ANOTHER STUPID SELFIE STORY

Indian official fined after draining reservoir in search of mobile phone

Rajesh Vishwas dropped phone into Paraklot reservoir in Chhattisgarh state while taking a selfie

Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 31 May 2023 

An Indian official who drained a reservoir to retrieve a mobile he dropped while taking a selfie has been fined 53,092 rupees (£520) by the government.

Rajesh Vishwas, a food inspector, had dropped his new phone worth about £1,000 into the Paralkot reservoir in Chhattisgarh state while taking a selfie during a picnic and swim with friends.

Local people spent two days attempting to dive down and retrieve the phone from the water, but their efforts proved futile. So Vishwas hired a diesel pump and emptied the reservoir of millions of litres of water.

Vishwas claimed his phone contained sensitive government information, which was why it needed to be retrieved, and alleged he had been given “verbal permission” to pump out the water into a nearby canal by the water resources department.

The water resources department later stated it had given permission for a few feet to be drained but “not that much”.


Indian official suspended after draining reservoir to retrieve phone

Though Vishwas eventually did manage to find the phone, his efforts made local headlines and then gradually went viral. He was accused of misusing his position and triggered outrage at the scale of wasted water, which is a scarce and valuable resource in India during the hot summer months and was used locally from the reservoir by farmers to irrigate their fields.

His actions landed him in hot water with government officials. Vishwas claimed they had been “overblown”, but he was suspended from his job and put under investigation by the state authorities.

This week he was given a total fine of 53,092 rupees by the state’s irrigation department, which accused him of wasting 4.1m litres of water. His actions were described as illegal and he was told to pay a fine of 10,000 rupees as well as an additional 43,092 rupees to cover the cost of the wasted water.

Meanwhile, after three days at the bottom of the reservoir, Vishwas’s phone proved broken beyond repair.

HOLLOYWOOD BABALON;SCIENTOLOGY
Danny Masterson, star of That ’70s Show, found guilty of rape

The charges against Danny Masterson date to a period when he was at the height of his fame, starring from 1998 until 2006 as Steven Hyde on Fox’s That ‘70s Show. Photograph: Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty Images

47-year-old actor, who allegedly drugged women’s drinks, faces up to 30 years in prison after jury finds him guilty

Associated Press

Wed 31 May 2023 

Danny Masterson, the actor best known for his role in That ’70s Show, was found guilty of two counts of rape on Wednesday in a Los Angeles retrial in which the Church of Scientology played a central role.

The jury of seven women and five men reached the verdict after deliberating for seven days spread over two weeks. They could not reach a verdict on the third count, that alleged Masterson raped a longtime girlfriend. They had voted 8-4 in favor of conviction.

Masterson was led from the courtroom in handcuffs. The 47-year-old actor faces up to 30 years in prison.

His wife, actor and model Bijou Phillips, wept as he was led away. Other family and friends sat stone-faced.

Prosecutors, retrying Masterson after a deadlocked jury led to a mistrial in December, said he forcibly raped three women, including a longtime girlfriend, in his Hollywood Hills home between 2001 and 2003. They told jurors he drugged the women’s drinks so he could rape them. They said he used his prominence in the church – where all three women were also members at the time – to avoid consequences for decades.

Masterson did not testify, and his lawyers called no witnesses. The defense argued that the acts were consensual, and attempted to discredit the women’s stories by highlighting changes and inconsistencies over time, which they said showed signs of coordination between them.

“If you decide that a witness deliberately lied about something in this case,” defense attorney Philip Cohen told jurors, “you should consider not believing anything that witness says.”

The Church of Scientology played a significant role in the first trial but arguably an even larger one in the second. Judge Charlaine F Olmedo allowed expert testimony on church policy from a former official in Scientology leadership who has become a prominent opponent.

Tensions ran high in the courtroom between current and former Scientologists, and even leaked into testimony, with the accusers saying on the stand that they felt intimidated by some members in the room.

Actor Leah Remini, a former member who has become the church’s highest-profile critic, sat in on the trial at times, putting her arm around one of the accusers to comfort her during closing arguments.


Founded in 1953 by L Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology has many members who work in Hollywood. The judge kept limits on how much prosecutors could talk about the church, and primarily allowed it to explain why the women took so long to go to authorities.

The women testified that when they reported Masterson to church officials, they were told they were not raped, were put through ethics programs themselves, and were warned against going to law enforcement to report a member of such high standing.

“They were raped, they were punished for it, and they were retaliated against,” the deputy district attorney, Reinhold Mueller, told jurors in his closing argument. “Scientology told them there’s no justice for them. You have the opportunity to show them there is justice.”

The church vehemently denied having any policy that forbids members from going to secular authorities.

Testimony in this case was graphic and emotional. Two women, who knew Masterson from social circles in the church, said he gave them drinks and that they then became woozy or passed out before he violently raped them in 2003.

The third, Masterson’s then-girlfriend of five years, said she awoke to find him raping her, and had to pull his hair to stop him.

The issue of drugging also played a major role in the retrial. At the first, Olmedo only allowed prosecutors and accusers to describe their disorientation, and to imply that they were drugged. The second time, they were allowed to argue it directly, and the prosecution attempted to make it a major factor, to no avail.

“The defendant drugs his victims to gain control,” said the deputy district attorney, Ariel Anson, in her closing argument. “He does this to take away his victims’ ability to consent.”

Masterson was not charged with any counts of drugging, and there is no toxicology evidence to back up the assertion. His attorney asked for a mistrial over the issue’s inclusion. The motion was denied, but the issue is likely to be a major factor in any potential appeal.

These charges date to a period when Masterson was at the height of his fame, starring from 1998 until 2006 as Steven Hyde on Fox’s That ’70s Show – the show that made stars of Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace.

