Gen Z and Millennials find meetings unproductive compared to instant messaging


ByDr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL
May 4, 2024


Headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, VNG is one of Vietnam's leading game publishers and also runs a digital wallet and the country's most popular messaging platform - — © AFP Nhac NGUYEN

The world of work continues to evolve and the younger generation are less keen to sit in meetings compared with communicating using instant messaging or email. A survey reveals that 59 percent more Gen Z and Millennial workers believe that instant messaging or email instead of calls or meetings is the best way to “get things done.”

The research comes from a study undertaken by global recruitment agency Robert Walters. This suggests modern technology methods have enabled younger professionals to achieve more efficient outcomes. As a consequence, just 11 percent of this cohort believe that calls and meetings are worthwhile.

In contrast, the survey finds that 49 percent of Gen X and Baby Boomers (aged 44-78) believe that less calls and meetings will have a negative impact on business relationships. Such findings exemplify the challenges of a multigenerational workforce.

This is in the context of the different generations, as commonly categorised by marketers:

Generations    Born    Current Ages

Gen Z                   1997 –  2012     12 – 27

Millennials        1981 – 1996      28 – 43

Gen X                 1965 – 1980      44 – 59

Boomers II (a/k/a Generation Jones)

                                1955 – 1964      60 – 69

Boomers I        1946 – 1954    70 – 78

Commenting on these findings, Martin Fox, Managing Director of Robert Walters Canada, says: “Younger professionals are embracing the digital age and the positive impact it can have on productivity and time management.”

Fox continues: “While the efficiency and convenience of digital communication cannot be denied, we must recognize the downsides. Face-to-face interactions allow for meaningful connections and provide an opportunity for non-verbal communication cues, building trust and rapport with clients and colleagues.”

Citing an example, Fox raises: “The subtleties of body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice contribute to a deeper understanding and connection that often cannot be fully conveyed through text or even video chats.”

Workers in a business hub. Image by © Tim Sandle.

The study also highlights the shift in attitudes towards traditional business practices. The old-school concept of a “long lunch” with a prospective client is perceived as outdated by some younger professionals, with almost half (46 percent) saying that they are “hit and miss”.

Here Fox observes: “Younger generations are less inclined to spend hours in a restaurant or cafe when they can have a quick discussion online. This change has the potential to reshape business models, as companies need to adapt to meet the needs and preferences of this tech-savvy demographic. Nevertheless, it’s crucial for employees to recognize the great value in in-person face time; it remains a crucial aspect of professional relationship-building.”

Such findings indicates that organizations should implement various communication methods to accommodate different preferences.

 

Online gaming abuse: Why the majority of gamers suffer

By Dr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL
May 4, 2024


Gamers in China are required to use their ID cards to register to play games online.

It has been estimated that 90 percent of children over the age of two, in high income countries like the U.S., play some form of video game. Hence, it has become more important than ever to protect a child while they play games online.

Safety advice for online activities like playing video games includes keeping personal information a secret and never sharing personal information with other players (such as real name, home address, age, gender, or pictures).

Marin Cristian-Ovidiu, the CEO of the Internet-based game offering platform OnlineGames.io has discussed with Digital Journal how to keep a child safe from online bullies.

Hide Your Child’s Personal Details

Cristian-Ovidiu recommends that a child should create a nickname and use an avatar that has no connection to them, rather than displaying their real name and photograph. They should also never have any of their basic details (date of birth, school/college name, mobile number, and address) attached to their account, and they should never discuss them online.

Show Them How To Spot Unsafe Adults

Warn your child that adults can masquerade as children, Cristian-Ovidiu warns, such as to obtain sexual pictures or arrange secret meet-ups.

Cristian-Ovidiu states: “Also warn your child about behaviours known as trolling and ‘griefing’, where people deliberately play badly or do things that make games worse for their teams. Let them know that these people are out to provoke a reaction and the best thing they can do is ignore them.”

Furthermore, he advises that cybercriminals often use in-game chats to perform their scams (e.g. offering fake loot boxes and downloads). Some try to get kids to give up their ‘skins’ (in-game cosmetic items) or in-app purchases by offering money. In some games, you can turn off the chat function to avoid these messages.

Create A Family Agreement

Discuss safety issues openly with your child and encourage them to make an agreement with you about things they will and will not do, advises Cristian-Ovidiu. This should cover points like how much screen time they’re allowed and an agreement to only play age-appropriate games. Encourage your child to tell you if there are issues but monitor their games and conversations.

Block Them From Accessing Inappropriate Content

Cristian-Ovidiu recommends: 2You can adjust each game’s privacy settings so you have more control over your child’s access. You can also update console settings to set age restrictions, manage online interactions, filter content, and control online purchases. This will prevent your child from being able to download games that feature adult content.”

Have A Gameplan For Dealing With Nasty Players

Cristian-Ovidiu also suggests explaining to a child the steps of what they should do if someone becomes abusive or behaves suspiciously.

How to spot a phishing email like a cybersecurity expert?


By Dr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL

May 3, 2024


Computers and offices. — Image by © Tim Sandle.

Phishing is an attempt to steal personal information or break into online accounts using deceptive emails, messages, ads or sites that look similar to sites you already use. It is a growing menace and the use of email remains the most common way to seeking to defraud the unaware.

Through the day scammers are sending a constant barrage of phishing emails to try and steal your money and identity.

Oliver Page, the CEO of CyberNut, tells Digital Journal about five ways to spot phishing emails like a professional IT consultant.

Tip 1: The Language Is Urgent And Fear-Mongering

With this first area, Page picks a scenario where you could be warned something bad will happen (for example, you will be charged or lose access to an important account) or you will miss a bargain or prize if you do not respond immediately.

Page states: “By implying there’s limited time to fix an error or claim a prize, the scammers are hoping you’ll be less likely to think twice about what you’re doing.”

