Police raids on London’s Kurdish community – an update

DECEMBER 16, 2024

Last month Labour Hub reported on the coordinated police raids on the Kurdish Community Centre in Haringey, north London at 2am on 27th November, as well as on the private homes of individuals and their families. Here we provide an update, compiled with the help of the Institute of Race Relations News Team.

The raids involved counter-terror units, closure of airspace, helicopters, dogs and a military-style occupation, which left the community angry and apprehensive. The raids meant the closure of the centre and the road for over a week, with residents forced to seek police permission to go to their homes; the occupation of the area by hundreds of riot police in armoured vans to contain a protest vigil and hunger strike; reports of brutality and violence towards children and elders. The raids provoked a series of demonstrations, joined by owners of local shops and restaurants shocked at the invasion of their community.

Six people arrested in the raids were charged on 9th December with membership of the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK, a proscribed organisation. A seventh was released without charge after being held for eleven days.

The PKK is banned in the UK, although the campaign to free its leader Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned in Turkey since 1999, has the support of trade unions and parliamentarians in the UK. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, whose Tottenham constituency contains the biggest proportion of diaspora Kurds in the UK, has previously voiced support for the campaign to release Ocalan and in  2016 was photographed at a protest where Kurdish groups displayed flags, including the proscribed PKK flag.

While the Belgian courts recognise the PKK as a legitimate party to an internal armed conflict, the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000 makes no such distinction between liberation struggles and terrorism. But whether or not the PKK’s proscription is justified, the Metropolitan police accepted that there was no imminent threat to public safety. Why, then, such colossal, trauma-inflicting expenditure of police resources?

Such political policing is not a purely local affair. For the Kurdish community, it is significant that the police operation here happened days after 200 Kurdish activists were arrested in Turkey, where Kurdish parliamentary parties are systematically harassed. Turkish forces and their proxies inflict gross human rights abuses on Kurds in Turkey and Syria, and the toppling of the Bashar al-Assad regime makes the future for Syria’s Kurds even less secure, even as European governments freeze asylum claims. Diplomatic and trade relations with Turkey dictate silence over these abuses – and perhaps require the criminalisation of a peaceful community in the UK.

The Turkish state’s attacks on Kurds in Syria, and Western complicity in them, are to be examined by a Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in Brussels on 5th-6th February 2025. Meanwhile, in the cause of racial justice, the demand for an end to the criminalisation of the Kurdish community must be supported.

Image: Metropolitan police counter-terrorism officers. https://the-siu.org.uk/uk-and-us-cooperate-to-arrest-man-for-funding-terrorism/ Creator: rawpixel.com / Sergeant Matt Hecht | Credit: rawpixel.com / Sergeant Matt Hecht. Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal CC0 1.0 Deed.

 

Nicaragua’s blanket of repression

DECEMBER 17, 2024

The Ortega-Murillo regime has betrayed the legacy of the Sandinista Revolution and makes a US-led neoliberal takeover more feasible, argues Mike Phipps. A Labour Hub long read.

The latest bulletin from the UK’s Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Action Group expresses alarm at the continued  – perhaps increased – hostility of the US Administration towards Nicaragua. It reports:

“On 22nd November President Biden signed an Executive Order stating that Nicaragua still poses an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States’. In doing so Biden repeated a designation that began under the last Trump presidency. It also has echoes of an identical 1986 Executive Order by President Ronald Reagan at the height of the contra war.”

As John Perry asked recently, “What ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ does Nicaragua pose to a country with 50 times its population and the world’s biggest military budget, whose southern border is in any case nearly 2,000 miles away?”  Nicaragua spends less of its national income on defence than almost any other country in the hemisphere.

The re-election of President Trump poses further threats. In 2018, Trump signed into law the Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act, which sought to cut Nicaragua off from loans from international lending institutions. Biden renewed Trump’s sanctions and indeed tightened them. No-one concerned with the independence and sovereignty of Latin American countries can look on the return of Trump with anything but apprehension.

It’s in this context that the Solidarity Campaign reports on the Nicaraguan government’s new proposed constitutional amendments, introduced supposedly to update the 1987 document “in line with reality. The key changes,” we are told, “relate to the protection of national sovereignty and institutionalising poverty reduction.”

Constitutional changes

Others have a different analysis. Gioconda Belli is a renowned poet and former militant who clandestinely transported weapons for the Sandinistas in the 1970s and later became responsible for international press liaison in 1982 and director of State Communications in 1984. She believes the constitutional changes are designed to enshrine a co-presidency that guarantees the succession of President Daniel Ortega’s wife, Rosario Murillo, in the event of his death. To head off potential opposition to this, the constitutional reforms, says Belli, enshrine a “voluntary” paramilitary army. This force, loyal to Murillo, “will be well-funded, ideologically driven, and trained by the military or by those who participated in the deadly repression of youth in 2018.”

The reforms further extend control over all branches of the state, eliminating the separation of powers enshrined in previous constitutions. Even before  this, at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the Group of Experts on Human Rights on Nicaragua (GHREN)  already declared that the country “does not meet even the most minimal reasonable standard of judicial independence.” 

The constitutional reforms also undermine municipal autonomy – a favourite target of dictators – which was restored to Nicaragua by the earlier Sandinista constitution of 1987. Additionally, mayors can be dismissed by the Attorney-General .

