AUSTRALIA
Gulf of Carpentaria the 'poor cousin' of Great Barrier Reef in climate change action
ABC North West Qld /
By Kemii Maguire
Posted Yesterday 

Hundreds of kilometres of mangroves in Queensland's Gulf Country have turned a ghostly white.( Supplied: James Cook University)

While attention has focused on the Great Barrier Reef this week, scientists warn Gulf of Carpentaria mangroves are also being devastated by the effects of climate change.

Key points:

Mangrove dieback in the Gulf of Carpentaria is being overlooked in climate discussions

Scientists say devastation in the Gulf directly correlates to Great Barrier Reef bleaching

Calls for better appreciation of climate change impact on mangroves

The World Heritage Committee, which sits under UNESCO, has proposed moving the Great Barrier Reef to the 'in danger' list because of the impact of climate change.

Mangrove ecologist Norman Duke from James Cook University (JCU) said while mangroves did not carry the same classifications as the reef, the climate change impacts were comparable.

"They go hand in hand," he said.

JCU researchers studying the Queensland Gulf region found more than 7,500 hectares of mangrove dieback since 2015.

"Weather conditions were not only enough to heat up the water and bleach the Great Barrier Reef, but it also has meant significant changes for mangroves," Dr Duke said.

"In this case, the mangroves have died from a lack of water and rain, but the events are synchronous, and that's the point."

7,500 hectares of mangroves have died in the Gulf of Carpentaria at Karumba.

(ABC North West Queensland: Lucy Murray)

Despite the severity of the dieback, no specific endangered or environmental listing had been applied to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

"What is currently happening with the Great Barrier Reef is because it is World Heritage-listed," Dr Duke said.

Unlike the Barrier Reef, which had federal government and global responsibility, the Gulf's environmental condition was controlled by local and state governments.

"The Queensland government has a general rule for mangrove disruption and the Northern Territory have their own rules," he said.
Mangroves not as controversial

Dr Norm Duke has been mangrove ecologist for more than 38 years.

(ABC Gold Coast: Ashleigh Stevenson)

The Barrier Reef's in danger listing saw a major backlash from politicians and local tourist operators.

Dr Duke said he had not found the same response to mangroves.

"Curiously enough, when people walk up to me the questions they ask is more about their concern with the mangroves," he said.

"It's not like they're saying nothing's happening and why we should be worried.

"Usually it's because something has happened and they want it explained.

"They simply need to know if they should be worried about it."

He said that climate discussions are not restricted to the Great Barrier Reef or coastal areas.

"We'd would encourage more appreciation for what these changes are, so we can better manage them."

Mangroves grow close to tourist hotspots including Karumba in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

(ABC News: Kelly Butterworth)

Dr Duke said the four-year-study into Gulf of Carpentaria mangroves would be released in the next coming weeks.

"There will be a lot of significant results that will be worth hearing about for people in the Gulf," he said.

"It's definitely a watch this space."

UAE chess champion faces one of the biggest games of his life

Emirati Salem Salah could win $100,000 on Saturday, but first he has to beat world champion Magnus Carlsen


Emirati chess champion Salem Salah is preparing for a speed chess tournament on Saturday, when he'll come up against the World Champion, Magnus Carlsen. Antonie Robertson / The National







Georgia Tolley
June 25, 2021


It was clear from a young age that Salem Saleh had startling talent, and an extraordinary mind.

The Arab chess prodigy started winning professional championships aged only 10, and was named a grandmaster by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) when he was 16, a title currently held by 1,721 other players in the world.

As Arab and Asian chess champion and the UAE's top player, Mr Saleh is used to coming first, but this weekend he will face some of the top minds in chess, including the world champion, Magnus Carlsen from Norway, woman world No 1 Hou Yifan from China, and several grandmasters from India including Vidit Gujrathi, Arjun Erigaisi, Gukesh D and Adhiban Baskaran.


The Queen's Gambit was like a bomb in the chess world - it created a huge shift in interest

Salem Saleh

"I enjoy playing but I enjoy winning more. I'm also competitive, and I hate to lose," said the 28-year-old Emirati.

"I'm really ambitious and I work really hard. My goal is to be No 1. That is what I'm hoping for – I don't shoot for No 20, I shoot for the top."


Mr Saleh could win $100,000 (Dh370,000) in the Goldmoney Asian Rapid, a virtual speed chess tournament where the competitors have only 15 minutes plus an additional 10 seconds per move to beat their opponent, but he said he does not think about the prize fund.

"When you're playing the game, you just forget about everything else, you just think about the moves," he said.

"In my head, I see a picture of the positions, and I start moving the pieces. The board, basically, is in my head."

An Emirati champion

Mr Saleh, who grew up in Sharjah the youngest of three brothers, was fortunate in that his father was involved in the management of the Sharjah Cultural and Chess Club.

The organisation was established in the 1970s, and still hosts to a vibrant community of chess enthusiasts.

Mr Saleh spent much of his childhood playing at the club, and still practises for six to eight hours a day with a coach, while also working for Dubai Police in quality control management. His professional chess skills mean he always thinks several steps ahead in his work as well.

"Generally I'm always planning and anticipating something; I create scenarios, I always imagine what will happen if this, or if that," he said.

"So I think chess influenced my thinking in my normal life, for sure."

Mr Saleh's areas of expertise encompass classical chess, speed chess and blitz chess, all of which have different rules and require different skillsets.

The classical format of the game allows two hours for each player for the game, with a 30-second increment for every move.

These games last about four hours, but can last as long as seven or even eight.

Rapid games are four times faster than the classical games and last an hour, and the blitz games are four times faster than the rapid games, lasting only 15 minutes.

The faster the game, the more the players rely on instinct to make their moves, and this is where Mr Saleh excels – he was ranked 19th in the world at one stage. In classical chess his world ranking is 53, but he is training to improve.

"First of all you can get better at chess itself, by improving different aspects. In the game, we have the opening, middle game and end game," he said.

"You can study more openings, you can find your own ideas, analyse with a computer and study different games, so you can improve in each aspect, by training, and by playing.

"When you play you find your weaknesses and you can work on that, and also your strengths, you can get better at them.

"There is the other part – the psychological part. In chess there is a lot of psychology – when you become a leader in a tournament, it feels different than at the start of the tournament; or when you lose two or three games in a row, you have to react differently.

"So with experience you become much more stable psychologically.

"You also need physical strength, because the games can sometimes last for six, seven hours, and the tournament can be two weeks sometimes, so you have to be physically very strong."

The chess world and The Queen's Gambit

Anya Taylor-Joy stars as chess prodigy Beth Harmon in Netflix show, 'The Queen's Gambit'. Phil Bray / Netflix

Mr Saleh's next major tournament is the FIDE World Cup in July, which will be his first in-person professional event for many months because of the pandemic.

The delayed 2020 FIDE World Chess Championship will also take place this year, in the UAE as part of Expo 2020 Dubai.

