'Jesus, guns, babies': Religious violence is now at the core of the Republican Party
Thomas Lecaque, Alternet
June 14, 2022

Gage Skidmore

At the tail end of last week, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado took the stage at the Charis Christian Center's Family Camp Meeting. The event claims that, "you will hear God's Word shared through speakers who have proven God's Word," and follows the speakers' list with Acts 2:17-18:

And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.

The apocalyptic context notwithstanding, Boebert's talk made quite a splash because of her invocation of Psalm 109:8 in the context of praying for President Biden — "May his days be few and another take his office" — before laughing at the cheers of the crowd. This is certainly not a new use of that text by the GOP — Sen. David Perdue of Georgia invoked it against Obama in 2016, and it became an anti-Obama slogan featured on bumper stickers. With the passage divorced from its full context, people can laugh — but Psalm 109 is a war psalm, calling for the death of the man in question, with 109:9 reading "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." And that's the point: As with so many aspects of contemporary Christian nationalism, give the line people can nod along to, and hold back the violent context. This is a prayer for the death of the president, and it is one we can honestly say has become normal for Republicans to use about Democratic presidents.

Maybe that's a big enough problem that we should acknowledge it not just as a fringe phenomenon, but as part of the core problem of the contemporary, MAGA-infused GOP.

Of course, Boebert has gone much further than prayers against the president. She met with organizers of the Jan. 6 coup attempt beforehand. She tweeted the locations of lawmakers, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as insurrectionists were breaking into the Capitol. Like Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Boebert and her family have posed for Christmas cards with AR-15-style weapons, with all of the problematic associations of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth with weapons designed for combat. These things — Jesus, guns and, with family photos, babies — are in fact pillars of the Christian nationalist branch of the GOP.

Georgia candidate Kandiss Taylor called fellow Republican Brian Kemp "Luciferian" and defined the First Amendment as "our right to worship Jesus freely — that's why we have a country."

Kandiss Taylor's failed Republican gubernatorial primary campaign in Georgia was incredibly instructive on where the GOP now stands. Her campaign bus, which literally had "Jesus, Guns, Babies" emblazoned on the side, was just the most overt aspect of her Christian nationalist campaign. She told followers to pray for good sheriffs and said that corrupt ones would be executed for treason, strongly implying her belief in the extremist "constitutional sheriff" doctrine, which holds sheriffs are arbiters of what the law is in their counties, not enforcers of it. She said at one campaign rally, "We're gonna do a political rally and we're gonna honor Jesus. They're not gonna tell us 'separation of church and state.' We are the church! We run this state!" — an aggressively Christian nationalist idea. Taylor called Gov. Brian Kemp's administration a "Luciferian regime," andsaid that as governor she would release an executive order against the "Satanic elites," and vowed to tear down the "Satanic" Ge orgia Guidestones.

Taylor even championed Native genocide, saying, "The First Amendment right, which is our right to worship Jesus freely — that's why we have a country. That's why we have Georgia. That's why we had our Founding Fathers come over here and destroy American Indians' homes and their land. They took it." And, of course, she champions the Big Lie, saying on Twitter, "We are in a spiritual war ... it's God versus Satan. If GA goes down, if we let them steal the election from us .. we're gonna steal it back if we have to." That carried over to her own loss — despite losing the primary by 70 points, she refused to concede.

We might well ask: So what? Taylor was defeated by a staggering margin, as were numerous other Christian nationalist candidates. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, for example, lost his primary race in North Carolina after the Republican establishment turned on him. Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin embraced extremism, appearing with militia members in photo ops, administering oaths to them reserved for the state military, and appeared on video at the America First PAC meeting, saying, "God calls us to pick up the sword and fight, and Christ will reign in the state of Idaho." She lost by 20 points. The Republican candidate for secretary of state in California, Rachel Hamm, said she decided to run for office because she was a prophetic dreamer, and because her youngest son, "a seer," had found Jesus in the closet where she prays, holding a scroll telling her to run. She also lost and then claimed fraud, tweeting, "When you've fought the good fight, had an honest contest & lost, that's when you concede. So, in my case, there will be no concession. Stolen elections=stolen Republic."

And then there those who are still running. Greg Lopez, a GOP gubernatorial candidate in Colorado, believes in a blanket ban on abortion, rejects climate change, has said that the "educational system has now been converted into state indoctrination centers" and is a proponent of the Big Lie. He appeared, alongside a range of conspiracy theorists and far right figures, at the Western Conservative Summit at the beginning of the month. And he is not shy about his negative views of the LGBTQ community, a common theme among GOP candidates.

Mark Burns in South Carolina, for example, was an early Trump supporter in 2016. He's an evangelical minister, a conspiracy theorist and pastor at the Harvest Praise & Worship Center. He's running for Congress in the state's 4th congressional district, and his platform reads like a grab bag of right-wing ideas:

Our right to bear arms is INHERENT, given to us by God almighty -- NOT by any man;
If we don't fix these elections NOW, America will be lost. Without open, honest, transparent elections, no other issue matters;
Life begins at conception;
Marriage is defined as between one man and one woman;
Critical Race Theory is Communist, anti-white Racism;
Vaccine and mask mandates are medical tyranny, and have no place in America;
The Pelosi budget opens the door wide open to full-blown communism.

