Illegal Israeli settlers throw stones and tear gas Palestinians in the West Bank

Adam Schrader
Sun, February 11, 2024 

A displaced Palestinian woman sits in front of a makeshift tent with her children, as Palestinian families seek shelter in the Mawasi area as they struggle to find clean water, food and medicine as Israeli attacks continue in Rafah, Gaza, Saturday, February 10, 2024. Photo by Ismael Mohamad/UPI


Feb. 11 (UPI) -- Illegal Israeli settlers threw stones at Palestinians in their cars in the West Bank on Sunday, before tear-gassing drivers, according to an Israeli human rights group.

The news was reported by Al-Jazeera citing Yesh Din, a non-governmental organization based in Israel. The organization has been tracking incidents of violence committed by Israeli settlers illegally living in the West Bank against Palestinians.

"The Israel government is coming out against the U.S. imposing sanctions on violent settlers but continues to do nothing to stop West Bank settler violence," Yesh Din said in a post on social media last week.

The organization has also been calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, while noting that only 6.6% of all criminal investigations opened by Israel against Palestinians they have detained have led to a conviction. And less than 1% of complaints against Israeli soldiers led to indictments.

Earlier this month, Joe Biden targeted violent settlers in the West Bank with sanctions -- a surprise move considering the president's long historical ties to Israel.

"[The violence] has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel and the broader Middle East region," Biden said.

"These actions undermine the foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a two-state solution and ensuring Israelis Palestinians can attain equal measures of security, prosperity and freedom."

But critics have said the sanctions, which only named a handful of people, don't go far enough as Palestinians point to the hundreds of people killed by Israelis before Hamas attacked on October 7. In 2023 alone, 199 Palestinians living in the West Bank were killed up through October 6.

Israel's West Bank settler population grew nearly 3%. Supporters say Gaza war could give new push

JULIA FRANKEL
Sun, February 11, 2024 

This photo shows a construction site of new housing projects in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Givat Ze'ev, Monday, June 18, 2023. The population of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank grew nearly 3% in 2023, according to a new report based on population statistics from the Israeli government. The report, released Sunday Feb. 11, 2024 by the pro-settler group WestBankJewishPopulationStats.com, found the settler population jumped to 517,407 as of Dec. 31, from 502,991 a year earlier. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)More


JERUSALEM (AP) — The population of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank grew nearly 3% in 2023, according to a new report based on population statistics from the Israeli government.

The report, released Sunday by the pro-settler group WestBankJewishPopulationStats.com, found the settler population jumped to 517,407 as of Dec. 31, from 502,991 a year earlier.

The settler population has grown over 15% in the last five years, the report said. Last year, it passed the half-million mark, a major threshold.

This year’s report predicted “accelerated growth” in the coming years, claiming the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, which triggered the current war in Gaza, persuaded many Israelis who were formerly opposed to settlement-building on occupied land to change positions.

“Serious cracks have indeed developed in the wall of opposition to Jewish settlement of the West Bank,” it said.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek all three areas for an independent state.

The international community overwhelmingly considers Israel’s settlements to be illegal and obstacles to peace by occupying land the Palestinians seek for their state. Israel considers the West Bank to be “disputed” and says the territory’s fate should be decided in negotiations. The Biden administration recently sanctioned four settlers for violence against Palestinians and activists in the West Bank.

The report projected that if the growth rate over the past five years continues, the settler population in the West Bank will exceed 600,000 before 2030.

The report did not include population figures for east Jerusalem, where more than 200,000 Israelis live in settlements that Israel considers to be neighborhoods of its capital. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as their would-be capital.

Israel’s government is dominated by settler leaders and supporters. The Israeli watchdog group Terrestrial Jerusalem says that since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza on Oct. 7, three settlement plans were either approved or are about to be approved in east Jerusalem.

Terrestrial Jerusalem called the speed of settlement approval processes over the last few months “frenetic."

The report comes as a spasm of violence grips the West Bank.

Since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, Israel has held the West Bank under a tight grip — limiting movement and conducting frequent raids on what it says are militant targets.

Palestinian health officials say 391 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank during that period. Most have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces. But the Israeli rights group Yesh Din says settlers shot and killed nine Palestinians in just the first month and a half of the war, among 225 incidents of Israeli civilian violence the group documented during that time.

Israeli checkpoints 'paralyse' West Bank life as Gaza war rages

Hossam Ezzedine with Majeda El-Batsh in Jerusalem
Fri, February 9, 2024 

An Israeli soldier mans a checkpoint at the al-Aroub camp for Palestinian refugees south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank (John MACDOUGALL)

To arrive at work in Jerusalem on time, Murad Khalid must be at the Israeli checkpoint by 3:00 am, despite living nearby in the occupied West Bank -- a constant challenge made worse by the Gaza war.

The 27-year-old said he and other residents of Kafr Aqab neighbourhood in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem -- located on the West Bank side of the barrier -- are subjected to a "security check that may take an hour for each car" at Qalandia crossing.

Israeli movement restrictions have long made life difficult for the three million Palestinians living in the West Bank.

But since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, traffic has become "paralysed", said Palestinian Authority official Abdullah Abu Rahmah.

The number of checkpoints and barriers in the Palestinian territory has greatly increased since October 7, adding hours to already lengthy commutes and forcing residents to either wait at the checkpoints or take long detours.

Largely unaffected are the 490,000 Israelis living across the West Bank in settlements -- considered illegal under international law -- who can bypass Palestinian communities on roads built especially for them.

- 'Exhausting' -

It used to take accountant Amer al-Salameen just half an hour to drive from his home in the city of Ramallah to his parent's village Al-Samou.

But with the new restrictions, the journey has turned into an "exhausting, tiring, and uncomfortable" four hours, said the 47-year-old.

"I used to visit my family every weekend with my wife and children. But today, I fear that something might happen on the road."

Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, has stepped up raids into Palestinian communities since Hamas's October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas and launched a relentless military offensive that has killed at least 27,947 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

In the West Bank, more than 380 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers over the same period, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.

Scores more have been arrested.

- 'Security for all' -

The Israeli army told AFP the additional barriers are "in accordance with the assessment of the situation in order to provide security to all residents of the sector".

Recently, an AFP team leaving Jerusalem at 8:00 am for the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem -- normally a trip of just two hours -- arrived there at 1:30 pm, following dirt roads through villages to get around the barriers.

The journey from Jerusalem to Jenin, also in the north, now similarly takes five hours instead of two.

Immediately after the October 7 attack, the Israeli army shut the road between the town of Huwara and Nablus, a major northern Palestinian city.

According to an AFP photographer, the army has also closed off the main entrances to most villages around Hebron in the southern West Bank, forcing residents to take dirt roads through other villages to access cities.

Student Lynn Ahmed says her usual one-hour drive from Tulkarem to Birzeit University, north of Ramallah, now takes more than three "due to closures and the destruction of some roads."

Given such difficulties, Birzeit and other Palestinian universities in the West Bank have returned to remote learning.

Israel first erected military checkpoints in the West Bank following the first Palestinian uprising or intifada in 1987, but the number increased after the start of the second intifada in 2000.

Since then, earthen barriers, gates, or cement block around 700 roads across the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Authority's Abu Rahmah, who heads a team monitoring settler activity.

he-mab/ysm/jd/spm

Biden urged to include politicians in sanctions on violent Israeli settlers

Chris McGreal in New York

THE GUARDIAN
Sat, February 10, 2024 

Joe Biden speaks in Leesburg, Virginia, on 8 February.Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters


There are growing calls for Joe Biden to use his new executive order sanctioning violent Israeli settlers to also target political leaders, including government ministers, responsible for driving attacks against Palestinians.

Pro-Israel groups and others in the US say the order is potentially a severe blow to the settlement movement in the West Bank, in part because financial sanctions could block even Israeli banks from doing business in parts of the occupied territories.

Human rights groups also want to see the measures used to stop US groups from donating tens of millions of dollars each year to the settlers.

The Biden administration has not said how widely it will apply the order after initially imposing sanctions against just four settlers responsible for escalating attacks on Palestinians, including forcing entire villages from their homes.