Tip 2: The Message Content Is Poor Or Garbled

Reputable firms would never start an email with a generic or impersonal greeting such as ‘Hi’. Similarly, instances of misspelling or bad grammar should ring alarm bells. If the email is littered with spelling and grammar mistakes, it clearly indicates the sender is not using tools such as Grammarly or Word’s spellcheck; it would be extremely unlikely for genuine companies to not proofread official emails, so repeated or obvious errors should always clue you in to the fact that something is amiss.

Tip 3: The Sender Address Or Domain Name Is Suspicious

If the message purports to come from a major organisation (such as Paypal), the email address should match the company’s name (e.g. @paypal.com). Genuine companies will never use a service like Gmail (@gmail.com) to communicate with you.

According to Page: “If the spelling of the domain name is incorrect, this should be immediately concerning. A scammer may have created a copycat address that slightly varies from the genuine company name (e.g. apple1.com) in the hope that you won’t check too closely.”

Tip 4: The Email Makes Personal Information Requests

Page warns that scammers are most often after one of the following:Your social security number
Your bank details
Your card numbers
Your contact information

This list leads Page to state: “If you’re unsure, never supply this data online. If the sender wants to send you money, be suspicious if they ask for your bank details first.”

Tip 5: The Email Contains Unknown Attachments Or Links

Page cautions not to access any attachments if they have strange file names or extensions. Clicking on ‘.zip’ means you’d unzip files onto your computer, and ‘.exe’ would run a software program on your device.

These attachments could release computer viruses or malware, while suspicious links could take you to fraudulent websites. Trustworthy companies would be more likely to use platforms such as Dropbox when supplying extra documents.

This leads Page to conclude: “You should also beware of vague and unexpected messages purporting to be from well-known companies, the authorities or the government, or your bank, as well as any email promising unbelievably good offers like free vacations or big-ticket items.”

Rescuers brave Indonesia volcano eruptions to save pets


AFP
May 5, 2024


A volunteer carries a wounded dog rescued from the foot of Mount Ruang

 - Copyright AFP Ronny Adolof BUOL

Ronny Adolof Buol

An Indonesian volunteer returns from a dangerous rescue mission to a remote island where a volcano recently unleashed huge eruptions, cradling an abandoned, emaciated dog covered in burn blisters.

Mount Ruang in Indonesia’s northernmost region has erupted more than half a dozen times since April 16, stirring a spectacular mix of ash, lava and lightning that forced the island’s residents to be permanently relocated and thousands more evacuated.

But while locals have fled, a team of volunteers travelled to Ruang by boat on daring rescue missions to save abandoned pets from the foot of the volcano that remains at its highest alert level.

“We know that they (the animals) are still living there. How come we let them die while we know they are still alive there?” 31-year-old volunteer Laurent Tan told AFP on Saturday.

Laurent, the owner of two animal shelters in North Sulawesi province capital Manado, is one of eight volunteers who have made the six-hour ferry journey several times to Ruang’s neighbouring Tagulandang island following the eruptions.

On one of their missions to the island’s ash-covered homes, they retrieved an unnamed pup, a white cat, and a bright turquoise-and-white tropical bird.

The dog, a female with burns on her face and body, was brought to a makeshift shelter on Tagulandang, where a veterinarian treated her on a wooden desk while a volunteer held up a mobile phone flashlight.

She appeared to have survived the eruptions by taking shelter in a large gutter. The surrounding village above ground had been destroyed, Laurent said.

The group, made of volunteers from animal welfare organisations, deployed for a second time on Friday after some pet owners made desperate social media appeals for them to evacuate their pets, and has since rescued “a lot” of animals, she added.

An AFP journalist at the scene said more than a dozen animals had been rescued since Friday.

Some owners had learned their pets were still alive after seeing them in pictures of Ruang island in the media.

– ‘Their lives matter’ –

Authorities had told locals to evacuate outside a seven-kilometre (4.3-mile) exclusion zone around the crater, which was lowered to five kilometres on Sunday, with around 11,000 people earmarked for evacuation.

As of Saturday, more than 5,000 people from Tagulandang had been evacuated, the national disaster mitigation agency said Sunday, while all of Ruang’s residents — more than 800 — had been taken for permanent relocation.

Authorities had warned of potential flying rocks, lava flows and tsunamis due to debris sliding into the sea.

But despite the risk, the volunteers were getting to work.

One climbed over the fence of an abandoned house to rescue several dogs left behind by their owner, before handing them over to vet Hendrikus Hermawan.

Hendrikus said the owner had asked the volunteers for help rescuing the dogs, which included a five-month-old puppy.

Many of the rescued animals appeared hungry and stressed after their owners left them, he told AFP.

“The first treatment we do here is give food and additional vitamins to relieve their stress,” he said, adding that the animals could survive as long as they were nourished.

The volunteers aim to rescue all the dogs, cats and birds threatened by the volcano, bring them to Manado and reunite them with any original owners, said Laurent.

While the initial focus of the eruptions was on the human impact, the volunteer said animals should not be forgotten.

“Our main focus is the animals. Many people have already received help, but these animals had no help,” she said.

“For me, their lives matter. We consider them part of our family.”

France probes TotalEnergies over 2021 Mozambique attack


AFP
May 4, 2024


TotalEnergies is accused of involuntary manslaughter and non-assistence to people in danger - Copyright AFP Lillian SUWANRUMPHA

Joseph SOTINEL

French prosecutors said Saturday they were investigating oil giant TotalEnergies for possible involuntary manslaughter in connection with a 2021 jihadist attack in Mozambique that killed hundreds.

The probe follows a legal complaint brought by victims’ families and attack survivors, accusing the French energy company, which was developing a major liquefied gas project in the region, of failing to protect its subcontractors, the prosecutors’ office told AFP.

The survivors and families say TotalEnergies also failed to provide fuel so that helicopters could evacuate civilians after Islamic State-linked militants killed dozens of people in the Mozambican port town of Palma on March 24, 2021.

