KULAKS

Analysis-Europe's angry farmers fuel backlash against EU ahead of elections

Updated Thu, February 1, 2024 

By Michel Rose

MONTAUBAN, France (Reuters) - In the last 12 months, the cost of running Jean-Marie Dirat's lamb farm in southwest France has jumped by 35,000 euros ($38,000), driven up by increasingly expensive fertilisers, fuel, electricity and pesticides.

Money is so tight that this year he won't pay himself. To his surprise, he even calculated he would be eligible for the minimum welfare benefit, given to society's poorest.

"My grandfather had 15 cows and 15 hectares. He raised his kids, his family, without any problem. Today, me and my wife, we have 70 hectares, 200 sheep, and we can't even pay ourselves a salary," Dirat told Reuters at a roadblock made of hay bales that barred access to a nuclear plant.

Other farmers in the French southwest, where a nationwide movement started, complain about red tape and restrictions on water usage, as well as competition from Ukrainian imports let into the European Union to help its economy during the war.

Farmers elsewhere in Europe are similarly disgruntled, with protests in Germany, Poland, Romania and Belgium coming after a new farmers' party scored highly in Dutch elections.

Their blockades and pickets are exposing a clash between the EU's drive to cut CO2 emissions and its aim of becoming more self-sufficient in production of food and other essentials following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Just five months before elections to the European Parliament, the revolt is fuelling a narrative that the EU is riding roughshod over farmers, who are struggling to adapt to stringent environmental regulations amid an inflation shock.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen's lieutenant Jordan Bardella blames "Macron's Europe" for the farmers' troubles. Le Pen herself says the EU needs to quit all free trade deals and that her party would block any future agreements, such as with Mercosur countries, if it wins power.

Worryingly for French President Emmanuel Macron and other EU leaders, opinion polls show farmers' grievances resonate with the public. An Elabe poll showed 87% of French people supported the farmers' cause and 73% of them considered the EU was a handicap for farmers, not an asset.

National governments are scrambling to address farmers' concerns, with France and Germany both watering down proposals to end tax breaks on agricultural diesel. The European Commission also announced new measures on Wednesday.

But the protests could amplify a shift to the right in the European Parliament and imperil the EU's green agenda. Poll projections show an "anti-climate policy action coalition" could be formed in the new legislature in June.

"The far-right's strategy is to Europeanise the conflict," Teneo analyst Antonio Barroso said. "Farmers are a small group, but these parties think they can attract the whole rural vote by extension."

VOICE FOR THE COUNTRYSIDE

Different political catalysts have spurred farmers from France to Romania into action.

In Germany, a week of protests against high fuel prices culminated last month in a rally of 10,000 farmers who gummed up central Berlin's streets with their tractors and jeered Finance Minister Christian Lindner.

The far-right Alternative for Germany party, running high in the polls on a lacklustre economy, tried to capitalise, dropping its usual opposition to subsidies and saying farmers demands should be met.

In March 2023, discontentment with climate and agriculture policy helped new party BBB win regional elections in the Netherlands, the world's second-biggest agricultural exporter.

Its list for June's EU elections will be led by Sander Smit, a former EU parliament adviser who wants to be "a voice of and for the countryside", campaigning for an easing of EU restrictions on agricultural land use.

"The EU must start working again for citizens, farmers, gardeners, fishermen, for communities, families and entrepreneurs," Smit, 38, said.

French unions like the powerful FNSEA have brought discipline to the farmers rallies, avoiding the violence seen during the "yellow vest" protests that rocked France in Macron's first term and already winning concessions from the government.

But unions say they can't control who farmers will vote for.

WINDS TURNING

In France, support from the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) means farmers, although politically conservative, have historically been more pro-European than the average voter.

In the 2022 presidential election, Le Pen did less well among farmers than in the rest of the population, while pro-European Macron outperformed, according to an Ifop/FNSEA poll.

Now, however, some farmers say they are tempted to vote for Le Pen's Rassemblement National (RN) in June in protest at the EU's climate drive, which they complain crushes production and leaves space for global competitors.

"Europe is putting us on a drip to let us die silently," Pierre Poma, a 66-year old retired farmer in Montauban in the southwest, told Reuters.

He joined the RN a few years ago and ran for a parliamentary seat in 2022, garnering 40% of the votes compared with the 15% Le Pen's party won in the same constituency in 2017.