Masterson had reunited with Kutcher on the 2016 Netflix comedy The Ranch, but was written off the show when an LAPD investigation was revealed in December 2017.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

‘People wanted to believe the fairytale’: the downfall of Elizabeth Holmes

Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos. Photograph: Jeff Chiu/AP

Disgraced founder of fraudulent blood-testing company Theranos begins prison sentence

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes begins 11-year sentence

Kari Paul in San Francisco

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 30 May 2023

Elizabeth Holmes has begun her prison sentence, in a remarkable fall for a startup founder who had become an icon known far outside Silicon Valley.

Holmes, 39, had once promised to revolutionize the medical world, but was convicted in January 2022 on four counts of defrauding investors in her blood-testing company, Theranos.


Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes turns herself in for 11-year prison term

It was a stunning turn for an entrepreneur who had once riveted the tech world. Holmes dropped out of Stanford University in 2003 at the age of 19, set on developing a company that would turn upside down the field of medical diagnostics.

She had filed a patent for a technology that aimed to perform a wide range of tests on a small amount of blood, a development that would eliminate the need for large blood samples for diagnostics.

For years, Theranos operated in stealth mode. But by 2013, it started attracting widespread attention and Holmes became a media darling, easily recognizable with her distinctive blond hair, black turtlenecks and husky voice.

“Here was a photogenic, telegenic young woman posing as the female Steve Jobs,” Margaret O’Mara, a historian of Silicon Valley who holds a professorship at the University of Washington, said ahead of Holmes’s trial. “It was an incredibly alluring narrative that everyone wanted to believe.”

“Holmes was going to be the first woman who reached billionaire status and join the pantheon of tech leaders,” said John Carreyrou, the Wall Street Journal reporter whose investigation into the company was key to exposing its lies. “People were really rooting for her – young girls were writing her letters. A lot of people wanted to believe the fairytale, because it would have represented real progress in a very male-dominated world of Silicon Valley.”

Led by Holmes and her co-executive, and former romantic partner, Sunny Balwani, Theranos would end up raising hundreds of millions of dollars from investors. Big-name board members, including the former US secretary of defense James Mattis and former US secretaries of state George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, gave the company an air of legitimacy, even though behind the scenes it had little scientific proof to show for its claims. Theranos and Walgreens cut a major deal to distribute the company’s testing devices in pharmacies across the US.

At its height, Theranos was valued at more than $9bn and Holmes became the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire in 2015. That same year, however, the fairytale would start to fall apart.

It began with a 2015 article by Carreyrou that revealed Theranos’s revolutionary technology wasn’t exactly what it seemed. Over the succeeding months, Carreyrou exposed how the testing devices Holmes said could perform a variety of medical tests with just a drop of blood were not actually being used to perform most of the analyses.

After scrutiny from regulators, Theranos started to retract its tests and recall its machines. Holmes stepped down as CEO in June 2018, with the company dissolving that same year.

Holmes settled with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which accused her of an “elaborate, years-long fraud”. But the US government charged Holmes and Balwani with defrauding both investors and patients, and making false claims about the effectiveness of the company’s technology.

Delayed by the pandemic and the birth of Holmes’s first child, the media-hyped trial kicked off in August 2021. It would last four months, with the jury in the San Jose courtroom hearing testimony from former employees, investors like Mattis and Holmes herself.

In her testimony, Holmes argued she understood Theranos’s technology to be more accurate than it was and her defense team portrayed her as under the influence of Balwani.

Still, the jury convicted her of four counts of defrauding investors, and in November 2022 she was sentenced to serve more than 11 years in prison.

Holmes’s conviction was a crucial moment in Silicon Valley, the central hub of an industry where the ethos of “fake it till you make it” has reigned for years.

The Silicon Valley investor Jason Calacanis, who was an early backer of major firms like Uber and Robinhood, said the verdict was a “reminder to founders”.

“Never lie, never bend the truth, always be honest about where you are at with your traction, especially when raising money,” he tweeted.

It was also an important moment for workers in the sector. Several former Theranos employees testified during the trial they had long suspected the company could not deliver on its promises, but felt they could not raise questions and risked being sued if they spoke out.

Holmes had been out on bail since she was indicted, and after her sentencing had unsuccessfully argued she should be able to remain out of custody while she sought a new trial.

In her last weeks of freedom, she broke her media silence with an extensive profile in the New York Times about her time at Theranos, her mistakes as an entrepreneur, and her life as a mother and partner to her husband, Billy Evans.

Holmes is serving her sentence at the federal prison camp Bryan, a minimum-security facility in Texas. Under federal law, she’s required to serve 85% of her sentence, even if it is reduced for good conduct. She faces three years of supervised release after her sentence ends and has been ordered to pay $452m in restitution to victims of the fraud.

Bryan prison houses primarily white-collar and non-violent female prisoners, and lacks the fencing and strict rules of higher-security prisons. It is a work-focused program that requires all inmates to hold a job for a minimum of 90 days.

30 YEARS LATER

Thelma and Louise review – punchier, bolder, hotter and sweatier than ever

Still has the power to stun … Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis in Thelma and Louise. Photograph: Snap/Rex Features

Callie Khouri’s feminist crime classic is a masterclass in narrative and character development and director Ridley Scott delivers pure action brio

Review

FIVE OUT OF FIVE STARS
Peter Bradshaw

THE GUARDIAN
Wed@ 31 May 2023

Screenwriter Callie Khouri’s desperada road-movie thriller Thelma & Louise is the classic whose Bechdel test credentials go all the way up to the title. Just over 30 years later, it looks punchier, bolder, hotter and sweatier than ever. This is a masterclass in narrative construction and character development and director Ridley Scott puts his pedal to the metal with pure action brio; I always particularly love the shot where the camera lovingly counter-swooshes back along the flank of the Thunderbird while it barrels down the highway, for the pure hell of it. It is a feminist crime classic in the tradition of Gun Crazy and Bonnie and Clyde, whose two heroines, played by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, get the Polaroid camera out for the most famous selfie in film history. And that ending – although arguably a concession to the idea of crime not being allowed to pay – still has the power to stun.

