Targeting the Messenger to Kill the Message

BY PAUL COCHRANE

 NOVEMBER 27, 2023
Facebook

TwitterRedditEmail

Photograph Source: Osps7 – CC BY-SA 4.0

The Israeli onslaught on Palestinians is having a chilling effect on the media and its ability to report on events. So far, since 7 October, 46 Palestinian journalists have been killed and there has been the complete or partial destruction of “at least 117 press offices”.

A further 11 journalists have been injured, two are missing, and 18 journalists were reported arrested. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor monitoring group said “Israel has launched a killing spree against journalists” in the Gaza Strip, while the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) labelled the first month of the war “the most lethal suffered by journalists since 1992”.

The attacks on journalists has become so extreme that an editor of a news outlet told me that their Palestinian correspondents are struggling to find places to live as civilians do not want to reside in the same building in case they are targeted. Palestinians are also hesitant to be in proximity to journalists for the same reason, as having ‘PRESS’ emblazoned on flak jackets and vehicles appears to make them a target of the IDF. This is clearly having an impact on reporting on what is happening within Gaza, on top of the difficulties of filing stories and footage amid power cuts and telecoms blackouts. Newsrooms can go for days without hearing whether journalists are alive or dead, or have been injured.

Over in Southern Lebanon, three journalists have been killed by Israeli strikes, two reporters from Al Mayadeen TV on the 21 November, and Reuters video-journalist Issam Abduallah on 14 October.

Four Israeli journalists were killed in the 7 October attacks, and one is missing, while in the ensuing weeks Israeli journalists that have spoken out and tried to be objective have faced intimidation. Palestinian journalists working within Israel have also faced intimidation. This past week, Israel’s communications minister has proposed banning Israeli daily Haaretz, claiming it is “sabotaging Israel in wartime” and was an “inflammatory mouthpiece for Israel’s enemies.”

The same editor mentioned earlier, said that their Israeli correspondents have stopped working with the news outlet, although it is not clear whether this is out of fear of reprisals or not willing to work for a news organisation that is not pro-Israel, with recent events causing a change of heart amid rampant nationalism.

How is there supposed to be proper journalism under such conditions? As the CPJ has noted: “We have said, especially after the (Israeli) army targeted communications facilities, that we have reached a news blackout. We also have the problems with censorship, assaults and detentions in the West Bank.”

This suffocating news environment ensures that the devastation, killings and inconvenient truths cannot be published or aired. The targeting of journalists also makes checking out the facts on the ground that much harder.

As in any conflict, the media war is a major influencer in swaying public opinion, a fact that has long been understood by the powers that be. As British minister David Lloyd George said in December 1917 of the bloodbath of World War I and the need to keep such horror out of the press: “If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don’t know, and can’t know.”

In the twenty-first century we do know that horror is unfolding, as images and news are released beyond the twentieth century dominant news mediums of newspapers and TV. Furthermore, we can watch and read news from around the world online, and not be reliant on local news, as in the past. It is our choice to look away or not.

That said, the traditional media is clearly still seen as a threat. The US and Israel are very aware of the power of the image, and have tried to muzzle one of the Middle East’s most courageous news outlets, Qatari-state owned Al Jazeera. The network was deliberately targeted in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and is once again in a valley of death, in Gaza. Its staff have suffered immensely. Al Jazeera’s chief correspondent, Wael al-Dahdouh, had his entire immediate family killed in an Israeli airstrike in October.

Israel has banned Beirut-based, Pan-Arab news channel Al Mayadeen, although held back from restricting Al Jazeera. However, US secretary of state Anthony Blinken told Qatar to ‘turn down the volume‘ of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the war on Palestinians. The reason given was that it was inflaming public opinion in the Middle East amid concerns about the conflict widening. This is indicative of Al Jazeera’s influence and power, and why the channel has been considered an enemy.

Indeed, in 2004, there was the infamous Al Jazeera bombing memo, in which then US president George W Bush reportedly told UK prime minister Tony Blair he wanted to bomb the network’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar. Bush said it was a ‘joke’.

The network has long been a thorn in the side of the US and the Israelis, with its unflinching satellite news coverage widely considered to have globalised the Second Intifada, in 2000 to 2005, and of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, showing images that no Western channel dared to show. Signalling in a brutal fashion its disapproval of the network, the US bombed Al Jazeera’s office in Kabul during the 2001 invasion, and attacked the media outlet multiple times during the 2003 Iraq invasion.

The US-instigated Global War on Terror, in which Israel plays a strong role, has also been in many ways a war on the media. Look at what happened to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for revealing US war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay – he is in solitary confinement in a British high-security prison, and faces extradition to the US.

As for Israel’s attacks on journalists, a report by the CPJ in May stated that the Israeli military has not been held accountable for the killing of 20 journalists, 18 of whom were Palestinian, over the past 22 years. This includes the killing of Palestinian-American, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh “by an Israeli bullet to the head while she was reporting on an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on May 11, 2022,” as AJ reported.

The CPJ report noted a “a pattern of the killings of journalists by [Israeli military]”…“No one has ever been charged or held accountable for these deaths … severely undermin[ing] the freedom of the press”.

