sluggerotoole--2019-09-26--The present state of Northern Irelands governance can no longer be ignored as October deadline loom

The present state of Northern Ireland’s governance can no longer be ignored as October deadline looms, says the Institute for Government

The think tank closest to Whitehall the Institute for Government has published the most comprehensive report on the state of government in Northern Ireland since the breakdown of Stormont. Here is its executive summary. It deserves to be read in full. Here is the launch video.  Not before time the IfG reminds the UK government of the perils of ignorance and neglect. Rather  generously, it attributes blame for failures as much to the  persistent and  puzzling ignorance of our affairs in London since the GFA,  as to the intractability of our politics.  Written very much within a civil service culture, it has nevertheless avoided pulling too many punches when addressing Westminster and Whitehall. It gives real insight into the Whitehall mentality  and  has given a useful voice to the hard pressed Northern Ireland Civil Service. The best outcome of the report will be signs that the government will adopt the more activist approach it recommends. Brexit makes that both more desirable and more difficult.  The report writers don’t seem to have engaged much with local politicians and have relied for evidence  mainly on civil servants and academics. This was probably wise, given the stand-off and the confidentiality surrounding the fruitless series of talks.  Northern Ireland politics will soon reach a new watershed on the interlinked agenda of  Brexit reaching  a climax of some sort and the UK government being forced to decide on some form of direct rule, with the local parties likely to remain deadlocked at least until a Brexit outcome emerges.  NI business in the Commons will feature on or around 21 October which is the deadline for reviewing progress on restoring the institutions.   In July, back bench amendments to the NI Executive Formation Act on same sex marriage and abortion were accepted as a device to prevent Parliament being prorogued for long. The Bill has since been superseded as a block on prorogation  by the sensational Supreme Court ruling.  But it has had  the equally  sensational and locally more significant result of passing these reforms into law in default of a Stormont restoration. It remains to be seen whether the government will seek to amend them with or without DUP pressure or even introduce a repeal Bill for abortion at least.  There follows  an extended summary of the IfG report. The full version is pretty comprehensive although cautious about peering too far into the future. At first digest its analysis will command  idespread support – although it oddly omits a discussion on a voluntary coalition in its proposed  Assembly reforms.  Everyone we spoke to agreed that the current situation was unacceptable – but had differing views on what the most troubling implications of the prolonged period without ministers were. They variously highlighted: • Pressing issues are going unaddressed – even where there is local agreement. • The inability of civil servants to make policy decisions risks “stagnation and decay” of public services. • There is a lack of scrutiny and accountability. • Opportunities for cross-border working are being missed. • Northern Ireland has been left without proper representation in the Brexit process. • The long-term risk is a deterioration in community relations.  On 24 July 2019, over two years after the Hart Inquiry ( into Historical Institutional Abuse)  concluded, then minister of state for Northern Ireland, John Penrose, told the House of Commons that the UK government would introduce legislation after summer recess  a commitment that the new NI secretary, Julian Smith, reiterated in August.  The Domestic Abuse Bill introduced to the House of Commons on 16 July extends the offence of coercive control to Northern Ireland. The decision in September by Prime Minister Johnson to end the parliamentary session meant that the bill was expected to fall, but with the Supreme Court’s decision that prorogation was unlawful it could continue its passage unless and until parliament is prorogued again.  Despite these recent commitments, such changes will require primary legislation – unless direct rule is imposed. And with continuing parliamentary battles over Brexit and the vulnerability of Johnson’s minority government, it is unlikely that devolved Northern Ireland issues will be a priority of the UK government in the near future – so the list of outstanding issues is likely to grow the longer the executive is absent  The inability of civil servants to make policy decisions risks “stagnation and decay” of public services Most senior civil servants we spoke to told us that the biggest consequence of the absence of an executive was not an immediate ‘cliff-edge’ caused by a lack of short-term decision making, but a longer-term inability to develop new policy or change policy direction. Many interviewees told us of the major structural changes to public services that are needed in Northern Ireland to run government effect  But even where there is clear policy direction on transformation there are still important decisions that civil servants do not feel can be made in the absence of political cover. A prime example is the merging of NI hospital emergency departments, where performance has always been worse than their English comparator, but has been in further decline since 2017  In its review of education funding in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee said that “the political deadlock at Stormont has meant that the education system has been unable to respond to the urgent challenges facing schools”, and that the UK’s approach of passing budgets for Northern Ireland on a rolling annual basis “has been an obstacle to investment and improvement in children’s education”.  Officials in the Department of Infrastructure told us that there is a public perception that the absence of ministers has meant that there is a big pile of projects waiting for sign off. In reality, however, there is no money for new projects to sign off on – and officials feel they cannot commit any capital sums for future projects that would pre-empt the decisions of incoming ministers.  There are also important decisions to be made about the long-term funding of water infrastructure. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that currently does not have domestic water charges, but officials and regulators have warned that the underfunding of water infrastructure is becoming increasingly unsustainable and could act as a brake on future economic development.  The Westminster institutions have done little to fill the scrutiny gap left by the absence of the NI Assembly. As a consequence of the UK government’s unwillingness to legislate until the last minute, most Northern Ireland bills have been subject to the emergency legislation procedure. In recent times, bills have usually been passed in one day in the Commons – having committee stage on the floor of the house rather than in public bill committees – and have passed through the Lords in two days. This means that legislation is often subject to little or no scrutiny, and there are few, if any, opportunities for concerned parties in Northern Ireland to feed into the process.  This absence of political representation was made even more problematic by the fact that the Northern Ireland perspective has often been missing in Whitehall, too. The Northern Ireland Office lacks the clout within government to ensure that Northern Ireland issues were given the priority they perhaps deserved. Officials told us that the culture of ‘no bad news’ among ministers translated into a reluctance to address the difficult issues raised by the Irish border and need for cross-border co-operation – for example, the operation of the Single Electricity Market.  In the absence of a plurality of Northern Ireland voices in Westminster, civil society in Northern Ireland has taken a more high-profile role than previously. Business, farming and human rights groups have publicly outlined their views on the consequences of Brexit on their respective sectors, and have been increasingly vocal in opposing no deal.25 This is unusual in Northern Ireland, where many civil society groups have been traditionally reluctant to speak out on political issues.  The absence of an executive is prompting remarkably little comment It is striking how readily accepted the prolonged absence of the executive seems to be.  The current arrangements could not survive a no-deal Brexit It is also clear that this vacuum could not survive no deal – as both UK ministers and Northern Ireland civil servants have acknowledged. Unless power-sharing is resumed, a no-deal Brexit will require UK ministers to take some sort of legislative control, as officials will not be able to take the fast-pace and wide-ranging policy decisions that will be required to manage the fallout – and cannot be held accountable for those decisions.*  Whether that constitutes full-on direct rule, or more limited Brexit-related powers, is uncertain. But no one should underestimate how controversial the imposition of direct rule in the circumstances of a no-deal Brexit would be. Such a move would attract strong criticism from nationalists, the Irish government and key figures in the US, who would likely argue that this would be an infringement of the GFA. When direct rule was last imposed, in 2002, there was an understanding that power-sharing was in its infancy and that teething problems were inevitable. Now, 20 years on, a decision to impose direct rule would be much more significant act.,  Polling from August 2019 suggests that a majority of people in Northern Ireland would also back a Northern Ireland-only backstop; although only one in six unionists would…  The UK government would undoubtedly be widely blamed for any economic fallout – north and south of the border – caused by a no-deal exit. In these circumstances, hopes of an imminent return of devolved government would be dashed. A no-deal Brexit would drive a further wedge between the parties, and the difficulties it would create would likely disincentivise any political party from re-entering government. The history of Northern Ireland shows that once imposed, direct rule often remains in place for a long time.  