Controversial St. Croix refinery ceases operations given 'extreme financial constraints'



Juliet Eilperin and Darryl Fears

WASHINGTON POST
Mon, June 21, 2021

Limetree Bay, a massive oil refinery in the Caribbean, announced Monday that it is ceasing operations following a number of catastrophic errors that rained oil droplets on St. Croix, sent residents to emergency rooms after noxious gas releases and raised fears among homeowners that their drinking water was laced with toxic chemicals.

The plant, which had closed a decade ago under a previous owner after toxic spills helped push it into bankruptcy, was plagued with problems from the start after the Trump administration granted it permission to reopen in February.

"Limetree had a very high rate of environmental violations over a very short period of time," said Judith Enck, a former Environmental Protection Agency official who monitored the plant under the Obama administration. "It was an environmental catastrophe unfolding in real time."

The refinery's pollution impacts on Black and Brown people in communities that surround it quickly emerged as a priority under President Joe Biden, who made environmental justice a major focus of his climate agenda. In May, the EPA ordered the refinery to suspend operations for 60 days as it weighed whether it had become "an imminent threat" to people's health.

Now the island stands as a critical test for the president, who has promised to devote 40% of federal spending on the environment to disadvantaged communities. Even as many residents welcomed the plant's closure Monday, they questioned how the territory would recover from the harm it has already caused.

Monday's announcement suggests that the refinery, which now owes tens of millions of dollars to contractors and faces multiple class-action lawsuits from residents, might never restart. The company, which will continue to operate an adjoining oil export terminal, told all 271 refinery employees that they will be terminated as of Sept. 19. On Friday, many of the remaining contractors were sent home. On Monday, contractors moved some of their equipment outside of the plant's fence line.

There are objections to the name because J'ouvert is the name of a festival celebrating Caribbean culture held annually in Trinidad and Tobago and Grenada during Carnival — and celebrated internationally.

Squad goals: Ocasio-Cortez warns Biden patience is wearing thin


David Smith in Washington

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, June 20, 2021,

Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

They were pointed questions, not personal criticisms. But they will have conveyed a warning to Joe Biden that the patience of the left of the Democratic party and its leaders in ‘the Squad’ of progressive politicians is not infinite.

“Are we passing the deal that helps working people the most?” asked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the firebrand New York congresswoman and best known member of the squad. “Are we passing the deal that makes the most jobs? Are we passing a deal that brings down the most climate emissions? Are we passing a deal that raises wages and actually improves our infrastructure for the next generation?”

Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance on the influential TV program Morning Joe last week came with the US president weeks into negotiations with Republicans over a massive infrastructure spending package – and apparently little to show for it.


The squad and others on the left of the party have remained broadly supportive of Biden as he seeks to restore an era of bipartisan cooperation. But with his agenda stalling on Capitol Hill, frustrations are mounting and threatening to crack the facade of Democratic unity.

It was Ocasio-Cortez, a social media star with a global profile, who hailed Biden’s first hundred days in office as having “definitely exceeded expectations that progressives had”. After all, the president’s staggering $1.9tn coronavirus relief package had been swiftly passed by Congress and signed into law, albeit without a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage that liberals have long sought.

Now cold reality is intruding, however. Legislation on voting rights, gun safety, immigration and police brutality is faltering in a House of Representatives where Democrats hold a slender 220-211 majority and a Senate split 50-50 with Republicans (vice president Kamala Harris gives the party the tie-breaking vote).

Biden’s next big ticket item, the American Jobs Plan, which initially proposed more than $2trn for infrastructure, is facing a rockier road. He conceded ground in negotiations with Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito that ultimately collapsed. Then a bipartisan group of senators came up with a $1.2trn proposal but, progressives say, it fails to address the climate crisis, healthcare and childcare.

Democratic leaders are now discussing a two-step process in which they pass a smaller bill with bipartisan support but then follow up with a second measure passed through a process known as budget reconciliation, which would require near total party unanimity.

The underlying challenge for Biden is how to keep together an unwieldy Democratic coalition that encompasses conservative senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia – which is Donald Trump country – and senator Bernie Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist from Vermont, who this week drafted a $6trn infrastructure package.

Then there is the squad, the left-leaning group of House members that now consists of seven people of color. The more that Manchin digs in his heels against ambitious legislation, the more restive the squad is likely to become, raising difficult questions over whether Biden is applying sufficient pressure to bring the doubters on board.

Yvette Simpson, chief executive of the progressive organization Democracy for America, said: “Right now people are really getting frustrated because it’s been six months and we don’t see Joe Biden engaging in the way that he should to push for more support. In fact, he’s negotiating against us and what Democrats want.

The party’s left wing is not convinced Biden is applying sufficient pressure to bring the doubters on board. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

“So I think there’s a growing sense of frustration among progressives and it’s understandable. We’re feeling like the clock is running out and we’re wasting valuable time and that’s where you’re going to start to see the squad and other members of the progressive movement push back and saying, ‘OK, we’ve got a limited window of time here. We need to put up or shut up’.”

With more than two in three Americans supporting the infrastructure bill, according to a Monmouth University poll, Simpson argues that the squad is on the right side of history. “Their relentlessness, their fearlessness and their persistence on this should be rewarded; they should not be punished because they are fighting for what we should be doing anyway.

“There’s going to be some blowback if the squad is fighting for things that we actually should get done and the rest of the party is saying, oh no, Republicans aren’t on board, oh no, let one person decide that he’s going to hold up an entire agenda for the entire nation, that the entire nation wants overwhelmingly.”

Although the Biden administration has actively engaged with progressives in its early months, there have been some flash points. Ocasio-Cortez and others were quick to speak out when it emerged that Biden intended to retain Trump’s cap on the number of refugees allowed into the US; the administration blinked first and backed down.

