https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-parliament-approves-ban-products-made-with-forced-labour-2024-04-23/

Not great!

::: spoiler article text

On Thursday, a video began circulating of a Metropolitan police officer instructing a Jewish man to leave a pro-Palestine march.

“You are quite openly Jewish,” the officer told Gideon Falter, who’d seemingly stumbled across the central London demo on 13 April. “This is a pro-Palestinian march. I’m not accusing you of anything, but I am worried about the reaction to your presence.” The officer threatened Falter with arrest for breaching the peace, and he left voluntarily.

The video spread like wildfire. Evidence shared with Novara Media suggests it was set up.

Working the media.

By Friday, the video was in every UK mainstream media outlet, including the Telegraph, Independent, Daily Mail, Guardian, Sky, ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC. The Met was forced to apologise, retract its apology, then apologise for the apology. While the Home Office issued a statement welcoming the Met’s contrition over the incident, Falter continued his media crusade unappeased.

On Saturday, he published a comment piece on his ordeal in the Times. By Sunday his story had gone global, featuring on Fox News and ABC as well as Israel’s Ynet and Haaretz. By Monday, Falter was the subject of hastily written puff pieces in the Times of Israel and the Sunday Times.

Following his gangbuster media round, on Sunday Falter called for Met commissioner Mark Rowley’s head. His call did not go unanswered: Rowley’s boss Sadiq Khan will meet him on Monday to discuss community relations, though it appears the commissioner has narrowly escaped dismissal. Rowley will also get a dressing down from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Community Security Trust later this week.

Perhaps sensing an opportunity to develop his “Britain is in chaos” narrative, prime minister Rishi Sunak added his two cents on the matter on Monday, saying he was “appalled” by the police’s treatment of Falter.

Yet just as quickly as the incident was making headlines, Falter’s account of it was unravelling.

Citation needed.

Media coverage of the altercation described Falter as an “antisemitism campaigner” – as well as running the UK arm of the land-grabbing Jewish National Fund, Falter is CEO of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), an organisation established in 2014 during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge that killed 2,251 Palestinians and 73 Israelis, and which published the video of Falter’s police interaction.

Most outlets failed to mention that Falter has for months been lobbying to ban the weekly pro-Palestine demonstrations.

In December, Falter gave oral evidence to the home affairs committee, castigating Rowley for permitting the demos. In November, the CAA held a rival anti-antisemitism march, which caused controversy after attracting far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson. Falter has on multiple occasions driven CAA propaganda vans through the Palestine demos.

Falter claims he was just passing through when he came across the demo. Evidence shared with Novara Media suggests he wasn’t.

“Last weekend I went to synagogue, as I do most Saturdays,” Falter wrote in his Times op-ed. “After the service I went for a walk, as I do most Saturdays.”

“I’m just a Jew in London trying to cross the road,” Falter can be heard telling an officer in the video.

Yet video footage and eyewitness testimony shared with Novara Media calls Falter’s narrative into question.

Getting to the truth.

Caolán, who requested that Novara Media only use his first name, saw Falter in Russell Square at around 11.30am on 13 April, over an hour before the march set off and long before any Shabbat service would have ended. Dan, who also asked to be referred to by his first name for fear of professional reprisal, spotted the group walking along Southampton Street near Holborn at around 1pm. It would be a further hour before freelance investigative journalist John Lubbock captured Falter’s altercation with police a few hundred metres away, on Aldwych, at around 2pm.

Speaking to Novara Media, Lubbock said that Falter appeared to have crossed onto Aldwych from the righthand side of the road, where a small pro-Israel counter-demonstration was taking place. “The obvious conclusion was that he had been part of that demonstration,” said Lubbock. In the CAA video, the officer can be seen offering to escort Falter to the Israel flags.

In his Times op-ed, Falter speaks of being accompanied by a group of five men. The video evidence suggests these weren’t just any individuals but included bodyguards and a videographer (in the majority of traditions, it is against Jewish law to use electronic devices on the Sabbath).

“He wasn’t being provocative because he was wearing a kippah,” said Lubbock. “He was being provocative because he was with a group of large bouncers. People wear uniforms that show political affiliations, we know how subcultures work. … He’s gone there to provoke.”

Sure enough, the officer in the video can be seen telling Falter: “I’ve already seen you deliberately leave the pavement and walk against this march”, describing his claim to be simply passing through as “disingenuous”.

On Monday morning, Falter was interviewed on Sky News alongside Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) director Ben Jamal.

Hours earlier, the PSC and other march co-organisers had published a joint statement condemning Falter’s “dishonest antics”. Jamal elaborated on these remarks in the Sky interview, pointing out to Falter that hundreds of Jews have participated in the pro-Palestine demonstrations as part of an organised Jewish bloc.

