Kenyan migrant workers endure severe hardships, unjust imprisonment in Iraq


2024-07-17 

Shafaq News/ Kenyan migrant workers, particularly young women, are enduring severe hardships in Iraq, with numerous reports of abuse and unjust imprisonment surfacing.

A report by Kenyan news site "Mwakilishi" has shed light on one such case that involves Catherine Wambui, who traveled to Iraq in 2020 with hopes of a better future, only to find herself entangled in a harrowing ordeal.

Wambui, who left Kenya with a two-year contract as a housekeeper, hoped to improve her living conditions. However, her contract marked the beginning of a dreadful experience, exposing the harsh realities faced by Kenyan migrants overseas.

When Wambui expressed her desire to return to Kenya at the end of her contract, her employer refused, pressuring her to extend her stay despite her emotional and psychological distress. The employer not only withheld her return ticket but also confiscated her passport, effectively trapping her in Iraq.

The situation worsened when immigration authorities handed her over to Iraqi authorities instead of facilitating her return to Kenya. Wambui was placed in a high-security prison under inhumane conditions, with overcrowded cells forcing detainees to sleep sitting up, and inadequate facilities exacerbating their suffering.

During Ramadan in 2023, some detainees, including Wambui, were released thanks to financial assistance from her parents in Kenya, who sent money for her plane ticket.

However, many other Kenyans remain unjustly detained in Basra prison, despite committing no crimes in Iraq.

Kenyan migrant communities emphasize the urgent need for better protection of migrant workers' rights and enhanced diplomatic efforts to safeguard Kenyan citizens abroad.

According to Kenyan Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi, there are 150 Kenyan nationals in Iraq, although this figure does not account for those in Iraqi prisons.

Israeli left-wing movement sees unprecedented rise in army service refusals

2024-07-17 

Shafaq News/ The Israeli left-wing movement "Yesh Gvul" (There is a Limit) has reported an unprecedented surge in refusals to serve in the Israeli army amidst the ongoing war in Gaza.

The movement, which has been helping Israelis refusing military service since the First Lebanon War in the early 1980s, received 100 assistance requests from current service refusers, which marks a significant increase compared to the 10-15 requests annually over the past decade and around 40 requests annually during the peak years of the Lebanon War and the First and Second Intifadas.

Yesh Gvul spokesperson Yishai Menuhin stated, "We have assisted around 40 soldiers and reservists who refused to enlist in the current war. Additionally, other activists in the movement have helped dozens more."

Similarly, the "Refusenik" group, which supports young men and women who refuse to enlist in the Israeli army, has noted a sharp increase in the number of reservists refusing service.

Left-wing activist David Zonshein, founder of the "Courage to Refuse" movement, reported receiving assistance requests from dozens of refusers during the current conflict, especially in recent months, surpassing the numbers seen in previous years.

According to a report in the "Times of Israel," the number of refusers has continued to grow due to the complexity of the war, the alleged war crimes, and increasing protests against the government's actions.

Beyond ideological refusals, some soldiers are also declining service due to war fatigue.

In late April, approximately 30 reservists in a paratrooper battalion called up for service in Rafah refused to report, citing prolonged combat affecting their studies, livelihoods, and families and causing them psychological and physical distress.

The refusals are not limited to Gaza. Some soldiers are unwilling to serve in the West Bank, along the northern border with Lebanon, or in any location, including command roles in the Home Front Command.

In response, an Israeli army spokesperson stated, "The army views refusal to serve in the reserves as a serious matter. Each case is individually reviewed and addressed by commanders."

It is noteworthy that since the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza on October 7, 39,289 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of whom are children, women, and elderly.

This figure is expected to drastically increase once the rubble is attended to, as it traps the bodies of less fortunate Palestinians who could not flee the brutal, unbalanced show of power.

 86% of people want their countries to put differences aside & work together to address the climate crisis.

TikTok loses first court challenge to EU’s big tech crackdown

© Photo credit: Shutterstock

17/07/2024

Judges said the Chinese social media platform can’t escape a new law reining in the likes of Google and Apple Inc.

The EU’s General Court said TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. is powerful enough to be covered by the bloc’s landmark Digital Markets Act, which took effect in March. The decision can be appealed to the bloc’s top court, the European Court of Justice.

