ITALY
Man arrested for threatening to kill gay son

Foggia man, 57, told son and wife 'I'll cut off your head'

Redazione ANSA ROME
25 September 2023

(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 25 - A 57-year-old Foggia man threatened to kill his 20-year-old son after the young man came out as gay, and threatened the life of his wife too after she supported his new life, sources said Monday.

"You're gay, I'll publish all your cross-dressing photos on Facebook, I'll make your life impossible, I'll kill you, I'll cut off your heard," said the man, according to the arrest warrant.

When his wife intervened to defend the young man, he reportedly told her too: "You're worthless, I'll kill you, I'll cut off your head," according to the police document.

 (ANSA).

HE TOLD HIS SON BETTER TO DIE A JIHADI 

ITALY
Students camp out to protest at astronomical rents
Protests all week in 25 cities

Redazione ANSAROME
25 September 2023

(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 25 - Students were pitching tents outside university buildings all over Italy on Monday to protest at the astronomical rents they face when studying away from their home towns.

It is the latest in a series of camp protest students have staged to highlight the problem.
This one will last all week in 25 Italian cities.

"We are pitching tents at La Sapienza (University on Rome) again," said the Union of University Students (UDU).

"We decided to protest as the government continues to ignore the high cost of studying and the accommodation crisis, without implementing any concrete solutions".

 (ANSA).

Researchers say world’s mountain treelines are rising due to climate change

The closed-loop mountain treelines encircle a mountain and are less likely to have been influenced by human activities and land usage.

SEP 22, 2023,

BEIJING – Chinese researchers have shed light on the factors that drove the world’s mountain treelines to move upwards, providing new evidence for the impact of climate change on global ecosystems, according to a study published in the journal Global Change Biology.

Mountain treelines are sensitive to climate change. However, the way that climate impacts mountain treelines is not fully understood, as they may also be affected by human activities.

A research group led by Dr Zeng Zhenzhong from the School of Environmental Science and Engineering, China’s Southern University of Science and Technology, established a global mountain treeline database by collecting high-resolution remote-sensing images of some 916,000km of closed-loop mountain treelines across 243 mountains around the world.

The closed-loop mountain treelines encircle a mountain and are less likely to have been influenced by human activities and land usage.

After analysing the database, the group found that temperature is the main climatic driver of treeline elevation in boreal and tropical regions, whereas precipitation is the main factor in temperate zones.

About 70 per cent of closed-loop mountain treelines have moved upward, with an average shift rate of 1.2 metres per year over the first decade of the 21st century, according to the study published in July this year and reported by China Science Daily on Thursday.

The study also found that treelines are shifting fastest in the tropical regions, with an average shift rate of 3.1 metres per year. For example, in Malawi, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, some treelines are moving upward at a rate of 10 metres per year.

While the upward movement of treelines means more trees can absorb more carbon from the atmosphere and expand the habitat of some forest species, it also poses challenges for fragile ecosystems at high altitudes, according to Dr He Xinyue, the first author of the paper.

Plants and animals at high altitudes are often very sensitive to environmental changes. As treelines moved up, they began to compete for space and nutrition, which could seriously threaten some endemic species, He added. 

XINHUA

South Korea's Yoon lambasts critics, calling them ‘communists’

FASCISTS CALL THEIR OPPONENTS COMMUNISTS

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's disapproval ratings stood at 59%, according to a recent poll, up from 37% when elected last year. | POOL / VIA REUTERS

BY HYUNSU YIM
REUTERS
Sep 22, 2023

SEOUL –

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's branding of critics as "communist totalitarian and anti-state forces" may rally his conservative base and distract from unease about some of his policies, but it risks fueling division and alienating some voters.

In South Korea, the label of communist carries higher stakes than in many Western democracies with the ongoing threat from ostensibly communist North Korea and Cold War-era laws that effectively ban activities deemed related to communism.

Yoon's remarks and the renewed public debate over communism come with his approval ratings slipping and political tensions rising ahead of a general election in April.

They also come at a time of a noticeable shift in Seoul's foreign policy as Yoon pushes for trilateral cooperation with the U.S. and Japan despite lingering public unease with Tokyo over historical issues, said Kevin Gray, a professor at University of Sussex.

"There is a legitimacy problem for Yoon in the sense that the gap between popular opinion in South Korea and what is being pursued internationally is increasing," Gray said.

"He has decided to take an approach not of trying to convince people but to label the opposition as being somehow an anti-state, communist totalitarian force."

In a speech earlier this month, Yoon said South Korea's freedom is "under constant threat" from "communist totalitarian and anti-state forces" who are critical of South Korea's deepening ties with the U.S. and Japan.

"The forces of communist totalitarianism have disguised themselves as democracy activists, human rights advocates and progressive activists," Yoon said in another speech for Liberation Day last month.