Squad members including Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib sharply criticized Israel for its recent bombing of Gaza and challenged the Biden administration’s unwavering support for the country. And when Harris told Guatemalans, “Do not come” to the US, Ocasio-Cortez called the comment “disappointing” and noted that it is legal to seek asylum.

Ocasio-Cortez has also been pushing Biden to face up to the fact that bipartisanship with a radicalized Republican party is a doomed enterprise. She tweeted: “Pres. Biden & Senate Dems should take a step back and ask themselves if playing patty-cake w GOP Senators is really worth the dismantling of people’s voting rights, setting the planet on fire, allowing massive corporations and the wealthy to not pay their fair share of taxes, etc.”

Jamaal Bowman, one of the squad’s newest members, said bluntly that Manchin “has become the new Mitch McConnell”, referring to the Republican senate minority leader infamous for obstruction, after the West Virginia senator declared support for the legislative filibuster while opposing an expansive voting rights bill.

The interventions carry weight in part because of the squad’s outsized influence in both mainstream and social media. Ocasio-Cortez has 12.7m followers on Twitter. Activists praise them for speaking with moral clarity about Washington’s failings in a way that strikes a chord with the public.

Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said: “I don’t think they are outside mainstream thinking around the frustrations that people have with the Senate as an institution or the limitations that present themselves with such a narrow margin and with Joe Manchin continuing to buck his own caucus. They’re playing a very useful role.”

Their willingness to dissent is a sign of party strength, not weakness, Mitchell argues. “When Joe Biden moves the struggle forward, they will give him credit for it. There are examples where the Biden administration has been outside of what we would consider progressive values and they’ve course corrected and it was, I think, because the squad were not afraid to call it.

“It led to the Biden administration actually getting better on those issues. That’s an example not of disunity, but co-equal branches operating as they should.”

But when it comes to the current legislative gridlock, some commentators argue that the squad would be wrong to take out their frustrations on the president, given the balance of power in the Senate.

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “I don’t know how you criticise Biden for Manchin. Biden is putting up the legislation they’d like. The problem is Congress and the sheer numbers. It’s an arithmetic problem more than an ideology problem.”

Democrats’ narrow majority in the House should, in theory, give the squad more leverage over party leadership than ever. They threatened to torpedo a $1.9bn spending bill to upgrade US Capitol security in the wake of 6 January insurrection over concerns about more money going to police; eventually three voted no, three voted present and one voted yes; the bill passed by a single vote.

Dave Handy, a New York-based political activist and consultant who worked on Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, said: “We have a very slim majority in Congress. The squad now wield more power than they’re giving themselves credit for. I don’t know why they’re ignorant of their bargaining position and the hand that they’re holding.”

“Everybody else at the table seems to be aware of this. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate are very aware of the cards that they’re holding. The squad is completely aloof. I’m not even sure they know that they’re playing poker. They might think they’re playing checkers.”

Handy argues that the squad should pressure Biden and other Democratic leaders much harder. “I don’t think that they’re wielding as much influence as they could be. The squad was elected to be rabble rousers. They are there to agitate. Theirs is the role of a reformer in Congress and, in my estimation, in this current Congress, they have not been doing that.”

Liberals to introduce new hate speech bill, possibly bringing back controversial Section 13

Anja Karadeglija 

NATIONAL POST

JUNE 22,2021


Right before the House of Commons breaks for summer, the Liberal government will introduce a new bill tackling hate speech, which could bring back a controversial law under the Canadian Human Rights Act.

© Provided by National Post Justice Minister David Lametti.

Justice Minister David Lametti has given notice the government will introduce a new bill, dealing with “hate propaganda, hate crimes and hate speech.” Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault has been working on a new online harms bill with Justice and other ministries, though government spokespeople declined to say Tuesday whether that bill is the legislation that will be tabled by Lametti.

One possibility is that Lametti’s bill could leave out online regulation and focus only on changes to hate speech law the government consulted on last year — though if that includes bringing back a civil remedy for hate speech, the bill still stands to garner much opposition.

Guilbeault told an industry conference last week that the upcoming online harms legislation, which will deal with hate speech and other illegal content, will be even more contentious than broadcasting bill C-10. That legislation finally passed through the House of Commons in the early hours of Tuesday morning after nearly two months of concern about its impact on free expression.

“Now, this is going to be controversial. People think that C-10 was controversial. Wait till we table this legislation,” Guilbeault said at an appearance at the Banff World Media Festival.

Spokespeople for Guilbeault and Lametti said they couldn’t provide any information about what will be in Lametti’s bill because of parliamentary privilege. Guilbeault and Arif Virani, Lametti’s parliamentary secretary, told the National Post in March the online harms bill would include both a Justice ministry piece in the form of a codifying in law a new definition of online hate, and new rules for online platforms, including a regulator that would enforce 24-hour takedowns for illegal content.

New definition of hate to be included in Liberal bill that might also revive contentious hate speech law

Liberals inching closer to reviving Section 13, the controversial hate speech law repealed in 2013

According to the notice paper, Lametti’s bill will “amend the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act and to make related amendments to another Act (hate propaganda, hate crimes and hate speech).”

As part of the work on building up the online harms bill, Virani held consultations across the country on Lametti’s behalf. That consultation included questions about reintroducing a form of a hate speech law — Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act — that was widely criticized over free speech rights before it was repealed in 2013.

Virani said in the spring bringing back a form of that law was something the government got “feedback on both sides of the ledger” from. He confirmed the government was “examining” section 13.