Many people suggest that power-sharing is near to its last chance saloon, and that any further collapses would leave big question marks over how to govern Northern Ireland in the long term. Whatever problems devolution has encountered, everyone we spoke to was clear that Northern Ireland had benefited from its return and that when the parties could act together that brought solid gains to Northern Ireland. This is perhaps best manifested in the fact that Northern Ireland has become a major tourist destination in recent years – external overnight trips increased by 34% between 2013 and 201835 – and that figure will have been further boosted in 2019 by the hosting of the Open golf tournament for the first time since 1951.  If the current attempts to restore power-sharing falter – and the government is not forced by a no-deal Brexit to change approach – the NI secretary should set out clearly the government’s long-term plan for governance in Northern Ireland, including how it intends to address the scrutiny gap.  It should also outline how it will ensure that the people of Northern Ireland do not suffer from the failure of their politicians to co-operate. Prime Minister Johnson has said restoration is a priority: he now needs to act as though it truly is.  He must also think how a power-sharing executive can be supported through the type of Brexit he is pushing for. The excuse that everything is on hold until power-sharing comes back is well past its sell-by date.  Whatever comes next, good UK–Irish relations are of great importance Co-operation between the UK and Irish governments is essential to any successful strategy in Northern Ireland. But Brexit has meant official relations between the two are at their lowest ebb since well before the 1990s. The Irish government considers itself as the co-guarantor of the GFA; the UK government has been reluctant to embrace such a characterisation, although Dublin’s central role in power-sharing talks is widely acknowledged. Officials present during the St Andrews Agreement, which paved the way for the last successful restoration of the executive, highlighted the importance of the British and Irish governments working in ‘lockstep’.  If direct rule is imposed, nationalist parties would expect a role for the Irish government. Both Sinn Féin and the SDLP have said they would favour a “joint authority” approach where Northern Ireland is co-governed by the UK and Irish governments – but the UK has ruled this out. Nonetheless, the Irish government will want to make full use of its entitlement under the GFA to involvement in Northern Ireland affairs (though without the derogation from sovereignty) through the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference. This institution, although disliked by unionists, is an essential part of the GFA. The government must find ways to repair its relationship with the Irish government, for the sake of Northern Ireland. Those institutions will be more important than ever as the UK leaves the EU. Irish diplomats have stressed that the fact that the UK and Ireland were both EU members, and often acted in concert in the EU, provided a forum for building and normalising relations that had been strained over the previous 50 years. The UK’s exit reduces that opportunity:38 the UK will have to actively invest in maintaining good relations with Ireland.  There will be further recommendations on how to improve the functioning of NI government when the Renewable Heat Initiative (RHI) Inquiry1 report is released. Those recommendations may cover capacity in the civil service and its need to formalise internal processes, the relationships between ministers and civil servants and the role of special advisers. David Sterling, head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) told the inquiry that 14 actions were already being put in place to address shortcomings.  We do not attempt replicate the detail of that inquiry or its likely recommendations here. Instead, we look at possible reforms that might increase the capacity of the political institutions in Northern Ireland to address the longer-term challenges people we spoke to identified. The seven areas for practical improvement are:  Increase the capacity for scrutiny by the Northern Ireland Assembly.  The government has also come under increasing pressure to address discrepancies in abortion and LGBT rights that exist between the UK and Northern Ireland. During the passage of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Bill 2017–19, amendments were added to compel the government to extend same-sex marriage to Northern Ireland and to liberalise abortion laws – both issues the government considered to be devolved matters – on which MPs were given a free vote. These provisions will come into force should the executive not be restored by 21 October 2019. Further amendments were subsequently added, including requirements for the NI secretary to report to Parliament on the progress of executive formation on specified dates, to limit the window in which the government could prorogue Parliament and to ensure that Parliament sits in the run-up to the UK’s current date for EU withdrawal on 31 October. The bill was passed into law in July 2019.  Scrutiny in the Assembly is also underdeveloped. The creation in 2016 of an official opposition is a new feature that requires further development; committees have done some great work but are often not taken seriously by ministers. To effectively hold the executive to account, the Assembly needs to develop its own identity, distinct from government, and ensure it has the appropriate resources to effectively scrutinise it.  The NICS should be applauded for how it has handled the absence of ministers, but as the Renewable Heat Incentive Inquiry into the ‘cash-for-ash’ scandal is expected to outline in its report due in November 2019, there are areas – such as transparency, collaboration across departments and capability – where there is room for improvement. Reform is needed.  In Westminster and Whitehall, the NI-specific implications of policies or issues are rarely considered, the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) is marginalised, and there is a poor general understanding of local issues. Greater clarification of the role of the NIO and steps to improve Northern Ireland literacy are necessary.  The government’s no-deal planning assumptions – Operation Yellowhammer, released in September 2019 – state that in the event of no deal, the government will not impose new checks, to avoid a hard border. However, it also notes that “the model is likely to prove unsustainable due to significant economic, legal and bio-security risks and no effective mitigations to address this will be available”.  We argue that the UK government and the British political establishment has not treated Northern Ireland and the Irish dimension of Brexit with the seriousness it deserves since the 2016 referendum, and even following the collapse of the power-sharing executive.  Finally, we look at whether it might be possible after any future return of power-sharing to bolster NI political institutions to make it easier for local politicians to address longer-term issues.  More generally, departments have taken different approaches to working without ministers depending on the nature of the departmental work, the level of ministerial intervention when the executive was running, the level of clear policy direction pre-collapse and, in some cases, the individual personalities of senior officials and their willingness to take possibly risky decisions, for example, the Department of Health (DoH) benefits from a 10-year plan Health and Wellbeing 2026: Delivering Together, approved by the executive before its collapse and published in May 2016. In an interview with Civil Service World, DoH Permanent Secretary Richard Pengelly, said that “the first couple of years are largely getting your sleeves rolled up and starting to do the hard graft”6 so civil servants have been able to get on with delivering this. By contrast, there had been little new policy direction from ministers in the Department of Education prior to the collapse. As such, the focus of the department has been on maintaining the current system, not reforming it.  Officials have had to manage preparations for Brexit without local political input  Intergovernmental working at an official level has generally been good, but there have been concerns that Northern Ireland-specific issues are not being adequately considered in UK preparations. This is in part because UK officials have been reluctant to force their ministers to confront the issues associated with managing the land border and north–south relations after Brexit.  There is a general wariness in Whitehall to share information on Brexit preparation with the devolved administrations – a consequence of the UK government’s distrust of Holyrood – hampering the ability of civil servants in the devolved administrations to plan accordingly. A lack of knowledge, and a failure to think through the implications of UK-wide initiatives for Northern Ireland, have also meant the NICS has repeatedly had to draw issues – such as unintentionally inflammatory communications* – to the attention of Whitehall colleagues.  Although the officials from Belfast can speak, the ministers from Scotland and Wales take precedence and the NICS officials do not raise the same sort of political objections as the Scottish and Welsh governments (although we have heard anecdotal evidence that Scottish and Welsh ministers often feel obliged to highlight issues that affect Northern Ireland in such fora).  Also in the absence of ministerial direction, Northern Ireland has not been able to develop clear thinking on its post-Brexit approach in key areas such as agriculture, fisheries and environmental protection. This has hampered its ability to feed into the discussions on the UK-wide commons frameworks necessary to ensure co-ordination and consistency across the UK in certain devolved policy areas that are to be repatriated from the EU.  The lack of ministerial voice from Northern Ireland places an additional responsibility on the Northern Ireland secretary to make sure that Northern Ireland’s concerns are properly addressed in all UK government Brexit discussions – and to make sure that they fully reflect the whole range of local concerns. While Theresa May’s Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, was on her key EU exit committee, her successor, Julian Smith, does not sit on the XS Committee, the Johnson administration’s key EU exit strategy committee.  This report highlights some of the consequences of such a prolonged period of governing without ministers:


sputnik--2019-12-11--Israeli Parliament Launches Dissolution Procedures Amid Political Deadlock - Statement

The current convocation lasted less than three months, the shortest period in the country's history. The bill was passed hours before the legislature's mandate to form a governing coalition expired.  On Monday, Israel's two largest parties, Likud and the Blue and White political alliance, agreed that if the current Knesset dissolved itself as expected on Wednesday, the country would hold new a parliamentary election on 2 March.  Following the April general election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the head of Likud, failed to form a viable coalition. Another election in September saw Benny Gantz of the Blue and White alliance pull slightly ahead of the current prime minister but still fall short of a majority.


thehill--2019-01-24--Senate rejects two measures to end shutdown

Senate Republicans blocked a stopgap measure to end the partial shutdown on Thursday, the second of two failed efforts to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.  Senators voted 52-44 on the legislation, falling short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a filibuster.  GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander Andrew (Lamar) Lamar AlexanderGrassley to test GOP on lowering drug prices McConnell blocks House bill to reopen government for second time Senators restart shutdown talks — and quickly hit roadblocks MORE (Tenn.), Susan Collins Susan Margaret CollinsGOP seeks to change narrative in shutdown fight Trump pitches new plan to reopen government amid Dem pushback The Memo: Concern over shutdown grows in Trump World MORE (Maine), Cory Gardner Cory Scott GardnerGOP seeks to change narrative in shutdown fight The Memo: Concern over shutdown grows in Trump World Senate Republicans eye rules change to speed Trump nominees MORE (Colo.), Johnny Isakson John (Johnny) Hardy IsaksonOn The Money: Shutdown Day 27 | Trump fires back at Pelosi by canceling her foreign travel | Dems blast 'petty' move | Trump also cancels delegation to Davos | House votes to disapprove of Trump lifting Russia sanction Leaders nix recess with no shutdown deal in sight Senators offer measure naming Saudi crown prince 'responsible' for Khashoggi slaying MORE (Ga.), Lisa Murkowski Lisa Ann MurkowskiMomentum for earmarks grows with Dem majority New momentum for Equal Rights Amendment Trump pitches new plan to reopen government amid Dem pushback MORE (Alaska) and Mitt Romney Willard (Mitt) Mitt RomneyFederal court hands Dems big win in Virginia redistricting case The Memo: Diverse Democratic field lines up for 2020 The Senate should host the State of the Union MORE (Utah) broke rank and voted to advance the stopgap bill, which would have reopened the quarter of the government currently shuttered and funded it through Feb. 8.  The vote came after the Senate also rejected a White House–backed proposal on Thursday that would have exchanged reopening the government for $5.7 billion for the wall. It would have allowed Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients and some temporary protected status holders to apply for a three-year extension of some legal protections, but included new restrictions on asylum seekers.  In a blow to Trump, that proposal got less support in the Senate than the stopgap measure, failing in a 50-47 vote.  The back-to-back failed votes in the Senate guarantees that the partial government shutdown will stretch into next week. More than 800,000 federal workers have been furloughed or forced to work without pay; they will miss their second paycheck on Friday.  The rejection of the stopgap bill comes after the Senate passed a continuing resolution (CR) late last month that would have prevented the partial shutdown and funded the government through Feb. 8. But the political landscape changed dramatically for Republicans after President Trump Donald John TrumpTrump: I will deliver State of the Union 'when the shutdown is over' Former NYPD commander claims Trump got special treatment for gun licenses Colbert starts petition for Cardi B to give State of the Union rebuttal MORE indicated that he would not support it without extra funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.  The earlier bill was passed in a voice vote with senators singing Christmas carols while they waited for the vote.  The moods have changed considerably since then.  “Leader McConnell says that President Trump’s bill is the only way to open up the government — bull. He claims our bill won’t pass because President Trump won’t sign it. Has he ever heard of a veto override? Has he ever heard of Article I?” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerCongress: Americans in Puerto Rico still need our help Airbnb is doing the Democrats' dirty work Protecting our judiciary must be a priority in the 116th Congress MORE (D-N.Y.) said from the Senate floor on Thursday.  Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans believe Trump is more to blame for the partial shutdown. A Fox News poll released Thursday found that 51 percent say Trump is more to blame, compared to Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Federal workers will mess their second paycheck during the shutdown on Friday.  Sen. Brian Schatz Brian Emanuel SchatzDemocrats signal they'll reject Trump shutdown proposal Trump expected to pitch immigration deal to end funding stalemate Dem senators debate whether to retweet Cardi B video criticizing Trump over shutdown MORE (D-Hawaii) said in a tweet on Friday that it wasn't “tenable” for Republicans to vote against reopening the government.  “You don’t get to say you want the government open but vote against the bill to reopen the government. It’s time to walk the talk,” Schatz said.  But Trump has shown no signs of backing down from his demand for wall funding. He tweeted on Thursday morning ahead of the vote: “Without a Wall there cannot be safety and security at the Border or for the U.S.A. BUILD THE WALL AND CRIME WILL FALL!”  Senate Republicans have largely remained aligned with Trump. They are defending a majority of their 2020 Senate seats in red states and don’t want to set up a fight with the president over an issue viewed as crucial to their base.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellAir travel union leaders warn of 'unprecedented' safety risks as shutdown continues On The Money: Shutdown Day 33 | Fight over State of the Union | Pelosi tells Trump no speech on Tuesday | Trump teases 'alternative' address | Trump adviser warns shutdown could hurt growth | Mulvaney seeks list of vulnerable programs Demonstrators protesting shutdown arrested outside McConnell's office MORE (R-Ky.) tried to characterize the decision between the two votes as wanting to make a “law,” by backing the GOP effort, or trying to make “points,” by supporting the short-term continuing resolution.  Republicans are trying to drive a wedge between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro PelosiTrump: I will deliver State of the Union 'when the shutdown is over' Colbert starts petition for Cardi B to give State of the Union rebuttal On The Money: Shutdown Day 33 | Fight over State of the Union | Pelosi tells Trump no speech on Tuesday | Trump teases 'alternative' address | Trump adviser warns shutdown could hurt growth | Mulvaney seeks list of vulnerable programs MORE (D-Calif.) and Democrats, who have remained deeply unified throughout the weeks-long fight.  “They know the Speaker of the House is unreasonable on these subjects, with her own members and her own House majority leader openly contradicting her on national television, and that Senate Democrats are not obligated to go down with her ship,” McConnell said from the Senate floor.  Senators are hoping that both bills failing would force Trump and Democrats to restart talks, which derailed during a White House meeting earlier this month, though Thursday’s votes provided no clear path to a quick solution.  A group of moderate senators are continuing to talk behind closed doors and have floated asking for a temporary CR in exchange for agreeing to take up Trump's border request. Sen. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamDOJ opinion will help protect kids from dangers of online gambling Graham angers Dems by digging into Clinton, Obama controversies Barr’s first task as AG: Look at former FBI leaders’ conduct MORE (R-S.C.), who has been a part of that group, reiterated on Thursday that he still wanted to pass a three-week stopgap bill but they likely needed more buy-in from Pelosi if they were going to gain traction.  Some GOP senators, including members of leadership, have also floated potentially broadening negotiations, by including more issues viewed as important Trump and Democrats, as an exit path.  “I actually think the president will have moved this process forward,” said Sen. Roy Blunt Roy Dean BluntMomentum for earmarks grows with Dem majority McConnell: Senate won't override Trump veto on shutdown fight Senate immigration talks fall apart MORE (R-Mo.), a member of GOP leadership, “by beginning the process of expanding it so that we can reach a conclusion.”


aljazeera--2019-12-26--Turkish court rules Wikipedia block violates rights

Turkey's Constitutional Court has ruled that a more than two-year block on access to online encyclopaedia Wikipedia in the country is a violation of freedom of expression.  Turkey blocked Wikipedia in April 2017, accusing it of being part of a "smear campaign" against the country, after the website refused to remove content that allegedly portrayed Turkey as supporting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) group and other organisations. • Twitter removes 5,929 Saudi accounts it deems to be state-backed  On its website, the court said on Thursday it had ruled "that freedom of expression, which is under the protection of the 26th clause of the constitution, had been violated". The ruling opens the way for lifting the website ban.  Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organisation that hosts Wikipedia, had applied to Turkey's highest court to challenge the access block.  "One of the sad issues is this: We expressed on every platform since the first day that the process of blocking access to the whole of Wikipedia was unlawful," Gonenc Gurkaynak, a lawyer representing Wikimedia, wrote on Twitter.  "Still, we had to drag out the subject by filing a lawsuit both with the [Constitutional Court] and [the European Court of Human Rights] and fight for this issue for years," he said.  The ruling was passed by a 10-to-six majority in the court, said Yaman Akdeniz, a lawyer who had applied to the court as a user.  Turkey blocked Wikipedia in April 2017 when the telecommunications watchdog cited a law allowing it to ban access to sites deemed obscene or a threat to national security.  The Constitutional Court needs to send a written statement to Turkey's telecommunication watchdog for the ban to be lifted, Akdeniz told Reuters news agency, adding that in the past similar rulings were implemented within 24 hours.  "Legally the [lower] court does not have the right to resist this ruling," he said. But he added there have been recent examples in which lower courts did not immediately implement the Constitutional Court ruling.  Akdeniz said the articles that led to the ban would remain online.  The independence of Turkey's judiciary has been hotly debated in recent years, with critics saying court rulings are influenced by politicians.  President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling AK Party deny such claims, saying the judiciary makes its decisions independently.  Many Turks have found ways to circumvent the ban on Wikipedia and other blocked websites.


breitbart--2019-08-20--Bokhari The Koch-Soros Alliance to Censor the Internet

Bokhari: The Koch-Soros Alliance to Censor the Internet

Organizations established by left-winger George Soros and libertarian Charles Koch have been working together on a key priority of globalist neoliberals and neoconservatives: censorship of the Internet.  Last year, the Charles Koch Institute pledged its support for the “After Charlottesville Project,” an initiative organized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) aimed at combating “online extremism.”  Sponsors of the initiative include Comcast, NBC Universal, the Kresge Foundation, and the George Soros Charitable Foundation.  Other groups involved in the project include a host of Soros-funded organizations, including “Hope not Hate,” the British equivalent of the far-left SPLC, and the pro-immigration National Immigration Forum.  The former group, Hope not Hate, has a reputation for far-left extremism. Liberal anti-extremism campaigner Maajid Nawaz accused them of “book burning” after it announced a campaign to get allegedly “racist” books banned by major retailers. It was also forced to retract a smear against a Jewish pro-Israel activist last year.  The National Immigration Forum, which initially aimed to persuade evangelicals and conservatives to support amnesty for illegal aliens, was exposed for its ties to George Soros by Breitbart News in 2013.  The ADL, which leads the After Charlottesville Project, was once a politically neutral anti-semitism watchdog. However, under former Obama White House official Jonathan Greenblatt, it has shifted in a markedly partisan direction, accusing President Trump of “racism” and attempting to blame rising anti-semitism on Trump supporters.  The Charles Koch Institute, once seen as a conservative nemesis of the left, has now aligned itself with this group of left-wing, pro-censorship, anti-Trump agitators. When it comes to censoring the Internet, both the progressive and “conservative” establishment appear to be converging on a common position.  More recently, the Charles Koch Institute has teamed up with Engine, a Google-funded think tank to host a series of events on internet content moderation, billed as discussions about “how and why various Internet companies of all sizes moderate their users’ content to the benefit of the platform and its users.”  Attendees at the events have included representatives from Airbnb, Cloudflare, Tumblr, the Wikimedia Foundation, and Automattic, the company that owns and operates the Wordpress.com blogging platform.  ADL-like rhetoric about fighting “hate” or “extremism” is frequently used as a pretext by major tech platforms to censor lawful expression. In one such example, just over a month before their representative attended the Koch-organized panel on content moderation, Automattic deleted several Wordpress blogs aimed at tracking the spread of radical Islam.  The Charles Koch Institute now appears committed to advancing Internet censorship — or “content moderation,” as they might call it. Sarah Ruger, the Institute’s director of “free expression initiatives” has praised Airbnb for canceling the reservations of far-right activists, and has called for “online hate” to be treated like a “virus.”  As always, there’s an elephant in the room — what counts as “online hate?”  Are you an insider at Google, Facebook, Twitter or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com.  Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.


