When are teachers striking in Scotland and why?

Steph Brawn
Fri, 6 January 2023 

Members of the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association (SSTA) held strikes in December and will do so again next week (Image: RADAR)

TEACHERS are set to go on strike in Scotland from next week with three unions engaging in industrial action over pay.

Here’s a guide to everything you need to know about why and when they are happening.
When are the strikes?


Primary school teachers who are members of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) will stage a walkout on Tuesday, January 10.

Secondary school teachers from that union will then follow the next day alongside those from NASUWT and Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA).

READ MORE: Keir Starmer 'inspired' by Nicola Sturgeon, Douglas Ross claims

The EIS has also organised a separate 16 consecutive days of strike action from Monday, January 16.

The dates and locations for these are:

Monday, January 16 – Glasgow and East Lothian

Tuesday, January 17 – Perth and Kinross and North Ayrshire

Wednesday, January 18 – Orkney and Fife

Thursday, January 19 – Moray and North Lanarkshire

Friday, January 20 – Angus and East Dunbartonshire

Monday, January 23 – East Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway

Tuesday, January 24 – Stirling and East Renfrewshire

Wednesday, January 25 – South Ayrshire and Edinburgh

Thursday, January 26 – Midlothian and West Dunbartonshire

Friday, January 27 – Renfrewshire and Falkirk

Monday, January 30 – Aberdeenshire and Scottish Borders

Tuesday, January 31 – Highlands and West Lothian

Wednesday, February 1 – Clackmannanshire and Aberdeen

Thursday, February 2 – Dundee and Argyll and Bute

Friday, February 3 – South Lanarkshire and the Western Isles

Monday, February 6 – Inverclyde and Shetland

What do the unions want?

The unions are calling for a pay increase of 10% and have rejected the current deal on the table which would see most staff in classrooms receive a 5% pay rise. The lowest-earning teachers would get a 6.85% increase.

Talks are taking place on Friday between unions and the government, as further and higher education minister Jamie Hepburn insisted the pay rise offered to teachers was “very fair”.

Hepburn said combined with other pay rises it would mean salaries for “most teachers” have increased by 21.8% since 2018.

Asked directly by BBC Radio Scotland on Friday if teachers would be offered more money, the minister said a “very fair and affordable offer” had been made.
Could the strikes spread across the UK?

Teachers are voting on whether to take industrial action in other parts of the UK, with an NASUWT ballot closing on Monday for staff in schools and sixth form colleges across England, Scotland and Wales.

The NAHT union, which represents head teachers and other school leaders in England and Wales, has a ballot closing next Wednesday, while the National Education Union is balloting members until next Friday.

READ MORE: Susie McCabe: 'We no longer live in a functioning British democracy'

Teachers’ pay offer is ‘very fair’, minister insists ahead of more talks

Katrine Bussey, PA Scotland Political Editor
Fri, 6 January 2023


A Scottish Government minister has refused to say if more cash could be found for teachers in a bid to prevent further strikes – which have already closed schools across the country.

Talks are taking place on Friday between unions and the government, as further and higher education minister Jamie Hepburn insisted the pay rise offered to teachers was “very fair”.

The deal on the table would see most most staff in classrooms receive a 5% pay rise, although the lowest-earning teachers would get a 6.85% increase.

And Mr Hepburn said combined with other pay rises it would mean salaries for “most teachers” have increased by 21.8% since since 2018.

Teachers, however, have rejected the offer, with unions pressing for a 10% rise.

With members of the EIS, NASUWT and SSTA trade unions all due to strike next week – affecting primary schools on January 10 and then secondary schools on January 11 – Mr Hepburn was pressed on whether more cash could be found.

Asked directly if teachers would be offered more money, the minister said a “very fair and affordable offer” had been made.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, he stressed rising inflation meant the Scottish Government budget was now worth less than when it was set, adding that the requirement on ministers to ensure a balanced budget meant that “we don’t have fiscal latitude”.

Speaking about the proposal made to teachers, Mr Hepburn stated: “If you actually look at what we have offered, it is 6.85% uplift for the lowest paid teachers, 5% for most and £3,000 for those earning £60,000 or more.

“That would representative a 21.8% cumulative pay increase for most teachers since 2018.

Asked if this was the final offer, Mr Hepburn stated: “Discussions will continue, but this is a fair and fundamentally an affordable offer and it would ensure that teachers in Scotland remain by some measure the best paid teaching staff in the UK.

“We want to make sure we have that edge for teachers in Scotland and the offer we have got on the table would ensure that.”

HE WILL OUT TORY THE TORIES
SIR Starmer may lack Blair’s charisma, but he may well change Britain more than New Labour ever did

Andy Beckett

THE GUARDIAN
Thu, 5 January 2023 


Britain seems in a strange mood as 2023 blearily begins. One of the worst periods of peacetime crisis in our modern history grinds on. Frighteningly, it is spreading into more and more areas of life that we’re used to thinking the state and business have largely under control. One of the world’s richest countries, even after the economic calamities of Tory rule, has in many ways become dysfunctional.

Yet the response from voters seems complex and relatively muted. There is fear – please don’t let me need a hospital – and frustration at how the stoppages and shortages are dragging on. There is disbelief at the country’s accelerating deterioration; but also fatalism, a feeling that Britain was due a fall after years of cost-cutting, complacency and overindulgence. There is exhaustion at the sheer length of the disruption; and scepticism about the ability of any politician to end it. But there is less overt anger than might reasonably be expected. Unlike the early 1980s, or the early 2010s – like now, both times when Tory policies were doing immense social damage – Britain is not rioting. At least, not yet.