Under section 13, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal could issue cease-and-desist orders and impose fines up to $10,000 in response to complaints from individuals about matters likely to expose them “to hatred or contempt” for the reason of those individuals being “identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”

Cara Zwibel, the director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s fundamental freedom’s program, said in an interview the fact that Lametti’s bill “is going to make amendments to the Criminal Code and to the Canadian Human Rights Act makes me think that … they will either reintroduce Section 13 or introduce something similar, but maybe not exactly the same.”

She noted the government had also consulted about potentially creating a new peace bond under the Criminal Code, which would deal with hate incidents that wouldn’t be prosecuted “to the fullest extent by the Crown, but where they’d still want to try and impose some sort of restrictions.”

The CCLA opposed Section 13, and Zwibel said it wouldn’t be a good idea to reintroduce it. “If it’s going to be something a little different from Section 13, then I guess I would reserve my judgment up until after I’ve seen exactly what it is,” she noted.

Zwibel said the concern with bringing back Section 13 is that it could create a chilling effect on free speech.

“The worry with, for example, reintroducing a remedy under the Canadian Human Rights Act is that with the Criminal Code we have the requirement that the attorney general approve a charge to pursue a promotion of hatred charge under the Criminal Code,” she said.

She said the same kind of screening mechanism isn’t there under a human rights regime. Even if the Human Rights Commission decides not to pursue cases and bring them forward under a tribunal, “there can be this chilling effect on people because they’ve been the subject of a complaint.”

© Provided by National Post Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault.

Zwibel said “even if the mechanism works well” and the commission is not pursuing cases that shouldn’t be pursued, “there is still a cost to free speech associated with investigating those complaints.”

Virani also told the National Post back in March the online harms bill would codify a definition of hate speech based on previous court decisions and how the Supreme Court has defined hate.

Zwibel said when it comes to defining hate speech, “there’s a lot that remains subjective and potentially vague in the definition. And codifying it doesn’t really alleviate those concerns.”

She added: “I just wouldn’t want it to hinder the ability of the courts to take all the context into account.”

The online harms bill was initially supposed to be tabled in the spring. Guilbeault told a Parliamentary committee in early June that the bill was delayed because of the controversy and Conservative Party opposition over Bill C-10.

While C-10 finally passed through the House of Commons, with the support of the NDP and the Bloc, it is set to hit a roadblock at the Senate. Senators from various caucuses told the National Post last week the majority of senators have no interest in fast-tracking the bill before the end of the Parliamentary session.

If the bill isn’t fast-tracked, it will be studied at a Senate committee, most likely in the fall. That means it’s likely to die on the order paper if a federal election is held then. The same would go for Lametti’s hate speech bill, which is set to be introduced on the last scheduled sitting day before Parliament breaks for summer.

Does outer space end – or go on forever?


Jack Singal, 

Associate Professor of Physics, University of Richmond
Mon, June 21, 2021

It can stretch your mind to ponder what's really out there.

Stijn Dijkstra/EyeEm via Getty Images


Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

What is beyond outer space? – Siah, age 11, Fremont, California

Right above you is the sky – or as scientists would call it, the atmosphere. It extends about 20 miles (32 kilometers) above the Earth. Floating around the atmosphere is a mixture of molecules – tiny bits of air so small you take in billions of them every time you breathe.

Above the atmosphere is space. It’s called that because it has far fewer molecules, with lots of empty space between them.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel to outer space – and then keep going? What would you find? Scientists like me are able to explain a lot of what you’d see. But there are some things we don’t know yet, like whether space just goes on forever.

Planets, stars and galaxies

At the beginning of your trip through space, you might recognize some of the sights. The Earth is part of a group of planets that all orbit the Sun – with some orbiting asteroids and comets mixed in, too.

A diagram of the solar system, showing the sun and its orbiting planets.

You might know that the Sun is actually just an average star, and looks bigger and brighter than the other stars only because it is closer. To get to the next nearest star, you would have to travel through trillions of miles of space. If you could ride on the fastest space probe NASA has ever made, it would still take you thousands of years to get there.

If stars are like houses, then galaxies are like cities full of houses. Scientists estimate there are 100 billion stars in Earth’s galaxy. If you could zoom out, way beyond Earth’s galaxy, those 100 billion stars would blend together – the way lights of city buildings do when viewed from an airplane.

Recently astronomers have learned that many or even most stars have their own orbiting planets. Some are even like Earth, so it’s possible they might be home to other beings also wondering what’s out there.

An image showing detail of one galaxy, but visually implying there are many more.

You would have to travel through millions of trillions more miles of space just to reach another galaxy. Most of that space is almost completely empty, with only some stray molecules and tiny mysterious invisible particles scientists call “dark matter.”

Using big telescopes, astronomers see millions of galaxies out there – and they just keep going, in every direction.

If you could watch for long enough, over millions of years, it would look like new space is gradually being added between all the galaxies. You can visualize this by imagining tiny dots on a deflated balloon and then thinking about blowing it up. The dots would keep moving farther apart, just like the galaxies are.

Is there an end?

If you could keep going out, as far as you wanted, would you just keep passing by galaxies forever? Are there an infinite number of galaxies in every direction? Or does the whole thing eventually end? And if it does end, what does it end with?

These are questions scientists don’t have definite answers to yet. Many think it’s likely you would just keep passing galaxies in every direction, forever. In that case, the universe would be infinite, with no end.

Some scientists think it’s possible the universe might eventually wrap back around on itself – so if you could just keep going out, you would someday come back around to where you started, from the other direction.

One way to think about this is to picture a globe, and imagine that you are a creature that can move only on the surface. If you start walking any direction, east for example, and just keep going, eventually you would come back to where you began. If this were the case for the universe, it would mean it is not infinitely big – although it would still be bigger than you can imagine.

