Pro-Palestine protester found not guilty of racial abuse over coconut poster

Pro-Palestine protester found not guilty of racial abuse over coconut poster
Marieha Hussain was photographed at a pro-Palestine protest in November. (Metropolitan Police)
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Updated 14 September 2024
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Pro-Palestine protester found not guilty of racial abuse over coconut poster

Pro-Palestine protester found not guilty of racial abuse over coconut poster
  • Hussain defended the placard as a form of “light-hearted political banter"

LONDON: A British teacher who carried a placard depicting Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts during a pro-Palestine demonstration in London was acquitted on Friday of a racially aggravated public order offense.

Marieha Hussain, 37, attended the protest in November, where her placard showed the faces of the then prime minister and home secretary superimposed onto coconuts beneath a palm tree.

Hussain, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, denied the prosecution’s claim that the placard was “racially abusive,” insisting it was meant to be satirical and humorous. On Friday, Westminster Magistrates’ Court cleared her of the charges, The Guardian newspaper reported.

Speaking outside the court, Hussain expressed frustration over the ordeal: “The damage done to my reputation and image can never be undone.” She criticized what she described as the misuse of hate speech laws, claiming they were being “weaponized to target ethnic minorities.”

Reflecting on the personal impact of the trial, she added: “This ordeal has been agonizing for my family and I. Instead of enjoying my pregnancy, I’ve been vilified by the media, lost my career, and been dragged through the court system.”

Despite the challenging experience, Hussain voiced her continued commitment to activism, particularly in support of Palestine.

“Nearly a year on from the genocide in Gaza, and despite this trial, I’m more determined than ever to continue using my voice to defend Palestine,” she said.

During the trial, Hussain defended the placard as a form of “light-hearted political banter,” explaining it was a satirical way of addressing serious issues.

Her defense lawyer, Rajiv Menon, argued that the case was a troubling attack on freedom of expression.

Menon said: “This prosecution of Ms Hussain is a disturbing attack on the right to peaceful protest, the right to criticize politicians, and the right to satirise in a British context.”

He highlighted the contrast between Hussain’s prosecution and the perceived leniency shown to figures such as Suella Braverman, Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson, who have made controversial statements without facing similar consequences.

Expert testimony was heard in court regarding the use of the term “coconut” and whether it constitutes a racial slur.

Menon contended that the placard was a satirical critique of the policies and rhetoric employed by Sunak and Braverman, particularly in relation to race and immigration.

The district judge, Vanessa Lloyd, ultimately found that the placard fell within the realm of political satire.

“I find that it was part of the genre of political satire, and, as such, the prosecution has not proved to the criminal standard that it was abusive,” she said.
 


Some Trump backers want no-term limit for him as president. He is thrilled

Some Trump backers want no-term limit for him as president. He is thrilled
Updated 59 min 56 sec ago
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Some Trump backers want no-term limit for him as president. He is thrilled

Some Trump backers want no-term limit for him as president. He is thrilled
  • “We love the idea of Trump as our Julius Caesar-type figure,” says Shane Trejo, from a group called Republicans for National Renewal
  • Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon says: “A man like Trump comes along only once or twice in a country’s history”

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump, yes.
But what about King Trump or even Donald Caesar?
The thoroughly un-American idea has been aired repeatedly in Washington since the Republican began his second term a month ago.
And it’s not just radiating from the wild fringes of Trump’s nationalist-populist Make America Great Again movement known as MAGA.
It’s coming from the 78-year-old billionaire himself.
“LONG LIVE THE KING!” Trump crowed Wednesday on his Truth Social platform to celebrate his government’s nixing of the New York City congestion pricing plan.
The White House then posted a fake magazine cover on its official X account, repeating the slogan and showing Trump wearing a golden crown.

 

Trump has a long history of suggesting he might serve more than the two terms allowed by the US Constitution.
What was often dismissed as joking during his first term looked darker after Trump refused to concede his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, then stoked his millions of followers to believe the election was rigged — culminating with the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol.
As Trump launches his second presidency with an unprecedented demonstration of executive power — using the world’s richest man Elon Musk to dismantle swaths of the government — giddy supporters want even more.
Much more.