Josh Paul, a former state department official who resigned over the US supplying weapons for Israel’s present war in Gaza, said that the order is framed broadly enough for the administration to pursue those enabling and facilitating a surge in killings, beatings and forced removals. It is driven in part by far-right members of the government, such as the national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, intent on removing Palestinians as a step toward annexation of all or parts of the occupied territories.

“I think the order could and should implicate members of the current Israeli government, including Ben-Gvir but not only,” said Paul.

“The order is a small step forward and incremental one. On the one hand, I would say it certainly doesn’t go far enough. But also it does have the potential to be used a lot more than it has been so far.”

Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, research director for Israel-Palestine at the group founded by the assassinated Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, Democracy for the Arab World Now, said that if the sanctions were expansively applied they could have a significant impact.

“The potential is to completely defund the settlement movement and the organisations that support it. It’s a very broad, powerful, weapon. But we have to see how they use it,” he said.

Paul suspects the order is a warning shot to pressure the Israeli government to rein in the settlers, who often act under the protection of the Israeli military or police, out of concern that the violence could explode into full scale conflict in the West Bank. But he questions whether Biden is interested in addressing the wider issue of the settlements, and the 700,000 Israelis living in the occupied territories, as an obstacle to peace.

“The problem isn’t violent settlers. They’re low-hanging fruit. The problem is the settlement enterprise and that is an enterprise that is funded, supported, enabled through US private donations and through US government tacit support. Occasionally secretaries of state or presidents pop up to condemn new settlement announcements but then do absolutely nothing to get in the way of that construction happening,” he said.

Others see the order as a chance to change the face of the settlement movement.

T’ruah, a New York-based group of rabbis campaigning for human rights, welcomed Biden’s order as “a really positive first step that has a lot of potential”. But T’ruah’s director, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, said the White House should follow up by targeting “the real leaders of the violent settler movement, including the heads of organisations that are inciting this violence”.

“There are a number of settler organisations in Israel whose leadership has been indicted, even in some cases convicted, in Israel of incitement and terror. The next step is to look at the leaders of those organisations,” she said.

Jacobs said that included much more prominent figures than the four obscure settlers already sanctioned, including present and former members of the Israeli parliament. She said Biden’s order should also be used to stop American organisations funding extremist Jewish groups in the occupied territories, including some with with close ties to the Kach movement, founded by the extremist American-born rabbi Meir Kahane and banned in Israel as a terrorist group.

“They’re also funding yeshivas like Od Yosef Chai in Yitzhar, one of the most extreme settlements. There are often settler attacks that originate from that settlement incited by the rabbis at the yeshiva,” she said.

In a rare prosecution of a rabbi, Yosef Elitzur of Yitzhar was convicted three years ago of inciting violence against Palestinians. Another of the yeshiva’s rabbis wrote a book claiming religious law permits Jews to kill gentile babies because of “the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents”.

In 2015, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that at least 50 organisations across the US were involved in fundraising for Israeli settlements.

T’ruah has previously asked the US tax authorities to investigate several American groups it accuses of funding Lehava, the Yitzhar yeshiva and other settlements with a history of violence or extremist groups. These include the New York-based Central Fund of Israel which also helps finance the Israel Land Fund which responsible for the expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers.

Jacobs said money raised in the US also goes to Honenu, a group associated with Ben-Gvir, that gives cash payments to Israelis convicted of terrorism, including Yigal Amir, who assassinated the prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

Another US group, Friends of Ir David, funds Elad, an Israeli settler organisation responsible for the forced removal of Palestinians as it seeks to “Judaise” occupied East Jerusalem.

Biden’s order bars individuals from travelling to the US and freezes their assets there. It quickly became evident that the measures could have a significant effect on settlers who have no direct connection with the US after Israeli banks froze accounts belonging to the targeted individuals so as to comply with American law.

Omer-Man said imposing sanctions on a wide range of settler leaders and those who support them could have a real impact.

“Take somebody living in a settlement. They have a mortgage. If they’re on the sanctions list, what happens to the mortgage? Does the Israeli bank cancel it? Does the Israeli government create a bank just to give mortgages to settlers which is then itself open to sanctions. The Jewish National Fund and the World Zionist Organization are involved designating and giving land to settlers which is inherently a part of the system,” he said.

“But none of that happens without political will. We don’t know what the red lines are, the triggers that the administration has set internally for when they’re going to expand the sanctions. If they don’t at least come up with a second round, then they won’t have created deterrence. It seems ridiculous to sanction these four individuals who are nobodies but it’s not really targeting them. It’s targeting the Israeli government.”

Paul said the Biden administration is genuinely concerned at events in the West Bank.

“I think the Biden administration understands the immense and imminent risk of a collapse of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which would be an absolute catastrophe,” he said.

But Paul added that the sanctions order was also a domestic political move, arriving in the face of strong criticism from Arab American voters and many more liberal Democrats over Biden’s support for Israel attack on Gaza even as the Palestinian death toll rose into the tens of thousands.

“I had a conversation a couple of days ago with an Arab American activist who told me that the settler sanctions were announced they got 50 texts from the administration saying, ‘Look at what we’re doing, isn’t this great?’ So it goes to show that there is inherently a political aspect to this,” said Paul.

Notorious conservative activist’s lawsuit threatens grant program for Black women amid anti-DEI push

Tatyana Tandanpolie

SALON
Sat, February 10, 2024

Edward Blum

The same conservative activist that led the legal push behind last summer's Supreme Court takedown of race-based college admissions has set his sights on the corporate sector, now challenging the legality of a grant intended to support Black businesswomen's ventures.

Edward Blum's American Alliance for Equal Rights filed a complaint against venture capital firm Fearless Fund in early August, accusing the Black-women-founded group of discriminating against other races in offering a grant program solely to Black businesswomen.

The lawsuit, currently being considered in a federal appeals court which held oral arguments in the case last week, is a symbol of an active conservative legal assault — bolstered, in part, by the Supreme Court's June decision — on DEI and race-consciousness in a number of venues, the most recent being private businesses. The case, alongside a spate of others like it, is poised to spark a nationwide reckoning with corporate DEI policies, spurring other challenges that could ultimately upend a swath of efforts meant to assuage racial and ethnic disparities.

The Alliance and other organizations filing similar lawsuits "see an opening because of the Supreme Court's decision," Olatunde Johnson, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg '59 Professor of Law for Columbia Law School, told Salon, noting that these groups are taking on employment programs, corporate DEI programs and other initiatives like the Fearless Fund.

These sorts of cases will likely test the ability of public and private employers to address discrimination and take affirmative steps to address the disparity it causes, Johnson explained.

"We do expect over the years to come  — not immediately — that we're really going to respond to the question of whether or not corporate DEI programs, fellowship programs and other affirmative efforts to address racial inequality are permissible," added Johnson, who specializes in constitutional and anti-discrimination law.

At issue in the Fearless Fund case is the firm's Strivers Grant Contest, which awards $20,000 to Black women seeking funding to boost their small businesses, according to The Associated Press. In order to be eligible for the program, the business must be at least 51 percent owned by Black women, revenue-generating (with a $50,000 minimum revenue "strongly preferred") and formed and operated under U.S. law, a 2023 webpage for the contest described.

The Alliance filed the suit on behalf of three of its members — anonymous businesswomen whom the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported included white and Asian women — who it said felt they incurred personal harm by being deemed ineligible to receive the grant solely based on their racial identities. The lawsuit did not identify the women, referring to them only as Owner A, Owner B and Owner C.

The Alliance argues that "entry in the program forms a contractual relationship between Fearless Fund and the applicant" with the applicant agreeing to the official eligibility requirements — what the Alliance considers the contract — through their application.

"Under that contract, the applicant obtains a chance at $20,000," the original lawsuit reads. "In exchange, Fearless Fund obtains, among other things, the right to use information about the applicant for publicity and to use the ideas in the application without further compensation."

The conservative organization hinges its claim on section 1981 of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, a Civil War-era law intended to protect formerly enslaved Americans from discrimination. The law provided equal rights and benefits to all citizens of the U.S. as "enjoyed by white citizens" to "make and enforce contracts" among other legal maneuvers.

