Orbiter set to launch in mission to reveal Sun's secrets

Issued on: 09/02/2020 - 

Miami (AFP)

The European Space Agency is set to embark upon one of its most ambitious projects to date, with the launch late Sunday from Florida's Cape Canaveral of its Solar Orbiter probe bound for the Sun.

The mission, due to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center at 11:03 pm (0403 GMT Monday), is set to last up to nine years.

Scientists say the craft, developed in close cooperation with NASA, is expected to provide unprecedented insights into the Sun's atmosphere, its winds and its magnetic fields.

It will also garner the first-ever images of the Sun's uncharted polar regions.

"It will be terra incognita," Daniel Muller, ESA project scientist for the mission in the Netherlands, was quoted as telling the NASA website. "This is really exploratory science."

After a fly-by of Venus and Mercury, the satellite is set to hit a maximum speed of 245,000 kilometers per hour (150,000 mph) before settling into orbit around the Sun.

The 10 state-of-the-art instruments on board will record myriad observations to help scientists unlock clues about what drives solar winds and flares.

Those winds and flares emit billions of highly charged particles that impact the Earth, producing the spectacular Northern Lights. But they can also disrupt radar systems, radio networks and even, though rarely, render satellites useless.

Orbiting relatively close to the Sun -- at nearly one-quarter Earth's distance from its star -- Solar Orbiter will be exposed to sunlight 13 times stronger than that reaching Earth.

With a custom-designed titanium heat shield, it is designed to withstand temperatures as high as 500 Celsius (930 Fahrenheit). Its heat-resistant structure will also protect its instruments from extreme particle radiation emitted from solar explosions.

The only spacecraft to previously fly over the Sun's poles was another joint ESA/NASA venture, the Ulysses, launched in 1990. But it got no closer to the Sun than the Earth is.

"You can't really get much closer than Solar Orbiter is going and still look at the Sun," Muller said.

The mission will be controlled from the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany.

© 2020 AFP

Iranian satellite fails to reach orbit in latest setback for space programme



09/02/2020

People gather around a model of a satellite-carrier rocket displayed during a ceremony in Tehran in 2016. © Raheb Homavandi, REUTERS

Text by:NEWS WIRES

An Iranian rocket failed to put a satellite into orbit on Sunday, state television reported, the latest setback for a programme the US claims helps Tehran advance its ballistic missile program.

The launch happened at Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Iran’s Semnan province, some 230 kilometers (145 miles) southeast of Iran’s capital, Tehran. A Simorgh, or “Phoenix,” rocket couldn't put the Zafar 1 communications satellite into orbit, however, due to a low speed, Iranian state TV reported.

“Stage-1 and stage-2 motors of the carrier functioned properly and the satellite was successfully detached from its carrier, but at the end of its path it did not reach the required speed for being put in the orbit,” Defense Ministry space programme spokesman Ahmad Hosseini told state TV.

Hosseini still sought to portray the failure as a “remarkable” achievement for its space programme.

In the days leading up to the launch, Iranian officials had been promoting the mission, including the country's Information and Communications Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi. His quick rise through the Islamic Republic’s carefully managed political system already is generating speculation he could be a candidate for Iran’s 2021 presidential campaign.

The launch had been planned amid celebrations ahead of the February anniversary of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran routinely unveils technological achievements for its armed forces, its space program and its nuclear efforts during this time.

Sunday's failure came after two failed launches of the Payam and Doosti satellites last year, as well as a launchpad rocket explosion in August. A separate fire at the Imam Khomeini Space Center in February 2019 also killed three researchers, authorities said at the time.

The rocket explosion in August drew even the attention of US President Donald Trump, who later tweeted what appeared to be a classified surveillance image of the launch failure. The three failures in a row raised suspicion of outside interference in Iran’s programme.

The US alleges such satellite launches defy a UN Security Council resolution calling on Iran to undertake no activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

Iran, which long has said it does not seek nuclear weapons, maintains its satellite launches and rocket tests do not have a military component. Tehran also says it hasn’t violated the UN resolution as it only “called upon” Tehran not to conduct such tests.

Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space.

The launch comes amid heightened tensions between Iran and the US since Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in May 2018. Iran since has begun breaking terms of the deal limiting its enrichment of uranium.

Meanwhile, a series of attacks across the Persian Gulf culminated with a US drone strike in Baghdad killing Iran's Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani and a retaliatory ballistic missile strike by Iran on Iraqi bases housing American troops earlier this month. Iran also accidentally shot down a Ukrainian commercial airliner taking off from Tehran amid the tensions, killing all 176 people on board.

(AP)

DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE;

Surrendered Pakistani Taliban spokesman escapes custody: official

& TWO CHARACTERS FROM JEWEL OF THE NILE

Issued on: 09/02/2020 

Islamabad (AFP)

A leading member of the Pakistan Taliban has escaped custody more than two years after surrendering to authorities, a senior security official said Sunday.

The confirmation comes days after Ehsanullah Ehsan -- the former spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) -- released an audio message claiming he had escaped detention and was now in Turkey.

A senior security source told AFP Ehsan was "one of our major assets in identifying and later tracking down militants".

The source was unable to confirm claims that Ehsan was in Turkey, or provide details of how he escaped.

Ehsan was infamous for issuing chilling claims following TTP attacks and has been linked to some of the country’s most bloody attacks -- including the bombing at a park in Lahore during Easter 2016, and the targeting of education activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.

