Zimbabwe bank workers, employers hammer out US dollar wage deal
by Staff reporter
MAR 5,2023


Bank workers and their employers have agreed on a wage structure that would see salaries split into local currency and US dollars at a ratio of 60:40 percent respectively.

The resolution was made when parties held a meeting 24 February his year.

Parties included the National Employment Council (NEC), the Banking Employers Association of Zimbabwe, and the Zimbabwe Banks and Allied Workers Union (ZIBAWU).

According to the NEC circular, 40 percent of the salary minimum for grades N/C (lowest grade) to DPV (highest) will be paid as hard currency in USD or alternatively in ZWL indexed at the prevailing inter-bank rate on the date of payment.

The parties also agreed to increase the industry minimum basic salary which is inclusive of housing allowance from ZWL$295,000 to ZWL$418,951.17.

The 60 percent ZWL component will be ZWL$ 251,370.00 and the US$40 percent component will be US$203.66.

Grade DP V wages will be increased from ZWL$468,141.13 to ZWL$758,079.25.

The 60 percent ZWL component will be ZWL$454,847.55 and the US$40 percent component will be pegged at US$368.52.

The agreement will run retrospectively from January to 31 March this year.

"Further, the parties have agreed to apply an 8 percent inter-band differential for grades N/C up to DPV and a 5 percent differential on all sub-band grades.

"Notwithstanding the dates of registration and publication hereof, this agreement shall be deemed to have come into effect on the 1st January 2023 and shall run for a period of three months up to 31st March 2023," reads the circular.

ZIBAWU assistant secretary general Shepard Ngandu said the agreement will not preclude them from engaging employers for further wage review.

"We agreed to negotiate quarterly and our aim is to get full USD salaries from the current 40 percent threshold," he said.

Bolsonaro Floats Return to Brazil in March in US Media Interview

Rachel Gamarski, Bloomberg 

Jair Bolsonaro speaks during the CPAC 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 4. 

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said he intends to return this month to Brazil, where he faces multiple investigations, NBC News reported.

Bolsonaro, who traveled to the US after losing last year’s presidential election and applied for a six-month visa on Jan. 30, made the comment in an interview while attending the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, NBC reported.

He has previously mentioned return dates that lapsed, telling CNN Brasil at one point that he planned to be back by the end of January.  He also told his lawyer, Marcelo Bessa, that he can postpone his return until April, O Globo reported. He didn’t mention a return date during a speech he gave to CPAC on Saturday.

Bolsonaro is under investigation on multiple fronts, including his alleged involvement in the Jan. 8 riot targeting Brasilia, the capital, by supporters who refused to accept his election defeat by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. 

The former president denied responsibility for the attack, saying he was no longer president and out of the country and that his supporters wouldn’t back such events, according to NBC.  

Lula’s administration wants Bolsonaro to appear before Brazilian courts and is considering options to force him to return to the country if he doesn’t voluntarily come back by the end of March. 

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

At CPAC, Brazil’s Former President Jair Bolsonaro Blames the Left for Insurrection

“Our people would never do what the people did on January 8th.”


ISABELA DIAS

Reporter Mother Jones

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

 Alex Brandon/AP

On Saturday, Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, who has become a darling of the US far-right, attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC. After losing his reelection bid last October to three-time president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro self-exiled in Florida, where he has been living the life of a retiree, with occasional public appearances at right-wing events. Bolsonaro was greeted with enthusiasm and cheers at the conference. “It’s indispensable for me to tell all of you that my relationship with President Donald Trump was simply exceptional,” he told the crowd.

The so-called Trump of the Tropics gave his usual spiel about a socialist threat in Brazil and claimed credit for not making the Brazilian people get vaccinated. Speaking with the assistance of a translator, he also suggested his “mission is not over yet.” Bolsonaro’s son and Brazilian Congressman Eduardo, who is behind the organization of CPAC’s Brazil-based version, also took part in the event and spoke on a panel titled “The Red Menace Comes to the Americas.”

Backstage, Bolsonaro told NBC News he has plans to return this month to Brazil, where he faces several investigations, including over his alleged role in inciting the January 8 insurrection in the Brazilian capital this year. The former president denied having any responsibility for the violent attack, saying he was no longer president and was outside of the country. Instead, he said he was “fighting for an investigation” into what he baselessly claimed was the work of leftist infiltrators. “All the Right rallies of the last four years were peaceful and we don’t have anything to do with that,” he said. “Our people would never do what the people did on January 8th. So we are more and more certain that it was people from the left that planned all of that.”

As I reported for Mother Jones earlier this year, Bolsonaro’s extreme far-right supporters lay siege to three government buildings in the capital’s Three Powers square: the Supreme Court, Congress, and Palácio do Planalto:

With revolting and gut-wrenching images of destruction that were eerily evocative of the January 6 invasion of the US Capitol, what transpired was far from surprising. Several experts in the United States and Brazil have noted that Sunday’s violence is the product of a transnational far-right movement. For weeks after Bolsonaro’s defeat, his fanatic followers who bought into the collective delusion of stolen elections engaged in various forms of civil disobedience: blocking roads, attacking police headquarters, and camping outside the army headquarters in Brasília and elsewhere in the country. Their convictions were similar to those who believed Donald Trump’s “Big Lie,” and these were crafted and fueled over time by their leader and US-based far-right demagogues. “Just as Bolsonaro is a cheap imitation of Trump, this was a cheap imitation of the [US] Capitol [invasion on January 6, 2021],” Lula’s former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told the Guardian.

