COMMENTARY
Biden is gaslighting us about natural gas exports

Time for President Biden to say NO to methane gas exports

By CALEB HEERINGA - ROISHETTA OZANE
SALON
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 24, 2023 5:30AM (EST)
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting about countering the flow of fentanyl into the United States, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House November 21, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Imagine you woke up one morning to find out that the government approved the construction of a giant “natural” gas processing facility in your backyard. Though your community already suffers from elevated levels of asthma, respiratory disease and cancer from polluting industry, no one asked you or your neighbors whether you wanted yet another source of air pollution.

Now imagine that the federal government told you that your new polluting neighbor was a solution to climate change and the escalating extreme weather disasters that routinely devastate your community.

That kind of gaslighting is the current reality for communities in Southern Louisiana, as President Biden’s Department of Energy considers granting a license to build a new “liquified natural gas” export terminal called Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2). This is the latest in the oil and gas industry’s mad dash to build gas export facilities that will make countries around the world dependent on fossil fuels for decades to come.

For years, the industry has pushed a myth: that “natural” gas is a clean energy solution that can act as a “bridge fuel” until clean energy like wind and solar are ready. In reality, wind and solar are now the most affordable source of new energy and are being deployed at record levels across the planet. And “natural” gas is mostly methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that warms to the atmosphere more than 80 times as quickly as carbon dioxide; it constantly leaks (or is purposefully released) from fracking sites, gas pipelines, and storage and processing facilities like CP2.

When all that methane pollution is taken into account, it erases any supposed climate benefit that gas has over coal power. According to researchers at Cornell University, it could even make gas worse than coal in terms of its contributions to extreme weather. Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell, found that even under a best-case scenario with as few leaks as possible, the greenhouse gas emissions from the entire gas export cycle are 24% worse than those caused by digging up and burning an equivalent amount of coal.

In addition to their vast climate impacts, exporting vast amounts of gas fuels inflation and raises energy prices for American families, as US utilities are forced to compete with entire foreign countries for the same limited supply of fuel. The price of gas nearly tripled last year as the industry rushed to make top dollar selling it overseas following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Huge new facilities like CP2 would only further tie US consumers to volatile international gas markets and risk higher monthly energy bills

These revelations about “natural” gas may be shocking to DC politicians who have been fed a steady diet of misleading marketing and industry lobbying, but it’s no surprise to Gulf Coast communities that are living next to these facilities. They see the bright red flames of methane that the industry routinely burns off, and can feel in their lungs the invisible pollutants these facilities release. A new poll released this month found that respondents want limits on natural gas exports by a 2-to-1 margin. 62% support a pause on the construction of new export facilities until the proper reviews are completed.

Even though pollution from gas export facilities is supposedly “regulated,” the industry often ignores those laws in order to keep reaping the profits on the sale of gas. Just down the road from where CP2 would be built, Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass 1 LNG exceeded its air pollution limits 139 times last year but kept operating because any potential fines are minuscule compared to the profits that executives can make selling gas overseas.

Does polluting Gulf Coast communities, warming the planet with more methane gas and raising US energy prices sound like its “in the public interest?” That’s the metric that President Biden’s Department of Energy (DOE) is supposed to be weighing to determine whether gas export facilities like CP2 can be built. But as a group of Democrats in Congress have noted, “DOE’s case-by-case approach to approvals ignores the aggregate impact that the explosive growth in U.S. LNG exports is having on climate, communities, and our economy.”

The reality is that the rush to expand gas exports has more to do with the interests of oil and gas executives than the public, which will be stuck with more extreme weather disasters, higher energy bills and air pollution in frontline communities in Southern Louisiana. It’s time for Biden and DOE to slow down and actually weigh the impacts that gas exports are having on the American public.


By CALEB HEERINGA
Caleb Heeringa is Campaign Director of Gas Leaks, a nonprofit educating the public about the harms of “natural” gas.MORE FROM CALEB HEERINGA

By ROISHETTA OZANE
Roishetta Ozane is the founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, a grassroots mutual aid, disaster relief, and environmental justice organization.

