Qatar says Israeli air strike on Hamas members in Doha 'killed any hope' for hostage release

Copyright AP/Copyright 2025 The AP. All rights reserved.

By Malek Fouda
Published on 11/09/2025 -

Doha says it will host an Arab-Islamic summit to formulate a coordinated regional response to Israel’s unprecedented airstrikes on Tuesday, which killed six people.

Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has "killed any hope" for the release of the remaining hostages being held in Gaza following air strikes on Doha on Tuesday.

The Qatari premier, speaking to US media outlets, said that the attacks, which Doha slammed as state terrorism, have angered the vast majority of the Arab world, including the Gulf states, who have come together in a united show of force to condemn Israel's actions.

"I was meeting one of the hostages' families the morning of the attack," said Al Thani in an interview with CNN.

"They are counting on this mediation. They have no other hope for that."

"What Netanyahu has done, he just killed any hope for those hostages," he added.

Smoke rises from an explosion, allegedly caused by an Israeli strike, in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025 AP/Copyright 2025 The AP. All rights reserved.

The Israeli air strike targeted the Hamas negotiating team in Doha as they prepared to convene with mediators to discuss a US ceasefire proposal to end the ongoing hostilities in Gaza, quickly approaching the two-year mark.

The blast killed six people. Hamas says its top leadership survived the attack, noting that five lower-level members were killed.

The group has in the past taken months to confirm the assassination of its leaders and following Tuesday's strike, offered no immediate proof of the survival of their senior figures.

A Qatari security officer was also killed in the attack.

A funeral was held on Thursday for the six victims at the Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab Mosque. Eyewitnesses say the mosque, capable of accommodating 30,000 worshippers, was at capacity.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, accompanied by top Qatari officials, was in attendance for the funeral prayers.

This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows damage after an Israeli strike targeted a compound that hosted Hamas' political leadership in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday Planet Labs PBC/AP

A host of regional leaders, including the United Arab Emirates' Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan and Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif descended to Doha on Wednesday in a show of solidarity with Qatar and to formulate a response to what is an unprecedented Israeli attack on the region.

Qatar says it will convene an emergency Arab-Islamic summit to discuss the strike, according to Qatar's national news agency. The two-day summit is set to take place in Doha on Sunday.

The announcement came as the United Nations Security Council opened an emergency session, which was delayed by a day to allow the Qatari premier to attend to discuss the threat of further escalation.

All 15 members of the Security Council, including the US, a key political, economic and defence ally of Qatar, condemned the Israeli aggression and expressed support for the "sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Qatar.

The council also endorsed a statement which called for the de-escalation of regional tensions, but did not explicitly mention Israel by name.

Strikes in Qatar: Netanyahu pushes the limits in Israel's war against Hamas

Analysis

The unprecedented Israeli strikes against Hamas leaders in Qatar on Tuesday revealed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is willing to cross what were previously red lines in his mission to decapitate the Islamist movement. But there may be a high price to pay for such a risky strategy – including for the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.


Issued on: 11/09/2025 - FRANCE24
By: Sébastian SEIBT

Hamas said the leaders of its negotiating delegation had survived the Israeli strikes on Qatar of September 9, 2025. © Jacqueline Penney, AFP


The Israeli strikes targeting Hamas leaders in Qatar on Tuesday opened a new front in Israel's military offensive against the group.

It is one thing for Israel to target Hezbollah in Lebanon, or even strike Syria or Iran. “But going into Qatar, defying the sovereignty of a US ally, is completely different," says Veronika Hinman, deputy director of the military education team at the University of Portsmouth in the UK.

And it is still “not quite clear yet how much of an escalation this is, or what the consequence will be", Hinman adds.

Officially, Netanyahu said he targeted the Hamas delegation in Doha after Monday's attack in Jerusalem that left six people dead – an attack for which Hamas claimed responsibility.

But even if the Qatar strike was a retaliation, Hinman says the operation “must have been on the table for a long time", and was definitely not drawn up in a single day.

The White House seemed unsure how to react to the Israeli strikes.

In a rare criticism of Israel, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the attack on a "sovereign nation and close ally of the United States" did not "advance Israel or America’s goals”, while quickly adding that eliminating Hamas was a “worthy goal”.

Hamas says none of its leaders were killed in the bombing.

Reacting to the strikes, US President Donald Trump said he was "not thrilled" and even “very unhappy”.

Trump taken by surprise?

Trump went further in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, telling him the decision to target Hamas inside Qatar was unwise, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Israeli attack appears to have taken Trump by surprise, with the New York Times reporting that it was launched "without so much as a courtesy notification to Washington". Trump officials said the White House was informed at the very last minute, when Israeli jets were already en route.

The attack must have taken careful advance planning agrees Amnon Aran, a Middle East specialist at City St George's, University of London.

Striking at the heart of one of Doha's touristy neighbourhoods while limiting the risk of collateral damage is not something that can be planned in a single day, he says.

The operation would need detailed preparation from reconnaissance of the target to choosing the method of attack, whether it be a bombing or a “targeted assassination”, Aran says.

“Then you need to decide whether you're going to actually fly over Qatari territory,” he adds.

The plan would need approvals all along the military chain of command, “from the army headquarters to the prime minister's office”, notes Aran.

Blurring the red lines

The Qatar operation reflects Netanyahu's “reckless” approach to the war against Hamas, says Ahron Bregman, formerly a major in the Israeli army and a specialist in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at King's College London.

"The question is whether or not Netanyahu still has 'red lines'," Hinman adds.

