The US Department of Agriculture was scheduled to begin sending out payments to Black and minority farmers this month, as part of a $4bn loan forgiveness program. The money was intended as a way to address more than 100 years of discriminatory practices and policies that have historically and disproportionately disadvantaged Black owners of farmland.

But a lawsuit on behalf of white farmers is accusing the Biden administration of discrimination due to an injunction granted this month by a federal judge in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Around the country, there are other lawsuits against debt relief to Black and minority farmers with claims of discrimination against white farmers, including one in Texas backed by the ex-Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

 According to Rodney Bradshaw, of Jetmore, Kansas  “My feeling before [the injunction] was that we’re finally getting some justice that was due to us after the Pigford agreement [a discrimination settlement in the late 1990s]. Now, it’s that promises to Black farmers are always put on hold,” says Bradshaw. He is a descendant of Black settlers with a more than 100-year legacy of farming in Kansas, but that legacy is as threatened as ever today, he says, because of racism that has been allowed to run rampant, and in some cases been historically supported, by the USDA. “There’s higher concentrations of Black farmers in the south. We had four major Black settlements here in Kansas, and they’re basically all gone – wiped out through systemic racism and discrimination.”

Black farmers peaked in number in 1920 when there were 949,889; today there are only 48,697; they account for only 1.4% of the country’s 3.4 million farmers (95% of US farmers are white) and own 0.52% of America’s farmland.

Part of the reason was displacement of Black farmers due to New Deal legislation, whose purpose was to help farmers by paying them to reduce crop production, thereby forcing food prices to rise. But white farmers used the money to purchase mechanical farming equipment and pushed out Black sharecroppers whose work was no longer needed due to the decreased production. Disenfranchisement didn’t stop there. In 1965, the US Commission on Civil Rights found that the USDA discriminated against Black farmers when providing financial assistance payments and loans. In 1999, the Clinton administration admitted that the USDA’s loan practices were discriminatory, in what is now known as the Pigford settlement.

The Pigford settlement was named for the Black farmer Timothy Pigford of North Carolina, who was the lead plaintiff in a victorious 1997 class-action lawsuit – still the largest civil rights settlement ever won against the federal government. It was supposed to pay just over $1bn to Black farmers, but less than 16,000 payments were received, even though more than 22,000 claims were filed. There were also tens of thousands of denied claims due to late filings, which Black farmers and their legal representatives blame on mismanagement of USDA communication of deadlines.

Tracy Lloyd McCurty, executive director of the Black Belt Justice Center, which works to enhance what it calls restorative land justice through a community-controlled land and financial cooperative known as the Black Agrarian Fund,  believes the USDA has previously engaged in deliberate obstructionism, and said in a statement to the Guardian that the Pigford settlement has had disastrous consequences in terms of denying Black families the ability to hold on to their farmlands. She wants more debts forgiven.

 “According to USDA data, only 2,000 out of the 17,000 farmers of color with direct loans with USDA are Black/African American and less than 5% of all Black farmers will receive debt cancellation. We have been grappling with these devastating numbers and the theft of Black farmlands by USDA through the Pigford lawsuit,” McCurty says. On the recent injunction, she says: “A colleague reminded us, ‘It is always going to be all deliberate speed if it’s on white supremacy’s time.’”

Black US farmers dismayed as white farmers’ lawsuit halts relief payments | US news | The Guardian

 The continuing exodus of millions of Venezuelans is reaching “a tipping point”. More than 5.6 million have left the country since 2015, when it had a population of 30 million, escaping political, economic and social hardships. But by the end of 2020, 3.9 million Venezuelans were designated as being displaced abroad without formal refugee status – but still judged in need of international protection. Stein said 1,800 to 2,000 people had been leaving Venezuela daily in the past three months, many taking dangerous paths out, including using people traffickers.

It has become the largest external displacement crisis in the region’s history, and the most underfunded.

 Eduardo Stein, special representative of the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), explained, “Whatever fails in one of the largest and richest countries in the subcontinent is going to affect the rest of the region. Latin America will never be the same.”

He claimed “donor fatigue” threatened funding, saying: “This pandemic has hit very hard those developed countries who have been traditional donors.”

Last year’s UN response plan received less than half the $1.41bn requested. The Red Cross has said it needs to raise $264m to support Venezuelans and 17 host countries over the next three years.

