ISRAEL KILLED ONE TOO MANY PALESTINIANS

US Presbyterian Church declares Israel 'apartheid state', create Nakba remembrance day

The New Arab Staff
30 June, 2022

The US Presbyterian Church declared Israel an 'apartheid state' and voted to designate a Nakba remembrance day within their calendars at the church's 225th General Assembly.


The church also affirmed the “right of all people to live and worship peacefully” in Jerusalem [Getty]


The US Presbyterian Church voted on Tuesday at its 225th General Assembly to declare Israel an "apartheid state" and designate a Nakba Remembrance Day within their calendars.

The church claims over 1.7 million members.

Its Committee on International Engagement passed a resolution recognising that “Israel’s laws, policies and practices regarding the Palestinian people fulfil the international legal definition of apartheid”, according to a statement on the Presbyterian Church’s website.

The committee also called for an end to Israel's siege of Gaza and affirmed the “right of all people to live and worship peacefully” in Jerusalem.

Out of 31 voting members, 28 agreed with the resolution, which states that Israel was practicing apartheid by “establishing two sets of laws, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians, which give preferential treatment to Israeli Jews and oppressive treatment to Palestinians”.

A resolution designating 15 May as the Palestinian Nakba Remembrance – commemorating the tragedy whereby 750,000 Palestinians were expelled for the creation of Israel in 1948 - was also approved.

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This received 31 affirmative votes and no negative votes within the committee.

It was passed “for the purpose of lifting prayer for peace” and “giving solidarity for those suffering under occupation”.

The resolution also stated the remembrance should be annually included in the Presbyterian Planning Calendar.

This resolution specifically calls on the US government to “exhort the government of Israel immediately to cease and desist all hostile actions that are defined as “collective punishment” under international law… [and] end the siege of Gaza”.

The Presbyterian Church's resolutions echo human rights groups’ statements surrounding Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Israel's continued occupation of Palestinian land and its persecution and violence against Palestinians have been defined as apartheid by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The UN's Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories has also issued a report saying that Israel has imposed an 'apartheid reality’ on Palestinians.

Sea lion found in polluted Riachuelo River returned to sea

 

A sea lion has been returned to the ocean after finding itself in the ultra-polluted Riachuelo River in Argentina.

He was saved two weeks ago from one of Latin America's dirtiest rivers and has been being treated at an animal rescue centre.

Watch the moment the sea lion was allowed back into the wild.

Egyptians prevented from answering questions on democracy in Arab World Survey

THE RULING IDEAS ARE THE IDEAS OF THE RULING CLASS  

Major new survey finds declining faith in democracy, but critics say poll is 'skewed' and citizens of authoritarian countries not allowed to answer all questions

Egyptian pro-democracy protesters celebrate at Cairo's Tahrir Square 

after president Hosni Mubarak stepped down on 11 February 2011 (AFP)

By Rayhan Uddin
Published date: 7 July 2022

A major new survey has claimed that Arabs are losing faith in the effectiveness of democracy, despite respondents in autocratic Egypt being denied the chance to answer questions on that very topic.

Citizens of several authoritarian countries in the Middle East did not also participate.

The Arab World Survey, commissioned by BBC News Arabic and conducted by the Arab Barometer network based at Princeton University, interviewed 23,000 people across Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and Palestine.

It was carried out between October 2021 and April 2022, and asked questions on a range of subjects including democracy, foreign leaders, religiosity, women’s rights and racism.

The survey, published on Wednesday, found that the vast majority of respondents believed that “under a democratic system, the country’s economic performance is weak”.

It also found that most people agree with the statements: “Democratic regimes are indecisive and full of problems,” “democratic systems are not effective at maintaining order and stability”, and “this country needs a leader who can bend the rules to get things done”.

 
Egypt and Mauritania evade questions

These statements on democracy were answered by people from nine of the participating ten states, with the notable exception of Egypt.

Egyptians also did not participate in questions on whether people prayed Fajr morning prayers on time, and whether they read the Quran daily.

A question asking respondents about their views on various world leaders’ foreign policy towards the Middle East and Africa region was also not answered in Egypt because “authorities would not allow these questions to be asked”.

Crossing the river: Black Mauritanians haunted by mass expulsion to Senegal

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Elsewhere, there are no results from Mauritania on the topic of racial discrimination because Mauritanian authorities asked for questions to be “modified or removed”.

The report notes that the country is going through a national dialogue to formally address racial issues.

Michael Robbins, director of Arab Barometer, told Middle East Eye that apart from Lebanon and Tunisia, the researchers needed some form of state approval to carry out questionnaires in the surveyed countries.

“Generally, locals have an idea of what is legal and what isn’t. We don’t want to put our teams in danger. I don’t think any survey is worth a human life or having someone jailed,” he said.

He said that authorities had sensitivities on certain topics, and did not usually provide a reason as to why some questions were not allowed to be answered by citizens.

“Egyptian authorities were very sensitive about international relations questions. That may be related to current negotiations with different powers.”
'Skewed and manipulative'

Analysts have expressed doubt over the findings, citing the omission of some countries and the framing of the questions.

“We have to interpret these results cautiously. A number of countries are excluded, the sampling methodology is imperfect, and some questions could not be asked in some of the surveyed countries,” Mohamad Elmasry, chair of the media studies programme at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Middle East Eye.

'[It was] engineered to elicit negative responses on democracy, while offering respondents no opportunity to give their opinions on the problems with undemocratic governance'

-Sarah Leah Whitson, Dawn

Elmasry said that it was fair to ask how democratic governments were likely to perform economically, particularly if the same questions are asked over time.