Voters have deserted the Conservative party in the opinion polls, it is true. Support is between a third and a half lower than it was at the last election. But while this fall has produced a big lead for Labour, beneath the surface shift the polls suggest there is still a lot of flux and confusion. When YouGov asked people last month who would be the best prime minister, 39% said they were not sure, 25% said Rishi Sunak, and only 32% said Keir Starmer, despite his increasingly confident tenure as Labour leader.

With possibly two years still to go until the next election – a long time in our eventful politics – a Labour government, let alone one that solves some of the country’s problems, remains quite abstract and distant for many voters. They sense that the Tories are on their way out, but they also appreciate that before that finally happens the current crisis may well get worse. A small but growing sense of anticipation about more competent and principled government under Starmer coexists with larger fears about the present and the immediate future.

How might Labour – or perhaps less foreseen political forces – navigate this hugely unsettled period? Given the breadth and depth of the current crisis, and the long accumulation of its causes, at least some of the turmoil may well continue past the election and deep into the next government. If any politician can produce some appealing and effective solutions to Britain’s suddenly sharp decline, they could be in power for a long time. This may be why, in a speech on Thursday trailed as promising “a decade of national renewal”, Starmer said Labour would introduce “a completely new way of governing”.

There can also be more cynical responses to national crises. Recently, Boris Johnson has begun to drop heavy hints that he could act as a national saviour. In a new year message delivered in his most drawling, charming mode, he said he was “confident that things will get better” for Britain in 2023, “lengthening our lead as the best place on Earth”. It’s easy to find this optimism absurd and offensive, coming from the person responsible for so many of our current disasters. Yet Johnson has made a career out of enough people believing his promises. Unless Sunak’s low-key and disengaged premiership wakes up, it would be foolish to rule out an attempted Johnson comeback.

But the anti-crisis politicians with most potential may be outside their party, given how associated the Tories are with the chaotic status quo. The relentless Nigel Farage, the increasingly popular rightwing populists of Reform UK, or perhaps some new, millionaire-backed reactionary movement: all could use Britain’s ongoing emergencies to their advantage. In the mid-70s, an economic crisis less severe in its social effects than today’s produced a toxic flowering of new far-right groups, until Margaret Thatcher’s radicalisation of the Tories took these groups’ members and impetus away. Given that much of our media is even more rightwing and at least as panicky about the state of the country as it was in the 70s, a would-be messiah from the fringes of the right might find plenty of backers.

Starmer lacks messianic qualities. Unlike Tony Blair at the equivalent stage of his Labour leadership, in the mid-90s, Starmer can’t use personal charisma to suggest that a government led by him would be fresh and dynamic. Nor does Starmer have Blair’s advantage of only having to devise solutions for a relatively contained national crisis. In the mid-90s, public services were struggling after years of Tory underfunding, but the economy was growing and many voters were feeling quite upbeat, ready to believe Labour when it said that “things can only get better”.

The public mood is different now. And while the Blair era is clearly an influence on Starmer – from his use of Gordon Brown and David Blunkett as advisers to his shadow ministers’ revival of Blairite strategies such as being “tough on crime” and “reforming” public services – Starmer’s policy proposals and rhetoric increasingly suggest that he would go further than New Labour in trying to change the country. He feels he has no choice. As he summed up today’s Britain at the last Labour conference: “We can’t go on like this.”

He still has a careful, hair-shirt side as a politician, warning almost with relish that a Starmer government would have to “make very difficult choices”. But the state of the country is simultaneously forcing him to be more expansive. This expansiveness is not just about winning the election. If a Starmer administration produces policies that are too small for the scale of the crisis – what he calls “sticking plaster politics” – his carefully acquired reputation for competence won’t last long.

It’s also possible that he is finding being bolder quite exciting – more so than the miserably tentative “constructive opposition” of his leadership’s first phase. That a typically cautious Labour leader could end up being a conduit for public dissatisfaction with the country the Tories have created, and an architect of whatever replaces it, still feels quite an unlikely outcome. But we live in strange times.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

NATIONS NOT RESERVATIONS

Montana lawmaker wants to revisit idea of reservations

Republican Sen. Keith Regier is proposing asking Congress to study alternatives to reservations. 

 Montana Democratic Rep. Shane Morigeau, of Missoula, speaks on the floor of the state House during a legislative session on March 27, 2019, in Helena, Mont. Morigeau, now a state senator, is pushing back against a proposed legislative referendum that seeks to ask Congress to revisit the idea of Native American reservations. The draft of the bill became available on Jan. 2, 2023. 

(Thom Bridge/Independent Record via AP, File)

AMY BETH HANSON
Fri, January 6, 2023 

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A white state lawmaker in Montana is questioning whether land set aside long ago for Native Americans should exist anymore.

Republican Sen. Keith Regier is proposing asking Congress to study alternatives to reservations. The measure, submitted this week and riddled with racial stereotypes, is unlikely to pass and would have no practical effect if it did. But it's causing tensions to surface at the Republican-controlled Montana Legislature that kicked off this week.

Native American lawmakers say they're now spending time responding to the proposed resolution rather than focusing on their own legislative priorities, including extending the state’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Task Force for another two years, creating a grant program to train community-based groups to search for missing people and encouraging the state to determine the economic impact of reservations on the state’s economy.

“I hate spending energy and time on this kind of stuff because I feel like it sidetracks us,” state Sen. Shane Morigeau, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said Thursday. “But at the same time, it clearly signals to me that we have a lot of educational work to do in this state.”

WHO PROPOSED THE RESOLUTION?