Ehsan surrendered to authorities in 2017 and later gave high-profile interviews on Pakistani television, angering many in the country who believed he was being pampered by authorities after years of helping lead the bloody insurgency.

Pakistani security officials argued, however, that he had supplied valuable intelligence in the fight against militants.

Pakistan has been battling a homegrown Islamist insurgency for over a decade, with thousands of civilians and security personnel dying in extremist attacks, especially after the TTP began their campaign of violence in 2007.

Overall levels of extremist-linked violence have dropped dramatically last year, with 2019 seeing the fewest deaths since 2007 when TTP was formed.

Analysts have credited the fall to military offensives against the Taliban in the tribal areas of North Waziristan and Khyber where they were headquartered, as well as operations in the country's largest city of Karachi.

In 2018, the TTP was further degraded after a US strike in Afghanistan killed their leader, Maulana Fazlullah.

© 2020 AFP

Criticism of US Mideast plan softened in UN draft resolution

Issued on: 09/02/2020

United Nations (United States) (AFP)

A reworked Palestinian resolution has dropped its initial condemnation of President Donald Trump's Mideast peace plan, opting for less confrontational language ahead of a UN Security Council vote, a copy obtained by AFP shows.

The latest draft also no longer mentions the United States by name as the plan's author, and couches its criticism in milder language than in the original.

The changes come as diplomatic pressure mounts ahead of Tuesday's Security Council vote, which Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas is expected to be on hand for.

In one sign of the pressure, Tunisia earlier in the week abruptly fired its ambassador to the United Nations, Moncef Baati, citing his failure to consult with his foreign ministry on matters said to include the peace plan.

Diplomatic sources said Tunisia's President Kais Saied was worried that Baati's expressions of support for the Palestinians would damage Tunis' relations with the United States.

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and adviser, briefed the Security Council on the US plan on Thursday.

The plan would put the Palestinian capital in a suburb of Jerusalem rather than East Jerusalem, and allow Israel to annex more than 130 Jewish settlements in the occupied territories as well as the Jordan Valley.

It has been roundly rejected by the Palestinians, the Arab League and the Islamic Cooperation Organization. On Sunday, the African Union followed suit, with its chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat telling a summit of African leaders in Addis Ababa that it "trampled on the rights of the Palestinian people."

The initial draft of the Palestinian resolution, which was presented by Tunisia and Indonesia last Tuesday, charged that the US plan "breaches international law and the internationally-endorsed terms of reference for the achievement of a just, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

The latest version says the US initiative "departs from the internationally-endorsed terms of reference and parameters for the achievement of a just, comprehensive and lasting solution to this conflict, as enshrined in the relevant United Nations resolutions."

The draft no longer calls for an international conference on the Middle East "at the earliest possible date," instead replacing that language with a reminder that such a call was made in a 2008 UN resolution.

It also adds a line "condemning all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation, incitement and destruction."

Despite the softer tone, however, it was unclear if the latest version would be enough to avoid a US veto when it comes to a vote on Tuesday.

It still condemns Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, and reaffirms the need to preserve the boundary lines from 1967.

Abbas is scheduled to hold a news conference in New York with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Ohlmert after the vote, according a statement from the Palestinian mission to the UN.

© 2020 AFP

Thousands rally in Morocco against Trump Mideast peace plan

LOOK WHO IS MARCHING, WOMEN LEAD THE REVOLUTION, WOMEN ARE THE PROLETARIAT 
Issued on: 09/02/2020

Rabat (AFP)

Thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets of the Moroccan capital Sunday to protest against a new US Middle East peace plan which the Palestinians say favours Israel.

Carrying Palestinian flags, the demonstrators, including local politicians and trade unionists, marched in Rabat chanting "Long Live Palestine".

They called for a boycott of American products, denounced the United States as "enemies of peace" and chanted "Palestine is not for sale".

Some of the demonstrators, who wore red-black-green-white scarves in the colours of the Palestinian standard, burned an Israeli flag and spoke against any attempt by Morocco "to normalise" ties with the Jewish state.

Morocco has warming but quiet relations with Israel, and no formal diplomatic ties.

Israel and Morocco opened "liaison" offices in each other's countries in the mid-1990s but Rabat closed them after an escalation of Palestinian-Israeli violence in 2000.

Elsewhere in North Africa, hundreds of Tunisians also protested Sunday against the US peace plan, in the eastern city of Sfax, an AFP journalist reported. Tunisia's powerful UGTT labour union, which organised the march, called the proposal an "accord of shame".

Last month US President Donald Trump unveiled his Middle East plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians which the Palestinians have rejected as biased in favour of the Jewish state.

Under the plan, Israel would retain control of the disputed city of Jerusalem as its "undivided capital", and annex settlements on Palestinian lands. Palestinians however want all of east Jerusalem to be the capital of any future state.

The plan has also been rejected by the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation -- two bodies in which Morocco is a prominent member.

After Trump unveiled the plan, the foreign minister of Morocco, a key US ally, said Rabat "appreciates the constructive efforts for peace deployed by the US administration for a durable solution in the Middle East".

Nasser Bourita went on to reiterate that Morocco's position is to support the creation of an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.

