07 Jun
News and Analyses, A Foreign Perspective
Nearly all of these are English-edition daily newspapers. These sites have interesting editorials and essays, and many have links to other good news sources. We try to limit this list to those sites which are regularly updated, reliable, with a high percentage of “up” time.
To root out racism, academics and activists say, talk of healing is not enough: the bias at the heart of American politics, policing and society must be addressed
Demonstrators protest outside the Starbucks cafe in Philadelphia where two black men were arrested. Photograph: Ron Todt/AP
It seems as though every single day, the list grows.
Waiting in a coffee shop while black. Selling real estate while black. Moving in while black. Napping while black. Working out while black.
Ever since a Starbucks in the Philadelphia area came under national scrutiny for calling the police on two black men waiting for a business associate in one of the company’s coffee shops, new attention has been focused on the long list of mundane activities that black Americans can’t confidently engage in without being treated as suspicious or having the police called.
“It’s just part of daily living. It’s what you expect as a person of color when you head out the door in the morning,” said Jeff Chang, the author of Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America. “A moment like this just sort of galvanized folks to be able to express all the different ways in which they’ve been impacted by daily racism.”
In many ways the newly energized conversation parallels how Black Lives Matter emerged as an ideological clearinghouse for the problem of racialized police violence several years ago. Neither phenomenon was new, but in both cases a stream of high profile incidents managed to snowball into its own trope, in part thanks to social media and smartphone videos. In this case that’s the trope of “everyday racism”.
A national, widespread effort to reorient Americans’ racist ideas – that has never happened before
For experts, the genesis is clear. While the US has ended the formal, legal codes of enslavement and segregation that stood for most of the nation’s history, little has been done to change the minds of too many about the racist ideas that those structures rested on.
“There has not been a society-wide and intensive challenge to racist ideas in the US,” said Ibram Kendi, the director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center at American University. “You’ve had people saying we need to have ‘national conversations’, You’ve have people calling for ‘healing’, because in their minds it’s just that people are hateful and they need to start loving … But in terms of a national, widespread effort to reorient Americans’ racist ideas – that has never happened before.”
And those ideas run deep, said Jamilah Lemieux, a cultural critic and writer. “Non-black people in this country have been fed a steady diet of propaganda from their parents, their schools, their churches, and from the media that tells them that people of color, and particularly black folks and Latinx people are not to be trusted.
“They’ve been taught that we are criminals, that we are violent that we are predators and think we need to be monitored.”
Hope and change
Barack Obama’s 2008 election was seen by much of white America as the dawning of a new, post-racial age. The logic held that, if a black man could attain the highest office in the land, then no goal could be considered out of reach for an individual black person in modern America.
This post-racial framing, of course, belies not just the inherited and institutional disadvantages black Americans face in housing, education, wealth, and other socioeconomic concerns, but also the emergence of what some have described as a “newer, slicker” form of racism. After the 2008 election, the anti-racist activist and writer Tim Wise described it as one where whites “hold the larger black community in low regard” but “carve out acceptable space for individuals like Obama who strike them as different”.
Tory peer subjects Israeli PM to sharp, unexpected questioning over killing of protesters
‘Why could you not use rubber bullets?’ the former Tory leader asked. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
The former Tory party leader Michael Howard has confronted the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over Israel’s killing of hundreds of Palestinian protesters, demanding to know why the country’s defence forces used live ammunition to curb the protests.
Responding to sharp, unexpected questions from one of the most prominent Jewish figures in British politics, Netanyahu said he was looking for new technological solutions to prevent protesters scaling the fence separating Gaza from Israel. He insisted the protesters were either paid civilians or Hamas members.
Netanyahu was speaking at the close of a lightning tour of Berlin, Paris and London, where he told European leaders that the Iran nuclear deal was collapsing as EU firms ended investment in Iran. The US president, Donald Trump, pulled out of the deal last month partly due to Israeli claims, rejected in Europe, that Iran was “cheating” on the 2015 deal.
Netanyahu also gave a sharp warning that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, would face direct Israeli military strikes if he allowed Iran to entrench itself in Syria.
Lord Howard said many people accepted the protests had not been peaceful, but added: “Fewer people sympathise with, and understand, the proposition that the only way to stop them scaling the fence was to kill them. Why could you not use rubber bullets? Why could you – if, in extremis, you had to use live ammunition – not shoot them in the legs? Why did you have to kill them?”
The British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, raised similar questions with Netanyahu when they met on Wednesday.