Regier said the language in the resolution was written by Mark Agather, a retired businessman who is involved in conservative politics in Kalispell near the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana.

Reiger has submitted the draft to legislative staffers, but he did not respond to an email Friday asking if he would formally introduce it.

Agather didn't respond to inquiries from The Associated Press, including on whether he sought input from tribal members.

The draft resolution argues that reservations have “failed to positively enhance the lives and well-being” of Native Americans, led to substance abuse, domestic violence, welfare dependence, poverty and substandard education. It also argues tribal members who don't own land have the highest poverty rate and lowest life expectancy of any ethnic group in America.

It also argues reservations are “not in the best interests of either the Indians inside our borders or for our common Montana Citizens.”

Morigeau said that if legislators want to consider any alternative, it should be “giving the land back that was taken in the first place, not robbing the last bit of land and resources that we have.”

HOW DO NATIVE AMERICANS RESPOND?

Floyd Azure, chairman of the Fort Peck Tribe in northeastern Montana, said the draft resolution perpetuates racial stereotypes about life on the reservation when social ills, such as addiction, exist nationwide.

“Why exaggerate the reservations?" he said. He thinks some people “make themselves feel better” by attacking Native Americans.

Morigeau said the federal government over decades has failed to stamp out tribes, their culture and language through relocation programs and boarding schools. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is from Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, repeatedly has acknowledged the harm those policies that no longer exist caused and sought ways to address the trauma.

“I'm tired of hearing what other people think is best for us,” Morigeau said. “Consult and seek the advice of Indian people,” rather than imposing on tribes.

The solution to any social issues on reservations, including addiction or disproportionate rates of health problems, is not to diminish reservations, Morigueau said. “We should be building tribal sovereignty up."

WHAT ARE RESERVATIONS?

More than half — or 326 — of the 574 federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native villages in the U.S. have land set aside that's categorized as federal trust land. Often the land is referred to as a reservation, but also as rancherias in California and pueblos in New Mexico.

The largest reservation is the Navajo Nation, which spans 27,000 square miles (69,000 square-kilometers) into parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Other reservations are tiny.

All but one of Montana’s seven reservations were established prior to statehood.

Federal policies at various points in history sought to disestablish reservations and force Native Americans into cities. Today, more than 70% of Native Americans live off reservation.

Momentum has grown in recent years to restore land to Native American tribes. The Interior Department under Haaland also has opened the door for Alaska Native villages to seek trust land status.

RACIAL UNDERTONES

The resolution argues that Native American reservations were created based on race. The U.S. Constitution recognizes tribes as sovereign governments, which is a political classification.

The federal government set the boundaries for reservations under the auspices of lessening conflicts between Native Americans and white settlers.

The same race-based language used in Reiger's draft resolution has shown up elsewhere. Most notably, from critics of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act who have argued the law is unconstitutional because it violates the equal protection clause.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling this year in a case challenging the law, which gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings of Native children. Tribes fear widespread impacts if the court attempts to dismantle their status as political sovereigns.

The race-based language also appeared in a case challenging tribal gambling operations in Washington state.

PREVIOUS RACIAL TENSIONS AT THE MONTANA LEGISLATURE:

During the 2021 legislative session, Native American lawmakers saw discrimination and racism in legislative actions, such as tabling a bill to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day and threats to eliminate funding for a Native American language preservation program that was later restored.

The Republican-controlled Legislature also passed bills similar to earlier laws that had been declared unconstitutional after a judge found they made it more difficult for Native Americans to vote. And the state Senate removed a member of the Montana Human Rights Commission, leaving it without Native American representation for the first time in at least 16 years.

“Legislators, including the Indian Caucus, make every attempt to be civil. However, it’s hard when the Indian people are attacked over and over, day after day,” Democratic Sen. Susan Webber said at the time.

Republicans denied any legislation was discriminatory.

___

Associated Press reporter Felicia Fonseca contributed from Flagstaff, Arizona.

‘She has let go of the past’: dance eases the trauma for Peru’s Shining Path survivors

Dan Collyns in Mazamari
Thu, 5 January 2023 



With a hand on the shoulder of the woman in front of her, Yolanda Rivera Charete begins to sway gently. She sings “Tsame tsinane, ashintsitanakebe” (Come on women, let’s go forward with strength) in Asháninka, the language of her tribe.

Dressed in a kushma, a long clay-brown tunic, face patterned red from achiote seeds – the source of annatto colouring – Rivera Charete, 63, and 15 others, dance to remember and to show their missing loved ones what has been happening in their lives.

In this dance workshop for members of the Asháninka, Peru’s largest indigenous Amazon group, the moves celebrate resistance while lamenting those enslaved, murdered and “disappeared” by the communist guerrilla group Shining Path, which fought the Peruvian government during the 1980s and 90s.

“I feel now that I am forgetting what happened to me. I feel calm, there is not too much worry,” says Rivera Charete from a gym under a corrugated metal roof in the jungle town of Mazamari, 150 miles north-east of the capital, Lima.

Charete fled her community, Centro Tsovameni, with eight children in 1989 when Shining Path fighters tortured and murdered her cousin, Isaias Charete, the village leader. “We’ve all been damaged psychologically,” she says.

Mónica Silva, associate professor in performing arts at Peru’s Pontifical Catholic University in Lima, has been a choreographer on the Buenas Noticias (Good News) programme since October. She says the initiative, started by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), helps women connect with others who suffered during the insurgency and allows younger women to understand and support mothers and grandmothers.

“To touch and hold somebody, it’s not just about affection, it’s saying we are together,” says Silva.