“However, I would prefer that mirroring questions be asked for other forms of government, most notably authoritarianism,” he noted.

“This is important, especially since authoritarianism is more common in the region.”

Asked by MEE why questions were not asked about the impact of authoritarianism, Robbins said it was something “we want to do and will do in future surveys”.

“It’s unfortunate that the Arab Barometer’s questions on governance were so skewed and manipulative,” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), told Middle East Eye.

“[It was] engineered to elicit negative responses on democracy, while offering respondents no opportunity to give their opinions on the problems with undemocratic, unrepresentative governance.”

Whitson took issue with the wording of the questions, noting that only negative options were given in relation to democracy, with “nothing positive”.

“The survey provides a distorted image of Arab public opinion, entirely excluding respondents from some of the region’s most abusive governments, while omitting political questions in countries like Egypt,” she said.
Erdogan rated most popular leader

Gulf countries, which are among the most autocratic in the region, were not involved in the survey.

Robbins said that the Gulf was a “much more restrictive environment” than other parts of the Middle East, but that the Arab Barometer is trying to push for more access in those countries.

He added that the survey’s funding often fluctuated, and it currently only had funding to research 12 countries. The results for Kuwait and Algeria were received too late to be included in the study.

The Arab Barometer’s major funders include two US government agencies, the Middle East Partnership Initiative and the Agency for International Development. Among other funders are BBC Arabic, the National Endowment for Democracy, the UN Development Programme and Princeton and Michigan universities.

While the findings indicated a decline in faith in democracy to provide stability and economic strength, overall most respondents still believed it to be the best form of government.

Elsewhere in the survey, there was widespread acknowledgement of racial discrimination, except in Egypt, where only eight percent of people said it was a problem. Eighty-six percent of Egyptians said there was no racial discrimination “at all” against dark skinned individuals.


It found that a majority of people surveyed said that men are better at political leadership than women, though support for this view had declined since 2018.

Lebanon and Tunisia had seen the biggest decline in this view, where less than half of respondents believe men to be better leaders.

Egypt: 'We cannot surrender to dictatorship,' says rights group founder

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While the 2018 survey found that some in the region were turning their backs on religion, most countries have seen a decline in the number of people describing themselves as “not religious”.

The analysis on global leaders compared the popularity of the MENA policies of presidents in the US, China, Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Syria, as well as Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Six of the nine countries (Egypt did not partake) favoured Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s foreign policy the most, while Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was the least popular.

Comey And McCabe Just Happened To Get Same Rare Intensive IRS Audits Under Trump Appointee

Andrew McCabe and James Comey.

By Cristina Cabrera
July 7, 2022

The I.R.S. selected former FBI chiefs James Comey and Andrew McCabe, two of ex-President Donald Trump’s top foes during his presidency, for an incredibly rare exhaustive tax audit when the agency was led by a Trump appointee.

The New York Times obtained I.R.S. documents showing that Comey’s return filing for 2017 –- the same year Trump fired the then-FBI director for disloyalty –- was chosen for the rare, intensive audit, which is called the National Research Program. The Times noted that of the nearly 153 million individual returns filed that year, only 5,000 of them were selected for that specific audit.

The documents similarly showed that McCabe’s 2019 tax return filing –- the year after Trump also fired him –- was one of the mere 8,000 filings the I.R.S. picked for the same audit program in 2019.

Comey and McCabe were informed of the audits in 2019 and 2021, respectively, when Trump-appointed commissioner Charles P. Rettig oversaw the I.R.S. Rettig actually remains in that post until this coming November.

Throughout his presidency and even after, Trump repeatedly bashed Comey and McCabe in his ceaseless rage over their refusal to scuttle the Russia investigation at his demand.

“Maybe it’s a coincidence or maybe somebody misused the I.R.S. to get at a political enemy,” Comey told the Times on Wednesday. “Given the role Trump wants to continue to play in our country, we should know the answer to that question.”

The tax agency said in a statement to the Times that Rettig “has been committed to running the I.R.S. in an impartial, unbiased manner from top to bottom” and had nothing to do with Comey and McCabe’s audits.

“Commissioner Rettig is not involved in individual audits or taxpayer cases; those are handled by career civil servants,” the agency said. “As I.R.S. commissioner, he has never been in contact with the White House –- in either administration –- on I.R.S. enforcement or individual taxpayer matters.

It’s unknown how exactly Comey and McCabe were chosen or who made the decision to audit them. The I.R.S. does not publicly disclose its selection process for the intensive National Research Program and is prohibited from discussing specific cases. Comey gave the Times a privacy release so the I.R.S. could give the newspaper more information about the case.

Neither Comey nor McCabe knew they’d both been targeted until they were contacted by the Times reporter. McCabe called for an investigation into the matter during a CNN interview on Wednesday night.

“I think it should be investigated,” he said. “People need to be able to trust the institutions of government.”

Trump may have committed “serious federal crime” with “targeted” IRS audits of Comey, McCabe: expert

Comey and McCabe suspiciously both faced audits targeting just 1 in 30,000 people each year

By IGOR DERYSH

Deputy Politics Editor

SALON
PUBLISHED JULY 7, 2022 

James Comey (Getty/Carsten Koall)

Former FBI Director James Comey and his top deputy Andy McCabe faced rate, intensive IRS audits after investigating former President Donald Trump, according to The New York Times.

Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017 while he oversaw the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, and McCabe, who was similarly terminated after investigating Trump over the Coney firing, were selected for a "random" audit known as an "autopsy without the benefit of death," according to the report. Out of about 153 million individual tax returns filed in 2017, only about 5,000 people are selected for this type of invasive audit each year.