The film is the story of two friends. Louise Sawyer (Sarandon) is a worldly wise woman waiting tables in a diner in Arkansas, whose supposed boyfriend, Jimmy (Michael Madsen) never seems to be around. Louise’s younger best friend is housewife Thelma Dickinson, a role in which Davis gave a wonderfully sweet-natured, innocent, vulnerable performance; it briefly made her an A-list star and we should have a twinge of regret thinking about the roles Davis should have been offered after this. Thelma is being bullied and cheated on by her boorish husband Darryl (Christopher McDonald) and longs for some escape. Then Louise offers her a special girls-only weekend break in a fishing cabin she’s managed to borrow – just the two of them, taking off for some fun in Louise’s sleek T-Bird.

The pair stop off for drinks at a roadhouse where Thelma dances and then goes outside with a creep who tries to rape her. Louise pulls a gun on him in the parking lot, and the chilling ruthlessness of the result, still startling even now, turns the two women into fugitives from the law. But the experience makes them more alive and wide-awake than they have been in their lives. Harvey Keitel is the kindly state cop who tries to get Thelma and Louise to turn themselves in peaceably, and Brad Pitt made his debut as the sweet-talking young rascal for whom Thelma briefly falls, but who turns out to be (almost) as bad as the rest of the menfolk.

Essentially Thelma & Louise is a rape-revenge film, and Khouri and Scott adroitly show you that the rape that it is a revenge for happened a long time before this story started: the gunshot discharges the backstory’s pent-up frustration and rage. Another writer might have given us a set-piece reminiscence making everything explicit, or even a flashback; Khouri gives us just a glancing line in the dialogue, a bitter joke about why Louise never goes to Texas any more. The movie gives us just motivation in the tank and keeps the momentum going.

There are so many great moments. Louise seeing what appears at first to be a freckle in the bathroom mirror – but is in fact blood, which she fiercely wipes away. We get some great comedy when Thelma tells Louise to shoot the cop’s radio, and poor innocent Louise thinks she means the radio he’s listening to music on. And then there’s the outrageous action-movie explosion provided by the two heroines symbolically shooting the odious truck-driver’s phallically shaped lorry by the roadside with its flammable load.

It all leads up to the Butch and Sundance finale in the Grand Canyon; perhaps tougher and more shocking than Butch and Sundance in that there is no escape into ambiguity. A warm welcome back to this great popular film.

Thelma and Louise is released on 2 June in UK cinemas, and is screening now in select Australian cinemas.

Kosovo: ‘fascist mobs’ guided by Serbia causing violence, says country’s PM

A soldier from the Nato-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo sets up a razor wire fence in front of a municipal building in Zvecan, Kosovo, on Wednesday. Photograph: Georgi Licovski/EPA

More than 30 Nato peacekeeping soldiers were injured in clashes on Monday after ethnic Albanian mayors took office

Shaun Walker in Bratislava and Lorenzo Tondo

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 30 May 2023 

Kosovo’s prime minister has blamed violence in the north of the country on “fascist mobs” controlled by the government of neighbouring Serbia, and said he had rejected a US request to relocate recently installed mayors out of their official offices.

More than 30 Nato peacekeeping soldiers were injured in clashes on Monday, prompting the alliance to announce it would send another 700 troops to the country. Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vučić put his country’s army on high combat alert.

The Nato peacekeeping mission, Kfor, said Italian and Hungarian peacekeepers were subjected to “unprovoked attacks and sustained trauma wounds with fractures and burns due to the explosion of incendiary devices”.


Kosovo clashes: Nato commander criticises ‘unacceptable’ attacks on troops

“Yesterday was very severe, we were very lucky that no life was lost,” Kosovo prime minister Albin Kurti told the Guardian by telephone from Pristina on Tuesday. He said “several” Nato peacekeepers were still in hospital.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called the attacks “unacceptable and irresponsible”.

The violence came after ethnic Albanian mayors took office in Serb-majority areas of northern Kosovo, after elections in April which Serbs boycotted. Kurti blamed Belgrade for orchestrating the boycott, which led to an extremely low turnout.


00:50Kosovo: Serb protesters throw teargas at Nato soldiers as internal frictions escalate – video

The area’s majority Serbs have never accepted Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia, and consider Belgrade their capital more than two decades after the Kosovo Albanian uprising against repressive Serbian rule.

Ethnic Albanians make up more than 90% of the population in Kosovo, but northern Serbs have long demanded the implementation of an EU-brokered 2013 deal for the creation of an association of autonomous municipalities in their area.

The violence has been widely condemned, but western allies of Kosovo have also sharply criticised the government in Pristina for the decision to install the mayors.

On Friday, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, issued an unusually strong rebuke to a US ally, saying the decision to use force to access municipal buildings in the north had been taken “against the advice” of the US and European partners and had “sharply and unnecessarily escalated tensions”.

Kurti expressed his displeasure at the statement, calling it “appeasement” of Vučić.

“I think it’s not just unfair and wrong and hurtful but at the same time very naive,” said Kurti, speaking to the Guardian by telephone from Pristina. “Perhaps secretary Blinken will explain this further one day, but definitely it was not helpful.”


Since then, Kurti said he had spoken to Gabriel Escobar, the US special envoy for the Balkans. He said Escobar had asked the Kosovan authorities to move the mayors to different premises, or to have them work from home, a request he had rejected.

“We cannot have Zoom mayors, we are a democratic republic,” said Kurti. “A democratic republic cannot surrender to fascist militia,” he added.

