WHITE SUPREMACY
Texas parole board denies posthumous pardon for George Floyd
Theresa Braine - Yesterday 

The Texas parole board has formally denied George Floyd posthumous parole for a 2004 Houston drug conviction whose arresting officer is now under scrutiny.

“The members of the Texas board of pardons and paroles have reconsidered their initial decision concerning your client’s application for a full pardon and/or pardon for innocence,” the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles wrote in a letter Thursday to Floyd’s attorney in the matter, Allison Mathis.

“After a full and careful review of the application and other information filed with the application, a majority of the board decided not to recommend a full pardon and/or pardon for innocence on 9/14/22,” the board’s letter said. “You client is eligible to reapply for a full pardon two years from the above date.”


A person reacts near Cup Foods in Minneapolis after a guilty verdict was announced at the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin for the 2020 death of George Floyd, Tuesday, April 20, 2021.© Morry Gash

Floyd was killed in May 2020 by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, with three other officers, all now fired, on hand. Nearly a year after Floyd’s death, Mathis applied for a posthumous pardon over a 2004 drug charge in Houston involving officer Gerald Goines, who today stands accused of fabricating informants, according to The Marshall Project, which was the first to report the board’s move on Thursday.

Goines had been accused of lying to get a warrant for a 2019 drug raid that resulted in the deaths of two innocent people, Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his wife, Rhogena Nicholas, 58. He faces two counts of felony murder, plus a slew of other federal and state charges. Numerous convictions tied to the disgraced former cop have been overturned.

Mathis applied for the pardon in April 2021. The board approved it in October that year, but then withdrew its recommendation in December, saying “procedural errors” had been found in Floyd’s case. In its letter Thursday, the board did not specify its reasons for denying the pardon.

Goines had arrested Floyd in a police sting for allegedly selling $10 worth of crack. He later pleaded guilty to a drug charge and was sentenced to 10 months in a state jail.

“We supported George Floyd’s pardon because we do not have confidence in the integrity of his conviction,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg told The Associated Press on Thursday. “We support clemency because it is appropriate.”

BS
Mexican government says train poses no threat to skeleton

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said Thursday that a prehistoric human skeleton found recently in a flooded cave system along the country’s Caribbean coast was actually registered by the institute in 2019 and would not be threatened by a nearby tourist train project.


In this photo courtesy of Octavio del Rio, shows fragments of a pre-historic human skeleton partly covered by sediment in an underwater cave in Tulum, Mexico, Sept. 10, 2022. The cave system was flooded at the end of the last ice age 8,000 years ago, according to an archaeologist and cave diver Octavio del Rio, and is located near where the government plans to build a high-speed tourist train through the jungle. (Octavio del Rio via AP)© Provided by Associated Press

Earlier this week, archaeologist Octavio del Rio said he and fellow diver Peter Broger saw the shattered skull and skeleton partly covered by sediment in a cave. They reported it to the institute, which had not publicly spoken of the find until its statement Thursday.

“The referenced skeleton corresponds to a 2019 discovery and is fully registered and identified as part of the Holocene Archaeology program,” the institute said. It added that scientific analysis had still not been carried out on the remains, but that it was 400 yards (meters) from the path of the government’s Maya Train project and was not threatened.



In this photo courtesy of Peter Broger, aquatic archaeologist Octavio del Rio films a pre-historic human skeleton partly covered by sediment in an underwater cave in Tulum, Mexico, Sept. 10, 2022. The cave system was flooded at the end of the last ice age 8,000 years ago, according to an archaeologist and cave diver Octavio del Rio, and is located near where the government plans to build a high-speed tourist train through the jungle. (Peter Broger via AP)© Provided by Associated Press

Del Rio, who has worked with the institute in the past but who is not currently affiliated, said Thursday the fact that the discovery was made in 2019, but still had not been analyzed, illustrated how long it takes to explore and investigate the extensive cave systems in the train’s path.

“This proves the area’s archaeological potential for investigation of the first settlers of America, and what there still is to discover,” Del Rio said.

He had said the skeleton was about 8 meters (26 feet) underwater, about a half-kilometer (a third of a mile) into the cave system.