Comey and McCabe, along with their spouses, defied the odds, being selected for the audit after being fired. The two men were selected for an IRS research program that uses "compliance research examinations" to try to catch tax cheats. Unlike typical audits, these audits force individuals to produce bank records, copies of checks, receipts and letters effectively recreating their finances for the year in question. The process takes months and often costs thousands in accountant fees.

"Your federal income tax return for the year shown above was selected at random for a compliance research examination," the IRS said in letters to both men. "We must examine randomly selected tax returns to better understand tax compliance and improve fairness of the tax system. We'll give you the opportunity to explain any errors we may find during the examination."

The "minuscule chances" of the top two FBI officials being selected at random raised questions about whether Trump appointees in the government or at the IRS purposely targeted them, noted Times reported Michael Schmidt.

"Lightning strikes, and that's unusual, and that's what it's like being picked for one of these audits," former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told the outlet. "The question is: Does lightning then strike again in the same area? Does it happen? Some people may see that in their lives, but most will not — so you don't need to be an anti-Trumper to look at this and think it's suspicious."

A Trump spokeswoman denied any knowledge of the audits.

IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, a Trump appointee who remains on the job, declined an interview with the Times but said in a statement that he was not involved in any audit.

"Commissioner Rettig is not involved in individual audits or taxpayer cases; those are handled by career civil servants," the statement said. "As I.R.S. commissioner, he has never been in contact with the White House — in either administration — on I.R.S. enforcement or individual taxpayer matters. He has been committed to running the I.R.S. in an impartial, unbiased manner from top to bottom."

The IRS did not specifically comment on the cases but says it forwards any allegations of wrongdoing it receives to the Treasury Department for "further review."

It is illegal under federal law for nearly anyone in the executive branch to request an IRS audit of a specific individual's taxes.

Comey's audit, which lasted over a year, actually found that he and his wife overpaid their federal income taxes and they received a $347 refund, according to the Times.
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"I don't know whether anything improper happened, but after learning how unusual this audit was and how badly Trump wanted to hurt me during that time, it made sense to try to figure it out," Comey told the Times. "Maybe it's a coincidence or maybe somebody misused the I.R.S. to get at a political enemy. Given the role Trump wants to continue to play in our country, we should know the answer to that question."

McCabe said his audit found that he and his wife owed a small amount of money, which they paid.

"The revenue agent I dealt with was professional and responsive," McCabe told the outlet. "Nevertheless, I have significant questions about how or why I was selected for this."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Months before McCabe's audit, Trump publicly questioned McCabe's finances, repeating a false claim about donations that his wife received when she ran for a Virginia state Senate seat.

"Was Andy McCabe ever forced to pay back the $700,000 illegally given to him and his wife, for his wife's political campaign, by Crooked Hillary Clinton while Hillary was under FBI investigation, and McCabe was the head of the FBI??? Just askin'?" Trump tweeted in September 2020.

McCabe was fired by Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2018, which cost him his pension shortly before he was set to retire. The Justice Department in October 2021, under new Attorney General Merrick Garland, reinstated his pension and cleansed his personnel record. He was informed his audit was completed last month.

McCabe claimed he was directly targeted for the audit.

"There was no penalties, there was no fines or anything like that, it was really pretty minimal thing in the end. But it's nerve-wracking, you know, it's really, it's really, kind of, you know – it's scary, really, to be … targeted like that," he told CNN. "I don't know what happened here. And like I said, I think they handled the business okay, you know, the person I dealt with was fine, but the question remains, how was I selected for this?"
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McCabe called for an investigation into the audits.

"It just defies logic to think that there wasn't some other factor involved," he said.

"No coincidence, for sure. Odds are 30,000 to 1," tweeted Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, warning that "this kind of political targeting is a serious federal crime."

Comey, McCabe, Objects Of Trump Ire, Were Subjects Of Rare IRS Audits Transcript

Rev › Blog › Transcripts › Andrew McCabe › Comey, McCabe, Objects Of Trump Ire, Were Subjects Of Rare IRS Audits Transcript


James Comey and Andrew McCabe, two people at the top of Donald Trump’s enemies list were both subject to uncommon, rigorous IRS audits. Read the transcript here.


Speaker 1: (00:00)
How did two of President Trump’s top perceive enemies end up facing that kind of audit, the kind of audit that seems designed to dig up any possible dirt? How exactly does that happen? A spokesperson for President Trump said he had, “No knowledge of this”, but in a statement to The Times, Comey said, what we were all thinking, “Maybe it’s a coincidence, or maybe somebody misused the IRS to get at a political enemy. “Given the role Trump wants to continue to play in our country, we should know the answer to that question”. Well that we should. And part of the story that I really don’t think we should overlook is how we almost never learned about it. James Comey and Andrew McCabe had worked together for years and neither one knew that the other had been audited like this both after they were fired from the FBI, “Neither man knew that the other had been audited until they were told by a reporter for The Times”. That reporter was New York Times, Michael Schmidt.

Speaker 1: (00:59)
I don’t know if there are any other Trump enemies out there that underwent intensive random audits by the IRS. But if there are, and they’re listening, please email my next guest Michael Schmidt. Joining us now is Michael. He’s the reporter for The New York times who broke this story. Michael, thank you for joining us this evening. We mentioned this particular type of audit is exhaustive and exhausting, but can you just help us understand how much in an audit like this, the IRS asks for and how much work it is to provide all of the material that they need?