Belli concludes: “Never in the history of Nicaragua, with its eleven Constitutions, has one been crafted with such shamelessness to suit the convenience of a married couple.”

Some background

 How did it come to this? The Nicaraguan Revolution was a beacon of hope in the 1980s in a continent firmly under the domination of US imperialism. But there is a long history of revolutionary movements gradually becoming corrupt bureaucracies. As elsewhere, the rot set in when the controlling faction in the leading party adopted a policy of stifling internal dissent and closing down opposition viewpoints. To its credit, the experience in Nicaragua was more gradual than many – but it happened nevertheless.

On July 19th 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew the country’s brutal dictatorship and embarked on a radical programme of economic and social reform. In 1984, the Sandinista government held the country’s first free elections in decades, denounced by Washington, but validated by international observers from many US-aligned countries.

Throughout the 1980s, the Reagan Administration unleashed a campaign of terror against Nicaragua. The indiscriminate savagery of the US’s contra war makes the current threats from the White House look tame by comparison. Yet, the Sandinista government survived thanks to its huge popular support. By the end of the 1980s, the head of the capital’s police force could boast that he was the only police chief in the whole of Latin America that had not fired a single round of tear gas during the previous decade.

The Sandinistas left office peacefully when they lost the 1990 elections. Seventeen years later, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency under very different conditions, having made the party his personal electoral vehicle. As I have previously argued, “His team made a pact with the then governing party, which granted immunity to one of the most corrupt politicians in the hemisphere. It also did a deal with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church which would support Ortega in return for his introduction of one of the most draconian anti-abortion laws anywhere in the world.”

Ortega made his wife vice president. Three sons became directors of TV channels and another headed a government agency working with incoming businesses. Opposition parties were de-registered and presidential candidates jailed. Critical social movements were repressed.

The government’s murderous repression against protesters in 2018 sparked an uprising across the country, which led to considerable loss of life on both sides. Human rights monitors say 355 people were killed by government forces. Regime supporters choose to describe this as a US-directed coup, but are less vocal on the initial killings by the regime or the subsequent blanket of repression that has smothered the country, prompting tens of thousands to go into exile.

Repression branded as anti-imperialism

The formal continuity of today’s Ortega regime with the traditions of Sandinismo makes it easier for it to brand its repression as a kind of anti-imperialism. Dissidents are labelled foreign agents. Hundreds of opponents have been stripped of their Nicaraguan nationality, their pensions cancelled. A  2021 reform to the Criminal Code extended the period for detention without charges from 48 hours to 90 days, violating the right to the presumption of innocence. Hearings have been held behind closed doors, with detainees denied the right to choose their legal counsel. Political prisoners allege beatings, electric shocks and other forms of torture.

Recent months alone have seen new laws proposed to restrict the right of Nicaraguans to leave or enter the country, limit international cooperation and stifle social media criticism of the regime. This is on top of the draconian national security laws passed in 2021 that suspended habeas corpus and gave the government sweeping powers to detain and prosecute critics.

In September, the UN Human Rights Office concluded that the human rights situation in Nicaragua has seriously deteriorated since last year, with increasing cases of arbitrary detentions, intimidation of opponents, ill-treatment in custody and attacks against Indigenous peoples.

Universities, media outlets and NGOs, including the International Red Cross, have been closed on a massive scale.  In 2024 alone, the regime shut down nearly 2,000 NGOs, from religious groups to livestock associations, bringing the total number of such nullifications to over 5,500 since 2018, a 70% reduction. Many of these were run by prominent former Sandinistas, such as the Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights’ Vilma Núñez, who was once Vice President of the Supreme Court of Justice.  All of these NGOs’ assets are now under government control, “recovered for the people of Nicaragua,” as the regime euphemistically puts it.  The UN Human Rights Office called the cull “deeply alarming”.

Later that month, the regime banished 135 political prisoners to Guatemala. It was just the latest in a series of mass banishments, often for trivial ‘offences’.  According to Confidencial, a newspaper founded by the former director of the Sandinista newspaper Barricada, “Former university professor Freddy Quezada’s crime was to ‘like’ a post supporting the Nicaraguan Miss Universe, Sheyniss Palacios. Kevin Laguna was imprisoned for painting a mural of her; and TikTok influencer Geovany Lopez Acevedo overstepped by criticizing the official narrative against the Nicaraguan beauty queen’s victory.”

The controversy around a Nicaraguan winning the Miss Universe competition seems almost surreal, were it not for the shocking consequences. Sheyniss Palacios was the first Nicaraguan ever to win the beauty pageant and the regime initially expressed “legitimate joy and pride” at her achievement – until pictures emerged of her participation in an anti-government protest in 2018. At that point, the owner of the Miss Nicaragua franchise was accused of – and faced police arrest for – deliberately rigging beauty contests in favour of competitors who were critical of the government as part of a ‘coup plot’. Others who expressed support faced more serious victimization.

The persecution of ‘old Sandinistas’

Former Sandinista comandante Dora María Téllez joined the Sandinistas in the 1970s. Aged just  22, she was third in command in the guerrilla operation in 1978 that occupied the Nicaraguan National Palace in Managua, where the National Assembly was in session, capturing 1,500 civilian hostages. She then played a central role in negotiating the release of Sandinista political prisoners and a million-dollar ransom payment. After the Revolution, she served as Health Minister from 1979 to 1990 before leaving the Sandinista in 1995.