When asked about the 2022 election results, Bolsonaro refused to acknowledge his loss. “The Brazilian people on the conservative side protested the results of the election,” he said. “I had much more support in 2022 than I did in 2018 [when first elected president].” In some ways, Brazil has become a laboratory for the global far-right and Bolsonaro has borrowed from Trump’s playbook, questioning the integrity of the electoral system and spreading misinformation about Brazil’s electronic voting machines. In the aftermath of the election, prominent US far-right supporters of the “Big Lie” said without evidence that the election had been rigged and encouraged Bolsonaro to refuse to accept defeat.

Bolsonaro’s appearance at CPAC, whose influence appears to be dwindling, is fitting. The event, as Media Matters’ Madeline Peltz told CNN, “no longer launches the careers of hopefuls looking to make an impact, rather; it’s now simply a box to check off. And without much otherwise on his to-do list, Bolsonaro might as well check it off.”

We Must Overturn SCOTUS Decisions That Effectively Deny Rights to Black People

George Floyd’s murder is part of a through line of police violence first enabled by the "Dred Scott" ruling.

By Taru Taylor , 

TRUTHOUT

March 5, 2023

A group of protestors march to the White House advocating for LGBTQ liberation and the Black Lives Matter movement on June 13, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

SAMUEL CORUM / GETTY IMAGES

The 2020 protests against police brutality after the death of George Floyd were the biggest in United States history. Not since the 1960s assassinations of the Kennedy brothers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. has our nation, and indeed the world, witnessed a more significant martyrdom. Many scoff at the notion of Floyd as martyr. Floyd was no statesman nor great moral leader. But his everyman quality resonates. His extrajudicial murder is part of a through line of police-perpetrated violence first enabled by the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision that has metastasized since 1857.

Floyd is a martyr to the truth that Dred Scott persists as the law of the land. Justice Roger Taney’s pro-slavery majority opinion held that Black people could never be citizens and that, “The negro had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

While Black people today are not enslaved like in 1857, Justice Peter Daniel’s concurring opinion continues to frame them, at best, as mere “freedmen” and “freedwomen.” Yet Black Americans have been freeborn citizens since July 9 a century and a half ago.

“Freedman” and “freedwoman” are thus slurs to every citizen born on U.S. soil after July 9, 1868. On that day the states ratified the 14th Amendment, declaring natural-born citizenship. The formerly enslaved persons that the 13th Amendment freed were “freedmen” and “freedwomen.” When Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (known as the Freedmen’s Bureau) in 1865 to incorporate Black people and white refugees into mainstream society, they named it appropriately. But all Americans born after that epochal July 9 have been freemen and freewomen.

This distinction between “freeman” and “freedman” is critical. As is Justice Daniel’s concurring opinion. Justice Daniel argued that U.S. society mirrors the three classes of ancient Rome. The ingenui (freemen) were freeborn citizens making up the ruling class. The libertini (freedmen) were quasi-citizens who behaved by obsequium, the official custom that made them compliant and dependent on their patrons or former masters. The servii were slaves. Here in the U.S., Black people were considered natural-born slaves although a few were “freedmen.” Only white men could be “freemen.”

RELATED STORY

PRISONS & POLICING
From “Probable Cause” to “Reasonable Suspicion”: The Subversion of the Fourth Amendment
The subversion arises from a 1968 Supreme Court decision.
By Taru Taylor , TRUTHOUTApril 17, 2018

Daniel’s concurring opinion frames today’s 40 million U.S. citizens who are Black as freedmen and freedwomen with no rights that white persons are bound to respect. The original intention of the 14th Amendment was to overrule Dred Scott, to recognize Black people as citizens with the same constitutional rights as whites.

But the Supreme Court, in the four decades after the Civil War, nullified the 14th Amendment when it came to Black people through several cases, such as the 1873 Slaughterhouse cases, which neutered the privileges or immunities clause; the 1883 Civil Rights cases ruling that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional; and the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision establishing the “separate but equal” doctrine, which sanctioned U.S. apartheid. More recently, the court voided the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and gave police officers “qualified immunity” in the 1967 Pierson v. Ray case. In short, the Supreme Court revived Dred Scott. The key issue is whether Black people who are born on U.S. soil should be recognized as freemen and freewomen with the full rights of citizens.
Lawless Law Enforcement

More than 18,000 police departments across the U.S. abuse citizens who are Black as if they are mere freedmen and freedwomen. For example, cops and their apologists explain away police brutality under the mantra: “He should have complied!” They evoke the ancient Roman custom of obsequium.

But our democratic republic only recognizes one class of citizen: the freeman or freewoman. The theory of popular sovereignty underpins the ideal of democracy in the U.S. and around the world. The citizen reigns. Public servants rule in his or her name. This is the fundamental “separation of powers.” The citizen votes and serves on juries and otherwise “checks and balances” the other three branches of government.

According to the Declaration of Independence, the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed. Black people do not consent to becoming George Floyd or Breonna Taylor, nor to any of the other martyrs who have suffered the extrajudicial death penalty.

Notwithstanding Indigenous tribal sovereignty, the preamble to the Constitution underscores popular sovereignty: “We the people do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Note the present tense, which means that every generation must define constitutional meaning. The preamble also mandates that we “secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” But to get beyond liberty as buzzword, let’s consider legal scholar William Blackstone’s definition of the term in his 1765 Commentaries on the Law of England, a master text for the constitutional framers.

Personal liberty “consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, or removing one’s person to whatsoever place one’s own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law.” In short, liberty is unrestrained locomotion.

The freeman or freewoman enjoys unrestrained locomotion. Meanwhile, the tyrannical U.S. majority criminalizes 40 million Americans for driving while Black, walking while Black or pretty much doing anything while Black. Yet half a century ago, one Supreme Court justice did see lawless law enforcement for what it was.