The same pattern is playing out today. Including the 20 journalists killed over the past two decades with the 49 journalists killed in the recent onslaught, that is a staggering 69 journalists killed by Israel. Targeting the messenger to kill the message has to stop.

Paul Cochrane is an independent journalist covering the Middle East and Africa. He lived in Bilad Al Sham (Cyprus, Palestine and Lebanon) for 24 years, mainly in Beirut. He is also the co-director of a documentary on the political-economy of water in Lebanon, “We Made Every Living Thing from Water”.

The Old and New Nakba

BY RAMZY BAROUD

 NOVEMBER 27, 2023
Facebook

TwitterRedditEmai

Fred Csasznik, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It is simply inaccurate to claim that the ongoing Israeli attempt to displace all, or many Palestinian refugees from Gaza to Sinai is a new idea, compelled by recent circumstances.

Displacing Palestinians, or as it is known in Israeli political lexicon, the ‘transfer’, is an old idea – as old as Israel itself.

In fact, historically, population ‘transfer’ has been more than an idea, but an actual government policy, with clear mechanisms. Yosef Weitz, director of the Land and Afforestation Department, was entrusted with setting up the Transfer Committee in May 1948 to oversee the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from their towns and villages.

In other words, while Israel was concluding the initial phase of ethnic cleansing, it initiated another phase, that of ‘transfer’, the results of which are well-known.

But even many of Israel’s so-called liberal intellectuals have, and continue to promote the idea, either proactively or in hindsight. “I don’t think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes,” Israeli historian Benny Morris said in an interview with Haaretz in 2004. “I think he (Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion) made a serious historical mistake in 1948 (…) If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. (… ) You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands.”

Morris was specifically referring to the Nakba, which began in earnest in December 1947, and did not conclude until 1949. Then, ethnic cleansing took on a different form, a slower campaign aimed at rejigging the demographic map of the newly founded Israel in favor of Israeli Jews at the expense of Palestinian Arabs.

Several campaigns targeting Palestinian Arab communities, which remained in Israel after the Nakba, were initiated under various guises. Though not a single community had survived the demographic onslaught by the Israeli government, Palestinian Bedouins received the lion’s share of displacement – a campaign that continues to this day.

After the war of June 1967, mass expulsion resumed once more. Approximately 430,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced, especially from areas originally occupied in 1948. Over the years, up to the present, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jewish settlers have taken the place of the displaced Palestinians, claiming their land, homes and orchards as if their own.

In fact, the slow ethnic cleansing of the West Bank is considered the epicenter of Israel’s ongoing colonialism in Occupied Palestine. And, from an international law perspective, it is one of its greatest war crimes, as it represents a stark violation of international norms, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention.

“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies,” Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states. It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.”

To claim that the recent call for mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza is a new event, compelled by the violent episode of October 7, and the subsequent genocide in Gaza, is both inaccurate and dishonest.

This claim ignores the fact that Israel, as a settler-colonial project, was founded on the concept of ethnic cleansing, and that Israeli politicians never stopped talking about mass displacing Palestinians, even under supposedly ‘normal’ circumstances.

For example, in 2014, then Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman tried to rebrand the old ‘transfer’ strategy, using not-so-clever new language.

“When I talk about land and population exchange, I mean the Little Triangle and Wadi Ara,” Lieberman said in a statement, referring to the predominantly Arab regions in central and northern Israel, insisting that “this is not a transfer”.

This context is critical if we wish to truly understand the story behind the enthusiastic return to the language of ethnic cleansing.

On November 11, Avi Dichter, Israel’s Minister for Agriculture and former head of the spy agency Shin Bet, specifically called for another Nakba. “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” Dichter said in a TV interview.

We can easily extract the following set of information from the Israeli minister’s statement: Israelis are very familiar with the term ‘Nakba’, thus what has befallen the Palestinian people 75 years ago – that of ethnic cleansing and genocide – and they remain unrepentant.

However, this was not a statement said in anger. A leaked government report dated October 13, six days into the war, suggested the mass transfer of Gaza’s population to the Sinai desert.

Four days later, on October 17, the Israeli think tank ‘Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy’, published a paper calling on the Israeli government to take advantage of this “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip”.

It makes little sense to assume that such extensive reports were all conjured up within a matter of days. Indeed, it takes years of planning and discussions for such complex schemes to be prepared, so that they become worthy of official consideration.

This is not the only evidence that the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza was not an urgent strategy propelled by recent events, as Palestinians in the West Bank, who were not involved in the October 7 operation, also found themselves under the threat of expulsion. This prompted Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh to state on November 7 that Amman considers any attempt to displace Palestinians a “red line”, in fact, a “declaration of war”.

Though Arab and international pressure has, thus far, failed to slow down the Israeli death machine in Gaza, Arab countries spoke firmly against any Israeli attempts to displace Palestinians.

For now, the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants, most of whom are refugees from historic Palestine, are internally displaced within that tiny piece of land, denied water, food, electricity – in fact, life itself. But they remain steadfast and will not allow for another Nakba to take place, no matter the cost.