In 2021, she was arrested in a violent police operation, involving 60 members of the riot squad. Police smashed down the doors, opened fire and physically hit the former Sandinista leader. She was sentenced in an express hearing that took place within the prison where she was held. After 605 days of imprisonment, she was expelled from the country, stripped of her Nicaraguan citizenship.

Recently she has said that “the obsession of the Ortega-Murillo regime is to control absolutely everything.” Referring to a new wave of arrests and purges of military, police and public officials, she called it “a sweep aimed at establishing in high-level public positions people who are unconditionally loyal.”

Even Jorge “El Cuervo (The Raven)” Guerrero, one of Daniel Ortega’s inner circle for more than four decades, was taken. His arrest and imprisonment at the age of 81 “informs everyone who was in the Sandinista Front guerrilla, no matter how old they are, how long they’ve been imprisoned, or how close they are to Daniel Ortega, that none of them have immunity,” said Téllez.

None – not even Humberto Ortega, brother of the President and another leading comandante, one of the original nine members of the Sandinista National Directorate and Minister of Defence from 1980 to 1995. Earlier this year he was placed under house arrest after criticising his brother’s regime as “authoritarian, dictatorial”. The President called him a “traitor”. His computers and phones were seized and his bodyguards and service workers arrested.

“Ortega and Murillo see in Humberto a competitor, someone annoying, who does not submit to their control, who is not subject to them,” commented Dora Maira Téllez. “He can say anything, as he has done. So this siege against Humberto — the same siege as against thousands of Nicaraguans — is to silence him.”

And silenced he was. Denied specialist medical treatment, he was later rushed to Managua’s Military Hospital and died a few months afterwards. Many feel his persecution and humiliation was aimed at removing him a as potential successor to his ailing elder brother who will be 80 next year.

A day after Humberto Ortega’s detention, 83-year old Judy Butler, a US citizen who had lived in Nicaragua for over 40 years and had done a small amount of translating for Humberto Ortega, was visited by several police, ordered to pack a small bag and then deported. She was given no reason, her phones were confiscated and all her personal belongings, including her computer, were left behind.

Between 1977 and 1983, Butler had been the editor of the Report on the Americas of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), an NGO of social science scholars. She had also worked on the magazine Envío, produced by the Central American University, which the regime took over and closed in 2023, cancelling the enrolment of hundreds of students.

Humberto Ortega was not the first historic Sandinista leader to die in the captivity of the Ortega-Murillo regime. Commander Hugo Torres, a Sandinista militant since 1971 and a retired general, collapsed and died in El Chipote prison in 2022 due to a lack of adequate medical care. 

Voices on the left speak up

As with Venezuela, voices  on the left are increasingly expressing concern about the Ortega regime. Chilean President Gabriel Boric called recently for political prisoners to be freed and human rights abuses prosecuted “regardless of the political affiliation of who is governing.”

Pablo Iglesias of Podemos in Spain, and former Uruguayan President José Mujica have also been sharply critical of Ortega. None of these individuals seek to promote US Administration interests.

Gregory Randall, a professor at Montevideo University and son of Margaret Randall, a prominent feminist supporter of the Sandinista Revolution in the 1980s, said recently that if the left does not denounce President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo’s government, it will lead to a “moral catastrophe, like not condemning the crimes of Stalinism at the time meant a disaster for communism that still affects us today.”

The parallel may look overblown at first sight, but the key similarity is that, just as Stalin tried and executed a great number of old Bolsheviks, today the focus of the repression of the Ortega-Murillo regime is on arresting, jailing and banishing many former Sandinista militants who risked their lives to make a popular revolution and build a better society.

The regime is an obstacle to defending the gains

The return of Trump to the White House ramps up the external threat against Nicaragua. The country’s Sandinista legacy remains significant, not least in the field of civic engagement. As Dora María Téllez says, “The most enduring feature of the revolution is the progress that has been made in terms of citizen organization and participation. By this I mean the capacities that various social sectors have developed to create the conditions necessary to improve their lives and to organize themselves to assert their rights, which is precisely what the dictatorship and its state of terror has turned against.”

There are important social gains as well that have not been overturned, even if they have been undermined. The Sandinista Revolution doubled the proportion of GNP spent on pre-university education in five years. It also established a single national health service available to all Nicaraguan citizens. But increased private sector penetration introduced after the Sandinistas left office in 1990 has weakened this and many non-governmental and volunteer bodies had to fill the gaps in poorer, rural areas. Their work has been adversely impacted by the current regime’s war on NGOs.

Furthermore the extreme politicisation introduced at all levels of administration by the regime post-2018 has led to state hospitals refusing to treat people based on their political orientation. “The health system as conceived and developed during the revolution, as a system of universal coverage, was simply turned into another instrument of Ortega and Murillo’s political and repressive interests,” comments Dora María Téllez.

The gains of the Sandinista Revolution were real and some remain so. But if they are to be successfully defended, the corrupt dynasty that has betrayed the Revolution’s great achievements  – and persecuted so many of its bravest militants – will have to leave the stage.

Image: President Daniel Ortega and his wife and Vice-President Rosario Murillo lead a rally in Managua in 2018.  https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2021/11/17/nicaraguan-president-wife-banned-from-us/ Creator: Alfredo Zuniga | Credit: AP Copyright: Copyright 2018 The Associated Press.  Licence: Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0 Deed

Mike Phipps’ new book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.

