The idea of Israel, the Zionist occupation, claiming a moral position is absurd. And the fact that the international community continues to give Israel any credibility is a dereliction of duty and forms a vacuum of morality for all of those who do not stand resolutely against its genocide in Palestine and its attacks on Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran. Israel’s immunity granted by Western colonial nations is a further reflection of the moral gulf between these states and the vast majority of humankind that subscribes  to values that uphold People(s)-Centered Human Rights, self-determination, and dignity.

Israel’s unprovoked attack is another example of the lawlessness that is fully supported by the U.S. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) rejects the notion that the U.S. was unaware of this attack. The U.S. had the ability to stop this attack if it was serious about containing Israel’s perpetual war crimes and disregard for international law, which is a  major threat to any form of true peace. The combination of Israel’s continued genocidal assaults and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, and its bombings and occupations of portions of the sovereign nations of Syria and Lebanon prove that Israel and the U.S. are the most dangerous nations in the world. Their power must be dismantled.

To conflate Israel’s actions with Jewish values is the height of antisemitism. Zionism, an ideology of white “supremacy,” must be wholly separated from Judaism’s teachings of justice, human rights, and inclusivity. Israel is no more a “Jewish state” than the U.S. is a “Christian state.” Both are violent constructs of ethnonationalism. BAP firmly rejects the conflation of Judaism with the barbarism of Zionism, just as we denounce the antisemitic trope that equates Zionism with Judaism itself.

Israel’s militarism further threatens global stability by spiking the price of oil by 8 percent in one night. This economic shockwave further demonstrates why we must continue linking the devastation of war with the devastation associated with the climate catastrophe that is fueled by capitalist war profiteering interests of fossil fuel cartels and the military industrial complex who both benefit from the Israeli war machine at the expense of human life and the ecosystems necessary to sustain it. Israel’s aggression is capitalism’s credit card with an unlimited spending limit.

History will remember this moment and Israel’s barbaric acts as an indelible and ignominious stain on international “law” and cooperation, people(s)-centered human rights and the basic tenets of human dignity.

In Response, BAP Demands that : 

• The UN Security Council and European Union impose immediate sanctions and consequences for Israel’s illegal acts, and institute an arms embargo.
• The international community must expel Israel from the United Nations. It has no place among fraternal nations.
• The international community categorically reject Israel’s fraudulent claims to jurisdiction over Iran’s lawful nuclear energy program.
• The IAEA investigate Israel’s unregulated nuclear program with the same rigor applied to others.
• U.S. lawmakers enforce laws prohibiting military aid to human rights violators by cutting off all arms transfers to Israel or face prosecution at the ICC and ICJ for complicity in war crimes.
• The ICC indict and prosecute Israeli and U.S. officials for continued war crimes throughout West Asia and the lawlessness of genocide perpetuated against the Palestinian people.
• All anti-imperialist, anti-war, pro-peace movements and organizations support Iran’s right to sovereignty, self-defense, and self-determination against Israel’s murderous aggression.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Black Alliance for Peace.

The Chinese team members and support staff confronted the eight activists who were seated close to them during Saturday’s friendly international match at the Allianz stadium in St. Paul, Minnesota, that the U.S. won 3-0.

The activists, dressed in white T-shirts, had been shouting slogans and holding up white banners that read “Free Tibet” during the second half of the game.

(Tenzin Shakya/RTYC-MN)

Members of the Chinese team sought their removal from the stands, and the activists were asked to leave the stadium by security guards. That prompted boos from other spectators who shouted, “Let them stay!” and chanted “Free speech!”

Soon after, stadium officials allowed the activists to return to their seats but confiscated their white banners. The activists watched the rest of the game holding up the Tibetan national flag that is banned by China inside Tibet. They also still wore their “Free Tibet” T-shirts.

(Tenzin Shakya/RTYC-MN)

“The biggest takeaway (from this campaign) is that if Tibetans stand up, raise our voices, and take action for our own cause, then the people of the world automatically rise up in support,” one of the protesters, Tenzin Palsang, told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday.

“China doesn’t just play soccer. They also play games with human rights,” said Palsang, who is president of the Minnesota chapter of the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress.

She cited harsh conditions inside Tibet, where she said children are suffering “colonial boarding school policies,” referring to the Chinese government-run schools where Tibetan children, aged 6-17, have reportedly been held in “prison-like” conditions and forced to study a Mandarin-heavy curriculum that promotes party loyalty or a state-approved “patriotic education.”

(Tenzin Shakya/RTYC-MN)

According to Freedom House’s annual 2025 Freedom in the World report, Tibet was given a score of 0, based on an analysis of political and civil freedoms, making it one of the least-free places in the world. China annexed Tibet in 1950 and has since governed the territory with an oppressively heavy-hand while seeking to erase Tibetan culture and identity.

Beijing denies it represses Tibet or seeks to erase its cultural traditions, instead pointing to economic development in the region as evidence of its positive impacts on the population of about 6 million Tibetans.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan.

Match Group, the tech company that owns Match.com, OkCupid, Hinge, Tinder and other popular dating services, has known for years which users have been accused of sexual assault and rape, but kept those reports hidden from others on the app, according to a new investigation. Match Group controls half of the world’s online dating market and facilitates meetups for millions of people in scores of countries around the world. “Match Group is aware of a lot of the scale of the harm on their apps. They actually track this on their backend,” says journalist Emily Elena Dugdale, one of the authors of the investigation produced as part of the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network. “Similar to many tech companies, there’s really little regulation that requires them to actually tell you what’s going on on their apps.” We also speak with whistleblower Michael Lawrie, the former head of user safety and advocacy at OkCupid. He says he quit after his concerns about user safety went unheeded. “I was seeing a lot of stuff,” Lawrie says. “It became impossible for me to carry on working there, ethically and morally.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te's administration is threatening legal action as sports officials on the democratic island lawyer up following widespread online abuse of Lin, who beat Yildiz Kahraman of Turkey in the semi-final on Wednesday. She will face Julia Szeremeta of Poland in the gold medal final bout on Saturday.

"I've gotten this far after being eliminated in the first round of the last competition, and now I have finally made it to the final," Lin told journalists in Paris following her win on Wednesday.

"I will be using everything I have learned throughout my life to do my absolute best in the match, and hopefully achieve my dream of winning the gold medal," she said.

The island's foreign ministry on Friday condemned Russia after one of its senior diplomats claimed Lin had "failed hormonal tests" and misidentified her as a man.

It said the International Olympics Committee had revoked the International Boxing Federation's right to organize Olympic boxing events, and its status as a world governing body, as well as publicly confirming Lin's eligibility "many times."

Russian fallacies

The ministry accused Deputy Russian U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy of "abusing the Security Council venue to publish fallacies that have nothing to do with maintaining international peace and security."

"This fully highlights Russia's disregard for international rules and justice and its intention to influence the Olympic Games with political power, as well as its arrogance," the ministry said in a statement on its official website.

Both Lin and Algerian boxer Imane Khelif have been subjected to intense scrutiny, criticism and bullying online since the start of the Olympic Games. Khelif has called for an end to the bullying, saying “it destroys people.”

Both were disqualified ahead of the International Boxing Association World Championships last year for "failing eligibility criteria," but the IBA hasn't said which tests were carried out.

The International Olympics Committee, or IOC, has said both women are eligible to compete in the Olympics, while IOC President Thomas Bach has dismissed the online furor as "hate speech."

"We have two boxers who are born as a woman, who have been raised as a woman, who have a passport as a woman, and who have competed for many years as a woman," Bach told journalists on Aug. 3. "There was never any doubt about them being a woman."

"What is going on in this context in social media with all this hate speech, with this aggression and abuse, fueled by this agenda, is totally unacceptable," he said.

Turkey's Kahraman made an "X" gesture with her fingers after losing to Lin, which many on social media interpreted as a reference to inaccurate claims about Lin's gender. She declined to explain the meaning of the gesture when asked by journalists.

Take a moment to read more

Soaring price of shuttlecocks ruffles feathers in China

Chinese police arrest Beijing woman for ‘defaming’ Olympic athletes

Tibetan athlete fails to medal in her latest Olympics but is ‘happy’

Chinese state TV pulls plug on Taiwan’s badminton victory

Chinese social media users slam athletes over failure to deliver gold

‘Talking nonsense’

Taiwanese boxing coach Li Wunan, honorary chairman of the Taiwan Boxing Association, said he has trained Lin since she was 13.

"I know very well that she is a woman," he told journalists on Aug. 7, adding that her critics on social media were "talking nonsense."

President Lai Ching-te said via his Facebook page that "there is no doubt regarding Lin's eligibility," and that she has the full backing of the government, Taiwan's Central News Agency reported this week.

Lai also "expressed his admiration and support for Lin for not caving into pressure" as she prepares for a match that could net Taiwan its first gold medal in Olympic boxing, the report said.

LGBTQ+ athletes, officials and observers have warned that a deluge of hateful comments misidentifying female boxer Imane Khelif in the Paris Olympics as transgender or a man could pose dangers for the LGBTQ+ community and female athletes in general, the Associated Press reported from Paris on Aug. 3.

The concerns come as famous figures — from former U.S. President Donald Trump to “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling — have railed against the Algerian boxer after her Italian competitor Angela Carini quit their bout Thursday. They and other social media comments falsely claimed Khelif was a man fighting a woman, the agency said.

Former athletes like Belgium’s Charline Van Snick, 33, a former judo medalist in the 2012 Games, said the testing and comments about women’s bodies are undoing years of work by female athletes to push back against stigma, it said.

"There are some women with more testosterone, or different kinds of body," AP quoted Van Snick as saying. "In judo, you are fighting, and you have to stay a woman, what is accepted of a woman. If you look too much like a man, they say, ‘Oh, she’s a man.’ But I’m a woman who could beat a man in the sport."

Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Wang Yun for RFA Mandarin.

Hernán González, a producer for the South American broadcaster Torneos, was forced to the ground and handcuffed by multiple law enforcement officers at a stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, while reporting live before a soccer match on July 14, 2024.

The New York Times reported that mayhem broke out at the Copa América final between Argentina and Colombia, when throngs of unticketed fans attempted to enter Hard Rock Stadium in the Miami suburb, delaying kickoff for more than an hour.

In footage captured by Mail Sport reporter Jake Fenner, officers from multiple law enforcement agencies can be seen grabbing a man who appears to be holding press credentials and who entered through the media entrance, according to Fenner.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker was able to confirm the man was González, who is the content and production director for Torneos, which produced and was a host broadcaster of the event.

In the video, González is quickly surrounded by at least six officers, who lift him sideways and place him prone on the ground, with an officer appearing to hold his head against the pavement while others place him in handcuffs. Both of the journalist’s shoes came off and his shirt ripped open in the course of the detention.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Diego Spairani, a photojournalist for the Argentinian TV news channel Todo Noticias, was pushed by police attempting to force him and a colleague from a stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, while reporting live before a soccer match on July 14, 2024.

The New York Times reported that mayhem broke out at the Copa América final between Argentina and Colombia, when throngs of unticketed fans attempted to enter Hard Rock Stadium in the Miami suburb, delaying kickoff for more than an hour.

In Todo Noticias’ live footage, reporter Leo Paradizo can be seen walking toward one of the closed entrances when suddenly the gate opens and individuals start rushing in. Law enforcement and event security quickly respond, and a Miami-Dade Police Department officer can be seen pushing Spairani back from the entrance while he says in Spanish that they’re cooperating.

The officer appears to direct the journalists to stand in a particular location, but a stadium employee approaches and erroneously asserts that the journalists had opened the gate for the crowd, saying that they should be forced to leave.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Leo Paradizo, a reporter for the Argentinian TV news channel Todo Noticias, was pushed by police attempting to force him and his photographer from a stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, while reporting live before a soccer match on July 14, 2024.

The New York Times reported that mayhem broke out at the Copa América final between Argentina and Colombia, when throngs of unticketed fans attempted to enter Hard Rock Stadium in the Miami suburb, delaying kickoff for more than an hour.

In Todo Noticias’ live footage, Paradizo can be seen walking toward one of the closed entrances when suddenly the gate opens and individuals start rushing in. Law enforcement and event security quickly respond, and a Miami-Dade Police Department officer can be seen pushing photographer Diego Spairani back from the entrance while he says in Spanish that they’re cooperating.

The officer appears to direct the journalists to stand in a particular location, but a stadium employee approaches and erroneously asserts that the journalists had opened the gate for the crowd, saying that they should be forced to leave.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

On Sunday, police arrested Furkan Saliu, founder of the news website PortaliX, and forced his team, producer Ariton Ramadan and camera operator Fatlum Aliu, to leave the game in Gorno Konjare, a village around 30 miles (45 kilometers) northeast of the capital, Skopje, as the journalists were filming the police breaking up a fight between rival fans, according to news reports and Saliu.

Saliu told CPJ via email that the police confiscated his phone and deleted videos on it, which showed officers using excessive force against bystanders, before releasing him later that day.

“North Macedonia authorities should promptly and credibly investigate why the police arrested journalist Furkan Saliu and deleted video footage from his phone,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Reporters deserve to be protected by the police when violence breaks out. Unless authorities have something to hide, they must ensure that journalists can report on issues of public interest without fear of police interference.”

The Ministry of Internal Affairs, which oversees the police, said in a statement that Saliu was arrested because he attacked the police officers and they subsequently found a gun in his car.

In a Facebook post, Saliu apologized for his behavior, which “probably caused the situation to escalate to finally end up in handcuffs,” but denied assaulting the police and said that he had a license for his gun.

PortaliX published a video that appears to show riot police holding Saliu on the ground while he shouts “I cannot breathe” and another person says “delete the recording.”

PortaliX described the police’s actions against Saliu as an “attempt to pressure free journalism.”

Saliu told CPJ that he had filed a criminal complaint to the police about the incident, which he described as a “flagrant violation of my rights as a human being and as a journalist.”

As of April 10, Saliu said he had not received any response to his complaint or heard whether authorities intended to charge him.

CPJ’s email request for comment to the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Felicia Anne Gayle Picus was found dead in her home, the victim of a vicious murder that devastated her family and rattled her neighbors in the gated community of University City, Missouri, just outside St. Louis. Police suspected a burglary gone wrong. The scene was replete with forensic evidence: There were bloody footprints and fingerprints, and the murder weapon — a kitchen knife used to stab Picus — was left lodged in her neck.

That detail caught the medical examiner’s attention. Weeks earlier, another woman had been stabbed to death just a couple of miles away, and the weapon was left in the victim’s body. Days after Picus’s murder, the University City police chief told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that investigators had identified a “prime suspect,” someone they said had been spotted in the area “in recent weeks,” whom they believed had killed before.

But whatever became of that lead is unclear. After Picus’s family posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer, a jailhouse informant named Henry Cole came forward with a story about how his former cellmate, Marcellus Williams, had confessed to murdering Picus. Soon, police secured a second informant: Laura Asaro, Williams’s former girlfriend, also told the cops that Williams was responsible for the killing. There were reasons to be wary of their stories. Both informants were facing prison time for unrelated crimes and stood to benefit. Many of the details they offered shifted over the course of questioning, while others did not match the crime. Nonetheless, Williams was charged with Picus’s murder, convicted, and sentenced to death.

Questions about the investigation and Williams’s guilt have only mounted in the years since the August 1998 crime. DNA testing on the murder weapon done years after his conviction revealed a partial male profile that could not have come from Williams. On the eve of Williams’s scheduled execution in 2017, then-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens intervened. He issued an executive order that triggered a rarely used provision of Missouri law, empaneling a board to review the evidence, including DNA, that jurors never heard about at trial.

While that review was ongoing for most of the last six years, the board never submitted a final report or recommendation to the governor, as the law requires. Instead, last June, Gov. Mike Parson announced that he was rescinding his predecessor’s order, effectively dissolving the panel that had been reinvestigating the case.

The question now is whether Missouri law allows the governor to simply disappear an ongoing investigation. Because the law has so rarely been used, its contours have never been fully litigated, prompting the Midwest Innocence Project, which represents Williams, to file a civil lawsuit seeking to invalidate Parson’s order. The state’s attorney general balked, arguing that Williams was trying to usurp the governor’s independent clemency powers. The AG has asked the Missouri Supreme Court to toss the lawsuit — and clear the way for Williams’s execution.

Picus spent a decade as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, including on the crime beat, before leaving to focus on philanthropic endeavors. She was an ardent environmentalist and feminist: She persuaded the newspaper to adopt its first recycling program, and a former colleague recalled how she’d advocated for using the term “personhole” instead of “manhole” in stories.

Diminutive in stature with long hair and a reported fondness for Birkenstocks, Picus was also a dedicated friend. She wrote hundreds of birthday and holiday cards each year — the day she was killed, she had more than 30 handmade cards ready to mail. “She was like a central switching system on the telephone company of life,” a childhood friend and fellow journalist wrote in the Chicago Tribune.

The Post-Dispatch covered the search for Picus’s killer as the months without an arrest wore on, publishing a detailed list of items police said had been stolen from her home, among them an old Apple laptop belonging to Picus’s husband, Dan. But it wasn’t until the $10,000 reward was posted that police secured statements from the informants, Cole and Asaro, claiming that Williams had confessed to the murder. Although the reward was supposed to be paid upon conviction, prosecutors encouraged Dan to pay Cole $5,000 upfront when it appeared that his cooperation might be flagging.

Cole and Asaro were the backbone of the prosecution’s case at Williams’s trial in the summer of 2001. The state painted a harrowing picture of the attack on Picus and cast Williams as a ruthless killer. There was no physical evidence, however, to back up the informants’ claims. Asaro claimed that Williams had scratches on his face the day of the murder, yet no foreign DNA was recovered from under Picus’s fingernails. Cole said Williams’s clothes were bloody and that he’d stolen a shirt to cover the stains when he left Picus’s house, yet no clothes were missing from the home. Bloody shoeprints found at the scene were a different size than Williams’s feet. Fingerprints lifted by investigators were deemed unusable by the state and then destroyed before the defense had a chance to analyze them.

There was, however, the Apple laptop, which police ultimately recovered. According to Asaro, Williams gave his grandfather’s neighbor the computer in exchange for crack cocaine. At trial, the man denied that account. He’d paid Williams for the laptop, he said. Williams told him that he’d gotten the computer from Asaro and was selling it for her. Prosecutors objected to this testimony, so the jury never heard it. Asaro and the man who received the computer have since died.

Like Cole and Asaro, Williams had a rap sheet. He’d been sentenced to decades in prison for robbery and burglary by the time of the murder trial. According to the Post-Dispatch, the jury deliberated for less than 90 minutes, “including lunch,” before deciding that Williams should be sentenced to die for Picus’s murder.

Marcellus Williams in an undated photo.

Attorneys for Williams sought to conduct DNA testing prior to his trial, but the circuit court judge refused. It wasn’t until 2015 that Williams was granted permission to test the murder weapon, which revealed a male DNA profile that did not match Williams. Nonetheless, the Missouri Supreme Court dismissed the new evidence and set Williams’s execution for August 22, 2017.

The Midwest Innocence Project turned to Greitens, asking that he halt the execution and convene a board of inquiry to investigate the case. On the day Williams was set to die, Greitens issued an executive order granting the request.