Poma, who used to grow peaches, pears and apples, says he had to sell his house because he could not turn a profit. He blames red tape and the EU's farm-to-fork strategy he abhors.

After visiting farmers' motorway blockades in recent days, he is confident like-minded parties will be a force to reckon with in Brussels after June.

"Our group is growing, in Germany, in Hungary, elsewhere. It's the end of a world, the end of the policies of the past," Poma said.

($1 = 0.9258 euros)

(Writing by Michel Rose; Additional reporting by Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam, Thomas Escritt in Berlin, Kate Abnett in Brussels and Anna Koper in Warsaw; Editing by Catherine Evans)

'Not the Solution': EU Delays Biodiversity Rule to Appease Farmers Protesting High Costs


"The farmers' protests across Europe highlight the need for the E.U. to set a clear long-term vision and plan to support farmers in a transition to a sustainable and resilient agriculture model," said one policy expert.


Farmers block the road with tractors near the European Parliament as they demand better conditions to grow, produce, and maintain a proper income, in Brussels on February 1, 2024.
(Photo: Nikos Oikonomou/Anadolu via Getty Images)

JULIA CONLEY
Feb 01, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Food policy and biodiversity advocacy groups in Europe on Thursday said the European Commission's recent concession to farmers who have protested high costs across France and other countries this week will ultimately harm the agricultural sector as well as citizens across the continent.

The Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GEAC) 8, under the European Union biodiversity strategy, calls for farmers to keep 4% of their land free from crop production to help regenerate healthy soil and increase biodiversity, or to use 7% of their land for "catch crops" which provide cover for the soil.

After farmers began demonstrating across France—blocking major roads with their tractors and dumping manure at government offices—and as the protests spread to Belgium, Spain, and Italy, the European Commission announced Wednesday a proposal to allow the sector to delay implementing the rules until 2025.

The uproar by farmers has been focused on the high cost of land and energy as well as pressure to sell their crops at near-cost prices and from the government to follow new rules like those proposed in the E.U.'s Nature Restoration Law.

As part of the bloc's Green Deal to protect the environment and reduce planetary heating, the law will establish measures to restore at least 20% of the E.U.'s land.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said Thursday that farmers "are asking for fair rewards for producing our food, and they are right," but warned that rolling back GEAC 8 "sidesteps the fundamental problem experienced and voiced by farmers across Europe, namely unfair prices."

Instead of delaying biodiversity rules, said Giulia Riedo, the group's sustainable farming policy officer, the European Commission should fully implement "the Unfair Trade Practices Directive, ensuring that farmers who farm sustainably receive more funds, and requiring food processors and retailers to play their part in improving the sustainability of the food sector."

"By sacrificing critical environmental measures, policymakers are barking up the wrong tree, and harming the long-term resilience and viability of Europe's farming sector in the process," said Riedo.

The group called for more public funding for farmers who farm sustainably and for "untargeted and harmful subsidies" to be "fundamentally repurposed, supported by increased funding for nature-friendly farming practices."

WWF also noted that agricultural funds are not fairly distributed, with "20% of the largest European farmers, often large-scale industrial agribusinesses, [receiving] 80% of direct payments, while most farmers (often family farms) on small or medium-sized farms receive little to nothing."

The group echoed an observation by the author of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week regarding profitability as a barrier to sustainable farming.

"Our results suggest that biodiversity-friendly farming can produce a win-win situation for biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery, but will often require additional public or private payments to become profitable for farmers," said Jeroen Scheper of Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands.

At the Institute for European Environmental Policy, Harriet Bradley, head of the group's Common Agricultural Policy and Food program, said loosening biodiversity rules for farmers "in many cases will be counterproductive."



"Numerous studies show that, if well-designed and managed, areas left for nature can enhance crop yields by boosting pollination and natural pest control," said Bradley. "Climate and biodiversity crises pose an existential threat, including to food security, to which the E.U. Green Deal is an essential response. Many European farmers face significant economic and social challenges, but relaxing rules that protect biodiversity is not the solution."

"Instead," she said, "the farmers' protests across Europe highlight the need for the E.U. to set a clear long-term vision and plan to support farmers in a transition to a sustainable and resilient agriculture model rather than continuing to lurch from crisis to crisis."

By delaying the potential for "pollinators that support farmers' production and natural predators that control pests," added BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, the European Commission's decision will make farmers "more dependent on the chemical industry."