Given the distance from the cave entrance, the skeleton couldn’t have gotten there without modern diving equipment, so it must be over 8,000 years old, Del Rio had earlier said, referring to the era when rising sea levels flooded the caves.

Some of the oldest human remains in North America have been discovered in the sinkhole caves known as “cenotes” on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, and experts say some of those caves are threatened by the Mexican government’s Maya Train tourism project.

Del Rio feared that even if the train did not pass directly over the site, its construction could damage or contaminate the cave system.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is racing to finish his Maya Train project in the remaining two years of his term over the objections of environmentalists, cave divers and archaeologists. They say his haste will allow little time to study the ancient remains.

Activists say the heavy, high-speed rail project will fragment the coastal jungle and will run often above the fragile limestone caves, which — because they are flooded, twisty and often incredibly narrow — can take decades to explore.

Caves along part of the coast already have been damaged by construction above them, with cement pilings used to support the weight above.

The 950-mile (1,500-kilometer) Maya Train line is meant to run in a rough loop around the Yucatan Peninsula, connecting beach resorts and archaeological sites.

Hungary – EU Parliament denounces Hungary as a «hybrid autocratic regime» and criticizes EU-27 inaction

Daniel Stewart - Yesterday


The plenary of the European Parliament has denounced Thursday that Hungary has become a "hybrid regime of electoral autocracy", in which elections are held but democratic standards are not respected, while accusing Member States of inaction for not moving forward in the Council with the procedure to sanction partners who put the rule of law at serious risk.

The report adopted with 433 votes in favor, 123 against and 28 abstentions recalls that four years ago the European Parliament itself initiated the procedure that activates Article 7 of the EU Treaty and warns that during this period the situation of fundamental rights in Hungary has deteriorated by the "deliberate and systemic efforts of the government" of Viktor Orbán.

Among the main areas of concern to MEPs are the functioning of the constitutional and electoral systems, the independence of the judiciary, corruption and conflicts of interest, and freedom of expression, including media pluralism.

They also warn of threats to academic freedom, freedom of religion and association, the right to equal treatment, including the rights of LGBTIQ people, minority rights and the situation of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.

Thus, the plenary meeting in Strasbourg (France) regretted the lack of action on the part of the Twenty-seven to which it stressed that they can move forward in the Article 7 procedure without the need for unanimity, since this level of consensus is only necessary to decide on possible sanctions at the end of the analysis of the rule of law by this mechanism.

They also demand that Budapest's anti-democratic drift should have consequences on its access to European funds, for example by excluding from financing cohesion programs that contribute to the misuse of EU funds or to violations of the rule of law.

In the view of MEPs, Hungary's recovery plan should also not be approved until the country fully complies with all the recommendations of the European Semester and implements all relevant rulings of the EU Court of Justice and the Court of Human Rights.

Hungary's response came from the Government spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, who urged the European Parliament to "focus" on the rising energy prices resulting from the "failed sanctions" against Russia.

"Because of sanctions, Europeans are poorer and Russia is making huge profits," Kovacs said on Twitter. "When Brussels passed the sanctions, this was not what it promised the European population," he has apostrophized.

FREEZING COHESION FUNDS Precisely this Sunday, the European Commission plans to adopt a proposal to freeze "billions of euros" in cohesion funds to Hungary because of the risk that the Orbán government will use them in programs that jeopardize the rule of law in the country, EU sources have indicated.

The draft proposal to which Europa Press had access and which was drafted last July by the Commissioner for Budgets, Johannes Hahn, estimated that given the seriousness of the threat should be blocked around 70% of three EU programs, including one energy.

Although the document of the Community Executive did not put a figure on the value of the funds that could be suspended, the Hungarian press has estimated their value at around 8.8 billion euros.

However, the Community sources warn that the percentage that Brussels finally proposes to freeze will be lower than the one included in the draft in view of the reforms that Budapest has promised in the last contacts with the Community services, including measures to reinforce the fight against corruption.

In any case, the last word will be of the Twenty-seven that once received the proposal that the College of Commissioners will have one month to take a decision, although it can extend the term up to three months, so the measure will not be immediate.

