Category Archives: Government Oppression

IT was 275 years ago today that Prince Charles Edward Stuart arrived at Roscoff in Brittany aboard the French ship LHeureux.

The crews of both LHeureux and its accompanying ship Le Prince de Conti cheered the Prince to the echo as he was taken ashore in a rowing boat, with a salute of 21 guns roaring out from each ship.

In the New Style dating it was October 10, 1746, and Charles had somehow survived more than six months in Scotland after the disastrous Battle of Culloden. He was never betrayed despite the 30,000 reward money offered by the Hanoverian Government, and thanks to the help of people like Flora MacDonald, he evaded the huge army of redcoats seeking him.

He did not know it at that point, but his arrival in France ended all hope of a further Jacobite campaign, for as we shall see, the Stuart cause no longer allied with the machinations of France.

READ MORE:King Constantine II: The formation of modern Scotland in the Alba period

I recently received a most fascinating note from Michael Nevin, chair of The 1745 Association and author of Reminiscences Of A Jacobite who reminded me that later this month will also see the 275th anniversary of the only meeting between two of the most enigmatic and charismatic personalities of the 18th-century, Madame de Pompadour, mistress of the French King Louis XV and Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

Niven told me: On Sunday October 23, 1746, the Marquise de Pompadour invited the Prince and his entourage to a soire at her residence in Fontainebleau. At the time of their meeting, Madame de Pompadour was aged just 24, while Prince Charles was a year older at 25.

Their encounter was more than a pleasant social engagement between a young man and a young woman. Two weeks earlier, the Prince had landed in Brittany following his escape from Scotland after Culloden, and was keen to win the support of the Marquise, the French Kings closest and most trusted adviser, to continue his campaign to win the British throne.

Their meeting was to have profound significance for them personally, for their nations, and indeed for the history of Europe, and proved to be the final act of the Auld Alliance.

Niven tells the story in a 24-minute video marking the anniversary of their meeting, When Madame De Pompadour Met Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Tragedy In Three Acts, which is on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9fzkyMZKRg). Its well worth it as it tells a fascinating story.

Also quite fascinating is a document that I saw seven years ago when it came up for sale in Edinburgh. It was being sold at Lyon & Turnbulls auction house in Edinburgh. If memory serves me it fetched 25,000, more than double the estimate of 12,000.

Lyon & Turnbulls experts explained just how important was that letter, written by Charles in French: He addresses the letter to His Majesty [Monsieur Mon Frere et Cousin], stating that he has written a Memorandum of his affairs [un petit memoire de mes affaires] for His Majesty, which he strongly hopes to put into the hands of the King himself, and offering to come incognito to a secret rendezvous of the Kings choosing.

The Memoire, also written entirely by the Prince, gives the Princes assessment of the political situation in Britain and claims that English government oppression is fostering ever more support for his cause.

He tries to account for the failure of the Rising and defeat at Culloden, saying that he has never lacked for Scottish subjects ready to fight for him, but that he lacked money, equipment and a regular army. If he had had just one of these he states, he would have been again by now Master of Scotland and probably of England too.

Translated from the French it states: Armed men were not lacking in Scotland. Instead, I missed at once money, provisions, and a handful of regular troops with just one of these three resources I would be master of Scotland today, and probably of all England too.

According to Lyon & Turnbull, Charles goes on to say that if he had only had provisions he would have been able to pursue General Hawley at the Battle of Falkirk and destroy his entire army which comprised the flower of the English army [qui etoit la fleur des troupes Angloises]. And if he had received sooner half the money sent to him by Louis he would have fought the Duke of Cumberland with equal numbers. With just 1200 more regular troops he would have won the Battle of Culloden.

He concludes by arguing that the setback can still be reversed if His Majesty can provide him with a battalion of 18 or 20,000 men, and assures His Majesty that their interests remain inseparable.

READ MORE:Kingdom of Alba and its unforgettable role in making Scotland

The letter was an indication that Charles had not given up. The problem for the Bonnie Prince was that the French under Louis XV had defeated the British-led forces at Fontenoy in May the previous year during the War of the Austrian Succession and now Louis wanted peace.

The commander of the forces known as the Pragmatic Army at Fontenoy was none other than the Duke of Cumberland, the Butcher of Culloden, who took the British contingent home to deal with the Jacobites.

By October, 1746, Louis XV was desperate for peace as the French economy was collapsing. The French had only promised support for Charles as a diversion to their war on the Continent, and now the Jacobites had become surplus to requirements.

Louis gave Charles a pension and he enjoyed himself among the ladies of Paris. Louis was firm, however and 275 years ago next month the cause of the Jacobites was lost forever.

Read more:

The Bonnie Prince and the king who finally refused to indulge his cause - The National

On 1 August, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi approved a law, previously approved by parliament, allowing for the non-disciplinary dismissal of public employees. Referred to in the media as the Law on the Dismissal of Employees Belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, the new legislation allows public administrations to dismiss any civil servant suspected of belonging to groups classified as terrorist in Egypt, as well as those who harm public services or the economic interests of the state.

It began with a series of fatal railway accidents. On 26 March 2021, a train collision in the Sohag Governorate in Upper Egypt killed 20 people and injured 165. Twenty-two days later, another accident occurred in the north of the country, killing 11 and injuring 98. Faced with criticism of his management following the accidents, the minister of transport and former army general Kamel al-Wazir accused extremist and rebel elements allegedly belonging to terrorist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood, banned in the country since 2013, of being behind the sabotage.

As proof of his charges, the Minister announced that he had identified 268 Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated elements within the transport sector, whom he could not sack as Egyptian law did not allow the dismissal of civil servants or employees of state-owned companies except for disciplinary reasons.

On 5 May 2021, a member of parliament from the pro-regime Mostaqbal Watan party introduced the new law before parliament. While characterised in the media as primarily aimed at the dismissal of employees with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the laws ambiguous and wide-ranging provisions are raising fears that any slightly critical voice within the public sector could be targeted.

The dismissal of employees belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood is just the tip of the iceberg. This law targets any public employee who opposes the regime, regardless of their affiliation. The government is well aware that most of the Muslim Brotherhood are either in prison or in exile, Kamal Abu Aita, the former minister of manpower, tells Equal Times. He argues that the law is being presented as anti-Muslim Brotherhood in order to gain public approval.

According to Abu Aita: The current regime always labels anyone who is not pro-regime as a member or sympathiser of the Muslim Brotherhood so that it can easily hunt down and punish them.

While the text of the law does not explicitly mention the Muslim Brotherhood, its second article authorises the dismissal of any public servant whose name appears on the terrorist list. But as Abu Aita argues, in a country where any opponent or trade unionist who is arrested can be charged without hesitation with belonging to a terrorist group or sharing the objectives of a terrorist group, the circle of public employees targeted by the legislation exceeds those who belong to the Muslim Brotherhood.