The liberal opposition party, which controls the National Assembly but is in disarray amid corruption charges against its leader, has criticized Yoon for wasting his term on an "ideological war” that deepens political divides and does nothing to address real problems.

"The president keeps emphasizing the threat from communist forces which don't exist," a spokesperson for the Democratic Party said at a briefing recently.

The presidential office declined to comment on Yoon's description of critics of his policies as "communists."

Sinking approval ratings

Yoon's disapproval ratings stood at 59%, according to a Gallup poll released on Friday, up from 37% when elected last year. Foreign policy, the government's economic management and stance on Japan's Fukushima wastewater release were the leading issues.

Given his low approval ratings, analysts say labeling his opponents as communists may still be useful for Yoon to hold onto his party's conservative base.

Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the legacy of the Korean War and North Korean infiltration into the South means "red-baiting" is still effective in demonizing opponents.

Earlier this year, four former officials at the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the biggest umbrella union in the country, were charged over links to North Korean spies and violating the National Security Act.

"Unfortunately, such tactics only deepen political divides, contributing to nationalist polarization," Yeo said.

Benjamin Engel, a research professor at Seoul National University, said Yoon's approach risks alienating some more moderate voters.

"During his campaign, Yoon often used the phrase 'uniting the people.' But his recent policies, rhetoric, and appointments suggest he is moving away from uniting the people. The result will be some people who may have voted for him last year now feel alienated," Engel said.

The 'new right' movement

Yoon has aligned himself with the "New Right" movement which offers a more "charitable" view of the country's authoritarian past and its link to the Japanese colonial period, Yeo said.

Rhee Jong-hoon, a Seoul-based political commentator, sees Yoon's more right wing approach as being influenced in part by his late father who studied in Japan and once took part in a signature campaign linked to the New Right movement.

"Yoon has perhaps always warmed to and sympathized with the figures who his father had hung out with and are associated with the New Right movement," Rhee said.

"It would be difficult to imagine (his move) being driven without his own deeply rooted conviction," Rhee said.

UK

The National Trust, which has more than 250,000 hectares (almost 620,000 acres) of farmland in its stewardship, is a thorn in the side to the government and its masters in the oil-money funded Tufton Street thinktanks

Stewart Lee

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, 24 September 2023 

I love British traditions. Whose heart soars not upon seeing some drunk men chasing a cheese down a fatally steep Gloucestershire hill, or some drunk men burning their faces off carrying flaming tar barrels on their heads in a Devonshire village, or some drunk men dropping an enormous effigy of David Jason into a giant burning boozer made of straw in a Hertfordshire hamlet at midnight? In Spanish fire bull festivals, cruel peasants set fire to animals. Here, outside the EU, we merely set fire to ourselves.

But the nights are drawing in and soon it will be time for one of the oldest, and most enjoyable, British traditions of all. Because it’s that time of year when, in the run-up to the National Trust’s AGM on 11 November, the opaquely funded “anti-woke” pressure group Restore Trust, backed by Neil Record of the Tufton Street climate crisis denial bodies Global Warming Policy Foundation and Net Zero Watch, tries to have its own pod people planted on the board. Sing ye wassail! It’s that time again!!

The National Trust, which has more than 250,000 hectares (almost 620,000 acres) of farmland in its stewardship, is a thorn in the side to the government and its masters in the oil-money funded Tufton Street thinktanks. National Trust members actually vote for board members themselves, while cultural and environmental organisations that take public funding, such as the British Museum, the V&A, the Natural History Museum and Kew Gardens, use a supposedly unbiased public appointments process to nobble their nabobs. This unbiased public appointments process has recently seen GB News social affairs editor Inaya Folarin Iman and Boris Johnson’s Mustique holiday facilitator David Ross parachuted on to the board of the National Portrait Gallery, whose trustees have included the spectral courgette Jacob Rees-Mogg, and where doubtless they spend a lot of time wondering how the invention of photography impacted on representational art.

A bird in the hand isn’t worth any in the bush at all if all the bushes have burned down in the climate crisis

But does this apparent covert jerrymandering actually jeopardise the future of all life on Earth? The answer is, sadly, yes. For example, much as we all love birds, it’s simply not possible for our feathered friends to survive without an environment to fly around in, so it makes perfect sense for a charity that likes birds to be concerned about preserving the places they live. A bird in the hand isn’t worth any in the bush at all if all the bushes have burned down in a massive brush fire due to the climate crisis and there were no birds in them anyway because they were all dead. So it’s obvious that the RSPB should be interested in environmental issues, because to ignore them would be the equivalent of spending 10 hours making a luxurious soup, having previously smashed every bowl in your house into smithereens and melted all the spoons down into tiny effigies of Wycombe MP Steve Baker.