For Indigenous Australians, painful colonial past mars queen’s legacy

Rachel Pannett, Michael E. Miller - Yesterday 

WASHINGTON POST

SYDNEY — When a young Queen Elizabeth II visited Australia on her first royal tour Down Under in 1954, one local authority erected hessian screens to shield the monarch’s motorcade from viewing Aboriginal camps along the route, according to several Indigenous elders.

Starting in the mid-1800s until 1970, about two decades into Elizabeth’s reign, government officials rounded up children — especially those of mixed White and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ethnicity. In many cases, the children were forcibly sent to boarding schools and church-run missions. For decades, as many as 1 in 3 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families nationwide, according to a later report commissioned by the Australian government. The children became known as the “stolen generations.”

The queen’s death last week brought the spotlight back to the complicated relationship between the monarchy and First Nations people here and around the world. Indigenous Australians have suffered greatly since the explorer James Cook first claimed part of the continent for the British crown — then held by the queen’s ancestor, King George III — and debate continues on whether she was responsible for past wrongs and the inequities many still face.

For some, the monarchy lies at the center of a vexed, often traumatic reckoning with their colonial past.

“The queen and her family represent the colonial system, which has created havoc in this country against First Nations people,” Lidia Thorpe, an Aboriginal senator with the left-of-center Greens, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “In all the time that this queen was reigning over our country — or so-called reigning over this country — not once did that queen try to stop any injustice against First Nations people.”



Australian Sen. Lidia Thorpe raises her fist during her swearing-in ceremony last month. Sh

e also referred to the "colonizing Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II” while taking the oath of office.

© Reuters

Australia to pay hundreds of millions in reparations to Indigenous ‘stolen generations’

Australia is one of the few settler-colonized Commonwealth nations that doesn’t have a treaty with its First Nations people. In neighboring New Zealand, Indigenous Maori chiefs signed one with the British crown in 1840, and Elizabeth was involved in at least one major treaty settlement, the country’s foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, recalled in Parliament on Tuesday.

The treaty, though acknowledged as imperfect by the queen, formed a binding connection between the Maori people and the crown. Later, it helped pave the way for settlements for the wrongful confiscation of land.

In Australia, the dark legacy of British imperialism has contributed to racial disparities in education, housing and incarceration rates, experts say. More than 400 Aboriginal people have died in custody since 1991, and the life expectancy of its 800,000 Indigenous people lags behind the wider population by years, government data shows.

Although some Indigenous elders recall the queen fondly — she visited the nation 16 times, venturing deep into the Outback — others have refused to mourn.

An Indigenous rugby league player received a one-game ban and a suspended fine this week from the sport’s administrators over a tweet — which was later deleted — that appeared to celebrate Elizabeth’s death. The Australian rules football league, meanwhile, decided not to mandate a minute’s silence for the queen during a round of competition celebrating Indigenous players and culture because it stirred up mixed emotions, the Age newspaper reported.



An Indigenous dancer performs as Governor-General David Hurley, second left, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese watch at the Proclamation of King Charles III in Canberra, Australia, last week.

© Mick Tsikas/AP

The Indigenous population is generally younger than the wider Australian population — some 31 percent were under 15 in 2021, according to official estimates — meaning many were probably too young to recall the queen’s last visit, in 2011. Only around 5 percent were 65 or older, compared with about 17 percent of non-Indigenous Australians

Australian senator: Pledge to ‘colonizing’ Queen Elizabeth II was ad-libbed

Thorpe — who made international headlines last month when she improvised at her swearing-in ceremony, adding the word “colonizing” as she pledged allegiance to Elizabeth — quipped that she was “probably busy doing something a lot better” during the last royal visit.

She is among a group of Australian lawmakers calling for a treaty with First Nations people, followed by a republic that would replace King Charles III with an Australian as head of state. “That is how we will unify this nation,” Thorpe said.

Elizabeth’s death has sparked fresh debate in a number of Commonwealth realms about severing ties to the monarchy, although Australia’s leader has said he’s in no rush to address the divisive issue in his term.

As Elizabeth gives way to Charles, realms consider severing ties

In New Zealand, where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said a republic is probable in her lifetime — she’s 42 — Maori politicians also reflected on the monarchy’s mixed legacy.

During condolences in Parliament on Tuesday, Maori party co-leader Rawiri Waititi said the British Empire was built on stolen “whenua” and stolen “taonga,” using the Maori words for land and treasure.