abcnews--2019-01-21--Billionaire fortunes grew 12 percent in 2018 as worlds poorest got 11 percent poorer

Billionaire fortunes grew 12 percent in 2018 as world's poorest got 11 percent poorer

In 2018, billionaire fortunes grew by 12 percent -- about $2.5 billion every day -- as the world's 3.8 billion poorest people lost about 11 percent of their wealth, according to a report by Oxfam launched to coincide with this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.  The number of billionaires has doubled since the financial crisis a decade ago, according to the report, with a millionaire becoming a billionaire roughly every other day.  "The last ten years clearly shows that we have learned nothing," Paul O'Brien, Oxfam America's vice president for policy and campaigns, said in a Jan. 20 statement. "While corporations and the super-rich enjoy the lowest tax bills, millions of girls around the world have no access to a decent education and women are dying due to a lack of maternity care."  Oxfam, which spans more than 90 countries and is dedicated to ending world poverty, according to the organization's website, has estimated that raising taxes by 0.5 percent on the world's richest 1 percent of earners would generate $418 billion annually that could go toward education and healthcare, ultimately saving more than 3 million people.  "The 2017 US tax bill is super-charging the worldwide tax race to the bottom and exacerbating the trend of governments dramatically cutting tax rates for wealthy individuals and corporations around the world," Oxfam said the statement. "The top rate of personal income tax in rich countries fell from 62 percent in 1970 to just 38 percent in 2013. The average rate in poor countries is just 28 percent. ... The corporate tax rate has been similarly slashed around the world over the past decades, with some countries now mulling over further cuts in response to the US move to do so."  O'Brien called the United States' latest tax law "a master class on how to favor massive corporations and the richest citizens" because it "rewards US companies that have trillions stashed offshore, encourages US companies to dodge foreign taxes on their foreign profits, and fuels a global race to the bottom that benefits big business and wealthy individuals at the expense of poor people everywhere."  Every day, Oxfam reported, about 10,000 people die because they can't access affordable healthcare.  "The only winners in the race to the bottom on corporate tax are the wealthiest among us," O'Brien added. "Now is the time to work towards a new set of tax rules that work for the many, not the few."


aljazeera--2019-01-21--Oxfam Worlds richest 26 own same wealth as poorest half

Oxfam: World's richest 26 own same wealth as poorest half

The world's 26 richest people own the same wealth as the poorest half of humanity, according to Oxfam International, as it urged governments to rise taxes on the wealthy to fight soaring inequality.  Billionaires around the world, who have almost doubled in number since the 2008 global financial crisis, saw their combined fortunes grow by $2.5bn a day, while the 3.8 billion people at the bottom of the scale saw their wealth decline by 11 percent in 2018, said the UK-based charity's annual inequality report on Monday.  The findings were released in the face of the World Economic Forum, which kicks off in the Swiss city of Davos on Tuesday.  The world's richest man, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, saw his fortune increase to $112bn last year, Oxfam said, pointing out that just one percent of his wealth was the equivalent to the entire health budget of Ethiopia, a country of 105 million people.  Analysts found that 3.4 billion people have barely escaped extreme poverty and are living on less than $5.50 a day while stressing the growing gap between rich and poor was undermining the fight against poverty, damaging economies, and increasing public anger.  "Our economy is broken with hundreds of millions of people living in extreme poverty while huge rewards go to those at the very top," Oxfam said.  "People across the globe are angry and frustrated," warned Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam's executive director, in a statement.  "Governments must now deliver real change by ensuring corporations and wealthy individuals pay their fair share of tax," she added, arguing this money could be used for education and healthcare to lift people out of poverty.  The report also said women and girls are the hardest hit by rising inequality, as men own 50 percent more of the total global wealth and control 86 percent of corporations.  Oxfam analysts acknowledged the number of extremely poor people was reduced by half between 1990 and 2010, and has since fallen further to 736 million.  They also noted, however, tax rates for high incomes have fallen in wealthy countries over the past decades.  "The super-rich and corporations are paying lower rates of tax than they have in decades," the Oxfam report said, pointing out "the human costs - children without teachers, clinics without medicines - are huge."  Calls for increased taxes on the wealthy have multiplied amid growing popular outrage in a number of countries over swelling inequality.  In the United States, new Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made headlines earlier this month by proposing to tax the ultra-rich up to 70 percent.  And in Europe, the "yellow vest" movement that has rocked France with anti-government protests since November is demanding that President Emmanuel Macron repeal controversial tax cuts on high earners.  Oxfam said getting the world's richest one percent to pay just 0.5 percent extra tax on their wealth could raise more money than it would cost to educate the 262 million children out of school, and provide life-saving healthcare for 3.3 million people.  It also suggested governments look again at taxes on inheritances or property, which have been reduced or eliminated in much of the developed world and barely implemented in the developing world.


aljazeera--2019-01-06--Top 10 countries most at risk of humanitarian disaster in 2019

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has named the countries most at risk of being hit by humanitarian catastrophe next year, with Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan topping the top 10 list.  As wars, famines and other disasters loom over several countries, 2019 is set to be another arduous year for millions of people around the world.  The next seven at-risk countries identified by the IRC's emergency response experts are Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Central African Republic, Syria, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Somalia.  The risks are both human (armed conflicts or economic collapse) as well as natural (droughts, floods and other climate-related events).  Internal or external displacement is the defining trend in the IRC list. Around 40 million people have been displaced across the world, with the top 10 countries accounting for over half - or nearly 22 million - of those displacements.  The 10 countries also account for at least 13 million refugees, 65 percent of the global total, plus an additional three million people who have fled Venezuela.  According to the United Nations, nearly 132 million people in 42 countries around the world will need humanitarian assistance, including protection, in 2019.  This photo gallery was provided by the International Rescue Committee


foreignpolicy--2019-02-24--Theres More Bad News Than You Think

There’s More Bad News Than You Think

There’s More Bad News Than You Think  Between the 24-hour news cycle, the internet, and the smartphone the world has never been so saturated with information. Yet a new report by CARE International finds that humanitarian crises affecting millions of people around the world snagged relatively few headlines last year.  The report, “Suffering in Silence,” also found that climate change played a direct role in at least five of the 10 most underreported humanitarian crises of 2018, from chronic droughts in Ethiopia to Typhoon Mangkhut in the Philippines. The tally underscores how the developing world, which has less historical responsibility for the emissions that cause climate change, is feeling its effects earliest and hardest.  In Madagascar, which the report describes as being at the front line of climate change, drought and unfavorable weather conditions have withered crops, while food prices hover close to record highs. Malnutrition is already rampant in Madagascar, which will likely be compounded by crop failure. Almost half of Madagascar’s children are stunted, which can hurt their cognitive and mental growth for the rest of their lives. Madagascar was ranked as the third most underreported crisis on the list.  The report looked at man-made or natural disasters affecting more than 1 million people, then analyzed online media reports to weigh the coverage they received. While the earthquake in Haiti made international headlines in 2010, the country’s chronic food shortages were the most underreported crisis of last year, the study found. Haiti was ranked fourth on the 2018 Long-Term Climate Risk Index, and the country is still struggling to recover from droughts in northern areas at the beginning of last year. Frequent natural disasters and extreme poverty have left half of the country facing the continued threat of extreme hunger, with almost a quarter of children in Haiti chronically malnourished.  Wars and revolutions galvanize global attention. Long-term droughts don’t. A lack of news coverage has real-world consequences, said Sven Harmeling, CARE International’s global policy Lead on climate change and resilience.  “If there is not enough media attention, it often means that there is a lack of political attention in terms of confronting the causes of the problem, but also in delivering the support and help that the people affected need,” he said. Cutbacks in news organizations’ foreign bureaus, he noted, have affected the ability of newsrooms to maintain their coverage of these crises.  While refugee and migrant flows to Europe and the United States have dominated headlines in the West in recent years, the report notes that over 80 percent of the world’s refugees currently live in developing countries. Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, currently hosts over 170,000 refugees from neighboring Nigeria and Mali. In Niger, which CARE International ranks eighth on the list of underreported crises, this has further strained a country already battling chronic food insecurity.  The report, which makes clear how climate change can reshape the security environment, comes at a time with the United States has stepped back from global efforts to combat climate change. President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change, undone a number of Obama-era climate change policies, and appointed a former coal industry lobbyist to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Most recently, he appointed a climate change skeptic to lead a White House initiative to denigrate the security threat from climate change that his own Pentagon is busy preparing for.  In January, Trump posted a tweet mocking global warming as large parts of the United States braced for winter storms.  “The evidence and scientific facts are so clear that not acting is coming close to a crime against humankind,” said Harmeling of CARE International.  One big problem: The places most likely to suffer as climate change intensifies are the ones with the least ability to gather the kind of detailed data that could help build predictive models.  “In the places where we see the biggest vulnerability, the highest human suffering, we are least able to provide precise numbers,” said Maarten van Aalst, the director of the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre.  Van Aalst, along with the U.S. military and intelligence community, stresses that many global disasters are caused by a confluence of factors, of which climate change is just one ingredient. “Climate change is acting as a risk magnifier for many of these disasters, but we shouldn’t blame climate change on its own,” he said.  Still, it’s a devastating magnifier, especially where infrastructure is weak and resilience is weaker.  “The first climate shock erodes vulnerability further, so the second shock hits people even harder and erodes vulnerability even further, so that the third shock is an even bigger killer,” van Aalst said.


