Israel: UN experts demand accountability over death of Palestinian hunger striker

03 May 2023


There must be accountability from the Israeli Government following the death of Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan, two independent UN human rights experts said on Wednesday Opens in new window, referring to the mass arbitrary detention of Palestinians as “cruel” and “inhumane.”

The 45-year-old Palestinian died in his prison cell on Tuesday morning following a nearly three-month hunger strike. He had been protesting Israel’s widespread policy of arbitrarily detaining Palestinians in “abhorrent conditions” and in violation of fair trial guarantees.

The call for greater accountability came from the independent expert, or Special Rapporteur, on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese Opens in new window, and the Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Tlaleng Mofokeng  Opens in new window.

Long history of hunger strikes

Mr. Adnan began his hunger strike protest shortly after being arrested - for the last time - on 5 February, facing terrorism-related charges.

Despite the serious deterioration of his health, Israeli authorities refused to release him, or transfer him to hospital, and continued to detain him in a prison hospital facility, reportedly without providing adequate healthcare, the experts said.

The Human Rights CouncilOpens in new window-appointed experts noted that Mr. Adnan had been arrested at least 12 times in the past, spending a total of around eight years in prison, mostly in administrative detention, and had been on hunger strike five times previously.

‘Tragic testament’

“The death of Khader Adnan is a tragic testament to Israel’s cruel and inhumane detention policy and practices, as well as the international community’s failure to hold Israel accountable in the face of callous illegalities perpetrated against Palestinian inmates,” the experts said.

Hundreds held without trial

The experts noted that Israel currently holds approximately 4,900 Palestinians in its prisons, including just over 1,000 administrative detainees who are held for an indefinite period without trial or charge, based on secret information.

The number of administrative detainees in Israeli detention facilities is at its highest since 2008, despite repeated condemnation from international human rights bodies and calls for Israel to immediately end the practice.

The UN rights office OHCHROpens in new window said in its press release, that many Palestinian prisoners have resorted to hunger strikes to “protest the brutality of Israel’s detention practices”.

‘Colonial’ occupation

The experts said they could not separate Israel’s prison policies, “from the colonial nature of its occupation, intended to control and subjugate all Palestinians in the territory Israel wants to control”.

“The systematic practice of administrative detention, is tantamount to a war crime of wilfully depriving protected persons of the rights of fair and regular trial”, said the two experts.

They added that it was ever more urgent for the international community to hold Israel accountable for its illegal acts in the occupied territory and stop the normalisation of war crimes.

“How many more lives will have to be lost, before an inch of justice can be delivered in the occupied Palestinian territory?” they concluded.

About the Rapporteurs

Independent human rights experts are all appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, in Geneva, under its Special ProceduresOpens in new window.

They are mandated to monitor and report on specific thematic issues or country situations. They are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.

STUPID TAX

Why does Trinidad & Tobago tax books?
'Books are expensive'

Written by Guest Contributor
Posted 4 May 2023 

By Dr. Gabrielle Hosein

This article, originally published in the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday

From April 28-30, the NGC Bocas Lit Fest — arguable the Caribbean's premier literary festival — gathered more than 100 novelists, short-story writers, biographers and poets to exuberantly celebrate books.

There was a glittering wealth of writing from the Caribbean. In-person or online, one could hear readings from recent publications, and backstories from this generation of award-winning Caribbean authors as they are ascending a global stage. The connection to both writers and their work felt wonderfully intimate and familiar, so typical of us in these small islands.

While the One Caribbean Media (OCM) award, symbolising the most commended book of the festival, went to Ayana Lloyd Banwo for her outstanding novel, “When We Were Birds,” the poetry prize went to Anthony Joseph for his recent collection, “Sonnets for Albert,” which captures his memories of his father in snapshots of vivid verse, and the non-fiction prize was awarded to Ira Mathur’s epic transnational autobiography, “Love the Dark Days.”

Circling the national library’s atrium in-between sessions, I pressed close to booksellers’ tables like a candy store window, trying to decide which books to buy. Such choices were a question of space; I’ve no more empty bookshelves even after agonizingly whittling down by about seven boxes to mostly Caribbean literature. However, deciding on the hard sweet or the soft toffee was also a matter of money. I was like a child clenching precious pennies.

Books are expensive.