At the event the reigning world champion, Magnus Carlsen, will defend his title against the winner of the Candidates Tournament, Ian Nepomniachtchi, with a $2.5m (Dh9 million) prize fund at stake.

Both events are certain to have a much bigger audience this year than ever before, thanks to the popularity of the blockbuster TV series, The Queen's Gambit, starring Anya Taylor-Joy as orphaned chess prodigy Beth Harmon.

READ MORE

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When it was released, the Netflix show made the top 10 in 92 countries and ranked No 1 in 63 countries, including the UK, Argentina, Israel and South Africa.

Chess sets sold out during the global lockdowns of 2020, with unit sales increasing by 87 per cent in the US in the three weeks after the programme premiered.

"It was like a bomb in the chess world – it created a huge shift in interest," Mr Saleh said.

"I have so many friends who knew that I was a chess player for so many years, and no one ever talked to me about chess.

"But when this Queen's Gambit came everyone seemed to be very interested, and they asked me about many things, and they started to like chess and play online."

To watch the real thing, the tournament starts at 3pm on Chess 24 on Saturday, with Mr Saleh against Hou Yifan in round one, Wesley So in round two, Peter Svidler in round three, Levon Aronian in round four and world champion Magnus Carlsen in round five.

Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani to invest $10.1bn into clean energy

The move toward green by the Mumbai-based giant offers a glimpse of the new order awaiting some of the world’s major fossil-fuel producers

Mr Ambani's Reliance Industries, which gets 60% of its revenue from oil refining and petrochemicals, plans to invest in four “giga factories” to produce solar modules, hydrogen, fuel cells and to build a battery grid to store electricity. Reuters

Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani unveiled an ambitious push into clean energy involving 750 billion rupees ($10.1bn) of investment over three years, marking a new pivot for one of the world’s biggest fossil-fuel billionaires.

Reliance Industries, which gets 60 per cent of its revenue from oil refining and petrochemicals, plans to spend 600 billion rupees on four “giga factories” to produce solar modules, hydrogen, fuel cells and to build a battery grid to store electricity. An additional 150bn rupees will be invested in value chain and other partnerships, Asia’s richest man told shareholders on Thursday.

The move toward green by the Mumbai-based giant, which reported an annual revenue of $63bn, offers a glimpse of the new order awaiting some of the world’s major fossil-fuel producers. Global giants such as Exxon Mobil and TotalEnergies have been under pressure to pare their carbon footprint, as governments, investors and consumers join to fight climate change and global warming.

Speaking at the company’s online annual meeting, Mr Ambani gave scant details of how he would execute the plan. He was ranked No. 4 among global fossil-fuel billionaires by Bloomberg Green last year. The $10bn in green investment over three years compares with Fitch Ratings’ estimate – published Wednesday – of $7.4bn in annual average capital expenditure by the Reliance group through March 2025.

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Shares of the company fell 2.4 per cent on Thursday in Mumbai, the most in more than two months.

“There is an apprehension that the new initiatives, especially green energy projects, will require high gestation period and may also result in fresh debt for the capex plans,” said Kranthi Bathini of WealthMills Securities. He expects these initiatives to benefit the company over the long term.

Mr Ambani isn’t entirely turning his back on his legacy oil and petrochemicals business. On Thursday, he said that a delayed plan to bring Saudi Arabian Oil Company as an investor in the energy division –announced two years ago – will be finalised this year. He didn’t elaborate. In a move to reassure investors, he also said Aramco Chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan will join the board of Reliance.

The proposed green transformation aligns with the priorities of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which has been debating aggressive climate targets that would cut net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by mid-century, a decade before China. Though fellow tycoon Gautam Adani, who built a coal-centered conglomerate of ports and power plants, is already pursuing a similar path expanding his presence in wind and solar energy, Mr Ambani’s plans are bigger in scope.

“The world is entering a new energy era, which is going to be highly disruptive,” said Mr Ambani, 64. “The age of fossil fuels, which powered economic growth globally for nearly three centuries, cannot continue much longer. The huge quantities of carbon it has emitted into the environment have endangered life on Earth.”

One of Reliance’s “giga factories” will manufacture solar modules, enabling 100 gigawatts of solar energy by 2030, including on rooftop installations in villages across the country; the second involves large-scale grid batteries to store electricity, for which Reliance will collaborate with global leaders on the technology; and, the third will build and install electrolysers for separating green hydrogen from water.

“I envision a future when our country will be transformed from a large importer of fossil energy to a large exporter of clean solar energy solutions,” Mr Ambani said.

The fourth factory would be for fuel cells, which use oxygen from the air and hydrogen to generate electricity – a technology that’s being promoted by carmakers including Hyundai Motor but famously dismissed as “mind-bogglingly stupid” by Tesla’s Elon Musk.

The announcement comes the year after India’s most valuable company raised more than $30bn selling stakes in its technology and retail units, and through a sale of shares to existing investors. Reliance brought on board Silicon Valley giants such as Google and Facebook to help grow its digital and e-commerce footprint in a $1 trillion retail market of more than 1.3 billion people.

The investment inflows, which Mr Ambani called “vote of confidence” in his businesses, have helped Reliance’s stock almost double in value since the beginning of April 2020. Mr Ambani’s net worth is about $84bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index.

The Adani-led group is also raising its game in clean energy goals. Adani Green Energy agreed last month to buy SoftBank Group’s $3.5bn renewable power business in India, in a bid to achieve its goal of having 25 gigawatts of renewable power capacity by 2025. The green focus has led to a share rally with Adani Green jumping more than 580 per cent and Adani Total Gas – a joint venture with TotalEnergies – by 670 per cent since the beginning of last year.

Reliance last year set itself a target of becoming a net-zero carbon company by 2035 – a shorter time frame compared to the self-imposed 2050 cut-off of many of its global peers including BP and Royal Dutch Shell. Mr Ambani’s group bought its first cargo of carbon-neutral crude oil in February and said it was looking for more such partnerships.

India’s government plans to expand its renewable energy capacity nearly fivefold to 450 gigawatts by 2030, as the nation aims to reduce its dependence on coal.

”Reliance’s strategy on energy, data and consumer will ensure the company continues to grow sustainably bucking all cyclical trends,” said Sunil Chandiramani, chief executive at Nyka Advisory Services. However, “it will need to navigate challenges of technology innovation, talent acquisition, investor expectations and global turmoil”, he said.

Gas infrastructure across Europe leaking planet-warming methane: report


EURACTIV.com with Reuters

Currently, the EU does not regulate methane emissions in the energy sector, meaning companies running the sites surveyed by CATF are not breaking laws because of leaks or venting. [CutMethaneEU]

The potent greenhouse gas methane is spewing out of natural gas infrastructure across the European Union because of leaks and venting, according to video footage made available to Reuters.

Using a €100,000 infrared camera, non-profit Clean Air Task Force (CATF) found methane seeping into the atmosphere at 123 oil and gas sites in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Romania this year.