And while these may sound like wild ideas, they're nothing compared to what Burns says. He has called for reviving the House Un-American Activities Committee — yes, the infamous Red-hunters of the 1940s — to investigate LGBTQ "indoctrination," which he calls a national security threat, saying that anyone engaged in it (or in gun control) should be tried for treason, and executed. Burns is literally calling for reviving the "lavender scare," which has a certain evil logic because that, in essence, is where Christian nationalists have settled in the culture wars: anti-trans legislation, anti-LGBTQ rallies and attacks, and pushing to re-criminalize sexual minorities.

The Jesus part is obvious. The guns have been covered, be it Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano's links to the apocalyptic Rod of Iron Ministries or the marketing of AR-15-style guns as sacred weapons. But babies may be the most important part of it. Attacks on the LGBTQ community must be understood in the context of right-wing ideas about sexual purity and a full-blown mania for forced birth legislation. Anti-abortion laws, attacks on contraception and attacks on sexual minorities are all part of a Christian nationalist assault on the nation. Movements like Quiverfull, taken from Psalm 127, have a number of political aspects alongside a belief system that shuns birth control and believes God will give them the right number of children. They literally believe that whoever has the most babies wins, and see that as the fundamental political and spiritual battle. One Quiverfull-affiliated author has said:

It is the womb that conceives and nourishes the "godly seed" who will come forth to be the light in the darkness and who will destroy the works of Satan in this world. God is looking for an army. ... The womb is a powerful weapon against Satan. Some women fear to bring babies into this evil world, but this is one of the greatest reasons for having children — to be the light in this dark world!

Quiverfull is a Christian patriarchy movement, not only pushing female submission to husbands and fathers, and eschewing education and contraception to win the culture war — as Salon reporter Kathryn Joyce has detailed in her book "Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement" — but also contributing to the protection of sexual predators in church communities and vigorously promoting the anti-abortion and forced birth laws being passed around the country.

I would also suggest, rather forcefully, that Christian patriarchy and Christian nationalism are linked to the "great replacement" theory, the deeply racist and xenophobic notion that nonwhite people are being brought into Western countries to "replace" white voters, in order to further a specific political agenda, leading to the supposed extinction of white people. As is well understood, this delusional ideology has fueled multiple massacres, including the mass shooting in Buffalo in May and earlier mass shootings in El Paso, Pittsburgh and Christchurch, New Zealand. Forced-birth laws and abortion bans are also part of this perceived demographic war, part and parcel with the spiritual battles Christian nationalists believe they are fighting and the very real stockpiling of arms, association with militia groups and opposition to government. PRRI's August 2021 survey shows that "great replacement" ideas are growing in evangelical circles, and have only become more mainstream since then.

Religious violence is the bedrock of Christian nationalism, and Christian nationalism is becoming the bedrock of the contemporary Republican Party. Forced birth laws, anti-LGBTQ legislation and the "great replacement" theory are all forms of violence, and all but certain to fuel the spread of more lethal violence. "Jesus, Guns and Babies" may seem like a laughable slogan, stripped of context. But it isn't funny at all.

Patriarchy and purity culture combine to silence women in the Southern Baptist Convention

The Conversation
June 14, 2022

Sad woman (Shutterstock)

A devastating yearlong investigation into the executive committee of the largest conservative evangelical denomination in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, has documented widespread claims of sex abuse including accusations of rape, cover-ups and gross mistreatment of women seeking justice.

In 2019 the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News partnered on a series of investigative reports on sexual misconduct by Southern Baptists with formal church roles. Subsequently, the annual meeting of the SBC held in June 2021 voted to authorize an investigations firm, Guidepost Solutions, to conduct an independent probe of its executive committee and its handling of sex abuse. The report and the list of alleged offenders has recently been made public.

I am a scholar of evangelicalism, gender and American culture, and over several years of my research I have seen how deeply ingrained aspects of conservative white evangelicalism force women to stay silent. In researching my two books, “Evangelical Christian Women” and “Building God’s Kingdom,” I found how structures of patriarchy force women to stay silent.

These deeply ingrained aspects of conservative white evangelicalism include “complementarianism,” or the patriarchal view that God gives authority to men and requires submission from women, and purity culture, an extreme version of sexual abstinence.
Purity culture

The SBC’s “True Love Waits,” a premarital abstinence campaign for teens launched in 1992, was an important component of the rise of purity culture. It was best known for the purity rings that girls wore as part of a pledge to their virginity to God and family.

More than merely the value of forgoing sex until marriage, purity culture centers sexual purity as a primary measure of the value of young women, who need to remain “pure” to attract a godly man in marriage. Sex education is virtually nonexistent, and dating is traded for “courtship” leading to marriage, under the authority of the girl’s father.

As author Linda Kay Klein writes in her book “Pure,” women are taught that they are responsible not only for their own purity, but for the purity of the males around them. Women are also made to believe that they are responsible if men are led to sin by what women wear. Additionally, they can be blamed for being inadequately submissive and for speaking up when they should be quiet. Women raised with these teachings also report experiencing tremendous fear and shame around issues of gender, sex and marriage.

The rhetoric of purity culture can be traced directly to the racist origins of the Southern Baptist Convention. The defense of slavery was the very foundation upon which the denomination was built, and the protection of the “purity of white womanhood” was a the justification for the perpetuation of white supremacy that outlived slavery.

