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Gulf Today
a day ago
- Politics
- Gulf Today
The great Gretas
Palestine's tiny strip coastal strip, Gaza, has become a global cause over the past 17 years thanks, in part, to two women called 'Greta.' Californian activist Greta Berlin is a cofounder of the Free Gaza Movement which in 2008 breached Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza by sailing small boats from Cyprus into the strip's fishermen's harbour. Born in Michigan and educated in Indiana and Illinois, Berlin, 84, was introduced to the Palestinian cause by her Palestinian-US husband who was a refugee from the town of Safad seized by Israel during its 1948 war of establishment. She became active in Palestinian advocacy after Israel's 1967 occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. She and her husband launched a non-profit charity, Pal Aid International, to send medicine and aid to the Palestinians. In response, she said his tax records were audited by the US Internal Revenue Service, they were questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and warned that their two children could be harmed by a pro-Israel organisation. Her second husband was Jewish and anti-Zionist. In 1977, while temporarily abstaining from the Palestinian cause, she established a successful firm for coaching engineers and scientists on how to present their work to conferences around the world. In 2003, Berlin joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM and travelled to the West Bank to taken part in its peaceful protests against the Israeli occupation. The Free Gaza Movement – established in 2006 – made five successful voyages to Gaza in 2008 but since December that year Israel has blocked all maritime missions to reach the strip. The most violent incident took place in 2010 when Israeli commandos landed by helicopter on the deck of the Istanbul ferry Mavi Marmara and killed nine activists. The Free Gaza banner was taken up in June by high-profile Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and 11 others on the two-masted sailboat Madleen. On the 9th, the boat was commandeered by Israeli commandoes, Thunberg and her colleagues were arrested, taken to Israel's Ashdod port and expelled to their home countries. At 22 years of age, two generations younger than Greta Berlin, Thunberg began to shine as a campaigner In 2018.. Then 15 , she skipped school to demand strong global action against climate change. She vowed to stay away from school until Sweden complied with the terms of the 2016 Paris climate agreement. Students elsewhere around the world followed Thunberg by staging protest boycotts at their schools every Friday. As momentum built, she addressed the 2018 UN Climate Change Conference as well as the 2019 Climate Change Summit in New York where Thunberg accused world leaders of inaction over the growing climate crisis. After graduating from secondary school in 2023, she intensified her involvement in the climate change movement and expanded recruitment by aggressive posting on social media, the chief means of communication used by youngsters of her generation. She also widened her horizons by leading her support to the causes of Palestine, Ukraine, Armenia and Western Sahara. After Hamas seized control of Gaza from the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority In 2007, Israel waged war on the strip In 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021. These attacks involved deadly and destructive bombings and shelling from which Gaza and Gazans never recovered. Israel controlled everything which entered the strip and limited building material. On Oct.7, 2023, Hamas fighters struck southern Israel, killing 1,200 and abducing 250, according to Israel. It responded with an offensive, two ceasefires and periods when aid could flow. Israel has failed to win the war and to map a route to end it. As the Palestinian death toll mounted to 55,000, Israel has lost global public opinion. Ireland, Spain, and Norway recognised the state of Palestine in May 2024. Other Western governments could follow suit. Thunberg described as 'horrific' Hamas' attack on Israel but added that 'the world needs to speak up and call for an immediate ceasefire, justice and freedom for Palestinians and all civilians affected.' In an article published in The Guardian, Thunberg, and other climate activists in her 'Fridays for the Future' movement, made the connection between the climate and Palestinian causes. They said, 'We won't stop speaking out about Gaza's suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights.' Unlike Berlin, Thunberg has attracted widespread publicity and awards. She was named in Time magazine's 100 most influential people and Forbes' list of the world's 100 most powerful women in 2019 and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Between 2008 and 2025 – and particularly over the past two years – a great deal has changed on the Palestine advocacy front. While attempting to suppress negative publicity over its policies in the occupied West Bank and dominated Gaza, Israel has not escaped castigation and condemnation. Among its sharpest critics has been B'Tselem, the Israeli rights organisation which labelled Israel's system of West Bank governance as 'apartheid,' which is illegal under international law. This label has been picked up by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch which had been wary of using the term until B'Tselem applied it. In July 2024, the International Court of Justice found Israel responsible for apartheid, war crimes, and crimes against humanity including plausible 'genocide.' Israel's Gaza's war, siege and blockade of Gaza led the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and ex-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant as well as Hamas leaders who were assassinated by Israel. Israel has not escaped accountability in global public opinion and among some Western allied governments although the US has remained loyal. It is much safer these days to be critical of Israel than when Greta Berlin and her sailors began their voyages to Gaza. Photos: AFP
AU Financial Review
28-05-2025
- Automotive
- AU Financial Review
America Inc raises the stakes in fight with Canberra over tax
American car giant Ford has enlisted the United States tax authorities to help fight a dispute with the Australian Tax Office, as experts warn that Donald Trump's 'America First' policy agenda will further sour Canberra's fraught relationship with US companies. Ford's move to bring in the US Internal Revenue Service comes as the ATO fights for billions of dollars of disputed taxes with major US corporations, including oil major ExxonMobil, aluminium manufacturer Alcoa, gold miner Newmont and PepsiCo.