Methane, the biggest cause of climate change after carbon dioxide (CO2), is the main component of natural gas and over 80 times more potent than CO2 in its first 20 years in the air.

Currently, the EU does not regulate methane emissions in the energy sector, meaning companies running the sites surveyed by CATF are not breaking laws because of leaks or venting.

While some member states require firms to report some emissions there is no overarching framework forcing them to monitor smaller leaks, or fix them.

That’s set to change.

The EU is proposing laws this year that will force oil and gas companies to monitor and report methane emissions, as well as improve the detection and repair of leaks.

In the energy sector, methane is emitted intentionally through venting and by accident from sites such as gas storage tanks, liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, pipeline compressor stations and oil and gas processing sites.

CATF visited over 200 sites in seven EU countries and filmed emissions with the infrared camera in public vantage points to detect hydrocarbons invisible to the naked eye, such as methane.

“Once you see it, you can’t unsee it,” said CATF’s James Turitto, who filmed the emissions. “If we have any hope of achieving only a 1.5 Celsius rise in average global temperatures, we must stop these leaks.”

Altogether, CATF counted 271 incidents, with some sites leaching methane from several places.

Turitto said over 90% of the sites he visited in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Romania were emitting methane while his hit rate in Germany and Austria was lower.


EU Commission paves way for regulating methane emissions in 2021

The European Commission has opted for a “holistic” approach to address the global warming impact of methane, putting the emphasis on international cooperation first before regulating emissions in sectors like energy and agriculture.

Leaks and holes

A selection of the CATF thermography, which shows hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds, was reviewed by five technical experts contacted by Reuters.

Given emissions were at installations handling natural gas – and methane is its main component – they concluded the emissions recorded by CATF were almost certainly methane.

At one gas plant owned by Italy’s Eni near the town of Pineto on the country’s Adriatic coast, methane appears to be leaking from a rusty hole in the side of a tank.

The footage captures a snapshot of each site’s emissions on a given day so it cannot quantify the amount of methane being emitted over longer periods.

What it does reveal is emissions that could be avoided if infrastructure owners used commercially available measurement and abatement technology, emissions experts said.

“If there are cracks in the storage tanks, it is a relatively easy fix to patch the tanks,” said Jonathan Dorn, an air quality expert at Abt Associates.

Turitto said he called an emergency number for reporting leaks at the Eni site but the line was dead.

Eni said the leak at Pineto was from a water tank which would have had negligible amounts of gas and that it had been detected and fixed during regular maintenance.

“We are strengthening our efforts in the implementation of periodic leak detection and repair monitoring campaigns,” Eni said, adding that it was supportive of EU regulations to address methane emissions.

Companies on notice

Brussels put energy companies on notice in October that it would target them with new rules on gas leaks and was also considering restrictions on venting or flaring of methane.

“The Commission calls on companies in the oil, gas and coal sectors to set up more robust leak detection and repair programmes to prepare for upcoming proposals for legislation that would make such programmes mandatory,” it said.

An EU official told Reuters this month that because the EU has few methane “super emitters”, the legislation would focus on tackling the smaller but far more frequent emissions that occur throughout energy sector infrastructure.

“The first thing is to really try to address these more diffused emissions of methane, covering the whole energy sector,” the official, who declined to be named, said.

Experts say the new rules will shake things up for every oil and gas firm in Europe, not least because the EU is considering forcing companies to find and fix even the smallest leaks.

“Each company has a lot to do,” said Andris Piebalgs, professor at the Florence School of Regulation and a former EU energy commissioner.

It is unlikely the new rules would take effect before 2023 but Brussels wants to get them in place early enough to contribute to its goal of cutting net emissions of all greenhouse gases by 55% by 2030 from 1990 levels.


EU working on plans to expose climate impact of natural gas

The European Commission is preparing a strategy to curb methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, including fracked LNG imported from the US. But the timing is uncertain because officials are still busy collecting data on which to base …

Intentional emissions

The EU is not alone. US President Joe Biden’s administration plans to propose new rules this year to reduce methane emissions.

The New York Times used an infrared camera to identify large methane leaks at US oil and gas sites in 2019 while satellite footage made available to Reuters revealed massive methane leaks from Russian gas pipelines.

CATF’s footage shows Italian energy company SNAM was venting hydrocarbons consistently over three dates during a two-week period from two stacks at its Panigaglia LNG terminal near La Spezia on the Mediterranean coast.

Tim Doty, a consultant in thermographic imaging in the energy sector and a former official at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said the footage showed the stacks were “openly venting hydrocarbon emissions”.

At a SNAM underground storage facility at Minerbio near Bologna, the infrared footage showed a plume of methane flowing out of a vent stack.

SNAM said it was a member of the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP), a voluntary group of energy companies that is committed to improving methane measurement and abatement. Eni is also a member.

“Emissions recorded by CATF at the Minerbio and Bordolano storage sites are fugitive emissions resulting from blowdown valves that are internally leaking … the full replacement, starting in 2021, will be completed in 2024,” SNAM said.

“The (Panigaglia) emission recorded by CATF at the vent stacks was due to the temporary mechanical failure of an air compressor,” it said. “We are confident to be able to fix the air compressor during the second half of 2021.”

Hunting the source

An expert with nearly two decades of experience at major oil companies who advises US firms and authorities on methane emissions said the CATF footage showed the EU had a problem.

“There is this urban legend that the U.S. natural gas system is disproportionately leaky compared to the rest of the world,” said the expert, who declined to be named. “When I look at these videos, they don’t seem very different than the United States.”

Globally, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere is rising. The UN said in April that without deep cuts in methane emissions this decade, the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5 Celsius would slip out of reach.

Once methane is in the atmosphere, it is all but impossible to trace it back to a specific source which means better monitoring at the point of emission is key.

A growing web of satellites searching for methane means major leaks of thousands of tonnes a year are easier to identify but many smaller leaks go unnoticed.

In Hungary, the footage showed a MOL site which separates gas from oil venting emissions.

The Hungarian energy company said it was aware of the emissions and they were an unavoidable part of normal and safe operations to avoid pressure building up in storage tanks.

MOL said there were no existing regulations requiring it to measure or report emissions but it aimed to end routine methane emissions from gas activities by 2030.

In Austria, at an OMV oil facility near onshore wells north of Vienna, the camera showed a number of smaller leaks.

OMV said it fully supported new EU methane rules. It said the minor leaks at the site had been fixed and it was planning to replace pressure regulation systems that release methane with equipment that stops such emissions.

“The presence of these emissions indicates that this site has ongoing maintenance issues,” said Doty, pointing to four different sources. “These emissions are very troubling.”

Urgent methane cuts needed to rein in climate change, UN says
Deep cuts in methane emissions, including from the fossil fuel industry, are urgently needed to slow the rate of global warming and keep it beneath a threshold agreed by world leaders, according to a UN report due to be released next week.

