All posts tagged: activists

Faith leaders, activists, the pope urge Biden to empty federal death row before Trump term

Faith leaders, activists, the pope urge Biden to empty federal death row before Trump term

Published by skeptic

(RNS) — A group of faith leaders, activists, law enforcement officials and families of murder victims has called on President Joe Biden to spare the lives of about 40 inmates currently on death row in federal prisons. The campaign is prompted by concerns the Department of Justice will lift a moratorium imposed by the Biden administration in 2021 and begin to execute prisoners after President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Thirteen federal prisoners were executed during the first Trump administration — more than four times as many as under all the presidents combined since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988. Among those asking Biden to commute the sentences of death row inmates is the Rev. Sharon Risher, whose mother, Ethel Lance, was one of nine church members killed in the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Risher cited Trump’s promise to restart executions in urging Biden to act. “It is vital that you deny him that opportunity by commuting every death sentence remaining on federal and military …

King Charles faces indigenous activists for second day after senator explains outburst – Royal family news

King Charles faces indigenous activists for second day after senator explains outburst – Royal family news

Published by skeptic

King Charles heckled by Australian senator: ‘Give us our land back’ Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email The King faced indigenous activists questioning the supremacy of the British monarchy for a second day as he tours Australia. When Charles met First Nations elders during a visit to the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence (NCIE) in Sydney, Elder Allan Murray from the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council told him their goal was “sovereignty”. The visit came after the King was accused on Monday of “genocide” against Australia’s First Nations by senator Lidia Thorpe who told him “You are not my King”. The Indigenous senator has spoken out to explain why she confronted him after his parliamentary adress. Senator Lidia Thorpe shouted at the monarch “you are not my king” and demanded a treaty between Australia‘s First Nations and its government on Monday. Ms Thorpe, an Indigenous woman from Victoria, has long advocated for a treaty between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians to …

Activists Denounce Paris Museum After Tibetan Exhibits Renamed

Activists Denounce Paris Museum After Tibetan Exhibits Renamed

Published by skeptic

On Saturday, Tibetan activists convened outside the Musée Guimet in Paris to protest the museum’s decision to replace exhibition materials that identify certain artifacts as Tibetan by replacing it with the Chinese name for the region. Activists claim the change to the language is problematic for deferring to a Chinese political narrative that’s historically aimed to erase Tibetan cultural identity from public spaces. The mass protest, which some sources estimate attracted 800 demonstrators, followed a report in the French newspaper Le Monde alleging that Musée Guimet and the Musée du quai Branly, two prominent Parisian museums that house collections of Asian art, altered their exhibition materials cataloging Tibetan artifacts as deriving instead from then Chinese term “Xizang Autonomous Region.” According to the same report, the Musée Guimet renamed its Tibetan art galleries as deriving from the “Himalayan world.” Related Articles A handful of Tibetan cultural advocacy groups based in France penned letters to both museums, requesting formal meetings to discuss the reasons behind and implications of the terminology changes, a request that activists say was …

Climate activists in frame for £1m costs of protest bans run up by UK’s biggest law firm | Environmental activism

Climate activists in frame for £1m costs of protest bans run up by UK’s biggest law firm | Environmental activism

Published by skeptic

Britain’s biggest law firm has sought more than £1m from climate protesters to cover the cost of court orders banning them from protesting, an investigation has found. The multibillion-pound City law firm DLA Piper has been trying to recover costs from activists for work done on behalf of National Highways Limited (NHL) and HS2 Ltd – both public bodies – obtaining injunctions banning protests on their sites. Courts have so far ordered activists to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to NHL and HS2 to reimburse them for DLA Piper’s costs. Reporters from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) scoured court records to collate the sums claimed by DLA Piper to cover costs incurred by the law firm for its clients, which included fees of £350 an hour for providing legal advice, £75,000 for a single hearing and £2,500 for drawing up a document listing its fees. Barristers said costs incurred by City law firms such as DLA Piper far exceeded those incurred by in-house solicitors at public bodies or local authorities, ratcheting up the …

George Monbiot on the record jail terms given to Just Stop Oil activists – podcast | Science

George Monbiot on the record jail terms given to Just Stop Oil activists – podcast | Science

Published by skeptic

Last week, five supporters of the Just Stop Oil climate campaign who conspired to cause gridlock on London’s orbital motorway were sentenced to lengthy jail terms by a judge who told them they had ‘crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic’. Columnist and campaigner George Monbiot tells Ian Sample why the sentences are so significant, how they fit into a crackdown on protest in the UK in recent years, and what impact they could have on future climate activism in the UK How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know Source link