American emperor?
“We love the idea of Trump as our Julius Caesar-type figure,” Shane Trejo, from a group called Republicans for National Renewal, told reporters at the conservative CPAC conference in Washington.
Trejo stood alongside a poster showing the elderly Trump as a rather more youthful Roman emperor with a chiseled face, laurel wreath and a toga.
Mixing his imperial metaphors, Trejo also described Trump as a “Napoleonic figure” capable of leading “our country out of perdition and into greatness.”
Republicans for National Renewal is lobbying Congress to approve a constitutional amendment to the two-terms limit.
According to the House Republican who introduced the resolution, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Trump is “the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness” and therefore should be given more time in power.
Amending the constitution would require a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate. That’s all but impossible to achieve.
But Republicans for National Renewal’s website proposes emulating a trick used by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and working around the term limits by getting a placeholder elected instead.
In the US version, Trump’s son Don Jr. “could run on a Trump/Trump ticket before gracefully resigning on Jan. 21, 2028 after securing victory,” the website says.
“This plan while unorthodox would show that MAGA cannot be stopped by any procedural rule.”
Another supporter calling to extend the Trump era is former adviser and highly influential right-wing strategist Steve Bannon.
“We want Trump in ‘28,” Bannon said at CPAC. “A man like Trump comes along only once or twice in a country’s history.”
Bannon, who emulated a viral Musk moment from January in making what looked like a Nazi salute from the stage, led the crowd in chants of, “We want Trump!“
Trump has done nothing to tamp down the talk, even if it goes against the grain of the founding US principles.
Just this Thursday, Trump asked guests at a White House event: “Should I run again?“
The response was shouts of “Four more years!“
No chance, say the constitutionalists.
But Trump clearly is thrilled by the controversy — and sure that the crown fits.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.

Screen grab of President Donald Trump's post on Truth Social


The origin of the phrase, according to some historians? Napoleon Bonaparte — the French general who crowned himself emperor in 1804.
 


Trump fires chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other military officers

Trump fires chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other military officers
Updated 40 min 36 sec ago
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Trump fires chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other military officers

Trump fires chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other military officers
  • Nominates retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine to be the next chairman

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump abruptly fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, sidelining a history-making fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign led by his defense secretary to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.
The ouster of Brown, only the second Black general to serve as chairman, is sure to send shock waves through the Pentagon. His 16 months in the job had been consumed with the war in Ukraine and the expanded conflict in the Middle East.
“I want to thank General Charles ‘CQ’ Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family,” Trump posted on social media.
Brown’s public support of Black Lives Matter after the police killing of George Floyd had made him fodder for the administration’s wars against “wokeism” in the military. His ouster is the latest upheaval at the Pentagon, which plans to cut 5,400 civilian probationary workers starting next week and identify $50 billion in programs that could be cut next year to redirect those savings to fund Trump’s priorities.
Trump said he’s nominating retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine to be the next chairman. Caine is a career F-16 pilot who served on active duty and in the National Guard, and was most recently the associate director for military affairs at the CIA, according to his military biography.

Trump credited Caine for being “instrumental in the complete annihilation of the ISIS caliphate.”

“Despite being highly qualified and respected to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the previous administration, General Caine was passed over for promotion by Sleepy Joe Biden. But not anymore!” he wrote.

Caine’s military service includes combat roles in Iraq, special operations postings and positions inside some of the Pentagon’s most classified special access programs.
However, he has not had key assignments identified in law as prerequisites for the job, including serving as either the vice chairman, as a combatant commander or a service chief. That requirement could be waived if the “president determines such action is necessary in the national interest.”

More firings
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a statement praising both Caine and Brown, announced the firings of two additional senior officers: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Jim Slife.
Franchetti becomes the second top female military officer to be fired by the Trump administration. Trump fired Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan just a day after he was sworn in.
A surface warfare officer, Franchetti has commanded at all levels, heading US 6th Fleet and US Naval Forces Korea. She was the second woman ever to be promoted to four-star admiral, and she did multiple deployments, including as commander of a naval destroyer and two stints as aircraft carrier strike group commander.
Slife led Air Force Special Operations Command prior to becoming the service’s vice chief of staff and had deployed to the Middle East and Afghanistan.

In his Truth Social post, Trump signaled that more firings in key posts are to be expected.

“I have also directed Secretary (Pete) Hegseth to solicit nominations for five additional high level positions, which will be announced soon,” he said.