In a sign of how much the recent events have damaged the relationship between Washington and Pristina, the US ambassador to Kosovo, Jeff Hovenier, told the Financial Times on Tuesday that the US will cancel joint military drills with Kosovo and put diplomatic meetings on hold.

“I would be surprised if, in this situation, Kosovo officials would visit the US,” Hovenier said.

Kurti insisted that the new mayors would continue to work from municipal offices.

“These are administrative, technical mayors who are necessary for smooth functioning of municipalities … I acknowledge that the political legitimacy of these mayors is low, however the legitimacy of others is zero,” he said.

Kosovo has been backed strongly by the west, but non-recognition by Russia, China and even five of the 27 EU nations has meant it has not been able to take up a seat at the UN or most other international organisations.

A deal signed earlier this year, mediated by the EU, foresaw Kosovo granting rights to Serb municipalities in the north and Belgrade agreeing to Kosovo’s accession to international institutions, but the recent violence shows that there is still a long way to go to implement the agreement.

On Tuesday, the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, told a press conference in Oslo that the alliance would send additional troops to Kosovo.

“We have decided to deploy 700 more troops from the operational reserve force for western Balkans and to put an additional battalion of reserve forces on high alertness so they can also be deployed if needed,” he said.

‘Unprecedented’ Nova Scotia wildfires expected to worsen, officials war

More than 18,000 people remain under evacuation order outside Halifax as Canadian PM Justin Trudeau pledges federal assistance

Smoke rises from a wildfire near Barrington Lake in Nova Scotia's Shelburne county.

 Photograph: Nova Scotia Government/AFP/Getty Images

Leyland Cecco in Toronto

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 31 May 2023 
Officials in the province of Nova Scotia say unprecedented wildfires that have forced thousands from their homes will keep growing despite the “water, raw muscle power and air power” deployed by fire crews.

As of Wednesday, more than 20,000 hectares of the Maritime province were burning from 13 wildfires, including three fires that considered out of control. More than 18,000 people remain under evacuation order outside Halifax, the region’s largest city. More than 200 structures, the majority of which are homes, have been destroyed by the fire. No fatalities have been recorded.

‘Like Nagasaki’: devastating wildfires will only get worse, new book warns

Hot, dry and windy conditions have seen the fire near the community of Tantallon grow to 837 hectares. Temperatures are expected to hit more than 30C this week, giving little respite to fatigued crews.

“Today could possibility be a very difficult day,” David Steeves of the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources told reporters. “Today could be a day that is very dangerous for the folks on the ground.”

Dave Meldrum, deputy chief of Halifax regional fire and emergency, said exhausted crews have been using “water, raw muscle power and air power” to fight the blazes since Sunday, using three helicopters and fire fighters from the city, province and department of national defence. Even after four days, the fires remains out of control.

For a province that typically measures the total amount of the region burned in hundreds of hectares, the record-breaking Barrington Lake blaze, stretching more than 20,000 hectares and still growing, has pushed Nova Scotia’s scarce resources to the brink. The largest ever fire recorded in Nova Scotia was in 1976 and measured 13,000 hectares.

“We’ve got more fires than we have resources to support them,” Scott Tingley, manager of forest protection at Nova Scotia’s department of natural resources, said during a news conference, adding the province is prioritizing safety and human life ahead of infrastructure.

Firefighters with Halifax regional fire and emergency work to put out fires in the Tantallon area of Nova Scotia. 

Photograph: Nova Scotia Government/AFP/Getty Images

The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said images of people fleeing their homes are “heartbreaking” and pledged federal assistance.

On Tuesday, the Nova Scotia premier, Tim Houston, announced a ban on all activity in the province’s forests, including hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, the use of off-highway vehicles and logging after six illegal burns were reported on Monday evening.

“For God’s sake, stop burning. Stop flicking cigarette butts out of the car window. Just stop it. Our resources are stretched incredibly thin right now fighting existing fires,” Houston said. “This is absolutely ridiculous with what’s happening in this province … It’s mind-boggling.”

On Wednesday, the province’s natural resources minister said the conditions Nova Scotia in are “unprecedented” and expected to worsen.

“Everything lined up for a perfect storm, if you will,” Tory Rushton told the CBC. “The dry winter, dry spring, perfectly warm breeze and warm weather in the spring has certainly not helped our province at all with this fire season.”

He said Barrington Lake fire had so far destroyed 40 structures, but added the size and speed of the fire made it difficult for officials to gauge the true scope of damage.

Officials are hopeful that rains forecast for the weekend will slow the largest fires and give crews a better chance at controlling the blazes.

AUSTRALIA

AFL Players Association criticises league’s handling of Hawthorn racism allegations

Hawthorn president Andy Gowers speaks to the media at Waverley Park in Melbourne. Photograph: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

CEO says ‘flawed’ process could prevent people speaking out

Investigation closed as Hawks hope to avoid AFL sanctions


Nino Bucci

THE GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA

Wed 31 May 2023 

The AFL Players Association has criticised the league for its “flawed” process of investigating allegations of racism at Hawthorn, saying it could make people hesitant to report concerns in future.

In a statement the AFLPA’s chief executive, Paul Marsh, said it had “serious concerns about the AFL’s process” which was “not truly independent”.

“The allegations raised by players and their families as part of Hawthorn’s Binmada Report were extremely serious and disturbing in nature and required an independent, wide-ranging, well-resourced and culturally safe process,” Marsh said.

He said the issue “presents the industry with an urgent need to reflect on whether the right industry-wide reporting systems, commitments and levels of accountability exist to ensure this does not happen again”.


Hawthorn racism review: ‘no adverse findings’ against trio as AFL inquiry ends

The AFLPA has proposed a human rights policy and framework to the league as part of ongoing collective bargaining agreement negotiations.