In either case, you could never get to the end of the universe or space. Scientists now consider it unlikely the universe has an end – a region where the galaxies stop or where there would be a barrier of some kind marking the end of space.

But nobody knows for sure. How to answer this question will need to be figured out by a future scientist.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

This article has been updated to correct the distances to the nearest star and galaxy.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Jack Singal, University of Richmond.

Read more:
The art of Aphantasia: how ‘mind blind’ artists create without being able to visualise

Why your zodiac sign is probably wrong

Jack Singal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Ethiopia's Tigray crisis: Abiy Ahmed denies reports of hunger


Mon, June 21, 2021, 

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has denied that there is hunger in the country's war-torn Tigray region.

Speaking at a polling station on the day of the country's general election, Mr Abiy admitted there was a problem but said the government could fix it.

The fighting, which the UN says has left five million people in need of food aid, is now in its eighth month.


More than 350,000 of them are living in famine conditions in Tigray, according to a recent UN-backed estimate.

"There is no hunger in Tigray," Mr Abiy told the BBC's Catherine Byaruhanga after he had voted. "There is a problem and the government is capable of fixing that."

Last week, the UN's humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock, told a closed session of the Security Council that there was famine in Tigray.

He also said that starvation was being used as a weapon of war by troops from neighbouring Eritrea who are fighting alongside Ethiopian forces in Tigray. Eritrea has denied the accusation.

Mr Abiy said Ethiopia would not push the Eritreans out but was working with them to "finalise... issues peacefully".


Live updates on the election


The tragedy of Ethiopia's man-made famine


Abiy Ahmed faces first election amid conflict


The Nobel Peace Prize winner who went to war

A study released on 10 June by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative found that 350,000 people were living in what it described as "catastrophe/famine".

At the time, Ethiopia denied that this was the case.

A further five million people were either in "crisis" or "emergency", the study said.

The Ethiopian authorities have said that they are distributing food aid and denied reports that they are restricting access to humanitarian agencies.
'Nothing to eat'

People in Qafta Humera, an isolated district in the west of Tigray, told the BBC earlier this month that they were on the verge of starvation.

"We don't have anything to eat," one man said by phone, explaining their crops and livestock had been looted during months of war.

The conflict, which began in November last year, has forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes and disrupted agriculture.

map of Tigray showing worst affected areas

Ethiopia's government launched an offensive to oust the region's then ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).

The party had had a massive fallout with Mr Abiy over his political reforms though the TPLF's capture of federal military bases in Tigray was the catalyst for the invasion.
Sudanese troops 'also in Ethiopia'

Ethiopia has allied with neighbouring Eritrea, whose troops have crossed the border and have been accused of human rights violations, including deliberately causing the lack of food - charges it denies.

Ethiopian soldiers and others involved in the conflict have also been accused of violations.

In March, Mr Abiy said that the Eritrean soldiers "will withdraw" without specifying when.

At the beginning of this month his spokesperson said reports from the defence ministry indicated they had begun withdrawing.

The UN says that more than five million people in Tigray need humanitarian assistance

"We are not pushing them out but we are making it peacefully, I am sure it will happen," Mr Abiy told the BBC.

"We are working with [Eritrea] to finalise our issues peacefully."

He also said that Sudanese troops were in Ethiopia, referring to the al-Fashaga triangle, which both countries claim.

Monday's general election is the first electoral test for the prime minister who came to power in 2018 as the nominee of the then-ruling coalition.

His reforming zeal, which saw the country become more open and democratic, won him supporters both inside and outside the country.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 after ending a 20-year stalemate with Eritrea.

But the conflict in Tigray has soured his reputation.

Voting is not taking place there because of the insecurity.

PENTECOSTAL COLONIALISM

The Nigerian priest saving Igbo deities from the bonfires

THE CATHOLIC  CHURCH IS A SYNCRETIC

RELIGION UNLIKE PROTESTANTISM

Wed, June 23, 2021, 

While some Pentecostal preachers in eastern Nigeria set fire to statues and other ancient artefacts that they regard as symbols of idolatry, one Catholic priest is collecting them instead.

The artefacts are central to the traditional religions practised by the region's Igbo people, who see them as sacred, and possessing supernatural powers.

But there are now very few adherents of these religions, as Christianity - led by Pentecostal churches - has become the area's dominant faith.

BBC Igbo's Chiagozie Nwonwu and Karina Igonikon report on the priest's efforts to protect a history that is being lost because of the actions of some preachers.

Short presentational grey line

Although he is referred to as "fire that burns", there is nothing frightening about Reverend Paul Obayi, who runs the Deities Museum in eastern Nigeria's Nsukka city.

Located in the compound of Saint Theresa's Catholic Cathedral, the three-roomed museum boasts hundreds of totems, masks, a stuffed lion and carvings of Igbo deities.

When communities abandon traditional religious beliefs, primarily under the influence of Christian Pentecostal churches, some pastors light bonfires to burn the artefacts, which they say contradict the faith's monotheistic beliefs, and which represent "evil spirits that bring bad luck".

Sometimes worshippers of the traditional religions also torch their deities, in accordance with a belief captured in the Igbo proverb: "If a God becomes too troublesome, it becomes wood for the fireplace."

But Reverend Obayi bucks the trend by preserving the rejected gods and goddesses, saying he uses religious powers to remove their supposed supernatural abilities. This has earned him the moniker Okunerere - "the fire that burns idols in the spirit".

"I've already destroyed the spirits," he said at his museum.

"What you have is just an empty shell. There is nothing inside."