Climate activists bemoan scant progress on finance as Cop29 looms | Cop29

Climate activists bemoan scant progress on finance as Cop29 looms | Cop29

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Finding the finance needed to stave off the worst impacts of the climate crisis will be “a very steep mountain to climb”, the UN has conceded, as two vital international conferences failed to produce the progress needed to generate funds for poor countries. With less than five months to go before the Cop29 UN climate summit in Azerbaijan in November, there is still no agreement on how to bridge the near-trillion dollar gap between what developing countries say is needed and the roughly $100bn a year of climate finance that flows today from public sources in the rich world to stricken developing nations. Rich countries have so far given little indication that they are rising to the challenge. The G7 summit of heads of state of the world’s richest countries, in Italy last weekend, skirted the topic of climate finance with warm words on the “importance of fiscal space and mobilising resources from all sources for increased climate and development action, particularly for low-income and vulnerable countries”. Campaigners said the group’s promises to “work on …

South Korean activists respond to North’s trash balloons with K-pop

South Korean activists respond to North’s trash balloons with K-pop

Published by Sam

SEOUL — After North Korea recently sent thousands of waste-filled balloons to South Korea, activists here responded with airborne deliveries that the regime up north might find even more despicable than garbage: K-pop and K-dramas. On Thursday, activists in South Korea set aloft 10 large balloons containing thousands of USB drives loaded with local music — including K-pop and trot songs, an old-school South Korean genre experiencing a modern revival — and “Winter Sonata,” a hugely popular romance TV series. Launched after midnight from Pocheon, a city about 30 miles northeast of Seoul, the balloons also carried 200,000 leaflets criticizing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as well as 2,000 U.S. $1 bills, according to a statement from the Fighters for Free North Korea (FFNK) group, which is led by North Korean defector Park Sang-hak. In a statement, FFNK accused North Korea of “indiscriminately dropping” 15 tons of waste on the South via balloons, calling it “a display of insult and embarrassment for our 50 million citizens.” The South Korean military said that the balloons …

Citizen activists take on ‘destructive’ solar power plants in France’s Provence region

Citizen activists take on ‘destructive’ solar power plants in France’s Provence region

Published by Sam

Citizen activists in southeastern France’s Alpes-de-Hautes-Provence region have been campaigning for two years against the growing number of solar power parks in a protected natural area around the Lure mountain. The local authorities, and the parks’ investors, claim the plants are “essential” projects in the fight against climate change, and in line with the ambitions of the European Green Deal. But the activists claim these projects are “destructive” for biodiversity and the landscape.  A few hundred metres above the commune of Cruis, in the Alpes-de-Hautes-Provence region, Sylvie Bitterlin, a 62-year-old actress, stands in front of the security fence of a brand-new solar farm. “Look, they’ve destroyed everything,” she says. On the 17-hectare site, the garrigue or scrubland of Provence has been replaced by several thousand solar panels. In Cruis, the photovoltaic power plant, operated by Boralex, was scheduled to begin operating this summer. © Cyrielle Cabot, FRANCE 24 The project has been under construction for several months and is nearly finished. According to the operator, Boralex, a Canadian renewable energy company, the site will generate …

‘It’s all we have’: young climate activists on the state of politics around the world | Climate crisis

‘It’s all we have’: young climate activists on the state of politics around the world | Climate crisis

Published by skeptic

This year elections are taking place across the globe, covering almost half of the world’s population. It is also likely to be, yet again, the hottest year recorded as the climate crisis intensifies. The Guardian asked young climate activists around the world what they want from the elections and whether politics is working in the fight to halt global heating. Adélaïde Charlier, 23, Belgium Election dates: 3 June to 9 June Adélaïde Charlier. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA “We’re scared, because we have worked really hard for the past five years as a movement to [focus attention on] the climate emergency,” says Adélaïde Charlier. In the European Union elections, the parliament is anticipated to swing sharply towards rightwing parties that oppose climate action. She says the EU’s green policies, some of which have already been blocked or weakened, are a scapegoat for the wider social change she sees as necessary to beat the climate crisis, but which are opposed by conservative groups. “We are questioning the norm and so I believe that this is a reaction to our …

Hong Kong Convicts 14 Democracy Activists in Largest National Security Trial

Hong Kong Convicts 14 Democracy Activists in Largest National Security Trial

Published by Sam

Fourteen democracy activists in Hong Kong were convicted on Thursday on national security charges, adding to the ranks of dozens of others — once the vanguard of the city’s opposition — who may now become a generation of political prisoners. The authorities had accused 47 pro-democracy figures, including Benny Tai, a former law professor, and Joshua Wong, a protest leader and founder of a student group, of conspiracy to commit subversion. Thirty-one of them had earlier pleaded guilty. On Thursday, judges picked by Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed leader convicted 14 of the remaining activists and acquitted two others. The charge carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The convictions show how the authorities have used the sweeping powers of a national security law imposed by Beijing to quash dissent across broad swathes of society. Most of the defendants had already spent at least the last three years in detention before the 118-day trial ended. Some of those accused are former lawmakers who joined politics after Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule by the British in …