I know several trade unionists and liberal labour activists who appear on the list of terrorist organisations due to their political affiliation, including the architect Mamdouh Hamza who was placed on the list for criticising the regimes policies on social networks, and Yehia Hussein Abdel Hadi, who has been detained without trial since January 2019 for participating in an event commemorating the 8th anniversary of the 25 January Revolution. They could be targeted by this law, adds the former minister. More than 60,000 political prisoners are currently behind bars in Egypt, including 30,000 in pre-trial detention, according to NGOs.

According to Ahmed al-Naggar, former editor-in-chief of the government-owned daily Al-Ahram, the law aims to dismiss any official whom the regime finds undesirable, as it judges employees by their political intentions and positions, not by their actions. As al-Naggar warned in statements made to the local news website Daaarb: The law constitutes a return of the inquisition in the public sector and will have very dangerous social consequences.

The new law could further increase workplace monitoring of employees political affiliations. The law would turn employees of public authorities and administrations into informers who help the security apparatus to hunt down any opponent, as well as any honest employee who criticises corruption in the institution where he or she works, Ammar Ali Hassan, professor of political science at Helwan University, tells Equal Times.

The regime wants employees who remain silent, who dont complain about their working conditions and who dont criticise power, he says.

After the law came into effect on 1 August, the government sent a copy to all state institutions in order to begin reviewing employee profiles, an unnamed official source told Sky News Arabia on 10 August. On 22 August, the ministry of transport announced that it had transferred 190 public servants allegedly belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood to positions unrelated to the operation of the railways, pending an investigation into their political affiliation, with a view to dismissing them.

In a statement issued the same day the law came into force, the supreme council of universities announced that it had begun to draw up a list of university professors and staff who belong to terrorist groups and who try in various ways to prevent universities from carrying out their educational mission.

But according to activists and members of opposition parties, article 1 of the law presents even greater danger. It stipulates that all public employees who have failed to meet their duties, as part of a bid to harm public services or the economic interests of the state will be dismissed.

This article represents a trap for employees. It paves the way for any public servant to be punished for calling for or participating in a strike or in any independent trade union activities. According to this law, they would be failing in their duties and hindering production or the functioning of state services, warns Wael Tawfik, a member of the workers committee at the Socialist Popular Alliance Party (SPAP).

While the law provides the state with a means for keeping in check the highly politicised working class, which has always been a key player in and even the driving force behind most of the uprisings in modern Egypt, it will also be a significant instrument for reducing the number of employees in the public sector, which the regime and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) consider to be bloated. According to official figures, the public sector and related services employ around six million people (not including the armed forces).

This new legislation gives the state new reasons to reduce the number of public sector employees. This is in line with the demands of the IMF, which granted Egypt a US$12 billion loan at the end of 2016, adds Elhami al-Merghani, vice president of SPAP.

Since 2020, thousands of employees have organised sit-ins in protest of the governments policy of closing large companies and factories that it deems to be in debt. Seven thousand workers and employees of the Egyptian Iron & Steel Co took part in the most recent sit-in in January 2021 following the governments decision to close the company and turn its six million square metre site into a residential development. According to certain analyses, this policy is also aimed at paving the way for the economic ambitions of the army, which is increasingly expanding its presence in civilian production.

The regime has adopted a policy that is hostile to the working class. It has closed several companies and dismissed thousands of workers in recent years on the pretext that these companies are not profitable, says al-Merghani.

While the government may be pleased with its hostile policy towards opponents and redundant public sector employees, this policy could have disastrous long-term effects as it risks increasing unemployment and unrest in a country where a large part of the population has long depended on the public sector for its income. As al-Merghani warns: The government can use the machinery of repressive laws to silence employees, but this oppression always leads to disaster.

Continued here:

A dangerous new law in Egypt allows for the dismissal of any public employee who opposes the regime - Equal Times

A curriculum company with links to Attorney General Merrick Garland sells local educators on its woke education materials and shows them how to stick state and federal taxpayers with the bill.

Panorama Education, founded by Garlands son-in-law Xan Tanner, produces teaching materials focused on systemic racism, oppression, white supremacy, and intersectionality, all under the rubric of "Social-Emotional Learning. The multimillion-dollar company's marketing plan appears to be to get educators to buy in and then show them how to pay for it all with government grants.

PARENT GROUPS SAY GARLAND MAY HAVE CONFLICT OF INTEREST ON SCHOOL BOARD ISSUE

International SEL Day is a perfect opportunity to tell your policymakers that committing to dismantling systems of oppression and advancing equity-centered SEL is important to you," the Panorama "toolkit" reads. "Reach out to your local, regional, state, and national policymakers.

Panorama's curriculum materials have angered some parents across the nation who see critical race theory and similar approaches as teaching K-12 children that they are either victims or oppressors based on their skin color. Garland enraged parent groups this week when he assigned the FBI to help address what he called a spike in "harassment" and "threats of violence" toward school board members. Some parent groups believe it was an effort to chill them from objecting to controversial curricula, which the DOJ denies.

Panorama's curriculum is as profitable as it is controversial. The company's revenues are not public, but it boasts that it "supports 13 million students in 21,000 schools" and has garnered tens of millions of dollars from investors. But most of its money appears to come from taxpayers, and Panorama uses educators to leverage it.

One 2021 Zoom workshop on SEL as Social Justice: Dismantling White Supremacy Within Systems and Self included numerous "calls to action" for the hundreds of teachers and others attending. At least five slides provided explicit talking points for educators to use to promote Panorama's approach to government officials.

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My name is [NAME] and Im your constituent. Im writing to you today to implore you to fight for our children who are being oppressed in our community of [CITY, TOWN, STATE, REGION, or COUNTRY]," the Panorama toolkit advises educators to tell officials. "Promoting racially and culturally inclusive K-12 social-emotional learning programming is one way that our school communities can work to confront structural racism. I urge you to consider anti-racist SEL as an integral part of addressing complex policy issues that face our children such as oppression."

Panorama also recommends asking legislators to support certain bills, providing an example of what to say: If you come across any upcoming bills that provide funding for SEL and/or resources for dismantling systemic oppression, I implore you to champion it both locally and nationally.

Panorama

Panorama

In one of the Panorama Think, Type, Tweet slides, the education company provides information on how to contact elected officials, from the president down to local leaders.

Panorama also recommends that educators tweet at your policymaker with a blurb from your advocacy letter, and it even provides a link that auto-generates a tweet to tag elected officials, which reads, Educators know that developing the whole child matters. On International #SELDay, Im calling for my legislators to advocate for #SEL and support bills that dismantle systemic oppression. @_______ @________ (cc: @PanoramaEd) #wholechild #edequity.

