Biden team quashes Trump environmental weakening that angered Canada

Alexander Panetta CBC 8/5/2021

© Mike Segar/Reuters Canada geese, seen here covered in snow on the Hudson River near New York City earlier this year, are among more than 1,000 species affected by the decision.

This story is part of Watching Washington, a regular dispatch from CBC News correspondents reporting on U.S. politics and developments that affect Canadians.

The Biden administration says it's siding with Canada in a dispute over an environmental protection for birds that migrate across the border.

It agrees that a Trump-era rule to weaken protections has to go.

The U.S. government on Friday published a regulatory decision proposing to revoke a policy change announced by the Trump administration.

The move comes after the new administration said in February that it was reviewing its predecessor's weakening of environmental protections for birds.

The Biden administration is now soliciting public comment on its decision.

At issue is whether companies, in particular energy companies, can be fined when birds are accidentally killed by their projects.

The Trump administration had done away with fines for non-intentional killings that had resulted in companies incurring $105.8 million US in penalties between 2010 and 2018.

The Canadian government had argued that the change, which affected more than 1,000 species, violated the terms of a 1916 Canada-U.S. agreement on migratory birds and would threaten vulnerable species.

"After further consideration, we have similar concerns to those of our treaty partner, Canada," said the new rule published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The document also cited previous laws passed by Congress to back the administration's interpretation of U.S. law as protecting birds from industrial activity.

A mother’s happy day: military spouse deported by Trump returns to family

Richard Luscombe in Miami 

THE GUARDIAN 8/5/2021

Three years ago Alejandra Juarez fell victim to Donald Trump’s cruelty as the wife of a decorated US Marine Corps veteran and mother of two young US citizen daughters was deported to Mexico under the former president’s zero-tolerance immigration policies.

On Saturday Juarez will rejoin her family in Florida as one of the first beneficiaries of a humanitarian program set up by Joe Biden’s administration to reunify parents Trump separated from their children.

But while Juarez’s Mother’s Day weekend reunion with daughters Pamela, 19, Estela, 11, and husband Temo will close a lengthy, painful journey of isolation and depression, she sees it as a door opening for other families torn apart by deportation.

Related: Trump-era policy forces families to make life-altering decisions at US-Mexico border

“I’m happy this is behind me and my family, and hoping this will lead to a permanent solution not only for military spouses like myself, but for everyone,” she told the Guardian from Mérida, Mexico, where she has been living since being forced from her home in Davenport, Florida, in 2018.

“I hope it will have a domino effect and bring many more people back.”

The Biden administration’s family reunification taskforce was set up by the new president’s executive order in February and began returning some of those “unjustly separated at the US-Mexico border” during the Trump era this week by granting them “humanitarian parole”.

The numbers, however, are uncertain. The homeland security department (DHS) taskforce has been working to identify cases, but admits finding them all will be a lengthy process. It is scheduled to deliver its first report on 2 June.

Also unclear is how many military families were affected by what Biden has called the “human tragedy” of separations during the four years Trump was in office. Federal agencies do not record military service in immigration cases, but a 2018 report by the advocacy group American Families United estimated that up to 11,800 active service men and women, all US citizens or permanent residents, had a spouse vulnerable to deportation.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who is also the taskforce’s chair, said this week’s first wave of reunifications was “just the beginning”.

“Many more will follow, and we recognize the importance of providing these families with the stability and resources they need to heal,” he said, noting the taskforce was “exploring options” for long-term legal stability for reunified families.

© Provided by The Guardian Alejandra Juarez walks with her two daughters, Pamela, 16, and Estela, nine, and her husband Temo Juarez, a former US mMarine, to the departure gates at Orlando international airport for her deportation flight to Mexico. Photograph: Joey Roulette/Reuters

Juarez, 41, and her 43-year-old husband Cuauhtemoc, known as Temo, were both born in Mexico. But while he came to the US legally as a child and was naturalized in 2002, shortly before a 16-month deployment in Iraq, she spent the 18 years of their marriage until her deportation undocumented.

As a teenager she was caught crossing the border illegally and chose to sign a document in English she said she didn’t understand and return to Mexico voluntarily instead of being placed in detention. The document permanently forfeited her right to legal status, which she did not discover until after her marriage.

She returned to the US and lived anonymously in Florida with her husband until a traffic stop in 2013 exposed her undocumented status. Even then, under the more relaxed policies of Barack Obama’s administration, she was allowed to stay with twice-yearly check-ins with immigration authorities.

Juarez self-deported in 2018 after Trump implemented his no-tolerance approach, and before authorities could enforce a removal order issued against her. She rented an apartment in Mexico with Estela while her husband remained in Florida to run his roofing business and allow Pamela to finish high school, but with money running out and two households to run, visits to Mexico became less frequent.

When the coronavirus pandemic struck, Juarez said, her jobs teaching English slowed up and Estela returned to Florida. The knowledge her daughters were growing up without their mother, she said, caused her depression for which she needed therapy.

Darren Soto, a Florida Democratic US congressman, lobbied the White House for Juarez to be allowed to return, and has introduced the Protect Patriot Spouses Act to Congress to protect military families from deportations.

