday we introduced the #GreenNewDeal for Health!\u201d

— Congresswoman Summer Lee (@Congresswoman Summer Lee) 1682019330

The bill would invest $130 billion in community health centers, authorize $100 billion in federal grants for medical facilities to improve climate resilience and disaster mitigation efforts, require hospitals that receive Medicare payments to notify the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary at least 180 days before a full closure, and create a task force to ensure a greener medical supply chain.

"Across the world, hundreds of millions of people are already feeling the effects of climate change and the health consequences that often follow. From increased cases of asthma due to air pollution to disruptions at care facilities after extreme weather events, it's clear we need to take steps now to protect public health," said Khanna.

The healthcare legislation is also backed by progressives from both chambers and various advocacy groups and unions.

"Stopping the climate crisis will require us to transform every aspect of our society, our economy, and especially our healthcare system, to work for people and the planet," said Sunrise's Prakash. "Sen. Markey's Green New Deal for Health finally addresses the staggering, often-overlooked costs to our health from fossil fuel-generated air pollution and climate change, and begins to build a system where people and workers are taken care of. If our generation is going to have a shot at a livable future, we must pass it as we strive towards our vision of a Green New Deal."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Vanuatu is in celebration mode after winning a significant battle on the world stage over climate change.

In a United Nations resolution spearheaded by Vanuatu, the world’s top court will now advise on countries’ legal obligations to fight climate change.

It also means the International Court of Justice can advise on consequences for those countries which do not comply. The resolution was passed overnight on Wednesday.

• READ MORE: UN adopts Vanuatu-led resolution in ‘epic win’ on climate change
• Other Vanuatu climate reports

Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau was ecstatic. He was in New York for the vote.

He called it a “historic resolution” and the beginning of a new era in multilateral climate co-operation.

“I celebrate today with the people of Vanuatu who are still reeling from the devastation from two back-to-back cyclones this month caused by the fossil fuels and greenhouse emissions that they are not responsible for,” he said.

His country is still picking up the pieces from Cyclone Judy and Cyclone Kevin, which struck within a couple of days of each other earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has been in Vanuatu looking at what support New Zealand can give — and ensuring help gets to those who need it.

NZ’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta . . . “”We have to acknowledge Vanuatu’s leadership.” Video: 1News

She has witnessed first-hand the climate challenge that the people are facing. Mahuta said New Zealand had supported Vanuatu’s drive to get the UN resolution across the line.

“We have to acknowledge Vanuatu’s leadership,” Mahuta told 1News.

“It’s not really the size of the country, but it’s the size of the vision, and Vanuatu’s voice has clearly put front row centre an aspiration to have the ICJ recognise the impacts of climate change on vulnerable countries.”

Accompanying New Zealand’s delegation is a 10-member Pasifika Medical Association PACMAT team. They will be based at the Aotearoa-funded Mindcare Mental Health facility for the next 28 days helping those traumatised by the two cyclones.

New Zealand has announced $12 million to add to a funding pool for the region to help people get back on their feet quicker after the disaster.

In Vanuatu, New Zealand is offering $18.5 million for a clean drinking water project, $4 million for tourism recovery and $3 million for general budget support.

Barbara Dreaver is 1News Pacific correspondent. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Climate justice advocates cheered Wednesday after the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on climate change and human rights.

The newly approved measure, introduced by Vanuatu and co-sponsored by more than 130 governments, asks the world's highest court to outline countries' legal responsibilities for combatting the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency and the legal consequences of failing to meet those obligations.

"We have witnessed a win for climate justice of epic proportions," Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau said after the resolution was adopted by consensus. "Today's historic resolution is the beginning of a new era in multilateral climate cooperation, one that is more fully focused on upholding the rule of international law and an era that places human rights and intergenerational equity at the forefront of climate decision-making."

"This is a landmark moment in the fight for climate justice as it is likely to provide clarity on how existing international law... can be applied to strengthen action on climate change."

Like other Pacific Island nations, Vanuatu bears little responsibility for the climate crisis but is acutely vulnerable to its impacts, including existentially threatening sea level rise and intensified cyclones such as those that displaced thousands in the region just weeks ago. The country began pushing for the ICJ resolution in 2021, following a campaign launched in 2019 by a group of students from a university in nearby Fiji.

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) hailed its passage as "a historic moment."

So too did Marta Schaaf, director of Amnesty International's Climate, Economic, and Social Justice program.

"This is a landmark moment in the fight for climate justice as it is likely to provide clarity on how existing international law, especially human rights and environmental legislation, can be applied to strengthen action on climate change," said Schaaf. "This will help mitigate the causes and consequences of the damage done to the climate and ultimately protect people and the environment globally."

“We salute this remarkable achievement by Vanuatu, and other Pacific Island states, which originally brought this urgent call to advance climate justice to the U.N.," Schaaf continued. "Today's victory sprang from the efforts of youth activists in Pacific Island states to secure climate justice."

Schaaf urged the ICJ "to provide a robust advisory opinion to advance climate justice." Last week's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she noted, shows that "the 1.5°C global warming limit agreed to in Paris in 2015 is likely to be breached before 2035 unless urgent action is taken." Temperature rise of roughly 1.1°C to date is already fueling catastrophic weather, with even more lethal impacts on the horizon barring transformative action.

"We see some fossil fuel-producing states both resisting calls to phase them out, and falsely promoting carbon capture and storage as a technological fix for the climate," said Schaaf. "An advisory opinion from the court can help put a brake on this accelerating climate disaster."

CIEL's Climate and Energy program director Nikki Reisch also applauded the resolution, saying it marks an important step "toward clarifying what existing law requires states to do to curb climate change and protect human rights."

"Courts can translate the clear scientific evidence that fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis into clear legal imperatives to phase them out now and implement proven available solutions."

Despite volumes of indisputable scientific evidence highlighting the need quickly replace fossil fuels—the leading source of greenhouse gas pollution—with renewables, last year's COP27 negotiations ended, like the 26 preceding U.N. climate summits, with no concrete commitment to wind down coal, oil, and gas production.

In the absence of a needed crackdown on the fossil fuel industry, immensely profitable oil and gas giants are planning to expand their operations in the coming years even though their executives know it means locking in additional planet-heating emissions and cataclysmic temperature increases.

While a handful of Pacific Island governments are leading calls for a global just transition to clean energy, other governments are actively aiding the continued extraction and combustion of fossil fuels.

Earlier this month, for instance, the Biden administration, which claims to view the climate crisis as an existential threat, approved ConocoPhillips' Willow project in the Alaskan Arctic—the largest proposed oil drilling endeavor on public land in U.S. history—and moved ahead with Lease Sale 259, one of the largest-ever offshore drilling auctions in the Gulf of Mexico.

As CIEL pointed out, "impacted communities across the globe are finding themselves with few alternatives but to resort to courts in their pursuit of clear rules to guide state climate action and hold states accountable for their failures."

According toThe New York Times:

The [ICJ's] opinion would not be binding. But, depending on what it says, it could potentially turn the voluntary pledges that every country has made under the Paris climate accord into legal obligations under a range of existing international statutes, such as those on the rights of children or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That could, in turn, lay the groundwork for new legal claims. (A few national courts have already relied in part on international law to rule in favor of climate activists' lawsuits.)

Courts play a critical role "in breaking through the inertia when politics break down," said Reisch. "Courts can translate the clear scientific evidence that fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis into clear legal imperatives to phase them out now and implement proven available solutions. They also can—and indeed must—hold states accountable for the mounting suffering caused by their failure to act."

Describing climate justice as "both a moral imperative and a prerequisite for effective global climate action," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the ICJ resolution "essential."

Advisory opinions issued by the world's top court "have tremendous importance and can have a long-standing impact on the international legal order," he added. Such a move "would assist the General Assembly, the U.N., and member states to take the bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs."

The passage of the ICJ resolution comes just days after a pair of scholars put forth a novel legal theory of "climate homicide," which aims to hold fossil fuel corporations criminally liable for disaster deaths.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

The UN General Assembly has adopted a Vanuatu-led resolution calling for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on climate change and human rights.

The resolution was tabled by Vanuatu and a core group of 17 countries, aiming to clarify what the obligations of states are in protecting the rights of current and future generations from the adverse effects of climate change.

The motion, sponsored by more than 130 countries, was greeted with cheers.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Pacific climate action

The ICJ will now prepare an advisory opinion that could be cited in climate court cases.

Vanuatu is one of the worst-affected nations affected by the climate crisis. Earlier this month, the country was hit by two Category 4 tropical cyclones in less than five days, which is estimated to cost Vanuatu more than half of its annual gross domestic product.

“Today we have witnessed a win for climate justice of epic proportions,” said Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau.

“Vanuatu sees today’s historic resolution as the beginning of a new era in multilateral climate cooperation, one that is more fully focused on upholding the rule of international law and an era that places human rights and inter-generational equity at the forefront of climate decision-making,” he said.

“The very fact that a small Pacific island nation like Vanuatu was able to successfully spearhead such a transformative outcome speaks to the incredible support from all corners of the globe.”

Kalsakau said he was celebrating the move but sees it is a “win” for the nation.

“I celebrate today with the people of Vanuatu, who are still reeling from the devastation from two back-to-back cyclones this month, caused by the fossil fuels and greenhouse emissions that they are not responsible for. To my people, today shows us that the world stands with Vanuatu.

“This celebration is a win for the rule of law, for protecting human rights, for improving multilateral climate cooperation, for climate justice and for acting with ambition to address the planetary climate crisis.

Vanuatu’s Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu called the move “a shift in narrative which may yield greater climate action and ambition among all states in the global community”.

Youth can play a part in saving planet
Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change played a key role in the campaign, and spokesman Solomon Yeo said the move shows that Pacific youth can play a part in tackling climate change.

“Today we celebrate four years of arduous work in convincing our leaders and raising global awareness on the initiative. We commend the undying support of our Pacific civil society organisations, communities, and youth who, without their support, we would not have ventured this far,” he said.

“The adopted resolution is a testament that Pacific youth can play an instrumental role in advancing global climate action.

“This further solidifies why young people’s voices must remain an integral part of the process. Now the first stage is over, we look to join hand-in-hand with governments and partners in bringing the world’s biggest problem to the world’s highest court.”

Oxfam Aotearoa has congratulated the student group for its role in the campaign.

Its climate justice lead, Nick Henry, said the world’s governments, especially in rich countries, must urgently take stronger action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stop the climate crisis getting worse.

He said a strong opinion from the International Court of Justice would help to hold governments to account on their obligations to act.

“To put this into perspective, the last comparable opinion was in 1996, when, after a long campaign from civil society, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion on nuclear weapons that was critical to nuclear disarmament and keeping the Pacific nuclear free.”

The UN Human Rights chief Volker Türk said the resolution could be an important catalyst for the “urgent, ambitious and equitable climate action that is needed to stop global heating” and to limit and remediate climate-induced human rights harms.

The move comes as the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that says current action and plans are insufficient to keep warming below 1.5 degrees.

The core group of countries behind the resolution also includes Pacific nations Federated States of Micronesia, Samoa and New Zealand, as well as Angola, Antigua & Barbuda, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Germany, Liechtenstein, Morocco, Mozambique, Portugal, Romania, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Uganda, and Vietnam.

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.

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Monday led two dozen House Democrats in urging Congress to allocate at least $1.2 billion in humanitarian aid for Yemen—whose people have suffered eight years of U.S.-backed Saudi war—in next year's budget.

"As we approach the 8th anniversary of the Yemen war, the country remains stuck in a devastating cycle of conflict and humanitarian crisis that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives," Tlaib (D-Mich.) and 23 other lawmakers wrote in a letter to House Subcommittee on State and Foreign Relations Chair Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Ranking Member Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).

"Yemen has the grim title of the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with over 4 million Yemenis displaced and an estimated 80% of the country's 30 million people reliant upon some form of assistance for their survival," the letter, which was first sent last week, asserts.

The letter's authors lament that "international appeals for assistance for Yemen have consistently [fallen] short of their goals by large margins" and that "the continuous reduction in funding has greatly exacerbated the humanitarian suffering."

The United Nations "has had to close over 75% of its lifesaving programs, and the World Food Program has been forced to cut or reduce food distribution to 8 million people, increasing the number of areas at risk of famine," the letter notes.

"Without a significant increase in American assistance (which we believe would incentivize foreign nations to increase their support in turn), we fear that 2023 will be a heartbreakingly deadly year for everyday Yemenis," the signers assert.

The lawmakers urge Congress to include at least $1.2 billion "for humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts in Yemen" in the budget for fiscal year 2024. They also ask the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development "to develop programming that directly invests in sustainably developing long-term economic opportunities for Yemenis."

Tlaib is one of four dozen bipartisan House lawmakers who last June introduced a War Powers Resolution to end "unauthorized" United States military involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen's civil war.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), along with Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), introduced a similar measure in the Senate. Last December, Sanders withdrew the resolution just before it was slated for a floor vote, while vowing to work with the Biden administration on ending U.S. involvement in the war.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Joined by Democratic House colleagues and activists outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday—the first full day of Ramadan—Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar announced a new resolution condemning Islamophobia and commemorating the recent anniversary of the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand mosque massacre.

Omar's office said the resolution—which is co-sponsored by more than 20 House Democrats—"comes after continued violence and threats made against religious minorities, particularly Muslims," while adding that the March 15, 2019 murder of 51 Muslim worshippers at the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch by an Australian white supremacist "was a stated source of inspiration for mass shootings in the United States."