Panorama also has lengthy guidance on how schools can apply for federal funding to spend on its products.

Panorama is committed to helping schools and districts find funding sources for new tools that can support students," it states. "We've compiled resources that may be helpful in identifying sustainable funding sources for your school or district.

The education company suggests that schools apply for funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act; the Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection, and Schools Act; the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund; the American Rescue Plan; and the Education Department's Title I, II, and IV to spend on Panorama.

Panorma

Elizabeth Breese, the vice president of marketing at Panorama, told the Washington Examiner that there is no conflict between what the company does and its co-founder's powerful connections.

The only relationship between Panorama Education and Attorney General Merrick Garland is that Panorama's co-founder Xan Tanner is AG Garlands son-in-law, she said.

Washington Examiner Videos

Tags: News, Merrick Garland, Education, Critical Race Theory, CARES Act

Original Author: Jerry Dunleavy

Original Location: Garland son-in-law's race-obsessed education company urges schools to push lawmakers to adopt its ideas and stick taxpayers with tab

The rest is here:

Garland son-in-law's race-obsessed education company urges schools to push lawmakers to adopt its ideas and stick taxpayers with tab - Yahoo News

Government forces have detained at least 500 people in a sweeping crackdown in IIOJK, local officials said on Sunday, following a string of suspected attacks and targeted killings in the disputed region.

Assailants fatally shot three Hindus and a Sikh person in the regions main city of Srinagar this week in a sudden rise in violence against civilians that both pro and anti-India Kashmiri politicians widely condemned.

Local police blamed the spate of killings on elements fighting against Indian rule in the region for decades. Officials said they had detained in the last three days over 500 people across the Kashmir Valley for questioning, with the majority of detainees from the main city of Srinagar.

Police say individuals belonging to The Resistance Front (TRF) group have shot and killed seven people since last week, pushing up the death toll from such attacks this year to 28 people. While 21 of those slain were Muslims, seven of them belonged to Hindu and Sikh minority communities.

Speaking with reporters recently, the regions top police officer Dilbag Singh described the killings as a conspiracy to create terror and communal rift.

On Thursday, TRF in a statement on social media claimed the group was targeting those working for Indian authorities and was not picking targets based on faith. The groups statement could not be independently verified.

The TRF was formed after India stripped IoK in 2019 of its semi autonomous status, scrapped its statehood, and undertook a massive security and communications lockdown for months. IoK has remained on edge ever since as authorities also put in place a slew of new laws, which critics and many Kashmiris fear could change the regions demographics.

This last weeks killings appeared to trigger widespread fear among minority communities, with many Hindu families opting to leave the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley. Those killed included a prominent Kashmiri Hindu chemist, two schoolteachers of the Hindu and Sikh faiths, and a Hindu street food vendor from Indias eastern state of Bihar.

According to police, those detained in the ensuing crackdown include members of religious groups, anti-India activists and overground workers, a term Indian authorities use for sympathisers and collaborationists of freedom fighters.

Freedom fighters in IIOJK have been fighting New Delhis rule since 1989. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

See the article here:

Indian arrests 500 Kashmiris in a fresh wave of state oppression - Pakistan Today

Photo Courtesy: AP News

Today is the World Day Against the Death Penalty

Today, when globally the call for the abolition of the death penalty is renewed and its inhumane and cruel nature is highlighted, we must recognize that the death penalty is one of the many tools of oppression used by structures of discrimination and violence.

This article sets out the way in which the death penalty functions as a tool of oppression and its role in an unrestrained national security regime that abuses the vulnerable and marginalized in the guise of protecting the state.

In Sri Lanka two wars are being waged at present; the seemingly never-ending war on terror and the war on drugs. Both wars rely on tools of oppression; namely the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and the threat of the implementation of the death penalty. Both wars have striking similarities and are related. Both wars largely impact marginalized, vulnerable and discriminated against communities, such as ethno-religious minorities and the poor.

At the intersection of the war on terror and war on drugs

Rhetoric, both in mainstream as well as social media, plays a critical role in fueling the two wars.

Rhetoric on the need to retain the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) rests on the supposed aim of making people safe by targeting those who are deemed deviants and not proper citizens, i.e. terrorists, via the law. The reality however is that the PTA has created insecurity first for Tamils, then for Muslims and now dissenters generally. People arrested under this law suffer numerous rights violations as documented in the report of the national study of prisons conducted by the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka. Furthermore, those arrested under the PTA are stigmatized and face multiple challenges, including accessing legal representation, which extends their incarceration. This in turn has a devastating impact on persons and their families.

The war on drugs was initiated by President Maithripala Sirisena who in 2019 sought to resume executions of those convicted of drug offences, supposedly to eradicate the drug trade. The Gotabaya Rajapaksa government has gone further and portrays the war on drugs as an extension of the war on terror. By pointing to the militarys victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the government claims the military is best suited to tackle the war on drugs as well. This is illustrated by statements of members of the present government, particularly the President, the Commander of the Army and the Secretary of Defence, who consistently equate the fight against drugs with the fight against terrorism, and present drug eradication as an issue of national security.

The government claims the PTA and death penalty are means through which it can increase the security of people. Yet, these are populist tools regimes use to portray their leaders as strong, i.e. a paternal figure who will safeguard the people. Gotabaya Rajapaksa for instance contested the 2019 Presidential elections on a platform of making the country safer from terror attacks. He is also a proponent of the de jure death penalty. His main contender Sajith Premadasa too claimed he would implement the death penalty for drugs and have strong counter terror measures if elected. He has since also called for those guilty of the 2019 Easter terror attacks to be sentenced to death.

I have written elsewhere about the injustices suffered by persons detained under the PTA and those on death row and how it is exacerbated both by their ethno-religious identities and their socio-economic circumstances. In this context, both wars, which are couched within the framework of national security, are fueled by different forms of profiling -ethno-religious in the war on terror and socio-economic in the war on drugs- discrimination and the perpetration of violence. The ethos which drives these wars is hyper-masculine, militarized, violent and control-based.

The dual wars are also tools of distraction. Arrests under the PTA seem to increase when the government finds the need to justify the PTAs existence, such as prior to a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. When there is a need to distract the public from harsh economic conditions they have to endure as a result of government action and inaction, Gnanasara Thero, the Buddhist monk who spews hate and vitriol against Muslims, appears on TV and issues warnings of impending Islamist terror attacks. Likewise, the war on drugs is a tool used to distract the public from systemic and structural dysfunctionalities, such as politicization and corruption, in the police and prison system. It could also be employed to conceal the involvement of state officials in the drug trade because, as highlighted by the Global Organised Crime Index 2021, global patterns confirm the role of state actors as vectors of organized crime by facilitating or taking part in illicit economies.