The entire attack in Cabo Delgado province lasted several days, claiming several hundred lives. Some of the victims were beheaded and thousands fled their homes.

Contacted by AFP Saturday, a TotalEnergies spokesman reiterated a previous statement saying it “firmly rejects the accusations”.

He said the company’s Mozambique teams had supplied emergency aid and made the evacuation of 2,500 people from the plant possible, including civilians, staff, contractors and sub-contractors.

The French investigation also seeks to establish whether TotalEnergies is guilty of non-assistance to people in danger, prosecutors said.

Seven British and South African complainants — three survivors and four relatives of victims — accuse TotalEnergies of failing to take steps to ensure the safety of subcontractors even before the assault.

The Al-Shabab group — unrelated to the Somali group of the same name — which carried out the attack had been active in Cabo Delgado province since 2017 and drawing ever closer to Palma.

“The danger was known,” said the complainants lawyer Henri Thulliez in 2023 at the time of the lawsuit.

Depending on the outcome of the preliminary probe, the case would either be dropped, or the investigation intensified with a view to bringing possible charges, they said.

– ‘Positive step’ –

Families and survivors welcomed the French decision, with Nicholas Alexander, a South African attack survivor, calling it “a positive step”.

TotalEnergies, he said, bore “a share of responsibility” in the tragedy, he told AFP.

Anabela Lemos, an activist at Friends of the Earth Mozambique — known locally as Justica Ambiental — said the “negative effects” of the French oil major’s Mozambique operations went beyond the 2021 attack because of environmental “destruction” and “deaths” as a result of its presence there.

TotalEnergies’s $20-billion project to develop a large gas field on the Afungi peninsula was halted following the 2021 attack, but chairman Patrick Pouyanne has since said he hoped to revive it.

In November 2023, a group of 124 NGOs posted an open letter to dozens of financial institutions, including European, Japanese and South African banks, urging them to withdraw from the project.

The NGOs — which included the Human Rights League, Oil Change International and Greenpeace France — told the 28 financial institutions that they would otherwise bear “direct and significant responsibility” for its impact.

“The humanitarian and security risks, as well as the complexity of operations in a conflict zone” were underestimated, the NGOs said in the letter, calling any continuation “reckless”.

The project threatened local ecosystems and the global climate, while failing to benefit local communities, they said.

Mozambique has set high hopes on vast natural gas deposits — the largest found south of the Sahara — that were discovered in the Muslim-majority northern province in 2010.

The former Portuguese colony of 30 million people in southeast Africa is one of the world’s poorest countries despite having large natural resources, especially gas.

It has faced insurgencies from Islamist groups for much of the past decade.

Mexico tourist train an environmental ‘nightmare,’ activists say


AFP
May 4, 2024

Environmental activist Roberto Rojo stands next to metal columns inside a cave supporting Mexico's controversial Maya Train - Copyright AFP CARL DE SOUZA
Jean Arce

In a cave in Mexico’s Riviera Maya, where nature has sculpted a subterranean landscape of stunning beauty, thick steel columns supporting a controversial new tourist railway intrude into a delicate ecosystem.

The Yucatan Peninsula boasts an estimated 2,400 of these caverns and sinkholes, which are known as cenotes and are a major attraction for tourists who swim and snorkel in the crystal clear waters that fill some of them.

Campaigners warn that the unique geological system is under threat from the Maya Train, one of outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s flagship infrastructure projects.

“It’s our worst nightmare. We’ve seen a large drill entering and breaking the ceiling of the cave” as well as its ancient stalactites, biologist and speleologist Roberto Rojo told AFP, surveying the damage.

In March, Rojo’s group Selvame del Tren (Save Me From the Train) filmed a huge drill piercing a hole into a cavern for one of the pillars supporting a railway viaduct.

Rojo calculates that the Maya Train, which partially opened in December, will need up to 17,000 columns along its 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) loop around southeastern Mexico.

Work on the project has continued despite a court-ordered suspension pending environmental studies.

The original plan was to build part of the railway — which the government says will bring prosperity to one of the country’s poorest regions — next to a major highway.

But according to environmentalists, the government moved the section into the jungle to avoid a conflict with hoteliers who feared traffic delays during construction.

They accuse Lopez Obrador of rushing to finish the railway before he leaves office in October.



– ‘Ecocide’ –



Activists have branded the construction work “ecocide.”

They say the project lacks the proper environmental impact studies, has razed 8.7 million trees and has irreversibly damaged the underground ecosystem.

Lopez Obrador calls the members of Salvame del Tren “pseudo-environmentalists” and accuses them of profiting from the “alleged defense of nature.”

The construction work, deemed of “national security” importance, is protected by the National Guard.

Reaching one of the affected cenotes is no easy task. It involves driving several kilometers from the resort city of Playa del Carmen, then continuing the journey — almost impossible without a guide — on foot, using a machete to cut through the undergrowth.

Once inside the cave, a helmet with a flashlight is essential.

The cavern is adorned by thousands of stalactites and stalagmites, some ancient and several meters high, others newly formed and measuring just a few centimeters.



– Clean-up promised –



Despite Lopez Obrador’s assurances, concrete has leaked out of the steel columns and contaminated the cenote water, according to environmentalists.

Worryingly, the well is a source of water for human consumption and eventually reaches the offshore Mesoamerican Reef — the second largest in the world, Rojo said.

“Plants, animals and ourselves depend on this, which is one of the last healthy aquifers we have in Mexico,” he said.

Lopez Obrador said three weeks ago that there has only been one accidental concrete spillage and that it was being remedied.

But inside the affected cenote, a clean-up has not yet happened.

Other columns show signs of leaks and rust. Drills continue to bore holes into the fragile ground.

The newspaper El Universal reported Friday that the environmental protection agency PROFEPA had documented five spillages linked to the railway construction.