© 2020 AFP

MONSIEUR ARACHNID
Maths wizard Cédric Villani adds to Macron woes in Paris mayoral equation

Issued on: 08/02/2020

French mathematician Cedric Villani, member of parliament and candidate for the Paris mayoral election, poses in the Square des Batignolles during his political campaign in Paris, France, on January 25, 2020. © Benoit Tessier, Reuters
Text by:Tracy MCNICOLL

Mathematician-turned-politician Cédric Villani wears his eccentricity on his sleeve – or, at least, on the lapel of his three-piece suit. There lurk his signature spider brooches. They stalk alongside his silken Ascot neckties and above his pocket watch, even on the campaign trail, where Emmanuel Macron's now ex-protégé is stumping for one of French politics’ most coveted prizes: The Paris mayor’s office.

Nationwide municipal elections next month pose the first domestic mid-term vote challenge for President Macron since his meteoric rise to power as a centrist independent in 2017. They represent his La République en Marche (LREM) party's first ever chance to uproot long-held socialist and conservative bastions of power in some 35,000 town and city hall races nationwide and to sow a network of local elected officials of its own. The jewel in that crown is Paris.

Enter Villani, whose political career is younger than Macron’s fledgling movement. Recruited from academia three years ago by Macron himself, the quirky maths whizz is reshaping the geometry of the race for Paris City Hall – apparently to the president’s own detriment.

Conquering the capital in 2020 once looked like an easy fight for LREM, which did well with Parisian voters in the 2017 presidential and 2019 European elections. But amid several long weeks of transit strikes over Macron’s notorious pension reform – and existential angst over what the party that pledged political renewal should be – those chances have soured.

Now, from a lowly fifth place in the polls, Villani has exposed the party’s contradictions and sown malaise in its ranks. Critics charge the plucky dissident with setting the Socialist incumbent Anne Hidalgo on a path to re-election as Paris mayor.

Spiderman

Very likely the only candidate to have a real-life spider named in his honour (the arachnid recently designated Araniella Villanii), the foppish 46-year-old is also a political novice, a lower-house lawmaker with only half a term under his belt.

As of last week, Villani doesn’t even have a party. After President Macron asked him to step aside in favour of LREM’s official candidate – the technocratic party man Benjamin Griveaux, whose looks are often likened to a proverbial ideal son-in-law – Villani refused. In a swashbuckling statement after the Élysée Palace meeting, Villani staked the moral high ground. “Between belonging to a political machinery and [my] commitment to the city that made me, I choose to remain faithful to Parisians in maintaining my bid freely.” So the party kicked him out.

Ce soir, ne craignez pas de dépenser votre énergie ! #NouveauParis pic.twitter.com/wHp00Um4V6— Cédric Villani (@VillaniCedric) February 5, 2020

The setback hasn’t stopped Villani. On Wednesday night, he unveiled his 100-page platform to some 1,600 supporters in a Belle Époque-era concert hall near Montmartre. Pledging to “repair the Paris of 2020” and “prepare the Paris of 2030”, he pitched such proposals as using artificial intelligence to help keep streets clean and traffic fluid, dedicating €5 billion to a green transition and tap the world’s best scientists for their expertise, making three more metro lines driverless, creating 290,000 social housing units, and promoting English and maths in Paris kindergartens.

“I’m the only candidate without a party, and yet I feel I’m the only one proposing a serious platform, a government platform,” he told the daily Le Parisien this week. “It is not eccentric, but feasible.”

Villani’s confidence in his potential appeal, even now that he is on the outside looking in, isn’t surprising. He insists he’s the truer torchbearer of LREM’s foundational ideals, the promises of political renewal that got Macron elected in the first place. Looking back at Villani’s story, his meteoric rise from the blackboard to the ballot box, the professor may have a point.

Fields medallist

Villani first rose to public prominence in 2010 when he won the prestigious Fields Medal. The so-called Nobel Prize for Maths is awarded every four years to the world's most brilliant mathematical minds under 40. During the ceremony a decade ago in Hyderabad, the Fields committee rewarded Villani’s “proofs of nonlinear Landau damping and convergence to equilibrium of the Boltzmann equation”.

But the long-time head of Paris’s renowned Institut Henri Poincaré has been keen to popularise science for the masses. The father of two fancies himself the "Lady Gaga of maths". Villani’s 2016 TED Talk – entitled “What’s so sexy about math?” – has earned 2 million views. In a proficient English that would put most French politicians to shame (Villani has been a guest professor at Berkeley and Princeton), he waxed lyrical before a TED crowd in Vancouver, describing performing maths as “replacing a beautiful coincidence with a beautiful explanation”.

After a brief initial brush with politics in support of Hidalgo’s winning 2014 Paris mayoralty bid, Villani went on to back the centrist upstart Macron in his longshot independent run for the Élysée Palace.

Macron's unlikely May 2017 win rocked the French political system to its core, leaving establishment parties left and right in tatters. As a 39-year-old president-elect, Macron made good on his pledge to draw half of his fledgling La République en Marche party's legislative candidates from civil society. One of his most emblematic grassroots picks was Villani: Pro-European, an expert in his field and a long-haired, spider-brooch-wearing change from politics as usual. In June 2017, the maths whizz won a seat for LREM representing the Essonne district, in suburban Paris, sweeping to victory with 69.36 percent of the vote.

‘Non-politicians’

Days before that election, Science magazine asked the prizewinning mathematician why he was running and why with Macron. “I never recognised myself in any national political movement. But Macron’s party is enthusiastically pro-European, which has become very rare among national parties in France,” he replied. “It also went very much against the old political tradition of systematically attacking opponents during the presidential election; instead it promoted benevolence, pragmatism and progress. And the party welcomed nonpoliticians with professional expertise.”