Judges said in a ruling on Wednesday that TikTok met the necessary thresholds to be brought under the scope of the DMA, and that ByteDance’s attempt to appeal the European Commission’s decision to target it wasn’t substantiated.

The DMA is designed to ban the most powerful tech firms from engaging in a list of potentially anti-competitive actions before it’s too late to save markets. It imposes a rigid regime on firms whose practices have previously resulted in billions of euros in fines and tax orders from the EU watchdog.

The rules apply to platforms with sales across the bloc of at least €7.5 billion or a market capitalization of €75 billion. Platform services are also required to have more than 45 million monthly active end-users and more than 10,000 yearly active business users in the EU to fall under the rules.Also read:

TikTok risks fines as EU issues ultimatum over app launch

The law makes it illegal for certain platforms to favour their own services over those of rivals. They are barred from combining personal data across their different services, prohibited from using data they collect from third-party merchants to compete against them, and have to allow users to download apps from rival platforms.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google Search, Apple’s Safari and Amazon.com Inc.’s marketplace are among the platforms covered by the DMA. Alongside TikTok, both Apple and Meta Platforms Inc. have challenged the designation of certain services under the rules.


TikTok appealed to the court to clarify whether it should be covered by the DMA. In a blog post announcing the decision at the time, the company said it’s “the most capable challenger” to the industry’s biggest players.

The video app is coming under scrutiny across the world as its influence grows and amid fears over its Chinese origins. US President Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation in April aimed at banning it in the US unless its Chinese owner cedes control of it. That legislation breezed through both chambers of Congress, and ultimately led to TikTok challenging the legality of the bill.

Meanwhile, TikTok has been investigated by EU regulators for creating potentially harmful features for children. Fines for TikTok’s alleged failings can be as high as 1% of its total annual income, under another freshly minted law, the EU’s Digital Services Act.

Will the assassination attempt make Trump more popular?

Astrid Prange de Oliveira

JULY 17,2024

DW

Assassination attempts or attacks often boost a politician's popularity, as in the case of Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro. Observers wonder whether the same will be true for Donald Trump.

https://p.dw.com/p/4iO4D

Following Saturday's assassination attempt, Donald Trump has officially been selected as the Republican presidential nominee at the party's national convention. Some say the shooting may have made him more likely to triumph in the US general election in November.

"It's certainly the case that the attack will garner him additional sympathy," political scientist and Latin America expert Günther Maihold told DW. "As a consequence, the individual moves into a different realm. The population sees them as both particularly vulnerable, and, at the same time, as a savior. This also applies to Trump."

Maihold compared the situation with the attack on Brazil's former president, Jair Bolsonaro, who was critically injured at an election campaign event in Rio de Janeiro on September 6, 2018. The following month, Bolsonaro won the presidential election with 55% of the vote.

Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed in the stomach during a presidential campaign rally in 2018; he subsequently won the electionImage: Eraldo Peres/AP Photo/picture alliance

'Combination of victimhood and catharsis'

"I do believe there is a kind of Bolsonaro effect," Maihold said. "The candidate becomes a symptom of the disintegration of their society, and, at the same time, a sympathetic figure. It's a combination of victimhood and catharsis. This combination endows them with an additional element of charisma."

Brazilian columnist Joel Pinheiro da Fonseca went one step further.

"Bolsonaro is not the only one to win an election following an assassination attempt," he wrote in the daily newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. "[US President Ronald] Reagan was reelected by a landslide in 1984 after the attempt on his life [in March 1981.]"

In Pinheiro's analysis, "Both were already the favorite; the attempt on their life only sealed their victory. The same is likely to happen with Trump."
Modi survived an attack

This was also true for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On October 27, 2013, he survived a bomb attack in Patna, the regional capital of the Indian state of Bihar, carried out by the Islamist organizations Indian Mujahideen and Students Islamic Movement of India.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently won re-election; he first came to power in 2013 after surviving a bomb attackImage: -/AFP/Getty Images

The attack occurred in the middle of the election campaign. Voting took place between April 7 and May 12, 2014, and Modi and his BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) won a majority in the Indian parliament for the first time. He has now been in power for ten years.