‘They All F*cking Hate Me!’ – Trump’s Rant About ‘The Blacks’

By Fisher Jack
June 19, 2021

Donald Trump (Getty)

*We’ve learned that now ex-President Donald Trump regretted not taking a harder line against protesters in the wake of the late George Floyd’s death, lamenting that “the Blacks” hated him and would never vote for him anyway.

Mike Bender, a Wall Street Journal reporter, has an upcoming book called “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost” coming out shortly. It was excerpted by Politico Playbook and it pictures Trump as seething in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, and regretting the criminal justice reform he supported because of his son-in-law Jared Kushner. (Thank God for Kushner.)

MORE NEWS ON EURWEB: A$AP Rocky Admits He Feared Trump’s Support During Sweden Arrest Would ‘Jeopardize’ His Case

Snoop – Trump – HarryO  (who Trump pardoned from prison before he left office)


“For Father’s Day in 2020, what DONALD TRUMP mostly wanted was to avoid his son-in-law. It was JARED KUSHNER who had talked the president into hiring BRAD PARSCALE to run a campaign that was now, just months before the election, in freefall. And when most Americans rejected Trump’s unreasonably truculent response to the civil unrest that was sweeping the country, the president also blamed Kushner. … Trump privately told advisers that he wished he’d been quicker to support police and more aggressive in his pushback against protesters.

“Trump had staked nearly his entire campaign in 2016 around a law-and-order image, and now groaned that the criminal justice reform that Kushner had persuaded him to support made him look weak and — even worse — hadn’t earned him any goodwill among Black voters.

“‘I’ve done all this stuff for the Blacks — it’s always Jared telling me to do this,’ Trump said to one confidante on Father’s Day. ‘And they all f—— hate me, and none of them are going to vote for me.’”

Trump Impeachment / Getty

If you paid any kind of attention, you know that Trump denounced the unrest around Floyd’s murder, continuously praised the National Guard crackdown on protests in Minneapolis. On the other hand, when white insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol, Trump opposed deploying the National Guard, and praised the invaders while the assault was in progress.

In November, 87 percent of voters Trump refers to as “The Blacks,” cast their ballots for now-President Joe Biden, according to exit polls.

UK

Vow to end NHS reliance on foreign staff criticised

POLITICAL POSTURING? Baroness Dido Harding formally applied to succeed Simon Stevens as the head of NHS England last week. (Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)

By: Lauren Codling

24 June, 2021

HEALTHCARE leaders have warned that the NHS will not survive without the contribution of overseas staff, following reports a life peer was vowing to end the
health service’s reliance on foreign workers.

Baroness Dido Harding has apparently pledged to make the NHS less reliant on non-UK workers, if she becomes head of the NHS. Harding, the former head of the NHS’s Test and Trace programme, formally applied to succeed Simon Stevens as the head of NHS England last week.

The Times claimed Harding would challenge the “prevailing orthodoxy” in government that staff are better sourced from abroad. Around 14 per cent of the NHS workforce are non-UK nationals, according to the House of Commons Library.

Reacting to the claims, British Medical Association (BMA) council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul said the NHS would not survive without the contribution of overseas health workers. Non-UK staff played a “critical role” in supporting the health service, he argued.

“Their contribution to saving lives and caring for patients during the pandemic has been invaluable,” he said.

Professor (Dr) Kailash Chand, a former deputy chair of the BMA, echoed his remarks. “The NHS is so reliant on immigrant workforce that it would not survive without the contribution of overseas healthcare workers,” he told Eastern Eye. “We should be celebrating their contribution and thanking them for the difference they have made to the NHS. A NHS without a non-UK workforce input is, to say the least, unrealistic.”

Dr Chand argued Harding’s comments “demeaned the contributions (of overseas medics)”. “It is a slap on our faces and those who’ve sacrificed their lives protecting the public serving the NHS since its inception,” the Manchester-based doctor said. “Foreign vs indigenous is a discriminatory and devious way to describe cultural relationships and does not bode well for multicultural global Britain.”

Both doctors noted the severe staffing shortages within the NHS. The Kings Fund said hospitals, mental health services and community providers reported a shortage of nearly 84,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff, affecting key groups such as nurses, midwives and health visitors.




Dr Nagpaul said: “With serious staffing shortages within the NHS, we must be doing all we can to attract and retain hardworking doctors and healthcare workers, both from overseas and within the UK, as that is what is needed to care for patients amid an enormous backlog of care.”

Dr Chand added: “Instead of demonising foreign staff, (Baroness Harding) should ask the government to improve the pay and conditions of NHS workers so home grown medics don’t emigrate to places like Canada and Australia.”

Dr Ramesh Mehta, president of the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO), agreed the NHS would struggle without the contribution of foreign doctors. Although he noted Harding was “ethically right” in acknowledging India needs more doctors than the UK, he said: “Since Dido is applying for the top NHS job, it may be her political posturing.”

Dr Mehta warned the Tory peer should resist from “making rash statements”. “She has certainly antagonised foreign-trained doctors in the NHS who provide sterling service and have stood by the NHS during the Covid disaster, even risking their lives,” he told Eastern Eye.

BAPIO’s national chairman, Dr JS Bamrah, said it was “regrettable” Harding had “failed to recognise our contributions, making many of us feel that we are an unwanted and undesirable part of the NHS workforce”.

“She would have done better to say she would do her utmost, if selected to be the boss of the NHS, to increase the uptake in UK medical schools and provide nurse bursaries to induce more nurses to join the NHS, so that the 100,000 vacancies in jobs can be filled,” he told Eastern Eye.

Others have also criticised Harding’s remarks. In response to the reports, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said the NHS “was built on internationalism, not xenophobia”, while Labour’s Angela Rayner called the vow “misguided and close to impossible”.

“It is also deeply offensive to all the NHS staff who have risked their lives during the pandemic,” said Rayner, the deputy leader of the opposition.

Simons was confirmed to be standing down as the NHS chief executive in April. Other reported frontrunners for the role include NHS England’s chief operating officer, Amanda Pritchard.

Lawyer: Death of John McAfee surprised the US mogul’s family


BY ARITZ PARRA ASSOCIATED PRESS
JUNE 25, 2021


John McAfee, creator of McAfee antivirus software is seen on a screen while testifying via video during an extradition hearing at the National Court in Madrid, Spain, on June 15, 2021. McAfee has been found dead on Wednesday June 24, 2021, in his jail cell near Barcelona in an apparent suicide, hours after a Spanish court approved his extradition to the United States to face tax charges which may have been punishable by decades in prison. Inset photo bottom right is a view of the courtroom. (Chema Moya, Pool photo via AP) CHEMA MOYA AP

MADRID

Authorities in Spain say a judge has ordered an autopsy for John McAfee, the gun-loving antivirus pioneer, cryptocurrency promoter and occasional politician who died in a prison cell pending extradition to the United States for allegedly evading millions in unpaid taxes.