Justice William Douglas championed Black liberty. He was the lone dissenter in two landmark cases that sanctioned the modern police state through the judicial doctrines “qualified immunity” and “reasonable suspicion” — respectively the 1967 Pierson v. Ray and the 1968 Terry v. Ohio decisions.
Justice Douglas’s Dissent in Pierson v. Ray

Pierson made “qualified immunity” the law of the land. The case involved white and Black clergymen who attempted to desegregate a bus terminal in Jackson, Mississippi. A municipal court convicted them of violating a state statute that made it a crime to congregate in a public place if they breached the peace and then refused to disperse when so ordered by a police officer. They were acquitted on appeal.

The clergymen then sued the municipal court judge, and the police officers who arrested them, under Section 1 of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. Pierson held that the act had in no way impaired the common law’s absolute immunity for judges in their judicial acts. It held that the police officers had a “qualified immunity” which would protect them from liability if the court found, on retrial, that the officers acted in the good-faith belief that the statute they were enforcing was constitutional.

The Pierson ruling effectively put judges and police officers above the law. It nullified a Civil Rights Act that was meant to protect Black Americans from neo-Confederate terror. Congress passed the Civil Rights Acts largely to void the Black Codes that the former Confederate states were using to deny Black people’s right to vote, make contracts, own property and move about freely etc. The Ku Klux Klan Act mandated that public officials recognize the rights of Black citizens.

The Ku Klux Klan Act states that “every person,” who under color of state law or custom, “subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen … to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.” Justice Douglas insists that when the act says “every person,” it means every person — not every person except judges or police officers.

Justice Douglas notes the “lawlessness” that pervaded the South after the Civil War and thus necessitated the Civil Rights Acts. Lawlessness was not limited to the South nor to the namesake of the act in question, the Ku Klux Klan. Justice Douglas describes some judges as “instruments of oppression.” He describes some state courts as “instruments of suppression of civil rights.” Writing in 1967, he makes plain the continuing relevance of the Civil Rights Acts enacted during the Reconstruction era: “The methods may have changed; the means may have become more subtle; but the wrong to be remedied still exists.”

As for the argument that judges and police officers need immunity from liability to be independent and to do their jobs effectively, Justice Douglas replied: “The argument that the actions of public officials must not be subjected to public scrutiny because to do so would have an inhibiting effect on their work, is but a more sophisticated way of saying, ‘The King can do no wrong.'”

But he was in lone dissent. Fifty-six years later, apologists for lawless law enforcement continue to argue, “The King can do no wrong.” “Qualified immunity” persists. The “king” thus sits on a bench or flashes badge and gun.

We the people must insist that our public servants, our tax-paid government employees, even those who wear black robes or blue uniforms, recognize our rights as freemen and freewomen. We must overturn Pierson.

Justice Douglas’s Dissent in Terry v. Ohio

Terry v. Ohio removed the probable cause limitation of the police power. This further criminalized Blackness and thus made inevitable George Floyd’s extrajudicial murder 52 years after it was decided.

The Fourth Amendment secures the citizen against any unreasonable search or seizure of their person or property. Before Terry, the reasonableness of a police officer’s seizure or search was defined by the magistrate’s authority to issue a warrant on a showing of probable cause.

Terry redefined “reasonableness” in more subjective terms. Before 1968, police officers operated, at least in theory, with reference to the magistrate’s authority. Ever since Terry, cops have had the despotic discretion to search or seize any U.S. citizen based on a “reasonable suspicion” that they are a criminal or are about to commit a crime.

Terry allows police officers to operate by their own standard of reasonableness — “reasonable suspicion.” By coining the phrase, the Supreme Court put its imprimatur on circular reasoning. Much as the doctrine of “papal infallibility” deemed the pope incapable of error when teaching on certain matters of faith or morals, “reasonable suspicion” sanctioned a sort of police infallibility. Police officers, especially when making “split-second decisions,” now arbitrarily determine what is reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

“Reasonable suspicion” is an oxymoron worthy of 1984’s “newspeak.” For suspicion is inherently unreasonable. Merriam-Webster defines “suspicion” as “the act of suspecting something wrong without proof or on slight evidence: mistrust.” Compare the probable cause standard.

“Probable cause” means “having more evidence for than against” a crime being committed or having been committed, according to Black’s Law Dictionary. Whereas suspicion is based on “slight evidence,” probable cause denotes the preponderance of evidence that a cop needs to arrest a suspect. Actually, there is no standard definition of probable cause. But the concept evolved in the British colonies that later became the U.S. to protest the general warrants that allowed British authorities to search colonists wherever and whenever they wanted. Probable cause thus mandates specific warrants. Out-of-control policing is not new.

Justice Douglas discusses how the American Revolution was largely a reaction against Redcoats’ policing colonists as if they were all suspects. The Crown imposed writs of assistance on Massachusetts to crack down on smuggling. Writs of assistance were general warrants that permitted customs officials to enter any office or home without notice or probable cause. Lawyer and colonial legislator James Otis resigned his position as advocate general of the admiralty court in protest. He then challenged the legality of these writs per the maxim: “Every man’s house is his castle.” Otis inspired the Fourth Amendment’s later codification of the castle doctrine and the need for probable cause.

Justice Douglas invokes Otis to suggest an analogy between Redcoat oppression of the colonists and likely aggravated police oppression thanks to “reasonable suspicion.” What Otis argued against in 1761 Justice Douglas dissented against in 1968 — police arresting and searching on suspicion unchecked by probable cause. Justice Douglas saw the unraveling of the Fourth Amendment as a matter of history repeating itself. He wrote: “Police control took the place of judicial control, since no showing of ‘probable cause’ before a magistrate was required.”

Today, “reasonable suspicion” enables police to seize on suspicion. The Orwellian device subverts the Fourth Amendment’s original intent. Probable cause had been a limit on police discretion. Through Terry, magisterial authority gave way to police authoritarianism. It enabled police inquisition to encroach the judicial function. Thus, the Supreme Court abdicated judicial control in favor of police control.