Perhaps if they were more affordable, more men would buy them instead of guns, carrying smaller ones rolled in their back pocket to read instead of killing time rolling weed. Perhaps if Caribbean books were more accessible, we might see each other’s outward violence and inner confusions more compassionately, finding characters in novels or descriptions in poems that enable us to recognise and forgive even ourselves.

Booksellers may make sales, but their trade is a labour of love, hardly making the profit they should, perhaps explaining why we have more rum shops than bookshops — places to drown loneliness and sorrows rather than be steadied by the humanity of shared desires and fears.

Contributing to this situation is a senseless tax on books imposed by the present government in February 2016. Educational materials such as school texts and exercise books are exempt. However, the cost of literature, even locally produced, was increased.

At the time, the finance minister described the tax regime as fiscal policy, not social policy, but that’s merely a mirage. All taxation reflects an assessment of social needs and priorities, as well as principles of who should contribute and how.

For example, VAT [Value Added Tax] applies equally to all consumers, whether rich or poor, and is therefore inequitable. In contrast, property and income tax should raise greater revenue from the wealthy, and be graduated rather than flat, meaning the rich should be taxed at higher rates than the poor, always.

At the time, booksellers protested. Professor Bridget Brereton described the decision to tax literature as strange, surprising and disappointing. She wrote, “VAT will be applied to all ‘literary books’ – this means novels of all kinds, modern and classics; volumes of short stories, plays and poetry; non-fiction books (biographies and autobiographies, works on social and natural sciences and his­tory, books about art and music).

Recently, a sort of literary renaissance has taken place in Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Carib­bean, with more local or regional authors publishing novels, short stories and poetry, and winning big awards, too, as well as interesting non-fiction books of all kinds. Do we want to reduce their market by ma­king their books more costly?”

Richie Sookhai, then president of the Chaguanas Chamber of Industry and Commerce, rightly observed, “This cannot be the way forward in a society where low levels of literacy can be cited as contributing factors in crime, poverty and social mobility.

“One of the ways we encourage pride in country is by reading about our history, about those who went before us and the great literature produced by our own writers like the Naipauls, Selvon, Lovelace. When we put that out of the reach of our children and the wider population, we do our country no service.”

And so it continues today. Caribbean literature, blooming in our midst, can transform our reality. Yet, as long as they are taxed as a luxury, people are least likely to choose books with their precious pennies.

Scientists warn of AI dangers but disagree on solutions

Computer scientists, including Geoffrey Hinton, who is often dubbed "the godfather of artificial intelligence", speak out about dangers of AI, such as job market destabilisation, automated weaponry and dangers of biased data sets.


Some experts are worried that hype around superhuman machines — which don't exist — is distracting from attempts to set practical safeguards on current AI products. / Photo: AP

Computer scientists who helped build the foundations of today's artificial intelligence [AI] technology have warned of its dangers, but disagree on what those dangers are or how to prevent them.

Humanity's survival is threatened when "smart things can outsmart us," the so-called "Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton said at a conference on Wednesday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"It may keep us around for a while to keep the power stations running," Hinton said. "But after that, maybe not."

After retiring from Google so he could speak more freely, the 75-year-old Hinton said he's recently changed his views about the reasoning capabilities of the computer systems he's spent a lifetime researching.

"These things will have learned from us, by reading all the novels that ever were and everything Machiavelli ever wrote, how to manipulate people," Hinton said, addressing the crowd attending MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital conference from his home via video. "Even if they can't directly pull levers, they can certainly get us to pull levers."

"I wish I had a nice simple solution I could push, but I don’t," he added. "I'm not sure there is a solution."

Fellow AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, co-winner with Hinton of the top computer science prize, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he's "pretty much aligned" with Hinton's concerns brought on by chatbots such as ChatGPT and related technology, but worries that to simply say "We're doomed" is not going to help.

"The main difference, I would say, is he's kind of a pessimistic person, and I'm more on the optimistic side," said Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal. "I do think that the dangers — the short-term ones, the long-term ones — are very serious and need to be taken seriously by not just a few researchers but governments and the population."

Governments discussing AI risks

There are plenty of signs that governments are listening. The White House has called in the CEOs of Google, Microsoft and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI to meet on Thursday with Vice President Kamala Harris in what's being described by officials as a frank discussion on how to mitigate both the near-term and long-term risks of their technology. European lawmakers are also accelerating negotiations to pass sweeping new AI rules.

But all the talk of the most dire future dangers has some worried that hype around superhuman machines — which don't exist — is distracting from attempts to set practical safeguards on current AI products that are largely unregulated and have been shown to cause real-world harms.