Indeed, as a lawmaker, Villani would go on to be tasked by the prime minister with a mission on artificial intelligence and by the education minister with another on the teaching of maths in France.

“Cédric is exceptional,” Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer gushed to the weekly Journal du Dimanche in 2018. “When one is in the presence of genius, one shouldn't pretend it were anything else. We are lucky that he exists and that he is giving of himself like this for the public good. He is a very special being in our time.”

But as time wore on, and as Villani's ambition grew, not everyone in the party would remain so enthusiastic about the value of his service.

Paris in play

In October 2018, Villani threw his hat in the nomination ring for Paris ahead of the 2020 race. “I will take part within the nominating process. Whoever is chosen, I will fall in line behind them,” he told the JDD. It was no secret then that Griveaux was in the running, too.

A longtime political operative and onetime CAC 40 executive, Griveaux was considered Macron’s right-hand-man and had long mooted a run for Paris City Hall. The 42-year-old eventually left his post as government spokesman to mount the bid. Last July, a party committee decided Griveaux was the best prepared candidate and chose him as the LREM nominee, over Villani and another hopeful. But the mathematician pondered his chances and announced in September that he was running anyway.

Merci à @enmarchefr de m’avoir accordé sa confiance pour cette campagne municipale à #Paris.

Ce soir est la première étape d’un élan collectif pour que, ensemble, nous puissions rendre aux Parisiens le plaisir et la fierté de vivre à Paris. pic.twitter.com/sjF8PP1ND0— Benjamin Griveaux (@BGriveaux) July 10, 2019

“Cédric Villani is what constitutes En Marche’s DNA,” a Villani associate told FRANCE 24 then. “He is a personality from civil society, a free man who had never done politics before, and who answered Emmanuel Macron’s call for the 2017 legislative elections, precisely to draw a line under the old political practices. And here we find ourselves in Paris with a candidate whose nomination was decided in advance,” the ally surmised, taking a dig at Griveaux.

Does not compute

Nonplussed party stalwarts warned Villani would split the vote. “Cédric is a mathematician, but he should be more calculating,” the longtime Macron ally Richard Ferrand, speaker of the lower-house National Assembly, told Reuters in September. “Division leads to failure. Unity means victory.”

Macron himself nevertheless let the Griveaux-Villani duel play out without interfering for five months, seemingly counting on the candidates to sort out that calculus themselves.

Finally, on January 26, a Sunday exactly seven weeks before the election’s first round, Macron summoned the Fields medallist to the Élysée to ask him to put two and two together and desist.

That same day, a poll on the Paris race appeared to make the political algebra clear. The Odoxa polling firm showed support for Griveaux at 16 percent and Villani at 10. The frontrunner Hidalgo, meanwhile, was on 23 percent. The pollster called Hidalgo “well placed for re-election [in the March 22 run-off] in every configuration that can reasonably be envisaged today” even though 57 percent of Parisians polled said they were unhappy with her record and 63 percent did not want her re-elected.

But Villani maintains that isn’t what the race for Paris is about. “The mathematician that I am with a little political experience knows that an election isn’t about arithmetic, it’s about the dynamic,” he told Le Parisien this week. “The scores don’t add together. Voters aren’t sheep.”

Indeed, the Odoxa poll also showed that while Hidalgo scored low on likeability, the conservative Rachida Dati polling second and Griveaux polling third are even less popular figures; Villani, meanwhile, registers as the most likeable candidate in the race, even if that hasn’t translated into vote pledges. Griveaux “is paying dearly for his rivalry with Villani, the government’s current unpopularity and France’s urge for a protest vote, as well as his incapacity to make himself sympathetic to voters,” Odoxa pollster Gaël Sliman explained.

“Anyway, the potential merger between Villani’s candidate list and Griveaux’s is today not at all what the ‘dissident’s’ voters want,” Sliman added. “Only 24 percent of them want such an alliance. The others would prefer either that Villani stay in the race (39 percent) or even that he merge with someone other than Griveaux (37 percent).”

Budding alliances, broken allegiances

Indeed, an alliance beyond LREM isn’t out of the question for Villani. In December, David Belliard, the green EELV party candidate for Paris, proposed a “Climate coalition” he believed could stretch from the far-left to Hidalgo and even Villani. Belliard is polling in fourth place, at 14.5 percent on the Odoxa poll; the pollster notes he is not well-known to the public but not disliked, either. The far-left categorically refused the offer. But the Villani and Hidalgo camps have entertained the notion; the sides have been talking, but the talks have so far been inconclusive. Villiani’s number might not be up in Paris, after all.

Macron’s LREM, meanwhile, is shedding allies, plumbed by disagreements far beyond who sits at the mayor’s desk in Paris City Hall. The government’s controversial handling of pension reform and an indelicate kerfuffle over legislation extending the length of bereavement leave are only the most recent existential issues unsettling the ruling party.


On Thursday, the National Assembly’s majority leader announced the LREM parliamentary group had lost three members in a single week.

One of the leaving lawmakers, 33-year-old Paula Forteza, quit in support of Villani’s Paris campaign. “We wanted to fight political machinery; we created a new one from scratch,” she lamented in a note to colleagues. Another first-time lawmaker, Frédérique Tuffnell, 63, said she remained “faithful to the spirit of Emmanuel Macron’s [2017] campaign” but “reached a point of no return” in her frustration over his controversial pension reform.