ipolitics--2019-02-21--The Drilldown Report finds climate change most underreported humanitarian crisis

The Drilldown: Report finds climate change most underreported humanitarian crisis

Food shortages borne of intense drought and hurricanes devastated countries such as Ethiopia. (Photo: CC, via News API.)  According to a study examining over a million online news stories, climate change caused the majority of underreported humanitarian disasters last year.  Food shortages borne of intense drought and hurricanes devastated countries such as Ethiopia and Haiti, but received less than 1,000 articles’ worth of coverage.  “Not only are the people who live in the world’s poorest countries most vulnerable to climate change, but they are also the least equipped to address its increasing impacts,” Sven Harmeling, climate change lead for report commissioner Care International, told the Guardian. “Media must not turn a blind eye to such crises and the role of climate change.”  In 2018, extreme weather events claimed about 5,000 lives and left almost 29 million people around the globe in need of humanitarian aid and emergency assistance. The report shows that nine of the 10 most neglected tragedies occurred in countries in the Africa Caribbean and Pacific states.  Oklahoma-based Devon Energy is moving $9 billion of assets out of Canada’s oilsands, announcing after markets closed Tuesday that it will pursue the “separation” of Canadian assets and its Barnett Shale holdings in Texas from its core business.  The company will open data rooms for potential buyers in the second quarter, with the aim to announce a deal by year-end for an outright sale or creation of new companies to own and operate the assets.  “With our world-class U.S. oil resource plays rapidly building momentum and achieving operating scale, the final step in our multi-year transformation is an aggressive, transformational move that will accelerate value creation for our shareholders by further simplifying our resource-rich asset portfolio,” CEO Dave Hager said in a news release.  Devon isn’t the first foreign company to divest from the oilsands, as Norway’s Statoil, France’s Total SA, Arkansas-based Murphy Oil and Houston-based ConocoPhillips have made similar moves to reduce ownership in Canada.  CIBC analyst Jon Morrison told the Financial Post that divestment could prove difficult amid Alberta’s curtailment measures and pipeline uncertainty in Western Canada. However, he pointed to Imperial Oil Ltd., Canadian Natural, Husky Energy Inc. and Suncor Energy Inc. as potential suitors in the bid for Devon’s assets.  Iraq is close to sealing a deal that would allow it to continue importing Iranian energy by avoiding the U.S. dollar, amid the Trump administration’s international pressure to cut natural gas purchases out of Iran.  “A big delegation came from the Iranian central bank and the idea was proposed to trade with Iran in euros,” Abdulkarim Hashim Mustafa, special adviser to Iraq’s prime minister, told Bloomberg in an interview Tuesday in Moscow. “There are other ideas to pay in Iraqi dinars, or in oil.”  The U.S. has pressured Iraq to slash purchases from Iran, but extended a temporary waiver to Baghdad from their sanctions on nations maintaining trade with Iran.  “These are American sanctions and we have the right to protect our national interests,” Mustafa said. “We tell them always: we are your friends but we are not part of your policies in the region. The Americans are well aware of this — it isn’t news for them.”  On Thursday morning, Brent Crude was at US$66.83 and West Texas Intermediate US$56.78.  In an op-ed for the Globe and Mail, Duane Bratt writes that the United We Roll protest was “almost a perfect demonstration.” Although he pointed to the merit of the movement in generating conversation outside of Alberta on issues plaguing the oil industry, Bratt said a few missteps kept the protest from reaching its potential.  First he said, the timing was off as “The Trudeau government is being rocked by the SNC-Lavalin scandal … (so) the convoy was the media’s second item, instead of leading the coverage.” Further, he said that because there was no appointed spokesperson there was a “disjointed … and at worse a racist message.”


21stcenturywire--2019-01-19--REVEALED Amnesty Internationals Historic Links to US UK Intelligence Agencies

REVEALED: Amnesty International’s Historic Links to US & UK Intelligence Agencies