Margaret Mitchell, a former leader on Google's AI ethics team, said she's upset that Hinton didn't speak out during his decade in a position of power at Google, especially after the 2020 ouster of prominent Black scientist Timnit Gebru, who had studied the harms of large language models before they were widely commercialised into products such as ChatGPT and Google's Bard.

"It's a privilege that he gets to jump from the realities of the propagation of discrimination now, the propagation of hate language, the toxicity and nonconsensual pornography of women, all of these issues that are actively harming people who are marginalised in tech," said Mitchell, who was also forced out of Google in the aftermath of Gebru's departure. "He's skipping over all of those things to worry about something farther off."

Bengio, Hinton and a third researcher, Yann LeCun, who works at Facebook parent Meta, were all awarded the Turing Prize in 2019 for their breakthroughs in the field of artificial neural networks, instrumental to the development of today's AI applications such as ChatGPT.

Bengio, the only one of the three who didn't take a job with a tech giant, has voiced concerns for years about near-term AI risks, including job market destabilisation, automated weaponry and the dangers of biased data sets.

But those concerns have grown recently, leading Bengio to join other computer scientists and tech business leaders like Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in calling for a six-month pause on developing AI systems more powerful than OpenAI's latest model, GPT-4.

Bengio said on Wednesday he believes the latest AI language models already pass the "Turing test" named after British codebreaker and AI pioneer Alan Turing's method introduced in 1950 to measure when AI becomes indistinguishable from a human — at least on the surface.

"That's a milestone that can have drastic consequences if we're not careful," Bengio said. "My main concern is how they can be exploited for nefarious purposes to destabilise democracies, for cyberattacks, disinformation. You can have a conversation with these systems and think that you’re interacting with a human. They’re difficult to spot."

Fearmongering?

Where researchers are less likely to agree is on how current AI language systems — which have many limitations, including a tendency to fabricate information — might actually get smarter than humans not just in memorising huge troves of information, but in showing critical reasoning and other human skills.

Aidan Gomez was one of the co-authors of the pioneering 2017 paper that introduced a so-called transformer technique — the "T" at the end of ChatGPT — for improving the performance of machine-learning systems, especially in how they learn from passages of text. Then just a 20-year-old intern at Google, Gomez remembers laying on a couch at the company's California headquarters when his team sent out the paper around 3 am when it was due.

"Aidan, this is going to be so huge," he remembers a colleague telling him, of the work that's since helped lead to new systems that can generate humanlike prose and imagery.

Six years later and now CEO of his own AI company called Cohere, which Hinton has invested in, Gomez is enthused about the potential applications of these systems but bothered by fearmongering he says is "detached from the reality" of their true capabilities and "relies on extraordinary leaps of imagination and reasoning."

"The notion that these models are somehow gonna get access to our nuclear weapons and launch some sort of extinction-level event is not a productive discourse to have," Gomez said. "It’s harmful to those real pragmatic policy efforts that are trying to do something good."

Asked about his investments in Cohere on Wednesday in light of his broader concerns about AI, Hinton said he had no plans to pull his investments because there are still many helpful applications of language models in medicine and elsewhere. He also said he hadn't made any bad decisions in pursuing the research he started in the 1970s.

"Until very recently, I thought this existential crisis was a long way off," Hinton said. "So I don't really have any regrets about what I did."

U$ Senators back solar tariffs, oppose prairie bird safeguards

By MATTHEW DALY 

Associated Press
MAY 3, 2023 

WASHINGTON — The Senate approved a measure Wednesday that would reinstate tariffs on solar panel imports from several Southeast Asian countries after President Joe Biden paused them in a bid to boost solar installations in the U.S.

Lawmakers also approved a separate plan to undo federal protections for the lesser prairie chicken, a rare grouse that's found in parts of the Midwest and Southwest, including one of the country's most prolific oil and gas fields.

The two measures are part of efforts by newly empowered Republicans to rebuke the Democratic president and block some of his administration's initiatives, particularly on the environment. Republicans control the House and have strong sway in the closely divided Senate, where California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein remains out for health reasons and conservatives such as Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., often side with the GOP.

Congress voted earlier this year to block a clean water rule imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency and a separate Labor Department measure that allows retirement plan managers to consider the effects of climate change in their investment plans. Biden vetoed both legislative measures.