Complaining that LREM hasn’t stuck to its new-politics ethos, the disillusioned deputies aren’t the first to walk away from La République en Marche. They bring the party’s majority in the National Assembly down to an even 300 seats, from 314 on Election Day in 2017. The magic number for maintaining a majority in the French lower house is 289.

Villani, for his part, might dress like a maths magician, but it would take some real hocus pocus to make him mayor of Paris in March. Still, the genial genius must know he has one constituency he can count on. “Did you know that Paris has more mathematicians than any other city in the world?” Villani asked his TED talk audience in 2016, a full year before he won election for the first time. A beautiful coincidence?

---30---

Christians in northeast Syria living in fear as Turkish forces, IS group active in region

Issued on: 07/02/2020

Christian women in the small church in the village of Tall Tamr in northeastern Syria. Some of them were kidnapped by the Islamic State group for a year in 2015. They are too poor to leave Syria. © Chris Huby, Le Pictorium

By:Chris HUBY|Matthieu DELMAS

In northeastern Syria, the Christian community is more threatened than ever. Last October, it found itself caught in the middle of the battle between Turkish and Kurdish forces. Meanwhile, Islamic State group sleeper cells are active in the region and the Christian minority is one of their targets. Our reporters Chris Huby and Matthieu Delmas went to meet a community living in fear of kidnappings and attacks.

In northeastern Syria, the Christian minority is caught in the crossfire. When Turkey launched Operation "Peace Spring" against Kurdish YPG fighters on the Turkish-Syrian border last October 9, Christians found themselves surrounded by fighting. Turkish forces and their allies took control of a handful of predominantly Christian villages in the Khabur Valley.

Meanwhile, Islamic State (IS) group sleeper cells have been reactivated, targeting the Christian minority – whose members they consider heretics – and forcing US troops to take up positions in the villages in late January 2020.

The consequences have been disastrous. While international observers had hoped for the return of Christians to the region, the exact opposite occurred. In a new exodus of the Christian minority, many have fled to Europe, the United States or Australia, even if that meant leaving all their possessions behind.

Among those who have chosen to stay in Syria despite the danger and the economic crisis, some have taken up arms to ensure their own security. More than 2,000 Christians have organised themselves into militias. They fully intend to defend themselves against the enemy, whether it’s Turkish or jihadist.

Swiss voters back new law against homophobia, projection shows

Issued on: 09/02/2020 -

A campaign poster showing gagged Swiss MP Celine Amaudruz of right wing populist Swiss People's Party and asking Swiss voters in a referendum to reject a proposed ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation, charging it will lead to censorship, is seen on a billboard in Geneve, on January 30, 2020. AFP - FABRICE COFFRINI

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Switzerland on Sunday voted strongly in favour of a new law against homophobia in a referendum despite opposition from the populist rightwing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), according to a projection.
The projection published by GFS Bern polling and research group found that 62 percent had voted in favour of the reform, with a margin of error of three percent.

The new law will widen existing legislation against discrimination or incitement to hatred on ethnic or religious grounds to include sexual orientation.

“This is a historic day,” Mathias Reynard, a lawmaker from the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland who initiated the reform, told Swiss channel RTS 1.

“It gives a signal which is magnificent for everyone and for anyone who has been a victim of discrimination,” he said.

The change was passed by the Swiss parliament in 2018 but critics, who believe it will end up censoring free speech, had forced a referendum on the issue.

Eric Bertinat, an SVP local lawmaker in Geneva, told AFP before the vote that he believed the law was “part of an LGBT plan to slowly move towards same-sex marriage and medically assisted reproduction” for gay couples.

Marc Frueh, head of the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland (EDU), a small party based on Christian values, said after the projection: “I accept defeat”.

“We will keep a close eye on how the law is implemented by the courts,” he told RTS 1.

All of Switzerland’s major parties except the SVP, the biggest political force in parliament, support the law.

Rights campaigner Jean-Pierre Sigrist, founder of an association of gay teachers, had said before the referendum that the new law might have stopped him getting beaten up outside a bar in Geneva four decades ago.

“And maybe I would not have been laughed at when I went to the police,” the 71-year-old told AFP, adding that he hoped the reform would help to counter a resurgence of intolerance against gay people.

Sigrist said he supported freedom of expression, “but not the freedom to say anything at all”.

‘No to Special Rights!’

Under the new law, homophobic comments made in a family setting or among friends would not be criminalised.

But publicly denigrating or discriminating against someone for being gay or inciting hatred against that person in text, speech, images or gestures, would be banned.

The government has said it will still be possible to have opinionated debates on issues such as same-sex marriage, and the new law does not ban jokes—however off-colour.

“Incitement to hatred needs to reach a certain level of intensity in order to be considered criminal in Switzerland,” Alexandre Curchod, a media lawyer, told AFP.

But he admitted that there could be exceptions “if it can be shown that, under the cover of artistic production or joking, someone is in fact engaging in incitement”.

Gay rights campaigners were divided over the legislation.

A group called ‘No to Special Rights!’ is opposed, arguing that the gay community does not need special protection.