Falter described Jamal’s claim as “rubbish” before saying “I don’t want to continue having a conversation with Ben Jamal”.

A photo has since emerged of a group of Jewish elders – among them Hungarian Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos – holding up pro-Palestine placards metres away from Falter.

By Monday, Falter’s story was beginning to ring hollow even to establishment politicians and journalists.

“Listening now to the full account of the ‘openly Jewish’ incident,” tweeted ex-Times journalist David Aaronovitch, “it is apparent that Gideon Falter was angling for an incident just like this.”

“Having now seen the longer video of the police interaction with Gideon Falter, I see that we have been misled,” wrote former crown prosecutor Nazir Afzal, “The officer may have been more careful with his words, but Mr Falter was provocative to the point that an arrest for breach of the peace might have been justified.”

“I have watched the … clip that’s on Sky News and it’s a totally different encounter to the one Gideon Falter has reported,” former Metropolitan police chief superintendent Dal Babu told the BBC. “The narrative that’s been pushed is not accurate.”

Meanwhile, government “antisemitism tsar” Lord John Mann appeared on BBC News arguing that Falter and the CAA “have other objectives in this” and “are not playing it straight”.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism did not respond to Novara Media’s request for comment.

Rivkah Brown is a commissioning editor and reporter at Novara Media.

I posted about this in the news mega, but figured I’d post separately too as it seems potentially happening.gif

With the caveat from the article:

H5N1 is a strain of influenza A. It’s impossible to know at this time if this is what is driving this increase, but vigilance is warranted. Hopefully this is simply all a coincidence or just a statistical anomaly. I watch for early signals to monitor.

But an apparent surge of flu in April in a cattle production region is…deeply concerning, given the bird flu situation right now.

Sorry for the crappy source. The Post is the only source that confirms the pigs arrested faculty.

It will be legal and encouraged to hunt & kill any unhoused person in at least 13 states by the end of the year at this rate.

In a major case on homelessness, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday appeared to side with an Oregon city's crackdown on sleeping in public. The decision could have sweeping implications for the record number of people living in tents and cars, and the cities and states struggling to manage them.

The Supreme Court had declined to hear a similar case out of Boise, Idaho, in 2019. But since then rates of homelessness have spiked. An annual federal count found more than 250,000 people living in parks, on streets, and in their vehicles. Sprawling street encampments have grown larger and expanded to new places, igniting intense backlash from residents and businesses.

The current case centers on the small city of Grants Pass, Ore., which has a population just under 40,000 and is a symbol of just how widespread the homelessness problem has become. A slew of other cities and states — led by Democrats and Republicans alike — urged the justices to take up this issue. Cities say the courts have hamstrung efforts to address homelessness

In both the Boise and Grants Pass cases, lower courts said that under the Eighth Amendment it's cruel and unusual to fine or jail someone for sleeping on public land if there's no adequate shelter available. But Grants Pass and many other cities across the West say those rulings have tied their hands as they try to keep their public spaces open and safe for everyone.

Grants Pass has no public shelter. But its local law essentially banned people from sleeping with a blanket or pillow on any public land, at any time.

During Monday's arguments, the Supreme Court's more liberal justices suggested this amounts to unlawfully targeting people simply because they're homeless. "You don't arrest babies who have blankets over them. You don't arrest people who are sleeping on the beach," said Justice Sotomayor.

Justice Kagan said sleeping is not a criminal act. "Sleeping is a biological necessity. It's sort of like breathing. ... But I wouldn't expect you to criminalize breathing in public."

But the court's conservative justices said it can be hard to draw the line between someone's conduct — which can be legally punished — and a status they are unable to change — which cannot be punished. "How about if there are no public bathroom facilities?" Justice Gorsuch asked. "Do people have an Eighth Amendment right to defecate and urinate? Is that conduct or is that status?"

Over and over, conservative justices also said homelessness is a complex policy problem and questioned whether courts like theirs should "micromanage" it.

"Why would you think that these nine people are the best people to judge and weigh those policy judgments?" Chief Justice Roberts asked.

He doesn't know that I don't think any Supreme Court Justice is the best person to judge or weigh any policy judgements...

Whatever the decision, this case won't solve the homelessness problem

States and cities across the U.S. have struggled to manage record rates of homelessness. Some in the West have found ways to limit encampments and even clear them out without running afoul of the 9th Circuit rulings. Elsewhere, several states have taken a more sweeping approach with camping bans. Florida's governor recently signed a law that seeks to move unhoused people off public property altogether and into government-run encampments.