Michael Schmidt: (01:31)
So most audits that the IRS does are set off by an algorithm or a computer that catches something weird in your return. Someone claims a 500,000 square foot home office. There’s something weird, something odd that the computer says, Hey, and they send you a letter and they say, Hey, what’s going on with this home office? Can you help us clarify that? And you have to explain that individual issue. That’s what most audits look like. They’re annoying. People don’t like them. They see them as invasive, but they’re part of the process for the IRS to collect the money that it needs to run the government. A small percentage of audits are done to figure out what the tax gap is. And that’s the gap between what Americans do pay in taxes and what they should be paying in taxes. So this is sort of a survey of the country to figure out who isn’t paying their taxes and they go out and the IRS says that they randomly pick Americans for this.

Michael Schmidt: (02:36)
And because they don’t know what they’re looking for, right, they’ve randomly picked these Americans, they have to turn over everything in your financial life to recreate your financial year, to determine whether you understated or overstated everything on your taxes. So that means producing receipts. In the case of Comey, there was a question about a printer cartridge he had bought two years earlier that I believe he had taken a write off on and whether he could come up with that receipt, or if there was an Amex statement to back that up. As you were pointing out, Comey had claimed dependence. To show that those dependents existed, that his children actually existed, he had to present the family’s Christmas card to the IRS. It took the Comey’s 15 months to get through this audit. And it cost them $5,000 in accounting fees, because they had to have an accountant that was going back and forth with the IRS agent who was doing the audit.

Speaker 1: (03:43)
Yeah. And the interesting thing about these audits is you can’t sort of just say, Hey, you’re the IRS. You know I have kids. Why don’t you handle that? When they ask you for information, you actually have to provide it. The odds of getting selected for one of these random audits is about one in 30,000 and a little bit, according to your article. The odds that both of these men who held the same position back to back in the same administration, both seen as political enemies of the president in charge and the IRS headed by a man that president appointed just makes it seem less than random.

Michael Schmidt: (04:18)
So we actually don’t in the story, lay out what the odds are because we don’t know how the IRS actually randomly selects these people, whether it’s weighted in a way. All we know is that the IRS says they’re trying to get a full picture of what the country looks like. They’re trying to get people that are W-2 employees, people that may be making millions of dollars a year. People that may be at the lower end of the economic spectrum. What the numbers we had in the story showed was, is like one out of how many taxpayers was subjected to this. So here were the numbers. For 2017, the year that they looked at Comey’s return, there were 5,000 audits of these done on individual taxpayers. So that could be a husband and a wife or partners together.

Michael Schmidt: (05:11)
So it could be a little bit more than 5,000 people, but out of 150 million returns. So they’re randomly picking 5,000 people out of 150 million returns. In 2019, the year that McCabe was audited for, there were 8,000 returns that were selected by the IRS for this out of 153 or 154 million returns that were from that year. So these are very, very low numbers. And what former IRS people that we talked to said is just that, like what are the chances that the people a top of Trump’s enemy’s list,

Speaker 1: (05:51)
Yeah.

Michael Schmidt: (05:51)
People who had overseen some of the most controversial decisions in the FBI’s history. Remember a lot of people blame Comey for the election of Hillary Clinton. There’s a lot of people that look very negatively on the FBI from this period of time. And these two people were subjected to these audits.

Speaker 1: (06:11)
Or the defeat of Hillary Clinton. The current IRS commissioner, Charles Rettig, he was appointed to his post by Donald Trump in 2018. Ironically, he had written an oped in Forbes at one point saying that he didn’t think it was necessary for Donald Trump to have to provide his personal tax returns. That was before he was appointed. What do we know about him and any potential role that he may have had in the selection of these two men to be part of this random audit?

Michael Schmidt: (06:38)
Well, the IRS in response to questions from us say that the commissioner plays no role in the selection of this, that he had had no discussions with the White House, any White House about any particular type of audit or law enforcement matter. So they pretty forcefully came back and said that on the record to us and we included that in the story. We know that he is someone that advocated during the 2016 election, that Trump should not release his returns. He is an attorney who had dedicated much of his career to helping people that were fighting with the IRS, often wealthy people that were fighting with the IRS.

Michael Schmidt: (07:19)
And we do know that Biden allowed him to stay in his position. So when Biden came in, he could have replaced pretty much anyone that he wanted in the executive branch. But I think going along with trying to restore some of the norms, he allowed the FBI director to stay in his position, even though Trump had appointed them. And he allowed commissioner Rettig to stay in at the IRS. His term is schedule to expire at the end of this year, towards the end of this year in the fall. So Biden could have replaced him, but allowed him to stay.

 

Taliban happy about withdrawal of Afghanistan’s non-NATO ally status

Online News EditorJuly 7, 2022

 

Kabul, Jul 7 (EFE) – The Taliban on Thursday welcomed the United States’ decision to revoke Afghanistan’s status as a major non-NATO ally (MNNA).

“We are also not happy under such name that because of them for two decades Afghans are decimated, suffered and endured problems,” the Taliban government’s deputy spokesperson Bilal Karimi told EFE.

The MNNA status was granted to Afghanistan by the US in 2012 to facilitate the acquisition of military equipment by the now-deposed government in Kabul that allied with Washington in the fight against the fundamentalists, who are now in power.

Previously, the Afghan armed forces, which relied heavily on the US to acquire weapons, was able to take advantage of some of this status.

The Taliban took control of the country in August last year, following a swift offensive during the final withdrawal of the US forces from the country.

Although the Taliban government is yet to be recognized by the international community, Bilal said they seek “to maintain bilateral diplomatic, business and economic relations with all countries.”