A five-member board would be set up to “assess the credibility and weight of all evidence” in the case, Greitens’s order read. The board was given subpoena power and tasked with keeping the information it collected in “strict confidence.” The order required the board to make a final report and recommendation to the governor “as to whether or not Williams should be executed or his sentence of death commuted.”

Greitens appointed five retired judges to the investigation, and they got to work. In the years that followed, the Midwest Innocence Project provided the board with a host of information and suggestions for lines of inquiry — continuing well after Greitens resigned amid a swirl of controversies the following year and Parson assumed office.

That is until Parson issued his own executive order on June 29, 2023, rescinding Greitens’s order. While Parson acknowledged that his predecessor had required a report from the board of inquiry regarding its investigation, the governor made no mention of any findings.

“This board was established nearly six years ago, and it is time to move forward,” he said. “We could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo, and solving nothing. This administration won’t do that.”

In 1963, the Missouri legislature passed several criminal justice reforms, including one aimed at avoiding wrongful executions. The state’s constitution already empowered the governor to grant reprieves, commutations, and pardons, but lawmakers added new authorities, allowing the governor, “in his discretion,” to appoint a board of inquiry tasked with gathering information bearing on whether a person “condemned to death” should in fact be executed. Lawmakers set several specific parameters, including that the board “shall” issue a final report. The law passed that summer and has never been amended.

Although it has been on the books for 60 years, the provision has only been invoked three times, including in the Marcellus Williams case. In 1997, then-Gov. Mel Carnahan stayed the execution of William Boliek, who had been sentenced to die for murdering a witness to a robbery in Kansas City, and ordered a board of inquiry to look into the case. The board submitted its report to Carnahan, but the governor did not act on it before he was killed in a plane crash — meaning the case was never resolved. The Missouri Supreme Court subsequently ruled that Carnahan was the only one who could lift the stay, meaning Boliek could never be executed. He remains on Missouri’s death row.

In an August 2023 civil lawsuit filed in Cole County, where the state capital is located, the Midwest Innocence Project drew on this history to argue that Parson had violated the law by dissolving Greitens’s board before it had fulfilled its statutory duty to provide a report and recommendation in Williams’s case.

Once the statute was triggered, the governor was bound to uphold its provisions. Parson’s order prematurely dissolving the board exceeded the power granted to his office by the legislature some 60 years ago, the lawyers argued. “All Mr. Williams is asking is for the board of inquiry to be able to complete its work and issue a report and recommendation, ensuring that at least one government entity finally hears all the evidence of his innocence,” said Tricia Rojo Bushnell, the Midwest Innocence Project’s executive director. Once the process is complete, Parson can do what he wants, she added. “But until that time, Mr. Williams has a right to this process that was started by Gov. Greitens precisely out of the concern that Missouri may execute an innocent person.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Jan. 10, 2024.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey sought to have the lawsuit dismissed outright, but in November, Circuit Court Judge S. Cotton Walker concluded that it should proceed. The statute didn’t expressly give Parson the authority to dissolve the board, and Williams had an interest in the process playing out according to the law, he wrote. “There is a fundamental difference between the governor’s authority to appoint a board in his discretion and the board’s ongoing existence being discretionary.”

Bailey appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, arguing that the circuit court couldn’t tell the governor what to do in matters of clemency. Since the board of inquiry statute references the governor’s constitutional powers over clemency, Bailey argued, interfering with his ability to dissolve the board was the same as interfering with his clemency powers. Williams was trying to use the court to “hijack” Parson’s authority, he wrote.

The Midwest Innocence Project argued that Bailey’s position was a red herring: Williams was not looking to interfere with Parson’s authority on matters of clemency; he was merely asking that the governor be required to follow the statute in his decision-making. To find otherwise would be violating the separation of powers in the other direction: allowing the governor to rewrite a decades-old act of the legislature. The governor’s position, the lawyers wrote, “has it backward.”

“The governor’s clemency power exists for the public good, not his own,” the defense brief reads. “As a result, a board of inquiry serves the public, not the governor, and that board ‘shall’ make a report and recommendation for the governor’s consideration before he makes a final clemency decision.”

There is no timeline for the Missouri Supreme Court to rule.

Meanwhile, the Conviction and Incident Review Unit at the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has also reached out to the court, asking that it refrain from setting a date for Williams’s execution for “an initial period of six months.” The office has also been investigating Williams’s case and needs more time to decide whether it will seek to vacate his sentence on its own — a power granted to state prosecutors under a newer, but also rarely used, Missouri law.

Marcellus Williams remains grateful to Greitens for staying his execution and invoking the board of inquiry statute. He told the Kansas City Star that he grew up “basically like a typical misguided” youth, bouncing in and out of juvenile detention. He had just started serving a 20-year sentence for robbing a doughnut shop when he was charged with Picus’s killing. He knew he hadn’t done it and said that despite his experience with the criminal justice system, he thought the mistake would be discovered and corrected. “You still have this naivete right there that you’re not really recognizing who you’re up against.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jordan Smith.

Felicia Anne Gayle Picus was found dead in her home, the victim of a vicious murder that devastated her family and rattled her neighbors in the gated community of University City, Missouri, just outside St. Louis. Police suspected a burglary gone wrong. The scene was replete with forensic evidence: There were bloody footprints and fingerprints, and the murder weapon — a kitchen knife used to stab Picus — was left lodged in her neck.

That detail caught the medical examiner’s attention. Weeks earlier, another woman had been stabbed to death just a couple of miles away, and the weapon was left in the victim’s body. Days after Picus’s murder, the University City police chief told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that investigators had identified a “prime suspect,” someone they said had been spotted in the area “in recent weeks,” whom they believed had killed before.

But whatever became of that lead is unclear. After Picus’s family posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer, a jailhouse informant named Henry Cole came forward with a story about how his former cellmate, Marcellus Williams, had confessed to murdering Picus. Soon, police secured a second informant: Laura Asaro, Williams’s former girlfriend, also told the cops that Williams was responsible for the killing. There were reasons to be wary of their stories. Both informants were facing prison time for unrelated crimes and stood to benefit. Many of the details they offered shifted over the course of questioning, while others did not match the crime. Nonetheless, Williams was charged with Picus’s murder, convicted, and sentenced to death.

Questions about the investigation and Williams’s guilt have only mounted in the years since the August 1998 crime. DNA testing on the murder weapon done years after his conviction revealed a partial male profile that could not have come from Williams. On the eve of Williams’s scheduled execution in 2017, then-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens intervened. He issued an executive order that triggered a rarely used provision of Missouri law, empaneling a board to review the evidence, including DNA, that jurors never heard about at trial.

While that review was ongoing for most of the last six years, the board never submitted a final report or recommendation to the governor, as the law requires. Instead, last June, Gov. Mike Parson announced that he was rescinding his predecessor’s order, effectively dissolving the panel that had been reinvestigating the case.

The question now is whether Missouri law allows the governor to simply disappear an ongoing investigation. Because the law has so rarely been used, its contours have never been fully litigated, prompting the Midwest Innocence Project, which represents Williams, to file a civil lawsuit seeking to invalidate Parson’s order. The state’s attorney general balked, arguing that Williams was trying to usurp the governor’s independent clemency powers. The AG has asked the Missouri Supreme Court to toss the lawsuit — and clear the way for Williams’s execution.

Picus spent a decade as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, including on the crime beat, before leaving to focus on philanthropic endeavors. She was an ardent environmentalist and feminist: She persuaded the newspaper to adopt its first recycling program, and a former colleague recalled how she’d advocated for using the term “personhole” instead of “manhole” in stories.

Diminutive in stature with long hair and a reported fondness for Birkenstocks, Picus was also a dedicated friend. She wrote hundreds of birthday and holiday cards each year — the day she was killed, she had more than 30 handmade cards ready to mail. “She was like a central switching system on the telephone company of life,” a childhood friend and fellow journalist wrote in the Chicago Tribune.

The Post-Dispatch covered the search for Picus’s killer as the months without an arrest wore on, publishing a detailed list of items police said had been stolen from her home, among them an old Apple laptop belonging to Picus’s husband, Dan. But it wasn’t until the $10,000 reward was posted that police secured statements from the informants, Cole and Asaro, claiming that Williams had confessed to the murder. Although the reward was supposed to be paid upon conviction, prosecutors encouraged Dan to pay Cole $5,000 upfront when it appeared that his cooperation might be flagging.

Cole and Asaro were the backbone of the prosecution’s case at Williams’s trial in the summer of 2001. The state painted a harrowing picture of the attack on Picus and cast Williams as a ruthless killer. There was no physical evidence, however, to back up the informants’ claims. Asaro claimed that Williams had scratches on his face the day of the murder, yet no foreign DNA was recovered from under Picus’s fingernails. Cole said Williams’s clothes were bloody and that he’d stolen a shirt to cover the stains when he left Picus’s house, yet no clothes were missing from the home. Bloody shoeprints found at the scene were a different size than Williams’s feet. Fingerprints lifted by investigators were deemed unusable by the state and then destroyed before the defense had a chance to analyze them.

There was, however, the Apple laptop, which police ultimately recovered. According to Asaro, Williams gave his grandfather’s neighbor the computer in exchange for crack cocaine. At trial, the man denied that account. He’d paid Williams for the laptop, he said. Williams told him that he’d gotten the computer from Asaro and was selling it for her. Prosecutors objected to this testimony, so the jury never heard it. Asaro and the man who received the computer have since died.

Like Cole and Asaro, Williams had a rap sheet. He’d been sentenced to decades in prison for robbery and burglary by the time of the murder trial. According to the Post-Dispatch, the jury deliberated for less than 90 minutes, “including lunch,” before deciding that Williams should be sentenced to die for Picus’s murder.