In America, you are forced to work full-time for poverty wages and when you are made homeless due to an uncontrolled and unregulated housing market, they will send you to live and work in a government camp...

Some worry that a decision in favor of Grants Pass will lead to more such moves or even a worst-case scenario of a "banishment race" if communities seek to push people out of their jurisdiction. Justice Sotomayor raised that concern during the arguments.

"Where do we put them if every city, every village, every town lacks compassion?" she said.

Grants Pass and other cities argue that the 9th Circuit's ruling has fueled the expansion of homeless encampments. But whichever way the case is decided, it's not likely to dramatically bring down the enormous number of people living outside in tents and vehicles. Many places simply don't have enough shelter beds for everyone. And more importantly, they don't have nearly enough permanent, affordable housing. The city of Grants Pass is short by 4,000 housing units; nationally, the deficit is in the millions.

If you simply criminalize being unhoused and funnel even more money into the local police department's yearly budget for surplus military gear, you don't have to invest in building 4,000 affordable housing units so long-time members of your community aren't living on public land in tents and you get some free prison slave labor for maintaining public infrastructure

That shortage has pushed rents to levels many cannot afford, which advocates say is a main driver of rising homelessness. Even where places are investing heavily to create more affordable housing, it will take a while to catch up. This Supreme Court case won't solve any of that, but it could dramatically shape the lives of those forced to live on streets, parks and back alleys for years to come.

Please God, deliver a hammer to the head of every American Supreme Court Justice or lawmaker in Grants Pass, Oregon

Suleiman alleged that some of the bodies had been found with hands and feet tied, “and there were signs of field executions. We do not know if they were buried alive or executed.

Who knows if we will ever find out what these two men were sharing. Which seems convenient.

Image is from this Washington Post article, which shows the Shabara artisanal mine, where cobalt and copper are dug out by hand.

This preamble got much of its information from this article in ROAPE, and this article in People's World.

Countries in the imperial core have increasingly advocated for Green New Deals, whose primary goal is to re-attract manufacturing capability to somewhat counter deindustrialization, and then export some of this renewable energy generation to other countries to gain profit. Just as the initial wave of industrialization was built on massive resource exploitation of coal and iron and then oil, this wave is being built on exploiting metals like lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. The DRC is one of the best case studies on the planet for understanding the new dynamic.

The DRC is, to your average Western country, a resource bonanza. It is the 11th largest country by land area, and contains lithium, copper, and cobalt in massive quantities, famously containing two thirds of the world's known cobalt supplies. The Western world and their institutions swarmed the DRC like piranhas, dismantling the Congo's sovereignty over its natural resources. China was not terribly involved in the privatisation process, but has stepped in to benefit from the West's work - Chinese corporations account for 40% of the production of major Congo cobalt projects (and 15 out of 19 cobalt mines), with Switzerland at 30% via Glencore, and Kazakhstan at 22%. The US, for whatever reason, withdrew from majority ownership of some projects in the mid-2010s, but is now anxious about China's position in the cobalt markets. Western countries in general have spent their time lately drawing up critical minerals strategies both to keep capitalism chugging along in their own countries, and attempt to weaken China, which invariably involves the Congo.

The Congo has attempted to resist imperialist encroachment. In 2018, the Kaliba administration asserted a new Mining Code which raised tax and royalty rates and increased state ownership in mining firms from 5% to 10%, and these changes were bitterly resisted by the West right to the end. Since 2019, under the Tshisekedi administration, the government established the state-owned EGC, which sought to take control over the processing and export of artisanal and small-scale cobalt production, which comprises 5-15% of cobalt production in the Congo. More recently, Tshisekedi is planning to move up the manufacturing chain - instead of merely mining cobalt, they want to refine it there and then make electric vehicle batteries and other such products with it, which would be an industry worth trillions of dollars. But so far, there hasn't been much movement away from having mining exports as the backbone of the economy, and it's doubtful that plans to just keep doing this until they get rich enough to build refineries and factories will work. The profits mostly go to Western countries and have failed to produce significant benefits for Congolese workers, nor resulted in the emergence of domestic industries so far. Reforms will help a little, but only a little, and they remain fundamentally constrained by the markets and the whims of the West.

Meanwhile, war and mass displacements have put immense stress on the country. There are 7.1 million displaced people in the DRC due to various conflicts and mass displacements - most recently, the war between the Congolese army and M23. Hundreds of thousands of people continue to be displaced every few months, and across the whole country, over 26 million require humanitarian aid. 6 million people have died in the eastern DRC in the last three decades, with hundreds of armed groups, both domestic and foreign, battling for resources and territory.

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

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https://www.businessinsider.com/american-sniper-in-ukraine-prefer-soviet-rifles-easier-get-bullets-2024-4