"Rather than helping farmers," said the group, "we are making their situation worse."

Europe’s farmers are struggling, but some sympathetic consumers have difficulty affording their food

JADE LE DELEY
Fri, February 2, 2024

BOUSSY-SAINT-ANTOINE, France (AP) — Truck driver Jeremy Donf understands French farmers are struggling and he wants to support local food producers. But like many consumers, buying French produced food isn't always an option.

Farmer protests across Europe this week have highlighted how farmers and households are both hurting these days because of multiple factors, including persistent inflation, high interest rates and volatile energy prices.

“We understand their anger because we value farmers. What are we going to do if they are not here? We won’t eat. Such protests are important,” Donf said.

But as he weighed Spanish-grown lemons in his suburban Paris supermarket, Donf noted that most of the produce around him was imported. And when French-grown food is available, not everyone can afford it. In a Paris market this week, Moroccan clementines and Polish mushrooms cost about half the price of their French counterparts.

The farmer protests drew widespread public support in France, even from truckers like Donf whose livelihood was threatened by the highway blockades that were part of the protests. Donf lives in the Paris suburb of Boussy-Saint-Antoine but comes from the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, where farming is important and many people buy directly from local farmers.

Governments including France, Spain and Greece agreed in recent days to pump hundreds of millions of euros into the farming sector to calm the protesters. The EU also granted concessions to farmers, sensitive to voter concerns ahead of European Parliament elections in June.

At a nearby farmers’ market this week, several shoppers specifically chose more expensive French meat and vegetables over cheaper imports, in part spurred by the recent protests.

“I am well aware that it’s not easy for some people to spend more money on food, but since my pension allows me to do it, I decided to favor high-quality (French) products,” said Patrick Jobard, a retiree.

Prices for wheat, corn and other grain — except rice — are lower than they were before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove global food commodity costs to record highs in 2022, which worsened hunger worldwide but helped farmers’ bottom lines.

Consumers, meanwhile, aren’t seeing big benefits from lower prices for wheat and other food commodities traded on global markets because the price surge that’s been seen at the grocery store is tied to other costs after food leaves the farm, said Joseph Glauber, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Things like energy costs and higher wages for labor have been “affecting every step of food processing, all the way to the retail shelves,” he said.

With prices having fallen, farmers are getting less for what they grow than they used to and are facing uncertainty from volatile energy prices.

That’s especially hard for farmers in Europe, because of the loss of inexpensive Russian natural gas and trade disruption as Yemen’s Houthi rebels attack ships in the Red Sea, he said.

The Red Sea is a critical trade route between Asia and Europe, so farmers in the European Union, Ukraine and Russia are facing the fallout from shipping companies diverting vessels on longer journeys around the tip of southern Africa.

“Those costs get passed back to producers,” said Glauber, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Not only that, interest rates are high, making it more expensive to borrow to buy farm equipment and other necessities. European farmers also face climate regulations that can drive up costs that aren’t being borne by competitors in the U.S. and elsewhere.

However, farmers in major economies like Europe and the U.S. do get government money for growing food, while “a bulk of agriculture around the world is unsubsidized. And they’re competing in this environment,” Glauber said.

Economies have slowed, especially in Europe, so food inflation has eased, but “people still think back two years ago and say, ‘Boy, this this meat is still very expensive relative to what I was paying two years ago,’” he said.

Cheaper imports are a big concern for farmers around Europe.

In France, a big focus of the farmers’ anger was the massive Rungis trading center, Europe’s biggest food market. It provides food to many Paris restaurants and supermarkets but is also seen as a symbol of globalized food chains.

A group of farmers from the rural southwest camped out with their tractors outside its gates this week, and later pushed past armored vehicles guarding the site, leading to 91 arrests.

“I chose to come here, because it’s a highly symbolic place, a food symbol,” said Jean-Baptiste Chemin, a grain and orchard farmer who drove there in his tractor from the Lot-et-Garonne region of southern France. Nearby stood a placard reading, ”We are nourishing you and we are dying.”

When police came to detain him, he joked with them in his distinctive southern accent that he wouldn’t object to being taken to a police station. “I already traveled 600 kilometers (360 miles) anyway.”

___

Associated Press writer Courtney Bonnell in London contributed to this report.