Like all heads of state and government around the world, Modi condemned the attack on Trump and called for peace. However, beyond the official condemnation of political violence, social media platforms are full of people apportioning blame.

'Global Left networks'

Indian government spokesperson Amit Malviya, for example, blamed the so-called "global Left" for the attack. Shortly after it happened, he posted on X, formerly Twitter: "Shinzo Abe, then Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, and now Donald Trump. […] The threat is real. Vile global Left networks are at work."

Bolsonaro's son Flavio is spreading the same narrative. "The far left demonizes and dehumanizes its opponents with lies — with the support of the mainstream media," he wrote, also on X. "And then a 'lone wolf' appears, who has to save the world from the 'enemy of democracy,' the 'genocidal murderer,' or the 'militias.' This is the formula of hate, which has real and almost deadly consequences."

Both commentators are convinced that "assassination attempts always target right-wing and conservative political leaders." But history shows us that this is not the case.
Political murder in Quito

In 1968, the Democrat presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was murdered during the US primary campaign. He was the brother of President John F. Kennedy, also a Democrat, who was assassinated in 1963.

A particularly shocking example was the murder of the Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio last year. An investigative journalist who had reported on corruption and violence in his homeland, Villavicencio was shot dead following a campaign rally in Quito on August 9, 2023.

The Ecuadorian anti-corruption journalist and presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead in 2023Image: Boris Romoleroux/Agencia Prensa-Independiente/IMAGO

Political violence on the right and left

Worldwide, the list of attacks on presidential candidates is long. Victims include former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who survived being poisoned with dioxin in 2004, as well as Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest and former president of Haiti, who was fired on when traveling in a motorcade on March 20, 2017. He escaped uninjured.

"It's irrelevant whether the attack is perpetrated by the left or the right," said political scientist Maihold. In any case, he points out, the attack on Trump doesn't fit the pattern: The shooter was a member of the Republican Party.

"It's more about us reaching a point where polarization is entering a new phase," Maihold said.

He warns that the use of violence is becoming increasingly acceptable.

"This new level of escalation is particularly dramatic in a country like the US, where there is such a high density of weapons," he said.

This article was originally published in German.

Astrid Prange de Oliveira DW editor with expertise in Brazil, globalization and religion

‘Fight, fight, fight!’ or ‘UNITE’? At historic moment, Trump faces rhetorical choice

(Photo illustration by Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times; Photo via Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

By Kevin Rector

Staff Writer 

July 17, 2024 

When Jennifer Mercieca published a book four years ago titled “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,” some of her friends immediately questioned the title. “‘Genius’?” they asked. “Really?”

Mercieca stood by it. She told her friends that, over her many years studying the former president, Trump’s ability to use words and images to promote himself and his agenda stood out again and again as exceptional.

That same skill set was the first thing that came to mind for Mercieca on Saturday, she said, when she watched Trump rise from a bloodied rally stage after being shot, pump his fist in the air and utter an instant political slogan: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

“To me, that was a perfectly Trumpian moment,” Mercieca said. “He knows what the scene is. He’s a demagogue of the spectacle. He’s an authoritarian P.T. Barnum.”

In the days since the shooting, elected officials, pundits and other political observers have been focused intensely on political rhetoric and its power to incite violence.

He’s an authoritarian P.T. Barnum

— Jennifer Mercieca, author, on Donald Trump

President Biden said it’s time to “cool it down.” Trump said he’s writing a new message of unity into his planned speech for the Republican National Convention on Thursday. “UNITE AMERICA!” he posted to Truth Social, a social media platform largely built on the divisiveness of Trump’s past political barbs.

Under such a spotlight, and in the wake of what some consider an iconic political moment in modern American history, how are voters and political observers the world over to listen to Trump moving forward? If he calls for unity, should they take him seriously?



Neither Trump’s campaign nor the Republican National Committee, which is working closely with the campaign, responded to a request for comment on Trump’s plans.

But Mercieca and other experts who’ve studied Trump, his image and the way he speaks to his base said they are skeptical that Trump will somehow change his tune now. They said they’ll be listening closely for a message of unity Thursday, but don’t expect it to be his only message — or for it to stick around very long.