“Reasonable suspicion” gave police officers, in effect, general warrants to seize or search (“stop and frisk”) Black people with impunity. Cops routinely ignore Black Americans’ right to the presumption of innocence, for Terry allows them to vent their prejudices and to treat 40 million citizens as criminals. “Reasonable suspicion” denotes white supremacist paranoia.

Otis foreshadows today’s complaints against lawless law enforcement. So does the Declaration of Independence. Consider its complaints about King George III permitting Redcoat police brutality: “For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.”

Justice Douglas wrote: “To give the police greater power than a magistrate is to take a long step down the totalitarian path.”

We must overturn Terry.

The judicial doctrines of “qualified immunity” and “reasonable suspicion” allow government employees with badge and gun to abuse their citizen-bosses who pay their salaries. Under current legal jurisprudence, Black people have no rights which men and women in blue uniforms are bound to respect. Dred Scott persists. Nevertheless, Justice Douglas’s Pierson and Terry dissents provide the blueprint for fighting racist police violence. Let’s take his heed.

Copyright © Truthout. 


TARU TAYLOR is a recent law school graduate who studied I Ching while teaching English in Korea and is president of Black Belt Chess Academy. He recently helped get the name “John Marshall” removed from Cleveland’s public law school on account of the former chief justice’s unrepentant slaveholding and lawless jurisprudence that conduced to Dred Scott.

US military commander in Syria briefed on anti-IS operations

By Bassem Mroue, AP and Lolita C. Baldor, AP
Mar 5, 2023

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley answers questions during a press conference at NATO headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 14, 2023. 

(DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

BEIRUT — The top U.S. military commander on Saturday visited northeast Syria where American troops and their allies are launching a campaign against the Islamic State group, a U.S. military official said.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley met commanders and troops who updated him on the ongoing operations against IS, said Col. Dave Butler, spokesman for Milley.

Butler did not say whether Milley met with commanders of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that have been the main ally of U.S. forces in Syria in the fight against IS.

Milley’s visit came a day after the U.S. Central Command said American troops and their allies carried more than a dozen joint operations in northeast Syria in February during which five IS operatives were killed and 11 detained.

“While there, he received updates on the counter-ISIS mission, inspected force protection measures and assessed repatriation efforts for the Al Hol refugee camp,” Butler said referring to a camp housing tens of thousands of mostly IS-linked women and children.

At al-Hol, tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis are crowded into tents in the fenced-in camp. Nearly 20,000 of them are children; most of the rest are women, wives and widows of IS fighters.

In a separate, heavily guarded section of the camp known as the annex are an additional 10,000 people: 2,000 women from 57 other countries — they are considered the most die-hard IS supporters — along with about 8,000 of their children.

Over the past few months several countries, including France, Spain and Iraq, repatriated scores of women and children from al-Hol.

Kurdish authorities currently operate more than two dozen detention facilities scattered across northeastern Syria, holding about 10,000 IS fighters. Among the detainees are some 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them, including about 800 Europeans.

There are currently about 900 U.S. forces on the ground in northeast Syria, according to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Dana Stroul.

Despite their defeat in March 2019 during which IS lost the last sliver of land it once controlled, the extremists sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

In February, IS sleeper cells attacked workers collecting truffles near the central town of Sukhna, killing at least 53 people, mostly workers but also some Syrian government security forces. Several similar attacks have occurred since.

Baldor reported from Washington.

US FARM AGENCY TO DISTRIBUTE DISCRIMINATION PAYMENTS THIS YEAR

REUTERS

March 5, 2023

REUTERS/Rachel Mummey

On the heels of an agency-wide plan to address inequity in its programs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it will distribute billions of dollars to farmers who faced discrimination by the agency by the end of this year.

The Biden administration has pledged to repair the USDA’s fractured relationships with farmers of color. Historical discrimination in the agency’s lending programs contributed to Black farmers losing $326 billion worth of land in the 20th century, a study found last year.

The agency’s latest effort is the distribution of $2.2 billion funded by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to farmers who have experienced discrimination in the USDA lending programs. The agency will contract with vendors and community groups to administer the payments by the end of 2023, it said on Wednesday.

“These funds are yet another stepping stone in the long march towards justice and an inclusive, equitable USDA,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement.

The administration is also issuing debt relief to farmers based on economic distress, which will disproportionately aid farmers of color, according to USDA data. But the administration’s failed attempt to target that relief by race, stalled last year by lawsuits from white farmers, disappointed some Black farmers.

On Tuesday, a commission set up by the agency recommended sweeping reviews and changes to USDA’s internal and external operations to ensure racial and gender equity.

USDA will select its partners in distributing the IRA funds by late spring, it said.

IT'S 2023, TOOK LONG ENOUGH

UN members agree to protect marine life in high seas for first time: ‘The ocean is not a limitless resource’

BYCHRISTINA LARSON, PATRICK WHITTLE 

AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 5, 2023 

Sandbar sharks swim next to a person snorkeling in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Hadera, Israel, Monday, Nov. 21, 2022. For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty on Saturday, March 4, 2023, to protect biodiversity in the high seas—nearly half the planet’s surface.

AP PHOTO/ODED BALILTY, FILE

For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas – representing a turning point for vast stretches of the planet where conservation has previously been hampered by a confusing patchwork of laws.

The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1994, before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept. The treaty agreement concluded two weeks of talks in New York.

An updated framework to protect marine life in the regions outside national boundary waters, known as the high seas, had been in discussions for more than 20 years, but previous efforts to reach an agreement had repeatedly stalled. The unified agreement treaty, which applies to nearly half the planet’s surface, was reached late Saturday.