“Until this work is done, we hold considerable fears that players and other members of our industry who suffer racism, sexism or other forms of exclusion or discrimination will be hesitant to raise concerns or share their experiences,” Marsh said.

The Hawthorn president, Andy Gowers, has admitted that closing the investigation into alleged racism within the AFL club does not represent a “total resolution” of the matter, and said he hoped the league would not go on to sanction the club.

Gowers spoke to media on Wednesday morning, after the AFL revealed that an independent panel would make no adverse findings against the three former Hawthorn staff who were linked to the allegations: Alastair Clarkson, Chris Fagan and Jason Burt. All three have strongly denied any wrongdoing.

“The announcement last night by the AFL, in one sense, is a step towards a resolution, a broader resolution, but it’s only one part of it, because it only involves the players,” Gowers said.

“A final resolution will involve us, the AFL and also our former staff on top of that. So there’s mixed emotions. Because although it was a resolution for one or two parties in a sense, it’s not total resolution and we’re not able to move on completely.”

The AFL is still considering sanctions against Hawthorn for any potential breaches of AFL rules in relation to the allegations.

Gowers said that in a “perfect world” the club would not be sanctioned, with penalties including fines or the stripping of draft picks among the options reportedly being considered.

“We’re disappointed that this is the nature of the discussion. We went into this with the best of intentions. Where it ended up, no one is happy about. That’s clear,” he said.

“But the dialogue between all parties has not been able to happen to this point. We would welcome that and we think that that is an opportunity for people to be heard, to tell their truth and to heal, as I said before.”

Gowers expressed regret that the former First Nations players and staff had all been unable to speak to the club about their version of events. But he agreed with sentiments expressed multiple times by AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan on Tuesday night that the way in which the report was made public influenced the club’s ability to be able to do this properly.


How the Hawthorn racism inquiry became an interminable mess where everyone loses

“As Gil said last night, it was leaked and that blew everything up,” Gowers said.

In April 2022, the Age reported multiple concerns the former Hawk Cyril Rioli and his wife Shannyn Ah Sam-Rioli had regarding the player’s time at the club.

The club asked the former AFL player Phil Egan to investigate its history. The terms of reference, according to the report, included to “listen and learn from the experiences of players and staff”, understand whether any of these people needed ongoing support provided by the club, and review its current practices to ensure it had a supportive environment for players and coaches.

Egan then went about speaking to current and former First Nations players and staff, saying 23 people were identified and 17 were spoken to.

In August 2022, Egan completed the report, also known as the Binmada report, which outlined a series of serious allegations.

It is unclear when the report was provided to Hawthorn.

But in late September 2022, the ABC revealed details of the contents of the report, and separately spoke with the families of three First Nations players.


Gowers said on Wednesday that he did not know where the leak came from but that he was not aware of a suggestion it came from Hawthorn.

He conceded that it would have been “preferable” for the former coaches to have been spoken to, but that, under AFL rules, once the Egan report was received by the club it had to provide it to the AFL’s integrity unit.

Gowers also made clear he was aware that the matter was far from over, with the AFL-backed independent investigation already taking eight months and having not publicly released a report on its findings.

He would not be drawn on other possible consequences facing the club, apart from his comments regarding AFL sanctions, with civil court action and human rights complaints also reportedly being considered by former players.

‘Insulted, humiliated, hunted’: plight of migrants as slums razed in French territory of Mayotte

The shantytown Talus 2 is demolished on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte as part of operation ‘take back’ to deport undeclared migrants, 22 May 2023. Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

As the first shantytown falls to the bulldozer under France’s operation ‘take back’, people on the Indian Ocean island tell of living in constant fear

Meerie Jesuthasan in Marseille

THE GUARDIAN
Wed 31 May 2023

 
It took less than 24 hours to raze the shantytown of Talus 2 on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte. France’s Operation Wuambushu (“take back”) began on Monday last week in its overseas territory, between Madagascar and Mozambique, with a dozen excavators and trucks carrying police officers. By Tuesday 23 May, most of the neighbourhood’s 162 informal homes had been destroyed, leaving hundreds of people without shelter.

Details of the operation were revealed in February as President Emmanuel Macron approved sending 510 additional French police officers to Mayotte with the aim of fighting “gangs, substandard housing and irregular immigration”.

Backed by far-right collectives and elected officials in Mayotte, the Macron government has begun waging a tough battle on the island.

Already, police have been using live rounds and arresting young people alleged to be involved in criminal gangs. The government reportedly aims to deport between 10,000 and 20,000 undocumented people (310,000 people live in Mayotte, an estimated half of whom are foreigners), and to destroy 1,000 bangas, or informal housing, in slums where 40% of the island’s inhabitants live.

Police perform identity checks and unannounced house raids in the name of controlling migrants on Mayotte.

 Photograph: Patrick Meinhardt/AFP/Getty Images


Undocumented immigrants will be sent to the state of Comoros, comprising three of the four islands in the archipelago that includes Mayotte, and where many of the undocumented originated.

Wuambushu, officially announced in April, has revived debate on Mayotte, the poorest department in France, where most deportations on the entire French territory occur.

Residents say the operation has brought a climate of fear that has crystallised into violent anti-Comoran sentiment. On 24 April, the initial intended start date of the operation, Salime Mdéré, vice-president of the departmental council of Mayotte, talked about “thug” and “terrorist” Comoran youths on evening television. “It might be necessary to kill some of them,” he said. “I’m weighing my words.”
I’m not going to wait for the authorities to arrest me. I failed. I didn’t get my papersOcéane, undocumented resident

The operation faced delays: a judge suspended the demolition of Talus 2 on 24 April, citing a lack of housing solutions for evicted families, while the Comoran government initially refused to accept deportees. But in mid-May, the prefecture successfully appealed against the court’s decision, and the Comoran port reopened to Mayotte’s boats after the Comoran president visited France.