“The young never lived the violence. This moment is the chance for the mum to talk about it. It’s not just about the dance, it’s about what happens in between the dancing.”

Eva Esteban, a psychologist with the ICRC, says : “Despite the disappearances, lives have gone on. What they want to do with this dance is to tell their loved ones the good news that has happened to them during the course of their life since they disappeared.

Nearly 70,000 people were killed in Peru between 1980 and 2000. Shining Path – Sendero Luminoso – was responsible for more than half of the deaths, according to Peru’s truth and reconciliation commission. Many Amazonians trapped between the insurgents and the Peruvian forces were forcibly recruited by the rebels and between 8,000 and 10,000 were violently displaced. About 50 communities disappeared and mass graves were discovered subsequently.

I didn’t live through what my mother did. But, thanks to this dance, I can see her relief. She has let go of the past

Hilda, daughter of Yolanda Rivera Charete

Before Rivera Charete began dancing, she says she felt “hard, because I was filled with the things that have happened”. But she adds: “Now, with this movement that they are teaching us, I feel looser.”

Her daughter Hilda, says: “I didn’t live through what my mother and older siblings did. But thanks to this dance, I can see her relief. She has let go of the past.”

Peals of laughter echo around the gym, as the women share a joke and rub each others’ backs. After three weeks of rehearsal, they are to perform publically in an amphitheatre in the town square.

The dances are full of movements such as slashing with a machete, casting a fishing line and weaving. “They are very in touch with movement, with nature, with the earth, with laughter,” says Silva. “They are not ashamed to have joy in the middle of the pain.”

Luzmila Chiricente, 68, is the oldest here. She was the leader of Cushiviani, an Asháninka community invaded by Shining Path in 1988. The rebels killed men, forcibly recruited boys and sexually abused girls. They kidnapped one of her five children, Juan, then 14. She never saw him again. Her eldest son, now 52, escaped by hiding in the rainforest.

“Sendero thought that by taking away my son they were going to shut me up, but I denounced them nationally and internationally,” she says. The grief remains, though.

“We can’t forget. There are some of us who have suffered a lot,” says Chiricente. When she is reminded of what happened, the past replays in her mind “like a movie”.

Chiricente is the founder of Peru’s first indigenous women’s organisation, Fremank (the Regional Federation of Indigenous Asháninka, Nomatsiguenga and Kakinte Women of the Central Jungle), and says it is vital that women support each other.

Related: ‘They attacked with machetes’: murder, mafias and illegal mining in Peru’s gold fields

“For the girls who don’t know what trauma is, the terror that happened to us, they will understand [now] so that it doesn’t happen again,” she says.

The Buenas Noticias programme began in 2019 among bereaved women in Ayacucho, the region that bore the brunt of the violence and where hundreds live without knowing what happened to their loved ones. It was adapted for the native Amazonians this year with the help of Lima theatre company La Plaza.

“Good things are also in their life – it is not all suffering,” says Esteban.

‘Tirailleurs’: France’s forgotten colonial soldiers step out of the shadows

Benjamin DODMAN
Thu, 5 January 2023 

© Bertrand Guay, AFP


The last surviving African soldiers who fought for colonial-era France will be able to live out their final days in their home countries following the French government's U-turn on their pension rights. The decision coincides with the cinema release of a film highlighting the untold sacrifices made by African “tirailleurs” on France’s battlefields during World War I.

In November 1998, just months after France’s multiracial football team lifted its first World Cup title, another legacy of the country’s colonial history passed away quietly in a faraway village north of Dakar, Senegal.

Abdoulaye Ndiaye, who died aged 104, was the last of the tirailleurs, the African riflemen who fought for their colonial masters in the trenches of northern France during World War I. He died just one day before France’s then-president, Jacques Chirac, was due to decorate him with the Legion of Honour in belated recognition of his services.


The failure to acknowledge Ndiaye’s sacrifice during his lifetime has stuck with French director Mathieu Vadepied ever since, inspiring a long-gestating project that has come to completion this week with the release in France and Senegal of his film “Tirailleurs” – whose English version is titled “Father & Soldier”.

“It felt like a symbol of France’s failure to recognise the tirailleurs and tell their story,” said the director following his film’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last year.


Read more on FRANCE 24 English

Read also:
Thiaroye 44: Investigating a colonial-era massacre in Senegal
France's forgotten African war heroes finally receive full pension rights
Hollande honours African role in France's WWI fight

Alex Jones lawyer suspended 6 months over records release


Norm Pattis, attorney for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, gives his opening statement in Jones' trial at Waterbury Superior Court, Tuesday morning, Sept. 13, 2022, in Waterbury, Conn. Pattis, on Thrusday, Jan. 5, 2023, has been suspended from practicing law in Connecticut for six months for improperly giving other Jones' attorneys in Texas confidential documents, including the medical records of relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

(H John Voorhees II/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool, File) 

DAVE COLLINS
Fri, January 6, 2023 at 8:52 AM MST·4 min read

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A lawyer for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been suspended from practicing law in Connecticut for six months for improperly giving Jones' other attorneys in Texas confidential documents, including the medical records of relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The ruling by Judge Barbara Bellis on Thursday afternoon came in the families' lawsuit against Jones for repeatedly calling the shooting a hoax on his Infowars show, which resulted in Jones being ordered to pay more than $1.4 billion in damages after a jury trial in Connecticut last year.

Bellis said New Haven-based lawyer Norm Pattis failed to safeguard the families' sensitive records in violation of her order that limited access to the documents to attorneys in the Connecticut case. She called his actions an “abject failure” and “inexcusable.”