The solar tariffs measure was approved, 56-41, and now goes to the White House, where Biden has vowed to veto it. Nine Democrats, including Manchin, supported the measure, while Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was the only Republican who opposed it.

The measure to undo the bird protections was approved 50-48 and now goes to the Republican-controlled House, where there is strong support for the plan. Manchin was the only Democrat to back the repeal of protections for the threatened bird.

The Senate action follows a House vote last week to reinstate fees on solar panels imported from Asia. Lawmakers from both parties have expressed concerns about what many call unfair competition from China.

Some U.S. manufacturers contend that China has essentially moved operations to four Southeast Asian countries — Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia — to skirt strict anti-dumping rules that limit imports from China.

Biden paused the tariffs last year amid complaints from the solar industry that the threat of up to $1 billion in retroactive tariffs and higher fees had led to delays or cancellations of hundreds of solar projects across the United States. Solar installations are a key part of Biden's agenda to fight climate change and achieve 100% clean electricity by 2035.

The White House said Biden's action was ''necessary to satisfy the demand for reliable and clean energy'' while providing ''certainty for jobs and investments in the solar supply chain and the solar installation market.″

A Commerce Department inquiry last year found likely trade violations involving Chinese products and recommended steep penalties. Biden halted tariffs for two years before the Commerce investigation was completed. The White House has said Biden will not extend the tariff suspension when it expires in June 2024.

The U.S. industry argues that solar panel imports are crucial as solar installations ramp up to meet increased demand for renewable energy. Less than 30% of solar panels and cells installed in the U.S. are produced here, although that number is increasing as U.S. manufacturers take advantage of tax credits included in the landmark climate law adopted last year.

But Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said tariffs were needed to hold China accountable while protecting U.S. jobs and workers.

''It's disgusting that Biden's actions would shield Chinese solar companies — many of which are using child and slave labor — and allow them to circumvent U.S. trade laws,'' Scott said in a statement. ''We need to be taking every step possible to hold Communist China and these companies accountable for breaking U.S. law.''

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., sponsored a separate measure repealing federal protections for a rare prairie bird that's found in parts of the Midwest and Southwest, including one of the country's most prolific oil and gas fields.

The lesser prairie chicken's range covers a portion of the oil-rich Permian Basin along the New Mexico-Texas state line and extends into parts of Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas. The habitat of the bird, a type of grouse, has diminished across about 90% of its historical range, officials said.

The crow-size, terrestrial birds are known for spring courtship rituals that include flamboyant dances by the males as they make a cacophony of clucking, cackling and booming sounds. They were once thought to number in the millions, but now hover around 30,000, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Environmentalists have long sought stronger federal protections for the bird, which they consider severely at risk due to oil and gas development, livestock grazing and farming, along with roads and power lines.

Marshall and other Republicans say greater protections aren't needed and that the government instead should rely on voluntary conservation efforts already in place.

''Farmers, ranchers, and others in Kansas and the region have been instrumental in the recovery of the species to this point, while the climate activists demanding (federal protections under the Endangered Species Act) have no understanding of the threat it poses to Kansas's economy, especially the energy and ag industries,'' Marshall said in a statement.

Lew Carpenter, director of conservation partnerships with the National Wildlife Federation, said voluntary efforts are not enough.

''We hope partisan politics will not put a halt to federal efforts to recover one of our region's iconic birds. And recovery means recovery of the habitat, too,'' said Carpenter, who also serves as vice president of the North American Grouse Partnership, a Colorado-based conservation group.

The League of Conservation Voters said the Senate vote ''sets a disastrous precedent" that could put the prairie bird and other endangered species ''at risk of disappearing forever.''

Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said reinstating solar tariffs would jeopardize 30,000 jobs nationwide, including thousands in Nevada, which has the nation's most solar jobs per capita.

''Enacting retroactive tariffs on imported solar panels and cells will absolutely kill the American solar industry, and it will kill any chance we have to meet our climate goals, and it will kill the current American solar jobs,'' Rosen said.

North Carolina Lawmakers Introduce Abortion Ban They Debated in Secret

Republicans plopped the legislation, which they claim represents the views of most state residents, into an unrelated bill.

By Susan Rinkunas
JEZEBEL

May 3,2023

House Speaker Pro Tempore Sarah Stevens (R) announces a bill to restrict abortion during a press conference on Tuesday.