How survivors described the abuse

Credibly accused men were protected by the SBC, while the women who dared to speak up were called sluts, adulteresses, Jezebels and even agents of Satan. For example, the report details the story of one woman whose abuse was mischaracterized by the SBC’s Baptist Press as a consensual affair and she was harassed online and called an adulteress. She ultimately lost her job at a Southern Baptist organization.

The report, which the former SBC leader Russell Moore calls “apocalyptic,” details harassment, insults and attacks on social media, some of which came from Baptist leaders to whom the women had been taught God required them to revere and submit. For example, the executive staff member at the center of handling abuse accusations, Augie Boto, characterized the survivors seeking justice as doing the work of Satan.



Survivor after survivor described their treatment at the hands of their own leaders as worse than their initial assaults. One survivor told investigators that when she provided details of her sexual abuse as a child among other things, one Executive Committee (EC) member “turn(ed) his back to her while she was speaking … and another EC member chortl(ed).”

“I ask you to try to imagine what it’s like to speak about something so painful to a room in which men disrespect you in such a way. … to speak about this horrific trauma of having my pastor repeatedly rape me as a child, only to have religious leaders behave in this way,” she said.
Shaming and silencing women

When victims are permitted to tell their stories to people in authority, it is likely to be an all-male committee including perhaps friends of the accused.

In such a hearing women – who because of purity culture practices have often been taught to always be modest and quiet in mixed company and may have had little to no sex education – are asked to detail what they often say is the most painful experience of their lives. Purity culture creates in women a strong sense of shame surrounding their bodies, their own sexuality, and sex in general. When they exhibit evidence of that shame it is taken as an admission that they share responsibility for the abuse.

Like their forebears before them who mobilized the mythic purity of white womanhood to shore up their power, today’s leaders at the center of this report remain male and overwhelmingly white. They use the language of purity culture to shame and silence women seeking justice while, at the same time, leading the charge in the fight against coming to terms with racism.

Can there be real reform?

The chairman of the SBC executive committee, Rolland Slade, and interim President and CEO Willie McLaurin said in a statement, in response to the report: “We are grieved by the findings of this investigation. We are committed to doing all we can to prevent future instances of sexual abuse in churches, to improve our response and our care, to remove reporting roadblocks.” Other Baptists too have expressed shock and anger at the revelations.

The Guidepost Solutions report concludes with a series of strategies such as forming an independent committee to oversee reforms, including providing resources for prevention and reporting of abuse. As helpful as these strategies may be, they don’t address how the underlying culture of the SBC continues to maintain the structures of white patriarchy.


By Julie Ingersoll, Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Florida

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

'So much for being deprogrammed': The View questions if Ginni Thomas has been pulled into QAnon after being in a cult

Sarah K. Burris
June 15, 2022

Gage Skimore

The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is continuing to be exposed for her pro-Trump activism, but a recent report revealed that she was once part of a cult. After being "deprogrammed," as she described, Thomas became an advocate against such groups.

Associates of Mrs. Thomas are concerned, however, that in the past few years, she has been sucked in once more after she's been linked to QAnon, which some are also describing as a kind of right-wing cult.

Co-hosts of "The View" on Wednesday conveyed their concern that Thomas is part of such movements and influencing her husband when it comes to the Supreme Court. In the past, Thomas has spoken about the "enemies of America" which she defines as the left. She has alleged that the left is trying to "kill" people like her and that's why it's important for her and others to have guns.

"So much for the deprogramming," quipped Joy Behar.

The cult she belong to was a kind of self-help multi-level marketing scheme where people would attend self-help seminars then if they brought people into the group they would rise in status. It wasn't specifically focused on a particular religion, which is how Sara Haines said that it was able to fly under the radar.

"That makes so much sense to me now that she was susceptible to these QAnon sort of base conspiracy theories of the election fraud and the 'big lie' and 'this was stolen.' She had — let's face it — weekly sometimes lunch meetings with this narcissistic or perhaps narcissistic president. I mean, you knew him and worked for him," Sunny Hostin said to former White House aide Alyssa Farah.

Farah noted that those with narcissistic personalities have a tendency to be more susceptible to cults because they place their own beliefs over that of others who might be fact-checking.

"This one is particularly irritating because, A: this is a sitting Supreme Court justice's wife," said Whoopi Goldberg. "That means he's listening to cases being argued in front of him while his wife is pushing a lie, and nothing's been done thus far. So, I don't know if she's in one of the weeks that they (the House Select Committee) have planned out to break it down. I hope so, because this does not make any sense to me, and, you know, if this is -- listen. I have a lot of friends who found themselves in the midst of couple cults. Some really, deep, deep, deep, and some who said, 'Oh. That's not for me.' And they find themselves because everybody is looking to connect. Especially after being in lockdown. But the idea that she is actively still working to push this lie stuns me, and that no one—- because you've said to us, there's nothing you can do to the justice."

READ MORE: Dem Capitol Hill staffer highlights the most 'chilling' parts of newly released 'reconnaissance tour' video

Sunny Hostin said that no one fully understands other people's relationships, "but the two of them together, considering that he is such a renowned legal mind and now she's a former cult member, I'm really surprised at this."