Mahuta, the foreign minister, who joined Charles at a Commonwealth leaders meeting in Rwanda a few months ago, said he made a commitment then to modernize the Commonwealth.

“He noted that to unlock the power of our common future, we must also acknowledge the wrongs which have shaped our past,” she told Parliament. “He spoke of colonialism, he spoke of slavery, and he understood the challenge in front of him.”

US hid fears of radiation directed at Moscow embassy in 70s, documents reveal

Julian Borger in New York - THE GUARDIAN - Yesterday 

The US complained to the Soviet Union for more than a decade about microwave radiation directed at its embassy in Moscow, but kept concerns secret from embassy staff for nine years, according to newly declassified documents.


Photograph: AP© Provided by The Guardian

The reported microwave radiation came to be known as the “Moscow signal” and was the source of frequent complaints from Washington. US officials were unsure of either the purpose of the signal or the potential health effects of long-term exposure to low-level microwave radiation.

The declassified documents, obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, provide a historical perspective on current anxiety about “Havana syndrome”, a cluster of mysterious neurological symptoms afflicting scores of US diplomats and spies, which the US believes may have been caused deliberately by some form of directed energy weapon.

The first reference to the Moscow signal was in a June 1967 state department memo recording a conversation between the then US secretary of state, Dean Rusk, and the Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, in which Rusk raised the matter of the “electro-magnetic signal” aimed at the embassy in Moscow. Gromyko expressed scepticism about the claim, but Rusk insisted there was “no doubt whatever about it” and sketched a rough diagram to illustrate his point. Gromyko said he would “look into the matter” but no change in the level of radiation was detected.

Over the years that followed, the microwave signals multiplied and intensified.

President Gerald Ford wrote to the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, in December 1975: “These transmissions have created levels of radiation within the embassy which may, in the opinion of our medical authorities, represent a hazard to the health of the American families living and working in that building. Indeed, in one particular case, they may already have caused a serious health problem for one member of our embassy staff.”

Ford was almost certainly referring to the ambassador Walter Stoessel, who became ill with leukaemia at that time, and died of the disease a decade later.

In his reply to the president, Brezhnev insisted the electromagnetic field around the US embassy was “of industrial origin”.

Despite US fears about the health effects, embassy staff were not informed, apparently because of concerns the story would leak to the media and upset arms control negotiations with Moscow. Stoessel’s illness was kept secret.

In a 1975 conversation with the then Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, asked for the signal to be turned off before he made a planned visit to Moscow or, he joked, “You could give me a radiation treatment”.

“We really are sitting on it here, but too many people know about it,” Kissinger told the ambassador. If it was discovered that the Nixon and Ford administrations had known about the problem and done nothing to stop it, he said, “we will catch hell”.

The embassy staff were finally informed in 1976. A state department telegram from February of that year said employees should be briefed in small groups but they should not pass on the details to their dependants. However, the telegram recommended that pregnant staff or family members be medically evacuated immediately for tests.

The Soviet leadership took no heed of the US complaints and it is unclear when the Moscow signal was turned off, if it ever existed. US experts were mystified over the purpose of the microwave radiation, with the two leading theories being that it was intended to neutralise electronic intelligence gathering by the embassy, or to activate listening devices built into the structure of the embassy.

When the previous embassy building was demolished in 1964, dozens of microphones had been found embedded in its walls.

Chernobyl or Fukushima? Understanding the Dangers of Zaporizhzhia | Opinion

Cheryl Rofer - Yesterday 

Europe's largest nuclear power plant, which has been under attack since February, has now shut down all six of its reactors. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), located in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, is now safer, even if it deprives the people the plant served of electricity.


A Ukrainian Emergency Ministry rescuer assists a woman to put on protective clothing during a nuclear emergency training session for civilians in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Sept. 8, 2022.

© YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP via Getty Images

Every day the reactors are shut down the heat and radioactivity decrease making a meltdown less likely. As of this writing, two power lines coming into the plant have been reconnected; two representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency are now at the plant; and talks are underway to end the shelling of the plant. All this lessens the danger of a radioactive leak but doesn't eliminate it.

