S.Africa’s graft watchdog clears Ramaphosa in farm cash scandal

By AFP
Published June 30, 2023

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa has always denied any wrongdoing 

- Copyright AFP Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD

South Africa’s corruption watchdog on Friday absolved President Cyril Ramaphosa of allegations that he breached executive ethics in a farm cash scandal that spawned into one of the biggest storms of his career.

The scandal erupted in June last year when the country’s former spy boss filed a complaint with the police alleging that Ramaphosa had concealed the 2020 theft of a huge haul of foreign currency from his Phala Phala farm.

An investigation by the ombudswoman, also known as the public protector, found that Ramaphosa’s handling of the case was not in violation of the constitution.

“Aggregated against the standard imposed by the executive ethics code it is found that there is no basis upon which to conclude that the president contravened” the relevant clauses of the law, “including the period following the alleged theft of US dollars”, interim ombudswoman, Kholeka Gcaleka told a news conference in Pretoria.

The public protector’s office is an independent state institution provided for in the constitution and reports on misconduct or malfeasance within the government. But it has no powers to prosecute.

The police is carrying out its own investigation in the farm heist case which raised accusations of money-laundering and corruption by the 70-year-old president.

Ramaphosa has always denied any wrongdoing.

He said the cash — more than half a million dollars stashed beneath sofa cushions — was payment for buffaloes bought by a Sudanese businessman.

A parliament-sanctioned independent panel said last year that he “may have committed” serious violations and misconduct.

Parliament later decided not to initiate impeachment proceedings that could have forced him out of office.

Ramaphosa, a former union boss who became a business tycoon after apartheid, stepped into the president’s job in February 2018.

He came into office promising a “new dawn” after the scandal-rocked tenure of former president Jacob Zuma.

As prices soar, Japan returns to human waste fertiliser

By AFP
Published June 29, 2023

Shimogoe is made from a combination of treated sewage sludge from septic tanks and human waste from cesspits -

 Copyright AFP Jung Yeon-je

Kyoko HASEGAWA

It’s cheap, recycled, and has centuries of tradition: “shimogoe” or “fertiliser from a person’s bottom” is finding new favour in Japan as Ukraine’s war hikes the price of chemical alternatives.

As in several parts of the world, the use of “night soil” to fertilise crops was once common in Japan.

However, the advent of sewage systems and treatment facilities, as well as chemical fertilisers, saw it fall out of fashion.

About a decade ago, Japanese treatment facilities wondered if they could revive interest to avoid sewage sludge disposal — a costly and potentially environmentally damaging process.

But enthusiasm was limited until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent the cost of chemical fertilisers soaring.

That has been a bonanza for a facility in northern Japan’s Tome, where sales of shimogoe were up 160 percent year-on-year by March 2023.

For the first time since the city began producing the fertiliser in 2010, it has sold out.

The demand is easy to explain, said facility vice president Toshiaki Kato.

“Our fertiliser is popular because it is cheap, and it is helping farmers cut soaring costs,” he told AFP.

“It is also good for the environment.”

Made of a combination of treated sewage sludge from septic tanks and human waste from cesspits, the fertiliser goes for 160 yen ($1.10) per 15 kilos.

That’s about a tenth of the price of products made from imported raw materials.

In southwestern Japan’s Saga too, officials report sales are up two to three times.

And dozens of tour groups from municipalities elsewhere in the country have visited, eager to replicate their programme.

– Historic origins –

Shimogoe was a key fertiliser in Japan’s pre-modern Edo era, said Arata Kobayashi, a fertiliser specialist who has written journal articles on the subject.

In the early 18th century, the one million residents of Tokyo — then called Edo — “produced” an estimated 500,000 tonnes of fertiliser a year.

It was big business, involving gatherers, transporters and farmers, “and all of them benefited from the recycling system,” Kobayashi said.

They “didn’t create a recycling system on purpose… it was the result of everyone pursuing profit.”

Japan’s government has encouraged the revival, citing environmental benefits, and concerns about food security since Russia’s invasion.

The ministry of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries hopes to double animal manure and human waste use by 2030, with a goal of them accounting for 40 percent of all fertiliser use in Japan.

In Miura outside Tokyo, vacuum trucks carrying human waste arrive one after another at a treatment facility.

Water is removed and then bacteria ferment the remaining solids in huge tanks.

Methane produced during the process is burned to supply the facility’s hot water and electricity, and the final product is a soil-like powder that can be spread on fields.

“We produce 500 tonnes of fertiliser annually,” said Kenichi Ryose, facility manager at Miura Biomass Centre.