The ‘Gaza Nakba’ must be rejected, not just by words, but through solid Arab and international action, to prevent Israel from taking advantage of the war to expel Palestinians out of their homeland, again. They must also work to hold Israel accountable for its war crimes, past and present, starting with the original Nakba of 1948.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

POSTMODERN IMPERIALI$M

China, IMF and investors can’t reach a deal on Zambia’s debt. What does it mean for other distressed African nations?

Bilateral creditors such as China shoulder much of the burden and want bondholders to take a bigger hit

The dispute could put other restructures on the continent in jeopardy, with Ethiopia expected to be the next in line, observers say

Jevans Nyabiage
SCMP

27 Nov, 2023

When Zambia struck a debt deal with bilateral creditors to restructure US$6.3 billion in loans in June, Lusaka said it “a significant step” to restore debt sustainability.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) went further, saying it was a “breakthrough” and precedent-setting.

The IMF said it would use the deal as a template for other nations such as Ethiopia and Ghana that are also seeking debt restructuring under the G20’s Common Framework.
Under the deal, China – as Zambia’s largest bilateral lender – has the biggest burden by agreeing to restructure US$4.1 billion of the total, with France, Britain, South Africa, Israel and India shouldering the rest.

As part of the agreement, Beijing and the other creditor countries – known as the Official Creditor Committee (OCC) – pushed for comparability of treatment (CoT) principle in which private bondholders would have to offer comparable debt relief.

Zambia proceeded to seek debt restructuring from private bondholders but the terms they reached in October were rejected by the OCC and the IMF.

The OCC also rejected a revised deal tweaked with the IMF in mid-November, saying it did not provide enough debt relief and did not meet the CoT criteria.

The setbacks have not only thrown into question the prospects for the Zambia deal, they might also discourage other debt-ridden African countries to follow similar paths, according to analysts.

China-funded infrastructure across Africa force difficult decisions for its leaders

The impasse is over just how big and what kind of a loss private bondholders should take.

Patrick Curran, a senior economist at research firm Tellimer, said official creditors were averse to nominal haircuts, preferring longer maturity extensions and lower interest payments instead. Bondholders, on the other hand, tended to prefer some level of upfront nominal haircuts in exchange for earlier payments in the form of higher coupons and shorter maturities.

China is responsible for restructuring the largest portion of the debt and without its approval no restructuring can go ahead.

Zambia and the IMF viewed the revised deal as sustainable and compatible with the CoT principle, but China and other official bilateral creditors want bondholders to take a larger haircut than what Zambia’s government or the IMF deemed necessary.

This did not go down well with private investors, who said the decision was “extraordinary” and would have “significant adverse consequences, most immediately for Zambia”.

Curran said the restructuring talks appeared to have hit a stalemate, with no further progress possible unless the OCC softened its position on the CoT principle.

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), this dispute could put restructures in jeopardy, and Zambia’s protracted debt restructuring negotiations would likely discourage other heavily indebted African nations from seeking similar deals.

For Zambia, the stakes are high.

It has been in a crisis since 2020 when it defaulted on some of its foreign debt at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Until the issue is resolved, Lusaka cannot attract much-needed foreign direct investment and there is no access to the international capital markets, according to Zambian officials. Further, the protracted debt negotiations have hit domestic bond markets, with the Zambian currency the Kwacha falling by 30 per cent against the US dollar this year.

Why China is on track to control African mineral transport route via Tazara line
12 Nov 2023


Zambia’s troubles could also signal the difficult road ahead for Ethiopia, which recently also secured a debt restructuring deal in principle with its official bilateral creditors, and is seeking to start talks to restructure a US$1 billion Eurobond maturing next year.

Ethiopia, which is a key Chinese ally, had already secured a debt deal with China in August when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Brics Summit in Johannesburg. Xi promised to suspend Ethiopia’s payments on debt maturing in 2023 and 2024 as part of the common framework for debt restructuring.

China is Ethiopia’s largest bilateral creditor, having advanced an estimated US$13.7 billion in debt to China between 2000 and 2021, according to Boston University data.

Curran said the rejection of the Zambian deal “is a dangerous precedent and could serve as a major hindrance not only in Zambia’s restructuring but also in future restructurings”.

“We will be keenly watching how the process unfolds in Zambia and assessing the implications for other current and impending restructuring cases both within the [G20] Common Framework, like Ghana and Ethiopia, and outside it, like Sri Lanka,” he said, referring to a multilateral mechanism for forgiving and restructuring sovereign debt.

IMF report says Chinese loans not main debt burden in sub-Saharan Africa
24 Oct 2023


Charlie Robertson, head of macro strategy at FIM Partners, an asset management firm, said foreign bondholders owned roughly US$3 billion of Zambia’s debt, “so have a bigger role than in Ethiopia but … interestingly, the gross domestic product impact from default is not very high, it is usually about 2 percentage points off growth”.

However, Robertson said longer restructuring may not necessarily hit foreign investor confidence in primary commodity exporters like Zambia and Ethiopia.