“When I reflect back on the nine years that he’s been in public [political] life, he’s been very consistent about how he communicates, and it’s always been a message of projecting strength, of using rhetorical strategies that belittle the opposition,” said Mercieca, a political historian and communications professor at Texas A&M.

“He loves the idea of people uniting if that means uniting behind Trump,” she said. “But as soon as any criticism is lodged at him, he will revert back to his normal, aggressive rhetoric.”

Several experts predicted that Trump will indeed use the attempt on his life to call for unity, but in the short term. In the long term, they say, he is more likely to use it to bolster more divisive political narratives he has long relied on, including the idea that ordinary Americans are under imminent threat from an array of foreign and domestic forces, and that he is the only one who can protect them.

Robert C. Rowland, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Kansas and author of the book “The Rhetoric of Donald Trump: Nationalist Populism and American Democracy,” said he would be shocked if Trump took up any real notion of unity — like “how Democrats love America, too.”

Instead, Rowland predicted Trump will quickly fall back on “the themes he always falls back on — the nationalist theme, the populist theme that the elites don’t care about you and look down on you, and then the theme that he’s the strongman protector of people.”

Many on the conservative right have reinforced their claim — especially since Saturday’s shooting — that Trump is a religious figure, a man sent by God to defend America and restore Christian values to government.

That idea also could become part of Trump’s message, namely if others around him urge him to incorporate it into his speech Thursday or his stump speech on the campaign trail, Rowland said. But “that kind of rhetoric does not come naturally” to Trump, he said — citing the time that Trump as president walked across Lafayette Park in Washington amid street protests and awkwardly held a Bible outside a local church.

More likely, Rowland said, is that Trump will use the assassination attempt to ratchet up the sort of us-against-them rhetoric.

“Part of his appeal is that he’s the straight talker who will be the defender of these groups who feel put upon by the elites,” Rowland said. After Saturday’s shooting, “the harshness of his rhetoric and what he is going to do to protect them has to leverage up — it can’t become more moderate.”

Ian Haney López, a Berkeley law professor, is the author of two books on political rhetoric in the modern era, including “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class.”

The language that Trump is using is designed to promote and answer a single question: Who threatens you?

— Ian Haney López, law professor

Haney López said American voters listening to Trump in the coming days and months will almost certainly hear the same sort of fear- and race-based messaging that he said have defined Trump’s political career from the start.

“The language that Trump is using is designed to promote and answer a single question: Who threatens you?” Haney López said.
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“He’s telling a story of constant and immediate threat that is coming from other people around you — and it can be immigrants, it can be African Americans, Black Lives Matter, it can be transgender people, it can be people insisting on gender equality,” Haney López said.

“He’s saying look at your neighbors, look around you, look at the people near you, but whatever you do, don’t look up. Don’t look up at the billionaire class, don’t look at large shareholders, don’t look at Wall Street, don’t look at the petrochemical industry.”

Haney López said the assassination attempt on Trump will bolster the idea already adopted wholly by Trump and his campaign that white America is “locked into racial conflict,” and that “others” — such as immigrants — “need to be restrained or caged or expelled” to ensure white Americans come out on top.

Mercieca agreed.

“He’s constantly telling his audience that they are the real Americans, they are the good Americans, they are the only ones who count, they have been left behind and humiliated, but he sees them as the good people they are and he will fight for them,” she said. “It’s a politics that is fascist, frankly. It is authoritarian.”

These tactics can be effective politically, she said, but they have consequences. Such rhetoric, she and others warned, spurs the kind of political violence that people on all sides of the political spectrum are denouncing.

Mercieca said data show Trump’s attacks on groups of people have spurred “stochastic terrorism” — or political violence against groups of people targeted with hostile political rhetoric.

Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and professor emeritus at Cal State San Bernardino, said such data are everywhere — and undeniable.


SHARDS FROM TELEPROMTER HIT TRUMP'S EAR, NOT A BULLET


Hate crimes against Black people, Levin said, rose when Trump used harsh language to condemn Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020. They rose against Asian people when Trump used anti-Chinese rhetoric in speaking about COVID-19. They rose against Latinos when Trump stoked fears about “caravans” of migrants arriving on the southern border.