These include the deadly synagogue shooting in Poway, California; the massacre of 23 people, most of them of Mexican origin, at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; and the murder of 10 people by a white supremacist in a Buffalo, New York grocery store.

Omar said:

As we begin the holy month of Ramadan, we must reaffirm that all people of faith should have the right to worship without fear. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, anti-Muslim hate crimes and attacks are at an all-time high. The attack in Christchurch, motivated by an extremist ideology of white supremacy, anti-Muslim hate, and the so-called replacement theory resonates deeply for Muslims in nearly every corner of the globe.

We also know that this increase in hate is not isolated to only Muslims. Church bombings, synagogue attacks, and racial hate crimes are also on the rise.

"In order to confront the evils of religious bigotry and hatred, we must come to understand that all our destinies are linked," Omar added. "That's why I'm proud to lead my colleagues in condemning the rise in Islamophobia and affirming the rights of religious minorities in the United States and around the world."

Robert McCaw, director of government relations at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, also spoke at Thursday's event, saying that "it is with a heavy heart that CAIR welcomes Omar's resolution," which "recognizes the threat posed by rising global Islamophobia to American Muslims and Muslims in other countries across the world, as well as the threat white supremacism poses to all people."

"It is incredibly important for Congress to lead the way in rejecting these hateful and dangerous ideologies, and CAIR calls on both sides of the aisle to co-sponsor and adopt this resolution," McCaw added. "As we remember the lives lost in Christchurch, we must continue to work towards a world where everyone is treated with humanity and dignity, regardless of their faith, ethnicity, or background."

In 2021, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed a resolution introduced by Omar aimed at combating Islamophobia after Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Col.) referred to her and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only two Muslim women in Congress—as the "jihad squad."

The House GOP, which now narrowly controls the chamber, voted last month to remove Omar from the foreign affairs panel. Just before the vote, the congresswoman said that Republicans "are not OK with having a Muslim have a voice on that committee."

Omar's new federal resolution stood in stark contrast with Texas state Rep. Tony Tinderholt's (R-94) vote against a legislative resolution celebrating Ramadan.

"As a combat veteran, I served beside many local translators who were Muslims and good people," the Iraq War veteran explained. "I can also attest that Ramadan was routinely the most violent period during every deployment."

"Texas and America were founded on Christian principles and my faith as a Christian prevents me from celebrating Ramadan," Tinderholt added.

Responding to Tinderholt's statement, CAIR tweeted: "Every elected official has the right to express their own sincerely held religious beliefs—and we welcome that. But to insult another religion is uncalled for and harmful."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

In late 2021, prostate cancer patients Robert Sachs, Clare Love, and Eric Sawyer petitioned the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to exercise its "march-in rights" against Xtandi. Under the Bayh-Dole Act, the federal government can reclaim and redistribute patents for inventions created with public funding—enabling generic competitors to produce cheaper versions—when "action is necessary to alleviate health or safety needs" or when an invention's benefits are not being made "available to the public on reasonable terms."

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra referred the petition to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose acting Director Lawrence Tabak argued in a Tuesday letter that "Xtandi is widely available to the public on the market," citing Astellas' estimate that "more than 200,000 patients were treated with Xtandi from 2012 to 2021."

Even with insurance, co-pays for Xtandi are sky-high. Medicare recipients, for example, are expected to pay roughly $10,000 per year for the medicine. Especially for the millions of uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S., Xtandi remains completely out of reach.

Tabak's letter went on to say that Xtandi's "practical application is evidenced by the 'manufacture, practice, and operation' of the invention and the invention's 'availability to and use by the public….'" As Knowledge Ecology International executive director James Love lamented, the NIH completely elided any mention of "reasonable terms," editing out that key phrase from Bayh-Dole.

In their appeal, the petitioners wrote: "The petition focused on a single issue: the reasonableness of charging U.S. cancer patients three to six times more than residents of other high-income countries for the drug Xtandi."

"There is no dispute about the following facts," the appeal continues. "Xtandi was invented on grants from the U.S. Army and the NIH at UCLA, a public university. The patents were licensed eventually to Astellas, a Japanese drug company, with a partnership share now held by Pfizer, following its 2016 $14 billion acquisition of Medivation, UCLA's original licensee, that occurred just after the NIH rejected an earlier march-in request on Xtandi. The prices in the United States have consistently been far higher than the prices in other high-income countries."

Prior to the 2021 petition, Clare Love and prostate cancer patient David Reed filed a petition, later joined by Sachs, with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) after the Senate Armed Services Committee instructed the Pentagon to initiate march-in proceedings when the price of a drug created with a DOD grant exceeds the median price in seven large high-income nations. The Pentagon, however, has yet to acknowledge or act on the petition submitted to it in February 2019.

"If you consider both of these requests together, a petition to exercise the government's march-in or other rights in the Xtandi patents has been pending before the federal government for more than four years," Thursday's appeal states. "The HHS petition was filed 16 months ago."

It continues:

The petitions were filed with the DOD and HHS instead of the NIH because the NIH has repeatedly demonstrated its unwillingness to even acknowledge that the Bayh-Dole Act includes an obligation to make products invented with federal funds 'available to the public on reasonable terms.' This is demonstrated by a track record of dismissing multiple requests to use the government's Bayh-Dole safeguard to address pricing abuses and access restrictions, including those concerning the federal government's march-in rights under 35 USC § 203, and the federal government's global royalty-free license, under 35 USC § 202(c)(4). There are also extensive email records between Mark Rohrbaugh, currently NIH special adviser for technology transfer who is a long-time agency official, and lobbyists for drug companies and university rights holders, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, which not only express opposition to any safeguards regarding unreasonable pricing but organize public relations efforts against using a march-in request to address the pricing of products.

"HHS chose to assign to the NIH the evaluation of our petition regarding Xtandi," says the appeal. "We request HHS to consider this appeal directly, and not assign NIH to review its own decision. The latter would be tantamount to no review at all."

Since Bayh-Dole was enacted in 1980, "march-in rights have never been used... and NIH has repeatedly rejected the idea that affordability is a reasonable term," The American Prospectreported Wednesday. With Xtandi, "advocates thought they found the perfect test case for a new administration that paid lip service to lowering prescription drug costs."

As The Levernoted on Wednesday, the NIH's decision this week was consistent with Biden's track record:

Biden was vice president when the Obama administration rejected congressional Democrats' demand that the government use the same power to lower the skyrocketing prices of medicine in America.

As a senator in 2000, Biden was one of just eight Democrats who helped pharmaceutical lobbyists kill a measure spearheaded by Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) and then-Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would have reinstated the Reagan-era requirement that drug companies sell medicines developed with public money at a reasonable price.

That requirement was repealed by the Clinton administration in 1995, following pressure by drugmakers.

But Becerra's acquiescence to Big Pharma was more surprising. Prior to joining the Biden administration, the HHS secretary had expressed support for wielding the executive branch's authority to rein in soaring drug prices.

As the attorney general of California in the summer of 2020, "Becerra demanded the Trump administration use existing law to lower the price of medicines that were originally developed at taxpayer expense," The Lever reported. "As a member of Congress in 2016, Becerra signed on to a letter to the Obama Department of Health and Human Services calling on officials to broadly use 'march-in rights' to lower the cost of prescription drugs—including 'specialty drugs, like those to treat cancer, which are frequently developed with taxpayer funds.'"

Despite pressure from numerous members of Congress and medicine affordability advocacy groups, the NIH declared Tuesday that it "does not believe that use of the march-in authority would be an effective means of lowering the price of the drug."

Instead, the agency vowed to "pursue a whole-of-government approach informed by public input to ensure the use of march-in authority is consistent with the policy and objective of the Bayh-Dole Act," a move that progressive advocates denounced as a "pathetic" attempt to deflect criticism of its failure to use or threaten to use its legal power.

“This is a drug that was invented with taxpayer dollars by scientists at UCLA and can be purchased in Canada for one-fifth the U.S. price," Sanders said Tuesday. "The Japanese drugmaker Astellas, which made $1 billion in profits in 2021, has raised the price of this drug by more than 75%."

"How many prostate cancer patients will die because they cannot afford this unacceptable price?" asked Sanders, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

During a Wednesday hearing, Sanders made the case for changing "the current culture of greed into a culture which understands that science and medical breakthroughs should work for ordinary people, and not just enrich large corporations and CEOs."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today joined Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for a press conference at the US Capitol to announce the introduction of a resolution that condemn Islamophobia, white supremacy, and commemorate the fourth anniversary of the Christchurch Mosque Massacre and other recent attacks.

Introduced by Rep. Omar, the resolution “comes after continued violence and threats made against religious minorities, particularly Muslims. The Christchurch attack was a stated source of inspiration for mass shootings in the United States, including the attack on the synagogue in Poway, California, the attack at the Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas, and the attack at the grocery store in Buffalo, New York.”

Click Here: Read The Full Resolution

Click Here: Watch the Press Conference

During the press conference Representative Ilhan Omar stated in part:

“As we begin the holy month of Ramadan, we must reaffirm that all people of faith should have the right to worship without fear.

“According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, anti-Muslim hate crimes and attacks are at an all-time high. The attack in Christchurch, motivated by an extremist ideology of white supremacy, anti-Muslim hate, and the so-called replacement theory resonates deeply for Muslims in nearly every corner of the globe. We also know that this increase in hate is not isolated to only Muslims. Church bombings, synagogue attacks, and racial hate crimes are also on the rise. In order to confront the evils of religious bigotry and hatred, we must come to understand that all our destinies are linked. That’s why I’m proud to lead my colleagues in condemning the rise in Islamophobia and affirming the rights of religious minorities in the United States and around the world.”

CAIR Director of Government Affairs Department Robert S. McCaw attending the press conference also stated in part:

“It is with a heavy heart that CAIR welcomes the introduction of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s U.S. House resolution marking the fourth anniversary of the tragic massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

“This cowardly attack, carried out by a white supremacist, anti-Muslim bigot, claimed the lives of fifty-one innocent Muslim worshipers during Friday Jummah prayers four years ago.

“This congressional resolution recognizes the threat posed by rising global Islamophobia to American Muslims and Muslims in other countries across the world, as well as the threat white supremacism poses to all people.

“It is incredibly important for Congress to lead the way in rejecting these hateful and dangerous ideologies, and CAIR calls on both sides of the aisle to co-sponsor and adopt this resolution.

“As we remember the lives lost in Christchurch, we must continue to work towards a world where everyone is treated with humanity and dignity, regardless of their faith, ethnicity, or background.”

Original co-sponsors of the resolution include Earl Blumenauer, Jamaal Bowman, André Carson, Emanuel Cleaver II, Jasmine Crockett, Lloyd Doggett, Sylvia R. Garcia, Brian Higgins, Sheila Jackson Lee, Henry C. (“Hank”) Johnson, Jr., Betty McCollum, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Donald M. Payne, Jr., Jan Schakowsky, Terri Sewell, Rashida Tlaib, Paul D. Tonko, Juan Vargas, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Nikema Williams, and Maxwell Frost.

Original endorsing organizations include Council on American–Islamic Relations, Human Rights First, Western States, March for Our Lives, Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence, MPower Change Action Fund, Minnesota Peace Project, Communities United Against Police Brutality, and People’s Justice Coalition.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

We have seen much recently about the Ukraine war anniversary. But March also marks the eighth anniversary of the war on Yemen and the 20th on Iraq. Members of Congress should introduce a Yemen War Powers Resolution before this war enters a ninth year.

In the past few weeks, activists in 17 cities across the United States protested at congressional offices and beyond, calling on lawmakers to bring the harmful U.S. role in the Yemen war to an end.

During the demonstrations, activists called on Sen. Bernie Sanders and other federal lawmakers to introduce a new Yemen War Powers Resolution this month. If brought up for a vote, Congress could order the president to end U.S. participation in the catastrophic conflict, which the U.S. has enabled for eight years. Sen. Sanders sponsored last year’s bill, but when he moved to bring the resolution to a vote in December, the Biden administration shut him down.

Sen. Sanders pledged to return to the Senate floor with a new Yemen War Powers Resolution if he and the administration were unable to agree to “strong and effective” action that would achieve his goals.

In the absence of meaningful public action from Biden to this end, the time is now for Sen. Sanders to make good on his pledge. For more than 11 months, Saudi Arabia has not bombed Yemen. However, without a negotiated settlement, this could change anytime. If the United States continues to support the war, it will be implicated in Saudi aggression if, and likely when, the conflict reignites.

Approximately two–thirds of the Royal Saudi Air Force receive direct support from U.S. military contracts in the form of spare parts and maintenance. The Saudi-led coalition has relied on this support to carry out these offensive strikes in Yemen. The United States has no sufficient compelling interest in Yemen that justifies complicity in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Since March 2015, the Saudi Arabia and /UAE)-led bombing and blockade of Yemen have killed hundreds of thousands of people and wreaked havoc on the country, creating one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world. 17 million people in Yemen are food insecure and 500,000 children are experiencing severe wasting.

For years Saudi Arabia –– and the Yemeni government it supports –– have prevented virtually any containerized goods from entering Hodeida, Yemen’s principal Red Sea port. Containerized goods include essentially everything other than food and fuel.