There is no danger of an accident like that at Chernobyl in 1986, but a meltdown like that at Fukushima, in Japan, remains possible. The heat from decaying fission products must be removed from the reactor cores by circulating water. The power for the circulation pumps comes from outside the plant, and the power from the grid has been interrupted many times. A nearby coal plant or on-site diesel-powered generators have supplied power during those interruptions. Now that the reactors are shut down, no more fission products are produced, and heat, radioactivity, and danger of a meltdown decrease.

If a meltdown did occur, the large reinforced-concrete reactor buildings are designed to contain it. Shelling could break that containment, although it is rated to survive an airplane crash.

Another danger at the plant is stored fuel that has been used in the reactors. Initially, it is placed in pools with circulating water—power again needed—to keep it cool. As it cools over months, it is loaded into concrete containers. Both pools and concrete containers are present at the site. Bombing of the pools could disperse radioactivity. If releasing radioactive material were Russia's objective, the pools would be the likeliest target.

Russia's occupation of the Ukrainian plant appears to have been part of the initial attempt to gain control of the country. Russian troops occupied the plant in March. Other power plants were also targeted because of their strategic importance. When the plan failed, Russia remained in control of ZNPP. A major objective now seems to be linking it to the Russian electrical grid.

Early in the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin was not shy about reminding the world of his country's nuclear weapons arsenal. His rhetoric did nothing to convince Ukraine or its supporters to throw in the towel, so ZNPP was slotted into the fear rhetoric in place of nuclear weapons. This provided some of the reaction the Kremlin was looking for, although there was no accession to Russia's demands.

Russia has used the plant as a military base, assuming that Ukraine will not take the risks inherent in shelling it. The occupying soldiers brutalized the operators, though they continue to run the plant. Russia has also sent in representatives from Rosatom, their state nuclear agency, who seem to have some understanding of what is required at a nuclear plant. The Rosatom presence confuses the Ukrainian operators' chain of command.

Russia should be motivated to keep the plant secure and whole if they want to connect it to their electrical grid. Using it as a nuclear threat conflicts with stealing the electricity. Still, the Russians have made the plant even more of a target by storing military vehicles near the reactors and in the turbine rooms.

It's not clear who is shelling the plant, but it seems aimed at disconnecting the plant from external power rather than directly to creating a radiological disaster. But the off and on operation experienced in recent weeks can damage the electrical equipment, if not the reactors themselves.

After his visit to the plant, the director-general of the IAEA, Rafael Mariano Grossi, has proposed a demilitarized zone around the plant, and in current talks, Russia and Ukraine seem willing to at least stop shelling.

Of course, full withdrawal of Russian troops and a demilitarized zone around the reactor and the city of Enerhodar—where the workers live—would be the best solution. It's hard to think of anything more obvious than the fact nuclear reactors don't belong in the middle of a war.

Cheryl Rofer is an independent scholar. She worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1965 to 2001, developed an essential spectrum for laser isotope separation, managed environmental cleanups at the Laboratory and a program to develop a disposal method for hazardous waste, and worked with Estonia and Kazakhstan to clean up environmental problems left by the Soviet Union.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

IAEA board passes resolution calling on Russia to leave Zaporizhzhia

By REUTERS - Yesterday 

The UN nuclear watchdog's 35-nation Board of Governors on Thursday passed a resolution demanding that Russia end its occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, diplomats at the closed-door meeting said.

The resolution is the second on Russia's invasion of Ukraine passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors, and their content is very similar, though the first resolution in March preceded Russian forces taking control of Zaporizhzhia, Europe's biggest nuclear power plant.

Both resolutions were proposed by Canada and Poland on behalf of Ukraine, which is not on the board, the IAEA's top policy-making body that meets more than once a year.

The text, which says the board calls on Russia to "immediately cease all actions against, and at, the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant and any other nuclear facility in Ukraine", was passed with 26 votes in favor, two against and seven abstentions, the diplomats said.

Russia and China were the countries that voted against while Egypt, South Africa, Senegal, Burundi, Vietnam, India and Pakistan abstained, they added.

The board "deplores the Russian Federation's persistent violent actions against nuclear facilities in Ukraine, including the ongoing presence of Russian forces and (Russian nuclear body) Rosatom personnel at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant," the resolution's text reads.