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Lawsuit Claims State Department Illegally Arming Israel via Leahy Law 'Loophole'

"This lawsuit demands one thing and one thing only: for the State Department to obey the law requiring a ban on assistance to abusive Israeli security forces," said one advocate.


U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on October 12, 2023.
(Photo: Eyepress Media Limited/Reuters via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Dec 17, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Palestinians and Palestinian Americans on Tuesday filed a lawsuit accusing the U.S. State Department of creating a "loophole" allowing Israel to skirt federal legislation barring American military aid to foreign militaries that violate human rights law.

The lawsuit, which was filed by five individuals and supported by the group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), accuses the State Department and Secretary of State Antony Blinken of violating the Leahy Law, legislation passed in two parts in the late 1990s that built on the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961's proscription of U.S. military aid to foreign security forces that commit gross human rights violations.

According to DAWN, the suit "documents how the State Department has created unique, insurmountable processes to evade the Leahy Law requirement to sanction abusive Israeli units, despite overwhelming evidence of their human rights violations" including "torture, prolonged detention without charge, forced disappearance, and flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty, and security, such as genocide, indiscriminate and deliberate killings, and deprivation of items essential to survival, including food, water, fuel, and medicine."



Case plaintiff Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian American from the southern Gazan city of Rafah who has lost numerous relatives in Israeli attacks, toldZeteo's Prem Thakker, "I'm hoping, through this action, through this lawsuit, that we can just call out the federal government to begin to enforce American laws."

The State Department has sparked international outrage by repeatedly finding that Israel is using U.S.-supplied arms in compliance with domestic human rights law, citing the key ally's right to defend itself and the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack. However, Israel's 438-day retaliation has left more than 162,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing in Gaza and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Thousands more have been killed or maimed in the West Bank.

South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Last month, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Both men have been warmly welcomed in Washington, D.C.. Congress and the Biden administration have approved tens of billions of dollars in arms transfers to Israel. U.S.-supplied bombs have been used in some of Israel's most notorious airstrikes. The U.S. has also vetoed numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding a Gaza cease-fire.

"This lawsuit demands one thing and one thing only: for the State Department to obey the law requiring a ban on assistance to abusive Israeli security forces," DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson said in a statement on Tuesday. "For too long, the State Department has acted as if there's an 'Israel exemption' from the Leahy Law, despite the fact that Congress required it to apply the law to every country in the world. As a result, millions of Palestinians have suffered unimaginable, horrific abuses by Israeli forces using U.S. weapons."

Stephen Rickard, a former U.S. official who helped pass the landmark legislation, said that "long-standing concerns that the State Department was not cutting off aid to specific Israel units as required by the Leahy Law... have been given dramatic urgency by the tragic ongoing crisis in Gaza."

"If the State Department will not comply with the law, then it is time for the courts to vindicate the rule of law and order it to do so," Rickard added.



The new lawsuit came a day after relatives of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi—the Turkish American woman who, according to witnesses, was deliberately shot in the head while peacefully protesting the expansion of Israel's illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank in September—met with Blinken in search of justice and accountability for the activist's killing.

Referring to another American activist killed by Israeli forces while defending Palestinian homes, Hamid Ali, Eygi's widower, said that Blinken "was attentive in listening to us, but unfortunately repeated a lot of the same things that we've been hearing for the past 20 years, particularly since Rachel Corrie's killing."

Ali called Blinken "very deferential to the Israelis," adding that "it felt like he was saying his hands were tied and they weren't able to really do much."

A journalist asked State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller during a Tuesday press conference why the U.S. has not suspended arms transfers to Israel by invoking the Leahy Law and citing the cases of victims like Eygi or Shireen Abu Akleh—the Palestinian American Al Jazeera correspondent who, according to witnesses and several independent probes, was deliberately shot dead by an Israeli sniper in the West Bank in May 2022.



"We have taken those cases extremely seriously," Miller claimed. Referring to Eygi, he added that he made it clear to Israel that "her death was unacceptable, that it should have been avoided, it should have never happened in the first place, that we want to see the results of their investigation, and we want to see them change their rules of engagement."

Congressional Report Warns of Climate Threat to US Insurance, Housing Markets

"The longer climate deniers keep up this charade, the more expensive things will get," said the JEC chair.


The remnants of buildings in Chimney Rock, North Carolina are captured on December 14, 2024, months after Hurricane Helene devastated the area.
(Photo: Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Dec 16, 2024
COMMON DREAMS


After at least two dozen U.S. disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion during a year that is on track to be the hottest on record, a congressional committee on Monday released a report detailing how the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency poses a "significant threat" to the country's housing and insurance markets.

"Climate-exacerbated disasters, such as wildfires, hurricanes, floods, drought, and excessive heat, are increasing risk and causing damage to homes across the country," states the report from Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee (JEC). "Last year, roughly 70% of Americans reported that their community experienced an extreme weather event."

"In the 1980s, the United States experienced an average of one billion-dollar disaster (adjusted for inflation) every four months; now, these significant disasters occur approximately every three weeks," the document continues. "2023 was the worst year for home insurers since 2000, with losses reaching $15.2 billion—more than twice the losses reported in 2022."

"Rising premiums and this issue of uninsurability could seriously disrupt the housing market and stress state-operated insurance programs, public services, and disaster relief."