Northern Ireland to elect Irish nationalist First Minister in historic shift

Fri, 2 February 2024 

Mary Lou McDonald
Irish politician, President of Sinn Féin


By Amanda Ferguson and Padraic Halpin

BELFAST/DUBLIN (Reuters) - Northern Ireland lawmakers are set to elect an Irish nationalist First Minister for the first time on Saturday, placing a member of the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army in charge of a region where it seeks an end to British rule.

But Michelle O'Neill's ascent to the role also marks the most significant milestone yet in a shift to a new generation of more pragmatic Irish nationalists not directly involved in the region's decades-long bloody conflict.


And her election was made possible by a compromise between her Sinn Fein party and its arch rival, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which this week ended a boycott of the region's power-sharing government that had threatened the 1998 Good Friday peace settlement.

"This is a historic moment in time, it's not lost of the wider public," O'Neill said on Tuesday when the DUP's decision to re-enter government made her election inevitable.

"But it depends on what you do with it... Let's get down to business. Let's ... actually deliver for public sector workers, for the wider society out there."

STALEMATE

Sinn Fein, once shunned by the political establishment on both sides of the Irish border, emerged as the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly for the first time in an election in 2022, giving it the right to nominate O'Neill as First Minister.

But her path was blocked by the DUP's refusal to join the government in protest at post-Brexit trade rules, which it said created barriers with the rest of the United Kingdom and undermined Northern Ireland's place in it.

The DUP ended its boycott this week after striking a deal with the UK government to ease trade frictions.

Technically the compulsory power-sharing system gives equal power to the DUP's Deputy First Minister as to O'Neill as first minister. But the First Minister title has always carried symbolic weight.

"The ground is shifting in a very decisive way," said Chris Donnelly, a political commentator from the mainly Catholic area of west Belfast. "And for nationalists that means the moment of Irish unity would appear to be closer than ever."

UNITED IRELAND

O'Neill's imminent appointment, like the 2022 election, have triggered talk of the ultimate dream of Irish nationalism: the end of British rule in Northern Ireland and a united Ireland.

"As a matter of fact in historic terms, it's within touching distance," Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein's leader in the Republic, said on Tuesday.

McDonald, whose party also looks set to be the largest in the south in elections due by next year, has repeatedly said a referendum could be held within a decade.

McDonald was speaking at Belfast's Stormont Assembly, established in 1921 as the parliament of a Northern Ireland state designed to provide a Protestant majority counterweight to the newly independent, predominantly Catholic, Irish state to the south.

At that time, the population split was roughly two-thirds Protestant to one-third Catholic. Data from the 2021 census showed Catholics outnumbered Protestants for the first time.

But opinion polls have made clear that demographics alone will not win a unity referendum: the polls consistently show a clear majority in favour of remaining part of the United Kingdom.

Under the 1998 peace deal that ended three decades of sectarian violence, a referendum on unity is at the discretion of the British government, which can call a referendum if it appears likely a majority of those voting would seek to form part of a united Ireland.

Writing in the Irish Times on Friday, University College Dublin history professor Diarmaid Ferriter described McDonald's comments as "wildly exaggerated".

While talking up the prospect of unity, Sinn Fein's pitch to voters at the 2022 election focused on economic concerns, following a similar playbook in the south where the party has found success campaigning on everyday issues like housing.

And all politicians in Northern Ireland are under intense pressure to deliver on bread and butter issues after the two-year hiatus put pressure on already stretched public services.

In a video message after the restoration of the executive was confirmed, O'Neill did not mention a united Ireland.

"We need to get down to brass tacks," she said.

(Additional reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Bureau of Prisons union leader asks Biden 'to prioritize and address' staffing


LUKE BARR
Fri, 2 February 2024 


The head of the Bureau of Prisons union has written to President Joe Biden asking him to seriously consider the impact staffing shortages are having on the nation's federal prisons.

"The current staffing shortage within our agency have reached a critical level, placing an unsustainable burden on our existing workforce, and compromising the safety and security of both staff and inmates," president of the Council of Prison Locals 33, Brandy Moore-White wrote to Biden in a letter obtained by ABC News.

Moore-White represents nearly 30,000 federal corrections employees.

BOP has lost 9,000 staff members since 2016, which "has raised serious concerns about our ability to effectively carry out our responsibilities," the letter said.

"These shortages have resulted in increased workloads, mandatory overtime, a practice called augmentation or reassignment (where non-correctional officers are assigned to perform the duties of a correctional officer and vacate their positions), and heightened stress levels for our staff, ultimately jeopardizing the well-being of all involved," it said.