“President Trump’s administration was an aberration in American history with regard to immigration. Now we have humanitarian considerations, which are American values, reincorporated into our federal government,” said Soto, who also backs the American Families United Act that would allow some undocumented immigrants with US citizen family members to stay.

“It’s been a long time coming, but Alejandra never gave up on us and we never gave up on her. They’ve missed almost three years of cherished memories together and it’s been traumatic for all of them.”

Juarez said she was grateful for the efforts of Soto, her immigration lawyers and daughter Estela, who was one of her mother’s biggest cheerleaders. The 11-year-old excoriated Trump at last year’s Democratic national convention, reading a letter in which she told him: “You tore our world apart.”

In January, she appealed for Biden’s help in an emotional video in which she likened her father’s military service to that of the new president’s late son Beau. Estela, Juarez said, is documenting the family’s story in a forthcoming book titled Until Someone Listens.

For now, Juarez said, her intention is making up for lost time.

“They need my cooking and they already told me what they want for breakfast on Sunday, so I’ll go grocery shopping like I always did, make breakfast for all of them and go to church like we used to,” she said. “I just want to enjoy my house and my family again.”

Threading salons' integral role in South Asian American communities

Fareeha Molvi, CNN 8/5/2021

It's been a year since Misbah Etman, a real estate agent in Los Angeles, stepped foot in a salon for any kind of beauty treatment, but threading is the one she has missed the most.

© Neethi

Before the pandemic, Etman frequented her go-to salon every few weeks for brow-shaping appointments. Like many South Asian American women, she found that the routine did as much for her mindset as it did her appearance.

"(I miss) that clean feeling that makes me think I can handle the world," said Etman. "If my eyebrows are unruly, the rest of my life is too."

South Asian-owned beauty parlors like Etman's LA favorite, can be found across America. In some, Bollywood music videos will play on a television in the background. In others, a religious symbol near the cash register might hint at the owner's beliefs: a small Hindu altar, a Buddha miniature or a plaque with Islamic calligraphy. Stations will often be abuzz with soft chatter punctuated by loud goodbyes from customers waving at the door. The bustle of comings and goings is usually constant

.

© Courtesy of Ziba Beauty Opening day at Ziba Beauty salon

In front of vanity mirrors, threading artists clad in kurti tops or salon aprons may be seen standing over reclining clients, who stretch the skin taut themselves. Cotton thread looped around their fingers, the practitioners move deftly to pluck delicate facial hairs. The service is typically over in a matter of minutes.

This vision of an archetypical salon may not be familiar to everyone in America who has undergone threading, which in recent decades, has become a popular way for people of all backgrounds to shape their brows and remove facial hair. But for women in the South Asian American diaspora, these kinds of spaces have become especially important sources of connection, familiarity and a complicated sense of belonging.

"(A salon is) a space ... where South Asians see themselves in their fullness," said Hareem Khan, an assistant professor of anthropology and ethnic studies at California State University, San Bernardino.

Culture and kinship

Within the South Asian community, threading falls somewhere between a universal cultural practice and a non-negotiable act of maintenance.

In previous generations, South Asian women would first get threaded in preparation for their wedding day. But today, girls typically start threading around the time they hit puberty, beginning what is often a lifelong commitment.

Many South Asians have body and facial hair that is naturally thick and dark, while beauty norms cast its removal as a marker of femininity and hygiene (a view that is, increasingly, being called into question). Threading is a quick and cost-effective way to remove unwanted hair from the upper lip, chin, forehead and cheeks, or to shape existing brow hair to accentuate the eyes and open up the face.

"(South Asian women) will give up their Starbucks but not their eyebrows," said Sumita Batra, CEO of Ziba Beauty, a chain of family-run threading salons in California. "It's really self-enhancement ... It's self-love."

While the historic origins of threading are disputed (various sources have claimed the practice originated in Middle East, China and India) many American threading salons are South Asian-owned and -operated.

In large American cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, burgeoning South Asian American enclaves began taking shape in the late 1980s. Immigrant women started offering threading services out of their living rooms and garages, advertising through word-of-mouth. Others started modest salons in the back rooms of sari shops, or strip malls near South Asian grocery stores.

When Batra's mother, Kundan Sabarwal, opened the first branch of Ziba Beauty in Artesia, California, in 1988, it was a predominantly women-only space that catered to an exclusively South Asian clientele. Threading's relative affordability (Ziba Beauty charged just $5 for brows when it first opened) made it a singular self-care ritual accessible across class lines.

The salons were one of the few places where South Asian immigrant women could socialize with one another, both as patrons and employees. People often relied on them to provide traditional beauty services they couldn't find elsewhere, like threading and henna application, as well as certain waxing and facial techniques.

Then, like now, immigrants and working-class women gravitated toward the salons for employment. Despite the prospect of long hours and low wages, many artists prefer threading over other service jobs because of the sense of community it offers, according to Preeti Sharma, an assistant professor of American studies at California State University, Long Beach, who has written a dissertation on the subject. "There is something about folks wanting to work with others in their community, and a kind of comfort," Sharma said in a phone interview.

In smaller salons, she added, women will help each other with transportation and childcare, share food and speak a common language.