“We cannot expect our system of justice or our attorneys to be perfect, but we can expect fundamental fairness and decency,” the judge wrote. “There was no fairness or decency in the treatment of the plaintiffs' most sensitive and personal information, and no excuse for the respondent's (Pattis') misconduct.”

Pattis said Friday in a text message that he plans to appeal the discipline and seek a stay of the punishment while he challenges it. Bellis scheduled a hearing on the stay request for Jan. 13.

“We’re looking forward to appellate review," he wrote in a subsequent email to The Associated Press.

During a hearing in August over possible discipline for the records release, Pattis invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions. In a court filing, he said there was no proof he violated any conduct rules and called the records release an “innocent mistake.”

A spokesperson for lawyers for the Sandy Hook families said they were not commenting on Pattis' suspension.

Pattis is currently representing one of several members of the Proud Boys extremist group charged criminally in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in a trial in Washington that is underway. It wasn't immediately clear how the suspension would affect the case. Pattis said he has notified the judge in Washington of the discipline.

Twenty first graders and six educators were killed in the shooting on Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut. Relatives of eight victims, as well as an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, sued Jones and his Austin, Texas-based company, Free Speech Systems, over the hoax claims, alleging defamation and infliction of emotional distress.

The plaintiffs testified during a monthlong trial about being threatened and harassed for years by people who deny the shooting happened. Strangers showed up at some of their homes and confronted some of them in public. People hurled abusive comments at them on social media and in emails. Some received death and rape threats.

The Sandy Hook families' lawyers gave Pattis nearly 400,000 pages of documents as part of discovery in the case, including about 4,000 pages that contained the plaintiffs' medical records. Bellis limited access of the records to lawyers in the Connecticut case.

In May of last year, Pattis' office sent an external hard drive containing the records to a bankruptcy lawyer for Jones and Free Speech Systems in Texas, Bellis' ruling said.

The bankruptcy lawyer, Kyung Lee, later gave the hard drive to lawyer Andino Reynal, a lawyer representing Jones and his company in a similar lawsuit over Jones' hoax claims filed in Texas by the parents of another child killed in the massacre. Reynal then sent the documents to the Sandy Hook families' lawyer in Texas.

The Texas case went to trial in the summer and resulted in Jones being ordered to pay the parents nearly $50 million in damages.

Bellis also is deciding whether Reynal should be suspended from practicing law in Connecticut, although he is based in Houston. In a court document, Reynal said he should not be disciplined, because a staff member at his firm sent the records to the Sandy Hook families' Texas lawyer by mistake.

Jones has said he plans to appeal both verdicts. Jones, personally, and Free Speech Systems are both currently seeking bankruptcy protection.

MONTES, ASSANGE, MANNING, SNOWDEN

Cuba spy Ana Belen Montes released after 20 years behind bars


An undated handout image shows Ana Belen Montes receiving a national intelligence certificate of distinction from George Tenet

Fri, January 6, 2023 

(Reuters) - Ana Belen Montes, one of the highest-ranking U.S. officials ever proven to have spied for Cuba, has been released from prison early, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed Friday, after she spent more than two decades behind bars.

Montes, 65, had in 2002 pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage after she was accused of using her leading position as a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) official to leak information, including identities of some U.S. spies, to Havana.

Aged 45, she was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

A U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent, Montes began working for the DIA in 1985 and rapidly climbed its ranks to become the agency's top Cuba analyst.

Prosecutors said during this time Montes received coded messages from Havana over a short-wave radio as strings of numbers, which she would type onto a decryption-equipped laptop to translate to text.

She was accused of supplying the identity of four U.S. spies to Cuba, as well as other classified information.

Montes was arrested on Sept. 21, 2001, shortly before the United States invaded Afghanistan. Her lawyer, a leading espionage specialist, had argued she had cooperated without reservation.

At her sentencing a year later, Montes argued that she had obeyed her conscience and that U.S. policy to Cuba was cruel and unfair. "I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it," she said.

Ricardo Urbina, the sentencing judge, ruled she put fellow U.S. citizens and the "nation as a whole" at risk.

On her release from prison, Urbino had ordered Montes should be placed under supervision for five years, with her internet access monitored and a ban from working for governments and contacting foreign agents without permission.

Under President Joe Biden, the United States has eased some sanctions on Cuba but maintained its Cold War-era embargo on the island and stepped up restrictions on illegal migrants, arriving in record levels amid raging inflation and medicine shortages.

(Reporting by Sarah Morland and Eric Beech; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

ONE OF MANY
Military Investigation Reveals How the U.S. Botched a Drone Strike in Kabul

Azmat Khan
Fri, January 6, 2023

Relatives and neighbors on Aug. 30, 2021, at the site of a U.S. drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians. (Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — In the chaotic final days of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, U.S. military analysts observed a white Toyota Corolla stop at what they believed was an Islamic State compound.

The Americans were already on edge. Three days earlier, a suicide bomber had killed scores of Afghans and 13 U.S. troops at a main gate of the Kabul airport. Now, officials had intelligence that there would be another attack there, and that it would involve a white Corolla.

They tracked the car around Kabul for the next several hours. After it pulled into a gated courtyard near the airport, they authorized a drone strike. Hours later, U.S. officials announced they had successfully thwarted an attack.

As reports of civilian deaths surfaced later that day, they issued statements saying they had “no indications” but would assess the claims and were investigating whether a secondary explosion may have killed civilians.

But portions of a U.S. Central Command investigation obtained by The New York Times show that military analysts reported within minutes of the strike that civilians may have been killed, and within three hours had assessed that at least three children were killed.