But, in August, when the RSPB called Rishi Sunak, Michael Gove and Thérèse Coffey “liars” for abandoning their environmental commitments, the RSPB’s own trustee Ben Caldecott helped to force a climbdown. Caldecott is, insanely, a senior fellow of the ExxonMobil-funded thinktank Policy Exchange, one of the Tufton Street gang of organisations, whose 2019 suggestion that the government should pass legislation to crackdown on Extinction Rebellion reportedly shaped Priti Patel’s draconian 2022 police bill. So last week, 68-year-old Trudi Warner was prosecuted for holding up a sign outside the Inner London crown court that said: “Jurors: you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.” It’s acts of environmental terrorism like this that must be clamped down on. No one wants to live in a world where old women hold up signs.

In the hallowed hall behind Warner, Judge Silas Reid had ruled that, during the trial of three environmentalists, environmental issues were not to be mentioned, presumably fearful that if the jury understood why the defendants had blocked the road, they’d let them off, and then we’d be in a nightmare dystopia that pitched morality against law and saw a load of old men who enjoy a few swift ones before the afternoon session out of a job for life.

The point being that the oil-smeared ghouls of Tufton Street and the Tory party have already gelded street protest with the police bill, and prevented public bodies from speaking out by stuffing them with their cronies, but the National Trust can only be infiltrated by Tufton Street should the members vote for the infiltrators. It’s a harder 18th-century walnut dresser to crack. So, every year, the ghostly astroturfed group Restore Trust emerges from the netherlands on social media and, in a campaign that appears coordinated with opinion piece writers at papers like the Times and the Daily Telegraph, attempts to get National Trust members to vote for its own plants, the usual mix of libertarians, cranks and arseholes.

This year’s star Restore Trust stooge is the historian and judge Lord Sumption, who, despite sounding like a character in a William Makepeace Thackeray novel who liked to either assume things or consume things or both, is a step up from Restore Trust’s star 2021 candidate, Stephen Green of Christian Voice, who, it would seem, once supported overseas laws proposing the execution of some gay people, though not necessarily on National Trust property, at least unless the events are properly stewarded.

On Wednesday, Rishi Sunak ripped up another raft of environmental commitments in a move so sudden that even the chair of Ford UK found herself suffering a moral whiplash injury as she veered suddenly away from the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles she’d been steering towards. Street protest is now under threat to the point where the punk rock naturalist Chris Packham is wondering whether it’s morally just to ignore the law and protest anyway. And the government’s gagging of even the relatively innocuous RSPB means birdwatchers no longer have a voice. That’s why it’s important to join the National Trust, of all things, now and vote in its AGM before 11 November, for the candidates the council recommends. Save the National Trust. And the environment! Here today! Scone tomorrow!

• Basic Lee tour dates are here

Africa's coup epidemic: What's different this time around?

Radwa Saad
22 September 2023

Only through transnational alliances can power be reconfigured at the scale needed to generate meaningful change

Supporters of Niger’s military junta gather in Niamey on 10 September 2023 (AFP)

With eight successful coups in the past three years alone, many have expressed concerns over a recent “coup epidemic” in Africa. But the continent is no stranger to coups, having intermittently grappled with the rise and fall of military regimes since decolonisation. Roughly 44 percent of the 242 successful coups since 1950 have been in Africa.

The recent resurgence of coups undermines the “third wave of democratisation” that swept across much of Africa throughout the 1990s, following the end of the Cold War. It also comes at a time when the international community is concerned with “democratic backsliding”, manifested in the global erosion of democratic institutions, the rise of populism and an increase in anti-democratic attitudes.

Rather than being embraced as a set of principles with normative value, democracy is often marketed as merely a means to an end - one that has yet to deliver on the region’s pressing hopes for stability, economic development or even meaningful participation.

It comes as no surprise that six decades after independence, movements and populations are increasingly frustrated with democracy’s unfulfilled promises. From the streets of Mali to Gabon, citizens disenchanted by the current state of democratic politics have taken to the streets en masse to legitimise and celebrate military takeovers. But what have military regimes achieved in the past, and what possibilities do they hold today?

Scholars have struggled to devise any reliable theory that can predict the causes of coups, but a few broad trends can be extracted. Coups rarely occur in institutionalised democracies above a certain threshold of economic development. Once initiated, coups set a precedent for resolving power struggles between competing factions of the military and society at large.

This explains why the biggest indicator of whether a state is prone to coups is whether it has experienced one in the past. Many also note a regional spillover effect, which explains the African Union (AU)’s adamant anti-coup position, even where coup plotters have popular support. Combined, these factors leave much of the Global South vulnerable to military uprisings.

Corporate interests

While many factors contribute to a military’s decision to intervene politically, the most determinative is whether an existing regime threatens their corporate interests. The 2021 Guinea coup, for instance, occurred within weeks of then-President Alpha Conde's decision to slash the military budget, while Sudan’s military saw a 59 percent reduction ahead of its coup the same year. Military budgets almost inevitably increase following a coup.