Dany Bahar, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in Washington DC, told the Guardian there remained “a big gap” in help for Venezuelan refugees, compared with other modern crises, such as Syria. He said the total funding per capita for Syrian refugees was more than 10 times that for Venezuelans – at $3,150 compared with $265, based on figures for 2020. Venezuela is second only in the world to Syria in terms of external displacement. The majority of refugees are being hosted in Latin America and the Caribbean. Colombia hosts more Venezuelans than any other country, accounting for 1.73 million people.

“Most of the host countries in the Venezuelan refugee crisis are in the region, and are developing countries,” Bahar said, “whereas Europe had much skin in the game in the case of the Syrians. Maybe that triggered much more generous funding.”

Roger Alonso Morgui, at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said the crisis was “not news any more”, adding: “When the big population movement happened a few years ago, there was still some attention. That now has become more silent in a way.”

Dominika Arseniuk, director in Colombia for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said,  “International solidarity and financial support is woefully insufficient and falls desperately short of what is needed to respond to the mass exodus from Venezuela.”

‘Latin America will never be the same’: Venezuela exodus reaches record levels | Global development | The Guardian

 The size of the UK’s nuclear arsenal had been on a downwards trajectory. Britain was set to reduce the number of warheads from 225 in 2010 to 180 by the mid-2020s, a decision made by David Cameron’s coalition government of 2010-15. This downsizing was part of three decades of gradual reductions in the UK’s nuclear arsenal, which included retiring its free-fall nuclear bombs in 1998. Britain now has roughly 195 warheads.

The UK government has now announced it is increasing the number of nuclear warheads for its Trident submarine fleet to 260. It had not been expected that the UK would increase its nuclear arsenal by over 40%. The Office of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the UK decision was contrary to its obligations under Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — in other words, it is illegal under international law. The NPT requires countries that have nuclear weapons to disarm, and those that don’t have them not to get them. 

 Johnson’s government unveiled in its “Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy”  which has changed Britain’s stance on the use of nuclear weapons. The British government is also threatening to use its nuclear arsenal against non-nuclear weapons states that are said to be heading in the direction of acquiring nuclear weapons — or, as the Integrated Review puts it, those states judged to be “in material breach of their non-proliferation obligations”. The UK now reserves the right to use nuclear weapons not only against nuclear threats but against enemies possessing chemical and biological weapons or “emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact”. 

 It is easily understood as a thinly veiled reference to Iran. The British government has repeatedly said that “Iran must never develop a nuclear weapon”. The Integrated Review says the UK will embark on “a renewed diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon”. But London appears to be sending a message to Tehran that is not just about diplomacy. 

The legal opinion also finds that the UK’s change in stance on the use of nuclear weapons is in breach of international law. Any use of nuclear weapons would violate international humanitarian law and a whole raft of legal obligations.

The UK’s new nuclear strategy is illegal and dangerou… (dailymaverick.co.za)

 The size of the UK’s nuclear arsenal had been on a downwards trajectory. Britain was set to reduce the number of warheads from 225 in 2010 to 180 by the mid-2020s, a decision made by David Cameron’s coalition government of 2010-15. This downsizing was part of three decades of gradual reductions in the UK’s nuclear arsenal, which included retiring its free-fall nuclear bombs in 1998. Britain now has roughly 195 warheads.

The UK government has now announced it is increasing the number of nuclear warheads for its Trident submarine fleet to 260. It had not been expected that the UK would increase its nuclear arsenal by over 40%. The Office of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the UK decision was contrary to its obligations under Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — in other words, it is illegal under international law. The NPT requires countries that have nuclear weapons to disarm, and those that don’t have them not to get them. 

 Johnson’s government unveiled in its “Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy”  which has changed Britain’s stance on the use of nuclear weapons. The British government is also threatening to use its nuclear arsenal against non-nuclear weapons states that are said to be heading in the direction of acquiring nuclear weapons — or, as the Integrated Review puts it, those states judged to be “in material breach of their non-proliferation obligations”. The UK now reserves the right to use nuclear weapons not only against nuclear threats but against enemies possessing chemical and biological weapons or “emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact”. 

 It is easily understood as a thinly veiled reference to Iran. The British government has repeatedly said that “Iran must never develop a nuclear weapon”. The Integrated Review says the UK will embark on “a renewed diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon”. But London appears to be sending a message to Tehran that is not just about diplomacy. 