IMAGE: Propaganda image from the cover of Amnesty International’s report entitled, ‘Squeezing the Life Out of Yarmouk: War Crimes Against Besieged Civilians’, one of many designed to fit hand-in-glove with the joint US and UK covert regime change operation deployed against Syria since 2011.  Amnesty International, the eminent human-rights non-governmental organization, is widely known for its advocacy in that realm. It produces reports critical of the Israeli occupation in Palestine and the Saudi-led war on Yemen. But it also publishes a steady flow of indictments against countries that don’t play ball with Washington — countries like Iran, China, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea and more. Those reports amplify the drumbeat for a “humanitarian” intervention in those nations.  Amnesty’s stellar image as a global defender of human rights runs counter to its early days when the British Foreign Office was believed to be censoring reports critical of the British empire. Peter Benenson, the co-founder of Amnesty, had deep ties to the British Foreign Office and Colonial Office while another co-founder, Luis Kutner, informed the FBI of a gun cache at Black Panther leader Fred Hampton’s home weeks before he was killed by the Bureau in a gun raid.  These troubling connections contradict Amnesty’s image as a benevolent defender of human rights and reveal key figures at the organization during its early years to be less concerned with human dignity and more concerned with the dignity of the United States and United Kingdom’s image in the world.  Amnesty’s Benenson, an avowed anti-communist, hailed from a military intelligence background. He pledged that Amnesty would be independent of government influence and would represent prisoners in the East, West, and global South alike.  But during the 1960s the U.K. was withdrawing from its colonies and the Foreign Office and Colonial Office were hungry for information from human-rights activists about the situations on the ground. In 1963, the Foreign Office instructed its operatives abroad to provide “discreet support” for Amnesty’s campaigns.  SEE ALSO: AN INTRODUCTION: Smart Power & The Human Rights Industrial Complex  Also that year, Benenson wrote to Colonial Office Minister Lord Lansdowne a proposal to prop up a “refugee counsellor” on the border of present-day Botswana and apartheid South Africa. That counsel was to assist refugees only, and explicitly avoid aiding anti-apartheid activists. “Communist influence should not be allowed to spread in this part of Africa, and in the present delicate situation, Amnesty International would wish to support Her Majesty’s Government in any such policy,” Benenson wrote. The next year, Amnesty ceased its support for anti-apartheid icon and the first president of a free South Africa, Nelson Mandela.  The following year, in 1964, Benenson enlisted the Foreign Office’s assistance in obtaining a visa to Haiti. The Foreign Office secured the visa and wrote to its Haiti representative Alan Elgar saying it “support[ed] the aims of Amnesty International.” There, Benenson went undercover as a painter, as Minister of State Walter Padley told him prior to his departure that “We shall have to be a little careful not to give the Haitians the impression that your visit is actually sponsored by Her Majesty’s Government.”  The New York Times exposed the ruse, leading some officials to claim ignorance; Elgar, for example, said he was “shocked by Benenson’s antics.” Benenson apologized to Minister Padley, saying “I really do not know why the New York Times, which is generally a responsible newspaper, should be doing this sort of thing over Haiti.”  In 1966, an Amnesty report on the British colony of Aden, a port city in present-day Yemen, detailed the British government’s torture of detainees at the Ras Morbut interrogation center. Prisoners there were stripped naked during interrogations, were forced to sit on poles that entered their anus, had their genitals twisted, cigarettes burned on their face, and were kept in cells where feces and urine covered the floor.  The report was never released, however. Benenson said that Amnesty general secretary Robert Swann had censored it to please the Foreign Office, but Amnesty co-founder Eric Baker said Benenson and Swann had met with the Foreign Office and agreed to keep the report under wraps in exchange for reforms. At the time, Lord Chancellor Gerald Gardiner wrote to Prime Minister Harold Wilson that “Amnesty held the [report] as long as they could simply because Peter Benenson did not want to do anything to hurt a Labour government.”  Then something changed. Benenson went to Aden and was horrified by what he found, writing “I never came upon an uglier picture than that which met my eyes in Aden,” despite his “many years spent in the personal investigation of repression.”  As all of this was unfolding, a similar funding scandal was developing that would rock Amnesty to its core. Polly Toynbee, a 20-year-old Amnesty volunteer, was in Nigeria and Southern Rhodesia, the British colony in Zimbabwe, which was at the time ruled by the white settler minority. There, Toynbee delivered funds to prisoner families with a seemingly endless supply of cash. Toynbee said that Benenson met with her there and admitted that the money was coming from the British government.  Toynbee and others were forced to leave Rhodesia in March 1966. On her way out, she grabbed documents from an abandoned safe including letters from Benenson to senior Amnesty officials working in the country that detailed Benenson’s request to Prime Minister Wilson for money, which had been received months prior.  In 1967 it was revealed that the CIA had established and was covertly funding another human rights organization founded in the early 1960s, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) through an American affiliate, the American Fund for Free Jurists Inc.  Benenson had founded, alongside Amnesty, the U.K. branch of the ICJ, called Justice. Amnesty international secretariat, Sean MacBride, was also the secretary-general of ICJ.  Then, the “Harry letters” hit the press. Officially, Amnesty denied knowledge of the payments from Wilson’s government. But Benenson admitted that their work in Rhodesia had been funded by the government, and returned the funds out of his own pocket. He wrote to Lord Chancellor Gardiner that he did it so as not to “jeopardize the political reputation” of those involved. Benenson then returned unspent funds from his two other human-rights organizations, Justice (the U.K. branch of the CIA-founded ICJ) and the Human Rights Advisory Service.  Benenson’s behavior in the wake of the revelations about the “Harry letters” infuriated his Amnesty colleagues. Some of them would go on to claim that he suffered from mental illness. One staffer wrote:  Later that year, Benenson stepped down as president of Amnesty in protest of its London office being surveilled and infiltrated by British intelligence — at least according to him. Later that month, Sean MacBride, the Amnesty official and ICJ operative, submitted a report to an Amnesty conference that denounced Benenson’s “erratic actions.” Benenson boycotted the conference, opting to submit a resolution demanding MacBride’s resignation over the CIA funding of ICJ.  Amnesty and the British government then suspended ties. The rights group then promised to “not only be independent and impartial but must not be put into a position where anything else could even be alleged” about its collusion with governments in 1967.  Amnesty’s role in the death of Black Panther Fred Hampton  But two years later, senior Amnesty officials engaged in far more troubling coordination with Western intelligence agencies.  FBI documents, released by the Bureau in the spring of 2018 as a part of a series of disclosures of documents pertaining to the assassination of President John Kennedy, detail Amnesty International’s role in the killing of Black Panther Party (BPP) Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton, the 21-year-old up-and-coming black liberation icon — a killing that was widely believed to be an assassination but was ruled officially as a justifiable homicide.  Amnesty International co-founder Luis Kutner attended a November 23, 1969 speech of Hampton’s delivered at the University of Illinois.  During the speech, Hampton described the BPP “as a revolutionary party” and “indicated that the party has guns to be used for peace and self-defense, and these guns are at the Hampton residence as well as BPP headquarters,” according to the FBI document.  “Kutner has reached the point where he would like to take legal action to silence the BPP,” the FBI wrote. “Kutner concluded by stating that he believed speakers like Hampton were psychotic, and it is only when they are faced with a court action that they stop their “rantings and ravings.”  The FBI internal report on Kutner’s testimony cited above was issued on December 1, 1969. Two days later, the FBI, alongside the Chicago Police Department, conducted a firearms raid on Hampton’s residence. When Hampton came home for the day, FBI informant William O’Neal slipped a barbiturate sleeping pill into his drink before leaving.  At 4:00 a.m. on December 4, police and FBI stormed into the apartment, instantly shooting a BPP guard. Due to reflexive convulsions related to death, the guard convulsed and pulled the trigger on a shotgun he was carrying – the only time a Black Panther member fired a gun during the raid. Authorities then opened fire on Hampton, who was in bed sleeping with his nine-month pregnant fiancee. Hampton is believed to have survived until two shots were fired at point-blank range towards his head.  Kutner would go on to form the “Friends of the FBI” group, an organization “formed to combat criticism of the Federal Bureau of Investigations,” according to the New York Times, after its covert campaign to disrupt leftists movements — COINTELPRO — was revealed. He also went on to operate in a number of theaters that saw heavy involvement from the CIA — including work Kutner did to undermine Congolese Prime Minister and staunch anti-imperialist Patrice Lumumba — and represented the Dalai Lama, who was provided $1.7 million a year by the CIA in the 1960s.  While Amnesty International’s shady operations in the 1960s might seem like ancient history at this point, they serve as an important reminder of the role that non-governmental organizations often play in furthering the objectives of governments of the nations where they are based.


activistpost--2019-11-27--Amnesty International: Google & Facebook’s “Surveillance-Based” Model Threatens Human Rights

Amnesty International has said that the “surveillance-based” business models of tech giants like Google and Facebook threaten human rights. Big tech has been known to collect private data, censor speech on behalf of the government, and financially punish dissenters by disallowing advertising.  Amnesty International has gone public with its scathing commentary about big tech. Describing Google and Facebook’s advertising-centric business models as “surveillance-based,” Amnesty International warns that the “mass harvesting of data – primarily for the purpose of advertising – has meant that surveillance has become the ‘business model of the internet.’”  So in order to sell you more products and get you to spend your hard-earned dollars, big tech fully intends to spy on you. This is not new information by any stretch of the imagination; however, it’s worth pointing out again. • Facebook and Google both run “continuous analysis and accumulation of information about people,” which constitutes illegal surveillance under the United States Constitution. • Facebook and Google don’t charge for their services, and instead, rely on people “handing over their data as a hidden kind of payment.” • Facebook and Google collect “a wealth of highly detailed data” that allows them to know more about individuals “than the individuals do about themselves.” • Facebook and Google now have the capacity to analyze and predict user habits and behaviors using artificial intelligence (AI) systems equipped with advanced surveillance and tracking technologies.  “… despite the real value of the services they provide, Google and Facebook’s platforms come at a systemic cost,” the Amnesty International report reveals. “The companies’ surveillance-based business model forces people to make a Faustian bargain, whereby they are only able to enjoy their human rights online by submitting to a system predicated on human rights abuse,” it adds. “Firstly, an assault on the right to privacy on an unprecedented scale, and then a series of knock-on effects that pose a serious risk to a range of other rights, from freedom of expression and opinion to freedom of thought and the right to non-discrimination.”  “This isn’t the internet people signed up for,” notes Amnesty International. “When Google and Facebook were first starting out two decades ago, both companies had radically different business models that did not depend on ubiquitous surveillance. The gradual erosion of privacy at the hands of Google and Facebook is a direct result of the companies’ establishing dominant market power and control over the global ‘public square.’”  We, as individuals, need to decide if the surveillance and lack of privacy is worth it.  This article was sourced from SHTFPlan.com  Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Become an Activist Post Patron for as little as $1 per month at Patreon. Follow us on SoMee, Flote, Minds, Twitter, and Steemit.  Provide, Protect and Profit from what’s coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today.


aljazeera--2019-02-22--Rights groups demand release of Duterte critic Leila de Lima