Goldberg noted that sometimes people get married and they're laying in bed together when the partner says, "you know, one time, I was married to a fish. And you're like, what?"

Hostin read a legal note that Mrs. Thomas continues to deny that there is any conflict of interest between her activism and her husband's position on the court.

Goldberg cut in after the legal disclaimer to assert, "we all know that's not true."


See the conversation below or at this link.

Nearly one in three children in north-east England on free school meals

Figures shows 10% rise in FSM across England and school leaders say real child poverty level is even higher

Students eating their school dinner. Department for Education figures show that 22.5% of state school pupils in England are on free school meals. 

Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA Media


Richard Adams 

THE GUARDIAN

Education editorThu 9 Jun 2022 

Nearly one in three children in the north-east of England are receiving free school meals (FSM), according to figures that reveal a 10% rise across England, as school leaders say the real level of child poverty is even higher.

The figures released in the Department for Education (DfE) annual school census show that 22.5% of state school pupils are on FSM, up from 20.8% last year, reflecting the increasing number of households receiving universal credit and earning less than £7,400 a year after tax.


Four years ago 13.6% of children were on FSM. That meant fewer than one in seven pupils were eligible. The current rate is one in 4.4.

Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), said: “Our members have described the rise in poverty in their schools’ communities over the past year as shocking and stark. It is clear that the combined pressures of Covid-19 and the cost of living crisis have driven more families and children into poverty.”

Poor families skipping meals and unable to afford heating, charity says

While the proportion of children on FSM increased across England, the north-east of England had the highest rate, with 29.1% of pupils eligible, while the north-west, the West Midlands, London, and Yorkshire and the Humber had about 25% of pupils eligible.

The south-east of England had the lowest rate, with 17.6%.

Anna Turley, the chair of the North East Child Poverty Commission, said: “It’s clear that the current threshold for free school meals – which hasn’t changed since 2018 – is totally inadequate, with many thousands of north-east pupils growing up in poverty but unable to receive this vital support.

“That picture is only going to get even worse in the coming months, as families grapple with soaring household bills and even more children face going hungry, with all the obvious consequences for their health and ability to learn.”

The Child Poverty Action Group said based on the latest figures, a further 800,000 children were living in poverty but did not qualify for FSM.

Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said it was even more shocking that current eligibility “does not even capture all the children who need help. Free school meal eligibility now applies to 22.5% of pupils but we know that the level of child poverty is about 30%.”

ASCL, the NAHT and other groups have been lobbying the government to widen FSM eligibility to include children from all households receiving universal credit, not just those earning less than £7,400 a year.

More than 50% of Gypsy and Roma pupils were eligible for FSM, as were more than 40% of children from Black Caribbean backgrounds. More than 21% of white British pupils were eligible.

Labour’s Stephen Morgan, the shadow schools minister, said: “The alarming rise in children eligible for free school meals is symptomatic of a cost of living crisis made worse by Downing Street. Unchecked inflation and Conservative choices to increase taxes are piling the pressure on families and school budgets.”

The DfE said: “We communicate regularly with schools and councils so they know what is available for these children. We know millions of families are struggling with the rising cost of living, which is why we are providing over £37bn to target those with the greatest need.”

ZIONIST SHOW TRIAL FOR PALESTINIAN POLITICAL PRISONER


Israeli court convicts Palestinian aid worker after six years in detention


By Henriette Chacar

BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters) - An Israeli court on Wednesday convicted a Palestinian aid worker who has been detained for six years on Israeli charges he funneled tens of millions of dollars in relief funds to the militant group Hamas.

The Beersheba District Court found El Halabi guilty of supporting a terror organisation but acquitted him of treason, judges reading out the verdict said. They set a sentencing hearing for July.

Mohammad El Halabi, head of Gaza operations for World Vision, an international Christian non-governmental organisation, was arrested in June 2016. Israel accused him of siphoning off up to $50 million to pay Hamas fighters, buy arms and fund the group's activities.

El Halabi has consistently denied the charges against him and has refused several plea deal offers.

World Vision, which focuses on helping children, said an independent audit found no evidence of wrongdoing or of funds missing. It said that in the 10-year period El Halabi was employed, it budgeted around $22.5 million for operations in Gaza, making the amount El Halabi allegedly diverted "hard to reconcile".

"World Vision acknowledges with disappointment the decision issued by the Beersheva District Court convicting Mr. Mohammad El Halabi," Sharon Marshall, senior director of public engagement for the organisation, said in a statement outside the court after the verdict was delivered.

"We're going to support Mohammad through whatever appeal process he has left in front of him because we believe, based on what we've seen in the court and in investigations, that he is innocent of the charges," Marshall told Reuters.

International human rights organisations have criticised El Halabi's prolonged detention and trial. Human Rights Watch said the guilty verdict against him "compounds a miscarriage of justice. Holding al-Halabi for six years based largely on secret evidence has made a mockery of due process and the most basic fair trial provisions."

On Tuesday, ahead of the verdict, the head of the United Nations Human Rights Office in Palestine, James Heenan, also expressed concern over whether El Halabi's trial had met international fair trial standards.

Widespread use of secret evidence, reliance on closed proceedings and credible allegations of ill-treatment in detention "paint a picture of enormous pressure on Mr el-Halabi to confess in the absence of evidence,” Heenan said.