Taliban leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada said Wednesday that they seeks a “good” relationship with everyone including the US, a statement that came a week after he stressed that Kabul would not take orders from anyone even if they use the atomic bomb against them.

Afghanistan is in the midst of an economic crisis exacerbated by the capture of power by the Taliban in August last year, which led to the freezing of international funds for the reconstruction of the war-torn country.

The country has also been hit by several natural disasters, the most recent of them an earthquake that left more than a thousand dead two weeks ago, as well as droughts and floods. EFE

lk-daa/sc

THIRD WORLD USA

10-year-old rape victim denied abortion after Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade

She was forced to travel to a different state to have the termination

by JADE BIGGS 

COSMOPOLITAN

5 JUL 2022

ELIJAH NOUVELAGEGETTY IMAGES

A 10-year-old rape victim, who was six weeks pregnant, was denied an abortion following the US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade. The ruling means there is no longer a nationwide right to terminate a pregnancy and individual states now have the freedom to make their own laws on abortion access.

The girl, who lives in Ohio, was ineligible to have an abortion in her own state in light of Roe v Wade being overturned and was forced to travel to Indiana for the procedure. Currently, abortion in Indiana is legal, but lawmakers are expected to bring in tighter restrictions later this month when the state assembly comes together.

"It’s hard to imagine that in just a few short weeks we will have no ability to provide that care," Dr Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, told the Columbus Dispatch. Bernard had treated the girl after a colleague in Ohio who works with child abuse victims called and asked for help.

Abortion providers like Bernard say they have seen a sharp increase in the number of patients, from the nearby states where such procedures are now restricted or banned, coming to their clinics for abortion.

The case has further reignited conversation in the US about abortion rights, and has forced anti-abortion political figures to address how the rights of women and girls – including abuse victims – will be balanced against abortion restrictions.


SOPA IMAGESGETTY IMAGES

Yet some anti-abortionists have seemingly deflected on the matter, with Republican governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota – where abortion is now illegal unless "necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant female" – telling CNN that the public should be "addressing those sick individuals [who] do this to our children" adding that "nobody’s talking about the pervert, horrible and deranged individual that raped a 10-year-old."

As for whether she would push to change the law in South Dakota if a similar case occurred, Noem said: "I don’t believe a tragic situation should be perpetuated by another tragedy. There’s more that we have got to do to make sure that we really are living a life that says every life is precious, especially innocent lives that have been shattered, like that 10-year-old girl."

When asked if the 10-year-old should have had the baby, the Republican replied, "every single life – every single life is precious. This tragedy is horrific. But, in South Dakota, the law today is that the abortions are illegal, except to save the life of the mother."

Although, Noem did not rule out that performing an abortion on the 10-year-old could be classed as protecting the life of the pregnant female. "Yes, that situation, the doctor, the family, the individuals closest to that will make the decisions there for that family."

"Jamestown will be lost": Climate change threatens to sink historic colony

Kris Van Cleave -


Jamestown, Virginia — More than 400 years after the first European settlers arrived, Jamestown, Virginia, is struggling to survive the ravages of climate change.

"We are concerned that if we don't take action, Jamestown will be lost," said Elizabeth Kostelny, who runs Preservation Virginia, the nonprofit overseeing the colony's original 22 acres along the James River.

Kostelny, who is racing to save it from rising water, said America will lose "part of its soul" if the site sinks.

"Jamestown's incredibly important," she told CBS News. "It tells a national story about our persistence, our democracy and the beginnings of our race relations."

The Jamestown colony marked the start of representative government in the new world. It's also where Pocahontas married John Rolfe. And it remains the site of archeological history, hidden and waiting to be unearthed. Kostelny said she finds things of significance at the site "every single day."

Jamestown races to protect colony from climate change



"Jamestown holds supreme in terms of world heritage. This place is in our minds where you draw a line in the sand about sea level rise, climate change and cultural heritage," David Givens, director of archeology at Jamestown Rediscovery, told CBS News.

That line in the sand starts with shoring up the 1904 seawall along the river bank with 96,000 tons of granite to help deflect the force of ever-strengthening storms.

The river has risen more than 18 inches in the last century. So-called 100-year storms now hit every five years. But the biggest threat to Jamestown isn't the rising river. It's a swamp that's literally devouring history as it grows.

"We have [water] from both sides, below, above. We're getting attacked from all sides," Michael Lavin, who is leading Jamestown's fight against climate change, told CBS News. "We're going to have to raise buildings, raise roads, do salvage archaeology, put in berms, pump systems to truly save Jamestown."

Saving the site will likely require raising tens of millions of dollars over the next five years to keep this American treasure from being washed away.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for JAMESTOWN 

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LEGAL EXPLAINER

US Supreme Court sharply limits EPA power plant authority

The Supreme Court decided on June 30 that shifting energy generation toward renewables exceeded EPA’s congressional authority, leaving our energy mix largely up to Congress.

by LEXI SMITH

JULY 6, 2022


The Supreme Court’s closely watched decision in West Virginia v. EPA held that the EPA exceeded its statutory authority in attempting to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act through the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. The six conservative justices ruled against EPA, the three liberal justices dissented.

While the six conservatives framed the decision as the natural consequence of long-standing legal principles, the three liberals suggested that the majority departed from normal principles and precedents, upending settled doctrines without acknowledging that they were doing so. More on this below.

The decision, announced June 30, is sparking widespread backlash from environmentalists and supporters of federal agency authority fearful the Court’s reasoning will have ripple effects not only in the environmental area, but across numerous federal agencies.
What was the court majority’s reasoning to limit EPA’s authority?