Marcellus Williams in an undated photo.

Attorneys for Williams sought to conduct DNA testing prior to his trial, but the circuit court judge refused. It wasn’t until 2015 that Williams was granted permission to test the murder weapon, which revealed a male DNA profile that did not match Williams. Nonetheless, the Missouri Supreme Court dismissed the new evidence and set Williams’s execution for August 22, 2017.

The Midwest Innocence Project turned to Greitens, asking that he halt the execution and convene a board of inquiry to investigate the case. On the day Williams was set to die, Greitens issued an executive order granting the request.

A five-member board would be set up to “assess the credibility and weight of all evidence” in the case, Greitens’s order read. The board was given subpoena power and tasked with keeping the information it collected in “strict confidence.” The order required the board to make a final report and recommendation to the governor “as to whether or not Williams should be executed or his sentence of death commuted.”

Greitens appointed five retired judges to the investigation, and they got to work. In the years that followed, the Midwest Innocence Project provided the board with a host of information and suggestions for lines of inquiry — continuing well after Greitens resigned amid a swirl of controversies the following year and Parson assumed office.

That is until Parson issued his own executive order on June 29, 2023, rescinding Greitens’s order. While Parson acknowledged that his predecessor had required a report from the board of inquiry regarding its investigation, the governor made no mention of any findings.

“This board was established nearly six years ago, and it is time to move forward,” he said. “We could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo, and solving nothing. This administration won’t do that.”

In 1963, the Missouri legislature passed several criminal justice reforms, including one aimed at avoiding wrongful executions. The state’s constitution already empowered the governor to grant reprieves, commutations, and pardons, but lawmakers added new authorities, allowing the governor, “in his discretion,” to appoint a board of inquiry tasked with gathering information bearing on whether a person “condemned to death” should in fact be executed. Lawmakers set several specific parameters, including that the board “shall” issue a final report. The law passed that summer and has never been amended.

Although it has been on the books for 60 years, the provision has only been invoked three times, including in the Marcellus Williams case. In 1997, then-Gov. Mel Carnahan stayed the execution of William Boliek, who had been sentenced to die for murdering a witness to a robbery in Kansas City, and ordered a board of inquiry to look into the case. The board submitted its report to Carnahan, but the governor did not act on it before he was killed in a plane crash — meaning the case was never resolved. The Missouri Supreme Court subsequently ruled that Carnahan was the only one who could lift the stay, meaning Boliek could never be executed. He remains on Missouri’s death row.

In an August 2023 civil lawsuit filed in Cole County, where the state capital is located, the Midwest Innocence Project drew on this history to argue that Parson had violated the law by dissolving Greitens’s board before it had fulfilled its statutory duty to provide a report and recommendation in Williams’s case.

Once the statute was triggered, the governor was bound to uphold its provisions. Parson’s order prematurely dissolving the board exceeded the power granted to his office by the legislature some 60 years ago, the lawyers argued. “All Mr. Williams is asking is for the board of inquiry to be able to complete its work and issue a report and recommendation, ensuring that at least one government entity finally hears all the evidence of his innocence,” said Tricia Rojo Bushnell, the Midwest Innocence Project’s executive director. Once the process is complete, Parson can do what he wants, she added. “But until that time, Mr. Williams has a right to this process that was started by Gov. Greitens precisely out of the concern that Missouri may execute an innocent person.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Jan. 10, 2024.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey sought to have the lawsuit dismissed outright, but in November, Circuit Court Judge S. Cotton Walker concluded that it should proceed. The statute didn’t expressly give Parson the authority to dissolve the board, and Williams had an interest in the process playing out according to the law, he wrote. “There is a fundamental difference between the governor’s authority to appoint a board in his discretion and the board’s ongoing existence being discretionary.”

Bailey appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, arguing that the circuit court couldn’t tell the governor what to do in matters of clemency. Since the board of inquiry statute references the governor’s constitutional powers over clemency, Bailey argued, interfering with his ability to dissolve the board was the same as interfering with his clemency powers. Williams was trying to use the court to “hijack” Parson’s authority, he wrote.

The Midwest Innocence Project argued that Bailey’s position was a red herring: Williams was not looking to interfere with Parson’s authority on matters of clemency; he was merely asking that the governor be required to follow the statute in his decision-making. To find otherwise would be violating the separation of powers in the other direction: allowing the governor to rewrite a decades-old act of the legislature. The governor’s position, the lawyers wrote, “has it backward.”

“The governor’s clemency power exists for the public good, not his own,” the defense brief reads. “As a result, a board of inquiry serves the public, not the governor, and that board ‘shall’ make a report and recommendation for the governor’s consideration before he makes a final clemency decision.”

There is no timeline for the Missouri Supreme Court to rule.

Meanwhile, the Conviction and Incident Review Unit at the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has also reached out to the court, asking that it refrain from setting a date for Williams’s execution for “an initial period of six months.” The office has also been investigating Williams’s case and needs more time to decide whether it will seek to vacate his sentence on its own — a power granted to state prosecutors under a newer, but also rarely used, Missouri law.

Marcellus Williams remains grateful to Greitens for staying his execution and invoking the board of inquiry statute. He told the Kansas City Star that he grew up “basically like a typical misguided” youth, bouncing in and out of juvenile detention. He had just started serving a 20-year sentence for robbing a doughnut shop when he was charged with Picus’s killing. He knew he hadn’t done it and said that despite his experience with the criminal justice system, he thought the mistake would be discovered and corrected. “You still have this naivete right there that you’re not really recognizing who you’re up against.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jordan Smith.

"Such mutilation of the tree of life and the resulting loss of ecosystem services provided by biodiversity to humanity is a serious threat to the stability of civilization," study co-authors Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University and Gerardo Ceballos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico wrote in the abstract.

Or, as Ehrlich summarized it in all caps on social media, "New approach to extinction crisis, very bad news."

Previous attempts to grapple with the sixth mass extinction had focused on the number of species lost or at risk. But looking at genera can provide a clear view of the "magnitude and impact" of these losses, the study authors wrote.

Why? Because when one species dies, other species in the same genus can fill its niche in the ecosystem and preserve much of its genetic code, Ceballos toldStanford News. However, when a genus disappears, it leaves a larger gap in both the ecosystem and the genetic record—one that it can take evolution tens to millions of years to fill.

For example, when the passenger pigeon genus went extinct in 1914, the white-footed mouse lost its main food competitor. This combined with a decrease in large predators caused white-footed mouse populations to explode, which has been fatal for humans, because white-footed mice are the primary carriers of Lyme disease.

"We are alarmist because we are alarmed."

"By losing all these genera, we are losing the foundations of the planet to have life in general and human life in particular," Ceballos told The Guardian.

There's also an inherent sadness to the disappearance of so much unique life.

"What we're losing are our only known living companions in the entire universe," Ehrlich told Stanford News.

Ceballos and Eherlich expected genera extinction rates to be lower than species ones, but found in fact that they were about the same. The pair looked specifically at birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. Beyond the 73 extinct genera, the planet also lost 10 families and two orders: the elephant bird and the New Zealand moa. Birds overall lost the most genera, with mammals coming in second.

What's more, if the climate emergency, the illegal wildlife trade, and habitat loss continue and all endangered genera go extinct by 2100, their extinction rate would jump to 354 times what it would have been without these human actions.

"People say that we are alarmist by saying that we expect a collapse," Ceballos told The Guardian. "We are alarmist because we are alarmed."

However, both authors emphasized that it was not too late to act.

"As dramatic as the results are, what is important to mention is that we still have time," Ceballos added. Though he noted that "the window of opportunity is closing rapidly."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

"Such mutilation of the tree of life and the resulting loss of ecosystem services provided by biodiversity to humanity is a serious threat to the stability of civilization," study co-authors Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University and Gerardo Ceballos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico wrote in the abstract.

Or, as Ehrlich summarized it in all caps on social media, "New approach to extinction crisis, very bad news."

Previous attempts to grapple with the sixth mass extinction had focused on the number of species lost or at risk. But looking at genera can provide a clear view of the "magnitude and impact" of these losses, the study authors wrote.

Why? Because when one species dies, other species in the same genus can fill its niche in the ecosystem and preserve much of its genetic code, Ceballos toldStanford News. However, when a genus disappears, it leaves a larger gap in both the ecosystem and the genetic record—one that it can take evolution tens to millions of years to fill.

For example, when the passenger pigeon genus went extinct in 1914, the white-footed mouse lost its main food competitor. This combined with a decrease in large predators caused white-footed mouse populations to explode, which has been fatal for humans, because white-footed mice are the primary carriers of Lyme disease.

"We are alarmist because we are alarmed."

"By losing all these genera, we are losing the foundations of the planet to have life in general and human life in particular," Ceballos told The Guardian.

There's also an inherent sadness to the disappearance of so much unique life.

"What we're losing are our only known living companions in the entire universe," Ehrlich told Stanford News.

Ceballos and Eherlich expected genera extinction rates to be lower than species ones, but found in fact that they were about the same. The pair looked specifically at birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. Beyond the 73 extinct genera, the planet also lost 10 families and two orders: the elephant bird and the New Zealand moa. Birds overall lost the most genera, with mammals coming in second.

What's more, if the climate emergency, the illegal wildlife trade, and habitat loss continue and all endangered genera go extinct by 2100, their extinction rate would jump to 354 times what it would have been without these human actions.

"People say that we are alarmist by saying that we expect a collapse," Ceballos told The Guardian. "We are alarmist because we are alarmed."

However, both authors emphasized that it was not too late to act.