For Aran, the US president remains the only one who can still set such "red lines" for Netanyahu. But the White House must choose to do so.

"Under the Biden administration, I think striking in Qatar” – which is home to the main US military base in the region – “was a complete no go”, Aran says.

Trump's approach "is a bit more ambiguous”, adds Aran, and Netanyahu seems to believe that Trump would find any means of ending the conflict with Hamas acceptable.

Despite the deals struck with the United States in exchange for protection, Qatar ultimately proved vulnerable.

The strikes on Qatar also reveal that Israel has chosen to rely “on bombing Hamas into submission", Aran says.

Israel is pursuing this strategy despite international condemnation of the attack, and at the risk of undermining the Israeli-American relationship or of making the other Gulf countries feel threatened.

Above all, destroy Hamas

Aran says the Doha attack reveals that, for Netanyahu’s government, the goal of destroying Hamas "takes precedence over the safe return of Israeli hostages”.

Bregman agrees. If Israel kills the Hamas negotiators, he asks, “Who will they negotiate with to secure the return of the hostages?”

But Netanyahu seems to believe that the operation could pay off.

If Hamas's senior leadership in Doha are eliminated, Aran says, "the only people that will be negotiating on behalf of Hamas will be the people who are inside the Gaza Strip” – and under direct military pressure from Israel.

And in the absence of its most experienced negotiators, Hamas's ability to marshal the support of countries like Iran and Turkey will be compromised, weakening the group's position.

The strikes may also cause Qatar to reconsider its key role as mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, Hinman notes, although Qatari authorities have said they want to continue to act as a go-between.

Perhaps launching this attack was a sign that the Israelis intend to sideline Qatar from negotiations with Hamas, leaving the role of mediator to be taken over by Egypt, Aran says.

That could be good news for Netanyahu's government. "Egypt is a country that is ideologically much less close to Hamas than Qatar is, and has a greater interest in seeing the fighting end quickly because it shares a border with Israel and the Gaza Strip," says Aran. "In the eyes of the Israeli authorities, Egypt would probably put more pressure on Hamas to accept Israel's conditions for ending the conflict."

However, if the Hamas leadership was left unscathed by the attack, they “will emerge stronger from this, and they will most likely be much more inflexible in future negotiations”, Aran predicts.

Even so, Netanyahu can expect to see benefits on the domestic political front.

“Politically, even if the operation failed, it will help Netanyahu with his political base at home," Bregman says. "His supporters, who are like a cult, will admire him for defying everyone and attacking Qatar.”

This article has been adapted from the original in French.

 

Masonic Medical Research Institute (MMRI) welcomes 13 students to prestigious Summer Fellowship program

BLUE LODGE NOT THE SHRINERS

Masonic Medical Research Institute

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2025 Summer Fellows: (from left to right): Lucas Constantine, Riley Collis, Genesis Cambell, Victoria Cioni, Willa Pratt, Emma Burke, Claire Marshall, Nurhaliza Syukur, Angelina Tangorra, Sandi Myint, Amna Khan, Natalie-Lorine Barber, Cooper Borelli.

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Credit: MMRI

UTICA, NY – MMRI is thrilled to welcome 13 undergraduate students to its highly esteemed 2025 Summer Fellowship program. For ten weeks, these Summer Fellows will study in the laboratories of MMRI’s principal investigators (PI) gaining invaluable scientific research experience.

This rigorous and competitive program selects students based on academic excellence and demonstrated drive to partake in cutting-edge research programs that include areas of cardiovascular disease biology, autoimmunity and autism.

“We are delighted to welcome these impressive students into MMRI’s coveted Summer Fellowship program,” said Maria Kontaridis, Ph.D., executive director and Gordon K. Moe professor and chair of biomedical research and translational medicine at MMRI. “We look forward to seeing the culmination of their research experiences at the end of this program. This is a testament to our mission, which includes our commitment to training future generations of science and medicine.”

Throughout the program, the Summer Fellows will engage in hands-on research using state-of-the-art techniques, such as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and targeted drug delivery. They will also participate in professional development workshops and didactic lectures on the various scientific disciplines in which MMRI excels. The program will culminate in a graduation ceremony on Friday, July 25, 2025, where the Fellows present their research to MMRI staff, colleagues, families, and community members.

MMRI is proud of its legacy and the success of its fellows, with many moving on to top tier graduate schools, medical schools, pharmacy schools, veterinary schools, and more. It has trained hundreds of aspiring scientists, many of whom have gone on to have diverse careers in research and medicine, some of which have been employed at local health systems, such as Mohawk Valley Health System, or nationally at organizations such as the Lupus Research Alliance. Many of these Summer Fellows have even returned to MMRI as postdoctoral fellows or research assistants, a true testament to the program’s success.