In the meantime, police continued an anti-delinquency operation, arresting suspected gang members in violent clashes. At least one teenager, who claimed not to have been involved in crime, was shot.

A woman confronts a French gendarme during the demolition of an informal settlement in Longoni, Mamoudzou, 17 April. 

Photograph: Patrick Meinhardt/AFP/Getty Images

For those without papers, it is an intensification of a “hunt for the undocumented” that has existed for decades. Océane*, 37, who has two young children and has lived in Mayotte since leaving the Comoro island of Anjouan in 2015 , has no legal status and says her landlord has told them to leave due to the operation. She left a violent situation at home, but is now contemplating going back.


“I’m not going to wait for the authorities to arrest me,” she says. “I failed. I didn’t get my papers.”

Many cross the 70km channel between the islands for healthcare unavailable in the Comoros. But while Mayotte benefits from resources due to its status as a European region, it suffers from its best medical staff leaving to work in France.

Océane says her ordeal didn’t begin with Wuambushu. “Everywhere I moved, I had to hide because there was the police, or Mahorans, who would come and report you,” she says.

Police presence is heavy in Mayotte, where numerous legal exceptions made in the name of controlling migrants have meant identity checks based on profiling, and routine unannounced police raids on people’s homes. It has, in effect, turned the territory into a police state, say human rights groups such as La Cimade.

Gendarmes patrol the streets after clashes ahead of planned evictions in Majicavo village in Mayotte’s Koungou commune on 25 April. 

Photograph: Chafion Madi/AFP/Getty Images


Océane says she regularly has to go through fields to take her daughter to school undetected, or hide out with neighbours when she hears the police are circling. The Mamoudzou hospital refused to give her son a birth certificate when he was born in 2018, making it impossible to sign him up for school.

Océane says those who told her landlord to evict her were not police but members of citizen collectives. Such groups have been holding pro-Wuambushu rallies, blocking hospitals that treat foreigners, and threatening to block ports if Comoros-bound ships don’t take undocumented migrants. This is similar to the xenophobic evictions in 2016, when collectives went door-to-door, searching for foreigners.
Don’t forget to bring your children with you. They are part of your luggageA flyer ordering foreigners to leave

This month, a flyer was distributed in the village of Hagnoundrou, ordering all foreigners to leave. “Don’t forget to bring your children with you,” it read. “They are part of your luggage.”

Collectives have strong links to the islands’ political elite: a former president of one is Estelle Youssouffa, the Mahoran deputy in the National Assembly since 2022. She has previously said that small boat factories in the Comoros should be bombed to stop migrants.

A pro-Wuambushu rally at a football stadium in Chirongui, Mayotte. Such groups have also blocked hospitals that treat foreigners. 

Photograph: Gregoire Merot/AP

Like Mdere, many blame Comoran youth for violence on the island and claim that Wuambushu will combat insecurity. Gang rivalries have led to violence in the past – last November, clashes resulted in several deaths.

French interior minister Gérald Darmanin, who sent an anti-terrorism police unit to contain the clashes, has repeatedly emphasised the anti-delinquent aspect of the operation. “There is a situation of serious delinquency, and we must respond with firmness,” he said in an interview with Le Figaro.

Others point to a more complicated reality, saying the gangs include poor Mahorans. DSK*, who arrived in Mayotte from the Comoros as a child and is a member of La Cimade, says France is following inhumane policies on the island. He asked not to use his real name for fear of being targeted.

“Mayotte is not the same as France,” he says, listing numerous obstacles that foreign-born children face – from being barred from schools to being denied citizenship or separated from deported parents.

DSK, who works as a school bus driver and struggled to obtain his own papers, says he has seen the consequences first-hand. “Children as young as 10 have to rely on themselves to eat, to dress themselves, to house themselves, and there is no social welfare for these kids. These are monsters that we are creating.”


He says children ask him to drop them outside their homes to avoid being seen by police. Mayotte locks up a high number of undocumented children – in 2021, France detained 3,135 children in Mayotte.

Numbers indicate which buildings will be spared in the demolition of Talus 2 shantytown.

 Photograph: Morgan Fache/AFP/Getty Images

The operation has revived debates around French colonialism, specifically Mayotte’s status as a French department, made official in 2011. The Comoran archipelago fell under French colonial rule in the mid-19th century and voted overwhelmingly for independence from France in 1974, but Mayotte – representing 8% of the total electorate – was against. France held a second referendum in 1976, with similar results. The UN general assembly has condemned France’s presence in Mayotte.

Ties between the islands remain strong, most Comorans and Mahorans have family on both sides. Mayotte’s economy relies heavily on foreign labour, particularly in construction. “If Darmanin had a magic wand and could transfer all the populations back to their islands, the first effect would be to destroy the local economy,” said anthropologist Damien Riccio in an interview with Mediapart.

Some offer a political explanation for France’s actions, saying the government is trying to showcase its immigration offensive after forcing through an unpopular pension reform in April that triggered large-scale protests. Wuambushu has become a platform for Macron’s government to appear tough on immigration in the face of far-right figures such as Marine Le Pen, who claim it does not go far enough.

Migrants arrive in Mayotte after being intercepted by border police while sailing at night from Comoros.

 Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

France has significant economic interests in the Mozambique channel, and Mayotte allows control in one of the largest maritime exclusive economic zones in the world. “France is only there to enrich itself, not to develop the island,” says DSK. “France doesn’t want the island or the island’s population – all it wants is the riches around it.”

Youssouffa has emphasised the region’s natural resources: “The Mozambique channel, where Mayotte is located, has significant gas reserves,” she said in a recent interview. “It’s important to let the entire regional gas and petrol ecosystem know that we have an interest in their working in our region, and that they must make particular efforts for security to stabilise that region.”

