Goalkeeper goes viral with stupendous back-flip celebration (VIDEO)

Burkina Faso's Herve Koffi couldn't contain his excitement after his team's AFCON penalty shootout win against Gabon

The goalkeeper illuminated the Africa Cup of Nations. © Twitter

Burkina Faso edged closer to what would be just their second-ever appearance in the Africa Cup of Nations final with a spot-kicks victory against their Gabonese rivals on Sunday thanks in part to the heroics of their goalkeeper, who has managed to hit the headlines not just for his performance in the shootout – but also his celebration afterwards.

Herve Koffi, who turns out for Belgian side Charleroi, had previously saved an effort from Guelor Kanga and was crouched close to the touchline as he awaited what proved to be the game-winning penalty from his teammate Ismahila Ouedraogo.

And when the ball flew into the back of the net securing his team's route to the quarter-finals, Koffi sped away and performed SIX backflips while the rest the Burkina Faso team rushed to congratulate Ouedraogo for his decisive penalty.

Gabon, who were without talisman Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang for the entire tournament, now head home despite not losing a single game in regulation time after emerging undefeated from their group.

Aubameyang, as well as Mario Lemina, were both sent home by the Gabonese FA after they tested positive for Covid. Both were also subject to reports that they were experiencing heart complaints - which has since been denied by Arsenal's Aubameyang. 

Burkina Faso, meanwhile, will take on Tunisia in their quarter-final on Saturday as they looked to claim the AFCON crown for the first time in their history.

They finished as runners-up to Nigeria in the 2013 final, while also claiming a respectable third place in 2017 but were disappointed to not qualify for the 2019 event.

But for Koffi and the rest of his teammates, Sunday's win appears to have been very much worth the wait.

Facebook stalling report on human rights impact in India, allege whistleblowers


Papers leaked by Frances Haugen revealed users in India were inundated with fake news and anti-Muslim posts

Facebook has earmarked only 13% of its global misinformation budget to non-US countries. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

Kari Paul
Thu 20 Jan 2022

Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen and other prominent whistleblowers have renewed calls for Facebook to release a long-awaited report on its impact in India, alleging the company is purposely obscuring human rights concerns.


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More than 20 organizations on Wednesday joined whistleblowers Frances Haugen and Sophie Zhang, as well as former Facebook vice-president Brian Boland, to demand the company, now called Meta, release its findings.

“As a result of the consistent and continuous barrage of hate on social media, particularly on Facebook, Indian Muslims have been practically dehumanized and rendered helpless and voiceless,” said Zafarul-Islam Khan, a former chairman of Delhi Minorities Commission, speaking at a press briefing organized by Facebook critics known as the Real Facebook Oversight Board.

Meta had commissioned law firm Foley Hoag in 2020 to carry out an independent review of its impact in India – the company’s largest market at 340 million users – but its release has repeatedly been delayed, activists allege.

In November, rights groups told the Wall Street Journal that the social media company had narrowed the draft report’s scope and was delaying the process of releasing it.

Calls for more information on how hate speech plays out on Meta platforms in India intensified when Haugen leaked internal documents in 2021 showing how the the company struggles to monitor problematic content in countries with large user bases.

The papers revealed in particular how users in India were inundated with fake news, hate speech including anti-Muslim posts and bots interfering with elections. These papers underscored an ongoing critique that the company does not allocate proportional resources to its larger, non-English markets.

Haugen revealed in her papers and testimony to Congress that Facebook has earmarked only 13% of its global misinformation budget to non-US countries, though Americans make up just 10% of its active daily user base.

Such funding issues are particularly stark in countries like India, which has 22 official languages, said Teesta Setalvad, an Indian civil rights activist and journalist, in a press conference on Wednesday.

“Facebook allows unchecked inciting content that has become an instrument for targeting minorities, Dalits and women in India,” she said.

Facebook’s director of human rights policy, Miranda Sissons, said in a statement : “Given the complexity of this work, we want these assessments to be thorough. We will report annually on how we’re addressing human rights impacts, in line with our Human Rights Policy.”

In their letter to Facebook, activists cited the UN guiding principles on business and human rights, which urge that companies should “be prepared to communicate this externally, particularly when concerns are raised by or on behalf of affected stakeholders”.

“Facebook knows its operations happen behind a veil,” Haugen said. “But when we speak to each other, we begin to see a larger, more comprehensive view. We must push for mandatory transparency.”

“Unless Facebook is required to publish, India will not get the safety it deserves,” she added.

Reuters contributed to this report

Pakistan woman sentenced to death for ‘blasphemous’ Whatsapp messages

Woman denies charges, says she is practicing Muslim

Maroosha Muzaffar

A 26-year-old Pakistani woman has been sentenced to death by a local court for sending allegedly blasphemous messages on WhatsApp and Facebook.