These factors point to the following. That the PTA and the death penalty are tools of oppression in a violent and rights violating national security regime that discriminates and perpetrates violence against the poor and ethno-religious minorities. That the wars on terror and drugs are used as distractions to divert attention from systemic and structural problems that need to be addressed. That national security is the catch-all net used to justify repressive state action in the dual wars.

Without fear there is no national (in)security

To sustain the wars on terror and drugs the government creates a constant state of insecurity. Impending terror attacks by Islamic extremists and re-grouping by the LTTE are said to be ever-present, while the drug menace is portrayed as the biggest threat to social order and well-being. Fear is hence the basis upon which public support is sought for both the PTA and the death penalty. Fear thereby becomes a useful tool to the government to deflect or counter challenges to the PTA and the death penalty by pointing to threats to national security and public demands for increased security.

Ultimately, the aim of the regime is to retain power at all cost. To such a regime the mobilization of fear becomes fundamental to the states security provision.

To this end, it fans the fears of the public and uses their demands for security and safety as justification for the repressive measures it employs. Public fear is weaponized by the government to normalize and create social acceptance of violence and cruelty against those it characterizes as deviants. The public supports the use of tools of repression without realizing that the reduction and prevention of crime requires creating a less violent and less cruel society in which humanity is prized, to which the PTA and death penalty are impediments.

An unchecked national security regime that functions on creating fear amongst the public to obtain support for restricting fundamental rights, can have grave social consequences. For example, in Colombia in early 2000s President Uribe introduced the concept of Democratic Security which expected the participation of all citizens as agents of the state whereby security became a collective effort and all citizens were expected to function as informants of the security sector, which increases mistrust among communities and lowers the possibility of solidarity and political organisation.

A national security system needs to be adequately constrained by the constitutional state from above and should be accountable to the institutions of mass representation from below (parliament, political parties, and civil society generally). If it is not, there emerges a condition where two systems come into existence the normative state which is endowed with elaborate powers for safeguarding the legal order as expressed in statutes, and the prerogative or administrative state which exercises unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees. There is therefore the danger that despite the normative value, and safeguards of certain legal mechanisms in terms of checks and balances, the entire legal system can become or de facto function as an instrument at the disposal of the political authorities.

This danger is real.

See more here:

Creating National (In)security: Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Death Penalty - Groundviews

Jack Poulson has developed an encyclopedic knowledge of how tech companies are evolving into military contractors. Tracking such intricate connections has become a full-timethough unpaidjob for the former Google research scientist as head of Tech Inquiry, a small nonprofit tackling the giant task of exposing ties between Silicon Valley and the U.S. military.

Google, and tech companies in general, transitioning into weapons development is something that should be paid close attention to, says Poulson. And certainly employees of the company should have a voice in whether that work is performed.

By delving through government contracting information and lobbying disclosures, and filing FOIA requests, Tech Inquiry has produced a set of custom databases for activists, journalists, and other researchers to probe tech-government connections. Its research covers the U.S. government as well as close intelligence allies, such as the U.K. and Canada. The group has also put out three dense reports that have been the foundation for many news articles. And its collaborating with advocacy groups to research the complex dealings and structures of tech firms.

Tech Inquirys latest report reveals (among many other things) Microsofts substantial role in a military drone AI program called Project Maven. If that name sounds familiar, its because the same program caused a huge rift at Google in 2018 when thousands of employees objected to the Dont be evil company contributing AI tech to a killer drone program. Google ultimately left Maven, but its peers in tech continued on, with little public notice.

It was another Google controversy that gave Poulson international status. In 2018, when he was an AI researcher at the company, he encountered source code for Project Dragonfly, a version of Googles namesake search engine being developed for mainland China. It contained a blacklist of forbidden queries, including the term human rights. Googles facilitation of Chinese government censorship was well known within the company, but Poulson made news by taking a stand against it in a public resignation.

Poulsons resignation letter quickly made him a spokesperson for tech worker opposition, with appeal to both the left and the right. It was a reasonably bipartisan issueactually, if anything, Republicans cared more about it than Democrats, he says. I wasnt criticizing the United States. From my perspective, I was criticizing Google. But Im sure from a lot of peoples perspectives, they were onboard because it included a critique of China.

Poulsons advocacy extended beyond censorship to also opposing Googles work on military contracts, such as Maven. And he found himself invited to confidential meetings between tech CEOs and senior officials from the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, who looked to him as the voice of techies opposed to working on weapons systems. Im not quite so sure I had any significant impact on what their opinions were, he says. But I certainly learned a lot about what sorts of relationships existed and who attended those sorts of meetings.

Exposing those relationships became the goal of Tech Inquiry, which Poulson formed in summer 2019 along with four other tech experts. They include fellow Google dissidents Irene Knapp and Laura Nolan, anti-surveillance advocate Liz OSullivan, and tech consultant Shauna Gordon-McKeon. Both Liz and Laura have played very significant roles in the campaign to stop killer robots, says Poulson. Knapp is also a privacy advocate. And Gordon-McKeon develops open-source software to help groups govern themselves online.

Unsurprisingly given its founders backgrounds, the organization employs a fair amount of technology. Working at Google, Poulson specialized in natural language processing and recommendation systems. While we mostly encounter recommendation engines in features, such as Netflix suggestions and TikTok feeds, the tech goes much further. Tech Inquiry sets it loose on data, such as federal procurement records, to understand connections between companies and the government. It also analyzes language on company websites to find similarities between them.

The result is a recommendation system that guides research by Tech Inquiry or anyone who uses its tools. Maybe they know about [data analysis firm] Palantir, but they dont know about, say, a Black Cape or a Fivecast or one of those companies, says Poulson. Having a recommendation system helps fill in some of those similarities.

But theres still plenty of manual labor. Tech Inquirys previous report, Death and Taxes, documented how technology and defense companies benefited from the Trump corporate tax cuts and how much they have been able to avoid in federal taxes. The report, which covered 57publicly traded companies, required reading through and collating over 1,000 financial filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tech Inquirys latest report, Easy as PAI, reveals complex defense and law-enforcement programs that use publicly available information (PAI), such as social media postings, satellite imagery, and location data. Some of these deals are revealed for the first time. Others, such as Project Maven, are fleshed out in greater detail.

One trend is how consumer technologies have migrated into military applications. For example, a company called SmileML made an iOS game in which people win points by mimicking the look of emojis. That produced data to train an AI in recognizing facial expressionstech that smileML supplies to companies to assess the performance of their salespeople. SmileML also sold the tech for $235,000 to the Special Operations Command, which oversees special ops by four branches of the U.S. military, for projects involving intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, per government documents.