The insurance industry is already responding to that stress. The publication highlights that "insurers are pulling out of some states with substantial wildfire or hurricane risk—like California, Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina—leaving some areas 'uninsurable,'" and "in many regions, even if the homeowner can get insurance, the policy covers less than the actual physical climate risks (for example, rising sea levels or more intense wildfires) that their home faces, leaving them 'underinsured.'"

JEC Democratic staff found that last year, "the average U.S. homeowners' insurance rate rose over 11%," and from 2011-21, it soared 44%. Researchers also documented state-by-state jumps for 2020-23. For increases, Florida was the highest ($1,272), followed by Louisiana ($986), the District of Columbia ($971), Colorado ($892), Massachusetts ($855), and Nebraska ($849).

The highest premiums for 2023 were in Florida ($3,547), Nebraska ($3,055), Oklahoma ($2,990), Massachusetts ($2,980), Colorado ($2,972), Hawaii ($2,958), D.C. ($2,867), Louisana ($2,793), Rhode Island ($2,792), and Mississippi ($2,787).

The report ties the rising premiums to "surging" prices for repairs, reinsurers also hiking rates, insurance litigation issues, and rate caps in some states pushing higher costs off to states that regulate the industry less. While JEC Democrats focused on the United States, as Common Dreamsreported last week, the climate threat to the insurance industry is a global problem.




"Rising premiums and this issue of uninsurability could seriously disrupt the housing market and stress state-operated insurance programs, public services, and disaster relief," the new report warns. "Given this rising threat, innovations in climate mitigation and adaptation, insurance options, and disaster relief are essential for protecting Americans and their finances."

The publication points out that "a previous JEC report on climate financial risks discussed other potential solutions like parametric insurance (a supplemental insurance plan that can pay homeowners faster), community-based catastrophe insurance that incentivizes community-level resilience efforts, and attempts to use risk-pooling, data, and AI to better price risk."

The new document also promotes the Wildfire Insurance Coverage Study Act, introduced by JEC Chair Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) "to address these data needs and study wildfire risk, insurance, and mitigation to help Americans make more informed decisions about the risks to their homes," and the Shelter Act, which "would create a new tax credit, allowing taxpayers to deduct 25% of disaster mitigation expenditures."

The report further recommends improvements to several Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) programs, including:Expanding the flagship pre-disaster mitigation grant funding available through FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program beyond the nearly $3 billion it received in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) to meet growing demand (only 22 states received funding in FY23; although, applications were received from all 50).
Making it easier for states to apply for FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which gives funds to states hit by a disaster that they can use to protect against future damage. The Biden-Harris administration recently streamlined the program's application process.
Enacting a National Disaster Safety Board (similar to the National Transportation Safety Board), which would provide data-informed recommendations to help communities become more resilient to disasters.

Expanding the Community Wildfire Defense Program, created by the BIL.

The JEC publication comes as the country prepares for President-elect Donald Trump to take office next month after running a campaign backed by billionaires and fossil fuel executives and pledging to "drill, baby, drill," which would increase planet-heating pollution as scientists warn of the need for cutting emissions. Republicans will also have control of both chambers of Congress.

Heinrich on Monday called out the GOP for its climate record, saying that "Republicans have denied that climate change is real for over 40 years, and as a result, homeowners are seeing their insurance costs rise."

"Homeowners in New Mexico have seen their premiums increase by $400 over the last three years because of Republicans' refusal to act," he added, citing the 2020-2023 data. "The longer climate deniers keep up this charade, the more expensive things will get."

Biden Admin Confirms Dangers of LNG Exports But Won't Act to Block Them

"This study mirrors the Biden administration's entire four-year approach to advancing a clean energy future: weak and half-hearted," one advocate said.

A liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker operates near a Venture Global export facility in Louisiana.
(Photo: Getty Images)

Olivia Rosane
Dec 17, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Approving more liquefied natural gas exports would raise domestic energy prices, increase the pollution burden placed on local communities, and exacerbate the climate crisis, the Biden administration concluded in a long-awaited report released Tuesday.

However, the Department of Energy (DOE) stopped short of denying any pending or future approvals, passing the buck to the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has vocally supported the LNG boom.

"This study mirrors the Biden administration's entire four-year approach to advancing a clean energy future: weak and half-hearted," Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh said in a statement. "Liquid natural gas exports systematically poison the most vulnerable frontline communities, pollute our air and water, and drive up domestic energy prices. We cannot continue to be victimized by the profit-driven agenda of fossil fuel corporations. President Biden must listen to the warnings of his own government by banning further LNG exports and rejecting pending LNG permits before he leaves office."

"DOE's long-awaited environmental and economic analyses demonstrate what environmental justice and frontline communities have been saying for years—liquefied natural gas export facilities are not in the public interest."

U.S. LNG exports have tripled in the last five years, making the country the leading gas exporter in the world. At the same time, the latest climate research has shown that—due to methane leaks across the LNG life cycle—the so-called "bridge fuel" is in fact worse for the climate than coal.

Following pressure from climate and environmental justice advocates, the Biden administration in January announced a pause on approving LNG exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries while the DOE updated the studies it uses to determine whether or not gas exports are in the public interest, as Congress has authorized it to do under the Natural Gas Act.

Those updated studies were released Tuesday, along with a statement from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Climate, consumer, and frontline advocates welcomed the findings themselves, which they said were largely consistent with their warnings and experience.