“This fertiliser is particularly good for leaf vegetables, like cabbage,” he added.

Ryose said “harmful materials like heavy metals are removed from processed sewage sludge before arriving” at the plant.

In the United States, there have been recent concerns about the levels of so-called forever chemicals (PFAS) in fertiliser made from sewage.

An environment ministry official said similar concerns had not been reported in Japan, but noted there are no current guidelines for PFAS levels in soil.

“We’re in the process of developing a scientifically reliable way to measure PFAS and studying how to regulate it,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

– ‘Dirty mud’ –

The sun is shining as the trucks arrive, and despite the facility’s odour-absorbing machines, a distinct aroma fills the air.

The smell has proved something of a problem, admitted Nobuyoshi Fujiwara, 41, who runs a lettuce farm in Yokosuka, north of Miura.

He started using shimogoe last year, “because I wanted to cut costs, and for the social good” of recycling waste.

But “we can’t use it in fields near houses, because there are complaints about the smell”.

“Also, you have to spread four or five times the volume that you use with regular chemical fertilisers,” he explained.

That’s the case for any type of manure, but can be a turn-off for some farmers because it is more work.

He concedes that the fertiliser faces something of a branding issue.

“The Chinese characters that are used for sludge — ‘dirty mud’ — are not great,” he said.

“Even though we produce safe food, I imagine that for those who don’t know much about it, the impressions people have of fertiliser made from human faeces might not be good.”

He doesn’t want to hide his use of the fertiliser though. In fact, he would like to see it publicised.

“An official certification system would be helpful to promote our produce,” he said.

Haiti plight has ‘never been worse,’ UNICEF chief warns


By AFP
Published June 29, 2023

Families fleeing Haiti's swirling gang violence gather in a part of the capital Port-au-Prince, as the UN dhildren's fund warns the country's conditions have 'never been worse'

- Copyright AFP Richard PIERRIN

Children recruited by gangs, houses burned and young girls raped are examples of the latest “horror” befalling Haiti’s people, the head of UNICEF described Thursday as she implored the world not to abandon the violence-plagued country.

The impoverished Caribbean nation “is truly becoming a forgotten crisis,” warned Catherine Russell days after returning from the capital Port-au-Prince.

The UN children’s fund director noted nearly half of Haiti’s population, an unprecedented 5.2 million people, were in dire need of humanitarian assistance, including nearly three million children.

Violent armed gangs control more than 60 percent of the capital and large swaths of the countryside, Russell told a briefing.

“Our team there are telling me it’s never been worse than it is now,” she said.

Russell highlighted “unprecedented hunger and malnutrition, grinding poverty, a crippled economy, resurgence of cholera, and a massive insecurity that creates a deadly downward spiral of violence.”

Compounding the crises, the flooding and earthquakes which ravage the country “continue to remind us all just how vulnerable Haiti is to climate change and natural disasters,” she added before reporting the shock testimonies from victims of gangs that are using rape as “a weapon for intimidation and control.”

At a survivors’ center in Port-au-Prince, “an 11-year-old girl told me in the softest voice that five men had grabbed her off the street,” Russell said.

“Three of the men raped her. She was eight months pregnant when we spoke and gave birth just a few days later.”

Russell said one woman told her that “armed men had barged into her house and raped her. Her 20-year-old sister resisted so strongly that they killed her by setting her on fire, then they burned down the house.”

Amid the relentless violence, schools and public areas that should be safe spaces are not, she added.

Russell accused the international community of sitting on their hands.

“Collectively the world is failing the Haitian people, and unless we take immediate action it’s hard to imagine a decent future for the population,” she said, noting that the government’s plea for an international assistance mission has so far gone unanswered.

“We can’t watch this country completely fall apart,” she said.

But “amid the horror was also some hope,” according to Russell.

She said she met teachers and health workers who were “braving the dangers of the streets” to show up for work educating and caring for Haiti’s children.

‘No future’: Egyptians risk lives at sea to reach Europe


By AFP
Published June 30, 2023

At least 82 people died in the shipwreck off Greece, one of the deadliest migrant drownings in recent years

- Copyright HELLENIC COASTGUARD/AFP/File -

Sofiane Alsaar

Hoping to escape a dire economy and bleak prospects, Egyptians are increasingly attempting the perilous sea crossing to Europe that this month claimed dozens of lives in a shipwreck off Greece.

“I spoke to my son for the last time on the evening of June 7. He told me they were taking off” two days later, said the father of a 14-year-old who had disappeared in the Mediterranean.

The crowded fishing boat his son boarded along with hundreds of other migrants set sail from Libya. It capsized in the Ionian Sea near Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula on the night of June 13 before reaching European shores.