This has hurt the economy and prevented critical life-saving medicine and medical equipment from reaching people in need. With apparent never-ending U.S. military support, Saudi Arabia lacks an important incentive to completely lift the blockade and withdraw from Yemen.

In 2018 Saudi dictator Mohammed Bin Salman ordered the murder of U.S. journalist Jamal Khashoggi and then lied about it. Just last year Saudi Arabia manipulated global energy markets to raise fuel prices and empower Russia in its immoral and illegal invasion of Ukraine.

These are just two examples of Saudi Arabia conduct harmful to the United States and its allies. The Biden administration was correct in October when it called for a re-evaluation of the US-Saudi relationship, urging Congress to propose measures to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. Passing the Yemen War Powers Resolution is a chance to do exactly that.

More than 100 national organizations – humanitarian, veterans’, libertarian, and others – wrote to Congress as recently as December urging passage of the Yemen War Powers Resolution. Bernie Sanders should re-introduce his resolution.

Under Article I of the U.S. Constitution, the power to raise and support armies is reserved for Congress. No Congressional authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) has been issued for Yemen. The War Powers Resolution empowers Congress to invoke its war powers authority to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in wars like the war in Yemen.

Saturday, March 25 will mark the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing of Yemen. To mark the occasion, US and international groups will hold an online rally to inspire and enhance education and activism to end the war in Yemen. Join grassroots groups on March 25th at noon Eastern Time and please sign the petition at PeaceAction.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Haylie Arocho - Isaac Evans-Frantz.

As communities and governments around the world marked International Women's Day on Wednesday, the need to include women in peace negotiations and place the needs of women and girls at the center of peace-building was a key theme of discussions at the United Nations Security Council.

The council met Tuesday to address the status of a resolution adopted nearly 23 years ago in October 2000, when international policymakers agreed on "the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response, and in post-conflict reconstruction."

The current state of Resolution 1325, said Sima Bahous, executive director of U.N. Women, shows that the world is in need of "a radical change of direction" regarding gender equality.

Bahous noted that days after the security council met in 2020 to mark the 20th anniversary of the resolution, a conflict broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. During two years of fighting, sexual violence was "committed at a staggering scale," and child marriage increased by 51%.

"Since the 20th anniversary," Bahous said, "there have been several military coups in conflict-affected countries, from the Sahel and Sudan to Myanmar, dramatically shrinking the civic space for women's organizations and activists, if not altogether closing it."

"Women's participation increases the probability of a peace agreement lasting at least two years by 20%, and by 35% the probability of a peace agreement lasting 15 years."

Women and girls also make up 90% of the nearly eight million Ukrainians who have been forced to flee to other countries since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and 68% of those who are internally displaced.

While the suffering of women and girls has been central to these conflicts, women were "excluded from 80% of peace negotiations from 2005 to 2020," Bahous said, adding, "We have neither significantly changed the composition of peace tables, nor the impunity enjoyed by those who commit atrocities against women and girls."

In a 2015 report on implementation of Resolution 1325, U.N. Women showed that the agreement led to "a substantial increase in the frequency of gender-responsive language in peace agreements and the number of women, women's groups, and gender experts who serve as official negotiators, mediators, or signatories."

Women's inclusion is frequently temporary and "more symbolic than substantive," according to the report, failing to lead to "a shift in dynamics, a broadening of the issues discussed."

An analysis of 40 worldwide peace agreements since the end of the Cold War showed that negotiators had a much higher chance of reaching a deal "in cases where women were able to exercise a strong influence on the negotiation process."

"Women's participation increases the probability of a peace agreement lasting at least two years by 20%, and by 35% the probability of a peace agreement lasting 15 years," the U.N. Women report reads.

Evidence of the importance of women's involvement in peace processes "is there staring us in the face," said Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, the United Kingdom's minister of state for the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and the United Nations.

"This council, this security council, knows that mediation, conflict prevention, and resolution have proven more successful time and time again when they are inclusive," said Ahmad. "They work better. They last longer when women are central to peace and building progressive societies... Yet it is an undeniable fact. Here we sit in 2023 and we are seeing tragically, a stagnation of the women, peace, and security agenda and a regression in women's rights around the world."

Former Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos has spoken frequently about the inclusion of women in peace talks in his country following decades of civil war, leading to a section of the peace accords that ensures women will receive specific benefits post-conflict in recognition of the disproportionate effects war has on women and girls.

"The participation of women at the formal negotiating table and within the wider peace process has been a crucial aspect of the journey towards peace in Colombia," said Santos on Monday, in a statement he made as a member of The Elders, a group of global leaders working for peace.

"But the task of women peace-builders is not an easy one," Santos added. "All too often, they face threats and denigration from within their own communities. It is incumbent on political leaders, governments and international organizations to recognize and defend their role, and put the necessary measures in place to ensure their safety and security."

Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, another Elder, said that "women and girls are often the first responders to the world's crises, working across the dividing lines of conflict."

While Colombia's peace negotiations centered women, Bineta Diop, the African Union Commission's special envoy on women, peace, and security, reported that many women in African countries experiencing conflict "are engaged in the community and peace-building initiatives," but "their voice is yet to be heard in peace negotiations and mediation where roadmaps to return to peace are drawn."

Bahous suggested the security council change direction with "mandates, conditions, quotas, funding earmarks, incentives, and consequences for non-compliance."

"We cannot expect 2025 to be any different," she said, "if the bulk of our interventions continue to be trainings, sensitization, guidance, capacity building, setting up networks, and holding one event after another to talk about women's participation, rather than mandating it in every meeting and decision-making process in which we have authority."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

• House overwhelmingly votes down resolution to force withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria within six months
• Senator Bernie Sanders holds hearing on union rights and corporate union-busting
• An International Women’s Day forum denounces cancelation of pandemic era programs that lifted women and children out of poverty
• The Justice Department announces a probe of the Memphis, Tennessee police department in wake of police killing of Tyre Nichols

Image: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The post House rejects resolution to force withdrawal of 900 U.S. troops in Syria; Verbal clash erupts at Senate hearing on corporate union-busting; International Women’s Day forum calls for reinstatement of pandemic era income support programs: The Pacifica Evening News March 8 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

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

We have seen much recently about the Ukraine war anniversary. But this is also the anniversary of other wars: March marks the 8th anniversary of the war on Yemen and the 20th on Iraq. Members of Congress, including Senator Bernie Sanders, should introduce a Yemen War Powers Resolution before this war enters a 9th year.

On March 1st activists in 10 cities across the United States protested at congressional offices and beyond, calling on their lawmakers to bring the harmful U.S. role in the Yemen war to a rapid and final end. Over 70 organizations called for and supported the protests.

During Wednesday’s protests, activists called on Sanders and other federal lawmakers to introduce a new Yemen War Powers Resolution this month. If brought to the floor for a vote, Congress could order the president to end U.S. participation in the catastrophic conflict, which the U.S. has enabled for eight years. Sanders sponsored last year’s bill, but when he moved to bring the resolution to a floor vote in December, he was shut down by the Biden administration.

In December, Sanders pledged to return to the Senate floor with a new Yemen War Powers Resolution if he and the administration were unable to agree to “strong and effective” action that would achieve his goals.

Without meaningful public action from Biden at this point, the time is now for Sen. Sanders to make good on his pledge. For over 10 months, Saudi Arabia has not dropped any bombs on Yemen. However, this could change anytime. If the United States continues to support the war, it will be implicated in Saudi aggression if, and likely when, the conflict escalates.

Without meaningful public action from Biden at this point, the time is now for Sen. Sanders to make good on his pledge.

Approximately two–thirds of the Royal Saudi Air Force receive direct support from U.S. military contracts in the form of spare parts and maintenance. TheSaudi-led coalition has relied on this support to carry out these offensive strikes in Yemen. The United States has no sufficient compelling interest in Yemen that justifies implication in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Since March 2015, the Saudi Arabia and /UAE)-led bombing and blockade of Yemen have killed hundreds of thousands of people and wreaked havoc on the country, creating one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world. 17 million people in Yemen are food insecure and 500,000 children are experiencing severe wasting, also known as severe acute malnutrition.

For years virtually no containerized goods have been allowed to enter Hodeida, Yemen’s principal Red Sea port Hodeida. Containerized goods include essentially everything other than food and fuel. This has helped cripple the economy and prevented critical life-saving medicine and medical equipment from reaching people in need.

This humanitarian crisis has worsened since President Biden took office. Admittedly this is not entirely his fault. The Biden administration took some initial good steps forward, including reversing the Trump administration’s policy to designate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and reversing an arms transfer in the works when Biden took office. The war in Ukraine and global wheat shortage have hit Yemen hard; the country relies heavily on imports. Climate disasters have also exacerbated the effects of the conflict in Yemen. But the Biden administration does bear partial responsibility for the continued suffering in Yemen.

Despite President Biden’s February 2021 commitment to end participation in Saudi offensive operations in Yemen, the U.S. has continued support for the war. The U.S. has continued to provide spare parts and maintenance for the Saudi air force, which increased the frequency of airstrikes on Yemen in 2021 and early 2022 – after Biden took office.

Without a negotiated settlement, nothing prevents Saudi Arabia from restarting airstrikes in Yemen. With apparent never-ending and unconditional U.S. military support, Saudi Arabia lacks an incentive to once and for all completely lift its blockade of Yemen and withdraw from Yemen.

In 2018 Saudi dictator Mohammed Bin Salman ordered the murder of a U.S. journalist and then lied about it. Just last year Saudi Arabia manipulated global energy markets to raise fuel prices and empower Russia in its immoral and illegal invasion of Ukraine. These are just a couple recent demonstrations of a history of destructive activity by Saudi Arabia that is harmful to the United States and its allies. The Biden administration was correct in October when it called for a re-evaluation of the US-Saudi relationship, urging Congress to propose measures to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. Passing the Yemen War Powers Resolution is a chance to do exactly that.

Organizations that signed the call to protest the war March 1st included the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation, the Yemeni Alliance Committee, About Face: Veterans Against War, Veterans for Peace, Progressive Democrats of America, the Libertarian Institute, Avaaz, CODEPINK, Peace Action, United for Peace and Justice, Democratic Socialists of America International Committee, Women's League for International Peace and Freedom – US Section, among over 70 organizations. Over 100 national organizations – humanitarian, veterans’, libertarian, and others – wrote to Congress as recently as December urging their passage of the Yemen War Powers Resolution. Bernie Sanders should re-introduce his resolution.

Under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the power to raise and support armies is reserved for Congress. No Congressional authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) has been issued for Yemen. The War Powers Resolution empowers Congress to invoke its constitutional war powers authority to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in wars like the war in Yemen.

The bill prevents a resumption of offensive Saudi airstrikes in Yemen by prohibiting U.S. involvement in them. This legislation can promote a negotiated settlement and long-term, lasting peace between the warring parties.

Saturday, March 25 will mark the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the Saudi-led coalition's bombing of Yemen. To mark the occasion, US and international groups will hold an online rally to inspire and enhance education and activism to end the war in Yemen. Join grassroots organizers on March 25th at 12pm Eastern. Register now.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Isaac Evans-Frantz.

The post US Anti-Socialism Resolution Demeans US Allies appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Edward Hunt.

The anti-socialism resolution passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month sent a chilling message not only to socialists in the United States but to many U.S. friends and allies around the world.

By backing a resolution that “denounces socialism in all its forms,” policymakers condemned a broad range of U.S. partners who have implemented various kinds of socialist policies. As several House members acknowledged during the debate over the resolution, the United States has a long history of working with socialist allies and trading partners around the world.

“This is a direct insult to many countries the United States counts among its allies—including NATO member states Spain, Germany, and Portugal—which are governed by parties or heads of state that identify as social democratic or socialist,” said Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), who expressed her reluctance to vote on the resolution.

For most of U.S. history, U.S. officials have strongly opposed socialism. Both Democrats and Republicans have targeted socialists with repression. The United States has repeatedly worked to destroy socialist leaders, ranging from Eugene Debs in the United States during the early twentieth century to leftist leaders across Latin America today.

“We do not believe in socialism,” Donald Trump explained in 2019, when he was U.S. president.

Republicans haverepeatedlycraftedbills that condemn socialism, often as attempts to tarnish Democrats and discredit social programs. Their major targets have included socialist politicians, social insurance programs such as Medicare and Social Security, and proposals for universal health care and the Green New Deal.

Their latest resolution stokes fears by misleadingly associating the democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders(I-VT) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(D-NY) with the tyrannical rule of Joseph Stalin and other repressive leaders.

“Whether it is communism, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, anarchism, democratic socialism, ecosocialism, or liberal socialism,” explained John Rose (R-TN), “none of these ideologies should, God willing, ever be implemented in the United States.”

All Republican speakers spoke in favor of the resolution on the logic of “socialism bad, capitalism good,” as Roger Williams (R-TX) put it, but a large number of Democrats spoke against it. Several Democratic officials criticized their Republican colleagues for conflating socialism with authoritarianism, ignoring the threat of fascism, and blocking an amendment that specified that Social Security and Medicare are not socialism.

“This resolution has little to do with intelligent discourse and everything to do with laying the groundwork to cut Social Security and Medicare,” said Mark Pocan (D-WI), who voted against the bill.

Most Democratic speakers made it a point to denounce socialism and proudly identify themselves as capitalists, similar to what President Joe Biden did in his State of the Union address, but several Democratic officials offered strategic reasons for opposing the bill. They noted that the United States has periodically worked with socialist governments, despite longstanding U.S. opposition to socialist policies.