This sense of kinship also exists between threading artists and their clients, according to Sridevi Kalvacherla, an Indian immigrant and independent threading artist in Tempe, Arizona. Kalvacherla started seeing customers in her home when the pandemic forced the salon she works at to close. "(They're) not even like clients now. It's like a family," she said, recalling conversations about recipes, festivals, jewelry and saris. Kalvacherla especially loves cooking Indian dishes and serving them to her clients. "They get that homey feeling (from me)," she added.

Pre-pandemic, Aruna Cadambi, a corporate responsibility manager in New York City, saw her threading artist every two to three weeks. They started off discussing things like Cadambi's wedding plans but gradually delved deeper into body image issues and talking about quarrels with family and friends. "We built a relationship of trust naturally over time," she said.

Their working relationship provided a degree of anonymity, making Cadambi feel like she could confide in her beauty technician more readily than she could some friends. Eventually, they became so close that in 2018, when logistical issues prevented Cadambi's mother, aunt and cousins from performing her "haldi-besan," a private pre-wedding ritual where close female relatives apply turmeric paste to the bride's skin, she entrusted her threading artist with the duty. She extended the offer not only due to the pair's special bond, but because the threader came from a similar cultural background and understood the custom.

The intimacy and trust required for threading (which "can have disastrous results if it's not done properly," said Khan) may also partly explain the close rapport that can develop between artists and their customers. If practitioners change jobs, it is not unusual for clients to follow them to their new salon, even if it is less convenient to travel to.


The flaws in familiarity

For many women in the South Asian diaspora, threading is also a survival tactic. Being teased at a young age, often by male peers, for having a mustache or "unibrow," or being called dirty and hairy, is a near-universal experience. As adults, moving in spaces where having "foreign" features can attract further discrimination, threading dark facial hair away offers one way to stand out less.

Navigating the politics around race, beauty and assimilation, it's not surprising that South Asian clients often seek a threader who is also of South Asian descent. "This person, without me even needing to fully communicate myself, knows how to handle my concerns," Khan said.

But this familiarity can have its downsides. It's common to walk into a salon for one service, only to be met with unwelcome suggestions for others: fix hairy arms with waxing, eradicate acne with a facial, dye unsightly gray hair. "You feel a little on edge because you know you're going to be called out," Khan said.

Critical comments are perhaps to be expected from businesses that rely on customers' aesthetic aspirations. But they may also illustrate generational and cultural disconnects between threaders and their clients.

At a young age, Khan said she was advised to thread her whole face in an effort to make her brown skin look lighter -- a comment in keeping with widespread colorist attitudes within the South Asian community. These comments troubled her, but over time she understood it as a way in which care was communicated, however misguided. "I don't see it as necessarily malicious," she said. "It's enacting through this lens of familiarity -- and all the good and bad that comes with it."

As both a social space to connect with culture and community, and one that reinforces (in some cases outdated) beauty ideals, the role of threading salons continues to evolve among South Asian Americans.

"The way we feel in a diasporic space is always going to be a complicated feeling ... The salon is a microcosm of that tension," Khan said.

Illustrations by artist Neethi (IG: @kneethee)

IN ALBERTA SOUTH ASIANS RUN MOST OF THE NAIL SALONS

This Mother’s Day, pay attention to racialized women leading resistance movements, like Tamil mothers

Vivetha Thambinathan, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Health Sciences, Western University 

On Mother’s Day in 2009, over 2,000 Tamil protesters stepped onto Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway, chanting “no more genocide,” blocking every lane of the highway, bringing traffic to a standstill.

These protests were in response to an atrocity that took place near the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, a war that lasted 26 years and ended with genocide. The atrocity saw tens of thousands of Tamil civilians lured by the Sri Lankan government into “no fire zones”, and trapped under gunfire.

When news broke, Toronto Tamils took to the streets to demand justice after months of peaceful protests, hunger strikes and rallies across the city. The Gardiner protest was a pivotal moment for Toronto Tamils, in terms of both shaping their political identity, and recognizing the strength of community mobilization.

Tamil women formed the front lines of this protest and deliberately chose this role to de-escalate any potential conflicts between other protesters and the police. Tamil women have been active leaders and participants in resistance movements, both in Canada and Sri Lanka. This is work that has been happening for decades.

As an Eelam Tamil anti-racism educator and scholar-activist who has spent all her life in Toronto, my doctoral research is located within the intersections of trauma-informed migrant healing, liberation psychology and arts-based participatory action research. I am grounded in a decolonial theoretical framework and committed to global feminisms.

This Mother’s Day, I encourage you to reflect on why mainstream media doesn’t recognize racialized women-led global resistance movements as feminism. Western society’s narrow view of feminism is grounded in white assumptions and catered towards the privileged, excluding acts of resistance by racialized mothers as feminism.

This article seeks to centre Tamil mothers in a feminist dialogue that otherwise would be drowned out by white noise.

Headlines fueled racism

The demonstration by the Tamil community in Toronto garnered overwhelmingly racist attention and negative media coverage, labelling them as ungrateful immigrants, and strategically using the “women and children” phrase to paint a passive, patriarchal image of Tamil mothers, ironically on Mother’s Day.