At least 82 people died in what has been called one of the deadliest migrant drownings in recent years.

“Young men regularly leave our village without telling their families,” the father told AFP, requesting anonymity to protect his privacy.

“That’s what happened to us,” he said. “I found out that my son had left for Libya” where he spent 15 days before taking off to sea.

More than 100 survivors have been pulled from the water, but the United Nations said that between 400 and 750 passengers were crammed on the boat — their remains of many of them likely still at sea.

Authorities say 43 Egyptians survived. A local NGO, Refugees Platform in Egypt (RPE), said it has received dozens of calls from families desperate for news of their relatives.

From the father’s Nile Delta village of Naamna alone, RPE has identified 13 missing persons, including nine minors.

And in two villages in the Sharqia governorate, the NGO’s executive director, Nour Khalil, said more than 40 families had asked for help.

“We don’t have specific numbers of Egyptians that were on the boat, and authorities have not disclosed the number of Egyptians that disappeared,” Khalil told AFP.

– Unaccompanied minors –

An approximate figure — about 200 Egyptians aboard the trawler — was given by one popular talk show host, Amr Adib, who has close ties to the government.

But more than two weeks on, the missing teenager’s family have no idea what happened to him.

“We went to the foreign ministry and they took a DNA sample, but we don’t know anything, no one tells us anything,” the father said.

According to Frontex, the European Union’s border patrol agency, authorities logged 50,300 migrants arriving in Europe between January and May through the central Mediterranean, which the UN has called the world’s most dangerous migration route.

But some make it through undetected.

In 2022, one in every five migrants who made it to Italy by sea — and one in every three unaccompanied minors — was Egyptian, according to the European Union Agency for Asylum.

It says most make their way via Libya, pushed by Egypt’s worst economic crisis in modern history and what Egyptian rights groups describe as “catastrophic” human rights violations.

Cairo has crafted an image for itself as a line of defence against irregular migration to Europe, requesting funding in return and beefing up security at its borders.

– Problem only ‘moved’ –

Authorities say no migrant boat has left from Egyptian shores since 2016.

French President Emmanuel Macron this month hailed Egypt’s role as a “leading partner” of the EU on “illegal migration”, according to a statement from President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s office during a visit to Paris.

In August, the European Commission announced 80 million euros ($87 million) in funding for Egypt’s “border management” including “surveillance at land and sea borders”.

But “the militarisation of the border is not a solution” and exposes migrants to abuses in areas where rights watchdogs have restricted access, according to Khalil.

Instead of deterring those desperate to leave, “it only moved the problem. Egyptians now cross to Libya” and embark on the treacherous passage from there, said the NGO chief.

Libya has repeatedly come under fire from the UN for its handling of migrants, including arbitrary detention and mass expulsions.

In early June, Libyan media broadcast unverified footage showing hundreds of Egyptians purportedly forced to walk to the border as they were being deported from Egypt’s war-ravaged western neighbour.

Many migrants know the risk they face, and will likely keep making such journeys “as long as the new generation is not able to raise their voice or have economic prospects in Egypt”, Khalil said.

He noted a changing pattern of migration.

“Before, they would come to Europe for a few years, go back to Egypt and start a small business” with the money they saved while abroad.

Now, Khalil said, “the new generation doesn’t want to go back to Egypt, they see no future there.”

UK ‘spy cops’ tactics unjustified: public inquiry report

By AFP
Published June 29, 2023

A public inquiry report slammed the tactics of UK undercover police, saying they were not justifed - Copyright AFP Jim WATSON

An undercover UK policing unit that spied on hundreds of campaign groups over decades should have been shut down as its tactics were unjustified, a report concluded on Thursday.

Officers working for the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) used subterfuge to infiltrate political and campaign groups and spy on its members.

Some women were tricked into sexual relations with undercover officers, some of whom had used the names of dead children to create false identifies.

Former senior judge John Mitting concluded in a report that most left-wing and activist organisations spied upon posed no threat.

The public inquiry he is chairing is looking into 50 years of undercover policing in England and Wales, after revelations in recent years about the underhand tactics prompted public outrage.

The first report covers the years 1968 to 1982 and is based on more than 3,400 documents, files, statements and evidence from former officers, as well as members of the public directly affected.

The inquiry was set up by former prime minister Theresa May in 2015 but was delayed by the sensitive nature of the evidence, and the coronavirus pandemic.

Hearings only began in November 2020.

Further hearings will look at the impact of officers’ relationships with women, and the at wider impact the double lives they led, with a final report due in 2026.