“It probably doesn’t make much difference in fact. A copper mine or a rose plantation might still get invested in even in a default situation,” Robertson said, referring to Zambia, which is one of the top copper producers in Africa, while Ethiopia has attracted investments in the horticulture industry.

Nevertheless, Robertson said he suspected “the protracted negotiations will deter other African countries from defaulting”.

“And given the bandwidth that these defaults require from institutions like the IMF … I imagine they will be keen to minimise the number of countries that do default, by being flexible, as they are with Kenya for example,” Robertson said.

On Ethiopia’s restructuring, Mark Bohlund, a senior credit research analyst at REDD Intelligence, said although there was not an up-to-date breakdown of the bilateral debt, most Ethiopia’s non-Paris Club debt of US$6.85 billion was owed to China. But India and Turkey were among the larger creditors.

Bohlund said he expected the “Ethiopia debt restructuring will be easier as we are likely talking about a maturity extension of principal payments rather than any writedown”.

He said with bondholders well aware that Ethiopia was in no position to make the US$1 billion principal payment next December, they would most likely accept an extension of the maturity even if it was at the current coupon rate, “which is pretty attractive if you have bought the bond at the current discounted rate”.

“It is clear that China will be looking closer at the comparability of treatment, as evidenced in Zambia. But should be less of an issue in Ethiopia,” Bohlund said.





Jevans Nyabiage
Kenyan journalist Jevans Nyabiage is the South China Morning Post's first Africa correspondent. Based in Nairobi, Jevans keeps an eye on China-Africa relations and also Chinese investments, ranging from infrastructure to energy and metal, on the continent.

New crypto front emerges in Israel’s militant financing fight

By Syndicated ContentNov 27, 2023 | 

By Tom Wilson and Elizabeth Howcroft

LONDON (Reuters) – A new front has emerged in Israel’s fight against the funding of Iran-backed militant groups from Hamas to Hezbollah: A fast-growing crypto network called Tron that until recently attracted less scrutiny than Bitcoin.

Quicker and cheaper than Bitcoin, the Tron network has overtaken its rival as a platform for crypto transfers associated with groups designated as terror organizations by Israel, the United States and other countries, according to interviews with seven financial crime experts and blockchain investigations specialists.

A Reuters’ analysis of crypto seizures announced by Israeli security services since 2021 reflects the trend, showing for the first time a sharp rise in the targeting of Tron wallets and a fall in Bitcoin wallet seizures.

“Earlier it was Bitcoin and now our data shows that these terrorist organizations tend to increasingly favor Tron,” said Mriganka Pattnaik, CEO of New York-based blockchain analysis firm Merkle Science, citing Tron’s faster transaction times, low fees, and stability.

Merkle Science says it counts law enforcement agencies in the United States, Britain and Singapore as clients.

Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF), which is responsible for such seizures, froze 143 Tron wallets between July 2021 and October 2023 that it believed were connected to a “designated terrorist organization” or used for a “severe terror crime,” the Reuters analysis found.

The Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel killed around 1,200 people. Israel’s subsequent bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza has killed some 14,000 people. In its response, Israel has also stepped up scrutiny of Hamas’ financing.

Contacted by Reuters with a summary of this article, Hayward Wong, a spokesperson for British Virgin Islands-registered Tron said all technologies could “in theory be used for questionable activities,” citing as an example U.S. dollars being used for money laundering.

Wong said Tron did not have control over those using its technology and that it was not linked to the groups identified by Israel.

Almost two-thirds of Israel’s Tron seizures – 87 – were this year, including 39 wallets that Israel said in June were owned by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and 26 it said in July belonged to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally that joined the assault on Israel from Gaza.

The seizures have also included 56 Tron wallets NBCTF said were linked to Hamas, including 46 in March last year it connected to a single Gaza-based money exchange company called Dubai Co. For Exchange.

Weeks after the Hamas assault, Israel announced its biggest known seizure of crypto accounts yet, freezing around 600 accounts it connected to Dubai Co., without stating which crypto networks or coins were used.

More than a dozen people whose funds were frozen in that seizure told Reuters they had been using Tron. They said they traded crypto to help their business or personal finances and denied any connection with Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

One of the people, who identified themselves only as Neo, said it was possible they had transferred money on one occasion to somebody associated with Hamas.

Israel calls Dubai Co. a terrorist group “due to the aid that they provide to the Hamas terrorist organization, particularly its military arm, in transferring funds on a scale of tens of millions of dollars a year.”

A representative for Dubai Co., whose email was listed on the seizure order, did not respond to a request for comment.

The armed wing of Hamas, which had raised crypto funds since at least 2019, said in April it would cease Bitcoin fundraising, citing increased efforts to prevent donations. Hamas did not mention Tron in the statement.

Reuters could not independently determine whether Hamas had used Tron. NBCTF declined to comment for this story, including about its understanding of the shift to Tron and how it linked the wallets to the militant groups. Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad did not respond to requests for comment.

Six people listed on Israel’s previous Tron seizure notices who responded to Reuters questions denied connections to militant groups. They included people based in Venezuela, Dubai and the West Bank city of Jenin.