Aneeqa Ateeq was found guilty by a court in Rawalpindi on Wednesday after a complaint against her was registered under Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws.

Ms Ateeq met her accuser, Farooq Hassanat, online in 2019 through a gaming app. Over time, they began interacting on WhatsApp and Facebook. Mr Hassanat claimed that Ms Ateeq “deliberately and intentionally defiled sacred religious personalities and insulted the religious beliefs of Muslims”.

He claimed that he asked her to delete the “blasphemous” messages but she refused, following which their friendship soured, and he filed a complaint with the cyber crime wing of the Federal Investigation Agency in Pakistan. It arrested Ms Ateeq in May 2020.

Ms Ateeq has said that she is a practising Muslim and has denied all charges.

“I can’t comment on the judgement as the issue is very sensitive,” her lawyer Syeda Rashida Zainab told the Guardian.

In recent years, Pakistan – which has some of the world’s strictest blasphemy laws – has even asked social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to help them identify citizens suspected of blasphemy. These charges can carry the death penalty.

About 80 people are currently in prison on charges of blasphemy, according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, with half of them sentenced to death. But so far there have been no executions related to blasphemy.

Last August, an eight-year-old boy had been charged with blasphemy in Pakistan, forcing him and his family to go into hiding. The local police had said that the Hindu boy — the youngest person to be charged with blasphemy in the country — was accused of urinating in the library of a madrassa, an Islamic religious school.

In several instances, mere accusations of blasphemy have led to mob violence and deadly attacks in the Islamic country.

In December, 48-year-old Sri Lankan Priyantha Diyawadanage, who was working as a manager in a factory in Sialkot city was lynched by a mob after he was accused of blasphemy for removing religious posters from the factory walls.

Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan called the incident a “day of shame” for the country. More than 100 people were arrested after protests erupted across the country against the killing.

Some 100 Israeli soldiers break into Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque

HEBRON, Monday, January 24, 2021 (WAFA) – Some 100 Israeli soldiers today broke into the Ibrahimi Mosque in the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

Ministry of Endowments (Awqaf) and Islamic Affairs slammed the military intrusion into the site as “a very serious indication of the Israeli occupation authorities’ intention to impose total control over the site and turn it into a synagogue.”

Twenty six years ago, Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein broke into the Ibrahimi Mosque and opened fire at Palestinian Muslim worshippers, killing 29. Four Palestinians were killed on the same day in the clashes that broke out around the Mosque in response to the massacre.

In the aftermath, the mosque, known to Jews as Tomb of the Patriarchs, was divided in two, with the larger part turned into a synagogue while heavy scrutiny was imposed on the Palestinians and areas closed completely to them, including an important market and the main street, Shuhada street.

An estimated 800 notoriously aggressive Israeli settlers live under the protection of thousands of soldiers in Hebron’s city center. The city is home to over 30,000 Palestinians.

Israel uses the Jewish nationalist name “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the occupied West Bank to reinforce its bogus claims to the territory and to give them a veneer of historical and religious legitimacy.

Such Israeli measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 54-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.

K.F.

Afghan women suffer discrimination under Taliban rule: report

fb/ajk 20.01.2022

“The crisis in Afghanistan has made an already challenging situation for women workers even worse,” Ramin Behzad, Senior Coordinator of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) for Afghanistan said, referring to a report conducted by the ILO.

UN agencies on Tuesday asked donors for USD 4.4 bn (EUR 3.88 bn) in humanitarian aid for Afghanistan in 2022, calling the funds an “essential stop...see more

The report “examines the effect of the August 15 Taliban takeover on Afghanistan’s economy and offers projections on how employment levels will fare in 2022. The projected scenarios are based on a multitude of factors including migration out of the country, the participation of women in the workforce and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.”

According to the ILO research, Afghan women’s employment levels fell by an estimated 16 percent in the third quarter of 2021.

Moreover, Women’s employment is expected to be 21 percent lower, than it was before the Taliban takeover by mid-2022 if current conditions continue.

“Based on the ILO’s estimations, thousands of Afghan workers have experienced job losses and reduced working hours due to the economic crisis. Current estimated employment levels are low compared to what they might have been if there had been no change in the government (...) with women disproportionately affected,” the report stressed.

The Taliban will only allow women to work subject to their interpretation of Islamic law, prompting some to leave jobs out of fear of punishment. Hard-won gains in women’s rights over the last two decades have been quickly reversed.

Taliban soldiers in Kabul. Photo: PAP/EPA/STR


Afghan women demand their rights be respected during protest in Kabul

Dozens of Afghan women took to the streets of Kabul on Tuesday, demanding their rights be respected and the Taliban stop killing people associated...see more

Afghan women are afraid to work

“In the past, we had so much work to do,” Sohaila Noori, a 29-year-old Afghan entrepreneur and founder of a tailoring business in Kabul said.