The Alliance and other anti-DEI entities in their own suits argue that the provision means race can't be taken into account in contracts at all.

“The common theme shared by all of these lawsuits is the challenge to race-based factors in corporate, governmental, cultural and academic endeavors,” Blum told the Wall Street Journal. “All of the lawsuits are attempting to eliminate race as a factor in these programs and policies.”

That argument, however, contradicts the original intent and historical context of the law they cite, according to Margaret Russell, a Santa Clara University professor of law, specializing in civil rights and constitutional law.

"If you take into account that section 1981 was really intended to prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color and ethnicity when making and enforcing contracts and ensure that individuals have the same rights and benefits as quote 'enjoyed by white citizens,' that is not a flat out rule that you don't take race into account," Russell said. "It is very much rooted in time periods."

Fearless Fund also rejects the claim, arguing that the program constitutes a charitable donation and is considered a form of protected expression under the First Amendment. The firm cites as support the Supreme Court's 303 Creative v. Elenis ruling from last June that saw the justices establish an evangelical, Colorado web designer's right to refuse hypothetical commissions for same-sex wedding websites under the First Amendment on the grounds that she should not be forced to produce speech she disagrees with.

By that logic, lawyers for Fearless Fund argue, the firm can't be made to adhere to a “colorblind-at-all-costs viewpoint” it disagrees with, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“We are solving the disparities that exist,” chief executive and co-founder Arian Simone told the outlet. “It’s very disheartening, the moment we are in right now, to see the economic progress due to the racial reckoning of 2020 and seeing where we are four years later.”

A 2019 Harvard University Kennedy School Women and Public Policy Program report found that women received a slim 2.4 percent share of the billions of dollars in venture capital funding. While 2020 marked a year of growth in the amount of money invested in Black women's companies, just 0.34 percent of venture capital firm investments went to companies with them at the helm, according to Crunchbase, which analyzes venture capital data.

Through its Strivers Grant Contest, which is currently paused, the firm endeavored to bridge that gap between the overwhelming majority of venture capital funding that goes to white men and the dismal margin that ends up in the hands of Black women business owners.

"Honestly, I actually have the same belief as the plaintiff," Simone told a reporter, in part, following last Wednesday's hearing, according to a clip shared on her Instagram. "I would like a world that race-based things do not matter. But guess what? We live in America, and there are disparities that have to be solved for for us to get to that point."

Attorneys for Fearless Fund navigated tough questioning from the three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Miami, composed of two Trump appointees and an Obama appointee, about the legality of the firm's grant program under the First Amendment and whether its exclusive support of Black women amounts to racial discrimination, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Broadly speaking, current law permits efforts like the Fearless Fund as long as they are "remedying past or contemporary discrimination if there is a basis that's established ... for determining that there is past or present discrimination," Johnson said. "Whether any particular case rises or falls depends on whether they can prove that in their sector, whether that informed the design of their program, whether or not they tried other efforts."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Fearless Fund sought a reversal of the October preliminary injunction suspending the operation of their grant program through the duration of the lawsuit. The foundation asked the court to rule in line with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia's September decision that found it "clearly intends to convey a particular message in promoting and operating its grant program: ‘Black women-owned businesses are vital to our economy.’... The Foundation’s conduct at issue is, therefore, expressive and subject to the First Amendment,” per the Journal-Constitution.

The Alliance had appealed the ruling and an injunction was granted by an 11th Circuit panel days later. A decision on Fearless Fund's appeal following last week's hearing is still pending. The way the case is playing out in the lower courts signals it's likely to wind up before the Supreme Court, Russell told Salon.

The Supreme Court's emboldening ruling against affirmative action policies in college admissions determined that those programs were in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and arose from two cases brought against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina by Students for Fair Admissions, another non-profit led by Blum.

Though the decision did not apply to corporations or their DEI policies, it did open the door for a slew of additional challenges to racial preferences in other sectors to take hold amid the number of them that had already been filed against corporations in recent years.

"It's really tragic that the Supreme Court ruled the way that it did in the affirmative action cases, both for public and private institutions, Russell told Salon, noting that "measures of racial equality and equity have happened really only since institutions of higher education opened their doors."

"Ignoring that history of discrimination is, I think, at best it's disingenuous. It's trying to reinforce existing inequities," she added, arguing that the ruling also illustrates the extent of conservative thought's shift farther to the right from the era of Republican President Richard Nixon, who authorized early affirmative action programs.

According to Time, the volume of anti-affirmative action cases has vaulted since the Supreme Court determination with some minority- and woman-targeted business resources being hit with suits of their own; others have removed specific mention of DEI initiatives and policies from their websites to avoid legal trouble.

Three major law firms sued by the Alliance over fellowship programs for students of color, particularly those from underrepresented demographics in the field, expanded their programs to all students, prompting the alliance to drop the suits, Time noted.

The groups behind these suits are "ignoring" the baseline conditions of racial and gender discrimination in various sectors, Johnson argued.

"I think that these cases — and they're successful at doing so, no doubt, because they attract a lot of attention from media and other resources — they focus attention on the discriminatory point as being [what is actually] the remedy for discrimination," Johnson told Salon. "And I would like to see more attention paid to what are the barriers, how do we address those barriers, including by the groups that bring these suits."

Johnson expects to see a spike in legal challenges to race-conscious programs or efforts to address racial inequality over the next few years that will result in an array of appellate rulings — and possibly a Supreme Court decision — and determine the scope of section 1981 and Title VII to address racial inequality and past or present discrimination.

"Fearless Fund is really just the tip of the iceberg," Russell said, adding that these "challenges are not just legal challenges. They are very much rhetorical challenges to try to change public perceptions of what racial equality means."

"If I were writing about this I would want to know, why is this the goal of these organizations? What kind of America do they want to see at the end? Who's financing them?" Johnson added, "because they adopt a very zero-sum view of economic prosperity in this country, and I think ultimately, that's a dangerous thing. We have to think about how we're going to design an inclusive democracy.

Republican lawmakers are backing dozens of bills targeting diversity efforts on campus and elsewhere

MICHAEL GOLDBERG
Fri, February 9, 2024

Florida House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, listens to Gov. Ron DeSantis give his State of the State address during a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives in Tallahassee, Fla., Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024. Driskell thinks the ideological motive behind restricting DEI is intertwined with an economic agenda that downplays the role of identity in exacerbating inequality.

 (AP Photo/Gary McCullough, File)

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Diversity initiatives would be defunded or banned from universities and other public institutions under a slate of bills pending in Republican-led legislatures, with some lawmakers counting on the issue resonating with voters in this election year.

Already this year, Republican lawmakers have proposed about 50 bills in 20 states that would restrict initiatives on diversity, equity and inclusion — known as DEI — or require their public disclosure, according to an Associated Press analysis using the bill-tracking software Plural.

This is the second year Republican-led state governments have targeted DEI. This year’s bills, as well as executive orders and internal agency directives, again focus heavily on higher education. But the legislation also would limit DEI in K-12 schools, state government, contracting and pension investments. Some bills would bar financial institutions from discriminating against those who refuse to participate in DEI programs.


Meanwhile, Democrats have filed about two dozen bills in 11 states that would require or promote DEI initiatives. The bills cover a broad spectrum, including measures to reverse Florida’s recent ban on DEI in higher education and measures to require DEI considerations in K-12 school curricula in Washington state.

The Supreme Court’s June decision ending affirmative action at universities has created a new legal landscape around diversity programs in the workplace and civil society.

But DEI's emergence as a political rallying cry has its roots on campus, with Republican opponents saying the programs are discriminatory and promote left-wing ideology. Democratic supporters say the programs are necessary for ensuring institutions meet the needs of increasingly diverse student populations.

Republican Oklahoma Sen. Rob Standridge, who has authored four bills aiming to hollow out DEI programs in the state, said it has become a salient campaign theme.

“I think it’s become more of a political thing," Standridge said. “In other words, people are using it in their campaigns in a positive way. So now all of a sudden, maybe the people that didn’t care before are like, well, wait a minute, I can use this on a flier next year. And Trump brings light to it, too.”