Photo: Travis Long/The News & Observer via AP (AP)

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina unveiled an abortion ban Tuesday that they’d been negotiating in secret for months; it could pass as soon as this week. The bill would ban abortion after 12 weeks, with nominal exceptions for rape and incest through 20 weeks, and would also place heavy restrictions on medication abortion. If it passes, it could further further decimate abortion access across the South.

The 46 pages of text were substituted into Senate Bill 20, an unrelated proposal about the “safe surrender of infants,” shortly before 11 p.m. on Tuesday, which meant they could bypass the normal committee hearing process for legislation.

Republicans were reportedly pushing for a six-week ban during closed-door negotiations, but during a press conference, women GOP lawmakers claimed that 12 weeks was more of a “mainstream” proposal, the Washington Post reported. “We look[ed] at what most North Carolinians have said. This is where most of them come down,” said state Sen. Joyce Krawiec (R), adding that there was “a lot of discussion, and a lot of back and forth.” House Speaker pro tempore Rep. Sarah Stevens (R) called the bill “pro-woman.”

Post reporter Caroline Kitchener said on Twitter that a source told her the deliberations were so clandestine that lawmakers had to hand over all their papers after every meeting.

While Gov. Roy Cooper (D) has vowed to veto abortion restrictions, Republicans now have a veto-proof supermajority after State Rep. Tricia Cotham—an EMILY’s List-endorsed lawmaker from a heavily blue district in the Charlotte area—switched parties earlier this year. Exactly one year ago this week following the Supreme Court leak, Cotham tweeted that she would fight to codify Roe v. Wade into state law.

The bill would also make people take two trips to a clinic 72 hours apart for abortion procedures and three trips for abortion pills. (One trip for “informed consent,” a second to get the medications, and a final in-person follow-up visit.) SB 20 would also increase funding for child care, foster care, paid parental leave, and anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. None of that makes it OK to force people to give birth; it’s window dressing to stand up the bill name, the “Care for Women, Children and Families Act.”

The leaders of the House and Senate’s Democratic delegations said in a statement that “Republican leadership has once again schemed behind closed doors and silenced the voices of both members of the public and members of the state legislature in order to force a harmful abortion ban down our throats. North Carolinians believe in freedom, including the freedom to decide if and when to start a family.”

ACLU of North Carolina senior policy counsel Liz Barber said in a statement that the bill “is neither moderate nor a compromise” and that North Carolinians don’t support further restrictions on abortion. “Lawmakers are ignoring the democratic process in order to push through unpopular legislation against the will of the people. This comes amidst countless efforts from lawmakers to curtail voting rights and control legislative redistricting,” Barber said. “Any ban on abortion is unacceptable. Everyone deserves the dignity and power to control if and when they want to be pregnant. These legislators would take that away.”

The whole charade calls to mind a notorious 2013 incident where state lawmakers tucked a bunch of abortion restrictions into a motorcycle safety bill called Senate Bill 353, basically daring then-Gov. Pat McCrory (R) to veto it. He didn’t.

Abortion restrictions are not popular: We know this from the 2022 midterms, six post-Dobbs ballot measures and counting, and tons of polling. This North Carolina nonsense shows how Republicans have to have to lie and rig the game in order to impose their will.

GOP Congresswoman snaps at conservative who accused her of supporting trans people by wearing a tux

The conservative troll struck a nerve.

By Alex Bollinger 

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

LGBTQNATION

Rep. Nancy Mace on Fox NewsPhoto: Screenshot

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is not a supporter of LGBTQ+ equality. She campaigned on transphobic lies to get her seat in the past two elections, she regularly posts anti-trans equality messages to social media, and she scored just 17 out of 100 on HRC’s Congressional Scorecard.

But that’s not enough for one of her supporters who accused her of supporting transgender people because she wore a tuxedo to last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. And while it was just one person making the comment on Twitter, Mace’s outsized reaction shows that the rightwing troll may have struck a nerve.

“Further, as our culture continues to undermine women by celebrating men who pretend to be them – why would you choose to wear a tux to the WHCD?” asked Randan Steinhauser, a self-described “Counter-Cultural Christian Conservative WOMAN,” according to her Twitter bio.

Steinhauser also brought up Mace’s position on abortion, which is anti-choice. Mace suggested that Republicans find a “middle ground” on the issue on CBS’s Face the Nation last Sunday.

The comments got under Mace’s skin and she responded with quite a few tweets. First, she tweeted that “This ain’t Gilead,” a reference to the dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale.

“When they can’t win the policy or the debate, they go straight for your appearance. So it goes…,” she wrote.