Brad Sherman (D-CA) presented an image of socialist leaders in NATO and emphasized their importance to the United States during the Cold War. “Without them, Stalinism may well have prevailed,” he said. “Yet, this resolution condemns them.”

Sherman added that many former Israeli leaders were socialists. The resolution “equates some of the greatest leaders of Israel with some of the greatest mass murderers of history,” he said.

Other Democratic critics pointed out that the United States still works with many countries with socialist political parties.

“With this resolution, House Republicans are sending a message to these nations that we condemn the domestic political process within their nations,” said Betty McCollum (D-MN), who voted against it. “That is outrageous.”

McCollum noted that many NATO countries that are supporting Ukraine have elected socialist leaders. “Congress should be working to strengthen the relationships with our fellow democracies, not passing poorly written messaging bills that will alienate our friends and allies,” she said.

Regardless, a majority of House members voted in favor of the resolution, making it clear that they oppose socialism in all its forms, whether at home or abroad. All Republicans who cast votes agreed that socialism must be condemned, and a majority of Democrats joined them. Not a single speaker defended socialism, despite the fact that a large portion of the U.S. population has a favorable view of socialism.

With this approach, House leaders demonstrated that they are so strongly opposed to socialism that they will alienate a large number of their constituents and vilify several of their allies, even at a time of war. Their resolution sent the disturbing message to socialists around the world that they will not be tolerated by powerful policymakers within the U.S. government.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Edward Hunt.

The United Nations' 193 member countries are expected to vote on a resolution declaring "the need to reach, as soon as possible, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace" in Ukraine next Thursday, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of its neighbor.

Two days of speeches are planned leading up to the vote, which could be just the latest U.N. General Assembly (GA) resolution related to the war. While such measures would typically come out of the Security Council, it has been hamstrung because Russia is one of five countries with veto power in that United Nations body.

A European Union diplomat toldThe Associated Press that Ukraine asked the E.U. to draft the resolution along with other member states to mark the anniversary of the invasion with a strong statement advocating peace, in line with the U.N. Charter.

The U.N. Charter uses the term peace dozens of times and specifically states that "all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations."

As the AP detailed:

Ukraine initially thought of having the General Assembly enshrine the 10-point peace plan that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced at the November summit of the Group of 20 major economies, U.N. diplomats said. But this idea was shelved in favor of the broader and less detailed resolution circulated Wednesday.

As one example, while the resolution to be voted on emphasizes the need to ensure accountability for the most serious crimes committed in Ukraine through "fair and independent investigations and prosecutions at the national or international level," it does not include Zelenskyy's call for a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes.

The pending resolution reportedly calls for "a cessation of hostilities" and reiterates the GA's earlier demand that Russia "immediately, completely, and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces" from internationally recognized Ukrainian territory.

The draft resolution—which would not be legally binding, if passed—also urges United Nations members and global groups to "redouble support for diplomatic efforts," including those of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, according to the AP.

E.U. Ambassador Olof Skoog, who helped draft the resolution, toldReuters that "we count on very broad support from the membership. What is at stake is not just the fate of Ukraine, it is the respect of the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of every state."

Previous GA resolutions calling for the withdrawal of all Russian troops, demanding the protection of civilians and critical infrastructure, and denouncing Russia's "attempted illegal annexation" of Ukrainian regions received at least 140 votes in favor.

Two other resolutions in the assembly last year—one suspending Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council and another advocating Russian reparations to Ukraine over the war—garnered less support, with just 93 and 94 supportive votes, respectively.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights on Monday confirmed the war has killed at least 7,199 Ukrainian civilians and injured another 11,756, while also noting that actual figures are likely "considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Dr Sitiveni Halapua, former deputy leader of Tonga’s Democratic Movement, has died aged 74.

Born on February 13, 1949, he was a respected academic, a pioneer of Tonga’s democratic reforms and pioneer of a conflict resolution system based on traditional practices.

Halapua earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Kent in the UK and went on to lecture in economics at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji.

• READ MORE: Disarray in Tonga’s Democratic Party revealed
• Taione denies he conspired to make Halapua Prime Minister

He was director of the Pacific Islands Development Programme at the East-West Centre at the University of Hawai’i for more than 20 years.

It was while working at the East-West Centre that he developed a conflict-resolution system based on the Polynesian practice of Talanoa, known as the “Talanoa conflict-resolution” system.

It has been used in the Cook Islands, Fiji and Tonga.

In November 2005, Dr Halapua was appointed to the National Committee for Political Reform, aimed at producing a plan for the democratic reform of Tonga.

Blame over report
In October 2006 the commission recommended a fully elected Parliament. He later accused Prime Minister Feleti Sevele’s of hijacking the report and blamed this for the 2006 Nuku’alofa riots, which destroyed much of central Nuku’alofa.

Dr Halapua was elected to Parliament as a People’s Representative for Tongatapu 3 in the 2010 elections.

Four years later, he was ousted as candidate for the Democratic Party after party leader and Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva’s newspaper, Kele’a, accused him of being at the centre of a plot to seek the premiership.

As Kaniva News reported at the time, Kele’a claimed that three Democratic Party members, including People’s Representatives Semisi Tapueluelu and Sione Taione planned in 2012 to replace Pohiva with fellow parliamentarian Dr Sitiveni Halapua.

Kele’a alleged that the plan was made in 2012 when the Democratic government lodged a motion of no confidence against the Prime Minister, Lord Tu’ivakano.

Both Taione and Halapua denied the story.

Relations between Pohiva and Halapua had been strained since October 2013 when Dr Halapua abstained from voting for a bill that would have let the Prime Minister be popularly elected.

Popular bill lost
The bill was laid before the Tongan Parliament by Democrat MP Dr ‘Aisake Eke and had received massive support from many of the 17 popular electorates, nine of which elected Democrat Members of Parliament. However, the motion was lost 15-6.

Dr Halapua’s abstention drew strong criticisms from the local media and the Democrats.

Kele’a lashed out at Dr Halapua’s behaviour, with the editor saying he no longer trusted him as one of the front benchers of the party.

Dr Halapua had long been an advocate of what he called Pule’anga Kafataha or “Coalition Government”.

Under the proposal all parliamentarians, whether nobles or commoners, would work together as a coalition.

In 2010 Halapua told Kaniva News that Democratic Party Parliamentarians voting as members of a coalition could elect a noble rather than his party leader, ‘Akilisi Pohiva, but still keep their allegiance to Pohiva and the Democratic Party.

After he was removed as a Democrat candidate, Dr Halapua said he would stand as an independent at the next election, but did not run. He stood unsuccessfully in the 2017 election.

Republished from Kaniva Tonga with permission from the authors.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

More than 100 U.S. House Democrats—including some of the wealthiest members of Congress—joined with Republican lawmakers on Thursday in passing a resolution "denouncing the horrors of socialism," a largely symbolic gesture that opponents warned is nonetheless a step toward slashing Social Security, Medicare, and other safety net programs.

House Concurrent Resolution 9, which "denounces socialism in all its forms and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States," was introduced by Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), the staunchly anti-communist daughter of Cuban exiles who once interviewed then-Cuban President Fidel Castro for Telemundo.

"I think it's the best resolution that has ever been presented before the United States Congress," Salazar told Insider at the U.S. Capitol before the vote. "Our youth are being penetrated by this ideology through media and academia."

The measure—which followed the vote to oust Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee—passed 328-86, with 14 lawmakers voting "present" and six members not voting.

One hundred and nine Democrats—many of them members of the corporate-friendly New Democrat Coalition—joined with every Republican lawmaker in voting to approve the resolution. Prominent Democrats who voted "yes" include: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), and House Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn (S.C.), all of whom played prominent roles in defeating Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) presidential campaigns, which were based on popular democratic socialist policies and principles.

\u201cOne of these "New Democrats" is Congresswoman @SuzanDelBene - the new chair of the @DCCC, the House Democrats' PAC.\n\nThis is their plan to win the majority: not to pass popular bills like #MedicareForAll, but to ATTACK progressives and stoke another Red Scare.\n\nEmbarrassing.\u201d

— Our Wisconsin Revolution (@Our Wisconsin Revolution) 1675369788

Many of the Democrats voting for the resolution also rank among the wealthiest members of Congress, including Pelosi, whose 2018 net worth was over $114 million, according to OpenSecrets.org; Suzan DelBene (Wash., $79 million net worth); Dean Phillips (Minn., $64 million); Scott Peters (Calif., $60 million); and Ro Khanna (Calif., $45 million). Khanna along with Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California and Rubén Gallego of Arizona, are either current or prospective candidates for U.S. Senate.

Denouncing the measure on the House floor, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.)—who voted "no"— said that "the socialism resolution is useless. It does nothing. It does not matter. Are we talking about public schools? Are we talking about roads? Are we talking about Social Security? I mean, give me a break."

\u201cThe GOP has called Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, & even free public schools "socialism" to scare ppl. Today, House R's wasted our time by debating a sham resolution in an attempt to justify cuts to programs that millions of Americans have paid into & earned.\u201d

— Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost) 1675355277

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Chair Emeritus of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, invoked his experience as a capitalist to lambaste the anti-socialism resolution.

"For 35 years now I've owned a small business, giving me significantly more experience as a capitalist than the vast majority of members on the other side of the aisle. So as a capitalist, let me tell you: This resolution is plain ridiculous. It jointly condemns Pol Pot and Norway," Pocan said during floor debate, referring to the former Cambodian dictator, who was supported by the Republican Reagan administration after leading a genocidal regime that killed at least 1.5 million people.

Pocan continued:

Here's what this is really about: More and more members on the other side of the aisle are calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and many have referred to these programs as "socialism" throughout their existence. The other night in the Rules Committee they showed their cards. Republicans refused an amendment to declare that Social Security and Medicare is not socialism. This resolution is little about intelligent discourse and everything to do about laying the groundwork to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), another "no" vote, called out the hypocrisy of Republicans who support corporate welfare or are personal beneficiaries of social programs. Waters took aim at House Small Business Committee Chair Roger Williams (R-Texas), who summarized his support for the resolution as: "Socialism bad. Capitalism good. In God we trust."

"Mr. Williams is my friend," said Waters, "but I do wonder whether Mr. Williams views the $1.43 million he received in debt forgiveness [to be] consistent with his views on socialism? I don't get it."

\u201cGOP logic:\n\nPublic Housing= Socialism\nSocial Security and Medicare=Socialism\nInfrastructure=Socialism\n\nRepublicans always have and always will brand programs to help working families as socialism. That's why I'm voting no on this distraction of a resolution.\u201d

— Rep. Nydia Velazquez (@Rep. Nydia Velazquez) 1675354158

After Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who voted against the measure, noted during floor debate that there have been numerous democratic socialist leaders around the world who've been "allies of America and NATO," Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) quipped, "If this resolution would just simply draw out my Democrat colleagues to just say, yes, they are in favor of socialism, maybe this is a worthwhile endeavor."

Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), a former organizer from Pittsburgh's Democratic Socialists of America chapter who voted against the resolution, shrugged off Republicans' red-baiting and the New Democrat Coalition's support for the GOP resolution.

"They're going to call you socialists anyways," Lee said.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Palestine, the War and the Arabs

The Russia-Ukraine war starting in February pressured many political entities, including Palestinians, to take sides or, at least, to declare a position. Though the Palestinian Authority (PA) and various Palestinian political parties insisted on their neutrality, Russia’s deviation from the US-led political paradigm in the Middle East opened up new margins for Palestinians to explore.

On May 4, a delegation of Hamas leaders met Russian officials in Moscow, and, a few months later, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas defied Washington by holding a meeting with Russian President Vladmir Putin in Astana, Kazakhstan. Despite US anger at Abbas, Washington could do little to retaliate against the Palestinian leadership, considering the delicate geopolitical balances in the Middle East and around the world.

The new political spaces created by global conflict also brought greater cohesion to the Arab position on Palestine, as articulated in a statement by the pan-Arab organization, the Arab League, in Cairo on November 29. Ahmed Aboul Gheit insisted on the Arab quest for a just peace and praised the ‘Algiers Declaration’ of the previous month. On October 12, 14 Palestinian political groups met in Algeria and signed a reconciliation agreement based on ending division through presidential and parliamentary elections.

This was part of a year-long momentum where Arab governments revitalized their position in support of the Palestinians, both financially and politically through funding the Palestinian refugees agency, UNRWA, or supporting Palestine at the United Nations.

On October 3, Arab representatives at the UN introduced Resolution A/C 1/77 L.2,  urging Israel to get rid of its nuclear weapons and to put “all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.” The Resolution was overwhelmingly approved by the United Nations General Assembly on October 28.

UN: ‘Deadliest Year’

Though no real action was taken by the UN to punish Israel for its ongoing military occupation and violations of Palestinian rights, several UN initiatives and resolutions continued to demonstrate the centrality of Palestine to the international agenda.

Last August, the ‘UN Experts’ condemned “Israel’s escalating attacks against Palestinian civil society in the occupied West Bank”, stating that these actions mount to severe suppression of human rights defenders and are illegal and unacceptable”.

In October, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, submitted a report to the UNGA, where she concluded that the realization of the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination requires dismantling the Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid regime.

On November 30, the UNGA also adopted a resolution to mark Nakba Day, which commemorates the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands in 1948.