The organizations that help power the conservative agenda say DEI's emergence at the center of political debate makes their crusade against it ripe for expansion.

“This has opened a window of opportunity, and we don’t want the window to close,” Mike Gonzalez, a fellow at powerful conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, said in an interview. “We want to meet this window with a robust policy agenda.”

In South Carolina, Rep. Josiah Magnuson, who introduced legislation to restrict DEI, said the issue reflects a growing sentiment among Republican lawmakers that ideologies disfavored by conservatives grow with the help of campus bureaucracies.

“We’re finding that our colleges and universities were kind of off the rails, and we need to rein them back in,” Magnuson said. "And so I think that’s another thing that’s providing a growing impetus to get our state universities under control.”

Not all Republicans are unified about which government approach is best suited to eliminate DEI.

In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed an executive order in December barring state agencies and universities from spending money on the programs. Standridge said it’s not clear what authority the order would have because Oklahoma’s universities are regulated by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, not the governor’s office.

“I appreciate the executive order but, arguably, it doesn’t really have the authority to force the schools to do anything," Standridge said. “I ran several bills thinking maybe the moderates that are in control of the Senate would allow us to do something against DEI.”

For Washington state Sen. Marko Liias, DEI is crucial to serving a diverse society. Liias introduced a bill in the Democratic-controlled Legislature in 2023 to weave DEI concepts into the state's K-12 learning standards. The bill, which is up for consideration again in 2024, is designed to meet the needs of a diversifying student population, he said.

"I think the opposition is organized around a political agenda, whereas I’m trying to respond to a diverse community that I represent and the experiences that they’re bringing to me," Liias said. "So it’s sort of reality versus theory, what’s happening in our families and schools versus an agenda driven by national foundations. That’s the divide.”

Republican-led Florida and Texas were the first states to adopt broad-based laws banning DEI efforts in higher education. Since then, other state leaders have followed.

“The idea to study how much we were spending on DEI came from me seeing what other states were doing. Specifically, Ron DeSantis in Florida,” said Mississippi State Auditor Shad White, a Republican.

In a 2023 report, White said Mississippi’s public universities are spending millions on DEI programs instead of student scholarships.

In the opening weeks of Mississippi’s 2024 session, Rep. Becky Currie introduced a bill that would implement sweeping bans on not only DEI offices but also on funding campus activities deemed “social activism.” The bill has been referred to a House committee. Currie declined to be interviewed.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill into law on Jan. 30 that makes the state the latest to prohibit diversity training, hiring and inclusion programs at universities and in state government. Cox has called using diversity statements in hiring “bordering on evil.”

Republican legislators in Wisconsin brokered a narrowly approved deal with regents in December for the state’s public university system to limit diversity positions at its two dozen campuses. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, later said he had only just begun to remove “cancerous DEI practices” and requested a review of diversity initiatives across state government.

The crackdown on DEI is part of the same legislative project as the earlier movement to restrict the academic and legal ideas termed critical race theory, said Jonathan Butcher, a research fellow in education policy for The Heritage Foundation.

Critical race theory is a way of thinking about America’s history based on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions.

“There is no separation. DEI is the application of critical race theory. DEI officers are the administrative control panels that are putting critical race theory into place,” Butcher said.

Rep. Fentrice Driskell, Florida’s Democratic House minority leader, thinks the ideological motive behind restricting DEI is intertwined with an economic agenda that downplays the role of identity in exacerbating inequality.

“It’s a flashpoint because the conservatives like to talk about meritocracy as their vision for a society where everybody can advance,” Driskell said. “Real life is actually more complicated than that. And that is what DEI programs are there to solve.”

___

Associated Press writers Trisha Ahmed in Minneapolis, David Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City and Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this story.

___

Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

S.Africa's radical left party eyes election win, vows to end power crisis


Zama LUTHULI
Sat, 10 February 2024 

Julius Malema, 42, (C) founded the EFF in 2013 after being thrown out of the ANC (RAJESH JANTILAL)

Firebrand leftist politician Julius Malema on Saturday accused the ruling ANC of neglecting the country's ills as he launched the party's electoral campaign ahead of a hotly contested poll that could cost the ruling party its parliamentary majority.

Through the crippling power cuts (locally known as loadshedding) South Africa's President Cyril "Ramaphosa is continuing to kill our people" he said as he unveiled the party's manifesto theme: "Our land and jobs now. Stop loadshedding".

He also accused the African National Congress (ANC) of "economic apartheid".

In a country plagued by an energy crisis, lacklustre economy and high unemployment, some 27.5 million registered South Africans will vote for a new parliament who will then vote in a new president.

The election is to be held on a date between May and August.

"We want political power to use it decisively" Malema declared, promising 4 million new jobs and an end power cuts within 6 months in office.

Opposition parties in recent months have been actively seeking to unseat the ANC.

The country's official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA), which in recent years has struggled to stave off its white, middle-class identity and win over black voters, has formed a coalition with several other groups.

But it has refused to join forces with the EFF, citing stark differences.

- Radical and militant -

Renowned for its theatrics, the EFF has gained prominence advocating radical reforms including land redistribution and nationalising key economic sectors to tackle deep inequalities that persist more than three decades after the end of apartheid.

"We are fighting an evil spirit of a white settler inside Ramaphosa," he accused the country's president.

Describing itself as a "radical and militant economic emancipation movement", the party draws inspiration from Marxism-Leninism and has notably displayed its support for Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

The flags of the African Union and Cuba hung around the stadium.

In recent years support for the party has since grown, largely among young, black South Africans angered by widespread poverty and unemployment.

Actively targeting universities and young voters, the militant party has won a string of student body votes in recent years, enlisting celebrities and influencers to spread its message.

Some polls show it battling with the liberal DA for second place behind the ANC.

A recent Ipsos survey put the two parties tied at between 17 and 20 percent.

"Malema is popular because he has risen up as a person who openly challenges authority head on for failing to liberate black people," independent political analyst Sandile Swana told AFP.

The choice of Durban to launch the campaign is significant as the port city is located in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, South Africa's second most populous and a key electoral battleground.

The ruling ANC is set to launch its own manifesto at the same venue in two weeks.

Malema, 42, founded the EFF in 2013 after being thrown out of the ANC, where he served as youth leader, for fomenting divisions and bringing the party into disrepute.

- 'Freedom is coming' -

Top MPs from the EFF were banned from this year's address after storming the stage where Ramaphosa was waiting to deliver his State of the Nation Address last year.

In turn, the EFF boycotted the speech entirely on Thursday.

In power since the advent of democracy in 1994, the ANC risks losing its parliamentary majority for the first time, its reputation tainted by graft and mismanagement.

Polls show it could win as little as 40 percent of the vote -- something that would force it to seek a coalition government to stay in power.

"We are in the 2024 election for nothing else but to win," Malema said. "South Africa your freedom is coming tomorrow."

The ANC currently holds 230 of the 400 seats (57.5 percent) in the National Assembly, while the DA holds 84 (20.8 percent) and the EFF 44 (10.8 percent).

Despite rainfall tens of thousands of people danced and sang to artists performing on stage in Durban's 55,000-seat stadium following the leader's speech.

zam/giv

‘The mother of all U-turns’: after Labour’s £28bn green policy climbdown, what’s left?


Toby Helm and Michael Savage

The Guardian
Sat, 10 February 2024 

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves: were they in a pitched battle over the £28bn figure?Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

It was in late September 2022, as Labour gathered for its annual conference in Liverpool, that the party’s top brass began to believe. The financial markets were in turmoil after Kwasi Kwarteng’s kamikaze mini-budget the week before. Interest and mortgage rates were spiralling as the Liz Truss experiment imploded. The pound had crashed.

Members of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet team tried to look and sound stern as the conference opened, reflecting the public’s fears of financial meltdown and worries about its effect on the cost of living, but secretly they could not believe their political good fortune.

Some of the more forward-looking among them thought that thanks to Truss and Kwarteng, one of the keys to a general election victory was now within the party’s grasp – and it was marked “fiscal responsibility”.

When shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves addressed delegates in Liverpool on the Monday, she fleshed out her party’s green prosperity plan, which had been launched 12 months earlier as the centrepiece of the party’s entire economic agenda. Labour, she said, would invest in solar, wind and tidal energy to “free ourselves from dependence on Russia” and build a modern sustainable economy.

She repeated two sentences, word for word, from her conference speech the year before. “I will be a responsible chancellor. I will be Britain’s first green chancellor.”

But one thing – one important detail – was missing.

There was no mention in the 2022 speech of the figure she had announced 12 months earlier. The £28bn a year of green investment (which she had promised would be delivered throughout the first term of a Labour government) had suddenly gone missing, as the prospect of power loomed into view.

Now, almost 18 months on, some in the Labour party believe that even then, in the autumn of 2022, Reeves was having doubts about committing so much money to the policy. “I think even then that the fiscal hawks in the party were getting to her,” said one key source. “I think they were beginning to think this could put fiscal credibility at risk.”

Early last Thursday evening, after an excruciating and tortuously protracted policy row at the top of the party, which at times caused real tensions between Starmer and his shadow chancellor, Labour MPs were invited to an online briefing with Reeves and Ed Miliband.

The £28bn figure had at last just been officially declared dead and the entire plan had been sliced in half. They wanted to explain it to the footsoldiers who had been selling the plan as Labour’s big idea for the past two and a half years.

Most Labour MPs were on their way home and could not tune in. But about 40 did so, and there were lively exchanges.

No one bought in fully to the Reeves/Miliband show of total unity, and some were furious. Everyone knew Miliband, the shadow energy and net zero secretary, had fought to keep the £28bn intact and that Reeves had wanted to water it down for months, if not much longer.

They knew too that Starmer had been uneasy about dropping it until days before the policy was dumped, fearing that if he did, people would think he did not believe in anything.

The whole episode was demoralising and dispiriting, said one senior figure on the backbenches on Thursday evening. “If we can’t invest for the long term in climate change without worrying about what the Tories are going to say, then when will be able to invest in anything for the long term?”

Other MPs who were present at the briefing said colleagues with strong Liberal Democrat forces in their constituencies, such as Catherine West in Hornsey and Wood Green, were particularly hot under the collar, saying they had pushed the £28bn on doorsteps for more than two years only for the mat to be pulled from under them.

Plenty of Labour MPs and activists are very uneasy. If this pledge, which had formed the cornerstone of Labour’s economic and green policy, could be thrown overboard, what, they ask, will ever be sacred? And, with the party now in the final stages of drawing up a manifesto for the next general election, what, when it comes to polling day, will be left?

Inevitably, after the deed was finally done, Team Starmer was quick to cast the “mother of all U-turns”, as it was rapidly (and justifiably) labelled, as merely good, pragmatic leadership.

Labour wins when its agenda is radical but deliverable in the world as it is. Thank God that is the Labour party under Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves
Josh Simons, Labour Together

Josh Simons, director of the Labour Together group, which grew out of Starmer’s leadership campaign, said the move had become inevitable because of the change in circumstances since Reeves announced it in 2021. The party should be unapologetic, he said. “The £28bn made sense then. Three years, three prime ministers, and one self-inflicted financial crisis later, it makes no sense at all. So often, the Labour party has lost elections because it clung to unachievable, pious, ideological purity. Labour wins when its agenda is radical but deliverable in the world as it is. Thank God that is the Labour party under Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.

“It’s a harder path but a braver one, which appreciates the gravity of earning the British people’s trust. And it is how you change things. The £28bn number is dead. Good riddance. Now we can talk about Labour’s ambitious plan for Britain.”

To people on the left of the party, and plenty on its centre ground, that kind of thinking is precisely the problem, and typical of a right-of-centre Labour faction which claims that it alone understands and prioritises the pursuit of power. As one Labour official put it: “Those of us who believed in £28bn also believe in getting into office. They are wrong to think they have a monopoly on that.”

Miliband told the Observer that Labour would “go into the next election with a world-leading climate agenda”. He added: “I am proud of our agenda and I relish the fight between Labour’s ambition and a Conservative party flirting with climate denial.”

Related: Labour cuts £28bn green investment pledge by half

Others are less convinced. Neal Lawson, director of the soft left Compass thinktank, who is threatened with expulsion from the party for sharing a Liberal Democrat MP’s call on Twitter in 2021 for some voters to back Green candidates in local elections, said in an essay published last week that the U-turn was symptomatic of a wider process of stifling debate and innovative thinking. “They ‘burn the village to save it,’” he wrote. “And so, an iron cage is built for any ‘victory’, not a springboard for greater radicalism.”

Barry Gardiner, the former shadow energy secretary, said: “Politically, it’s strategically incompetent,” while senior environmentalists were clearly dismayed. Jess Ralston, an analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, suggested the UK under a Labour government could lose out in the race for green investment if it was seen to go cool on the environmental agenda: “If we want warm homes, reasonable bills, and energy independence, investment is required … There is a global economic race to build clean industries and Britain has to compete for green investment.”

As rumours of the U-turn swirled early last week Paul Johnson, director of the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, said there were no other big-ticket spending items on Labour’s list for the electorate to get excited about. “What is most remarkable about this pledge is not its scale, nor its affordability; it’s the fact that it is the only substantial spending pledge that Labour has made. It is quite the statement of priority. It has pledged next to nothing over and above the present government’s plans for anything else – health, welfare, social care, local government, education, anything.”

As well as raising important issues about the substance of Labour policy, the £28bn fiasco also raises questions about the party’s processes and the chain of command under Starmer.

A remaining puzzle is why Starmer continued to use the £28bn figure in interviews just days before the U-turn. Was he in a pitched battle with Reeves in which, finally, he gave in? His supporters insist not, and say that he merely stuck to the official line until the figure was dropped, rather than opting for an interim “fudge” position. (This generous interpretation ignores the fact that Reeves had clearly avoided saying the figure for some time.)

But the level of indecision and confusion that had been allowed to endure for weeks and months, was, many MPs noted, off the scale. People who had worked with both Tony Blair and Starmer noted that while Blair had welcomed competing views, his own opinion on an issue was always easy to discern.

Starmer’s approach, by contrast, was more gnomic – he would hear differing opinions before retreating to make a decision, with those involved left unclear about where he might land. That, they said, explained in part the confusion that had endured for weeks.

It was also due, insiders said, to Starmer’s insistence that if the figure were to be axed, Labour had to come up with a robust alternative that could not be moved again. That led to a lot of often painful meetings with various figures across the party and industry, inevitably leading to leaks.

Once the move was made, there was delight at the top of the party at the BBC News alert that followed. It said Starmer had dropped the plan because the Tories had “crashed the economy”.

Related: Starmer’s £28bn green plan was bungled but Labour still has bold hopes for the country – and the planet | Polly Toynbee

Internal supporters of the change are now bullish about what the U-turn allows them to do – attack the Tory economic record without being hampered by a borrowing figure they were struggling to justify.

“We’ve got a platform now which we can agree on, and we can campaign on,” said one. “We’ve been able to remind people of a core part of our argument – that the Conservatives crashed the economy. Previously, we wanted to attack Jeremy Hunt after reports that he wanted to “max out” the government’s fiscal headroom with tax cuts. We weren’t able to do that because the [£28bn] figure became a distraction. Now we can.”

But while that may be true, the whole fiasco has reinforced doubts among MPs and activists on the left and in the centre who were never convinced about Starmer and his beliefs in the first place: “He dropped most of the 10 pledges he made during his leadership campaign. Now he undermines his five missions by dropping this. People will have a right, the Tories will have a right in the run-up to an election, to ask: what is this guy about? What does he really believe in?”

UK
Labour MPs facing wave of independent challengers over stance on Gaza


Michael Savage Policy Editor

 THE GUARDIAN
Sat, 10 February 2024 

A pro-Palestinian protest march makes its way down Camden High Street in London towards Keir Starmer’s constituency headquarters.Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

Labour MPs are warning they face a growing challenge from a well-funded slate of independent candidates opposed to Keir Starmer’s position on the Israel-Gaza war, amid an increasingly coordinated campaign in the build-up to the next election.