Then Mace posted a picture of Melania Trump wearing a tuxedo-inspired outfit, sans bowtie.

“Curious… who wore it better? Then vs. now?” Mace asked. “I love freedom and liberty, including being free to wear a tux.”

She added an American flag emoji, possibly to show off her conservative bona fides.

“Just your run-of-the-mill mean girl tweet…” Mace wrote yesterday as she quote-tweeted a message from gay conservative Brad Polumbo.



And she re-tweeted posts from journalist Yashar Ali (showing Melania Trump and Donald Trump advisor Hope Hicks in a tuxedo) as well as a tweet from conservative columnist Ingrid Jacques that mentioned the incident, which, again, was literally one person tweeting about Mace’s tuxedo and getting several dozen likes.




And, for good measure, Mace tweeted a clip of her attacking transgender equality.

“We want to protect women and girls,” she wrote, as if trans women pose a threat to cis women. “Biological men should not be in female locker rooms, or competing against women in sports.”



When she was campaigning for office in 2020, Mace accused her opponent, the incumbent Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC), of working with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to pass “a law requiring transgendered [sic] equality in the military, a liberal mandate that will close Parris Island.” Parris Island is a Marine Corps base in her district.

No such law was passed. Her campaign made it up. She won the election anyway.

In 2022, she accused her Democratic opponent of “child abuse” for performing gender-affirming surgery on young children. The attacks led to threats and forced her opponent to take unpaid leave from her job as a doctor at Jenkins Children’s Hospital and increase security.

“SEX CHANGE SURGERY. PUBERTY BLOCKERS. GENDER CHANGING HORMONES. FOR CHILDREN?! THAT’S NOT PROTECTION. THAT’S CHILD ABUSE,” text on a Mace campaign ad said, referring to her opponent, Dr. Annie Andrews.

Andrews did not perform gender-affirming surgery on minors. Mace’s campaign made that up too. And Mace won that election.

Since she got into office, though, she has been trying to appear to be a more moderate alternative to extreme Republicans, calling Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) “bats**t crazy” in emojis, despite Mace’s own extreme voting record.

In 2021, she was even caught saying that the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t necessary when she spoke on Fox News and then talking about her support for the COVID-19 vaccines on CNN hours later.

Mace knows that transphobia works to win elections – at least in her district – which could explain her overreaction to one tweet from a relatively unknown person on Twitter.

Germany’s top Green slams radical climate protesters

Climate activists gluing themselves to streets or airport runways are ‘unhelpful’ and ‘downright wrong,’ says Robert Habeck

Robert Habeck described the Last Generation movement's actions as "not only unhelpful, but downright wrong" | John Macdougall/AFP via Getty Images

BY HANS VON DER BURCHARD
MAY 3, 2023 

BERLIN — Germany's most senior Green politician, Robert Habeck, has slammed radical activists who glue themselves to the ground to highlight the climate emergency, saying such protests are "unhelpful" and "downright wrong."

Activists from the "Last Generation" movement caused a stir in Germany in recent months by gluing themselves to streets, highways and even airport runways to raise awareness of the need to step up the fight against climate change.

Speaking at an election rally in Bremen on Tuesday evening, Habeck, who is vice chancellor and economy minister, sharply criticized these protesters.

"With all understanding for the frustration that we are running out of time [to stop global warming]… I think it's politically wrong how these actions are going, because in a democracy it's always about creating majorities. And that is recognizably not the case [here]," Habeck said.

Some two-thirds of Germans have a negative opinion of these protesters, also known as "Klima-Kleber" (climate gluers), according to a survey published Tuesday. Moderate climate activists also fear that such radical protests risk eroding public support for the often costly steps that societies need to take to reduce their carbon footprint.

Habeck lauded Greta Thunberg's "Fridays for Future" movement, which mobilized millions worldwide to peacefully protest, entered into political dialogue with leaders, and won a lawsuit ordering the German government to partly revise its climate emission targets.

But the Last Generation movement is very different, Habeck said, describing their actions as "not only unhelpful, but downright wrong."

UK

PMQs: Caroline Lucas steals the show blasting Tories’ ‘poisonous narrative’ on asylum seekers

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

Today

The Green MP asked why the PM has not made a Sudanese family visa scheme.

In the last PMQs session before the local elections, Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak squabbled mainly on economic and housing issues, with the Labour leader grilling the Prime Minister on mortgage costs and the government’s decision to scrap housing targets.