International human rights groups have renewed their call on the Philippine government to drop all charges against detained opposition senator, Leila de Lima, even as she expressed doubt about getting a fair trial while President Rodrigo Duterte is in office.  "De Lima's prolonged detention is the culmination of President Duterte's long demonisation campaign against a critical sitting senator," Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said on Friday in a joint statement with Amnesty International and FORUM-ASIA.  "These preposterous charges against her should immediately be dropped and the senator released."  Nicholas Bequelin of Amnesty International said de Lima's "prolonged arbitrary detention" is a "blatant attempt to silence her" as she continues to speak against the alleged human rights violations of the Duterte administration.  De Lima has been under detention since February 24, 2017. The justice department filed charges against her alleging that she received money from drug dealers when she was the justice secretary during the previous administration.  In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera in December, the senator had denied the allegations, saying she has already been "pronounced guilty" even without a trial.  "This is farcical. The charges are a total, absolute lie and fabrications."  In the two years that she has been arrested, she said the Duterte administration has subjected her to "the most vicious attack on my honour, dignity and womanhood".  "I am a victim of political persecution, and my right to due process has been violated," de Lima said from her detention cell at the national police headquarters in Manila.  She said the personal attacks against her have distorted public opinion, making it easier for the president and his allies to "manipulate" the legal system and justify her detention.  Earlier, de Lima had challenged her arrest and detention, but the Supreme Court denied her request.  De Lima said the only reason Duterte targeted her is that she refused to back down from her criticism of the president's drug war.  "He [Duterte] hates strong women who stand up to him and fight him," she said.  Human rights advocates say the death toll in Duterte's war on drugs has surpassed 20,000 since he assumed office in 2016. A human rights watchdog said in December that the number could be as high as 27,000.  The government, however, claims the toll is much lower. According to its latest report, published in December, a total of 5,050 people have been killed since the launch of the anti-drug campaign.  FORUM-ASIA, a network of human rights advocates in Asia, said de Lima's detention is "emblematic of the deteriorating situation for all human rights defenders" in the Philippines.  "Senator de Lima's two years in custody show the lengths the Duterte administration will go to stifle dissent and threaten human rights defenders who demand accountability for violations," said John Samuel, executive director of FORUM-ASIA.  "The government's fabricated charges against her only reflect how compromised its institutions have become under the present administration."  From inside her jail cell, Senator de Lima continues to call out the president on the extra-judicial killings, the plan to revive the death penalty and the renewal of the martial law in the southern island of Mindanao.  "What is happening now in Mindanao is an aberration of the law. The declaration trivialises the situation there."  In response, Duterte's spokesman Salvador Panelo dismissed de Lima's recent statements calling her a "disgruntled and failed politician".  In a statement to Al Jazeera, opposition senator, Benigno Aquino IV, however, defended the detained legislator "for her bravery and her untiring passion to serve the Filipino people in the face of the injustice and oppression that she is experiencing."  After two years of involuntary confinement, Senator de Lima said that she has learned to adjust to her daily routine, which includes reviewing pending legislation and other documents, which an assistant regularly brings to her detention cell.  "I have spent my second Christmas here, and my second birthday here," she said. "But when you are innocent, you are not really afraid."  "I can sleep well at night. But I must admit that sometimes I cry. Of course, I am only human," de Lima said.  But she complained that during the summer months, she has difficulty sleeping as the temperature becomes unbearable, with only a small electric fan provided to her. To ease the heat, she would splash water in the concrete flooring of her cell to keep her room cooler.  She said that she also misses cooking at home and spending time with her 84-year-old mother, Norma, who is now suffering from dementia. They saw each other for the first time in two years just before Christmas.  De Lima said that given her political fight with the president, it is doubtful that she could be released while Duterte is in power.  "But I am sure vindication will come. I just don't know when."  Asked if she can forgive Duterte, she said, "The time of reckoning will eventually come. I am capable of forgiving him. But I also want justice."


abcnews--2019-12-30--Reparations and Religion: 50 years after ‘Black Manifesto’

(RNS) — On a Sunday morning in May of 1969, as clergy processed into the sanctuary of New York’s august Riverside Church, civil rights activist James Forman vaulted into the pulpit to demand $500 million in reparations for the mistreatment of African Americans from white churches and synagogues.  At the time, Forman’s interruption represented the high point for the reparations movement. A week before, Forman had debuted a radical proposal for racial justice known as “the Black Manifesto” for 500 black activists gathered in Detroit for the National Black Economic Development Conference.  “(W)e know that the churches and synagogues have a tremendous wealth,” the manifesto stated, “and its membership, white America, has profited and still exploits black people.  ”The conference determined, by a 187-63 vote, that it was time for white Christians and Jews to pay reparations and demonstrate a willingness to fight “the white supremacy and racism which has forced us as black people to make these demands.  This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story.  ”Riverside, then a mostly white liberal Protestant congregation whose neo-Gothic landmark building was financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr., would be deeply divided over the next few years over Forman’s challenge. As the activist brought his manifesto to other congregations and denominations, Riverside established a lecture series and a “Fund for Social Justice” that aimed to raise $450,000 over three years to help the poor in the local community. It fell short of the goal by almost $100,000.  The Black Manifesto’s demands never caught fire in the broader U.S. religious community. The Rev. Gayraud Wilmore, a black Presbyterian leader in New York City in 1969, recalled 50 years later how religious institutions responded.  “I saw them withering and unable to step forward and say ‘Let’s be the church,’” said Wilmore, now 98. “I saw no bold action taken on our side to go along with the bold action Forman was taking.  ”Five decades later, the reparations debate has reentered the national spotlight, with some religious institutions leading the way.  Earlier in December, Reform Jews, declaring that “racial inequity is present in virtually every aspect of American life,” voted overwhelmingly to support a U.S. commission to develop proposals for reparations and urged conversations in their congregations to redress systemic racism.  In recent months, Virginia Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary and Georgetown University have all announced plans to fund initiatives that would benefit the descendants of slaves, while Episcopal dioceses in New York and Long Island made million- and half-million-dollar commitments as reparations committees continued their work.  In May, the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland voted to study reparations and urge congregations to “examine how their endowed wealth is tied to the institution of slavery.  ”Maryland’s African American bishop, Eugene Taylor Sutton, said tears came to his eyes when the measure passed at the diocese’s general convention with no dissenting votes, and he realized that the assembled delegates, representing a membership that is 90% white, “got it.”  “They get this thing called justice, and when you put it in a frame that there is a basic injustice in this nation of stealing from generations of people and that has a direct effect on today, then people,” Sutton said, “they say, 'OK, we got to get that fixed.’  ”Sutton, who testified before Congress in June with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates to advocate for the idea of a U.S. reparations commission, emphasized that reparations can come in many forms. Starting next month, members of his diocese will begin to consider options such as providing better access for people of color to home buying, job training and faculty positions at seminaries.  It has taken some American religious institutions 50 years to get their heads around reparations. When Forman hijacked that Sunday morning service, two-thirds of Riverside worshippers, including the minister, stormed out in protest. After activists occupied offices in the Interchurch Center of New York, a court issued restraining orders to bar Forman from the building. In Missouri, manifesto supporters in St. Louis carried out a series of “Black Sunday” protests, interrupting local services, which led to confrontations with white church members and arrests.  The manifesto was quite specific in its demands. Black activists would control the distribution of reparations. The $500 million (soon increased to $3 billion) would be spent on programs designed to ensure black self-determination. These included establishing a Southern land bank, publishing industries, television networks, job training centers, labor unions and a black university.  The manifesto’s rhetoric was just as controversial. Written by Forman, a former member of the civil rights group known as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the preamble framed reparations in Marxist terms. “Time is short,” Forman wrote. “(N)o oppressed people ever gained their liberation until they were ready to fight, to use whatever means necessary, including the use of force and power of the gun to bring down the colonizer.  ”Prominent black and white religious leaders diverged on how to interpret Forman’s call for revolution. The Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, who succeeded the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, compared Forman to biblical prophets who spoke truth to power. Writing in The Christian Century, he asked, “Was there not even a physical resemblance between Amos, the dusty-road-weary prophet in his desert garb, and Jim Forman in his dashiki?”  The response from some white denominations was outright rejection. The Southern Baptist Convention dismissed the manifesto as “outrageous.” The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York called it un-American and touted its own programs for the “needy and disadvantaged” instead.  The American Jewish Committee, which as part of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization had helped organize the National Black Economic Development Conference, withdrew from the IFCO. Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, IFCO’s first president, resigned, stating hecould not “in conscience stand by in silence and appear ... to give assent to the revolutionary ideology and racist rhetoric of the Black Manifesto.  ”Other denominations were more ambivalent. The Reformed Church in America invited Forman to address its general synod after he occupied the denomination’s headquarters a month after his action at Riverside. The Rev. Rand Peabody, a 22-year-old white seminarian who had already been slated to give the sermon the next day, revised his sermon after hearing news of Forman’s “liberation” of the RCA’s offices.  “I remember I said it’s not a time for us to feel either blamed or shamed and certainly not a time to feel futile,” Peabody, now 73, said in an interview. “Our denomination, in his eye, did indeed have the power to play a part and we should accept that as almost a commissioning of the denomination to indeed step up to the plate and get involved in more focused and proactive ways.  ”Like other denominations, the RCA didn’t accede to Forman’s demand that reparations be handed over freely. Instead the synod voted to create a $100,000 fund “to be disbursed according to the decisions” of a newly formed Black Council. The council then rejected the money.“We just basically wanted to be at the table where decisions are being made and not considered an auxiliary or an offshoot or a secondhand portion of the denomination,” said the Rev. Dwayne Jackson, a Hackensack, New Jersey, pastor, who was a panelist at an RCA event commemorating the manifesto in October titled “Unfinished Business.”  Jackson, who knew some members of the council from his childhood church in the Bronx, said the staffer hired to oversee the council was the church’s first black executive. (Today, people of color comprise a third of the RCA’s executive leadership team.)  Other denominations acknowledged the grievances raised by the manifesto but rejected the solutions it proposed and even the language of “reparations.” Instead they created or continued programs aimed at helping poor blacks and others. The Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People, the Evangelical Covenant Church’s Fund for Disadvantaged Americans of Minority Groups and the Episcopal Church’s General Convention Special Program were all created around the time of Forman’s action.  Dominique DuBois Gilliard, the current director of the ECC’s “racial righteousness and reconciliation” ministry, recently reflected on how this kind of response “enacted a very problematic erasure of the black freedom struggle.”  Met with the manifesto’s demands, “the Covenant found it more palatable to shift the conversation to marginalization in general,” Gilliard writes in the May/August edition of its Covenant Quarterly, which focused on the 50th anniversary of the manifesto. “This response has strong parallels to proclamations that ‘All Lives Matter’ in response to the declaration ‘Black Lives Matter.’"  There has been a shift in recent years, however, which Gilliard has helped encourage. The ECC Resolution on Racism, passed in June, insists that “the time is right for white clergy to attend to the sins of our own community and make a public commitment to prioritize antiracism work within our ministerium.”  Nell Gibson, a member and former chair of the Episcopal Diocese of New York’s Reparations Committee, recalled that in the wake of Forman’s declaration — which resulted in the Episcopal Church’s $200,000 donation to the National Committee of Black Churchmen — members of her Manhattan church created a Black and Brown Caucus. After receiving the $30,000 they demanded from their St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, they developed a free breakfast program for children, a summer “liberation school” that taught minority children their ancestors’ history and a prison law library.  Fifty years on, reparations are often framed as spiritual tests as much as financial ones. This year was named the “Year of Apology” for the Episcopal Diocese of New York, and each Sunday Gibson’s congregation has said a prayer that includes this sentence: “For the many ways — social, economic and political — that white supremacy has accrued benefits to some of us at the expense of others, we repent.”  Soon, the diocesan reparations committee will consider a number of possible next steps, such as a truth and reconciliation commission or education and health care initiatives.  Likewise, Sutton said his Maryland Episcopal diocese is moving methodically after years of conversation about reparations to figuring out how that will be lived out financially and otherwise.  “We don’t have all the solutions, we don’t know everything that’s going to fix the problem and so we’re going to be humble in even what we think we can accomplish,” he said. “But, by God, we’re going to do something.  ”This story is one in a series by Religion News Service about the future of segregation and integration in American religion, produced in partnership with Sacred Writes, a project that helps scholars share their research with a broader audience.  This story is one in a series by Religion News Service about the future of segregation and integration in American religion, produced in partnership with Sacred Writes, a project that helps scholars share their research with a broader audience.