“We only really have two major global commons — the atmosphere and the oceans,” said Georgetown marine biologist Rebecca Helm. While the oceans may draw less attention, “protecting this half of earth’s surface is absolutely critical to the health of our planet.”

Nichola Clark, an oceans expert at the Pew Charitable Trusts who observed the talks in New York, called the long-awaited treaty text “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to protect the oceans — a major win for biodiversity.”

The treaty will create a new body to manage conservation of ocean life and establish marine protected areas in the high seas. And Clark said that’s critical to achieve the U.N. Biodiversity Conference’s recent pledge to protect 30% of the planet’s waters, as well as its land, for conservation.

Treaty negotiations initially were anticipated to conclude Friday, but stretched through the night and deep into Saturday. The crafting of the treaty, which at times looked in jeopardy, represents “a historic and overwhelming success for international marine protection,” said Steffi Lemke, Germany’s environment minister.

“For the first time, we are getting a binding agreement for the high seas, which until now have hardly been protected,” Lemke said. “Comprehensive protection of endangered species and habitats is now finally possible on more than 40% of the Earth’s surface.”

The treaty also establishes ground rules for conducting environmental impact assessments for commercial activities in the oceans.

“It means all activities planned for the high seas need to be looked at, though not all will go through a full assessment,” said Jessica Battle, an oceans governance expert at the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

Several marine species — including dolphins, whales, sea turtles and many fish — make long annual migrations, crossing national borders and the high seas. Efforts to protect them, along with human communities that rely on fishing or tourism related to marine life, have long proven difficult for international governing bodies.

“This treaty will help to knit together the different regional treaties to be able to address threats and concerns across species’ ranges,” Battle said.

That protection also helps coastal biodiversity and economies, said Gladys Martínez de Lemos, executive director of the nonprofit Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense focusing on environmental issues across Latin America.

“Governments have taken an important step that strengthens the legal protection of two-thirds of the ocean and with it marine biodiversity and the livelihoods of coastal communities,” she said.

The question now is how well the ambitious treaty will be implemented.

Formal adoption also remains outstanding, with numerous conservationists and environmental groups vowing to watch closely.

The high seas have long suffered exploitation due to commercial fishing and mining, as well as pollution from chemicals and plastics. The new agreement is about “acknowledging that the ocean is not a limitless resource, and it requires global cooperation to use the ocean sustainably,” Rutgers University biologist Malin Pinsky said.

Associated Press writer Frank Jordans contributed to this report from Berlin

'The Biggest Conservation Victory Ever!' Global Treaty to Protect Oceans Reached


"This is a historic day for conservation and a sign that in a divided world, protecting nature and people can triumph over geopolitics," said Greenpeace in response to an agreement to protect world's marine biodiversity.


Hawksbill turtle swimming over coral reef.
(Photo by Georgette Douwma / iStock via Gettty Images)

JON QUEALLY
Mar 05, 2023

Ocean conservationists expressed elation late Saturday after it was announced—following nearly two decades of consideration and effort—that delegates from around the world had agreed to language for a far-reaching global treaty aimed at protecting the biodiversity on the high seas and in the deep oceans of the world.

"This is a historic day for conservation and a sign that in a divided world, protecting nature and people can triumph over geopolitics," declared Dr. Laura Meller, the oceans campaigner for Greenpeace Nordic.

"We praise countries for seeking compromises, putting aside differences, and delivering a Treaty that will let us protect the oceans, build our resilience to climate change and safeguard the lives and livelihoods of billions of people," Meller added.

The final text of the Global Ocean Treaty, formally referred to as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty (BBNJ), was reached after a two-week round of talks that concluded with a 48-hour marathon push between delegations at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

"The High Seas Treaty opens the path for humankind to finally provide protection to marine life across our one ocean."

"This is huge," said Greenpeace in a social media post, calling the agreement "the biggest conservation victory ever!"

Rena Lee of Singapore, the U.N Ambassador for Oceans and president of the conference hosting the talks, received a standing ovation after announcing a final deal had been reached. "The shipped has reached the shore," Lee told the conference.

"Following a two-week-long rollercoaster ride of negotiations and super-hero efforts in the last 48 hours, governments reached agreement on key issues that will advance protection and better management of marine biodiversity in the High Seas," said Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, a coalition of over 40 ocean-focused NGOs that also includes the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Minna Epps, director of the Global Marine and Polar Programme at the IUCN, said the agreement represents a new opportunity.

"The High Seas Treaty opens the path for humankind to finally provide protection to marine life across our one ocean," Epps said in a statement. "Its adoption closes essential gaps in international law and offers a framework for governments to work together to protect global ocean health, climate resilience, and the socioeconomic wellbeing and food security of billions of people."

Protecting the world's high seas, which refers to areas of the oceans outside the jurisdiction of any country, is part of the larger push to protect planetary biodiversity and seen as key if nations want to keep their commitment to the UN-brokered Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework—also known as the known as the 30x30 pledge—that aims protect 30 percent of the world's natural habitat by 2030.

"With currently just over 1% of the High Seas protected," said the High Seas Alliance in a statement, "the new Treaty will provide a pathway to establish marine protected areas in these waters." The group said the treaty will make acheiving the goals of the Kunming-Montreal agreement possible, but that "time is of the essence" for the world's biodiversity.

"The new Treaty will bring ocean governance into the 21st century," said the group, "including establishing modern requirements to assess and manage planned human activities that would affect marine life in the High Seas as well as ensuring greater transparency. This will greatly strengthen the effective area-based management of fishing, shipping, and other activities that have contributed to the overall decline in ocean health."

According to Greenpeace's assessment of the talks:

The High Ambition Coalition, which includes the EU, US and UK, and China were key players in brokering the deal. Both showed willingness to compromise in the final days of talks, and built coalitions instead of sowing division. Small Island States have shown leadership throughout the process, and the G77 group led the way in ensuring the Treaty can be put into practice in a fair and equitable way.