As anticipated in earlier coverage, Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion focused on three main arguments: the major questions doctrine; the text of the Clean Air Act; and standing.

The ‘major questions’ doctrine

The major questions doctrine suggests that courts should presume that Congress wants to make the most important policy decisions itself, rather than delegating them to Executive branch agencies. In other words, Congress must clearly state if it wishes to delegate authority to an agency on an issue of major “economic and political significance.” Otherwise, the majority opinion holds, the courts will presume that such congressional authority was not delegated.

The Court turned to the major questions doctrine to assess whether the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan exceeded the EPA’s statutory authority under the Clean Air Act. The majority suggested that Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, the provision on which the Clean Power Plan was based, did not clearly delegate authority to the EPA to shift energy generation. (The Court uses “shifting energy generation” to mean shifting away from the most greenhouse gas-intensive sources like coal and toward renewables).

Chief Justice Roberts characterized Section 111(d) as “ancillary” and a “backwater.” Roberts emphasized that the section had not been used to justify sweeping regulatory programs prior to the Clean Power Plan and should not be read to implicitly grant EPA broad authority to “balanc[e] the many vital considerations of national policy implicated in deciding how Americans will get their energy.” He concluded that the court should approach “assertions of extravagant statutory power over the national economy with skepticism.”

To show how broad the Clean Power Plan’s effect on the national economy would be, the majority looked to projections from when the plan was initially put forward, predicting compliance costs and resulting lost jobs. (These figures did not translate to real-world costs or job losses because the Clean Power Plan was never implemented, and market forces alone accomplished the plan’s emission reduction goals).

The majority also analogized this case to other recent decisions made on major questions doctrine grounds. The Court used the doctrine to strike down an eviction moratorium created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the pandemic, writing that “[w]e expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.” Similarly, the Court struck down a workplace COVID vaccine mandate by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration on major questions grounds.

The text of the Clean Air Act

The majority spent less time on text of the actual statute than might be expected, given the conservative-leaning Justices’ proclaimed textualist philosophy of statutory interpretation. One of the main debates in the parties’ briefing and oral argument concerned the scope of EPA’s textual authority under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act: Did the statute authorize emission reduction programs that worked across different sources of pollution, such as the emissions trading system created by the Clean Power Plan; Or did it limit reduction programs to technological measures implemented at individual power plants?

In other words:

– Could EPA try to shift energy generation away from heavy polluters like coal plants?

– Or was EPA restricted to measures that cleaned up each individual plant without changing how much each plant was used?

The majority side-stepped this question. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the court “had no occasion to decide whether the statutory phrase ‘system of emission reduction’ [in Section 111(d)] refers exclusively to measures that improve the pollution performance of individual sources.” Instead, the court asked more narrowly whether the “the ‘best system of emission reduction’ identified by EPA in the Clean Power Plan [namely generation shifting] was within the authority granted to the agency in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act.”

The Court concluded that it was not. The majority distinguished between the use of the word “system” in Section 111(d) versus other areas of the Clean Air Act that allow broader regulatory power, such as the cap-and-trade program used to reduce acid rain under the Clean Air Act.

The issue of standing

One of the major issues in the case involved whether West Virginia and the other challengers had standing to bring this suit to court in the first place. The court concluded that they did have standing.

In order to get into court, litigants must prove they have standing. Standing requires that litigants show they have been injured; that the person or institution they are suing caused the injury; and that the courts can redress the injury.

The parties in this case debated whether the challengers have standing because the Clean Power Plan is no longer in effect. The Trump administration had repealed it and then replaced it with the Alternative Clean Energy rule. That rule was struck down by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In short, no regulation currently is doing what the challengers oppose, namely using the relevant section of the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The challengers successfully argued that they had standing because when the Trump administration’s Alternative Clean Energy rule was struck down by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, that court opened the door for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan to be reinstated, even if the Biden administration had not actually reinstated it or an alternative rule.

The Court also found that the case was not moot. Since the regulation of greenhouse gases under the relevant provision of the Clean Air Act could recur, the Court found the case to be justiciable, i.e., appropriate for judicial consideration.
How would Justices Gorsuch and Alito take the major questions doctrine further?

Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Alito, concurred with the majority but wrote separately to argue that the major questions doctrine embodies constitutional principles, not just principles of statutory interpretation. In his view, the major questions doctrine protects the constitutional principle that legislative power rests with Congress and not with the executive branch, meaning Congress cannot delegate authority too broadly to federal agencies.

Anticipating counterarguments that Congress lacks the time and the capacity to take over the federal agencies’ often highly technical regulatory work, he responded: “Admittedly, lawmaking under our Constitution can be difficult. But that is nothing particular to our time nor any accident. The framers believed that the power to make new laws regulating private conduct was a grave one that could, if not properly checked, pose a serious threat to individual liberty . . . By effectively requiring a broad consensus to pass legislation, the Constitution sought to ensure that any new laws would enjoy wide social acceptance, profit from input by an array of different perspectives during their consideration, and thanks to all this prove stable over time.” In other words, Justice Gorsuch views the gridlock of Congress not as an obstacle that requires gap-filling by federal agencies, but rather as a feature of our constitutional system that prevents government overreach.

If Justices Gorsuch and Alito’s views gain traction over time, we may see the revival of the nondelegation doctrine, which would make it unconstitutional for Congress to delegate broad authority to agencies. The majority opinion in this case merely held that Congress did not delegate authority to the EPA to shift energy generation away from fossil fuels. But if Justices Gorsuch and Alito’s views prevail in the long run, the court eventually could Congress cannot delegate such authority under constitutional principles.
How did the dissenters respond?