A military’s corporate interests, however, go beyond monetary considerations. National armies command respect, and a regime that deploys the military against domestic opposition may threaten its legitimacy and internal cohesion. The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt during the Arab Spring are prime examples.

Successive defeats in war that officers can link to intrusion in their affairs can also prompt coups. Coup-plotting officers in the Sahel have repeatedly cited their grievances over France’s imprudent counterterrorism military interventions in the region.

Militaries in Africa and the Middle East have expanded their power base through alliances with the working classes against aristocratic and feudal forces

Public opinion polls show that militaries consistently outrank other state institutions in terms of legitimacy, a trend that transcends regime types and geopolitical boundaries. This is partially because militaries tend to be more representative of a society’s demographics, and offer avenues for social mobility that other state institutions foreclose. Whether they will ultimately rule in favour of the working class, however, largely depends on the composition of the military.

The officer corps in most countries is predominantly drawn from middle-class elements of a society. They are thus inclined to preserve the interests of their class through alliances with other strata of society. Latin America, by virtue of its earlier and rapid exposure to modernity, is one region where the degree of politicisation and mobilisation among the lower classes has been high enough to challenge the military’s corporate and middle-class interests.

In some cases, this has led the military to act in alliance with the conservative class to overthrow pro-working-class elected coalitions. In Chile under dictator Augusto Pinochet, for instance, the military feared that a communist takeover would result in the substitution of the regular army with a people’s militia.

By contrast, militaries in Africa and the Middle East have expanded their power base through alliances with the working classes against aristocratic and feudal forces. Low degrees of working-class mobilisation and delayed exposure to modernity weakened the nature of the class struggle, allowing post-colonial military regimes to grant concessions to the working classes in the form of land reforms, subsidies and nationalisation of healthcare and education, without threatening their own position.

Such class alliances also explain the motives and support for subsequent military coups against Islamist elected coalitions in Algeria in the early 1990s and Egypt in 2013. An Islamist takeover threatened both the middle-class way of life and the military’s corporate interests.

Additional challenges

Yet, just because a military is more representative of a population, doesn’t mean it is better equipped to govern. A handful of charismatic military figures in the past - such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings and Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara, to name a few - were able to carry out massive social transformations via “revolutions from above”.

These legacies remain deeply ingrained in the public imagination, reinforcing the allure of a military-dominated utopia. But decades of military rule have repeatedly shown that militaries rarely, if ever, perform better than their civilian counterparts in most areas of governance.

Africa coups: As France's influence teeters in the Sahel, can Turkey take advantage?

Read More »

On the contrary, military rule comes with an additional set of challenges: the reliance on coups for transfers of power, more allocation to defence budgets, the weakening of civil society, and a greater reliance on force to rule.

Militaries also tend to overestimate what they can accomplish through political intervention, while underestimating the challenges of governance. As the intractability of the problems they seek to resolve becomes clear, the combination of factionalism within army ranks and the threat of mass revolts compels them to return to the barracks - but only when they can ensure that the succeeding regime will protect their corporate interests.

Celebrations of military takeovers in the Sahel can be explained by people’s frustrations with developmental and political impasses, as well as the proliferation of transnational armed groups threatening state security. But unique to these demonstrations, especially those in the Sahel, is a staunch anti-imperialist undertone.

The connection between imperial processes of extraction, and elite capture of the state through flawed electoral processes and systemic underdevelopment, is becoming increasingly clear to citizenries. France’s neocolonial influence has been singled out as the primary impetus governing these challenges.
Neocolonial powers

These challenges, however, are not new. In the 1960s, Ghanaian politician and political theorist Kwame Nkrumah used the term “neocolonialism” to describe the final, most dangerous stage of imperialism. Neocolonialism is a system of economic domination upheld by western, capitalist powers that strategically reduces former colonies to sites of extraction for raw resources and markets for their manufactured goods.

Three elements sustain this system: uneven trade conditions in the global economy that reinforce the peripheral status of former colonies; the use of military force to re-subjugate or overthrow governments that threaten this order; and political intervention, typically in the form of bribes to public servants who act as agents or stooges of imperial interests.

These problems, Nkrumah warned, are global in nature. They are beyond the capacity of any single national government to confront unilaterally. Only through regional and transnational alliances can power be reconfigured at the scale needed to generate meaningful change and break this deeply entrenched cycle of dependency. Economic and political unity “is the first requisite for destroying neo-colonialism”, Nkrumah noted.

Sudanese protesters hold a demonstration against the October 2021 coup, in the capital Khartoum, on 2 January 2022 (AFP)

One may add that an anti-imperialist consciousness and mass awareness of neocolonial exploitation are a prerequisite for unity. Africa’s population is demonstrating this awareness, but the question remains whether militaries are positioned to reclaim control over countries’ resources and future. There are structural and strategic reasons to believe they are, but not without a cost.

Politics is a game of alliances. Prospects for meaningful change ultimately boil down to how effectively militaries can forge new domestic, regional and international alliances, while severing the previous alliances and pacts that reinforced France’s neocolonial stronghold in the region.