The fair sharing of monetary benefits from Marine Genetic Resources was a key sticking point. This was only resolved on the final day of talks. The section of the Treaty on Marine Protected Areas does away with broken consensus-based decision making which has failed to protect the oceans through existing regional bodies like the Antarctic Ocean Commission. While there are still major issues in the text, it is a workable Treaty that is a starting point for protecting 30% of the world’s oceans.

The group said it is now urgent for governments around the world to take the final step of ratifying the treaty.

"We can now finally move from talk to real change at sea. Countries must formally adopt the Treaty and ratify it as quickly as possible to bring it into force, and then deliver the fully protected ocean sanctuaries our planet needs," Meller said. "The clock is still ticking to deliver 30×30. We have half a decade left, and we can't be complacent."
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JON QUEALLYis managing editor of Common Dreams.

250,000 Israelis Rally against Netanyahu, Warn of Dictatorship and ‘No Liberty in an Occupation State’

By Juan Cole

March 5, 2023

Source: Informed Comment


Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – WAFA reports that on Saturday evening some 250,000 Israelis are estimated to have come out in numerous cities to protest plans of the government of Binyamin Netanyahu to gut the judiciary. It is the ninth week in a row that rallies have been held, and they appear to be growing ever larger.

An estimated 160,000 people came out for the central demonstration on Kaplan street in Tel Aviv. The issue of neutering the Supreme Court dominated this and previous rallies, according to Al Jazeera.

WAFA says, however, that the current government’s complicity in pogroms against Palestinians finally began making an appearance as an issue for some protesters. They raised placards that said things like, “Where were the police when Huwwara was being burned?” They were referring to the rampage of Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the Palestinian West Bank in the small town of Huwwara near Nablus last Sunday, in which they set fire to houses, cars and trees and some shot up the place, killing one Palestinian aid worker, Sameh Aqtar, who had just come back from helping victims of the Turkish earthquake, and who was shot in the belly. Over 100 Palestinian residents were wounded, some badly.

Other posters depicted two fascist ministers in the government, Itamar Ben-Gvir, minister of national security, and Bezalel Smotrich, minister of finance, with Huwwara burning behind them. One said, “Yesterday in Huwwara, tomorrow in Israel,” a warning that the extremists would happily happily set fire to Israel itself to achieve their extremist goals. The Israeli Right has referred to the protesters as “terrorists.”

The demonstrations grew in the port city of Haifa in comparison with past weeks, with 35,000 attending the rally there. They demanded Netanyahu’s resignation. Some raised placards saying in Hebrew, English and Arabic “Palestinian Lives Matter,” “A people that occupies another people cannot be free,” “The time has come to pull down the dictatorship,” “A Government of Shame,” and “Apartheid does not stop at the Green Line.”

The green line is the border between Israel proper in its 1949 borders and the Palestinian West Bank, which Israel seized in 1967 and which major human rights organizations have said is being ruled under Apartheid laws and procedures.

In Netanya north of Tel Aviv about 20,000 protesters came out, about 10% of the resort city’s population.

In upscale Herzliya, 12,000 rallied, which is more than 10% of the city. 6,000 came out in Be’er-Sheva in the Negev. Thousands protested in other, smaller towns and cities all around the country.

For the first time this Saturday, demonstrations were held in Bat Yam south of Tel Aviv, which is known as the stronghold of the far right-wing Likud Party that Netanyahu leads.

A thousand police were assigned to try to control the Tel Aviv crowds. At Ben-Gvir’s urging, police had used military-grade tear gas and stun grenades against Tel Aviv crowds on Wednesdays “March of Disruption,” which saw many strikes and work stoppages. On Saturday, the protest in Tel Aviv was largely peaceful, but toward the end demonstrators blocked a main artery and clashed with police.

In his 1748 work Spirit of the Laws, eighteenth-century French thinker Montesquieu (Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, d. 1755) wrote,


“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.

There would be an end of everything, were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.”

Montesquieu’s division of powers was one basis for the U.S. constitution and this key concept has been central to democratic thinking.

By involving the ruling party more in the selection of supreme court justices and in allowing the legislature to overrule the supreme court with a simple majority, Netanyahu plans to subordinate the judiciary to himself and his parliamentary coalition. The Israeli public understands that if Netanyahu succeeds “there can be no liberty.”

Remarkably, since the Palestinian issue is a third rail in Israeli politics and many Israelis initially thought it would be a distraction to bring it up, some protesters at least have become more vocal on the extremist Religious Zionism and Jewish Power parties’ plans for deepening Apartheid in the Palestinian West Bank.

And some at least of these Israelis have clearly gotten the message that if the extremists succeed in crushing the Palestinians, they will next proceed to crush the centrist and leftist Israelis, as well.

Michael Bloomberg warns Israel ‘courting disaster’ with judicial overhaul

Billionaire former New York mayor urges Netanyahu to ‘slow

down’ controversial legislation, says he understands those

pulling funds from country

By TOI STAFF5 March 2023,

Former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg (L), seen with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 

Former New York City mayor and longtime Israel supporter Michael Bloomberg published a New York Times op-ed Sunday warning against the Israeli government’s plans to overhaul the judiciary and sympathizing with those who are already pulling their funds out of the country for fear of the fallout.

It was the latest in a series of alarms raised by prominent figures abroad against the planned legislation.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is courting disaster” by trying to claim powers that are above review and is “imperiling Israel’s alliances around the world, its security in the region, its economy at home, and the very democracy upon which the country was built,” Bloomberg warned.

The billionaire spoke of his “fervent hope” that Netanyahu would heed President Isaac Herzog and “pull back and slow down” his coalition’s legislative plans.