Another case is X-Mode Social, which harvested location data from consumer mobile apps, such as a prayer app called Muslim Pro. The company later won a $200,000 contract to provide location data to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the military intel wing of the Pentagon. (According to a report in Motherboard, its unclear what the military did with this data.)

Neither of these deals was publicized, nor was there a direct link between the Pentagon and the companies. Instead, SmileML was a subcontractor to a British defense firm called BAE Systems. And X-Mode Social, which later changed its name to Outlogic, contracted through a company called Systems & Technology Research.

I must confess that my eyes glazed over at times as I struggled through the obtuse structures and relationships detailed in Poulsons report. The tech-military connections are dense, often involving little-known companies or subsidiaries, running through obscure middlemen, and linking to unfamiliar government agencies in order to fulfill vaguely described, acronym-laden objectives.

But Poulson enjoys the challenge of decrypting these corporate dealings. If youre interested in a company, of course youre interested in who owns them and whats under them, he says. Because if you dont know those things, then youre not actually knowing what that company is doing.

Unraveling the Project Maven ball of yarn was one of the biggest components of Tech Inquirys new report. The issue gained prominence because of the Google connection, coming at a time when employee activism, on a number of issues at the company, was spiking. And when Google pulled out of Maven in 2019, the program faded from public view. But it continued under the radar, involving dozens of tech companies. Press attention given to different companies is kind of wildly off the mark as to what their roles have been in military contracting, says Poulson.

As usual, these ties were filtered through contractors: Booz Allen Hamilton (Edward Snowdens former employer) and a tech provider called ECS Federal. The latter managed three contracts that involved 33 tech companies. Microsoft tops the list, receiving $31.6 million last year to supply AI for analyzing video and motion. Other name brands on the list include Amazon Web Services, IBM, and Peter Thiels Palantir. But the second-biggest contractor (receiving $25.2 million) was Clarifai, a boutique AI company thats providing facial recognition tech to the Pentagon. (Unlike some companies, Clarifai has been very up front about its work with the military.)

The press has been key to Poulsons personal rise as a tech critic, as well as publicizing Tech Inquirys research. The New York Times, for instance, has covered Poulsons Google advocacy, run an opinion piece he wrote, and quoted him in several articles, such as one about Intel and Nvidias ties to Chinese government oppression.

But the Times now finds itself under Tech Inquirys microscope. Easy as PAI points out the papers collaboration with the nonprofit think tank Center for Advanced Defense Studies on an article about North Korean oil deliveries. That organization uses technology from controversial firm Palantir and has also contracted with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency to provide what the records call bulk datasets. The think tank has also collaborated with Buzzfeed News, including on a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of detention centers in Chinas Xinjiang region.

Tech Inquiry also publicizes the links between military contractors and media organizations ProPublica, MIT Technology Review, and The Washington Post. The three are partners in an association called The Center for New Data. The Center also includes two location-tracking data brokers: Outlogic, which harvested data from the Muslim prayer app; and Veraset, a company with ties to Saudi intelligence.

In some cases, news outlets that expose the activities of data harvesting technologies are utilizing the same or similar technologies. Why is it that journalists are off limits for pointing out their usage of surveillance technology? says Poulson.

Critical as he may be, Poulson recognizes the media as a key constituency for Tech Inquirys research tool. I definitely know there are journalists that use it, he says.

The group also aims to serve advocacy organizations. Recently, it helped the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE) with a project called Big Tech Sells War. Opposed to the military and surveillance projects of the 20-year War on Terror, ACRE built a website to document the tech industrys role in that war. It draws heavily on data collected by Tech Inquiry.

Poulsons group is currently working on a project to map the global footprint of cloud-computing companies. Thats a paid gig for worker union UNI Global, funded by the German governments Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and it will bring some much-needed income. Tech Inquiry is very picky about where it gets funding, and doesnt solicit or accept money from corporations or from foundations linked to tech billionaires, such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative or the Gates Foundation. Its most common funding is from individuals sending in $50 per month.

As a result, the organization has been an all-volunteer effort till now. Poulson says that it now has enough money to fund a part-time position, likely his. Thats exciting to not just be burning cash, he says, with a laugh. Not that hes likely to limit his hours to those hes paid for. [This is] the only thing Ive done for the past year, he says.

And he intends to do a lot more. Tech Inquiry started out providing insight into companies dealings with national governments. Now its digging into state governments, with information on Florida and New York State procurement and California lobbying filings, for instance. Each state has its own system for making information available, which requires a lot of tweaking to automate data collection.

The group is also going international. It already has data on the so-called Five Eyes intel alliance of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Now its setting sights on the European Union and China. Its developing a machine-translation system to render these countries complex documents into English, which likely requires training their own AI models to handle the task.

As Tech Inquiry has evolved, its had to evaluate the identity it projects. On a personal level, its members favor restrictions on military technologies and on the role of Silicon Valley in developing them. But it wants to be seen as an objective source of data, available to anyone.

We started out [with] advocacy. And so I dont think you can ever really fully shake that as an organization, says Poulson. But hes trying to strike a neutral tone in his reporting, letting the information speak for itself without commentary. I find more and more that if you find something thats actually interesting, you dont have to really infer anything from it, he says. You can just state the facts, and thats enough.

Continue reading here:

How Jack Poulson and Tech Inquiry reveal tech-military ties - Fast Company

Rahima Mahmut, a singer who has been living in London for 21 years, is calling on Tower Hamlets Council to change the names of three locations around a large building that was recently acquired by the Chinese Embassy.

Its like theyre building their own palace there, Rahima fumes. Its like a fortress facing the Tower Bridge.

We are asking Tower Hamlets Council to dedicate three names to three different communities that are being affected by Chinese government oppression - Tibet Hill, Uyghur Court and Hong Kong Square, she says. It would be symbolic.

Rahima is an ethnic Uyghur. Uyghurs hail from the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Several decades of Han Chinese migration from different parts of China has resulted in the Uyghurs becoming a minority in their homeland, which they prefer to call East Turkestan.

In the last few years particularly, Xinjiang has seen much media attention, amid allegations that China is holding as many as 3 million Uyghurs in concentration camps there.

READ MORE: China slaps sanctions on UK MPs in retaliation for Xinjiang human rights' claims

Rahima was born there, in the city of Gulja, and fled to London in the year 2000 when she noticed that things were getting from bad to worse.

I left after the Gulja Massacre, which happened on 5th February 1997. A peaceful protest was crushed and over 100 were killed on the day, followed by mass arrests. Amnesty International later reported that over 200 men who organised and participated in this peaceful protest were executed, Rahima tells MyLondon.

Up to 4,000 young men were arrested and given long-term prison sentences, including some of my relatives. Some died under torture.