Both Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly accused each other of shelling the plant.

Russia's mission to the IAEA said "the Achilles' heel of this resolution" was that it said nothing about the systematic shelling of the plant.

"The reason is simple - this shelling is carried out by Ukraine, which is supported and shielded by Western countries in every possible way," it said in a statement.

The resolution adds that Russia's occupation of the plant significantly increases the risk of a nuclear accident. Ukrainian staff continue to operate the plant in conditions that the IAEA has described as endangering the site's safety.

"This Board took up the issue in March and adopted a resolution that deplored Russia's violent actions and called upon Russia to immediately cease all actions against and at nuclear facilities in Ukraine and return control of them to the competent Ukrainian authorities," the US statement to the board said.

"The very next day, Russia spurned that call by seizing the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant. Russia is treating Ukraine's civilian infrastructure as a military prize, seeking to deprive Ukraine of control over its own energy resources and to use the plant as a base for military action against Ukraine," it added.

India Overtakes UK to Become Fifth Biggest Economy

Statista - Yesterday

Just a decade ago, Indian GDP was the eleventh largest in the world. Now, with 7 percent growth forecast for 2022, India's economy has overtaken the United Kingdom's in terms of size, making it the fifth biggest. That's according to the latest figures from the International Monetary Fund.

India's growth is accompanied by a period of rapid inflation in the UK, creating a cost of living crisis and the risk of a recession which the Bank of England predicts could last into 2024. This situation, coupled with a turbulent political period and the continued hangover of Brexit, led to Indian output overtaking that of the UK in the final quarter of 2021, with the first of 2022 offering no change in the ranking.

Looking ahead, the IMF forecasts this to become the new status quo, with India expected to leap further ahead of the UK up to 2027 - making India the fourth largest economy by that time, too, and leaving the UK behind in sixth.

This chart shows the GDP of India and the United Kingdom from 1980 to 2027.

gdp of india and united kingdom© Provided by Statista

SA Parliament names panel to probe Ramaphosa over farm scandal

Yesterday 

South Africa’s Parliament has appointed an independent panel to determine whether President Cyril Ramaphosa should face impeachment over the alleged cover-up of a heist at his luxury farmhouse.


South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa - then deputy president - arrives to attend the Stud Game Breeders auction at Mbizi Lodge outside Bela-Bela on September 6, 2014 wearing a cap customised for his Phala Phala game farm [File: Stefan Heunis/AFP]© Provided by Al Jazeera

National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula named the panel in a statement overnight Wednesday, according to local news outlet News24.

The three-man panel is headed by former Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo and includes a former High Court judge and a university professor. It will have 30 days to report its findings.

To remove a president requires a two-thirds majority vote in the National Assembly and that could be a tall order as Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC) party commands more than two-thirds of the seats.

But there has recently been division within the ANC’s ranks as some party members joined an anti-Ramaphosa rally in July, to demand his removal.

In June, legislators from the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a leading opposition party, heckled the president as he delivered a speech in Parliament.

A small opposition party, the African Transformation Movement (ATM), set down the motion that led to the creation of the panel in Parliament on Wednesday.

The scandal around Ramaphosa erupted in June after South Africa’s former national spy boss, Arthur Fraser, filed a complaint with the police.

He alleged that robbers broke into the president’s farm in the northeast of the country, where they stole $4m in cash stashed in furniture.

Ramaphosa hid the robbery from the authorities and instead organised for the robbers to be kidnapped, questioned and then bribed into silence, Fraser said.

The president is also alleged to have enlisted the assistance of his Namibian counterpart, Hage Geingob, in apprehending one of the suspects who was a Namibian national and fled back home.

Ramaphosa has acknowledged a burglary but denies the accusations of kidnapping and bribery, saying he reported the break-in to the police.

He has also disputed the amount of money involved and said the cash came from legitimate sales of game from his animal-breeding farm.

In June, Ramaphosa suspended the country’s anti-corruption ombudswoman a day after she launched an investigation into the burglary. The public protector’s office had said it would invoke subpoena powers to get answers from the president.

Last week, the High Court dismissed the suspension, saying the “hurried nature” of the move “may have been retaliatory”.