A court spokeswoman for the Catalonia region said Thursday that a forensic team would need to perform toxicology tests on McAfee's body to determine the cause of death and that results could take “days or weeks.”

Authorities say everything at the scene indicated that the 75-year-old tycoon killed himself.

The judicial investigation is being handled by a court in Martorell, a town northwest of Barcelona with jurisdiction over the prison where McAfee died. The spokeswoman wasn't authorized to be identified by name in media reports.

McAfee's Spanish lawyer, Javier Villalba, said the entrepreneur's death had come as a surprise to his wife and other relatives, adding he would seek to get “to the bottom” of his client's death.

“This has been like pouring cold water on the family and on his defense team," Villalba told The Associated Press on Thursday. “Nobody expected it, he had not said goodbye.”

Although Villalba said he had no evidence of any foul play but blamed the death on “the cruelty of the system” for keeping a 75-year-old behind bars for economic, not violent, crimes after judges refused to release him on bail.

”We had managed to nullify seven of the 10 counts he was accused of and even so he was still that dangerous person who could be fleeing Spain if he was released?" the lawyer said. “He was a world eminence, where could he hide?”

Spain's National Court on Monday ruled that McAfee should be extradited to the U.S. to face charges for evading more than $4 million in taxes in the fiscal years 2016 to 2018. The judge dropped seven of the 10 counts in the initial indictment.

Villalba said McAfee had learned about the ruling on Tuesday and that his death on Wednesday didn't come in the heat of the moment. He also said McAfee and the legal team had been preparing an appeal to avoid being extradited.

A penitentiary source told the AP that McAfee was sharing a cell in the Brians 2 jail where he had been put in preventive detention since he was arrested in October last year on a U.S. warrant, but that at the moment of his death he had been alone.

Prosecutors in Tennessee accused McAfee of failing to report income from promoting cryptocurrencies while he did consulting work, earnings made in speaking engagements and for selling the rights to his life story for a documentary. The criminal charges carried a prison sentence of up to 30 years.

The British-born entrepreneur led an eccentric life after selling his stake in the antivirus software company named after him in the early 1990s. He twice made long-shot runs for the U.S. presidency.

McAfee often professed his love for drugs and guns in public remarks. And some of his actions landed him in legal trouble beyond Tennessee, from Central America to the Caribbean. In 2012, he was sought for questioning in connection with the murder of his neighbor in Belize, but was never charged with a crime.





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FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015, file photo, John McAfee announces his candidacy for president in Opelika, Ala. McAfee, the outlandish security software pioneer who tried to live life as a hedonistic outsider while running from a host of legal troubles, was found dead in his jail cell near Barcelona , Spain, on Wednesday, June 23, 2021. His death came just hours after a Spanish court announced that it had approved his extradition to the United States to face tax charges punishable by decades in prison, authorities said. (Todd J. Van Emst/Opelika-Auburn News via AP, File) TODD J. VAN EMST AP

Mumford & Sons’ Banjoist Quits After Andy Ngo Praise Controversy

Winston Marshall provoked a backlash in March after tweeting his support for a book by Ngo, a right-wing provocateur.


BY ABID RAHMAN

JUNE 24, 2021

Winston Marshall TIM MOSENFELDER/WIREIMAGE

Winston Marshall, the banjoist and guitarist of Mumford & Sons, has quit the Grammy-winning British band months after provoking a fan and public backlash following his support for a book by right-wing provocateur Andy Ngo.

In a post on Medium, Marshall outlined the reasons he is leaving the band he had been a part of since they were founded in 2007. He expands on his initial apology but also says he could not continue to “self-censor” his views. “I have spent much time reflecting, reading and listening. The truth is that my commenting on a book that documents the extreme far left and their activities is in no way an endorsement of the equally repugnant far right,” Marshall writes.

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“For me to speak about what I’ve learnt to be such a controversial issue will inevitably bring my bandmates more trouble. My love, loyalty and accountability to them cannot permit that.” he added. “I could remain and continue to self-censor but it will erode my sense of integrity.”

He continued, “I hope in distancing myself from [the band] I am able to speak my mind without them suffering the consequences.”

On Twitter, the official Mumford & Sons account tweeted: “We wish you all the best for the future, Win, and we love you man.”

In March, in a now-deleted tweet, Marshall, who also goes by the music aliases Country Winston and WN5TN, congratulated Ngo on the publication of his book Unmasked, which promises to take the reader “inside ANTIFA’s radical plan to destroy democracy.”

“Finally had the time to read your important book. You’re a brave man,” Marshall tweeted, before deleting the message following a backlash and intense mockery of the band.

Ngo, a conservative journalist who rose to prominence filming left-wing protests in Portland, has become notorious for his associations with the neo-fascist white nationalist groups the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer.

A few days after his tweet, Marshall announced he was “taking time away” from the band.

While a member of Mumford & Sons, Marshall courted controversy for associating with notorious right-wing personalities. In 2018, Marshall invited Canadian academic Jordan Peterson, who has been accused of transphobia, misogyny and Islamophobia, to visit the band’s London studios.

After pictures of Peterson and members of the band appeared on social media, Marshall told a Canadian radio station, “I don’t think that having a photograph with someone means you agree with everything they say.” He added, “Primarily I’m interested in his psychological stuff, which I find very interesting.”

Egyptian army controls secret funds, report finds


An Egyptian army conscript stands guard outside a polling station before the start of the first day of the 2018 presidential elections, in Boulaq al-Dakrour neighbourhood in the capital Cairo's southwestern Giza district on 26 March 2018, with an electoral poster seen behind inside the station depicting incumbent President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (C) between late Presidents Anwar Sadat (L) and Gamal Abdel Nasser (R) with a caption reading in Arabic "Support the Egyptian Army against terrorism". [KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images]

Arabi21
June 25, 2021 

Informed Egyptian sources have revealed specific information and exclusive details about vast secret funds controlled by the Egyptian military institution as part of its financial assets, which are not subject to any sort of supervision. These funds are not included in the general budget of the state or even the armed forces' budget, not least because a large part is kept outside Egypt.

These "secret" funds clarify some of the ambiguities and answer many questions about the sources of Egypt's financial allocations for various national projects.

In response to questions about the source of the funds he spends on projects, President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi said in February this year that, "The money comes from Egypt, our country… It has been granted to us by Allah the Most Gracious." He stressed that what the regime is doing "is beyond the people's capacity, above the Egyptian state's capacity, and you are still asking about the source of the funds."
The truth is bigger than Sisi

At the 8th National Youth Conference in September 2019, Sisi responded to the huge commotion caused by artist and contractor Mohammed Ali by saying, "The truth is bigger than me… Bigger than me." This prompted some to wonder what this bigger truth is that he cannot reveal.

According to the sources, there is a general budget allocated for the armed forces that is deposited in a special account in the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) and some other (unnamed) banks. They manage it quite independently, but there is a secret budget the details of which are known only to a very limited number of senior military commanders. This budget includes many items, most importantly Operation Urubah 90, special funds, dollar deposits and other items that are not represented on the board of directors of any economic entity controlled by the army.