‘AXIS OF RESISTANCE’

In the June statement, Israel said it seized funds “intended for use by the terrorist organizations financed by Iran.” Iran counts Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad in a so-called Axis of Resistance opposing Israeli and American power in the Middle East.

In the seizure statements, NBCTF did not affirm Tehran was the source of the funding. Iran’s foreign ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment about using Tron to fund groups it supports.

Iran has previously used Tron to skirt U.S. sanctions. Reuters reported last year that Iranian firms used it for $8 billion in transactions between 2018 and 2022.

Estimates of the sums of money that reach proscribed groups through crypto are unreliable because it is hard to say whether money sent to seized wallets was really destined for those groups.

The value of crypto transactions and the digital wallet addresses used for them can be traced on the blockchain – a public ledger that underpins crypto. However, it is hard for those outside law enforcement or crypto trading platforms to know the real identity of those involved in the transactions.

The people Reuters consulted additionally said their research showed the cryptocurrency Tether was dominant across the Tron network.

Tether, the world’s biggest so-called stablecoin, is backed by reserves and aims to keep a 1:1 peg with the dollar. The company said in a statement that it regularly traced and froze tokens “used for nefarious purposes,” and coordinated these efforts with law enforcement.

Tether is the third-largest crypto token, with a market value of $89 billion, up by around a third in the past year, according to CoinGecko data.

Despite its lack of name recognition outside crypto circles, Tron is the dominant blockchain for Tether transactions, currently hosting $48 billion of the tokens, according to Tether’s website. Average daily transactions on Tron hit 9.1 million from April-June, according to data firm Messari, up over 70% from the same period last year.

Justin Sun, who founded Tron in 2017, was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in March for allegedly artificially inflating trading volumes and selling Tron tokens as an unregistered security. Sun said the SEC charges “lack merit.”

Binbin Deng, a representative of Sun, referred Reuters to Tron spokesperson Wong’s statement.

‘BLINDSPOT’

Since its 2008 birth, the Bitcoin blockchain, and since then crypto more widely, have been magnets for criminals drawn by liquidity and a reputation for anonymity. Of all crypto transaction volumes, the illicit share was 0.2% in 2022, down from 2% three years earlier, according to blockchain tracker Chainalysis.

In Israel, Bitcoin seizures have been scarce by comparison with Tron. In 2021, the first year NBCTF published seizure notices, it froze 30 Bitcoin wallets. No Bitcoin wallets appear in notices in the subsequent years.

The Financial Action Task Force, a Paris-based G7 body that fights illicit finance, warned last month that terrorist organisations were seeking to further boost donor anonymity, citing the growing popularity of Tether transfers on Tron.

Four of the people consulted by Reuters said law enforcement’s increased capability to trace transactions on Bitcoin was driving such groups to Tron.

Tron initially drew less attention from blockchain analysis firms, said Shlomit Wagman, a senior fellow at Harvard University who was director-general of the Israel Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Prohibition Authority from 2016 to 2022.

“There was until now this blindspot,” she said.

Transaction fees on Tron cost far less than on Bitcoin, U.S. investment firm VanEck says. Militant groups were also using stablecoins on Tron instead of more volatile bitcoin tokens to ensure the “value of their crypto is being preserved,” Wagman said.

(Reporting by Tom Wilson and Elizabeth Howcroft in London, additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Maya Gebeily in Beirut ; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)

NZ

Criminal defence lawyer arrested at Middle East protest claims police misused power

Poppy Clark20:07, Nov 27 2023

Criminal defence lawyer Lucy Rogers captured the moment she was arrested at the Middle East protest march in Auckland on Saturday.

A criminal defence lawyer claims police misused their power when charging her with breaching the peace at a Middle East protest in Auckland - but police say they feared her actions would incite violence.

Lucy Rogers was leaving a work meeting on Saturday, where she is currently representing someone in a four-week jury trial, when she noticed people walking along Queen Street in protest.

Walking into a nearby shop, Rogers purchased an A2 piece of paper and wrote “selective condemnation of genocide is evil” on it before standing on the footpath as protestors took to the road.

Speaking to Stuff on Monday, Rogers said she is “not a pro-Israel protestor”.

“I think that both sides are doing appalling things here.”

Rogers said she held the sign above her head, but did not say anything.

“I was silent and peaceful, and several metres away from [protestors].”

Rogers alleges police officers at the event approached her, removed the sign from her hands before ripping it up. She then began recording on her phone.

She openly filmed the police officer's identification badges as she continued to question why they had removed her sign in the first place, and can be heard asking a police officer: “What are you going to do, tell me I can’t stand on the footpath? Where does it say that in the law?”.

“No, because [the protesters are] going to get upset and it’s going to cause a riot, so we’re just going to stand here,” the officer responded.

When Rogers shifted from her spot, police escorted her to the side of the street before handcuffing and arresting her for “breach of the peace”.

Acting Superintendent Jacqui Whittaker said police were “required to engage with a female whose behaviour gave rise for concern”.

“Her attempts to antagonise people rallying along Queen Street was deemed to meet a threshold where a serious disturbance or violence between parties could eventuate,” she said.