 The seal for the Federal Bureau of Prisons is seen at Federal Bureau of Prisons headquarters in Washington

(Carolyn Kaster/AP, FILE)

MORE: DeSantis sends National Guard to help with Florida prison staffing shortage

Moore-White says in addition to the staffing levels, pay "insufficiency" has become a "significant concern" for officers.

"The current pay structure within the Bureau is significantly lower than that of other Federal Law Enforcement Agencies, including the US Marshals, Immigration and Customs (ICE) and Border Patrol," she said.

She said the pay scale doesn't compare to state and local law enforcement jobs or jobs in the private sector.

This concern has been confirmed by the director of the Bureau of Prisons, who said one of the main competitors for BOP recruitment is often times the local big box store.

"I urge you to prioritize and address these pressing issues within the Federal Bureau of Prisons," Moore-White wrote to Biden. "By investing in our personnel, you will not only improve the working conditions of thousands of public servants, but also enhance the integrity and effectiveness of our nation's federal correctional system."

In an interview done for the CBS News program "60 Minutes," BOP Director Collette Peters said she is aware of the staffing issues in the federal prison system and is working to address it.

The BOP and the White House have not commented on the letter.

 abcnews.go.com

Biden is campaigning against the Lost Cause and the ‘poison’ of white supremacy in South Carolina

Joseph Patrick Kelly, College of Charleston
Fri, 2 February 2024 


President Joe Biden at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina on Jan. 8, 2024. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

In the blur of breaking news, one of President Joe Biden’s first speeches of the 2024 campaign was given in South Carolina and has already been mostly forgotten in the ongoing coverage of the state’s democratic primary on Feb. 3, 2024.

We should pay it more attention.

The site of the speech on Jan. 8, 2024, was Charleston, South Carolina’s Mother Emanuel AME Church, where, on a summer evening in 2015, an avowed white supremacist murdered nine Black worshipers, including Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor and a state representative. At Pinckney’s funeral, then-President Barack Obama sang a heart-felt version of the Christian hymn Amazing Grace.

From the pulpit, Biden sounded like a preacher.

“The word of God was pierced by bullets in hate and rage, propelled by not just gunpowder but by a poison,” Biden said. “A poison that’s for too long haunted this nation. What is that poison? White supremacy. … Throughout our history, it’s ripped this nation apart.”

As a historian who studies democracy in the American South, I am doing research for a book on free speech, lying and fascism in America during the 1920s and 1930s. What I have learned is that Biden’s Mother Emanuel speech should rank with some of the most important speeches in our history.

The original big lie

In 1820, 44 years after the nation’s birth, U.S. Sen. William Smith of South Carolina was the first to claim in Congress that men were not created equal. Boldly rejecting the Declaration of Independence as effusive “enthusiasm,” Smith injected white supremacy into public discourse.

It spread like wildfire, and there’s little wonder. Smith, who owned several plantations and at least 71 enslaved people, was among more than 1,800 U.S. legislators who enslaved Black people.

Southern propagandists rewrote history, arguing the founders never really believed in equality. If you disagreed, vigilante thugs would beat you up or chase you into exile. They killed more than a few people who spoke up against slavery.
‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’

The Supreme Court’s infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford extended Southern racist ideology into the North. Black people, the court held, are “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and … the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery.”

The following year, in his campaign for the U. S. Senate, Abraham Lincoln sounded the alarm. He addressed the consequences of slavery on America’s democracy and warned that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

“This government cannot endure,” he said, “permanently half slave and half free. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it … or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.”

An 1860 portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The Civil War was supposed to end slavery and the white supremacist ideology that underpinned it. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, known as the Reconstruction amendments, made equality explicit in the Constitution, extending civil and political rights to newly freed African Americans.

That upended the Southern social order.

The South then invented what Biden called the “self-serving lie” of the “Lost Cause,” the rewritten version of the Civil War that claims slavery had nothing to do with the war. The white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan was the violent hammer of this “Lost Cause,” and its emergence coincided with Jim Crow laws that established racial segregation across the South and disenfranchised Black voters until the 1960s.
Democracies in peril

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 6, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sounded a new alarm. His “Four Freedoms” speech was an updated version of Lincoln’s and further defined freedom within a democracy.