"As dramatic as the results are, what is important to mention is that we still have time," Ceballos added. Though he noted that "the window of opportunity is closing rapidly."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

A recent study from the meteorological organization World Weather Attribution found that climate change made the drought 100 times more likely. The region has always swung between wet and dry periods, but high temperatures have increased what scientists call “evaporative demand” over the desert, causing moisture to disappear faster than ever and making every drought more severe as a result. The current rain pattern “would not have led to drought at all” in a preindustrial world, the researchers found. 

Even though climate change made the disaster far easier to predict, humanitarian aid donors did not heed its warnings. As the drought unfolded, wealthy countries and aid organizations rushed to deliver supplies. The United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, shipped more than $1 billion worth of food last year, and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, mobilized around $138 million of cash and food. The UN will hold a “pledging conference” in New York next week, calling on the international community to send billions more in assistance. But this aid started to flow only after food insecurity in the region had already peaked, and practically none of it will make the region more resilient to future climate shocks.

The international community’s response to the food shortage has been in keeping with past relief efforts in the region. Weather forecasters predicted a previous dry spell in 2011, but money arrived too late to prevent death and displacement. Though the response was faster during another drought in 2016, international donors failed to provide money for infrastructure development and climate adaptation, which helped ensure that the region remained vulnerable to the present drought.

Experts say that the crisis in the Horn of Africa highlights the need for a paradigm shift in the humanitarian aid system, which was built to address sudden and infrequent calamities. Now, however, short-lived disasters like hurricanes and wildfires are happening more often, and climate change is also causing slow-onset crises such as drought and sea-level rise. That means the best way to protect against climate impacts is to spend money before they happen. 

“Humanitarians have been trying to respond [to climate change], but the way in which we’ve been doing things is not meeting the needs,” said Beza Tesfaye, a research director at the humanitarian aid organization Mercy Corps. “The needs are growing and becoming more complex.”

The easiest way for aid organizations like the FAO and USAID to improve their response is to start acting earlier. Experts spotted the potential for drought in the Horn of Africa back in 2019, but advocates in the region struggled to raise money for a response until last year. 

“I think that there is a lot more that could have been done that wasn’t,” said Brenda Lazarus, a food security economist at the FAO, based in Kenya. Lazarus’s team spotted some of the early signs of consecutive failed rains in the region as early as 2020 and appealed to aid partners for help. “I can remember three years ago going to donors and partners and saying, ‘Look, we know this drought is coming. It’s very clear from the forecast that things are likely going to get really bad soon.’” 

If there had been money for pre-disaster outreach, the farmers and pastoralists who make up the majority of Somalia’s labor force might have been able to prepare for the drought, said Jaabir Abdullahi Hussein, a climate researcher at Somalia’s environmental ministry. They could have planted more drought-tolerant staple crops or sold off their livestock herds before the animals began to starve. 

“The local communities, they don’t actually know the drought is coming,” Hussein told Grist. “They don’t get the required information on when, how, where, and what to plant. All of a sudden it’s revealed that the rain is not coming, and the farmers lose their crops and everything.” Somalia’s national government didn’t have the capacity to warn pastoralists around the country about the likelihood of a failed rainy season; if the government had received help from outside organizations, Hussein said, it might have been able to prevent many deaths.

In other parts of the world, aid organizations have experimented with so-called “anticipatory action,” and the results have been encouraging. Last year the nonprofit GiveDirectly sent cash payments to flood-prone populations in Mozambique just before a major cyclone, and it found that recipients used the money on survival necessities, stockpiling food and strengthening their home defenses or paying for transportation to evacuate. The United Nations’ World Food Programme has achieved similarly encouraging results by delivering advance cash payments to residents of Bangladesh four days before a severe flood.

“These things to some extent can be forecasted, and there have been a lot of conversations in the humanitarian community around being better at anticipating disasters,” said Tesfaye of Mercy Corps. “But in practice we don’t see a lot of money flowing at early stages where there can be a meaningful aversion of impacts.” 

The same dynamic holds true for future-oriented adaptation funding, which could help make livelihoods like agriculture and livestock more resilient to climate change. These industries together account for almost three-quarters of Somalia’s economic output, and both are extremely sensitive to climate change: A failed rainy season causes crop failures and deprives sheep and goat herds of food and water, which stunts growth and reduces milk output. Most communities in the region don’t have access to alternate water sources like wells and reservoirs. 

The aid that organizations like USAID provide during drought emergencies doesn’t alleviate these long-term issues, and most other development funding from United Nations organizations isn’t focused on climate change. There are some new financing arms like the Green Climate Fund that have cobbled together money for some adaptation pilot projects in the Horn of Africa, but these projects tend to be hyperlocal and isolated. The Green Climate Fund, for instance, has spent around $42 million to date on two projects in Somalia. 

“Those [adaptation projects] are really significantly underfunded,” said Lazarus. “We’re thinking that we’re going to have these micro-scale investments in these pilot projects, and that that’s going to have kind of a transformative impact on the region — and the reality is these programs are just way too small to do that.”

There’s no shortage of potential projects that could help: Harvesting rainwater and planting with drought-resilient seeds could help farmers protect their crops during dry spells, and new water storage facilities could help pastoralists ensure their herds don’t die of dehydration. A 2015 United Nations initiative in Somalia led to the construction of a novel “sand dam” that traps and stores freshwater beneath layers of sand, ensuring that farmers don’t have to rely on inconsistent rains. But Africa has received only 4 percent of climate adaptation funding spent to date, despite being home to almost a fifth of the world’s population. A recent UN report found that adaptation spending in developing countries is hovering between 10 and 20 percent of current need.

Many hope that this funding logjam was broken last year at the UN climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where developed countries agreed to create a fund that will address what negotiators call “loss and damage” from climate change. The fund is essentially the start of a climate reparations program, wherein developed countries that have emitted most historical carbon are supposed to send some kind of funding to poorer countries that are most susceptible to the effects of climate change.

In theory, nations like Somalia should be among the biggest beneficiaries of this “loss and damage” fund, but there are few details about what kind of assistance richer countries will be providing, according to Swenja Surminski, a professor at the London School of Economics who studies climate adaptation financing.

“It is not really clear to me what [the funds] are going to be used for, and also how we distinguish between spending on ‘loss and damage’ and spending on ‘adaptation,’” Surminski told Grist. It’s also uncertain whether the fund will provide cash payments or more complex financing arrangements such as bonds and insurance plans. If the money does allow countries to invest in adaptation infrastructure, says Surminski, it could go a long way toward softening the blow of future disasters. First, however, the money itself needs to materialize.

Responding to the impacts of climate change will also require developed countries to rethink the aid they already provide. For decades, multilateral organizations have distinguished between “humanitarian” aid for disasters and “development” aid designed to help lift countries out of poverty — a distinction that mirrors climate negotiators’ differentiation between loss and damage compensation and adaptation funding. The escalating pace of the climate crisis in countries like Somalia has shown that the two disciplines aren’t separate, and that long-term development funding is necessary to forestall the effects of severe disasters such as drought.

“When we have a humanitarian emergency, we’re all kind of able to move in a coordinated way,” said Lazarus. When it comes to preparing for climate change, though, “we’re kind of still missing that,” she added, “and because I think we’re not moving in the most coordinated manner, I think that has been kind of limiting the scalability of a lot of these programs.”

Hussein of Somalia’s environmental ministry told Grist that the droughts that have battered Somalia and the region only make the moral case for adaptation more urgent. Wealthy countries have an obligation to address disasters that their emissions helped cause, he argued, and reforming their aid response is the best place to start.

“We need more ambitious funds for climate impacts,” he said. “That is not ‘aid.’ It’s a responsibility that has to be taken by those countries that have caused climate change.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As drought grips the Horn of Africa, humanitarian aid is no match for climate change on May 22, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

Given the secrecy typically accorded to the military and the inclination of government officials to skew data to satisfy the preferences of those in power, intelligence failures are anything but unusual in this country’s security affairs. In 2003, for instance, President George W. Bush invaded Iraq based on claims — later found to be baseless — that its leader, Saddam Hussein, was developing or already possessed weapons of mass destruction. Similarly, the instant collapse of the Afghan government in August 2021, when the U.S. completed the withdrawal of its forces from that country, came as a shock only because of wildly optimistic intelligence estimates of that government’s strength. Now, the Department of Defense has delivered another massive intelligence failure, this time on China’s future threat to American security.

The Pentagon is required by law to provide Congress and the public with an annual report on “military and security developments involving the People’s Republic of China,” or PRC, over the next 20 years. The 2022 version, 196 pages of detailed information published last November 29th, focused on its current and future military threat to the United States. In two decades, so we’re assured, China’s military — the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA — will be superbly equipped to counter Washington should a conflict arise over Taiwan or navigation rights in the South China Sea. But here’s the shocking thing: in those nearly 200 pages of analysis, there wasn’t a single word — not one — devoted to China’s role in what will pose the most pressing threat to our security in the years to come: runaway climate change.

At a time when California has just been battered in a singular fashion by punishing winds and massive rainstorms delivered by a moisture-laden “atmospheric river” flowing over large parts of the state while much of the rest of the country has suffered from severe, often lethal floods, tornadoes, or snowstorms, it should be self-evident that climate change constitutes a vital threat to our security. But those storms, along with the rapacious wildfires and relentless heatwaves experienced in recent summers — not to speak of a 1,200-year record megadrought in the Southwest — represent a mere prelude to what we can expect in the decades to come. By 2042, the nightly news — already saturated with storm-related disasters — could be devoted almost exclusively to such events.

All true, you might say, but what does China have to do with any of this? Why should climate change be included in a Department of Defense report on security developments in relation to the People’s Republic?