The 2025 MMRI Summer Fellowship program includes:

Maria Kontaridis, Ph.D.:

Natalie-Lorine Barber, SUNY Polytechnic Institute

Genesis Campbell, University at Buffalo

Riley Collis, Emory University

Amna Khan, SUNY Polytechnic Institute

Claire Marshall, Rochester Institute of Technology

Sandi Myint, Yale University

Chase Kessinger, Ph.D.:

Willa Pratt, University of Delaware

Zhiqiang Lin, Ph.D.:

Angelina Tangorra, Nazareth University

Jason McCarthy, Ph.D.:

Lucas Constantine, Hamilton College

Nurhaliza Syukur, Utica University

Matthew Nystoriak, Ph.D.:

Cooper Borelli, Boston College

Emma Burke, Bates College

Tongbin Wu, Ph.D.:

Victoria Cioni, Nazareth University

The 2025 MMRI Summer Fellowship program was made possible thanks to the generous support from its sponsors, including:

• Alera Group Company
• Dr. Sidney J. Blatt
• Burrows Foundation
• Drs. Atul and Amita Butala
• First Manhattan Masonic District
• Mr. Gary T. Forrest
• Cecelia and Ronald Gouse
• Hazen B. Hinman, Sr. Foundation, Inc.
• Health Forward Foundation
• R⸫W⸫ Walter R. Leong
• M&T Bank / Partners Trust Bank Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation
• Drs. Frank Dubeck and MaryBeth McCall
• The Give Back to Utica Fund/Steven H. Oram
• UpMobility Foundation
• Utica Lodge #47 F. & A.M.

“We’d like to thank our generous program funders,” said Stephen F. Izzo, principal development officer at MMRI. “Their support is enabling our world-class faculty to train the next generation of scientists to understand and overcome some of the world’s most pernicious diseases.”

Read more about the MMRI Summer Fellowship here: 

https://www.mmri.edu/summerfellow/

 

Whistleblower David McBride sentenced, war criminals remain free

Pip Hinman

May 15, 202

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David McBridge addressing a protest outside Labor's national conference in 2023 in Magan-djin/Brisbane. Photo: Alex Bainbridge

The jailing of Afghanistan war crimes whistleblower David McBride on May 14 has been condemned by truth-tellers across the globe.

McBride, a former Australian Defence Forces lawyer, served two tours in Afghanistan in 2011 and 2013, and complained internally about the behaviour of some Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) members, but said he was not taken seriously.

See also

David McBride, whistleblowing and following orders

David McBride should be protected, not prosecuted

Whistleblower David McBride expects to be handed a custodial sentence

First SAS soldier charged for war crimes in Afghanistan

Stella Assange, a friend, said on X that it is “scandalous” that McBride, who “shared documents evidencing impunity over ADF war crimes in Afghanistan” had been sentenced.

“The only person going to prison over the war crimes is the man who blew the whistle,” Assange said.

McBride’s leaked information was considered by the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) Afghanistan (Brereton) Inquiry, established by the Coalition government to investigate allegations of war crimes committed by the elite SAS in Afghanistan — Australia’s longest war.

The four-year inquiry by Paul Brereton, a New South Wales Court of Appeal judge and senior officer in the Australian Army Reserve, published its report in 2020. It included evidence of 23 incidents in which one or more civilians — or people who had been captured or injured — were unlawfully killed by special forces soldiers, or at their direction.

The report found a further two incidents that it said could be classified as the war crime of “cruel treatment”.

It made 36 referrals to the Australian Federal Police, only one of which has gone to court.

Meanwhile, McBride was charged with five national security offences, denied immunity from prosecution and jailed for 5 years and 8 months, with no parole for 2 years and 3 months.

The only alleged war criminal to appear before court is SAS veteran Oliver Schulz, whose crime was first publicised by the ABC’s Four Corners program on March 16, 2020.

He shot Afghan man Dad Mohammad during an ADF raid in Uruzgan Province, southern Afghanistan, in May 2012.

The ABC’s video footage of the incident helped bring the severity of the war crimes allegations in Afghanistan to the public.

abc_four_corners_2020_on_afghanistan_killing_.png

Still from the Four Corners' expose on Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.

Mohammad was married with two very young daughters. His family complained to the ADF, which investigated and cleared Shulz of wrong-doing. He completed multiple tours and was awarded the Commendation for Gallantry in Afghanistan.

Schulz has fared a lot better than McBride, whose evidence would have contributed to getting Shulz to face court.

Arrested in March last year, Shulz was granted relaxed bail conditions in February, since, according to the magistrate, the highly trained alleged war criminal presents no “heightened risk” and his lawyer argued he would be “at grave risk” of being attacked by “extremists” (in jail) opposed to the war in Afghanistan.

McBride has been charged with stealing public documents; not murder or war crimes.

McBride has always said he gave the ABC the documents as an act of public duty. He has spent five years waiting for sentencing, and now faces more than two years in jail.

Michael West has pointed out that McBride was not even allowed to argue his case in court, as the public interest defence was ruled out. He was therefore compelled to plead guilty.

“What kind of justice is it where McBride is denied the opportunity to put his case in an open court of law, being forced rather to plead guilty to government charges but with no resort to the most basic legal right of pleading his case?” West asked.

“And what kind of justice is it that allows a whistleblower to be tried and convicted while the actual war crimes go unprosecuted, while dozens of incidents go entirely unpunished, untested in court?”

A Brutal Punishment: The Sentencing of David McBride

by Binoy Kampmark / May 15th, 2024

Sometimes, it’s best not to leave the issue of justice to the judges.  They do what they must: consult the statutes, test the rivers of power, and hope that their ruling will not be subject to appeal.  David McBride, the man who revealed that Australia’s special forces in Afghanistan had dimmed and muddied before exhaustion, committed atrocities and faced a compromised chain of command, was condemned on May 14 to a prison term of five years and eight months.

Without McBride’s feats, there would have been no Afghan Files published by the ABC.  The Brereton Inquiry, established to investigate alleged war crimes, would most likely have never been launched.  (That notable document subsequently identified 39 instances of alleged unlawful killings of Afghan civilians by members of the special forces.)