In Gaza, dozens of Palestinians gathered with posters of El Halabi to show their support.

"This is a grave mistake and an injustice," his father, Khalil El Halabi, told Reuters. "My son is innocent."

(Reporting by Henriette Chacar in Beersheba; Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)

Israeli court STAR CHAMBER finds Gaza aid worker guilty on terror charges

BEERSHEBA, Israel (AP) — An Israeli court on Wednesday found a Gaza aid worker guilty of several terrorism charges in a high-profile case in which his employer, independent auditors and the Australian government say they have found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Mohammed el-Halabi, the Gaza director for the international Christian charity World Vision, was arrested in 2016 and accused of diverting tens of millions of dollars to the Islamic militant group Hamas that rules the territory. The trial, and his prolonged detention, have further strained relations between Israel and humanitarian organizations that provide aid to Palestinians.

Both he and World Vision have denied the allegations and an independent audit in 2017 also found no evidence of support for Hamas. His lawyer, Maher Hanna, has said el-Halabi turned down several plea bargain offers on principle that would have allowed him to walk free.

El-Halabi has not yet been sentenced. World Vision said he would appeal the ruling, which was largely based on classified information that has not been made public but was shared with the defense.

The district court in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba said el-Halabi was guilty of several charges, including membership in a terror organization, providing information to a terror group, taking part in militant exercises and carrying a weapon.

It said he diverted “millions” of dollars every year, as well as equipment, from World Vision and its donors to Hamas. It said Hamas used the funds for militant activities, as well as children's counseling, food aid and Quran memorization contests for its supporters. Pipes and nylon diverted to Hamas were used for military purposes, it said.

The court said it was not convinced by World Vision's testimony that it had firm controls in place that would have prevented the diversion of such aid. The court said the full 254-page decision is “confidential and cannot be made public.”

It appeared to rely heavily on a confession by el-Halabi that has not been made public. His lawyer has said the confession was given under duress to an informant and should not have been admitted as evidence.

The court said the confession was “given in various ways," and "is detailed, coherent, truthful and has many unique details,” including the names and ranks of Hamas operatives, and descriptions of strategic locations in Gaza.

Speaking to reporters immediately after the verdict, Hanna said he had not yet read the full decision. But he accused the judge of siding with Israeli security forces and relying on evidence that has not been made public — and which he has previously described as unreliable.

"All the judge said, if I want to summarize it in one sentence: ‘The security forces cannot be wrong, they are probably right,'” he told reporters.


Sharon Marshall, a spokeswoman for World Vision who has closely followed the case, said there had been “irregularities in the trial process and a lack of substantive and publicly available evidence.” She said the charity supports el-Halabi's intent to appeal and called for a “fair and transparent" process.

“We strongly condemn any act of terrorism or support of such activities, and reject any attempts to divert humanitarian resources or exploit the work of humanitarian organizations operating anywhere,” she said.

The Christian charity operates in nearly 100 countries and annually distributes some $2.5 billion in aid.

Israeli authorities have repeatedly said they have proof that Hamas had infiltrated the aid group and was diverting funds from needy Gazans. Then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trumpeted the charges in an online video shortly after el-Halabi’s arrest.

Critics say Israel often relies on questionable informants. They allege that Israel smears groups that provide aid or other support to Palestinians in order to shore up its nearly 55-year military occupation of lands the Palestinians want for a future state.

Israel says it supports the work of aid organizations but must prevent donor funds from falling into the hands of armed groups like Hamas that do not recognize it and attack its citizens.

In a statement, the Israeli Foreign Ministry acknowledged the verdict while saying it “continues to support international efforts to provide assistance to the Gazan population."

Israel “remains committed to cooperating with, and facilitating, the continued operations of humanitarian organizations, including World Vision, in a manner consistent with security considerations and applicable standards,” it said.

After el-Halabi’s arrest, World Vision suspended its activities in Gaza, where over 2 million Palestinians live under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed when Hamas seized power nearly 15 years ago. Israel says the restrictions are needed to contain Hamas, while critics view them as a form of collective punishment.

World Vision worked with several Western donor countries to construct an independent audit of its activities in Gaza. It declined to name the auditors because of a non-disclosure agreement, but last year the Guardian newspaper identified them as the international accounting firm Deloitte and DLA Piper, a global law firm.

A team of around a dozen lawyers, including several former assistant U.S. attorneys, reviewed nearly 300,000 emails and conducted over 180 interviews. Forensic auditors scoured nearly every financial transaction at World Vision from 2010 until 2016.

In July 2017, they submitted an over 400-page report of their findings to World Vision, which shared it with donor governments. World Vision said it offered the report to Israel, but Israeli authorities refused to sign the non-disclosure agreement.

Brett Ingerman, a lawyer with DLA Piper who headed the investigation, confirmed its involvement and told The Associated Press earlier this year that the report found no evidence that el-Halabi was affiliated with Hamas or had diverted any funds. Instead, he said it found that el-Halabi had enforced internal controls and ordered employees to avoid anyone suspected of Hamas ties.

The Australian government conducted its own review, reaching similar conclusions. Australia was the biggest single donor to World Vision’s humanitarian work in Gaza, providing some $4.4 million in the previous three fiscal years before el-Halabi's arrest. There was no immediate comment on the verdict from Australian officials.