Criminal defence lawyer Lucy Rogers was arrested on Saturday at the Middle East protest in Auckland.

“Police applied a graduated response to dealing with the situation, which saw the female arrested for breach of the peace.”

Whittaker notes Rogers “was subsequently released and received a warning a short time later, once the safety risk to all parties had been mitigated.”

Rogers said the police let her go when they realised she was not causing harm and would not be staying at the protest.

“What this suggests in my view is that they have misused laws against breach of the peace, resisting police and perhaps other such laws again and again and again.”

Rogers told Stuff she did not receive a warning from the police and after going to her doctors on Monday, had been diagnosed with a slight sprain to her shoulder.

A watchdog urges UN Security Council to consider all options to protect Sudan’s Darfur civilians

BY SAMY MAGDY, ASSOCIATED PRESS - 11/27/23 

This is a locator map for Sudan with its capital, Khartoum. (AP Photo)


CAIRO (AP) — An international watchdog urged the United Nations Security Council on Monday to consider all options to protect civilians in Sudan’s Darfur region after the latest attacks on non-Arabs killed hundreds of civilians.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which was born out of the notorious Janjaweed militias, has been at war against the Sudanese military since mid-April, when months of tension exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and other urban areas in the African nation. The conflict wrecked the country and forced more than 6 million people out of their homes, either to safer areas inside Sudan or to neighboring countries.

In the first week of November, the RSF and their allied Arab militias attacked the town of Ardamata, a few kilometers (miles) north of Geneina, the provincial capital of West Darfur, Human Rights Watch said. After taking over a military base in Ardamata, the attackers rampaged through the camp for displaced people and other nearby residential areas that were all largely inhabited by the African Masalit tribe and other non-Arab groups, according to the rights group.

More than 800 people were reportedly killed in the multi-day assault, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

People who fled Ardamata described a spree of killings, shelling, unlawful detentions, sexual violence, ill treatment, and looting in the town, HRW said. The RSF and their allied militias shot at civilians as they fled, and executed people in their homes, shelters, and in the streets, they said.

A 45-year-old Masalit farmer said Arab militiamen accompanied by RSF vehicles entered the house where he was sheltering in Ardamata camp on Nov. 7. They brought seven men to the front of the house, the man told HRW.

“They told me to come out of the house,” HRW quoted the man as saying. “The moment I came out, one or two of the Arabs shot at the seven men from close range. They immediately executed them.”

Mohamed Osman, HRW’s Sudan researcher, said the attack on Ardamata was the RSF’s “latest episode of ethnically targeted killings,” which bears the hallmarks of “an organized campaign of atrocities against Masalit civilians.”

“The U.N. Security Council needs to stop ignoring the desperate need to protect Darfur civilians,” he said. “Regional and international actors have ignored the alarms that survivors have raised for months on the risks of further atrocities in West Darfur.”

A spokesperson for the RSF didn’t respond to phone calls seeking comment. HRW also said the RSF didn’t respond to its findings and questions.

Darfur, which was the scene of a genocidal conflict in the early 2000s, has witnessed some of the worst bouts of violence in the ongoing war. International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan said in July they were investigating alleged new war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

The RSF has stepped up its attacks across the western region in recent weeks, seizing many military bases. Fighting also intensified around a military base outside Khartoum earlier in November.

The RSF reportedly took many people captive in the Ardamata attack. Footage on social media purportedly shows fighters in RSF uniform and militiamen detaining and hitting people.

HRW said it verified and analyzed five videos uploaded between Nov. 4-5 showing a group of at least 125 men and boys being forced to run toward Geneina Airport, east of Ardamata. Several of the men were visibly wounded, some limping, while one person was carried by four other men, the videos showed.

HRW was not able to determine what happened to any of the 125 people.

“The U.N. has been sickened by a series of videos on social media which appear to have been made by RSF and allied personnel abusing captives, as well as pictures of dead bodies in the streets of Ardamata,” Toby Harward, U.N.’s deputy humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, told The Associated Press on Nov. 12.

The UNHCR reported extensive looting in the town, including U.N. humanitarian aid, and about 100 shelters were razed to the ground. At least 8,000 people have fled the town to neighboring Chad, joining at least 450,000 others, mostly women and children, who were forced out of their homes in similar attacks in West Darfur earlier this year, the agency said.

Satellite imagery taken the first week of November shows possible new graves and bodies in the street in Ardamata. Other imagery shows looting and arson in and around a camp for displaced people in the town.

“The Security Council needs to take concrete measures to address the gravity of the situation, roll out sanctions against key commanders, seek the release of those unlawfully detained, and support accountability efforts in the region,” Osman, the researcher, said.

WORKERS CAPITAL
Aussie super funds back UK clean energy

Nov 27, 2023,


Australian super funds will pump around $20 billion into UK clean energy projects.
Photo: Getty

A major global institutional investment manager owned by Australian superannuation funds plans to pump almost $20 billion into clean energy and infrastructure projects in the United Kingdom.

IFM Investors had already earmarked almost $6 billion towards UK-based infrastructure, with Monday’s announcement an extension of the agreement.