The National Post published phrases like: “let’s call it the Tamil traffic strategy,” and “rabid Tamils surged into roadways blocking traffic … turning from figures of sympathy into bloody nuisances, from citizens into adversaries, from freedom fighters into extortionists.”

And there was a focus on othering the Tamil community, dehumanizing their existence, delegitimizing their demonstrations and removing the agency and will of women and mothers participating in and leading these protests.

Western feminism

Historically, feminism has excluded racialized women.

When we think of when women got the right to vote in Canada, it tends to go back to when white women got it — in the 1920s. But it wasn’t until 1948 that Chinese, Japanese and South Asian women were able to vote and Indigenous women received this right even later, in 1960. Simply put, popularized feminism is not intersectional. As feminist, and social activist bell hooks eloquently writes:

“White women who dominate feminist discourse today rarely question whether or not their perspective of women’s reality is true to the lived experiences of women as a collective group.”

Global feminist movements and everyday acts of women-driven resistance by racialized mothers and women don’t get the same spotlight as mainstream western feminist campaigns. Non-western feminisms are often historically erased and remain invisible within the media.

© (Shutterstock) Tamil women are seen occupying central Place Kelber Square in Strasbourg, France. Protesting against human rights abuses by the Sri Lankan government on May 18, 2019.

Tamil women and mothers fighting for their community

Tamil mothers and women are the glue to our community’s solidarity, activism and resistance.

Eelam, the native Tamil name for the island of Sri Lanka, has the second-highest number of enforced disappearances in the world. And for the past four years Families of The Disappeared has been fighting for truth and justice and searching for their loved ones.

Approximately 100,000, predominantly Tamil people, have been disappeared by the state since 1983. Now 12 years since the end of the armed conflict, the whereabouts of the disappeared are still unknown.

Women and mother-led protests by Families of the Disappeared began in 2017 with roadside demonstrations in Kilinochchi to demand answers for the fates and locations of their loved ones. Sister protests across the island were also mobilized in Vavuniya, Trincomalee, Mullaithivu, Kilinochchi and Maruthankerny.

These demonstrations are characterized as ammas (mothers) and ammamas (grandmothers) sitting on the road, holding photos of their loved ones, in all weather conditions, despite militarization and intimidation by police. At least 78 people have died in this pursuit of truth and justice.

And their work largely goes unrecognized. By mainstream media not identifying and highlighting these mother-led resistance movements, they are contributing to the erasure of these narratives. These powerful stories deserve to be told. This is the kind of work you should picture when you hear the word feminism

.

© (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena) Tamil women sit holding placards with portraits of their missing relatives as they protest outside a railway station in Colombo, Sri Lanka on April 6, 2015.

Marginalized women-led feminism ignored globally

There are parallels between the plight faced by Tamil women and the plight of Indigenous women in Canada who have spent over four decades documenting, raising awareness and demanding justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. As a Tamil woman living in Canada, I couldn’t ignore these parallels.

Feminism, as it is portrayed by mainstream media, should not be reserved for privileged white women. The intergenerational struggles and resistance of racialized women and mothers living in the west, particularly of Black and Indigenous people, is often not given space.

This Mother’s Day, join me in searching for global stories about racialized mothers and women you haven’t heard before. Not because they didn’t happen or has less of an impact, but because they were not given the same attention.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Vivetha Thambinathan receives funding from the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program. She is affiliated with PEARL (People for Equality and Relief in Lanka).

Analysis: Facebook confronts human rights dilemma on political speech
By Paresh Dave

© Reuters/LEAH MILLIS FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Trump hosts roundtable discussion on the reopening of U.S. economy at the White House in Washington

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc oversight board's extension of former U.S. President Donald Trump's banishment from the social network failed to settle how it will balance political leaders' freedom of speech and its responsibility to make sure hateful rhetoric does not incite violence.

The 20-person board, which includes legal scholars, activists and a former prime minister, upheld Trump's suspension from Facebook for the time being but said the company needed to do far more to prepare for volatile political situations.

The company's policies on these issues have huge importance not just in the United States but in countries including India, Brazil, Myanmar and the Philippines. Political leaders there have turned to the social network to stoke hate or spread misinformation, both with deadly consequences, according to critical reviews by the United Nations and other bodies.

"Facebook has become a virtually indispensable medium for political discourse," the board said in its Wednesday ruling. "It has a responsibility both to allow political expression and to avoid serious risks to other human rights."

The Oversight Board gave Facebook credit for evaluating Trump's actions during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which prompted his ban from the service, against the Rabat Plan of Action, a globally accepted test for distinguishing incitement of hatred and violence from what should be protected as free speech.

The six-point Rabat plan considers the context and intent of the speech, the speaker, the content itself, its reach and the imminence of harm. Trump, president at the time, told protesters in a Facebook video that they were "very special," even as some were still storming into the Capitol. Trump's account had 35 million followers.

The board concluded that Trump "used the communicative authority of the presidency in support of attackers," and his violation of Facebook's policies against glorifying violence was "severe in terms of its human rights harms." It did not exercise its authority to tell Facebook it must ban Trump permanently.