READ: Biden writes another blank cheque for Sisi

Article 203 of the Egyptian Constitution is clear that: "A National Defence Council is to be established, presided over by the President of the Republic and including in its membership the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Minister of Defence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of the Interior, the Chief of the General Intelligence Service, the Chief of Staff of the armed forces, the Commanders of the Navy, the Air Force and Air Defence, the armed forces Chief of Operations and the Head of Military Intelligence."

This council is responsible for looking into matters pertaining to the methods used to ensure the safety and security of the country, and discussing the armed forces' budget. This incorporated as a single figure in the state budget. The council's opinion must be sought in relation to draft laws on the armed forces.



Egyptian walk past a huge poster of Egypt's former Defence Minister and armed forces chief General Abdul Fatah Al-Sisi outside the High Court in downtown Cairo, on 27 March 2014. [KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images]

Its other jurisdictions are defined by law. When discussing the budget, the head of the financial affairs department of the armed forces and the heads of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and the National Security Committee at the House of Representatives shall be included. The President of the Republic may invite whoever is seen as having relevant expertise to attend the council's meetings but they will not have a vote.

In April 2013, the armed forces' general budget was first included in the state budget for the fiscal year 2013-2014. The total military budget was estimated at 31 billion Egyptian pounds compared with 27 billion in the 2012-2013 budget.

In preparation for the ground offensive to liberate Kuwait in 1990, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait provided the Egyptian armed forces with a grant of $1.1 billion. Former President Hosni Mubarak agreed that the armed forces would invest these funds for their own benefit provided that the money would be exploited to improve their efficiency.

The funds were deposited in various accounts in Greek and Swiss banks. Two years after the liberation of Kuwait, the Minister of Defence, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, obtained Mubarak's agreement to release 150 million Egyptian pounds to be distributed as rewards to commanders and officers, especially after questions were raised among military personnel about the Saudi grant.

There was also a sub-account allocated by the Saudi armed forces for funds to be granted as allowances for food, transportation and personal expenditure for officers and soldiers who participated in Operation Urubah 90. The sources confirmed that commanders gave officers and soldiers small monthly amounts while keeping the allocated funds for themselves.

Brigadier General Fathy Zaghlul, the operations coordinator in Hafr Al-Batin in Saudi Arabia, was responsible for this sub-account. After the Kuwait war it was discovered that Zaghlul had made an arrangement with his brother to go to Switzerland to open a bank account. He then transferred 32 million Egyptian pounds from the food, transportation and pocket allowances into his brother's Swiss account.

This fraud was discovered, but it took several months to find Zaghlul. He was ordered to return the looted funds but the military institution could not get the money out of the bank account. The then Minister of Defence, Youssef Sabri Abu Taleb, did not initiate any legal action against Zaghlul for fear of the scandal it would cause. Instead, Zaghlul was forced into retirement.

Such funds were still being invested abroad throughout Mubarak's term of office under the personal supervision of Tantawi and Major General Mahmoud Nasr, who was head of the Financial Affairs Authority for the Armed Forces, monitored by military intelligence. A portion of the money was invested in various projects abroad, as well as in transactions and speculations that were not included, of course, in the official records of the armed forces' economy or that of the state.

READ: New death sentences in Egypt demand us to seek clemency for the accused

"As soon as the 2011 January Revolution broke out," explained the sources, "Tantawi stopped all transactions on this account, which at that time was worth about $16 billion, as he wanted to transfer it to the official account of the armed forces in Egypt out of fear of the repercussions of the revolution. This forced him to reveal the truth about the amount and his position to the military council to involve it in the decision."

However, General Nasr suggested at one of the meetings of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that these funds should not be touched, nor returned to Egypt, under the pretext that the internal political conditions were not favourable. Out of fear that this matter would be revealed by the media, he proposed an alternative plan to say that this amount was deposited abroad for the purpose of sealing huge arms deals that did not take place because of the revolution. Tantawi was convinced of this idea and the amount remained abroad, but he made steady profits by depositing the money in the bank without making any transactions, or trading and speculating.

During the period leading up to the 2012 presidential election, Tantawi apparently started to have more concerns about depositing funds abroad, not least in case the incoming president was not on the same page as the military council. He was alarmed about General Ahmed Shafik's victory, because Shafik knew a lot about military affairs. Even though he had been away from the military institution for years, he maintained good relations with some senior officers, intelligence chiefs and former presidency officials.

General Nasr proposed a plan to Tantawi to transfer the affiliation of the National Investment Bank (NIB) to the Ministry of Planning, with the aim of freeing the institution from the Central Bank's supervision, and then appoint a consensus minister of planning; he wanted to task Ashraf Al-Arabi with this. Afterwards, and according to the same plan, the funds would be transferred to the NIB. Hence, Tantawi issued decision No. 285 of 2012 which stipulated the transfer of the bank's affiliation to the planning ministry as a first step to bring the funds from abroad.

The NIB is one of the economic and investment branches of the Egyptian state. It was established under the provisions of Law No 119 of 1980 for the purpose of financing all projects included in the general economic and social development plan of the State, by contributing to the capital of these projects or extending them through loans or other means, and monitoring their implementation. The bank describes itself as "a tool that the state can use to intervene in controlling the markets and implement its economic and social policies."




10 years on from the Egyptian Revolution
[Mohammed Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]

As one of the leading financial and development institutions with massive potential and capabilities, the NIB is required to engage in events as a source and a recipient of influence and play an important role In light of recent economic changes in the local and international scene.

Following Mohamed Morsi's victory in the presidential election, Tantawi felt reassured that Shafik had lost and so did not feel the need to bring the money back from abroad. Nasr persuaded him to wait for some time under the pretext that they could convince the Muslim Brotherhood that there was good reason for keeping such a large amount of money abroad.

Meanwhile, Ashraf Al-Arabi actually became a minister. Not quite as planned, though; he was appointed in the Brotherhood government and the situation was not fully secured despite the prior agreement between them. This is why the decision to return the amount was postponed, despite the unjustified decision to transfer the NIB's affiliation to the planning ministry.

The sources pointed out that after 3 July, 2013, the coup leader, Minister of Defence Al-Sisi, met with the Military Council to thrash out the plan for him to run for the presidency, while telling it that all bank accounts, surpluses and profits of the armed forces would be at his personal disposal as President of the Republic and Supreme Commander. This was setting a precedent.

READ: Egypt to buy $4.5bn worth of Rafale fighter jets from France

The financial situation of the armed forces when Sisi became Minister of Defence in August 2012 can be summed up as follows: 164 billion Egyptian pounds of accumulated budget surpluses; $16 billion in deposits abroad (Urubah 90); and 3.6 billion Egyptian pounds in revenues from economic activity. The profit for the year's economic activity has been estimated at 113 million Egyptian pounds.