Billions will be invested in key projects by 2027 under the new memorandum of understanding brokered between IFM Investors and the UK government.

UK high commissioner to Australia Vicki Treadell said private sector support was needed to boost investment in clean energy technology such as offshore wind to hit emissions reductions targets.

“We want to attract investment into that, government can’t do it on its own,” she told AAP.

The use of superannuation would ensure good medium to long term returns, she said.

“No one’s looking to make a quick buck. What they want is steady, secure, stable investment opportunities,” she said.

“Australian super funds, in particular, have been longstanding investors into the UK, so they know from their experience that those returns are realised at the rates and value that they are looking for.”

IFM Investors chief executive David Neal said these sorts of partnerships were necessary to unlock superannuation funds for the low carbon transition.

“Our presence in the UK continues to grow and we look forward to working closely with the government to drive investment into large-scale infrastructure and energy transition projects across equity and debt funding,” he said.

“Australia’s ‘super funds’ system can be a trusted long-term partner with the United Kingdom.”

The Biden administration’s massive spending on low-carbon technology via the Inflation Reduction Act has triggered an international race to attract finance, workers, and technology manufacturing for the transition.

–AAP

Cop28: Business should to be at the centre of climate negotiations

Not only is there no time to waste, there is no need to wait

BADR
JAFAR

Solar panels at the Expo 2020 site in, Dubai. EPA

This week, more than 70,000 people from around the world will converge in Dubai to participate in the climate summit Cop28. In the lead-up to the event, the UAE’s Cop28 Presidency has made no secret of its ambition to make this the most inclusive and consequential Conference of the Parties. And while much of that effort has focused on elevating the voices of historically under-represented communities, and rightly so, a lesser-known determination of the Cop28 Presidency has involved transforming the manner in which the Cop process engages with the private sector.

Most notably, Cop28 will feature the inaugural Business and Philanthropy Climate Forum on December 1 and 2, held in parallel with the World Climate Action Summit. Hosted by the Cop28 Presidency, the Forum will bring together 1,000 leaders from business and philanthropy, along with policymakers and other stakeholders, to exchange ideas, co-create solutions and spur tangible action to support the climate agenda.

Not only is there no time to waste. There is also no need to wait. There are abundant opportunities for business and philanthropy actors to meaningfully engage. In fact, Cop28 and the Business and Philanthropy Climate Forum have developed a set of 22 potential actions that chief executives and philanthropists could take right away.

From supporting game-changing climate "moonshots" and breakthrough technologies, and expanding indigenous peoples’ direct access to investment, to accelerating the transformation of food supply chains across the Global South, among many others, the options are diverse and run the gamut of climate and nature-related immediate needs and opportunities.

Most importantly, they provide an accessible way for private sector leaders to move beyond pledges and declarations and into action and implementation, in ways that are suited to their capabilities and competencies.

Naturally, the Forum’s agenda is aligned with the four pillars outlined by the Cop28 Presidency, including fast-tracking the global energy transition, transforming climate finance, putting nature and people at the heart of climate action, and making inclusivity a hallmark. Some of the key areas that will be fleshed out over 100 sessions include: accelerating technology transfer, de-risking green investments, enhancing natural capital, boosting green small and medium enterprises and start-ups, and increasing investment in resilience for vulnerable communities around the world.

Importantly, the outcomes are intended to extend far beyond Cop28. To that end, the Cop28 Business and Philanthropy Forum has established global delivery partnerships with organisations as geographically and functionally diverse as the Sustainable Markets Initiative, International Finance Corporation, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Economic Forum, Asian Development Bank, Africa Finance Corporation, Inter-American Development Bank, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and XPrize.

Philanthropic capital can often be deployed in more flexible, risk-tolerant and patient ways than other forms of finance

Arguably, one of the most substantial impacts that business and philanthropy stakeholders could make is to help fix climate finance. It is estimated that global investments of more than $3 trillion per year will be required to enable the world to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Under the right conditions, the private sector could play the most consequential role in generating the multiplier effect required to take us from billions to trillions and meet that shortfall.

However, for far too long, business and philanthropy have been on the periphery of global climate discussions, often dismissed as a part of the problem. Some may have been OK with that, as it helped them avoid the thorny politics and in some cases even thornier choices involved in addressing the climate crisis, but even those that did want to engage with the process in a constructive way could not always find a way in.


This is a terrible missed opportunity. Private capital markets have more than doubled over the past decade, reaching more than $23 trillion. Philanthropic capital alone flowing through the global financial system every single year is well above $1 trillion dollars. By its nature, philanthropic capital can often be deployed in more flexible, risk-tolerant and patient ways than other forms of finance. Combined, these private capital flows are key to unlocking accessible, affordable and targeted solutions to closing the climate finance gap. And we mustn’t neglect the massive additional contributions that businesses everywhere and of all sizes can make to the climate action agenda through their networks, capacity to innovate, and engagement with local communities.

The Gulf can help African countries meet their climate-finance targets

In the same way that we can no longer decouple the human development agenda from the climate and nature agenda, we can also no longer afford to keep governments, businesses and philanthropists operating in isolation from one another. They must work together and in parallel, collaborating where they can while always playing to their respective strengths. When we get this right, blending capabilities and capital from across these different sectors, we can produce outcomes on the required scale and in a timeframe that not one of individual stakeholder groups could achieve on their own.