The immediate issue was whether the U.S. should help England and other European allies defend against the fascist regimes of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

This was no academic question of foreign policy. In helping Britain, President Roosevelt stated, the United States was fighting for the universal freedoms that all people possessed: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Biden has rung a similiar alarm. During his speech at Mother Emanuel church – and again during other campaign stops before the Feb. 3 Democratic Party primary in South Carolina – Biden acknowledged that he is not only running against the GOP front-runner Donald Trump but also against a “second lost cause” myth.

Biden called out Trump for his “big lie” about the 2020 election that Trump has repeatedly claim was “rigged” against him. He criticized those who he said are attempting to “steal history” again and spin the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as “a peaceful protest.”

At its core, Biden warned, Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is a resurrection of southern-style white nationalism and the age-old disregard for equal rights.

“We all know who Donald Trump is,” Biden said during his speech and in his ads, calling on Americans to work to make up for centuries of racism and discrimination “The question we have to answer is who are we?”

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.

It was written by: Joseph Patrick Kelly, College of Charleston.

Read more:

Trump tapped into white victimhood – leaving fertile ground for white supremacists

How the quest for significance and respect underlies the white supremacist movement, conspiracy theories and a range of other problems

Joseph Patrick Kelly volunteers for the Charleston County (SC) Democratic Party.

The United Nations' top court said Friday it had jurisdiction to rule in most parts of a case brought by Ukraine 

NEWS WIRES
Fri, 2 February 2024 



The United Nations' top court said Friday it had jurisdiction to rule in most parts of a case brought by Ukraine over Russia's brutal 2022 invasion, with Kyiv urging reparations.

Ukraine dragged Russia before the International Court of Justice only a few days after the invasion, seeking to battle its neighbour on all fronts, legal as well as diplomatic and military.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion on February 24, 2022, part of his argument was that pro-Russian people in eastern Ukraine had been "subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kyiv regime".

Ukraine filed a suit at the ICJ, "emphatically denying" this and arguing that Russia's use of "genocide" as a pretext for invasion went against the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.

In a preliminary ruling in March 2022, the ICJ sided with Ukraine and ordered Russia to halt its invasion immediately.

But Russia objected to this judgement, saying the ICJ, which decides on disputes between states, had no legal right to decide in this case.

The ICJ on Friday tossed out Moscow's argument, saying it did have jurisdiction to rule on this.

However, Ukraine had also said in its submission that Russia's use of force during the invasion was itself in contravention of the Genocide Convention.

The ICJ said it did not have competence to decide on this part of the case.

The ICJ's rulings are binding and cannot be appealed but it has no means to enforce its decisions.

The ICJ is under heightened scrutiny at the moment with a high-profile case about the war in Gaza.

World Court Rules Ukraine Can Go Ahead With Genocide Case Against Russia

But the case is not a straight-forward accusation of genocide.


Kate Nicholson
Fri, 2 February 2024 

Russia tried to get Ukraine's genocide case thrown out

Russia tried to get Ukraine's genocide case thrown out

The International Court of Justice just rejected most of Russia’s objections to Ukraine’s genocide case against Moscow, meaning it will still go ahead.

Ukraine brought this case to the ICJ, the United Nations’ highest court which is also known as the World Court, days after Russia invaded its neighbour on February 24, 2022.

But the case is not a straight-forward accusation of genocide.

Kyiv has accused Russia of violating the international genocide treaty, not by committing genocide, but by justifying Russia’s own invasion of Ukraine through the treaty itself.

This is part of the landmark 1948 UN convention which both Russia and Ukraine ratified.

In its case, Ukraine alleges Moscow justified its invasion two years ago – known in Russia as the “special military operation” – by claiming it needed to stop an alleged genocide of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, Luhansk and Donetsk.

Ukraine also accuses Moscow of “planning acts of genocide”.

Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv since 2014, and Putin signed a decree recognising the independence of two Ukrainian regions three days before initiating war.

But, Kyiv says it did not pose any risk of genocide to those in eastern Ukraine – and by making such a claim to justify its war, Russia was in breach of international law.

Russia’s lawyers have argued since September 2023 that the case should be thrown out, that the arguments were flawed and the court had no jurisdiction.

It said Ukraine’s argument was a way to combat Russia’s supposed legal military action.

But today, out of Russia’s six preliminary objections to the case, the ICJ rejected five.