Justice Kagan’s dissent, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Breyer, opposed the majority’s decisions on the major questions doctrine (MQD), the text of the Clean Air Act, and standing.

With respect to the major questions doctrine, Kagan argued that the majority used the doctrine in a novel and unwarranted way. In past MQD cases, she argued, the Court simply used “common sense” with regard to agencies working outside their usual area of expertise and authority. But here, she argued, the EPA is operating clearly within its wheelhouse under the statutory design that Congress intended. Justice Kagan also expressed concern that the majority did not clearly define what constitutes a “major question,” meaning this ruling creates uncertainty for the future of federal regulation.

In discussing the text of the Clean Air Act, the dissent emphasized that a textualist approach to interpreting the phrase “best system of emission reduction” would focus on the definition of “system,” which encompasses almost any regulatory program aimed at reducing emissions, including cap-and-trade. Kagan accused the current court of being “textualist only when being so suits it. When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the ‘major questions doctrine’ magically appear as get-out-of-text-free cards.”

Finally, the dissent vehemently disagreed with the majority about whether the challengers had standing. She called the majority’s ruling an “advisory opinion,” which is another way of saying it exceeded the court’s constitutional authority by ruling on a matter that was speculative rather than a concrete controversy. Past standing cases have repeatedly held that speculative harms are not sufficient to sustain a litigant’s case. She suggested that “this Court could not wait – even to see what the new rule says – to constrain EPA’s efforts to address climate change.”
Looking to the future of climate regulation

Perhaps most obviously, this decision sharply curtails EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. While the opinion is technically limited to Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, the logic of the major questions doctrine may prevent EPA from using any of the major environmental statutes to promote energy generation shifting. Most of the nation’s environmental laws were passed before climate change was a widespread public concern. Any attempt to use those older laws to promote generation shifting may run into the same argument: That Congress in those laws did not clearly delegate the authority to create regulations of major “economic and political significance” in the energy sector in the face of climate change.

However, certain avenues remain open for environmental regulation. EPA still can implement restrictions at individual power plants. It still can use the Clean Air Act to limit greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles and oil and gas. And it can target other pollutants that directly harm human health and often co-occur with greenhouse gas emissions. State and local climate efforts will also become increasingly important tools. It’s important to acknowledge that most of those alternative approaches involve prospects of time-consuming rule-makings and of likely litigation.

On the legal side, the court’s ruling on standing may or may not unsettle long-standing principles regarding speculative harm. The ruling may open the door for anti-regulation advocates to challenge rules before they go into effect, so long as they are similar to defunct rules that the Court deems illegal. But the ruling might also be limited to the strange procedural elements of this case, in which the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in some sense reinstated the Clean Power Plan, and only the Executive branch’s voluntary decision to pursue a new rule prevented the plan from going back into effect.

Finally, it is worth noting how little the Court discussed two of its past decisions that are closely related to this case: Massachusetts v. EPA and American Electric Power v. Connecticut.

In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court on 2007 had held 5-4 that EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. That power was not overturned in West Virginia v. EPA, given the other avenues still available discussed above. But it did sharply curtail the EPA’s authority.

In American Electric Power v. Connecticut, the Court in 2011 heard a public nuisance challenge to greenhouse gas pollution. Public nuisances are acts, conditions, or conduct that interfere with the rights of the public generally. Connecticut’s nuisance claim rested on federal common law, a form of judge-made law. Judge-made law can be displaced by laws passed by Congress. The Supreme Court decided that because Congress had already granted EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, Congress had displaced judge-made law in this area.

In West Virginia v. EPA, the Court did not overrule either precedent, but it is noteworthy that the majority and concurrence did not mention Massachusetts v. EPA at all. And Chief Justice Roberts mentioned American Electric Power v. Connecticut only briefly, distinguishing it from this case. He characterized American Electric Power as a decision that acknowledged that Section 111(d) displaced federal nuisance suits regarding climate change, but said that in that decision, “we said nothing about the ways in which Congress intended EPA to exercise its power under that provision.”
What does the court’s ruling mean for federal agencies writ large?

The expansion of the major questions doctrine in this case may have an impact across the federal government. If Justice Kagan is correct, this case is the first time the major questions doctrine has been used to stop an agency from taking action that was, she argued, clearly within its wheelhouse and authorized by statutory text. In effect, she fears the door has been opened for the court to limit any federal agency power not clearly and explicitly delegated on questions of major “economic and political significance.” Lots of agencies rely on older statutes to regulate modern problems, particularly in arenas that are fast-changing, like environment, health, public safety, finance, technology, and more. The court’s logic in this case could be used to curtail many of these regulations.

As Justice Kagan put it, “In all times, but ever more in our increasingly complex society, the legislature simply cannot do its job absent an ability to delegate power under broad general directives . . . First, Members of Congress often don’t know enough – and know they don’t know enough – to regulate sensibly on an issue . . . Second and relatedly, Members of Congress often can’t know enough – and again, know they can’t – to keep regulatory schemes working across time.” If the Court requires Congress to take on the work of modern regulatory agencies, she wrote, many key governmental functions will be affected.

Lexi Smith is a third-year student at Yale Law School. She studied environmental science and public policy as an undergraduate at Harvard, and she worked as an advisor to the Mayor of Boston on climate policy before enrolling in law school.