In an affidavit, McBride explained how he wished Australians to realise that “Afghan civilians were being murdered and that Australian military leaders were at the very least turning the other way and at worst tacitly approving this behaviour”.  Furthermore “soldiers were being improperly prosecuted as a smokescreen to cover [the leadership’s] inaction and failure to hold reprehensible conduct to account.”

For taking and disclosing 235 documents from defence offices mainly located in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), the former military lawyer was charged with five national security offences.  He also found Australia’s whistleblowing laws feeble and fundamentally useless.  The Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 (Cth) provided no immunity from prosecution, a fact aided by grave warnings from the Australian government that vital evidence would be excluded from court deliberation on national security grounds.

Through the process, the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, could have intervened under Section 71 of the Judiciary Act 1903 (Cth), vesting the top legal officer in the country with powers to drop prosecutions against individuals charged with “an indictable offence against the laws of the Commonwealth”.  Dreyfus refused, arguing that such powers were only exercised in “very unusual and exceptional circumstances”.

At trial, chief counsel Trish McDonald SC, representing the government, made the astonishing claim that McBride had an absolute duty to obey orders flowing from the oath sworn to the sovereign. No public interest test could modify such a duty, a claim that would have surprised anyone familiar with the Nuremberg War Crimes trials held in the aftermath of the Second World War. “A soldier does not serve the sovereign by promising to do whatever the soldier thinks is in the public interest, even if contrary to the laws made by parliament.” To justify such a specious argument, authorities from the 19th century were consulted: “There is nothing so dangerous to the civil establishment of the state as an undisciplined or reactionary army.”

ACT Justice David Mossop tended to agree, declaring that, “There is no aspect of duty that allows the accused to act in the public interest contrary to a lawful order”. A valiant effort was subsequently made by McBride’s counsel, Steven Odgers SC, to test the matter in the ACT Court of Appeal.  Chief Justice Lucy McCallum heard the following submission from Odgers: “His only real argument is that what he did was the right thing. There was an order: don’t disclose this stuff, but he bled, and did the right thing, to use his language, and the question is does the fact that he’s in breach of orders mean that he’s in breach of his duty, so that he’s got no defence?”  The answer from the Chief Justice was curt: Mossop’s ruling was “not obviously wrong.”

With few options, a guilty plea was entered to three charges.  Left at the mercy of Justice Mossop, the punitive sentence shocked many of McBride’s supporters.  The judge thought McBride of “good character” but possessed by a mania “with the correctness of his own opinions”.  He suffered from a “misguided self-belief” and “was unable to operate within the legal framework that his duty required him to do”.

The judge was cognisant of the Commonwealth’s concerns that disclosing such documents would damage Australia’s standing with “foreign partners”, making them less inclined to share information.  He also rebuked McBride for copying the documents and storing them insecurely, leaving them vulnerable to access from foreign powers.  For all that, none of the identifiable risks had eventuated, and the Australian Defence Force had “taken no steps” to investigate the matter.

This brutal flaying of McBride largely centres on clouding his personal reasons.  In a long tradition of mistreating whistleblowers, questions are asked as to why he decided to reveal the documents to the press.  Motivation has been muddled with effect and affect. The better question, asks Peter Greste, executive director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, is not examining the reasons for exposing such material but the revelations they disclose.  That, he argues, is where the public interest lies.  Unfortunately, in Australia, tests of public interest all too often morph into a weapon fashioned to fanatically defend government secrecy.

All that is left now is for McBride’s defence team to appeal on the crucial subject of duty, something so curiously rigid in Australian legal doctrine.  “We think it’s an issue of national importance, indeed international importance, that a western nation has such as a narrow definition of duty,” argued his defence lawyer, Mark Davis.

John Kiriakou, formerly of the Central Intelligence Agency, was the only figure to be convicted, not of torture inflicted by his colleagues during the clownishly named War on Terror, but of exposing its practice. McBride is the only one to be convicted in the context of alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, not for their commission, but for furnishing documentation exposing them, including the connivance of a sullied leadership.  The world of whistleblowing abounds with its sick ironies.Facebook

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

‘Double agents’: fossil-fuel lobbyists work for US groups trying to fight climate crisis

Story by Oliver Milman • THE GUARDIAN

More than 1,500 lobbyists in the US are working on behalf of fossil-fuel companies while at the same time representing hundreds of liberal-run cities, universities, technology companies and environmental groups that say they are tackling the climate crisis, the Guardian can reveal.

Lobbyists for oil, gas and coal interests are also employed by a vast sweep of institutions, ranging from the city governments of Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia; tech giants such as Apple and Google; more than 150 universities; some of the country’s leading environmental groups – and even ski resorts seeing their snow melted by global heating.

The breadth of fossil fuel lobbyists’ work for other clients is captured in a new database of their lobbying interests which was published online on Wednesday.

Related: State Farm stopped insuring California homes due to climate risks. But it shares lobbyists with big oil

It shows the reach of state-level fossil fuel lobbyists into almost every aspect of American life, spanning local governments, large corporations, cultural institutions such as museums and film festivals, and advocacy groups, grouping together clients with starkly contradictory aims.

For instance, State Farm, the insurance company that announced in May it would halt new homeowner policies in California due to the “catastrophic” risk of wildfires worsened by the climate crisis, employs lobbyists that also advocate for fossil fuel interests to lawmakers in 18 states.