Alas, none of these statements altered the violent nature of Israel’s attitude towards Palestinians. On October 29, the UN Mideast envoy, Tor Wennesland, said that 2022 is on course to be the ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the UN started tracking fatalities in 2005.

Israeli Violence and the Lions’ Den

Israel has killed over 200 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza since the start of 2022, including 47 children. Only a few of them made headlines in mainstream media. However, the world still showed outrage following the cold blood murder of famed Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11, while she was covering the tragic events in Jenin. Widespread calls for an impartial investigation finally convinced the FBI to open a criminal probe into Abu Akleh’s killing.

The Israeli killing spree was motivated by two reasons: first, the rise of armed resistance in the northern West Bank, and second, Israel’s chaotic political scene.

Continued Israeli attacks on Jenin, Nablus and other West Bank towns and refugee camps resulted in the formation of a new Palestinian armed group known as the Lions’ Den. Unlike other groups, the Nablus-based movement was non-factional, which created new spaces for national unity among all Palestinians, regardless of their political or ideological backgrounds.

The Israeli government quickly retaliated against the Lions’ Den. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz belittled the group’s appeal on October 13, announcing “Eventually, we will lay our hands on the terrorists”, estimating their number to be 30 fighters. “We will work out how to reach them and we will eliminate them,” Gantz said. The Israeli assessment has proven untrue as the brigade continued to grow, morphing into other brigades in Jenin, Al-Khalil (Hebron) and other West Bank regions.

The killing of Palestinian fighter Oday Tamimi in a clash near the illegal Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim on October 19 further accentuated the boldness of the new Palestinian generation of resisters. Moreover, the televised execution of Ammar Mufleh in the town of Huwara on December 2 also illustrated Israel’s willingness to flout international law to end the ongoing armed rebellion in occupied Palestine.

The Israeli violence is also directly linked to Tel Aviv’s own political crisis. Though Benjamin Netanyahu was ousted through an unlikely alliance among various Israeli political forces, which was led by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in June 2021, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is slated for a comeback.

Bennett resigned from his post on June 20, leaving the leadership to his coalition partner, Yair Lapid. New elections, the fifth in three years, were held on November 1. This time around, Netanyahu’s rightwing coalition won by a comfortable margin, introducing to Israel’s already extremist government such notorious personalities as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, known for their violent action and rhetoric against Palestinians.

Though Washington had indicated on November 2 that it will not be working directly with Ben-Gvir, the US Ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, seemed to reverse that position by declaring that “no one hurts the unbreakable ties between Israel and the United States.”

Keeping in mind that the increased violence in the West Bank was a direct result of the militant nature of the Bennet-Lapid government as it labored to demonstrate its toughness against Palestinian Resistance, the new government is expected to be even more violent, setting the stage for a wider confrontation in both the West Bank and Gaza.

The brief but deadly Israeli war on the besieged Gaza Strip on August 5 resulted in the killing of at least 46 Palestinians and the injuring of at least 360, according to UN estimates. Despite the devastation resulting from the war, it could have been much worse, as not all Palestinian groups took part in the fighting and Israel seemed keen on ending its hostilities before a prolonged conflict resulted in a heavy political price. Netanyahu, too, is likely to resort to war on Gaza, should he need to create a distraction from future political difficulties or to keep his rightwing partners in line.

Culture of Hope

Despite the violence of the Israeli occupation and the hardship of isolation and siege, Palestinian culture continued to flourish with Palestinian artists, filmmakers, athletes, intellectuals and teachers continuing to leave their mark on the cultural scene in Palestine, in the Middle East and worldwide.

In May, Mohammed Hamada, a 20-year-old weightlifter from the Gaza Strip, became the first Palestinian athlete to win gold and bronze medals at the weightlifting world championships held in Heraklion, Greece.

In September, Palestinian-American systems engineer Nujoud Fahoum Merancy was appointed as one of the leaders of the Artemis missions, a program by NASA that aims to fly astronauts to the Moon.

Palestinian Resistance and cultural achievements are constantly boosted by growing international solidarity with Palestine. Thanks to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the multinational company General Mills  nnounced in June that it is divesting entirely from Israel. This was one of many other achievements credited to the Palestine-led boycott movement, which included other companies, universities and churches.

However, nothing compares to the endless stream of solidarity exhibited by Arab and international football fans in the Qatar World Cup 2022, which started on November 30. Although the Palestine national football team has not qualified for the world’s most important sports event, the flag of Palestine was the most visible among all other international flags. The iconic Palestinian Kufiyeh was also adorned by thousands of fans including world leaders, dignitaries and celebrities.

2022 was another year of tragedy and hope for the Palestinians. It is this hope, buoyed by numerous little victories, that makes the struggle for Palestinian freedom possible. One wishes that 2023 will be a better year.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

“Here’s some free advice for 2023,”  Erin Keller writes at the New York Post: “Delete all your personal information — and sexual content — from your electronic devices before donating them to Goodwill.”

The advice may be free, but it’s worth far more than we’re paying for it.

The “news hook” to Keller’s piece:  A TikToker’s revelations concerning an old router he bought at Goodwill for $15.  This particular router (a discontinued Apple model called a “Time Capsule”) did more than connect its user to the Internet. It also included a hard drive to store computer backups on.

Money quote: “There is audit history, credit card numbers, flight information. I have this man’s bank account number …”

Fortunately, “@dankeunextgay” isn’t  a bad guy. He’s not abusing, sharing, or selling the information. He’s trying to track down the router’s former owner or family to return it.

You might be surprised at how common this kind of thing is. My son (who’s into retro computing) once bought a stack of 3.5″ floppy disks at a thrift store. When he got home, he discovered that their previous owner had been a hospital, and that they were chock full of, in US legal parlance, “Protected Health Information” on patients. He’s not a bad guy either, so he formatted the disks and filled them with his own stuff instead of prank-calling cancer patients or trying to pick up other people’s  oxycodone prescriptions.

There’s a lot of talk these days about a “right” to privacy. I’m skeptical of that notion (“information wants to be free”), but privacy is certainly a good thing. And it’s our responsibility to protect our own privacy and the privacy of those we’ve made promises to (e.g. a health provider’s promise of patient confidentiality).

So yes, if you’re going to drop your old laptop in a thrift store donation bin (or abandon it at a repair shop — yes, I’m talking to you, Hunter), for the love of Pete wipe your hard drive first.

But there’s more to it than that. Use strong passwords. Lock your phone with a pin, not a swipe or fingerprint scan. Use end-to-end encryption for your emails and texts where it’s available. Set up PGP to encrypt your private documents.

There are bad people and governments (but I repeat myself) out there who won’t hesitate to abuse your personal information for their own benefit.

If you value your privacy, guard it.

Happy New Year.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Knapp.

The General Assembly of the United Nations on Friday approved a resolution that asks the International Court of Justice to issue an opinion on the legal consequences of Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.

The resolution passed with a final vote of 87 in favor, 26 opposed, and 53 nations abstaining. Among those opposed to the measure were the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

Specifically, the resolution asks the ICJ to provide the United Nations with an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel's ongoing "occupation, settlement and annexation" of the Occupied Territories, "including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures."

The official request to the ICJ also asks the body, known broadly as the World Court, how specific Israeli policies and practices "affect the legal status of the occupation" and to characterize any legal consequences for all the United Nations and its member states that stem from this status.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said Saturday that the vote signals that "the time has come for Israel to be a state subject to law, and to be held accountable for its ongoing crimes against our people."

Ahead of the vote, Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour said in an address to General Assembly members: "We trust that, regardless of your vote today, if you believe in international law and peace, you will uphold the opinion of the International Court of Justice when delivered and you will stand up to this Israeli government right now."

As Al-Jazeera noted, "The ICJ last weighed in on the issue of Israel's occupation in 2004, when it ruled that Israel's wall in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem was illegal. Israel rejected that ruling, accusing the court of being politically motivated."

The Israeli government made its displeasure with the resolution known prior to the vote, with its U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan saying "[a]ny decision from a judicial body which receives its mandate from the morally bankrupt and politicized U.N. is completely illegitimate."

While the ICJ's rulings have binding status, there is no legal mechanism to enforce its decisions and continued U.S. support for Israeli occupation means there is little hope for any consequences regardless of what the World Court puts forth.

Mansour noted that Friday's vote arrived just days following the swearing-in of the new far-right Israeli government, once again headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but now backed by a coalition even more hostile to Palestinian rights than previous iterations.

Mansour warned that Netanyahu will now oversee an acceleration of the "colonial and racist policies" that have marked the Likud governments of the past.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jon Queally.

President Joe Biden's stated opposition to the death penalty did not stop the United States from joining Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea in voting against a United Nations resolution supporting a worldwide moratorium on the practice on Thursday, leading critics to question once again whether the president will make good on his campaign pledge to eliminate capital punishment in his own country.

The resolution passed in a vote of 125-37 with 22 abstensions, but as it has in the past when a proposed death penalty moratorium has come up for a vote at the U.N., the U.S. delegation did not aid its passage. 

"As a country, we pride ourselves on a commitment to human rights and the commitment to the dignity of all individuals. To be aligned with the actions of a country that actively repudiates those values creates a significant problem."

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), told Newsweek that the U.S. position "becomes especially problematic this year" as the country aligned itself with Iran amid its "use of very public gruesome hanging as a way of attempting to repress social protest."

At least 18 people have been sentenced to death in Iran for participating in nationwide anti-government protests, according to Amnesty International, and two have been publicly executed so far.

The U.S. vote on the resolution, Dunham told Newsweek, "put us in the same league, with Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia... As a country, we pride ourselves on a commitment to human rights and the commitment to the dignity of all individuals. To be aligned with the actions of a country that actively repudiates those values creates a significant problem."

Austin Sarat, a death penalty expert at Amherst College, wrote at Justia ahead of the vote that "it is time for the United States to join most of the world in rejecting state killing."

"Joe Biden ran for president as an abolitionist," Sarat wrote. "It is time for him to govern as an abolitionist. It is time for him to put this country on record as committed to ending the death penalty."

"Doing so would send a strong signal of where he wants to lead the country on this issue and also would lend support to groups working to end the death penalty," he added, both in the U.S. and abroad.

The vote came two days after Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced she was dismantling the state's execution chamber and commuting the sentences of all 17 people on death row to life in prison without parole, saying she made the decision based on her belief that capital punishment is "both dysfunctional and immoral."

On Friday, the DPIC released its annual review of the death penalty in the U.S., which showed that "seven of the 20 execution attempts were visibly problematic—an astonishing 35%—as a result of executioner incompetence, failures to follow protocols, or defects in the protocols themselves."

It took three hours for executioners in Alabama to set an IV line when they put Joe James Jr. to death on July 28, subjecting him to "hours of pain and suffering" and meeting "the definition of cruel and unusual punishment," Maya Foa, director of Reprieve U.S., said at the time.

"Witnesses reported significant problems in all three of Arizona's executions," reported the DPIC on Friday, "including the 'surreal' spectacle of a possibly innocent man assisting his executioners in finding a vein in which to inject the lethal chemicals."

The U.S. executed people "with serious mental illness, brain damage, intellectual disability, and strong claims of innocence," added the group, raising "serious concerns about the application of the death penalty."

As 44 people remain on federal death row in the U.S. and the Biden administration continues to litigate capital cases like that of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the U.S. government is now being "outpaced" by states like Oregon as well as the majority of the world regarding its death penalty policy, wrote MSNBC opinion columnist Jordan Rubin on Thursday.

"This all raises the question," wrote Rubin, "of when Biden will deliver on his campaign pledge, if ever."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

The post Sanders Caves to White House on Yemen War Powers Resolution appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Charles Pierson.

For nearly 75 years, the Palestinian Nakba, the ‘Catastrophe’ wrought by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias in 1947-48, has served as the epicenter of the Palestinian tragedy as well as the collective Palestinian struggle for freedom.

Three decades ago, namely after the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian leadership in 1993, the Nakba practically ceased to exist as a relevant political variable. Palestinians were urged to move past that date, and to invest their energies and political capital in an alternative and more ‘practical’ goal, a return to the 1967 borders.

In June 1967, Israel occupied the rest of historic Palestine — East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza — igniting yet another wave of ethnic cleansing.

Based on these two dates, Western cheerleaders of Oslo divided Palestinians into two camps: the ‘extremists’ who insisted on the centrality of the 1948 Nakba, and the ‘moderates’ who agreed to shift the center of gravity of Palestinian history and politics to 1967.

Such historical revisionism impacted every aspect of the Palestinian struggle: it splintered Palestinians ideologically and politically; relegated the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees, which is enshrined in UN Resolution 194; spared Israel the legal and moral accountability of its violent establishment on the ruins of Palestine, and more.

Leading Palestinian Nakba historian, Salman Abu Sitta, explained in an interview a few years ago the difference between the so-called pragmatic politics of Oslo and the collective struggle of Palestinians as the difference between ‘aims’ and ‘rights’. Palestinians “don’t have ‘aims’ … (but) rights,” he said. “… These rights are inalienable, they represent the bottom red line beyond which no concession is possible. Because doing so will destroy their life.”

Indeed, shifting the historical centrality of the narrative away from the Nakba was equivalent to the very destruction of the lives of Palestinian refugees as it has been tragically apparent in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria in recent years.