The legal opinion also finds that the UK’s change in stance on the use of nuclear weapons is in breach of international law. Any use of nuclear weapons would violate international humanitarian law and a whole raft of legal obligations.

The UK’s new nuclear strategy is illegal and dangerou… (dailymaverick.co.za)

 The size of the UK’s nuclear arsenal had been on a downwards trajectory. Britain was set to reduce the number of warheads from 225 in 2010 to 180 by the mid-2020s, a decision made by David Cameron’s coalition government of 2010-15. This downsizing was part of three decades of gradual reductions in the UK’s nuclear arsenal, which included retiring its free-fall nuclear bombs in 1998. Britain now has roughly 195 warheads.

The UK government has now announced it is increasing the number of nuclear warheads for its Trident submarine fleet to 260. It had not been expected that the UK would increase its nuclear arsenal by over 40%. The Office of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the UK decision was contrary to its obligations under Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — in other words, it is illegal under international law. The NPT requires countries that have nuclear weapons to disarm, and those that don’t have them not to get them. 

 Johnson’s government unveiled in its “Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy”  which has changed Britain’s stance on the use of nuclear weapons. The British government is also threatening to use its nuclear arsenal against non-nuclear weapons states that are said to be heading in the direction of acquiring nuclear weapons — or, as the Integrated Review puts it, those states judged to be “in material breach of their non-proliferation obligations”. The UK now reserves the right to use nuclear weapons not only against nuclear threats but against enemies possessing chemical and biological weapons or “emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact”. 

 It is easily understood as a thinly veiled reference to Iran. The British government has repeatedly said that “Iran must never develop a nuclear weapon”. The Integrated Review says the UK will embark on “a renewed diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon”. But London appears to be sending a message to Tehran that is not just about diplomacy. 

The legal opinion also finds that the UK’s change in stance on the use of nuclear weapons is in breach of international law. Any use of nuclear weapons would violate international humanitarian law and a whole raft of legal obligations.

The UK’s new nuclear strategy is illegal and dangerou… (dailymaverick.co.za)

 Oxfam has released a report saying that while supermarkets enjoyed a bumper pandemic 2020, food labourers were victims of “modern slavery.”

Entitled “Pandemic profiteers and virus losers,” the report examined working conditions on tea plantations in the Assam state in India, as well as coffee plantations in Brazil, grape fields in South Africa and in the fishing industry in Thailand. All four countries showed “exploitation and shocking cases of modern slave labour.”

 Supermarket chains experienced a “boom in sales” in the pandemic year of 2020 while producers in many poorer countries lost their jobs, worked in slave-like conditions and were inadequately protected from the coronavirus, Oxfam said.

“While the supermarket chains were cashing in, the workers who produce our food are fighting for their livelihoods,” wrote Tim Zahn and Annika Zieske, authors of the report.

Oxfam cited extreme physical labour without running water and a lack of protection against pesticides and COVID-19 among coffee plantation workers in Brazil. The pandemic was hitting women particularly hard, the report highlighted. Female workers were dismissed more often than the average worker and had to shoulder most of the additional nursing and care work.

The situation looked very different for German supermarkets. Oxfam found that their sales went up to 17% in 2020 and that the assets of their owners grew by up to 30%.

“The pandemic profits of the owners of Aldi Süd alone would have been enough to pay the living wages of around 4 million workers in the Brazilian coffee sector,” the report said.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, “workers who make the food get less and less of the price of the products on sale in the supermarket,” Oxfam said.

Oxfam found that in South Africa, for example, workers received only 1% percent of the sales price of the grapes they produce.

Oxfam: Supermarkets cashing in as food labourers suffer | News | DW | 22.06.2021

 In Gaza more than half the territory’s population living below the poverty line and cost $16.7bn in lost GDP annually. This figure does not account for the huge opportunity cost of preventing the Palestinian people from using their natural gas field off the shores of Gaza. 

The Israeli government has established de facto control over Gaza’s offshore natural gas reserves. In commandeering and exploiting Palestinian oil and gas resources, Israel is acting in violation of the letter and the spirit of the Hague Regulations, the Fourth Geneva Convention and a body of international humanitarian and human rights law that addresses the exploitation of common resources by an occupying power, without regard for the interest, rights and shares of the occupied population.

 A recent study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) points out that new discoveries of natural gas in the Levant Basin in the Eastern Mediterranean are in the range of 122 trillion cubic feet, while recoverable oil is estimated at 1.7 billion barrels. 