There are three reasons why it should not only have been included but given extensive coverage. First, China is now and will remain the world’s leading emitter of climate-altering carbon emissions, with the United States — though historically the greatest emitter — staying in second place. So, any effort to slow the pace of global warming and truly enhance this country’s “security” must involve a strong drive by Beijing to reduce its emissions as well as cooperation in energy decarbonization between the two greatest emitters on this planet. Second, China itself will be subjected to extreme climate-change harm in the years to come, which will severely limit the PRC’s ability to carry out ambitious military plans of the sort described in the 2022 Pentagon report. Finally, by 2042, count on one thing: the American and Chinese armed forces will be devoting most of their resources and attention to disaster relief and recovery, diminishing both their motives and their capacity to go to war with one another.

China’s Outsized Role in the Climate-Change Equation

Global warming, scientists tell us, is caused by the accumulation of “anthropogenic” (human-produced) greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere that trap the reflected light from the sun’s radiation. Most of those GHGs are carbon and methane emitted during the production and combustion of fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas); additional GHGs are released through agricultural and industrial processes, especially steel and cement production. To prevent global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era — the largest increase scientists believe the planet can absorb without catastrophic outcomes — such emissions will have to be sharply reduced.

Historically speaking, the United States and the European Union (EU) countries have been the largest GHG emitters, responsible for 25% and 22% of cumulative CO2 emissions, respectively. But those countries, and other advanced industrial nations like Canada and Japan, have been taking significant steps to reduce their emissions, including phasing out the use of coal in electricity generation and providing incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles. As a result, their net CO2 emissions have diminished in recent years and are expected to decline further in the decades to come (though they will need to do yet more to keep us below that 1.5-degree warming limit).

China, a relative latecomer to the industrial era, is historically responsible for “only” 13% of cumulative global CO2 emissions. However, in its drive to accelerate its economic growth in recent decades, it has vastly increased its reliance on coal to generate electricity, resulting in ever-greater CO2 emissions. China now accounts for an astonishing 56% of total world coal consumption, which, in turn, largely explains its current dominance among the major carbon emitters. According to the 2022 edition of the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook, the PRC was responsible for 33% of global CO2 emissions in 2021, compared with 15% for the U.S. and 11% for the EU.

Like most other countries, China has pledged to abide by the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 and undertake the decarbonization of its economy as part of a worldwide drive to keep global warming within some bounds. As part of that agreement, however, China identified itself as a “developing” country with the option of increasing its fossil-fuel use for 15 years or so before achieving a peak in CO2 emissions in 2030. Barring some surprising set of developments then, the PRC will undoubtedly remain the world’s leading source of CO2 emissions for years to come, suffusing the atmosphere with colossal amounts of carbon dioxide and undergirding a continuing rise in global temperatures.

Yes, the United States, Japan, and the EU countries should indeed do more to reduce their emissions, but they’re already on a downward trajectory and an even more rapid decline will not be enough to offset China’s colossal CO2 output. Put differently, those Chinese emissions — estimated by the IEA at 12 billion metric tons annually — represent at least as great a threat to U.S. security as the multitude of tanks, planes, ships, and missiles enumerated in the Pentagon’s 2022 report on security developments in the PRC. That means they will require the close attention of American policymakers if we are to escape the most severe impacts of climate change.

China’s Vulnerability to Climate Change

Along with detailed information on China’s outsized contribution to the greenhouse effect, any thorough report on security developments involving the PRC should have included an assessment of that country’s vulnerability to climate change. It should have laid out just how global warming might, in the future, affect its ability to marshal resources for a demanding, high-cost military competition with the United States.

In the coming decades, like the U.S. and other continental-scale countries, China will suffer severely from the multiple impacts of rising world temperatures, including extreme storm damage, prolonged droughts and heatwaves, catastrophic flooding, and rising seas. Worse yet, the PRC has several distinctive features that will leave it especially vulnerable to global warming, including a heavily-populated eastern seaboard exposed to rising sea levels and increasingly powerful typhoons; a vast interior, parts of which, already significantly dry, will be prone to full-scale desertification; and a vital river system that relies on unpredictable rainfall and increasingly imperiled glacial runoff. As warming advances and China experiences an ever-increasing climate assault, its social, economic, and political institutions, including the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), will be severely tested.

According to a recent study from the Center for Climate and Security, “China’s Climate Security Vulnerabilities,” the threats to its vital institutions will take two major forms: hits to its critical infrastructure like port facilities, military bases, transportation hubs, and low-lying urban centers along China’s heavily populated coastline; and the danger of growing internal instability arising from ever-increasing economic dislocation, food scarcity, and governmental incapacitation.

China’s coastline already suffers heavy flooding during severe storms and significant parts of it could be entirely underwater by the second half of this century, requiring the possible relocation of hundreds of millions of people and the reconstruction of billions of dollars’ worth of vital facilities. Such tasks will surely require the full attention of Chinese authorities as well as the extensive homebound commitment of military resources, leaving little capacity for foreign adventures. Why, you might wonder, is there not a single sentence about this in the Pentagon’s assessment of future Chinese capabilities?

Even more worrisome, from Beijing’s perspective, is the possible effect of climate change on the country’s internal stability. “Climate change impacts are likely to threaten China’s economic growth, its food and water security, and its efforts at poverty eradication,” the climate center’s study suggests (but the Pentagon report doesn’t mention). Such developments will, in turn, “likely increase the country’s vulnerability to political instability, as climate change undermines the government’s ability to meet its citizens’ demands.”

Of particular concern, the report suggests, is global warming’s dire threat to food security. China, it notes, must feed approximately 20% of the world’s population while occupying only 12% of its arable land, much of which is vulnerable to drought, flooding, extreme heat, and other disastrous climate impacts. As food and water supplies dwindle, Beijing could face popular unrest, even revolt, in food-scarce areas of the country, especially if the government fails to respond adequately. This, no doubt, will compel the CCP to deploy its armed forces nationwide to maintain order, leaving ever fewer of them available for other military purposes — another possibility absent from the Pentagon’s assessment.

Of course, in the years to come, the U.S., too, will feel the ever more severe impacts of climate change and may itself no longer be in a position to fight wars in distant lands — a consideration also completely absent from the Pentagon report.

The Prospects for Climate Cooperation

Along with gauging China’s military capabilities, that annual report is required by law to consider “United States-China engagement and cooperation on security matters… including through United States-China military-to-military contacts.” And indeed, the 2022 version does note that Washington interprets such “engagement” as involving joint efforts to avert accidental or inadvertent conflict by participating in high-level Pentagon-PLA crisis-management arrangements, including what’s known as the Crisis Communications Working Group. “Recurring exchanges [like these],” the report affirms, “serve as regularized mechanisms for dialogue to advance priorities related to crisis prevention and management.”

Any effort aimed at preventing conflict between the two countries is certainly a worthy endeavor. But the report also assumes that such military friction is now inevitable and the most that can be hoped for is to prevent World War III from being ignited. However, given all we’ve already learned about the climate threat to both China and the United States, isn’t it time to move beyond mere conflict avoidance to more collaborative efforts, military and otherwise, aimed at reducing our mutual climate vulnerabilities?

At the moment, sadly enough, such relations sound far-fetched indeed. But it shouldn’t be so. After all, the Department of Defense has already designated climate change a vital threat to national security and has indeed called for cooperative efforts between American forces and those of other countries in overcoming climate-related dangers. “We will elevate climate as a national security priority,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared in March 2021, “integrating climate considerations into the Department’s policies, strategies, and partner engagements.”

The Pentagon provided further information on such “partner engagements” in a 2021 report on the military’s vulnerabilities to climate change. “There are many ways for the Department to integrate climate considerations into international partner engagements,” that report affirmed, “including supporting interagency diplomacy and development initiatives in partner nations [and] sharing best practices.” One such effort, it noted, is the Pacific Environmental Security Partnership, a network of climate specialists from that region who meet annually at the Pentagon-sponsored Pacific Environmental Security Forum.

At present, China is not among the nations involved in that or other Pentagon-sponsored climate initiatives. Yet, as both countries experience increasingly severe impacts from rising global temperatures and their militaries are forced to devote ever more time and resources to disaster relief, information-sharing on climate-response “best practices” will make so much more sense than girding for war over Taiwan or small uninhabited islands in the East and South China Seas (some of which will be completely underwater by century’s end). Indeed, the Pentagon and the PLA are more alike in facing the climate challenge than most of the world’s military forces and so it should be in both countries’ mutual interests to promote cooperation in the ultimate critical area for any country in this era of ours.

Consider it a form of twenty-first-century madness, then, that a Pentagon report on the U.S. and China can’t even conceive of such a possibility. Given China’s increasingly significant role in world affairs, Congress should require an annual Pentagon report on all relevant military and security developments involving the PRC. Count on one thing: in the future, one devoted exclusively to analyzing what still passes for “military” developments and lacking any discussion of climate change will seem like an all-too-grim joke. The world deserves better going forward if we are to survive the coming climate onslaught.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Michael T. Klare.

Instead of enjoying a late Thanksgiving meal with his mother in Georgia, Randal Reid spent nearly a week in jail in November after he was falsely identified as a luxury purse thief by Louisiana authorities using facial recognition technology.

That's according to Monday reporting by NOLA.com, which caught the attention of Fight for the Future, a digital rights group that has long advocated against law enforcement and private entities using such technology, partly because of its shortcomings and the risk of outcomes like this.

"So much wrong here," Fight for the Future said Tuesday, sharing the story on Twitter. The group highlighted that many cops can use facial recognition systems without publicly disclosing it, and anyone's "life can be upended because of a machine's mistake."