While politicians from all relevant sides continued to bemoan the ‘stagnant’ or even ‘dead’ peace process – often blaming one another for that supposed calamity – a different kind of conflict was taking place. On the one hand, ordinary Palestinians along with their historians and intellectuals fought to reassert the importance of the Nakba, while Israelis continued to almost completely ignore the earth-shattering event, as if it is of no consequence to the equally tragic present.

Gaza’s ‘Great March of Return‘ (2018-2019) was possibly the most significant collective and sustainable Palestinian action that attempted to reorient the new generation around the starting date of the Palestinian tragedy.

Over 300 people, mostly from third or fourth post-Nakba generations, were killed by Israeli snipers at the Gaza fence for demanding their Right of Return. The bloody events of those years were enough to tell us that Palestinians have not forgotten the roots of their struggle, as it also illustrated Israel’s fear of Palestinian memory.

The work of Rosemary Sayigh on the exclusion of the Nakba from the trauma genre, and also that of Samah Sabawi, demonstrate, not only the complexity of the Nakba’s impact on the Palestinian collective awareness, but also the ongoing denial — if not erasure — of the Nakba from academic and historical discourses.

“The most significant traumatic event in Palestinian history is absent from the ‘trauma genre’,” Sabawi wrote in the recently-published volume, Our Vision for Liberation.

Sayigh argued that “the loss of recognition of (the Palestinian refugees’) rights to people- and state-hood created by the Nakba has led to an exceptional vulnerability to violence,” with Syria being the latest example.

Israel was always aware of this. When Israeli leaders agreed to the Oslo political paradigm, they understood that removing the Nakba from the political discourse of the Palestinian leadership constituted a major victory for the Israeli narrative.

Thanks to ordinary Palestinians, those who have held on to the keys and deeds to their original homes and land in historic Palestine, history is finally being rewritten, back to its original and accurate form.

By passing Resolution A/77/L.24, which declared May 15, 2023, as ‘Nakba Day’, the UNGA has corrected a historical wrong.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, rightly understood the UN’s decision as a major step towards the delegitimization of Israel as a military occupier of Palestine. “Try to imagine the international community commemorating your country’s Independence Day by calling it a disaster. What a disgrace,” he said.

Absent from Erdan’s remarks and other responses by the Israeli officials is the mere hint of political or even moral accountability for the ethnic cleansing of over 530 Palestinian towns and villages, and the expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians, whose descendants are now numbered in millions of refugees.

Not only did Israel invest decades in canceling and erasing the Nakba, it also criminalized it by passing what is now known as the Nakba Law of 2011.

But the more Israel engages in this form of historical negationism, the harder Palestinians fight to reclaim their historical rights.

May 15, 2023, UN Nakba Day represents the triumph of the Palestinian narrative over that of Israeli negationists. This means that the blood spilled during Gaza’s March of Return was not in vain, as the Nakba and the Right of Return are now back at the center of the Palestinian story.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

A coalition of more than 100 advocacy, faith-based, and news organizations on Wednesday urged members of Congress to adopt Sen. Bernie Sanders' War Powers Resolution to block U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, where the recent expiry of a temporary cease-fire has renewed suffering in one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

"We, the undersigned 105 organizations, welcomed news earlier this year that Yemen's warring parties agreed to a nationwide truce to halt military operations, lift fuel restrictions, and open Sanaa airport to commercial traffic," the signatories wrote in a letter to congressional lawmakers. "Unfortunately, it's been almost two months since the U.N.-brokered truce in Yemen expired, violence on the ground is escalating, and there is still no formal mechanism preventing a return to all-out war."

"In an effort to renew this truce and further incentivize Saudi Arabia to stay at the negotiating table, we urge you to bring the War Powers Resolutions to end U.S. military participation in the Saudi-led coalition's war on Yemen," the signers added.

In June, 48 bipartisan House lawmakers led by Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced a War Powers Resolution to end unauthorized U.S. support for a war in which nearly 400,000 people have been killed.

A Saudi-led blockade has also exacerbated starvation and disease in Yemen, where more than 23 million of the country's 30 million people required some form of assistance in 2022, according to United Nations humanitarian officials.

Sanders (I-Vt.), along with Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), introduced a Senate version of the resolution in July, with the two-time Democratic presidential candidate declaring that "we must put an end to the unauthorized and unconstitutional involvement of U.S. armed forces in the catastrophic Saudi-led war in Yemen."

On Tuesday, Sanders said he believes he has enough support to pass a Senate resolution, and that he plans to bring the measure to a floor vote "hopefully next week."

The War Powers Resolution would require only a simple majority to pass in both the House and Senate.

Meanwhile, progressives are pushing President Joe Biden to hold Saudi leaders, especially Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman, accountable for atrocities including war crimes in Yemen and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 

As the groups' letter details:

With continued U.S. military support, Saudi Arabia escalated its campaign of collective punishment on the people of Yemen in recent months... Earlier this year, Saudi airstrikes targeting a migrant detention facility and vital communications infrastructure killed at least 90 civilians, wounded over 200, and triggered a nationwide internet blackout. 

After seven years of direct and indirect involvement in the Yemen war, the United States must cease supplying weapons, spare parts, maintenance services, and logistical support to Saudi Arabia to ensure that there is no return of hostilities in Yemen and the conditions remain for the parties to achieve a lasting peace agreement. 

In October, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced a bill to block all U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. After initially freezing arms sales to the kingdom and its coalition partner United Arab Emirates and promising to end all offensive support for the war shortly after taking office, Biden resumed hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and support sales to the countries.

The new letter's signatories include: American Friends Service Committee, Antiwar.com, Center for Constitutional Rights, CodePink, Defending Rights & Dissent, Demand Progress, Democracy for the Arab World Now, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Indivisible, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, MADRE, MoveOn, MPower Change, Muslim Justice League, National Council of Churches, Our Revolution, Pax Christi USA, Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Presbyterian Church USA, Public Citizen, RootsAction, Sunrise Movement, Veterans for Peace, Win Without War, and World Beyond War.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

“No amount of U.S. support for Saudi and UAE’s war on Yemen should be acceptable.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Daniel Boguslaw.

As United Nations member states prepare to condemn the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba for the 30th straight year, peace groups on Saturday launched a series of rallies that will take place across the nation in the coming days to demand an end to the crippling 60-year blockade.

"From L.A. to NYC we're demanding that the U.S. #UnblockCuba!"

Members of groups including CodePink, Black Alliance for Peace, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Democratic Socialists of America, and others rallied in New York City, Los Angeles, and Portland on Saturday, with further demonstrations planned on November 2 in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, and on November 3 in San Francisco. Activists from Australia to Argentina also held demonstrations of solidarity with Cuba.

The protesters have three demands: End the U.S. blockade, remove Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and lift all travel and economic restrictions on Cuba.

Cuba will present a draft resolution to end the U.S. embargo at the United Nations General Assembly on November 2-3. The United States—usually along with Israel and a tiny handful of small, dependent nations—perennially votes against such resolutions, which pass overwhelmingly each year. Last year's vote was 184-2, with the U.S. and Israel dissenting and Brazil, Colombia, and Ukraine abstaining.

In Los Angeles, Carlos Sirah of Black Alliance for Peace noted what activists call the absurdity of the U.S. including Cuba on its list of terror sponsors.

"Imagine the United States putting someone on the terrorist list—the biggest terrorist in the Western Hemisphere, the biggest terrorist in the world—has put Cuba on the [terror list], which has effectively and materially put a burden on Cuba in terms of limiting the amount of resources it can bring in," Sirah told Kawsachun News.

This "has the effect of not only impoverishing the island, but also the added effect of keeping people from their families," Sirah added. "Who has Cuba bombed? Who has Cuba invaded, versus who has the U.S. bombed? How many bases does the United States have in the world?"

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, was among the activists who delivered a petition with the groups' demands signed by more than 10,000 people and over 100 organizations to the U.S. State Department. CodePink is asking the Biden administration to take a big step toward normalizing relations with Cuba—which, after progress during the Obama era, were rolled back under former President Donald Trump—by abstaining from the resolution vote.

Having lost effective economic control of the island in 1959 following the successful revolution led by Fidel Castro against a brutal U.S.-backed dictatorship, successive U.S. administrations waged a decadeslong campaign of state-sanctioned exile terror, attempted subversion, failed assassination attempts, economic warfare, and covert operations large and small in a fruitless policy of regime change. There have been 13 U.S. administrations since the triumph of the Cuban revolution.

The United Nations estimated in 2018 that the U.S. embargo has cost Cuba's economy at least $130 billion.

"The Black Alliance for Peace along with this coalition calls for the immediate end of the blockade, but further than that, calls for the demilitarization of the whole hemisphere," said Sirah. "We call for the end to [United States Southern Command]. We call for the end of militarization. We call for the end of the constant meddling in the affairs of Latin America, the Caribbean—and Haiti."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution aimed at assisting the Marshall Islands to get justice in the aftermath of the United States nuclear testing.

“We have suffered the cancer of the nuclear legacy for far too long and we need to find a way forward to a better future for our people,” says Samuel Lanwi, deputy permanent representative of the Marshall Islands to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The Marshallese people are still struggling with the health and environmental consequences of nuclear tests, including higher cancer rates.

• READ MORE: Other reports on nuclear tests legacy in Marshall Islands

Many people displaced due to the tests are still unable to return home.

The US conducted 67 US nuclear tests from 1946-1958 and a settlement was reached in 1986 with the United States, a Compact of Free Association, which fell short of addressing the extensive environmental and health damage that resulted from the tests.

The U.S government asserts the bilateral agreement settled “all claims, past, present and future”, including nuclear compensation.

Today at #HRC51, res. L.24/Rev.1 on RMI’s nuclear legacy was adopted by consensus. 64 years after the last nuclear test, RMI will receive UN assistance in upholding the rights of the Marshallese people that still bear the scars of this dark chapter of our past. #Nuclearlegacy pic.twitter.com/u15GKcAX6l

— Marshall Islands Permanent Mission in Geneva (@RMIGeneva) October 7, 2022

The new text tabled by five Pacific Island states called on the UN rights chief to submit a report in September 2024 on the challenges to the enjoyment of human rights by the Marshallese people, stemming from the nuclear legacy.

It called on the UN rights chief to submit a report in September 2024 on the challenges to the enjoyment of human rights by the Marshallese people stemming from the nuclear legacy.

The US as well as other nuclear weapons states such as Britain, India and Pakistan expressed concern about some aspects of the text but did not ask for a vote on the motion.

Japan did not speak at the meeting.

Observers say some nuclear states fear the initiative for the Marshall Islands could open the door to other countries bringing similar issues to the rights body.

A concrete dome on Runit Island containing radioactive waste is of concern, especially about rising sea levels as a result of climate change, according to the countries that drafted the resolution.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. Reporting also by Kyodo News/Pacnews.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday said he has not been able to get a single Senate Republican to support his resolution expressing support for Brazilian democracy and opposition to a military coup, a fact that the Vermont senator lamented as indicative of "the state of democracy in the United States."

"This resolution is very simple and straightforward," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a floor speech outlining the details of a measure he introduced alongside Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and a handful of other Senate Democrats on Brazil's Independence Day earlier this month.

"It's important for the people of Brazil to know we're on their side, on the side of democracy."

"It does not take sides in Brazil's election, obviously—and that would be unacceptable," Sanders said Wednesday. "But what it does do is express the sense of the United States Senate that the United States government will make it unequivocally clear that the continuing relationship of the United States and Brazil depends upon the commitment of the government of Brazil to democracy and human rights."

The resolution calls on the Biden administration to "continue to speak out against efforts to incite political violence and undermine the electoral process in Brazil." The measure also pushes the administration to "review and reconsider the relationship between the United States and any government that comes to power in Brazil through undemocratic means, including a military coup," and to cut off U.S. military aid to the country in the case of such an outcome.

A companion resolution in the House is led by Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin (Md.), Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.), and Sara Jacobs (Calif.).

While the resolution's text doesn't mention Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro by name, Sanders noted in his floor speech that the far-right leader has openly signaled he "might attempt to destroy Brazilian democracy and remain in power no matter what the people of Brazil determine in a free and democratic election."

The Vermont senator pointed specifically to Bolsonaro's declaration that "only God can take me from the presidency" and other similar anti-democratic remarks in the lead-up to Brazil's October 2 presidential election, in which leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is currently the polling frontrunner.

"It is obviously not the business of the United States to determine who the next president of Brazil is, or to get involved in Brazil's presidential elections in any way. That is a decision to be made solely by the people of Brazil through a fair and free election," Sanders said. "But it is the business of the United States to make clear to the people of Brazil that our government will not recognize or support a government that comes to power through a military coup or the undermining of a democratic election. That is our business."

Speaking to the Washington Post on Wednesday, Sanders highlighted one potential reason for unanimous GOP opposition to his resolution: Subservience to former U.S. President Donald Trump, an ally of Bolsonaro who attempted to overturn his loss in 2020—an effort that culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"I suspect that my Republican colleagues do not want to antagonize Trump," Sanders said. "That tells us a little bit about the state of democracy in this country and the Republican Party."

For months, Sanders has been spotlighting the dire warnings of Brazilian civil society and raising the possibility that Bolsonaro will draw from Trump's playbook if Lula wins in October.

Ahead of the presidential contest, Bolsonaro—handed a megaphone by Facebook and other social media platforms—has been raising unsubstantiated claims of fraud and suggesting that "the army is on our side," heightening fears of violence and a military coup attempt. The U.S. supported the 1964 military coup in Brazil, but the Biden administration has reportedly warned Bolsonaro against undermining the 2022 presidential election.