Targets included justice campaigns, including that for Stephen Lawrence, the black victim of a racist murder by a group of white youths in south London in 1993.

The SDS was set up to gather intelligence to help uniformed officers handle events where there was a risk of public disorder.

– Unjustified –

Mitting concluded that while the unit did help policing preparations, its role should not be overstated.

Had its operations been made public in the 1970s, the unit would have been “brought to a rapid end”, he said, adding that little or no thought had been given to the effect of its tactics and long spells that officers spent working undercover.

“If these issues had been addressed, it is hard to see how any conclusion could legitimately have been reached which would not have resulted in the closure of the SDS,” he wrote.

Only three of the groups targeted at the time was justified in the public interest — Sinn Fein, which was the political wing of the paramilitary Irish Republican Army (IRA), and two others.

The two others have not been named publicly.

Mitting said “long-term deployments into left-wing and anarchist groups did make a real contribution” to policing but other, “less intrusive means” could have achieved the same results.

“The question is whether or not the end justified the means,” he added.

“I have come to the firm conclusion that, for a unit of a police force, it did not; and that had the use of these means been publicly known at the time, the SDS would have been brought to a rapid end.”

Jon Savell, from the Metropolitan Police, said regulation and oversight of undercover work had been transformed.

“The way in which undercover policing was conducted in the 1970s bears no relation to how it is conducted today,” he said.

Pope grants audience to Assange’s wife

By AFP
Published June 30, 2023

Stella Assange, wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has said her husband's extradition to the United States could be imminent - Copyright AFP Zakaria ABDELKAFI

Pope Francis met Friday with the wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as he nears the “endgame” of his fight against extradition to the United States on espionage charges.

Francis, the head of the worldwide Catholic Church, “received in audience Ms Stella Assange, with family members,” the Vatican said in a short statement.

On Twitter, Stella Assange said she and her children had been given a private audience with the 86-year-old Argentine pontiff, adding: “We are overwhelmed.”

Julian Assange is in prison in Britain, fighting extradition to the US, where he faces trial for allegedly violating the US Espionage Act by publishing military and diplomatic files in 2010 related to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

He could be sentenced to decades behind bars if found guilty.

During a protest in London against his extradition earlier this month, his wife said his transfer to the United States could be imminent.

“Julian could be a few weeks away from extradition. We don’t have a clear timeline, but this really is the endgame,” Stella Assange told reporters.

Supporters portray the Australian publisher as a martyr to press freedom.

The 51-year-old has been held since 2019 at the Belmarsh high security prison in southeast London.

He previously spent nearly seven years holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on allegations of sexual assault.

He claimed the allegations were politically motivated, linked to the work of WikiLeaks.

JUNE 30, 2023

The Struggle Against Assange’s Extradition Continue

BY EVE OTTENBERGFacebook

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Photograph Source: Ivan Radic – CC BY 2.0

As Julian Assange’s appeal of his extradition to the United States wends its way through British courts, now is a good time to review what’s at stake. Nothing less than a free press and the rule of law. That’s because Assange is being persecuted for publishing proof of U.S. military criminality, among other war and political matters. The charges may sound technical and focus on “hacking,” but the U.S. has pursued him for over a decade, thanks to his shocking revelations of American war crimes in Iraq. If the U.S. can get him on a technicality, even a fabricated one, it will try to do so. In the process, the empire has perverted the rule of law in the U.K., where Assange was tried in a kangaroo court. I say kangaroo court, because the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, ignored recognized standards of justice and law to reach a predetermined conclusion.

In early June, justice Jonathan Swift dismissed Assange’s appeal of his extradition. Not only that, he also informed the petitioners that “The application to rely on fresh evidence is refused.” The evidence we already have dates from September 2020, when Baraitser heard the case. Not surprisingly, since that time, Assange’s counsel found more evidence, because, frankly, there’s no dearth of it. More to the point, the old evidence was never weighed properly by Baraitser to begin with. It screams to be revisited.

But judge Swift, formerly a lawyer for the British government, dismissed it all rather brusquely. “There are eight proposed grounds of appeal. They are set out at great length (some 100 pages) but the extraordinary length of the pleading serves only to make clear that the proposed appeal comes to no more than an attempt to re-run the extensive arguments made to and rejected by the District Judge.” Never mind that the district judge, Baraitser, adopted the prosecutor’s directives as her legal decisions, and that that prosecutor, John Lewis, got those directives from the U.S. government, according to former diplomat Craig Murray. Baraitser’s ruling made a shambles of the law, from which it will not easily recover.