The documents also provide detailed examples of how assumptions and biases led to the deadly blunder.

Military analysts wrongly concluded, for example, that a package loaded into the car contained explosives because of its “careful handling and size,” and that the driver’s “erratic route” was evidence that he was trying to evade surveillance.

The investigation was completed a week and a half after the strike and was never released, but the Times has obtained 66 partially redacted pages of it through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against Central Command.

Central Command declined to provide additional comment beyond statements it had previously made about the strike. The Pentagon previously acknowledged that the strike was a “tragic mistake” that killed 10 civilians, and told the Times that a new action plan intended to protect civilians drew on lessons learned from the incident.

Among those killed was Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime aid worker and the driver of the car.

Responding to a description of the document released to the Times, Hina Shamsi, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing families of victims, said the investigation “makes clear that military personnel saw what they wanted to see and not reality, which was an Afghan aid worker going about his daily life.”

The Attack

On Aug. 29, 2021, an American MQ-9 Reaper drone shot a Hellfire missile at a white Toyota Corolla in a neighborhood near the Kabul airport.

Within 20 minutes, multiple military officials and members of the strike team learned that analysts had seen possible civilian casualties in video feeds, according to their sworn statements for the investigation.

Two to three hours after the attack, analysts who had reviewed the footage frame by frame assessed that three children had been killed. An officer then shared that information with two top commanders in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, the ground force commander, and Rear Adm. Peter G. Vasely.

In sworn statements, six of nine witnesses described learning immediately after the strike that civilians were in the area and may have been killed.

Later that day, Central Command said in a statement that officials were “assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties” but had “no indications at this time.”

An update several hours later noted that powerful subsequent explosions may have caused civilian casualties but did not mention that analysts had already assessed three children were killed.

Three days later, Gen. Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the strike was “righteous” and had killed an Islamic State facilitator as well as “others,” but who they were, “we don’t know. We’ll try to sort through all of that.”

Over the next several weeks, Pentagon officials continued to say that an Islamic State target was killed in the strike, even as evidence mounted to the contrary.

On Sept. 10, a Times investigation based on video evidence and interviews with more than a dozen of Ahmadi’s co-workers and family members in Kabul found no evidence that explosives were present in the vehicle.

Ahmadi, who worked as an electrical engineer for a California-based aid group, had spent the day picking up his employer’s laptop, taking colleagues to and from work and loading canisters of water into his trunk to bring home to his family.

Officials insisted that their target had visited an Islamic State “safe house,” but the Times found that the building was actually the home of Ahmadi’s boss, whose laptop he was picking up.

A week after the Times investigation was published, military officials acknowledged that 10 civilians had been killed and that Ahmadi posed no threat and had no connection to the Islamic State.

Tracking a White Toyota

A subsequent review led by the Air Force inspector general, Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said, remains classified. But the general acknowledged that confirmation bias — a tendency to look for, analyze or remember information in a way that supports an existing belief — was an important factor in how Ahmadi became a target.

The documents obtained by the Times offer specific examples of how confirmation bias led to errors, including the military’s conclusion that the car it was looking for was the one Ahmadi was driving.

According to the documents, U.S. intelligence reports on Aug. 29 indicated that an Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-K was planning an imminent attack on the airport that could involve suicide bombers, “rockets on timers” in the back of a vehicle, and a white Toyota Corolla.

Surveillance aircraft began tracking the white Corolla that Ahmadi was driving after it stopped at an “established ISIS-K compound.” Drones followed the car to “a second building,” where they observed Ahmadi as he “carefully loaded” a “package” into the trunk. Analysts assessed the package to be explosives “based on the careful handling and size of the material.”

Over the next several hours, analysts watched as the car made stops and dropped off “adult males,” some of whom were carrying “bags or other box-shaped objects.” At one point, an analyst described how the car was “gingerly loaded with a box carried by five adult males.”

The investigation notes the car’s other movements that day, including that it entered a mall parking garage, that “bags” and “jugs” were unloaded from the trunk, and that it stopped at a Taliban checkpoint.

Analysts said the car followed an “erratic route” that was “consistent with ISIS-K directives to avoid close circuit cameras and pre-attack posture historically demonstrated by the group.”

By the time the car pulled into an open-air garage at a house enclosed by “high walls” about 1 mile from the airport, military officials were ready to authorize the strike.

A man who was seen opening and closing the gate for the car was also assessed to be a part of the threat. “I personally believed this to be a likely staging location and the moving personnel to likely be a part of the overall attack plot,” one official recounted to investigators. “That was my perception, and it was largely based on both someone immediately shutting the gate behind the vehicle and someone running in the courtyard.”

At this point, new intelligence indicated the airport attack would be delayed until the following day, according to one of the investigation’s interviewees, but military personnel were concerned that they could lose the target.

Thinking that the walls would limit the blast radius from reaching pedestrians on the street, the strike team launched a Hellfire missile at the vehicle. Shortly after impact, witnesses said they saw large secondary explosions, which helped confirm investigators’ belief that the vehicle contained explosives.

But the documents present a less definitive understanding of the source of the secondary explosion. “Conflicting opinions from experts regarding the secondary explosion makes it inconclusive regarding the source of the flame seen after the strike,” according to the report’s findings, which recommended further investigation.

Footage of the minutes after the strike obtained by the Times shows a fireball from the blast, which expands several seconds later. On Sept. 17, after additional review, military officials said the explosion was probably a propane or gas tank.

The investigation refers to an additional surveillance drone not under military control that was also tracking the vehicle but does not specify what it observed. The Times confirmed that the drone was operated by the CIA and observed children, possibly in the car, moments before impact, as CNN had reported.