Meanwhile, Baltimore, which is suing big oil firms for their role in causing climate-related damages, has shared a lobbyist with ExxonMobil, one of the named defendants in the case. Syracuse University, a pioneer in the fossil fuel divestment movement, has a lobbyist with 14 separate oil and gas clients.

When you hire these insider lobbyists, you are basically working with double agents. They are guns for hireTimmons Roberts of Brown University

“It’s incredible that this has gone under the radar for so long, as these lobbyists help the fossil fuel industry wield extraordinary power,” said James Browning, a former Common Cause lobbyist who put together the database for a new venture called F Minus. “Many of these cities and counties face severe costs from climate change and yet elected officials are selling their residents out. It’s extraordinary.

“The worst thing about hiring these lobbyists is that it legitimizes the fossil fuel industry,” Browning added. “They can cloak their radical agenda in respectability when their lobbyists also have clients in the arts, or city government, or with conservation groups. It normalizes something that is very dangerous.”

The searchable database, created by compiling the public disclosure records of lobbyists up to 2022 reveals:

Some of the most progressive-minded cities in the US employ fossil fuel lobbyists. Chicago shares a lobbyist with BP. Philadelphia’s lobbyist also works for the Koch Industries network. Los Angeles has a lobbyist contracted to the gas plant firm Tenaska. Even cities that are suing fossil fuel companies for climate damages, such as Baltimore, have fossil fuel-aligned lobbyists.

Environmental groups that push for action on climate change also, incongruously, use lobbyists employed by the fossil fuel industry. The Environmental Defense Fund shares lobbyists with ExxonMobil, Calpine and Duke Energy, all major gas producers. A lobbyist for the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund also works on behalf of the mining company BHP.

Large tech companies have repeatedly touted their climate credentials but many also use fossil fuel-aligned lobbyists. Amazon employs fossil fuel lobbyists in 27 states. Apple shares a lobbyist with the Koch network. Microsoft’s lobbyist also lobbies on behalf of Exxon. Google has a lobbyist who has seven different fossil fuel companies as clients.

More than 150 universities have ties to lobbyists who also push the interests of fossil fuel companies. These include colleges that have vowed to divest from fossil fuels under pressure from students concerned about the climate crisis, such as California State University, the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University and Syracuse University. Scores of school districts, from Washington state to Florida, have lobbyists who also work for fossil fuel interests.

A constellation of cultural and recreational bodies also use fossil fuel lobbyists, despite in many cases calling for action on the climate crisis. The New Museum in New York City, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Sundance Film Institute in Utah all share lobbyists with fossil fuel interests, as does the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Florida Aquarium. Even top ski resorts such as Jackson Hole and Vail, which face the prospect of dwindling snow on slopes due to rising temperatures, use fossil fuel lobbyists.

Cities, companies, universities and green groups that use fossil fuel-linked lobbyists said this work didn’t conflict with their own climate goals and in some cases was even beneficial. “It is common for lobbyists to work for a variety of clients,” said a spokesperson for the University of Washington.

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art said it had retained a lobbyist on the F Minus database “for a period during the pandemic … We are not currently working with the company.”


The Los Angeles County Museum of Art said it no longer works with the lobbying company that F Minus linked to fossil fuel interests. 

A spokesperson for the Environmental Defense Fund said that working for big oil is “not, in itself, an automatic disqualification. In some cases it can actually help us find productive alignment in unexpected places.” Microsoft said despite its lobbying arrangements there is “no ambiguity or doubt about Microsoft’s commitment to the aggressive steps needed to address the world’s carbon crisis”.

But the vast scale of the use of fossil fuel lobbyists by organizations that advocate for climate action underlines the deeply embedded influence of oil, gas and coal interests, according to Timmons Roberts, an environmental sociologist at Brown University.

“The fossil fuel industry is very good at getting what it wants because they get the lobbyists best at playing the game,” Roberts said. “They have the best staff, huge legal departments, and the ability to funnel dark money to lobbying and influence channels.

“This database really makes it apparent that when you hire these insider lobbyists, you are basically working with double agents. They are guns for hire. The information you share with them is probably going to the opposition.”

Roberts said that climate-concerned organizations may get a “short term” benefit by gaining access to politicians close to the fossil fuel lobbyists they use but that the enduring impact is to simply reinforce the status of polluting industries. “It would make a big difference if all of these institutions cut all ties with fossil fuel lobbyists, even if they lose some access to insider decisions,” he said. “It would be taking one more step to removing the social license from an industry that’s making the planet uninhabitable.”

Nearly all states require lobbyists to register and submit periodic disclosure reports, and lobbyists tend not to advocate for both sides of the same piece of legislation. Beyond that, the laws around lobbying are scant. There is no bar to lobbyists working for clients with seemingly diametrically opposing aims, and there are few guardrails to ensure sensitive information isn’t shared with the other side.

This has led to lobbyists with client lists that are jarring in their juxtapositions. Hinman Straub, a New York-based advisory firm, lobbies on behalf of Koch Industries, known for its history of climate denial and muscular efforts to block action to cut emissions, as well as Bard College, one of the most liberal institutions in the US.

Seth McKeel, a former Republican state legislator in Florida, is lobbyist to both Apple, which has vowed to completely decarbonize its supply chain by 2030, and Kinder Morgan, which has more than 140 oil and gas terminals.

Syracuse University’s lobbyist, the Brown & Weinraub outfit, also has 14 fossil fuel clients, including Koch Industries companies, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute, a situation that Alex Scrivner, a Syracuse PhD student and campus climate advocate, described as “disheartening”. The Koch Industries network itself shares lobbyists with a broad range of institutions, from the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre to Google.