Railyard explosion, inspections raise safety questions about Union Pacific’s hazmat shipping


 Smoke emanates from a railroad car after an explosion at Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard, Sept. 14, 2023, in North Platte, Neb. The explosion of a shipping container filled with toxic acid inside the world’s largest railyard, combined with hundreds of rules violations inspectors found there, raises questions about Union Pacific’s safety and the effectiveness of the rules for shipping hazardous materials. The Sept. 14 blast fortunately happened in a remote corner of the railyard and the resulting fire did not spread widely.

 (Ryan Herzog/The Telegraph via AP, File)

Locomotives are stacked up with freight cars in the Union Pacific Railroad’s Bailey Yard, April 21, 2016, in North Platte, Neb. The explosion of a shipping container filled with toxic acid inside the world’s largest railyard, Bailey Yard, combined with hundreds of rules violations inspectors found there, raises questions about Union Pacific’s safety and the effectiveness of the rules for shipping hazardous materials. The Sept. 14, 2023, blast fortunately happened in a remote corner of the railyard and the resulting fire did not spread widely. 

(AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

A Union Pacific train travels through Union, Neb., July 31, 2018. The explosion of a shipping container filled with toxic acid inside the world’s largest railyard, Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard in North Platte, Neb., combined with hundreds of rules violations inspectors found there, raises questions about Union Pacific’s safety and the effectiveness of the rules for shipping hazardous materials. The Sept. 14, 2023, blast fortunately happened in a remote corner of the railyard and the resulting fire did not spread widely.

(AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)


BY JOSH FUNK

 November 23, 2023

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Federal inspectors have twice found hundreds of defects in the locomotives and railcars Union Pacific uses at the world’s largest railyard in Nebraska, but none of those seem to explain why a shipping container filled with toxic acid exploded there this fall.

Investigators haven’t confirmed the cause of the Sept. 14 blast in a remote corner of the railroad’s Bailey Yard in North Platte, Nebraska, about 250 miles west of Omaha. The explosion didn’t spread far, but investigators appear to be delving into the questionable decision to load dozens of plastic barrels of perchloric acid inside a shipping container with a wood floor and possibly atop wooden pallets, even though that acid is known to react with wood or any other organic material.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever read about perchloric acid, but when it comes in contact with organic material, it becomes highly volatile. So that car was doomed from the day it was loaded,” said Andy Foust, a Nebraska leader of the largest rail union that represents the workers who were switching those railcars just before the explosion.

The explosion highlighted not only potential problems at the sprawling railyard but also the national rail network’s reliance on everyone involved in shipping hazardous materials taking proper precautions. As the Nebraska explosion made clear, there can be problems that are hard to spot before potentially disastrous accidents occur.

Some details about the explosion might never be known because the shipping container carrying the acid was destroyed. Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Warren Flatau said “the leaked acid reacted with the wooden floor of the intermodal container, and any other organic material within the container (i.e., pallets).”

The resulting explosion propelled shrapnel up to 600 feet away and prompted first responders to evacuate everyone within a mile outside the railyard. After the first container exploded, a second metal shipping container — believed to hold memory foam — fell down on top of it and caught fire, but no other cars ignited.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told a gathering of rail labor leaders in Nebraska the explosion could have been much worse and “grabbed national headlines had the wind been blowing a little bit different or had things gone just a little bit different in the yard that day” — much like Norfolk Southern’s fiery derailment in eastern Ohio did.

That February derailment — and others that followed — put the focus on railroad safety and prompted Congress and regulators to propose reforms, which have largely stalled.

Foust said Union Pacific never evacuated the railyard. Nearby workers left the area on their own, but most in the railyard continued working. Foust expects that to change because he said UP is revising its emergency response plan.