But the board chastised Facebook for not having a process for re-applying that or some other test to determine when Trump's privileges should be restored. It gave Facebook six months to decide on Trump's status and urged the company to develop a policy to handle crises in which its existing options would not prevent imminent harm.

Facebook said it is reviewing the feedback.

INDIA TURMOIL

Trump's suspension was the first time Facebook blocked a current president, prime minister or head of state. In March, it booted Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro for 30 days for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. His administration called the penalty "digital totalitarianism."

As it has become a major information source, Facebook has mostly given leeway to political leaders because what they say is newsworthy and important to the functioning of governments. Still, its policing of rule-breaking politicians, and political speech more broadly, has prompted backlash from governments and new regulatory threats in India, Hungary and Mexico.

Many civil society advocates say the company is too ready to silence political dissent and has no toolkit for dealing with the many ways authoritarian governments are manipulating its services, which also include Instagram and WhatsApp.

The issue is especially fraught in India, where users since last year have criticized Facebook for being slow to police hate speech and other actions by politicians of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Meanwhile, the government demanded that Facebook remove posts critical of its handling of the pandemic, including some by local lawmakers.

At the heart of the board's order in the Trump case is the view that every Facebook user, including Trump, deserves clarity on actions that will get them banned forever and steps they can take to ensure temporary suspensions are lifted.

United Nations conventions, which establish a widely respected though voluntary framework for international human rights law, hold that freedom of expression is a bedrock right, and thus people should not be subject to arbitrary muzzling by Facebook. The company committed to upholding such human rights in a corporate policy unveiled in March that includes annual follow-up reports.

"If you believe in the international human rights law principles that guide the decision, it is hard to see how a lifetime ban could EVER be permissible for any content violation," Nate Persily, a Stanford University law professor, tweeted on Wednesday.

But human rights law also holds that people must be protected from violence and other forms of harm.

Sarah Morris, director of New America’s Open Technology Institute, said the board's decision indicates Trump's repeated problematic postings in the run-up to Jan. 6 and their impact on the attack "make it a particularly egregious case that warranted deplatforming" him.

The board declined to go down the road recommended by a minority of members that Trump should not be reinstated until the company is satisfied that he has stopped making false claims about widespread fraud in the election he lost last year and disavowed support for those involved in the Capitol attack.

If Facebook adopted that requirement, Trump's return may be far off. He has called Joe Biden's 2020 presidential election victory "THE BIG LIE!," repeating the claim as recently as Monday.

(Reporting by Helen Coster, Elizabeth Culliford, Paresh Dave, Sheila Dang, Steve Holland and David Morgan. Editing by Joanthan Weber and Cynthia Osterman)

Environmental activists are being killed in Honduras over their opposition to mining

Giada Ferrucci, PhD Student, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, Western University 1 day ago

Two men shot Arnold Joaquín Morazán Erazo to death in his home in Tocoa, Honduras, one night in October 2020. Morazán was an environmental activist and one of 32 people criminalized by the Honduran government for defending the Guapinol River against the environmental impacts of a new iron oxide mine in the Carlos Escaleras National Park.

© (AP Photo/ Elmer Martinez) Activists and supporters of Honduran environmental and Indigenous rights activist Berta Caceres hold signs with her name and likeness during the trial against Roberto David Castillo, an alleged mastermind of her murder, outside of the Supreme Court building in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on April 6, 2021.

So far, at least eight people who have opposed the mine have been killed, putting its owner, Inversiones Los Pinares, at the centre of a deadly environmental conflict in the mineral-rich Bajo Aguán region. Local communities are concerned about the mine’s potential ecological damage. In their attempts to defend their territories, local leaders have been surveilled, threatened, injured and imprisoned, and some, like Morazán, have been killed.

Honduras is the deadliest place in the world for environmental defenders. Hundreds of them have been killed since 2009, including the Indigenous environmental leader Berta Càceres, who was assassinated in 2016.

The details are murky for some of the killings. In 2019, as a member of a fact-finding delegation, my colleagues and I documented that national police and military forces have patrolled the territory surrounding the mining project. We have recommended a thorough, prompt and impartial investigation of the human rights abuses by military police and paramilitary forces against human rights defenders and journalists in Tocoa.
The roots of conflict

Communities in Tocoa have persisted in organizing against the mines since 2011, when the Carlos Escaleras was declared a national park. The next year, congress reduced the park’s no-development zone to accommodate the mine’s development, following a permit process mired by irregularities.

Inversiones Los Pinares is owned by Lenir Pérez, a businessman previously accused of human rights violations, and Ana Facussé, daughter of the late palm oil magnate, Miguel Facussé. Even though the mine hasn’t yet exploited the iron oxide in the 200-hectare concession, community water supplies are polluted, trees have been flattened and landslides and flooding are more frequent.

In 2018, Los Pinares began to build an access road to the mine. In response, community members in Tocoa, including Morazán, established the Municipal Committee for the Defence of Public and Common Goods to campaign against the dispossession of natural resources by extractive industries. They submitted five requests for public consultations and held demonstrations in front of city hall. They also erected a “Camp in Defence of Water and Life” to block access to the mine.

© (ACAFREMIN: Central American Alliance Against Mining) View of the Camp in Defence of Water and Life.