– ‘A balance’ –



The government says that for the five completed sections of the train, nine protected natural areas have been created, totaling 1.34 million hectares (3.3 million acres).

Most of it corresponds to the Bajos del Norte National Park, an underwater reserve in the Gulf of Mexico.

The government also created a protected area in the southeastern state of Campeche that it says will be the second-largest rainforest reserve in the world, after the Brazilian Amazon.

In Playa del Carmen, tourists blissfully unaware of the environmental fears arrived recently at a modern Maya Train station that had been inaugurated two months ago.

About a hundred people were waiting for the train, which has a capacity of 2,210 passengers, according to the defense ministry, which manages the project.

Environmental damage is part of the project’s “yin and yang,” said Jaime Vazquez, a tour operator arriving at the station.

“On the one hand there is an effect, of course, but on the other hand you benefit humans. So it’s a balance,” the 40-year-old said.

So empire and the slave trade contributed little to Britain’s wealth? Pull the other one, Kemi Badenoch

The business and trade secretary played into the ideological tosh that the wonders of the Industrial Revolution were funded by beer brewers and sheep farmers

Will Hutton
Sun 5 May 2024 

THE OBSERVER

Britain ran an empire for centuries that at its peak 100 years ago occupied just under a quarter of the world’s land area. Yet if you believe “Imperial Measurement”, a report released last week from the rightwing Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the net economic impact of this vast empire on Britain was negligible, even negative.

If you thought the empire profoundly shaped our industry, trade and financial institutions, with slavery an inherent part of the equation, helped turbocharge the Industrial Revolution and underwrote what was the world’s greatest navy for 150 years, think again. The contribution of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people to our economy was trumped by domestic brewing and sheep farming, opines the IEA. The tax “burden” of defending this barely profitable empire was not worth the candle. Instead, it was free-market economics that unleashed British economic growth – a truth that must be restated before Marxists and reparation-seeking ex-colonies start controlling the narrative.

It is a risible recasting of history that should have been ignored as self-serving ideological tosh. But enter the business and trade secretary and aspiring Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, who took it upon herself to endorse this IEA “research”. She told an audience of financial services bosses at a conference in London: “It worries me when I hear people talk about wealth and success in the UK as being down to colonialism or imperialism or white privilege or whatever.” If you believe any of this story about oppression and exploitation as the cause of British wealth, then the solutions to “our growth and productivity problem” will be even worse. It was “free markets and liberal institutions” that drove the Industrial Revolution and economic growth thereafter.

Except that, while they were certainly part of a cocktail of reasons for Britain’s rise to economic pre-eminence, they were only part. Recent historical research, blithely dismissed by author Kristian Niemietz, the IEA’s head of political economy, has increasingly uncovered a mountain of evidence that places ever more importance on empire, and slavery in particular, as important drivers of the Industrial Revolution and evolution of our economy.

Take innovation, and the correctly celebrated inventions – James Hargreaves’ spinning jenny of 1764/5, Richard Arkwright’s water frame, patented in 1769, and Samuel Crompton’s mule, introduced in 1778/9 – that together made it possible to harness the delicate but tough Barbadense cotton and manufacture it at scale. By the turn of the 18th century, Lancashire had emerged as Europe’s pre-eminent manufacturing centre of high-quality cotton, usable with other weaves and whose dyes and prints would hold. It was a position of global dominance that Lancashire cotton manufacture, soon joined by West Yorkshire, would reinforce over the century ahead.

But as Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson write in their brilliant Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, it was no accident that this all began a few miles from Europe’s largest slave port, Liverpool. Or that fine Barbadense cotton flourished in Britain’s slave plantations in Barbados and elsewhere in the West Indies. Or that much of the finance for investing in these expensive, but highly profitable, innovative machines came from Liverpool merchants whose own fortunes originated in transatlantic trade.
By the last decades of the 18th century, the West Indies was co-equal with Europe as Britain’s biggest trading partner

In painstaking research, they place slavery at the heart, not only of early industrialisation, but the growth of services such as banking and insurance. By the last decades of the 18th century, they demonstrate that the West Indies was co-equal with Europe as Britain’s biggest trading partner. Cotton’s importance was preceded by slave-grown sugar, which became a national staple. All this spawned a vast boom in British shipping, from 1m tons and 50,000 seamen in the 1780s to 2.5m tons and 130,000 seamen in the 1830s, with the growth propelled by the Atlantic plantation trade.

The ships and their cargoes, whether of enslaved people, sugar or cotton, needed insuring, generating a large marine insurance industry. Sugar refineries were prone to burning down easily – there were over 100 in London alone in the 1780s – causing the need for specialist fire insurance companies. No account of the boom in the textile industry either side of the Pennines or the City of London is complete without empire and the slave trade, which even after abolition in 1833 would continue as trade in indentured labour.

The trade needed protecting and policing. A strong navy was an imperative – the West Indies became the second most important theatre for the navy outside British home waters, and where the custom of giving sailors a daily tot of West Indian rum originated. A 74-gun ship of the line from 1805 might cost the equivalent of 16 cotton mills, but the money was easily found from burgeoning tariffs. The navy was also a richly profitable and important market for British farmers and gun makers.

No one argues that slavery caused the Industrial Revolution, least of all Berg and Hudson. But to minimise and abstract, as Niemietz attempts, the economic impact of first the sugar and then cotton slave plantations, and also the industries that radiated from them, as not part of the story is plainly inadmissible. It is also true that liberal institutions, such as judicial independence and rule of law, helped early capitalism and was additionally fostered by the creation of a unified internal market.

Britain’s liberal approach to immigration, in welcoming inventors, scientists and engineers from all over Europe, fanned the fires of invention and manufacture, as economic historian Joel Mokyr argues in The Enlightened Economy. Badenoch would be more persuasive if, while exalting such liberal factors, she conceded the critical role of slavery, but also that her own government is hardly a friend of judicial independence, celebrates leaving the largest single market on earth and could scarcely be more hostile to immigration – very different illiberal principles to those she thinks drove the Industrial Revolution.