The practice of political lobbying has grown significantly since the 1970s, with the fossil fuel industry among the most prolific users of paid operatives to help shape favourable government policies. A study released in May found that not only is the industry more likely to lobby than others, its lobbying expenditures have jumped when faced with potential climate-linked threats to its business model.

This morass of fossil fuel lobbying now touches all flavours of political persuasion. Lobbying contracts can involve a range of different tasks that do not necessarily directly clash with the stated aims of another client, and some environmental groups feel that having fossil fuel-aligned lobbyists can open up pathways to Republican lawmakers who might otherwise not be amenable to them.

Denis Dison, director of communications for the National Resources Defense Council Action Fund, said the environmental group “as a rule” doesn’t use people who also work with the fossil fuel industry. But he added that “at times we retain vendors that specialize in engagement that can help build support for climate and equity progress across both sides of the aisle”.

Browning said his advice would be to avoid “cynical calculations”. He said: “We got into this mess on climate by groups seeking short-term wins but empowering the fossil fuel industry and giving them credibility.” State capitols can act as a sort of “alternate reality” where existential issues like the climate crisis are overshadowed by the desire to cultivate alliances and bolster influence, he added.

“People just assume there is no alternative to the status quo, but it’s time to take a side. It’s all about who is in the room when decisions are made, and the only way to force change is to get these fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists out of the room.”

Lobbyists, like lawyers, aren’t required to hold the same worldview as their clients, according to Sarah Bryner, director of research at OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks lobbying. “But you could see it would be problematic to represent clients with radically opposed views to other clients,” she said.

“The money thing matters, too. These environmental groups, and even cities, can’t pay lobbyists as much as huge multinational fossil fuel companies can, so there is an imbalance there. Loyalties would be split.”

You shouldn’t be funding the person who is poisoning you

Former Culver City, California, mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells

Meghan Sahli-Wells saw the pressure exerted by fossil fuel lobbying first-hand while she was mayor of Culver City, California, where she spearheaded a move to ban oil drilling near homes and schools. Culver City, part of Los Angeles county, overlaps with the Inglewood oilfield, and the close proximity of oilwells to residences has been blamed for worsening health problems, such as asthma, as well as fueling the climate crisis.

“It takes so much community effort and political lift to pass policies and then these lobbying firms come in and try to undo them overnight,” said Sahli-Wells, who ended her second mayoral term in 2020. Oil and gas interests, which spent $34m across California lobbying lawmakers and state agencies last year, mobilised against the ban, arguing it would be economically harmful and cause gasoline prices to spike.

“There was just a huge push from the fossil fuel industry,” Sahli-Wells said. “It’s not a good look to be funding lobbyists for fossil fuels, especially with public money.

“I hope that many people just don’t know they share lobbyists with fossil fuel companies and that this database will bring transparency and allow leaders to better vet these companies,” she added. “You shouldn’t be funding the person who is poisoning you.”

COMING FOR KENNEY'S JOB

Brian Jean back in the Alberta Legislature after claiming byelection win



Sean Amato
CTV News Edmonton
Updated March 15, 2022 

The man working to swipe Premier Jason Kenney’s job took a big step towards that ultimate goal Tuesday night, winning a byelection while carrying the United Conservative Party flag.

Former Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean won the riding of Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche receiving roughly 60 per cent of the vote.

Jean has been calling for the resignation of Kenney for months, insisting that the first-term premier will lose to the opposition NDP in a general election scheduled for May 2023.

The Fort McMurray-based lawyer and businessman has been rallying people to vote against Kenney in an April 9 leadership review, even turning down door knocking help from UCP MLAs in favour of that cause.

Jean, a former MLA and MP, defeated NDP candidate Ariana Mancini Tuesday.

She also finished second to Jean in the 2015 provincial election. Mancini captured roughly 17 per cent of the vote Tuesday.

Jean resigned as a UCP MLA for the area in 2018 after he lost a leadership vote to Jason Kenney in 2017.

Kenney was asked at a news conference in Edmonton Tuesday morning who he'd be rooting for in the contest.

"Well, obviously the United Conservative Party. And obviously I encourage people to get out and vote," he said, not mentioning Jean by name.

Wildrose Independence Party leader Paul Hinman finished third with roughly 11 per cent.

The byelection was triggered when UCP MLA Laila Goodridge resigned to run for a federal seat.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Chelan Skulski


Brian Jean after winning Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche byelection on Tuesday March 15, 2022. (CTV News Edmonton/Sean Amato)

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'Not trusted by anyone': The campaign to kick Jason Kenney out of the premier's chair

WHOEVER GETS ELECTED KENNEY LOSES

Premier Jason Kenney calls March 15 byelection, UCP candidate campaigning to oust him

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has called a byelection that will feature his own candidate campaigning to topple him as leader.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

EDMONTON — Elections Alberta announced Tuesday the launch of a four-week campaign in Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche. Voters in the northern constituency will head to the polls March 15.

Brian Jean, a former Kenney political partner turned foe, is running to retain the seat for the United Conservatives.

Jean said it has become clear to him and many in the party that the core conservative values of the UCP can still bring political victory against the NDP in the 2023 election — but not with Kenney at the helm.

“I believe UCP policy is better policy (than the NDP’s),” Jean said in an interview.

“With a change in leadership style and direction, and in particular a person, it has a chance to win back the hearts and minds of Albertans.”