After Sisi took office as president officially in 2014, this file was assigned to Major General Nasr, who followed his time as head of the military's Financial Affairs Authority by becoming a financial advisor to President Al-Sisi in June 2019. Accordingly, Nasr was able to transfer the authority to approve disbursing all armed forces' funds to Sisi, who entrusted him with the task of collecting profits on a regular basis.

The sources maintain that the secret Urubah 90 deposit is still in a foreign bank account.
Army bank accounts abroad

A leak broadcast by the opposition Mekameleen TV channel in February 2015 indicated that Sisi requested Major General Abbas Kamel, who was serving as his office manager, to inform the former Saudi Royal Court chief Khaled Al-Tuwaijri to deposit $30 billion in aid from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait in the armed forces' account. Kamel asked how such a large amount could be transferred to that account. Sisi is said to have replied that it could be done by pumping it directly into the armed forces' accounts in those countries; in other words, into the accounts of the military attaches in the Egyptian Embassies in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait City.

The sources noted that some funds related to the armed forces' economic activities abroad are always placed in the military attaches' accounts, and not in private bank accounts, of course.

One of the reasons why Sisi dismissed his son-in-law, Lieutenant-General Mahmoud Hegazy, who served as chief of staff, was that the latter had reservations about managing these secret funds in this way. Hegazy apparently preferred to conduct the process in a legal manner. He was also in almost permanent disagreement with Kamel, who previously held the position of head of the defence attaches branch. Although they served in the army together, their conduct and actions were completely different.
The armed forces' massive funds

Al-Sisi is said to have sold land plots belonging to the armed forces between 2018 and 2020, along with the Suez and Ain Sukhna Roads, the Ismailia Suez Road and the Yellow Mountain, for 6.8 billion Egyptian pounds. The carry forward surpluses of the armed forces' budgets jumped to 342 billion Egyptian pounds this year, with a 200 billion increase since Sisi took charge of the Ministry of Defence. This entire amount, which has been transferred to a special presidency bank account, is under the control of the president.

"All these revenues, profits, invested funds, deposits and surpluses are increasing very rapidly, because the armed forces receive every penny they spend on projects, in addition to the government profits," added the sources. "However, in spite of cancelling subsidies and doubling the prices of all services, the budget deficit jumped to about 450 billion Egyptian pounds instead of decreasing, an amount paid annually by the government in dues for the armed forces."

Sisi instructed the defence minister to evacuate the area located on the other side of Salah Salem Street, including the main tank repair workshop, the main vehicle workshop, the railway station for the armed forces and the veterinary hospital, in preparation for selling these properties, along with the Military College. The price was set at nearly 1.1 trillion Egyptian pounds, under the supervision of the Sovereign Fund of Egypt.

Since 2015 Sisi has seized the accounts, revenues and profits of the Arab Organisation for Industrialisation (AOI) via the Ministry of Military Production. He has also seized the profits of the contracts allocated by the ministry to buy materials locally and abroad, separately from its factories. The president's profits are estimated at 2 trillion Egyptian pounds.



Billboards of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi are seen in Cairo, Egypt [Mohammed Bendari/Apaimages]

"Military prisons, along with some civilian prisons, have been implicated in the furniture industry in an extensive and professional manner, in order to control the business," said the sources. "Thus, the regime agreed with a large number of furniture dealers to supply them with furniture with the aim of paralysing the original and traditional furniture industry in Damietta governorate in favour of the New Damietta, in which the army has secretly invested."

The profits ensured by the military prisons are transferred to a special account controlled by the Financial Affairs Authority for the Armed Forces, and cannot be used without Sisi's approval and the defence minister's signature. This is in addition to revenues generated by the furniture workshops led by the Second Field Army, the Third Field Army, the Northern Region, the Red Sea Sector and the workshops of the General Services Authority and Missions Authority, as well as the quarries.
The Central Auditing Organisation's monitoring mission

It is noteworthy that in March 2021, General Nasr stated that all the activities of the armed forces' production base are subject to the oversight of the Central Auditing Organisation (CAO), which commits to hundreds of oversight committees annually. He presented scanned copies of the first pages of the CAO's reports on the activities of the various companies affiliated with the armed forces, especially the National Service Products Organisation (NSPO).

However, private sources completely denied the validity of Nasr's claim. "None of the military economic activities are subject to any supervisory or even regulatory authority, not by the CAO, the Administrative Control Authority (ACA) nor the Parliament or the Ministry of Finance, despite the fact that very limited formal procedures took place in the past," they insisted. Indeed, everyone is well aware that there are certain things that cannot be addressed or approached, because this area is a major red line.

How, in this context, is it possible to monitor companies and transactions without even knowing they exist?

READ: Egypt biggest purchaser of Italy weapons systems, once again

We will fight for our projects

To explain the reason why senior officers of the armed forces insist on carrying on with these declared and undeclared economic activities, and their absolute refusal to apply any real oversight measures to supervise the flow of profits, the sources cited previous statements issued by Nasr after the outbreak of the revolution. "We will fight for our projects, this is a battle that we will not leave behind," he said. "The effort that we have been putting in for 30 years will not be destroyed by anyone else, and we will not allow anyone else to approach the projects of the armed forces."

The armed forces' economic activities were initiated in the 1960s, especially after the 1967 Six Day War against the occupation state of Israel, during which there was a campaign of popular donations to support the military institution and contribute to rebuilding it. This prompted the armed forces, pushed by feelings of humiliation, to have its own independent revenues and budgets that have been getting bigger ever since, to be exploited in legitimate and illegitimate ways that deviate from the norm, especially after the military institution became a deep state in its own right.

It is noteworthy that the defence ministry rejected a request by the then President Mohamed Morsi to allocate $1.5 billion to help the government deal with the aggravating shortage in fuel and other basic commodities. This illustrates perfectly the significant difference in the way that the armed forces as an institution dealt with Morsi and the way it deals with Sisi.

This report appeared in Arabic in Arabi21 on 23 June 2021

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

 Palestine security forces disperse protest against assassination activist Nizar Banat

 
Security forces block Palestinian demonstrators gathered to protest against the death of Nizar Banat, on 24 June 2021, in Ramallah, West Bank. [Issam Rimawi - Anadolu Agency]

June 25, 2021 

Palestinian security forces yesterday dispersed a rally organised by activists in the central West Bank city of Ramallah, condemning the assassination of activist and political opponent, Nizar Banat, Anadolu reported.

Eyewitnesses told the agency that the Palestinian security forces dispersed the rally, which started in Al-Manara Square in central Ramallah and headed towards PA President Mahmoud Abbas' headquarters, to protest against the targeting of Banat.

The eyewitnesses said security forces fired tear gas canisters and beat dozens of activists with wood and iron batons, causing many of them to suffer breathing difficulties or bruising.

The participants raised pictures of Banat and chanted slogans accusing the Palestinian security services of assassinating him.