With several MPs warning they continue to face anger over the party’s handling of its position on the Middle East, the Observer has been told that meetings have been taking place in recent days to identify, fund and champion a list of independent candidates to take on Labour MPs who failed to back an immediate ceasefire in a parliamentary vote last November.

The Bethnal Green and Bow seat in east London, held by the shadow business minister Rushanara Ali, is among the constituencies being discussed. An independent candidate has already been installed to stand against shadow health secretary Wes Streeting in Ilford North, with a major fundraising campaign already under way to back her.


One MP said that the funds being talked about were substantial and would cause concern among colleagues with large Muslim populations, as well as those with a significant share of voters willing to back a candidate to the left of Labour. It is understood a meeting about running rival candidates, which included potential financial backers, was held in London last week.

“People are talking to some independent candidates and donating serious amounts of money to help them run against the Labour party,” said one MP. “It’s astonishing – I’ve never known this level of funding and organisation. The anger is off the scale. We have to do so much to get those communities back on side. They want to teach the Labour party a lesson.”

Another MP who voted in favour of a ceasefire said: “There is a lot of anger. There is more organisation taking place than ever before – it’s not yet clear where that goes. It isn’t just the Muslim community. Liberal voters are also exercised about this. It isn’t necessarily that these candidates will win – but could they take important votes away?”

Labour MPs have already been alerted to a new website, themuslimvote.co.uk, which is directing Muslim voters to back a slate of locally approved candidates. It states it is “focused on seats where the Muslim vote can influence the outcome” and will not back anyone “who voted against or abstained on the ceasefire vote”. It already lists a series of backers, including NGOs, community groups and Muslim-run businesses.

Starmer initially refused to back a ceasefire last year, with Labour MPs told not to vote in favour of the SNP motion backing one. He also faced criticism for an interview in which he appeared to support Israel’s right to cut off power and water in Gaza. He later clarified this was not his view. Labour now supports a “sustainable ceasefire”, alongside the government.

Given Labour’s dominant position in the opinion polls overall, political analysts have said there is little chance of potential seats being lost following a collapse in support from Muslim communities. Real nervousness remains among individual Labour MPs, with reports of some being barred from events in their constituencies over demands for Labour to strengthen its support for Gaza.

The first test of the electoral impact of the issue will come later this month in the Rochdale byelection. George Galloway, the former Labour MP who previously secured a byelection victory in Bradford West in 2012, is running on a pro-Palestinian platform. While about one in three Rochdale voters is Muslim, Labour is widely expected to retain the seat.

Several figures, including Jess Phillips, resigned from the frontbench to back a ceasefire last year. There are now rumours that the SNP is planning to hold another vote on the issue in the coming weeks.

Some MPs appear to have changed their position in the wake of the original vote. John Cryer, the Leyton and Wanstead MP and chair of the parliamentary Labour party, did not back the SNP motion, but subsequently wrote to constituents saying “we should now be calling for a ceasefire”. Several concerned shadow ministers also attended a recent meeting with Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador in the UK.

Figures in Starmer’s shadow cabinet are under serious pressure locally. Shabana Mahmood, the shadow justice secretary and one of Labour’s most senior Muslim MPs, said this week that there had been “a loss of trust” in her party among British Muslims and called for Labour to rebuild it.

Some Labour MPs are already on edge after a recent poll suggested the party had lost more than a quarter of the Muslim voters that backed it at the last election. However, Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future thinktank, said that while Labour risks losing “significant numbers of Muslim voters”, it was unlikely to lose “even a handful of seats” as a result at the coming election.

“Labour is shielded from an immediate impact if they do gain three or four million voters nationally by being 10% up on the last general election,” he said. “The formative political experiences of young Muslim first-time voters may matter more in future general elections – if a Labour government becomes less popular in office than it is now in opposition, then it could become dangerous if it seems to take its diverse urban vote for granted.

“The general election challenge for independent candidates is that almost no Westminster constituencies could be won with an appeal to a single minority group. Even where half the voters are Muslim, there is never going to be a 100% community block vote, so it will take a cross-community alliance of voters to win a seat.

“The Muslim vote may matter most in 2024 where there are marginal seats with a large Muslim presence, such as in SNP-Labour marginals in Glasgow, or Conservative-held seats like Peterborough or Wycombe – not because they have the most Muslim voters but because minority votes can be the tipping point in a marginal seat.”

'Hour of Truth' for Brazil's Bolsonaro

Louis GENOT
Fri, 9 February 2024

Federal police officers leave the headquarters of Jair Bolsonaro's Liberal Party during an operation targeting some of the former president's top aides in Brasilia on February 8, 2024 (Sergio Lima)

Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro is reeling from a damning avalanche of revelations that emerged Thursday as police targeted him and his inner circle in an investigation for allegedly plotting a coup.

Ordered to surrender his passport, the far-right ex-president (2019-2022), who calls himself the victim of "persecution," is likely facing arrest in the near future, according to pundits.

Here is a look at the accusations contained in the court documents that authorized "Operation Tempus Veritatis" -- "hour of truth," in Latin -- in which police carried out dozens of search and seizure raids and arrested several Bolsonaro allies.


- What revelations? -

Citing investigators, the 135-page ruling by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes green-lighting the operation finds evidence that Bolsonaro, members of his cabinet, top advisers and military high brass colluded in a plan to undermine Brazilian democracy and keep him in power.

It details months of anti-democratic maneuvers by Bolsonaro and his allies preparing for a "coup" in the build-up to Brazil's October 2022 elections, which polls suggested the incumbent would lose to veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

"These aren't just the delirious ramblings of one collaborator. This was a coordinated action in the presence of several ministers and the president of the republic. It's extremely serious," says Geraldo Monteiro, a political scientist at Rio de Janeiro State University.

Police say the first phase of the plan was to discredit Brazil's electronic voting system with a "disinformation" campaign ahead of the elections, to "legitimize a military intervention" if Bolsonaro lost.

The high court released a video of a July 5, 2022 meeting at which Bolsonaro called on "all cabinet ministers" to help discredit the voting system.

"If we act after the elections, it will be chaos, a guerrilla war, the country will go up in flames," said the ex-army captain.

Army General Augusto Heleno, a top Bolsonaro adviser, added: "If we need to slam our fist on the table to turn the situation around, it has to be before the election."

In the end, Bolsonaro supporters' most blatant power grab came after the election, on January 8, 2023 -- a week after Lula's inauguration -- when thousands of rioters invaded the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court, urging the military to oust the newly installed president.

- Was there a coup plot? -

Investigators say preparations were in place for a "military coup to prevent the legitimately elected president from taking power."

Police allege Bolsonaro personally edited a draft decree in which he would have called new elections and ordered the arrest of Judge Moraes.

The text was presented to high-ranking military members at a December 7 meeting.

In the end, it was never enacted.

Moraes's ruling said there was also "pressure on undecided military officers to join the coup plot."

- What is the impact for Bolsonaro? -

Monteiro called the revelations "the biggest blow so far" for Bolsonaro, even more damaging than when electoral authorities barred him in June from running for office until 2030.

"This time, we're talking about potential criminal charges," he told AFP.

"Bolsonaro will probably be arrested, given his direct implication in preparations for a coup."

Any criminal charges would come only after the investigation concludes, which Brazilian media reports indicate will be soon.

Police say their investigation involves charges of "attempted coup" and "overthrow of the democratic rule of law."

Defendants convicted on those charges over the January 8 riots have been sentenced to 14 to 17 years in prison by the Supreme Court.

- What is the political fallout? -

Bolsonaro has so far remained a hugely influential figure on the right, despite facing numerous corruption and abuse-of-power investigations since leaving office.

Monteiro said the new scandal is unlikely to "affect the hard core of his most fanatical supporters," but will dent Bolsonaro's broader popularity.

Research and polling firm Quaest found 58 percent of messages on social media about Thursday's police operation were critical of Bolsonaro, a rare setback for the master of digital warfare.