"DOE's long-awaited environmental and economic analyses demonstrate what environmental justice and frontline communities have been saying for years—liquefied natural gas export facilities are not in the public interest," Leslie Fields, the chief federal officer at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, said in a statement. "Not only do these projects compound public health and safety harms to communities, especially in the Gulf and for communities of color, but they also exacerbate the climate crisis and raise energy prices here at home."

Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, said on social media that Granholm's statement was "even stronger than I expected."

In it, Granholm emphasized five key findings from the updated studies:LNG exports are booming, with the quantities already approved being sufficient to meet global demand for decades in 4 out of 5 scenarios.
Increasing exports would boost the profits of export facility owners and generate jobs in the industry, but would raise gas prices for domestic industry and consumers overall. Within the U.S., "unfettered exports" would raise prices by more than 30% and add "well over" $100 to the average yearly household energy bill by 2050.
LNG export facilities are concentrated in communities already exposed to fossil fuel industry pollution, with methane, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and other contaminates raising mortality rates.
Increased LNG exports would contribute to the climate crisis: They are more likely to supplant renewables than coal and add to global emissions in every scenario the DOE examined.
Regulators should consider where LNG exports will be shipped. Demand in Europe is falling, while China is currently the leading importer and projected to remain so through 2050.

"Today's study makes clear that all pending export applications must be denied as being inconsistent with the public interest, and should result in a reassessment of existing exports to determine compatibility with the public interest," Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, said in a statement. "Using LNG exports to provide energy abundance for China at the expense of higher utility bills for working Americans is not in the public interest."

Granholm stated clearly that "the effect of increased energy prices for domestic consumers combined with the negative impacts to local communities and the climate will continue to grow as exports increase."

Yet she also said the Biden administration would not act on the findings of the updated studies due to the timing of their release: The report's publication now triggers a 60-day comment period, and the inauguration is only a little more than a month away.

"Given that the comment period for the study will continue into the next administration—and that there are a limited number of applications that are concurrently ready for the DOE 'public interest' review—decisions about the future of LNG export levels will necessarily be made by future administrations," she said. "Our hope is that we can now assess the future of natural gas exports based on the facts and ensure authorizations are reviewed in a manner that truly advances the public interest of all the American people."

While the purpose of the DOE's updated studies had never been to deny or approve exports—rather to inform those decisions—advocates have been pushing the Biden administration to act on its findings. In particular, frontline Gulf groups are concerned about Calcasieu Pass 2 and Commonwealth LNG, two pending export facilities that are currently subject to supplemental environmental impact statements by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission due to concerns about their local impacts.

"We were hoping that this study would be released and with this study would come the denial of permits for these projects," frontline leader Roishetta Ozane of the Vessel Project of Louisiana said in a press briefing.

"It'll be hard for the Trump administration to completely ignore the finding that exports drive up costs for consumers. That's political dynamite."

Several groups responded to the study with renewed calls for permit denials.

"This study confirms that Donald Trump's plans to supercharge LNG exports will come at the expense of consumers and the climate," said Friends of the Earth senior energy campaigner Raena Garcia. "We cannot afford to prop up an industry that continues to threaten our people and the planet for profit. Over the next few weeks, it is not too late for the Biden administration to curb the deadly LNG export boom."

Walsh of Food & Water Watch said: "Secretary Granholm's admission that continuing LNG exports will drive up costs and harm vulnerable communities is a sad reflection on what we have been saying for the last decade. It is time for this administration to start matching its rhetoric with action, and reject new LNG exports while it still can."

But Henn told Common Dreams that this might be a losing battle.

"The administration has indicated it wants to follow the regular process and not jump ahead and deny permits before they leave office, only to have Trump reapprove them," Henn said. "We disagree and think denials would send a strong political signal and potentially strengthen legal challenges. It's unlikely we'll sway them with so little time left, but we're going to try."

Still, campaigners emphasized that the DOE's findings will strengthen the case of any community or group opposing LNG exports going forward.

"This report will serve as a tool for us in fighting against these projects," Ozane said.

This remains the case despite the Trump administration's pro-fossil fuel stance and history of running roughshod over rules and regulations.

"Trump will of course try and ignore the study, but it gives us new political, legal, and diplomatic arguments," Henn told Common Dreams. "Politically, it'll be hard for the Trump administration to completely ignore the finding that exports drive up costs for consumers. That's political dynamite. Legally, if Trump just ignores the findings of this report and rushes approval, that opens the door for challenges."

Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Gillian Giannetti pointed out in a press briefing that "because these studies are in the public record, the failure to properly consider them and their relevance would be unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act."

Slocum of Public Citizen said that groups like his have legal intervention status and can ask a court to review any Trump decision.

"Any court is going to want to know—what does the administrative record say?" he noted. "And this report greatly strengthens the case that requested LNG exports are not consistent with the public interest. So a court can toss out a Trump admin approval."

"These studies show clearly that LNG exports are in gas executives' best interest and nobody else's."

Henn added that the findings could slow the LNG buildout both diplomatically and economically.

"Diplomatically, the climate data in this report makes it less likely that our allies, all of whom have signed the Paris agreement, will be as interested in importing dirty U.S. gas," he told Common Dreams.

"Finally," he concluded, "this report will cause tremors on Wall Street. This report and Secretary Granholm's strongly worded letter indicate that future Democratic administrations won't likely support new export facilities. Since these are long-term investment decisions, that uncertainty will slow down financing for new projects."