According to Rahima, the crackdown on the Uyghur people and their cultural identity started at the end of 1996, when Chinese police went around arresting religious Uyghur Muslims. Uyghurs went on to march, demanding cultural and religious freedoms, but their peaceful protests were met by even more state violence.

"Everyone was thinking about how they could leave. There was no hope. It took me three years to get my passport and get a visa to come to the UK as a student. Two years later, my son and his father joined me. I never went back, Rahima says.

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Since coming to London, Rahima has been a voice for the Uyghurs she left behind. Even before their suffering came to light in recent news stories and television documentaries, she was working almost entirely on her own to raise awareness. One of the ways she did this was through her singing.

Ive tried to use every opportunity and every platform, she says. After coming to London, I found some musicians and we started the London Uyghur Ensemble, which included two other Uyghur musicians from Kyrgyzstan. We used music to raise awareness of the Uyghur people, their poetry, art and culture. Recently weve been doing more Silk Road music. We changed the bands name to London Silk Road Collective.

When people asked me where I came from, I didnt just tell them I came from China. We have a very distinct identity. We talk about types of cultural Uyghur music that are now under threat, like Meshrep, she adds. I try to reach out through my music, or through activism and protests. I give talks and speak at events to highlight what is happening, and to ask people and governments to help my people.

Rahima, who is also the UK director of the World Uyghur Congress and Executive Director of Stop Uyghur Genocide, which she established about a year ago, says that she believes there are about 500 Uyghurs currently living in the UK, most of whom live in London. Yet when it comes to organising protests against the Chinese government, very few of them actually turn up.

They are scared that they will get reported on and get into trouble when they go back (to Xinjiang). Some Uyghurs who went back in 2016 and 2017 were harassed and offered all kinds of incentives to report on Uyghurs here, she explains.

Some Uyghurs living here are even afraid to renew their Chinese passports because they know that if they reveal their names it will cause problems for their family back home, she continues, confessing that she herself has not heard of her nine siblings and friends in Xinjiang since 2017.

But in recent years Rahima has found more support for her cause. She personally helped work on an award-winning 2019 ITV documentary called Undercover: Inside China's Digital Gulag, and has also lobbied for three parliamentary actions to punish the Chinese regime for their alleged crimes.

One was for a genocide amendment on the trade deal (with China) which was tabled by Lord Alton of Liverpool, Rahima says. We campaigned very hard. Although the amendment didnt pass in the end, through this campaign we were able to educate almost every single MP about what was happening.

The second thing was a motion to vote whether Chinas government is committing genocide and that was unanimously passed. The latest one is the Olympic diplomatic boycott, which was also unanimously passed. So we hope now that government officials wont attend the Winter Olympics, which will be hosted by the Chinese regime next year, she goes on.

Nowadays Rahima is championing an independent peoples tribunal being led by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who previously prosecuted the late Yugoslav president Slobodan Miloevi for war crimes and genocide. The aim of the tribunal is to gather legal evidence against the Chinese authorities and prove that the genocide of the Uyghur people is indeed taking place in Xinjiang, after which the plan is to lobby the UK government into recognising the genocide officially.

The first hearing was in June. It was four days of intense accounts of people who lost their children and family members. Just recently we had a second hearing with more expert voices and internment camp survivors. The decision will be made on 9th December, Rahima says.

Rahima claims that even some witnesses who participated in the tribunal received phone calls threatening them not to give evidence. One Uyghur witness who testified said his family members were taken away just one day before he gave evidence. After the first hearing was completed, the Chinese government forced the family members of some of the witnesses to publicly condemn them on video, and brand them liars, she adds.

Asked what she plans to do next, Rahima says she has just released a new song called My dear son, when will you return, which features some 40 artists from all over the world. She also says she is on tour in Denmark, where shes singing classical Uyghur songs and talking to people there about what is happening in Xinjiang, or as she prefers to call it, East Turkestan.

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Why this Uyghur activist is campaigning to change street names in Tower Hamlets - My London

Monday, 11 October 2021, 12:05 pmArticle: Fightback

By BRONWEN BEECHEY

The conceptof intersectionality originates from a 1989 article byKimberl Crenshaw, a law studies professor and one of thefounders of Critical Race Theory. While Critical Race Theory(CRT) has become one of the latest spectres haunting theright-wing in the US, it originated in the 1980s and 90samong a group of legal scholars, including Crenshaw, whotook issue with the liberal consensus that discriminationand racism in the law were irrational and that once theirrational distortions of bias were removed, the underlyinglegal and socioeconomic order would revert to a neutral,benign state of impersonally apportioned justice.Crenshaw and other CRT founders argued that racism was notan aberration that could be legislated out of existence,highlighting the continuing economic inequality betweenwhites and minorities, and the lack of minorityrepresentation in supposedly colour-blind institutionssuch as universities. Instead, Crenshaw wrote,discrimination continued due to the stubborn endurance ofthe structures of white dominance in other words, theAmerican legal and political system was inherentlyracist.

The concept of intersectionality came from theideas debated in CRT. Crenshaws 1989 article,Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A BlackFeminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, FeministTheory and Antiracist Politics, published in theUniversity of Chicago Legal Forum, centred on threelegal cases that dealt with issues of both racial and sexdiscrimination. Each case, Crenshaw argued, demonstrated thelimitations of a single-issue analysis of how the lawconsiders racism and sexism.

For example,DeGraffenreid v General Motors was a 1976 case wherefive black women sued General Motors over its senioritypolicy. General Motors never hired black women until 1964,and so when seniority-based layoffs occurred after arecession in the early 1970s, all of the black women werelaid off. The women argued that General Motors senioritypolicy was discriminatory on both racial and gender grounds.However, the court refused to consider the two categoriestogether, stating in the words of the judge that blackwomen could not be considered as a separate, protectedclass, as to do so would open up a Pandoras box ofminorities who would demand protection by thelaw.

Crenshaw argued that the 1976 case and othersignored the specific challenges facing black women as agroup. She wrote:

The point is thatBlack women can experience discrimination in any number ofways and that the contradiction arises from our assumptionsthat their claims of exclusion must be unidirectional.Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, comingand going in all four directions. Discrimination, liketraffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction,and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in anintersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from anynumber of directions and, sometimes, from all of them.Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in theintersection, her injury could result from sexdiscrimination or racediscrimination.

In a 2017 interview,Crenshaw said that Intersectionality is a lens throughwhich you can see where power comes and collides, where itinterlocks and intersects. Its not simply that theresa race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class orLBGTQ problem there. Many times, that framework erases whathappens to people who are subject to all of thesethings.