These reserves offer an opportunity to distribute and share about $524bn among the different parties in the region. The revenues from these resources are currently going only to Israel.

The Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories and the blockade of the Gaza Strip have prevented the Palestinian people from exercising any control over their own fossil fuel resources, leaving the Palestinian economy on the verge of collapse.

 The 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, known as the Oslo II Accord, gave the Palestinian Authority (PA) maritime jurisdiction over its waters up to 20 nautical miles from the coast. The PA signed a 25-year contract for gas exploration with the British Gas Group in 1999, and a large gas field, Gaza Marine, was discovered at 17 to 21 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza the same year. However, despite initial discussions between the Israeli government, the PA and British Gas on the sale of gas from this field and the provision of much-needed revenue to the occupied Palestinian territories, the Palestinians have not realised any benefits. British Gas, has since been dealing with the Israeli government, effectively bypassing the Palestinian government regarding exploration and development rights.

Israel has also taken control of the Meged oil and natural gas field, located inside the occupied West Bank. Israel states that the field lies west of the armistice line of 1948, yet most of the reservoir is situated beneath the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. More recently, Israel has begun to develop new oil and gas finds in the Eastern Mediterranean, solely for its own benefit.

The Paris Protocol on Economic Relations, permits Israel control of Palestinian monetary policy, borders and trade. UNCTAD estimates that, under occupation, the Palestinian people have lost $47.7bn in fiscal revenues over the 2007-2017 period, including revenues leaked to Israel and accrued interest. In comparison, the Palestinian government’s development spending over the same period was approximately $4.5bn.

The economic costs inflicted on the Palestinian people under occupation are well documented: tight restrictions on the movement of people and goods; the confiscation and destruction of property and assets; loss of land, water and other natural resources; a fragmented domestic market and separation from neighbouring and international markets; and the expansion of Israeli settlements. 

UNCTAD estimates that it would cost a minimum of $838m per year to lift Gaza’s population out of poverty. Access to oil and gas revenues would provide the Palestinians with sustainable financing to invest in long-term economic reconstruction, rehabilitation and recovery. The alternative is for these common resources to be exploited individually and exclusively by Israel, and to become another trigger for conflict and violence.

Meantime, Israel has allowed a limited resumption of commercial exports from the besieged Gaza Strip in what it called a “conditional” measure, one month after a truce halted an 11-day bombing offensive. The easing also included the resumption of postal services in and out of Gaza. Too late, however,  for the Pepsi bottling plant which said it was closing and laying off 250 workers because raw materials needed to stay in business were being obstructed.

Palestine’s forgotten oil and gas resources | Oil and Gas | Al Jazeera

 The UN rights chief,  Michelle Bachelet told the opening of the UN Human Rights Council’s 47th session, “To recover from the most wide-reaching and severe cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes, we need a life-changing vision and concerted action.” 

Bachelet said she was deeply disturbed by reports of “serious violations” in Tigray, racked by war and with about 350,000 people threatened by famine. She pointed to “extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests and detentions, sexual violence against children as well as adults,” and said she had “credible reports” that Eritrean soldiers were still operating in the region. Other parts of Ethiopia, which held elections on Monday, were also seeing “alarming incidents of deadly ethnic and inter-communal violence and displacement”, Bachelet said.

“The ongoing deployment of military forces is not a durable solution,” she said.

Bachelet also decried the situation in northern Mozambique, ravaged by recent deadly jihadist violence, where she said food insecurity was rising and “almost 800,000 people, including 364,000 children” had now been forced to flee their homes.

She  also pointed to the “chilling impact” of a sweeping national security law introduced in Hong Kong. The law, which took effect on the eve of 1 July, 2020, is seen as the spear tip of a sweeping crackdown on Beijing’s critics in the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong following 2019’s huge democracy protests. It has criminalised much dissent, given China jurisdiction over some cases and awarded authorities powerful new investigative powers. She also pointed to “reports of serious human rights violations” in China’s Xinjiang region, and said she hoped Beijing would grant her a long-discussed visit there, including “meaningful access” this year. At least one million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been held in camps, according to rights groups.