Levin said “hate rhetoric” is always high during election years, and that everyone — voters, candidates and Trump especially — would be wise to “tone it down.”

Levin said Trump’s next move — and his Thursday speech — matter, but how he and others continue to discuss the stakes of the race from now until November will matter more.

“People are much more likely to embrace bigoted stereotypes when there is a narrative behind it that is repeated and repeated in a way that is entertaining and comforting,” Levin warned. “And you can hear it in the lilt of Trump’s voice.”

More to Read

Abcarian: Don’t let political rhetoric distract you from this truth about the Trump shooting
July 17, 2024


Opinion: This is a turning point for Trump. What will he make of it?
July 17, 2024


Column: Trump betrays call for unity by embracing J.D. Vance, Marjorie Taylor Greene
July 16, 2024



Kevin Rector
Kevin Rector is a legal affairs reporter for the Los Angeles Times covering the California Supreme Court, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and other legal trends and issues, and chipping in on coverage of the 2024 election. He started with The Times in 2020 and previously covered the Los Angeles Police Department for the paper. Before that, Rector worked at the Baltimore Sun for eight years, where he was a police and investigative reporter and part of a team that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting. More recently, he was part of a Times team awarded the 2023 Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress for coverage of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. He is from Maryland.

Equal rights and freedoms: legal support to vulnerable people in Ukraine



July 17, 2024

In Ukraine, aggression or violence against a transgender person based on transgender hostility would not lead to a criminal case on the infliction of bodily harm, because no law protects this category of people. Likewise, there is no concept of a ‘compatible partnership’ in Ukrainian legislation, which affects the rights of a gay partner in marriage, burial, inheritance issues, etc. Personal data of HIV patients often get disclosed to the Ukrainian law enforcement bodies, which violates the concept of medical confidentiality. ‘Projector’, a human rights defense NGO from Odesa has been at the forefront of legal protection of such vulnerable groups for over four years, thanks to the EU support.

“I was in the second year of my law degree at the Odesa National University. Once, on a trolleybus I saw a couple of young men enter, holding hands. Everyone on the trolleybus looked down on them, as if saying “They are gay! What a shame!” And it struck me that they belong to the category of vulnerable people who receive nothing but stigma and discrimination. In that moment I understood that I wanted to protect them. By chance, I came across an organisation which worked with HIV-positive people and the LGBT+ community. This is where I started to work and grow professionally.”

In 2022 Daniel was off at the front as a tank commander, taking part in the defence of Chernihiv

Vitalii Matvieiev

Vitalii is a Ukrainian lawyer, offering the prominent legal assistance to vulnerable groups of citizens

Vitalii Matvieiev is a Ukrainian lawyer, well-known in his home country for the prominent legal assistance he offers to vulnerable and marginalised groups of citizens – people living with HIV/AIDS, the LGBT+ community, victims of domestic violence, ex drug addicts, etc. His carrier started in 2019 with defending the case of an HIV-positive woman who was struggling for custody of her dying friend’s child. At that moment, the Ukrainian legislation denied HIV-positive individuals (and other categories of vulnerable people) the right to adopt a child. The process lasted two years, but, finally, the court handed down a favourable decision. The case led to the repeal of the discriminatory law.

This landmark trial reached many people across the country who found themselves in similar situations, and Vitalii was receiving hundreds of mails and messages. The key challenge was quite clear: an absence of organisations which would follow up on the problems of vulnerable community members on a legal level. Existing human rights organisations in Ukraine were “paralegal” − limited to a mere monitoring of violated human rights and crime recording, rather than bringing them to the court.

“Together with my friend Andrii Radetskyi we wished to establish a non-governmental organisation which would defend human rights and freedoms, having respect for the individual and recognising equal opportunities for everyone. So, in November 2019 we registered our NGO ‘Projector’ as a grassroots human rights defence organisation that provides legal and psychological assistance to individuals across the south of Ukraine and advocates for the rights of the vulnerable and marginalised groups of citizens,” the lawyer explains.

In 2020, Projector received support from the European Union through the European Endowment for Democracy (EED), which enabled the NGO to provide pro bono legal, psychological and information services to its clients. In the four years since, the Projector team has followed 100 cases, 72 of which were resolved in favour of the plaintiffs. It has also provided 1,453 psychological consultations and 3,135 legal consultations.