Most of the artefacts at Deities Museum are wooden carvings

Reverend Obayi said he had been partially influenced by museums in Western countries, which are under enormous pressure to return artefacts, such as the Benin Bronzes, that were looted during the colonial era.

"I visit museums in the West and I see artefacts, some from Benin even, and I made up my mind to preserve ours."
A treasure trove of deities

The cathedral's administrator, Reverend Father Eugene Odo, supports his initiative, comparing it to a Catholic-owned museum in Italy.

"In Rome for instance there is the museum housing things that the Romans did as pagans, and people go there to see the stages of human development," he said.

Though the Deities Museum hosts visitors who come from as far as Lagos to see some of the tagged items, it is in dire need of care and attention. The artefacts, some of them centuries old, are strewn across the museum's floor, caked in dust. Some have been ravaged by termites.

But it is a treasure trove of Igbo deities - in one corner is a fearsome-looking mask surrounded by raffia, in another corner a deity used by tricksters - two oblong-shaped objects held together by string, used in the past to solve "mysteries" such as catching a thief. Hidden levers operated by the trickster were used to control the movement of the objects when the names of suspects were called out, making it look like an invisible force had discovered the thief.

But the pièce de résistance is the Adaada leja, a raffia-covered headless goddess, feted by those seeking children. Reverend Obayi said the deity was almost 200 years old.
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The items are from the "deliverance services" he has conducted over the past 20 years in towns and villages across Nigeria's south-east.

"People write letters inviting my ministry to come and remove the idols that are disturbing them," he said.
Ways of the ancestors

Odinani, an ancient Igbo religion, was practised before the arrival of Christianity and colonialism. It is a form of animism where people pray to a spirit - represented by a statue - known as chi. It seeks intercession on their behalf from a Supreme Being, or Chukwu.

Other deities worshipped include:


Ala - the goddess of fertility


Amadioha - the god of thunder


Ekwensu - the god of bargains and mischief


Ikenga - an avatar of the owner's spirit

Not many adherents of these ancient religions remain, and they endure persecution from the Christian majority.

Their sacred days are disregarded, traditions such as rites of passages are frowned upon and there have been instances where shrines have been invaded by Christians activists.

Nowadays, most practitioners of these religions are elderly, although a handful of youngsters are now rebelling against their Christian faith and learning the ways of their ancestors.

In the past, most Igbo homes had small altars for the Ikenga

Chinasa Nwosu, a Pentecostal bishop of the Royal Church in the southern city of Port Harcourt, is a fierce critic of the traditional beliefs.

Bishop Nwosu first shot into the limelight in the early 1990s for tearing down shrines, burning the so-called idols, and uprooting what he denounces as "evil trees".

These trees, some of them ancient, have their bases wrapped in white or red pieces of cloth and are sacred to adherents who worship and make small sacrifices to them. Some are in the family compound but most are in forests away from the community.

"God does not want us to practice idol worship. African religion, most of the time, is based on idolatry," he said.

"Blessings come when you remove those accursed things," he added, quoting the Bible.

Bishop Chinasa Nwosu burns objects that he believes are against Christian teachings

He said that carvings and other artworks such as the Benin Bronzes and Ife Heads, which are artefacts stolen from western Nigeria and are now in Europeans museums, had not been consecrated to a God so he was not opposed to them being returned.

But he warned the Nigerian government that if it brought back artefacts that could be traced to "idolatry", such as the Ikenga wood carvings in the British Museum, he would want them burnt.

Such views are vehemently opposed by Reverend Obayi, who remains determined to preserve the artefacts in his modest museum.

"They are artefacts that our children will see and they will understand how their forefathers lived," he said.

Gabon paid for protecting forests, in African first



2 / 2
Gabon paid for protecting forests, in African first

Gabon is home to nearly 60 percent of Africa's remaining forest elephants, listed in March as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature


Tue, June 22, 2021, 7:41 AM·2 min read

Gabon has become the first African nation to receive a financial reward for protecting its forests as part of international efforts to fight climate change, the government announced Tuesday.

Gabon has received $17 million in recompense for successfully cutting its carbon emissions by reducing deforestation and forest degradation, the environment ministry said in a statement.

The payment came "after independent experts verified Gabon's results" showing that the country's carbon emissions in 2016-17 had dropped compared with the annual figures for 2006-15.

The funds were delivered by the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), an organisation launched in 2015 by the United Nations and backed by international donors.

The scheme provides financial incentives to Central African governments to pursue economic growth without harming the vast forests that cover much of the region.

The world's rainforests are seen as a vital weapon in the fight against climate change by sucking out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Gabon, where forests cover 90 percent of the territory, is home to some 18 percent of the Congo Basin forest, known as "the second lung of the planet" after the Amazon.

Under a 10-year deal signed with CAFI in 2019, Gabon is set to receive a total of $150 million if it meets its carbon-cutting targets.

The small tropical country has pledged to cut its carbon emissions in half by 2025 from 2005 levels.

The forests in Gabon alone "absorb a total of 140 million tonnes of CO2 each year, which is equivalent to removing 30 million cars from circulation throughout the world," the environment ministry said.

Gabon has been a leader in Central Africa in preserving its rainforests, creating 13 national parks since 2000 that cover around 11 percent of the country.

Norwegian Environment Minister Sveinung Rotevatn, whose government is a major donor to CAFI, said Gabon had "demonstrated that with vision, dedication and strong dynamism, reductions in (CO2) emissions can be achieved in the Congo Basin forest".

Gabon's environment ministry said the first cash payment would notably be used to invest in local forestry projects.

"The aim is to improve the income, livelihoods and well-being of communities in Gabon," it said.

Along with fighting climate change, protecting the world's rainforests is seen as key to staving off threats to biodiversity.