The National
28-04-2025
- Business
- The National
Richard Murphy: The US economy is on a cliff edge, Wile E Coyote-style
You will probably be familiar with him. He runs off the edge of a cliff, quite often. He maintains his forward momentum for a short while, his legs pumping furiously, until he looks down and realises not only is further forward progress impossible but that he will inevitably crash to the ground, as, of course, he does. The metaphor appeared entirely appropriate to me when applied to the US economy and to the country as a whole. As I've been saying in this column, on my blog and on my YouTube channel, Donald Trump is going to crash the US economy. Nobody has taken my warnings more seriously than people in the US – my audience there has grown enormously in recent months. Whether that is because there is a form of masochism deep in some parts of the American psyche that likes to be told by a person with an English accent (which I have) that they are heading for disaster, or that people in that country find something that resonates in my warnings, I do not know. But what I am sure of is the fact that if we stand back and look at where the US is, it must crash soon. A president cannot create the scale of havoc that Trump has, within his own country and beyond. without massive consequences arising. Trump has declared a trade war. He is fuelling US inflation. He is harming US financial markets. He is threatening US jobs. He is reducing the profitability of US companies. They will react by reducing the level of investment they make in the US economy, with inevitable consequences for the level of employment. In addition, Trump has undermined the rule of law. He is also seeking to wreck the US Internal Revenue Service (the equivalent of HM Revenue & Customs), which is looking likely to lose about one-third of its staff in the space of little more than three months. This is likely to destroy its capacity to operate, and so to collect the taxes the US government needs to function. The number of staff being sacked by the federal government might well affect the US unemployment rate. US foreign relations are in tatters. Russia is laughing. Ukraine and Gaza are at massive risk. Canada and Greenland rightly wonder what happens next. Put all that together, and that feeling that Wile E Coyote had just before his descent began is one that many astute people in the US are now feeling. The rest are going to catch up soon. What happens then? No-one knows. We are in uncharted territory. However, assuming that domestic stability can be maintained (and that cannot be guaranteed in a country with so many guns), the US economy is, at best, going to have an uncomfortable recession, and as likely a depression. READ MORE: Kate Forbes: For Scotland to thrive, it must look east A depression means the country might face a prolonged downturn in economic activity, typically lasting longer than three years. Depressions usually result in high unemployment and widespread business failures. The world has not seen one since the 1930s. Trump might just manage another, almost a century later. That does not mean Scotland needs to suffer to quite the same extent, but there are two reasons to worry. The first is that when the US sneezes, the rest of the world tends to catch a cold – US economic downturns tend to be mightily contagious. The second can be summed up in two words: Rachel Reeves. The Chancellor is still desperate to do a trade deal with Trump, as if his word is worth relying upon when, time and again, he has already proven it to be worthless. Worse still, her dedication to her fiscal rules suggests she is capable of making things very much worse in the UK, and so in Scotland, than they might need to be. What I think we can be sure of is that she will do too little, too late, and then only what is necessary to appease the City of London, not to provide security to the people of Scotland. We are in deep trouble, it is time to stop pretending otherwise. We are already almost certainly over that cliff. All we are waiting to find out is when our furious efforts to prevent the fall might fail. Scotland and its political leadership need to work out now what they might do in response. There is no point looking to London for help. So, what is that response going to be? That is what I want to know.
The Guardian
19-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump news at a glance: Maryland senator says Ábrego García moved from notorious El Salvador prison
Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen revealed that Kilmar Ábrego García had been moved from El Salvador's notorious Cecot prison – where he was sharing a cell with 25 other inmates – to a detention center with better conditions. Van Hollen met with Ábrego García, whom the Trump administration admits it mistakenly deported, and said that he had been left 'traumatized' after facing threats in the Cecot facility. Van Hollen also accused El Salvador's government of planting two margarita glasses between him and Ábrego García for the meeting to make it appear as if they were enjoying a leisurely cocktail. Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Ábrego García's wife, expressed relief to learn her husband is alive after Van Hollen's trip. Trump said on social media the senator 'looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador'. Read the full story Trump said the US would 'pass' on brokering a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia unless there were signs a settlement could be reached 'very shortly', while Kyiv said it had signed a memorandum with the US over a controversial minerals deal. Read the full story Donald Trump is replacing the acting commissioner of the US Internal Revenue Service after the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, reportedly complained to the president that the agency head had been appointed without his knowledge and under the instruction of the Doge leader, Elon Musk. Read the full story The Trump administration has replaced – a website that once provided Americans with access to information about free tests, vaccines, treatment and secondary conditions such as long Covid – with a treatise on the 'lab leak' theory. Read the full story The justice department's civil rights division is shifting its focus away from its longstanding work protecting the rights of marginalized groups and will instead pivot towards Trump's priorities, including hunting for non-citizen voters and protecting white people from discrimination, according to new internal mission statements seen by the Guardian. Read the full story A federal court has blocked the sweeping termination of staff at the top US consumer protection agency, a day after the Trump administration moved to axe about 1,500 of the agency's 1,700 workforce, while officials investigate whether the action violated existing judicial orders. Read the full story The American Civil Liberties Union asked the US supreme court to block the deportation of a new group of Venezuelan men detained in Texas. A US-born American citizen who was detained in Florida has been released. Republicans in nearly half of state legislatures have proposed bills to require documentary proof of citizenship to vote. The Trump administration has spared the jobs of federal employees who provide services for Elon Musk's companies, SpaceX and Starlink, raising a new round of conflict of interest questions around Doge. Catching up? Here's what happened on 17 April 2025.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
3 tips for last-minute tax filing
The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) received fewer tax returns by the end of March than it did the previous year as more Americans delayed filing. National Association of Tax Professionals director of tax content Tom O'Saben joins Wealth host Brad Smith to share some tips for last-minute tax tips. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Wealth here.