This is not an easy feat, but it remains possible. Militaries typically adhere to a unifying set of ideological values that stress merit, modernisation, rationalisation, and political order and stability. This, along with their rigid chain-of-command hierarchy, allows them to bypass the political stalemates and clientelism associated with electoral politics to foster radical and rapid change.
Strategic alliances

Africa’s military elites also tend to move fluidly between common networks by virtue of their training in similar institutions. All these factors increase the likelihood of transnational cooperation among members of new military regimes, such as the proposed regional partnership between Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea.

A joint military force could effectively clamp down on the movement and proliferation of armed groups weakening the Sahel’s collective security. These countries are also rich in resources, including diamonds, oil, uranium, gold and phosphates. New economic pacts could boost their bargaining power in the global economy, while putting an end to the privileges afforded to French companies in the extraction of these resources.

This wave of coups is far from over, with analysts predicting more to come

Strategic reasons also exist for military regimes to join forces. Regional and global powers are hostile to such regimes, viewing them as destabilising forces with negative implications for peace, security and democracy.

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), for example, threatened to deploy troops in Niger to restore a democratically elected government. The decision was judiciously rejected by the AU, which is being forced to rethink its adamant anti-coup position.

In response, Mali and Burkina Faso have pledged to defend Niger against Ecowas intervention, deeming it a "declaration of war". In other words, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

This wave of coups is far from over, with analysts predicting more to come. Military leaders rarely have a long-term vision for governance, but through strategic alliances with civilian technocrats, they can effectively exploit the transition period to sever the economic and political arrangements undermining their countries’ autonomy, and lay out a new blueprint for transnational integration. Only then does democracy actually stand a chance of flourishing in Africa.

In essence, civil-military relations are most constructive when militaries focus on their role of protecting territorial sovereignty, but what is there to protect when national sovereignty is questionable to begin with?

Only when this fundamental issue is resolved can subordinate, democratic militaries become a reality in Africa.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Radwa Saad is a Ph.D. Candidate at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the politics of military conscription practices in Africa as well as Afro-Arab relations. She holds an MSc in Security Studies from King’s College London and previously served as a peace, security, and development fellow at the African Leadership Centre.
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.

UK

Boris Johnson should pay back his taxpayer-funded legal fees for the Partygate inquiry  Labour has said.

Aubrey Allegretti Senior political correspondent
Sun, 24 September 2023 

Photograph: Carla Carniel/Reuters

Boris Johnson should pay back his taxpayer-funded legal fees for the Partygate inquiry and an investigation into “issues” with the Cabinet Office’s sign-off process should be launched, Labour has said.

Pat McFadden, the shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said the £265,000 bill should be looked into after a critical report was published this week by the National Audit Office.

The public spending watchdog found the proper process was not followed when the Cabinet Office agreed to cover Johnson’s legal bills last August, because the decision was not made by the correct accounting officer. It found the correct official did endorse the decision, but a month after it had already been taken.


The NAO also said the precedents cited by the government for covering the costs during the privileges committee’s inquiry were not “wholly persuasive”.

McFadden wrote to William Wragg, the Conservative MP and chair of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, calling for him to launch an inquiry into the process.

Highlighting the NAO’s finding that other legal cases where ministers had their legal costs covered were “substantively different” from the Commons probe, McFadden said: “I would very much agree.”

He added there were several “issues with Cabinet Office processes” identified and that there was “legitimate public interest in terms of the sums of money involved, their use and the approval processes for agreeing this”.

McFadden asked the committee, which examines the work of the Cabinet Office, to look at whether the use of taxpayers’ money was appropriate. He also said the committee should examine whether the flawed process was “inconsistent with good government practice” and “whether the funds should be returned, as we have previously called for”.

Johnson declined to comment. Since leaving No 10, he has made millions of pounds through a combination of speeches and books, and been gifted tens of thousands in-kind for hospitality and accommodation.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “There is an established precedent across multiple administrations based on the principle that former ministers, of all political colours, may be supported with legal representation after they have left office – when matters relate to their time and conduct as a minister of the crown.

“The government has been consistently clear that the contract award followed the proper procurement process.”

The cross-party privileges committee concluded in the summer that Johnson had misled parliament. Its findings prompted Johnson to quit as an MP before sanctions could be imposed.

Former ministers paid half a million in severance over past year

Genevieve Holl-Allen
Sun, 24 September 2023 

Liz Truss - Dominic Lipinski/PA

Ex-ministers have received more than half a million pounds in severance pay over the past year, new research has revealed.

The Department for Levelling Up paid out the most to former employees in severance of any Whitehall department, at more than £77,000 since 2022.

Ministers leaving the Home Office over the last year received £52,858, and the Department for Education handed out £49,495 in the same period in severance.