Gabon is home to nearly 60 percent of Africa's remaining forest elephants, listed in March as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

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UK
Proposed laws to restrict ‘noisy’ protests breach human rights and must be scrapped, government told

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED TRY, TRY AGAIN

Say it loud: Demonstrators attend a protest against a new proposed policing bill in Manchester (Reuters)

Lizzie Dearden
Mon, June 21, 2021, 11:54 PM·5 min read

Concerning new policing laws will hand too much power to the home secretary and give authorities “oppressive” rights to quash protests, a cross-party group of MPs and peers has warned.

Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights found that proposals to allow police to restrict “noisy” protests were “not necessary in a democratic society” and must be scrapped.

A report published on Tuesday said it was also unacceptable to give the home secretary the power to define “serious disruption”, or to increase prison sentences for non-violent crimes related to protest.


The plans are contained within the wide-ranging Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which is currently undergoing parliamentary scrutiny after being backed by MPs in March.

It has sparked a wave of demonstrations, including some that resulted in vandalism and violence against police officers, amid accusations that the government was stifling the right to protest.

Labour MP Harriet Harman, who chairs the human rights committee, said protest was the “essence” of British democracy and allowed the public to literally make their voices heard.

“The government proposals to allow police to restrict ‘noisy’ protests are oppressive and wrong,” she added.

“Noisy protests are the exercises of the lungs of a healthy democracy. They should not be treated as an inconvenience by those in power.”

Ms Harman said police already had access to “perfectly adequate” powers for protests, and that demonstrations themselves should be given explicit statutory protection in the law.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights said that peaceful protests had to be “seen and, crucially in this context, heard” to fulfil the European Convention on Human Rights.

“A power that would allow the police to move the location of a demonstration, limit its numbers or duration, or even to silence certain shouts or chants, in order to suppress noise is therefore of significant concern,” it added.

Members said interference with the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly can only be justified by a “pressing social need”, or “legitimate aims” such as to prevent disorder, preserve public safety and protect the rights of others.

“It is not clear to us what right the public has to be free from ‘serious unease’ that might result from peaceful and otherwise lawful protest,” the committee added.

“Despite receiving a large number of submissions addressing part three of the bill, we did not receive a single piece of written evidence welcoming the changes it proposes.”

The report found that political rhetoric had been “downplaying the importance of the right to peaceful protest and treating it as an inconvenience”, and that public authorities should be reminded of their obligation to “refrain from interfering unlawfully” with the right to demonstrate.

The draft bill would create a power for the home secretary to clarify the meaning of “serious disruption” in law, for the purpose of protest restrictions, without parliamentary scrutiny.

“It raises the risk that a future home secretary could respond to particular protests to which the government objects and specify those as falling within the ‘serious disruption’ triggers,” the report said.

“It is vitally important that peaceful protests are policed on the basis of the harm they cause, not their political content.”

The committee also called for changes to proposals to lower the threshold for prosecuting protesters for breaching police conditions, saying they “increased the risk of peaceful protesters being arrested or prosecuted for innocent mistakes”.

Members said the government should omit part of the bill that would, for the first time, allow police to impose restrictions on protests by a single person.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights found a proposed new criminal offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance” – which would be punishable by up to 10 years in prison – was unclear and risked criminalising some forms of peaceful protest.

It called for the wording of the law to be changed to ensure it required “serious harm” to be caused to the public, and to make non-violent protest a defence.

The human rights group Liberty said the bill followed heavy restrictions on protest during the coronavirus pandemic and would hand police “the power to choose where, when and how people can protest”.

Its policy and campaigns manager Rosalind Comyn said: “Giving police even more powers to control and limit our right to protest is incredibly dangerous. We urge those in power to listen to the warnings about what this bill would mean for the future of civil liberties in the UK – and to oppose it at every chance they get.”

Campaign group Big Brother Watch called the report “damning” and called for MPs to remove the “draconian” protest powers from the bill.

Ministers have argued that “recent changes in tactics” used by Extinction Rebellion protesters, including gluing themselves to buildings and vehicles, have highlighted gaps in existing public order laws from 1986.

Demonstrators in Bristol stand near a burning police vehicle during a protest against the proposed policing bill (Reuters/Peter Cziborra)

However, the Joint Committee on Human Rights said it had seen no evidence that any gaps justified plans to make noise a threshold for imposing restrictions on demonstrations.

The committee said that national police leaders did not routinely collect data on the use of current powers, and there was no indication they were being used to their utmost extent or proving ineffective.

It found that neither the police nor a key HM Inspectorate of Constabulary report on protest powers called for the ability to restrict protests based on noise.

“We also note that the larger and more well-supported a demonstration, the louder it is likely to be,” the report added. “Restrictions on noise could disproportionately impact the demonstrations that have the greatest public backing.”

It warned that the proposed law would require police officers to interpret vague wording such as “intensity” and “serious unease” to trigger noise provisions, which could lead to bias against different groups or cause “arbitrary or discriminatory” enforcement.

The report also rejected arguments over the costs incurred for policing large protests, saying: “The fundamental right to protest should not be restricted simply because its exercise is too expensive.”

In total, the committee called for five clauses to be removed from the bill, five to be significantly changed and the addition of a statutory protection for peaceful protest.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The right to protest is a cornerstone of our democracy and our proposed measures are in line with human rights legislation and in no way impinge on the right to protest.“

Read More

Policing bill: Plan to crack down on protests passes first Commons hurdle despite civil liberties warning

New protest laws ‘go too far’ and are not needed, police commissioners say

Priti Patel fails to explain what is ‘a noisy protest’ to be banned under tough new laws

Priti Patel accused of undermining democracy with planned crackdown on protests

New crackdown on Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter needed due to ‘huge inconvenience’, minister says

Legal experts define a new international crime: 'Ecocide'



Legal experts define a new international crime: 'Ecocide'

Katie Surma, Inside Climate News and Yuliya Talmazan
Tue, June 22, 2021, 

This article was published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news outlet that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is part of "The Fifth Crime," a series on ecocide.