A similar stand was organized in Ibn Rushd square, in Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, during which the participants raised Banat's pictures .

Banat, an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority and a former candidate in parliamentary elections called off earlier this year, died after Palestinian security forces arrested him and beat him with batons yesterday.

Family spokesman, Ammar Banat, accused the Palestinian security forces of assassinating him.

Ammar said the Preventive Security and General Intelligence forces stormed Banat's home at 3am local time and beat him with iron and wooden batons.

Banat sparked controversy after he demanded the European Union stop financial support for the Palestinian Authority (PA), following the decision to cancel the elections and over their heinous record of human rights violations.

Hamas: Abbas responsible for Palestinian activist's murder

Palestinians protest against the death of activist Nizar Banat in Gaza, on 24 June 2021 [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]

June 25, 2021 

Hamas says it holds Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas fully responsible for the assassination of activist and political opponent, Nizar Banat.

"The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, strongly condemns Abbas' security forces' assassination of the activist and political opponent, Nizar Banat, deputy head of the Freedom and Dignity List in the legislative elections," it said in a statement, adding that "this orchestrated and premeditated crime reflects the intentions and behaviour of Abbas' authority and his security services towards our people, opposition activists, and political opponents."

"Hamas holds the President of the Oslo Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and his authority full responsibility for all the repercussions and consequences of this heinous crime that is added to the series of crimes and violations of this authority against our people," it continued.

It added that it rejects the decision of PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh to form a committee to investigate the circumstances of the assassination, saying: "There is no trust in a committee formed by the authority, its government, and services for they all carried out the assassination, and must bear full responsibility for this heinous crime".

The statement called on the Palestinian people, factions and institutions to shoulder their responsibilities, take bold and responsible national decisions towards those involved in this heinous crime, and work to protect Palestinian people from the oppression, arrogance and criminality of the PA.

An outspoken critic of the PA, Banat was due to run in the parliamentary elections which were called off by Abbas earlier this year. His family said PA security forces arrested and beat him with batons yesterday, he was later found to have been killed.

Why did the PA kill Nizar Banat?

Palestinians gather for a demonstration in protest against the death of activist Nizar Banat, who died during his arrest by Palestinian security forces, in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on 24 June 2021. [MOSAB SHAWER/AFP via Getty Images]

Motasem A Dalloul
abujomaaGaza
June 24, 2021 

Today at dawn, Palestinians across the occupied territories were shocked to learn that a well-known activist in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, Nizar Banat, had been killed by Palestinian Authority security forces.

The PA Governor in Hebron, Jibreen Al-Bakri, issued a statement about the killing. He claimed that the security forces aimed to enforce the law as they went to detain Banat on the basis of a detention order issued by the Public Prosecutor. He said that the activist died during the detention process due to health problems. He did not mention the "brutal" and "barbaric" way that Banat was beaten on his head and face. Bakri said that Banat was transferred to hospital, but his friends and family have searched for him everywhere, and insist that wherever he was taken, it was not to hospital.

According to Banat's family, "The PA security services detonated the door of the house, broke into the building and immediately started beating [Banat] with iron bars and batons while he was asleep, along with two of his brothers. They emptied three bottles of pepper powder in his face when he got up; stripped him of his clothes; lynched him; insulted him while he was bleeding; kidnapped him; took him to an unknown location; and murdered him."

Palestinian factions, leaders, activists and international officials have condemned Banat's "murder". The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, described what happened as a "full-fledged crime that reflects the bloody policy of the PA." It blamed the government of Mohammad Shtayyeh for "this unethical crime which is rejected by all Palestinians and unacceptable to all Palestinian traditions and norms."

READ: When will the Palestinians unite?

The UN Envoy to the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, wrote on twitter: "Alarmed & saddened by the death of activist, former parliamentary candidate, Nizar Banat following his arrest by [Palestinian security forces] in Hebron… I call for a swift, independent & transparent investigation. Perpetrators must be brought to justice."

The EU Delegation to the Palestinians also turned to Twitter: "Shocked and saddened by the death of activist and former legislative candidate Nizar Banat following his arrest by the PA security forces last night. Full, independent, and transparent investigation should be conducted immediately."

The UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Palestine, Lynn Hastings, added: "Disturbing news on the death of activist Nizar Banat shortly after his arrest by Palestinian Security Forces from his home in Hebron. I note that an investigation has been initiated and call on the authorities to ensure that those responsible are swiftly brought to justice."

Palestinian activists and journalists joined in the condemnation of the killing of Banat. Some made it clear that, in their view, he was "murdered" by the PA.

"The PA murdered Nizar Banat in a shameful way," said journalist and activist Ismail Al-Thawabteh. "The liquidation by the PA of activist Nizar Banat today at dawn is strongly condemned and must be deterred in order not to be repeated.



The wife (L) of the Palestinian activist Nizar Banat, who died during his arrest by Palestinian security forces, grieves in her house in the village of Dura near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, on 24 June 2021. [MOSAB SHAWER/AFP via Getty Images]

Thousands of words have already been written and spoken about Banat's "murder", and his name has trended on Twitter. Why, though, did the PA kill him?

Nizar Banat was an outspoken critic of the PA, Fatah and the PLO, all of which are headed by Mahmoud Abbas. He exposed many cases of corruption linked to them. The latest example was the PA-Israeli deal to exchange soon-to-expire Israeli Covid-19 vaccines for newly-produced vaccines intended for the West Bank. The deal was cancelled after it was exposed.

Banat intended to run for the Palestinian parliamentary election, and has been posting videos on his Facebook page about PA corruption and criticising the security cooperation between Ramallah and Israel at the expense of the Palestinian resistance and the principles of the Palestinian cause.

He was arrested eight times by the PA and tortured because of his views and activism against PA corruption. He was open about rejecting the peace made by the PA with Israel because, according to him, it met all the demands of the Israeli occupation and undermined all the rights of the Palestinians.

Recently, Banat phoned Muhannad Karaja from Lawyers for Justice, and told him that the PA was threatening him. He explained to Karaja that the PA intelligence services asked him to end his criticism of the PA and officials from Fatah and the PLO.

This suggests that the PA killed Nizar Banat to silence him, because he embarrasses the authority by exposing its conspiracies with the Israeli occupation plotted against the Palestinians. The PA killed him because he was a nationalist who believed that the authority is nothing more than a Zionist project intended to serve the Zionist project in the region.

Even though Prime Minister Shtayyeh has already announced that an investigation will go ahead, Banat's family, Palestinian activists and rights groups are sceptical about it being "independent and transparent" as demanded by representatives of the international community.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian NGO Network has warned that the PA's political crackdown on its opponents will turn it into "a police state governed by repression and a disregard for people's lives and their dignity under the reality of the occupation." It called for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to put an end to all infringements of civil rights and public freedoms to preserve the dignity of Palestinian citizens.

READ: 'There is no Plan B,' but accolades from Abbas are still forthcoming

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor