Early Warning Project

(...) As outlined in the 2022 report, the risk of mass atrocities in Papua is based on structural factors—Indonesia’s history of mass violence, political exclusion, and militarization—and immediate drivers of violence, including protests, intra-Papuan divisions, and intensifying armed clashes.

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Photo of protest

Over the past three years, Papua has undergone significant changes. The Indonesian government has rapidly expanded the region’s administrative structure, increased the military presence, and revived controversial transmigration and food estate development programs. Targeted inclusion policies have accelerated the representation of Indigenous Papuans in the military and local government. Despite these developments, the broader Indigenous population remains deeply marginalized, which has fueled Papuan nationalism. Political expressions of and mobilization around pro-independence sentiment have increased—as evidenced by the steadily rising demonstrations. In response, the Indonesian government has intensified repression and expanded military deployments. Armed clashes between guerrilla fighters and Indonesian forces have continued, with separatist groups expanding their areas of operation. As a result, the number of internally displaced persons has risen sharply. (...)

Complete article

> Link to report (pdf)

Tags: #english #West Papua #West Papoea #New Guinea #indonesia #Nieuw Guinea #colonialism #papua #papoea #deforestation #indigenous people #human rights #transmigration

The Guardian

It’s not about Nato or the Soviet Union. It’s about democracy.

It may be difficult for a real-estate mogul like Donald Trump to recognize, but Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is not about slices of war-torn land in eastern Ukraine. It is about Ukraine’s democracy. Putin fears that the Russian people will see that democracy as an enticing alternative to his stultifying autocratic rule. Trump is unlikely to secure a peace deal unless he acts on that reality and changes the cost-benefit analysis behind Putin’s continuing war. (...)

Putin invaded Ukraine to quash its democracy. Unlike the established democracies of Europe, Ukraine looks too much like Russia for Putin to ignore the possibility that Russians will see an alternative future in its accountable, elected government. Like Russia, Ukraine is Slavic and Orthodox. And far from a small statelet, Ukraine, with the second largest population among post-Soviet states after Russia, cannot be ignored. (...)

Complete article

‘Putin invaded Ukraine to quash its democracy.’ Photograph: Joey Sussman/Zuma/Shutterstock.

Tags: #english #russia #us #ukraine #putin #trump #zelensky #democracy #war #peace #geopolitics

Media Lens/

Five of the six journalists and cameramen killed by Israel on 10 August 2025
Anas al-Sharif, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed Qreiqeh (photo credit: Al Jazeera)

Late last Sunday, a targeted Israeli attack killed prominent Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif alongside several colleagues. (...)

Western ‘mainstream’ news outlets prominently featured Israel’s claim that Anas al-Sharif was a Hamas operative. This televised BBC News segment was typical:

‘Israel says Anas Al-Sharif was a member of Hamas, a claim long rejected by the news network, his family, and the Committee to Protect Journalists.’

Although scepticism was indicated, the Israeli propaganda claim skewed reporting by disrupting the reality that Israel had just deliberately murdered several journalists and media workers. This was exactly as Israel wished, diverting attention from its killings to addressing the presented ‘evidence’ of one victim being an active Hamas operative. This is part of a longstanding Israeli pattern of lies and deception since the genocide began in October 2023.

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said:

‘Israel keeps killing journalists, usually accusing them of being part of Hamas’s military, rarely offering any proof beyond its own worthless assertions.’

(...) In fact, responsible journalists should go further and explain to audiences that Israel has a long history of lying, fabrication and deceit. Since the genocide began, there has been a litany of lies that the ‘mainstream’ media have propagated and, when exposed, ignored or downplayed. Mehdi Hasan, founder of independent outlet Zeteo, powerfully debunked ten of the most egregious Israeli lies in a clip lasting just three minutes:

In summary, ‘Israel’s top 10 lies about its Gaza genocide’ presented by Hasan are:

1. Hamas systematically steals aid coming into Gaza.

2. It’s all about the hostages, i.e. if Hamas released the hostages, Israel would stop the genocide.

3. 40 beheaded babies, and babies in ovens or hung on clotheslines.

4. Mass rape on 7 October 2023 as a weapon of war.

5. Hamas ‘command and control centre’ under Al-Shifa hospital.

6. A schedule found for Hamas guards in Rantisi hospital (it was an Arabic calendar).

7. UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians, is a front for Hamas.

8. You cannot trust the ‘Hamas-controlled’ health ministry.

9. Israel didn’t kill those 15 aid workers or 100 people waiting for flour.

10. Hamas uses human shields. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #media #news #journalism #journalist #bbc #genocide

The Guardian

The puerile standoff between the US and Russia ought to alert a slumbering public to a risk that is in many ways greater than during the cold war.

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A tourist at the peace statue at the venue of the 80th Nagasaki Peace Ceremony in Japan, 8 August 2025. Photograph: Franck Robichon/EPA.

Nuclear weapons – their lethal menace, dark history and future spread – are back in the headlines again and, as usual, the news is worrying, bordering on desperate. (...)

Whatever the reason, it falls to the children of the cold war – to the daughters of Greenham Common, to the heirs of ban-the-bomb protesters, to CND’s indefatigable campaigners – to more loudly warn: this way lies extinction. Yet why is it that they alone sound the tocsin? It’s all happening again, only this time it’s worse, and everyone’s a target. If unchecked, today’s vastly more powerful nukes could turn the planet into a universal killing field. Last week’s ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings should be seen as a warning as well as a reminder. (...)

For the first time since the cold war, Europe, Asia and the Middle East are being transformed into potential nuclear battlegrounds, with the difference, now, that atomic bombs and missiles are viewed not as deterrents but as offensive, war-winning weapons. The proliferation of lower-yield, tactical warheads supposedly makes “limited” nuclear warfare possible. Once that red line is crossed, an unstoppable chain reaction may ensue. (...)

The challenge is formidable, the outcome uncertain. But someone, somehow, somewhere must call a halt to the madness. It is still just possible to hope that, unlike in 1945, wiser counsels will prevail.

Complete article

Tags: #english #nuclear weapons #nuclear war #non-proliferation #russia #us #united states #nato #missiles #doomsday clock #inf #new start #arms-control

The Guardian

Political platitudes and a few trucks of aid won’t save the children dying now. But they show leaders can’t ignore public opinion for ever. (...)

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Illustration: Nathalie Lees/The Guardian

Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass punishment – all these descriptions still somehow do not capture the lurid and varied ways in which Palestinians in Gaza are being killed: bombed in their homes, and in their tents, burned alive in their hospital beds, shot while queueing for food and now starved. It almost doesn’t matter what it is called any more, because all you need to see to know that what is happening is a crime that requires immediate action is the bones of a child sticking out of its thin skin, while the food it needs is being blocked by Israeli soldiers.

The time for justifications, arguing about semantics and hand-wringing over the “complexity” of the conflict has long passed. The only question now is, how is it that the world cannot get Israel to allow a morsel of food into a starving civilian’s mouth? (...)

Complete article

Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #genocide #International Court of Justice #icj #icc #international criminal court #food aid #starvation

The Guardian

The rules of the institutions that define our lives bend like reeds when it comes to Israel – so much that the whole global order is on the verge of collapse. (...)

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People make their way past the rubble of houses in Rafah on 20 January 2025, a day after a ceasefire deal in the war between Israel and Hamas came into effect. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images.

Israel’s war in Gaza is chipping away at so much of what we – in the United States but also internationally – had agreed upon as acceptable, from the rules governing our freedom of speech to the very laws of armed conflict. It seems no exaggeration to say that the foundation of the international order of the last 77 years is threatened by this change in the obligations governing our legal and political responsibilities to each other.

This collapse began with the liberal world’s lack of resolve to rein in Israel’s war in Gaza. It escalated when no one lifted a finger to stop hospitals being bombed. It expanded when mass starvation became a weapon of war. And it is peaking at a time when total war is no longer viewed as a human abhorrence but is instead the deliberate policy of the state of Israel.

The implications of this collapse are profound for international, regional and even domestic politics. Political dissent is repressed, political language is policed, and traditionally liberal societies are increasingly militarized against their own citizens.

Many of us disregard how much has shifted in the last 20 months. But we are ignoring the collapse of the international system that has defined our lives for generations at our own collective peril. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #genocide #International Court of Justice #icj #icc #international criminal court

The Guardian

Teresa Ribera says effects of crisis are becoming increasingly obvious but not translating into proper action.

Political cowardice is hindering European efforts to face up to the effects of the climate crisis, even as the continent is pummelled by a record-breaking heatwave, the EU’s green transition chief has warned.

In an interview with the Guardian, Teresa Ribera said that although the effects of the climate emergency were becoming increasingly obvious, they were still not translating into proper action. (...)

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Photograph: Salas/EPA.

Ribera said there was still a long way to go when it came to readying infrastructures and urban environments for the realities of the emergency.

A major part of the problem, she added, was that some political parties “continue to insist, quite vehemently, that climate change does not exist”, or else say that taking decisions to adapt to environmental realities is too expensive.

“Sorry, but it’ll be much more expensive if we don’t act,” said Ribera, the executive vice-president of the European Commission for clean, just and competitive transition and a former Spanish environment minister. “We all know that.” (...)

Complete article

Tags: #english #extreme weather #climate crisis #climate change #climate science #climate scepticism #climate denial #global warming #heat wave #water management #eu #european union #green politics #infrastructure

The Guardian

Israel is the main source of terror and instability in the Middle East. But the west continually turns away from this reality

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A man is helped after an explosion in Tehran, amid Israel's airstrikes against Iran, 15 June 2025. Photograph: Amir Kholousi/AP.

As the G7 issues a statement declaring that Israel has a “right to defend itself”, you have a right to ask if you are losing your mind. Israel launched an unprovoked onslaught on Iran. Its excuse – that Tehran may acquire a nuclear weapon – renders its attack illegal under the UN charter, which forbids wars justified by the claim of a future threat.

“Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,” declares the G7 statement. Even though Donald Trump’s intelligence chief testified three months ago that the US intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”. Even though it’s Israel that actually possesses nuclear weapons, while refusing to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and refusing International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. Even though, as progress was being made in nuclear talks between Iran and the US, Israel targeted Iran’s chief negotiator and proceeded to exterminate scientists, including their families, alongside countless other civilians, including children, an athlete, a teacher, a pilates instructor. Even though Israel’s leader is subject to an arrest warrant, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. And even though Israel has erased Gaza in a genocidal frenzy, and subjected the illegally occupied and colonised West Bank to an escalating pogrom, attacked southern Lebanon and Beirut, and invaded and occupied Syria. No country in the Middle East is as great a source of regional instability and terror as Israel: it’s not even close. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #iran #nuclear arms #non-proliferation treaty #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #Iinternational criminal court #icc

Media Lens

Noam Chomsky offered a rule of thumb for predicting the ‘mainstream’ response to crimes against humanity:

‘There is a way to calibrate reaction. If it’s a crime of somebody else, particularly an enemy, then we’re utterly outraged. If it’s our own crime, either comparable or worse, either it’s suppressed or denied. That works with almost 100 percent precision.’ (Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, ‘The Politics of Genocide’, Monthly Review Press, 2010, p.27)

Now is an excellent time to put Chomsky’s claim to the test.

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A BBC headline over a photograph of an emaciated Palestinian baby read:

‘“Situation is dire” – BBC returns to Gaza baby left hungry by Israeli blockade’

‘Left hungry’? Was she peckish? Was her stomach rumbling? The headline led readers far from the reality of the cataclysm described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 12 May:

‘The entire 2.1 million population of Gaza is facing prolonged food shortages, with nearly half a million people in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death.’

Another BBC headline read:

‘Red Cross says at least 21 killed and dozens shot in Gaza aid incident’

Given everything we have seen over the last 20 months, it was obvious that the mysterious ‘incident’ had been yet another Israeli massacre. Blame had indeed been pinned on ‘Israeli gunfire’ by Palestinian sources, the BBC noted, cautioning:

‘But the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said findings from an initial inquiry showed its forces had not fired at people while they were near or within the aid centre.’

Again, after 20 months, we know such Israeli denials are automatic, reflexive, signifying nothing. More deflection and denial followed from the BBC. We had to keep reading to the end of the article to find a comment that rang true:

‘Mohammed Ghareeb, a journalist in Rafah, told the BBC that Palestinians had gathered near the aid centre run by the GHF when Israeli tanks approached and opened fire on the crowd.
‘Mr Ghareeb said the crowd of Palestinians were near Al-Alam roundabout around 04:30 local time (02:30 BST), close to the aid centre run by GHF, shortly before Israeli tanks appeared and opened fire.’

A surreal piece in the Guardian by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett clearly meant well:

‘I have seen images on my phone screen these past months that will haunt me as long as I live. Dead, injured, starving children and babies. Children crying in pain and in fear for their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. A small boy shaking in terror from the trauma of an airstrike. Scenes of unspeakable horror and violence that have left me feeling sick.’

Such honest expressions of personal anguish are welcome, of course, but the fact is that the word ‘Israel’ appeared nowhere in Cosslett’s article. How is that possible? Of the mass slaughter, Cosslett asked: ‘What is it doing to us as a society?’ Her own failure to shame the Israeli genocidaires, or even to name them, gives an idea. (...)

Last month, WHO reported 697 attacks on health facilities in Gaza since October 2023. As a result, at least 94% of all hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed. In March 2025, a United Nations investigation concluded that Israel had committed ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza by systematically destroying its reproductive healthcare facilities. (...)

Last month, the UN reported that fully 95 per cent of Gaza’s agricultural land has been rendered unusable by Israeli attacks, with 80 per cent of crop land damaged. According to the report, only 4.6 per cent of it can be cultivated, while 71.2 per cent of Gaza’s greenhouses and 82.8 per cent of its agricultural wells have been destroyed by Israeli attacks. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #media #news #journalism #journalist #bbc #genocide #International Court of Justice #icj

The Guardian

Politicians reviled environmental minister Marina Silva in the senate this week, but new legislation is fuelling the fire. (...)

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The Trans-Amazon Highway crosses a deforested area in Brazil. Politicians are trying to force through deforestation projects that are under scrutiny by Marina Silva’s environment ministry. Photograph: André Penner/AP.

At the centre of everything is a long-running row over oil exploration in the Foz do Amazonas. BP and the French oil company Total used to hold most of these rights, but they baulked at the political and environmental challenge of drilling so close to the world’s biggest centre of terrestrial biodiversity. Instead, Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, stepped up. For Lula – and the senators in nearby regions – that meant potential votes, jobs and export earnings. The only thing standing in their way was the environment ministry, which has delayed a licence for years due to the risks of a possible spill in such an ecologically sensitive area.

That handbrake was lifted earlier this week, when the head of the environmental regulator, Ibama, ignored the warnings of 29 expert advisers by moving on to the next stage of the approval process for operations in the Foz do Amazonas. This capitulation followed pressure from Congress and the president.

This was followed by the biggest legislative setback for the environment in more than 40 years. To the delight of the mining, construction and farming industries, the senate has passed a long-pending bill that strips a range of environmental licensing powers from Silva’s ministry. This piece of legislation – dubbed the devastation bill by opponents – allows companies to self-license or avoid environmental licensing for road construction, dam-building and other projects. It is a shift of control from the representatives of the people to the executives of big companies.

Lula could yet wield a veto on this bill. But so far the president’s response has been tepid. His party has a weak presence in congress, so he depends on a broad and fractious coalition, many of whose members are enmeshed in agribusiness or mining. Next year’s presidential election seems to be weighing on his mind more than November’s Cop30 climate summit in Belém. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #english #brazil #brasil #brazilie #Environment #Amazon #rainforest #fossil fuel #deforestation #oil exploration #lula #marina silva

Media Lens

BBC News regularly proclaims its supposed editorial principles of fearless, independent, impartial, fair and accurate journalism. (...)

When it comes to the broadcaster’s coverage of Gaza since October 2023, and long before, BBC audiences have seen for themselves the hollowness of such BBC rhetoric.

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This, of course, is all part of an endemic pattern of BBC bias towards Israel under the guise of ‘impartiality’; a façade that has now been obliterated. The corporation’s longstanding, blatant protection of Israel, considered an ‘apartheid regime’ by major human rights organisations, has been particularly glaring since Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government ordered genocidal attacks on Gaza in October 2023. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #media #news #journalism #journalist #bbc #genocide #International Court of Justice #icj #propaganda

The Guardian

The broadcaster behaves like Starmer’s government: suppress the left, cave to your critics, and undermine your own survival.

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Illustration: Sébastien Thibault

It’s no longer even pretending. Last week, the BBC, already the UK’s most prolific censor, instructed the presenter Evan Davis to drop the podcast he hosted in his own time about heat pumps. It was a gentle, wry look at the machines, with no obvious political content. But the BBC, Davis says, saw it as “steering into areas of public controversy”. It should cease forthwith.

So are BBC presenters banned from saying anything controversial? Far from it. Take an article published earlier this year by Justin Webb in the Times. It praised the “political genius” of Donald Trump, suggested that Democrats are now seen as the extremists, and claimed that Trump is widely regarded as “making [America] normal again”. The BBC was fine with that, and complaints about it were rejected.

I believe Webb had every right to write that article. But his claims were indisputably matters of “public controversy”. So why shut down Davis’s non-political podcast on heat pumps, but not Webb’s inflammatory support for Trump? The answer is simple: economic power. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #english #bbc #media #journalism #journalist #news #press #lobby #thinktank #censorship #fossil fuel #climate #climate change #climate crisis #media bias

The Guardian

Around the globe, conflict is spreading – but it’s too often going ignored. Are we simply overwhelmed by the scale of it?

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A funeral ceremony for people killed in a US airstrike on a marketplace in Sanaa, Yemen, 23 April 2025. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Victims of Nazi atrocities will be remembered at ceremonies next week marking the end of the second world war in Europe. (...)

The dead of 1939-45 should never be forgotten. But we should also be mindful to count the dead of 2025. To know that in years to come, we will remember, record and honour victims of today’s recurring atrocities. (...)

When confronted by such horrors, silence is unacceptable. Silence is complicity. To remain silent is to suggest nothing has been learned from the past. (...)

Why is this carnage tolerated, even normalised? One proffered reason is the complexity and number of conflicts – the most since 1945. The total has doubled in the past five years. More than 300 million people need humanitarian aid and protection. Yet the UN system, frequently paralysed by major power rivalries, is failing. Its authority is scorned, its envoys sidelined, its peacekeepers attacked, in Lebanon and elsewhere. It is critically under resourced. (...)

People in wealthier, more stable countries appear overwhelmed by the vast extent and sheer awfulness of global breakdown. Anecdotally, many say that faced by relentless tsunamis of upsetting news they simply “switch off”. It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that they feel powerless. Natural disasters still prompt generous responses. (...)

But man-made “forever wars”, and complicated ethnic and religious conflicts in, say, Afghanistan, Syria or Somalia are harder to engage with. (...)

War and conflict are products, not causes, of current world disorder, which is primarily political in origin. Spreading instability stems, partly at least, from political fragmentation, from the ongoing rejection of globalisation and an agreed international rulebook. A rising tide of authoritarian rightwing populism, ultra-nationalism, me-first economics, xenophobic prejudice and fear of difference – as well as an enervating loss of faith, trust and moral purpose – contribute to this depleted sense of connection. (...)

Politically, militarily and morally atrocious behaviour is spreading like a virus, and draws ever closer to home.

Complete article

Tags: #english #second world war #wwII #holocaust #yemen #gaza #israel #palestine #palestinians #genicide #war crimes #torture #haiti #Democratic Republic of the Congo #DRC #congo #myanmar #afghanistan, #syria #somalia #sudan

The Guardian

About 89% of the public want their governments to do more to tackle the climate crisis – but don’t know they’re the majority.

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People march as they take part in a strike to demand action on the global climate crisis on 20 September 2019 in New York City. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

A superpower in the fight against global heating is hiding in plain sight. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of people in the world – between 80% and 89%, according to a growing number of peer-reviewed scientific studies – want their governments to take stronger climate action. (...)

For years – and especially at this fraught political moment – most coverage of the climate crisis has been defensive. People who support climate action are implicitly told – by their elected officials, by the fossil fuel industry, by news coverage and social media discourse – that theirs is a minority, even a fringe, view.

That is not what the new research finds. (...)

In other words, an overwhelming majority of people want stronger action against climate change. But at least for now, this global climate majority is a silent majority. (...)

What would it mean if this silent climate majority woke up – if its members came to understand just how many people, both in distant lands and in their own communities, think and feel like they do? How might this majority’s actions – as citizens, as consumers, as voters – change? If the current narrative in news and social media shifted from one of retreat and despair to one of self-confidence and common purpose, would people shift from being passive observers to active shapers of their shared future? If so, what kinds of climate action would they demand from their leaders?

These are the animating questions behind the 89% Project, a yearlong media initiative that launched this week. The journalistic non-profit we run, Covering Climate Now, has invited newsrooms from around the world to report, independently or together, on the climate majorities found in their communities. (...)

We believe the current mismatch between public will and government action amounts to a deficit in democracy. Can that deficit be addressed if the climate majority awakens to its existence? Would people elect different leaders? Buy (or not buy) different products? Would they talk differently to family, friends and co-workers about what can be done to build a cleaner, safer future?

Complete article

Tags: #english #climate #climate change #climate crisis #extreme weather #media #news #journalism #journalist #democracy

Media Lens

The post-WW2 ‘international rules-based order’ that supposedly underpins global affairs in the interests of peace, democracy and prosperity has always been largely a charade. But Israel’s continuing Gaza genocide, carried out with seeming impunity and with the complicity and even active participation of the US and its allies, has exposed the charade like never before.

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Israeli soldiers celebrate in front of a home they destroyed in Gaza (via Maha Hussaini).

Twenty years ago, at the 2005 World Summit, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’ or ‘R2P’. The key concerns were to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Whenever populations are at risk of such crimes, the international community is supposed to take collective action ‘in a timely and decisive manner’ to prevent mass atrocities from taking place. (...)

If the doctrine of ‘R2P’ was authentic, then there would have been massive international action to prevent Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as Israeli terror acts committed in the occupied West Bank, including the routine killing of Palestinian children. (...)

The killing of 15 medics and emergency workers last month by Israeli soldiers, and the attempted Israeli cover-up, with bodies and vehicles buried in a shallow mass grave, provoked not a single public condemnation of Israel from Western leaders, as far as we are aware. (...)

Historian and political commentator Assal Rad observed via X that Western media have no compunction giving headline coverage whenever ‘Russia lies’. But, in the case of Israel, the headlines use the weasel phrase: ‘Israel changes account’. (...)

Last November, perhaps seeking a viral ‘gotcha’ moment, a journalist challenged Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, with the clichéd question, ‘Does Israel have a right to exist?’

Albanese’s cogent response is worth contemplating:

‘Israel does exist. Israel is a recognised member of the United Nations. Besides this, there is not such a thing in international law like a right of a state to exist. Does Italy have a right to exist? Italy exists. Now, if tomorrow, Italy and France want to merge and become Ita-France, fine, this is not up to us. What is enshrined in international law is the right of a people to exist. So, the state is there. The state of Israel is there. It’s protected as a member of the United Nations. Does this justify the erasure of another people? Hell, no. Not 75 years ago. Not 57 years ago. Surely not today. Where is the protection of the Palestinian people from erasure, from annexation, from illegal occupation and apartheid? This is what we need to discuss.’

A powerful reply indeed. Where is the much-vaunted ‘R2P’ when it comes to Palestine?

Last Friday, Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that Gaza has become ‘hell on earth’. Israel was ‘threatening the viability of Palestinians continuing to live in Gaza at all’. What is happening in Gaza is, she said, an ‘extreme hollowing out’ of international law.

Complete article

Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #nato #libya #iraq #media #news #journalism #journalist #bbc #genocide #International Court of Justice #icj

Counterpunch

(...) After being betrayed by the United Nations more than sixty years ago, Melanesian West Papua, occupied by Indonesia ever since, is a particularly poignant case in point. In its increasingly militarised torture mode of governance, the Indonesian regime—now headed by Prabowo Subianto, notorious for his war crimes in East Timor—is the world’s biggest palm oil exporter, to the tune of 47 million tonnes of crude palm oil in 2023, and 54% of global exports. The industry accounts for 4.5% of Indonesian GDP and directly or indirectly employs 16.2 million people. The total area of Indonesian palm oil cultivation is about 25 million hectares (out of 29 million hectares globally, which amounts to approximately 6.7% of the size of the European Union), and plantations covering many million more hectares are planned. In 2023, industrial oil palm plantations in Indonesia expanded by 116,000 hectares, a 54% increase compared with 2022. The largest oil palm project so far is Tanah Merah, in Boven Digoel Regency. Seven companies control the area of 280,000 hectares of which more than 140,000 hectares of land traditionally occupied by the Awyu people will be taken for oil palm production.

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Remains of peat forests in Indonesia that were destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations. Photo: Aidenvironment, 2006. CC BY-SA 2.0.

In West Papua this destructive extractivism also entails violent social change for the country’s Indigenous peoples. It’s impossible to know how many people have been displaced in the name of “food security” (security for KitKat production) as the Indonesian government is understandably averse to providing statistics of the genocide it has been committing in West Papua for more than sixty years. The Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights calculates that there are between 60,000 and 100,000 internally displaced people. Mining, palm plantations, and logging by Indonesian and international companies are protected by the state transmigration programme which creates militarised buffer zones protecting the areas designated for Indonesian government “development” programmes. It’s calculated that Indonesian transmigrants outnumber West Papuans by about ten percent, and approximately 25% of the Indigenous population, or more than 500,000 people have been killed. Needless to say, the demographics represent atrocious human rights violations, including destruction of West Papuan languages and culture. (...)

Complete article

> See also: Mass displacements in West Papua show Prabowo’s true face

Tags: #english #West Papua #West Papoea #New Guinea #indonesia #Nieuw Guinea #colonialism #papua #papoea #deforestation #palm oil #indigenous people #human rights #prabowo #transmigration

The Guardian

After 15 Palestinian medics and civil defence workers were killed by Israeli forces late last month, Israel began a familiar pattern of denial. (...)

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A mural of slain of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead during an Israeli military raid in Jenin in 2022. Photograph: Adel Hana/AP.

Often, at first, the IDF denies involvement. Sometimes – in the context of Gaza – it suggests one of Hamas’s own rockets fell short, causing the casualties.

Otherwise, it might allege that those killed were either combatants themselves, or collateral damage from the targeting of combatants.

And the case of the Gaza medics is only the latest incident when Israel has altered its account of a high profile killing. (...)

According to analysis conducted by Israeli human rights organisation, Yesh Din, published last year, the mechanism set up by the IDF’s general staff to investigate potential war crimes is designed to avoid responsibility while giving the impression that a process is taking place. (...)

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> See also: Israel resumes genocide in Gaza. Yet the Western media is suppressing the truth.

Tags: #english #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #WestBank #genocide #hamas #icc #war crimes #civilian deaths #medics

The Guardian

The country’s so-called political centre has licensed a new era of authoritarianism – to the AfD’s delight.

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Police officers in front of a protest in solidarity with Palestinians, Berlin, 4 November 2023. Photograph: Clemens Bilan/EPA.

A crackdown on political dissent is well under way in Germany. Over the past two years, institutions and authorities have cancelled events, exhibitions and awards over statements about Palestine or Israel. There are many examples: the Frankfurt book fair indefinitely postponing an award ceremony for Adania Shibli; the Heinrich Böll Foundation withdrawing the Hannah Arendt prize from Masha Gessen; the University of Cologne rescinding a professorship for Nancy Fraser; the No Other Land directors Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham being defamed by German ministers. And, most recently, the philosopher Omri Boehm being disinvited from speaking at this month’s anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald.

In nearly all of these cases, accusations of antisemitism loom large – even though Jews are often among those being targeted. More often than not, it is liberals driving or tacitly accepting these cancellations, while conservatives and the far right lean back and cheer them on. While vigilance against rising antisemitism is no doubt warranted – especially in Germany – that concern is increasingly weaponised as a political tool to silence the left.

Germany has recently taken a chilling new step, signalling its willingness to use political views as grounds to curb migration. Authorities are now moving to deport foreign nationals for participating in pro-Palestine actions. (...)

With a new conservative government in power, the crackdown on Palestinians and migrants – already well under way with the so-called traffic-light coalition – is set to escalate even further. Germany is at a crossroads: it can choose to uphold the principles it claims to stand for, or continue down a path of authoritarianism. For now, the direction seems unmistakably clear.