Europe has repeatedly expressed its backing for Kyiv ahead of this case, with more than 24 countries offering formal statements to the court supporting Ukraine.

Although the case has passed this stage, it may be months until the World Court hears the full arguments, and years away from making a full legally binding decision.

Russia has prompted several responses from the UN’s highest court since the war in Ukraine began.

The ICJ issued emergency measures in March 2022, a month after the invasion, calling for Moscow to stop its military actions.

While the court is legally binding, it has no way to force countries to take its orders – so Russia ignored this plea.

And, only earlier this week, the world court ruled Russia had violated parts of UN treaties against the financing of terrorism and discriminated minorities in occupied Crimea in 2014 in a separate case.

However, it was not a strong victory for Ukraine, as the ICJ rejected Kyiv’s call for compensation and just ordered Russia to comply with the treaties.

Still Ukraine’s representative Anton Korynevych said it was significant because “this is the first time that officially, legally, Russia is called a violator of international law.”

Opinion

When Mark Zuckerberg can face US senators and claim the moral high ground, we’re through the looking glass


Marina Hyde
Fri, 2 February 2024

Mark Zuckerberg arrives to testify before a senate judiciary committee hearing on online child safety, Capitol Hill, Washington DC, 31 January 2024.Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Did you catch a clip of the tech CEOs in Washington this week? The Senate judiciary committee had summoned five CEOs to a hearing titled Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis. There was Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel, Discord’s Jason Citron and X’s Linda Yaccarino – and a predictable vibe of “Senator, I’m a parent myself …” Listen, these moguls simply want to provide the tools to help families and friends connect with each other. Why must human misery and untold, tax-avoidant billions attend them at every turn?

If you did see footage from the hearing, it was probably one of two moments of deliberately clippable news content. Ranking committee member Lindsey Graham addressed Zuckerberg with the words: “I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands.” Well, ditto, Senator. “You have a product that is killing people,” continued Graham, who strangely has yet to make the same point to the makers of whichever brand of AR-15 he proudly owns, or indeed to the makers of the assault rifles responsible for another record high of US school shootings last year. Firearms fatalities are the number one cause of death among US children and teenagers, a fact the tech CEOs at this hearing politely declined to mention, because no one likes a whatabouterist. And after all, the point of these things is to just get through the posturing of politicians infinitely less powerful than you, then scoot back to behaving precisely as you were before. Zuckerberg was out of there in time to report bumper results and announce Meta’s first ever dividend on Thursday. At time of writing, its shares were soaring.

Anyhow, if it wasn’t that clip, maybe it was the one of Zuckerberg being goaded by sedition fist-pumper Josh Hawley into apologising to those in the committee room audience who had lost children to suicide following exploitation on his platform. Thanks to some stagey prodding by Senator Hawley, who famously encouraged the mob on 6 January 2020 (before later being filmed running away from them after they stormed the Capitol), Zuckerberg turned round, stood up, and faced his audience of the bereaved. “I’m sorry for everything you’ve all gone through,” he began. Helpfully, a transcribed version of this off-the-cuff moment found its way into a Meta press release minutes after the event.


So I guess that was the hearing. “Tense”, “heated”, “stunning” – listen, if adjectival cliches were legislation, this exercise would have been something more than pointless. And yet, they’re not and it wasn’t. There really ought to be a genre name for this kind of performative busywork – the theatre of failure, perhaps.

Other outcomes were once available. Back in 1994, the CEOs of seven big tobacco firms took their oaths before a Senate committee, then spouted a communal line that nicotine wasn’t addictive. Within two years, all seven had quit the tobacco industry – a development not unrelated to the fact that all seven were under investigation by the justice department for perjury. Those were different times, and not just because we probably wouldn’t slap them with the “seven dwarfs” moniker now. These days, you can’t escape the sense that old guys were shouting at Zuckerberg at a hearing six years ago, while he offered 2018’s variation on his favourite blandishment: “We know we have more work to do”. And you suspect they’ll be shouting at him again in five years’ time, when he will still know they have more work to do. “If you’re waiting on these guys to solve the problem,” sniffed Graham of the tech CEOs, “we’re gonna die waiting.” Again, the senator speaks of what he knows. There is always talk of legislation, but there is never really much legislation.