“We had different types of contracts, we could easily pay a salary to our master tailors and other workers, but currently we have no contracts,” she added, referring to the fact that the tailor used to employ 80 people, now having only 30 employees.

“Mostly, our families are worried about our safety. They repeatedly call us when we do not reach home on time, but we all continue to work (...) because we have economic problems,” one of the women who continue to work at the tailoring business stressed.


source: REUTERS

Pope confers lay ministries on women, formalising recognition of roles


By Philip Pullella

2022/1/24

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Sunday for the first time conferred the lay Roman Catholic ministries of lector and catechist on women, roles that previously many had carried out without institutional recognition.

He conferred the ministries at a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, where, in an apparent reference to resistance to change by some conservative, he criticised those who need to have rigid regulations and "more rules" in order to find God.

Last year, Francis changed Church law on the ministries of lector and acolyte, which mainly had been reserved to seminarians preparing for priesthood, saying he wanted to bring stability and public recognition to women already serving in the roles.

Lectors read from scripture, acolytes serve at Mass, and catechists teach the faith to children and adult converts.

The ministries of lector and acolyte existed before but were officially reserved to men. Francis instituted the ministry of the catechist last year.

At Sunday's Mass the pope installed six women and two men as lectors and three women and five men as catechists. Francis gave a bible to each lector and a crucifix to each catechist.

The formalisation, including a conferral ceremony, will make it more difficult for conservative bishops to block women in their dioceses from taking on those roles.

The change will be particularly important as a recognition for women in places such as the Amazon, where some are the de facto religious leaders of remote communities hit by a severe shortage of priests.

The Vatican stressed that the roles are not a precursor to women one day being allowed to become priests. The Catholic Church teaches that only men can be priests because Jesus chose only men as his apostles.

Supporters of a female priesthood say Jesus was conforming to the customs of his times and that women played a greater role in the early Church than is commonly recognised.

Francis has appointed a number of women to senior jobs in Vatican departments previously held by men.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Tucker Carlson is pushing Vladimir Putin's expansionist dreams on US airwaves

John Stoehr
January 24, 2022

I had just finished an interview with Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon when I saw a clip of last night’s Tucker Carlson show. The segment was about Ukraine at the center of tensions between the US, NATO and Russia.

He said:
What is NATO and what is the purpose of NATO since the fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago that NATO was designed to be a bulwark against. Well, no one can answer that question. Not one person. And yet the same people who cooked up the Iraq War are now insisting that Ukraine must join NATO anyway. That would mean putting American military hardware right on Russia’s border. Russia doesn’t want that anymore than we would want Russian missiles in Tijuana.

MSNBC talking head Malcolm Nance said it was a master class in “How to openly Broadcast for America’s enemies.” He said Carlson is playing the part of a Fifth Column – or as Merriam-Webster says, “a group of secret sympathizers or supporters of an enemy that engage in espionage or sabotage within defense lines or national borders.”
 
“It is really bizarre, but unsurprising to hear Tucker Carlson repeating Russian state talking points that are over a decade old, St. Julian-Varnon said after I asked for a response to the Carlson clip.

“I've written about the connections between the alt-right and Russia. There is an echo chamber between the two that is terrifying,” she said.

She added: “The 180 turn from Republican views during the Cold War to accommodating Russian views on NATO is something to behold.”

St. Julian-Varnon is a PhD student and presidential fellow in the Department of History at Penn. Among other things, she studies African and African Diasporic racial identity in the former Soviet Union. I wanted to know more about the stakes of Ukrainian tensions.

She said the US and NATO allies could have responded more strongly after Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, took the Crimean peninsula.

They didn’t. And here we are now.

What's the status now with US-Russian relations over Ukraine?

Right now, the status is probably as tense as it has been since the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea. Russia is seeking promises that the United States and NATO cannot and do not intend on making. Particularly, NATO not expanding to include Ukraine.

This has been a Russian point of contention throughout Putin's multiple presidencies. He sees NATO as an anti-Russian military alliance, and its expansion into Ukraine is, for him, a threat.

Why does Putin see it as a threat?

NATO was created as an anti-Soviet military alliance. Arguably, since Russia was not allowed to join NATO following the collapse of the USSR, it appears to Putin that it is an anti-Russian alliance.

The level of "threat" that NATO expansion means to Russia depends on Russia's goals. If the goal is to force Ukraine to remain in Russia's political, military and economic orbit, then it is a threat.

However, NATO expansion is not an existential nor military threat to Russia. Putin is using it to rationalize his behavior.

What would he have to gain by invading?

This is the question I've been thinking about the most.