Netanyahu told Howard that the methods he proposed had been tried, and claimed: “Hamas wanted the Jews to kill more. Their goal was to have as many casualties. Our goal was to minimise casualties.”
He said he would be the first to use non-lethal means if they could be found, and insisted he was exploring other options for the future.
He claimed his army was facing a new form of warfare. He said it was “unconscionable” that Hamas put civilians in front of its fighters as human shields. The military and political wings of Hamas were indistinguishable, he said, describing them as “the worst theocratic gangsters in the world”.
He suggested that the Hamas wings believed in nothing. “They don’t believe in democracy or pluralism. They hang gays. Why are progressive forces going behind some of the least progressive forces in the world?” The answer, he said, was antisemitism. “It is important to call things as they are.”
Netanyahu also sent out his clearest warning yet that he would not tolerate the Syrian civil war finishing with Iranians remaining inside Syria. It is an issue that increasingly preoccupies Russia as it tries to prevent Israel going to war against Assad if he allows Tehran’s influence to grow so close to Israel’s border.
In May, Israel launched a large-scale attack on what it said were Iranian targets in Syria, raising fears of a big confrontation. Those strikes followed a barrage of rockets that Israel said were fired toward its forces in the occupied Golan Heights by Iran from Syria.
Netanyahu said: “I think Mr Assad has to consider this. As long as he engages in this horrific civil war inside Syria we will not deny him a deal. Now that the war is over, and Daesh is finished, and he likes or allows Iran to come in to entrench itself with a view to attack Israel, with the intention of destroying Israel, and its sovereign territory, he is no longer immune, his regime is no longer immune.
World Politics
United States
Donald Trump lets it all hang out – cartoon
President reportedly invoked war of 1812 when Canadian PM asked how he could justify tariffs on national security grounds
Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump shared a testy phone call last month. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
He has criticized Canada’s trade polices as “unfair” and dismissed its dairy policy as “a disgrace”. Now, Donald Trump has reportedly added a 200-year-old battle to his litany of complaints against the United States’ northern neighbor.
During a tetchy phone call last month to discuss looming steel and aluminum tariffs, Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, reportedly asked how Trump could justify the new duties on national security grounds.
In reply, Trump asked, according to CNN: “Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?” The White House did not respond to a request for comment and Canadian officials declined to comment on the record.
The White House was burned by British troops in 1814 as part of a failed invasion of the mid-Atlantic, more than 50 years before the signing of Canada’s confederation paved the way for the founding of modern-day Canada.
Although the British successfully took Washington and burned much of the city, they failed in their major goal of taking Baltimore when their forces were rebuffed at the battle of Fort McHenry.
Trump’s comments come at a time of increased tensions between the US and Canada, shortly before the US president unilaterally announced increased tariffs without congressional approval, citing national security needs.
The border between the US and Canada has been demilitarized for two centuries.
Trump’s justification for the new duties has provoked outrage from Canadians.
Trudeau said in an interview with NBC on Sunday: “One of the things that I have to admit I’m having a lot of trouble getting around is the idea that this entire thing is coming about because the president and the administration have decided that Canada and Canadian steel and aluminum is a national security threat to the United States.”
“My neighbours will put a tyre around my neck and set it on fire.” That is what Rosemary fears will happen if she, a lesbian, is deported by Britain back to Nigeria. She fled her homeland nearly a decade ago after her husband discovered her sexuality and threatened to kill her. She knew she was gay from the age of 12 but, she says: “I come from a culture where you have to get married: my mother threatened to kill herself if I didn’t.”
None of this satisfied the Home Office. It asked her why, if she was gay, she got married, had children and didn’t come out until she’d left the country. Even though she’s an active member of Leicester’s LGBT community, the authorities refused to believe her, and locked her up in Yarl’s Wood detention centre for four months. “It’s a place you wouldn’t wish on your enemy – a place of torture,” she tells me. She is now fighting deportation to Nigeria, a nation that forbids homosexuality, and where surveys suggest that nine out of 10 people oppose same-sex relations.
Rosemary’s story is a damning indictment of the chasm that exists between the government’s rhetoric on LGBT rights and its actual record. The prime minister herself repeatedly voted to keep anti-gay laws until a few years ago. While it was a Tory government that introduced equal marriage – though most Tory MPs did not vote for it – this is an issue of life and death for gays, lesbians and bisexuals. It is also, in part, about our colonial legacy. Many of the countries they face deportation to have anti-gay laws that were designed while the British were in power. We have a moral duty to offer support and safety to LGBT people fleeing repression for which Britain shares responsibility. Yet, according to Home Office figures released last year, of 3,535 asylum claims related to sexuality over a two-year period, a staggering two-thirds were rejected. The government hopes that the furore over Windrush has dissipated, that scrutiny of the “hostile environment” and the injustices it perpetrates has gone. That must not happen.