“There was a large part of that yard that had no idea what was going on, and they were told to continue doing their job,” said Foust, who has discussed the explosion with FRA inspectors, the railroad and first responders because of his role with the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division union.

Railroad officials said at the time that the wind blew smoke away from the facility, and because the railyard is up to eight miles (13 kilometers) wide, most UP workers were a safe distance away.

Despite the explosion, the method of loading 56 barrels of acid doesn’t appear to violate any regulations, so such shipping methods could still be occurring. A Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration spokesman said that “as the regulations prohibit any leakage from a package, the regulations do not specify what materials the drums are loaded onto.”

Shippers are required to take precautions when loading hazardous materials, including ensuring that plastic drums can’t tip over. The drums used to ship hazardous materials also must undergo extensive testing.

In this case, the FRA spokesman said investigators couldn’t determine what loading precautions were taken because the container was destroyed.

The perchloric acid, used in explosives and some industrial processes, was produced at a company in Ohio that hasn’t been publicly identified. Norfolk Southern transported the acid, then handed it off to Union Pacific. Both railroads declined to comment on the explosion, citing the ongoing investigation.

Given the timing of the explosion, the leak likely happened inside UP’s railyard.

Railroads inspect railcars before they pick them up for mechanical problems or signs of tampering, but they assume shippers have properly packed them.

“We really rely on them to know best how to package and do it in a safe way, so it isn’t going to become an issue for us,” said North Platte Fire Chief Dennis Thompson, who led the response to the explosion.

Thompson said the emergency response went smoothly because the weather conditions and location were favorable, and the railroad let him know within 25 minutes exactly what they were dealing with.

Before the explosion, inspections at the railyard in July and August prompted the head of the FRA to write a letter to UP’s CEO highlighting that the rate of defects was twice the national average. In September, the week after the explosion, inspectors returned to follow up and turned up more than 500 additional problems.

Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena said he understands and welcomes the agency’s scrutiny.

Vena said Union Pacific and other major railroads have become safer over time. But there were still more than 1,000 derailments last year, and as the East Palestine derailment demonstrated, just one train crash can be disastrous if hazardous materials are involved.

“Do we have more to do? Absolutely,” said Vena, who became CEO in August. “And that’s what I’m challenging the team with here at Union Pacific is we have to get better ... We’ll invest in it. We’ll spend money on technology. We’ll spend money on people.”

FRA regulators who oversee the inspectors aren’t overly concerned, with the head of the agency’s Office of Railroad Infrastructure and Mechanical saying violations are common when he sends a team out.

“We did not find any systematic issues that would indicate they are operating unsafe equipment that put the public at risk,” the FRA’s Charlie King said.

  

On Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism

A “non-Jewish” Jewish perspective. 

LEWIS SIEGELBAUM

THE NATION

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the constituency office of Labour Party leader Keir Starmer on November 18, 2023 in London, United Kingdom, calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.(Mark Kerrison / Getty)

Seeking some “common understanding” about the relationship of anti-Zionism to antisemitism, New York Times columnist Charles Blow consulted Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. Greenblatt, fresh from the March for Israel held on November 14 at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., told Blow that he regarded anti-Zionism as, by definition, antisemitism, because “Zionism is fundamental to Judaism.” Someone claiming to be anti-Zionist but not antisemitic, according to Greenblatt, would be “like someone saying in 1963 that ‘I’m against the civil rights movement, but I’m also against racism.’”