Trump has asserted his executive authority in a much stronger way in his second term, removing most officials from the Biden administration even though many of those positions are meant to carry over from one administration to the next.
The chairman role was established in 1949 as an adviser to the president and secretary of defense, as a way to filter all of the views of the service chiefs and more readily provide that information to the White House without the president having to reach out to each individual military branch, according to an Atlantic Council briefing written by retired Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro. The role has no actual command authority.
Trump acted despite support for Brown among key members of Congress and a seemingly friendly meeting with him in mid-December, when the two were seated next to each other for a time at the Army-Navy football game.
Sen. Roger Wicker, GOP chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, didn’t mention Caine’s name in a statement Friday.
“I thank Chairman Brown for his decades of honorable service to our nation,” Wicker said. “I am confident Secretary Hegseth and President Trump will select a qualified and capable successor for the critical position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
Brown’s future was called into question during the confirmation hearing for Hegseth last month. Asked if he would fire Brown, Hegseth responded, “Every single senior officer will be reviewed based on meritocracy, standards, lethality and commitment to lawful orders they will be given.”
Hegseth had previously taken aim at Brown. “First of all, you gotta fire, you know, you gotta fire the chairman of Joint Chiefs,” he said flatly in a podcast in November. And in one of his books, he questioned whether Brown got the job because he was Black.
“Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt — which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” Hegseth wrote.
As he walked into the Pentagon on his first day as defense chief on Jan. 27, Hegseth was asked directly if he planned to fire Brown.
“I’m standing with him right now,” said Hegseth, patting Brown on the back. “Look forward to working with him.”
Brown, who spent Friday visiting troops at the US-Mexico border, drew attention to himself for speaking out about the death of George Floyd in 2020. While he knew it was risky, he said, discussions with his wife and sons about the killing convinced him he needed to say something.
As protests roiled the nation, Brown posted a video message to the Air Force titled, “Here’s What I’m Thinking About.” He described the pressures that came with being one of the few Black men in his unit. He recalled pushing himself “to perform error-free” as a pilot and officer his whole life, but still facing bias. He said he’d been questioned about his credentials, even when he wore the same flight suit and wings as every other pilot.
Brown’s path to the chairmanship was troubled — he was among the more than 260 senior military officers whose nominations were stalled for months by Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. But when the Senate vote was finally taken in September 2023, Brown easily was confirmed by a vote of 89-8.
It had been 30 years since Colin Powell became the first Black chairman, serving from 1989 to 1993. But while African Americans made up 17.2 percent of the 1.3 million active-duty service members, only 9 percent of officers were Black, according to a 2021 Defense Department report.
Brown’s service as chairman made history in that this was the first time that both the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, and the Joint Chiefs chairman were Black.


An encroaching desert threatens to swallow Mauritania’s homes and history

A hut is surrounded by sand in Chinguetti, Mauritania on Feb. 4, 2025. (AP)
A hut is surrounded by sand in Chinguetti, Mauritania on Feb. 4, 2025. (AP)
Updated 22 February 2025
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An encroaching desert threatens to swallow Mauritania’s homes and history

A hut is surrounded by sand in Chinguetti, Mauritania on Feb. 4, 2025. (AP)
  • Chinguetti is one of four UNESCO World Heritage sites in Mauritania, a West African nation where only 0.5 percent of land is considered farmable

CHINGUETTI, Mauritania: For centuries, poets, scholars and theologians have flocked to Chinguetti, a trans-Saharan trading post home to more than a dozen libraries containing thousands of manuscripts.
But it now stands on the brink of oblivion. Shifting sands have long covered the ancient city’s 8th-century core and are encroaching on neighborhoods at its current edge. Residents say the desert is their destiny.
As the world’s climate gets hotter and drier, sandstorms are more frequently depositing inches and feet of dunes onto Chinguetti’s streets and in people’s homes, submerging some entirely. Tree-planting projects are trying to keep the invading sands at bay, but so far, they haven’t eased the deep-rooted worries about the future.