Meanwhile, deep divisions have been fostered between historically linked people. Océane says she doesn’t want to move back to Comoros, but has little choice.

“I don’t believe in the French Republic any more,” she says. “What do you want me to do, when I have kids and they didn’t even give one of them a birth certificate?

“France is destroying my kids’ future, and what do you want me to do, stay like this, and live a life of playing cat and mouse? To be discriminated against, insulted, humiliated everywhere I go? I can’t take it any more, my kids can’t take it.”

* Names have been changed

New York’s latest one-of-a-kind store is ‘like an Indigenous-futurist version of Warhol’s Factory’

Korina Emmerich and Liana Shewey of Relative Arts, the community space, open atelier and shop displaying contemporary Indigenous fashion and design. Photograph: Maria Spann/The Guardian

Indigenous boutique owners Liana Shewey and Korina Emmerich want to acknowledge traditions but also push the design narrative


The New Face of Small Business
Indigenous peoples
Sophia Herring

The Guardian

Tue 30 May 2023 

Location, location, location. It can make or break a business. For Liana Shewey and Korina Emmerich, it was a call to action. When a mutual friend told the activists and creatives – Shewey is an educator and Emmerich is a fashion designer – about a newly vacant storefront on the ground floor of her mother’s Manhattan co-op building, the pair, who met five years ago at an Indigenous women’s collective and quickly became best friends, visited the space. It was 350 sq ft – a far cry from the 20,000 sq ft clubhouse of the duo’s wildest fantasies. But something felt right. “We jumped on it,” said Shewey.


The Sioux Chef’s Owamni restaurant wows critics – and decolonizes cuisine

The co-op board wasn’t willing to hand the keys over to just anyone. But their friend’s mother is Navajo, and also the board president. Within days the building had its newest tenant: Relative Arts NYC, a boutique that carries pieces by Indigenous designers and also hosts literary readings, album releases and art installations featuring work by Indigenous artists.

“It just felt so important for us to have a space, as grassroots organizers in the city,” said Shewey, who was raised in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and is a member of the Mvskoke (Creek) Nation. Building a store that specializes in goods from Indigenous and many female-owned labels was a natural way to support their community. According to research from 2021, Indigenous women working full time were typically paid $0.57 for every $1 paid to white, non-Hispanic men. The two had long lamented the scarcity of Indigenous-owned businesses in New York (about .5% of business owners in the US are Indigenous, despite making up approximately 3% of the population).

Liana Shewey and Korina Emmerich. Photograph: Maria Spann/The Guardian

The merchandise builds on their mission to shatter stereotypes. The entrepreneurs speak to “Indigenous futurism”, an emerging art and design movement that leans away from cliches. Shewey recalled meeting a non-Indigenous woman at a poetry reading earlier this year. “She was like, ‘Oh, I’ll need to come by your shop because I need some new silver and turquoise jewelry.’ And that is a beautiful tradition, but we are so much more than that.” Items for sale include blankets from Teton Trade Cloth, a Lenape-owned label, and I Heart Lenape Hoking T-shirts that play off the classic I Heart NY logo.

Emmerich, who grew up in Eugene, Oregon, and whose father is of Puyallup descent, focused on her own fashion label, EMME Studio, in her late 20s and early 30s. Her work has appeared on the cover of InStyle magazine and in the Lexicon of Fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She still makes pieces by special order, and the shop doubles as an atelier. When she spoke with the Guardian, she was rushing to complete a dress that she was making for a producer of Killers of the Flower Moon, the new Martin Scorsese film, to wear to the Cannes film festival. Shewey, whose day job is as an outreach educator at the New-York Historical Society, was speaking from her car, where she was taking a break from a marathon day of teaching four sixth-grade classes.
My struggle is here and I need to be with my communityLiana Shewey

The entrepreneurs, who can be found at their shop every weekend, relied on crowdfunding to convert the space into a store. An initial round of fundraising garnered $6,465, which covered shelving units and a sofa from Craigslist. They found a handful of industrial school chairs on the side of the road.

The pair are breaking even, and still debating whether to form a nonprofit or operate as an LLC. “We want Relative Arts to be a greater incubation hub for people to be able to learn, create and work out of,” said Shewey. For now, though, the merchandise alone speaks volumes. “It’s taking us out of a historical context and saying that we are still here and not just still here, but we are thriving and growing.”
Tell me about what led you both here.

Shewey: I lived in Portland for about a decade and got really integrated into the local rock’n’roll scene. I bartended, worked at a local Starbucks, and then eventually started a music production company of my own with a few friends. In 2014, I moved to the Czech Republic and started organizing around the refugee crisis. I came back in 2016 when everything was happening with Standing Rock. It made me realize my struggle is here and I need to be with my community.


Emmerich: At 13, I made my first jingle dress regalia, and got very into sewing. I came to New York with two suitcases, a cat and $75. I worked in a boutique and I had my own line. I actually had a lot of success, thanks to a company called Brand Assembly that helps support smaller designers. But you slowly realize with everything in the fashion industry, if you want to do it ethically, you will be poor. I just dreamed that one day I would have a space to be able to share everybody’s work.

Korina Emmerich assists a customer at Relative Arts. Photograph: Maria Spann/The Guardian

How do you work as a team?

Emmerich: We’ve been planning and organizing together for so long that we just naturally gravitate towards each other in our work style. Liana is analytical and does the logistical things as well as planning, and organizing when it comes to programming. I have this more creative, community outreach part of my work where building relationships is such an important aspect.
How are you staying afloat?

Emmerich: It’s been a huge challenge. We don’t have any major backing, so we are continuing to look for grants.

How do you choose what goes in the store?