Really? Leaving aside the analogy for the moment, the claim that anti-Zionism is “by definition” antisemitism strikes me—a self-professed anti-Zionist Jew—as incredibly intolerant and exhibiting a colossal ignorance of history. Let’s start with the history. Judaism, according to experts’ consensus, originated about 3,700 years ago in the related kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The Babylonian captivity of the Judahites and other untoward events during the Hellenistic and Roman periods led to the dispersal of Jewish groups throughout the Mediterranean, and the eventual formation of three distinct diasporic communities (Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim). In succeeding centuries, these communities interacted with their polytheistic, Christian, and Muslim neighbors in distinct ways, experienced repeated religious-cultural schisms, and also spawned revivalist movements—of which Hasidic Judaism is probably the best known. Two developments in post-Enlightenment Europe are worthy of note: the emancipation of Jews from various legal restrictions thanks to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic conquests; and the concurrent Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) that stressed secular culture and a turn away from Yiddish.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw two further developments: the emigration of large numbers of Jews from Europe to the Americas; and the emergence of Jewish nationalism, or modern Zionism, that sought a Jewish national homeland. Both were responses to the persistence of antisemitism in Europe and the failure of assimilationist strategies to cope with it. From its first congress in 1897, the Zionist Organization led by Theodore Herzl proclaimed that Jews, no less than any other national group, deserved their own homeland—that is, their own nation-state. Although Zionists had some early success in recruiting European Jews to settle in Ottoman-held Palestine, their numbers remained small up to 1914 in comparison to the indigenous Muslim and Christian populations as well the transatlantic wave of emigrants. Within Europe, Zionism faced significant pushback from Jews who threw in their lot with internationalist movements, especially of Marxist inspiration.

Before the Nazis came to power in Germany, therefore, the vast majority of Jews would have laughed at the notion that Zionism was “fundamental to Judaism.” It took a lot more to realize the Zionist project of creating a state of Israel that would assume the burden of protecting all Jews who made aliya (immigration to that state). It took British colonial machinations, insistent fundraising among Jews wealthy and otherwise, and paramilitary Jewish “self-defense” organizations with names like Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi (“the Stern Gang”) that carried out terrorist missions against both the British and Palestinians. But the decisive factor was undoubtedly the Holocaust and the persistent unwillingness of the United States to take more than a small fraction of Jewish refugees before, during and even after the war.

In the course of realizing the Zionist project, a lot of other people got displaced, lost, or had severely constrained, their homeland. Palestinians also had their civil and political rights restricted even under relatively liberal Israeli governments. Little wonder that the 75 years of Israeli independence have been punctuated so often by war: the 1948 War of Independence/Palestinian Nakba; the 1956 Suez Crisis when Israel joined neocolonialist Britain and France to attack upstart Egypt; the Six-Day War of 1967 when Israel took the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt; the Yom Kippur War of 1973 (initiated by Egypt to regain the Sinai); the war Israel launched in 1982 to expel the Palestinian Liberation Organization from southern Lebanon; the two Intifadas of 1987–93 and 2000–05; and the Israel-Hamas War of 2023. This dolorous list does not include the far more frequent skirmishes, instances of rock-throwing, slingshot hurling, kidnapping, imprisonment, shootings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers, beating by settlers, attacks on Israeli civilians, so-called “targeted killings” and other forms of violence indicative of endemic ill-will.

Notwithstanding, most Israelis probably do not think of themselves as racists. But they don’t necessarily favor equal rights for all Israel’s inhabitants, either. There are, however, millions of Jews scattered throughout the world who do. Their rejection of Zionists’ insistence on the requirement to support Israel come what may makes them neither antisemites nor “self-hating Jews.” They may be simply non-nationalistic or even anti-nationalist, which is to say, internationalist.In this sense, they are the legatees of a long Jewish tradition going back to the 17th-century Portuguese-Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and carried forward by the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, by Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, and Leon Trotsky. Isaac Deutscher, the Polish-Jewish Marxist, called them “non-Jewish Jews.” They each transcended their own ethnic or religious particularities to struggle for the emancipation of all.