(AFP)

Israel's Palestinian minority has good reason to fear Trump's plan
Demand from the Israeli extreme right to strip Palestinians of citizenship has moved out of the shadows with US help

Palestinian women wave national flags as they protest a Donald Trump so-called 'deal of the century' (AFP/File photo)
By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth, Israel Published date: 7 February 2020

The Trump administration's decision to green-light Israel's annexation of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank grabbed headlines last week. But US support for a related proposal – one equally cherished by Israel’s extreme right – was far less noticed.

Under the terms of the "Peace to Prosperity" document, the US could allow Israel to strip potentially hundreds of thousands of its own inhabitants of their citizenship in a so-called "populated land swap" with the settlements.

Those in danger of having their citizenship revoked are drawn from Israel's large Palestinian minority – one in five of the country's population.

Done deal: How the peace process sold out the Palestinians+ Show


These Palestinians are descendants from families that managed to avoid the large-scale expulsions by the Israeli army in 1948 that led to the creation of a Jewish state on the ruins of the Palestinians' homeland.

The plan would require minor modifications to borders recognised since Israel agreed to a ceasefire with its Arab neighbours in 1949.

The result would be to transfer a long, thin strip of land in Israel known as the "Triangle" into the West Bank – along with a dozen towns and villages densely populated with Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

Samer Atamni, director of the Jewish-Arab centre for peace at Givat Haviva, an institute promoting greater social integration in Israel, lives in Kafr Karia, one the towns likely to be moved under the plan.

"There's been talk about this idea for a while but mostly from the extreme right. Now Trump has brought it out of the margins and into the mainstream," he told Middle East Eye.

'Even if the plan cannot be implemented yet, it presents us – the native people of the land – as unwelcome guests, as a fifth column, as the enemy'
- Yousef Jabareen, Knesset member

"The worry is that it will become the basis of any future political solution. It has been normalised."

Yousef Jabareen, a member of the Israeli parliament from Umm al-Fahm, home to 50,000 Palestinians and the largest community targeted by the "land swap", said the proposal was a dramatic step-up in a growing campaign to delegitimise the Palestinian minority.

"Even if the plan cannot be implemented yet, it presents us – the native people of the land – as unwelcome guests, as a fifth column, as the enemy," he told MEE.

"And it will inflame the right-wing's incitement, including from [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, that Palestinian members of the parliament are representatives for a terrorist population."

'Pieces on a chessboard'

Defenders of the plan have argued that it does not violate the rights of those affected because they would not be physically forced from their homes. Instead, their communities would be reassigned to a Palestinian state.

But forcible transfer of the kind suggested in the Trump plan – sometimes referred to as "static transfer" – is likely to constitute a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Atamni noted that families would be torn apart. Those inside the Triangle would be separated behind checkpoints and walls from family members living elsewhere in Israel. It would also cut many off from their places of work, schools and colleges, as well as their historic lands.

"We study and work in Israel. It is the only reality our community has known for decades," he said.

"It confirms our worst fears that Israel does not take our rights as citizens seriously, that it thinks it can simply issue diktats, and play with our futures as if we are pieces on a chessboard." 

Worse on other side

Jabareen pointed out that residents of the Triangle had no reason to be reassured about their prospects from the Trump document.

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"What state is it that we would be transferred to? From the Trump plan it is clear that there will be no Palestinian state, only a series of ghettoes, South African-style Bantustans. Under this plan, we would be placed under Israeli military rule, under occupation and apartheid."

Baraa Mahamid, a 20-year-old activist with the Umm al-Fahm Youth Movement, agreed. He pointed out that many residents of the Triangle travelled into West Bank cities like Jenin, which is close by.

"We see the greater poverty there, the checkpoints, the walls, Israeli soldiers everywhere. There are many problems for us living here in Israel, but people are afraid their life would become much worse on the other side of the wall."
Demographic timebomb

According to Israeli government sources quoted this week by the Haaretz daily, Netanyahu was the one who persuaded the Americans to include the transfer option.

He is reported to have been lobbying US officials to adopt the provision since work first began on Trump’s so-called "deal of the century" back in 2017.

It is the first time that an official US peace plan has included such a proposal or produced a map showing how such a territorial exchange would work on the ground.

For Netanyahu and many Israeli Jews, who see the country's Palestinian citizens as a "demographic timebomb," with high birth rates that might slowly erode the state's decisive Jewish majority, the transfer plan is both a demographic and territorial win.

According to polls, about half of Israeli Jews support the expulsion of Palestinian citizens.

Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List, which brings together the main Palestinian political factions, warned this week that the transfer of the Triangle was likely to be only the first stage in wider measures.

The Israeli right, he said, was "conveying a clear message to all of Israel's Arab citizens: 'You are not welcome here and your turn will come when the next plan is released'."
Territorial gains

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The transfer of the Triangle offers a twofold gain for the right.

First, it subtracts large numbers of Palestinians from Israel's population without losing much territory, thereby strengthening Israel’s Jewish majority.

Second, it rationalises Israel's "reciprocal" annexation of swaths of West Bank territory on which the Jewish settlements are built, thereby defeating any chance of creating a viable Palestinian state.

But critically for those who support annexation, it substantially increases Israel's territorial area without risking a rise in Palestinian numbers.

According to figures published by Peace Now this week, some 380,000 Palestinians – 260,000 in the Triangle and a further 120,000 in East Jerusalem – would be "swapped out" to a Palestinian state.

Meanwhile, some 330,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem would need to be "swapped in" - that is, brought under Israeli rule as part of the annexations.

The overall gain would be official US recognition for the first time of territory housing 650,000 Jewish settlers as part of Israel.