Pressure has been piling on Ramaphosa in the run-up to an ANC conference in December where he is expected to seek re-election

In Hong Kong, mourning the Queen has another purpose: defying China

Kathleen Magramo - Yesterday

Thousands of people in Hong Kong have turned out to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II, in one of the largest public gatherings since China clamped down on shows of political dissent in the former British colony more than two years ago.

Crowds of more than 2,500 people of varying ages lined up for hours outside the British consulate Monday, enduring sweltering temperatures of 33 degrees Celsius (91 Fahrenheit), to leave flowers, framed photographs and messages thanking the “boss lady” or “lady in charge” – as she was often known in Cantonese during the colonial years.

For some of them, this was not only a matter of mourning a monarch who had ruled over the city for 45 years, but a subtle form of protest at how China has tightened its grip on a once free-wheeling and boisterous city that critics contest has seen its civil liberties steadily eroded since the British handed sovereignty to Beijing 25 years ago.

Public gatherings have been rare since China imposed a national security law in June 2020 in an attempt to extinguish the increasingly forceful pro-democracy protests that had been rocking the city since 2019. That clampdown, together with coronavirus restrictions that critics claim are sometimes co-opted for political purposes have effectively silenced most overt forms of mass gathering or public dissent.


Mourners placed colonial flags and images of the Queen outside the British consulate in Hong Kong on September 12, 2022.

- Tyrone Siu/Reuters

But in celebrating the monarchy and its symbols, some Hong Kongers see an opportunity for a veiled dig at both the Chinese Communist Party, which has made no secret of its eagerness for Hong Kongers to forget the era, and local authorities who recently introduced school books that claim the city was never even a colony to begin with. The books instead refer to the period of British rule as a “forcible occupation.”

A retiree named Wing, who spoke to CNN outside the consulate on Monday but declined to give his full name, said it was “incredible” to be part of a mass gathering again.

“I feel angry that the Hong Kong government is not showing any respect properly (to the Queen). They’re scared of the Chinese government telling them off, but we were part of the colony,” said Wing, who was born in the 1960s.

Another, Sylvia Lee said she was saddened to hear of the Queen’s death, saying that she was a symbol of stability across the world.

“No one lives forever and we knew this day would come someday. She was a respected figure, and the government during the colonial period made many contributions to Hong Kong’s development, especially in the 70s and 80s,” Lee told CNN, referring to a period when governors appointed to the city built up its public housing and transport infrastructure.

A symbol of protest - and a complicated past

On the surface, mourning the Queen might not seem confrontational – especially given both Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee (a former police officer who started his career with the Royal Hong Kong Police Force in 1977) have sent their condolences” to the United Kingdom.

Related video: Hong Kong Consulate Sees Huge Lines Of People Paying Respects To The Queen

Duration 0:26  View on Watch

But the displays of affection are also a reminder of the city’s pro-democracy protests, during which demonstrators adopted the colonial flag as a sign of resistance to Chinese one-party rule.

At the height of the 2019 protests, anti-government demonstrators broke into the city’s legislative chamber, defacing it with graffiti calling for universal suffrage while hanging the colonial flag on the council president’s seat.

The sensitivities surrounding the city’s colonial era were highlighted on Thursday, when the Cantonese opera star Law Kar-ying apologized for leaving flowers outside the consulate, retracting a post on his Instagram page that had said he wanted to pay respects to the Queen because Hong Kong was a “blessed land” under her reign. Law said his words were “ill-thought” and asked people not to “over interpret” them.

“I am a long-time holder of a Chinese passport, which speaks for itself. I am Chinese and I will always love my motherland. I am sorry,” he said on the Chinese Twitter-like platform Weibo.

It was not clear what prompted Law to issue the apology.

Britain’s ties to Hong Kong stretch back to the 19th century, when the empire’s desire to force opium on China – both in trade and through its population’s addiction to the illicit drug– resulted in two wars that forced China to cede land to the British.

Britain ruled Hong Kong for 156 years until it was handed back to China in 1997 as part of a longstanding agreement, but signs of British influence remain in the city’s English street names and use of the common law system.

Queen Elizabeth herself visited Hong Kong twice while the city was a British territory, while her son, now King Charles III, attended the handover ceremony.