Intersectionality is also linked with thedevelopment of identity politics, a concept that was firstarticulated in a public statement by a black feminist socialwork, the Combahee River Collective. The statementhighlighted the need to develop a politics that wasanti-racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist,unlike those of black men. Itconcluded:

Our politics evolve from ahealthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our communitywhich allows us to continue our struggle and work. Thisfocusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the conceptof identity politics. We believe that the most profound andpotentially most radical politics come directly out of ourown identity, as opposed to working to end somebody elsesoppression.

Identity politics wascriticised by many on the left, on the basis that itencouraged an inward-looking focus that elevated differencesbetween activists and emphasised the importance of livedexperience over the development of solidarity betweendifferent groups. It was also criticised for creatinghierarchies of oppression where the more types ofoppression an individual suffered from, the higher theirstatus. Others pointed out that identity politics wasco-opted by the mainstream political parties, allowing themto present progressive legislation on womens rights andLGBT+ issues while continuing their austerity policiestoward workers and the poor. Intersectionality can be seen,at least in part, as a response to the limitations ofidentity politics, although the terms are sometimes usedinterchangeably.

The concept of intersectionality wasquickly picked up by other academics, who applied it toqueer theory, feminist legal theory and numerous studies onrace, gender and sexuality. Over time, it began to appearoutside academia. In 2015, intersectionality was addedto the Oxford English Dictionary, and shortly after the termbecame widely, though not always accurately, used inmainstream media. It quickly became associated with NorthAmerican feminist campaigns such as Me Too and the 2017Womens March on Washington. As a result,intersectionality was added to the vocabulary ofright-wingers as a term of abuse, along with politicalcorrectness, cancel culture and privilegechecking. It was variously described as a new castesystem, a conspiracy theory of victimisation, andrepresenting a form of feminism that puts a label on you.It tells you how oppressed you are. It tells you whatyoure allowed to say, what youre allowed tothink.

Interestingly, a number of conservativecommentators have acknowledged that intersectionality as anidea or legal concept is valid. Right-wing commentator BenShapiro, who has described intersectionality as reallydangerous, told Vox that the originalarticulation of the idea by Crenshaw is accurate and not aproblem The issue for conservatives is the application ofintersectionality beyond the academic sphere, where it isperceived as an attempt to invert an existing hierarchy ofoppression so that white, straight, cisgender men are on thebottom. In response, Crenshaw points out that her aim is notto replicate existing power dynamics but to remove thosepower dynamics altogether. She adds that There havealways been people, from the very beginning of the civilrights movement, who had denounced the creation of equalityrights on the grounds that it takes something away fromthem.

Less predictably, intersectionality has alsobeen criticised by left-wing and Marxist commentators. Thesecritiques are focused on the role of class, which isrecognised in intersectional theory as a form of oppression,but not given any more importance than other forms such asrace, gender or sexuality; whereas Marxism traditionallyviews class as the primary form of oppression. Some of thesearguments have been crudely reductionist, arguing that anydiscussion of race, gender and sexuality is a diversion fromthe class struggle. These arguments seem to assume that theworking class is composed primarily of white men, asituation that has not existed for at least the past 30years, if ever.

Other Marxist scholars, such asBarbara Foley, Eve Mitchell and Asad Haider, recognise theimportance of anti-racist, feminist and queer issues, butargue that these identities are largely a product ofcapitalist social relations. According toFoley:

...the ways in which raceand genderas modes of oppressionhave historically beenshaped by the division of labor can and should be understoodwithin the explanatory framework supplied by class analysis,which foregrounds the issue of exploitation, that is, of theprofits gained from the extraction of what Marx calledsurplus value from the labor of those who produce thethings that society needs.

EveMitchell describes intersectional theory as in part, aresponse to the marginalisation of women of colour in the1960s and 1970s feminist, Black Power, and other anti-racistorganisations. She states:

It isimportant to note that identity politics andintersectionality theorists are not wrong, but they areincomplete. Patriarchal and racialized social relations arematerial, concrete and real. So are the contradictionsbetween the particular and universal, and the appearance andessence. The solution must build upon these contradictionsand push on them...Embracing womanhood, organizing on thebasis of blackness, and building a specifically queerpolitics is an essential aspect of our liberation. It is thematerial starting point ofstruggle.

However, both Mitchell andHaider argue, the essential next step is to move beyondorganising around identity and towards an understanding thatsolidarity between all those oppressed by capitalism is theonly way to defeat it.

Other Marxist commentatorsargue that there is no incompatibility betweenintersectionality and Marxism. Sofa Saio Gradin, a queernon-binary Marxist, writes:

Radicalqueerness and anti-racism are not forms of identitypolitics; and class struggle is not free from questions ofidentity. All forms of social life are already coded byclass, race, gender and disability, so there are no forms ofpolitics or struggle that exist outside these structures ofsocial power. The claim that intersectional critiquesdistract from the real struggle or are divisive isbased on a fundamental misunderstanding of bothintersectionality and socialism: the question is not whetherthe two can be integrated, buthow.

In her 2020 book, Marxism andIntersectionality: Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality underContemporary Capitalism, Ashley Bohrer also argues thata thorough analysis of capitalism requires insights andtools from both Marxist and intersectional traditions.She adds, in a recent interview:

Wecant understand race (in its gendered, sexualised,ability-laden senses) without understanding that the modernnotion of race was invented in a capitalist world, that weall experience race in a capitalist world. There is noseparating any of these categories from capitalism and thereis no separating capitalism from race, gender, sexuality,ability or nationality.

The role ofintersectionality in Aotearoa New Zealand is particularlyrelevant in a nation that Marxists describe as acolonial-settler state. Like Australia, Canada and theUnited States, Aotearoa New Zealand was settled by Europeansas part of an imperialist project, where the colonisingnation (England) displaced and often physically extinguishedthe indigenous population with the aim of seizing itsresources. Later waves of migration brought othernationalities in, particularly Pacific Islanders who wereused as a cheap labour force following the post-Second WorldWar boom. As a result, a large percentage of the workingclass in New Zealand (if not the majority) are Mori,Pasefika or other ethnicities such as Chinese or Indian.This has given class struggle an intersectional dimension.To give one example, the support of unions for theoccupation of Takaparawhau/Bastion Point in the 1970s wasinstrumental in ensuring that, even after the occupation wasviolently ended by police and army, construction was notable to proceed.

The effects of the current COVID-19pandemic in Aotearoa NZ also can be seen through anintersectional lens. The most affected community in the waveof the delta strain has been the Pasefika community. This isdue to several factors. Firstly, many of the essentialworkers who have been working through the lockdowns medical staff, retail workers, supply chain and transportworkers are Pasefika or Mori and therefore at greaterrisk. These workers are low paid and generally live insubstandard, overcrowded housing. It is also customary inPasefika and Mori cultures for elderly family members tobe cared for at home by relatives, meaning that COVID-19(particularly the Delta variant) spreads rapidly and affectsboth the old and the very young.