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Tags: #english #germany #far right #afd #protest #freedom of expression #democracy #gaza #palestine #palestinians #israel #antisemitism #migration #immigrants

Why the press is ramping up its acts of anticipatory obedience to the Trump regime

Salon

During the 2024 election, the American mainstream news media continued to practice its obsolete norms of “fairness,” “balance,” “objectivity,” and “neutrality.” Coverage remained steadfastly focused on “bothsidesism,” an obsession with the polls and the “horserace,” and inside the Beltway gossip rather than critical coverage of Trump’s campaign and his MAGA authoritarian populist movement. As an institution, the news media did not treat Donald Trump’s chances of victory over the Democrats in the 2024 election with the seriousness and alarm it merited. The result was to normalize and minimize the existential harm that Trump’s return to power would cause the nation. (…)

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U.S. President Donald Trump takes a question from a reporter during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Tags: #english #us #united states #media #news #journalism #journalist #trump #elections #bothsidesism #maga #democracy #populism #authoritarianism

Media Lens

The BBC’s withdrawal of the powerful documentary, ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’, epitomises how much the UK’s national broadcaster is beholden to the Israel lobby.

The corporation’s longstanding systematic protection of Israel, considered an ‘apartheid regime’ by major human rights organisations, has been particularly glaring since the country launched its genocidal attacks on Gaza in October 2023. We have all seen the repetition and amplification of the Israeli narrative above the Palestinian perspective, omission of ‘Israel’ from headlines about its latest war crimes committed in Gaza, and even the dismissive treatment by senior BBC management of serious concerns about bias raised by their own journalists. (...)

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Note. At the time of writing, ‘Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone’, can be viewed here on Rumble.

Tags: #english #media #news #journalism #journalist #censorship #propaganda #bbc #gaza #palestine #palestinians #occupied territories #documentary #israel lobby #genocide #war crimes #human rights

Electronic Frontier Foundation

If you’re fed up with Meta right now, you’re not alone. Google searches for deleting Facebook and Instagram spiked last week after Meta announced its latest policy changes. These changes, seemingly designed to appease the incoming Trump administration, included loosening Meta’s hate speech policy to allow for the targeting of LGBTQ+ people and immigrants.

If these changes—or Meta’s long history of anti-competitive, censorial, and invasive practices—make you want to cut ties with the company, it’s sadly not as simple as deleting your Facebook account or spending less time on Instagram. Meta tracks your activity across millions of websites and apps, regardless of whether you use its platforms, and it profits from that data through targeted ads. If you want to limit Meta’s ability to collect and profit from your personal data, here’s what you need to know. (...)

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Tags: #english #privacy #data #personal data #data mining #surveillance capitalism #meta #facebook #whatsapp #hate speech #discrimnation #racisme #censorship

The Guardian

Guantánamo Bay? Imperialism? Alliances with billionaires? Those shocked at the president’s early moves have forgotten what came before.

The dust briefly settled, only for it to be kicked up once again. Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders – causing chaos on everything from foreign aid to world trade – is rapidly rocking and reshaping domestic and foreign policy. And the temptation is, yet again, to think of Donald Trump as an exogenous shock to US democracy. But look closer, and you will see not a rogue president taking a hammer to a hitherto stable political order, but a history of the erosion of norms that paved the way for him. (...)

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Presidents Trump and Biden

This is not to suggest that there is no difference between Trump and his predecessors, or that anyone is under any illusion that the US was a perfect democracy before his arrival on the scene. I do not mean to minimise the president’s violations and their material impact, most of all his lack of adherence to a peaceful transition of power – a super norm, if you will. But the American dream of prosperity at home and supremacy abroad has long masked a much more cynical and transactional order – one that Trump is both exposing and entrenching.

The danger comes from assuming that Trumpism comes out of nowhere. In fact, it comes from many sources, but one of them is his predecessors’ creation of a political system in which serial breaches are seen as acceptable because they are done by the right people. Well, to millions of people, Trump is the right person.

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Tags: #english #us #united states #politics #democracy #state of law #guantanamo #immigrants #billionaires #imperialism #iraq war #war on terror