Empire, without doubt, profoundly affected the British economy. Not least, it was a source of lush, easy profits and rents which have become a benchmark that most British companies target even now, so limiting the projects in which they invest. British industry was still sheltering behind preferential imperial tariffs in 1970.

Empire absolved us of thinking how to develop our national economy; the market seemed to achieve that magically by itself. This magical thinking is now integral to our headlong decline, and the IEA is one of its leading advocates, betraying a wilful ignorance that goes beyond history. Its advice wrecked Liz Truss’s career. Badenoch should beware it does not do the same for her.

SEE

Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch says historians 'exaggerate' the importance of slavery and colonialism to Britain's growth as a world power saying it was really down to 'ingenuity and industry'

CENSORED

Israel: Al Jazeera goes off air after government order

The Qatari TV network is no longer available in Israel after the Cabinet voted to suspend it. Israel has had a tense relationship with the broadcaster, accusing it of bias and incitement.

The Al Jazeera TV network was taken off the air in Israel on Sunday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet voted to suspend the broadcaster's operations.

The decision follows a law — commonly referred to as the "Al Jazeera law" — passed by the Israeli Knesset that allows the closure of foreign broadcasters considered to pose a security threat amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

"My government decided unanimously: the incitement channel Al Jazeera will close in Israel," Netanyahu posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Al Jazeera on Sunday again rejected accusations from Israel that its reporting from Gaza was biased.

"The Netanyahu government has decided in a highly misleading and calumnious step to endorse the order to shut down Al Jazeera offices in Israel," the network said.

It called the move a "criminal act" that violates the human right of access to information.

"We confirm that we will pursue all avenues at international and legal organizations to protect our rights and crews," it added without elaborating.
What we know about the ban

Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said on X that the order would take immediate effect.

According to Israeli media, the order can suspend broadcasting in the country for 45 days.

Al Jazeera's senior English correspondent in Israel, Imran Khan, said that alongside the TV channel, the website was also being blocked.

He said devices used for providing content to Al Jazeera were also banned, meaning his phone could be confiscated if he uses it for news gathering.

"It’s a wide-ranging ban and we do not know how long it will be in place for," he added, according to his statement on Al Jazeera's website.

"The background of this decision is not professional or journalistic ... it's political," said Waleed Omari, bureau chief of Al Jazeera in Israel and the Palestinian territories, adding that the network was preparing a legal response.
Israel's relationship with the Qatari broadcaster

Israel has had a tense relationship with the Qatar-based news organization, which has intensely covered the ongoing war in Gaza with a particular focus on the Palestinian side.

One of the few media organizations that has continued to function in Gaza since October 7, Al Jazeera has broadcast images and videos of deadly airstrikes and crowded hospitals under Israeli fire.

Israel has accused the network of working with Hamas.

Qatar, which owns the network, has been involved in mediating a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas — a Palestinian militant group considered a terror organization by Israel, the US, Germany and other countries.

VIDEO Netanyahu pushes to shut Israeli office of Al Jazeera TV  01:31

Numerous journalists have been killed in Gaza during Israel's military offensive, including several who worked for Al Jazeera.

The death of the Palestinian-American reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022 sparked global outrage. She had been reporting for the network during an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank when she was shot dead.

Al Jazeera blamed the Israeli military for the death and took the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Israel has rejected the accusation.

ab/sms (Reuters, AP, AFP)

Israel shuts down Al Jazeera offices: A 'message' being sent to Qatar, expert says

Issued on: 05/05/2024 

Video by:FRANCE 24

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that his government has voted unanimously to shut down the local offices of Qatar-owned broadcaster Al Jazeera, escalating Israel’s long-running feud with the channel at a time when ceasefire negotiations with Hamas — mediated by Qatar — are gaining steam. Qatar is currently hosting Hamas's leadership. “This has probably got a lot more to do with these negotiations, pressure, or some sort of message being sent to Qatar than it has to do with Al Jazeera as a television network,” said John Lyndon, executive director at the Alliance for Middle East Peace.

Palestinians face famine amid persistent food shortages in Gaza

Issued on: 05/05/2024 

Palestinians wait in long queues for food in Gaza as shortages persist despite slight improvements in deliveries of aid to the besieged Strip. Gazans say they are forced to skip meals and haven’t seen vegetables in weeks. "There is famine, full-blown famine in the north and it's moving its way south," World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain said in an interview Friday as she called for a ceasefire and unfettered, safe access to Gaza.

01:29  Video by: FRANCE 24

Guns and sheep: Settlers use shepherding outposts to seize West Bank land

Agence France-Presse
May 4, 2024

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

(AFP) – Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank say armed Jewish settlers are increasingly seizing their lands by bringing livestock to so-called shepherding outposts and refusing to leave.

One settler arrived recently near sunset on a hilltop near the village of Deir Jarir, wearing a black shirt and a green headscarf, like many Palestinian farmers, they said.

"The settlers imitate us in every way," said Abdullah Abu Rahme, a member of a Palestinian anti-settler group, who said the hardliners also employ violence and "throw stones at us and block roads".

One local man, Haidar Abu Makho, 50, looked sadly across to a hill where settlers' sheep were now grazing, in the rural area near Ramallah.

The land, where settlers' bungalows and cars could be seen ringed by a wire fence, he said, "rightfully belongs to my grandfather and father and is meant to be passed down through the generations".

But now, he said, "this shepherd, who is a settler... has obstructed my access to my land".

Israel has occupied the West Bank, home to three million Palestinians, since 1967. Around 490,000 Israeli settlers live there in communities considered illegal under international law.

Violence has often flared, but the bloodshed has intensified since the October 7 attack by Gaza's rulers Hamas sparked the devastating war in the Palestinian coastal territory.