The importance of thechurch to the majority of Pasefika families has resulted insuper-spreader events at large church services, and somechurches have shared anti-vax conspiracy theories amongtheir followers. Historical memories of the Dawn Raids andracism has created an understandable distrust of government;and there are many in the community who have overstayed workvisas and are reluctant to go to vaccination or testingcentres (although there is no restriction on eligibility dueto immigration status).

Added to this is the chronicunderfunding of health services, particularly in SouthAuckland where the majority of Pacific peopleslive.

The low vaccination rate among Mori can alsobe explained by the legacy of colonialism, where Mori weredispossessed of their land and food sources, had theirlanguage and culture suppressed and lost thousands todiseases introduced by the settlers. Mori in rural areashave limited access to health services and transport.Disinformation about vaccines has also had an impact,feeding into general distrust of government and healthpolicies that have disadvantaged and discriminated againstMori in the past.

Taking an intersectional approachmeans supporting efforts by Mori and Pasefika communitiesto organise vaccination and testing at marae, churches andother sites where community members feel comfortable, and todevelop resources in their own languages to encouragevaccination and counter disinformation. It means supportingefforts by Mori and Pasefika to counter food insecurity.It means calling on the government to increase benefits andwages and build more public housing. And it means supportingthe fight against climate change, which in many areas isalready being led by Pasefika and Mori youth.

TheCOVID-19 pandemic is showing us that capitalism is preparedto sacrifice millions of lives to keep its profits coming.The majority of those lives are those of the poor and peopleof colour. At the same time, there have been countlessexamples of solidarity in responding to the pandemic. Thissolidarity can be built upon a basis of understanding thatdifferent people experience oppression in different ways, aswell as understanding the common cause of that oppression a system that considers certain lives to be expendableso that the rich can survive.

This was written forFightback's magazine issue on class. Subscribe to themagazine here.

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Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie has told party members Scotland needs us and that he and Lorna Slater were "just getting started".

Speaking at his party's conference at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh, Mr Harvie said his partys past frustrations at a lack of progress over climate change, the economy and a failed social fabric could be turned into action as a result of the co-operation agreement with the SNP.

Mr Harvie and fellow co-leader Lorna Slater were given ministerial office as part of the power-sharing agreement signed in August.

The eventmarks the first time a Green party conference has taken place from a position of government in UK history.

READ MORE:Lorna Slater Scotland needs independence to tackle climate emergency

On the streets and the doorsteps, our work creates an urgent call for change, just as weve always done for nearly 50 years of our movements history, 30 for our own partys history, he said.

In Parliament, were bringing constructive challenge into politics and bringing a voice to the communities we represent, just as weve done since 1999.

And now, in Government, were turning rhetoric into action.

Now, more than ever, thanks to the hard work of our members and campaigners, the Scottish Greens are working for Scotland.

And now, more than ever, Scotland needs us.

The two co-leaders are now Scottish Government ministers

Mr Harvie said Green MSPs are putting inequality at the heart of the recovery strategy.

Ms Slater stressed the importance of the partys policy decisions, saying: As we meet this weekend we can do so with more than just hope we can do it with the knowledge that the policies we discuss can change the lives of people across our country.

The agreement that we negotiated will deliver real and positive change for our climate and our communities.

Ms Slater also attacked the UK Government and Prime Minister in her speech, claiming their actions are pushing people towards supporting Scottish independence.

She said: Very soon, the eyes of the world will be on Scotland for Cop26.

What will they see? The Prime Minister has said he does not want the Scottish Government to be involved in case they see it as an advert for independence.

Every day that Boris Johnson and his colleagues stand in Downing Street is an advert for Scottish independence.

Scotland can do so much better than this, Ms Slater continued.

The conference is at Dynamic Earth

With the full powers of independence, we can take a different path, we can build a better society.

We can build our circular economy and invest in people, we can be a European leader in renewable energy.

We can build a Scotland that works with our friends and neighbours, a Scotland that stands in solidarity with people living under oppression, and a Scotland that welcomes refugees and extends the hand of friendship around the world.

It wont always be easy, there will be difficult moments, but there always is when history is being made.

READ MORE:Thousands of activists to take to Glasgow streets during summit

Mr Harvie took his own swipe at the UK Government, branding them extremists.

He said the UK Government is desperate to look inwards, savagely cutting international development funding, ignoring climate science and undermining Scotlands Parliament.

Conference, we look at these horrors and we know we must defend our homes from these extremists, he said.

Thats true whether our home means our planet, our country or the roof over our heads.

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Patrick Harvie says "Scotland needs us" as Green Party holds first conference as part of Government - HeraldScotland

Cape Town - Despite a ruling by acting Western Cape High Court Judge James Lekhuleni slating the province for its 5-year unlawful and unconstitutional intervention in Kannaland, local government MEC Anton Bredell is unmoved.

The provincial executive council, the Finance MEC, Bredell and the financial administrator appointed by the Western Cape government for Kannaland had applied to have the municipal bank accounts frozen.

This was part of an ongoing intervention in the municipalitys affairs since 2016.

Judge Lekhuleni said in his ruling that he found the long intervention very concerning and tantamount to permanent intervention, which infringes the functional and operational integrity of the three arms of government.

It started in 2016 and continues to date. The court was informed that the purported plan is proposed to last until the local government elections. The contract of the administrator was also extended until the election.

In my view an intervention of this nature, that is aimed at lasting five years from one election to the other, is not a temporary measure envisioned by the constitution, said Lekhuleni.

Bredell said that while he noted the judgment, he remained concerned at the ongoing situation in Kannaland, a municipality with severe financial challenges, and stood by his actions.

Bredell said: Without the provincial governments actions and the financial and technical support provided since 2016, service delivery would have failed.

We are reviewing the judgment and considering our options moving forward, said Bredell.

The 7-seat council has been controlled by a succession of coalitions since the last local government election. The DA and ANC have two seats each and the balance of power with three seats, rests with the Independent Civic Organisation of South Africa (Icosa).

The leader of the opposition in the legislature, Cameron Dugmore (ANC), saw the judgment as a victory for the Klein Karoo town municipality of Kannaland and its people against DA political oppression, financial exploitation, unlawfulness and hypocrisy.

Icosa leader and Kannaland councillor Jeffrey Donson said: The ruling brought to an end a sad chapter of irregular intervention for political gain.

Kannaland Municipality speaker Werner Meshoa (Icosa) said: The DAs insatiable appetite for power at all and at any cost is appalling. They were in bed with the ANC in Kannaland against Icosa and in bed with Icosa in Oudtshoorn against the ANC.

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Bredell 'notes' Kannaland judgment but stands by his actions - IOL