Take 50-year-old Larry, who fled Lagos in Nigeria in 2014. He realised he was gay aged 14 but, like so many gay Nigerians, had to stay firmly in the closet for his own safety. Although there were whispers and rumours about his sexuality, he married a woman in 1999. But his wife found him with another man four years ago and “raised the alarm”. Local people invaded his flat and beat him; later, police officers beat him, too, and forced him to pay money to avoid arrest. When he was attacked again, he fled the country, fearing his life was in danger.
He stayed with a cousin and family friend, but was detained by immigration officers in 2016. He was imprisoned in three detention centres, and given a deportation order backdated by several weeks, meaning his appeal time had already lapsed. He fell into mental crisis, slamming his head against his cell wall and door until he was rushed to hospital. “I will be subjected to persecution back home and I fear for my life,” he says, noting that his involvement with British LGBT organisations is all over the internet.
Rosemary fears for her life if the Home Office deports her back to Nigeria.
Other stories are equally distressing. Roseline, 26, came here from Nigeria aged 12: she survived a car crash two years earlier, which claimed her parents’ lives. A guardian accompanied her to the UK and was then deported, leaving Roseline and her sisters in foster care. “They treated me like a slave,” she says. She was forced to clean, cook, look after the family’s children, and faced physical and verbal abuse. School was no escape: there, she suffered racist bullying. Later, she was arrested and imprisoned for false representation in an immigration case, then detained at Yarl’s Wood, where she suffered from “hallucinations and terror”. Roseline, who speaks with a thick London accent, faces being deported to a country she left as a child, being separated from her fiancee, and being put in grave danger. As Karen Doyle, the national organiser for Movement for Justice – which plays a critical role defending gay refugees – tells me, many deportation decisions challenge the sexuality of the defendant, failing to take account of how complex the coming-out process can be, not least for those fleeing countries with anti-gay laws.
The eagles – and four other protected species – are alleged to have been poisoned
The dead wedge-tailed eagles were found at Tubbut, near the NSW border. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
More than 100 wedge-tailed eagles have been found on a farm in eastern Victoria, prompting a criminal investigation.
Officers from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) found the carcasses on a property at Tubbut, which is on the edge of the Snowy River national park near the New South Wales border in East Gippsland.
Guardian Australia understands that the eagles are alleged to have been poisoned.
Four other protected species were also allegedly killed.
The penalty for deliberately killing the animals, which are a protected species under the Victorian Wildlife Act, is a fine of up to $7,928.50 or six months’ imprisonment. An additional penalty of $792.85 is applicable for each additional bird killed, which could push the maximum fine in this case to more than $90,000.
A spokesman from DELWP said the matter was still under investigation and that charges had not yet been laid.
“DELWP is taking this matter very seriously,” he said.
The department has asked community members with any information about the alleged poisoning of birds of prey to report it to Crimestoppers.
East Gippsland is a hotspot for wedge-tailed eagles, which are the largest bird of prey in Australia with a wingspan of up to 2.8 metres.
Local landowners, who are reluctant to speak publicly about the issue for fear of reprisal, have told Guardian Australia that as many as 10 pairs have been seen at one time wheeling over the area the valley in which Tubbut lies.
Photos posted publicly on Facebook and tagged Tubbut in April showed a dead wedge-tailed eagle alongside the carcass of a lamb, from which it had apparently been feeding. Guardian Australia does not allege that the person who uploaded the photo is the subject of a DELWP investigation.
Wedge-tailed eagles have historically come into conflict with farmers for feeding on livestock, particularly lambs. Various Australian governments had bounties in place to encourage the killing of wedge-tailed eagles until the 1970s, when they were protected under law and numbers began to recover. They are now the most abundant large eagle species in the world.
Victorian authorities have only issued three permits to kill wedge-tailed eagles in the past 10 years, resulting in the deaths of 12 birds.
Sean Dooley from Birdlife Australia said the stigma against wedge-tailed eagles for killing livestock was unwarranted because they primarily ate carrion, or preyed on animals that were already very weak.
“They’re primarily scavengers,” he said. “When they are seen at lambs, the lamb has probably already died.”
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