There’s a line near the start of the movie version of Ready Player One, the cult dystopian book about a VR world that weirdly feels like the lodestar for Zuckerberg’s pivot towards the metaverse: “I was born in 2027,” explains the teenage protagonist, “after the corn syrup droughts, after the bandwidth riots … after people stopped trying to fix problems, and just tried to outlive them.” It was hard to watch any amount of Wednesday’s hearing – it’s hard to watch a lot of news about the intersection of politics and mega-business these days, in fact – and not feel we are in a very similar place. Few of the politicians giving it the hero act could be said to have left the world in a better place than the one in which they found it when they took office. A necrotic form of politics has gripped the Republican party in particular, and this is the vacuum in which they have been downgraded by corporations they don’t even understand, let alone have the will, foresight, or political skill to control.

“Companies over countries,” as Mark Zuckerberg said a long time ago. This once-unformed thought becomes more realised all the time, with the Meta boss last year explaining that, “Increasingly, the real world is a combination of the physical world we inhabit and the digital world we are building.” The added irony is that the more the Lindsey Grahams fail the real world, the more people retreat further into the unregulated embrace of the worlds that the Mark Zuckerbergs run. It’s going to take so much more than the theatre of failure to solve it – but bad actors currently dominate the bill.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Laurie Anderson ends German professorship after criticism of Palestine support

Ashifa Kassam
Thu, February 1, 2024 

Laurie Anderson performs at the Royal Festival Hall on 18 May 2017 in London, England.Photograph: Imelda Michalczyk/Redferns

The artist, musician and film director Laurie Anderson has withdrawn from a guest professorship at a university in Germany after officials took issue with her support for a 2021 statement by Palestinian artists titled Letter Against Apartheid.

Related: Award ceremony suspended after writer compares Gaza to Nazi-era Jewish ghettos

The decision, announced days before Anderson is due to receive a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Grammys, adds to the wave of cultural events that have been scrapped in Germany after artists expressed views deemed by officials to be anti-Israel.

Late last week the Folkwang University of Arts in Essen said it had “engaged in talks” with Anderson – whose works include the 1981 single O Superman and the 2015 film Heart of a Dog, dedicated to her late husband, Lou Reed – after her name surfaced among the thousands of artists who had backed the open letter, which called for “an immediate and unconditional cessation of Israeli violence against Palestinians”.

The university said it believed that art, culture and science are places “where contentious issues are kept in check”.

Its statement continued: “It has now become apparent that, in 2021, Laurie Anderson publicly supported the Palestinian artists’ ‘Letter Against Apartheid’ appeal, which, among other things, takes up calls for boycotts by the anti-Israel BDS movement,” it said. “In light of the now public question regarding her political stance, Laurie Anderson has decided to withdraw from the professorship.”

While the open letter in question does not directly make reference to the boycott, divest and sanctions movement, which was labelled by the German parliament as antisemitic in 2019, it calls on governments to apply sanctions and to “cut trade, economic and cultural relations”.

The statement also included remarks from Anderson. “For me the question isn’t whether my political opinions have shifted. The real question is this: Why is this question being asked in the first place?” she said. “Based on this situation I withdraw from the project.”

The decision came weeks after it was announced that Anderson would follow in Marina Abramović’s footsteps as the second artist to take up the university’s Pina Bausch guest professorship. “Throughout her eventful artistic career, Laurie Anderson has created groundbreaking works – in visual arts, theatre, experimental music and technology alike,” the university said in a statement at the time. “Laurie Anderson is celebrated for her innovative work, fusing music, performance art, and technology that push the boundaries of artistic expression.”

The crisis in the Middle East has plunged Germany into a far-reaching debate over the limits of freedom of expression when it comes to art and the personal views of artists, prompting a divisive call for an all-out boycott of German cultural institutions over the government’s pro-Israel stance.

Several high-profile artists and intellectuals have been affected: in December, a German foundation said it would no longer be awarding a prize for political thinking to the US-Russian journalist Masha Gessen after the writer drew parallels between Gaza and a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe, while in mid-October the Frankfurt book fair called off an awards ceremony due to honour a novel by the Palestinian author Adania Shibli.

German officials have defended their stance, which comes amid a spike in antisemitism in the country. In a statement sent to AFP in December, the country’s culture minister, Claudia Roth, said that “Israel’s security is a fundamental principle” for Germany, but stressed it was important to try to keep cultural spaces “open and safe for everybody”.

She noted that the cancellation of events and prize ceremonies should be “the last step”, adding: “I would hope that we can move away from fear and move towards dialogue and discourse.”