Still, the city’s colonial past was far from peaceful nor was it without its critics. Riots broke out in the 1960s, when what started as protests against increases in ferry fares and demands for better labor rights spiraled into rampant strikes and bomb attacks that at times brought the city to a standstill.

Over 2,500 people lined up to offer condolences to Queen Elizabeth II

 outside the British consulate in Hong Kong on September 12, 2022.

- Jan Camenzind Broomby/ CNN

In the wake of the protests, the British colonial government introduced a series of welfare reforms, including public housing programs and compulsory free education.

But critics of the colonial era point out that even under British rule Hong Kongers did not have universal suffrage. And many felt London neglected its duty by failing to grant British citizenship to Hong Kongers at the time of the handover, instead offering most a limited passport that did not give them the right to live and work in Britain. Since the introduction of the national security law, Britain has created what it calls a path to citizenship via a new type of visa.

“It was (the Queen’s) empire that, in 1997, handed us over to China against our wishes,” said Jeffrey Ngo, a Washington-based activist who was born during the last few years of colonial Hong Kong.

Ngo said he was too young to remember life under British rule but said older generations of Hong Kongers look back on Queen Elizabeth II’s reign – especially her 1975 and 1986 visits – with tremendous fondness “because they associate that with a freer, simpler, happier bygone era.”

“The feeling is understandable, given that the intuitive point of comparison is Hong Kong under Chinese rule. I respect their lived experience, albeit it’s not something I share. For me, the monarchy’s wealth and prestige are impossible to disentangle from the empire’s violence and expansionism,” he said.

Ngo said the draconian laws being used by Beijing to prosecute pro-democracy activists today – such as colonial era legislation on sedition – were reminders that there was a darker side to Britain’s legacy too.

CNN’s Jan Camenzind Broomby contributed reporting.

Hong Kong actor apologises for praising British queen

AFP - Yesterday 

A veteran Hong Kong opera star apologised and declared his patriotism on Thursday after his praise for Britain's late Queen Elizabeth II sparked a backlash among nationalists in China.

Hong Kongers have queued for hours outside of Britain's consulate this week

© Peter PARKS

Thousands of Hong Kong residents have queued up outside the city's British consulate this week to sign a condolence book for the late monarch who died after 70 years on the throne.

Among the mourners was Law Kar-ying, a heavyweight of the Cantonese opera scene, who published a selfie on Instagram from the queue and a message that read: "Hong Kong was a blessed land during her reign."

Instagram is banned in mainland China but Law's post went viral on other social media sites, sparking anger and criticism among nationalists.

On Thursday, Law took to China's Twitter-like platform Weibo to post a video apologising for "making remarks of mourning without thinking them through".

"My original intention was to express condolences for a late elderly woman and I would like to appeal to everyone not to overly interpret what I said," the 75-year-old said in Mandarin Chinese.

"I can't possibly forget my origin and ancestry. That I have been keeping a Chinese passport says it all, I am Chinese and I love my motherland forever. I am sorry," he added.

Related video: Hong Kong Consulate Sees Huge Lines Of People Paying Respects To The Queen

Duration 0:26 View on Watch

His original Instagram post was deleted.

Hong Kong was a British colony for over 150 years and while the financial hub was returned to China in 1997, the past is engraved into its landscape, from street names and the ubiquity of English to the common law legal system.

While other former colonies have seen more muted reactions to Elizabeth II's death, about 6,700 Hong Kong residents, including some government officials, have signed the consulate's condolence book so far.

Queues have snaked through the business district and taken up to four hours.

Many mourners have expressed nostalgia for the city's colonial past at a time when China is seeking to purge dissent following huge democracy protests three years ago.

Ta Kung Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper which answers to Beijing's local Liaison Office, ran a commentary on Tuesday accusing "anti-Chinese elements and anti-China media" of "whitewashing colonial rule" by encouraging mourning of Elizabeth II.

Nationalism has surged under President Xi Jinping, China's most assertive and authoritarian leader in a generation.

Celebrities and businesses can find themselves facing huge consumer backlashes for any perceived slight to China or suggestion of disloyalty.

Many of the commenters underneath Law's Weibo video were not convinced by his apology.

Some told him to "learn from his wife" Liza Wang, a veteran actress who was a Hong Kong delegate to China's top political advisory body for two decades.

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