___

Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press reporter Isaac Scharf in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Emily Rose And Joseph Krauss, The Associated Press

US Grocery stores are a hotbed for racism and hate crimes, data shows

Elliott Ramos - NBC News

In December 2018, a 31-year-old man allegedly kicked a 1-year-old boy in a Wichita, Kansas, grocery store while yelling racist slurs at the toddler’s Black family.

In June 2021, a former Marine allegedly punched a Black 19-year-old who is autistic in a Chicago grocery store and shouted that “white people built this country.”

And three months ago in March, Rose Wysocki had an uncomfortable encounter with an 18-year-old white man at Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York.

Wysocki, a produce manager at the store, had just helped the man locate an item in the produce section when he told Wysocki that she “didn’t belong” in the majority Black store.

“I was just like, ‘Why do you say that,’” Wysocki told NBC News. The man replied that Wysocki, who is also white, looked like she belonged “in the suburbs.”

“When he turned around and went to walk away, he called me a n—-- lover.”

Two months later, police said that same man returned to the same grocery store, where he shot and killed 10 Black people as they shopped for food. The Department of Justice has charged the suspected shooter, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, with 26 counts of hate crimes and firearms offenses. The charges carry the potential of the death penalty.

The mass shooting in Buffalo is the latest in a wave of racism and hate that has swept over grocery stores across the country in the past decade, a trend that data shows has greatly accelerated since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

According to an NBC News analysis of FBI hate crime data from the last 10 years, more than 160 hate crimes were recorded at grocery stores in 2020, 65% more than in 2019 and four times as many as in 2010.

“With regard to 2020, we saw grocery stores were a more common target than they were a decade ago,” said Brian Levin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

Experts who follow hate crime trends gave several reasons for their rise in 2020, from the pandemic to the presidential election. But they also noted the special role that grocery stores played, serving as one of the few places that year where people could gather in public, as restaurants, schools and businesses were closed.


“That's one of the few places where people congregated, because they had to,” Levin said. “It was a necessity, even houses of worship were able to adapt via Zoom.”

Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit organization that works to combat racism against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, cataloged more than 10,000 hate incidents from 2020 to 2021 and found that 1 in 10 hate incidents occurred in grocery stores.

“Incidents that occur in businesses are like incidents that occur on the streets,” said Dr. Russell Jeung, Stop AAPI Hate co-founder. “In both cases, people use anti-China rhetoric. So they say things like: ‘You're the reason why we have Covid-19. Go back to China, you c—-.’”

Experts said that grocery store employees, like other essential workers, were often stuck enforcing city or state mask mandates on irate customers. And for some, a request to mask up was often the spark needed to launch into racist verbal assaults.

“It's disturbing, but there has been violence in the workplace as it related to the mask mandate,” said Marc Perrone, president of United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing more than 1.3 million food and retail workers.

“People wore masks that were decorated with hate symbols. We had violence inflicted on some of our members because they were trying to have conversations with people about mask mandates and trying to stay safe during the pandemic,” Perrone said.

In Santee, California, a man wore a Ku Klux Klan hood at a Vons grocery store in May 2020. The man was not charged with a crime. Five days later, a different man wore a mask with a Nazi swastika while shopping at a Food-4-Less.

The Buffalo shooting came three years after 23 dead people were killed and more than a dozen others injured at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart. The shooter, a 21-year-old man, targeted the mostly Latino customers of the store and posted a racist screed on 8chan, a fringe internet message board tied to numerous mass shootings, where he decried a Hispanic “invasion” of the state.

Perrone’s organization has called on Congress to pass the STOP Violence Act, which would make grocery stores eligible for federal funding for active shooter preparedness.

“I don't think that you can legislate away hate,” Perrone said. “I think that you can legislate some things that might limit the impact of that.”

Twenty-two hate crimes involved murder in 2020, three times as many as 2010.

“2020 was a watershed moment for racial hate. It was a watershed time for racial hate crimes, and our data is unmistakable on this,” Levin, of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, said, noting that June 2020 was the second-worst month for hate crimes since record-keeping started in 1991. It was also the worst-ever month for anti-Black hate crimes.

But as bad as 2020 was, Levin said that hate crimes have only continued to increase in the two years since. The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism issued a report in May that showed hate crimes rose by more than a third in 37 major U.S. cities from 2020 to 2021.

Levin said that hate crimes tend to increase during years with elections. And with the midterm elections six months away, he said more hate crimes and assaults could be on the way.

“What we're concerned about is the second half of the year,” Levin said.

“We can see this consistently because the stereotypes that label people [as] legitimate targets for aggression tend to increase as the elections come closer.”

Canada's Kinross Gold sells Russia assets at half price

(Reuters) - Canada's Kinross Gold Corp said on Wednesday it had sold all of its Russian assets to the Highland Gold Mining Group for $340 million in cash, half of the previously announced price.

The Toronto-based miner said in April it would sell its Kupol mine and Udinsk project to Highland Gold, one of the largest gold miners in Russia, for $680 million.

"The transaction consideration was adjusted by the parties following review by the recently formed Russian Sub-commission on the Control of Foreign Investments," Kinross said, adding the sale was approved for a price not exceeding $340 million.