A panel of 12 lawyers from around the world has proposed a legal definition for a new crime that the lawyers want to see outlawed internationally: ecocide, or widespread destruction of the environment.

The definition’s unveiling on Tuesday is the first major step in a global campaign aimed at preventing environmental catastrophes like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest — and, more broadly, climate change.

The Netherlands-based Stop Ecocide Foundation, along with a coalition of environmentalists, lawyers and human rights advocates, has been pushing since 2017 to make ecocide a crime prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. The court currently prosecutes just four offenses: genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression and war crimes.

If the campaign to criminalize ecocide succeeds, the international court would be able to hold accountable those most responsible for major ecological harms, including business and government leaders.

The definition released on Tuesday, the result of months of work by the team of a dozen lawyers, describes ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”

If this definition is adopted as the fifth crime before the international court, it would signal that mass environmental destruction is one of the most morally reprehensible crimes in the world, advocates said.

“None of the existing international criminal laws protect the environment as an end in itself, and that's what the crime of ecocide does,” Philippe Sands, professor of international law at University College London and co-chair of the panel that drafted the definition, said at an online news conference Tuesday.

The International Criminal Court has not commented on the panel’s efforts.

There is still a long road ahead before the ecocide definition could be adopted by the court. One of the court’s 123 member countries would need to submit the definition to the United Nations secretary-general, triggering a formal multistep process that could lead to an amendment of the Rome Statute, which sets the court’s rules.

But legal scholars say the panel’s work could still have effects at the International Criminal Court and beyond, regardless of whether ecocide is officially made an international crime.

“It is an essential exercise because environmental damage is growing phenomenally,” said David J. Scheffer, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues who led the U.S. delegation that negotiated the International Criminal Court’s founding treaty. “Ecocide, by its mere existence, will heighten the issue of the environment.”
The campaign

The International Criminal Court’s four existing crimes focus on harm to humans, not the planet — so the lawyers who began working late last year to craft an ecocide definition had to largely start from scratch.

They wanted it to be strict enough to be meaningful, but they also wanted it to be appealing enough to win support from most of the world’s nations, which are historically reluctant to cede sovereignty to international institutions.

“A perfect definition does you no good if states ignore it or worse, become hostile to the enterprise and set the effort back,” said Nancy Combs, an expert in international criminal law and professor at William and Mary Law School. “If the panel’s calculations are wrong, the whole thing could go bust.”

Related: A growing number of world leaders advocate making ecocide a crime before the International Criminal Court, to serve as a “moral line” for the planet.

The definition aims to be less of a sledgehammer and more of a guardrail for governments and businesses that are most responsible for ecological harm.

“We hope that that approach comes up with something which is potentially effective,” Sands said, but not “so widespread in its effects that states run away and throw their arms up in horror.”

The definition also had to be general enough to address all manner of environmental harms and keep pace with evolving science but specific enough to put would-be wrongdoers on notice of what counts as criminal behavior.

The six-month endeavor required an unprecedented collaborative effort between international criminal lawyers and environmental lawyers, two professions that until now have rarely intersected.
The definition

The 165-word definition resembles the court’s other four crimes in some ways, including by implementing high thresholds, like “widespread” and “severe” damage.

But the new potential crime differs in one major respect: harm to human beings is not a prerequisite for ecocide. That shift would be a major development for international criminal law, which mainly focuses on human injuries, Richard Rogers, a British lawyer and one of the panelists, said.

The definition is also notable for what it doesn’t include. The panel chose not to incorporate a list of examples of ecocide for fear that something would inevitably be left out, possibly signaling that the excluded act may not qualify, lawyers said.

That choice also had a political dimension. The panel did not want countries to feel they were being targeted by examples. “We felt that it was best to keep that door shut,” Sands said.

Sands believes the definition would cover actions that contribute to climate change, though the specifics aren’t yet clear. It may come down to whether the actions are also unlawful, under other national or international laws, he said.
What’s next

Now that the panel has delivered its definition, Stop Ecocide’s diplomatic work will kick into high gear to marshal political backing.

The support, or lack thereof, will act as a bellwether for how serious governments are about combating climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.

Lawmakers from close U.S. allies like France, Belgium, Finland, Spain, Canada, Luxemburg and the European Union have voiced their support for making ecocide a crime. Major greenhouse gas emitters like the United States, China, India and Russia are not members of the court but could weigh in on diplomatic negotiations.

If one of the court’s member countries formally proposes an ecocide crime, triggering the start of the amendment process, then at the court’s next annual meeting in December, the countries would hold a vote on whether to take up the proposal. Then, the countries would debate the crime’s definition, a process that could take years, or even decades.

In the meantime, Jojo Mehta, the co-founder of Stop Ecocide Foundation, expects just the prospect of the crime to shift the behavior of some businesses, governments, insurers and financers.

And lawmakers from around the world have already expressed interest in enacting their own national ecocide laws, using the panel’s definition as a starting point.

“Even if some states only revise their domestic law, that would be a success,” Christina Voigt, a Norway-based international law professor and one of the panelists, said.

Above all, the new definition is stimulating debate about whether mass environmental damage should be illegal.

“We fully expect that attention from around the world will expand significantly as a result of this definition emerging,” Mehta said, “and that public interest and demand for this very concrete legal solution will steadily increase.”