It comes as the Liberal Democrats, who conducted the research, call for the rules on severance pay to be changed to prevent disgraced MPs from being able to claim.

Chris Pincher, who resigned from Government after he was accused of drunkenly groping two men, received £7,920 as a so-called golden goodbye.

Chris Pincher - UK Parliament/PA

Wendy Chamberlain, Lib Dem whip, will today/MONDAY call for a major overhaul of the system, which would also see ministers having to serve in post for a “reasonable period” before being able to receive severance.

Liz Truss, who served as prime minister for 49 days, received £18,860 in severance, the same amount that Boris Johnson was awarded when he left office.

Her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, was paid £16,876 after just 38 days in office.

Ms Chamberlain described these golden goodbyes as “an outrage”.

“The cost of Conservative chaos is piling up for families across the country.

“The British public will never forgive this shambolic Conservative government.”

“Conservative ministers crashed the economy and then were rewarded for it. It is time to change the rules over ministerial severance pay for good to end these revolving door payouts - enough is enough.”

She will announce the new proposals on the third day of the Liberal Democrat autumn conference, taking place in Bournemouth.

Wendy Chamberlain - Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

The new proposals would also demand that payouts could not be claimed if they are reappointed to Government within a year.

Under current rules, ministers can claim severance pay of up to almost £17,000, and prime ministers up to £18,660, regardless of the reason for departure and length of time in post.

Whitehall departments gave out £530,000 in taxpayer-funded ministerial severance payments in the last year.

The Cabinet Office paid £75,585 in ministerial severance in the last year, and the Treasury gave out £45,000.

A Government spokesman said: “There are long-standing rules in place to determine what ministers are entitled to receive as severance pay. Under those rules, it is for ministers to decide whether they wish to accept it.”

A Conservative Party spokesman said of the proposals: “This is exactly the kind of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ policy that the nation expects from the Lib Dems.

“Severance payments have been made by successive administrations over several decades – including at the end of the Coalition Government in 2015.

“If their ministers were happy to accept payments then, they should pay them back to British taxpayer before attempting to score political points.”

Immigrant, pop star ... and supreme court judge who will decide fate of Israel’s justice system

Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem
Sat, 23 September 2023 

Photograph: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images

When Esther Hayut, a bespectacled woman with hair always neatly parted down the middle and pinned back with a barrette, was sworn in as the chief justice of Israel’s supreme court in 2017, she pledged to protect the country’s judiciary from politically motivated attempts to weaken it.

“It is the properly applied rule of law that serves as the glue which keeps our nation together … I pray that the justice system will not crack,” she told an audience that included Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The child of Holocaust survivors, and something of a pop star in her youth, Hayut and the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara , are perhaps unlikely candidates for the faces of liberal Israel. But eight months into the existential crisis triggered by the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul, that is how they are viewed by supporters and detractors alike.

“I see Hayut as courageous. She knows this is not an ordinary situation and is willing to speak out,” said a former Israeli justice minister who asked to be quoted anonymously in order to speak freely. “She shares the values that defined Israel until now.”

Hayut’s term has dovetailed with mounting attacks on the judicial system. Netanyahu, who faces corruption charges he denies, led the charge. But the campaign accelerated at the instigation of the prime minister’s coalition partners: since last year’s election, his far-right allies have made judicial overhaul their raison d’être.

The government says that the changes are needed to rein in an unelected and biased supreme court. The huge protest movement opposed to the plans says the proposals amount to democratic backsliding.

So far, only one element of the overhaul has been passed into law: the abolition of the “reasonableness clause” that allows the supreme court to override government decisions. The court last week began hearing petitions against scrapping the clause, meaning top judges are now in the extraordinary position of deciding on whether to limit their own powers.

Related: Protests in Israel as supreme court hears challenge to judicial curbs

Hayut’s legacy is on the line ahead of mandatory retirement when she turns 70 next month. The final rulings of supreme court justices are usually weighty, but there has never been more at stake in Israel’s roiling body politic.

Hayut was born in 1953 in a ma’abara, or transit camp for immigrants, in the town of Herzliya. Her parents were Romanians: her mother survived deportation to Transnistria, and her father Auschwitz. They divorced while Hayut was still a toddler. An only child, she was raised by her maternal grandparents.

At 18, during her military service, she became semi-famous as a singer in a band attached to the Israel Defense Forces’ Central Command. In the 1960s and 70s, the army’s musical outfits were popular, serving as a training ground for young people who would go on to become famous musicians and performers, including pop star Dorit Reuveni.

Musicians from the time remember Hayut as charming, disciplined and smart. The group are still friends. “Even then she wanted to be a lawyer and aspired to be a judge,” Reuveni told news website Ynet in 2017. Hayut graduated in law from Tel Aviv University, opened her own practice and by 1990 had become a judge, rising to the supreme court in 2004. The presidency is decided by seniority; in 2017 she was sworn in for a five-year term.