The government response to the protesters was swift and brutal. It violently broke up the protest camp, militarized the entire region and arrested 32 local environmental activists.

In 2019, 12 of the accused environmentalists appeared voluntarily before authorities to face the charges against them: usurpation, arson, robbery, unlawful detention, illicit association and aggravated robbery. Eight of them remain imprisoned, although the prosecution has not presented any solid evidence to justify such prolonged detention.

The state also deployed the police and the army to protect the interests of Inversiones Los Pinares, eschewing the internationally recognized rights of the communities to organize, defend the environment and protest peacefully against the mine.

© (GuapinolResiste) Members of the Municipal Committee in Defence of Common and Public Goods of Tocoa imprisoned for their participation in a peaceful protest against Inversiones Los Pinares.

The international community

International organizations have acknowledged the important democratic roles of the environmental defenders in Tocoa.

The Institute for Policy Studies, Washington’s first progressive multi-issue think tank, awarded the community committee with the international Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights award. In 2020, the committee members were nominated for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded annually by the European Union.

Yet, in Honduras, these same activists are victims of defamation campaigns, criminalization, social media attacks and constant threats. Several residents have been forced to flee Honduras to escape criminal persecution. Meanwhile, the state uses corruption and police repression to guarantee impunity for those persecuting defenders.

The United States and Canada play a key role in the current crisis. They have geostrategic and economic interests in Honduras, through trade agreements and aid programs implemented after a 2009 coup. Afterwards, President Juan Orlando Hernandez declared Honduras “open for business.”

The country sold its natural resources, fuelling the expansion of extractive industries and causing conflicts with communities. The corporate-friendly General Mining Law lifted a seven-year moratorium on new mining projects — it was developed with technical assistance and funding from the Canadian government.
A call for justice

The conflict in Tocoa has increasingly gained the attention and support of the United Nations, particularly the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Oxfam and the Canadian Peace Brigades.

Under the Geneva Convention rules, the international community should condemn the state’s violence against environmental defenders and accept asylum applications.

It should pressure the Honduran government to enable free, prior and informed consent, and call for free and fair elections. Until then, the international community should suspend non-humanitarian economic aid to Honduras.

© (ACAFREMIN) ‘Let’s safeguard the forests’ is painted on a rock along the Guapinol River.

A UN working group recently ruled that the the detention of the eight defenders is arbitrary. The defenders have since launched legal action, and Blanca Izaguirre, the country’s human rights ombudsperson commissioner, has urged the state of Honduras to release them immediately.

Since it launched its project in Tocoa, Inversiones Los Pinares has reinforced patterns of violence, stigmatization, defamation and criminalization of environmental defenders. At the same time, state authorities have failed to meet human rights obligations.

“We feel vulnerable. While we were always protesting pacifically, here in Honduras you are criminalized for defending nature. But we do believe that water cannot be negotiated, because water is life,” Reynaldo Dominguez, one of the Guapinol defenders, told me in a recent interview.

The persistent corruption, structural violence and impunity suggest that Morazán will not be the last victim assassinated for defending nature for the livelihood of the community.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Giada Ferrucci consults to the Central American Alliance against Mining (ACAFREMIN)

CANADA

Politically sensitive 'Made in Israel' wine-labelling case sent back to food agency

TORONTO — A finding that wine from the West Bank can be labelled as a product of Israel was not reasoned properly and should now be thrashed out again, the Federal Court of Appeal has ruled.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

As a result, the appellate court said the politically sensitive case, which at one point threatened to put Middle East politics on trial, should go back to the Complaints and Appeals Office of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

"The administrative decision maker must demonstrate that its interpretation of the relevant provisions is consistent with their text, context and purpose," Chief Justice Marc Noel said. "Here this demonstration is totally lacking."

The case arose in 2017, when Dr. David Kattenburg, of Winnipeg, raised concerns that wines produced by Psagot and Shiloh Winery, located in the West Bank, were from Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, not Israel itself. He argued the wines should not, under Canadian law, be branded as Product of Israel.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency initially sided with him. However, the agency reversed course after some Jewish groups protested and Global Affairs Canada said the West Bank could be considered Israeli territory under the Canada-Israel free trade agreement.

In July 2019, a Federal Court judge found the settlements were not part of the State of Israel and the labelling was therefore misleading and deceptive. She sent the case back to the food inspection agency, saying Canadian consumers needed to know exactly what they were buying.

"One peaceful way in which people can express their political views is through their purchasing decisions," then-judge Anne Mactavish wrote, prompting the federal government to appeal.

In its analysis, the Federal Court of Appeal said the food agency was required to interpret and apply Canadian laws to decide whether the wine labels were indeed false or misleading.

The view of Global Affairs that the West Bank falls under the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement played a "determinative role" in the food agency's decision that the labelling was legal, Noel said. However, that was not enough to decide whether the agency's ruling had been reasonable, he said.

"We simply have no idea how the agency construed its legislation in coming to the conclusion that the labels are compliant," Noel said.

Noel said the agency, in taking a fresh look at the case, will want to hear from the affected parties, including Psagot, which had been unaware of the case until it reached Federal Court.