And never mind that, as award-winning journalist Chris Hedges observed: “The CIA spied on Julian in the embassy…recorded the privileged conversations between Julian and his lawyers as they discussed his defense. This fact alone invalidated the trial.” And never mind that Assange isn’t even a U.S. citizen, so what business the Espionage Act has being applied to him is far from clear to a lay person of average common sense. Such application apparently means that American laws apply globally, to anyone the U.S. sees fit to prosecute anywhere on the planet, though these non-citizens lack any of the American rights defined in the U.S. constitution. That, on its face, is preposterous. So the question remains: by what legal hocus pocus can Assange, a publisher, be construed as a traitor to the U.S., when he is not an American citizen?

Leaving aside the debate on whether the horrific Espionage Act – which should not exist in any government and jurisprudence that boast of their freedoms – can even apply to Assange, you should note that the indictment oversteps in other ways as well. Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University told the New York Times, back on May 23, 2019: “The charges rely almost entirely on conduct that investigative journalists engage in every day. The indictment should be understood as a frontal attack on press freedom.”

Assange’s appeal discusses his exposure of U.S. government criminality in its wars of choice. “The law is fiercely protective of human rights defenders,” the appeal notes. “Exposure of state criminality is, in law, a protected political act, the product of a political opinion. Prosecutions on account of such acts are straightforwardly prohibited…The history of this prosecution…is a textbook example of political persecution. The course of this case since 2011 is simply extraordinary. It involves, inter alia, U.S. Governmental plots to interfere with judges who investigate the matters Mr. Assange exposed; to silence the International Criminal Court (ICC) who have taken up Mr. Assange’s disclosures and to kidnap and rendition Mr. Assange himself, or else murder him.” So the U.S. violated Assange’s human rights based on his political views. It persecuted him based on those political views. Those facts rebut the rulings against him. But both judges Swift and Baraitser closed their eyes, ears and minds to these self-evident truths.

Meanwhile, the U.S. violation of Assange’s rights is deeper and darker than may first appear. The Trump administration was up to its neck in criminal machinations on how to murder or kidnap Assange. On September 27, 2021, the Guardian recounted, “The discussions on kidnapping or killing Assange took place in 2017, Yahoo News reported…The then CIA director, Mike Pompeo and his top officials were furious about WikiLeaks’ publication of ‘Vault7.’…Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration went so far as to request ‘sketches’ or ‘options’ for killing Assange.”

So again, as Assange’s appeal states, the prosecution amounts to political persecution. Assange’s counsel demolishes that prosecution, arguing that: “(a) It is unprecedented in law. (b) It cuts clean across established principles of free speech. (c) To deal with that, it anticipates a trial at which Mr. Assange, as a foreigner, can be denied reliance on the First Amendment (d) indeed a trial without protections of the U.S. Constitution altogether and (e) is accompanied by exposure to a grossly disproportionate sentence.” Got that? Assange will be prosecuted in the U.S. with NO constitutional protections, just as if he were in a Nazi or Soviet court.

The appeal’s section treating Assange’s political views begins: “Professor Noam Chomsky, Professor Paul Rogers and Daniel Ellsberg all outlined for the DJ [district judge Baraitser] Mr. Assange’s political opinions and how/why these opinions brought him into conflict with the U.S. Government. The U.S., in the end, did not challenge those witnesses’ assertion that Mr. Assange has ‘political opinions’ related to transparency, democratic accountability, opposition to surveillance, opposition to war crimes and human rights abuses. Nor did the prosecution challenge the evidence of Rogers, Ellsberg and Chomsky that these opinions motivated his conduct.” The prosecution did not challenge these things because it couldn’t. Only in the very skewed world of Baraitser’s courtroom could such an atrocious prosecution have prevailed.

So Assange has been persecuted by an abusive prosecution for his political views and for the free speech right to express them. This prosecution defies the law. It should never have happened. Hopefully, either Assange’s next appeal to the British court or the one to the European Court of Human Rights will prevail. In the U.K., his case will come before two new judges, so, as his wife, Stella Assange, noted, there is good reason for optimism that he will not be extradited. For Assange, his human rights are at stake and possibly his very life, as even judge Baraitser noted, when she referred to him as a serious suicide risk in a U.S. supermax prison. For the rest of us, the end of press freedom and basic legal fairness hang in the balance.

Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest book is Roman Summer. She can be reached at her website.

Night of fires, looting in Lille as protests sweep France

By AFP
Published June 30, 2023

Firefighters in and around Lille spent the night rushing from blaze to blaze

- Copyright AFP Jung Yeon-je
Zoé LEROY

A burned district office, another pelted with stones, “lots of looting”: in Lille, in the north of France, a game of cat and mouse played out into the wee hours of Friday morning between authorities and protesters.