Russian authorities in March had stipulated that any transaction between Russians and foreign counterparties requires permission from the commission, saying it wanted to ensure decisions to exit were considered and not driven by political pressure.

Highland Gold operates several mines in the country, including in Chukotka and Khabarovsk regions where the Kupol mine and Udinsk project are located.

U.S.-listed shares of Kinross were up 3% in premarket trading, mirroring gains in other gold miners on a stronger bullion.

(Reporting by Ruhi Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Halifax approves four areas where about 30 people experiencing homelessness can camp

Halifax city council has unanimously approved a plan to allow people without housing to camp in four parks and green spaces in the municipality.



A staff report submitted to council had recommended allowing more than 30 people to sleep in tents at two sites in Halifax and two in Dartmouth.

The report states that Halifax is in a "homelessness crisis."

Those camping in the approved areas will be expected to follow noise bylaws and a ban on fires, which will be enforced by municipal compliance officers and not Halifax Regional Police.

There are also limits on the number of tents allowed at each site.

Even with planned housing units on the books, the report says demand for shelter will "still exceed supply."

Halifax had 200 shelter beds and 622 unhoused people in the city as of June 14, as reported by Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia.

City councillor Tim Outhit says the plan is a “temporary Band-Aid” fix that doesn’t address the expected increase in homelessness.

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

Ottawa police promise outreach to Sikh community after false Parliament bomb tip


Ottawa police have reached out to the leadership of the city’s Sikh community and will be meeting with them later this week to get their feedback on the police response to the false bomb tip that led to the arrest of two Sikh rally organizers near Parliament Hill on Saturday.

Interim police chief Steve Bell shared that information in a letter to the city's police services board Tuesday night.

The RCMP is conducting an ongoing investigation into the event, Bell said, noting that in light of that investigation, Ottawa police is limited in what it can share about Saturday's incident, but added it will work to give as much information as possible to "ensure transparency."

Bell said police are aware of the effect law enforcement's response had on the individuals who were arrested.

"We have reached out to the leadership of Ottawa’s Sikh community and we will be meeting with them later this week to take their feedback and discuss the Ottawa police response and operational processes under these circumstances," he said. "Our relationship with the Sikh community is important to us."

However, the two men who were arrested live in Quebec and say they have not heard anything from Ottawa police since their release from custody and they also have not been informed that officers are meeting with the Ottawa Sikh community.

Manveer Singh and Parminder Singh have spoken out about their arrests to defend their reputations and seek answers about who targeted them with the false tip and why. Parminder Singh said he’s appealing to Ottawa police, RCMP and CBSA to explain what happened.

"I really need to know who is behind this," said Parminder Singh, who lives in Pierrefonds, Que.

Harpreet Hansra, a fellow organizer of the rally, has called for police to deliver a public apology to the two men and supported the World Sikh Organization of Canada’s call for an investigation into the false tip.

The RCMP would not confirm Wednesday that such an investigation is underway. It said for privacy and operational reasons, it can only confirm details related to criminal investigations where charges have been laid.

When the RCMP probe finishes, Ottawa police will review the incident and community feedback to look at how it can improve its response to similar incidents, Bell said in the letter to the police services board.

Bell said the "detailed and specific threat" about the potential use of explosives in the Parliament Hill area "was complicated by time factors related to a planned event."

Police acted on the information received to ensure public safety, and acted "in good faith" and worked "as quickly and effectively as possible" to investigate the potential threat, said Bell.

The organizers of the rally, held in remembrance of the victims of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in India, had a permit to hold the event on Parliament Hill. When they arrived, they were told the area was shut down due to an ongoing threat and they moved to the lawn of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Soon after the rally started, the men say police arrested them and told them their names were connected to a serious bomb threat on the Hill. Manveer Singh, who lives in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Que., said police claimed they had “credible information” linking him to the threat.

"What was that credible information that led police to arrest me?” he asked.

Police searched their cars for explosives before handcuffing them and taking them to the police station, where they were made to remove their turbans and questioned by officers, the men said. Manveer Singh also had to remove other religious symbols including a bracelet called a kara and a ceremonial dagger known as a kirpan.

The men said they were eventually released, with police apologizing and explaining that the pair were the victims of a "terrorism hoax."

Parliament was also evacuated while police investigated the tip on Saturday. After several hours, police said no threat to public safety was found and the area reopened.

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

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This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Erika Ibrahim, The Canadian Press

Floods leave Yellowstone landscape 'dramatically changed'



RED LODGE, Mont. (AP) — The forces of fire and ice shaped Yellowstone National Park over thousands of years. It took decades longer for humans to tame it enough for tourists to visit, often from the comfort of their cars.

In just days, heavy rain and rapid snowmelt caused a dramatic flood that may forever alter the human footprint on the park's terrain and the communities that have grown around it.

The historic floodwaters that raged through Yellowstone this week, tearing out bridges and pouring into nearby homes, pushed a popular fishing river off course — possibly permanently — and may force roadways nearly torn away by torrents of water to be rebuilt in new places.

“The landscape literally and figuratively has changed dramatically in the last 36 hours,” said Bill Berg, a commissioner in nearby Park County. “A little bit ironic that this spectacular landscape was created by violent geologic and hydrologic events, and it’s just not very handy when it happens while we’re all here settled on it.”