The coalition is pushing a dramatic judicial restructuring that would increase government control over the judiciary. Critics say that along with other planned legislation, the sweeping reforms will impact Israel’s democratic character by upsetting its system of checks and balances, granting almost all power to the executive branch and leaving individual rights unprotected and minorities undefended.

Bloomberg assessed that the economic damage from the proposed changes is already being felt and noted that last month the shekel fell to a three-year record low against the dollar and euro. He noted that “a broad swath of business leaders and investors” have spoken out against the proposals “and, in a disturbing sign,” some have already begun pulling money out of the country while “re-evaluating their plans for future growth there.”

“As the owner of a global company, I don’t blame them,” he wrote.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) chairs the weekly cabinet meeting, flanked by Justice Minister Yariv Levin, at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on March 5, 2023. (GIL COHEN-MAGEN / POOL / AFP)

Bloomberg said that companies and investors “place enormous value on strong and independent judicial systems because courts help protect them — not only against crime and corruption but also government overreach.”

“The extraordinary rise in Israel’s economic standing over the last generation may be Mr. Netanyahu’s greatest achievement,” he continued. “Yet unless he changes course, Mr. Netanyahu risks throwing all that progress — and his own hard-earned legacy — away.”

Aside from the economic impact, Bloomberg wrote, there is Israel’s security, which greatly relies on the relationship with the United States, is “built on shared values — freedom, equality, democracy,” and can only be maintained “by a commitment to the rule of law, including an independent judiciary capable of upholding it.”

If Israel moved to a form of governance “that mirrors those of authoritarian countries,” it risks upsetting its ties to the US and other free nations, resulting in a “devastating loss” for Israel’s security, damage to the prospects of peace with the Palestinians, he warned, adding that such a prospect “could even imperil the future of the Jewish homeland.”

Israel, he noted, is in “one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods” and faces existential threats. “The more divided it is at home, the weaker it appears to its enemies,” Bloomberg said.

The overhaul, he warned, would also undermine the “deep attachment millions of people around the world feel toward the country,” forged not just from its Jewish character, but its commitment to freedom.

Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York, speaks at the opening of the US Pavilion at the COP27 UN Climate Summit, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, November 8, 2022. (Nariman El-Mofty/AP)

“I have never gotten involved in its domestic politics or criticized its government initiatives,” Bloomberg wrote. “But my love for Israel, my respect for its people, and my concern about its future are now leading me to speak out against the current government’s attempt to effectively abolish the nation’s independent judiciary.”

Bloomberg served as mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013 and was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for US president in 2020.

His remarks joined those of a growing chorus from abroad against the overhaul.

Among those who have spoken up were a group of more than 70 prominent law professors at American universities who, in January, signed onto a statement urging the Israeli government to rethink its plan.

The 78 signatories included former deans at the Harvard and Yale law schools, Martha Minow and Robert Post, along with Alan Dershowitz — a staunch Israel supporter who had already spoken out against the government’s legal proposals. Dershowitz has since repeated his insistence that the judiciary remain non-partisan.

In addition, a group of 310 economists, including Nobel Prize-winning economist Eric Maskin of the United States and Israel Prize recipient Menahem Yaari, signed a letter against the proposed overhaul, warning that it could “lead investors to flee and bring a brain drain.”

Tens of thousands of Israelis protest against plans by the government to overhaul the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 4, 2023. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

Last week, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said that Europe was increasingly concerned over the plans and a group of foreign ambassadors reportedly grilled Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana with questions about the proposals.

The judicial overhaul plan has also drawn intense criticism and warnings from leading financial and legal experts in Israel, as well as weekly mass protests and public petitions by various officials, professionals, and private companies.

President Herzog first issued a plea to pause the legislative blitz last month to enable dialogue between coalition and opposition on constructive judicial reform, warning that the rifts over the issue were becoming dangerous.

While Netanyahu has said he is open to dialogue, he has insisted that he will not slow efforts to advance the judicial overhaul.

In Bulldozing Israeli Democracy, Benjamin Netanyahu Could Become the BDS Movement’s Greatest Ally

Capital is beginning to flee Israel in the wake of the prime minister’s judicial overhaul.

By Daniel Boguslaw

March 5, 2023

Source: The Intercept


In recent years, the Israeli government has identified boycott, divestment, and sanctions of the Jewish state over its treatment of Palestinians as a top threat to the country. Today, right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be the BDS movement’s greatest ally.

In his bid to evade prosecution for influence peddling and bribery, Netanyahu has forged a political alliance with Israel’s extremist religious parties, allied himself with the remnants of the anti-Arab terror organization Kach, and now charged forward with plans to gut the Israeli Supreme Court. Ahead of Israel’s 2022 election — the fifth in four years — Netanyahu put forward a proposal to effectively strip the judiciary of its moderating influence on Israeli society while transferring power to the executive branch and what is now an extremist-controlled Parliament.

Already, the effects of an unmoored and emboldened Israeli far right have emerged, with a full-on pogrom — endorsed by Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — taking place late last month in the occupied West Bank town of Hawara.

The Israeli government’s far-right turn has spurred tens of thousands of Israelis from across the political spectrum to take to the streets in protest — and BDS members are watching closely as its goal of making Israel an economic and cultural pariah is finally materializing on the horizon.

“The BDS movement has tracked the most recent divestments and threats of divestment from Israel, concluding that the self-identified ‘Start-up Nation’ is increasingly and gradually looking like a Shut Down Nation,” Omar Barghouti, one of the co-founders of the BDS movement, told The Intercept.

Leading figures at Israel’s major universities have warned that the efforts to force judicial reform through Israel’s Parliament could lead to widespread brain drain and have a devastating effect on Israel’s education system, scholars, and cultural institutions writ large.