As in other French cities, the metropolis of one and a half million near the Belgian border has been convulsed by at-times violent demonstrations since Tuesday’s fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old named Nahel in Nanterre, near Paris.

The incident revived longstanding grievances about policing and racial profiling in France’s multiethnic suburbs, but some in Lille suggested the backlash had gone too far, even as they denounced the shooting.

In the district of Wazemmes, firefighters worked until after midnight to extinguish a blaze that damaged the ground floor and blackened the facade of the local district hall.

“Burning a district hall is useless,” said 22-year-old bus driver Sofiane, standing in front of the charred edifice as fireworks sounded in the distance.

“The cop who did this did not have to do it”, he said of the officer who shot Nahel, “but attacking public places, what does it serve?”

District councillor Brice Lauret, who had rushed to the scene, said the violence was “unacceptable”.

“I can understand anger, but not violence,” he added.

In another area, Fives, the district hall was targeted with stones, its windows broken out, according to Lille city hall, while an elementary school in the neighbourhood of Moulins was badly damaged by flames.

There was also “a lot of looting” of shops and supermarkets, it added, saying “very mobile small groups, composed of very young” individuals were striking “everywhere”.

– ‘Today they are shooting’ –

The city had beefed up its security presence on Thursday, deploying elite RAID units, a helicopter and police drones after violence broke out the previous night, though the measures appeared to have little deterrent effect.

The first incidents started around 9:00 pm (1900 GMT), in the sector of the central police station, where authorities had prohibited gatherings after calls for a rally went out on social media.

Mobile and scattered, small groups of young people set fire to trash cans and cars on a main artery. Some broke the windows of a supermarket, later emerging with bottles of soda.

RAID officers, aboard an ATV and in an armoured vehicle, intervened several times, brandishing projectile launchers.

“They are not showing any mercy; today they are shooting,” commented one passerby who, like many interviewed by AFP, declined to identify himself.

– From blaze to blaze –

Tensions were also high in the nearby municipality of Roubaix, one of the poorest in France, where firefighters dashed from blaze to blaze throughout the night.

Next to a theatre with broken-out windows, barricades burned as fireworks crisscrossed the sky. Near the train station, a hotel caught fire, sending its dozen or so residents fleeing into the streets.

As firefighters battled the blaze, another was already starting nearby in a large office building, residents said.

“In two days, they did what the Yellow Vests did in two years,” said one pedestrian, referring to the spontaneous and sometimes violent anti-government protest movement that broke out in 2018.

Not far away, a witness recounted having seen a group of about 50 people set fire to a brokerage company’s office.

A social centre in the city was also set on fire, according to Amine Elbahi, who ran unsuccessfully in the area in the last legislative elections.

“The police, they feel free to do anything. They killed an innocent youth, they have to stop,” said one 16-year-old passerby back in Lille.

Another man in his 20s appeared to agree: “Nahel’s death is too serious, it’s unjustified.”

“But the reaction is bad; degrading public services is useless,” he added. “It’s our money that will fix all this.”

State of emergency mulled by French govt over protest violence

By AFP
Published June 30, 2023

Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne, left, is attending a crisis meeting with President Emmanuel Macron - Copyright HELLENIC COASTGUARD/AFP/File

Anne RENAUT

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said Friday that the government was considering “all options” to restore order, including declaring a state of emergency, after a third night of rioting over a police officer’s killing of a youth.

Asked by reporters if a state of emergency was a possibility, as some right-wing opposition parties have demanded, Borne replied: “I won’t tell you now, but we are looking at all options, with one priority: restoring order throughout the country”.

The prime minister, who was visiting a police station in Evry-Courcouronnes south of Paris, is to attend a crisis security meeting chaired by President Emmanuel Macron at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT).

A state of emergency would give authorities increased powers to declare localised curfews, ban demonstrations, and give police more freedom in restraining suspected rioters and searching homes.

Macron cut short a trip to Brussels for an EU summit on Friday and was said by an aide to be prepared to adopt new measures “without taboos”, though some ministers in the cabinet are known to be opposed to a state of emergency.

During the nationwide urban riots in 2005, the right-wing government at the time declared a state of emergency after around two weeks of clashes, the first time the measure had been used in mainland France since the 1950s.

“We are calling for a curfew initially, then the imposition of a full state of emergency and the mobilisation of all the forces of law and order in the country,” spokesman for the far-right National Rally Sebastien Chenu told LCI television Friday.

“Right now we’re at the bottom of a cliff and we need to be extremely tough,” he said.