"The demographic rationale behind this isn't being hidden," said Jabareen. "Israel loses lots of Palestinian citizens and gains lots of territory seized by Jewish settlers."
Citizenship and loyalty

Schemes to transfer the Triangle have been floating around on the right for nearly two decades. It first came to prominence when a formal plan was published by Avigdor Lieberman, a settler who has served as defence and foreign minister under Netanyahu.

He has been keen to tie citizenship rights to "loyalty" to Israel as a Jewish state. In previous election campaigns, he has run under the slogan: "No loyalty, no citizenship."

Transferring the Triangle has been seen by the right as a prelude to much wider revocations of citizenship for Palestinians, according to Jabareen.

In recent years more politicians on the right, including Netanyahu, have been explicit that Palestinian citizens are necessarily disloyal to a Jewish state because they hold on to their Palestinian identity. 

'Sword over our heads'Such imputations of disloyalty were a mainstay of Netanyahu's two election campaigns last year. He accused Palestinian voters of wanting "to annihilate us all – women, children and men".

He also sent his Likud party's monitors into polling stations in Palestinian communities wearing body cameras, implying that Palestinian voters were defrauding the Jewish majority.

Jabareen noted: "In the parliament members of the ruling coalition openly incite against us. Bezalel Smotrich [a settler leader, and currently the transport minister] says it proudly: 'Accept your inferior status, or you will go to jail or be expelled.' For them, the Triangle plan is a sword hanging over our heads."
Palestinian identity

The assumption of disloyalty is implied in the wording of the Trump plan, which states that residents of the Triangle's communities "largely self-identify as Palestinian".

In fact, noted Atamni, the situation is far more complex. Surveys suggest that there is a complicated interplay between the minority's Palestinian, Arab, Israeli and various religious identities.

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"Yes, our national identity is Palestinian, but that doesn't detract in any way from the fact that our civil identity is Israeli," he said. "When we struggle in Israel it is for our civil rights, to end the discrimination we face from the state and receive equality as citizens."

Nonetheless, the transfer proposal contained in Trump's so-called "deal of the century" is in line with recent legislative moves by Israel that sanction the downgrading of the status of Palestinian citizens.

The most significant is the nation-state law, passed in 2018. It confers constitution-like status on Israel's Jewishness, revokes Arabic as an official language, and makes a top priority of Judaisation – a policy of settling Jews into Palestinian areas inside Israel and the occupied territories.

"Over the last 10 years Israeli society has moved further right very quickly," said Atamni. "The left in Israel has been a huge disappointment. Most have kept silent about the recent threats to our status."

Political calculations

Jabareen observed that the ultra-nationalist bloc supporting Netanyahu had a pressing political need to delegitimise the standing of Palestinians as citizens, and especially as voters.

Netanyahu has been unable to form a government for the past year – and thereby avoid an impending corruption trial – because he has twice narrowly lost to an opposition bloc led by a former army general, Benny Gantz, of the Blue and White party.

The bloc under Gantz can only end the stalemate and win power itself if it allies with the Joint List, which represents Israel’s Palestinian minority. But Gantz has embraced the Trump plan, breaking any possible alliance with the Joint List.

If both Jewish blocs again fail to win a majority in the election on 2 March, the pressure will mount on Gantz to enter a unity government with Netanyahu.

Disillusionment from Palestinian voters and a drop in their turnout might also mean Netanyahu’s coalition can scrape over the electoral threshold and win back power.

Additionally, Netanyahu is trying to grow the right-wing bloc by urging his far-right coalition partners to form an electoral alliance with the Jewish Power party, heirs of the outlawed Kach movement. They demand the expulsion of Palestinians from a Greater Israel.

The US decision to support a platform that promotes the transfer of large numbers of Palestinian citizens against their will could help rehabilitate the image of the racists of Jewish Power, making them look more politically respectable.
Internment camps

Before Netanyahu began lobbying for it in 2017, he had sought to persuade former President Obama's officials of its benefits as early as 2014. According to the Maariv newspaper, Netanyahu argued that the move would reduce the Palestinian minority from a fifth of Israel's population to 12 per cent.

At the same time, the Israeli foreign ministry produced a document analysing how a "population exchange" might be presented as in accordance with international law. It concluded that the measure would require that either the affected citizens supported the move or the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas backed it.

Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Palestinian citizens are opposed.

Aware of the minority's hostility, the Netanyahu government staged a drill in 2010 in which Israeli security services trained for an uprising in response to a transfer of the Triangle. As part of the exercise, internment camps were established for protesters.

Mahamid, the youth activist from Umm al-Fahm, said the plan had at least made the reality of life for Palestinian citizens clearer.

"We were told our citizenship would protect us, that it would get us our rights if we were loyal. But it never did. And now that is being made explicit in the threat to expel us."



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British universities invest £450m in companies complicit in Israeli crimes: Report
Research from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign suggests more than 100 universities have funds involved

Several universities invest in some of the world’s largest arms manufacturers, including BAE Systems which sponsors UCL's Centre for Ethics and Law (AFP)
By Delilah Boxstein
Published date: 19 January 2020

More than 100 British universities have over £454m (about $600m) invested in companies complicit in Israeli violations of international law, research from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has claimed, revelations that have angered pro-Palestinian activists.

At the end of last year, the PSC unveiled a publicly accessible database listing 117 of the UK’s 151 universities with investments in companies that the group deems complicit in Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.