HSBC responsible investment chief quits over climate comments controversy

BY:CHARLIE CONCHIE

 THURSDAY 07 JULY 2022 

The global head of responsible investing at HSBC Asset Management revealed he had resigned today after sparking a furore in May with a speech that played down the risk of climate change and slammed “shrill, partisan” climate warnings.

Stuart Kirk, who was put on paid leave by HSBC in May after the speech, attacked “group-think” and “sloppy logic” of sustainable finance in a LinkedIn post today, and said HSBC’s behaviour towards him had made his position “unsustainable”.

“There is no place for virtue signalling in finance,” he wrote, adding that “true impact comes from the combination of real-world action and innovative solutions.”

“Investing is hard. So is saving our planet. Opinions on both differ. But humanity’s best chance of success is open and honest debate. If companies believe in diversity and speaking up, they need to walk the talk. A cancel culture destroys wealth and progress,” he said.

Kirk said he would continue to “prod with a sharp stick” the “mainstream bubble” of sustainable finance after leaving his post.

The comments made by Kirk at the FT’s Moral Money summit in May sparked a major global debate about the nature of climate and ESG investing, with some claiming they had revealed the empty nature of much of the sustainable finance industry.

HSBC bosses scrambled to distance themselves from the claims, with chief exec Noel Quinn saying they did not represent the views of the firm. 

In his post today, Kirk said he would now be looking to launch a new asset class this year.

“I’ve been gathering a crack group of like-minded individuals together to deliver what is arguably the greatest sustainable investment idea ever conceived,” he said. 

“A whole new asset class. Sounds fanciful – but I am not one for hyperbole, as viewers of my presentation know well.”

George Floyd killing: Derek Chauvin gets 21 years for violating Floyd's civil rights

7 Jul, 2022


A federal judge sentenced the former police officer to 21 years on July 7, 2022, for federal civil rights violations in the killing of George Floyd. Photo / AP
AP
By Steve Karnowski


A US judge has sentenced Derek Chauvin to 21 years in prison for violating George Floyd's civil rights, telling the former Minneapolis police officer that what he did was "simply wrong" and "offensive."

US District Judge Paul Magnuson sharply criticised Chauvin for his actions on May 25, 2020, when the white officer pinned Floyd to the pavement outside a Minneapolis corner store for more than nine minutes as the black man lay dying. Floyd's killing sparked protests worldwide in a reckoning over police brutality and racism.

"I really don't know why you did what you did," Magnuson said. "To put your knee on a person's neck until they expired is simply wrong ... Your conduct is wrong and it is offensive."

Magnuson, who earlier this year presided over the federal trial and convictions of three other officers at the scene, blamed Chauvin alone for what happened. Chauvin was by far the senior officer present as police tried to arrest Floyd while responding to a 911 call accusing him of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. And Chauvin rebuffed questions from one of the other officers about whether Floyd should be turned on his side.

"You absolutely destroyed the lives of three young officers by taking command of the scene," Magnuson said.

Even so, Magnuson's sentence was at the low end of the 20 to 25 years called for in a plea agreement in which Chauvin will serve the federal sentence at the same time he serves his 22-and-a-half-year sentence for his state conviction of murder and manslaughter charges.

Because of differences in parole eligibility in the state and federal systems, it means that Chauvin will serve slightly more time behind bars than he would have on the state sentence alone. He would be eligible for parole after 15 years on the state sentence, but must serve almost 18 years of his federal time before he could be released.

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He will also do his time in the federal system, where he may be safer and may be held under fewer restrictions than in the state system.

Chauvin's attorney Eric Nelson had asked for 20 years, arguing that Chauvin was remorseful and would make that clear to the court. But Chauvin, in brief remarks, made no direct apology or expression of remorse to Floyd's family.

Instead, he told the family that he wishes Floyd's children "all the best in their life" and that they have "excellent guidance in becoming good adults".

Chauvin wore an orange prison uniform and a protective mask, according to pool media reports from the courtroom. He waved at family and friends in the gallery as he entered. The media reports made no mention of visible reaction by Chauvin to any part of the hearing.

Prosecutor LeeAnn Bell asked Magnuson to give Chauvin the full 25 years possible in the plea deal, highlighting the "special responsibility" that he had as a police officer to care for the people in his custody.

"He wasn't a rookie," Bell said. "He knew what his training was ... He admitted before this court that his conduct was wrong and he did it anyway."

Floyd's brother Philonise also asked for the maximum possible sentence.

"My family and I have been given a life sentence," the man said. "We will never get George's life back."

The family of Daunte Wright gathers on the one-year anniversary of George Floyd's death, May 25, 2021, in Minneapolis. Photo / AP

Chauvin's mother, Carolyn Pawlenty, who also appeared at his state sentencing, told Magnuson that her son didn't go to work intending to kill someone.

"Many things have been written about him that are totally wrong such as he's a racist, which he isn't, that he has no heart," she said.

"I believe it is God's will for all of us to forgive. Everyone in the state of Minnesota needs to heal and remember that all life matters, no matter the colour of your skin. Every life matters," she added.

In entering his federal plea last year, Chauvin for the first time admitted that he kept his knee on Floyd's neck - even as Floyd pleaded, "I can't breathe," and then became unresponsive - killing him. Chauvin admitted he willfully deprived Floyd of his right to be free from unreasonable seizure, including unreasonable force by a police officer.

Magnuson has not set sentencing dates for the three other officers who were on the scene - Tou Thao, J Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane - who were convicted in February of federal civil rights charges.

Lane is also due to be sentenced September 21 after pleading guilty in state court to aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. Thao and Kueng turned down plea deals and are due to be tried in state court October 24 on aiding and abetting charges.