Current Issue

November 27/December 4, 2023, Issue

In an interview he gave in 1967 in the wake of the Six Day War (and shortly before his death), Deutscher referred to Israel, victorious in three successive wars, as the “Prussia of the Middle East.” But this Middle Eastern Prussia was, Deutscher observed, a “feeble parody of the original” in the sense that “the Prussians were at least able to use their victories for uniting in their Reich all German-speaking peoples living outside the Austro- Hungarian Empire.” The Israelis were stuck with the problem of what to do with the conquered Arabs. Should they, as Ben Gurion, “the evil spirit of Israeli chauvinism,” urged, create an Israeli Protectorate on the West Bank of the Jordan? He went on:

None of the Israeli parties is prepared even to contemplate a bi-national Arab-Israeli state. Meanwhile great numbers of Arabs have been “induced” to leave their homes on the Jordan, and the treatment of those who have stayed behind is far worse than that of the Arab minority in Israel that was kept under martial law for 19 years. Yes, this victory is worse for Israel than a defeat. Far from giving Israel a higher degree of security, it has rendered it much more insecure. If Arab revenge and extermination is what the Israelis feared, they have behaved as if they were bent on turning a bogey into an actual menace.

So how fundamental is Zionism to Judaism? In the aftermath of the massacre of October 7 and the plethora of antisemitic acts committed in the United States and elsewhere in the world in response to the Israeli army’s retaliatory violence inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza, we might consider another question: How fundamental is anti-Zionism to Judaism?

Lewis Siegelbaum

Lewis Siegelbaum is an emeritus professor of history at Michigan State University, and a member of the Historians for Peace and Democracy (HPAD) Israel-Palestine Working Group.

A reaction to the Dutch elections


NETHERLANDS / EPC FLASH ANALYSIS
Elizabeth Kuiper
Date: 24/11/2023

If the far-right party that won the Dutch elections on Thursday has its way, the possibility of a Nexit is no longer merely hypothetical. The EU should now get ready for more political unrest in 2024 and beyond if the elections in the Netherlands are any indication of what will happen in other member states. With populists in power in Hungary, Slovakia and Italy and support for these parties surging in Germany and France, the Netherlands is the latest country where yesterday’s elections saw an increase in support for the Dutch anti-immigration populists.

Immigration has been a big issue in the election campaign, especially since Rutte’s government fell over a bill to reduce asylum seekers. The Dutch liberal party (VVD) seems to have underestimated the fact that after 13 years of VVD Prime Minister Rutte, right-leaning voters were not looking for a party that would compromise with other mainstream parties on issues like migration and the green agenda, as they did in previous coalitions. Even though Wilders’s tone has been described as ‘milder’ his rhetoric and priorities on migration and leaving the EU remain unchanged.

Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) was founded in 2006, with anti-Islam policies at the heart of his party from the start. The party has never been in government but provided key support in 2010 to the ruling coalition led by Mark Rutte’s Dutch liberals (VVD). Two years after the start of that government, Wilders withdrew his support for the minority coalition. Future coalition partners are advised to remind themselves of that experience, and the VVD made a strategic mistake by opening the door for Wilders this time.

In terms of the seats needed to form a majority government, a coalition of Wilders party together with the liberal VVD party and the centrist New Social Contract (NSC) led by Pieter Omtzigt seems the most obvious option at the moment. Omtzigt, a former Christian-Democrat MP, has led a strong campaign focusing on the cost-of-living crisis and shares the VVD position on migration. However, forming a government will not be easy as both VVD and NSC have flagged concerns in the past about Wilders’ stance on the rule of law and the EU.

Despite the complete lack of focus on the EU in the Dutch election campaign, the congratulations for Wilders coming in last night on social media from the likes of Le Pen and Orban are telling examples of the potential implications of these elections for the EU, eight months before the June 2024 European Parliament elections.

All of this is part of a worrying trend of more fragmentation and polarisation in EU Member States. The outcome of the Polish elections in October this year brought some initial hope that this trend was reversing. Still, the Netherlands is the latest example of the perils of relying on opinion polls all over again.

We don’t know yet how long the coalition negotiations are going to last in the Netherlands, but what is clear is that the outcome will impact the Commission’s 2024-2029 mandate. A right-wing government would not only be detrimental to the position of the Netherlands in the EU, but also unwelcome news for the EU institutions in light of the June 2024 elections.