The military investigation includes recommendations for better coordination, but the documents do not mention that the CIA drone observed children before impact.

“When confirmation bias was so deadly in this case, you have to ask how many other people targeted by the military over the years were also unjustly killed,” Shamsi said.

The investigation noted that a rocket attack at the airport did occur the next day, about 200 meters from the supposed “ISIS compound” where Ahmadi first stopped — the event that triggered the initial surveillance. Times journalists identified the car from which the rockets were launched as a white Toyota.

A year later, in August 2022, the Pentagon announced a plan for preventing civilian deaths in U.S. military operations that includes imposing a new system to reduce the risk of confirmation bias and misidentifying targets.

The Pentagon is still developing the policy, which incorporates training on mitigating cognitive bias and creates “civilian harm assessment cells.” It will also give the U.S. military more ways to respond to victims, in addition to condolence payments to survivors and family members of those harmed.

None of Ahmadi’s surviving relatives have received monetary assistance from the U.S. government as a result of the strike.

One of Ahmadi’s brothers, Emal Ahmadi, whose toddler Malika was also killed in the strike, arrived in the United States last week.

“I thought the U.S. government would welcome us, meet with us,” he said. “We are waiting for them.”

© 2023 The New York Times Company

As young Gazans die at sea, anger rises over leaders' travel






Palestinian women weep during the funeral of Mohammed al-Shaer, one of eight Palestinians who drowned off the coast of Tunisia, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, Dec. 18, 2022. As a rising number of Gazans are drowning in the sea en route to a better life in Europe, Gaza's Hamas rulers are moving to comfortable life in upscale Middle East hotels, prompted a rare outpouring of anger at home, where the economy collapses and 2.3 million people remain effectively trapped in the tiny, conflict-scarred territory. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair, File)

FARES AKRAM and ISABEL DEBRE
Thu, January 5, 2023


JERUSALEM (AP) — Khaled Shurrab had been waiting more than half his life to get out of Gaza.

The 27-year-old had never left the coastal enclave, which has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since 2007. He couldn’t find a job — the territory’s youth unemployment rate is over 60%. Like a growing number of Gazans, he packed his life into a suitcase and eventually made it to Turkey, where he set out on a treacherous sea voyage to Greece last October. When his rickety boat went down, his body disappeared into the sea.

A rising number of Gazans, seeking better lives abroad, are drowning at sea. The devastating procession has prompted a rare outpouring of anger against the territory’s militant Hamas rulers, a number of whom are making their own — very different — exodus.

In recent months, high-profile Hamas officials have quietly decamped to upscale hotels in Beirut, Doha and Istanbul, stirring resentment among residents who see them as leading luxurious lives abroad while the economy collapses at home and 2.3 million Gazans remain effectively trapped in the tiny, conflict-scarred territory. Four wars against Israel and dozens of smaller skirmishes over the years have taken their toll in casualties, damage and isolation.

Israel and Egypt say the tight movement restrictions are needed to keep Hamas from stockpiling more weapons. Critics say the blockade amounts to collective punishment, as residents grapple with daily blackouts and routine shortages of basic goods.

“I blame the rulers here, the government of Gaza,” said Shurrab’s mother, Um Mohammed, from her home in the southern town of Khan Younis. Her son’s body was never recovered from the Aegean Sea. “They live in luxury while our children eat dirt, migrate and die abroad.”

Hamas says the leaders who have left plan on returning. Yet the string of exits keeps growing.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh relocated to Qatar, an energy-rich Gulf state, with his wife and several children in 2019. Political leader Fathi Hamad moved to Istanbul a year ago and frequently flies to Beirut, Lebanon's capital, where media reports have shown him in meetings at a five-star hotel.

Deputy leader Khalil al-Hayya also relocated to Turkey last year, according to news reports, including Hamas outlets that highlighted some of his travels. Since then, he has paid only two short visits to Gaza.

Former government spokesman Taher Nounou and leader Ibrahim Salah moved to Doha, the Qatari capital. Senior member Salah al-Bardawil, spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri and dozens of aides also have resettled in Doha, Istanbul, or Beirut, according to Hamas media reports and official statements.

Turkey in particular has long been a favorite destination for Hamas leaders and supporters because of the country’s lenient visa policies toward members of what the United States and Europe consider a terrorist organization.

Several children of Hamas leaders are running lucrative real estate businesses for their parents in Istanbul, according to a Palestinian businessman familiar with their enterprises. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Azmi Keshawi, Gaza analyst at the International Crisis Group, said that the movement of officials abroad has in some cases helped the group coordinate its operations with key patrons outside the territory. But he said Hamas nonetheless has a growing image problem at home.

“Ordinary Palestinians see that Hamas has gone from this humble Palestinian leadership who lived and struggled among the people to living in these comfortable zones where they are no longer suffering and seem far from the Palestinian cause and issues,” he said. “Definitely people talk about this and draw comparisons in anger.”

Wary of public backlash, Hamas does not comment on reports about its leaders leaving Gaza. As social media fills with revelations, it casts leaders' stays abroad as temporary foreign tours aimed at drumming up support. Some of these tours last for years.

Public outrage erupted last month at a mass funeral for young Gazans who drowned en route to Europe. Distraught families blamed Hamas for contributing to the collapse and chaos of Gazan life and accused the Islamic militant group of nepotism and corruption.

Mourners shouted the names of leaders including Haniyeh and Yehiyeh Sinwar, Hamas’ current leader in Gaza, and chanted, "People are the victims!”

Such defiance is rare as Hamas moves to quash nearly all hints of dissent — though it remains the most popular group in its Gaza stronghold.