Bachelet also criticised recent measures by the Kremlin shrinking the space for opposing political views and access to participation in September elections. She highlighted the recent moves to dismantle the movement of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Barring his organisations from working in the country, a Moscow court earlier this month branded them as “extremist” in a ruling Bachelet said was “based on vaguely defined allegations of attempting to change the foundations of constitutional order”. Putin, has signed legislation outlawing staff, members and sponsors of “extremist” groups from running in parliamentary elections.

“I call on Russia to uphold civil and political rights,” Bachelet said.

UN warns of worst ‘cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes’ | United Nations | The Guardian

 Combining solar power and microbes could produce 10 times more protein than crops such as soya beans, according to a new study at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam, Germany, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

The concept uses electricity from solar panels and carbon dioxide from the air to create fuel for microbes, which are grown in bioreactor vats and then processed into dry protein powders. The process makes highly efficient use of land, water and fertiliser and could be deployed anywhere, not just in countries with strong sunshine or fertile soils, the scientists said. Microbes are already used to make many common foods, such as bread, yoghurt, beer and Quorn. At least a dozen companies are already producing animal feed from microbes but the bacteria are typically fed either sugars from other crops or methane or methanol from fossil fuels. Solar Foods, based in Finland, is using electricity to create food for humans.

Dorian Leger who led the new analysis, said: “We think microbial foods are very promising and will be one of the major contributors to solving the potential food crisis. It might pick up quite quickly on the consumer side, but it’s hard to say. “But I do some exercise, and if I was offered a bacterial protein shake now, I would have it.”

The team focused on soya beans, as these are linked to the destruction of forests and are mostly fed to animals, but other bacteria produce the main elements of palm oil.

 “Bacteria are very flexible, so they could eventually be tuned to different products,” Leger said.

The new assessment is the first quantitative comparison of land use and energy efficiency between traditional agriculture and solar-powered microbial production systems. The researchers used data on today’s technologies to calculate the efficiency of each step of the process, including capturing CO2 from the air and processing the microbes into food that people could eat. They found the microbial system used just 1% of the water needed by the crops and a small fraction of the fertiliser, most of which is wasted when used in fields.

The analysis estimated that the solar-microbial process could produce 15 tonnes of protein from each hectare (or per 2.5 acres) a year, enough to feed 520 people, which the scientists said was a conservative estimate. In comparison, a hectare of soya beans could produce 1.1 tonnes of protein, feeding 40 people. Even in countries with relatively low sunlight levels like the UK, microbial protein production was at least five times greater from each hectare than plants. The microbial protein would cost about the same as current proteins eaten by people, such as whey or pea, the researchers suggested. But it was several times more expensive than current animal feeds, although future technological improvements are expected to lower costs.

Leger said plants’ ability to photosynthesise is remarkable but, in terms of energy efficiency, staple crops only convert about 1% of solar energy into edible biomass. This is because plants have evolved to compete and reproduce as well as just grow, and use less of the solar light spectrum than photovoltaic panels. All the components of the system exist, but Leger said they now need to be tested together and at scale, in particular the capturing of CO2 from the air and ensuring that used solar panels can be recycled. “For human food, there’s also a lot of regulation that needs to be overcome,” he said.

Pete Iannetta, at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, said: ““It’s a really interesting concept – you are divorcing food production from land use, which would mean you could have all that land available for rewilding.” But he said food is not only composed of the main nutrients, like protein and carbohydrate: “There are an awful lot of secondary compounds that are important for your wellbeing.” Iannetta also questioned whether microbial foods would become mainstream: “For example, we have used algae for a long time as a potential food resource, but it’s still not widely accepted.”

Microbes and solar power ‘could produce 10 times more food than plants’ | Food | The Guardian

  Biden will meet the chief of the European Union’s executive, Ursula von der Leyen, and European Council President Charles Michel. The meeting marks the return of EU-US collaboration on fighting climate change. The United States and EU are the world’s second and third-biggest emitters of CO2, respectively, after China. A draft of their summit statement, seen by Reuters, outlines plans for a transatlantic alliance to develop green technologies and points to sustainable finance as an area for closer transatlantic collaboration.

It did not include firm promises of cash. It also stopped short of setting a date for the United States and EU to quit burning coal, the most polluting fossil fuel and the single biggest of greenhouse gas emissions.

Australia’s reliance on coal-fired power makes it one of the world’s largest carbon emitters per capita, but its conservative government has steadfastly backed the country’s fossil fuel industries. Australia has refused to budge from its Paris Agreement commitment to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% from 2005 levels by 2030.