True Left

The US representative at the UN Council, Kelly Billingsley, said her country wanted Paris to “expand efforts to counter crimes and threats of violence motivated by religious hatred such as anti-Muslim hate, including cases of harassment, vandalism, and assault”.

Meanwhile, China urged France to “stop measures that violate rights of migrants” and Brazil and Japan highlighted the importance of stopping “racial profiling by security forces”.

South Africa warns Putin of threat of arrest should he attend BRICS Summit in person
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"We have no option not to arrest Putin," a government official said. “If he comes here, we will have to arrest him.”

Last week, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed a special government committee headed by the country's vice president to study the government's Vladimir Putin’s international arrest warrant, the newspaper reported.

This committee will not be able to find "any options that would allow Putin to come," the paper’s sources said. "The only option we have is for [Putin] to participate in the summit via Teams or Zoom from Moscow."

They keep blowing the whistle before he shows up, don't tell him. Show some patience, invite putin and conduct a secret operation to detain him.

Why warn him? Let hin show up then supriae him with a new shiny set of bracelets.

Why warn him.. just do it

Don't warn him... let him show up.

the smart thing would be to encourage Putin to come. And, have the Navy SEALS waiting for him.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican on Thursday responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” the theories backed by 15th-century “papal bulls” that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today.
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The statement, from the Vatican’s development and education offices, marked a historic recognition of the Vatican’s own complicity in colonial-era abuses committed by European powers.
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On Thursday, these Indigenous leaders welcomed the statement as a first good step, even though it didn’t address the rescinding of the bulls themselves and continued to take distance from acknowledging actual Vatican culpability in abuses. The statement said the papal documents had been “manipulated” for political purposes by competing colonial powers “to justify immoral acts against Indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesial authorities.”
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The statement was a response to decades of Indigenous demands for the Vatican to formally rescind the papal bulls that provided the Portuguese and Spanish kingdoms the religious backing to expand their territories in Africa and the Americas for the sake of spreading Christianity.

Those decrees underpin the “Doctrine of Discovery,” a legal concept coined in a 1823 U.S. Supreme Court decision that has come to be understood as meaning that ownership and sovereignty over land passed to Europeans because they “discovered” it.

It was cited as recently as a 2005 Supreme Court decision involving the Oneida Indian Nation written by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
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Michelle Schenandoah of the Oneida Nation had called for the Vatican to rescind the papal bulls when she delivered the closing remarks of the First Nations delegation that met with Francis during a weeklong visit last year by Native groups from Canada. On Thursday, she called the Vatican statement “another step in the right direction,” but noted that it didn’t mention the rescinding of the bulls themselves.

“I think what this does is it really puts the responsibility on nation states such as the United States, to look at its use of the Doctrine of Discovery,” she said in a interview from Syracuse, New York, where she is a professor of Indigenous law at Syracuse University’s College of Law. “This goes beyond land. It really has created generation upon generation of genocidal policies directed towards Indigenous peoples. And I think that it’s time for these governments to take full accountability for their actions.”

South Africa’s parliament has voted to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Israel.

This comes after years of strained relations due to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Al Jazeera’s Fahmida Miller reports from Johannesburg, South Africa.

Israel on Saturday condemned the "severe" expulsion of a senior diplomat from the African Union summit, accusing arch-foe Iran of orchestrating the move with help from Algeria and South Africa.

A video circulating on social media shows guards escorting the Israeli foreign ministry's deputy director general for Africa, Sharon Bar-li, out of the AU assembly taking place in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry described the incident as "severe," noting Bar-li was "an accredited observer with an entry tag", a claim denied by an AU official.

The ministry spokesman said it was "saddening to see the African Union taken hostage by a small number of extremist states like Algeria and South Africa, which are driven by hatred and controlled by Iran".
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Israel attained observer status at the AU in 2021 after decades of diplomatic efforts, drawing protest from powerful members including South Africa and Algeria, which argued that it flew in the face of AU statements supporting the Palestinians.

Last year, unease flared over the accreditation of Israel as an observer at the AU, with the Palestinians -- who also have an observer status at the body -- urging it to be withdrawn.

Police ban planned Quran burning protest in Norway

Oslo police Inspector Martin Strand says demonstration in Norwegian capital ‘can’t go ahead due to security concerns’.

Police in Norway have banned a planned protest including the burning of a copy of the Islamic holy book, the Quran, hours after the Turkish foreign ministry summoned the Norwegian ambassador to complain.

A group of protesters planned to burn a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish embassy in Oslo on Friday, police said.

“The police emphasise that burning the Quran is a legal political statement in Norway, but this event can’t go ahead due to security concerns,” Oslo police Inspector Martin Strand said in a statement on Thursday.