Governments at all levels will always have a leading role to play in steering local and global responses to climate change, but there is increasing evidence that the private sector holds the greatest untapped potential for accelerating the implementation of the world’s climate and nature goals. Through initiatives such as the Cop28 Business and Philanthropy Forum, we can engage with this essential community and others in new and constructive ways, in turn creating a more inclusive green agenda that meets our climate and nature goals, while being conducive to social and economic progress in a way that leaves no one behind.

Beijing frets over Taiwan opposition split as parties go on the attack over China ties

 A supporter of the main opposition party Kuomintang (KMT) waves a Taiwanese flag outside of the Central Election Commission in Taipei, Taiwan November 24, 2023. REUTERS/Ann Wang/File Photo

BEIJING/TAIPEI - Beijing is fretting that a split in Taiwan's opposition could pave the way for the island's ruling party - which the Chinese government despises - to stay in power, as China took centre stage in election campaigning over the weekend.

China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, looms large over the Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary election as it has ramped up military pressure against the island.

Last week, negotiations for a united presidential ticket between the two main opposition parties, which seek closer ties with China, imploded, giving a boost to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), already leading opinion polls.

China's official response so far has been a brief statement from its Taiwan Affairs Office late Friday saying it hopes the election result will help maintain peace and stability, and reiterating that Taiwan faces "a choice between war and peace".

But on Chinese social media, the drama has been followed with a sense of despair at the opposition's disunity.

Zhang Xuesong, director of strategic research at Chinese think tank CICG Asia-Pacific, wrote on his Weibo social media account that the disintegration of the talks was a "loss for cross-Taiwan Strait peace".

"That was an extremely frustrating day," he added. "Of course, the only thing that gives us confidence is that Taiwan is one step closer to finally being reunified."

Other Chinese Weibo accounts that follow Taiwan have been similarly despondent.

State-run Shenzhen Television wrote that the breakdown in talks signalled "a chaotic battle" to come in the election.

One Chinese Weibo user wrote simply: "I saw news that the talks broke down, and now I've lost hope."

The DPP has defied Chinese pressure. Beijing views DPP presidential candidate Lai Ching-te as a separatist and has rebuffed repeated offers of talks from both him and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen.

Speaking at a campaign rally on Sunday night in Taipei's sister city New Taipei, Lai said that if Taiwan accepts it is part of China - Beijing's bottom line for talks - it will lose sovereignty.

"With no sovereignty, you will have no ownership over your land, your homes," Lai said.

Hou Yu-ih, the candidate for Taiwan's largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), told his supporters that a vote for Lai was a vote for war and only he could bring peace. Lai and the DPP strongly dispute that point of view.

On Monday, China's Taiwan Affairs Office repeated its attacks on Lai and running mate Hsiao Bi-khim, formerly Taiwan's de facto ambassador to the United States.

Lai and Hsiao "distorted facts and downplayed the harmfulness and danger of 'Taiwan independence' separatist activities to deceive voters in the 2024 leadership election in Taiwan", it said.

Opinion polls since the opposition talks collapsed have given a mixed picture.

The Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation said that just more than half of respondents to the question of who they regarded as having the "best prospects" of winning answered Lai.

Television station ETtoday put Lai at about 35%, with Hou nipping at his heels with 33% and former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je from the small Taiwan People's Party at 21%.

A split opposition gives Lai an increased chance of victory in Taiwan's first-past-the-post system. In 2020's election, the DPP won in a landslide, taking 56% of the vote, but only had to face one main opponent, the KMT's Han Kuo-yu. 

REUTERS

Shoppers spend record $9.8 billion in US online sales on Black Friday

Top-selling categories were smartwatches, televisions, toys and gaming, according to report.



REUTERS

Important for the retail sector, the shopping season extends through Christmas and culminates with a grand finale on New Year's Eve. / Photo: Reuters

US consumers have spent a record $9.8 billion online on Black Friday, up 7.5 percent from the previous year, according to local media.

“We’ve seen a very strategic consumer emerge over the past year, where they’re really trying to take advantage of these marquee days so that they can maximize on discounts,” Vivek Pandya, a lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, told CNBC on Saturday.

According to the report, Black Friday’s top-selling categories were smartwatches, televisions, toys and gaming.

Earlier, Adobe Analytics, which covers most US online retailing sites, reported that Americans spent $5.6 billion in online shopping on Thanksgiving Day, up 5.5 percent from last year.

Shopping season extends through Christmas

The retail sector in the US sees a pivotal period commencing with Thanksgiving Day, celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November each year, followed by the widespread discounted shopping frenzy of Black Friday.

This holiday shopping season continues with Small Business Saturday, designed to boost sales for small businesses, and Cyber Monday, the Monday following Thanksgiving weekend and the second-biggest shopping day and biggest day for online sales.

Important for the retail sector, the shopping season extends through Christmas and culminates with a grand finale on New Year's Eve.