Noel also made it clear the agency is not bound by Mactavish's reasons.

"It will be open to the agency, as the decider of the merits of the labelling issue, to come to whatever outcome it thinks appropriate, provided that its interpretation and application of the relevant provisions to the facts in issue can be seen to be reasonable," Noel said.

Psagot bills itself as an award-winning winery 15 minutes north of Jerusalem. It says its wines are produced by Israelis under auspices of an Israeli company in an Israeli community subject to Israeli law in Israeli territory.

"Put simply, Psagot Winery proudly produces wines that are products of Israel," it says.

The winery said it was pleased the Federal Court of Appeal had now sent the case back to the food agency with direction the lower court's decision was not binding, and that Psagot can make submissions.

Dimitri Lascaris, the lawyer who acted for Kattenburg, said the government had again failed to persuade the court that the food agency had acted reasonably. The agency will not succeed in justifying its decision, he said.

"The reason for this is simple: As Canada’s government has long acknowledged, the West Bank is not part of Israel," Lascaris said. "The settlements in which these wines produced are, in the words of the U.N. Security Council, a 'flagrant violation of international law'."

Some Jewish groups called the ruling a victory, with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs saying the case was "part of a broader campaign to boycott Israel and Israeli goods."

Michael Bueckert, vice-president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, said the organization was disappointed.

"There's no question that it is both false and misleading to apply "Product of Israel" labels to goods from illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank," Bueckert said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 6, 2021.

U.S. broadband industry accused in 'fake' net neutrality comments

By David Shepardson

© Reuters/ANDREW KELLY FILE PHOTO: Signage is seen at the headquarters of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The broadband industry in 2017 funded a campaign that generated millions of fake comments to create the impression of grassroots opposition to net neutrality rules while the U.S. Federal Communications Commission considered repealing the policy, New York state's attorney general said on Thursday.

Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, said her office reached agreements with three companies involved in the scheme - Fluent Inc, Opt-Intelligence Inc and React2Media Inc - imposing penalties of $4.4 million and requiring them to adopt comprehensive reforms in future advocacy campaigns.

Her office identified the companies as the lead generators responsible for millions of the fake comments submitted in the FCC's net neutrality proceeding. Federal agencies often solicit public comments on key policy issues before taking action.

The New York investigation showed that broadband industry players spent $4.2 million to generate and submit more than 8.5 million fake comments to the FCC "to create the appearance of widespread grassroots opposition to existing net neutrality rules."

The investigation found that nearly 18 million of the more than 22 million public comments that the FCC received both for and against net neutrality were fake.

New York-based Fluent agreed to pay $3.7 million, according to the attorney general's office. It said Fluent provided the broadband industry with more than 5 million digital signatures for net neutrality comments.

Fluent said in a statement that the settlement covers "legacy practices that occurred prior to late 2018."

The company added that the settlement "provides clarity and sets a new standard in the political advocacy space" and said that since it has already made most of the required changes it "will have little impact on how Fluent serves our clients."

Opt-Intelligence and React2Media did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The three companies also worked on more than 100 other unrelated campaigns to influence regulatory agencies and public officials and generated fake comments for other rulemaking proceedings, the investigation found.

James said investigations into others that engaged in fraud are ongoing.

The FCC under Democratic former President Barack Obama adopted landmark net neutrality rules in 2015 that barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic or offering paid fast lanes. The rules, opposed by the broadband industry, were overturned by the FCC under President Donald Trump in December 2017.

Supporters of the net neutrality rules argued that the protections ensured a free and open internet. Broadband and telecoms trade groups argued that the rules would discourage investment.

Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, voted against the repeal and said the report "demonstrates how the record informing the FCC’s net neutrality repeal was flooded with fraud... We have to learn from these lessons and improve because the public deserves an open and fair opportunity to tell Washington what they think about the policies that affect their lives."

New York's investigation also found the FCC received another 9.3 million fake comments supporting net neutrality that used fictitious identities. Most of these comments were submitted by a 19-year-old college student using automated software, it found.

In mid-January 2017, several days before Trump was inaugurated, a document was circulated among a small group of senior broadband industry executives "laying out a plan to overturn the FCC's existing net neutrality regulations," according to James' office.

The document proposed a campaign to provide support for the FCC's expected net neutrality repeal, it said.

The campaign was run through a nonprofit organization funded by the broadband industry called Broadband for America made up of senior broadband company and trade group officials, it said. Documents cited in the investigation said the public comments would give the FCC's Republican chairman at the time, Ajit Pai, "volume and intellectual cover" for the repeal.

Pai declined to comment.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Will Dunham, Chizu Nomiyama and Diane Craft)

ORWELL'S AMERIKA

Opinion: GOPer files complaint against Democrat for telling the truth about Big Lie social posts

CNN Opinion by Frida Ghitis 

7/5/2021


The campaign to deceive the American people is entering a new and dangerous phase. Now that most Republican elected officials in Washington have surrendered to the Big Lie -- the thoroughly debunked claim that former President Donald Trump won the November 2020 election -- they are moving to intimidate or punish anyone who provides evidence of their deception, or of their role in the lead-up to the most direct assault on American democracy in memory, the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

© Provided by CNN REP. ZOE LOFGREN (D-CALIFORNIA)

On Thursday, the House Communication Standards Commission released a formal complaint by Republican Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia against Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-California), who in March issued a report compiling the disturbing election-related social media posts of scores of Republicans.