'Aggressive' confiscations


Human rights groups have blamed the hardline religious-nationalist settler movement for an upsurge in attacks and land grabs since the start of the Gaza war.

Among the most radical are the so-called "hilltop youth", often teenage school dropouts who dream of settling all of the biblical land of Israel, and who sometimes also clash with Israeli security forces.

Israeli analyst Elhanan Miller said the hilltop shepherds are "far-right extremists who settle Palestinian land illegally", mostly in the southern West Bank and Jordan Valley.

Miller told AFP that many of them are "marginalised" youths who left school early and use shepherding of sheep and goats as a cover to seize land and natural resources.

Rights groups say settlers in shepherding outposts carry guns and have used attack dogs to threaten and attack Palestinians, sometimes killing their livestock and destroying their property.

The groups have been especially active around Deir Jarir, a village of about around 5,000 people, said the local man, Abu Makho.

"The settlers have effectively blocked access to vast stretches of land around Deir Jarir, preventing both agricultural use and grazing for the people across tens of kilometres," he said.

"By situating a shepherd with a flock of sheep atop a hill, a substantial portion of land is seized... denying Palestinians access to it."

He said settlers had "aggressively confiscated" local houses and tractors as well as horses and donkeys, all "symbols of the Palestinian traditional farming life".

'Defenceless'

Israeli rights group B'Tselem said in a report in March that attacks had surged, including incidents where settlers in vehicles were "speeding erratically directly into Palestinian flocks and herds".

B'Tselem also charged that settler groups have enjoyed backing by Israeli security forces.

"Through cooperation and collaboration among the military, police, settlers... Israel has reduced grazing areas available to Palestinians, blocked regular water supply and took measures to isolate the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank," it said.

The Israeli army did not respond to an AFP request for comment on the Deir Jarir case.

Israeli settlement watchdog group Peace Now said that so far this year, as world attention has focussed on Gaza, Israel has seized more than 1,000 hectares of West Bank land.


In March, Israeli authorities declared as state land 800 hectares next to a farmer's home near the Jordan Valley village of Jiftlik, a move that often leads to restrictions on Palestinians' access.

In areas near Deir Jarir, other residents also said they had been impacted, at great cost to their livelihoods.

Suleiman Khouriyeh, the mayor of the nearby village of Taybeh, population 1,800, said the "entire eastern region has been encroached upon by numerous hilltop shepherds".

"We are unable to access the olive groves that we rightfully own" during harvest season, he said, adding that the community's losses amounted to thousands of dollars.

Khouriyeh said that locals don't have "the power or strength to confront the heavily armed" settlers.

"We are defenceless against them and their weapons."

I remember the 1960s crackdowns against war protesters. This is a repeat

The mistakes made at one point in time have an eerie way of re-emerging as memories fade

Robert Reich

Sun 5 May 2024

I’ve been spending the last several weeks trying to find out what’s really going on with the campus protests.

I’ve met with students at Berkeley, where I teach. I’ve visited with faculty at Columbia University. I’ve spoken by phone with young people and professors at many other universities.

We Columbia University students urge you to listen to our voices

My conclusion: while protest movements are often ignited by many different things and attract an assortment of people with a range of motives, this one is centered on one thing: moral outrage at the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people – most of them women and children – in Gaza.

To interpret these protests as anything else – as antisemitic or anti-Zionist or anti-American or pro-Palestinian – is to miss the essence of what’s going on and why.


Most of the students and faculty I’ve spoken with found Hamas’s attack on October 7 odious. They also find Israel’s current government morally bankrupt, in that its response to Hamas’s attack has been disproportionate.

Some protesters focus their anger on Israel, some on the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, some on Joe Biden for failing to stand up to Netanyahu, for giving Israel additional armaments, and for what they perceive as Biden’s patronizing response to the protests.

Like any protest movement, the actions have attracted a few on the fringe. I’ve heard scattered reports of antisemitism, although I haven’t witnessed or heard anything that might be interpreted as antisemitic. In fact, a significant number of the protesters are Jewish.

To describe the protesters as “pro-Palestinian” is also inaccurate. Most do not support Palestine as such; they do not know enough about the history of Israel and Palestine to pass moral judgment.

But they have a deep and abiding sense that what is happening in Gaza is morally wrong, and that the United States is complicit in that immorality.

Many tell me they are planning not to vote this coming November – a clear danger to Biden’s re-election campaign, which in turn increases the odds of a Trump presidency.


When I tell them that a failure to vote for Biden is in effect a vote for Trump, they say they cannot in good conscience vote for either candidate.

Quite a number tell me that “the lesser of two evils is still evil”. I tell them Trump would be far worse for the world – truly evil. Many remain unconvinced.

I have sharp memories of the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, in which I participated some 55 years ago.

I remember being appalled at the unnecessary carnage in Vietnam. I was incensed that the first world, white and rich, was randomly killing people in the third world, mostly non-white and poor. As an American, I felt morally complicit.

I was angry at college administrators who summoned police to clear protesters – using teargas, stun guns and mass arrests. The response only added fuel to the flames.

The anti-Vietnam war movement became fodder for rightwing politicians like Richard Nixon, demanding “law and order”. The spectacle also appalled many non-college, working-class people who viewed the students as pampered, selfish, anti-American, unpatriotic.

I vividly recall the anti war demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, and the brutality of the Chicago police and Illinois national guard – later described by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence as a “police riot”.

As the anti-war protesters chanted “The whole world is watching”, network television conveyed the riotous scene to what seemed like the whole world.

I had spent months working for the anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. The convention nominated Hubert Humphrey. That November, the nation voted in Richard Nixon as president.

History, as it is said, doesn’t repeat itself. It only rhymes.