As the Financial Times reported earlier this week, Bolsonaro still has support in crucial segments of the Brazilian business community that oppose Lula retaking the presidency and favor the Brazilian incumbent's corporate-friendly economic record.

"Bolsonaro's indifference to the razing of the Amazon rainforest may alarm the West," the Financial Times wrote, "but the country's powerful soy and beef farmers instead see a champion of their interests."

In a statement earlier this month upon introducing his resolution, Sanders said it "would be unacceptable for the United States to recognize a government that came to power undemocratically, and it would send a horrific message to the entire world."

"The United States should make it clear that we support the democratic process," Sanders added, "and it's important for the people of Brazil to know we're on their side, on the side of democracy."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

A union representing New Zealand tertiary sector staff says a proposal which could lead to massive job cuts at the Auckland University of Technology came completely out of the blue and was a major shock.

Around 230 jobs could be axed as the university suffers a significant drop in international student enrolments, due to the covid-19 pandemic.

AUT yesterday announced it would review administration and support roles and a small number of courses with low enrolments.

• LISTEN TO RNZ CHECKPOINT: ‘People are shocked and horrified – we had no idea this was coming’ – Tina Smith
• AUT announces review of staff roles and low enrolment courses

Programmes included in the university’s proposal included Bachelor’s degrees in Social Sciences, Conflict Resolution, Japanese Studies, and English and New Media.

The faculty with the highest number of proposed cuts is Design and Creative Technologies, with 50 jobs being axed.

Tertiary Education Union national secretary Tina Smith told RNZ Checkpoint she was shocked and horrified by the depth of the cuts.

“The thing that’s horrific, really horrific, is the numbers of staff that they’re talking about – they’re talking about 150 academic and about 80 general professional staff and that’s full time equivalent, in real numbers, in real people numbers, that could be a lot more.”

Smith said a member who had worked there for more than 20 years told her they had never before seen cuts of this magnitude.

Significant international student drop
Costs had increased, international student numbers had dropped significantly, and it had fewer New Zealand students than last year because more people, including school leavers, were choosing to work instead of study, AUT said.

AUT vice-chancellor Toeolesulusulu Professor Damon Salesa said the proposed staff cuts would reduce spending by $21 million a year.

Smith acknowledged that student numbers would be down next year because students had had a tough time due to covid and there was a workforce shortage.

“So there’s that option for students to go and earn some money instead of study,” she said.

“But what we need to do is encourage people into the long-term futures that will do the best for them and their whānau, which is gaining the real skills that they need to rebuild our economy, this country and for businesses.”

Cutting courses and students was “short-term thinking” and not the right approach, she said.

Smith acknowledged that some courses did have low student numbers but said it was important to keep those staff on board and look at alternatives for them.

Faulty ‘benchmarking’
“One of the things they’re [AUT] using for their rationale is that the percentage of staff of our operating expenses is above the benchmarking of other universities.”

But AUT was a comparatively new university so had higher debt and less reserves than some of the more established universities, she said.

AUT had had a high percentage of lower decile students and had been a good employer in the past, Smith said.

“So why change a formula that worked really well? Yes, it’s going to be a bit of a rocky time – but what you do in a rocky time is you stand together, you hold tight and you say, ‘we’re going to take the long view’.”

It was essential not to lose what made your institution valuable, Smith said.

• AUT made a $12.9 million surplus in 2021, after a $12.3 million surplus in 2020. It has a policy of being the “university of choice” for Māori and Pacific students.

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.

As U.S. President Joe Biden visits the Middle East this week, three senators introduced a joint resolution to end the United States' involvement in the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

"This war has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis today and it is past time to end U.S. complicity in those horrors."

The resolution is sponsored by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—and, according to the trio, it is already backed by a bipartisan group of over 100 House members.

"We must put an end to the unauthorized and unconstitutional involvement of U.S. armed forces in the catastrophic Saudi-led war in Yemen and Congress must take back its authority over war," Sanders said in a statement, detailing the dire conditions in the region.

"More than 85,000 children in Yemen have already starved and millions more are facing imminent famine and death," he pointed out. "More than 70% of Yemen's population currently rely on humanitarian food assistance and the U.N. has warned the death toll could climb to 1.3 million people by 2030."

"This war has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis today and it is past time to end U.S. complicity in those horrors," Sanders declared. "Let us pass this resolution, so we can focus on diplomacy to end this war."

While a cease-fire in Yemen has held over the past few months, peace advocates and progressive lawmakers have continued to call for an end to U.S. support for the yearslong war.

"The war in Yemen has been an unmitigated disaster for which all parties to the conflict share responsibility," Leahy said Thursday. "Why are we supporting a corrupt theocracy that brutalizes its own people, in a war that is best known for causing immense suffering and death among impoverished, defenseless civilians?"

Both Leahy and Warren emphasized that U.S. participation was never congressionally authorized.

"The American people, through their elected representatives in Congress, never authorized U.S. involvement in the war—but Congress abdicated its constitutional powers and failed to prevent our country from involving itself in this crisis," Warren said.

Not long after taking office last year, Biden announced an end to U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition's "offensive operations" in Yemen. However, his administration has continued to allow arms sales and provide maintenance and logistical support.

The U.S. president is set to head to Saudi Arabia on Friday. Responsible Statecraft noted Thursday that "in an op-ed explaining the reasoning behind the trip, Biden touted an ongoing truce in Yemen, but didn't say whether he would press for an end to the war."

As the senators' statement explains, their resolution—which follows a similar one introduced in the House last month—would "follow through on Biden's pledge" from last year by:

• Ending U.S. intelligence sharing for the purpose of enabling offensive Saudi-led coalition strikes;
• Ending U.S. logistical support for offensive Saudi-led coalition strikes, including the provision of maintenance and spare parts to coalition members flying warplanes which are bombing Yemen; and
• Prohibiting U.S. military personnel from being assigned to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany Saudi-led coalition forces engaged in hostilities without specific statutory authorization.

The statement highlighted that the resolution "is considered privileged in the Senate and can receive a vote on the floor as soon as 10 calendar days following introduction."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

A leading peace group on Monday said a new report detailing the depth of U.S. support for Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen—hundreds of which have been called war crimes by international legal experts—shows the need for Congress to pass a recently introduced measure to end American complicity in the one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

"Our ongoing complicity is a stain on our nation's soul. Just further reason for Congress to pass the newly introduced Yemen War Powers Resolution."

According to The Washington Post—which along with the Security Force Monitor (SFM) at Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute analyzed thousands of news reports and images to identify warplanes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that have attacked Yemen—"a substantial portion of the air raids were carried out by jets developed, maintained, and sold by U.S. companies, and by pilots who were trained by the U.S. military."

This, despite a February 2021 pledge by President Joe Biden to end U.S. support for "offensive operations" in the Saudi-led war—a promise that has been repeatedly sidestepped via arms sales and a $500 million maintenance contract.

"This is an absolutely devastating analysis of U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen," tweeted the Quaker peace group Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). "Our ongoing complicity is a stain on our nation's soul. Just further reason for Congress to pass the newly introduced Yemen War Powers Resolution."

Last week, a bipartisan group of 48 House lawmakers introduced a War Powers Resolution directing "the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress."

"It's critical that the Biden administration take the steps necessary to fulfill their promise to end U.S. support for the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen," explained Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), one of the resolution's lead sponsors.

"We should not be involved in yet another conflict in the Middle East," he added, "especially a brutal war that has created the world's largest humanitarian crisis, and contributed to the deaths of at least 377,000 civilians."

Writing for Just Security, Priyanka Motaparthy, director of the Counterterrorism, Armed Conflict, and Human Rights Project at Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute, and SFM's Tony Wilson noted Saturday that "during seven years of war, coalition airstrikes have killed nearly 9,000 civilians in Yemen."

"Human rights groups and the United Nations-mandated Group of Eminent Experts have documented more than 300 airstrikes that are likely war crimes or violations of the laws of war," they continued. "These strikes have hit hospitals and other medical facilities, markets, a school bus filled with children, and a funeral hall filled with mourners."

"Independent human rights groups, journalists, and U.N. monitoring bodies have found U.S. weapons used in many of these attacks," the pair added.

The Post-SFM investigation comes amid widespread U.S. and Western condemnation of alleged and documented Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

"Thousands of similar strikes have taken place against Yemeni civilians," the report notes. "The indiscriminate bombings have become a hallmark of the Yemen war, drawing international scrutiny of the countries participating in the air campaign, and those arming them, including the United States."

The report also comes as Biden prepares to visit Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks in a bid to boost relations with the oil-rich kingdom amid record fuel prices driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine—despite a campaign promise to make the nation's leaders "pay the price" for their role in the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The president's decision to visit the fundamentalist kingdom, one of the world's worst human rights violators, stands in stark contrast to the U.S.' exclusion of Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan leaders from the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles—purportedly due to the lack of democracy and respect for human rights in those countries.

Annelle Sheline, a Middle East research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, last week called the introduction of the War Powers Resolution "a key factor in why the warring parties in Yemen decided to extend their ceasefire," which is now in its third month.

Speaking of the resolution on Al Jazeera last week, Sheline said that "if this were to pass, two-thirds of Saudi Arabia's air force would be grounded, because they cannot operate without U.S. military contractors, spare parts, and assistance."

"It very clearly shows," she added, "that the Saudis... don't want to be in the position of losing the ability to fly their own planes if the U.S. does withdraw support."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

In September, Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) declared war on the junta and ordered allied PDF groups around the country — formed to protect civilians from the military in the aftermath of its Feb. 1, 2021, coup — to attack junta targets.

In areas where the PDFs were the strongest, such as in Magway and Sagaing regions in the north and west, the junta armed and trained groups of citizens who support military rule, forming the militia groups now known as the Pyu Saw Htee. The militia — whose name is derived from Pyusawhti, the legendary founder of the first Burmese kingdom — was given carte blanche to make arrests, seize property, kill PDF members and destroy villages, sources have told RFA’s Myanmar Service.

More than 15 months since the military takeover, the two proxy forces have grown substantially and regularly clash throughout the country, where many of their fighters live virtually side by side as residents of neighboring townships and villages that support either the NUG or the junta.

Min Zaw Oo, executive director of the Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security (MIPS), said that even if the junta and the NUG hammer out a resolution to Myanmar’s political crisis, the conflict between the Pyu Saw Htee and the PDF may well continue far into the future.

“These are conflicts that are not easily ended,” he said.

“It’s different from dying in a battle — war can end if a ceasefire is agreed to by two armies. … But such killing between civilians is not easily forgotten. This is a problem that will remain for decades to come. The mistrust will fester and remain a black mark on our society.”

Observers say that between 150 and 200 civilians are killed each month in Myanmar — not on the battlefield, but during violent raids on villages that have in some cases resulted in massacres.

The Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP Myanmar), an independent research group, recently said it had documented the killing of at least 5,646 civilians across the country between the time of the coup and May 10, 2022.

The current chaos is the result of the junta’s failure to control the violence, whether willingly or not, Min Zaw Oo said.

Despite international pressure to defuse the situation through inclusive talks with all of Myanmar’s stakeholders, the junta has not only refused to meet with the NUG, which it calls a “terrorist organization,” it is forcibly “recruiting” Pyu Saw Htee fighters to battle the PDF in regions such as Sagaing and Magway, sources said Wednesday.

Moe Gyi, a resident of Kan Doe village in Magway’s Gangaw township, told RFA that a joint force of junta troops and Pyu Saw Htee fighters entered the tract on May 13 and ordered people there to form a militia.

“They told us to form a Pyu Saw Htee group within a week and said they would set the village on fire if we didn’t do so,” he said.

According to Moe Gyi, a Buddhist monk from the village refused, and the junta forces promised to return in seven days.

“There will be violence,” he said, adding that many residents have fled in fear of the military, which is “expanding their control to the south” of the township through the formation of Pyu Saw Htee militias.

Other sources told RFA that the junta has provided training and weapons to the Pyu Saw Htee in Gangaw’s nearby Myauk Khin Yan and Han Thar Wa Di villages under the direction of “Bullet” Hla Swe, a former member of Parliament for the military proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

USDP spokesperson Nanda Hla Myint said that although the party has not instructed its members to attack the PDF, it would “not stop” those who do.

“We don’t have a party policy directing members to take up arms,” he said. “But it is their right to participate in programs set down by the local authorities, depending on the security situation in their area, so we have nothing to say about it.”

Reports of forced recruitment into pro-junta militias were echoed by a resident of Sagaing’s Pale township named Zaw Zaw, who told RFA on Wednesday that fighters from two Pyu Saw Htee camps in the villages of Imahtee and Zeebyugone have threatened to harm area inhabitants if they do not fight the PDF.

“People were told that food and water supplies will be cut off if they do not take up arms,” he said, adding that the junta is “exploiting” them because it does not even bother to maintain lists of Pyu Saw Htee fighters killed in operations against the PDF.

The junta has repeatedly denied reports that it is behind the expansion of the Pyu Saw Htee, insisting that villagers are willingly and independently forming militia units to protect themselves from the PDF.

Junta deputy minister of information, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, on Wednesday denied reports that the military is forcing villagers to form militias.

“If there is a real need, we will provide training,” he said.