Reid—a 28-year-old Black man misidentified as one of three people who allegedly stole over $10,000 in Chanel and Louis Vuitton purses from a pair of shops via bogus credit card purchases—was pulled over by local police in Georgia's Dekalb County on November 25, while he was driving on Interstate 20 to meet up with his mother, NOLA.com reported.

"They told me I had a warrant out of Jefferson Parish. I said, 'What is Jefferson Parish?,'" Reid recalled. "I have never been to Louisiana a day in my life. Then they told me it was for theft. So not only have I not been to Louisiana, I also don't steal."

Reid wasn't released from the Dekalb County jail until December 1. While behind bars, he worried about losing his job as a transportation analyst and being convicted of felonies that he did not commit.

"Not eating, not sleeping. I'm thinking about these charges. Not doing anything because I don't know what's really going on the whole time," he said. "They didn't even try to make the right ID."

Tommy Calogero, Reid's lawyer, told NOLA.com that Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office detectives "tacitly" admitted the misidentification and rescinded a July warrant. The news outlet noted that court records show a Baton Rouge Police Department detective "adopted JPSO's identification of Reid to secure an arrest warrant" for one of the thefts.

According to the report:

Sheriff Joe Lopinto's office did not respond to several requests for information on Reid's arrest and release, the agency's use of facial recognition, or any safeguards around it. That office also denied a formal request for the July 18 arrest warrant for Reid and copies of policies or purchases related to facial recognition, citing an ongoing investigation.

Baton Rouge police also did not respond to questions about its warrant for Reid's arrest. The warrant, signed by 19th Judicial District Judge Eboni Rose, does not say how Lopinto's office identified Reid.

As Fight for the Future summarized: "Police blindly trusted a facial recognition scan to arrest a man in Georgia. He was wrongly imprisoned for a WEEK. Now (surprise, surprise) the cops are stonewalling the press about their failure."

Experts from the ACLU of Louisana and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) shared concerns with NOLA.com about police use of the technology—which, as research has shown, more frequently misidentifies people of color.

In response to reporting on Reid's experience, the national ACLU on Tuesday stressed the flaws of facial recognition tools and asserted that "law enforcement must drop this dangerous technology—we shouldn't have to worry about being falsely arrested because an algorithm gets it wrong."

The national ACLU has previously called on policymakers to end law enforcement use of facial recognition technology across the United States—including after the January 2020 wrongful arrest of Robert Williams, a Black man in Michigan misidentified as a shoplifting suspect.

"My daughters can't unsee me being handcuffed and put into a police car. But they can see me use this experience to bring some good into the world," Williams wrote in a June 2020 opinion piece. "I keep thinking about how lucky I was to have spent only one night in jail—as traumatizing as it was. Many Black people won't be so lucky. My family and I don't want to live with that fear. I don't want anyone to live with that fear."

Even before Williams' arrest, Fight for the Future and partners groups launched a "Ban Facial Recognition" campaign, which has tracked restrictions and known uses of the technology as well as enabled constituents to pressure lawmakers to ban it. Despite some progress in restricting or banning law enforcement's use of such tools at the local and state levels, the United States still lacks federal law on the topic.

"Like nuclear or biological weapons, facial recognition poses a threat to human society and basic liberty that far outweighs any potential benefits," the campaign's website argues. "Silicon Valley lobbyists are disingenuously calling for light 'regulation' of facial recognition so they can continue to profit by rapidly spreading this surveillance dragnet. They're trying to avoid the real debate: whether technology this dangerous should even exist."

According to the campaign, "Industry-friendly and government-friendly oversight will not fix the dangers inherent in law enforcement's use of facial recognition: We need an all-out ban."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

"The Organized Crime and Triad Bureau is dealing with the case," the government said in a statement on Tuesday. "Police will take follow-up actions seriously in accordance with the law on whether the incident has breached the National Anthem Ordinance or any other legislation of Hong Kong, including the Hong Kong National Security Law."

The national security law, which heralded a citywide crackdown on dissent and mass exodus of people in the wake of the 2019 protests, bans public speech or actions deemed likely to "incite hatred" of the government, while the national anthem law bans any speech or actions deemed to be disrespectful to the Chinese national anthem. 

In a scene that went viral on social media in Hong Kong, "Glory to Hong Kong" blared out over the sound system before a rugby match between Hong Kong and South Korea played just outside of Seoul on Sunday. International sporting protocol would require China’s communist national anthem, the March of the Volunteers, to be played instead.

The Hong Kong government said the song is "closely associated with violent protests and the [Hong Kong] 'independence' movement," although the song calls for freedom and democracy rather than independence. 

In September, a 43-year-old man was arrested for "sedition" after playing Glory to Hong Kong on the harmonica at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral vigil in Hong Kong.

The police announcement came as match organizers Asian Rugby blamed the anthem gaffe on "an innocent mistake" by an intern, government broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong reported on Tuesday.

"But questions remain about why the song, associated with violent protests in Hong Kong in 2019, ended up in a folder where all national anthems were stored," the station's report said.

Asia Rugby’s interim CEO, Benjamin van Rooyen, told reporters that the Hong Kong Rugby Union had provided the correct audio file to Asia Rugby when the Hong Kong rugby team played in Bangkok last month, and that the Korea Rugby Union should have had the correct anthem on file after Hong Kong played a match in the country in July.

"This was somebody who was provided with a song ... and somebody pressed play. That person has no understanding of the politics of the world," van Rooyen told an online news conference in comments quoted by Radio Television Hong Kong. "I don’t think there were any ulterior motives in any of this. This was a simple human error."

The Hong Kong Rugby Union said future errors of this type would mean the Hong Kong team's "immediate withdrawal from competition."

'Chilling effect'

Last week, Hong Kong citizen journalist Paula Leung was jailed for three months after she pleaded guilty to "insulting the national anthem" by waving a colonial-era Hong Kong flag at a shopping mall that was screening a medal ceremony for Hong Kong fencer Edgar Cheung on July 26, 2021.

Australian lawyer and rights activist Kevin Yam said Hong Kong courts are imposing increasingly harsh sentences on cases involving China's national symbols.

"There were a few cases more than 10 years ago now involving the national flag law, but they only wound up with fines of around 1,000 or a few hundred Hong Kong dollars," Yam told RFA. "Nowadays, you can go to jail for booing the national anthem."

"This is a terrible thing, and it will have a chilling effect, and shows how Hong Kong is moving backwards, and not with the times," he said. "Things are different under the national security law, and freedom and human rights have all gone into reverse."

Sociologist Chung Kim-wah said such measures can only ban public expressions of anti-government feeling, not the feelings themselves.

"They are now using various laws to impose the heaviest possible sentences, so that nobody will dare to resist or spread discontent with the regime," Chung told RFA. "Beijing ... wants Hong Kong people to refrain from expressing themselves so that they eventually get used to it, and can only obey [the authorities]."

"But stopping them expressing themselves won't mean they accept all of this; it will just fuel greater discontent in more people."

In 2019, when protesters began defending peaceful demonstrators against riot police firing tear gas, non-lethal bullets and occasionally live ammunition with Molotov cocktails, bricks and other makeshift weapons, Hong Kong fans chanted "Freedom for Hong Kong" and booed the Chinese national anthem at a soccer match in South Korea.

They waved banners that read "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution in our time!" a popular protest slogan that was banned under the national security law, and sang "Glory to Hong Kong." 

Hong Kong passed a national anthem law in June 2020 banning 'insults' to the Chinese national anthem after Hong Kong soccer fans repeatedly booed, yelled Cantonese obscenities or turned their backs when it was played at matches. 

Hong Kong second-in-command Chan Kwok-ki met with the South Korean Consul General on Monday to protest against Sunday's incident.

"The [Hong Kong government] raises strong objections to [Asian Rugby] for its inability ... to prevent the incident from happening," Chan was quoted as saying in a government statement. He said the Hong Kong Rugby Union would launch its own investigation to study ways to ensure the incident is never repeated.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Cantonese.

Navy Chief of Staff, Vice Adm. Chiang Cheng-kuo, told a legislative budget hearing Monday that a prototype could be launched earlier than the May deadline earmarked in the plan, but the navy wanted to ensure its quality and safety first.

Taiwan started building its Indigenous Defensive Submarine fleet in November 2020 at a new submarine factory in the southern port city of Kaohsiung.

At the inauguration ceremony of the “Made in Taiwan” submarine program, President Tsai Ing-wen said that the submarines would “play a key role in the Navy’s asymmetric warfare capabilities, as well as deterring hostile vessels from encircling Taiwan.”

In April 2021, the U.S. approved the export of sensitive technology including three major types of equipment — digital sonar systems, integrated combat systems and an auxiliary equipment system (periscopes) – for the fleet.

The plan is to build as many as eight diesel-electric submarines at an estimated cost of U.S. $16 billion but opposition Kuomintang legislators have been calling for a budget freeze on the program, complaining about delays in the upgrading of Taiwan’s existing subs.

Taiwan has a total of four submarines, two of them dating from World War II, making them among the oldest submarines in service in the world. They were transferred from the U.S. during the 1970s. 

The other two are the Chien Lung-class Hai Lung (SS-793) and Hai Hu (SS-794) submarines purchased from the Netherlands in the 1980s and in need of a combat upgrade.

The Dutch-made submarines have reportedly been taking part in some of Taiwan’s naval drills in the South China Sea.

Skepticism over indigenous submarines

The new domestic submarines are being constructed at a shipyard owned by Taiwan’s CSBC Corporation under an agreement between the Ministry of National Defense with CSBC and the National Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology in northern Taiwan.

Some analysts have however raised questions about the effectiveness of the indigenous submarine program.

Liao Hongxiang, a former lecturer at the Taiwan War College, told local media that the contracted company, CSBS, has “no past performance” in building submarines.