The constituency came open last August after UCP backbencher Laila Goodridge stepped down to run, successfully, for the Conservative party in the federal election.

Kenney waited until the final day of the six-month statutory window to call the byelection. He said he wanted to wait to get through the Omicron wave of COVID-19.

The NDP candidate, Ariana Mancini, said the byelection is about sending a message to a UCP government that has badly mismanaged health care during the pandemic and eroded the bottom lines for working families with policies igniting hikes to income taxes, property taxes, school fees, utility bills and insurance rates.

“I’ve knocked on so many doors over the past 10 weeks and families are telling me their bills are stacking up higher and higher every month,” Mancini said.

“Folks in Fort McMurray have had enough of the drama and the infighting in the UCP.

“We need a government that is focused on families and businesses here in our community.”

Paul Hinman, leader of the Wildrose Independence Party, has announced he will also contest the seat.

Kenney and Jean have a long history dating back to when they were federal Conservative MPs.




Both eventually left to enter Alberta provincial politics. Jean took over as head of the Wildrose Party and Kenney became leader of the Progressive Conservatives.

Together they co-founded the United Conservative Party in 2017. Jean lost the leadership of the new party to Kenney in a vote stained by accusations of secret deals, colluding candidates and fraud.

Jean, who is from Fort McMurray, has represented the area as a member of Parliament and as a provincial member of the legislature.

He eventually quit his UCP seat but announced last November that he was coming out of retirement to run again in the byelection with the goal of ousting Kenney as party leader and premier.

Jean has criticized Kenney's performance on multiple files and has suggested the premier's top-down approach to government was causing Albertans to ditch the UCP in droves.

The Jean fight is one of two brush fires Kenney is trying to put out while working to improve his low popularity numbers and boost party fundraising that lags well behind the NDP.

On April 9, party members are to gather in Red Deer, Alta., to vote on Kenney's leadership. The vote was originally supposed to happen this fall, but Kenney agreed to move it up to tamp down growing discontent within caucus over his job performance.

Kenney has framed the vote not as a referendum on his performance, but as important to repel fringe elements threatening the stability, core ideology and achievements of his party and government.

"There will be an effort obviously by many of the folks involved in these (COVID-19) protests — who perhaps have never belonged to a party before — to show up at that special general meeting to use it as a platform for their anger about COVID measures over the past two years," he said Monday.

"So it's incumbent on mainstream Alberta conservatives to also show up in large numbers to send a message about the importance of stability and maintaining a big-tent mainstream coalition for the interests of the future of the province."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 15, 2022.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

TOO BAD KENNEY, YOU LOSE

ALBERTA
NDP ready for 2022 byelection as Notley blasts UCP's handling of COVID-19

Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley said lifting COVID-19 restrictions for what the province called “the best summer ever” was “the government’s biggest failure” this past year.

In a year-end interview, Notley said it was this decision that worsened the fourth wave of the virus and pushed Alberta’s health care system to its breaking point.

More than 15,000 surgeries were delayed as hospitals were overwhelmed. COVID-19 hospitalizations peaked at 1,133 patients, including 267 patients in ICUs.

The Northern Lights Regional Health Centre (NLRHC) brought in seven health care workers from Newfoundland and Labrador to help staff.

During the third wave in the spring, the local ICU was regularly packed and patients were sent to hospitals in Edmonton.

“How many people had their treatment delayed at the same time we saw up to 1,000 preventable deaths?” said Notley.

Premier Jason Kenney; current health minister Jason Copping and his predecessor, Tyler Shandro; and Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw have admitted lifting most COVID-19 restrictions on Canada Day put Alberta on course for the fourth wave in the fall.

Meanwhile, the NDP is ending the year on a high note. Party fundraising outpaced the UCP and the Opposition succeeded in getting the UCP to reverse course on multiple files.

This included coal mining along the eastern slopes of the Rockies, a widely-panned draft K-6 curriculum, and wage cuts for nurses.

Notley also attacked Kenney for making a $1.5 billion investment in the Keystone XL pipeline before the 2020 U.S. presidential election was held. President Joe Biden fulfilled his campaign promise to cancel the project during his first day in office.

“You didn’t have to be an oil and gas expert to know that it was a very reckless gamble, of $1.5 billion, at least, belonging to Albertans. We shouldn’t have lost that money,” said Notley.

Notley said her goals for 2022 include a focus on improving Alberta’s health care system and economic diversification. The party has called on the Alberta government to boost supports for long-term problems among recovered COVID-19 patients, particularly in rural Alberta.

“We know affordability is a problem. It’s always been a problem in Fort McMurray but it’s going up across the province,” said Notley . “[The provincial government] can put the cap back in place that we had around utilities They could put the cap on insurance rates back because people’s insurance rates are skyrocketing.”

Locally, the NDP is siding with the municipality’s fight to run its own EMS dispatch. The party is also lobbying for a reversal to changes made to the Disaster Relief Program (DRP). Earlier this year, the province limited homeowners to a one-time payment of $500,000 in government relief after a natural disaster. Municipalities and Métis settlements are also now on the hook for 10 per cent of damages.

“These changes will have sweeping effects on housing prices and the ability to sell a previously flooded home in Fort McMurray,” said Ariana Mancini, NDP candidate for Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche, earlier this month. “This is about protecting our community, encouraging people to raise their families here and ensuring those already living here can retire in peace.”

Mancini’s main opponent is former UCP MLA and Wildrose Leader Brian Jean. Jean lost to Kenney for UCP leadership and resigned in Feb. 2018.