aljazeera--2019-01-17--McJesus in Palestine Using bad art to whitewash Israels crimes

McJesus in Palestine: Using bad art to whitewash Israel's crimes

Hundreds of Palestinian Muslims and Christians descended on the Haifa Museum of Art last Friday to protest the display of various artworks that use mass culture merchandise and corporate mascots to depict Christian icons. An online petition has also been launched to demand the removal of Finnish artist Jani Leinonen's artworks, which included a crucified Ronald McDonald and Mattel dolls - Ken and Barbie - representing Jesus Christ and Virgin Mary.  Although Leinonen made a name for himself as a subversive anti-capitalist protest artist, the artworks he chose to put on display in the Haifa Museum's "Sacred Goods" exhibition missed the mark.  In irreverent creations such as "McJesus", the artist offered little more than an uninspiring rehash of the centuries-old critique of the relationship between religion and capitalism. More importantly, he completely ignored the political context in which these artworks are displayed, allowing the Israeli establishment to use the local population's anger about the offensive exhibition to whitewash the oppression and threats the Palestinian Christians are currently facing.  Leinonen's McJesus, like other artwork in the exhibition, seeks to show how consumer products have become "sacred goods," merchandise invested with the authority of religious power and symbolism.  However, there is nothing provocative or refreshing about this critique. The criticism of the sacralisation of capitalism and its obverse notion, the commercialisation of religion, has been ongoing for quite a few centuries now. Already in The Theory of the Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Smith had used the "invisible hand" metaphor to draw this analogy between capitalism and religion. Ironically, the anachronistic nature of Leinonen's artwork was also highlighted in the curator's comment on the exhibition, where it was noted that "Already in the late nineteenth century, writer Emile Zola crowned consumption as the new religion, in which religious rituals in a church have been replaced by purchasing ceremonies at a department store."  Recycling the age-old critique of the complicity between religion and capitalism - as banal as it may be - could have still made an impact if Leinonen bothered to take into consideration the context in which these artworks are going to be displayed.  The local context was clearly on the artist's mind when he decided to transform a Ken doll into Jesus, as the box he packaged the doll in was emblazoned with the Hebrew word for Jesus (Yeshua). However, there was no commentary offered in any of his artworks about Israel's realities -  its occupation of Palestinian land and oppression of the Palestinian population.  In the hands of a different artist attuned to the brutal realities of the local context, the image of a crucified McDonalds' clown could have offered radical commentary on the Palestinian struggle for freedom. It could have easily highlighted the concerted efforts of both American religious institutions, especially evangelicals, and American corporate culture to provide material support and mythical narratives that legitimise the current policies of the authoritarian colonial-capitalist Israeli state.  Leinonen missed this opportunity. But even more importantly, his "bad art" allowed Israeli authorities to opportunistically exploit the indigenous population's protests about Leinonen's artworks and use the controversy to conceal the Israeli state's racist and discriminatory policies and mistreatment of Palestinian Christians.  Following protests by Palestinians, Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev spared no time in condemning the art exhibition in the name of "democratic values" and" tolerance for other cultural and religious traditions".  In her letter to the museum director, Regev stated: "The values that distinguish us as a Jewish and democratic state oblige us to respect the religious feelings of all citizens of the State of Israel - Muslims, Christians, Druze and others." She insisted that disrespecting sacred symbols "may affect the delicate fabric of our democratic society, which respects the religious feelings of others as one of its most enlightened foundations."  This appeal for tolerance is belied not only by the racist, discriminatory and divisive policies of Israel but also by the past actions of Regev herself. In May 2012, for example, Regev received much unwanted public attention after she called Sudanese asylum seekers a "cancer in the nation's body." For the record, Regev later apologised to Israeli cancer patients for her offensive remarks about cancer, but never felt the need to apologise to the human beings that she likened to a deadly disease.  So what was behind the Culture Minister's uncharacteristic appeal for tolerance and newfound concern for the rights and sentiments of Israel's indigenous communities?  Regev's condemnation of the exhibition was an attempt to whitewash the ongoing Nakba and to present Israel as a state that respects the diverse religious identities of all its citizens and residents, including Christians.  This, of course, couldn't be further from the truth.  About a year ago, Theophilos III, the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, warned in an op-ed in the Guardian that Israeli policies are driving Palestinian Christians out of the Holy Land. He outlined the efforts of the Israeli Knesset to strip Palestinian Christians of their church lands and property rights through a "church lands" bill that would put an end to the church's sovereignty over its lands in the old city of Jerusalem.  Theophilos III also pointed out the activities of radical settler groups in and around Jerusalem that are destabilising the status quo regarding "the protection and accessibility" of the holy sites in the city. Many of these radical settlers have been suspected of carrying out "price tag" attacks on churches and other Christian properties, desecrating and vandalising churches, monasteries, and holy sites and spraying hate graffiti on them. In most of these cases, the Israeli authorities did not apprehend any suspects and dismissed the incidents on the grounds of unknown perpetrators.  These attacks on Christian churches and properties, which date back to the Nakba, also target Christians in the West Bank. Israeli forces, for example, have raided a well-known monastery in Bethlehem and attempted to confiscate its land to continue building its apartheid annexation and separation wall in the Cremisan Valley. It is important to note that Israeli military forces aid and abet the radical settlers in their desecration of Christian sites, offering them the protection they need as they raid these sites to perform religious rituals there.  The state's racist and discriminatory laws, closure policies and the apartheid annexation and separation wall restrict the access of Palestinian Christians to the holy sites in Jerusalem, effectively censuring their religious freedom and hindering them from practising their faith. These policies, as Theophilos III warns, threaten "the very presence of Christians in the Holy Land".  Disingenuous calls for tolerance and understanding by Israeli authority figures like Regev should not trick anyone into thinking that the capitalist settler-colony that is Israel cares about the religious sensitivities of Christians or Muslims living in Israel. Needless to say, as Regev was talking about the so-called "democratic fabric" of the Israeli society, Israeli state police was using stun grenades and tear gas to squash and disperse the crowds demonstrating near the museum.  Regev's letter also exposed a major shortcoming of the Israeli liberal left. Israeli leftists were outraged not only by Regev's failure to condemn "the violence against the museum," but also by her threats to cut state funding for such offensive exhibitions. In their eyes, as always, violence was one-sided and perpetrated by the Arabs. They ignored the structural violence of the state in the name of the fight over culture and artistic freedom.  Leinonen's McJesus and other artwork in the "Sacred Goods" exhibition is uncharacteristic of his other subversive anti-capitalist protest art and the School of Disobedience he runs. In this exhibition, he misses an important opportunity to critique the more pernicious aspects of capitalist exploitation and fetishisation through a critical engagement with the structures of violence and social inequalities that constitute the authoritarian capitalist-colonial Israeli state. The only way out of the false universality of the corporate capitalist culture that the crucified clown represents and into the truly radical and egalitarian universality for which Jesus stands is the practice of decolonisation.  The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.