“Since Taiwan has absolutely no experience in the design and manufacture of submarine subsystems, the unit price of each diesel-electric submarine is more than twice that of other countries' similar submarines,” Liao said.

There is a large gap between the submarine forces of Taiwan and China and, according to the analyst, even with eight new submarines, the Taiwanese Navy still cannot compete with the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s fleet.

China is believed to have around 70 submarines, including a dozen that are nuclear-powered. The number of Chinese nuclear submarines is likely to increase to 21 by 2030, according to the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence.

Instead of acquiring new subs, Liao suggested that the Navy could deploy surveillance systems to early detect enemy submarines in Taiwan’s waters and use smart naval mines and long-range anti-submarine rockets to neutralize them.

Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine colonel who spent a year studying Taiwan’s defense system, also suggested sea mines, “especially the 'smart' kinds.”

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

Relax Padosi , it’s only a game.
Hamaare yahan Deepawali hai toh pataakhe phod rahe hain aur aap bevajah TV phod rahe hain .

Nahin yaar, TV ka kya kasoor. pic.twitter.com/AvVL4fOmny

— Virender Sehwag (@virendersehwag) October 23, 2022

Sehwag shared the visuals on Instagram as well. NDTV India carried the news based on Sehwag’s tweet. (Archived link)

A number of other media outlets also covered the video. Among them were India Today, Times Now, Zee24 Taas, Live Hindustan, News18 Hindi, ABP न्यूज़, Jagran, IBC24, and Sportz Wiki. Some of the outlets mentioned that Sehwag shared the video, and called it funny. However, none of these contained any information about the original source of the video.

The clip was also widely circulated on social media. (Twitter, Facebook)

Fact-check

Alt News performed a keyword search on YouTube, which led us to another video posted to the platform on June 16, 2016. According to the video title, the video shows an angry football fan destroying his television set and laptop during a match between Turkey and Croatia.

However, in contrast to the viral video, this 2016 YouTube clip shows a football match playing on the television screen, not a game of cricket. 

In addition, we also came across an article by UK outlet The Sun dated June 16, 2016, which includes screen grabs from the video. As per the report, this was a match between Turkey and Croatia during the Euro 2016 event. A Turkish spectator was watching the match with his wife. When she asked him a question during the match, he asked her to leave the room. Following this, the wife began turning the TV on and off through her smartphone. The interruptions in the match angered the man to such an extent that he smashed his laptop into two and also destroyed the TV.

The full version of the video can also be found on YouTube.

To sum it up, footage of an angry football fan who destroyed a TV set during a Euro 2016 match between Turkey and Croatia was falsely circulated by former cricketer Virender Sehwag and several media outlets linking it to the recent cricket match between India and Pakistan in the ongoing T20 World Cup. Not only that, the footage was also doctored to replace the football match on the TV screen with a cricket match. 

The post Fan breaking TV after India-Pak match: Doctored, unrelated clip shared by Sehwag appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Kinjal.

Photograph Source: C-Span – Fair Use

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” US president Joe Biden warned on August 25. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”

A week later, in Philadelphia, he expanded on his criticisms: “They promote authoritarian leaders and they fanned the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, the rule of law, the very soul of this country.”

He’s not wrong, but his emphasis on a single aspect — Donald Trump’s cult of personality — obscures the real nature of “semi-fascism” and comes a century too late.

To put it bluntly, the United States has been more than “semi-“fascist since long before Biden was born.

Fascism rose from the social tumult following World War One as armed groups of military veterans clashed violently with the socialist left around the world. In Germany, they took the form of various “freikorps.” In the United States, they flocked to a single organization, the American Legion.

The Legion brawled with leftists in the streets of American cities, conducted military-style raids on labor union offices and, in the words of its national commander, Alvin Owsley, stood “ready to protect our country’s institutions and ideals as the Fascisti dealt with the destructionists who menaced Italy. … Do not forget that the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States.” The Legion even invited Mussolini, the first self-declared fascist head of state in the world, to address its national convention.

At the same time, what James Burnham later described as the “managerial state” — which answers to the Mussolini definition of fascism, “everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State” —  began to coalesce in various countries.

In the US, that culminated in the New Deal and a cult of personality around Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected to an unprecedented four terms as president and would likely have continued as leader (the German word is “Fuhrer”) had he lived longer.

Pre-existing strong democratic norms blunted and limited the scope of American fascism (particularly quasi-worship of the designated leader), but victory in World War Two allowed it to continue within that limited scope.

American fascism’s key aspects — nationalism, militarism, subordination of rights to “national security” claims, obsession with internal policing, and, yes, increasingly rigged/constrained elections to preserve the rule of “approved” parties (versus no elections at all) — survive and thrive to this day.

Joe Biden has been a cog in the American fascist machine, a willing participant in its depredations, for more than 50 years, promoting everything from mass incarceration to state control of enterprise through “industrial policy.”

His sole valid complaint about “the MAGA philosophy” is that it re-introduces the “cult of personality” aspect of fascism’s Spanish and pre-World-War-2 Italian, German, Japanese, and Soviet variants.

He’s right about that, but he’s advocating for one form of fascism over another, not against fascism itself.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Knapp.

The post Florida Gubernatorial Election: Swamp Monster Cage Match appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Knapp.

The US Supreme Court’s recent ruling to throw out Roe v Wade is an issue of relevance to political leaders in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The decision was met with enthusiasm by those opposed to abortion here, including opposition National MP for Tāmaki Simon O’Connor.

Pro-choice groups such as Abortion Rights Aotearoa (ALRANZ) expressed alarm, not only for American women but for what this might signal for New Zealand.

• READ MORE: The end of Roe v Wade would likely embolden global anti-abortion activists and politicians
• Roe v Wade overturned: what abortion access and reproductive rights look like around the world
• US Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade – but for abortion opponents, this is just the beginning

This has left opposition leader Christopher Luxon with a dilemma. He found himself caught up in questions that put a spotlight on his pro-life values, politics and integrity.

Luxon’s anti-abortion beliefs are not news. In the days following his election as party leader late last year, when asked to confirm if, from his point of view, abortion was tantamount to murder, he clarified “that’s what a pro-life position is”.

Yet, in recent days, Luxon has repeatedly and emphatically sought to reassure voters National would not pursue a change to this country’s abortion laws should it win government.

Abortion is legal in Aotearoa, decriminalised in 2020 within the framework of the Abortion Legislation Act. It’s clear Luxon hopes his assurances will appease those of a pro-choice view, the position of most New Zealanders according to polling in 2019.

Principle and pragmatism in leadership
It has long been argued good leadership is underpinned by strength of character, a clear moral compass and integrity — in other words, consistency between one’s words and actions.

National MP Simon O’Connor has returned to Parliament with an apology to colleagues over a social media post that celebrated the US Supreme Court’s overturning of abortion law.https://t.co/dR4eBM8Z4K

— RNZ (@radionz) June 28, 2022

Whether a leader possesses the prudence to gauge what is a practically wise course of action in a given situation that upholds important values, or simply panders to what is politically safe and expedient, offers insights into their character.

Over time, we can discern if they lean more strongly toward being values-based or if they tend to align with what Machiavelli controversially advised: that to retain power a leader must appear to look good but be willing to do whatever it takes to maintain their position.

Of course both considerations have some role to play as no one is perfect. We should look for a matter of degree or emphasis. A more strongly Machiavellian orientation is associated with toxic leadership.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has characterised herself as a “pragmatic idealist”. Her track record indicates a willingness to accept considerable political heat in defence of key values.

This is seen, for example, in her sustained advocacy of covid-related health measures such as vaccine mandates and managed isolation, even when doing so was not the politically expedient path to follow.

Luxon’s leadership track record in the public domain is far less extensive. Much remains unknown or untested as to what kind of leader he is. Being leader of the opposition is, of course, a very different role to that of prime minister.

However, in his maiden speech Luxon described his Christian faith as something that anchors him and shapes his values, while also arguing politicians should not seek to force their beliefs on others.

His response to this week’s controversy proves he is willing to set aside his personal values for what is politically expedient. This suggests he is less of an idealist and more a pragmatist.

This may be a relief to the pro-choice lobby, given his anti-abortion beliefs. But if the political calculus changes, what might then happen?

Sums it up really. It is absolutely 100% a woman’s right to choose #AbortionBan #USA pic.twitter.com/JhgS4Txaqz

— Russ (@smiffy2609) June 25, 2022

The matter is not settled
New Zealand’s constitutional and legal systems differ from those of the US, but the Supreme Court decision proves it is possible to wind back access to abortion.

Even if Luxon’s current assurance is sincerely intended, it may not sustain should the broader political acceptability of his personal beliefs change. And on that front, there are grounds for concern.

The National Council of Women’s 2021 gender attitudes survey revealed a clear increase in more conservative, anti-egalitarian attitudes. Researchers at The Disinformation Project also found sexist and misogynistic themes feature strongly in the conspiracy-laden disinformation gaining influence in New Zealand.

If these kinds of shifts in public opinion continue to gather steam, it may become more politically tenable for Luxon to shift gear regarding New Zealand’s abortion laws.

In such a situation, the right to abortion may not be the only one imperilled. A 2019 survey in the US showed a strong connection between an anti-abortion or “pro-life” stance and more general anti-egalitarian views.

It is clear Luxon is aiming to reassure the public he has no intentions to advance changes to our abortion laws. But his seeming readiness to set aside personal beliefs in favour of what is politically viable also suggests that, if the political landscape changes, so too might his stance.

A broader question arises from this: if a leader is prepared to give up a presumably sincerely held conviction to secure more votes, what other values that matter to voters might they be willing to abandon in pursuit of political power?

Dr Suze Wilson is senior lecturer, School of Management, Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Global Times.