Earlier this month, he announced a return to politics and won the UCP’s nomination by promising to out Kenney. Jean says the premier’s leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic is setting the NDP up for a victory in the next provincial election.

Mancini is also running against Paul Hinman, leader of the separatist Wildrose Independence Party and former Wildrose MLA for Cardston-Taber-Warner and Calgary-Glenmore. A date for the byelection must be scheduled by Feb. 15.

-with files from Vincent McDermott and the Canadian Press

JeHamilton@postmedia.com

Jenna Hamilton, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Fort McMurray Today

Two-thirds of Albertans feel Kenney deserves a leadership review, poll suggests

A new poll suggests large public support for Premier Jason Kenney’s leadership review, and even his resignation, while his party is trailing the NDP if a vote were held today.

Author of the article:Ashley Joannou
Publishing date:Dec 14, 2021 • 

Premier Jason Kenney. 

PHOTO BY DARREN MAKOWICHUK /Postmedia file

The latest Leger poll, conducted on behalf of Postmedia, suggests 66 per cent of Albertans polled think Kenney deserves a leadership review and 60 per cent think he should resign.

The numbers show the NDP continues to lead with 43 per cent of decided or leaning voters saying they are prepared to vote for Rachel Notley and the NDP compared to 32 per cent for Kenney’s UCP government.

The poll of 1,249 Albertans was conducted from Dec. 2 to 5, just prior to the United Conservative Party executive announcing that Kenney would face a leadership review in Red Deer on April 9, but not earlier as was called for by 22 dissenting constituency associations.

Leger’s executive vice president Ian Large said he thinks the polling results could influence the scheduled leadership review even though the vast majority of those polled aren’t the same people who will make the final decision.

“(Kenney) has to convince the party that despite these very low numbers, and this dissatisfaction, that he is re-electable. But when you’ve got six in 10 Albertans that think he should resign? That’s a tough row to hoe,” he said.

Half of those who intend to vote UCP want a leadership review of Kenney. Of those who intend to vote NDP, eight in 10 want Kenney to resign, the polling says.

While the NDP continues to lead, the gap between the two major parties is narrowing slightly, Large said, but that’s not necessarily because the UCP is gaining ground.

Polling from May showed the NDP with 46 per cent of the vote compared to the UCP’s 33 per cent. In March 2021 those numbers sat at 51 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.

While the UCP’s share of the vote has stayed relatively stable, in the December polling Paul Hinman’s Wildrose Independence Party showed up on the playing field with 10 per cent of decided voters. In previous polling the party was grouped in the “some other party” category.

“Those aren’t NDP voters … So what I’m thinking is there may be kind of a trickle from the NDP, back to the (United) Conservatives but at the same time, there’s some bleeding from the (United) Conservatives to the Wildrose Independence,” Large said.

Large said the Wildrose Independence Party is doing particularly well in rural Alberta and it will be important to understand why those voters are dissatisfied with the current government if the UCP wants to plot a path to remain in government come 2023.

“This time of the election cycle, it’s really easy to tell your pollster, I’m going to I’m going to show how angry I am by picking this virtually non existent party with no seats,” he said.

Hinman will be running in an upcoming byelection in Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche, he announced on Twitter last week.

Kenney has faced criticism of his leadership throughout the pandemic. Large said, but with oil prices climbing and job numbers improving that could benefit the government.

“All the things that the UCP promised are coming to fruition. And so do they come to fruition fast enough before either the April vote or the 2023 election?” he said.

Online polls cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population. If the data were collected through a random sample, the margin of error would be plus or minus 2.8 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

ajoannou@postmedia.com

Viewpoint: Renewable energy is a terrifying word to people who don't care

Theresa Hinman

The Oklahoman
Sun, December 5, 2021

Theresa Hinman

Although the population of Native Americans, as a whole, has risen in Oklahoma, self-actualization has maintained the irony of moving fast by running and boasting of how far you ran.

Old Native men would tell you, "you didn't run anywhere, kiddo, your treadmill stayed in place." Your reply: "No grandfather, this computer readout says I just ran three miles in place so it's the same as running three miles." Then, the grandfather says, "You can lie and still accomplish the truth? ... There is no truth to going three miles in place, but there is truth in moving your body like it went three miles in place."

This is the story of statistics. The practical application of statistics sounds good, but application is greater. We, in America, shun the very idea of communism and socialism. That is exactly what our tribes practiced and lived by 1,000 years before the "invasion." The old school tribes never had global warming ... for 1,000 years. We looked out for our fellow animals and the Earth and shared evenly.

The fossil fuel profiteers left oil drills and debris all over the land as they skipped to the bank. Once an area was spent, the oil companies just walked away from the mess they created. They didn't care. They had money to spend, and there was no respect for the Earth. We, tribal people, shared everything and counted the wildlife and Earth as our family. We used only what we needed and never became greedy of overuse. Renewable energy is a terrifying word to the people who don't care. The fossil fuel profiteers take, take until there is nothing left to take.

We can now accomplish running around the world on our treadmill by applying the ever available renewable energy the Earth provides. As a bonus, we can rid ourselves of reliance on the profiteers and be excellent stewards to what we are blessed to have on our tribal lands. The U.S. government thought they gave us useless land. We are Native Americans, and no land is useless because we are privileged to be on any of it.

Theresa Hinman is a member of the Ponca Nation.

Native Americans can apply the ever available renewable energy the Earth provides and be good stewards of the land.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Viewpoint: Renewable energy is terrifying word to people who don't care