The mistakes made at one point in time have an eerie way of re-emerging two generations later, as memories fade.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

Columbia University protests look increasingly like those in 1968 as police storm campuses nationwide

2024/05/02


The police have regularly been called in to squelch student protests over the past century.
Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images

Stefan M. Bradley, Amherst College

Columbia University has become the epicenter of student protests over the war in Gaza. In the following Q&A, Stefan Bradley, a history professor at Amherst College and author of the 2009 book “Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s,” touches on the similarities and differences between the protests of the 1960s and now.
How do protests now differ from those of 1968?

Similarities lie in students’ opposition to war, racism and prejudice.

A key difference is social media, which has contributed greatly to the ability of students to mobilize. News of various actions and protests spreads quickly.

Violence or the threat thereof is another difference. Initial demonstrations at Columbia University in April 1968 started with the threat of violence between radical students who wanted to end the university’s ties to war research during the Vietnam War and terminate a university gymnasium construction project and mostly white athletes who wanted to push forward with it. The gym had been designed for mostly Black and brown Harlem residents to enter one door and Columbia affiliates in another. Columbia affiliates also had greater access to various parts of the gym, leading residents to refer to the situation as “Gym Crow.”

Considering the institution’s history of expansion and the uprisings surrounding the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that took place just weeks earlier, tension was in the air. Taking the demonstration to the gym site, student activists then clashed with police in the park before returning to campus to take over Hamilton Hall, the same building where dozens of Columbia student activists in this year’s protests over Gaza were arrested on the night of April 30, 2024.

Until April 30, students were less disruptive than they’d been in the past. The encampments on the South Lawn did not prevent major functions of the university.

But after students took over Hamilton Hall, the calculus has changed. By breaking into the building and barricading themselves in, the campus activists provided administrators with even more justification to call on the police to remove them.
How so?

Officials in 1968 called city police to forcibly remove students, who had subsequently taken over four more buildings, and to make arrests. It quickly turned violent. Police charged into buildings and around campus to make arrests. In a building called Math Hall, activists, including Tom Hayden – author of the Port Huron Statement, a leftist manifesto that called on students to work against racism, imperialism and poverty – fought back. Police struck observers and activists alike with batons.

With long-standing critiques of the university in their minds, and the death of King in their hearts, Harlem residents were ready to support protesting students.


NYPD officers run to head off striking students during the series of protests on the campus of Columbia University in New York City in 1968.
Authenticated News via Getty Images

Black Power leaders such as Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown explained to the press that if Columbia did not negotiate with the Black students in Hamilton, then the university would have to deal with the “brothers out on the streets” of Harlem. The threat of a coalition with Harlem neighbors aided in the success of the activists in ending the university’s construction of a private gymnasium in nearby Morningside Park and the cessation of the school’s ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses, a consortium of flagship and elite higher education institutions conducting government-funded defense research during the Cold War.

The threat of violence loomed with the recent building capture and arrests at Hamilton. The 2024 protest is starting to resemble the 1968 protest in terms of students feeling uncomfortable with their university’s decision-making and administrators feeling compelled to regain control of campus. The differences are becoming slimmer and the similarities thicker.

What about the use of symbolism?

In 1968 and today, students used symbolism to send a message.

Fifty-six years ago, demonstrators also took over Hamilton Hall – named after Alexander Hamilton – renaming it Malcolm X University and hanging images of Stokely Carmichael.

Today, protesters renamed it Hind’s Hall – in honor of a 6-year-old Palestinian child killed by Israeli tank fire in Gaza – and flew a Palestinian flag from a Hamilton window.
What is the legacy of the 1968 protest?

The major legacy is that students are the moral compass of these well-endowed, elite institutions – even if they engage in disruptive behavior. They are willing to act on campus when no one else will. If left to the trustees, administrators, faculty and staff, the university would likely be quiet and civil while waiting for the marketplace of ideas and countless committees to suss out what to do about real-time humanitarian crises.

Young people have always been impatient in their calls for justice. In 1968, the issues were Columbia’s construction of a gymnasium in West Harlem and the university’s relationship with the IDA; in the 1980s, it was the university’s financial interests in apartheid South Africa; and in the 2010s, the school’s investments in private prison corporations. The 1968 rebellion taught later generations not to accept indiscriminate killing and injustice.

Another legacy is that the deployment of police to break up demonstrations may end disruptions in the short term, but it may also end up radicalizing moderate students who see their friends get arrested or injured.

What makes a protest successful?

Of course, students want every demand met, but that is often unlikely to happen. A better mark of success is the disruption of the status quo and the amount of attention they bring to issues. In that regard, the protests have been a success.

Conflict at a place like Columbia garners attention because of its location in the media capital of the world. When administrators respond to issues students raise by focusing on policies and procedures, it can give the impression that the issues are not important.

Fifty-six years ago, campus activists inspired students abroad to chant “Two, Three, Many Columbias!” Administrators may want to remain apolitical, but campus demonstrators want to know where their tuition goes and have a say in how it is spent. Highlighting the conflict between key sources of funding – the students paying tuition and the school’s major donors – is a notable victory.

How unprecedented are the student arrests?

There is precedence for student arrests on and off campus. The NYPD violently arrested more than 700 students in April 1968 and dozens more in May.

When students in the 20th century rebelled against the idea that the university was supposed to act in the place of their parents, higher education officials turned to law enforcement in the hope that students would comply.

There were arrests at the Fisk Institute in 1925 for protests over strict student rules, including those that limited participation in civil rights movements; there was the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, when students demanded the right to pass out civil rights literature on campus.

In 1970, there were also police or National Guard-involved shootings of students at Jackson State and Kent State, a predominantly white university.

In 2016, police battled students protesting tuition hikes in California. There were no fatal shootings, but nonlethal weapons like pepper spray were deployed. Inviting police onto campus introduces an element that concedes power to those not interested in the educational well-being of students.

Stefan M. Bradley, Professor of Black Studies and History, Amherst College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

© The Moderate Voice

Will the US campus protests harm Biden – and benefit Trump?

Rightwing media have seized on campus protests to portray the president as weak. Will it have an impact in November?