Putin, if the Russian military can take and hold it, gains probably most of Eastern Ukraine, i.e., the Ukrainian territory east of Kyiv. He has stated multiple times that this is Novorossiya or Malorossiya, the names for Ukrainian territory during Imperial Russian history.

So, if we take Putin at his word, he seeks to recreate the greater Russian imperial territory on the western border of Russia by adding the Ukrainian east.

Putin does not recognize Ukraine as a sovereign state nor Ukrainians as non-Russian people. That’s clear from his public statements.

I also think Putin would see invasion, depending on the NATO and American responses, as a clear illustration of Russia's position as a global power (rather than a regional power, as western media and policy officials like to describe it).

More worrisome is if the west fails to support Ukraine in case of an invasion, there is a devastating lesson to be learned by smaller post-Soviet states. It is better to work with Russia than suffer like Ukraine.

Let's assume there is an invasion and there is a response from the US and its allies. What would that response look like?

I'm not sure, and it seems like American and western European leaders are not sure either.

Biden's "minor incursions" gaffe in his most recent speech about the tension in Ukraine showed no consensus on what to do, but it appears there are or will be levels of response based on Russia's actions.

I don't see American or NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine.

Most likely severe sanctions on Russia yet again. More targeted sanctions like those against four Ukrainian MPs with ties to Russia. Perhaps material and weapons support and aid. Maybe support for the Ukrainian domestic fighters against the invading Russian forces.

But I remember watching the crises in Crimea and Donetsk in real-time in 2014, and my hopes for a strong US response were dashed.

So a stronger response would be better?

I think so. The 2014 response did not prevent what we’re seeing now.

But I do not think Russia anticipates nor wants a full-on war, especially with any western forces. It doesn't make sense.

Constant destabilization of Ukraine makes it less likely Ukraine will be a viable candidate to join the EU or NATO.

Can you help us understand Russian politics?

I think it depends on what you see as defining Russian politics.

I'd argue that very little that Putin does is reflective of regular Russians who are still reeling from sanctions and rampant covid infections.

Putin has consolidated power such that the Duma wields little influence on major policy. Influence and money go hand-in-hand in Russian politics, but what is more damaging is the tight hold that Putin has on the media.

Russian state-controlled media serves as a microphone for the Kremlin, and it is incredibly difficult for any Russian independent media sources to remain open.

Meduza (though based in Latvia) has been deemed a foreign agent, Memorial has been shut down (it was an incredibly important archive that preserved the life histories of Soviet people, among other things).

Moreover, the Russian Orthodox Church works as an instrument of the Kremlin. So you don't necessarily have an independent religious impulse in the largest church in the country.

And finally, elections, especially national elections, are a sham.

Opposition figures are constantly harassed and imprisoned, their offices raided. There is no open, functioning democracy in Russia.

Can you explain Putin's vision?

I think Putin's vision is to make Russia a world power again, in similar strength and influence to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

The issues with his vision of Ukraine stems from an imperialist view on Ukraine as forever a part of and linked to Russia. This predates the Soviet Union and ties back to Imperial Russia.

But the vision isn't neo-Soviet per se. We don't see Putin trying to destabilize the Baltic states, but he has maintained close ties and influence with former Soviet states in Central Asia (Russian 'peacekeepers' in Kazakhstan during the protests for example).

Putin also wants to maintain absolute control over Russia. I think the portrayal of Putin as some omniscient, mastermind of evil is overblown. What Putin does understand and has understood for a long time, is realpolitik. Money, influence, hard power. Those influence his thinking and his behavior.

In a way, Putin's behavior in Ukraine is forcing the US, European Union, and NATO to publicly show how they think about and what they will do for the states of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc that want to become part of Europe.

Will the west allow Ukraine to join the EU or NATO? Will it use military support, if necessary in an invasion?

I think these are key issues for Putin because they have real meaning on the ground.

I do want Americans and western Europeans to understand that there are millions of lives at stake here in Ukraine. No invasion will be a minor incursion, it will cost lives and destroy communities.

For the sake of Ukraine, I hope the west understands this.

John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.

Black Texas farmers were finally on track to get federal aid. The state’s agriculture commissioner is helping stop that.

Texas Tribune
January 24, 2022

Texas Agricultural commissioner Sid Miller.

Igalious “Ike” Mills grew up working his family’s farm in the Piney Woods town of Nacogdoches. His siblings still keep it running, relying on a lot of the same equipment used by their father and grandfather.

Mills, who is Black, spends much of his energy trying to connect a dwindling number of Black farmers with state and federal programs that can help them keep their operations running. So it was welcome news last year when Congress passed a law intended to help cover the debts of thousands of “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers” and correct the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s historic discrimination, long recognized by the agency itself.

But Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller stepped in. He is among the many white litigants challenging the law, which a federal judge temporarily blocked as court cases play out. And even though Miller filed the suit in April as a private citizen, Mills says his perch as the state’s agriculture commissioner is stoking frustration from farmers of color who already distrust the government.

“They’re disappointed, number one,” said Mills, who is director of the Texas Agriforestry Small Farmers and Ranchers. “And like some of them are saying, ‘Oh, here we go again.’ That pushes us back even further in terms of trying to engage Black landowners to participate in USDA programs.”

Nationally, Black farmers have lost more than 12 million acres of farmland over the past century, according to the Washington Post, due to biased government policies and discriminatory business practices. In 1920, there were over 925,000 Black farmers in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But by 1997, their numbers had fallen to just under 18,500.

Recent data suggest the USDA continues to disproportionately reject Black farmers for loans. According to a CNN analysis, 42% of Black farmers were rejected for direct USDA loans in 2021, more than any other demographic group

Last March, Congress passed a sweeping debt relief program for farmers of color. The culmination of 20 years of advocacy, the law would have provided $4 billion worth of debt relief for loans many of them had taken on to stay afloat while being passed over for financial programs and assistance their white counterparts had an easier time obtaining. Black farmers made up about a quarter of those targeted in the bill.

Texas Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller spoke to people protesting mask mandates at the Governor’s Mansion in Austin in 2020. Credit: Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune


As agriculture commissioner, Miller leads an agency tasked with “advocat[ing] for policies at the federal, state, and local level” beneficial to Texas’s agriculture sector and “provid[ing] financial assistance to farmers and ranchers,” among other duties. In a statement to The Texas Tribune, Miller called the debt relief program “facially illegal and constitutionally impermissible.”

“Such a course will lead only to disunity and discord,” Miller said. “Shame on the Biden Administration for authorizing a program it knows was unambiguously illegal, instead of enacting a proper relief bill that complies with the laws and constitution of the United States.”

But advocates of the program saw it as an attempt to make Black farmers whole after years of USDA discrimination.

USDA press secretary Kate Waters told the Tribune that she couldn’t comment on ongoing litigation. She added the agency is establishing an equity commission of about 30 non-USDA employees to help identify how the USDA can eliminate structural barriers to various programs.

“There is a long history of racism at USDA. It’s a lot to unpack,” Waters said. “We’re on the case and we’re here to regain trust.”

But Mills said Miller’s lawsuit is undermining existing efforts to build trust. A federal judge’s halt to the program, thanks in part to Miller’s challenge, paused the USDA’s plans to start paying the loans in June, with eligible farmers and ranchers expected to receive an additional 20% loan to cover the tax burden associated with the relief.

The lawsuit is “like a slap in the face for Black farmers. That just elevates another level of mistrust that we shouldn’t have to deal with,” he said. “They have to understand what we’re trying to develop here. That’s counterproductive.”

Roy Mills, right, drives a tractor loaded with hay around a pasture as his brother Ike walks behind him, distributing the hay in clumps. Credit: Meridith Kohut for The Texas Tribune

History of discrimination, mistrust

A red clay road lined with pine and oak trees leads to Mills’ family farm in Nacogdoches. While much of the equipment his brother uses to keep the farm going is old and needs replacing, the Mills family instead shares equipment with other Black farmers.

Born in 1953, Mills recalls shopping at a white-owned feed store that allowed his family to buy goods on credit until his dad got the money, oftentimes through selling bales of cotton, the farm’s primary export. The store essentially served as the family’s bank, Mills said, because access to financial institutions was “totally unheard of.”

“We had to do what we had to do to survive,” Mills said. It’s a perspective that Black farmers and ranchers share today, Mills added.

Mills also remembers milking cows and making butter with a churn as a child. Mills’ family also grew corn and raised cattle, largely for themselves. While the farm was largely self-sustaining, the family also sold cotton in the market, where Mills said buyers offered his dad lower prices than they would white farmers.

“You kind of expected that because of the Jim Crow attitude and how you’d been treated as a Black farmer and rancher,” Mills said.

And by then, Mills said, the American government had long given Black people little reason to trust it. From its earliest days, America used labor from enslaved people to build up its economy — and the generational wealth of white enslavers.

Mills pointed out how federal troops arrived in Galveston on June 19, 1865, to ensure people still being forced into labor knew their enslavement was no longer legal — over two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

“We’ve always been denied access,” Mills said. “Even when they made laws to give former slaves 40 acres and a mule and then they took that back.”

Between 1937 and 1961, Congress changed eligibility for USDA loans from farm tenants, laborers and sharecroppers to family farm owner-operators with farming training or experience. This change, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund wrote in a court filing, made it easier for county committees, which help deliver federal programs at the local level, to deny loans to Black applicants.