The head of the right-wing Republicans party, Eric Ciotti, had called for a state of emergency on Thursday, saying “The nation cannot waver in any circumstances”.

Around 40,000 security forces were deployed on Thursday evening and 875 people were arrested overnight, according to the interior ministry.

– ‘Admission of failure?’ –

France lived under a state of emergency for two years following the November 2015 terror attacks by jihadist gunmen that left 130 people dead at the Bataclan concert hall, restaurants and the national sports stadium.

Many of the anti-terror provisions in the emergency law, including giving the government powers to close places of worship and restrain people without trial, were included in a new law passed in 2017 under Macron that was widely criticised by civil liberties groups.

An aide to Macron had played down the possibility of emergency law on Thursday, saying that there was “no need for an over-reaction”.

Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Olivier Klein also spoke out against it on Friday, telling France Inter radio that it would be “an admission of failure”.

“I think we still have other options,” he said.

Clamart, a suburb southwest of Paris, became the first area to declare a nightly curfew on Thursday, while public bus and tram services in the capital region were stopped at 9:00 pm — a measure that will now be imposed nightly for an indefinite period.

Mother leads rally in memory of French teen killed by police

By AFP
Published June 29, 2023

So so-called "white march" for Nahel was led by his mother Mounia 

- Copyright AFP/File JUSTIN TALLIS

Thousands of people on Thursday took to the streets of a Paris suburb to remember a French teen killed by police during a traffic stop, with protesters led by his mother as anger showed no sign of abating.

Nahel M., 17, was shot in the chest at point-blank range in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday in an incident captured on video that has reignited debate in France about police tactics.

A march in Nahel’s memory was led by his mother Mounia who waved at the crowds from an open top truck wearing a white t-shirt with the slogan “Justice for Nahel 27/06/23” and also brandishing a heart shape.

“No justice, no peace!”, the crowds chanted, adding: “Everyone hates the police!”.

There was no sign of the kind of violence that has marked the late night protests over the past 48 hours across France.

Some carried signs such as “Police kill”, “How many other Nahels were not filmed?” or even “Our lives are in danger”.

Assa Traore, a well-known activist against police violence whose brother died after being arrested in 2016, told the rally: “The whole world must see that when we walk for Nahel, we walk for all those who were not filmed.”

The local MP from France’s Green party Sabrina Sebaihi said: “This march is a moment of meditation and mourning for the family, it is important to respect it.”

leo-ld-mby-sjw/jh/jmm

Swiss want moratorium on deep-sea mining

By AFP
Published June 28, 2023

Switzerland said deep-sea mining in the international seabed area must be postponed until protection from the 'harmful effects' could be ensured - Copyright POOL/AFP Jade GAO

Switzerland, a global commodities trading hub, decided Wednesday to push for a moratorium on commercial exploitation of the international seabed area, which has enormous mineral resources.

Bern said deep-sea mining in the area “must be postponed” until protection from the “harmful effects” could be ensured.

Switzerland will “support a moratorium on commercial exploitation of the area until there is more scientific knowledge of its impact and protection of the marine environment can be guaranteed”, the government said in a statement.

Wildlife conservation group WWF said: “Switzerland is sending an important signal for the protection of the oceans and their biodiversity”.

Meanwhile the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature said it was “fantastic news on deep sea mining”.

Greenpeace called it a “success for the oceans”.

Switzerland will take its position to the 28th session of the International Seabed Authority in Jamaica’s capital Kingston next month.

The ISA organises and controls all mineral resources-related activities in the international seabed, outside national territorial jurisdiction, “for the benefit of all humankind”, it says.

It is mandated to ensure the effective protection of the marine environment from the potentially harmful consequences of seabed extraction operations.

The deep seabed covers around 54 percent of the total area of the world’s ocean floor.

“There is growing interest from certain states and companies who wish to commercially exploit the area’s mineral resources, which are potentially useful for the transition to renewable energy,” the Swiss government said.

“Minerals such as cobalt and manganese are needed to manufacture electric vehicle batteries,” it added.

However, most ISA member states think no commercial seabed mining should be allowed before regulations are in place, it said.

Some 15 countries have gone further and are opposed to any commercial use of the area, with or without regulations, Bern added.

Switzerland is a stronghold for commodity trading. It is home to large companies like Glencore — active in coal, metals and oil — or firms like Vitol or Trafigura, based in Singapore but with a large operations centre in Geneva.