Tree branches stick out of the sand in Chinguetti, Mauritania on Jan. 13, 2025. (AP)

Chinguetti is one of four UNESCO World Heritage sites in Mauritania, a West African nation where only 0.5 percent of land is considered farmable. In Africa — the continent that contributes the least to fossil fuel emissions — only Somalia and Eswatini have experienced more climate change impacts, according to World Bank data.
Mauritanians believe Chinguetti is among Islam’s holiest cities. Its dry stone and mud mortar homes, mosques and libraries store some of West Africa’s oldest quranic texts and manuscripts, covering topics ranging from law to mathematics.
Community leader Melainine Med El Wely feels agonized over the stakes for residents and the history contained within Chinguetti’s walls. It’s like watching a natural disaster in slow motion, he said.

Retired teacher Mohamed Lemine Bahane poses for a photo on Jan. 13 2025, in Chinguetti, Mauritania. (AP)

“It’s a city surrounded by an ocean of sand that’s advancing every minute,” El Wely, the president of the local Association for Participatory Oasis Management, said. “There are places that I walk now that I remember being the roofs of houses when I was a kid.”
He remembers that once when enough sand blew into his neighborhood to cover the palms used to make roofs, an unknowing camel walking through the neighborhood plunged into what was once someone’s living room.
Research suggests sand migration plays a significant role in desertification. Deserts, including the Sahara, are expanding at unprecedented rates and “sand seas” are being reactivated, with blowing dunes transforming landscapes where vegetation once stood.

A man walks through sand with palm trees in the distance in Chinguetti, Mauritania on Feb. 3, 2025. (AP)

“What we used to think of as the worst case scenario five to 10 years ago is now actually looking like a more likely scenario than we had in mind,” said Andreas Baas, an earth scientist from King’s College London who researches how winds and the way they blow sand are changing.
More than three-quarters of the earth’s land has become drier in recent decades, according to a 2024 United Nations report on desertification. The aridity has imperiled ability of plants, humans and animals to survive. It robs lands of the moisture needed to sustain life, kills crops and can cause sandstorms and wildfires.
“Human-caused climate change is the culprit; known for making the planet warmer, it is also making more and more land drier,” the UN report said. “Aridity-related water scarcity is causing illness and death and spurring large-scale forced migration around the world.”
Scientists and policymakers are mostly concerned about soils degrading in once-fertile regions that are gradually becoming wastelands, rather than areas deep in the Sahara Desert.
Still, in Chinguetti, a changing climate is ushering in many of the consequences that officials have warned about. Trees are withering, wells are running dry and livelihoods are vanishing.
Date farmers like 50-year-old Salima Ould Salem have found it increasingly difficult to nourish their palm trees, and now have to pipe in water from tanks and prune more thoroughly to make sure it’s used efficiently. Salem’s neighborhood used to be full of families, but they’ve gradually moved away. Sand now blocks the doorway to his home. It’s buried those where some of his neighbors once lived. And a nearby guesthouse built by a Belgian investor decades ago is now half-submerged in a rippling copper-hued dune.
Though many have departed, Salem remains, aware that each time a member of the community leaves, their home can no long serve as a bulwark and the rest of the community therefore becomes more likely to be swallowed by the desert.
“We prefer to stay here. If I leave, my place will disappear,” the 50-year-old date farmer said.
Acacia, gum and palm trees once shielded the neighborhood from encroaching dunes, but they’ve gradually disappeared. The trees have either died of thirst or have been cut down by residents needing firewood or foliage for their herds to feed on.
Sandstorms are not new but have become increasingly intrusive, each leaving inches or feet in the neighborhoods on the edge of the city, retired teacher Mohamed Lemine Bahane said. Residents use mules and carts to remove the sand because the old city’s streets are too narrow to accommodate cars or bulldozers. When sand piles high enough, some build new walls atop existing structures.
“When you remove the vegetation, it gives the dunes a chance to become more active, because it’s ultimately the vegetation that can hold down the sand so it doesn’t blow too much,” Bahane said.
Bahane has for years taken measurements of the sand deposits and rains and says that Chinguetti has received an annual average of 2.5 centimeters (one inch) of rainfall over the past decade. As rainfall plummets, trees die, and more sand migrates into town. And with shorter acacia trees submerged in sand, some herders resort to cutting down date palm trees to feed their flocks, further disrupting the ecosystem and date farming economy. The sands also raise public health concerns for the community breathing in the dust, Bahane said.
The solution, he believes, has to be planting more trees both in neighborhoods and along the perimeter of town. Such “green belts” have been proposed on a continent-wide scale as Africa’s “Great Green Wall” as well as locally, in towns like Chinguetti. Mauritania’s Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Agriculture as well as European-funded NGOs have floated projects to plant trees to insulate the city’s libraries and manuscripts from the incoming desert.
Though some have been replanted, there’s little sign that it has contributed to stopping the desert in its tracks. It can take years for taproots to grow deep enough into the earth to access groundwater.
“We’re convinced that desertification is our destiny. But thankfully, there are still people convinced that it can be resisted,” El Wely, the community leader, said.
 