The federation is a nonprofit organization that provides resources to limited-resource Black farmers and landowners. It tried to intervene as a party in Miller’s lawsuit against Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. But a judge last month denied that attempt.

The history of discriminatory practices, the federation argues, saddled many Black farmers with substantial debt, driving hundreds of thousands out of agriculture altogether.

Ike and Roy Mills distribute hay around the pasture on their farm. Ike and Roy are, respectively, director and program coordinator of Nacogdoches-based Texas Agriforestry Small Farmers and Ranchers, an organization that helps connect Black farmers with state and federal programs. 

Credit: Meridith Kohut for The Texas Tribune

Census data show that the number of Black farmers in the United States decreased by 90.6% between 1920 and 1969.

Miller’s motion to block the law for excluding white farmers would only increase existing debts and worsen these trends, the federation wrote in its October motion to intervene. Farmers who made plans and purchases with the understanding they were eligible for the new federal assistance would face “severe, life-changing disadvantage” without the relief, the federation added.

If the law continues to be blocked, the federation said its members will face “irreparable harm.”

“Many Black farmers will lose their land and farming equipment to foreclosures,” the federation wrote.

Previous attempts at redress

The government acknowledged its history of discrimination in two lawsuits settled in 1999 and 2010, which jointly made thousands of Black farmers eligible for over $2 billion collectively.

The first case was known as Pigford I, named after the farmer Timothy Pigford, who filed the case alongside 400 other plaintiffs. It resulted in a settlement worth more than $1 billion. Over 13,000 farmers, able to prove they faced discrimination in USDA loan programs, were eligible for $50,000 payouts.

After the USDA denied thousands of those claims for missing deadlines, the second case came. Pigford II resulted in a $1.25 billion settlement.

But the $2.25 billion total doesn’t begin to account for the economic damages incurred by Black landowners, according to Thomas Mitchell. Nor does the $4 billion in debt relief included for farmers of color in the COVID-19 relief package signed into law this spring.

Mitchell is the co-director of Texas A&M’s Real Estate and Community Development Law program and a member of the Land Loss and Reparations Project, a research team analyzing the impact of land loss on Black wealth. The group’s preliminary analysis suggests the millions of acres lost by Black landowners over the last 100 years, known as “the great dispossession,” has resulted in over $300 billion lost.

“There’s no way that the [American Rescue Plan] represents anything approaching the level that it would take to make farmers whole,” Mitchell said. “It’s a lot more substantial than anything the federal government had done previously to try to remedy this incredible, horrible record of discrimination that’s been ongoing for 100 years.”
Fostering connections

A sweeping 1997 report by the Civil Rights Action Team — a group charged by then-Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman with developing recommendations to address institutional problems — found that improved department outreach would increase program participation among farmers of color, a failure the agency noted had increased mistrust.

“Underrepresentation of minorities on county committees and on county staffs means minority and female producers hear less about programs and have a more difficult time participating in USDA programs because they lack specific information on available services,” according to the report. “USDA does not place a priority on serving the needs of small and limited-resource farmers and has not supported any coordinated effort to address this problem.”

Today, people like Mills and Clarence Bunch of Prairie View A&M University are working to fill information gaps.

Ike and Roy Mills feed the cows at their East Texas farm, which has been in their family for three generations. Credit: Meridith Kohut for The Texas Tribune

The Agriculture and Natural Resources unit of Prairie View A&M’s Cooperative Extension Program provides knowledge to agricultural producers to help small farmers and ranchers sustain their practices and become profitable. After the American Rescue Plan passed, Bunch helped organize an educational meeting in June between USDA leaders and Texas producers.

Earlier this month, Vilsack met with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives to renew efforts to increase the number of Black and underserved southern landowners.

Similarly, the Texas agriforestry group Mills runs provides outreach to farmers who would benefit from state and federal programs but lack the necessary information to participate.

Mills is focused on getting socially disadvantaged farmers access to the kind of capital denied by slaveholders in the 19th century and then again through discriminatory loan practices in the 20th century.

“You can’t get things to put back into your farm unless you have capital,” Mills said. “The people who’re getting hurt is the ones that got the small operation and can’t get access to capital, trying to make it and trying to survive on their land.”
Black farming’s present and future

Brandon Smith, 43, has been ranching his entire life, a practice that goes back at least four generations in his family.

He learned to ranch from his grandfather, who once owned 100 acres. By the time his grandparents died, the land had been reduced to 12 acres, he said, because they could not secure loans from the USDA.

Smith’s experience was detailed in the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund’s unsuccessful motion to intervene in Miller’s lawsuits.

“It’s common knowledge that white ranchers have access to credit that Black ranchers don’t have,” he said in a declaration submitted to the court. “That’s the way it’s always been.”