America's gas tax's tortured history shows how hard it is to fund new infrastructure

Theodore J. Kury, Director of Energy Studies, University of Florida
Tue, June 22, 2021

Gas taxes have long been used to pay for roads and bridges. AP Photo/Seth Perlman

As the Biden administration and Republicans negotiate a possible infrastructure spending package, how to pay for it has been a key sticking point.

President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress want to raise taxes on the rich, while some Republicans have been pushing for an increase in the gas tax – which would be the first in 28 years. A bipartisan group of senators recently crafted a compromise bill that would pay for just under US$1 trillion in spending on rail, roads and bridges over five years in part by indexing the gas tax to inflation. Democrats call this regressive because it would raise taxes on working Americans.

As the director of energy studies at the University of Florida’s Public Utility Research Center, I’ve studied both taxes on energy and how the government spends money on infrastructure.

Throughout the gas tax’s controversial history, leaders have frequently called upon this revenue source when serious infrastructure investment is needed.

The first 40 years

This resilient levy is a major source of U.S. funding for roads and transit today. It originated during the Great Depression as a “temporary” penny-per-gallon gasoline tax. At the time, a gallon cost about 18 cents, or about $2.90 in 2021 dollars.

As he signed the Revenue Act of 1932 into law, President Herbert Hoover lauded “the willingness of our people to accept this added burden in these times in order impregnably to establish the credit of the federal government.”

The original gas tax, an emergency measure intended to bolster the budget and fund national defense spending, not to meet transportation needs, was slated to expire in 1933. Instead, persistent budget deficits throughout the New Deal and World War II kept it in force throughout Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration over the objections of the oil, automotive and travel industries. It became a permanent 1.5-cent levy in 1941.

Multiple efforts to do away with the gas tax ever since have failed.

For example, Congress again scheduled the tax’s repeal in 1951 when it increased it to 2 cents as a source of revenue related to the Korean War. Instead, lawmakers agreed to keep the tax on the books to help pay for one of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s top priorities, the national interstate highway system.

In 1956 the levy rose once more, to 3 cents, when Americans were paying about 30 cents for a gallon of gas. At the same time, the government established the Highway Trust Fund to use the gas tax revenue to pay for building and maintaining the new interstates.

The tax rose to 4 cents per gallon in 1959 and froze at that level for more than two decades.

Running on empty

Gas tax revenue stopped keeping up with the expenses it was supposed to cover in the early 1970s following a severe bout of inflation and OPEC’s oil embargo. U.S. gas prices soared from about 36 cents per gallon in 1972 to $1.31 in 1981.

Responding to what members of both major political parties saw as a transportation infrastructure crisis, Congress more than doubled the tax to 9 cents per gallon as part of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982. The same law split the Highway Trust Fund and its revenue stream into two parts: The first 8 cents would finance roadwork while the other penny would finance mass transit projects.

This hike may have struck drivers as a sharp increase, but public spending on transportation infrastructure would continue to fall as a percentage of all outlays.

In 1984, Congress increased spending on highways by funneling proceeds from fines and other penalties that businesses pay for safety violations, such as failing to label hazardous materials or forcing drivers to work too many hours in a row.

Congress boosted the tax twice more in the 1990s but primarily to reduce the then-ballooning federal deficit. Only half of a 5-cent increase in 1990 went to highways and transit, while a 4.3-cent lift three years later went entirely to lowering the deficit.

By 1997, the government had redirected all gas tax revenue reserved for deficit reduction to the Highway Trust Fund, where it still flows today.

Along the way, other federal fuel taxes arose, including a 24.4-cent-per-gallon diesel tax and taxes on methanol and compressed natural gas. And state fuel taxes, which in most cases began before the federal gas tax, range from as low as 8.95 cents per gallon in Alaska to as high as 57.6 cents per gallon in Pennsylvania.

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Making do

Since 1993, when the federal gas tax was first parked at 18.4 cents, inflation and rising construction costs have eroded its effectiveness as a transportation-related revenue source. In addition, U.S. vehicles have grown more fuel-efficient overall – which means Americans use less fuel for every mile they drive.

As a result, highway and transit spending has significantly outpaced the revenue collected from the gas tax and other sources. Since 2008, the government has transferred over $80 billion to the fund that it had to take from other sources.

But it’s still not enough. The American Society of Civil Engineers, which gives U.S. infrastructure a C-minus, is calling on the government and private sector to increase spending on roads and bridges by at least $2.5 trillion within a decade.

While it’s true the gas tax may be regressive because lower-income people pay the same rate as those who earn higher incomes, there are still advantages to this tax.

For one thing, it follows the “user pays” principle of providing government services. Under this principle, the people using the roads are held responsible for paying for their upkeep. As the number of motorists using electric vehicles increases, however, this may become less true over time.

Further, it would also create an incentive to at least marginally decrease the use of fossil fuels, accomplishing another goal of the administration.

Finally, the government could always subsidize the tax for the poor, perhaps through annual lump-sum payments, making it less regressive.

Clearly, U.S. infrastructure is in dire need of upgrading and investment. At the end of the day, Americans will pay for it one way or another – whether in taxes or through costs of unsafe and inadequate infrastructure, including in lost lives. How the government pays for investment may matter less than that it finally does it.

This is an updated version of an article first published on Feb. 27, 2018.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Theodore J. Kury, University of Florida.

Read more:

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Women-dominated child and home care work is critical infrastructure that has long been devalued

Theodore J. Kury is the Director of Energy Studies at the University of Florida’s Public Utility Research Center, which is sponsored in part by the Florida electric and gas utilities and the Florida Public Service Commission, none of which has editorial control of any of the content the Center produces.