Investment firms, long the target of BDS pressure, are signaling that keeping their money in Israel might end up being bad for their clients’ bottom lines. The firms are warning that the erosion of democracy in Israel could be followed by capital flight and decreased investment as seen in Poland and Hungary in the wake of similar anti-democratic reforms — a de facto divestment owing to market pressures themselves.

In the past, sanctions against Israel have largely failed to materialize, lacking a critical mass of Western countries that have long treated Israel as a geopolitical ally. But as signs of growing unease mount, Irish parliamentarians renewed calls for increased sanctions, and infighting in the European Union over security cooperation and unchecked support is starting to spill into view.

“These economic-financial woes will only strengthen BDS campaigning worldwide to pressure companies and investment funds to dump apartheid Israel, as many of them eventually dumped apartheid South Africa,” Barghouti said.

In the early 2000s, activists opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine created a plan to achieve a global realignment toward Israel. Building on the anti-globalization efforts of the 1990s and effective boycotts against South African apartheid, activists sought to create a multipronged campaign focused on mobilizing economic and cultural pressures to force changes in Israeli society. Boycotting Israeli products and cultural institutions, divesting from Israeli companies, and imposing sanctions for the violation of international law formed the three pillars of the BDS movement.

In recent years, American politicians and pro-Israel advocacy groups have worked at the state and national levels to criminalize BDS protests under the banner of antisemitism. Anti-BDS laws have proliferated in over 30 states, and found widespread buy-in from sitting U.S. senators. Ironically, this full-throated support of Israel may catalyze many of the outcomes they hoped to criminalize.

“Anti-BDS laws are a direct effort by the government of Israel to penalize Americans for criticizing how Palestinians are treated. It is more objectionable now than it was at any time this idea that we will listen to the prime minister of Israel on this issue,” Gadeir Abbas, an attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told The Intercept. CAIR has worked to oppose bills seeking to criminalize the BDS movement in the United States. “For Palestinians, Israel has always been anti-democratic, and now that anti-democratic energy is enveloping all of Israel. I don’t think it’s clear to anybody what will happen next.”

In early February, just days after claiming that Wall Street firms were sticking firmly to Israel in the face of the protests roiling the county, Netanyahu was forced to confront an internal report from JPMorgan warning that the “idiosyncratic risk” posed by judicial reform could destabilize Israel’s credit rating. Netanyahu attempted to prevent JPMorgan from releasing negative analysis, according to the Israeli press, and met with major investors in France to calm fears about economic turmoil in Israel.

Already some $4 billion has flowed out of Israeli banks in the wake of the proposed judicial reforms, with European bank HSBC joining JPMorgan to suggest political turmoil could significantly damage Israel’s economy. The changes pose such a grave economic threat, a member of Israel’s monetary committee — the Israeli equivalent of the American Federal Reserve Board of Governors — resigned in protest. Even former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who attended MIT in the 1970s alongside Netanyahu, told Bloomberg that Netanyahu’s judicial reforms, which raise “serious and profound questions about the rule of law,” “could have quite serious adverse effects on the Israeli economy.”

The HR firm Papaya Global, which has invested tens of billions in Israel, announced at the end of January that it would pull funds out of Israel alongside other smaller tech firms, signaling that the tech sector, which accounts for 10 percent of Israeli employment, could also see significant damage in the coming months.

Israeli universities are also sounding the alarm that judicial reform could devastate international collaboration and research funding, isolating them from the rest of the world.

“This is liable to manifest itself as a brain drain,” leading Israeli academics wrote in an open letter, “and in the fact that faculty members will hesitate to join our ranks; that students, research students, post-doctoral students, and international colleagues will not come to Israel; that our access to international research funds will be limited; that foreign industries will withdraw themselves from cooperating with Israeli academia; and we will be excluded from the international research and educational community.”

While Israel has faced almost no sanctions for its repeated violations of international law, cracks have started to show. In 2021, Norway committed to withdrawing its sovereign wealth fund investments in Israeli companies tied to West Bank settlement expansion. In coming months, Norway may announce a decision to further withdraw hundreds of millions from Israeli banks.

Ireland has repeatedly advanced bills to ban the import of Israeli products, nearing success on multiple occasions only to have the U.S. State Department quash the country’s efforts. Irish parliamentarians who have long called for sanctioning Israel may find new support in light of the recent political upheaval. In January, the Irish foreign minister called on Israel to pay compensation for the destruction of EU-funded buildings in occupied Palestine.

In a letter to Netanyahu, Ada Colau wrote, “As mayor of Barcelona, a Mediterranean city and defender of human rights, I cannot be indifferent to the systematic violation of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian population,” thereby ending the city’s ties to Israel and its “twinning” arrangement with Tel Aviv.

The EU also quietly backed off security cooperation with Israel last year and could find full-throated support for Netanyahu less and less tenable in the face of over 90 countries — including Germany and France — decrying Israel’s increasingly hostile attacks against Palestine at the U.N.

In February, the European Union was also forced to issue a statement heading off alarm that the international body would intervene in the fight over judicial reforms. “Israel is a democratic country with functioning democratic institutions and it is not for us to comment on ongoing domestic discussions,” it said. While Israel is not an EU member state, the European body has repeatedly decried the consolidation of power by authoritarian leaders in Hungary and Poland, going beyond statements to cut billions of dollars in funding to the two European nations.

“This far-right government with its strong fascist tendencies, promises to once and for all destroy apartheid Israel’s ludicrous, deeply racist claim of being a ‘democracy,’” Barghouti, the BDS movement co-founder, said. “This assertion, seared into the consciousness of tens of millions of Americans over decades of sophisticated propaganda campaigns, has essentially flourished by erasing the Palestinian people subjected to Israel’s system of colonial oppression.”