But it was Caroline Lucas who stole the show. The Green MP called on Rishi Sunak to set up a Sudanese family visa scheme for those fleeing violence to reunite with relatives in the UK, similar to the scheme set up for Ukrainians.

The PM declined to say whether such a move is on the cards.

“His government’s vile and immoral refugee ban bill and the toxic language coming from the Home Office isn’t even dog whistle politics,” said Lucas, adding, “It is a giant hard-right foghorn blasting out a poisonous narrative, and it plunged to new depths last week when a Home Office minister claimed that people trying to come to the UK, and I quote ‘tend to have completely different values to those in the UK.’

“Can he explain what he thinks is so different about the values held by the people of war-torn Sudan? And can he tell us what values are stopping him from creating a Sudanese family visa scheme like he did for the people of Ukraine?”

The PM’s feeble comeback was that Britain has a “proud history of welcoming almost half a million refugees over the past several years” and “will continue to do so.” Sunak also claimed that the country’s ability to help refugees is ‘absolutely hampered’ by illegal small boat crossings.

The Green MP’s comments attracted praise on Twitter.

‘Caroline Lucas is kicking Sunak’s arse. Respect. One of the very few politicians with a backbone and integrity,” someone shared.

“Brilliant by Caroline Lucas,” wrote another.

“Compare and contrast. Brilliant use of language by Caroline Lucas PMQs. Long-winded boring planted questions by Tory MPs in a vain attempt to attack on local issues,” someone else shared.

Another highlight of the session was SNP MP Stephen Flynn asking the Prime Minister about Labour scrapping its pledge to scrap tuition fees. Flynn continued that in 2010 David Cameron persuaded Nick Clegg to drop his pledge on tuition fees and said that the axing tuition fees pledge is Labour’s ‘Nick Clegg moment.’

“Will Sunak take the credit for persuading Keir Starmer to do likewise,” he asked.

The PM thanked the SNP MP for the question, adding it is hard to keep up with Starmer’s broken promises.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward

Democrats still aim to probe oil giants’ climate-change knowledge

State and local governments press suits for compensation

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., one of the leaders of the inquiry while chairing the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Environment, passed its work to Senate Budget Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who had previously talked with Khanna about examining the oil companies' climate comments.

 (Tom Williams/file photo)

By David Jordan and Benjamin J. Hulac

CQ Roll Call 

Posted May 3, 2023

Senate Democrats aim to continue a House investigation into the oil industry's so-called supermajors and what they knew about climate change as localities across the country seek compensation for its effects.

The Democrats on what was then called the House Oversight and Reform Committee launched an investigation in 2021 examining whether the largest oil companies privately knew their products were contributing to climate change and hiding this fact from the public.

As part of the investigation, the heads of BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Shell Oil, as well as the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, testified before the committee, defending their business practices against Democratic criticism. However, current Oversight Chairman James R. Comer, R-Ky., dismissed the inquiry as little more than a political stunt.

With the change in leadership, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., one of the leaders on the inquiry while chairing the panel’s environmental subcommittee, passed the committee’s work to Senate Budget Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who had previously talked with Khanna about examining the oil companies’ climate comments.

“The idea for me to do that originally was his brainchild,” Khanna said. “He came to the office and gave me the idea that this is what I can do with the majority. So I’m looking forward to seeing what his committee does.”

Whitehouse, known for his floor speeches raising alarms about the effects of climate change, has already held hearings examining the effect climate change could have on the federal budget and insurance markets. Whitehouse said he also intends to “shine light on the fossil fuel industry’s obstacle course of deceit and greenwashing that blocks pragmatic solutions.”

“I appreciate the leadership of House Democrats last Congress and share House Oversight Ranking Member Raskin’s determination to expose how Big Oil’s campaign of dishonesty, dark money, and malign political influence will undermine America’s economic stability if left unchallenged,” Whitehouse said in a statement, referencing Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the committee’s ranking Democrat. “Big Oil corruption is a massive contributing factor in our looming climate emergency, and we must all work together to address it.”

Supporters have compared the inquiry into the oil giants to the 1990s investigation into “Big Tobacco,” with some hoping it may provide similar support for ongoing litigation. States, cities and counties are seeking to demonstrate the oil companies knew the effects the sale of their products would have on the environment, in violation of local consumer protection and public nuisance laws.
State courts

On April 24, the Supreme Court turned down requests from energy companies to examine a procedural question in these cases, where the localities are seeking compensation for the effects of climate change, such as fire, flood and drought.