The report also undermines Trump's economic argument that more fossil fuel production is better for everyone, revealing it instead for another giveaway to the wealthy.

"Despite claims from the incoming Trump administration that it wants to lower prices, the truth is they are putting billionaire fossil fuel donors ahead of everyday Americans," Greenpeace USA deputy climate program director John Noël said in a statement. "The record is crystal clear: Increasing LNG exports will drive up costs for domestic businesses and consumers. Full stop. Any further investment in LNG will only exacerbate the cost-of-living crisis, while enriching gas industry CEOs who don't have to experience the fallout of living near an export terminal."

Lauren Parker, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, agreed, saying, "These studies show clearly that LNG exports are in gas executives' best interest and nobody else's."

Parker concluded, "If Trump wants to drive up dangerous gas exports, he's going to have to answer for causing more deadly storms, condemning the Rice's whale to extinction, and socking consumers with higher costs."

ICJ Set to Decide Whether Fueling Climate Change Violates International Law


The case could have critical consequences for the survival of future generations.

By Marjorie Cohn ,

Truthout

December 16, 2024

A man paddles himself, two other people and a dog through floodwaters on a raft made out of storm debris on February 6, 2024, in Havana, Cuba.

YAMIL LAGE / AFP via Getty Images

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has just completed hearings on the climate crisis in a case that could have critical consequences for the survival of future generations. From December 2-13, more than 100 states and organizations argued before the ICJ in landmark litigation that began five years ago when Pacific Islander law students initiated a grassroots movement that persuaded the UN General Assembly to request an advisory opinion from the ICJ.

“In The Hague, most of which lies below sea level, this has been a momentous two weeks,” environmental attorney Richard Harvey, who works for Greenpeace International and watched the historic proceedings, told Truthout. “The Cold War divided the world into East and West but climate change divides it into North and South: corporate petrostates against the Small Island Developing States and the rest.”

“Never before have the U.S., Russia, China, U.K., Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and OPEC [the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] lined up so explicitly against those who suffer the most from their greed,” Harvey said. “Corporate petrostates shamelessly asserted that peoples’ rights to self-determination, to life and to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment are, in essence, trumped by their right to fossil fuel profits.”

On March 29, 2023, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 77/276 that recognized “climate change is an unprecedented challenge of civilizational proportions and that the well-being of present and future generations of humankind depends on our immediate and urgent response to it.” The resolution directed the ICJ to render an advisory opinion on:The obligations of States under international law to protect the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic [caused by humans] emissions of greenhouse gases, now and in the future.
The legal consequences for States that fail to do this and cause significant harm to present and future generations and other States (particularly small island developing States affected by adverse effects of climate change).

The campaign in the General Assembly was spearheaded by Vanuatu, a constellation of 83 small islands in the South Pacific and one of the states most vulnerable to climate change. The measure that was introduced by Vanuatu and co-sponsored by over 130 states took aim at the primary emitters of fossil fuels, of which the United States is the leading culprit.




“Today, we find ourselves on the frontlines of a crisis we did not create ⎯ a crisis that threatens our very existence and that of so many other peoples who have come in unprecedented numbers to be heard by this Court,” Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and environment, told the 15 judges. “The outcome of these proceedings will reverberate across generations, determining the fate of nations like mine and the future of our planet.”

The Climate Crisis Is “Existential” for Many Developing Countries

Many states, including Tuvalu, characterized the climate crisis as “existential.” Despite producing less than 0.01 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, Tuvalu is on a trajectory to be the first country completely lost to rising sea levels due to climate change. The Solomon Islands have already lost five islands and others face severe erosion. Several states cited extreme weather events, many quite recent, that have had disastrous consequences for their people.


“The cost of fossil fuel subsidies from States reached an all-time high of US$7 trillion in 2022,” more than 23 times the amount that developing countries strived to secure for climate finance at the recent COP29.

Elizabeth Exposto, chief of staff to the prime minister of Timor-Leste, which is acutely vulnerable to climate change, said, “The climate crisis that we face today is the result of the historical and ongoing actions of industrialised nations, which have reaped the benefits of rapid economic growth, powered by colonial exploitation and carbon-intensive industries and practices.” She also noted, “These nations, representing only a fraction of the global population, are overwhelmingly responsible for the climate crisis, and yet, the impacts of climate change do not respect borders.”

But Margaret Taylor, legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State, dismissed the idea that the worst offenders were most responsible for taking actions to remedy the harm they are causing to the developing states. She asserted that, “States’ current obligations in respect of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions do not vary based on differentiation between categories of States, such as those characterized as ‘developed’ and ‘developing.’”

Like other major emitting states, Russia contended that the 1.5 degrees centigrade temperature limit in the Paris agreement is not legally binding, international responsibility is only triggered at the moment the climate treaties came into force for each state, causation by a single state is impossible to prove, and the primary emitters are not responsible for harm that future generations will suffer.

Even though Palestine is responsible for less than 0.01 percent of global emissions, it suffers severe climate impacts that are intensified by Israel’s illegal occupation. It has led to “the violation of the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to control its territory, to have sovereignty over its resources and to be in command of its climate policies,” Ambassador Ammar Hijazi, permanent representative of the State of Palestine to International Organizations in the Netherlands, told the court.