Considered part of the bench’s liberal camp, according to the New York online Tablet magazine, Hayut has “made a career out of walking a fine line … championing the underprivileged but committed to national security”.

She is sympathetic to class actions against large companies and discrimination cases, and strengthened protection laws for foreign workers. In decisions, she often quotes poetry. Yet Palestinians would not agree with the chief justice’s image as progressive: she decided in 2014 that house demolitions of Palestinians who commit terror attacks are justified, although under international law this is considered collective punishment.

Some of Hayut’s landmark rulings have struck down government laws, for which she has been criticised by the right. Hayut was part of the majority opinion invalidating the Tal Law, temporary legislation exempting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from military service, and cancelled privatisation plans for prisons. In some cases she approved the appointment of ministers with criminal records, in others struck them down.

For the hearings on the “reasonableness” clause, Hayut convened a panel of all 15 judges – the first time the entire bench has been called. Observers believe she is keen to show that the court’s decision will be as broad as possible.

This month’s marathon 13-hour opening session was watched closely for clues about how the justices will lean, but Hayut’s opinion appears to be clear. In a fiery and unprecedented address in January, she declared that the judicial overhaul “would fatally undermine judicial independence, giving the Knesset a ‘blank cheque’ to pass any legislation it pleases, even in violation of basic civil rights”.

Addressing the government’s legal representatives, Hayut said: “You think the duty to act reasonably applies to the government and ministers … But who makes sure they do?”

Israel’s supreme court has never struck down a quasi-constitutional “basic law” before. What is likely to be Hayut’s final ruling could also plunge the country into uncharted political and legal waters.

How Germany, France and Italy compare on net zero emission targets

Ajit Niranjan European Environment Correspondent

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, 24 September 2023 


Germany, France and Italy have pledged to hit net zero emissions around the middle of the century in a bid to stop weather from growing more extreme.

But the EU’s three biggest economies – and polluters – are all struggling to meet their goals.

Germany

Germany, Europe’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, plans to hit net zero emissions by 2045. Every big party bar the far right promised to keep the planet from heating 1.5C.


The coalition government between the Social Democrats, Greens and liberals has nearly torn itself apart fighting over policies to clean up the economy. The liberals and opposition Christian Democrats have framed proposals to phase out combustion engine cars and new gas boilers as an attack on freedom. However, laws to make it easier to build wind turbines and solar panels have been pushed through with little backlash.

Germany strengthened its climate law two years ago after the top court ruled the previous version was “partly unconstitutional”. But sectors like buildings and transport have since failed to meet their yearly targets. The government’s scientific watchdog said the transport minister’s last “immediate action plan” was too weak even to assess. The cabinet has now decided to scrap sectoral targets.

France

Related: EU states must bridge ‘planning gap’ in order to hit climate targets, report warns

France aims to reach net zero emissions by 2050. But while it plans to go slower than Germany, it is already closer to the target. In 2021, it spewed half as much greenhouse gas as Germany, mainly because of a vast fleet of nuclear power plants making low-carbon electricity.

France wants half of its energy to come from nuclear power by 2035 and 40% of its electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030.

But France has struggled to cut emissions from agriculture, which are the highest of any country in Europe, and transport. In 2018 the “yellow vest” protest movement forced French president Emmanuel Macron to ditch a planned hike on fuel taxes.

This May the Conseil d’État, France’s top court, found “no credible guarantee that the trajectory of reducing greenhouse gas emissions shall be effectively respected”.

Italy

Europe’s third biggest polluter has a net zero goal of 2050.

In a draft national energy and climate plan, it said it aims to use renewable sources to make 65% of its electricity by 2030 and cover 40% of its energy demand.

Italy relies heavily on fossil gas for heating and power, mostly from abroad. Its clean energy industries have grown slowly over the last 10 years, though recent reforms are set to pick up the pace of installations. Italy is also offering a “superbonus” tax break to insulate homes.

Yet as heatwaves killed people in July, the environment minister said he did not know “how much [climate change] is due to man or Earth”. The IPCC has shown that global heating is entirely down to humans.

ICYMI

Methuselah arrived in the US in 1938. She’s now the oldest fish in captivity

Katharine Gammon
Sun, 24 September 2023 

Photograph: John G Mabanglo/EPA

She’s super gentle, and doesn’t get overly excited. She enjoys eating earthworms, fruits and vegetables, and slowly moving around her tank. Her favorite food – at least for what is in season now – figs.

If Methuselah sounds like a grand old dame, it’s because she is: the fish is the oldest living specimen in captivity, aged somewhere upwards of 92 and potentially as high as 101 years. She arrived on a steamship from Australia along with 230 other fishes to the Steinhart aquarium in San Francisco in 1938 as a young, small fish. And Methuselah’s story unfolded in a typical way, for a fish in an aquarium: she grew. Humans came to look at her. She peered back through glass at humans.