Over the years -especially after Brexit where the Dutch lost an important ally around the Council table- the Netherlands has taken a more assertive stance in the EU. How a new government will position itself on EU files, such as the EU’s support to Ukraine, climate policy and economic governance, depends very much on whether Wilders will manage to form a government.

Clearly the mobilisation of voters expressing political discontent needs to be addressed at the EU level in the years to come. The EU would need to show its ability to solve social problems and implement a fair and just climate transition. Populist parties will argue that social policies and healthcare systems need to be designed at national level and that there is no role for the EU in these areas. Their argument is cynical enough, as the cost of EU non-intervention in these areas is high, as there will be no common standards and ready-made solutions at the national level for the problems of our time, such as an ageing population, migration and climate change.

The outcome of the Dutch elections sends a signal to the EU that it cannot afford to overlook. If the EU fails to come up with preventative and strategic policymaking during its 2024-2029 mandate, divergences between member states will grow to the detriment of EU cohesion.


Elizabeth Kuiper is an Associate Director and Head of the Social Europe and Well-being programme at the European Policy Centre.

The Netherlands’ longtime ruling party says it won’t join a new government following far-right’s win



Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, or VVD, left, and Pieter Omtzigt, leader of the New Social Contract party, right, talk prior to the start of a meeting with speaker of the House Vera Bergkamp, two days after far-right PVV party leader Geert Wilders won the most votes in a general election, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 24, 2023. 

Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right party PVV, or Party for Freedom, gestures during a meeting of leaders of the political parties with speaker of the House Vera Bergkamp, two days after Wilders’ won the most votes in a general election, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 24, 2023.

Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right party PVV, or Party for Freedom, seated, Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, leader ofthe People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, or VVD, right, and Frans Timmermans, of the center-left two party bloc of Labor Party and Green Left, rear left, arrive for a meeting with speaker of the House Vera Bergkamp, two days after Wilders won the most votes in a general election, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 24, 2023. 

Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right party PVV, or Party for Freedom, left, and Pieter Omtzigt, leader of the New Social Contract party, wait for the start of a meeting with speaker of the House Vera Bergkamp, two days after Wilders won the most votes in a general election, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 24, 2023.

Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right party PVV, or Party for Freedom, center, and Frans Timmermans, of the center-left two party bloc of Labor Party and Green Left, right, wait for the start of a meeting with speaker of the House Vera Bergkamp, two days after Wilders won the most votes in a general election, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 24, 2023. 

Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right party PVV, or Party for Freedom, center, rubs his face, as Frans Timmermans, of the center-left two party bloc of Labor Party and Green Left, right, wait for the start of a meeting with speaker of the House Vera Bergkamp, two days after Wilders won the most votes in a general election, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 24, 2023. 

(AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

BY MIKE CORDER
November 24, 2023

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The process of forming a new Dutch government in the aftermath of far-right firebrand Geert Wilders’ stunning election victory got underway Friday as leaders of political parties met with the chair of parliament’s lower house to appoint a “scout” to investigate possible coalitions.

Wilders’ anti-Islam Party for Freedom, known by its Dutch acronym PVV, won 37 seats in the 150-seat lower house, indicating a seismic shift to the right for the Netherlands. The party of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte won 24, 10 fewer than in the previous election, according to a near complete count of Wednesday’s votes.

The new leader of Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, said ahead of Friday’s meeting that the party known as VVD would not formally join a new coalition but might support one in parliament.

Yeşilgöz-Zegerius told Dutch broadcaster NOS said that after 13 years of Rutte as prime minister and VVD’s loss of lawmaker seats in the election, “another role is appropriate” for the party.

But she added that her party would make “a center-right coalition possible,” meaning VVD would “support constructive proposals.”

The election result paves the way for Wilders to take the lead in forming a new coalition and potentially to succeed Rutte as prime minister. However, he will likely have to convince potential coalition partners that he would tone down some of his anti-Islam policies.