With a net profit of $17.3 billion in 2022, Glencore is a juggernaut in the brokerage of metals, such as copper, zinc, nickel or cobalt.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for DEEP SEA MINING 

Environmentalists sue Norway over new oil projects

By AFP
Published June 29, 2023

Norway's petroleum and energy ministry gave its green light Wednesday to 19 fossil fuel projects worth more than 200 billion kroner ($18.6 billion) - Copyright AFP Nhac NGUYEN

Two environmental groups said Thursday they were suing the Norwegian state for violating the country’s human rights commitments and constitution by planning new oil and gas projects worth nearly $19 billion.

The Nordic branch of Greenpeace and Natur og Ungdom, which previously lost a similar lawsuit brought against the state, objected to the planned development of three new oil fields approved by the government.

“The Norwegian government is hellbent on opening new oil fields that will produce fossil fuels decades into the future,” the head of Greenpeace Norway, Frode Pleym, said in a statement.

“It is blatantly disregarding the climate, the science, and even our own Supreme Court in its effort to please the oil industry,” he added.

Norway’s petroleum and energy ministry gave its green light Wednesday to 19 fossil fuel projects worth more than 200 billion kroner ($18.6 billion).

They include the extension of existing oil and gas fields and investments to increase the rate of hydrocarbon recovery in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea, as well as the opening of new fields, including Yggdrasil, which belongs to Norwegian group Aker BP.

The two other fields — Tyrving, also controlled by Aker BP, and Breidablikk, operated by Norway’s Equinor — had previously received government authorisation.

– ‘Inadequate’ impact studies –

The government said the projects would boost employment and hone skills, and cited the need for Norway — which became Europe’s biggest gas supplier last year following the war in Ukraine — to continue supplying energy to the continent.

In December 2020, Norway’s Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace and Natur og Ungdom calling for the cancellation of exploration licenses granted in May 2016 to 13 oil companies in the fragile Arctic region.

The court argued that Article 112 of Norway’s constitution which guarantees the right to a healthy environment could only be invoked if the state failed to shoulder responsibility for the environment and climate, which it said was not the case.

This time, the two organisations argue climate impact studies on the future oil fields are “either non-existent or highly inadequate”.

They also claim the state is violating its obligation to take children’s best interests into account, which they say is a violation of both Norway’s constitution and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The petroleum and energy ministry disagreed.

“The government is respecting its commitments in the Paris (climate) treaty”, state secretary Andreas Bjelland Eriksen said.

“At the same time, we need to contribute to energy security during the transition… The authorisations we have granted ensure that Europe will continue to have access to energy in the future as well”.

DUTY TO ACCOMODATE - UNANIMOUS 

US high court sets new rule for firms requiring work on religious holidays

By AFP
Published June 29, 2023

Former US postal worker Gerald Groff had resigned from his job after not meeting requirements to work some Sundays 

- Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File KEVORK DJANSEZIAN

The US Supreme Court set a tougher standard Thursday for companies to be able to claim “undue hardship” when requiring employees to work on religious holidays.

It ruled unanimously in the case of former postal worker Gerald Groff, whose requests to not work on Sundays due to his Christian beliefs were not accommodated by the US Postal Service (USPS).

Groff resigned after not meeting USPS requirements to work some Sundays and sued on the basis of his constitutional right to practice his faith.

Successive lower courts had rejected his complaint, saying USPS made efforts to accommodate him and had proved under the legal standard that it would suffer “undue hardship” to its business if it had to find other workers to fill his spot.

In their ruling, the high court justices did not focus on Groff’s religious rights.

Instead, the issue was how “undue hardship” was defined — how much difficulty a business would have to incur to justify forcing a worker to work on a religious holiday.

A 46-year-old precedent case, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, said “undue hardship” could be defined as anything more than minimal — “de minimis” — cost to the business.

“De minimis” then became a standard that religious rights advocates say essentially allowed businesses to reject any faith-related work request by an employee.

“Hardison’s ‘de minimis’ test makes a mockery of the English language and no party truly defends it today,” Groff’s attorney Aaron Streett told the court in an April hearing.

Attorneys on both sides of the case agreed on that specific issue, and it was on that that the justices ruled Thursday.

The Hardison phrase “more than a de minimis cost” is insufficient for establishing “undue hardship,” the court ruled.

“Under any definition, a hardship is more severe than a mere burden,” it said.

In future cases, it said, if a company wants to prove it cannot meet an employee’s religious scheduling needs, the employer must show that it “would result in substantial increased costs” to its business.

The ruling was not an absolute victory for Groff, however. The Supreme Court sent the case back to the appeals court for a rehearing under the new standard.

USPS will then be under pressure to prove that Groff’s needs would add “substantial increased costs” to its business.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/business/us-high-court-sets-new-rule-for-firms-requiring-work-on-religious-holidays/article#ixzz8686wWM4q