But 1938 was a different time: bread cost nine cents a loaf. A racehorse named Seabiscuit was winning races. Germany was persecuting Jews, foretelling a coming conflict in Europe.

Then there is Methuselah, who is no ordinary fish. She’s the only fish still living from the steamship. And most importantly, she’s a lungfish – a species more closely related to humans or cows than to ray-finned fish like salmon or cod – which can breathe air using a single lung when streams become stagnant, or when water quality changes. Lungfish are also believed to be an example of the original creatures that crawled out of water and moved to land in evolutionary history. The species was discovered 1870 – and the scientist who first described the fish originally thought it was an amphibian.

Lungfish like Methuselah have long held secrets, but scientists have only recently attempted to understand their evolution and life history. For one thing, the fish’s genome is the largest of any animal, containing 43bn base pairs – roughly 14 times the number in the human genome. The previous record holder, the Mexican axolotl, has a genome made up of 32bn base pairs.

“Genetics is really quite straightforward for normal fish – but for lungfish they’re so unique and so different that all of those techniques didn’t or don’t work,” said David T Roberts, a senior scientist with Seqwater, statutory authority of the government of Queensland in Australia, where the fish still live in a handful of rivers in the wild. “It’s always pushed the envelope on uncovering some of its secrets to be able to manage and conserve it – and age is a really important one.”

Methuselah lives at the Steinhart aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate park in San Francisco, California. Photograph: John G Mabanglo/EPA

A fish’s age is critical to know because it tells scientists information like growth rates, maturity, longevity and how long they breed – which is vital fundamental knowledge to manage a protected species.

Lungfish – a vulnerable species – have proved especially challenging to age because they grow a lot at the beginning of their lives, but then grow extremely slowly (yet continuously) for the remainder of their lives. Ear bones that are harvested after most fishes’ death can be counted like tree rings, but lungfish, always the outlier, don’t have the same composition to their ear bones.

So scientists started to use radiocarbon to date the fish – relying on a technique that basically imprints living things with a signature of carbon resulting from the atomic bomb tests back in the 1950s. The problem there is that it doesn’t work well in animals born before 1950, when the carbon signature changed.

Now, scientists are using DNA tools that look at methylation – the way that DNA is turned on or off – to age the fish. For younger fish, it can offer an exact number of age, but for older fish it gives a range.

It wasn’t the first time this technique had been used. Last year, scientists estimated a lungfish named Granddad who lived at the Shedd aquarium in Chicago to be 109 years (give or take six years) at the time of his death, confirming that lungfish can live well over 100 years. The analysis also revealed that Granddad started his life in the Burnett River in Queensland, Australia, the location of the species’ original discovery in 1870.

In the study on Methuselah, aquarium workers took samples the size of a peppercorn piece from lungfishes in captivity and extracted the DNA from that in order to estimate the age for the first time ever. They found her to be at least 92 years old. The scientists plan to release their findings of 30 other lungfish later this year, as part of a library of living lungfish across the world.

Knowing how long they potentially live and understanding more about how long they could reproduce could drive how we’re caring for habitat to help keep that species afloat in the wild 

Brenda Melton

“Knowing how long they potentially live and understanding more about how long they could reproduce could drive how we’re caring for habitat to help keep that species afloat in the wild,” says Brenda Melton, director of animal care and welfare at the Steinhart Aquarium. “It just really opens the doors for a lot of other conversations and questions that might be able to be asked about how we can better care for them in the wild and preserve habitat.”

Roberts is inspired to continue to conserve the fish – after all, lungfish were around before dinosaurs became extinct – and their cousins possibly split off into animals with legs and then crawled onto land and then became humans, he says. “They’re a cousin to all land animals, basically.”

Methuselah’s age is now known, but she still holds other mysteries – even her biological sex. The handlers use she/her pronouns, but they actually don’t know if Methuselah is a male or female. Some fish have differences in size or shape – but not lungfish. And behaviorally, they suspect she’s a female, but they will not be able to find out for sure until she passes away.

Another question is if the fish is feeling old – and how do fish change when they’re geriatric? Melton says it varies widely. Most fish live only a few years – so it’s rare to see really old fish in the wild. But there are some hints: some spinal changes, like a curved back, or losing weight, cloudy eyes or looking a little gray in the scales.

Two of the other fish in the new study were aged at 50 and 54 – and Melton says they look a little more similar in coloration, while Methuselah has gotten a little lighter in color over the years. “We don’t know that that’s actually tied to her age, but it’s the only thing that we have seen physically that looks different for this fish.”

Melton says just the existence of something that has lived for so long leaves her in awe. She wonders what Methuselah thinks of all her companions and living situations over the many years she’s spent at the aquarium – as the fish has the longest institutional memory of anything in the building.

“It’s incredible to me that after all of these years of having her in our care,” she says, “we’re still learning and we still have the ability to learn from animals in ways that we can’t even conceive yet.”