Carter's complaint came after House Republicans all but solicited complaints against Lofgren from their members.

It all fits neatly with the effort to push out the conservative Republican Rep. Liz Cheney from the Republican leadership for her refusal to endorse the Big Lie, and the continuing harassment of Republican critics of Trump, alongside the relentless repetition of Trump's lie.

Reading Lofgren's social media review, a reasonable person would conclude many of the officials' posts helped contribute to inciting the events of January 6. Lofgren does not reach that conclusion explicitly, but she does suggest concluding that in her foreword. She lays out the evidence and recommends we consider the implications.

As she points out in the report, the US Constitution, in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, prohibits anyone who has engaged in "insurrection or rebellion," from serving in Congress. She doesn't say they should be expelled, she simply cites the Constitution, and shows us what they said. The connection between their words -- not to mention Trump's -- and the January 6 rebellion is left for us to ponder.

That, apparently, is far too many facts for today's Republican Party.

The complaint against Lofgren has to be seen to be believed. Signed by Carter, it argues that by showing what members of Congress posted on social media, Lofgren violated rules of "decorum," and "disparage" them, in violation of House communications rules. If the evidence seems like disparagement, it's because the posts are appalling. They show the members incessantly telling their followers they had been robbed, that the election was stolen from them, and often saying they should respond with action.

Carter accuses Lofgren of inappropriately speculating about the motivation behind the posts, but his own quotes of her words show this is a stretch. Lofgren expresses concerns, and questions whether members violated their oath of office. "Like former President Trump," Lofgren wrote in the foreword, "any elected Member of Congress who aided and abetted the insurrection or incited the attack seriously threatened our democratic government. They would have betrayed their oath of office."

In her response to the complaint, Lofgren dismembers the accusations, showing point by point how her report does not violate House communications rules. "To the contrary," she asserts, "this Review is critical to our obligations." Far from intimidated, Lofgren restates her argument that the evidence from her report "could be the basis for a decision to expel members," based on the 14th Amendment's Section 3.

Carter's section takes up only 11 pages in Lofgren's nearly 2,000-page report. But it provides an arc of what happened to the party. On November 9, Carter says Trump and his backers deserve "our day in court." That was absolutely reasonable, but the rhetoric began changing as Trump promoted his lie.

As we know, they had many days in court. Dozens of court cases, recounts and other forms of scrutiny confirmed that Biden won. In fact, the government internet security agency formally concluded that "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history." The 2020 election is the most scrutinized, verified, litigated US election.

Every effort to support Trump's claim that he won (by a landslide, he dares claim) has come up empty. But facts no longer matter. By the time the court cases were dismissed, Trump's acolytes had moved beyond asking for a hearing. Republicans keep fanning the flames. How would you feel if you believed that the man you chose was robbed of victory? Judges have said, on the record, that the rhetoric of politicians can spur violence.

By December, Carter was asking people to "Chip in to stop the steal," literally trying to cash in on Trump's lie, a pattern that has helped fill the coffers of Trumpist politicians. (Ironically, Carter accused Lofgren of politicizing the report by showing the fundraising link he posted!)

On January 2, Rep. Pete Sessions reported he had met with the Stop the Steal group, "I encouraged them to keep fighting ... look forward to doing MY duty on January 6th." Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has backed QAnon, has nearly a hundred pages of social media posts in Lofgren's review. When Trump announced in December that there would be a "wild" gathering in Washington on January 6, she posted, "I'm planning a little something on January 6th as well."

Two days before the assault on the Capitol, Rep. Matt Gaetz warned, "Republicans will not leave democracy undefended on January 6th."

In the end, even after Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol, even after their calls to "Hang Mike Pence," Congress did certify Biden's victory. But dozens of Republican lawmakers voted against the certification. They voted to deny Americans their choice of president. Biden won the Electoral College 306 to 232; he won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes, and he had his victory confirmed in some 60 court cases. Still, 147 Republican lawmakers voted against his presidency. That alone sounds like an assault on US democracy.

Trump lost and Biden is president, but the campaign against his presidency, against American democracy is far from over. Trump has not relented. Just this week he issued another "proclamation," about his phony victory. Republican leaders make the pilgrimage to the former guy's pink retirement base in Florida to bend the knee, surrender their principles, and repeat his lie.

Trump rants about his imaginary victory to handfuls of Mar-a-Lago visitors in the evenings, and plots his revenge against the few remaining truth tellers in his party during the day.

Biden is president and Trump is not. But the contest over the November election, the battle over the truth about what Americans chose in last year's election, is far from over. The events of the past few days -- the push against Cheney, the review of Facebook's ban on Trump, the complaint against Lofgren -- all confirm that this chapter of America's history has not been closed. How the chapter ends will go a long way in determining the future of the country.

It's not a contest between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans; it's one between plain truth and deliberate lies propagated by self-serving politicians at the expense of their country's democracy.

Frida Ghitis

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