The debt relief program “was a lifesaver for my sons and me,” Smith said in the declaration. But the holdup, he said, has left them vulnerable to further land loss.

With the continuous land loss, Mills said many Black farmers and ranchers worry about future Black farmers’ prospects.

“You got to make it better for the next generations coming in,” Mills said. “We got to do something to help preserve that."

Ike Mills disperses clumps of hay for his cows and does his best to ensure that each cow gets an equal share. Credit: Meridith Kohut for The Texas Tribune

Miller v. Vilsack

To successfully uphold the new law, Chase Cooper said the defendants need to outline how USDA practices caused Black and other socially disadvantaged farmers to financially suffer. Cooper — a partner with Winston & Strawn, who submitted the federation’s motion to join the suit — said the organization is better poised to fulfill that task than the USDA.

“Frankly, one should not expect the USDA to give the most robust portrayal of discrimination within itself,” Cooper said. “It’s very important for the people who stand to gain or lose from this litigation to be directly heard and to be a part of the lawsuit.”

While U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor denied their motion in December, Cooper said the group is appealing that decision. O’Connor’s past rulings against a key Obamacare provision and transgender children’s right to use the bathroom of their identity have made his court a favorite among Texas conservatives.

Some big conservative names have gotten behind Miller’s lawsuit. The effort has been sponsored by America First Legal, a group founded by Stephen Miller and other Trump-era officials as a conservative version of the ACLU.

With the courts blocking the relief, the Biden administration sought to pass a new program through the Build Back Better Act. The proposed changes would grant debt relief eligibility based on economic insecurity rather than race. But Reuters reported in December that such changes would exclude thousands of the program’s originally intended recipients.

The lawsuit has overshadowed the work done by community-based organizations to provide assistance, Mills said, which hurts existing trust-building efforts. But when it comes to ensuring the health of Black agriculture and building trust, Mills said a big piece of that puzzle will be sustained commitment from government officials.

“People, they’ve seen a lot of talk,” Mills said. “They’re going to have to see some results.”

UK court rules Julian Assange can appeal extradition to the US

Sinéad Baker

Julian Assange. Jack Taylor/Getty Images


A British court ruled that Assange can appeal the December decision that he can be extradited to the US.

The WikiLeaks founder faces hacking and espionage charges in the US.

Assange can now bring his case to the UK Supreme Court.

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been allowed to appeal the decision that he can be extradited to the US, a British court ruled Monday.

The High Court in London said that Assange can appeal a December ruling that he can be extradited to the US, where he faces multiple charges. It means his case can now go to the UK Supreme Court.

The court had in December reversed an earlier court ruling that said Assange could not be extradited to the US because he was at risk of suicide and self-harm in the US.

The summary of that decision said the US had assured the UK that Assange would "receive appropriate clinical and psychological treatment" in the US. The US also said it would let Assange serve his sentence in Australia, his home country, if he asks to do so.

Assange faces 18 charges in the US. The country accused him of conspiring to hack government computers and breaching the Espionage Act when WikiLeaks published a trove of confidential military and diplomatic documents in 2010.

Assange had for years lived in Ecuador's embassy in London as an asylum seeker. He was brought to a UK prison when Ecuador withdrew its protection over him in in April 2019, and the police dragged him out.

The US then requested to extradite him.

Human-rights groups say Assange should not be criminalized for sharing information in the public interest, and that he would not be safe in the US.

UK: High Court grants Julian Assange right to appeal extradition case to the Supreme Court

RSF_en

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomes the High Court’s decision to allow Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange to appeal to the Supreme Court, seeking review of his extradition case, but limited to one narrow ground. The Supreme Court will be asked to consider matters related to the US government’s provision of diplomatic assurances regarding Assange’s treatment if extradited.

On 24 January, the High Court granted Julian Assange the right to appeal to the Supreme Court, seeking review of the decision that could allow for his extradition to the US. Assange’s legal team now has 14 days to file an application with the Supreme Court, which could take several months to decide whether it will accept the case for review.

If accepted, the Supreme Court would consider matters related to the US government’s provision of diplomatic assurances regarding Assange’s treatment, which were filed only prior to the appeal stage of proceedings, meaning the assurances were not scrutinised in the evidentiary portion of the extradition hearing. The High Court granted permission for Assange to file an application on this ground due to the lateness of the US government’s provision of these diplomatic assurances.

“We welcome the High Court’s decision to allow Julian Assange the right to appeal his extradition case to the Supreme Court. This case will have enormous implications for journalism and press freedom around the world, and could be hugely precedent-setting. It deserves consideration by the highest court in the land. We very much hope that the Supreme Court will indeed accept the case for review,” said RSF’s Director of International Campaigns Rebecca Vincent, who was present in court for the hearing.