For the PSC, those companies help sustain “Israel’s system of institutionalised racist discrimination, amounting to the crime of apartheid… [through] weapons, technology and other support it receives from companies around the world.”

The campaign began when Huda Ammori, the PSC’s campaigns officer, set up a chapter of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement at the University of Manchester in her student days.

At the time, she suspected many universities as well as her own were involved in such practices. That spurred her to begin collecting information for PSC’s database.

“For me it was an outrage, as any student, especially as a Palestinian student, who has to pay tuition fees towards institutions that are investing in companies enabling these abuses,” Ammori told Middle East Eye.

“But I knew that it wasn’t just the University of Manchester, and this would probably be something that’s happening across UK institutions.”
Visual surveillance in Jerusalem

The PSC sent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to all 151 British universities asking for their direct and indirect investments and the value of those investments.

Of the universities, 53 refused to hand over information, 42 used the public interest exemption for the Freedom of Information Act and 11 did not respond.



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In order to determine an estimated number of investments for universities that did not provide information, PSC used the data from universities that did supply their details and calculated an average percentage of investments in complicit companies.

The PSC notes that universities in the UK invest in a range of companies that supply Israel’s military with weapons and help construct Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The University of Oxford is the highest offender, with an estimated £130,447,800 of investments in complicit companies.

A number of institutions are invested in Cisco Systems, such as Imperial College London, which has £2,995,670 in investments in the company.

Cisco has set up technological hubs in the West Bank, Naqab (Negev) and occupied Syrian Golan, expanded visual surveillance in Jerusalem, and provides information technology to the Israeli military.
'Ethical investment policy'

Several universities invest in some of the world’s largest arms manufacturers, including Boeing, Airbus and BAE Systems - all of which supply weapons and aircraft to the Israeli military.

University College London, which has £2,901,978 in complicit investments, ironically has BAE Systems sponsoring their Centre for Ethics and Law.

The University of Manchester has £734,000 in investments in Caterpillar, a company providing the Israeli military with the D9 bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes, schools and communities.

Despite this, Manchester is one of nearly 90 British universities who say they conduct an “ethical investment policy”.

“As a university, we work closely with our investment managers to ensure our portfolio complies with our published Socially Responsible Investment Policy and considers environmental, social and governance issues, as well as financial factors,” a University of Manchester spokesperson told MEE.
Students take action

The database’s publication sparked outrage among students.

Ammori said more than 20 student-run Palestine solidarity groups are now using the database in their campaigns.

At campuses without active Palestinian societies, like the University of St Andrews, students are reaching out to the PSC about how they can take action.

When the PSC published its database, it also sent out letters to the universities with the information collected.


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It also sent the universities a pledge to sign, which would see the institutions affirming they will commit to principles of anti-discrimination and anti-racism.

The PSC is urging students to get their universities to sign the pledge, which includes promising to sever ties with companies complicit in Israeli crimes and abuses against Palestinians.

“A university is nothing without students,” Ammori said.

“And the database is for the students, and the university community, to hold their institutions to account on these investments linking to human rights abuses, because by default they are making students complicit in this as well.”

The Aberdeen University Palestine Society met with the vice principal of education and the director of finance on 13 December.

Thanks to that meeting, the director of finance committed to urging Northern Trust – one of the pooled funds the University of Aberdeen invests in – to divest from complicit firms.

The university is expected to give the Aberdeen University Palestine Society an update this month.

“Our goal is for the university to pressure the fund to divest, and if they won’t, then for the university to divest from the fund since these investments are against our university’s sustainable investment policy and are complicit in breaking international law,” Alba Utrera Roman, president of the Aberdeen University Palestine Society, said.

“There’s still a long way to go but this was an important first step in our divestment campaign.”
Divesting investments

According to the PSC, the University of Exeter has £2,328,707 in investments in complicit companies, and a partnership with QinetiQ, which provided testing services for the British Army Watchkeeper WK450 drone, a model based on Israeli crafts used in military assaults on Gaza.

However, Colter Louwerse, Exeter Friends of Palestine’s publicity officer, believes the PSC “massively overshoots” the true amount of investment, saying the estimation is skewed by the rejection of the PSC’s FOI request.

Moreover, Louwerse notes there had been a reduction in these investments because the university recently moved its funds from being managed by JPMorgan Chase to Rathbone Greenbank Investments, a firm dedicated to ethical and sustainable investments.

“That’s not just the product of activism having to do with Palestine, it’s also the product of activism on climate change because there’s been a strong movement on campus to get the university to divest from fossil fuels,” Louwerse said of the university’s decision.

Given the University of Exeter’s investments are no longer deeply embedded with these complicit companies, Exeter Friends of Palestine is now focusing their activism on QinetiQ’s presence on campus.


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“These companies that the University of Exeter may not be investing in are nevertheless providing research funding for projects that are connected to security systems, weapons manufacturing and all those things,” Louwerse said.

“So this research is being done on our campus and then being repurposed by these companies to be sold for use in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

The University of Sheffield Palestine Society plans to mimic this tactic, by targeting its university’s research centre collaborations with complicit firms.

The main goal is to inform students, especially those working at the research centre, about the university’s connections to these companies.

“Even if we don’t accomplish something big like divesting from companies, we are still very satisfied with raising awareness and making sure as many students know about our university’s unethical cooperation and investments,” Yazan Khader, president of the University of Sheffield Palestine Society, said.