Daniel Johnson (30) is a Ukrainian military man. In 2022 he was off at the front as a tank commander, taking part in the defence of Chernihiv; there he was wounded and shell-shocked. After rehabilitation he was directed under the command of the airborne forces. “I am gay, and I do not hide it. It has never been a limit for me to perform my military service effectively. But the head of the command department conveyed that people like me ruin his service, and that being gay is a disease.” Daniel was demoted and sent to a reserve battalion. When he resigned from the service due to health issues, he was denied financial assistance while waiting for the medical certificate. “I also could not get the documents that confirmed my service in the combat zone and the awards that I had received there. They did not want to reward me, and it was discriminatory,” continues Daniel. “When I learned about Projector, I decided to address them to defend myself. Thanks to the NGO, I received all the payments, the certificate, my awards, as well as a disability pension. This public organisation is doing an amazing job!”

There is no law in Ukraine that protects the rights of the LGBT+ community. And if the problem was alarming in peaceful time, martial law has exacerbated it. “We were approached by the transgender community from all over Ukraine,” confirms Vitalii. “There were cases when these people were detained because of the difference between their appearance and their identification documents, which had not been changed due to lack of time. We have provided not only legal advice, but also psychological support as we noticed some suicidal intentions.”

Julia Familieva

Juliia Kohan

Julia Familieva (53) is an HIV-positive transgender woman. She is the programme coordinator of the pan-Ukrainian organisation of transgender people ‘Cohorta’. “I got to know Projector through a representative from our community, whose rights were violated by law enforcement agencies. The Projector lawyers followed her long and difficult case and won the trial. Since then, I have addressed the NGO’s team many times, because many transgender people are ashamed to seek help themselves if they face discrimination,” says Julia. A close collaboration between the two organisations resulted in 30 court victories on protection of transgender people’s rights and on the issues of gender transition.

Maintaining the privacy of HIV/AIDS-related information as well as of drug abuse treatment records was another common issue faced by the NGO lawyers. They registered cases of disclosure of personal data by doctors to law enforcement bodies, which could be used to persecute a person. Juliia Kohan (58), an HIV-positive former drug addict, found herself in this situation. Projector filed her lawsuit to the General Prosecutor’s Office, to the Ombudsman and finally to the court. “Though we are still waiting for the court’s decision, I’m hopeful, because my doctors have ceased to request data,” affirms Juliia.

Projector has triggered important work on the changes to relevant legislative acts. But above all, it has contributed to shaping a more tolerant attitude in Ukrainian society to vulnerable groups, creating an environment where all people are valued and respected.

“Until 2020, the level of stigma and closure of the LGBT+ community was enormous. Its members were scared to address law enforcement bodies. Now such fears are much reduced, as we – together with other civil society organisations working in the field – have established collaboration with the Regional Prosecutor’s Office and with the Ombudsman’s Office. We have carried out information and educational activities to increase legal literacy among our clients. We have highlighted high-profile cases in the mass media. And now I see that these people are more motivated and confident in defending their violated rights,” concludes the lawyer.

The initiative of the NGO Projector was funded by the European Union through the European Endowment for Democracy.

Author: Volha Prokharava

 

International Press Institute and Factograf launch guide to decoding disinformation

July 17, 2024

The International Press Institute and the Croatian fact-checking website Faktograf have launched a ‘Guide to Decoding Disinformation’.

This resource is designed to give journalists, fact-checkers and researchers a handy framework to investigate disinformation and smear campaigns targeting media professionals on the frontlines of exposing disinformation.

It helps to understand the context of misinformation, analyse timelines and platforms, identify key actors and identify false narratives. 

Javier Luque, head of digital communications at IPI, said: “These guidelines are not one-size-fits-all, as disinformation keeps evolving with new technologies. However, this guide is a starting point to identify the main components of disinformation campaigns targeting journalists and their credibility.”

The ‘Guide to Decoding Disinformation’ is part of the Decoding the disinformation Playbook of Populism in Europe initiative, supported by the European Media and Information Fund, managed by the European University Institute and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Find out more

Press release

Guide to Decoding DisinformationDownload

Nuclear-powered submarine steams north in surface position

The Northern Fleet has for unknown reasons called home three warships that were supposed to show strength at Russia's Main Naval Parade in St. Petersburg later this month.