This decision follows the High Court’s ruling of 10 December 2021 by the same judges, overturning the District Judge’s decision of 4 January 2021 barring extradition on mental health grounds. The High Court had ruled in favour of the US government’s appeal, on the basis of the diplomatic assurances provided regarding Assange’s treatment if extradited.

RSF believes that Assange has been targeted for his contributions to journalism, as Wikileaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked classified documents in 2010 informed extensive public interest reporting around the world, exposing war crimes and human rights violations that have never been prosecuted. If he faces trial in the US, Assange would not be able to argue a public interest defence, as the Espionage Act lacks such a provision. Assange’s prosecution would set a dangerous precedent that would have lasting implications for journalism and press freedom around the world.

RSF is also gravely concerned by the state of Assange’s mental and physical health, which remain at great risk in conditions of prolonged detention in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison – risks that would be severely exacerbated if the US succeeds in securing his extradition. In December it was revealed that he had suffered a mini-stroke in prison during the appellate hearing, and in January it was reported that Covid infections were again on the rise in Belmarsh prison.

The UK and US are respectively ranked 33rd and 44th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

WAGE SLAVERY 
With tips, restaurants can pay workers as little as $2 an hour. 

It's why no one's coming back to work.

insider@insider.com (Paul Constant) 

© Provided by Business Insider Tipped service workers in more than 40 states are only guaranteed $2.13 an hour from their employers. Noam Galai/Getty Images

Paul Constant is a writer at Civic Ventures and the cohost of the "Pitchfork Economics" podcast.
He spoke with Saru Jayaraman of UC Berkeley's Food Labor Research Center about tipped workers.
Some workers earn only $2.13 an hour and are leaving the industry as a result, Jayaraman said.

"Prior to the pandemic, the restaurant industry was the largest and fastest-growing private sector employer in the US," Saru Jayaraman, director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California Berkeley, said on the latest episode of "Pitchfork Economics." But restaurants have also always been one of the lowest-paying sectors of the economy.

We frequently refer to the federal minimum wage as $7.25 per hour, but the truth is that $7.25 isn't the lowest an employer can legally get away with paying their workers. The actual lowest wage an American worker can legally be paid is what we call the subminimum wage, which currently still stands at $2.13 per hour for tipped employees.

Tipped workers in more than 40 states around the nation take home less than the $7.25 minimum wage from their employers, with customer tips making up the rest of their paychecks. Jayaraman, the author most recently of "One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America," said this has to change.

The subminimum wage for tipped workers is a racist practice, Jayaraman said, which dates back to the time of the Emancipation Proclamation "when the restaurant lobby first demanded the right to hire newly freed slaves, not pay them anything at all, and have them live entirely on this newfangled concept that had come from Europe at the time called tipping."

Essentially, the subminimum wage allows restaurant owners to outsource their payroll expenses to customers. And the tipping system isn't some libertarian's ideal free-market system in which the most efficient workers are tipped exactly what they're worth. Women and people of color who work for tips always earn significantly "less than white, male tipped workers," Jayaraman said, "because of the biases we all carry as customers. That got even worse during the pandemic."

Employer justifications for the subminimum wage tend to fall apart under the slightest examination. The restaurant industry clearly doesn't need to pay less than the minimum wage to survive because seven states around the country have eliminated the tipped minimum wage, requiring restaurant owners to pay their employees at least the state's full minimum wage. These states still have a wide variety of restaurants of all kinds.

This isn't a partisan issue or a matter of more or less prosperous states, either: States with no tipped minimum wage include progressive hotbeds with large wealthy urban areas like California and Washington and red states with relatively low populations and huge rural expanses like Montana and Alaska.

Restaurant workers in these seven states have for years taken home more than the federal tipped minimum wage per hour with no negative effects on the restaurant industry. In fact, Denny's CFO Robert Verostek told shareholders last year that the chain's diners in California — which at the time had a $14 minimum wage and no tipped wage — "outperformed the system" with "six consecutive years of positive guest traffic — not just positive sales, but positive guest traffic — as the minimum wage was going up."

The pandemic has worsened conditions for restaurant workers, and many of them have decided that the subminimum wage isn't worth the hassle. Jayaraman serves as president for the nonprofit One Fair Wage, which last year surveyed 3,000 restaurant workers who left their jobs during the Great Resignation and found that 54% of respondents said they were abandoning the industry entirely.

Of those leaving restaurant work, "nearly eight in 10 say the only thing that would make them stay or come back is a full livable wage with tips on top," Jayaraman said. Two bucks and a sprinkling of pocket change per hour isn't enough to convince them to navigate the racism and sexual harassment that servers routinely face, in addition to all the problems that come with working a public-facing job during a pandemic.

"They are not having it. They're not putting up with it anymore," Jayaraman said.