His party’s election platform states that the Netherlands “is not an Islamic country. No Islamic schools, Qurans and mosques.”

One potential coalition partner for Wilders is the recently formed New Social Contract party, or NSC, which won 20 seats. The party’s centrist leader, Pieter Omtzigt, said he could not accept “unconstitutional” policies.

Article 1 of the Constitution of the Netherlands outlaws discrimination “on grounds of religion, belief, political opinion, race, gender, disability, sexual orientation or on any other grounds.”

In an election-night victory speech, Wilders pledged not to push any policies that would breach Dutch law or the constitution.

 

Kashmir journalist freed by Indian authorities nearly two years after arrest

#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA

24 November 2023, 

India Kashmir Journalist Released. Picture: PA

Fahad Shah was granted bail by a court last week and released on Thursday.

Indian authorities have released a prominent Kashmir journalist on bail nearly two years after he was arrested on accusations of publishing “anti-national content” and “glorifying terrorism” in the disputed Himalayan region.

Fahad Shah, founder and editor of news portal The Kashmir Walla, was arrested in February 2022 under India’s sedition and anti-terror laws.

He was released on Thursday after a court last week granted him bail, saying there was not enough evidence to try him for terrorism and quashed some of the charges.

The 21 months’ confinement of Shah, who is also a correspondent for US newspaper Christian Science Monitor and other international outlets, highlighted the widening crackdown against journalists and freedom of expression in the contested region.

What he and his colleagues at The Kashmir Walla actually did was to report widely and honestly about events in Kashmir, where journalists operate in an increasingly oppressive and hostile atmosphere

Mark Sappenfield, Christian Science Monitor

The Indian government banned The Kashmir Walla earlier this year for undeclared reasons.

“What he and his colleagues at The Kashmir Walla actually did was to report widely and honestly about events in Kashmir, where journalists operate in an increasingly oppressive and hostile atmosphere,” Mark Sappenfield, editor of The Christian Science Monitor, wrote on Monday after Shah was granted bail.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, press freedoms in India have steadily shrunk since he was first elected in 2014.

At the time, the country was ranked 140th in the global press freedom index by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. This year, the watchdog has ranked India at 161 out of 180 nations — below the Philippines and Pakistan.

Muslim-majority Kashmir is one of the most heavily militarised regions in the world and the fighting has left tens of thousands of people dead.

Media has always been tightly controlled in India’s part. Arm twisting and fear have been extensively used to intimidate the press since 1989, when rebels began fighting Indian soldiers in a bid to establish an independent Kashmir or union with Pakistan. Pakistan controls Kashmir’s other part and the two countries fiercely claim the territory in full.

Kashmir’s diverse media flourished despite relentless pressure from Indian authorities and rebel groups.

Fahad Shah (right) speaks with his uncle at his residence on the outskirts of Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir (Dar Yasin/AP/PA)

Their situation has dramatically worsened since India revoked the region’s semi-autonomy in 2019, throwing Kashmir under a severe security and communication lockdown and the media in a black hole.

A year later, the government’s new media policy sought to control the press more effectively to crack down on independent reporting.

Since then, dozens of people have been arrested, interrogated and investigated under harsh anti-terror laws as authorities began filing criminal cases against some journalists in a campaign that has been widely seen as criminalisation of journalists in Kashmir.

Several of them have been forced to reveal their sources while others have been physically assaulted.

The court in its judgment said that although getting bail under India’s anti-terror law was difficult, it could not be denied to Mr Shah because he did not pose a “clear and present danger” to society if released.

“It would mean that any criticism of the central government can be described as a terrorist act because the honour of India is its incorporeal property,” the court said in its bail order.

“Such a proposition would collide headlong with the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression enshrined in Article 19 of the constitution.”

Mr Shah continues to face trial under other sections of the anti-terror law.

By Press Association