The ruling will allow a case brought by Boulder County, the city of Boulder and San Miguel County in Colorado to proceed in state court. The companies had sought to move the cases to federal court, arguing that their claims were in fact federal since issues such as pollution are regulated by laws such as the Clean Air Act.

The decision will allow the case to proceed in state court, where the localities expected a more favorable hearing of the case.

“Oil companies are making record profits while our planet continues to warm,” Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said in a statement following the ruling. “It’s only fair that the companies that profit from irresponsible actions compensate communities for the harm they cause.”

The Biden administration reversed the position of the Trump administration and supported the localities in their bid to keep the cases in state court. The Supreme Court also denied similar requests concerning cases brought by Rhode Island, Honolulu, Baltimore and San Mateo, Calif.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who sits on the Oversight Committee, said she believes the hearings held over the last two years provided substantial evidence these companies knew the effects their products would have. She referred to the damages lawsuits as the “legal vanguard in our collective ability to confront climate change.”

“They knew this science far before the public did, far before even in some areas the U.S. government started to figure things out in the ’70s,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “I believe that these lawsuits represent a very significant frontier in making sure that we’re holding the folks responsible financially, as well.”

Ultimately, executives from the four companies and API answered questions before the House committee last year, though not to the satisfaction of Democrats, who accused the executives of obfuscating their roles.

Representatives for Chevron and Shell did not respond to requests for comment about the Senate inquiry. Spokesmen for BP and Exxon declined to comment.

“America’s oil and natural gas industry is focused on delivering affordable, reliable energy while reducing emissions, and any allegations to the contrary are false,” said API Senior Vice President Megan Bloomgren. “Just as America leads the world in reducing emissions to generational lows, we are poised to lead in the next generation of low carbon technologies, including carbon capture and hydrogen. We will continue working with lawmakers and regulators on policies that unlock innovation and accelerate progress on emissions reductions.”

Right-Wing Doctors' Org Accidentally Leaks Massive Trove of Sensitive Documents

The anti-LGBTQ American College of Pediatricians published an unsecured Google Drive link containing 10,000 files about its internal workings to its website.

By Caitlin Cruz

JEZEBEL

Photo: Sean Justice (iStock by Getty Images)

A massive trove of internal information from the American College of Pediatricians (ACP) and its donors was left unsecured on the group’s own website, according to a new report. More than 10,000 documents (including zip files that contain many more files) reviewed by Wired—including “highly sensitive internal information about the College’s donors and taxes, social security numbers of board members, staff resignation letters, budgetary and fundraising concerns, and the usernames and passwords of more than 100 online accounts”—were left unsecured on the rightwing organization’s website until the magazine reached out.

The American College of Pediatricians is a rightwing hate group (as deemed by the Southern Poverty Law Center) which peddles an anti-LGBTQ agenda via conservative media and amicus briefs against LGBTQ people. Most recently, the ACP has been a party of the abortion pill lawsuit currently confounding the federal judiciary.

The group trades on its official sound naming, though the actual premiere organization for pediatricians is the American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP. The group was founded in 2002 after the AAP announced its support of gay couples adopting children. While the AAP has 67,000 members, the ACP only has about 700 members, according to Wired. It average age is over 50 and its members are mostly male, according to the records. Still, it has outsized influence on conservative policy.

Among the leaked documents are presentations, accounting files and spreadsheeting, including what Wired described as “an export of an internal database containing information on 1,200 past and current members.” The unsecured data warehouse included mailing lists, mailers, and recruitment documents. Among the secretive membership roles, Wired found at least one “recent commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services” who joined in 2019 but asked that their membership remain secret. Another strategy document found by Wired showed a prior “unified plan” to “continue discrediting the SPLC,” the organization that called ACP a hate group.

Another interesting part of the document leak was a contract from April 2021, where the Alliance Defending Freedom (the conservative legal group trying to get mifepristone off the market, among other anti-abortion goals) agreed to represent the ACP pro bono. As Wired reported: “It stipulates that ADF’s ability to subsidize expenses incurred during lawsuits would be limited by ethical guidelines; however, it could still forgive any lingering costs simply by declaring the College ‘indigent.’”

ACP did not respond to Wired for a request for comment. The group’s last public press release was in April, after a federal judge tried to remove federal authorization of mifepristone.