"The near-term repercussions seem modest," said consulting firm Eurasia Group. But the fallout "will deepen the country’s political divide," it added.

lg/jhb/bfm

AI-generated party video has Khan claiming victory in Pakistan election

AFP
February 10 2024 

An autorickshaw with a party poster for jailed former prime minister Imran Khan in Peshawar, a day after Pakistan's election (Abdul MAJEED)

An AI-generated video released Saturday by the party of jailed former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan has him claiming victory in the country's election.

Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) defied a months-long crackdown that crippled campaigning and forced candidates to run as independents in Thursday's vote, but their showing stunned observers.

A slow counting process showed independents had won at least 99 seats -- 88 of them loyal to Khan -- by Saturday morning.

The army-backed Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) took 71 and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) snapped up 53 -- with minor parties taking the rest and 15 of the elected 266-seat National Assembly still to be announced.

"I congratulate you all on winning the 2024 elections. I strongly believed in you all, that you would go out to vote," Khan is credited as saying in the AI video shared early Saturday on his X profile -- the fourth his party has produced.

Khan's physical appearance is from a genuine video clip recorded last year, but his voice and speech are artificially generated.

Khan's party redefined election campaigning in Pakistan with its social media "rallies" and use of artificial intelligence technology.

TV channels are prohibited from mentioning Khan's name or showing video clips of him, and the party was barred from holding in-person rallies.

Instead, PTI media staff took the party's election campaign online, holding YouTube and TikTok "rallies" -- despite authorities regularly blocking internet access when they did so.

The strategy is widely credited with earning independent candidates loyal to PTI the youth vote, contributing significantly to their success.

bur-fox/sco

'Restaurant of Love' helps feed Tunis homeless


Aymen Jamli
Fri, 9 February 2024 

Leila and another Tunis homeless person share the Friday night dinner offered by the 'Restaurant of Love' (FETHI BELAID)

On a corner by the entrance to Tunis zoo, Leila waits for a hot meal from the Tunisian capital's "Restaurant of Love" in a cardboard shelter where she and her dogs sleep.

The 50-year-old says she has been living on the streets for more than 27 years.

"I don't want to go to the shelter centres," and feels safer in her makeshift abode, despite the dangers of robbery and violence on the street, she says as she fixes a plastic cover over her bed for the cold winter night.

Leila is always happy to see the volunteers from the NGOs Universelle and Samu Social when they bring her food and clothing every Friday night.

For the rest of the week, she often has to make do with no more than a tin of sardines.

The Friday night meal is from the kitchen of the "Restaurant of Love", a charitable initiative launched by Universelle three years ago to help feed the growing number of Tunis' homeless.

There are no official data on the exact number of people living on the streets in the capital, but it is estimated to be in the hundreds.

- 'First of its kind' -

The "Restaurant of Love" is the "first of its kind" in Tunisia, says Nizar Khadhari, the 39-year-old head of Universelle.

The idea is simple -- a regular eatery affordable for everyone, with a plate of pasta costing just 4.5 dinars or $1.40.

Homeless people can eat there for free -- accounting for around 30 percent of the 400-450 meals served there every day.

But paying customers can also make donations in a tin by the cash register to help cover the costs.

"All profits go to the homeless, and we also employ some of them... We try to motivate them to return and integrate into society," says Khadhari.

"The economic situation is hitting this vulnerable group of people particularly hard," says Khadhari, who predicts that the number of rough sleepers in the capital will continue to grow "due to rising prices and a lack of job opportunities".

According to World Bank data, growth of the North African country's highly indebted economy stood at just 1.2 percent in 2023, while inflation stood at 8.3 percent in 2022.

And with the economic woes exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and soaring food prices in the wake of the war in Ukraine, poverty rates are on the rise in the population of 12 million.

According to official statistics, the poverty rate in Tunisia stood at 16.6 percent nationwide in 2021 but was nearer 25 percent in rural areas.

Many Tunisians flee the poorer regions in the interior of the country to coastal cities in the hope of finding work.

But with no luck when they get there, they often find themselves with nowhere to live.

- 'No solution' -

Some are kicked out by their families or suffer from mental health problems and can often only find shelter in a metro or bus station.

Sabri, a man in his thirties who makes a living selling paper handkerchiefs on the street, says he has repeatedly tried to kill himself.

"I'm tired of being on the street for 20 years," he says, and sees "no solution" in sight.

Last year, Tunisia's ministry of social affairs said it helped 223 homeless people in the greater Tunis area. But in other areas of the country, such help is non-existent.

"The economic impact on vulnerable people cannot be ignored, and there are programmes to help them," said Rafik Bouktif, a ministry of social affairs official who heads a shelter centre in Tunis.

The centre is home to about 50 people and has a budget of 400,000 dinars ($128,000) to work with Universelle and Samu Social in the greater Tunis region.

"Combining state resources with those of NGOs is a sure way of reaching more people," says Bouktif.

Nevertheless, "while ambitions are great, the means remain limited".

The "Restaurant of Love" recently moved from the outskirts of the city to downtown Tunis. And the paying customers -- from all walks of life -- think it's a great idea.

"We eat while we feed others," says Asmaa, a government worker who eats there every day after finding out about it on social media.

ayj/bou/srk/spm

How Toyota accelerated past the electric car slowdown

Matt Oliver
Fri, 9 February 2024 

Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda believes electric cars will never account for more than a third of the market - Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg

Speaking to Toyota employees last month, Akio Toyoda sounded slightly bruised.

The chairman of the world’s biggest car maker described how he had been “beaten up” by critics for refusing to bet all his company’s chips on electric vehicles (EVs).

Instead, he has doggedly championed a so-called multi-pathway approach that spans EVs, hybrids and even hydrogen-powered cars.


The decision has infuriated climate activists who once praised Toyota for its eco-friendly Prius hatchback, while even industry insiders have wondered whether the company is making a strategic blunder.

“It’s really hard to fight alone,” Toyoda said to staff, according to a translation of his January remarks.

But now the industrialist’s rivals are looking on in envy, as a slowdown in EV sales has left his company in pole position to capitalise on a surge in demand for hybrids.

Toyota sold 10.3 million cars in 2023, an increase of 7.7pc compared to a year earlier.

The total included a combined 3.5 million hybrids and plug-in hybrids – a year-on-year increase of 32pc – but only 104,000 EVs.

For the year to the end of March, the Japanese giant is now forecasting profits of 4.5 trillion yen (£24bn), up from 2.5 trillion yen previously.

Yoichi Miyazaki, executive vice president at Toyota, said hybrids were even selling strongly in China – the world’s biggest market and producer of EVs.

“As a realistic solution, hybrids are still favoured by our customers,” he told reporters.

Meanwhile, rival manufacturers that have driven further ahead with EVs are now pumping the brakes, with Ford, Volkswagen and General Motors among those scaling back production.

After successfully targeting early adopters, they are finding the mass market much tougher to crack – with many consumers still put off by high prices and worries about charging infrastructure.

“EVs have soaked up all of the early adopter and wealthy demand,” explains Andrew Bergbaum, an automotive expert at consultancy AlixPartners.

“But the costs still haven’t come down to the point where they’ve reached the mass market prices you see with internal combustion engine (ICE) cars.

“Hybrids are also considerably cheaper [than EVs], because the batteries in them are so much smaller.

“Once you couple that with range anxiety and concerns about EV resale values, it’s a fairly understandable market phenomenon.”

Alongside the cheaper upfront cost compared to EVs, automotive analysts say drivers also like the fact their hybrids get more out of each tank of petrol.

Toyota’s Prius, first launched in 1997, became one of the most popular hybrid cars, with the model notching up more than five million sales globally.

The company and other proponents have long argued hybrids are an ideal bridge between petrol-only cars and pure EVs, with Toyota’s chairman noting that the company serves many markets around the world that cannot progress as quickly with electrification as Japan and the West.

In his remarks to staff last month, Toyoda noted that one billion people around the world still live in areas without electricity. “So a single [EV] option cannot provide transportation for everyone,” he is said to have added.

His critics, including Greenpeace, charge that hybrids cannot deliver a fast enough drop in emissions globally to stop catastrophic climate change, however.

None the less, even in the West the biggest barriers to EV adoption remain high prices and unevenly distributed charging infrastructure.