A recent poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 43% of residents of Gaza would support the group if parliamentary elections were held, compared to 30% for the rival Fatah movement. The figures were nearly identical to support levels three months earlier.

The poll, conducted in December, questioned a total of 1,200 people in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank on a range of issues, and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Still, more Gazans appear to be risking everything to get out.

A report issued in November by the Council on International Relations-Palestine, a Hamas-affiliated think tank, said 60,000 young people have left Gaza in recent years.

It blamed Israel, saying “the policies of occupation and siege” have "turned the life of Gazans into unbearable hell.” The report was the first semi-official data on emigration. It did not say how the data was compiled.

Some who leave seek job opportunities in wealthy Gulf Arab states. Many, like Shurrab, fly to Turkey and attempt the perilous sea voyage to Europe in hopes of getting asylum.

Two shipwrecks in October alone made 2022 the deadliest at sea for Gazan migrants in eight years, according to rights groups. Shurrab is among 360 Gazans who have drowned or disappeared at sea since 2014, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

Despite the risks, Khaled Moharreb is still contemplating the dangerous sea route. After earning a nursing diploma two years ago, the 22-year-old said he has been unable to find a job.

“I want to travel and build my life," he said. "Anything outside is better than this place where you can not do anything and where the government is indifferent."

Without directly mentioning Hamas, he said he blames “those who control and run the country” for the lack of job opportunities.

Hamas has offered no apologies. Atef Adwan, a Hamas lawmaker, recently denounced those who attempt to flee to Europe as making a perverse pilgrimage to a land of “deterioration and regression.”

Migration has long carried stigma among Palestinians, who have fought for decades to stay on their land. Haniyeh’s roots in a crowded Gaza City refugee camp are a core part of his political identity.

Amid growing scrutiny, Hamas issued an unusual statement last year announcing the return of three top officials — al-Hayyah, al-Zahar and Salah — to Gaza, reassuring the public that they “did not flee.”

Yet just two months later, news trickled out in Hamas media that al-Hayyah and Salah were on new “foreign tours” in Qatar and Iran.

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Akram reported from Hamilton, Ontario.

New RIGHT WING Israeli government takes steps to penalize Palestinians


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, in Jerusalem. (Atef Safadi/Pool Photo via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)


ISABEL DEBRE
Fri, January 6, 2023

JERUSALEM (AP) — In some of its first acts since coming to power, Israel's new Security Cabinet approved a series of punitive steps against the Palestinian leadership, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Friday.

According to a statement from Netanyahu's office, the move is in retaliation for Palestinians pushing the U.N.'s highest judicial body to give its opinion on the Israeli occupation. The Palestinians vowed to continue their diplomatic efforts despite the Israeli new measures.

The development underscores the hard-line approach to the Palestinians that Israel's new ultranationalist government has promised at a time of rising violence in the occupied territories.

It comes a week after the United Nations General Assembly voted to approve a resolution requesting that the International Court of Justice intervene and render an opinion on the legality of Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Israel's Security Cabinet described the Palestinian Authority's request to the U.N. as a “decision to wage political and legal war against the State of Israel.”

"The current government will not sit idly by in the face of this war and will respond as necessary," it said.

In response, the Security Cabinet, packed with Netanyahu's far-right and religiously conservative allies, decided Israel would withhold $39 million from the Palestinian Authority and transfer the funds instead to a compensation program for the families of Israeli victims of Palestinian militant attacks.

It also said Israel would further deduct revenue it typically transfers to the cash-strapped PA — a sum equal to the amount the authority paid last year to families of Palestinian prisoners and those killed in the conflict, including militants implicated in attacks against Israelis. The Palestinian leadership describes the payments as necessary social welfare, while Israel says the so-called Martyrs’ Fund incentivizes violence. Israel's withheld funds threaten to exacerbate the PA's fiscal woes.

The Security Cabinet also targeted Palestinian officials directly, saying it would deny benefits to “VIPs who are leading the political and legal war against Israel.” Top PA officials receive Israeli permits that allow them to travel easily in and out of the occupied West Bank, unlike ordinary Palestinians.

“Israeli blackmailing of our tax revenues will not stop us from continuing our political and diplomatic struggle,” said Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh. He added that the Israeli measures will deepen the Palestinian financial crisis and budget shortfall.

Other measures announced Friday focused on the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Through decades of failed peace talks, Israel has controlled the territory, which Palestinians have long demanded as part of their hoped-for state.

Israel's new far-right government has vowed to prioritize the expansion of settlements and legalize illegally built outposts. Already, Israel has constructed dozens of Jewish settlements home to around 500,000 Israelis who live alongside around 2.5 million Palestinians.

The Security Cabinet, a small group of high-level ministers who answer directly to the prime minister, also said it would freeze Palestinian construction in Area C, the 60% of the West Bank where, under interim peace accords, Israel already exercises complete control. Area C includes the settlements, as well as rural areas that are home to some 300,000 Palestinians, according to the U.N.

The final step detailed by the government Friday involves taking unspecified “action” against organizations in the West Bank that “promote terrorist activity or any hostile activity." That includes groups carrying out “political and legal action against Israel under the guise of humanitarian work,” it said.

Exactly what groups could be targeted remain unclear. Over a year ago, Israel designated six major Palestinian rights watchdogs as terrorist organizations, and raided and shuttered their offices last summer. The Palestinian groups rejected the allegations and the move drew widespread international condemnation.

___

Associated Press writers Isaac Scharf in Jerusalem and Fares Akram in Hamilton, Ontario, contributed to this report.