“During the training, we teach them not only how to shoot but also what rules to follow, as well as the duties and responsibilities that any ordinary soldier should know. We are working for the peace of the community in a systematic way.”

Zaw Min Tun said PDF groups “often attack villages when they hear that a militia unit has been formed,” and that they frequently “set them on fire when they withdraw,” then blame the military for the destruction.

Tun Tun Oo, the leader of the Kani Township PDF in Sagaing region, told RFA that the expansion of the Pyu Saw Htee militias would not deter the opposition from its goal of unseating the junta.

“These Pyu Saw Htees have not affected the revolution in general,” he said. “They will gradually disappear. But for the time being, the junta will continue to use them.”

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Myanmar Service.

Human rights defenders on Monday hailed a "historic" U.S. House of Representatives resolution introduced by Rep. Rashida Tlaib and six progressive co-sponsors recognizing the Nakba, the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians perpetrated by the founders of Israel and their descendants pursuing territorial conquest and living space.

"By recognizing this history, we can shift U.S. foreign policy toward justice and accountability."

Tlaib (D-Mich.)—who is the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress—on Monday introduced a House Resolution Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian Refugees' Rights to commemorate the 74th anniversary of the Nakba, or "catastrophe." The measure is co-sponsored by Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), Marie Newman (D-Ill.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

"The Nakba is well-documented and continues to play out today," Tlaib tweeted. "We must acknowledge that the humanity of Palestinians is being denied when folks refuse to acknowledge the war crimes and human rights violations in apartheid Israel."

"Silence and blank checks enable more violence," she added, referring to the billions of dollars in practically unconditional military aid given by the U.S. to Israel each year.

Nadia Saah, director of the advocacy group Project48, said in a statement that "with this historic resolution, Rep. Tlaib and her colleagues have given a voice to Palestinian Nakba survivors and their descendants who have been living in exile and denied the right to return to their homes for 74 years."

"By calling on the U.S. government to commemorate the Nakba and address the historic and ongoing injustice of land theft and the displacement of Palestinian families, they are paving ground towards a durable future rooted in justice, equality, and return," she added.

Sana Siddiq, manager of policy and advocacy campaigns at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, said that her group is "proud to endorse Congresswoman Tlaib's principled Nakba Day resolution."

"To acknowledge the historic and ongoing injustice of Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people is a vital first step," she added. "By recognizing this history, we can shift U.S. foreign policy toward justice and accountability."

The new resolution acknowledges the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from hundreds of cities, towns, and villages—sometimes by massacre, "death march", and other violence—during the formation of the modern state of Israel in 1947 to 1949, as well as the plight of the seven million Palestinian refugees denied the right of return guaranteed under United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194. The measure stands in stark contrast with Israeli legislation criminalizing commemoration of the Nakba.

Tlaib tied the events of 1947-49 with the continuing oppression of Palestinians by Israel, which in addition to illegally occupying and colonizing the West Bank and East Jerusalem stands accused by international, Israeli, and Palestinian human rights thgroups of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes.

"As the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh last week made all too clear, the violence and war crimes are an ongoing and ever-present assault on the existence and humanity of the Palestinian people," Tlaib said in a statement referring to the well-known Palestinian-American Al Jazeera correspondent who was fatally shot in the face last week while covering an Israeli military raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the illegally occupied West Bank.

"The Israeli apartheid government's ongoing ethnic cleansing seeks to degrade Palestinian humanity and break the will of the people to be free," Tlaib added. "Fortunately, as Palestinians and their allies prove time and time again, we will persist no matter the circumstances until peace, freedom, equity, and respect for all people are secured and protected."

Osama Abuirshaid, executive director for Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, asserted that "for more than 74 years, the international community has failed the Palestinian people and denied them their legitimate and inalienable rights."

"For 74 years, the United States colluded with the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people, enabling Israel to defy all human, moral, and legal values," he continued. "The time has come for the United States to correct an ongoing historical mistake it committed by recognizing the Palestinian Nakba, and to pressure Israel to respect American values that call for justice, equality, and freedom for all."

"It is no longer acceptable for Israel to continue to defy binding international resolutions and humanitarian values aided and abetted by the U.S.," he added. "Enough of 74 years of occupation, displacement, and double standards. The Palestinian people deserve the right for self-determination, the Israeli apartheid must no longer enjoy impunity and the U.S. must live up to the values it holds dear."

Stefanie Fox, executive director of the advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said that "in order to build a future rooted in justice and freedom for all, we must reckon with the destruction and permanent displacement Palestinians suffered in 1948 in the name of creating the state of Israel."

"Without addressing the Nakba and the ongoing attempts by the Israeli government to continue displacing Palestinians to this day, there cannot be a truly just and sustainable peace," she added. "Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib's historic resolution is a step toward the sacred work of tikkun olam—of repairing the world—so we can all be free."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Prak Sokhonn, who is also the foreign minister of rotating ASEAN chair Cambodia, traveled to Myanmar from March 21-23 with the expressed goal of facilitating an end to the unrest that has engulfed the country since the military seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup. However, after meeting with junta chief Snr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and other military leaders on Monday, the regime denied the envoy access to Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained head of the deposed National League for Democracy (NLD). Prak Sokhonn also did not meet with members of the shadow National Unity Government (NUG).

Political analyst Sai Kyi Zin Soe called the trip a “failed visit” that was unlikely to move the needle on the crisis.

“It shows [Cambodia] will not be able to resolve the issue even if they want to during their ASEAN leadership role,” he said. “They won’t be able to find an acceptable solution for all of us because they didn’t meet all the people they should have. So, I don’t see any positive outcome from this trip.”

Prak Sokhonn’s visit was highly anticipated by observers who say that leaders of the NLD, which won Myanmar’s November 2020 election by a landslide, must be given a seat at the table for any negotiations on the country’s political future.

Allowing the ASEAN envoy to meet with all stakeholders is a key stipulation of the Five-Point Consensus (5PC) agreed to by Min Aung Hlaing during an emergency gathering of the bloc in April last year. However, ASEAN operates under a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of its member nations and such agreements are non-binding.

On Tuesday, Prak Sokhonn met with the chairman of the lesser-known opposition People’s Party, Ko Ko Gyi, who urged him to pressure the junta on releasing the country’s political prisoners and ending acts of violence against civilians.

Ko Ko Gyi characterized the meeting as a kind of progress and called for further dialogue. However, the People’s Party does not enjoy nearly the same level of support as the NLD and is not expected to mount any real challenge in elections.

The envoy told reporters on Wednesday that he had personally asked Min Aung Hlaing for a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, who was arrested after the coup and faces several charges brought by the military. The junta chief refused the request, citing her ongoing trial.

Prak Sokhonn also acknowledged that the junta had failed to make any real progress on implementing the other points it agreed to in the 5PC, including ending the use of violence against civilians. He said ASEAN would refrain from inviting its representatives to bloc gatherings until it had done so — a policy that has been in place for months.

Criticism of ASEAN

Bo Hla Tint, NUG ambassador to ASEAN, criticized the bloc’s resolutions as toothless and called for stronger measures.

“The junta does not respect nor implement the ASEAN consensus,” said Bo Hla Tint, whose party reached out to Prak Sokhonn about a meeting ahead of his visit but received no answer. “It shows the junta that it is totally impossible for ASEAN to end the violence using such a weak approach to enforcing the current five-point agreement.”

The NUG, which many people in Myanmar see as their only representative body, has held informal talks with ASEAN member states Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines, but has had no contact with Cambodia, the bloc’s chair. The junta says the NUG has no authority and characterizes it as a terrorist organization.

ASEAN expert Daw Moe Thuzar said meeting with Myanmar’s many political stakeholders is crucial to understanding the crisis from all angles.

“Cambodia will only be able to understand the various aspects of the current political crisis and help solve the issue if it holds dialogue with organizations such as the CRPH [Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Committee of Representatives] and NUG, which represent the people of Myanmar and our democracy,” she said.

Repeated attempts by RFA to contact junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment went unanswered on Thursday.

In the lead up to and during Prak Sokhonn’s visit, sources reported a relative lull in clashes in Myanmar’s remote border regions, where the junta has faced tough resistance since launching offensives against ethnic insurgents and branches of the prodemocracy People’s Defense Force (PDF) paramilitary group loyal to the NUG.

But the lull followed what was described as overall intensified fighting throughout the month of March in the areas, which include Sagaing and Magway regions, as well as Chin, Kayin and Kayah states, with rising civilian casualties and the mass displacement of residents fleeing the violence.

Many ethnic armies have been fighting against Myanmar’s military since the country’s 1948 independence. After the coup, several groups threw their support behind local PDF branches to battle junta troops.

Only 10 groups have signed a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the government since 2015, when the document was inked in the presence of international observers and Myanmar’s highest legislature.

The 10 groups suggested in June that the deal remains in place, despite an already flailing peace process that was all but destroyed by the unpopular junta’s coup. However, they say they will not pursue talks with the military, which they view as having stolen power from the country’s democratically elected government.

Dialogue ‘unlikely’

Min Zaw Oo, the director of the Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security, said that given the current situation, it will only be possible for the NUG to enter negotiations after discussions between the junta and the ethnic groups that have signed the ceasefire agreement have taken place.

“At the moment, it is far from possible to talk to the [junta] for some forces, especially groups like NUG and the PDF,” he said.

“Another question is whether the NUG holds enough influence over all the PDF groups in the country. Some of them are not even coordinating with the NUG and operate on their own, without a proper chain of command.”

Political analyst Than Soe Naing agreed that a dialogue between all stakeholders is unlikely.

“In the past 70 years of fighting against the military, [the ethnic armies] were fighting separately from one another, in their own way,” he said. “Now, most of the ethnic armed groups and PDF militias have joined hands and are fighting a civil war, so there is no room for negotiations.”

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Thailand-based rights group, junta security forces have killed more than 1,700 civilians and arrested more than 9,900 since the military coup.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said earlier this week that more than 500,000 people have been displaced by fighting in the country since February 2021.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA’s Myanmar Service.

Ukrainian President Voldomyr Zelenskyy said Monday that bringing an end to Moscow's deadly assault on his country is within reach—but only if Russian President Vladimir Putin stops offering ultimatums and agrees to negotiate the terms of a peaceful settlement.

During an exclusive interview set to air in full on Monday night, ABC World News Tonight host David Muir asked Zelenskyy if he has rejected the Kremlin's "three conditions to end the war—that you must give up on joining NATO, recognize Crimea as part of Russia, and recognize the independence of those two separatist regions in the east."

"The question is more difficult than simply acknowledging [these terms]," Zelenskyy said in response. "This is another ultimatum, and we are not prepared for ultimatums. But we have the possible resolution for these three items—key items."

"What needs to be done," said Zelenskyy, "is for President Putin to start talking and start the dialogue instead of living in the informational bubble without oxygen. I think that's where he is; he is in this bubble. He's getting this information and you don't know how realistic that information is that he's getting."

Russia promised to immediately cease its invasion of Ukraine once the country's leaders agree to the three aforementioned demands earlier on Monday, prior to the third round of negotiations between diplomats from Moscow and Kyiv in Belarus.

Those talks have since come to a close with "small positive movements forward in improving the logistics of humanitarian corridors," according to lead Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak.

When asked what he would like to say to Putin, Zelenskyy said: "I think he's capable of stopping the war that he started. And even if he doesn't think that he was the one who started [it], he should know one important thing that he cannot deny, that stopping the war is what he's capable of."

Warning that a failure to end Russia's war on Ukraine could "trigger a world war," Zelenskyy stressed that "it should be stopped now."

At the same time, Zelenskyy reiterated that he wants the United States and NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine to prevent Russian missiles from destroying civilian infrastructure.

When Muir reminded Zelenskyy that U.S. President Joe Biden and NATO have refused to implement a no-fly zone due to "concerns this could trigger... a much bigger war than what we're seeing already because there would have to be a willingness to shoot Russian planes out of the sky," the Ukrainian president insisted that firing at Russian planes is necessary.

"You have to preserve lives. There... were simply kids there with tumors," Zelenskyy said of a recent Russian missile strike on a pediatric clinic. "And in the university, there were ordinary students. I'm sure that the brave American soldiers who would be shooting it down knowing that it is flying towards the students, I'm sure that they had no doubt in doing so."

However, as Anatol Lieven and William Hartung warned Monday in a Common Dreams opinion piece: "Shooting down Russian planes and bombing Russian anti-aircraft sites would greatly increase the risks of escalation, up to and including a nuclear confrontation. That's reason enough not to go forward, regardless of how loud the demands to do so may be."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, are set to meet in Turkey on Thursday.

"We hope this meeting will be a turning point," said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who is planning to attend the meeting. "We want this meeting to be an important step on the path of peace and stability. We will work for a lasting peace and stability."

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

• California Representative Lieu plans to introduce an impeachment resolution next Monday
• Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar introduces articles of impeachment against Trump after he incites mob
• Followers of the far-right movement say there were warning signs leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol this week
• Civil-rights advocates say the police response to Trump supporters was in stark contrast to responses to peaceful civil-rights protests
• California Governor Newsom unveils his new state budget plan, marking the start of months of negotiations
• California state legislators introduce the Keep California Working Act to help small businesses and nonprofits

The post California Representative Lieu plans to introduce an impeachment resolution next Monday; Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar introduces articles of impeachment against Trump after he incites mob appeared first on KPFA.

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