While a new, petrol-fuelled version of the Vauxhall Corsa – one of the UK’s most popular cars – will set you back £19,000, the EV variant costs £34,000, according to MoneySavingExpert.

Meanwhile, governments are failing to hold up their end of the bargain by ensuring there is always somewhere to charge.

The UK vowed to roll out at least six high-power charging stations to every motorway service area in England by the end of last year but missed the target woefully – with only two in five service areas meeting this standard.

Meanwhile, early adopters of EVs have been hit with sky-high insurance premiums and rapid falls in value, with used prices expected to fall by as much as half over three years.

Against this backdrop, hybrids are proving hugely popular, with sales currently growing faster than those of EVs in some markets.

UK sales of hybrids and plug-in hybrids surged 31pc higher to a combined 380,253 cars last year, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). This grew their total market share from 17.9pc to 20pc.

By comparison, sales of EVs climbed 18pc to 314,687 – but their market share shrank from 16.6pc to 16.5pc.

Over the same period, sales of hybrids in the European Union surged 30pc higher to 2.7 million units as well, fuelled by demand in Germany, France and Spain.

And while the UK and the EU are both set to ban sales of hybrids from 2035, a much bigger market is set to remain open for longer: China.

In Western markets, hybrids often sell for a few thousand dollars more than petrol cars but in China this trend has been flipped – with some auto giants selling them for 20pc less than their combustion engine counterparts.

Last year, while the number of EVs bought in China surged 38pc to 6.68 million, the number of plug-in hybrids rocketed 85pc higher to 2.8 million.

“While pure battery-powered EVs are leading the transition… sales data suggest consumers are increasingly demanding various types of hybrid vehicles that burn fossil fuels as backup,” Ernan Cui, an analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, told The Nikkei in Japan.

What’s more, Toyota’s current hybrid advantage is not easily replicated. It takes between five and seven years to develop a new car, notes AlixPartner’s Bergbaum.

“So decisions made years ago really determine when you’re going to launch a car,” he explains. “You change that but really only by a year or so.”

Manufacturers can adjust their EV production lines, however.

“But if you don’t have a hybrid in development or production at the moment, you’re probably not going to create one – because the investment is so huge.”

Toyota’s strategy also includes continued investment in hydrogen cars, but has met far less success so far with the launch of its Mirai model. Hydrogen cars use a fuel cell instead of a battery, relying on a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen for propulsion.

Like petrol vehicles, they can in theory be refilled extremely quickly. “But if you’ve actually bought one in Europe, you will find it very difficult to fill up,” Bergbaum adds.

Still, he argues, critics are wrong to charge that Toyota has taken no interest in EVs. While climate activists accuse the company of foot-dragging, it is still investing $35bn in the technology up to 2030.

By then it is hoping to have around 30 electric car models available, or around one quarter of its current lineup. At the moment just one has gone on sale, the bZ4X SUV, with underwhelming results.

A Toyota spokesman says the company “sees carbon as the enemy, not a single power-train”, adding: “Multiple solutions are offered that deliver carbon reduction – a mix of battery-electric vehicles, [plug-in hybrids], [fuel cell cars] and [hybrids] so that customers can choose what best suits them considering availability of renewable energy, infrastructure, government policy and price point.”

The company says it aims to have 10 EV models on the market by 2026, when it expects sales to reach 1.5m a year.

The bZ4X SUV is Toyota's only electric car available so far - Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

Last year Toyota claimed it had made a technological breakthrough that could cut the cost, size and weight of batteries in half – a potential game-changer.

Bosses say these solid-state batteries will deliver a 20pc improvement in so-called cruising range, for example motorway driving, and will be charged in 10 minutes or less. They are aiming to have the technology on the roads by 2027.

Should the hybrid gold rush dry up, Toyota will need this kind of innovation to distinguish itself in what is now becoming a very crowded field of EVs.

A particular threat to the company will come from China. “If you’re asking whether it was canny to have the multi-propulsion strategy and invest in solid state, it looks like it might have been,” says Bergbaum.

“But I don’t think this game has fully played out yet. Because the Chinese are now coming and selling cars that are quasi-commensurate in price to a standard ICE.

“So I think we’re soon going to see a very different dynamic in the European market.”

With emission rules also continuing to ramp up – the UK’s zero emission vehicle mandate began this year, tightening the screws on manufacturers – Toyota may also come under pressure from governments to move faster into EVs.

But that isn’t something that appeared to worry chairman Toyoda when he spoke to staff last month.

“I think this is something that customers and the market will decide,” he said. “Not regulatory values or political power.”

UK

Train companies set for bonuses after performance standards lowered


Gareth Corfield
Fri, 9 February 2024 

Passengers walk past a Thameslink train

Train companies are set to earn bonus payments from the Government after performance standards were lowered to make them easier to meet.

Transport ministers have eased targets for areas including hygiene, staff helpfulness and graffiti after some railway companies struggled to meet them.

The Department for Transport (DfT) sets performance benchmarks for rail companies that are then monitored by the Office for Rail and Road (ORR), the watchdog.


Meeting those standards is part of the criteria for receiving millions of pounds in bonus performance payments from the Government.

However, The Telegraph understands that officials have reduced the so-called “service quality regime” targets because operators are failing to meet them.

The targets were introduced 18 months ago in a DfT drive to make train companies pay more attention to the condition of stations and platforms.

ORR inspectors mark companies’ performance, as well as taking into account mystery shopper scores for customer service quality, and responses to questions asked on social media.

Thameslink failed to meet seven out of the nine targets in the first year, 2022-23. All seven – including customer service, station information and cleanliness – were then lowered the next year.
Benchmark system criticised

Thameslink’s owners can earn up to £22.9 million per year in bonus payments paid from taxpayer money if they meet the service quality benchmarks as well as train punctuality targets set by ministers.

A company spokesman said: “Our absolute focus is on providing improved services for our customers, as demonstrated by nine out of 10 trains arriving within five minutes of their scheduled time in the year to March 2023.”

The operator Southeastern also had some performance targets slashed after failing to meet the higher standard for the same year, with the expected standard for cleanliness and graffiti reduced from 86 per cent to 54 per cent.

The operator has so far failed to meet the lower standards but is not eligible for performance bonus payments because it is nationalised.

A Southeastern spokesman said: “We will continue to work with the Department for Transport to target further improvements and we expect our service quality regime assessments to improve throughout the year as we work to build a better, more reliable and sustainable railway.”

The service quality benchmark system itself has been criticised for industry figures who claim that ratings do not accurately reflect the state of Britain’s trains and railway stations.

A source from a major passenger rail operator described the Government’s service quality regime framework as “just bonkers”, saying: “They were brought in with the best of intentions … but for example the hygiene requirements don’t bear any resemblance to what a clean or well-kept station looks like.”
Labour commitment to renationalisation

The source said that a missing paper roll in a set of station lavatories can trigger a “fail” rating under the service quality rating system, even if the rest of the facilities are clean and serviceable.

Labour has committed to renationalising passenger train companies, with Louise Haigh, the shadow transport secretary, saying last month: “I’ll be setting out our plans, actually in just two or three weeks’ time, which will demonstrate how we’ll save money and how that money will bring those operators into public ownership, all of them, within the first term of a Labour government.”

She told GB News: “There’s absolutely no compensation provided to the operators.”

Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, has rejected the idea of full state ownership as a fix for the railways’ problems, which include ongoing strikes by the Aslef trade union on pay rises for drivers.

The Government said that the union rejected a pay deal that would have seen these salaries rise from £60,000 to an average of £65,000.

Speaking to a Conservative conference a few weeks ago, Mr Harper said: “I think there is a role for the state in setting the overall regulatory structure for the rail network. But you also need to have it working in partnership with the private sector. And I think there’s a role for both.”

Last year the railways needed £12 billion in public subsidies to function, with £4.4 billion of that sum going to passenger train companies.

That sum has fallen from the £19.4 billion required to prevent the railways from collapsing in 2020-21, during the worst of the Covid pandemic, but remains higher than the £7.4 billion needed in 2019.

A DfT spokesman said: “Performance should be assessed through targets that are achievable and incentivise operators to deliver concrete improvements that benefit passengers.”