The Viktor-III class submarine Tambov steams along the surface of Skagerrak on Monday. Photo: Norwegian Armed Forces


By Thomas Nilsen
July 15, 2024
INDEPENDENT BARENTS OBSERVER


As reported by the Barents Observer on Sunday, the nuclear-powered submarine Tambov, the destroyer Admiral Levchenko and the landing vessel Ivan Green suddenly departed the Baltic Sea.

On Monday, the Norwegian Armed Forces informs that the warships are in Skagerrak south of Norway.

The Barents Observer has got new photos showing that the Tambov sails along on the surface.

Normally, a submarine will hide below.

One reason not to dive could be that there are only a limited number of crew, as the submarine was in transit when sailing south earlier this month, heading to the naval parade and was not out for patrol or exercise.

Spokesperson with the Norwegian Joint Headquarters, Henrik Omtvedt Jenssen, says to the Barents Observer that Tambov sailed part of the voyage southbound also on the surface when transiting from the Barents Sea to the Baltic Sea.

The sudden change of plans, not to participate at the Main Naval Parade in St. Petersburg on July 28, is not explained in any Russian sources, neither media nor official statements. There are no information about possible cancellations of the Navy’s biggest annual event, or about shrinking the scale of the celebrations.

B-448 Tambov sails together with Admiral Levchenko and Ivan Green in the same direction. The vessels will likely head north outside Norway towards to Kola Peninsula over the next few days.

“The Defence Forces follows all traffic in our areas of interest. Having a good overview of all activity is a priority and important task for us,” says Jenssen.

The Tambov is one of the oldest nuclear-powered submarines still in operation with the Northern Fleet. Based in Vidyayevo, the Viktor-III class was recommissioned last year after a 7-years lasting modernization at the Nerpa shipyard north of Murmansk.

The vessel is an attack submarine, armed with torpedoes. She is powered by two water-cooled reactors and is considered to be a rather noisy.

The Russian Northern Fleet destroyer Admiral Levchenko. Photo: Norwegian Armed Forces

The big landing ship Ivan Gren on Monday. Photo: Norwegian Armed Forces

Oil spills detected in Murmansk region

Authorities search for those responsible for the incident.


Representatives of the Russian environmental watchdog testing the waters of the Tuloma River that flows into the Barents Sea. 

Photo: Rosprirodnadzor Vkontakte

Text:
Elizaveta Vereykina
July 17, 2024

INDEPENDENT BARENTS OBSERVER

A large oil spill was detected in the Pervomaysky district of Murmansk city - the capital of the Russian Arctic. The spill has appeared in the very inner part of the Kola fjord - along the Tuloma River that flows into the Barents Sea, Russian environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor reported on July 15 in Vkontakte.

“Water samples have been taken, - the watchdog reported, - Significant excesses of the maximum permissible concentration for the pollutant “petroleum” have been established. The spill is spreading downstream towards the Barents Sea. Along the entire route of the pollution, saturated spots of oil products are observed on the shoreline of the Kola Bay.”

Representatives of the environmental watchdog testing the waters around Kola town. Photo: Rosprirodnadzor

Authorities have so far tested water in two locations - around the Kolsky bridge in the Pervomaysky district of Murmansk and around the bridge in the town of Kola in the Murmansk suburbs. The watchdog experts suggest the initial source of both spills is the same and is located further upstream.

“The area of ​​the polluted water was 591 square meters, - the watchdog reported in VKontakte, - The maximum permissible concentration for the pollutant “petroleum products” was found to be 400 times higher.”

Despite the fact that the spill was discovered on 1 July, the authorities are still trying to find those responsible for it and are calling on the public to help:

Murmansk is located a few kilometers away from the Barents Sea

Ella Marie: Oppressed people should resist - I think it's good for the soul

Sámi artist and activist Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen was one of the artists performing at the Riddu Riđđu festival in Manndalen in northern Norway, which took place July 10-13. The Barents Observer met with her during the festival to talk about what fuels her activism and the key issues she sees facing the Sámi People right now.