Robert Tait in Washington

THE GUARDIAN

Sat 4 May 2024 


At the height of the tensions on US campuses this week, with Republicans gleefully seizing on student unrest as an election issue that could propel Donald Trump back into the White House, Joe Biden tried to steer a middle path.

Weighing the democratic right to peaceful protest and the political necessity to stem disruption, Biden declared that “order must prevail”.


“Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear – none of this is a peaceful protest,” Biden said in a statement on Thursday. “Dissent is essential for democracy … There’s the right to protest. But not the right to cause chaos.”

His comments were his most notable intervention yet in the face of campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. The protests are a potential minefield for Biden.


As his lead over Trump among younger voters continues to slip significantly from its 2020 levels and as he tries to fend off Republican attacks, he risks alienating young voters by siding with police.

On the other hand, as riot police have moved against pro-Palestinian encampments and arrested thousands of people, senior Republican figures and Trump himself have been pushing hard to depict the US president as losing control and allowing America’s universities to slide into upheaval.

Fox News has lavished round-the-clock coverage to what it has portrayed as a perfect storm of “Democrat chaos”, with riot police moving into occupied buildings on Columbia campus and open brawling at UCLA after a pro-Israel group attacked an encampment with sticks and fireworks.

The events have diverted attention from the Trump trial in New York, where he is facing charges over a hush-money payment to an adult film star. That has confounded hopes among Democrat strategists that details from the trial would deal a blow to the Republican campaign.

The focus of Fox and other conservative media on the pro-Palestinian protests marks a shift from other areas of supposed disorder allegedly caused by Biden administration incompetence – particularly the US-Mexico border, where there has been a continuous inflow of asylum seekers.


Trump – posing, somewhat incongruously given his current legal predicament, as the law-and-order candidate – led the chorus on his Truth Social media platform. He called for a “COMPLETE LOCKDOWN” of Columbia and other universities similar to what he claimed had been imposed on the area outside the Manhattan court where he is on trial, supposedly to stop his supporters gathering.

His pronouncement came after he had minimised a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – where a counter-protester was killed and after which he was condemned for saying there had been “fine people on both sides” – as a “peanut” compared with the current protests.

View image in fullscreenPolice officers on the UCLA campus earlier this week. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

Trump is attempting to capitalise on a febrile campus atmosphere in which Jewish and pro-Israel students have complained of antisemitism and being subjected to threats.

So far, analysts say, there is scant evidence of the images of campus upheaval having a radical effect on voter attitudes – although some caution that this may change if protests continue into the autumn.

Biden is conscious of parallels with previous instances of student protests sweeping through American campuses, and producing arguably decisive effects in presidential politics.

In 1968, mass demonstrations against the Vietnam war spilled over into the Democratic national convention in Chicago – coincidentally, the city that will stage this year’s event, where Biden will be formally adopted as his party’s candidate – resulting in violent street clashes with police and punch-ups on the convention floor.

The anarchic scenes were followed by the defeat of the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, then the vice-president, to the Republican Richard Nixon.


With polls showing the president running neck-and-neck with Trump, but behind in most battleground states, the Biden campaign could be forgiven for fearing that the current tumult might be instrumental in engineering a repetition.

Analysts, however, point out that the Gaza war does not resonate with the American public in the same way as the war in Vietnam, where more than half a million US troops were deployed by 1968.

“The raw numbers [of protesters] would have been a lot bigger in 1968,” said Kyle Kondik of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia.

“The current protests are certainly large, but it does seem like Vietnam was fundamentally a lot different [from Gaza]. You had young people being drafted to fight overseas, America was engaged heavily in fighting a land war overseas.

“The US has indirect involvement in Gaza in terms of funding. But it’s different and less impactful overall. I don’t think the race has changed in any kind of a significant way.”

Other observers say that even for voters under 34, a cohort among which polls have shown Biden’s lead over Trump to be slipping significantly, Gaza plays a much smaller role than the passions emanating from college campuses would indicate.

Amy Walter, of the Cook Political Report, told the Wall Street Journal’s free expression podcast: “What we see from the data is that for voters under 34, the top issues are the same as the top issues for folks over the age of 34, which the economy and the cost of living – they are concerned about issue of gun violence.”

In a possible indicator that Gaza’s electoral impact even younger voters may be limited, an NBC focus group of college students opposed to US support for Israel’s military offensive revealed that few planned to vote based on the issue – although some said they would opt for third-party candidates such as Jill Stein of the Green party or Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Yet for Biden, even that could have disproportionately negative effects. Walter said: “If you take just a small percentage of younger people who feel very strongly about this issue and say, ‘I cannot vote for Trump, but Biden is no good, I’m staying home’ … for Biden that might be a lot.

“He has a coalition that’s dependent on voters who dislike Trump coming back to him.”

What electoral bearing the protests have could be decided by the effectiveness of the very crackdowns Republicans have been calling for – especially when combined with the imminent end of the academic year, which will see most students leaving campus.

JD Vance, the Republican senator and outspoken Trump ally, may have inadvertently highlighted a Republican dilemma when he posted on X: “No civilization should tolerate these encampments. Get rid of them.”


With more than 2,000 protesters having been arrested, that process may already have begun, apparently with Biden’s blessing.

If the college clampdowns successfully quell the protests, it would deprive Republicans of the images of chaos they crave – unless the war in Gaza continues to rage, fuelling future protests.

Writing in New York magazine, Jonathan Chait said it was in Trump’s interests for the protests to carry on – a development he connected to a continuation of the war in Gaza into the autumn, thus triggering a fresh round of unrest at the height of the election campaign.

“In a recent social-media post, Trump demanded, ‘STOP THE PROTESTS NOW!!!’” Chait wrote. “If they are still going on during a prospective second Trump term, he will probably stop them with maximal violence. In the meantime, he fervently wishes them to continue through November.”