Palestine’s representatives raised the significant linkage between occupation, militarism and climate justice. “Climate scientists have determined that the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip was responsible for emission of between 420,000 and 650,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in just the first 120 days, which is the period for which there is published data,” Kate Mackintosh argued for Palestine. “This is equivalent to the total annual emissions of 26 of the lowest-emitting States.”

“Although the occupying Power has a legal obligation to protect the environment and to conserve the natural resources of the occupied territory for the benefit of the protected population, this obligation is often violated, as the Court has already concluded in relation to Israel’s occupation of Palestine,” Mackintosh added. She was referring to the ICJ’s advisory opinion issued in July which concluded that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal.

Representatives from the Dominican Republic said that damages from climate change violate the fundamental right to survival — a right recognized by the ICJ in its advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons.
The Risks of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Have Been Known Since at Least the 1960s

Regenvanu from Vanuatu emphasized that “the unprecedented risks created by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have been known since at least the 1960s,” citing an address by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in 1965: “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”

Referring to the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Regenvanu noted, “For many peoples, including in Vanuatu, the prolonged and systematic failure of the COP process has cost them their well-being, their cultures and even their lives. There is an urgent need for a collective response to climate change grounded not in political convenience but in international law.”

Jorge Viñuales from the Melanesian Spearhead Group stated that emissions of greenhouse gases have increased more than 50 percent since 1990. He cited a report by the International Monetary Fund that “the cost of fossil fuel subsidies from States reached an all-time high of US$7 trillion in 2022,” more than 23 times the amount that developing countries strived to secure for climate finance at the recent COP29.

Fossil fuels account for 80 percent of global primary energy. Nearly 80 percent of historical greenhouse gases have come from the Group of 20 (G20), while developing countries contributed only 4 percent.

In its directive to the ICJ for an advisory opinion, the General Assembly resolution referenced several relevant sources of international law, including the UN Charter; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; UNFCCC; the Paris Climate Agreement; the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea; the duty of due diligence; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the principle of prevention of significant harm to the environment; and the duty to protect and preserve the marine environment.

The Leading Greenhouse Gas Emitters Tried to Narrow Climate Change Law

Nevertheless, the leading greenhouse gas-emitting states argued that their international legal obligations did not go beyond those set forth in the UNFCCC and Paris agreement, an international treaty on climate change adopted by 196 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in 2015 and entered into force in 2016.

But the overwhelming majority of states told the court that international law governing climate change also includes customary international law and human rights law.

“As the majority of the submissions have highlighted, for islands like Samoa, climate change is more than an environmental issue,” Peseta Noumea Simi, chief executive officer in Samoa’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said. “It is a health, food security, economic, social, cultural, human rights and security concern. As large ocean States, it fundamentally affects our ability to draw sustenance from the pristine oceans and seas that surround us.”

The Solomon Islands called for international legal protection for refugees displaced by climate change under international refugee law.

Some, like Ecuador, maintained that states which have significantly harmed the climate system, including harm caused by private contractors under its jurisdiction, must also be held accountable.

The Union of Comoros argued that breaches of the legal obligations owed to the international community as a whole (erga omnes) require reparations, including cessation of illegal acts, compensation for damage and loss, and financial support. Many of the states agreed that reparations must be paid, including restitution, compensation and satisfaction (for moral damages such as mental and emotional suffering). Some, including the African Union, mentioned debt cancellation (or at least debt relief) and structural reparation. Vietnam, which continues to suffer the effects of the U.S. military’s spraying of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, suggested restorative measures for the national environment.

A Favorable Advisory Opinion From the ICJ Would Carry Great Moral Weight

During his first term, President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris agreement. President Joe Biden then rejoined the treaty in 2021. Now, Trump is preparing once again to leave the Paris agreement and has promised to increase fossil-fuel production.

Although an advisory opinion from the ICJ is not legally binding, it carries great moral weight. It could help climate activists hold polluting states accountable by providing legal support for climate litigation against their governments. Politicians could cite it to support the imposition of sanctions against states that fail to comply with their legal obligations. And diplomats could use it as a minimum standard in the next global climate change negotiations.

“The ICJ’s opinion will be published in 2025, just as the court celebrates its 80th birthday,” Harvey told Truthout. “I sincerely hope our colleagues threatened by rising sea levels, unbreathable air and deadly temperature increases will find its opinion a cause for celebration.”

On the last day of the hearings, Vishal Prasad, director of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, presented the ICJ with the “People’s Petition: A Collective Climate Justice Call for the ICJ,” which quoted a young woman from the Micronesian island of Kiribati: “The ocean, once a nurturing mother, has become a vengeful giant, swallowing the land it once cradled. It no longer only gives life — it now takes it, inch by inch. Where it once offered sustenance, it now brings destruction, its rising tides a cold and unrelenting force that pulls homes, cultures, and futures into its depths.”

Prasad invoked the memory of his ancestors, who were guided across the Pacific islands by the stars, telling the judges: “Just as the wayfinders of the Pacific held the wisdom to guide us through the vast ocean to safe harbour, you hold the knowledge and the responsibility to guide the international community to ensure the protection of our collective future. And you can do this simply by applying international law to the conduct responsible for climate change.”

Indeed, Vanuatu’s Regenvanu told the ICJ, “Let us not allow future generations to look back and wonder why the cause of their doom was condoned.”


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.