The unprecedented flooding drove more than 10,000 visitors out of the nation’s oldest national park and damaged hundreds of homes in nearby communities, though remarkably no was reported hurt or killed. The only visitors left in the massive park straddling three states were a dozen campers still making their way out of the backcountry.

The park could remain closed as long as a week, and northern entrances may not reopen this summer, Superintendent Cam Sholly said.

“I’ve heard this is a 1,000-year event, whatever that means these days. They seem to be happening more and more frequently,” he said.

Sholly noted some weather forecasts include the possibility of additional flooding this weekend.

A house falls into the Yellowstone River in Gardiner, Montana after record flooding and rockslides in the area (June 14)

Days of rain and rapid snowmelt wrought havoc across parts of southern Montana and northern Wyoming, where it washed away cabins, swamped small towns and knocked out power. It hit the park as a summer tourist season that draws millions of visitors was ramping up during its 150th anniversary year.

Businesses in hard-hit Gardiner had just started really recovering from the tourism contraction brought by the coronavirus pandemic, and were hoping for a good year, Berg said.

“It’s a Yellowstone town, and it lives and dies by tourism, and this is going to be a pretty big hit,” he said. “They’re looking to try to figure out how to hold things together.”

Some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the park and Yellowstone’s gateway communities in southern Montana. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a mudslide, washed out bridges and roads undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers.

In Red Lodge, a town of 2,100 that’s a popular jumping-off point for a scenic route into the Yellowstone high country, a creek running through town jumped its banks and swamped the main thoroughfare, leaving trout swimming in the street a day later under sunny skies.

Residents described a harrowing scene where the water went from a trickle to a torrent over just a few hours.

The water toppled telephone poles, knocked over fences and carved deep fissures in the ground through a neighborhood of hundreds of houses. Electricity was restored by Tuesday, but there was still no running water in the affected neighborhood.


Heidi Hoffman left early Monday to buy a sump pump in Billings, but by the time she returned her basement was full of water.

“We lost all our belongings in the basement,” Hoffman said as the pump removed a steady stream of water into her muddy backyard. “Yearbooks, pictures, clothes, furniture. Were going to be cleaning up for a long time.”

At least 200 homes were flooded in Red Lodge and the town of Fromberg.

The flooding came as the Midwest and East Coast sizzle from a heat wave and other parts of the West burn from an early wildfire season amid a persistent drought that has increased the frequency and intensity of fires. Smoke from a fire in the mountains of Flagstaff, Arizona, could be seen in Colorado.

While the flooding hasn't been directly attributed to climate change, Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said a warming environment makes extreme weather events more likely than they would have been "without the warming that human activity has caused.”

“Will Yellowstone have a repeat of this in five or even 50 years? Maybe not, but somewhere will have something equivalent or even more extreme,” he said.

Heavy rain on top of melting mountain snow pushed the Yellowstone, Stillwater and Clarks Fork rivers to record levels Monday and triggered rock and mudslides, according to the National Weather Service. The Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs topped a record set in 1918.

Yellowstone's northern roads may remain impassable for a substantial length of time. The flooding affected the rest of the park, too, with park officials warning of yet higher flooding and potential problems with water supplies and wastewater systems at developed areas.

Major flooding swept away at least one bridge, washed away roads and set off mudslides in Yellowstone National Park on Monday, prompting officials to close the entrances to the popular tourist attraction and evacuate visitors. (June 13)

The rains hit just as area hotels filled up in recent weeks with summer tourists. More than 4 million visitors were tallied by the park last year. The wave of tourists doesn’t abate until fall, and June is typically one of Yellowstone’s busiest months.

Mark Taylor, owner and chief pilot of Rocky Mountain Rotors, said his company had airlifted about 40 paying customers over the past two days from Gardiner, including two women who were “very pregnant.”

Taylor spoke as he ferried a family of four adults from Texas, who wanted to do some more sightseeing before heading home.

“I imagine they’re going to rent a car and they’re going to go check out some other parts of Montana — somewhere drier,” he said.

At a cabin in Gardiner, Parker Manning of Terre Haute, Indiana, got an up-close view of the roiling Yellowstone River floodwaters just outside his door. Entire trees and even a lone kayaker streamed by.

In early evening, he shot video as the waters ate away at the opposite bank where a large brown house that had been home to park employees before they were evacuated was precariously perched.

In a large cracking sound heard over the river's roar, the house tipped into the waters and was pulled into the current. Sholly said it floated 5 miles (8 kilometers) before sinking.

The towns of Cooke City and Silvergate, just east of the park, were also isolated by floodwaters, which also made drinking water unsafe. People left a hospital and low-lying areas in Livingston.

In south-central Montana, 68 people at a campground were rescued by raft after flooding on the Stillwater River. Some roads in the area were closed and residents were evacuated.

In the hamlet of Nye, at least four cabins washed into the Stillwater River, said Shelley Blazina, including one she owned.

“It was my sanctuary,” she said Tuesday. “Yesterday I was in shock. Today I’m just in intense sadness.”

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Whitehurst reported from Salt Lake City. Associated Press writers Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, R.J. Rico in Atlanta, and Brian Melley in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Matthew Brown And Lindsay Whitehurst, The Associated Press