We’re doing contemporary work here and now. There’s no rule that says we have to only exist in a historical contextLiana Shewey

Shewey: Our goal is to showcase contemporary Indigenous designers who are doing fun, subversive, wearable work, as opposed to the assumption of what Indigenous design has to look like. I want to talk about how Indigenous people exist here and now and we’re doing contemporary work here and now. There’s no rule that says we have to only exist in a historical context.

What is it like operating an Indigenous business within a community that so rarely acknowledges it’s on Indigenous land to begin with?


Emmerich: Even though Relative Arts may be the first of its kind, we are not the first ones to be doing this work. It was amazing to have the American Indian Community House come to open the space on our first day, to say a prayer and give us their blessing.

Shewey: I’m thinking about how many people come off the streets and buy one of our pieces just because they like the garments themselves. Then they look at the basketball jersey and ask: what is the Salish Sea? [The Salish coast, along the north-western US and Canada, is home to Indigenous nations.] If they didn’t know, they walk out having learned about decolonization.

Why do you think the fashion world has been so slow to include Native designers?

Emmerich: We’re often sidelined and continue to be marginalized. Magazines will run pieces saying, “Here’s some great Indigenous designers to shop from,” instead of just being a part of the overall narrative.

Shewey: Vogue just covered the Santa Fe Indian Market. It had never been in Vogue before, and it’s like the largest event in Santa Fe.

What advice can you offer for working with a friend?

Shewey: Good ideas are good ideas. But business is totally different. You’re entering what is hopefully a lifelong relationship with somebody. And I think that making that commitment in itself is something that needs to be talked over especially when you’re talking about owner percentages, that in a world where we want everything to be equitable. And it’s important to just really, really consider who is willing to take the initiative to be a business owner, rather than somebody who’s just working in a cool store, because it’s not always going to be sunshine and rainbows.

What is your long-term goal?

Emmerich: We like to think of Relative Arts as a hub. The plans that we have are so much bigger than just a store.

Shewey: I have so many visions of what we are going to build. We’ve mused that we want it to kind of look like an Indigenous-futurist version of Andy Warhol’s Factory. It would be so wonderful to have thousands of feet, although I doubt Andy ever had to apply for funding.

Mexico’s president says he would support peace agreement with cartels

Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s comments come after an activist’s open letter to crime groups to stop forced disappearances

Andrés Manuel López Obrador speaking during a press conference in Mexico City. Photograph: Mexican Presidency/AFP/Getty Images

Oscar Lopez in Mexico City

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 31 May 2023 

Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said he would support an agreement with some of the nation’s most powerful and violent cartels in order to stop the bloodshed that has overwhelmed the country.

The comments from López Obrador, or Amlo as he’s commonly known, came after an activist searching for her missing brother published an open letter directed at 10 organized crime groups calling for them to stop the practice of forced disappearance, where a person isn’t just killed but completely erased, their body dissolve in acid or burnt to ash.


“I agree and I hope we achieve peace – that’s what we all want,” said Amlo during his daily morning news conference when asked about the proposed pact. “Violence is irrational and we’re going to continue looking for peace, to achieve peace and that is what we’re doing. And if there is an initiative of this kind, of course we support it.”


More than 100,000 people have disappeared in Mexico since 1964, the majority in the last 15 years or so since the government at the time launched its war against cartels, sending the military out into the streets and taking down key organized crime leaders.


Land of no return: the Mexican city torn apart by cartel kidnappings

López Obrador, elected in a 2018 landslide, promised a different, non-confrontational approach which he called “hugs not bullets”. He also vowed to take the military off the streets: instead, he has vastly expanded the army’s funding and administrative power, while creating a national guard force with more than 100,000 troops.

But the efforts have done little to staunch the bloodshed: more than 30,000 people have been killed every year of Amlo’s administration, and more than 40,000 have been reported missing since he took office, according to government figures.

“Mexico has been submerged in a spiral of violence that has left a deep mark on society,” wrote activist Delia Quiroa, who has been looking for her brother for nearly a decade, in her letter to gangs including the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels. “Reality has surpassed fiction and the number of missing persons in our country is impossible to count accurately.”

Making an appeal to the commonality between gangsters and victims, marked by traditions like Mother’s Day and Day of the Dead, Quiroa called on the cartels to sign “a social pact to prevent and eradicate the disappearance of people in Mexico and promote peace”.

Quiroa said that the idea for a pact with the cartels emerged from the desperation felt by family members of the disappeared who are fed up with the government’s lack of response to the crisis of missing people.

“It’s a struggle day after day after day,” she told the Guardian. “All we want is to know what happened, if [our relatives] are dead, if we can give them a dignified burial.”

When asked about the possibility of an agreement with the cartels, López Obrador said that he would support anything that would mean curbing Mexico’s ongoing carnage.

“I approve of everything that means putting aside or not using violence,” he said. Cartel members “should assume responsibility and behave like good citizens”.

Quiroa welcomed the president’s support for her pact with organized crime, but said that more needed to be done to help relatives of the missing locate their loved ones – dead or alive.

“What does it matter if the people below [the president], who are in charge of helping victims, don’t care?” she said. “He needs to supervise his people, to make sure they actually do something.”

Angélica Durán-Martínez, a security expert at the University of Massachusetts Lowell said that finding solutions to violence beyond militarization isn’t necessarily outlandish, given that years of all-out war with cartels have only resulted in bloodshed.

“Putting emphasis on how are we going to reduce violence, how are we going to reduce the humanitarian costs and take emphasis away from pursuing crime at all costs,” she said. “It’s an idea that should have a more central place in public policy.”

But without a strategy that takes into account the realities of organized crime in Mexico, the president’s words risk remaining just that.

“Simply declaring it doesn’t mean anything, because the first big problem is how do you do it,” she added. “How do you do it without increasing the power of these organized crime groups?”