 


Pentagon says will cut civilian workforce by at least 5 percent

Pentagon says will cut civilian workforce by at least 5 percent
Updated 22 February 2025
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Pentagon says will cut civilian workforce by at least 5 percent

Pentagon says will cut civilian workforce by at least 5 percent

WASHINGTON: The Defense Department said Friday that it’s cutting 5,400 probationary workers starting next week and will put a hiring freeze in place.
It comes after staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, were at the Pentagon earlier in the week and received lists of such employees, US officials said. They said those lists did not include uniformed military personnel, who are exempt. Probationary employees are generally those on the job for less than a year and who have yet to gain civil service protection.
“We anticipate reducing the Department’s civilian workforce by 5-8 percent to produce efficiencies and refocus the Department on the President’s priorities and restoring readiness in the force,” Darin Selnick, who is acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a statement.
Probationary employees are generally those on the job for less than a year and who have yet to gain civil service protection.
President Donald Trump’s administration is firing thousands of federal workers who have fewer civil service protections. For example, roughly 2,000 employees were cut from the US Forest Service, and an 7,000 people are expected to be let go at the Internal Revenue Service.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has supported cuts, posting on X last week that the Pentagon needs “to cut the fat (HQ) and grow the muscle (warfighters.)”
The Defense Department is the largest government agency, with the Government Accountability Office finding in 2023 that it had more than 700,000 full-time civilian workers.
Hegseth also has directed the military services to identify $50 billion in programs that could be cut next year to redirect those savings to fund Trump’s priorities. It represents about 8 percent of the military’s budget.


Zelensky: Ukraine, US working on economic deal to ensure it works

Zelensky: Ukraine, US working on economic deal to ensure it works
Updated 22 February 2025
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Zelensky: Ukraine, US working on economic deal to ensure it works

Zelensky: Ukraine, US working on economic deal to ensure it works
  • Zelensky became involved in barbed exchanges with Trump this week over approaches to a peace settlement

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that officials from his country and the US were working on concluding an economic deal to ensure that the accord worked and was fair to Kyiv.
In Washington, US President Donald Trump said negotiators were close to clinching an accord.
Zelensky rejected an initial proposal focusing on cooperation around metals, saying it was “not a serious conversation” and not in Ukraine’s interests.
“Today, the teams of Ukraine and the United States are working on a draft agreement between our governments,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
“This agreement has the potential to strengthen our relations and, most importantly, the details must be arranged in such a way that ensures it works. I am hoping for a result, a fair result.”
Zelensky’s comments followed a conversation between his chief of staff, Andrii Yermak, and US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. The Ukrainian president’s office said the two men discussed “aligning positions” in bilateral relations.
Yermak “stressed the importance of maintaining bilateral cooperation and a high level of relations between Ukraine and the United States,” according to the president’s office.
Waltz said on Friday he expected Zelensky to sign the minerals agreement with the US as part of efforts to end the Ukraine war.
“Here’s the bottom line, President Zelensky is going to sign that deal, and you will see that in the very short term,” Waltz told the Conservative Political Action Conference on the outskirts of Washington.
Zelensky rejected US demands for $500 billion in mineral wealth from Ukraine to repay Washington for wartime aid, saying the US had supplied nowhere near that sum.
He also said the proposed deal offered none of the security guarantees that Ukraine is seeking as part of a peace settlement.
Zelensky became involved in barbed exchanges with Trump this week over approaches to a peace settlement and the opening of US-Russian talks to which Ukraine was not invited.
Trump branded the Ukrainian leader “a dictator without elections,” a reference to Zelensky remaining in office beyond his mandate without calling a wartime election.
In his address, Zelensky provided details of telephone calls he made to European and African leaders — including Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Ireland, Luxembourg and Sweden.
“The main conclusion is that Europe must and can do considerably more so that peace can realistically be achieved,” he said.